I can never seem to get enough of Oliver Stone’s 1994 movie, Natural Born Killers. I re-watched the Director’s Cut several nights ago, along with the special features which include director’s commentary, deleted scenes and Chaos Rising; the behind-the-scenes, making-of piece, which has interviews with the actors, producers and crew, and which chronicles the filming and the controversy centered around the violent nature of the movie.
The original screenplay was penned by Quentin Tarantino, before he became “the” Quentin Tarantino. There was a big brouhaha in the press around the time of release about then neophyte producers Jane Hamsher and Don Murphy, JD Productions, optioning the screenplay from Tarantino, who in the meantime became quite famous from the success of Reservoir Dogs. Purportedly Tarantino hoped to get the script back after the year-option expired, so he could make the movie himself, and a big feud erupted between Tarantino and JD Productions, culminating in Don Murphy supposedly saying he would openly celebrate Tarantino’s death, and Tarantino slapping Murphy in the face at a famous LA restaurant.
After the movie was released, Jane Hamsher’s book, Killer Instincts: How Two Young Producers Took on Hollywood and Made the Most Controversial Film of the Decade was published. Killer Instincts is a great, gossipy read about the underbelly of making movies in Hollywood, and the excitement and unique craziness of making a movie with the legendary Oliver Stone.
As the story goes, just when JD Productions was about to lose the option, purportedly due to underhanded, behind the scene maneuvers of Tarantino, Oliver Stone stepped in as director to help Hamsher and Murphy make the movie. He also re-wrote the script, much to the chagrin of Tarantino, with the help of David Veloz and Richard Rutowski.
The whole sordid affair was fodder for the tabloids and gossip mills, and I ate up everything I could find on the movie, since I am one of the biggest Oliver Stone fans on the planet. And I must confess a big fan of Tarantino’s earlier work, as Tarantino was also a big influence on my own wannabe, screenwriting attempts. I snatched up and eagerly devoured every book, magazine and shred of press material I could find on both filmmakers at the time. I’m still a big fan of both auteurs, but Stone is by far the better and more serious filmmaker, and in that famous feud, I would still fall into Stone’s camp.
When I first saw Natural Born Killers on the big screen, I really didn’t like it. I much preferred the serious Stone films, and upon first viewing, I was disappointed. I thought Natural Born Killers was kind of silly and awkward, and even incongruously silly and horrific. It was shocking in places. It was creepy in places. I usually don’t like movies that mix violence and comedy, and I’m not much into satire. As a matter of fact, I didn’t like Natural Born Killers so much, that I ended up watching it ten times on the big screen! And yes, I still have all my chromosomes. By the second and third viewings, I liked it a lot and recognized it as a work of genius: a psychedelic, satirical, no-holds-barred, violent love story. And I must confess, I do love violent love stories. (The Tarantino penned, True Romance, for instance, is a great, violent love story.) By the fourth through the tenth big screen viewings, I took along as many friends as I could and watched it to study camera angles, sets, props, acting skills, etc. I studied that movie intensely, as a devoted, armchair student of film and all things Oliver Stone.
Of course, more controversy eventually erupted over the movie as copycat killings and violent crimes began to occur and be attributed to the movie. Mystery writer and attorney John Grisham even went so far as to help bring a lawsuit against Oliver Stone and Time Warner on behalf of one of the victims. (I have since boycotted all things John Grisham.) According to newspaper accounts at the time, one of the copycat killings even happened on the roof of a convenient store on the NW corner of Midway and Rosemeade, about a stone’s throw from the apartment where I lived in Dallas for many years and made my own movie. The Grisham lawsuit was unsuccessful, thankfully, and no precedent was set which would make filmmaker’s and artists responsible for the actions of a few lunatics and lost souls who might act upon movies, plays, books, poems or other art forms or media created by artists whose soul intent is to move, enlighten or entertain an audience. Tragic indeed when life imitates art in such a way as to cause a murder, and my heart does go out to the victims and their families. But one cannot prosecute Martin Scorcese or Paul Schrader because John Hinckley shot President Reagan purportedly due to an infatuation with the Jodie Foster teen prostitute character, Iris, in the movie Taxi Driver.
It was Aristotle who said, “Art imitates life,” and Oscar Wilde who countered centuries later, “Life imitates art.” I remember reading John Lennon’s Playboy magazine interview in 1980 in which he mentioned he was subsisting on Hershey’s with Almonds candy bars and Gauloise cigarettes. I rushed out and purchased and consumed both of those items simply to experience what John Lennon experienced. Life imitating art, one might say. I couldn’t very well sue John Lennon or Playboy magazine if I developed lung cancer or a tooth cavity, though eating Hershey’s with Almonds and smoking French cigarettes was my way of imitating the artist, John Lennon; silly though it may have been.
Nowadays in film, product placement has become the evil twin of life imitating art. Movie production companies now include brand name, consumer products in their movies in order to raise production funds from corporations that market the products. It’s an art-compromising way to subliminally include commercials into movies to make a buck. When famed filmmaker, David Lynch was asked what he thought about product placement in movies, he replied emphatically, “Bullshit, total fucking bullshit.”
One of the things that struck me as I watched the opening scene of Natural Born Killers is the inclusion by Oliver Stone of various “natural born killers” and inhabitants of the desert: such as the coyote, the rattlesnake, the hawk, the scorpion and the rednecks with the dead deer on the roof of the truck; all killers in their own right, yet all a part of the natural order of the planet. As Mickey Knox says in the nationally televised, prison interview on Super Bowl Sunday that comes later in the movie, “It’s just murder… all God’s creatures do it… the wolf doesn’t know why he’s a wolf - the deer doesn’t know why he’s a deer. God just made it that way.” He goes on to say: “The media is like the weather, except it’s manmade.” Those may be wise observations from a demented mind about the cruelty of nature, but still rather chilling statements to a viewer in a civilized society.
