Day: January 14, 2012

If either Woody Allen or Sony Classics co-presidents Michael Barker and Tom Bernard are reading this, please do the right thing and get Midnight in Paris costar Corey Stoll a seat at tomorrow night’s Golden Globes awards. At today’s Spirit Awards luncheon Stoll told N.Y. Times “Carpetbagger” columnist Melena Ryzik that he’s been excluded from the Sony Classics table inside the Beverly Hilton ballroom.

Midnight in Paris costar and Ernest Hemingway inhabitor par excellence at today’s Spirit Awards luncheon at BOA Steakhouse. I interviewed Stoll in Manhattan a little more than three months ago.

Guys…really? Stoll is the standout supporting performer in this, one of the most successful films in the history of Sony Classics and a hallmark in Woody’s career. His Ernest Hemingway is perfect and succinct and beautiful in a way — one of the main reasons for the personal charisma and magnetism in this film. If I had anything to say about it Stoll would be one of the Best Supporting Actor nominees at the Globes and the Oscars. Ryzik, myself and dozens of others have interviewed him and praised his work. This isn’t right….c’mon.

I happened to glance earlier today at a blowup of jacket art for Paramount Home Video’s forthcoming Chinatown Bluray, and for the first time in my life I noticed that the artist gave Jack Nicholson‘s J.J. Gittes the face of a zombie. Look at those ice-cold cat eyes. He could be an alien looking to feast on flesh. All the artist had to do was insert dark green where Nicholson’s pupils are, but he deliberately went for a night-vision predator look. I’ll never be able to look at this famous image the same way again.

The Bluray’s principal commentary track sounds like a humdinger — Chinatown screenwriter Robert Towne and director David Fincher.

Film Independent, the non-profit arts organization that produces the Spirit Awards and the Los Angeles Film Festival, announced the winners of its four Spirit Awards filmmaker grants earlier today at its annual Spirit Awards Nominee Brunch held at BOA Steakhouse in West Hollywood. What does BOA stand for? Nobody knows. Best guesses: “Best of Argentina” or the initials of the restaurant chain’s secret owner whose name could be “Benicio Oscar Alvarez.”

Focus Features’ James Schamus, who at this very moment was reminding myself, Deadline‘s Pete Hammond and In Contention‘s Kris Tapley that there’s a major romantic triangle at the core of Tinker Tailor Solider Spy — Gary Oldman’s Smiley, Smiley’s wife Anne and Karla, who has urged the “mole” to have an affair with Anne in order to misdirect Smiley’s attentions.

Artist helmer Michel Hazanavicius, the presumptive winner of the 2012 Best Director Oscar, at today’s Spirit Awards event, whom interviewed in Manhattan a little more than three months ago.

Mark Duplass (whose performance I recently enjoyed in Larry Kasdan‘s Darling Companion) and Sarah Paulson hosted the event and handed out the honors.

Director-screenwriter Larry Karaszewksi, who on Thursday, 1.19, will be hosting an American Cinematheque screening of Frank Perry’s Last Summer, with Barbara Hershey dropping by for a post-screening q & a.

The Artist costar Penelope Ann Miller, her 11 year-old daughter Eloisa May. I know this shot would be bad and that I should have activated the flash to compensate for the overhead sunlight, but I didn’t. I slacked off and look what happened. Entirely my fault and not cool. Apologies.

Artist composer Ludovic Bource, who composed a good 90 minutes worth of original music vs. the six minutes of Bernard Herrmann music that Kim Novak was so pissed off about.

Winners for the remaining categories will be revealed at the 2012 Film Independent Spirit Awards, which Seth Rogen will serve as emcee. The event will happen under the big white tent on a parking lot at the beach in Santa Monica on Saturday, 2.25.12. The awards ceremony will premiere later that evening at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on IFC.

I was hoping to get Paramount chairman and CEO Brad Grey‘s attention at last night’s Golden Globes party on the Paramount lot. I wanted to shake his hand and say “thanks” for approving funding for the Shane Bluray, which, as I reported the other day, is about two-thirds of the way through to completion. But I wasn’t aggressive enough. It’s a push-push-push world out there, and you can’t just enjoy the vibe and talk to friends if you want to get things done. You have to be Johnny-on-the-spot.

The best line of the evening was from The Hollywood Reporter‘s Kim Masters, who was watching Grey and his homies as they sat on a couple of couches and chit-chatted. And then suddenly they all got up and left “as one,” Masters said. A group doing things in unison is standard corporate behavior if a Top Dog is among them. He/she gestures every so slightly, and everyone in his/her peer group instantly “apes” this gesture in order to show obeisance.

I’m not judging this or being in any way snide here. I’m just as ready to follow or imitate the behavior of those who are more powerful than I and whose favor I curry as much as anyone else. As evidenced by my 11.13 food court post, I understand and concur with jungle law.

I was loving the lighting at this event. Kevin Costner was there, and I was told Jack Nicholson showed up also but I didn’t personally see him.

So my 12.23 post about the Weinstein Co.’s planned adaptation of Tracy Letts‘August Osage County possibly being in limbo with presumed costars Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts having flown the coop does not reflect how things really are, I’m pleased to report.

Deadline‘s Pete Hammond wrote a day or so ago that “the Weinstein Company’s David Glasser [says that] the long-awaited screen version of August, Osage County should be getting underway around September as both Streep’s and Roberts’ schedules seem to be clearing for then. John Wells is going to direct and Glasser said the script by playwright Tracy Letts is fantastic. Another Weinstein Oscar contender for 2013?”

So a 2007 play is going to finally hit screens in 2013…maybe. But a little voice is telling me that the Weinsteiners might have waited too long.

Because of the delicate and always volatile shifting of the zeitgeist and the general reordering of things that happens on a continuing cosmic basis, the right kind of film adaptation of a Broadway play always hits screens within three to four years (like Mike Nichols‘ 1966 Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff arriving four years after the original Broadway play). If the movie version arrives five or six or seven years later something is always lost on some vague level. The things in the cultural ether that led to the writing of the original play have dissipated and floated away like pollen, or have otherwise been transformed.

I was sitting in an an orchestra seat on opening night of the 1984 Broadway production of David Mamet‘s Glengarry Glen Ross, and I can tell you it was electric and vital as blood — a play about rapacious greed just as the Reagan era Wall Street boom was kicking in. It had no fucking steak knives and it was fucking perfect. But the Al Pacino-Jack Lemmon-Alec Baldwin movie adaptation didn’t come out until 1992, at the dawn of the Clinton era. It’s a fairly good film and will always be an excellent play, but too many years had passed. The sands had shifted and it just wasn’t the same. You should’ve been there with me for that 1984 Glengarry debut. People were levitating out of their seats.

What’s the M for? The middle initial has always been H. I hope he (or should I say He?) continues to post on a wide array of topics. I’m thinking, of course, of Max Von Sydow‘s line in Hannah and Her Sisters…you know the one I mean.