Monday, March 12, 2012
Is the magic and the meaning in the movies or ourselves?
was meant perhaps to suggest a mixture of horror movie and automated toyshop, but now just provides noisy irritation. Films
have become a lot quieter since then — at least in the music department. And above all the acting seems weirdly dated,
with its deliberately sought-out stiffness and posing.…Now the performance just looks arch, and we know that stylisation in film requires more extreme measures — a real marionette-effect, for instance. It's notable that in this film Resnais succeeds best
with his anti-naturalist note when the actors are either quite still — so still you don't know whether they are in a moving picture
or a photograph — or dancing, rocking slowly, dully, to the sounds of an unearthly waltz.”
— Michael Wood, The Guardian, July 14, 2011
By Edward Copeland
The above quote appeared in a piece Wood wrote on the occasion of a 50th anniversary engagement of Last Year in Marienbad. Despite the way it reads, Wood's overall tone was positive. Putting aside that he must not go to new movies that often if he thinks film scores today have become a lot quieter, his words about the acting in Marienbad struck me as another reason why Resnais' film entrances me in a way other films that could be called "similar" don't. I can't imagine anyone, fan or foe of the film, watching it thinking that acting or
characterization had occurred in Marienbad or even had been desired. Using the actors as props but attempting to make them "real" in other movies that could be lumped into the same category as Marienbad might be why works by a filmmaker such as Lars von Trier or each successive effort by Terrence Malick don't: They go to the trouble of pretending they care about narrative storytelling and their poor performers, such as a Kirsten Dunst in Melancholia or a Sean Penn in The Tree of Life, try to create characters in universes where that doesn't matter. At least Resnais and Robbe-Grillet made it clear to everyone that the actors' importance equaled that of the ceiling fixtures (probably less) in Marienbad so that doesn't get in my way. It's been a progression for Malick. His film that I tolerated best was Badlands. Then came Days of Heaven, pretty but blah with a voiceover from a poorly educated person with a Southern accent waxing philosophical as if she were in a Coen brothers movie, only not doing it for laughs. It got even worse in The Thin Red Line, so much so that I skipped The New World (with its Clue-like 15 different versions) entirely. So many spoke glowingly about The Tree of Life (I even let my contributior J.D. run a positive review of it before I saw it), even people who didn't care for The Thin Red Line, that I decided I'd give The Tree of Life a chance and went in with an open mind. I should have known better. Malick and I just aren't cut out for each other. I've been saying for a long time he really should be a nature documentarian because narratives aren't his forte. I can feel the anger of his fans exercising their fingers to beging composing their replies. Now, I didn't just write my anti-Malick feelings to get a rise out of them but also to remind people of one of the central objectives of this second, more generalized Marienbad-inspired post: All opinions about movies are subjective. Before we move on, just to calm the Malick fans before I whack on Lars von Trier, check out this interview with my good friend Matt Zoller Seitz, an ordained archbishop in the Church of Terrence Malick, and his five-part video essay series on Malick's films from Badlands through The Tree of Life for The Museum of the Moving Image. 
As for Von Trier, we got off on the wrong foot with poor Max von Sydow's voiceover leading the somnambulistic tone of Zentropa. Somehow Emily Watson overcame his traps to give a good performance Breaking the Waves, which I otherwise rejected. I admit that I still would like to see The Kingdom and I liked Dancer in the Dark. Never saw The Idiots. Never wanted to see Dogville. The Five Obstructions sounds interesting as an experiment, not necessarily a movie. Perhaps a reality TV show. Then came Melancholia — ay caramba — though you definitely see the Marienbad influence there: He even had similarly sculpted trees. If you want to see a 2011 film that involves the sudden appearance of a planet in the sky, rent the indie Another Earth. It's shorter, better written and contains actual characters. It will mean sacrificing Udo Kier's appearance as a wedding planner complaining that the bride ruined his work. I'm certain I've said enough in this section to get blood pressures boiling, so now I can move on to what too many people — both moviegoers and critics alike — tend to do: Take what's said about their favorite movies and filmmakers way too seriously. Forgetting that the things I wrote above are my opinion and, more importantly, opinions about movies and filmmakers. This is hardly the equivalent of, let me think of a recent example, Rush Limbaugh calling a law student testifying to Congress about a friend's medical reason for access to contraceptives a slut who must have lots of sex and if health insurers cover female contraceptives, he should be allowed to see tapes of her having sex on his computer. Big difference between that and me saying I don't think Melancholia is a good movie. I'm giving a subjective opinion. Rush is being an asshole.
Thinking about how upset people can get when a favorite film has been attacked takes me back to my days as a working critic. I usually received angry letters or phone calls, since my paper fortunately didn't run movie critics' photos. I preferred anonymity, like a food critic. Ironically, given my physical state now, I once received a letter from an organization for disabled people taking me to task for referring to a character in a movie as being "confined to a wheelchair." They were right and I never used that phrase again even before I learned the hard way why those words are inaccurate. I recall the woman who called the day I gave The Beverly Hillbillies movie the smackdown it so richly deserved. (That's one plus to this nonprofit blog thing — with the exception of my
obsession of trying to see all the major Oscar nominees each year, I only see what I want. I feel sad for those few remaining paid critics who still have to sit through Adam Sandler movies.) Anyway, this woman called almost as soon as I arrived in the office that morning to harangue me about the bad review — even though she hadn't seen the movie. What cracked me up was her question: "Do you think the people who made that movie appreciate you writing those things about their film?" I didn't have phone numbers for Penelope Spheeris or any of the cast members to get the answer. The absolute funniest phone call came from an older-sounding man horrified because I'd given something a good review. It was the Monday after The Crying Game opened in our city. I already had placed it at No. 1 on my 10 best of 1992 list, but its January 1993 opening gave me the first chance for a full-fledged review. The man couldn't believe I liked that movie. "It made me ill," he told me. "I felt like I needed to take a shower afterward." It took every ounce of restraint I could muster not to respond, "You found Jaye Davidson attractive, eh?" The final one isn't really funny and it took place in person. I was heading to a dreaded radio-promoted screening of something and I stopped by the concession stand to get a drink. The kid working knew who I was and gave me an unmistakably dirty look, so obvious that I had to ask what was wrong. "I used to respect you. Your reviews were the only good ones that paper ever had," he said. I asked him what I did wrong. Turned out that he couldn't believe how I tore apart Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers. He was working and so was I, so I didn't have time to try to explain subjectivity or how great I thought Pauline Kael was though I probably disagreed with her more than I agreed, but what can you do? 
