Quotes, The Record & David Carr

I read David Carr’s latest column on quote approvals with great interest… but I felt that all things said, it was a lot of trees and no forest.

Basically, the piece – which you should read – speaks to recent admissions that quote approval has become a norm in a lot of coverage out there, not just in meaningless endeavors like filmmaking, but in politics and business. All very interesting. But my big problem, mostly with Traditional Media (Old Media, if you will), is that tone is set by so many unnamed sources, most of whom are legit – which is why papers like NYT indulge them – but have a vested interest in spinning the story. And the reporters and their editors would rather have a piece that promotes controversy over one that is reported down to the details, perhaps undercutting the edge of the idea that the reporter started with or was fed by an unnamed source.

To me, this is the virus and the quote thing is a minor pimple on the surface.

I got out of the quote game a long, long time ago. Why? Not because I couldn’t get quotes or get people on the phone, but because as soon as you take people on the record, they have an investment in your stories that starts the manipulation ball rolling… if it hasn’t already rolled over you by the time you are typing it up. I respect Carr and others who still live by the foundational idea of tradition and the work of going out trolling for the money quotes for hours, days, or even weeks. But I cover an industry where a quote is the easiest and most effective way to lie.

For me, this is an endless source of conflict. In my own work, it is about knowing that my closest allies will lie to me whenever they feel they need to do so. This is their job, just is my job is to not allow myself to get played. Moreover, they are out there telling that same lie to many, many others, often at major media outlets, and they will get it printed/legitimized, which means that I am often reduced to being some “fucking blogger” going against the grain of a media whitewash of something minor or major. And still, this is the job of professionals in the industry. Not just publicists, but all the way to the top of the food chain. They set an agenda and then there is a pitch. And if you aren’t buying, they have dozens of other potential suckers out there desperate for attention, respect, and a scoop.

That brings me to the other side of this conflict for me, which is trying not to feel endless distaste and disrespect for those who just keep publishing what they have been told, often convincing themselves that because the person telling them the lie is titled “CEO” or “President” that they wouldn’t possibly lie. Ha.

I am not saying that everything anyone says to an entertainment reporter is a lie or that every entertainment reporter is a sucker waiting for the hook. What I think is that 98% of the stories about the entertainment industry is grist for the mill. All politics are personal and if you are the one changing agencies, it means a lot to you and those who lost you or who signed you. But aside from a part of the industry being reminded about where everyone stands on the chess board, this is meaningless information. And there is a ton of pure press release journalism. I know, everyone is out there fighting for position and getting 2 outside quotes for every press release requires time on the phone… but come on… seriously… just because you heard a rumor and told the studio and so they gave you the information they were going to be asking you to publish next week a few days early… really… is this important work?

And then there is the 2%. Fox makes a dramatic change in movie leadership. A studio lays out its strategy for the next number of years. Corporations make huge decisions about the future of media formatting. Etc. Is there more than one of these stories a month? Rarely. And when they do break, the reporting/analysis around them, as you read each outlet’s pieces, you can see that the same sources – in most cases – are feeding the same off-the-record angles to as many writers as will spin the spin. Three outlets saying the same thing is not a consensus in this era… it’s a church choir.

And yes, I am writing about entertainment journalism. That’s where I live.

But I wasn’t shocked by NYT’s Judith Miller getting her tit caught in a ringer over Weapons of Mass Destruction… because she was telling NYT readers what a lot of people in Washington actually believed. NYT doesn’t have a secret service working for them. Their intel is only as good as the intel being given to the leaders who are either leaking directly or a step or two from the people whose names are on those confidential memos. I have noted many times that my sense is – because neither of them have ever said otherwise in public, as far as I know – that The Clintons believed there were weapons on mass destruction because they were briefed that there were WMDs in production, even before W ran with that faux nuclear ball. Of course, Miller was wrong, as was the intel. And she was strung up because she was on the wrong side of the truth and the liberal media. (There is plenty of conservative media… but there is a lot of liberal media, especially in the big outlets.)

