July 03, 2008
One of my earliest transcendent experiences in movies was
watching Werner Herzog’s “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” for the first time. He has
never quite equaled that achievement, in my opinion. But neither has anyone
else. He’s one of the greatest living filmmakers, even though Abel Ferrara
wants him to burn in hell.
He seemed in a good mood when I talked to him on the phone about
his new film, “Encounters at the End of the World.” And why not: it seems that
after 40 years of making movies he’s finally getting some notice from audiences
in America.
PK: With Encounters at the End of the World, you’re the first
filmmaker who’s shot on all seven continents.
WH: [laughing] I have to stop you right there, because this is
kind of embarrassing,[laughs]. I do not want to end up in the Guinness Book of
World Records.
PK: I see this was never a goal of yours.
WH: No, no, of course not. But you see, there’s also something
significant about it. Early in the film Encounters at the End of the World,
there’s a fork – a caterpillar driver, and he comes from Bulgaria, and
has graduated in philosophy and comparative literature, and he says something
very beautiful. He talks about his childhood and how he started to venture out
into the world. His grandmother read The Odyssey to him when he was a child,
and about the Argonauts, and he said, “In my mind, I started to travel and
explore, and in that moment I fell in love with the world.”And I thought, “My
goodness, that’s exactly what I have done in many of my films.” I went out, ventured
out, just being in love with the world. And, ultimately, I’m doing this film in
Antarctica because I love this place, and the love of images under water, under
the ice shelf of the Ross
Sea was the fascination
that drove me down.
PK: And even though you’ve vowed not to make a movie about
penguins, the penguins actually do make an appearance.
WH: They do, yes [laughs]… I swore to everyone I’m not going to
do another film about fluffy penguins, however the penguins I filmed were so
good I had to include them in the movie.
PK: Do you discourage people from reading into the penguin that
wonders off by it’s own into the wilderness, or the group of people with
buckets on their head wandering aimlessly and getting lost? Do you discourage
people from reading something metaphoric into those?
WH: Well, I think that it’s not a big metaphor, let’s face it,
when you see the film as an audience, with the people with buckets over their
head in order to simulate a white-out, it’s absolutely hilarious. And I saw a
screening last night here in New York,
and people laughed harder than in an Eddie Murphy movie. So there’s a lot of
humor in that, and of course it’s….that’s what I like about the film, and we
should not overload it with lots of meanings. Of course the penguin is strange,
and looks like a deranged, almost insane penguin that is marching straight into
the interior of the continent. No one can stop him. Yeah, but it’s very strange
and, of course, kind of sad to see him like that.
PK: We shouldn’t read into him that he’s a deranged artist or
something like that.
WH: No, it’s…..I personally do not read too much into it. A
disoriented or deranged penguin is a deranged penguin and nothing else.
PK: Nonetheless, this film seems a bit rosier about nature, and
human nature, than “Grizzly Man” a few years before. Have you become more of a
mellow person since then?
WH: No, no, it’s just the kind of subject I’m dealing with in the
films. Of course, “Grizzly Man,” it’s not that I invented the story, I relied
heavily on incredible footage that Timothy Treadwell shot, and of course we
know he was killed and eaten by a bear together with his girlfriend, so it’s a
very tragic story, and no matter how you turn his story, it’s always going to
be a tragic one. And of course nobody deserves to die like he died. And when
you do a film in Antarctica and all this joy
of being down there and being allowed to set your foot on this continent and
exploring the incredible beauty of this place, of course it will translate into
a different general mood.
PK: It’s almost mystical at the end, that even though you point
out the dangers of global warming and there’s kind of a doom and gloom prophecy
about the end of the human race, there’s this kind of idea that you can
mystically commune with nature.
WH: In a way yes, but many of the scientists are totally
convinced that our presence on this planet is not really sustainable, which
doesn’t make me nervous. I think the last dinosaurs were not nervous either,
the last ones to trod the ground. I think the trilobites before they died out
were not nervous about their disappearance. Sponge, apparently, have a good
chance of surviving us, lizards among the higher order of species, lizards
probably have a better survival chance.
PK: Well, that’s reassuring.
WH: [laughs] It is, yes. But there’s certainly no permanence in
our existence here on this planet.
PK: So you don’t think people should take this as a warning about
global warming?
WH: It’s not only global warming. There are many other factors
that will contribute to our demise. Global warming is just one significant
element.
PK: I’ve seen almost all your films, and I haven’t seen any with
any real political content, unlike those of your friend Errol Morris. Do you
feel above politics, or you just don’t think it’s the place of film to concern
itself with that?
WH: No, I’m not above politics because I’m part of a society. So
it’s evident, whether you like it or not, you’re a part of a living community,
and the body of – which in effect is always political. But I’m not a political
talent. A man like Errol Morris in a way is more talented, I guess, but he’s
not really a politician either; he’s a storyteller, he’s a filmmaker, and he
gives us deep insight into things we normally overlook. And he’s a great filmmaker,
and there’s nothing wrong about that.
PK: I spoke to Errol and other nonfiction and documentary
filmmakers in the last year, and I asked them, what is the difference between a
nonfiction documentary film and say a fiction film. Do you have a distinction?
WH: No, it’s all movies. And all my documentaries, put it in
quotes only please, all my “documentaries” are somehow secret feature films
anyway. I stylize, I stage, I invent. For example in “Encounters at the End of
the World,” I just declare some things that we are seeing as pure science
fiction. And all of a sudden you see the science fiction in it, if it were not
of our planet.
PK: Like the divers under the ice.
WH: Under the ice. Or, for example, how strange things are
getting – there are these long endless tunnels carved right under the very
South Pole, into the ice, deep underground, 70 degrees below zero, and at the
end of one of these tunnels, under the mathematically true South Pole, someone,
a maintenance worker apparently, has dug some sort of a shrine into the ice and
stashed away a deep-frozen sturgeon. So how strange can it get? You can’t even
invent something like this.
PK: Do you have any idea of what the meaning of that might be?
WH: I think we should not ask. I actually know what happened, and
why the sturgeon was stolen and why it was put there, but if I start to explain
it, all this image and the event will lost its mystery and its beauty.
PK: I know you like to participate in everything that goes on in
your movies. Did you climb into those tunnels and go on a dive under the ice?
WH: I went into the tunnels. You actually see me crawling ahead
of the camera. You do not recognize me because you never see my face because I
was guiding the camera because it was such low crawl spaces sometimes, and it
was very, very tough for the camera to follow. Under the ice, I really wanted
to dive under the ice, but this is only open for the best of the best of the
divers because it’s too dangerous and the resources of Antarctica
cannot be wasted away by a big rescue action or whatever. And they actually had
fatalities and you just don’t go under the ice. I know my limits, and in such a
case, I would delegate.
PK: I noticed the film is dedicated to Roger Ebert, and it
reminded me that one of your feats was to walk 500 miles to pay a visit on
another film critic or film historian, Lotte Eisner. Do you have an affinity
for film critics?
WH: No, I think Lotte Eisner was not a film critic. She was a
co-founder of the cinemateque, and she was some sort of mentor for me in
spirit, and so when she was going to die, I walked from Munich
to Paris
because I didn’t want to allow her to die, and she actually was out of hospital
when I arrived. But Roger Ebert, I don’t care whether he’s a critic or not. You
see, I’ve always tried to be a good soldier of cinema, and I feel pretty much
alone, and all of a sudden, for decades as a great, wonderful soldier of cinema
out there and that’s Roger Ebert, and I feel a kinship with him in a way, and
now he’s so deeply afflicted by illness, he’s been… he cannot speak for two
years or so, and he still soldiers on, watching movies and writing about them,
and I dedicated the film in deep kinship and admiration to him. I said to him,
“Roger, this is a film you cannot review. You can only enjoy it or hate it or
whatever, but you cannot review it because you cannot review a film that is
dedicated to you.” And instead of reviewing it he wrote a very, very kind
letter to me. And it was a personal letter and I told no one about it, but
Roger actually posted it on his website a few months later.
PK: That’s a big sacrifice because a favorable review from Roger
would change your box-office.
WH: No, come on, let’s face it. Having a good review from Roger
Ebert, it doesn’t change a film, and whether it changes the box-office or not,
sometimes you must not care about it.
PK: It seems like at times you go out of the consciousness of the
mainstream, and then you come back for a film like “Grizzly Man.”
Do you think you’re now in another phase of your career?
