Bryan Cranston acts out at Tribeca 'Psychos We Love' panel

Walter White met the father of Nucky Thompson at the Tribeca Film Festival’s “Future of Film” panel discussion on April 22 at the School of Visual Arts Theatre in downtown Manhattan. For those not addicted to cable TV’s current Golden Age, that would be Bryan Cranston, three-time Emmy winner for his role as a high-school chemistry teacher turned meth kingpin in the much-lauded “Breaking Bad,” and Terence Winter, creator of HBO’s 1920s crime epic “Boardwalk Empire” and recent Oscar nominee as the writer of Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street.

The theme of the session was “Psychos We Love,” an analysis not only of the television sociopaths the public can’t get enough of, but how psychopathic tendencies are present in highly functioning members of society including our leaders. Lending rather startling expertise was James H. Fallon, PH.D, professor of psychiatry and human behavior at the University of California, Irvine; author of The Psychopath Inside…and himself a diagnosed psychopath. (More about that later.)

Moderated by ABC News’ Juju Chang, the program tended to ricochet between topics, attempting to explain the attraction of the characters created by Winter and Cranston and then veering off into Fallon-led explanations of how brain chemistry impacts personality traits.

Winter likened our fascination with movie and TV psychopaths to riding a roller coaster, experiencing a momentary thrill and surviving it, living a dangerous life vicariously through fictional characters without having to suffer the consequences. One of the best movie examples of that vicarious thrill, he feels, is young Michael Corleone’s first act of murder in The Godfather.

Cranston contended that poorly written heavies who are “just bad” aren't nearly as interesting or effective as “someone who…I’m not sure if he’s good or bad. What strikes the heart of a Nucky or Tony Soprano or my character is that there’s a mixture. It’s really what human beings are.”

The actor analyzed his now-classic Walter White persona as “a man who was given a set of circumstances that created the type of person he became. His emotional core was calloused over, and his [cancer] diagnosis exploded that core, gave him a sense of life.” Of course, that “sense of life” led him to drug dealing, deception and murder. For Cranston, the role was “catnip, what actors love.”

Cranston’s comedy chops, known from his previous incarnation as the wacky father on “Malcolm in the Middle,” came to the fore when Fallon freely admitted that a brain scan confirmed he is a borderline psychopath and that his family line includes an unusual number of killers going back to Lizzie Borden. Cranston feigned palpable discomfort and panic, and a rictus smile when facing Fallon, and circled a finger around his head (that familiar sign for “crazy”) when the doctor said he especially enjoyed one of the goriest scenes from the first season of “Breaking Bad.”

The audience gasped when Fallon quoted a colleague who said he could easily spot signs of a psychosis in a two-year-old (which prompted Cranston to imitate that child: “You don’t tell me when to use my inside voice!”) According to Fallon, it all boils down to the chemistry in our frontal lobe and the absence of empathy elements there. Fallon said he has trained himself to overcome his psychopathic tendencies by consciously choosing selfless rather than selfish acts, telling his wife, “You know, this is not from the heart.”

The discussion even extended to Cranston’s current gig, playing President Lyndon B. Johnson in the hit play All the Way. Many leaders, in Fallon’s view, possess a megalomaniacal psychosis that enables them to accomplish great things. Cranston agreed that LBJ “would do anything in his arsenal” to make things happen, and wondered whether his great domestic achievements would have been realized without those “negative” traits.

Winter, also one of the lead writers of another TV classic, “The Sopranos,” ended the session by speculating on the “reptilian brain” of the human animal. That potential for fury and vengeance is something we all share, and isn’t it lucky that we have avatars like Tony Soprano and Walter White to live out those urges for us?

—Kevin Lally

Two Tribeca docs focus on an FBI out of bounds

One of the great strengths of the ever-evolving Tribeca Film Festival is its commitment to documentaries. Once again, the festival is showcasing a generous number of nonfiction features covering a wide array of subjects, from politicians like Ann Richards and Barney Frank, to musicians like James Brown, Clark Terry, Nas, Alice Cooper and Bob Weir, to human-rights abuses, environmental concerns and the scourge of poverty.

