The Brothers Bloom's Recent Activity - Spout

Film:The Brothers Bloom

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:01:02 GMT

Title: The Brothers Bloom
Year: 2009
Director: Rian Johnson
Plot: When the younger of two notorious sibling con artists announces a plan to go legit, his brother implores him to carry out one last swindle in the eagerly anticipated sophomore feature from Brick writer/director Rian Johnson. Tired of a life on the run, a confidence man who has dedicated his life to the art of the grift decides to call it quits. Despite his plans to leave his criminal past behind, however, the reluctant scammer finds that his brother has masterminded one last scheme to claim the wealth of an eccentric millionaire (Rachel Weisz). With the opportunity to make enough money so that he would be able to live comfortably even if his legitimate endeavors fail, the heretofore unrepentant con man finds it increasingly difficult to refuse his sibling's potentially profitable endeavor. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
Times Tagged: 66
Number of Lists: 7
Number of blog posts: 7
Number of discussion threads: 3
SpoutRating: 3

Spout Post: The Brothers Bloom review

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:04:30 GMT

Post By: JimBell
Post To: JimBell Blog
Post Date: 11/10/2009 1:04:30 AM
Body: Whether you like The Brothers Bloom (2008) will largely depend on your sense of humour and your tolerance for being fooled. Film maker Rian Johnson assumes you are “full of beans” like he is, and that you’ll follow the twists and turns of the caper with interest. It worked for me, but a sense of humour and a tolerance for ambiguity are highly individual. I liked the sly sense of humour. For example, when the con artists Bloom (Adrian Brody) and his brother Stephen (Mark Raffelo) select a lonely American heiress as their last target, they get Penelope (Rachael Weicz) who “collects hobbies”—we see a montage of her playing a variety of musical instruments, spinning discs, leaping into the air for karate kicks, and so on, ending with a piece of origami that looks a bit sad. The karate and the fancy paper appear later in the movie, which to my mind makes the montage of hobbies not gratuitous but which to some people seems merely smug. There is an intelligent “conceit” or extended metaphor that runs throughout the film: writing a life. Stephen plans his masterful cons like a Russian writer planning a sprawling novel, but Bloom is getting tired of always playing a part and wants to live an unwritten life. This raises the question of whether you can lead an unwritten life. The film does not explore this deeply because it is a fast-paced caper, but it provides a serious idea to anchor the shenanigans. It also sets up Penelope to reinterpret the metaphor in the climactic scene—what matters is who does the writing. If Bloom no longer has his brother writing roles for him, he can try to write his own life, the best story he can create. I thought the handling of the metaphor was deft, but others might see it as too smart for its own good. The actors were so good I could relax and trust they’d pull off any scene, funny or serious or ambiguous. I enjoyed a movie that assumed I was smart enough to remember a sentence about blood made early in the movie to interpret a key scene late in the film. The only noteworthy weakness is thatm try as I might, I cannot figure out Stephen’s motivation for his behaviour in the climax of the movie. I can guess, but the film does not give us much to go on. Still I found the entire movie a fun and entertaining romp.

Spout Post: Bullets of Summer: Movie Edition

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:01:02 GMT

Post By: ShaunHuston
Post To: ShaunHuston filmblog
Post Date: 7/27/2009 7:01:02 PM
Body: Picking up more pieces from this summer of non-blogging. Now, summer films. Star Trek. Like, well, pretty much everybody, I found the new Trek film to be well-cast and thoroughly entertaining. Structurally, I think that the intro for Kirk could have been tighter – the joyride scene in no way needs to be as drawn out as it is, especially not when followed by the bar fight. For me, the movie really gets started when Spock shows up. And yet, I do agree with Chris Wisniewski at Reverse Shot about the lack of philosophical ambition in JJ Abrams' reboot. Trek's creators have always strived to make the franchise about something, and while this hasn't always led to good film or TV, it does, I think, help explain the durability of the storyworld. The new movie is not only the first installment that seems to have been made purely for thrill and spectacle, but allows horrific genocide to go by with hardly more than a nod in the direction of the profundity of such an event. I still enjoyed the movie, but after the fact, I felt myself missing the typical moral and intellectual earnestness of the series. Sugar. An interesting and sometimes beautiful film, particularly in its handling of cultural juxtapositions and the deftness with which it wraps an immigration story in a sports movie. I need to watch it again though to fully develop my thoughts; my expectations were pretty high going in and sometimes it helps to see a movie like that once, with those burdens, and then again later, without them to gain some perspective. The Brothers Bloom. Another film I was looking forward to, and enjoyed, but need to see again. I mentally composed, but never wrote, a post on the movie's production design, which I think works well to shift the core cast into their own version of reality, one where Stephen's elaborate and literary cons might actually work. Motivated quirkiness of this kind, which is probably most often associated today with Wes Anderson's movies, works better for me than unmotivated oddness, as in Juno (2007), where the quirks are pretty much their own arguments, and not in the service of anything of consequence. The Girlfriend Experience. Not sure what to write here; a film I'm glad I saw, but can't say that it left much of a lasting impression. Public Enemies. This is a movie I like and appreciate more now than when I first saw it. I am compelled by the use of HD for a period piece like this, a device that clearly announces itself as a product of now, a movie about the 1930s, not of or from the period, which is the more conventional way of approaching historical material. Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince. As the film franchise has progressed, I am less enthused about seeing these movies. In part, this is because the films are becoming more what they should have been to begin with, which is directed at fans and readers of the books, which I am not. Moon. The best film I've seen this summer, easily. Beautiful, cool, provocative, anchored by a surprisingly understated lead, almost one-person show, performance from Sam Rockwell. Love the way the film quietly and cleverly plays with the memory of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Originally posted on:Short-Circuit Signs

