Assuming that the preliminary panel includes no representative of the Kazakhstan government --which has paid for full-page newspaper ads condemning the antics of a fake reporter, played by Sacha Baron Cohen -- it isn’t likely AMPAS will be left red-faced by the choice of “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.” Stranger things have happened, of course, but not lately.

Hearing that “An Inconvient Truth” appears to have a lock on a nomination, if not the whole enchilada, won’t please liberal-bashing Republicans and right-wing talk-show hosts, parent-teachers of the home-schooled Evangelicals in “Jesus Camp,” and other doubters of global warming. The prospect of watching Al Gore stroll the Red Carpet on February 25 could kill ratings in those red-tinged states not as susceptible to melting icecaps as California, New York or the Antarctic home of the stars of “March of the Penguins.”

It might be interesting, as well, to see how MPAA chairman Dan Glickman would react to “This Film Is Not Rated” getting the nod.

No candidate for shortlisting may be more immediately topical, though, than Amy Berg’s “Deliver Us From Evil.” As the investigation of the current Capitol Hill sex scandal progresses, parallels between coverups of the activities of former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley’s and those of disgraced ex-priest Oliver O’Grady are becoming ever more inescapable.

Just as several of the most powerful Republicans in Washington have been forced to testify on what they knew, when, and what they did about Foley’s advances to pages, Berg’s documentary indicts Catholic Church hierarchy for ignoring horrific crimes perpetrated by O’Grady on the children of his parishioners. Their decision to shuffle the Irish-born priest to other churches in the Northern California archdiocese, instead of forcing him to quit or undergo treatment, ensured dozens more victims.

O’Grady took advantage of the naivite of parents who couldn’t imagine such a betrayal of trust could take place under their noses, nor were they likely to buy reports of molestation from their own kids. In the ’70s, pedophilia was considered to be a crime not committed by priest, but squirrelly little guys who hid in bushes and lured their victims with candy. That misconception would be forever shattered by the confirmed reports of pedophilia -- and subsequent coverups by Bernard Cardinal Law --among priests in the Boston archdiocese in the ’80s and ’90s.

O’Grady, now living in Ireland, allowed Berg to interview him about his crimes and the ineffectual moves by his superiors to control his predilictions and protect parishioners. O’Grady served time in prison here, but, as Berg’s cameras attest, he is now free to roam the streets of Dublin in alarmingly close proximity to children and unsuspecting parents.

By coincidence, on Thursday, a priest who Foley reportedly accused of molestation almost four decades ago admitted he fondled the six-term congressman as a teen. Like O’Grady, his admission of guilt was less an apology than a disassociative refusal to deal with reality.

"Once maybe I touched him or so, but didn't, it wasn't -- because it's not something you call, I mean, rape or penetration or anything like that you know. We were just fondling," Father Anthony Mercieca, 69, said in a phone interview with CNN affiliate WPTV from his home on the Maltese island of Gozo in the Mediterranean.

"He seemed to like it, you know? So it was sort of more like a spontaneous thing," Mercieca told WPTV, a West Palm Beach station.
"See abuse, it's a bad word, you know, because abuse, you abuse someone against his will. But it involved just spontaneousness, you know?

"Anyway, he will overcome it, with a psychiatrist you know. Mark is a very intelligent man."

Guess, not.

Both priests were given permission to visit the homes of their victims, occasionally stay overnight and travel with the children as their guardian. Unlike O’Grady, who also was molested as a child, Mercieca has outlasted the statutes of limitations on such crimes and is still a priest.

The gravity of the situation documented in “Deliver Us From Evil” also is driven home in interviews with “survivors” and their parents, and through the good work of canon lawyer and victims’ advocate Father Tom Doyle. Not surprisingly, perhaps, Church hierarchy avoided contact with the filmmakers and were represented solely in video-taped legal depositions of Cardinal Roger Mahoney (now, Archbishop of Los Angeles) and other of Father Ollie’s former superiors in the Fresno area.

Berg also implicates newly installed Pope Benedict, who, before he took office, presided over high-level Vatican committees looking into priestly abuse. The committee essentially washed its hands of the whole sordid mess, not only prompting lawsuits from victims but also President George W. Bush’s decision to grant him immunity from prosecution here.

Last week, photos of Bush showing his support for House Speaker Dennis Hastert -- accused of covering up knowledge of Foley’s behavior -- were splashed across the front pages of newspaper across the U.S. Having just seen “Deliver Us From Evil,” it was impossible not to fear for the safety of children entrusted to adults who have more compassion for the predator than its prey.

51 Birch Street

At first glance, Doug Block’s “51 Birch Street” feels very much like one of those projects assigned high school seniors with aspirations of going to film school in the big city. You know, go interview mom and dad, and try to unearth some deep, dark secret or pearl of accumulated wisdom.

And, indeed, Block’s primary intention was merely to do a family history, which could be passed along to future generations for reference or rekindle memories of childhood bliss. On the surface, the Blocks seemed typical of tens of thousands of other families in and beyond Port Washington, N.Y. Mom and dad had their issues but both seemed content to play out the string together.

The unexpected death of Mina Block, early in the production, opened up a Pandora’s Box of options and misgivings. There was no way, for instance, that Block could have anticipated his 83-year-old father, Mike, would suddenly decide to marry Kitty, a woman he had met and worked with as a young man. Nor, could he predict that his father’s glum personality would be transformed almost overnight into one of romantic bliss.

Compounding Block and his siblings’ consternation was Mike and Kitty’s decision to sell the house at 51 Birch Street and move to Florida. All of sudden, the filmmaker had a story worth sharing ... a horror story.

Like B lock, most viewers will consider Mike to be a cad, or, worse, a man who cheated on his wife throughout the entirety of their 54-year marriage without remorse. It isn’t until the son discovers a treasure trove of diaries, poems and drawings hidden by Mina, as if in anticipation of someone eventually finding them, that all of our preconceptions are upended.

The documents describe a woman very different than one Block knew primarily as a mother often harried, but always loving. Here was Mina stripped of camouflage and the expectations of her children. She was troubled by her husband’s inattention sexually and otherwise; distressed by the limitations imposed on women throughout most of the 20th Century; and lonely enough to seek the compassion of her psychiatrist and other men. As confirmed by Mina’s best friend, here also was a woman who, along with her husband, experimented with marijuana and flirted, at least, with the idea of enlisting in the sexual revolution of ’60s.

Who was this woman? Why did Mina elect to remain married to a man she so clearly disliked? Was she the victim or the perpetrator? Were her theories about Mike’s inattention accurate?

As these questions are raised and addressed by Block, his siblings and their reluctant father, viewers will scour memories of their own family to look for clues and answers to deep-seeded anxieties. Some may even be shaken to the core of their beliefs, and will begin a similar journey into the past.

Some critics have compared “51 Birch Street” to “Capturing the Friedmans,” but that’s a stretch. Mostly, they share a style that leans heavily on family photo albums and home movies; a Long Island setting; and similar ethnic backgrounds for the key players. The Blocks’ secrets are unnerving, but no where as profoundly creepy as those of the Friedmans. Both are, however, compelling in their patient explorations of family dynamics.

Come November, I wouldn’t be surprised to find both “51 Birch Street” and “Deliver Us From Evil” on the academy’s shortlist of potential nominees.

