Movie City Indie Archive for August, 2005
Defending McD's against Super-Size Me for the little fat people
AP’s Valerie Bauman comes to the defense of embattled, defenseless entrepreneur McDonald’s, finding a documentary that’s the anti-Super Size Me, one that advocates eating only the fast food chain’s products in order to lose weight. 
The credulous Bauman writes that after seeing Morgan Spurlock‘s documentary, “Merab Morgan decided to give a fast-food-only diet a try. The construction worker and mother of two ate only at McDonald’s for 90 days— and dropped 37 pounds in the process… Morgan, of Henderson, N.C., thought the documentary had unfairly targeted the world’s largest restaurant company, implying that the obese were victims of a careless corporate giant. People are responsible for what they eat, she said, not restaurants…. “I thought it’s two birds with one stone — to lose weight and to prove a point for the little fat people…” Continuing to speak a bizarre lingo we don’t quite recognize, Morgan [non-Spurlock division] is quoted as saying, “Just because they accidentally put an apple pie in my bag instead of my apple dippers doesn’t mean I’m going to say, ‘Oh, I can eat the apple pie.'” … One person went so far as to make her own independent film about dieting at McDonald’s. “Me and Mickey D” follows Soso Whaley of Kensington, N.H., as she spends three 30-day periods on the diet. She dropped from 175 to 139 pounds, eating 2,000 calories a day at McDonald’s. “I had to think about what I was eating,” Whaley said… Walt Riker, the company’s vice president of corporate communications, said the Oak Brook, Ill.-based company is pleased–but not surprised–that some customers have lost weight eating only at the fast-food giant.” [Photo: Ray Pride]
Malkovich: pushing the train with 200 people
At the Locarno fest, the Age’s Stephanie Bunbury draws some red blood from John Malkovich: “Malkovich [was] lethally outspoken. Terrorism, he said, was with us to stay. “Because committing murder for political change always works. Always. Violence rules the world.” Later, he was asked if he were not afraid to be seen promoting terrorism with such rash remarks. “Terrorism hardly seems to need promotion… It seems to have done quite well, no?” He “concentrated largely on talking about acting in films; the comparison he favoured was between the successful play as a runaway train where actors just hold on, and film as a craft where a train has to be pushed up a hill….”Initially, I liked the form I knew… In later years, I got to enjoy pushing the train with 200 people.”
Stone by Stone: Oliver's still disinterring Alexander
Oliver Stone tells Stephen Dalton of The Age about recutting Alexander and the long view of history: “I think of those architects who say, ‘I built the building, people may hate it but a building lasts’… People look at it again and again over time. They came to accept the Pompidou Centre in Paris. I need to take a long-term view on this. When I’m dead I hope to be appreciated. Ha-ha!” … “We did 4 times the business outside America… That does indicate some kind of cultural difference…. That’s a huge differential – it’s usually one to one, two to one at most. I was hoping the British would look at it in another light, but it was impossible to overcome. In Britain I got some of the worst reviews, next to America, that I’ve ever got in my life… It never opened anywhere in the South, for example. Once ‘Alexander the Gay’ came out that was the headline, which was very cheesy – that killed it. You don’t combine homosexuality or bisexuality with military men in America.” He puffs a bit about his upcoming 9/11 pic for Par: “There was an overreaction after 9/11… It was a call for hysteria and as a result it led to war. Bush was given enormous powers and misused them. He created a huge bureaucracy, a Homeland Security system that won’t really work. He created a war in Iraq that has further helped bust the economy, and has led to civil war there. He was the wrong leader at the wrong time. I always felt that. I wish I had been wrong.”
