Joe's View

With Joe Meyers, entertainment writer

Archive for February, 2013

‘Indiscretion’: we’re not as ‘liberated’ as we think we are

Thursday, February 28, 2013 by:Joe Meyers

The wages of sin are presented with great drama and suspense in the new Charles Dubow novel, “Indiscretion” (William Morrow), which follows the impact of marital infidelity on a famous, and famously attractive, rich couple.

The first novel has been gathering good reviews since it was published earlier this month, and with good reason — it’s a beautifully written and provocative account of what happens to a marriage after a husband strays.

In recent decades, we’ve been conditioned to think that a marriage should be able to stay sound after an occasional outside sexual adventure, but Dubow shows us that neither men nor women can separate sex and “love” as easily as we might think we can.

The book has drawn comparisons with “The Great Gatsby” because of the wealthy characters, scenes in deluxe Long Island settings, and the fact that the story of the tragic romance is told by an observer.

Walter has been friends with Maddy and Harry Winslow for many years when the story begins. Walter has known Maddy since childhood and after she married Harry they became a tight trio.

Like Nick Carraway’s attraction to Daisy and Gatsby in “The Great Gatsby,” Walter is bedazzled by the beauty and charm of his friends. There’s never a threat of sex getting in the way for the man — he’s not gay, his motor just runs a little slow — but Walter’s adoration of the couple has strong elements of romantic love in it, as well as friendship.

Harry is a National Book Award-winning novelist and Maddy is beautiful, witty and generous to all of her friends. Their charisma is so so strong that everyone wants to be around them.

The trouble starts when a young woman named Claire arrives in the Hamptons on a date with an obnoxious British man who has become very wealthy in the financial sector.

At a social gathering, Claire is drawn to Maddy and Harry — she read Harry’s book and loved it — and they rescue her when the Brit becomes even worse than usual.

The 20ish woman works in the media and is naturally drawn to the fame and charm and wealth of her hosts.

Walter views everything with compassion — we soon see that he is writing about past events and he seems to be a reliable narrator.

The title and the cover suggest a novel racier than what is actually between the covers of “Indiscretion” — this isn’t a “Fatal Attraction” with a man succumbing to an evil temptress.

Dubow appears to be a moralist who shares Walter’s distress at the notion of Harry straying from Maddy, but Claire is not a villain. She is simply young and naive about the repercussions of expressing her desire for Harry and encouraging him to reciprocate.

It’s an auspicious debut.

‘Curse of the Starving Class’: Sam Shepard done right

Wednesday, February 27, 2013 by:Joe Meyers

There is so much that can go wrong in any production of a Sam Shepard play — casting, tone, design — that when everything is done right it’s a cause for celebration.

That’s what has occurred with Gordon Edelstein’s Long Wharf Theatre staging of “Curse of the Starving Class,” so you really need to get to New Haven between now and March 10 when the show closes.

Shepard has always been an acquired taste (one which many people never acquire).

Shepard’s world view is darkly comic and he veers from the real to the surreal with alarming speed, but his take on the lost American dream, collapsing families, and unbridled commerce rolling over almost everything in the past century can be as gripping as the work of Arthur Miller, Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams.

Unlike those titans, however, Shepard is willing to alienate a good portion of the mainstream theater audience to have his say (this is the reason he has never joined peer David Mamet as a Broadway favorite). He’s like Beckett in his relationship with the audience — an entertainer, to be sure, but a take or leave it kind of guy.

Edelstein has assembled a terrific cast led by frequent collaborator Judith Ivey and Kevin Tighe as the dazed, distracted matriarch and patriarch of a farm family living on the edge of the desert in California.

Ella (Ivey) and Weston (Tighe) are lost in their own dreams of money and eventual comfort somewhere else, so they haven’t really been fit parents to Wesley (Peter Albrink) and Emma (Elvy Yost).

Both parents are so tuned out and self-involved that at key points in the play each of them decides to take a nap on the kitchen table — and there they sleep while their farm and their family is falling to pieces.

