Notfilm: When Samuel Beckett met Buster Keaton

A Broadway production of Waiting for Godot, starring knights and X-Men collaborators Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, marks the second Samuel Beckett revival in New York City in as many months. Godot famously bears the influence of both music hall variety acts and slapstick comedies. A routine in which Vladimir and Estragon mix up their bowler hats evokes a bit filmed several times over the years by Leo McCarey (it pops up in Duck Soup with the Marx Brothers).

Fifty years ago Beckett made his only visit to the United States to oversee the shooting in New York City of his only screenplay, called Film. Directed by Beckett's friend Alan Schneider, Film starred the silent comedy icon Buster Keaton. Beckett and Keaton—one of the most unlikely collaborations in cinema history.

Although Film went on to win the Film Critics' prize at the Venice Film Festival, it has always been controversial, to fans of Beckett and Keaton alike. The recent discovery of outtakes, a deleted scene, and tape recordings of Beckett, Schneider, and Grove Press publisher Barney Rosset discussing the production could change our opinion of the project.

Producer Dennis Doros of Milestone Films is raising funds through Indiegogo for Notfilm, a documentary about the making of Film. This is the first time Milestone, known for distributing movies like Killer of Sheep, The Exiles and The Connection, is investing in a production. Archivist Ross Lipman, who is directing the documentary, has helped restore works by filmmakers as varied as Bruce Conner and Sid Lavarents.

While working on the recent UCLA Film & Television Archive restoration of Film, Lipman stumbled across a cache of material in Grove Press publisher Barney Rosset's Fourth Avenue apartment. Stored under Rosset's kitchen sink: film reels with outtakes and a deleted scene from Film. Also found in the apartment: audio recordings of production meetings Beckett, Schneider and Rosset held before shooting. Very few recordings of Beckett are known to exist, let alone the Nobel Prize-winning author discussing his work.

Lipman and Milestone are not only restoring and assembling the discoveries in a documentary feature, they are adding supplementary material, like an interview Lipman recently filmed with Judith Douw, Beckett's assistant for much of his New York stay back in 1964. In Lipman's words, "Judith is one of those extraordinary ladies of the avant-garde—a ravishing beauty in her day, now glowing at an age where she seems straight out of a Beckett play herself. She's also wonderfully eccentric in way that is so uniquely New York, and she had some surprising revelations which bear on my understanding of Film."

You can contribute to this important project through Indiegogo or through the Los Angeles Film Forum, which is offering a tax-deductible sponsorship program.

As Doros noted in an e-mail, this is just the opening salvo in "Milestone's efforts to restore Rosset's entire film work, including his 1947 film Strange Victory and the Zero Mostel/Burgess Meredith version of Waiting for Godot that Schneider also directed."

Contacted recently, McKellen and Stewart admitted that they had yet to see Film. But both agreed that Beckett's interest in silent film comedy was serious, and played a part in how they interpret their roles. McKellen noted that Beckett was very specific in his stage directions for the routine with the bowler hats.

Keaton fans should jump at the opportunity to see new footage of one of the true icons of cinema. And by contributing to the Notfilm campaign, we can help Milestone in its important task of producing and distributing more documentaries and restorations.

 

The best of Nobel Prize-winner Alice Munro onscreen

We were thrilled to learn this morning that Canadian author Alice Munro has won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Word on the street inhabited by the world’s literati (a crumbling back alley, perhaps, but one paved with centuries’ old cobblestones and smelling wonderfully of musky first editions) had for weeks been buzzing about Japanese author Haruki Murakami, who was widely favored to win. In the press release announcing Munro as the award’s recipient, however, a single line proclaimed what fans of the writer have known for decades: Munro is simply the

“master of the contemporary short story.”

(Spaces included in the original announcement; we assume for maximum aesthetic/dramatic effect.)

Filmmakers, too, have long known of Munro’s cinematic potential. Directors have been adapting her short stories and novels for the silver screen and its competitive younger brother, TV, since the ‘70s. Like all enduring authors with a definite sense of their art, the kind you can identify by their opening sentences alone, Munro has certain themes to which time and again she returns. Broadly and simplistically speaking, these include the complicated nature of family relationships – frequently mother/daughter pairings – aging, and that subject a professor of mine once told me every story, no matter how dark or silly or cynical, is really about (and if yours isn’t, you’re writing wrong and probably shouldn’t be writing at all): the various manifestations of love.

All of which may make Munro sound as if she’s an especially girly and sentimental authoress. The wonderful thing about Munro as a writer, however, is her ability to turn an unsentimental eye on those situations which, in lazier hands, could easily lend themselves to the Nicholas Sparks treatment: A man who must admit his aging wife, suffering from Alzheimer’s, into a rest home. An abused wife who snaps. Lives of Girls and Women.

