Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
As this year began, if someone had told me that I'd be pinning some of my fondest hopes for this year on Robin Williams, I would have said they were crazy.
And, no, I'm not saying that I dislike him as a performer. Far from it; in many ways, he's been as influential on my developing taste over the years as anyone in front of or behind the camera.
Instead, let's just say I'd become disillusioned with the majority of what Robin was up to. He seemed to be locked in some sort of career stutter, hacking up the kind of live-action family oriented dreck that Eddie Murphy seems to be taking over these days. His live appearances had all taken on a familiar tone, and for the first time, I found myself bored by him each time he appeared.
So as I sit here on a Sunday evening, recovering from the rollercoaster second half of the third game of the NBA Finals (go, Lakers!), I find myself stunned by the glimpse I've had this weekend of the next three films Robin is part of. Not only has he put together a line-up that may go a long way towards salvaging this painfully bland film year, but he may have even found the key to saving his cinematic soul.
DEATH TO SMOOCHY
Adam Resnick and Danny De Vito are a match made in Hell. Both of them have sick streaks a mile wide, and with them goading each other on, it's a safe bet that DEATH TO SMOOCHY is going to be one of the darkest mainstream comedies since THE WAR OF THE ROSES, and as of the August 11, 2000 draft, it's enormous evil fun.
The script's opening sets the stakes, so we know right away just how far Resnick is willing to go to prove a point. We see a children's show taping in progress, a giant foam Rhino dancing with a bunch of kids. It's a joyful image, and it's jarring when we cut suddenly to a parking garage after the show. The Rhino comes walking out, ready to go home, and gets jumped by a bunch of Mob thugs who wrestle him into a stairwell where they beat the shit out of him before putting six bullets in his head, making sure he's dead.
NARRATOR:
Children's television... it's a tough racket.
And just like that, we've gone back in time to a year before that shocking image, to a time when RAINBOW RANDOLPH was the biggest thing in children's television. This is the role Robin's playing, and if he's looking to put an end to his safe family image, he couldn't have found a more direct stake to the heart if he'd tried. Randolph is a scumbag, and as the film opens, he's taking a meeting with some parents in a bar. They want their kid to get a good spot while dancing on Rainbow Randolph's show, right down front by the cameras. They offer him a stack of cash, and he tells them to pitch in even more next time, then stands to go. That's when the feds move in and Rainbow Randolph's career ends.
The network is scandalized, and the pressure to find a replacement falls squarely on the head of FRANK STOKES (Jon Stewart), head of children's programming, who then passes the pressure on to NORA BISHOP (Catherine Keener), his second in command. Their mission is simple: find a squeaky clean replacement for Rainbow Randolph, someone who is completely beyond reproach. There's really only one name that fits the bill, and both Frank and Nora are horrified at who they're stuck with.
It's no wonder. When we meet Smoochy The Rhino, he's performing at a methadone clinic, singing happy songs about kicking heroin to the assembled addicts. Inside the Smoochy suit is perpetually cheerful SHELDON MOPES (Edward Norton). It's a great role, the innocent afloat in a sea of sharks, and a good deal of the first half of the script deals with his initiation into the horrifically corrupt world of children's television. He wants to be a Captain Kangaroo or a Mr. Rogers for the new millennium, but everyone else just wants to use Smoochy to sell cereal, toys, and bogus children's charities, and when he tries to stand up for what he thinks is right, the full force of the industry comes to bear against him.
There's some pointed satire here, but for the most part, it's just dark absurdism, and that's where De Vito has always been at his best as a director. As things build to the debut of SMOOCHY ON ICE, there are any number of twists and turns, and the way the film wraps back around to that opening scene surprised me quite a bit. Williams has been given a great role to play here as Rainbow Randolph gets dragged further and further into the gutter, then past the gutter and into the sewer, then deeper even still. He goes completely insane, and begins to plot the actual death of Smoochy, and some of the funniest material in the film comes from Randolph's dissolution. There's something great about Williams playing broken men, people who can barely hold themselves together. What's impressed me the most over the years is the way he manages to bring new grace notes to this type of character time and time again, and I'm willing to bet he does the same here.
INSOMNIA
There's going to be a lot of attention focused on Christopher Nolan when his follow-up to MEMENTO is released, and I think that's a good thing. He can handle it, and I think we're going to be spared the sort of embarrassing sophomore slump that's hit so many young filmmakers after their breakthrough films recently. Nolan's an exciting filmmaker with a strong visual sense that has developed a strong list of supporters with his first two films. I still haven't seen FOLLOWING, his debut feature, but I should be taking a look at it later this week.