Posted by Gary Dretzka at 10:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 20, 2007

Digital Dretzka officially digs documentaries, and, each year, we like to welcome the start of Documentary Season. In fact, we much prefer watching documentaries at 10 in the morning on a Tuesday than attending prime-time screenings of 90 percent of all Hollywood movies on a Saturday night. We also enjoy watching non-fiction fare on cable television and PBS, whether it shines a light on ancient civilizations or the apprehension of serial killers.

We wish people who profess to love movies as much as we do would pay to see documentaries in theaters, or, if not there, at home on DVD. We have a similar fondness for indies and foreign titles. And, we’re firmly on the side of world peace and ending poverty … but, that’s another column.

Like you, we don’t trust members of the Motion Picture Academy to nominate -- let alone, award -- the finest examples of any year’s crop of films in any category, but especially those honoring documentaries. No matter how hard the academy attempts to reform itself, huge blunders invariably are made. Like those responsible for the quagmire in Iraq, no one in the academy feels it necessary to acknowledge such mistakes, explain how they might have occurred or, God forbid, apologize.

Others of you are just as passionate about perceived injustices in more glamorous categories, such as Best Picture, Best Director and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. Good for you. We rarely have a rooting interest in those contests, and choose to direct our unhappiness elsewhere.

(Anyone who takes the Golden Globes or Peoples Choice Awards seriously enough to give a crap, one way or the other, ought to make an appointment with Dr. Phil.)

Being Documentary Season, art houses suddenly are playing documentaries people have been waiting to see since reading about them Sundance or some other long-ago festivals. It’s a brief period of time -- a veritable Brigadoon -- so pay careful attention to the listings for those mandatory one-week qualifying runs in a major city or college town. Here a few that are making the rounds right now.

Al Franken: God Spoke
The release of “Al Franken: God Spoke” -- Nick Doob and Chris Hegedus’s follow-ups to “Startup.com” and “The War Room” -- coincides both with the satirist’s drive to raise funds for his Midwest Values PAC and news that financially strapped Air America Radio was forced to hold back at least one of his paychecks. Franken always makes for good copy, especially in an election year, but even those who think bad publicity is better than no publicity would agree the timing was less than advantageous for the film. Even worse, it gave Franken’s many enemies on the right even more material for their liberal-baiting diatribes on talk radio.

Two years in the making, “God Spoke” describes the process that greased the longtime Minnesotan’s progression from “SNL” writer-comedian to fully engaged political activist. It wasn’t all that much of a stretch for the author of “Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations” and “Why Not Me?,” as he was quickly emerging as one of the few loyal Democrats with something resembling a sense of humor. In October, 2002, that quality was severely tested by the untimely death of his friend, U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone, during a campaign trip to northern Minnesota.

That tragic event, in combination with the voters’ refusal to honor Wellstone’s memory by electing a like-minded Democrat, prompted Franken to pick up the baton and advance the cause of progressivism in a state that had elected Jesse Ventura governor. He would write another best-seller, this one targeting Fox News’ pet Neanderthal Bill O’Reilly, before the launch of Air America. A year later, in 2005, he launched the PAC, and has since hinted at a run for public office in 2008.

It’s difficult to imagine what Doob and Hegedus had in mind when they decided to focus on the 57-year-old Harvard grad. More than likely, they saw an opportunity to document the launch and possible meltdown of Air America … that, or the emergence of the new Great Liberal Hope.

In real life, Franken is no Stuart Smalley: he’s smart, well-read, industrious, dedicated, funny, charismatic and a non-Hollywood celebrity … everything most politicians aren’t. But, that much we already knew walking into the theater.

Inadvertently, perhaps, “God Spoke” also reveals just how smarmy the electoral process has become in this country, and how easy it is to succumb to the trappings of power. Franken emerges from the movie with his integrity intact, but it’s hard not to feel embarrassed for him as he makes nice with Henry Kissinger and other Republican swine at a cocktail party he’s just gate-crashed with camera crew in tow. Even worse are his bordering-on-childish exchanges -- they could hardly be called debates -- with such professional provocateurs as Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity.

By the end of the film, it’s impossible not to wonder how many compromises Franken might have to make to succeed as a candidate for offices higher than the ones provided him at Air America and “Saturday Night Live.” Or, at what point he’ll start pulling back from his more progressive beliefs and morph into a pragmatist, just as Bill and Hillary Clinton did when push came to shove.

You won’t find the answers to those questions in “God Spoke,” or many clues as to what kind of leader he would be. Still, for those voters disgusted by the gutlessness and greed demonstrated by our elected politicians, Franken could offer a ray of hope for the future. As a politician, he could probably do exponentially more good than as a host for a radio network that can’t even pay its employees.

Jesus Camp
It’s highly likely that most admirers of Al Franken and his brand of liberalism would view “Jesus Camp” with the same horror usually reserved for newsreel footage of World War II concentration camps and skull collections in Cambodia and Rwanda. Conservatives, however, might see in Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s portrait of contemporary red-state Evangelism great hope for the future of the U.S. That’s how deeply the filmmakers have buried their own points of view in the film’s even-handed narrative.

On-screen graphics tell us that there are 100 million Evangelicals in this country, including a generation of kids raised on Christian-rock music, Christian cable networks, the well-publicized re-births of miscreants ranging from politicians to serial killers, and increasingly divisive public debates over abortion, evolution and Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic outbursts. The filmmakers were given so much access to Pentecostal Pastor Becky Fischer’s “Kids on Fire Summer Camp” that it’s possible to believe she was conned into thinking they were making an infomercial for it. Neither did any of the children or adults featured in “Jesus Camp” appear uptight about how it possibly could be used to make them look ridiculous.

Fears that “Jesus Camp” might be seen as leftist propaganda likely prompted the producers’ request to pull the film from Michael Moore’s film festival in Traverse City, Mich. Moore is so despised by conservatives, any connection could damage hopes for box-office success in the Heartland. Magnolia’s strategy was to open “Jesus Camp” in Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and Missouri, ahead of its Friday debut in New York and other major cities on September 29. It’s the rare documentary that will find admirers on both sides of the political and critical aisle, but for entirely different reasons.

Liberals’ worst fears will be realized, watching home-schooled kids being taught utter nonsense about globe warming, evolution, homosexuality, the Supreme Court and the godlessness of the “Harry Potter” novels. Some will go into shock listening to anti-abortion diatribes by pre-teens and hearing the war chants of kids wearing jungle-camouflage makeup in the war for souls. More disturbing, perhaps, is Pastor Fischer’s stated admiration for indoctrination techniques employed by militant Muslims “in Israel and Palestine.”

Any kids in the audience might wonder, too, if the campers were allowed to read any other book than the bible, or play games that didn‘t involve unborn fetuses, cardboard cut-outs of George W. Bush or talking in tongues. What ever happened to snipe hunts and frog bashing? Maybe that sort of thing is left for the kids of the snake-handling Pentecostals.

The one thing hard-core Evangelical audiences certainly will find suspect is the sporadic commentary of a liberal Christian talk-show host. Ostensibly, he’s there to balance the rhetoric and remind blue-staters than not all born-again Christians are consumed with inflicting their political opinions on children barely out of kindergarten.

The kids featured in “Jesus Camp” all seem intelligent, articulate, obedient and fun to be around, when they aren‘t politely asking strangers if they‘ve been “saved.“ The adults don’t look as if they might someday put on red armbands and march to City Hall demanding the detention of folks who were only born once, either.

But, you never know.

