Weekly Wilson - Blog of Author Connie C. Wilson - Welcome to WeeklyWilson.com, where author/film critic Connie (Corcoran) Wilson avoids totally losing her marbles in semi-retirement by writing about film (see the Chicago Film Festival reviews and SXSW), politics and books----her own books and those of other people. You'll also find her diverging frequently to share humorous (or not-so-humorous) anecdotes and concerns. Try it! You'll like it!

“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our fathers is alive in our lifetime, who still questions the power of our democracy? This is your answer.” With those words, Obama evoked the title of his best-selling book “Dreams from My Father.” He answered the doubters in the world-at-large who may have thought that the American dream was on its deathbed. “What happens to a dream deferred?” Lorraine Hansberry asked in “A Raisin in the Sun.” “Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?” There had been evidence that immigration numbers were down…that fewer people from other countries wanted to come to the United States—-that some abroad no longer viewed this as the land of opportunity, but they are wrong.

“It’s the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen, by people who waited 3 hours and 4 hours, many for the first time in their lives, because that this time must be different, and they believed that their voices could be that difference.” My daughter voted for the very first time. After careful consideration, she chose to register and vote in her college town of Nashville, Tennessee, which went red, anyway. Young people turned out in record numbers, giving the lie to the label of apathetic that had dogged them. Newly registered voters clogged the polling places, a tribute not only to the outstanding organization of the campaign’s masterminds but also to the determination of a battered and bruised nation to make change a reality.

In his next line, Obama paid tribute to all ethnic groups, including “gay, straight, disabled and not disabled” saying that “Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states. We are and always will be the United States of America.” I thought of the American Independence Party, which Sarah Palin seemed to actively support, even from her Governor’s office. I thought of one word: “Amen!”

“It’s the answer that led those who’ve been told for so long to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we an achieve, to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more to the hope of a better day.” The fear-mongering tactics that Lee Atwater taught Karl Rove and Karl Rove (“Bush’s Brain”) used over the past 8 years (and which John McCain’s handlers tried to use this year) have been discredited. The majority of citizens figured out that trying to “scare” us out of rational thinking by using color-coded charts and rattling sabers was not the right way to select a leader for this great land. We have, once again, put our hands on the arc of history and bent it to the hope of a better day. Amen to that, also.

In his next paragraph, Senator (now President-Elect) Obama paid tribute to the old warrior who ran against him, Senator John McCain. Both candidates proved to be class acts on election night, although there were times along the way that we all wondered about some of the tactics we were seeing. Guilt by association? We would all go down to defeat if we were held responsible for the sins of every single person we ever met in our lives. Roslyn Carter would be blamed for the crimes of John Wayne Gacy under the reasoning used in some of the ads. There is no question that the final day’s ad using the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s incendiary comments in an attempt to discredit Barack Obama was among the lowest of many low blows. “Too risky,” it said. What is “too risky” at this point in our nation’s history would have been more of the same.

In his next paragraph, Obama thanked his wife and children and let us all know that a puppy is coming to the White House, I immediately thought of another young president with young children who had horses (a pony named Macaroni) and who played beneath the Oval Office desk. This nation can use the happy sound of children’s laughter and the image of a happy nuclear family in the White House during these trying times. I can almost imagine Caroline Kennedy smiling at the thought, just as I am smiling at the thought.

There were echoes of Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech in Obama’s well-crafted remarks. There were echoes of Abraham Lincoln’s “of the people, by the people and for the people” Gettysburg Address. There was a palpable sense of hope despite adversity, of leadership in tough times, of optimism amongst despair.

I felt proud to be an American last night. I felt proud to have elected the candidate who wants war to stop. I felt glad that I had done what I could to help elect the first African-American, and, some day, I hope to help elect the first female President…just so long as it’s not Sarah Palin, who is the antithesis of nearly every belief I hold. Pretty, yes. Prepared, no.

Grant Park Election Day

By Connie Wilson

On November 5, 2008

In Editorial, Politics

On this “day-after-the-election” I wanted to share with you, my reader, some of my thoughts and feellings about the historic journey we have all witnessed, and explain my fascination with the cause.

I began covering the candidates who appeared at the Iowa caucuses the year that (Dr.) Howard Dean ran for president. My long-dormant political passion was stoked by drifting across the steet from teaching classes at the Kahl Building in downtown Davenport, Iowa, and wandering into the downtown Dean headquarters. We were urged to stay and share our thoughts and feelings about the state of America. I became hugely disillusioned in the wake of the 2000 election that saw “hanging chads” in Florida and the Supreme Court select George W. Bush as our 43rd president. I found it incomprehensible that one man’s brother (then-Governor Jeb Bush of Florida) could hand the most important office in our land to someone totally unprepared. The process was broken. I, along with many others, felt betrayed. I have felt that only once before…when a 1st Ward Alderman race I had labored long and hard in turned out to be “rigged,” was proven to have had officials at the top playing fast-and-loose with the absentee ballots, but nothing…not one word…was written in the local newspaper, despite the presence of a reporter from same (Jenny Lee of the Moline, Illinois, Daily Dispatch). it is one thing for candidates to cheat and get caught. That happens every day. My point: where is the retribution? Where is the “gotcha'” moment that restores the true, natural order of the universe? It seemed that the sense of decency and honesty in the election process that i had watched my father helped preserve in his races for Democratic County Treasurer of Buchanan County (IA) had evaporated, and in its place was corruption at the very heart of the political process…even in small-town America. If counties like Rock Island County, Illinois, were proven to be as dirty as Cook County in Chicago, what was the world coming to? And if proving it, in court, didn’t bring at least a slap on the hand to the perpetrators, could our national election process be far behind in granting complete impunity to those who would steal our democracy from us?

I live in a divided household, an Arnold Schwarzenegger/Maria Shriver split, with no one but me weighing in as a Democrat or…at times…an Independent. When one family member admits to glee at the time that JFK was shot, the feeling of complete alienation from what is right and what is good becomes pervasive. I have never wished death on a candidate, no matter how corrupt or evil I might perceive them to be. I have the same horror of that kind of thinking as I do for not trying (at least) to see the other person’s point of view.

Many times, my life partner would tell me that, in expressing my support for a candidate that (apparently) did not provide congruency with his own choices, I was or had been “obnoxious.” This meant that I had spoken my mind about the lack of preparedness or the general quality of a Repubican, usually, and I had found them wanting. at the same time, I hosted coffees for a Republican neighbor (Ray LaHood, last out of Peoria) and contributed to more than one Republican candidate (Andrea Zinga, Dave Machacek) so, was I really the blind straight-party voting ticket person that my spouse accused me of being during various discussions that generated far more heat than light? No. I was someone who would weigh the candidates and try my best to select that individual who could best lead our country in troubled times.

No times are more troubled than now. The economy is spiraling downward. We are fighting on two fronts. Our esteem abroad seemed irreparably shattered by a pre-emptive war that should never have been started, begun by a man who wanted to show dear old dad that he could do it better. History will judge if junior did a better job or a worse job than his father, but, as for me, in my semi-retirement, determined to write as I had always planned to do, I became political.

Oh, we still observed the political sticker moratorium, after the years of a Republican bumper sticker being applied over a Democratic bumper sticker ad nauseum, but I was not content to sit idly by and watch my country go down the tubes in the wake of George W. Bush. I became convinced that a president who was determined to ‘win at any costs” and a running mate with little or no foreign policy experience and some very esoteric views about the rest of the world and science and religion spelled certain doom for what remained of this once-great nation.

And I also decided that the best way for me to contribute to the victory of one (of many excellent Democratic candidates (Obama, Clinton, Richardson, Edwards, et. al.) as opposed to the reactionary forces of the Republicans arrayed against them was to throw off the cloak of meek-and-mild indifference and DO SOMETHING. Anything. Even if it was the wrong something, it would be better than a Bush clone in the White House. After all, what more could the man ruin.

It was this decision, made during a previous election run, that led me to ‘blog” for Iowa (www.blogforiowa), which, no doubt, earned me a place on George W. Bush’s enemies list. I took popular song lyrics and turned them into political gems aimed at exposing the Man Who Would be King. With humor, I aimed barbs at “the Decider,” covering Abu Ghraib and all things horrible like it. My journey had begun, and it would not end until November 4, 2008, in Grant Park in Chicago (see video above).

