Nicholas Thurkettle

Of the type that I cannot tell you about. It’s a Hollywood development, it is one of the most exciting things to happen in my career in awhile, and I must remain mum, because:

1) It involves a name I am not officially permitted to drop in public.
2) It does not pass my test of real in Hollywood, which we remember involves a signature on a piece of paper and a check that clears.

It must sound awfully joyless of me that I am so resistant when these things happen for which a lot of would-be screenwriters would trade three toes. But I’m not denying it, just saving it and letting it accrue interest. If this development behaves the way it potentially can – as a hard-to-resist chunk of movie bait that movie-making elements will be drawn out to sniff at – then trust me; you will see joy. Snoopy dancing with his little black nose in the air-type joy.

Until then, keep the faith, brothers and sisters.

I have a few traditions around this time of year:

-I publish a 10 Best/10 Worst list from the movies I saw that were released in the previous year; thus closing the book on them so I can exclusively review releases from this year.
-I publish my predictions of who will win this year’s Academy Awards.
-I have seen all the Best Picture nominees.

None of those traditions hold this year. The reasons are many and interrelated. You may have noticed that I am months behind on the movie reviews I publish, and I still have about 10 I intend to write. Organizing my writing time and goals is an ongoing struggle, with the way my life is structured right now.

I could give myself the excuse that, with 10 Best Picture nominees for the first time in my life, it’s understandable that I missed one (An Education) in the run-up. I know I will catch it soon, but I always had a certain OCD pride in seeing all the nominees in advance, so I could feel extra opinionated.

But now I will see that habits can be broken and the world does not come to an end. And I’ll get to do the important thing, which is to enjoy the ceremony with friends, and appreciate the passing of another excellent year of cinema.

And by the way? This isn’t a full round of predictions, but all that talk of this being the year of Avatar versus The Hurt Locker? In the last two weeks, I have come around to thinking there is a different possibility for one of the two top prizes – Inglourious Basterds.

My reasons why?:

-Harvey Weinstein distributed Inglourious Basterds; and no one knows how to run a better single-minded, no-bullet-un-fired campaign of ratfuckery for Oscars than Harvey. The well-timed news articles complaining about Hurt Locker’s originality and accuracy in the final hours before the ballot deadline, the leak of that producer’s e-mail breaking Academy rules by bad-mouthing Avatar; someone has done a very good job provoking a hot war between those two pictures. With the new vote-counting procedure for Best Picture, the movie with the most first-place votes won’t necessarily win, if everyone outside its camp ranks it much lower. In religion, business, and politics, always ask: “Who benefits?”

-James Cameron got his big sweep with Titanic, and Oscar has a resistance to repeating history this exactly. Titanic may have been criticized as hokey, but it was providing romantic sweep and melodrama that gave a patina of classicism to its scope. Avatar doesn’t score as high for its all-ages dramatic appeal, and is probably a little too weirdly-spectacular for the older voters (and boy are there a LOT of them).

-The Hurt Locker’s box office was small. REALLY small. Look at the most recent Best Picture winners – Slumdog Millionaire, No Country For Old Men, The Departed, Crash, Million Dollar Baby. The lowest grossing of them, No Country, had over five times Hurt Locker’s box office when it won. Locker finished its run in theatres many months ago, and while it ran an amazing awards campaign, it doesn’t change the fact that just not a lot of people have seen it. And being on DVD doesn’t provide the same cultural currency payoff. That said, because of the strength of its campaign, and the historic possibilities for director Kathryn Bigelow, I still think it is well-positioned to win Best Picture or Best Director, or possibly both. But I now think that, if it splits, the movie it splits with will be Inglourious.

-The Academy’s favorite prize to give is the make-up prize. Quentin Tarantino had to be satisfied with the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Pulp Fiction, one of the greatest and most influential films of its generation. He’s a slow-burning savant who doesn’t put out movies as often as other filmmakers, and eccentric enough that he doesn’t always put out movies that can attract the approval of the respectables. Inglourious is roundly admired, financially successful, and shows him working at the peak of his craft. The Academy has a chance to give him one of its top prizes, and can’t be assured it will have another any time soon.

-Did I mention Harvey Weinstein?

