News & Notes Inside the Week in Film

When ‘Good’ Simply Isn’t Good Enough

‘Feel good’ movies are now for suckers.  ‘Feel great’ movies are where it’s at.

by Chris Neumer

My brother recently moved.  When I arrived at his old apartment to help him move, he handed me a bag filled to the brim with DVDs that he and his roommate had borrowed from me over the course of the last few years and failed to return.  It was an absolute treasure trove of, “Oh yeah, I remember that movie,” and, “I was wondering where that went.”

One of the DVDs in the bag was an unopened copy of the Steve Carrell film Dan in Real Life.  I’d never seen the movie for reasons both logistical—my brother had the DVD—and lack of desire—I am not a fan of any projects featuring self-help gurus who can’t seem to do anything right in their own life.  Not only that, but the tagline for the film was written in 18 point Helvetica.  That alone should be enough for someone to steer clear.  (It also co-stars Dane Cook, but I didn’t notice this red flag until later).

I eyed the DVD box and, after wondering why Carrell was content to lie face down in pancakes, was struck by something else on the sleeve: former Maxim Magazine critic Pete Hammond’s quote that Dan in Real Life was “The Feel-Great Comedy Of The Year”.

Yes, part of me wondered why the folks at Disney capitalized the ‘O’ in ‘of’, but the majority of me wondered when ‘feel-good comedies’ had transformed into ‘feel-great comedies’.  It is a subtle shift, mind you, and one that I feel confident that most people would not notice, but it is a true and distinct transformation nonetheless.

I’m not quite sure what to make of this upgrade.   Is ‘good’ simply not good enough anymore?  Has Hollywood logic (and American culture) gotten to the point where people scoff at the notion of simply feeling good anymore?  “Oh sure, Universal’s new picture will make you feel good, but ours will make you feel great.  I mean, it’s up to you to decide what you want to see.”

More to the point, where can we go from here?  If we’re already at ‘great’, what’s the next step up?  The mind boggles.  Fade In.  Voice over begins: “I used to do cocaine.  I’d do a line off a hooker in the morning and even myself out with some speed in the afternoon.  Now?  I simply watch Brett Ratner’s new film.  Dan in Real Life will make you feel great, but that’s so 2009.  Now?  Now I need the hard stuff.  A new Ratner movie.  That’s the feel-high comedy I need.”

Sadly, thanks to Cook’s presence in Dan in Real Life, I will never watch the film in order to discern whether or not Hammond’s statement is anywhere close to being correct.  C’est la vie.

Flashback to 2006: John Travolta was Allegedly Gay then too

John Travolta’s lawyer attempts to debuke Travolta gay rumors with logic it would be a stretch to call faulty

by Chris Neumer

The quotes that you see in the Ten Minute Guide and the print version of Stumped are generally quotes that I’ve seen and found amusing while going through my work week.  To the best of my knowledge, I’ve never actually sought out quotes.  They’ve always been something that I’ve stumbled upon in the course of my life.  Sometimes I hear these quotes while at a screening or watching a DVD, sometimes they come while researching a story and sometimes they come while I’m talking to friends or colleagues.

The thing that makes quotes unique is that they are incredibly small, self-contained stories.  Sara Roemer’s line in Disturbia, “No, I’m not over here,” doesn’t need an intro, it doesn’t need an explanation or any context.  It’s funny on it’s own; a five word story.  On supremely rare occasions a quote will be so humorous, obtuse or philosophically unsound it needs a blurb surrounding it to accurately give the quote the attention it deserves.  This is one of those truly rare occasions.

I am in the midst of interviewing box office analysts for a story I am writing on actor John Travolta’s miserable career record/sky high paycheck.  Quite simply, no one should keep getting paid when their track record is as bad as Travolta’s.  He may have had a couple of hits in the 70s, but so did Roy Scheider.  While reading up on Travolta, I learned that there are a fair amount of rumors out there that he is gay.  This was stunning to me because 1) I hadn’t heard the rumors in more than ten years of writing about film, and 2) Gay guys also aren’t often scientologists for very long.  L. Ron Hubbard not only considered homosexuality an illness, but Scientology centers have long attempted to “cure” homosexuality.

Helping nothing is the fact that Travolta makes a habit of kissing people with whom he’s friendly.  Male or female, it doesn’t matter.  After a photo emerged in late 2006 of Travolta pecking a friend good-bye, Travolta’s camp decided to put an end to the rumors once and for all.  They threatened lawsuits, they denounced the frivolous rumors, they stated in no uncertain terms that Travolta was straight.  Then they got greedy and decided to attempt to logically explain things to the media.  It was at this point that the train derailed.  And derailed with a speed normally reserved for Jamaican sprinters.

In a conversation with the New York Daily News, Travolta’s lawyer, Jay Lavely, stated in all earnestness, “This looks like complete hogwash.  Travolta is a happily married man, which proves he isn’t gay.”

Touche.

Coming Down From the Pedestal

How You Know You Have a Problem With Alcohol: The Richard Harris Edition

by Chris Neumer

When film historians and cinephiles look back at the actors of the pre-Godfather era, they often do so with reverential tones and a warm fondness for the actors in question. The lives of the Barrymores, Flynns, Waynes and Harris’ of Hollywood are viewed with a pair of rose-colored glasses. Very heavily tinted rose-colored glasses. People might talk about the height of Veronica Lake’s fame… but they don’t necessarily talk about the fact that she was abused by her father and was a schizophrenic.

A lot of these stories that shined a negative light on the talent were suppressed thanks to the very strong-armed nature of the studio PR departments of the time. Yes, stories about Errol Flynn coming home and finding the dead body of John Barrymore in his house got out, but those were sold with a boys-will-be-boys spin. Alcoholics like Oliver Reed, Peter O’Toole, Richard Burton and Richard Harris were sold as party-animals or social drinkers. Severely disturbed actresses like Lake or Marilyn Monroe were deemed eccentric Hollywood types. Every once in a while though another story comes out in a new biography or interview that takes those soft-sell terms away from the actors of the age and gives the stories a slightly different perspective.

Harris was the latest actor to get the bright light of truth shined onto his behavior. Harris’ son Jared revealed that his father was at a party thrown by Elizabeth Taylor. At a certain point in time, Taylor stopped serving alcohol and asked the party goers to leave. After the last of her guests had left, she retired to her bedroom for the night. When she opened the door to her bedroom, she found Harris already there drinking her Chanel No. 5 perfume with a friend.

I think we’re going to have to revisit Harris’ ‘social drinker’ label.

The Photo of the Week

Semi-Pro

The 5 Things I Learned This Week

Fascinatingly true things to broaden your mind

1) There is no medical definition for ‘virginity’.

2) Actor Josh Lucas has three middle names.  One of them is ‘Easy’.  Another is ‘Lucas’.  Yup, his real last name is Maurer.

3) The largest shopping mall in North American is in Edmonton, Canada.

4) A botanist that specializes in fungi is called a ‘mycologist’.

5) Composer Hans Zimmer was part of the group The Buggles.  The Buggles were best known for their hit song “Video Killed the Radio Star”.