Day: February 23, 2013

Yesterday afternoon Timothy Egan posted a N.Y. Times “Opinionator” piece about why Zero Dark Thirty will not win the Best Picture Oscar. I asked a guy who’s closely affiliated with this Kathryn Bigelow-directed, Mark Boal-written film for a response. Here it is:

“Oy! He keeps moving the goal post.

“First he charges the film is inaccurate. Then he admits that CIA leadership folks (who, unlike him, have access to the secret record) say the movie is pretty accurate. But that validation now becomes a flaw because the new goal post is not accuracy but does the CIA agree — or is the film a CIA blowjob?

“Of course, if the CIA said the film was lousy, he would then agree with the CIA. and the CIA’s opinion would shift from being untrustworthy to being spot-on. Then he says the film lacks context. Okay, write your own movie, make your own creative choices.

Egan states that “a quick reminder [in ZD30] that President Bush all but gave up on bin Laden — “I truly am not that concerned about him,” he said less than a year after the murder of 3,000 of our citizens — would have plugged a vital hole.” To which i say Ehan must have been too busy texting his editor that he has a hot column to notice the scene where the Bush-appointed station chief screams at Maya, “I don’t care about Bin Laden! He’s out of the game!”

“By the way, we showed plenty of false starts. We portray the first eight years of the hunt as being wasteful because the name [of the courier] was in the files the entire time.

“He mentions a quote from Jane Mayer, writing in The New Yorker, to wit: “The film doesn’t include a single scene in which torture is questioned. This is also not true.

“Jason Clarke‘s character, the guy who does all the dirty work, quits because his soul is sick…and when it comes to decision time in the boardroom with Leon Panetta/James Gandolfini, he doubts the value of all the interrogations. ‘I spent time in those rooms,’ he says. ‘I would say it’s a soft-sixty” that bin Laden is there. In the context of the scene and indeed of the entire film, the guy who has done the most torture Is the most skeptical about its value, of anyone in the room.

“It’s just become fashionable for a certain class of political reporter which feels threatened by the power of this film and their own dwindling capacity to reach readers, to diss it.”

“Egan doesn’t have a coherent argument. He has an opinion (that ZD30 is bad news) based largely in jealousy, and he drives that opinion around through a variety of logically inconsistent attacks, constantly searching to reach his conclusion , which is that ZD30 isn’t nearly as good as if he had done it.”

Honestly? I wasn’t expecting Silver Linings Playbook to win four big Spirit Awards today. And yet it took Best Feature, and David O. Russell won for Best Director and Best Screenplay and the Best Actress trophy went to Jennifer Lawrence. I figured they might split the biggies between SLP and Beasts of the Southern Wild and/or Benh Zeitlin, but no.

What does this mean Oscar-wise? Maybe nothing, but could Russell at least take Best Director? Along with Jennifer Lawrence taking Best Actress, I mean.

The Sessions scored twice with John Hawkes winning for Best Actor and Helen Hunt taking the Best Supporting Actress award. Matthew McConaughey won Best Supporting Actor for his aging stripper role in Steven Soderbergh‘s Magic Mike.

Amour director Michael Haneke before start of Spirit Awards ceremony.

SLP‘s David O. Russell, winner of the Best Director and Best Screenpay awards.

Jonathan Dana, Deadline‘s Pete Hammond.

Toy’s House director Jordan Vogt-Roberts.

I somehow missed (a) Thursday night’s Live Read of the screenplay/film version of David Mamet‘s Glengarry Glen Ross, which was performed by an all-female cast (terrific idea!) and then (b) Sean Fennesssey‘s account of same on Grantland, which appeared yesterday afternoon.

Fennessey begins by quoting LACA Film Series curator Elvis Mitchell: “‘The melancholy of the blues and the immediacy of jazz…his characters are hard-hearted and hardheaded, so I thought women can do that,.’ That was how Mitchell [introduced] the conceit of last night’s Live Read. Mamet’s terse, rhythmic story tracks four real estate salesmen (and scam artists) desperately working through the night on the eve of a robbery. The Live Read, a semi-regular event at LACMA, is a quiet, clever, only-in-L.A. happening where the city’s access to celebrity and artists is actually used for good.”

