October
26
For Your Consideration: John Turturro's Romance & Cigarettes gets Oscar qualifying run
[Posted by Peter Debruge]
For nearly two years, it looked like one of the most offbeat and original American movies of the decade would never reach American audiences. I'm talking about John Turturro's Romance & Cigarettes, a blue-collar musical set in suburban Queens, where bridge builder James Gandolfini indulges himself in the two great vices of the film's title: smoking cancer sticks and sticking smoking-hot Kate Winslet (I'm not the type to drop the "O word" in my reviews, but come on Academy, you owe it to yourselves to see Winslet top even her Eternal Sunshine performance as the ultimate Scarlet Woman).
So here's the deal: Turturro started writing the script on the set of "Barton Fink" and eventaully made the movie for United Artists just as parent company MGM was changing hands, and while other movies caught in the fray (such as Capote) went on to box-office and Oscar glory, Romance & Cigarettes fell by the wayside. According to a recent New York Times story, after inheriting UA's undistributed titles, Sony couldn't find anyone to swallow Romance & Cigarette's $3 million asking price. So it sat on the shelf, doomed to an eventual straight-to-DVD fate. Until Turturro's pal (and co-star) Adam Sandler stepped in, convincing the studio to let Turturro open the film himself at New York's Film Forum in October.
“There’s at least $3 million of weirdos out there who’d go to see it. I probably know half of them,” Gandolfini told the Times, and I couldn't agree more. No matter how jaded, audiences simply don't witness movies as alive and crazy as this every day. It's a left-field ringer, an unmatched mix of carefully observed working-class detail and off-the-wall eccentricity (after Hairspray, who wouldn't want to see Christopher Walken erupt into a spontaneous cover of Tom Jones' "Delilah"?), simultaneously poignant and outrageous. It's bawdy, raunchy and rude, yet sentimental and sincere. Not everyone's cuppa tea, but it's got that Coen brothers feel (they exec produced for their old friend) and a terrific cast and — get this — it's coming to Los Angeles!
The film's Dec. 21 L.A. opening means, among other things, an Oscar-qualifying run. And Winslet's not the only standout in a cast that includes a side of Susan Sarandon you won't soon forget (the kind of steel-willed female character actresses can so rarely sink their teeth into). It's been an uphill battle for Turturro, getting this movie in front of audiences, and running the show single-handedly means you won't see any For Your Consideration ads on the cover of Variety. Take my advice: Consider it anyway.
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This is a great great film, Why did it have to go to DVD
until I was aware of it? This was Oscar stuff--confused.
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