Day: September 22, 2021

David Chase on what it would take to get him to make another Sopranos prequel after The Many Saints of Newark; we’d love to share good trailers of the films you’re working on, and behind-the-scenes photos, too; a pair of bonkers Rick James stories. All in today’s Movie News Rundown.

But First: Here are interviews with some of the filmmakers featured in a recent celebration of Indigenous cinema hosted by our friends at New Filmmakers Los Angeles.

Meet Michael… and Robert: Director Michael Haussman wrote this very amusing piece for us about shooting his film Edge of the World in a jungle in Borneo that included crocodile-filled waters. Edge of the World stars Jonathan Rhys Meyers as James Brooke, the 1840s figure who inspired The Man Who Would be King, Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim. Michael adopted second on-set name, Robert, for reason we’ll let him explain.

Rick James: Has anyone watched Showtime’s Bitchin’: The Sound and Fury of Rick James? I went very deep on two of the stories it includes: The time Rick James was in a band with Neil Young, and the time Rick James narrowly avoided being at 10500 Cielo Drive on the night of Aug. 9, 1969.

David Chase: Deadline has a terrific, long interview with Chase, creator of The Sopranos and co-writer of the excellent new prequel, The Many Saints of Newark. I would recommend not reading it unless you’re okay with some Many Saints of Newark spoilers. Chase also says he would consider making another prequel film if he could write it with Terence Winter, a veteran of The Sopranos, the creator of Boardwalk Empire, and the writer of The Wolf of Wall Street.

Also: Add David Chase to the list of filmmakers (including Dune director Denis Villeneuve) who are very unhappy about their films being released simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max. Chase says he’s “extremely angry” about the situation and might never have made The Many Saints of Newark if he knew that would happen.

Many Saints of Newark Release Date: The film, directed by Alan Taylor, will be out on Oct. 1. As a big Sopranos fan, I love it. I’m sure David Chase would appreciate it if you’d see it in a theater, if you feel safe doing so.

Not Pandering: I finally watched The White Lotus and read this Vulture interview with the show’s creator, the wonderful Mike White. He responds to questions about why the show didn’t dish out retribution on some of its awful, entitled characters, and says something about pandering that I really appreciate: “I feel like I could create characters that fit some people’s political and cultural agenda and probably my own. That would be pandering. The point of art is to reflect something that feels true and conflicted.”

Good Trailer: Did you know you can DM things you’re working on, and, whenever possible, we’ll share them? Such is the case with Robbie Banfitch, who directed the very scary, very well-done trailer for his film The Outwaters. Have a look and let’s meet back below.

About Robbie Banfitch: “I’m Robbie Banfitch, the writer/director/editor and a graduate of the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan,” he writes. “I’ve spent the past nine years of my life working for the environmental organization Greenpeace and the past five years of my life making three feature-length films.  The first of those (The Outwaters) is ready to leave the nest. It’s a naturalistic, slow-burn story about a group of travelers who encounter menacing phenomena while camping in a remote stretch of the Mojave Desert. … the goal is to scare, and do so artfully.” The film is currently submitting to festivals. (Hey Robbie, this list may help!) You can learn more about Robbie Banfitch and The Outwaters on this Film Freeway page.

Send Us Your Good Trailers: You can always send us your good trailers, and a little about yourself and your film, to info@moviemaker.com. You can also DM us @moviemakermag. We also love behind-the-scenes photos, and are happy to share them on Instagram. We obviously can’t share everything, but we’ll do our absolute best to highlight standout work.

Comment of the Day Revisited: Recent comment of the day-er Todd Schoenberger noted his annoyance with the trailer trope of “high-pitched ringing to signify disorientation.” I just want to note that The Outwaters avoids this trope, while effectively using a lot of sounds very effectively, including: wind beating on… something (right at the beginning), a hard-to-place hiss or gasp (0:07), errant… guitar? (:14) and whatever that scary thing is going on at the 18-second mark. The subtlety of all these sounds immediately pulled me in and signaled that the people behind this trailer know what they’re doing. This level of care inspires confidence that they aren’t going to waste our valuable viewing time.

