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seph7 · 8 months

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Press Kit for Breakdown (1997), including production info excerpt.

Breakdown Press Kit Excerpt

The American Southwest is a land of vast, desolate spaces and rugged terrain. sometimes beautiful. but always harsh and unyielding. Its long, lonely highways stretch to the horizon and beyond. with a hundred miles and more from one tiny oasis of civilization to the next.

What happens if your car breaks down on one of the West's remote back roads. and you are stranded alone in the desert, under the merciless sun? "Breakdown." starring Kurt Russell. J.T. Walsh and Kathleen Quinlan is a taut, suspenseful action thriller that cleverly preys upon one's paranoia of being stranded miles from any vestige of civilization.

"Breakdown" is produced by Martha and Dino De Laurentis from a story by Jonathan Mostow. The Paramount Pictures presentation in association with Dino De Laurentiis and Spelling Films is directed by Jonathan Mostow from a screenplay by Jonathan Mostow and Sam Montgomery. The executive producers are Jonathan Fernandez and Harry Colomby. The film will be distributed by Spelling Films International outside the U.S. and Canada. Paramount Pictures is part of the entertainment operations of Viacom Inc.. which also owns a majority interest in Spelling Entertainment Group Inc.. Spelling Films' parent company.

When Jeff (Kurt Russell) sets off cross-country from Boston to San Diego with his wife Amy (Kathleen Quinlan), he thinks he is leaving his troubles behind and moving on towards fantastic new beginnings.

Then, while taking the 'scenic route' through the beautiful but vast, desolate spaces of the desert Southwest, their car breaks down. Jeff and Amy find themselves stranded on a seldom-traveled road, many miles from the nearest human habitation.

Fortunately, help appears at hand as an 18 wheeler semi truck comes into view on the horizon.

The driver is Red (J.T. Walsh), an over-the-road trucker. Immaculate and professional, he seems to harken back to a time when long-haul truckers were "knights of the road." He offers Jeff and Amy a ride to Belle's Diner, the nearest place along this lonely stretch of highway, where they can escape the hot sun and call for a tow truck.

After initial hesitation, Amy agrees to go with him, since it's obvious there might not be any other way to get help; she'll call the tow truck from the restaurant while Jeff waits with the car.

In the meantime, Jeff locates the problem - a loose wire - and fixes it. With the car back in working order, he drives on to Belle's Diner to catch up with Amy so they can continue on their way... but Amy isn't there. The diner isn't exactly a bustling place, yet the bartender and customers claim they never saw either Amy or Red. When Jeff continues to question them, he gets only cold stares and furtive glances - as though he were delusional. driven crazy by the heat and the long lonely highways. Jeff’s growing anxiety is only made worse by his gnawing suspicion that they aren't telling him the truth.

Getting back on the road, Jeff searches for Red's truck - but when he finds it, Red who just hours before so charmingly offered his assistance, denies ever having seen Jeff or his wife. The police are of no help. as they view Amy's disappearance skeptically They've seen many couples fight and split while making long distance car trips. Who's to say this is anv different?

With nowhere and no one to turn to. Jeff sets forth on his determined. increasingly desperate search for Amy - who has vanished utterly into the immense, sun baked emptiness of the West.

If only the car hadn't broken down in the middle of nowhere…

"Breakdown" takes an ordinary man into the vast open spaces where the law does not reach - - and into the dark spaces of the human soul.

According to producer Dino De Laurentis, "everybody can be in this situation. Thousands of people disappear in the United States every year and nobody knows where they go." To Martha De Laurentis, "this story has real characters put into a situation that could happen to anyone. You're traveling in a car and it breaks down in the middle of nowhere. You've tried to fix it yourself and that doesn't work, so what do you do?"

Writer-director Mostow recounts the genesis of his story: "When I wrote this script, I wanted to explore the universal feeling of unease that people get when they're out in the middle of no place. far from home. far from civilized society. far from a place where rules and cops protect you."

Mostow's partnership with the De Laurentis occurred when Dino De Laurentis, whose work includes more than 500 films in four decades, among them "The Bible." "War and Peace." "Serpico." "Three Days of the Condor." "King Kong," "Blue Velvet." "Conan The Barbarian." "The Valachi Papers," "Crimes of the Heart" and "Bound." saw the filmmakers first directorial effort. "I like to use my experience with a younger director." says De Laurents. "and when I saw Jon Mostow's first film, 'Flight of Black Angel, I wanted his next picture."

Another key decision according to De Laurents and Mostow was casting the part of Jeff Taylor. Says Dino De Laurentis: "Jeff is an odd hero to begin the picture since he is a normal human being who is not looking for trouble. He suddenly finds himself in a position where he must find the courage and strength to save his wife.

When the audience sees this picture. they will be able to see that they could be in a similar situation tomorrow if they're driving while on vacation." De Laurents and Mostow decided at once that they wanted Kurt Russell for the part. "Within a week we had an answer from Kurt," he says. "and we were making this picture."

Casting Kurt Russell as Jeff Taylor was pivotal in making this movie believable to audiences. Says Martha De Laurents. who has teamed with Dino De Laurentiis since the production of "Ragtime." "Kurt is every man's actor. He's vulnerable so that men can relate to him and he's handsome so that women like him. The emotion he brings to this character is perfect for this story about a situation that could happen to anybody.” Adds uniter-director Mostow. "Kurt can convey that emotion in a way that you care about."

Dino De Laurentis reputation is what brought mega-star Russell onto the production. According to Russell. "He is one of the few people in this town that -- just out of my own interest - when I'm an old man I'd like to say. I worked with Dino De Laurentiis. Dino has an ingrained passion for movie making that this town always, always, always desperately needs."

Russell, whose wide range of work includes "Silkwood," "Stargate,” "Tombstone” and John Carpenter's Escape From L.A.." explains why he liked the role. "The whole point of this movie is to make this a relatable concept for everyone. It's basically about the fear that something like this could happen, does happen when you're driving in the middle of nowhere. I liked the credibility of what the character does. The actions he takes are very believable. though strictly personal to him - the same as yours would be different from mine. By putting the audience in a situation they can relate to, hopefully they will see portions of themselves and be able to experience some of their worst fears and nightmares.

Kathleen Quinlan, nominated for an Oscar for her role in "Apollo 13," plays Amy Taylor. Says Quinlan, "Amy is intelligent and strong. She loves her husband, and knows that they are at a crossroads and that she must be decisive. When she leaves in Red's truck. she feels she's taken action to help them out of their situation."

Mostow elaborates on casting Quinlan: "I wanted everything in this movie to feel real and truthful. I wanted a real person that could be married to Kurt's character: not some damsel in distress. Kathleen has turned out to be fabulous."

J.T. Walsh, recently seen in Oliver Stone's "Nixon." plays Red, the seeming Good Samaritan trucker who offers the couple his assistance. According to Walsh: "Red is an ethically challenged, Good Samaritan who is presented with an opportunity. Driving a truck is a hard living and out in the wide open spaces of the barren Southwest. there's not too many people or policemen which makes it easier for him to operate on his own terms.”

