Two weeks ago I sat down with Black and White director-writer Mike Binder at his West Los Angeles office and talked about a lot of things. The film, the chasm between black and white culture, his new novel-writing career, his recent decision to move away from dramadies and into more plot-driven material with a little “bounce,” Richard Linklater‘s Boyhood, the relentless glossiness of BET, alcoholism, watching screeners vs. seeing films with a paying audience, etc. It’s an open, relaxed, no-bullshit discussion — one of the most engaging I’ve ever posted on this site.

I think we all understand by now that Black and White is about a child-custody battle over a young African-American girl (Jillian Estell), and that the heart of the conflict is an argument jointly waged by her somewhat unstable, drug-dabbling father (Andre Holland) and her paternal grandmother (Octavia Spencer) that she needs to be raised by her own people. On the other hand her white attorney grandfather (Kevin Costner), who’s been raising her for years with his recently deceased wife (Jennifer Ehle) following the death of the girl’s mom, is determined to keep her in a more stable (i.e., drug-free) environment, which is ironic given that grandma’s death has turned grandpa into a raging boozer.

What I learned during our talk is that Binder is drawing from a personal history with a mixed-culture upbringing. Back in the late ’80s Binder’s in-law Maria Murphy, the sister of his wife Diane Murphy, died from an accidental infusion of HIV during a medical procedure, and it was left to Binder and his wife to raise Maria’s half-African-American son, Sean, who was 7 at the time. But it wasn’t a 100% proposition as Sean spent a lot of time with his absent father’s family in South Central. Sean is doing well today and living in Tampa, Florida. Binder says, “I’ve been wanting to write this story for a long time. The custody battle and the father with the drug problem…it comes from a real place.”

I’ve written three or four times about Mike Binder‘s Black and White, a racially-tinged drama in which a hard-drinking, well-off, basically fair-minded L.A. attorney and grandfather, played by Kevin Costner, goes eyeball to eyeball against his African-American in-laws in a custody battle for his granddaughter. And that’s too brief a description about what this film really gets into. Everyone puts on their tiptoe shoes when any kind of racial subject comes up in any context, but not Black and White. It plays it mild and sad and blunt and angry. It’s a lot more candid and straight-from-the-shoulder than you might expect.

Jillian Estell, Kevin Costner in Mike Binder’s Black and White.

I saw Black and White last July with a bit of initial skepticism and concern, and I came out surprised and impressed. It doesn’t placate or soothe but it’s not snarly or inflammatory either. It just talks straight and open about…well, more than just racial matters. It takes a hard look at responsibility and parenting and racial identity and who’s really feeling what, and if you ask me it offers one of the frankest discussions about the black-white racial chasm since Barack Obama‘s Philadelphia speech about Reverend Wright, and before that Spike Lee‘s Do The Right Thing. I mean it. I really think it’s on that level.

I also think it delivers Costner’s best performance since The Upside of Anger and before that Field of Dreams. Really. His Dreams guy was about economic anxiety and dads and hope and reaching out and melting down. His Black and White guy, an angry-ass widower who drinks like a fish throughout the entire film and yet may not be an actual alcoholic, is about caring and who-gives-a-shit? fatigue and rage at a drug-using son-in-law and a compulsion to just spill out his blunt, take-it-or-leave-it feelings, especially during a big court-testimony scene at the end.

9:15 pm: It is gratifying to report that the TIFF media guys have decided to upgrade my TIFF press pass to priority level…many thanks, deply appreciated. Earlier: To my slight surprise the TIFF media guys gave me a grunt-level press pass this morning. I’ve been enjoying the benefits of a priority pass (a pass with a capital P on the bottom) for many years here, and I guess I’ve gotten used to it. A TIFF priority press pass isn’t quite the same honor as having a pink-with-yellow-pastille pass at the Cannes Film Festival or an all-access, no-waiting market badge at Sundance, but a TIFF priority pass means you get to wait in shorter lines at the Scotiabank, and sometimes it can mean the difference between seeing a hot film and being shut out.

What does this Men, Women and Children poster indicate about the content of the film? We all understand that the marketing for a film and the film itself exist in two separate realms, but presumably the poster was approved by director Jason Reitman and colleagues. To me it’s saying the obvious, which is that no one in the film (which Paramount will open on 10.3) is paying attention to genuine human interaction except for the young couple.

“Pessoa used to say that literature was the most agreeable way to ignore life. You think he would’ve felt the same way about your iPhone?” — a line spoken by Edward Norton‘s Matt Shiner character in a 2012 draft of Alejandro G. Inarritu‘s Birdman.

