The Occasional Critic

'Casino' (released Nov. 22, 2005)

2011-02-04T15:15:00.000-08:00

By DONALD PORTER
Standard-Examiner staff

A ponderous, meandering beast of a crime epic, Martin Scorsese’s “Casino” takes many greatish elements and reduces them to tedious mediocrities.

Scorsese is a filmmaker with an affinity for stories about mobsters and their peculiar manner of doing business -- he directed “Mean Streets” and “GoodFellas,” the latter of which is one of the finest films released since 1990. So he seems a natural for this tale of a mob-run Las Vegas casino in the ‘70s, before corporate America took the gaming racket away from organized crime.

Alas, Scorsese’s affinity for the minutiae of the gambling industry hobbles “Casino,” diverting attention from the characters and the story at hand: how gambler Sam “Ace” Rothstein and his childhood friend, Nicky Santoro, managed to screw up a gig that not only managed itself, but was also making them fabulously wealthy.

Robert De Niro stars as Rothstein, the guy the mob puts in charge of the Tangiers, a casino on The Strip.

The mistake Rothstein makes is allowing Santoro (Joe Pesci), the “made” mob guy who was his protector and best friend in their younger years, to move out to Vegas. Santoro is a nut-job -- a psychotic killer and hardened criminal who pursues life on the wrong side of the law with such gusto he’s eventually banned from all of the Vegas casinos and jeopardizes Rothstein’s position with the Nevada Gaming Commission.

And the catalyst for all this disaster is Ginger McKenna (Sharon Stone), as devious a call-girl and grifter as you can imagine. Rothstein marries her, although he knows she doesn’t love him -- then ruins himself, his marriage and his friendship with Santoro trying to control her like she was one of his business assets.

This story plays out against a macabre backdrop of bent-noses who shoot people in the head, bash out their brains with baseball bats, stab ballpoint pens into necks and, perhaps the most revolting, squeeze a man’s head in a vise until his eye pops out.

This is not a pretty, or subtle, film by any stretch.

The performances are good, especially Stone’s. But good as they are, both De Niro and Pesci are flexing gangster muscles both they, and we, are too familiar with by now.

The film is chock-full of supporting turns by a host of comics and character actors, including James Woods, Don Rickles, Alan King, Kevin Pollak, L.Q. Jones and Dick Smothers -- all of whom are playing it straight.

Even in failure, Scorsese manages to be stylish. “Casino” may be too long by a third, and you may find yourself wishing some of the longer, more laborious scenes would come to a hasty conclusion. But you can’t take your eyes off the screen.

'A Low Down Dirty Shame' (released Nov. 23, 1994)

2011-02-04T15:07:00.000-08:00

By DONALD PORTERStandard-Examiner staff

Sometimes filmmakers get it so right, even when they get it wrong.

That’s the case with “A Low Down Dirty Shame,” the new “Shaft” spoof by writer-director Keenen Ivory Wayans (“I’m Gonna Git You Sucka”). It’s a low-down dirty shame that such a talented man -- he created the irreverent Fox TV sketch-comedy series “In Living Color,” too -- has made such an awful mess.

“A Low Down Dirty Shame” is truth in advertising: Sexist, homophobic and derivative of so many better action films, “Low Down” is disappointing at the outset and goes downhill from there.

Wayans takes the structure of a conventional detective movie, then dresses it up in fancy, allegedly hip clothing. It doesn’t work.

Wayans stars as Andre Shame, a former cop who was tossed off the force in the wake of a botched drug bust. Now Shame works the streets of L.A. as a lowly private eye -- poor but honorable, at least in his own eyes.

Then an old cop friend, Rothmiller (Charles S. Dutton), walks back into his life. Vets of the same bust-gone-bad, Rothmiller was the hero of the piece -- landing a job with the federal government’s Drug Enforcement Agency -- while Shame was the goat. Rothmiller is now theorizing that the drug lord they believed to be dead is actually alive and living in Los Angeles, and to find him they must locate his, and Shame's, former girlfriend, Angela (Salli Richardson).

Wayans, who also wrote the script, has built into his plot the potential for action, buddy-bonding and romance. All that’s left is to find some comedy in the mix. But in doing so, the filmmaker resorts to silly, stereotypical portrayals of homosexuals, who Shame alternately ridicules and preserves from doom. He attempts to have it both ways: Insulting gays like a Real Man, while not enough of an ogre to look the other way when a gay man is in harm's way.

How enlightened.

Which is not to say that “Low Down” doesn’t have its moments, infrequent as they may be. After taking a good old-fashioned butt-whipping, a bruised and beaten Shame is greeted by his secretary with, “What happened to you?”

“I been partyin’ with Rodney King and Reginald Denny,” is Shame’s retort.

There’s not enough of that kind of social satire, which he pumped out week in and week out while in charge of “In Living Color.” Instead, he bows to the demands of the Hollywood action genre, which increasingly requires its directors to be outrageous above all else. Wayans seems to have watched plenty of films by John Woo -- the two-fisted gunplay and sliding down stairways on his back while firing are straight out of “A Better Tomorrow Part II” -- James Cameron and John McTiernan, but none of their technical expertise has rubbed off. The action lacks robustness and a sense of danger and grace that is the requisite of this kind of movie.

“A Low Down Dirty Shame,” indeed.

"Amateur": Deadpan humor fills intriguing plot

2010-12-29T11:58:00.000-08:00

By DONALD PORTER
Standard-Examiner staff

The landscape of the American cinema is littered with enormously talented people you've never heard of. Hal Hartley is a writer-director you probably don’t know, and that’s too bad. His previous films, “Trust,” “The Unbelievable Truth” and “Simple Men,” are gems savored by the select few who saw them play in art houses or festivals or, possibly, who rented them by accident at the video store.

Now comes Hartley’s latest, “Amateur,” and he’s lost none of his edge or his talent for finding humor in the oddest places.

“Amateur” stars frequent Hartley collaborator Martin Donovan as a man who awakens in a New York City alley, injured and suffering amnesia. He wanders into a cafe, his head bleeding, and is rescued by a former nun, Isabelle (Isabelle Huppert). She takes him home, and together they set about trying to find out just who he is.

Hartley then introduces a parallel plot -- something about a former porn star, Sofia (Elina Lowensohn), on the run from a pack of vicious thugs who work for a European mob boss. But Sofia is somehow connected to Donovan’s mystery man, and we begin to suspect that the amnesiac might have a terribly dark history.

Revealing any more of the story would be a great disservice, because much of the fun in a Hartley film is watching the plot spin ’round and ’round in smaller and smaller concentric circles. (I will say, however, that Hartley leaves a mighty huge surprise -- which could stir some healthy debate among those who see this movie -- until the film’s last moments.)

The filmmaker is perhaps best known for his droll, deadpan dialogue. His characters say the most outrageous things in such even tones that you have to stay sharp so the jokes don’t zip right over your head.

And Hartley is a master of the absurd situation. His talent is singular. His humor is thoughtful and darkly ironic. You’ll enjoy “Amateur.”

"Get Shorty"

2010-12-16T14:53:00.000-08:00

Probably my favorite author is Elmore Leonard. I love his work. So when a respectful adaptation of his fantastic “Get Shorty” was made, it was time for a celebration. I had fun with the writing style on this one.
“Get Shorty” one of this year’s best

By DONALD PORTER
Standard-Examiner staff

There’s this guy, name’s Chili Palmer. Works as a shylock for a Miami outfit -- you know, mob.

So, he’s a debt collector, right? Gets sent to L.A., supposed to find a movie producer owes this Vegas casino a wad of green. But when Chili gets to L.A., he falls in with the producer, Harry Zimm. They decide to make a movie together. The movie’s about Chili’s trip to L.A., only Harry doesn’t know about that just yet.

Chili's makin’ it up as he goes.

This is the movie, called “Get Shorty.” It’s based on the Elmore Leonard novel. Leonard’s books have been made into movies before. Or should I say ruined by the movies before? Watch Burt Reynolds’ “Stick,” and you’ll know what I mean.

“Get Shorty” was made by guys who liked the book. Respected the book. Its tough-guy dialogue, its humor, its grit. In Leonard’s books, the characters talk like this. In short sentences. No wasted words.

The book is a great one, and so is the movie. One of the year’s best.

John Travolta plays Chili. He’s just right, having played the smacked-up hit man in last year’s “Pulp Fiction.” His Chili is cool. A sharp dresser and a guy who has the goods. Chili’s tired of the rackets, looking to get out. And, hey, maybe the movie business is his next step.

Chili knows the movies. Even the grade-Z schlock Harry’s been making all his life; his movies have the words “slime creatures” in the titles. Stuff like that. Chili knows all of ’em.

He also knows Karen Flores, one of Harry’s favorite stars. She screams real good in those movies – you know, when the monsters jump out. Now Chili’s met her, in person, and she’s a looker. Definitely Chili’s type. And she used to be married to this pompous actor Martin Weir. Guy won an Oscar. Harry says maybe they can get Martin to play the lead in Chili’s movie.

Wow. And even if Martin says no, Chili explains he’ll just press a gun between Martin’s eyes until he signs the contract. Simple.

But first Chili has to collect those debts. It’s the only way he can leave the rackets. There’s the matter of the money Harry owes the Vegas guys. And Chili’s Miami boss, Ray “Bones” Barboni, is out for blood. There’s been this thing, real personal like, between Chili and Ray Bones ever since Chili busted Ray Bones’ nose and shot him in the head.

But that’s not all. Chili also has to deal with this drug trafficker, Bo Catlett, and his bodyguard, guy called Bear, used to be a stuntman. Always acting tough, these two, so Chili gets violent with ’em. It’s a bother, you know, while you’re trying to put a film deal together.

“Get Shorty” is fantastic. A high-water mark for everybody involved. Barry Sonnenfeld directed it; he made those “Addams Family” movies. Scott Frank, the screenwriter, wrote scripts for “Dead Again” and “Little Man Tate.” He deserves lots of credit.

You also got big stars taking small roles, here. Gene Hackman plays Harry. Danny DeVito plays Martin. Incredible, both of ’em. So are Delroy Lindo, plays Bo, and this top-notch character actor, James Gandolfini, plays Bear.

You gotta, admit, though, Travolta and Rene Russo, that “Lethal Weapon 3” actress who plays Karen, are the ones who come off best. Russo, as Karen, looks great and is twice as smart as any of the guys. Well, except for Chili. Maybe.

This is the movie to see, “Get Shorty.” Do it.

“Pure Formality” a nice surprise; “Paradiso” director turns to intrigue

2010-12-09T11:16:00.000-08:00

“A Pure Formality” has one of the best surprise endings I’ve seen in years. I have heard people say they saw it coming, but I don’t believe them.

The film is the latest from Italian writer-director Giuseppe Tornatore, who has charmed American audiences with “Cinema Paradiso” and “Everybody’s Fine.” While those two films depended upon his ability to create bittersweet evocations of nostalgia, “A Pure Formality” sets aside the sweetness, retains plenty of bitterness and cranks up the intrigue.

The film opens with a famous author, Onoff (Gerard Depardieu), running through a raging downpour.The police stop him, take him into custody and transport him to the local police station. The building is a ramshackle affair, with an incessantly leaking roof and big, drafty rooms filled with books stacked hither and yon.

Finally, the Inspector (Roman Polanski) arrives to begin an interrogation. A body has been found nearby, beaten so badly the authorities cannot identify it. The Inspector asks Onoff where he’s been, and what he’s been doing.

Onoff offers nothing but vague answers, punctuated by the refrain, “I don’t remember.”

Does he remember? Is he a killer? Or is he as baffled as he really puts on?

In the midst of the interrogation, Tornatore inserts many quick flashbacks, building to the aforementioned surprise conclusion.

Some will doubtless find “A Pure Formality” little more than a very well-made gimmick movie. But there’s more going on here. Depardieu and Polanski are amazing, locked as they are in combat within the confines of this dank room. It’s fun to see them sparring, and that they’ve been doing so in such a compelling movie makes it all the more satisfying.

A trio of vampire movies

2009-10-10T06:04:00.000-07:00

Since the second installment of the "Twilight" series is set to open in theaters soon (I haven't read the books, nor did I see the first film), I looked back and found three reviews of vampire movies to post. The first is a Mel Brooks spoof of the genre, though focused mostly on the classic "Dracula," and it doesn't work too well. The next is an Eddie Murphy romp. And the third -- the one worth a look, if you can find it, is an atmospheric, interesting exercise.

“Dracula” needs more life

By DONALD PORTER
Standard-Examiner staff

Mel Brooks’ new comedy “Dracula: Dead and Loving It” is one of those good news/bad news movies. While it may be better than “Robin Hood: Men in Tights” and “Spaceballs,” it doesn’t come close to “Blazing Saddles,” “Young Frankenstein” or “High Anxiety.”

Brooks’ tenure in Hollywood has been meteoric: It burned white hot, then plummeted.

“Dracula: Dead and Loving It” marks a partial return to old form for the once-master spoofer. He lampoons not only the movies that have been adaptations -- loose, and otherwise -- of the classic horror novel “Dracula,” but also the novel itself. In his own offbeat way, he remains as close or closer to the source material than many previous adaptations, including Francis Ford Coppola’s “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” and Tod Browning’s 1931 version of “Dracula” starring Bela Lugosi.

Leslie Nielsen (“The Naked Gun”) stars as Count Dracula, and Peter MacNichol plays his mad slave, Renfield. Together, they travel from Transylvania to London, where the count sets about gnawing on the necks of a pair of local women. Out to stop him are the uptight Harker (Steven Weber) and famed vampire hunter Dr. Van Helsing (Brooks).

The film is about equal parts funny and stupid. The best scene begins with this exchange between Harker and Van Helsing, upon entering the crypt where a vampire sleeps:

“She’s dead,” observes Harker.

“No,” counters Van Helsing.

“She’s alive?”

“She’s nosferatu.”

“She’s Italian?”

The scene concludes with Harker literally bathed in the vampire’s blood, a sick-funny moment fit for a Monty Python movie.

Fortunately, that’s about the extent of the gore. Unfortunately, much of the writing is weaker than it ought to be. Brooks needs to figure out a way to hire back a pair of now-successful writer-directors who worked with him in the ’70s -- Andrew Bergman (“Blazing Saddles”) and Barry Levinson (“High Anxiety”). The writers Brooks has now just don’t have comparable skills.

Murphy bites into another bad film with “Vampire in Brooklyn”

By DONALD PORTER
Standard-Examiner staff

So, when exactly did Eddie Murphy decide to star in nothing but lousy movies?

It was 1988, that’s when -- right after “Coming to America.” And the trend continues with the release of “Vampire in Brooklyn,” his latest. It’s a horror flick directed by Wes Craven (“A Nightmare on Elm Street”), and it wants desperately to be a blend of broad comedy and scary effects. It does neither.

Murphy plays the last of a race of vampires who were run out of Egypt, then fled to the Caribbean, where they’ve been waylaying travelers in the Bermuda Triangle for centuries. Now Murphy’s bloodsucker, Max, has traveled to New York City in search of a half-vampire/half-human woman he hopes to transform into a vampire by the next full moon.

Why before the next full moon? Well ... just because, that’s why.

Murphy arrives in the Big Apple on a boat loaded with corpses; he chewed his way through the necks of the crew. And, as luck -- not to mention contrivance -- would have it, one investigating police officer assigned to solve the case of the multiple murders is Rita Veder (Angela Bassett), the very half-vampire Max has come looking for.

Absent Max’s search for Rita, the film becomes, then, about his attempts to seduce her into the vampire fold. And for someone so desperate, Max surely takes his sweet time; when he wants to gnaw on most humans, he simply uses his overwhelming vampire strength to subdue and bite them. But with Rita, the thought never occurs to him.

That’s only one of many inconsistencies in “Vampire in Brooklyn.” But the film really isn’t about vampires. No, it’s more about Eddie Murphy. Like so many star-tripping actors, Murphy seems attracted to certain movie projects out of vanity.

Just why he does this is anyone’s guess. To show off his range? Because he misses the chance to play different characters like he did years ago on “Saturday Night Live”?

Who knows? In the end, “Vampire in Brooklyn” is nothing more than a profane, frequently offensive sham -- not a comedy and not a thriller. Bassett is wasted, and Murphy wastes everybody’s time.

“Nadja” funny, but it tends to get too artsy for its own good

By DONALD PORTER
Standard-Examiner staff

As thickly atmospheric and comically pretentious as any movie you’re likely to see all year, “Nadja” does the artsy thing with the vampire myth.

The film, which premiered in competition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, follows the twin children, Nadja and Edgar, of Count Dracula, who are trying to break free from their sordid fate.

Nadja (Elina Lowensohn) cruises through New York City’s nightclub scene every evening, preying on one-night stands with the help of her slave, Renfield. She’s not happy about it and says she wants to change. Still, two centuries’ worth of bad habits and bloodlust are difficult to leave behind.

And there’s a new wrinkle in the lives of both Nadja and Edgar (Jared Harris): Dr. Van Helsing (Peter Fonda) has just recently put a stake through the heart of their father. Surprisingly, Van Helsing seems to take little pleasure in his victory: “He was like Elvis in the end,” he says, allowing that the Count’s fame had gone to his head, and he’d lost his edge. That’s indicative of the kind of droll humor you’ll find here.

But Van Helsing’s job is not done. Now the vampire killer is out to get Nadja and Edgar, and he enlists the aid of his nephew, Jim (Martin Donovan).

“Nadja” was written and directed by Michael Almereyda, who displays a keen eye and ear for the cinema. He borrows his deadpan dialogue from Hal Hartley (“Simple Men”) -- not to mention Hartley’s frequent star, Donovan. And his use of deeply textured black and white cinematography is stunning.

But, as with many independents, there’s that uncontrollable urge to be different, and Almereyda does so with a vengeance.

Interspersed throughout the film are scenes shot with the now-defunct Pixelvision, a camera that recorded audio and video images on simple audio cassette tapes. The resulting image brings new meaning to the word “grainy,” and Almereyda seems to be so enamored with the process he tends to use it indiscriminately; we suspect at the outset the Pixelvision is intended as a vampire’s point-of-view device, but then Almereyda shoots other scenes in Pixelvision that are clearly not from a vampire’s perspective.

