How do you go from being a tough, provocative director of respected envelope-pushing dramas to a seemingly flailing director of wildly miscalculated embarassments? That’s what Otto Preminger managed to do between the mid ’60s and mid ’70s. Many great directors lost their touch or their edge when they got older (Elia Kazan, Francis Coppola, John Frankenheimer, Billy Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock, Elia Kazan, John Schlesinger), but only the once-great Preminger appeared to literally lose his mind, or certainly his judgment.
Otto Preminger sometime during the mid ’50s.
I’m reminded of this by the recent DVD release of Such Good Friends (’71) and the forthcoming DVD of Skidoo (’68) — two of the worst films ever made by a “name” director during Hollywood’s counter-culture flirtation. Not to mention the painfully campy Hurry Sundown (’67), the altogether dismal Tell Me You Love Me, Junie Moon (’70) and the catastrophic Rosebud (’75), which has never had a domestic DVD release.
Okay, Preminger redeemed himself somewhat (or at least slightly) with his final film, The Human Factor (’79), but the ’67-to-’75 damage has been so deep and wounding that it almost didn’t matter. What other director has lost it this badly during the final laps?
Early in his career Preminger hit the motherlode with a classic noir, Laura (’44), and then went into quasi-slumber mode for six or seven years before finding his legendary early ’50s-to-mid ’60s groove — Angel Face (’52), The Moon Is Blue (’53), Carmen Jones (’54), The Man with the Golden Arm (’56), Saint Joan (’57), Bonjour Tristesse (’58), Porgy and Bess (1959), Anatomy of a Murder (’59 — probably his peak), Exodus (1960 — starting to slip), Advise and Consent (’62), The Cardinal (’63) and In Harm’s Way (’65 — his last semi-decent film before the fall).
I was stirred and intrigued and frequently taken away by portions of Terrence Malick‘s The Tree of Lifewhen I saw it in Cannes. So when friends told me they planned to see it last night it suddenly seemed like a good idea to join them. But now, 12 hours after the lights came up in Arclight #5, I’m not so sure.
Jessica Chastain in The Tree of Life
Life is still a gentle, layered, highly undisciplined cosmic church-service movie — a quiet spiritual environment to dream inside of and meditate by. But (and I’m sorry to say this in a way) it doesn’t gain with a second viewing. And all very good or great movies tend to do this. So what’s wrong?
I was made fun of on 5.22 by New York‘s “Approval Matrix” guy for tweeting from Cannes that I was glad I’d seen The Tree of Life but I’m “not sure if I’ll buy/get the Bluray.” Now that I’ve seen it twice I know I won’t bring the Bluray home. In other words I immediately sensed it wasn’t a two-timer in Cannes and now the proof is in the pudding, so I would say my premonitions have merit.
For me, The Tree of Life is an amazing film in the sense that it gathers and swirls it all together in the same way that I myself swirl it all together ever day, soaking in my blender shake of childhood memories, present-day ennui, seaside dreams, forest-primeval dreams and dinosaur dreams, catch-as-catch-can impressions and endless variations and meditations about loss and lament and the absence of grace, etc. That plus “fuck me because it sure could have been a happier life if it hadn’t been for my gruff, largely unaffectionate, World War II-generation dad who brought darkness and snippiness too many times to the dinner table,” etc.
I’m always disengaging from the present and wandering around in the past and thinking about dinosaurs and Dean Martin and Steve McQueen and Lee Marvin and cap guns and girls in bikinis on beaches and how my mother looked and sounded when she was young, and how I used to argue with myself about who was worse, she or my father. All I know is that except for movie-watching and running around with friends, my childhood was a Soviet prison-camp experience — a spiritual gulag. My parents and the public schools I attended may have made me into a tougher, more resourceful survivor than if they’d been “nicer” and easier on me, but God, what a price.
I’m presuming it’s not just me who takes this head-trip all the time, but each and every person on the planet. Malick is merely taking a grab-bag of his own lamentings and assembling them into a film. That — don’t get me wrong — is a very welcome thing. I’m immensely grateful that a film as nourishing and open-pored as The Tree of Life is playing in the same plex alongside Transformers 3 (a film that gives you no room whatsoever to trip out).
But I’m not convinced that what Malick has done is all that staggering or transcendent or worth the kind of in-depth explanation piece that Salon‘s Matt Zoller Seitz has written, which reminds me of the sermons that Episcopalian ministers used to deliver when they tried to explain what God and Jesus could or should mean to the average parishioner (i.e., myself). I used to quietly groan to myself during these sermons, and then I took LSD when I was 19 and I finally did see God and Jesus, and I realized what tepid and cautious fellows those ministers were.
