Film School Rejects » Dr. Cole Abaius

Summit Reinvigorates Weitz Into Making More Films

Dr. Cole Abaius — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:05:15 +0000

Two weeks ago, I got to talk with Melissa Rosenberg, the screenwriter beyond Twilight and New Moon who had a lot of positive things to say about Summit and the way they do business. Apparently they make movies instead of talk about making them, give their talent a lot of room to grow, and offer freedoms that most other studios don’t. Which probably explains why they are growing (even if most of that growth comes on the backs of a brooding vampire and his anti-feminist love interest).

But Neil Miller will be glad to know that Chris Weitz, director of New Moon, has decided not to quit filmmaking and instead, according to Variety, will be making more movies after his next with Summit.

In that next project, he’ll be tackling the story of an immigrant worker trying to raise a son with Gardner.

The money quote here:

There are no werewolves or vampires, just a Mexican gardener in Los Angeles,” Weitz said.

We reported last week that Weitz would be doing the project, but apparently he’s claiming he won’t be leaving the directing chair even after finishing this next flick. That should be great news for anyone who thought he was smug for wanting to quit.

Of course, Weitz’s frustrations with the industry stemmed completely from the studio overhauling his vision for The Golden Compass, but it looks like a solid relationship with Summit has done the trick in convincing the director to keep working. Or it was the $140 million weekend that New Moon had. Either way – more movies from Chris Weitz!

So he’s signing on with them again and making something that sounds like the Latino version of The Pursuit of Happyness (of which, the main character’s last name was Gardner).

Yes, I love judging film concepts by rough loglines. It’s a gift.

On an un-sarcastic note, I think this is really cool. I’ve enjoyed several of Weitz’s films, and I love hearing any story that involves the amount of freedom and respect a studio gives to a filmmaker. It looks and sounds like Summit is doing something right over there.

What do you think?

Fringe Star Defends Us Against ‘UFO’

Dr. Cole Abaius — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 05:46:46 +0000

I’ve never seen “Fringe,” so I have to assume that it’s a science fiction show about a few teenagers working out their relationship problems, sneaking into each other’s bedrooms and pondering deep, deep thoughts out on the local lake.

Now, Joshua Jackson will be attempting to build a film career off of his television career on said show.

What’s that you say? He’s already done this once before? Good to know.

Also good to know is that Variety is reporting that the star has signed on to play the lead in the film adaptation of a cult hit 1970s British television show (you can see why Hollywood is clamoring for it). This raises two questions:

Can an actor jump to movies, fail, jump back to television, and then jump back into movies and succeed?
Where the hell is our big screen “Red Dwarf” movie?

The second is clearly the more important, but UFO will be hear sooner, and it will be directed by Matthew Gratzner – a first-time solo director with seasoned experience in the visual fx department. His resume is miles deep with everything from League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to Iron Man to Men In Black.

Speaking of which, the plot sounds eerily similar….Jackson will be playing Paul Foster, a pilot who joins an underground group hidden (you know) underground, fighting an alien race that keeps stealing humans.

So all around it sounds like a return to the 1990s. And the 1970s. And where is my damned Red Dwarf movie?

What do you think, friends?

Reject Radio: Episode 27: Good Times Had By None

Dr. Cole Abaius — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 05:19:33 +0000

Brought to you by: Phoning It In – That’s what we’re going to be doing.

This week, on a very special episode of Reject Radio, we finally utilize the internet to do the show, special guest Kevin Carr can’t stop talking about menstrual blood, and we do our impression of 1930s British Robert Redford.

We do it all for you.

We also manage to review The Blind Side and New MoonOMG.

Listen Here:

Download This Episode

On This Week’s Show:

Segment 1: Ripped From the Headlines [0:00 - 33:00ish]

There Was No News This Week, so We Talk About Al Gore
And NBC’s Blatant Enviro-Themed Thursday
All the Other News Involves How Many People Camped Out for New Moon
And Idris Elba Just Got Cast in Thor as Hilmdall Heimdall, the Man Who Invented the Heimlich Maneuver
In the Lollipop Forest
Also, The American Gladiators Movie Hired a Writer
Neil Is Dead Get Over It Trailer Round Up: Round Two for Clash of the Titans

Segment 2: Reviews [33:00 - 62:0oish]

The Blind Side
Twilight Saga: New Moon [Neil's review]

Segment 3: The World Famous Third Segment [62:00 - Fin]

Our Favorite Vampire Sports Movies That We Just Made Up: Admit it. You’d go see Million Dollar Rabies.
Dr. Abaius’s Totally Accurate Box Office Guesses: Who took the top spot this week?
Go Eat Turkey. We’ll See You in Two Weeks.

Reject Radio Airs Live Sunday Nights at 10p EST / 7p PST

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Call Reject Radio: (512) 212-1301
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Old Ass Movies: White Christmas

Dr. Cole Abaius — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 21:03:59 +0000

Every Sunday, Film School Rejects presents a film that was made before you were born and tells you why you should like it. This week, Old Ass Movies presents:

White Christmas (1954)

While walking through a major store the other day, I noticed that all of their Christmas gear had already been broken out, and I felt that that sent a central message to shoppers that Thanksgiving is easily overlooked. The hell with Thanksgiving. Bring on Christmas.

I’ve decided to join in the exclusionary spirit, completely bypassing Thanksgiving (as if my entries seem themed in the first place), and go straight to the source of holiday cheer that is the only holiday that can leave the streets and highways of Los Angeles empty.

And what better way than to spotlight White Christmas?

I recognize that for some modern audiences, this film will seem completely dated. It’s one of those films that was birthed from the stage show, from Vaudeville, and stands halfway between the musical genre (where people just burst out into song randomly) and a film genre where entertainers use real stages and real performances within the narrative to deliver musical numbers aside the usual plot progression.