If you’re at all familiar with this site you know I hold HBO’s The Wire in the highest regard. I believe that anyone who has failed to see even one of the 60 episodes broadcast between ’00 and ’08 has to answer for that. I also feel that anyone who fails to express sufficient enthusiasm for the series has an enzyme deficiency of some kind. But I’m honestly confused about the remastered-aspect-ratio brouhaha that erupted a couple of days ago. An HBO marathon of all 60 Wire episodes in a remastered high-def formt begins on Thursday, September 4th, but some are alarmed about the remastering process. It is feared in some quarters that the Wire‘s original aspect ratio (i.e., the show was originally broadcast in a standard boxy 4:3) has been cleavered on the tops and bottoms to render a 16 x 9 high-def version. Others believe that the show was originally shot at 1.85 and that the sides were cleavered in order to present the show at 4:3 between ’00 and ’08. I honestly don’t know the answer.

Wow…I’ve never posted just one article in the course of a day but it had to happen sooner or later. My LAX to Toronto flight (Air Canada) taxi-ing as we speak. Arriving 11-ish. I like setting up early.

Yesterday Deadline’s Pete Hammond praised Ramin Bahrani’s 99 Homes, a moral-outrage drama about a couple of guys (Andrew Garfield, Michael Shannon) making good but smelly money by evicting working-class Floridians from their homes roughly two years after the 2008 meltdown. Dog eat dog, survival of the fittest, no room for compassion, etc. Pete is usually a shrewd assessor of award-season contenders but this time he’s way off. I saw 99 Homes in Telluride a couple of days ago and it was all I could do to keep from groaning aloud. Just because a film is portraying real- life realities and has its heart in the right place doesn’t mean it’s good, much less an awards hottie.

Andrew Garfield, Michael Shannon in Ramin Bahrani’s 99 Homes.

99 Homes is a close-up portrait of the real-estate trauma that’s been happening in middle-class communities all over the country for the last five or six years, and is about the willingness of a regular guy to whack regular folks -— to serve as a kind of foreclosure hit man — in order to save his own neck.

Then again the evictees aren’t blameless. They aren’t exactly “deadbeats” but they are out of work and behind on their mortgage payments, and are probably over-extended in terms of income vs. debt. I was saying to myself, “Too bad, chubby…but did you ever imagine this might happen when you signed that bank loan?” A lot of out-of-work people have had their homes seized by bankstas over the last three or four years. And guys like Shannon’s Rick Carver are paid to be their muscle on the street.

Carver is technically a realtor but is really the Tony Montana of foreclosures and evictions. It’s the return of The Ice Man in suburban Florida and dressed in nicer duds. But at least he’s giving Garfield’s Dennis Nash, a single construction-worker dad whom Carver evicts from his modest Orlando-area home (along with his son and mom) as the film begins, a chance to stay afloat. Garfield has moved his brood to a motel and is panicking over his inability to cover expenses, and so he naturally says “damn right” when Shannon offers work.

With Focus World having acquired David Cronenberg‘s Maps to the Stars for an early 2015 release , there is speculation that they may not want to spring for a Julianne Moore Best Actress campaign, which of course would require an L.A. and N.Y. platform release in late December plus the usual ad coin commitment. The talk stems from Variety‘s Ramin Setoodeh and Brent Lang having written that Moore “could be sitting out awards season.” If so, odd. Moore is madly, blazingly “on” as a fading film star. She hits exactly the right notes in a film that itself is quite a careful dance — dryly farcical, creepy hah-hah, deadpannish. Easily an award-calibre performance. Here’s my 5.18 quickie Cannes review.

Maps to the Stars will open in “early” 2015, Variety says, which of course means late January, February or early March. The only reason Focus wouldn’t give Maps to the Stars a qualifying run in support of Moore…well, there is no logical reason. They have to go there. If they don’t they’ll be cultivating a bad rep with talent — a distributor that doesn’t step up to the plate during award season.

The sound completely sucks (forget it you’re not listening with earphones) on this video of Anne Thompson‘s Telluride chat with Birdman director/cowriter Alejandro “G.” (i.e., no more Gonzalez) Inarritu. But the printed q & a is pretty good. Read that at least.

During last Thursday’s drive from Durango Airport to Telluride, I stopped at Zuma Natural Foods in Mancos. I ordered a delicious cappucino from storekeeper Mo (a.k.a. Maureen) while tapping out a couple of emails. And then I left. It wasn’t until this morning that I remembered I’d forgotten to pay for the cappucino. So today I decided to hit Zuma on the way back to Durango and square myself. Except that took longer than I figured, and by the time I’d gotten Mo’s attention and asked what I owe (she insisted the cappucino was free) I’d been there a little over ten and closer to twelve minutes. I peeled out of the lot and drove 80 mph trying to make my 3:20 pm US Air flight from Durango, but I missed it by — you guessed it — about ten minutes. No good deed. So I drove back to Mancos, a cool little town that’s a bit more appealing than Durango, which is too industrial and Starbucky. I’m now chilling in room 26 at the Mesa Verde Motel. My rescheduled flight leaves at 6:30 am. I have to get up at 4:15 am to be at Durango Airport by 5:45 am.

“Popularity is the slutty cousin of prestige.” Hang onto that. It’s 12:10 pm, my plane to Los Angeles leaves from Durango at 3:30 pm and that’s two hours from here. Later.