In an 8.10 piece about the toxic effect of fame, the Toronto Star‘s Geoff Pevere writes that “next week in Memphis, hundreds of thousands of people will converge to mark the 30th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley, a man whose struggles with his own notoriety have become so deeply engrained in the popular consciousness they’ve taken on the contours of a kind of pop-cult mythology.

“That’s why we all know the story, whether or not the specific subject is Elvis, Marilyn, Jacko, John Lennon, Kurt Cobain, Brando or Judy Garland. It goes like this: Fame comes early to the conspicuously gifted one, too early for such a sensitive soul to bear. The pressure warps the frail creative vessel, resulting in seclusion, addiction, madness and (often) early death.”
One of the lousier scripts I wrote in the ’80s (i.e., good concept but lacking a decent third act as well as that forward-motion purposefulness and clarity that all good screenplays have) was called Tupelo Honey, and I never understood why someone else didn’t try and do something like this. Maybe someone did and it just sucked.
The basic idea was that aliens cruise down to earth in August 1977 and scoop up Presley just before he dies on the toilet at Graceland, leaving an immaculate genetic imitation to take his place. As one of their endless medical experiments, the aliens take Elvis up to the mothership and clean him out — the drugs and the fat and the poisons sucked out of his system — and then return him to earth all thin and primed and ready to go a few years later. In fact, they’ve de-aged him in the bargain. (Humans are always frozen in time in the company of aliens — remember those soldiers and sailors returned to the earth in Close Encounters? — and so the Elvis abductors have simply gone one better.)
The problem is that Elvis can’t convince anyone that he’s The Man when he tries to get work. Even his former friends and ex-girlfriends don’t believe he’s the real deal. (Too thin, too healthy, too alive.) The best he can do is get hired in Vegas as one of the coolest Elvis imitators in the world, and he hates that. So he quits Vegas and goes back to Tupelo, Mississippi, to try and sort things out and figure what to do with the rest of his life. Elvis is resigned to not singing anymore so he takes a job driving a truck for a soft-drink company. He meets a nice girl, starts to fall for her, makes friends with a couple of good ole boy musicians, and then slowly begins to go through a music reawakening — finding himself again as a performer.
I could never figure out what kind of music he’d get into, or how he’d get past the image problem of being seen as an Elivs Presley imitator…or what the overall solution would be. But if somebody were to come up with a decent third act for this thing and if someone else were to make the movie with the right cast, I’d pay to see it. I really like the idea.

The clips on Nerve’s 50 Best Sex Scenes site are…well, incomplete. Of course. Where’s the breast-washing scene from The Silence? Or the Last Tango in Paris stand-up-quickie-with-the-overcoat scene? But the ones they’ve got aren’t bad.

In the face of next to no encouraging news, the trapped Utah mine workers story has become a kind of dance in which the governing rule is not only a matter of not stepping in the dogshit (i.e., saying what’s really on everyone’s mind), but to push aside the option of using one’s nostrils as well as the powers of deductive reasoning to detect the aroma. We don’t want it to be there because we don’t want to hurt anyone.

Why does Joe Leydon smirk and shrug shoulders and go so easy on Rush Hour 3 in this video-clip thingie? What could his motivation possibly be? Is he some kind of devout believer in amiability for its own sake? It is necessary to be merciless in the face of mediocrity and the resulting oppression, especially in times like these.

A guy who talks to money guys and is familiar with the financial flow-through situation in the independent financing world believes that “there’s so much [production] money out there right now, and there’s so much product coming out that the market is being swamped, and a lot of people are getting killed, and it’s going to get worse.”

I’m sensing this swamp effect from my perspective also It seems like there are so many films out there that I can’t keep up. All these little films are coming out and I want to see them all but I don’t get around to a good percentage. And my failure to keep up is helping to seal the fate of some of these films, and I feel badly about that.
“It’s so crowded [out there] that they’re going to kill each other.” the guy believes. “I talked to a guy on a plane last March, and he said back then — this was five months ago — that there’s an amazing amount of money out there and almost anyone can get funded.” I was told in May 2005 that the floodgates were opening bigtime. Everyone has been aware of this for at least the last couple of years.
“But so many independent films are coming out that they’re going to have trouble getting distribution, getting video deals, getting TV deals…and soon or later it’s going to implode. There’s too much product, and few of [these movies] are doing well enough to be called successes.” In short, a very grim forecast due to a very crowded market.
“What independent movies have done any real business this summer?,” he asked. “La Vie en Rose, Rescue Dawn, Waitress, Once, 1408 and what else? Miramax is doing decent business with Becoming Jane right now and they’ve got No Country for Old Men coming out in November and maybe getting into the Oscar game, but they’ve had a very dry season for a good year, and if this continues Disney is not going to finance them. Lionsgate got slammed with their torture movies cratering, although 1408 — a good classic horror film — did pretty well.”