Let’s not forget what we, as journalists, actually do. We report what others are doing/saying/thinking/trying to get away with. Every story from the best intended journalists is based on trust, not on first-hand experience. (That is, unless like Carr, we report something on our first-hand experiences. But that wasn’t in the paper.)

People who ask journalists for quote approval don’t trust journalists. That is their job. They are right to ask, even if journalists trying to cover news should never say, “yes.”

Journalists should not trust people who quote… and especially not people who only quote without attribution. But all too often, we are not doing our jobs. We are trying to be first… trying to get attention… trying to get access… etc. If you’re doing feature writing (or DP/30s, for that matter), fine. These are not news breaking instruments… at least not any real news of any real consequence. But quotes? A small issue.

Now… if you want to get me started on major papers using academics to fill out the need for quotes on stories when they are physically and intellectually disconnected from the industries and issues on which they opine so freely? Well… that’s another story.

An ARGH! Story

I am so sick of the ignorance of otherwise intelligent journalists about theatrical and the box office and the potential future. And I am exhausted by responding as often as I do… though it’s not nearly often enough to be effective. The “theatrical is dying” meme speaks to so many constituents, from the aethetes to the morons, that it just keeps going.

Today’s WRONG Writer is Claude Brodesser-Akner. Honestly, it’s hard to write about “A Proposal for Fixing Hollywood’s Box-Office Problem” without insulting the man over and over again. He states his notions as fact – clearly, he read this shit somewhere, which is why I rail when the NYT runs mythology about the movie business as fact recklessly – spewing such blather as “How was your summer? Hollywood’s was terrible” and then proceeds to mix and match micro ideas and macro ideas as though context is irrelevant. In his brain, he can’t differentiate between Dark Shadows, Total Recall, and Battleship. He suffers the most insidious infection that entertainment reporters suffer from, intellectual herpes that disallows people from understanding that just because people use cumulative numbers, each of the stories is a weather event, not nature itself.

Classic “I’m going to make my point, whether the math makes sense or not,” is this gem, “domestic ticket revenue dropped 8 percent in July and 10 percent in August.” Well. I guess it would shock you to know that we’re UP for the year and down about 2% for the summer. And this leaves out international, which continues to boom… but people who want to scream about the end of theatrical don’t want to think about how international is a big reason for the choices re: “tentpoles.”

Dark Shadows did 2/3 of its $238m worldwide gross overseas, were Depp is nearly unstoppable. Battleship did 3/4 of its $300m gross overseas. And Total Recall will get about 2/3 of its $170m+ worldwide gross from international.

The problem for all three of these movies had NOTHING to do with the box office. Yes, it would have been covered by bigger box office success. But the price tags – the very thing that the agents feeding CB-A this hogwash are moaning about – are the problem, not the revenue created. Do you know which Tim Burton films did more theatrical dollars than Dark Shadows? The 2 Batmans, Alice, Charlie, and Apes… all franchise characters so well known that anyone can recognize them with one word. And Shadows? What percentage of people know the name “Barnabas Collins” in any real way?

Get it?!

Don Murphy, God bless his angry little soul, is dead on right about Transformers being different than many other properties being converted to feature films. What Transformers also had that was more important (in my view) than anything else Murphy mentions to CB-A is Michael Bay and the moment of CG improving to meet the mission of the film. I think the first film is mediocre at best… but succeeds brilliantly at the visual, visceral experience that audiences LOVE.

The problem with Battleship is that no one has any expectations of what it is, so it’s almost worse than starting without that branding. Did anyone have a clear idea of what a movie based on the game would be when they heard the idea of converting it to a feature film? The movie needs some serious cutting, but even so, if it had been called Water Fight or some such stupid title, I think it would have done more business on effects alone. Universal had to almost unsell “Battleship” and then also sell a new idea. Add to that, Peter Berg picked a relative unknown to be his lead… so there was nothing much to push off of when things went sideways.

