William Horberg

Back To Bucharest

I always thought that Matt Drake's original screenplay "The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman" had one of the freshest voices I had ever read when my producing partners Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa first brought it to me.

Which is probably why it has taken six years and a series of false starts and heartbreaking stops to finally make its way to the floor. Originality is not the most precious coin in the Hollywood realm these days. It's genre-defying blend of aching love story, comedy, edgy violence and trippy surrealism in a pitch-perfect tone of black absurdism that mirrors the sensibility of its Eastern European setting had many studios and financiers flirting with the project but ulitmately shying away in this risk adverse era of more formulaic and easily pigeon-holed fare.

You can see the surprised look on Matt's face as he finds himself sitting in the breakfast room of the Bucharest Marriott with director Fredrik Bond five weeks out from shooting and putting the finishing touches on the production polish of the script.

I hadn't been back to Bucharest in almost ten years, since the completion of principal photography of "Cold Mountain", Anthony Minghella's epic Civil War story which was mostly filmed in the mountains of Transylvania.

But as that film was rural and period, Charlie is contemporary and very urban, and the Bucharest I returned to was mostly unrecognizable to me from ten years ago.

Bond is one of the top commercial directors working in the world today and he is making his feature film debut on "Charlie". His uncanny eye and good taste have found some great locations for the film that capture in architecture and landscape the incongruous juxtaposition of romantic idealism and old world cynicism at the heart of Matt's fable.

This looks like the world's tiniest bar, but these gentlemen seem to be enjoying the intimacy of the space.

Shia LaBeouf and Evan Rachel Wood and Mads Mikkelson are starring the film, but they hadn't arrived yet on this cold and rather inclement day of scouting.

But things will heat up soon in every way as the circus comes to town and Fredrik Bond and Matt Drake and their whole team of artists and technicians assemble in Romania to try to capture the anarchistic spirit of Bucharest and film the necessary death that will finally let "Charlie" live!

Enjoy!

william

April in Paris

"There is Paramount Paris and Metro Paris and of course the real Paris.

Paramount's is the most Parisian of all." - Ernst Lubitsch

Ernst Lubitsch was possibly the wittiest of 20th century filmmakers, but even he probably couldn't have imagined adding to the list of his famous aphorism "Paris, Serbia" - the recreation of 19th century Paris springing to life on the stages of Pink Studios outside of Belgrade in April 2012 for the production of Emile Zola's classic tragic love story "Therese Raquin". 

 

I don't know if this production will be the most Parisian of all, but if it is it will be thanks to the efforts of our very talented and not-French production designer, Uli Hanisch from Cologne, with whom I had the pleasure of working twelve years ago in Italy on the production of Tom Tykwer's "Heaven" and have happily reunited on this show.

Uli is the wizardly alchemist who makes this:

into this:

Which when all the last nails are hammered will conjure up the illusions for our cameras that will turn Serbia into this:

                  

and this:

Does every great production designer grow up reading Sir Walter Scott's verse:

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive!"

As Ernst Lubistch knew, our celluloid dreams are made of just such deceptions.

Enjoy!

william

 

 

Ten Best Films

"Tis the season for retrospective analysis of the year that was and the resulting onslaught of lists, or lisztomania to paraphrase the film of British director Ken Russell, one of the many 20th Century film icons who died this year.

My TEN BEST list this year is retro - ten films that I had wanted to see for years and finally caught up with, or some fresh suggestions of classics from film friends that really inspired me.

All highly recommended. In no particular order.

1. KES

            

Ken Loach's second film after his start in British television and the one that brought him international acclaim is a masterpiece of realism featuring an unforgettable performance by young David Bradley and his kestrel, whose soaring flights over the soot-scarred landscape of his troubled youth are pure poetry.

2. THE WORLD

           

Thanks to Dave Kehr for turning me on to this Chinese film from director Jia Zhangke, with its fascinating modern blend of realism, theatricality and animation. Set in a loopy Beijing theme park with Vegas-style recreations of scaled down versions of famous world landmarks that might have been designed by the villian Gru from "Despicable Me", the opening shot alone is worth the price of admission.

3. GET OUT YOUR HANDKERCHIEFS

           

How did I miss this one? An iconic French comedy by Bertrand Blier from the '70's that helped catapult its star Gerard Depardieu to worldwide fame, the somewhat far-fetched and very French premise of a young husband enlisting a lover to cheer up his depressed and tres beautiful wife, wonderfully played by Carole Laure, has three or four unforgettable scenes including the tour-de-force opening ten or twelve minute sequence in which the premise is set-up so convincingly - a triumph of writing, acting and direction.

