So you toss the word “misogynist” around the hip young director and his ingenue star and everyone gets bent out of shape. I mean, of the three women in “The Wackness,” one (Stephanie played by Olivia Thirlby) is a cold-hearted, selfish and hedonistic bitch, her mother, played by Famke Jannsen, is a cold-hearted, joyless shrew, a chick named unity played by Mart-Kate Olsen is a drug addled Park Avenue ditz and the hero’s mother is a nag. Not that these are necessarily bad things; I liked the movie. But let’s see if the director Jonathan Levine and Thirlby can talk their way out of this one.

JL: ..but that’s me personally. Perhaps that’s something that subconsciously wells up in the movie, but I think that in many ways I try to be as fair as possible and I think that’s the great thing about having Olivia in the film, having Famke in the film, and Mary-Kate, that perhaps on the page these characters are less sympathetic, but these guys are so wonderful that they can sort of fill that out in a beautiful way. And I don’t know if it’s misogyny or not. I wish I could tell you. I wish that I could analyze it in that way, but I think that for me the female characters in the film, the men are all kind of at the mercy of these female characters in a way and that’s often how I feel with women. My problem is that they hold a great deal of sway over me and perhaps there is kind of a reactionary response to that that converts itself into some sort of animosity, but I would like to hope that deep down the movie is really about people and really cares about all the people in the film. I don’t know. Now I feel like maybe I’m a dick.

OT: No. You’re not. You’re not a dick. If I may, I have to comment on this. I’m really sensitive to things that I think are misogynistic because I think that it comes out by accident a lot and I don’t think this film is [misogynistic] whatsoever even though the two main characters are male and thus given to discussing women and sex in a very frank and male way. I think that the females in the film… I don’t think that it’s misogynistic to depict a female who can use her feminine wiles and is confident and is sexual. I think the other way around. I think that at least between Luke and Stephanie, Stephanie wears the pants. Luke is like a little bitch. He doesn’t know how to deal with the fact that this is his first tiem and for Stephanie it’s just

PK: He’s the blushing virgin and your character plays the sexually  confident one. A role reversal [folding his position like a cheap suitcase]

OT: I think that if it’s done right the femme fatale character can be the ultimate feminist character and not given to those kind of I don’t think that Stephanie is a character that is a male fantasy.

JL: No. I think she’s a real person and that’s what’s sort of so great about. I think that the shifting power dynamic is something that’s very interesting to look at. And the great thing is that, Olivia, with what you did especially, you can always see the inner life flipping behind this characters eyes and you can always see the motivation even when the characters are not necessarily acting sympathetically and I think that the male characters do that too. You always, I think any sort of misogyny in the film would come as an active defense mechanism. It’s like a fall back thing, that’s what these guys are clinging to and it’s because they are so under the sway of the women in their lives and they can’t find any degree of control over it so they have to cling to their misogyny and I hope that’s more of the characters of the film and less of a macro thing

PK: [increasingly sycophantic] It’s a pretty accurate portrayal of the adolescent mind.

OT: I think so. The male mind which is kind of adolescent regardless of what age. I mean the truth is that boys will be boys and there’s a distinction between guy talk, which is frank and you could interpret it as offensive, but who’s gonna do that. There’s a difference between that and actually chauvinism I think.

PK: Which is where the soundtrack  gives cues. I’m talking about Donovan of course.

JL: Donovan was a real woman hater. You can tell. All his rhymes are about bitches and hos.

PK: You mentioned this in another interview how the focus of the movie sort of switches from Luke character to Dr. Squires [the Ben Kingsley character], did that occur in the course of the shooting?

JL: No, it was originally in the script. It was this POV shift about half way through and then it shifts from focusing on the relationship between the sort of buddy movie of it to the kind of blossoming romance as well, but it does, it shifts to Kingsley. It always shifted to Kingsley in the script around page 40, page 50.

PK: It also seemed to me, he’s sort of a 60s leftover and the movie sort of reminded me of some of the films that came out in the 60s about you young men being initiated like “The Graduate,” obviously,  or… did you ever see “If…”?

JL: I never saw “If…”

PK: It’s a good one. Were you influenced by those?

JL: “The Graduate” certainly was one of the seminal films that I saw that made me want to be a filmmaker. I think that we watched that a lot. We watched a lot of, myself and the producers and my DP, watched a lot of kind of May-September buddy movies, whether it be “Wonder Boys” or “Harold and Maude,” stuff like that, and we also watched a lot of Cameron Crowe type stuff, whether it be “Almost Famous” or “Say Anything,” all that stuff kind of combined to a hodge podge of influences, but for me the stuff that influeced me most growing up is like early 90s independent film whether it’s Todd Haynes or Spike Lee all that stuff is really, that informs more the attitude

PK: There’s a lot of Spike Lee in your movie

JL: Yea, definitely. The kind of in your face provocation. The kind of willful roughness in a way.

