The Reeler

"I grew up going to the New York Film Festival," Miller (right) told me. "It was a dream to have a film at the New York Film Festival. Maybe some people fantasize about this award or that award, but for me it was gettting a film into the New York Film Festival. Being in that room with that crowd, you know? Projecting the movie on that screen was really the experience of a lifetime. And everything that's happened since then has been sort of an extension."

But it's a long extension--a five-month marathon from Lincoln Center through events like tonight's (Capote also claimed the National Society of Film Critics best picture award Sunday) and then eventually onto the Oscars. I guess it's a nice problem to have, but how are you withstanding the grind?

"It's fun," he said. "This is the easy part. Getting up at four in the morning and schlepping out into the prairie is the hard part."

If you say so, Bennett. If you say so. Newsday critic Gene Seymour--a Reeler Top 10 Top 10 fave and current NYFCC chairman--was also floating around; having resigned myself to the coup's unlikelihood after seeing Armond White arrive in a suit and tie, I asked Seymour if there were any films that he thought disappointingly flew under the other critics' radar. "My 10-best list included The 40-Year-Old Virgin," Seymour reminded me, thankfully avoiding rehashing the "shopping-center-suburban-nerd universe"/"American dream life" meditation he stabbed at in his list.

"Why not?" he continued. "It was funny, it was well-made. But people don't think of comedies--especially summer comedies--as being in that vein. They figure it somehow falls short of kind of a classical perfection. I've got news for you: Comedies never fall into a classical perfection. Like The Bank Dick. W.C. Fields. Nobody would call that a perfect movie. Yet for more than 70 years, it makes people laugh their heads off. So who knows? I'm betting that 20 years from now, people will see The 40-Year-Old Virgin and still find something funny about it."

Brokeback Mountain producer James Schamus (left) and History of Violence award-winner Maria Bello, almost to their tables

I will get back to Seymour about the idea of "classically perfect" comedies (what is Preston Sturges?), but either way, what will it take for critics to stand up for films like Virgin, or anything for that matter that is cursed with a release date before, say, November 1?

"I don't think they're forgotten," Seymour replied. "There are plenty of people out there who bring this stuff up. I just think a lot of us should personally work a lot harder to sort of keep these movies in mind and to make leaps of the imagination once in a while. To say that it isn'r always the things that look more glossy that are more prestigious. There's some fun stuff out there that will probably be around 20 or 30 years from now."

OK, well--next year, right?

He nodded. "Next year."

Finally, I managed to visit again with Christopher Doyle--the coolest damn D.P. in the world and the recipient of both the NYFCC's and National Society of Film Critics' best cinematography award for his 2046 collaboration with Lai Yiu-Fai and Kwan Pun-Leung. "Thanks, but what do you say?" he asked in reference to the NSFC award announcement earlier in the day. "You say these critics are not critical enough? Actually, it reminds me to be more critical. This is the great pleasure of collaborating with someone now, which I'd never done in my whole life until the last six months. It actually makes you more critical. If you settle back into an armchair of complacency, so fucking what, you know? If your next film is not your best film, what are you here for? So I hope it's given me a bit of kick in the bum. I have this thing: 'Hey, wake up. Don't take it too seriously, thanks for what you've done, but we expect more.' I hope so."

Yeah, well, so do I. And speaking of Doyle's next film, there was a rumor going around the last time he and I talked that he might be working with Anton Corbijn on the Ian Curtis/Joy Division biopic Control. Is that indeed the film the two had planned?

"No, no, no, no... yeah, yeah," Doyle said. "Yeah! We even went to the U2 concert together."

Great. So, um, where is that one at?

"I don't know at the moment," he told me. "Anton is a very discreet person, to put it mildly. I think that there's some... I don't know. You work with someone like me and we just talk about everything. I think that people need a certain... what's the word? Reticence about their form to make it purer to them, and I think that's what Anton is like. He has to step back to find out where he's standing, whereas someone like me--or any cinematographer--we just step in and make a mess and work it out from there. You know. We're slightly different personalities, which I hope will work." He uncorked his trademark, mischievous laugh. "It will happen."

OK, but what about Wong Kar-Wai? He was hanging around Cipriani somewhere, and I know Doyle had mentioned in the past that 2046--their seventh collaboration--would likely be their last film together. But tonight was the night for his change of heart, right? In which he and Wong would join hands and pledge each other loyalty for the rest of their careers? That estrangement talk was all bullshit, right?

"We'll see," Doyle said, laughing again. "I feel that tonight is going to be the Brokeback Mountain of critical awards. Should I lick my hand first? What do you want me to do? I think you're right. This is... What can I say? I am where I am because of Wong Kar-Wai. There's no question about it. We will go further, and we do care."

So there you have it. Gene Seymour will go to war for the summer comedy, Control will get made and Chris Doyle will once more stem the rose with Wong Kar-Wai. I think I can die now.