Miramax and the rush to flush: a Scots view
The Scotsman’s Siobhan Synnot offers a UK perspective on the last-minute Miramax rush to flush, reviewing the fates of Proof and The Libertine, among other pics: “The whole situation has reopened one of the pet arguments in the film industry: whether Miramax is really responsible for revitalising independent film or for murdering it… Miramax can… be high-handed with its films and some of the artists the company claims to have nurtured. Besides delaying and shelving movies that the Weinsteins feel would be hard to sell, there is also Harvey’s habit of re-editing films to his own satisfaction…” The biggest loser, Siobhan surmises, is Danny Boyle’s Alien Love Triangle, “a project that appears to be not so much released as allowed to wander off into the undergrowth. Made between A Life Less Ordinary and The Beach, this was a truly small film and has never been shown publicly. Miramax… commissioned it as part of a trilogy of science-fiction shorts, then decided to turn the other segments into full-length features (Impostor and Mimic), leaving Boyle’s section effectively orphaned. Boyle himself wasn’t sure what fate awaited the picture recently. A 28-minute fable about sexual stereotypes, it’s a light-hearted [bit] in which Kenneth Branagh’s scientist discovers that his wife (Courteney Cox) is really a male alien, just as Cox’s own green, bald wife (Heather Graham) comes calling. Boyle called it charming but says that the film couldn’t be expanded… because “there’s a limit on charm”. “I don’t know if it’s coming out on DVD or not. I hope it is, perhaps as an extra feature, but I can’t see how you could watch it as a new release in the cinema. And I made it when Branagh and Courtney and Heather were rising young stars…And they’re not that any more.”
Grimm's trims: Gilliam tucks it under
Terry Gilliam visits with old friend Jack Mathews of the NY Daily News (who was instrumental in getting Gilliam’s cut of Brazil released) and has a word about the solo written-by credit for The Brothers Grimm as submitted by Miramax: Ehren Krueger “is a young and very busy guy best known for his adaptations of the Japanese movies that became The Ring and The Ring Two… Gilliam says his Grimm … would have been another horror film… One wonders how the script evolved into such a deliriously whimsical fairy tale. “What’s interesting about this film is that it was not made from a screenplay but from a dress pattern,” Gilliam says, by way of explaining why he and his regular writing partner Tony Grisoni are not credited. “Tony and I have devised the idea of a dress pattern, a big thing that everybody can gather around and make little tucks here, little hems here. It’s the future of filmmaking.” Sure enough, if you look at the credits for The Brothers Grimm, you’ll see Gilliam’s and Grisoni’s names as “Dress Pattern Makers.””
Baby penguins: an 11
In a trend item in International Newsweek, Sean Smith transcribes a variety of head-scratches over March of the Penguins: “It’s about the most committed parents on the face of the planet,” says Adam Leipzig, president of National Geographic Feature Films. “So kids can relate to it and parents can relate to it, and yet it’s unlike anything else that people can buy tickets to.” And maybe one more little reason: “On a cute scale from 1 to 10, a baby penguin is an 11.”
New indie: Peter Mullan swims the mainstream
Gifted actor and writer-director Peter Mullan has a new movie out about swimming called On a Clear Day; he tells Scottish site iofilm.co.uk about other currents: “Mullan argues that mainstream is where it’s at – it’s just that a lot of independent filmmakers haven’t caught on yet. “Those of us on the left, socially conscious type of cinema need to start playing with form, genres and style… Otherwise you just get trapped in a kind of worthy social realism and because the sentiment is good it’s like ‘it doesn’t matter how we present it to you… it’s the thought it counts’. But we need to grow up, guys. I don’t want to abandon the multiplexes to some of the Nazi-type of stuff you get there and then let film festivals go, ‘Yeah, we get the more humanitarian left-orientated part of cinema’… My family don’t tend to watch arthouse types of film, festivals or whatever – they go to UG fucking C. I’m not just going to walk away from my family, my class, my friends because ‘I don’t go there’. I want to be in there with films that [I hope] aren’t compromised and hopefully have something to try to touch upon. I go to the cinema a lot with my kids. You look up and, man, there’s virtually nothing I want to see. Sometimes I even look forward to the fact that I’m going to see a kids’ movie.”
