What Might Have Been

Last night, I was fortunate enough to attend a program at McCarter Theatre in which Frank Rich interviewed Stephen Sondheim. It was a fantastic program with lots of stories and insight from the great composer.

Among the many stories he told was one about a possible movie adaptation of Into the Woods. Sondheim said that he and Jim Hanson were talking about a film of the fairy tale musical, but Henson’s death obviously ended the project. There were a few audible reactions from the audience, some sighs and cries of “oh,” and at least one utterance (from me) of “Oh my God.”

Sondheim heard a few of these and looked toward the audience with an expression that relayed just how wonderful that movie might have been, and how he regretted that it never happened. Then he said, “I’ll never forgive him.”

Remembering Lanford Wilson

I just read the news that Lanford Wilson died and reading the headline made me gasp. I interviewed the influential playwright a few years ago when he and his collaborator, the director Marshall Mason, worked on a revival of his Pulitzer Prize-winning play Talley’s Folly at McCarter Theatre.

The Wilson and Mason interview is one of my favorites. They talked freely about their work and indulged all of my questions (many of which I’m sure they heard before and some of which, I’m sure were quite silly).

A few memories stand out: Wilson’s last finished play was Rain Dance in 2002, about six years prior to our interview. I asked if he would write another one and he quickly responded yes and playfully said he’d “slap” me “across both cheeks” for suggesting otherwise.

Another memory I have is him telling me about how the idea came about for Talley’s Folly. Helen Stenborg who played Sally Talley in Fifth of July (and who, coincidentally died two days before Wilson) asked him for some background about the relationship between her character and her late husband Matt. That led to Wilson writing a play about the two characters falling in love.

He also told me a great story about talking with the director Harold Clurman about writing a “joyous” play and how one should end. Clurman responded “joyously, joyously!”

I wrote all of this into my story, and I was proud of it. I still think it’s a pretty good story, but a few weeks after I wrote it, I bought a book containing the three plays he wrote about the Talley family. Inside was an essay in which he wrote about the talks with Stenborg and Clurman. How silly of me to think I had gotten some kind of scoop.

My last memory of Wilson? After the interview, he picked up a bag containing some snacks from Wawa, and I couldn’t help but wonder: Did he buy those himself, and if so, did the cashier at Wawa know that he or she had just sold some chips to a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright?

Last Chance to See ‘The How and the Why’

I finally got to see The How and The Why at McCarter Theatre this week and while I’ll spare you a full review, I’ll tell you to go see it while you can.

Sarah Treem’s play finishes its run this weekend with performances Friday at 8, Saturday at 3 and 8 and Sunday at 2. It’s intriguing, thoughtful, funny, insightful and emotional. What more could you want. Mercedes Ruehl and Bess Rous are fantastic, and I love the second act set.  See it and let me know what you think.

You can read my preview story of the play here and Bob Brown’s review of it here. For tickets call 609-258-2787 or go to www.mccarter.org.

Surely you can’t be serious

Classic movie fans can see one of the funniest movies ever made on the big screen when Airplane! comes to the AMC in Hamilton Sat. Jan. 29 at 12:30 and Tues. Feb. 1 at 7:30 p.m.

So there!

Back At the Movies

The movie review shows hosted by Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel (then by Ebert and Richard Roeper, and then other critical combinations) have as much to do with my love of movies as the movies I saw as a child. Except for the dreadful “Ben and Ben” year, I barely missed an episode of Sneak Previews, At the Movies, & the movies, or whatever it was called at various times.

Ebert is back, kind of. Unable to speak because of various surgeries, the Chicago Sun-Times’ critic is the producer of a new show, Roger Ebert Presents At the Movies, which made its debut on PBS this past weekend.

(One quick first complaint: My DVR had the show starting at 11 on Saturday night. It started about 10 minutes earlier, so I missed the start. I watched the first segments online, but I like to watch TV shows on an actual television.)

The first episode was odd. The rhythm between the two featured critics — Christy Lemire of the Associated Press and Ignatiy Vishnevetsky of mubi.com — is off. That’s to be expected for a new television team, but even the show’s conceit is weird. Love him or hate him, Ebert had a real voice that made him a great TV presence. Now two critics who are supposed to be authoritative are working for the Ebert brand, making this their own show is going to be tough.

The most notable thing about the duo is not that Lemire and Vishnevetsky disagreed on everything, but that Lemire gave all five movies a thumb’s up while Lemire gave them all a thumb’s down. I can’t say much about this because I haven’t seen any of the reviewed pictures, but Vishnevetsky’s opinions have me scratching my head. I have a rule that an interesting critic will go against the grain now and then, that means liking things most critics hate (think Michael Phillips liking 10,000 BC or Ebert’s endorsement of Cop and a Half many years ago). But on a first sampling, Vishnevetsky’s recommendations of The Green Hornet, No Strings Attached and The Dilemma make for a trifecta that has me doubting his trustworthiness.

