December 9, 2002

“If I were going to treat you to dinner this week, which of the following two meals would you prefer? 1. A dab of Ostera caviar, a smidgen of carrot flan, a toasted fennel cracker, a dollop of wild rice, a half cup of cannellini bean soup, a few shiitake mushrooms, and a small plate of endive and candied walnut salad. 2. A man's size sirloin steak smothered in onions and mashed potatoes with gravy. As I'm sure you've guessed, Libra, this is a trick question. The correct answer -- if you'd like to be in maximum alignment with astrological energies, that is -- is the first option. The same goes for most other areas of your life. If given a choice, always opt for bite-sized portions of a variety of novel tastes instead of a large helping of familiar fillers.” 
-- From Rob Brezsney’s Free Will Astrology

I am a steak-eating Libra.  But this weekend was a feast of bite-sized options.

In so many ways, it’s been a brutal couple of years since AOL shut down roughcut.com.  Maybe it was God’s (whoever that is to you or me) way of telling me that it just couldn’t be that easy.  The Miami Film Festival experience was tough, but would have been fulfilling from beginning to end were it not for a few people with sharp knives and my near-virginal naivety about them and their personal issues.  My commitment to entertainment journalism wasn’t really cemented until sometime this summer, when I realized that I could, in the midst of tough times, try to reach farther.  Some of the personal damage of the last ten months without a “real” job will linger for another six months, I’m sure.  But I have grown, as a journalist and as a man, due to all of this, in ways that I am just beginning to understand.

Which brings me to my point…

I love all this.  I am writing this part of today’s column on Saturday afternoon, just back from an hour or so with Maggie Gyllenhaal and on my way to chat with Susan Orlean and then on to meet Alfonso Cuaron.  And as I drove away from the Chateau Marmont, I related to young Miss Gyllenhaal.  She had spoken about a play that she’ll be doing in Los Angeles next summer, Tony Kushner’s first full-length piece since Angels in America.  And she spoke of how it filled her in a way that was so powerful for her… so special… so rare. 

And that’s how our conversation made me feel. 

Movies don’t always mean very much.  This little world of ours out here is a hard, cynical, petty little place.  But when you meet someone who seems to be in such the right space… anxious to grow… really passionate about the work… really passionate about her own adaptation and looking for the answers in what life presents her instead of focusing on the problems or the game… it’s a quasi-religious experience… because first and last, I am a true believer in film.  I am a die-hard romantic (and a Die Hard romantic).  And when the reminders come that I am not alone… it just busts me up.

Lest my purple prose leads you to think that Gyllenhaal is all sunshine and flowers, she was still tough and funny enough to get off this line when she joined a conversation about City of God while I was talking about Meirelles & Lund’s use of real people from the Brazilian ghetto: “I don’t like movies where they don’t use actors.”  A dry wit.

I watched Secretary twice in preparation for this conversation.  Truth is, I had only seen it without the first 30 minutes when I caught it in Toronto, running from one movie to another.  What I was struck by in Toronto was the gimmick of S&M as a black comedy device.  But seeing the rest of the movie - particularly the set-up about Gyllenhaal’s character being a “cutter” who was hospitalized after cutting too deep one time and this being exposed to her family – really changed the experience for me. 

When I first saw the picture, I wrote that I thought that Gyllenhaal would be best served by having her own sitcom for a few years, securing her place at the table with the skills she so obviously has.  The idea of this almost made Maggie spit up her coffee.  But even before I sat down with her, I had moved along from that idea.  Watching Secretary more closely, I was struck with the maturity and authority of her face.  There is something “beyond her years” about the 25-year-old Maggie G.  (She just had a birthday a few weeks ago.)   It’s not unlike what so many filmmakers see in her brother, Jake, who is inevitably cast as young, naïve and capable of wisdom beyond his years.