There's another reason this film will be under extreme scrutiny, and that's because so many people are so fond of the original film by Erik Skjoldbjaerg. I haven't seen the whole film, having tuned in late to it on IFC, but now that I've read Hillary Seitz's American screenplay, dated 5.2.00, I'm definitely going to rent the Criterion Edition DVD and take a look. Once again, it looks like George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh's Section Eight Films has come up with a winner, the right combination of talent and material, and have given Nolan the blueprint to craft a powerful, striking major studio debut.
Al Pacino's the star of the film, playing Detective WILL DORMER, a legend of sorts from Seattle, an old-fashioned good cop who's been working with his partner HAP ECKHART (Martin Donovan) for quite a while. Their reason for visiting Nightmute, Alaska in the film is two-fold. First, they've been invited up to help on a case, and second, they're escaping the pressure cooker of a major Internal Affairs investigation that's underway. They're welcomed by an old friend and by ELLIE BURR (Maura Tierney), a newly-minted detective who idolizes Will for his history, and they meet a number of supporting characters that include strong roles for Nicky Katt and Hillary Swank.
At first, it appears they've been asked to help on a simple, if unusual, murder case involving a young girl. Her boyfriend RANDY STETZ (Jonathan Jackson) is one of the first people to fall under suspicion, but Will's not convinced. Her blue knapsack is found in a small cabin by a lake, and the cops search it, coming up with nothing more damning than a hairbrush, some "Hello Kitty" stickers, a couple of mystery novel paperbacks by Walter Boyd, a local author. They put the bag back and watch to see who comes to claim it, which leads the cops to a foggy beach on an early morning, a scene unfolds that changes Dormer's world, leaving his partner dead and the suspect free. Discussing the plot beyond that point becomes difficult, especially since I'm not sure how much of the plot was in the original and how much is invention for this remake, so I'm gonna toss a little spoiler space in here. I'll pick back up with the blue non-spoiler text a couple of paragraphs down.
DO NOT KEEP READING IF YOU WANT TO SEE INSOMNIA TOTALLY FRESH!!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!
Robin Williams shows up as Walter Byrd, author of the J. Brody mystery series. The film is not so much a mystery about who killed the girl as it is a terrible game that evolves between Byrd and Detective Dormer after the morning on the beach. Seems that Hap and Will are under investigation by Internal Affairs back in Seattle, and Hap has made up his mind to come clean when they return from Alaska. It's Will who shoots his partner, and Byrd sees him do it. When he contacts Will, he tells him that they're "partners" now, and what unfolds is a sad, doomed game of cat and mouse between these two men who each have trouble controlling their rage. Williams is going to be able to give his inner sonofabitch free reign in this one as he tightens the screws on Dormer, expecting a free pass on his own transgression just because he's learned Dormer's secret.
OKAY. FINISHED WITH THE SPOILERS. COME ON BACK AND JOIN US, WON'T YOU?!
Hillary Seitz has crafted a strong piece of suspense writing here that doesn't depend on comparisons with the original for its greatness. Her style is clean and spare on the page, and the complex story unfolds at a quick clip, confident, without a single misstep.
Oh, wait... I take that back. There's one. The last two lines of dialogue in the script... well, frankly, they stink. You can't deliver such a smart, confident, clean build to your audience, then smack them in the face on their way out the door. They'll remember. Make sure that last beat plays as well as everything else, and this could be Nolan's ticket to the A-list.
A BRIEF PAUSE, IN WHICH WE RECAP...
Both DEATH TO SMOOCHY and INSOMNIA are what I would describe as supporting roles, and damn strong ones. They both represent strong choices by Williams, and even though SMOOCHY is a comedy, Rainbow Randolph isn't your typical Williams role. There's no room for familiar shtick here, and that's a good thing. One of the reasons GOOD WILL HUNTING featured such strong work by him was because it was such a tight script, such a particular voice. These roles have typically given Williams room to do some of his most charged work, detailed and specific, in films like DEAD AGAIN and THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN and Christopher Hampton's THE SECRET AGENT, which featured one of the most frightening Williams appearances to date.
If you don't count PATCH ADAMS, of course.
These supporting roles, including his appearance as "Dr. Know" in Spielberg's A.I., are just warm-ups, though, for what I feel will be the main event, the project most worth paying attention to, and one that's already been deeply misunderstood by some online critics in their rush to judgement.
ONE HOUR PHOTO
One of my current fascinations is studying the careers of the various members of Propaganda Films. I find it difficult to get a bead on any talent pool that can include David Fincher and Spike Jonze alongside Michael Bay and Simon West. It's like finding out that the Jedi and the Sith are holding mixers; it just don't make no sense.
