I felt a teeny bit antsy and uncertain about contacting Roger Avary following his release from jail a couple of years back. (He did time for DUI manslaughter that resulted in the death of a friend.) I’ve been a fan and admirer since the Pulp Fiction days, but I didn’t know if he’d want to hear from guys like me. But this morning a Locarno Film Festival interview that he gave to Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn signalled that he’s back. So I wrote him and hope to say hello sometime soon.

After doing so I was immediately reminded that I’ve never seen Glitterati, the feature-length version of a sequence that appeared in Avary’s The Rules of Attraction (’02). Avary showed me a portion about ten years ago, but I never sat down and saw the whole thing. Here’s Avary’s YouTube explanation of what it is/was:

“For this sequence, from The Rules of Attraction (2002), I directed Kip Pardue to remain in character as the vacant, vapid, and self-absorbed Victor from the moment we stepped onto the plane to Europe until the moment we returned to Los Angeles. A blinding twelve cities in two weeks shooting every possible moment on a Sony PD-150. It was an endurance test. I told Kip that I would have 24/7 access — no matter how intimate the situation.

“With no script, and the loosest of plans, I tracked Victor as he partied across Europe in the shell-shocked weeks following 9/11. We would be raving with Paul Oakenfold one day in Dublin, and then at a Ford model party in Paris the next. Five minutes into a conversation with, say, an heiress or a model, I would stop shooting, explain who we were, that Victor was actually the actor Kip Pardue, and that we were shooting a scene for my latest film, The Rules of Attraction. Our only other crew member, Academy Award-winning producer Greg Shapiro, would then step forward and get them to sign a waiver, and then Victor would proceed to dawn.

“I didn’t sleep more than a few hours those two weeks. Months later, Kip would receive calls from the various girls Victor had hooked up with who were confused as to what was real and what wasn’t. Who were we? Where is Victor? I cut the 70 hours of footage down to these 4 minutes which I cut into the film. Years later I decided to form the unused footage into a musical tone-film of all it’s own: Glitterati.”

Here’s a piece I ran in October 2002, called “La Dolce Victor“:

“Roger Avary’s Glitterati is a kind of dramatic documentary about a European debauch enjoyed in September and October of ’01 by Rules of Attraction costar Kip Pardue. Or rather, technically speaking, by Pardue’s character, Victor Johnson, since Pardue stayed more or less in character during filming.

“The footage was initially intended to be used for a brief episode in Rules. It became that and, for my money, is easily the single coolest portion.

“Now, however, Avary has decided to expand the 70 hours of footage he captured of Pardue running around Europe and getting down with various women into a feature-length docudrama. Avary is about halfway into the editing, and is hoping to put the finished product into theatres before it goes to DVD sometime next year. I was shown two or three clips and found them…well, a lot more than fascinating.

“Avary followed the 26-year-old actor around in all these cities with two video cameras — the larger and more professional-level Sony DP 150 and a smaller Sony PC 9.

Every woman Pardue met and hooked up with signed a release obtained by producer Greg Shapiro with an understanding the footage being shot was for inclusion in a feature film. And according to Avary, they all went for it hook, line and sinker, even to the point of making out with Pardue and, to some extent (I’m not sure how explicit the footage will be in the end), having sex with him on camera.

“I didn’t see enough footage to be able to tell if Avary pays as much attention to the European scenery and tourist sights as he did the women, but the thing captures the way Europe can look and smell and sound to a touring, hang-it-all youth who’s constantly distracted or on the move.

I absolutely love this portion: “The look of Glitterati on Avary’s Macintosh flat-panel screen was awesome as well. The video footage seemed to have the texture of film, except for those odd moments when sunlight would hit somebody’s face and that portion of the image would briefly white-out. The footage seemed more textured than what video usually delivers, and yet like something other than film — it’s some kind of hybrid. If only digital video could look this good on a big screen (pixellation is always visible when you blow things up), the whole video-to-film thing would be a much more tantalizing option.”

There’s this bizarre blogger/commentator sub-cabal that believes Zero Dark Thirty is a bad title. I think it’s genius-level — one of the coolest-sounding, totally-owns-the-room titles ever. Partly, I admit, because the meaning (i.e., pitch dark or dead of night) isn’t precisely, immediately clear to the dumb-asses. That’s why it’s dead-on because it radiates coolness, confidence, authority. It says “we know and you ought to.”

And yet MCN’s David Poland and Variety‘s Jeff Sneider have tweeted that it doesn’t work, etc. Presumably others feel the same way. Apart from the fact that it totally works, they don’t seem to understand that capitulating to the idiots is a form of spiritual and cultural suicide. NEVER dumb things down. Beakers of hemlock are preferable.

After ballyhooing Baz Luhrman‘s The Great Gatsby at last April’s Cinemacon and debuting an audacious, high-style trailer in late May, Warner Bros. has cancelled the 12.25 release of this 3D adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel. The new plan is to open it sometime next summer. Dashed expectations, “oh, no!,” car skids off road, call AAA.

First Gravity got yanked and sent into 2013. And then the Aurora massacre took down Gangster Squad. And now Gatsby is off to the showers and/or back to the refitting room. Why didn’t they boot Cloud Atlas into 2013 while they were at it? Is there any chance they could delay The Hobbitt? Just asking.

Scenario #1: It was agreed that Luhrman’s film, which finished principal photography on 12.22.11, needs more work, although the opening is four and a half months off and therefore another seven or eight weeks of cutting time remains. Scenario #2: It was mutually agreed that the film is note perfect and will be ready in plenty of time to spare, but Luhrman decided it could be even more perfect and persuaded WB to give him more time to finesse and maybe shoot some extra material.

My 5.22 response to the trailer: “This is looking more and more like one of the most intriguing awards-season headliners. The 1920s have been removed from that feeling of veiled sepia antiquity — they feel electric, refreshed, wild. And although the CG still looks a wee bit primitive in the final New York City cut, the idea of glimpsing the Manhattan of 90 years ago has my pulse racing. Plus the actors all seem in fine form.”

My Cinemacon reaction to the Gatsby reel: “The second-biggest attraction during the Warner Bros. Cinemacon presentation was some 3D footage from Baz Luhrman’s The Great Gatsby. I’ve been fearful that Luhrman would smother the Fitzgerald novel under Bazzy bombast. But what I saw felt curiously alive and its own bird — a high-style reboot of classic Fitzgerald that doesn’t feel (at least during the short time it took to screen) the least bit antiquated or borrowed or strained. It’s a 1920s recreation that doesn’t try to do anything except make the characters and the story feel ‘right.'”

The trailer for Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal‘s Zero Dark Thirty (Sony, 12.19) is up, and it’s not that great. I don’t like the guy yelling “when was the last time you saw Bin Laden?” not once but twice. Trailers always cut away context and particularity so this line is probably spoken at the end of an interrogation scene that builds and builds and leads to this explosion. Bottom line: Not bad but not good enough. Sony marketing needs to try again.

Question: Name a film that you always have to defend liking, and a film that you always have to defend not liking. Name them but don’t defend them. HE answer: For defending liking, Sydney Pollack‘s Castle Keep, Curtis Hanson‘s In Her Shoes or Abbott and Costello Meet The Mummy. And for defending not liking, Billy Wilder‘s The Lost Weekend, A Foreign Affair or…ahh, screw it, pretty much any Wilder film after The Fortune Cookie. I’ve also never liked Johnny Guitar.

I was walking out of my local Gelson’s last week when I spotted a rather large, bulky-looking car parked next to mine. It looked like some kind of tank, like one of those heavy-bodied Detroit-made cars for old rich guys. Then I realized it was a Rolls Royce, and my first thought was “good God, even Rolls Royces have gone downmarket.” One of the main aesthetic tragedies of the 21st Century is that new money doesn’t get what was cool and classic about old-money styles and designs, and this is but one example.

In the old days Rolls Royces had a classic, elegant, upper-crust air. The new Rolls Royces look like they’re made to appeal, no offense, to guys who don’t get the hand-made British Empire aesthetic and who are maybe looking to bulletproof the windshield and the tires.

An 8.3.12 Guardian piece by David Shariatmadari about Alfred Hitchcock‘s North by Northwest delivers an assessment that reminds me in some ways of of Robin Wood’s much longer assessment of this 1959 classic, to wit:

“Life, most of the time, is matter of routine. We get up, go to work, pass the day as we have hundreds like it before. But this predictability is an illusion, because at any moment, the whole reassuring framework could collapse. An accident, an incredible stroke of luck, a crime: and suddenly everything has changed.

“Roger Thornhill’s life turns on a dime in the bar of the Plaza Hotel on 59th street, at the moment he calls over the bellboy. He’s an advertising executive – one of the original Mad Men – whose anxieties centre around keeping his women sweet (with gifts dispatched by an obliging secretary), his mother happy and the Skin Glow account ticking over. But that bellboy was looking for a certain George Kaplan, and he’s not the only one: a couple of shady characters waiting around the corner see Thornhill and think they’ve found their man. When he steps into the lobby for a moment, one of them presses a gun to his heart.

“He’s whisked out of his natural habitat — no more martinis for Roger, at least not quite yet — and into a world which no longer seems to be following the rules. Who are these men who keep insisting he’s Kaplan? Who threaten to kill him if he tries to escape? And why, having arrived at a well-appointed country house, is he asked how much he knows and how he knows it?

“At this point, we’re as baffled as Thornhill. Despite having been with him for only a couple of scenes, we feel all the disorientation – and the rising panic – of his having been taken for someone else. Hitchcock, as ever, taps a reservoir of primitive fear. How would it feel if no one believed you were you? And the harder you tried to convince them, the less they took you seriously?

“It baffles me that North by Northwest is regularly eclipsed in assessments of Hitchcock’s oeuvre, not least by the all-conquering Vertigo, which has been fetishised by critics since the 1960s. It received another boost earlier this week in Sight and Sound’s once-a-decade poll, while North by Northwest was nowhere to be found.