That said, it didn’t matter than John Carter was based on a classic sci-fi novel with all kinds of history behind it.  Only a sliver of the potential audience for the film knows the book… a lot smaller percentage of the potential audience than those familiar with Battleship as a game.  But in the end, the failure of the movie was two-fold. First, the sell wasn’t big enough to protect the movie from needing long legs to succeed. And second, the movie, once it was sampled, didn’t inspire very many people to engage in positive word of mouth that would give it those legs. You can have a huge success with a bad movie if you sell an idea people really want really well, even if it doesn’t accurately represent the film. And you can bomb with a great film if you can’t sell what’s great about the film.

The financial failure of both of these films was based on their cost, not the films. Didn’t matter what the legacy of the titles was going into release. $283m and $303m. Those were the worldwide grosses. The theatrical take for those films to break even is about $400 ww… which only 9 films did that number this summer, 6 of which were sequels + Ted, Brave, and The Hunger Games. So the only truly “new,” uninsured title to get there was Ted… a phenom. Two films betting against that trendline lost. Not shocking. Certainly not because exhibition and distribution are split.

But back to CB-A…

He has all kinds of basics wrong. For instance, the 90-80-70 thing for exhibitors paying studios from ticket sales is 7 or 8 years from being the norm. Studios have been seriously trying to shorten the theatrical window for 15 years, seeking a shorter route to Home Entertainment revenue. It doesn’t have a good G*d-damn to do with avoiding rentals at a lower percentage. Likewise the rise in average ticket price, which is not a very complete stat these days, has grown faster than in the past almost exclusively because of 3D. Prices have always gone up every summer, starting particularly in the days of Jurassic Park. But the bigger leaps are about 3D pricing.. which is not being driven by exhibitors in any way.

I don’t know what Terry Press said to CB-A, but her theory is not really quoted in the piece. Based on the example CB-A uses, Magic Mike, all I can do is call “bullshit.” What the hell is he talking about? Yes, the movie played better in “red states.” How does this keep WB from making choices about showing the movie? Do we fantasize that they weren’t going to release it in LA? Are we bitching about the cost of grossing $114m domestic on a film with a $7m budget that the studio picked up after it was paid for? Apparently no one told CB-A that the studio didn’t produce the film… or he would know that “devot(ing) resources to other productions” made no sense… and that the film was massively profitable, even if WB was making most of its money on distribution.

But then CB-A comes around again to the GIANT LIE… that the studios didn’t create the short window by their own will and AGAINST the will of exhibitors. And now they want to circle around and claim this was done to them?!?! What utter bullshit!

DVD is dead. The studios fucked up their cash cow in record time. And they hamstrung exhibition in the greedy race for those DVD dollars, keeping it from being an ongoing area of growth. And now, they are scrambling for dollars… and as I have been writing for many years, exhibition is the only window that will create financial differentiation of significance between big hits and modest successes as we move into the future. So now “They” want full ownership again.

That is, I think, the story under this story. Whoever spoonfed this crap to CB-A represents the interests of the studios and the studios, which are now carefully looking at the margins they make on everything, and now want to own the profits from this part of the business again. There’s money in it… not for them as distributors, but for them as owners of exhibition, which is not going anywhere and which will become more and more successful in the next decade and onward.

Personally, I don’t care if “They” buy out exhibition. I know some people love their business, but buy it for a fair price and hey, okay by me. It’s going well enough overseas, whether they own a lot of the new movie theaters.

But don’t bullshit us. And don’t make Claude bullshit us just because he isn’t knowledgeable enough to know he’s being completely played. It’s not nice.

Weekend Estimates by Foreign Bucks Klady

The View From After TIFF

Good morning, Movienam!

I thought I’d start boxing the TIFF experience this morning.

It’s a weird time for film festivals. Not just TIFF. But especially at TIFF this year. Literally every single journalist or publicist I talked to – and this year, I ended up spending more time with publicists than journalists, which can be fun, but is not always ideal – talked about how front-loaded the festival felt this year… that they were exhausted by Saturday noon… that something felt “off.”

And I try to look at it objectively and I think, “It’s been front-loaded for many years now… there have been a lot of junkets – more studio junkets, actually – for many years now… and we’re all exhausted every year at TIFF.”