Two eye-opening documentaries at this year’s fest zero in on the FBI overstepping its bounds in two different eras: the height of the Vietnam War and the post-9/11 age of intensified surveillance. One focuses on anti-war activists who emerge as true American heroes, the other on hapless dupes of a brazen entrapment scheme. In both cases, you leave with a new perspective on the abuses our government is capable of.

Johanna Hamilton’s 1971 provides an insiders’ look at the March 8, 1971 break-in by anti-war activists at a local FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, a small town near Philadelphia. This incident isn’t nearly as celebrated as the publication of the Pentagon Papers a few months later or the 1973 Watergate hearings that brought down the Nixon administration, but it’s a watershed moment for its exposure of illegal spying on and intimidation of dissenting citizens by the U.S. government.

The theft was the handiwork of eight ordinary citizens who hoped to obtain damning evidence of government misconduct by targeting a vulnerable FBI field office like the one in Media. Portions of the documentary play like a suspenseful heist movie, with well-staged re-enactments while the real-life conspirators appear on camera for the first time to recall the details. Shrewdly, they picked the night of the “Fight of the Century,” the momentous boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, to conduct their caper, a few hours when police and feds would likely be preoccupied. Prior to the big night, activist Bonnie Raines had cased the office in question by posing as an eager visitor interested in “opportunities for women in the FBI.”

Bonnie and her husband John are the most intriguing of the group, parents of three young children who risked the future of their family unit for their ideals. The unofficial leader of the group and mastermind of the Media scheme was Bill Davidon, a gentle and brilliant scientist who sadly died just last year.

For any left-leaning member of the “Baby Boom” generation, 1971 is a reminder of just how courageous anti-war activists could be, faced with a Federal Bureau of Investigation led by the much-feared and seemingly invulnerable J. Edgar Hoover. The potential consequences for the Media Eight were enormous and devastating, yet they prevailed, eluded detection, and brought national attention to abuses in a fashion that changed America…for a time.

The festival debut of 1971 couldn’t be timelier in light of the current controversy surrounding Edward Snowden’s revelations of the National Security Agency’s surveillance of American citizens. (In fact, Laura Poitras, who just shared a Pulitzer Prize for her role in the NSA exposé, is credited as a co-executive producer of 1971). The Snowden case is arguably more problematic, but you can draw a direct line from the pioneering activists of 1971 to Snowden and the systematic invasiveness he’s revealed. More than 40 years later, those crusading Baby Boomers seem pretty damn admirable. What will history say about Snowden?

No less revelatory is The Newburgh Sting, David Heilbroner and Kate Davis’ account of the real story behind a foiled New York terrorist plot that made headlines in 2009. The reports at the time were shocking and unsettling: the arrest of four men midway through a mission to bomb Jewish centers in the Bronx and shoot down a plane. Muslim extremists had been on the loose in the depressed town of Newburgh, 60 miles north of New York City!

What the news media failed to uncover was that this terrorist scheme was entirely the fabrication of the FBI and its informant, a shady Pakistani businessman who recruited one not-very-devout Muslim small-time criminal and three of his buddies with the promise of a quarter-million dollars if they joined his crazy plan for jihad. There was no terrorist cabal at the unluckily targeted mosque in Newburgh; the FBI created it, with impoverished black men as their easy patsies. This wasn’t an appeal to radical convictions, it was an appeal to make a big score—and it’s not necessarily clear who was being played (or at least thought they were doing the playing).