Bing Crosby teams with Danny Kaye as Bob Wallace and Phil Davis – two Army veterans and entertainers who decide they want to put on a huge show for their former mentor and CO, Major General Thomas Waverly (Dean Jagger). Of course, this is only after their main plan to sneak away from work responsibilities with the gorgeous Haynes Sisters (Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen as Betty and Judy) turns sour due to a noticeable lack of snow in scenic Vermont. That lack has kept away the tourism trade that Waverly now depends on as an inn owner, so the huge show turns into a benefit not only for old time’s sake but for the future of the business as well.

Like I said, I can understand why it would seem dated, but the chemistry between Crosby and Kaye should resonate with any audience. Over fifty years later, we still have a huge number of films released every year that attempt to capture the buddy comedy spirit that these two men embodied here (and where Crosby and Hope helped pioneer in their Road To movies). You can see the roots of films like I Love You, Man and The Hangover buried deep in a movie like this. Crosby and Kaye are an odd couple, one free-spirited and reckless, the other refined and serious with a good sense of humor. Both are trying pretty hard to make romance work with two beautiful ladies. Both wear comically large santa hats in the finale.

And that’s really the entire point and an argument that modern audiences are already used to hearing. There are some serious issues with the movie – no depth, random placement of musical numbers, a nearly non-existent plot that gets stretched out. However, the movie is still wildly entertaining. To quote half of the commenters for Neil’s Transformers 2 review, “They weren’t trying to make Hamlet here.” [Spelling corrected]

It’s a fun movie that will probably wash right out of your memory as quickly as new fallen snow, but with some attractive people oozing charisma and performing some great Irving Berlin music while carrying out a funny, heartfelt task, the movie remains a fantastic entry into the holiday library.

And for film buffs who care about this sort of thing, White Christmas is the first film to ever use VistaVision – one of the original Hi-Def 35mm variants. I know, I know. It’s no Cinerama. But it was still game changing.

I grew up watching this movie with my mother, and it became a sort of tradition during the holidays. Although, I admit that I had trouble relating to it considering it had never snowed growing up on the beaches of sunny Texas. Still, White Christmas lies in that realm of filmmaking that won’t challenge the audience at all, won’t make them think, won’t display any greater human truths, but is guaranteed to put a smile on your face. It’s better than Thanksgiving, and if you really want an interesting afternoon, double feature it with the original Black Christmas.

Discuss: Would You Go On Another ‘Vacation’ With Chevy Chase?

Dr. Cole Abaius — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:45:04 +0000

Sometimes I feel like I’m just getting back from Wally World. I’m tired, irritable, and there’s an unseasonably high urine count in my sandwiches. But with the news that Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo are teaming up for a Superbowl commercial, I have to wonder if we should really be saving up for a real family vacation.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Superbowl commercials because 1) they are a colossal let down and 2) I’m usually watching the Puppy Bowl instead (after the NFC championship, don’t we sort of already know who’s going to win the Superbowl?), but I would much rather see that dynamic duo hit the big screen again.

I know I’m usually pretty negative toward the lack of creativity that this decade will be marred by, but if we’re in for a penny, why not be in for a pound? Let’s just sequelize everything. All of it.

Some possible downsides to a National Lampoon’s Vacation sequel in the here and now:

National Lampoon, like the magazine that spawned it, has become one of the least funny producers of The Funny around.
With John Hughes gone, who could possibly write it?
Year One

Some urine-soaked food for thought.

What do you think?

Exclusive: ‘New Moon’ Screenwriter Talks Adapting Empty Pages and ‘Eclipse’ Additions

Dr. Cole Abaius — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:38:45 +0000

I realize that not many in our core audience will be shouting Oh Em Gee whenever they see even the slightest bit of Twilight: New Moon news, but I think that most of our core audience (that means you, Darnell) loves the profess of filmmaking. You love the smell of color correction chemicals in the morning and the weight of an apple box in your arms. Or you just love that moment where you look up and a once-empty page is completely filled. With shit that you’re going to edit anyway. But the point stands.

Melissa Rosenberg is a screenwriter who straddles more two worlds in more than one way. The first is obvious: she writes heavily for both television and film. The second is less obvious: she has written three Twilight films (which seem to gain ire from certain sects of fanboys) and she writes for “Dexter” (which seems to get excited squeals from the same sects).

I was lucky enough to get her perspective on writing someone else’s story, the dream of writing, and falling in love with a guy in an L. Ron Hubbard costume.

As usual, I’m in bold.

We were just talking about going home for the holidays.

Where are you from originally?

Corpus Christi, Texas, but now I’m holed up in Austin.

I’m very fond of Austin, and my husband, ["Weeds" writer] Lev Spiro, did his graduate work in Austin for five years. His friends are sort of an Austin circle. In fact we met at an Austin Halloween party. We were out in L.A., and you know, all the Austin people together…

What were you dressed up as?

Well, I’d actually dressed up the week before as Liza Minnelli from Cabaret, but he was L. Ron Hubbard, and he had this volcano on his head that actually erupted when you lit it, and it was quite clever. He was handing out money.

Is that what did it for you?

Yeah, pretty much. [Laughs]

[Laughs] True love. And speaking of that, would you mind getting started by telling me a little bit about your philosophy of adapting someone else’s work?

Well, I’m sure it depends on whose work you’re adapting. With Stephanie [Meyer]’s work, my philosophy was to stay as true to the book as I could. But that doesn’t mean staying true to every scene and every line of dialog. Obviously one can’t do that. I think in some cases of people adapting books, they use it as a jumping off place. An interesting concept. Let’s expand on it and do something else. When approaching this particular adaptation, it was very much about adapting this book and bringing this book to the screen, and staying true to the emotional arc, the emotional journies of the characters.

Was there an urge to stay true to the book for the fans?

