James Caan‘s facial expression between the 17- and 21-second mark tells you a lot about who John Wayne was. “Gimme that look you give me,” etc. Twelve-year-old kids, seeing who could screw up who, etc.
I tried to watch El Dorado once and I couldn’t stay with it. Feels lazy, phony. Everyone looks and behaves like actors saying lines, and all the supporting players and extras are dressed like they just came out of Nudie’s. Hawks phoned this one in. One of two remakes of his own Rio Bravo, the other being Rio Lobo. I respect Rio Bravo but have never believed it. No one ever has. Jean-Luc Godard gave carte blanche praise to Rio Bravo way back when, and he’s never answered for that. I’m more of a High Noon type of guy.
The Tracking Board has reported that Relativity’s Dana Brunetti intends to remake Fred Zinneman‘s High Noon, and that he’ll be using a contemporary plot with drug cartel goons (i.e., the new Frank Miller gang) coming for a Will Kane-like figure who’s scared but won’t back down. Brunetti is proceeding properly by having purchased the rights from Karen Kramer, widow of original High Noon producer Stanley Kramer.
But wait a minute, man. Three months ago I reviewedAri Issler and Ben Snyder‘s 11:55, which played at the L.A, Film Festival, and I’m telling you it’s a straight-up High Noon remake and a fairly decent one at that. And it involves drug dealers.
11:55 was actually the thirdHigh Noon remake. Howard Hawks‘ Rio Bravo (’59) was the first. (Hawks made it clear time and again that he set out to make his own version of High Noon.) Then came Peter Hyams‘ Outland (’81), which was set aboard a space-station cargo vessel of some kind with Sean Connery as Gary Cooper. So Brunetti’s version, if and when it happens, will be the fourth remake.
Here are some High Noon set photos I’ve never seen before except for the last one (i.e., after the jump). I have a dream that the swaggering Rio Bravo cultists will eventually run out of steam or lose interest and admit that Howard Hawks‘ 1959 film, which has been called a much richer creation than High Noon by the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Peter Bogdanovich and Jean Luc Godard, is a decent but moderate effort, an easy-going “friends sitting around and shooting the shit in a jailhouse as they prepare to fight the bad guys” movie, and that High Noon will bounce back and be once again recognized as a timeless classic, as it was when it first appeared in the early Eisenhower years and for many years following.
Three days ago BBC Culture posted the results of a poll of 62 international film critics who’d been asked to name the 100 Greatest American Films of all time. The BBC’s description of this group (a) doesn’t mention online voices and (b) explains that “some of the critics we invited to participate are film reviewers at newspapers or magazines, others are broadcasters and some write books.” Esteemed, knowledgable fuddy-duds, in other words. Scholastically correct fashionistas and a smattering of old-schoolers who know their stuff but — important trait to keep in mind — are also careful to limit their favorites to films that are currently approved of by the fine and fanciful “they.”
The BBC could have mentioned that this group, not atypically, is basically bending and blowing with the current cultural winds. Hence Gone With The Wind has barely made the cut at #$97 (a satisfying moment for GWTW basher Lou Lumenick) and — this pisses me off — Rio Bravo is listed at #41 but no High Noon at all. And Marnie at #47? Mainly because a small, tightly-knit fraternity of hardcore Marnie dweebs (Richard Brody, Glenn Kenny, Dave Kehr, et. al.) have been beating the drum for years. Last April I voiced strong disgreement with the Marnie cult and yet here it is, sitting on a Greatest American Films list…my spirit wilts. And where’s One-Eyed Jacks? And where’s Shane?
Sony Pictures has officially deep-sixed the 12.25 theatrical opening of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg‘s The Interview. Freedom of speech is lying on the canvas and down for the count, and cyber-terrorism has won. It’s now 7:13 am in Pyongyang. Kim Jong-Un is ecstatic…rolling all over the floor in delight, giggling and high-fiving his staff. This is his only big triumph as North Korea’s leader. “Made it, pa…top of the world!” Two victory celebrations are currently being planned for tonight — one for the public and another for North Korean governmental and business elites. All rsvps must be received no later than 3 pm Pyongyang time. Dress will be formal. Open bar, hors d’oeuvres.
Meanwhile, Variety‘s Brent Lang is reporting that SPE “is weighing releasing the film on premium video-on-demand, according to an insider.” I was all over this option yesterday, of course. As Ben Stiller would say, “Do it…do it…do it.”
But if Sony execs are thinking about VOD, why are they cancelling press screenings left and right? They’d still want reviews for a VOD opening, right? Oh, right, of course…they’re afraid that North Korean rogue agents might attack.
