Day: December 22, 2005

Reader/listener alert: I don’t think I can manage a fresh “Elsewhere Live” broadcast today. Tech problems, no speaker phone, continuing transit strike, stranded in Brooklyn, etc. It’s insane. I was going to talk about this and that but mainly run my interview with the great Werner Herzog so here it is. I’ll put up the MP3 file as a stand-alone link in Elsewhere Live either late tonight or tomorrow morning. (I may also run a portion of the q & a in transcript form.) Herzog’s Grizzly Man comes out on DVD on 12.26 via Lion’s Gate, and he has a live-action feature called Rescue Dawn, a non-Vietnam War jungle survivalist drama set in Laos in 1965, coming out in March ’06 (according to the IMDB). Partly inspired, suggested or at the very least echoed or hinted at by Herzog’s 1997 doc Little Dieter Needs to Fly, the film costars Christian Bale, Steve Zahn and Jeremy Davies.

I believe what I believe about Munich‘s worthiness as a Best Picture contender, but I’m at least flexible enough to realize that the “poor Munich” thing has kicked in, and I’m adaptable enough to go with it. It has been beaten up by right-wing political types, and does deserve sympathy and understanding in the wake of this.

From late August to roughly mid-November, Capote‘s Phillip Seymour Hoffman was the far-ahead front-runner to take the Best Actor Oscar. But Heath Ledger has surged over the last two or three weeks, and it seems right now as if Ledger is ahead on points…sadness points, empathy points. Ennis del Mar feels like a sadder, more tragic figure than Truman Capote because he isn’t in the least bit brilliant, and enjoys far fewer opportunities and is overcome by “this thing” that he can’t quite make himself deal with. Capote is overcome also…by ambition, by a curiously deep love for Perry Smith, by his own self-interest. But his story is more complex and totally uptown and economically flush, whereas Ennis del Mar’s is rural and fumbling and hardscrabble. Hoffman is such a masterful actor, but Ledger so choked me up. I’m torn by these two performances…torn and divided. I know they’re both great, but I don’t know which way to turn.

I should have mentioned this earlier, but kudos to the Pheonix Film Critics for announcing an original independent thought by giving its Best Picure award to Ron Howard’s Cinderella Man…and also by naming George Clooney as Best Director for his helming of Good Night, and Good Luck.

Finally got around to reading the piece by Salon‘s Michelle Gold- berg about the political attacks against Munich (all by the pro- Israeli right), and I agree — it’s a very thorough and perceptive analysis. And the sympathy surge for this Steven Spielberg film continues…and that’s fine.

Looks like the transit strike will be over by tomorrow (i.e., Friday) or thefreabouts. Perhaps only one more exercise day remaining! Hollywood Elsewhere is planning another 140-block visit in Man- hattan later today. A visit with Capote director Bennett Miller, stopping by to pick up a script of Mike Binder’s Reign Over Me, visiting the AMC plex on 42nd Street, etc.

Fun With Dick and Jane…what is that? A movie? The title is on the marquees, the cans of film are in the booths, but to paraphrase Richard Burton’s line in Peter Glenville’s Becket, “In me there is only…a void.”