If you’re approved (and don’t think this is any kind of duckwalk), it’ll cost you $1800 upfront and $4200 annually. But first you have to be nominated by a standing member, and then be approved by a nine-person membership committee, which meets twice monthly.
SVB member: “It doesn’t matter if you have money”…obviously bullshit. “It matters if you’re interesting.” Translation: If you’re dull or under-educated or given to a certain entitled arrogance you might have a tougher time of it.
Cheney: “Officially, what stands in your way are just three simple questions that make up the application to Jeff Klein‘s 10-month-old hotspot in West Hollywood: What would your autobiography be called? What is your favorite restaurant and why? What would your unique contribution to SVB be?”
(1) Title of HE’s autobiography: “Beware Those Who Live In A Crowd — They Are Nothing Alone.” Subtitle: “Avoid All Well-Dressed People Who Smile Strenuously — You’ll Live Longer.”
(2) HE’s favorite restaurant: Pier Luigi in Rome. Because it’s elegant and unpretentious and located in a smallish cobblestoned piazza, and because the food and service are always perfect.
(3) Unique HE contribution to SVB: Showing up for special film-related events but otherwise avoiding the premises like the plague.
…and, having just discussed John Lennon seconds before, they don’t mention Yesterday‘s most penetrating, head-turning scene? Because…what, they don’t want to spoil? The movie came out over three months ago. Spoiler whiners haven’t a leg to stand on after 90 days. I would have been completely fascinated to hear McCartney’s reaction.
It doesn’t seem like that far back when I attended the first big Academy screening of Prizzi’s Honor. But it happened 34 and 1/3 fucking years ago. Sobered by this realization, I started poking around yesterday, and eventually came across and re-read a fascinating Film Comment interview with Charley Partanna himself. Good reading, on point, nicely refined.
This morning I asked the author, Beverly Walker, whom I’ve known for eons, how it came about. The piece, she said, was derived from six hours of conversation, which happened in three installments. “Three separate interviews?,” I replied. “Wow, the access. Today all you can hope for is 20 minutes in a hotel room. Didn’t Jack’s publicist ask ‘Jeez, Beverly…how many sessions do you need?’ Can you give me a rundown about how and where it all happened?”
Beverly replied in less than an hour, and very tidily at that.
BW: “I had an acquaintanceship with Jack, having been introduced by Pierre Cottrell shortly after I moved to Los Angeles in 1970. Pierre — a producer with Barbet Schroeder of Eric Rohmer’s early films — had known Jack a long time; in fact, Jack had lived with Pierre and his wife, Edith, during a long sojourn in Paris in the ‘60s. Pierre had become a friend of mine during my years at the N.Y. Film Festival.
“This acquaintance with Jack was renewed when I handled NYC release publicity for The King of Marvin Gardens. I liked Jack a lot; I was fascinated by the huge difference between the guy I was around and his public persona. I knew how smart he was — how articulate — and thought he would be a great interview subject. Somewhere along the way, he said he would sit down with me for an interview,
During the filming of Prizzi’s Honor (which I worked on), he confirmed it.
“When shooting was finished, I went to his house on Mulholland on three separate occasions, for at least two hours each time, to talk with him. It was quite easy and informal. The second time, as I recall, he was distressed about losing most of his eyebrows, which were singed when a burner on his stove flared up**. It was scary, and he was in pain. Nonetheless, he carried on.
“Jack never had a publicist or an agent, just a manager. But the appointments were done through an assistant of his, whose name I regret to say I cannot recall, but whom I knew from being around the set on Prizzi’s Honor.
“We — Harlan Jacobson, editor of Film Comment at the time, and myself — had agreed to allow Jack to read the interview before publication. There was concern because Jack had indiscreetly talked so much about drugs and other inflammatory subjects; his position within the industry was a little iffy. I didn’t mind because I had no intention of addressing those subjects. I really wanted to allow him to show this other side of himself, which was largely hidden from the public.
According to longtime Robert De Niro partner and Irishman producer Jane Rosenthal, Martin Scorsese‘s final gangster flick “is a slower movie. It doesn’t have the kind of intensity, the visual intensity, [of] a Casino or a Goodfellas. It is guys looking at themselves through an older perspective.”
It’s basically about “toxic masculinity” being the end-all and be-all of the life of mob hitman Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), Rosenthal says, “and what happens when someone chooses one family over their own nuclear family, and then tries to make repairs at the end of [his life]. What happens to men who make that decision.”
The Irishman will debut at the NY Film Festival on Friday, 9.27, or four days hence.