Lemire is clearly the better of the two, her opinions are strong and she makes them well. A critic being negative often sounds smarter than a positive one, but Vishnevetsky’s running theme is: It’s not a masterpiece but I liked it. Ebert once wrote a none-too-subtle directive aimed at Ben Lyons (who took over the old show for one season) about what it takes to be a real critic. Based on one episode, Vishnevetsky seems far closer to the Lyons school of film criticism than the Gene Siskel one.

Another segment of the show was downright lame. We spent a few minutes with Kim Morgan, whom I’ve never heard of, but was assured was a classic movie genius. Her assignment was to tell us about a great, old movie. OK, I’m always up for a recommendation. And what did Morgan spotlight? The Third Man.

The Third Man? Are you kidding me? What’s next week’s pick? Casablanca? The Third Man is a great movie, but it’s a ridiculously obvious choice. So maybe Morgan had some nifty insights. Wrong. She ran through the plot, then told us a highlight is the great entrance by Orson Welles. That’s great insight for someone who doesn’t know Fred Astaire could dance a bit, but if you’re a movie lover, you know this. (She also mentioned the musical score played on the zither and the famous quote about the cuckoo clock.)

The show was such a mixed bag because a segment (one that was pretty cool) introduced the people behind the show via a spoof of the Citizen Kane trailer, but you had to know the trailer (or at least Orson Welles’ style of announcing the credits to his films) to get the joke. So the producers of this show think its viewers need to be told The Third Man is a good movie, but that they’re familiar with the Citizen Kane trailer.

I love movies and I think I know my stuff. But there’s tons I don’t know. Surely, there’s someone who can fill me on a great movie I haven’t heard of.

There is, and his name is Roger Ebert. His section is called “Roger’s Office” and it started with a few seconds of him typing. Then we hear Werner Horzog’s voice, “speaking for Roger Ebert.” Ebert’s review of an animated film called My Dog Tulip does everything a show like this should. It informed us a movie few know about it, and Ebert expressed his opinion in an intelligent, well written way. (It’s also a classic Ebert review, based largely on the film’s emotional impact.) We all know whether or not we want to see The Green Hornet, what makes a show like this worthwhile is informing us of something we might miss.

Ebert may not be able to speak, but he hasn’t lost his voice.

Stage Fright

I made my debut on the McCarter Theatre stage a few weeks ago.

No one was in the audience, the seats were empty, a sea of maroon velvet. I had just finished an interview with actor Stephen Spinella for a story in Timeoff previewing An Iliad, which is running at McCarter through Nov. 7.

After I interviewed him, I followed Spinella, Packet Photographer Phil McAuliffe, and McCarter’s Dan Bauer through some halls and up a narrow, circular stairway off stage left of the Matthews Theatre. I actually got nervous as I walked onto the stage, and my stomach got queasy at the thought of people sitting in the seats, waiting for me to do anything.

“There’s no one here, and I’m nervous,” I said to Spinella. “I don’t know how you do it.”

His response? “You think about anything else.”

Critical Thinking – ‘The American’

One of the fun parts of my job is talking (usually via e-mail) movies with Elise Nakhnikian, TIMEOFF’s movie critic. So I thought it might be interesting to share some of our exchanges on this blog.

I love Elise’s reviews, and I was thrilled to read that she liked The American. I saw it the same weekend she did, and I thought it was great. But then I talked to a few people who didn’t share my enthusiasm, so it was nice to find some kinship with her. Following is an exchange Elise and I had about The American.

Two things I should point out: First, most of our discussions aren’t this long, but we had a lot to say about this movie, and some other topics it led to. Second, this includes some big-time spoilers, starting with the second paragraph. So you might not want to read it until after you’ve seen The American, if you plan to see it and haven’t yet.

ANTHONY: I saw The American yesterday and loved it. I had a discussion with my wife’s uncle, he didn’t like it much, and I noticed the New Yorker reviewer didn’t care for it, so it’s nice to see I’m not alone.

I have a question: When the woman tries to shoot Clooney at the end, did her gun backfire or did Pavel shoot her? I thought the gun backfired (and that perhaps Jack rigged it that way, knowing he was Pavel’s target). But my wife’s uncle thought Pavel shot her. I had no doubts that the gun backfired, but now I’m wondering, what was Pavel doing there if he didn’t plan on killing both of them?

ELISE: I was wondering the same thing – or a variation on it.

I have to say, I just assumed that Pavel shot her. But now that you mention it, Jack did hesitate before delivering the gun — he took it out of its case, remember? I wondered what that was about, though I didn’t think about it for long. Now you have me wondering again. The part of her face that was destroyed was the eye over the eyepiece, which might jibe with a backfire — as if I really know what a backfire injury would look like. I like your theory, though.

Since I assume Pavel did it, I was trying to figure out why Pavel he shot her – or rather, why he shot her before she shot Jack. You would think, if he were wanted her and Jack dead, that he would just wait until she shot Jack and then shoot her, grab the gun, and go.

The theory I came up with was that Pavel had always intended to kill both her and Jack – and probably the woman who came out to test the gun with the flower target, too – so there would be no one left who could trace this very expensive hand-made gun to him. I mean, why spend thousands of dollars (what they paid him plus his living expenses plus the two women’s time and travel expenses) for something as easy to come by as a gun, unless it’s crucial that it be totally untraceable? But the shooter messed up Pavel’s plan by waiting for such a public occasion to target Jack. Pavel didn’t want to risk people rushing up after hearing her shot and before he could get away — they might see him fleeing. So he took her out before she could shoot, knowing that Jack would follow and he could get him then. That could be totally off base, of course, but I need to come up with something that might make sense of that scene.

