Wednesday, 7 October 1998

RANTING & RAVING

Two items this week. One is mine, the other is from a young reader/filmmaker. Both are about an indie film. Mine is a rave and hers is a rant, so hold on.

Just who the hell does Todd Solondz think he is? Woody Allen, the filmmaker who seems the be the most comparable to Solondz, made seven feature films before getting to the dark, festering, angry stuff. Maybe America likes the "happy" Woody better, but his more serious work has always been more truthful. First, he failed to really say what he wanted to, to some degree, with Interiors. Then, he lightened up a bit and made the beautifully shaded Manhattan before going on the attack again with Stardust Memories. Some consider that film a masterpiece. I consider it another near miss. Four more films of a lighter tone came before Allen tried to go a little darker again with Hannah and Her Sisters, which is loaded with painful deceit and paranoia between the funny parts. Closer. September, failure. Radio Days, brilliant memoir, offering more insight into the filmmaker. Another Woman, another failure, perhaps his biggest failure. And then, Allen hit his grand slam -- Crimes and Misdemeanors married drama and comedy, personal and professional and truth and fiction, all with the aerobatic ease of Mikhail Baryshnikov. That was 19 films into Woody's remarkable career.

So why am I reviewing Woody Allen's career instead of Todd Solondz' Happiness? Because I want to offer some perspective on the magnitude of his achievement. In just his second film, he has created a masterwork. He's not a brilliant visualist, barely a passable one. This film is not as broad in scope or as perfect as Crimes and Misdemeanors, but this is the kind of filmmaking that changes what filmmaking is and what we expect from the experience. Solondz works with the very darkest parts of human nature and manages to make them horrible and funny and ultimately, real. Make no mistake, Happiness is a horror show. There may never have been a film more deserving of an NC-17. Child molestation, sexual perversion and unlimited narcissism are all on display. (We never see any actual child molestation, but we feel every bit of the sickness. And Solondz allows his characters to tell the truth about that and everything else.) But so is the pursuit of true happiness. Or are they the same?

Solondz builds the story around three sisters. (Another Hannah connection? Both are stealing from Chekov, I would guess, and he probably stole it from someone before that.) One (Cynthia Stevenson) has the perfect married-with-kids life. Or so it would seem. Another (Lara Flynn Boyle) is wildly successful, wildly single and completely incapable of anything more than self-loathing masked in an overwhelming display of self-love. And the third (Jane Adams) is the searcher, open to anything and unable to find it. Adams has the most complex role and steals the movie from the better known actors. But Dylan Baker ("Murder One"), as Stevenson's husband, gives an awesome performance. Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who you may remember as the guy in love with Dirk Diggler in Boogie Nights, gives another great performance as the nerd in perverse pursuit of Flynn Boyle, his dream girl. Ben Gazzara, Louise Lasser and Elizabeth Ashley bring veteran weight to their small roles. And Camryn Manheim, whose "This is for the fat girls!" acceptance speech at the Emmys was about the only truly memorable part of that evening, gives what would be an Supporting Actress Oscar-nominated performance if this were any movie other than Happiness. This flick, unfortunately, needs a sticker saying: "WARNING: Too Intense For Academy Members Who Are Still Driving Miss Daisy." (That would be 80 percent of them.)

I don't want to give too much of the plot away. And I want to warn again, this is the most adult film you will ever see. It is the emotional equivalent of the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan. A friend of mine who came to the screening with me walked away enraged, calling this the worst film he ever saw. That's true passion. (And he ended up admitting that the most offensive of the characters was the most real and honest.) That's why it's so good. It makes the audience face things it doesn't necessarily want to see. In fact, if you wanted to see them, you would have to be a sick person. But Solondz does it so artfully, that the horror resonates as you convulse in laughter, much like parts of Welcome to the Dollhouse did.