Vajra Sky Over Tibet
Filmed surreptitiously by writer-director John Bush while was on a pilgrimage to Tibet, “Vajra Sky Over Tibet” will be of great interest to lovers of travel and religious documentaries, as well as those folks who put “Free Tibet” stickers on their hybrid cars. By successfully avoiding the watchful eyes of Chinese authorities, Bush’s small team was able to capture images of daily life and religious ritual rarely seen by Western audiences … or anyone else, for that matter. To avoid the risk of exposing civilians to reprisal by police, Bush wisely elected to forgo on-location interviews and add the narration of fellow Buddhist Tenzin L. Choegyal in post-production.

Despite these limitations, “Vajra Sky Over Tibet” is a spectacularly beautiful and highly informative movie … remarkably well lit for the conditions and shot as if Bush had all the time in the world to set up his cameras. His Buddhist credentials allowed the team access to the inner sanctums of temples beyond the reach of most tourists and bear witness to the determination of the residents to practice their religion openly. Their strength and resolve are palpable.

Well beyond any political subtext are wondrous scenes of sky-piercing mountains, raging rivers, lakes with mirror surfaces and picture-postcard valleys. The religious art and architecture is magnificent, as well.

“Vajra Sky Over Tibet” is slowly making its way around the country. This week it‘s playing in the San Francisco area. -- G.D.

Posted by Gary Dretzka at 03:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

September 13, 2006

For the past dozen years, David Leaf and John Scheinfeld have made a pretty decent living churning out rockumentaries and video biographies of several generations worth of pop-culture icons, ranging from Frank Sinatra and Jimmy Durante to Brian Wilson and Jonathan Winters. Indeed, a scan of their resumes might suggest that cable television would be in deep trouble if they stopped collaborating on the kinds of celebrity profiles repeated endlessly on such networks as A&E, Bravo, TBS, TNT, CMT, TLC and National Geographic.

Their revelatory new documentary, “The U.S. vs. John Lennon,” breaks the mold by starting out in theaters, before touching down on VH1. It opens in Los Angeles and New York Friday, before moving into the hinterlands on Sept. 29.

Lennon’s contributions to pop music in the second half of the 20th Century have been exhaustively recorded, dissected and analyzed ever since the Beatles emerged as one of the greatest cultural phenomenon in recorded history. Likewise, his marriage to performance artist Yoko Ono has been scrutinized with the same intensity usually reserved for the tax returns of mob chieftains. Lennon’s untimely death assured that the mythologizing would continue apace for generations to come.

“The U.S. vs. John Lennon” focuses tightly on a relatively brief period in Lennon’s life, during which the Luvable Moptop became a prime target for the dirty tricksters of the Nixon White House. At a time when Republican lawmakers were in position to end the war in Vietnam and mend the economy, a pinhead potentate from South Carolina -- longtime senator Strom Thurmond -- convinced President Richard M. Nixon to worry, instead, about a musician whose rallying cry was, “Give Peace a Chance." The ability of such a well-known dove to appeal to newly enfranchised 18-year-olds was of great concern to the hawks in Washington.

“He was a high-profile figure, so his activities were monitored," reminds would-be Watergate fall-guy G. Gordon Liddy, whose testimony adds perspective to the more liberal musings of Bobby Seale, Angela Davis, Walter Cronkite, Carl Bernstein, Ron Kovic, Noam Chomsky, George McGovern, Geraldo Rivera, Bobby Seale, John Sinclair and Tom Smothers.

“Liddy gave us a window into the White House,” said Scheinfeld. “Kovic (played by Tom Cruise, in ‘Born on the Fourth of July’ was the moral heart of the movie. Journalists Cronkite and Bernstein described how Lennon fit into what was happening in the streets.”

What got Thurmond’s attention was Lennon’s perceived ability to influence policy and public opinion, simply by singing a few songs and raising his clenched fist at political rallies. In 1971, at the height of civil rights and antiwar activism on campuses and inner cities, Lennon appeared at a benefit for a relatively obscure Ann Arbor radical and music manager who was doing hard time in prison, ostensibly for selling two joints to an undercover cop.

John Sinclair’s sentence was widely seen as a travesty of justice, and punishment for his promotion of the anarchic White Panther Party and the kick-out-the-jams band, the MC5. As long as Sinclair remained a local hero, Michigan lawmakers couldn’t be bothered with his case. Two days after Lennon’s appearance, Sinclair was released from prison.

Celebrities had yet to be taken seriously as forces for change in national political movements. Jane Fonda was more of an embarrassment to the Movement than a godsend, but Lennon was the real deal.

Leaders of the Yippies and Black Panthers saw in Lennon a marquee attraction for their rallies, and happily exploited his passion for the Movement. A series of similar events were planned to take advantage of the publicity surrounding the 1972 Democratic and Republican conventions.

Thurmond, who built his power base by pandering to segregationists, understood only too well the power of Lennon's appeal and wrote Nixon, suggesting that his visa be pulled and deportation hearings begun. The order would was based on a misdemeanor pot conviction, in 1968, in England. Few in Thurmond’s circle had forgotten, either, Lennon’s off-hand observation, made in 1966, “We're more popular than Jesus now.”

Instead of meekly giving in, Lennon hired immigration attorney Leon Wildes, who primarily employed delay tactics to buy time for his client and wait out the election. He also sued Attorney General John Mitchell, charging conspiracy.

Although the case for deportation eventually was dropped, Lennon paid a terrible toll in the emotional distress caused by having to deal daily with wiretaps, informers and a high-level smear campaign. He also was distressed about the hatred directed at Ono by fans, who blamed her for the break-up of the Beatles and the couple’s famously kooky Amsterdam “bed-in.”

“John grow up loving the America and was shocked that the government was going after him,” said Sheinfeld. “He also was blindsided by the vehemence of the response by religious groups to his comments about Jesus and the Beatles.”

Much of what’s described in “The U.S. vs. John Lennon” was first made public in Jon Wiener’s book, “Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files.” It was the product of exhaustive research, intense legal maneuverings and a close perusal of 280 pages of FBI files kept secret until 1997. Leaf and Scheinfeld’s primary task was to illuminate the blocks of largely blacked-out text with archival news, concert and interview footage, and record new interviews to contextualize the material.

(The Smoking Gun has just published a more extensive sampling of Lennon-Ono files -- demonstating a range of FBI concerns that borders on the hysterical -- made available only through repeated FOIA requests http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/1208051lennon1.html?link=rssfeed).

The FBI’s efforts to discredit leftists, counterculture figures and civil rights leaders was revealed to the public in the early ’70s, after files were stolen from an FBI field office and leaked to the press. The targets of dirty FBI tricks and misinformation campaigns ranged from Martin Luther King Jr. and actress Jean Seberg, and included the infiltration and manipulation of such groups as the Black Panthers, Weather Underground, American Indian Movement, Nation of Islam KKK and American Nazi Party. Suddenly, the prevailing mood of paranoia fostered by leftist, campus and other activist groups seemed, if anything, understated.

Leaf and Scheinfeld worked closely with Ono, who had access to much unseen material, and painstakingly scoured news archives for vintage photos, clips and newsreel footage. Especially poignant is the material shot on the very day -- Lennon’s birthday -- he not only was awarded his green card, but his son, Sean, also was born.

“We knew that pictures from that day existed, but no one could find them,” said Leaf. “John’s the best in the world at finding those sorts of things. Turns out, they were simply misfiled.”