But I also agree… something was different this year. I think for starters, the overall quality of the films, high to low, was as good or better than it’s ever been. Adjusting for personal taste, this was a TIFF very light on clunkers. And people even seemed to have fun with some of those.

But it feels a bit, this year, like the major North American festivals of the fall – Telluride, Toronto, and New York – are all rethinking their positions and trying to fix something that wasn’t broken. Telluride has become a press fest, after decades of avoiding just that. And it’s not leaving non-media at Telluride happy, with more people, longer lines, over-anticipation of “awards movies,” and too many distractions from the Telluride experience of “the good ol’ days.” Bill & Stella Pence have been gone for a few years and Tom Luddy is no spring chicken. The festival that the three of them built set the gold standard. The festival that it seems to want to become now is a more expensive version of a much more conventional film fest. Hype is to Telluride as 3D is to movies.

In addition, Telluride’s new love affair with the civilian spotlight threatens its ability to fulfill its mission. During the 15 years in which I have been a Telluride watcher and attendee, there have been many great surprise “TBA”s that turned up right after or right before their Venice or Toronto “world premieres.” It was a lovely part of the expensive, exclusive long weekend in the mountains. But now, it has become a game… a game that Toronto and Venice (and New York as well) are less and less inclined to indulge. For instance, Warner Bros did World Premiere of Argo in Telluride this year. It wasn’t called that. But it was reviewed by enough people and outlets that, for all intents and purposes, it served as the World Premiere. People in Toronto were reacting to Telluride. And that’s okay… well, unless your strategy isn’t covering for an inferior movie with mountain hype… or until Toronto cares that its negotiated premieres are being undercut.

Telluride failed to get a number of awards-type movies this year because of this… films whose distributors were warned off of Telluride by Toronto (as well as NYFF). There is, in fact, a big difference between a wonderful little festival of cineastes, rich people, a hippie or two, and a few critics/journalists and a place where studios are now doing dinners for 40 or even 50.

The original core of Telluride was silent film. Strong and often obscure international film followed. And then, a handful of higher profile films, mostly from the indies or Dependents. This year, the biggest story was the absence of The Master, followed by Warner Bros’ Argo, followed by Bill Murray showing up (though almost no one really likes the film), followed by the beautifully foreign honorees, Marion Cotillard and Mads Mikkelsen. Stories We Tell and Frances Ha got minor bumps. And Sally Potter’s Ginger & Rosa got narrowed down into the Elle Fanning story because the press going there has gotten… well… simpler-thinking.

But when the #1 story is a movie that isn’t there… either something is wrong with the festival or something is wrong with how the festival is engaging the media. I vote for the latter.

There is plenty of good still in Telluride, so to compare it to a great restaurant bought out by a rich guy who start running whores and gambling in back and tightening the purse on food costs is too much. Let’s just say that what makes great events great is, in part, remembering why greatness ever attached in the first place.

Meanwhile, at New York, the new policy of chasing world premieres – which has eluded the festival for decades with just a couple of pre-The Social Network – changes the position of the most powerful local film festival in America. Ironically, faced with a leadership change in the festival forced by Richard Peña’s retirement, the choices were two very smart, very capable, good guys… who won’t change much. But the institution is changing regardless and I fear that before too long, “getting the job done well and smartly” will not be enough. There will have to be a new idea of what NYFF is (and the year-round programming with it) and that someone will have to be the front person to really sell it.

Back to TIFF… I love the idea of the Jason Reitman live-read thing… belongs in the rest of the Toronto year. I love the idea of an Asian Summit… but TIFF is already bursting to the gills and it was, sadly, barely noticed. Etc, etc, etc.

On this continent, TIFF owns August – December, Sundance owns January – April and everyone else is just working on another level. Love South by Southwest, but it’s a niche event compared to the two big shows. Cannes breaks things up, but it’s not an important festival in terms of the United States and the films that emerged this year that will get big US pushes… all bought by US distributors BEFORE the festival.