WH: Well, I’ve never thought about career in my life ever. I
don’t have a career; I only have a life. But as I live in the United States, I
married here in the United States, it has done good to me and I always felt,
yes, I am moving here and I’m out for new horizons, new subject matters, new
perspectives, new alliances, new forms of distribution, and it has done good to
me.
PK: I heard you are doing a remake of Abel Ferrera’s “Bad
Lieutenant” or a sequel?
WH: No, it’s not a remake nor is it a sequel. I think it’s a
completely different story, the same way the last James Bond film is not a
remake of the previous one. It’s an entirely different story. I know that Abel
Ferrera is ranting wildly, it’s wonderful to have the thunder around before you even start
working, but I think he’s under the impression that I’m doing a remake, so I
can actually assure him it’s not going to be that. I think he’s got a good
face. I think I should try to engage him as a drug dealer.
PK: He’s quite a character.
WH: Yeah, maybe.
PK: You weren’t familiar with him before you came up with the
idea of doing this? I read somewhere that you didn’t know who he was.
WH: I don’t really know much about who he is. I only heard he
made this film “Bad Lieutenant.” I have no idea what else he made. But I’m told
he’s a gruff, vociferous person, which is beautiful, yes? We need these people.
PK: Had you seen the movie and said, “I want to do this again?”
WH: No, I have not seen it.
PK: So you were approached by –
WH: No, I got a screenplay which was already finished, and no,
what was really intriguing is that Nicolas Cage was interested in it, and it
turned out that Nicolas Cage really wanted to have me as a director. And the
prospect to work, No. 1, the prospect to do a film noir was very intriguing,
and the prospect to work with such an exceptional man like Nicholas Cage is
quite fascinating.
PK: And this would be a studio, a Hollywood
studio production?
WH: No.
PK: And “Rescue Dawn” was that a studio production? I was reading
a “New Yorker” story and it seemed like there was a lot of …
WH: No, it’s not a studio production. Only 24 hours before the
film was shown for the first time, MGM acquired it. It’s as remote from Hollywood as it can get.
The producer – one of the two producers – came from the trucking business and
is running some seedy nightclubs, and the other producer is a basketball star,
Elton Brand, so how far can it get from Hollywood?
PK: But it was more money than you’re used to?
WH: No, I have made much bigger films.
PK: Oh you have?
WH: Yeah sure. Like “Fitzcarraldo,” or “Nosferatu,” “Aguirre,” “Kaspar
Hauser,” or “Invincible,” or… I have made at least a dozen movies that were
much bigger and more much expensive.
PK: Oh, OK. I was wondering … the movie “Rescue Down” is about a
pilot who’s captured. Does that give you any insight, or change your opinion at
all about, say, a presidential candidate?
WH: Oh, we should not [laughter]… draw some kind of parallel
between a shot down pilot who was the only American POW to escape from Vietcong
captivity. No, but it’s very, very exciting times in America right now, with what I see.
Very, very fascinating political climate right now, and I truly, truly like to
see what is emerging right now.
PK: It’s also a very volatile period for films that are
documentaries.
WH: Well, it always is, in a way. I wouldn’t say that political
life is really that volatile, but all of a sudden there is a revival of the sense
of politics, and the most, the most wonderful of all things, was to see how
many people would turn up for caucuses or primaries. All of a sudden it’s a
revival of the sense of politics. We, the Americans, are shaping our political
life. We are shaping our future, that’s wonderful to see.
PK: Are you a citizen?
WH: No, I’m saying that as a guest in your country. I’m married
to an American citizen. She is actually voting, and I see the excitement of
her, and I see the excitement of all the friends around, so it’s very, very
good times in terms of politics.
PK: Do you think Dieter would have made a good president?
WH: No. [laughs] He was way too wild. No, no of course not.
McCain actually is one of those who was shot down and in captivity. But I think
he would make a better president than Dieter Dengler.
PK: I see. But he didn’t escape.
WH: No, he didn’t. Being imprisoned in captivity in Hanoi itself, that was
impossible to escape.
PK: Another film that I heard you were making, maybe it’s not
true, but I heard you’re making a film with David Lynch?
WH: In a way, yes, but that’s way down the line. The film has to
find its window of opportunity. David is actually going to be the executive
producer but I wrote the screenplay and will direct the film. But there’s yet
another film, and I’m signed up for it with Focus Features to do a film in Southeast Asia, “The Piano Tuner.” So it’s just one after
another, and I really have to work hard, very focused. I’m afraid we have to
finish soon.
PK: OK, there’s something I’ve always been curious about. The late
singer Ian Curtis of the band Joy Division has been featured in a couple of
films lately. In them it’s shown how he committed suicide after watching your
film “Stroszek” on TV. Did you know about this?
WH: I heard about it, I heard about the film because I think they
wanted to acquire some excerpts of my film “Stroszek,” which he apparently saw
before he died.
PK: How do you feel about it?
WH: I heard about it, yes. I haven’t seen the film but I heard
about this case. My feeling is it’s not a film that can drive anyone into
suicide. There must have been massive other reasons for that. And um… it
touches me in a very strange and deep way. I wish I had met the man, I wish I
had been his friend, I may have… I may have made a film with him.
June 29, 2008
Turkish-German
director Fatih Akin’s most recent films, the frenetic, punkish "Head-On" (no, you don't rub it directly on your forehead) and the more
meditative and consoling "The Edge of Heaven," have at least two things in
common: characters go to Turkey,
and they don’t come back — usually for unfortunate reasons. So I was worried
when the first attempt to get in touch with Akin, who was vacationing in Turkey, was
unsuccessful. The publicist gave me a song and dance about Akin’s two year-old child
crying and how he'd have to receive the call the next day at the office of
somebody
or something. It sounded a little bit like a rough draft of a Fatih Akin
movie. So I was relieved to make the connection the next day.
PK:So you’re in Turkey.
Are you at the same beach as the one at the end of “The Edge of Heaven?”
FA: No. I am on the west
coast. never been here before on vacation here. I’ve got another week of
vacation
PK: I heard your two-year-old wasn’t happy with you doing the
interview yesterday.
FA: He was kind of crazy and wild yesterday. It wasn’t very smart
of me to think I could do the interview on the street on my mobile while I was
with my family. I couldn’t hear the questions. so I asked the restaurant next
to where I’m staying if I could use their phone today.
PK: They say having children changes everything.
FA: It brings out a lot of things that are a part of you but you
don’t know they are a part of you. You learn what’s important and what’s not.
I’m a family person. I come from a big family. I feel trust in and protected by
the family system. I just follow the biology.
PK: Did this contribute to the change in tone from the anarchic
“Head On” to the more meditative “Edge of Heaven?”
FA: Yes. I was writing it during the pregnancy and the birth and
the first few months. I was very emotional. It was a very frightening time and
crazy time as I was writing the screenplay. I was thinking a lot about death
while I was experiencing the birth. On the other hand I was also trying to do
something different because I had to prove to myself and to critics that I
could do something different. I didn’t want to repeat myself. It’s a very
curious film. It’s not that funny or crazy. It was inspired by all the stuff I
saw in Cannes
while I was on the jury in 2005.
http://gofrance.about.com/od/cannes/a/cannes05jury.htm And the next film I’m
working on will be very different from the last two.
PK: That’s “Soul Kitchen?”
FA: Yes. If it isn’t funny I’ll say it’s a melodrama. Comedy is
the hardest. I have been working for five years on that damn screenplay. I
think it’s the most difficult film I ever worked on.
PK: It’s your Billy Wilder film?
FA: I am very very inspired by him. And Woody Allen is very top
level. You can make people cry -- that’s so easy. Worldwide. You can make
people cry in Japan or great Britain
about the same things. But timing and humor is so much more difficult. On the
other hand, though it is more difficult, you don’t see any comedy in Cannes. It’s considered
by all the cinephiles and top film critics as very mainstream-y or not arty
enough. I think that’s arrogance. I know what I’m talking about because I’ve
been in the middle of the writing process of a comedy for five years.
PK: It shoots in October?
FA: I have financing and everything but I’ll tell you, if I don’t
feel comfortable with the script I won’t start shooting I don’t care. We’ll see
what will happen.
PK: By the way, “Edge of Heaven” -- do you like that translation
of the film’s title?Like translation of title?
FA: Yeah. I chose it. I didn’t like so much “On the Other Side”
[the literal translation of the film’s German title, “Auf der anderen Seite”]
as a translation.
PK: “The Edge of Heaven” sounds like a Douglas Sirk film that was
never made.
FA: I consider that a compliment. I wanted to give the film its
own identity for the commercial market. It’s a very beautiful title in German
but when you translate it word for word “On the Other Side…” There was another film “The Lives of Others.”