I’m basically saying that my second Life experience was the same exquisitely captured, three-card-monte salad toss. The dreams and ennui of Mr. Malick when he first hatched the idea back in the ’70s (when it was called Q) + the joy and wonder of Emmanuel Lubezki‘s cinematography + Malick’s “I’ll figure it out during editing” strategy. Many an ambitious and/or captivating film could be described as being “less about itself than what you the viewer would make of it,” but The Tree of Life is especially that kind of film. You’re on your own, baby.
My first Cannes tweet still says it all: “Terrence Malick made The Tree of Life in this free-flowing, free-associative way because he could, because he doesn’t have Bert and Harold Schneider riding his ass in post, and because God told him to…like it or lump it.”
The other problem was last night’s Arclight showing was projected with insufficient light and with a slightly hazy focus. Malick asked projectionists for 14 foot lamberts of light when showing his film. I knew right away I was looking at something like 10 or 11 foot lamberts…somewhere in that vicinity. Not terrible but not enough. Some if not much of the subtleties in Lubezki’s visual scheme are simply not manifested when the brightness levels aren’t full-on. And I was really pissed off during the closing credits when it was obvious that the focus had never been there all along. The Arclight is supposed to be a top-quality experience, but it wasn’t good enough last night in theatre #5.
Eight days ago Jezebel posted Kathy Griffin‘s very well-told story about running into Michelle Bachmann. Griffin’s money question was, “Were you born a bigot or did you grow into it?” Bachmann’s reply: “That’s a good question. I’m gonna have to get back to you on that one!”
Please, God — let Ms. Bachmann become the 2012 Republican nominee for president. Chris Matthews said a couple of weeks ago on Real Time with Bill Maher that he believes she’s going to beat Mitt Romney in New Hampshire because she stands for something and really speaks her mind (however dubious her mental determinations may be) and is not a phony. Please give us Bachmann…seriously. Talk about a gift from Heaven.
Last night I paid to see A Better Life — paid! — for the second time. (My first viewing was at the Santa Monica Aero on June 7th.) It was playing at Arclight #11, and after the show — totally sold out, by the way — director Chris Weitz and star Demian Bichir dropped by for a q & a. And then they were swamped in the lobby outside for photos and chit-chat.
Damian Bichir in Chris Weitz’s A Better Life.
A second viewing doesn’t diminish A Better Life in the least. If anything it seemed to play a bit cleaner and stronger. I wrote on 6.8 that “it’s genuinely moving, if a little too grim and deflating at times.” Well, the grimness and deflation were gone last night and replaced by a kind of dignity and austerity and emotional truthfulness that’s really quite rare in mainstream movies today. I realized this during my first viewing, but perhaps not fully enough.
“I fell in love with [the script] the first time I read it,” Bichir tellsVanity Fair‘s Sasha Bronner. “It was so powerful and so well written. No gimmicks, no Hollywood tricks. It was the real thing. And then the character was one of those characters that you’re looking for in your life. That’s a Hamlet, that’s a King Lear, that’s one of those bigger-than-life characters, that’s Travis in Taxi Driver. It’s many, many characters in one.”
What a nothing Friday…I’m sorry, Saturday this is. Nothing happening anywhere and hot out to boot. I might as well just go to the club and do some laundry and then take a nap. Shine it. Jett flew out Thursday night for a visit but he decided to go to Las Vegas today with a platonic girlfriend so it’s just me and the cats and my Blurays. That and a plan to visit with friends and go to The Tree of Life again. And then a scooter ride for an hour or so.
“What does a man care about?,” Hemingway asked Hotcher. “Staying healthy. Working good. Eating and drinking with his friends. Enjoying himself in bed. I haven’t any of them. You understand, goddamn it? None of them.”
Hotcher visited Hemingway visited him in June 1961. The novelist had been succumbing to what seemed to be paranoia and had been talking about suicide (and had attempted it once or twice) and had been undergoing shock treatments. Hotchner asked him, “Papa, why do you want to kill yourself?”
“What do you think happens to a man going on 62 when he realizes that he can never write the books and stories he promised himself?,” Hemingway replied. “Or do any of the other things he promised himself in the good days?”
“How can you say that?,” Hotchner replied. “You have written a beautiful book about Paris, as beautiful as anyone can hope to write.” He meant A Movable Feast.
“The best of that I wrote before. And now I can’t finish it.”
Hotcher told him to relax or even retire.
“Retire?” Hemingway said. “Unlike your baseball player and your prizefighter and your matador, how does a writer retire? No one accepts that his legs are shot or the whiplash gone from his reflexes. Everywhere he goes, he hears the same damn question: what are you working on?”
The truth? If you’re a writer who’s 62 or 52 or 32 or 42 and you feel you’re really and truly past it? Unable to write well or feel or give pleasure or just live in a way that feels honest and robust and complete? I don’t know. It’s a tough one to answer. I do know if you’ve written well before you can write well again. I’m better at it now than I was five years ago, and certainly ten or twenty years before that. How could Hemingway have unlearned what he knew so well, and did so well in his prime? Maybe it was the booze. It often is. Alcohol and other substances certainly did in Hunter S. Thompson, who went out the same way.
