The inane recording studio chit-chat before the Swingin’ Blue Jeans kick into gear with “Hippy Hippy Shake“…somehow it all works better this way.
I’m genuinely embarassed to admit I have a curious soft spot for this puerile, super-synthetic tune. Originally written and recorded by 17-year-old Chan Romero in ’59. It charted at No. 3 in Australia. The Beatles recorded a crude, garage-bandy version sometime in mid’ 63. The flashier, superior Swingin’ Blue Jeans version was recorded in December ’63, and wound up charting stateside in early ’64.
I’ve just finished reading a mind-blowing Variety article by Tatiana Siegel (posted on 3.9 at 10:13 am) that contains chapter-and-verse charges of plagiarism against either Holdovers director Alexander Payne or Holdovers screenwriter David Hemingson, or both.
The particulars are too voluminous to be recounted or even compressed here, but the basic allegation is that Payne read a very similar 2013 script by Stephenson called Frisco, which was on the 2013 Black List roster, and that (this is directly from the Siegel article) “Payne had [read] the Frisco script in both 2013 and again in late 2019, right before Payne approached Hemingson about collaborating on [The Holdovers]. That contention seems to be backed up by emails involving several Hollywood agencies and producers.”
The Siegel article contains a 33-page “Introductory Document” titled “FRISCO and THE HOLDOVERS,” and it pains me to admit that it seems — emphasis on the “s” word — fairly damning in its particulars.
Speaking for myself I find the mere suspicion of the great Alexander Payne (Citizen Ruth, Election, About Schmidt, Sideways, The Descendants, Nebraska, Downsizing, The Holdovers) having deliberately engaged in out-and-out plagiarism just inconceivable. It can’t be what it seems. It just can’t be.
First-rate auteurs and their collaborators simply don’t behave this recklessly and foolishly, especially when there’s a paper trail and chapter-and-verse evidence this vivid and specific. Stealing from a 2013 Black List script is just insanity…self-destructive insanity.
I don’t feel an obligation to state what I’m thankful for today, just because the calendar says this is the day to put your feelings on the table. For I feel thankful 24/7/365.
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Way back in ’84 (38 years ago) hotshot movie guy Lewis Beale wrote a piece for L.A. Times “Calendar” about his loathing for James L. Brooks‘ Terms of Endearment (’83). The piece isn’t accessible online, Beale explained, but it boiled down to the following:
1. Aurora Greenway (Shirley MacLaine) was a horrible (read: headstrong, egoistic) person who treats her daughter Emma (Debra Winger) dismissively or otherwise like dirt, and only becomes involved in Emma’s life when she’s dying of cancer, and because of this we’re supposed to like her because she’s Somebody’s Mother.
2. The film covers 30 years and takes place in three cities, but has no sense of time and place. At all. [HE to Beale: It primarily takes place in Houston and in a mid-sized university town in Nebraska. The New York visit is brief and basically doesn’t count.]
3. Emma whines all the time, then Brooks puts her in a New York restaurant with three or four bitchy career women to make her look good and them bad. [HE to Beale: Emma whines when her husband Flap (Jeff Daniels) starts cheating on her. She doesn’t whine at all when she gets cancer.]
4. Cancer is to the 1980s what consumption was to the Victorians — the province of hacks. [HE to Beale: Cancer happens to unlucky younger people. It’s not common, but it happens.]
5. Sloppy pacing, sitcom structures, characters introduced for no reason (Danny DeVito‘s), etc.
Beale also mentioned that two of America’s foremost critics, Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris, also hated the film.
The piece got tons of negative mail. Beale’s editor IrvLetofsky loved the piece, and the negative reaction.
HE comment: The movie is saved by Jack Nicholson‘s Garrett Breedlove. Without him Terms would have been unbearable.
4.27.06 article fr5om Houston during my last visit there (and probably my last): “There are good people all over this town but with the exception of a visit Wednesday night to River Oaks, where the really rich folks live and where the oak trees are huge and the grass is moist and fragrant, Houston seemed less than abundant with down-home charm. And if you’ve been to New York or Paris or London or Rome, it feels lacking in cultural refinement.
“To me, it’s an arid corporate hee-haw town. Not enough sidewalks. Cavernous malls. Lots of middle-aged guys with monster beer bellies. Expensive cars tearing around like they’re in the Monte Carlo Grand Prix, and all those revolting glass-and-steel towers. Not enough trees. Women with vaguely predatory vibes and long jaws. And the strip clubs — strip clubs! — as prominent and well located as the better restaurants, music stores and markets…nothing covert about them.