The clearly entrapped “Newburgh Four” are currently serving a 25-year prison term, recently lost an appeal, and may be headed to the Supreme Court, where their prospects are none too bright. As the entertainingly outspoken aunt of one of the four suggests, the sentence should have been “five years for not having any common sense.” And, when it comes to ruthless, opportunistic and fearsome power, “there ain’t no gang like the government."
—Kevin Lally

Welcome to Tribeca: The Kick-Off Lunch

We‚Äôre still several hours away from Tribeca‚Äôs opening-night screening of Time is Illmatic, but the festival officially kicked-off earlier this afternoon. Co-founders Jane Rosenthal and Robert De Niro hosted an Opening Lunch around the corner from Tribeca headquarters, at the restaurant Thalassa on Franklin Street. Organizers, press, and the worker ants of showbiz, PR reps, networked while noshing on salmon, arugula, chicken and feta cheese, ravioli, beef‚Ķ and matzo bread, for those celebrating the Passover holiday. The restaurant‚Äôs high ceilings and typical Manhattanite wooden floors made for strained hearing conditions at times  ‚Äì too many film recommendations, speculation, and Cannes chatter (Tribeca has barely begun and already we‚Äôre looking ahead to the next event; yes, typical Manhattanite) rose in waves and crashed about accordingly. The centerpieces were appropriately lovely, perhaps small terrariums or else they were overlarge paperweights, with flowers and rocks inside, and tea candles (which also lined the stairs leading to the dining room, becoming the unfortunate victims of one man‚Äôs imbalance when he bumped into a framed photograph on the wall and sent it and its neighbor crashing down the steps) floating on top. The vodka, grapefruit juice and rosemary cocktails were delicious.

De Niro of course was the first to speak, providing the succinct opening remarks that did not include the phrase, “good food, good meat, good God, let’s eat!” but that captured its essence. Jane Rosenthal rose next (“Can I sit now?” asked De Niro) and addressed the excitement and growing pains attenuate with leading an event now entering its 13^th, or official teenage years. Like all teenagers, we’re curious and we question, she said, before introducing a film reel of innovative Tribeca highlights. Docs Mala Mala, 1971, and Tomorrow We Disappear; dramas such as X/Y, Palo Alto and Starred Up; genre-benders like Glass Chin; and comedies including Intramural, and A Brony Tale, which, to be accurate, is a documentary about male fans of My Little Pony and not a comedy, but which nonetheless provided the afternoon’s most frequented punchline, were all on display, among others.

I was fortunate to be seated next to Tribeca Artistic Director Frederic Boyer, an amiable Parisian with rumpled curly hair who worked at Cannes prior to joining Tribeca. It is Boyer who is responsible for selecting Tribeca’s film slate. This seemed to me a Sisyphean or at the very least Herculean task, but Boyer said the key is to maintain your enthusiasm. When asked how many movies he views during the selection process, he waved his hand as if to indicate the silly futility of trying to keep track. He must watch seven or eight-hundred, he said airily. But you have to approach each one as if you’re waiting to be surprised. He said, You can’t treat it like a job. Essentially, you have to leave yourself open, even expect to be moved. I was left with an expectant sense of what he has chosen, what is to come.

The documentaries Ne Me Quitte Pas and Five Star, and the drama Starred Up, were among the films he singled out for emphasis. Boyer also agreed with the German journalist at our table that the German film Der Samurai was worth a look.

Guests started to file out after the meal, and maybe half, maybe less, stayed for coffee and a dessert of macaroons and finger pastries. It was a pleasant afternoon that set the stage nicely for the next 10 days. When the different factions began to wave their colors and some festival organizers and journalists peeled off for interviews, the message was clear: And now on to the show.

Tribeca 2014: Films to Watch

NYC’s Tribeca Film Festival kicks off in just a few brief days, this Wednesday, April 16. The showcase not only highlights an overwhelming selection of films across many, many genres and, of course, countries, but also offers an array of supplementary events. Filmmaker panel discussions, interactive selections, Q&A sessions, awards ceremonies, concerts, and then some, are all on the docket for Tribeca 2014.

Over the next two weeks we’ll post regular updates on everything TFF. Our dispatches will cover standard bread-and-butter film reviews, but also, interviews with directors and actors.

To whet your appetite for what’s to come, we’ve compiled a list of films we believe worthy of particular anticipation. Check out our Films to Watch, and let us know which titles grab your interest!

Time is Illmatic –Illmatic, the debut CD from rapper Nas, turns 20 this year, a benchmark artist One9 commemorates in this documentary homage. From his home borough of Queens, to his jazz musician father, to the contemporary hip-hop scene, Nas pulled from a variety of sources to craft what is, today, popularly regarded as his magnum opus, and a genre classic. Very lucky fans with tickets to the Tribeca premiere (which also opens the festival) will enjoy a live performance by the maestro MC himself.

