Light Through Celluloid

Oscar Night Writer Montage

2007-02-27T12:25:00.001-08:00

Here is the collection of classic films clips illustrating the agony and ecstasy of playings with words...

Mamet on the Free Market Film Industry

2007-02-22T19:33:00.000-08:00

Stephen Carson on the problems with the central planning of culture:

A fascinating interview with playwright/screenwriter/director David Mamet by Charlie Rose (jump to 29:00) features his comments on economics and Hollywood (jump to 36:00). The interview is about his book Bambi Vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business. He says that he has been studying economics and has been fascinated with the film industry as an exemplar of the free market. He explicitly rejects central planning of culture, "the commissar of culture" (state theaters, etc.) and celebrates the entrepreneur who he says must have "arrogance or, to put it differently, self-assurance" as they push for their vision while always keeping an eye on the audience. See Theatre and the State by Hans Frank for a brief overview of central planning of culture in the U.S.

Here is a short interview with Mamet from Kris Warner of Bloomberg News on screenwriters, producers who produce nothing, Curtis vs. Olivier, and a Greek god...

Helpful or Not So Helpful Advice

2006-12-20T19:41:00.000-08:00

Joe Eszterhas has some advice for screenwriters. "Steal as much memorabilia from the set as you can," the legend who penned "Flashdance" and "Basic Instinct" tells Stuff magazine. "There seems to be a market for everything on eBay these days. If you are somehow lucky enough to get something iconic, like the ice pick I wrote into my script for 'Basic Instinct,' I would suggest you hang onto it."

As Pablo Picasso stated: "Good artists copy, great artists steal."

War Tax Resister as Stranger Than Fiction

2006-12-18T20:14:00.000-08:00

A Review from The Free Liberal:

...Pascal goes through a process of transformation herself in seeing the good in the taxman. Although Stranger than Fiction is Crick’s story, she perhaps utters one of the most important lines in the movie from a free liberal point-of-view. When asked how she went from being a Harvard law student to being a radical baker, she explains that she wanted to be a lawyer so she could save the world, but once at school she spent all her time baking for study groups and not attending to her grades. She realized that her true skill for improving the world was in baking cookies. Ana Pascal derives pleasure from making people happy. Although the word “socialist” is bandied about, it is clear she is an entrepreneur of the John Mackey variety.

Essential good comes not from “fighting the system” or undoing injustice brought on by external forces, it comes from our ability to help others achieve their own happiness. Not everyone is an artistic baker who creates amazing delicacies, but everywhere people are working to reduce the cost of happiness for others, doing good for them in ways visible and hidden. We do this on a personal level with our friends, family, and colleagues, and we do it for people whom we will never meet but will nonetheless benefit from the derivative effects of our efforts to build and innovate in our work. In economics we call this the “free market.”

The taxman is unloved because he is precisely the opposite of the entrepreneur. He takes wealth from us to pay for things which don’t help society (or at least we think a good bit is unhelpful). He does not operate on any principle other than that he has been sent to enforce a technical rule against a technical violation. My grandfather, who was an IRS auditor, often remarks that he should have gone into car sales, “because nobody likes to pay taxes, but everyone is happy when they are buying a car.”

Can A Screenwriter Be An Auteur Too?

2006-10-30T16:27:00.000-08:00

Doree Shafrir from Slate.com considers the question:

"In last Sunday's New York Times, Terrence Rafferty wrote about the fight between writer Guillermo Arriaga and director Alejandro González Iñárritu over their new film Babel, which opens today. Rafferty quoted Arriaga as saying, 'When they say it's an auteur film, I say auteurs film. I have always been against the 'film by' credit on a movie. It's a collaborative process and it deserves several authors.' Rafferty went on to write that Arriaga's 'relatively uncombative tone may … disguise a rather more aggressive agenda.'

...It's clear that González Iñárritu, director of highly stylized films Amores Perros, 21 Grams, and now Babel, is making a play for auteur status. (A wide variety of directors have achieved such renown, from Alfred Hitchcock and Woody Allen to Luis Buñuel, Wong Kar-Wai, and Jean-Luc Godard.) Arriaga's response is, 'Wait one second—I've written all three of those movies. You can't have all the credit.' On the surface, this seems a reasonable request, but it gets to the essence of who, in fact, makes a film. Unlike a book written by one author, a film is worked on by a team of many people. Is only González Iñárritu's vision being communicated in these three films? Or is Arriaga's as well?"

At the end, Shafrir mentions an interesting book by David Kipen: The Schreiber Theory: A Radical Rewrite of American Film History, that has elicited quite a few rabid comments on Amazon.com.

As a bonus, here is a link to a few screenwriter cartoons.

Gunnery Sgt. Hartman on Eyes Wide Shut

2006-10-05T19:57:00.001-07:00

An interesting interview with R. Lee Ermey, the prototypical Sgt. Slaughter, of Full Metal Jacket fame, the 62-year-old former jarhead, host of Discovery Channel's military documentary "Mail Call," originator of an infamous improvised quote about "goddamned common courtesy" that became a classic:

Did you and Kubrick become close while shooting Full Metal Jacket?
Very close. Stanley called me up all the time. He'd call at three o'clock in the morning and say, "Oh, it's 10 o'clock over here." [Laughs] "Yeah, well, it's three o-fucking-clock in the morning here, Stanley. Oh well." He called me about two weeks before he died, as a matter of fact. We had a long conversation about Eyes Wide Shut. He told me it was a piece of shit and that he was disgusted with it and that the critics were going to have him for lunch. He said Cruise and Kidman had their way with him—exactly the words he used.

What did he mean?
He was kind of a shy little timid guy. He wasn't real forceful. That's why he didn't appreciate working with big, high-powered actors. They would have their way with him, he would lose control, and his movie would turn to shit.

Interesting. But, I don't think you should take any of his views on current foreign policy seriously.

Wait, Wait...What?

2006-10-03T21:08:00.000-07:00

Ed Gonzalez at Slant Magazine states that:

Mulholland Drive, possibly the greatest work of American film art since Altman's Nashville, is an impossible act for Lynch to have to follow, but the bug-eyed director—pupils dilated and imagination tripping in almost inconceivable directions—has made the Atlas Shrugged of narrative avant-garde films, compulsively watchable and insanely self-devouring.

UPDATE: Steve Sailer attempts to break it all down for the casual viewer in a way that no other critic has been bold enough to do:

The basic structure of the film is promising, resembling the setup for a complicated Tom Stoppard play. Dern plays a classy Hollywood actress married to a jealous Polish millionaire. She lands a big role in a Southern Gothic film about adulterous lovers and the husband who will kill them if he finds out. Her leading man is a Colin Farrell-type star notorious for sleeping with all his leading ladies, especially the married ones. Not surprisingly, you soon can't tell whether the love scenes depict the characters in the film-within-a-film, or whether the stars are rehearsing a little too realistically in their spare time.

Considerately, Lynch has characters clue the audience in on what will happen, such as a sinister Polish hag who visits Dern in her LA mansion and tells her that her upcoming romance film is actually about murder, or maybe she just forgot, but who can remember, she asks, what comes before what, whether it's today, yesterday, or tomorrow?

The director (Jeremy Irons) reveals that the new movie is actually a remake of a Polish movie, based on a Polish Gypsy folktale, about adulterous lovers that was begun in the 1930s but never finished because the two stars were murdered, presumably by a jealous husband. And there's suppose to be a Gypsy curse on the whole proceedings.

Then, Dern somehow becomes, like Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse 5, unstuck in time (or maybe she's just crazy) and is soon encountering scenes both from the unfinished Polish movie and from the private lives of the doomed Polish actors.

