Month: October 2008

The climax of the final interview between David Frost and Richard Nixon in 1977 came when Nixon said the following about his Watergate legacy: “I let down my friends, I let down the country, I let down our system of government and the dreams of all those young people that ought to get into government. I let the American people down. And I’ll have to carry that burden the rest of my life.”

Richard M. Nixon; George W. Bush

It hit me as I was watching the Nixonified Frank Langella say these words in Frost/Nixon (Universal, 12.5) that for his all his venality and paranoia, Nixon — a very intelligent and knowledgable fellow by even the yardstick of his enemies — at least had the character to admit this. Who believes that George Bush, Jr. will ever say anything similar?

Every indication is that Bush will go his grave before saying anything like the following: “I not only misled the country but shamed the office of the Presidency by lying and fabricating our way into the Iraq invasion, by turning the huge Clinton surplus into a massive deficit, by ignoring the Kyoto Accords and hastening the onset of global warming, by presiding over a the creation of a new class of super-wealthy Americans that undermined middle-class economic security, by sitting in that Florida classroom like a chump after hearing about the WTC attacks, ” etc.

George Hickenloooper (Factory Girl) and R.J. Cutler (The War Room) have put together an upcoming documentary series about Denver mayor John Hickenlooper (George’s cousin) called Hick Town. Below is a 156-second teaser that includes a private moment between Mayor Hickenlooper, Senator Barack Obama and co-director George. Get out the vote, watch the show, cheer on the mild-mannered mayor, etc.

Hickenlooper-the-director describes Hick Town as “a high-end reality series about a big city Mayor keeping his office and town together. Think a real life version of Spin City or The Office. The first five episodes were shot while John (who Time ranked one of the top five Mayors in America) hosted the Democratic National Convention and dealt with everything from bomb threats to assassination plots to overly eager marijuana enthusiasts to stray dogs. This is a fun show that puts a very human face on public service.”

Hick Town is executive produced by Cutler, Donald Zuckerman and Jeff Chianakas. It was directed by George Hickenlooper. The show will premiere on a soon-to-be-named major network.

“I’ve had just about enough of the patronizing bullshit of Kris Tapley,” writes And The Winner columnist Scott Feinberg. The fight began with Feinberg’s responding to my quickie Milk reaction post last night, which led to Tapley bitch-slapping Feinberg over something he wrote and then it was off the races. I’m just passing this along, okay? I’m not in this.

“Incidentally, who the hell is [Tapley]?,” writes Feinberg. “We’re about the same age, we both started covering the Oscars in the same place, we’ve been doing this for roughly the same length of time, and — acknowledging something that he won’t — we both know our stuff, which is why we’ve both had opportunities to contribute to the websites of mainstream outlets. The difference is that Kris has lost perspective and actually believes he’s a big-shot now, and that everyone else is merely a pee-on whose opinion is less worthy than his own.

“Kris didn’t like that this web site was generating attention on other Oscar sites, and he particularly didn’t like that I periodically e-mailed the Oscar other bloggers links to interesting pieces/or scoops of mine (just like they did to me), so he removed a link to my site from his blogroll. Eventually, he restored a link to AndTheWinnerIs, but he has never linked to The Feinberg Files, even though I linked to both InContention and Red Carpet District (R.I.P.). But, hey, it’s his right.

“What’s really perplexed me is what I ever did to Kris that led him to completely blacklist my name or anything to do with me from his site — except to snidely note, as one of his news-recap items the week I was hired to do a new blog, that “The Los Angeles Times has hired an east coast outsider and called it awards coverage. Well, we wish him well.’

“Look, Kris obviously has a problem with me, although we’ve never met and I’ve never done anything to him. I’ve kept this between Kris and me until now, but his complete eruption over a two-sentence harmless observation that I shared on Jeff Wells’ site is absurd and rather pathetic. It makes me wonder if we’re dealing with a Captain Queeg type of personality here… maybe Dan White is more fitting. (Kidding.)

“But you’ve gotta admit that it takes some chutzpah for Kris, of all people, to be this condescending to anyone.”

I’ve been otherwise engaged (which is sometimes a euphemism for “lazy”) but let’s get down to this, link-wise: (a) Stephen Zeitchik‘s 10.28 Hollywood Reporter piece about the alleged “Milk marketing conundrum” (which broke late yesterday evening as I was on my way out of the Milk screening and on my way to the Frost/Nixon one); (b) the angry response from Focus Features honcho James Schamus; and (c) a comment from Nathan Lee that echoes back into what Devin Faraci has raised today.

One of the things that’s striking a lot of people about Milk is how regrettably timely it is right now, with Proposition 8 (i.e., eliminating gay marriage) on the ballot in California. Which makes you wonder if the movie should have been released before Election Day as a way to organize people to vote this measure down. In the view of CHUD’s Devin Faraci, in the 30 years since Harvey Milk died we really haven’t come very far in terms of gay rights.

