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Hollywood vs. New York: Isn’t it romantic?

Jim Emerson

Kirby Ferguson of GoodieBag.tv (whom you may remember from “Trajan is the Movie Font”) has composed a spectacular image overture, “Hollywood vs. New York,” which he describes as, “Four decades of celluloid New York annihilation distilled into one musical montage.” Think of it as the opening of Woody Allen’s “Manhattan” without the spoken narration, even as it echoes in your memory: “Chapter One. He Adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion.” Uh, no, make that, “He romanticized it all out of proportion…”

(tip: @theauteursdaily)

Apatow’s Pineapple Express Oscar short

Jim Emerson

See? They think “Doubt” is a comedy, too….

And, as it goes on, they get deeper (the Apatow-produced “Step Brothers,” in which Rogen appears), and deeper (Franco as Scott Smith, in a romantic screen kiss with Harvey Milk), and deeper (Ram Jam!) and deeper (Janusz Kaminski) into the movies — just like their characters do in “Pineapple Express” itself.

“Oh yeah? Well, I criticize you back!”

Jim Emerson

If critics have become irrelevant, it has little to do with how many people say they pay attention to them or how many movies get press screened before they open. No, I submit it’s because so many people don’t even know what criticism is. They think it means “saying something bad.” Listen to the way they reason argue with one another. Watch the talking heads on TV. Listen to the little kids on the playground, or the couple in the bar having a marital spat. News reporting or blog commenting. It’s all the same. Critical thinking is not a value prized by our culture.

“I criticize something!”

“I disagree! So, I criticize you back! You are a criticizer!”

Never mind specifics, subtleties, reasons — they’re superfluous. All that matters is point-of-view, pro- something or anti- something else. A “debate” is merely a series of unrelated expressions of agreement or disagreement — usually expressed as disparaging characterizations of the other person. Republicans say this, Democrats say that, nothing else exists outside of their opinions. In this climate, that quotation from Daniel Dennett in the upper right column is indecipherable. See Monty Python’s “Argument Clinic” sketch, where argument is hopelessly confused with abuse and contradiction.

So, say whatever you want about “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” or President Obama or Michael Jackson or Bill Maher (to cite a few recent topics hereabouts). What matters is only whether the remarks are critical (in which case you will be characterized as a naysayer) or approving (in which case you will be characterized as praisegiver). In either case, what you actually said will be considered trivial by many, if it is considered (or noticed) at all.

The Dirty Harry scene

Jim Emerson

View image “Dirty Harry” (1971). This poster design wasn’t actually used for the original release, though Critic Gary Giddins noted that this was the “DH” poster on display in Eastwood’s Malpaso office in 1988. Typeface: Is that a Helvetica font?

In celebration of the DVD release of David Fincher’s Director’s Cut of “Zodiac” (only a few minutes longer — I’m not sure what has been changed or added see below), here’s a scripted scene, from an undated draft, that you won’t find in any version of the movie:

INT. MOVIE THEATER — NIGHT

Graysmith and Toschi sit in the dark while “Dirty Harry” unspools on the screen in front of them.

MOVIE POLICE CAPTAIN (O.S.)

He calls himself the Scorpio Killer. From what we understand, he’s planning on targeting a school bus full of children.

CLINT EASTWOOD (O.S.)

That’s not gonna happen.

THE AUDIENCE around Graysmith and Toschi burst into APPLAUSE.

ON SCREEN — The final scene. Clint has cornered the SCORPIO KILLER. Holding his Magnum .44 on him.

CLINT EASTWOOD (CONT’D)

… maybe I fired five bullets, maybe I fired six. In all the confusion, I lost count. So the only question is, do you feel lucky? Do you? Punk?

A beat. Apparently the Scorpio Killer feels lucky and goes for his gun. Clint blows his head off.

People cheer again. Graysmith and Toschi exchange a look…

And then BURST OUT HYSTERICALLY LAUGHING. At the absurdity of it all. They get some looks, but that only makes them laugh harder. They can’t stop. Doubled over. Tears run down their faces. A release of all the built up tension…

What a beautiful, ambiguous scene. I wonder if they could have made it work on film without having to spell it out.

