In the obits for the recently-deceased John Vernon, everyone mentioned his role as Dean Wormer in Animal House. Almost no one, of course, mentioned his two finest roles — Maynard Boyle, the Reno-based mob guy in Don Siegel’s Charley Varrick (’73), and Mal Reese, Lee Marvin’s cowardly betrayer in John Boorman’s Point Blank (’67). There’s a transcendent moment in Varrick when Vernon, playing pool in a desert saloon, is called to the phone and told by small-time thief Varrick (Walter Matthau) that he wants to return a large amount of stolen mob money. Getting this dough back has been Vernon/Boyle’s obsession throughout the film, and when he hears it will be returned he delivers a beautiful little gesture with his hand. The gesture says, “Amazing! My life isn’t over, I won’t be killed by my mob associates…life can be beautiful!”

Have the right-wing attacks against Million Dollar Baby (or the import of its ending, rather) given any kind of advantage to The Aviator? I am of the firm opinion that The Aviator has no chance to take the Best Picture Oscar…none. There is a slim chance that a last-minute surge of sympathy for Martin Scorsese (with everyone starting to realize that The Aviator is finished, and wanting to do something for poor Scorsese after all…despite the indications of Clint Eastwood’s DGA Best Director win) has begun to manifest….maybe. I’m attributing this development to last Tuesday’s release of the two-disc Raging Bull DVD.

Strange Invaders

There√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s no telling how good or even credible Timothy Hines’ screen adaptation of H.G. Wells√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ The War of the Worlds will be, but it√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s hard not to sympathize with any David facing a Goliath…especially when the kid with the slingshot got rolling on his project first.
Hines’ film cost $12 million and apparently has no formal distributor, but will open, it is being claimed, seven and a half weeks from now — on Wednesday, March 30 — in five major cities on a four-wall basis…or so I’ve been told. (Hines is claiming he has a distributor, although he won’t identify it.)
Paramount Pictures War of the Worlds (6.29), which is costing at least $150 million to produce, boasts the talents of director Steven Spielberg, star Tom Cruise and screenwriter David Koepp. Nonetheless, it will open about three months after the indie upstart.

A turn-of-the-century English military man (James Lathrop) enduring an attack by Martian invaders in Timothy Hines’ modestly-budgeted version of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds.

No one thinks this will have even a slight effect upon the grosses of the Spielberg film, but the timing of the release of Hines’ film could work in his favor.
The notion of a Seattle-based, hip-pocket filmmaker beating Spielberg, Cruise and Paramount Pictures to the Martian punch is, at the very least, intriguing.
As Hines told me yesterday over the phone, “I√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢m not doing this on the coattails of Spielberg. I√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ve been working on this film for seven years. We almost made it two years ago but 9/11 forced us to rewrite it and start over. In any event we√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢re not selling sizzle — we actually have the steak.”
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And yet there are issues about the Hines project that are giving me concern.
For one thing, the 44 year-old Hines (House of the Rising, A Midsummer Night’s Dream) won√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t tell me who his financial backers are, except to describe them as “computer industry people, and I√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢m not talking about Paul Allen or Bill Gates.” He said one of the individuals behind the project is “one of the largest venture capitalists in the world.”
Then there’s the issue of Hines declining to tell me who his distributor is. I was told Friday morning that he doesn’t actually have one — he and his partners are going to self-distribute (i.e., “four wall”) by booking screens outright, paying for their own advertising, etc. Hines has since declared this is “not true,” although he wouldn’t cough up specifics.

The one-sheet for Hines’ film looks half-classy, half-exploitation…passable but a little bit cheesy-looking. It’s not the sort of movie poster, I would think, that a savvy, hard-core distribution marketer would necessarily use to sell a movie with. Is this reflective in some way of the film itself?
Hines, the head of a Seattle-based company called Pendragon Pictures, has been doing a fairly skillful job of promoting his film on at least two websites aimed at sci-fi geeks, but it bothers me that the trailer won’t play, and is viewable only via Windows Media.
(Hines wrote me after this article posted on Friday and insisted “the trailers on howstuffworks.com are perfectly downloadable and have been downloaded by millions.” Good to hear…but I couldn’t download them, and a screenwriter friend who lives in New York had the same experience.)
Hines’ feature, an apparently faithful adaptation of Wells novel that√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s set in 1900 England, cost a reported $20 million, although $8 million of this was sunk into an earlier version that was going to be set in the present day, but was abandoned after the 9.11 tragedy. (It was decided that a modern-day film about invading destructive Martians would seem exploitive.)
H.G. Wells√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ The War of the Worlds, the official title of Hines’ project, may turn out to be a half-decent low-budgeter, a surprisingly inventive film or a grade-Z stinker, but come hell or high water it is apparently set to open in Atlanta, New York, Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco on 3.30.
A follow-up DVD release is set for 6.15 — two weeks before the Spielberg-Cruise flick hits screens.

Mechanical, spider-like Martian menace in H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds.

Whatever else it may turn out to be, the Spielberg-Cruise War of the Worlds is expected to be an all-out, go-for-broke CG extravaganza. It√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s a modern-day spin on Wells’ allegorical tale of alien invaders (i.e., it was meant as a metaphor for British colonialism, and was actually a kind of protest about the Boer War), and will be set largely in and around Hoboken, New Jersey, with Cruise apparently playing a longshoreman.
It wouldn’t be totally out of line in a present-day context to call the Spielberg-Cruise flick a metaphor about U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq — just think of U.S. forces as the Martians and the Iraqis as Hoboken natives.
I called around yesterday (i.e., Thursday) and found it hard to find anyone in the indie distribution community who√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s seen Hines’ film, or has spoken to anyone who√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s seen it.
Hines told me a story about the film’s release strategy and financial backing was expected to break in Forbes on 2.11, but I checked about this on Friday morning and it appears that the story may be delayed.
I asked Hines why his pre-release strategy didn’t involve a trade story or two in Variety or The Hollywood Reporter. He didn√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t have much of a response other than to air a suspicion that trade magazine reporters are too caught up in catering to powerful Hollywood distributor-advertisers to deliver an unbiased report about a small-time producer going up against the big guys.

I asked Hines two or three times about when the film would be shown to critics, and each time he gave what sounded to me like an evasive answer. He later told me he’ll let me have an exclusive peek sometime in early March.
Here’s some verbatim excerpts from what Hines told me. I√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢m just running the quotes undoctored, not having time to double-check everything before my scheduled return to Santa Barbara early this afternoon:
√¢‚Ǩ≈ìI√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ve been wanting to make War of the Worlds since I was ten years old. We were going to make a present-day version but we had to abandon our plan after 9/11.”
[Note: I don’t know for a fact that Hines began his film in ’98, but he took out a trade ad announcing his project in the 5.7.01 issue of Daily Variety, timed for appearance during the Cannes Film Festival.]
“I√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢m a small independent coming out of nowhere. We√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢re clearly not part of the Hollywood machine. Obviously, Steven Spielberg doesn√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t want to be seen as trailing in our footsteps. This is the first time ever in history in which a major studio, big-budget film will be following a smaller indie version of the same thing into the marketplace.
“We’re expecting to be trashed by critics, but my film is gorgeous. I cry every day at how well it’s coming together.
√¢‚Ǩ≈ìWe√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢re following the Wells book very closely, which partly involves using an old-fashioned idea know as story tension. The book begins with the initial landings, but the Martians don√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t really show their hand until one third of the way in…but you know all the while that they’re going to emerge and start attacking, and that√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s where the tension lies.”

Timothy Hines, apparently. (I haven’t met the guy or taken his photo personally.)

“I didn√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t make it as an analogy to the Iraqi War, although, yes, it√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s about occupiers and hubris. All through history invaders and conquerors have fallen prey to their own hubris. You see it again and again and again. Wells was protesting the Boer War with his book. He was saying Britain is going to fall one day, and it did…it was beaten by a little brown man wearing a loincloth.
“Paramount is trying to get people to compare our film with theirs on the basis of budget and special effects alone, but a satisfying film is about more than just that.
“That said, our effects are going to look as good as if not better than what you see on Star Trek, for instance. Our film, at its best, comes off as visually assured as The Matrix.”

SBIFF: The Return

Prior to the “Directors on Directing” panel at Santa Barbara’s Lobero theatre, on Saturday, 2.5.05, staged as part of the Santa Barbara Film Festival (l. to r.): the totally hidden head of Joel Schumacher (The Phantom of the Opera, Kevin Bacon (Loverboy), the partially hidden head of Terry George (Hotel Rwanda), Jeff Arch (Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys ), Luis Mandoki, i.e., Mexico’s answer to Carrot Top (Voces Inocentes), Alejandro Amenabar (The Sea Inside), Michael Traeger (The Moguls), and producer-moderator Peter Guber.

(l. to r.): Bacon, Schumacher, Arch, George, Mandoki, Amenabar and Traeger.