As such, the technique is reduced to distraction. Something this jarring needs to have a clearly defined purpose.

“Nadja” is an interesting film, and funny -- especially the over-the-top Fonda, who gives his best performance in years -- but ultimately it’s too self-aware for its own good.

Jeffrey Boam interview, June 1995

2009-09-30T14:06:00.000-07:00

This is not a complete transcript of the interview. My vague recollection was that I was facing a pretty tight deadline, and so I skimmed through the recording and only transcribed the notes I thought I might use in the interview story. That said, the nuggets here are pretty interesting, given the way things played out:

* On “Lethal Weapon IV”: Jeffrey got no credit whatsoever. It turned out to be another bad “Lethal Weapon” experience with Warner Bros. and Richard Donner. Before the interview, he sent me a copy of the screenplay. At the time, I suspected he was eager to talk about it because he felt like it might be slipping away and going to another writer, and so he was trying to salvage it. His script, if I’m remembering correctly, involved the Los Angeles Lakers on a jet and a terrorist attack.

* He also mentions “The Phantom,” which he alluded to in our earlier interview. That movie bombed.

* On the fourth “Indiana Jones” movie, he didn’t get a credit, either. But what little he says about it sounds like George Lucas had the story pretty well set even back in the mid-1990s.

Don Porter: THE RIGHT-WING TERRORISM THING SEEMS PRETTY DEAD-ON.

Jeffrey Boam: “It seemed kind of far-fetched when I wrote it. [The Oklahoma City bombing] kind of spooked me a little bit, actually.”

DP: THE WAY YOU’RE PLAYING THE WHOLE RACISM THING, AND THE RADICAL RIGHT-WING, SEEMS PRETTY RELEVANT, ESPECIALLY IN L.A. AND MEL GIBSON’S BEEN SAYING HE’S NOT SURE HE WANTS TO DO ANOTHER ONE. I’M SORT OF SURPRISED THAT YOU WENT BACK TO WARNERS TO WRITE THE SCRIPT, GIVEN WHAT HAPPENED WITH “LETHAL III.”

JB: “So was I. I did a lot of anguishing over this decision, and the deal took about four months or five months, actually, to be concluded. They seemed determined to do another one -- to do another movie -- so they had someone write a script and they gave it to me to read just for my input. And it kind of made me depressed to think that this movie could be made from this script; it was kind of second-rate, imitative and derivative of the other movies. So I thought, ‘Gee, I don’t want to see this movie get made and someone else to have written it.’

“And then they came to me. And then they came to me -- and I hadn’t done anything about it, just held my feelings to myself -- the producer said, ‘You really have to do this. You’re the only one who can do it.’ And so I thought maybe I could really get something out of this, financially, and also get them to agree to certain terms that would protect me from the kind of abuse I felt I’d received the last time.“A lot of that did happen. Not all of, but a lot of it. So, they made it very attractive for me to do it, and so I did it.”

DP: IT WAS A FUN READ. I THOUGHT IT WAS REALLY EXCITING, ESPECIALLY DOWN THE STRETCH, WITH THE STINGER MISSILE.

JB: “Well, the whole idea for this one was to write a movie that wasn’t as episodic and as much of a shaggy dog story as ‘III,’ ... we decided to tell a story that could maybe could work if it wasn’t Mel and Danny, wasn’t a ‘Lethal Weapon’ story. So those were my marching orders, really: to write a story where every scene was about the story.

“The director, Dick Donner, is kind of famous for detours and peripheral characters and scenes, which he really loves, which kind of take you away from the point of the story. We decided to come up with a story and just tell the story.”

DP: HAVE YOU HEARD FROM DONNER?

JB: “Only secondhand. ... As far as I know, Mel hasn’t even read it. I’ll BET he has, but no one’s told me.”

DP: WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN DOING IN THE MEANTIME? THE DATE ON THE SCRIPT IS JANUARY.

JB: “I’ve been working on a fourth installment of ‘Indiana Jones.’ I’m just about done with the first draft. Somebody else had also tried their hand at it, and it didn’t work out too well.”

DP: THEY ALWAYS KEEP COMING BACK TO YOU, JEFFREY.

JB: “It’s nice, you know. Actually, George Lucas came to me to do this first, and I was busy writing a movie called ‘The Phantom.’ So I couldn’t do ‘Indy,’ because I had to do that, and when I finished that, George came back to me and said, ‘It didn’t really work out with the other writer, are you available?’

“And, it turned out, I was. Now I’m working on that, and it looks like ‘The Phantom’ might get made also, because Paramount just hired a new director on that project: Simon Wincer. He’s a good director, and he has a long history with ‘The Phantom’ -- he tried to get a movie made about 10 years ago in Australia. It’s very big in Australia; this character’s kind of a cult hero in Australia. Nobody can understand why, but that’s how it is.”

DP: WHEN WILL THEY START SHOOTING THE “INDY” MOVIE?

JB: “Well, it’s conceivable that it could be the movie that Steven (Spielberg) does next. It could go very quickly. George has seen most of the first draft; we put off the first 15 pages because we weren’t really sure what we wanted to do there. So I gave him everything but the first 15 pages, and he’s very happy with that. So I know we’re well on the road to having the script that he likes. And generally when he likes it, Steven’s not far behind. And once Steven’s on board, Harrison (Ford) is much easier to snag, as well.

“But with these people it’s always a big problem getting all these big paydays dealt with. But I find that on both the ‘Lethal’ and ‘Indy’ films there’s a tremendous amount of team spirit and loyalty amongst the principals. They don’t like the idea of anybody else doing it but them. So if it looks like ‘Indy’ is going to get made -- of course you could cast somebody else besides Harrison Ford, if you HAD to -- but Harrison wouldn’t dream of that. ... So these guys play hard-to-get, but then if it looks like the thing’s going to on without them, they go nuts.”

DP: ANY HINTS AS TO WHAT THE “INDY” THING’S ABOUT?

JB: “It’s set in the ’50s, I’ll tell you that. And Harrison will play his own age. A considerable amount of action. We have him (Sean Connery character) back, for kind of a cameo. I’d love to tell you more, but George is secretive about these things.

“Whatever the ’50s conjur up, that’s probably what this is about. That’s all I’ll say. I think you’ll kind of automatically grasp what the story is if you just think about what the ’50s is about and how it might relate to Indy.

“It’s not about Elvis, though.”

DP: TELL ME MORE ABOUT THE TERRORISM ANGLE IN “LETHAL IV,” AND WHETHER IT MIGHT BE TOO SOON AFTER OKLAHOMA CITY.

JB: “I don’t know whether that works for or against it. I can argue both sides of that question.”

DP: A LOT OF PEOPLE MENTIONED THAT BEFORE THE RELEASE OF “DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE.”

JB: “In a review I read in one of the major weeklies, he said he was sure Hollywood was already cranking out next summer’s action-adventure movies about right-wing militia groups.”

“But it’s a good subject that I don’t think has really been done before, except in one little-known movie called ‘Dead-Bang,’ which really just kind of scraped the surface of the whole thing. ... It kind of got some of this world right, but it only dealt with it superficially.”

DP: WHAT’S UP NEXT?

JB: “I’m gonna have to go back and work on ‘Lethal,’ assuming everyone wants to go forward. I owe them probably three more drafts on it if they require it. So if that gets moving I’ll be stuck on that.”

DP: WHAT ABOUT DIRECTING?

JB: [He says he did an episode of “Tales from the Crypt” for HBO.] “I enjoyed it quite a bit, but I didn’t enjoy ALL of it. Even though it was only a two-week commitment, I’d say about half that time I really didn’t like at all. I don’t like pre-production. I just find it a terrible chore to scout locations, and do casting. I thought that that would be enjoyable; it turned out not to be. Shooting was too intense to even comment on. And post-production is genuinely gratifying.

“So, a feature film would be that experience, times 20. ... Interesting writing jobs keep coming along.”

DP: WELL, THEY’RE THE DREAM JOBS, TOO. WHAT ELSE WOULD YOU RATHER BE DOING THAN WRITING THE “INDIANA JONES” MOVIES?

JB: “ ‘Star Wars,’ maybe. It could happen. George is writing the three scripts now, for the new trilogy. But he says he wants to have them re-written; he just wants to get something down on paper so he can start doing the pre-production. But he wants all three scripts re-written and polished. So, maybe there would be an opportunity to work on that.

“This is all stuff that’s just boiling on a burner, and I hope someday it turns into a meal.”

The Jeffrey Boam interview, 1992

2009-09-24T20:17:00.000-07:00

In the late 1980s and early '90s, I guested a couple of times a week on KALL-AM radio in Salt Lake City with DJ Peter Boam, who went by the on-air handle of "Peter B." He's a great guy, and we had a lot of fun talking movies and showbiz. It was during the waning days of so-called "full-service" radio, when listeners got music, news and talk all rolled into one.

Peter's brother was the late Jeffrey Boam, who unfortunately passed away in January 2000. Jeffrey was a tremendously successful screenwriter who penned scripts for movies including "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," "Lethal Weapon 2," "Lethal Weapon 3," "Innerspace," "The Dead Zone," "Funny Farm," "The Lost Boys" and "Straight Time." (He also was a writer-producer on one of my favorite, but sadly short-lived, TV series, "The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.")

I first met Jeffrey in 1989 or 1990. While the family was vacationing at Disneyland, I took a few hours in the middle of the day and drove up to the Warner Bros. lot -- where Jeffrey was under contract -- and interviewed him in his offices there.

It was the first of three interviews with Jeffrey, spread over several years. And the summer of 1989 was a big one for him, since that summer he had both "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" and "Lethal Weapon 2" in theaters. I'll post that first interview from '89 or '90 when I find it, but since I ran across the other two, I'll post them; they both were by phone, and came at interesting times in his career. Today's will be the one from 1992.

I began by asking him about his highly publicized arbitration fight with the writer's guild over “Lethal Weapon 3.” The Wikipedia entry sums it up pretty well:

Screenwriter Jeffrey Boam is credited twice in the 'screenplay by' credits. This is because he did one draft by himself (granting him the first credit) and a second draft collaborating with Robert Mark Kamen (granting him the second credit). If two writers are credited on a film and their names are separated with an ampersand (&), this means they collaborated on the screenplay. If their names are separated with the word 'and,' this means they both contributed enough significant material to receive credit but did not work together (more than likely one was hired to rewrite the previous writer). In this rare scenario, Boam was hired to rewrite his own script with a second writer.

JEFFREY BOAM: “I think it’s unprecedented. And I think the credit is somewhat ludicrous, and I think when you look at that credit you say, ‘My god, if he gets his name up their three times, why didn’t they just have sole screenplay credit by him?’ Which is what everyone in the world expected, but the guild found some technicality to prevent me from doing that -- which is that the work I did could not be viewed in total, and that the work I did on my own had to be viewed separately from the work I did collaborating with this other writer.

“So the arbitration committee felt that the work that we did as a team was sufficient for the team to get credit. So what happens is I get credit as an individual -- a single writer -- I get credit part of a team that rewrote me, and then I get sole credit for having conceived the story by myself.

“So, it’s a mind-boggling credit I think that makes a mockery out of the concept of authorship, which is what I thought the guild was attempting to secure and to protect with the arbitration system.”

DON PORTER: WELL, ISN’T THAT THE WHOLE IDEA BEHIND THE ARBITRATION SYSTEM? THAT’S THE MAIN THRUST, RIGHT?

JB: “I know. And I feel basically that they have failed me and they have failed themselves in this decision.”

DP: SO TAKE ME BACK A LITTLE BIT. THE LAST TIME I TALKED TO YOU WAS ABOUT A YEAR AND A HALF AGO, AND YOU WERE IN THE PROCESS OF WRITING THE SCREENPLAY, I THINK.

JB: “Was I? I remember it seemed like a long time ago, and I have been working on this a long time. So I could have been working on it.”

DP: I THINK WE TALKED IN OCTOBER OF 1990. BUT, ANYWAY, WHEN THEY CAME TO YOU, DID THEY SAY, “THIS IS THE IDEA WE WANT?” OR DID THEY JUST LEAVE IT UP TO YOU TO COME UP WITH THE PLOT?

JB: “They basically left everything up to me. And I would then go into them with my ideas. They would accept and reject, and I would then retreat back to wherever I do my brainstorming and come up with more ideas.”

DP: SO, AT WHAT POINT DID DONNER DECIDE THAT HE WANTED SOMETHING ELSE, AND HAVE YOU START WORKING WITH THIS OTHER WRITER?

JB: “Well, after the second draft, Dick decided he wanted to go off in a completely new direction with another writer.”

DP: WHAT WAS THE THRUST OF YOUR STORY AT THAT POINT, BEFORE HE ...

JB: “Exactly what it is now. My second draft was almost identical to what’s on the screen now in its major components. But Dick, for some reason -- you know, creative people are kind of crazy -- and Dick was working on ‘Lethal Flyer,’ no, I mean ‘Radio Flyer’ ...”

DP: FREUDIAN SLIP?

JB: “... yeah, it is a Freudian slip.” [Much laughter.] “And he was very much involved with ‘Radio Flyer’ and he either didn’t have the patience or the energy or the time to really devote to the development of ‘Lethal Weapon 3.’ And by the time I handed him my second draft, his lack of attention to the script was interpreted on his own part as a lack of interest in the script. And I think he felt like he needed to be jump-started, and a way to do that would be to throw away everything and start over with a new writer.

“So I was told after my second draft that I had been fired, basically.”

DP: WOW, YOU WERE JUST OFF THE PROJECT?

“I was just off the project, and that Dick was going to go in a new direction with a new writer. And after about two or three weeks I got a call saying, ‘That is not working out and they want to come back’ to me. But I think in Dick’s mind I had been beaten down and used up and exhausted – and some of that was true and some of that he was responsible for.

“And I think as kind of a political move on the part of the studio, in an effort to get Dick to come back to what I had done, as kind of a salve for him -- a face-saving measure -- they said, ‘Well, what if we bring in another writer to work with Jeffrey, to maybe bring in that new blood that you’re looking for?’ So I think that it was kind of a political move more than a creative move.

“And I was pretty much, then, forced to collaborate with another writer, and after a certain point finally put my foot down and said, ‘This is not right, it’s not helpful, I’m rewriting everything he’s doing anyway, you don’t like what he does -- either I go on alone at this point or I don’t go on at all.’ And so then I was reinstated as the sole writer on the script, the other writer went off and all through production from early October through early January I was rewriting on the movie.”

DP: NOW, I’M GUESSING THAT, GIVEN HIS CREDITS, SOME OF THE MARTIAL ARTS STUFF CAME OUT OF HIS WORK ON THE SCRIPT. IS THAT CORRECT?

JB: “Well, it’s hard to say. Martial arts is a kind of general topic and anybody can write on a screenplay, ‘Such and such does a spinning back kick.’ It doesn’t take any expertise in martial arts to write that someone has martial arts ability. And I don’t even know that it was his idea to have – in fact, I remember the genesis of this: I had originally written this character as a man. And one of Dick’s commands to us when we started collaborating was, ‘Make this character a woman, and basically keep the same personality, just make her a woman.’ And the personality of the male character was someone who was Mel’s match, someone who was as lethal and crazy as Mel was in his own way.

“So, in making this character a woman, I think the martial arts expertise just came out of that notion: to make a kind of female Martin Riggs.”

DP: WELL, IT REALLY KIND OF CHANGES THE WHOLE -- IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT, OF COURSE YOU KNOW THIS -- BUT CHANGES THE WHOLE THING DRASTICALLY. IF THAT WAS A MAN TO BEGIN WITH IT WOULD HAVE BEEN A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FILM, THAT RELATIONSHIP ANYWAY.

JB: “Oh, clearly, absolutely. That relationship was created out of this gender switch we did with the character. And at that time, Mel actually did have an affair with Murtaugh’s daughter.”

DP: SO, THAT’S WHERE THE KISS CAME FROM? SORT OF A REMNANT OF THAT?

JB: “Exactly. And Danny’s suspicion of that when Mel comes on the boat and says, 'Rianne came to my trailer to talk to me about you.’ And he gets all upset about her coming to his trailer, and then he punches him at the end of the scene because he thinks Mel slept with her.”

DP: “I SLEPT WITH THE WRONG PERSON, SOMEONE I SHOULDN’T HAVE.”

JB: “Right. So he assumes it’s his daughter.”

DP: SO YOU’RE BACK ON, AND I’M ASSUMING THEY SENT THE OTHER WRITER PACKING?

JB: “Yeah.”

DP: SO HE WASN’T WORKING ON IT ANYMORE?

JB: “No.”

DP: HOW MUCH WERE YOU INVOLVED AFTER THEY ACTUALLY STARTED SHOOTING THE FILM? PETER SAID YOU TRAVELLED BACK TO FLORIDA WHEN THEY IMPLODED THE BUILDING.

JB: “I was far more involved than I wanted to be at that point. I was involved as a writer, and I don’t really like to be employed as a writer on a movie that’s in production; it’s not a great way to write.”

DP: WHY?

JB: “Well, because the element of preparation is” … [takes another call]. “Basically it means that you’re a little in trouble. You should be able to prepare a script, write a script -- prep it, do the preproduction on it – and go out and shoot it. You should only be worrying about the mechanics of making the movie at that point. And you should not be really worried about the creative aspect of the script. And if you are, it’s just really hard on everybody, because I’m having to write scenes, or change scenes and they have to go off and figure out how to prep those scenes, or I have to write a scene within the limitations of what they’ve already prepped.

“It’s just a hassle. It’s no fun to receive a phone call at seven in the morning from the director, who’s sitting in his trailer saying, ‘I don’t like this scene, kid. Can you get down here? We gotta work on this.’ ”

DP: WELL, YEAH, THAT’S GOT TO BE INCREDIBLY DEMANDING.

JB: “Oh, it is. It’s VERY demanding.”

DP: EVERYBODY STANDING AROUND WAITING FOR YOU TO WRITE WHAT THEY’RE GOING TO DO.

JB: “And this has happened. I mean, this has happened. I remember many times where I’d be sitting in Dick’s trailer with Mel or with Joe Pesci or with Joel Silver -- or with all of them -- and there’s a crew of a hundred people sitting outside drinking coffee and reading the trades waiting for us.”

