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Charlie Kaufman Would You Like to Know That He Really Does Care About @#$%ing Structure!

Phil Nugent — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Synecdoche, NY has just opened in England, and Laura Barton stopped by Charlie Kaufman's hotel room to help him measure himself for a coffin. "Does he read the reviews? 'Uh. I've stopped,' he says, not remotely convincingly, and immediately contradicts himself: 'I tend to not only read reviews, but also every little stupid thing online. It's a very bad idea, and there's a lot of angry people in the world. And it's weird to absorb all that weirdness.' He speaks like a hen pecking the dust. 'Were you at the screening [in London] last night?' He directs the question to the carpet. 'I was, like, what in the world would motivate someone to shout, "Rubbish"? I speculated it might be the same guy who asked later on, "I've noticed that your movies don't have any structure, and I'm wondering if you are comfortable with your movies not having any structure, or whether you'd rather they had structure..." He said "structure" three times.'"

Kaufman doesn't exactly agree with the contention that he his intricately built scripts have no, ahem, structure. "There's this inherent screenplay structure that everyone seems to be stuck on," he points out, "this three-act thing. It doesn't really interest me. To me, it's kind of like saying, 'Well, when you do a painting, you always need to have sky here, the person here and the ground here.' Well, you don't. In other art forms or other mediums, they accept that it's just something available for you to work with. I actually think I'm probably more interested in structure than most people who write screenplays, because I think about it." At the same time, he is by nature what might be called an improvisational writer. "In the case of Being John Malkovich, which is the first screenplay I wrote by myself, I was trying to take two separate ideas and combine them. So I would see if I could surprise myself, if I could force myself into directions that were unanticipated. It was a conscious decision to try and duplicate that process of writing with someone else, but doing it by myself. But one of the reasons it's nice to have a collaborator is that when things get bad, you can have fun with it, you can make jokes about it."

Of course, a tendency for making jokes about things getting very bad may be part of what has made Kaufman such a controversial figure. On Synecdoche, "I was trying to present a life, with its moments of nothing. There is something that happens to people when they get old, which is that they get sidelined. There isn't a big, dramatic crescendo and then their life is over. They're forced out of their work, the people in their lives die, they lose their place in the world, people don't take them seriously, and then they just continue to live. And what is that? What does that feel like? I wanted to try to be truthful about that and express something about what I think is a really sad human condition." Kaufman was nonplussed by some of the praise he got, from people who had been hostile to his earlier work (and, with Synecdoche< went right back to being hostile to it), for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, because they "said it was the first time that I had expressed any human emotion, or heart, or something like that."

Some of us find Kaufman's work so emotionally affecting that the only way we can account for the accusation that it's too cold is that it's a rationalization formed by people who are made angry by his work because it gets to them in soft, sensitive places where they'd prefer to remain untouched. Kaufman himself doesn't say this, but some of the things he does say make you wonder if he could maybe relate to that. On Synecdoche, he was trying to address his own awareness of death: "I think death is a hard thing to look at, but I can't really not." As for the idea that one needs time and distance to gain the perspective necessary to write about painful experiences, "It's not only that I don't like [that concept], it's that I think there's a dishonesty to it. I've come to that sort of conclusion that it doesn't exist, that distance, ever. It's not real. We tell stories about the world, and our lives in the world, and relationships. It's just a way that the human brain organizes things. You never actually live there. The thing that you're putting in perspective is always over, you know? And the truth is that it's very hard to live where we really are, but that's the only place we get to live. So I'm kind of interested in that, in exploring that."

Related Stories: Screengrab Review: Synecdoche, NY

In Other Blogs: Synecdoche-Mania

Clippy Strikes Back: The Scariest Technology In Cinema History! (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 20:00:00 GMT

This week, youngsters (and the young at heart) will be treated to the sight of a giant space robot tearing up San Francisco (in 3-D!) in Monsters vs. Aliens (click here for review).

But last week, something really scary happened: my computer completely shut down thanks to some nasty virus, leaving me completely laptop-less for three long, frightening days (right in the middle of SXSW!), during which time I realized I no longer have the ability to think straight, remember things, communicate or even feed and dress myself without my little cybernetic soul mate in good working order.

Fortunately, the fine people at PC Guru in Austin, TX got me up and running...but it was definitely a scary reminder of how much it’s gonna suck when Facebook finally becomes self-aware and turns all our computers, ATMs, DVRs, MP3s and GPS systems against us.

So, as a public service, your (mostly) human friends here at the Screengrab figured now would be as good a time as any to whip up some post-Y2K panic with our list of THE SCARIEST TECHNOLOGY IN CINEMA HISTORY!

METROPOLIS (1927)

Fritz Lang's titanic silent sci-fi masterpiece uses a look derived from a mix of Art Deco and Amazing Stories cover designs to decorate a political allegory that Lang said was inspired by his first sight of New York City, which seems to have fried some of the wiring in his central cortex. (If the old boy were to come back and see what the place looks like today, we'd have to find him a job biting the heads off chickens.) Society consists of the rich who live above ground in glittering skyscrapers and the poor who labor and live in underground tunnels, sort of like in Titanic. The whole shebang is run by Johan, a capitalist uber-lord; meanwhile, down below, Metropolis has found its answer to Samuel Gompers in the beautiful Maria, a saintly labor activist who is rallying the workers. The plot kicks into high gear when Johan's breathtakingly goofy son, Freder, gets a look at Maria and is instantly radicalized. Instead of taking the usual tack of industrialist tyrants in this situation and buying his kid a motorcycle and a lap dance, Johan turns to his trusty house mad scientist, Rotwang, who creates a trouble-making robot duplicate of Maria, in a scene that anticipates The Bride of Frankenstein and Dr. Strangelove in about equal measure, and turns 'er loose, with results that prove instructional for one and all. (PN)

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)

Its red eye glowing, its voice calm and soothing, HAL 9000 – on-board computer of the spaceship Discovery – remains, forty-one years after 2001: A Space Odyssey’s debut, cinema’s most iconic piece of evil technology. Or, at least, the sentient HAL is one of the most dangerous pieces of technology to ever be presented on screen, as its homicidal tendencies stem primarily from a desire to fulfill preprogrammed mission directives – aims which are threatened by the plan of astronauts Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Poole (Gary Lockwood) to disconnect it. The fact that self-preservation in service of duty is HAL’s motivation to kill problematizes any attempt to cast it as purely evil, especially since its survival instinct, when viewed alongside its emotive speech (contrasted with the men’s monotonous, monosyllabic utterances), marks the computer as distinctly human-like. Nonetheless, even if HAL isn’t immoral, it most certainly is frighteningly lethal. And rarely have the movies presented a more harrowing, intimidating vision of technology-run-amok than the sight of HAL covertly, calculatingly reading the lips of the scheming astronauts, and soon thereafter sending Poole spinning into the oblivion of space. (NS)