So far, so good. A half hour into the film, my hopes were high. But then … the story never develops any momentum. And it just goes on and on and on forever and a day. You know the last ten minutes of "2001," where the astronaut keeps walking into strange rooms, staring in puzzlement at different versions of himself? Well, multiply that by 18 and you'll grasp what this three-hour disaster is like: Laura Dern walking into scores of rooms and staring in horror at what she sees. But there isn't much that's all that horrible to look at, so the film doesn't even offer the amusements of a horror film. The soundtrack consists of endless minor key chords and thump-thump heartbeat-like percussion, which is pretty creepy for awhile, but gets old eventually.

Lynch himself seems to get bored with this, and keeps introducing characters that don't fit into his already overstuffed four-level structure. Dern re-emerges as a foul-mouthed skank who apparently lives in Pomona, in the "Inland Empire" east of LA, and is married to a man from Poland (which was an inland country, except for the controversial Danzig corridor, when the original movie was made between the wars -- see how the Pomona-Poland Inland Empire theme all fits together!), who runs off to join a Baltic circus to care for the animals. And then there are scenes from a Polish sitcom starring a stiffly dressed bourgeois family with the heads of rabbits, which I guess is tied into the recurrent theme of being good with animals, which also pops up in the ten minute monologue by a Chinese homeless lady sitting on the star-engraved sidewalk of Hollywood Blvd., who talks at vast length about her friend in Pomona who is retiring from turning tricks to stay home with her pet monkey.

This isn't as random as it sounds because every damn thing in the movie is foretold earlier. For example, in Dern's second incarnation, as the whore, she delivers a long monologue to a Hollywood private eye (who looks kind of like, rather improbably for a shamus, Matthew Yglesias) in which, in the course of talking about some guy she once knew, she mentions that he had a one-legged sister. About an hour later, as I was walking out early, about 170 minutes into this ordeal, up on the screen -- well, what do you know! -- there's suddenly a one-legged woman.

To be honest, I'm often a big admirer of films constructed in this manner. I imagine that if I sat through "Inland Empire" again, I could explain why, say, "Repo Man" is art while "Inland Empire" is an obsessive-compulsive nightmare / snoozeathon, but no way in hell am I going to subject myself to it another time.

Like Peter Jackson's interminable "King Kong," what's being debuted in the theatres is the three-hour Director's Cut. Hopefully, someday there will be a two-hour Editor's Cut of "Inland Empire."

David Lynch's Inland Empire

2006-09-07T16:44:00.000-07:00

Inland Empire: Set in the inland valley outside of Los Angeles, David Lynch's new film is a mystery about a woman in trouble.

Laura Dern, Jeremy Irons, Harry Dean Stanton, Justin Theroux, Julia Ormond...

"Laura Dern admitted that she was not sure what the film was about. 'My experience on this film was very unique to say the least, even after working with David for a long time,' she said.

'Each day was a different direction, each day was a different idea because we didn’t have a script we were following. The truth is, I didn’t know who I was playing — and I still don’t know. I’m looking forward to seeing the film to learn more.'”

"It appears that the film script has a Machiavellian life of its own. An increasingly hysterical Dern is pursued from one fraught scene to the next by a queue of assorted creeps."

"Lynch always resists attempts at interpretation; here, he defies any kind of narrative description as well. Two and a half years in the making, this is seat-of-the-pants filmmaking at its most baffling. There was never a complete script, so thesps turned up each day with a new set of lines and no idea where they were going, making Dern's central turn even more remarkable for its coherence."

"David Lynch's latest opus is a Russian doll of a film with stories inside stories inside stories. But coming in at three hours long, made in Poland and Hollywood, the digitally-shot film is inspired and incomprehensible by turns."

"It’s almost impossible to summarise the plot of a film that doesn’t really have one; by the end of the three hours, we have little to add to Lynch’s laconic press-book statement that INLAND EMPIRE is about 'a woman in love and in trouble.'"

"David Lynch took time out to defend his hallucinatory new picture at the Venice film festival yesterday, insisting that it makes 'perfect sense' - to him at least.

'It's supposed to make perfect sense,' he said. 'Every film is like going into a new world, going into the unknown. But you should be not afraid of using your intuition, and feel and think your way through.'"

A quick glimpse at his short flicks.

Hmmmmmm...

A First Look At 2007

2006-08-03T19:35:00.000-07:00

Sure, it is a little early for the casual viewer, too late for the studio exec, but just about right for the cinephile.

Firstshowing.net gives you a taste of what to look forward to in 2007. They may be a little too enthusiastic for some tastes, but after all that is their job.

Here are a few highlights:

Release Date: 2007
Director: Lee Tamahori
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Julianne Moore, Jessica Biel
Synopsis: A man who can see into his own future has to avoid capture by a government organization and win the love of a woman who will be the mother of his child.
The Hype: Another Philip K. Dick adaptation (also A Scanner Darkly) that looks to be an incredibly interesting film with Nicolas Cage as the star.

300

Release Date: March 16, 2007
Director: Zack Snyder
Starring: Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, David Wenham, Dominic West, Vincent Regan
Synopsis: Based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel, “300″ concerns the 480 B.C. Battle of Thermopylae, where the King of Sparta led his army against the advancing Persians.
The Hype: Thanks to a special preview shown at Comic-Con, everyone is abuzz about just how intense and epic this ancient Spartan adventure will be, complete with comic-book stylized imagery.

American Gangster

Release Date: 2007
Director: Ridley Scott
Starring: Russell Crowe, Denzel Washington
Synopsis: A drug lord smuggles heroin into Harlem during the 1970s by hiding the stash inside the coffins of American soldiers returning from Vietnam.
The Hype: Russell Crowe is going to be fightin’ it up - this time as a gangster! No wait, he’s a detective, damn, our dreams haven’t come true… Either way, this movie, supposedly directed by the legendary Ridley Scott, may rattle some cages during 2007.

Beowulf

Release Date: November 16, 2007
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich, Robin Wright Penn, Brendan Gleeson
Synopsis: The Scandinavian warrior Beowulf must fight and defeat the monster Grendel who is terrorizing towns, and later, Grendel’s mother, who begins killing out of revenge.
The Hype: Zemeckis will bring this epic tale from ancient history to life; it’s been yearning for a film adaption for years.

There Will Be Blood

Release Date: 2007
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano
Synopsis: A story about family, greed, religion, and oil, centered around a turn-of-the-century Texas prospector in the early days of the business.
The Hype: An adaptation of a novel by Upton Sinclair and directed by the guy behind Boogie Nights and Magnolia comes this film about family, greed, religion, and oil. May be an epic drama worth its penny when it comes out next year.

Transformers

Release Date: July 4, 2007
Director: Michael Bay
Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Jon Voight, Bernie Mac, Tyrese Gibson
Synopsis: Dueling alien races, the Autobots and the Decepticons, bring their battle to Earth, leaving the future of humankind hanging in the balance.
The Hype: Many of our childhood memories are brightened by the mention of Transformers. And it’s now come time for a live action Transformers movie that will spend nearly a year in CGI development to tweak and perfect the transformations and robot elements; on top of being directed by Michael Bay and being released on our nation’s day of celebration - July 4th. Another film that may top the list in 2007 - at least in the “totally badass” category.

Robert A. Heinlein "On Writing"

2006-07-24T17:25:00.000-07:00

Robert A. Heinlein had five iron-clad rules for writing that translate well from the science fiction world into the world of screenwriting. Sci-fi writer, Robert J. Sawyer adds his own sixth rule to the mix that is a prerequisite.

"Heinlein used to say he had no qualms about giving away these rules, even though they explained how you could become his direct competitor, because he knew that almost no one would follow their advice."

"...if you start off with a hundred people who say they want to be writers, you lose half of the remaining total after each rule — fully half the people who hear each rule will fail to follow it."

Rule One: You Must Write

You can't just talk about wanting to be a writer. You can't simply take courses, or read up on the process of writing, or daydream about someday getting around to it. The only way to become a writer is to plant yourself in front of your keyboard and go to work.

Rule Two: Finish What Your Start

You cannot learn how to write without seeing a piece through to its conclusion...Once you have an overall draft, with a beginning, middle, and end, you'll be surprised at how easy it is to see what works and what doesn't. And you'll never master such things as plot, suspense, or character growth unless you actually construct an entire piece.