In “Zodiac” itself, Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) goes into the lobby for a smoke, and Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) approaches him for the first time. He shyly introduces himself and, awkwardly, tells Toschi how the movie ended. Toschi makes a defensive remark along the lines of, “So much for due process…” The movie (like “No Country for Old Men”) never allows its characters or its audience even a vicarious catharsis. It’s all about not knowing — and having to live with the knowledge of not knowing…

UPDATE: 1 Day Later: January 9, 2008: Please see Zac’s comment below for exact notations on the differences between the theatrical and director’s cuts of “Zodiac.” (I cannot imagine a more fitting response to the movie than this kind of detective work!)

Also: In Fincher’s commentary on his movie’s “Dirty Harry” scene, he says that Toschi (on whom Steve McQueen modeled his performance in 1968’s “Bullitt”) was “amused” at the Hollywood take on Zodiac, and that people began to say things to him like, “Guess Dirty Harry solved your case!” Fincher suggests maybe the Eastwood movie provided a kind of artificial closure for the public that they would never get in life, and that perhaps they began to lose interest in Zodiac afterwards because of it. (Four “Dirty Harry” sequels were released between 1973 (“Magnum Force”] and 1988 [“The Dead Pool”].) Fincher recalls that, as he and his family were moving away from the Marin area in 1976 (when he was about 13 or 14), he wondered if they’d ever caught the Zodiac.

As Mr. Peel observes below, Eastwood’s voice and likeness are conspicuously absent from “Zodiac.” Even a shot of the standee in the lobby is chopped at the neck.

Mad Mel’s mouth

Jim Emerson

Mel Gibson with a player in his upcoming film “Apocalypto,” who is undoubtedly not of the Hebrew persuasion.

Drunk people say the darndest things. Like Mel Gibson, who was arrested on DUI charges Friday (blood alcohol level: 0.12; legal limit: 0.08). He seized the occasion, around three in the morning, to offer the arresting officers his assessment of the role of Jewry in world affairs. And, really, who wouldn’t, under the circumstances? Field sobriety tests present splendid opportunities to expound on a range of subjects, especially if you can’t focus on any one of them for too terribly long. You’ve kind of got a captive audience (or vice-versa), and if the cops will listen and record what you say, what a handy way to organize your religious and political opinions before they put you in a detox cell! According to the incident report obtained by AOL’s TMZ.com and summarized in the New York Daily News:

The “Passion of the Christ” director repeatedly said, “My life is f—-d,” according to the report by Los Angeles County Deputy James Mee… […]

“F—–g Jews. The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world,” Mee’s report quotes him as saying.

“Are you a Jew?” Gibson asked the deputy, according to the report.

The actor also berated the deputy, threatening, “You motherf—-r. I’m going to f— you,” according to Mee’s report.

The actor also told the cop he “owns Malibu” and would spend all his money “to get even with me,” Mee said in his report.

TMZ quoted a law enforcement source as saying Gibson noticed a female sergeant on the scene and yelled at her, “What do you think you’re looking at, sugar t–s?”

Deputy Mee then wrote an eight-page report detailing of the incident, but higher-ups in the sheriff’s department felt it was too “inflammatory” to release and would merely serve to incite “Jewish hatred,” TMZ said.

(Note: Officer Mee’s last name is not a traditional Hebraic one.) TMZ.com, which broke the story and the allegations of a police cover-up of Gibson’s Jew-hating tantrum, reports that Malibu police had stopped Gibson two other times for DUIs — three years ago and last year — but let him slide. Not Friday, though.

Everybody and her pedicurist has been weighing in on this, but the first thing I thought of was how alcohol loosens the inhibitions that usually prevent people from saying what they really feel. Drunken free-speech probably more accurately reflects someone’s true attitudes than sober, publicist-crafted press statements. Gibson has apologized, saying he has a problem with alcohol. But it sounds to me like he has a bit more of a problem with Jews. And as Albert Finney said in John Huston’s film of “Under the Volcano”: “There are some things you can’t apologize for.” A commenter over at Anne Thompson’s Hollywood Reporter Risky Biz Blog sums up my own feelings about Mel’s Latest Disgrace:

Wow, that booze is pretty potent stuff. Like Mel Gibson, I can say that some of my best friends are Jews. It’s quite disturbing to think that I might denounce them with obscenities and blood-libel accusations if I drank too much alcohol.

Jeepers.

Yeah. Jeepers creepers.

