It’s strange, but there’s a bizarre scene in Nancy Meyers‘ The Holiday when Cameron Diaz punches her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend (played by Ed Burns) that almost works, and the same bit is shown in the Holiday trailer and it doesn’t work at all. The reason is that the sound of the punch is different in the feature (i.e., fake but not blatantly so) than in the trailer.
When Cameron decks Burns in the film, it sounds half-realistic in a typical bogus way — you hear that combination “thunk-kish” sound that foley techicians have been fond of for the last 50 or 60 years. But when she slugs him in the trailer, it sounds like ten Rocky Balboas slugging ten slabs of raw meat simultan- eously in a Philadelphia butcher shop, only amplified and turned up to 10.
What does this mean? That trailers are about the bullshit “sell” (even if hearing a ridiculously over-amped punch sends some of us running in the opposite direction) and are about their own jackoff standards and maneuvers, and movies are about trying to adhere to a kind of movie reality that’s supposed to be at least somewhat acquainted with the way people actually behave and the way things actually sound. Even if the film has been directed by Nancy Meyers.

For months I’ve been feeling that former FAA bigwig Ben Sliney, who plays himself in Paul Greengrass‘s United 93, should be regarded as a Best Supporting Actor contender. It’s a minority opinion, okay, but New York Post critic Lou Lumenick is an ally. And there’s a lot more merit to this suggestion than you might think at first.

Ben Sliney at Hollywood’s Renaissance Hotel — 11.22.06, 10:35 am

Sliney does a lot more in this superb film than play himself, and he does more than just “behave.” He exudes a mixed-bag thing that boils down to three quan- tities — trust, concentration and plain-spokenness. A Boston-area native and a former Manhattan attorney who lives in Long Island (about a half hour out of town), Sliney sends out decency signals like a radio tower — a certain can-do affable- ness. He’s Joe Pesci without the manic edge. He’s Jack Warden in the ’70s and ’80s, only less actor-ish. He’s James Gleason. (Very few readers know who Gleason was, I’m guessing, but he was the boxing manager in ’41’s Here Comes Mr. Jordan.)
Sliney is a soother character. As soon as he appeared in United 93 and started talking, I said to myself, “I like this guy…he’s part white-collar, part blue-collar.” A lot of actors know how to summon the skill to project this quality, but very few seem to be actually be it. Sliney’s United 93 performance is a little like Harold Russell‘s in The Best Years of Our Lives, only he seems smarter and more confident.
I met hundreds of meat-and-potato guys like Ben Sliney when I lived in Manhattan in the early ’80s, and there ought to be more of them in movies.. Because they’re life-like in a familiar, vaguely comforting sort of way. And you can’t beat that last name. “Sliney” is the kind of name would-be actors always drop when they decide to try to get into the business. It’s a name like “Smucker.” Worse, actually.
I just saw Nancy Meyers‘ The Holiday the other night, and it’s all about big stars putting on acts that you don’t believe. (Jack Black is the only genuine presence among the four leads — Eli Wallach and Ed Burns are very good in supporting roles.) Ben Sliney may not be an “actor,” but he projects more humanity, warmth and natural charm in United 93 than Cameron Diaz, Jude Law and Kate Wins- let do in Meyers’ film.

Another guy Sliney reminds me of is marketing guy Tom Sherak, who used to be a vice-chairman at 20th Century Fox and then a top dog at Revolution Studios. Sherak spoke before a class that I moderated back in the mid ’90s, and people liked him right away for the same reasons. Because he talks like a working-class guy and doesn’t put on airs, but at the same time is obviously brilliant and shrewd and a gentleman.
I spoke to Sliney late this morning in the lobby of the Rennaissance Hotel. We began by talking about computers and how he learned to “act” as a trial lawyer. I don’t have to summarize our chat — it’s all there. Here’s the mp3.
Message to agents: this guy really has something and is jazzed enough by his United 93 experience to maybe act again. Message to Academy: in his own unforced, unassuming way, Sliney is just as good in his film as Adam Beach is in Flags of Our Fathers , Jack Nicholson in The Departed, Brad Pitt in Babel and and Steve Carell and Alan Arkin in Little Miss Sunshine.
And he’s better than Eddie Murphy in Dreamgirls because he has more of a lived-in quality than Murphy (who “acts” all through it) and because he never drops his pants.

There is no peace to be had from Thanksgiving, ever…unless your idea of peace is having a bloated stomach and a feeling of being drugged and woozy and needing desperately to take a long walk. The only sense of thankfulness I presently have is due to Oscar season ad revenues. As for stuffing myself…forget it. I spoke Monday with Flags of Our Fathers costar Adam Beach (awfully nice guy) and he was in the fourth day of a ten-day fast. Meeting Beach and being told this was a message from the Health God, I later decided. No eating rich foods. Pigging out, bad. But for those of you who still subscribe to the Thanksgiving mythology, HE hopes you have a nice one tomorrow.