It sounds similar. It lacked a certain poetry. Maybe there is some, me not
being and English speaking person, but I asked English speakers and we
discovered “The Edge of Heaven.” When the professor is waiting for his father
on the beach at the end. That’s the perfect description.
PK: Which is not the same
beach you’re at now.
FA: The beach here is not so wild. It’s calm and protected and
safe for children.
PK: The multi-narrative reminds me of Kieslowski.
FA: Many people have compared it to Kieslowski and I have to
admit I’ve never seen his films. Except “A Short Film about Killing” and “A
Short Film About Love.” Those are by Kieslowski, right? But I haven’t seen the
trilogy.
PK: “Babel”
is another film it’s been compared to.
FA: That one I’ve seen. But I saw it during the editing process
[of “Edge”]. “21 Grams” was a big influence. For “Head-on” also. The way he
shot the film.
But I’m not so much influenced by [Alejandro Gonzalez] Inarritu
[the director]. I’m a friend of his writer Guillermo Arriaga. We met in Cannes and he became a friend.
PK: You also mentioned Persian and Asian films as influences.
FA: When you have a piece written by Arriaga and directed by
Inarritu he covers everything from every side so he completely controls it and
in the editing room he can do whatever he wants. At first I thought I was going
to do it like that. But then we thought we have this modern form of narrative
structure like with Tarantino, we decided the structure might be modern but the
way we would shoot the film actors landscape space, that was inspired by Asian
cinema. This makes the film more interesting, I think. On the one hand there’s
the classical oldfashionedc of telling the story and you have the moder way of
telling the story and you mix them together. I have some ideas and follow them
and in the end something different comes out. It develops its own power and
rules and you follow that Kubrick wasn’t like that. He never gave up until he
got exactly what he wanted. I don’t have that patience.
PK: Plus he made a film only every ten years or so.
FA: I respect that. But I feel comfortable doing something every
two or three years.
PK: You engaged in improvisation on this film?
FA: I don’t come to the set and say, what are we going to do today?
Since I’m the producer I like to be on time and be under budget. I like to be
fast, organized, prepared. The more you prepare the more space you have to try
stuf out. That’s been my experience. Before I
come to the set I have a rehearsal with my actors I know what they’re
going to do and I have a shot list for my DP. I know the location. Once
prepared you can be free. If I have
another idea o n the set or the actor has another idea which is better than we
can do that. But if I didn’t know what we were going to do I would be
completely lost. You don’t know what will happen on the set. Maybe it will be
rainy on that day you need it to be sunny. Instead of not shooting I will be
able to change the script and find a reason to put the rain into it.
PK: Is this more political? With the terrorist political group
and the fundamentalist vigilantes?
FA: I don’t think it’s a political. It depends on what the
definition of a political film is. A filmmaker like Yilmaz Guney, the great
Kurdish director who died in ‘84 and made “Yol” is political…
PK: Aren’t you working on a documentary about him?
FA: I’m working on a project about him. I don’t know yet whether
it will be a documentary or fiction. It’s a very difficult subject. But I like
him as a filmmaker. His passion, both romantic and visual. But he was a
political filmmaker. He believed he could change an audience. He was a Maoist.
He tried to teach an audience. He was didactic. Michael Moore also is a
political filmmaker. These filmmakers have certain ideas and they try to teach
the audience. I don’t want to teach myaudience because I don’t know anything
about anything. There’s nothing I know I can teach. If there as message I would
just say it and not put it in a film. Like Bob Marley, he’s got the same message in one line that’s
in my films “One love, one life, let’s
come together.” This is what I want to tell people: we’re all one, we’re all
united, connected to each other. It doesn’t matter where you come from or your
religion. It wasn’t the aim of the film in the beginning. It came out in the
process. At the end we could say, oh, it was about that.
It deals with political issues, right. But I don’t want to
compare it to those masters. Sidney Lumet, I think he’s a great political
filmmaker. He made films about political issues…But his films are about
humanity. The human being is in the foreground. He accepts and forgives human
beings for what they’re doing. But there are political issues in “Dog Day
Afternoon,” “Serpico” or “12 Angry Men.”
PK: How about Costra-Gavras?
FA: I love him and his work and he’s a political filmmaker. He
asked me to appear in his film and I couldn’t because of the time. But later I
thought it’s for the best because I really don’t want to act anymore. Even if I
act I’m not a good actor. I don’t feel comfortable. Directors always say, trust
me, trust me. I know I don’t do them a
favor if I appear in his films. Scorsese could come and ask me and I wouldn’t
do it.
PK: He’d act in your films probably though.
FA :Scorsese? That would be funny. That would be great. He’s a
great actor.
PK: What’s your deal with Hollywood?
Weren’t you planning to do a Western?
FA: It’s one of those 20 plus things I have to do. Last year I
made a huge trip to New Mexico
with friends and a camera and we collected a lot of material for something we
call “The Western.” Certain issues about Turkey
today we discovered that we could put them in an arty framing in the US. I really
want to come over and do something. But this is a very expensive and huge and
difficult thing to write.
You have the problem of
choice. So many interesting things that people offer to you. Or interesting
ideas you discover. Books, subjects. So much stuff to do. And what I’m going to do now is “Soul Kitchen.”
There’s an inner voice that says do “Soul Kitchen.” I don’t think I lack the
courage to come over. I’ve been negotiating for two years with an American
company to come over with a project. If you flirt with the studio, it’s
difficult. This studio has a great catalogue and great people and those people
have other people behind them and they have stuff to say. It’s difficult to
create an infrastructure where you feel yourself protected. And then it’s like
it took me ten years in Europe to get where
I’m completely free to do what I want and I don’t want to give this up. To do
things the way I want to do them. My
films are better than they were before. The first three films were important.
They were my education but the pictures weren’t so much for me but for the
producers. They had me do things I didn’t want to do. They forced me to
compromise. “Head-on” was the first film I produced so I could do what I wanted
and it was the most successful film so far.
They were great producers and they discovered me and taught me.
But it was living in the parents’ house. They had their own ideology and ideas
of right and wrong and when I became an adult I had my opinions and so I had to
move out.
PK: What would you do if a Hollywood
studio offered you, say, “Iron Man 2?”
FA: I have agents there. Sometimes I get a script that’s already
written. But at this point I’m afraid I’m more a filmmaker than a director. I
wish I could be a director. I’ve done that in the past in Germany working
from a screenplay. That’s difficult working with my own language. But if I get
something in Los Angeles
or New York I have to go there and understand people and the lifestyle.
PK: Here’s an odd item I read: you were arrested in Germany for
wearing an anti-Bush T-shirt with a swastika on it.What happened with that?
FA: The German police wanted to put me in jail. I didn’t know
that this was criminal. If I knew it was criminal I wouldn’t wear it. I saw
that Hugo Chavez was wearing it and a football player and I was proud wearing
the same T-shirt as them. It was interesting - “Der Spiegel” had
the story and you should see all the internet users’ comments - very, very ugly
comments by Germans. Like, how many Armenians were killed by your grandfather?
Stuff like that. On the one hand, it’s good to see what such a symbol brings
out in the German mind. There not cool with that at all. They completely freak
out. But also like Nazis. Zealous. Really ugly stuff.
PK: But the anti-Bush refrence didn’t bother anyone.
FA: Not at all. Like I tried to tell “Der Spiegel,” his looking for a reason to attack Iraq was like Hitler’s rationale for an attack
against Poland.
PK: Let’s change the subject to Hanna Schygulla. What was it like
working with her?
FA: It was like flirting with her. Like dancing with her. I wish
I wasolder or she was younger and we could have a love affair or something like
that. It was a bit like an unspoken love affair. I saw some Fassbinder films before I met her,
because he made so many. But most of her films I watched afterwards. I met her
at a film festival in Zagreb.
Then I discovered “Maria Braun” and “Lili Marlene” and all that. “Petra Von Kant.” I fell in
love with her. The film was written for her.
PK: It seems in a lot of your films when a character goes to Turkey bad
something happens.
FA: I don’t want to create that image. It’s a beautiful country.
I think it’s the most beautiful country in the world. I’m a filmmaker, a
storyteller. Sometimes I tell dark stories. This is my fantasy. People get
angry about my fantasies sometimes. I think America is a great place. But when
you see all the films made there with mass murder you don’t think the place is
like that.
PK: How goes the Turkish film industry?
