What a broad…

Thanks to IFP Miami, I was able to invite Doris Wishman to participate in the 19^th annual Miami Film Festival.  Her film, Satan was A Lady, made it premiere a year before at the New York Underground Film Festival.  As it turns out, her last appearance with the film was at my first and last festival at The Colony Theater in Miami Beach. 

Doris and her entourage of more than a dozen arrived for the Midnight show, looking for a seat at the bar.  The film’s star, Honey Lauren, was happy to come into the theater to talk to the crowd.  Doris was not.  But I wasn’t having any of that.  I took the cordless microphone that I was using to introduce the movies at the Colony and found Doris in the lobby bar, still within earshot of the crowd in the theater.  It took her a minute or two to realize just what I was up to… but once I got her talking, it didn’t take her long to come into the theater to take in the applause of a loving audience of cult film fans.  And then to return to say a little bit more, generating laughs and applause with her style and attitude and fine-aged-wine sensuality. 

Moments like that are the joy I took away from the Miami Film Festival.  A woman in her 80s, still fighting to make movies, taking that last victory lap.  Cuban audiences experiencing the humanity of their lost nation in La Tropical.  One of the frat jerks in Raw Deal: A Question of Consent threatening my cameraman after the film.  A theater full of skateboarding teens, screaming all the way through Dogtown & Z-Boys.  Fred Forrest watching Fred Forrest circa 1982 in One From The Heart, 70 feet wide and with perfect sound quality on Miami Beach. 

Of course, the same idiots who didn’t understand why doing a Budd Boetticher retrospective was important are the same idiots who pooh-poohed the Wishman screening.  Sadly, the Miami Film Festival is unlikely to ever see such judgment-free moments of movie love again anytime soon.

Doris Wishman was a special woman.  Even more special, I suspect, than her cranky attitude allowed us to know.  She worked in the most manly of the man’s work of the film business and kept it going for four decades.  Her final film, the just-finished digital feature, Dildo Heaven, will premiere at the Chicago Underground Film Festival later this year.  Doris would tell us not to bother, but she would be pissed if she were not missed.  And missed she shall be. 

GETTING CHANGE BACK:  I had the opportunity to see Changing Lanes yesterday… wow… I wish I had seen it when it came out.  The question seems to be, can Changing Lanes be an Oscar contender.  And my answer is yes… and no. 

There were two great revelations for me in Changing Lanes.  First, there was Samuel L. Jackson’s overwhelmingly brilliant performance.   Jackson’s genius is bittersweet, because we live in a movie era in which the studio drama is all but non-existent.  If that weren’t true, Jackson would not be the Sidney Poitier of his generation… this guy is DeNiro or Pacino or Hoffman.  He is Spencer Tracey.  He is an actor and a movie star.  He can do anything. 

Jackson is one of those actors who loves to add physical stuff to his characterizations.  His hair changes… or disappears.  He wears glasses or sports a scar that covers half his face or wears clothes that seem to define the character.  In Changing Lanes, I’d swear that he was two inches shorter and that his chest was six inches smaller and that his little mustache reset the strength of his face with a patina of weakness. 

Ben Affleck is very good in this film, his first starring feature in a truly dramatic role.  Kevin Smith showed us that he was an actor all the way back in Chasing Amy.  He can do this.  I’m not sure he’s meant to save the world, but he can act. 

Sam Jackson’s work here is exquisite.  This is an intimate, real, unshowy, deeply emotional, truly special performance.  If Paramount gets serious about pushing Jackson for an Oscar - and Ben Affleck is the kind of human being, it seems, who would be the first to encourage attention to someone else’s brilliance – it can happen.  I don’t know that anyone is going to catch up with Jack Nicholson’s performance in About Schmidt as a showstopper.  But you will not see a more perfect performance this year than Jackson’s in Changing Lanes. 

The other thing that really jumped out at me here was the work of Roger Michell.  Sidney Lumet is on my list of favorite directors.  Lumet was from the great generation of TV drama directors who went on to dominate the scene in the early 70s along with the film school bunch.  Besides directing one of my very favorite films of all time, Network, Lumet made such great dramas as 12 Angry Men, The Pawnbroker, Fail-Safe, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Prince of the City, The Verdict, Running on Empty and the sadly undervalued dramatic comedy Just Tell Me What You Want. 

