wired

In early ’99, more than seven and a half years ago, everyone was talking about the studio version of Brian Helgeland‘s Payback — a remake of John Boorman‘s Point Blank as well as a re-adaptation of Donald Westlake‘s “Parker” novel — vs. the rumored Helgeland version that had been suppressed.
I distinctly remember asking then-Paramount publicist Jasmine Madatian at a Westwood screening about the “other” version of Payback at a screening and her telling me, “Jeffrey, what are you saying? There is no other version!”

Now comes a Harry Knowles review of an Austin screening of the Helgeland version, now being called Payback:Straight Up. Harry is calling it “a complete overhaul. No Kris Kristofferson, no kidnapped son sub-plot, no boxing match and no pulled punches.
“This [new version] is a mean sucker punch, gutter dirty, pissed-off piece of pulp art! Gibson is not ‘the likable superstar’ in this film. He beats the shit out of Deborah Kara Unger in this version. He is straight to the point, no cookie-cutter bullshit. This is the way a Parker novel by Donald Westlake should be handled.
“The film is leaner and meaner. There are no explosions and needless tacked on gore. This is brutal and hard-nosed. Oh, and immensely satisfying!!!
“Here’s the problem though. At this point, according to Helgeland at the screening, the film will most likely end up going to DVD in February or March – with a minor dump into a few theaters here or there. I completely get how this film from 7 years ago isn’t a big priority. It was a tiny, small budget film from a prior regime that did its business on DVD. And the investment in allowing Brian to finish this cut is also minuscule. I, also completely get that if you just hit this straight to DVD, you’ll make a killing, theoretically.
“However, Payback isn’t one of the great Mel Gibson movies in most people’s eyes. It was that Mel flick he did before Lethal Weapon 4. The one where he didn’t fight Jet Li. But to really get the audience’s attention, I think you’ve got to get this film back on to screens.
“This is a radically different film. Better music, better editing, better storytelling and just flat out a great film.
“I don’t expect Paramount to make it a big release. Frankly, I don’t think that would work. However, I really think handing the film over to Paramount Vantage could be an ideal way to treat this tiny crime film the way it ought to be treated, with a team that would help it in a limited release, that built upon the critical acclaim that this cut would receive by critics everywhere.”

That scene in The Departed when Jack Nicholson‘s gang meets that gang of Asian thugs to sell those stolen missile-guiding microchips? Jack mentions the basic concept of payment for goods, and to underline the point in a crudely ethnic vein, he says, “No tickee, no laundry.” Wrong. The perjorative Chinese immigrant expression is “no tickee, no washee .”

A nicely written, curiously selective Hollywood trend piece by Time‘s Rebecca Winters Keegan about the Splat Pack — the latest, hottest crop of English-speaking horror filmmakers: Leigh Whannell (screenwriter of Saw I, II and III; actor in I and II), James Wan (director of Saw, Death Sentence), Rob Zombie (The Devil’s Rejects, the new Halloween), Eli Roth (Hostel), Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes, the forthcoming Mirrors), Neil Marshall (The Descent, the forthcoming Doomsday) and Saw III director Darren Lynn Bousman. I didn’t notice any mentions of Severance director Christopher Smith or Black Sheep helmer Jonathan King. And except for Wan, there’s no mention of any particular Asian horror-meisters.

Three or four months ago I was taken off the Movie City News columnist links — demoted — and grouped in with the very formidable Cindy Adams, Nikki Finke, Mark Ebner , Jeannette Walls and Rush & Molloy as a gossip. Two days ago I was restored to the colum- nist ranks, although I’m still lumped in with the gossips. Either it’s a mistake and or I did something to warrant reconsideration. 10:50 pm update: Nope…a mistake! I’m just a gossip again.

Pete Hammond has listed several actors and actresses in his Hollywood Wiretap piece about how playing real-life figures seems to usher in Oscar contender talk. Typically comprehensive (Hammond knows his stuff) but a little too generous. Here’s HE’s tough-darts, hard-odds rundown:

the great Ben Sliney (seriously) as himself in United 93

First group: (a) Ben Affleck as Superman actor George Reeves in Hollywoodland / HE verdict: forget Venice; (b) Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin in Last King of Scotland / HE verdict : is all this Forrest-is-getting-weaker, peaked-too-soon talk being kicked around all over or…?; (c) Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth and Michael Sheen as Tony Blair in The Queen / HE verdict : Mirren’s locked; Sheen’s looking pretty good for supporting; (d) Sienna Miller as Edie Sedgwick in Factory Girl / HE verdict: Miller’s terrif but the nommie thing’s on hold as no one except myself and F.X. Feeney have seen the film; (e) Renee Zellweger as Beatrix Potter in Miss Potter / HE verdict: has anyone seen this film, and if if she’s good isn’t the Zellwegger animus factor still pretty strong?
Second group: (f) Annette Bening as Deidre Burroughs in Running With Scissors / HE verdict: Bening’s a top-notch, very well-liked actress, but her performance has a certain root-canal quality; (g) Derek Luke as South African freedom fighter Patrick Chamusso in Catch A Fire / HE verdict: I bought and respcted his performance 100%, but is it Oscar-y enough?; (h) Adam Beach as Ira Hayes in Flags Of Our Fathers / HE verdict: chops aren’t there; (i) Nicolas Cage, Michael Pena, Maria Bello, Maggie Gyllenhaal as their real life 9/11 counterparts in World Trade Center / HE verdict: Bello or Gyllenhaal, maybe, but forget the guys; (j) Gretchen Mol‘s performance as a legendary ’50s pin-up model in The Notorious Bettie Page / HE verdict: won’t happen;
Third group: (k) Kirsten Dunst as Marie-Antoinette / HE verdict: c’mon…not a serious proposition; (l) Ed Harris as Ludwig van Beethoven in Copying Beethoven / HE verdict : has anyone seen this?; (m) Keisha Castle Hughes as Mary, mother of Jesus, in The Nativity Story / HE verdict : something tells me her being actually preggers at age 16 is going to work against her on some level; (n) Toby Jones and Sandra Bullock as Truman Capote and Harper Lee in Infamous / HE verdict : forget it; and…
Year’s Best Performance by a Non-Actor: (o) Ben Sliney as himself in United 93 — in all seriousness, a brilliant, fully believable, totally lived-in performance / HE verdict : Sliney’s the guy.