Spout Post: Quarantine Brothers Outbreak Placid Ordeal

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 18:09:35 GMT

Post By: dibot
Post To: dibot Blog
Post Date: 6/13/2009 2:09:35 PM
Body: Lake Placid 2 is a sad parody of the witty original. the set-up is the same - people are going missing and then getting attacked/eaten on a peaceful Maine lake. Luckily, the filmmakers just gave up and went for the camp, knowing this film could never be taken seriously. But it's not even campy enough to be really good.I really enjoyed The Brothers Bloom, the second feature from writer/director Rian Johnson ("Brick"). In some ways, it feels like a Wes Anderson ("The Drjeeling Limited"), but Johnson has darkness Anderson will never possess. The story follows two con artist brothers through some early exploits and then a "last great heist," because one of the brothers, Adrian Brody ("Cadillac Records") wants out. But he falls for a girl, Rachel Weisz ("Definitely, Maybe") in a contingency that his brother, Mark Ruffalo ("Blindness"), couldn't plan for. Or could he? It's fun, funny, sometimes sad, but always entertaining. Loved it.Looking at the ratings fro Quarantine, they're not very high. This surprises me as I found the film to be a tense, often frightening, entry into the zombie genre. It starts slow as a local reporter, Jennifer Carpenter ("Dexter"), plans to follow some firefighters around for the evening. Almost all shots are from the handheld point-of-view of her cameraman. The early ones establishing the team and the firemen. But as they go to the first call, they find something strange and then are locked in the building by what seems to be the army. Not zombies in the traditional sense, but zombie-esque in the spreading and of the disease and trapping of the victims. Very watchable.Outbreak came on AMC the other day and I thought it would be fun to revisit, because, if there's something I love almost as much as bad horror, it's apocalyptic disaster. A deadly airborne virus pretty much takes out a small town and the army will do almost anything to keep it contained. And cover up where the disease originated. Anyway, the movie is just okay now. Still frightening in it's plausibility. Especially on the heels of this swine flu scare. But the acting is kind of blah. And it does seem to drag on, though the actual running time is only a few minutes over two hours. Not a bad watch, but not as good as I remembered.I watched Calvaire (The Ordeal) a few weeks back and found it seriously disturbing. A singer's van breaks down in some remote woods and he finds shelter at a local inn where he's the only guest. And then things just get super, super, super weird. It's not anything you haven't seen before, it's just the way this is put together. There are moments of silence that make you twitch and long for sound. And then music that just gets under your skin. And then the images, not graphic per se, simply a nightmare you wish you and the main character could escape. This is a film I won't soon forget.

Spout Post: 10 Worst Sundance Sensations?

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 19:34:28 GMT

Post By: SkyPilot
Post To: Sundance
Post Date: 1/15/2009 2:34:28 PM
Body: Reading Chris Campbell's 10 Worst Sundance Sensations is sort of like listening to someone bash your old friends. My affection for some of these films makes it hard to say whether I agree with any of his picks, which include Napoleon Dynamite, Garden State, and Brick. I can't argue with someone who says Napoleon Dynamite isn't funny, but I will argue with Chris when he says "Napoleon Dynamite is not comedy. It is merely quirky, which is not the same thing as funny." I don't mean to sound like a philosophy undergrad, but you asked for it, Chris: what is "funny"? He made me smile when he called Garden State a "homecoming of age" movie that spawned a hundred like it. Get this, though: "Any idiot can write a script of this type and fill it with quirky scenery and an obnoxious yet adorable love interest." Obviously Chris knows a lot of talented idiots. I appreciated his writing about Brick, especially the part where he says "Who wouldn't rather watch a double feature of The Big Sleep and Heathers?" Then I thought, 'I liked Brick. I thought it was gritty and exciting. How is Chris changing my mind when he's not even explaining why the movie is bad?' But maybe Chris's oldest selections are a good indicator of his judgment? I haven't seen Boxing Helena (1993) or The Brothers McMullen (1995), and I didn't even know Ed Burns was a writer/director! One of my coworkers just told me Burns was a really 'in vogue' filmmaker for a while. What do you guys think, are Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho Libre), Rian Johnson (Brick, The Brothers Bloom), and Zack Braff along the same lines? In another ten years, will people be saying, "I didn't know Zack Braff was a writer/director!"

