MCN Columnists
David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

3 Days To Go Golden Days Before They End

And so… we near the end.

Looking back at my first column, 19 weeks ago, there is not a single thing in it that remotely embarrasses me.  3 of the 5 nominees were in my Top 4.  The other 2 were near the bottom of the first Top 15, but appropriately so at the time.

We were discussing the dark movies, the two comedies, the contenders that didn’t have the marketing muscle to make it, the three titles from first-time directors that ended up being BP nominated, the half-dozen well-liked pictures that had already seen their fates sealed by poor box office reception, and Clayton being the only early October survivor (No Country held off expansion until November)… still themes of discussion.

My point is not to smell my own farts here.  The point is, it’s been that kind of season.

Julie Christie, Daniel Day-Lewis and George Clooney, Javier Bardem, the Coens, Diablo vs Gilroy, Ellen Page emerging, love lettering Holbrook and Dee, Cotillard trying to find her balance in English, Haggis’ film getting mishandled with a terrible date, two Paramount films launching their Oscar campaigns in Harry Knowles’ lap to little effect (though one did get nominated, thanks to the real critics), and Searchlight, Miramax, Vantage, Focus, and WB continuing to be the dominant players in the last five years with 17 of the last 25 Best Picture nominations between them.

Déjà vu all over the place.  All you have to do is to listen to the ground.

This is not to say that new companies can’t break into the game.  Universal has managed 3 nominations in that period, though there is a sense that two have been for well-liked films flogged for with an unusual amount of awards marketing dollars and the third was Spielberg on Jewish pain.  New Line had their 2 Rings nods.  And aside from that, it’s only 1 each for Lionsgate, Sony Classics, and Fox.  Lionsgate is the only true indie that has managed a nod in the last 5 years.

And if No Country wins on Sunday night, it will mean that in five of the last six years, the winning movie has had either Cynthia Swartz or Michelle Robertson on the film as a leading consultant, dominating as Universal & Tony Angellotti and Terry Press’ DreamWorks team had in the years before that.

This doesn’t mean that someone else can’t be on the winning team… but the question of who will be the next great consulting voice is not answered.  This is not meant to discount the value of all the terrific consultants out there, some of whom have also been working on movies that won and some of whom have gotten nominations against all odds.  And even the best can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear… at least not in the winner’s circle.  Really, can anyone really doubt the strength of the Searchlight and Fox Vantage teams in the last couple of years?  There is no better mechanic in the game than Lisa Taback. But until they break the tape at the finish… well, in the Oscar game, winning isn’t everything, but it is 80% of everything.

Anyway…

People want to talk about box office not mattering… yet once again, there was no Best Picture nominee release before December 26 (There Will Be Blood) with less than $32 million in the domestic box office.  And it wasn’t just obviously financially troubled movies that didn’t make the cut.  Films that did okay, but seemed like disappointments died as well, whether Sweeney Todd ($52m dom/$122m ww, #7 musical of all time), Charlie Wilson’s War ($66m dom/$98m ww) or The Great Debaters ($30m, $26m when noms closed).

Journalists have been left spinning their wheels like gerbils in a show biz cage for weeks.  This week’s laugher is Juno as the threat to No Country.  No way.  God bless the film.  God bless Peter Rice & Co, who delivered a mainstream comedy right out of ApatowVille that is not only the highest grossing film in Searchlight’s remarkable history, but which will come close to doubling the domestic gross of the #2 film, Sideways. But Oscar doesn’t give the award to non-showbiz comedies (Shakespeare in Love being the one arguable comedy in recent history), the last exception being Annie Hall, 30 years ago.  (And you could make the argument that it was a show biz comedy, following Woody from coast to coast.)

Moreover, it is the classic example of a “little movie” that got too big to win.  Shakespeare in Love didn’t crack $100 million until weeks after it won.  Nor did Driving Miss Daisy. There just is no history for a film becoming a surprise box office monster and winning.  And there will be none this year.

You want to make a case for There Will Be Blood?  Good luck.  What is the precedent?  Eastwood?  Letters From Iwo Jima didn’t win.  Million Dollar Baby was over $60 million when the final vote closed and was the #3 film when it was nominated.  TWBB is at $32 million, #5 in the group of nominees.