The movie is chocked full of oblique angles, jump cuts, black and white footage and every conceivable angle and film format known to mankind. It is a visual onslaught that never lets up throughout the whole movie: a psychedelic, kaleidoscopic, drug-induced romp through every conceivable manipulation ever dedicated to film. According to Hamsher’s book and interviews included in the Director’s Cut, she and Oliver Stone and others ate hallucinogenic mushrooms while scouting film locations in the desert. The movie itself tries to imitate a psychedelic trip, and successfully does so in my humble opinion.
One of the film’s most disturbing scenes to me is the backstory of Juliette Lewis’s character, Mallory, and her life at home with her abusive father, Jack, eerily played by Rodney Dangerfield. As the scene unfolds and it is made apparent that Jack has physically and sexually abused his daughter, the scene is nonetheless shot as a sitcom, complete with a laugh track included at the most sinister moments. The incongruity of that juxtaposition of a very creepy scene with a laugh track layered in was quite troubling to me, and difficult to watch. It is also at that juncture where Tarantino, during his first viewing of Natural Born Killers, supposedly walked out of the movie theater and said he would, “Watch it on cable someday.” Evidently he did not approve of the rewrites or Stone’s interpretation of his original script. Tarantino had even insisted that he be given screen credit for the “story’’ only, when he was made aware of the numerous changes to his original script.
The cast of Natural Born Killers did a great job. Stone said one reason he cast Woody Harrelson was because Woody’s father, hit man Charles Harrelson, infamously assassinated a federal judge in Texas in 1979, and Stone thought there was something in Woody’s genetic makeup that would bring out something extra in the Mickey Knox character. Juliette Lewis was dedicated to the role of Mallory Knox, and it shows in her flawless performance. Robert Downey, Jr. almost steals the show as the TV journalist, Wayne Gale. Tommy Lee Jones gives a rare performance as the cruel, nose-picking prison warden with his crude, instruments of torture. Tom Sizemore rounded out the cast very well playing the famous, memoir-writing lawman that is hired to track down the psychotic, murderous lovers. As we find out, he too is a killer who strangles a prostitute in a motel as he searches for Mickey and Mallory.
There are no heroes it seems in Natural Born Killers. According to Oliver Stone, “Once [Mickey and Mallory] kill, they’ve entered into this world of breaking all the rules. It’s fitting that the filmmaker is also breaking the rules, with them.”
Maybe to some, Natural Born Killers is a sick, controversial movie, unrealistically portraying a sick world. But, as Tommy Lee Jones says in the interview in Chaos Rising, “You don’t have to be a very sophisticated person to know that this is not an exploitation film. This is an art film.”
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Having My Baby Wins Most Ambitious Film Award, or, Four Years of Snowballing Karma
The Blog lives on. We’re on a roll. Having My Baby won the award for Most Ambitious Film at the Columbia Gorge International Film Festival (formerly known as the Washougal International Film Festival) in Vancouver, Washington. Many thanks to the lovely and talented festival founder and director, Breven Angaelica Warren, and her trusted sidekick, Festival Captain, Wes Parker. They treated us very kindly during our stay in their fair city, and we really appreciate it.
Most Ambitious Film, Having My Baby. It has a nice little ring to it. I like it. I suppose I should get an award for Most Megalomaniacal Director, truth be known. I can proudly says, “It’s over, Johnny.” Having My Baby is a tangible commodity. So, I’m living proof you can make an award-winning, feature-length, action-drama film for $80,000 while simultaneously working 40-hour weeks for The Man. However, such sleep deprivation, physical hardship, mental anguish and gravity of will is not recommended for one’s health. It turns you into a “mean man.” Someone who is driven. Someone who will not take “no” for an answer. Like the Terminator, “It will not die!” “Ugh, must make movie, get out of way.” One friend in a polite way told me I was just stupid enough to think I could do it, and ended up doing it. After four years of seat-of-the-pants filmmaking making Having My Baby, I would have to say, I agree.
In the end, I’m proud of Having My Baby. It’s a cool little flick if the story interests you. One thing that has puzzled me however, is that people think Having My Baby is a Christian movie, however, I contend, it only has a fundamentalist Christian character. Sophie is proudly agnostic. As the creator of Blaine and Sophie, I never chose between them or took a side. As the omnipotent creator/writer, I must be totally neutral so that the audience may choose for themselves. Just the facts, ma’am. Having My Baby is an action-drama, human interest, love story. I guess. What do I know? The squares love it. The civilians love it. I love it, though some of it does still make me cringe. Too much karma still. Four years of snowballing karma wasn’t vanquished in a day.
Most Ambitious Film, Having My Baby. It has a nice little ring to it. I like it. I suppose I should get an award for Most Megalomaniacal Director, truth be known. I can proudly says, “It’s over, Johnny.” Having My Baby is a tangible commodity. So, I’m living proof you can make an award-winning, feature-length, action-drama film for $80,000 while simultaneously working 40-hour weeks for The Man. However, such sleep deprivation, physical hardship, mental anguish and gravity of will is not recommended for one’s health. It turns you into a “mean man.” Someone who is driven. Someone who will not take “no” for an answer. Like the Terminator, “It will not die!” “Ugh, must make movie, get out of way.” One friend in a polite way told me I was just stupid enough to think I could do it, and ended up doing it. After four years of seat-of-the-pants filmmaking making Having My Baby, I would have to say, I agree.
