Month: August 2012

Let’s take a moment and give it up for this 1975 Michael Ritchie film, an example of the kind of social satire that has pretty much disappeared from movie theatres — a kind that doesn’t exaggerate, deals plain but clever cards, favors subtlety over hammer blows and treats its characters with dignity, or a semblance of. But Karyn Kusama says it better:

In his 10.9.75 review, N.Y. Times critic Vincent Canby called Smile, which focuses on an annual Junior Miss beauty pageant in Santa Rosa, California, “a pungent surprise, a rollicking satire that misses few of the obvious targets, but without dehumanizing the victims. It’s an especially American kind of social comedy in the way that great good humor sometimes is used to reveal unpleasant facts instead of burying them.”

If you were a sincere churchgoer, would you go to a Sunday service with a nice pleasant buzz-on from a glass or two of wine? The Lord Almighty would surely be offended. By the same token no serious moviegoer would want to watch a film half-sloshed or even a wee bit “happy”…right?

When I was drumming for The Sludge Brothers, a no-account Connecticut blues band, our lead singer-guitarist used to tell the crowds, “Remember — the more you drink, the better we sound.” But alcohol and cinema don’t mix. Really. You should drink a cappuccino or a Red Bull or green tea before a film. Or do Zen breathing exercises. Alcohol always takes things in a downmarket direction. It certainly diminishes the spiritual.

This hasn’t stopped Robert Redford‘s Sundance Cinemas and the iPic theatrical chain from deciding to offer alcohol in their theatres. An 8.23 Wrap piece by Steve Pond says that the Sundance-refurbished version of the old Laemmle Sunset 5 (Sunset and Crescent Heights) and iPic’s renovated theatre in Westwood (i.e., site of the old Avco) are going to serve beer and wine.

These chains are also looking to attract upscale types with plush seating and astronomical prices that will presumably discourage attendance by low-lifes.

I have a friend who’s a devoted fan of Broadway plays, and sometimes he’ll see a play or a musical after slurping down a double vodka so what do I know? I’ll tell you what I know. I know that movies theatres are not amusement environments — they’re churches, and you should hold off on the libations until after the film is over.

Roughly three weeks ago an art presentation called “Disasterland“, a series of portraits of Disney characters redefined according to our appalling and deeply flawed 21st Century culture, appeared at the La Luz de Jesus gallery on Hollywood Blvd. The artist is Jose Rodolfo Loaiza Ontiveros. The show runs until Sunday, August 3rd — eight more days including today.

From the gallery’s website: “Continuing his penchant for cleverly depicting the “uncouth” customs of our dichotomous society, Rodolfo explores what would happen to our fables if they were flesh and blood and confronted with the frenetic and excessive world of fame….who among them would prove susceptible to the excesses of drugs, alcohol, harassment or vanity?”

Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon and allegedly one of the dullest guys to ever do something momentous, died today at age 82. But let’s hold off for a minute or two and offer due respect for his and NASA’s brilliant achievement and for Armstrong being the super-reliable and resourceful pilot that his colleagues always spoke of.

Now that I’ve paid my respects I can say that I was always bothered by Armstrong’s historic first words after his feet touched the moon’s surface: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Obviously “man” and “mankind” are synonymous so the statement made zero sense, but it would have if Armstrong had simply said “a” man. Instead he ruined it, and that grammatical error is now etched in stone and marble for centuries to come with millions upon millions of unborn people fated to read this silly quote and scratch their heads and look at each other and ask, “What…? I don’t get it.”

Armstrong rarely spoke in public, rarely said anything, rarely shared or reflected or expounded. He was a private man who decided early on to keep to himself, and was content to simply be a skilled pilot who did the job. That’s fine in itself, but I’ll never forget Norman Mailer‘s describing Armstrong as a bit of a dolt in his 1971 book “Of a Fire on The Moon.” I particularly recall his comparing Armstrong’s responses to press conference questions to the way a cow grazing in a field deals with flies by flicking them away with its tail.

Four years ago I passed along a story about Universal’s intending to make a film out of James R. Hansen‘s “First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong.” I wrote that the book “will be adapted into screenplay form by Nicole Perlman — if the poor woman manages to stay awake while writing it. For Universal is essentially going to make a movie about that cow.”

