Writers — serious writers of books and plays as opposed to, say, journalists — are not very interesting people to make films about. They’re almost as bad as painters. Morose, self-destructive depressives…terrific. Unless the film follows the writer on an intense real-life adventure of some kind, as Fred Zinneman‘s Julia did with an episode in the life of the young Lillian Hellman. Or better yet, if the movie somehow injects its writer character into a surreal realm of his/her own devising, like Joel and Ethan Coen did with John Turturro‘s gloom-head screenwriter in Barton Fink, or like David Cronenberg did with a William S. Burroughs-like character in his adaptation of Naked Lunch.
The latter approach, apparently, is the idea behind Paul Giamatti‘s untitled, just-announced film about Blade Runner author Phillip K. Dick movie, which Giamatti’s Touchy Feely Films will produce with Anonymous Content. The screenplay, to be written by Tony Grisoni (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), will use elements from Dick’s unfinished novel “The Owl in Daylight.” The visually surreal aspects of Tery Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing mixed with an “Owl” synopsis (found on Wikipedia) offer clues about what Giamatti’s film will be up to. In fact, it sounds like it may contain similarities to Lady in the Water as well as an echo or two from Kurt Vonnegut‘s Slaughterhouse Five and Spike Jonze‘s Being John Malkovich.
Giamatti will play Ed Firmley, a composer of music scores for second-tier horror and sci-fi films who gets mugged by a squad of deaf alien humanoids — emissaries of a species that can’t hear but enjoys amazing visual abilities — who implant a micro-chip in Firmley’s head so their brethren back home can monitor and experience his life. The aliens soon become disinterested in the idea when they realize what a cheeseball-level composer Firmley is, and from this point is where the story truly takes flight. The meaning of the “The Owl in Daylight” title is presumably self-explanatory.

The history of movies about writers is mostly colored in varying shades of tedium.
My nomination for the worst movie ever made about a playwright is Arthur Hiller‘s Author! Author! (’82).
Christine Jeffs‘ Slyvia, with Gwynneth Paltrow as suicidal author Sylvia Plath, turned out far better than Larry Peerce‘s The Bell Jar (’79), but that didn’t make it pulse-quickening in and of itself.
Ernest Hemingway‘s times in Italy during World War I resulted decades later in one of the worst wartime romance movies ever made, Richard Attenborough‘s In Love and War (’96) as well as the middling Rock Hudson–Jennifer Jones romance A Farewell to Arms (’57).
I don’t have any recollections of Peter MacNicol‘s “Stingo” being an especially riveting character in Alan Pakula‘ s Sophie’s Choice (’82).
Al Freeman Jr.’s budding writer character in Castle Keep (’69) had a few pithy lines, but mostly seemed to fade into the woodwork.
I have mostly dreary recollections of Vincent D’Onofrio‘s Robert Howard character in Doug Ireland‘s The Whole Wide World , and also of Jennifer Jason Leigh‘s Dorothy Parker in Alan Rudolph‘s Mrs Parker and the Vicious Circle.
On top of Turturro in Barton Fink, Peter Weller’s “Bill Lee” in Naked Lunch and Jane Fonda’s Lillian Hellman in Julia, I can think of two other absorbing writer characters: Joseph Fiennes ‘ Will Shakespeare in Shakespeare in Love and Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Jim Carroll in The Basketball Diaries.

Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland‘s Quinceanera (Sony Pictures Classics) is a nice little cultural mixer (gays and Hispanics in L.A.’s Echo Lake district) and an above-average indie drama. The story moves along, nothing feels arch or forced, and all but one of the characters are likable. The one who isn’t — the problem — is Emily Rios, who plays the central character of Magdelena, whose pregnancy gets her kicked out of her home and leads to her staying with an 80-something uncle (Chalo Gonzalez) along her gay cousin Carlos (Jesse Garcia), etc. The glitch is that Rios plays her character like a sourpuss all through — irritated, frowning, scowling — and spending time with her is a drag. It’s not Rios herself — she’s lively enough off-screen — but Glatzer and Westmoreland’s decision to cover Magdelena in downer molasses.

Quinceanera star Emily Rios “playing” Magdelena in a poster shot for the film (l.) and at last month’s Seattle Film Festival (r.)

11 years ago, to mark the 100th anniversary of cinema, the Vatican (expressing its wisdom through a site maintained by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) made known its choice of 45 all-time great films. You’d think they could have at least gone for 50 or 60 films. You’d think they’d also would have updated the list last year to honor the 110th anniversary. That aside, the Vatiican made some decent calls back in the Clinton era; plus their critic knew how to write and sounded moderately sophisticated. The films are blocked into three categories: religion, values and art.

This photo of the late Jayne Mansfield, taken from a dance-hall sequence in Raoul Walsh ‘s Sheriff of Fractured Jaw (’58), is taken from Dave Kehr‘s DVD column on the N.Y. Times site. Some Times guy working for the tech squad has obviously squeezed it horizontally, and the effect is more than weird. It’s almost spooky.