WESTWORLD (1973)

While re-watching Westworld in preparation for this list, I recovered a long-lost childhood memory. I’m on a train with my family when bandits on horseback pull us over, board the train and take our money. This really happened, although I should probably explain that it was supposed to happen – it was no ordinary train ride, but rather a reenactment of the Great Train Robbery. I remember being terrified as the bandits prowled the aisle, brandishing their pistols, bandannas concealing most of their faces – but not so terrified that I actually relinquished the dollar my mother had slipped me so that I could enjoy being robbed along with everyone else. Why am I telling you this? Because, like Westworld, this was a simulation of life in the Old West intended to give us all the thrills without any of the consequences. As far as I know, there were no actual robots involved, but how can I be sure? The other thing it has in common with Westworld is that it scared me as a kid. Now that I’ve seen Westworld as an adult, I realize it’s about as scary as a visit to Six Gun City. The movie serves up some of writer/director Michael Crichton’s patented technophobia with a formula that would be duplicated to better effect in Jurassic Park, as visitors to a high-tech theme park find themselves terrorized by the robots meant to amuse them. It does have one thing going for it: Yul Brynner’s iconic black-hatted Gunslinger, who did the unstoppable killer robot thing more than a decade before The Terminator. (SVD)

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004)

In screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's world, human beings don't really need technology to screw up their lives, but in this movie they get some help anyway, courtesy of Lacuna, Inc. and its mind-wipe service, which enables the client to have his memory scrubbed of anything that he feels is holding him back or causing him undue pain. Jim Carrey, at his most subdued, is the loser hero who discovers that Clementine (Kate Winslet), the old flame who shook up his life, has had her memories of their time together erased, possibly as a lark, and who opts to have his own mind scrubbed clean of its memories of her, not realizing how hard he'll fight to hang onto any traces of having had her in his life when the process begins. Kaufman and director Michel Gondry manage to wring romantic comedy out of what may be the most painful of romantic truths: everyone wants to be remembered, but the memories of what was most important to you may be the ones that you'd sometimes most like to be rid of. (PN)

Click Here For Part Two, Three & Four

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Nick Schager, Scott Von Doviak

Morning Deal Report: Green Hornet Goes Gondry

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 14:30:00 GMT

Here’s a startling turn of events that potentially makes the Seth Rogen vehicle The Green Hornet a bit more interesting. “Columbia has set Michel Gondry to direct The Green Hornet, and the studio has set a June 25, 2010, release date for the film,” Variety reports. “Gondry, best known for far-out fare like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep and Human Nature, brings an unusual sensibility to what will be the most overtly commercial film of his career.” Can Charlie Kaufman’s Elongated Man be far behind?

It’s getting harder to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to making jokes about movies based on board games. I may be imagining things here, but I seem to recall a notorious bomb from the ‘80s adapted from Clue. And yet: “Universal is moving several spaces up the board with Clue, a big-screen take on the classic game, and is in final negotiations with Pirates of the Caribbean helmer Gore Verbinski to direct and produce,” per The Hollywood Reporter. Let the Johnny Depp as Colonel Mustard rumors start now.

If board game adaptations aren’t your thing, how about a movie based on a series of paintings? “Warner Bros. has acquired screen rights to The Lonely Dog, a limited-edition book of paintings done by Queenstown artist Ivan Clarke. The studio will turn the dog tale into a CG animated film,” Variety reports. “Clarke hatched the project when he left his dog alone, caught the look on the pooch's face and painted a fully clothed character with a lonely look on its mug.”

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Thursday Poll for New Year's Day 2009

Paul Clark — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 23:00:00 GMT

The celebration of some obscure holiday caught me completely off guard a week ago, and so shocked was I by its sudden emergence that I completely forgot to run a Thursday poll. Because of this, I neglected to report that fully half of our readers, when given the choice between Kate Winslet’s Oscar-nominated performances, preferred her turn as the mood-haired Clementine in Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Somewhat less expected was the 25% showing for the second-place finisher, 2006’s Little Children, followed by her performances in Sense and Sensibility and Iris. Bringing up the rear was her starmaking role in a little sleeper hit called Titanic, which brought in no votes whatsoever. So that only leaves us with the question of whether she’ll finally take home an Oscar this year, either as Revolutionary Road’s disenchanted housewife or the “illiterate Nazi cougar” (thanks, Uncle Crizzle!) of The Reader.

Over the past week, the writers of The Screengrab have posted their lists of the best movies of 2008. Now it’s your turn. Which of the Screengrab’s top five favorites from the past year do you prefer?

Which is your favorite? | BuzzDash polls

Feel free to post your lists of the best of 2008 in the comments section if you wish. See you next week!

The Best of 2008: Leonard Pierce's Picks for the Best Movies of the Year, Part Two

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:45:00 GMT

5. WALL*E (Andrew Stanton, dir.)

Pixar has been on such a roll of late that if they were a single director, they’d be getting mention in the same breath as the golden age greats. But they’re not; they’re an aggregate of many clever, talented folks who make computer-generated cartoons that are at least partly intended for children. I’m not going to argue that this isn’t sometimes a weakness; in WALL*E, the environmental message only seems fitting and appropriate because I happen to agree with it, and the crypto-Objectivism in The Incredibles only bothered me because I don’t. But regardless of the heavy-handedness of the moral, it can’t be denied that WALL*E is flat out the most wonderful film of the year, hopeful and funny and romantic and bittersweet all at the same time, and wrapped up in a package so beautiful to look at you wonder why anyone ever questions the potential of CGI. And if this astounding motion picture spawned an obnoxious marketing empire, one can only shake one’s head and say “Damn kids don’t know how good they’ve got it.”

4. RACHEL GETTING MARRIED (Jonathan Demme, dir.)

If you ever want to flummox a music critic, ask him to describe one of his favorite new bands without comparing them to another band. Of course, Rachel Getting Married proves that the same can occasionally be said for movie critics: it seems impossible to talk about without referencing something else. It’s got the dysfunctional family dynamics of Il y a Longtemps Que Je T’aime; the comeback-kid story of The Wrestler; the hateful-misanthrope-as-vehicle-for-joyous-redemption jawn of a Wes Anderson film (only better) and the structure and form of the late Robert Altman’s best work (only different). With all of these elements at play, though, it never seems derivative of anything else, only reminiscent in the best possible way. In the end, Rachel Getting Married is its own film, familiar yet new and impressive, and carried along by some of the finest acting of the year, most especially from Anne Hathaway and Bill Irwin.