Rule Three: You Must Refrain From Rewriting, Except to Editorial Order

This is the one that got Heinlein in trouble with creative-writing teachers. Perhaps a more appropriate wording would have been, "Don't tinker endlessly with your story." You can spend forever modifying, revising, and polishing. There's an old saying that stories are never finished, only abandoned — learn to abandon yours.

Rule Four: You Must Put Your Story on the Market

Send your story out. You can live the fantasy that you're a "professional writer," but one day you'll have to see if that fantasy has any grounding in reality.

Rule Five: You Must Keep it on the Market until it has Sold

Work gets rejected all the time... If the rejection note contains advice you think is good, revise the story and send it out again. If not, then simply turn the story around: pop it in the mail, sending it to another market.

Rule Six: Start Working on Something Else

As soon as you've finished one piece, start on another. Don't wait for the first story to come back from the editor you've submitted it to; get to work on your next project.

Of the original hundred wannabe writers, only one or two will follow all six rules.

The question is: will you be one of them?

Linklater: The Enigma

2006-07-05T20:31:00.000-07:00

Richard Linklater: writer-director of Slacker, Dazed and Confused, Before Sunrise and Before Sunset.

Richard Linklater: the director of The School of Rock, the remake of Bad News Bears, but who turned down directing a Harry Potter sequel.

Richard Linklater is an enigma and this Toronto Star interview does a good job of trying to get to the bottom of it all while discussing his new film, A Scanner Darkly, another adaptation of a Philip K. Dick novel.

Here is an early Linklater interview by Alice Hicks of MovieMaker Magazine.

Here is a more academic look at Linklater's oeuvre via Senses of Cinema.

Quote of the Day

2006-06-29T17:06:00.000-07:00

A writer is not a confectioner, a cosmetic dealer, or an entertainer. He is a man who has signed a contract with his conscious and his sense of duty. - A. Chekhov

Kubrick's First Film Online

2006-06-29T14:35:00.000-07:00

Day of the Fight is a 1951 short (16 minute) documentary based on an earlier photo feature Stanley Kubrick had done for Look (Prizefighter, published January 18, 1949), which featured Irish middleweight boxer Walter Cartier, during the height of his career.

Day Of The Fight shows a day in his life, in particular the day of his fight with black middleweight Bobby James, on April 17th, 1950. The film opens with a short section on boxing's history. We then follow Cartier through his day, as he prepares for the 10:00 P.M. bout. He eats breakfast, then goes to early mass and next eats lunch. At 4:00 P.M., he starts preparing for the fight, and by 8:00, he is waiting in his dressing room.

There he sets himself to become the fighter the occasion demands. We then see the fight itself, where he comes out victorious in a short match. (The fight features a noted knock-out scene, which was not filmed by Kubrick himself, as he was reloading a negative cartridge in his camera at the time of the blow.)

Although the original planned buyer of the picture went out of business, Kubrick was able to sell Day of the Fight to RKO Pictures for the $4,000, making the small profit of $100 on his $3,900 cost to make it.

Filmbrain wonders "if the film had any influence on Scorsese and Raging Bull -- there are a few moments, particularly a through-the-stool-legs shot of the other fighter that seemed very familiar."

the mutiny company offers the film for your viewing pleasure here.

My thanks to GreenCine Daily for the pointer.

UPDATE: Stanley Kubrick's early short Flying Padre is available here. It is the story of "two days in the life of priest Father Fred Stadtmuller whose New Mexico parish is so large he can only spread goodness and light among his flock with the aid of a mono-plane."

The Movie I've Seen the Most

2006-06-29T12:56:00.000-07:00

Spike Lee, Paul Schrader, Laura Ziskin, Peter Farrelly, Judd Apatow, Liev Shreiber, Kathleen Kennedy, Stacy Peralta, Paul Hirsch, Neil LaBute, among others, weigh in on their most-watched movie.

While I am not one prone to multiple viewings, I would have to say Joe Versus the Volcano is one that I will not change the channel when I come across it. Maria Full of Grace is another one I have seen quite a few times lately thanks to HBO.

Wings of Desire is the film I continue to enjoy over and over and over again. It is a masterpiece of modern filmmaking.

For movies on the movies, you can't go wrong with Federico Fellini's 8 1/2. On the other side of the spectrum, Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels is always worth another look.

Postscript: Of course, almost any Capra film is good for a second, third, or fourth viewing.

RomCom Writers Must Pay Attention

2006-06-17T00:29:00.000-07:00

Cracked presents: The 7 Best 80's Movie Girlfriends.

Is Being Rich And Famous All It Is Cracked Up To Be?

2006-06-15T23:05:00.000-07:00

Jacob Weisberg reports on The Death Styles of the Rich and Famous (via LewRockwell.com):

John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, and wife's sister died when the single-engine plane Kennedy was piloting plunged into waters off Martha's Vineyard. Though the crash was apparently caused by spatial disorientation on the part of an inexperienced pilot, there was speculation that Kennedy might also have been impaired by a foot injury from an earlier paragliding accident. If true, that would make the tragedy doubly wealth-and-fame-related. Of course, the Kennedy family is in a risk category all its own. One wonders if the surviving members are insurable at all, given the family history of driving off bridges (Teddy), smashing into trees while playing football on skis (Michael), death by drugs (David, Christina Onassis), plane crashes (Joseph Jr., Kathleen, Alexander Onassis, and, very nearly, Teddy), and assassination (JFK and RFK). These are terrible fates, but ones that members of the struggling middle class do not have to worry much about.

If you survive paycheck-to-paycheck, you can also rest easy about dying while fleeing paparazzi (Princess Diana); at the hand of a servant jealous of your other servants (Edmund Safra); at the hand of the president of your fan club (Selena); at the hand of a lunatic stalker (John Lennon); at the hand of an impatient heir (the royal family of Nepal); from a face lift (Olivia Goldsmith); in your Porsche, while drag racing (basketball player Bobby Phills); in pursuit of a speed-boat record (Stefano Casiraghi, husband of Princess Caroline of Monaco); while diving off your yacht (Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys); after fighting with Christopher Walken (Natalie Wood); while trying to buzz Ozzy Osbourne's tour bus (Randy Rhoads); from injuries sustained in a cross-country riding event * (Christopher Reeve); in staged violence on a film set (Brandon Lee); as a former vice president, atop your mistress (Nelson Rockefeller); or of a disease that subsequently gets named after you (Lou Gehrig).

What happens if our culture's greatest reward of money and fame turn out to be not quite so rewarding?

A Great Book, A Great Actress. A Great Film?

2006-06-14T22:19:00.000-07:00

The Hollywood Reporter has the scoop on the next project for one of Hollywood's latest breakout stars. Catalina Sandino Moreno is in negotiations to join the cast of "Love in the Time of Cholera." Mike Newell is directing for Stone Village Pictures and New Line Cinema. Javier Bardem and Giovanna Mezzogiorno have already been cast in the film, based on the novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

The story follows a romantic man named Florentino (Bardem) who loses Fermina (Mezzogiorno), the girl of his dreams, to a wealthier suitor and spends the next 50 years building his life and reputation so that one day he might have her.

Moreno, if she signs on the dotted line, will play Hildebranda Sanchez, Fermina's cousin.

"The Most Expensive Ticket in the World"

2006-06-14T18:51:00.000-07:00

What if you had to drive 300 miles and pay $67 just to see a movie? That is the case in Saudi Arabia where one has to travel to Bahrain for the authentic theater-going experience. Abdullah Eyaf has catalogued the struggles of movie lovers in Saudi Arabia in his new documentary "Cinema 500km."

Raja al-Mutairi, who writes about the cinema for Al-Riyadh daily, said there is no law that bans cinemas, but he said Saudis are unwilling to open theaters for fear of a clash with Islamists.