Spout Post: Re:Collaboration - Best Films of 2008

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 02:43:37 GMT

Post By: mciocco
Post To: Community Recommendations
Post Date: 12/11/2008 9:43:37 PM
Body: A couple years ago, I started putting together top 10 lists. I had no problem in 2006... indeed, several of my honorable mentions could easily have made the list. 2007 was more difficult, but there were some great late year entries and discoveries that made the list easier. 2008 has been difficult so far, but I'm still holding out hope. I only have two definites for this year's list: The Dark Knight Timecrimes As far as some other films I enjoyed and am considering for the list: Forgetting Sarah Marshall The Bank Job Teeth Burn After Reading Let the Right One In And some movies I want to see before finalizing my list: The Counterfeiters Slumdog Millionaire Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day Doubt The Brothers Bloom Kung-Fu Panda (got the DVD this week!) Frost/Nixon Man on Wire The Curious Case of Benjamin Button The Wrestler And probably 15 others:p I think I'll be able to put together 10 that I consider worthy... ~Mark

Spout Post: Re:Collaboration - Best Films of 2008

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 23:30:49 GMT

Post By: mercurial
Post To: Community Recommendations
Post Date: 12/9/2008 6:30:49 PM
Body: Liked these (in no particular order): Cloverfield Incredible theatrical experience. Might be hampered watching at home. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist Cutesy teen flick. Had a great 80's feel to it. Hamlet 2 Perverse and just plain hilarious throughout. Great original music. House Bunny I'm a sucker for Anna Faris and she plays a ditzy Playmate perfectly. The Dark Knight A comic geek's wet dream. My Winnipeg Immensely creative, original film. A flurry of emotions in a bizarre little package. WALL-E Heartbreakingly sentimental love story; action packed galactic adventure. Iron Man Another comic geek's wet dream. And Robert Downey Jr. Nuff said. The Fall Just insanely wondrous film. Deserves the comparisons to The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Speed Racer Seizure inducing fanboy fun. Savage Grace Frightening 'Based on a True Story' film. Amazing performances. The Strangers Nothing new, but executed perfectly. Dark, abysmal terror. My Blueberry Nights Subtle, nuanced performances and beautiful direction. Packed with emotion. Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day Carefree, fanciful period flick. Amy Adams and Frances McDormand are a perfect slapstick duo on screen. Jumper Big budget Sci-Fi blockbuster without all the annoying garnishes. Watching the Detectives Made for cinephiles about cinephiles. Hokey fun. Movies that might be on my list that I haven't seen yet: Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead The Curious Case of Benjamin Button The Spirit Doubt The Wrestler The Brothers Bloom Revolutionary Road Repo! The Genetic Opera Humboldt County Just Buried Milk Australia Rachel Getting Married W. Fear(s) of the Dark Synecdoche, New York Zack and Miri Make a Porno Towelhead Vicky Cristina Barcelona The Wackness Brideshead Revisited Glass: A Portrait in Twelve Parts

Spout Post: Brothers Bloom is the Archer Fish of Cinema

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 06:35:12 GMT

Post By: laraemeadows
Post To: laraemeadows Blog
Post Date: 10/21/2008 2:35:12 AM
Body: The Brothers Bloom unwinds the story of two confidence men, an Asian sidekick and their rich but isolated mark. The Brothers Bloom is a charming off kilter dramedy about love. Bloom (Adrien Brody) and his brother Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) work as confidence men with their explosive sidekick Bang Bang (Rinko Kikuchi). Tired of the life, Bloom tells his brother he’s done. His brother talks him into one final con against Penelope Stamp (Rachael Weisz.) Penelope is a rich, excentric shut-in who has yet to live. They take advantage of her loneliness in a scam meant to satisfy her need for adventure. Rian Johnson sees the world in The Brothers Bloom the way an archer fish sees bugs. The archer fish hunts bugs above the water’s surface by shooting water at the bug from below the water line. When looking up from underneath everything looks like it is one place but actually is in a slightly different place because water refracts light, changing the view for the submerged. The archer fish has to see things slightly cockeyed in order to get the archery right. Rian Johnson took a slightly crooked approach to get the cinematic physics just right. Penelope Stamp is the Robin Hood of cinematic archer fish. Everything about her life, her development, and her emotions are delightfully off balance. She isn’t brilliant but she had dedicated herself to learning how to do many strange and obscure things. It wasn’t good enough for Rian Johnson to make Penelope interested in pinhole cameras (a camera made by putting a piece of photo paper in a light-tight container and poking a pin hole in it to expose the paper), it had to be a pin hole camera made of a watermelon. Johnson made sure Penelope is beautiful, but by casting Weisz, made her an interesting beauty. It isn’t just the nature of the characters, but also how they talk. Johnson commits so fully to this strange-ified world, that dialogue that would warrant a call to the loony bin in real life, seems natural in the world created in The Brothers Bloom. The downside to making the characters fit so naturally in their world is jokes or emotions that might resonate deeply in our world sometimes fall a little flat in The Brothers Bloom. There are no gut busting jokes but occasionally the audience finds themselves chuckling. Cheeks will not be soaked in tears, but occasionally a frog may find way into the throats of the viewers. The Brothers Bloom is an endearing quirk-filled film sure to whisk the audience away on a flying crime filled love carpet. If you liked this review, please visit my page. http://www.associatedcontent.com/user/65207/larae_meadows.html

