Many Sides of The Other Side

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Orson Welles, The Other Side of the Wind

Saw Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind last night. It’s his last film, uncompleted when he died.

Some top Hollywood professionals, including producer Frank Marshall and director-actor Peter Bogdanovich (who both worked with Welles on the movie), put in huge efforts to turn hundreds of reels in different formats into a single movie, according to a documentary featurette that screened with the film. Marshall and three of the film’s top post-production people attended the screening and talked about their struggles in bringing Welles’ last creation into a complete and living form.

Did their long, hard work yield a good movie? Well . . .

The Other Side of the Wind is a picturesque, scattershot mess about Jake Hannaford, a director who’s screening his newest and not yet complete movie, also called The Other Side of the Wind, at his 70th birthday party. While he hosts the party, he has to deal with biographers and documentarians intruding on the party, friends and assistants who try to help the director but sometimes only bother him, severe problems plaguing the movie, and so on.

It’s a jumble — an energetic and intriguing jumble, but a jumble.

And wildly sexist. The movie has very few women, almost all of whom are complainers or annoyances. Two exceptions: a clueless teenager whom the aged Hannaford seems to be grooming for seduction, and the film-within-the-film’s leading lady.

This woman is one of the most blatant fantasies ever put in a non-porno film. She’s exotically beautiful, sexually hungry (though a bit of a tease), completely wordless (she never speaks) and almost always nude. She doesn’t even have a name; the movie calls her The Actress. She’s all sexuality, no personality.

By the way, the woman who played her — Oja Kodar — was Welles’ lover and the movie’s co-writer. Make of that what you want.

The movie never bored me, but it rarely fascinated me. It’s a shame, too. Welles offered some characters with potential for richness and surprises, and he displayed some intriguing visuals, but they didn’t come together into anything focused and coherent.

 

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“Be vewy quiet. I’m hunting Jimmy Stewart.”

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Classic radio, Elmer Fudd, It's a Wonderful Life, James Stewart, Jimmy Stewart, Radio, Radio drama, Sirius XM

My fellow animation fans, you’ll like this.

Sirius XM’s Classic Radio channel is running a theme of “Christmas in July,” airing Christmas-themed shows. Today, they broadcast a 1949 version of It’s a Wonderful Life, starring Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey, the role that he played in the movie.

For the guardian angel Clarence, the producers didn’t get Henry Travers, who played him in the movie. Instead, they hired . . .

Elmer Fudd.

I am not kidding. Arthur Q. Bryan, the voice of Elmer Fudd, played Clarence in the voice of Fudd. Maybe it was Bryan’s natural voice; I don’t know.

But it’s weird as hell to hear Elmer Fudd introduce himself, as Clawence, to George Baiwey of Bedford Fawws.

Listen.

Lions and tigers and Nazis, oh my!

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Jessica Chastain, Movies, Nazis, The Zookeeeper's Wife

Saw The Zookeeper’s Wife last night, courtesy of my thoughtful and generous friend Anne Toole.

The movie centers on a husband and wife pair of Warsaw zookeepers who hide Jews in their zoo and help them escape the Nazis. It offers pitch-perfect acting, handsome cinematography, fine-tuned storytelling, and overall high craftsmanship.

But it’s got the heroes-of-the-Holocaust genre’s predictable signposts:
a sophisticated but venal Nazi commander;
noble saviors of the downtrodden and the threatened;
thuggish Nazi soldiers;
frightened children;
desperate parents;
escape strategies whispered just out of Nazi earshot;
a lovely heroine nearly but not quite giving up that which is dearer than life itself to the amorous boss Nazi;
and so on.

Also, the movie sentimentalizes the zoo creatures. Every animal in the movie seems lovable, but everyone I’ve met who works with animals has stories about bad-tempered, intractable or gleefully nasty beasts.

Nevertheless, the animals provide some of the movie’s most interesting moments. When the Nazis bomb Warsaw, for instance, some big, predatory beasts escape the zoo and wander the city streets. You don’t usually see that in a war movie, although the graphic novel Pride of Baghdad did a version of it set in the Iraq war.

The movie does have fresh touches that don’t involve animals. A well-dressed young lady smiles prettily for a photo, like a tourist posing for a snapshot — in front of the guarded barb-wire gate of the Warsaw Ghetto.