In the end, I’m proud of Having My Baby. It’s a cool little flick if the story interests you. One thing that has puzzled me however, is that people think Having My Baby is a Christian movie, however, I contend, it only has a fundamentalist Christian character. Sophie is proudly agnostic. As the creator of Blaine and Sophie, I never chose between them or took a side. As the omnipotent creator/writer, I must be totally neutral so that the audience may choose for themselves. Just the facts, ma’am. Having My Baby is an action-drama, human interest, love story. I guess. What do I know? The squares love it. The civilians love it. I love it, though some of it does still make me cringe. Too much karma still. Four years of snowballing karma wasn’t vanquished in a day.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Watching Hud with My Dad
My pop died of emphysema several years ago, and I've always wished I'd had more time to visit with him. He wasn't around much when I was a youngster. My mom always said, "Your daddy worked hard, but he also played hard." And if you'll pardon my language, my dad was a cross between Archie Bunker and Brando's description of his father in Last Tango in Paris: "He was a super masculine, whore fucker, bar fighter."
My dad was from Tennessee. His name was Hugh L., and the L. was only an initial and didn't stand for anything. Having a middle initial as a substitute for an actual name was evidently a custom in the hills of Tennessee where my dad grew up in the 1930's. There is a common joke there that the people are so poor they can't even afford a full name, and could only afford a middle initial. My dad eventually told everyone the L. stood for Larry, just to get them to shut up about it, I guess. Larry is what my mom called him until his dying day.
My dad was a kind, compassionate man, but he had a rough exterior and was an unrepentant womanizer. Growing up in Chicago in the 1960's, on the very few, rare occasions my dad was home and not working or playing, I was actually able to watch TV with my dad. We couldn't watch any comedies. If I turned it to Get Smart or Hogan's Heroes, he'd say, "Get that shit off there." So I'd have to turn it to Gunsmoke, The Rifleman or Wanted Dead or Alive. Testosterone city. Needless to say I was a bit deficient in the sense of humor department as a child and later in life. What my Dad did like was: he liked beer, he liked women, he liked baseball and he liked country food; food like biscuits and gravy, and wilted mustard greens soaked in bacon bits and hot grease. Cracklings, even, whatever the heck that is. And he liked a good western, too.
The only time he really busted my ass when I was a kid was when I took too long to water the pigs during the heat of the day in the burning hell of a Texas summer, and when I went swimming in a stock tank without permission near a place called Hippie Ridge in Wise County, Texas. But he was always busting my balls about something later in life, in my early twenties especially, when I was a shiftless, lazy, college dropout, Rimbaud wannabe. But, short story long, when I knew the old fucker only had a few years left to live, I loaded the car up with VHS movie cassettes and drove up to Roane County, Tennessee to see him. I tried to take a variety of movies for him to see. Some movies I took I knew he would like, like the Clint Eastwood western, The Unforgiven. (I always get choked up at the end when those prostitutes come out in the rain to see Clint Eastwood ride out of town.) And some movies I took just to mess with his head, like Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. When the little dwarf in the red room sucks up the corn from a silver spoon in an extreme closeup while the soundtrack plays in reverse, that's about the time my dad said, "Sheeeit, son, get that shit off there." Leave it to David Lynch to blow my dad's mind. That's about the time I hit the eject button and I popped in Hud.
I knew my dad would probably get a stiffy watching Hud, because he was Hud, in so many ways. Ruggedly handsome like Newman, with chiseled features and a confident swagger. I never once heard my dad laugh in his life... seriously... never! I heard him chuckle once or twice, either watching a John Wayne movie or some other western movie that had a brief moment of comedy between scenes of killing dark-skinned people. But, by golly, he sure liked watching Hud! Hud, the drunken, womanizing cowboy. He came pretty darn close to laughing a time or two, especially when Hud was extricating himself from the clutches of a jealous husband. My dad told me of a few such close calls in his life. When my dad was sober he wouldn't have two words to say, but when he was drinking, he was a hillbilly raconteur who would get on a drunken binge and couldn't shut up. I'll withhold some of the scandalous details since there might be women and children about. I think you get the picture.
Hud was adapted from the Larry McMurtry novel, Horseman, Pass By. Hud's younger brother is played by Brandon de Wilde, the kid from Shane as a young man. Larry McMurtry is a life long native of the Wichita Falls area, where my mom and dad and our family lived a time or two. There are some good chapters on the making of Hud in Larry McMurty's book, In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas. Released in 1962, Hud is a great movie and a great nostalgia trip for anyone who grew up in Texas. Academy awards went to Patricia Neal and Melvyn Douglas, and to James Wong Howe for his brilliant cinematography.
I was glad my dad and I got the chance to watch Hud together one of the last times I saw him. It was one of the very few times we ever bonded, as they say. If you could call it that. That's when my dad told me that I was named after a character from the Zane Grey western novel, The Lone Star Ranger, and General Leslie Groves of the Manhattan Project. My mom, who eventually divorced him, had always told me I was named after some of my dad's Air Force buddies. I know my dad wasn't much of a role model, but he was my dad. We don't get to pick them. It's like the genetic lottery. I guess I could have done a lot worse. He was a good man most of the time, except when it came to married women and booze. He never was there for me as a kid, but he always put food on the table. Now I suppose he's up on that great big barstool in the sky.
