wired

In the obits for the recently-deceased John Vernon, everyone mentioned his role as Dean Wormer in Animal House. Almost no one, of course, mentioned his two finest roles — Maynard Boyle, the Reno-based mob guy in Don Siegel’s Charley Varrick (’73), and Mal Reese, Lee Marvin’s cowardly betrayer in John Boorman’s Point Blank (’67). There’s a transcendent moment in Varrick when Vernon, playing pool in a desert saloon, is called to the phone and told by small-time thief Varrick (Walter Matthau) that he wants to return a large amount of stolen mob money. Getting this dough back has been Vernon/Boyle’s obsession throughout the film, and when he hears it will be returned he delivers a beautiful little gesture with his hand. The gesture says, “Amazing! My life isn’t over, I won’t be killed by my mob associates…life can be beautiful!”

Have the right-wing attacks against Million Dollar Baby (or the import of its ending, rather) given any kind of advantage to The Aviator? I am of the firm opinion that The Aviator has no chance to take the Best Picture Oscar…none. There is a slim chance that a last-minute surge of sympathy for Martin Scorsese (with everyone starting to realize that The Aviator is finished, and wanting to do something for poor Scorsese after all…despite the indications of Clint Eastwood’s DGA Best Director win) has begun to manifest….maybe. I’m attributing this development to last Tuesday’s release of the two-disc Raging Bull DVD.

At the Santa Barbara Film Festival last Sunday I asked Sideways star Paul Giamatti why he didn’t get nominated for Best Actor. In so doing I aired my pet theory, which is that Academy voters of a certain age resented his Miles character stealing money from his mother’s bedroom bureau. Since then New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis has floated a better explanation, to wit: “While film critics embraced [Giamatti] and the performance, because they relate to both, actors are terrified of the specter that each presents. Actors sell themselves as being completely together, manicured, extraordinary physical specimens; they are not (or so they think and hope) losers. In this sense, both Mr. Giamatti, whose physical appearance is a rebuke to the buff and gloss of Hollywood’s plastic people, and the sad-sack character he plays in Sideways represent twinned nightmares for these professional narcissists. Then there’s the fact that actors can also be pretty damn stupid.”

In his comment following an Ain’t It Cool riff on last Saturday’s writer’s panel at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, Drew McWeeny (a.k.a., “Moriarty”) wrote, “I heard that Jeffrey Wells tried to shout down John Logan at one point about The Aviator.” C’mon…I hardly shouted Logan down. I simply asked his view about the heavy emphasis given to Howard Hughes’ obsessive compulsive disorder in Martin Scorsese’s film, given (a) a view shared by Hughes biographer Pat Broeske that Hughes’ OCD didn’t manifest big-time until the 1950s, and (b) given the fact that a 2002 draft of Logan’s script (the dialogue from which was very closely adhered to by Scorsese) didn’t emphasize it quite as much. “It√ɬ≠s amazing to me how some people get so invested in the Oscars that they start to disparage the work of the people they√ɬ≠re not rooting for, even to the point of attacking them verbally in a public forum,” McWeeny remarked. There’s a certain way of putting a question when you’re “attacking” someone, and — believe me — I put my question to Logan in a very measured and respectful way.

“My most embarrassing moment in Hollywood was an interview with Jim Carrey that at least absolved me of star fever,” New York Times reporter Bernie Weinraub has written in a farewell piece. “The comedian, in a suite at Ma Maison Sofitel, was promoting his film The Mask. I had taken medicine for a bad cold. The interview began. I was settled into an easy chair, facing Mr. Carrey with my feet crossed in front of me. As he began answering questions, I fell asleep. The next thing I knew, I was feeling somebody kick the bottom of my shoe with his foot. I woke up, mortified. Years later, I met his manager Jimmy Miller. I told Mr. Miller I had a confession: that I fell asleep while interviewing Mr. Carrey. Mr. Miller exclaimed: ‘So you’re the guy! He talks all the time about a reporter who once fell asleep on him.'” Hilarious, yes, but it’s also very brave of Weinraub to admit this. It was noted by some reporters who also interviewed Carrey at the Ma Maison Sofitel that same day (including myself, for a piece for the New York Daily News) that Carrey was giving the exact same quotes to every journalist who dropped by, so maybe this un-spontaneous shpiel had something to do with Weinraub’s slumber, above and beyond the cough medicine.

A bogus AP headline about Leonardo DiCaprio’s receiving the Platinum Award from the Santa Barbara International Film Festival last Sunday evening has led certain media commentators to smirk at the concept of giving the 30 year-old DiCaprio a “Life Achievement Award.” That term doesn’t apply, of course, as it was never used by the festival organizers.