And as I mentioned, the sheer level of skill in this movie is high. In one of the most memorable sequences, the heroine tries to draw out a withdrawn young girl who’s suffered unforgivable abuse. A lot of movies have presented that type of scene, but the acting, writing, and direction in this movie showed great sensitivity.

So: not much new here besides the premise — but not much to complain about, either.

Which stars are unbelievers?

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Angelina Jolie, Atheism, CM Punk, Daniel Radcliffe, George Clooney, Mark Zuckerberg, Tyler the Creator, Zac Efron

I said recently that I’ve posted two items that I had written for my book What If I’m an Atheist? but had to delete from it in cutting the book to the proper word count. In the spirit of “Well, why not?”, here is an excerpt that did get into the book and that I think deserves a blog posting.

Angelina Jolie

When The Onion asked Jolie if there’s a god, she answered, “For the people who believe in it, I hope so. There doesn’t need to be a God for me.” The longtime man in her life, Brad Pitt, is an unbeliever as well. In 2009, he told the German magazine Bild, “I’m probably 20 percent atheist and 80 percent agnostic.”

CM Punk

This World Wrestling Entertainment star is not just atheistic but combative about it. When a journalist told him “Stop being a dogmatic atheist. It’s overdone and annoying,” the wrestler answered, “Stop believing in a man in the sky. It’s illogical.”

Daniel Radcliffe

The guy you love as Harry Potter is an unbeliever. “I’m an atheist, but I’m very relaxed about it,” he’s said. “I don’t preach my atheism, but I have a huge amount of respect for people like [atheist author] Richard Dawkins who do.” What’s more, he’s called himself “a militant atheist when religion starts impacting on legislation.”

George Clooney

“I don’t believe in heaven and hell,” Clooney’s said. “I don’t know if I believe in God.” He doesn’t object to religion, though. In an interview on CNN, he’s said, “Whatever anybody believes, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else, it’s fair enough and works. And I think it’s real and matters. I don’t happen to have those beliefs as much. I don’t believe in those things.”

Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook’s founder was born Jewish, but the young billionaire has listed himself as an atheist on his Facebook page. He doesn’t talk much about his beliefs (or lack thereof), though.

Tyler, the Creator

“I hate religion, to me it keeps people in a box and won’t allow them to do what the fuck they want,” the Odd Future rapper has written. When a fan challenged him about loving Jesus, he answered, “[Jesus] is not real. Why the fuck would I love someone that I haven’t met?”

Zac Efron

The Neighbors and Baywatch star has said, “I was raised agnostic, so we never practiced religion.”And he’s stayed that way. Although his ancestry is Jewish, he told the Jewish newspaper Forward that he remains agnostic.

 

In Star Wars, time flies. Or crawls. Or something.

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Anakin Skywalker, Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Rogue One, Star Wars

Time moves strangely in the Star Wars universe.

At the end of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, the knightly Obi-Wan Kenobi hands baby Luke Skywalker to farmer Owen Lars and his wife, Beru. They seem to be in their 20s. Joel Edgerton, who played Owen, was 29 (but looked younger) when the film was shot during the summer of 2003. Bonnie Piesse, who played Beru, was no older than 20.

Jump to Episode IV. Luke is now about 19. Mark Hamill was 24 during filming but, like Edgerton, looked younger.

Owen and Beru seem to be in their 60s. Phil Brown (Owen) was 60 and Shelagh Fraser (Beru) was 55.

Meanwhile, Ewan McGregor was 32 when he played Obi-Wan Kenobi in Episode III, while Alec Guinness was 62 when playing the same character in IV.

So Luke has gotten about 20 years older while his guardians have gained about 30. That’s a large difference.

Now, consider Luke’s father, Anakin Skywalker.

In Episode I, he’s a child, played by eight-year-old Jake Lloyd. In Episode II, when 19-year-old Hayden Christensen took on the role, Anakin naturally looks like he’s gotten at least a decade older.

But remember Obi-Wan Kenobi? Ewan McGregor looked only a little older in Episode II than he did in Episode I. So did Natalie Portman, who appeared in both films as Luke’s mom, Amidala.

So Luke lives through as many years as Obi-Wan, Owen, and Beru, but he looks like he went through fewer. And Anakin lives through as many years as Obi-Wan and Amidala but looks like he went through more.

And now, a further complication.