Santa Barbara’s Haley Street looking east, State Street at the traffic light — Saturday, 2.5.05, 5:25 pm.

Mike “Mouse” McCoy (l.), pretty much the star of Dana Brown’s Dust to Glory, a rousing, fast-moving doc about the Baja 1000 race in November ’03, with Brown (r.) at an after-party at Soho, an upstairs bar just off State Street — Saturday, 2.5.05, 10:40 pm.

Thoroughbred

I have this notion that the Norman Jean Roy photo of Hilary Swank that appears on page 362 of the new Vanity Fair (as well as on a Sunset Strip billboard plugging this issue) is going to cinch Swank’s chances at winning the Best Actress Oscar.

Million Dollar Baby star Hilary Swank in 1936 Leni Reifenstahl mode, as seen on Sunset Strip billboard plugging current Oscar-themed “Hollywood” issue of Vanity Fair.

One look at this photo and you can’t help saying, “Wow…she’s on it.” If nothing else it’s a reminder of the intense physicality that Swank brought to her performance in Clint Eastwood’s boxing film.
A Swank triumph has been feeling like a strong likelihood anyway, but this photo feels like a closer of some kind. Or am I just floating on my own fizz?

Throat Session

A gala invitational screening of Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey’s Inside Deep Throat (Universal, 2.11) happened Thursday night at Hollywood’s Arclight Dome theatre, followed by a discussion of some of the subjects raised by the film (social values, the legacy of pornography, etc.) by five prominent panelists.
Conservative talk-show host Dennis Prager brought about gasps from the mostly-liberal audience by saying he believed that damaging a child’s sense of sexual innocence was more emotionally harmful than exposing the same child to violence. He also advanced the notion of good violence (i.e., the shooting of evil Nazis) vs. bad violence.

After Thursday night’s screening of Inside Deep Throat, a discussion of sexual values by Democratic strategist/spokesperson Lawrence O’Donnell, author, filmmaker and Time critic Richard Schickel, author and syndicated columnist Arianna Huffington, conservative radio talk-show host Dennis Prager and Variety editor Peter Bart — 2.4.05, 9:25 pm at Hollywood’s Arclight Dome theatre.

Democratic spokesperson and campaign strategist Lawrence O’Donnell and Time magazine film critic Richard Schickel contended that no parent can keep his or her child in a state of idyllic innocence these days regarding sexual matters. Schickel said one needs to adopt an “existential, case-by-case, child-by-child” approach in dealing with these matters.
Moderator Peter Bart didn’t let audience members ask questions, but if he had I would have brought up the concept of good sex vs. bad sex, and why neither the film nor the panel had addressed the fundamental issue of how deeply depressing pornography is. The fact is that pornography envelops the viewer in the spiritual world of some very desperate and untalented people who are doing things that may seem hot at first, but after watching them for ten minutes or so constitute a total turn-off.

O’Donnell, Schickel, Huffington — 2.3.05, 9:40 pm at Hollywood’s Arclight Dome theatre.

I’ve always said that I would be a major porn fan if X-rated filmmakers would make their films look and feel like a 1960 Ingmar Bergman film — using moody, carefully- lighted black-and-white photography with someone of the calibre of Sven Nykvist serving as the director of photography, and using actresses like Bibi Anderson and Liv Ullman, and spoken in Swedish, of course.
I have never seen a single porno film shot in lustrous black-and-white. Has anyone? This alone indicates the skanky, donkey-like mentality of X-rated filmmakers, and their general unwillingness (inability?) to do anything other than shoot the same old boring crap.

Sharon’s Book

The first thing that got me about Sharon Waxman’s Rebels on the Backlot (Harper Entertainment) was its assurance. It’s a very smooth and soothing read.
Call me a plebian but I love inside-the-beltway books that deliver that massage-y, cruise-control, we-know-everything feeling(like Peter Biskind√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s Down and Dirty Pictures and David Thomson√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s The Whole Equation did) along with…you know, the other virtues.
The next thing that got me was a certain compassion for George Clooney and David O. Russell. Those poor guys…fine on their respective turfs, but put them together on the set of a physically difficult, hard-to-get-right movie like Three Kings and sparks of agitation are inevitable.

International Creative Management hotshot agent Robert Newman (i.e., “the hip indie guy”), Rebels on the Backlot author and New York Times Hollywood beat Sharon Waxman, and producer Don Murphy (From Hell, Permanent Midnight) at beginning of party for Waxman’s just-released book at Book Soup, an oasis of literacy in West Hollywood — 2.3.05, 7:05 pm.

Waxman delivers a better, more convincing story of their fight during the making of this 1999 film than anything I’ve read or heard anywhere else.
What was the hassle about? Russell, King√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s director, told Clooney before filming began that he needed to break a lot of bad acting “habits,” and that he wanted Clooney “to be very still” in his role. When Kings began rolling, Russell kept on Clooney to cut down on the Clooney-isms, in response to which the TV-series veteran repeatedly “bristled.”
√¢‚Ǩ≈ìTheir relationship seemed doomed,√¢‚Ǩ¬ù Waxman writes. Clooney “felt undermined by his director and labored under the burden of knowing he was Russell√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s last choice…this led to disastrous consequences.√¢‚Ǩ¬ù
Out-there guys like Russell are never a day at the beach, but David O. was only trying to bring about the aesthetically right thing. Clooney does have a lot of bad habits. That cool-smug-guy thing that he employs all the time…don√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t get me started. Russell may have been the provocateur in the breakdown of their working relationship, but Clooney needed — needs — what he was trying to dispense.
It was reported two or three months ago that Russell was upset with Waxman for making him seem slightly looney-tunes in her Times profile of his methods in the making of I Heart Huckabees. Many people agreed with him to some extent, but Waxman√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s book has balanced the ledger sheet. To my eyes, she’s portrayed Russell as the most doggedly exacting and perceptive high-profile director in town.

Rebels on the Backlot is essentially a story about the adventures of six cool-cat Gen-X writer-directors — the leaders of the pack who defined a certain accomplished, provocative, well-funded hipness over the least ten years: Russell, Spike Jonze, Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher, Steven Soderbergh and Paul Thomas Anderson.
“I wanted to know about who they were,” Waxman told a New York Observer writer last week. √¢‚Ǩ≈ìWhen you are talking about films that are so personal in their vision, you can√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t help but wonder from what mind or personality [those pieces of work] sprang.”
Waxman was in Park City covering the Sundance Film Festival for the New York Times, for which she handles the Hollywood beat. I could have arranged some face-time with her myself (which would have made the piece you’re reading a better one), but the festival kept shoving me around and throwing me off my game.
I√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ve run into these directors at one time or another, mostly in the course of doing this or that story, but I√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ve never gotten to know them. Not like I know Wes Anderson, I mean. (Hey…how come Waxman didn’t include him in the book? Focus on seven directors rather than seven, etc. Wes is as important as any of these other guys, I feel.)
Another thing that caused me to find Waxman√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s book delightful is that it conveys facts that significantly add to my understanding of what these filmmakers are about…what√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s driven them, scared them, briefly defeated them, inspired them.

Three Kings director David O. Russell, star George Clooney during the problematic (some would say tumultuous) shooting.

I was shocked, shocked to read that Quentin Tarantino’s background was not that of a white-trash, fast-food-eating Tennessee kid from a broken home, but one that was more or less upper middle-class.
There√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s a passage about Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s personal lives that I find fascinating. Partly because this is exactly the kind of passage that an aggressive and brilliant male writer would never include in a book about Hollywood filmmakers. It’s mildly cool nonetheless that Waxman has shown her colors in this fashion.
Tarantino nor Soderbergh “had trouble with intimacy” and “seemed [unable] to sustain relationships with the opposite sex,” she writes.
There was “a quiet woman” who was part of Tarantino√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s life about 12 or 14 years ago named Grace Lovelace “who remains -√¢‚Ǩ‚Äú according to many who know [Tarantino] — the true love of his life.” She reports that after he became famous Tarantino became “a serial dater of his leading ladies or his producer or the starlet of the moment.”
This is nothing compared to what she does to Soderbergh. She suggests that he may be James Spader in sex,lies and videotape, “the articulate intellectual dealing with emotions in distant, muted ways,” a guy, like Spader√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s “Graham” character, “who could enjoy sex with women only through the distance of the camera eye.”
To varying degrees, all the directors in Waxman’s book come off as fickle, egoistic, thin-skinned, prickly, brusque. This is nothing strange, of course. There’s always seemed to be a basic disconnect between submissive, mild-mannered, go-along behavior and being possessed of exceptional talent, smarts and vision. I’ve noticed this time and again, and it’s no big deal.

Some day, somehow, someone will discover on what set this shot of Steven Soderbergh was taken. My guess is The Limey.