Bad Hair – A heartbreaker for anyone who has ever wished for better: Better parents, better looks, a better outcome for their dreams. Junior is a nine-year-old Venezuelan living in the slums of Caracas, whose dearest wish is to straighten his hair for his school photo. But Junior’s fixation sets off a homophobic panic in his unemployed and overtaxed mother. Their family dynamic gives the contentious clans of the Bible, or of cable TV, a run for their money.

Starred Up – Another filial relationship that ought to make you appreciate your parents. Teenage Eric has been deemed so dangerous by The System he is “starred up,” or placed in a maximum security prison for adults. Adjusting to his new surroundings proves tough for the pugilistic Eric, especially when it comes to dealing with one inmate in particular: dear old Dad.

Ne Me Quitte Pas – This French documentary plays like a fictional character study of two aging Belgian farmers. Marcel’s wife has left him for another man and Bob grows increasingly estranged from his adult son. Both are alcoholics in varying states of acceptance, both, it seems, have only the other to lean on. Funny in a sad kind of way, and sad in ways that are also very funny, Ne Me Quitte Pas is an odd duck, for which viewers should make way.

Venus in Fur – Roman Polanski’s adaptation of the Tony award-winning play. Writer-director Thomas (Mathieu Amalric) is trying to cast his theatrical production of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s scandalous 19^th-century novel (we derive our term “sadomasochism” from the author’s name) but can’t find a leading lady to satisfy his tastes. Enter the mysterious Vanda, a woman whose boorish exterior hides reserves of artistic talent. As the two bicker, rehearse, and then some, what is real and what is staged becomes increasingly difficult to discern… for the audience and Thomas alike.

Human Capital – This Italian offering plays fast and artsy with structure, approaching the death of a stranger from three different points of view, and beginning the story at its end. Two of Italy’s finest, Valeria Golino (Rain Man) and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (Munich), star in this adaptation of the Stephen Amidon novel, which begs the question: How much is a human life worth? (However much 21 Grams would bring in, we’re guessing.)

Match – A second stage-to-screen adaptation, Match stars Carla Gugino and Matthew Lillard as a couple of academics interviewing a famed and now retired dancer (Patrick Stewart) for their dissertation. What starts off as a chummy chat, however, soon takes a turn for the unnerving, as the couple’s questions become increasingly personal, and throw into doubt the real reason for their visit.

Life Partners – Some might say the topic of immature twentysomethings, those who live their lives in a kind of emotional purgatory between the eschewal of responsibility and the acceptance of responsibility, has been played out, and they might be right. But that doesn’t mean one should skip over Life Partners, a trendy film full of pop-culture references and American Apparel that nonetheless tackles ageless themes of friendship and, yes, aging, with heart. Grab your high-school best friend or former college roommate for this one. (For maximum nostalgic impact, we suggest watching an episode or two of “The O.C.” and “Gossip Girl” prior to viewing – newlyweds Adam Brody and Leighton Meester star.)

About Alex – Billed as “The Big Chill for the social media age,” About Alex focuses on a group of former college friends who reunite when one among their number suffers a nervous breakdown. (Not coincidentally, “Alex” is the name of the friend whose suicide in 1983’s The Big Chill provides the reason for that film’s collection of pals, including Kevin Spacey, Glenn Close, and William Hurt, to reassemble.) Aubrey Plaza, Jason Ritter and Maggie Grace star.

Something Must Break ‚ÄìWhen gay Sebastian and straight Andreas meet, their bond forms quickly. But their friendship no sooner begins than it begins to deteriorate, as Sebastian‚Äôs determination to become the female ‚ÄúEllie‚Äù grows, as does Andreas‚Äô refusal to accept his attraction to Sebastian.  The Swedish Something Must Break is a love story: love of friend, of lover and of self.