There’s more to the story, of course, but the film pretty much ends there. Lennon would disappear from the public eye in the mid-’70s, a period during which he battled many personal demons and nearly destroyed his relationship with Ono. This would be followed by a retrenchment into home, family and music, and a career resurgence cut short by Mark David Chapman’s hollow-point bullets.

Although the filmmakers don’t bang viewers over the head with parallels between Lennon’s deportation drama and the Bush White House’s support of the Patriot Act, they’re impossible to miss and ignore.

Radicals of the ’60s and ’70s, who claimed their phones were tapped and their every move chronicled by federal agents or paid informers, were ridiculed as paranoid fools and dupes of the New Left. The disclosure of COINTELPRO demonstrated that, if anything, official misconduct was more extensive than anyone imagined.

Earlier this year, it was revealed that records of phone conversations between millions of Americans have been stored in one government computer or another, conceivably available to any number of agencies, hackers and private eyes. Like J. Edgar Hoover, Bush assured his constituents they have nothing to fear, unless, of course, they happened to be terrorists. But, the revelation almost certainly had a chilling effect on whistleblowers, anti-war activisits and other blabbermouths who might consider leaking information to reporters.

It’s also become clear, despite the President’s promise to prosecute anyone charged with leaking secrets to the press, that the worst offenders worked at the highest levels of the administration, and at the behest of Bush’s closest advisers. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the only people incarcerated over the revelation of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson’s identit

Posted by Gary Dretzka at 04:16 PM | Permalink

September 05, 2006

Tonight, I did something I hadn’t done in years. Like millions of other obedient Americans, I tuned into “CBS Evening News With Katie Couric” to see the face that launch’d a thousand sappy magazine and newspaper articles in the months since her departure from NBC in May.

Helen of Troy, Katie wasn’t. Not that she was trying to dazzle us with anything but her ability to navigate a set without stumbling or missing a cue.

Wisely, Couric elected to leave the party-hardy dresses and fuck-me pumps she favored on “Today” back home -- for the time-being, anyway -- and chose, instead, one of those generic ensembles women in New York and Washington don when they want to be taken seriously. (Henceforth, ratings will dictate the length of her skirts and height of her heels.)

Otherwise, Couric seemed as prepared, personable and articulate as anyone else who’s paid millions of dollars annually to write the news off a Teleprompter. Given the visibility accorded her in our celebrity-centric media, the 49-year-old Virginian -- I think CBS would prefer reporters to ignore Style Book protocol by referring to her as Katie in second reference -- will get more than her fair share of “exclusive” interviews, and the show will benefit from her rapt attention to the job at hand. Soon, however, the other network anchors will demand equal time from newsmakers, and CBS will weigh their new superstar down with corporate glad-handing, speaking engagements, prime-time assignments and on-site reporting.

By this time next week, Couric will be part of the television woodwork, and millions of fickle viewers -- myself included -- will return to their regular routines. These include watching DVDs and reruns on cable, surfing the web and, yes, even eating dinner with the tube turned off. Like newspapers, the nightly network newscasts have been in free-fall for years, and it will take more than the addition of a photogenic anchor to reverse the trend.

Truth is, the heads of the broadcast networks only give a crap about the nightly newscasts when ratings sag, budgets need to be trimmed or a naughty word or bare nipple manages to get on the air.

If the executives took their responsibilities to heart, one of them would bite the bullet and do the unthinkable, which is to add another half-hour (including another 10 minutes of commercials) to the newscast and insert it into a “day part” that better accommodates commuter schedules. This would mean, of course, asking affiliates to relinquish a half-hour of prime-time access usually reserved for such cash cows as “Wheel of Fortune,” “ET” or reruns of “Everybody Loves Raymond.” And, since the networks own and operate stations in the most lucrative markets, that dog simply won’t hunt … as Dan Rather would have said.

It explains why Couric used precious seconds of airtime pimping for www.cbsnews.com, which looks exactly like a couple of hundred other websites and promotes CBS programming and personalities above real news. With such websites in their arsenal, CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox already have an iron-clad excuse for not adding another half-hour of news to their broadcast arms.

Network executives also want viewers to seek out their cable operations as sources for more complete coverage. The personnel may represent the second team, but it’s there … 24 hours a day … just like Time Warner’s CNN, which has been the network of choice for breaking news for most of the last 25 years. A half-hour doesn’t provide Couric, Brian William and Charles Gibson enough time to be more than a headline and sound-bite service, similar to those pages in big-city newspapers that encapsulate the material inside, so you don’t have to bother reading it.

Apparently, this is all the news most Americans want, anyway. Just consider the recent Harris survey that revealed half of all Americans now think that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction before our last invasion, up from 35 percent in 2005. It’s also been widely reported that a staggering number of people -- teens and college students, mostly -- list Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” as their primary source for news. This, even though Stewart has widely acknowledged that he reads “fake news” and never fails to point out that his program is on the Comedy Channel. (Fooled the folks who give out Peabody Awards, too.)

Judging solely by the first broadcast of “The CBS Evening News With Katie Couric,” the show is likely to be fast-paced and at least as informative as the other nightly newscasts. Couric’s natural perkiness will be exploited by producers -- probably to a fault -- but she isn’t likely to embarrass herself or her network, linguistically or otherwise. One hopes she has the gumption to say “no,” when one of her bosses asks her to verify the strength of a hurricane by tying herself to a tree, or don elaborate costumes to score dubious “beats.”

Tuesday night’s broadcast led with a fairly interesting visit to a Taliban camp within 10 miles of a platoon of American troops. (Reporter Lara Logan wore a chadur with a striking blaze of red fabric on her chest … nice touch.) This was followed by video footage of President Bush lying to his constituents about terrorism, and a knee-jerk interview with the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman that also contradicted Bush. Apparently, Ford has a new boss and Chevron located a bunch of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, but Americans shouldn’t expect to reap the benefits because hurricanes can be mighty tough on oil rigs.

Instead of an in-depth discussion of “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin’s methodology and its impact on the environmental movement -- pro and con -- viewers were directed to the website and pictures of mourning Aussies. Fast-food alarmist Morgan Spurlock was accorded the privilege of presenting the first “Free Speech” video column, and, while it didn’t suck, the segment was a luxury that half-hour newscasts shouldn’t afford.

There was other stuff, including a nice feature on a native Cheesehead who brightens the life of Nicaraguan orphans with portraits drawn by their American counterparts. The coup de’grace would come in the most obvious and cheesy way possible … when in doubt, play the celebrity card.

The big scoop came with the revelation of tightly held photos taken for Vanity Fair by Annie Liebovitz -- yes, THAT Annie Liebovitz -- of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ baby, Suri … or a child purporting to be Suri. No mention of any deal cut between the magazine and the stars, or between CBS News and Vanity Fair, for that matter. Neither did Couric question Cruise’s bizarre obsession with secrecy, or whether his connection to the Church of Scientology might have had something to do with the shielding of Suri from public view. Nope, just a cutesy-pie hand-out photo disguised as news.

Couric closed the show by encouraging her audience to go to the website, once again, to help her come up with a sign-off phrase, a la Walter Cronkite’s famous “And, that’s the way it is …” She probably got the idea from USA Today and AOL, organizations that poll their readers everyday on all manner of dopey subjects, but wouldn’t in a million years base any decisions on the results.

Let’s hope it’s something better than “Courage,” which Dan Rather adopted when things got too dark in his life, and, by extension, our’s. Maybe something like, “Now, don’t forget to go to www.cbsnews.com for the rest of the news, commercials and plugs for other CBS programming … ya’hear.”

