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Sunday, March 14, 2010
SXSW live review: “Lebanon, PA”
“Lebanon, PA” is the anti-“Juno.”
Where “Juno” glided along with a host of Hollywood talent and a twee self-satisfaction, “Lebanon, PA” boasts three name actors and a host of unknowns examining a teen pregnancy through a very different cultural lens.
We first see Will (Josh Hopkins) storming out of an apartment after an apparent breakup, A 35-year-old Philadelphia ad man, we next see him discussing how to market to children — a brave choice for a guy we’re supposed to sympathize with.
Will returns to Lebanon, Pa. to bury his recently deceased father, a man he saw very little after his parents’ divorce. His mother Jeanette (Mary Beth Hurt) is eager for him to sell his father’s house.
While in Lebanon, Will meets Andy (Philadelphia stage vet Ian Merrill Peakes, holding down the folm’s most complicated character), a devoutly Catholic, single father of two. His life at loose ends, Will strikes up an odd friendship with Andy’s daughter CJ (Temple theater student Rachel Kitson making her film debut). He also starts hanging out with CJ’s married teacher Vicki (Samantha Mathis).
Democratic consultant James Carville, who helped the late Robert P. Casey to an unlikely win for Pennsylvania governor in 1986, once described the state as “Philadelphia on one end, Pittsburgh on the other, with Alabama in the middle.” It was a bit of a snide comment, but he had a point. Between the two cities, Pennsylvania is a very Catholic state. (Casey was famously pro-life.)
Writer, director and editor Ben Hickernell takes a look at this very conflict. Will is big-city, non-religious and interested in a (possibly unhappily) married woman. Andy has struggled as a single father as long as his younger child has been alive and find abortion unthinkable. CJ is in the middle, genuinely unsure of what to do as some adults tell her what to do and others refuse to help her make a choice.
Hickernell and most of the cast was present for a brief q-and-a, including Mathis, whom one woman was convinced she had seen on a soap opera. (No, ma’am, but have you seen “Pump Up the Volume?”)
Peakes discussed trying the make a man very unlike himself empathetic and noted that if people took the time to examine many sides of various important life choices rather than rushing into a decision, the world might be a slightly better place. Amen.
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Capsule summary: ‘Tiny Furniture’
Many small, intimate films have portrayed the plight of wayward 20-somethings stumbling awkwardly into adulthood, but few have so effectively accomplished it from such an honest and often neglected point of view. That, in part, is why “Tiny Furniture,” written and directed by 23 year-old Lena Dunham is so refreshing yet familiar.
(That, in part, is why “Tiny Furniture,” written and directed by 23 year-old Lena Dunham feels so utterly original. Many small, intimate films have portrayed the plight of wayward 20-somethings stumbling awkwardly into adulthood, but few have so effectively accomplished it from the often neglected point of view of a young woman.)
Having moved back to her artist mother’s loft in New York City following graduation from a college in the Midwest, Aura (Dunham) searches for a sense of purpose and self-worth amidst a sea of pretentious would-be artists; immature and opportunistic men; and low-paying jobs.
The brilliantly written dialogue, especially between Aura and her (actual) mother and sister (Laurie Simmons and Grace Dunham), is burdened and enlivened by the offerings of daily life, both mundane and profound, and offers a pace and emotional depth that feels utterly natural. Even when it is incredibly witty, the movie never feels overwrought or embellished. It seems as it if is telling a truth, one that we have not heard enough in movies.
“Tiny Furniture” screens Monday, March 15 at 2:15 PM at Alamo Ritz 1; Tuesday, March 16 at 11:30 AM at Alamo South; and Saturday, March 20 at 4:15 PM at Alamo Ritz 2.
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Growing pains at SXSW
It’s great that the SXSW Film Festival is growing and going strong, and there’s much to recommend it. But….. seriously folks, when you have badge holders waiting in line for an hour and when you have people who have purchased tickets waiting in line for an hour and only a few of the badge holders and none of the ticket holders get in, you’ve got a problem.
That’s what happened today at the screening of Winter’s Bone at the Alamo South. And when you got inside, you realized why so few members of the public were getting in to the screening of the film. Several rows had been reserved, and people who showed up 10 minutes before the screening were being let in before others. Why? Some said they were members of the “jury.” And a publicist who was eager to have them see the film was hustling them in front of other people who had waited.
Also, quite a few seats were reserved for the “filmmakers.” The only problem: The filmmakers didn’t show up. Instead, you had a few people who had SMALL supporting parts, and friends of those who had small supporting parts, and they were let in AFTER the movie had begun, swinging their cellphones, which were still blaring.
As for the regular SXSW staff at the Alamo South, they seemed to show little concern for answering questions correctly. When I first arrived and asked which line was for Winter’s Bone, the staff directed me to a line, where I dutifully stood, waiting with others, for a while, only to discover that it was NOT for Winter’s Bone but for another screening.