Mick LaSalle's firsthand account of a disaster
The SF Chronicle movie critic explains the bloody art of bad reviews, sounding reminiscent of Mel Brooks on the difference between comedy and tragedy [“Tragedy is when I have a hangnail. Comedy is when you fall into a sewer and die.”]: “Each of them is an attempt to put into words an experience I considered… torture. In putting words to such an event, the event inevitably seems funny on the page, but the humor, to the extent it’s there, doesn’t derive from a disposition to mockery but from a genuine effort to describe a specific variety of hideousness. Thus, the reader laughs not because the critic is inflicting pain, which isn’t funny, but because the critic is in pain, which is funny. The reader gets to enjoy the critic’s suffering… There are few things less funny than a critic’s trying to be funny, and nothing less useful than a critic’s filtering information through the cliched, distorted and self-protective prism of a knee-jerk snideness… No, really the only way for a bad review to be fun is for it to be the honest product of misery.”
On the Fry: Stephen reflects
Wilde wordsmith Stephen Fry muses in the Observer’s “This Much I Know”: “By 15 I’d read just about every biography of every literary whoopsie that’s ever been written and I imagined I would become a writer or teacher or belletrist in Tangier or Ischia or somewhere… I think people probably realised that to say I found intimacy distasteful was really a way of saying I was afraid of it. Sometimes people don’t believe the things you say, not because they think you’re lying, but because they think you’re kidding yourself…”
Batman continues: some true West
Adam West offers some independent-minded thinking in a swell profile in the Independent, talking to Robert Chalmers: “Wisdom,” according to Adam West, is knowing when to shut the fuck up.” And for the past 20 years or so, by this definition, there are few major stars who have been such exemplary models of good sense… Since the mid-1980s, by which time he’d retreated to a farm outside the remote town of Ketchum, Idaho (pop. 3,003) he has become increasingly reluctant to speak to journalists. The process of arranging a meeting with West has taken months and involved the submission of previous interviews, dozens of phone messages and emails. Even though the actor has finally agreed to see me, when I get to Idaho his mobile is switched off, and have to spend two days at a Tyrolean-themed motel in Ketchum before I manage to get through to him… “I got banned from Aspen,” West says. “Why?”
“Well, you know, we’d been partying and…” “And?” A pause.
“Liquor?” “Yes.”
“Women? “Yes.”
“Police?” “Yes.”
All this was some years ago, West recalls.
“I was escorted out of town and advised it would be unwise to return. About 15 years later, I had a letter from the Aspen authorities saying it would be OK to come back – to visit.”
Fear & Loathing in Saskatchewan: Gilliam finishes 2
Chip McGrath books some time with Terry Gilliam at 64 with 2 pics in the pipeline in the Sunday NY Times: “My problem is I worry too much sometimes about the time things are taking. And I keep pushing to get it done. So I say, O.K., we’ll live with that, and keep moving forward. And it’s always been like that, and I hate it. I hate being the one that’s worried about the time.”… I said that wasn’t his reputation…. He looked at me and said, “My reputation has nothing to do with me.” Of Brothers Grimm, he tells McGrath, “Usually my battles are when I finish a film, but this one got off to some very bad beginnings…” Dimension had acquired the movie from MGM after it was already in Prague, and lead Samantha Morton was fired, followed by DP Nicola Pecorini. Eventuallly, both sides agreed to walk away from the unfinished film. “It happens with every film… There comes a part where the money and the creative elements all come crashing together. Everybody’s under a lot of pressure, and everybody is panicking about what works and what doesn’t… I walked off and did Tideland and came back 6 months later… I always dreamed of being able to finish a film, walk away from it, and then come back a few months later… and this time the circumstances sort of allowed it to happen.”