For me, honestly, I was fairly unaware of the fanbase. It was really – the book itself lent itself to adaptation. Stephanie has created such a rich mythology and such rich characters that I was compelled by the story and wanted to bring that story to the screen. I didn’t really see a need to go off the path of that. I loved the story. Earlier, you know, the galleys of the book had been optioned by Paramount before it was in print, and they had a different philosophy for this book and used it as a launching pad for a different story. I never read that script, but as Stephanie says, “It was a great script. It just had nothing to do with my book.”

Do you know what it was? You said you didn’t read it, but did you get an inclination of what they included and left out?

I know that the CIA was involved, and the character Bella was a track star or something like that. It’s so contrary to the character Stephanie created. So when Summit approached Stephanie about optioning the rights to the book after Paramount let them go, Stephanie was understandably wary. She was not particularly interested in letting them go for fear of the same thing happening. So she, in optioning the book to them, has very specific things in her contract for things that could and could not happen, and she sort of wrote a brief manifesto of things such as “No canines in the vampires should be longer than normal canines.” You know, fangs. This sort of thing.

When I heard about this manifesto, I thought, “Oh, God. Really? I’m gonna have to work within these restrictions?” I didn’t want any restrictions, ya know?

Sure.

So I read it. It’s only like a page or two, just a couple of details of what she wanted. And I thought, “Well, I wouldn’t do that anyway.” [Laughs] Because I’m interested in adapting the book. I think if I had been more interested in using it as a jumping off place that would have been more frustrating. But I had no interest in doing that, so it was just a good marriage for me.

Beyond the usual difficulties adapting something, this is the book that involves blank pages to show emotion. How do you adapt empty pages for the screen?

What I did was to show the passage of time and the lack of movement for [Bella]. That was to put her – have you seen the movie?

I haven’t gotten a chance yet. They screen it Wednesday.

Ah. Well, so, I put her – there’s a scene in which that passage of time happens, and it’s her sitting stone-still as time and seasons pass around her, and Chris [Weitz] did some really beautiful stuff visually with that. So that was my way of putting that same sense of blankness, and yet, the time is passing.

You’ve worked a lot in TV. Do you still feel young in film?

I am young in the film world. I’ve had four – when Eclipse is done – I’ll have had four movies made in a very short period of time. Sort of on a television schedule really. Typically movies take years and sometimes decades to get made, and I’ve been fortunate enough to work with Summit, and they really make movies. They’ve done all four of my movies.

I am young. I’ve worked for one feature studio; I’ve worked for one group of executives. My managers and agents keep telling me, “You gotta get out there and work with some other studios,” but I’m so happy at Summit. I’m really reluctant to go! They are such a great little studio. You hear all the horror stories about working at the major studios and development hell and your work being re-written by five or ten other people. I have no interest in that kind of career. Sounds like hell to me.

No doubt I will get lured in by some fantastic project, and hopefully it’ll be a good experience.

Is this what you wanted to do when you grew up?

I always loved writing, but I also loved performing. I was always into performing, so I think I saw myself as some sort of performer. A dancer. A musician of sorts. I had some talent, and I could have been perhaps good at any one of those things, but I was never going to be great I don’t think. I gave those up and went back to what I’d always loved to do, and not quite realized I could make a career out of it in the form of screenwriting. The next step was to move to Los Angeles, and start working for a film company. I started to get that I could marry my love of the performing arts with my love of storytelling into this one career. That’s when I went for it.

How are Twilight and “Dexter” similar?

Twilight and “Dexter” are similar in that the lead characters are both characters who are passing as humans. And are both in search of, they are studying humanity and moving toward their own humanity. They are both very much The Other. They are outsiders looking in.

And then, of course, there’s the blood.

Looking ahead to the future, are you even thinking about Eclipse at this point?

Eclipse has finished shooting.

It’s done?

It’s in post right now. I wrote New Moon, and then segued into writing Eclipse because they wanted to shoot them very, very close together. They shot New Moon and I think three months later went into production on Eclipse.

So when you say they make movies…

They make movies. Yeah.

I’m surprised. I’d checked out stories about it in post, and I guess it’s my mindset that I couldn’t believe the speed.

Well, there’s another element in that vampires aren’t supposed to age, so you have to stay on top of that one. But it’s also that you want to keep it in the zeitgeist. There’s probably a marketing angle there somehow. But for me it just worked out. I went from one to the other and without any time.

Was there anything in Eclipse that got you energized?

The triangle of the three characters is quite delicious, and a great deal of fun to write, and I was also really excited to write the finale – the battle. What I also got to do was to expand on what was in the book, things she could not have written. The books are all told intimately from Bella’s point of view – you get to see inside her head, and I think there’s a great deal of the appeal there. But what happens is that she’s only hearing about events that happen off-page. Anything that happens with the Volturi or with the evil vampires or the newborn army – she’s only hearing about it after the fact or through Alice regarding visions.

But we as filmmakers can actually go and see that and can develop little stories for those characters. I was able to develop the characters of Victoria and her lover and we could cut away to that, we could cut away to the newborn army to see what they’re up to. Those were fun scenes to write. I love that stuff.

What’s the deal with Breaking Dawn then? Are you interested in writing that?

Breaking Dawn is kind of a No Comment situation. Obviously I’d be a fool not to want to write it and complete the process. But nothing has been decided at this moment so we will see.

How the Twilight Movie Might Have Been Way, Way Different

Dr. Cole Abaius — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:16:13 +0000

I love stories about film development and the twists and turns that take it from the world of the possible into the realm of the screen. Imagining Pee Wee Herman in Ghostbusters is hilarious to me.

I didn’t like Twilight at all, but something about it remaining close to the book (or at least not a complete bastardization with the word Twilight stamped on it) makes me happy. And apparently that’s what almost happened.

I interviewed Melissa Rosenberg, the screenwriter of the first film and the upcoming New Moon, and she said that when it was in Paramount’s hands, the movie was going to be very different:

Was there an urge to stay true to the book for the fans?

