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Week in Film
Week in Film
A Gramm of Porn
17 July 2008
Phil Gramm had been touted as Senator John McGain' top economic advisor until he let fly an unfortunate comment about America being a "nation of whiners" and in a "mental recession." To highlight Gramm's own positive economic outlook, Max Blumenthal at The Nation reports on some of the Senator's past financial adventures, among them, a short stint producing films. But not just any films. In 1973, Gramm's brother-in-law George Canton enticed him to cut a check for $15.000 to get the softcore sexploitation flick Truck Stop Women off the ground. Canton showed the Sentator footage of Playboy's Playmate of the Year for 1970, Claudia Jennings, to demonstrate the movie's earning potential. But, as Blumenthal reports, "because the film was oversold, however, Caton returned his brother-in-law's money, offering him an investment opportunity in an upcoming feature." Gramm then put another $15K into Beauty Queens, a follow-up by Truck Stop director Mark L. Lester, which unfortunately got shelved. But Gramm's investment was finally rolled into another venture, the low-budget satire of Nixon, White House Madness, which, according to Blumenthal, "featured the crazed president wandering around the White House in the nude." That movie's financial failure ended Gramm's film fun.
That's One Long Book, My Love
15 July 2008
Written by the late French novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet, director Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad is one of the iconic films of the French New Wave, an often obscure and elliptical movie that has continued to intrigue and entrance viewers since it was released in 1961. Each person who watches it will likely view Resnais' masterpiece in a slightly different way, however none have reacted quite as strongly or enthusiastically as Mark Leach. The Texan writer began Marienbad My Love in the 1980s, creating what is probably the only piece of Nouvelle Vague fan fiction on record. (And yes, film geeks, you do get extra points for spotting the reference to Resnais' other great film of the era, Hiroshima Mon Amour…) The book, available online as a download through Leach's site, is about a man stuck on a desert island who believes he must bring about the end of the world by directing a sci-fi remake of Marienbad. If that doesn't sound loopy enough, the book is a whopping 12.5 million words in length, as Leach's initial crack at the book only further inspired him. "When I released the first edition of Marienbad My Love, 2.5 million words seemed plenty long for a 21st century Apocalypse," the author admits. "But the ideas kept coming, and the story kept growing. Now I feel like I'm just getting warmed up." According to an article on the book, Leach's magnum opus also contains a "4,400,000-letter noun and a three million-word sentence."
Orangutan Survival, Any Which Way You Can
16 July 2008
It is safe to say that the cult movie Every Which Way But Loose – and its sequel Any Which Way You Can – would not hold such an important place in the hearts of movie lovers were it not for the presence of Clyde, Clint Eastwood's best friend and constant companion in the movie. Clyde was, of course, an orangutan, but there will not be many more of his kind appearing in Hollywood productions. Last week, Working Wildlife of Los Angeles, a company that provided the animals for work in film and television productions, took orangutans off their books for good. Wildlife conservationists felt that an incorrect image was being presented of the primates if they made regular appearances on the small and big screens when they are, in fact, an increasingly endangered species. Accordingly, six orangutans from Working Wildlife will be sent to a new home at the Great Ape Trust of Iowa research center in Des Moines; already there are 3-year-old Rocky and his mother, Katy, and they will be joined by a four more of their kind in the next few months. According to recent figures, there are only 62,000 orangutans left globally, all of which are under severe threat from clearance of their habitat by loggers and farmers in their native Indonesia and Malaysia.
Robert De Niro's Identity Crisis
18 July 2008
As fake identities go, Patricia Highsmith's most memorable creation, Tom Ripley, knew that the smart way to go was to impersonate a guy you've killed. In Moldova, however, they seemingly have different ideas on how things should done, though the events of last week may make them rethink their approach. During a roadside stop in the eastern Romanian town of Lasi, a Moldovian forger tried to get out of a spot check by claiming he was Robert De Niro. You know, the world famous, Oscar-winning actor who had previously managed to hide his deep love of incognito driving tours through Eastern Europe. However, the local constabulary were not convinced that this was the star of such hits as The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Flawless. "He was even dressed up like the Hollywood star with a designer suit and sunglasses — but he didn't fool officers," police explained to journalists. "We knew that Robert De Niro would not be driving alone around a remote part of the country. We guessed he was an imposter." The counterfeit star was arrested and later linked to a gang forging work documents for Moldovian workers wanting to move to the EU.
The Sound of Musicals
20 July 2008
As Mama Mia made moviegoers' musical day this weekend, talk is in the air of a return for two other great musicals of stage and screen. The New York Times reported that the now-over-50-year-old show stopper West Side Story is slated to return to Broadway in February, albeit with a noticeable difference. Arthur Laurents, who wrote the original book, is making his new production bilingual, letting the Puerto Rican Sharks and their ilk speak in their native tongue. While Leonard Bernstein's music and Jerome Robbins' choreography will go unchanged, much of the script and part of Stephen Sondheim's lyrics will be translated. For Laurents, many adaptations, including the film version, have sanitized the musical's hard-hitting gritty core: "You don't treat these kids as little darlings, but as what they are …They're all killers, Jets and Sharks." Of the Oscar-winning film, which stars Natalie Wood as the Latina Maria, Laurents decried to the Times ""Bogus accents, bogus dialect, bogus costumes. I think it's also terribly acted." Elsewhere Emma Thompson told Parade Magazine that "I've been hired to write a new screenplay for My Fair Lady, based on the foreword and afterword of Shaw's Pygmalion — different from the musical and not as sweet an ending."