A strong director can√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t be a strong director without being tough and flinty and at times unyielding. It√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s a tough game that requires toughness and tough hides. I respect this, and have no problem with anyone who wants to try and bitch-slap me (so to speak) or give me an argument of some kind about something I’ve written. As long as they’re straight about it, fine.
A week and a half ago Soderbergh lectured me during the Inside Deep Throat Sundance party. It was about my writing a couple of years ago that George Clooney’s Confessions of a Dangerous Mind seemed strongly influenced by Soderbergh-ian visual stylings, which, in his view, diminished Clooney’s rep by suggesting he had no visual chops or chutzpah of his own.
I wish more people in this town would play it like Soderbergh and just walk right up and say it to my face.
It may sound like a vague put-down to call Rebels a great airport lounge or a coast-to-coast read, but this book is friendly. I read it cover to cover, but it’s structured and titled in such a way that you can just drop into any chapter and go to town. I guess what I’m really saying is that people with attention deficit disorder will have no problem with it.

Monochrome Porn

“Regarding your comment about there being no black-and-white pornography: I’ve seen it done by Andrew Blake (http://www.andrewblake.com). He actually uses it quite a bit. His stuff is really top notch — all shot on film, excellent lighting and the best looking girls in porn. The only problem is that he’s really gotten into the bondage stuff, which does nothing for me.” — Ross Williams, writer-
director (http://eraticate.com)

Truce Already

“I liked your two stories about the competing Christmas Truce of 1914 projects. I thought you might be amused to know that there is a virtual train wreck of Christmas Truce projects in the works.
“Besides the Vadim Perelman’s The Truce, Paul Weitz’s Silent Night and the German-French co-production of Joyeux Noel costarring Diane Kurger (now in the can and slated for a Xmas ’05 release), there are also:
“(1) Truce: 1914 — A British production ramping up for a 2005 start to be helmed by Peter Shillingford, a director known for his IMAX work. Brian Cox, Til Schweiger and Jonny Lee Miller are attached. (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1466053)
“(2) Light of Peace — A film being produced by Marc Rosco of Electric Entertainment. Roland Emmerich was attached to direct.
“(3) …and a short film called Offside (produced by pop singer Michael Bolton) that premiered at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival.
“And then there is my own short film, also called The Truce, which won a Student Emmy and played at the 2001 Hamptons Film Festival (while Offside screened in an adjacent theater).
“I can’t accuse anyone of ripping me off; I was still shooting while Offside was in post. (http://www.thetruce.com and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289587/ combined).
“I had my own idea for a Christmas truce feature where the German and British soldiers team up to destroy an asteroid heading towards a crash collision with Earth, but none of the studios bit…alas.” — Eric Rolnick

Strange Invaders

There’s no telling how good or even credible Timothy Hines’ screen adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds will be, but it’s hard not to sympathize with any David facing a Goliath…especially when the kid with the slingshot got rolling on his project first.

Hines’ film cost $12 million and apparently has no formal distributor, but will open, it is being claimed, seven and a half weeks from now — on Wednesday, March 30 — in five major cities on a four-wall basis…or so I’ve been told. (Hines is claiming he has a distributor, although he won’t identify it.)

Paramount Pictures War of the Worlds (6.29), which is costing at least $150 million to produce, boasts the talents of director Steven Spielberg, star Tom Cruise and screenwriter David Koepp. Nonetheless, it will open about three months after the indie upstart.

A turn-of-the-century English military man (James Lathrop) enduring an attack by Martian invaders in Timothy Hines’ modestly-budgeted version of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds.

No one thinks this will have even a slight effect upon the grosses of the Spielberg film, but the timing of the release of Hines’ film could work in his favor.

The notion of a Seattle-based, hip-pocket filmmaker beating Spielberg, Cruise and Paramount Pictures to the Martian punch is, at the very least, intriguing.

As Hines told me yesterday over the phone, “I’m not doing this on the coattails of Spielberg. I’ve been working on this film for seven years. We almost made it two years ago but 9/11 forced us to rewrite it and start over. In any event we’re not selling sizzle — we actually have the steak.”

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And yet there are issues about the Hines project that are giving me concern.

For one thing, the 44 year-old Hines (House of the Rising, A Midsummer Night’s Dream) won’t tell me who his financial backers are, except to describe them as “computer industry people, and I’m not talking about Paul Allen or Bill Gates.” He said one of the individuals behind the project is “one of the largest venture capitalists in the world.”

Then there’s the issue of Hines declining to tell me who his distributor is. I was told Friday morning that he doesn’t actually have one — he and his partners are going to self-distribute (i.e., “four wall”) by booking screens outright, paying for their own advertising, etc. Hines has since declared this is “not true,” although he wouldn’t cough up specifics.

The one-sheet for Hines’ film looks half-classy, half-exploitation…passable but a little bit cheesy-looking. It’s not the sort of movie poster, I would think, that a savvy, hard-core distribution marketer would necessarily use to sell a movie with. Is this reflective in some way of the film itself?

Hines, the head of a Seattle-based company called Pendragon Pictures, has been doing a fairly skillful job of promoting his film on at least two websites aimed at sci-fi geeks, but it bothers me that the trailer won’t play, and is viewable only via Windows Media.

(Hines wrote me after this article posted on Friday and insisted “the trailers on howstuffworks.com are perfectly downloadable and have been downloaded by millions.” Good to hear…but I couldn’t download them, and a screenwriter friend who lives in New York had the same experience.)

Hines’ feature, an apparently faithful adaptation of Wells novel that’s set in 1900 England, cost a reported $20 million, although $8 million of this was sunk into an earlier version that was going to be set in the present day, but was abandoned after the 9.11 tragedy. (It was decided that a modern-day film about invading destructive Martians would seem exploitive.)

H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, the official title of Hines’ project, may turn out to be a half-decent low-budgeter, a surprisingly inventive film or a grade-Z stinker, but come hell or high water it is apparently set to open in Atlanta, New York, Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco on 3.30.

A follow-up DVD release is set for 6.15 — two weeks before the Spielberg-Cruise flick hits screens.

Mechanical, spider-like Martian menace in H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds.

Whatever else it may turn out to be, the Spielberg-Cruise War of the Worlds is expected to be an all-out, go-for-broke CG extravaganza. It’s a modern-day spin on Wells’ allegorical tale of alien invaders (i.e., it was meant as a metaphor for British colonialism, and was actually a kind of protest about the Boer War), and will be set largely in and around Hoboken, New Jersey, with Cruise apparently playing a longshoreman.

It wouldn’t be totally out of line in a present-day context to call the Spielberg-Cruise flick a metaphor about U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq — just think of U.S. forces as the Martians and the Iraqis as Hoboken natives.

I called around yesterday (i.e., Thursday) and found it hard to find anyone in the indie distribution community who’s seen Hines’ film, or has spoken to anyone who’s seen it.

Hines told me a story about the film’s release strategy and financial backing was expected to break in Forbes on 2.11, but I checked about this on Friday morning and it appears that the story may be delayed.

I asked Hines why his pre-release strategy didn’t involve a trade story or two in Variety or The Hollywood Reporter. He didn’t have much of a response other than to air a suspicion that trade magazine reporters are too caught up in catering to powerful Hollywood distributor-advertisers to deliver an unbiased report about a small-time producer going up against the big guys.

I asked Hines two or three times about when the film would be shown to critics, and each time he gave what sounded to me like an evasive answer. He later told me he’ll let me have an exclusive peek sometime in early March.

Here’s some verbatim excerpts from what Hines told me. I’m just running the quotes undoctored, not having time to double-check everything before my scheduled return to Santa Barbara early this afternoon:

“I’ve been wanting to make War of the Worlds since I was ten years old. We were going to make a present-day version but we had to abandon our plan after 9/11.”

[Note: I don’t know for a fact that Hines began his film in ’98, but he took out a trade ad announcing his project in the 5.7.01 issue of Daily Variety, timed for appearance during the Cannes Film Festival.]

“I’m a small independent coming out of nowhere. We’re clearly not part of the Hollywood machine. Obviously, Steven Spielberg doesn’t want to be seen as trailing in our footsteps. This is the first time ever in history in which a major studio, big-budget film will be following a smaller indie version of the same thing into the marketplace.

“We’re expecting to be trashed by critics, but my film is gorgeous. I cry every day at how well it’s coming together.

“We’re following the Wells book very closely, which partly involves using an old-fashioned idea know as story tension. The book begins with the initial landings, but the Martians don’t really show their hand until one third of the way in…but you know all the while that they’re going to emerge and start attacking, and that’s where the tension lies.”

Timothy Hines, apparently. (I haven’t met the guy or taken his photo personally.)

“I didn’t make it as an analogy to the Iraqi War, although, yes, it’s about occupiers and hubris. All through history invaders and conquerors have fallen prey to their own hubris. You see it again and again and again. Wells was protesting the Boer War with his book. He was saying Britain is going to fall one day, and it did…it was beaten by a little brown man wearing a loincloth.