The other issue I wanted to address was whether meaning matters, though the person who responded most specifically to that query answered it more than 45 years ago and died nearly seven years ago. Susan Sontag's "Against Interpretation" struck me like a lightning bolt this week, probably quite annoyingly since I imagine many out there had read it long ago and I'm cheerleading it as if I just found out the world was round and am telling everyone I know. Sontag quotes a famous saying by D.H. Lawrence that I had heard before that might be the most concise warning against reading too much into art, be it literature or film: "Never trust the teller, trust the tale.” Sontag drops his line into Part 6, which I quoted a couple times in my review. She also writes there, "Interpretation, based on the highly dubious theory that a work of art is composed of items of content, violates art. It makes art into an article for use, for arrangement into a mental scheme of categories." Sontag carries it further, questioning (in 1966 remember) what role criticism should take. In Part 8, Sontag wrote:
"What kind of criticism, of commentary on the arts, is desirable today? For I am not saying that works of art are ineffable, that they cannot be described or paraphrased. They can be. The question is how. What would criticism look like that would serve the work of art, not usurp its place?
What is needed, first, is more attention to form in art. If excessive stress on content provokes the arrogance of interpretation, more extended and more thorough descriptions of form would silence. What is needed is a vocabulary — a descriptive, rather than prescriptive, vocabulary — for forms. The best criticism, and it is uncommon, is of this sort that dissolves considerations of content into those of form.…
Equally valuable would be acts of criticism which would supply a really accurate, sharp, loving description of the appearance of a work of art. This seems even harder to do than formal analysis."
Her essay really builds up a head of steam, so by the time she reaches Part 9, Sontag's words ignite a virtual bonfire of ideas, ideas that she had placed on paper decades earlier that I'd said and thought often before without knowing her essay existed. Part 9 added more to contemplate:
"Interpretation takes the sensory experience of the work of art for granted, and proceeds from there. This cannot be taken for granted, now. Think of the sheer multiplication of works of art available to every one of us, superadded to the conflicting tastes and odors and sights of the urban environment that bombard our senses. Ours is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience.…
What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more.
Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art, much less to squeeze more content out of the work than is already there. Our task is to cut back content so that we can see the thing at all.
The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art — and, by analogy, our own experience — more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means."
"Against Interpretation" is an essay divided in 10 sections, though Sontag's last section consists of a single sentence calling for "an erotics of art." As I've said, I've never been one who spent much time trying to decipher a film's meaning. As I read Sontag's essay, the words sounded like an echo of my present sent from someone else's past. When Sontag added how overburdened her senses were — in the early to mid-1960s — compared to the overload now, it was as if I'd found a holy text by accident — but I promised you a punchline and I will give it to you, but first I'm going to share all the friends kind enough to contribute to this with thoughts on Last Year at Marienbad, films they love but can explain, style vs. substance, etc. Thanks to all who replied. Here they are, in alphabetical order:
"I would offer Syndromes and a Century as a movie that defies conventional understanding yet totally transported and transformed me: I left the theater in an elated state, but not sure how I got there. Couldn't begin to tell you what it 'means': there's no 'story' in the usual sense, yet I knew I was in the presence of a masterful filmmaker casting a spell I didn't want broken. Apitchapong Weerasethakul's films are both abstract and down to earth, so that they never feel pretentious the way, say, the late (Theo) Angelopoulos often did, where every gorgeous frame asked you to admire his (sometimes ponderous) brilliance. But of course many people find these Thai films baffling and boring. Chacun a son gout."
"Great art fills you with awe and wonder — whether it’s through substance, a particular style (the hallmark of a great artist, who may eventually seem like a friend on the same mental wavelength as you) or usually some combination of both. Being able to explain it eventually helps, but ultimately art is an emotional experience that changes you or takes you to a different place. If you are in the same frame of mind afterward as you were at the beginning, it’s probably not great art."
(1) “Why does Movie X work for me, but not for Critic A or others?” Because something “working” is a two-way street between the text and each member of the audience. We all have movies we love that we know we shouldn’t, and we all have movies we greatly admire
but dislike. There’s no accounting for taste.(2) “How can a director…have either fans who think he walks on water or people such as myself who mock him mercilessly but seemingly few who look at him dispassionately from the middle ground?” In the case of Lars von Trier, it’s because he’s an agitator; his work is designed to provoke extreme reactions, and he wants you to either love or hate his movies — and I think he’d actually prefer you hate his work. (I’m actually on the dispassionate middle ground with him.) And remember that critics have agendas, too; some are simply provocateurs. More generally, directors/authors make connections with some people and not with others.
(3) “Does the magic reside in the movies or within ourselves?” Yes! The best critics don’t merely provide summary judgment; they show you how something worked or didn’t work for them. Essentially, they’re articulating and supporting a deeply personal reaction.
"'Substance' is such an abstract term when it comes to any discussion of the movies; I suppose, if you go by the conventional definition, Amistad has substance, whereas Bringing Up Baby does not…but does anyone reading this regard the Spielberg entry as the superior example of the filmmaker's craft? I think you need to accept each and every film on its own terms, and judge them based on how well they succeed in achieving their own objectives; you can't measure them all by the same scale, and it's probably a mistake to use subject matter, or even stylistic aesthetics, as your guide in determining the worth of any particular enterprise. There isn't a particular 'type' of film that I'm more inclined to like more than any other — you take them all on an individual basis (in reference to Marienbad, which I haven't seen, there are some very oblique films — The Tree of Life is a recent example — that have really connected with me…whereas others have left me absolutely cold.) That's the nature of the beast — whether it's gourmet cooking from a Five-Star Chef, or a damn good cheeseburger, a good eat is a good eat."
"I've always been a big believer in the idea that style is substance. I like this quote I found in the comments section of a Jim Emerson blog post: 'Style is supposed to express content, dammit — not disguise a lack of it! The meaning of a film is in what these images on the screen (and don't forget the sounds!) do to you while you experience them. (As you so eloquently put it: a film is about what happens to you when you're watching it.) If you ask me, we should stop seeing style and content as separate entities. In a good film, they're a natural unity.' I understand that this person is using 'content' instead of 'substance,' but I thought it still applied here. In fact, I liked it so much I used it as one of my blog's epigraphs."
"I, too, like Last Year at Marienbad. I like Delphine Seyrig. The formal garden. The chorus line of cypresses. It had the order and mystery of a de Chirico painting. I've often wondered why Pauline Kael and Manny Farber were so tough on it. But I saw it in the '70s, when it was an artifact of another civilization and not an expression of contemporary weltanschauung.