It was really – the book itself lent itself to adaptation. Stephanie has created such a rich mythology and such rich characters that I was compelled by the story and wanted to bring that story to the screen. I didn’t really see a need to go off the path of that. I loved the story. Earlier, you know, the galleys of the book had been optioned by Paramount before it was in print, and they had a different philosophy for this book and used it as a launching pad for a different story. I never read that script, but as Stephanie says, ‘It was a great script. It just had nothing to do with my book.’”

When I ask her to expand, she gets the government involved:

I know that the CIA was involved, and the character Bella was a track star or something like that. It’s so contrary to the character Stephanie created.”

So instead of brooding, you get sniper teams and a popular athlete taking down school records. Maybe that would have made for a better film, but it wouldn’t have been the source material, and there’s something to be said for that – especially in a world where so many adaptations and remakes are In Name Only.

What do you think? Did you want a SWAT team?

The Stretch: Find True Love in Fight Club [A Look Back]

Dr. Cole Abaius — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:20:59 +0000

Editor’s Note: In honor of the 10-Year Anniversary of the release of Fight Club and the release of the special edition Blu-ray this week, we’ve decided to go back into the FSR archive and resurrect one of our favorite Fight Club articles of years past. In this article, Dr. Cole Abaius compares the themes of Fincher’s brutal film to those of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Trust us, this is not a joke. This article originally posted on September 22, 2008.

Perhaps the most well known love story of all time, “Romeo & Juliet” has been adapted several hundred times and has even more imitators that attempt to recreate the magical, star-crossed romance in paltry homage pieces. However, there is one film that rises above the others as the best version of “Romeo & Juliet” since “Romeo & Juliet.”

That film is David Fincher’s Fight Club.

Just go with me on this for a second. Oh, and there might just be SOME SPOILERS for the three people who haven’t seen it yet.

The Breakdown

Man hates life. Man’s Condo explodes. Man goes to live with an insanely destructive nihilist who starts an underground fighting club and creates chaos all over the city. Along the way, he engages in an unhealthy relationship with a suicidal woman that he meets at a Testicular Cancer Anonymous meeting.

The Stretch

If this doesn’t sound like “Romeo & Juliet” right off the bat, I’m not sure what does.

Jack (the narrator) obviously represents Romeo – a bored male in love with collecting cheap Swedish furniture and obeying his corporate masters. This love, like Romeo’s love for the Swedish-born Rosaline, is a shallow one, that Jack must overcome in order to know true love with his life-partner, Tyler Durden.

It’s fairly clear that Jack and Tyler’s meeting on an airplane mirrors the Balcony Scene in “R & J.” Both are elevated above ground, and in both, the speakers’ lines form a Shared Sonnet – the ideal poetic structure for discussing both love and soap.

Thus, Tyler Durden represents Juliet. The two characters share the same lust for anarchy and lute music and have never been in a fight until they find love. It’s also well known that Brad Pitt was Franco Zeffirelli’s first choice for the role of Juliet in his 1968 adaptation, but Pitt was only five years old at the time so Olivia Hussey stepped in to fill the void.

This connection also becomes obvious later in Juliet’s storyline when she shaves her head and attempts to blow up the major Credit Lendors of Verona using homemade napalm.

Bob, the lactating support group friend is the story’s Tybalt. Both were revered fighters in their prime and now serve no purpose but to agitate Jack and Romeo. Bob also dies, as Tybalt does at the hands of Romeo, as a direct result of Jack’s actions. Both deaths spur on dramatic shifts in each story – forcing previously unaligned characters to choose sides and forcing the protagonists to rethink the path they are headed down. Much like how Tybalt’s death forces Romeo into exile in Mantua, Bob’s death sparks Jack’s departure to retrace Tyler’s plane flights all over the country.

Also, Bob’s Bitch Tits represent Benvolio, the comic relief of the story. Unfortunately, a sizable monologue about Queen Mab – Bob’s Bitch Tits’ only line in the movie – was cut due to time constraints.

Perhaps the most important figure in the story, Marla Singer, represents Suicide, a common theme in “R & J.” At the beginning of Fight Club, Marla is all Jack can think about, but instead of going after her, he seeks out the foolish man-love of Tyler Durden. At the beginning of “Romeo & Juliet,” Romeo waxes dramatic about suicide after being scorned by Rosaline, but chooses to seek out true love with Juliet instead.

Ultimately, and spoilerifically, Jack ends up choosing Marla over Durden in the same way that Romeo chooses suicide when he believes his life with Juliet cannot be realized.

In another thinly veiled reference, Juliet’s decision to take a dagger to her bosom is yet another obvious homage to Bob’s Bitch Tits. In fact, Shakespeare’s ability to foresee and allude to future works of art is one of the reasons he’s considered a genius.

Jack and Tyler being the same person may seem to complicate the comparison, but, yet again, it seems obvious that the consummation scene in “Romeo & Juliet” is an almost shot for shot twin with the scene in which Jack realizes that he’s Tyler Durden. In both, two people ceremoniously join together as one in a hotel room with slightly homosexual overtones while confusing the lark for the nightingale.

If read in this light, it becomes clear that Shakespeare’s Juliet might actually be a schizophrenic hallucination that Romeo creates after diving deep into depression over Rosaline’s rejecting him. It also means that Jack represents both Romeo and Juliet as does Tyler Durden. Confused yet? Neither am I.

If all of this is the case, though, the endings don’t quite line up. Jack chooses Marla just as Juliet chooses suicide – but in a very real sense, Jack survives the end of the story despite the bullet wound in his neck (Jack’s Neck clearly represents Juliet’s Bosom). However, in my scholarly research, I found an alternate version of “Romeo & Juliet” by Shakespeare in which Juliet is jolted back to life by an earthquake and stands on the edge of a cliff, watching the Capulet and Montague estates topple to the ground while “Where is My Mind?” by The Pixies plays in the background.

