Day: February 6, 2013

Zero Dark Thirty screenwriter-producer Mark Boal spoke last night at L.A.’s Loyola Marymount University in concert with a program called “First Amendment Week.” The talk happened at 6 pm at Burns Back Court. At one point Boal addressed the torture issue. Here’s an excerpt with very minor edits:

Zero Dark Thirty screenwriter-producer Mark Boal.

“Much has been made of the card at the beginning of the film that says ‘based on firsthand accounts of actual events.’ To be honest, of all the controversial topics, that’s the one I get the least. Because that’s exactly what Zero Dark Thirty is — a film that is based on firsthand accounts of actual events. I know — I talked to the people who experienced those events.

“But the card didn’t say Zero Dark Thirty is an exact rendition (no pun intended) of actual events, and we certainly don’t pretend that it is. It’s not a videotaped transcription of a six-volume Senate report — [and] that’s probably a good thing.

“At the end of the day, merging film and news is a balancing act between fact-finding and storytelling. It comes with a distinct set of responsibilities to the subjects, the audience, and history. Movies from All the President’s Men to Black Hawk Down to The Social Network have all [done this].

“Because I was a reporter before I was a filmmaker, I think I have a decent grasp on how to blend fact and fiction into drama that reveals the essential truth of the story I’m trying to tell. But not everyone appreciates the value in mixing fact and fiction.

“While New Yorker critic David Denby wrote a generally positive review, which I appreciate, he criticized us for wanting ‘to claim the authority of fact and the freedom of fiction at the same time.’ And there, Mr. Denby got it exactly wrong by being exactly right.

“Without the freedom of fiction, we couldn’t share this story with millions who deserve to understand it, question it, and debate it. Without the authority of fact, we wouldn’t have a story to share, issues to understand, questions to ask, or controversies to debate.

“I believe any artist blending fact and fiction has a special responsibility to set
expectations about that blend, to be open and honest about the mix, and stay true to the essential story being told.

“I think we’ve done that, and I think we got the balance right. Certainly, it seems like the public feels that way. We’ve been gratified by audience reactions and reviews and, well, great box-office business.

“But like other movies that have blended real events with created ones, in very different ratios — from Bonnie and Clyde to The French Connection to JFK — we’ve managed to stir the pot a bit.

“Most of the conversation around Zero Dark Thirty surrounds the fact that this film was the first to graphically depict very realistic scenes involving enhanced interrogation — torture — and their relationship to the ultimate discovery of bin Laden in Abbottabad. And we’ve been criticized from pretty much every direction about that.

“From the left, we’ve been accused of defending torture because there are disagreements in some quarters as to exactly which detainee undergoing exactly which form of interrogation first produced the lead that led to bin Laden. And thus, their argument goes, if it’s not crystal clear that enhanced interrogation produced the lead, we shouldn’t have included it, because it gives the impression we’re endorsing its effectiveness.

“I can’t understand the logic to that. If we left the torture out, we’d be whitewashing history.

“And of course, as Kathryn has said, ‘depiction is not endorsement. If it was, no artist would be able to paint inhumane practices, no author could write about them, and no filmmaker could delve into the thorny subjects of our time.’ Or to put it in very 2013 terms: retweets don’t equal endorsement. Depiction — and retweets — are about exposing ideas to people and letting them make their own judgments.

“From the right, we’ve been criticized for depicting the interrogation scenes as more brutal than they actually were, or because we show some torture practices being performed by Americans working for the CIA when they were actually performed by Americans working for the military. Or by the CIA working with the military at Abu Ghraib.

“But every interrogation technique portrayed in the film was performed by Americans, some lawfully, some not, in the war on terror. They are part of this story. As one commentator put it, ‘Because torture was in the mix during all of the early interrogations, it would be wrong to ignore it, and impossible to say it had no effect.’

“No less an authority than Leon Panetta said publicly, ‘The whole effort in going after bin Laden involved ten years of work, in piecing together various pieces of intelligence that were gathered. And there’s no question that some of the intelligence gathered was a result of some of these methods.”

“We used to say you know you did a good job when you pissed off both sides of the aisle. But both of criticism, from the left and from the right, squarely miss the point.