Spout Post: The Brothers Bloom Review, Fantastic Fest 2008

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 23:01:15 GMT

Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 9/24/2008 7:01:15 PM
Body: Fantastic Fest is hosting four “Secret Screenings” of movies that haven’t been released yet, and the first one unspooled last night to a theater full of people who had no idea what they were about to see. Rian Johnson was in town with a print of his movie The Brothers Bloom, and one lucky audience got to see it several months early. It’s hard to watch Bloom and not think about the world that Wes Anderson’s films inhabit. Places where people travel by steamship, are always immaculately dressed, and consist of extreme caricatures. Johnson’s first feature Brick had that quality, and The Brothers Bloom has it in spades. It’s a fantasy world that Johnson himself probably wouldn’t mind living in, and I’m sure he’d have a fair share of people willing to follow him. At least one theater full of people last night wouldn’t have minded. Bloom is the story of two brothers, Bloom and Stephen, who bounce from house to house as foster children while cooking up elaborate confidence schemes to line their pockets with. In one of their first successes, they lure the local children to a mud-drenched cave in search of a fairy. Although they are found out and lose the admission ticket cash, they’d previously set up a profit-sharing percentage with the local drycleaner. What makes these cons work so well are Stephen’s elaborate plans, which often involve hand-drawn flowcharts and maps, and Bloom always serves as his central hook. As a result, Bloom is often the central face of these cons, and it keeps him from getting the girl, and he’s playing puppet to his older brother’s machinations. Throughout the opening scenes, when the brothers are young, con-artist expert and cardsharp extraordinaire Ricky Jay provides the narration. When we see the brothers again, they’ve aged through the miracle of movie magic into Brody and Ruffalo, and they’ve been joined by a silent third partner, Bang Bang, played by Rinko Kikuchi from Babel. By then they’ve been working the con circuit for years, and have become fairly successful at it. However, Bloom has become more and more melancholy, and longs for “an unwritten life,” meaning one where his brother hasn’t scripted everything out for him. He wants out of the con business so he can set out on his own. The only problem is, once Stephen grants him this wish, he winds up drunk and running low on cash. Stephen has no trouble finding him, and he lures him back for “one last con and then you’re out.” Bloom agrees, but the problem is that the he falls for the next mark, eccentric millionaire Penelope (played by Rachel Weisz) and despite his efforts to remain aloof, it throws a monkey wrench into the works. Especially once she discovers that they are con men and she wants to be one as well. That’s where the bulk of the movie takes place. The only problem with movies about cons, like House of Games, The Spanish Prisoner and even The Sting, is that you’re not quite sure what to believe, because in the end almost everything has been part of the con. Bloom is no different, and at times you realize that you’ve known what was going to happen all along, but it still holds one sad secret in surprise at the very end of the film. At least, it looks like a surprise. It’s doubtful there will ever be a The Brothers Bloom 2: Bloomin’ Onion or anything, but if there is…you won’t be caught off-guard. I have to admit that I’m not the biggest Adrien Brody fan on the planet, but he manages to charm in his role as the depressed Bloom, and Rachel Weisz somehow finds an entirely untapped well of oddness within her psyche that was probably hinted at back when her librarian character got drunk in The Mummy. She’s disarmingly approachable as a sad and lonely heiress. Ruffalo is cheerily robust in her role as the the ringmaster of all the cons and maintains a huge smile throughout the movie, but it’s really Rinko Kikuchi who owns this film. Her mute Bang Bang character is not only gorgeous, but she manages to convey more by not speaking than most actors can with a three-page monologue. Rounding out the cast is Robbie Coltrane as a co-conspirator who joins their long con, although Johnson had originally wanted Ricky Jay for this role, and Bob Dylan as the narrator. When he couldn’t get Jay because of scheduling issues, he got him to narrate instead and decided that worked out well because he didn’t know how he could possibly direct Dylan. Dylan’s participation probably wouldn’t have really affected the film that much, but Ricky Jay is honestly a perfect choice in the role of The Curator. Not that Coltrane didn’t do a good job, but given Jay’s obsession and earnest love for confidence games, it would have been great to see what he could have done with the part. While Bloom doesn’t carve new cinematic ground, it does create a new fantasy world for the art of the con game, and it remains buoyed by earnest performances throughout. While some reviewers have complained that it feels a bit too long in the middle, I could have easily watched another half hour, because I wanted to remain in that world just a bit longer. Bloom opens on January 19th. Hopefully it won’t get lost in the post-Christmas/pre-Sundance dead zone for movies. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