The Princess and the Frog
Directors: Ron Clements & John Musker
Writers: Story by Ron Clements & John Musker and Greg Erb and Jason Oremland, Screenplay by Ron Clements & John Musker and Rob Edwards, based on the story The Frog Princess by Ed Baker; music and lyrics by Randy Newman
Producer: Peter Del Vecho
Featuring the Vocal Talents of: Anika Noni Rose, Bruno Campos, Keith David, Michael-Leon Wooley, Jennifer Cody, Jim Cummings, Peter Bartlett, Jenifer Lewis, Oprah Winfrey, Terrence Howard, John Goodman

I recognize what they’re doing – the broad humor and the good heart, the way colorful ink is made to imitate life, the fairy tale story that proudly wins its happy ending. It is familiar but shocking, because it makes you realize just how long it has been since you saw it. It’s Disney Animation.

This is not to say that the Walt Disney Transglobal Entertainment Conglompire has failed to put out cartoons in recent years. But it felt so distressingly like they hated their own legacy and character, like they had no confidence that children still worked the way they did even 15 years ago when The Lion King was enrapturing them. When the budgets and staffs were slashed, when spreadsheet-inspired sequels to classics were outsourced to quickie TV animators, and finally, when they announced that they were through with 2D hand-drawn animation, and would be switching entirely to digital like their competitors at Pixar and Dreamworks, I wondered why all these suited bigwigs could have such poor taste as to grin at a funeral.

But with Pixar heads John Lasseter and Ed Catmull brought in to take the reins of the animation studio that inspired them and so many other artists in its heydays, we have the privilege of watching this one corner of Disney re-discover, and re-embrace, its true nature. The Princess and the Frog might not rank in the masterpiece class of Disney’s long roll call of animated features – the format they essentially invented with 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs – but it brings with it a palpable breath of joy. You get to see them remembering what they do, and that it feels good.
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Originally published 11/17/04

Ray
Director: Taylor Hackford
Writers: Screen story by Taylor Hackford and James L. White, screenplay by James L. White
Producers: Taylor Hackford, Stuart Benjamin, Howard Baldwin, Karen Elise Baldwin
Stars: Jamie Foxx, Kerry Washington, Regina King, Sharon Warren, Clifton Powell, Bokeem Woodbine, Harry J. Lennix, Aunjanue Ellis, Curtis Armstrong, Richard Schiff, Larenz Tate

A movie and a life always make strange bedfellows; my gut call would be that there’s a lower ratio of excellent biopics than nearly any other genre in filmmaking. Sure, you have the attraction of a famous name, and the opportunity for award-friendly acting. But it’s hard finding defining emotional and dramatic shape in messy real lives. It’s even harder when the life in question is one so many people are invested in that there’s immense pressure to fit in all those highlights.

Ask yourself what a challenge it would be making one mix album to summarize Ray Charles, whose genius crossed so many genres and embraced so many stories and moods. The cumbersome weight of expectations throws Ray seriously off-balance. You are left learning a great deal about the life of the artist – in fact, most of what a good timeline would tell you. But after trying to jam in so much data, we leave strangely unenthralled despite the extraordinary efforts of Jamie Foxx in the title role.
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Originally published 11/2/04

Sideways
Director: Alexander Payne
Writers: Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, based on the novel by Rex Pickett
Producer: Michael London
Stars: Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen, Sandra Oh

Screenwriting gurus use a term called “petting the dog”, which is meant to remind writers to give their characters some action that humanizes them, so we in the audience will like them.

Sideways shows us a different application of this principle, we might call it “chugging the spit bucket.” Which means there’s got to be a lot to this warm, rambling charmer of a movie for us to like these characters. After all, how hard is it to like a guy who pets a dog?
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Thanks to the influence of pirate radio stations that embraced it, Concrete and Clay, a British pop song with some atypical vocal harmonies and a Latin beat, was the #1 song in the UK for exactly one week in 1965. The band, Unit 4 + 2, never had another hit, and after attempts at shuffled lineups, harder rock, and even psychedelia, broke up in 1970 and never re-formed for a nostalgia tour. When the song was released in the US, it was forced to compete with a cover version by singer songwriter Eddie Rambeau, and as a result, neither made it to the top 10. Ironically, it was also the biggest hit of Rambeau’s career.

Here’s the original – six lads singing a good little tune about young love:

You might recognize it from the soundtrack to Rushmore. I heard it on the radio the other night and realized I had never known its right title. I also realized that I wanted to sing it at karaoke some night. So I went hunting for it on YouTube to study it, and was surprised to see the strange life this song has led since it came into being 45 years ago.