“The United States tortured people as a matter of national policy, authorized by the White House, approved by the Department of Justice, and disclosed to the Congress. There was never a question of leaving these acts, as reprehensible as they are, out of the story of the hunt for bin Laden, or it wouldn’t be an honest story.

“The brutality and inhumanity of rough interrogations are clear as day in the film. I don’t see how you can watch those scenes and not feel the suffering of the person being interrogated. At the same time, the scenes accurately depict the role that rough interrogations played in the hunt. Sometimes they produced bad information, sometimes they produced nothing, and sometimes they produced a useful scrap.

“Torture is in the movie, because torture is part of the story. It is part of the history.

“Was the torture effective? Was it necessary? Was it terrible? Was it wrong?

“I have my view – I think it was dead wrong. Some people I respect come to the opposite conclusion. But in the end, you have to decide for yourself. As the Bard wrote, ‘the play’s the thing.’ So is the film. Zero Dark Thirty doesn’t try to tell you what to think. It simply encourages you to think. And therein, catch the conscience of the country.”

No matter how you slice it a Rotten Tomatoes score in the low ’80s is cause for comfort. One out of every five critics having an issue with the film in question is nothing to sweat. RT ratings almost never seem to place in the ’70s or high ’60s. Once they drop below 80 they tend to plummet down to the low 60s. If they don’t do this it’s unusual.

This is all to say in a half-assed, mealy-mouthed, beating-around-the-bush sort of way that Steven Soderbergh‘s Side Effects is a smart, tightly wound, character-driven thriller of sorts. I saw it before Sundance and I was going to tap out my review today. Tomorrow for sure.

Yesterday Connecticut Rep. Joe Courtney complained in an open letter to Steven Spielberg that Lincoln has dishonored the reputations of two Connecticut Congressmen as well as Connecticut itself by incorrectly showing that said Congressmen voted against the 13th Amendment when the votes were taken on January 31st, 1865. Courtney wants Spielberg to publicly admit the mistake before the 2.24 Oscar telecast, and also dub it out before the film goes to DVD/Bluray.

“As a Member of Congress from Connecticut, I was on the edge of my seat during [Lincoln‘s recreation of the] roll call vote on the ratification of the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery,” Courtney writes on his website. “But when two of three members of the Nutmeg State’s House delegation voted to uphold slavery, I could not believe my own eyes and ears. How could Congressmen from Connecticut — a state that supported President Lincoln and lost thousands of her sons fighting against slavery on the Union side of the Civil War — have been on the wrong side of history?

“After some digging and a check of the Congressional Record from January 31, 1865, I learned that in fact, Connecticut’s entire Congressional delegation, including four members of the House of Representatives — Augustus Brandegee of New London, James English of New Haven, Henry Deming of Colchester and John Henry Hubbard of Salisbury — all voted to abolish slavery. Even in a delegation that included both Democrats and Republicans, Connecticut provided a unified front against slavery.”

I figured Lincoln screenwriter Tony Kushner, a man of honor and respect, had to have a good reason (perhaps a dramatic one?) for, according to Courtney, ignoring the historical record, so I asked Disney publicist Stephanie Kluft if this matter could be explained. She ignored me but studio publicists are always slow on the pickup. Update: Kushner’s husband Mark Harris wrote back promptly (I didn’t see his reply right away — it was hidden in the folds of the original message) and explained that Kushner was on a plane and thus unreachable. So there it is.

With Peter Landesman‘s Parkland currently shooting in Austin, I’m once again asking if anyone can send a PDF of the script. I want to know if Landesman has followed my advice (which I posted on 10.6.12) to set the whole film, which is about JFK’s murder in Dallas on 11.22.63, in and around Parkland hospital and nowhere else.

Update: The answer to my question was answered in a 1.25.13 Collider post, and the answer is no — FORGET THE HE VERSION. Parkland may or may not turn out to be a half-decent film, but architecturally it’s going to be a totally run-of-the-mill historical enactment using all kinds of different perspectives and locales. The purity of my keep-it-at-Parkland concept has been rejected.

Here‘s the original piece: “So Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman have hired Landesman to direct his script of Parkland, which is basically about JFK’s murder on 11.22.63 as principally experienced by the staffers, victims and various onlookers at Dallas’s Parkland Hospital.

