The Screengrab : art linson

Screengrab Review: "What Just Happened"

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:15:00 GMT

Recently, when we were preparing our list of the greatest leading men of all time, we had occasion to consider the latter days of Robert DeNiro. The closer you get to the present day, the uglier his career gets, and the more it appears he's just in it these days for the paychecks that will get him into the better restaurants. When I sat down for a viewing of his latest, What Just Happened, I wasn't expecting much, especially since his comic track record hasn't been stellar since Midnight Run. The fact that the film's author, Art Linson, is a friend of DeNiro's was also unpromising, since such nepotistic endeavors flatter the friendship over the art, and what's more, it's an inside-Hollywood movie, which has produced its share of great films, but more than its share of stinkers.

I won't say that it's a triumph for DeNiro, or even a return to form, but most of the movie's failings -- of which there aren't enough for me to call it bad -- are those of Barry Levinson's uninspired direction and a somewhat aimless and formless script. DeNiro doesn't turn in the kind of legendary performance he was once known for, but that's only because the script doesn't let him. In fact, his role as frazzled middle-aged movie producer Ben -- a stand-in for Linson -- is one of his finest in years: he never explodes only because he's too ineffectual and harried to aspire to an explosion. It's a tight, focused, and highly competent performance as a man nearing the end of his rope and no idea of what to do when he gets there, but because he's in such an absurd profession, and surrounded by such grandly dysfunctional people, that circumstance is understood -- by him and by us -- to be comic instead of tragic. It's a performance that won't remind anyone of Travis Bickle or Rupert Pupkin, but it should definitely remind them that DeNiro still has a few surprises left in him.

It's in this inherent unseriousness that the picture succeeds in its modest way. Everyone in the film carries on as if the fate of the world revolves around the decisions they make based on egomania, resentment and cowardice, and the laughs come from the fact that their utter irrelevance even in their own lives manages to create an aura of sustained menance and philosophical unease even as we see DeNiro haplessly trying to convince a self-satisfied auteur that audiences won't enjoy the brutal on-screen slaughter of a dog as much as he does. He's also assisted by a cast that, in the tradition of the better inside-baseball movies about movies, likewise are willing to take the piss, most especially John Turturro as his omniphobic agent and Bruce Willis, performing what appears to be an unbelievably heartless parody of Bruce Willis. What Just Happened isn't a great movie, but it's a good movie, and Robert DeNiro needs to get back to making more good movies. This one's a start.

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Depp vs. Murray: Dueling Gonzos

Andrew Osborne — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Many people think of Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson as the drug-addled grotesque at the center of Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, a buffoonish personification of the worst of ‘60s & ‘70s excess...and, by most accounts, Thompson both played up and fell victim to this public persona in the latter part of his life and career, trading on his wild-and-crazy persona in the pop culture fast lane like a counter-culture Hugh Hefner while his writing became ever more lazy and diffuse. "I'm leading a normal life and right alongside me there is this myth,” he admitted as early as 1977, “and it is growing and mushrooming and getting more and more warped. When I get invited to, say, speak at universities, I'm not sure if they are inviting [his crazed, quasi-fictional alter-ego Raoul] Duke or Thompson. I'm not sure who to be."

In his prime, however, Thompson was not only a larger-than-life, groundbreaking literary stylist, but also a crack-shot political reporter with a formidable grasp of American realpolitik. Nearly four decades before Hilary and Barack started trading body blows in the 2008 primaries, Thompson was bemoaning the essential fracture he saw at the heart of the modern Democratic Party in Fear and Loathing On The Campaign Trail ’72: “I think what most people seem to be tired of are the sort of lint-headed, wooly-minded—what a lot of people call do-gooders—people who would like to do the right thing, but who just can’t get it up.”

On The Campaign Trail ’72 is a fantastically insightful cautionary chronicle of the doomed McGovern presidential campaign, essential reading for anyone interested in the health of the Republic (especially in an election year)...and, in fact, I'd only just recently finished re-reading the book when a friend, out of the blue, sent me a DVD packed with various bits of Thompson-alia, including The Crazy Never Die, a 1988 documentary short about Dr. Gonzo by the Mitchell Brothers Film Group of San Francisco, along with material from the two extant fictional depictions of Thompson’s life: Terry Gilliam’s Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas (1998) and Art Linson’s Where The Buffalo Roam (1980).

I had seen both Thompson biopics before, but it was interesting to compare the movies and their lead performances side by side. According to Doug Hill & Jeff Weingrad’s backstage history Saturday Night, Bill Murray became so immersed in his semi-autobiographical portrayal (in Buffalo) that he palled around with and virtually became Hunter S. Thompson, “complete with long black cigarette holder, dark glasses, and nasty habits,” a pseudo-Method transformation that lasted until the movie came out and bombed like the Enola Gay, after which the comedian returned to his regular, affable self, as if waking from a long, strange coma.

