In the month of July, I take a look at films released in my very favorite film stock and aspect ratio: black & white in anamorphic. Unless they’re being financed with credit cards, movies are rarely shot like this anymore because they’re impossible to sell to television. Yet these dreams sneak onto Turner Classic Movies every now and again …

Manhattan (1979)
Directed by Woody Allen
Written by Woody Allen & Marshall Brickman
Produced by Charles H. Joffe
96 minutes

Of the 39 feature films he’s directed and written so far, neither the Oscar winning Best Picture Annie Hall nor the handful of other treasures in the Woody Allen vault have the timeless magnificence of Manhattan. Allen discussed the idea of shooting a movie in anamorphic widescreen with cinematographer Gordon Willis on the set of Interiors in 1977. Their ambition was to make a movie that captured an intimacy typically blown away by epic framing and since the story would take place in New York, use black & white film stock to express the vibe of the city. Allen — who grew up in Brooklyn and was introduced to Manhattan via Hollywood movies – began coming up with scenes as he listened to Michael Tilson Thomas recordings of George Gershwin. He then wrote a script with Marshall Brickman.

Manhattan is a valentine for the other 364 days on the calendar. Allen’s intent was to make a picture more serious than Annie Hall but funnier than Interiors, “a serious picture that had laughs in it”. Manhattan fits that bill better than just about any movie you could name. Allen’s one-liners aren’t the knee slappers they may have once been, but the film’s visual and symphonic splendor are as enthralling as they ever were. Expressing the resplendence of a city as it existed mostly in his own dreams, Manhattan volleys between Allen’s contention that we’re being too tough on ourselves, while in the moments that matter most, not being nearly tough enough. Diane Keaton and Mariel Hemingway — far sexier in other roles — have never seemed more beautiful than they are here, while Woody gives his most nuanced performance.

Four friends gather for supper at Elaine’s. Isaac Davis (Woody Allen) is a 42-year-old writer working on a book set in the city he adores. His 17-year-old girlfriend Tracy (Mariel Hemingway) has more intelligence and maturity than Isaac’s ego will give her credit for. His best friend Yale (Michael Murphy) is married to Emily (Anne Byrne) but leaving the restaurant, reveals to Isaac that he’s become involved with another woman. Isaac is unable to offer much relationship advice as his second ex-wife Jill (Meryl Streep) has taken up with a woman and is publishing a tell-all memoir about their marriage, or as she calls it, “an honest account of our breakup.” While Tracy asserts that she’s in love with Isaac, he advises the teenager to view their relationship as little more than “a detour on the highway of life.”

Visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Isaac and Tracy run into Yale and his mistress: journalist and neurotic dingbat Mary Wilkie (Diane Keaton). She offends Isaac by disparaging all of his cultural heroes — from Heinrich Boll to Ingmar Bergman — in under a minute. Nervous about his future once he quits a job writing for a hip sketch TV show, Isaac bumps into Mary at a benefit for the Museum of Modern Art and ends up wandering Manhattan with her until sunrise. Yale develops a guilty conscience after breaking off his affair and when Isaac maintains that he’s not serious about Tracy, compels his friend to give Mary a call. Isaac and Mary leap right into a relationship, which ends up being undermined when Mary confesses she still has feelings for Yale. Realizing he made a mistake by dumping Tracy, Isaac sets out to make things right.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average 16,781 users: 92% for Manhattan

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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In the month of July, I take a look at films released in my very favorite film stock and aspect ratio: black & white in anamorphic. Unless they’re being financed with credit cards, movies are rarely shot like this anymore because they’re impossible to sell to television. Yet these dreams sneak onto Turner Classic Movies every now and again …

Jules et Jim (1962)
Directed by François Truffaut
Screenplay by François Truffaut & Jean Gruault, based on the novel by Henri-Pierre Roché
Produced by François Truffaut
105 minutes

Constructed on the novelty that a woman might choose the ardor of two men — best friends at that — instead of limiting herself to one or the other, it seems appropriate that Jules et Jim still thrives as a triumph of romance over reason. This jewel of the French New Wave probably shouldn’t continue to resonate as deeply as it does, but its sensual pleasures still intoxicate. Mixing a cinematic cocktail of wisdom and exuberance, a first novel by 73-year-old Henri-Pierre Roché was adapted to film by 28-year-old critic turned filmmaker François Truffaut, who’d been an admirer of the book’s stylish blend of refinement and simplicity. Shot on stolen locations with a small crew on a budget of $280,000, the film was a box office smash in France and critically adored in the U.S., where Janus Films handled distribution.

By 1977, Truffaut admitted that Jules et Jim had become overrated, feeling his adaptation with writing partner Jean Gruault was too decorative and perhaps not brutally honest enough. Shot by Raoul Coutard in black & white “Franscope” — which was essentially Fox’s CinemaScope process, cribbed by filmmakers in Europe and renamed to avoid litigation — the film balances a sad, yearning quality in its rural scenes while moving at locomotive speed through ideas, whims and revelations in Paris. Jeanne Moreau is not my idea of Helen of Troy, but the mystique of Jules et Jim is that she represents any woman whose desires are dictated by the wind, which makes her desirable. The French dialogue moves so rapidly that more than one viewing may be mandated before the full breadth of the film’s pleasures take effect.

In Paris of 1912, a German named Jules (Oscar Werner) meets a fellow writer, a Frenchman named Jim (Henri Serre). Exchanging language and culture and bonding over a shared indifference toward money, the men becomes inseparable. Despite his vast acquaintances with ladies about town, Jim is unable to set his friend up with a woman; a nocturnal encounter with a girl (Marie Dubois) they rescue on the street is over for Jules by morning. His luck changes when Jules arranges dinner with Jim and three women his cousin studied with in Munich: one German, one Dutch, one French. The latter is named Catherine (Jeanne Moreau) and her elegant features remind the men of a statue they were just marveling over. After dating for a month, Jules introduces Catherine to Jim and the trio frolics across Paris.

During a holiday to the beach, Jules asks Catherine to marry him. She contends that she’s known more men than he’s known women, but that a union might be amicable. Jim covets Catherine from afar and World War I divides the trio by even greater distances. After Germany’s defeat, Jim travels to a chalet that Jules and Catherine share on the Rhine with their young daughter Sabine (Sabine Haudepin). Jules reveals that despite bringing order and harmony to their household, Catherine is bored easily and has strayed in their marriage with at least three men, while a fourth suitor — a guitar player named Albert (Boris Bassiak) who is an old acquaintance of the friends — convalesces nearby. Unique in some way to each man but unable to satisfy herself with any one of them, Catherine enters into an affair with Jim with dire consequences for all involved.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 5,805 users: 89% for Jules et Jim

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

What do you say?

Amazing Stories 1.12: Vanessa In the Garden (1985)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Written by Steven Spielberg
Produced by David E. Vogel
24 minutes 40 seconds

After directing four of the biggest box office successes of all time within a 10-year time frame, Steven Spielberg was a brand name that NBC felt confident committing 44 half-hours of prime time to with an anthology TV series titled Amazing Stories. Unlike The Twilight Zone — which CBS resurrected in 1985 — Spielberg intended his tales to be more wondrous than weird, magical instead of macabre (Stephen King need not apply). Spielberg co-wrote and directed the first episode Ghost Train, but neither critics nor Nielsen families were very amazed and after two seasons, the pricey show (roughly $1 million per episode) was dimmed out. What was intriguing about Amazing Stories while it lasted were the directors Spielberg invited to play with him in TV Land, which in Season 1 included Peter Hyams, Joe Dante and Martin Scorsese. A filmmaker who delivered memorable results was Clint Eastwood.

Vanessa In the Garden suffers from the usual Amazing Stories ailments, offering less than the talent involved seemed capable (the best episode was the animated Family Dog directed by Brad Bird in Season 2). The premise of a grieving artist who receives inspiration from his recently deceased wife was a good enough idea, but the resulting sketch is neither eerie nor romantic, with Harvey Keitel and Sondra Locke miscast as lovers and Spielberg insisting on marooning adult characters squarely in Fantasyland. That said, Eastwood eschews the manic pace and special effects orientation most of the directors embraced for the show and turns in a leisurely paced, thoughtful and pastoral piece that channels a Merchant Ivory production into prime time. Lennie Niehaus composed the elegant musical score, while Spielberg’s mom Leah Adler made a rare cameo for the art gallery scene.

Somewhere in America of the 1920s, painter Byron Sullivan (Harvey Keitel) seems posed for major success in the art world, due to the efforts of his agent Teddy (Beau Bridges) but mostly his loyal wife and muse Vanessa (Sondra Locke), the subject of Byron’s work. At their country estate, Teddy announces that he has in fact secured an exhibition for his client and already taken commissions for half of his paintings. Bryon takes Vanessa out to lunch to celebrate, but on the carriage ride home, a bolt of lightning strikes down a tree, spooking the horse. In the crash that ensues, Vanessa is killed.

Bryon piles most of the paintings of his late wife into a bonfire, threatening his chances at an exhibition. Attempting to light a match to one last painting of his muse, the flame is mysteriously blown out. The following morning, Byron notices that Vanessa has disappeared from the painting. He then discovers her taking a stroll in the garden. When she jumps back onto canvas, Byron realizes he can restore his wife’s place by his side as long as he keeps painting her in his work. He soon has enough paintings to fill an exhibition, with a mysterious lady in black by his side.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average: Not available

Metacritic “Metascore” average: Not available

What do you say?

Idiocracy (2006)
Directed by Mike Judge
Screenplay by Mike Judge & Etan Cohen, story by Mike Judge
Produced by Mike Judge, Elysa Koplovitz
84 minutes

Should I Care?
In a case as mysterious as lightning striking twice, the long awaited follow-up from Austin based animator and filmmaker Mike Judge was wrapped in a blanket and abandoned on a church doorstep by Fox, who committed the same offense on Judge’s previous film. Like Office Space, Idiocracy is an unpolished gem whose cult status has multiplied the more moviegoers find it. Thrusting a regular Jack and Jill from the present into a future where human evolution has regressed to the point where Beavis and Butt-Head would be considered the minds of their time, Judge whips up another potent and laugh-out-loud cultural satire. Its faults are glaring, but Idiocracy is funny, smart, dumb and unnerving all at the same time. Much of its ragged charm is generated by how low Fox set the bar on this film. Considering that its ideal presentation is a living room or laptop computer — where at most you’re investing a couple of bucks and 80 minutes of your time — the studio might have even known what they were doing.

Watching Idiocracy without socks not only boosts its entertainment value, it gives the viewer the ability to pause and process the data mine of comic material hidden in family trees, TV menus and billboards. The film is embarrassingly shy of post-production value, with special effects that look more abandoned than finished, as well as narration that suggests the movie was put in the rearview mirror by all those involved as quickly as possible. Idiocracy almost qualifies as a student thesis, but if that’s the case, this is the most hilarious and intelligently sketched student thesis of all time. Gently mocking the greed and consumption depended on by corporations, Judge avoids a smug or angry tone; like Office Space, his heart lies with the common man. But underneath the sight gags and occasional toilet humor lurks an acidic satire of those further down the evolutionary ladder, too lazy, dumb or irresponsible for planned parenthood and how that — at its most ridiculous extreme — could alter the future.