I think about that moment in That Thing You Do! when Tom Hanks tries to explain what he likes about the song, and just snaps his fingers and says: “’That Thing You Do’, you know, it’s catchy.” This is a catchy song, and sweet, and you can see why many artists along the way have thought it could do them some good.

Here’s now-prolific film composer Randy Edelman giving it some ballad-y touches and good 70’s over-instrumentation, scoring a hit in the era when singers could be fugly:

And here’s Australian rocker Martin Plaza, complete with mullet and “I’m Dead Sexy!” facial confidence, who adds some perfectly-deployed horrible synthesizers in a video with so many bits of cutting-edge 80’s low budget trickery that you’ll be wondering where the star wipe is:

Once again, a hit for him. And it was also a hit for late 80’s German pop trio Hong Kong Syndikat, whose video teaches us that with a bit of good music coming out of the boom box, hobos, baby-snatchers, rockabilly rejects, naughty nuns, and overweight people can all smile and share pastries together on the sidewalk:

But you want to know someone for whom this song wasn’t a hit? This guy:

Believe it or not, that’s Kevin Rowland, former lead singer of Dexy’s Midnight Runners, another One-Hit Wonder Hall of Famer with 1982’s unforgettable Come on Eileen. Seeing this video, I remember that this was how I first heard a snippet of this song, on a VH1 Where Are They Now? special, where Kevin announced that with this new album of his, he was going to be unveiling his line of men’s dresses; and how it wasn’t at all a gay thing, he just thought it should be okay for men to wear dresses. And stockings. And combination phallus-hammocks/thongs. And schoolgirl shoes.

I cannot decide what is my favorite part of this video – is it the conga drummer who is barely playing the drums, but is just there for Kevin to rub up against in an extremely non-gay manner? The widely-varying but still-very-generally-low enthusiasm of the backup singer/angels? The way this was obviously shot in a couple of hours on a tiny soundstage for next to no money? Or is it just the whole conceit that this middle-aged pansexual really wants everyone to pay more attention to his shaved ass?

According to the never-ever-wrong Wikipedia, the album – which was supposed to have something to do with his recovery from drug addiction – sold less than 500 copies, and when he tried to perform live in the dress, he was driven off the stage by a hail of bottles.

Understand, I do not mean by this light mockery to discourage. I think more weird people need to do more weird things, because it enriches life for the squares. I think all the people in these videos felt the same impulse I felt when I heard that song. Snap snap, you know, it’s catchy.

On my first day of my first acting class in my first year as a theatre major, the teacher arranged us in a circle on the floor; and, one-by-one, we had to leap to our feet, brandish an imaginary spear, and shout: “I will dare to fail gloriously!” The point is that in the theatre, there is no going back and there is no room for apologies. If you are going to screw up, screw up big.

I have always loved this philosophy because it incorporates the idea that mistakes will happen no matter how much you prepare. The imperfections are as much a part of the music as Jackson Pollock’s cigarette ashes are part of his paintings. Every night, the audience gets a version of the show that will never be done again, because of the hundred little accidents, deviations, and discoveries.

This spontaneity is part of the reason I moved away from acting – I have a hard time with trust and letting go in the moment, and my best idea usually only comes after rumination and calculation. It’s why I’m better as a writer than a performer – I get a chance to think rather than just react.

But even though since college I have rarely sought out opportunities to perform on stage, I have developed this strange pattern over the years of ending up on a stage anyway. It started in high school. A community children’s theatre group I had performed with in the past needed someone to fill in on tech – and on our budget, by “tech” I mean flipping a light switch and operating a CD changer in the back of a cafeteria. So I showed up for one rehearsal, watched the show, and noted all my tasks.

On opening day, at one o’clock, the director called and said: “Hey, I’ve got a crazy idea. Want to act in the play?” One of the cast (and strangely enough, he might be reading this post right now) had twisted his ankle after the last rehearsal and couldn’t perform. The director needed someone who could memorize the part in six hours.

Now this part I do well. I’ve done Shakespeare and Tom Stoppard and I adore words, so I have the skill for recording language in my brain on short-notice. I will freely say I am not all that good an actor, and I’m tricky to cast – I can’t dance, my singing is so-so, I’m too odd-looking for the leading man roles, too tall and soft for the energetic character roles, too cerebral for the boisterous roles, too rubber-faced for serious roles, too unthreatening for the macho roles, and too young for the old crafty roles. But I understand stagecraft and discipline enough that people I work with can trust that they don’t have to start from square one. I can be plugged in on an emergency basis and they won’t have to worry I’m going to crash the show.