I've been particularly curious about Mark Romanek, especially while he was circling URBAN TOWNIE and considering the film. It was a strong, personal piece of writing that could have made a great little film, and when it didn't happen, I heard a number of reasons why. All I knew for sure about Romanek's involvement was that he moved on to a project he wrote himself.
This is that film. You've probably seen an image or two from the film by now, and you may have read a few early reactions to the script on DARK HORIZONS or IGN FILM FORCE. There's a few misconceptions that seem to have crept into the coverage and some of the Talk Backs that I'd like to address. First, this is no thriller. I don't think it was meant to be a thriller, not in the FATAL ATTRACTION thuddingly obvious commercial carbon copy sort of way that we've gotten so used to. Instead, this is an intimate character study about a broken soul who has become fixated on an image of something he's never had. It's also not a RED DRAGON knockoff. That would again imply that this is a thriller. When I first read people talking about this, they boiled down the plot in a way that made it sound like something moderately interesting that boiled down to a glossy slasher film. But that's the problem with reading descriptions of something instead of actually reading what's being described. You're at the mercy of the person describing it to you, and their bias is going to slant the way they describe it. I'm as guilty of it as anyone out there. When I like something, I can't help but be enthusiastic in describing it. When I dislike something, I find it hard to contain my sarcasm and scorn, leading to things like my CELL review.
That's one of the reasons that even if other people have dismissed a project, I like to try and approach it with an open mind. When I picked up the script for ONE HOUR PHOTO, I had no idea what sort of ride to expect or how far Romanek was willing to go. As a result, I found myself completely absorbed in the world of Sy Parrish, and I feel confident in saying that this is one of the projects I'm most looking forward to between now and the end of the year. Romanek is a writer of uncommon elegance and humanity, nothing like I expected. He has crafted something that is achingly real, almost embarrassingly intimate, and he's given Robin Williams one of the best roles he's ever had to play in the process.
For one thing, this script features the best use of narration since FIGHT CLUB or ELECTION, and in some ways, it's even better. Romanek has experience as a still photographer, and he's made great use of that knowledge here, giving Sy Parrish a particular voice that is captivating and honest. Romanek makes devastating use of subtext here, allowing Sy to speak about some fascinating things even as he's also giving us information that adds up to a series of major punches over the course of the film.
The premise is simple. Sy works at a local store, a WalMart type chain, where he has been developing pictures for over a decade. There's one family who comes in almost every week with new pictures, The Yorkins. Sy has developed a fixation on NINA (GLADIATOR's Connie Nielsen), the mother, and Jake, the family's 11 year old son, that manifests in a creepy but harmless way. Sy keeps copies of all the photos he develops for the family and displays them in a chronological montage on one wall of his apartment. He loses himself in the pictures, in the life that those pictures portray, and does his best to insinuate himself into their real life in his brief encounters with them at the store.
Two things happen, though, that raise the stakes and force Sy to change his behavior, one right after the other. First, he learns through the pictures he's developing that Nina's husband WILL is having an affair. Second, his store figures out he's been printing copies of something, thousands of copies, and they fire him.
What happens then is not what I expected, and it doesn’t unfold for the reasons you'd think.
What I find most impressive is the way Romanek avoids the easy beats, the shortcuts that have derailed similar mainstream films in the past. This is an indie movie in spirit, if not in origin. Romanek refuses to give in to formula, and that's what makes it so breathtaking. You keep waiting for that misstep, that move that's going to make the film fall in line with everything else we see, but it never comes.
Instead, Sy Parrish is portrayed as a person, as someone with a major piece of himself missing, and he's allowed to remain human all the way until the closing frames of the film. Romanek isn't writing some cheap thrill ride with a stock monster at the heart of it. Instead, he's trying to take an unflinching look at just how someone can get so broken that they become a menace to the people they think they love.
The keen intelligence of the script, both in terms of what it says and the style of how it's written, suggests to me that Romanek is one of the good guys, and I'm excited. This is what we always hope for when these strong visualists like Chris Cunningham or Jonathan Glazer or Fincher or Michel Gondry or even Tarsem make the switch from videos to features. I always pray that we'll see a perfect marriage of substance and style, and Romanek is already ahead of the game. If he can write a script like this, then I have faith that his heart and his head will steer him towards worthwhile stories as his career progresses.
And so the gauntlet has been thrown down. Robin Williams has picked a slate of smart, challenging, adult roles that could very well rennovate his image with demanding film fans who miss the daring of roles like GARP or GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM or DEAD POETS SOCIETY. If anything, he's raised the bar here by taking on a handful of roles that will push him in new ways. It's nice to see someone who could very easily coast on their past work choosing to reach for new heights instead, and I hope it pays off in all three cases.
"Moriarty" out.