Also featured in the cast are such notable actors as Jack Noseworthy as Billy.' M.C. Gainey as Earl and Ritch Brinkley as Al.' They represent many of the unsavory people one might run into at a roadside diner or small-town bar while on the road. and their hostile demeanors help feed the paranoia of being a stranger in a foreign land.

According to Mostow. They re victimizing people that are traveling long distances and they've been getting away with it."

Doug Milsome, B.S.C.. who has worked extensively with Stanley Kubrick and most recently with Michael Cimino on "Sun Chaser," served as the director of photography. Other key behind-the-scenes people include Victoria Paul ("Greedy") as production designer and Terry Dresbach ("Red Rock West") as costume designer.

Second unit director Jim Amert ("Congo." "Basic Instinct") coordinated the stunt sequences while Jeffrey Sudzin ("Bound") served as line producer. Film editing was performed by editors Derek Brechin (*Stargate") and Kevin Stitt ("Nick of Time").

J.T. WALSH (Red Barr) most recently appeared in "Sling Blade" for which he and the rest of the cast were nominated for a SAG award for "Outstanding Performance by the Cast of a Theatrical Motion Picture.

Walsh began his career off-Broadway. appearing in such productions as "Ice." “Half A Lifetime" and the Obie Award-winning " American Buffalo." He shot to fame with his memorable performance as one of the corrupt realtors in David Marter's "Glengarry Glen Ross." Other Broadway credits include **Macbeth." "Rose." "Richard III and "Last Licks."

Since moving to feature films, Walsh has worked with Sidney Lumet in “Power," Robert Towne in "Tequila Sunrise," David Mamet in "House of Games," Barry Levinson in "Tin Men," and "Good Morning, Vietnam," Ron Howard in "Backdraft," Rob Reiner in "A Few Good Men," Joel Schumacher in "The Client," Wolfgang Peterson in "Outbreak," and Oliver Stone in "Nixon." Some of Walsh's other feature credits include "The Grifters," "Red Rock West," "The Big Picture," "Narrow Margin," "Hoffa," "Blue Chips," "Miracle on 34th Street," "Outbreak," "Executive Decision," and "Nixon."

He currently stars as 'Frank Bach’, the ominous Navy Captain in the series "Dark Skies." (1997)

#j.t. walsh #jt walsh #underrated actors #jtwalsh #breakdown

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k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9 · 3 years

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Breakdown (1997)

Directed by Jonathan Mostow

#Breakdown (1997)#90's #1997 #kurt Russell #Jeffrey Taylor #Kathleen Quinlan #Amy Taylor #J.T. Walsh as Warren 'Red' Barr #M. C. Gainey as Earl #Jack Noseworthy as Billy #Ritch Brinkley as Al #Moira Harris as Arleen Barr #Rex Linn as Sheriff Boyd #Kim Robillard as Deputy Sheriff Len Carver #Vincent Berry as Deke Barr #Breakdown is a 1997 American thriller film #favorite movie

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ratemysheppard · 6 years

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59) Nether World

Title- Nether World

Year- 1997

Character- California

Synopsis- Two hit men bide their time waiting for their mark, in a tense and claustrophobic film noir.

Medium- I was lucky enough to get in touch with the director who was kind enough to give me a private link so that I could watch the film in order to review it - unfortunately, I’m not able to share that link publicly, sorry guys.

Entirety or episode?- Entirety

Warning: this review contains serious plot spoilers!

Overall verdict- I spent a long time trying to track this one down, and in the end I was lucky enough to get in touch with Anders Dalgaard, who not only wrote the screenplay but also directed and edited the film, and made it possible for me to watch the film. In my research I read that the production was completed, with a tiny production team and cast, in a limited set, on a micro-budget of only around £20,000. This makes what was achieved with this film - which was Dalgaard’s debut feature-length piece - all the more impressive to me.

I’ve read mixed reviews on this film: some accusing it of pop philosophy and naïve stylings, others comparing it to Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’. A clear parallel for me with Beckett is that Nether World is ambiguous, cyclical and often confusing but absolutely invites interpretation.

On my first watch through, I wasn’t entirely sure what was happening, but the whole thing looked beautiful to me. It’s full of gritty, black and white gumshoe-noir shots, and saturated, dreamlike flashbacks/flashforwards packed with intriguing symbolism reminiscent of Twin Peaks. The story and its imagery played on my mind until I watched it for a second time and started to unpick some of the themes, and unravel what I interpreted from the plot.

On one level, this is a thriller about two ‘Agents’ (assassins) from ‘the Company’ who are paired up to perform a hit together. At first, it seems like they have little in common. Old Timer (William Morgan Sheppard) is brash, cynical and jaded, whilst California (Mark Sheppard) is an idealistic young soldier, only in it for the money to support his pregnant wife. However, as time passes it becomes clear that they have a lot more in common than it first appears – literally: a shared past/future; a shared existence.

The majority of the action takes place in a literal nether-world – the liminal, chthonic space of an underground parking lot in the height of a stifling heatwave. This highlights the repeated themes of being trapped, suffocated; caught in a purgatorial loop.

The slow reveal of California starting to realise what’s going on is subtly and expertly written, and stunningly performed by both of the lead actors. The repetition of footage in certain scenes is used very effectively, enhancing the theme of mistakes endlessly repeated.

Upon watching the film a second time, I noticed so much foreshadowing and so many lovely little details. California pointing the gun first at Maria, then at himself, in the first flashback sequence is an eerie prediction of their fates. There’s a lot of that in Nether World – too much to explore in a brief review, but I kept noticing new details and deeper layers.

“I’m not like you,” California repeats to his jaded partner.

“There’s no escape from me,” could be a direct response from Old Timer to that claim: I’m still not entirely sure whether he directs that to the Photographer, or to California. As time passes (although, according to the clock, no time has passed at all: another unsettling anomaly of this situation, and a further comment on how things can’t help but repeat themselves) California’s behaviour becomes increasingly like Old Timer’s. We watch him become Old Timer before our eyes: first figuratively – with the smoking, drinking, the breakdown of his morals and marital fidelity - and then literally. As Old Timer says, “You’re not hunting me. I’m hunting me.” We realise that this has been a single, unreliable narrator all along, the story told from the fragmented point of view of a murderer driven mad by the mistake he replays over and over again in his mind. Finally, what was left of his younger, optimistic, self disappears completely and he is left with what he has turned into: the abusive father he was too late to kill; he has nothing left but to finish the job. The idea of ‘turning into our fathers’ is lent additional gravity by the fact that the two lead actors are father and son.

This feeling of going around in circles – literally and metaphorically: the repeated motif of spiralling stairs; the repeated patterns of disillusionment and violence – is a key theme of Nether World. The action both starts and concludes with the protagonist killing himself, neatly bookending the narrative.

The process of watching this film, of figuring out what was going on, and interpreting my own meanings from it, absolutely delighted me. I’m very grateful for having had the opportunity to watch it, and I hope that one day it’ll be available on public release for others to enjoy too.

