The Hollywood Reporter: Risky Business

Stay off Canal Street...or get hit by a Carr

By Steven Zeitchik

In the 1980's the Green Bay Packers would play several games a year a few hours south, in Milwaukee. We're not sure why this comes to mind, except that it's been a few days since we caught up with the Tribeca Film Festival, which this year is being played in the East Village. So a rundown is in order:

* You know how when a movie is bad you compliment the cinematography?  David Carr pretty much does the same in a partial drive-by -- call it a walk-by --on the fest that Jane built, making sure to say it has " enormous size, a catholic range of film interests and a backdrop in a world-class city" before going on to say what's been on a lot of people's minds and lips about identity, buyers and (movie) buzz. Even if it's been said before, Carr still does a decent job of throwing in a defense or two before sloshing through the problems. Plus, there's a bonus knock on Park City public transportation.

*There still are no big sales at the fest -- we don't count IFC's purchase today of "Fermat's Room," which was one of those "has bought a movie that screened at a fest" deals -- but we wouldn't be surprised if it happens soon, and with a fiction film, no less. Which brings us to...

*...Two shameless plugs for people we know who have Tribeca movies we like. Steven Kaplan is a relative,  but he's also the star of the consistently well-reviewed "Bart Got a Room," which we'd say is the breakout of the fest even if we hadn't shared many a Thanksgiving table with the star. It's sweet, funny, human, plays exactly within its ambitions and can be a nice little addition for a distributor who will care for and feed it. (Okay, now we're sounding like we're describing a puppy. You know what we mean.) And director Brian Hecker is destined for some good gigs, though your guess is as good as ours whether he takes the Tamara Jenkins road and puts ten years and thousands of pages between him and his next project, or opts for the quick studio (bet you never thought you'd see those words together) gig. Either way, expect a "Bart" sale pretty soon.

* The other plug: Dana O'Keefe's "The New Yorkist," apart from offering the opportunity to call the Cinetic Media exec names like "The Duluthist," is one of the funniest, hippest movies you'll ever see about an overreaching intellectual striver/poseur contemplating Central European wars and the gamut of human experience from his apartment while insistent classical music plays loudly over his wordless thoughts. This is a good thing. A very good thing.

* "Tennessee" is a pretentious, needlessly moody movie that got made after someone watched a few too many pay-TV airings of "Sling Blade." Still, gratuitous singing scene aside, Mariah Carey is actually not half-bad.

*There was a big screening in Tribeca this week -- only it wasn't part of the Tribeca Film Festival. It was the Cinema Society event for "Iron Man," and while some of the people -- particularly visting L.A. execs -- tippling with Robert Downey Jr., Jon Favreau and Terence Howard all talked about the Tribeca Film Festival, the casually star-studded and buzz-generating event was so good it pointed up just how much Tribeca needs, but doesn't have, events of this sort. Sure, it was a little exclusive and would eliminate the more democratic crowds of a Tribeca fete, but the scores of fans lined up outside the Odeon didn't seem to mind. Of course if this weekend's closing film "Speed Racer" can light things up at the box-office, it could spell the best opening/closing one-two punch the festival has had in a long time. And with the news that "What Just Happened" will wind things down on the Riviera, Tribeca can now legitimately say its closing night film was better-reviewed than Cannes'.

Outfitted as Iron Man, in non-ideological colors

By Steven Zeitchik

There will be much written about "Iron Man" -- the box-office potential, Downey Jr.'s ironic take on the role, the fact that Jeff Bridges may be the first superhero villain to resemble Rob Reiner -- but  what struck us after seeing it tonight is the politics of it all, or, more accurately, the apolitics of it all.