Michell’s work on Changing Lanes reminded me of no one more than it did Lumet.  His simple, but complete understanding of the emotion of New York streets.  His brilliant choices for supporting cast members, across the board.  (The only misstep for me was Amanda Peet as Affleck’s wife.  I like Peet a lot.  But she didn’t have the crackle that the rest of Michell’s choices.  Laura Linney, a little older than Affleck, would have been absolutely perfect in the one-scene, big-fireworks role.) 

Amongst the raft of quality supporting roles – Sydney Pollack, Toni Collette, Dylan Baker, William Hurt and really great moments with people cast in really small roles… so small that I don’t know their character names well enough to credit them.  And then, there is Kim Staunton.  If she were a name actress, her brief turn as Jackson’s estranged wife would be listed as a serious possibility for Best Supporting Actress.  She actually played Jackson’s on-screen wife before, in the disastrous Amos & Andrew.  But unless I am wrong, she played another tiny role with a huge impact as the significant other of Dennis Haysbert, who desperately wants her man to stay on the straight and narrow.  (He gets his brains blown out onto a steering wheel.)

As with Jackson jumping ahead of Affleck for me, my appreciation for Michell doesn’t diminish the work of screenwriters Chap Taylor and Michael Tolkin.  The film has the potential to slip into melodrama, but never does.  The dialogue is smart, strong and measured.  And as the story carries you along, there are no easy answers about what is coming next as Affleck and Jackson keep switching the roles of cat and mouse. 

This is a really good movie.  A solid, unique story told with great skill.  If there is an inherent weakness, it is that Jackson’s character is so right and that Affleck’s is so wrong for so much of the movie.  But in a story about men who can’t help themselves, where one of the men has tricked himself into believing that he’s trying hard enough and the other doesn’t think he needs to try at all, I was pleased to have taken the ride.  And Jackson… wow.

DARN THOSE KIDS!!!:  The New York Times’ A.O. Scott wrote an interesting Sunday piece on kid’s movies.  It’s a spark for conversation, though I feel like he falls into the popular trap of rose-tinted memory.  I was also a little offended, for the filmmakers, by his comment that the biggest films are “engineered for maximum cross-generational appeal.”  He includes Lord of the Rings with the animated Shrek and Toy Story, as well as Harry Potter.  I think Peter Jackson would bristle at the suggestion that his work was engineered for anyone except for him or that he had made a movie meant for children.  Rings is significantly more violent than any of the other film sit is piled in with.  Nonetheless, it’s worth a read, right here.

HUSH YOUR MOUTH:  IFC is kicking off a series of blaxpoitation with a documentary, Baadasssss Cinema. The New York Times’ Hal Hinson takes a look here.

BEYOND BELIEF:  It’s 11:23 p.m. on Monday night and my jaw is on the ground.  I just spent some time on Ain’t It Cool for the first time in a while, marveling at the leaky executive ship at Warner Bros., as defined by the easy flow of info to Ain’t It Cool regarding Batman vs. Superman casting.  Then, Gregg Kilday writes a story that is ostensibly about Wolfgang Petersen making a movie called Troy, inspired by the Iliad.  But like other ass-backwards stories coming out of WB lately (Darren Aronofsky going off to do The Fountain and not Batman: Year One), the most significant upshot here is that it means that Batman vs. Superman is being delayed for at least another 18 months… and with that, no casting is set, because I can promise you that no matter how much Colin Farrell wants to be Batman, his agents are not going to sign him now to start a picture in 18 months or two years unless the dollar signs are so big that they can’t imagine him being worth more then… and that’s just about impossible. 

The bigger question is, how the hell can a company like Warner Bros. continue to allow their biggest feature franchises to lie fallow year after year after year.  Somehow, they have managed to kill two Batman movies in the same two-month period.  The only acceptable answer is that we are 48 hours away from an announcement that a Superman movie is about to happen.  But I doubt that severely.  I just smell another big, ugly mistake.