DP: SO TELL ME: AT THIS POINT, YOU’VE SEEN THE FILM, I’M ASSUMING A COUPLE OF TIMES -- THE FINISHED PRODUCT -- AND I KIND OF ENJOYED IT, I GOTTA TELL YA. I THOUGHT IT WAS A LOT FUNNIER THAN I REMEMBER THE LAST ONE BEING.

JB: “I think the accent is more on humor in this one.”

DP: ARE YOU HAPPY WITH IT? HOW HAPPY ARE YOU WITH IT?

JB: “Well, I guess given the kind of nightmarish experience of working on it, I am happy with it. I’m happy with it because I think an audience likes it.

“I feel a little bit like Sullivan in ‘Sullivan’s Travels’ -- you know, at the end he’s on a chain gang and the other members of the chain gang are sitting there roaring at a Fritz the Cat cartoon or something. That’s how I feel: I feel like I’ve seen the dark side and out of it has come basically this frivolous piece of entertainment that causes people to laugh and be happy. And I think, ‘I guess it was worthwhile. I guess it works, I guess it’s OK.’ It’s not a great piece of filmmaking, it’s not a great piece of literature, it’s not going to become one of the best movies of the decade, but people enjoy themselves when they’re watching it. It is an entertainment business, and I do want to entertain people. So I feel like I’ve succeeded, or we’ve succeeded.”

DP: LAWRENCE KASDAN SAID RECENTLY THAT HE HAD WANTED TO MAKE IMPORTANT FILMS THAT SAY SOMETHING, BUT ALSO THAT PEOPLE ENJOY. AND HE SORT OF MADE THE SAME COMMENT YOU DID, THAT MAYBE ENTERTAINING PEOPLE WAS ENOUGH. IS THAT WHERE YOU’VE ARRIVED AT? IS ENTERTAINING PEOPLE ENOUGH?

JB: “It’s something I arrived at four or five movies ago. I think I’ve just lost sight of it. I think working on this movie has made me feel that the pain and misery of the experience would be translated to the screen -- and it wasn’t. And the people who watch it have no knowledge of how hard it was to get what was on there, or how frustrated we were in not getting something up there. They just see it and take it at face value. That’s all I’m really saying, is that they want to be entertained, they wanna like it, and we have given them something I think is enjoyable for two hours and I think they will feel they’ve gotten their money’s worth and the time was well-spent.”

DP: PETER MENTIONED THERE WAS ALREADY TALK OF “LETHAL 4,” AND HAVING SAID WHAT YOU JUST SAID ABOUT THE AGONY OF THE PROCESS, WILL YOU BE INVOLVED IF THEY DECIDE TO DO IT?

JB: “I think they will decide to do it, and the studio has spoken to me about it. Dick and Joel have not spoken to me about it. And my feeling right now is that I don’t even want to think about it. I want to get on to my own career; I know this is my career, but I feel that these movies are really more a part of Dick’s and Joel’s careers, and I want to do my own movie -- write and direct my own movie. And I don’t want to be distracted or sidetracked by having to work on another ‘Lethal Weapon’ movie.”

DP: PETER HAD MENTIONED -- AND I THINK WE HAD TALKED ABOUT IT BEFORE -- THAT YOU WANTED TO DIRECT, AND YOU’RE PLANNING ON DOING IT IN THE VERY NEAR FUTURE.

JB: “The next script I write will be with that goal in mind.”

DP: SO IT’S SOMETHING YOU HAVEN’T WRITTEN YET?

JB: “No. There’s a couple of ideas I have. One is probably a higher priority than others, but it’s premature to talk about it because there’s a rights issue involved and Warners hasn’t secured the rights to it yet, so I don’t want to mention it.”

DP: WILL IT BE SOMETHING THAT’S A COMPLETE DEPARTURE FOR YOU? I THINK IT’S SAFE TO SAY YOU’RE ASSOCIATED WITH FILMS THAT ARE QUINTESSENTIAL ROLLICKING GOOD TIMES.

JB: “No, I think that’s what I want to do. I want to do that kind of a movie on a budget that they will allow me to work with. Of the three ideas I have in mind, they all have the same components of the movies I’ve written: humor and action and adventure and some camaraderie.”

DP: I REMEMBER THAT WHEN WE TALKED BEFORE, YOU HAD A LOT OF REALLY FOND MEMORIES OF “FUNNY FARM,” AND WOULD THAT BE THE KIND OF THING YOU WOULD BE INTERESTED IN DOING? THAT’S ONE THAT, IF I HAD TO CHOOSE FAVORITES OF THE FILMS YOU’VE WRITTEN, THAT WOULD BE RIGHT UP THERE.

JB: “Really?”

DP: I MEAN, I REALLY ENJOYED THAT ONE.

JB: “Well, in that that’s a comedy, the movie I write will be a comedy -- yes, you could say that. But I think it’ll have more action.”

DP: WELL, HEY, IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE I OUGHTA KNOW? WHHAT ELSE HAVE YOU GOT GOING? PETER SAID SOMETHING ABOUT A TELEVISION REVIVAL OF “’77 SUNSET STRIP”?

JB: “Oh, yeah. My producing partner and I have, I guess you could say, re-created ‘ ’77 Sunset Strip’ for the ’90s, for ABC. We have a script we’ve written and they’re very high on the project. But in television, many are called, but few are chosen [takes another call].”

DP: BUT THINGS ARE LOOKING UP FOR THAT PROJECT?

JB: “Yeah, I think so. They are interested in it. Television is almost more competitive than movies.”

DP: HAVE YOU CAST IT YET?

JB: “No. If we get to the point of casting it, it means they’re gonna go -- at least with the pilot.”

DP: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO “SGT. ROCK”?

JB: “Well, Peter’s got the screenplay right now, and he’s reading it. ‘Sgt. Rock’ didn’t turn out well from the studio’s point of view. It turned out great from my point of view. I wrote exactly the kind of movie I wanted, but it wasn’t the movie they wanted.”

[Peter let me read the screenplay, and it was a lot of fun. Months earlier Peter had said Jeffrey was prepping to write the "Sgt. Rock" screenplay, and said Jeffrey wanted to know if I knew of any good war movies he should watch -- Peter may have been kidding about that part; I don't know -- but I said he should look at Robert Aldrich's films, especially "Attack."]

DP: WHAT WAS THE DIFFERENCE IN PHILOSOPHY THERE?

JB: “For them it was too real, too grim, too painful. It’s almost an anti-war movie, kind of a war-is-hell movie.”

DP: AND THEY WANTED A MORE CARTOONISH ...

JB: “Yeah, they wanted ‘Lethal Weapon’ or ‘Indiana Jones’ goes to war. And even though I started out with the idea of doing that, somewhere along the line I lost that. And I didn’t lose it intentionally; but I think doing research on World War II -- and I did a lot of research on just infantry soldiers, in particular, reading journals and letters -- it just ALTERED me. And the movie I wrote, I think, was probably fairly true to the lives of these people and was not the kind of rollicking entertainment the studio wanted.”

DP: THEY WANTED SOMETHING A LITTLE MORE ESCAPIST.

JB: “Absolutely.”

DP: TALKING ABOUT WORLD WAR II FILMS, I SAW A REALLY GOOD ONE YESTERDAY AFTERNOON WITH PETER CALLED “A MIDNIGHT CLEAR.”

JB: “Yeah, I hear it’s really good.”

DP: YEAH, REALLY WELL DONE. SHOT UP HERE, AS A MATTER OF FACT.

JB: “That’s right. I’d like to see it.”

DP: WELL, IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE THAT I HAVEN’T ASKED YOU THAT YOU MIGHT WANT ME TO KNOW ABOUT “LETHAL 3” OR ANYTHING ELSE?

JB: “Well, you know, in truth you don’t really need to know anything about ‘Lethal 3,’ except what’s on the screen. But if you’re interested, I could tell you more. But I don’t know what you’re interested in.”

DP: I AM. I JUST THINK THAT ... WHEN I INTERVIEWED YOU BEFORE, I MUST CONFESS, I HADN’T – I THINK YOU’RE BASICALLY THE ONLY SCREENWRITER I’VE EVER ACTUALLY TALKED TO IN DEPTH AND WRITTEN ANYTHING THAT WE’VE PLAYED LARGE. AND I’LL TELL YA, I HAD A LOT OF RESPONSE FROM JUST THE CASUAL READERS. PEOPLE WERE REALLY INTERESTED TO KNOW ABOUT PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY WRITE FILMS. AND I JUST THOUGHT FROM THE THINGS PETER HAD BEEN TELLING ME, THIS SEEMED LIKE A SORT OF NATURAL THING TO DO. HE HAD BEEN TELLING ME BITS AND PIECES ABOUT THE TROUBLE YOU WERE HAVING DURING PRODUCTION, THINGS LIKE THAT.

ANOTHER THING HE SAID YESTERDAY WAS THAT YOUR WIFE HAD REFUSED TO GO TO THE PREMIERE [HE LAUGHS] WITH YOU BECAUSE -- WELL, YOU CAN TELL ME WHY.

JB: “It wasn’t a protest. It wasn’t like she was trying to make a point. She’s just not ready to re-experience the misery of the time that I was writing this movie. I think she was just afraid it would bring it all back. It was really an awful time, working on this movie.”

DP: PETER SAID AT ONE POINT YOU JUST DECIDED TO TAKE A CRUISE TO GET AWAY FOR A WHILE.

JB: “Yeah, we did. We did, for two weeks at the end of the year. The picture was still shooting, and I told everybody well in advance, ‘Look, I’m going to be gone. If you need me, you better tell me now, because I’m leaving.’ And, typically, people don’t hear what they don’t want to hear. So, when I left, everyone acted like, ‘What? You’re going? Don’t go.’ But I left.”

DP: DID THEY EVER TRY TO GET HOLD OF YOU ON THE BOAT?

JB: “No, they got along fine without me. The thing is, the material was there -- it was always there. And if I’m not there to change it, they’ll shoot what they have. They’re always embellishing it anyway; and it’s fine, it works.

“I think the problem with ‘Lethal 3’ was that everyone had a different idea of WHY this franchise works.”

DP: WHAT’S YOUR THEORY?

JB: “One thing we all agree on is that the chemistry between Mel and Danny is essential. But beyond that, I feel that the thing had to have a high co-efficient of humor and action -- it needed to be kind of thrilling moment to moment. My notion is to always keep it exciting, even edging toward more comic-book like. I think sequels always evolve in that direction -- they go from being serious to less serious and then even less serious. I’ve never seen a sequel, or series, go the other way. For some reason, I don’t think it can. It’s like the law of gravity: It doesn’t work that way. You can’t become more serious with a sequel, you have to become less serious. So, in becoming less serious, I think I tended toward more outrageous action, more outrageous comedy -- everything became more outrageous.

“But Dick wanted to downscale everything. Dick wanted to make it more personal, smaller, more intimate. He wanted to make it less story-oriented. He wanted to be more episodic. And it was Dick’s idea that the movie be the last eight days of Danny’s career on the force, leading up to his retirement. At one point, we even counted down the days, so you actually see the days going by; you would actually know that now we’re down to four days, now we’re down to three days, now we’re down to two days. The idea being that Danny tries to stay out of trouble his last week, and Mel keeps bringing him into trouble.

“Now, what Dick really had no interest in was what the bad guy’s story was all about. Dick’s focus was on Mel and Danny, and it was hard for him to concentrate on: What was the crime that they were pursuing? Who was the villain? What was he up to? And I felt that that had to be strong, it had to really be what the movie was about, and the personal stuff had to be the icing on the cake.

“And I think what I saw as icing, Dick saw as cake. It was a constant -- it wasn’t a battle -- it was a constant push and pull between the two of us throughout the entire development of the script to see who would actually prevail in this little battle.”

DP: WHAT COMES OUT OF AN EXPERIENCE LIKE THAT PERSONALLY? ON A PERSONAL LEVEL, DO YOU GUYS GET ALONG? OR IS THIS JUST A PURELY PROFESSIONAL, “WE TOLERATE EACH OTHER WHEN WE’RE IN EACH OTHER’S PRESENCE BECAUSE WE HAVE TO”?

JB: “No, I think we genuinely like each other. And I think we have great affection for each other. And I think I am pretty much forced to observe the pecking order of our individual occupations.”

DP: HE’S THE BOSS.

JB: “He’s the boss. He’s the director and I’m the writer, and I do see my role in this as serving him. I do not see my job as trying to get my vision on screen. I do have a vision, and I have to promote it and be the champion of it. But, ultimately, I have to get Dick’s vision on the screen. My job is to maybe get him to buy into my vision. But if he doesn’t, then I’ve got to somehow fulfill his vision. And even though I recognize that as my job, I got to the point where I was sick of doing that. But I felt that I achieved more than that, that I’ve gone beyond that -- that what I’ve done should have granted me the power to see my own ideas prevail. But they CAN’T, because that’s not how the system works; the only way for that to happen is for me to be the director.

“So I was going through my own kind of personal conflict of still being the writer -- the second guy on the totem pole -- when I really felt I had earned the right to be the top guy on the totem pole. I didn’t want to direct this movie, but I just felt people should trust me more and listen to me more and be more willing to accept what I have to say as maybe being right.”

DP: SO WHEN WE LOOK FOR THE NEXT SCREEN CREDIT, IT WON’T BE “SGT. ROCK” IF THEY SUDDENLY DECIDE TO MAKE THAT, IT WILL BE PROBABLY SOMETHING YOU WRITE AND DIRECT YOURSELF?

JB: “I hope so. That’s my goal.”

DP: THIS IS WITH WARNERS TOO, RIGHT?

JB: “At the moment it is.”

DP: BUT ALL THAT COULD CHANGE, RIGHT?

JB: “It could change. But my contract with Warners isn’t up yet, I have six months to go and I think in that time all of us are trying to make a good faith effort to maintain our relationship.”

DP: DO YOU THINK, IS THERE A POSSIBILITY THAT “SGT. ROCK” MIGHT SUDDENLY TAKE OFF?

JB: “I don’t think so. Not with my script anyway.”

DP: IT’LL HAVE TO GO THROUGH SOME SORT OF METAMORPHOSIS FIRST?

JB: “Oh, definitely.”

DP: WELL, THAT’S TOO BAD. IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN INTERESTING TO ...

JB: “Get the script from Peter, read it and you’ll see.”

DP: OH, DOES HE HAVE A COPY OF IT?

JB: “Yeah.”

DP: GREAT, I’LL HAVE TO ASK HIM.

JB: “It’s really one of my favorite scripts. It was kind of crushing that it was met with such negative reaction.”

DP: WELL, HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO WRITE SOMETHING LIKE THAT?

JB: “Yeah, about six months worth of work.”

DP: TALENT ASIDE, I DON’T THINK I COULD EVER BE IN A BUSINESS LIKE THAT. IT WOULD JUST BE SUICIDE TIME FOR ME IF I INVESTED THAT KIND OF WORK IN SOMETHING AND THEY JUST REJECTED IT OUT OF HAND.

JB: “Well, that was nothing. I’ve worked for years and years without anything happening. So six months is just a drop in the bucket.”

"Se7en" (1995)

2009-09-13T18:42:00.000-07:00

Cast, crew can take pride in “Se7en”

By DONALD PORTER
Standard-Examiner staff

There is a serial killer on the loose. He’s imaginative, devoted and, as one of the homicide detectives working the case gravely intones, “He’s patient.”

As bizarre and abnormal as these serial murders are, this killer has made them even more of a novelty, basing each on one of the so-called “Seven Deadly Sins”: gluttony, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy and wrath.

That’s the premise of “Se7en,” a well-made but grisly, disturbing thriller starring Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt as the cops assigned to crack the case before the killer can dispatch all seven of his intended victims.

Lt. William Somerset (Freeman) is a meticulous investigator who’s a scant six days from retirement. David Mills (Pitt) is the much younger detective Somerset is training to take his place. Somerset is well-read, cool, methodical, a natty dresser. Mills doesn’t know literature, is a hot-head, impatient and a slob.

They don’t get along well, but when it becomes clear there’s a mass murderer on the loose, they form an uneasy alliance.

“Se7en,” the sophomore effort by director David Fincher (“Alien3”), is an utterly compelling tour through a twisted, crazed world of sadism and madness.

Here’s an example: The killings start with an enormously fat man who the police theorize was forced to eat himself to death. While we do not witness the torture, we are treated to a fairly explicit view of the crime scene, (black and white) photographic evidence and his nude remains sprawled across the coroner’s examination table.

Sounds unwatchable, right? Well, yes and no; given Fincher’s penchant for dark, murky cinematography, a good share of the actual gore is hidden in shadow.

“Se7en” has plenty going for it. There’s a cagey, solid script by Andrew Kevin Walker (who reportedly wrote it while working in a New York City record store), that keeps us guessing, frightened and dreading what might happen next.

The centerpiece, however, is Freeman’s Somerset. This is a remarkable character, played by a remarkable actor. Somerset has spent the bulk of the last 35 years investigating one crime after another. He has no personal life to speak of, and only vague notions of what he might do when he’s not a cop anymore.

He has for years retreated to a lonely life in a nondescript apartment or to the library to read great works of poetry and prose. There are murders every day, and no matter how committed he is to doing a good, fair job investigating the crimes, there will always be more the next day, and the day after that.

“Se7en” is a harsh but well-made motion picture, and Freeman is excellent -- so good he ought to be remembered come Oscar time.

Peter Bogdanovich interview, 1993

2009-08-30T06:10:00.000-07:00

“The Thing Called Love” is one of a thousand curious marketing stories in the history of the film business. It was directed by Peter Bogdanovich, who had a string of big hits and critical favorites in the 1970s – “The Last Picture Show,” “What’s Up, Doc?” and “Paper Moon,” and then again in the ’80s hit with “Mask.” (Bogdanovich is also known as a film historian who conducted extensive interviews – and had friendships – with legendary directors like Orson Welles and John Ford. And as the lover of the tragic Dorothy Stratten.) In August 1993, there was a press screening for “The Thing Called Love,” a showbiz-insider movie about wanna-be country music singer-songwriters pursuing their dreams in Nashville. The music genre was exploding in popularity around the country at the time. It starred the long-established River Phoenix, who would sadly be dead of a drug overdose in a couple of months, and up-and-comers Samantha Mathis (“Broken Arrow”), Dermot Mulroney (“My Best Friend’s Wedding”) and Sandra Bullock. All the Salt Lake-area critics assumed the film would be opening wide. I was a bit surprised when I was offered a phone interview with Bogdanovich – granted, he hadn’t had a hit in a while, but still … Anyway, he called and I’ve pasted in the transcript from the interview below. The Standard-Examiner, Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret News published interview stories the day the film opened in local theaters. But it turned out the film was being test-marketed in Utah only – it didn’t open wide until a month or so later, if memory serves. The studio had decided to test-market it in a region friendly to country-western music to see how it would play. I don’t think it made much money here, and it bombed nationally later on, even with the curiosity surrounding the tragedy of River Phoenix’s O.D. (Incidentally, Phoenix overdosed in Los Angeles during a break from filming a movie, “Dark Blood,” in Utah – a movie that was never finished or released.) Here now is the interview with Peter Bogdanovich, who was a lot of fun to speak with.

