Month: February 2012

It’s been decided that a father-son relationship drama starring Paul Dano and Robert De Niro will sell more tickets if it’s called Being Flynn rather than Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, the title of the 2004 memoir that the film is based on. Nick Flynn‘s book is about a reunion with his egoistic alcoholic dad in Boston in the late ’80s. The title refers to his father’s description of homeless living in Beantown.

Being Flynn (Focus, 3.2) was directed, written and co-produced by Paul Weitz (About A Boy). It costars Olivia Thirlby, Lili Taylor, Wes Studi and Julianne Moore.

Steve Jaymes‘ The Interrupters, which aired on Frontline last night, is currently streaming for free. It’s also on DVD/Bluray. It’s about violence prevention under the aegis of CeaseFire, a Chicago organization, and a portrait of three “violence interrupters” — Ameena Matthews, Cobe Williams, Eddie Bocanegra — trying to protect their Chicago neighborhoods from gunfire, beatdowns, chain-whippings and other bad stuff.

Imagine what this movie would be if Jerry Bruckheimer got hold of the material and turned it into a narrative.

I did a little hanging and chatting with Jerry Bruckheimer in the mid to late ’90s, once on the set of Crimson Tide (’95) but mostly in the wake of his partner Don Simpson‘s death (which happened in January ’96) when “produced by Jerry Bruckheimer” meant elite, sirloin-steak guy movies like The Rock, Con Air, Enemy of the State, Armageddon, Remember the Titans, Gone in Sixty Seconds and Black Hawk Down.

Bruckheimer has been on an extremely lucrative but creatively downhill path ever since Pearl Harbor and particularly since the Pirates franchise and the National Treasure films and Kangaroo Jack, Prince of Persia, The Lone Ranger, etc. Which is why his name has become a punchline and a metaphor for putrid, family-friendly, high-concept studio crap.

I’m sure Bruckheimer, who’s as rich as Cresus, has a response all worked out when he reads or hears this stuff. I’m presuming it goes something like “nobody understands that it’s tremendously difficult to deliver first-rate, financially successful studio sludge…really, really hard. But you know what? Fuck ’em. They can laugh at me all they want, but I’m laughing as I drive to the bank.” The only thing he hasn’t rationalized or figured out is what to do when he gets older and starts feeling those Jacob Marley recriminations, which come to all men sooner or later.

Each and every person who’s decided to cop out and go for the dough and let the other stuff sort itself out has felt badly during the last stage of his life. No exceptions. They start thinking stuff like “who am I really? what has my life been about? what will my legacy be?” and so on. If Bruckheimer had been killed in a plane crash just after the release of Black Hawk Down his reputation would be secure — the guy who delivered the creme de la creme of guy films. Eleven years later that rep is sadly down the tubes.

Ten or twelve years ago a guy told me about an autobiography that his colorful, hard-living father had written, and the first sentence, he said, went something like this: “I’ve been used, sued, screwed, subdued, refused, abused, led astray, turned around, flim-flammed, betrayed, deluded, polluted, disrespected, bamboozled and tattoo’ed.” I’ve actually made it into a longer sentence than it was originally.

Something historically significant has just happened in the mind of L.A. Times Hollywood reporter Steven Zeitchik, and I think it’s worth exploring. At 5:44 am this morning he tweeted that The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo has “done middlingly in the US.” Except David Fincher‘s noir-thriller, released by Sony, has recently topped $100 million so what does he mean? Is Zeitchik saying that $100 million domestic is a bit tepid for a film that cost $90 million to make? Or that $100 mill domestic is generally a meh-level thing?

Back in the ’90s a film earning $100 million domestic had definitely won a gold medal and membership in a very select club. No longer. These days $100 million is almost chump change for big-dick studio movies. To be regarded as a serious hit they now have to pull in at least $200 domestic plus another $200 or so internationally…right? Certainly by the Zeitchik scale. In whatever context a hardcore 24/7 industry reporter like Zeitchick describing $100 million as “middling” is something to mull over and meditate upon and placed in an easily referenced folder for reexamining down the road.

If I knew that allegedly exciting and provocative films like Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky‘s Francine and Billy Bob Thornton‘s Jayne Mansfield’s Car were playing at 2012 South by Southwest, I would have applied for press credentials and snagged plane tix and arranged for lodging and all the rest of it. But as I said two weeks ago, Austin just doesn’t seem worth it.

21 Jump Street…possibly decent but clearly studio product, not enough throttle. Joss Whedon‘s The Cabin in the Woods…repelled. I saw about 60% of William Friedkin‘s Killer Joe at Toronto last September…meh. I caught Richard Linklater‘s Bernie at the LA Film Festival last June…not bad, “different”, engaging Jack Black performance. The Raid, which I hate, has already played Toronto and Sundance. Guy Maddin‘s Keyhole…maybe. Three episodes of Lena Dunham‘s Girls…fine. The one SXSW film that really has me halfway excited? Bobcat Goldwaith‘s God Bless America.