Screen time- Lead role

Accent- American

Mark’s character- California is an example of what Mark Sheppard can do when given good material to work with. He’s a brilliant, nuanced character with a ton of backstory and depth and Mr S plays him phenomenally well. His interaction with Old Timer – (played with equal skill by his dad, William Morgan Sheppard) – is wonderful. His chemistry with Natalia Ivanova who plays California’s wife Maria (also brilliantly) is genuinely sweet and believable. This story is a true tragedy, as we get to see the long-term development of a character, the degeneration and demoralisation of a man who starts out idealistic and believing in justice. And Mr S makes you feel every single blow.

Highlight- Those beautiful, dreamy desert shots, all pastel colours and neo Western.

“I’ll get you another one.” “I wanted this one.” OOF. I feel ya, Maria.

THE GOLDFISH D:

The moment, at ‘Allentown’, when the penny first starts to drop for California.

“I’m not like you!” Way too sad and relatable.

“Now. Say something smart.” I dunno why, that just gave me chills. It was the delivery.

When California realises.

That final reveal/transition at the peephole.

That final desert shot with the veil.

Rewatch?- If this ever becomes available on DVD I will buy a copy and watch it many, many times over.

#Mark Sheppard #Mark Sheppard 1997 #Nether World #Anders Dalgaard #California #review #Honest Review #spoilers #RateMySheppard

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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Hulu New Releases: January 2021

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A new year means a new start. But in its list of new year releases for January 2021, Hulu is sending a message of…eh, we’ll get the year started in February. Not to be overly rude to the usually sturdy streaming service, but there’s not much going on for Hulu in 2021’s first month.

Perhaps the biggest release of note is something that already enjoyed a successful release for ITV in the U.K. The Sister is the lates thriller from Neil Cross (Luther) and it makes its U.S. debut on Hulu on Jan. 22. 2020 comedies Save Yourselves and Like a Boss both arrive on Jan. 1. Hulu original film The Ultimate Playlist of Noise premieres on Jan. 15 and TV series Everyone is Doing Great arrives on Jan. 13.

Thankfully Hulu’s library titles are a bit livelier this month. Jan. 1 sees the arrival of Blade Runner: The Final Cut, Boogie Nights, Face/Off, The Princess Bride, The Truman Show, and more. Then when the network TV season gets rolling, Hulu gets to be the streaming home to new seasons of shows like Prodigal Son, 9-1-1, and 9-1-1: Lone Star.

Ultimately, there will be plenty to watch on Hulu at the beginning of 2021. It will just be another month or so before the streamer comes through with some major original blockbusters.

Hulu New Releases – January 2021

January 1 Dick Clark’s Primetime New Year’s Rockin’ Eve With Ryan Seacrest: Special (ABC) Fire Force: Season 2, Episodes 1-12 (DUBBED) (Funimation) 1900 (1977) 1900 (Extended Cut) (1977) A Night at the Roxbury (1998) American Gigolo (1980) Arachnophobia (1990) The Arrival (1996) Austin Powers In Goldmember (2002) Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery (1997) Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999) Bad Company (2002) Blade Runner: The Final Cut (2007) Blood Diamond (2006) Bloody Sunday (2002) Blow (2001) Boogie Nights (1997) Breakdown (1997) Broken Arrow (1996) The Brothers McMullen (1995) Bully (2001) Changing Lanes (2002) Chaplin (1992) Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs (2009) Cloverfield (2008) Coneheads (1993) Constantine (2005) The Cooler (2003) The Core (2003) Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011) Cujo (1983) Dance Flick (2009) Date Night (2010) Dead Poets Society (1989) Dead Presidents (1995) The Dead Zone (1983) Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2009) Donnie Brasco (1997) The Duff (2015) Enemy at the Gates (2001) Escape from Alcatraz (1979) Eve’s Bayou (1997) Face/Off (1997) The Firm (1993) The Foot Fist Way (2008) Footloose (1984) Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974) Frozen (2010) The Gift (2000) Girl Most Likely (2013) Good Luck Chuck (2007) Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) The Haunting (1999) Hell or High water (2016) Hondo (1953) Hot Shots! (1991) How Do You Know (2010) In & Out (1997) Indecent Proposal (1993) Internal Affairs (1990) Kiss the Girls (1997) The Ladies Man (2000) Last of the Mohicans: Director’s Cut (1992) The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000) Like a Boss (2020) The Longest Yard (1974) Look Who’s Talking (1989) Look Who’s Talking Now (1993) Look Who’s Talking Too (1990) Lost In Space (1998) Love And Basketball (2000) Major League (1989) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) The Mexican (2001) More Than a Game (2008) Mousehunt (1997) My Best Friend’S Girl (2008) New In Town (2009) Night at the Museum (2006) Paycheck (2003) The Peacemaker (1997) Places in the Heart (1984) Poseidon (2006) Pride (2007) The Princess Bride (1987) Push (2009) The Quick and the Dead (1995) Regarding Henry (1991) The Relic (1997) The Rules Of Attraction (2002) Salt (2010) Save Yourselves (2020) Selena (1997) Shrek (2001) The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) Soul Plane (2004) Species (1995) Star Kid (1998) Star Trek Beyond (2016) Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) Star Trek: First Contact (1996) Starman (1984) Stephen King’s Graveyard Shift (1990) Super Dark Times (2017) The Three Musketeers (2011) The Truman Show (1998) Vampire in Brooklyn (1995) Virtuosity (1995) Walking Tall (1973) War (2007) Where Hope Grows (2015) Wonder Boys (2000) Young Adult (2011) January 4 Call Me Kat: Season 1 Finale (FOX) The Rookie: Season 3 Premiere (ABC) January 5 The Bachelor: Season 25 Premiere (ABC) The Wall: Season 4 Premiere (NBC) Boruto: Complete Season 1 (DUBBED) (Viz) January 6 Gordon Ramsay’s American Road Trip: Series Premiere (FOX) Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist: Season 2 Premiere (NBC) Mighty Oak (2020) January 7 Name That Tune: Series Premiere (FOX) Vanderpump Rules: Complete Season 8 (Bravo) Gretel & Hansel (2020) January 8 The Hustler: Series Premiere (ABC) The Chase: Series Premiere (ABC) Celebrity Wheel of Fortune: Series Premiere (ABC) Mr. Mayor: Series Premiere (NBC) A Certain Scientific Railgun Part 2: Complete Season 3 (DUBBED) (Funimation) Celebs Go Dating: Complete Seasons 6 – 8 (All3Media) Tattoo Fixers Extreme UK: Complete Seasons 5 & 6 (All3Media) January 10 One-Punch Man: Complete Season 2 (DUBBED) (Viz)

