This trailer tells you that Jacob Bernstein and Nick Hooker‘s Everything Is Copy (HBO, 3.21), a doc about the late Nora Ephron, is chummy, admiring, familial — one of those valentine portraits that occasionally turn up in the wake of a celebrated person’s passing. (Jacob is the son of Ephron and ex-husband Carl Bernstein.) But Variety‘s Nick Schrager saysit’s better than that.
“Anything but a morose tale of a bright light snuffed out far too soon, Bernstein’s documentary is an inspiring heartstring-tugger,” he wrote after the doc screened at last September’s NY Film Festival. “Buoyed by proficient nonfiction techniques, it nimbly captures, in both words and images, the spirit of Ephron: a larger-than-life force of nature whose triumphs were born from her unapologetic embrace of ambition, and from her shrewd recognition that honesty, whether sweet or scathing, always goes down better with a dose of humor.”
The Savannah Film Festival is one of the finest and classiest second-tier festivals on the fall circuit. “Second-tier” is in no way a dismissive term. It’s a cool, classy regional festival that doesn’t need to be Cannes or Berlin or Sundance or Telluride. The vibe is always smart and sophisticated; never anxious or strained. Screenings + seminars + strolls and bike rides + great food. Well-attended, smartly programmed and lots of shade. Last night was a rematch with Meg Ryan‘s Ithaca, which I saw and reviewed at the Middleburg Film Festival. Tonight’s big attraction at the SCAD trustees theatre is HE’s own Room.
Meg Ryan at lecturn prior to last night’s screening of Ithaca. For the occasion the Savannah Film Festival gave her a Lifetime Career Award. Born in ’61, Ryan has been at it for 35 years, give or take. The peak years were ’89 (When Harry Met Sally) to ’00 (Proof of Life — her last reasonably good film). Other highlights: Joe Versus the Volcano, The Doors, Prelude to a Kiss, Sleepless in Seattle, When a Man Loves a Woman, I.Q., French Kiss, Courage Under Fire, City of Angels, Hurlyburly, You’ve Got Mail, Hanging Up.
Middleburg Film Festival attendees were seriously into catching yesterday’s 5pm screening of Meg Ryan‘s Ithaca…long lines, hopped-up chatter. They wanted to see Meg, of course, but this transferred into what seemed to be serious interest in the film. And then Ithaca played and the aftermath was “uhm, okay…ssshhh, keep it down, she’s right over there.” By contrast the pre-screening vibe before the 8 pm showing of Todd Haynes‘ Carol could be described as one of interest but not excitement. The “air” in the room felt settled (i.e., less than fully engaged) when it played, and my sense of the after-vibe was one of respect more than anything else. This is a conservative community, after all — I shouldn’t have expected the same near-euphoria that greeted Carol‘s first screening in Cannes. It played just as effectively for me, I can tell you. Cate Blanchett gives such a glammy actressy performance, so 1950s elegant in so many ways, mannered but vulnerable. And the cigarettes, my God! I was on the verge of coughing just from watching her ignite one after another. And there’s no diminishment from Rooney Mara, who deserved that Best Actress award from the Cannes jury. I understand, of course, the political strategy of running Mara as Best Supporting Actress, but also the irony as she’s arguably playing the lead role, despite what the title implies.
Thanks to Obscured Pictures‘ R.J. Millard for inviting Hollywood Elsewhere to attend the 2015 Middleburg Film Festival (10.22 thru 10.25). I’m going for three reasons. One, I haven’t visited rural Virginia in eons. Two, Washington Post critic Ann Hornaday tells me the festival is a “really nice hang.” And three, the films (including Spotlight, Meg Ryan‘s Ithaca, Son of Saul, Carol, Truth, 45 Years, Anomalisa) have been well chosen. They’re the consensus movies that anyone of taste and discretion who hasn’t attended the big fall festivals (Venice, Telluride, Toronto) would want to see. Yes, I’ve seen most of them but still.
A 10.27.13 Washington Post piece by Jen Chaney called Middleburg “a festival with the vibe of a hyper-miniature, horse country Park City, Utah…a really itty-bitty Cannes brightened by fall foliage instead of the glistening French Riviera.”