Zero Motivation – Israel is the only country that demands compulsory military service from both men and women. The latter are the subject of Zero Motivation, which follows its heroines as they combat boredom and each other’s opinions, biding their time until they can return to civilian life. Mean Girls meets Jarhead? We’ll bite.

The Overnighters – This slice of small-town American life takes the citizens of Williston, North Dakota, for its documentary subjects. Oil, and lots of it, was recently discovered in Williston, prompting hundreds of unemployed men to flood the town in search of their fortunes, or the ever elusive, ever alluring American Dream. A local pastor tries to provide spiritual guidance to these newcomers, even hosting several in his home, but the more he gives, the more he is called upon to sustain.

Every Secret Thing ‚Äì Documentarian Amy Berg (Deliver Us From Evil) makes her fiction directorial debut helming this drama written by Enough Said‚Äôs Nicole Holofcener. In fact, the production as a whole is characterized by strong female artists: It also has Elizabeth Banks, Diane Lane and Dakota Fanning in starring roles.  Based on the novel by Laura Lippman, Every Secret Thing follows the residents of a small town in which a child went missing several years ago, and another has just disappeared. Fanning was one of the girls convicted for the first disappearance and is among the prime suspects for taken 2.

Night Moves – Eco-activists plot to blow up a dam as a piece of political theatre intended to make a radical statement. But Jesse Eisenberg, Peter Sarsgaard and Dakota Fanning find themselves in way over their heads when things do not, naturally, go according to plan in this moody drama directed and co-written by Kelly Reichardt.

Movie-theatre drama 'The Flick' wins Pulitzer

Annie Baker's play The Flick, which follows the employees of a struggling movie theatre in Worcester County, MA, has won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for drama, it was revealed earlier today. Last spring, our Doris Toumarkine reviewed the lauded production. The following article appeared online in April 2013:

Saving 'The Flick': Off-Broadway hit ponders the future of an indie movie theatre

By: Doris Toumarkine

Rare indeed it is that any Times Square-area play, Broadway or Off, with no bold-faced names among cast, playwright or director can generate at least three major New York Times pieces. But Annie Baker’s current play The Flick, about a struggling single-screen theatre in Worcester County, Mass., and its three struggling employees, has had sold-out shows during its extended run at 42nd Street’s Playwrights Horizons, which ends Sunday.

Yes, the cast is terrific, their dilemmas stirring (more later), but the damsel in distress here doesn’t have long hair or long legs but short lines and a short life expectancy. The dubious fate of the theatre itself makes The Flick, which is the name of the theatre, a dramatic spin on the children’s classic tome The Little Engine That Could. Call it The Little Theatre That Could.

What grabs eyes and touches hearts (at least for audiences who toil not in live theatre but the movie theatre business) is the play’s amazing set, which provides a wide screen, wall-to-wall view of the shabby coral and beige, roughly 200-seat auditorium that is the entire stage, the venue’s vinyl walls (four speakers and four light sconces) and ceiling (two large fans and florescent overheads).

Fortunately, the theater’s floors between rows (usually ripe for cleaning) remain unseen. (Über-designer David Rockwell clearly had no hand in this auditorium; David Zinn served as admirable overseer of the play’s scenic and costume design.)

Sounds and flickering projector lights also contribute to the veracity. Pounding movie scores pierce the dark room during unseen end credits, lights go up as the projector clatters to a rest and the theatre’s two-man cleaning squad goes to work. Need it be said that The Flick is one of the last theatres in the Worcester area to remain 35mm and stuck way back in the previous century? (Its projector is even called the Century.)

Co-starring with the set are the play’s human characters, three lost but worthy souls who run the place for absentee and unseen owner Steve. There’s bald, speech-impaired Sam (Matthew Maher), a sweet but mentally slow 35-year-old projectionist wannabe who has found a second home at the theatre while serving for years as popcorn, soda, box-office and cleanup guy. He’s totally in love with the younger Rose (Louisa Krause), a cute (green hair aside) wild-child local cycling through boyfriends and excess but having somehow found her own kind of orgone box in the theatre’s projection booth as the resident projectionist.