In an otherwise sophisticated and intelligent film -- the script cleverly does away with the tired superhero conceit that those closest to him don't know his dual identity; Downey Jr'.s Tony Stark even makes a meta quip about it -- politics are the subject that dare not speak its name. Clearly Jon Favreau and Marvel didn't want to go the "V for Vendetta" route, with its dystopia that actively plays on 21st century fears, or the way of "The Kingdom," an action pic with clear ideological battle lines. But even by the standards of the tentpole film, "Iron Man" works hard to remove political meaning, despite the fact that the origin myth (and film's critical first scenes) take place in an overseas U.S. war, and the fact that the whole reason Stark creates the Iron Man suit in the first place is to further a pacifist, weapons-free agenda.

Stan Lee's comic book was first set during Vietnam and featured a strong anti-Communist message; though he later scaled it back, Iron Man was clearly a hero forged by ideological flames. In the new film, the war part stays, updated here to Afghanistan (what, you thought they'd make it Iraq?), and for a minute one wonders if politics might become backdrop, or even more.

Then the feeling fades. Stark is captured in a desert after shots are fired at his army jeep, but the antagonist turns out to be a generic warlord/fanatic (even the attack winds up being aimed at him and isn't the crossfire of a war zone, as you might expect in, well, a war zone). The film in any event later disposes of any negative association by having Iron Man save a small village from the menace of the warlord, whose motive, if it's religious or political, is never expressed. The rescue, meant to show Starks' sudden burst of conscience, could  just as easily have happened with drug dealers or the Mafia.

Even the U.S. military -- oh U.S. military, reliable opponent numero uno of the outlaw superhero -- appears mostly benign. At worst the army is innocently identifying flying foreign objects that happen to be "Iron Man." Mostly it's just helping him out. (Stark even gives a mini-speech saluting the soldiers who died in the jeep attack, which for a movie with a pacifist theme seems a little strange, but that's another matter). Even a shadowy government branch called S.H.I.E.L.D pitches in to help Stark. The main villain isn't an ideological figure either -- he's an inside man in Stark's company who could be the bad guy from any corporate thriller.

We know, we know. This is a four-quadrant superhero movie, trying to hit not just the full spectrum in this country but many different audiences abroad. Still, for a movie set in, and whose character is shaped by, conflict overseas -- and for source material that embraced geopolitics -- it's a striking absence. Heck, even "Rambo" had a political point-of-view. It's also a deft absence -- "Iron Man" may be the first film whose desert-battlefield setting, obscure languages, guerilla warfare and high-tech weapons make it feels utterly contemporary, and yet which contains not so much as a single stray mark of ideology. In other words, it may be the first film to find its way out of Hollywood's recent dilemma: how to make a film rooted in the modern geopolitical world that doesn't conjure up specific Iraq impressions or divide its audience, and in so doing risk box office.

Of course there's plenty of room for the script to turn political in the sequel. And there could be room for Favreau to explore it. We caught up with the director after the premiere and he was notably open to the idea. "A sequel will depend on how the movie does commercially," he said. "But I would do number two in a heartbeat." And once there's a few hundred million under the belt, hearts sometimes beat a little differently.

Babies, mamas, men and women

By Steven Zeitchik

Regular readers of this blog know there's nothing we enjoy more -- besides for random references to sports teams, that is (puzzling Jets draft, no?) -- than parsing weekend box office for trends. So what can this weekend's tally teach us? Well, "Baby Mama," a pregnancy comedy starring two women but with enough raunch gags to keep ye local frat house amused and quote-happy earned more in its opening weekend than last week's opener, "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," a male comedy in which (by writer Jason Segel's admission) the men get all vulnerable and teary and act like, well, women.

Michael McCullers' Tina Fey/Amy Poehler-starrer earned about half a million more, or 4% ($18.3 to $17.7m) than Judd Apatow's and Nick Stoller's pretext for writing really academic pieces about genitalia -- we mean poignant rom-com -- despite opening on fewer screens.

That means that by the new Hollywood rules, if you're making a comedy of love and raunch, you're better off aiming at women and sneaking in something for the men than the other way around.

