April 25, 2024
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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
I am trying to understand why this film left me so cold. I like Clooney (esp. in roles such as these), I thought the female roles were very well written, the topic was interesting and the direction wasn’t too bad. The problems were the ending which didn’t resolve anything and the low key nature of the movie (i.e. there was no urgency in anything). Also, has Vera Farmiga had some work done, I couldn’t get over how tight she looked anytime she was on the screen.
I can’t stop thinking about this one, ever since seeing it. Obviously, the film has a lot to say about the economy and the people forced to deal with job loss. But there’s something profound, I think, about what is said about how we handle our relationships these days.
And Anna Kendrick was a revelation to me.
I saw this with my family on Christmas day. Aside from the music being overbearing at times (most likely the theater’s fault), I was very entertained. I don’t believe the ending was supposed to resolve anything. The film basically follows a guy doing what he does, and does it well because of the kind of person he is. It was very funny, very sad, and at the same time kinda hopeful, so it didn’t leave me feeling too cold. I loved the end answering machine song.
I loved it – Clooney is very good in it, but yes, the revelations are Anna Kendrick and Vera Farmiga.
I loved it – Clooney is very good in it, but yes, the revelations are Anna Kendrick and Vera Farmiga.
*smacks forehead at the thought that ANYONE thinks this movie is anything but vapib and smacks it ven harder that anyone thinks AK is a “revelation.”
Some o you got some seriously low expectations.
@EOTW i see where you are coming from, but i still enjoyed it. AKs performance is not something you bring up with your friends when discussing great performances, but it somehow is turning into that because of all the rave reviews. I don’t understand how anybody found AKs performance a revelation, and some sort of explanation would be nice.
I don’t understand all th raves either. I have said it again and again, but JR is a pedestrian director if ever there was one. No visual panache, no real flir for any kind of personality. His films are boring to look at and I’m kinda shocked that Clooney, who has a track record working with real talent, would go here. It’s just a predictable, boring, completely surface movie. I can tell you that it is NOT getting raves in the heartland, which it professes to know so much about.
It’s a “movie of our times” made by people who only fly from NY to LA and back without ever stopping in-between.
To each his own – as written, Anna Kendrick’s character is nothing special. But she really delivers the goods and makes you care about some one who could be quite cliched.
And spare me the “heartland” stuff – yes, yes, every one in between the coasts lives in a small town that revolves a church, general store, and VFW. Just simple people who are down to earth, right? Come on, let’s start shovelling the cliches about the “elites” and how they’re forcing poor values on us.
Up in the Air felt pretty real to me and it was very sharply written. Is it the greatest movie ever? No. Even the best film of the year? Not so sure.
KENDRICK POWER.
Best movie of year (my longish explanation for that is in the B.O. thread and I am too lazy to copy and paste it here now).
EOTW: (as IO summoning Lex Luthor) WRONG!!!!
Hey, MINI SPOILER:
Can someone else who’s seen it tell me WHERE you think Reitman cribbed that soundless shot of Kendrick’s back on the movie escalator from?
I’m thinking it’s a riff on a similar moment from BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN where Ledger imagines something happening to Gylenhaal and the sound cuts out (it playing in his head)… Is it also from another movie? It’s definitely an homage or steal from something, and Brokeback is the main thing I can think of.
(moving escalator, I meant to say above…)
To each his own – as written, Anna Kendrick’s character is nothing special. But she really delivers the goods and makes you care about some one who could be quite cliched.
And spare me the “heartland” stuff – yes, yes, every one in between the coasts lives in a small town that revolves a church, general store, and VFW. Just simple people who are down to earth, right? Come on, let’s start shovelling the cliches about the “elites” and how they’re forcing poor values on us.
Up in the Air felt pretty real to me and it was very sharply written. Is it the greatest movie ever? No. Even the best film of the year? Not so sure.
LexG,
Could be anywhere. Didn’t Memento have moments like that? But if we want to be historic, we could go back to the 1960s with Resnais’ Je t’aime, Je t’aime and then Bertolucci’s Conformist. But I have a sneaking feeling that it was Godard (who else) who might have started it with Une femme est une femme/Le Mepris/Pierrot le Fou.