Can you imagine any old-time, bullshit-spewing producer in the Sam Spiegel or David O. Selznick or Harvey Weinstein mode calling one of his upcoming films “slower”? Rosenthal presumably means that The Irishman is sadder or more meditative, etc. But my God, in most people’s opinion “slower” is only a step or two removed from boring.
And the term “toxic masculinity”, of course, is straight out of your basic SJW feminist handbook.
Over the years most mobster types (including the ones in the first two Godfather films, Goodfellas and The Sopranos) have been portrayed as men who lived most completely in the company of their crime family paisans, and secondarily with their nuclear families, as a kind of fallback thing.
What was the final shot of The Godfather (’72) about, when Al Neri closed that door on Diane Keaton‘s Kay Adams? It was about Kay being shut out of the inner sanctum of Michael Corleone‘s gangster life, and realizing that she’ll always be kept in a restricted zone in which she’ll never really share or know what’s going on.
Remember the definitive line that Don Corrado Prizzi (William Hickey) says to Charlie Partanna (Jack Nicholson) in Prizzi’s Honor? They’re talking about unscrupulous hitwoman Irene Walker (Kathleen Turner), whom Charlie has recently married and loves deeply. The boss, however, wants her dead. When Charlie protests, he’s told that there’s no choice because the Prizzi family is everything. “She is your wife,” Don Corrado says, “but we are your life.”
How is this any different from what Rosenthal is talking about?
There isn’t a guy alive who hasn’t dreamt about revelling in a three-way Satyricon thing, but a hetero menage a trois, trust me, is a lot more of a delicate struggle than you might think.
I wouldn’t normally mention that I lucked out with a couple of situations in my late 20s, but it seems allowable in the context of Svetlana Cvetko‘s Show Me What You Got, which is about a prolonged Jules et Jim-type relationship between a beautiful, dark-haired Italian woman (Christina Rambaldi) and a pair of spirited, medium-macho, ginger-haired dudes (Neyssan Falahi, Mattia Manasi).
Both times my threebies were between me and two women, and both were mixed experiences. On one level intimidating, on another level ecstatic, and on still another never truly open and equal and even-steven. Both times I found myself leaning towards one lassie over another, but I naturally didn’t want to convey this so I had to pretend as best I could that everything was everything and we all shine on. It was exhausting.
I decided early on that Show Me What You Got had to be about the fact that Rambaldi’s character would almost certainly prefer Falahi over Manasi or vice versa, and that the story tension would have to be about her choosing one over the other. Or perhaps getting pregnant but nobody knowing who the father is. Or (this was my favorite) her becoming pregnant by a third guy whom Falahi and Manasi haven’t met or even been told about. Preferably some super-rich, Porsche-driving guy a la Robert Redford in Indecent Proposal.
All good love stories need some kind of basic tension. They all require that the person with the most power in a relationship has to choose option A, B or C. They can’t just be about ongoing eros or gliding along.
Yesterday afternoon, as Tatyana was exchanging her iPhone 6 for a new iPhone 8 Plus, I downloaded iOS 13.0 on my own iPhone 8 Plus, which I’ve had for about 18 months. Many cosmetic but agreeable changes (i.e., faster keyboard, dark mode, new photos tabs, tweaks of this and that) but I’m especially loving all the new visual adjustment options on the camera. I probably could have shot all kinds of mesmerizing black-and-white captures before yesterday, but I’m suddenly into it now because I was lazy before or whatever.
In 2014 Elliot Rodger, 22, stabbed three people near his Isla Vista apartment, and then shot 11 people near the UCSB campus, sending three to God, before killing himself.
“The 40-year-old self-proclaimed misogynist who shot six women, two of them fatally, at a Tallahassee yoga studio last year name-checked the Isla Vista gunman in one of his final online posts. The 21-year-old who fatally shot two students and himself at his former high school in Aztec, New Mexico, in 2017 used the Isla Vista shooter’s name as an online pseudonym and called him a “supreme gentleman.” The man who carried out the 2015 Umpqua Community College shooting in Oregon, which left nine people dead and eight others wounded, wrote in an online manifesto that he was a virgin with “no friends, no job, no girlfriend,” and said that he and others like him — including the Isla Vista gunman — ‘stand with the gods.'”
This is not new, much less startling, news to anyone who’s been paying the least amount of attention. And it was surely on the minds of all those Venice Film Festival-attending critics who suggested that Joker might be received as some kind of incel anthem flick.
“Unlike Heath Ledger’s inscrutable take on the character in 2008’s The Dark Knight, Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck, a failed comedian who still lives with his elderly mother, is the horribly familiar enemy within. If the film hadn’t been set in the ’80s he could easily be the latest online message-board extremist to take his grievances murderously viral.