3. CHE (Steven Soderbergh, dir.)

Steven Soderbergh keeps on making great movies, and never the same one twice. His latest is getting lots of what child care experts call “good attention” and “bad attention”; it’s certain that Soderbergh intended it that way, with its rigid formal structure, back-spasm-inducing length, difficult tonal shifts, and…oh, yeah, it’s a biopic about one of the most controversial figures of the 20th century. It’s just as hard to figure out how much of the negative reception is due to political and moral judgment of the revolutionary Che Guevara as it is to figure out how much of the positive reception comes from those who valorize him, but taken purely as a movie, Che is hard to beat: it’s formally daring, adventurously directed, risk-taking, well-made, and held together by a powerful performance that shows its subject neither as a heroic rebel or a vicious murderer, but simply as a man so consumed by his cause that he didn’t know what else to do than keep fighting for it.

2. WENDY AND LUCY (Kelly Reichardt, dir.)

There have been a number of exceptionally well-done documentaries in recent years about ordinary people dangling from the precipice of financial ruin in economically uncertain times, but successful narrative films dealing with the same subject have been few and far between. That’s largely because it’s hard to approach the topic in fiction without becoming didactic, maudlin, or treacly – and those challenges are certainly, and perilously, evident in Kelly Reichardt’s story about a young woman in brutally limited circumstances who loses her beloved dog while pursuing a slender chance at a decent job. But the miraculous thing about Wendy and Lucy is that it toes that line from its first frame to its last without ever tumbling down and making a mess of itself. That’s a testament to the top-notch script, the surprisingly deep direction, and the beautiful performance by lead actress Michelle Williams. No one could ever have predicted that an heir to the Italian neo-realist tradition would emerge in 2008 from America’s Pacific Northwest; that it happened is one of the year’s greatest surprises.

1. SYNECHDOCHE, NEW YORK (Charlie Kaufman, dir.)

There are so many things that could have gone wrong with Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut. I first heard him talk about his desire to direct way back in 2004, when I interviewed him for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and when Synechdoche, New York was finally announced, I was full of dread. The video stores of America are choked with mediocre-to-bad movies by talented writers who decided what they really wanted to do was direct. I needn’t have worried: Synechdoche, New York is easily my favorite film of the year. Kaufman approached directing with the same meticulous, self-searching approach that he does writing, and the result is nothing short of astounding. The best movies, for me, are the ones that seem to completely rewire my head – that are so profound and well-crafted that they redefine my basic approach to their subject, form or content. Charlie Kaufman accomplishes that his first time out of the gate, and that’s the mark of a major talent.

ALMOST MADE IT: The Strangers, Doubt, Iron Man, The Wrestler, Bigger Stronger Faster*.

DIDN'T SEE THEM: Entre les Murs (The Class), Standard Operating Procedure, Lat den Ratte Komme In (Let the Right One In), Dear Zachary: A Letter To His Son About His Father, Trouble the Water, Full Battle Rattle, Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge (Flight of the Red Balloon).

PERFORMANCES OF THE YEAR: Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler; Bill Irwin, Rachel Getting Married; Kristin Scott Thomas, Il y a Longtemps Que Je T'aime; Viola Davis, Doubt.

MADE IN 2007, BUT GREAT IN 2008: 4 Luni 3 Saptamani si 2 Zile (4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days); Paranoid Park; My Winnipeg; Une Vielle Maitress (The Last Mistress); Auf der Anderen Seite (The Edge of Heaven); Encounters at the End of the World; Chop Shop.

OVERRATED: Waltz with Bashir; In Bruges; Happy-Go-Lucky; Slumdog Millionaire; Kung Fu Panda.

Click for Part One

The Year in Trailer Review: Paul Clark's Favorite Trailers of 2008, Part 1

Paul Clark — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Later this week, I’ll be listing my favorite movies of 2008. But before I do that, I’d like to look back at the trailers from this past year that have made my job as Screengrab’s resident trailer guru worthwhile. Despite the lack of really world-beating trailers a la Buffalo ‘66 or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I had no trouble finding seven trailers from 2008 that were pretty rockin’.

In no particular order:

As a fan of the Watchmen graphic novels, I’m pretty conflicted about Zack Snyder’s upcoming remake. On the one hand, it looks really damn cool. On the other, so did the trailers for 300, and look what happened there. That said, it does look really damn cool, and the visuals are surprisingly close to what I’d imagined from reading the books. Snyder’s casting choices are pretty hit-and-miss, but the ones that are on are dead-on perfect. Here I’ve posted the first two trailers, although the third is pretty awesome too.

The Duplass brothers’ Baghead was something of a disappointment for me, largely because the trailer suggested an intriguing combination- a mix between “mumblecore” and the slasher movie. What made the trailer especially interesting was that it didn’t spring the horror element on the audience until almost the very end, making for a finale that’s surprisingly unsettling. Maybe it was just that the trailer gave no hint to the movie’s dumbass denouement, but I still wish I could see the movie that this trailer had me hoping for.

Sometimes, the difference between a good trailer and a great one is a perfectly-chosen bit of music, and no trailer from 2008 exemplifies this more for me than this spot for Sam Mendes’ Revolutionary Road. In many ways, this trailer is pretty much what you’d expect from Mendes adapting Richard Yates’ novel- suburban discontent, gorgeously shot and designed period settings- but once the Nina Simone song kicks in, the trailer takes on a strange, even spooky element that’s wholly unexpected. It’s enough to make one forgive the curious absence of costars Kathy Bates and Michael Shannon.

Screengrab Salutes: The Top 25 Leading Ladies of All Time (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 21:00:00 GMT

15. LAUREN BACALL (1924 - )

How cool is Lauren Bacall? Cool enough that she tamed Humphrey Bogart, the greatest leading man of all time. Originally making her name as a teenage fashion model, Bacall’s slender frame and fiery eyes caught the attention of Howard Hawks, who changed her name, fixed her hair, and likely would have driven her career straight into the ground if he hadn’t arranged to cast her in The Big Sleep opposite the man she called “Mr. Bogart”. Bacall wasn’t even the best actress in the movie – according to both Raymond Chandler and William Faulkner, Martha Vickers, cast as her sister, acted rings around her to the degree that her scenes were cut so as not to make Bacall look bad. But she was good enough: her chemistry with Bogey was electrifying, her patented chin-down, eyes-up look was enchanting, and her clever patter, delivered in a sultry, husky voice combining East Coast class with East Side brass, could be felt in the hip pockets of every man in hearing distance. America demanded more of her, and she went on to prove that while she wasn’t the greatest actress of her day, she was at least game for anything, and surprisingly adept with light comedy as well as her trademark dangerous-dame roles. Now a ripe old 84 years old, Bacall is the very image of the classy old Hollywood dame, occasionally taking acting work (with Lars von Trier, even!), but mostly content to be one of Tinseltown’s great raconteurs – a fearless liberal, a hilarious storyteller, and a priceless link to the Golden Era.