TIFF was doing just fine last year. But now, things seem to be in play again. The Elgin has be subsumed by The Princess of Wales, a location that was rented as an accommodation last year and this year became the theater of choice for a number of the higher-profile filmmakers. Meanwhile, the Roy Thompson Hall is looking brutally bad as a movie theater with a balcony (3rd level) that is like watching a movie from outside the walls of a drive-in theater. But most of the 1st floor is now taken up by sponsors and even the mezzanine makes for a fairly mediocre viewing experience. Heck, you even see distributors looking at the Ryerson theater as a better place to screen than the RTH. Why? Because it draws a cooler crowd and that is what being at a festival is about.

And don’t even get me started on the press screenings and the front-loading of the festival. By the time I had emerged from scheduling hell on Wednesday, there was a very thin gruel left to see (as compared to the opening 5 days) and even thinner on the press schedule. It’s become like major studios shoving movies into shorter and shorted windows and then complaining that nothing has legs. Toronto is now a 5-day festival, in effect, because Team TIFF has allowed it to become that. And even though all the distributors are pushing to be in those first days, they are – in all but the strongest players’ cases – damaging their own product.

All three of these festivals are world-class. But as they start chasing something bigger than what has made them great, the trouble begins. Both NY and Toronto were fortunate that the economy turned and that their giant capital investments have been (mostly) paid off, though there was fear it might not happen a few years ago. (Yes, film festivals are better off today than when Obama took office.) But now, they seem emboldened like a Republican touting Reagan’s economics without remembering his then-record deficits. They are competitive and desperate to grow and dominate even more. And I’m here to say, you can screw up your business by getting too ambitious.

Little things mean nothing in the big picture. But a series of little things that come to define your style and intent can overwhelm the reality of your message.

I am a great believer in quality institutions. But with great power comes great responsibility. And from my perspective, the greatest responsibility is to see yourself clearly in the mirror and to make sure that that clear, beautiful image that made the institution what it is today doesn’t become distorted by the agenda that you never listened to in the building of your success.

TIFF still sells a lot of tickets to a lot of movie-loving Torontonians. That seems to be where things are still working pretty well. But the rest… not in the best service of the films that are not one of the Chosen 20 or the people covering the festival and presumably helping the future of the smaller films or, for me, the pleasure of the journey. I was always sad when TIFF ended each year. I stayed though the last public screening. Now, often wonder if I can leave earlier. (I can’t… I was shooting talent interviews until 5pm on my last full day this year.)

I love TIFF… and Telluride… and the idea – I really don’t attend – of NYFF. But these are slowly working towards becoming sexless marriages of convenience. No one wants that, do they?

Friday Estimates by Resident Klady

So…

This is a good weekend for an object lesson. Right at the top of the charts, you have two films – one aged franchise and the other a 3D relaunch of an animated classic – that exist primarily because of the international market. In the case of Resident Evil: Enough Already, there is one key stat that is as staggering as last year’s most staggering figure, the Fast Five international number. Fast Five did improve about $55m domestically on the flagging F&F franchise… but at the cost of adding a lot of expensive talent. International, however, went from a series-best $208 million to $416m… double. And let’s not forget Ice Age 3 leaping 50% internationally, from IA2’s $460m to $690m… and IA4 holding remarkably steady near the same worldwide number. (For people reading Tom Rothman tea leaves, look closer at this film’s history… then recall Titan A.E. for some historic perspective.)

Now… look at the international number for Resident 4… $236m after a previous high of $97m for the franchise.

We are not alone.

#4 almost doubled #3’s worldwide gross, putting the whole franchise in a difference weight class. Those are Shutter Island/Salt numbers vs This Means War/Tower Heist numbers.

Likewise, Finding Nemo 3D may not have excited many at Disney as a worldwide theatrical based on the Lion King numbers. Adding $180m in gross to The Lion King is a nice number. But it’s not a huge number at all. They paid for a restoration and a conversion and will make some profit in the end. But the international ($83m) didn’t even match the domestic ($94m) even while internationally 3D is much hotter than here at home. But Titanic 3D rekindled the fire. Paramount managed a not-too-thrilling $58m domestically. (They knew they were on the less exciting market from the start.) Remember, the original release of Titanic did double overseas what it did here. But in this case, international did 5 to 1 over domestic… $285m international. (Another Fox breadcrumb, Sherlocks.)