And since I was being historic, sorry The Conformist was 1970.
8 1/2
1963
Guido is asleep in bed, and his mistress Carla is reading and laughing next to him, but there’s no sound because he luckily can’t hear it.
ANA NISI MASA
I’m sick of going on about how trite and pedestrian I think this movie is, so three unrelated points:
1. JK Simmons, Jason Bateman, Galifianakis, Danny McBride, and Melanie Lynskey feel like the Indiewood Dramedy Bus & Truck Company at this point. Seriously, was there not a part for Ken Jeong?
2. The talking heads from real unemployed people are fatal, because they a) feel totally scripted and b) make you realize how little the film’s main arc has to do with the current economic climate.
3. No American filmmaker would dare make a movie about Farmiga’s character and, let’s face it, she’s the most interesting person in the movie.
Up in the Air reminds me of an A-list 1950s awards bait movie.
It’s consciously trying to be arty by avoiding whenever possible any attempt to establish a real emotion connection. But it puts out a veneer of being important and having a message that you should care about.
Up in the Air is one hell of a lot like Sayonara isn’t it? but not as good as 12 Angry Men. Both Oscar losers, by the way.
Juno had actual heart and soul, that makes it one of the best movies of the decade, in my opinion, and it was made with all the expertise seen on display in Up in the Air, but because it was both a drama and a comedy, no one noticed how cleverly and effectively the cinematography and production design, and yes, script design (goofy dialog and all) was communicating magnificently. Juno had the sort of framing and blocking you see so masterfully done in Robert Mulligan’s films (which is reminiscent of Capra and Ford blocking and framing), whereas Up in the Air is excellent in spite of the bland Digital Intermediate perfection and directorial pomp and hand waving ‘look at me I’m important’-ness.
the scene that works better than any are the scenes that introduce the characters who interact with Clooney (what was his name in this movie again, Cary, was it?) Clooney meeting Kendrick. Clooney meeting Farmiga, Clooney meeting Arrested Development guy playing Arrested Development guy for the umpteenth time in four years since the show was mercifully canceled after seasons of excruciating unfunny injoke on top of unfunny injoke. Those scenes are great, as are the scenes where we meet Clooney’s family. So we have terrific set up of all the character and then….
it doesn’t go anywhere, instead we get the subplot about the economy and formal faux-OTF interview bites with actors pretending to be laid off workers in order to show us how daring and indy and challenging the film is.
Up in the Air is slick and seems to lack heart in favor of manipulating critical levers to gain acclaim. It’s a grand tradition of filmmaking, but sort of a shame to see Reitman go that route, rather than the Wilder/Leigh sensibilities I felt was possible based on his earlier work. I hope he comes back with something less self-consciously critic-bait (though it doesn’t fellate critics nearly as much as Sideways did) and something more heartfelt.
The film left me cold because it IS cold. A sucker-punch masquerading as a hug, a lump of coal in the stocking. Shrewdly made, cynically ‘inspired.’
By the end, Ryan Bingham has finally learned about himself what we understand about him within 5 minutes of the opening credits.
You dudes are harsh… It’s most emotionally exhausting movie of the year, and also the warmest and most affectionate. Much like the Bateman/Garner scenes in JUNO, Reitman has a feel for the intense, deeply personal stuff that doesn’t get said a lot of times in movies.
It’s his best movie yet; I also liked JUNO, at least the relationship stuff.
If there’s one COLD, smarmy entry in the Reitman filmography, it’s the smug, cold, ugly Thank You for Smoking with its ugly, off-putting butterscotch scene and self-satisfied air of telling us something any reasonable adult has understood since 1972 about the world works.
UITA is much more human-scoped and scaled, much warmer, sweeter, more decent and more devastating. If you’re a man and you don’t see yourself in Ryan Bingham at the end, I don’t know whether to envy you or to say you’re not looking hard enough within.