Rush Hour 3 will have about $53,515,000 in the pants pocket by Sunday night. It made $18,456,000 last night, but it’ll probably be down today because (a) sequels always fade on Saturday unless they’re propelled by exceptional word-of-mouth (as The Bourne Ultimatum was last weekend) and (b) the word-of-mouth on Brett Ratner‘s film is sure to be piss poor. (You’d have to be a complete movie retard to enthusiastically tell a friend, “Wow, great film!!”)
The Bourne Ultimatum will pull in $32,321,000 — down 52% from last weekend — for a $131,995,000 two-week cume. The Simpsons Movie is down 56% for $11,139,000. Stardust has tanked with a projected $8,661,000 by Sunday night, with $2,985,000 earned last night in 2540 theatres. Underdog will come in fifth with $6,880,000.
The sixth-place Hairspray will earn $6,634,000 by Sunday, and will therefore have a total of $92.4 million, meaning it’s all but certain to cross $100 million. (Hey, how come it’s not up to $150 million by now? All right, that’s it…can Russell Schwartz!!) I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry will be seventh with 6,130,000, which will put it across the $100 million mark — $ 104,000,000, to be precise.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will make $5,873,000 — the cume is now $272 million. No Reservations will be ninth with…I lost the figure but the Sunday-night cume will be $32,184,000 — will WB make back its p & a outlay? And poor Daddy Day Camp is tenth with $3,720,000 — 2392 theatres, 1600 a print, dead.
Becoming Jane expanded, added 500 runs, 600 theatres now….$3,179,000 and 5300 a pinrt…not bad..
Skinwalkers opened in 737 theatres and willl take in 472,000 by Sunday night…$670 dollars a print. Julie Delpy‘s Two Days in Paris opened in 8 theatres, and will earn $164,000 or about $28,000 a print. Rocket Science opened in six theatres and will make… okay, this makes two films I’m not completely sure about. But it did moderately well, I’m told.

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Warren Beatty and Arthur Penn‘s Bonnie and Clyde, three thoughts from A.O. Scott in the 8.12 N.Y. Times about how this 1967 Warner Bros. movie broke Hollywood’s depiction-of-violence dam and introduced the idea of hip carnage with one fell swoop — a horrific and exhilarating machine-gun massacre scene at the finale:

Thought #1: Bonnie and Clyde‘s “hero and heroine [played by Beatty and Faye Dunaway] exist in a state of vague solidarity with the poor and destitute — the banks they rob are the real enemies of the people, and they are admired by hard-luck farmers and sharecroppers — but they themselves are much too glamorous to pass as members of the oppressed masses.
“They are not fighting injustice so much as they are having fun, enjoying the prerogatives of outlaw fame. They exist in a kind of anarchic utopia where the pursuit of kicks is imagined to be inherently political. In this universe the usual ethical justifications of violent action are stripped away, but the aura of righteousness somehow remains.”
Thought #2: Since Bonnie and Clyde‘s ascension as a hip vanguard movie that brought forward a new-at-the-time screen sensibility, “Not Getting It has been the accusation leveled against critics of a certain kind of movie violence by its defenders. The easiest way to attack movie violence is to warn of its real-world consequences, to worry that someone will imitate what is seen on screen. The symmetrically literal-minded response is that because violence already exists in the world, refusing to show it in movies would be dishonest.

“[But] neither of these positions quite acknowledges the particularity of cinematic violence, which is not the same as what it depicts. Even the most bloodthirsty moviegoer would be likely to leave a real fusillade like the one at the end of Bonnie and Clyde sickened and traumatized, rather than thrilled. The particular charge of that scene, and others like it, is that it tries to push the pretense — the art — as close to trauma as possible and to make the appreciation of that art its point. Missing the point is what marks you as square.”
Thought #3: “I still get a kick out of Bonnie and Clyde, but it’s accompanied by a twinge of unease, by the suspicion that, in some ways that matter and that have become too easy to dismiss, Bosley Crowther was right.” What Scott means, I think, is that Crowther, square that he was, may have recognized “the real-world consequences” that Bonnie and Clyde‘s finale would bring about in terms of endless imitation and can-you-top-this? violence.
One final thought — a passage that Scott quotes from Pauline Kael‘s defense of that argued strongly with Crowther’s tut-tuttish slam: Bonnie and Clyde, she wrote, “brings into the almost frighteningly public world of movies things that people have been feeling and saying and writing about. And once something is said or done on the screens of the world, it can never again belong to a minority, never again be the private possession of an educated, or `knowing’ group.
“But even for that group there is an excitement in hearing its own private thoughts expressed out loud and in seeing something of its own sensibility become part of our common culture.”

