January
20
Sundance Watch: What Just Happened
With What Just Happened, producer-screenwriter Art Linson and director Barry Levinson, with considerable help from Robert DeNiro, have crafted a delightfully amusing backstage Hollywood comedy. Think an update of The Player, maybe, or an episode of Entourage (complete with Cannes finale) on steroids. To Barry Levinson, the small ($30-20 million) budget required him to shoot "quickly and efficiently," as he said at the world premiere Saturday at the Eccles.
All the buyers were there, again, as seller John Sloss of Cinetic Media worried that the movie, despite all best efforts, had been over-hyped. Linson wanted the indie to go to Sundance to prove that it could play for audiences who weren't Hollywood insiders. Well, I laughed my head off--most of the guffaws in the room came from industry types. DeNiro gives his best performance in years and every moment rings painfully true, from the palatial homes of ex-wives that dwarf his own, to his battles with a bearded actor (played by Bruce Willis) based on Alec Baldwin of The Edge. Catherine Keener plays the steely-eyed studio head who recuts a crazed director's movie. This story is partly based on David Fincher's Fight Club, as chronicled in Linson's book.
It was weird to see this right after The Great Buck Howard, a Playtone production developed by Tom Hanks' son Colin and featuring a cameo by his Dad. Hanks did some funny stand-up before the movie which unintentionally topped the movie to follow. John Malkovich is terrific as a has-been mentalist. Young Hanks is a bit quiet and flat on-screen, as Emily Blunt (in her second Sundance film, she's also in Sunshine Cleaning) tries hard to keep things moving. But Malkovich carries the day in this odd, old-fashioned little fable that doesn't really go anywhere.
Both of these movies feel like tentative low-budget efforts on the part of folks who are accustomed to a much bigger playpen. They are turning to the indies and Sundance to give them a chance to escape from that studio prison. But they don't escape enough. Levinson's film is far superior, and feeds off heart-felt personal experience. After the screening, buyers filed out into the night. Some will call Sloss and line up outside his Deer Valley condo. Others will take a pass.
The expected buying frenzy has been muted as buyers seem more cautious this year. Unless it's all about to explode.
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30 million and Barry Levinson, who had to shoot "quickly and efficiently?" Please. 30 million doesn't require quickness or efficiency. It requires a jaded, Hollywood director who wouldn't know how to make a movie for less than 30 million bucks without feeling strapped. Hysterical. This is Sundance? (Why don't they just rename the Eccles the "Catherine Keener Theater?") That is a HUGE budget for ANYTHING playing at Sundance, and the fact that Levinson (who's best movie is still "Diner" back when he had something to say) is making a movie about inside Hollywood snarkiness is hypocrisy at its height.
Posted by: MrsWakely | January 20, 2008 at 10:08 AM
This was a great film to be a part of and acting with Robert De Niro and being directed by Barry Levinson is a true professional treat! When will we stop talking about the differences and just talk about the work. Bravo Barry, Bravo.
Posted by: Alan Sutovsky | January 25, 2008 at 07:24 PM