What could a movie about Leonard Bernstein possibly amount to without his music? Bradley Cooper‘s planned Bernstein biopic, which is partly backed by Steven Spielberg and Paramount Pictures, has secured music rights from the Bernstein estate. So that’s pretty much it for Jake Gyllenhaal‘s rival Bernstein project, right? Both were announced last May.
I respect Cooper’s intention to both direct and star. A comprehensive Benstein biopic would naturally focus upon Bernstein’s creative saga with West Side Story, and also upon his closeted life and conflicted marriage to Felicia Montealegre. A heavy smoker and emphysema sufferer, Bernstein died at age 72 in 1990.
Presumably Cooper’s pic will include the Black Panthers episode that Tom Wolfe wrote about in “Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny’s” (6.8.70). A Black Panther fundraiser was held at Bernstein’s Park Avenue apartment, and was attended by Donald Cox, a Panther “field marshal” from Oakland. Wolfe‘s famous New York article was more or less about the guilty-liberal syndrome among Bernstein’s social crowd.
“There’s a family in our driveway” suggests…what? As with Get Out, I’m presuming that Jordan Peele is saying something about our cultural undercurrents.
Their comments frequently allude to the Sundance comintern platform — representation, diversity, political correctness, emerging female voices, LGBTQs, etc. They also cast subtle side-eyes in the direction of white-male filmmakers, who’ve been stinking up the joint for too many years.
Reaction from a journalist friend: “McCarthy reads like he doesn’t want to offend anybody. I understand his position, but that’s the thing about wokesters. Despite barely having any experience in writing, let alone cinema-watching, Beandrea’s resume is scant and only dates as far back as 2016 on Google, and yet she believes she has the authority to dictate what is right and wrong to veterans like McCarthy.
“Imagine if McCarthy, who’s been in the game since the ’60s and who made the definitive doc on cinematography (Visions of Light), spoke back to Beandrea about her opinions? She doesn’t care if he’s a film historian. He’s white and older and so she will set him straight.”
HE response: My impression is that McCarthy, Frosch, Felperin and Rooney sound like they’ve got loaded guns pointed at their heads. You can say what you think, fellas, as long as you don’t say the wrong things. McCarthy and friends are like that terrified family in that Twilight Zone episode, It’s A Good Life. Beandra and the wokesters are Anthony Fremont, and McCarthy, Rooney, Frosch and Felperin are the elders who are afraid to step outside the “happy” arena.
Rod Serling: “This particular monster can read minds, you see. He knows every thought, he can feel every emotion. His name is Anthony Fremont. He’s six years old, with a cute little-boy face and blue, guileless eyes. But when those eyes look at you, you’d better start thinking happy thoughts, because the mind behind them is absolutely in charge. For this is the Twilight Zone.”
Journalist friend again: “Throughout the fest I wanted journalists to be honest with me about why they thought this year’s program was lackluster, at least in terms of the narrative features. Almost all of them mentioned the fact that Sundance’s adamant stance on inclusivity was to blame. You won’t get these critics admitting this in print, of course, but many personally confessed that was a problem.”
Michael Winterbottom’s The Wedding Guest (IFC Films, 3.1) “has all the elements of a classic film noir — a shady man kidnapping a woman for cash, a long road trip, seedy hotel rooms in squalid cities, slow-burning heat between the two leads — but absolutely none of the style.
“The constantly changing backdrop of Pakistani and Indian locations represents the only real point of interest here, as the director’s original screenplay feels like a rough draft and the characters’ attitudes are almost constantly sour. Commercial prospects are nil.” — from Todd McCarthy‘s 9.9.18 Hollywood Reporter review.
Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma has won the DGA’s Best Feature Film award, beating out A Star Is Born‘s Bradley Cooper, Green Book‘s Peter Farrelly, BlacKkKlansman‘s Spike Lee and Vice‘s Adam McKay. Congrats also to Escape at Donnemora‘s Ben Stiller and Eighth Grade‘s Bo Burnham.
Another winner during tonight’s DGA ceremony was Spike Jonze‘s “Welcome Home”, for the top commercial award. The Apple HomePod spot apparently surfaced on YouTube on 9.12.17. I love how Jonze and FKA Twigs immediately convey that feeling of spiritual big-city fatigue at the start, and then a euphoric, Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen-type release. The Anderson Paak song is “Til It’s Over.”