Let me know what they come up with. I get all the news I can stand via “Naked News.” Now, that‘s infotainment. -- G.D.

Posted by Gary Dretzka at 11:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 11, 2006

“Conversations With Other Women,” arrived in Los Angeles and New York City Friday in much the same way as do most other low-budget movies: lacking the fanfare that attends even the lamest of studio fare, but safely over the biggest hurdle faced by any picture lacking a star in the same orbit as Johnny Depp or Nicole Kidman.

Distribution is the Holy Grail of independent filmmakers, and it’s every bit as elusive. Entire film festivals unspool without a single award-winner getting a serious offer from an American company. Meanwhile, Rob Schneider and Jenny McCarthy seem never to be without one or two projects either in the can or on the runway.

Like most of their peers, Hans Canosa and Gabrielle Zevin -- the director and writer of “Conversations With Other Women” -- could walk down Hollywood Boulevard at the height of the daily tourist rush and not be recognized by a single soul. Under the same circumstances, a Quentin Tarantino might be required to sign an autograph or two, but not many others.

While Canosa and Zevin may not stand out in a crowd just yet, “Conversations With Other Women” won’t face the indignity of being completely ignored by the big-city media. Their good fortune in casting such recognizable stars as Helena Bonham Carter and Aaron Eckhart guaranteed at least a modicum of exposure. Movies come and go, but the media’s appetite for stories and pictures about celebrities is insatiable.

Succeeding in the publicity game these days requires a bit thought more than simply rolling out a red carpet and providing free booze and sandwiches for the working press. At a time when mainstream newspapers, TV and radio outlets are struggling to keep pace with the Internet, the money spent on wining, dining and confining members of the junket press at the Four Seasons rarely guarantees box-office success, anymore.

The closest thing to a sure thing is a well-timed appearance on “Oprah,” especially if one of the stars has suddenly remembered being abused as a child. Sadly, though, Ms. Winfrey has little time for movies whose budget doesn’t exceed the cost of one of her get-away estates.

Independent, foreign and documentary films are far more dependent on reviews, word-of-mouth and the kindness of strangers in the alternative media than guest spots on “Leno.” Instead of full-blown junkets, decidedly more modest “press days” are arranged for those outlets in search of something more substantial than a sound bite or confirmation of an on-location tryst.

Apart from the more casual atmosphere and the quality of the pictures being pitched, the primary difference between junkets and press days – for reporters, anyway -- comes in the decreased likelihood of being forced to relinquish interview time to a former Miss Alabama who’s realized her dream of being an “entertainment journalist.” The challenge of selling a freelance piece based on a 20-minute interview with the writer or director of a low-budget movie, however wonderful, remains formidable. We blog, therefore we are.

Carter’s Oscar nomination, in 1998, for her terrific performance in “The Wings of the Dove,” immediately qualified her for heightened attention from the mainstream and celebrity press. Aside from being a hunk, Eckhart was coming off an exceptional performance in “Thank You for Smoking,” and he’ll soon be seen again in Brian DePalma’s much-anticipated, “The Black Dahlia.”

In “Conversations With Other Women,” Eckhart and Carter play unnamed guests at a New York wedding who appear to meet as strangers, but, in fact, share a romantic past. It’s clear by their dancing around the subject that certain aspects of their failed relationship were left unresolved. Both declare ahead of time their happiness with their current partners – one of whom is back home in London, the other dancing on a Broadway stage – but neither attempts to derail the possibility of a one last hook-up for old times’ sake.

Zevin’s screenplay demands several long, uninterrupted streams of intense dialogue, which allow the characters to play catch-up, philosophize and flirt simultaneously. The action, such as it is, is confined to a pair of small, otherwise unpopulated rooms, and an elevator car. Except for one crucial visual conceit, “Conversations With Other Women” could be re-staged live and not a single beat would be missed.

This single conceit, however, distinguishes “Conversations” from the hundreds of other indies released since Mike Higgis’ “Timecode” made the leap from the festival circuit to arthouses, in 2000. Eckhart and Carter’s hit-and-run romance plays out on a screen split in two for the film’s entire 84-minute length.

The gimmick didn’t work particularly well for Higgis, who elected to juggle four interrelated storylines in separate quadrants. Canosa and Zevin’s movie is quite a bit more intimate than “Timecode,” so, audiences needn’t work nearly as hard to get into the flow of the plot and rhythm of the dialogue. If nothing else, the technique also provided ample material for discussion on press day.

Eckhart, who was holding court this day in a comfy suite at the Le Meridien, described how he and Carter were required to work in what amounted to stereo, with a pair of DV cameras capturing their actions and reactions individually and in “real time.” This strategy facilitated Canosa’s decision to assign dialogue in four- and five-minute stretches, freeing the actors to perform as if they were working live, on stage. The fancy stuff would be resolved in the post-production process.

Their chance reunion at the wedding not only allows Man and Woman (as they’re referred to in the credits) to rekindle the extinguished flame, however briefly, but also to reminisce and tie up some very loose ends. Flashback sequences map the relationship of Young Man (Erik Eidem) and Young Woman (the very appealing Nora Zehetner) in better times, also in split screen.

“There were so many layers to the story that interested me,” emphasizes Eckhart, who, in person and on screen, seems far more grown up and Hollywood-handsome than most other male stars in their late thirtysomethings. “My character always wondered what happened to Helena’s character … and there’s the matter of a ‘lost baby.’ She’s gotten married and is living in London, and he hasn’t gotten past his bachelor ways.

“He seems to be intimated by her ability to move on, but there’s still tenderness and sweetness there.”

And, yet, all roads lead to the empty hotel room upstairs. If this isn’t a male fantasy, nothing is.

Of course, the idea of sharing a nightcap in a hotel room with someone who’s a dead ringer for a young Robert Redford might be the fantasy of a good many women, as well. Eckhart acknowledges, however, that not all women have forgiven him for playing world-class creeps in Neil LaBute’s corrosive anti-romances, “In the Company of Men” and “Your Friends and Neighbors.”

“Yeah, they remember … a lot of women had violent reactions to ‘In the Company of Men,’ especially,” allowed Eckhart, whose character conspired to ruin the life of an attractive but highly vulnerable office worker, who’s deaf.

And, with that response, the actor’s publicist pulled the plug. Next …

No matter, a close reading of the press notes revealed another juicy angle. This interview, blessedly would merely require a phone conversation.

Turns out, the story of Canosa’s personal journey from a missionary posting in Singapore, to New York and Hollywood, is every bit as fascinating as any picture released in the months since the last limousine carrying a freeloading celebrity rolled out of Park City, Utah. It would make a terrific movie … that is, if anyone would believe it.

The director of “Conversations With Other Women,” a film that can’t be accused of being naïve about matters of the flesh, was raised in an environment of extreme cultural deprivation. His parents, strict fundamentalist Christians (Seventh Day Adventists), forbade access to most artistic disciplines … something about the Second Commandment and its condemnation of false gods, graven images and worshiping pictures.

Canosa was living in Singapore with his parents, in a missionary community, when he took his first giant step toward depravity. He popped his cultural cherry at the age of 10, by sneaking away to attend a performance of a traditional Chinese opera. Talk about sensory overload …

He wouldn’t see a movie in a real bricks-and-mortar theater until he was 17. Among the first titles he sampled were “Citizen Kane” and “2001: A Space Odyssey,” but his appetite for the cinema was huge.