14. ANNA KARINA (1940 - )

When she was young, she was the face of the French New Wave. And she was (and is) utterly beautiful, but she has always looked younger than her years. So she has the face of a little girl in those early films, but the words that she speaks -- and the way that she speaks them -- are those of an older, wiser person. Her first film appearance was in a film by the Situationist philosopher Guy Dubord. She has worked with Agnes Varda, Jacques Rivette, Fassbinder, Visconti, and, of course, Godard, to whom she was married during his greatest period of creativity. Wow.

13. MYRNA LOY (1905-1993)

With her pert features and her way with a tart comeback, Loy was peerless in her day at the delicate art of making sanity look sexy, which is always a cause worth fighting for. Much of what needs to be said about her career got said last week in our entry on William Powell in our Leading Men list: they did, after all, co-star in fourteen films. It was the double impact of Manhattan Melodrama, in which she left Clark Gable (with Gable's enthusiastic consent) for Powell, and their first Thin Man movie that, as she was wont to put it, made her an overnight success after more than eighty films. Her earlier jobs had included uncredited bit parts in The Jazz Singer and the 1925 silent Ben-Hur, as well as punching the clock as the sexy-evil-zombie daughter of the Yellow Peril supervillain embodied by Boris Karloff in the camp classic The Mask of Fu Manchu. She also served her country as Fredric March's wife in The Best Years of Our Lives, making a pretty good case for going off to war so long as you had her to come back to. Her last movie roles included 1978's The End (where the director-star, Burt Reynolds, made a bid for being considered a man of taste by casting her as his mother), and the underappreciated Just Tell Me What You Want (1980), as Alan King's unflappable assistant. In 1973, she made her Broadway debut in a production of Clare Booth Luce's The Women, which was reportedly a failure, but which absolutely has to have been better than the recent movie version.

12. GRETA GARBO (1905-1990)

Garbo began her career in silent pictures in her native Sweden and in Germany. It was after seeing one of these, Gosta Berlings Saga, that Louis B. Mayer decreed that she and the film's director be brought to America and installed at MGM. It didn't take him long to decide that the director could go back home after all, but Garbo stuck around, entrancing the crowds who piled into theaters to watch her co-starring roles with her offscreen lover John Gilbert through the clouds of steam that the two of them seemed to give off together. When Garbo made her first sound picture, Anna Christie (1930), MGM famously promoted it with the line, "Garbo Talks!"; years later, when she made the comedy Ninotchka (a calculated, and successful, attempt to lighten what had come to seem an oppressively heavy image), they used the line, "Garbo Laughs!" Pauline Kael once asked why, when she gave what is generally remembered as her finest performance in the 1936 Camille, they didn't think to use the line, "Garbo Acts!" Garbo was a superb actress, but the real historic impact of her career is the degree to which she established that there are some faces so beloved by the camera that their bearers can do no wrong in its all-seeing eye. Although most of her vehicles (Camille included) are kind of stodgy and crude and cheesy at the edges, they hold up to the extent that you cannot take your eyes off that woman. Garbo retired from the screen after 1941, reportedly due to a feeling that her moment had passed and in rebellion against MGM's desire to change her image and maker her seem like more of an accessible, regular gal. (The mind reels, the blood curdles, at the thought of how they might have tried going about this.) The only known time since then that she willingly stepped in front of a camera came in 1949, when she was 43, and agreed to do a screen test for a picture that she was considering coming out of retirement for but that subsequently fell through. To judge from that footage, seen above, whatever her reasons for not returning to movies, it couldn't have been that she'd lost her ability to make the camera go weak in the knees.

11. KATE WINSLET (1975 - )

The story of modern Hollywood is largely one of actresses who start out doing interesting, challenging roles until some big studio takes notice and rewards them for their hard work by putting them in blockbuster movies that make them rich – and utterly boring. Though she’s made some bad choices in her career (let’s not even talk about The Life of David Gale), former sandwich shop employee Kate Winslet, after becoming one of the biggest stars in the world by virtue of appearing as the female lead in Titanic, has steadfastly refused to settle into the role of a reliable, rich and uninteresting box office draw. Her pre-Titanic career was launched with an eerie, unforgettable performance in Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures, which she followed up with adventurous roles in classical adaptations like Jude and Hamlet; but shockingly, it was after appearing in the highest-grossing film of all time that her career really got interesting. Since that time, she’s become known for her unconventional beauty (having had many pointed things to say about Hollywood’s insistence that its leading ladies stay rail-thin) and her willingness to portray women who are sexually adventurous, unflatteringly neurotic, and possessed of unexpected and sometimes alarming depths. Outside of a few bill-paying blockbusters – likely the result of knowing she’ll never luck into another Titanic – she’s chosen a rare path, appearing in movies like Hideous Kinky, Quills, Iris, and Finding Neverland. She’s even put an unforgettable twist on romantic comedy with her role as Clementine in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. When you’re the star of the biggest movie in history, maybe you can afford to take those kinds of risks; if so, we’re glad it was Kate Winslet who got the chance.

Click Here for Part One, Two, Four, Five, Six, Seven & Eight

Contributors: Leonard Pierce, Hayden Childs, Phil Nugent

Coming Soon: A Screengrab Salute To Movie Trailers (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 21:00:00 GMT

The fake trailers from TROPIC THUNDER (2008), GRINDHOUSE (2007) & KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE (1977)

Of course, no tribute to the art of coming attraction trailers would be complete without a nod to the art of FAKE coming attraction trailers. Tropic Thunder recently delighted many and outraged some with its fake preview for Simple Jack, a dead-on parody of the odious, manipulative genre of faux-inspirational retar...I mean, “mentally challenged”-sploitation potboilers like I Am Sam. And last year, the interstitial glimpses of fictional schlock classics like Machete, Thanksgiving, Werewolf Women of the SS and Don’t (by Robert Rodriguez and cameo directors Eli Roth, Rob Zombie and Edgar Wright, respectively) were the best reasons to sit through the entire 191-minute cut of Grindhouse in one sitting. But perhaps the granddaddy (or granddaughter?) of all fake trailers is the "teaser" for Catholic High School Girls In Trouble, one of the definite hits in John Landis’ hit-or-miss cult classic, Kentucky Fried Movie (but, uh, you might not wanna watch this one at work).