“In her poem about sunflowers, Mary Oliver writes that "the long work / of turning their lives / into a celebration / is not easy." I'd like to extend that description to the Scorpio tribe. No one labors harder than you to uncover the secret thrills that life holds in its hidden depths; and sometimes, during your meticulous investigations, you almost forget how to laugh. Yet with each passing year, you refine your capacity for mysterious delight; you become more skilled at transforming your life into a festive masterpiece. I predict that the coming weeks will bring a breakthrough in that heroic, slow-motion process.”

Maggie Gyllenhaal is clearly refining her own festive masterpiece of a life.  She’s done some small roles in big movies, but her first big role in a studio film is in Mona Lisa Smile, and that’s a rather dramatically different experience than Secretary or something like Case De Los Babys, which she is doing for John Sayles on a micro-budget.  But she has found her footing in that world also, after admittedly feeling like she was flailing a little at first.  And when Maggie Gyllenhaal talks about how great it’s been working with Kirsten Dunst or Julia Roberts, you don’t feel like she’s just doing The Junket Tango.  She found what was important to her and she’s comfortable with those judgments.

Gyllenhaal seems like a strong candidate for the Independent Spirit Awards (nominees announced this Wednesday morning) and for Best Actress – Musical For Comedy.  A win or two would probably earn her a spot at the Oscars.  But you get the feeling that she could happily live without all that… at least, for now. 

THE WEEKEND STARTED with a series of Friday night parties that eventually led to a chance to hang out with Jeremy Drysdale, an English screenwriter whose Grand Theft Parsons just finished shooting with Jackass’s Johnny Knoxville in the lead.   Funny guy.  He taught a drunken frat boy how to hit on women the English way.  He offered insights into the life of a rising writer in Hollywood.  And he got me to ride a mechanical bull. 

On Saturday, in a twist of Hollywood logic, a writer followed the actress, as a chance to sit with Susan Orlean, the first adapter of John Larouche’s story, as writer of Orchid Fever for The New Yorker (“Yes, The New Yorker”) and then as author of The Orchid Thief, the book that drove Charlie Kaufman to screenwriting schizophrenia in Adaptation.  (Note: The exclusive releases this weekend brought in $57,570 per screen.  Go, baby, go!)

Orlean is a small woman, skinny as a stick though apparently busty, light-eyed and red-haired, shoulder squared to the world and sharply attractive, in spite of the fact that her skin is so pale that you start to thing you might see right through to the bone.  She has the posture of the girl who sat in the front row and knew all the answers to the questions with calm assurance of someone who is deservedly selling an awful lot of books.  Orlean is of unknown age.  Until recently, she was employed by The New Yorker, writing in depth on the nature of real people without ever falling to the banal. 

And that last paragraph requires some small apology to Susan for pilfering her first paragraph of The Orchid Thief.  Nonetheless, it’s all true.  Besides all of that, Susan is a hoot.  She is open, friendly and unencumbered by any pretense (other than a taste for the best champagne available). 

We talked a lot about those she worked with and about the opportunities to come.  Her “exit” from The New Yorker is only temporary, as she’s taking a little leave to live.  Her husband is based in Boston and the commute is a bit much.  Meanwhile, she continues work on her next book, a look at the journey of Keiko, the whale who played “Willy” in  the first two Free Willy movies.  She was working on a book about the rap world, but she realized that her small, female whiteness would become too powerful a theme in the book and she dropped it after a lot of research.  And she’d love to see a deal finally come together to make a film of her memorable article “Meet The Shaggs.”

I didn’t really have enough time to ask all the questions about the movie that I should have, as the tangential was more fun than any questions I might have had.  I didn’t even have a chance to discuss a collaboration I had with her over a few weeks some 16 years ago… seemed too self-serving to bring up.  (That’s what the column is for, damn it!  Self-serving stuff!)

ON SATURDAY NIGHT, it was on to a cocktail party for Alfonso Cuaron, 21 days before his birthday…

“You're living large these days, Sagittarius. I predict that your life will have synchronistic resonance with several historical events. For instance, December 6, 1933 was the first day in 13 years Americans could legally drink alcoholic beverages, and December 6, 2002 will bring the end of a noxious prohibition for you. On December 7, 1988, Soviet President Gorbachev eliminated 500,000 troops from his military forces, and any minute now you'll lower your own defenses. On December 9, 1793, Noah Webster created New York's first daily newspaper, and you're about to upgrade your ability to communicate.”