FA: . There are a few great filmmakers. Like Nuri Bilge Ceylan,
who won the best director award in Cannes
this year. And Zeki Demirkibuz. He’s a great
guy. They produce direct, write and edit themselves. Turkey is a unique country with
unique issues. It’s a very strange country. The EU, America can’t help us. We are very
alone. Not irrational, but emotional. Passionate. So I think you can look for
good cinema coming from here. We have a lot of problems and so a lot of stories
to tell.
June 26, 2008
As you might
recall, in his discussion
a few days back of "War, Inc." John Cusack mentioned as an example of a
straight-talking journalist CBS
newsperson Lara Logan. Indeed, she might have
served as somewhat of a model of that film’s heroine, the crusading reporter played
by Marisa Tomei who gets involved romantically with the corporate hitman played
by Cusack. Now, according to "The New York Post," life
seems to be imitating politically edgy entertainment as they report that Logan
had an affair with a US Embassy worker while on assignment in Baghdad (she also apparently found time to
make whoopie with CNN reporter Michael
Ware).
Apparently the embassy guy’s
estranged wife is making a fuss about it as leverage in the couple’s ongoing
divorce procedures. But you have to wonder about political motivations,
since Logan, as Cusack noted, is
one of the few outspoken critics of the administration in mainstream media.
CBS, however, insists that she will retain her recent post as their “foreign affairs” chief. You can imagine what "The Post" did with that unfortunate choice of words.
Let that be a warning to whomever is named
in this blog as being in opposition to those in power! Who knew how widely read
and influential it must be! Who knows how delusional I can be!
June 23, 2008
Most discussions of “War, Inc.” have concentrated on John
Cusack’s outspoken politics and have ignored or dismissed the contribution of
the director, Josh Seftel. Which is a shame because the Tufts grad and longtime
Somerville resident not only gave the film a big budget look on a shoestring
but also brought in some genuine war zone experience, and I’m not just talking
about his documentary “Taking on the Kennedys.” Here’s
a transcription of our phone conversation from a few days back.
PK: Are you
still on the Kennedy hate list?
JS: People
always ask me, “Do the Kennedy’s hate you?” and I just think it’s a funny question,
and it’s not…. I’ve hung out with Patrick since the film, it’s just so not a
big deal with them.
PK: So this
is your first feature-length feature film. How did you get involved in making
this movie?
JS: Well, I
made a short film called “Breaking the Mold: The Kee Malesky Story". Maryland Public Television asked me if I wanted to
direct a fiction film. And I said “sure, it sounds like fun,” and they said,
“there’s one catch: it has to teach middle-aged children about indoor air
quality.” So I said, look, I’ll do it if I can write it, and I can do a
director’s cut that I can enter into film festivals, and they said sure, go for
it. So I made the film, I shot it in Lowell Mass, and worked with all improv
comedians from the Boston area, and that film did well, I mean it played in
festivals and was kind of a sleeper. Alexander Payne saw it in Seattle, at a festival, and he called me, and
he said, “look,” he said, “you have an original voice, you should be directing
features.” And he said, “I have a script I want you to read, tell me what you
think of it,” so he sent me a script for a film called “Et tu, Babe” and
I liked the script a lot, and he said, “Well, I’m going to introduce you to the
guys who wrote it.” And it was written by Mark Leyner and John Cusack. And from
that point forward, I got to know John and Mark and John’s producing partner,
Grace Loh, and we started talking and hanging out for probably it was a period
of 2 to 3 years, where we were talking about finding ways to work together.
PK: So that
film was not made.
JS: That film
hadn’t been made, no, we talked about a few different projects, and a couple
projects almost happened but didn’t quite happen. And then this one came along,
and it was just the right timing.
PK: Did you
find this to be more challenging than making an independent short film about
air quality?
JS: Is it
more challenging? I mean in some ways yes, in some ways no, right? Obviously
it’s a bigger scope, bigger budget, I mean we weren’t blowing things up. We
weren’t blowing shit up in Lowell. But we were in Bulgaria.
PK: Not that Lowell couldn’t use a
little blowing up.
JS: No, I
love Lowell.
And it’s an up-and-coming city, right?
PK: I guess. I don’t know what that means. It’s no Lynn,
that’s for sure.
JS: Exactly. So, you know, one of the great things about working on a film of this
size and with this kind of cast is having that cast to work with. It’s like
being the coach of the dream team,
PK: You also
had kind of a low budget. When I found out it had such a low budget,
after seeing it, I thought, how’d they do that?
JS: Bulgaria
is a magical place. The budget goes a lot further there. You take 10 million
dollars and really it becomes 40 million on the screen. To have extras in Bulgaria …people
work for a really small amount of money. And we had a great Bulgarian crew, I
mean,he guy on the set, our pyro guy, the guy that blows stuff up? He
actually used to work for the Bulgarian
mafia.
PK: Ah, great
on a resume.
JS: He told
us his job was to blow up cars for the mafia. So we had a lot of authenticity
with our pyro guy.
PK: You
didn’t have any dealings with the Bulgarian mafia other than this guy, right?
JS: Not that
I know of.
PK: Do you
think the word is going to get out that the so-called liberal “War, Inc.”
people were exploiting Bulgarian workers?
JS: I never
said they were exploited.
PK: I was
especially impressed in a scene in a war zone -- Falafel? Or Falaf? It kind of
reminded me of the fortress at the end of the river in “Apocalypse Now” meshed
with the Battle of Hue in “Full Metal Jacket.” How did you put that together?
JS: Well, you
know, "Full Metal Jacket" definitely something that came to mind when I saw – we
found this set, it was actually an old factory that was being torn down, it was
in the process of being torn down, we found the set, and we said, “Stop what
you’re doing, this is great.” It was a bunch of buildings, that were – all that
was left were the frames and a lot of rubble around it. And so they halted the
demolition for the time we took to shoot it, and we just came in and had an
amazing production designer who actually did the film “Delicatessen,” Miljen Kreka Kljakovic
and he just did amazing things with what was there. That was a big part of it,
was finding things that were already there, and making the most of them.
PK: Like that
palace on the hill... Was that a found location also?
JS: That was
CGI.
PK: Oh,
that’s so disillusioning.
JS: There was
a house, there was a structure up there, but we made it look more majestic, I
think, as I recall. Sorry.
PK: That’s
ok. You’ve worked in documentaries up until this point. Did you find that was
an asset in making this movie, which is kind of surreal?
JS: The work
I’ve done in documentaries was
invaluable. When I read the script, I was struck by the absurdity of it and at
the same time, there’s so much truth and reality to the absurd moments, and a
lot of this stuff I’ve seen in real life. I’ve been in war zones, in hot-spots,
I’ve been in the back rooms of political campaigns, I’ve followed pop-stars
around as a journalist. I felt like I could bring that to the table, and try to…try
to interpret that.
PK: This is
all from your work on “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” that you got all this
experience?
JS: Yeah,
most of the war-zone stuff, yeah. No, you know, I was in Bosnia, and in
Romanian orphanages.
PK: Why were
you in Bosnia
in 1995?
JS: I was
covering the war. It was kind of a youthful adventure.
PK:
Dangerous.
JS: Very
dangerous. I learned that it’s not fun to be shot at.
PK: Aww, come
on. You young guys.
JS: I know,
right? This was in Mostar.
PK: Probably
saw some nasty stuff.
JS: Yes.
Pretty scary stuff. And just devastation. You’re walking around and the streets
are all pock-marked with shelling, and buildings, all the windows are blown out,
it’s just a wasteland.
PK: And
you were able to bring this sensibility to “War Inc.” You said in an interview
that you like to combine the depressing with the funny.
JS: This
is different from the other films made about what’s going on in Iraq. It’s a
different tone, it’s funny, I’d have to say it’s a wild ride, it’s face paced,
it’s weird…
PK: It’s
funnier than “Lions for Lambs,” let’s put it that way.
JS: You need
to give people a different flavor on this topic, they’ve already seen everything
on CNN in a serious tone, and it’s just another way of getting at this subject.
PK: Do you
think films can change things?
JS: Yeah,
change things, or help people, or teach people, you know, what have you. That’s
what matters to me the most about the time I’m spending on my work. It may
teach people not to put scorpions down their pants, I don’t know.
PK: Or it may
encourage people to do it now, ‘cause they saw Hilary Duff do it. I tried it.
No big deal.
JS: How did
you like Hilary Duff?
PK: I almost
didn’t recognize her.
JS: Do you
know the story behind that look and everything? I went online and I printed out
the trampiest pictures of our trampiest pop-stars in their trampiest moments.