So, What’s This About?
In the year 2005, Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson) is reassigned from an Army library and volunteered for “a human hibernation experiment” in which the military will revive him after one year of cryogenic sleep. Chosen due to his lack of family and how average he is, the army is unable to find a comparable female test subject and selects one from the private sector: Rita (Maya Rudolph), whose pardon for criminal charges and an arrangement with her pimp have secured her cooperation. When the army base is scuttled and replaced by a Fuddrucker’s, Joe and Rita lie dormant until the year 2505, when one of the many mountains of garbage mankind has left to accumulate crumbles. Joe crashes into the living room of Frito Pendejo (Dax Shepard), who we later learn earned his law degree at Costco. While Joe is able to understand everyone — whose English has devolved into a hybrid of hillbilly, valley girl, street slang and grunts featuring the words “ass” or “shut up” — Joe’s voice strikes those of the future as “pompous and faggy” and provokes them.

Joe discovers that in the future, water has been replaced by a sports drink called Brwando (“The Thirst Mutilator”), a dust bowl has decimated the economy and the number one movie in the country is Ass, which consists of nothing more than 90 minutes of a guy’s naked ass (“It won eight Oscars that year, including Best Screenplay”). Arrested for inability to pay his hospital bill, Joe escapes from prison by notifying a guard that he’s supposed to be getting out. His abnormally high intelligence brings Joe to the attention of President Camacho (Terry Crews), a five-time Ultimate Smackdown champion and porn superstar. Now the smartest man on earth, Joe is named Secretary of the Interior and tasked with fixing the economy in exchange for a full pardon. Employing the help of Tina and Frito, Joe figures out that irrigating crops with Brwando is the cause for the dust bowl. The practice is banned, but when his decision bankrupts Brawndo, Joe is sentenced to “rehabilitation” as the center attraction at a gigantic tractor pull.

Who Should Be Held Responsible?
Mike Judge was raised in the suburbs of Albuquerque, New Mexico. He earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from UC San Diego in 1985 and embarked on a series of dull engineering jobs. Relocating to Dallas to pursue his musical career as a bass guitar player, Judge’s love for animation led him to create a two-minute short; titled Office Space, it featured a neurotic paper pusher named Milton being tormented by his smarmy boss. Office Space was screened at Animation Celebration, which was being held that year in Dallas. Judge’s work began appearing on MTV’s Liquid Television, which launched another animated short Judge had come up with titled Beavis and Butt-Head into its own program. The mega success of the show — vilified by pundits as everything dumb about TV and praised by David Letterman, Stephen King and others as anything but — led to a hugely successful animated film released in 1996, Beavis and Butt-Head Do America.

A live action version of Office Space written and directed by Judge was ignored in theaters, building a big cult following on DVD instead. Convinced that a high concept idea was needed to go over well at the box office, Judge came back with a sci-fi comedy titled 3001. Written with a gofer turned writer on Beavis and Butt-Head named Etan Cohen, Fox agreed to bankroll Judge’s next film at a budget of roughly $30 million. Shooting commenced at Austin Studios in May 2004, with Judge and Elysa Koplovitz — former VP of MTV Films who’d worked on the Beavis and Butt-Head feature — producing under Judge’s Austin-based Ternion banner. Once 3001 went before test audiences, the lukewarm response failed to garner the financial support from Fox to properly finish the film, which was shelved. Discarded into a handful of U.S. cities in September 2006 without any promotional campaign whatsoever, the bizarre saga of Idiocracy remained a mystery until Judge broke his silence during the press junket for Extract three years later.

How’d They Do It?
Interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross in August 2009, Mike Judge confirmed that the idea for what became Idiocracy began in 1995, while he was writing Beavis and Butt-Head Do America. “I guess I was just thinking about evolution and now that there’s no predators and everybody survives — where would it go? But, so I’d written down something about this idea. And then it was in 2001, I was at Disneyland and I was waiting in line at the Alice In Wonderland ride with my daughter and somebody — or both daughters I guess — and somebody behind me had a stroller and two little kids and her and this other woman with two little kids was passing by. I guess they’d had an altercation and they just start getting in this cussing match with each other, just, you know, ‘bitch’ this. But you know, just yelling and like ‘I’ll kick you ass and I’ll’ and I was just sitting there thinking wow, the Disneyland of that was envisioned, way back in the ’50s and, to right now.”

Judge elaborated in a July 2004 interview with The Dallas Morning News, “There was an article that didn’t get a lot of attention about how the crime-rate drop corresponded to about 17 years after Roe v. Wade. The theory was that a lot of unwanted kids weren’t born who would have been coming of criminal age.” Judge admitted this debate wasn’t one that was necessarily politically correct. “It gets into eugenics. To me, it’s just like all the people on The Jerry Springer Show, who’ve knocked up, like, five girls, and then their sons knocked up five and the responsible people waited to have kids.” Judge turned to Etan Cohen, who’d spent his term at Harvard pursuing a degree in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures and writing for Beavis and Butt-Head, where Cohen started out as a summer gofer his freshman year. Upon graduation in 1997, Cohen moved to Los Angeles and landed a job on the ABC sitcom It’s Like, You Know before joining the writing staff of Judge’s award winning animated series for Fox, King of the Hill.

Etan Cohen — in a June 2006 interview with Variety — recalled, “Mike called me up and asked me to write Idiocracy – about a man who signs on for a sleep experiment and wakes up 500 years later, but a quirk in evolution has left him the smartest guy on the planet — which was insane. It was almost like film school, except Mike Judge was teaching the class.” Cohen suggested that in five centuries of devolution, the National Art Museum would have morphed into the National Fart Museum. In the world of Judge & Cohen’s script, every available space is covered with advertising — even clothing — while the Secretary of State ends each sentence with “ … brought to you by Carl’s Jr.” because he’s been well compensated. Nurses too dumb to speak diagnose patients with a console where pictures depict various ailments. Cash resembles a hillbilly version of a Master P album cover. Starbucks is still around, but has changed its name to “Starbuck’s Exotic Coffee for Men” to lure more customers.

In a September 2009 interview with Slashfilm, Judge admitted, “I realize that a lot of the things I’m doing don’t fit into the category so easily that people are comfortable with. You know, when we were writing the first draft, we’d start coming up with this stuff. And I think one of the first things that I had written, even when it was a treatment, was the billboard that said, ‘If you don’t smoke Carlton’s, Fuck You.’ Because there’s the billboard: ‘If you smoke, please try Carlton’s.’ So, when I was thinking about this idea, I thought one of the most fun things to do would be the advertising, you know? And when I moved to Austin, maybe a little before I moved to it, I had seen this sign that said, ‘Erotic Tan for Men.’ So, I was like, god, now there are tanning salons that are like, brothels or something. So, I just started thinking what if all these other places started sexualizing things, because people in advertising are always using sex to sell things. There’s already, like, ‘Sexy Scissors’ and Hooters and all of this stuff. And I thought, what if you just cut these people loose and they literally used sex to sell things.”

Judge continued, “It became really fun to write. And you know, looking back, I can see how it can look like an odd movie to come out of Fox I guess. But you know, they were pretty supportive of it up until the end. They also, they didn’t know how to give notes on something like this.” While Carlton Cigarettes and Wal-Mart did not permit their logos to be lampooned, they were the exception. “And as far as the products stuff, I remember writing it and going, ‘Oh man, there’s no way we’re going to clear all of this stuff.’ And I had a meeting with the lawyers, who were actually really cool and really liked the script. And in the Beavis & Butt-Head movie I couldn’t even have a bottle that was shaped like a Jack Daniel’s bottle. I couldn’t have, there was more, it was just ridiculous on that. But on Idiocracy, when we were talking about Starbucks, the lawyers said, ‘Well, it would help if you didn’t pick on just one company and if you did more than one.’ So, I was like okay, and that’s why there’s the whole red light district with Starbucks and there’s an H&R Block with ‘Tax Return and Relief,’ and all of that. But the other stuff, Carl Jr’s, that was all in the script, and I couldn’t believe it all cleared.”

Once Judge decided to cast Luke Wilson, he rewrote the script with the actor from Bottle Rocket and The Royal Tennenbaums in mind. “Luke is really funny. I think because he’s so good looking, casting people in Hollywood tend to want to put him in boyfriend roles. But he’s really funny. He does really good imitations. He could have been in sketch comedy.” Auditioning performers for the female lead, Judge saw Maya Rudolph and was concerned that the Saturday Night Live cast member might go over the top in a bid for laughs. Rudolph ended up winning the part. “I thought her acting was very much like real movie acting. She definitely gets the big picture. She was really fun to work with and this is her first big part in a movie.” Dax Shepard — from the MTV series Punk’d — wasn’t the physical type Judge was looking for in the part of the dim witted Frito. “I was imagining this big, heavy guy, but it wasn’t working and then Dax came in and read for it. Driving home I was thinking about how funny he was … He has no fear of the camera or of being in a movie. He lets it all hang out in a really funny way.”

With roughly $30 million in financing from Fox, what was then titled 3001 began shooting May 2004 at Austin Studios. Two still photographs emerged online and as of February, a release date of August 2005 was scheduled. Little was made public about the film, even when it finally escaped into theaters September 2006. There were no trailers, no press junket and no major ad campaign of any kind. There was no mention of Idiocracy on the Fox Movies website and if moviegoers who somehow knew about the film dialed Moviefone for show times, there was no listing for Idiocracy but for something called The Untitled Mike Judge Project. Fox opened Idiocracy in seven cities — Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles and Toronto — on a limited number of screens. Waiting to see the box office returns before expanding Idiocracy to other markets, the studio never did. Limited to 130 theaters, the new comedy from the creator of Beavis and Butt-Head and Office Space managed $444,093 in the U.S. and $51,210 internationally.

The press began speculating about what had happened. There were several theories. One was that Idiocracy was so awful that no one involved wanted to be associated with it. Mike Judge could not be reached for comment. Publicists for Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph maintained that their clients were unavailable for interviews. In August 2005, a reader giving the name “Delicious” had submitted to the website Ain’t It Cool News a review of a test screening he/she claimed to have attended several months previous. “Not only is it not funny, the acting is atrocious. I’ll give it to Mike Judge for trying something completely different for this movie, trying not to copy Office Space, but man, I can’t see this movie coming out into theatres, if not just straight to DVD.” A self-professed fan of Office Space who’d been looking forward to the screening, the scooper added, “I must also say that I wasn’t alone in the audience I was at. People sitting around us were saying things, and not mincing words, about how bad the movie was. People were actually MAD about seeing a movie that was FREE!”