January 11 Lights Out (2016) The Rhythm Section (2020) January 12 A Little Late with Lilly Singh: Season 2 Premiere (NBC) January 13 Prodigal Son: Season 2 Premiere (FOX) The Resident: Season 4 Premiere (FOX) Everyone is Doing Great: Complete Season 1 (Endeavor Content) January 14 Call Your Mother: Series Premiere (ABC) Alone (2020) The Secrets We Keep (2020) January 15 Endlings: Complete Season 2 (Hulu Original) The Ultimate Playlist of Noise: Film Premiere (Hulu Original) January 17 Is It Wrong to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?: Complete Season 3 (SUBBED) (Infinite Frontiers) No Escape (2020) January 18 I Don’t Know How She Does It (2011) January 19 9-1-1: Season 4 Premiere (FOX) 9-1-1: Lone Star: Season 2 Premiere (FOX) January 20 90 Day Fiancé: Self-Quarantined: Complete Season 1 (TLC) A Very Brady Renovation: Complete Season 1 (HGTV) Car Kings: Complete Season 1 (Discovery) Cutthroat Kitchen: Complete Season 14 (Food Network) Gold Rush: Complete Season 10 (Discovery) House Hunters International: Complete Season 138 (HGTV) House Hunters: Complete Season 163 (HGTV) Property Brothers: Forever Home: Complete Season 1 (HGTV) Puppy Bowl: Complete Seasons 14 & 15 (Animal Planet) River Monsters: Complete Season 9 (Animal Planet) Rob Riggle: Global Investigator: Complete Season 1 (Discovery) Rock The Block: Complete Season 1 (HGTV) Save My Skin: Complete Season 1 (TLC) Torn from the Headlines: New York Post Reports: Complete Season 1 (ID) Who Killed Jeffrey Epstein?: Complete Season 1 (ID) Worst Bakers in America: Complete Season 2 (Food Network) Worst Cooks in America: Complete Season 17 (Food Network) January 22 Derek Delgaudio’s In & Of Itself: Film Special Premiere (Hulu Original) The Sister: Complete Season 1 (Hulu Original) Grown-ish: Season 3B Premiere (Freeform) Terra Willy (2020) January 27 Mixed-Ish: Season 2 Premiere (ABC) The Haves and Have Nots: Complete Season 7B (OWN) January 29 Jann: Complete Seasons 1 & 2 (Distribution 360)

Leaving Hulu – January 2021

January 3 The Waterboy (1998)

January 7 Scream 4 (2011)

January 24 Awaiting (2015) Janis: Little Blue Girl (2015) Le Ride (2016) Respectable: The Mary Millington Story (2016) Soufra (2017) The Ghoul (2015) The Heart of Nuba (2018)

January 29 School Dance (2014)

January 31 12 Rounds (2009) Arachnophobia (1990) Bad Company (2002) Beerfest (2006) Blow (2001) Blue City (1986) Breakdown (1997) Christmas In Compton (2012) Christmas In Vermont (2016) Click (2006) Cloverfield (2008) Constantine (2005) Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011) Dance Flick (2009) Dead Presidents (1995) Death At A Funeral (2010) Donnie Brasco (1997) I Heart Huckabees (2003) In & Out (1997) Indecent Proposal (1993) Lady in a Cage (1964) Look Who’s Talking (1989) Look Who’s Talking Now (1993) Look Who’s Talking Too (1990) Love Hurts (1990) Major League (1989) Maverick (1994) My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997) Next Day Air (2009) Once Upon A Time At Christmas (2017) Pride (2007) Shrink (2009) Spy Next Door (2010) Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) Star Trek: First Contact (1996) Sydney White (2007) The Blair Witch Project (1999) The Christmas Tale (2005) The Dog Who Saved Christmas (2009) The Eye (2008) The Fifth Element (1997) The Final Girls (2015) The Horse Whisperer (1998) The Ladies Man (2000) The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000) The Longest Yard (1974) The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring (2001) The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King (2003) The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers (2002) The Pirates! Band Of Misfits (2012) The Prestige (2006) The Skull (1965) W. (2008)

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back-and-totheleft · 4 years

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After the Fall

In Oliver Stone’s new film, World Trade Center, a rescue worker stands atop a pile of steaming rubble, planning his descent into the inferno below. “I need a medic up here,” he yells. “Anybody a medic?”

“I used to be a medic,” comes a voice from the darkness.

A tiny figure scrambles up the base of the hill like a large bug. As he passes into the light, we see that it’s Frank Whaley, an actor who got his start with appearances in Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July, The Doors and JFK.

“My license lapsed,” the figure says. “I had a few bad years. But I’m good.”

Such is the legacy of Stone — a towering figure in modern film who always seems to be wrangling his own personal demons — that it is almost impossible not to read a scene like that autobiographically. A three-time Oscar winner as both writer (Midnight Express) and director (Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July), Stone has spent much of the past dozen years surrounded by controversy or chaos: His satirical tabloid blitzkrieg Natural Born Killers caused novelist John Grisham to accuse him of engendering real-life murders. Nixon, his oddly sympathetic portrait of the ex-president, eluded liberals and conservatives alike. The jumpy, kinetic editing style he employed in the day-for-noir U Turn and the pro-football pageant Any Given Sunday inspired longtime Stone critic Elvis Mitchell to label the latter “the world’s first ADD epic.”

Then the first of two HBO documentaries (Comandante) on Fidel Castro was shelved for being too sympathetic, while a subsequent portrait of Yasser Arafat (Persona Non Grata) saw Stone’s crew fleeing Ramallah four hours before the Israeli army attacked the Palestinian leader’s compound. (A third film, expected to profile either Kim Jong-Il or Saddam Hussein, was canceled.) He has been arrested twice — in 1999 and 2005 — for DUI and possession of marijuana, respectively. During an appearance at HBO’s “Making Movies That Matter” panel at Lincoln Center in October 2001, he allegedly made inflammatory remarks regarding the September 11 attacks, earning him scorn and ridicule in The New Yorker and elsewhere. Most painfully, when Stone, in 2004, finally realized his 20-year obsession to make Alexander, a sweeping history of Alexander the Great filmed on three continents, the film failed to find a domestic audience.

Now comes World Trade Center, a delicate, contained and extremely powerful evocation of our 2001 national trauma, starring Nicolas Cage and Michael Peña as John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno, New York City Port Authority cops who were miraculously excavated from beneath the glowing rubble of Building No. 7. In an odd way, it brings Stone’s career full circle: His first student film, Last Year in Viet Nam, made at NYU in 1970 (for film professor Martin Scorsese), opens with a panorama of southern Manhattan and what would have been the Twin Towers, except that they weren’t completed until January 1972. But in another respect, World Trade Center may be Stone’s most subversive film yet — a rousing, populist, patriotic adventure story that kicks the legs out from under the right-wing criticism marshaled against him. It could prove the ultimate irony that the bête noire of American conservatives — the man who profiled right-wing death squads in Salvador, My Lai–like atrocities in Platoon, hostile takeovers in Wall Street, the anti-war movement in Born on the Fourth of July and, most notably, the fecund proliferation of Kennedy-assassination conspiracy theories in JFK — may find his most enthusiastic audience among the very partisans who have heretofore decried his lifetime of work. As no less a cultural observer than Mel Gibson said of Stone in the 1997 thriller Conspiracy Theory, “He’s a disinformation junkie for them. The fact that he’s still alive says it all. He probably should be dead, but he’s not.”