Finally, there’s 20-year-old newcomer Avery (Aaron Clifton Moten), Sam’s trainee and a refugee from a broken home in which his professor father (a linguistics and semiotics professor, no less) left his mother and injured the son. Bright, articulate and passionate about film (the references fly), he’s on a break from college as he struggles with the family trauma. As the iconic, obsessed film buff (and no doubt closest to the playwright’s alter ego), he’s also a human database of all things movies and, furiously anti-digital, a passionate defender of all things celluloid and analog. The endangered theatre seems the perfect temple for him.

The trio mull the ethical ramifications of people sneaking food from the outside into the theatre (Sam takes a “philosophical” stance against this even though he was guilty of same) and speculate about owner Steve trying to sell the venue. After hours, they take a busman’s holiday and run The Wild Bunch, one of the many old orphaned 35mm prints that clutter the booth.

Newbie Avery learns from mentor Sam that part of the ceiling had come down but Steve wouldn’t pay a penny to fix it (apparently a pro tem job did the trick). Also annoying is that Steve refuses to upgrade to nachos at the counter.

As a picture of things that can go down after the picture winds down, The Flick give us extended scenes of Sam and Avery cleaning the room as they play the parlor game of “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” in a verbal contest to link two unlikely stars in a chain of the films they’ve been in. No surprise that Avery cannot be stumped and even navigates the long chain that joins the unlikely pairing of Pauly Shore and Ian Holm. (Lots of film references pepper this three-hour play, a length that has stirred some criticism but nothing compared to the raves that came in.)

In the theatre between shows or after closing, Sam and Avery face a quiet war zone. One annoyance is the laggard who is sound asleep after the picture ends. Less amusing are the challenges of cleaning the place, not just gum off seats or food-coated floors but filthy restrooms better left not described.

And, yes, with the unseen cinema owner Steve always AWOL, there’s some skimming off ticket sales as the three staffers confiscate some stubs and resell so they can have their “dinner money.” Avery balks but turns that corner when convinced that it’s their well-deserved “employee tradition” and his reluctance would destroy that. Only a later closer look at the theatre’s books from a prospective buyer may awaken suspicions. And then there are the oversized jerseys staff will be required to wear when new proprietors take over.

Yes, new owners and digital conversion bring good and bad. Those jerseys aside, there are better ways to clean the butter dispenser and no more splicing together of previews. And Avery, who quit The Flick once digital was declared the winner, returns to gleefully haul away as booty a bunch of 35mm reels and prints, further assuring that celluloid, like life, will go on.

Veracity abounds here. Sally Strasser, owner of the two-screen State Theater in the small Adirondack town of Tupper Lake, New York, was thrilled to notice that the play’s seats are identical to hers in one room.

As if mimicking many of today’s films, The Flick unfolds as short bursts of scenes but borrows from the past with its many fadeouts. Much of the action comes with existential despair (Avery endlessly scraping seats; Sam scraping the icky bottoms of the large waste containers; both employees endlessly sweeping). But nothing here is depressing, as the play is a celebration of survival and moving on. And of the power of movies in all lives.

Playwright Baker, with a number of off-Broadway productions and awards to her credit, has a growing cult following, no doubt boosted by a recent New Yorker magazine profile. She just crossed into her 30s but grew up a serious young movie fanatic in Amherst, Mass. In fact, the third of the three New York Times pieces focuses on the buff-in-the-making aspect of her life that as a teen took her to a local mall for compulsive film-viewing (Pulp Fiction was the big one), to frequent consultations with video-store savants regarding what to see, and into repertory immersion at places like New York’s Film Forum. With The Flick, she works again with her frequent collaborator and director Sam Gold.

Already having had an extended run and bursting with potential for expansion and improvement for the real big screen, The Flick, like its star theatre, need not end. If adapted as the kind of cool, knowing little hipster indie that might attract a cool, knowing cast, it might make a good bet for art houses. In an era when anything can get resurrected (Moose Murders? Heaven’s Gate?), anything is possible.

Encounters with the late Mickey Rooney

FJI contributor Bruce Feld recalls his two encounters with movie legend Mickey Rooney, who died on April 6 at the age of 93.