It’s a shame that the righties are hammering away at Million Dollar Baby over …well, the life-and-death issue raised in the film’s third act. (I refuse to spoil, even though the cat’s totally out of the bag.) Not because the righties are wrong in their views about this, but because they’ve diminished the viewing experience for the millions who’ve yet to see it. That’s really crappy and I’m sorry. For a thorough reading of the hard-right position on this matter, check out Garret Keiser’s article (“Life Everlasting: The Religious Right and the Right to Die”) in the current edition of Harper’s.

Ask anyone — the Sundance Film Festival award that really counts is the Audience Award, and yesterday’s (Saturday, 1.29) winner of that honor was Craig Brewer’s Hustle & Flow….right on. Another thing you can usually depend upon is that the Sundance jurors will give their dramatic competition Grand Jury prize to a film that a lot of people didn’t get or flat-out didn’t like. This was clearly the case when they give their big trophy to Ira Sachs’ Forty Shades of Blue, a romantic triangle drama set in Memphis. At least four times during the festival I was told in no uncertain terms that Blue is highly problematic, dislikable, tiresome, irritating, etc. A sharp industry watcher and good friend agrees with me that Blue had “no buzz” during the festival, and Hollywood Reporter critic Duane Byrge called it “a drab, minor-key melodrama.” I’m not saying the jurors are wackjobbers or off on their own cloud…but you can bet that some people are thinking this or wondering if this is the case. I’m speaking of actor John C. Reilly, director Chris Eyre (Skins, Smoke Signals), critic B. Ruby Rich, producer Christine Vacchon, and actress Vera Farmiga (Close to the Bone). Cheers, in any case, for Eugene Jerecki’s Why We Fight for taking the Grand Jury Prize in the American documentary category.

A few days ago Oscar handicapper Pete Hammond said in this column that if Martin Scorsese doesn’t win the Director’s Guild of America “outstanding directorial achievement” award for his direction of The Aviator, “all bets are off.” What he meant was, Scorsese’s chances of winning the Best Director Oscar will be strongly diminished. So I guess it’s fair to say that all bets are indeed off since Clint Eastwood has won this award for his direction of Million Dollar Baby. Congrats, also, to Byambasuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni for nabbing the DGA’s best Documentary award for The Story of the Weeping Camel.

Between phone-installation delays, not enough sleep, column-posting problems, visits to medical clincs, computer spyware issues, too much stress and spending a small fortune on taxi fares, all I want is to get the hell out of here. I’ve seen some interesting, at times very affecting films in Park City, and yes, I will try and tap out some thoughts and impressions about some of these tomorrow morning (particularly of The Chumscrubber, which I’m seeing tonight) but after six days of this 6:30 am to 1:30 am routine your seams start to tear.

Isn’t it ironic that Paul Giamatti is standing side-by-side with fellow Oscar nominees Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Jamie Foxx, et. al., on the cover of the current Newsweek (“Oscar Confidential”) and his Oscar nominee status, as of this morning, is no more? It’s the Eisenhower-era members of the Academy who voted against him, I suspect….or rather against Miles, his Sideways character. Giamatti’s deeply touching, occasionally side-splitting performance was one of ’04’s finest, but Academy blue-hairs had no tolerance for Miles’ morose, schlubby, wine-swigging behavior. The death blow, I’m guessing, was over Miles having stolen money from his mother’s bedroom dresser.

Craig Brewer’s Hustle & Flow, so far the one absolute knockout of the ’05 Sundance Film Festival, was acquired for theatrical distribution Saturday night by MTV/Paramount for $9 million. The total fee is actually $16 million for a 3-picture deal that will cover two other films to be produced and directed by Flow producer John Singleton for $3.5 million each. Paramount publicist Nancy Kirkpatrick called to say that Paramount’s newly-installed chief Brad Grey, marketing head Rob Friedman and production president Donald De Line saw it in Los Angeles on Saturday night while Viacom co-president and COO Tom Freston was catching it at the same time at the Park City Racquet Club. Freston was obviously in town to close a deal with Singleton and his Hustle & Flow producing partner Stephanie Allain and their UTA reps. Everybody had to be keenly interested in Hustle & Flow after Saturday’s levitational screening, but other suitors included Newmarket, Miramax, New Line, Fox SearchlightFox Searchlight, Warner Independent and Focus Features. The film is about a Memphis pimp (Terrence Howard, delivering a breakout performance equal to Morgan Freeman’s in Street Smart) trying to become a successful rapper, and the twists and turns he goes through in trying to achieve this. This is not just a great movie…but also a great musical, in that it lets you see and feel how music is created from the ground up.