The trailer for BUFFALO ’66 (1998)

Whether you love him or hate him, you have to agree that Vincent Gallo doesn’t make ordinary movies. Gallo’s taste for the strange extended to his trailer for his first directorial effort, Buffalo ’66. Cut by Gallo himself, the trailer is a montage of still images from the film, set to the opening passages of Yes’ “Heart of the Sunrise.” As a montage it’s pretty irresistible, with the percussive cutting matching the rhythm of the song, down to the way Gallo animates the stills of Anjelica Huston gesticulating at the dinner table. But what makes this trailer even cooler is that it’s one of the few that show more or less everything in the movie without giving it away. We see the characters, the style, the grey and dingy setting, but we’re wondering how it all fits together. And thanks to how well Gallo sells it, we can’t wait to find out.

The trailer for MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (1975)

The Python boys never met a phenomenon they couldn’t satirize, so it was only natural that with the trailer for their first feature, they’d hold the art of movie advertising up to scorn. This epic three-minute spot begins with a panoramic shot that’s meant to underline the majesty of the film that’s ostensibly being advertised, accompanied by properly stentorian narration. Naturally, the boys soon pull the rug out from under this seriousness, revealing it to be merely auditions for a voiceover artist. Eventually, we end up with narration in subtitled Chinese (this at a time when studios were avoiding non-English dialogue in trailers), after which the trailer goes to work on the self-important rhetoric of studio marketing. The narrator calls the movie “run-of-the-mill” and says, “compared to something like Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, it’s all rather silly.” In addition, the editing of the trailer is reminiscent of the work of fly-by-night distributors who more or less assembled highlights from the film with little regard for coherence. But here, that’s all part of the magic, although it may be difficult to notice while you’re laughing at the trailer’s version of a rave review or the abrupt segue to an advertisement for a nearby Chinese restaurant. So few classic movies have the trailers they deserve, but Monty Python and the Holy Grail definitely does.

The trailer for COMEDIAN (2002)

When it was announced that Don “The Voice” LaFontaine had passed away, many movie lovers flashed back to this trailer, only to discover that its featured talent wasn’t LaFontaine at all, but fellow voiceover titan Hal Douglas. No matter: we’d like to think that LaFontaine would have approved of this “anti-trailer”, still the most succinct and priceless distillation of the deathless voiceover clichés that he spouted so many times over the years. But while on the surface this teaser has nothing but contempt for the inane catchphrases that get recycled by the studios, there’s also a real affection for the men whose job it is to give them authority. By giving a face to the usually faceless voiceover artist, we gain respect for him, and for the way he forges on even when he realizes that the things he’s made to say are completely absurd. As much as lines like “in a world…” have become a joke to trailer watchers, they’re also a kind of comfort, and when Douglas responds to his being fired with, “No, I like it in here,” we can’t help but think that, yes, we like you in there too.

The trailer for SLEEPER (1973)

This trailer for Woody Allen's futuristic "love story about two people who hate each other" parodies the convention by which the great filmmaker is caught by the camera crew and an unseen interviewer while busily working on his next masterpiece. The trailer itself benefits from clips drawn from one of Allen's few films to include both vivid cartoon imagery and an elegant production design. And the scenes in which Allen promises a movie "with very little overt comedy" and scenes "of a cerebral, almost didactic nature" look even funnier now, considering that they could pass as an accurate description of any of a dozen stink bombs he's made since this slapstick classic came out.

The trailer for ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004)

Instead of emphasizing popular stars Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey, early promotions for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind featured supporting player Tom Wilkinson – if you knew to look for him. This teaser trailer mimicks the low-budget aesthetic of commercials for the local dentist’s office, but the service they’re offering – a selective memory erasure – is purely the stuff of Charlie Kaufman’s imagination. The poker-faced buzz campaign for Eternal Sunshine was entirely based around Lacuna, Inc., including a website with coupons.

The trailer for LITTLE CHILDREN (2006)

You can keep your big explosions and breathtaking panoramas. This trailer for Todd Field’s Little Children holds everything in, and the mounting tension – symbolized by a child’s toy train chugging through a dozen ordinary suburban moments – is almost unbearable.

The trailer for THE SHINING (1980)

Often the most memorable and effective trailers aren't those that sweat to cram in the movie's every high point and plot point but those that boil a picture down to an especially striking image and sell it in a way that sutures it to the viewer's imagination. Stanley Kubrick provided an especially choice example with this early and mysterious look at his 1980 horror movie. It consists of a single shot that turned up late in the film, tricked up here with electronic music and mechanical-sounding voices chanting "Redrum." (Did Kubrick bring in HAL 9000 to work on the soundtrack?) It appeared several months before the movie itself was released, and played briefly before being pulled in favor of a more conventional and far less disturbing trailer.

Click Here for Part One!

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Paul Clark, Phil Nugent, Gwynne Watkins

Charlie Kaufman Gets Wired

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 17:00:00 GMT

With his directorial debut Synecdoche, New York due next month, the notoriously press shy Charlie Kaufman has reluctantly decided that a little publicity is in order, especially given the movie’s pre-release rep as, shall we say, an esoteric experience. Kaufman agreed to sit down with a writer from geek culture magazine Wired for a profile in an upcoming issue. Ah, but what form should this profile take? It can’t be just a run-of-the-mill celebrity puff piece, because this is the guy behind such mind-twisters as Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It has to be meta in some way. And so a blog was born.

Storyboard is described as “a profile of a profile of Charlie Kaufman.” The idea is to provide “an almost-real-time, behind-the-scenes look at the assigning, writing, editing, and designing of a Wired feature….This is a one-time experiment, tied solely to the Charlie Kaufman profile scheduled to run in our November 08 issue.” The blog consists of internal emails, surveillance video from the Wired offices, and as of yesterday, the rough draft of writer Jason Tanz’s Kaufman profile.

It’s an interesting peek behind the curtain, but I’m not sure that Storyboard is really equivalent to what Kaufman does in his work. It’s more like a collection of DVD extras, but it’s still well worth checking out. For instance, there’s this September 5th entry collecting emails concerning Kaufman’s refusal to sit for a photo shoot. “I thought this was part of the negotiation, that he had never sat for an interview/shoot.,” writes creative director Scott Dadich. “This gives me serious reservations about doing the piece…. can we do a silhouette? something not showing his face?” Stay tuned for the resolution to this development, as well as promised full audio from the three-hour interview.