Don Porter: I SAW THE FILM LAST WEEK AND THIS SEEMS TO BE ONE OF THOSE RIGHT-FILM-AT-THE-RIGHT-TIME SORTS OF MOVIES.

Peter Bogdanovich: “Boy, I hope so, Don.”

SEEMS MAYBE IT'S SORT OF RIDING THE WAVE OF COUNTRY MUSIC POPULARITY. HOW MUCH DID THAT PLAY IN YOUR DECISION TO BECOME INVOLVED WITH THE FILM?

“I like country music; I always have. I mean, always – ever since 1970, when I went to Nashville -- when I was preparing ‘Last Picture Show’ I went to Nashville to meet with some country-western singers to get to know more about country music because I wanted to use it in the movie. And I sort of fell in love with it then, and have used it in five or six pictures since then.

“So when this offer came from Paramount, that was one of the things that did appeal to me quite a bit -- the fact that this was a songwriter, these were songwriters, and the songs they were writing were basically country songs. I thought that was interesting, it was an area I didn't know anything about in terms of what that was like, really, and because it was about young people, you know, you could take more license with it – because young people’s experiences tend to be more unusual, whereas when you get older they tend to be more the same.”

NOW, THERE’RE SOMETHING LIKE 50 SONGS IN THE MOVIE ...

“There are an awful lot of songs; I don't know if anyone has counted them up yet. I thought there was over 50. But that includes some songs that are older songs that we include on the track. We should count them up. I should do that sometime.”

IN DOING SOME BACKGROUND ON THIS, YOU WERE QUOTED AS SAYING THAT YOU SORT OF LIKE TO USE MUSIC TO PLAY AGAINST A SCENE. BUT DID YOU REALLY USE THAT APPROACH WITH THIS ONE?

“It varies. I don't like to do anything constantly, or people start to see what you're doing if you just follow one particular pattern. And with this, since there's so much music, and since we made a decision early on ...” [puts me on hold to take a call]

WE WERE TALKING ABOUT THE MUSIC AND HOW YOU USED IT IN THE FILM.

“So we decided at some point not to have a score, per se. And I said, ‘Let's just use songs that are new songs that we’re going to use in the picture, and then let's use some old songs on the track. Let's just do it like that.’ I don't know how it evolved, but as we kept going into it I decided to be a little less -- oh, what's the word? -- we got more free with it. I had the idea at some point, as a matter of fact, early on that is source-y -- playing like a score.

“I'm sorry, I'll start again. This gets complicated. I decided at some point that I wanted to have something playing as source -- the best example is when the jukebox is playing in the diner: She comes in, sits down and there's something playing on the jukebox and you hear it change to something else, it plays for a little while and at some point it just springs forward and becomes score for a little while -- then you go into that montage when you see her looking for work. That kind of idea, and then going from that back into a source cue. It's something we did back and forth all through the movie, and kind of were very loose with it. I thought, since this is a picture about songwriters, why not be real loose about the songs? They go in and they go out and they're all over the place. And since people are so used to music in pictures now -- I mean, SONGS in pictures -- and everybody watches MTV now, they're used to seeing songs dramatized. So I thought why not be very free with it? I think an audience will have no problem going in and out of songs and so on, and they'll understand what we're doing and it'll be all right.

“There are sometimes when we use music as a counterpoint, when the song really has nothing to do with what she's feeling. Like ‘She's in Love with the Boy,’ for example: When she sings ‘She's in Love with the Boy,’ when Trisha [Yearwood] sings her song, and you see her looking for work -- that really has nothing to do with that song. She's not in love with anybody. But it was a popular song and we used it as a kind of counterpoint.

“Then again, at the end when we use another Trisha Yearwood song called ‘Walk-Away Joe,’ it isn't really about what she's feeling at that moment, either, but it seems to give a different mood; I don't know what it is, it just works. And so we didn't try to say, ‘OK, we can't use the song if it doesn't mean what we're saying at this point.’ We just kind of left it open. Sometimes we do and sometimes we don't. There's a certain amount of irony in a couple of choices, for example when you hear River [Phoenix] singing ‘Standing on a Rock’ -- which is a song about being happy and in a good place, and you see their relationship is really not in a good place -- that becomes kind of ironic, for me, in a way. And later, when he's singing this love song about how much he's never been in love before until now, he's sung it before but now he seems to mean it -- whereas the first time you hear him sing it he doesn't really seem to mean it.

“So we used that as much as we could. We tried to play with it going in and …”

ANOTHER THING I THOUGHT WAS PRETTY INTERESTING WAS THE CASTING OF K.T. OSLIN AS LUCY. I THOUGHT SHE DID A GREAT JOB.

“Isn't she good?”

YEAH. SEE, I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT K.T. OSLIN LOOKED LIKE, SO I THOUGHT YOU HAD AN ACTRESS -- I MEAN, I THOUGHT SHE WAS SOMEONE WHO DID THIS FOR A LIVING. I WAS QUITE SURPRISED WHEN I FOUND OUT THIS WAS K.T. OSLIN.

“She’s really good. The studio, actually, suggested we think about using some country singers and performers in various roles. And I thought that was a good idea, since that was why I had originally gone to Nashville back in ’70, because I had the thought to use some country people for acting in the picture -- not to play a leading role, but to play the part that Ben Johnson [who won a supporting actor Oscar for his work] played -- but I didn't find anybody who I thought was right, then I thought of Ben and that was that.”

FORTUNATELY.

“We did actually use a couple of people from Nashville in ‘Last Picture Show’ in acting roles. So I went down to Nashville this time and interviewed five or six country singers and K.T., there was no contest because K.T. was so right for it, it seemed to me. Plus, what I didn't know was that she had a lot of experience as an actress and she'd been on the Broadway stage before she even was a country singer -- which nobody knows, and I didn't know until she told me. And that kind of cinched it.”

NOW, I WONDERED IF YOU'D TELL ME A LITTLE BIT ABOUT HOW THE REST OF THE CAST FELL INTO PLACE. I NOTICED IN THE PRESS NOTES THAT RIVER PHOENIX ACTUALLY DID SOME WRITING, WROTE SOME MATERIAL ...

“He wrote two songs, and one of them we couldn't use because we just didn't have a place for it, but it was a really good song. The other one was the one he sings to her outside the hospital and later in the Bluebird, ‘Lone Star State of Mind.’ ”

NOW, WAS HE PART OF THE PICTURE EARLY ON?

“No, he became involved after I did. We were trying to cast it and -- this has never actually happened to me before -- but we didn't offer it to him. We heard he was not available and he wasn't even discussed because we weren't thinking of a star in that part. A couple of people said they didn't think a star would do it because the girl's part was so much better, bigger.

“Well, it turned out River's agent had read the script and sent it to River and said, ‘Read this, it's being directed by Bogdanovich.’ He read it and called her, and said, ‘It needs a lot of work, don't you think?’ And she said, ‘Yeah, but you always wanted to sing and do you know this director's work?’ And he said, ‘No.’ She said, ‘Go rent “The Last Picture Show” ...’

HE DIDN'T KNOW YOUR FILMS?

“No.”

THAT'S JUST KIND OF SURPRISING.

“He’d heard of me, but he hadn’t seen any of them. He rented it and called her back and said, ‘I wanna work with the guy.’ So then she called the studio and said River Phoenix is very interested in doing this movie. At which point the studio called me -- I was in New York -- and said, ‘What do you think about River Phoenix?’ And I said, ‘Jesus, he’d be great. He’s a wonderful actor; he can do anything.’ So they were thrilled, and they made a deal with River. At which point Samantha [Mathis], who was interested in doing it but hadn't decided whether she felt the script was there or not, jumped in. So then we had the two leads, and there were two people up for the Kyle role, and River had worked with Dermot [Mulroney] before and recommended him very highly for the part.”

ARE THOSE HIS (RIVER'S) VOCALS IN THE PICTURE?

“Yeah.”

OH, THEY ARE? WELL, HE HAS A VOICE, TOO.

“They all did their own vocals. ... It thrilled all of us, because we said from the beginning it didn't matter if these people were brilliant singers as long as they were brilliant actors, because we figured these are songwriters and not every songwriter has to be a great singer -- he can be good enough to do a demo but he doesn't have to be great.”

BOB DYLAN AND NEIL YOUNG, THERE YOU GO.

“Yeah. ... We got lucky because River and Dermot are both musicians, and Sandra comes from a completely musical family -- her mother and father are both opera singers and teachers – and Sam liked to sing, even though she never had.”

ARE THE PEOPLE IN NASHVILLE REALLY ENAMORED OF THE MUSIC BUSINESS LIKE THE FILM MAKES IT OUT? I LOVED THAT SCENE WHERE KYLE HEARS HIS SONG ON THE RADIO FOR THE FIRST TIME, AND EVERYBODY KIND OF FORGETS ABOUT THE ACCIDENT WHEN THEY FIND OUT IT'S HIS SONG PLAYING ON THE RADIO.

“I think maybe it's a slight exaggeration, but it's certainly possible -- very possible. Because, you know, music is what it's about: Music City. Everybody's into that, just like Hollywood is the movies.

“The people of Nashville were very dubious about the movie, of exactly what we had in mind: Was this just another way of cashing in on country music and not putting anything back and, so to speak, just exploiting it and at the same time trying to show them like jerks. They don't want to be portrayed as hicks, and, you know, VENAL hillbillies. We avoided that, tried to avoid that and be as honest about it as possible.”

ANOTHER THING I REALLY LIKED ABOUT IT WAS THAT IT DOESN'T HAVE WHAT I WOULD CALL -- AND ESPECIALLY COMPARED TO MOST OTHER FILMS NOW – A CONVENTIONALLY HAPPY ENDING. IT'S VERY AMBIGUOUS AS TO WHAT HAPPENS TO THESE PEOPLE. YOU TAKE AWAY FROM THIS FILM – IF YOU'RE REALLY INTO THESE UPBEAT ENDINGS -- YOU CAN TAKE AWAY THAT, WELL, THEY ALL LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER AND GO ON TO HAVE GREAT CAREERS. OR IF YOU'RE INTO MORE PESSIMISTIC ENDINGS YOU CAN SAY, WELL, YOU KNOW, LIFE PROBABLY CONTINUED FOR THEM LIKE IT HAD TO THAT POINT: A VERY ROCKY, ROLLERCOASTER-TYPE EXISTENCE. I'M ALWAYS HAPPY WHEN FILMMAKERS PULL A FAST ONE LIKE THAT. IS THAT WHAT YOU WERE AIMING FOR?

“Yeah, that's correct. I mean, we wanted it -- the actors and I all felt that to have River and Samantha, or Miranda and James, just come back and end up together, or that she would drop him and end up with Kyle, both of those solutions seemed to us to be glib and too easy in terms of we knew we had to end the picture shortly after she sings the song, you can't keep going with it; that's the thing she was trying to do, and she wrote a song and Lucy liked it and said it was a good song and that was it. That was really the climax.

“Now we had to wrap up the personal story, which was extremely important. But it had to be wrapped up in not too long. So we couldn't go on and see another two weeks and what really happened, we really had to end it that night, it seemed to me. It was that way in the original script and I felt she should end up with both of them, and it should be open-ended as to how it was going to resolve itself -- maybe she wound end up with James, maybe she wouldn't, maybe it would switch and it would be her and Kyle.

“So we all kind of agreed that's the way it should be, although we weren't sure how and audience would react. And you have to always remember you’re making a picture spending about $20 million -- which is what it ended up costing, a little under, about nineteen-something -- nevertheless it’s not a huge, it’s not gigantic by the standards of most pictures nowadays, but nevertheless it's still a good deal of money. And so you have to bear in mind this is not a small, $3 million movie that's going to open at art houses. It's a major Hollywood movie. So with all that in mind, you don't want to make a real down ending and say it’s going to turn out like this, because you don't know what’s going to happen. In life, I’ve seen people end up happy and not happily -- or happy for 10 years and then they break up. As we all know, show business isn't easy in any branch, and neither are relations between men and women -- as we show in the movie. But I felt the audience, if all went well, would like these three people individually even though they may disapprove of some of what River does, or whatever, that they would essentially forgive them and like them at the end. And so it felt like that what was important, finally, was that the three of them were friends, and that that was as far as it might be -- it MIGHT go somewhere else, but at least that was a positive finish, that they could end up as friends after having gone through the jealousy and the breakup. And so that was what we aimed for.”

WELL, I THINK YOU HIT IT. I'M ALWAYS HAPPY WHEN THAT HAPPENS. I LIKE THAT, I DON'T LIKE THINGS TO BE SO NEATLY RESOLVED. I THOUGHT THIS SHOULD PRETTY MUCH SATISFY EVERYONE, FROM THE CYNICS TO THE ROMANTICS.

“Well, I hope so. I think it leaves it open for a lot of different interpretations. But what is not open for interpretation is that she has the upper hand. And that's what I like, because that’s unusual for a woman to succeed without being punished. Usually in movies, women, if they succeed, are punished either by losing the men -- because the men walk out saying, ‘You’re too interested in your career.’ And so the woman is all by herself. Or they don’t make it. Or it takes a guy for them to make it. Or whatever it is. We tried, all of us, were keen on making an ending where the woman succeeded on her own, and DESPITE the problems with the men, rather than through the love of a good man she found her way -- we didn't want that either. We wanted: She found her own way because she was strong and did it. That was the message we were hoping to send out, and hoped to encourage young women to be independent, as opposed to being dependent.”

NOW, YOU'RE DIFFERENT THAN MOST FILMMAKERS IN THAT YOU'RE PRETTY WELL KNOWN AS A FILM JOURNALIST AND HISTORIAN, AS WELL. AND I WONDER FROM YOUR PERSPECTIVE, AND I KNOW YOU'VE DONE THIS YOURSELF, THERE SEEMS TO BE A LOT OF, A PROLIFERATION, OF DIRECTOR’S CUTS AND RESTORED FILMS, ALL OF A SUDDEN FLOODING THE MARKET. I WONDERED IF YOU COULD TELL ME WHAT WAS BEHIND YOUR DECISION TO DO THAT WITH “LAST PICTURE SHOW” AND, HAVE YOU DONE IT WITH “TEXASVILLE”?

“Yeah, it just came out.”

WHAT WAS BEHIND THE DECISION TO GO BACK AND TOY WITH A FILM SO MANY PEOPLE CONSIDER A MASTERPIECE?

“I always felt that it was not quite right. When we finished it, I thought some scenes had been cut out that we shouldn't have cut out. Then it got very good reactions. But then six months after the picture opened, I got the producers to let me put back a minute and a half we’d cut out.”

I DIDN'T KNOW THAT.

“Nobody did, because we didn’t make an issue out of it. We just went back and did it. So all subsequent prints of the movie were actually a minute and a half longer than the release version. Maybe it was a year after it opened, maybe less, I can’t remember. ... It was my second picture, and my first studio picture, and we didn't have big arguments about it, but at some point when it was about two hours and eight or 10 minutes I thought were getting in danger of making it too short. And everybody wanted it to be under two hours because they didn't know what was going to happen, it was an oddball movie, no stars, it was kind of a down movie and so on. So we compromised; there were some cuts made that I just wasn't that happy with and there were some transitions I thought were abrupt. But abrupt transitions were kind of in the vogue at that time, and so nobody was bothered by it. What bothered me, looking at it over the years, was that some of those transitions weren't really me, they were just fashionable, because in the late ’60s and early ’70s it was kind of fashionable to do some jump-cutting, al a the New Wave, and I never really liked that, actually, because I thought it would date the picture, and it did.

“So when I had the opportunity of making ‘Texasville,’ the original plan was to re-cut ‘Last Picture Show’ and add whatever I thought we needed to add and put it out into theaters before ‘Texasville’ opened. Unfortunately, the best laid plans of mice and men go awry, and that one did for a variety of reasons too long to go into. But it didn’t work out that way, although I did get to re-cut the picture, it was not shown until I don't know when the re-cut version came out on laserdisc. Criterion has it on laserdisc, and we added about seven minutes to the picture overall. And I just think it's a much better version; it's smoother, you can tell less easily it was made in 1971 and I think it makes clearer the characters' motivations and actions. It’s just a better movie.

“And the same thing with ‘Texasville.’ As a result of not being able to familiarize audiences with ‘Last Picture Show’ before ‘Texasville’ opened, we had to remove quite a bit of ‘Texasville.’ Otherwise, the references would be boring – people wouldn’t know what it was. So we took about 25 minutes out that I thought maybe we should have had in. Admittedly, it is an unusual sequel, and that was one of the problems with it: It wasn’t what people perceived it was going to be, and what they hoped it would be.”

BUT THAT'S THE POINT, RIGHT?

“That was sort of the point, because life isn’t what you expect it to be. And middle-aged problems are intrinsically funnier than -- at least when you present them. Old age and youth are tragic, but middle age is usually funny. It isn’t funny when you're going through it, believe me, but you don’t want to bore the people having to watch these boring middle-aged people suffering, so it’s better to play it for comedy. And that’s what we did.”

AS I SAID, YOU CONTINUE TO DO SOME CRITICISM, AND I HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO TALK WITH PAUL SCHRADER LAST YEAR AND HE WAS SAYING -- I WAS ASKING HIM ABOUT THE CRITICISM HE USED TO DO -- AND ASKED HIM IF HE WOULD ENJOY DOING ANY MORE OF IT. HE SAID HE WOULD, BUT FELT THAT HE COULDN’T BECAUSE HE WAS MAKING HIS OWN FILMS NOW. THAT REALLY HASN’T SLOWED YOU DOWN, OR STOPPED YOU FROM DOING IT ALTOGETHER.