Why Middleburg? Because BET co-founder and billionaire Sheila Crump Johnson wants attention for the Salamander Resort, which she owns and which is located just outside of town. Hosting a bunch of film people (including journalist freeloaders like myself) is a good way of attracting business by selling people on the idea of Middleburg being a moneyed, honeyed, cultured, quasi-hip destination for people who can, you know, afford it.
I was struck by three things in this Rose McGowan interview by HuffPost Live‘s Ricky Camilleri. One, I’ve always thought of her as Tallulah Bankhead without the alcohol, and now that she’s 41 McGowan really owns that attitude, I feel. Two, the semi-astonishing story (found near the 13-minute mark) about McGowan’s agent having told her to keep quiet during meetings because her assertive intelligent manner was “intimidating men” and spoiling the vibe. And three, the fact that McGowan looks different than she used to. Her lips aren’t Meg Ryan-ish but they’ve been worked on a bit. McGowan was in a 2007 car crash and had to do a little re-sculpturing to look hot again, or so I’m told.
I’ll be attending a PBS press event at the Beverly Hilton hotel today. Several shows will be discussed from 10 am to 6 pm and then a dinner and presentation to follow. I love PBS programming plus I haven’t taken part in a TV junket in ages so this should be novel and stimulating.
A discussion of PBS 2012 Election Coverage will kick things off at 10:15 am with Gwen Ifill, Judy Woodruff, Raney Aronson, Maria Hinojosa and PBS senior vp John Wilson participating. Then a buffet luncheon at 12:15 pm. At 12:45 pm Ken Burns‘ The Dust Bowl, a doc about the most socially devastating weather disaster of the 1930s, will be discussed. At 2:30 pm a press conference about Half The Sky will commence with America Ferrara, Diane Lane, Meg Ryan and Nicholas Kristof. At 3:45 pm a discussion of Inventing David Geffen, a doc that will premiere on American Masters on 11.20, will happen with Geffen and filmmaker Susan Lacy participating.
The very-good-when-she-was-good Nora Ephron died yesterday at age 71 — hugs and condolences to friends, family, fans. A blood disorder rooted to lukemia, and a shock (nobody outside Ephron’s immediate circle seemed to know it was coming) and very sad — she left way, way too early. But she lived a very full life and experienced the kind of excitement and fulfillment and creative satisfaction that many of us only dream about.
I always think of Bob Dylan‘s line about “death’s honesty” when someone goes. That’s what it is, all right — honest. But keep your distance, pal.
Ephron was an expert, witty, self-deflating writer of a neo-feminist slant. Her best years in this vein began in the late ’60s as a journalist-essayist. Her ’70s articles in particular (largely about food, sex, life in Manhattan) were really, really good — amusing, cutting, confessional, clever. Her screenwriter mother Phoebe once told her that “everything is copy”, and she certainly seemed to have followed that rule. Yes, some of Nora’s ruffs and bon mots were mean at times, but if you’re worried about pissing people off you’ve no business being a writer. Ephron had her voice, and no one can ever take that away.
While married to Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein Ephron and he did a re-write of William Goldman‘s All The President’s Men script, and if I’m not mistaken at least one of their scenes made it into that 1976 film — the one in which Dustin Hoffman (as Bernstein) fakes out the chilly, brittle secretary of Dade County investigator Martin Dardis (Ned Beatty) by calling and pretending to be some guy in the County Clerk’s office who needs some records picked up that Dardis wants, etc.
That was a really good scene, and on the strength of it and the screenplay Ephron got a screenwriting gig for a TV movie, and eventually a ticket into the movie bigtime. The ’80s were great for her.
Ephron’s first highly acclaimed screenplay was for Silkwood (’82), which Mike Nichols directed with Meryl Streep as the brave but doomed Karen Silkwood — a strong, commendable, well-acted drama.
And then came her screenplay of Heartburn (’86), which was based on her book of the same name about her marriage to Bernstein and the infidelity that led to their breakup. The Mike Nichols-directed film was quite satisfying during the first half, and less so during the second. The ending was flat.
For me Heartburn was the first movie that told me that Ephron, good as she was, was unwilling to step outside of her well-tended box. She couldn’t seem to admit to any kind of marital failing on the part of her stand-in character, Rachel Samstat (played by Streep), and that was trouble.