“Perhaps the lack of Freudian handwaving leads people to rate it poorly in comparison. But despite the preposterous (though seamlessly woven) plot, it’s a rather good psychological fable, and a lot less pretentious into the bargain. Thornhill is a man who can’t — or hasn’t had to — grow up. Eve saves him, but not before she breaks the bonds that have kept her in a terrifyingly subservient relationship. Hitchcock’s ability to conjure up that sense of a perfectly pleasant life going haywire is especially powerful.

“Our thrill is to see it all unfold, safe in the knowledge that at the end we’ll be able to return to the old routine. And even if things don’t always go as planned, perhaps we’ll be able to tackle them with a little of the old Thornhill panache.”

I’m a big Martin McDonagh fan (particularly his direction and writing of In Bruges and his B’way-produced A Behanding in Spokane), and so I was more than a little disappointed to read that Seven Psychopaths, a oddball noir-comedy of some kind with Colin Farrell, Christopher Walken, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson, Abbie Cornish, Tom Waits, Olga Kurylenko and Zeljko Ivanek, won’t have a regular berth at the 2012 Toronto Film Festival but will be screened under Midnight Madness.

This ghetto-izes it, of course. At least to some extent. The suggestion is that Psychopaths is too manic or extreme to play along with the stolid mainstreamers, and that it might even be some kind of problem within its own realm and terms. If I was McDonagh I’d be pissed. (I meant to post this earlier but the dog ate my notes.)

Deadline‘s Pete Hammond is reporting that Fox Searchlight is thinking about playing it safe with the release date of Sacha Gervasi‘s Hitchcock, a mild-mannered drama (I read the script eons ago) about the making of Psycho. It looks and sounds like a perfect end-of-the-year film aimed at educated adults and a likely slamdunk for acting awards, but FS isn’t so sure, Hammond hears.

(l.) Anthony Hopkins as Alfred Hitchcock in Sasha Gervasi’s Hitchcock; (r.) Toby Jones as Mr. Hitchcock in HBO’s The Girl.

The natural thing, of course, would be to release Hitchcock by the end of the year and thereby put Anthony Hopkins‘ portrayal of Alfred Hitchcock into possible Best Actor contention. A late 2012 release would also instill a healthy competitive spirit between Hitchcock and HBO’s The Girl, the “other” Hitchcock drama that will focus on the director’s lewd intentions toward Tippi Hedren during the making of The Birds and Marnie.

And yet Hitchcock editor Pamela Martin (The Fighter, Little Miss Sunshine) told Hammond a couple of days ago that “it is currently undetermined whether Searchlight will try for a late 2012 Oscar-qualifying release of Hitchcock…she says they are still doing the director’s cut and if they decide to get it out this year it will mean a big rush to get it ready in time.” Ahem….Hitchcock wrapped in June and it’ll be a “big rush” to get it out by late December? Otto Preminger‘s Anatomy of a Murder began shooting on 3.23.59, wrapped on 5.15.59 and opened on 7.2.59. So don’t even go there. Don’t use the word “big” and don’t use the word “rush.” Turning a film around in five months is nothing.

Martin, says Hammond, “has nothing but praise for the performances” and “singled out” Scarlet Johansson‘s performance as Janet Leigh, who played Marion Crane in Psycho. I’m sorry but I explained a little more than five months ago why Johansson is a bad casting choice to play Leigh, and I see no reason to change my mind.

You can tell that The Girl won’t be as good as Hitchcock because a set still shows Toby Jones‘ Hitchcock wearing an English bowler, and Hitchcock almost never wore a bowler, certainly not after he moved to California in 1939. The one exception (and correct me if I’m wrong) is a bowler-hatted appearance he made in a trailer for Frenzy (’72). That bowler is the blade of grass that tells you almost everything you need to know about The Girl. Mark my words.

Sienna Miller is playing Hedren in The Girl, by the way.

Fox Searchlight needs to man up and put Hitchcock into theatres before 12.31.12. And then release it more widely sometime in late January or February. Simple.

If there’d only been a couple of NRA members hanging around with handguns or rifles slung over their shoulders, they could have quick-drawed and gone into a bent-knee crouch and shot the shooter like Dirty Harry….blam! blam! blam! So what was the shooter’s deal? “There is something inherently disgusting about the media ‘clarifying’ that Sikhs are not Muslims. — Jeremy Cahill on Twitter, re-tweeted by Ray Pride.

“No force from outside, nor any pain, has finally proved stronger than her power to weigh down upon herself. If she has possibly been strangled once, then suffocated again in the life of the orphanage, and lived to be stifled by the studio and choked by the rages of marriage, she has kept in reaction a total control over her life, which is perhaps to say that she chooses to be in control of her death.

“And out there somewhere in the attractions of that eternity she has heard singing in her ears from childhood, she takes the leap to leave the pain of one deadened soul for the hope of life in another, she says good-bye to that world she conquered and could not use.” — excerpted from Norman Mailer‘s Marilyn Monroe biography, which originally hit stores in 1973 and has been republished a few times (and in two or three different forms) since.

It’s a good bet that today the Lookee-lous are going to be all over Monroe’s home (i.e., where she died, and the only place she ever owned) at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive in Brentwood.