Through the bitter cold of Iowa’s winter, I tracked caucus candidates like Joe Biden and Christopher Dodd and Hillary Clinton and John Edwards and Barack obama to school gymnasiums and people’s living rooms. I listened to their message(s) of change and hope. I contributed cash, but, more importantly, I contributed time and effort, attempting to let others know what I was able to observe, up-close-and-personal. Yes, some of my early heroes turned out to have feet of clay (Edwards, anyone?), but the eventual winner of this marathon race seems like the right man for the job at the right time in history.

The palpable enthusiasm at last night’s part gathering was like a city celebrating a World Series or a Super Bowl victory. Just a few moments ago, sitting in my 7th floor condo on Indiana Avenue near Hutchinson Field, a red balloon, no doubt left over from last night’s celebration, drifted past my balcony door. Today, though I am tired, I feel that, somehow, we, as a nation are back on the right track. It is a given that other nation’s will see Barack Obama as a worthy representative of this nation’s highest ideals. After years of a stumbling, incoherent leader who not only could not speak well, but could not lead well, we will have a well-qualified, well-educated, hard-working man who seems to genuinely love his family and his country in ways that do not visit death and destruction on the rest of the world.

I pray for Barack Obama on this day-after-the-election. I revel in the knowledge that I was “there,” inside, at the Pepsi Center in Denvr, at the Excel Center in St. Paul, at the Target Center for the Ron Paul Rally in Minneapolis, at the Iowa caucuses, at the Belmont Town Hall Meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, and, last night, in Grant Park where Barack Obama started this nation on a brand new journey that I hope will restore this country’s honor and reputation, both abroad and at home.

Viggo Mortensen Receives Award at Chicago Film Festival Showing of “Good”

By Connie Wilson

On October 30, 2008

In Movies, Reviews

The closing night of the Chicago Film Festival (Wednesday, October 29^th) featured a tribute to Viggo Mortensen, whose film “Good” was screened after highlight clips of movies from Mortensen’s career were shown. The clips were great. I wish they had gone on forever. The love scene from 2005’s “A History of Violence” with Maria Bello on the staircase. (Hot! Hot! Hot!) The scene in “Hidalgo” with Mortensen turning his horse loose to join the herd. A memorable scene acting opposite Al Pacino in “Carlito’s Way.” A scene opposite Patricia Arquette in 1991’s “The Indian Runner” as Frankie. A death scene from “Lord of the Rings: Return of the King”, where Mortensen played Aragon.

Mention was made of Mortensen’s upcoming role in “The Road,” the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s best-selling novel, and of his role in “Appaloosa” with Ed Harris. I longed for scenes from “Eastern Promises,” (remember the nude shower scene with the Russian Mafia?) which garnered him an Academy Award nomination. That was an extremely strong performance with the characteristic cool swagger that we know Mortensen can deliver so convincingly. His role this night in “Good” was not.

Mortensen, himself, took the podium (see picture) to accept his Hugo Award and commented, “I’m relieved to hear that this is not a life-time achievement award. I had some trepidation at first. I didn’t think I’d be put out to pasture just yet. I’m very grateful to still be around and employable.” Mortensen has just turned 50, yet looks and acts 10 years younger.

At the point that the film was to start, Mortensen welcomed co-star Jason Isaacs to the podium. Isaacs called Mortensen “a remarkable star” telling the audience how Mortensen brought him a stone from Auschwitz and visited Isaacs’ family to bond with him before they appeared onscreen as best friends John Halder and Maurice, his Jewish colleague. The Brazilian director Vicente Amorim also spoke, calling the film “a film very much like the choices we make every day in our everyday lives.” Previously, co-star Isaacs had said, “I felt it to be completely contemporary. Very, very beautifully subtle. (*I‘d say a little TOO subtle.) What is the right thing to do and how will I explain my actions to my children?”

Kidding around with the crowd before introducing Isaacs, Mortensen said, “He may sing a song or tell a joke. I’m not sure what he’ll do. He recently received a steroid injection for some undisclosed infection.” This seemed to amuse Viggo as he shared the odd anecdote. The guy’s an original and a little odd, from what I’ve read, and it came through onstage.

The program for the film festival showing of “Good” summarizes its plot this way: “Viggo Mortensen, in an extraordinary change-of-pace role as Professor John Halder. He plays a good, decent individual with family problems, a German literature professor in the 1930s. Halder explores his personal circumstances in a novel advocating compassionate euthanasia. When the book is unexpectedly enlisted by powerful political figures in support of government propaganda, Halder finds his career rising in an optimistic current of nationalism and prosperity. Yet, with Halder’s change in fortune, seemingly inconsequential decisions potentially jeopardize the people in his life with devastating effects.” The program further noted that the movie is based on the acclaimed play by C.P. Taylor.

It’s easy to understand that if the Nazis got hold of a book advocating euthanasia, they’d run with it to the limit and start offing half of those deemed less than perfect Aryan types. In fact, they did exactly this during World War II, as I remember from my trip to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., sweeping into hospitals and taking babies from their incubators, murdering the mentally defective, etc.

What is not easy to see is how Viggo’s somewhat wishy-washy character is as “good” as advertised in the title. He leaves his wife and two children to have an affair (and ultimately marry) a former student. This is “good?” Since when?

He is wishy-washy again when his best friend, Maurice, begs him for help in fleeing the country as the Nazis become increasingly violent towards those German Jews who have remained. Ultimately, John Halder does, in fact, attempt to get a ticket for Maurice to flee to Paris, but his new wife ann turns Maurice in to the authorities when he comes to the house to pick it up (at a time when John is off doing Nazi things like burning cars and beating up residents. True, he seems characteristically baffled that he is in the midst of a rioting crowd scene, but that just reinforced my impression of this Viggo role as a Thurber character, a sort of neo-Nazi Walter Mitty, if you will. (And I’d like the Viggo back who was screwing on the staircase, thank you very much.)

The movie moves slowly and somewhat turgidly through the build-up to Halder’s ultimate realization that he has contributed to a great wrong being perpetrated upon the Jewish populace. There are unexplained bits, such as John’s suddenly hearing music at various points, which was both odd and puzzling. We expect the sub-plot involving his mother to have John forced to put her in a home where she will then face potential euthanisation by the Nazi hordes, but that doesn’t happen. What we don’t anticipate happening is for Viggo Mortensen, the epitome of cool, forceful performances, to give one where he seems to be emulating Mr. Rogers (of “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood” fame). If that comparison seems “off”, perhaps one of Jimmy Stewart’s old roles with Viggo oozing befuddlement and seeming somewhat bewildered by everything that is happening to him and around him. Not the Viggo Mortensen audiences have come to know and love. Give me the Viggo of “Eastern Promises,” please. And hold the “Good.”

There are some exchanges that spell out the predicament facing Maurice, his Jewish friend. John (Viggo) tells his new wife Ann, “I never thought it would come to this,” and she (Jodie Whittaker) responds, “It’s not your fault. Any Jew with any sense left long ago.”

Personally, I enjoyed the exchange on a park bench between Maurice and John, where John explains that his elderly mother, who is failing mentally and physically, tried to commit suicide by overdosing on pills. Explains John, “Her memory is gone. Her dignity is gone. She can hardly breathe.” Maurice responds, “At least she isn’t Jewish.” [An amusing line in an otherwise dour and overly somber film.] It started with Maurice throwing a pound of cheesecake to the ground in a violent frenzy, so that was peculiar, too.

The John Wrathall screenplay, with location shooting in Budapest, Hungary, just does not gel in this adaptation. Everything that happens to John seems random. It’s as though he has stumbled into his own life and is bewildered by it, including his rise to prominence in the Reich. The scenes with his family, including a first wife who obsessively plays the piano at all times like a possessed weasel need more explanation. You want Viggo to say, “For God’s sake, quit pounding on the damned piano and come out here in the kitchen and help with dinner. Or, failing that, go see what my mother wants upstairs.” (Or, better yet, “Hey, honey, come here and join me on the staircase and I’ll savagely screw the living daylights out of you.”)