Sorry Lex, but Rob is so right about this. but, Rob, I KNEW going in that they used (some) real people in the interviews. So, when they popped up onscreen, all it did was take me out of this already cruddy film and jar me into reality. It was such a disconnect from the unrealistic, sappy film that I was seeing that it was almost laughable in parts.
While I guess VF’s Alex is interesting (mostly cause I’d like to fuck the shit out of her), her character ends up being as one note as the othe two characters. it’s just all so boring and trite:
VF = cheating whore wife
AK = good girl
GC = stud
Zzzzzzzzzz…
Sorry Lex, but Rob is so right about this. but, Rob, I KNEW going in that they used (some) real people in the interviews. So, when they popped up onscreen, all it did was take me out of this already cruddy film and jar me into reality. It was such a disconnect from the unrealistic, sappy film that I was seeing that it was almost laughable in parts.
While I guess VF’s Alex is interesting (mostly cause I’d like to fuck the shit out of her), her character ends up being as one note as the othe two characters. it’s just all so boring and trite:
VF = cheating whore wife
AK = good girl
GC = stud
Zzzzzzzzzz…
EOTW, I think you have oversimplified the film quite a bit, but oh well.
Still, with regards to VF, I would recommend that you put a Spoiler Alert first – the film has not even fully reached wide release, yet.
I saw it, but many have not, as of yet.
If the definition of “revelation” is “an act of revealing to view or making known,” I really don’t see the objection to my labeling Anna Kendrick as such.
To me, she was the unknown part of the movie (go ahead and object to my not seeing her in any film before, if you must), and in many ways, her character is the heart of the story.
It’s really not worth smacking your forehead over. That’ll just cause you a headache.
Reitman doesn’t seem to be particularly well-schooled in film history (judging by his own statements), so I’d guess that moving walkway shot is cribbed from BROKEBACK as opposed to anything made before 1990.
I liked it quite a bit, except for the ending, which seemed to have a lot of the hallmarks of I-don’t-know-how-to-end-this-movie-itis. I mean, it seemed to be awkwardly trying to straddle the line between closure and definitive open-endedness.
The more I think about the ending the more I like it. Vera F stole that movie. She’ll lose to MoNique I’m sure (still haven’t seen Precious), but great work.
I found it quite entertaining. **Poss Spoilers contained herein** I actually liked the “real” people in there and much preferred the no names that they did use. The scene w/JK Simmons came off way too neat and clean and was unbelieable to me because I was looking at it thinking, “well, OK, that’s too easy. Of course he’ll come around like that, he’s an actor.”
It’s kinda one of those things that made X-Files. I’ll be totally riveted to some of the most far-fetched, acid dropping, lying kid w/ADD storylines but the moment I start seeing guest casting I’m gonna start nit picking everything down to how Mulder and Scully always seem to get the same type rental car.
I thought the build up to the ending was a bit forced. Her reaction could’ve come down a notch or two. There was something too “we’ll do this to fool the audience” about it that I can’t quite fully articulate. I think maybe cuz as much as Clooney’s character knows about human nature/cynisism there were obvious questions he didn’t ask, even to himself, about her. I realize he’s made some chances and the need for the dramatic reveal but I felt like they might as well have cued a drumroll for him the moement he got into the cab in Chicago.
When it comes to this and Thank You for Smoking, I like the characters that Reitman is chosing to focus on. While there’s an initial satisfaction of getting the answer, “what kind of person would do these jobs,” there seems to be a loss of the total identity to where who there are/what they do doesn’t seem to matter. And sure, you could say that’s the goal is to find the universal thread w/in them but it’s almost like a sitcom in that it doesn’t matter if the character is a doctor, lawyer, former model or vet, it’s just a person in a messed up situation. There’s a part of me that wishes to see the help or hindrance of the individual having an affect on the decisions or reactions to what’s going on in the story. I realize they’re adaptations. It just kinda seems like great care is shown early on showing who the characters are but then that’s kinda abandoned once we get half way through the picture.