Spout Post: Rian Johnson Interview, The Brothers Bloom, Toronto 2008

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 15:00:56 GMT

Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 9/18/2008 11:00:56 AM
Body: Rian Johnson is the director of the innovative modern-day film noir Brick, which premiered at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, and The Brothers Bloom is his impressive followup. While Brick is certainly set in a world of its own, with everyone in a contemporary high school speaking in 30s and 40s detective-speak, The Brothers Bloom takes place in a fantasy world chock full of steamships, fancy cars, and mysterious settings. He gets impressive performances out of Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo, Rachel Weisz reinvents herself nicely, and Japanese actress Rinko Kikuchi is terrific with an extremely tiny amount of dialogue. It’s well worth seeing when it comes out in January. I sat down with Rian in Toronto and he told me about writing a part for Bob Dylan, his feelings about being compared to Wes Anderson, and his next project: a dark science fiction movie called Looper. Well, I want to start off, I was a huge champion of Brick at Sundance. Oh, cool. Thank you. We actually had a big debate after the film when we were having lunch. Most of the people we were with were like, “At the very end she leans over and whispers a word in his ear. She didn’t say anything that we could hear, right?” And I’m like, “No, she said motherfucker.” Right. And we saw you afterward and I went up and asked you, and you said, “No, she says motherfucker.” [laughs] I was wondering. Do a lot of people have that reaction, or did you guys think about dialing that down on the soundtrack? Yeah. I wanted it to be up on there so that you could hear it but you couldn’t. It’s probably more accurately represented on DVD actually in terms of the exact balance. But of course at screenings, I had like told myself, if people ask, I won’t tell. But of course I’m such a pussy when people come up and ask. Well, I was glad to know, because it was one of those things that would eat away at you. Yeah, yeah. If you crank it up on the DVD, you can hear it pretty clearly. I think, yeah. And I always thought that people would be able to hear it. But there you go. OK, good to know. Well, there you go. Mystery solved. [Editor’s note: In both the screenplay and the novella of the film, that moment reads like this – She brings her head to his, puts her lips to his ear, breathes warm breath, and says two words. The first is Mother- the second is low, guttural and lost to the whistling wind. She turns and walks briskly away. So maybe that was his original intention. At any rate, you know what it is in the movie now.] What inspired you to make The Brothers Bloom? I read the short poem you had written. That sort of was the beginning genesis of the film? Yeah, I wrote that before I wrote most of the rest of the script. I wrote that and then it was a while before I came back to it and wrote the rest of it. I guess it started with con man movies. That’s one of my favorite genres and the idea of doing something in that world appealed to me. But then what got me really going on it was the challenge of doing a character-based con man movie, or specifically a con man movie with a love story in it. Just because as a fan of con man movies and as an audience member, you come into them with such a specific expectation. The thing that kind of defines success in the con man movie, typically, is whether you get fooled at the end, which is typically a question of who fucks over who in the end. And you may be surprised by that, but it’s a surprise that you expect to have. So for me, the challenge or the marching orders, the thing that kind of got me excited, was can you do a con man movie where the audience knows coming in that they can’t trust anyone and thus can’t emotionally invest in them? Can you make that the actual issue at stake? Can you make that the main character’s main problem, have the audience identify with him, and then have some emotional stakes in it? And have the end twist misdirect a little, so you think the end twist is about the plot, but actually have the real twist in the end be an emotional payoff. That was kind of the thing that got me rolling on it, kind of the emphasis. And then for me, it very much also became about story telling, and how story telling works for good and for ill in our lives I guess. I subscribe to that Criterion newsletter. They came to you last year I think and asked what are some of your top films? Oh, yeah, yeah. I think House of Games, was that on your list? It was mentioned in the same email. Yeah, I think they were just about to put out the House of Games thing, which is a great disc. Did you get that? Yeah I bought that, you bet. The commentary is actually really fun. It’s fantastic. Yeah, it’s great. Is that that how you got Ricky Jay involved? No, I had been a fan of Ricky’s for years and years and years actually. Kind of an embarrassingly big fan actually. And just as like a little geeky hobby, I mess around with card stuff, mostly because of being a Ricky Jay fan. And actually