“Note to Landesman: I haven’t read the script but please, please just lock your movie down at the hospital from start to finish and don’t leave.

“Please, please don’t show us the shooting at Dealey Plaza, and please don’t introduce us to Abraham Zapruder…none of that. It’s been done to death by too many other films and filmmakers. Don’t compete with that. Just stay at the hospital and wait for the world and its traumatic injuries to come to Parkland. It will soon enough. All you have to do is hang tight and introduce us to three or four doctors and nurses (you can make them up, if you want) and a couple of senior administrators and ambulance drivers and whatnot, and show them making the rounds and talking about Kennedy’s visit and so on.

“I don’t care if you’ve written a lot of scenes that happen in other parts of Dallas. If you have, throw ’em out. Forget ’em, burn ’em. The only stylistic edge you’ll have to is to keep it all at Parkland. The ER rooms, the hallways, the offices, the parking lot. In fact, you might want to think about doing it all in one long take.”

If Landesman is shooting Parkland the HE way, it might be good. If not, all bets are off.

“I think that you can’t start to pick apart anything out of the Bill of Rights without thinking that it’s all going to become undone. If you take one out or change one law, then why wouldn’t they take all your rights away from you?” — Bruce Willis speaking to an Associated Press reporter about…what’s he talking about? Because banning assault rifles and high-capacity magazines and instituting tougher background checks in no way weakens or even faintly challenges the Second Amendment.

Say you’re Seth Rogen or Paul Rudd and you’ve been invited by a Samsung exec to come to Century City to talk about an endorsement deal. And once you sit down the Samsung guy says “pitch me something”? I’d pitch him something, sure. I’d stand up and pitch a nice clean stream of warm yellow liquid onto his conference-room rug before, you know, politely excusing myself.

I’m posting this without comment, but this morning Buzzfeed’s Adam B. Vary posted “The Complete Annotated Oscar Nominees Class Photo,” which provided some commentary about some of the Oscar nominees who posed for a big wide group shot on Monday, 2.4, following the Oscar nominees luncheon. Vary was either there or he had a source who was. In any event he reports the following:

“Getting all the nominees onto the risers [i.e., six bleacher-seating amphitheatre platforms] was a long, long process. One by one their names were called out, and the room applauded as they came forward, shook Academy President Hawk Koch‘s hand, and took their places. The risers were loaded in roughly from the top to the bottom, meaning those placed on the top had to stand in place for around a half-hour while the full class assembled.

“There was one man who did not have to stand in place, however: The penultimate name called was that of Lincoln producer and director Steven Spielberg, the closest thing Hollywood has to a godfather these days, who gamely rose from the comfort of his table and was squeezed in on the end of the second row.

“A big theme of this Oscar season, which of late has been dominated by the Argo comeback, is how director Ben Affleck has come across as modest, self-effacing, and gracious, compared with Spielberg, access to whom is strictly controlled and whose operation smacks to some of high-handedness. In the case of the Oscar class photo, it should be noted that Affleck, in comparison to Spielberg’s last minute walk-on, was one of the very first called and stood in position the entire half-hour at the top of the bleachers, smiling happily.”

‘Nuff said?

There are only three February releases that I’ve seen and am certain are worth the price of admission. They are (a) Steven Soderbergh‘s Side Effects (Open Road, 2.8), which I’ve been too distracted to run a review of thus far); (b) Abbas Kiarostami‘s Like Someone In Love (IFCFilms, 2.15), which I praised last May in Cannes; and (c) Pablo Larrain‘s No (Sony Classics, 2.15), which I also went apeshit over in Cannes and would win the Best Foreign Language Feature Oscar if it wasn’t for Amour.

A Good Die To Day Hard (20th Century Fox, 2.13) looks to me and everyone else on the planet like another slick empty corporate-crap franchise action flick. I wasn’t able to catch last night’s all-media screening of Identity Thief — apologies. I’ve been marginally impressed by the trailer for Scott Stewart’s Dark Skies (Weinstein Co., 2.22) so here’s hoping.

So maybe there are five or six films worth a tumble before March comes along. But only three for sure. That’s February for you — always a sucky month.