And I tried to take the most horrific aspects of several of them and try to
combine it into one person.
PK: That’s a
lot to work with there.
JS: That is a
lot to work with. So we took, you know, purple hair extensions, and the right
kind of eye make-up, and the right kind of clothing, we just kept adding more
and we looked at her and she still looked really adorable, and so we added more
and more, and finally after several applications of make-up and other trampy
things, we felt like we hit our mark, but it took a lot to overcome the
wholesome factor. And then she just did a great job, I thought, in terms of her
performance. I thought it was a revelation.
PK: Another
Hilary making great strides for women. By the way, do you think the election is
going to energize the popularity of the movie, because people are so much into
politics now?
JS: I think
there is something happening right now, things are shifting for sure, and I
think this film could be…. I think it’s going to inspire people, for sure, and
I think that, you know, like I said, I hope that it changes the way that people
see things, or maybe the way people vote.
PK: And maybe
the way people make movies too.
JS: Um… we’ll
see about that.
June 16, 2008
Once you get John started on this Iraq thing he sure has a lot to say. Here's the rest of our conversation, which is kind of an education on recent US foreign policy that you probably haven't heard much about if you stick to the mainstream media and are bugged by the poltical referecnces in "Iron Man" and "You Don't Mess With the Zohan." And he still finds time to talk about Hilary Duff's pants.
PK: Do you think this is the best time to release the
movie? Wasn’t it originally conceived in
2004?
JC: We conceived of
it at the very very height of it, you
know, when the statue fell and Bush was strutting around like a peacock. And
people were on podiums telling, we should all watch what we say, and all those
kind of threats, those McCarthyite threats.
PK: Around the time the contractors were killed in Fallujah…
J C: It was right
around there. We had been writing the
script for a while. You know, I had been studying a lot of this stuff for a
while, talking to as many independent journalists as I could, and getting as
much information as I could from all the great heoric journalists out there who
really put their lives on the line to get the truth out about this stuff, from
Naomi [Klein] who was over there, to Jeremy
Scahill, to the reports in the McClatchy
Newspapers to Laura Logan and some other people I
knew over there. And the list goes on
and on. But when you realize what they were doing. And you realize they had
used 9/11 to foster in kind of this shadow version of the state that’s fully
privatized. And when you knew that when Bremer walked in there – you know we sort of based the look of Hauser
[the mercenary played by Cusack] off of Paul Bremer, you know the disaster
capitalist, as Naomi called him, with the Brooks Brothers suit and the army
boots going around in the helicopters.
So these aren’t very subtle facts, and
the journalists got it out there that while the place was still burning he basically by fiat exempted Blackwater from
any federal or international law and basically issued orders that all the
subsidies of the state could be soldto 100% ownerships by foreign companies. We
basically create a market with war. We make money off of destruction of the
place, and we come in take over, make money rebuilding the whole place, and
then we preach about the free markets, all the while allowing a complete protectionist
racket and then tell the Iraqis that when we’re done you can work here. And
then with a straight face we say we’re interested in freedom. I mean the balls
of that, the hypocrisy, the lies are so intense it makes your eyes water. So if
you know what’s going on over there, and you know that’s what this ideology
really is. …and of course this has nothing to do with the soldiers who are
being manipulated, the only people who aren’t dirty in this mess are the
military’s families and the soldiers who are doing their jobs. But the companies that are trying to create
these new “free markets” with war and then protect them and the mercenaries and
you know, its like they’re just gorging off of other people’s land and property,
is so immoral. And the other great thing
that people don’t know about this stuff is that we’re paying for all these
companies to do this. They just bill us
right at the state department. So lets
say you thought it was okay for Blackwater or Bechtel or any of these companies
to do what they’re doing over there, well, we’re paying for it.
PK: Do you think it would have been a more effective movie
if it came out in 2004 or is it more so now?
JC: I think that what’s improtant is that we wanted to make
it in 2004 and we started making it, but I think right now, the movie has been
done five or six months now, but when even four or five months ago when we had
the movie done, the reaction was well, that’s anti-American and we don’t want
to show it, you know, we always knew we’d get a polarizing reaction to the
movie. But now we’re getting a much more open response to it.
PK: I’ve been looking at some of the reviews, and you expect
a lot of the right wing nuts to kind of come out against it and there were a
few of those, but most of these negative reviews were from film critics who…
JC: Most critics are on the
liberal side of things
PK: Do you feel sort of betrayed
by that?
JC: Nope, I thought it was kind
of predicatable
PK: Why is that?
JC: Well, we’re talking about a culture in the press mostly.
I would say the “New York Times,”for
example, I’m a big fan of Bob Herbert and a lot of reporters over there, and
there’s a lot of great individual reporters.
PK: They win a lot of Pulitzer
Prizes.
JC: Right, but it’s also a culture that enabled the war for
six or seven years, broke all the Judy Miller stuff, didn’t take a really hard
stand on any of this stuff for years, and at the end of the greatest foreign
policy disaster in the history of the country, it took one of the intellectual
architects of the invasion, and gave him a column on the back page, Bill Kristol.
I wouldn’t
expect that culture to get the movie. And also I don’t know if some of the reviewers
who reviewed it didn’t really know what’s going in Iraq. I mean some people have said
the movie is five years too late. Do
they know anything about what’s going on over there? I’ll tell you this: if you
look a the people we have on on myspace, some of the people who have been over
there, people who have written books about it. I don’t know if they think it’s
five years too late.
PK: I think some of the criticism comes from an aesthetic
point of view because I think it’s very hard for a lot of critics to accept
films that have drastic changes of tone from real madcap comedy to something
th at’s really grim. I mean there’s a scene where you get the amputee Rockettes,
it’s a real assault.
JC: We wanted to do that.
We thought it needed to be offensive. If you thought of – this is going to sound insane – when Bob Dylan went
electric, he got booed. When Punk Rock came out, the easy listening rock
critics didn’t like it. I mean it’s not
meant to be cherished in that way. It’s
meant to provoke and outrage and it’s a raw low-budget movie. But the tone shifts
were intentional, that was something that we liked, which is we wanted it to be
kind of disarming and kind of like bit like a fever dream. Whether we liked that our not, fine, but for
the critics to suggest that it wasn’t intentional…They don’t have to like it,
and they don’t have to get it. But let’s
just put it this way, the mainstream media and the power journalists haven’t
been right about much in the last 7 years.
PK: That excludes me.
JC: Maybe it does, and as I said I don’t like to paint
people into brushes, but I will say it hasn’t b een uniformed, but I wouldn’t
expect a movie that’s pretty experimental and out there to be appreciated right
away. And many timesa piece of art is not understood right when it
comes out, but yet the more you look at it, the more you go wait a minute that
does have a pulse, that does reflect life a little bit, that does reflect what
is going on right now.
PK: It does draw on a lot of tradition films going back to “Doctor
Strangelove,” even the Marx Brothers.
JC: Or “Putney Slope,” or any of those types of things that
challenge the conventional wisdom and the aristocracy, so that you can’t then
be upset that the traditional wisdom doesn’t like it.
PK: So the plans are to release it on the platform basis,
and then have it come out on DVD in July?
JC: No not at all. The plan is that it’s gonna come out
boosted up by about 18 or 20 theatres in New
York or LA. We still
don’t have much of an
advertising budget, so it’s completely all viral, what’s been happening. But
then they’re gonna go to about 10 new markets in two weeks. And if that keeps
going well, then we’ll just keep going with it. So we’re gonna platform it, and
I’m hoping that it will, but we’ve gotten all these people who really really
love the movie and are into the cause of making it a viral movie. And they feel like if we can get this movie
out there, we can send a message that we want more of these types of movies.
And they wanted to actually get interacted with the film and have meetings
afterwards and get people together and have fun with it.
PK: If Bill O’Reilly asked you to appear on his program,
would you accept?
JC: What, Bill O’Reilly?
PK: Yeah
JC: I dunno. I dunno what the point would be but I dunno if
he’d really be interested in talking about any of it.
PK: He’d treat you like everyone else; he’d set you up as a pinata, and then not
allow you to respond to any of his abuse.
JC: You know I’m Irish too and I don’t take shit from
people.
PK: You could probably take him too. You were a kickboxer
right?
JC: That’s right. the only thing is that he’s gotten his
teeth kicked in so many times intellectu ally speaking, it’s kind of like
kicking someone while he’s down.
PK: It’s kind of like picking on
George Bush at this point.
JC: But that man’s still got a lot of power, and that man’s
still getting people killed.