Three thoughts from Woody Allen about the recently departed Ingmar Bergman, as conveyed in tomorrow’s (Sunday, 8.12) N.Y. Times in a piece called “The Man Who Asked Hard Questions.”

Ingmar Bergman, Woody Allen

Thought #1: “I have joked about art being the intellectual’s Catholicism, [or] a wishful belief in an afterlife. Better to live on in one’s apartment than to live on in the hearts and minds of the public, is how I put it. And certainly Bergman’s movies will live on and will be viewed at museums and on TV and sold on DVDs, but knowing him, this was meager compensation. I am sure he would have been only too glad to barter each one of his films for an additional year of life.”
Thought #2: “I’ve said it before to people who have a romanticized view of the artist and hold creation sacred: In the end, your art doesn’t save you. No matter what sublime works you fabricate (and Bergman gave us a menu of amazing movie masterpieces) they don’t shield you from the fateful knocking at the door that interrupted the knight and his friends at the end of The Seventh Seal.”
Thought #3: “Because I sang his praises so enthusiastically over the decades, when he died many newspapers and magazines called me for comments or interviews. As if I had anything of real value to add to the grim news besides once again simply extolling his greatness. How had he influenced me, they asked? He couldn’t have influenced me, I said, he was a genius and I am not a genius and genius cannot be learned or its magic passed on.”

A sizable Time magazine piece by Belinda Luscombe called “Who Killed The Love Story?” went up yesterday. It’s a state-of-the-industry lament about what Hollywood has been giving mainstream audiences in the way of good, affecting love stories, and with a dispiriting answer — damn few. Luscombe goes all over the map, mentions a lot of titles and talks to a lot of people, and nowhere — not even anecdotally or parenthetically — does she mention Once, the most affecting romantic movie in ages.
That’s because Once hasn’t made enough dough to qualify, in Time‘s eyes, as a bona fide romantic film. This is an absolutely idiotic way to look at it. Once has only made $6.5 million, but it’s held onto screens since opening last May by continuing to pull in urban singles and couples and ubers. It obviously has a following, and some (like Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone) are even talking about it being a possible Best Picture contender.
If I were Luscombe’s senior editor, I would give her a tongue-lashing and then put her on suspension for two weeks. Reporters Hilary Hylton and Rita Healy should be ashamed also. I mean this. This is one of the dumbest omissions I’ve ever seen in a major news weekly — crass, clueless.

This is the first half-decent still I’ve seen anywhere from Tim Burton‘s Sweeney Todd (Dreamamount, 12.21). Have others turned up elsewhere? I like it that the colors are nicely muted. I can’t tell if dp Dariusz Wolski is going with one of those almost-monochromatic color schemes (in the vein of the one used by Clint Eastwood for Letters From Iwo Jima) or not. But if he is, this is the first thing I’ve liked about the smell of this film so far.

Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter

There are now two Abraham Lincoln movies in the pipeline — that serious weighty thing that Steven Spielberg will direct with Liam Neeson in the title role (i.e., the one I’ve been writing about since ’05), and a weird-thoughtful comedy from director Mike Binder about Lincoln being somehow brought back to life by an electric charge of some kind or another, and grappling with life in 2007. I’m not kidding, and I think its an excellent concept. But what would you call it? Remancipator?
My first thought was “cool…Abe’s back” but then I thought about this. A great legend of the 19th Century comes face to face with the mind-blowing and the tragic aspects of what this country has become is….not funny. A man from a world of sabers, horse and buggies, hoop skirts and top hats encountering obese people and SUVs everywhere, McMansions, global warming, George Bush, celebrity meltdowns, junk food, etc.? That’s a kind of horror film.
But the more I thought about it, the funnier it became. A fish-out-of-water piece with all kinds of strange cultural undercurrents. Lincoln driving a car, visiting Banana Republic, taking a Pilates class, dealing with an iPhone, etc. He can’t meet a nice bank teller and fall in love like Malcolm McDowell‘s H.G. Wells did in Time After Time. What would be do with himself? Become a pot dealer? A horse breeder?
In any event, Binder and Spielberg are sort-of bonded now. Binder says that Spielberg told him he’ll start work on the Lincoln film as soon as he finishes work on Indiana Jones 4, which would be next summer or next fall.

Summing up his feelings about Rush Hour 3, Time’s Richard Corliss says that “the first Rush Hour was a pretty good movie, the second one pretty lame [and] the threequel is somewhere in between — nothing special but with a high amiability quotient.” Plus Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker “know they click, [and] it’s no crime for them to extend and exploit that good vibe one more time.” That constitutes a “red” Rotten Tomato review? I’m asking because Corliss is one of the few major critic whose reviews haven’t been rated as “green” (i.e., thumbs down). Variety‘s Robert Koehler and the Philadelpha Inquirer‘s Carrie Rickey also gave it a pass. Brett Ratner‘s actioner has an 18% positive rating overall.