"When Pauline begged to be disinvited to the "Come-Dressed-as-the-Sick-Soul-of-Europe Parties" and Manny described the star of La Notte as 'Monica Unvital,' they were fighting a stealth battle against the New York intellectuals who assumed that film art came from Europe. (Manny and Pauline both grew up in the Bay Area and were somewhat suspicious of East Coast intellectuals. They saw art in American movies. My hunch is part of their irritation at the more Symbolist of the French and Italian new wave was because the intellectual quarterlies didn't respect American movies. Interestingly, Susan Sontag — who was raised in North Hollywood! — was one of those NY intellectuals they railed against.)
"As to the basic question: When we go to films we project ourselves and values on the screen. The beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
"Malick represents pure visual storytelling, which I find exciting as long as there are no lava lamps or dinosaurs."
"Last Year really builds on its predecessor, Hiroshima Mon Amour, which was a collaboration between Resnais and Margeurite Duras, the screenwriter/novelist. It kind of pushes the techniques of Hiroshima to the next level, juxtaposing elliptical or poetic editing and voiceover to create something very close to an experimental or puzzle film. I admire it more than I like it, and I think some of the people who made fun of it at the time as a film that was flattering art house audiences for 'getting' it when there was nothing to get might have had a point. It's mainly a stylistic and atmospheric exercise, I think, ultimately far less effective than Hiroshima because it's not rooted in psychological and historical specifics. It's a bit more aware of itself as a tour-de-force, as an attempt to top what the director had done before. It verges on self-parody rather often, and Resnais is not known for his humor, so I suspect most of this is unintentional."
"It doesn't take much for people to disagree about a movie, and that's partly because there's always so much to like or dislike: the story and the dialogue, the tone of the cinematography, the settings and costumes, the actors and their performances, the director's point of view. The closeness or distance of what's onscreen from your sensibility, and then how you feel about that. And it's complicated — loving a movie and respecting it are two different things. I don't care for Citizen Kane and I love Myra Breckinridge. I can't defend this preference on any sort of critical grounds…I know intellectually that Kane has all the virtues of script, acting, art direction, photography, and theme ('meaning,' in other words) and that Myra is an incoherent mess. But we don't evaluate movies intellectually. More than any other art form, they're an experience, and no two people have the same experience, even of the same event."
"I was once in a play called Slow Love. It was written by an Australian man who had epilepsy. He envisioned his work to come in a series of staged images that would be framed by lights up — some kind of abstract action — blackout. This would repeat maybe a hundred times to make up the content of the play. Of the many referenced works in the play was Last Year at Marienbad, which was quoted throughout. I think in the play it was meant to mirror what the writer was feeling, about the echoing of brief but substantial, memorable images. I suppose that film, therefore, does much of what every other art form does — it can be both abstract and entertaining. I think ultimately there is some kind of deeper meaning people take from even the most abstract works. It probably isn't a shared experience, the way it would be with a more accessible, universal story. In the end, I think it comes down to you, on that
day, as to whether the film will piss you off or pull you in. I was far more moved and intrigued by what Von Trier did in Melancholia that what Malick did in Tree of Life, perhaps because Tree of Life felt like a singular experience of a certain kind of family — whereas Melancholia (Take Shelter, too) was closer to what I think life is really like in 2011. But I guess I'd have to say that, ultimately, the magic resides within us — and depending on how much energy we have that particular day to struggle with a meaningless film. This year seemed to offer up many fairly abstract, challenging stories that sort of meant what you wanted them to mean. But too many of those and you tune them out, reaching instead for the ones that tell stories that aren't open to interpretation. Marienbad stands out because it was one of a kind. It's hard to find anything that is one of a kind now.
The great thing about it all, I guess, is that there is room for both — frustratingly opaque art and pleasingly transparent entertainment."
"All I can say is that I do think movies cast a kind of spell when they work for you. I've seen movies under different circumstances and have had totally different reactions, other times my attempt at rediscovering something I thought maybe I was unprepared for only leaves to the depressing realization I was 'right' the first time."
"At the risk of polarizing some people here, I'm one of those biased moviegoers who thinks movies always need to be entertaining and — for the most part — have a plot, in order for me to be invested. At times I'm willing to bend the rules, of course; whenever kids at my college campus tell me they can't finish 2001 because it has no story, I always try to tell them that the film is meant to be an experience, full of ideas, and that a plot doesn't emerge until two-thirds into the movie…but at least it's telling a story. On second
thought, I guess Killer of Sheep didn't really have a story at all, but you know what? Burnett still drew me into that world. I got a feel for that environment. So, I love that movie too.Again, though, being — for the most part — a proponent of movies with stories, I do have a bit of problem with movies that are all about exercises in style. This is why I have a more difficult time appreciating Godard than some of my peers in the blogosphere, or why I can't watch Soderbergh's Ocean remakes. The actors are clearly having fun on the screen, but I'm not having any fun watching them.
Again, though, there's always that Killer of Sheep-style of filmmaking: slow, slow case studies of slow characters. Uncle Boonmee and Gus Van Sant's Last Days both come to mind, and I love those movies, too. But those are the films in which all entertainment value derives from exploring those slow, introverted characters through repeated viewings. I had an even easier time appreciating Melancholia and Tree of Life because they have more of a narrative to them, though they're clearly also exercises in style.
I guess what I'm trying to say is: if I were a director, I'd want to be a storyteller, first and foremost. Have a good style, sure, but good substance first. Some of you guys are bringing up Howard Hawks, whom I do like, but the fact that most of his movies *are* mostly just full of talky sequences of camaraderie and bonding without much plot to them is probably the reason why you don't hear me raving about his work as much as others. Maybe that's why I enjoy John Ford's movies a little more.
By now, it certainly will seem anticlimactic, but as I previewed, I also stumbled upon an essay Susan Sontag wrote. Titled "Thirty Years Later," the essay was published in the Summer 1996 edition of The Threepenny Review to mark the reissuing of Against Interpretation on its 30th anniversary. What Sontag had to say as she looked backward began promising enough.
"The great revelation for me had been the cinema: I felt particularly marked by the films of Godard and Bresson. I wrote more about cinema than about literature, not because I loved movies more than novels but because I loved more new movies than new novels. Of course, I took the supremacy of the greatest literature for granted. (And assumed my readers did, too.) But it was clear to me that the film-makers I admired were, quite simply, better and more original artists than nearly all of the most acclaimed novelists; that, indeed, no other art was being so widely practiced at such a high level. One of my happiest achievements in the years that I was doing the writing collected in Against Interpretation is that no day passed without my seeing at least one, sometimes two or three, movies. Most of them were 'old.' My gluttonous absorption in cinema history only reinforced my gratitude for certain new films which (along with my roll-call of favorites from the silent era and the 1930s) I saw again and again, so exalting did they seem to me in their freedom and inventiveness of narrative method, their sensuality and gravity and beauty."
