Notes from Underdog.

My Year of Flops: 80s Screenwriters in Excess (from AV Club)

Provocative new piece in AV Club as Nathan Rabin continues his march through a "year of flops" with a look at one-time wunderkind screenwriter Joe Eszterhas (and Shane Black, who, remarkably once donated money to a former 'friend' who bailed from their relationship out of jealousy and basically demanded a ransom to continue). But this is more about Eszterhas, and nobody embodied 80s/90s Hollywood excess and burnout more than he:

My Year Of Flops: Inside Hollywood Edition, Case File 109: An Alan Smithee Film: Burn, Hollywood, Burn

In the Darwinian ecosystem of Hollywood, screenwriters occupy a position just below the bottom; if they're allowed on film sets at all, it's generally so they can serve coffee to production assistants. In the minds of executives, screenwriters are to be neither seen nor heard. Yet Eszterhas continuously made a public spectacle of himself, feuding with producers, stars, directors, and most famously, super-agent Mike Ovitz. In a notorious bit of show-business lore, the unflappable Ovitz reportedly responded to Eszterhas' threat to sign with another agency by saying, "You're not leaving this agency. If you do, my foot soldiers who go up and down Wilshire Boulevard each day will blow your brains out."

Screenwriters are replaced and re-written on an hourly basis. Yet Eszterhas had the brass cojones to insist that his words were sacrosanct. Like his hero, Paddy Chayefsky, Eszterhas angrily demanded that his precious, precious dialogue couldn't be altered or re-written. Eszterhas wasn't about to let Johnny Improv or Joey Script Polish change a lovingly crafted line like "Well, she got that magna cum laude pussy on her that done fried up your brain!" with something less soulful or authentic.

In his characteristically self-indulgent memoir, Hollywood Animal, Eszterhas posits himself as the conscience of screenwriterdom, a proud culture warrior who used the power he accrued writing about ice-pick-wielding lesbian serial killers and plucky prostitutes to single-handedly win a place at the table for long-suffering scribes.

First Run Features folded into Icarus Films

Interesting tidbit from a press release I received today:

Seymour Wishman, President of First Run Features, and Jonathan Miller, President of First Run/Icarus Films, announced today that First Run Features has sold its interest in First Run/Icarus Films back to the company.

The result of this transaction is that First Run/Icarus Films is now wholly owned by Jonathan Miller, who will continue as President of the company.

Additionally, First Run/Icarus Films will change its name to Icarus Films, as of June 1, 2008.

(Some background:
First Run/Icarus Films was formed in 1987 when Icarus Films (founded in
1978) and First Run Features merged their non-theatrical divisions to create a new company to serve the non-theatrical marketplace.

Founded in 1979, First Run Features is a leading distributor of fiction and documentary films, with a library of approximately 450 titles.  First Run releases between 10 and 15 films annually in theatres, and around 50 new films per year on DVD. Recent releases have included Michael Apted’s 49 UP, Daniel Karslake’s FOR THE BIBLE TELLS ME SO and Oren Jacoby’s CONSTANTINE’S SWORD.)

Movie Moms for Mother's Day.

Happy Mother's Day!
Erin Donovan presents us with some of the Best (and Worst) Movie Moms, organized by type. Have at it!

New writer's blog: Earl Pomerantz

Veteran television comedy writer Earl Pomerantz (Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi, among many other fine credits) is now doing his own blog, and it''s a must=read.

Good timing, because on the spur of the moment I bought Season 2 of Taxi the other day at Amoeba Records, great to have around for those slow evenings, during bouts of insomnia or procrastination. And Mr. Pomerantz relates an anecdote about writing for that show and working for Ed. Weinberger. (And the revelation that Tony Banta was original an Irish boxer named Ryan.)

SFIFF Dispatch Redux: The Wackness

Originally posted on GreenCine Daily.

With his second feature, Jonathan Levine, New York native and once an assistant to writer-director Paul Schrader, captures his home town's vibe expertly in the uneven but ultimately winning little coming of age dramedy The Wackness. The film takes a bit of time to find its stride - but it does when Levine lets go of some of his filmic pretenses and lets the characters take hold.

Josh Peck, continuing his graduation from teen TV star to respected actor, is wholly believable and empathetic as Luke, a sad sack who has always felt a bit out of his peers' social circles. His parents are fracturing and on the brink of bankruptcy, so to earn some extra green he sells, well, green weed (hidden in an ice cream cart), and even trades some of it to a therapist in exchange for counseling sessions. These scenes will not remind anyone of Ordinary People.