4. HOUSE

          

I blogged about this late '70's film from Japanese producer/director Nobuhiko Obayashi previously but it merits another mention here as a celebration of extreme no-limits-to-the-imagination filmmaking. Pure pop!

5. SHADOWS

           

It was great fun this year in preparing for the filming of "Disconnect" to revisit the early independent work of writer/director/actor/producer John Cassavettes and rewatch Husbands and Faces, and to finally get a chance to watch his very first and perhaps best film "Shadows". The closest film equivalent to a great improvised jazz solo, this black and white portrait of a group of interracial relationships in Beat era New York City stars Leila Goldoni and a memorable turn from Tony Ray, whose father Nick Ray was also one of the most interesting filmmakers of the era.

6. BLOODY SUNDAY

           

This film caused a stir among agents and executives in Hollywood when it first came around in 2002 and catapulted its director Paul Greengrass to big studio level filmmaking, but I was out of the country and missed it, and it has been surprisingly hard to get on DVD since then for some reason - it certainly deserves to be more widely seen; perhaps a Criterion treatment should be in the offing. In the vein of The Battle of Algiers, it is a documentary-style portrait of one man caught in the maelstrom of a devastating act of political violence, with an incredible performance by James Nesbitt that must be seen.

7. DAVID HOLZMAN'S DIARY

           

From people of the generation that preceded mine I had always heard that this cult film holds a place of reverence, and seen today it is a pioneering analog work that anticipates so much of what has become the lingua franca of the digital age - DIY, confessional self-reflection, unreliable narrative, meta-fiction. "Exit To The Gift Shop" certainly owes a debt of gratitude to this film. Having known the director Jim McBride for decades I am embarrassed to admit that I only caught up with it on its video re-release this year; but I'm happy to include it on this list of rediscovered gems.

8. THIS SPORTING LIFE

          

I was happy to find this still frame from the movie online, as apart from the more famous iconic image of the bloodied and muddied working class rugby player played by Richard Harris in this amazing, harrowing film by Lindsay Andersen; this was one of the scenes that really broke my heart - the tender interlude he has with the children of widower Rachel Roberts.  A sharp contrast to the film's brutal depiction of life and love as violent sport and a bucolic memory to cling to amidst the many hard truths of David Storey's novel and screenplay. Sometimes the emperor has no clothes, and sometimes a masterpiece is a masterpiece for a reason - glad I waited as long as I did to encounter this one.

9. BORN TO WIN

          

One of the pleasures of having a streaming Netflix subscription and an iPad. I stumbled on this great Ivan Passer film accidentally one night on location and couldn't stop watching it - not because of the small supporting role played by Robert DeNiro who is shamefully featured on the DVD cover - but because it was such a captivating portrait of a time and place (the mean streets of Manhattan circa 1970) with such winning performances (George Segal, Karen Black, Paula Prentiss) and an unforgettable turn by Jay Fletcher as Segal's drug-hustling buddy Billy Dynamite. It has a mixed reputation, but I think it is one of those films that has gotten better with age.

10. MURDERBALL

           

I liked this film so much that I hired its co-director Henry-Alex Rubin to direct "Disconnect". A documentary with a real grasp of narrative storytelling and just the right tone in a story that could have been too sentimental or full of bathos. The "star" of "Murderball", Mark Zupan, pictured here, even came out and graced us with a cameo in our movie. Watch for him!

What cinematic discoveries or rediscoveries did you make this year?

Enjoy!

william

Diego's One Minute Movie Reviews

                

"Hey, buddy, do you want to see "Hugo"?

"That movie is not for kids, Dad. It's about CLOCKS"!

:)

Enjoy!

william

War Horse

Having never read the book, nor seen the Broadway play, I was surprised to discover that one of the two Steven Spielberg movies out this holiday season belongs to the minor subgenre of films like The Yellow Rolls Royce, The Red Violin or 20 Bucks, stories whose organizing narrative principle is to follow around an object (in this case a horse) passing hands through multiple owners.

 

It would be a safe bet to assume that "War Horse" is by far the largest budgeted film ever made in this fairly obscure genre, and it will be interesting to see if it can overcome the pitfalls of the typically episodic nature of this structure, which can be distancing and feel gimmick-y to the audience (despite some epic battle scenes, it didn't as far as I was concerned).

In this golden age of snark, it is a dangerous gambit to make a film whose title can not only mean:

a. a horse used in war

but also:

b. something that has become overly familiar or hackneyed due to much repetition in the standard repertoire.