The Recap

Jack is Romeo and Tyler Durden is Juliet, engaging in a disturbing “menage au four” with himself. Marla is Suicide – a dark, dangerous release from Jack’s earlier love. Bob and His Bitch Tits represent Tybalt and Benvolio respectively – both fight skillfully, doth protest too much, and are killed ironically. And the author of “Fight Club,” Chuck Palahniuk, like Shakespeare, may have never actually existed.

Even though Chuck Palahniuk and David Fincher have never admitted to it in any interviews, when the two stories’ elements are critically reviewed, it seems almost too obvious (to any intelligent film critic) the connection between Fight Club and William Shakespeare’s classic tragedy of love.

Reject Radio: Episode 26: AHOY

Dr. Cole Abaius — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 05:13:17 +0000

Brought to you by: That fire insurance you rolled your eyes at – not laughing now are you?

This week, on a very special episode of Reject Radio, we sit down with vegetarian film critic Edward Douglas from Comingsoon.net. He turned down tickets to a Metallica show in order to shoot the breeze about music, represents the Germans by sticking up for Roland Emmerich, and can’t say anything about his set visit to Clash of the Titans.

Also somehow, we end up reviewing 2012 and Pirate Radio.

Listen Here:

Download This Episode

On This Week’s Show:

Segment 1: Ripped From the Headlines [0:00 - 33:00ish]

Apparently Roland Emmerich Wants More Independence Days
Bill Pullman Might Still Be President
Would You Vote For Him?
What if it was Zombie Bill Pullman?
Thought So
MGM is For Sale, Maybe, So Pull Out Your Wallets
The Neil Miller Memorial Trailer Roundup: Clash of the Titans Will. Clash. Your. Titans.
This Becomes a Huge Discussion About Bands Scoring Films, and I’m Not Sure How
Dance Breaking in the Streets

Segment 2: Reviews [33:00 - 62:0oish]

2012 [Rob Hunter's Review]
Pirate Radio [Cole's Awesome Review]

Segment 3: The World Famous Third Segment [62:00 - Fin]

On the High Seas: When an indie film like Ink gets the spotlight from Pirate Bay, is it a tacit celebration of piracy? Is there an upside to it? Is wearing an eye patch really necessary?
Dr. Abaius’s Totally Accurate Box Office Guesses: Who took the top spot this week?
Elenore, Gee! We Think You’re Swell

Reject Radio Airs Live Sunday Nights at 10p EST / 7p PST

Watch Live at FilmSchoolRejects.com/Radio
Call Reject Radio: (512) 212-1301
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Old Ass Movies: Duck Soup

Dr. Cole Abaius — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 02:14:30 +0000

Every Sunday, Film School Rejects presents a movie that was made before you were born and tells you why you should like it. This week, Old Ass Movies presents:

Duck Soup (1933)

Duck Soup may be the funniest movie of all time. It deals with war, politics, fear, corruption – and it does so without taking any of it seriously. Not in the slightest.

But unfortunately, I really won’t be able to talk about it.

The reason for this is because the comedy is incredible experiential. Like a comic strip, the value of it can’t simply be read to a person and be expected to translate at all. I wish I could share with you each scene, but it’s something that stumbles off the screen and lands flat on its face right into a cream pie. Something you just have to see and laugh at yourself.

It is, in my humble opinion, the funniest offering from the Marx Brothers ever to be filmed. It’s also the last film they did for Paramount and the last film they did with all four of them being featured. Groucho takes top billing as usual as Rufus T. Firefly, the over-eager ruler of a failing nation called Freedonia (financed by the wealthy, easily romanced Mrs. Teasdale (Margaret Dumont). The neighboring ruler sends over the hapless spies Pinky (Harpo) and Chicolini (Chico) while Zeppo plays a dashing Lieutenant in the military.

None of this movie makes any sense at all. It pivots from scene to scene with little concern with how anything in the real world works. Ultimately, most set ups are built just to have a butt of the joke be hammered home by the outlandish absurdity of Groucho. These scenes are usually immediately followed by Harpo annoying Groucho by cutting his tie in half, answering his phone (despite never speaking) and generally running amok. It’s controlled chaos, and it works brilliantly. In the hands of lesser comedians, it would all seem random, but they infuse a preternatural likability into each character so that instead of ending up with your eyebrow raised, you end up rolling on the floor with laughter with your eyebrow raised.

First of all, Groucho gets away with saying the most offensive things to people because he’s slick, and they usually can’t understand half the words that are coming out of that rapid-fire mouth. Second of all, Harpo and Chico make a phenomenal comic duo and go through the ropes stealing a competing street vendor’s hat repeatedly (until the light it on fire) until they are tapped by the government to be top notch spies. Some would call this a satire on war and politics (especially since it’s huge fight at the end predates the great, missing pie fight scene that should have been in Dr. Strangelove) but I’m pretty sure it’s just anarchy that happens in the governmental halls. They really could have set this anywhere, but sending up the self-importance of politicians is too much a draw to refuse it.

Of course, Zeppo – the most talented of the group who could do everyone else’s parts at a moment’s notice – relegates himself to playing a dashing figure that never gets to make a joke.

Beyond the humor, Chico proves his incredible piano talent and Harpo displays some killer harp strumming. This sort of thing sounds completely foreign to a modern audience, but they work perfectly for a group that came straight out of Vaudeville. They wanted to display their comic chops, their slapstick, and their high art of music. If that doesn’t make sense to you, great. Because the whole damned film won’t make any anyway.

However, you will recognize at least one comic bit that made its way into a lot of other shows and movies – a bit where Chico pretends to be Groucho, using the doorway as a mirror and moving exactly how Groucho moves until the punch line of the site gag. It’s something that has been copied over and over again, and it all started here.

