Day: March 11, 2013

I’ve been reading Phillip Roth‘s books all my life. It was his compulsive candor about sex, I think, that hooked me initially and kept me coming back. For some reason I was more impressed by Roth’s stories about horndog behavior than I was by, say, Henry Miller‘s. Roth was the first guy I read who described anal. That got to me on a certain level. I said to myself, “Well, if Phillip Roth can not only go there but openly write about it, I guess it’s an okay thing.”

These days Roth is writing about the approaching finale, about humbling, about everyone dying around him. I guess this is why he’s let himself be profiled by an American Masters doc. He’s figuring it’s now or never. He’ll turn 80 on 3.19.

I have to be honest — I’ve only seen half of Philip Roth: Unmasked. I was enjoying it but I was tired or something. It’s a 90-minute portrait in which Roth riffs on his life and art “as he has never done before,” the copy says. It debuts on PBS on 3.29, but on Wednesday it’ll play at the Film Forum for a week.

I’ve read Portnoy’s Complaint, Our Gang, The Human Stain, The Ghost Writer (’79), The Dying Animal, a screenplay based on American Pastoral but not the book, Goodbye Columbus, Zuckerman Unbound (’81). Now that I’ve been somewhat re-energized I’d like to read The Anatomy Lesson (’83), The Prague Orgy (’85), all of I Married A Communist (’98, having read about a third of it) and Exit Ghost (’07).

“The crux of this plainly observed and illuminating documentary, centered on filmed interviews with the novelist that are organized into a loose biographical portrait, is a classic story of personal and artistic self-discovery,” New Yorker critic Richard Brody writes. “[This began] with the thirtyish writer’s recognition, nearly half a century ago, in the company of a new group of like-minded friends in New York, that his round-table comedic voice was entertaining and therefore needed to be channelled into his work.

“The result, of course, was Portnoy’s Complaint, one of the key literary works of the sixties, which also made Roth famous. In much of the discussion that follows, he explains how he dealt with his new public persona — and how he transformed his experiences into fiction.

“His achievements are parsed and praised in interviews with such writers as Nicole Krauss, Jonathan Franzen and Claudia Roth Pierpont. Along the way, it’s as if yet another voice, another mask, were under construction: that of the wise retiree, facing the end of his life with a jovially sardonic serenity, if for no other reason than the confidence that his written voice will outlive him.”

Has the age difference between Man of Steel costars Henry Cavill (Clark Kent/Superman) and Amy Adams (Lois Lane) struck anyone else as…well, curious? I don’t know if they’re romantically linked in Zack Snyder‘s film or not, but their characters were entwined in the last two Superman films. And honestly? The ginger-headed, pale-skinned Adams looks a bit too old for Cavill. You can call me names but it’s true.

C’mon, she’s got him by a good eight years. Cavill will turn 30 in May and she’ll turn 40 in August 2014. Adams has always been a hot tamale but she’s never looked strikingly younger than her age. If Cavill was in a typical romcom, you know Adams could be cast as his best friend’s older sister.

In a pinch Cavill could pass for 25 or so, which is what Chris Reeve was when he shot Superman (’78). Margot Kidder was 28 or 29 when she played Lois Lane in that film, but she didn’t seem the least bit older than Reeve. When he shot Bryan Singer‘s Superman Returns (’06) Brandon Routh (Superman/Clark Kent) was 26 or so, and costar Kate Bosworth (Lois Lane) was 23 — again, not an issue. I’m just saying that Cavill looks like a healthy and buffed 20something and Adams, attractive as she is, looks her age. She’ll more than make up for this with her performance, I’m presuming, and for all I know a line or two of dialogue will take note of the slight age-discrepancy. I’m just saying it’s there.

Think of how Adams looked in The Master, On The Road and Trouble With The Curve. She’s one of the best actresses around but she’s no spring chicken.