it’s weird; one of my very best friends from college was Ricky’s assistant for years. And so there was always this strange thing when I hung out with my friend, because he knew I was a big fan of Ricky’s. And so there was that strange neither of us brought it up thing for years. But then actually at some point, I forget when it happened, but I was able to meet Ricky through him. We got to know each other a little bit. I actually wrote a part in this movie, originally the Robbie Coltrane part in for Ricky. But he couldn’t come out there for it, and we were lucky enough to get Robbie for it. Yeah, he was great in that role. Yeah. Yeah, he did a good job. Our initial idea was to try and get Bob Dylan to do the opening narration actually. Wow, what happened? I realized there’s no way I could have directed that, you know what I mean? Who knows what we would have gotten. Sure. So, I was really happy. I was initially a little reticent just because of the whole Magnolia thing. But at the end of the day, it’s such a different thing. It’s such a different movie. And it just made so much sense to have Ricky’s fingerprint on this movie somehow. He’s got such a great voice too. Yeah, totally. The role of Bang Bang, I’ve never seen an actress do so much with so little. She has maybe one full line of dialogue if you add it all together. Right, right, right. How much of that was her look and what the actress brought to the role? Well, that was exactly what I was kind of terrified with in going to actresses, is the fact that on the page it looks like there’s nothing there, you know? Whereas in my mind it was always actually a really substantial character in the movie. It was just a nonverbal character, which for me, that’s one of the things I was specifically really excited about with the movie is creating a nonverbal performance, finding someone who was into that. Besides Harpo Marx and being a big Marx Brothers movie fan, I had been going to see… there’s a show called “Snowshow” in New York that was put on by this troupe of clowns led by Slava who was very famous over in Russia. Actually Joseph Gordon Levitt was the one who got me into it. He’s friends with all those guys. Nonverbal performance in terms of clowning is really respected as an art form over there. And there’s so much that can be done with it. When I met Rinko, she was genuinely excited about creating a character without words, not seeing it as well I guess I’ll do the best I can with this, or not seeing it as why aren’t I in this script? Where are all my lines? But having the same perspective I did on it, which is that it’s an opportunity to do something truly unique. And the fact that there’s so much talking in there, and there’s so many words in there, I think actually makes her pop out more, because I think her silence is much louder than another line would be. You know? As a writer also, it was a good exercise, because the temptation and one of the things I think I’m trying to learn as a writer is you immediately want to put everything into words. You immediately want to say everything. So what was written, like a lot of stage directions for her? Not even a ton, because it would have ended up being like a 160 page script if I had written all of that. So I kind of had to sit Rinko down and explain to her how present she was going to be, how whenever the audience was unsure about how to feel about a scene, I wanted their eyes to go straight to Bang Bang. You know? She was the all knowing, all seeing eye. Yeah, and someone delivered one of the funniest lines in the film to her. The guy was like, “I’m really into anime.” Yeah, that’s our producer, Ram Bergman. That was very funny. So the look of the film is so amazing. A lot of times when we were discussing it afterward, we kept saying, and this is not meant to be a sleight at all, it feels like a Wes Anderson sort of film. I’m sure you must have heard that comparison. Yeah. Yeah. How do you feel about that comparison? It’s not bad company to be in, but at the same time, you also want to have your own movie. Well, I think it’s…Yeah I’m a big Wes Anderson fan, and I’m very flattered by the comparison. At the same time, I think if you take a good look at the movie and a good look at his movies, they’re obviously very different. And I know that the creation of it, for me, wasn’t from any sort of place of imitation of him. I wasn’t looking at his movies and trying to do that. I think it’s coming right out of a movie, it’s always the quickest and easiest way to describe it is comparing it to another movie, I think. But the quickest way of doing something is not always the most accurate, and I think. I don’t know. The comparison is very flattering I guess. So what’s next? What are you going to be doing? A science fiction movie I’m actually writing right now. Really? Yeah, it’s a really dark, very different than Bloom, very dark, very violent, actually, science fiction movie called Looper. It’s a completely different world and I’m really excited about chewing on it. Great, well I can’t wait to see that eventually. Good luck with all of it. Thanks, thank you very much. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