Main image: Michael Gandolfini and Alessandro Nivola in the Sopranos prequel The Many Saints of Newark. 

 

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Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence play scientists trying to warn people that the end is near in the new Netflix comedy Don’t Look Up, from Anchorman director Adam McKay.

In the just-released trailer, the president of the United States, played by Meryl Streep, asks the incredulous pair: “Do you know how many ‘the world is ending’ meeting we’ve had over the last two years?”

“Drought, famine, hole in the ozone,” adds an aide, played by Jonah Hill. “It’s so boring.”

The film marks McKay’s return to comedy after the (mostly) dramatic Dick Cheney biopic Vice and the financial-collapse drama The Big Short. Those were dramas with a great feel for absurdity. Don’t Look Up is a satire of our modern age, where lots of people suffer science fatigue and a seemingly endless barrage of grim predictions for our world.

McKay said in a recent interview with MovieMaker that the film is partly a response to the frustrations of trying to navigate a flood of news, misinformation and social media white noise.

“In fairness to people, we’re dealing with an explosion of media — social media interconnectedness — that I don’t think any of us ever could have imagined. It’s creating new types of communities. It’s creating new types of exchanges that have never existed in the history of Homo sapiens ever. So we we definitely are confused. We’re definitely angry. This happens to coincide in the U.S. with a time where your average citizen has never had less power than right now. So it makes sense that the little bit of power we do have, which is to yell our opinions on social media, to get angry and outraged, would go down like that. So I understand why people fall into it,” McKay said on the podcast, which you can check out on Google, Apple or Spotify or here:

Don’t Look Up, coming to Netflix on Dec. 24, includes a huge A-list cast that includes Jennifer Hudson, Cate Blanchett, Timothee Chalomet and Ariana Grande, among others.

This is a busy time for McKay: He’s also an executive producer of Successsion, returning to HBO next month, and is working on a series about the Showtime-era Los Angeles Lakers.

Main image: Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence in Don’t Look Up.

 

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What does Todd Phillips’ 2009 hit comedy The Hangover have in common with The Sin of Harold Diddlebock, a 1947 movie about a man’s wild night out that ended the career of silent film star Harold Lloyd?

On the latest episode of The Industry podcast, host Dan Delgado delves into the history of The Sin of Harold Diddlebock, an ill-fated picture written and directed by Preston Sturges that saw the end of a short-lived business partnership between Lloyd and billionaire philanthropist Howard Hughes.

It also shares some striking similarities with The Hangover. You can listen to this episode of The Industry podcast on Spotify, Apple, or above.

The Sin of Harold Diddlebock was produced by both Hughes and Sturges through their production banner California Pictures, which they formed together in 1944. But the movie would bring about the end of their friendship and business partnership when they realized they couldn’t see eye-to-eye about its comedic tone.

After its premiere in 1947, Hughes pulled it from release and decided to make several edits and re-shoot some scenes, re-releasing a new version in 1950 with the title Mad Wednesday. It flopped. Lloyd never made another movie, marking the end of a long and mostly successful career which included dozens of popular silent films and “talkies” from as far back as 1913.

Also Read: How We Shot Edge of the World Amid Jungle, Floods and Crocodiles

Tom Sturges, the son of director Preston Sturges, said the first time he saw The Hangover he was immediately struck by all it had in common with Diddlebock.

“A brilliant film. Hilarious. But if you look deep into its DNA, you go, ‘Wow, this is so similar.’ Harold Lloyd wakes up to a lion, and he bought a circus — tell me two other movies where a guy wakes up with a lion in the next room or a tiger,” Sturges said. “It doesn’t happen… those are the only two. So, when I saw The Hangover and I loved it and laughed my ass off, I went, ‘This is the hidden twin sister of The Sin of Harold Diddlebock.”

Delgado spelled out all the similarities between the two films.