“Well, I don’t really write about stuff that’s current. I don’t want to get into that. So the stuff that I've done is mainly about the older directors that I knew, or older actors that I knew. I did a show for CBS, for a while -- for two years, actually -- but that was all about old movies; I said to them, ‘I’m not going to go beyond 1962.’ ”

SINCE YOU HAVE HAD ASSOCIATION WITH SOME OF THE GREAT DIRECTORS OVER THE YEARS AND THE COURSE OF YOUR CAREER, WHAT’S THE STATE OF AMERICAN FILMS NOW? DO YOU THINK THEY’RE GETTING BETTER OR WORSE? ARE PEOPLE TREATED TO GOOD FILMS NOWADAYS? ARE THEY AS GOOD AS THEY WERE 10, 20 OR 30 YEARS AGO?

“Technically, sound is better, and color has gotten better ...”

“Clerks” (1994)

2009-08-30T05:55:00.000-07:00

I definitely ventured against the critical grain on this one. And Kevin Smith has gone on to a successful, entertainingly iconoclastic career.

$28,000 film just ain’t that funny

By DONALD PORTER
Standard-Examiner staff

The ultimate expression of prevailing slacker chic, “Clerks” arrives in Utah theaters today, trailing awards -- from Sundance and Cannes -- and critical praise in its wake. But just why it’s been so flattered with tony prizes and positive reviews is a puzzlement.

Yes, “Clerks” is witty. And, to be sure, it’s quite an achievement for a micro-budget of less than $28,000. (For comparison, the average Hollywood studio movie costs upwards of $30 million, excluding prints and advertising.)

But if you strip away the irresistible background story of a pair of resourceful first-time filmmakers who scratched together the funds to make their movie by maxing out credit cards and filming in a convenience store where one of them was employed, you’re left with an ultra-low budget oddity that’s more profane, sexist and vulgar than it is intelligent or entertaining.

“Clerks” is a day in the life of two twentysomething clerks: Dante (Brian O’Halloran) runs the register at a convenience store, while Randal (Jeff Anderson) works behind the counter at an adjoining video shop. Together, Dante and Randal discourse -- relentlessly -- on the shabby state of their respective lives, while minor characters move in and out of the frame as day winds into night.

The point writer-director Kevin Smith seems to be making, in a decidedly comic fashion, is that America holds little promise for its budding generations. Dante and Randal are destined to work dead-end service jobs. Frankly, it’s a concept that's much more reassuring than, say, these two guys piloting passenger aircraft or working as neurosurgeons; at least they’re employed in positions where their idiocy can’t do much harm.

The protagonist-as-slob is nothing new, and has in fact become a bankable premise for low-brow movie comedies. How else do you explain the popularity of “Wayne's World,” “Ace Ventura” and any number of other movies? “Clerks” isn't that dopey, but Dante and Randal aren’t braniacs, either; their shockingly explicit discussions of sex should offend almost everyone -- the movie was originally rated NC-17 for its foul language, but later downgraded to an R on appeal -- and the unenlightened regard for females is pointedly politically incorrect.

This alternately bright, silly, witty and stupid approach is more messy than confident. (For the super-low budget gem, Robert Rodriguez’s robust “El Mariachi” remains the champ.) Even so, Smith's “Clerks” has its moments, including an impromptu roller-skate hockey match on the roof of the store and a discussion of the political subtext of “Return of the Jedi,” both of which will leave viewers howling with laughter.

Such bursts of hilarity are infrequent, though. “Clerks” is a misfire.

"Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" (1989)

2009-08-27T14:38:00.000-07:00

By DONALD PORTER
Standard·Examiner staff

Hey, dudes and babes, listen up. There's this, like, new movie called "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure." And, whoa, it's not bad. Actually, it's most excellent as teen films go.

The movie is about these two dudes named Bill and Ted, from San Dimas, Calif. And they're, like, awesomely righteous. They have a cool band called the Wyld Stallyns, and they hope to, like, lure Eddie Van Halen away from his group to play guitar for them, ya know? And they really need him, too, because neither Ted nor Bill know how to play their instruments.

So, anyway, Ted's dad is this bogus authority figure who works as a cop on the San Dimas police force. And since Ted is failing history, his dad has threatened to send him to, like, a military academy.

No way!

The only solution is if Ted -- with the help of Bill -- can score an A-plus on his final oral report for history. At first it looks pretty grim, man. But then this totally bodacious guy named Rufus drops by the parking lot of the Circle K and offers Bill and Ted the use of his time machine, which looks just like a phone booth.

Radical!

So Bill and Ted, like, go back in history to bag all these famous dudes so they can bring them to San Dimas and pass the exam. Some guys are pretty sedate, like Billy the Kid and Socrates and Abe Lincoln. But others, man, are supremely gnarly: Napoleon Bonaparte makes an ass of himself at the bowling alley, Genghis Kahn drinks toilet water and Sigmund Freud is always hittin’ on the babes.

The reason this movie is, like, so cool is that Bill and Ted never fully realize the awesome opportunity they’ve been given. Before they trip off in the phone booth, they think Caesar is, like, a salad guy and George Washington is, like, that dollar-bill guy and Marco Polo is just a water sport, dude. They bag all these historical figures just to pass the class, man, not to increase mankind's knowledge of the past.

Sure, there are some audaciously dumb scenes. But most of it is, like, really funny. Keanu Reeves, the laid-back dude from “River’s Edge,” and Alex Winter are quite excellent as Ted and Bill. And even that old comic dude, George Carlin, is most humorous as Rufus the time travel guide.

Like, thumbs up on this one. Fer sure.

"Heat" (1995)

2009-08-23T11:26:00.000-07:00

Given that Michael Mann's latest film, "Public Enemies," is still in (a few) theaters, I thought I'd post my review of "Heat," which was a lot of fun. I especially liked the after-heist shootout through the streets of Los Angeles, which oddly enough would be played out in real life not too long afterward.

“Heat” is on with great acting, writing, intensity

By DONALD PORTER

Standard-Examiner staff

There is an action scene in “Heat” that is as visceral and powerful as any filmed in years: Four bank robbers are attempting to make their getaway, but they’re encircled by cops in downtown Los Angeles. Both sides are heavily armed, and writer-director Michael Mann, instead of showing us the resulting shootout, puts his audience smack-dab in the middle of it.

For all of the violent action flicks being made, few have ever matched this portion of “Heat.” Words like “intense” and “powerful” come up short.

That said, the rest of the film, which stars Al Pacino and Robert De Niro -- the aging dream duo of Method actors -- as a cop and robber, respectively, isn’t exactly a great film. It is, however, interesting, exciting and smart, and seems much shorter than its excessive 170 minutes.

“Heat” is the story of two men on opposite sides of the law. Vincent Hanna (Pacino) is an obsessive cop who’s in the process of sacrificing his third marriage on the altar of law enforcement. A supercop in the L.A.P.D.’s Robbery/Homicide Division, Hanna’s on the trail of a murderous but well disciplined and effective hold-up crew.

Neil McCauley (De Niro) is the aforementioned crew’s leader, and the object of Hanna’s fixation. A real pro in the murder-theft game, McCauley is a professional loner, and a guy who lives by the credo that a thief should have nothing in his life that he can’t leave immediately when he senses cops are around the corner. But lately, he’s grown weary of the underworld game, has fallen in love with a young graphic artist (Amy Brenneman), and is planning to make one or two more big scores, then take it on the lam to New Zealand, where he will live out his days on his ill-gotten wealth.

The prospect of Pacino and De Niro squaring off on-screen is a dreamy one. But, alas, they spend something less than 10 minutes in the same frame. The scenes are memorable, though, and therefore shouldn’t be spoiled by a description here.

Although “Heat” is too long, that length does have at least one benefit: Mann’s script includes plenty of supporting characters, and the actors in the roles make the most of it.

Casting against type has always been one of Mann’s strengths. (Remember funny man James Belushi in the director’s underrated “Thief,” or Merchant-Ivory drawing-room specialist Daniel Day-Lewis in “Last of the Mohicans”?) And “Heat” is a prime example.

Ted Levine, the murderous Buffalo Bill in “The Silence of the Lambs,” plays a cop here, as does Wes Studi, who previously has played mostly Native American roles in various westerns. Jon Voight and Val Kilmer, on the other hand, have derived most of their fame from playing it straight -- and in Kilmer’s case, “Batman,” for crying out loud -- but here Mann has cast them as the most ruthless and efficient killers.

Furthermore, Mann investigates the personal lives of Hanna, McCauley and Kilmer’s gambling junkie, Chris Shiherlis. (Ashley Judd is good, too, as Shiherlis’ wife.) And, in truth, these are probably the film’s weakest links. The movie skips right along when the subject is planning the heist, or planning to arrest the men who are planning the heist. But “Heat” slows and frequently seems contrived when exploring the home lives of its various characters.

Fans of crime melodrama should enjoy “Heat,” an imaginative, stylish and expansive film. Others may find its violence and language off-putting. All will have to admit, though, this film presents some of the sharpest writing and best acting of the season.

"The Prophecy" (1995)

2009-08-22T06:13:00.000-07:00

You like horror? You’ll love “The Prophecy”

By DONALD PORTER
Standard-Examiner staff

Once in a while, a little horror movie comes along that reminds you of the genre’s possibilities to entertain. It happened a few years ago with “Tremors,” and a few years before that with “They Live.”

Now comes “The Prophecy,” a nifty, scary little shocker that despite being drenched in religious themes remains pleasantly free of dogma. It offers tons of fun for those drawn toward horror that makes you both think and laugh out loud.

The ever-laconic, creepy Christopher Walken stars here as the archangel Gabriel, who’s descended to Earth on a mission that sounds very bad for all of humanity. Apparently, there was a second war waged in heaven -- after the first one, which resulted in Lucifer being banished with his bunch to hell -- that continues unresolved to this day. Now, angels on both sides are warring on the streets of America, vying for a particularly nasty soul which, if it falls into the hands of Gabriel, could turn the tide his way.

Now, since this would not be a good thing, one particularly kind and wise angel, Simon (Eric Stoltz), has figured a way to fake-out Gabriel. But the latter angel is devious, and closing in.

Enter a New York City cop, Thomas Dagget (Elias Koteas), who once studied for the priesthood but left on the very day he was to be made a priest. Dagget is onto this nasty business between the angels, having found a dead one and his Bible -- a 2nd-century text that includes a hitherto unknown chapter by the apostle John referring to this “second war.”

So Dagget follows Simon and Gabriel to the deserts of Arizona in a quest to 1) reaffirm his own faith, 2) protect any humans who might get in their way, and 3) help tip the balance in favor of the good angels and against Gabriel’s bloodthirsty bunch.

“The Prophecy” is deliriously outlandish, but it accomplishes the neat trick of being absolutely unsettling at the same time. Very much like the big-budget shocker “The Omen,” there’s just enough sensible-sounding Christian philosophy in “The Prophecy” to help an audience suspend its disbelief for 90 minutes and have a great time playing along.

The surprisingly smart script and even direction of first-timer Gregory Widen -- who previously wrote the scripts for “The Highlander” and “Backdraft” -- are a real plus, but his ability to cast such fine talent in front of the camera makes a huge difference, too. Walken finds both the humor and the horror in the piece, as does Stoltz. And Koteas seems just right as the spiritually hungry cop out to redeem his guilt-ridden soul.

“The Prophecy” is full of surprises, both little and gargantuan, that add up to a swell time. This kind of horror film doesn’t come along too often; see it before it’s gone.

Joe Mantegna, March 1989

2009-08-09T19:58:00.000-07:00

In March 1989, word came that an independent film would be filming at various Ogden locations over a few weeks. I’m not sure how it works now, but two decades ago, a guy like me – film critic for a small daily newspaper – would have to work the phones in an attempt to convince a publicist somewhere that they should let me on the set to interview one or more people associated with the production.

I was especially keen to get an interview for this film, “Wait Until Spring, Bandini” – based on the John Fante novel – since its male lead was Joe Mantegna, one of my favorite actors. I got the interview – actually, a two-parter – and the first time I sat down with him was near midnight in his trailer next to a little-used train trestle in West Ogden. He was gracious and funny and we spent a couple of hours talking and hanging around the set to watch that evening’s scene be filmed.

A couple of weeks later, I spent the morning on Ogden’s Historic 25th Street watching another scene, this one with Mantegna and Burt Young (“Rocky”). Mantegna had me sitting in the director’s chair next to his while the crew attempted to make a 70-degree day look like a mid-winter scene, including shoveling snow all over the street and sidewalks. It was a fun day, with lots of conversation about his long collaboration with playwright/filmmaker David Mamet, among other things.

During the next week, after I’d already written my profile and it was waiting to be published, I went to Salt Lake City for the advance screening of the restored “Lawrence of Arabia” with cartoonist Cal Grondahl. At intermission, Cal wanted to move down front – “Lawrence” is his favorite movie – so we found a spot on the third row, center. A few moments after sitting down, I heard someone saying “Don. Don!” behind us. I turned around and it was Joe Mantegna. He was there with a few friends from the film crew; I introduced him to Cal, and we chatted about Peter O’Toole and “The Ruling Class.” It was a fun evening.

Here’s the piece I wrote for the Standard:

By DONALD PORTER
Standard-Examiner staff

OGDEN – Joe Mantegna seems to be a nice guy. You can tell because a nice guy doesn't behave as if he minds you barging into his trailer – unannounced – at 10:15 p.m. on a cold winter night to interview him.

Joe Mantegna is also a fine actor who, at 41, is finally coming into his own in terms of a national reputation. The past two years, he's starred in the critically acclaimed “House of Games” and “Things Change.” Both films were written and directed by his pal David Mamet, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of “Glengarry Glen Ross,” for which Mantegna also won a Tony in 1984 as Best Supporting Actor.

Mantegna is in this trailer, in Ogden, as filming progresses on “Wait Until Spring, Bandini.” He’s sitting on a narrow couch, in costume – a well-worn and wrinkled brown suit – waiting for his call to appear before the cameras. The film is a period piece, set in the late 1920s, about an immigrant Italian family trying to survive a harsh winter in a Colorado mining town. Mantegna plays the father, who becomes involved with a wealthy widow played by Faye Dunaway.

“Bandini” is the first job the actor has taken since his starring stint in another Mamet play on Broadway, “Speed the Plow,” ended in the fall of 1988. Before reporting to work on the movie, he took time off to stay home with wife Arlene and daughter Mia Marie for awhile, since work can tend to crowd out personal time.

Mantegna (pronounced man-TAYNE-ya) has appeared in numerous films since winning the Tony award, including “Compromising Positions,” “The Money Pit,” “Critical Condition,” “Suspect,” “Off Beat” and “Weeds.” But his best roles were in the Mamet films, neither of which have played in Ogden theaters. The erratic releases of both films have probably kept Mantegna from becoming as popular, or recognizable, as, say, a John Malkovich.

“Mamet’s films don’t get much of a release for some reason,” the actor says, resting his forehead in the palm of his right hand. “I think that (studios) don’t know how to categorize his films.” If a movie doesn’t plug into action/adventure, sex comedy or some other readily identifiable formula, they don't seem to know what audience to target, and movies don’t get big releases.

“But they got out there,” he says. “Thank God for video. I have people stopping me all the time to tell me they liked ‘House of Games,’ and I know 90 or 98 percent of these people didn’t see it in a theater – really obscure types: baggage handlers and people like that. They (studios) don’t figure people in Ogden would like this stuff. I don’t think they give an audience much credit. People here know as much about what’s goin’ on as people in supposedly more cosmopolitan areas.”

And that’s another thing that makes you like Mantegna: He’s not a snob. He comes from working-class roots in Chicago; his dad sold insurance and his mom worked at Sears. Mantegna was raised in Cicero, a suburb west of Chicago. He became involved in musical theater at Morton East High School, and was cast in a local production of “Hair” after graduation.

Then, in 1973, Mantegna met Mamet. The two Chicagoans, who were born just 16 days apart, became fast friends. Soon Mantegna was cast in the Mamet plays “A Life in the Theater” and “The Disappearance of the Jews.” Then came “Glengarry Glen Ross,” the Pulitzer and the Tony. Mantegna was on his way. Some have gone so far as to say Mamet writes with Mantegna in mind.

Mantegna says he doesn’t know: “I never ask him. He has implied that. ... But I don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

Unlike many actors, Mantegna doesn’t get all wrapped up in discussing technique or motivation or method. This is a guy who doesn’t go into a closet to summon the Muse; he just acts, he says, based on what he’s learned in the past 41 years of life.

“I don’t have to fly to Italy to learn to become an Italian immigrant. I just put on the hat and the coat,” he says, gesturing to the rest of his wardrobe on a table across the room,” and stick the cigar in my mouth and I’m pretty much there. Most of what you need comes from the script. I learned about brick-laying, so I’d be comfortable with what my character does for a living, but that’s about it.”

He’s not criticizing people who do it that way; it’s just that he doesn’t feel the need. At this point, he says, his confidence level is high enough to carry him through. He believes in himself, and his experience in the theater has been good training.

“I started in theater, so it makes (success in film) easier to happen,” he explains, scratching the two-day beard stubble on his chin. “But I know some wonderful actors who’ve never done any theater in their lives.” Which is not to say he discusses acting at length with other actors, either – especially theater actors. His reasoning: “Sometimes actors in the theater get too ‘actory.’ ”

This is yet another charming quality of Mantegna’s – he likes to make up words. If he searches his brain for the right word and can’t find it, he simply creates one.

When the topic of discussion runs to his price for performing in movies – of both the high- and low-budget variety – the actor explains his feelings with a dash of improvisational English: “Price is not everything. I try not to do things for free – I mean, the first 15 years I was in the business, I didn’t do so well. So the last 15 years as a success will" compensate for the first half of the career.