Halder’s ailing mother is constantly calling for him from the upstairs bedroom as the poor man is also attempting to chop vegetables for dinner, mind the kids and answer the doorbell. It almost comes off as a comic variation of Three Stooges material, as he is seen racing to answer the door, chopping the veggies foru goulash and taking care of his dotty Mom, while the first wife pounds away like some obsessive/compulsive nut job. All-in-all, the domestic scene looked a bit disheveled, true, but, if, as the dialogue has suggested in the movie up to this point, “You’ll do the right thing. You always do,” (his mother speaking), then why does John up and take a mistress and dump his loving family unit so suddenly? Seemed out-of-character and not what someone who “always does the right thing” would do.

Even more puzzling, why is the wife he leaves so compliant when she is dumped? The emotions the woman expresses are unlike any scorned wife I’ve ever met, and I don’t think it’s a 1930’s thing. Wife Number One and the two kids are abandoned for the younger fraulein and piano-woman is left to fend for herself after doing almost none of the housework or cooking or other domestic chores normally associated with the female of the species. Does she complain? Au contraire, mon frere.

In almost the very next scene, Wife Number One tells her philandering husband as they stroll through what may have been his mother’s funeral scene (it was unclear) how proud she and the abandoned children are of him. Hmmmmmm. Did not wash for me. Real life does not work that way, in my experience. More realistic if Wife Number One was calling Dr. John Halder a “schweinhund” and swearing a blue streak, methinks, but that’s in the world I live in.

John Halder, on the other hand, seems to inhabit his own version of reality, complete with an ostrich-like inability to see what is happening right before his very eyes, a very wishy-washy constitution, and a problem with spinelessness.

The end of the film also comes rather abruptly, as John attempts to find his now-deported friend Maurice in a concentration camp. A single tear runs down his cheek as he realizes what his book hath wrought. Then it ends. The screen goes black.

We filed out silently, wishing we could have another replay of those clips from Mortensen’s early films, which were very entertaining, absorbing and true-to-life. Unfortunately, the clumsily-titled “Good” may have had the intention of making a statement about how we all must stand up against injustice wherever we find it, but it did not translate well as directed by the Brazilian director shooting in Hungary, and even an actor as competent as Viggo Mortensen is only as good as his material.

Colin Hanks Q&A: “The Great Buck Howard” on Oct. 27 at the Chicago Film Festival

By Connie Wilson

On October 28, 2008

In Interviews, Movies

Question #1: How long did it take to get the film made? A: “It took us 3 years to get the financing and 2 years to make.”

Question #2: Is Buck Howard like the real-life character of Kreskin upon which Buck is based? A: “The handshake thing is for real. I’ve actually never met Kreskin,” said Hanks. “I hear Malkovich’s portrayal is pretty amazing.”

Question #3: Do you think you’ll ever do more movies like (2002’s) “Orange County?” A: “I think I’ve pretty much done all I can in that genre.”

Question #4: Where did this story come from? A: “The Great Buck Howard…at least about the first 15 minutes of it…is all about the experiences of the writer/director Sean McGinly. He’s the one who worked for Kreskin. I just liked the story. I just think this is a really cool story and it is just a great little movie that can get a few laughs and tell a story.”

Question #5: How did you get all the people to do the cameos in the film? “Most of the cameos were written into the script. I have some mutual friends with
Jon Stewart and Conen O’Brien. Martha Stewart was the one I was surprised to get, but all of them were petrified to have been performing with John Malkovich. I’ve actually thought it would be cool if John would dress up as Buck Howard and go back on the same shows to promote our film. We also got Ricky Jay (Gil Bellamy in the cast, as Howard’s manager), because he’s kind of a historian of magicians. He was too busy to consult, but he came in and said, in a matter of seconds, ‘This is about Kreskin, isn’t it?’”

Question #6: What was John Malkovich like to work with? A: “Malkovich was extremely friendly, very very funny, a pleasant surprise, because, obviously, you don’t always like the people you work with and people say, ‘That dude is supposed to be the weirdest man ever.” I asked John about his weekend one day. He said, ‘I woke up on Saturday. I read the paper, even though it’s all bullshit, but I read it, anyway. I hung around the house and went to the park and played in a pick-up game of basketball.’ Anywhere he is filming, John Malkovich will be taking part in a pick-up game of basketball. The thing that makes John such a great actor was his adding little touches like the Captain & Tennille and telling me, “Those flowers are expensive. Take the flowers.”

Question #7: What was it like working with your dad? A: A lot of fun. It was good. He makes it easier, more enjoyable because he’s so good at what he does. With Malkovich, as well, it was a trifecta, a sandwich of joy.”

Question #8: Did you always know you wanted to be an actor?” A: “If my team was in the play-offs in sports, then I often wanted to be whatever sport that was. I always enjoyed acting, though, and I always did it. It was not until I got to college that I realized I had to figure out what I wanted to do. I love what I do and actually there is nothing else I would really rather do. The truth is, I love what I do. I have genuine passion for it.” (*The younger Hanks had a production assistant job on “Apollo 13” and most recently had a story arc as Father John Gill on AMC’s “MadMen” televsion show, with Jon Hamm. He also starred in 2005’s “King Kong” as Preston, Jack Black’s assistant and in 2002’s “Orange County’ as Shaun Brumder, Jack Black’s scholarly brother. He had a role as 2^nd Lt. Henry Jones in the television mini-series “Band of Brothers,” which his father helped produce, and had a small role in “That Thing You Do” in 1996, as a male page, a part which he got using a fake last name to avoid trading on his father’s fame. Colin Hanks also has a small part as Speechwriter #1 on Oliver Stone’s “W” out now.)

Question #9: What is your next project? A: “To be honest, I’m not working on a whole lot right now. I just had a story arc on “MadMen” and a bit part in “W.” I’m directing a documentary on Tower Records, which could take a while.”

Question #10: Do you have any other idols, other than your dad? A: “No, not really. I do like Jeff Bridges in “The Big Lebowski.”

Question #11: What have you been doing while you have been in Chicago?” A: “Well, I just killed an hour in the bowling alley that’s attached to this place and I was hoping to go to a World Series game while here. I saw a BlackHawks game. I heard some good comedy at Second City. I ate a buffet at the John Hancock building (not so good). I saw some great art.”

Question #12: Did you visit any bars? A: I’m gonna’ plead the fifth on that one? Well, okay: Timmy O’Toole’s.

Question #13: What is your favorite Tom Hanks film? A: “I really can’t pick ‘a favorite,’ but I can tell you that I can’t watch ‘Philadelphia.’”

Mickey Rourke Roars Back as Randy “The Ram” Robinson in New Darren Aronofsky Film

By Connie Wilson

On October 26, 2008

In Interviews, Movies, Reviews

“The world don’t give a shit about me. You can lose everything that you love, and I’m not as pretty as I used to be, but I’m still standing and I’m the Ram. You people here are my family.” So says Mickey Rourke, roaring back to the big screen in Darren Aronofsky’s (“The Fountain”) low-budget film “The Wrestler” as Randy “the Ram” Robinson. The role was supposedly modeled on Randy “Macho Man” Savage, although Rourke gives credit elsewhere for his gritty portrait of a washed-up professional wrestler facing retirement due to a heart condition.

(www.chicagotribune.com). In an interview with Michael Phillips about this entry in the Chicago Film Festival which is receiving Oscar buzz for Rourke’s strong performance, Rourke said (October 12, p. 5): “My younger brother, Joe, back in the day in Venice Beach, we used to go lift weights at Gold’s Gym, which was the mecca of bodybuilding back then. And there was a guy named Magic. He had long blonde hair. He had two hearing aids and couldn’t hear a (expletive deleted) thing. He was a character, a biker dude who lived in a bus behind the gym. He wrestled on the side, and I based my character on this guy Magic more than on anybody else.”

Wherever the inspiration for his wrestler character, the character’s words ring true in Rourke’s career and life when he speaks lines like, “I just want to tell you: I’m the one who was supposed to make everything okay for everybody, but things didn’t work out. And I left. And now I’m an old broken-down piece of meat, and I’m alone, and I deserve to be alone. I just don’t want you to hate me.” That bit of dialogue is uttered in a touching scene with Evan Rachel Wood, who plays his estranged daughter. Their trip to a deserted, run-down amusement park/arcade previously visited in her youth is symbolic of “The Ram’s” broken-down status in his career and in his life.

