September 2011
9 posts
The Last American Man →
gq.com
tetw:
by Elizabeth Gilbert
Eustace Conway is not like any man you know. He’s got perfect vision, perfect balance, perfect reflexes and travels through life with perfect equanimity. He is smart and fearless and believes he can do anything he sets his mind to - like saving America.
Read this article, it’s amazing, and the book is amazing too. Elizabeth Gilbert’s journalism made me want to go into writing, which is why it’s been hard to see Eat Pray Love become such a monster that people think it’s the only book she ever wrote.
“It was in that context that The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou came out in December 2004. Oozing ambition out of every pore and self-consciousness with every move, the movie remains the most divisive entry in the Anderson canon. Unscientific measures like Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes rate it as his worst, a judgment with which this Anderson fan concurs. He was approaching the pinnacle of his cultural influence—the “Wes wannabe” was fast becoming the decade’s version of the Tarantino imitator—and had made a movie that felt more like an exhibition. It was the work of an artist who had become the curator of his own style. Seven years later, it remains Exhibit A in the case against Anderson—and, paradoxically, a reminder of his value to film culture.”
—An apt article on Wes Anderson’s work, from Reverse Shot. I do think that Anderson’s work - and its legacy - has certainly suffered from the fact that so many films have aped Anderson’s style. Seeing Aquatic in theaters was a nightmare, however. Every “joke” was just funny for weirdness’ sake, and there was nothing to care about.
"I'm here to make a movie. I'm not here to make friends." - David Fincher on his career
[What killed this piece? The fact that the US-remake Dragon Tattoo trailer leaked that very weekend in the States. But I had a glorious 24 hours where I was one of the first people who saw the trailer! Note: Fincher superfans in Sweden all resembled Meatloaf in Fight Club, which was odd.]
David Fincher took a break from day 133 of shooting on his American remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to make an appearance at the Stockholm Film Insitute’s “Actors Studio” at the Cinemateket on Friday, May 27th, where he talked about his directing career to an audience of scruffy Swedes with movie dreams. Showing flashes of self-deprecation and his famous steely reputation, he was funny and frank, whether talking about the failure of his debut feature, or his advice to today’s aspiring filmmakers (“write a script and make a film, this is an interesting enough generation with no excuses”), along with tantalizing hints about his upcoming version of Stieg Larsson’s best-seller.
The session ended with the red band teaser trailer for Dragon Tattoo on the big screen, the sounds of Led Zepplin’s “Immigrant Song,” with vocals by Karen O, booming, quick cuts of Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara as the leads - shots that were pointedly recognizable from the original, revealing nothing, and the tagline was wicked, classic Fincher: “The feel bad movie of Christmas.”
On Aliens 3: “I was lucky enough - my first movie stunk. For my second movie, I siezed control. You have to find the thing you will kill to make and make it a certain way. I’m here to make a movie. I’m not here to make friends. But you can’t say that the first time, because it’s kind of douchey.”
On Seven: “The violence of Seven is psychological, which is part of what I thought was powerful about the script. It was far more horrible because it exists in this Pandora’s Box of the imagination. You remember it differently from what you see.”
On Fight Club: “When I first read Chuck Palahniuk’s book, I couldn’t stop laughing. It was so sick and funny at the same time. I embraced it immediately.” While the failure of the film in the theaters was a matter of timing (too close to the Columbine shootings), “it sold 13 or 14 million DVDs. It paid for itself five times over on DVD.”
On The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: “Another movie about death. I loved the metaphor. If you could go in the other direction - beauty, vitality, youth - when you know what to do with it, chronological events conspire to bring you regret, to bring you loss.”
On Dragon Tattoo: “We found a place [on location] three weeks ago that was like ‘Yes, this is why we’re shooting in Stockholm. The cobblestone streets… [The Swedish original] is a really handsome thriller with a towering performance by the girl. Hard to follow.”
On directing: “It’s a circus, it takes 90 people at least. You have to understand what people are going to be best responsible for managing this entity, otherwise you’ll just be pissed off and irritated, which I am all the time anyways. I’m just now getting what storytelling is, the thing that you’re going there to catch, lightning in a bottle. It’s great to have a technical background and to know the physics so you can get to the thing that’s really important - the moment that people surprise you. I tell people, I’m selling immortality. If we do this and do it well, it will last forever.”
From a 2008 interview I did with Jeff Nichols, the director of Shotgun Stories* (go see it on the biggest, prettiest screen you can find - 35 mm of gorgeously shot film) and the upcoming Take Shelter:
One thing I was curious about, Michael Shannon and his weird head?
It’s enormous, isn’t it? I had never met him in person before, but you couldn’t miss him coming down the escalator at the airport. But there’s something interesting that happens when you put him on film. It kind of evens itself out.
He’s a fantastic actor with an interesting face that’s handsome from some corners and Willem Dafoe from others.
My fiancée’s maid of honor actually thinks he’s totally hot and I’m just baffled by it.
* In some ways, Shotgun Stories is reminiscent of a David Gordon Green film if David Gordon Green kept going with atmospheric southern art films and didn’t make the leap into the mainstream that brought us Eastbound and Down, Your Highness, The Pineapple Express, and the wonderful-looking (sarcasm) The Sitter. The evolution of David Gordon Green, however, is another post entirely!