In person, Stone has an infectious laugh, seems genuinely engaged and takes the full measure of my questions before answering, at which point his ideas often come so fast they seem to be skipping across the surface of the conversation. He’s also the most fun kind of intellectual, in that he perpetually appears to be trying to figure himself out. Briefly a classmate of George W. Bush’s at Yale, he seems — at least on the evidence of our wide-ranging, three-hour discussion — to have absorbed a good deal more of its freshman syllabus. We spoke at his West L.A. editing suite, where he is currently preparing a three-hour, 45-minute DVD-only “road show” version of Alexander, complete with intermission.

L.A. WEEKLY: Where were you on the morning of September 11, 2001?

OLIVER STONE: L.A. Asleep. My wife put the TV on.

And what did you think was happening?

It was sensational. It was exciting. It was horrifying. It reminded me in its barbarity and ferocity of the French Revolution — the tumbrels, heads falling. And I had feelings of anger in me, and vengeance. I had a fight with my son, actually, because he was much more objective about it: “How do you know? Don’t assume anything. You’re acting like the mob.” But there were other feelings as well. You know, I realize I’m an older person; I’ve seen Vietnam and a lot of death and shit. Oklahoma City was horrible. JFK’s assassination. Watergate. The 2000 election. We’ve been through our times of shit in this country, so this was another version.

World Trade Centeris very powerful — emotionally powerful. I had a very visceral reaction to it.I think it’s obviously the film, but it’s also more than the film — it’s the fact that the subject matter is so loaded. If you make a film about fire jumpers, and a fire jumper comes to see it, he’ll say, “Well, you got this part right, you got this part wrong.’?” With this film, we’re all fire jumpers. It’s also very different from a lot of your other films — it’s gentle and contained and quiet. I’m wondering if you had to devise a different approach because the subject matter was so delicate.

I just want to say first that the way I look at myself — it’s not necessarily in the result — but with every film, I really have made an effort to make each one an island unto itself in this little sea that we go around in our ships. And every island has been a destination, a stop for a period of time. I’ve tried to take a different style for every film, because it’s the story that comes first, and the subject dictates the style. Even with something like Natural Born Killers, which seems very stylistic and eccentric, it’s still the content that I think is valid and important. With this film, certain things presented themselves: Obviously, the sensitivities of everyone involved, but ultimately that’s the sky around the project. With JFK, for instance, there were his children to think of, Jackie was still alive, Teddy Kennedy. Blowing his head off in Dealey Plaza didn’t go down well with them either. But there was a bigger story to tell.

Here we were limited by movement, so we worked out a style by which, methodically, the film would go in and out of light: Light would fight with the dark, or rather, light would try to make it up to the dark. Claustrophobia is an issue with a film like this. I did Talk Radio, so I know that feeling of being on one set the whole time. Also, Born on the Fourth of July: That was a very contained movie, in a way, because we had a young man in a wheelchair in the second half, where there’s very little movement. When I read this script, I said, “How do we make this movie watchable? How do we make the tension manageable for a mainstream audience?”

It may surprise a lot of people that you’re not using a lot of shock cuts, moving around inside the frame — what you’ve termed your “cubist” style.

Well, where can you move in a hole? A hole is limited. Finding the right point of view in the hole is crucial.

You once said about Platoon?, “I felt like if I didn’t do it now, I’m going to forget.” We’re five years out from 9/11 now, and there is much public hand-wringing about whether it’s too soon yet to deal with this subject matter.

I think it’s a bogus question. The consequences of that day are far worse today. More people have died since then because of the war on terror. There’s more war, there’s more fear, and there is constitutional breakdown left and right. Have the good sense to go to the psychiatrist quickly. If you’ve been raped, talk to somebody about what that day itself was like before you build up all this armor.

You pursued this film, correct?

Yes. Petitioned. My agent, Bryan Lourd, a man of taste, said to me, “Look, I read this script two weeks ago — it stays with me, it’s emotional. I don’t know if it will make a dime, I don’t know if I can get it financed, but just read it.” So I read it, and I said, “My God, I never thought of this — to do 2001 this way.” I knew [World Trade Center producers] Michael Shamberg and Stacy Sher. But no one would make it; Universal dropped it at the [proposed] budget. I was doing other things, I wasn’t stopping my life. But then it came back around. Paramount was just coming into being [under new management]. We were very lucky, because that new studio energy was coming in, and they wanted to make it so badly that it happened right away.

And did you talk with the producers about politics — if there would be a political viewpoint that informed the story?

There was no room for it, because John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno were not interested in politics, per se. They don’t talk about politics like you and I do. Their lives are not determined by it; they live according to what is given them. So it never entered into the equation. I loved the script [by Andrea Berloff] as it was. I loved the inspiration of the story. So I vowed to stay inside those parameters.

New York is probably the most liberal city in America, and yet the 9/11 attack has been so politicized, its imagery considered so proprietary, that right-wing skepticism has been mounting steadily against you since this project was announced. A story in The New York Times said the film is being strategically marketed to right-wing opinion leaders using the PR firm that advised the Swift Boat Veterans group. It even quoted the conservative National Review Web site as saying, “God Bless Oliver Stone.”

I knew [the studio] was doing grassroots marketing to everybody — Hispanics, cops, firemen, teachers, church groups. I didn’t know that they had hired a specific firm; I found out that day. I’m pleased they like it, because it goes beyond politics.

Could you foresee a left-wing backlash against the film?

If people on the right are responding with their hearts, I’m all for it. But if they’re making it into a political statement, it’s wrong. Those on the left might say, “Oh, this is a simplified context, and these are simplistic working-class values. You’re not showing a wider political context.” Or secondly, that we’re sentimentalizing the event — which would be unfair, because I think there’s a lot of grit there. But this is a populist film. We’ve said that from the beginning. In our hearts, it was a Frank Capra type of movie. And he didn’t necessarily get great notices.

In an odd way, I was reminded of Preston Sturges Hail the Conquering Hero — a wartime comedy that pokes fun at the notion of patriotism and, by extension, patriotic movies but which, by the end, almost subversively, fills you with this patriotic fervor. I’m wondering if you see this as your “Nixon in China” moment: Only the director of Nixon and JFK could get away with a film where the most heroic character is an ex-Marine who consults with his pastor before putting himself in harm’s way.

That character, Dave Karnes, is an unlikely hero. He goes to church — that’s a documented thing; he checks with his pastor in a born-again church before he goes down to Manhattan. He evaded the authorities. Get it done; that’s a Marine thing. I think you can argue that the Marine is an ambivalent character, because at the end of the movie, this sense of vengeance is what fuels the wrong war in Iraq.

But for him it’s the right war.