Only an actress with great comic timing — and prodigious audience rapport — can make a selfish, detached mother funny, and that’s what Judith Ivey does here. But the comedy she and Edelstein find in a bleak situation doesn’t detract from the seriousness of Shepard’s intentions — the laughs heighten the drama (and the horror).

Tighe is equally skilled at walking a very fine line between hopelessness and hilarity, and the actor gets a few monologues where Shepard’s poetry really sings.

Mention must be made of the great set design by Michael Yeagan who has opened up the rear of the Long Wharf stage space so that the desert really does seem to come right down to the wrecked farmhouse. He also uses that rear space for one of the biggest shock effects in the second half of the play.

Yeargan is a master of custom tailoring his designs to the tricky architecture of modern theaters — he is one of the very few who have conquered the awkward set-up of the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center with designs that have used every inch of available space (his work on “South Pacfic” was breathtaking and made every seat in the thrust stage space a good one — something that is most often not the case for folks sitting on the two sides of the stage).

I could go on and on about this great production of “Curse of the Starving Class” but I would hate to take away from your enjoyment of its atmosphere of constant surprise and suspense. It’s a triumph for Edelstein and Long Wharf.

For more information on the show go to www.longwharf.org

‘The Local Stigmatic’: Al Pacino’s 20 year labor of love

Tuesday, February 26, 2013 by:Joe Meyers

Commentary tracks on DVDs are often little more than thinly disguised PR for the movie in question, but you can’t say that of Al Pacino’s insights on the never-theatrically-released “The Local Stigmatic.”

Based on a one-act play by British writer Heathcote Williams, the 56-minute film was shot during the 1980s, completed in 1990, and then never publicly shown, with the exception of some private screenings for acting and film classes.

Pacino finally agreed to include “The Local Stigmatic” in a DVD package of other films he has produced independently, including “Chinese Coffee” and “Looking for Richard.”

I’ve always been fascinated by “Stigmatic” because I knew one of the actors who played a major role — the late great Joseph Maher — and had been hearing about it for years from him as the piece was being edited and re-edited by Pacino and director David Wheeler.

Pacino financed the film himself and it was shot in multiple locations — from New York City to Atlanta — as the star raised the money and when the small cast had no other conflicting (i.e.paying) jobs.

Maher and Pacino had first done the piece together on stage in 1968.

Pacino has always been famous for exploring the same stage roles again and again — the performer has done multiple productions of “Richard III,” “American Buffalo” and “Salome,” among others — but he kept returning to “The Local Stigmatic” for decades.

The play is about two nihilistic London men, simmering with rage over the advantages that celebrities have over them, who viciously assault a British stage and film star they meet in a West End bar.

On the commentary track, Pacino talks about his fascination with the play and his feeling that it has never been properly appreciated. According to the star, the original New York stage production was panned and was only able to run after Jon Voight put up some extra money.

“I don’t know why I’ve been caught by this thing,” Pacino says in the intense whisper he uses throughout his commentary.

“How do people get like that?,” he asks rhetorically of the pair of thugs played by Pacino and Paul Guilfoyle. “Can you see them as little babies?”

The star goes on to say that he believe Williams was ahead of his time to see the hunger for fame — and the undercurrent of resentment for those who have it — that is so rampant in our culture. “How could he have known this stuff in 1964?,” Pacino says of Williams’ insights into fame and fans-turned-assassins. “He nailed it.”

Ironically, the film itself is very seriously flawed. Pacino seems too old for his punk role and his cockney accent is distractingly uncertain (the star’s worst vocal work this side of the notorious “Revolution”). The piece opens with a 10 or 15-minute monologue about dog racing that is very hard to focus on.

Listening to Pacino talk about the project is another story — he is forthright, generous to the other performers, and very funny about his own obsessiveness. While the movie seems squishy and uncertain, Pacino is riveting and I was very glad to hear his take on this little-seen labor of love.

Notes on last night’s Oscars, or: has it ever been a good show?

Monday, February 25, 2013 by:Joe Meyers

With its pulse being taken second by second on Twitter and other social media, the Oscar telecast now feels more like a giant focus group than a coherent TV special.