Beyond innovation, the “war” at the end of the film might be the funniest thing ever committed to celluloid. Groucho ends up in no fewer than 7 different costumes that seem to materialize at random (from the Civil War era to Boy Scout uniforms to Coonskin caps). In college, I watched this film maybe 100 times or so, and for some reason, my friends James and Aaron and I could never finish it because we would lose our minds during a portion of the fight where Groucho gets his head stuck in a large jar. He screams out, they try to pry it off of him, and the scene cuts away to more fighting. When the shot jumps back, someone’s drawn Groucho’s face on the outside of the jar as a quick, easy solution.

For some reason, this makes me lose it every time.

But like I said, I can’t explain it to you. It’s just something you have to see for yourself.

‘Ink’ Producer Responds to Piracy

Dr. Cole Abaius — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 06:42:23 +0000

A month ago, a little film called Paranormal Activity muscled its way into the marketplace powered partly by the people and mostly by the giant mountain of Paramount. As much as it was touted as a the demands of the masses, it was ultimately a pretend democratic movement.

Almost a year ago, I received an email not unlike the usual random shots in the dark we get – arrows let loose against the blinding sun that a filmmaker or independent producer lets fly and then crosses their fingers hoping they hit the target. The email I received was from a husband and wife team of filmmakers who sent a trailer that made me lose my mind. So they sent me the movie, and I loved it. They then spent the entirety of 2009 bleeding themselves dry to either get noticed by the establishment or to release the movie on their own, city by city.

A week ago, that film was one of the most pirated films in the world and, subsequently, a truly independent film with zero studio ties jumped to #16 on IMDB. It was a real democratic movement.

I spoke with Kiowa Winans, the producer of Ink the day it happened, and what she had to offer was something far more nuanced than the “championing of piracy” meme that seems to be spreading like wildfire. After all, this is a complex situation – one that both helps and hurts – and Winans is more aware of that than anyone.

“We’re struggling filmmakers. You’re not ripping off the major studios,” she says to the initial question of how she feels about the piracy. They own 100% of the film, have done all the distribution themselves, paid for all the DVD and Blu-ray copies, so when people steal the film, they are stealing directly from the filmmakers. In this case, they seem fairly complicit.

Since the film is available through Netflix, Blockbuster and through several independent rental stores, it would seem like the filmmakers aren’t the only ones with something at stake, but when I bring that up, Winans informs me that Netflix doubled the amount of their orders on the day of the piracy and the resulting news blitz. The film was stolen, but it created an audience that wasn’t previously there. An audience that ended up legally attaining the movie and making more money for Netflix.

This seems like a tacit celebration of illegal downloading. But Winans dug deeper and gave their official stance:

It’s been astounding, but as indie filmmakers, as studio filmmakers, as any filmmakers we need to know there’s a financial model that works. If we’re unable to pay back our investors on Ink, we can’t go on. If the exposure equates to dollars, we’re gold. If these users only see it on bit torrent and don’t pay, we’re not.”

She then went on to say that it’s clear that the number of people illegally downloading is not balancing out with the few that have gone on to donate to them or buy the film outright. So it’s helping them in one way (exposure) and not helping them in another (money). Sadly, it’s in the way that really matters where people who want something for free are not doing filmmakers any favors.

Then, I bring up Rhett Reese, the co-writer/co-producer of Zombieland who quickly hinted that piracy was going to hurt the chances of seeing a sequel to the hit. Winans was empathetic to his position, saying, “I feel the worst for guys like Rhett,” and claiming that piracy is destroying the incentive for people trying to make a living in filmmaking from being able to do so. “People who think they are Robin Hood are wrong,” she said.

And she’s right. Believing that piracy is stealing from the already-thickly-lined pockets of Fat Cat executives is naive. It’s people like Reese, who are within the studio system but who have to stay on the grind to maintain their career trajectory, who deliver the content that get hurt most by piracy.

Reese went online today to expand on that idea:

No, I don’t believe that 1 download = 1 lost ticket sale or 1 lost DVD sale. Certainly, there are many people who both contribute to a movie’s legitimate B.O. and also download the movie… including, it turns out, the people I singled out on Twitter. There are also many people who download movies who would never pay to see those same movies in any format regardless. But I do believe that there is a significant, non-trivial population of people who might have (in an ideal world with no piracy) paid to see Zombieland, either in theaters or on DVD, but instead chose to watch it for free, because it was easy and didn’t cost them anything.

No, I don’t subscribe to the Robin Hood argument, which claims that rich, greedy Hollywood studios/actors/writers/etc. have enough $ and don’t need more. Nor do I subscribe to the argument that examines positive correlations between downloads and box office and concludes that popularity in the one (downloads) is somehow causing the popularity in the other (box office). Correlation does not imply causality.

Although he used the awesome online handle Super-Grover, Reese didn’t exactly explain how piracy would hurt their chances for a sequel, but extrapolating the logic isn’t all that difficult. Studios make money on the back end. They want a ton of people there opening weekend, but they really aim for the sales of DVDs and Blu-rays. If the studio believes they can’t make the money they want because of piracy, they might see fit not to make the movie at all.

On the other side of the argument is the proof of profitability that seems to have escaped those in the system, at least when it comes to Ink. Winans saw the piracy as unfortunate on face, but recognized the significance of what it meant and ultimately disagreed with Reese’s position on correlation.

“We’ve spent the past 10 months hearing ‘we can’t advertise your movie, it’s too weird, there’s no audience for it,’ from Hollywood. The activity on the torrent sites, the 400,000 that downloaded it has unequivocally proved there’s a massive audience for it,” Winans said.

It’s hard to say whether that’s true or not. It’s impossible to know whether downloads would translate to an audience – the very reason why piracy is such a hazy topic in the first place. One side argues that they are losing money, another argues that they never had that money to begin with because pirates weren’t going to pay in the first place. Unfortunately, there’s no dependable data on the issue so the arguments on both sides are speculative.