There’s an anecdote in David Handleman‘s 1985 California piece about Terrence Malick (titled “Absence of Malick“) that has always amused me. It’s a brief recollection about Malick having landed a New Yorker assignment in the late ’60s to write a piece about Che Guevara, and his having travelled to Bolivia to research it. But he over-researched it, Handleman wrote, and “got drowned in it, and never turned [the piece] in.”

The story actually comforted me because I did the same damn thing in ’85. I had pitched an article to an American Film editor about the inner lives of film critics — who they were deep down, what had lit the initial spark, what drove them on and so on. I was calling it “The Outsiders.” And I knew it had the makings of something really good. So I talked to many, many critics and transcribed the interviews and wound up with at least 25 or 30 pages of single-spaced pages, all typed out and corrected with side notes and thoughts about structure and whatnot.

And I got into it more and more, and it became a small mountain. And then a big one. And then it became quicksand and I slowly sank into it, knowing I’d gotten myself into trouble and unsure whether to keep trying or to forget it and walk away. I felt like I was covered in glue or tar. I finally gave up. The guilt was awful. I’d never worked so hard on something to no avail. But it taught me three things.

One, never churn out that much research about a single topic ever again without writing anything down — write as you go along. Two, forget about big subjects and grand designs — always choose a topic that appears to be small or smallish and then make it bigger or richer with your interpretation of it. And three, always listen to what people say and let that material point the way.

My next whopper-sized article was a 1995 Los Angeles magazine piece called “Right Face,” about the struggles of conservative-minded writers and actors in the film industry. I did almost as much research on this as I did on “The Outsiders,” but somehow I pulled it together and turned a pretty good piece. And then Lew Harris, my Los Angeles editor, gave me dirty looks for years after that because he felt my research hadn’t been quite thorough enough. Or so it seemed from my end. Dick. But the piece was well received. It was labor well spent.

I’m adding Marina Zenovich‘s Roman Polanski: Odd Man Out to my list of Toronto Film Festival essentials. To go by Thom Powers‘ description on the TIFF website, Zenovich’s film — the second Polanski doc unveiled this year (the first being Laurent Bouzereau and Andrew Braunsberg’s Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir) and a kind of sequel to Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired — is at least partly about guilt.

“What happens when an award-winning documentary intended to highlight a legal injustice comes back to haunt its maker?,” Powers writes. “In 2008, director Marina Zenovich’s Emmy Award-winning film Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired brought a radical new understanding to the circumstances surrounding Roman Polanski’s 1977 statutory rape case. Interviewing key participants from both the prosecution and the defense, Zenovich detailed how Polanski couldn’t get a fair trial, prompting him to flee the United States. Even Polanski’s victim, Samantha Geimer, said he was treated unjustly and deserved to have the case dismissed. But these views didn’t stop others from vilifying Polanski. The film’s notoriety seemed to make him even more ‘wanted and desired’ by the authorities.

“When Polanski was arrested in Switzerland in 2009 and threatened with extradition to the United States, Zenovich felt she was partly to blame. Her new film, Roman Polanski: Odd Man Out, revisits this endlessly controversial case from several new angles. What possessed the Swiss government to arrest Polanski? For years, he had vacationed in Switzerland and even bought a home there. Was the Swiss government trying to distract attention from an American investigation into its banks? Was the Los Angeles District Attorney grandstanding for his own political ambitions? How far had Zenovich’s own work as a filmmaker unwittingly contributed to Polanski’s arrest?

“Zenovich applies her insider’s knowledge and dogged research to the process of investigating what took place in Switzerland. (The subtitle Odd Man Out refers to the 1947 fugitive drama that Polanski has cited as a favorite.) Whether or not you’ve seen her previous film, this work stands on its own as a shrewd commentary on the collision of life and cinematic art. When it comes to Polanski’s case, opinions have always been more prevalent than facts. An esteemed journalist is caught in an unguarded moment saying, ‘Just take him out and shoot him.’ But Zenovich unearths fresh perspectives and new questions. The film leads us to think about broader questions of legal manipulation, media distortion, and power politics. No matter how much you think you understand this case, you have a lot to learn.”