Strictly speaking, this shouldn't surprise us given the demographers who are always telling us about female purchasing power. But since each of these movies camouflages its humor for one audience by aiming it at another, there's another lesson: Women don't mind seeing women act like men, but men don't want to see men act like women, at least not to the same extent.

Some gender-studies students are going to have a field day with this one.

Big wheels keep on turning

By Steven Zeitchik

Could "Trucker" be the first big feature deal to come out of Tribeca in years? Sure, James Mottern's drama, about a hard-bitten truck driver reconnecting with her pre-adolescent son after her ex falls ill, has so much minimalism, moodiness and blue-collar atmosphere it makes a Ray Carver story look like a chocolate milkshake (though with Michelle Monaghan at the center, it also has the most attractive truck driver you'll ever see; we'll never look at a CB radio the same way again).

But the film's premiere at New York's Village East Cinema -- for our money, home to the coolest old theater in Gotham -- drew a stable of acquisition execs Thursday evening. Buyers from Par Vantage, Sony Classics, Miramax, Searchlight -- and, most juicily of all, Harvey Weinstein, who rarely sits for festival screenings but turned out for this one for at least an hour -- all showed up to view the Plum Pictures title just a little while after Madonna's Malawi advocacy piece "I Am Because We Are" unspooled for distributors down in actual Tribeca.

With many heads of companies at home in either New York or Los Angeles, an overnight sale on "Trucker" is unlikely. But six figures and a respectable theatrical run -- something which hasn't been all that common at Tribeca over the last few years -- may not be too farfetched for the Cinetic-repped pic being handled by 42 West.

If you're thinking those elements makes the movie seem like a Sundance pic, you should. The movie actually was on a shortlist to play there this year until it became clear it wasn't ready. But Plum, which after last year's run with "Grace is Gone" and "Dedication" had a less auspicious Sundance this year with Craig Morgan's "Birds of America" and the Alan Alda-Matthew Broderick collaboration "Diminished Capacity," may have figured out a nifty little secret: Instead of premiering a movie into the maw of Park City because it feels like it belongs there, open the same movie in a smaller festival. That will make a tough-to-sell indie drama seem bigger and less difficult, and it could find buyers in a mood to spend money instead of to say no.

And, oh yes, do it after a really earnest screening of a documentary about an AIDS pandemic in Africa. That might help too. It could make a drama seem...not quite as bleak.

Who's your baby mama

By Steven Zeitchik

God bless the Tribeca Film Festival. Or someone should. Where else can you see Jeff Zucker, a slew of gossip columnists, a host of "SNL" alumnae like Steve Martin, Jimmy Fallon and Chevy Chase, a battalion of Endeavor agents, and, just to keep it indie real, Killer Films' Christine Vachon, muttering to her guest about "how bad" that prescreening commercial from the New York tourism board was.

Nowhere, apparently, but for the surreal precincts of the Ziegfeld on Tribeca night, which in this particular year topped off the Jane Rosenthal press conference/opening remarks (more opening-night films over the last seven years for Rosenthal-De Niro go-to studio Universal than not, she noted) with a screening of "Baby Mama," the movie that seeks to add an important contribution to the criminally underserved genre of the concept pregnancy comedy.

In case you were wondering, Bobby wasn't at either press conference or opening-night festivities, reluctant, as he was, to face the post-CAA heat -- we mean shooting "Righteous Kill" really, really far away, in Connecticut, a full hour up I-95 (Patrick Goldstein -- not a fan) -- so the crowd was feted not with the sobriety of "United 93" of two years ago or last year's goofy earnestness of Al Gore and John Bon Jovi. instead, after the film said group went directly to MOMA, in what what we're willing to gamble is the venerable institution's first-ever time tricked out in giant baby blocks and plush teddy bears.