PK: When you graduated from high school was it as memorable a year for you as it was for the character in this movie?

OT: Yea, I mean it was a little atypical my own experience. I graduated in 2005, so 10 years, 11 years behind the curve of the kids in this movie. In a lot of ways it was very different, in a lot of ways it was exactly the same.

PK: Is your heart broken?

OT: Not yet. Almost. I actually didn’t. It was a little atypical for me because I got my first acting gig when I was about to graduate, so I actually left school a little early.

JL: But it was the high school that Olivia went to was very similar

OT: Very similar I think it probably was not a far cry for the school that Stephanie and Luke graduated from

JL: In fact one of the reference materials was my buddy went to the same high school that she went to in ‘94 and I took his yearbook and that was one of the reference materials

OT:...  and the school is K-12, so in 94 I was actually at the school in 2nd grade and I was in the yearbook that they were using as a wardrobe reference. They were looking at the seniors page, but if you flipped to lower school, I was there in 2nd grade.

PK: So what are you guys doing now? I heard that you’re and I found this hard to believe because you had already been in one of his movies but you were taken off the cast of “Pineapple Express” and plan to boycott it when it comes out?

OT: Yea I don’t think that David had anything to do with that decision. I’m not boycotting it for the record. Somebody came up with that. That’s absolutely not true.

JL: I’ll go see it. You wanna go see it?

OT: I’m ready to go see it. It’s going to be hilarious. Plus, I participated in it for a while.

JL: But we should pay for “The Wackness” and then just sneak into it.

OT: OK.

PK: “The Wackness” got the audience award at Sundance and also at Los Angeles, but it seems to me like it’s going to be a really tough sell because it’s not really like a stoner comedy like Pineapple Express would be.

OT: It’s a bit of a mixture. It’s like very specific and very broad and universal at the same time.

JL: I mean I guess we’ll see. I think for me as a… and I’m a big summer movie film guy, but at this point I’ve seen so many explosions and computer characters, that I’ll be excited about, I mean I think beyond anything it’s a character driven movie so hopefully that is something that people will respond to at this point in the summer, but it’s challenging. It’s provocative and it’s different, but I consider those assets.

PK: What are you going up against?

JL: I mean “Hancock” comes out the same weekend, but I don’t think we’re really

PK: Another adolescent male character with super powers.

JL: I guess that’s true. I’m not sure that we’re gonna. I willingly concede to that, but I think that hopefully we can be a nice alternative for some people.

PK: Upcoming projects?

JL: Well, I’m adapting a book for Sony called “The Echelon Vendetta” and then I’m reading a lot of scripts, but the fact that I’m so proud of this makes it hard. I don’t want to do anything that sucks, so I’m trying to hold out and figure out the right thing.

OT: “Safety Glass,” “Dream of the Romans,”  “New York I Love You,” “Margaret.”

PK: These are all done?

OT: Yep, they’re in the can.

PK: So now you’re just relaxing. Doing crack.

Say what you will about the films of Judd Apatow, but “Knocked Up,” “Superbad” and the rest have inspired one worthy trend in Hollywood movies: dope smoking. Not only is it prominent in the upcoming Apatow movie, “Pineapple Express” (the title refers to a lethal blend of cannabis) directed by David Gordon Green, but also in “The Wackness,” JonathanLevine's vaguely-memoiristic tragi-comedy of being an 18-year-old dope dealer hopelessly in love with a seemingly unattainable woman in New York City in 1994. Whose stepdad is his psychiatrist played by Ben Kingsley. To whom he sells dope, and so on. That one.

A couple of weeks ago I interviewed the director Levine and Olivia Thirlby, who plays Stephanie, the unrequited love, but I got so stoned while talking to them I forgot about it. I found it later when I played the tape thinking it was an old  Mott the Hoople/Cowsills mix. So here it is now two weeks late but still relevant. Why? Well, Thirlby, who also played Juno’s best friend in “Juno,” was supposed to play a role in “Pineapple Express” (she was also in Green’s last movie “Snow Angels”) , but got dropped from the cast. So there. Anyway, she’ll get around to talking about that and also the “Juno” effect so-called with all those unmarried Gloucester high school girls getting pregnant. Or getting stoned, I can’t remember which. And then, oh yeah: misogyny.

Here goes.

PK: So what was it about 1994 that was so tragic for everybody’s lives?

JL: That was so tragic? Well I think that’s more what the characters are going through at the time. I don’t think that’s specific to ’94. I think there were two separate things. There was the world I wanted to set it in, which is a world I was very intimately involved with from my own personal experience and then there was kind of the themes I wanted to addresss. I think ’94, not just with the music that was so important to me growing up, but thematically I think with Giuliani cleaning up New York and New York at this crossroads, I think it sort of mirrored what the chacters were going through at the time.