Apple juices Errol
At Think Secret, which keeps its eyes on all things Apple, Ryan Katz rumors that Apple dumped its pricey new iPod campaign shot by Errol Morris, “before the first ads even hit television… Apple had selected 60 individuals for the campaign out of thousands who had responded to the company’s call on its Web site for iPod-catalyst Switch stories. Those 60, which ranged in age from about 18 to 35 and spanned a diverse number of cultures and professions, were flown to Los Angeles in early May to shoot the ads with Moxie Pictures and Errol Morris… Of the 60 flown to L.A., Moxie and Morris settled on 30 who would be the new faces of the Switch campaign. Switchers were interviewed from ten minutes to over an hour by Morris, who asked them a wide variety of questions. According to sources, that’s where problems started to arise. “So few people could speak into the camera,” one source said, adding that — almost with a sense of futility — those too nervous ended up being spoon-fed lines…. With members of Apple corporate overseeing the filming, it became apparent to a number on set that tension between Morris and Apple over the direction and execution of the campaign was building…. “An unbelievable amount of money was invested in this campaign, you wouldn’t believe it…” Like the original campaign, the new Switch ads were destined for television, print, billboards, and buses. Switchers were paid $3,100 for their day’s work.” At Morris’ site, he’s posted another in a series of clever if doomed ads, for a Quaker “weight control” oatmeal.
Nobody effs with the Ebert: two for zero
Friday finds Roger Ebert giving two of his exceptionally rare zero-star ratings; while he doesn’t cover his own recent razzing by the one-and-only Rob Schneider, he does describe the Schneider-Patrick Goldstein foodfight: “Schneider retaliated by attacking Goldstein in full-page ads in Daily Variety and the Hollywood Reporter… Schneider wrote: “Well, Mr. Goldstein, I decided to do some research to find out what awards you have won. I went online and found that you have won nothing. Absolutely nothing. No journalistic awards of any kind … Maybe you didn’t win a Pulitzer Prize because they haven’t invented a category for Best Third-Rate, Unfunny Pompous Reporter Who’s Never Been Acknowledged by His Peers.” … I found [Schneider’s] not so good at dishing it out, either. I went online and found that Patrick Goldstein has won a National Headliner Award, a Los Angeles Press Club Award, a RockCritics.com award, and the Publicists’ Guild award for lifetime achievement… Schneider is correct, and Patrick Goldstein has not yet won a Pulitzer Prize. Therefore, Goldstein is not qualified to complain… As chance would have it, I have won the Pulitzer Prize, and so I am qualified. Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks. Writing about the slaughter-porn Chaos (which I am grateful to have not been invited to see), Ebert lays it on a different line: “Chaos is ugly, nihilistic, and cruel — a film I regret having seen. I urge you to avoid it. Don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s “only” a horror film, or a slasher film. It is an exercise in heartless cruelty and it ends with careless brutality. The movie denies not only the value of life, but the possibility of hope… DeFalco directs with a crude, efficient gusto, as a man with an ax makes short work of firewood. … It works, all right, but I’m with Ed Gonzalez: Why do we need this shit?” Ebert’s website also offers a bonus catalogue of critical contumely.
Paying for Wes Anderson's sins: Bill's penance
The Hollywood Reporter on the cat that’s a dog: “Bill Murray is in negotiations to reprise his role as the voice of Garfield in 20th Century Fox’s sequel Garfield 2, while Breckin Meyer and Jennifer Love Hewitt have signed on to return, though Hewitt’s role will be greatly reduced.”
It's R-r-r-r-r-rated R: some Judd Apatow notes
First-time writer-director Judd Apatow “has used 40 Year-Old Virgin research screenings to test things as subtle as a 5-second song cue,” writes LA Times’ John Horn. “He also recorded research audience reaction to the film on an audio tape. When he was back in the editing room, he synchronized the audience recording with the film. He thus was able to hear not only what failed to produce laughs, but also to notice laughs where he thought no joke existed…” Apatow notes other external factors: “My first thought when Wedding Crashers ended was, ‘Oh, my God. We are so much dirtier than they are.'”