The wondrous and eternal thing about writing is that you never stop getting closer to the best you can do. The process never ends. The light is always just up ahead.
What Naval submarine captain knows enough about the price of recreational drugs to compare it to the cost of high-end cigars? Even if such a man exists, is it likely he’d share this knowledge with a subordinate officer? The cultural frame of reference behind Gene Hackman‘s remark to Denzel Washington is obviously not Naval, but that of wealthy, jaded Hollywood filmmakers. And that’s why it’s cool.
For 30 article-writing years I’ve been using the exploding-head scene in Scanners as a metaphor for being driven crazy by movies that drive me crazy. And yet the only one (or portion of one) that comes to mind is the first 20 minutes of Baz Luhrman‘s Moulin Rouge. The still was captured by DVD Beaver from the new German Scanners Bluray.
I don’t know what I’d do if a supreme authority were to tell me I’ll no longer be allowed to see any more Asian films about (a) “young Japanese women whose breasts double as machine guns,” (b) “light-on-their-feet martial arts caper[s],” (c) “reasonably credible seventh-century mystery stories with supernatural elements” by way of Asian kung-fu, (d) “a beautiful courtier using her martial-arts skills to dress herself while dodging hundreds of arrows,” and blah blah. But I’d be upset.
Actually, make that really upset. I imagine I’d be shouting and writing angry emails and stamping my feet in protest. But after an hour or so I’d probably exhale and nod my head sagely and look at the supreme authority in the face and say, “All right, okay…I don’t like this but I accept it. I’ll no longer have the joy of pulp-popcorn Asian cinema in my life but c’est la vie.”
Deadline‘s Nikki Finke has not, in my mind, broken the news about Larry Crowne being a 4th of July shortfaller. She’s reporting today that tracking is indicating a mere $14 to $15 million tally for the four-day holiday weekend (i.e., from today through Monday evening) when it “should be” at least $20 million.
But Glenn Kenny, you see, put this out last night at 10:15 pm when he wrote that Crowne costars Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts “will, in less than 48 hours, be chastised by the usual suspects for an inability to put butts in seats.” I think we all know what the tea leaves say.
Saturday, 7.2 Update: Variety‘s Michael Sullivanreports that Crowne earned $4.043 million from 2,973 engagements on Friday, which is roughly in line with Finke’s projection.
“So are you going to the Con this year?,” a bright and ascerbic fanboy asked me a couple of days ago. Naah, I replied. I think it would be wrong…well, dishonest of me to go. How can I fantasize one minute about strafing the ComicCon faithful and then turn around and drive down to San Diego and say, “Hey, I’m here…read my coverage!”?
We kicked that one around a bit, and then he said that the Big Question, parroting what was written in the N.Y. Times on 6.13, is “who’s going to get hurt? Someone always does and distributors know that, and some of them are afraid. They show their footage in Hall H and bring out the talent and it doesn’t work and the chatter starts and sometimes it backfires.
“I’m wondering about Lionsgate and Hunger Games. They’ve been shooting for…what, a couple of months now and they’re saying that scheduling an appearance is too tough and they don’t have decent footage?”
Scheduling a Comic Con appearance is always tough while shooting a film, but if you grim up and decide you’re doing to do it come hell or high water…
“They need to be there. They need to be there. They’re grooming this franchise to be the inheritor of Twilight‘s shadow and they need to sell that. I don’t think anyone believes them anyway. If somebody says they’re going into rehab for painkillers I figure they’re probably a heroin addict. Everything is always one step down, you know that. If they say they aren’t far enough along, it means they’re concerned with what they have. They never say what’s going on.”
So no Hunger Games…
“No Hunger Games, no Man of Steel footage from Zack Snyder and the cast, no Dark Knight Returns, no John Carter of Mars, no Marvel presence.
“What they have are Cowboys & Aliens, the finished film, and there’s no way they’re not gonna have Indiana Jones and James Bond take a bow on-stage. And they have The Amazing Spider-Man and Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Tintin…there’s a chance that Spielberg could show up for that…Shark Night 3D, Immortals, Bill Condon‘s Twilight: Breaking Dawn and The Raven…some Edgar Allen Poe thing with John Cusack.”
“But the real story and the big Comic-Con competition is D23 (8.19 to 8.21).
“Three years ago Disney created this project called D23, a high-end promotional event that caters to mega-Disney freaks. That Rocketeer showing at El Capitan was a D23 event. They put on expos and D23 is catering to the hardest of the hardcore, and they’re at the Anahiem Convention Center within spitting distance of ComicCon, and they’re growing their own convention. Devin Faraciwrote that D23 is why Marvel isn’t doing ComicCon, and that he thinks D23 is ‘going to compete’ with ComicCon.”