Spout Post: Adam Del Deo and James Stern, Every Little Step, Toronto 2008

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 23:01:22 GMT

Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 9/12/2008 7:01:22 PM
Body: Adam Del Deo and James Stern didn’t start out thinking they’d get into the documentary business, but Every Little Step marks their fourth documentary together as co-directors. It’s an emotional film that follows several hopeful dancer/singer/actors who hope to get cast in the 2006 revival of “A Chorus Line” on Broadway. I honestly didn’t think this would be too interesting of a film for me, having never seen the musical or the Michael Douglas movie version, but it was extremely compelling without taking a turn for a reality television style, which I’d feared would happen. Stern, who also serves as the CEO for Endgame Entertainment, had earlier produced Legally Blonde: The Search for Elle Woods which was a reality show about casting the “Legally Blonde” musical, and I still can’t believe that even exists. He’s worked on Broadway for many years, which helped him secure the legendary reel to reel recordings that consisted of show creator Michael Bennett in conversation with dancers. These tapes not only helped Bennett to create A Chorus Line, but they also serve as the backbone to the film. Read on after the break to find out what it was like making this film, how they got the tapes, and what they think about the current state of documentary filmmaking in America. What inspired you guys to get involved with this? James: First is, I was doing an interview with one of the trades, and they were saying, “How can you do another documentary? Documentaries are so tough.”  And I said, “Would you say that about a feature that I do?”  And they said, “No.”  I said, “Why not?”  They said, “Well there’s all sorts of different kind of features.”  I said, “Ah, interesting. So, you’re saying there’s not all different kinds of documentaries.” I said, “Now, you’re asking would we have done a documentary on Abu Ghraib or Darfur, and if we had would we feel nervous.” A) I don’t know if we would do that, because those are great, but it’s not necessarily we wanted to do this, but B) yes, we would be very nervous.  We wanted to do a commercial film. We wanted to do a film with a real heartbeat. So, that’s what we were looking to do, and we were really thrilled when we got this opportunity. It’s important for us that we did a film that was about something, but was at the same time commercial. What separates this film from the reality television is the historical underpinnings which lend context to the yearnings and the attempts of these young people within our show. And it gives you an understanding of why it’s all important, why it resonates with America so much, and the rest of the world too.  So, all that went into it. So, for us, it’s not reality television. At the same time, we’re really visually commercial film. Adam: Yeah, we didn’t look at it as reality television. The play is sort of a phenomenon, so iconic. What we really like about the play and the movie, the potentially really interesting movie, was that we were going to be following thousands of dancers that were struggling, trying to get a job on Broadway, and in doing that, revealing who they were personally, what it meant to work for that. But, that’s what the play was about.  So, there’s this parallel that needs to be turned into. So, Jim and me talked to her a lot about creating Fellini’s 8 1/2 following that type of a prospect and then applying it to this Broadway. So, that was really fascinating. Did you guys know about the revival in advance and then plan this out, or did it sort of come together happily? James: The revival is really part of it. John Breglio, who produced the revival and was Michael Bennet’s lawyer and great great friend, had seen my prior film So Goes the Nation. I produced on Broadway. I produced 15 shows in New York. So, I think, the subset of Broadway, producers of musicals and documentary filmmakers is probably one. So I was a natural for John to call once he loved that other movie. So, that was very much part of this, going into it. Did he also provide the access to the archival material? James: Yeah. He provided the access to the tapes, which was so critical. Without the tapes… the tapes are the stuff of legend. As a Broadway person, I heard for years about those tapes. People talked about them, and nobody ever heard them. So, the fact that we actually had access to those was a huge bonus as well. What surprised you most about this documentary? I guess every documentary has its own surprises. Was there something that just really surprised you when this was coming together as a film when you were shooting it? Adam: I think, for me at least, Jim has so much more experience on Broadway than I do, which is really zero. But, to me, it was just the amount of people, I mean, the waves, we captured that in the opening five minutes of the film, thousands of people come to these auditions. When you do the math in your head, it’s just like, gah! James: It doesn’t surprise me at all, because this is my life. I’ve seen this so many times. You’re right, for years. Adam: So overwhelming, that if they get the job, they get paid not a lot of money, that the people dedicate their lives, they need to perform. James: That was really what I did for love, you know. Adam: They need to perform. It’s such a powerful… if you get that genetic whatever that is, instincts to have to be a dancer, performer, there’s people who have to do that to feel that their lives are defined in the way that they want them to be. Did that help in the film making process that you just sort of brought a new eye to it? This is old hat for you, but you’re experiencing it sort of for the first time. James: I think 100%, and I don’t think it’s old hat for me. But, I do think that getting the history of it right, and getting the underpinnings of the show right, was really critical to me. And Adam as an equal counterbalance to making sure that it was something that was accessible to people that didn’t have my background was absolutely critical. Adam: Yeah, we had different versions of the film, some of which were more audition based. What I mean by that is following the audition process. And there were other versions that were more historical based.  So, we ultimately came to the conclusion that in terms of a target audience, not the entire audience, but just our target, was someone that had seen the show on Broadway.  And they had these feelings and memories that they’ve never let go, that it was such a powerful experience that they could relive that. And to add some information for the insiders and to keep it accessible enough that we could get a broad term audience when it comes out in theaters. To go after them and have all that not be too exact. Why has “A Chorus Line” endured for so long? It’s amazing. James: It’s endured for several reasons. Outside of the fact that it’s just got a phenomenal, hummable score, I mean the songs are iconic. You also have a construct which is about yearning and dreams, and that’s something that’s very relevant.  