Tareq Al-Hussein, whose first cinema experience was captured in the documentary, said his first trip to the movies will always be special.

"In films, I had always seen stars meeting their girlfriends at the movies or seen an actor munching on pop corn. But I never really knew what it felt like."

"In the theater, the emotions I had were more intense than those I had watching a movie alone. When I was laughing, everybody else was laughing. When I got scared, everybody else got scared. It was an experience I’ll always be proud of."

All Sunshine and Starlets?

2006-06-13T15:56:00.000-07:00

The third season is here. The show The London Free Press calls "the ultimate and unapologetic male wish-fulfilment series." Fans enjoy the vicarious life as the characters seem to live out the Hollywood dream. Florangela Davila calls it "a fast-paced hedonistic ride."

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Charlie McCollum, writing in The Mercury News, seems to think the show improves with age. He sees the show as "running on all cylinders now" as characters who bordered on cliche have suddenly become fully developed human beings.

But all is not roses. Chicago Tribune staff reporter Allison Benedikt thinks the "once-great show has gone Hollywood." She writes: "Entourage" works best when Ari's barking on the phone, not trying to fix his marriage. It works best when the guys are hanging out, talking about women or cars or food or weed, not trying to protect Vince from a scam.

What could be better than that? More Sloan?

Here is an AP interview with Ari Emanuel. I mean, Ari Gold. I mean, Jeremy Piven.

TMZ offers up the "Entourage Decoder" to stay clued in on all the inside jokes and references to Tinseltown for those west of Sepulveda.

Yes, that really was Jimmy Woods' girlfriend. The daughter of one of his golfing buddies.

All sunshine and starlets? Yes, apparently so.

Jim Jarmusch's Favorite Musical Moments in Film

2006-06-13T12:39:00.000-07:00

"Movies where a band plays I love, like Blow Up; or where it's a rock'n'roll film without music, where rock'n'roll is integrated into the film, it's an experience of the characters." And films with cameo appearances: "When a band will suddenly appear, like Ski Party or something, when suddenly James Brown and the Famous Flames appeared in the ski lodge."

He was less enamoured by Fastest Guitar Alive, which starred Roy Orbison. "He's very stiff. It's a predictable movie. Not a good movie." And dismisses also the popular trend for biopics such as Walk the Line and Ray. "I have an aversion to biopics in general. The Johnny Cash movie was well done but I couldn't get inside of it because it wasn't Johnny Cash and I'm a Johnny Cash fan." He then swoops back to Scorsese, whom he lauds for his use of songs such as Cream's The Sunshine of Your Love in Goodfellas, and the Rolling Stones' Jumpin' Jack Flash in Mean Streets. "It works because the music doesn't seem tacked on," he explains. "So often, music in films seems like wallpaper bought by the yard. Yunno, 'Give me 10 yards of hip-hop.'"

Music is an integral part of how Jarmusch works. "I always make mix tapes of songs that inspire me when I'm writing a script," he explains. "And often that will be the music I use in the film. Right now it's a strange mix of old blues recordings and music from the 15th century; English composers William Lawes and William Byrd, with Wanda Jackson, Boris, Tom Verlaine and Jozef von Wissen, a composer who uses lutes and little electronic things. I've also had a five-year Kinks obsession." Throughout Dead Man, for example, Jarmusch was listening to a lot of Neil Young and Crazy Horse, "particularly the solos". He then asked Young to score the film...

BIG Summer Movie Season

2006-06-02T20:29:00.000-07:00

I have a good feeling about this one. I think this is going to be a huge summer for movies. It just seems like people are ready to get back into the theater. We have already gotten off to a good start with MI:3, The Da Vinci Code and X-Men: The Last Stand, the rest of the summer seems to look even better.

Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest should kill at the Box Office. Ditto Cars.

Warner Brothers' Superman Returns should do equally as well.

And, the Weinstein Company's Clerks II should have enough fans to make it a big hit.

The only question is who are the sleepers that will pierce through the hype to enjoy their day in the sun. Click? My Super Ex-Girlfriend? Talladega Nights?

I'm just not buying Snakes on a Plane or Miami Vice. If they were stocks, I'd sell them short. But, I'm no studio exec. At least not yet. But, I seem to recall something about online entertainment betting...

Here is David Poland's take on things.

Update: Here is an LA Times article on the new "Hollywood players" turning the weekend box-office race into a participatory sport. Movie Lines are posted Thursday nights at the World Sports Exchange.

Is Hollywood Losing Its Glitz and Glamour?

2006-06-02T20:12:00.000-07:00

It seems as if burdensome regulations and union rules may be having a deleterious effect on the moviemaking bottom line. A new study concludes that TV pilot production in the LA area fell more than 23% from last year's level at a cost of more than 1,000 jobs which drained $70 million from the local economy.

A coupling of tax incentives and less regulation has lured production to twenty-five other states as well as Canada. The leaders are New York City and Canada as they enticed 11 projects away from LA each. Washington D.C. managed three.

In 2005, Los Angeles hosted 105 pilot projects, which represented 85 percent of those filmed. In 2006, the number of pilots fell to 81 and the city's share slumped to 68 percent.

The overall number of industry pilots slipped just 3 percent to 120 (from 124 a year earlier) during the February-to-May pilot season, according to the study, which was based on an industrywide survey of production companies.

Cannes Sunset

2006-05-30T22:58:00.000-07:00

Cahal Milmo in The Independent provides a thorough look at the career of this year's Palme d'Or winner Ken Loach.

J. Hoberman from The Village Voice gives an overview of what exactly went on during cinema's brief days on the Riviera. Was Babel really the "quintessential film" of the festival?

The LA Times via Kenneth Turan looks at the slighted, the neglected, and what could have been in Cannes. Did the jury miss the sensual, the visually poetic, the politically taboo? Or the magical fantasy with an impeccable sense of atmosphere and mood within a world of strange and wonderous creatures?

Matt Dentler at indieWIRE puts the fork in it and gives his own take on it all as well as his top 7.

While, Mike D'Angelo makes it political and then tries to reconcile The Pianist as a David Lynch kind of movie and The Wind that Shakes the Barley as a Wong Kar-wai type of flick.

I have a suspicion Anne Thompson was right when she surmised that the jury locked over the choice of Volver vs. Babel and went for the consensus pick.

The ScreenGrab @ Nerve provides the last word on the importance of Cannes for American cinema.

Kenneth Turan puts it all in perspective when he quotes a line Godard uttered in Wim Wenders' Room 666: "The Hollywood dream is to make one single film and show it everywhere in the world." Cannes makes sure that won't ever happen.

The Original Hollywood Bad Girl

2006-05-30T20:53:00.000-07:00

Ava Gardner is a screen legend, but what you don't know about her may shock you. The Guardian reports on the lastest biography of the big star, cover girl, and tabloid sensation with intimate detail: "Asked by a reporter what she saw in Sinatra - a 119lb has-been - she replied demurely that 19lb of it was cock."

"As a starlet she set the social pace: boozing, swearing, taking her pick of men; ahead of her time. Her acting break came in 1946 with The Killers with Burt Lancaster. Rarely has anyone been more sexual on screen doing so little; she gave Lancaster an erection during a screen kiss, to the hilarity of the crew."

Later, she was doted on by "macho, dangerously sentimental drunks" the likes of Ernest Hemingway, John Ford, and John Huston.

"Before boredom set in she was sustained by the banter and loose intimacy of movie sets. MGM loaned her out for too many bad films and her studio contract meant she earned less than contemporaries. She chose European exile over Hollywood and, in spite of her liberal values and lack of racial prejudice, moved to Franco's Spain (with its advantages of a muzzled press). She was barred from Madrid's Hotel Ritz for peeing in the lobby. By then life was an exhausting round of insomnia, booze, forced gaiety, mood swings, tantrums, and being driven around by a chauffeur while consuming an entire thermos of gin in the back of the car. "

Unsurprisingly, this Virginia tobacco farm girl's life ended sadly as she tried to come "to terms with the illusion of her independence as it turned to loneliness" while living her last days in London childless.

