Monday, August 25, 2003
Fun (?) Movie News. #011:
Here's an update to this post, courtesy a recent Jeff Wells "Hollywood Elsewhere" column.
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Too Hip for the Room?
If I had a Coen brothers movie opening on October 10, as Universal does with INTOLERABLE CRUELTY, I'd sure as shit be taking it to the Toronto Film Festival. Even if it's a mezzo-mezzo effort, I'd take it there because the press generally loves the Coen's and the buzz and excitement the film would accrue would more than justify the costs and the headaches. Toronto is the sort of venue that's tailor-made for promoting an arch, offbeat, battle-of-the-sexes film of this type.
For me, the fact that this dark comedy with George Clooney and Catherine Zeta Jones isn't going to Toronto raises red flags in and of itself. Plus the trailer makes it look awfully broad and mainstream-y for a Coen bros. film. There's also this guy who occasionally gives me good stuff saying that some "radical last-minute tinkering centering on the second act" has been going on recently.
A Universal spokesperson says "not taking INTOLERABLE to Toronto doesn't signify anything except the impossibility of being in two places at pretty much the same time -- we're showing the film at the Venice Festival in two weeks with George and Catherine in attendance. And there hasn't been any radical re-working of anything -- who's got the time? The Coens are making LADYKILLERS with every minute they've got right now.
"INTOLERABLE plays flat-out great," the spokesperson claims. "The Coens maintain their idiosyncratic style but intentionally made a film with an accessible, mainstream appeal that's more associated with Brian Grazer, who produced it. It's a witty throwback to some of the Sturges, Cukor or Hawks romantic comedies that relied on sexual chemistry and verbal repartee, and George, Catherine, Billy Bob and the whole cast are more than up to stepping up to that. You're going to love it."
Clooney plays Miles, a slippery divorce attorney who crosses swords with Zeta Jones' Marylin. (Is there any other actress besides Madonna and Jennifer Lopez who's more closely identified in the public mind with opportunistic money-grubbing that CZJ? She's really got the greed market cornered.) Cedric the Entertainer plays a slithery shamus; Billy Bob Thornton portrays one of Marylin's ex-hubbies.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY's "Fall Preview" issue calls CRUELTY the Coen's "first foray into what is seemingly a mass-market comedy, replete with a producer who knows how to milk mass-market comedy for millions -- Imagine's Brian Grazer. 'They wanted to work with me for the mainstream part of it,' says Grazer, 'and I wanted to work with them for their quirky and artistic nature.'"
CRUELTY started as a script by John Romano ("Monk," "Hill Street Blues"). His script was substantially re-written by Robert Ramsay and Matthew Stone (LIFE, BIG TROUBLE), but the verdict came down that their version was "funny but not good enough," according to a producer who was around at the time. This activity happened maybe six or seven years ago. Then Alphaville's Jim Jacks, one of the film's listed producers, brought in Joel and Ethan Coen to rewrite CRUELTY "for money," the source says.
Then Grazer's Imagine Entertainment worked its way into things. Grazer declared at one stage in the game that Ron Howard would direct, but that never happened. In any event, once Imagine was in "they never left," says the producer. And then later "other directors and producers came and went" before the Coens were lured back to direct. The script "was always funny ....oops but arch," the source recalls. "It pretended to have an emotional core, but mostly that felt tossed off in favor of glib tricks."
The source agrees "that the trailer looks awful. I heard that testing has been mediocre. Kinda too hip for the room is my guess."
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posted by Linus |
6:37 PM
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