PK: Do you to take some credit for derailing Giuliani’s presidential hopes?

JL: No. He was well on his way to derailing himself

OT: He was derailed a while ago I think.

PK: Olivia, in 1994 you were in New York. But you were only about 6 at that time, right?

OT: 8, I was 8

PK: Do you remember anything about it?

OT: Yeah, I totally do. Like John said, the city was undergoing huge changes and I was very aware of that. At least in the sense that all the adults around me were talking about it and, especially in the neighborhood I grew up in, the changes were really evident. I mean, it was a huge deal. We had a lot of friends in the neighborhood, people that had been living there for a long time, and when they started arresting the homeless people out of Tompkins Square park it was a huge deal when Giuliani started trying to close all the community gardens. It was a huge deal. It was something I was very much aware of and when the first restaurants started to open up within walking distance that was also a huge deal.

PK: What part of New York is this?

OT: The East Village. When I was that age in ’94, it was still really kind of pretty authentic. And people who didn’t live there didn’t go there and now it’s, especially over the past two or three years, it has become really different.

PK: It’s like a theme park or something?

OT: It’s like a quaint tenement theme park.

PK: There was an artistic fervor going on...?

OT: I wouldn’t say artistic fervor at all.

PK: Before, I mean.

OT: Oh, before. No. It wasn’t really like a bohemian area. It was like a crackhead area.

JL: A lot of crack fervor. People getting excited about crack

PK: You don’t have any crack in your movie, though.

JL: No

PK: You draw the line at crack?

JL: It’s just not anything I knew personally. I’ve been lucky enough to avoid crack thus far.

OT: Don’t lie, John

JL: OK, well, with the exception of a few nights in college, but, no, that wasn’t the world I knew, that wasn’t the world we were involved in. So, no crack.

PK: But you smoked pot continually when you were about 18 or so?

JL: Yeah, pretty frequently.

PK: But you never sold it?

JL: I never sold it. I would have been really bad at it I think. I would have gotten arrested like even when I cheated on a paper in high school I would get caught, I always had a really guilt conscience.

PK: If the film is autobiographical, did you have a heartbreak at the same time? Were you also a virgin?

JL: I guess. Was I a virgin? At some point I was. I probably like around that time was when I was deflowered. I’m not really very comfortable talking about that one. Am I blushing?

PK: No, but I am.

JL: Ok. No, it’s not strictly autobiographical in any way. It’s just the worldview that the characters have, the music, the backdrop, that’s all culled from my personal experience, but nothing in that movie really happened.

PK: Is that a Donovan song on the soundtrack?

JL: There’s a Donovan song, “Season of the Witch.” Yeah, we thought that Kingsley’s character…

PK: Wasn’t that used by Scorsese in “Mean Streets?”

JL: I don’t think he did.

PK: No, I’m thinking of “Atlantis.”

JL: Anyway, we used it because we thought the Kingsley character would have been really into like 60s -70s psychedelia and that in many ways he would kind of connect the spirit of that music to the spirit of hip hop that Luke’s listening to.

PK: I get the impression that Ben Kingslry may have been a handful to work with.

JL: No he’s awesome. Why do you think he may have been a handful?

PK: His performance is so, I don’t know, out there and freaky…

OT: That’s the amazing thing about him is that he’s functioning on such a high level as an actor that he can go from being himself to being this character who bears no resemblance to himself in an instant. It was one of the coolest things about working with him is that a lot of actors like need to be in character and get in character and if they are playing someone who’s childlike or volatile or crazy or stoned they need to be those things all the time, but he’s not that way at all he’s very, one moment you’re talking to him before the camera is rolling and he’s his stately, highly intelligent proper British kind of self and then the next moment, literally, the camera’s rolling and he’s become all glassy-eyed and stoned and...

JL: Yea, it’s crazy. He’s got remarkable control and you wouldn’t know from one moment to the next that he could go to that extreme place without …I don’t think he’s ever done that stuff

PK: I read that you had to teach him how to use a bong.

JL: That’s on the internet today. I did teach him how to use a bong, but he wasn’t so interested in kind of the details of that stuff. He was really interested in the emotion and intention of his character and that’s sort of how he connects to it like all the details are fairly ancillary to it. He connects to it through this very kind of, he’s a classically trained Shakespearean actor, that’s how he gets to it even when there’s a bong involved.

PK: Did he improvise at all? Some of his riffs seemed almost spontaneous.