Another theory was that Fox buckled under pressure from corporate sponsors. Kim Morgan — a contributor for MSN’s film blog The Hitlist — posted a rave review of Idiocracy on her blog Sunset Gun and speculated the cause of its media blackout.“No one knows for sure, but I’m thinking that attacking Starbucks, Fuddruckers, Carl’s Jr. and Costco had something to do with it. Oh yes, and Fox News, can’t forget that beacon of ‘fair and balanced’ broadcast journalism. Fittingly, this is exactly the kind of DEVO inspired treatment Idiocracy is mocking — that big business rules and there’s very little we can do about it. So, like Judge’s Beavis and Butt-head, his now classic Office Space and his TV Show King of the Hill, Idiocracy (and the predicament it fell into) is both darkly hilarious and deeply sad.” Luke Thompson — who also posted a positive review, for E! Online — told Fishbowl L.A., “It was obvious the studio killed it. Usually, movies that don’t screen for the press are promoted up the wazoo with misleading trailers, posters, etc., but this wasn’t promoted at all. It’s possible Mike Judge or somebody else pissed somebody important off.”

Still another theory was that Judge might have had a dispute with Fox over final cut. In retaliation, the studio might have slashed his post-production budget and dumped the film into theaters to fulfill their contractual obligation. Tim League, founder of Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas in Texas, supported this theory by revealing to the website Cinematical that his exhibition contract only specified Idiocracy be run for one week — two weeks is the standard for a new release — at only a 35% share for Fox, which League considered uncommonly low for what distributors typically ask for in the first two weeks of a major release. He added that in spite of requests he’d fielded from film festivals seeking permission to screen Idiocracy, Fox had apparently turned those requests down. League commented, “I’ve never seen anything like this. A studio releases a movie and then doesn’t want anyone to see it. Marketing it should be a no-brainer, with Mike Judge’s pedigree and Luke Wilson starring.”

In a chat with Chud.com in November 2006, Dax Shepard was stumped about the fate of Idiocracy. “I don’t know. There are all kinds of conspiracy theories surrounding it now, but there are a couple of issues. One is that it tested poorly, and they base all their P&A funds on how well it tests. But what they didn’t step back and think about is that the people who go see a free test screening on a Saturday night are the people being made fun of in the movie, so of course it didn’t test well. And then I think there are also issues with all the corporate attacks and Rupert [Murdoch, founder of News Corp., which owns Fox] being a very immersed guy in the corporate world, globally. That has to do something to do with it.” Shepard added, “The only perplexing thing about the Mike Judge movie is, why did they make it? The ballsy thing, in my opinion, was making the movie. The movie was the script — they knew what it was going to be. I don’t understand them making it in the first place. It doesn’t shock me that they didn’t know how to market it, but I’m shocked they made it.”

Promoting Extract on Collider.com in September 2009, Judge offered his theory on who or what killed Idiocracy. “I think it was a combination of — I don’t think anyone was out to get me — I think the combination was just kind of incompetence and just not knowing what to do with it. They tried a few ads, it didn’t look very good, and then I think what happened is they said, ‘Okay, Office Space made a lot of money on DVD. Didn’t do a lot at the box office. This is like that, what did we do wrong on Office Space? Well, we spent money promoting it. That was a waste of money because everyone found it on their own anyway, so let’s not spend anything. Let’s not even call Moviefone and give ‘em a title.’” Judge added, “So I just said, well, I’m not going to lift a finger to do any press. I don’t want to talk about it to anybody. ‘Cause I really don’t know why they’re doing this. I don’t own it. It didn’t bug me as much as it does some people because I just kind of, in a way, I ended up getting — without doing any interviews — getting a lot of press about how it didn’t get any press. So maybe it wasn’t a bad idea. I don’t think that was their plan. I don’t think it was a master plan to dump it on purpose. I mean, they did dump it.”

Where’d You Get All of This?
“Beavis Creator Sees a Funny Future and Films It” By Jane Sumner. The Dallas Morning News, 30 July 2004

“Mike Judge Is Getting Screwed (Again)” By Brian Rafferty. Esquire, June 2006

“Etan Cohen” By Steven Kotler. Variety, 22 June 2006

“Sooner or Later, Mike Judge Extracts Success” By Lisa Rosen. The Los Angeles Times, 3 September 2009

“The Mike Judge Interview” By Hunter Stephenson. Slashfilm.com, 9 September 2009

“IndieSeen: Time For Mike Judge To Go Indie” By Jette Kernion. Cinematical, 22 October 2006

“Dax Shepard Ponders Fox’s Idiocracy” By Devin Faraci. Chud.com, 15 November 2006

“Mike Judge, Finding A Comic Extract in the Office” By Terry Gross. Fresh Air, 25 August 2009

“Mike Judge talks Office Space, Idiocracy and Extract” By Steve Weintraub. Collider.com, 1 September 2009

2 Days in Paris (2007)
Written by Julie Delpy
Directed by Julie Delpy
Produced by Tempête Sous un Crâne/ Polaris Films/ 3L Filmproduktion/ Rezo Films
MPAA rating: “R for sexual content, some nudity and language”
Running time: 96 minutes

Should I Care?
As someone who vaguely admires the walking and talking travelogues Julie Delpy starred in with Ethan Hawke for director Richard Linklater — Before Sunrise (1995) and Before Sunset (2004) — it took me weeks to get around to watching Delpy’s feature film directing debut 2 Days in Paris, which on appearance, looked like a fairly flaccid copy. But what Delpy divines from a somewhat used and abused premise not only kept me entertained, but impressed the hell out of me. Unlike the Before films — or Linklater’s oeuvre following Dazed and Confused — Delpy’s relationship comedy not only maintains a coherent point of view throughout, but introduces a filmmaker with both a funny bone and balls, firing some hilarious flak at both her motherland and her adopted country in the twilight of the Bush Years.

2 Days in Paris bears one mark of a terrific movie: Delpy makes it all look easy. Plugging friends and family into roles and shooting largely at her parent’s home in Paris, there’s a handmade, organic texture that was mandated by the budget, but in a welcome surprise, the movie is also a laugh riot. Delpy has a terrific ear for the way heated conversations play out, beginning innocuously, then growing more contentious, until your taxi driver is calling you a cunt. Goldberg & Delpy have chemistry that would have been palpable in Iowa, but in Paris, their relationship is stuffed in a pressure cooker. Shot in digital high-def, 2 Days in Paris doesn’t look a penny more than it cost, but that home movie vibe enhances the edginess and unadulterated passion Delpy seems to have been after. Bravo.

So, What’s This About?
A New York couple returns from a Venetian getaway to pick up the woman’s cat and visit her family and friends in Paris before flying home. Marion (Julie Delpy) is a photographer, gutsy and open minded, qualities that have enabled her to co-exist with Jack (Adam Goldberg), an interior designer with neuroses about everything from food to mold to public transit. Barely able to comprehend French, he’s introduced to Marion’s family. Her dramatic mother (Marie Pillet) has overfed Marion’s cat, prompting fears the airline will deny the beloved pet passage in the cabin. Marion’s father (Albert Delpy) takes pleasure in keying cars that park too close to the sidewalk and uses his ribald sense of humor to make Jack uncomfortable.

Marion’s sister (Alexia Landeau) is a special education teacher who hates kids; she sides with Jack in disgust over Marion sharing nude photos of her boyfriend with the family. Jack expresses a desire to visit the Catacombs — which end up being closed — and Jim Morrison’s gravesite, even though he doesn’t really like The Doors. Whether on the sidewalk or at a party, the morose Jack endures being introduced to one amorous ex-boyfriend of Marion’s after another. Bewildered by French customs and language, he grows suspicious of his girlfriend’s fidelity. Meanwhile, Marion begins to realize how little she knows about her boyfriend of two years and questions whether she can continue to put up with his act.

Who Made It?
Julie Delpy — the only child of actors Albert Delpy and Marie Pillet — grew up in Paris, where she made her acting debut at the age of 5. She was 14 when cast in a movie (Jean-Luc Godard’s Detective) and received a César nomination for her work in Bertrand Tavernier’s Béatrice at age 18. Delpy moved to the United States in 1989 to study film and screenwriting at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She won wide acclaim for her role as a Nazi teenager in Europa Europa (1990) and went on to star in White (1994) and Before Sunrise (1995). After graduating college in 1993, Delpy moved to Los Angeles and between acting jobs, wrote and directed three short films over the next decade. She earned an Oscar nomination for co-writing Before Sunset (2004) with Richard Linklater & Ethan Hawke.

Delpy dubbed her production company Tempête Sous un Crâne, wrote several unproduced scripts over the years and had ideas for many more. One was about a French/American couple and their 48-hour nightmare visit to Paris. A producer named Christophe Mazodier — who Delpy was working with on a movie that never came together — liked the idea. With his French based Polaris Films supporting her, Delpy was finally able to land financing from Germany’s 3L Filmproduktion and France’s Rezo Films, who agreed to split the roughly $2.5 million budget for Delpy to make her feature film directing debut. Family and friends comprised much of the cast and 2 Days in Paris was such a crowd pleaser at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2007 that it quickly sold to exhibitors in over 40 territories.

How’d They Do It?
Julie Delpy hit upon the idea for what became her feature film directing debut some time before she helped author Before Sunset. “I thought about it for the first time in 2001, and I thought it would be funny to have a movie about a relationship over 48 hours in Paris that falls apart. An American guy with a lot of neuroses, and a fearless French woman who doesn’t have any neuroses. I actually originally started writing a short story or a novel, but I can’t write novels, I’m not capable of doing it. It always ends up that I start doing the dialogue, and as it goes along I transfer it from Word to Final Draft and it turns into a screenplay. Then Richard Linklater called me for writing Before Sunset, so I was like, ‘OK, forget that one! Why don’t we set Before Sunset in Paris?’ They were like, ‘OK, let’s do that.’”

Five years later, the actress mentioned the idea to producer Christophe Mazodier, who was working with Delpy on another project. The founder of Polaris Film Production (with Thierry Potok and Hubert Toint) recalled, “She talked to me about the story of 2 Days in Paris, which attracted my interest right away. In January 2006, she asked me to help her find a team for a challenging shoot with a very small budget, but I thought it a pity to make the film in this way and I suggested to her that I’d take care of it. We barely had 20 pages of dialogue, but Julie wrote the rest very quickly, even if there were still gaps. The aim was to leave enough room for improvisation on the set and especially to go very quickly while keeping our editorial freedom, not having to look at all costs for television backing.”

Mazodier and Delpy arrived on a sum of €1.7 million (roughly $2.5 million USD) needed to produce the film they had in mind. The producer revealed, “2 Days in Paris was based on a clear and very personal idea of Julie’s. So we needed to develop trust in its ability to attract audiences. The Anglo-Saxon, German or European audiences had no problem in imagining that, probably because they’re more receptive to films like Before Sunset and Before Sunrise. But the French still see Julie as the young 16 year-old actress of Tavernier and investors traditionally like very written scripts, where every comma is thought out, very far from Julie’s conceptual approach. Our approach is certainly a little unsettling for the French market because we said we would shoot the film in June 2006 with or without backing.”