Mansfield’s face somehow reminds me of Don Keefer‘s on that Twilight Zone episode called “It’s a Good Life” — the way Keefer looked after being turned into a plastic jack-in-the-box head, I mean. A mere photo hasn’t creeped me out this much since I was six or seven years old.

This has been an incredibly soft day. In terms of stuff to get into, I mean. I feel numb, drifting. Like I’m in a rowboat without oars. It’s so draggy I’m reduced to tapping out items like the one you’re reading right now. It’s so slow I’m linking to a Bill Maher/Mel Gibson piece that was Huffington Post-ed five days ago. Pathetic. This is a good excerpt, though: “Mel, let me remind you: The Jews have not started all the wars in the world. But they have greenlit all the movies.”

Horror and Kevin Smith? Doesn’t sound right. The words “profoundly awful idea” may even apply. I’ve previously suggested his writing suggested a GenX Who’s Afraid of Viriginia Woolf, which I know he has in him. And here’s a new pitch: a 150-minute My Dinner with Andre with Jason Mewes and I-don’t-know-who-else. Maybe Kevin, maybe somebody else playing Mewes’ old friend, maybe an actress playing a hot date, maybe Nick Nolte playing his dad. Shot in a restaurant like Andre, with nothing but closeups and two-shots and just dialogue, dialogue, dialogue.

Something needs to be explained about the new Fox Home Video Star Wars double-disc DVD (out 9.12), which will include both the original 1977 version plus the digitally reworked, extra-scenes version that Lucas created in the ’90s. Even though the DVD jacket displays a big golden “IV” in the background plus that rejiggered ’90s title — “Stars Wars: A New Hope — that Lucas created back in the Clinton years, the opening yellow credit crawl seen at the beginning of the brand-new, spiffed-up ’77 version will simply say “STAR WARS” and then go into the storybook crawl. The words “A NEW HOPE” will not appear. Just wanted to make that clear.

This 8.6.06 Australian Herald Sun piece doesn’t put much on the table, but it’s reporting that 19 years ago Mel Gibson expressed some form of roundabout verbal support for the Australian League of Rights. The group is described by reporter Lincoln Wright as “a far-right group notorious for its anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial.” (Gibson reportedly campaigned for “a friend” [named] Rob Taylor, who is described as having “stood unsuccessfully for the northern Victorian federal seat of Indi,” although Taylor’s ties to the Australian League of Rights group, if any, aren’t remotely explained.) The story strikes me as a bit thin, but there may be a whiff of truth in it.

I always miss good movies at Sundance, every time, and one I missed last January is an intimate relationship drama called Off the Black. Directed and written by James Ponsoldt, the film has no website (a mistake) but ThinkFilm is releasing it on 12.1.06. I can’t seem to find a nice, tight little one-line description but it has something do with a high-school umpire (played by Nick Nolte) and a screwed-up kid (Trevor Morgan) and the kid’s not-very-nurturing father (Tim Hutton ).

I’m particularly interested because I’m a big Nolte fan (I thought he should have gotten more attention last year for his suporting performance in The Beautiful Country) and because I’ve been hearing that Off The Black might turn into a Best Actor Oscar shot for the guy in a small-time, limited-ad-budget, little-Oscar-campaign-that-could sort of way. Like Felicity Huffman managed to do with Transamerica, and Laura Linney managed with You Can Count on Me….one of those deals.
A guy named Matt Park wrote me this morning saying “this is the best performance Nolte has ever delivered. He said something about he and his girlfriend being choked up when the lights came up at the Eccles but you have to watch that stuff. Nolte’s umpire, he wrote, is “rough, vulgar, hilarious…he breaks your heart. And the film manages to be honest and emotional and funny without ever being overly sentimental. It felt like some of my favorite flicks from the 70’s.”
I’ve had to remind myself three times so far that Ponsoldt’s film isn’t called Into the Black. It’s a funny title. It doesn’t seem to “say” anything.
I’m going to be seeing it in two or three days, but the trades apparently liked it and so did MCN’s Stu Van Airsdale, and I’m wondering if anyone’s who’s seen it since has any reactions to share.

I filed “Apocalypto Later ” about 15 hours ago, and I’ve since read all the responses and elicited some new thoughts and the consensus, boiled down, seems to be this: Americans are not the media, and are fairly racist deep-down and don’t really care that much about Mel’s anti-Semitic rant so don’t worry about any negative reactions to the film, especially with some people apparently being more inclined to see Apocaylpto because of this episode.