JL: I think it’s mostly acting. He had one improvisational line with Mary-Kate which was very good, but he was very much interested in adhering to the text strictly. In fact, when he would get one word wrong he would ask the script supervisor to come up to him and inform him of that.

PK: So Mary-Kate Olsen and Ben Kingsley in a phone booth. How did you come up with that idea?

JL: Well, it wasn’t that. I wrote it before they were even involved. So it was originally just more about this character trying to connect to his lost youth by hooking up randomly in a bar. Once it became them, I recognized that it might cause a bit of a stir, but at the time when we were shooting it it just felt, and this is maybe a testament to how strange I am, but it felt really fine, because he’s playing a character that’s the maturity level of an adolescent and she’s very wise beyond her years  in a way so I think they kind of met in the middle.

PK: [to Thirlby]Were you sorry that you weren’t in a similar scene with Ben?

OT: Was I sorry that I didn’t have a make-out scene with her? Who’s not? I mean, even Jon considered writing himself into the script so that he could make out with Sir Ben.

JT: By the way, we rehearsed that scene and then I was like this just doesn’t make sense, it’s just weird

PK: I don’t know it could be a sequel. You probably don’t want to talk about “Juno,” but it’s been sort of in the...

OT: It’s ok we can talk about it

PK: Especially locally we have these Gloucester teenagers

OT: So what happened? They decided they all wanted to get pregnant and they all wanted to do it together and they were inspired by the film “Juno.”

PK: Well I think that last step is debatable.

JL: That’s just pure speculation. I feel like that’s much ado about nothing.

PK: It’s a hot topic.

OT: I mean I’ve definitely heard of it. People have been asking me about it, but I think “Juno” is a piece of fiction. It’s a movie and it’s meant to be an artistic endeavor and that’s the beauty of art is that you put it out into the world and people can react to it so many different ways and if they react to it by taking it very literally then that’s their choice.

PK: And you don’t think the movie’s responsible for…?

OT: How could the movie be responsible?

PK: Hey, I’m on your side

OT: I mean I don’t see how those things tie together. That would be the same as saying that a movie that depicts a psychokiller inspires psychokillers [as in this recent case]. Sure, potentially maybe that’s true, but is it the movie’s fault? If some person saw the movie “Seven” for example and said wow that appeals to me I’m gonna go kill people in a very strange and convoluted way, maybe they were inspired by the film, but is it the fault of the film for depicting that?

PK: Oddly enough, though, after I saw “The Wackness,” I did become a drug dealer.

JL: You became a drug dealer? After I saw “Juno,” I got pregnant, which is weird, but yeah, I don’t know. I feel like if you’re worried what anyone’s going to do when they see your movie it’s going to paralyze you.

OT: I mean it’s the same thing with Jackass of kids trying the Jackass stunts. Does that mean we have to put a disclaimer in front of every single film saying “don’t go do this.”

PK: I think that’s Darwinism at work. The people who imitate Jackass are probably people who shouldn’t live to reproduce.

JL: What about the people who see a double feature of "Jackass" and "Juno?" They’re probably screwed.

PK: They’d probably cancel each other out. Meanwhile, in one interview you said you don’t know how to write women. And in retrospect I'm wondering if maybe the movie might be a little misogynistic.

JL: Well.

OT: People keep saying that.

JL: Oh my god, really? I haven’t heard it. No one said it to me. Here’s the thing, I can neither confirm or deny that. There are parts of me that potentially have that and I would probably like to work on those parts. I don’t claim to be a perfect person, but I also don’t want to censor myself to the point where I’m, I think if you start censoring the bad traits of your personality, the character overall or the personality of the film overall is undermined. I certainly hope that’s not the case. I don’t think my girlfriend thinks that’s the case.

OT: I certainly don’t think it’s the case.

Next: Enough with this misogyny obsession, already. 

For what it’s worth, here’s my take on the greatest movie of all time . 

THE DARK KNIGHT

Already fans are declaring “The Dark Knight” the best film of all time. Well, I’m not even sure it was the best film released last week. True, so much hype and near unanimous critical raves can set one up for disappointment. But when I saw the film I was shocked by its murkiness, incoherence and downright tedium. I was a fan of Christopher Nolan’s “Batman Begins,” but for a film featuring a character called the Joker, this sequel was utterly humorless and self-important.

It starts out with a decent bank heist, but when the fake Batmen show up, and the pack of dogs and the perplexing cameo by Cilian Murphy’s the Scarecrow from the previous movie, I was not only confused but I didn’t care and I thought Christian Bale as Batman looked like he felt the same way. Then the back story about the mob laundering money and some guy from Hong Kong offering them a deal and Bruce Wayne’s company offering that guy a deal -- it was about as riveting as the trade tariff scenario in “Star Wars -- Episode II: Attack of the Clones.”