“Imagine watching ‘Psycho’ with the same eyes as those of a viewer in 1960,” Canosa suggested. “It was a pure cinematic experience. I brought that same innocence to all the movies I watched back then.

“I considered all films to be holy, and I watched everything.”

As if movies weren’t evil enough, Canosa also decided to attend a secular college, Harvard. It was at this point that he was disowned by his parents, for real.

“I’d become the kind of person my parents had warned me against,” he said.

Canosa hit the ground running. While at Harvard, he directed dozens of short films, experimental videos and plays. It also was in Cambridge that he began collaborating with Zevin. Their first theatrical film, “Alma Mater,” was about a Harvard professor in the ’60s who fell in love with his male teaching assistant. It went largely unseen outside the 2002-03 festival circuit, but the hook was set.

The split-screen idea also had its genesis in his delayed exposure to the cinema.

“It seemed as if the characters only existed for me while they were up there, on the screen,” he explained. “I had a dream in which I was sitting in a theater, and, when I looked behind me, I could see the other characters. The script for this movie was written with that idea in mind …. I’d been thinking about it for years.

“The flashback scenes, which presented two separate points of view, demonstrated the unreliability of memory. The man and woman recalled the same incidents differently, even as they were playing out simultaneously on the screen.”

In this way, he added, “the audiences' eyes participate in the experience.”

Canosa expected that viewers wouldn’t have trouble adjusting to the split screen. Unlike “The Thomas Crown Affair,” its deployment was consistent throughout, and the screen wasn’t always divided in half. Indeed, because the vertical dividing line moved from right to left and back, it served as punctuation to the emotional shifts in the characters.

It wouldn’t have succeeded at all, however, if the actors weren’t able to pull off the lengthy snatches of dialogue or read the emotional temperature of the situation. Their sexual heat is palpable throughout.

Canosa and Zevin’s next project is a “vampire love story.”

“Growing up, waiting for Jesus to return was the most important thing in my life,” he allowed. “I’m drawn to stories with immortality themes.” – G.D.

Posted by Gary Dretzka at 03:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 4, 2006

Would it have killed the editors of the Los Angeles Times’ Calendar section to give Kevin Thomas’ review of “Quinceañera” a more prominent place in Friday’s paper than the lower right-hand corner of Page 4?

What were they thinking? It’s difficult to imagine that a veteran critic would be asked to contribute seven inches of commentary – not counting the absurdly generic headline and information-free cast box that were tacked onto it – on a Sundance sensation set and shot within a 10-minute drive of Times’ office and starring several fine young actors from the city’s Hispanic community. Moreover, the paper had already published two feature-length profiles on the writer-directors, and how their personal story mirrored that of their characters.

The subject matter, too, would seem to have been of particular interest to Times readers. Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland describe what can happen to an established inner-city neighborhood when it gets “discovered” by imperialistic yuppies (gay ones, at that), and introduce audiences to a half-dozen characters not cut from the usual Hollywood mold. As such, “Quinceañera” can be appreciated both as a work of social realism – in the mold of British kitchen-sink dramas from the early ’60s – or as a bittersweet coming-of-age story peculiar to almost any immigrant community.

For years, Thomas was the Times’ go-to guy both for low-budget indies and movies with gay and lesbian content. Deemed expendable last winter, after Tribune Co. ordered the Times to conduct another one of its periodic purges, the workhorse critic’s byline still appears with great regularity in Calendar (so much for cost-cutting), alongside those of a growing number of critics from other Tribune properties and the occasional AP review. Thomas’ review of “Quinceañera” was quite positive, so he probably was hard-pressed to fit his commentary into such a short space.

As of Friday night, 11 of the 12 reviews of “Quinceañera” made accessible on Metacritic.com were flat-out raves. The authors of those pieces included Ella Taylor, for the LA Weekly and Village Voice; Peter Rainer, for the Christian Science Monitor; Stephen Holden, of the New Times; and those representing Variety and Hollywood Reporter. Holden’s piece was at least three times longer than Thomas’. (Say what you will about the NYT’s sometimes misguided and naive coverage of the entertainment industry, it too often makes the hometown paper look amateurish and lazy by comparison.)

Instead, the Calendar brain trust elected to lead the section with Kenneth Turan’s begrudgingly positive review of “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.” That critique was paired with a sidebar on the film’s use of contrarian product placement, and Carina Chocano’s takedown of “Barnyard: The Original Party Animals.” The positioning of the “Talladega Nights” review could be justified, one supposes, by the amount of hype accorded stars Will Farrell and John C. Reilly, and the media’s current obsession with NASCAR culture, which boils down to a pair of five-word phrases: “C’mon, show us your tits” and “Is there any more beer?”

No amount of praise or ridicule in the Los Angeles Times -- or any other newspaper north or west of Little Rock, for that matter -- could possibly influence ticket sales for this most critic-proof of comedies. The same probably could be said about an animated film about anthropomorphic cows, pigs, chickens and mules … except, maybe, in Wisconsin and Iowa.

Did anyone at Times even consider putting “Quinceañera” out front, and sticking “Barnyard” in the nether regions of the section, where it belonged? We’ll never know.

The knee-jerk positioning of reviews of big-budget studio products on the Calendar front is nothing new (remember, too, the Page 1, Section 1, treatment accorded “The Da Vinci Code”). Hard not to see it as being another sop – along with the paper’s over-heated coverage of the Oscars -- to an industry that’s recently threatened to cut back on its print advertising.

If so, it will be even more interesting to see how the addition of ads on section fronts, including Calendar, will affect decision-making by editors there. When, for instance, an editor is made aware that Turan is about to unleash the same kind of rant he directed at “Titanic” -- this time, though, on a movie being plugged in a quarter-page ad on Page 1 -- will the review be relegated to a space deeper inside Calendar? Or, worse, will the studio be warned in advance of the critic’s opinion, and be given an opportunity to re-position or pull its ad, as is customarily done with display ads for airlines after a deadly plane crash?

“Quinceañera” is exactly the kind of movie that ought to be given front-page consideration, if only in the Times, Daily News and other local rags. Fans of arthouse titles actually do read newspapers, and carefully consider the opinions of their favorite critics while weighing their entertainment options. Giving equal weight to low-budget products not only is the fair thing to do, but it also tells readers to open their minds to more offbeat fare.

Like “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” “Quinceañera” will be given time to find an audience, or for an audience to find it. The positive notices are already in print and publicists probably have plucked blurbs from the reviews of respected critics (as opposed to those from junket whores) for ads in next week’s papers. The arthouse crowd and gay community almost certainly will turn out on opening weekend, and, if they dig it, spread the word. When the film platforms out, the foundation for success already will have been laid.

Reaching the potentially huge Hispanic audience, especially those teens and young adults who already haunt the multiplexes and malls, may prove more problematical. Even though this segment of the marketplace would be the one most likely to appreciate the dilemma faced by two of the key characters, it may also be among the most difficult to reach. East L.A. is notoriously underscreened and the critics who’ve raved about the film carry little weight in predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods. Otherwise, a terrific little movie like “Real Women Have Curves” might have grossed more than $5.8 million and, at its peak, run on 163 screens.

Like “Quinceañera,” Patricia Cardoso’s dramedy came away from Sundance with an Audience Award for its director and a Special Jury Prize.