Adam Goldberg — the energetic character actor best known as Mellish from Saving Private Ryan — had been approached by Delpy years ago with the prospect of playing Jack. “I used to read scripts of hers, and it always seemed nuts to me that she wasn’t directing. I thought we had a very strange and funny dynamic, and I definitely liked the idea of at least attempting to put that on film.” Delpy enthused, “I knew him for a long time and I always thought he’d be great as a lead — an offbeat romantic lead. But he’d never had that chance because maybe he’s a different kind of personality that people didn’t dare to hire him to play a whole film.” She added, “The sadder and more angry he looks, the funnier he is. There were times he didn’t even want to be funny but he just had that quality.”

In February 2006, Germany’s 3L Filmproduktion and France’s Rezo Films stepped up to finance 2 Days in Paris. Delpy admitted, “The biggest stress was not getting the money we thought we were going to get. The producer thought we were going to get money from the French government; and then he thought we were going to get money from Paris, because Paris gives people money when they shoot in the city; then we thought we were going to get money from a French-German fund, but we didn’t get it because some director didn’t like the screenplay and fought against it, like, violently — and gave the money to his best friend! So we got no help whatsoever, and we made the film with very little money.” With filming already delayed one week while Adam Goldberg wrapped a role in Deja Vu, cameras rolled in June 2006 only 12 hours after the actor landed in Paris.

Working with French cinematographer Lubomir Bakchev and shooting in digital high definition using the Sony HDW-750 camera, Delpy’s visual palette was dictated by a 20-day schedule. “I think the fact that we didn’t have too much money to do those wonderful shots of Paris — we were shooting in HD and wide shots don’t look that great in HD. Daytime in Paris is not that pretty in HD.” She added, “It was a choice but it was also because I had no choice. I would have loved to have been able to do a few shots in 35mm but we didn’t have the money to do that. We limited it but I think it works for the film in the way that I played with it — your limitations can be a strength, in a way. I like that look. One of my favorite movies is Fat City, which is all done with long lenses. I love those long-lens things where things are blurry in the background and only the people are in focus.”

With no one to compose a musical score, Delpy — who wrote and produced a well received, self-titled folk/pop album in 2003 — considered not using any music. “My boyfriend is a composer, Marc Streitenfeld, and he was watching the film with me and I asked if he thought it was missing music and he thought it was, so I went to my room and I have an entire file in my computer of film music that I wrote. It’s themes and other little odd bits that I wrote for fun. So I picked one and it worked, I rearranged another and wrote something new for the ‘Jealously Theme’. I think the music actually adds comedy to the film, which I think is great.” She added, “It helped a lot that I was editing the film in my house, so I could just go to my room and write it out, then put it into the film. Some worked and some didn’t. But the processes felt quite organic.”

Christophe Mazodier stated, “We never doubted that the film would interest the whole world, but we very quickly got confirmation of that at Cannes 2006 when the title was pre-sold to Japan. The script had the potential to do really well abroad because it had, with a lot of humor and without taking itself seriously, everything that foreigners think about the French. And it wasn’t only one-sided because the Americans aren’t spared either. It’s a fake romantic comedy.” A screening at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2007 was so well received that Rezo Films successfully sold 2 Days in Paris to exhibitors in 40 territories. Delpy mused, “Maybe the appeal is the dysfunction of it. Maybe every family is dysfunctional and that’s the only thing in common throughout the world.”

Opening May 2007 in Germany and Austria, August 2007 in the United States, the U.K. and Canada, the fake romantic comedy was well reviewed by critics. Carina Chocano, The Los Angeles Times: “2 Days in Paris is pure Julie Delpy, figuratively and otherwise. Since first becoming known to American audiences in the early ’90s, she’s revealed herself to be an artist of sundry and unexpected talents, with a distinctive voice and point of view.” Roger Ebert, The Chicago Sun Times: “Delpy in fact has made a smart film with an edge to it; her Jack and Marion reveal things about themselves they never thought they’d tell anybody, and we wonder why they ever went out on a second date.” Marjorie Baumgarten, The Austin Chronicle: “2 Days in Paris provides a smart and funny respite from most of what passes for romantic comedy these days.”

Delpy’s directorial debut quietly grossed $4.4 million in the United States and $15.2 million overseas. The actress/ writer/ producer/ director/ composer set 2 Days in Paris apart from her other work by revealing, “A friend of mine suggested that I should try to make something that might seem from afar to be like Before Sunset since I had just had some success with that, and then do something totally different in tone and style. Apart from Paris and a French-American couple, there is nothing in it that resembles that film. It is more of a comedy than a romantic movie while Before Sunset was more of a romantic movie — it is light but it is not a comedy. This one is more of a straightforward comedy. I love Before Sunset, don’t get me wrong, but it is just a different film. I think it turns out to be kind of a romantic film in the end but throughout the film, it is more harsh and funny with a twisted side.”

Where’d You Get All of This?
“Christophe Mazodier: Producer” By Fabien Lemercier. CineEuropa, 9 July 2007

“A French Actress’s Life on Screen. Kind Of” By Kristin Hohenadel. The New York Times, 5 August 2007

“Interview: Julie Delpy” By Benjamin Crossley-Marra. IonCinema.com, 6 August 2007

“2 Days In Paris Director Julie Delpy” By Erica Abel. indieWIRE, 9 August 2007

“Julie Delpy, 2 Days In Paris” By Nick Dawson. FilmMaker Magazine, 10 August 2007

“Interview: 20 Minutes In Julie Delpy’s Head” By Peter Sobczynski. efilmcritic.com, 29 August 2007

“Two Days In Paris: Julie Delpy Interview” By Ron Carnevale. indieLondon

The Namesake (2007)
Screenplay by Sooni Taraporevala, based on the novel by Jhumpa Lahiri
Directed by Mira Nair
Produced by Mirabai Films/ Cine Mosaic
Running time: 122 minutes

So, What’s This About?
En route by train from Calcutta to Dungarpur in the year 1974, Ashoke (Irrfan Khan) is pried away from Nikolai Gogol’s The Overcoat by a passenger who implores the bookworm to see the world while he’s young and free. Three years later, Ashoke returns from New York, where he’s earning a PH.d in fiber optics. He participates in a family arranged marriage to a spirited classical singer named Ashima (Tabu), who accepts because she likes Ashoke’s shoes. Uprooted to suburban New York — where gas is available 24 hours a day, but she misses her family — Ashima bares a son, who Ashoke blesses with the “pet name” of his favorite writer: Gogol.

At the age of 4, their son makes the unconventional choice of going by his pet name in America, but years later, on the verge of entering Yale, Gogol (Kal Penn) rejects his “paranoid, suicidal, friendless, depressed” poet namesake and reverts to a variation on his “good name”: Nick. A family vacation to India and a visit to the Taj Mahal convince Gogol to major in architecture. He later introduces his parents to his very loving, very blonde girlfriend (Jacinda Barrett), but a sudden death in the family pulls Gogol closer to his Bengali roots. He marries a Bengali in New York — the heady Moushumi (Zuleikha Robinson) — but only faces more questions about his cultural identity.

Who Made It?
Born in London, raised in Rhode Island, Jhumpa Lahiri received a B.A. in English literature from Barnard College and three M.A.’s and her PH.d (in Renaissance Studies) from Boston University. Her first book — the short story collection Interpreter of Maladies — was published in 1999. On its way to becoming a bestseller, New York Magazine named it the Book of the Year and Lahiri became the first writer of Asian descent to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Her first novel — The Namesake — arrived in 2003. After reading it by chance on a flight from New York to India, filmmaker Mira Nair optioned the novel, putting two other projects aside to direct a film adaptation.

Mira Nair attended Delhi University to study sociology, but soon became active in political theater. Attending Harvard, her focus shifted to photography and finally, filmmaking. Her 1979 Harvard thesis — Jama Masjid Street Journal — documented Muslim family life in Delhi. A critically acclaimed feature film debut — Salaam Bombay! (1988) — earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film. Moving between features and documentaries, Nair scored a critical and commercial success with the low budget Monsoon Wedding in 2001. The Namesake reunited her with producer Lydia Dean Pilcher — founder of Cine Mosaic — and screenwriter Sooni Taraporevala, author of three of Nair’s previous films.

How’d They Do It?
A note Jhumpa Lahiri wrote to herself in 1997 during one of her visits to extended family in Calcutta would form the basis for her debut novel, The Namesake. Lahiri recalled, “The names we have — we think they’re so much about who we are and that they are the one word that exists that represents us, and yet, we don’t choose them. They’re from our parents. And I knew that Bengalis loved to name children after artists and writers. I literally wrote down on a piece of paper: a boy named Gogol.” Working on the novel for the next six years, Lahiri researched Russian author Nikolai Gogol and train wrecks, but relied mostly on experiences she’d made during her stays in India.

Published to great acclaim in 2003, Mira Nair read The Namesake on a flight from New York to India six months after purchasing the novel. “I was committed making two other films — they were already financed and everything — when I read The Namesake by chance on a plane. At first it was really being inspired by grief: I was in mourning for a parent I had lost — my mother-in-law, who was like a mother to me — and burying her in the snow of New York when she was an African woman was so shocking and so devastating, and also the first time in my life to be confronted with the finality of loss. I felt Jhumpa really distilled this and like I had found a sister or someone who understood exactly what I was going through.”

Nair continued, “But then as I got more involved with it, it was obviously not your classic reductive immigrant story of the mail-order bride who comes from the dirt poor to the shiny sparkling new world. None of those stories do justice to the complexities of our lives, of our parents and us and so on. And I have to get visually engaged or inspired and both these cities, New York and Calcutta, I know so well, and I have lived in that state between them for so long. What I love in filmmaking in general is the circus of life and that subject matter just gave me so much, so many places to go.” Arriving in Jodhpur to shoot the finale of Vanity Fair, Nair phoned her agent and was told that the film rights to The Namesake were available.

A week later, Nair was back in New York to sit with Jhumpa Lahiri and discuss her vision for The Namesake. Adapting a screenplay, Nair turned to Sooni Taraporevala, who’d written Salaam Bombay! and Mississippi Masala with the director. The screenwriter recalled, “The vital thing, I think, is that Mira and I connected with the emotional landscape. On both levels. I connected with Gogol because I too studied in America, and, when I came back after six years, my parents didn’t really recognize me. And I connected with the parents, because, well, I’m one myself now. It’s a story that reaches out to all the generations, and I think this adaptation came at a time I was ready for it, when I could completely relate to all of the characters.”