So much for Batman. It’s the late Heath Ledger’s The Joker that is the real draw. Showy and whimsical (that’s a funny magic trick with the pencil) it injects the film with much-needed vitality, chaos and comedy. After two and a half hours, however, Ledger’s reptilian lip-licking and skewed, sibilant line readings seem a little mannered. Certainly the basic plot pattern of the Joker taking hostages, offering Batman impossible alternatives, and cackling mirthlessly when everything blows up gets a little repetitious. It might not be an allegory for the War on Terror, but it sure tries to be as depressing.

Ledger was a great actor and if he gets an Oscar it will be the one he deserved for "Brokeback Mountain." But I can’t help being nostalgic for Jack Nicholson’s Joker in Tim Burton’s 1989 “Batman.” He was funny and scary with great lines like, “This town needs an enema!” This movie needs one, too.

Kudos to fellow "Phoenix" film critic Brett Michel for being one of the few ( Dave Kehr makes similar observations in his blog) to recognize the resemblance between Heath Ledger’s Joker in “The Dark Knight” and Andy Robinson’s antic, anarchistic Scorpio in “Dirty Harry” (1971). Physical and stylistic similarities aside, they are basically the same in being domestic terrorists, sado-masochistic nihilists willing to kill the guilty and innocent alike in order to overthrow the status quo.

Nor does the comparison stop there, with Christian Bale’s Batman being a technologically enhanced, rich man’s version of Clint Eastwood’s blue collar Harry Callahan (Bale's Batman even talks with Clint's raspy whisper). Both heroes face the same dilemma -- how to protect society from evil without succumbing to evil methods? How to save civilization from savages without becoming savages themselves?

Why so popular now? In many ways 2008 is a lot like 1971. The country wants out of an unpopular war. The government employs questionable, potentially unconstitutional methods to fight terrorists (radicals and black activists in 1971; Al Qaeda in 2008) and other destabilizing forces. A Republican was running for president with a platform to continue the policies of the previous four years.

The biggest difference, though, has been the film’s reception. “Harry” was brutally divisive among both critics and audiences. Chief among the naysayers was critic Pauline Kael, who described the film as a "right-wing fantasy [that is] a remarkably simple-minded attack on liberal values" and as exhibiting "fascist medievalism."

But anyone criticising “The Dark Knight” would be taking his or her life in their hands, as notes “Globe” critic Ty Burr in a blog posting  in which he describes the almost desperate popular embrace of the film, making it the “pop tsunami so many moviegoers, primarily young ones, saw it as and needed it to be.”

Some critics, however have dared to resist the wave. Curiously, almost all of them are what might be called “Paulettes” (the term drawn from an “Illuminati”-like theory of contemporary film criticism I won’t go into). In short, these are critics strongly influenced by the opinions and style of the late, legendary “New Yorker” critic. Unlike Kael’s take on Harry, they don’t find “Knight” especially “trim, brutal, and exciting…” but as rather murky, incoherent and clumsy (I agree). They also brought to bear the typical Kael criticism that the film was too dark and punishing to be entertaining (I’d have to go along with that ,too). But it’s the politics that most recall Kael’s take-down of Harry -- they see the film as not so much a critique of “fascism” as an advertisement for it (True for “Knight,” but I think Kael misread the irony of “Harry.”).

Here are some examples:

David Denby, “New Yorker”

          “Warner Bros. has continued to drain the poetry, fantasy, and comedy out of Tim Burton’s original          conception for ‘Batman’ (1989), completing the job of coarsening the material into hyperviolent summer action spectacle… The narrative isn’t shaped coherently ‘The Dark Knight’ has been made in a time of terror, but it’s not fighting        terror; it’s embracing and unleashing it.”

David Edelstein, New York Magazine

          “ ‘The Dark Knight’ is noisy, jumbled, and sadistic.”

Michael Sragow, “Baltimore Sun"

          “… confuses pompousness with seriousness and popular mechanics for drama. True believers may    buy into the gloom and doom of The Dark Knight, but many of us will ask, with the Joker, "Why so    serious?"”

Armond White, "New York Press"

          “Every generation also has the right—no, obligation—to question a pop-entertainment that    diminishes universal ideas of good, evil, social purpose and pleasure…. Appealing to adolescent    jadedness and boredom… the tone glibly nihilistic (hip)...”

Stephanie Zacharek, "Salon.com"

          "But "The Dark Knight" looks as if it were made from a messy blackboard diagram with lots of             circles, heavily underlined phrases ("Duality! Good vs. evil — in the same person! Kinship     between hero and villain!") and crisscrossing arrows that ultimately point to nothing." 