PK: Well there’s always Iran. He can
still go after them..
JC: My only point with this is that I’m hoping that
well-meaning Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, anyone with a shred of
patriotism in their body, will band together to disgrace, mock, and shame this
ideology, but also it’s important that they be held accountable, you know,
because if they’re not, I just don’t know what the future of the country is
because it means, well, the constitution and the laws don’t mean anything if
the Democrats are close to getting power. So because Pelosi takes impeachment
off the table, so that means we may get the White House back, the rule of law
doesn’t matter?
PK: I think impeachment has been off the table since Nixon
got off the hook for Watergate.
JC: Yeah, but I think that’s a
disaster.
PK: Definitely. But this is what my readers what my readers
are interested in. Is it true that you dropped a scorpion down 
Hilary Duff’s
pants?
JC: She dropped it down her own
pants.
PK: How is that possible?
JC: I dunno, there wasn’t any law against it in Bulgaria [where
the film was shot], and Hilary read the script and she knew she wanted to do
it. She’s really game. She’s
like a pretty spirited wild-woman. She’s pretty great.
PK: Was that an allusion to"The
Wild Bunch?"
JC: I don’t think we probably thought of it, but I’m sure it
was in some way.
PK: I guess my question is, how
do you avoid getting stung?
JC: Well there’s a scorpion wrangler in Bulgaria, which is a good job if you think how
many scorpion wranglers could there be in Bulgaria. He’s probably got the
market cornered there. But he had these scorpions and he took off the poison
stinger, or he somehow neutralized the poison stinger, and Hilary put that scorpion down her pants.
June 14, 2008
In between political ads and
app![]()
earances on MSNBC firing back at Bill O’Reilly, John
Cusack has been working hard lately to promote his new film, “War,Inc.” And for good reason. Not only is it another film about the Iraq (or
"Turaquistan") War, which so far have all gotten beaten up both critically at the
box office, but it’s also a satire, the genre that, as George S. Kaufman put
it, "closes on Saturday night." Not to mention, as Larissa Alexandrovna darkly
hints in the “Huffington Post,” a “blacklisting” by critics presumably all part
of the right wing conspiracy. Well, we should be so lucky.
Despite the demands on his time, John still was able to spare me
about 40 minutes on the phone. I found him thoughtful, passionate, prone to
long pauses while he ruminated. Literally ruminated, as in “chewed,” for, as I eventually
realized, he was eating his lunch.
So go see this movie if only to let this poor man eat his lunch
in peace.
PK: In its first two weekends at four theatres it’s rivaled
in per screen average Indiana Jones and Sex and the City. How do you account
for that?
JC: Well it's kind of a long answer but I’ll see if I can
give you one. Whenever we’ve gotten the movie in front of the audience, people
have really, really loved it, and we’ve had a really polarizing response to the
movie, which we sort of thought we would going in. And what’s been reported
sort of in the press a little bit is that
everyone hates the movie, but somehow people are going anyway, and that’s a
weird a story but if you look at what’s happening on in the press, and we have
a big myspace page and we have, I dunno, 30 or 40 heroes of the left and the
activist left, you know, from Gore Vidal to Naomi Klein, to Damien Hurst to Laura Logan from “60 Minutes,”
to people who really know these issues, and who write more about just movies
and junkets. They’re writing about politics and culture and life, and many of
the people who have defended the movie and championed it have never written
about films before, although they’re people from like Larissa Alexandrovna and
some others, and we’ve had alter “Alternet,” Crooks and Liars. You know, there’s been a real viral
groundswell about the movie. and so people are thinking , there’s seems to be a
lot people who really do get it, and those people seem to really impress
people, so I think that gets people in the door. And people are probably realizing that the
movie is meant to be offensive and it takes aim at the corporate media and the
mainstream media as much as it does the
neocons. So I think it’s inevitable that certain
people weren’t gonna get it. Some people
looked at the movie and saw that, you know, it has a happy ending, and they
don’t really realize that we’re satirizing happy endings in movies. So it’s
okay that people don’t get it. No one is required to like our little punk rock
movie. But I think it’s disingenuous to
suggest that there hasn’t been a whole bunch of support for the movie too. I
mean from people in meanstream media like the “Los Angeles Times” and “Time” magazine
and “USA Today.” So, we’ve gotten a polarizing response to it and not entirely
negative. And it’s sort of being presented like it’s just negative. I think people want a movie that takes it right to the heart of the Bush-Cheney
cabal.
PK: All the other Iraq War movies have tanked. This is the
only that’s a comedy. Do you think that’s why it’s been more appealing to
audiences?
JC: Well I think
there’s that, and also I think that there’s two ways you can go. That there’s
this sense of inevitability about the whole thing and that maybe that Bush and
Cheney and what they represent, which is this kind of 30 year movement from
this far far right which is to kind of, totally privatize everything that it
means to be a state. I think that people know that that’s, you know, they have
a sense of inevitability that this is the way things are and it’s just too
entrenched and its so depressing what’s happening and what America has been
reduced to and the damage that’s been done to our military and the damage
that’s been done to the image of America across the world. And so it’s very
depressing, so when you finish work, and you know, you might not want to be
reminded of that in a very serious and somber way. But when you get a comedy or
satire, and this isn’t like “The Wedding Crashers,” it’s not like it is, well
sometimes it is, but it’s not like you’re suppopsed to just laugh and
escape. You’re supposed to have nervous
laughter and uncomfortable laughter and you’re supposed to think. But I think
this type of a film allows you to reclaim your sense of defiance and your sense
of outrage and the sense of subversion.
It should be fun to tell the right people to go to hell. It should feel
good to tell the truth and run. So, I
think this allows people to get riled up in a healthy way. And I think that’s what absurdist comedy does
because it basically just takes current trends to their logical conclusion in a
world that’s gone totally mad. That logical conclusion is surreal and insane,
which is exactly what the Bush-Cheney world view is.
PK: So you think that at this point, most of the American
people are against the war and realize it’s a mistake and so forth, but they
don’t think they can do anything about it. So when a movie comes up that tells
them what they already know they’ll just feel depressed, unless you can somehow
convince them there’s something they can do about it, or that a spirit of
subversion is actually something they can aspire to.
JC: Yeah I mean I think that there’s. there’s a great writer name Arundhati Roy. http://www.weroy.org/arundhati.shtmlAnd
what she said I tried to remember when we were making the movie. And we tried to remember it. “Our strategy should not only be to confront
empire but to lay seige to it, to deprive it of oxygen, to shame it, to mock it
with our art, our music, our literature, our stubborness and our sheer
relentlessness and our ability to tell our own stories, stories that are
different than the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe. The corporate
revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they’re selling. Their ideas,
their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Remember this, we be many but they be few.
They need us more than we need them.” So
I thought that was kind of brilliant quote which I thought encapsulates that.
And I that, you know, if it wasn’t Arundhati Roy, it might have been Abbie
Hoffman saying it.
PK: He probably did say that, but maybe not in exactly the
same way.
JC: But what I’m saying is that sentiment is one that we
desperately need, because the first thing that we need to reclaim is our sense
of outrage and our spirit and our sense that we’re not gonna let these bastards
get away with this. That’s what I feel anyway, but I think that movie seems to
be tapping into that spirit a bit.
NEXT: Hilary Duff and the scorpion.
June 11, 2008
And so the debate about the future of film criticism, which,
admittedly, only film critics seem to be interested in, goes on.
Here’s my own recent illustrative anecdote. A couple of
weeks ago the local publicists for Disney invited me to an early screening of
their big summer animation movie, “WALL-e.” Then they, well, disinvited me.
Why? It seems the early screenings were only for those who were gioing to do
interviews for puff pieces on the film or who were going to write stuff like:
"WALL*E"
delivered big time. How big time is big time? Let's just say it's a good thing
I was sitting in the back row, because this movie charmed my fucking pants off,
then went down on me in public for an hour and a half. (To the family sitting
next to me, sorry for all the noise.)”
as in this review.
As you can see, then, the Disney and Pixar people, like all
studios, fear us. One bad word from us would topple the “WALL-e” juggernaut
from clearing $60 million in its opening weekend despite enlisting people like
NASA in its PR campaign (see below). How else could mediocre blockbusters like “Iron Man” and
“You Don’t Mess With the Zohan”
clean up
at the box office if not for a thumbs up from the top tier of movie critics?
Only a cynic would suggest that the movies were going to make a ton of money
anyway and these guys are just desperately trying to seem cool, in the loop and
relevant by liking them.