Then the essay turns decidedly toward the pessimistic side, not that you could argue with her much even though that is now almost 16 years old. "The world in which these essays were written no longer exists," Sontag wrote. "Instead of the utopian moment, we live in a time which is experienced as the end — more exactly, just past the end — of every ideal. (And therefore of culture: there is no possibility of true culture without altruism.) An illusion of the end, perhaps — and not more illusory than the conviction of thirty years ago that we were on the threshold of a great positive transformation of culture and society. No, not an illusion, I think." If Sontag felt this way in 1996, imagine what she'd think of our world today where the GOP presidential candidates try to outcrazy each other, little of good, substantive policy can be created in D.C. since both parties in Congress would rather do nothing that let the opposing team take partial credit for a "win" and, though film lovers such as myself hate to admit it, while television played a primary role in the debasing of our culture and still does with the various Real Housewives and Jersey Shores, the best shows that TV produces regularly exceed in quality the best in movies whether the films come from Hollywood studios or are produced independently. What grabbed me the most in "Thirty Years Later" were when Sontag wrote these words:
"So I can’t help viewing the writing collected in Against Interpretation with a certain irony. Still, I urge the reader not to lose sight of — it may take some effort of imagination — the larger context of admirations in which these essays were written. To call for an “erotics of art” did not mean to disparage the role of the critical intellect. To laud work condescended to, then, as 'popular' culture did not mean to conspire in the repudiation of high culture and its burden of seriousness, of depth. I thought I’d seen through certain kinds of facile moralism, and was denouncing them in the name of a more alert, less complacent seriousness. What I didn’t understand (I was surely not the right person to understand this) is that seriousness itself was in the early stages of losing credibility in the culture at large, and that some of the more transgressive art I was enjoying would reinforce frivolous, merely consumerist transgressions. Thirty years later, the undermining of standards of seriousness is almost complete, with the ascendancy of a culture whose most intelligible, persuasive values are drawn from the entertainment industries. Now the very idea of the serious (and the honorable) seems quaint, 'unrealistic,' to most people; and when allowed, as an arbitrary decision of temperament, probably unhealthy, too."
Surely, she can't be serious. I think she was and her name was Susan, not Shirley. It was enough to break my momentary spell. While I certainly agree with much of what Sontag wrote, where would we be without a little levity? (Watching nothing but Terrence Malick films, he said, followed by a rim shot from the drummer.)
I wish that I had had more time to organize these posts more coherently and given the number of comments I've received on the first two parts, I doesn't seemed to have sparked the conversation I'd hoped for either. Oh, well. Do you all think there was a subliminal message in Airplane!?
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Labels: Books, Coens, Criticism, Dunst, Godard, Hawks, John Ford, Kael, Malick, Oliver Stone, Resnais, Sean Penn, Soderbergh, Spielberg, Van Sant, Von Sydow, von Trier
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Saturday, March 10, 2012
Bringing Up Babs
By Damian Arlyn
I remember working in the video store one day when a regular customer came in to check out a few titles. He glanced at the enormous flat screen we had behind the counter, saw Barbra Streisand belting out some catchy show tune and uttered a question I got asked a lot in those days. "What are you watching?" he said. "Hello, Dolly!" I answered. He smiled, shook his head and exclaimed, "See, now, here's where I break with the stereotype. I'm a gay guy who doesn't like Barbra Streisand." I just laughed and replied, "That's OK. I'm a straight guy who does."
And it's true. Although she is by no means my favorite actress (nor would I ever see a film simply because she's in it), I happen to enjoy watching her onscreen. Funny Girl, Meet the Fockers and the aforementioned Hello, Dolly! are all films I love, but my favorite movie of hers would have to be the hilarious What's Up, Doc? which celebrates its 40th anniversary today. Nowhere is Babs' gift for comedy and sheer charisma on display better than in this film. They even find an excuse to show off her incredible voice once or twice: namely, in the film's opening and ending credits where she sings Cole Porter's "You're The Top" as well as the scene at the piano when she croons a few lines of "As Time Goes By."
It also doesn't hurt that What's Up, Doc? happens to be a really great movie. Hot off of his success with The Last Picture Show, Peter Bogdanovich originally conceived it as a remake of Howard Hawks' Bringing Up Baby, but wisely decided (much as Lawrence Kasdan would do later with his film noir tribute Body Heat) to use Hawks' film merely as an inspiration rather than a template and to give What's Up, Doc? its own identity. As a result, it comes off more as a love letter to screwball comedies in general as well as to iconic Warner Bros. feature films (such as Casablanca) and classic animated shorts. Hence, when Barbra's character, Judy Maxwell, is introduced first to Ryan O'Neal's nerdy Howard Bannister, she's seen munching on a carrot a la Bugs Bunny and/or Clark Gable from It Happened One Night. With her brash, fast-talking, trouble-making personality and his stiff, bespectacled, long-suffering demeanor, the two leads clearly are based on Baby's Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. (Interestingly, Streisand shared a best actress Oscar with Ms. Hepburn only four years earlier in one of the Academy's rare ties. Streisand won for her film debut in Funny Girl while Hepburn earned her third best actress trophy for The Lion in Winter. Hepburn's prize was her second consecutive win in the category having taken the 1967 Oscar for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.) Aside from Judy constantly getting Howard into trouble and a reminiscent coat-tearing gag, the similarities between Doc and Baby essentially end there.
Also, What's Up, Doc? lacks a leopard. Instead the chaos revolves around four identical carrying cases containing such varied items as clothes, rocks, jewels and classified government documents. When moviegoers first see the quartet of cases at the start of Doc, it's the filmmakers signaling audiences that much confusion and hilarity awaits. At this point I have to confess that, although I've seen the film at least a dozen times, I cannot to this day follow which case is which throughout the course of the film. Every time I sit down to watch, I swear I'm going to keep track of the cases, but I always give up about 20 minutes into it. I take some comfort, however, from the fact that even the great Buck Henry, in the process of re-writing the screenplay, reportedly phoned Bogdanovich to say, "I've lost one of the suitcases. It's in the hotel somewhere, but I don't know where I put it."