Randy is struggling to connect with someone…anyone. He tries to romance a local stripper (Marisa Tomei, showing a lot of skin in her role). He tries to win back his daughter, who shouts at him, “There is no more fixing this. It is broke. Permanently.” The Ram is even reduced to waiting on customers wearing a nametag that says “Robin” and a hair net at a deli (Abraham and Charlotte Aronofsky have bit parts here).

Most critics are predicting an Oscar nomination for Rourke, who, in the Phillips interview, said, “For a while there in the dark years before “The Wrestler” I needed to get away, to just…I had too much crap going on in my life.” He adds, “I didn’t know it was going to take me 13 years, but what are you going to do? I was really bad for a long time, and it wasn’t anybody’s fault except mine. Change is hard, especially for a guy like me. And it’s not that I wanted to change. I had to change. And I’m very thankful now that I did.”

No young actors in this country in the early eighties were more promising than Mickey Rourke and Sean Penn. Acting class colleagues used to spread the word when either was going to do a scene, as all admired the duo’s intensity. Rourke was in “Heaven’s Gate” in 1980 (cited as one of the biggest financial failures of all time) and in “Diner” in 1982. He had a real run of films in the mid-to-late eighties, with “9 and ½ Weeks,” “Angel Heart”(1986) and “Barfly” (1987). Then he made the controversial “Wild Orchid” in 1990, a critically panned film that paired him with Carre Otis, a former model whom he would marry and, later, divorce in 1998.

The number of roles that Rourke supposedly rejected, which turned out to be big box office and bad career decisions, is legion. Rourke actually retired from the ring to box professionally from 1991 to 1995, a move that left him with a battered face that is almost unrecognizable when compared to his early acting years. Born in 1956, he was told he was too old to really be good when he resumed boxing, so he took beating after beating. His love of boxing began at age 12, when he won a bantamweight fight at 118 pounds.

For this latest film, Rourke trained with professional wrestler “Afa, the Wild Samoan,” and many other pro wrestlers are given credit at the end of the film, such as Brutus Beefcake and The Flesh Eaters. With an 80s soundtrack (guitars by Slash on the original music composed by Clint Mansell) and the line extolling the eighties with the sentiment “That Cobain pussy hadn’t come around and ruined it (rock and roll)” the low-budget look into the life of Randy “The Ram” Robinson (Ramzinsky), who lives in a trailer and is nearing the end of his career, is depressingly realistic. It gives both Rourke and co-stars Evan Rachel Wood (as his daughter) and Marisa Tomei (as his stripper friend) meaty roles. The fight against “The Ayatollah” that climaxes the film is supposedly based on the WWF wrestler “The Iron Sheikh.” (www.FilmSchoolRejects and www.NYA.com).

Robert Davi Answers Questions about “The Dukes” at Chicago Film Festival

By Connie Wilson

On October 23, 2008

In Interviews, Movies

During the Q&A with Robert Davi at the Tuesday night (Oct. 21) showing of “The Dukes”, the audience, which was not a full house, was treated to “vamping” by the long-time character actor, as he waited for friends of his to arrive and for traffic to allow others to see the film.

First question for Robert Davi was: “How long did it take for you to shoot the film?”

A: “Eight months to a year.

Question #2: “What was the film shot on?” A: “The film was shot on Super 16, then I did a D.I. and transferred it to 35 millimeter. It is a modern film that doesn’t have a sleek look. I wanted a rough-around-the-edges look.” Davi gave credit to his DP (Director of Photography) Michael Goy for the film’s look, which is intimate and classic.

Question #3: Object of the film? A: “I wanted to bring light to the world whenever we could. I wanted it to have no politics and have an upbeat ending.” Davi also said, “I hope your dad’s not a dentist,” in reference to the heist of a dentist’s gold from his safe. Davi reminisced: “Growing up, going to the dentist was a huge thing. It was expensive. It was humorous. It was universal. With the stock market thing and the housing crisis, I thought it was something that wouldn’t bring people down.”

Question #4: “What about the character Murph?” A: “In the script, Murph was originally a tough Irish guy. I wanted to break the stereotype, so the part was reworked for the Latvian character actor who played Murph. “I wanted to have the idea of transplanted New Yorkers.” And, added Davi, “That was me singing at the end of the film. The guy who was a stand-up comic in the film was also a stand-up comic in real life. He tried to become an actor in Los Angeles, but it fell apart. There is a sense of geographical dislocation in the film, a New York story set in Los Angeles.”

Question #5: “What made you want to be an actor?” A: “I got the idea from watching Italian films when I was a kid growing up. Then, I worked in the theater. Then we discovered I had a voice. I was a baritone with the soul of a tenor. I studied voice with Tito Gobi.”

Question #6: “What was your inspiration…your idea for the story?” A: In the 1970s I worked with Stella Adler. This was when there were 25,000 steelworkers being laid off. The idea of that, of losing your job, was very frightening to me, as a young guy. And then my dad was laid off. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to make my first film with Frank Sinatra and I met Jay Black, who had been in a group called ‘Jay and the Americans.’ There was also an influence from Alvin Toffler’s book ‘The Third Wave.”

Question #7: “Will there be a sequel?” A: “If it’s successful, there might be a sequel. I did think about it. At the beginning, that is Cousin Brucie you hear, who used to open for the Beatles at Shea Stadium and place like that. I showed this to David Edelstein and Peter Travers in New York City of the New York Film Critics’ Association. They loved the music in it. I had some ideas to do things differently. For example. I had the idea of the car going into a tunnel sequence where the car would break into musical notes and then the car would go out onto Ventura Boulevard.

I also used Ash Wednesday because it was a remembrance of these guys pulling a heist with ash on their foreheads. It was a whole dichotomy of that, indicative of these guys, the melting pot aspect of the group.

Question #8: “What were some of the hurdles you faced in making the film?” A: “The financial was the biggest hurdle. I was looking for the challenge and I was ready. Also, distribution is always a problem. Independents aren’t really that bad. Also, we had to have the right cast. I was lucky to find the kid who played my son. I met 15 young boys who were all lovely, but it was a pivotal part. I did several improvisations with him and bonded with him. He was a very loving and very open little boy. Finding him was as big a challenge as Vittorio DeSica finding the right boy to use in “The Bicycle Thief.” The young actor later went on to play the son in ‘Pirates of the Caribbean.’ Then, the biggest emotional push was when the group gets shut down on opening night.”

Question #9: “What about the cast?” A: “I knew I wanted Chazz. I knew all the other actors. I’m not an overactor, so I knew that ensemble. Originally, Murph was an Irishman, but I rewrote it. You know what someone once said, ‘After the writer writes the screenplay, he should die.’”

Closing comments: “I love Chicago. I appreciate you all being here. Thank you all for sharing this with me.”

17 Questions for Writer/Director Kevin Smith (“Zack and Miri Make A Porno”)

By Connie Wilson

On October 23, 2008

In Interviews, Movies

Q&A with Kevin Smith following the October 21^st showing of “Zack and Mimi Make a Porno” at the Chicago Film Festival

As Kevin Smith approached the front of the theater to answer questions, his opening gambit was, “Awesome to be here in Gotham City.” He added, “If our movie makes one-tenth of what that movie made, I’ll be a happy man.”

The first audience question was: “How did you get an “R” rating for this movie?” Smith’s answer was involved. “Initially,” he said, “the movie was given a rating of NC17. We expected that. They said, ‘No, it is still too raunchy. That s*** shot will never play in an ‘R’-rated movie. We just had to accept the rating. Then, it goes before a board of 14 people. One half were from NATO, and I thought, ‘Whoa!’ I didn’t know it was this important!’ Turns out NATO means National Association of Theater Owners. The other 7 are Motion Picture ratings board people. We had 15 minutes to stand up and tell why the movie should be an ‘R.’ Then you leave and there is a silent vote. There were 2 areas that were under discussion. One was the first porno scene because of ‘too much thrusting.’ I felt like saying, ‘Come to my house. There’s no thrusting at all; just hovering.’ The other area of concern was the s*** shot. It’s only 14 frames…not even a second of film. It definitely makes an impact. It certainly did on Jeff Anderson! You get to cite precedent, so we were ready to argue our case. It takes 24 frames to make up one second of screen time. That shot is only 14 frames. If I were 13 and it was 1983 and I saw those scenes, yes, I would go to the bathroom and tug one out. But no kid is gonna’ do that today. So, we cited, as precedent, Angelina Jolie and Ethan Hawke in ‘Taking Lives,’ where there is a lot of (sexual) thrusting, but it’s done seriously. Our was a comedic version of sex. In order to do that, we had to go over that. For the s*** shot, we cited “Jackass: the Helmet,” where they have a fart helmet. Then, they get a funnel and there’s actual excrement expressed into the funnel in documentary fashion, and THAT got an ‘R’ rating.