With Mira Nair in New York corresponding with the Mumbai-based Sooni Taraporevala via email in March 2004, a first draft was knocked out in “an insane 11 days” according to the screenwriter. Though Nair’s agent at Creative Artists Agency — Bart Walker — initially pushed for a script they could present to buyers at the Cannes Film Festival in May, Nair opted to work with Taraporevala through six drafts and take the necessary time to discover the world of The Namesake. The director revealed, “One of the first things I asked Jhumpa to do was to invite me home to her family. And I photographed their house and also photographed their photograph album. A lot of the fashion, a lot of the kind of ideas of what the parents will wear and so on would emerge from these pictures.”

Producer Lydia Dean Pilcher arrived on a budget of $9.6 million and split financing three ways: Ronnie Screwvala of Bombay-based UTV Motion Pictures, Taka Ichise of Tokyo-based Entertainment Farm and Fox Searchlight Pictures each invested $3.2 million in financing. Fox Searchlight was interested in distributing the picture worldwide, but Nair added, “I felt with The Namesake that I needed an Indian investor who was invested in it in the beginning so that I would have somebody homegrown who would then exploit this film — even though it’s not going to be made like a Bollywood film, or like a commercial Indian film in any way — but I want somebody on the turf there who knows the systems and who can be invested enough in it to give me a really substantial distribution.”

Konkona Sen Sharma was initially cast in the role of Ashima, but when filming was pushed back, the actress had to drop out. Two weeks before cameras rolled, the National Film Award winning Tabu was cast instead, making her Hollywood debut. Nair added, “Irrfan Khan who plays Ashoke was someone I discovered when he was 18 years old and I was what, 29, in a basement in the National School of Drama, where he was a student. And he came out and worked with me in my first film Salaam Bombay! and since then, I’ve longed to give him a part that deserves his extraordinary, extraordinary talent.” Interested in casting an Indian actor in the role of Gogol, Nair settled on Abhishek Bachchan.

Kal Penn had been given a copy of The Namesake by his Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle co-star John Cho. Penn recalled, “As soon as I read it we talked about trying to get the rights. We placed calls to our respective lawyers and in the interim said we don’t know anybody other than Mira Nair who could do justice to the intimacy of the novel. And then we got the phone call back saying, ‘You can’t have the rights. Mira Nair beat you to it.’” Undeterred, Penn wrote Nair a letter, crediting Mississippi Masala for his pursuit of acting. He received an invitation to fly to Calcutta to audition. With the lobbying efforts of Nair’s 13-year-old son as a bonus, Penn won the part. A 28-day shooting schedule would commence March 2005 in New York, followed by 11 days in Kolkata, India.

The Namesake screened at the Telluride and Toronto film festivals in September 2006 before opening in the United States, India, France and the U.K. in March 2007. Critics were effusive with praise. Toddy Burton, The Austin Chronicle: “Reminiscent of Jim Sheridan’s masterly In America, The Namesake delivers such a tactile presence that it’s difficult not to leave feeling as if you’ve just struggled through a New York winter, attended an Indian wedding, and returned from a Calcutta holiday.” Dennis Lim, The Los Angeles Times: “Despite being rooted in knotty issues of identity, Lahiri’s novel forgoes didacticism in favor of vivid portraiture. Nair and her uniformly superb cast take the same tack: The characters are individuals before they are emblems.”

Earning $13.5 million at the U.S. box office and adding $6.5 million overseas, The Namesake became another gem in Mira Nair’s growing filmography. The director stated, “I made this film to take families to because as a mother of a 15-year-old, it is an insult to my intelligence those family films. There’s no film I can take my whole family to and enjoy — it’s very rare. So I wanted to make a film where I could take my grandparents and my teenager, and we could all get something from it that wouldn’t insult us, that would actually jam us and take us somewhere. So it would be seen like that as a film for the family.”

Should I Care?
I’ve never read Jhumpa Lahiri’s bestseller, but if The Namesake isn’t one of the richest, most deeply affecting adaptations of print to film in recent memory, I can’t imagine what is. Powered by the same currents that make a good novel so rewarding, Mira Nair’s jewel of a film offers no instant gratification — no plot twists, no special effects, no jokes — but through the narrative skills and confidence of a filmmaker firing on all cylinders, is crafted into a great story of both intimacy and scope. Spanning 25 years and two cities on opposite ends of the globe, The Namesake is one of the best ‘70s films of the 21st century, touching The Godfather Part II and Five Easy Pieces with varying degrees of subtle brilliance.

An embarrassment of technical riches — cinematographer Frederick Elmes, editor Allyson Johnson and composer Nitin Sawhney deserved Oscar nominations for their textured work — what’s magnificent about The Namesake is the atmosphere, sensuality and mystique that drip from the film. Watching this, it’s clear Warner Bros. knew what they were doing offering Mira Nair the fourth Harry Potter installment: in addition to drawing excellent performances from actors both young and old, she understands the magic of film. Growing up outside the U.S., it’s Nair — along with Peter Weir, Alfonso Cuarón and Hayao Miyazaki, among a growing list — who seem to be making the most original, thought provoking and grown up films today.

Where’d You Get All of This?
“Catching Up With Pulitzer Prize Winner Jhumpa Lahiri” By Matthew Sloan. Poets & Writers, October 2003

“Nair’s The Namesake: A Life Between Two Worlds” NPR, 9 March 2007

“Mira Nair: Q&A” By Ben Walters. Time Out London, 27 March 2007

“Godmothers of The Namesake” By Craig Lambert. Harvard Magazine, March 2007

“From Salaam Bombay to Little Zizou” Rediff News, April 2007

“The Anatomy of The Namesake with Mira Nair” The Namesake. 20th Century Fox (2007)

“Mira Nair Interview, The Namesake” By Sheila Roberts. Movies Online

Broken English (2007)
Written by Zoe Cassavetes
Directed by Zoe Cassavetes
Produced by Vox3 Films/ HDNet Films
Running time: 96 minutes

So, What’s This About?
Bachelorette Nora Wilder (Parker Posey) gets dressed and puts in an appearance at the anniversary party of her best friend Audrey (Drea de Matteo), celebrating five years of matrimony to a movie director (Tim Guinee) Nora introduced her to. At the party is Nora’s mother (Gena Rowlands), who gently asks her daughter why she hasn’t found a man for herself. A manager of guest relations at a boutique New York City hotel, Nora goes out for a drink with a VIP guest, a mohawked movie star (Justin Theroux). When that ends badly, Nora allows her mother to set her up with a recently single movie lover (Josh Hamilton), but this date goes awry as well.

At the insistence of a co-worker (Michael Panes), Nora drags herself to a party. Disgusted with herself and heading home, she meets an attentive young Frenchman named Julien (Melvil Poupaud) marking time in America after the actress girlfriend he accompanied overseas dumped him. Julien insists on showing Nora a good time, in spite of her brittle neuroses. After a few days together, he invites her to return to Paris with him. Nora demures, but faced with plenty of free time after quitting her job, she joins Audrey for a jaunt to the Eternal City. While her friend contemplates an affair, Nora discovers she’s lost Julien’s phone number. Rather than give up and go home, she sets out to explore Paris on her own.

Who Made It?
Zoe Cassavetes is the youngest child of late actor/director John Cassavetes and actress Gena Rowlands. Her siblings are directors Nick Cassavetes (The Notebook) and Alexandra (Xan) Cassavetes, who helmed the 2004 documentary Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession. Zoe Cassavetes grew up in Los Angeles, where in 1994, she co-created, co-wrote and co-hosted — with Sofia Coppola — a fake news magazine for Comedy Central called Hi Octane. Cassavetes served as assistant director on Coppola’s short film Lick the Star (1998) and then moved to Manhattan, where she went into credit card debt to finance her own short, Men Make Women Crazy Theory (2000).

Cassavetes then wrote the script for a feature film titled Broken English. Parker Posey agreed to star and producer Andrew Fierberg agreed to raise financing, but it would take three and a half years for cameras to roll. Paris based Back Up Films secured part of a budget from Japanese distributor Phantom Films and brought French actors Melvil Poupaud and Bernadette Laffont (replacing Jeanne Moreau) on board. Five weeks before filming was set to begin, Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban agreed to bankroll the rest of Broken English, distributing it via their Magnolia Pictures and on their high-def cable channel HDNet.

How’d They Do It?
When the allure of acting or television hosting lost their appeal, Zoe Cassavetes moved to New York. She took a job as a marketing executive at the Mercer Hotel in SoHo before working on a 20-minute short, Men Make Women Crazy Theory. Cassavetes recalled, “You know, I ate out of the quarter jar for a few months here and there while I was trying to make the movie, but having no money, and being incredibly destitute was the best thing that could ever have happened to me. eBay was huge for me at that moment.” Debuting at the Sundance Film Festival in 2000, the film featured Aleksia Landeau recording a long winded, drunken answering machine message to a guy while soaking in the tub.

Cassavetes moved on to completing a script for a feature film. “When I thought of the idea for Broken English it was at a time when I was totally overwhelmed by people asking me whether I was married or had a boyfriend. I saw that it was happening to a lot of my friends as well. I think it comes at a certain age where society almost insists that you fall in love, get married and have children. However, it seems that we are all more confused about relationships than ever. I wanted to explore these themes about what it is like to be lonely and to be ashamed of that feeling.” She would add, “So I just wanted to make a nice, little portrait about what happens to someone when they get caught up in all of that.”

In 2002, Andrew Fierberg — producer of Thirteen Conversations About One Thing and Secretary — was approached by Cassavetes to help finance Broken English. He recalled, “We had a number of conversations about the script, did some rewrites and got it off the ground about a year after that. We had several budgets in mind and several scenarios on how we would make the film based on how much money we would raise. We had a full cast and crew and were all geared up and ready to go. And we put a line in the sand. We said that regardless of how much money we can raise, we will make the movie.”

Cassavetes had received a verbal commitment from Parker Posey to star. The filmmaker recalled, “I did have a certain type of person in mind. I mean, I’m a huge fan of Parker’s work and always have been. But I saw Personal Velocity, and she played a role in that movie that was completely against her usual, well, I wouldn’t say ‘type,’ but that more comedic style that she does. I saw this other huge range in her. Then I met her, and we sat and gabbed for three hours. We didn’t even talk about the script. At the end of it I was like, ‘Oh, wait, are you going to do the movie?’ And she was like, ‘Oh, yeah, totally.’ And I thought, ‘If life could only be that easy.’”

Financing Broken English would take three and a half years. Cassavetes admitted, “It’s so hard to get the money for a movie. It’s so much harder to get $1 million than it is to get $100 million. I still don’t know why. But then once we got the money it went very fast. We had five weeks of pre-production. We shot for 20 days. We didn’t have the money, or most of it, when we started pre-production. We just kind of decided that we were going to make the movie no matter what. Everyone knew what we were going to do, how fast it was going to be or how fast things were going to change, and I’d heard all these great things about Parker, that she would do that, which was really a big deal.”

Andrew Fierberg recalled, “We took the project to HDNet about five weeks before we planned to start shooting, and we told them that if they wanted to come on board, we’d be happy to work with them. They said yes. We were already in preproduction as we were signing papers, and the deal took us to a budget level that made us feel more comfortable.” According to Fierberg, the budget for Broken English fell under the $2 million ceiling HDNet has set to finance their pictures. “It was more than $800,000 but less than $2 million.” Shooting would commence May 2006 in New York for two weeks before moving to Paris.