Yet, she could probably still boast: "I haven't taken an overdose of sleeping pills and called my agent. I haven't been in jail, and I don't go running to the psychiatrist every two minutes. That's something of an accomplishment these days."

And, even today.

The Great Summer Blockbusters of Our Youth

2006-05-29T18:05:00.000-07:00

This Cinematical.com post by Erik Davis quickly raised my eyebrows as he began to discuss his "ultimate summer movie going experiences." We are practically the same age and I was wondering how his summer's of cinema would stack up to mine. Well, ultimately, they didn't.

It is amazing, or maybe not so amazing, how we could have such a completely different exposure to the movies throughout the years. Obviously not so amazing, but that is what is so great about the movies. It is our common conversation in this day and age besides politics and religion.

To be influenced by Adventures in Babysitting at the age of ten is unfathomable to me. In the same genre, I would suggest Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead. Christina Applegate was just a much more desirable babysitter at the time. Moreover, to see Jurassic Park at sixteen without acknowledging the decadence and depravity (use your imagination) that occurred as we watched it at a drive-in while sitting in a friends station wagon is to lose sight of the whole experience. True Romance was a little more my style at the time.

But, maybe I should explain. I didn't have the typical movie going experience. But, then again who does? I saw Monty Python's The Meaning of Life at age seven when I was brought along by my mom's bestfriend's husband, his thirteen year-old son, and my dad. I don't think my dad quite knew exactly what he was getting into. I convinced my mom to let me and my younger brother watch A Nightmare on Elm Street when I was about eleven. I never had a nightmare and went on to watch plenty of horror flicks. I still don't really understand the appeal of the whole horror genre.

By the time I got to Batman, Independence Day, There's Something About Mary, and Saving Private Ryan, the formulaic terrifying, awe-inspiring cinematic experience was long over. Those films might have been entertaining, but they were mostly just stiff, laughable, full of lame bathroom jokes or trying to convince me that war could be just a "neat learning experience." None of which I bought at the time or thankfully even today.

Anyway, in keeping with the spirit of it all, here are my top 5 ultimate summer movie going experiences from days long gone by:

- Star Wars: This wasn't just a movie. It was an era. A whole new phenomenon. It defined a large portion of my early childhood. I don't even remember the first time I saw it. But, I remember the whole universe it created, the fantastic action figures, and the Star Wars birthday cakes of my early years.

- Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: This was fun at the movies with a capital f. Raiders of the Lost Ark set everything up perfectly. It was brilliant fun for an eight year old kid. This was life larger than ever. 'Short Round' was just the kind of sidekick you wanted along for the adventure into an exotic realm with a beautiful American singer by your side. From the daring escape from the get-go to the plane crash high in the snow-capped hills to discovering one of the sacred Sankara Stones to riding along on elephants through the jungle, the banquet at the Palace of Pankot to tearing a heart out, the mine-train sequence and the recurrence of the whip vs. pistol gag; this was a great adventure and you never had to leave your seat in the theater.

- Back To The Future: This brought action and adventure to suburban America. You could've been Marty McFly. Your parents certainly could've been George and Lorraine McFly. All you were missing was ol' Doc Brown. And, maybe the Claudia Wells/Elisabeth Shue character. Maybe, the flux capacitor and a DeLorean too.

- Ferris Bueller's Day Off: I was in the 4th or 5th grade and it was one helluva fantasy. I was born in Chicago and so I thought this was the way to live. What a great life. I wrote "Save Ferris" on my notebook, but my bestfriend decided to wait until the movie caught on among my classmates.

I think that is about it. I could list number 5 as Home Alone, but that was more about the circumstances rather than the actual movie. The days of video had truly dawned and I started to catch up on the history of cinema. Luckily, I was exposed to more and more movies from around the world. What an amazing education. I had traveled a good part of the globe, but seeing movies from different places in different ages opened up a whole new perspective on life. This was so much more of an education than any teacher in high school could have ever provided. I wish I would've seen a lot of those later films up on the big screen, but those dreams will have their day.

POSTSCRIPT: If push came to shove and I had to pick a fifth film (since I don't want to leave you with just four), I would have to say Der Himmel Uber Berlin aka Wings of Desire. Besides the old great filmmakers, this was my transition toward international cinema. That, and Cinema Paradiso. There, that is six, satisfied?

Film Translations and Movie Adaptations

2006-05-26T21:11:00.000-07:00

Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation wasn't the first and certainly will not be the last word on the work of a screenwriter bringing someone else's work up on to the big screen. It has been reported that Jeffrey Eugenides, the original writer of the novel that turned into the film The Virgin Suicides, was not particularly happy that he was denied a screenwriting cred when Sofia Coppola used almost every bit of his dialogue when writing her screenplay.

Many of our favorite screenplays that we credit our favorite screenwriters with writing actually come from original material that started out with long forgotten names. Sidney Howard did not write Gone with the Wind, but Margaret Mitchell did. Julius Epstein, Philip Epstein, and Howard Koch did not write Casablanca aka Everybody Comes to Rick's, but Joan Alison and Murray Burnett did. Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler did not come up with the idea for Double Indemnity, but James M. Cain did. William Goldman did not write All The President's Men, but Woodward and Bernstein did. Stanley Kubrick did not write 2001: A Space Odyssey, but Arthur C. Clarke did. Francis Ford Coppola did not come up with the idea for The Godfather, but Mario Puzo did. Bo Goldman did not write One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but Ken Kesey did. Tom Stoppard did not write Empire of the Sun, but J.G. Ballard did. Etc. Etc. The list goes on and on and on.

Forget about the much debated influences that led George Lucas to write Star Wars. Or the derivation of Quentin Tarantino's oeuvre. Or even the mystery of the authorship of Good Will Hunting.

But, let us not forget about the work of William Shakespeare, losing sight of the literal translations, he brought us such gems as West Side Story, Kiss Me Kate, O, 10 Things I Hate About You, Throne of Blood, and Ran.

Did you know Shakespeare wrote 635 screenplays??!!

That is not to say that what they did with the previous material is not great, it most often is.

That is also not to say that great original material does not exist, it most certainly does. But, we should also recognize that it is that much more rare (and that will have to wait for a later post).

So whose movie is it? Shouldn't we remember the earlier writers when we praise the work up on the screen? Where would we be without original material? And, does this explain why so many screenwriters are so quick to revise and rewrite earlier work? Is it just so good it needs to be put up on the screen? Is it just the safe, easy way out? Or, do they have a unique vision that only they can provide in order to translate a page turner into a real movie?

The Gloriously Dismal Art of Writing

2006-05-24T06:05:00.000-07:00

Economics has been incorrectly labeled the dismal science. Even so, writing may be correctly considered the dismal art. Ernest Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O'Neil, and John Steinbeck were all legendary writers and legendary alcoholics. Many have met their ultimate fate while staring at a blank page. Writers struggle. Lucky for Shakespeare we don't know the depths of his depravity.

Kurt Vonnegut once said: "I am a monopolar depressive descended from monopolar depressives. That's how come I write so good."

Moreover, Douglas Adams stated: "First of all, realize that it's very hard, and that writing is a grueling and lonely business and, unless you are extremely lucky, badly paid as well. You had better really, really, really want to do it."

Writing demands mounds of motivation and determination, a way with words, an ounce or more of creativity, and a certain arrogance to get you through the moments of doubt and depression.

But, most of all, writers suffer. They must suffer in order to overcome. More often than not, your best writing will come when you just can't help but write something down. You need to be at the point where you have something worthwhile to say and you just can't help but let it out. This should be thought of, not as a detriment, but as a badge of honor. It is why it is more than appropriate that writing should be considered the dismal art. And, why it can be so satisfying.

This leads us to how to find the why in order to write.

