For some reason I love these photos of Blue Is The Warmest Color costar Lea Seydoux and Adele Exarchopoulos speaking with director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Biutiful, the forthcoming Birdman) following a Saturday screening of Abdellatif Kechiche‘s landmark film at Telluride’s Werner Herzog cinema. (Not taken by me — as soon as I remember who shot these I’ll give due credit.)
I sometimes dance a bit when I feel good. A subtle kind of slow-roll thing. Low-key, hip-shakey, bop-shoo-woppy. Never on a dance floor, of course, but at a party, in a parking lot, in a checkout line…anywhere but in a fucking club. Why am I mentioning this? Because this is what Michael Fassbender was doing Saturday night at the 12 Years A Slave party in Telluride.
Or he did, at least, during…oh, the first 20 or 30 minutes when he was talking to his friends and colleagues. He seemed to be saying to himself (and to any perceptive person who was watching), “This is good, this party. I feel nice…uhm-hmm. I’m just gonna cut loose a little bit.” He was talking and listening and being the debonair adult, of course, but he was doin’ it besides. Like he was dancing to “All Shook Up.” And I was saying to myself, “This guy is cool because he dances whenever and wherever. Like me, he’s a free man in Paris. He doesn’t need a fucking dance floor.”
I was so in awe that I devolved into a fan mentality when I spoke to Fassbender 10 or 15 minutes later. For some reason I asked him where his character’s plantation was located and…fucking Christ, did I just ask Fassbender a question I could answer in 10 or 12 seconds by going on the IMDB? Stunned by my faux pas, I quickly said, “I mean, I know…kind of a dipshit question, right? I could get this info by going online.” And then Fassbender, to his immense and lasting credit, looked me in the eye and said without a smirk or the slightest tone of condescension, “Then why don’t you go online to get it?”
And he was right! Honesty blast! When I’ve said something asinine I know it right away and MF was straight enough to say, “Yeah, I agree with you!” I laughed (well, chortled) and recovered by sharing my feelings about 12 Years A Slave when I caught it the previous night at the Palm. And then we talked about the feelings everyone seemed to be having after it ended. And that was all right.
And then my dp friend Svetlana Cvetko (Inequality For All, Inside Job) stepped in and started speaking with him, and then maybe ten minutes later I sauntered over and said, “Michael, could I get a photo for my column?” And Fassbender said, “You know what, man? I’d rather not.” But not in a snide or dismissive way. It was almost a pleading thing. His eyes seemed to say, “Do you get this? It’s not you…I just don’t feel like it.” And I said, “That’s cool, man…no worries.” And we gave each other a little upper-arm, top-of the-shoulder reassurance pat and that was that.
I have to leave (and I really wish it weren’t so) by 9:15 or thereabouts in order to make a 12:30 flight from Durango to LAX. I’m missing the 9 am Salinger screening. There’s a huge aesthetic gulf between your film-festival journo-distributor-buyer elites (endless merriment for Glenn Kenny) and regular Joes & Janes with mainstream sensibilities. People like Nebraska and Labor Day, which I’m not so high on. And they seem to be cool or mezzo mezzo toward the films I love/worship — Inside Llewyn Davis, All Is Lost, 12 Years A Slave, etc. Everyone likes Gravity. I never saw Tim’s Vermeer although not for lack of trying. I meant to share a brief chat I had with Michael Fassbender at the 12 Years A Slave party — I’ll do that this afternoon. I finally uploaded the mp3 of my chat with Alfonso Cuaron — here it is.
Boxoffice.com‘s Phil Contrino has begun a petition to try and influence Warner Bros. to arrange special-event bookings of Gravity and 2001: A Space Odyssey as a double-bill. On IMAX screens, for instance. “2001 is a film that was meant to be viewed on a big screen,” he writes. “If Gravity really deserves to be compared to 2001, then Warner Bros.– the studio behind both films–and exhibitors around the globe should treat movie fans to a double feature.”
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.
Something happened a couple of days ago that may seem minor in the greater scheme, but every time I think about it I can’t help feeling elated. I dropped my iPhone into a kitchen sink filled with warm water and it survived. No twitches or glitches or after-damage whatsoever. It was saved from instant death by (a) the fact that it was encased in a Mophie juice pack and (b) the fact that I scooped it out in less than a second — the bat of an eyelash. I was so fast I surprised myself. I was faster than Muhammad Ali delivering a jab. And then I used paper towels and all was well. The possibility that I might have to buy another one after losing my previous iPhone in Berlin last May was horrifying. Saved by the Mophie!
Hollywood Reporter critic Stephen Farber is calling Peter Landesman‘s Parkland (Open Road, 2.20), a docudrama about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, “engrossing, quietly revelatory and often profoundly moving as it retells a story we only thought we knew..filled with sharp details that will be eye-opening to most viewers, [and] exceptionally well made.” And the Guardian‘s Xan Brooks is saying that Parkland “gives us a neat Texas spin on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, [using an] approach that makes a worn-out old tragedy feel supple and urgent.” But Variety‘s Peter Debruge and Indiewire‘s Matt Mueller have totally dumped on it.
Alfonso Cuaron‘s Gravity (Warner Bros., 10.4), which screened twice last night at the Telluride Film Festival, is the most visually sophisticated, super-immersive weightless thrill-ride flick I’ve ever seen. If Stanley Kubrick had been there last night he would freely admit that 2001: A Space Odyssey is no longer the ultimate, adult-angled, real-tech depiction of what it looks and feels like to orbit the earth. Nifty and super-cool from a pure-eyeball perspective, Gravity is certainly the most essential theatrical experience since Avatar. You can’t watch a top-dollar 3D super-flick of this type on anything other than a monster-sized IMAX screen.
The once-legendary David Frost died yesterday at age 74, possibly of a heart attack. He was on a Mediterranean-bound cruise ship to do a speaking gig. Not the worst way to go — suddenly, sea air in your lungs, no prolonged deterioration. When I heard the news I didn’t think first of Frost’s 1977 Richard Nixon interviews or his hosting of That Was The Week That Was in the ’60s. For me Frost’s finest moments were those 1974 interviews with Muhammad Ali in Zaire before his Heavyweight Championship bout with George Foreman. Those were the high times. Frost was a celebrity conversationalist, a go-getter, a personality, a lightweight who grew into a middleweight (at least that) in the ’70s. he appeared to live in a state of constant engagement, drive, curiosity. A good fellow. Condolences to friends and family.