Sen. Barack Obama acknowledged on “Meet the Press” this morning that he’s considering a run for president in 2008, backing off previous statements that he would not do so. That’s it…Hilary’s over. She can run in the primaries and do whatever, but she was pretty much dismissed before as a candidate with any chance in hell of getting any kind of sizable support from the red-staters, and now she’s really over. So in the general election it’ll be Obama vs…?

Here’s my third and final Flags/Emily thematic link item. No more, I promise, but anyone who saw Flags of Our Fathers this weekend definitely has to listen to this. If you want to be thorough about it, read item #1 and item #2 first.

Every damn line of movie dialogue in this Independent piece about (i.e., composed of excerpts from) Paul Welling‘s “Sex, Lines and Videotape: Famous Film Quotes” (which isn’t even purchasable via Amazon.com) has been drilled into every movie lover’s head like the the basic ABC’s…over and over, year after year. We’re living in a fascistic culture.
What’s needed is a book of less-heralded movie dialogue that’s off the beaten path. Like Paddy Chayefsky ‘s “life is sensual, factual” speech spoken by James Garner in The Americanization of Emily…pretty good stuff, never quoted. Or this little Joe Pesci snippet from Raging Bull — whenever I think of this classic Martin Scorsese film I think of this line, I swear, and I laugh every time. Or this Pesci and DeNiro argument over supposed infidellity…great back and forth, and I’ll bet 90% of every pair of brothers or best friends have had a conversation like this at one time or another.

Friday, 10.20, 9:25 pm

James D. Stern and Adam Del Deo‘s …So Goes The Nation, which explains in the frankest terms imaginable how the John Kerry campaign blew it in every way imaginable with the middle American voting public during the ’04 election and how cagey and brilliant the Bushies were at almost every turn, opened last night at the Regency Showcase on La Brea just south of Melrose. The last time I saw this film was in Toronto with a full house — last night’s 7:30 pm show was, shall we say, a wee bit under-attended. It’s a riveting piece all the same, but the vibe isn’t the same with a near-empty house.

I’m repeating myself but the Best Actor race is going to come down to Will Smith‘s end-of-the-movie crying card and struggling-single-dad uplift card in The Pursuit of Happyness (the film being a true story about a guy who was homeless and on the streets with his son but who turned things around when he became a financial trader) vs. Peter O’Toole‘s career-capping performance in Venus fortified with a three-point pitch: (a) he’s never won an Oscar, (b) he wuz robbed 41 years ago when his Becket performance lost out to Rex Harrison‘s in My Fair Lady, and (c) it’s now or never. That’s the shorthand.

The previous Peter Howell/Flags of Our Fathers/Hannibal- at-the-gates piece will suffice if you want to post something about Clint Eastwood‘s film, but it would be really interesting to get as many reactions as possible about Flags. What people do and say this weekend in response to this film will, I think, largely decide if it becomes a Best Picture nominee.

Toronto Star critic Peter Howell went to a radio-promotion-with- a-smattering-of-critics screening of Flags of Our Fathers last Wednesday, and observed the following: “It was at the Paramount downtown, in a room with several hundred seats. I expected it to be a mob scene, as it often is at movie previews, but the theatre was practically empty when I arrived at 6:30 pm. When the movie started just after 7 p.m., the room looked only about half full. This for a movie that had been touted as a sure-fire Oscar nominee and likely winner.
“So what happened to the audience? The show had the usual radio-station push and free tickets. The only thing missing was the T-shirt giveaway, which would have been tacky for a film like this. I noticed a preponderance of people over age 40, including several elderly gents a few rows ahead of me who were quite likely WW II vets. The likely answer: Flags just isn’t grabbing young people.

“One other interesting thing about that screening. A good many people stayed in their seats to watch the credits right to the end, including those older gents. They were obviously moved by what they’d seen and wanted more time to take it in.”
At the same time Howell’s letter came in, an e-mail from a younger guy named Peter Rogers declares that Flags “did so-so business this weekend for the same reason Hollywoodland and The Black Dahlia bombed, and why The Good German, The Good Shepherd and Catch a Fire will fall. The paradigm has shifted and no one under 30 wants to see bygone-era movies anymore on the big screen.
“Moviegoing these days is all about events and genre films (Departed, Saw 3, Spiderman, etc.). TV and cable are the primary outlet for adult dramas. The sooner you accept this, the sooner you will write about stuff people actually care about.”
Wells to Rogers: I’m not saying you’re wrong about the under-30s, but I’d rather take cyanide than live in the movie world you’re describing. No offense, gentle sir, but you’re avatar-ing the philosophy of the unwashed digital masses and forecast- ing the death of culture and cultivation, and I don’t mean the culture that worships Upstairs/Downstairs.
“I love good slovenly downmarket entertainment as much as you do; it just has to be good. An example of this is The Departed, obviously, but I also love Joseph L. Mankiewicz‘s Julius Ceasar (due 11.7 on Warner Home Video), so no offense and due respect but you have spittle on your chin and pieces of fast-food chicken on your jacket. You’re one of Hannibal’s soldiers beating drums and throwing rocks outside the gates of Rome.