BAD AD WATCH:  Finding advertising for The Hot Button is one of the ways I could bring some money in… but I am always shy about going forward.  Why?  I was looking at the story on Ain’t It Cool and ran into a java driven: “Burning.  Itching. Pain.  Need Relief?  Free trial of effective genital herpes prescription medication.”  (Insert your own joke here.)

UNTITLED:  They are making a documentary about the 70s movie era with the name Raging Bulls, Easy Riders… but Peter Biskind is not involved.  I don’t know how that works.  But what I do know is that Ken Bowser, a smart and gentle man is making the film, so I am already rooting for his success.  The story about some interviewees coming aboard is here.

SIGHT & SOUND:  I hate grouped critics lists almost as much as I find people explaining why they didn’t participate obnoxious.  (Note: If you pass, have the good taste not to try to get points for having been asked as well.)  I will eventually look closely at the lists and write something… but not today.

EARS TO YOU:  For people who are interested in the real scoop on Disney, not just the cheap, public backbiting, you can’t beat Bruce Orwall and the Wall Street Journal.  The first story of note was on Friday when Disney obviously decided to talk to Orwall to try to stop the bleeding from the Salon article and others suggesting that Eisner was on thin ice.  My first thought, of course, was “This is the advantage of being at a big publication.”  But Orwall deserves Eisner’s respect.  Orwall followed up on Monday with a fascinating story about some Disney board members whose status as “independent” board members is now in jeopardy because they had family members hired by the company in the last year.  These are the kinds of details that separate the WSJ from the rest.  Facts and perspective in one.  Great.

OLD NEWS IS…:  There is a week old story from the New York Times about the glory of Viacom boredom.  I don’t know if I liked to it somewhere, but if not, here it is again.

READER OF THE DAY:  TALLER THAN GARY writes:  “Just wanted to suggest that the poor box office showings for the recent Clint Eastwood films (i.e., past few years at least) may be partly due to the fact that Clint has become so over-exposed on TV. TNT and TBS in particular show old Eastwood films on such a regular basis it's practically a joke. Ted Turner must have bought the TV rights to the whole library. Whether it be cowboy Clint, cop Clint, or any other of the various incarnations of Clint, the sight of him on my TV screen is almost as inevitable as the nightly news.

The strategy of saturating viewers in Clint seems sound at first, just part of the icon-izing process. But when I see so many of his movies tanking at the box office (beginning roughly at the same time as his canonization-by-TV began), I have to wonder: Is broadcasting The Gauntlet a couple dozen times a year such a great idea?

Which also means Sandra Locke should just *forget* the big comeback plans...”

DAVID RESPONDS:  HEY! I used to work for those people!!!  And more to the point, they are the same company that releases Eastwood’s new movies.  I’m sure the strategy has been discussed.

Now, there is a little more Signs stuff filled with more Signs spoilers… so be wary if you wish to be unspoiled…

READY? SPOILERS FOLLOW!

NOT MARSHALL wrote in the most clean, complete version of the “real” Signs story:  “I've been amused by all of the SIGNS detractors, ranting about how terrible the movie is.  I have to say I agreed with them... but after some thought, think the movie may be subtly more intelligent than anyone is giving it credit.

A reader at Jeff Wells' column came up with the notion that Gibson's daughter is actually an angel.  (How they came up with this idea, I'll never know, since it's so subtle it's hardly there.)  But, inspired by this idea, I added to it, and think the movie makes total sense if you look at it in a different way: the "aliens" are not aliens at all, but are demons sent from hell.  Our highly secular society, however, can only come up with a "factual" explanation for their appearance: they are invading extraterrestrials here in flying saucers to "harvest" us and our planet.

Let's get film school-y here: the arrival of the demons on a worldwide level coincides with the arrival of Gibson's own demons.  He's a once-holy man who has renounced his faith (who, ironically, "no longer believes" in God, yet keeps talking to God to tell him how much he hates Him).  The worldwide invasion of demons is just a metaphor for what's going on in Gibson's own life.  More, the news broadcasts claim that the "aliens" have the ability to "change color and blend in with their surroundings."  Fascinating, yes, but we never see it in the movie... because we don't have to.  That's just M. Night reminding us that evil can be impossible to see amongst ourselves... we ALL have demons, and while it would be nice if the only "evildoers" in our society were of the mustache-twirling, obvious variety, the fact is that people who may look "normal" can be thoroughly evil as well.  And while these "aliens" have arrived in "UFOs," do we ever see actual spaceships?  Never.  All we see are lights in the night sky.  Nor do the aliens use futuristic, unearthly technology.  Of course they don't... because they're DEMONS.  They have no technology.