As I wrote a few weeks ago after re-watching the film, “The problem is that Jack Nicholson‘s affair with the unseen giraffe lady with the big splayed feet (inspired by Bernstein’s affair with Margaret Jay) happens entirely off-screen and reveals nothing at all about Nicholson’s psychology. All you can sense is that he feels vaguely threatened by fatherhood and responsibility. It just feels bizarre that the affair just happens without the audience being told anything. Nicholson’s Mark is just a selfish shit (which may well have been the case except it takes two to bring a marriage down), and I felt bothered and irritated that I wasn’t getting the whole story.”
And then then came her much-beloved screenplay for When Harry Met Sally (’89), which included that famous Meg Ryan orgasm scene in the diner. That and the film’s nicely-woven emotionality solidified Ephron’s rep as the seasoned go-to lady for romantic comedies, and she was more or less set for life…as far as anyone who lives by their wits and the task of catching and condensing ephemeral pollen can have anything “set.”
Ephron’s first directing effort, This is My Life, a dramedy about a mom (Julie Kavner) who works nights as a stand-up comic, was a critical and box-office dud. But her next film, Sleepless in Seattle (’93), was a huge hit, and was reasonably well handled for the most part. But — sorry but I think it’s true — after that it was all downhill as far as Ephron’s mise en scene-ing was concerned. For she had stepped into another box — that of the highly-paid hyphenate who could presumably deliver sharp, well-sculpted romantic comedies that connected with women and men alike — and the demands of that business or that genre plus her inability to really dig in and go for the challenge and somehow deliver soulful relationship meals in an ’80s and ’90s James L. Brooks-like vein….I don’t know what happened exactly, but it was all diminishing returns, or so it seemed to me.
Mixed Nuts (’94), Michael (’96), You’ve Got Mail (’98), Lucky Numbers (’00), Bewitched (’05) and Julie & Julia (’09) — none of them really worked. And yet I was mostly okay with the screenplay she co-wrote with her sister Delia for Hanging Up (’00), a Diane Keaton-directed film about three sisters (Keaton, Meg Ryan, Lisa Kudrow) coping with the death of their cantankerous dad (Walter Matthau).
The last time I heard Ephron speak was during a 4.18.09 tribute to Mike Nichols panel at the Museum of Modern Art. She and three of Nichols’ legendary collaborators — Streep, Elaine May and Buck Henry — delivered a “moderately dazzling, often funny, at times chaotic group discussion,” I wrote, “like a spirited dinner-table thing between Uncle Mike and the in-laws…a nice, raggedy, catch-as-catch-can vibe.” Here’s the mp3. Really good stuff.
Here’s a portion of an introduction that Ephron wrote for the Kindle version of her last book, “I Remember Nothing””
“When you’re young, you make jokes about how things slip your mind. You think it’s amusing that you’ve wandered into the kitchen and can’t remember why. Or that you carefully made a shopping list and left it home on the counter. Or that you managed to forget the plot of a movie you saw only last week.
“And then you get older.
“Anyway, at some point, I thought it might be fun to write a book about what I remember, and what I’ve forgotten. I still feel bad about my neck, but I feel even worse about the fact that huge bits of my life have gone slip-sliding away, and I thought I’d better write them down while I still had a sense of humor about it all.”
411’s Roger Friedman has posted another portion in which Ephron lists the things she’ll miss when she’s gone:
“My kids, Nick [Pileggi, her husband), Spring, Fall, waffles, the concept of waffles, bacon, a walk in the park, the idea of a walk in the park, the park, Shakespeare in the Park, the bed, reading in bed, fireworks, laughs, the view out the window, twinkle lights, butter, dinner at home just the two of us, dinner with friends, dinner with friends in cities where none of us lives, Paris, next year in Istanbul, Pride and Prejudice, the Christmas tree, Thanksgiving dinner, one for the table, the dogwood, taking a bath, coming over the bridge to Manhattan, pie.”
The South by Southwest program notes for It’s About You, a documentary about John Mellencamp touring in ’09 and recording No Better Than This, explain that the film “is told through the eyes of the father/son filmmaking team of Kurt and Ian Markus, neither of whom had ever made a film before.” They also say that “the entire 90-minute film is shot on super8, to stunning effect.”