“While they are definitely very different pictures, in The Hangover, three guys get presumably blackout drunk and wake up in a Las Vegas hotel with a tiger in it, having no memory of the previous night, and have to retrace their steps in order to find their missing friend. Oh, and in the process, one of them discovers that he got married,” Delgado said. “In Diddlebock, Harold gets blackout drunk and wakes up with a lion in his house, having no memory of the previous night. He deals with the consequences of his drunken behavior, which includes a circus that he bought. Oh, and in the process, he also discovers that he got married.”

Reps for the writers of the first Hangover movie did not immediately respond to MovieMaker‘s request for comment about whether Diddlebock was an influence.

 

The post Here’s What a 1947 Movie About a Wild Night Out Has in Common With The Hangover appeared first on MovieMaker Magazine.

A Justice League giveaway; the story of silent film icon Harold Lloyd’s last role, The Matrix: Resurrections trailer goes down the rabbit hole, and Adam McKay enlists Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence to warn that the end is near. All in today’s Movie News Rundown.

But First: We will not have a Rundown tomorrow, because of some things.

Enter to Win: To mark the release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League on 4K Ultra HD, we have ten to give away. But you have to be signed up for this newsletter you’re reading for a chance to win. If you’re already signed up, thanks! Why not get someone in your household to sign up, so you can watch Justice League together? 

What Things Though: Just, you know, personal things. Everything’s fine.

Harold Lloyd’s Last Movie: In the latest episode of The Industry, host Dan Delgado tells the story of silent film and “talkie” star Harold Lloyd’s final film — a comedy that bears amusing similarities to 2009’s The Hangover.  This is a story that includes Howard Hughes, a secret tunnel to the Chateau Marmont, and much more. You can listen on Spotify, Apple, or here:

 

The Matrix: Resurrections Trailer: I have zero insights here (I can’t even remember which pill does what) but this trailer makes me want to see a movie I didn’t have much interest in before. It seems to step outside Matrix lore and have some fun with it, the way Nightmare on Elm Street 7 went all meta. Everyone remembers Nightmare on Elm Street 7, right? Wes Craven’s New Nightmare? Anyway here’s The Matrix: Resurrections trailer:

Where’s Laurence Fishburne? Is a thing many people on social media are asking. I’m sure one way or another, everything will be fine.

“Things”: Exactly.

Also, Wow: This shot right here.

White Rabbit: One of my favorite things about the Matrix: Resurrections trailer is that I never, ever, ever wanted to hear the Jefferson Airplane’s melodramatic “White Rabbit” ever again, but it works wonderfully in the context of the film’s San Francisco setting and our current vulnerability to internet rabbit holes, which feels very Matrix. The most newly resonant line: “When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead.” And of course the lines about the pills.

Speaking of Logic and Proportion Falling Sloppy Dead: The new Adam McKay film Don’t Look Up, out on Netflix on Dec. 24, stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence as scientists trying to convince the world that a comet is coming to kill us all — and finding everyone has information fatigue. In a scene set in the White House, they warn the president (Meryl Streep) of the danger. “Do you know how many ‘the world is ending’ meeting we’ve had over the last two years?” she asks. An aide played by Jonah Hill chimes in: “Drought, famine, hole in the ozone. It’s so boring.” The cast includes Cate Blanchett, Ariana Grande, Timothee Chalomet, Tyler Perry and many more. Here you go:

Are You Going Somewhere Or Something?: I’ll be near Boston, Massachusetts, where Don’t Look Up was filmed. You can hear more about that from Adam McKay right here.

Attica: Indiewire has this interview with director Stanley Nelson, whose new film Attica marks the 50th anniversary of a bloody prison uprising that left 29 inmates and 10 hostages dead. The film premieres today at the Toronto International Film Festival and will air on Showtime. “Attica is a story that’s evergreen,” Nelson tells IndieWire. “We could have made the film at any time and the conversations would be the same, on mass incaceration, racial implications, and the need for reform. But it was good to look back at it 50 years later, and with new knowledge never released before.” Attica has also been the subject of past docs, and the very intense 1994 John Frankenheimer drama Against the Wall, with Kyle MacLachan, Samuel L. Jackson, and the late Clarence Williams III. And it was the subject of a 1980 TV movie starring Morgan Freeman.