How does this relate to the young girl?  Whether she's an angel or not, or a future saint, she's still a child, and thus an innocent.  She has no demons of her own, unlike everyone else (the cynical adults) in the cast.  Whether the water at the climax is "holy water" in the truest sense, it has been "blessed" (touched) by the only person in the movie who's pure.  Sure, the Culkin kid is a "child" too, but he's a few years older and, lest we forget, told his father that he hated him... so he's not so innocent anymore. (I'd actually argue that the girl IS an angel: Gibson calls her that a few times; she was able to smile after birth, something Mel was told "babies can't do"; she has visions of the future; etc.  She probably doesn't know it, but she is blessed herself.)

So, there you have it.  It's not an alien invasion movie, as everyone thinks, but an apocalyptic tale of demons trying to finish taking over society.  Only at the end of the film -- when our secular society has been jolted awake and makes a return to faith, as Gibson has -- are the demons forced back to hell. It's also telling that the humans' resistance begins in the Middle East, site of most of the traditionally "holy" cities on the planet (Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Mecca, etc.).  And no, I don't think the Middle Easterners discovered that the "aliens" are destroyed by "water" (because in fact it takes holy water to kill them)...I think that the citizens of those holy places began to pray, HARD, for an end to their suffering.  And it worked -- the demons were turned back. 

Maybe I'm looking too deeply at it, but you have to admit, at least that  explanation explains away most of the plot holes.

(Mind you, I still think the movie was thoroughly pretentious, and doubt that M. Night was even GOING for the above explanation... but who knows.  Even so, it's no excuse for that terrible ending of his... sheesh!)”

And MINK MAN adds: “Reading the talkbackers regarding Signs, I just had to write in to offer my .02 cents regarding a few of the comments....

First, regarding Dandy Danny's criticism of the "I hate you" dialogue, well, he says that the son seems smart enough to realize that Mel's character shouldn't be blamed for what happened to the son's mother. Clearly that is NOT why the son says "I hate you". Obviously the thing that has changed the most in the family's house since the mother's death is Mel's loss of faith. That loss has turned Mel cynical, bitter, etc.; now imagine how that change would affect his relationships with his kids, who are still mourning the loss of their mother. Mel's loss of faith means that there's no comfort for the kids to be found from their father regarding their mom's fate. This was demonstrated fully in the speech Mel tells his younger brother that "we're on our own". The kids could tell that their dad didn't think mom was at peace, or in heaven, etc., and dad's opinion has permeated the house for six months, and it caused the kids, among other things, great anger, which simply spills out of the son at that particular moment. This previous explanation is the subtext of the scene, which shouldn't need explaining.

Erland's disappointment regarding the alien book picture that resembled Mel's house, hoping there was more to it? There was more to it, but only metaphorically. As so many critics have tried to point out, the "Alien" invasion can be taken literally as an actual invasion, OR the invasion is a metaphor for the "invasion" of hopelessness that has invaded Mel's character, replacing his faith. Something horrible has literally happened at Mel's house (the wife's death), thus, the house is on fire. Something from beyond their control may have caused this terrible tragedy, thus, the aliens are invading. The success of these ideas resonating with the audience is arguable, but to write off M. Night as a hack writer is way off base. We don't see zillions of Aliens, or what happens all around the world regarding their fate, because the main thrust of the picture is Mel's family crisis and not the Aliens. I appreciated the screenplay much more than most it would seem.

I enjoyed the film a great deal, although I will say that I also felt a slight disappointment with the ending, for reasons which remain unclear to me. I saw the film in Orange County in a packed screening, and the movie worked like a Swiss watch on the audience. Scary, funny, creepy, dreadful; a fun experience with a crowd for a change.”

E ME:  What did you think of Changing Lanes…. seems like years ago…