As for "Mama," it's better than the buzz has it. Yet again, Universal has another adult-themed comedy aimed at the kid in the adult, or the other way around. Writer-director McCullers (behind a few of the "Austin Powers" sequels) more or less pulls it off -- Amy Poehler gets to ham it up in her preeningly blue-collar comedy self, Steve Martin steal the show as a New Ager (even if he was poaching more than a little from Tim Robbins' crunchy pretentiousness in "High Fidelity") and that foul-mouther wiseacre from "40-Year-Old Virgin" offer his trademark tough love while engaging in offhanded weirdness like fixing a wooden owl (yes yes, we know he's Romany Malco), even if it all does dissolve in a puddle of goo at the end.

Nowhere else could you see a comedienne try on the fake-pregnancy apparatus known as a '"he-tus" and get huge laughs from a lot of people in suits. Nowhere but Tribeca, that is.

French flirtations

Thierry Fremaux, you sneaky devil. We've had too busy a day running around a festival in this country to fully process the news of a big festival soon happening in another one. But obviously it was a big morning for Cannes, which announced its competition and several other lineups Wednesday morning. As THR Paris correspondent Rebecca Lefler reports, movies that people thought wouldn't be there --like Eastwood's "Changeling" and Soderbergh's twin Che pics --will sneak in under the wire.

On the other hand, noticeably absent are a handful of movies that, ahem, certain festwatchers projected could make it, including Fernando Meirelles' "Blindness," Guillermo Ariaga's "The Burning Plain" and Michael Winterbottom's "Genova." The middle one isn't ready, but 2929 and Ariaga could bring it to Venice, we're hearing. The first one keeps with the low Miramax profile at the fest (no "Brideshead Revisited" either). The last one we're still poking around on.

But though the feeling is of a thin field on U.S. and U.K. productions, international and multi-national selections -- with Wim Wenders, Walter Salles, Nuri Bilge Ceylan and the Dardenne Brothers premiering films -- feel more robust. And there's out-of-competition slots to the likes of Spielberg and Woody Allen. And the directors fortnight. So it may not be such a U.S.-light festival after all. And Thierry, you thought you could fool us.

Fey, as in quaintly unconventional

And speaking of Tribeca, and opening nights, and baby mamas (weren't we? oops, maybe that was a different conversation), we admit to being amused by this Videogum piece about "Baby Mama" and "Tina Fey-tigue," which is, well, exactly what it sounds like.

Brought to our attention by Defamer in an item that brilliantly parses the movie's spots, Videogum coins a great cognate. Oh, and the analysis is pretty good too.

Bobby, Jane and the seven-year itch

By Steven Zeitchik

In this, its seventh year, the Tribeca Film Festival is trying again to make this the year of the breakout. It's a noble attempt, one made nobler by the hiring of Gena Terranova, nee of the Weinstein Co., to streamline the slate and filter for quality/commerciality (well, the film-festival version of commerciality, at least). After all, as an exec involved in "Transamerica" a few years back, she's connected to the festival's only bona fide boxoffice hit, and that expertise/karma should rub off).

Along with indie-beat stalwart Gregg Goldstein, we run down some of the more promising titles in this year's line-up -- and with genre pictures like "From Within," dramatic comedies like "Bart Got a Room" (full disclosure: it stars our cousin -- no, not William H. Macy with a fro, the other guy) and thrillers like "The Caller," there is promise to spare.

Of course for all the changes the fest made to both the slate and the way movies are presented and screened, Tribeca still faces some of the issues it faces every year: buyers can be thin on the ground, movies can feel small and money can be scarce ahead of Cannes.

Plus this year there's the added concern with even markets at higher-profile fests have been rocky. John Sloss says it all when he notes that "The specialty market is in flux." When a bigtime seller like Sloss is saying that, you know there are obstacles.

The right -- or wrong -- side of the ledger

By Borys Kit

Fan-fiction films featuring characters from the likes of "Star Wars" or "Harry Potter" have been booming of late.