The gags come fast and furious in What's Up, Doc? More than a decade before Bruce Willis and Bogdanovich's ex-girlfriend Cybill Shepherd resurrected rapid-fire banter on TV's Moonlighting, Streisand and O'Neal fire a barrage of zingers at each other so quickly that you're almost afraid to laugh for fear you'll miss the next one. The behind-the-scenes team also populates the What's Up, Doc? universe with a whole host of kooky characters, each bringing his or her unique comic flair to those roles. There isn't a single boring person in What's Up, Doc? Everyone (right down to the painter who drops his cigar into the bucket) amuses. At the top of the heap resides the great Madeline Kahn in her feature film debut as Howard's frumpy fiancée Eunice Burns. Two years before she joined Mel Brooks' cinematic comedy troupe, she proved to the world her status as one of the funniest women ever to grace the silver screen. Another Mel Brooks' regular, Kenneth Mars, plays Hugh Simon, providing yet one more strangely accented flamboyant nutball to his immense repertoire. A very young Randy Quaid, a brief M. Emmet Walsh and a very annoyed John Hillerman also show up in hilarious bit parts.
All of this anarchy culminates in a spectacular car chase through the streets of San Francisco that actually rivals the one from Bullitt. Apparently it took four weeks to shoot, cost $1 million (¼ of the film's budget) and even managed to get the filmmakers in trouble with the city for destroying some of its property without permission. Nevertheless, Bogdanovich pulls out all the stops in creating this over-the-top action/slapstick set piece that overflows with both thrills and laughs. When watching it, one can't help but be reminded that physical comedy on this grand of a scale doesn't even get attempted anymore. One wishes another director would resurrect the kind of awesome stunt-comedy on display here and in The Pink Panther series.
The film's dénouement takes place in a courtroom where an embittered, elderly judge (the brilliant Liam Dunn) hears the arguments of everyone involved and tries to make sense of it all. Howard's attempt to explain only serves to frustrate and confuse the judge further and results in this gem of an exchange that owes more than a little bit to Abbott & Costello's "Who's on First?":
HOWARD: First, there was this trouble between me and Hugh.
JUDGE: You and me?
HOWARD: No, not you. Hugh.
HUGH: I am Hugh.
JUDGE: You are me?
HUGH: No, I am Hugh.
JUDGE: Stop saying that. [to bailiff] Make him stop saying that!
HUGH: Don't touch me, I'm a doctor.
JUDGE: Of what?
HUGH: Music.
JUDGE: Can you fix a hi-fi?
HUGH: No, sir.
JUDGE: Then shut up!
The tag line for What's Up, Doc? read: "A screwball comedy. Remember them?" Well, whether people remembered screwball comedy or simply discovered it for the first time, they certainly embraced the film as it was an enormous success upon its release. It took in $66 million in North America alone and became the third-highest grossing film of the year. Since The Last Picture Show was released in late '71 and Doc came out in early '72, Bogdanovich had two hugely successful films playing in theaters at the same time. Unfortunately, his career, which had just started to rise, also had neared its peak. Although he would follow Doc with Paper Moon his directing career would only see sporadic critical successes after that such as Saint Jack and Mask. He even filmed Texasville, the sequel to The Last Picture Show, but he'd never again see the kind of commercial or critical success he had achieved in the early 1970s. Bogdanovich would eventually end up working in television, often as an actor such as his long recurring role as Dr. Elliot Kupferberg, psychiatrist to Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Bracco) on The Sopranos. The most recent feature film he directed was 2001's fairly well-received The Cat's Meow starring Kirsten Dunst as Marion Davies and Edward Herrmann as William Randolph Hearst. Based on a play of the same name, The Cat's Meow concerned a real-life mystery in 1924 Hollywood involving the shooting death of writer/producer/director Thomas Ince (Cary Elwes) on Hearst's yacht.
When Bogdanovich was good, he was great and What's Up, Doc? is, in my opinion, the jewel in his crown. It made a once-forgotten genre popular again, it jump-started a lot of comic careers and it reminded us all that love meaning never having to say we're sorry is the dumbest thing we've ever heard.
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Labels: 70s, Abbott and Costello, Bogdanovich, Buck Henry, Cary, Cole Porter, Cybill Shepherd, Dunst, Gable, Hawks, K. Hepburn, L. Kasdan, Mel Brooks, Movie Tributes, R. Quaid, Streisand, The Sopranos, Willis
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Monday, January 23, 2012
The Trier of strife
By Edward Copeland
As Lars von Trier's Melancholia opens, I thought for a moment that the DVD I was watching wasn't his movie but some sort of mashup of images merging von Trier's film, Terrence Malick's more cosmological portions of The Tree of Life and perhaps a little Return of the Jedi thrown in for good measure. (How else do you explain scenes of Kirsten Dunst cavorting beneath a dark hood and sending lightning bolts from her fingers unless it's an homage to Emperor Palpatine?) As for Lars von Trier himself, Melancholia provides more evidence that this emperor has no clothes or, at best, covers his privates with a fig leaf occasionally.
I haven't seen the complete Lars von Trier filmography. I haven't even disliked all of his films I've seen (I did like Dancer in the Dark) and someday I actually would like to watch The Kingdom. I also admit that the idea behind The Five Obstructions intrigues me, since it's not a traditional remake and Martin Scorsese plans to take part in a new version of the experiment.
Now that I've said a few nice things about von Trier, let's get to my problems with the Danish director: Must he make most things such a chore? It's miraculous Emily Watson delivered such a good performance in the teeth-gnashing Breaking the Waves. I think the course for my cinematic relationship with von Trier was set the first time I saw a work by him — Zentropa. My good friend Matt Zoller Seitz summed up that film best when he said he kept expecting Max von Sydow's voicover to start intoning, "You are getting very sleepy" because that's the overriding way Zentropa affected me. It only lacked the image of a swaying pocket watch to put me in a hypnotic trance, but not in the good way some films can but like professional tricksters do where afterward you recall absolutely nothing that transpired.
Last year, von Trier gave us Melancholia, which has been on an awards and nominations spree since the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, hailed by those who confuse piss-poor screenplays lacking the depth of '80s TV perfume commercials as profound, and believe half-baked ideas and cookie-cutter metaphors are insightful. Melancholia reaps rewards from the type of critical reviews that drive me up the wall. While it's true that all opinions about movies are subjective, so no one's positive or negative take on a film can be wrong, these types of assessments put that truism to the test. When boiled down, these write-ups scream, "I have no idea what [insert film here] is about — it must be genius." When you read between those laudatory lines, you detect the whiff of people not being truthful for fear they'll be ridiculed by the intelligentsia if they don't lionize movies such as Melancholia.
Melancholia revolves around two sisters — Justine (Kirsten Dunst) and Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg). The film divides itself in two halves, one devoted to each sibling. Part I is titled "Justine" and details the reception being thrown for her and new husband Michael (Alexander Skarsgård) at the mansion belonging to Claire and her husband John (Kiefer Sutherland).