I actually found it interesting that I had to mull it over that way. It shows how much faith the filmmakers had earned — I felt sure they had a good reason for what happened, though they didn’t spell it out any more than they did any of the who-what-why of the stalking of Jack that was going on throughout the movie.

P.S. I’m glad you liked it too! I saw it with my husband, who didn’t like it at all. He and I have very similar taste in movies, but we really disagreed on this one. He thought it was just a string of clichés — the whore with a heart of gold, the hero who dies just as he’s finally about to break free, etc. But I think the truism that what matters is not what story a movie tells but how it tells it is particularly true of genre movies, and I thought this one portrayed those familiar elements creatively enough to make them feel fresh.

ANTHONY: I’m finding myself loving George Clooney movies lately. I didn’t think much of things like Good Night, and Good Luck and Michael Clayton. And at the risk of sounding dopey, I just didn’t understand a minute of Syriana.

Now with Burn After Reading, Up in the Air and The American (not to mention The Fantastic Mr. Fox), I think he’s on a roll. He’s a rare movie star who just demands my attention, I can’t take my eyes off him (OK, maybe my eyes swayed during some of the scenes with Violante Placido).

Speaking of which, this is also the first movie I’ve seen in a while that is genuinely sexy. The main characters are ridiculously attractive — the most attractive assassins ever, and the most beautiful prostitute in history — but all of the aesthetics of the movie are beautiful.

ELISE: I like George Clooney a lot too. Was just watching him on a Roseanne rerun last night and thinking how frustrating it must have been for him to be cast as a callow pretty boy.

I liked Good Night, and Good Luck when I saw it, since I was hungry for a liberal parable at the time, but I don’t have any desire to see it again. Michael Clayton holds up better in my memory — I’d happily see that again. I remember it as an smartly done, beautifully shot genre film — not unlike The American in that sense, and with Clooney playing a similarly trapped/frustrated character. What did you not like about it?

ANTHONY: What I didn’t like about Good Night, and Good Luck was that it just seemed to re-enact events, especially Murrow’s broadcasts. I’m no expert on Murrow, but I didn’t learn anything new about him, or McCarthyism, because of the movie. Gene Siskel had a test for movies based on real-life events: Is it more insightful or interesting than a documentary about the topic would be? I’d say Good Night, and Good Luck failed that test. It did, however, lead to one of my all-time favorite Oscar jokes, when Jon Stewart said that, coincidentally, “Good Night, and Good Luck” are also the words uses Clooney to end all his dates.

I should see Michael Clayton again, I don’t remember it enough to be fair about it. But I recall thinking it was a pretty standard story, not as layered or as much of a statement about the times we’re living in as a lot of reviews led me to believe it would be.

About The American: A lot of people just hate it. Someone left a biting comment on your review, and NewJerseyNewsroom.com’s review of it was hateful, as were all of the comments left under it. I hate to sound all smart and superior – and as with almost every movie, I’m sure there’s an argument to make against it – but I wonder if people just aren’t patient enough these days to watch a deliberate, quiet character study. I’ve read a few jibes at the scenes where Clooney builds the gun, I loved those scenes: I liked watching the character’s competence, and the way he used those elements to build the gun.

ELISE: Interesting point about fiction films needing to be better than documentaries about the same subject. When I wrote about Milk, http://girls-can-play.blogspot.com/2008/12/milk.html I said it takes a great fiction film to beat a good doc if you’re telling a real person’s life story, since the impact of seeing the actual person gives the documentary an edge. Maybe you’re right about that in terms of Good Night, and Good Luck too, but I liked what Clooney was doing with the look and the mood of it enough not to think about documentaries while I watched it. What I loved about that movie was how Clooney focused on was what happened behind the scenes — how hard it was to get that interview on the air and how close it came to being squelched. Like you, I didn’t learn anything new about what McCarthy was doing or how Murrow showed him up in that interview, but I saw that stuff as the background for the real story, which was about how journalists can beat back demagogues and change the political landscape if they do their job right.

But ironically, the message that made me like it so much is exactly what makes me not so interested in seeing it again. I was really frustrated at the time with how our media had echoed and amplified the lies the Bush Administration was putting out about WMDs to justify going into Iraq, so I felt this urgent need for a reminder about the role reporters are supposed to play in a democracy. I still feel that need, but not so urgently at the moment.

That’s probably why message movies usually have a short shelf life. Something that seems important when it comes out can quickly feel irrelevant or dated or overly familiar. I think Good Night, and Good Luck will hold up a lot better than, say, Gentleman’s Agreement, though. I guess the people who made that one thought audiences needed to be reminded that Jews are people too, in the wake of the Holocaust, and maybe they were right. But geez, could that screenplay have been any more painfully obvious and sanctimonious? Clooney’s movies are always intelligently made, even when they’re just okay.