Hustler of Culture
See Elephant. Now. Gus Van Sant’s fictional retelling of a high school shooting (structured like Columbine but not a faithful adaptation) offers no insight into why these tragedies happen but instead says that the sickness in our soul is how ordinary they are. It’s a moody, hypnotic, enormously disturbing day at the cinema but worth every minute.
P.S. Anyone know why the film is called Elephant?
In case you missed it, The Majestic (2001) is a wonderful film about doing the having the courage to do the right thing in the face of sorrow. You probably think of it as Jim Carrey-blatant-play-for-an-Oscar. Remembering that it came out a few short months after September 11th, I prefer to think of it as exactly the movie we needed. And maybe still do.
The Kid Stays in The Picture is a fascinating documentary about the movie producer Robert Evans, who has perhaps the longest winning streak in Hollywood in the early 1970’s, producing (in a row) Rosemary’s Baby, Love Story, The Godfather and Chinatown. Evans was also known for dating beautiful woman, a project which he attacked with nearly as much gusto as he did producing films.
Evans is wearied, articulate and full of himself. If you can look past that (after five minutes, it isn’t hard), this is a fascinating stylish documentary which skews the reverence most film geeks (Suzan and I included) have for this cinematic period. See if you’ve taken a film class since about 1985, you’re tought that 1967-1975 or roughly The Graduate to Jaws was the Last Golden age of American Cinema before commercial leviathans like Star Wars made movemaking about selling Happy Meals rather than changing the world.
By Evans account, the era of Hollywood barrons like Jack Warner and Daryl F. Zanuck and their big silly movies might have been over but he wanted to take their place. Bratty kids like Francis Ford Coppola and Roman Polanski might have been geniuses but they needed the guiding hand of an older brother like (who else?) Robert Evans.
Nonsense and bluster? Of course. But Evans admits that up front. Honesty’s hardly the point. Evans is a salesman, one of the best. This movie is 90 minutes of watching him go.
Readers of Film Critic.com will be happy to know that they take the greatest care to respond to mail from considered parties. See the bottom of this review.
Gregory Peck, one of the last surviving actors from the old Hollywood studio system died today at 87. I best knew him as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, the role that minted him an icon, and in Gentlemen’s Agreement, one of the first Hollywood films to talk about anti-semitism.
Late in his life, Peck stopped acting and earned a modest living showing slides of his films and talking to live audiences about his life and career. I saw one of these presentations in maybe 1993 at the Power Center in Ann Arbor when I was home from college on summer vacation. While the audience gushed about how some of his movies had changed their lives, Peck simply nodded, thanked them and answered their questions as best he could. One earnest college student asked him to autograph her copy of “Mockingbird” in the middle of the show. Peck smiled and asked her to come backstage afterward. He’d be happy to.
I remember at the time, in all my youthful arrogance, thinking this was no way to go out, surrounded by people who remembered you then instead of admired you know, reminiscing instead of doing. I think about that warm June night in Michigan now and have great respect for Gregory Peck. When Warren Zevon found out last year that his lung cancer was inoperate and his time here was short, he went to work finishing an album. I’m a musician, he said, this is what I do. I don’t know how to do anything else.
Gregory Peck was an actor, a difficult, draining profession. By that summer in 1993, he was done. And yet he had fans all over the world who wanted to hear him, hear what the movies were once like and what all those years being a part of them had meant to him. So he remembered, in public, for us and maybe a little for himself. The biggest part of his life was over. He knew that, made peace with it and spent his time enjoying the fruits and wisdom of that hard work, mostly with his family and sometimes with the people that had watched him along the way.
Looking back on it now, I think Gregory Peck knew how he wanted his life to end and did it with dignity and grace. A little older and wiser myself, I understand that better now than I once did.
I haven’t seen Bruce Almighty yet and while I accept it might be fun, something is holding me back. I think this assesment pretty much nails it.
I caught a late screening of A Mighty Wind this Saturday and can’t tell you how pleased I was. For the record, I am not a big fan of Christopher Guest’s movies. Didn’t care for Waiting for Guffman, couldn’t stand Best in Show. Both of them I found only fitfully funny, a big laugh followed by a long period of uncomfortable silence. It’s exactly how I normally feel in the presence of something that could be funny if the person telling the joke wasn’t, at heart, an asshole.
In Guffman and Show, I got the sense Christopher Guest didn’t think much of his characters. Sure, he found their silly preoccupations (dog shows, community theatre) cute, comically, a good mine. Genially obsessive people can be a hoot if left to their own devices. I just wanted Guest to move the fuck out of the way and let that happan.
These characters were plenty hilarious on their own. Instead, he gives each just enough time to make an ass of themselves and then moves on the next one. The result: None of them develop enough to be funny as people, but instead are funny as cultural-types: community theatre devotees, dog show enthusiasts, small towners, the unironic. The message: People who are crazy about community theatre and dog shows are funny because their concerns are petty and stupid compared to ours.
I don’t find that funny, just mean.
The spiritual ancestor to all these films is of course,This is Spinal Tap (which was made by Rob Reiner, not Guest. Guest played the dim guitarist who insisted his speakers cold go up to 11.), made in 1984. Its hilarity (still, after about 63 viewings) eminates from how completely convinced this terrible band of heavy metal has-beens remain about their own talent and importance, how hard they work at being rock stars when they so clearly aren’t anymore. Wind pulls the same trick yet but with a lighter touch. The three 60’s folk acts who have assembled for a tribute concert in the present day still float on a raft of their own self-importance. Yet unlike the heavy-metalers who refuse to believe they’re careers have been cast out to sea (Reiner clearly thinks they are nimrods), the three folk acts either have no interest in nostolgia, know folk ain’t coming back and are a little grumpy about it, or are perfectly context to gut folk and parade around in the carcass for a few bucks. The comedy then comes from watching them poke at, bite, or run away from their own irrelevence. It’s got vulnerability and a heart, which makes me laugh even more.
There are some great jokes, and Guest and Co. earn them all (Harry Shearer and bandmates talking about how they had to add the holes to their first records is just a riot) by creating funny characters in a vaguely sad situation and then letting them be. Instead of the cheap, shooting gallery humor of Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show, A Mighty Wind works by laying it on gently rather than being nasty for its own sake.
Cherish (2002):
Imprisionment is only dull if you are.
Xanadu was a blast. The heckling was relentless.