No one is even considering Atonement as an option… though you couldn’t easily make any argument against it beyond, “It ain’t that good… it’s not that well liked.”

The argument against Michael Clayton could be that it is still in the #4 box office slot and is likely to be stuck there unless it wins the Oscar, since Atonement, only $123,000 ahead at the box office, is still winning head-to-head, day-by-day.  But aside from that, it makes perfect sense as the alternative to No Country For Old Men. It’s New Old Hollywood with Clooney, Wilkinson, Gilroy, and even Swinton to some degree.  It’s serious, but it doesn’t choke you with its weight.  And no one in the Academy will be embarrassed to say that it was this year’s Best Picture.

Still, the movie that has made the long haul and is still most likely to follow in its own precursor footsteps is No Country For Old Men. It’s the third Coen Bros film to score nods for the brothers, inarguably amongst the five most important American filmmakers to emerge in the last two decades.  It’s their second Best Picture nominee.  It seems like the time is now.

Six of the last ten and thirteen of the last twenty Best Picture winners have been directed by well-set, mostly previously-nominated veterans.  What film this year makes sense following the legacy of Haggis, Marshall, Mendes, Madden, Minghella, Gibson, and Costner?  (Interesting that the only one who was born in America was Costner, eh?)

So… Money says No Country.  Veteran status says No Country.  The Editing Stat says No Country.  DGA’s 70% picking BP winners, not Directing winners says No Country.  The Golden Globes 90% Wrong in Best Picture (and how could they miss Return of the King?) with 10 shots in the last five years says No Country.  NY Film Critics (3 matching in the last 10 years), BFCA (6 of 10), and SAG (5 in 10) all say No Country.  And more than double the critics awards of any other film and five times the number of Best Picture wins of the next closest titles…

It ALL seems to say No Country.

And there is no reason to really think it won’t win.  The people around the film have not strutted around like they already won it.  There is no “must love” film sauntering around in the background… just four films with strong constituencies for adult conscience drama, directing, comedy, and period romance.  Even its male lead, Tommy Lee Jones, got an Oscar nod… for another picture… but contributing to the ‘feel right” of it all.

It is likely to be as boring and pleasant an Oscar night as any in memory.

And then, on Monday, the discussion between Swartz and Rudin about the positioning of Revolutionary Road will continue.  Is it Mendes time for a second Oscar?  Will The Great Kate with a K finally win her first Oscar?  Will Leo get his?  Will Deakins be a negative if he wins this year… or great bait of he loses this year?  Can Scott Rudin be the Bride twice in two years after being left out of even bridesmaid status all but once in over a decade of being in the chase?

Or will the film end up being just another quality Oscar miss with pedigree to spare?

I don’t know.

And I don’t really care.

We are exactly 3 months away from Indiana Jones IV (Harrison Ford needs an IV around now) and a whip arrived by courier on Wednesday to prove it.  It’s the off-season.  We have a SAG strike to avoid and a President to elect.  Monday morning I get on a cruise ship with 200 of my favorite Canadians, heading for Mexico, for the Floating Festival, which will honor the recently passed great man, Dusty Cohl and a great living actress, Gena Rowlands.

We look to the future by appreciating our past. And loving movies.

For me, the joy of this season has come half an hour at a time, talking to the likes of Bardem and Cotillard and Polley and Mortensen and Page and Swinton and Wilkinson and Gilroy and Brolin and Gosling and Gillespie and Oliver and Schnabel and Kaminski and Harwood and Ryan and Holbrook and Ronan and Gibney and Amalric and Croze and so many others who I never got to spend time with on camera but hung out with like Linney and Jenkins and Clooney and Ferguson and Haggis and Knightley and Rudin and even the unnominated like Burton and Taymor and Adams and Blonsky and Kelley and Hirsch and Clarkson and Mortimer and McAvoy and Langella and Riley and Turturro and Cronenberg and Bosco and Lee and Jordan and Nair…

The joy of getting to know just a little bit more about these people is such a pleasure and such and privilege (and for those who I didn’t name but gave me time as well). These are the memories that will stick with me forever… not the dance of the pundits.

The closer you get to the work, the more that the work is all that really matters.

Viva la cinema!

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon