Saturday, 16 September 2000

Strange day, strange karma.

When I finally got to sleep Thursday night, it was about 5 a.m. The aboriginal dancing at the Olympics was great to see. But I decided that I would sleep for a full 7 hours for the second time in the last 17 days. I wake up around noon and start looking over the schedule. I could go see this movie or that movie...but nothing I really want to see. I dress and I walk in the direction of the theater, but by the time I get there, I don't want to go in...I've maxed out. So, I have brunch on the terrace of a restaurant. And then, I consider going to the movies again. And again, I don't really want to go. So, I buy a book...A BOOK!!!! Reading! What a concept!!! I pick up Susan Orleans' The Orchis Thief and get a ringside table on a busy walking street, order a rum & Coke and start reading. About 30 minutes in, I get tired. So I go take a nap.

What's wrong with this picture?

I think I just fell out of rhythm and ran out of must-see movies. Or even wanna-see movies. And once I lost my drive, I was lost all day.

Until the Gala Presentation of The Dish...

What's The Dish? It's the story of a small Australian village's critical participation in the broadcast of the most watched TV show ever: the 1969 space walk. As it turned out, Parkes, Australia was (and is) the home of one of the largest radio telescopes in the southern hemisphere. NASA needed that telescope to handle radio signals -- and eventually TV signals -- during the 12 hours of daytime in the northern hemisphere. And so, the connection from earth to the moon came down to three Australians, an American rep from NASA and a security guard of limited intelligence.

Here's the part where I come completely clean before getting into what I think of this film. I met the director and executive producer of The Dish at Roger Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival last April. I like these guys. And make no mistake, I wanted to like their movie. But if I didn't like it, I would hang my head and tell you the truth. Fortunately, I don't have that problem.

The Dish has every likelihood of being the next The Full Monty...a kind of movie that has been evading the studios ever since The Full Monty did big business and pulled in four Oscar nominations, winning one. They tried it again with Waking Ned Divine, Little Voice and Rushmore in 1998, but they didn't quite take. Last year, they even tried it with Rob Sitch's first film, The Castle.

Everyone wants a small non-American film that can do what can be sold as surprising business and get a Best Picture nomination. So why have these Full Monty wannabes (and I'm sure my list is short) failed to recapture lightening in a bottle? Well, the movie doesn't just have to be good and it doesn't just have to win hearts, but it has to translate into the lives of Americans in a way that doesn't leave everyone going, "that was cute, but..."

The Dish is a movie made by Australians for Australians that could just as easily have been made by an American for Americans. Besides the basic argument that funny is funny and that people are people, this is a movie about an American moon landing. The thrill of watching the first steps on the moon is an American phenomena first and a world phenomena second. After all, it was our men and our ship.

And the thing about The Dish is that besides being grounded in a happy-hearted American/world event, it is a joyous, tightly-written, beautifully shot, big-screen movie that is guaranteed to take audiences from any English speaking country on the planet on a ride that will make them laugh, make them love and make them tear up just a little bit, remembering the joy of the moment for all mankind. Looking back, with the space shuttle and all, the first man to walk on the moon isn't quite the romantic notion that it was back then. But The Dish takes you back to that time, to that moment and to those emotions quite beautifully.

A short while ago, I slapped down the notion that David Mamet's State & Main deserved comparisons to the works of Billy Wilder and/or Preston Sturges. And once again, I like State & Main. I like it quite a bit. And I am as big a Mamet supporter as there is. But I just don't think that he came close to the absolute mastery of those two giants of screen comedy. So, as I sat in Roy Thompson Hall Friday night and watched The Dish and started to think about what Sitch's movie, which I was loving, compared to, I went through the list. And I didn't come up with the perfect fit. But what I came up with was Sturges. And I will explain...in this movie, Sitch and the team he works with (more on them shortly) manage to create characters in a single line of dialogue for character after character. You really get the character in an instant. The next door neighbor who has a crush on the girl next store and a military obsession that keeps her at a distance. The wife of the local politician who doesn't want her husband to call her "Maisie," lest a visiting dignitary not take her seriously. The little kid who knows more about the launch than NASA seems to know. And that last kid also explains why the movie works so well...he never has that big moment where he, this kid, turns out to have the solution that makes him smarter than all the adults. Sitch & Co. don't make those kind of broad, easy to read jokes. They observe humanity in a very real, very simple way. Just like Sturges. The Dish has a cynicism of what people are really like that matches Sturges, but it never sees them quite as darkly as Sturges. And like The Castle, it is not the way of this group to look to really big themes. Sitch is more intimate than Sturges. There is a difference. But The Dish is a sign that the level to which the greats aspired may actually be within Sitch's reach.

The reason I keep writing "& Co." and things like that is that Rob Sitch is a member of a five-person team of comic performers, writers, producers and directors called Working Dog. The other members of the group are Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner, Jane Kennedy and Michael Hirsh. The first three on that list and Sitch are credited with the screenplay and producing chores on The Dish. Hirsh acts as executive producer. So, you get the feeling that there is some real group work here. Additionally, on this film, Sitch is backed up by cinematographer Graeme Wood, editor Jill Babcock and composers Edmund Choi and Jane Kennedy, all of whom raise the level of this film to a new high.

"More Dishing"