By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
Movies of the Week: NY Observer Does Oscar, College and Demme's Neil Young
Notwithstanding Andrew Sarris’s trenchant reprinting of Freedomland writer Richard Price’s IMDB resume, this week’s New York Observer boasts a trifecta of interesting (and in one case, kind of fantastic, but I’ll get to that) film pieces that I have been wanting to get to for days now. If only I upheld an efficiency standard.
I suppose it would actually be something like two and a half film pieces: Ron Rosenbaum settles into a little more general survey of the two (or is it three?) Neil Youngs after a somewhat scorching indictment of Young’s new concert movie, Neil Young: Heart of Gold. All but pulling director Jonathan Demme aside to yawn in his face before slapping it, Rosenbaum contrasts the “bland, insipid, complacent, syrupy, self-satisfied, family-values, country-pie, pious, rural-virtues Neil Young” of Heart of Gold against the more transcendent “hard-core, killer rock ’n’ roll genius whose electrifying, volcanic sound and deeply resonant and compressed lyrics left an imprint not just on music, but on popular culture itself.”
But in also contrasting Demme’s work to that of Jim Jarmusch, whose 1997 doc Year of the Horse documented a rawer, dynamic Young in performance, Rosenbaum’s indignance is a thing to behold:
Mr. Demme’s film omits the dark, electrifying, deeply disruptive, sometimes bleak, sometimes exhilarating and subversive Neil Young. … Don’t get me wrong: Mr. Demme’s film is in many ways both beautiful and respectful. But by exalting rural virtues—in effect, by equating “rural” with “virtue”—and by making a hymn of praise for the prairie wisdom of the Great White North, Neil’s Canadian prairie roots, he verges on rural supremacism. By that I mean the ingrained American nativist, puritanical distrust of (and distaste for) the urban, the cosmopolitan, the seductive sins of sophistication, irony and complexity. Instead, simple is always best. Or less dangerous.
And so, in his extremely well-meaning way, Mr. Demme—well known as an admirably socially engaged director—has made perhaps the most reactionary film of the past year.
Reactionary in the sense that it implicitly gives the impression that family values of a certain kind—the Great White North, Great White Nashville kind—are the only true values. If you stay close to the land and practice rural virtues, you’ll go to heaven, (as long as you’re a rich rock—sorry, “country-rock”—star). Conventionality rules, dude!
The thing is, Demme and Rosenbaum are going to have words about this, and we’ll likely never know what comes out of it. Now I totally want to see the aesthetes go to war (Rosenbaum cites “Demme’s reliably adoring film-critic acolytes”–read: uninformed snobs); I want to see an impassioned, bloody, granola-vs.-cocaine Neil Young Civil War in my lifetime.
Failing that, I suppose there is always the coming Oscar apocalypse as defined by Observer media guru Tom Scocca: A newspaper industry in thrall to an film advertising machine that whirrs into high gear earlier and earlier each year. You already know a lot of machinery–The New York Times’s Red Carpet, the L.A. Times’s Envelope, Variety’s garish, full-page “For Your Consideration” ads–but Scocca implies that their increasingly muscular coordination makes for an equally incremental brain death:
On Feb. 1, Tribune Publishing president Scott Smith described the entertainment market in his company’s fourth-quarter conference call: “We’ve also got the phenomena where the L.A. Times basically gets a whole bunch of trade advertising in the movie category, and that’s driven both by the Academy Awards and other awards at this time of year.”
Mr. Smith then offered a prediction. “And expect over time,” he said, “that we will continue to get a really big share of movie advertising …. ”
And what are readers getting? In the (Feb. 20 NYT) Jon Stewart piece, reporter Jacques Steinberg offered the fit-to-print news that Mr. Stewart has “signed on to lead the establishment’s ultimate talent show,” that his performance “could be remembered for years to come,” and that his writing staff is “reluctant to give away much of their game plan.”
Mr. Steinberg’s story jumped to page E7, where it faced Oscar-themed ads for Munich, Transamerica, Capote and Crash.
Scocca being Scocca, there are stats (17 NYT Oscar stories in 1990 compared with 77 in 2005), citations (earlier Times stories brushing off Oscar hype) and the one devil’s advocate who essentially proves the phenomenon–in this case, New York Times deputy managing editor and Web poobah Jonathan Landman:
Mr. Landman, who was in charge of the culture department during the last Oscar season, said he was “not a big expert on Oscar coverage” and that the topic of overkill on the Academy Awards was “stupid.”
“It’s not a new thing,” Mr. Landman said of The Times’ coverage.
Meanwhile, this week’s most fascinating read will be found in The Transom, where Andrew Stengel brings us the insanely well-reported story of NYU student filmmakers pushing six-figure budgets on their short projects. An anonymous NYU film professor notes the trend as the school’s “dirty little secret,” while a verrrrry well-connected students go on the record about shorts with costs in excess of $200,000.
Check out the work of one Anthony Green, a Canadian sportswear scion who shot his 10-minute junior-year project Pigeon with an Oscar nominee, 35mm stock and help from some high-powered friends:
With the American (Michael) Lerner in the cast, the film wasn’t eligible for discounts off union rates—and the budget rose from $15,000 to $25,000. … Enter Karen Wookey, the veteran Canadian producer of such syndicated television shows as Mutant X and Andromeda—and a longtime friend of Mr. Green’s parents.
Ms. Wookey, in her new capacity as Pigeon’s producer, casually mentioned Mr. Green’s budget issues over breakfast with her former boss, Jay Firestone, the Canadian entertainment mogul who founded Fireworks Entertainment. Mr. Firestone threw in the $10,000 needed for completion from personal funds.
Ms. Wookey also got the script into the hands of (Wendy) Crewson, who Americans may know as Anne Packard from the third season of 24. But the masterstroke was getting most of her crew from Mutant X, which was on break at the time, to work on the film. The professional crew largely worked for free, and the post-production was on the house.
As for Pigeon’s real-world cost, Ms. Wookey said, “You could probably say it was between $200,000 and half a million, depending on your measuring posts.”
At least it was good, said Green’s professors. But still, I mean, Jesus Christ, this is all enough to make even George Pataki shit. Anyway, there is a wealth of revelation where that came from if you need additional reasons to NYU this morning. I guess it’s not all bad–Stengel finds a few down-to-earth students as well–but I still feel more than a little soiled with inadequacy. Oh well. That is why we have Winter Passing, I guess.