“Paramount is trying to get people to compare our film with theirs on the basis of budget and special effects alone, but a satisfying film is about more than just that.

“That said, our effects are going to look as good as if not better than what you see on Star Trek, for instance. Our film, at its best, comes off as visually assured as The Matrix.”

SBIFF: The Return

Prior to the “Directors on Directing” panel at Santa Barbara’s Lobero theatre, on Saturday, 2.5.05, staged as part of the Santa Barbara Film Festival (l. to r.): the totally hidden head of Joel Schumacher (The Phantom of the Opera, Kevin Bacon (Loverboy), the partially hidden head of Terry George (Hotel Rwanda), Jeff Arch (Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys ), Luis Mandoki, i.e., Mexico’s answer to Carrot Top (Voces Inocentes), Alejandro Amenabar (The Sea Inside), Michael Traeger (The Moguls), and producer-moderator Peter Guber.

(l. to r.): Bacon, Schumacher, Arch, George, Mandoki, Amenabar and Traeger.

Santa Barbara’s Haley Street looking east, State Street at the traffic light — Saturday, 2.5.05, 5:25 pm.

Mike “Mouse” McCoy (l.), pretty much the star of Dana Brown’s Dust to Glory, a rousing, fast-moving doc about the Baja 1000 race in November ’03, with Brown (r.) at an after-party at Soho, an upstairs bar just off State Street — Saturday, 2.5.05, 10:40 pm.

Thoroughbred

I have this notion that the Norman Jean Roy photo of Hilary Swank that appears on page 362 of the new Vanity Fair (as well as on a Sunset Strip billboard plugging this issue) is going to cinch Swank’s chances at winning the Best Actress Oscar.

Million Dollar Baby star Hilary Swank in 1936 Leni Reifenstahl mode, as seen on Sunset Strip billboard plugging current Oscar-themed “Hollywood” issue of Vanity Fair.

One look at this photo and you can’t help saying, “Wow…she’s on it.” If nothing else it’s a reminder of the intense physicality that Swank brought to her performance in Clint Eastwood’s boxing film.

A Swank triumph has been feeling like a strong likelihood anyway, but this photo feels like a closer of some kind. Or am I just floating on my own fizz?

Throat Session

A gala invitational screening of Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey’s Inside Deep Throat (Universal, 2.11) happened Thursday night at Hollywood’s Arclight Dome theatre, followed by a discussion of some of the subjects raised by the film (social values, the legacy of pornography, etc.) by five prominent panelists.

Conservative talk-show host Dennis Prager brought about gasps from the mostly-liberal audience by saying he believed that damaging a child’s sense of sexual innocence was more emotionally harmful than exposing the same child to violence. He also advanced the notion of good violence (i.e., the shooting of evil Nazis) vs. bad violence.

After Thursday night’s screening of Inside Deep Throat, a discussion of sexual values by Democratic strategist/spokesperson Lawrence O’Donnell, author, filmmaker and Time critic Richard Schickel, author and syndicated columnist Arianna Huffington, conservative radio talk-show host Dennis Prager and Variety editor Peter Bart — 2.4.05, 9:25 pm at Hollywood’s Arclight Dome theatre.

Democratic spokesperson and campaign strategist Lawrence O’Donnell and Time magazine film critic Richard Schickel contended that no parent can keep his or her child in a state of idyllic innocence these days regarding sexual matters. Schickel said one needs to adopt an “existential, case-by-case, child-by-child” approach in dealing with these matters.

Moderator Peter Bart didn’t let audience members ask questions, but if he had I would have brought up the concept of good sex vs. bad sex, and why neither the film nor the panel had addressed the fundamental issue of how deeply depressing pornography is. The fact is that pornography envelops the viewer in the spiritual world of some very desperate and untalented people who are doing things that may seem hot at first, but after watching them for ten minutes or so constitute a total turn-off.

O’Donnell, Schickel, Huffington — 2.3.05, 9:40 pm at Hollywood’s Arclight Dome theatre.

I’ve always said that I would be a major porn fan if X-rated filmmakers would make their films look and feel like a 1960 Ingmar Bergman film — using moody, carefully- lighted black-and-white photography with someone of the calibre of Sven Nykvist serving as the director of photography, and using actresses like Bibi Anderson and Liv Ullman, and spoken in Swedish, of course.

I have never seen a single porno film shot in lustrous black-and-white. Has anyone? This alone indicates the skanky, donkey-like mentality of X-rated filmmakers, and their general unwillingness (inability?) to do anything other than shoot the same old boring crap.

Sharon’s Book

The first thing that got me about Sharon Waxman’s Rebels on the Backlot (Harper Entertainment) was its assurance. It’s a very smooth and soothing read.

Call me a plebian but I love inside-the-beltway books that deliver that massage-y, cruise-control, we-know-everything feeling(like Peter Biskind’s Down and Dirty Pictures and David Thomson’s The Whole Equation did) along with…you know, the other virtues.

The next thing that got me was a certain compassion for George Clooney and David O. Russell. Those poor guys…fine on their respective turfs, but put them together on the set of a physically difficult, hard-to-get-right movie like Three Kings and sparks of agitation are inevitable.

International Creative Management hotshot agent Robert Newman (i.e., “the hip indie guy”), Rebels on the Backlot author and New York Times Hollywood beat Sharon Waxman, and producer Don Murphy (From Hell, Permanent Midnight) at beginning of party for Waxman’s just-released book at Book Soup, an oasis of literacy in West Hollywood — 2.3.05, 7:05 pm.

Waxman delivers a better, more convincing story of their fight during the making of this 1999 film than anything I’ve read or heard anywhere else.

What was the hassle about? Russell, King’s director, told Clooney before filming began that he needed to break a lot of bad acting “habits,” and that he wanted Clooney “to be very still” in his role. When Kings began rolling, Russell kept on Clooney to cut down on the Clooney-isms, in response to which the TV-series veteran repeatedly “bristled.”

“Their relationship seemed doomed,” Waxman writes. Clooney “felt undermined by his director and labored under the burden of knowing he was Russell’s last choice…this led to disastrous consequences.”

Out-there guys like Russell are never a day at the beach, but David O. was only trying to bring about the aesthetically right thing. Clooney does have a lot of bad habits. That cool-smug-guy thing that he employs all the time…don’t get me started. Russell may have been the provocateur in the breakdown of their working relationship, but Clooney needed — needs — what he was trying to dispense.

It was reported two or three months ago that Russell was upset with Waxman for making him seem slightly looney-tunes in her Times profile of his methods in the making of I Heart Huckabees. Many people agreed with him to some extent, but Waxman’s book has balanced the ledger sheet. To my eyes, she’s portrayed Russell as the most doggedly exacting and perceptive high-profile director in town.

Rebels on the Backlot is essentially a story about the adventures of six cool-cat Gen-X writer-directors — the leaders of the pack who defined a certain accomplished, provocative, well-funded hipness over the least ten years: Russell, Spike Jonze, Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher, Steven Soderbergh and Paul Thomas Anderson.

“I wanted to know about who they were,” Waxman told a New York Observer writer last week. “When you are talking about films that are so personal in their vision, you can’t help but wonder from what mind or personality [those pieces of work] sprang.”

Waxman was in Park City covering the Sundance Film Festival for the New York Times, for which she handles the Hollywood beat. I could have arranged some face-time with her myself (which would have made the piece you’re reading a better one), but the festival kept shoving me around and throwing me off my game.

I’ve run into these directors at one time or another, mostly in the course of doing this or that story, but I’ve never gotten to know them. Not like I know Wes Anderson, I mean. (Hey…how come Waxman didn’t include him in the book? Focus on seven directors rather than seven, etc. Wes is as important as any of these other guys, I feel.)

Another thing that caused me to find Waxman’s book delightful is that it conveys facts that significantly add to my understanding of what these filmmakers are about…what’s driven them, scared them, briefly defeated them, inspired them.

Three Kings director David O. Russell, star George Clooney during the problematic (some would say tumultuous) shooting.

I was shocked, shocked to read that Quentin Tarantino’s background was not that of a white-trash, fast-food-eating Tennessee kid from a broken home, but one that was more or less upper middle-class.

There’s a passage about Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh’s personal lives that I find fascinating. Partly because this is exactly the kind of passage that an aggressive and brilliant male writer would never include in a book about Hollywood filmmakers. It’s mildly cool nonetheless that Waxman has shown her colors in this fashion.

Tarantino nor Soderbergh “had trouble with intimacy” and “seemed [unable] to sustain relationships with the opposite sex,” she writes.

There was “a quiet woman” who was part of Tarantino’s life about 12 or 14 years ago named Grace Lovelace “who remains -– according to many who know [Tarantino] — the true love of his life.” She reports that after he became famous Tarantino became “a serial dater of his leading ladies or his producer or the starlet of the moment.”