N.P. Thompson, "Movies into Film"

"The Dark Knight, with its sanitized, hollowed-out approach to the most outre violence, would seem to be the movie that Bush's Abu Ghraib America deserves "

Marc Savlov, "The Austin Chronicle"

     "Or so goes the nihilistic logic behind 'The Dark Knight,' a grim little parable on the wages of sin and the high cost of redemption... In short, it's a Batman for the new age of anxiety."

Marshall Fine, "Star Magazine"

          "Why do comic-book movies want to be serious literature? That’s the problem with this movie the    same way it was with 2006’s 'Superman Returns.' Instead of being exciting pop-culture entertainment that forces the viewer to take it seriously, the movie takes itself too seriously – and     misses the fun in the process."

It should be noted in fairness that Fine also wrote an adulatory book about John Cassavetes, a director whose films Kael loathed. So nettlesome were her reviews to the director, Fine reports in his book, that one time when they were forced to share a cab together, Cassavetes threw Kael’s shoes out the window.

Now, that’s a film critic.

Whenever I think I might be taking movies too seriously, there are always nutbags like Glenn Beck to remind me that, at least compared to some people, I have not as yet gone over the deep end. According to the CNN news personality, the upcoming film version of the Hasbro toy “G.I. Joe,” along with such previous fifth column screen assaults on Homeland Security as “Superman Returns” and “Happy Feet,” is just another sign that the U.N., Al Gore and the terrorists are winning.

Here’s how Glenn sees it:

“…our nation is under attack. It is being taken from us in the cover of darkness. There are American hostage crisises [sic] going on right now, worse than the American hostage crisis we experienced in 1979, and it is happening at our border. I'll have more on that, coming up in just a second.

But first, there's something else. We're being attacked someplace else in the cover of night, and if we lose this battle, we lose it all. Here's "The Point" tonight. G.I. Joe is the latest casualty in the war against the American way, and I know, I know, Glenn, it's just a toy, a little hunk of plastic, a cartoon. I know. And that makes it easy to dismiss this. But I believe that would be a huge mistake.

We cannot lose sight of the fact that G.I. Joe was a real guy and he is something more, as well. He's -- he is a symbol, and when you attack a symbol, you strike a blow against everything it represents. And here's how I got there…”

And from there, there’s no escape.

Based on a F. Scott Fitzgerald story about a guy who is born an old man (ouch!) and ages in reverse into infantilism, David Fincher’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” starring Brad Pitt, has aroused much interest pending its opening on December 19. But judging from photos from the film released recently, the screen version looks like it might differ significantly from the original. As can be seen here, the elderly, newborn Benjamin Button is in fact no other than Karl Rove and in the course of the film not only will he regress in age but he’ll also be forced to obey the subpoena ordering him to testify to Congress, will be indicted for and convicted of manifold crimes including treason, and will spend the rest of his life, shriveling into a zygote, in a Federal penitentiary.

 (all photos except the second one by YH)

Disney World by way of The Village 

The Thermal Hotel graces the Karlovy Vary Skyline 

The Fifth Floor

 Partaking of the healing spa waters

Barbie (in the Toy Museum, Prague) 

As expected, “The Investigator” proved to be a tough sell. I was pleased that it was the favorite of one other juror, but it wasn't enough. So be it; on to the other contenders.

One film did not enter the discussion: “The Guitar” by Amy Redford, Robert’s daughter. Though “well received” at Sundance (no doubt by Redford himself, that Festival’s founder) according to its publicity, it did not impress anyone in the jury, except maybe negatively. Saffron Burrows, a frequent guest at Karlovy Vary (she conducted a “master class” this time around) plays Melody, a Manhattan woman diagnosed (by Janeane Garafolo, no less) with terminal throat cancer (it gives Burrows a chance to show off her Godfather imitation). Her solution? Shopping. She moves into a huge empty loft, takes off all her clothes (rebirth! and also a chance for her to parade around naked for about 15 minutes) and hits the phone, ordering tons of top of the line designer label furniture, clothes, accessories. And takeout -- we need that distraught female eating scene, though this time there’s no Haagen Daz. For companionship, she sleeps with the delivery people. The moral? Maybe Redford is suggesting maxing out your credit card as a cancer treatment. It’s worth a try.

Nor did “Terribly Happy,” win. As a consolation it won the Grand Jury Prize and $30,000 (all we offer is everlasting glory and maybe a beer after the awards ceremony). Zhang Chi’s “The Shaft,” a meticulously arty but basically kitschy exercise in photogenic miserablism, another contender, didn't win either.

Then there were two: “The Captive,” previously mentioned, and Czech director Petr Zelenka’s “The Karamazovs.” Czech, please! “Karamazovs” wins.