How much of our current mainstream cinema could fall under that last definition?

william

Cinema of the Mind

You know when you crack open a book and in one sentence are caught up in the spell of an author's voice and grip and eagerly relax as you know you are going to gladly be transported to wherever the storyteller confidently chooses to take you?

"Dr. Rankin was a lage and rawboned man on whom the newest suit at once appeared outdated, like a suit in a photograph of twenty years ago. This was due to the squareness and flatness of his torso, which might have been put together by a manufacturer of packing cases. His face also had a wooden and a roughly constructed look; his hair was wiglike and resentful of the comb. He had those huge and clumsy hands which can be an asset to a doctor in a small upstate town where people still retain a rural relish for paradox, thinking that the more apelike the paw, the more precise it can be in the delicate business of a tonsillectomy."

                                        - De Mortuis

"A rural relish for paradox" - wonderful!

Thanks to Peter Lang for introducing me to the delightful worlds and imagination of John Collier. As a fan of the fantastic and a wanderer amongst the wonderful, I have no idea how this writer and his work stayed off of my radar screen for lo these many years. What were those English teachers at the Latin School of Chicago and Wesleyan University thinking to not include a writer like Collier in their cirriculum?

Thanks to the New York Review of Books publishing imprint for collecting these fanciful stories and bringing them back in print for the 21st century - with a fan's appreciation of an introduction by Ray Bradbury no less!

Apparantly one of Collier's epic but never realized achievements was his screenplay adaptation of Milton's "Paradise Lost" - which he dubbed Cinema of the Mind. It would take more than a "rural relish for paradox" to think that we are currently living in an Age of "cinema of the mind" (many other body parts would more quickly spring to mind), but imagine if some brave filmmaker and adventurous studio would boldly take up Collier's mantle today!

Who would your choice be to play Adam? Eve? Moloch? Satan? Beelzebub?

Enjoy!

william

Source Code

Great books often don't make great movies.

It's a funny paradox that many filmmakers have found out the hard way over the years. Baz Lurhmann is creating his own new version of The Great Gatsby this Fall, and the bar is set pretty low for him to come up with a more imaginative interpretation than Jack Clayton's inert 1974 attempt, but it will be interesting to see if he can avoid the pitfalls of the highbrow literary adaptation.

The fine subtle quality of the prose, the interior voice of the characters the author so easily conjures, the pressure of competing with the expectations of a fan base of readers who have already made their own film in their mind, can be a deadly cocktail to overcome in the translation from one medium to the other.

So it is fun to dig deep sometimes and find some of the more obscure and disreputable fiction that has been used as the basis for some of the greatest works of cinema.

Few people have heard of writer Harry Grey today, and fewer still have read him. But those who have might have enjoyed the poetry of his hard-bitten noir sensibility and the verisimilitude in his portrayal of growing up gangster on the Lower East Side.

We reached the bottom of the stairway. It was like a play with all the actors converging from different entrances on to the stage. The cashier, an amazed expression on his face, had turned, facing us.

Patsy crowded in from the doorway holding his .45, looking fierce and incredulous at the same time. Behind him was the stocky guy and the two tall men. Back of them pushing into the room were Jake, Pipy and Goo-Goo with rods. All eyes were fixed on us, Maxie and me. Big Max had the Tommy gun in his hands. His .45 in the holster was strapped to his bare chest. His .22 was attached to his right arm, and I crouched with my .45 in my right, my big knife in my left hand. 

We were a dirty, sweaty, savage, bizarre-looking pair.

One person who did apparantly read Harry Grey was the brilliant Italian auteur Sergio Leone, and the book later became the basis for his epic crime masterpiece "Once Upon A Time In America". Liberated from any obligation to faithfully serve a work of literature, Leone and his team of screenwriters Leonardo Benvenuti, Piero De Barnardi, Enrico Medioli, Franco Arcalli and Franco Ferrini (what a writing room that must have been!) came up with a work of pure cinema in which non-linear time and memory give shape and meaning to the narrative.

Another great piece of source code for a Hollywood classic is Ira Wolfert's huge tome "The Underworld" aka "Tucker's People" which became the basis for Abraham Polonsky's unforgettable "Force of Evil" starring John Garfield. Wolfert was around to share screenplay credit on that film.

All the things a man has to go through to get to live here, thought Leo, the things, the things, thousands and millions and millions of dirty things to hurt people and hurt himself.  The street seemed drowned in stone. It looked narrow and drowned, a thing emptied of life and walled with swollen, stone bones. The feeling of costly desolation was heavy in Leo. This costly desolation was splendor, but Leo did not think of it as splendid. Yet he tried to be faithful to the rich. He tried to think of the costly desolation as good for sleep. Only the rich could afford to buy quiet like this in the heart of the city, he told himself. He felt suddenly that only a man who had made himself rich could become barren enough to want and be comfortable in this desolation.