It happened again when my sister was helping produce her fiancée’s musical. They needed an extra set of backstage hands and someone who could walk on to do two lines at the end. And with one rehearsal, that’s exactly what I did. Auntie Mame happened a few years later because of my brother. He had kept doing community theatre as an occasional hobby, and when a production needed to fill a supporting role eleven days from opening, a friend of his in the cast dropped his name. He wasn’t available for the whole run, so I got brought along as part of the family package for half of the performances.

After that, when I was directing my 10-minute play for Sacred Fools in LA, and my lead dropped out three days before the show, my good friend Mishka the Hairy Russian, who I had also cast and have known since college, was the one who convinced me that searching for a new actor on such short notice was foolish when we already had a perfectly capable one who knew the script available – by which he meant me.

I auditioned for one play a year or so ago, but didn’t prepare, mumbled my way through it and didn’t have a serious chance at a part. I have never been that good at auditioning and it wasn’t a show for which I was actually appropriate, in hindsight.

But Norma Jean, one of my castmates from Auntie Mame, remembered my ability to swing in at the last minute (and actually has a far higher opinion of my abilities than I do), and on Saturday night she dropped me a Facebook message which is the reason why I haven’t been able to post, or really even think much, since then.
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The Road
Director: John Hillcoat
Writers: Screenplay by Joe Penhall, based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy
Producers: Nick Wechsler, Steve Schwartz, Paula Mae Schwartz
Stars: Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Charlize Theron, Robert Duvall, Guy Pearce

Viggo Mortensen’s performance in The Road is great because of all that the movie denies him. Withered and hoarse, he has such small spaces within which to suggest the human he used to be, covered as it is by what he has to be now. He says to his son: “I’ll shoot anyone who touches you; ‘cause it’s my job.” And under his absolute conviction he is able to show us his grief that life has become that simple, that the nearness of death has made his parental tunnel vision, in his mind, necessary. We believe he is not a ruthless man, but his love is now a ruthless love, and the way it has altered him provides the tension in this post-apocalyptic journey filmed from the pages of Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

As movie apocalypses go this is one of the most thorough I have seen – even the innocent plants and animals were not spared. It’s a planet-wide cemetery; everything is decay and despair, and the only sound on the horizon is the sighing crash of another dead tree. Even their roots have given up. Director John Hillcoat used the primitive Australian Outback to mesmerizing effect in 2006’s The Proposition, and he realizes this bleak future just as capably.
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Originally published 11/1/04

Team America: World Police
Director: Trey Parker
Writers: Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Pam Brady
Producers: Scott Rudin, Matt Stone, Trey Parker
Starring the voices of: Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Kristen Miller, Masasa, Daran Norris, Phil Hendrie, Maurice LaMarche

-PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

-Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

It’s a dangerous, dangerous thing to assume that Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park and the brains/voices behind Team America: World Police, have any agenda beyond making you laugh.

Dumber and more hostile people than them have suggested that celebrities who speak out against war are giving aid to the enemy, which is exactly what happens in the movie. The catch is, the people who’ve suggested this have never been funny at it. And I doubt Parker and Stone really believe it. But I do think they consider it funny. And maybe it is inherently funny that famous actors believe they can change the world, but it can’t be discounted that the climax of the movie involves, well, good acting changing the world. And thus a clear message beyond universal mockery eludes us again.

I will not attempt to even guess at Parker and Stone’s politics, much less criticize them. My criticism is reserved solely for their humor.
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Originally posted 9/27/04

Shaun of the Dead
Director: Edgar Wright
Writers: Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright
Producer: Nira Park
Stars: Simon Pegg, Kate Ashfield, Nick Frost, Lucy Davis, Dylan Moran, Penelope Wilton, Bill Nighy

The Scream movies were labeled “post-modern” because the characters in them had seen horror movies and used them as a template for survival. Shaun of the Dead is a different kind of post-modern, because its success depends heavily on the audience having seen horror movies, particularly zombie movies. The characters have not seen zombie movies, and know nothing about survival except how much their preferred post-hangover victuals cost at the corner market.

This almost appallingly-amusing movie’s central joke is that there’s no thing too weird, say, for example, an apocalypse of the walking dead, that we as people couldn’t eventually filter into a background irritant. The inertia of the average low-watt slacker, we see, will always bring him back to his couch, television and beer.
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