My dad was from Tennessee. His name was Hugh L., and the L. was only an initial and didn't stand for anything. Having a middle initial as a substitute for an actual name was evidently a custom in the hills of Tennessee where my dad grew up in the 1930's. There is a common joke there that the people are so poor they can't even afford a full name, and could only afford a middle initial. My dad eventually told everyone the L. stood for Larry, just to get them to shut up about it, I guess. Larry is what my mom called him until his dying day.
My dad was a kind, compassionate man, but he had a rough exterior and was an unrepentant womanizer. Growing up in Chicago in the 1960's, on the very few, rare occasions my dad was home and not working or playing, I was actually able to watch TV with my dad. We couldn't watch any comedies. If I turned it to Get Smart or Hogan's Heroes, he'd say, "Get that shit off there." So I'd have to turn it to Gunsmoke, The Rifleman or Wanted Dead or Alive. Testosterone city. Needless to say I was a bit deficient in the sense of humor department as a child and later in life. What my Dad did like was: he liked beer, he liked women, he liked baseball and he liked country food; food like biscuits and gravy, and wilted mustard greens soaked in bacon bits and hot grease. Cracklings, even, whatever the heck that is. And he liked a good western, too.
The only time he really busted my ass when I was a kid was when I took too long to water the pigs during the heat of the day in the burning hell of a Texas summer, and when I went swimming in a stock tank without permission near a place called Hippie Ridge in Wise County, Texas. But he was always busting my balls about something later in life, in my early twenties especially, when I was a shiftless, lazy, college dropout, Rimbaud wannabe. But, short story long, when I knew the old fucker only had a few years left to live, I loaded the car up with VHS movie cassettes and drove up to Roane County, Tennessee to see him. I tried to take a variety of movies for him to see. Some movies I took I knew he would like, like the Clint Eastwood western, The Unforgiven. (I always get choked up at the end when those prostitutes come out in the rain to see Clint Eastwood ride out of town.) And some movies I took just to mess with his head, like Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. When the little dwarf in the red room sucks up the corn from a silver spoon in an extreme closeup while the soundtrack plays in reverse, that's about the time my dad said, "Sheeeit, son, get that shit off there." Leave it to David Lynch to blow my dad's mind. That's about the time I hit the eject button and I popped in Hud.
I knew my dad would probably get a stiffy watching Hud, because he was Hud, in so many ways. Ruggedly handsome like Newman, with chiseled features and a confident swagger. I never once heard my dad laugh in his life... seriously... never! I heard him chuckle once or twice, either watching a John Wayne movie or some other western movie that had a brief moment of comedy between scenes of killing dark-skinned people. But, by golly, he sure liked watching Hud! Hud, the drunken, womanizing cowboy. He came pretty darn close to laughing a time or two, especially when Hud was extricating himself from the clutches of a jealous husband. My dad told me of a few such close calls in his life. When my dad was sober he wouldn't have two words to say, but when he was drinking, he was a hillbilly raconteur who would get on a drunken binge and couldn't shut up. I'll withhold some of the scandalous details since there might be women and children about. I think you get the picture.
Hud was adapted from the Larry McMurtry novel, Horseman, Pass By. Hud's younger brother is played by Brandon de Wilde, the kid from Shane as a young man. Larry McMurtry is a life long native of the Wichita Falls area, where my mom and dad and our family lived a time or two. There are some good chapters on the making of Hud in Larry McMurty's book, In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas. Released in 1962, Hud is a great movie and a great nostalgia trip for anyone who grew up in Texas. Academy awards went to Patricia Neal and Melvyn Douglas, and to James Wong Howe for his brilliant cinematography.
I was glad my dad and I got the chance to watch Hud together one of the last times I saw him. It was one of the very few times we ever bonded, as they say. If you could call it that. That's when my dad told me that I was named after a character from the Zane Grey western novel, The Lone Star Ranger, and General Leslie Groves of the Manhattan Project. My mom, who eventually divorced him, had always told me I was named after some of my dad's Air Force buddies. I know my dad wasn't much of a role model, but he was my dad. We don't get to pick them. It's like the genetic lottery. I guess I could have done a lot worse. He was a good man most of the time, except when it came to married women and booze. He never was there for me as a kid, but he always put food on the table. Now I suppose he's up on that great big barstool in the sky.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Movie Jonesing and DVD Buying Escapades
I've been busier than a one-armed paper hanger (no offense to one-armed paper hangers) and haven't had time to do this blog up proper, as they might say. I haven't had time to work on my screenplay in progress, Jacksboro Highway. I haven't had time to write some freelance stuff I've had notes on for some time (one about Depression era babies, the other about international arms trafficking regulations), and I haven't had much time for anything except working for The Man.
But I have squeezed in some movie watching time, and this is purportedly a movie blog, or so I've been lead to believe. What's the use of having a blog if one doesn't record inane ruminations in it, right? So this will be a recent update in which I write about the DVDs I've been lucky enough to purchase and find the time to watch. Bored already, right?
I watched the special edition DVD of Alan Parker's, Angel Heart. It had some great extras, including interviews with Mickey Rourke. The movie is one of the greatest gumshoe whodunits ever put to cellulose, and a terrific period piece. I love the scenes in New Orleans. It is easily Mickey Rourke's finest performance, playing alongside a champ like De Niro. Good stuff! I thought Lisa Bonet did a great job, too.
On to Raging Bull, the 2-Disc DVD Collector's Set. True cinema at its finest. Another period piece that will knock your block off. The boxing movie that changed my mind about boxing movies. And who knew? Cathy Moriarty was only sixteen when she was cast alongside Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci. This Collector's Set is so great. Three audio commentaries with Scorcese, Schoonmaker, Irwin Winkler and Jake La Motta. Lots of featurettes about the making-of. For just pure filmmaking savvy, this is Scorcese's best movie ever, hands down, and Robert De Niro's finest performance ever. Absolutely brilliant, all of it!