This is nothing compared to what she does to Soderbergh. She suggests that he may be James Spader in sex,lies and videotape, “the articulate intellectual dealing with emotions in distant, muted ways,” a guy, like Spader’s “Graham” character, “who could enjoy sex with women only through the distance of the camera eye.”

To varying degrees, all the directors in Waxman’s book come off as fickle, egoistic, thin-skinned, prickly, brusque. This is nothing strange, of course. There’s always seemed to be a basic disconnect between submissive, mild-mannered, go-along behavior and being possessed of exceptional talent, smarts and vision. I’ve noticed this time and again, and it’s no big deal.

Some day, somehow, someone will discover on what set this shot of Steven Soderbergh was taken. My guess is The Limey.

A strong director can’t be a strong director without being tough and flinty and at times unyielding. It’s a tough game that requires toughness and tough hides. I respect this, and have no problem with anyone who wants to try and bitch-slap me (so to speak) or give me an argument of some kind about something I’ve written. As long as they’re straight about it, fine.

A week and a half ago Soderbergh lectured me during the Inside Deep Throat Sundance party. It was about my writing a couple of years ago that George Clooney’s Confessions of a Dangerous Mind seemed strongly influenced by Soderbergh-ian visual stylings, which, in his view, diminished Clooney’s rep by suggesting he had no visual chops or chutzpah of his own.

I wish more people in this town would play it like Soderbergh and just walk right up and say it to my face.

It may sound like a vague put-down to call Rebels a great airport lounge or a coast-to-coast read, but this book is friendly. I read it cover to cover, but it’s structured and titled in such a way that you can just drop into any chapter and go to town. I guess what I’m really saying is that people with attention deficit disorder will have no problem with it.

Monochrome Porn

“Regarding your comment about there being no black-and-white pornography: I’ve seen it done by Andrew Blake (http://www.andrewblake.com). He actually uses it quite a bit. His stuff is really top notch — all shot on film, excellent lighting and the best looking girls in porn. The only problem is that he’s really gotten into the bondage stuff, which does nothing for me.” — Ross Williams, writer-
director (http://eraticate.com)

Truce Already

“I liked your two stories about the competing Christmas Truce of 1914 projects. I thought you might be amused to know that there is a virtual train wreck of Christmas Truce projects in the works.

“Besides the Vadim Perelman’s The Truce, Paul Weitz’s Silent Night and the German-French co-production of Joyeux Noel costarring Diane Kurger (now in the can and slated for a Xmas ’05 release), there are also:

“(1) Truce: 1914 — A British production ramping up for a 2005 start to be helmed by Peter Shillingford, a director known for his IMAX work. Brian Cox, Til Schweiger and Jonny Lee Miller are attached. (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1466053)

“(2) Light of Peace — A film being produced by Marc Rosco of Electric Entertainment. Roland Emmerich was attached to direct.

“(3) …and a short film called Offside (produced by pop singer Michael Bolton) that premiered at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival.

“And then there is my own short film, also called The Truce, which won a Student Emmy and played at the 2001 Hamptons Film Festival (while Offside screened in an adjacent theater).

“I can’t accuse anyone of ripping me off; I was still shooting while Offside was in post. (http://www.thetruce.com and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289587/ combined).

“I had my own idea for a Christmas truce feature where the German and British soldiers team up to destroy an asteroid heading towards a crash collision with Earth, but none of the studios bit…alas.” — Eric Rolnick

Sharon’s Book

The first thing that got me about Sharon Waxman’s Rebels on the Backlot (Harper Entertainment) was its assurance. It’s a very smooth and soothing read.
Call me a plebeian but I love inside-the-beltway books that deliver that massage-y, cruise-control, we-know-everything feeling (like Peter Biskind√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s Down and Dirty Pictures and David Thomson√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s The Whole Equation did) along with…you know, the other standard virtues.

Three Kings director David O. Russell, star George Clooney during the problematic (some would say tumultuous) shooting.

The next thing that got me was a certain compassion for George Clooney and David O. Russell. Those poor guys…fine on their respective turfs, but put them together on the set of a physically difficult, hard-to-get-right movie like Three Kings and sparks of agitation are inevitable.
Waxman delivers a better, more convincing story of their fight during the making of this 1999 film than anything I’ve read or heard anywhere else.
< ?php include ('/home/hollyw9/public_html/wired'); ?>
What was the trouble about? Russell, King√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s director, told Clooney before shooting began that he needed to break a lot of bad acting “habits,” and that he wanted Clooney “to be very still” in his role. When Kings began rolling, Russell kept on Clooney to cut down on the Clooney-isms, in response to which the TV-series veteran repeatedly “bristled.”
√¢‚Ǩ≈ìTheir relationship seemed doomed,√¢‚Ǩ¬ù Waxman writes. Clooney “felt undermined by his director and labored under the burden of knowing he was Russell√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s last choice…this led to disastrous consequences.√¢‚Ǩ¬ù
Out-there guys like Russell are never a day at the beach, but David O. was only trying to bring about the aesthetically right thing. Clooney does have a lot of bad habits. That cool-smug-guy thing that he does all the time…don√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t get me started. Russell may have been the provocateur in the breakdown of their working relationship, but Clooney needed — needs — what he was trying to dispense.

It was reported two or three months ago that Russell was upset with Waxman for making him seem slightly looney-tunes in her Times profile of his methods in the making of I Heart Huckabees. Many people agreed with him to some extent, but Waxman√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s book has balanced the ledger sheet. To my eyes, she’s portrayed Russell as the most doggedly exacting and perceptive big-gun director in town.
Rebels on the Backlot is essentially a story about the adventures of six Gen-X writer-directors — leaders of the pack who defined a certain accomplished, provocative, well-funded hipness over the least ten years: Russell, Spike Jonze, Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher, Steven Soderbergh and Paul Thomas Anderson.
“I wanted to know about who they were,” Waxman told a New York Observer writer last week. √¢‚Ǩ≈ìWhen you are talking about films that are so personal in their vision, you can√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t help but wonder from what mind or personality [those pieces of work] sprang.”
Waxman was in Park City covering the Sundance Film Festival for the New York Times, for which she handles the Hollywood beat. I could have arranged some face-time with her myself (which would have made the piece you’re reading a better one), but the festival kept shoving me around and throwing me off my game.
I√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ve run into these directors at one time or another, mostly in the course of doing this or that story, but I√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ve never gotten to know them. Not like I know Wes Anderson, say. (I’m wondering why Waxman didn’t include him in the book. Wes pushed to the front of the pack in the mid ’90s, and is as important as any of these other guys…no?)
Another thing I found delightful about Waxman√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s book is that it conveys facts that significantly add to my understanding of what these filmmakers are about…what√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s driven them, scared them, briefly defeated them, inspired them.

Rebels on the Back Lot author Sharon Waxman signing books at (I think) the party thrown by Harper Entertainment in Park City during the Sundance Film Festival.

I was shocked, shocked to read that Quentin Tarantino’s background was not that of a white-trash, fast-food-eating Tennessee kid from a broken home, but one that was more or less upper middle-class.
There√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s a passage about Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s personal lives that I find fascinating. Partly because this is exactly the kind of passage that an aggressive and brilliant male writer would never include in a book about Hollywood filmmakers. It’s mildly cool nonetheless that Waxman has shown her colors in this fashion.
Tarantino nor Soderbergh “had trouble with intimacy” and “seemed [unable] to sustain relationships with the opposite sex,” she writes.
There was “a quiet woman” who was part of Tarantino√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s life about 12 or 14 years ago named Grace Lovelace “who remains -√¢‚Ǩ‚Äú according to many who know [Tarantino] — the true love of his life.” She reports that after he became famous Tarantino became “a serial dater of his leading ladies or his producer or the starlet of the moment.”
This is nothing compared to what she does to Soderbergh. She suggests that he may be James Spader in sex,lies and videotape, “the articulate intellectual dealing with emotions in distant, muted ways,” a guy, like Spader√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s “Graham” character, “who could enjoy sex with women only through the distance of the camera eye.”
To varying degrees, all the directors in Waxman’s book come off as fickle, egoistic, thin-skinned, prickly, brusque. This is nothing strange, of course. There’s always seemed to be a basic disconnect between submissive, mild-mannered, go-along behavior and being possessed of exceptional talent, smarts and vision. I’ve noticed this time and again, and it’s no big deal.

Some day, somehow, someone will discover on what set this shot of Steven Soderbergh was taken. My guess is The Limey.