“I’m at the point in my career where there might be three or four things happening at once. I have options,” he says, adjusting the vest of his suit. “So I wonder, should I clone myself so I can do more than one at a time? Let’s say I chose something for money and let something else go that I really cared about. And then you see up on the screen: ‘Joe Mantegna as the Talking Tomato.’ And the other thing that you turned down is good and maybe wins an Oscar. You get tempted a lot. ... All I'm saying is you have to say where are you and where do you want to be? I’d like to have people look back at me (in later years) like they do Bogart or Cary Grant. Like, Stallone did a porno movie. ... He probably had to, or maybe he thought that was the only thing he could at the time. I don’t look down on him for that. It’s when you regress. Sometimes I cock an eye when someone wins an Oscar one year and sells you Ritz crackers the next.”

Jump ahead two weeks. Mantegna is doing a scene with co-star Burt Young on west 25th Street. It’s 70 degrees, but the scene requires that the actors wear coats and scarves to give the appearance of a cold mountain town. After several takes, Mantegna walks out of the frame and complains, “Oh, the cold!”

When director Dominique Deruddere finally gets the take he wants, Mantegna takes a seat in a chair with his name stenciled on the back. “They clone guys like me; I don’t sweat.”

After nearly two months in Utah, Mantegna has finally begun journeying out of his Salt Lake City hotel room to soak up some local color.

“I went out yesterday and did some ‘Mormonizing,’ ” he says, smiling and obviously happy about creating yet another new word. “I went to that Temple Square and looked around. They gave me a Book of Mormon. I figure, when in Rome ..., ya know?”

With the end in sight for “Bandini” filming – the crew will shoot two more weeks in Orem before wrapping – Mantegna is lining up future projects. First he’ll be directing a play, “Bleacher Bums,” which he helped write in the 1970s, in Chicago. Then he’ll do a film in New York with Ray Liotta and John Malkovich; no director has been named he says, but Taylor Hackford will be executive producing. And, finally, he'll return to Chicago to do another movie for Mamet.

Maybe one of those films will score big with audiences. It’s impossible to forecast. One thing’s certain, though, Mantegna will stay pretty much the same guy he’s always been, regardless of the bank account. His key to survival in such an uncertain business, he says, is “never take it too seriously.”

John Woo interview, from 1992 Sundance Film Festival

2009-07-24T08:28:00.000-07:00

In the early 1990s, a good friend of mine, Scott Bowles, turned me on to Hong Kong movies. Very quickly, I craved all I could get from director John Woo and one of his favorite stars, Chow Yun-Fat – at that time, neither were known to any American fans outside a handful of people. To see their bootlegged films – that was the only way to see them at that time, since nothing had yet been officially released on tape for the U.S. market – was always flat-out thrilling.

Then I got lucky, and Woo’s “Hard-Boiled” played a midnight slot at Sundance in 1992. I had seen it, bootlegged, of course, but it was great fun to watch in Park City’s little Egyptian Theater. Best of all, Woo was on hand to introduce it. The joint rocked.

I snagged an interview with Woo the next day. We spoke upstairs at “Z” Place, a nightclub that, during the festival, served as the hospitality suite for filmmakers and journalists. It should also be noted that Woo was probably the only guy in Park City wearing a sport jacket and tie -- he seemed to take all of it very seriously, and wasn’t dressing down to impress the off-Hollywood crowd. The actual newspaper piece I wrote is still stuffed somewhere in a box, but the verbatim transcript of the Q&A was on my hard drive. Woo had recently moved to the United States – he and his wife had had an anchor baby here years before – and he had not been shy about saying he was coming due to the impending communist Chinese takeover of Hong Kong in 1997. He had been an outspoken critic of the totalitarian government, and he was a Christian, and he suspected both of those things would make it difficult for him to work after the British relinquished control in ’97. His English was OK, but still a little rough; I’ve preserved it to give you a flavor of the interviewed as it happened.

D.P.: YOU WERE TALKING LAST NIGHT ABOUT BEING A PEACE-LOVING MAN, AND IT SEEMED TO GET QUITE A CHUCKLE OUT OF THE PEOPLE WHO’VE SEEN YOUR FILMS.

J.W.: “Since I think of everybody as a friend, because I really appreciate everybody that likes me and my movies, I just wanted to let everybody know a little bit more about me. Actually, I’m really a peace(ful) person, and you know, I hate evil and I hate all of the dictators in the world and I hate war and I usually hate people killing people. So in my movies I always use the stronger force of justice to fight them back, to hit them hard.”

[JUST THEN, JOE LEYDON, FILM CRITIC FOR THE HOUSTON POST, WALKS BY WITH ACTOR JOHN TURTURRO. WOO STANDS UP, THANKS JOE FOR THE RECENT PROFILE HE WROTE IN THE LOS ANGELES TIMES CALENDER SECTION AND THEY EMBRACE. LEYDON INTRODUCES TURTURRO TO WOO. THEN IT’S BACK TO THE INTERVIEW.]

“When I was young -- I grew up in the ’60s -- and I was so much influenced, because in that period, the Hong Kong young man was so very much influenced by the American culture, especially the movies and the music. We were so crazy about Elvis Presley, James Dean, John Kennedy. When John Kennedy got killed, I cried.”

SORT OF THE END OF IDEALISM.

“Yeah. And we were also influenced by the hippie generation. At that time we were also talking about love, peace and flower(-power) and hate war and antiwar. We also go in the street to protest the war with demonstrations. Even now, I keep it in my mind. And I’m a Christian -- the Lutheran Church -- so I admire Jesus very much, you know, and I always do as he say, love my neighbor and love your enemy. I always dreaming and hoping that the world can be more better, and the people no need for suffering or war or anything and getting along together very well and peace and love and a dream for the world.”

SO, NOW, SINCE YOUR FILMS ARE SO STYLISTICALLY VIOLENT, HOW DO THE TWO PHILOSOPHIES SORT OF RELATE TO EACH OTHER? ON THE SURFACE, THEY SEEM TO BE OPPOSED TO EACH OTHER. HOW DOES A MAN WHO COMES FROM THIS SORT OF PHILOSOPHY WIND UP MAKING FILMS THAT ARE SO ROUGH AND TOUGH AND EXHILIRATING?

“In my childhood, I have seen too much violence. My family was very poor, and I grew up in a slum, a bad neighborhood, and I have seen people get killed and people betray each other. And, also, we have met the biggest liars in Hong Kong, in 1967 -- the Communist Party was making a huge riot, a lot of people got killed in the street, a policeman was killed in the street -- and also I saw a lot of news about the Vietnam War, and Cambodia, where the Communist Party chopped off millions of peoples’ hands and other things. I was so mad and so sad.

“So it became to make me feel this kind of thing has got to be stopped. But how to stop, nobody got an answer. So I think I was dreaming to have a hero, and a hero can stop this kind of thing. Somehow, like Jesus, he sacrifice himself to save other people.”

[THEN HE CALLS OVER TERENCE CHANG, THE PRODUCER OF “HARD-BOILED” AND “HARD TARGET,” HIS FIRST AMERICAN FILM, TO TRANSLATE HIS MORE COMPLEX THOUGHTS ON THE MATTER.]

T.C.: “John says he was very much influenced by the classic Chinese novels of chivalry and of knighthood and those kind of stories. And also, since he was young, he has been helped by a lot of friends, so friendship plays a very important part in his films ...”

JW: “And church.”

TC: “... and church.”

JW: “So since I’ve been helped by a lot of people, I was thinking how to repay society. So my films always emphasize the help and being helped (he plays the sage bartender in ‘Hard-Boiled’).”

IT SEEMS LIKE YOU'VE GOTTEN A LOT OF NOTORIETY FOR THE “BETTER TOMORROW” FILMS AND “A BULLET IN THE HEAD” AND “THE KILLER” AND NOW “HARD-BOILED.” BUT ONE OF THE FILMS I ENJOY THE MOST -- I DON’T THINK IT’S MY FAVORITE THAT I’VE SEEN OF YOURS, BUT ONE OF THE ONES I ENJOY THE MOST IS “ONCE A THIEF,” AND THAT’S KIND OF A DEPARTURE FOR YOU. DO YOU SEE IT THAT WAY? [WOO SMILES BROADLY AND BEGINS LAUGHING BEFORE I FINISH THE QUESTION.]

JW: “He produced that” [pointing at TC].

YOU PRODUCED THAT?

TC: “Yeah.”

JOHN DIRECTED IT, THOUGH, RIGHT?

TC: “Yeah, but John doesn’t like to talk about that one.”

[THEN TC STARTS TO CHUCKLE.]

JW: “No, actually, I enjoy the film too. I only enjoy the first part, the first half, which was shot in Paris. I very much enjoyed that, ah ...”

TC: “Well, he made the film ‘Bullet in the Head,’ which I think is his best film. But the film, unfortunately, was not successful commercially. It’s a very expensive film and it lost money.”

NOW, WE’RE TALKING “A BULLET IN THE HEAD”?

TC: “Yeah. (Then) the studio wanted us to make a film for the Chinese New Year slot, and they wanted a comedy. John had this very good story which was not a comedy, but he had to change it to a comedy.”

SO THAT'S WHERE THE COMIC ASPECT COMES FROM?

JW: “Yeah” [smiling].

THEY IMPOSED THAT ...

TC: “And also, he’s not too happy about the production because we had from the first day of shooting to release was only two months.”

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

JW: “Yeah, yeah, yeah” [excitedly].

TC: “Even shooting in Paris.”

JW: “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

NO KIDDING?

JW: “No kidding.”

SO IS THAT THE SHORTEST YOU’VE EVER WORKED?

JW: [nods] “Yes.”

OH, MY WORD.

TC: “He’s a perfectionist, you know. Sometimes he knows it’s not too perfect.”

WELL, THE MAIN REASON I ENJOYED IT WAS THERE WAS THAT ELEMENT OF WHIMSY TO IT, A LITTLE CAPER ASPECT TO IT. I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU DID IT FROM START TO FINISH IN TWO AND A HALF MONTHS. THAT MUST HAVE BEEN PURE HELL.

TC: “That film was a big hit.”

REALLY?

JW: “Yeah.”

TC: “A very big hit, in Asia.”

THAT’S WHAT HAPPENS. IT’S THE WAY THE FILM BUSINESS WORKS. SINCE YOU BROUGHT IT UP, LET’S TALK A LITTLE BIT ABOUT “A BULLET IN THE HEAD.” WERE THERE INFLUENCES, WERE YOU INFLUENCED BY ANY OTHER VIETNAM FILMS YOU’D SEEN PRIOR TO GOING INTO THAT? I’M THINKING SPECIFICALLY OF THE PRISON CAMP SCENE: IT SEEMED TO SORT OF BRING TO MIND “THE DEER HUNTER” -- I MEAN, IT WAS TOTALLY DIFFERENT, BUT THAT’S WHAT I THOUGHT OF WHEN I SAW IT.

TC [translating]: “John said the story was conceived as a prequel to ‘A Better Tomorrow,’ but when he finished the script the Beijing massacre took place -- the Tiananmen Square massacre took place -- and so he changed the second half of the film to take place in Vietnam, and he wanted to use Vietnam as a metaphor for Hong Kong. He wanted to reflect how a totalitarian government can destroy a society ...”

[Woo breaks in with more Chinese.]

TC: “... can destroy the value of human nature, anything that’s virtuous.”

JW: “I was so upset, felt so ashamed and so mad -- I was so pained -- I put all that kind of feeling into the Vietnam [POW camp] scene. So that’s why.”

THERE IS THAT SCENE IN “A BULLET IN THE HEAD” WHERE THERE IS A CROWD MASSACRE, A SORT OF CROWD MASSACRE IN ADDITION TO THE PRISON CAMP SCENE.
ALSO, SOMEONE HAD SAID YOU MANAGED TO GET CHOW YUN-FAT A CAMEO IN “HARD TARGET”?

JW: “No, that’s false.”

ARE WE EVER GOING TO SEE -- YOU TOLD JOE (LEYDON), I READ THE PIECE IN THE L.A. TIMES, YOU WOULD PROBABLY BE MAKING FILMS HERE, AND MAYBE RETURN TO HONG KONG SOMETIME, BUT YOU’LL BE MAKING FILMS HERE -- IS THERE ANY HOPE OR PLAN TO BRING CHOW YUN-FAT OVER AND HAVE HIM START MAKING FILMS HERE? IS HE GOING TO BE LOOKING TO EMIGRATE BY 1997, AS WELL? OR DO YOU KNOW? WOULD YOU LIKE TO MAKE FILMS WITH HIM HERE, TOO?

JW: “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We are planning to make a film with him. It’s gonna be my next year’s project, with him to star.”

TC: “He’s tempted to do one film here, but he’s not available this year, so it’ll be next year. Quentin Tarantino is writing the script, with him to direct.”

WHAT WILL YOU BE DOING NEXT, THIS YEAR?

JW: “I’m still looking for good material.”

NOTHING DEFINITE THIS YEAR?

JW: “Nothing definite.”

I ALSO WANTED TO ASK YOU ABOUT, WHAT’S YOUR TAKE ON YOUR POPULARITY OVER HERE? I MEAN, THERE WAS A PRETTY GOOD INDICATION OF IT LAST NIGHT AT THE SCREENING, PEOPLE WERE JUST GOING CRAZY THAT YOU HAD SHOWN UP. AND ALSO DURING THE FILM, I’VE NEVER REALLY SEEN A SUNDANCE AUDIENCE REACT LIKE THAT DURING A FILM. HOW DO YOU FEEL? WHAT DOES THAT DO FOR YOU? MAYBE THE CROWDS IN HONG KONG DO THAT ALL THE TIME, I DON’T KNOW.

JW: “No. In Hong Kong they are not used to the ...”

TC: “We have midnight shows in Hong Kong as a premiere for a film, and the crowd is usually very rowdy. If they see something they like, they would cheer ...”

JW: “Applaud.”

TC: “... stomp feet and talk back to the screen. But if they see something they don’t like, they would just take out knives and maybe cut the seats.”

REALLY? OH, GOOD. I’LL BET THAT MAKES THE THEATER OWNERS HAPPY.

JW: “Yeah, I was so excited about last night. And I really appreciate people who they all enjoyed the movie. I really feel friendship and it gave me more encouragement to make more good movies. I was so happy. When I’m making a movie, when I’m working, I’m also thinking of them, and thinking how they’ll react. So it causes me to make it more good.”

I WONDERED IF I COULD ALSO ASK A COUPLE OF QUESTIONS ABOUT “HARD TARGET,” BECAUSE IT’LL BE COMING OUT THIS SUMMER? IN JOE’S ARTICLE IT INDICATED MAYBE THERE WAS A LITTLE PRESSURE FROM THE STUDIO TO KIND OF TONE IT DOWN ...

JW: “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

... A LITTLE, TO LESSEN THE BODY COUNT. DID THEY SAY NOT AS MANY BODIES AS YOU’D LIKE?

JW: “Yeah, yeah.”

IS THAT EASY TO RECONCILE? DO YOU HAVE TO PUT UP WITH THE SAME RESTRICTIONS IN HONG KONG, OR NOT?

JW: “No, no.”

YOU’VE ALWAYS BEEN ABLE TO PRETTY MUCH DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO?

JW: “Because we produce our own films -- me and Terence -- I, usually when I work, I’m just like a painter: I paint what I feel and I shoot what I like to do and I shoot what I feel. For example, sometimes when I’m shooting a certain scene of fighting or drama, something for which I’ve got strong feeling -- like he’s got to kill five people or 10 people, just do it because it’s necessary.

“But here the studio has the concern about the rating and the general audience’s feeling. They feel the general audience doesn’t like too much violence in films, so they asked me to tone it down, don’t kill so many, because they get the NC-17. So, I shot very carefully -- not like in Hong Kong, carefree.”

WAS IT A GOOD EXPERIENCE, THOUGH? I KNOW YOU’RE NOT DONE WITH IT YET, YOU’RE IN THE EDITING AND POST-PRODUCTION PROCESS. DID THE EXPERIENCE LIVE UP OR DOWN TO YOUR EXPECTATIONS? WAS IT PRETTY MUCH WHAT YOU FIGURED SHOOTING IN AMERICA WOULD BE LIKE?

JW: “Yeah. ... In some ways I have a little disappointment with the system, the Hollywood system.”

A LITTLE MORE BUREAUCRACY?

JW: “But in the other way I feel much more happier than in Hong Kong, because I have a great crew and all the crew and actors are so professional and so dedicated to their work and the movie. Most of the crew, they are all educated and they all love a good movie. So when they find out -- of course they know about me -- but when they find out I am a very serious filmmaker, they gave me more respect. And so we respected each other and working like a big family. It makes me feel very comfortable and very happy. And so usually my work, my camerawork, is very difficult. And no matter how difficult they always delivered.”

NOW, I’M ASSUMING THE BUDGET WAS PROBABLY HIGHER THAN YOU’RE USED TO WORKING WITH, RIGHT?

JW: “Yeah, higher.”

WAS THAT NICE? WAS IT NICE TO HAVE THE LUXURY OF A LITTLE MORE MONEY, OR DOES IT TRANSLATE THAT WAY?

TC: “It seems a lot higher, you know, but then the above-the-line was much higher, too. And, also, we don’t have that many shooting days. For instance, ‘Hard-Boiled,’ which only cost $4.5 million, John could have 123 shooting days first unit. But in ‘Hard Target’ it's $19.6 million and we only could afford to have 79 shooting days.”

WOW. THAT’S QUITE A DIFFERENCE. SO ALL THAT EXTRA MONEY GOES TO PAY A CREW THAT COSTS A LOT MORE THAN A CREW IN HONG KONG?

JW: “Yeah.”

I ASSUME YOU’VE BEEN WORKING WITH A LOT OF THE SAME PEOPLE FOR MANY YEARS?

JW: “I wish them a lot, because they, the Hong Kong crew I used to work with, was also very dedicated and they also gave a great contribution to all my work. As you can see from my movies, they really did a great job for me. So I miss them very much.”

ARE WE GOING TO SEE A DOMESTIC THEATRICAL RELEASE FOR “HARD-BOILED”?

TC: “Yes.”

WHO’S GOING TO DO THAT?

TC: “Rim Film. It’s a new film company set up by Tom Gray of Golden Harvest. This will be the first release.” [The company was set up to bring Hong Kong films to this country.]