Last night, it was hard to sort through the love and hate for new host Seth MacFarlane as he proceeded through the night — lots of people felt he was vulgar and sexist, others thought he brought an appropriate level of 21st century snark to a broadcast that has always been a muddle of bad jokes, mediocre musical performances and lots of Hollywood self-congratulation.

The bottom line was that he looked comfortable and exuded self-confidence — something that cannot be said of James Franco two years ago — and had a decent number of good bits and solid jokes to get past the bad ones.

The guy also has some musical talent — it was fun to watch him hoof with Channing Tatum and Charlize Theron (bottom) in the best part of the opening number (we all know Tatum is a dancer, but most people probably don’t remember that Theron started as a ballet dancer).

MacFarlane’s time on screen was never as painful to look at as the joint appearance of award presenters Melissa McCarthy and Paul Rudd (right) — who bombed — or the really crass presenting moment of Mark Wahlberg and the teddy bear character from MacFarlane’s hit comedy “Ted.”

As time pases, people remember the high points of live TV shows and forget about the long, dull stretches. Whether the host was Bob Hope or Johnny Carson or Billy Crystal, the Oscars always have too much business to attend to for it to be a great show — and the networks stretch it out as long as possible to have a maximum number of commercial slots.

There’s a good reason why old awards shows are never rerun — even to fill out all of those endless hours on cable. Most of them can be boiled down to 10 or 15 minutes of decent entertainment and the fun of seeing a favorite actor win a prize.

People remember a few spontaneous moments from previous Oscarcasts — the Marlon Brando rejection, the scolding of Vanessa Redgrave by Paddy Chayefsky, the streaker — and the rest is forgotten with good reason.

The most notable change in the modern era is the rise of actresses shilling for designers in the endless red carpet prologue. The fact that many of them are paid lots of money to wear specific designers’ clothes is never mentioned as they preen in front of the assembled press.

The PR and press build-up now goes on for months in advance of the actual award giving.

The ratings might have declined from the Oscar glory days of the 1960s and 1970s (when TV viewers had a lot fewer choices) but the amount of press coverage and speculation before the show airs is phenomenal. I grew up in a period when few serious movie fans took the Oscars seriously (after all, we saw “In the Heat of the Night” chosen over “Bonnie & Clyde” and “The Graduate” and “Rocky” win over “Taxi Driver”) but now the critics are as bad as the fans, bitching and moaning about “snubs” and getting furious when a performance they don’t like wins a top honor.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gets more coverage than ever for its annual orgy of self-promotion — and the PR hype lasts for many more weeks in advance of the show than it used to — so it is no wonder they don’t really care whether or not people are thrilled by the telecast. It would be impossible to put a cash value on the torrent of free publicity the annual shindig generates for a diverse slate of films ranging from “Argo” to “Amour” is incalculable.

Who needs an Oscar party when you have Twitter?

Sunday, February 24, 2013 by:Joe Meyers

For those of us who are “civilians” — i.e. outside of the Hollywood film industry — watching the Oscars has been a long-running, annual orgy of snark.

Picking apart the fashion ensembles of the actresses.

Questioning the taste of the industry folk when they give an Oscar to a film we hate.

Collectively rolling our eyes at the ghastly musical numbers and witless pre-envelope opening banter.

Twitter has added a whole new element of fun to watching any big TV special, with one eye on the screen and the other on the never-ending feed of commentary.

If only we had Twitter back in the days of Sasheen Littlefeather accepting an Oscar for Marlon Brando (above) or Jack Palance doing his one-armed push-ups or that streaker who raced across the stage as David Niven was about to speak (below).

What fun we could have had.

Well, tonight I’ll be joining several of my Hearst colleagues for live Twitter commentary on the whole shindig. Our comments — and your feedback — will be aggregated under the hashtag #ouroscars and you will find all of the Tweets and Oscar blog posts — and lots of terrific pictures — on a web page set up just for that purpose:

https://www.rebelmouse.com/ouroscars/

Today at 1:30 p.m. East Coast time/10:30 a.m. West Coast time, the terrific film critic Mick LaSalle and the social lead for @SFGate Jeff Elder will be doing a live Oscar chat that you can follow — or comment on — at the Twitter hashtag #ouroscars. I plan to add my two cents during this event.