A strong director can√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t be a strong director without being tough and flinty and even unyielding. The game that requires toughness and tough hides. I respect this, and have no problem with anyone who wants to get in my face and give me an argument of some kind about something I’ve written. As long as they’re straight about it, fine.
A week and a half ago Soderbergh lectured me during the Inside Deep Throat Sundance party. It was about my writing a couple of years ago that George Clooney’s Confessions of a Dangerous Mind seemed strongly influenced by Soderbergh-ian visual stylings, which, in his view, diminished Clooney’s rep by suggesting he had no visual chops or chutzpah of his own.
I wish more people in this town would play it like Soderbergh and just walk right up and say it to my face.
It may sound like a vague put-down to call Rebels a great airport lounge or a coast-to-coast read, but this book is friendly. I read it cover to cover, but it’s structured and titled in such a way that you can just drop into any chapter and go to town. I guess what I’m really saying is that people with attention deficit disorder will have no problem with it.

More Later

New stuff, I mean. In the meantime, I’m holding on to some of the stories I ran last weekend at the Santa Barbara film Festival…

Panel Thief

Maybe a story about the intoxicating elements within a certain woman’s personality isn’t exactly page-one material, but Oscar screenwriting nominee Julie Delpy (for her Before Sunset collaboration with Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke) totally killed at Saturday’s screenwriter’s panel at the Lobero Theatre.
Delpy is — right now, in my humble opinion — the absolute coolest, wittiest and most radiantly attractive actress around. Her Sunset performance had me half-convinced of this, but yesterday’s panel dazzle brought the house down and amounted to a total closer.

Actress-screenwriter Julie Delpy during Saturday afternoon’s panel discussion, “It Starts With the Script,” at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.

She was quick, hilarious and unabashedly confessional. Her mind was here, there and everywhere…but always amusingly and never scattershot. She said at one point that she’d lost the ability to think because she was listening too much to the sound of her own voice, and she had everyone in stitches as she described the disorientation. She unintentionally reduced moderator Frank Pierson to a straight-man stooge during a brief back-and-forth. Her facial expressions alone were inspired.
And she got off a great line about how women will have truly secured their just portion of power in the film industry “when a mediocre woman is given a powerful job.”
Brian Grazer and Ron Howard erred in not hiring Delpy to play Sophie Neveu opposite Tom Hanks in the forthcoming production of The Da Vinci Code. (They’ve gone with 26 year-old Audrey Tatou, who’s too young and small and slender to play Hanks’ pseudo-love interest…he probably outweighs her by at least 100 pounds.)
Garden State director-screenwriter Zach Braff was asked the most questions and drew the heartiest applause during yesterday’s discussion, as a good chunk of the audience was composed of under-35 types, the demographic that has turned Garden State into a formidable nationwide hit.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and The Incredibles director and co-writer Brad Bird seemed to be the most popular after Braff, and all three delivered the best cracks.

(l. to r.) Screenwriters John Logan (The Aviator), Jose Rivera (The Motorcycle Diaries), Paul Haggis (Million Dollar Baby), Julie Delpy (Before Sunset), Frank Pierson (Dog Day Afternoon), Brad Bird (The Incredibles), Zach Braff (Garden State), Bill Condon (Kinsey), and Jim Taylor (Sideways) just prior to Saturday afternoon’s panel discussion at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.

That is, if you left Delpy out of the equation.
The other screenwriter panelists were Million Dollar Baby‘s Paul Haggis, Kinsey‘s Bill Condon, The Aviator‘s John Logan, Sideway‘s Jim Taylor,and The Motorcycle Diaries‘s Jose Rivera.
Pierson (Cool Hand Luke, Dog Day Afternoon), the current president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, got shouted down at one point by an audience member because they thought he was talking too much and not letting the panelists have their say. Pierson’s moderating skills can be on the avuncular and loquacious side, but he’s also a wise and perceptive man.
A very young aspiring screenwriter — a woman — asked Braff at one point whether “this feeling of uncertainty and nervousness and not knowing what’s going to happen in my life…is this going to continue or get worse or what?” Braff said he was sorry but no, it’s not going to stop, but hang in there and don’t let it defeat you.
Pierson had a better answer. He said to the woman, “If you’re lucky, it will never stop…because your writing will be better for it.”

Elvis Mitchell interviewing Sideways star Paul Giamatti at Santa Barbara’s Victoria Threatre late Sunday afternoon — 1.30.05, 5:45 pm.

Leonardo DiCaprio addressing crowd at Santa Barbara’s Arlington Theatre after being presented with the SBIFF’s Platinum Award by Aviator director Martin Scorsese — Sunday, 1.30, 9:20 pm.

Piece of letter-sized paper taped to seventh-row seat at Santa Barbara’s Arlington Theatre — Sunday, 1.30.05, 7:25 pm.

Author, film critic and TV personality Leonard Maltin and Best Supporting Actress nominee Virginia Madsen (for Sideways, as if I had to say that) after a small luncheon at Nu, a restaurant on State Street, which followed a women’s filmmaker panel at the Lobero Theatre — 1.30.05, 2:25 pm.

Santa Barbara Film Festival artistic director Roger Durling just before Saturday evening’s Annette Bening tribute — 1.29.05, 7:25 pm.

Former New York Times critic and current Columbia consultant Elvis Mitchell interviewing Best Actress nominee Annette Bening (Being Julia) at Santa Barbara’s Lobero Theatre — 1.29.05, 8:35 pm.

Woody Time

I drove up to the Santa Barbara Film Festival late Friday afternoon, checked into a Holiday Inn and went straight to the Arlington Theatre on State Street to catch the festival’s opening-night attraction — Woody Allen’s Melinda and Melinda.
Most of the reviews out of Europe (it played last fall at the San Sebastian Film Festival and has since opened commercially in Spain and other territories) called Melinda a return to form for Allen, and I seem to recall someone saying it was his best since Mighty Aphrodite.
That’s close to an accurate statement, or at least not far off the mark. Melinda and Melinda is a very good…make that a slightly-better-than-very-good Woody.

(l. to r.) Will Ferrell and Radha Mitchell in Melinda and Melinda.

It’s a half-downerish, half-amusing piece about the fine line between comedy and tragedy. It basically says that the two opposite poles are made of the same story material, and the difference essentially lies in the attitude we bring to this or that situation or circumstance.
The piece is framed by a couple of playwright/screenwriter pals (Wallace Shawn, Larry Pine) discussing the differences between comedy and tragedy. They expound by talking about a real-life story they’ve heard about an actual New York woman named Melinda (who’s known to a friend of theirs), and riffing on how her story might turn out as a tragedy or comedy.
These writers proceed to entertain each other by telling parallel tales about Melinda (which we see dramatized, of course) that are similar in every respect except for the fundamental slant.
Only Melinda (Radha Mitchell) appears in both versions. The downer piece costars Chloe Sevigny, Johnny Lee Miller and Chiwetel Ejiofor (the doctor from Dirty Pretty Things) while the comedic piece costars Will Ferrell and Amanda Peet.
The two stories explore themes and plot turns that Allen fans will quickly recognize. Anxious and lonely New Yorkers, lovers at cross purposes, spouses cheating on each other, and the constant dodging and lying that goes on between significant others.
√¢‚Ǩ≈ìOf course we communicate,” Peet says to Farrell, her live-in partner, at one point. “Now, can we not talk about it?√¢‚Ǩ¬ù
I wouldn’t quite place Melinda among Allen’s very best (Manhattan, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Hannah and Her Sisters, Husbands and Wives). I would, however, put it in roughly the same realm as, say, Sweet and Lowdown or Bullets Over Broadway.
It’s not quite a nine-course meal, but is undeniably nutritious. It’s been written with a fairly sharp quill, gets right down to business in short order, and delivers the philosophical goods, gags and witticisms in an agreeably absorbing fashion.
It provides Mitchell, who portrays two versions of the same character of Melinda, with a chance to shift between Bergmanesque edge-of-suicide emoting and Annie Hall-like bubbly-goofy stuff, and she delivers with assurance and buoyancy on both counts.
And Ferrell has fun playing the neurotic, emotionally frustrated, wittily judgmental Woody character. The idea of an actor hired by Woody Allen to deliver a performance that literally channels Allen’s spirit and personality will always be an extremely weird confection, but Kenneth Branagh and John Cusack have obviously done it before and I suppose we’re all getting used to this.
The comic highlight is a would-be seduction scene between Farrell and Vinessa Shaw (the prostitute in Eyes Wide Shut). The gags in this scene aren’t profound, but they’re funny as hell.

Sharon’s Book

The first thing that got me about Sharon Waxman’s Rebels on the Backlot (Harper Entertainment) was its assurance. It’s a very smooth and soothing read.

Call me a plebeian but I love inside-the-beltway books that deliver that massage-y, cruise-control, we-know-everything feeling (like Peter Biskind’s Down and Dirty Pictures and David Thomson’s The Whole Equation did) along with…you know, the other standard virtues.

Three Kings director David O. Russell, star George Clooney during the problematic (some would say tumultuous) shooting.

The next thing that got me was a certain compassion for George Clooney and David O. Russell. Those poor guys…fine on their respective turfs, but put them together on the set of a physically difficult, hard-to-get-right movie like Three Kings and sparks of agitation are inevitable.