Scarface... the 2-Disc Platinum Edition... oodles and oodles of extras, but unfortunately no director's or other commentary. Just featurettes, interviews, making-of extras and delected scenes.
The script for the 80's Scarface remake was written by Oliver Stone in France, while he kicked a coke habit. In Miami and Latin America, he hung out with drug lords and law enforcement personnel as he researched the illicit drug trade. It's a great, violent movie, with lots of bullets and lots of babes, and a true, gangster classic. The Platinum Edition has great interviews with Oliver Stone, director, Brian De Palma, and producer, Martin Bregman. Scarface is a masterpiece and cult classic in every sense of the word. The movie was dedicated to Howard Hawks and Ben Hecht who directed and wrote the original 1932 Scarface.
I watched to 2008 released 30th Anniversity Edition of Midnight Express, the movie for which Oliver Stone won his first academy award for best adapted screenplay, and also another Alan Parker movie. (One of my all time favorite movies by Alan Parker is Pink Floyd, The Wall.) This edition has lots of extras, including a great commentary by Alan Parker and interviews with Oliver Stone. Midnight Express is a great prison movie, though painful to watch at times. Actor Brad Davis is amazingly believable as the young American with a hankering for some hashish.
So, that's been some of my DVD buying escapades and movie watching pleasure. I love the director's commentaries and featurettes on anniversary and special edition DVDs. Making movies can be such a weird adventure! Hearing the anecdotal stories behind the scenes is lots of fun for aspiring filmmakers and civilians alike.
But I have squeezed in some movie watching time, and this is purportedly a movie blog, or so I've been lead to believe. What's the use of having a blog if one doesn't record inane ruminations in it, right? So this will be a recent update in which I write about the DVDs I've been lucky enough to purchase and find the time to watch. Bored already, right?
I watched the special edition DVD of Alan Parker's, Angel Heart. It had some great extras, including interviews with Mickey Rourke. The movie is one of the greatest gumshoe whodunits ever put to cellulose, and a terrific period piece. I love the scenes in New Orleans. It is easily Mickey Rourke's finest performance, playing alongside a champ like De Niro. Good stuff! I thought Lisa Bonet did a great job, too.
On to Raging Bull, the 2-Disc DVD Collector's Set. True cinema at its finest. Another period piece that will knock your block off. The boxing movie that changed my mind about boxing movies. And who knew? Cathy Moriarty was only sixteen when she was cast alongside Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci. This Collector's Set is so great. Three audio commentaries with Scorcese, Schoonmaker, Irwin Winkler and Jake La Motta. Lots of featurettes about the making-of. For just pure filmmaking savvy, this is Scorcese's best movie ever, hands down, and Robert De Niro's finest performance ever. Absolutely brilliant, all of it!
Scarface... the 2-Disc Platinum Edition... oodles and oodles of extras, but unfortunately no director's or other commentary. Just featurettes, interviews, making-of extras and delected scenes.
The script for the 80's Scarface remake was written by Oliver Stone in France, while he kicked a coke habit. In Miami and Latin America, he hung out with drug lords and law enforcement personnel as he researched the illicit drug trade. It's a great, violent movie, with lots of bullets and lots of babes, and a true, gangster classic. The Platinum Edition has great interviews with Oliver Stone, director, Brian De Palma, and producer, Martin Bregman. Scarface is a masterpiece and cult classic in every sense of the word. The movie was dedicated to Howard Hawks and Ben Hecht who directed and wrote the original 1932 Scarface.
I watched to 2008 released 30th Anniversity Edition of Midnight Express, the movie for which Oliver Stone won his first academy award for best adapted screenplay, and also another Alan Parker movie. (One of my all time favorite movies by Alan Parker is Pink Floyd, The Wall.) This edition has lots of extras, including a great commentary by Alan Parker and interviews with Oliver Stone. Midnight Express is a great prison movie, though painful to watch at times. Actor Brad Davis is amazingly believable as the young American with a hankering for some hashish.
So, that's been some of my DVD buying escapades and movie watching pleasure. I love the director's commentaries and featurettes on anniversary and special edition DVDs. Making movies can be such a weird adventure! Hearing the anecdotal stories behind the scenes is lots of fun for aspiring filmmakers and civilians alike.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
HAVING MY BABY Now Available on DVD
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Hollywood Love Fest - The 82nd Annual Academy Awards
It was fun to watch the 82nd Academy Awards and once again see all the beautiful people kick up their heels and throw their annual shindig. I thought Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin did a great job co-hosting, and for me, it was fun to see a Hollywood sacred cow like good old democratic socialist Ed Asner in the crowd, as well as an old timer like Christopher Plummer there as a nominee, even if he did not get his due. Christoph Waltz was a difficult actor to beat, I suppose.
I love the work of cinematographer, Robert Richardson, especially when he was working with Oliver Stone. He was hard to miss tonight sitting behind Quentin Tarantino with his trademark long hair and beard, now snow white, looking like a character in a kung fu movie, the old man from the mountain. He was nominated for best cinematographer for Inglourious Basterds. (I have to get the spelling right on Inglourious and Basterds!)
I was happy to see a young, acoustic guitar-strumming song writer like Ryan Bingham win the Oscar for Best Song for the theme song from Crazy Heart. He went from rodeo cowboy breaking bones riding bulls and living in his pickup truck to Oscar winner in a few short years. He paid his dues and came up the hard way. I bet his life story would make a great movie.