With so many close races tonight, and such special guests as Barbra Streisand (her first Oscar singing performance since 1977), there should be a lot to talk about before, during and after the show.

See you at the Oscars!

If ‘Argo’ wins best picture, who takes the best director Oscar?

Saturday, February 23, 2013 by:Joe Meyers

Movie people and TV network executives believe that more people will watch the annual Oscar telecast when the nominees include big, popular hits.

If that’s true Sunday night’s telecast should score great numbers because the best picture division is packed with films that have done well at the box office while pleasing many critics.

“Argo,” “Lincoln,” “Silver Linings Playbook” and “Life of Pi” are all in the tradition of such crowd-pleasing best picture winners as “Amadeus,” “Braveheart” and “Terms of Endearment.”

The fact that no one seems quite certain of who will win what should also boost the ratings — there might be at least a few surprises in the top categories, and the prognosticators I’ve been reading all leave room for some dark horse winners.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences threw a monkey wrench into what is often the easiest category to forecast — best picture — by not giving Ben Affleck his expected nomination for best director.

Nine times out of ten, the best picture and director prizes go to the same film, and those two winners are handily forecast when the Directors Guild of America gives out its prize a few weeks before the Oscar.

The DGA winner almost always wins the best director Oscar as well, but a few weeks ago Affleck took that prize and so now a mystery has enshrouded both top Academy Award honors.

There is a widespread belief among critics and industry people alike that “Argo” will win best picture largely because of the surge of sympathy for Affleck not getting a nod in the directing division. If this happens, it will be the first time since 1989 that a movie wins best picture without having its director nominated (the 24-year-old film in question was “Driving Miss Daisy” and the snubbed director was Bruce Beresford).

Because we are now flying blind in the two categories, we face two possibilities — “Argo” takes picture and Steven Spielberg, David O. Russell, Michael Haneke, Ang Lee or Benh Zeitlin wins director; or “Argo” is passed over for best picture and Oscar tradition will be reinforced by having best director and best picture linked once again.

If you had asked me a month ago — when the nominations were announced — what movie was going to win best picture I would have said “Lincoln” and have added that Spielberg would win for best director. It’s a strong film that presents history with intelligence and passion and it also has been a huge box office hit.

I assumed on Oscar nomination morning that “Amour,” “Life of Pi,” “Silver Linings Playbook” and “Beasts of the Southern Wild” didn’t quite have the heft to take the two top prizes (with “Silver Linings Playbook” being a production of Oscar master Harvey Weinstein I didn’t rule it out, however; Weinstein has won in those two categories the past two years for “The Artist” and “The King’s Speech”).

So, what’s going to happen Sunday night?

I don’t know.

“Argo” feels like the best picture winner at this point and if the voters swing that way they could give “Lincoln” the consolation prize in the director category (which should prompt a bitter flashback for Spielberg, who won in the 1998 director’s race, for “Saving Private Ryan,” but saw the best picture statuette go to another Weinstein sleeper, “Shakespeare in Love”).

I’ve read columnists who make good cases for the best director Oscar going to Ang Lee for his extraordinary skill in bringing the challenging “Life of Pi” to the screen (and in 3D) or some folks think the Academy might try to recognize one of the true titans of world cinema and give the prize to Haneke.

And all of the above would be negated if Weinstein manages to pull off a “Silver Linings Playbook” sweep that repeats his underdog Oscar triumphs in past years. The Academy’s affection for the film was amply demonstrated in it getting nominations in all four of the acting categories (something that hasn’t happened since “Reds” 30 years ago).

What all of this means is lots of suspense Sunday night right down to the awarding of the final prize — best picture.

The best book ever written about the Academy Awards?

Friday, February 22, 2013 by:Joe Meyers

Critic and historian Mark Harris has been the most reliably sane and informed commentator on the Oscar race over the past few years.

