Friendly memo to Boston Herald critic Jim Verniere: What’s with the deliberately slowed-down reading of the copy? No offense but it sounds spazzy. Best quote: “Trainwreck could be this generation’s When Aaron Met Amy.”
Friendly memo to Boston Herald critic Jim Verniere: What’s with the deliberately slowed-down reading of the copy? No offense but it sounds spazzy. Best quote: “Trainwreck could be this generation’s When Aaron Met Amy.”
Message received last night from Manhattan broadcast media guy Bill McCuddy: “Just saw Trainwreck in a media/real people screening. Played great in the room. I loved it. Apatow’s best since Funny People.”
“What about Amy’s performance?,” I wrote back. “She wasn’t just funny — she reached way down and pulled out some real feeling and serious melancholia in some of those second and third-act scenes. That funeral eulogy? Seriously good stuff.”
McCuddy: “She’s great and I agree — especially some of her takes/reactions when other characters can’t see her. But that eulogy was also in the writing.” [Schumer wrote the screenplay.] “A lot of the movie is better written than audiences will give it credit for.”
“It’s become a Trainwreck talking point. Or selling point, really. For those that live by t.p.’s, the notion or term ‘give it a rest’ is a non-starter. Congenial talk show host giving ‘anything to keep the ball in the air’ guest a chance to beat up the blogger. Schumer said she ‘didn’t read it’ but that her people said ‘he called you a monster!’ At a certain point it doesn’t matter what you actually wrote. The legend becomes the legend. No winning. You just have to move on.” — from comment thread posted this morning when David Slovakia and Pertwillably pointed out the Conan/Schumer clip, which starts at 21:35. Sidenote: I cringe when someone refers to me as a “blogger” — a noun that I’ll never stop wincing at. “Columnist” will suffice. I used to say “online columnist” when print still had a foot-hold.
In their weekly Deadline chat, Mike Fleming and Peter Bart briefly discuss the occasionally tempestuous Tom Rothman being chosen to succeed Sony honcho Amy Pascal, and Bart says the following: “[Rothman] had a great record at Fox but he’s contentious. And he’s got a big voice. But is that a character flaw? Everyone in Hollywood has been reading everyone else’s emails these past few weeks, and if there’s one point that emerges, it is this: Packaging movies is akin to a barroom brawl. Deal making is like an episode of Survivor. Every offer is an insult. Every counter-offer is an affront. Every casting suggestion is ludicrous. Every star is really an idiot and every agent a terrorist. This is not an atmosphere for gentle people. So if Rothman has a temper, as the press suggests, it will come in handy.”
Roughly two months ago a very early draft of Eric Roth‘s screenplay for Killers of the Flower Moon (dated 2.20.17,...
More »Frances McDormand‘s Fern was strong but mule-stubborn and at the end of the day self-destructive, and this stunted psychology led...
More »Can’t decide which performance is better, although I’ve always leaned toward Tina Vitale, her cynical New Jersey moll behind the...
More »Two days ago (1.19) a Facebook tribute congratulated Tippi Hedren for having reached her 94th year (blow out the candles!)...
More »A friend suggested a list of the Ten Best American Crime Flicks of the ‘70s. By which he meant films...
More »I’ve never been able to give myself over to Sam Peckinpah’s Major Dundee, a 1965 Civil War–era western, and I’ve...
More »