Many consume too much liquor and say things they shouldn't. All sorts of strangeness seems to be transpiring. Justine's boss (Stellan Skarsgård) interrupts the beginning of the reception to try to get all the guests to think of a tagline for his ad campaign. Justine keeps making excuses to disappear and notices a bright star in the sky which John, a noted astronomer, identifies as Antares — only the star eventually vanishes. John explains it's because the "rogue planet" Melancholia has passed in front of it, but he doesn't get around to explaining that to Justine until Part II so her mood just gets worse. One of the many things that amuses me about the pomposity of Melancholia stems from the notion that a new planet would be discovered by astronomers on Earth and they'd name it Melancholia. That's simply because whenever people on Earth find new planets and label them, they always give them cheery names such as Melancholia. I assume it resides in the small Woeisme galaxy that also includes the planets Anhedonia, Fullofhimself and Onemoodysonofabitch.
At least the wedding reception half of the movie includes the two most welcome presences in the film: John Hurt as Justine's sloshed father Dexter and Charlotte Rampling as her bitter, divorced mother Gaby who makes a speech about why she didn't attend the wedding because of her opposition to the institution of marriage. Her character eventually locks herself in a bathroom (perhaps hoping that no one noticed she agreed to appear in the movie) alienating hosts John and Claire because the reception's strict scheduling requires cutting the cake at a certain time. John knocks on the door and pleads with Gaby to come downstairs to view the slicing of the dessert. "When Justine took her first crap on the potty, I wasn't there. When she had her first sexual intercourse, I wasn't there. So give me a break, please, with all your fucking rituals," Gaby tells John through the door.
All of the chaos, much of which Justine causes herself, prompts the wedding planner, played by director/iconoclast Udo Kier, to declare, "She ruined my wedding! I will not look at her!" Besides being badly written, this section reminded me of two vastly superior films. Toward the beginning, the sculpted trees arranged in rows in front of the mansion brought to mind Alain Resnais' incomparable classic Last Year at Marienbad, in which I've been immersed of late in preparation for an upcoming tribute. The second, and more generalized, similarity belongs to a very good work by one of von Trier's fellow Dogme 95 practitioners, Thomas Vinterberg's 1998 film The Celebration. What happened to Vinterberg anyway?
In Part II, titled "Claire," Justine has sunk deep into depression, presumably because she assumed that she was the sole lead of the movie and now her sister has taken over. Claire, who in Part I was annoying and a bit high maintenance about the details of a wedding reception (Justine didn't even throw the bouquet fast enough for her schedule, so Claire took it from her and tossed it herself), now has become obsessed with this rogue planet Melancholia. John assures her that while Melancholia now can be seen by the naked eye, it will pass Earth safely and she needn't fear collision. Claire isn't convinced and fears for the lives of John, Justine and her son Leo (Cameron Spurr). It's an interesting coincidence that two films released in 2011 — this and Another Earth — should both have Earth-like planets appear in the sky out of nowhere, except Another Earth, with a budget of less than $200,000 and no major stars versus Melancholia's $9 million budget and well-known cast, told a better, more moving story and grossed almost exactly half what Melancholia has in the U.S.
John keeps on a brave face for his wife, but he has his concerns as well. Justine thinks that the possibility of the end of the world sounds sort of cool. The two sisters have one exchange of dialogue so ridiculous that I actually laughed out loud at it because it reminded me of the scene in Woody Allen's Love and Death between Woody's Boris and Diane Keaton's Sonja the night before he's going to fight a duel. Boris confesses his love as they discuss death and God, but somehow the talk keeps coming back to closeups of Woody rambling about the harvest and various forms of wheat. "The crops, the grains. Fields of rippling wheat. Wheat. All there is in life is wheat.…Oh, wheat! Lots of wheat! Fields of wheat. A tremendous amount of wheat!…Yellow wheat. Red wheat. Wheat with feathers. Cream of wheat."
I couldn't believe that someone actually put down the Melancholia exchange between Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg in IMDb's memorable quotes section.
JUSTINE: The earth is evil. We don't need to grieve for it.
CLAIRE: What?
JUSTINE: Nobody will miss it.
CLAIRE: But where would Leo grow?
JUSTINE: All I know is, life on earth is evil.
CLAIRE: Then maybe life somewhere else.
JUSTINE: But there isn't.
CLAIRE: How do you know?
JUSTINE: Because I know things.
CLAIRE: Oh yes, you always imagined you did.
JUSTINE: I know we're alone.
CLAIRE: I don't think you know that at all.
JUSTINE: 678. The bean lottery. Nobody guessed the amount of beans in the bottle.
CLAIRE: No, that's right.
JUSTINE: But I know. 678.
CLAIRE:Well, perhaps. But what does that prove?
JUSTINE: That I know things. And when I say we're alone, we're alone. Life is only on earth, and not for long.
What differentiates the sequence in Love and Death from the one in Melancholia though (besides the humor that is) is that Allen's 1975 spoof of Russian literature actually has more significant things to say on the big philosophical issues than Melancholia does. The comedy holds deeper thoughts in its hilarious head than the emptiness of the Melancholia vacuum. Trust me: Rent Love and Death instead of this von Trier time-waster. You'll be better off.
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Labels: 10s, Diane Keaton, Dunst, John Hurt, K. Sutherland, Malick, Rampling, Remakes, Resnais, Scorsese, Von Sydow, von Trier, Woody
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Wednesday, May 02, 2007
What a tangled web they wove
By Edward Copeland
The first Spider-Man didn't do much for me. The visual effects seemed particularly fake and I just didn't get into it. Then along came Spider-Man 2 and I enjoyed the hell out of it. However, the third time is not the charm, namely because so many villains are piled on and the running time gets extended to such an unnatural extent, that the end result left me dissatisfied.
Not that there isn't a lot to like in Spider-Man 3, particularly in the comic (as in comedic) scenes involving J.K. Simmons as newspaper editor Jameson, a brief cameo by longtime Sam Raimi cohort Bruce Campbell and some great sequences involving the "bad" Peter Parker, infected by some type of organism from outer space.
Peter's college professor tells him that the organism seems to accentuate the attributes of the host it attaches itself to, and Parker already was beginning to have ego problems before his infection. He's enjoying being the toast of the town as Spider-Man, so much so that he fails to notice the career problems of his faithful girlfriend Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst). (Aside: I know that the New York portrayed in Spider-Man 3 bears only a cursory resemblance to the real city and I shouldn't expect it to follow the rules but Mary Jane's firing from her Broadway show after a slew of bad opening night reviews took me out of the film's reality. There are contracts to consider and surely the show's producers and director would have known there was a problem before opening night and I've never heard of a performer being replaced because of bad reviews while the show kept marching on.)