No one expects Nemo 3D to do $285m international or even in total. But $60m domestic and $150m international would make it a cash cow for Disney. Even $120m international would be a big win.

Can’t overlook 2016: Obama’s America which is about to pass Chimpanzee (the off-camera jokes about this at Fox News are all too imaginable) to become the year’s highest grossing doc and the #3 grossing non-concert doc of all-time. (Note: AJ Schnack would put 5 more older “non-fiction” films in the highest group, above 2016… not sure how many are concert films, which I see as irrelevant to this conversation) A few million people have paid to see this thing. And I suspect that by November, the results of the election will put it in a clearer perspective (As it did F9/11).

Speaking of cults… ha… actually I despise seeing leads about The Master that reference Scientology… disrespectful of the film, the artists involved, and journalism. Huge, perhaps record-breaking, “5-screen” launch of The Master. And unlike Brokeback Mountain, for instance, the 70mm situation disallows last minute extra screenings to creep into the stats. That said, as best I can tell, the film is actually in 4 theaters on 11 screens. (Village East 1, Angelika 2, Arclight Hollywood 5 – including The Dome – and Landmark Westside Pavilion 3).

Still, a $750,000 – $1 million weekend on even 11 screens is remarkable. The question for The Master is how wildly and how financially successfully it can expand. I believe The Cult of PTA (of which I consider myself a charter member, even if I had major issues with the third act of TWBB), has $10m – $15m in box office to offer. After that, it requires the selling genius of Mr. Weinstein. I gently remind you all that PTA has never had a film gross as much as $41m domestic or $77m worldwide. And brilliant as it is, The Master isn’t exactly an opiate for the masses.

And so it goes…

DP/30: Sneek Peeks TIFF 2012 – Episode II

Yes… the sound is a bit up and down and there has been no color correction… wanted to get something out there after showing so little during the week.

BYOB: Topping Off TIFF

Working TIFF

I have been invisible for days… no writing… barely tweeting.

And yet, I haven’t slept more than 5 hours at a time, haven’t eaten lunch or breakfast for days, am often literally standing at the back of theaters so I can try to make the next event, and generally, have the candle burning at both ends.

One wonders whether TIFF is punching me (and all of us covering it) in the face or if I am just getting old.

Don’t get me wrong. I am still one of the luckiest people you will run into in the entertainment journalism game. I have spent most of the last 4 days talking to some really amusing and interesting people… or seeing their work. I get to bring back a little slice of the often unexpected history of people who are truly invested. And I am bound only by “what do we feel like talking about today?”

As for pumping out more about the movies… I can’t say that I don’t have insta-pinions of everything I see. I do. But I suppose that I am more reluctant to make them a matter of public record as I am also more reluctant to take anyone’s first-blush ideas on these films seriously. If I feel like listening to the instant barrage of bloviating within minutes of a film’s closing credits leads to shallow, unconsidered, brutally overstated argument that then has to be defended because to disagree with one’s “gut”—at least publicly—is unacceptable, then how can I feel good about being party to this phenomenon… even if I am always right about everything instantly (DUH!).

In 2012, the most valuable tool a critic has is perspective. It is becoming more and more rare.

That and, this week, sleep… and vegetables.

DP/30: Sneek Peeks On Day One, TIFF 2012

Landing In Toronto

It’s going to be a long fest.

A lot if great stuff, but right now, it’s schedule Jenga.

Sorry to be M.I.A.

Portrait Of An Artist

I was looking for something else and ran into this portrait of Charlie Kaufman… and just kinda love it.  It fits.

Klady’s 3-Day Estimates

Friday Estimates by The Possessed Klady

It’s Labor Day weekend. It used to be ironic because of all the box office stillborns on this date. But the slot has been mined by the indies, starting with UA dredging up the first-ever 4-day $10m opening weekend over Labor Day in 2001 with Jeepers Crepers ($15.8m). IN2005, Focus put an Oscar-bait film, The Constant Gardener, in the slot and opened to $11m in 4 days on its way to $36m domestic and an Oscar for Rachel Weisz. In that same year, Fox rolled Transporter 2 into that slot and opened to $20m. Since then, two movies have opened to over $10m in 4 days in this slot every year, with 3 in the slot last year.