“Cherry Kutac told me before I came that Houston is like L.A. but without the soul, and I think that just about nails it.
“Early tomorrow morning I’m going down to the courthouse where the Enron trial is happening. And then I’ll drive by St. John’s, the private school where Wes Anderson shot Rushmore, and maybe visit MacLaine’s Terms of Endearment home.”
Last night Deadline‘s Michael Flemingreported that Alexander Payne‘s The Holdovers, a low-key, Christmas-themed ensemble comedy with Paul Giamatti as “a disliked curmudgeonly teacher” at an elite New England private school, will be screened this weekend for distributors and marketers in Toronto.
The Holdovers “isn’t officially on the for-sale lists,” Fleming wrote, “but I expect it to be a big deal. And it’s very possible that one of the usual suspects will step up and put this film [into] the awards season race late in the year.”
The film’s Wiki page says Miramax is the distributor but maybe they’re looking to partner with someone or negotiate a hand-off of some kind,
The Holdovers began shooting in Massachusetts on 1.27.22. A seemingly finished version of Payne’s film was research-screened in Santa Monica on Thursday, 8.11, and was well received, I’m told, as a “return to form.” I’ve been presuming all along that it won’t emerge until Cannes 2023 at the earliest, but why show it to distributors during TIFF ’22 if there isn’t at least a willingness to consider an end-of-the-year opening?
Here’s hoping that the celebrated creator of Election, About Schmidt, Sideways, Citizen Ruth, The Descendants and Nebraska is back in that deliciously wise, character-driven groove that we’ve all come to associate with Payneworld and whom we all love and cherish despite the disappointment with Downsizing…here’s hoping that the Payne flag will soon rise again, rippling in the wind at the top of the smarthouse flagpole.
Hollywood Reporter columnist Scott Feinberg has never been one to let grass grow under his feet. The 2021 Cannes Film Festival starts the day after tomorrow — Tuesday, July 6 — and Scott is already shufflin’ up and down the Croisette. That’s because he’s fast on his feet and his middle name is Hopper — hip-hop, hip-hop, hippity-hop, hippity-hop, hippity-hoppity, hippity-hoppity, etc.
If it was my show I’d still be in Paris, man…strollin’ around Montparnasse and through the Jardin du Luxembourg and maybe over to Passy (the Last Tango in Paris building!) and the non-touristy parts of Montmartre, etc. And I’d be there tomorrow (7.5) also, and then I’d catch the Paris-to-Cannes train on Tuesday (7.6) at 7:15 am.
Incidentally: Always pan slowly, and sometimes it works better if you don’t pan at all. Go with a series of static tableaus, blending one into the other.
Back covering Cannes for the 1st time in 8 years! Last time: GATSBY, FRUITVALE & NEBRASKA; Harvey, Toback & Franco; breakouts JLaw & MBJ; legends Redford & Riva. This time: COVID tests/masks; Spike; a lineup with Damon, Cotillard, Baker, Kousmanen & Farhadi; that same great view. pic.twitter.com/Wx0U8sMxam
In a 2014 Fade-In interview with the late F.X. Feeney, Nebraska director Alexander Payne said the following:
“Some studio people asked me out to lunch a couple of months ago, and they said, ‘Look, if we let you run the studio, what changes would you make?’ I said, ‘Well, thanks for asking. I believe in the $25 to $45 million adult comedy and adult drama. Why does everything now adult have to be absolutely shrink-wrapped and be robbed of the production value it could have? Where is Trading Places today? Where is Groundhog Day today? Intelligent summer comedies. Where are the intelligent ones?’ Then the studio guy said, ‘Well $45 million…I think I might disagree with your price point.’ I said, ‘You might, but where is Out of Africa today? Why don’t we have films like that?”
Payne wasn’t crazy to ask this. Others felt the same way. The middle-class Spotlight came out the following year (2015) and Manchester By The Sea happened in 2016. But look at how things are now. Good God. It’s just noteworthy, I think, that Payne’s viewpoint seemed entirely legit and reasonable and not in the least bit eccentric only seven years ago.
By the way: A few minutes ago I was quizzing myself on the states in the above CNN map. Unlike Al Franken, I can’t draw the U.S. map on a state-by-state basis but since grade school I’ve been fairly solid on which state is where, etc.