But this one featuring Batman and the Joker -- a spin on the new movie and some, uh, more current events -- is either hilarious or just ridiculously over-the-line, according to the viewers who've chimed in. Either way, we're sure it has Warners lawyers huddling up as we type. We'd say more but we just report the information, we don't comment on it (on something as sensitive as this, anyway). You can view the video here.

The strife before our eyes

By Steven Zeitchik

Vadim Perelman's "House of Sand and Fog" was one of the most artful, if at times self-conscious, depictions of loss and tragedy to come out of a major studio in a long time. But it looks like a Monty Python skit compared to the director's new effort, "The Life Before Her Eyes," a suburban-family drama, parallel-universe mystery, class allegory, sexual coming-of-age tale and school-shooting tragedy.

You know, that genre.

The movie, which opens next week, centers on a high-school student (Evan Rachel Wood, excellent in her well-honed modes of playfulness and precociousness), who survived a school shooting but watched her friend get killed in front of her. Wood then grows up to be, well, Uma Thurman, wracked with guilt over surviving the Columbine-esque massacre but living a perfect little suburban life.

Or does she?

The central mystery is whether Wood's character actually survives and is living the Thurman sections, or if she's inventing the whole thing in her head the seconds before the shooting. The movie melds ambitions with an almost reckless insistence: an auteurish vision (lots of stylized shots with spinning cameras aimed at the sky and close-up water lapping at the lens), an indie drama's sense of loss and contemplation and the sci-fi-ish conceit in which half the movie may or may not be taking place. Not since "The Lake House" has such an extravagant Twilight Zone hook been married to such a familiar genre. (As a movie that was first called "In Bloom," it may also may be the first example of a film that reverted to the title of its source material upon release, and as such the first film we can think of that gives out the big reveal in its name).

But "Life" is more than just a symbol of a kind of stylized filmmaking that we don't see as much as we used to; it's representative of the cold climate for indie drama, even the more ambitious kind. The 2929 production failed to land a satisfactory deal when it played Toronto last year and so is now going in-house through Magnolia, a perfectly good home for it -- assuming Wagner et al. didn't pay a very un-Magnolia price to make it.

Perelman's career is in a trickier place. He's the kind of guy who would've flourished in the indie drama-happy '90's. Now he's caught between the prestige world and the indie one, and though he's decidely more capable than your typical Sundance director -- check out this insightful interview with him on Box Office Mojo -- his movie still feel a little too distant and not quite grand enough for the current Oscar zeitgeist. (His next project is an adaptation of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." You see what we mean.)

Perelman showed some self-awareness when he said at the premiere of his new pic earlier in the week that "it's a difficult film to get made and get out there and possibly even to watch." For the sake of a maturing director with no small amount of promise, let's hope America doesn't agree.

Pioneering spirits

By Carl DiOrio

The Pioneer of the Year dinner of the Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation is always one of the most well-supported charitable events in Hollywood. But it's not necessarily one of the most ripsnorting soirees in town.

That could change after Wednesday night's affair. In addition to the usual throngs of distribution execs from all the major studios, the event saw actor and comedian Kevin Pollack entertaining guests during dinner with impersonations of Jack Nicholson, Peter Falk and Alan Arkin.

Regal Entertainment chief Mike Campbell, long known for his charitable activities personally and corporately, was presented the annual Pioneer award by Tom Cruise, with the A-lister’s presentation to the exhibition topper preceded by an energetic set by former Creedance Clearwater Revival frontman John Fogerty.

Cruise seemed to wrap himself in the businesslike mantle of his current role in the United Artists exec team, offering warm if understated congratulatory remarks. There was certainly no jumping on couches, anyway.

Campbell, for his part, appeared most impressed by the mere presence of his boss at the event. "I want to thank Phil Anschutz for coming tonight, though he had to leave early,” Campbell said. "He even let them take a picture -- after he found out it was a charitable event."