Question: at what point would Man of Steel‘s casting directors (Kristy Carlson, Lora Kennedy, Claire Simon) have said to themselves, “You know something? Adams is just a bit too old. We have to go just a little bit younger”? What if she’d been 40 instead of 38 when they shot Man of Steel? What if she’d been 41 or 42? I’m all for older woman-younger guy hook-ups in movies, but something as square as Man of Steel presumably demands a more traditional if not a vaguely old-fashioned attitude.

Earlier today Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet ran a likeliest Best Picture contenders piece, and I was surprised that he called John Wells‘ August: Osage County (Weinstein Co., 11.8) one of his “other side of the cut” films, i.e. not a top-tenner. In so doing he lumped it in with The Fifth Estate, Lee Daniels‘ The Butler (an all-but-guaranteed shortfaller), Elysium and Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom.

I immediately recalled that Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil had shared something a bit dismissive about August Osage County, which I saw on Broadway about five or six years ago and went nuts for. I’ve always figured that with the five-Tony-Award pedigree and the prospect of a knock-down, drag-out brawl between Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts that it would have to be a heavy year-end hitter.

So I wrote them both as follows: “Can you guys briefly explain your basic prejudice about August: Osage County? Tom, you told me months ago that you don’t see it working all that well as a film, and that one-set, dialogue-driven, Long Day’s Journey Into Night-like plays of this sort don’t translate all that well into movies and so on. Is it because John Wells is the director, and his last film, Company Men, wasn’t all that great? I was hugely impressed by the play when I saw it in NYC…what was it, five years ago?”

Brevet said “it’s not necessarily a prejudice as much as it’s up against a lot of strong, though unseen, competition. Plus a talky dark comedy from John Wells just doesn’t jump out at me as an instant Best Picture front-runner beyond the actors that will surely be competing for nominations.”

O’Neil answered thusly: “I’m skeptical about another stage-to-screen transfer of a Broadway show that won Best Play. Look at the recent disappointments (War Horse, Doubt, God of Carnage) and fiascos (History Boys, Proof). It’s better to have lost Best Play like Frost/Nixon did to Tom Stoppard’s Coast of Utopia. F/N was a terrific film that will endure.

“I think producers like Harvey who invest in both Hollywood film and Broadway theater get blinding hard-ons for shows that have overblown reputations because they won awards on Broadway. Let’s be honest — there’s so little new, quality-level theater on Broadway competing for Best Play that lightweight puff like History Boys can win. That doesn’t mean it should be made into a movie. Anybody who’s actually seen August: Osage County knows that nothing at all happens for three hours except for an intoxicated, hellcat momma staggering around the stage, shrieking wisecracks and insults. The wisecracks aren’t really clever, the characters are one-dimensional and…wait, does it have a plot? I don’t remember seeing one back in 2008 when I suffered through a performance at the Music Box Theater.”

Obviously no one (myself included) knows anything at this stage. Well, I know I loved the play and that it’s a corrosive family drama and that all the theatre critics went apeshit over it. Most of us would be shocked, I think, if at least some of that power didn’t translate to the screen. But we know right now that there’s a little bit of resistance out there, however brusque or premature it might sound.

The August: Osage County producers bought this house — “the historic Boulanger home north of Pawhuska” — to shoot in. “The home and 22 acres, including several barns and ponds, were sold by Michael and Deborah McKinney [and] went for the asking.”

I hate fracking as much as the next guy and “Don’t Frack My Mother” (which was just uploaded) is catchy and well-performed, but somehow the idea of another ensemble of spirited touchy-feely celebrities singing about a heinous practice that everyone needs to condemn…somehow it doesn’t quite cut it. It needs to be shot in a more stylistically striking way or something. Or perhaps it would be better if actors not known for their singing abilities were to sing it. Or (this is pretty good) if dead actors could sing it. You know…use clips from old musicals and synch the song to their lip movements.

Plus the song is several months old, having been performed by Sean and Yoko Lennon on Jimmy Fallon last summer. Plus there’s just something about the timbre of Yoko’s voice, man. It grates. Always has.