So, I’m out in the hall with Joan Gravis who heads up the ratings board and I’m close to making a deal. I was definitely invested in keeping the s*** shot. And then someone comes out and tells us we’ve been given an ‘R’ and I’m, like, ‘See you later, Joan.'”

Question 2: “What about marketing the movie?”: A: “Marketing the movie has been a bitch. We actually use stick figures for the marketing poster, and we’re still having trouble getting the word out or getting people to post them (the posters). We’re having a hard time marketing because the word ‘porno’ is actually in the title. Some people think it actually is a porno film because of that. I’d rather let the movie speak for itself; it comes out in 10 days.”

Question 3: “What about the current generation? Would you let your children see your films?” A: “My daughter is 9. She is gay for ‘High School Musical 3.’ That is the antithesis of our movie. I can get behind it, though. I think our audience is all 10 to 20 years older than my daughter. Kids are hip to that s***. Even in the kids’ world, gossip rules.”

Question 4: (from a would-be writer) “I’m a writer. Can I work for you?” A: “I don’t’ have enough juice to get my own s*** made! I had to get Seth Rogen in this movie before I got the power to get it made.” (Answer was a resounding “No.”)

Question 5: “What strikes you as funny?” A: “I try to make myself laugh and, if other people laugh, that’s my internal barometer.”

Question 6: “How did it happen that Tom Savini appeared as Jenkins, the owner of a shop in the film?” A: “Tom Savini, of course, is the make-up guy associated with George Romero in films like ‘Dawn of the Dead’ and many, many others, and he was a fan. He just wanted to be in it. Monroeville was the place where they shot ‘Dawn of the Dead’ and that shopping mall where they shot that film is in the movie.”

Question 7: “When would Joe Siegel walk out?” A: “I don’t know that he would have made it past the s*** shot. And then he died. So, I really couldn’t talk about it with him. But thanks for bringing the room down!” (Laughter) [*The reference to Joe Siegel was an attempt by an audience member to show how much more he knew than the rest of we mere spectators and how much better informed than the rest of us he was, in that most of the audience didn’t have clue one about Joe Siegel (“Please, Alex! May I buy a clue?”) including me. I assume(d) Joe Siegel had something to do with rating movies…before he died, of course. I don’t really care. It was not germane, really, but, hey…audience member guy! I hope it was a Big Ego Boost to know something arcane that the rest of us didn’t know and that had little or nothing to do with the film, itself and thanks for asking that question and wasting all of our time!]

Question 8: “Were the scenes all scripted, or was there some ad-libbing and improvisation?” A: “Will Ferell and Chris Rock are great ad-libbers, as is Seth Rogen. Take the line, ‘Why is he so high-strung?’ It just sounded like Ben Affleck trying to be funny. With Seth, it was germane to the scene. It propels the scene forward.”

Question 9: “Whose films have influenced you? Who would you like to work with?” A: Jason Segal, Jonah (from “The Forty Year Old Virgin,” and “SuperBad”), Seth Rogen. When I saw Seth in “The Forty Year Old Virgin” I decided I was going to write him a lead. I wrote him an e-mail, asking if he would be interested, and I had an e-mail back within 5 minutes. Seth said he had told his agent, when he arrived in Hollywood, ‘I want to be in a Kevin Smith movie.’ This dude is famous now. He’s more famous than me.”

Question 10: “Do you think there will ever be a ‘Clerks II’?” A: “There was a messy divorce between the Weinstein Brothers and Miramax, so I doubt it.”

At this point, Smith diverged into telling a story about Thanksgiving dinner at the home of Steven Spielberg. George Lucas stopped by, and Ben Affleck was there at the time, along with the Paltrows, who are close friends of the Spielbergs. So, Affleck calls me up and says, (of Lucas and Spielberg), “They were both really geeky. They had a website-off and then lost interest in that and started surfing for porn, but not good porn, you know? That soft porn stuff. And Affleck asked them if they’d ever heard of a movie called ‘Clerks’ and he said, ‘Yes.’ That’s enough.”

Question 11 had to do with the use of R2D2 and other Lucas-inspired characters in the film, such as Princess Leia. A: “Rich McCallum who worked for Lucas let us use the sound effects. It’s not like Lucas said, ‘You put balls on R2D2? I was gonna’ do that in the 50-year-reunion DVD.'”

The conversation moved on to Smith’s recent weight gain, which he attributed to not putting himself in the movie for the first time in many films and, therefore, hitting the craft services wagon much too heavily. “I look in the mirror now and I see my father at age 65, and I’m, like, only 38! Once this movie is over, I’m going to go and drop a lot of weight, but I didn’t think I’d hear anything about my weight here in Chicago. I expected Chicagoans to say, ‘Come: you’re one of us. Come feed with us at the trough.’

Smith then told a funny story about breaking a futuristic toilet at the Laker Blazers poker tournament. When he saw the futuristic toilet with no base, which jutted directly out from the wall, he thought, ‘Nothing under it. That is no friend to a fat man.’ Smith went on to describe doing what he termed “the hover,” (as done for women for years in public rest rooms.) He went into a long discussion of being “a back or front wiper.”

Basically, the story ends with the toilet pulling straight out of the wall and breaking, with Smith saying it was “Horrible on every f****** level. I gotta’ get off the bowl, count to 3 and jump like in ‘Lethal Weapon II.’ And then there’s the guy waiting on the outside of the stall. He’s shouting, ‘You okay in there?’ It’s not like you can come out and be like, ‘Who did this?'”

All ended well when the owner of the emporium was summoned and promised, “Nobody ever has to know.” [Except that Smith just told the world.]

Question #12: “Are you filming a horror movie?” A: I’m filming ‘Red State,’ a $3 to $5 million-dollar horror movie. I’m having a hard time getting funding for it. It’s so black it makes ‘The Dark Knight’ look like ‘Beverley Hills Chihuahua.'”

Question #13: “Do you think you have grown as a filmmaker?” A: Noting that he is now back with his original Director of Photography Dave Klein, Smith said, “I think this is the best thing we’ve ever done visually.” Smith promised to stay faithful to using Klein in the future, noting that he had been paired with Vilmos Szigmond on “Jersey Girl,” as the studio sought to educate him by pairing him with a great Director of Photography in some recent projects. “They ended up saying, we could put him with a great DP and he would turn him into s***. I told Klein, ‘Dude, I will never not work with you (Klein) again.'”

Smith notes that he likes to set his movies in places where he hangs out, hence his settings which, up until this movie set in Pittsburgh, have always been in New Jersey. When he met Seth Rogen, Rogen told him: “‘Clerks’ was the movie that made me want to be a filmmaker.’ He’d (Rogen) say, ‘You’re great!’ And I’d say, “No, YOU’RE great!’ We have a very good interaction. I’d work with him again in a heartbeat.”

Smith then told the audience that the s*** shot had actually happened to Barry Sonnenfeldt when he was working shooting porno films. “I want an e-mail or a call from him, saying either, ‘Dude, you nailed it!’ or ‘You were so far off!'”

Question #14: “Why did you cast 2 actual porn stars (Traci Lord and Katie Morgan) in the film?” “It was Seth’s idea. ‘Think about it,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing you can ask her to do that will be as horrible as what she does in her day job.’ So, we were researching it on the internet…just for the movie, I swear (laughter)…and I saw a YouTube bit of Katie Morgan where she was pretty good in the acting part. She was so excited about the Premiere of the movie. I was like, ‘I’ve been doing this for 15 years now. I’m jaded. I’ve got it at my house. I can watch it in my living room,’ and she’s all excited and enthused about the Premiere.”

Smith noted that Morgan has said to him, “I want to be able to do both” (i.e. serious and porno films). “It was very helpful having Katie and Traci on the set. They knew how it worked in the porn industry. It became ‘Teach me how to direct, Katie Morgan.’ Getting Traci Lords was kind of a coup for us. She hasn’t made a porno film in, like, 20 years and, insensitively, we sent her the script. She read it and decided, ‘Maybe it’s time I embraced my past and made fun of it.”

