With Uli Edel‘s The Baader-Meinhof Complex preparing to open later this month (NYC on 8.21, LA on 8.28), it’s apparent that Vitagraph, the film’s U.S. distributor, didn’t push a suggestion I made in my 9.30.08 review, which was to retitle it The Baader-Meinhof Gang. “You have to think in popcorn terms when you’re deciding on a title,” I wrote, “and popcorn munchers don’t know from complexes. This is basically a high-voltage shoot ’em up about a political-minded Barrow gang that ends in death, jail and suicide.”
After watching Annie Hall last night, Vanity Fair.com’s Julian Sancton is wondering if Funny People is Judd Apatow‘s attempt to similarly veer off in a more grounded reality vein.
Well…obviously, of course, yeah. But it doesn’t flatter Apatow to bring up Allen’s 1978 coming-into-his-own film. Nor is it fair, really, as Funny People is about how a talented but selfish egotist manages to gradually edge toward menschhood after a serious brush with death while Annie Hall grapples with a much more touching and universal theme — i.e., that the reasons people get together tend, paradoxically, to be the same reasons why they break up.
“At 41, Apatow is exactly the same age as Allen was when Annie Hall was released, in 1977, when he was considered as Apatow is today the top comedic filmmaker of his time. And just as Allen did with such goofy farces as Sleeper, Bananas and Love and Death, Apatow amassed enough political capital in Hollywood with The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up to convince studios to allow him to spend it all on a more serious passion project.
“In each case, the filmmakers wrote what they knew, what they obsessed about, which happened to be the same two things: comedy and women. Each film gets both laughs and pathos by focusing on the existential angst of a standup comedian, and on his ultimately fruitless efforts to rekindle an old romance. The films actually overlap directly on a few plot points, such as with the smarmy foils played by Tony Roberts and Jason Schwartzman, who, in Allen and Apatow’s films respectively, both sell out by starring in second-rate sitcoms.
And “most importantly, both films stubbornly avoid the happy ending,” Sancton states.
Really? Funny People‘s conclusion isn’t “happy” but it does end on a tone of decency and mutual respect and rapprochement between Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen‘s comedian characters.
Unfortunately Apatow delivers a bummer epilogue at the end of the piece.
“It’s possible, however, that Funny People will be more of a detour in Apatow’s career than a new direction,” Sancton writes. “When I spoke to the director recently about some of the more emotionally difficult scenes in his latest film, he seemed hesitant to revisit that kind of pain anytime soon.
“‘The dramatic scenes were so painful to make that it made me respect people who can do that for an entire movie,’ he told me. ‘Just watching Adam prepare and get in the mindset to make a very difficult and sad scene was almost more than I, personally, could handle. All I thought the whole time was, After this I need to make a really stupid movie. Next time you may say this was the broadest thing I have ever done.'”
Imagine Allen saying the following to an interviewer just before the release of Annie Hall:
“I don’t know…I’m not sure about my creative direction because those dramatic scenes were really rough. It brought back all the stuff I went through with Diane in our real-life relationship. It was almost more than I could handle. I’m thinking I might want to make another Bananas or Take The Money and Run and just…you know, recover from this thing.
“For the last few months I’ve been nursing this idea for a widescreen black-and-white film called Manhattan — another difficult-relationships film — but I’m now thinking it would be better to just relapse back into a silly comedy and…you know, have a good time and make people laugh. I mean, I’m an entertainer, right? And that’s what people want me to be.”
Steven Spielberg‘s decision to direct an adaptation of Harvey, a 65 year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning play and a 59 year-old Universal film that starred James Stewart, is an essentially timid and conservative move. It’s about looking back at age 62, communing with old-time sentimental America, potentially having fun with Tom Hanks (who’s widely expected to play Stewart’s role of Elwood P. Dowd) and for some reason wanting to slosh around in amiable charm and likable oddness, which has never been Spielberg’s strong suit.
Harvey, which 20th Century Fox is financing and which will include, I’m presuming, the constant CG visualization of Harvey the rabbit, will, mark my words, be seen as a minor Spielberg hiccup at the end of the day. He doesn’t have it in him to be deft and discreet, which is what this kind of material needs. Spielberg almost always puts on the waders and sloshes right into the swamp. He’s always looking to touch or melt hearts, even when the film would be better off without this. He’ll never know from subtlety.
And all the while Tony Kushner‘s Lincoln — the biopic that Spielberg has delayed and dilly-dalllied with for years, the big creative-challenge project of his autumnal years that obviously terrifies him down to his cracked toenails — continues to wither on the vine as poor Liam Neeson, who’s dying to play Lincoln before he gets too old, waits and frets.
What is there to say about a once-interesting, super-rich director-producer who hasn’t made a truly formidable or at least largely unblemished film since 1998’s Saving Private Ryan and before that ’93’s Schindler’s List? And who, facing the final surge of creative opportunity and productivity in his life (he’s got another 10 to 12 years left of high-energy directing), has made two lightweight fantasy films over the last three years — Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Tintin — and has now committed to a third in this vein (i.e., Harvey)?
Because I still foolishly believe in the Spielberg who used to be (the guy who, with the exception of 1941, hit nothing but home runs from ’74’s Duel to ’82’s E.T., and who showed flashes of the old vigor three more times with ’89’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and the afore-mentioned Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan)…because I’m gullible enough to believe that Spielberg could pull it together and rally the troops for another surge, I keep asking myself again and again when is this guy going to man up and stop tiddly-winking around?