And if you have any doubt about the power of criticism, how
about Sony Classics avoiding New York
City in their opening of Mark and Jay Duplass’s “Baghead” and instead releasing the film in places like Portland
and Austin that
“tend to connect with what’s new and different.”
The reason? David Poland in Movie City News suggests it
might have something to do with this negative “New York Times” review of the
Duplass Brothers’ first film “The Puffy Chair.”
So there you go: when critics aren’t proving their mettle by
getting on the bandwagon for the most recent heavily promoted summer movie, they
can show their stuff by scaring off anyone who dares to show originality and
talent on a tiny budget. So there!
June 08, 2008
Are the
terrorists winning the war of popular culture? While everyone has been keeping
their eyes out for dirty bombs and airline hijackings, sleeper cells have
infiltrated the ranks of Oprah’s Book Club and summer movie blockbusters.
Leave it to
eagle-eyed critic Debbie Schlussel to
spot the hand of Al Qaeda in Andre Dubus III’s Oprah-touted “The Garden of Last Days,” which
“sympathizes” with one of the 9/11 terrorists. Good call, Debbie - if we start to try comprehending the motives
and psychology of our enemy, then the terrorists will win.
But it
doesn’t stop there. Of course you’d expect a pointy-headed liberal “auteur”
like Steven Soderbergh to spend four hours of screen time celebrating the life
of a cold-blooded commie killer in his new hagiographic biopic “Che.” Nor is it a surprise that our craven European “allies” are turning out garbage hailing such
deranged political criminals as the Baader-Meinhof gang (in the upcoming German film “The Baader-Meinhof Complex”) or the lovable Carlos the Jackal in a new film by French director Olivier
Asssayas. 
But in fact
the bad guys are much closer to home, no further away than the local multiplex.
Again, hats off to Debbie Schlussel on tipping us off months ago about the
baleful influence of "Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo:" “It's not
exactly a newsflash that Hollywood
sides with Islamic terrorists and is against the impotent War on Terror,” she
sagely reminds us. “And I've noted that actor Kal Penn, who played Kumar Patel
in the hit movie, "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle," is sympathetic with Muslims and
Islamic terrorists…”
No doubt
about Kal Penn.
I mean, he LOOKS like a terrorist. But Adam Sandler? Sad but true. His new
comedy “Don’t Mess With the Zohan” not only portrays a terrorist (played by
John Turturro) as “sympathetic,” but has the malignant audacity to suggest that
one way to solve the ongoing crisis in the Middle East is by having Israelis
and Palestinians getting along with each other! “[H]igh quality Bin Laden Cinema” indeed.
You can mess
with the Zohan. But don’t mess with Debbie Schlussel
June 03, 2008
Around the time of the moon landing when people were wondering
what Neil Armstrong would
say when he first set foot on the surface some
comedian whose name I can’t remember joked that he could make himself a pile of
money if he just shouted “Coca-Cola!” Those were the days. Now such Philip K.
Dickian crass commercialization of space flight is the norm and what’s left of the
final frontier is only on the Sci-Fi channel or in Star Trek sequels. These
days, instead of exploring new worlds, NASA has been reduced to hauling plumbing
supplies and pushing product placement items to promote upcoming Pixar movies.
To wit: in addition to bringing a replacent toilet for the crew, the “Discovery”
makes a much needed delivery of a Buzz Lightyear action figure from Pixar’s
“Toy Story” to the space station just in time for the release of “Wall-E,” its
new animated feature about a futuristic robot. No doubt this will help move the
film’s “300 robot-themed consumer products that will
arrive on store shelves over the next month.”
In the face of such cosmic merchandising, the barrage of labels let loose in
“Sex and the City,” a virtual “Super Bowl for women” as a studio rep put it for “Vanity Fair,” seems small potatoes.
May 29, 2008
Far from being tossed onto the trash heap of history, the
Russian Communist Party has recovered very nicely from the downfall of the Soviet Union by entering another field: film criticism.
After ripping “Armageddon” a few years ago because it impugned the quality
of Russian space hardware, they are
taking to task Steven Spielberg’s International blockbuster “Indiana Jones and
the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.” Says St Petersburg Communist Party chief
Sergei Malinkovich, “It’s rubbish ... In 1957 the communists did not run with
crystal skulls throughout the U.S.
Why should we agree to that sort of lie and let the West trick our youth?” He
called for the film to banned. Another
party member added, “Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett (are) second-rate actors,
serving as the running dogs of the CIA. We need to deprive these people of the
right of entering the country.”
Meanwhile,
some right-leaning critics here in the U.S. have also faulted the film, but rather than finding its politics anti-Communist, they see it as pro-liberal, if not
downright pink. Writes the
blogger “Dirty Harry” on the website “Libertas,” “As far as the film’s politics, act one’s
anti-anti-Communist message serves no story purpose whatsoever. Jones did
not need to be fired [ because the FBI suspects him of being a Red] in order to be sent off on an adventure
and the story-point is never again picked up or resolved — making it
a first for an Indiana Jones’ film: an awkward, ham-fisted political
message shoe-horned in at the expense of story quality.” (for a more
ideologically sound entertainment, he recommends renting “Rambo:” “…an unsparing look at the
evil that exists in our world without any of the politically-correct nonsense
of a European arch-villain. Stallone may be too savvy to say so, but if his use
of Burma
isn’t an allegory for the War on Terror, I don’t know what is. Any
liberals at all interested in what will happen in Iraq should
Obama keep his promise to offer up a surrender date may want to Netflix this”).
So there you
go: touch on politics and nobody’s happy, except maybe the silent but savvy
Sylvester Stallone. Which doesn’t stop Nick Turse on “Alternet” from arguing that Hollywood blockbusters, in particular “Iron Man,” serve to
rewrite recent history exonerating the US from all wrongdoing in the War
against Terror. But according to “New York Post” film critic Kyle Smith’s take
on “Iron Man”, the opposite is
the case:“There are only two scenes (including the one with the first Iron Man
costume) in which Iron Man blows away America’s enemies; he spends about
as much time fighting the U.S. Air Force (destroying an F-22 and nearly killing
a pilot in the process) and US industry.
“You would think that, in 2008,
it wouldn’t be so difficult for a screenplay to imagine some villains for an
American to fight, but according to this movie (really? again?) our deadliest
enemies are domestic.
“Even
assuming that were true (news flash: it isn’t), it weakens Iron Man, and the
movie. The second half of it is guilt trip, and guilt isn’t fun. When Iron Man
goes to rescue some Afghanistan
villagers …his is some sort of prosaic U.N. mission, not an epic clash of good
and evil.”
Who to believe? Says
voice of reason in the “Daily Standard” If you go into ‘Iron
Man’ seeking right-wing imagery, you'll find it: Tony Stark is a patriot,
pro-military, and likes unilateral intervention. If you go into ‘Iron Man’ looking
for left-wing imagery, you’ll find that, too.”
Which kind of answers a question that's been bugging me lately: why haven't any of the presidential candidates tried to score easy points like they do in every election by taking cheap shots at Hollywood “indecency” or
“anti-Americanism?” Now I can see that it’s just too risky: who knows whether
the film is liberal or conserrvative and who you might be offending? (Mind you,
in the case of the films such as the upcoming remake of John Milius’s “Red
Dawn,” there might not be
this uncertainty.)
That doesn’t
stop Sharon Stone from putting in her two cents worth about the Chinese earthquakes,
blaming them on karma from the oppression of Tibet. All it got for her was a ban
of her films in China.
So now a billion people can’t see “Basic Instinct 2.” Mix politics and movies
and everyone loses.
May 27, 2008
Because of his many, memorable appearances on screen, Sydney
Pollack, who just died at the age of 73, might
have the been the most familiar of contemporary directors to the average moviegoer. In
most roles (but not Stanley Kubrick’s "Eyes Wide Shut." Yikes!) he seemed that
hardbitten, savvy guy with a heart of gold whom you wouldn’t mind having a beer
with and whom you could rely on to help you out in a pinch. And so he was,
according to the many tributes in print and
on the internet.
As a filmmaker, Pollack made numerous passable films and the
occasional gem. Some of my favorites include “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?,”
“Three Days of the Condor,” “The Electric Horseman,” “Absence of Malice” and “Tootsie.” “Out of Africa,”
his Oscar winner, not so much. If he had any distinctive stylistic trait it was
coaxing the best performances out of the big name stars -- Robert Redford,
Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise, Dustin Hoffman, Nicole Kidman, Al Pacino -- he
invariably worked with. What a Rolodex the man must have had. That, and the
ineffable generosity of spirit that was part of his character. He was the quintessential
Hollywood filmmaker, and probably better at
that than anyone else.