The primary protagonists of “Quinceañera” are teen cousins Magdalena and Carlos, both of whom have been forced to leave home because of their fathers’ intolerance for sexual precociousness. Maria becomes pregnant in the most improbable of ways, while borderline-cholo, Carlos, is caught surfing the Net for gay websites. Both find shelter and solace in the small, cozy home of their beloved great-uncle, Tomas.

Echo Park has changed a great deal in the 13 years since writer-director Allison Anders moved there to research her gang-girl drama, “Mi Vida Loca.” The new owners of the pair of houses on the property, Gary and James, are an affluent gay couple who see in the working-class neighborhood – tucked between Silver Lake and Elysian Park, home to Dodger Stadium – a way to gain a foothold in an area ripe for gentrification. They’re not bad guys, really, just tremendously opportunistic … in their choice of investments and boy toys.

As was the case with Glatzer and Westmoreland, who live on the same block as the one shown in their film, Gary and James found their neighbors to be friendly, helpful and tolerant of their lifestyle. Things get complicated, however, when Carlos gives into his instincts and curiosity, and allows himself to be seduced by the couple.

Magdalena, the bright and cheerful daughter of a storefront preacher, is looking forward to her quinceañera. The quasi-religious ceremonies celebrate a girl’s passage into womanhood, at 15, and can be as extravagant as any Beverly Hills bat mitzvah party. Before getting pregnant, the girl’s biggest concern is her father’s refusal to splurge on a Hummer limousine, like that accorded her cousin. The gravity of that problem, however, is negated by Magdalena’s inability to convince her father that, despite her pregnancy, she remains a virgin. Stranger things have happened, but not in the last 2,000 years.

Gary and James show their true colors by delivering the inevitable eviction notice to Tomas, but not before humiliating the rough trade next-door. The rest of the film bears few of the usual Hollywood trademarks, and that’s a very good thing.

In real life, Glatzer and Westmoreland – who shared the same credits on “The Fluffer” -- would make convincing spokesmen for the positive elements of gentrification. Otherwise, their Echo Park neighbors wouldn’t have opened their doors to cast and crew, allowing the filmmakers to bring “Quinceañera” in for under $400,000.

Echo Park may not survive gentrification – newly built condo units already border the couple’s property – but it won’t be because a cabal of gay and lesbian developers conspired to turn the community into a WeHo/East for couples looking for something a bit less noisy and expensive. In L.A., developers are an equal-opportunity demolisher of dreams, and it would have occurred in due course, anyway. Blame it on the hipsters and artists who arrived first.

“We set out to shoot the entire film within a mile-radius of our room, and we almost succeeded,” said Westmoreland, during an interview conducted in the convincingly boho-themed Downbeat.Cafe, a few steps north of Echo Park landmarks Burrito King, Pizza Buono and the Car Wash on Sunset. “The idea was to make the movie cheap and fast – three weeks to write and three more to shoot – and this was made possible by the incredible way the Latino community turned out to support us. People let us into our homes, turned up to be extras, lent quinceañera dresses to us, cooked food and let us know when we were on target and when we weren’t.

“Our aim wasn’t to make a movie that was anti-gentrification. The important thing is to honor traditions and not wear blinders after moving into the neighborhood.”

The idea to use a pair of quinceañeras as the centerpiece events came after attending one such ceremony in the same storefront church used in the film. The same photographs that hang on the walls of houses in the movie can be found on the walls of their neighbors’ residences.

Tio Tomas, who makes a meager living as a vendor of the the sweet beverage champurrado, is the most fully fictionalized character in “Quinceañera.” He, too, though, was inspired by an actual person: Westmoreland’s own great-uncle, a kindly Yorkshireman who took him in as a boy, and was supportive of his lifestyle choices. As portrayed Chalo Gonzalez, a veteran of several Sam Peckinpah westerns, Tomas is a bridge between old and new cultures and generations of Angelenos.

The occurrence of unplanned pregnancies certainly isn’t new or unusual in movies about young Latinas, in Echo Park or anywhere else. The introduction of a character who is macho, gay and reasonably comfortable with his sexuality, on the other hand, most assuredly is.

“We’ve been told that Latinos might have an extremely negative reaction to Carlos,” Glatzer said. “But, we know there are gay cholos out there, and we’ve been told they’re very happy about the film. So far, the test screenings have gone very well.”

Adds Westmoreland, “Intolerance and homophobia aren’t unique to Latinos. Growing up in the north of England, I was surrounded by it.”

A more conclusive answer to that question won’t come until “Quinceañera” platforms out to areas closer to the core demographic, and, then, into an America that suddenly has forgotten its own immigrant roots. Currently, it’s playing on three screens in Manhattan and four upscale theaters in Los Angeles.

It’s already opened in France, and, next month, will expand its reach to England and the rest of Europe. Even though it was a big hit at Sundance, Sony Pictures Classics didn’t pick the film up until it was screened at the Berlin Film Festival, as part of a children’s sidebar lineup. (Ironically, the MPAA forced Sony to accept a R-rating for the same “Quinceañera” that was deemed appropriate for 12-year-olds in Switzerland.)

If “Quinceañera” takes off, it might encourage theater chains to increase their footprint in Hispanic neighborhoods. As yet, no barrio equivalent to the Magic Johnson Theaters exists. Historically, exhibitors have written off this audience segment as being too poor, too uneducated, too mono-lingual and too devoted to their telenovellas to add much to their companies’ bottom lines.

This spring, however, tens of thousands of young Hispanics made their presence felt at a series of rallies and marches staged to protest politically charged legislation designed to punish those men, women and children who braved hostile desert environments and heavily armed rednecks to work menial jobs for substandard pay and benefits. It took Congress all of about 10 minutes to recognize the potential clout of this growing constituency and tone down the rhetoric.

Any business that continues to base its decisions on discredited stereotypes and prejudices now does so at its own financial peril. – G.D.

Posted by Gary Dretzka at 09:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

7/10/06

If there were any single place on Earth for a crowd-phobic adult to avoid Saturday night, it would have been the local multiplex. Only 24 hours old, “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest” had already grown to juggernaut proportions, and I feared downtown Monrovia – that’s in the “other” Valley, for you west-siders and non-Angelinos – would be swarming with teenagers looking for their weekly dose of summer action. It wasn’t.

That’s not to take anything away from “POTC Redux,” though. In our neck of the San Gabriel Valley, the buccaneer blockbuster was playing on no fewer than 21 screens within a 15-minute drive, and it had already enjoyed a monster Friday. By the time we arrived, the 2½-hour picture already was playing in three of the four auditoriums in which it was being shown – “Superman Returns” occupied three of the other eight – so it’s difficult to know how many of our neighbors had similarly ventured forth in the sweltering summer heat.

The multiplex was bustling, but not nearly as chaotic as was feared. With the exception of the Krikorian Cinema 12’s costumed employees – out here in the boonies, even the purveyors of popcorn are expected to put on a show – there proved to be nothing to fear on this night.

Heck, across the street in the park, amateur astronomers had even set up humongous telescopes to record the passing of the space shuttle. If it weren’t for the mountains that towered over the town on its northern border, Monrovia could have passed – and often does – as Hollywood’s version of Anywhere USA.