Robin Wright as Ricky Roma, originated by Al Pacino, but more primally by Joe Mantegna in the original stage production. Catherine O’Hara as Shelley Levene, originated by Jack Lemmon or Robert Prosky in the stage version. Melanie Lynskey as George Aaronow, originated by Alan Arkin. Maria Bello as Dave Moss, originated by Ed Harris. Mae Whitman as John Williamson, originated by Kevin Spacey. And Carla Gugino as Blake (“set of steak knives”), originated by Alec Baldwin.

Taken in October 1987 from the East Berlin side of the Brandenburg Gate. Berlin was part of an Eastern Bloc honeymoon my ex-wife Maggie and I were on. We had tied the knot in Paris at St. Julien le Pauvre and were looking to avoid a typical westernized European atmosphere (i.e., McDonalds) by visiting only Communist countries — i.e., Czechoslovakia, East Germany. Cool idea, mixed results.

In about 90 minutes I’ll be driving over to that same beach-adjacent parking lot in Santa Monica for the good old Film Independent Spirit Awards. Same red carpet, same crowds, same parking passes, same security goons, same massive circus tent. The best part is the schmooze time (11 am to 1 pm) before everything starts. In my drinking days I used to enjoy my champagne during this period and get happily buzzed. Not “half in the bag” but…you know, “happy.” At noon! Thank God those days are over.

For years and years the weather in Santa Monica was perfect on Spirit Awards day — warm and balmy, no breeze or not too breezy, radiant blue sky. But last year it was chilly and blustery and faintly miserable. It was like the Southern California Weather Demon was saying “I left you alone for so many years in the past but not today….today I’m going to put you through it, Spirit Awards!” Being inside the main tent was okay but if you were in the rear press tent it was like “where’s my overcoat?” I felt like Jack London looking to build a fire. The almost-gale-strength winds assaulted the heavy plastic material covering the tent entrances. The gusts blew napkins into the air and destroyed women’s carefully coiffed hair styles.

Please, God…please spare me an experience like that today. Either way the Spirits will air tonight on IFC at 10 pm Pacific/Eastern and 9 pm Central.

Former SNL headliner Andy Samberg, who’s looking to be the next Paul Rudd or Adam Sandler or Bill Murray or whomever, is the emcee.

The Spirit Awards are basically the Indie Oscars, of course, but the definition of what specifically constitutes a Spirit-worthy indie film has become more liberal and/or less precise in recent years. I forget what the budgetary limit for Best Feature contenders is now but I remember the days when it was $15 million. Now it’s…what is it? $25 million? Higher?

From last year’s report: “The 2012 Spirit Awards did the wrong thing today by giving four awards to the Big Oscar Inevitable known as The Artist — Best Feature, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Cinematography. The worst kowtow was giving Jean Dujardin its Best Actor prize instead of, say, A Better Life‘s Damien Bichir or Take Shelter‘s Michael Shannon. It wasn’t an indie thing to do — it was a ‘we want to be the Oscars too!‘ thing. Extremely bad form, dark day, etc.”

But the dominant Spirit Award qualifier, as always, is having the right attitude, a certain unpretentious or hands-on “fuck it, we’ll do it this way instead” approach to filmmaking. Being willing and able to scrimp and cut corners whenever necessary, to occasionally pick out your own wardrobe and do your own makeup in a gas station bathroom, and…I don’t know, having the improvisational fuck-all nerve and spontaneity and irreverence of spirit to quietly pantomine “what the fuck just happened?” when an 85 year-old actress wins a BAFTA award? Serious Spirit-minded people don’t walk around frowning and seething and spitting bile and getting their knickers in a twist.

Best Feature nominees: Beasts of the Southern Wild, Bernie, Keep the Lights On (which I haven’t even seen), Moonrise Kingdom and Silver Linings Playbook. I’ll be happy if Beasts of the Southern Wild or Bernie or SLP wins. Prediction: Beasts of the Southern Wild.

I know that if I see Richard Linklater there I’m going to tell him how knocked out I was by Before Midnight, which will definitely be a Spiit Award nominee this time next year in several categories.

Best Director: Wes Anderson, Benh Zeitlin, Ira Sachs (Keep The LIghts On), David O. Russell, Julia Loktev (The Loneliest Planet). Prediction: Zeitlin or Russell.