For him it’s the right war. That’s correct. I think if you really look at JFK or at Nixon, which are the two political films I did uncensored in my career — which is amazing unto itself — JFK is neither right nor left, and was attacked equally by the left, who did not like the Kennedy figure of 1963. It was done in the centrist tradition of American dissent: It questioned government and the authority of government. So I was taken aback that the right made such a big issue out of it. I suppose, because they were in office [when the film came out]. But they had never done that historically. They would have been on the side of the investigation; [Barry] Goldwater may well have been. JFK was not a bunch of fantasies strung together. It involved an enormous amount of research — as much as World Trade Center, if not more.

You could make the same argument about Nixon. You took the dominant political figure in our lifetime and gave him the Shakespearean treatment his life cried out for.

It was a psychological point of view. The right wing thought it was going to be a hatchet job; instead, it made him a human being. Unfortunately, in my career, I have spoken out between films, and that’s what’s gotten confused with the films themselves. I think the focus has been lost. Somewhere along the line, I guess, I said, “Look: I’m a filmmaker, but I’m also John Q. Citizen, and things piss me off. I have a right to say, if people ask me and they’re interested, what I fucking think.” And that’s the line I’ve always gotten in trouble with. It’s always between the films, if you look at the statements I’ve made. There’s nothing in the films themselves, as far as I know, that’s really offensive politically.

How much of the criticism against you do you think is organized for partisan political gain?

I’ve always wondered that — especially in the ’90s, after the JFK situation. You have to wonder: Will it come out one day in a government file? You hear about those programs from the ’50s and the ’60s. I was so grateful that Michael Moore came along. He helped me.

He seems to enjoy it. Maybe it’s the counterpart to how the left treats Charlton Heston.

Charlton Heston once said in an interview, “People like Oliver Stone would never hire me in the new Hollywood.” And I went out of my way on Any Given Sunday to hire him. I loved him. I said, “Forget politics, I love your character.” Political reputation pigeonholes you, and in a society that’s very busy, it’s an easy way to get rid of having to think too much about people and what they’re saying. I’m a dramatist; I’m a humanist. I protest.

There’s one line in World Trade Center — I think we hear it on a TV monitor in an office at the Port Authority — where the announcer says, “. . . the shock of the explosion that was coincidental with the two towers coming down,” and then you move on to something else. Was the suggestion that an unexplained explosion might have accompanied the towers’ demise the one seed of doubt you intentionally planted in an otherwise apolitical movie?

Well, I think that all reality is questionable, as you know. Frankly, I’m not an expert on that at all. And I haven’t pursued it, because I think the consequences of where we are now are far worse. But even if there was a conspiracy, it wouldn’t change where we are now. We’re into another place, where there’s more war, more terror, more bankruptcy, more debt, above all more constitutional breakdown and more fear than ever before. That’s very serious. And we’re on the edge of possibly something bigger and very dangerous. Richard Clarke’s book [Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror], at least, is about a true conspiracy that we know existed, of a small group who took over the government and did it their way — manipulated, created the war. It’s 30 or 40 people, right?

Sy Hersh says it’s 11 guys.

It was a conspiracy, and it was basically at the top. It’s Cheney and Rumsfeld influencing Bush. Cheney and Rumsfeld go back to the Ford administration, and when they got their way, they kicked butt. That’s a great story. But that’s not even all of it. When you’ve got a guy like Representative Pete Hoekstra from Michigan, who was a friend of the Bush administration — who had approved of the Patriot Act, the eavesdropping, the taxes, the bank records, all of it — saying in the press that there’s something worse that he’s pissed off about, because they hadn’t consulted him. Something worse? I mean, all the cards are not on the table, right? This is a big story. And we’re living it. How can you write about it? We’re fucking rocking in the boat. It’s like trying to write a great war novel when you might be going into World War II.

Were you at Yale the same time Bush was?

I was in the same class, yeah. I don’t remember him. I was never in a fraternity. I went twice — I dropped out one year and then went back for half of a second year and dropped out.

But at one point Bush requested to meet you, didn’t he?

Yeah, I met him. It was a political breakfast speech here in California at a club, the Republican right wing. They invited me — they’ve always had fun with me, I don’t know why — and it was a big hotel room and a speech about tough love and justice in Texas. He was governor then, around ’98 or so. I swear, I knew in that room on that day that he was going to be president. There was just no question. He had that confidence, and they adored him. There was an organized love for him. He asked for me to come up to the podium and we had a one-on-one. I was in the Bush spotlight — that thing where he stares at you and he gets to know you a little bit.

Assigns you a nickname.

There was one funny line. He knew I’d been in Vietnam. Actually, I didn’t know he’d been at Yale. He told me he’d been in my class; it was a surprise to me. But then he said he’d had a buddy who had been to Vietnam who’d been killed. “Buddy,” he said. It was funny — it was on his mind, he raised it. And it was the way he looked at me: I just felt like, boy, I bet you he’d rather his buddy had come home than me. But he was very friendly, very charming — a very sociable man.

Have you ever thought about going into politics — running for office? Would you consider doing that in a later part of your life?

Not seriously, no.

Orson Welles wrote a weekly political newspaper column during WWII — he was friends with FDR through Sumner Welles, a distant relative of his and a presidential adviser, and at one point he considered running for the Senate from California or his native Wisconsin.

Politics is about raising money and being popular and shaking a lot of hands and spending a lot of time with people. Those are not my strengths. It would be exhausting and would completely destroy my ability to do what I do.

You were pro-Vietnam before you enlisted in the infantry, right? You were fairly conservative?

Yes.

So we could say that you spent the entire 1960s across the political divide from most of what you’ve now come to stand for?

My story is complicated. I did write a novel about being 19 called A Child’s Night Dream. My parents divorced when I was 14, and being the only child, there was no family to go back to. Basically, going to Vietnam was really throwing myself to the wolves. It was a form of rebellion and suicide.

I’ve read a quote to the effect of “I felt like I had to atone for the act of imagination.” Was it actually the failure of the novel that sent you over the edge?

After I left Yale the second time and finished the novel — I was writing the novel instead of going to class, and that’s why I flunked out — my father was supporting me, and that’s an impossible situation: 19 years old, your father is furious at you for the tuition that he’s lost, and you’re living in his apartment trying to finish a novel. It’s like Jack Kerouac moving back home with his mother. But I really believed in it: I was insane with passion. It was the only thing I had. I had no woman friends in my life. I had nothing to support me beyond that. And when that failed, I went into the Army with the idea of “Let God sort it out, whoever I am.” It’s egregious to think that you can be on the level of Mailer or any of your heroes — Hemingway, or Joyce; I was into Joyce heavily at the time.

Part of the fun of watching someone like you working without a net, from a distance, is charting the rises and falls of your career. And sometimes there are films that don’t hit right, that suffer because of the moment or the context — the sky around it, as you put it. I’m thinking specifically of Nixon, which was a commercial failure, but seems to get more sophisticated every time I see it. Or, more recently, Alexander.