I KNOW THAT THE VIDEOS ARE AVAILABLE IN ASIAN VIDEO STORES, AND I KNOW THAT “THE KILLER” WAS THE FIRST ONE THAT WAS RELEASED PRETTY MUCH MAINSTREAM ON VIDEO [IN THIS COUNTRY]. ARE THERE PLANS TO RELEASE OTHER FILMS OF YOURS ONTO VIDEO?

TC: “ ‘Hard-Boiled’ will be the second one.”

ARE YOU GOING TO GO BACK AND DO ANY OF THE OTHERS?

TC: “If ‘Hard-Boiled’ is successful, sure – ‘A Better Tomorrow,’ ‘A Bullet in the Head,’ I don't see why not. I heard ‘The Killer’ did very well.”

IT’S QUITE A SENSATION, I THINK. IT DID PRETTY WELL THEATRICALLY IN SALT LAKE, I THINK -- IT PLAYED QUITE A WHILE. “RAISE THE RED LANTERN” MIGHT HAVE PLAYED AN EQUIVALENT AMOUNT OF TIME. I THINK THEY’RE PRETTY POPULAR.

"Duplicity"

2009-07-22T14:56:00.000-07:00

(Review first appeared in the April issue of the Ogden Independent.)

In the 1940s and ’50s, they made movies the equal of “Duplicity” all the time: sparkling dialogue, crackerjack plotting, memorable acting. But it’s been so long, maybe the biggest surprise “Duplicity” offers is that a film this good can still make it through the Hollywood meatgrinder and emerge intact.

The movie’s plot is too dizzyingly complex to describe is this space. Just know this: One consumer-products company hopes to steal a secret formula for a lotion – or is it a cream? For the purpose of this story, that’s an important distinction – from the other, and is willing to spend whatever it takes – think: AIG bonus money – in order to make it happen.

Julia Roberts and Clive Owen play ex-government spies-turned-corporate-black-baggers. Their respective dark-ops teams have the task of making the theft happen, preventing it … or not. Right up to the end, we’re not really certain.

And that’s the perverse joy of “Duplicity”: The suspicion among all characters runs bone-deep. “Duplicity” earns its name, since no single individual in the film ever trusts anyone else. It’s amazing, really, that writer-director Tony Gilroy can wring sympathy from such a collection of cynics and double-dealers. But he does.

That, of course, does not owe simply to great writing and direction. You need talented actors to sell it to the audience. And here, there are plenty. Gilroy, whose debut as a director, “Michael Clayton,” was another terrific wallow in the corporate sleaze, has hired a first-rate supporting crew. (Gilroy also wrote the screenplays for “The Bourne Identity” and its sequels.) As in “Michael Clayton,” Gilroy has enlisted Tom Wilkinson, this time playing a corporate throat-slitter opposite Paul Giamatti. The two run rival business behemoths, and aren’t above physical confrontations – an example of which plays hilariously over the opening credits.

Employing a heavy dose of time-shifting, even more so than he did in “Michael Clayton,” Gilroy jumps back and forth over months and years, weaving a complex but sturdy web of deceit, saturated with romance, dark comedy and bitter complaint. This is snappy filmmaking that assumes the audience can keep up.

As the opposing corporate spies do their dirty work – Roberts on Wilkinson’s team, and Owen on Giamatti’s – it’s great fun to witness the manipulation and craftiness. We’ve seen this in other movies, yes, but rarely at this level of sophistication.

For example, the different way Gilroy spins the romance: Roberts and Owen are hot for each other, sure, but maybe they’re hotter for the money they could grab if they team up and the scam goes just right. Then again, how do they make it work if they can’t trust each other? This game is played with an edge uncommon to contemporary filmmaking – these people are thoroughly dishonest, all of them – and it loads “Duplicity” with a feast of surprises.

It’s worth mentioning, too, that all the performances are praiseworthy – not exactly shocking given the skills of these pros. Still, this is arguably the best work we’ve seen from Roberts, whose clever choices bring a heretofore unseen depth to her portrayal. She has a few magical scenes, with her face telling stories we’ve never seen before; her years away from starring roles have served her well.

One other thing: The ads and preview trailers for “Duplicity” are selling it as more of a romantic comedy than a thriller. In fact, it’s less a romantic comedy than a thriller. Don’t let this discourage you. Gilroy’s accomplishment is staggering. “Duplicity” is a full-on cinematic treat.

Nora Ephron, 1992

2009-07-17T11:54:00.000-07:00

With “Julie & Julia” set to open sometime soon, I thought it might be fun to go back to 1992 and writer-director Nora Ephron’s first directorial effort, “This is My Life,” which opened the Sundance Film Festival that year. In anticipation of the festival’s opening night, I interviewed the filmmaker via telephone – she was in New York City.

I have to add that talking to her on the phone was like watching one of her movies: delightful. She’s just a great interview, couldn’t have been more relaxed and generous; it doesn’t hurt that she was a journalist, and apparently that she’s just a good human being, too, from all indications.

Anyway, here’s a transcript of most of the phoner.

DP: THE PAST FEW YEARS WE'VE BEEN HEARING MORE AND MORE ABOUT THE LACK OF GOOD ROLES FOR FEMALES IN FILMS. BUT YOUR FILMS SEEM TO ALMOST ALWAYS HAVE STRONG CENTRAL CHARACTERS WHO ARE FEMALES. HAVE YOU EVER HAD TROUBLE SELLING THE NOTION THAT FEMALES AS THE FOCUS OF MOVIES ARE A REALLY GOOD THING?

NE: “Well, I think one of the reasons I wanted to direct, finally, is that it's unbelievably hard to get a movie made if it's about a woman. Because you see what happens is you write a script and then you have to get someone to direct it. And the most amazing thing about this is that what happens is you go into your agent's office and he says to his assistant, ‘Bring in the directors list.' And the assistant brings in the directors' list and it is A PIECE OF PAPER. It's not even that big a piece of paper -- well, it's 8x14, but it's not FULL. And on it is a list of, I'd say, 80 or 90 names. Out of which, never mind how many are women -- although more this year than last year -- but the point is, out of which you can rule out 90 percent of the people on the list because they don't make movies about women. Or they don't make comedies. So you're left with 10 names, let's say. And some of those names are people we'd all love to make a movie with, but GET IN LINE. Sydney Pollack makes movies about women ...”

BUT HE MAKES A MOVIE ABOUT EVERY FIVE YEARS.

“... well, even if he made one every year it might not be yours. So you get to a certain point where if you're someone like me who likes to write about women, you kind of think to yourself, ‘Well I might as well direct this. I know as much about this as anybody they're going to get to direct this.' And of course particularly with this project which I came onto as a writer to direct it. It was close to my life in terms of the fact that I'm a single mother and my parents wrote about me and I'm a sister and I think I spend a lot of time thinking about what it's like having a career and being a mother and blah, blah, blah. All those things were things were things that were so familiar to me I couldn't imagine why I shouldn't direct it.

“But I think it is very hard to get movies made where the women have the main parts. It just is.”

I WAS WONDERING IF ANOTHER REASON WAS THAT YOU WERE TIRED OF SITTING BACK AND WATCHING WHAT OTHER PEOPLE HAD DONE TO YOUR SCREENPLAYS?

“Sometimes you sit back and watch other people do things to your screenplays and you're completely thrilled with it.”

YOU'VE HAD GOOD AND BAD LUCK WITH THAT.

“I've had both. I really think Rob did the most spectacular job on ‘When Harry Met Sally ...' There's no way I could look at that movie and say I could have done that, you know? I couldn't have.”

SOMETIMES IT EXCEEDS YOUR EXPECTATIONS?

“Yeah. If you work with Mike Nichols you don't delude yourself for one minute into thinking you can do what he does. But every so often you look at a movie of yours that didn't work out so well and you think to yourself, ‘Gee, I could have done just as bad a job as that person did -- and at least it would be MY movie.'”

I DON'T KNOW HOW WILLING YOU ARE TO TALK ABOUT SOMETHING IN PARTICULAR, BUT I WAS WONDERING ABOUT, WHEN I SAW YOUR NAME ON THE CREDITS OF “MY BLUE HEAVEN” I WENT IN EXPECTING ... MORE THAN I GOT.

“Well, there it is. You make a movie like that and, in a way, you're almost grateful because it's one of the things that makes you think, ‘I'll become a director.'”

I JUST DISCOVERED, AND I HAD NOT KNOWN THIS BEFORE, THAT YOUR PARENTS WERE SCREENWRITERS. IS THIS SOMETHING YOU'VE ALWAYS BEEN ANGLING TOWARD?

“No, not at all. In fact, one of the reasons I left Los Angeles as quickly as I did and went into journalism was that I had no interest whatsoever in being in the movie business. I wanted to be a journalist.”

SO HOW DID IT HAPPEN?

“Well, how it happened was ...” (long pause)

LIKE EVERY OTHER JOURNALIST DID YOU GET TIRED OF JOURNALISM?

“That hadn't quite happened yet. It was about to happen, but I didn't know it yet, right? But I was a newspaper reporter and then I became a magazine writer and then I became a columnist, OK? And around that time, someone -- this is a long story, and it may not be interesting, but you're stuck with it.”

THAT'S OK, GO AHEAD.

“Someone came to me and said, ‘Let's do a women's caper movie.' And I got very excited because I had a plot for a caper movie and I hadn't figured out what to do with it. From being on the fringes of Watergate, which, you know, I was ...” [referring to her marriage to reporter Carl Bernstein]

RIGHT.

“I had heard this story, which I hasten to tell you is not a true story, but it was one of the many rumors of Watergate. The rumor was that Jimmy Hoffa had bribed Maurice Stans [the finance chairman for the Committee to Re-elect the President] to get a pardon from President Nixon and had delivered a huge amount of cash in a suitcase to Maurice Stans at the Pierre Hotel in New York. And the night they delivered the cash, the Pierre Hotel safe was robbed -- of course, by the Teamsters. Now, Nixon had to pardon Hoffa because he had collected the bribe, and they couldn't say it was stolen from the safe because what were they doing with all the money, right?

“So I thought, this is the perfect crime. I wonder what I could do with that? So what I did was I wrote a script and became a television movie; it was made as a TV movie.”

THE ONE WITH LAUREN BACALL? [“Perfect Gentlemen,” from 1978]

“Yes. And it was not a good movie, I must tell you. It was not a good movie at all. However, I had had a movie made, you see? So then someone came to me to do another one. And I had just started doing them when -- I saw ‘Perfect Gentleman’ when I was pregnant with my first kid, and I'd just started getting work as a screenwriter when my marriage broke up. And, basically, I was kept alive by the movie business, because the last thing I could do with two very small kids was to go off and do the kind of long reporting stuff that I liked to do. I could sit at home and do screenplays and still be a mom. So the movie business sort of saved my life at that juncture, because I don't know how I would have supported everybody if it hadn't been for that.

“But meanwhile, looking back on it, it's quite clear that I was ready to stop doing journalism and start doing something else. I'd kind of gotten to the point you may or may not recognize, depending on how long you've been in the business, where some of what you're writing seems a little familiar to you and it's because you've written it before.”

YES, I CAN RELATE TO THAT. AND THE SAD THING IS I HAVEN'T BEEN AT IT THAT LONG.

“So it was a good time for me to make that move into the movie business. And of course you learn a HUGE amount writing screenplays; you learn a tremendous amount about structure and how to tell a story in a very economical way. And then if a movie gets made you learn three times more than you learn by just writing it. And it's probably the most fun of anything you can do, being around a movie. So by the time my first movie was made, I was pretty hooked.”

SO YOU KNEW WHY MOM AND DAD DID WHAT THEY DID?

“Yeah, I did.”

YOUR CAREER SEEMS TO HAVE BROKEN DOWN INTO PHASES, AS YOU'VE ALLUDED TO, AND MAYBE THIS IS TOO EARLY TO TELL, BUT DO YOU FORESEE A TIME MAYBE WHEN DIRECTING WON'T HOLD A FASCINATION FOR YOU?

“Yes. And then I plan to become an actor. (Rim shot!) [She laughs loudly, as do I.] Listen, I'm hoping I get to direct a second movie, at this point. I can't wait to do another.”

THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM IS IF YOU FAIL, YOU FAIL UPWARD. SO IF YOU'RE A SUCCESS, THEN WHAT HAPPENS, I GUESS, IS THAT YOU NEVER WORK AGAIN?

“We'll see about that.”

YOU WERE A JOURNALIST FOR SO LONG, HOW DOES IT FEEL TOO BE THE SUBJECT OF SO MUCH JOURNALISM?

“One of my first books is called ‘Wallflower at the Orgy.’ I don't know if you ever saw it, but in the introduction to it I wrote something -- and I happen to have it right here, so I'm just going to pull it out, OK?”

SURE.

“Forgive me.”

When she was a journalist, she confesses, she grew weary of telling other peoples' stories and longed to do something that spoke of her own feelings and experiences.

“I look back on this and think that I must have been INSANE to have ever thought that. I much prefer doing what you do -- at this moment. Given the choice, I'd rather be the person asking the questions. And that's one thing that you do as a screenwriter or a director: It's not talking about yourself, it's finding out how you can make something work and how you can help an actor get to a certain point so that they feel what the scene is about. The last thing in the world I want to do is talk about myself. BUT, as Truman Capote once said, ‘A fella has to push his book, right?' I mean, so here I am.”

THAT'S THE WAY IT'S DONE NOW.

“Yeah.”

ALSO, I WAS WONDERING IF HAVING BEEN A SCREENWRITER FOR A TIME BEFORE DIRECTING, IS DIRECTING THAT MUCH MORE FUN, THAT MUCH MORE SATISFYING?

“Yes, it is. You know, one of the things that's the most frustrating when you are a screenwriter is it's not that you don't want credit for the words -- you do -- it's sort of continually ... Let me back up and start that sentence again. One of the biggest shocks I had when my first movie was made – ‘Silkwood,’ I mean -- nothing prepares you for how much it's the director's movie. NOTHING. As involved as you are, and as I was lucky to be on my movies, a director makes a movie and every single decision in the movie, virtually, is the director's: what the people are wearing, the lighting and what the set looks like and where the house is built and it's just, it's so extraordinary. There's no way, until you have a movie made, that you can begin to grasp how little a screenwriter has to do with what a movie finally is.”

THAT'S KIND OF A DISHEARTENING THOUGHT.

“Well, it is and it isn't, in that it's still fun to be in the movie business. But you really do know when a movie works and it's your screenplay that you may have done a good screenplay but the reason it's working is the director -- it's not you. One of the things that's absolutely fascinating when you go into the movie business is how much the movie is the director's, and not the writer's. Then, of course, it makes you insane that everyone doesn't understand that.”

WAS IT DIFFICULT ADAPTING SOMEONE ELSE'S BOOK TO THE SCREEN?

“Well, I think it's a lot easier doing it with someone else's rather than your own. Usually, when you decide you want to do a movie -- at least for me -- I never respond to material unless I can see a beginning, a middle and an end to the movie. When I read that book, the particular story of our movie is not in the book.”

REALLY?

“The book takes place in period, I mean 20 years ago. Dottie's already successful. But there was an illusion to the fact that she moved out from Norm and that they'd moved in with Aunt Harriett. And I just immediately saw how we could take those characters and make up a story to go with them that would work as a movie. And, it's almost like an improvisation on the book. We used a lot of wonderful things that were in the book ... but when I read it I thought: We start it when she moves out and when we end it she's about to become successful, but she's still not huge. It's just a year of her life. ... Once you have that (the beginning, middle and end) it's not HARD. I don't know how to say this. That's the hard part, finding the beginning, middle and end.

“And, of course, this book had the thing that's a dream in any project, which is three people. Scenes with three people are more fun to write than anything you can do. We had the same thing in ‘Silkwood.’ ... Because three in a scene is always two against one, and then it always changes. You always change the configurations, and you can do a scene where the configurations change three, four or five times. ...”

YOU MUST HAVE A PRETTY GOOD WORKING RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR SISTER.

“I do.”

HOW DID YOU GET STARTED WRITING TOGETHER?

“From reading this book. ... What I always thought was that if I ever directed anything I would want a collaborator on the script because, for two reasons: one, when you're shooting a movie every so often you have to write something, and you can't do it when you're directing a movie. You just can't, you can't do both jobs. I know that there are people who do, but I'm not one of them. And I felt, of course -- and please understand that I'm saying this with some sense of humor – that I had been so unbelievably helpful to the directors that I worked with, and I wanted someone there who was going to be as helpful to me. So when I read the book it was obvious that Delia and I should do it, because it was our life and we were sisters and the relationship between the two girls in the book is so close to our relationship. I mean, the girls in the movie, that thing between them is us. So I just thought it would be perfect to do it with Delia.”

WILL YOU BE DOING ANYTHING AGAIN WITH HER?

“Oh, god, I hope so.”

ARE YOU WORKING ON ANYTHING RIGHT NOW?

“Well, we've done a script we hope were going to do. So far, we don't know when.”

"Kafka," Steven Soderbergh, Jeremy Irons and Sundance: The press conference

2009-07-02T23:07:00.000-07:00

I covered the Sundance Film Festival from 1986-1996. I attended hundreds of screenings, conducted a lot of interviews and attended plenty of press conferences.

Since a big story of the past week out of Hollywood has been the way Steven Soderbergh’s “Moneyball” was canceled just days before it was to begin shooting, I thought I’d publish the transcript of a press conference he and star Jeremy Irons gave in January 1992 to promote “Kafka.” The story I wrote from it is tucked away in a box somewhere, and maybe I’ll republish that someday. I think this was Soderbergh’s sophomore effort after having such a smash with “sex, lies and videotape.” (That’s another Sundance story, with Soderbergh taking to the mic prior to a screening of “slv” and lecturing the Sundance folks on how to improve the acoustics in Park City’s Egyptian Theatre.)

Here you go:

JEREMY IRONS: "When I arrived in Prague, Steven was very keen that I should see an astounding set that had been built -- the main office set, which had something like a thousand typewriters and a thousand desks and a thousand chairs, or something like that; it was incredible. I was still a bit jet-lagged, and he said to me, ‘That's your desk there.' And I said, ‘Great.' And I went and sat in it, trying to impress him that I'm preparing myself.

"And I said, ‘It's very nice, good.' And he said, ‘When you get promoted, you go into that office there. And I said, ‘Thank you very much,' and I went into that office and I sat in my new desk, and imagined having been promoted and looked at the typewriter and on the typewriter there was some paper and ... it said: ‘Working with a second-time director, eh? That's a touch risky. Signed, One Who Knows.'