What a revoltin’ development! Nikki Finke is reporting that Sony is paying $4 million to Akiva Goldsman to write what will technically be a sequel to The Da Vinci Code, the strangely popular adaptation on Dan Brown‘s best-seller that I saw once — once — at the Cannes Film Festival and will never, ever see again. Goldsman will be adapting Angels & Demons, which is actually a Da Vinci Code prequel. (“Robert Langdon’s first adventure!”) Brown, meanwhile, is now in the midst of writing an actual Da Vinci Code sequel, for which Goldman will presumably be paid $7.5 million adapt into screenplay form.
Finke says $4 million is an all-time high figure “for hiring a screenwriter.” Of course, Shane Black got paid $4 million in ’95 or thereabouts to write The Long Kiss Goodnight (or so says his Wikipedia bio), but then he wound up with a producer credit also so maybe that was partly the reason he was paid this. (I called Black’s agent Tom Strickler at Endeavor for specifics…zip.) Finke says Goldsman isn’t getting a producer credit on Angels & Demons — the fee is for “straight scribbling.”
The problem with Angels & Demons is where do the haters go with it emotionally? Everyone is hating it sight unseen now, but how do we top that when and if it goes to Cannes in ’08 or ’09? I foresee a big screening of Angels & Demons at the Grand Palais and 97% of the critics panning it, and Columbia marketing chief Valerie Van Galder saying to a journalist, “Gosh darn it all…you work your fingers to the bone and you do everything you can to give it the best Cannes launch that you can, and then the critics come along and just dump on it!”

I tried to find my California Split and The Long Goodbye DVDs earlier today…loaned out! But here’s a pretty good McCabe and Mrs. Miller scene between Warren Beatty and Julie Christie, with Christie doing most of the talking.

“The New Line / Peter Jackson contretemps is just posturing on both sides of an ongoing negotation. There’s too much money to be made by settling their differences, so settle they will — after issuing a few inflammatory press releases first.” — a guy who seems to know everyone and is quite familiar with New Line corporate pyschology.

The forthcoming Xmas season is looking weak, weak….exhibitors are crying. Prior-to-Thanksgiving holiday-tracking is always one indicator, and the only title with any kind of potential heat (i.e., build factor) is Will Smith‘s The Pursuit of Happyness (Columbia, — 12.20) — 69, 35, 3. Otherwise nothing is over 6 or a 7 in the first choice category. Night at the Museum and Dreamgirls may ignite a month from now, but right now early tracking isn’t pointing to anything really big — nothing Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter level. It’s almost all low-flamey.
The only thing that has any kind of strength this coming five-day weekend (starting on Wednesday) is Tony Scott, Jerry Bruckheimer and Denzel Washington‘s Deja Vu — 85, 43, 15. Those are good numbers, but not overwhelming — if it was going to really burn the house down the first choice would be in the 20s. It could maybe reach $50 million as of Sunday evening.
Deck The Halls (20th Century Fox, 11.22) is looking okay — 71, 25, and 4….but the survey guys aren’t talking to the kids. For Your Consideration (Warner Independent) is mezzo-mezzo — 26, 23 and 1. The Fountain (one toke over the line, sweet Jesus) is at 44, 24 and 3. Tenacious D — 63, 27 and 5. Bobby…57, 35 (decent), first choice 7…but not overwhelming.
The Nativity (New Line, 12.1) is at 38, 27 and 2. Apocalypto (Touchstone, 12.8) is 53, 22…negative number (i.e., definitely not interested) are at 14 and holding…and the first choice is 2. The negatives and the first choice haven’t moved — that means trouble. Blood Diamond (Warner Bros., 12.8) is puttering along — 58, 31 and 4. The Holiday (Columbia, 12.8) — 61, 25 and 2…not much. Eragon , 38, 30 3.
No numbers yet on the other prospective biggies. Night at the Museum (20th Century Fox, 12.20) is supposed to be pretty good, and it may take off big-time. Dreamgirls (Dreamamount) isn’t opening wide until 12.25 — early numbers will be in tomorrow.

I’ve just heard about the death of the irreplacable, eternally influential Robert Altman. There are hundreds of things I could riff on, but death’s honesty always seems to be a little too blunt — too sudden — when it comes to really special guys like Altman. I guess the Academy got around to giving him his gold-watch award last year none too soon. His health was getting shakier and shakier over the last three or four years.

I’m more than a little startled by this. I was always thinking Altman might just have one more bulls-eye in him. Something satiric and snappy, but in a gentle-trippy- haunting way. That’s what I think of when I think of his great films.
He was a beautiful ornery man, occasionally touched by genius. That’s how genius is — it visits, whispers, flutters down and lights you up…and then it’s gone. And you can’t even show the world that it’s touched you unless you’re lucky as well. Altman was lucky and imbued enough to have things really work out maybe six or seven times in his life, and that’s pretty impressive.
I’m talking the usual litany, of course: Nashville, The Long Goodbye, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Player, M.A.S.H., California Split, Thieves Like Us, Tanner on HBO, Gosford Park…what is that, eight? A Prairie Home Companion was warm and very spirited…an engaging mood piece (I loved Garrison Keillor and Meryl Streep‘s singing), but not quite pantheon-level.
I used to get a real kick out of Altman’s ornery-ness. He was always friendly, but he never smiled unless he really meant it. He tended to scowl and he didn’t suffer fools. He sure as shit didn’t tolerate any of my bullshit when I first started to talk to him in early ’92, when early screenings of The Player were happening and I was trying to spread the word that Altman was back in a big way.