(l.) Abraham Lincoln; (r.) Lincoln-Neeson digital blend.
What will his next Lincoln-avoidance project be after Harvey? A bullshit Old Boy remake with Will Smith? The dumbing down of Interstellar?
I say and plead again to Spielberg: do the decent thing and drop Lincoln and give it to someone else to direct. Someone who isn’t afraid, someone with more depth and passion. Go ahead and be the life-loving Tintin/Harvey hah-hey guy. Shallow it up to your heart’s content but don’t block a potentially great film from being made. Lincoln is beyond your abilities. Admit this and let it go.
The new Harvey screenplay is a first-time effort by Jonathan Tropper. The original 1944 play was written by Mary Chase. Stewart played Dowd on Broadway as well as in the 1950 Henry Koster-directed film.
A creeping slumbering-energy force slipped in and shut down HE today. Well, not really. I was forced to spend hours figuring out synch issues with the Apple guys in the wake of my primary Windows computer (a 17-inch Gateway I’ve had since ’06) finally dying today after a lethal Spyware invasion/occupation. And after the whole synch issue (which took over seven hours to partially resolve) was done I had nothing left. Tomorrow is another day.
Delta #84 to Kennedy/NYC has been delayed from its previously-skedded 12:30 pm departure due to a missing co-pilot whose replacement has only just arrived. Welcome! Flying Delta Airlines is like taking the chicken bus from Belize City to Playa del Carmen…don’t ask. Arriving around 11:30 pm. Maybe.
I first saw Dances With Wolves just after it opened on November 9, 1990, but that was my last looksee until two or three days ago when I happened to see a crappy pan-and-scan version on cable. I never saw it on laser disc in the ’90s and never caught the 227-minute director’s cut that came out in ’04 or whenever. One reason, I suppose, is that I’ve always resented Dances With Wolves for taking the 1990 Best Picture Oscar from Martin Scorsese‘s Goodfellas, which of course was and is a far better film.
I only saw the last 100 minutes — the part in which Kevin Costner‘s Dunbar is captured by U.S. Cavalry troops and held for the capital crime of treason for consorting with Native Americans, and the subsequent attack on these troops by the Pawnee and Costner getting back with Mary McDonnell, etc. But I have to say this film hasn’t aged well. It’s so labored and unsubtle. The guys playing the troops act in the broadest manner, leering and scowling like unshaven degenerate pigs. Over and over Costner-the-director says to the audience, “See how cruel and reprehensible the white soldiers are? And see how pure and noble and big of heart the Pawnee are? Do you see how there’s no contest as to which is the morally superior culture?”
“Preservationists are also bracing for the potential loss of [Westwood] village’s two most architecturally distinctive theaters: the Village and Bruin, which date from the 1930s. Encino-based Mann Theatres has given notice that it intends not to renew its leases on the Broxton Avenue theaters — one Spanish Mission style with the famed neon-lighted Fox tower, the other Art Moderne with a distinctive wraparound marquee. Both are city historic-cultural monuments.” — from Martha Groves‘ 8.1 L.A. Times story, “Theatres Fading To Black in Westwood.”
This dead mouse was lying in front of my place in West Hollywood about 45 minutes ago. I figured right away “okay, man up, pick it up, put it in the dumpster.” My inner teenaged girl was reluctant to do this — I don’t like to handle dead things — but I shook it off and picked it up by the end of the tail. I was heading toward the garage when the tail fur slid off in my fingers and the mouse hit the pavement. I could feel dead-mouse tail grease on the tips of my right thumb and index finger. I figured he was somewhere between the icky gooey stage of decomposition and ants crawling over his eyeballs. No way was I going to pick this sucker up a second time.
It’s not very manly — I used to pick up dead animals all the time when I was a kid — but I decided that the best course would be to walk over to the washoom inside the restaurant next door and wash my hands. Which I did. Let somebody else take a shot with the mouse. Mine didn’t work.
I’ve been trying to (a) sell my black beater Nissan 240 SX (which runs reasonably well, isn’t that bad looking, has good brakes and unworn tires and a working radio/CD player) and (b) find someone to adopt/babysit the BMW yellow-jacket motorcycle (i.e., keep it and ride it now and then so the battery won’t die) and coming up blank on both fronts. You have to either drive vehicles or sell them — they can’t just sit in a garage. Over the last few days these two matters have been the biggest time swallowers apart from the InFilm tour, which came to an end yesterday. I fly back to Manhattan today at noon. Dead zone from 12:30 pm to 7 pm Pacific.
I never glance at Interview magazine much less read it, but Jack Nicholson‘s q & a with Mad Men‘s January Jones is…well, curious, of course. I presume the deal happened between Jones and Nicholson first and then the editors got involved, but still…odd. But he’s a relaxed and relaxing questioner and a very good listener. I would pay serious coin to read a series of interviews between Nicholson and two or three dozen actors, directors, screenwriters, producers, etc. He gets right down to it, knows exactly how things work and gets right into the strategies.
That said, the article’s headline copy is disingenuous by claiming the piece is “by Jack Nicholson” when it’s clear that he didn’t write the intro copy.