Her inclination toward and incisive handling of universal themes makes her work ripe for dramatic interpretation. It’s no wonder her output has inspired several screen adaptations. Below, we’ve included the trailers or other related media (where available) to most of these projects, as well as the original Munro titles on which they’re based, for your viewing - and hopefully supplemental reading - pleasure:

Film: Hateship Loveship (TBA. Stars Kristen Wiig, Guy Pearce, and Hailee Steinfeld)
Based On: Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (collection of short stories)

 

Film: Away From Her (2006. Julie Christie was nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award; director Sarah Polley was nominated for a Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award.)
Based On: “The Bear Came Over The Mountain” (short story)

 

Film: Edge of Madness (2002)
Based On: “A Wilderness Station” (short story)

 

TV Movie: Lives of Girls and Women (1996)
Based On: Lives of Girls and Women (novel)

TV Series: “The Newcomers” (1977)
Based On: Actually, nothing – she wrote it!

Holiday movie watch: A first peek at 'The Book Thief'

The Book Thief may technically be a young adult book, but every person who's recommended it to me so far (with great enthusiasm, it's worth noting) has been an adult. The story itself has all-ages appeal, following a foster girl whose adoptive parents take in a young Jewish man in Nazi Germany. The book drew raves for its innovative writing style, which includes having Death as its narrator. The trailer for the movie just released, and while there are no voice-overs from 'Death' heard, it appears the feature will be emotionally riveting. An opening title card boasts that the movie comes "From the studio that brought you Life of Pi," an unusual credit, but an apt one given that both films are adaptations of popular yet literary bestsellers. Pi, too, had a distinctive writing style that become more straightforward cinematically. I suspect that The Book Thief, if it gets good reviews, will follow a similar trajectory to Pi: a potential spot in the top ten among the Best Picture nominees, and a scattering of other nominations. However, World War II movies have always done extremely well at the Oscars, and that may give the picture more standing than Pi did.

In the trailer, Oscar-winner Geoffrey Rush is a standout. With a glance, he's believable as a kind-hearted foster parent who's courageous enough to house an "enemy of state" in his basement. A two-time Oscar nominee, Emily Watson, plays his wife. The young French-Canadian actress Sophie Nélisse has the leading role as the book-loving girl, and she seems incredibly at home in the part, which is only her second notable role after a part in Monsieur Lazhar.

The 20th Century Fox production has been unusually quick. It moved up from a winter 2014 to a November 15, 2013, release date, which is also something of a vote of confidence. The director of a number of "Downton Abbey" episodes, Brian Percival, helms, and those that hail from television are often known for being able to work quickly. With a release date in prime Oscar territory, it looks like The Book Thief will be one to watch, both in theatres and during awards season.

George Clooney fights Nazis in 'Monuments Men'

If you look at the lineup of Oscar nominees in any given year, it becomes clear that movies taking place during World War II are heavily represented. There are serious movies, like Schindler's List, The Reader, The Pianist, The Thin Red Line, and Saving Private Ryan, to name just a few, and then there's Quentin Tarantino's recent injection of humor into the genre via Inglourious Basterds. The Monuments Men, which stars George Clooney as a Nazi-fighting commander of a small, scrappy group of fighters, appears to nod to both.

The trailer for the Columbia action thriller, which comes out in prime holiday movie season, December 18, establishes that the stakes are high, but the group is mostly in control. An illustrative scene features Matt Damon frozen in place, explaining that he has stepped on a land mine, while his buddies come in, repeating, "Whadja do that for?" In that sense, it appears the George Clooney-directed feature may also be cribbing from the tone from another actor-directed work, Ben Affleck's Argo, which had real stakes but also a front-and-center sense of humor about the CIA's attempt to get Americans out of Iran during the hostage crisis. Hey, it won the movie a Best Picture Oscar, after all.

I wonder if there's something to the fact that both of these movies have an actor's stamp on them--perhaps it's much harder for a screenwriter to mix humor and drama together on the page, whereas a project with an actor attached has a great first reader to help sell the idea. Just a thought. In the case of The Monuments Men, Clooney co-wrote the screenplay with his frequent production partner Grant Heslov (The Men Who Stare at Goats, and producer of Affleck's Argo), based on a nonfiction book. Argo took a similar path, adapting a magazine article that outlined true events. Affleck's only additional credit was for producing, not writing, though it's worth noting he did win an Oscar for the screenplay he wrote with Damon for Good Will Hunting. With summer movie season winding down, 'tis the season for great-looking trailers for fall and winter movies. For the time being, we're riding high, ignoring the inevitable letdown some of these movies will bring.

DiCaprio plays another rich criminal in ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’

Paramount has begun building hype for Leonardo DiCaprio’s
latest project, The Wolf of Wall Street,
directed by Martin Scorsese. The first trailer for the film, slated to hit
theaters November 15, released on Sunday. The
Wolf of Wall Street is based on Jordan Belfort’s 2007 memoir of the same
name. Belfort, a hedge fund manager, made hundreds of millions of dollars in
the 1980s and ’90s through his brokerage firm Stratton Oakmont, until it was
discovered that the firm was inflating stocks and committing fraud, as well as
perpetrating other financial crimes. Belfort was arrested and spent nearly two
years in prison.