Nature is often frequently cited as a source of inspiration. The Austrian poet Franz Grillparzer suggested that "art compares to nature as wine to a grape." Friedrich Von Schiller had a comparable perspective when he wrote:

"As noble art has survived noble nature, so too she marches ahead of it, fashioning and awakening by her inspiration. Before truth sends her triumphant light into the depths of the heart, imagination catches its rays, and the peaks of humanity will be glowing when humid night still lingers in the valleys."

Yet, inspiration can be found almost anywhere. A.A. Milne found it in his son's stuffed animals. One in particular is now known by the name of Winnie-the-Poo. Voltaire was inspired by the days he spent in exile in England encountering the novel ideas of one Isaac Newton. Ayn Rand found it in the New York skyline. The lovely but unattainable Beatrice was Dante's muse. In Greek mythology, Calliope is the muse of epic poetry. Best known as the source of inspiration for Homer's The Illiad and The Odyssey.

So look around, live a little, and write a lot.

But, stay off the sauce.

Quote Unquote

2006-05-23T19:36:00.000-07:00

"My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement." - Patricia Graynamore

Never Too Early For Oscar

2006-05-22T15:00:00.000-07:00

The 2007 Academy Awards may seem like a long way off for the casual viewer or even for the avid movie fan, but not for the studios or the hollywood insider. There are 279 days and 2 hours until Oscar strikes again. Anything can happen. Yet, this fact hasn't stopped David Poland from declaring this The Year Of The Director. Noted filmmakers such as Francis Ford Coppola, Milos Forman, Werner Herzog, Brian DePalma, Clint Eastwood, Steven Soderbergh, Anthony Minghella, Steven Zaillian, Mel Gibson, David Fincher, Martin Scorsese, Sofia Coppola, Bill Condon, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Philip Noyce, Marc Forster, among many others will grace us with the presence of their projects up on the silver screen this year.

Here is Poland's first Oscar chart of the award season detailing the race as he sees it.

Back To Screenwriting

2006-05-19T18:52:00.000-07:00

Lajos Egri wrote a book way back in 1946 that consistently ranks in the top three of the most influential works on the art of dramatic writing. And that is exactly the title of his book. A sure fire way to rank in the top three is to take a contradictory position to the book placed at number one. And that is exactly what Lajos Egri does. Egri argues contra Aristotle (discussed here) that character is king. He also argues that writing for the theater, and thus the screen, has lacked the spirit of a destination. Sounding like a great praxeologist, he writes: "Everything has a purpose, or premise. Every second of our life has its own premise, whether or not we are conscious of it at the time. That premise may be as simple as breathing or as complex as a vital emotional decision, but it is always there."

Which leads us to what Egri emphasizes and Moses L. Malevinsky states in The Science of Playwrighting:

"Emotion, or the elements in or of an emotion, constitute the basic things in life. Emotion is life. Life is emotion. Therefore emotion is drama. Drama is emotion.

No emotion ever made, or ever will make, a good play if we do not know what kind of forces set emotion going. Emotion, to be sure, is as necessary to a play as barking to a dog."

Eric M. Vonrothkirch, an Amazon reviewer from Garland, TX, gives you a glimpse of what you'll find inside the book:

* Formulate your premise. Premise is a statement, idea, or conviction that your story proves true.

* Choose a pivotal character who will force the conflict.

* Dialogue should come from the voice of the character, not the writer.

* Orchestrate the other characters. The unity of opposites must be binding. Polar opposites must form a dialectic which creates a unified tension.

* Be careful to select the correct point of attack. Every point of attack starts with conflict.

* There are several types of conflict, such as jumping conflict, but you only want rising or foreshadowing conflict.

* No conflict can rise without perpetual exposition, which is transition.

* Rising conflict, the product of exposition and transition, will ensure growth.

* Characters must conflict--there must be some polarity.

* Crisis will lead to climax. Climax will lead to conclusion.

Here is a link to chapter 1.

As for the long lasting debate between character and plot, I'll stick with William Goldman and say "screenwriting is structure, structure, structure." Interestingly, he is not alone in having faith in this insight as others have been known to observe that writing is organization, organization, organization. Vibrant characters should be obviously obligatory from the outset, but without structure you've got nothing. At best, you've got a bunch of interesting people knocking heads with no place to go. And who wants to see that? Nonetheless, Lajos is worth a look.

A Return To Volver

2006-05-18T21:39:00.000-07:00

Pedro Almodovar's new film Volver screens this Friday night at the Cannes Film Festival. A tale of "murder, incest, adultery, grief, dread..." One thing is certain, the poster is simply exquisite. It isn't even Penelope Cruz exclusively. A hundred different actors could have posed in that position (the performance is a different monster entirely). But, this image is the complete package. The brilliant red. The flowers. The sideward glance. The hint of blood. The contrast with the black eyes, the stern pink lips, the gold hoop earrings. Who wouldn't want to see the picture?

THIS is a one-sheet.

The way a one-sheet should be.

How the film turns out, we'll have to wait and see. But, I've heard good things.

Here is an advanced look with the Cahiers du Cinema review by Emmanuel Burdeau.

For a whole new perspective on the art of the movie poster visit The Avant-Garde.

H'W'D Update

2006-05-18T10:48:00.000-07:00

Lest you think all the action is happening on the Cote d'Azur, here are a few of the latest projects from the cattle herd in la LA land:

- Guillermo Del Toro has been hired to adapt and direct “The Witches” by Warner Bros. Based on Roald Dahl’s book, the fantasy film is about an orphaned young boy who is sent to live with his grandmother, who is a mistress of magical arts. Alfonso Cuaron is producing the project.

- John Malkovich has signed on to star in “Disgrace” for Wild Strawberries Films. The drama based on a J.M. Coetzee novel and adapted for the screen by Anna Maria Monticelli is about the tribulations an exiled poetry professor faces with his lover in the upheaval of post-Apartheid South Africa. Steve Jacobs is directing the film. The project is being produced by Monticelli and Emile Sherman, with Julio DePietro and Wouter Barendrecht executive producing.

- Abel Ferrara has set up his project “The Last Crew” at Virtual Films and Wild Bunch. The drama will revolve around the criminal underworld of 1970s New York. Michael Pitt is starring. Fernando Sulichin, Chris Hanley, Jordan Gertner and Vincent Maraval are producing, while Jean Cazes is executive producing.

For more visit Script_Radar.

And, The Screenwriting Life has a helpful breakdown of April script sales by genre.

Cannes: Now More Than You'll Ever Need

2006-05-17T19:44:00.000-07:00

The Cannes Film Festival started off with a bang with the usual snarky critics (that irresistable combination of sarcasm and cynicism only found in "sophisticated" cineastes) downgrading the latest popular fare. This year's victim being the Da Vinci Code.

The Independent Film Channel has a live webcam of the red carpet so you don't miss one minute of excitement. Here is a list of the official selection. The competition for the Palme d'Or includes a few films that should arouse the interest of Hollywood's eyes and ears such as Pedro Almadovar's Volver, Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, Alejandro Gonzalez Innarritu's Babel, Richard Kelly's Southland Tales, and Richard Linklater's Fast Food Nation. These films and more will be judged by a jury of artists led by the illustrious Wong Kar-Wai and will include Elia Suleiman, Helena Bonham Carter, Lucretia Martel, Monica Bellucci, Patrice Leconte, Samuel Jackson, Tim Roth, and Zhang Ziyi.

French director Patrice Leconte had the most interesting thing to say on the jury proceedings: "I just hope that our choices don't fall into that category that I call the 'stairway syndrome. ' When the co-renters in a building cannot decide on a color, in the end they choose something neutral like beige. I hope that the Palme d'Or winner will be colorful."

But, Wong Kar-Wai would not miss a point to wax poetic either: The jury is sometimes like a mirror. It is our decisions, it is our selection and it reflects not only the film, but also ourselves. So it's subjective like all mirrors, they are sometimes distorted. Makes things look prettier or worse, so I hope today this Jury will be as clear as possible as a mirror. So in case there is an angel looking in, there won't be a monkey looking out.”