At the end of Episode III, Bail Organa, played by Jimmy Smits, adopts baby Leia, Luke’s sister. At the end of Rogue One, Leia makes a cameo appearance, looking like Carrie Fisher when she played Leia — that is, when Fisher was 19.

But as my colleague Jennifer de Guzman has pointed out, Bail/Smits doesn’t look 19 years older. He looks much as he did in Episode III.

The Star Wars universe is one crazy place.

A geeky suggestion

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Casting, Movies, Star Trek

With the death of the well-liked Anton Yelchin, who played U.S.S. Enterprise navigator Chekov in the recent Star Trek movies, I presume that the Trek filmmakers won’t hire someone else to play the role. If they make another Star Trek film, they may hire some nondescript actor to play some anonymous navigation officer. Like other bit, background and extra players, the new performer will fill out the scene but do little else.

Instead, my idea: The ship’s new navigator is a familiar face — Carol Marcus, who came aboard in the second new Trek movie, Star Trek Into Darkness.

After all, Into Darkness concluded with Captain Kirk telling Marcus, “I’m glad you could be a part of the family,” to which she replied, “It’s nice to have a family.” Despite that warm and friendly buildup, implying that she might stick around, she was absent from the third movie, Star Trek Beyond.

I’d like to see Marcus back in the next Trek. The series could use more women (Lt. Uhura is the only female in the main ensemble), and it’d be nice to see an old friend in so central a position as the navigator’s seat.

How did they get to be movie stars?

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acting, Barbra Streisand, Helen Mirren, Melissa McCarthy, Meryl Streep, movie stars, Tom Hanks

People usually think of movie stars as young, slim and gorgeous. But not all stars fit the mold.

Somehow, the rough-looking Humphrey Bogart became a romantic leading man in, among other movies, the beloved Casablanca. The old, fat and bulb-nosed W.C. Fields gathered an enormous fan base. Today, a fat woman in her 40s is a superstar: Melissa McCarthy.

Why? What do these people have that grabs the world?

Comedians, obviously, can be funny-looking. The Marx Brothers or Abbott and Costello don’t generally inspire steamy romantic fantasies, but we love to laugh at them. (By the way, if those comedians do spark sweaty urges of lust in your loins, I don’t want to know you.)

In addition, tough guys aren’t supposed to resemble a cover model from the latest issue of Seventeen. You have to look as if you’ve been through some rough years to play the roles that made Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson into big stars. Still, tough guys (and so far, they’re only guys; we haven’t seen a female action superstar since Pearl White in the silent-era The Perils of Pauline) have often had beautiful bodies: strong, lean, and muscular.

“Everyman” stars depend more on likability than beauty: Jimmy Stewart, Jack Lemmon, and Tom Hanks are examples. This is another sexist category, though. Women who play similar roles (Sandra Bullock, Janet Gaynor) are at a minimum cute and often gorgeous. A guy playing everyman roles can look like an everyman, but a woman, it seems, has to look like America’s sweetheart.

Performers who have extraordinary skill, particularly musical skill, don’t necessarily need conventional beauty. Fred Astaire wasn’t much to look at until he danced, and then he was mesmerizing. Barbra Streisand’s nose has been the punchline of a thousand jokes, but when she sings, the laughs stop and the love begins.

Some stars benefit from snobbery along the lines of “I’m no sucker for a pretty face. I respect talent.” The more un-pretty these stars are — I’m thinking of Spencer Tracy, Bette Davis, and Dustin Hoffman — the more their admirers can pat themselves on the back for seeing the beauty of their thespian gifts and ignoring their outer shell.

A few performers embody one or more of these types. Wallace Beery was ugly, fat and old for a movie star — in his late 40s and early 50s at the height of his fame in the 1930s. But he could play funny, he could play tough, and he was a hell of an actor, with an Oscar nomination for the prison drama The Big House and the Oscar itself for The Champ.

One of Beery’s frequent co-stars, Marie Dressler, was older and arguably uglier than Beery — and for a while was even more popular, although her film career was shorter. She too could play funny, tough and dramatic. She still shines in her most famous moment: the last scene of Dinner at Eight, alongside Jean Harlow.

Closer to the present day, there’s the rotund, unpretty and very short Danny DeVito. In the late 1980s and early ’90s, he was starring or co-starring in hits such as Batman Returns and Twins.

Around the same time, a nearly middle-aged and not conventionally pretty black woman with a bizarre name — Whoopi Goldberg — helped to make hits out of Sister Act and Ghost, among other movies.