Related:
Charlie Kaufman Does Not Save His Urine in Jars
The Screengrab Presents: The Five Kinds of Twist Endings

Trailer Review: Yes Man

Paul Clark — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 16:00:00 GMT

For all you fans of broad-as-a-barn-door Jim Carrey, this is your lucky day. As with his previous smashes Liar, Liar and Bruce Almighty, The Yes Man stars Carrey as a man whose life gets turned around by high-concept intervention, this time in the form of a self-help guru who convinces him to go an entire year without saying “no.” With life-affirming laughter sure to ensue, this fits to clearly into the feel-good Carrey template that it’s hard to believe it was based on a memoir rather than being churned out by an established screenwriter with Carrey in mind. That said, it could turn out to be a cut above his other films in this vein, if the presence of director Peyton Reed is any indication- though he also directed The Break-Up, so you never know. If nothing else, this should line Carrey’s coffers for a few years, which will hopefully allow him to make something more adventurous akin to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Although truth be told, just as long as he doesn’t make another The Number 23, I’ll be satisfied.

Cannes Rundown, Days 10 and 11- I'd be the screenwriter who speaks Chinese and plays the oboe. That would be cool.

Paul Clark — Sun, 25 May 2008 04:01:00 GMT

As the Cannes Film Festival enters its final days before the announcement of awards on Sunday, here’s one final roundup of reviews. We begin with Charlie Kaufman’s highly-anticipated (by me, anyway) directorial debut Synecdoche, New York. Would Kaufman’s inexperience behind the camera cause him to become timid and soften his edge? If reviews are any indication, don’t bet on it.

AO Scott in the New York Times- “Mr. Kaufman, the wildly inventive screenwriter of “Being John Malkovich” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” has, in his first film as a director, made those efforts look almost conventional. Like his protagonist, a beleaguered theater director played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, he has created a seamless and complicated alternate reality, unsettling nearly every expectation a moviegoer might have about time, psychology and narrative structure.”

But not all were so impressed. J. Hoberman in the Village Voice- “Collapsing in sodden self-reflexivity after a promising 40 minutes, Kaufman’s arch, interminable phantasmagoria—with Philip Seymour Hoffman as a Job-like theater director—retroactively improved all but the most miserablist movies I saw at Cannes.”

Other competition titles:

Jeff Wells on Paolo Sorrentino’s Il Divo- “I knew I was seeing something intensely audacious and stylistically exciting, but the political arena it depicts is so dry and complex and wholly-unto-itself that gradually the film makes you feel as if you're lying in an isolation tank.”

Laurent Cantet’s The Class/Entre Les Meurs, according to Time Out’s Geoff Andrew- “Everything rings absolutely true in this film, and everything is utterly engrossing from start to finish, despite the apparent lack of a straightforward narrative during the first hour… There are no easy answers proffered to the various questions raised about education, schools and society, but the film makes for admirably lucid, subtle and thought-provoking drama throughout. And the kids are terrific.”

Cinematical’s James Rocchi tears into Wim Wenders’ latest, The Palermo Shooting- “After Palermo Shooting ended (with a title card offering the film as a tribute "To Ingmar (Bergman) and Michelangelo (Antonioni)," which made me imagine Bergman and Antonioni saying Uh, thanks, but. ... from the next world), the Cannes press audience booed and laughed and stumbled out into the streets for detailed digressions and discussions on how, exactly, Wenders had, as our British friends say, lost the plot. Palermo Shooting goes fairly off the mark, or fires blanks, or has a damp fuse; I'm not sure about which firearm metaphor applies here, and if Wenders can't be bothered to have any cohesion to his signs and symbols, why should I?... It's still a little sad to see a major filmmaker make such a series of major mistakes in the name of a fairly minor film.”

While I certainly admire Cannes’ devotion to Wenders, perhaps the competition would be better served if, instead of reserving spots for ex-Palme winners past their prime, the selectors would give some love to gifted up-and-comers who deserve a higher profile People like, say, Kelly Reichardt, whose Wendy and Lucy played in Un Certain Regard. Here’s ScreenDaily’s Mike Goodridge- “Reichardt's films are quiet and detailed, and in Wendy And Lucy , she provides an all too believable picture of how fine is the line between getting by and becoming homeless and destitute… Unlike Old Joy, which was a two-hander, Wendy And Lucy is told entirely from the point of view of one character - and her dog, of course. The beauty of the film is not only in telling a story with so few words but in showing the wordless tenderness that exists between woman and dog in a society which has cast her onto its fringes. “

Also of note was the Un Certain Regard prizewinner, Tulpan. Here’s ScreenDaily’s Jonathan Romney on the film- “Shy courtship, stark landscapes and a spirited supporting cast of livestock make Tulpan a vivid, intensely enjoyable debut feature from former documentarian Sergei Dvortsevoi. The Kazakhstan-set film hardly breaks new ground, in both setting and mood pitching its tent very close to The Story Of The Weeping Camel. But it similarly blends intimate, gentle fiction with a strong dose of ethnographic observation, to immensely charming effect.”

Justin Chang in Variety on Albert Serra’s Birdsong- “Patience was no doubt required of the Three Wise Men as they made their way toward Bethlehem, and the same will be required of auds who seek out "Birdsong," Albert Serra's minimalist reinterpretation of the Magi's journey. Hushed, contemplative but often quite droll experiment offers beautifully sculpted images on a black-and-white canvas across its sometimes hypnotic, sometimes tedious runtime.”

Wendy Ide praises Eldorado in the London Times- “This off-beat tragicomic road movie from Belgium is one of the sleeper hits of the festival. Screening in the Director’s Fortnight sidebar, it’s a far cry from the dour, grey perception of Belgian cinema fostered by the work of people like the Dardenne brothers…The landscapes and soundtrack choices evoke American road movies of a bygone era; the sensibility is definitely European.”

Abel Ferrara’s Chelsea on the Rocks, according to Dennis Lim in the Los Angeles Times- “Abel Ferrara's new film, "Chelsea on the Rocks," represents a kind of homecoming for the Bronx-born director and longtime chronicler of the New York City underbelly. Ferrara, best known for urban tales of damnation such as "Bad Lieutenant" and "King of New York," moved to Italy several years ago, fleeing a city transformed by the Rudolph W. Giuliani regime and the Sept. 11 attacks, not to mention a cultural and economic climate that had grown more hostile to maverick filmmakers.”