Quentin Tarantino did not look too happy when Mark Boal won for Best Original Screenplay. QT’s script was definitely original, but too silly, I think, to win the top screenwriting honor, and had too much white space.
There is no way any director other than James Cameron should have won for Best Director. The dedication, innovation and persistence behind Avatar cannot be equaled for a long time to come. I guess The Academy thought the time had come for a woman to win Best Director. So be it. I loved Strange Days and Point Break, by the way, both directed by Kathryn Bigelow, but no way The Hurt Locker was better directed than Avatar.
And The Hurt Locker wins Best Picture? There is like no way! James Cameron was robbed, probably by the military industrial complex and the necessary glorification of the war. I actually fell asleep at the theater watching the last twenty minutes of The Hurt Locker, but I was wide awake at the climactic ending of Avatar. The Hurt Locker was a propaganda snooze fest compared to Avatar. I know a lot of film purists and Cameron haters didn’t want to see a special effects-heavy production like Avatar win, but the movie is way too grand and magnificent to be overlooked. What a travesty! Plus it has almost grossed a billion dollars domestically! Let’s face it, it’s entertaining. Oh well, it’s not the first time a movie or director has been robbed at the Oscars. I’m sure it won’t be the last. Just look at Martin Scorsese and Raging Bull. Movies are so much fun to watch when they are good, and good is such a relative term when it comes to cinema and the Academy of Motion Pictures. An audience is a fickle thing.
We place actors on such pedestals, and make them into demi-gods, yet they are for the most part normal people who just happen to have a cool job. Just for an instant tonight watching the Academy Awards I thought I was watching an homage to great statesmen or perhaps the scientist who invented the cure for polio, not a bunch of people playing house and cowboys and Indians. I have to admit, I loved every minute of it. As an industry, cinema has only been around for a little over one hundred years. That’s the blink of an eye in historic terms. I hope I’m around long enough to see many more movies and many more innovations.
I love the work of cinematographer, Robert Richardson, especially when he was working with Oliver Stone. He was hard to miss tonight sitting behind Quentin Tarantino with his trademark long hair and beard, now snow white, looking like a character in a kung fu movie, the old man from the mountain. He was nominated for best cinematographer for Inglourious Basterds. (I have to get the spelling right on Inglourious and Basterds!)
I was happy to see a young, acoustic guitar-strumming song writer like Ryan Bingham win the Oscar for Best Song for the theme song from Crazy Heart. He went from rodeo cowboy breaking bones riding bulls and living in his pickup truck to Oscar winner in a few short years. He paid his dues and came up the hard way. I bet his life story would make a great movie.
Quentin Tarantino did not look too happy when Mark Boal won for Best Original Screenplay. QT’s script was definitely original, but too silly, I think, to win the top screenwriting honor, and had too much white space.
There is no way any director other than James Cameron should have won for Best Director. The dedication, innovation and persistence behind Avatar cannot be equaled for a long time to come. I guess The Academy thought the time had come for a woman to win Best Director. So be it. I loved Strange Days and Point Break, by the way, both directed by Kathryn Bigelow, but no way The Hurt Locker was better directed than Avatar.
And The Hurt Locker wins Best Picture? There is like no way! James Cameron was robbed, probably by the military industrial complex and the necessary glorification of the war. I actually fell asleep at the theater watching the last twenty minutes of The Hurt Locker, but I was wide awake at the climactic ending of Avatar. The Hurt Locker was a propaganda snooze fest compared to Avatar. I know a lot of film purists and Cameron haters didn’t want to see a special effects-heavy production like Avatar win, but the movie is way too grand and magnificent to be overlooked. What a travesty! Plus it has almost grossed a billion dollars domestically! Let’s face it, it’s entertaining. Oh well, it’s not the first time a movie or director has been robbed at the Oscars. I’m sure it won’t be the last. Just look at Martin Scorsese and Raging Bull. Movies are so much fun to watch when they are good, and good is such a relative term when it comes to cinema and the Academy of Motion Pictures. An audience is a fickle thing.
We place actors on such pedestals, and make them into demi-gods, yet they are for the most part normal people who just happen to have a cool job. Just for an instant tonight watching the Academy Awards I thought I was watching an homage to great statesmen or perhaps the scientist who invented the cure for polio, not a bunch of people playing house and cowboys and Indians. I have to admit, I loved every minute of it. As an industry, cinema has only been around for a little over one hundred years. That’s the blink of an eye in historic terms. I hope I’m around long enough to see many more movies and many more innovations.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Blind Pigs and the Paris, Texas Criterion Collection
I have been asked to write a script for a new film project. A new acquaintance, who is a cinematographer and fellow collaborator on the new project, recommended that I watch the Wim Wender’s Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or winner, Paris, Texas. He recommended that I watch it for inspiration, I suppose, before attempting to write the new script; as Wim Wenders is one of his favorite directors. As fate would have it, the Criterion Collection of Paris, Texas was due for release on January 26, 2010.
I had watched Paris, Texas years ago but basically had no recollection of it, due to the fact it was 1984 when it was released, and also due to the fact that was too many “inebriated” years ago. I just remember Harry Dean Stanton wandering in the desert, and I believe I tuned out after that. I had never watched a Wim Wenders movie, and being a college dropout and autodidact, I was not well versed in foreign films or movies in general. For years in the Seventies and early Eighties I avoided television like the plague, and found very little time for movies. To this day I’ve never seen an episode of the television show, Dallas, and many other hit shows of that era. I have blank spaces like an amnesiac for whole swatches of that era. I had always fancied myself a poet, which was probably a bit of a stretch, since teenage doggerel and mind-altered verse does not necessarily amount to poetry. So this is not so much a review of the movie Paris, Texas (I’m not worthy) as it is the ramblings of a film auteur wannabe.