“[And] yet Phoenix doesn’t seem to have considered this kind of question at all. So when I put it to him — ‘Aren’t you worried that this film might perversely end up inspiring exactly the kind of people it’s about, with potentially tragic results?’ — a fight-or-flight response kicked in.
“‘Why?’ Phoenix eventually muttered, his lip curling up at one side. ‘Why would you…? No…no.’ Then he stood up, shuffled towards me, clasped my hands between his, and walked out the door.”
This provides a peek into Phoenix’s mind. The man obviously lives in his own isolation tank. He was right smack in the middle of the Venice and Toronto Joker hoopla with everyone saying “incel wacko weirdo” blah blah…possible echoes and stirring of portents of real-life malice. And yet the whole conversation flew right around Phoenix’s head and into the ether.
Collin has described the Phoenix incident as “my most hair-raising interview yet.”
A research screening of Sam Mendes‘ 1917 happened this evening (Wednesday, 8.18) at the AMC Garden State in Paramus, New Jersey, and one guy (whom I know but have had only sporadic contact with) is claiming it’s grade-A and then some.
“It’s much better than Dunkirk,” the guy claims, “and is basically as if the opening battle of Saving Private Ryan was a whole movie. Young British soldiers are trying to relay a message regarding a German ambush, and we follow their mission and race against the clock. It’s not just a gimmick or experience. It actually has character development and first-rate dialogue. Surprisingly emotional since the soldiers have personal family ties. Elements of irony and dark comedy. It’s filmed like Birdman with long takes hidden and disguised as one shot. Brutally graphic, shocking and bloody, lots of dodging of bombs, hiding in caves. Hard R.”
Accept the word “masterpiece” or not, but that’s the term being used this evening. The running time is a little less than two hours — 110 minutes. Most of the film has a professional completed veneer…nearly done. Occasionally funny in an unexpected way. Uses magic-trick editing to make it look like it was shot in a single take. Easily dp Roger Deakins‘ best work.
The next reaction will be from someone claiming that 1917 is not as good as all this — trust me.
In the previous post I mentioned a certain forehead-slapper in James Gray‘s Ad Astra (Fox/Disney, 9.20). But it’s not the only one. There are actually three. The first, which has been spoiled all over the place, is a Mad Max-like dune-buggy car chase on the moon. Then comes the curious biological presence thing. Then comes another lunar moment in which Brad Pitt attempts to surreptitiously board a Mars-bound space vehicle…all right, forget it.
There’s a lot to “admire” in Ad Astra. I didn’t believe a frame of it, but I approved (and still do approve) of the adult-friendly attitude. I appreciated the effort that Gray made in this regard.
Okay, portions were made for the intellectually stunted or disengaged, but otherwise it’s a reasonably tidy, pro-level, not excessively long (124 minutes) space drama with some very cool VFX. All through it I was feeling a certain amount of respect mixed with a certain indifference. It didn’t turn me on but it’s not a flagrant burn.
Ad Astra is basically about how an emotionally brusque, middle-aged astronaut (Brad Pitt) travels all the way to Neptune to find his presumed-dead-but-actually-alive astronaut dad (Tommy Lee Jones) way the hell out at the edge of the solar system. And thereafter settle or solve some important matters.
Dad has been missing or at least out of contact for 30 years, and, we eventually discover, is living aboard a massive Neptune-orbiting space craft. The voyage he launched three decades earlier was called the Lima Project (pronounced like the city in Peru, not the bean). Pitt’s primary goal is to somehow stop the generating of destructive energy surges (or pulses) that have been causing terrible havoc and killing thousands on earth. I didn’t get the science of it and didn’t really care, to be honest, but the surges have originated from Neptune so maybe Jones is somehow culpable.
Pitt to TLJ: “C’mon, dad, cut the shit. You’re hurting people and really fucking things up.”
By the conclusion Brad seems to have partially resolved some paternal issues he’s been carrying around for decades. Stuff like “okay, you tutored me in math and we watched black-and-white movies together, but otherwise why were you such an aloof workaholic prick, dad, and why did you abandon our family? Why didn’t we take more walks, have more catches on the front lawn, watch more football games, go on camping trips?”
My basic thought as I left the theatre last week was “not a bad film…annoying and stupid, yes, but not fatally so…and certainly satisfying from a VFX standpoint. But my God, what an awful long way to go (not to mention the spending of untold billions if not trillions) just to allow a guy to come to terms with his complex feelings about his father and perhaps achieve some kind of closure.”