I guess all of this is to be expected at a festival that is growing by leaps and bounds. But someone needs to get a grip or risk alienating the public bigtime. Anyone at SXSW care to respond?
P.S. For all of you people who paid good money to see this movie, which was a winner at Sundance, there’s another screening. 7 p.m. Wednesday, Alamo South. If you’re a badge holder and you see other people getting in before you on Wednesday, you might wanna speak up. It’s your money. Please email me if this happens. cealy@statesman.com
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SXSW live: John and Jonah, goofballs
On a beautiful Sunday afternoon, actors John C. Reilly and Jonah Hill were plumping their comedy of discomfort “Cyrus” in an Austin hotel suite. The movie, written and directed by one-time Austin boys Mark and Jay Duplass and co-starring Marisa Tomei, had its local premiere Saturday night at the Paramount.
- Chris Garcia: Jonah, a while ago you’d seen the Duplass brothers’ “The Puffy Chair” and immediately wanted to work with them.
Jonah Hill: That’s exactly what happened. I saw their short film “Intervention” first and followed everything from then on. I picked up on a unique voice they had, and it was clear that no one was doing it the way they were doing it. When you see that, you want to collaborate with those people.
- What’s so unique about what they do?
John C. Reilly: They don’t know how to make a movie the way most people make movies. They’re truly unique, because they just taught themselves how to do it with very little means, so their personal style just totally comes through. And they have a really strong b.s.-detector. They know when something seems fake and movie-ish and too manufactured. They’re really in tune with honesty.
Hill: They stand by what they want to do and will never deviate from their intentions.
- I know they give the actors a lot of freedom on the set. They don’t block as much, shoot long takes and keep the camera rolling when scenes end, which a few other directors also do.
Hill: Judd Apatow does a lot of that.
Reilly: Robert Altman, Lars Von Trier.
Hill: I heard that whoever directed “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel” did that. I heard that the chipmunks had quite a bit of freedom on “The Squeakquel” to riff and a lot of that stuff wasn’t in the script.
Reilly: Squeak!
Hill: Yeah, to squeak. Honestly, I heard that it was a really open set.
Reilly: (Laughing) Don’t do that.
Hill: (Laughing): Well, Theodore, the mouse that’s Theodore, is a clasically trained actor.
Reilly: No, Alvin is clearly the natural.
Hill: Alvin is the teen heart-throb, but Theodore — he was in the Steppenwolf Theatre with you, I believe.
Reilly: Oh, Jo-Jo.
- How much improv do Mark and Jay allow? Did you rehearse first?
Reilly: We didn’t rehearse. We’d all read the script and just show up and have some discussions about the general tone of the movie before shooting. They didn’t even want us to do one blocking rehearsal. They’d set up the scene so we could move around wherever we wanted to and they warned the crew that was going to be happening. Most days they would tell us not to do what was written in the script but to say things the way we would say it. Even on days when I thought, “Wow, do we even have a movie here? Is this going to gel together?,” I always knew it was at least going to sound original and fresh, because this is how people talk. It was just Jonah, Marisa and I trying to work it out.
- Your love of Austin precedes you, Jonah. How many times have you been here?
Hill: Probably 10.
Reilly: Damn.
Hill: I come out for fun. I’ve come three or four times for my movies and come back with my friends to drink beer and go to the Alamo Drafthouse. Waterloo Video closed, which I just found out and is very sad for me.
- John, I totally don’t care, but you kind of lied to me last time I interviewed you when you were in town. You said you weren’t playing Sasquatch in “Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny,” but you did.
Reilly: I didn’t lie to you. Sasquatch is real.
- During that same interview I think I offended you by describing a lot of your characters as “schlubby.” But now, in the “Cyrus” press notes, that’s exactly what they call you.
Reilly: Well, no one wants to hear themselves described as schlubby. You hear that four times in a day and it’s like, enough with the (expletive) schlubby already. A schlub. It’s kind of a lovable word.
- It is a lovable word.
Reilly: It’s better than schlemiel.
Hill: Schlimazel. I would refer to you as a schlimazel.
Reilly: What’s the difference?
Hill: Schlemiel, schlimazel, hasen-something incorporated!
Reilly: Hasenpfeffer incorporated!
- Can I just take your pictures and get out of here?
Hill: What? (Laughing) You have a strange interview style …
Reilly holds up a sketch he drew of himself. He’s on a skateboard.
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Scene report: “The People vs. George Lucas”
Darth Vader and Boba Fett greeted fanboys lined up for the first showing of the lively doc “The People Vs. George Lucas” — a line so long that another screening was added at midnight to accommodate the spillover.