One pleasant surprise I discovered was that the screenplay for Paris, Texas was written by Sam Shepard, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright whose play Tooth of Crime inspired me to become a playwright and write my first play, Warboots. (Warboots received a somewhat nice review by critic Lawson Taitte of The Dallas Morning News when it premiered on the stage in Deep Ellum in 1993.) Paris, Texas is based loosely on Shepard’s book, Motel Chronicles. The screenplay was adapted further by Dallas screenwriter, L.M. “Kit” Carson. Carson’s son by actress Karen Black, Hunter Carson, plays the son named Hunter in the film, and did a superb job. (I’ve always loved Karen Black, especially in Day of the Locusts and Easy Rider.) I was surprised when I looked up Hunter Carson’s name on IMDb to discover that he has done very little acting since. He was very good in Paris, Texas as the young boy abandoned by his parents and left to be raised by relatives.
I must admit that while watching the Criterion Collection of Paris, Texas I kept waiting for something to happen. I like movies where something happens. I like movies with a linear plot and sequence of events that keep me interested. I was left thinking, maybe something is happening and I’m just not an astute enough observer to “see” it. I must confess, I just don’t get most “European” movies. They’re way too subtle for my tastes. The three “foreign” movies I can say I did like are Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris, Costa Gavras’ Z and the Chinese erotic movie, Sex and Zen. There are a few others, but I won’t bother listing them all.
The movie obviously deals with mental illness. Travis, Harry Dean Stanton’s character, is obviously mentally ill, probably paranoid schizophrenic. Why else would he be walking through the desert, mute and detached from reality? It would take more than just a broken heart to compel such wandering for four years. (I knew a guy like that who used to walk all the time on the highway. He never wore socks and wore big, thick boots. He wasn’t schizophrenic, but he had a slight speech impediment and it was rumored that he had dropped too much acid in the Sixties and Seventies. He told me he once saw ZZ Top when they were a garage band in Ft. Worth. He had a lot of old war stories from growing up in Ft. Worth in the Fifties and Sixties. He was actually a nice guy, just misunderstood and the object of much bullying.) One of my favorite scenes of the movie is the mentally ill guy screaming a monologue of apocalyptic content on the highway overpass as rush hour traffic rushes by below. I thought that was pretty brilliant to have that turn up out of nowhere. I’ve been around a lot of mentally ill people, and that scene was spot on.
I finally “got” Paris, Texas after watching all the extras and listening to the director’s commentary by Wim Wenders. That’s when I discovered that the movie was for the most part made up as they went along, a pastiche of scenes stuck together like a celluloid poem, a “poetic” movie if you will. I guess the film purists “got it” all along, or were satisfied if they didn’t “get it” right away. I’m afraid my attention span isn’t the best for European movies or sentiments.
My heartstrings were touched the most when French actress Aurore Clement, who plays Hunter’s aunt Anne, pleads on the phone for Hunter to come home. That was a sad and touching moment. (Aurore Clement is stunningly beautiful, especially in the French plantation scene in Apocalypse Now Redux.) Dean Stockwell is also great as Walt, the brother of the wandering Travis, and the beautiful Nastassja Kinski did a great job with her Southern accent and portraying Jane, the long lost mother eventually found working in a peep show in Houston. The movie actually didn’t have an ending until Sam Shepard dictated the ending over the phone to Wenders, because by that time Sam Shepard had other obligations as an actor on another movie set, and fax machines did not yet exist.
Robby Muller’s cinematography is superb. I loved the big, blue skies of Texas and the Southwest, the clouds, the trains, the colors, and the grandeur of the opening scenes in the desert area around Big Bend National Park, near Terlingua, Texas. Equally unique and nostalgic are the many shots of motels, stores and cafes (inevitable I suppose in any “road movie”), which Wim Wenders mentions in the commentary as being homage to the photography of Walker Evans.
The Criterion Collection also has great extras other than the director’s commentary: an interview of Wenders by German journalist, Roger Willemsen; excerpts from a 1990 documentary on Wenders featuring interviews with Wenders, Robby Muller, composer Ry Cooder, Harry Dean Stanton, Dennis Hopper, Peter Falk, Hans Zischler, novelist Patricia Highsmith and director Samuel Fuller. It also has new video interviews with filmmakers Allison Anders, who was a young production assistant on the movie, and Claire Denis, who was assistant director.
The Criterion Collection has many other extras too numerous to list here. The film did provide much inspiration, but most of the inspiration came from watching the extras. Just getting the opportunity to listen to the director’s commentary alone was worth the price paid for the DVD. It was very interesting to learn about the many struggles of Wim Wenders to see the movie to completion, such as stealing shots on the Houston freeways, coming up with an ending midway through the film when there wasn’t a complete screenplay, and searching for some sort of central vision from a potpourri of ideas which weren’t totally worked out before filming began. Those are trying circumstances for any filmmaker. There is an old Russian saying, “Even a blind pig finds an acorn every once in a while.” Congratulations to Wim Wenders for his steadfastness in seeing his incomplete vision to the end, for winning the Palme d’Or and for making a beautiful, poetic movie in the process.