MEL UPDATE (8/1/06): Mel Gibson issued another apology (this time to Jews — oops, he forgot the first time), asking for forgiveness, and announcing that he will check into rehab. We assume he means the Shylock Center for Jew Abuse, but maybe not. Classic stuff from the horse’s… mouth: “There is no excuse, nor should there be any tolerance, for anyone who thinks or expresses any kind of anti-Semitic remark…. [Note: It’s the remark that is inexusable, whether silently thought or said aloud, not the anti-Semitism itself.] But please know from my heart that I am not an anti-Semite. I am not a bigot. Hatred of any kind goes against my faith.” And yet… hatred of any kind is almost always said to go against any faith — and yet, it’s that same faith that people use to justify their hatred. Maybe Mel needs to detox on whatever virulent strain of renegade Catholicism he’s infected with…

12 writers, 12 films: MSN’s Best Movies of the Decade

Jim Emerson

MSN’s Dave McCoy writes:

Saying that we’ve come up with the 12 best films of the decade is pretty hilarious when you get right down to it. You can’t take the thousands of films released in the past 10 years and say, “Yes, these by far represent the greatest cinema had to offer!” Hell, if you quizzed the 12 of us right now, we’d probably give you completely different lists than the ones we delivered in early December 2009. But, you can’t say it isn’t fun, right?

This reminds me: How the hell did I manage to omit Laurent Cantet’s 2001 “Time Out”? You can find the aggregate ballot results here, individual contributors’ lists here.

After the jump: The composite list, my list, and my capsule appreciation of “Caché”:

Jason Reitman’s question pie

Jim Emerson

Now engaged in a marathon publicity junket for his new film “Up in the Air,” director Jason Reitman (“Juno,” “Thank You For Smoking”) has been flying around the country doing interviews. Lots of interviews. Gang-bang interviews (as they are known in the trade) and one-on-ones. Through the magic of Twitter, he published two pie charts listing the most-asked questions. (Thought experiment: Imagine being asked the same questions over and over for days or weeks and answering them so that you sound like you care what you’re saying.)

Roger Ebert has posted his questions here. After the jump: The 11-20 most-asked questions, and my own Venn diagram!

Opening Shots: ‘Slacker’

Jim Emerson

View image: To sleep, perchance to dream…

View image: The dreamer awakes.

View image: Meanwhile, on the other side of the world… (From the opening shot of “Lost in Translation.”)

Does this shot look uncannily familiar? A man asleep, or almost asleep, with his head against a window as the twilight world outside floats by. This one’s from Richard Linklater’s “Slacker,” but we’ve also featured a similar opening shot from Sophia Coppola’s “Lost in Translation.”

I love the way the window, besides being a frame within a frame (suggesting a slightly fuzzy, abstracted reality in the background that’s distinct from, but related to, what we’re seeing in the foreground), is almost like a cartoon dialogue bubble, but instead of words it’s filled with images. A dream, perhaps? It certainly has a dreamlike quality. And, of course, the sleeper/dreamer in this shot is the filmmaker himself, Richard Linklater. And the movie we’re about to see is filled with stream-of-consciousness monologues and long, winding shots that drift from one character to another until the very end when some kids throw the camera itself off a cliff. Linklater (unlike Bill Murray in Coppola’s movie) is on the right of the frame, with the window images moving from left to right. Linklater’s face is on the strong axis, in terms of traditional composition, and the flow of motion seems natural and unforced, kind of like the path-of-least-resistance flow of the whole movie. Murray, on the left with the images moving right to left (against the way we Westerners read) seems to be swimming upstream in an Eastern world. (Speaking of upstream: You rarely see images of spawning salmon leaping left to right; upstream always seems to be right to left. See “My Own Private Idaho.”)

Between a critic and a crank

Jim Emerson

Tony Kushner knows the difference. He responds to Clive James’ playground insults (see How Not To Write About Film) in kind, with a scathingly funny (and totally accurate) letter to the New York Times. The Pulitzer-winning writer of “Angels in America” and co-screenwriter of “Munich” says:

In his review of Phillip Lopate’s anthology “American Movie Critics” (June 4), Clive James, wanting to demonstrate to critics how to “take down” a film they don’t like, pans “Munich.” He accuses the film’s writers of not knowing “half enough about politics.” No instances of our semi-ignorance are provided; not one line of the script is cited….