Facing a mandate from HDNet that the film shoot digitally, the producers reached an arrangement with Thomson Grass Valley, manufacturers of the Viper FilmStream. Director of photography John Pirozzi recalled, “One thing I really like about Viper compared to other HD cameras — like the VariCam and the F900 — is its highlights. The real benefit you have with no compression is that the camera holds highlights in a much more impressive way. You have so much detail. The giveaway with HD and video in general is always in the highlights. Testing the Viper against the other compressed cameras, you can see it. It’s very clear that it really stands up to highlights.”

Cassavetes drew on Cleo From 5 to 7 — directed by Agnes Varda in 1962 — for inspiration. “Strangely, it had kind of the perfect mood for what I wanted. I mean, the character in that movie is a little more self-centered than Parker Posey’s character, Nora, is in mine. But I liked that the film started out with the tarot-card reading, and there was something about the way the movie was shot. I was also really into watching Eric Rohmer and Woody Allen movies, because I felt like my movie was really talky.” Broken English was screened for competition at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2007 before taking film fests in Philadelphia, Newport Beach, San Francisco, Seattle and Las Vegas by storm.

Critics would be divided over how good Broken English was. Matt Zoller Seitz, The New York Times: “A well-acted, smartly directed film that’s depressing because it could have amounted to so much more. It departs from the studio-financed romantic-comedy template in just one, unfortunately fatal respect: it makes a point of pride out of rejecting cliché, then swoons into its embrace.” Carina Chocano, The Los Angeles Times: “A simple, empathetic script and calm, assured directing display a level of emotional honesty and character development that’s confoundingly rare these days, especially when it comes to female characters.” Lisa Schwarzbaum at Entertainment Weekly really liked it. Andrew O’Hehir at Salon not so much.

Opening June 2007 in the United States, Broken English never expanded beyond 41 theaters, but totaled $956,919 domestically and added $987,281 internationally. Cassavetes shrugged off the suggestion that she’d taken her time — at the ripe old age of 36 — to follow in the footsteps of her filmmaking family. “Right before I started shooting, I realized my dad was exactly the same age I was when he made Faces [sic] in 1959. So that made me feel good. And my brother Nick said, ‘Don’t worry — I made my first film at that age, too.’ It took me a little bit longer to do what I wanted, but you have more to say the older you get.”

Should I Care?
Broken English begins with a delicate montage of its heroine Nora Wilder trying to decide what to wear on an evening out. She’s alone in her apartment and as she empties her closet or opens her medicine cabinet, I got the distinct feeling I was peeping into someone’s private space. That type of intimacy is fused throughout the film, which in its contemplative but understated way (it’s rated PG-13) tells the story of two New Yorkers spending a few days in Paris. This textured palette may turn off those expecting either John Cassavetes or Sex and the City, but it does announce the arrival of an exciting new filmmaker.

Zoe Cassavetes cans the cuteness, enabling the profusely witty Parker Posey to fashion an unusually strong dramatic performance. Melvil Poupaud, Drea de Matteo, Justin Theroux, Josh Hamilton, Gena Rowlands, Peter Bogdanovich and Bernadette Lafont round out a terrific cast, while Paris duo Scratch Massive composed the off-beat electronic soundtrack. What I really liked was how the film, without needling America or its male population, suggests that a change of scenery can affect both your outlook and the people you attract for the better. Cassavetes guides us through New York and Paris with the knack of someone who seems to have explored these great cities while single.

Where’d You Get All of This?
“The Digital Pieces of Broken English” By Peter Caranicas. Videography, 2 May 2007

“Women With Indie Influence” By Brantley Bardin. New York Daily News, 17 June 2007

“Interview: Zoe Cassavetes On Broken English” By Ian Spelling. Latino Review, 21 June 2007

“Zoe Cassavetes on Broken English” By Aaron Hillis. IFC, 25 June 2007

Broken English – Production Notes

“The Family Business” By Sandy MacDonald. The Boston Globe, 1 July 2007

“Zoe Cassavetes” By Wes Anderson. Interview, July 2007

“Zoe Cassavetes & Parker Posey Interview, Broken English” By Sheila Roberts. MoviesOnline

Quid Pro Quo (2008)
Written by Carlos Brooks
Directed by Carlos Brooks
Produced by Sanford-Pillsbury Productions/ HDNet Films
Running time: 82 minutes

By Joe Valdez

So, What’s This About?
“I don’t remember any of what I’m about to tell you. I only know what the police and coroner reports said.” So begins a personal remembrance from Isaac Knott (Nick Stahl), correspondent for “Public Radio New York”. His editor (Jessica Hecht) shares with him a tip from an anonymous caller — known only as Ancient Chinese Girl — who claims a man entered a bayside hospital and tried bribing an intern to chop off his leg. The tipster wants to meet Isaac, who’s been paralyzed and restricted to a wheelchair since the age of eight, the only survivor of a car accident that killed his parents in upstate New York.

After Ancient Chinese Girl dispatches him to a clandestine gathering of “wannabes” — able bodied men and women who share the unusual desire to be disabled — Isaac finally meets his wily tipster, an art conservator named Fiona (Vera Farmiga). Fascinated by why someone would want to be paralyzed who isn’t, Fiona agrees to tell Isaac what she knows about this underworld if, quid pro quo, he helps her understand what it’s like being disabled. Daffy and unpredictable, Fiona’s complicated feelings for the reporter change when a pair of antique spectators shoes suddenly give Isaac the ability to walk.

Who Made It?
Carlos Brooks attended Western Washington University as an English major and was later accepted into USC on a merit scholarship to study film and writing. Brooks would win an Abraham Polonsky Award for screenwriting at USC and marry classmate Helen Childress, who was hot as a bottle rocket after authoring the 1994 Winona Ryder/Ethan Hawke flick Reality Bites. Brooks spent the next decade carving out a career as a screenwriter. Among his scripts was a spec called Empire – which Robert Zemeckis was to produce through his company Imagemovers — that took place amid construction of the Empire State Building.

In 2004, Brooks appeared to finally be getting his shot at the director’s chair through HDNet Films, a division of Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban’s 2929 Entertainment. Mark Cuban is the billionaire who owns the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks and once spent a day managing a Dairy Queen in Coppell, Texas after Cuban accused a game referee of being unfit to run a DQ. Sticking his big toe into film financing, Cuban has had an energetic run, producing Good Night and Good Luck, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Bubble, among many others. HDNet Films was launched to develop, finance and produce feature films to be shot in High Definition.

How’d They Do It?
The idea that would become Quid Pro Quo began germinating in 2000 with Carlos Brooks, whose focus of study at USC had been Alfred Hitchcock. “I wrote the script just to write. I didn’t write it to direct or anything; I just wanted to write something different. I’ve always wanted to write a detective story, and what this really is is a detective story in disguise. It’s an investigative journalistic piece, and the best detective stories are the ones where the detective ultimately realizes he’s been investigating himself. I would never write an actual detective story — at least I don’t think I would — but that’s what this secretly is.”

Brooks’ original idea involved an agoraphobic and a pair of headphones that gave him access to the outside world, Rear Window style. Googling through disabilities, Brooks stumbled upon the wannabe subculture. “I kind of vectored in on them. I’ve never met anybody who had Body Dysmorphic Disorder — that’s what it’s really called, I guess. I just kind of lurked, and I was fascinated by the tone of their writing. They knew they sounded quote, unquote ‘crazy.’ It’s entirely different talking about something we think is crazy without knowing you’re crazy. They were incredibly self-aware, painfully self-aware and wanted acceptance despite what they were saying.”

Intended as a writing sample, Quid Pro Quo started attracting interest from directors. Brooks decided he could do no worse himself and working with producers Midge Sanford & Sarah Pillsbury, landed a $2 million commitment from HDNet for his directing debut. He faced a long slog after being greenlit in 2004. Pre-production was shut down for 11 months after Brooks reached an impasse with the producers over casting. For the female lead, Brooks was set on an unknown named Vera Farmiga. “To find an actress who can make that role sympathetic and living and breathing was too good to pass up. When you find the right actor, you stick by them.”

Vera Farmiga mused, “I grew up watching Murder, She Wrote and Love Boat. Quirky detective stories and oddball romances. I imagine initially that’s what drew me. I love romance. I am always on the quest for an unusual romance, and this was it. There always has to be something about the character in the script that really turns my head and Fiona — I have a stiff neck from craning at this one. My initial response was she’s that woman in your life that you are absolutely terrified of but at the same time have to be around. She fascinated me. And the fact that it is just an unusual detective love story, and also a taboo subject that you don’t hear anything about.”

Quid Pro Quo began rolling October 2005 for an 18-day shoot in New Jersey. Brooks revealed, “I shot on a Sony 900 camera, and we used the 950 for a few scenes where it was a tight space. My production designer, Roshelle Berliner, and the DP Michael McDonough, and I experimented with shiny metallic surfaces to trick the video lens into thinking it’s film. I don’t know why this works, but it does. It tricks the chip in the video camera into softening those hard video lines and edges. If you walked on the set, you would think it’s the strangest looking place because Isaac’s apartment was full of wallpaper with metallic inlays. But on video, it looks like film. It gives it this Sidney Lumet-circa-The Verdict look, and that’s what I wanted.”

Joining Vera Farmiga was Nick Stahl, the best John Connor (in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines) and the lead in the HBO series Carnivale. Stahl elaborated on the film’s difficult journey. “We actually ended up re-shooting some stuff, and adding a couple of scenes. I think it was the kind of thing that, it was so clear on the page, the story, and the tone of it was so clear, but, for whatever reason, it’s such a different process once you actually film it and then you actually go to start editing it.” He added, “A lot of people didn’t get it, and that was the reason why we had to go back and retool some stuff. Carlos Brooks worked endlessly for so long. He kept cutting it and working at it.”

Screened January 2008 at the Sundance Film Festival, critics went along with Quid Pro Quo, for the most part. Justin Chang, Variety: “An exceedingly odd meeting of the minds (and bodies) occurs in Quid Pro Quo, a strikingly original and provocative first feature from scribe-helmer Carlos Brooks.” Stephen Holden, The New York Times: “After spinning out metaphors of paralysis and eroticism in its characters’ feverish imaginations, Quid Pro Quo decides at the last minute that it has to explain everything. The moment it pulls away from the fantastic, it lands with a thud.” Jenni Miller, Premiere: “Fans of strange love stories and detective thrillers would do well to investigate this indie gem.”