When I asked to do a second Entertainment Weekly interview with him prior to the opening of The Player in April ’92, he thought I was being inefficient and taking too long and flat-out said so: “What are you, writing a book?” A month or two later we were both at the Cannes Film Festival, and I was trying to get quotes for an EW piece about celebrity reactions to the Rodney King riots that had just happened in Los Angeles. I asked Altman for a quote at a black-tie party on the beach, and he scowled again. “This subject is too important to comment about for Entertain- ment Weekly,” he said, and then turned his back.
You can’t hear me, Bob, and if you were here you wouldn’t give a shit anyway, but I’ve been telling people that line for the last 14 years and getting a good laugh from it every time.
I lived in a studio on Hightower Drive in the Hollywood hills in ’85 and ’86 precisely because it was on the same little street where the way-up-high, elevator-access, deco-styled Long Goodbye apartment was located — the one that Elliot Gould‘s Philip Marlowe lived in. You know, the one with the naked hippie-girl neighbors who used to ask him to pick up some brownie mix on his way out to the super market at 1:30 am?

Isn’t this the same funny trailer for Night at the Museum (20th Century Fox, 12.20) that’s been kicking around since Labor Day, if not before? That Robin Williams/Teddy Roosevelt bit is hilarious. (Meaning it’ll be tired when we finally see the film.) Thing is, it says “January 2007” at the very end — I just checked with a Fox rep and the opening date is definitely 12.20.06, so it appears the “human element” kicked in and somebody erred. The rep said they won’t be screening it until sometime in early December due to the scores of visual effects that have to be tweaked just so.

“While many critics were impressed by Children of Men‘s virtuosity and bravado,” writes Hollywood Reporter/Risky Biz blogger columnist Anne Thompson, “the industry types were seeing a downer film that’s going to lose money. The movie is a brilliant exercise in style, but it’s another grim dystopian look at our future — like Blade Runner or Fahrenheit 451 — that simply cost too much money.”
Wells to thoughtful industry types: (a) Yeah, it’s “grim” but, as you well know, only in a general milieu-ish way — it’s mostly an action-driven chase movie, the story has a clear “maybe things aren’t so bad after all” theme, and the finale is all about relief, reverence and shelter from the storm, and (b) When a movie is photographed with as much genius as Children of Men and is so thrillingly well-done, it can’t be called downerish unless you’re a total moron because the whole thing is so exhilarating to sit through. Going to this film and calling it a “downer” is like standing in front of Pablo Picasso‘s “Guernica” and complaining that it’s not colorful enough (i.e., Pablo painted it in grays, blacks and whites).
Thompson reports that Men cost between $72 and $90 million, which I’ll admit seems like a lot. “So what if it makes money or not?,” she rhetorically asks. “It matters because we want smart, risky movies to return some cash so that the studios are encouraged to make more of them.
“One could look at this as the passion project that [director-cowriter] Alfonso Cuaron finally got to make after delivering a blockbuster like Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. That’s how things work. He can afford a noble failure. The studios all want to be in business with him.”

Before reading this item, please click on this mp3 file — it’ll set the proper mood. Done? Here we go: We all know what the words “directed by Nancy Meyers” mean — glossy, carefully lighted comedies about smart-but- quirky career women who (a) usually have shiny copper pots hanging in their kitchens and (b) have been hurt in past relationships but are looking to make a new unlikely relationship work, even if they start out hating the guy.

If you look at the trailer for The Holiday (Columbia, 12.8), Meyers’ latest romantic comedy, you may say to yourself (as I did), “Well, at least it has Jack Black in it.” But it may be okay. I haven’t yet seen it (and I most likely won’t until the first week of December) but let’s give it the benefit of the doubt. Naaah, can’t do that. Because the damn poster won’t stop irking me. Because it keep telling me “same old, same old” and “asleep at the wheel.”
You’ve got two couples — Cameron Diaz and Jude Law, Kate Winslet and Black — making goo-goo eyes at each other. (Black’s dippy grin makes him look toothless and deballed, on top of which he looks airbrushed within an inch of his life. We seem to be looking at a John Belushi-romances-Blair Bown Contintental Divide situation here.)
I’m just saying there’s something deeply untrustworthy about any poster that says, “Trust these smiling faces.” The Temptations didn’t trust them and I don’t either. What are they smiling about? Nothing, the poster says. It’s just chemistry — Cameron likes Jude and Kate likes Jack and vice versa, and you can count on them getting down in Act Two and putting another log on the fire and turning on the Sinatra and getting to know each other.
It’s just too bad that the Columbia ad guys didn’t try to convey something besides the same old Nancy Meyers stuff. It tells you it’s not exactly the most angular or unusual film she’s ever made. I mean, Columbia has actually made an effort to convey this to audiences. I can’t be the only one having this reaction.