The Cahiers du Cinema gives you a look at the selection process for those curious.

If you haven't yet arrived at the airport in Nice, several journos have you covered as they blog from a cafe across the street from the Palais des Festivals. David Gritten covers the scene for the Daily Telegraph. Xan Brooks has you covered via the Guardian. And, Simon Houpt from the Globe and Mail gives you his candid perspective.

The New York Times covers the show casting aside the purists and the scenesters while acting as the cognescenti.

The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, the Los Angeles Times, IndieWire, and the Guardian (podcast included) are all offering carpet-to-carpet coverage.

The best place, besides the blogger gossip of course, to find the real scoop is perhaps the official site.

Cannes: Now More Than Ever

2006-05-15T23:13:00.000-07:00

I don't know where all the negative press about the Cannes Film Festival is coming from. But, it surely is as relevant to today's world as it ever was. Probably even more so in this globalized marketplace.

Here is one rebuttal to the numbers in question.

Here are a few of the Palme d'Or winners to refresh your memory (not to mention the glitz and glamour of the Croisette that the Sunset strip will never top):

2005: L'Enfant
2004: Fahrenheit 9/11
2002: The Pianist
2000: Dancers in the Dark
1996: Secrets & Lies
1994: Pulp Fiction
1993: The Piano & Farewell My Concubine
1991: Barton Fink
1990: Wild At Heart
1989: Sex, Lies, and Videotape
1988: Pelle the Conqueror
1986: The Mission
1984: Paris, Texas
1980: Kagemusha & All That Jazz
1979: The Tin Drum & Apocalypse Now
1976: Taxi Driver
1974: The Conversation
1970: M.A.S.H.
1967: BLOW UP
1966: A Man and a Woman
1962: The Payer of Promises
1960: La Dolce Vita
1955: Marty
1949: The Third Man

The list certainly stands on its own against the Academy Award winning films for Best Picture. N'est-ce pas? Add the competition and it looks even better. Even Crash (2005) haters can get behind this one. They feel the pain of worthy adversaries. Imagine Friendly Persuasion beating Kanal & The Seventh Seal (1957) or The Payer of Promises beating Eclipse & Trial of Joan of Arc (1962). If beating Andrei Roublev & Easy Rider (1969) or Under The Sun of Satan beating Wings of Desire (1987). Not to mention Wild Strawberries (1957) missed out on a Palme d'Or and so did Les 400 Coups (1959) and A Bout de Souffle (1960) and Stranger Than Paradise (1984). Talk about fierce competition.

Changing of the Guard?

2006-05-13T23:42:00.000-07:00

Anne Thompson, Risky Business Anne Thompson, of The Hollywood Reporter sees the recent success of the studio's indie units resulting in the execs having more clout in determining what makes it onto the screen. However, David Poland gives a brief look at the problem with dependents at his MCN blog.

Add to that Filmmaker Magazine's article on The 10% Solution and the news that longtime super-agent John Ptak has left CAA to form his own consulting firm in order to advise folks on both sides of the game as well as secure private equity funding for productions and you have one big mess.

One thing is clear: whoever figures it all out stands to make a ton of dough. And, hopefully some great movies. The guard may not be changing, but the role of the guard surely is.

But, then again when has it not? The question is whether you are going to sit on the sidelines and let the cash slip through your fingers just like the days of the advent of radio, or television, or video, or the internet, or...

A Little Theater In Oceanside Has All The Answers

2006-05-13T22:58:00.000-07:00

Who knew all our problems were so easy to fix? We are well on our way back to the movie palace era.

Forget downloading movies over torrents. Forget piracy in China. Forget outdated pricing. Forget buying a ticket for one movie and seeing another (I can't even believe people do this, do you really think Tom Cruise cares?). Forget DVD's and home theater set-ups. Forget the fact that everything is marketed to a teenage audience when the demographics tell a different tale. Forget a lousy, noisey experience at the theater.

The answer is: BEER.

Disclaimer: Lest I be misunderstood, I applaud the effort and hope to see more effort being made to secure a pleasurable viewing experience at the theater. I would even suggest providing the opportunity to see classic and even experimental films on the big screen once again. I would also suggest maintaing the silence during the show with the only exceptions being laughter and gasps in horror. But, yea, you might want to think about addressing the other issues too. Please turn your uncertainty into experimentation.

American Masters

2006-05-08T23:47:00.000-07:00

John Ford and Francis Morrison. Oh, wait, I mean John Wayne. Yea that is it. These two American masters had a much more complicated relationship than anyone ever imagined. Once upon a time John Ford was a successful director who just happened upon a young UCLA grad working a summer job as an assistant property man on the Fox lot. And, the rest, is as they say: history.

The Duke stalls, Ford roars ahead. The Duke picks it up and they both ride to fame and glory. Ford falls, and the Duke picks him up.

Underneath it all is a complex relationship with questions of politics, responsibility, perspective, and the dynamics of personality all brewing beneath the surface.

PBS and American Masters looks at John Ford/John Wayne this Wednesday, May 10th, 2006.

The Good Old Days in Today's Dollars

2006-05-03T17:49:00.000-07:00

Florence Lawrence, aka "The Biograph Girl," launched the star system when she left Biograph Studios for IMP when Carl Laemmle, who later founded Universal Pictures, agreed to give her a marquee identifying her by name on screen and in advertising. Salaries predictably began to rise and studios have been cursing and crying ever since:

1912: By the end of the year Lawrence was the highest paid actor, making $250 per week. $4,949.47 in 2005 dollars.

1913: Mary Pickford signed a contract worth $500 a week. Approximately $9,554.95 today.

1914: Pickford re-signs for double her weekly fee worth $18,662.02 adjusted for inflation.

1915: Pickford doubles up again and receives $36,845.05 in 2005 dollars weekly compensation.

1916: Charlie Chaplin banks $10,000 per week ($182,401.26). Plus a $150,000 ($2,736,018.91) signing bonus.

1919: Fatty Arbuckle becomes the first star to be guaranteed a million dollar yearly salary. $12,299,270.97 in 2005 dollars. A sum that surely came in handy during the subsequent witch-hunt that destroyed his career and personal life.

But, damn were those studios raking in the dough in those days. Paying Miss Pickford $36 g's a week! And Roscoe signs for $12 million! Yes sir, those were the good ol' days. I wonder how many execs still curse cute little Canadian Florence Lawrence's name.

The initial figures were published in William Goldman's Adventures In The Screen Trade.

Interestingly, Steven Soderbergh is now calling for a salary cap for actors.

And, now studio execs via Entertainment Weekly seem to be questioning the relative worth of some of the current stock of high-priced talent.

La plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

A Screenwriter's Life in Pictures

2006-04-29T22:55:00.000-07:00

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

Paul Gauguin, 1897, Oil on Canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA. USA.

A Screenwriter's Life in Words

2006-04-29T22:50:00.000-07:00

"In my opinion, modern writers have lost the sense of what a play should be. A drama is not meant to tell us a man's whole life, but to place him in a situation and tie up his destiny in such a way that his entire being will be clear from the manner in which he unties the knot! Yes, I have critiziced Shakespeare. But at least, in his plays, every character acts, and it is clear why he acts as he does...."

-Leo Tolstoy in a heated conversation with Anton Chekhov on his idea of the theater.

Henry Chinaski Up On The Big Screen

2006-04-29T22:45:00.000-07:00

It isn't often one gets to see the late, great Charles Bukowski up on the big screen. Even counting Mickey Rourke in Barfly. But, Matt Dillon is taking his turn in the film version of Factotum. Here is the original book it was based on although you may want to take a look at Post Office or a few of his poems or even Women before you delve into this one. Or maybe even Hollywood (you know for you Hollywood types).

This all-encompassing Bukowski site is worth a moment of your time. And, if you can get your hands on this DVD, I highly recommend the documentary Bukowski: Born Into This.

