Saturday, June 30, 2012

Public Speaking, a conversation with Fran Lebowitz (2010)



Fran Lebowitz is a smart woman. She is known for being judgmental, witty, and for not producing too much writing. The two books that she did produce over thirty years ago are still in print. She refers to her writer's block as "writer's blockade." But her mouth makes up for what her pen fails to produce. It moves at full speed, and speaks with great feeling about among other things how an important, discerning audience for sophisticated culture was lost with the AIDS epidemic.

Martin Scorsese directed this film for HBO. He used Nino Rota music familiar to me from Fellini movies which provides a gentle comic background. Also to be heard is a bit of soundtrack from his own movie, Taxi Driver, when Lebowitz is seen driving her oversized car, the same model as the old yellow cabs, through Manhattan. Sometimes you can see Scorsese shaking with laughter as Lebowitz answers questions posed by a man sitting across from her in a restaurant, but who is never identified.

Especially telling are two clips from 1960s era William F. Buckley's debates, one with James Baldwin, the other with Gore Vidal, which display Buckley's vicious prejudices. Lebowitz never comments on them, though she does describe her first seduction into the intellectual life as watching James Baldwin talk, but the theme of homophobia and its damage run throughout the film. She clearly not only relates, she identifies as a person whose outsider status made her who she is, a woman worth listening to.

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Nora Ephron
















Nora Ephron has died.  This took me by surprise.  Last summer,the film club I advise had been trying to get her to come to our school and give an assembly.  It seemed only right at an all girls school to  have a woman director of stature come in.  We had heard nothing back from her all last summer.  We heard nothing during the fall during our follow up requests.  Finally we got someone else to come, a male filmmaker who was known for his action movies, a screenwriter and director whose new project was a heist film involving young bicycle messengers in Manhattan. It stars David Gordon Levitt.

Just as we were confirming that David Koepp, director of Premium Rush, could come, we heard back from Ephron.  It was November, around the time of Thanksgiving.  She said, was the date still open.  Or how about the club just come over to her house, which we did.

During the course of our  conversation, we learned that to write screenplays for movies, first you should learn something about life, and journalism is not a bad way to begin. She learned how to write a script  by typing out William Goldman's script for All the President's Men.  She and her then husband Carl Bernstein were trying to improve it because they were not quite happy with it.  Since she could type, she was delegated the role of creating the new typescript which entailed typing the old one.

Not a bad way to learn to write.

Ephron said that she knew someone who retyped all of Moby Dick he was so taken with it, and wanted to own the words of the great Melville.

So Ephron gave credit to William Goldman as the first screenwriter she learned from because she typed his screenplay.

She also said that her favorite movie was Casablanca.

When asked what type of cinematographer she preferred, she said that she had no use for cinematographers who use lots of helicopters to get the action shots.  She needed a cameraman who could make a middle aged woman not look like she needed a face lift.  The film club had coincidentally that same day attended the assembly with David Koepp who showed a preview of his new movie with David Gordon Levitt.  I think at least one helicopter was involved, and there were no middle aged women.

I love this clip of Ephron discussing the virtues of Meryl Streep's acting when Streep was being honored by the American Film Institute. Streep benefited greatly from Ephron's screenplays. So did countless others.



Wednesday, June 20, 2012

The Sky Is Pink, a short movie by Josh Fox

As we pack our bags to move to the upper Delaware River for several months, New York's Governor Cuomo is preparing to allow fracking in some distressed economic counties where there are deep seams of natural gas. I wish there were a cleaner way to satisfy our insatiable appetite for energy. Fracking transforms rural lands into industrial zones, and has been known to contaminate the drinking water of those who have signed leases with the companies engaged in the drilling.

Josh Fox has been fighting fracking with his films, most notably Gasland. Here is the latest.



THE SKY IS PINK from JFOX on Vimeo.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

I think that the reason this movie works so well is that the cast is pitch perfect. Maggie Smith is the least of them. Tom Wilkinson once again charms with his minimalist approach to acting. Judi Dench is radiant in her simple costumes and short white hair. Bill Nighy underplays as well. Imagine that we really could retire to a more joyful, spiritually rewarding place that serves delicious food. Wouldn't we all want to go there? AARP, please start working on this now. A discount residential hotel in a beautiful foreign country that sees the elderly as a business opportunity, not as unwanted castoffs.