Heres our “motivation” for picking it: “…for translating Dostoevsky’s great moral fable into an ingenious fusion of theater, film, literature and real life..” It’s a quasi-documentary about a Prague Theater group performing a stage version of the novel in a Polish factory as a way of reaching out to the common people and integrating their art with their lives. The adaption is rather brilliant as are the performances and the use of the setting very inventive. As for the fictional frame stories -- their interaction with a worker whose son just died, etc.  -- a little weak. But it has the intellectual rigor and wit of such similar exercises as “Marat/Sade” and “Vanya on 42nd St.” A good choice if I do say so myself.

Some other random patterns I've been noticing in the films screened here:

1. Split screen/splitting couples. Invariably a relationship in trouble is made concrete on the screen by separating the two with a door jamb, a stair railing, etc. Maybe arty about 40 years go, but now a cliche.

2. Vomiting. At moments of intense emotion a character vomits dramatically. Does this ever happen in real life? I would have thought this device would have been done  with after the vomiting scene in  "Team America: World Police."

3. Cats. At key plot moments a cat will appear, cross the screen or settle in a character's lap or something. But that's okay. I like cats.

More importantly, though, I've seen a film which not only is the first here at Karlovy Vary that can legitimately be called Kafkaesque but is also the best film in the festival, Hungarian director Attila Gigor's "The Investigator." But, it will be a hard sell. I myself almost balked on it when the talking crab appeared, but I gave it time and it grew on me. Once you accept the talking crab I think you're going to love this movie.

An assistant pathologist in Budapest rounds off his day of attending to gruesome corpses by visiting his mother dying of cancer in the hospital. She needs an operation he can't afford to pay for. Meanwhile, a mysterious young cafe waitress also is hitting on him but the pathologist shuns all human contact; the closest he can get to a person is when he lovingly applies make-up to a cadaver's face. So he's got a little bit of the Norman Bates thing going for him, but also, as the story develops, some Columbo and RoboCop as well.

 One day a stranger with a gimpy eye called Cyclops (allusion alert! The Odyssey!) offers him a huge wad of money if he agrees to kill a complete stranger. Without too much compunction (a cat in fact plays a part in his decision making) the pathologist accepts, and... So now you're thinking "The American Friend" or "Strangers on a Train." But I'm also thinking Oedipus, the first detective. He also tried to solve a murder and ended up finding out both the identity of the victim and the killer and himself. This film is kind of like Oedipus with a happy (sort of) ending. It's a Greek Comedy, Hungarian style. And it's very funny, too.

I just came from the fitness center at the Thermal Hotel, the monolithic 70s era Soviet hotel where I am staying, and let's just say that the term Kafkaesque came to mind. Had he been alive today the great Czech writer might have been inspired to write "The Castle" all over again. A simple workout involved taking a special sideways elevator only operated by a key card, paying 90 crowns, changing in a stark locker room, taking off one's shoes, showing  a receipt to gain admittance, putting your shoes on again to use the cardio machine and asking an attendant to turn it on. And if you forget your towel as I did, then you have to go back and repeat everything, removing and replacing the shoes and so on. A word to the wise -- don't take locker number 37. I'll say no more.

I'm not here for fitness, however, but for film. I have seen over half the competition movies and others besides and I have reached the point, as I have at many other festivals, when I notice certain patterns emerging. Most of  these patterns are patently silly and surely coincidental. Like, why are there so many movies in which the main character suddenly indulges in frantic and embarassingly bad dancing? But others seem to reflect some larger reality. Like the descent of a "civilized" person into "savagery" as seen above in "Terribly Happy." Over the past couple of years the standard festival feature was about immigrants from the the Third World trying to enter a European country or adjusting to life there. Here the direction seems to have reversed, with Europeans heading to the Third World -- or to the Third World equivalent in their own country -- and basically slumming it.

The results, though perhaps well intended, are  borderline patronizing, even racist. As is the case with Belgian director Manuel Pouette's "Distant Tremors," in which a three Europeans join a young Senegalese man in a trip down the river to steal fetishes and, in effect, test the differences between the Western scientific approach and African "magic." Kind of a muddle of "Apocalypse Now" and "Walkabout" with many subtitles. Or German director Tom Schreiber's "Dr. Aleman," in which a fatuous German intern takes up residency in the ER of Cali, Colombia and becomes engrossed in the violent, drug-addled criminal culture whose bullet-riddled victims he treats at the hospital. Once he's offered a gun,the film takes an inevitable, trivializing Hollywood course. Probably the best of these is Russian filmmaker Alexey Uchitel's "The Captive," in which a  couple of hardened Russian troops take a hunky Chechen guerrilla prisoner and, while esorting him back to their own lines, find he's a person just like themselves, and kind of cute.

Other motifs? Films (or plays or radio shows) within films; films about squabbling middle class, middle aged couples (Bergman has a lot to answer for for his "Scenes from a Marriage." But nothing as Kafkaesque as the Hotel Thermal's fitness center.