Should I Care?
Quid Pro Quo has been unfortunate to draw comparisons to David Cronenberg’s Crash, but I didn’t find anything disturbing about the movie. It’s edgy and a bit dark, but immensely fresh, sharp witted, impeccably well cast and I would even describe this as a film David Fincher might have shot if given only $1.6 million. I don’t care for the title and wonder why Mark Cuban is producing so many movies that barely see the light of day. Distributed by his Magnolia Pictures in June 2008, Quid Pro Quo never expanded beyond four theaters in the United States, grossing $11,864. This movie deserved an attentive publicity campaign and a much better commercial fate.

I liked how Quid Pro Quo defies categorization — if I had to, I’d label it an unusual romantic comedy with mystery — and forced me to both pay attention and react to it, as opposed to just watching passively. The dialogue has a lot of crackle and pop, and for a film with such a grotesque sounding premise, is pretty funny. Rachel Black puts in a cute performance as Stahl’s office buddy. But the chief reason to see this is the daffy Vera Farmiga, who once again spins through a movie like a punk ballerina. Carlos Brooks demonstrates a sharp ear, a terrific eye and great taste not only delivering a solid debut, but executing a film with such a high degree of difficulty.

Your thoughts?

Where’d You Get All of This?
“Carlos Brooks, Quid Pro Quo” The Reeler, 20 January 2008

“Local Film School Drop-out Gets into Sundance” By Sam Vicchrilli. The Seatle Times, 25 January 2008

“Nick Stahl” By Terry Keefe. Venice Magazine, March 2008

“Vera Farmiga Offers up Quid Pro Quo” By Jenni Miller. Premiere, June 2008

“Interview: Carlos Brooks on Quid Pro Quo” By Matt Singer. IFC. Com, 13 June 2008

What the *&#! Is This About?
In New York City of the 1870s, Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) is among the well heeled who attend a performance of the opera Faust at the Academy of Music. Newland is taken aback by the entrance of the Countess Ellen Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer), who’s left her husband in Europe and become an object of great scandal by returning to her family. Newland is engaged to Ellen’s innocent, pampered cousin May (Winona Ryder). To discourage gossip against the family, he announces his engagement to May at an opera ball that night. When Ellen fails to appear, Newland seems disappointed. He goes out of his way to ingratiate her back into the favor of New York society, with the help of May’s reclusive grandmother Manson Mingott (Miriam Margolyes).

Sensing she might feel lonely, Newland wants to help the free spirited and exotic Ellen. “Is New York such a labyrinth? I thought it was all straight up and down, like 5th Avenue, all the cross streets numbered and big honest labels on everything.” “Everything is labeled,” he tells her, “but everybody is not.” Behind closed doors, Newland questions conformity. In public, he upholds family and tradition. “This was a world balanced so precariously that its harmony could be shattered by a whisper,” says our narrator (Joanne Woodward). The Mingotts enlist Newland to dissuade Ellen from seeking a divorce, but he finds himself falling in love with her. He tries to speed up his engagement to May, who correctly guesses he’s in love with someone else. Newland denies this.

For Newland, responsibility to his mother and sister, who rely on him for every security, comes before his own desires. A year and a half later, Ellen returns to New York when Mrs. Mingott suffers a stroke. Newland goes to meet her at the train station. They share a carriage ride, where a simple touch of Ellen’s wrist qualifies as a consummation of their affair. Ellen refuses to take it any further for fear it will hurt May. Meeting each other at the Metropolitan Museum, Ellen changes her mind about the prospect of an affair. Newland finally decides to confess his feelings to his wife, but she interrupts to tell him that Ellen is returning to her husband. Newland realizes that his family and all of New York society have conspired to send her back to Europe to preserve decorum.

Who Should Be Held Responsible?
Edith Wharton wrote most of The Age of Innocence from September 1919 to March 1920 while living in the Rue de Varenne of Paris. Her sister-in-law Minnie Jones helped research 1870s New York society by combing through back issues of the New York Tribune at Yale University Library. Published in 1920 in serial format, then as a novel, The Age of Innocence became a phenomenal bestseller. Columbia University awarded it the Pulitzer Prize for Literature – making Wharton the first woman to receive the honor – and within two years, the author had reaped $50,000 in royalties, including $15,000 from Warner Bros. for the film rights. The studio produced a seven-reel feature in 1924, while RKO mounted a talkie version in 1931 starring Irene Dunne as Countess Ellen Olenska. Neither was a box office success.

60 years after its publication, Jay Cocks – former film critic for Time Magazine – handed a copy of The Age of Innocence to his friend, director Martin Scorsese. Appearing on The Charlie Rose Show in October 1993, Scorsese recalled, “We had known each other since ‘68 and over the years we saw so many different films and over the years we really tried to write scripts together and do all kinds of projects and really got involved with wanting to do many different genres: westerns, costume pieces – you could call them costume pieces – romantic films, musicals, etcetera. And so around 1980 he gave me the book and said, ‘When you decide to do that romance piece,’ he said, ‘this one is you.’ Meaning this has the qualities that you would like.’”

Scorsese continued, “When I finally did read the book – because when he gave me the book I was finishing Raging Bull and I was going into King of Comedy – and in a sense, Raging Bull is a picture that is spinning. It’s like a vortex of emotion. I was very much into that state of mind. So it took me a while to sit down and read the book. But when I did, I reacted immediately to the passion of the love story between Archer and Ellen and especially the fact that it’s unconsummated … maybe because I read it and it was 1987, January and I had gotten older, but I reacted immediately to that. I must tell you that I’ve read other books – I’ve loved the books of Thomas Hardy and other types of classical literature and 19th century English literature – but this one, I said I can make into a film.”

Adapting a screenplay in 1987, Cocks & Scorsese had a first draft in three weeks. The Age of Innocence was set up at Fox, with Scorsese planning to direct as soon as he completed GoodFellas. But when studio chairman Joe Roth weighed the commercial risk of an Edith Wharton novel against Scorsese’s $32 million budget – as well as the director’s unwillingness to reduce his fee – the project was put into turnaround. Scorsese accepted an offer to direct Cape Fear for Steven Spielberg, but even after that movie became a blockbuster, Universal Pictures considered The Age of Innocence too rich for its taste as well. Mark Canton, chairman of Columbia/TriStar, was eager to forge a relationship with Scorsese, who by that time had been crowned “the greatest living American director” by critics. Columbia agreed to finance the film.

Speaking with the New York Times in 2007, Daniel Day-Lewis recalled The Age of Innocence and Martin Scorsese. “He is a mighty man, and when he asks you to do something, you want to do it. I was struggling to escape from English drawing rooms, but because of Martin, I accepted the role in The Age of Innocence.” Michelle Pfeiffer had already worked in drawing rooms as well, but Scorsese was more impressed by the versatility she’d shown in Married to the Mob, as well as Scarface, offering her the role of Ellen Olenska. The actress recalled, “What’s most universal and timeless about the novel and the film is what they have to say about the charades people play, the masks people wear for the sake of what’s socially acceptable. That’s still going strong. And when you see someone’s whole life guided by those standards, it touches a chord. You ask yourself: Will I wind up like Newland Archer? Could I make those sacrifices without becoming bitter?”

Many of those involved with the production of The Age of Innocence seemed enamored with the timelessness of Edith Wharton’s story. Jay Cocks remarked at the time, “The themes – which are love, passion, conscience, commitment – they’re pertinent and immediate and compelling at any time, whether it’s 1993 or 2010. We have the same problems of wanting things we can’t have and having things we don’t want, and that’s what this story is about.” As filming was just getting underway, Martin Scorsese addressed his suitability to portray those themes successfully. “I guess you try to make films about what you know. Merchant and Ivory are maybe more attuned to this kind of society. It is second nature to them, whereas Mean Streets, GoodFellas, Raging Bull are more second nature to me. But a love between two people, whether successful or unsuccessful, is common to everybody.”

By the time The Age of Innocence went before the cameras in March 1992, Scorsese’s visual research consultant – Robin Standefer – had spent two and a half years studying New York society of the 1870s. Her work with the New York Historical Society, the Library of Congress and Edith Wharton scholars was so meticulous that Standefer discovered Wharton had misnamed a Bougeureau painting in her novel. A dozen other consultants were devoted to food, to decorative arts, to etiquette. With its three-story brownstones, the Victorian city of Troy, New York – located on the east bank of the Hudson River across from Albany – stood in for 19th century Manhattan. The opera sequence was filmed over a five-day period inside the Philadelphia Academy of Music, while outside, the streets were covered with soil, as New York had no paved streets in the 1870s.

Accustomed to having a year to cut his films, when The Age of Innocence wrapped in June 1992, Scorsese and editor Thelma Schoonmaker were initially given only five months to have the film ready for Christmas. Then Scorsese’s 79-year-old father Charles – who had played bit roles in many of his son’s films – fell seriously ill. The studio decided against hurrying the greatest living American director. Producer Barbara De Fina recalled, “All the fine cutting and shaping would have suffered, the down-to-the-frame timing that makes it a Scorsese movie. Marty also likes to cut his scenes to the music, not lay in the score afterward.” Adding $2 million to its production costs, Columbia was confident that they were positioning the film for Academy Awards consideration in ‘93, with industry observers predicting a Best Actress win for Michelle Pfeiffer.

Premiering at the Venice Film Festival August 1993, The Age of Innocence opened in the United States and Canada in limited release the following month. The critical praise was faint. Rita Kempley, the Washington Post: “Though lovely to behold, this film isn’t meant to send you home with a song in your heart.” Todd McCarthy, Variety: “An extraordinarily sumptuous piece of filmmaking, The Age of Innocence represents an impeccably faithful adaptation of Edith Wharton’s classic novel, which is both a blessing and a bit of a curse.” Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: “As beautifully mounted as this production is, Scorsese has a way of letting the decor take over, so that Wharton’s tale of societal constraints comes through only in fits and starts. But it’s a noble failure.”

After test screenings had not gone well, Mark Canton successfully lobbied Scorsese to cut the film from 165 minutes down to 139 minutes. Audiences ignored the film anyway, which grossed $32.2 million in the U.S. The New York Times cited an unnamed prominent theater exhibitor as saying, “It’s a coast picture, a specialized picture that does best on the East Coast and the West Coast but doesn’t hit in the heartland. The women seemed to like it, but it didn’t grab the men at all. A good picture, but not mainstream.” Nominated for five Academy Awards – including Winona Ryder for Best Supporting Actress – only Gabriella Pescucci (Best Costume Design) ended up being honored. Michelle Pfeiffer wasn’t even nominated.

Should I Care?
Stanley Kubrick bent the heads of critics and moviegoers into a question mark in the mid 1970s when the director of 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange announced he was adapting an 1844 novel by William Makepeace Thackeray titled Barry Lyndon. If the choice of material wasn’t visionary in itself, the costume piece starring Ryan O’Neal was rendered to film with nothing less than the artistry of an 18th century impressionist painting. Martin Scorsese routinely cites Barry Lyndon as his favorite Kubrick film and The Age of Innocence is not only the director’s valentine to it, but surpasses it in style, exquisitely interpreting the language and descriptive flow of a Victorian Era novel, while boasting actors and production techniques that make Kubrick’s 1975 film look on many levels like hobby moviemaking.