Additionally, it’s probably the first bit of confessional commerce ever done in America, so that, before Oprah Winfrey or before Mona Simpson was writing confessional novels, for goodness sakes, there was “A Chorus Line.” And I think that that comes, you know, I think that people can relate to all that, and people can really relate to individual characters in the show and think, you know, I can do that, essentially. Was there ever a moment when you guys were shooting this and you thought, we don’t know if this is going to work, if this is going to be interesting? James: Yes.   [laughter] Adam: I think, we always knew it was there, I mean, finding the movie, I mean, we have so much respect for any documentary filmmaker that makes a good movie, and all the filmmakers that are here. We know what it’s like to sit in that edit room on, you know, a cold Sunday night in the middle of winter, and you’ve got a big week ahead of you, and nothing’s going to work, and you’ve got to figure it out, you know? You’ve got to go through that 400 hours and you may take it one step at a time, because I think if you knew how difficult the process was, you’d be very intimidated. It seems like it would be. Adam: It’s a massive amount of work. We work with great people, and we’ve been lucky so far; I think we made a few pretty good movies. What do you think about the current state of documentary films? The American market seems glutted, currently, with documentaries. Everywhere you turn, there’s a new documentary on every possible subject. What do you guys think about the landscape of documentaries? Adam: Well, we’re aware of it, so we try to pick commercial, broad subjects. James: I mean, there’s great, great work out there right now which is very serious, and what distributors would think of, and we’re not distributors. We’re everything that is not commercial material.   I come from the theatre. I never thought that I’d make a documentary; this is my fourth. So, you know, I come from, all about writing, all about words, all about dramatic structure, and Adam comes from a narrative world as well. We came from place of wanting to do commercial films.  I think that everything is difficult right now. I think, features are difficult right now. I think that there’s a glut on the marketplace due to an excess of capital from Wall Street, which I’m sure will not be there in a couple years because of what’s going on with Wall Street today.  And I think that films that take word of mouth to develop aren’t real strong because there’s so many different releases every week, and people’s, you know, and there’s so much other ways to, you know, use your disposable time that that’s just really…  Now, I think that out of this, something else is going to develop, whether it’s documentaries online, whether it’s documentaries in some sort of form of television online, blah, blah, but the problem that we’re having right now that we’re in that inbetween time. Do you guys both sit in front of the monitor, are you trading off, is someone closer to the set, and the other person’s back in video village? Adam: We’re usually doing it together. James: I think that we do things together. I think that Adam is going to take more of a lead in terms of shooting on the ground, you know, on the verite stuff. I might take a little more of a lead in some of the interviews. So, we split things up pretty well.  And we’re in the edit room at the same time, although there are times when we’re doing different things in the edit room based on where we are in the cut. Do you think the success of High School Musical will benefit your documentary? James: Yes, 100 percent. 100 percent sure. I think that’s good, but I mean, the fact that my kids, you know, who are 12 and nine are inundated with the idea of seeing musicals makes this something that they are going to want to see, and not just someone who is my age. So, I think that’s all to the good, and for my purposes, as somebody who still works on Broadway every year or so, that’s great. I mean, the more that people are going to be exposed to different forms of art and culture, the better. Disney turned that into such a franchise, and they actually have a reality show now based on the making of high school musicals at high schools across the United States. If this film is a success and they go on and say, we want to do a reality show around casting Broadway shows or even “A Chorus Line”… James: Actually, I just did, I just did. I produced Legally Blonde. Oh, you did? James: Yeah, so I mean, we just did that one. OK. So, you’re already, you’re familiar with it. James: I’m already there, yeah. We already did this with Elle Woods, The Search for Elle Woods. Was that a difficult process, or was it difficult making that? James: No, you know, I mean, everything is and isn’t. I don’t think it was backbreakingly difficult. I mean, I think that, you know, I always say that making products that you really care about is the Lord’s work, and selling it is the Devil’s. And I think that anything that gets people’s attention for good work, I think, is great. So, what else are you guys working on? I loved The Brothers Bloom by the way. Great movie. James: Thank you. Thank you very much, thanks. What else are you guys currently working on, what’s your next project? James: Well, we have Easy Virtue here, which opens tonight, and The Brothers Bloom. We also have An Education which was written by Nick Hornby, which will be premiering later this year, an r-rated comedy. Endgame looks to be doing four to five films a year. Adam and I will be doing another one later this year.  The great news about doing a film like this is that it’s commercial, and that it’s got such a core, and it’s got such a commercial following. The bad news is, we have to find something that’s just as good.   [laughter] So we’re not quite certain about what it’s going to be, but it’s going to have to be something that really lands for us. It’ll be a documentary? James: Not necessarily. Have you guys worked on a narrative before together? James: Yeah. Which film? James: It’s a film called It’s The Rage which starred Gary Sinise and Joan Allen, Jeff Daniels, and Adam actually produced that and I directed it. That’s how we met. So, would you ever co-direct a narrative together? James: Sure. Sure. Sure. Adam: Yeah. James: Sure. Absolutely. Great. Well, I wish you guys success. James: Thank you very much. Adam: Thanks so much. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

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