As the sad sack psychotherapist Dr Squires, Sir Ben Kingsley exists in another dimension here, channeling Harvey Keitel (he even seems to reference him physically, replete with one-size-too-small bowler hat, scraggly hair and goatee), toking from a humungous bong, but there's something more to his part here. Squires is married to Kristin (Famke Janssen) and their relationship, too, is on the rocks. Even if there's a certain inevitability to a therapist's dysfunctional private life, Janssen and Kingsley bring a great deal (of bathos) to their scenes together, ultimately to heartbreaking effect.

Another SFIFF Dispatch: Shadows in the Palace and La France.

Catching up on my SFIFF Dispatches, which David Hudson kindly posted first on GreenCine Daily. I will have at least one more before all is said and done. (Well, all is said and done today, but I'll be done with the sayin' tomorrow.)
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Shadows in the Palace

Korean filmmaker Kim Meejeung's first feature (she was an assistant director on Lee Jun-ik's Once upon a Time in the Battlefield and The King and the Clown) is a stunning, memorable, if occasionally convoluted mystery set during Korea's Chosun era. It's particularly notable for its cast of mostly female characters - the story centers around the maids who live and work as virtual prisoners in the palace of the emperor, and its protagonist is a female court doctor, Chun-ryung (Park Jin-hie), who investigates the death of one maid found hanging in her claustrophobic room. Suicide, she's told, but she suspects murder and investigates, unraveling a web of deceit, getting caught up in political maneuverings and eventually fearing for her own life.

The depiction of the period is striking, from the delicious costumes to the recreation of palace life, and the murder mystery fascinates throughout. I sensed some audience discomfort and confusion with the film's more fantastical elements, but for anyone who's seen a Korean period mystery-cum-ghost story before, these things should come as less of a surprise. Still, there are times when the story becomes a bit overly complicated for its own good (I feel the need to see it a second time just to catch up with some of the more confusing plot threads). The dialogue can be a bit expository, though, frankly at times I was grateful it was, given how convoluted it becomes as it all unspools.

How to pitch (from LA Times)

Great, useful advice from an exec at Turner, for anyone trying to sell an idea to a studio or TV network. Some of the tips here may sound fairly obvious, but you'd be surprised...

Turner Entertainment's Michael Wright tells how to pitch >>

If you've come with material appropriate to the network or studio you're pitching, and you have the talent to execute it (or have the right talent attached), you're ahead of the crowd. No performance art, special effects or b.s. should persuade an experienced buyer to choose something that is not, at its core, right for his or her audience.

That said, the first rule of successful pitching is to understand the buyer. We live in the era of the brand, when every network and studio has (or believes it has) a specific personality that is understood by its audience. You wouldn't pitch the same project to TNT (my own beloved drama network) that you'd pitch to my other beloved network, TBS (our "very funny" network). Yet I've had comedies pitched for TNT and epic dramas for TBS (granted, some of the epic dramas were unintentionally hilarious).

Similarly, you wouldn't want to take your dark, dystopian, toxic family tragedy to Disney any more than you'd pitch a zany comedy about nuns who enter a baking contest to the folks who produced "Saw." Successfully selling your project starts with knowing which studios and networks do what and why and targeting the appropriate home. Let them know you've done your research. It flatters the hell out of the buyer because they think you actually know their work. Or care enough to pretend. Either way, it's all good.

The second rule of pitching is to be brief and clear. Believe me, if you pitch longer than half an hour without being asked to elaborate, it's a pass. At some point, you should hear a form of "Tell me more" from the buyer. If you don't, and you're continuing on anyway, you are risking death by schedule (by going on so long, you've screwed up the exec's schedule and now he hates you).

SFIFF Dispatch: Art of Negative Thinking and Medicine for Melancholy

(Cross-posted from GreenCine Daily. Thanks David for the editing and linking!)

I've been trying to pick and choose among the many fine offerings at the SFIFF this year, narrowing it down to films that haven't already had a lot of play elsewhere, at least in the States, and/or that might otherwise be overlooked or that don't already have a major distributor. (Which didn't stop me from seeing The Wackness [site]; review for that one coming a bit later.) While these two films - one Norwegian, the other Californian - couldn't be more different in most ways, they both embrace the cynical sides of their protagonists, who ultimately, nonetheless, find some semblance of joy.

The Art of Negative Thinking

"If we focus on our opportunities, we can become giants."
"Small changes lead to big changes."