Finally, here’s a link to Karina Longworth’s live-blogging of Quentin Tarantino’s Film Lecture at Cannes. I’ve seen how fast that dude talks, and my fingers are hurting just thinking about it. Bang-up job, Karina.

Smarter People Than Us Pick the Five Most Realistic Science Fiction Movies

Phil Nugent — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:30:00 GMT

To celebrate the success of Iron Man, which apparently does a much better job of realistically depicting how a man might go about turning himself into an armored guilded missle than, say, Spider-Man did in its speculation on the probable effects of being bitten by a radioactive spider ("Mommy, hiw come he's not turning brown and lying crumpled on the floor weeping?"), New Scientist has compiled a list of "five science fiction movies that get the science right." This is one of those areas where we'll just have to take their word for it, along with whether the kids in Spellbound got those words spelled right or not, or what circumstances would make it possible for a strange man to flirt with Julia Roberts on the street and not wind up in traction. It may be no surprise that 2001 leads the list; it is, after all, an acknowledged masterpiece of the genre whose "strikingly realistic depiction of space travel" was forged in a collaboration between a serious sci-fi author and a cerebral, perfectionist director. And besides, it always puts us to sleep, just like science class. (New Scientist notes that the film's "crew members are shown coping with the boredom and routine of a long, straightforward trek across empty space", which sure is one way of putting it.)

More surprising, perhaps, are the thumb's-up for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which accurately "depicts memory as essentially a network of links," its distant cousin Solaris (either version), and Gattaca, which posits a "grimly plausible vision of a society dominated by genetic prejudice", and which some may consider an even greater film than 2001, simply because it's even more boring. The there's Alien, which impresses for the thought given to the life cycle of its title character, "in particular for the finer details of its life cycle." Cynics and subscribers to The Daily Worker will also point to the film's cold-eyed view of the characters' unfeeling employers and the nature of blue-collar labor in space, though the fact that two of the lowest-level, bluest-collared workers appear to belong to a union now clearly stamps the film as a pre-1980s period piece. On the other hand, extensive study into the behavior of people in emergency situations has concluded that it is true that if you stick half a dozen folks aboard a spaceship and have them plot their escape from a terrifying, homicidal shape-shifting monster, one of them will wander off to look for the cat.

Romantic Comedies: Where's the Love?

Phil Nugent — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 18:00:00 GMT

A. O. Scott contemplates the decline of the Hollywood romantic comedy and wonders how it is that so rich and noble a genre, a form used by Preston Sturges and Howard Hawks and Ernst Lubitsch to fully explore the complexities and frustrations of love's pursuit and all its attending derangements, could have degenerated into a way to grind out fodder to fill theaters in the late-winter season and keep Kate Hudson employed. Compared to those earlier great works, "the dry martinis of the past have been sweetened and diluted. We emerge lulled and soothed, but rarely intoxicated." Sure, some of this is the nostalgia talking, but it's not as if the man doesn't have a big ol' point. For some "stars", such as Hudson (and Matthew McConaughey, her co-star in the new Fool's Gold), steady work in such movies as How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Alex and Emma, Raising Helen and Failure to Launch — paper-thin flicks just passing through theaters on their way to steady rotation on cable — is the movie equivalent to being a cast regular on one of those TV series, such as Wings or Coach, that seem to stay on the air for fifteen years even though you've never met anyone who watches it. What's depressing is how the ambition seems to have leaked out of the genre, and not just ambitious filmmaking, but any ambitions regarding serious romance.

In the glittering surface of classic screwball comedy, this ambitiousness was most obviously expressed in torrents of language. In Sturges's The Lady Eve Henry Fonda tells Barbara Stanwyck, "Every time I've looked at you here on the boat it wasn't only here I saw you: you seemed to go way back…I know that isn't clear but I saw you here and at the same time further away and then still further away and then very small…like converging perspective lines… no, that isn't it, more like figures following each other in a forest glade. Only way back there you were a little girl in short dresses with your hair falling on your shoulders, in the middle distance your hair is up but you're still gawky like a colt…then when you get nearer you look more like you do now, except not so pretty…but I've only told you half of it, because way back there a little boy is standing with you, holding your hand, and in the middle distance I'm still with you, not holding your hand anymore because it isn't manly, but wanting to. And then still nearer we look terrible: you with your legs like a colt and mine like a calf…what I'm trying to say, only I'm not a poet I'm an ophiologist, is that I've always loved you. I mean I've never loved anyone but you. I suppose that sounds as dull as a drugstore novel, and what I see inside I'll never be able to cast into words…but that's what I mean. I wish we were married and on our honeymoon." And he's supposed to be one of the inarticulate ones! Then there's Unfaithfully Yours, the conductor hero played by Rex Harrison, upon learning that his brother-in-law has hired a private detective to keep an eye on his wife, lashes out: "No man who employs detectives should ever be disappointed. I hope every time you've engaged these vermin you've discovered you had antlers out to here, that you were the laughing stock of the city, and that you came crawling out of the agency your face aflame, your briefcase stuffed with undeniable evidence of your multiple betrayal, dishonor dripping from your ears like garlands of seaweed," and responds to the man's offer to "forgive your insults" by saying, "I forbid you to forgive me anything on any grounds whatsoever and I may still punch you in the nose at any instant! Now go away and never speak to me again unless it is in some public place where your silence might cause comment and embarrassment to our wives." Given special tutoring and help from a CGI effects team, could Matthew McConaughey say all that? Maybe in a month's time, if you let him take a break every three words to fortify himself with bong hits.

