Day: April 16, 2013

If you’re making any kind of realistic ’70s movie your wardrobe and hair choices are going to horrify or sicken a good portion of your audience, even those who lived through that sartorially-disastrous decade. This certainly seems to be the case with David O. Russell‘s American Hustle, a title which alludes to honest entrepeneurship as much as cons and flim-flams. The film formerly known as “Russell’s ABSCAM flick” (and before that American Bullshit) finally got a firm title yesterday.

American Hustle montage stolen from Indiewire.

When I said “realistic ’70s movie” I meant one that excludes X-factor people. Nobody wants to admit this and I’m sure I’ll be called an elitist for saying so, but only semi-clueless bridge-and-tunnel people from lower-middle-class “meathead” neighborhoods (i.e., those who weren’t connected to dynamic big-city culture) wore laughably grotesque ’70s threads.

I was bopping around on the fringes in the mid to late ’70s and I never wore a fucking leisure suit or elephant collars or gaudy sunglasses or had godawful “big-hair.” Okay, I wore flared jeans but I was mainly into T-shirts and Frye boots and Brian DePalma-styled khaki bush-safari jackets and that whole American Gigolo/Giorgi Armani/Milan-influenced thing (i.e., nifty sport jackets, Italian loafers, shirts with small pointed collars).

HE to Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu: Congrats on yesterday’s start of principal photography on Birdman, your Michael Keaton-Edward Norton dramedy about a somewhat faded Hollywood actor from the CG-bullshit-blockbuster realm trying to revive his career by starring in a Broadway play based on a Raymond Carver story. Nobody likes to put pressure on themselves but the Fox Searchlight release suggests that your film could be released at the end of 2013. If you decide to make the effort and add gray hairs.

A rep for Fox Searchlight, Birdman‘s distributor, says “we’re targeting 2014” so that’s that, I guess. Then again David O. Russell‘s ABSCAM film is only a month ahead of you and that will definitely be released by mid December, Sony has announced. I realize it wouldn’t be easy but you could do it.

A ten-week shoot means you’ll be wrapped on July 1st or by July 15th if you go twelve weeks. If you firmly commit to five months in post-production you could have Birdman ready for release by mid-December. Especially if you shoot for ten weeks. Definitely possible and not all that crazy. If the editing goes well and the Movie Godz are favoring.

Shooting for Cannes 2014 is the simpler and more sensible thing — I get that. And you’ve never done a “comedy” so this is new turf. I’ll assume 2014 unless I hear otherwise…howzat?

In addition to Keaton and Norton Birdman costars Lindsay Duncan, Zach Galifianakis, Andrea Riseborough, Amy Ryan, Emma Stone and Naomi Watts. The film will be a New Regency production with Inarritu and John Lesher serving as producers. Pic will be produced by New Regency. Fox Searchlight Pictures will market and distribute.

A Bluray of Andrew V. NcLaglen‘s McLintock (’63) came out three weeks ago. It’s not an especially admirable John Wayne film — a rowdy, overly broad western farce and nowhere near as entertaining in that regard as North to Alaska (’60). Boiled down it has one really good scene (i.e., “the hell I won’t”). And it’s noteworthy for using an exclamation point in the title.

Two questions: What other semi-respectable films have used exclamation points or question marks in their titles? (All I can think of are Them! and Quo Vadis?) And what films are known for being mostly a wash except for one really good or at least half-decent scene?

Roughly 18 hours ago (or sometime yesterday around 2 pm Pacific) Patton Oswalt posted a statement about yesterday afternoon’s Boston bombings. HE is surely among the last sites to link to this but what the hell. While I feel awful for the victims and for the citizens of Boston affected by the sonic impact of this sickening act, I don’t feel the least bit bummed out or dispirited by it, certainly not in a general philosophical sense. Oswalt was bummed by the 9/11 attacks but not this time. He explains as follows:

“This is a giant planet and we’re lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they’re pointed towards darkness. But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak.

“This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We’d have eaten ourselves alive long ago. So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, ‘The good outnumber you, and we always will.'”

Last night the first-ever Chicago Critics Film Festival came to a close, and following a screening of a mint-condition 35mm print of Sorcerer followed by q & a with William Friedkin, the legendary director closed with some Dylan Thomas verse for Roger Ebert.