He holds a special place in my recollections because he is the only actor I ever interviewed who had actually made silent films. The first time I interviewed him, I had to drive way the hell out into the San Fernando Valley to a nondescript office in a bland suburb about as glamorous as a used-car lot. His office was clean, well-organized and rather small. I laid my recorder in front of him and sat in front of his wooden desk. His manner was amiable and he was one of the most forthcoming and open subjects I ever met.

He was also unique in another respect. Most people I interview speak with me; Mickey performed. He did not simply answer questions...he did a little play. His voice rose as if he were projecting to a balcony, though, as I said, it was a relatively small office. Stage spit fired through the air and made the conversation a wee bit dangerous, though I don't think he hit me. It didn't matter what the question was about. I would see him look at me, then past me to an invisible audience, and off he would go. When I asked him about Judy Garland, the volume diminished a little. He looked heartsick and said he would have given anything to have maintained her health or prolonged her life. I felt he was still heartbroken about her, but he was a deceptively good actor and I could not swear what he was saying was spontaneous or another lively performance.

The second time we met was for lunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel. We sat in a super-comfortable booth side by side ("Good," I thought, "the stage spit won't hit me"), facing the room rather than each other. He was warm and friendly, and put his arm around me when an assistant took our photo. I put the recorder on the table and had no trouble transcribing the interview. He spoke loudly enough so that he could be heard for the length of ten or fifteen feet. He mentioned again that he had been "Box office star #1 for two years in a row," although he had said that during the first interview. And he was laudatory about his eighth wife, Jan. I was sorry to hear that that particular relationship ended the year before he died. The rumor was that her relatives were siphoning off his income. He had even been compelled to testify before Congress. I watched the news clips on television. He did more than testify about the indignities of old age. He performed.

Week in review 4/7 - 4/11

Mickey Rooney, the man whose 90-year career was the longest any actor has ever enjoyed in Hollywood, and whose many starring roles included turns alongside Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn and Judy Garland, among other industry greats, passed away Sunday. He was 93.

From an accepted legend to a tireless aspirant, we transition (is there a graceful way to do so?) from Rooney to James Franco. The latter raised eyebrows when he was caught soliciting a 17-year-old on Instagram last week. Naturally, the teen posted their exchange online, including some pretty damning Franco selfies that made it well near impossible for the actor to deny his involvment, should he have wanted to do so. (Franco went on to issue a public apology.) Was the social media stunt just that -- a stunt, timed to coincide with the Tribeca Film Festival premiere of his new movie, Palo Alto, in which Franco stars as, yup, an older man who hits on a teen? Or is James Franco an irredeamable creep?

Does it matter? Seth Abramson of Indiewire wants to know.

Well, we would like to know how soon in advance we can buy tickets to the Tina Fey film in which Amy Poehler just agreed to co-star, The Nest. 

We're thrilled by the news, and equally excited by the prospect of uncovering the next powerhouse female comedy team. The new Females First initiative from Dazed and Confused may do just that. The magazine's femme-centric project asks industry veterans to judge works from aspiring female filmmakers, and to select one film they believe worthy of note. Jane Campion and Helen Mirren are among the stacked jury.

Octavia Spencer would make for a great addition to the Females First team, though, so far as we know, she is not involved. Too bad, because the actress has some pretty insightful things to say about the state of the marginalized in today's film industry.

Finally, we leave off with a story that didn't technically make this week's headlines, but which did form the basis for the recent British movie, U Want Me 2 Kill Him? (Longform.org posted the archived story this week, so it makes the cut.) Fascinating, unnerving stuff.

Legendary Actor Mickey Rooney Dead at 93, The Hollywood Reporter

METAMERICANA: Is James Franco a Creep? Thank God We'll Never Know, Indiewire

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler Team Up for 'The Nest,' Slashfilm

Women in Hollywood Seeking to Help Out New Female Filmmakers, Jezebel

Octavia Spencer Doesn't Agree with John Singleton's Claim that Black Directors are Being Shut Out, Indiewire

'U Want Me 2 Kill Him?', Vanity Fair