So I felt…well, slightly thrown when I couldn’t remember which state is north of Iowa and east of the two Dakotas. I also drew a blank on the state below South Dakota; ditto the one below Iowa. The respective answers are (a) Minnesota, (b) Nebraska and (c) Missouri. Franken and the Coen Bros are from Minnesota so that should be easy to remember; ditto Nebraska and the legend of Alexander Payne. No solid connection with Missouri other than Harry Truman and staunch skepticism, even though I once visited “KayCeeMoe.”
I know my maps a lot better than any of those geographical doofuses Jimmy Kimmel or Jay Leno have talked to on the street, but otherwise I’ve no excuse. I only know that I eyeballed the above three and racked my brain, and the names just wouldn’t come. Truth be told I’ve always had a certain feeling of distance and disconnection when it comes to the Midwestern breadbasket region. New England, Mid-Atlantic, Deep South, Rocky Mountain states, Southeast, Southwest, Northwest rainforests and California…no problem. But the breadbasket is hazy.
I guess I’m basically saying that it’s the breadbasket states’ fault, not mine. Too flat, not distinctive enough, lacking in personality. Plus the ones I couldn’t remember all end in vowels.
This morning Farren Nehme (@selfstyledsiren) posted a portion of this Lee Remick interview. It was to promote Mistral’s Daughter, a 1984 TV miniseries. The Nebraska-based interviewer (KOLN/KGIN-TV) asks horrific questions while exuding a revoltingly unctuous manner. Why did they cast you and Jack Lemmon for Days of Wine and Roses instead of Piper Laurie and Cliff Robertson, who did an excellent job in the TV version? Elia Kazan‘s Wild River was a flop. With Richard Burton dead, do you think his excessive drinking was a factor?
It sounds cold to say this, but it’ll be better for all of us once this information gets around. You can’t talk to these “open up” idiots but once their friends and family members start dying they might have second thoughts.
A 5.11 NBC News report says that coronavirus infection rates “are spiking to new highs in several metropolitan areas and smaller communities across the country, according to undisclosed data the White House’s pandemic task force is using to track rates of infection, which was obtained by NBC News.
“The data in a May 7 coronavirus task force report are at odds with President Donald Trump‘s declaration Monday that ‘all throughout the country, the numbers are coming down rapidly.’
“The 10 top areas recorded surges of 72.4 percent or greater over a seven-day period compared to the previous week, according to a set of tables produced for the task force by its data and analytics unit. They include Nashville, Tennessee; Des Moines, Iowa; Amarillo, Texas; and — atop the list, with a 650 percent increase — Central City, Kentucky.
“On a separate list of ‘locations to watch,’ which didn’t meet the precise criteria for the first set: Charlotte, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska; Minneapolis; Montgomery, Alabama; Columbus, Ohio; and Phoenix.
“The rates of new cases in Charlotte and Kansas City represented increases of more than 200 percent over the previous week, and other tables included in the data show clusters in neighboring counties that don’t form geographic areas on their own, such as Wisconsin’s Kenosha and Racine counties, which neighbor each other between Chicago and Milwaukee.”
The look of contempt that Poe Dameron gives Kylo Ren at the 33-second mark is perfect. His eyes say three things: (1) “Is this cowboy-hatted dude…whatever he thinks he’s doing is lame”; (2) “Did he used to sing with the Jordinaires?”; (3) “And he’s recording with us?” I laughed at Oscar Isaac‘s disdain when I first saw Inside Llewyn Davis six and a half years ago, and I bought it all over again when I re-watched it last night. A 100% genuine moment, one human being to another. I’m sorry but it sank in more deeply than any single moment in The Rise of Skywalker. Plus the instrumentation sounds extra-great with headphones, especially with the stand-up bass.
Nine films were nominated for 2013 Best Picture Oscar, and Inside Llewyn Davis wasn’t one of them? Seriously? The Best Picture winner, 12 Years A Slave, is a masterpiece, but who re-watches the other eight nominees and to what extent?
I will never, ever watch Gravity again. (Sandra Bullock going “aagghh!” in a haunted house, and space is the ghost.) Nor will I ever watch David O. Russell‘s American Hustle again. (But I’ll watch Silver Linings Playbook any day of the week and twice on Sundays.) Captain Phillips was over-rated. Dallas Buyers Club is a good film — I’d watch it again. Spike Jonze‘s Her is also special, but I haven’t re-viewed. The best thing about Alexander Payne‘s Nebraska was that song, “Their Pie.” Dernsy screwed himself out of an Oscar by insisting that his grouchy old cuss was a Best Actor thang. Inside Llewyn Davis should have been nominated instead of Philomena. Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street is the 2013 Best Picture nominee that people will be re-watching 50 years hence.