This in turn would allow Brad to henceforth build a warmer, more trusting relationship with his wife, Eve, once he returns to earth. Eve is represented more than “played” by Liv Tyler, as she doesn’t say a word. Or not as I recall.
It took Voyager 2 about 12 years to reach Neptune (launched on 8.20.77, arrived in Neptune orbit on 8.24.89). The return trip to earth would presumably take another 12 years, for a grand total of 24 or 25. And so Pitt, who’s supposed to be in his mid 40s as the film begins, would be pushing 70. He’d be Rip Van Winkle with a white beard. But in the movie he’s not noticably older when he returns. The only difference is that he now has a moderate-length beard, but it’s not gray or white. (It might be salt and pepper-ish.)
“Oh, man. I’m gonna abstain. I mean, you never know, and it’s really nice when your number comes up. But the goal is for the film to land, to speak to someone, whether it’s now or a decade from now. I find chasing it actually a disservice to the purity of your telling a story, and a shackling thing to focus on.”
Translation: “If I campaign I’m gonna have to spend three to four months answering cloying questions about my contentious divorce from Angie and my relationship with Maddox and who I’m going out with and stuff like that, and life is short, you know? I don’t want to become a talking sock puppet, repeating the same answers to the same pain-in-the-ass, Access Hollywood questions.
“Roman Polanski didn’t compaign for The Pianist, but he won anyway, right? I’m gonna follow his lead. If I win, great. And if Tom Hanks takes it for playing Fred Rogers, fine.”
Elbaum: “We were prepping by February, we [began shooting] the movie in March, we wrapped it in May, and the movie’s coming out in September, which is insane.” By which Elbaum presumably meant “this is way faster than the usual.” She’s not wrong.
Wikipedia saysHustlers began principal photography on 3.22.19 in New York City, with the shoot lasting 29 days. Final production wrapped on May 3. Hustlers premiered at the Toronto Film Festival almost exactly four months later — 9.7.19. It opened last Friday (9.13.19).
A four-month turnaround from the conclusion of lensing to a film festival opening is very fast work, but — I almost hate to point this out — it wasn’t totally insane. At least three films did it faster.
Oliver Stone‘s W. opened only three months and one week after the finish of principal photography, but of course it was shown to press at least a couple of weeks prior (I know because I attended the junket at the Four Seasons) so it was actually finished and screenable less than three months after shooting stopped. Filming began on 5.12.08, and completed on 7.11.08. It opened in theatres on 10.17.08.
I can’t remember or even discover the exact details, but Floyd Mutrux‘s American Hot Wax (’78), a biopic of rock ‘n’ roll disk jockey and promoter Alan Freed, managed an extremely quick turnaround. I interviewed Mutrux at a Manhattan junket a couple of weeks prior to the 3.17 opening, and as I recall the Paramount-produced film had wrapped as recently as the previous December or possibly even January. I wrote director Cameron Crowe, who performed a brief cameo, to see if he could recall any details — he hasn’t responded. I’m pretty sure the film wrapped less than 12 weeks before opening day, and possibly less than ten.
But the Big Daddy of fast Hollywood turnarounds is still Otto Preminger‘s Anatomy of a Murder (’59). Liner notes for a Columbia/TriStar DVD of the film claim that principal photography in Michigan began on 3.23.59 and ended on 5.15.59. The Anatomy Wiki page says it previewed on 6.18.59, or 33 days after wrapping. The first public screening happened at the Butler Theater in Ishpeming and the Nordic Theater in Marquette on 6.29.59. The world premiere for the 160-minute film was either held on 7.1.59 (according to Wikipedia) or 7.2.59 (according to the DVD), at the United Artists Theater in Detroit.
Most of my responses to Josh and Benny Safdie‘s Uncut Gems were about irritation and frustration. Because, in my judgment, Sandler’s Howard Ratner, a total gambling junkie, isn’t interesting. Not because Sandler isn’t good in the role — he’s actually brilliant — but because the film has no interest in looking or reaching beyond the hustling mood-rush aspects of his wildly self-destructive addiction.
That’s not a putdown of Sandler’s performance. Within the realm that the Safdies have created, he’s completely authentic. We all know what Sandler’s screen persona has been for the last 25 years — droll, laid-back, quippy, sarcastic smart-ass. Howard Ratner is different. Sandler has never given himself to a character like this before. I just want to make that clear. You could say that Sandler is better than the film. I completely respect what he’s done here. In fact, I’ve just visited Gold Derby and upped his standing to fourth place (right behind Adam Driver, Joaquin Phoenix and Robert De Niro).