I realize that one or two special films I’m not eyeballing right now may pop through and start some conversation. That’s fine, but I can wait. I’m at peace with not being there for the first Austin showings. I’m looking at Tribeca two months hence and then Cannes, of course, and…well, that’s enough.

This was taken in the fall of ’99, a couple of months into my deal with Reel.com and about 14 months after I’d first begun writing the Mr. Showbiz column in August 1998. Every now and then you’ll find a photo or a memento lying around and you’ll say, “Wow, that was eight or ten years ago.” But October 1999 does not seem like 12 and 1/3 years ago. At all. The next time I turn around it’ll be 15 years behind me, and then 20. It just gets away from you.

Yesterday Hollywood Reporter critic David Rooney, filing from the Berlin Film Festival, posted an eloquent review of Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky‘s Francine, a.k.a., the Melissa Leo “cat movie” that I mentioned three or four days ago.

Melissa Leo, Keith Leonard in Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky’s Francine.

“A minimalist, image-based character study that is almost impossibly fragile and yet emotionally robust, Francine is a legitimate discovery. It’s propelled by Melissa Leo’s remarkable title-role performance, rigorous in its honesty and unimpeded by even a scrap of vanity. Made on a shoestring, this first narrative feature from husband-and-wife filmmaking team Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky is raw, intimate and observed with penetrating acuity.

“The austere approach and stark naturalism invite comparison with the work of Kelly Reichardt, and the subject specifically recalls Wendy and Lucy. The earliest films of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne also come to mind while watching. But Cassidy and Shatzky, whose backgrounds are jointly in photography and documentary, have their own voice and their own nonjudgmental gaze.

“As a window into a life of seemingly irreversible dissociation, the film performs the uncommon trick of being wide open and pellucid while simultaneously shut tight and opaque.

“One of the interesting aspects of Francine is that despite the unsettling intimacy of the portrait, only sparing use is made of facial closeups — the usual short-cut to accessing an introspective character. Dialogue figures just as frugally, and psychological background is entirely withheld. But still we come to know the woman onscreen, speculating about her history and contemplating her future after the film has ended.”

Last weekend 20th Century Fox flew several junket-whore types to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois to promote Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov‘s Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter (opening 6.22). If you’ve seen the trailer (domestic or international) you know this film has as much reverence for Lincoln’s history as my two cats. For what it’s worth Burton’s black-and-white introduction, filmed in London, plays well.

N.Y. Times music critic Jon Pareles and Billboard‘s Danyel Smith spoke about Whitney Houston on Charlie Rose last night. The only stab at explaining what caused Houston’s tragic drug habit and death came at the 11-minute mark, when Smith said that Houston had all this responsibility to be great and maybe in the midst of this “she just wanted a cigarette, and maybe something else.” Okay, but what about other superstar entertainers who’ve dealt with this kind of pressure and who haven’t become cokeheads or died?

Smith also vaguely attributed some of Houston’s difficulties to her having grown up in Newark, New Jersey, which, she said, can be a “rough and tumble” environment. Except coming from a tough neighborhood tends to toughen you up and make you stronger, no? “That which doesn’t kill you”…right?

The only positive response I’ve ever had to the word “valentine” was when I saw Sydney Lumet‘s The Fugitive Kind and Marlon Brando‘s Valentine Xavier appeared in a snakeskin jacket. I feel zilch about this Hollywood montage making the rounds today. The finale of The Apartment is the only proclamation scene that has ever touched me because (a) it comes at the very end and (b) the object of Jack Lemmon‘s affection shrugs and says “fine, whatever…let’s get down to it.” Exactly.

I also love the champagne-cork gag. Perfect timing, perfect delivery. I laugh every time.

Deadline is reporting that Chris Pine‘s former agency, SDB Partners, has filed a lawsuit against the actor after he dumped them by email. SDB wants commissions on This Means War as well as Pine’s forthcoming work as Captain Kirk in Paramount’s Star Trek franchise.

It appears (emphasis on the “a” word) that Pine is dumping these guys because he’s panicking about the reception to War, the all-but-universally reviled McG action-romcom that sneaks tonight and opens on Friday. He reportedly canned them last November, at which point he’d surely realized what a piece of shite the McG was. In any event he needs to convey a message to the industry that he realizes he (i.e., SDB) screwed up and that he’s making changes, etc. “Okay, I signed off on the McG, fine, but they pushed me into it so it’s mainly their fault!”…or words to that effect.