John Fante's Ask The Dust is in theaters, now more Bukowski! What is the world coming to? Who is next? Knut Hamsun? Rainer Maria Rilke? Jens Peter Jacobsen?

As for casting in the next Bukowski pic, you couldn't go wrong with Geoffrey Rush.

The Incomplete Zach Helm Manifesto

2006-04-27T22:12:00.000-07:00

Look out for Zach Helm. The buzz train is full steam ahead. A tale of a DePaul graduate who gave up the dull life of re-writing the work of other scribes in order to stick to his guns and write from the heart. As a result, Helm penned the spec Stranger Than Fiction, a romantic comedy that now stars Will Ferrell as the IRS agent hearing voices in his head seemingly authoring his own life (one of the hottest scripts in town last year).

Helm now finds himself directing his first feature from his script entitled Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium. The film is currently shooting in Toronto with Natalie Portman and Dustin Hoffman about a magical toy-store owner in search of a successor. He is also reportedly working on an adaptation of Matthew Collin's 2001 book, This Is Serbia Calling, a nonfiction account of the Belgrade radio station that helped run Slobodan Milosevic out of power.

The following is an incomplete list of his manifesto that got him out of the re-write business and onto the big screen.

Rule No. 1, Section One: "I will no longer allow financial need or career ambition to determine the direction of my work. I will not put myself in any position in which my work is owed to another party."

No. 2: "I won't take re-write jobs, I won't script-doctor. There's a lot of money to be had, lots of money for spending two weeks of work on a script, but I can't do it. I have a slight ethical …It would be very hypocritical of me to try to reserve all this creative power and try to hold on to my scripts as much as I can and then go take some first-time writer's script and bang it up."

No. 3: "I will not sell my work simply to the highest bidder, but instead to those parties that I feel will best represent and develop my work."

No. 5: "Any deal struck in regards to my work will forgo any immediate financial gain if it may mean the surrender of creative control or participation in the work's development."

No. 6: "I will not write for writing's sake. I will write only when inspired to write"

On the subject of his scripts, Helm states: "[t]here's this sort of sincerity to it. There's a lot of emotion to it. It's honest without being cynical, necessarily."

Read how The Manifesto changed his life in Vanity Fair.

The WNEP Theater in Chicago once described him in this way: "Zach Helm is a writer from Los Angeles, California. His plays include Chapters on American Artistry, Last Chance For A Slow Dance, Harold, and his two new works Polonius and The Darkness. His screenplays include The DisAssociate which will be directed by Chris Noonan at Dreamworks and the adaptation of the Caldecott winning Sector 7 for Paramount. He is a merit scholar graduate of DePaul University, former performer at the Lollapalooza music festival, the protege of acclaimed literary theorist Joe Wells, and retired spelling champion."

Aristotle's Poetics for the Cineaste

2006-04-24T19:32:00.000-07:00

Every screenwriter should be familiar with Aristotle the Great's Poetics, but in this day and age you don't have to slog through the original. Lucky for you, a couple screen enthusiasts have gone through, highlighted, and interpreted the relevant material so you don't have to read the 2,356 year old Greek. Cus, you know it is...well, all Greek to you. Bet you never heard that one before. Anyway, even though I recommend you read the original, a glance at a Cliff Notes version can't hurt either.

Lance Lee, a poet and a playwright, has written A Poetics for Screenwriters. A very detailed work for those with an academic bent. By the way, just so you know, his mother, Lucile Wilds, was a renowned model of her day— her legs insured for $150,000 and her smile everywhere.

Mike Tierno, a writer/director, titled his book on the same subject Aristotle's Poetics for Screenwriters. You can read an interview with Tierno that covers a lot of what is in the book here.

I should say that I am in no way affiliated with these works nor do I receive any compensation for mentioning them. I am just a fool for toga-wearing dramedy enthusiasts. Hopefully, someone will dig up his treatise on comedy someday soon. Maybe we will then learn to laugh again. At least at things that are really funny.

Since I have included Plato (left) in the photo above I don't want to leave you hanging without mentioning any of his theories on art. But, I wouldn't put much stock in his ideas on politics. Suffice it to say that Plato held that oral communication is superior to the written word. In his Phaedrus he pointed to the accuracy of talking over reading. And, in his Seventh Epistle he said that nothing of importance should ever be written down, but transmitted orally in its stead. So Plato preferred movies over books. Who knew?

Managers Vs. Agents

2006-04-24T16:35:00.000-07:00

Claude Brodesser of KCRW's The Business has an interesting 10 minute chat at the end of his show this week with an agent and a manager discussing their relative value to the industry. A pending Marathon Entertainment lawsuit could change the rules once again.

Check The Not So Secret Lives of Hollywood Managers for some background info.

A Short Retrospective

2006-04-24T07:00:00.000-07:00

It all started when I became enamored of the big blockbuster films coming out of Hollywood in the late 70's and early 80's. Nothing was ever so vast and entertaining. And yet, I must say, I also owe a great debt to the foreign films of long ago that illustrated that it was not all about blood, guts, and glory. Yet, it took me a while to discover Vigo, Bresson, Godard, Antonioni, and Fellini. But, I am forever in their debt. In the beginning though, it was all Star Wars birthday cakes then Rambo and later Ramones/Sex Pistols/The Clash style birthday parties. A little later on I was exposed to my first live set at Victorine Studios on the Cote d'Azur in a role on a little picture with some big stars. It opened up a whole new world I knew nothing about. Oddly enough, I then modeled in front of the Eiffel Tower at the Trocadero in Paris at a skateboarding competition. And, shot a few photos for an automobile commercial on the Croisette during the Cannes Film Festival. Not a bad way to live, I thought to myself. Mind you, this was all before the age of thirteen.

I returned to the States to continue my education, yet not before seeing the effects of war up close and personal (a whole different story). Once I returned, I shied away from the limelight. I saw America from a new set of eyes, even ultimately checking out what the People's Republic of Cambridge, Massachusetts had to offer. And, in the end winding up with a degree in hand (or at least filed away somewhere). I had always been quick to write down words on a page in almost every form. Poems, short stories, the first glimpse of a novel, etc. At first, I was paid a dollar a word for an article I wrote on the state of the technology sector (not too shabby!). Then I received multiple thousands of dollars for a few white papers I wrote about the intricacies of specific technology companies. I left that all behind to discover the theater of economics and political philosophy. I wrote about what I considered to be the truth of the market process in a world of scarce resources and individual actors.

Yet, this left me with a creative void which I tried to fill by studying painting and the arts in general. I have now returned to my first love. Film. The cinema. Movies. 24 frames per second of a 120 page script up on the silver screen. A member of the audience escaping from their daily life to be entertained, enlightened, inspired, and/or provoked to action. This audience member was now lifting the veil behind the screen. It was a world I never really left, but placed, knowingly, on the back burner until a later, more suitable date. I now continue on the journey with several projects up in the air and only time will tell where it all takes me.

Freedom on Film

2006-04-24T06:02:00.000-07:00

A few great lines of liberty from popular movies:

"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room."

- Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

"A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti."

- The Silence of the Lambs

"My father once told me that artists use lies to tell the truth, while politicians use lies to cover the truth up."

- V for Vendetta

"Screw'm! Screw'm all! Screw the gov'm'nt!"

- Legends of the Fall

"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people."

- V for Vendetta

“The mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. Every great achievement came from an individual mind. Every horror was the result of forcing humans to be conformists.”

- The Fountainhead

Ten Bears: These things you say we will have, we already have.
Josey Wales: That's true. I ain't promising you nothing extra. I'm just giving you life and you're giving me life. And I'm saying that men can live together without butchering one another.
Ten Bears: It's sad that governments are chiefed by the double tongues. There is iron in your words of death for all Comanche to see, and so there is iron in your words of life. No signed paper can hold the iron. It must come from men. The words of Ten Bears carries the same iron of life and death. It is good that warriors such as we meet in the struggle of life... or death. It shall be life.

- The Outlaw Josey Wales

Via The Austrian Economists