I wrote the following to Polanski this morning: “Roman — I’ve been friendly with Marina Zenovich for many years, and I intend to see her documentary, Roman Polanski: Odd Man Out, at the Toronto Film Festival. I just heard from her via email (she’s in France now) but forgot to ask her if you and she have corresponded to any degree over the last few years. Have you ever had any contact with Marina? Did you speak with her while she made this film, or while she was cutting it? Have you seen her Odd Man Out doc? By the way, have you seen the British Network Bluray of Carol Reed’s Odd Man Out? Quite beautiful.”

Nine people were reportedly hit this morning by NYPD friendly fire. You’d never know it to watch this security-cam video. The shooter goes down in a sort of lame-ass way. “Oh, I’ve been shot two or three times!…well, I guess I’d better collapse on the sidewalk and roll over and die.” A Hollywood action director would never stand for anything this rote.

It’s believed in some quarters that Liz Garbus‘s Love, Marilyn, a doc that focuses on a trove of Monroe’s private writings and musings that were discovered a year or two ago, will have its first-anywhere public showing at the Telluride Film Festival before moving on to Toronto. Garbus enlisted several big-name actors (Viola Davis, Glenn Close, Uma Thurman, Lindsay Lohan, Paul Giamatti, Adrien Brody, Marisa Tomei) to voice Monroe’s thoughts and jottings.

Taken two days ago at outdoor Westwood mortuary where Monroe’s remains lie. Her tomb is exactly like Oscar Wilde’s in Pere Lachaise in Paris — covered with lipstick kisses.

When I saw Butter last year at the 2011 Telluride Film Festival “there were laughs from time to time but my general impression was that audience energy levels eventually turned flat. Because after the first 25 or 30 minutes it was clear that the filmmakers weren’t interested in investing any real human truth or honest emotional underpinnings to any of the characters — with one or two exceptions they’re all playing exaggerated satirical types. And worked-out, semi-logical motivations are few and far between.

“I would love to have fun with a smart comedy that skewers Middle America and Jennifer Garner‘s Michelle Bachmann-like character, but Butter is sloppily written and poorly motivated and simply not a class act.

“Garner’s rightwing bitch is so shrill and constipated and psychopathic that it’s impossible to laugh at or with her after the first half-hour or so. Yara Shahidi , a 10-year-old African-American girl who plays the instigating lead, is the one uncompromised bright note, and is obviously pretty and appealing. Ty Burrell, playing Garner’s hapless, low-key husband, is okay for the most part. But Olivia Wilde‘s stripper character and Hugh Jackman‘s car-salesman doofus are written too crudely and illogically.

“Comedies have to be funny, obviously, but they never work unless they’ve been written and constructed like drama. Once you say, ‘Oh, we’re just making a ‘comedy’ so we can goof off and make fun of this and that and throw reality out the window,’ you’re finished.

“Butter was being compared last night to Michael Ritchie‘s Smile (’75), an admired satire about a teenaged beauty competition in Santa Rosa. Forget it, nowhere near, not even close. [A critic friend] mentioned Alexander Payne‘s Election as another similarity. No way in hell — Butter isn’t remotely in the same league.”

You know what I need? I’ll tell you what I need…seriously. I need a nice long sprawling sequence in a feature film. Perfectly choreographed, five or six minutes without a cut. The opening credits of Touch of Evil, the Copacabana Goodfellas shot….we need one of these every so often. Good for the soul. When was the last one?

You know what I need? I’ll tell you what I need. I need to see a Cameron Crowe movie about a father grappling with his son’s amphetamine addiction. Crowe, a good fellow struggling to re-claim the rep he enjoyed in the mid ’90s to early aughts as a magic-touch director, has been adapting David Sheff‘s “Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction” and Nic Sheff ‘s “Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines.” Yeah! But first give me root-canal surgery.

I raised a son and he turned out to be a drug addict, a parking-lot attendant, an asshole, a racist, an obese layabout, a wife-beater, a birther, a mass murderer….you name it. Oohh, was it my fault? Gee, I don’t feel so good.

Maybe if Crowe’s film is done the right way it’ll remind some of us of Shawn Ku‘s Beautiful Boy(2010), a drama costarring Michael Sheen and Maria Bello about their son being accused of a mass shooting. Or Lynne Ramsay‘s We Need To Talk About Kevin, a story about the raising of a warlock-eyed Beelzebub who shoots up a bunch of high school kids at the end.