Waxman delivers a better, more convincing story of their fight during the making of this 1999 film than anything I’ve read or heard anywhere else.

< ?php include ('/home/hollyw9/public_html/wired'); ?>
What was the trouble about? Russell, King’s director, told Clooney before shooting began that he needed to break a lot of bad acting “habits,” and that he wanted Clooney “to be very still” in his role. When Kings began rolling, Russell kept on Clooney to cut down on the Clooney-isms, in response to which the TV-series veteran repeatedly “bristled.”

“Their relationship seemed doomed,” Waxman writes. Clooney “felt undermined by his director and labored under the burden of knowing he was Russell’s last choice…this led to disastrous consequences.”

Out-there guys like Russell are never a day at the beach, but David O. was only trying to bring about the aesthetically right thing. Clooney does have a lot of bad habits. That cool-smug-guy thing that he does all the time…don’t get me started. Russell may have been the provocateur in the breakdown of their working relationship, but Clooney needed — needs — what he was trying to dispense.

It was reported two or three months ago that Russell was upset with Waxman for making him seem slightly looney-tunes in her Times profile of his methods in the making of I Heart Huckabees. Many people agreed with him to some extent, but Waxman’s book has balanced the ledger sheet. To my eyes, she’s portrayed Russell as the most doggedly exacting and perceptive big-gun director in town.

Rebels on the Backlot is essentially a story about the adventures of six Gen-X writer-directors — leaders of the pack who defined a certain accomplished, provocative, well-funded hipness over the least ten years: Russell, Spike Jonze, Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher, Steven Soderbergh and Paul Thomas Anderson.

“I wanted to know about who they were,” Waxman told a New York Observer writer last week. “When you are talking about films that are so personal in their vision, you can’t help but wonder from what mind or personality [those pieces of work] sprang.”

Waxman was in Park City covering the Sundance Film Festival for the New York Times, for which she handles the Hollywood beat. I could have arranged some face-time with her myself (which would have made the piece you’re reading a better one), but the festival kept shoving me around and throwing me off my game.

I’ve run into these directors at one time or another, mostly in the course of doing this or that story, but I’ve never gotten to know them. Not like I know Wes Anderson, say. (I’m wondering why Waxman didn’t include him in the book. Wes pushed to the front of the pack in the mid ’90s, and is as important as any of these other guys…no?)

Another thing I found delightful about Waxman’s book is that it conveys facts that significantly add to my understanding of what these filmmakers are about…what’s driven them, scared them, briefly defeated them, inspired them.

Rebels on the Back Lot author Sharon Waxman signing books at (I think) the party thrown by Harper Entertainment in Park City during the Sundance Film Festival.

I was shocked, shocked to read that Quentin Tarantino’s background was not that of a white-trash, fast-food-eating Tennessee kid from a broken home, but one that was more or less upper middle-class.

There’s a passage about Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh’s personal lives that I find fascinating. Partly because this is exactly the kind of passage that an aggressive and brilliant male writer would never include in a book about Hollywood filmmakers. It’s mildly cool nonetheless that Waxman has shown her colors in this fashion.

Tarantino nor Soderbergh “had trouble with intimacy” and “seemed [unable] to sustain relationships with the opposite sex,” she writes.

There was “a quiet woman” who was part of Tarantino’s life about 12 or 14 years ago named Grace Lovelace “who remains -– according to many who know [Tarantino] — the true love of his life.” She reports that after he became famous Tarantino became “a serial dater of his leading ladies or his producer or the starlet of the moment.”

This is nothing compared to what she does to Soderbergh. She suggests that he may be James Spader in sex,lies and videotape, “the articulate intellectual dealing with emotions in distant, muted ways,” a guy, like Spader’s “Graham” character, “who could enjoy sex with women only through the distance of the camera eye.”

To varying degrees, all the directors in Waxman’s book come off as fickle, egoistic, thin-skinned, prickly, brusque. This is nothing strange, of course. There’s always seemed to be a basic disconnect between submissive, mild-mannered, go-along behavior and being possessed of exceptional talent, smarts and vision. I’ve noticed this time and again, and it’s no big deal.

Some day, somehow, someone will discover on what set this shot of Steven Soderbergh was taken. My guess is The Limey.

A strong director can’t be a strong director without being tough and flinty and even unyielding. The game that requires toughness and tough hides. I respect this, and have no problem with anyone who wants to get in my face and give me an argument of some kind about something I’ve written. As long as they’re straight about it, fine.

A week and a half ago Soderbergh lectured me during the Inside Deep Throat Sundance party. It was about my writing a couple of years ago that George Clooney’s Confessions of a Dangerous Mind seemed strongly influenced by Soderbergh-ian visual stylings, which, in his view, diminished Clooney’s rep by suggesting he had no visual chops or chutzpah of his own.

I wish more people in this town would play it like Soderbergh and just walk right up and say it to my face.

It may sound like a vague put-down to call Rebels a great airport lounge or a coast-to-coast read, but this book is friendly. I read it cover to cover, but it’s structured and titled in such a way that you can just drop into any chapter and go to town. I guess what I’m really saying is that people with attention deficit disorder will have no problem with it.

More Later

New stuff, I mean. In the meantime, I’m holding on to some of the stories I ran last weekend at the Santa Barbara film Festival…

Panel Thief

Maybe a story about the intoxicating elements within a certain woman’s personality isn’t exactly page-one material, but Oscar screenwriting nominee Julie Delpy (for her Before Sunset collaboration with Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke) totally killed at Saturday’s screenwriter’s panel at the Lobero Theatre.

Delpy is — right now, in my humble opinion — the absolute coolest, wittiest and most radiantly attractive actress around. Her Sunset performance had me half-convinced of this, but yesterday’s panel dazzle brought the house down and amounted to a total closer.

Actress-screenwriter Julie Delpy during Saturday afternoon’s panel discussion, “It Starts With the Script,” at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.

She was quick, hilarious and unabashedly confessional. Her mind was here, there and everywhere…but always amusingly and never scattershot. She said at one point that she’d lost the ability to think because she was listening too much to the sound of her own voice, and she had everyone in stitches as she described the disorientation. She unintentionally reduced moderator Frank Pierson to a straight-man stooge during a brief back-and-forth. Her facial expressions alone were inspired.

And she got off a great line about how women will have truly secured their just portion of power in the film industry “when a mediocre woman is given a powerful job.”

Brian Grazer and Ron Howard erred in not hiring Delpy to play Sophie Neveu opposite Tom Hanks in the forthcoming production of The Da Vinci Code. (They’ve gone with 26 year-old Audrey Tatou, who’s too young and small and slender to play Hanks’ pseudo-love interest…he probably outweighs her by at least 100 pounds.)

Garden State director-screenwriter Zach Braff was asked the most questions and drew the heartiest applause during yesterday’s discussion, as a good chunk of the audience was composed of under-35 types, the demographic that has turned Garden State into a formidable nationwide hit.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and The Incredibles director and co-writer Brad Bird seemed to be the most popular after Braff, and all three delivered the best cracks.

(l. to r.) Screenwriters John Logan (The Aviator), Jose Rivera (The Motorcycle Diaries), Paul Haggis (Million Dollar Baby), Julie Delpy (Before Sunset), Frank Pierson (Dog Day Afternoon), Brad Bird (The Incredibles), Zach Braff (Garden State), Bill Condon (Kinsey), and Jim Taylor (Sideways) just prior to Saturday afternoon’s panel discussion at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.

That is, if you left Delpy out of the equation.

The other screenwriter panelists were Million Dollar Baby‘s Paul Haggis, Kinsey‘s Bill Condon, The Aviator‘s John Logan, Sideway‘s Jim Taylor,and The Motorcycle Diaries‘s Jose Rivera.

Pierson (Cool Hand Luke, Dog Day Afternoon), the current president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, got shouted down at one point by an audience member because they thought he was talking too much and not letting the panelists have their say. Pierson’s moderating skills can be on the avuncular and loquacious side, but he’s also a wise and perceptive man.

A very young aspiring screenwriter — a woman — asked Braff at one point whether “this feeling of uncertainty and nervousness and not knowing what’s going to happen in my life…is this going to continue or get worse or what?” Braff said he was sorry but no, it’s not going to stop, but hang in there and don’t let it defeat you.

Pierson had a better answer. He said to the woman, “If you’re lucky, it will never stop…because your writing will be better for it.”

Elvis Mitchell interviewing Sideways star Paul Giamatti at Santa Barbara’s Victoria Threatre late Sunday afternoon — 1.30.05, 5:45 pm.

Leonardo DiCaprio addressing crowd at Santa Barbara’s Arlington Theatre after being presented with the SBIFF’s Platinum Award by Aviator director Martin Scorsese — Sunday, 1.30, 9:20 pm.