But even Winans doesn’t buy into the correlation completely. “I don’t see it as dollars lost. I see it as fans gained.”

And maybe that’s the entire point. For the big studio pictures, there is no upside to piracy. It’s cut and dry. How harmful it is should be up for discussion, but there’s no doubt that it is, in fact, harmful. But for filmmakers like the Winanses who have made a movie that seems to resonate with an audience that Hollywood never wanted to give them, piracy might not be all bad. It might not be good – considering that it hasn’t given the filmmakers any measurable money – but it might not be all bad. This is a question that most (including myself) don’t even want to consider. In a perfect world, stealing is wrong and filmmakers should be treated with respect. But now we have a very real example of filmmakers who are comfortable with their flick being stolen, a rental outlet who has made more money because of it, and a greater audience for a movie.

However, it’s my personal argument that it’s not the piracy that’s raised the profile for Ink. It’s easy to point to it as proof, but it’s certainly not the true cause. What is, is the blood sweat and tears that have gone into a two-person release team taking their film from city to city on their own, getting the word out, and filling theaters from word of mouth. I doubt that anyone would have pirated the film in the first place had they not read about it or seen the strong reviews coming from websites or from the recommendation of friends who got lucky enough to see it on the big screen. So if indie filmmakers are looking for an easy new marketing tool, I think they are out of luck.

Perhaps this is why even Winans doesn’t blindly celebrate piracy. She has the greatest reason to, but she sees the forest for the trees. It’s nice to see a certain brand of success, I’m sure, but as we’re ending our conversation, she raises an excellent question that applies not only to Ink, but to the rest of the film community.

“Now that we’re here, how do we keep going?”

Review: Pirate Radio

Dr. Cole Abaius — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:11:26 +0000

If you know me personally, or read anything I write, you know that I worship the 1960s and the music of the time. I grew up behind the seat belt of my dad’s Chevy Silverado, driving around town with the Oldies station blaring out songs about Brown Sugar tasting so good, My Guitar Gently weeping, and People Trying to put down my father’s generation. I fell in love with grinding guitars, amps that never worked quite right, and the homemade sound of just trying to be louder and more soulful than the guys who were just on stage.

As if it were really hard to impress me when a soundtrack includes some of the coolest Rock ‘n’ Roll of the mid-60s, Pirate Radio (aka The Boat That Rocked) goes far beyond the Whiter Shade of Pale in order to build an irreverent story that captures the (romanticized) spirit of the time and become one of the funniest comedies of the year.

With Britain still refusing to play Rock on the airwaves, the explosion of American and British bands finds a home out at sea where free-spirited jockeys spread the peace, love, sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.

It’s difficult to talk about the film without just doing an overview of the characters because each and every one fits together like a puzzle piece coming together to form a very fuzzy image. There’s The Count (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), the lone American who seems like an optimistic cowboy version of Hoffman’s character back in Almost Famous; Doctor Dave (Nick Frost), the big and beautiful sex-obsessed prankster; Quentin (Bill Nighy), the calmly insane captain and business man behind the whole endeavor; Simon (Chris O’Dowd), the unsure puppy dog looking for true love; Young Carl (Tom Sturridge), who’s sent to the ship in a foolish attempt to set him on the straight and narrow; Thick Kevin (Tom Brooke), who is not smart; Felicity (Katherine Parkinson), the sweet, lone woman who we’re constantly reminded is a lesbian; Midnight Mark (Tom Wisdom), the sexiest man who barely says anything even on the air; Bob (Ralph Brown), the Deadhead, bearded wastoid; and Gavin (Rhys Ifans) the savior of them all as the most famous DJ at the time. Not to mention a few side characters on the boat that deliver the news or run the equipment. And the slew of girls that are delivered by ferry bi-monthly.

That list long enough? Luckily, writer/director Richard Curtis tosses them all in a room together to create the sort of frenetic, Animal House-esque energy of people truly not giving a shit. They get their jobs done because they are in love with music, and their down time is spent working out differences large and small with childish solutions mixed with some genuine compassion. Of course, they broadcast it all as a sort of proto-reality show where a nation of devoted listeners jam out all night and live vicariously on a ship of fools – experiencing the sex and fun while riding the radio waves.

To put it simply: this film is a hell of a lot of fun.

And, in a year that hasn’t had a ton of great comedies (except a few), it’s a welcome change of pace that really hits the laugh lines hard, refusing to give into dramatics even while disaster is striking.

In fact, the buzzkill moments that could have been involve Sir Alistair Dormandy (Kenneth Branagh), the MP who is trying to outlaw the pirates throughout the entire film. He’s a polished, mustache-ringing Snidely Whiplash of government who is played for laughs and finds himself at the butt-end of the joke in almost every scene. Especially when he’s getting the upper hand. The fact that his scenes are some of the funniest in the movie despite the noted lack of chaos in them is a testament to Curtis creating a character that is just a few inches deeper than a cliche – a man who we can sympathize with mildly, but hate with the flippant hand wave of apathy. He’s not a villain so much as someone you really just want to piss off so we can have our music.

The film is perfectly balanced – one story about a man threatening to kill fun, and the story those scenes cut to where a group of rebels live it up on a boat. There’s also love, family issues, and a certain amount of coming-of-age (exactly the kinds that you’d expect from Richard Curtis, actually), and they all fill in the gaps that otherwise would have sunk the ship as a meaningless display of frivolity without an anchor. Luckily, Curtis has made a kind of movie that hasn’t been seen in a long time – a film that is happy to build serious and sweet moments, and equally happy to knock them right off the pedestal in a clever way. It’s called comedy, and it’s nice to have it back.

If there is a rough patch, it’s that some of the sequences don’t quite gel in context with one another. At least, not without really digging into the mindset of free love and truly living care free. It’s granted some leeway for solving hard problems with a wink and smile, but Curtis does get away with too much of it in one or two sections that almost seem unnecessary.