Despite all his apparent mental immersion in the role, however, Murray the actor never really disappears into the character, and his performance as Thompson is not markedly different from his 1979 performance as Trip Harrison in Meatballs or his later depiction of Carl Spackler in Caddyshack. If anything, his Thompson seems like the bastard child of Carl and Trip, with a few Gonzo quotes and props thrown into the mix.

Johnny Depp also palled around with Thompson before, during and after his portrayal of the man, but the actor’s performance as “Raoul Duke” in Gilliam’s adaptation of the allegedly unfilmable Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas is a believably stylized depiction of a more fully-realized character, grounding the film’s bombastic excesses with deadpan wit and an undercurrent of genuine sadness for the lost utopian dreams of the '60s counter-culture.

In the final analysis, Depp (arguably) offers a better performance in a better film, but after Gilliam’s surrealistic take (and Benicio del Toro’s intense but off-putting performance as Duke/Thompson’s friend, Dr. Gonzo/Oscar Acosta), Where The Buffalo Roam’s more laid-back, relatively naturalistic approach, while meandering (and, well, bad), still makes me wish for an accurate, insightful biopic of the real Hunter S. Thompson, beyond all the same old fear and loathing.

The Top Ten Uncompleted Movies, Part 2

Phil Nugent — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 20:30:00 GMT

APT PUPIL

Bryan Singer's adaptation was not the first version of this Stephen King novella. In 1987, British Director Alan Bridges had Nicol Williamson and Ricky Schroder in the leads of this story concerning a teenager discovering his elderly neighbor's Nazi past. Unfortunately, the film ran over budget and with ten days of filming left, the financing ran out and the film shut down. Accounts vary of just how much was left to shoot. Stephen King had reportedly seen a 3/4 rough cut and commented it was "really good" while the writers, Ken and Jim Wheat, reported seeing an assemblage of forty minutes' worth of footage. By the time financing was found to complete the shoot a year later, Schroder had grown too too old to continue in his role and there was no way to finish the film short of a full re-shoot. To date, the footage has never been shown to the public, though if there's ever a special edition of Bryan Singer's version, one hopes that the director would be able to snag the rights to include Alan Bridge's version as a bonus feature.

IN GOD'S HANDS

It is a tragic fact that many early feature films have been lost forever due to negligence and poor preservation. What's horrifying is to find out that even in the 21st Century, an entire feature film can be lost due to an accident, especially when its not the new Eddie Murphy comedy but it comes from someone like filmmaker Lodge Kerrigan. In God's Hands was produced by Stephen Soderbergh's Section Eight outfit and starred Peter Sarsgaard and Maggie Gyllenhaal as a couple who've lost their child. Unfortunately, the entire camera negative of the film was damaged, causing it to be lost. I'm still stunned that someone on the film didn't realize something was wrong after the first few days of shooting just by checking the rushes, but the damage had been done. Kerrigan, who bounced back with Keane, has expressed no interest in trying to re-shoot In God's Hands. This is one of those cases that could be used as a backhanded argument for abandoning film to shoot digital.

THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER

This British animation has the distinction of having had the longest production phase ever. Renowned animator Richard Williams started the project in 1965, animating it part time and financing the project through the odd commercial jobs and work on other films, such as Murder on the Orient Express, The Charge of the Light Brigade, and the credit sequences on some of the "Pink Panther" films. After endearing himself to the powers that be by serving as animation director on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Williams was finally able to get financing to complete the film, but a variety of factors resulted in its being taken away from him by Mirimax and handed over to television animator Fred Calvert. Despite numerous promises from various parties to try and complete the film according to Williams's original design, this probably won't be happening anytime soon. The original workprint of the film can be found on YouTube. The "completed" bastardisation edition can be bought from your local Blockbuster Bargain bucket, hidden under a couple hundred copies of Norbit.

MY BEST FRIEND'S BIRTHDAY

Unofficially considered by those in the know as Quentin Tarentino's directorial debut, this is a far cry from Reservoir Dogs. Shot on Super 16mm over a few years, the completed 70-minute cut was lost in a fire, and so what survives is about 30-40 minutes of rough footage. Is it watchable? It has certainly has had a cult following grow around it, and despite its technical issues, it is in, IMHO, a far more enjoyable time waster than Death Proof.

