Bob Fosse on the set of LennyApologies dearest readers about the slow rollout of various columns this month. April is such a weird month, isn't it? What can you do. So you recently asked a bunch of questions and here's 11 answers! I hope you'll speak out on these same topics in the comments to make this more conversational. I do actually love to hear your opinions, too! xoxo
EDWARD: Have you ever wanted to make a movie?
NATHANIEL: The short answer is "no". The medium answer is I think it might be fun to work on one once, to have the experience (the areas that most interest me in terms of my own potential skills are casting and editing). But my basic feeling is that I love movies too much to commit to one only for years on end as so many filmmakers seem to have to do. The long answer is that I have fantasized about it but usually only in the context of becoming a great director of modern movie musicals since Hollywood so desperately needs someone who is inspired by / committed to that genre specifically. We need a new Fosse/Minnelli/Berkeley/Donen roughly a billion times more than we need a new Scorsese/Spielberg/Tarantino/Malick/Kubrick/Whomever. There are always people trying to be that latter group of guys!
MARK: If you could bring back any movie star deceased back in a Peter Cushing Rogue One style cameo who would you choose.
NATHANIEL: I would choose not to do this at all. I think when an actor dies they shouldn't be conjured up with visual effects artistry. I read interviews where they stressed 'we didn't do anything that would have upset Peter Cushing' but let's be honest: he's dead and there's no way they could possibly know this! That's just them rationalizing their neato visual tricks. To me it feels weirdly like plagiarism since the actor in question has no control over the performance that is using their image / voice. We should just celebrate whatever work great actors left us before they passed on!
CARLOS: I know Almodóvar is your favorite living director, so I'm curious to hear what are some of your favorite parts of his filmography. Let's say, in Oscar fashion, favorite movie, script, lead and supporting actor/actress performances?
We will be doing a week long Pedro party (May 9th-15th). I'll answer this question quickly but I'd prefer to do it less quickly with five nominees for each category, ha! Anyway short answers (since I'd want to see everything again to draw up a "five nominee by category list") that are subject to change go like so...
Film: Law of Desire
Direction: Talk to Her
Screenplay: All About My Mother
Performance, Ensemble: Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
Lead Performance, Female: Penelope Cruz, Volver
Lead Performance, Male: Gael García Bernal, Bad Education
I'd have to think too hard on Supporting Performances as his movies have such crazy rich ensembles but I love Carmen Maura in absolutely everything (though she's often a lead).
KAREN: Would you ever consider covering an old Cannes festival in May as the next one begins?
I've actually considered this several times. It would be beyond interesting given the wide swath of international cinema involved each time. But every time I think 'this May we'll do [insert old year here] I discover that too many of the films from that year are impossible to find. It's quite frustrating! It's sometimes even hard to find Oscar nominees from any given year so I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that it's infinitely harder to find random 20ish Cannes competition titles from all over the world.
ROONEY: Jennifer Lawrence -- After her underperforming Joy and Passengers, what's your prognosis? Will she remain dominant or is her time at the top already slowly passing?
Contrary to popular consensus I don't actually think Joy and Passengers underperformed. I mean obviously they did in terms of studio expectations. But I'd argue that given what they were, qualitatively and story-wise, they did well. In fact, I think Joy would have outright flopped without her in the leading role. I actually think it's a good movie (*dodges your tomatoes*) but it's an odd one without any kind of traditional audience hook (beyond, 'hey, it's the new Jennifer Lawrence movie!')
Here's a conundrum, though: I think Passengers would absolutely have been a better movie with someone else in her role (her laziest performance as there's just nothing in the performance selling the actual character or her journalism that we're hearing about) but I also think she helped it eke out $100 million despite no one really loving it. So my answer is that she'll remain dominant. Generally speaking supernova actors like that have about a 5-10 year window before they're just regular ol' absurdly wealthy and fabulous stars again (1% problems!). We're technically at Year 5 with JLaw since she ascended to superstardom with The Hunger Games / Silver Linings Playbook (nearly a billion globally between them in a single year!) so I think there will be at a couple more major hits before she is just "one of" the main stars of her generation rather than the star. I sense that this question wants a "she's over!" answer. I regret to inform you then, Rooney, that my prediction is that she remains famous and popular her whole life even when she's no longer considered truly "bankable" ... like how Julia Roberts is now.
ANA: Are there going to be April Shower Episodes?
Not this year - the month got away -- but I'm hoping next year to do some in advance so that we can have them literally every day of the month which was always the intention that never happened! Please enjoy this picture of Jake Gyllenhaal in the shower as my apology!