There was little doubt about where this jury’s sympathies were: Most of the crowd clearly felt Lucas had turned to the Dark Side years ago and should be fed to a sarlacc. But cries of “George Lucas raped my childhood” were balanced in the film, which gave ample time to those defending his right to do whatever he wants with his fictional creation, including turning it into an epic bore.
After the film, director Alexandre Philippe (whose generosity toward his subject extended to a defense of “Howard the Duck”) said that the loved/hated filmmaker has not seen it. He and his producers kept the Q&A short, moving the party over to the Highball, where long before the “Princess Leia Slavegirl Danceoff” was scheduled to begin, Stormtroopers were spotted chatting women up at the bar.
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Capsule summary of “Marwencol”
Mark Hogancamp was beaten by five men outside a bar and suffered brain damage. He had to learn to write again, to think again, and everything else. But as he continues to recover, he has started an unusual therapy: Building small worlds of people in his backyard by using and modifying dolls.
His artistic efforts are the subject of Jeff Malmbergs’ “Marwencol,” which first screened Saturday at SXSW and will screen again at 11:15 a.m. Sunday at the Alamo South and at 1:15 p.m. Friday, March 19, at the Alamo Ritz.
Hogancamp’s alternate universe is set during World War II in a Belgian village called Marwencol, hence the doc’s unusual name. The dolls in the town represent his friends, and the main soldier is his alter ego. He stages stories by positioning the dolls, then taking photographs to document the different moments in his stories.
And some of the stories help him deal with his psychological problems. For instance, rather than getting angry at real-life friends, Hogancamp takes out his frustrations on the dolls in his imaginary village. SS officers are maimed and shot. Various characters are killed off, some in noble ways, some not.
It’s a fascinating look at the mind of a man who’s trying to recover from a tragedy. And the story really takes flight when Hogancamp’s work is noticed by a New York art gallery, which stages an exhibition of his photographic stories.
“Marwencol” is one of the top documentaries at SXSW. So put it on your calendar. The screening on March 19 is probably the easiest one to attend, since the music fest will be in full swing and film crowds will diminish.
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SXSW capsule: “Mars”
As the Alamo Ritz’s lobby filled with cast and crew of “Mars” before the Austin sci-fi film’s Saturday premiere, it was hard not to notice Kinky Friedman, unlit cigar in mouth, admiring the theater’s Davy Crockett statue.
Friedman plays the president of the United States in the film (Kinky getting elected to something? now that’s what I call science fiction), and appears to be reading from cue cards in many scenes. He’s a weak link balanced by an enjoyable performance by Mark Duplass, who plays a has-been astronaut hired for a Martian expedition mainly to do interviews with talk-show hosts.
The most noteworthy thing about Geoff Marslett’s homemade, cult-ready movie is its novel animation style, a computer-heavy rotoscope technique that leaves everyone looking grainy and took about two years to complete. It’s a greenscreen-friendly process allowing live-action footage to mesh with pure animation, which made one bit of the Q&A surprising: The loopy zero-grav bedhead hairstyles worn by crew members weren’t drawn in by animators after shooting, but were done the old-fashioned way by stylist Nancy Rankin.
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Capsule summary: “My Trip to Al-Qaeda”
Austin writer Lawrence Wright hosted a surprise early screening Saturday night of the new documentary based on his one-man play, “My Trip to Al-Qaeda.”
The documentary, directed by Alex Gibney, details the thousands of hours of interviews that Wright conducted while reporting on the terrorist group for The New Yorker. It also focuses on the tensions between being reporter and being a citizen after the 9/11 attacks.
Included in the documentary, of course, are many points that the writer made in his prize-winning nonfiction, “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.”
It’s a deeply personal documentary, detailing Wright’s frustration with U.S. policies that served to fuel the fire of Al-Qaeda. The torture, the waterboarding, the use of dogs to terrorize prisoners. (Wright goes into detail about the particular aversion to dogs that Islamists have because of a nasty historical incident hundreds of years ago.)
Wright first staged in his play in New York in 2007. But the documentary goes beyond just showing Wright on stage. It incorporates footage of him in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, as well as details about his meticulous cataloging of interviews that led to the writing of “The Looming Tower.”
It’s an insightful look inside a writer’s mind as he goes about trying to explain the rise of Al-Qaeda and the dangers that lie ahead if Al-Qaeda wins. The group has no political agenda, he says, other than to fuel the hatred of Westerners. And if Al-Qaeda ever takes political control, Wright openly wonders what kinds of policies they will institute. The answers are rather depressing and terrifying.
The screening on Saturday was kept secret, partly because the movie is scheduled to have its official world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. But Wright says he wanted to show the movie first in his hometown. It’s a coup for SXSW. And it’s a very worthwhile, timely documentary.
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