I, having been taken down, will run for cover in a moment, but first I would like to respond to James’s devastating analysis. I do so know more than half enough!… Since “Munich” isn’t mentioned in the anthology, his attack isn’t merely vague, it’s utterly gratuitous. After using up an awful lot of paper and ink sharing his opinions of real film critics, James exposes himself as the sort of writer who slags the people behind the art because he can’t summon the substance or wit to articulate his unhappiness with the art itself — or, I suspect, in the case of “Munich,” with the politics he feels the art expresses. That’s the difference between a critic and a crank.

3-D, QT & “DP”

Jim Emerson

QT: Back in flack mode.

Dave Kehr points out errors in the New York Times story about the future of 3-D by Sharon Waxman (the Judy Miller of showbiz reporting), which Kehr describes as “riddled with errors and misperceptions, to the point where it is actively misleading.” Not the first time for Waxman, and it won’t be the last. (I had to stop reading her “Rebels on the Backlot” book because it was likewise riddled with factual errors and such gross misunderstandings of how the movie business works that it led her to draw preposterous conclusions about what she witnessed or was told.)

There’s a classic line in the Waxman article from Springsteen/”Titanic” producer Jon Landau: “The screen has always been an emotional barrier for audiences. Good 3-D makes the screen go away. It disappears, and you’re looking at a window into a world.”

Yeah, that damned screen. If only it weren’t there to present an emotional barrier for us. (Maybe if we removed it — and the back wall of the theater — the projector could just show the movie into 3-D “reality” and allow us to really feel the emotions the movie is trying to convey!) It’s like the way those blasted audio speakers get in the way of our emotional involvement in recorded music. Gotta get past that…

DK also refers us to a hilariously profane (i.e., Tarantinoesque) account of the “Death Proof” press conference in Cannes by Rob Nelson of the Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages. Excerpt:

Not that I don’t appreciate the privilege of seeing a longer “Death Proof”—I positively adored it at 87 minutes on the bottom-half of the ill-fated “Grindhouse” double bill. But whoever encouraged the Cannes Film Festival to advertise its new cut at “2h07” (i.e., 127 minutes)—director Quentin Tarantino, perhaps, or (more likely) the Weinstein Co.’s Stuntman Harv—is practically begging for a long ride on the fuckin’ roof of the white Dodge Challenger, sans straps. I mean, the goddamn thing is no fuckin’ longer than 113 tops—I fuckin’ timed it—but that didn’t stop Stuntman Harv from bum-rushing the Death Proof press conference yesterday to say that “you’re missing the essence of Tarantino” at 87 (pffff…), and that the new cut, when it’s released internationally, “will dwarf Grindhouse—trust me.” Fuck, man. Does anyone, even Tarantino, trust Harvey Weinstein at this point?

Near the end of the press conference, which had QT literally sweating with enthusiasm for his movie and its many sources, a journalist asks Monsieur Grindhouse how he feels about writers having been requested by Harvey’s crew to pay $1,500 apiece for a seat at the Cannes “Death Proof” junket. […]

… As you might’ve guessed, gorgeous Butterfly (Vanessa Ferlito) finally does her big Texas Chili Parlor lapdance for Kurt Russell’s icy-hot villain in a scene that QT invests with as much meta-movie passion as a fuckin’ car chase or shootout or samurai showdown. Butterfly’s tailfeather-shakin’ shit is ridiculously, hilariously hot—even, it seems, for the lady from Uzbekistan who pipes up during the press conference to thank QT for his kick-ass female-empowerment movie on behalf of “all the women of Central Asia.”…

Cinema isn’t dead, it’s just different

Jim Emerson

Commenting on Jonathan Rosenbaum’s article in Cineaste (“DVDs: A New Form of Collective Cinephilia,” Michael Althen wrote that, for him, cinema is not what it used to be:

It only exists in festivals — and on DVD. That’s a long way from my/our former belief that cinema can only exist if it follows the well-known liturgy of an anonymous mass staring at a screen. On the other hand, this was a somehow romantic construct fueled by Truffaut’s “Day by Night” and other cinephile movies. To be honest, that was not how I discovered the Movies. Born in [the] Sixties, growing up in a suburb, I saw most of the influential movies of my life on TV: “Le samourai”, “The Party,” “Jules et Jim”, “Citizen Kane”, “Le scandale”… Did these less-than-ideal-viewing-circumstances diminish in any way the experience? Maybe…. [Maybe] Cinema is not dead — but it’s different. Its future will be defined by those who grow up having the possibility to choose between Blu-ray at home and 35mm somewhere in the dark.