At this point, Smith told a humorous story about interviewing the porn queen in his home and how he could just imagine his mother and father from his childhood viewing this. He said, “Why did you waste the time on this?”

Question #15: “Do you still work with Scott Mosier?” A: “I find it nearly impossible to do my job without Scott. He’s a wonderful film editor, and he’s a great guy to bounce cuts off (Smith both wrote, directed, and edited the film). It’s like a porn version of how Scott and I make films.”

Question #16: “Who thought up or gave you the idea for the Dutch Rudder?” A: “That came from DP Dave Klein, and I added the Double Dutch Rudder. There was a third one that got cut, the Double Dutch Fudge Rudder.”

At this point, there was a discussion of Jason Mewes always being naked. “He’s always got it out or what-not.” (Smith says “what-not” a lot! Next up: “Yada?”) “When he walked out of the bedroom, naked, he was a lot larger than he normally is, and Ben Affleck said to me, ‘You realize that Mewes is one pump away from total lift-off.’ Mewes, upon hearing this, said, “Tell Affleck that I’m my own fluffer. And I was on the way down, not on the way up.'” An audience member asked if Mewes was off drugs and alcohol. Smith responded, “He’s been sober for 6 years. Doesn’t drink. Doesn’t do drugs.” (As I recall, we applauded Mewes being sober…and I don’t even know the guy!)

Question #17: “Do you have a favorite ‘Star Wars’ sexual fantasy?” A: “I never have had a “Star Wars’ sexual fantasy.”

Writer/Director/Editor Smith told an amusing story about chatting with Brandon Routh, who played “Superman” in the most recent installment of that franchise, and who plays a gay classmate of Zack and Miri’s, in this film. (Smith): “I asked him if there wasn’t some sort of morals clause in his contract that would forbid him from making this film, and he said that the only clause was that he couldn’t portray other superheroes and, when I heard that, I said, ‘Right on! Get in there and kiss that guy!’ “(Jason Long)

Audiences who can handle the crude language (as Smith fans can) and situations and are not scandalized by the storyline, which is basically a sweet story of the discovery of true love, will enjoy “Zack and Miri Make A Porno.” All of us present on October 21st enjoyed the film and the following Q&A at the Chicago Film Festival with Writer/Director/Editor Kevin Smith.

Twenty Questions for Screenwriter/Director Charlie Kaufman at the Chicago Film Festival (October 19, 2008)

By Connie Wilson

On October 21, 2008

In Movies, Reviews

[*”Synecdoche, New York:” Q&A Following the showing of the film at the Chicago Film Festival.]

The first question to be asked after the screening of “Synecdoche, New York” was a bit murky, but it seemed to be about whether the screenwriter-turned-director knew where he was going from the outset or found his way there during the cutting process.

Charlie Kaufman’s answer was: “Why do you want to know that?” After there was no answer from the audience member, he went on to say that he often found direction during the editing process.

Question Number Two was from a film student and asked about the 200 short scenes in Kaufman’s first directorial effort, as compared to a normal movie average of 100 scenes. Kaufman responded that it took him 45 days to shoot the entire movie and that he knew he had a lot of scenes.

Question Number Three: The third question referenced Seattle critic N.P. Thomson who apparently called the movie “A dream about outliving your dreams,” and said that it had “a sense of melancholy.” Kaufman responded, “Everyone has something they feel regretful about” (or words to that effect) and went on to say, “I’m kind of dogged about not imposing my opinion on others. Yeah. That sounds good.”

Question Number Four: Kaufman was asked whether he had a theatrical background, since the main character in his movie, Cayden Cotard, is a director in the film. He responded that he “did a lot when I was a kid. I did direct a couple of plays before I did this,” mentioning 2 plays he directed in New York City, one in Los Angeles and one in London. The cast there? Meryl Streep, Hope Davis, Jennifer Jason-Leigh, etc. Kaufman said he was able to get his first choices for the film and they were all his favorite actors.

Question Number Five: Kaufman was asked if he had had trouble getting funding to make the film. He answered that, originally, Spike Jonze was to have helmed the film but the combination of the script and Kaufman taking over the reins led Sony to put the film in turnaround (shelve it). But, very quickly after that, said Kaufman, he was able to secure financing with final cut, but he noted: “The landscape has changed a lot in the past couple of years. It wasn’t hard at the time. I don’t know why.” (Yes, the landscape very definitely has changed a lot, financially, hasn’t it, Kids? Our 401K’s are becoming 201K’s and it is unlikely that anyone willing to put up the money to make a movie would be quite as cavalier about backing a film this blatantly uncommercial.)

Question Number Six: This question was about whether he makes things up as he goes along and whether his lead characters are his alter egos. A: “I make things up as I go along, but, there was a lot of back-and-forth until I had something I liked. There are similarities between me and the people I write about. I don’t know how it could be otherwise.” Kaufman went on to say that Philip Seymour Hoffman was an actor whose work he admired immensely and who represents his voice in the film. In fact, Hoffman was largely responsible for Kaufman’s decision to retain the film’s ending, rather than capitulate to those who advised against such a bleak “ending.”

Question Number Seven: Kaufman was asked whether his previous work with other filmmakers, such as Spike Jonze, informed his work. He said, “I don’t know how to answer that. I didn’t move away from things; I just tried to figure out what worked for me.”

Question Number Eight: One of the aspiring filmmakers in the audience asked how Kaufman kept the film’s plot straight, since it was not linear. Kaufman said he once thought he’d use cards, but he found that that did not work for him. “I write a lot of ideas, spend a lot of time thinking. I take notes. I get to a point where I’m ready to start writing dialogue.” Kaufman called dialogue, for him as a filmmaker, “a more comfortable situation,” and noted, “I am able to do it quickly.” At this point, there was some reference to Mr. Kaufman’s having written for “Mr. Show,” the television comedy show, but he quickly responded that he had never written for the show. He did acknowledge that Louis C.K., the stand-up comic, had brought him in to do one skit, a Weird Al Yankovich skit, where there were 3 Weird Als: Weird Al, Weirder Al and Normal Al. He described the skit as “parody/parody of parody/back to normal.”

Question Number Nine: Kaufman was asked whether he preferred to write or direct, since he has now done both. His answer was, “Since I have now done directing, I think I want to do more of it. I like having the control. I like being able to pick the final directions.” He noted, though, that, “I’m kind of a moody, sulky person, and you’re not allowed to be that when you’re the director. ” Kaufman said he could remain cheerful and encouraging for 10 hours of the 17 they worked, “but not for the last 7 hours.”

Question Number Ten: Kaufman was asked about collaborating with others. He responded, “You collaborate with people and it’s 60/40 %. A lot of the aesthetic was informed by how much we could afford.” Kaufman called directing “an extremely pragmatic business as opposed to writing.” He commented that set director Marc Freedman came in with sketches that were appropriate for a low budget movie, such as a whole block on an Armory. He also noted that, “The Zeppelin is fake” and that, “We could have had more of the Zeppelin, but we didn’t.”

Question Number Eleven: Kaufman was asked about influences on his work. He rephrased the question, “What am I influenced by?” And Kaufman answered, “I try to find what I’m thinking about. The reality is the chaos and confusion of your current existence…what seems true…what seems honest.”

Question Number Twelve: Kaufman was asked about the cast and whether he was surprised to get such a stellar group for his first film. He said, “I cast them, so I wasn’t surprised. It was a thrill for me to get to work with these people. Most of them are my favorite actors.”

Question Number Thirteen: Kaufman was asked about the meaning of the film and said, “I want people to interpret it their own way.” He talked about how his own feelings are sometimes hurt by criticism, noting, “I’m a sensitive guy.” He said, “People put a lot of shit into the world. I want to put something honest out there.”

Question Number Fourteen: Asked about the use of “Death of a Salesman” within his film. He said he was definitely “not making fun of the play at all,” and that, originally, the film he wanted to use was “Equus” but that he could only get the rights to use “Death of a Salesman,” which, he noted, had actually worked out well. He said, “There’s something heartbreaking about kids doing ‘Death of a Salesman.’ (when they’re in high school). I like that play a lot. I’m not making fun of it.” Kaufman also mused about the different ways that casting one person in one part might change the film saying, “What if I cast Michelle as Adele?” ( actually thought he said “Linda” here, but did not remember a character called “Linda” in the film, so I may be misquoting, and, if so, I apologize to the director and ask for a better seat or a microphone that works, next time.)