And today, Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren, both attractive but old enough to be grandmothers, are beloved and bankable.

So yes, it helps to look like Charlize Theron or Ryan Reynolds. But it’s nice to know that if an actor can embody something that people love, whether it’s comedy chops, a tough persona or sheer acting ability, he or she can look like you or me.

I ain’t ’fraid of no sexist backlash

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Bill Murray, Ghostbusters, Melissa McCarthy, movie trailers

I know that a lot of people have hated the new Ghostbusters trailers. Even Melissa McCarthy, one of the movie’s stars, has admitted that the first trailer wasn’t all that good.

But a one-after-another viewing of the second trailer and the original Murray-Aykroyd-Landis movie’s trailer provides an interesting contrast.

The original has a much more “serious,” mock-menacing tone, which contrasted with the trailer’s gags and highlighted them.

Also, the original doesn’t include Ernie Hudson’s character much at all, while second new-GB trailer gives time to all of the ’busters.

Another difference, a big one, is Bill Murray’s sublime confidence. The stars of the new movie are funny, but none of them displays Murray’s apparent ease and panache. Comedies don’t always need that kind of style, but it sure did buoy the original movie.

Bottom line, though, is that both the original and the second “new Ghostbusters” trailer have a few good laughs. So despite all of the hatred and controversy over the new trailers, I think that the new movie has a good chance to be really funny.

And in any case, we’ll find out sooner or later, won’t we?

The ladies of My Fair Lady

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Audrey Hepburn, Julie Andrews, My Fair Lady

The most famous productions of My Fair Lady starred actual ladies — the refined, elegant Julie Andrews on stage; the chic, graceful Audrey Hepburn on film.

But such casting is a cheat.

The show’s about transforming a gutter girl into a princess. But Andrews and Hepburn were princess-like to begin with. The audience knew that the ugly duckling of the first scenes was already a swan. The casting drains tension and uncertainty out of the story.

I’m not criticizing Andrews or Hepburn, who are wonderful performers. I can even see good reasons to cast them (in addition to their obvious talent and star quality).

First, you can argue that MFL is about how Eliza always had a lady within her, so it’s appropriate to cast someone with a ladylike aura.

Also, it’s fun to watch someone as tasteful and polished as Andrews/Hepburn howl like a true prole.

(By the way, I know that neither actress had a princessy upbringing in real life. I’m talking about how the audience sees the actress, not the actress’s actual biography.)

Has anyone staged a successful production of MFL that starred someone like Bette Davis or Melissa McCarthy? I mean someone who’s less conventionally lovely than Hepburn or Andrews, and who’s known for playing scrappy fighters. The audience would be eager to see how that kind of actress would metamorphose into a lady.

Interestingly, MFL’s source, Shaw’s Pygmalion, has had a wider variety of Elizas: Diana Rigg, Michelle Dockery, Claire Danes, Margot Kidder, and even Twiggy. The audience didn’t identify them with as much gentility and charm as Andrews or Hepburn, even though all of them are attractive and no one considered them crass or coarse when they played the role.

It’d be intriguing to see Hilary Swank as Eliza. She’s beautiful and fashionable, but she earned her Oscars for playing working-class underdogs in Boys Don’t Cry and Million Dollar Baby.

Thumbs up for ‘In & Out’

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comedy, LGBTQ

I just re-saw “In & Out” (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119360/), which I hadn’t seen since it was released in 1997. It’s one of those comedies where nearly every performer gets something funny to do, thanks to Paul Rudnick’s script and Frank Oz’s direction.

Kevin Kline slaughters in the lead role, pulling laughs in everything from subtle facial expressions to a wild dance. Joan Cusack digs in to find comedy in a role — a first hopeful then disappointed bride — that could have devolved into nothing but whining and bewilderment.

Some of the best fun came from actors who surprised me. Fashion model Shalom Harlow, no one’s idea of an experienced comedian, found the funny again and again. Tom Selleck skillfully delivered as a shallow but likeable gay newscaster in this pro-gay movie, even though in real life he was an old-fashioned, conservative Republican making the movie when his party was largely anti-gay.

I have to mention also the movie’s old pros doing characters that fit them like their own skin, including Debbie Reynolds as a warm but tart mom and Bob Newhart as a guy under pressure to say ugly and uncomfortable things no matter how much he doesn’t want to.

So yeah, I liked it.