October Films dumped this film for fear of fighting the MPAA, yet will release an infantile piece of masturbatory garbage like Orgazmo, which deals with porn yet has no insight or value other than as a footnote to the "South Park" collection. (It isn't very funny either, the ultimate sin.) Shame on them. And understand, I'm not going to be judging others who hate this film. At least not civilians. (Critics have a greater responsibility than their own personal tastes.) It is not an easy film to experience, neither was Kundun, but both films were like nothing I've ever seen before. (And I don't mean that in a What Dreams May Come kind of way.) Happiness is, by its existence, for better or worse, an important piece of film history.

The film starts its release a week from Friday. I'm sure that you'll hear more about it from me and others before then.

READER OF THE DAY: Hyunjin Jo: "I'm in preparation for a low-budget feature film, called 20 Changes with an Asian FEMALE as the lead with an ensemble of three Caucasian FEMALES and a Jewish boyfriend to the Asian lead. All of them are 20 years old. Currently, the script is at all the smaller of the major studios (Fine Line, Searchlight, Gramercy, yada, yada), and though I have gotten an overwhelming favorable response concerning the project, I really don't expect any one of these studios to be involved in a pre-buy situation. And not because of the Asian female lead (Lindsay Price from "Beverly Hills, 90210"), though that certainly plays a part in it, but because the problem lays apparently with the fact that I have a majority female cast, a young cast and the fact that I don't have this huge Ronin-type action scene to play out in the international market. Instead, the characters talk and are 20 years old. In regard to dialogue and such, some comparisons have been made to The Breakfast Club. Although I'm sure that the action scenes of running through the hallways of Sherman High gave Frankenheimer a run for his money.

"It's important to note that 20 Changes has very little to do with the fact that the main character is Asian. She is a young American female going through the trials and tribulations of turning 20. So, I don't have this overwhelming Asian theme like something like The Joy Luck Club or the The Wedding Banquet. Both are excellent films in their own right, but because my story is more about being 20 and being female than about being Asian, it doesn't even have that exclusive Asian edge to take it into the market. Basically, my belief is that if I swap the genders in the story and make all the characters white, I don't believe that I would be waiting for financing. (I'm currently partly funded).

"Now, don't think of this as a boo hoo letter. It's not meant to be. I'm certain that 20 Changes will get made. This is my first feature film that I will be directing and that fact, of course, doesn't help the issue of getting money. However, is there a market for Asian leads? Of course. (I certainly do see Lindsay Price eventually getting to the level of a Halle Berry or Jennifer Lopez and being hired as an actress, not just as an Asian actress). But is the market powerful? Probably not.

"I think the big problem lays upon Asian-Americans. One certainly does not see a backlash of angry Asian viewers LOUDLY protesting the lack of plain ol' Asian-American characters in today's films. Right now, it might be at the level of leaves rustling on a fall day, but without that noise, Hollywood won't listen, because it's all about the CASH and what the studios think the audience wants. Example: the tidal wave of terror/horror films. Or making the studios scared (READ: losing money) because of protest. And they (the studios and, quite frankly, talent) can rant on and on about there not being enough good scripts for minorities and women, which I certainly do think is part of the problem. But the main problem is that films are not being made with Asian leads because the powers that be, don't think they will make money. And why would they? Their only examples of what an Asian lead would do for a film has been through MALE, Asian action films or some token stereotypical heavily accented Asian, listed last in the credits. If listed at all. So why would they cast an Asian that could be played by a Caucasian, Hispanic or an African-American?

"Asian leads in films is just about as difficult as finding a good film portraying women. Of course, it only takes one movie to start changing all of this. Could it be 20 Changes, taking on the Asian and FEMALE issue simultaneously, to accomplish this? Perhaps, but in the interim, I'm busy doing my own song and dance to get my film made. Just promise me that if it's out there in the market, that you will go check it out.

Thanks for your time.

P.S.: Just so you know. I am an Asian female."

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E ME: Do you want to be pushed? Do you want new experiences? Or would you really just see more CG? Either position is defensible, but only if you write and explain.

CORRECTION: A Simple Plan, which I mentioned as opening this weekend, has apparently been pushed to December 4th. Some readers, very excited by the film and its potential, suggest that this is a part of an Oscar strategy. I think it's a disaster waiting to happen unless Paramount has some notion that Psycho is moving. Like the idea of that remake or not, it's going to open and open big.