Sadly, for us, Harris had to sit out this year’s Oscars because he is married to Tony Kushner, the screenwriter and playwright who is a nominee for his amazing “Lincoln” script.

Harris writes for Entertainment Weekly, New York magazine and GQ about movies and television on a regular basis. He has a characteristically smart piece on male movie stars in the current GQ in which he contrasts the 2012 films of rising stars Channing Tatum and Taylor Kitsch and then muses on what constitutes a “star” in contemporary Hollywood.

In 2008, Harris published what is perhaps the best book ever written about the Oscars, “Pictures at a Revolution” (The Penguin Press), which rightly brought him tremendous critical praise.

The book takes us back to 1967 and shows us how the five films nominated for the best picture Oscar that year were a perfect representation of the artistic and financial forces that were about to produce a changing of the guard in Hollywood.

Old-school Tinsel Town was represented by the conservative “Doctor Dolittle” and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” the brash young revolutionaries were on hand in the form of “Bonnie & Clyde” and “The Graduate” and the fifth film (and eventual winner) was a mix of old and new styles, “In the Heat of the Night.”

Harris takes us behind the scenes of the making of all five Oscar-nominated films. In each case, years were spent simply trying to get the movies into production.

The material on “Bonnie & Clyde” is particularly interesting, detailing the half-decade spent by Esquire magazine writers Robert Benton and David Newman trying to interest directors in their off-beat gangster film. Harris shows us how their screenplay grew out of the writers’ love of the French New Wave pictures that opened here in the early 1960s and that “Bonnie & Clyde” was almost directed by Francois Truffaut (he opted instead for “Fahrenheit 451” as his English language debut).

“Pictures at a Revolution” is based on fresh reporting and fresh insights into a pivotal moment in the history of movies. And the mixture of commerce and art represented in the Oscar race of 1967 is still true of the Academy’s thinking 46 years later.

Oscar madness: try to remember Cary Grant & ‘Rocky’

Friday, February 22, 2013 by:Joe Meyers

It’s the movie buff’s equivalent of the Super Bowl.

A huge TV event that is anticipated for weeks — months? — and then forgotten almost immediately.

At two recent Oscar library discussions that I led, I asked those who attended if they could name the man who won best actor last year, and it took a while for one participant to remember Jean Dujardin of “The Artist.”

When I went further back in time and asked if anyone could recall the film that earned Goldie Hawn an Oscar, both groups were stumped (It was “Cactus Flower” in 1969.)

Of course, Oscar wins in major categories mean a boost at the box office — and in DVD rentals and downloads — but to get angry because your favorite film or performer is overlooked is a bit foolish when you consider the history of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences annual award ceremony.

Lots of wonderful movies went into the Hollywood history books with best picture Oscar citations — foremost among them the first two “Godfather” films, “Lawrence of Arabia,” “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Midnight Cowboy” and several others I could mention.

But, does anyone now believe that “Rocky” was the best film of 1976? Or that it should have beaten “All the President’s Men,” “Taxi Driver” and “Network”?

Is it right that Hilary Swank has won two best actress Oscars and that the long list of women who never won includes Carole Lombard, Michelle Pfeiffer, Glenn Close, Jean Arthur, Jill Clayburgh, Greta Garbo?…you get the idea.

Time generally straightens things out when it comes to the reputations of films and their stars. “On Golden Pond” won the top acting prize for Henry Fonda in 1982 — mostly because everyone knew he was dying and he had never won — but Burt Lancaster did infinitely more interesting (and challenging) work that year in “Atlantic City.”

How seriously can you take the Oscars when Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock were never honored with competitive Academy Awards and Stanley Kubrick’s sole win was not for directing but for supervising the special effects in “2001: A Space Odyssey”?

Between now and Sunday night’s television shindig, I’ll be blogging here on some of my predictions, some Oscar history, and whatever else crosses my mind.

I’ll also be live Tweeting during the ceremony at @joesview as part of the Hearst Oscar team that you can find on Twitter at #ouroscars.

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