The MGM/Weinstein reboot of Halloween remains the high water mark, opening to a 4-day of $31m in 2007. No other film has topped Transporter 2‘s $20.1m 4-day launch there. Halloween is also the high mark for total domestic gross from a Labor Day launch with $58.3m.

13 of the 17 films that have opened to over $10m in this slot are either horror or broad comedies targeting teens almost exclusively. The art films are Gardener, The American, and The Debt. All About Steve is the oddball.

So those are the boundaries.

One other note: As The Dark Knight Rises has passed $950m, it’s worth noting that this is the Batman film with the highest percentage of its theatrical gross coming from international. It’s only the second of the films to gross more internationally than at home and the other was Batman & Robin, which was more a product of domestic failure than international strength. The domestic and international numbers are almost the inverse of TDK’s (TDKR domestic being about $43m lower than TDK).

Reviewing The Master

The Master is, at the same time, both completely familiar as something emerging from the mind of Paul Thomas Anderson and completely unfamiliar, as he has freed himself of traditional narrative considerations.

I don’t think of this as a movie that can really be spoiled. It is demanding of the viewer and each person will linger in the experience in their way. But if you want to go in clean, stop reading this now. I’m not going to offer up a blow-by-blow of the story, but a discussion of the ideas an techniques of the film.

The movie opens and we spend considerable time – not unlike There Will Be Blood – with one character, Joaquin Phoenix’s Freddie Quells. In Blood, the hands-on journey of Daniel Plainview to Oilman defines the entire film. There is some balance created by Eli Sunday, but he is really a reflection that clarifies Plainview.

Here, Paul Thomas Anderson has “corrected” that imbalance, though I don’t really think he was trying to respond to another film of his through this one. That said, the two characters here are of equal power. Freddie is the dominant presence in the film, as he is all male, stuck in perpetual emotional puberty. Joaquin Phoenix gives his most fevered performance to date.

Freddie’s opposite number is Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s Lancaster Dodd, a snake oil salesman of self-help. Carefully coiffed and almost always “on,” like the big con artists of The Grifters, but without the sexual release, enjoyment of the con, and ultimate mental breakdown. Those things are all deferred to Freddie.

Driving Lancaster (rarely referred to by name and certainly not by “Lancaster,” while “Freddie” is always “Freddie”) is Amy Adams’ Mary Sue Dodd, whom I do not believe is ever referred to by “Mary Sue” in the entirety of the film. Hers is the smallest of the three major roles, but she drives the entire thing… not unlike the Julianne Moore character in Boogie Nights, but even more so. In some ways, she is the opposite number to Dirk Diggler’s mother in Boogie, unfettered by – like both older BN women – sexual confusion. Mrs. Dodd is a zealot, much more so than Mr. Dodd, and she eventually shows herself to be the driving force between the whole “movement” that Mr. Dodd fronts and sells so eloquently.

My take on the film, overall, is that Mrs. Dodd created Mr. Dodd out of the Freddie she found. The entire system of “beliefs” that Dodd is pushing seems designed to make a Lancaster out of a Freddie. And in the end, as we see both in Freddie and in Dodd, you cannot tame your inner Freddie, you can only sublimate him, presumably for your own good.

It’s worth considering all the water in this film. Water is considered to be a reflection of emotion in a dream state. The movie opens on a beach, there is the churning water behind the boat, seen in the trailer, Freddie/Dodd come together on a boat… even the major scene between The Dodds (described below) takes place as the water runs in the sink.

A friend, who hasn’t seen the picture, but knows the history of L. Ron Hubbard, refers back to Hubbard’s house-sharing pal Jack Parsons, a rich kid and literally a rocket scientist, with whom Hubbard lived in Pasadena in the 1940s. Tales of their debauchery are epic. I can’t begin to speak to their veracity. But some will argue that Freddie is a reflection of Jack or of the time these men partied together.