Should I have been surprised? Probably not. I’d never completely bought the hype about the industry being in a “slump,” so there was no reason to accept the media’s new contention that it was rallying and lines comprised of unruly youths would extend around the block. We’d been to these theaters many times before, and always found them to be clean, comfortable and only occasionally occupied by customers more concerned with their cellphones than the feelings of their neighbors. (Out here, folks don’t accept it as a fact of life that everyone within earshot is entitled to their opinions.) Young people tended to stay on their side of the multiplex, while adults rarely partook in the raunchier fare favored by their children.

Nonetheless, my wife and I were in no hurry to see “POTC,” a film likely to appeal to members of both camps. It probably would be around another week or so, before being entering the DVD marketplace sometime around Labor Day (O.K., Halloween). Johnny Depp may be a lot of things – most of them very good -- but he isn’t an actor who demands the attention of the office-water-cooler crowd, come Monday morning. (Maybe if he appeared on “Desperate Housewives,” and moved in with Teri Hatcher, that, too, would change.)

Instead, we agreed to check out “The Devil Wears Prada,” expecting the theater to be empty – our fellow adults also fearing the prophesized mayhem -- and Meryl Streep to be as wonderful as advertised. Upon arrival, the lines at the box-office were shorter than anticipated, even if many of the customers were paying with credit cards. (Who ever thought that was a good idea?) It made me wonder if Fandango and other pre-sale outlets were having a positive impact on business, or the kids behind the windows were just that efficient. A article in Monday’s New York Times would argue the latter, since, at best, a mere 8 percent of ticket-buyers use these services, which add a “service” fee to each transaction.

Lo and behold, upon entering the amphitheater-style auditorium, it immediately became clear that we wouldn’t be alone for the screening. Indeed, the racked portion of the theater was nearly full, while the neck-ache seats on the floor were partially occupied, as well.

The faces in the crowd looked very much like our’s … closer to the age of Meryl Streep than that of co-star Anne Hathaway. And, for all the cautionary notes in reviews labeling “Prada” a chick-flick based on a chick-lit best-seller, maybe 40 percent of those faces belong to males. This isn’t to suggest that the guys arrived voluntarily, one that they were there and none was heard whimpering about being forced to miss a ballgame.

The movie progressed with many outbursts of laughter, and very few visits to the loo or concession stand. And, as the final credits rolled, most of the guys walked out of the theater with one those begrudging smiles that indicated “Prada” wasn’t anywhere near as painful as they’d feared it would be. The smiles worn by their partners said something else … “I told you so.”

And, why not? They were right.

Although most of the reviews were complimentary, just mentioning the word “chick flick” in the first several paragraphs usually is enough to eliminate half the potential audience for a picture. Generally, even “chicks” find such movies insufferable, but what else is there?

Such titles as “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” “Ready to Launch,” “Alex & Emma,” “Le Divorce” “The Family Stone,” “Must Love Dogs.” “Shopgirl” and “The Wedding Date” are to men what movies featuring Seth Green, Johnny Knoxville, Carrot Top and the Three Stooges must be to women. For every film that transcends the chick-flick curse – “As Good as It Gets,” “Something’s Gotta Give,” “The Upside of Anger,” come immediately to mind – there are a dozen like “Rumor Has It,” “Irresistible,” “The Stepford Wives” and “Monster-in-Law” that squander the box-office currency of such actors Shirley MacLaine, Jane Fonda, Glenn Close and Susan Sarandon.

Not only is Streep’s performance in “Prada” wickedly funny, but it also has the added benefit of ringing absolutely true. Her Miranda Priestly may be a monster, but she’s recognizable as the kind of ego-manical boss – Donald Trump, Martha Stewart, Leona Helmsley and apparently Anna Wintour – who are despised and admired in equal measure by their employees, TV viewers and greedy MBAs. Streep owns Priestly in much the same way as Close embodied Cruella DeVil, in “101 Dalmations.”

Magazine publishing is a particularly nasty dodge. No one should doubt that Streep’s Priestly is anything more than a slight exaggeration or loose composite. Most editors would eat their children if it meant securing the first photographs of Tom and Katie’s “miracle child.”

“The Devil Wears Prada” worked for me, and, I suspect, others in the audience, as a Disney fairy tale for contemporary adults. Think of Priestly as a direct descendent of the evil Queen in “Snow White,” or Cinderella’s cruel stepmother, Maleficent, De Vil or the Queen of Hearts in “Alice in Wonderland,” and you’ll know immediately what Hathaway’s impossibly out-of-touch Andy Sachs is up against as her junior assistant. (Priestly’s style-obsessed senior aide, as played by Emily Blunt, likewise appeared to be taking her cues from Cinderella’s cruel stepsisters, Drizella and Anastasia.)

There’s also a Prince Charming, but, while handsome, he isn’t as chivalrous as we’re led to believe. That he turns out to be a heel is a decidedly modern conceit: he’s rich, handsome, powerful and connected … what’s the problem?

Liberties have been taken with the novel, of course, but only those who’ve read the book will bother to mention them. If the performances by Streep, Hathaway, Blunt and Stanley Tucci weren’t so appealing, the sizable holes in the story might be far more problematic. People would walk out of the theater comparing the movie to the book, and wishing out loud that the filmmakers had trusted the text. That wasn’t the case here.

Even so, Hathaway is far too naive and uninformed to be anything but a fairy-tale waif, while her live-in “hottie” boyfriend (Adrian Grenier, of “Entourage”) looks as if he belongs on another coast entirely. Priestly tests Andy with tasks that are so difficult to perform that their sheer ridiculousness detracts from the flow of the movie. The accident that frees Andy to take Emily’s spot at the Paris shows also is far too conveniently timed.

We expect so little of Hollywood comedies these days, however, the occasional absurdist moment in an otherwise entertaining movie is easily forgiven.

Another major plus is the producer’s decision to film entirely on location in New York City and Paris. “Prada” is such a site-specific picture that Toronto would have stuck out like a sore thumb. “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” also set in the world of magazine publishing, was partially filmed in Canada and it looked like it.

Every time the camera panned back to display a panoramic view of New York’s bridges, skyscrapers and the theater district, the two women sitting next to me started cooing like doves. Shooting in Manhattan might have been expensive, but the decision likely will pay dividends in verisimilitude. Paris also looked great.

Even so, the production reportedly was budgeted at a modest $35 million, a small fraction of the cost of “Superman Returns,” “POTC” or even “Poseidon.” For the past two weeks, “Prada” has held its own against two of the season’s most anticipated movies, racking in $63.6 million on 1,200 fewer screens than either blockbuster. With a little patience on the part of Fox and exhibiters, it might even prove to have longer legs than those films.

Is there anything else to be gleaned here? Meryl Streep may be the most gifted actress of our time, but her presence doesn’t guarantee success at the box office. She’s terrific in “A Prairie Home Companion,” as well, but the $13 million its made certainly has more to do with Garrison Keillor’s substantial fan base than her duets with Lily Tomlin.

Maybe positive reviews sold “Prada,” or it benefited from an awareness of Lauren Weisberger’s bitchy roman-a-clef. Hathaway and Grenier’s presence didn’t hurt any, that’s for sure.

My guess is that “Prada” was pre-sold in the television and trailer campaigns. A little bit of Streep went a very long way toward convincing potential viewers there were good laughs to be found here, just as there were in “Something’s Gotta Give” and “About Schmidt.” Maybe, too, New York looked too good to miss.

The mix of fresh and familiar faces – ingénues and established stars – all working at the top of their game in the service of a smart script can be a potent formula. Hollywood ought to try it more often. – G.D.

Posted by Gary Dretzka at 02:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)