Peter's self-absorption eventually threatens his relationship with Mary Jane, but he's got plenty of other things to keep him occupied. Harry (James Franco) still blames him for the death of his Green Goblin father (Willem Dafoe) and is trying to repeat his father's experiments.
Meanwhile, a common criminal seeking to help his ailing daughter (a beefed-up Thomas Haden Church) becomes a dangerous adversary thanks to a strange scientific accident. (As Peter asks after his first encounter with the Sandman, "Where do all these guys come from?")
If that weren't enough, the aforementioned outer space goo turns Spidey into a dark-suited megalomaniac, which further alienates him from a rival photographer Eddie Brock (Topher Grace) who has an imaginary relationship with the model daughter (Bryce Dallas Howard) of a city police captain (James Cromwell). Later, once Peter frees himself of the organism, it unfortunately lands on Eddie, turning him into another archvillain named Venom.
As you can imagine from a brief synopsis this complicated, that's exactly how the film plays as well. It's just too much and with so many subplots and subtext (I forgot to mention that Sandman may be the person who killed Peter's uncle in the first film), the film ultimately proves more exhausting than entertaining. It's a shame, because there is a lot to like.
Tobey Maguire actually does some of his best work when Peter transforms from nice guy geek into the epitome of narcissistic self love. Raimi moves some scenes, particularly the funny ones, along well, but the rest get tiresome, especially some of the action sequences.
It's also worth noting that when you see out-of-control cranes bringing down tall New York buildings and clouds of Sandman dust flowing through the streets, the echoes of 9/11 are inescapable and uncomfortable. The script also has some fine ideas lurking beneath the surface involving bad luck versus bad choices and whether it's ever too late to make a new choice, but they get lost in the noise.
By the end, even though the climax telegraphs its payoff, you can see why they may have thought it necessary to include so many characters and elements, but I still think that Spider-Man 3 could have worked much better if the entire Sandman story had been jettisoned.
In the end, I liked Spider-Man 3 better than the first one, but Spider-Man 2 remains the best installment as far as I'm concerned.
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The first Spider-Man didn't do much for me. The visual effects seemed particularly fake and I just didn't get into it. Then along came Spider-Man 2 and I enjoyed the hell out of it. However, the third time is not the charm, namely because so many villains are piled on and the running time gets extended to such an unnatural extent, that the end result left me dissatisfied.
Not that there isn't a lot to like in Spider-Man 3, particularly in the comic (as in comedic) scenes involving J.K. Simmons as newspaper editor Jameson, a brief cameo by longtime Sam Raimi cohort Bruce Campbell and some great sequences involving the "bad" Peter Parker, infected by some type of organism from outer space.
Peter's college professor tells him that the organism seems to accentuate the attributes of the host it attaches itself to, and Parker already was beginning to have ego problems before his infection. He's enjoying being the toast of the town as Spider-Man, so much so that he fails to notice the career problems of his faithful girlfriend Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst). (Aside: I know that the New York portrayed in Spider-Man 3 bears only a cursory resemblance to the real city and I shouldn't expect it to follow the rules but Mary Jane's firing from her Broadway show after a slew of bad opening night reviews took me out of the film's reality. There are contracts to consider and surely the show's producers and director would have known there was a problem before opening night and I've never heard of a performer being replaced because of bad reviews while the show kept marching on.)
Peter's self-absorption eventually threatens his relationship with Mary Jane, but he's got plenty of other things to keep him occupied. Harry (James Franco) still blames him for the death of his Green Goblin father (Willem Dafoe) and is trying to repeat his father's experiments.
Meanwhile, a common criminal seeking to help his ailing daughter (a beefed-up Thomas Haden Church) becomes a dangerous adversary thanks to a strange scientific accident. (As Peter asks after his first encounter with the Sandman, "Where do all these guys come from?")
If that weren't enough, the aforementioned outer space goo turns Spidey into a dark-suited megalomaniac, which further alienates him from a rival photographer Eddie Brock (Topher Grace) who has an imaginary relationship with the model daughter (Bryce Dallas Howard) of a city police captain (James Cromwell). Later, once Peter frees himself of the organism, it unfortunately lands on Eddie, turning him into another archvillain named Venom.
As you can imagine from a brief synopsis this complicated, that's exactly how the film plays as well. It's just too much and with so many subplots and subtext (I forgot to mention that Sandman may be the person who killed Peter's uncle in the first film), the film ultimately proves more exhausting than entertaining. It's a shame, because there is a lot to like.
Tobey Maguire actually does some of his best work when Peter transforms from nice guy geek into the epitome of narcissistic self love. Raimi moves some scenes, particularly the funny ones, along well, but the rest get tiresome, especially some of the action sequences.
It's also worth noting that when you see out-of-control cranes bringing down tall New York buildings and clouds of Sandman dust flowing through the streets, the echoes of 9/11 are inescapable and uncomfortable. The script also has some fine ideas lurking beneath the surface involving bad luck versus bad choices and whether it's ever too late to make a new choice, but they get lost in the noise.
By the end, even though the climax telegraphs its payoff, you can see why they may have thought it necessary to include so many characters and elements, but I still think that Spider-Man 3 could have worked much better if the entire Sandman story had been jettisoned.
In the end, I liked Spider-Man 3 better than the first one, but Spider-Man 2 remains the best installment as far as I'm concerned.
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Labels: 00s, Bruce Campbell, Dafoe, Dunst, Franco, Raimi, Sequels
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Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Let them eat icing...
By Edward Copeland
...because the tasty topping is all you're going to get from this great-looking but empty biopic of Marie Antoinette, Sofia Coppola's truly bizarre followup to her exquisite Lost in Translation.
I don't say this lightly when I say that this film actually pales to the creaky 1938 W.S. Van Dyke version starring Norma Shearer, especially in the casting of Louis XVI. I like Jason Schwartzman, but Robert Morley's Oscar-nominated turn in the 1938 version is hilarious.
Coppola's 2006 version is a real headscratcher, tossing in anachronistic dialogue and music for no apparent reason. The music at times is so blaring that it's difficult to hear the dialogue, which is probably a good thing since when you can hear it, you expect someone to go, "Dude, where's my crown?"