A war correspondent with progressive political views, he was labeled a Communist in that witch-hunting era and denounced by HUAC and others. The book does have quite a scathing view of the jungle ethos of unfettered capitalism and a nice way of equating gangsters and businessmen that is hardly new today but still carried some bite back in 1943 when written.

Sydney Pollack used to talk about the work that he and David Rayfiel did adapting the pulp-y "Six Days of the Condor" into the rich, evocative and thematically sophisticated "Three Days of the Condor".

When you are enjoying a movie that works on its own visual terms and doesn't seem like a filmed recording of a play or a story in another medium, consider the source!

Enjoy!

william

The Tree of Life

I'm still contemplating the visual and aural symphony that is Terrence Malick's latest entry into his unique and all-too small body of utterly non-conformist films.

Whatever adjustments one has to make to let go of narrative and dramatic expectations and just "experience" his vision, I for one am always happy to surrender to him - profound and pretentious, banal and breathtaking, microscopically emotional and majestically grand- it is all there to love or hate.

I am still pondering the opening line of narration - "There are two ways through life. The way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you will follow." - and not sure yet if it is the key to unlocking the meaning of the film for me. I am drawn to see it again.

But the film, and that line, did inspire me to make a happy connection to a class I took many years ago on Metaphysical poetry, and to find anew these verses from George Herbert.

In Affliction (IV) he pictures humanity as caught in the awkward space between human nature and divine grace.

Broken in pieces all asunder,
Lord, hunt me not,
A thing forgot,
Once a poor creature, now a wonder,
A wonder tortur’d in the space
Betwixt this world and that of grace.

My thoughts are all a case of knives,
Wounding my heart
With scatter’d smart,
As wat’ring pots give flowers their lives.
Nothing their fury can control,
While they do wound and prick my soul.

All my attendants are at strife,
Quitting their place
Unto my face:
Nothing performs the task of life:
The elements are let loose to fight,
And while I live, try out their right.

Oh help, my God! let not their plot
Kill them and me,
And also thee,
Who art my life: dissolve the knot,
As the sun scatters by his light
All the rebellions of the night.

Then shall those powers, which work for grief,
Enter thy pay,
And day by day
Labour thy praise, and my relief;
With care and courage building me,
Till I reach heav’n, and much more, thee.

Herbert's poetry reflects his own experience that human frailty abounds; but he also knew that divine grace abounds all the more. 

Malick's film feels like a direct descendant of those poets - the Metaphysical Filmmaker.

Enjoy!

william

 

 

The Last Picture Show

The abandoned Renaissance movie theatre in the main square, Point-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe.

Houston, We've Got A Problem

That sulfurous smell wafting down Hollywood Boulevard this month is not some municipal gas leak, nor the malodorous consequence of an egg yolk turned bad, but rather another by-product altogether, the hard-boiled blackness of the human hearts on display in this months festival of classic Noir films playing at the Egyptian Theater.

The programmers have served up an eclectic menu of murder and mayhem, including some rarely-screened, never-on-dvd prints of films that won't be found on many film noir best-of lists and barely rate a mention even in Todd McCarthy's seminal "Kings of the B's" guide to cut-rate cinema.

Movies like the Sam Katzman produced and William Castle directed "The Houston Story" and "New Orleans Uncensored" are fun to watch today for their extreme low-budget "ripped from the headlines" social commentary and their on-location photography which afford a documentary pleasure in showing us a world long gone.

In one laugh-out-loud moment, the morality-free chanteuse played by Barbara Hale (soon to become famous as Perry Mason's sidekick Della Street on television) drops a dime on her lover Gene Barry, giving away his location to the two gunmen sent to kill him, while the good girl waitress from the Derrick Diner (this being a Houston scam involving corruption on the oil fields) who actually loves Barry, phones the police, hoping they can get there in time to prevent his murder.

"Thanks, lady, you just saved the state a lot of money" is the lead detective's budget-conscious reply.

And where else will you find dialogue like:

"What's a flunky? 

"A hood with a social security number."

Castle is famous for "The TIngler" and other '60's era exploitation movies, but "The Houston Story", while nothing spectacular, was a solid little programmer, almost innocent in its quite modest ambitions and economical style.

Also modest was the motley group of hard-core noir cognoscenti who turned out for the double-feature. "What a collection!" I whispered to my wife as I looked around the theater. "What are you talking about, you're one of them" was her noir-ish wise-crackin' reply.

And she was right!

Enjoy!

william