Of course, while a glib tongue may be of great use in courting ladies fair [insert joke here], it's not the only thing. Still, it's sobering how little some of the people in these current movies are willing to settle for. In Fool's Gold, McConaughey is good-looking, dim-witted, lucky, and probably a fun guy to have a beer with. Just because these are the qualities Tim Russert looks for in a president, are they really all you could ask for in a fantasy boyfriend? Hudson is actually chastised for expecting or wanting more — though it's not clear that she wouldn't find all that perfectly satisfactory if it just came yoked to a shitload of money. In the great romantic comedies, the hero and heroine test each other, challenge each other, ultimately prove that each is special enough to deserve the other. For filmmakers who prize niceness above everything else, this may smack of bad sexual politics. But even if there's some hostility in the concept of romance as a challenge, seeing the leads prove themselves worth of the challenge made for a payoff that was worth it. In most of what passes for romantic comedy nowadays, the hero and heroine are resigned to ending up together because they're the best-looking people onscreen, and have nothing to do but yell and bicker and engage in wacky shenanigans to postpone the inevitable until the picture has achieved feature length. The really unsettling thing about this is that there may be something more to it than a worry in Hollywood that making a movie about people who really seem special, and not just special-looking, might irritate the lumpen drones in the audience. Scott singles Juno out as an example of a movie that does have some of that old magic, and Ellen Page is definitely worth slaying a dragon over, but for some of us, the weirdest thing about that picture is how abnormally reluctant the heroine is to simply admit that she kinda likes the best friend who got her pregnant, even though, as Michael Cera plays the part, he's openly yearning for her to give him a sign that his feeling for her is reciprocated. The fact is that when a modern romantic comedy like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind does tap into something imaginative and deeply felt, it often ends inconclusively, if not in outright despair. It's as if the few filmmakers left who want to bring their A-game to this kind of material are also the ones who are too wised-up to believe in happy endings.

The Ten Worst Hairdos in Movie History, Part 2

Peter Smith — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Woody Harrelson and Bill Murray, KINGPIN (1996)

Bowling is enjoyed by millions of Americans of all ages, but in the Farrelly brothers' second film Kingpin, the professional bowling circuit is portrayed as being forever trapped in the seventies. Professional bowlers are seen as sleazeball would-be lounge lizards, dressing in garish clothes, doing cock-of-the-walk victory dances, and relentlessly chasing women when they're not bowling. But in Kingpin, the most telling remnant of their faded vocation is almost certainly the hairdos they sport. In the seventies, Harrelson's Roy Munson and Murray's Ernie "Big Ern" McCracken were well-coiffed slicksters. Two decades hence, they try, with varying degrees of success, to maintain their youthful appearance by engaging in that age-old solution practiced by creepy old men the world over — the comb over. True to their characters, Big Ern is better at maintaining the façade — his 'do looks like a woodland creature parked itself atop his pate, but at least it doesn't reflect the light. But once the rivals take to the lanes for the climactic showdown, Big Ern shows his true colors. Usually a cool customer, he lets the stress get the better of his hair, and it gradually begins to detach from his head, until it resembles the world's largest ripped seam. In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Kate Winslet's Clementine speaks of having mood hair, but we'd like to think that, as with so many great things in cinema, Bill Murray got there first.

The Leningrad Cowboys, LENINGRAD COWBOYS GO AMERICA

Rock'n'roll has a history of some pretty questionable hairdos, but none like those worn by the Leningrad Cowboys. Almost surely the most rockin' band to get their start north of the Arctic Circle, the Cowboys first entered the scene as the brainchild of director Aki Kaurismäki, who assembled some of his rocker pals for his 1989 stone-faced mockumentary, Leningrad Cowboys Go America. In the film, the Cowboys, tired of playing in Siberia, mount an American tour, despite their uncertain grasp of the English language. But if their songs mark them as foreigners, their hair is positively alien, with all members sporting uniform black pompadours, each with a large, unicorn-like forelock pointing out into the distance. As the film progresses, we discover that this hairdo is actually a congenital signifier of musical skill — the musically-challenged cousin who stalks the combo has but a tiny tuft to his name. Unfortunately for the Cowboys, the U.S. tour is mostly a washout, but they'd find more enduring success at home following the fall of the Iron Curtain. They appeared in two more features, Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses and the concert film Total Balalaika Show, in which they teamed up with the Alexandrov Red Army Chorus and Dance Ensemble, as well as over half a dozen music videos directed by Kaurismäki. Finally, the Cowboys made their triumphant return to the American stage for the 1994 MTV Video Music Awards at Radio City Music Hall. All the while, the band remained true to their roots, never touching so much as a strand of those terrible, awesome hairdos.

Demi Moore, STRIPTEASE

Some might think the obvious choice here would be G.I. Jane, but somehow even a number-one blade on a pair of clippers only revealed that Demi Moore had a perfectly shaped head, and didn't diminish her hotness in the least. The same cannot be said for the bangs-and-blow-dry look of Striptease. Yeah, we know she's supposed to be playing a stripper, but those are clearly hair extensions, and not very flattering ones at that. Most people at the time were probably distracted by the reveal of Moore's surgically enhanced breasts (we liked the originals just fine, thank you) and there are certainly many places the finger of blame can be pointed in this nuclear stinkbomb of a movie — but you shouldn't underestimate just how bad a haircut had to be back then to make Demi Moore look unattractive.

Kevin Costner, THE BODYGUARD (1992)

The story behind one of Sir Kevin's more laughable haircuts (and, if you've seen his mullet in Robin Hood, that's really saying something) is actually kinda touching: The interracial romance-thriller The Bodyguard was originally conceived as a vehicle for Diana Ross and Steve McQueen way back during the 1970s. When the film was finally made in 1992, starring Costner and Whitney Houston, the star decided to try and channel McQueen; to do so he adopted the legendary icon of cool's trademark close-cropped haircut, which looked fantastic on McQueen but downright surreal on Costner. That said, Costner did have the last laugh: The Bodyguard was one of his worst films, and a stain on screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan's career (it had been his first script — turns out he made up for it with The Empire Strikes Back), but it wound up being a huge hit. Indeed, we're not unconvinced that Costner's follicular follies in this film didn't lead indirectly to the George-Clooney-and-his-Caesar-haircut craze a couple of years later. There you go, folks — one more societal ill you can blame on Kevin Costner.

Nicolas Cage, NATIONAL TREASURE (2004)

Full disclosure: For weeks the spot for this entry stood empty on this list, with simply the words "Nicolas Cage, FILM TO BE DETERMINED LATER" holding its place. Because let's face it, any number of films starring Nicolas Cage from the past few years could go here — from the god-awful toupee he sported in Ghost Rider to the goofy balding curls he fretted over in Adaptation (of course, we don't hold that last one against him, not only because his bad hair was a plot point in that film, but also because we have this disturbing suspicion that, had nature been allowed to take its course, that's what Nicolas Cage's real hair might actually look like today). But we're going with National Treasure, for the simple fact that we spent the whole film staring at the slug-like patch of weave at the very tip of the actor's forehead. Seriously, this isn't hair, it's a lid. In these later years, Cage and Kevin Costner have switched places, but if you'd asked us fifteen years ago which of the two would allow himself to go bald gracefully while the other kept trying new ways to make himself look like he had something resembling a "full" "head" of "hair," the answer might have been different.

— Paul Clark, Bilge Ebiri, Phil Nugent, Vern, Bryan Whitefield

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