I’ve had three big setbacks, in terms of being completely dismissed: Heaven and Earth, Nixon — by many people, at least — and Alexander. On Alexander, it was just devastating, because in America and England, the numbers were so tough. It wasn’t just that people didn’t like it. It was ridiculed. It was destructive criticism. Meanwhile, in the rest of the world we were connecting, we were among the top 20 films of that year in the foreign market. We did better than four of the five Oscar nominees abroad. It was well respected.

Why didn’t Alexander connect? Do we agree that it didn’t connect with English-speaking audiences?

I like the director’s cut better than the first version, because I had more time to prepare it. And the structure is different. It wasn’t because of the homosexuality — that’s a red herring. The mother’s back story and father’s back story, which are really essential, don’t come in until later. We’re doing a third, expanded version now — we’re going all out. This is not for theatrical; it’s for the people who love the film who want to see more of it. It’s the Cecil B. De Mille treatment — three hours and 45 minutes. What I’m doing is going back and showing the whole thing in its sumptuousness, really going with the concept that it had to be an old-fashioned movie, with an intermission, like a road show. Be a showman, instead of trying to be a responsible filmmaker. Go all out on this one. This is my Apocalypse Now, my De Mille epic. [The first time] I was trying to step up to the plate, so to speak. I should have pulled it back, taken an extra year like Marty did with Gangs of New York. But it would have cost a lot of money.

In Oliver Stone’s America, the documentary included with the DVD box set of your films, you say, “I’ve always admired Alexander because of the momentum and the speed with which he traveled and conquered. In my small metaphoric way, I would say the countries were films, and I moved through them like him . . . he’s striking everywhere. I think it was great. We had a great run. But it’s definitely a new phase.” Is Alexander the figure you most closely identify with?

I am a Method director to a certain degree. I do become part of what I shoot. And I think with Alexander, the perception is of hubris, certainly — “Alexander the Great? Who the fuck is he? He thinks he’s Alexander.” I could see that coming. But I always knew who Oliver Stone was. I never lost track of that. And I made the film humbly, in 94 fucking days on three continents. I ran the crew like I always run the crew. Nothing changed in my habits. I walked in the deserts, we shot in a sandstorm once, and it was the same old Oliver who did Salvador. Hubris is taking 110 days on some stupid comedy. That’s an insult to filmmaking the way I was raised. I’m sticking to NYU principles, and I still do to this day. Movies are a tradition; we didn’t invent it — we take it from somebody else and pass it on.

But with Alexander, you faced a challenge like you’ve never faced before, because no matter how bruising the attacks on JFK and Nixon, your core audience was always still with you. For whatever reason, Alexander failed to connect with an audience.

Yeah. In America.

In America. I don't wish to judge it; this is an empirical observation.

No, it didn't connect. Alexander is the high point of my life, and it always will be. I’m not asking for universal love on that; it’s just impossible. It’s not paced to the American style, nor is he a conventional hero. He’s filled with doubts. But Alexander is a beautiful story, and I think I did him well. I mean, I wouldn’t have released it [otherwise]. But I can’t give up; I would never give up. I would be all wrong in my assessments of myself as I work. You have to hear your own self, follow your own drama, or whatever Thoreau said long ago at Walden Pond. [“Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour.”] Alexander was a huge setback for me, and it certainly hurt me in this business. But you have to understand that people have been saying bad things about me for years. I don’t listen; I have to try to keep going.

I don’t want to make specious connections, but you’ve had several high-profile drug arrests in the last few years. Before that, you were making supernihilist films in an edgy, frenetic style. I'm wondering if these are all moving parts of the same phenomenon.

I’ve smoked dope and drunk alcohol most of my life, okay? Getting pulled over and arrested is a fault, it’s a mistake — a wake-up call. I did get busted a couple of times. One was at a roadblock, so it’s not like I was endangering anybody’s life. The other time, I got pulled over by a civilian cop; I was actually busted for driving too slow. And when the tests came back, I was below the intoxication level. Nobody knows that, because it never got published that way. I should get a chauffeur is what I fucking should do. [Laughs.]

But nobody cares if you smoke pot. They care if it affects the work, if it’s part of a larger problem.

Okay, but I don’t feel bad. I got heavier, physically, at certain points, and I think that gives the appearance of degradation, like Jim Morrison. But I did have a pre-diabetic condition through my mother, and I was on too much sugar. Any Given Sunday, I love that movie, but it was more effort than you think — it was like a three-ring circus, to make five football games in five stadiums work. It took so much energy. There were some problems with the crew on that film. So by the end of that movie, my doctor said I was too stressed, and at my age it was dangerous. There were some issues of medications and stuff, no question about it. But sports people love that movie. With Alexander, there’s a fan site where there are people who have seen it 50 times. They go to the sites in Macedon. They love the romanticism of it. So it’s confusing to me. I’ve tried every fucking time to get it right, even if I haven’t been in my best physical shape. I will get it right. Not everyone is going to agree with me, but I’m going to get it right.

With World Trade Center, it's your first time to deal with studio financing in a decade; you look better, healthier. Has your life changed? Is this a new start?

Your story is a journalistic narrative, and it’s a good one, about Oliver coming back after Alexander, and how there’s a change in his life. And I’ve somewhat agreed with it, but I’ve also pointed out that my methods have stayed the same. But it is about your storyline, in a way — about life. If you go to film school, and you think about your career traditionally, you arc up, in the sense that your budgets get bigger, the stars, whatever. There’s a nice arc to a man’s life. You make your better films later — it’s horrible if you’re Orson Welles, if you make your best film first. And Alexander was a chance to do something on another level entirely. So I reached a peak of ambition. And the ambition was perhaps not matched by my execution, although there are points in the execution that do match the ambition, I think. So then it died a metaphoric death. Point of view died with it, as it died when Heaven and Earth came out. That [movie] was a very sensitive side of myself that I loved — it was tender, and the woman was tender. And it was ridiculed and killed, and part of me, you know . . . those feelings were hurt and eradicated for a while. Same thing with Nixon. You want to get rid of the person after you finish. You want to go back to being who you are, but you’re no longer the same person, because your journey has changed.

And part of me did die [with Alexander] — that part that was enamored of “my very important storyline,” end of quote. Me being the storyline. I played it out. I did all my biographical figures. I have no need to be John or Will. I had a need to be Ron Kovic. I had a need to be Alexander. I had a need to be Nixon and Morrison and Garrison. That’s the change. So now I can be myself, maybe. I can be more authentic to myself. I think there was an attraction to go from the past into the contemporary world in its most hellish moment. It’s like I dropped out and I couldn’t get back in, until by going back to 2001, I could come back into this era. I feel liberated, in the sense that, not that it would be next, but I feel I could do a movie about those next five years. Not that I think it’s complete yet — I think there’s a lot going on that we don’t know about in the government. But I think there’s something in the air. I smell it, and I feel fresh again, having done something — my new, 24-hour, humble microcosm of that day. Wherever I go with World Trade Center, it’s going to spin off to wherever I go next.