What I believe is that PTA took all of the stories about Hubbard and then threw away the restrictions of reality or truth… that this movie is not at all a biographical work about Hubbard or Scientology, but a poem of sorts drawn from the elements, speaking to themes of duality that Anderson has long had an interest in exploring. To say this movie is “about Scientology” would be like saying that Clerks 2 is “about McDonald’s.”

There are many “key scenes” in the film, but the two that I expect will be most discussed are, first, the one in the jail, where Dodd is brain right and Freddie is brain left, caged next to each other, Dodd calmly smoking a cigarette and Freddie literally destroying his cell.

The second is a sequence in which Dodd, with a few drinks in him, imagines all the women in his circle to be naked while enjoying a party. In the next scene, Mrs. Dodd comes to him and reminds him of his boundaries. She emotionlessly takes control of his penis as he washes his face at the sink and mirror and gives him sexual relief as she explains that he is sliding and better keep himself in check. It’s not the only time that Dodd cannot keep his inner Freddie under wraps, but it is the only time where we see the mechanism of his control.

There is no “meet cute” between Freddie and The Dodds in this film. It’s one of the things that makes clear that what we are seeing on the surface in not all there is to see. Freddie exists as a character – The Character – in the film before we meet The Dodds. Like the early mining sequences in TWBB, this opening chunk of the film has its own wonders and joys. Telling is a sequence in which as character who looks a lot like Dodd – played by W. Earl Brown – is provoked and eventually attacked by the then-department-store-photographer Freddie. This is what happens when “Dodd” enters Freddie’s world. Havoc. When Freddie enters Dodd’s world, there is a tempering of Freddie… but ultimately, there is no way to be with Freddie and fully sublimate Freddie.

Freddie and Dodd meet when Freddie turns up on the yacht where The Dodds are celebrating his daughter’s wedding, This is a natural moment at which a man might miss his wild youth… and voila, his wild life turns up. But after plenty of Freddie, Dodd ends up screaming – to himself? – “no one likes you… but me!” Freddie has to go. And his exit is seen by many as anti-climactic. Not me. Truly saying goodbye to your youthful self is a major event in a life. But Anderson being Anderson, it is not signaled and commented on in dialogue over and over.

That is the range of this film. It’s not a big narrative tale. But it’s like a pure narcotic, so strong that it needs to be cut to be consumed safely. Of course, Anderson is not out for safety.

Anderson has may flourishes in the film that are in line with Kubrick’s love of subtext. For instance, Kubrick created a world in which every woman was a redhead and even the curtains were framed by red as blue light watched the action in Eyes Wide Shut… Tom Cruise surrounded by his wife, played by the blue-eyed, then-red-headed Nicole Kidman. All the women in the lives of Dodd/Freddie in this film are also redheads.

As always, PTA makes a gorgeous movie. The images, the performances, the music… all of the very highest level. I have a great deal of respect for the choice to make a 70mm film almost 2 full decades since there has been a non-doc/IMAX release in the format. And it’s beautiful. I’ve seen it onscreen in two rooms and both were a sheer sensory joy. One could discuss for many hours whether this choice is PTA’s Freddie or Dodd in practice, as it is a choice that is both elegant and perverse. But artists being artists must always be accepted and celebrated.

This is probably PTA’s least accessible movie for general audiences. But it is also his most mature work as a filmmaker. Kubrick had puzzles in all of his films, but he died just before the release of his one true puzzle movie, Eyes Wide Shut. He offered even fewer clues to the subtext than Anderson has here. But this is a film for which a surface reading will offer some pleasures, but a sense of discomfort for many. And not just for “dumb people.” Some of the smartest film people I know walked away from a first screening feeling dazed and confused. But this is the kind of film that gets richer and more beautiful in multiple viewings and for years to come. And that is the true test of art. And Mr. Anderson, for all the choices he makes that one agrees with or disagrees with in a audience-reliant medium, is an artist, first and last, in and out, Freddie and Dodd. Thank goodness for that.