You can't blame actors such as Schwartzman and Kirsten Dunst much since they really are just there to fill out the deservedly Oscar-winning costumes and character development is nonexistent. This saddens though in the case of Judy Davis, who is completely wasted, and Rip Torn, though he manages to get a few good moments as Louis XV.
The film also suffers with every character seeming to bring a different accent (or no accent) to the table. I'm glad I didn't catch this until it was on DVD, because watching it is quite laborious and it helps to be able to stop and start it again.
The whole enterprise is just puzzling. Whatever Coppola was setting out to do doesn't work, and that's before the dreaded Danny Huston shows up briefly as her older brother. If I ever doubted the ability of people to make deals with the devil, Huston's persistent appearances in film seems proof enough to me that it can happen. Huston turns 45 this year and, according to IMDb, never appeared in a film until 1995's Leaving Las Vegas, where he played the pivotal role of Bartender #2.
Since his first sizable role in a major release, 2003's 21 Grams, this painful-to-watch "actor" has appeared in 10 feature films, some of which succeeded in spite of his presence, others that failed because of it (see John Sayles' Silver City) and has two more features being prepared for release this year as well as the part of Samuel Adams in HBO's upcoming John Adams miniseries. His father John has been dead for a long time, so he's not pulling the strings and his half-sister Anjelica (who has talent) hasn't worked nearly as much as he has.
However, I can't blame Danny Huston for the mess that is Marie Antoinette. It would be a beautiful, mindboggling bore even if he weren't in it.
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...because the tasty topping is all you're going to get from this great-looking but empty biopic of Marie Antoinette, Sofia Coppola's truly bizarre followup to her exquisite Lost in Translation.
I don't say this lightly when I say that this film actually pales to the creaky 1938 W.S. Van Dyke version starring Norma Shearer, especially in the casting of Louis XVI. I like Jason Schwartzman, but Robert Morley's Oscar-nominated turn in the 1938 version is hilarious.
Coppola's 2006 version is a real headscratcher, tossing in anachronistic dialogue and music for no apparent reason. The music at times is so blaring that it's difficult to hear the dialogue, which is probably a good thing since when you can hear it, you expect someone to go, "Dude, where's my crown?"
You can't blame actors such as Schwartzman and Kirsten Dunst much since they really are just there to fill out the deservedly Oscar-winning costumes and character development is nonexistent. This saddens though in the case of Judy Davis, who is completely wasted, and Rip Torn, though he manages to get a few good moments as Louis XV.
The film also suffers with every character seeming to bring a different accent (or no accent) to the table. I'm glad I didn't catch this until it was on DVD, because watching it is quite laborious and it helps to be able to stop and start it again.
The whole enterprise is just puzzling. Whatever Coppola was setting out to do doesn't work, and that's before the dreaded Danny Huston shows up briefly as her older brother. If I ever doubted the ability of people to make deals with the devil, Huston's persistent appearances in film seems proof enough to me that it can happen. Huston turns 45 this year and, according to IMDb, never appeared in a film until 1995's Leaving Las Vegas, where he played the pivotal role of Bartender #2.
Since his first sizable role in a major release, 2003's 21 Grams, this painful-to-watch "actor" has appeared in 10 feature films, some of which succeeded in spite of his presence, others that failed because of it (see John Sayles' Silver City) and has two more features being prepared for release this year as well as the part of Samuel Adams in HBO's upcoming John Adams miniseries. His father John has been dead for a long time, so he's not pulling the strings and his half-sister Anjelica (who has talent) hasn't worked nearly as much as he has.
However, I can't blame Danny Huston for the mess that is Marie Antoinette. It would be a beautiful, mindboggling bore even if he weren't in it.
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Labels: 00s, A. Huston, Dunst, HBO, Huston, Judy Davis, Remakes, Rip Torn, Sayles
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Saturday, December 24, 2005
From the Vault: Bonnie Hunt
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED DEC. 10, 1995
Working with Robin Williams can go one of two ways: watching a one-man show or joining him at play. Thank goodness actress Bonnie Hunt's similar improvisational background (she started at Chicago's Second City) made her a ready partner for Williams, whether it be entertaining their young co-stars with routines of Jodie Foster's Nell character ordering food at a drive-through window or creating an alternate version of their new film Jumanji starring Mo and Tony, affectionately known as "the trailer park couple."
Hunt, who may be a more familiar face than name, has appeared in the Beethoven movies as well as last year's Only You. She also stars, produces and writes a CBS comedy called The Bonnie Hunt Show, which earned glowing reviews but is currently residing in hiatus land. The series is the second Hunt has attempted on CBS with David Letterman as executive producer.
"Dave's my pal. He's a dear friend of mine, like a brother to me and a wonderful business partner. The one thing we suffer from is the political agenda. It doesn't seem to be our nature."
Currently, Hunt's mind is on a different type of game — Jumanji, a sinister board game that is also the title of her new movie. When Hunt was growing up with her six siblings in Chicago, their games were Chutes and Ladders and Mousetrap, not a game that unleashes stampedes, monkeys and monsoons on a small, unsuspecting New England town.
"When I read the script, it reminded me a lot of The Wizard of Oz. I was so involved in it; my imagination was going crazy reading it. I thought it'd be nice to be involved in a film that's nice for the whole family to see."
Speaking of family, when Hunt briefly referred to her real-life husband, another reporter asked if he was in show business to which she replied, "Oh no — he's a good man." Co-starring with Hunt and Williams are two young performers — 13-year-old Kirsten Dunst (Interview With the Vampire, Little Women) and 10-year-old Bradley Pierce. Dunst was the main audience for the Nell impressions, and Pierce gave Hunt a bit of a realization about being an actress.
"To have children on the set, you realize that if a 10-year-old can do it, who are you kidding? It humbles you."
The playfulness she had with Williams was made evident when Williams interrupted the interview to play Tony to Hunt's Mo. Hunt said there's a different Jumanji that exists with the Tony and Mo characters. In order to keep Williams in character, director Joe Johnston agreed to give him one last take of each scene to go wild. That's where Tony and Mo came from.
"When you walk on a set with Robin, it's like you're at a barbecue in his back yard. He really is a joy."
What also pleased Hunt about Williams was his attitude, or lack thereof.
"Robin makes a lot of money. He's been around a long time, and people are so in awe of him when they see him walk down the street, but he just keeps it humble. You don't have to assume the star position in order to be treated like one."
The process of making Jumanji, as difficult as it could be involving special effects and the two weeks it took to film a storm scene, was relatively stress-free for Hunt.
"I found it probably one of the easiest jobs I've ever had because I love to improvise. To me, it's easier than doing the written word."
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Labels: Dunst, Interview, Jodie Foster, Letterman, Robin
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