That ridiculous NATO suggestion about “delaying” the theatrical opening of The Interview was so mashed-potatoes pathetic I don’t even want to talk about it. What would John Wayne do in this situation? I’ll tell you what he wouldn’t do. He wouldn’t talk about “delaying” anything. He would draw and fire or keep his gun holstered, period. We are truly living through The Age of the Executive Candy-Ass.
A little more than a week ago I ran a piece about how Montgomery Clift, once regarded as one of the three reigning ’50s-era brooders along with Marlon Brando and James Dean, is barely known among GenY types and whose memory is apparently fading in general. Then today I ran across a Rio Bravo vs. High Noon piece I posted seven and a half years ago, and it hit me that these two films — considered by boomer and GenX film buffs as essential, world-class mythical westerns — are probably unknown to most of your GenY moviegoers and Hulu/Netflix subscribers. I’m only guessing but I wouldn’t be surprised to read definitive polling proof of this. Or that The Searchers is also dead to them. If the late Stuart Byron, author of a landmark New York piece about The Searchers, was among us he’d be inconsolable. One thing I know is that GenY considers almost everything made before the ’80s as ancient; I also believe that westerns carry next to no cred with them. With the possible exception of The Wild Bunch almost all oaters are considered “dad” or even “grand-dad” films by anyone born after 1985. Am I wrong?
Around 2:30 pm today Gravity director Alfonso Cuaron and I did a sit-down in the rear of the Sheridan chophouse. We talked for 45 minutes; could have gone two or three hours. We spoke about Gravity, of course, but steered clear of too much technical talk. Cuaron supposed what Stanley Kubrick would have to say about Gravity in regards to 2001: A Space Odyssey. He also spoke about decreasing movie-sophistication levels among today’s general audiences. And declared himself a general advocate of HFR cinematography. He said that he added grain to the final look of Gravity because, being “an old fart,” he loves a little texture (although his ten-year-old daughter doesn’t). Cuaron also said he’s more of a High Noon than a Rio Bravo fan, which earns him a gold star in my book. Not a bad discussion if I do say so myself.
Gravity director and co-writer Alfonso Cuaron — Sunday, 9.1, 2:55 pm.
During a Telluride-spnosored outdoor chat at the Abel Gance cinema (l to r.) Alfonso Cuaron, Jonas Cuaron, Hollywood Reporter critic Todd McCarthy.
Watch this clip of John Wayne accepting Gary Cooper‘s Best Actor Oscar for High Noon at the March 1953 Oscar awards. Wayne delivers a comic riff about being angry that his people didn’t work harder at getting him the role of Marshall Will Kane. This is outrageous bullshit. High Noon was partly a metaphor for what screenwriter Carl Foreman had suffered (and was at the time still suffering) during Hollywood’s blacklisting of certain lefty screenwriters and how so many of his Hollywood “friends” had thrown up their hands or turned tail. Wayne was a staunch anti-Communist and more or less a supporter of the blacklist so the idea of him playing Kane is absurd. Not to mention the fact that he openly derided High Noon when it came out and later got together with Howard Hawks and made Rio Bravo as a retort to High Noon‘s dark view of human nature.
The DVD Beaver screen captures and comparisons of Olive Films’ Bluray of High Noon (out 7.17) are thrilling. For the 189th time, here’s my 7.27.07 piece arguing that Fred Zinneman‘s 1952 classic is a far better film than Rio Bravo. Topped off (or resting upon, really) a Dimitri Tiomkin score that just kills, there’s really no argument.
This is a day or two old, but it’s revealing, I think, when Bill Clinton tells Harvey Weinstein (who was guest-hosting for Piers Morgan) that he’s never given any thought about who might play him in a film. Not Brad Pitt (“too good looking”), he said. George Clooney “is at least more my size. He’s good-looking but, you know, you could put bulbous things on his nose and you could do makeup with him.”
The best Clinton so far has been John Travolta‘s in Primary Colors — he had that laid-back folksy charm. Dennis Quaid‘s Clinton was better than decent, I thought, in HBO’s The Special Relationship.
Clinton singled out High Noon as his all-time favorite film, having seen it “25 or 30 times.” Dwight D. Eisenhower was also a seious fan; I read somewhere that George Bush also swears by it. Clinton talks a bit more about High Noon on the two-disc special edition DVD that came out in ’08.