Question Number Fifteen: Someone asked a long drawn-out question about whether the film was “semi-neurotic, semi-adolescent” and Kaufman responded, “Well, not if you put it that way!” He continued talking about his creative process, saying, “When I start something, I don’t know where it’s going to go. I write stuff from the inside. It is what it is.” Kaufman made me( as a fellow writer) feel better by saying that he does not have a “routine” where he writes “X” number of hours a day at a certain time, etc. (Thanks for that, Charlie! I mean it!) “What I wanted to do when I started out was to try to externalize the internal world of this character. The dream imagery (house burning, etc.) just came. I found it kind of fascinating.” Charlie talked about how “the end is built into the beginning” (i.e., we are born to die…”in the midst of life we are in death”) and used the idea of choices that inform our lives, especially in regards to the character of Hazel, who buys and lives in a constantly burning house. “She didn’t have to buy that house and live in that house, but she chose to. It’s all about decisions. The funny things are funny because they resonate.”

Question Number Sixteen: “Why did you use John Malkovich as the main character in ‘Being John Malkovich?'” A: “At the time, it was because I thought it was funny.” The question then became why Kaufman named the film “Synecdoche, New York” and he responded, “I don’t know why. I liked the way it sounded. I didn’t have it as the only title. It’s so long ago that I don’t know exactly why. I just knew I wanted it to start out somewhere where little theater is done, like Poughkeepsie or somewhere and then end up in New York City, so the town had to be outside of New York City.” He added that he had found new things in the title as recently as two weeks ago.

Question Number Seventeen: “Why view life like this?” This question came from a young man in my row who seemed rather discontented with what he viewed as the pessimistic tone of the film. Kaufman’s answer: A – “How do I view it? I don’t think of it as pessimistic. I think we are all on a continuum. Everyone is on the same path. I think it informs our life that we’re the only animals that know we’re going to die. I want, as a reader or a viewer, ‘Eureka!’ moments that speak to me/him. I think of myself as enormously optimistic. Take happiness. Fake happiness is meaningless and alienating. I’m not creating a product. I’m not trying to get you to come see my movie. That’s kind of the end of it, for me. Do with it what you will. I think you can really only offer us yourself. The rest is a lie, and the rest is a gamble.” [*I remember thinking, at this point, that it was a rather self-indulgent thing to take the money of investors (and the talents of a top-notch cast) and care only about articulating one’s own angst. I wondered how the people who gave Kaufman the money to make the film would view his comment about not trying to convince audiences to come see the film in today’s economic climate? It’s one thing to have something to say and to want to say it well, and to realize that not all of life is “happy” and “uplifting” and “joyous,” but it’s another thing, entirely, to have a film that meanders off-topic a great deal and is so “down” and depressing that people will be driven from the theater…or never get there at all. Maybe collaborations with others on films have been good to and for Charlie Kaufman in the past? Certainly any of his previous films were more entertaining and more commercial, if not more profound. But that’s just my opinion, and the only one I’m qualified to express, so see it at your own speed and make your own judgments; he does have impressive talent in the writing department, and watching someone who may be slowly dying is sure upbeat and gives you that little bit of extra verve in your step as you exit the theater. For some actual quotes from the film, please see my review on www.associatedcontent.com]

Question Number Eighteen: Kaufman was asked whether he finds interviews like this one “enjoyable” or not, as they continue during additional screenings of his film. He responded, “I find it more or less enjoyable. I really enjoyed it. I’m happy. It’s not a burden.”

Question Number Nineteen: When asked about any advice or arguments that arose during the filming, Kaufman acknowledged that there were some who cautioned him against retaining the bleak ending. “There was a lot of anxiety about the end of the movie.” Kaufman confessed that he actually wrote another different ending for the film, but that he listened to Philip Seymour Hoffman the most and Hoffman did not see how the film could end any other way than the way it did and urged him not to shoot it and/or not to use it.

Many wanted Catherine Keener’s character (Adele Lack) to come back for some sort of “resolution,” said Kaufman, but he did not see it that way. He went on to say, “Your confidence gets kind of shaky, but I had final cut.” He remarked, “I wasn’t going to change the movie to say something that would bring more people to it.

Kaufman repeated his “final cut” comment at least three times during the Question and Answer session. Woody Allen was always held up as the director who had the ideal situation of “final cut” and that having “final cut” was a director’s dream.

Question Number Twenty: “What do you like (in movies) that is mainstream?” Kaufman responded, “I like to sit home and watch crap on a Friday night, too. I like a lot of movies. I’m not, like, a weirdo or anything.” After the tittering died down, the questioner asked Kaufman if he had seen “The Dark Knight” and Charlie responded, “I haven’t actually seen any Super Hero movies this year. I like the Coen Brothers. I liked ‘Dumb & dumber. There are some really funny lines and situations in that movie.” [*This is where I agree to disagree with you, Charlie, but, then again, I saw it while in Portugal and it probably plays better if you know what-the-hell they’re saying. Or not.]

The questioner went on to ask if Kaufman had seen “A Scanner Darkly.” He responded, “It seemed weird, to me, that he wanted to do it (“A Scanner Darkly”) that way (using rotogravure). I wouldn’t have done that.” [*I have a theory that using this method allowed him to use the younger, thinner, more hirsute Woody Harrelson. All that was required from the leads: voices. They could look like they had looked 20 years earlier, if the director chose to have them drawn that way. I liked the film.]

Question Number Twenty-One: “In your films, does character inform plot, or does plot inform character?” He answered, “I honestly don’t know what that means. They’re all sort of combined. I feel like I want to make it (the film) organic. It’s all up for grabs. Structure really is important to me. I actually think about it (structure) a lot.”

When pushed further about the film’s bleak view of life (as perceived by many viewers), Charlie Kaufman responded, “You’re asking me something that you feel and then asking me why YOU feel it. I’m not going to venture a guess. I don’t know you. I think being a person is hard. The grocery clerk looks like she hates you. Other people are mean to you. There’s only one end to any project that you do, and that’s your death.”

When asked why he ended the film, finally, he said: “I ended it because I got bored, I had a deadline I had to meet to get paid. I spent a lot of time not writing but thinking.”

One of the many meanings of the title is “simultaneous understanding.” There are many, many others, just as there are many, many other interpretations of this interesting, experimental, but ultimately joyless film.

Chicago Film Festival Features Lynch Film “Surveillance” (October 18, 2008)

By Connie Wilson

On October 19, 2008

In Movies, Reviews

The movie “Surveillance” marks a return to writing and directing for David Lynch’s daughter, Jennifer, the 40-year-old who won an award as Worst Director in 1993 for her directing of the critically panned film “Boxing Helena.” [This was the film that Madonna left to make “Evita” and, eventually, the film that caused a lawsuit to be lodged against Kim Basinger, who also walked away from that sick plot. That 1993 film was another weirdly themed Lynch movie, roundly criticized for its “violence-against-women” theme.]

This time out, Jennifer Chambers Lynch has co-scripted a film on a topic that is equally offensive, sharing writing credit with Kent Harper, who does double duty portraying character Jack Bennet, one of the police officers in the remote rural crime scene town. Jennifer Lynch also wrote The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer to accompany her father’s television series, “Twin Peaks.” Interestingly enough, Chambers Lynch has been quoted as saying that the film was originally going to be a film about witches.

Instead, it is a film about a murder in that desolate town, which sets off a killing spree by the 2 serial killers. Who are the killers? Where might they strike next? What is their motive? All these questions need answers.

“Surveillance” is the story of the subsequent search for the 2 serial killers and the answers to those questions. There is gore aplenty in the opening sequences, featuring the attack on an unsuspecting sleeping couple in their home. The terror-struck wife flees the crime scene and is stalked and captured by the psychotic duo. Police are searching for the MIA victim.