The Wolf of Wall
Street trailer bears several striking similarities to DiCaprio’s most
recent movie, The Great Gatsby, both
thematically and in terms of promotional materials. It’s clear that, like Gatsby, Scorsese will devote much of Wolf’s screen time to the protagonist’s
startling displays of wealth. Girls, drugs, wads of cash, luxurious
settings—all are featured prominently in the two-minute-fifteen-second Wolf trailer. The promos for both films
are also carried by a DiCaprio voiceover, explaining his character’s meteoric
rise in wealth and reputation.

Most obviously, both trailers are ushered along by a Kanye
West song—or, in Gatsby’s case, a
West-Jay-Z collaboration. “No Church in the Wild” (Gatsby) and “Black
Skinhead” (Wolf) both feature wild
yells, pounding drum beats, and West’s emotive, angry rapping. The songs provide
a thrilling adrenaline rush, and breathlessly shuttle viewers from shots of
over-the-top parties and all the trappings of excessive wealth, to hints of
DiCaprio’s characters’ downfall and emotional collapse. In fact, Wolf could easily be seen as the latest
in a trilogy of DiCaprio films which explore the indulgence and devastation
created when men from humble beginnings turn to crime and gain incredible
wealth, starting with 2002’s Catch Me if
You Can and continuing with Gatsby.

Wolf looks like a
skillful and highly entertaining drama, far closer in quality to the excellent Catch Me if You Can than this year’s
disappointing Gatsby. Jonah Hill and Matthew
McConaughey (who has shown himself to be terrific in smaller comedic parts,
from Dazed and Confused through Magic Mike) also promise to deliver memorable
performances in supporting roles.

Wolf screenwriter Terence
Winter already has plenty of practice creating devious, charismatic crooks, as
a writer and executive producer on “Boardwalk Empire,” which like Gatsby, is set in the 1920s. Scorsese, of course,
built his career on depicting such characters in award-winning films like Goodfellas, The Departed, and Gangs of New York. It will be quite interesting to
see what parallels the pair draws between the white-collar criminals of the
Roaring Twenties and those of the 1990s.

Trailer Roundup: 'Love and Other Drugs' and 'How Do You Know'

By Sarah Sluis

As the summer winds down, I take a look at the two recently released trailers for the fall/winter movie season.

'Love and Other Drugs'

Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal (who were briefly paired together in Brokeback Mountain) star in Love and Other Drugs, which I had pegged as a romance with some dark comedy thrown in. Based on a memoir by a Viagra pharmaceutical rep, it led me to expect something with a little bit of The Insider in it. After all, pharma salespeople are rather morally ambiguous characters, since their job is to persuade doctors to prescribe more of their drug, regardless of what is the best medical decision for the patient

Enter the trailer:

Do I like Love and Other Drugs more or less after seeing the trailer? Less. Why? The trailer makes the movie sound too much like a typical romantic comedy. Worse, it gives away moments that must take place towards the end of the movie, including crying (presumably after a break-up) and Gyllenhaal's character trying to catch up with the Hathaway character on a bus (which is usually the scene right before they kiss and go to closing credits). It's possible that the movie's premise has just been sanitized for a public that's presumably skittish about anything out of the ordinary, and the strongest sign that this is true is one striking omission. Hathaway's character has Parkinson's Disease, a plot point that never makes its way into the trailer. Maybe audiences would find that too depressing? This movie is still on my to-see list when it comes out November 24th, but now it needs to redeem itself to fall in line with my initial expectations. Another good sign? It's releasing over Thanksgiving, a prime slot that implies the studio thinks it's got a good movie on its hands.

'How Do You Know'

The latest from James L. Brooks (who last directed Spanglish and As Good As It Gets), How Do You Know places Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson and Paul Rudd in a love triangle, and also features Jack Nicholson--a cast full of great actors. It centers on a female softball player (Witherspoon) torn between her baseball pitcher boyfriend (Wilson) and a down-on-his luck corporate guy (Rudd).

Enter the trailer:

Do I like How Do You Know more of less after seeing the trailer? More. Most of all, this trailer seems thoughtful, not gimmicky. The trailer brings to mind a Cameron Crowe movie (perhaps Jerry Maguire?) but that's not a bad thing as far as I'm concerned. We learn less about plot points, which are for the most part elided, and more about the characters' states of mind. In As Good As It Gets, so much of the movie was about Jack Nicholson's character, which enriched the relationship he had with Helen Hunt. I really feel that Brooks will be able to pull off a similarly meaningful character transformation here. I also can't decide if this line of Witherspoon's dialogue is interesting or trite: "Most girls' plan is to meet a guy, fall in love, have a baby. But I don't know if I have what it takes for everybody's regular plan." It's pretty common in romantic comedies for women to say they don't want the standard package only to end up with all of the above in the end. However, if Brooks and Witherspoon can make us believe this about Witherspoon's character, I'll be right on board for this movie. It's also eyeing a high-traffic release date on December 17th, where I'm sure it will attract large audiences.