ARRIVE ALIVE

Jeremiah Chechik is one unlucky man. His second film was supposed to be a comedy featuring Willem Dafoe as a hotel manager who falls for Joan Cusack as one of the guests. It was co-written by National Lampoon and Saturday Night Live veteran and self-styled "dangerous comedian" Michael O'Donoghue and produced by Art Linson. Unfortunately after two weeks of shooting, Linson pulled the plug and wrote off a couple of million dollars. Why? Apparently, it was due to Dafoe's performance, an attempt to bring "edge" to a romantic-comedy leading-man part that Linson, in his book A Pound of Flesh, described as "terrifying". Chechik managed to bounce back with Benny & Joon before his career was nearly destroyed with The Avengers, one of those productions where 50% of the production ended up on the cutting room floor.

QUE VIVA MEXICO

This was to be Sergei Eisenstein's first film made outside Russia, co-produced by renowned American novelist, Upton Sinclair. Unfortunately, after cost-overruns and other problems, Eisenstein was summoned back to the Soviet Union by Stalin (who can refuse an invitation like that?) leaving behind over 200,000 feet of unedited footage. Despite promises to send the footage to the USSR for the director to edit, this never came to pass, and instead several different edited versions of the film have appeared under different titles over the years, most of them falling into obscurity. None of the versions come close to what Eisenstein may have wanted but the film is still inspiring people to take a shot at it. (This YouTube clip is a trailer to promote the latest attempt at a restoration from Lutz Becker).

--Phil Nugent; Faisal A. Qureshi

Click here for Part 1.

Mike D'Angelo at Sundance: Part 9

Peter Smith — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 19:05:00 GMT

Mike D'Angelo reports from the Sundance Film Festival:

As the festival winds down, some quick notes on movies I didn't have time to address earlier. (I'm gonna include the walk-outs here, despite the wrath of one reader who believes that saying anything at all about a movie you didn't see from start to finish constitutes dereliction of duty. Obviously, you should take such judgments with a grain or two of salt — and maybe an entire shakerful in the case of Ballast, which I'll very likely see again, and in full, at some point. But at the same time, you can get a mighty strong sense of a film in thirty-five to forty minutes.)

Traces of the Trade: A Story From the Deep North (Documentary Competition): Painfully earnest young woman with unbearably whiny voice — she narrates, alas — discovers that her esteemed ancestors were slave traders, corrals nine relatives for self-indulgent journey to sore spots from the family's past. For hardcore aficionados of liberal white guilt only. (W/O)

Time Crimes (Park City at Midnight): I'm a sucker for time-travel stories, but even I had trouble warming to this Spanish gloss on 2004 Sundance prizewinner Primer, in which a middle-aged schlub travels ninety minutes into the past and finds himself engaged in unwitting battle with other versions of himself who've developed wildly divergent agendas. Ineptly directed, for the most part, and the concluding twist is singularly unsatisfying. Come back, Shane (Carruth).

The Wave (World Cinema Dramatic Competition): German filmmaker Dennis Gansel turns the true story of a high-school history experiment gone awry into a glossy, pulse-pounding thriller, employing methods almost as fascistic as those of The Wave itself. Intentional irony? One can't help but be riveted by the spectacle of ordinary teenagers willingly submitting to autocratic rule — their überhip teacher is attempting to demonstrate that the Nazis weren't anomalous monsters — but earmarking one kid as emotionally unstable from the get-go means that we're just twiddling our thumbs as we await the inevitable moment when he finally snaps.

What Just Happened? (Premieres): Hollywood made yet another mildly lacerating self-portrait, that's what. Loosely based on the memoirs of producer Art Linson (Fight Club, Into the Wild, several Mamet films), it boasts the most relaxed De Niro performance in ages and a smattering of truly hilarious jokes, most of them involving out-of-control entitlement. Too bad Bruce Willis, sporting a Grizzly Adams beard that he refuses to shave prior to the start of filming on a new picture, isn't nearly as funny as Alec Baldwin must have been in real life. (Read Linson's equally diverting book for the lowdown; it happened on 1997's The Edge.)

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (Dramatic Competition): Michael Chabon's complicated first novel has been reduced (by Dodgeball's Rawson Marshall Thurber) to a simple bisexual love triangle, with two major characters — Arthur and Cleveland — melded into one, and another, the improbably named Phlox, distorted almost beyond recognition. And yet the movie still almost kinda works, mostly because Peter Sarsgaard commits himself so fully to his ludicrous bad-boy manipulator that we, like the dazed young protagonist, are completely taken in.

Downloading Nancy (Dramatic Competition): I'd had about enough of this repugnant exercise in nihilism at the point when Maria Bello, playing a masochistic housewife who's hired a stranger she found on the Internet (Jason Patric) to torture and kill her, walks barefoot into a mouse trap, over and over and over, shrieking with laughter each time it snaps on her toes. By all accounts from those who stuck it out, it gets much, much worse thereafter. At least the "revelation" that she was sexually abused as a child isn't saved for the final reel. (W/O)