May 22, 2008
Who needed drugs back in 1970 when there were peyote-powered
brain bogglers like Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell’s Performance, Alejandro
Jodorowsky’s El Topo and Werner Herzog’s Even Dwarfs Started Small on the
screen? Those psychedelic, boundary breaking days might be coming back despite the perpetual complaints about the death of independent cinema.
Well,
Cammell may be dead and Roeg perhaps is still awaiting resuscitation -- his 2007
film “Puffball” lived up to its title
in terms of distribution, though a
remake of his 1973 masterpiece “Don’t Look Now” has been in the works since
2005 and has a 2009 release date.
But more to the point is the collaboration of Jodorowsky and
Herzog -- and David Lynch! It’s a three
headed monster reminiscent of the surreal triptych prowling the desert of “El
Topo.” For their project “King Shot,” described as a “metaphysical gangster
movie…with enough sex and violence to guarantee an NC-17 rating,” this Dream
(or perhaps more accurately, “Nightmare”) Team has cast Nick Nolte, Marilyn
Manson, Asia Argento and Udo Kier. What, no Crispin Glover?
Herzog, meanwhile, has other projects keeping him busy. Another
collaboration with Lynch called “My Son, My Son” is based
on a real story about a man who’s read too much Sophocles and kills his mother
with a sword. And you thought video games caused criminal behavior -- it’s
about time we had a ban on Greek tragedy! Plus he plans a remake of Abel Ferrara’s “Bad
Lieutenant” starring Nicolas Cage. Because Ferrara’s version was just too namby-pamby.
Meanwhile, I also look forward to the possibility that David
Cronenberg might be directing the English language remake of "Timecrimes" -- the original by Spanish dirrector Nacho Vigalondo, shown at the Boston
Independent Film Festival, was already
terrific. And to the adaptation of Philip K.Dick’s “Ubik,” planned by the Celluloid Dreams company. Or another production
company called Halcyon that not only signed up Christian Bale to star in a new
“Terminator” trilogy but also bought up the rest of Dick’s novels for
adaptations. Pass the psilocybin! The next thing you know I’ll be able to take
my canary yellow bell bottoms out of the closet and be in style again.
May 14, 2008
The conventional wisdom says that C.S. Lewis’s Narnia and the movie adaptations of the books offer aproper Christian alternative to the godless moonshine of Philip Pullman’s "The Golden Compass" and the satan worshipping witchcraft of Harry Potter.
But how Christian is it? I’m not referring to the scene in 2005’s “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” in which Father Christmas (that’s Santa Claus, or the Spirit of Rampant Consumerism as he is known to us on this side of the Atlantic) presenting children lethal weapons as holiday presents. Hardly PC, but not really un-Christian, at least not since the reign of the Emperor Constantine (In hoc signo we’ll kick your ass).
Nor does this have anything to do with Lewis’s alleged taste for the lash (he signed some letters “Philomastix,” ie, “whiplover”), suggested in some of the books, which he picked up in his experience in British boarding schools. Especially Wynard, whose sadistic headmaster was later certified as insane.
Or even his non-condemnatory attitude towards homosexuality, which he discusses in his 1955 autobiography “Surprised by Joy,” referring to its practice in his school days as “the only counterpoise to the social struggle; the one oasis (though green only with weeds and moist only with foetid water) in the burning desert of competitive ambition…. pederasty, however great an evil in itself, was, in that time and place, the only foothold or cranny left for certain good things ... A perversion was the only chink left through which something spontaneous and uncalculating could creep in."
No, what really disturbs some Christian fundamentalists is that C.S. Lewis’s lenient, tolerant brand of Christianity might be “a Trojan Horse” for the evils of paganism and black magic. See for example this posting on the website from “Balaam’s Ass Speaks” titled “C.S. Lewis: Satan’s Wisest Fool” which begins:
“John F. Kennedy, C.S. Lewis, and Aldous Huxley all died on the same day.
They all went to the same place.
Kennedy went to hell because he trusted in the Roman Whore.
Huxley went to hell because he trusted in himself alone and his hybrid Eastern mystic notions.
And, Lewis went to hell because he invented a new god, and he ended his life a Taoist.
We will prove it here.”
They are especially outraged by an episode in “Prince Caspian” involving Aslan, the children Lucy and Susan, Bacchus, Silenus and a company of Maenads. In a chapter titled “Dionysus, Bacchus, Silenus and the Maenads No One Under 18 Please,” the posting states “What Lewis is describing here is nothing other than a Bacchanalian orgy!.. Now, if Aslan is 
supposedly the Lord Jesus Christ, as many assure us and as Lewis himself allowed, then what we find here is the grossest blasphemy!! This is then supposedly Jesus Christ leading a Satanic orgy of Bacchus!! This is sick beyond description!!”
Harsh words. Perhaps that is why the makers of the film adaptation, Walden Media, headed by billionaire Christian crusader Philip Anschutz, deleted that scene and replaced it with a battle in which our Christian heroes kill scores of bad guys and which ends in a bloody massacre.
I suspect, however, that the Balaam’s Ass people, and perhaps even those at Walden, might be misreading the text. They might be the perfect audience, then, for “The Complete Idiots Guide to the World of Narnia” by James S. Bell and Cheryl Dunlop.
I asked Ms. Dunlop what she had to say about this Trojan Horse (isn’t that a pagan metaphor?)
theory and she kindly sent the following response:
“I'd say that such a person has probably not read much of Lewis's work, and maybe has spent too much time reading other people who comment on Lewis's work without understanding it. One crucial point is that in Lewis's works, witches and hags and such are never morally good. In other writers (“Harry Potter,” “Wizard of Oz,” and even “Lord of the Rings”) we see good witches and wizards. Lewis's good characters are simply never involved in witchcraft. One might as well 
accuse the Bible of promoting Satan worship because Satan is mentioned in it.
“An interesting point in this regard comes from perhaps the most “pagan” scene in the whole series, Bacchus and his maidens distributing refreshments in “Prince Caspian.” Lucy and Susan agree that they would not want to have met this wild group except in the presence of Aslan--the hint that they are dangerous and must be kept in submission to Aslan (Christ). Lewis simply had no patience with those who said a Christian shouldn't drink (or smoke--he smoked pipes).”
Maybe that will enlighten them. As for me, I have no doubts of Lewis’s Christian credentials after noting the resemblance between Aslan the Lion and Fr. Leo Muldoon, S.J., Dean of Discipline when I attended Boston College High School.
March 25, 2008
With two grim milestones passed -- the fifth year of war and the 4,000th soldier killed in action -- it would seem prime time for the presidential candidates to push the issue in their campaigns. John McCain, for one, seems to have pretty much taken it for granted that the war has been won (winning = endless U.S. military presence) and is setting the groundwork for a similar intractable, bloody and unrthinkably costly conflict in Iran. The Democrats, meanwhile, have been distracted by more serious issues such as what Obama’s pastor said and whether Clinton “misspoke” about enemy groundfire when her plane landed in Bosnia 12 years ago.
So you can’t really blame a filmmaker for not pushing the war, even if that’s what her film is ostensibly about. Especially given the success rate of every previous film on the subject. After “Boys Don’t Cry,” her unflinching 1999 film about gender blurring and sexual violence, Kimberly Peirce doesn’t seem like the type to back down from a controversy or from a risk. Her new film “Stop-Loss” is ostensibly about the psychology of traumatized Iraq War vets and their exploitation by a military that assigns them to repeated tours of duty. But in the words of the “Hollywood Reporter:” “you wouldn't know it from the trailer, which emphasizes a young cast in moments of camaraderie in Texas. Or from the poster, which has the vibe of a ‘Friday Night Lights’ or ‘Varsity Blues’ as much as ‘Platoon’ or ‘Full Metal Jacket.’”
Similarly, Erroll Morris’s new film “Standard Operating Procedure,” a documentary about the Abu Ghraib prison, also grapples with the disturbing psychic toll the war has had on the soldiers compelled to wage it. So far, though he and those marketing the film have not attempted to disguise the film’s connections with the Iraq War. Rumors that a nervous studio executive suggested retitling it “Muhammed’s Heroes” and retooling it as an update of the wacky 1960s TV show about a Nazi POW camp have not been substantiated.
March 20, 2008
Anthony Minghella, who died unexpectedly Tuesday at the age of 54
, made some films that were truly great (