-Paul Cullum, “After the Fall,” LA Weekly, Aug 9 2006 [x]

#oliver stone #la weekly #World Trade Center #alexander #arrests #dui #drugs #September 11 #politics

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whileiamdying · 4 years

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Pedro Almodóvar

Pedro Almodóvar Caballero (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈpeðɾo almoˈðoβaɾ kaβaˈʝeɾo]; born 25 September 1949) is a Spanish filmmaker, director, screenwriter, producer, and former actor.

He came to prominence as a director and screenwriter during La Movida Madrileña, a cultural renaissance that followed after the end of Francoist Spain. His first few films characterised the sense of sexual and political freedom of the period. In 1986, he established his own film production company, El Deseo, with his younger brother Agustín Almodóvar, responsible for producing all of his films since Law of Desire (1987).

Almodóvar achieved international recognition for his black comedy-drama film Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown(1988), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and went on to more success with the dark romantic comedy film Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990), the melodrama High Heels (1991) and the romantic drama thriller Live Flesh(1997).

His subsequent two films won an Academy Award each: All About My Mother (1999) received the award for Best Foreign Language Film while Talk to Her (2002) earned him the award for Best Original Screenplay. Almodóvar followed this with the drama Volver (2006), the romantic thriller Broken Embraces (2009), the psychological thriller The Skin I Live In (2011) and the dramas Julieta (2016) and Pain and Glory (2019), all of which were in competition for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

His films are marked by his employment of certain actors and creative personnel, complex narratives, melodrama, pop culture, popular songs, irreverent humour, strong colours, and glossy décor. Desire, passion, family, and identity are among Almodóvar's most prevalent themes.

Acclaimed as one of the most internationally successful Spanish filmmakers, Almodóvar and his films have gained worldwide interest and developed a cult following. He has won two Academy Awards, five British Academy Film Awards, six European Film Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, nine Goya Awards and four prizes at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1997, Almodóvar received the French Legion of Honour, followed by the Gold Medal of Merit in the Fine Arts by the Spanish Ministry of Culture in 1999.

He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001 and received an honorary doctoral degree in 2009 from Harvard University in addition to an honorary doctoral degree from the University of Oxford in 2016 for his contribution to the arts. In 2013, he received an honorary European Film Academy Achievement in World Cinema Award. In January 2017 he was named as President of the Jury for the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. In 2019, he was awarded the Honorary Golden Lion at the 76th Venice International Film Festival.

#Vanity Fair #Proust Questionnaire #Pedro Almodóvar

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newyorktheater · 5 years

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Now is the time when interest in Broadway is at its peak, piqued by the three-hour TV commercial for Broadway known as the 2019 Tony Awards.

Get tickets to attend the Tony Awards in person!

I regularly get asked for recommendations, especially from out-of-towners planning a trip to New York. When I try to explore the person’s tastes, they typically say to me “I just want you to pick the shows for me.” So here are ten (plus several “bonus” selections.)

THREE NEW PLAYS

The Ferryman Bernard B. Jacobs Theater (242 W 45th Street New York, NY 10036) Opened: October 21, 2018 Twitter: @TheFerrymanBway

Theatergoers have only until July 7, 2019 to see this feast of Irish storytelling in a breathtaking mix of genres – from suspenseful thriller to family saga to ghost story to history lesson to morality tale. Now with an American cast, this play by Jez Butterworth and directed by Sam Mendes tells the story of Quinn Carney (Brian d’Arcy James) who was once a member of the Irish Republican Army but is now a farmer with a sprawling brood — but on this day of the annual Harvest, his past comes back to threaten him.

Tickets to The Ferryman

To Kill A Mockingbird Shubert Theater (225 W 44th Street, New York, NY 10036) Opened: December 13, 2018 Twitter: @mockingbirdbway

Aaron Sorkin has adapted Harper Lee’s beloved novel to focus more on the murder trial of an unjustly accused black man who is defended by Atticus Finch (Jeff Daniels.) But Scout (Celia Keenan-Bolger), her brother Jem (Will Pulled) and her friend Dill (Gideon Glick) still feature in the show, all played by adults.

Tickets to To Kill A Mockingbird

What The Constitution Means To Me Helen Hayes Theater Opened: March 31, 2019 Twitter: @constitutionbwy

Fifteen-year-old Heidi Schreck earned enough money for her college tuition by winning Constitutional debate competitions across the United States. Now she re-creates one such competition, portraying herself, as a way to explore the relationship between the document and four generations of women in her own family — and by extension all women. This smart, informative, funny and moving play has engendered an almost cult-like devotion, serving as a kind of communal salve for the politically shell-shocked and disaffected. It ends on Broadway on August 24, 2019.

Tickets to What The Constitution Means To Me

Bonus Play

Opened last season:

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Lyric Theater (213 W. 42nd St., New York, NY 10036) Opened: April 22, 2018 Twitter: @HPPlayNYC

This continuation of the saga of the boy wizard is really for (the legions of) Potter fans, but the special effects are awe-inspiring:

Tickets to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

THREE NEW MUSICALS

Hadestown Walter Kerr (219 W 48th Street, New York, NY 10036) Opened: April 17, 2019 Twitter: @hadestown

This sung-through musical taking place in Hell adapts the Greek myth of retrieving his wife Eurydice from the Underworld. Anaïs Mitchell’s score features sweet and sexy folk music, rocking jazz, and down-home blues.

Tickets to Hadestown

Oklahoma!, Broadway 2019

Oklahoma! Circle in the Square Theater (235 W 50th Street NYC) Opened: April 07, 2019 Twitter: @OklahomaBway

This is of course not a “new” musical, but this fifth Broadway revival of the landmark musical, directed by Daniel Fish, offers such a different interpretation that it feels like new. It’s a darker take, and the music is countrified, with a small on-stage band (and some of the performers) playing fiddle, accordion, banjo guitar.

Tickets to Oklahoma!

Ain’t Too Proud The Life and Times of The Temptations Imperial Theater (249 West 45th St. NYC) Opened: Mar 21, 2019 Twitter: @AintTooProud

Fans of 1960’s Motown are in for a treat in this musical whose performers can sing and dance as well as the Temptations — and act too.

Tickets to Ain’t Too Proud

Bonus Musicals

Opened in previous seasons:

My Fair Lady Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont (150 W. 65th St) Opened April 19, 2018 Twitter: @MyFairLadyBway

If you haven’t seen Laura Benanti in this fourth Broadway revival of the Lerner and Lowe musical, you have only until July 7th to do so.

Tickets to My Fair Lady

Dear Evan Hansen Music Box Theatre (239 West 45th St.) Opened: December 04, 2016 Twitter: @DearEvanHansen

Evan Hansen is an anxious high school student with no real friends who becomes the center of attention when a classmate he barely knew commits suicide and, through a misunderstanding, people think that Evan was his best friend. Evan turns that misunderstanding into a lie, and the lie gets out of hand. The musical offers insights into an array of issues, from adolescent insecurity to the downside of social media, while keeping us emotionally engaged with the characters. The songs by Pasek and Paul are tuneful and deeply felt.