It seems that cinema, like criticism, is forever dying and never quite dead. (See my recent post, “It’s the End of the Cinema as we know it (then and now).”) Movie formats and formulas are always being tinkered with — which is not to say you have to like the new recipes, any more than you were obliged to savor the flavor of New Coke back in the 1980s.

Shoot the paparazzo

Jim Emerson

View image Writer-director Tom DiCillo in the limelight. (photo by Thompson McClellan)

After the Ebertfest screening of “Delirious” Thursday afternoon, writer-director Tom DiCillo (“Johnny Suede,” “Living in Oblivion,” “Box of Moonlight,” “The Real Blonde” (1998)) recalled sending Roger Ebert an e-mail. He was in despair over the distributor’s treatment of his latest film, which Ebert had reviewed quite favorably. Out of frustration, and although he’d never written to a critic before, DiCillo posed five pained (and semi-rhetorical) questions about the injustice of the movie business, the last of which was: “Is this all a Kafkaesque nightmare that will never end?”

Ebert wrote back and answered every question. To the final one, he said yes.

Yes, but is it art, too?

Jim Emerson

(Continuing the discussion, “Yes, but is it art?):

I labeled the above short film (“close up”) a critical essay / dream sequence, which is what I intended when I made it last fall. But pretend you saw it at a film festival or a gallery and were told it was a “found footage” composition by a filmmaker whose influences include, say, Bruce Connor, Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, Luis Bunuel, Jean-Luc Godard, Dziga Vertov, and/or Guy Maddin. Would you perceive it differently, whether you thought it was any good or not?

What if you were told that it was a meditation on the intersection of the actor’s gaze, the camera’s gaze, and the gaze into the mirror; of the movies that have been implanted so deeply in our heads that they become part of us; of the human face as blank slate and reflection of thoughts and emotions; of the skull beneath the skin and the vanity of the flesh; of subconscious metamorphoses and/or stream-of-consciousness Surrealist dream-imagery? A densely interwoven montage of images that requires annotation and explanation to fully understand (you know, like Eliot’s poetry)? Or a Surrealist experiment in the vein of “Un Chien Andalou,” using only silent footage, scored to a multi-tracked collage soundtrack composed of excerpts from two symphonies by Gustav Mahler and stock sound effects?

I, the Fury: Mickey Spillane, R.I.P.

Jim Emerson

View image: Mickey Spillane Strips Down to Naked Fury!

Mickey Spillane, the creator of hard-fisted private eye Mike Hammer, has died at the age of 88. Several of his kiss-kiss, bang-bang pulp novels — including “I, the Jury,” “The Long Wait” and “My Gun is Quick” — were made into movies, and Spillane himself played Mike Hammer in the 1963 picture, “The Girl Hunters” (“Trapped in a Quicksand of Love…”).

But the Spillane movie masterpiece is, of course, “Kiss Me Deadly” (1955), directed by Robert Aldrich and scripted by A.I. Bezzerides. It is considered one of the bookend landmarks of the age of full-blown film noir, beginning (roughly) with Billy Wilder’s “Double Indemnity” (1944), and one of the most florid examples of that post-war style.

Recently, we featured Kim Morgan’s appreciation of the opening shot of “Kiss Me Deadly,” which is worth re-visiting. As Kim describes this crazy Pandora’s Box of a movie (the inspiration for the glowing MacGuffin/Great Whatzit suitcase in “Pulp Fiction”), it’s filled to bursting with “stark, hard-boiled cruelty, paranoia, insanity and psycho-sexual angst.” That’s a great capsule description, not only of this particular film, but of the Spillane sensibility in general.

View image

Likewise, Roger Ebert summed up essential qualities of the world created by Spillane and his chain-smoking, wise-cracking partners in crime in his brief “Guide to Film Noir”:

Film noir is . . .

1. A French term meaning “black film,” or film of the night, inspired by the Series Noir, a line of cheap paperbacks that translated hard-boiled American crime authors and found a popular audience in France.

2. A movie which at no time misleads you into thinking there is going to be a happy ending.

3. Locations that reek of the night, of shadows, of alleys, of the back doors of fancy places, of apartment buildings with a high turnover rate, of taxi drivers and bartenders who have seen it all….