The other factor is that unless Gibson himself asks for a release-date delay, Touchstone, the film’s distributor, is pretty much obliged to be supportive of Apocaylpto because not being supportive sends the wrong message to other filmmakers, and so the film will probably come out on 12.8 and that’s that.
Repeating for clarity’s sake: this seems to be a “consensus” view, okay? It’s not necessarily my own view that Americans are racist — it’s what people are telling me. Got it?
An industry consultant says that Apocalypto “is so out there” — foreign language, exotic Mayan culture backdrop, guys in loincloths and face-paint carrying spears — “that it won’t be a true test of Gibson’s popularity waning or waxing. I doubt most of America will punish Mel for anti-Semitic remarks as most of them are bigots themselves. This is a very bigoted country.
“Before this happened Apocalypto was a marketing challenge, to say the least. There’s a question about the film not having a strong villain, and without that you don’t have a strong hero figure. So how do you get people to see this movie? People don’t go to see the best foreign-language fims in this country, so I wonder how you’re going to get them to come see this one except…you have to wonder, you really do have to wonder…if it was sold as ‘this is the film Hollywood Jews don’t want you to see….if you want to see more Jesus films, go see this one.'”
The Touchstone situation is this: (a) The studio has a close relationship with Gibson dating back to Ransom , and yet the company at large does not; (b) Unless Gison asks them to delay the release date (which is possible), or corporate gets queasy (also possible), it’s doubtful that Touchstone will blink or do anything that looks unsupportive; and (c) The campaign will be much trickier now, but that will be the case anyway with a March of April ’07 release date since the press will resurrect the anti-Semitic drama no matter what.
And finally, I want to make sure everyone considers an idea floated by reader Nate West — an envelope-pushing comedy called Meet the Rabbis that you just know everyone would want to see, no question. The basic plot involves an aging, drunken movie star who blows up his career with a stunning racist tirade. Then he’s forced to attend sensitivity sessions with two rabbis played by Ben Stiller and Steve Carell. Of course, the funny part is that deep down he really does hate Jews. Even funnier is that his public doesn’t much mind that he hates Jews, because either they don’t know any or they hate them too.
In all seriousness, if Gibson, Stiller and Carell were to make this film — and of course, if it turned out to be as dark and funny as the premise suggests — Gibson’s troubles would be over. He would be totally in the clear…but the film wouldn’t work if Gibson didn’t play himself as bluntly and candidly as he probably really is, deep-down.

Apocalypto Later

The Mel Gibson mess seems to be getting heavier all around, like fog. People will eventually get sick of it, but they’ll never forget about it. I’ve gotten used to the idea of news stories flaring brightly for a week or two and then going away, but there’s something deeper and skunkier about this one. Fame lasts 15 minutes; memories of racial hatred tend to linger a bit longer.
And that probably means that Gibson’s Apocalypto (Disney, 12.8) may have to push back its release date. April ’07, I’m thinking. Maybe. I don’t know. I’d like to hear opinions. But I’m starting to think that bumping it makes sense.

Mel Gibson giving direction during shooting of Apocalypto (Touchstone, 12.8)

There are lots of indications out there about how deep-seated the public’s anger at Gibson may be over his reported anti-Semitic blurtings, but the thing that got me was a story about Gibson’s troubles (“Mel to Pay?”) in the News & Notes section of this week’s Entertainment Weekly.
I don’t remember any story in this section ever drawing a hard moral line in the sand. Views and attitudes are hinted at left and right every week, but never in a declarative, plain-spoken way. But right after saying that attempts at rehabbing Gibson’s image (including “the Official Talk Show Contrition Tour””) are probably in the works, writer Daniel Fierman concludes with these words: “We’re here to tell you it’s not going to work — at least right now. The violence of Gibson’s [anti-Semitic] words won’t allow it.”
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The words “we’re here to tell you” tells me something is going on. Anything that goads EW editors into growing a pair and actually allowing something to be said in their magazine is a significant seismic indicator. And I’m starting to think there’s no way Disney’s Touchstone division can put Apocalypto (12.8) into theatres only four months from now.
The pre-release p.r. campaign would obviously have to begin sometime around mid October, and no matter how many Larry King and Diane Sawyer confessionals Gibson does on the tube (and he’ll probably have to wait until late September or early October to do these or he’ll look too craven), any Apocalypto interview he gives will turn into a referendum on racism.
I strongly doubt that the Gibson moral rehab effort can work if it’s hurried along. And I doubt it can be managed successfully (if it can be managed at all) over the next two months.

The public needs to chill about this, and the media needs to get sick of writing about it. We all know that as long as editors and reporters think there’s any juice in this story, they’ll keep hammering. Everyone has to get completely bored of dissing Mel-the-bigot — it’s the only way — and that can only be achieved through endless repetition.
The Gibson thing will cool down naturally by the end of this month, but it’ll spark up again like a wounded panther if and when the Apocalypto campaign starts up in the mid fall.
I have an idea that if Touchstone pushes Apocalypto back and lets the boiling water cool down, it’ll be less difficult to release it in early April, or possibly late March. Or maybe a bit earlier. I’m not sure. People are going to bring up anti- Semitism no matter when Apocalypto comes out, but they’ll probably be a bit more tired of it six or seven or eight months from now.
I’m leaving film fanatics like myself out of the equation. I’d much rather see Apocalypto sooner than later. Gibson is a nervy hard-core filmmaker, and I’ve been reading all along that he’s got something to say about parallels between ancient Mayan culture and our own. My vote, personally, is open it sooner, not later. But I’m from Mars.
I was talking with some guys in a video store last night about Apocalypto‘s release, and one guy in his early 40s said he thinks the Malibu racism thing will increase interest in people wanting to see it, and that nobody will give that much of a damn in four months’ time.
I suspect this may be a minority view, but what does everyone think?