I’m aware of the post-PGA Green Book surge, and I agree that it’s probably a stronger preferential ballot contender than Roma. But I still think Roma will win the Best Picture Oscar, and for four reasons.
One, it’s a masterful smarthouse memory poem — a film that 5, 10 or 20 years from now the Academy can look back upon with serious pride. Two, a Roma win would spell out a huge fuck-you to the hateful, bottom-of-the-barrel opportunism of Donald Trump. Three, Alfonso Cuaron is very well-liked by everyone. And four, those perfect jet planes flying overhead, not to mention those enormously metaphorical dog loads in the driveway.
Sasha Stone says: “I disagree with Zack Sharf‘s assessment. I think Roma creeps up the ballot out of guilt and obligation and appreciation for craft, even if people don’t love it. I think Roma‘s best chance of winning is actually on a preferential ballot, and yet the Best Picture race remains wide open at this point. The only movies that have won anything so far are Bohemian Rhapsody, Green Book and Black Panther, and none of them have Oscar nominations for Best Director. It’s a really crazy and unpredictable year.”
All this said, if Green Book wins the Best Picture Oscar this would surely be understood as an even bigger fuck-you to the p.c. wokester commentariat. I can’t think of a more delicious scenario than this. My pulse accelerates at the thought.
Torrential rains interfered with the Santa Barbara Film Festival earlier today. In the late morning the 101 freeway was temporarily closed due to flooding. There were running rapids, vigorous streams, street ponds and even street lakes everywhere. I loved buzzing around inside my 2018 Volkswagen Beetle rental — such a smooth-running, well-constructed car, and with a great sound system.
Umbrellas were all but impossible to find. I was told “sorry, bruh” at three…make that four stores. I finally snagged one at the fifth.
Honored Riviera Award recipient Viggo Mortensen tried to drive up, but got stuck in Camarillo. Soon after he and travel-mate Ed Harris (who presented Mortensen’s award at the end of this afternoon’s ceremony) were heroically and adventurously flown to Santa Barbara in a private plane. The Riviera show, moderated by Deadline‘s Pete Hammond, was only delayed an hour.
Glenn Close, recipient of the SBIFF’s Maltin Modern Master Award, cancelled her 8 pm Arlington theatre show altogether — it will now happen tomorrow afternoon (Sunday) at 3 pm. Hmmm. If Mortensen could make it for a (delayed) 3 pm ceremony, why couldn’t Close get here in time for a show that would have started five hours later? Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
The rain prevented four out of seven invited screenwriters (Green Book‘s Brian Currie, If Beale Street Could Talk‘s Barry Jenkins, The Favourite‘s Tony McNamara, Generation Wealth‘s Lauren Greenfield) from attending the annual Writers Panel at the Lobero. Moderator Anne Thompson had to make do with First Reformed‘s Paul Schrader, BlacKkKlansman‘s Kevin Willmott and A Star Is Born‘s Will Fetters.
I didn’t make it to the Producer’s Panel, but I gather it was also under-attended.
The 2019 Sundance Film Festival “Nobody Gives A Shit” Awards, announced this evening:
U.S. Dramatic:
Grand Jury Prize — Clemency, director: Chinonye Chukwu
Directing — The Last Black Man in San Francisco, director: Joe Talbot
Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award — Share, screenwriter: Pippa Bianco
Special Jury Award for Vision and Craft — Honey Boy, director: Alma Har’el
Special Jury Award for Acting — Rhianne Barreto in Share
Special Jury Award for Creative Collaboration — The Last Black Man in San Francisco, director: Joe Talbot
U.S. Documentary:
Grand Jury Prize — One Child Nation,” director: Nanfu Wang
Directing — American Factory, directors: Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert
Special Jury Award for Moral Urgency — Always in Season, director: Jacqueline Olive
Special Jury Award for Emerging Filmmaker — Jawline, directed by Liza Mandelup
Special Jury Award for Editing — Apollo 11, director: Todd Douglas Miller
Special Jury Award for Cinematography — Luke Lorentzen for Midnight Family
Brent Lang‘s just-reported Variety story says that IFC Films has paid roughly $2 million for Gavin Hood‘s Official Secrets, an Iraq War-related whistleblower drama that I caught a few days ago at Sundance ’19.
