Digital Dretzka

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)