When travelling carnivals played rural Kansas in the days of L. Frank Baum, this poor woman (had she been around) would have been a side-show attraction. Now she’s just a nice gal talking about her lifestyle. Only in 21st Century America. How would it be any different if a heroin addict were to post videos about which brand of heroin he/she prefers (Afghanistan vs. Myanmar vs. Mexico) with a little side video about how to hit up like a professional?

A teaser for a forthcoming American Masters special, Mel Brooks: Make a Noise (PBS, 5.20), arrived this morning. A Shout! Factory DVD is available the next day, but no VOD/online rentals? The clips indicate that Matthew Broderick, Richard Lewis, Nathan Lane and Carl Reiner see Brooks as an egoistic handful and no day at the beach. Like every driven artist-performer who’s ever lived. What else is new?

May I be blunt? In an 11.13 N.Y. Times interview with Frank Bruni, Alexander Payne remarked that all good directors have a magic decade. “They say you can do honest, sincere work for decades, but you’re given in general a 10-year period when what you do touches the zeitgeist — when you’re relevant,” he said. Due respect but Brooks’ movie-lightning period lasted only six years — The Producers (’68), The Twelve Chairs (’70), Blazing Saddles (’74) and Young Frankenstein (’74).

But if you count Brooks’ peak years as writer-performer on TV in the ’50s and ’60s (with Sid Ceasar on Your Show of Shows/Ceasar’s Hour and later Get Smart) and his 2000 Year-Old Man recordings with Carl Reiner, his hot-and-relevant period lasted a little over 20 years. Which is fairly extraordinary.

Silent Movie (’76) wasn’t all that amusing when you get right down to it. (I saw it exactly once, and I tittered but never laughed.) High Anxiety (’78)…Hitchcock tribute stuff, in and out. The Spanish Inquisition musical number in History of the World, Part I (’81) was hilarious and provocative, but otherwise the film was just mezzo-mezzo. Spaceballs (’87) was a downturn, I felt — a wallow. Life Stinks (’91) was actually a kind of resurgence — a character-driven movie that wasn’t a genre spoof. Robin Hood: Men in Tights (’93) and Dracula: Dead and Loving It (’95) were weak tea.

In November ’11 I applied Alexander Payne‘s ten-years-of-special-relevance theory to other directors. Andrew Sarris‘s remark about artists having only so much psychic essence also applies. Two things have to happen for a director to enjoy a special zeitgeist-tapping run. One, the director has to be firing on all cylinders. And two, the culture has to embrace and celebrate his/her output during this run of inspiration. Just being good or gifted doesn’t cut it in itself — the public (or at the very least the critics and the award-bestowing fraternity) also has to agree.

David Lean had a high-quality ten-year run run from Brief Encounter (’45) through Summertime (’55), but his prime-zeitgeist period lasted only eight years — The Bridge on the River Kwai (’57) to Dr. Zhivago (’65). The poorly received Ryan’s Daughter nearly finished him off, but then he came back in ’84 with A Passage to India.

John Ford‘s zeitgeist decade ran from The Informer to My Darling Clementine (’46), then he began to caricature himself with his Monument Valley films of the late ’40s and ’50s. Ford resurged with The Horse Soldiers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

Alfred Hitchcock did superb work in the ’30s and ’40s, but his window of mythic greatness was only nine years — Strangers on a Train (’51) to Psycho (’60).

Billy Wilder‘s grace period ran an even ten years — Sunset Boulevard (’50) to The Apartment (’60). Francis Coppola‘s window ran from The Godfather (’72) to One From The Heart (’82). Oliver Stone had a 13-year window — Salvador (’86) to Any Given Sunday (’99). So far Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu has had a decade-long grace period — Amores perros (’00) to Biutiful (’10). David Fincher has enjoyed an eleven-year window so far — Fight Club (’99) to The Social Network (’10).

Other assessments about other directors in this context?

While I did pretty well as a journalist and a columnist in the ’90s and early aughts, my big decade began in ’06 when I took HE in to a several-posts-per-day bloggy-blog format. I honestly feel like things are crackling on all four burners right now.