About five years ago I wrote that High Noon “is not about the Old West, obviously — it’s a metaphor movie about the Hollywood climate in the early ’50s — but it walks and talks like a western, and is angry, blunt, honed and unequivocal to that end. It’s about the very worst in people, and the best in a single, anxious, far-from-perfect man. I’m speaking of screenwriter-producer Carl Foreman, who was being eyeballed by the Hollywood right for alleged Communist ties when he wrote it, and receiving a very tough lesson in human nature in the process.
“Foreman wound up writing a crap-free movie that talks tough, cuts no slack and speaks with a single voice.
“You know from the get-go that High Noon is going to say something hard and fundamental about who and what we are. It’s not going to poke along some dusty trail and go yippie-ki-yay and twirl a six-gun. It’s going to look you in the eye and say what’s what, and not just about the political and moral climate in some small western town that Gary Cooper’s Willl Kane is the sheriff of.
“High Noon may seem a bit stodgy or conventional to some and perhaps not as excitingly cinematic to the elites, but it’s a far greater film than Rio Bravo.
“Both are about a lawman (Cooper in High Noon, John Wayne in Rio Bravo) facing up to bad guys who will kill him if he doesn’t arrest or kill them first. The similarities pretty much end there.
“High Noon is about facing very tough odds alone, and how you can’t finally trust anyone but yourself because most of your ‘friends’ and neighbors will equivocate or desert you when the going gets tough. Rio Bravo is about standing up to evil with your flawed but loyal pallies and nourishing their souls in the bargain — about doing what you can to help them become better men. This basically translates into everyone pitching in to help an alcoholic (Dean Martin) get straight and reclaim his self-respect. High Noon doesn’t need help. It’s about solitude, values…four o’clock in the morning courage.
“We’d all like to have loyal supportive friends by our side, but honestly, which represents the more realistic view of human nature? The more admirable?”
In a July 2007 HE piece that explained how and why High Noon is a far greater film that Rio Bravo (one of the best essays I’ve ever posted on this site), I included a Jean-Luc Godard quote that argued against my viewpoint, but which I’ve always enjoyed on its own terms:
“The great filmmakers always tie themselves down by complying with the rules of the game,” Godard said. “Take, for example, the films of Howard Hawks, and in particular Rio Bravo. That is a work of extraordinary psychological insight and aesthetic perception, but Hawks has made his film so that the insight can pass unnoticed without disturbing the audience that has come to see a Western like all others. Hawks is the greater because he has succeeded in fitting all he holds most dear into a well-worn subject.”
In 100 words or less, please name any 21st century filmmaker who has made such a film over the last decade or so — a film that works as unpretentious genre entertainment on one level but also offers a meaningful metaphoric journey of whatever kind if you want to dig deeper and look behind the curtain. A film in other words that doesn’t announce or insist upon its deeper, weightier content but which definitely has the “horses” if you do a little probing.
If you ask me Michael Clayton is such a film. Readers are advised that they’re not allowed to mention anything by Peter Jackson in this thread.
Longtime Village Voice film critic Jim Hoberman has been cut loose. Hoberman had been a Voice critic since 19831978, a staffer since ’83 and the paper’s senior critic since ’88. The news was initially posted at 5:37 pm eastern, and then New York/”Daily Intel”‘s Joe Coscarelliposted it at 6:08 pm. This makes Karina Longworth the only noteworthy V.V./L.A. Weekly film critic left on the payroll.
“To celebrate his 30th anniversary as a film critic at The Village Voice, on 1.5.08 the Museum of the Moving Image presented a conversation with Hoberman moderated by New York Times film critic A. O. Scott.”
“I’ve seen a lot of people lose their jobs there in the last five years,” Hoberman told Coscarelli. “I would be disingenuous to say I hadn’t considered the possibility that this would happen to me eventually. I was shocked, but not surprised.”
The correct spelling of the Hogan’s Heroes thing: “Hoohhhhberman!”
And here are nine memorable Hoberman quotes from Some Came Running‘s Glenn Kenny. Can I be honest in a Lee Marvin sort of way? The only Hoberman riff on this list that I fully agree with (and enjoy) is the one about Blue Velvet. The florid praise by way of ecstatic description of the wilder portions of Inglorious Basterds seems excessively geeky and cul-de-sacky. I know what Inglorious Basterds is. I sat through that fucker twice, and I don’t think I could stand it a third time. You can’t fool me or push me around. Those days are over.
High Noon forever! And Rio Bravo…well, it’s pretty good here and there. Especially the silent part with grubby Dean Martin and the coin and the spittoon and that look of total disgust on the Duke’s face. But why the hell does Martin knock him cold with a piece of wood?