I saw It’s About You a couple of hours ago, and it needs to be said that the super8 effect is not “stunning” — the correct terms are “underwhelming,” “exasperating” and “aesthetically futile.” The idea in using this format, I’m guessing, is that Markus figured that super8’s raw realism correlates to the gritty, balls-out, unpretentious honesty of Mellencamp’s music. But the photography is so golfball grainy and murky and lacking in intrigue — everything captured by Markus and his son looks like shit, and the only thing that comes through is Markus’s belief that super8 is delivering some kind of primal truth that digital couldn’t hope to capture or simulate.
At one point Markus remarks that a special blimp encasement had to be built to suppress super8 camera noise during his shooting of Mellencamp recording his album. He also mentions that the camera, per super8 norm, had to be reloaded every few minutes. And you can’t help but ask yourself, “So these guys were so convinced that the coolness of super8 imagery would be worth it in the end that they put up with all this hassle? Why didn’t someone step in and say, ‘Guys, no one will care…in fact, some people will wonder why you bothered with super8 at all because it looks like crap and brings next-to-nothing to the table’?”
Secondly, Markus and his son’s filmmaking inexperience shows. Markus is a respected still photographer, but his instincts (and those of his son) are dull and listless, and their shooting technique (which includes an occasional inability to focus the lens, or a lack of interest in same) is strictly amateur hour.
Thirdly, Markus conveys very little in his narration except for the fact that John is his friend and that America and iife in general sure have changed since he was young, but basically that his friend is such a fascinating subject that all he and his son have to do is point and shoot. That’s a rather naive view.
Markus is also annoyingly stingy with facts. There’s a scene in which Mellencamp and his now ex-wife Elaine Irwin Mellencamp don white robes and receive holy baptism in a small pool inside a church. Markus isn’t making a film about celebrity, but it feels dishonest that he doesn’t identify Irwin or (I realize this is a stretch) perhaps mention the fact that Mellencamp announced on 12.30.10 that he and Irwin had separated, and that since then Mellencamp has copped to a relationship with Meg Ryan.
After 15 minutes or so I began to be convinced that the South by Southwest team accepted this film solely because of Mellencamp’s name and the fake-cool pedigree of super 8mm. They couldn’t have watched this thing and gone, “Aaahh, yes!…something fresh and real and heartland-y!” They had to know it was cornbeef hash out of a can, and decided to try and sell it as SXSW-approved farm fresh. I know that sounds cynical but what other explanation could there be?
Among the out -of-competition 2009 Tribeca Film Festival highlights (for me)…
* Don McKay (director-writer: Jake Goldberger). Thomas Haden Church as a guy returning to his hometown at the bidding of his cancer-stricken ex-girlfriend (Elisabeth Shue). Costarring Melissa Leo.
* An Englishman in New York,” (director, Richard Laxton — screenwriter, Brian Fillis). John Hurt revisiting real-life writer, actor, and gay icon Quentin Crisp. Focusing on the 72-year-old star’s move to New York in 1981, and the fallout from a reckless comment about the burgeoning AIDS epidemic.Costarring Cynthia Nixon, Jonathan Tucker, Swoosie Kurtz.
* Serious Moonlight (director, Cheryl Hines — screenwriter, Adrienne Shelly) Type A attorney Louise (Meg Ryan) busts her husband (Timothy Hutton) for cheating with a younger hottie (Kristen Bell), duct-tapes him to a toilet. In the indie realm, Hutton is the absolute go-to guy for playing dissolute womanizers.
* In the Loop (director, Armando Iannucci — screenwriters, Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Tony Roche and Iannucci). My pre-Sundance review says it all.
Six years ago I wrote a short piece about a very touchy anatomical subject for my Reel.com column. I happened to come across it again today. It struck me as a very odd thing, and yet truthful. This is a slow news day so I’m re-posting with add-ons and modifications. The subject is why feet are almost never given close-ups in movies.
“Has anyone every wondered why directors and their cinematographers almost never include close-ups of actors’ feet in movies? Because 90% of human feet are strange and alienating, is why. But it goes farther than that. For me, bare feet are a contemporary pestilence that no culture since the sandal-wearing Greeks and Romans has had to deal with. Once upon a time sandled feet were a subject for light mockery, something that only eccentric beatniks went for. Exposed digits have been ubiquitous, of course, in warm weather months since the mid ’60s. I for one regret it.