These are the mantras uttered by a group of disabled adults in group therapy in Bard Breien's dark comedy that goes to some unexpected places on its way through a rather simple story. Fridtjov Såheim (Hawaii, Oslo) plays a man wheelchair-bound after a car accident, moping around the house he shares with his beleaguered girlfriend Marta (the lovely Marian Ottesen), who doesn't know what to do with him. With his shaggy long hair, his weapons fixation and obsession with The Deer Hunter it's almost as if he's tricked himself into thinking he's a recovering Vietnam vet. The positive-thinking disabled group come visit him at Marta's request, and find converting him to their "cause" proves rather difficult. In fact, over the course of one evening, he'll convert them to his cause in some ways. And if this is beginning to sound potentially maudlin, Breien generally keeps things properly acerbic, while the excellent ensemble cast never veers into caricature.

 

Bloggers Under Attack! Next, on HBO.

UPDATE 5-5-08: I thought I'd put this at the top because it's important. While it doesn't fully make up for the depths to which he sunk on HBO (more below), Buzz Bissinger's interview on The Big Lead blog goes a long way to make up for it. He is contrite, apologetic, and what's more seems so much more open-minded about blogs, as well as admitting the danger of making sweeping generalizations, that it's almost a relief, especially to those many of us who were fans of his writing in the past. And he makes a good point about the overall dumbing-down of society as well as a general tone of mean-spiritedness and derision in public & media conversations these days (ironic, of course, considering his own behavior). But, still, it's a start.

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It's already fairly infamous, and frankly, as I'll point out below, many others have discussed it at length much more satisfyingly than I could at this point. But it ties in with what I've been thinking about for months anyway.

What am I talking about? The latest "attack" on the blogosphere from an Established Journalist™, in this case writer Buzz Bissinger going bananas on sports blogger Will Deitch (Deadspin) and all sports blogs and all bloggers who blog about everything, on Bob Costas Live. In fact, that ten minutes may be the low point of Bob Costas' career. The roundtable consisted of Bissinger, Deitch, and, oh yes, for no reason whatsoever, Browns wide receiver Braylon Edwards, who has no connection to blogging but must have been booked to be on the show that day no matter what. It was all an utter embarrassment, but it's Bissinger, author of a fantastic book on football, "Friday Night Lights," who should be most ashamed of himself.

First, watch the video clip (partial, not the whole sequence).

Second, read:

Deadspin's reaction.

And for more>>>

SFIFF Dispatch: The Toe Tactic

(Cross-posted from GreenCine Daily:)

 

Animator Emily Hubley, the daughter of renowned animators John and Faith Hubley (A Windy Day, Voyage to Next), is perhaps best known for her work on Hedwig and the Angry Inch, but she's also director of a wealth of fine animated shorts. The Toe Tactic [site] is both her first feature and her first live action film and, as you'd expect and hope, that live action is interspersed with her wonderfully wobbly, colorful cartoons. In the post-screening Q&A, Hubley confessed that her original intent was to make an all-live action film, with one brief animated sequence, but then things took off, evolved... and now, animated dogs control the universe in playfully self-deprecating interludes that do a fine job of carrying the film forward.

The film stars lovely young actress Lily Rabe, who has a little bit of a young Laura Linney-ish vibe, and is the daughter of Jill Clayburgh and playwright David Rabe), along with Daniel London (Old Joy), who plays the shy elevator man who finds her appealing.

The Toe Tactic is also boosted by a wonderfully eccentric, recognizable cast of indie stalwarts - including the ubiquitous Kevin Corrigan as a neighborhood piano teacher, John Sayles as Rabe's landlord, the always reliably wacky Jane Lynch (the "fuck buddy" boss in 40 Year Old Virgin and several Christopher Guest mockumentaries) as a bitter open mic night hostess and Mary Kay Place as the worrying mother - along with voices provided by comics (David Cross, for example, as one of the animated dogs) and veteran actors (Eli "Yes I'm Still Alive" Wallach, Andrea Martin, Marian Seldes). A plot involving Rabe's friendship with an eccentric and lonely woman played by Novella Nelson gets a bit muddled along the way. The multiple character framework with the gentle comedy about yearning and loss may remind you of Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know and the melancholy Australian film Look Both Ways, and while it isn't as polished as either of those films, it's charm lies in its low-key humor (the open mic night is one highlight) and sweetness.

Toe Tactic has some decidedly awkward, amateurish moments in pacing and tone, and the thin story isn't really much to hang a cartoon hat on - young woman trying to finally move past the tragic death of her father years before - but Hubley mostly resists making things too mawkish or cutesy, and the film does grow into its own as it moves along. In short, it's slight and imperfect, but so lovely and lovingly made that it's hard to pick on, too.

The appropriately moody but sweet music score is by Yo La Tengo, by the way, one of the members of which is Emily Hubley's sister Georgia.