Gather round and time-trip with yours truly back to Saturday, 12.2.06 — the day of the press junket for Steven Soderbergh‘s The Good German, held on the 18th floor of Manhattan’s Waldorf Astoria. I’m mentioning this because of an impression I had that day of costar Cate Blanchett, who kiddingly called herself “so old!” at the Critics Choice awards a few days ago but was all of 37 back then.
It was the doodling that got me. Holding a #2 pencil, Blanchett was doodling on a note pad as she answered questions, and my heart kind of melted when I saw this. Here’s how I described her:
“Blanchett was extraordinary. Honestly? I stared at her more than I listened.
“It was obvious within a minute or two that she was living deep in her own realm. One with little electric cracks of lightning. She looks down and does little fidgety things — pulling her wedding ring on and off, drawing a doodle on a note pad. It’s not that she’s shy or avoids eye contact, but a lot of the time she talks to the tabletop or her eyes dart around as she’s answering. (Always a mark of a fine creative mind.) Plus it’s been a while since I’ve heard her native Australian accent. She’s done so many different accents recently she could be channelling the Meryl Streep of the ’80s.”
Here’s the mp3 from the conversation, but again — it wasn’t what she said but how she said it. Here’s George Clooney’s interview.
The round tables (which also included Soderbergh) ended just after 1 pm. I took a snap of Blanchett’s doddle pad and a pair of Good German DVDs, but the image quality is atrocious by today’s standards.
The Good German got creamed by critics — 34%.
Posted on 11.27.06: “I’ve seen The Good German twice in Los Angeles, both times with seasoned industry types, and nobody’s gone into a dismissive neg-head chortle about it. Not in my presence, at least. The reactions have been…well, okay, muted but always respectful. No one I spoke to was deriding it or grumbling on their way out to the parking lot.
“Set in the post-World War II rubble of Berlin, The Good German is a very periodesque, Third Man-ish experience, but it’s not spoofy in the slightest. Except for the final scene it’s relatively earnest (as far as a film like this can be) and straight and about itself. It’s partly a tribute piece — a recreation of a military whodunit drama as it might have actually looked and moved if, say, Michael Curtiz had directed it in 1946 — and partly a Phillip Marlowe detetective story in uniform.”
2.16.06: “Pete Hammond tells me he was casually praising Clooney at a party last weekend for helping to keep the monochrome tradition alive with both The Good German and Good Night, and Good Luck, and Clooney answered, “Yeah, well, I think after The Good German that’s about it for the black-and-white thing.”