Despite the cast being overstuffed, everyone works together, sharing the spotlight and laugh lines in equal measure. There are no punchline hogs here, no stars attempting to out-scenery-chew, no dominant figures. Several characters are given more to work with, but ultimately, some of the funniest stuff come from characters I had difficulty remembering the names for. People with only 10 lines or so.

Over all, the film is undeniably hilarious. It’s dry, but not inaccessible, with a story that’s only heartfelt when it has to be, a cast that’s brilliant when they need to be, and a writer/director that guides the whole thing toward side-splitting success.

Not to mention ear-drum-splitting success.

The Upside: Great characters, great directing, great story, and a classic-style comedy. And that damned perfect soundtrack.

The Downside: A few moments that seem unnecessary, and a few dramatic solutions that don’t perfectly fly.

On the Side: Jack Davenport plays a man called Twatt in it, and apparently Dormandy’s secretary was originally meant to be called Ms. Clit.

Emmerich Wants to Celebrate ‘Independence Day’ Again. And Again.

Dr. Cole Abaius — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 05:00:58 +0000

After watching 2012 the other day, which feels like it should have been called Independence Day, 2012, I can’t say I’m thrilled to hear Roland Emmerich discuss a fervor for not only making a sequel, but making two for the film that really vaulted him into the great beyond of filmmaking.

Yeah, yeah, Stargate was awesome, too.

According to the MTV Movies Blog, Emmerich really wants to roll the dice on more ID movies.

The money quote here:

What we want to do in the next – it’s actually two movies – we want to do a bigger arc,” he explained. “Independence Day was always like the king who leads his troops into battle against an evil force, and that stays like that.”

So we’d need Big Willy back. Maybe see what Jeff Goldblum has going on these days. And we’d need Roland Emmerich’s record to keep spinning, his car to keep idling, and his directing to go back to the well that he’s been not-so-unobviously trying to get back to with his recent films. At least he’s being more open about it now.

The question is, could Will Smith take time off from making a sequel to a film that came out in 1997 (Men In Black) to make a sequel to a film that came out in 1996?

What do you think?

‘Monopoly’ Will Be Like Alice in Capitalism-Land

Dr. Cole Abaius — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:29:12 +0000

Editor’s Note: This article contains some plot details, so don’t read it if you don’t wanna know ‘em.

I admit that I, too, scoffed at the idea of a Monopoly movie. I still do. It’s not just the cold I’ve been trying to beat for a few days.

Why do I scoff? Because the idea seems ridiculous. We all know it’s ridiculous. Even with Ridley Scott directing, we know the central concept is absurd. We also know that (as John Gholson from Cinematical brought up in this week’s Reject Radio), it’s one more step toward all-out commercials being paraded as films.

I don’t mean to sound overly dramatic or doomsday-like about the whole thing, especially when a bright, shiny, silver lining has just been added to the entire affair.

The Los Angeles Times did an interview with the man behind the story, Frank Beddor, who admitted that he hit upon it coming out of an experience writing a book that fictionalizes (even further) the characters from “Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass.” Essentially, he wanted to create a fantasy world that a human being suddenly finds himself a part of.

The Monopoly money quote here:

I created a comedic, lovable loser who lives in Manhattan and works at a real estate company and he’s not very good at his job but he’s great at playing Monopoly. And the world record for playing is 70 straight days – over 1,600 hours – and he wanted to try to convince his friends to help him break that world record. They think he is crazy. They kid him about this girl and they’re playing the game and there’s this big fight. And he’s holding a Chance card and after they’ve left he says, ‘Damn, I wanted to use that Chance card,’ and he throws it down. He falls asleep and then he wakes up in the morning and he’s holding the Chance card, and he thinks, ‘That’s odd.’”

What follows is the main character waking up to find his funds have been replaced by Monopoly money in the world of Monopoly City and he will have to face off against the evil Parker Brothers. Beddor also claimed that a ton of sight-gags were written in to utilize the icons of the board game like that damned shoe everyone always wants to be.

This sounds frightening to me.

Actually, to be fair, it sounds like a children’s movie that could be a campy sort of fun and have a schmaltzy gloss of studio playing-it-safe-ism that isn’t a total nightmare.

But man does it sound hokey. It sounds like a stock story where a guy who can’t be cool in this world finds success in a fantasy world where he moves from reference point to reference point so that people can yell, “I recognize that from the game!” Who wants to bet he’ll end up going to jail? Who wants to bet he’ll somehow stumble upon some lucky free parking? Who wants to bet he’ll get peed on by a Scottie dog?

I’m gonna love this thing in spite of myself, aren’t I?

Aren’t I?

Anyone Want to Buy MGM?

Dr. Cole Abaius — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:22:06 +0000

While driving around your neighborhood in two weeks or so, you might be drawn in by the allure of a poster board sign pointing you in the direction of a nearby garage sale where you can get a bag of clothes for $1, a VHS of Zeus and Roxanne for $1, and MGM for a negotiable price.

According to Variety and their sources, MGM might be sold to the highest bidder in the coming weeks. Not only that – MGM, United Artists and the copyright on Leo the Lion (the MGM logo that you only care about when trying to sync up “Dark Side of the Moon”) might be sold separately.

Essentially what’s on the market is the library controlled by MGM which consists of many of their titles post-1986 (Ted Turner owns the library from years prior), most of the post-1952 United Artist catalog, post-1981 Orion Pictures titles, and several minor catalogs. So, yes, someone else might be controlling whether we get that Zeus and Roxanne Blu-ray we’ve been clamoring for.

Of course nothing in the business world is set in stone, the company could still sell at a negotiated price or declare bankruptcy.

I’m hoping they actually auction off the titles in the library one by one. That way I have a chance of owning, oh I don’t know, Zeus and Roxanne, for example.

Do you have the cash? We could split it.

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