JB: I just finished reading "Where'd You Go Bernadette," and the casting of Cate Blanchett is sooo perfect, that it's almost taken away some of the excitement around it, because it's so flawless and indesputable. I'm not entirely sure how to eloquently and correctly phrase what I'm getting at, but have you ever experienced that, where the casting of a role is just so on point, and the actor just nails every beat impeccably, that the obviousness of them in that role ultimately takes away some of the thrill of the performance?
I haven't experienced the second part of that equation because my only recollection of a casting decision where I was absolutely floored at how perfect it was was Michelle Pfeiffer in White Oleander. But I found the performance that arrived even more thrilling than my best dreams for it after hearing she'd been cast (I loved the book). I think it's one of her three best performances from her whole career and given my love for her you know that's saying something! Curiously, despite not reading a lot of books (he says with shame), I had also read The Deep End of the Ocean before Michelle Pfeiffer was cast and I had the opposite experience with that one. I thought she was wrong for the part when I heard the casting but that she would still manage to be great but I ended up feeling underwhelmed by the performance.
CHRIS: will there be Film Bitch nominees for acting in limited (cameo) roles or I did I miss them?
I have the rough draft half done. I am just super late.
TYLER: What are your overall thoughts on Chris Pine? Do you like him as an actor? Do you see an Oscar nomination in his future?
If he keeps up his stretching, then yes. "Pretty" men have always had a hard time being taken seriously as actors and he's just now entering the age where his looks will become less of an obstacle. I think it's just part of the headspace of the patriarchal society we live in that men are more valued once they are a bit "weathered". It's the same system of thought that leads people to think that men age gracefully while women just "lose their looks". It's annoying and absurdly sexist but it's how things work in mainstream culture (generally speaking of course as there are exceptions to all such arbitrary "rules").
Looks and aging aside, Pine is also growing as an actor. Into the Woods was a smart comic stretch. Then his dramatic moment at the Oscar (oh wait, that was real life... but still endearing!) followed by his best dramatic performance to date in Hell or High Water. The Oscar nomination might still be a decade away but if he keeps choosing good material, I do think it'll come.
IRVIN: Can Get Out and Logan get some Oscar attention?
Yes. As you'll see in the April Foolish Oscar predictions, I think Logan has a good shot as anything at a Makeup and Hair nomination (though that branch is notoriously impossible to understand) and I think Get Out, with the right campaign, could become a contender across the board.
Cathy Moriarty as "Nurse Nan" in SOAPDISHJAMES: How badly do we need to re-assess trans portrayals in early 90s cinema? There's everything from Ace Ventura to The Crying Game. Also Soapdish, Silence of the Lambs, and all the drag movies because heaven help us most didn't know the difference between drag queens and transgender people then.
This will be an unpopular opinion but I'm not actually sure we need to reassess the past continually in light of current feelings. Perhaps it depends on what you mean by reassess. I think this is one of the dangers of Social Justice Warrior mentality, though that's awkard to say being very pro Social Justice. The thing is that when people defaut to outrage and judgment the result is that instead of opening the world's minds to new ways of thinking about complicated issues that a lot of people don't understand (even within the LGBT community) we end up shutting down thoughtful discussion, and honest group therapy opportunities about supporting each other in the best ways possible. One size does not always fit all, especially when you add in the passage of time. Context is very important and context changes.
I recently saw the new documentary The Death and Life of Marsha P Johnson about the famous Stonewall activist. The archival footage was quite amazing but it was interesting, watching it in 2017 after all these years of trans rights discussions and preferred pronoun popularity and the sudden banishing of the term "tranny", that both Marsha and her friend Sylvia Rivera, referred to themselves interchangeably throughout all the old footage as interviews as "transvestites," "drag queens" and "women" while discussing their activism for their rights and the rights of their sisters. Sometimes within the archival footage they were wearing men's clothes and sometimes women's clothes! They were militant about deserving their rights but they didn't seem militant at all about what words they used and what words other people used (Marsha P Johnson's family, who are interviewed in the documentary, don't seem to have decided whether to say "he" or "she" still, years after her death)
I found it fascinating but it also made me sad. I realized that a lot of people today who think of themselves as progressive will be eager to condemn these two women featured in the documentary because of the way they discuss the issues. And these are two pioneers who created a safe house for homeless trans women back in the 1970s for f***'s sake and who actually jump-started the entire LGBT movement. They basically gave us the foundation from which we are now able to get angry about things like insensitivity to the trans experience! It's a funny sort of paradox, isn't it?
Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson of 70s activism fame.
That's it for this week's 'Ask Nathaniel' responses. I'd love to hear your takes on Jennifer Lawrence's current popularity (secure or wobbly?), reviving dead actors via CGI, and what is the proper way to view old movies given our modern eyes?