Cannes-Watch: 'What Just Happened' will happen on the Croisette

One of the big Sundance disappointments will get a do-over of sorts at Cannes, where we're hearing "What Just Happened?" will make an appearance. Barry Levinson's tale of a producer's unraveling life was a potential blockbuster sale in Park City, then it wasn't, and then things just went quiet. Cinetic and CAA were repping the film at Sundance, at one point asking for high seven figures. But in a lukewarm sales climate, buyers didn't go for it.

The movie has its laughs but also has its problems -- its Hollywood satire doesn't bite sharply enough, and its non-biz sections don't carry the movie far enough to make it work as a drama.

But can the Art Linson-penned movie get more buzz on the beaches of the Riviera than than it did in the mountains of Utah?

It will be an interesting play for producer 2929, which had the big Cannes sale of last year with "We Own the Night" but has had less success with buyers at Sundance. The news also comes at a transitional time for Robert De Niro, who of course just left CAA.

Either way, the movie will pose an oddly self-referential viewing experience since its final scenes actually take place in Cannes. That's where the movie-within-a-movie that De Niro produced screens and where a bewildered De Niro poses the title question after a spell of bad fortune. We'll see if the film's reps are asking the same question once all is said and done.

UPDATE: Not only will the film be at Cannes, it will be closing the festival. That means it could play to smaller audiences, as more wanderlusting festgoers might have already flown the coop. But it also will give the film a showcase spot and help highlight it for the international distributors who are no doubt at the center of its do-over strategy. In any event, it's probably the first time a movie partly set on the opening-night of a festival will play its closing night.

Meryl, Meryl, Meryl, it's a Streep man's world

By Steven Zeitchik

First things first from the Meryl Streep gala (the best moment captured brilliantly here by S.T. VanAirsdale at Defamer) at Lincoln Center Monday night: The new "Mama Mia" drew some seriously mixed reactions.

Maybe it's just the footage that organizers sneak-peeked -- Streep belting out a 70's kitsch lyric as she spins on the seaside mountaintop of a Greek island, interposed with long shots of the scenic coast and tight shots of a wordless, fidgety Pierce Brosnan -- but what comes off as good camp in the live show translates here as the unintentional, Rocky Horror kind. A few in the audience started tittering until they realized it was supposed to play straight.

Afterward, some praised Streep's singing, but Universal and director Phyllida Lloyd, the British opera director making her feature debut, may be turning skyward in the hope of a box-office recitative that's more weighty than light comedy.

But enough about studio adaptations of decade-old theater adaptations of thirty-year-old Swedish pop ditties like "Wish I was dum dum diddle, your darling fiddle." The "Mamma Mia" clip reminded once again -- not that we, or you, needed it -- of just how much range Streep has, and how much of it comes unexpectedly from her voice. Whether she's singing for the pre-War working-class in "Ironweed," speaking in the sing-song condescension of Miranda Priestley in "The Devil Wears Prada" or scratching out a perfectly loopy Minnesota accent in "The Prairie Home Companion," Streep can adjust the vocal nuance so well everything else just seems to follow.

Then she came out and proved the point, projecting a kind of Broadway presence that managed to hold the attention of the thousands in Avery Fisher Hall like she was giving a dining-room toast. "I was really dreading this, for so many reasons. The dress. The speech. Seating the relatives with the stars." Comic pause. "So many minefields."

Lately, Streep has played either nurturing and conscience-stricken ("Prime," "Lions for Lambs") or commandeering and bluff ("Manchurian Candidate," "Prada"). As we sat there inhaling all that talent, we wondered if she might, in an upcoming stint as Julia Child, bring back some of comedy and flair she showed in her previous roles. Or maybe just play a rabbi.

And then on cue, she dismissed our fears like Miranda Priestley dismisses assistants. "The famous people will get gifts from me tomorrow," she told the audience. "I'm just giving you...the nod."