Dante Ferretti lavishes the period in pictorial detail, with director of photography Michael Ballhaus bathing those scenes in vibrant color (the floral shop scenes alone are worth the price of a rental). Editor Thelma Schoonmaker, title designers Elaine & Saul Bass and composer Elmer Bernstein make The Age on Innocence a Thanksgiving banquet where each guest unwraps a spectacular dish. Like Thanksgiving, all this food – not to mention the many characters, their social positions and veiled agendas – are prone to give the first time viewer indigestion. On repeated viewings, the passion between Wharton’s exiled lovers and the tenacity of those seeking to keep them apart is much easier to distill and be moved by. Daniel Day-Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer are as emotionally compelling here as any other roles I can remember.

© Joe Valdez

Where Are You Getting This *&#!?
“Scorsese, From the Mean Streets to Charm School” By Alessandra Stanley. The New York Times, 28 June 1992

“The Fine Aging of Innocence” By Steve Daly. Entertainment Weekly, 21 May 1993

“In Age of Innocence, Eternal Questions” By Francine Prose. The New York Times, 12 September 1993

“Recreating The Age of Innocence In Brick and Paint” By Christopher Gray. The New York Times, 24 October 1993

“Innocence & Experience: The Making of The Age of Innocence” (1993)

Hit and Run: How Jon Peters and Peter Guber Took Sony for a Ride in Hollywood. By Nancy Griffin, Kim Masters. Simon and Schuster (1997)

Synopsis
“Therefore, the Lord God banished Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and placed a flaming sword to protect the tree of life,” writes a woman in a book. A Spanish conquistador (Hugh Jackman) dispatched on a crusade by his queen (Rachel Weisz) reaches the top of a Mayan temple before being mortally wounded by a priest. Moving into the distant future, what appears to be the same man travels through space in a transcendent bubble, on a mission to deliver a dying tree to a supernova. Moving back in time to what appears to be the present day, neurosurgeon Tom Creo (Hugh Jackman, again) searches in vain to find a cure for the brain tumor afflicting his wife Izzi (Rachel Weisz, again). She shares with her husband a book she’s written titled The Fountain, a chronicle of immortal love that spans one thousand years. Before her death, she gives her husband the key to finishing the story.

Production history
Darren Aronofsky was a few weeks away from shooting his second feature film – Requiem for a Dream – in March 1999 when he went to the movies with actor Jared Leto. Aronofsky recalls, “I walked out of The Matrix with Jared and I was thinking, ‘What kind of science fiction movie can people make now?’ The Wachowskis basically took all the great sci-fi ideas of the 20th century and rolled them into a delicious pop culture sandwich that everyone on the planet devoured. Suddenly, Philip K. Dick’s ideas no longer seemed that fresh. Cyberpunk? Done.” Aronofsky’s friend Ari Handel had earned a Ph.D in neuroscience from NYU in 2000, but instead of making a career in academic research, took the director up on an offer to write something together. Over long walks in Brooklyn, Aronofsky & Handel arrived on a science fiction tale that would stretch across time, a story within a story within a story that Aronofsky likened to “Russian matryoshka dolls.”

Handel recalls, “We would plan out the scenes and the characters then Darren would go off and write. I would read what he wrote and give thoughts then work on something. But he basically did the writing of it. At various times in various ways I would be involved with editing that and conceiving the way certain things would happen. I worked him on the structure and the outline of the characters but he put it all together. This was repeated over and over again because the screenplay was rewritten many times. The film is like a jigsaw puzzle, sometimes frustratingly so. Often rewrites felt like when you see yogis on television squeeze themselves into a box then a foot would be sticking out then they would have to get the whole guy out of the box to get that foot in. That’s how complicated it was.”

The screenplay – which Aronofsky code named The Last Man, but intended on calling The Fountain – was a fusion of Handel’s research into astronomy, brain cancer and the afterlife, and Aronofsky’s fascination with Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s experiences as a 16th century conquistador. Somewhere in there, Aronofsky also wanted to explore the meaning of life. “That’s what The Fountain is for me: those late night conversations you had with your college roommates where you basically sat around and talked about what is consciousness? What is existence? That’s, for me, what the exercise of the film was about, it was to explore these big questions and to explore the big questions I think everyone has to come into it and start thinking about how they answer those questions for themselves.” Brad Pitt had seen Requiem for a Dream and was so cuckoo to work with Aronofsky, the star called within half an hour of the director dropping the script off to say he would play the lead.

Lorenzo di Bonaventura – the executive VP of worldwide motion pictures for Warner Bros. – also felt Aronofsky was a major talent, having signed him to write a Batman origin story with Frank Miller. In June 2001, Warner Bros. announced it was moving The Fountain on the fast track for production, with Cate Blanchett joining Pitt in the top secret sci-fi project. While Aronofsky had shot his debut Pi with $60,000 in donations from family and friends, and Requiem for a Dream on a $5 million budget, the cost of The Fountain was tabbed at $60 million. As a September 2001 start date crept closer, that figure climbed to at least $72 million. Warner Bros. tapped the brakes, putting the production on an extended hiatus. Cate Blanchett spent much of the next year on maternity leave, Pitt turned down other job offers – growing a mountain man beard for his character’s scenes in New Spain – and Aronofsky labored to unravel his ambitious screenplay with an eye on reducing costs.

Production of The Fountain was rescheduled for October 2002 at Warner Roadshow Studios in Queensland, Australia. A crew of 450 technicians was – by Aronofsky’s estimation – 60-70% finished constructing the elaborate sets, including a 120-foot tall Mayan pyramid. 150 performers cast as Mayan warriors were waiting to be flown in from Guatemala. Aronofsky had storyboarded and shot listed the entire film. Then seven weeks before cameras were set to roll, the director received a call from Brad Pitt’s agents at CAA notifying him that their client was dropping out of The Fountain. Warner Bros. president of production Jeff Robinov would later admit that Pitt found the original script brilliant, but flawed, and was not satisfied with Aronofsky’s attempts to streamline the story. Aronofsky recalls, “After working together for two and a half years, Brad lost trust in me and faith in the project. He told me he felt like he was breaking up with a girl.”

Efforts to find someone else to take The Fountain to the prom when Pitt exited were unsuccessful. Warner Bros. – having sunk $18 million into the project – pulled the plug a second time, sending the crew home and auctioning off the sets. Seven months later, in the summer of 2003, Aronofsky was unable to sleep. He found his research materials still staring at him from his bookshelf and recalls thinking, “What is the cheapest version of this film that still captures what it’s about and captures the spectacle of it, but I don’t have to deal with all the nightmares? So I literally started writing and two weeks later, this version of The Fountain came out and it was a very different film, but everyone who read it felt it was better. Because I didn’t have to write it for a price, a studio, or for an actor, I was purely writing what I wanted to write, I was able to finally shape it into what it was meant to be.”

Scaling the film back with an independently minded aesthetic, Aronofsky’s producer Eric Watson estimated that Version 2.0 of The Fountain could be produced for roughly $35 million. Warner Bros. agreed to bankroll it, splitting costs with producer Arnon Milchan and his New Regency Pictures. Watson admitted, “We may have been naïve when we started The Fountain about the way Hollywood works. We learned it, and looking back I don’t know if I would have wanted those lessons, but I have them. We thought the whole process was set up to get movies made but you still have to fight.” Aronofsky met Hugh Jackman, who was performing on Broadway in The Boy From Oz; the actor was not only as enthusiastic about the script and working with Aronofsky as Pitt had been, but suggested the director’s fiancée Rachel Weisz be considered as the female lead. In November 2004 – over two years after being shut down – The Fountain finally began shooting, at Technoparc Studios in Montreal.

Premiering September 2006 at the Venice Film Festival to a mixed reaction, The Fountain made a blitz through several festivals – in Toronto, Austin, Chicago – before opening in the U.S. in November. Critics uniformly trashed the long delayed dream project. Carina Chocano, the Los Angeles Times: “Bloated and logy, and art-directed within an inch of its life, the movie shovels heaps of phony portent and all-purpose mystical imagery onto a thin and maudlin plot.” A.O. Scott, the New York Times: “The problem, though, is that its techniques run too far beyond its ideas, which are blurry and banal, rather than mysterious and resonant. The Fountain is something to see, but it is also much less, finally, than meets the eye.” Marjorie Baumgarten, Austin Chronicle: “Aronofsky’s reach far exceeds his grasp with this film, and the muddle he concocts makes one wonder if there was ever a solid foundation for The Fountain. Hope may spring eternal, but this fountain is a dry hole.”

The Fountain grossed $10.1 million in the U.S. and $5.8 million overseas, but if Aronofsky had any regrets, he didn’t air them during a media roundtable in November 2006. “I’ve always made divisive films. Whenever you try to make something new, something different, some people are going to want to hang with it, some people are going to shut down. I had the same kind of response on Requiem and the same response on Pi. So I’m very used to it. I know the amount of labor and love that went into The Fountain and, for me, it represents that work so I’m very proud of it. It’s interesting because it’s not the critics that judge films anymore, it’s the public. Because of the Internet, you get people writing in and creating dialogue and that’s what you want to do: you want to make an impact. When you get a 20-year-old kid writing three pages on a talkback about your film, that’s the victory for me. It means that kid has a great experience with it. That’s what I’m trying to do.”

Opinion
Trying to diagnose what went wrong on The Fountain takes an approach like Mission Control’s in Apollo 13; it’s easier to talk about what’s actually good in the film than it is to check off all the systems that are FUBAR. Clint Mansell’s orchestral score is grandly elegant, even if the movie it was composed for does not live up to the sweep of the music. Much of the framing, compositions and camera movements are ornate, even if the Pay-Less sets give director of photography Matthew Libatique precious little to work with. And Darren Aronofsky’s devotion to bringing “psychedelic” back to sci-fi deserves an extra credit point, even it’s on a project that flunks out of the class. In The Fountain, the universe is as mysterious as a fortune cookie, love is as infinite as a bad soap opera and the future is as awesome as a Hare Krishna floating through space in his pajamas.

The budget definitely does not help Aronofsky get his ideas across any more coherently – the Mayan jungle and space bubble sets are so obscured and cheesy looking that taking the movie seriously becomes an exercise in futility – but it’s the screenplay that ultimately writes a check that the director cannot cash, even with his admirable visual skills. Characters remain flat (the gravitas of Ellen Burstyn, Mark Margolis, Cliff Curtis and Ethan Suplee go to waste in bit parts.) Dialogue is unintentionally funny (Jackman’s line reading upon discovering the tree of life: “Behold!”). Most stupefying for a film so inspired by 2001, Star Wars or The Matrix – at least in terms of wanting to take sci-fi to new places – The Fountain regresses to vague film school drivel where artistic ambition is everything and imagination means little, even in stories about the mysteries of the universe.

© Joe Valdez

Sources
“The Outsider”. By Steve Silberman. Wired, November 2006