“Nobody talks about it, but everyone understands. In real life all but the most unusually perfect feet are good for a glance at best, and should rarely be contemplated further. This goes double for the movies. Hands, kneecaps, ear lobes, fingers, noses, biceps, chest hair (or lack of) — these and others anatomical features are routinely displayed in films. But never feet.
“Well, almost never.
“There’s a close-up of Michael Keaton and Geena Davis‘ bare feet soaking in a fountain in Ron Underwood‘s relationship comedy Speechless (1994). An argument could be advanced that this insert shot was one of the reasons it bombed. I remember recoiling in my theater seat after glancing at those gleaming, well-pedicured nubs and deciding I would give Speechless a failing grade.
“The only tolerable close-up of feet I can recall happens about a half hour into Nicholas Ray‘s King of Kings (1961). Jeffrey Hunter as Jesus Christ is walking in the desert and looking for spiritual purification, and at one point the camera cuts to a shot of his bleeding feet stepping on sand and cactus thorns and sharp stones. Hunter’s feet (or maybe Ray used a foot double?) looked good to me — lean, tanned, athletic, perfect pedicure.
“Having bad feet can really mess with the aura that an attractive or extra-talented movie star has carefully built up. One definition of bad feet are feet with extra-long European-styled toes. New York writer Pete Hamill once described the toes belonging to Nastassja Kinski‘s for an interview he did with her in the early ’80s as ‘bad toes.’ So I’m not the first one to bring this up.
“The following actors, in my opinion, have either unappealing feet or bad toes: Meg Ryan (too long and bony), Terence Stamp (I noticed his bulbous toes after catching a restored print of Pasolini’s Teorema), Debra Winger (too-long toes) , Diane Keaton (ditto), and British actor Robert Newton. I distinctly remember not being pleased when Sam Mendes showed us the balls of Kevin Spacey‘s naked feet in a scene in American Beauty.
“The list is short for the simple reason that most directors are careful not to give audiences even a glimpse of these bare appendages.
“Bad feet can even mess up a stage performance. I remember cooling on British actor Stephen Dillane‘s performance in a Broadway revival of Tom Stoppard‘s The Real Thing because he was shoeless throughout most of the play, and because his toes were knobby and protruding.
“Is it allowable to acknowledge how unfortunate it is these days that virtually every American woman walks around these days in open-toed shoes or sandals, and that a good 70% should probably consider alternatives? I’ve seen some women’s feet that are drop-dead beautiful, but these are the exception. Most of the female feet I see are so-so or okay, at best. Some are close to dreadful. Most men over the age of 35 or 40 should just forget about going barefoot or wearing sandals, period.
“Every time I see a friend or acquaintance approach on a street or in a mall and I notice they’re wearing sandals, a little part of me dies inside. Or at the very least grims up and prepares.”
I’m sorry if this sounds insensitive, but the images of Annette Bening and especially Meg Ryan in this poster for The Women (Picturehouse, 9.12) simply don’t resemble the actresses in their 21st century incarnations. Bening, bless her enormous talent and sense of class, had been made to look like her Bugsy or American Beauty self, and Ryan…c’mon. Did she ever look like this? What happened to the Botox lips that nearly killed her career? It’s all the doing of the art person behind the poster, of course. A simple case of over-sweetening.
To hear it from Fantasy Moguls’ Steve Mason, the projected weekend gross of The Golden Compass is “anemic” — worse than disappointing — with an estimated $9 million earned yesterday and a mere $27 million for the weekend. Those are shattering numbers for a movie that cost a reported $200 million. By comparison, The Chronicles of Narnia made $65.5 million on its opening weekend in December 2005. Obviously no joy in Mudville (i.e., the New Line offices) this weekend.
Mason is also asking if this latest torpedo-in-the-hull spells the end of Nicole Kidman‘s run as a top-dollar actress. Compass, Mason notes, is Kidman’s sixth wipeout or short-faller in a row (if you don’t count the moderately passable business being done by Margot at the Wedding). Birth, The Interpreter, Bewitched, Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus and Invasion were all flubs or disappointments.
I’ve been saying this for a long while now. Kidman is a talented actress with mostly excellent taste in projects, but she doesn’t radiate much warmth or empathy and she doesn’t put butts in seats. But she’s had a good run and has a long future ahead of her…just on a lower pay scale. There’s nothing wrong with being Meg Ryan.