I had watched Paris, Texas years ago but basically had no recollection of it, due to the fact it was 1984 when it was released, and also due to the fact that was too many “inebriated” years ago. I just remember Harry Dean Stanton wandering in the desert, and I believe I tuned out after that. I had never watched a Wim Wenders movie, and being a college dropout and autodidact, I was not well versed in foreign films or movies in general. For years in the Seventies and early Eighties I avoided television like the plague, and found very little time for movies. To this day I’ve never seen an episode of the television show, Dallas, and many other hit shows of that era. I have blank spaces like an amnesiac for whole swatches of that era. I had always fancied myself a poet, which was probably a bit of a stretch, since teenage doggerel and mind-altered verse does not necessarily amount to poetry. So this is not so much a review of the movie Paris, Texas (I’m not worthy) as it is the ramblings of a film auteur wannabe.
One pleasant surprise I discovered was that the screenplay for Paris, Texas was written by Sam Shepard, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright whose play Tooth of Crime inspired me to become a playwright and write my first play, Warboots. (Warboots received a somewhat nice review by critic Lawson Taitte of The Dallas Morning News when it premiered on the stage in Deep Ellum in 1993.) Paris, Texas is based loosely on Shepard’s book, Motel Chronicles. The screenplay was adapted further by Dallas screenwriter, L.M. “Kit” Carson. Carson’s son by actress Karen Black, Hunter Carson, plays the son named Hunter in the film, and did a superb job. (I’ve always loved Karen Black, especially in Day of the Locusts and Easy Rider.) I was surprised when I looked up Hunter Carson’s name on IMDb to discover that he has done very little acting since. He was very good in Paris, Texas as the young boy abandoned by his parents and left to be raised by relatives.
I must admit that while watching the Criterion Collection of Paris, Texas I kept waiting for something to happen. I like movies where something happens. I like movies with a linear plot and sequence of events that keep me interested. I was left thinking, maybe something is happening and I’m just not an astute enough observer to “see” it. I must confess, I just don’t get most “European” movies. They’re way too subtle for my tastes. The three “foreign” movies I can say I did like are Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris, Costa Gavras’ Z and the Chinese erotic movie, Sex and Zen. There are a few others, but I won’t bother listing them all.
The movie obviously deals with mental illness. Travis, Harry Dean Stanton’s character, is obviously mentally ill, probably paranoid schizophrenic. Why else would he be walking through the desert, mute and detached from reality? It would take more than just a broken heart to compel such wandering for four years. (I knew a guy like that who used to walk all the time on the highway. He never wore socks and wore big, thick boots. He wasn’t schizophrenic, but he had a slight speech impediment and it was rumored that he had dropped too much acid in the Sixties and Seventies. He told me he once saw ZZ Top when they were a garage band in Ft. Worth. He had a lot of old war stories from growing up in Ft. Worth in the Fifties and Sixties. He was actually a nice guy, just misunderstood and the object of much bullying.) One of my favorite scenes of the movie is the mentally ill guy screaming a monologue of apocalyptic content on the highway overpass as rush hour traffic rushes by below. I thought that was pretty brilliant to have that turn up out of nowhere. I’ve been around a lot of mentally ill people, and that scene was spot on.
I finally “got” Paris, Texas after watching all the extras and listening to the director’s commentary by Wim Wenders. That’s when I discovered that the movie was for the most part made up as they went along, a pastiche of scenes stuck together like a celluloid poem, a “poetic” movie if you will. I guess the film purists “got it” all along, or were satisfied if they didn’t “get it” right away. I’m afraid my attention span isn’t the best for European movies or sentiments.
My heartstrings were touched the most when French actress Aurore Clement, who plays Hunter’s aunt Anne, pleads on the phone for Hunter to come home. That was a sad and touching moment. (Aurore Clement is stunningly beautiful, especially in the French plantation scene in Apocalypse Now Redux.) Dean Stockwell is also great as Walt, the brother of the wandering Travis, and the beautiful Nastassja Kinski did a great job with her Southern accent and portraying Jane, the long lost mother eventually found working in a peep show in Houston. The movie actually didn’t have an ending until Sam Shepard dictated the ending over the phone to Wenders, because by that time Sam Shepard had other obligations as an actor on another movie set, and fax machines did not yet exist.
Robby Muller’s cinematography is superb. I loved the big, blue skies of Texas and the Southwest, the clouds, the trains, the colors, and the grandeur of the opening scenes in the desert area around Big Bend National Park, near Terlingua, Texas. Equally unique and nostalgic are the many shots of motels, stores and cafes (inevitable I suppose in any “road movie”), which Wim Wenders mentions in the commentary as being homage to the photography of Walker Evans.
The Criterion Collection also has great extras other than the director’s commentary: an interview of Wenders by German journalist, Roger Willemsen; excerpts from a 1990 documentary on Wenders featuring interviews with Wenders, Robby Muller, composer Ry Cooder, Harry Dean Stanton, Dennis Hopper, Peter Falk, Hans Zischler, novelist Patricia Highsmith and director Samuel Fuller. It also has new video interviews with filmmakers Allison Anders, who was a young production assistant on the movie, and Claire Denis, who was assistant director.
The Criterion Collection has many other extras too numerous to list here. The film did provide much inspiration, but most of the inspiration came from watching the extras. Just getting the opportunity to listen to the director’s commentary alone was worth the price paid for the DVD. It was very interesting to learn about the many struggles of Wim Wenders to see the movie to completion, such as stealing shots on the Houston freeways, coming up with an ending midway through the film when there wasn’t a complete screenplay, and searching for some sort of central vision from a potpourri of ideas which weren’t totally worked out before filming began. Those are trying circumstances for any filmmaker. There is an old Russian saying, “Even a blind pig finds an acorn every once in a while.” Congratulations to Wim Wenders for his steadfastness in seeing his incomplete vision to the end, for winning the Palme d’Or and for making a beautiful, poetic movie in the process.
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