Will You Be Back?: Of course! We love you very much and will be back with a new Rundown on Monday.

Have a Great Weekend and Be Careful Out There: I’ve shared this before, but here’s a scene from the jaw-dropping 1923 Harold Lloyd silent film “Safety Last.”

Main image: Keanu Reeves surrounded by new subscribers to the Rundown in The Matrix: Resurrection, learning that they have won Zack Snyder’s Justice League on 4K Ultra HD.

 

 

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The Voyeurs writer-director Michael Mohan understands the term “erotic thriller” reads as dated. And while he holds a lot of love for the genre which peaked in the ’90s, his latest thriller is not some stale homage to a forgotten era.

“Every movie is a product of its time,” Mohan tells MovieMaker. “Even though in my mind, I’m bringing this genre back and there is something of a throwback, just the fact that I’m saying the word ‘erotic thriller,’ there’s something dated about saying that. But I didn’t want the movie to feel dated.”

To Mohan, it’s important to distinguish between the different subgenres that make up this category of film.

“You’ve got movies like Body Heat and Wild Things that are these sweaty neo-noirs,” Mohan says. “And then you have ‘[blank] from Hell’ movies, like ‘the Nanny from Hell’ in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.”

But there is another subgenre, which Mohan calls “steamy moral dilemmas,” which include Adrian Lyne films like Unfaithful and Indecent Proposal, that Mohan hopes The Voyeurs will join.

“What I love about those movies is that you’re going to have an opinion on whether or not the character made the right decision. And the person next to you is going to have a completely different opinion, but will be just as passionate. And you get to have these fun arguments after the movie is over,” he says.

In The Voyeurs, Sydney Sweeney and Justice Smith’s characters, Pippa and Thomas, spy on their neighbors (played by Ben Hardy and Natasha Liu Bordizzo) — a couple who don’t seem to understand how blinds work. Mohan worked with cinematographer Elisha Christian (his roommate from film school) to subtly visualize the closing spaces between the two couples.

“What we wanted to achieve is that these apartments that are far apart felt like they were getting closer and closer together as the movie went on, but it was all motivated by story,” Mohan says.

“When they’re first looking over there, they’re just looking with their naked eye. So it has to be wide. It can’t go close, because she can’t see. The next night, when they look, we went just a teeny bit tighter on the lens. And then when they get the binoculars, that’s when we’re on that longer POV lens, and we stuck with it. And then as the movie went on, we would tighten up our lens further and further from there.”

Pippa and Thomas not only watch, but also listen in on their two neighbors, with the aid of a nifty laser pointer trick. Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation is a big inspiration on The Voyeurs, and these audio elements play into that reference.

Mohan worked with sound designer Nathan Ruyle to subtly transition a bustling city soundscape into a more intimate drama as the story wears on.

“When the couple first moves in together, you’re hearing all the traffic, you’re hearing ambulances, you’re hearing construction all around them,” Mohan says. “But then as the movie goes on, and they’re focused more and more in on this couple across the way, the sound of the city melts away until that one fateful night where Pippa crosses the line — you can almost hear a pin drop.”

That moment is marked by one of those character decisions sure to get audiences debating. Without spoiling anything, the plot boils over in its final act with a number of twisty turns.

“The thing I love about about erotic thrillers is that the best ones go far off the rails in the third act. I knew I needed to go there here,” Mohan says. “I was OK with it pushing the boundaries of believability, because it was going to serve the allegory of the movie.”

The Voyeurs, written and directed by Michael Mohan, is now available to stream on Amazon Prime Video. Main image (above): Sydney Sweeney and Justice Smith in The Voyeurs, from writer-director Michael Mohan. 

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