In the 11.10 issue of People, Oliver Jones asks I’ve Loved You So Long star and likely Oscar nominee Kristin Scott Thomas about her favorite review so far. “Someone compared my performance to Steve McQueen,” she answers. “That’s the ultimate compliment to me — to be compared to a man!”

That “someone” would be me. The McQueen comparison is on the mp3 in this KST interview piece (“Doesn’t Miss a Trick”) that I ran on 10.14. What I actually said is that her ILYSL acting reminds me of McQueen’s in The Sand Pebbles — masterfully low-key, and his best ever according to common consensus. I also referenced Al Pacino’s performance in The Godfather, Part II.

The cutting, the humor, the personalities, the conversations, the Harrison Ford turnaround — this really works and builds and more than sustains itself, and for a nearly five-minute running time. Which is no small thing. Either Steven Spielberg directed or is “playing” the director. If it’s the former, did he supervise the cutting also? If so, my hat is off.

Famed NASCAR driver and racing-team owner Robert Glen Johnson, a.k.a. “Junior Johnson” — the guy Tom Wolfe wrote about in his famous 1965 article “The Last American Hero is Junior Johnson. Yes!” and which led to Lamont Johnson’s The Last American Hero (’73) with Jeff Bridges in the title role — has come out for Barack Obama.

Robert Glen Johnson; jacket art for Last American Hero DVD.

“Our country is in a rough spot, and we’re going to need some serious change. There’s only one candidate ready to deliver it — and that’s Barack Obama,” Johnson has written in a mass e-mail.

“Every day I talk to someone else who’s never voted for a Democrat, but now they’re voting for Barack Obama. They realize that Barack understands what we’re going through here in North Carolina. And they’re ready for change. So I’ve made up my mind, and I’m ready to get involved. I know that I could never have won a race without my pit crew, and I know Barack can’t win this one without us.”

A friend who had heard and passed along some less-than-ecstatic reactions to Milk a while back wrote me last night to ask what I really meant when I wrote that “those who’ve been spreading the iffy stuff are, I have to conclude, by and large mean-spirited and overly demanding.”

What I was trying to convey, I answered, is that anyone who would come out of this film and call it hagiography and a bronzed martyr construction and declare that there’s no lump-in-the-throat at the end wouldn’t necessarily be “wrong” but they would fit my definition of unfairly dismissive and would therefore be, in line with this, somewhat mean-spirited.

I mean this in the sense that Milk has a good and honest heart, it tries and largely succeeds at telling Harvey Milk‘s story the way it seems to have happened (to go by Rob Epstein‘s 1983 doc), and that while it’s not a great film it’s a very honorable one — I gave it an 8.5 — that has no flaws so glaring as to deserve being trashed.

I’m not saying the naysayers are wrong. I’m saying they don’t seem to have much compassion for a very decently layered and fully considered and honest effort. They didn’t ‘let it in’ because it didn’t meet certain standards they they have, fine, but generally speaking Milk isn’t, by any fair standard, a ‘problem movie.’

My first idea way back when was that Van Sant might make something in the vein of Elephant and Last Days — cal it Harvey Milk’s Last Day — that would forego conventional narrative, but his decision to go semi-conventional here works surprisingly well as far as it goes, in part because of the raw and naturalistic vibe contained in Harris Savides‘ photography, in part because of the performances, in part because it creates a late ’70s spherical wholeness that’s fairly easy to buy into.

It’s not, I’ll agree, quite as moving as the Oscar-wining doc — watching and listening to the real people tell it, and particularly to get to know and love the real Harvey carries a special realism and organic chemistry that can’t be duplicated by actors — but what is? Gus shows the real Harvey at the very end, and this brief exposure to the kindness and generosity of spirit in his features made me melt.

The friend mentioned that some who were at the Castro screening tonight were mixed on it as well, and that In Contention‘s KrisTapley is somewhere in there, clearly. “Could this be a gay biopic that perhaps plays better for some bizarre reason to straight guys like you and Poland?,” he asked. That’s conceivable, I answered. Maybe. It’s a topic for further review.

“For the first time in my memory, we have a major Oscar movie that actually is a gay-agenda movie,” MCN’s David Poland briefly wrote last night. “But on the making, it is so much more. It is a brilliant, powerfully humane piece of work that reaches well beyond the issue of gay rights or any idea that this is a gay-only film.

“Sean Penn gives an Oscar lock performance of power and subtlety that ranks with the best of his career. Great work by James Franco and Emile Hirsch. Josh Brolin may not have enough screen time or empathy for awards, but got the mixed emotions of a murderer so right that I felt my blood go cold watching a shot of him walking a fateful hallway.

“And the mixture of doc footage and this drama is amazing, pushing the bar farther and racking up another great piece by Harris Savides.”