Cuaron, whose Y Tu Mama Tambien is one most mentioned of the dark horses in the awards season, is in London these days, preparing to start production on the next Harry Potter movie.   But he was in L.A. this weekend to meet and greet and eat.  But it wasn’t your typical movie hype gang bang.  This was a party at producer Mark Johnson’s home and waiting to welcome the exhausted Alfonso were Peter Farrelly, Steven Soderbergh, Callie Khouri, Lawrence Bender, Saffron Burroughs, John Herzfeld, Bridget Moynahan, Frank Pierson, Robin Tunney, Rose McGowan and Taylor Hackford.  (Credits not contractual.) 

In other words… a very cool room.   More to my indulgence, a room filled with a bunch of people whose work and personal styles I really enjoy and admire.  Novel tastes and familiar fillers, all in one. 

I don’t much care for showbiz parties… I always feel like I have to be on guard.  But not in this room.  It’s easy to forget that there are sane humans in this game.  Peter Farrelly (Sagittarius) is one of my favorite people, even though I run into him almost never.  Soderbergh (Capricorn) is smart and tough and truthful in a way that shines through in his work.  Talking to Bender (birth date unknown) about shooting in China (they wrapped Kill Bill a few months ago) was great, having spent time at the Beijing and Shanghai studios a couple of years ago.  Callie Khouri (Sagittarius) was her usual sunny, helpful self, chatting happily with a friend of mine whose film is still looking for distribution and whose next romantic comedy is about to hit the spec market. 

And then there were the publicists… glory girls all.

Sunday was far more anti-social.  But two screenings of Gangs of New York on Sunday – first the release version and then Scorsese’s 2001 cut – was quite illuminating.  (More on that in the days to come.  And no, I won’t answer your e-mail asking for a private insight on the film.)  Scorsese is a Scorpio, like Maggie Gyllenhaal.  Do you think that the odd coincidence of all these Nov-Jan birthdays means something?  Safron Burroughs and Taylor Hackford are both Capricorns.  Bridget Moynahan and Rose McGowan are both Virgos.  And Robin Tunney is the only Gemini I could find in that room.

But this Libra stands alone. 

Of course, I have almost no interesting in astrology.  But for one weekend… taste something new… there is still joy to be found in Hollywood.

READER OF THE DAY:  ARTHUR’S BOY writes: “How can you drool over Minority Report when you admit the ending is bullshit?  Conclusions are pretty damn important, and although I think a film with a terrible ending can be good, they shouldn't be Oscar contenders.

I wasn't blown away by Minority Report, and I disliked it more and more after I talked about with people.  The filmmaking is fine, but there are so many unimpressive plot twists and characters that hold the movie back.  The biggest problem is the way it holds back on the issues it brings up.  Spielberg basically made the only interesting ideas McGuffins. 

I don't know.  Just my opinion.”

And THE WHITE ONE counters: “While ‘the very end of Minority Report does fall apart’ is a defensible statement, I think there's an ironclad counterargument against it -- the one argued for a week in July by ROTDers. Spielberg allows you to read the end of the film as a John's halo sleep; you have the DVD, so check out the scene when they drop him into his little cylindrical cocoon. He descends corpse-like into the ground, his halo lights up ... and we cut to his wife in his boss's office, where his boss makes the Freudian slip that proves his undoing.

Is it signaled as a dream ending? At best, it's ambiguous, which is the perfect note for the ending to strike. That moment when the halo lights up is the turning point in the movie's portrayal of the universe from unjust to just -- certainly that's the dream of a betrayed lawman. What Spielberg gave us was perfectly measured to play both ways, and if most people didn't get it (and didn't like Minority Report's ending), then you could read it as kind of a kiss-off from the director to those who wailed about the ending to A.I.

For those who wanted MR to have a dark ending – it has one, and the joke's on them for not seeing it.

E ME:  What’s your sign, man?