 Nick Nolte is a no-show. He cancelled at the last minute to appear with his documentary, "Nick Nolte: No Exit," leaving the director, Thomas Thurman, holding the bag. So much for his opportunity to join the ranks of such celebrated Karlovy Vary visitors as Karl Marx, Kamal Ataturk, Anton Dvorak and, this year, Robert De Niro, Christopher Lee and Rita Tushingham.That's his decision. Far be it for me to judge.

Except when it comes to movies. And so, back to work. Our local Czech member of the jury, Jan, has already seen all the films in competition in order to preview them for television and he said that he thought the first film screened was the best. Which doesn't give you much motivation to watch the remaining 13. Then again, he might be wrong. So far, though, in my opinion, after 8 movies, he is not.

The film is Henrik Ruben Genz's "Terribly Happy," or as it's known in the original Danish, "Frygtelig Lykkelig." A cop from Copenhagen, reassigned for disciplinary reasons, pulls into a squalid hamlet in Denmark's South Jutland region. First off, if these festivals serve no other purpose at all, they at least provide tips to the unwary traveler, and if I were you I'd cross South Jutland off my list of future tourist destinations. If the Bates Motel were an entire community it would resemble this town. The local bully wears a cowboy hat and bolo tie and gets drunk and breaks people's arms. His wife is a schizo slut who tries to seduce the new cop, presumably so her husband will break his arm. Her feral daughter pushes a baby carriage with a squeaky wheel late at night whenever her husband beats her up. Then there's the Bog, where people, outsiders especially, disappear.Nonetheless, it's not long before the new cop feels right at home.

Genz's amoral, vaguely sadistic black comedy reminds me of the Coen Brothers' "Blood Simple" and John Dahl's "Red Rock West." More recently it calls to mind films I saw last year at Thessaloniki, "Jar City" and "Cargo 200" (the latter also screening here, and apparently consigned to the festival loop without ever finding a distributor). Good but not great is the general consensus. Six more, however, remain.

 I am now in Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic attending the film festival where I am serving on the International Film Critics [FIPRESCI] jury [it is a "nonstatutory" jury, and I'm not sure what  that means]. Also known as Carlsbad, the town has since the 14th century been renowned for its salubrious waters, reputed to cure many ills, and has expanded over the centuries into a valley full of  baroque and Art Deco hotels, spas and knick knack shops that looks like a cross between Rockport, Mass., and "The Village" on the old TV series "The Prisoner." Many of the geat names of history have passed through over the years, people like Beethoven, Goethe, Mozart, Freud and Mark Twain, and just this week Nick Nolte and Robert De Niro.

 They are not here just for the waters, no doubt, but for the opportunity to promote their new movies in the Eastern European and international market. De Niro was here also to receive the festival's "Crystal Globe" award for his lifetime contribution to world cinema. It took place a couple of days ago, the 4th of July in fact [like Thanksgiving, not celebrated overseas, I discovered] at the festival's lengthy opening ceremony [there were fireworks!] followed by a screening of his new film "What Just Happened?" directed by Barry Levinson.

On the plus side, the film was disorienting. Based on the Art Linson autobiography, it's about a producer, played by De Niro, with problems. First, the director of the movie he just finished shooting, "Fiercely," has a final scene in which the hero, played by Sean Penn, played by Sean Penn, gets killed and his dog has his brains blown out. After a disastrous test screening, he's got to convince the loony filmmaker to kill the killing of the dog. Second, the new movie he's putting together stars Bruce Willis, played by Bruce Willis, who shows up the first day of shooting overweight and with a big bushy beard and a bad attitude.Finally, he finds a pink argyle sock under the bed of is ex-wife, the kind of hosiery that could only be worn by the screenwriter whose name I forgot but who's played by Stanley Tucci (but who ISN'T Stanley Tucci, at least not in this movie) and who earlier in the film pitched him a script in which Brad Pitt (played by no one; he never makes an appearance) plays a florist. "There isn't a film there," De Niro's character tells him.

Unfortunately, the criticism applies to "What Just Happened?" also. It's Altman's "The Player" with a little bit of Levinson's own "Wag the Dog" thrown in but without the edge or urgency of either. Like the movie within the movie it also has problems with the ending, though killing a dog might have picked things up a little. More interesting than the movie, though, is the way it reflects it's own making. "What Just Happened?" had screened at Cannes to a more or less disastrous reception and Levinson has since been trying to salvage it.  At the press conference the following day De Niro admitted that it was a "work in progress" and that they were still working out certain details, like the ending.

"What Just Happened?," however, is not one of the films in competition. I'll get to those later.

Be seeing you.

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.