There’s a whoppingirony in the contrast between IFC’s modest buy and the $14 million paid by Amazon for Scott Z. Burns‘ The Report, which is also a fact-based whistleblower drama about exposing shifty, lying behavior on the part of the Bush-Cheney administration in the selling and prosecution of the Iraq War.
The Report is about Senate staffer Daniel Jones (Adam Driver) investigating, authoring and releasing a massive report on CIA torture.
Official Secrets is about real-life translator and British intelligence employee Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley) revealing a U.S. plan to bug United Nations “swing”countries in order to pressure them into voting in favor of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which of course was founded upon a fiction that Saddam Hussein‘s Iraqi government was in possession of WMDs and represented a terrorist threat.
The difference is that while The Report is plodding, sanctimonious and a chore to sit through, Official Secrets is an ace-level piece about pressure, courage and hard political elbows — a grade-A, non-manipulative procedural that tells Gun’s story in brisk, straightforward fashion, and which recalls the efficient, brass-tack narratives of All The President’s Men or Michael Clayton.
Official Secrets is exactly the sort of fact-based government-and-politics drama that I adore, just as The Report is precisely the kind of self-righteous, moral-breast-beating drama that I can’t stand.
Everyone knows that Spike Lee suffered a devastating career episode when arguably his best film, the racially charged Do The Right Thing (’89), which had won Best Picture awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the Chicago Film Critics, was deniedaBestPictureOscarnomination.
The ’89 Best Picture nominees were Driving Miss Daisy, Born on the Fourth of July, Dead Poets Society, Field of Dreams and My Left Foot. It seemed like a horrendous oversight to many that Lee’s film, which delivered profound racial truths, was blown off. Adding insult to injury (at least in Lee’s mind) was the fact that Driving Miss Daisy, universally regarded as awhiteperson’scomfortfilm about racism, won the Best Picture Oscar.
That win and that snub has seethed in Lee’s mind ever since. I listened to him talk about it just a few weeks ago in Manhattan. It’s like “it happened yesterday,” he said.
Many have said that Green Book is 2018’s Driving Miss Daisy. Many have argued that Peter Farrelly‘s film could have been made in the late ’80s. I happen to believe in my heart that GreenBook is a somewhat nobler and more-highly-crafted film than Driving Miss Daisy, and that it exudes a classy and honorable current, and that it works as an anti-Trump metaphor.
But I understand why Lee and others believe it’s Driving Miss Daisy 2. And I understand why Lee has apparent feelings of animus toward this Universal release. Unfortunate, but that’s apparently the way it is.
This has happened to me exactly twice in my life, but I live in fear of it happening again. I work very, very hard on the column. Always scanning, looking for triggers, drilling down, rewriting…always on the hunt for the mistake, the sentence that needs to rewritten or eliminated, whatever needs attention. Sometimes I overdo it. Sometimes I drink too much coffee or lemonade-flavored Monster or fail to get enough sleep, and as a result I’ve twice fogged out behind the wheel, as if I’m there but not there. I’ll spot a momentary danger of some kind (reckless driving, guy ahead of me suddenly braking, red light) but for some fatigue-related reason I won’t respond fast enough, because I’ve fallen into a kind of dream. And all of a sudden…shit!…almost a fender-bender. 99.8% of the time I’m the sharpest driver in the world (especially on the rumbling scooter hog), but when sneaky fatigue creeps in…well, I’ve said it.
Right after this portion of last night’s Rami Malek interview, Scott Feinberg brought up “the elephant in the room” — director Bryan Singer. I described Malek’s reaction last night — empathy for Singer’s alleged victims, a terse and steely dismissal of the director himself. We all understand the campaign narrative — Singer may have directed 90% of the film but he’s currently radioactive, so his contributions are dismissable.
It’s significant but unsurprising that the Santa Barbara Film Festival video team decided to lop off the portion of the interview in which Singer was discussed.