Piece of letter-sized paper taped to seventh-row seat at Santa Barbara’s Arlington Theatre — Sunday, 1.30.05, 7:25 pm.

Author, film critic and TV personality Leonard Maltin and Best Supporting Actress nominee Virginia Madsen (for Sideways, as if I had to say that) after a small luncheon at Nu, a restaurant on State Street, which followed a women’s filmmaker panel at the Lobero Theatre — 1.30.05, 2:25 pm.

Santa Barbara Film Festival artistic director Roger Durling just before Saturday evening’s Annette Bening tribute — 1.29.05, 7:25 pm.

Former New York Times critic and current Columbia consultant Elvis Mitchell interviewing Best Actress nominee Annette Bening (Being Julia) at Santa Barbara’s Lobero Theatre — 1.29.05, 8:35 pm.

Woody Time

I drove up to the Santa Barbara Film Festival late Friday afternoon, checked into a Holiday Inn and went straight to the Arlington Theatre on State Street to catch the festival’s opening-night attraction — Woody Allen’s Melinda and Melinda.

Most of the reviews out of Europe (it played last fall at the San Sebastian Film Festival and has since opened commercially in Spain and other territories) called Melinda a return to form for Allen, and I seem to recall someone saying it was his best since Mighty Aphrodite.

That’s close to an accurate statement, or at least not far off the mark. Melinda and Melinda is a very good…make that a slightly-better-than-very-good Woody.

(l. to r.) Will Ferrell and Radha Mitchell in Melinda and Melinda.

It’s a half-downerish, half-amusing piece about the fine line between comedy and tragedy. It basically says that the two opposite poles are made of the same story material, and the difference essentially lies in the attitude we bring to this or that situation or circumstance.

The piece is framed by a couple of playwright/screenwriter pals (Wallace Shawn, Larry Pine) discussing the differences between comedy and tragedy. They expound by talking about a real-life story they’ve heard about an actual New York woman named Melinda (who’s known to a friend of theirs), and riffing on how her story might turn out as a tragedy or comedy.

These writers proceed to entertain each other by telling parallel tales about Melinda (which we see dramatized, of course) that are similar in every respect except for the fundamental slant.

Only Melinda (Radha Mitchell) appears in both versions. The downer piece costars Chloe Sevigny, Johnny Lee Miller and Chiwetel Ejiofor (the doctor from Dirty Pretty Things) while the comedic piece costars Will Ferrell and Amanda Peet.

The two stories explore themes and plot turns that Allen fans will quickly recognize. Anxious and lonely New Yorkers, lovers at cross purposes, spouses cheating on each other, and the constant dodging and lying that goes on between significant others.

“Of course we communicate,” Peet says to Farrell, her live-in partner, at one point. “Now, can we not talk about it?”

I wouldn’t quite place Melinda among Allen’s very best (Manhattan, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Hannah and Her Sisters, Husbands and Wives). I would, however, put it in roughly the same realm as, say, Sweet and Lowdown or Bullets Over Broadway.

It’s not quite a nine-course meal, but is undeniably nutritious. It’s been written with a fairly sharp quill, gets right down to business in short order, and delivers the philosophical goods, gags and witticisms in an agreeably absorbing fashion.

It provides Mitchell, who portrays two versions of the same character of Melinda, with a chance to shift between Bergmanesque edge-of-suicide emoting and Annie Hall-like bubbly-goofy stuff, and she delivers with assurance and buoyancy on both counts.

And Ferrell has fun playing the neurotic, emotionally frustrated, wittily judgmental Woody character. The idea of an actor hired by Woody Allen to deliver a performance that literally channels Allen’s spirit and personality will always be an extremely weird confection, but Kenneth Branagh and John Cusack have obviously done it before and I suppose we’re all getting used to this.

The comic highlight is a would-be seduction scene between Farrell and Vinessa Shaw (the prostitute in Eyes Wide Shut). The gags in this scene aren’t profound, but they’re funny as hell.

At the Santa Barbara Film Festival last Sunday I asked Sideways star Paul Giamatti why he didn’t get nominated for Best Actor. In so doing I aired my pet theory, which is that Academy voters of a certain age resented his Miles character stealing money from his mother’s bedroom bureau. Since then New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis has floated a better explanation, to wit: “While film critics embraced [Giamatti] and the performance, because they relate to both, actors are terrified of the specter that each presents. Actors sell themselves as being completely together, manicured, extraordinary physical specimens; they are not (or so they think and hope) losers. In this sense, both Mr. Giamatti, whose physical appearance is a rebuke to the buff and gloss of Hollywood’s plastic people, and the sad-sack character he plays in Sideways represent twinned nightmares for these professional narcissists. Then there’s the fact that actors can also be pretty damn stupid.”

In his comment following an Ain’t It Cool riff on last Saturday’s writer’s panel at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, Drew McWeeny (a.k.a., “Moriarty”) wrote, “I heard that Jeffrey Wells tried to shout down John Logan at one point about The Aviator.” C’mon…I hardly shouted Logan down. I simply asked his view about the heavy emphasis given to Howard Hughes’ obsessive compulsive disorder in Martin Scorsese’s film, given (a) a view shared by Hughes biographer Pat Broeske that Hughes’ OCD didn’t manifest big-time until the 1950s, and (b) given the fact that a 2002 draft of Logan’s script (the dialogue from which was very closely adhered to by Scorsese) didn’t emphasize it quite as much. “It√ɬ≠s amazing to me how some people get so invested in the Oscars that they start to disparage the work of the people they√ɬ≠re not rooting for, even to the point of attacking them verbally in a public forum,” McWeeny remarked. There’s a certain way of putting a question when you’re “attacking” someone, and — believe me — I put my question to Logan in a very measured and respectful way.

“My most embarrassing moment in Hollywood was an interview with Jim Carrey that at least absolved me of star fever,” New York Times reporter Bernie Weinraub has written in a farewell piece. “The comedian, in a suite at Ma Maison Sofitel, was promoting his film The Mask. I had taken medicine for a bad cold. The interview began. I was settled into an easy chair, facing Mr. Carrey with my feet crossed in front of me. As he began answering questions, I fell asleep. The next thing I knew, I was feeling somebody kick the bottom of my shoe with his foot. I woke up, mortified. Years later, I met his manager Jimmy Miller. I told Mr. Miller I had a confession: that I fell asleep while interviewing Mr. Carrey. Mr. Miller exclaimed: ‘So you’re the guy! He talks all the time about a reporter who once fell asleep on him.'” Hilarious, yes, but it’s also very brave of Weinraub to admit this. It was noted by some reporters who also interviewed Carrey at the Ma Maison Sofitel that same day (including myself, for a piece for the New York Daily News) that Carrey was giving the exact same quotes to every journalist who dropped by, so maybe this un-spontaneous shpiel had something to do with Weinraub’s slumber, above and beyond the cough medicine.

A bogus AP headline about Leonardo DiCaprio’s receiving the Platinum Award from the Santa Barbara International Film Festival last Sunday evening has led certain media commentators to smirk at the concept of giving the 30 year-old DiCaprio a “Life Achievement Award.” That term doesn’t apply, of course, as it was never used by the festival organizers.

It’s a shame that the righties are hammering away at Million Dollar Baby over …well, the life-and-death issue raised in the film’s third act. (I refuse to spoil, even though the cat’s totally out of the bag.) Not because the righties are wrong in their views about this, but because they’ve diminished the viewing experience for the millions who’ve yet to see it. That’s really crappy and I’m sorry. For a thorough reading of the hard-right position on this matter, check out Garret Keiser’s article (“Life Everlasting: The Religious Right and the Right to Die”) in the current edition of Harper’s.

Ask anyone — the Sundance Film Festival award that really counts is the Audience Award, and yesterday’s (Saturday, 1.29) winner of that honor was Craig Brewer’s Hustle & Flow….right on. Another thing you can usually depend upon is that the Sundance jurors will give their dramatic competition Grand Jury prize to a film that a lot of people didn’t get or flat-out didn’t like. This was clearly the case when they give their big trophy to Ira Sachs’ Forty Shades of Blue, a romantic triangle drama set in Memphis. At least four times during the festival I was told in no uncertain terms that Blue is highly problematic, dislikable, tiresome, irritating, etc. A sharp industry watcher and good friend agrees with me that Blue had “no buzz” during the festival, and Hollywood Reporter critic Duane Byrge called it “a drab, minor-key melodrama.” I’m not saying the jurors are wackjobbers or off on their own cloud…but you can bet that some people are thinking this or wondering if this is the case. I’m speaking of actor John C. Reilly, director Chris Eyre (Skins, Smoke Signals), critic B. Ruby Rich, producer Christine Vacchon, and actress Vera Farmiga (Close to the Bone). Cheers, in any case, for Eugene Jerecki’s Why We Fight for taking the Grand Jury Prize in the American documentary category.