"And I thought, well, this is obviously a joke on the unit, it's marvelous, and continued on and looked around other bits of the set. And after about an hour, Steven said, ‘Did you get my message?' ... So he was well-aware, I think, of the onus on him. But he is a man without bullshit, and so we'll know that quite clearly and in my opinion, from what I saw, not care at all about it. I think like every artist who stands up and says their thing, has to have an element of ‘f--- you' about themselves. And Steven has enough self confidence.”

STEVEN SODERBERGH: "Yeah, I was not being glib in tossing that to Jeremy. The pressure is self-imposed. If you start worrying about what people are going to think you just cripple yourself. From a creative standpoint, I don't care about that. So my concerns were just trying to make a good film, a different film, use some filmmaking muscles I hadn't used before and stretch a little bit. And the good thing about shooting in Prague is that nobody comes to visit.''

QUESTION: HOW MUCH DID THE LOCATION AFFECT YOU -- THE SUDDEN RUSH OF DEMOCRACY AND THE PLACE WHHERE KAFKA LIVED?

SS: "I know that for me, being in the city in which he lived and wrote had an effect. It might have been an intangible effect, but it permeated the film as far as I was concerned. You know, that aspects of the changing of the guard over there -- politically speaking -- I think only affected us in the sense that we were able to go and shoot there. I can't begin to speak for the Czech people, who I know were going through a bit of confusion probably, in some sense, of Westerners. That was my impression.”

JI: "If I try and imagine shooting that film on a lot in Hollywood, I think it was quite important that we shot in Prague. But it is quite intangible. I had to go home for a short weekend about three weeks into the shoot, and I was, you know, Prague's all right, but the food's not great and I hadn't really gotten into the plan then -- I hadn't met many people -- and I was quite pleased to be going home for the weekend. And I landed at Heathrow in London and drove out, and I thought, ‘Where is this place? This is like the moon.' And it was then I discovered what Prague had done to me in three weeks. For me, it was essential to have been there. It's not just what you see on the camera, it's the whole feel. As an actor, it made my job considerably easier, similar to shooting ‘The Mission' in South America rather than Los Angeles.”

GERMAN INFLUENCES:

SS: "Part of the blame, or I should say, RESPONSIBILITY, for the German Expressionism in the film lies with Lem [Dobbs, the screenwriter] -- it was his script and it was kind of seeped in that. Certainly, I have an appreciation and a like for German Expressionism. I'm a big fan of Fritz Lang. I think Welles, perhaps, exists in the form that he does, if Fritz Lang doesn't come before him. And certainly there was a lot of Welles tossed in there, too.

“I had second thoughts about naming the character Murnau [played by Ian Holm], and ultimately decided I liked the sound of the name and I'm gonna leave it, whether people think it's stupid or not. So it really, you know, I really felt the film was filtered through three sensibilities: Lem's, mine and Jeremy's. So, I can only, in a sense, account for certain things in the movie; so many things in the movie that you think were directorial choices were actually in the script. And in this case, German Expressionism was heavily laced through the script.”

CZECH FILM BUSINESS:

SS: "I can tell you that they were very conflicted. When we were completing principal photography they were a month away from disbanding the state-run film industry and there were a whole lot of people who were about too go freelance, which was an alien concept. When we went back for some brief re-shooting in the spring, we spoke to some of the people we worked with before, and they said, ‘Yeah, everybody's scared. There's a couple of films coming in and they're making more money.' We had no guarantee that when we went in and started talking about overtime, and saying yeah, we wanted to pay them overtime, we found out that they weren't being paid overtime and we had to kind of pitch a fit to make sure they were.

"What the long-term effects are going to be, I don't know. There are a lot of films over there now -- from everywhere.”

JEREMY, DID YOU REALLY EXIT ""SEX, LIES'' AND SAY, "I MUST WORK WITH THAT MAN''?

JI: "I did come out of the movie, and I did say to the lady I was with -- I think it was my wife, although she denies it -- I'd love too work with that man. Because I was struck by a freshness and I don't really describe it very well, but a clearness, an originality of vision, a lack of bullshit and a lack of manipulation, which I found very refreshing in an American film. And I also had watched I don't know how many good performances -- how many characters are there in the film? And I knew it was Steven's first film, and I think it's very exciting working with new filmmakers, who are not set in their ways, who are still trying things, still learning; I think people in flux are the most exciting to work with -- people with a hunger, an appetite, which young directors have. And people who can do it well, that's a rare combination.”

SS: "I must also say that in my first conversations with Jeremy, I never got that impression” (laughter).

HOW DID YOU TWO COME TOGETHER?

SS: "I wanted him from the very beginning. I never regretted that choice.”

JI: "Although we were saying earlier, and I do have a problem, sadly, I have a reputation for being kind of serious, kind of arty -- I suppose because I'm easily bored as an actor and many commercial films don’t demand very much acting, so I tend to choose pictures which allow me to do my craft. Therefore I have this reputation for being a bit serious, a bit straight, a bit arty, and I don't think that helps ‘Kafka,' because the name Kafka doesn't help ‘Kafka.' And I think my presence -- I was saying to him just before we came in -- maybe you would have been better off with ...”

SS: "Yeah, with who?”

JI: "Well, with Billy Connolly or something. But you know what I mean, there's an expectation -- Jeremy Irons as Kafka -- that's it's going to be a sort of erudite piece, which is not what we intended at all. AND IT'S IN BLACK ANND WHITE!”

IS THERE SOMETHING ABOUT EASTERN EUROPE THAT DRAWS YOU?

JI: "No. Not particularly. I love getting to know new places. That's one of the perks of my job. New cultures and new sorts of people. Playing someone who’s very unlike me is interesting. It's true that getting the chance to go to Prague during that time, when it was in flux, was a big plus for doing the film. Had Steven said he was going to shoot this in a field in Arizona, I might have been slightly less thrilled.”

WOULD JI DO “SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE”?

JI: "I'd love to branch out. Comedy, it's very difficult to find good comedies -- for me anyway. I mean, other people get offered them first. I did make a comedy, and sadly without a comedy director, so it didn’t work very well. It was called ‘Chorus of Disapproval,' and if you see it billed, turn over. But I'd like to. I do have a sense of humor, but it's slightly bizarre. I haven't yet found a director and a writer who could latch onto it -- although Steven came pretty close. It contains a lot of IRONY, I know that.” (groans at the pun)

WHAT NEXT?

SS: "It'll be one of two things: One is a film set in the '20s, about professional football; I know you're all expecting a sports comedy from me now. I haven't approached Jeremy about it yet. (Laughs). The other is a movie based on a novel called ‘King of the Hill' by A.E. Hotchner [which was, in fact, his next film] about a young boy growing up in Missouri during the '30s. A very small film. It’s just not clear right now which one is going to come first. I'm going to do them both, they'd both be done with Universal.”

STUDIO FILMS?

SS: [After those two he hopes to return to working with the people who produced “Kafka,” because, as he says, “ ‘Kafka' was an incredibly comfortable experience for me, over and above the physical hardships of making the film. I hope to move back and forth” between independents and studios.

WHY "KAFKA”?

SS: "I knew I wanted to do something different. The script had intrigued me, because I never thought a film about Kafka could be exciting. And so the script really caught me off guard. It avoided what I thought were the pitfalls of making a film about Kafka's life or a straight adaptation of one of his works. I had made one film under the most comfortable circumstances imaginable, and I wanted to do the exact opposite on the second film. So there was some design, but at the same time I'm not going to spend my career reacting against ‘sex, lies' -- that would be pointless. I'm sure I'll make a film similar to that some day, again. But for now I wanted to start, as soon as possible, neutralizing expectations about what kinds of films I have to make.”

SUNDANCE:

SS: "Sundance is, for independents, kind of the ranking festival in the United States for exposure and potential, for filmmakers to reach an audience or a distributor. I've never taken part in any of the labs, so I really can’t speak to that. I'd like to, I just haven’t had the opportunity.

"But it's obviously changing a lot. ‘sex, lies' had some very good effects and some bad effects. So the festival's changing every year, and hopefully it'll keep changing for the better.”

WHAT WERE THE “BAD EFFECTS”:

SS: "It's funny, Harlan Jacobson and I were talking about this the other day. Here are the bad effects: ‘sex, lies' established a commercial performance benchmark that I think is unhealthy -- it was an aberration, of sorts, and I think it's unfair for somebody to go see a film and say, ‘Yeah, but it won’t do what "sex, lies” did. That's awful. The measure of success for an independent film shouldn't be box office, necessarily. I think it should be more recoupment of investment. And there are more films showing here that have distribution already than ever before. It's because the level of awareness has risen, and as a result people are getting to these films earlier. That subverts part of the purpose, at least initially I think, of the festival -- which is to help filmmakers find distribution.

"So, there's an increased awareness of independent film, that's great; there's a slightly different definition of success for an independent film, maybe that's not so great. You run the danger of the festival becoming a market, instead of just a festival about just seeing some good movies and appreciating them.”

DID YOU KNOW MUCH ABOUT KAFKA BEFORE PLAYING HIM?

JI: "No, I knew nothing about Kafka. I'm very badly read. Yes, I read rather a lot about Kafka for my preparation.”

But Soderbergh told him it was all a waste of time. “And he was right. I decided I didn't like Kafka at all; he wasn't my sort of bloke. I think you fall in love with Kafka during your adolescence, probably. All the people who love Kafka met him during their teens -- you know, read him. I personally think he was an eternal adolescent. I mean, all his worries are the worries of an adolescent.”

SWITCH TO COLOR:

SS: "No, the switch to color was not in the script. It was something mentioned quite casually by one of our producers, Stuart Cornfeld. I thought it was interesting, I thought it was appropriate.” He said he knew it would interest and disorient the audience.

JI ON PLAYING KLAUS VON BULOW:

JI: "I'm trained to go from one character to another with the blink of an eye.”

EVER INTIMIDATED BY WORKING WITH OTHER BIG STARS?

JI: "I'm always slightly frightened that I'll be disappointed. But apart from that, it's like knowing you're going to have a good game -- it's a good team up there.”

A decade ago, JI said, he spent the summer in Cedar City, Utah, with the BBC filming plays at the Utah Shakespearean Festival. Would he come back again someday?

"Without wishing to seem rude, NO. ... I'd even think hard about going to Broadway for a summer to do Shakespeare.'”

SS: "Don't go to film school. Save your tuition, make a film with the money and make people watch it.” Film schools, he said, are too structured for him.

"Slumdog Millionaire"

2009-07-01T14:59:00.000-07:00

(Originally published in the March 2009 Ogden Independent)

by Don Porter
Film artists like Danny Boyle, director of the Oscar-winning “Slumdog Millionaire,” are a comparative rarity in world cinema. They make, with remarkable consistency, idiosyncratic films that manage to attract wide audiences. For those who know much about film and the motion picture business, this is a remarkable accomplishment.

That Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire” has achieved the pinnacle of recognition with its Oscar nomination and victory finally takes the filmmaker over that last bit of uncovered commercial ground: the kind of attention and praise marketing budgets can’t possibly purchase.

Described simply, “Slumdog Millionaire” is the story of Jamal, child of the Mumbai slums, who is competing on the Indian-TV version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire.” He’s doing remarkably well on the game show, which seems improbable to the host and producers, who assume he’s cheating. The film flashes back to reveal Jamal’s life story, and the series of sometimes unwatchable graphic events that constitute his education.

“Slumdog” is vibrant, pulsating, funny and grim. We are, at turns, horrified and delighted. As India emerges with First World aspirations, it must drag its Third World realities behind like a gaudy caravan – enlivened and complemented by A.R. Rahman’s brilliant musical score. Boyle’s stunning direction marries the alternately stark and lush qualities of screenwriter Simon Beaufoy’s narrative, and the conventions of Bollywood cinema – huge sections of the film are in Hindi, with subtitles – to his own penchant for Western genre-busting.

Boyle’s cast, led by British actor Dev Patel as the adult Jamal, offers one heartbreaking, thrilling performance after another. The ensemble of characters, each striving along divergent paths to lift themselves from the unimaginable squalor of their youth, tells a modern story, yes, but one with roots as old as human society.

Boyle’s dexterity behind the camera should have him ranked with the best technicians of the business as well as the heart-yanking sentimentalists. His ease when it comes to juxtaposing the two is impressive, and has from, time to time, left him victim to criticism alleging cynical audience manipulation. It’s the same sort of jealousy that dogged Steven Spielberg for too many years. It is, essentially, a complaint that a director is too good. Please.

Local audiences might be interested to know Boyle created one of his lesser efforts in Utah during the '90s: “A Life Less Ordinary,” shot in various Salt Lake and Top of Utah locations. It’s a trivial effort, but makes good fun for spotting familiar streets and buildings.

If you’re new to Boyle via “Slumdog,” it would do you well to sample the best of his previous work, including the re-imagined zombie flick “28 Days Later,” which he followed with the G-rated family film “Millions.” The sci-fi “Sunshine” was an interesting character piece, and both “Trainspotting” and “Shallow Grave” were fresh mid-'90s spins/spoofs on the burgeoning subgenre of hipster crime comedies – both are pitch black and screamingly funny.

“Slumdog Millionaire,” then, isn’t so much a surprise as a long-coming recognition of a filmmaker’s talent. Boyle’s been building to this triumph for a decade and a half. If you haven’t yet seen it, go. If you have, you’re like me: already planning to see it again.

"Gran Torino"

2009-06-29T15:07:00.000-07:00

(Originally published in the Ogden Independent, February 2009)

By Don Porter

While it would doubtless comfort an enlightened soul to believe that bigots like Walt Kowalski, Clint Eastwood’s racist in “Gran Torino,” are fast-fading relics of a troubled American past, it also would be delusional. Racial hatred – fueled by the ignorance to which it is welded – is not a fading characteristic of our national character.

That much of “Gran Torino” rings true.

Walt is a brutal, mirthless echo of Archie Bunker. The film introduces him as a solitary, scowling figure at his long-suffering wife’s funeral, a woman we gather did not endorse her husband’s xenophobic fury. But his rage is not confined to those who don’t share his white skin. As his children and grandchildren take their seats, the bile of disapproval gurgles in his throat: He actually growls in response to the sight of his own blood. They don’t live up. But, we realize soon enough, in Walt’s view nobody ever does.

Walt’s castle is a modest postwar two-story in a Detroit neighborhood that’s quickly transforming from a white working-class enclave to one increasingly populated with Hmong refugees from Southeast Asia. Walt, a retired Ford assembly-line laborer, spends his days spewing racial epithets to the faces of his neighbors, as well as behind their backs. Mainly, he seems preoccupied with keeping them off his lawn.That kind of attitude has to spring from somewhere. And we find out soon enough: Though 50-plus years removed from his Korean War combat experience, Walt continues to lug with him everywhere the burden of guilt and pride – a combustible combination, that -- of his wartime service.

The film’s plot is set in motion late one night when Walt catches his young next-door neighbor Thao trying to steal the old vet’s cherry ’72 Gran Torino. Typical of Walt’s disproportionate responses to almost everything, he responds by shoving a loaded rifle in the boy’s face. Why? Walt loves that car more than anything else on God’s green earth. It is the film’s primary metaphor: This less-than-classic automobile is a relic of a past when Detroit made vehicles that guaranteed mechanics a good living. (I know; in high school, I owned, and was constantly repairing, a ’72 Gran Torino.) It stands as an emblem of a shopworn, discredited past, which efficiently and obviously reflects Walt’s outlook on life.

Eastwood, also directing here, works from a script that’s the equivalent of a bullhorn in the debate over immigration, white flight and cultural diversity. The director’s faithfulness to the textual blueprint offers precious little artfulness or subtlety regarding the film’s overriding themes – family relationships, interracial struggle, gang culture, religion and so on. As such, the movie ranks as a lesser accomplishment on the filmmaker’s resume.

But as so often happens even when Eastwood stumbles, it’s still interesting to watch the fall. Though a fairly standard tale of redemption, Eastwood makes sure the going is never easy. For one thing, the film functions as a thesaurus for racist slang -- a surprising percentage of which is inappropriately played for laughs. But as Walt is inevitably drawn into the lives of his neighbors, who are not played sickening-sweet as similar characters have been in other films, he remains true to his generally loathsome self: ugly, irascible.

There is no joining of the hands, singing of “Kumbaya” or easy resolution to the various disputes at work in “Gran Torino.” While that is laudable and rare in a work of mass-market entertainment, it’s the way Eastwood – especially late-career Clint – usually approaches his prickly subject matter.

One other thing: With all the chatter about Eastwood saying this could be his swan song as an actor, there had been a lot of talk about him deserving an Oscar nomination for his performance here, and the real possibility of his first acting Oscar. He didn’t get the nod, and you can’t blame Oscar voters – his fellow actors in the nominating round – one bit. He does solid work here, but it’s not among his very best work. It would have been a career tribute – like John Wayne winning for “True Grit” instead of “Red River” or “The Searchers,” or Henry Fonda winning for “On Golden Pond” rather than “The Grapes of Wrath” or “12 Angry Men.” The Academy blew its chance by not giving Eastwood the golden statue for “Tightrope” or “Unforgiven” or even “Million Dollar Baby.” Here’s hoping he stands before the cameras again, and gives a performance worthy of that elusive win.

Welcome to The Occasional Critic

2009-06-06T20:34:00.000-07:00

For 11 years -- 1985-96 -- I was the film and TV writer/critic for the Standard-Examiner newspaper in Ogden, Utah. I wrote a LOT of movie reviews, columns and interviews/profiles of filmmakers during that time.

My children were too young at the time to 1) be interested in what Dad did for a living, so I've decided to risk 2) they still won't be interested. My plan is to collect some of what I did over the years, at random, so they can see what the old man did for a living -- something precious few people are still able to do in daily journalism as it exists today.

Also, since I left journalism in 2008, I write a monthly movie review for The Ogden Independent -- an alternative newspaper founded and edited by my old pal Steve Conlin. I'll drop those reviews in here, too.

Who knows, maybe I'll discover fairly quickly I'm not interested in reading these things either. For the time being, I'm committed to clogging up space in the Net.