Enter lead actors Bill Pullman (“Independence Day,” “Lake Placid”) as FBI investigator Sam Hallaway, accompanied by his partner Julia Ormond (“First Knight”). The two seem to be a romantic item as well. They arrive to coordinate the investigation with Captain Billings (Michael Ironside of “Scanners”), but there is resistance from the other officers, DeGrasso (Gil Gayle), who has a bad attitude, and Officer Wright (Charlie Newmark), who seems as dense as a box of rocks. The blonde 8-year-old girl who has witnessed the crime(s) and isn’t saying much will need to be interviewed, as will the surviving female drug addict and the redheaded police officer (Harper) whose partner was killed on the highway while investigating the crime(s).

Police, in general, are depicted in an unfavorable light by the filmmakers. Cops are corrupt, dishonest, abuse their power, and are neither fair nor intelligent in this film. When Captain Billings tells Bill Pullman’s FBI Investigator that he is confused in one scene, Pullman’s character responds, “You should be used to that by now.” This film will definitely not amuse those who have taken an oath to “protect and serve.” The men in blue have good cause to dislike the observations made about them.

There are 3 people who may be able to shed light on the killers’ identities and whereabouts. One is the 8-year-old girl, Stephanie (Ryan Simpkins) whose entire family (mother, stepfather, brother) has been gunned down before her eyes while in a car en route to a four-day vacation.

The second is a drug-addled beautiful blonde, Bobbi Prescott (Pell James) who has also witnessed the death of her boyfriend on the same highway.

The third witness is one of the responding officers, Jack Bennet (Kent Harper) whose partner was shot and killed at the highway crime scene. The van on the highway where the bloodbath occurs may (or may not) have contained the kidnapped woman who was taken from the original bedroom crime scene.

David Lynch’s movies are always weird, intense, and gory. Lynch films (father and, now, daughter) cross the line both thematically and in terms of their surreal imagery. In terms of this movie, the old saying that “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” applies. Jennifer’s take in this outrageously psychopathic film is just as over-the-line as her father’s work has always been. In fact, Jennifer started young appearing in her father’s film “Eraserhead” when she was only 9 and working on “Blue Velvet” when only 18m so she is no stranger to the weird, the intense and the eccentric.

I noticed a few people heading for the exit as the film reached its psychopathic climax. I don’t think they were on their way to the rest room; they never returned. However, the gory violence and sado-masochistic theme didn’t keep the film from being named Best Motion Picture at the recent Sitges International Film Festival of Catalonia, and it is well done.

It’s always difficult, in this day and age, to find a “surprise” ending. We all love a “Sixth Sense,” but it gets harder and harder to deliver a “surprise” to a jaded audience. This film managed to deliver one—no small feat— but that’s all I’m going to tell you, for fear of spoiling it.

There were some themes buried in the dialogue. Little Stephanie says, “They thought it was a secret, but it wasn’t” of her mother and her stepfather’s affection for one another. The statement resonates throughout the film for a variety of reasons. Images of camera lenses dominate the film, which seems appropriate, given its title “Surveillance.”

There are some funny lines. For example, the policeman (played by co-writer Harper) says, “I’m a good cop’ and is told, “That’s a total oxymoron.” At another point, Bill Pullman tells the pretty young wonan who has survived the killings, “You probably read the end of a book first. That’s no way to live.” There’s a scene where a “bad cop” has placed a gun in one character’s mouth after stopping him for speeding and tells the terrified man, (while making him suck on the barrel of his gun), “I’m all about safety.” There’s even a wry comment on family vacations, when Stephanie’s brother asks the traditional question, “Are we there yet?” Cheri Oteri (SNL alumnus who frequently co-starred with Will Farrell as one of the hyper Spartan cheerleaders) has the line, in regards to the disastrous vacation trip, “I’m not really havin’ a very good time.” Smoking is also skewered.

I enjoyed the imagery that Ms. Lynch employed, with her close-ups of dead birds in the road and abandoned farm implements in a desolate desert area. Even the store names (“Cum & Stay”) amused, but the plot, as it unfolds, is anything but amusing. Terrifying, perhaps. Psychotic, for sure. Weird, definitely. Sick in the way that all sociopaths are, and, finally, entertaining in its attention to and examination of the details of weird, erotic serial killer sexuality.

Jennifer Mirocha Runs in Chicago Marathon on October 12th

By Connie Wilson

On October 13, 2008

In Local, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Sports

My daughter’s high school classmate and good friend, Jennifer Mirocha of East Moline, ran her first marathon on Sunday, October 12^th in Chicago. Jen had never run more than 13 miles in one day, but the Augustana College (Rock Island, IL) double major in Economics and Marketing began training for the race a year ago and vowed to complete it with only her boyfriend, Josh Sun and me cheering her on.

Commenting on the run, Jennifer said, “The first half was not bad, but at the 18 to 19 mile mark, it got bad. It was really hot. One person was wearing a shirt that said, ‘It can’t be hotter than last year!'” The 2007 race was cut short when a seasoned runner dropped dead in the near 100-degree heat.

Josh was able to run barefoot alongside Jennifer at a few key places along the race route, because 26 Chicago McDonald’s restaurants had a tracking system in place that helped the rest of us know where to find our favorite runners amongst the throngs participating.

I sat in a grandstand situated at Roosevelt and Columbus and tried to pick Jennifer out of the throng that was rounding that corner and heading for the finish line, which was just a short half-mile down that road towards Millennium Park. The runners just kept coming and watching them was hypnotic.

Jen said she “tried not to stop and to run as hard as I could” for the last 4 miles of the race. Prior to that, she had taken advantage of the water stops to rehydrate. (That was a good thing, as an older female contestant was seen lying on a cot, convulsing.)

The announcer speaking over a loudspeaker near me announced that a 70-year-old woman had just completed the race, and many were in a wheelchair division .I began to feel like an underachiever, but my duty, today, was to help find Jen, present her with flowers (real and fake) and buy us all a beer in the beer tent. We hadn’t thought about how to prove that the 21-year-old Jen, who looks younger, was really 21. She didn’t carry her cell phone, nor did she have identification on her person, other than her race number (#28733). That number reflected how soon she registered for the race.

Jennifer is the daughter of Cary and Lyn Mirocha of East Moline and will study abroad in Vietnam as part of Augustana’s Study Abroad program in February. This day, she was a true champion, finishing in 5 hours, 6 minutes and 55 seconds for an 11:42 pace, per mile, in her very first marathon. Jennifer commented that her feet have grown in size from 7’s to 9’s since she took up running, she now has flat feet (whereas she previously had high arches) and she appeared to be limping after the finish, as did many who completed the race. All the runners who made it through proudly wore their medals, and many wore pink rabbit ears, courtesy of Energizer Bunny batteries, or draped themselves in lightweight silver reflector capes, courtesy of Bank of America, to ward off the heat.

Twenty-nine neighborhoods, 31,000 runners, a million and a half spectators ran the Chicago Marathon on Sunday, October 12^th. A 26.2 mile course is a lot to cover, whether as a runner or as a journalist. Evans Chernuiyot of Kenya pocketed $140,000 for winning the Bank of America Chicago Marathon: $100,000 for wining and a $40,000 bonus that was based on his time of 2 hours, 6 minutes, 25 seconds, the 9^th fastest time in the 31 year history of the race. ([email protected]). These statistics courtesy of the Monday, October 13, Chicago Tribune special Chicago Marathon section which noted that Kenyans scored victories in 4 of the 5 point-scoring races on the 1008 World Marathon Majors: London, Boston, the Olympics and Chicago. The New York Marathon is next.

The Chicago neighborhoods that the race traveled through included: Bronzeville, The Gap, the South Commons, the South Loop, the Prairie District, the Central Station District (where I sometimes reside), the New East Side, Streeterville, the Magnificent Mile, the Loop, River North, Near North, Old town, Old Town Triangle, Lincoln Park, Park West, lake view East, Park West, Lincoln Park, Old Town, Near North, West Loop Gate, Greektown, the West Loop, the Near West side, the West Loop, Little Italy, University Village, Illinois Medical District, Pilsen, East Pilsen, Bridgegport, and Chinatown.

It was at Chinatown that Josh caught up with Jennifer and, she said, “When I saw Josh in Chinatown, it really helped.” Josh works for the Davenport School District as a computer whiz. (Not his real title, but it will do).

Great job, Jennifer! Can’t wait to see your times in the next ones! Yeah! Go Jennifer!