Thompson On Hollywood

Watchmen's Snyder Reveals Secrets; Legendary's Tull Talks Superman

I'm not going out on a limb to say that the most anticipated presentation at Comic-Con will be Zack Snyder's panel on Warner Bros.' The Watchmen. Remember, 300 exploded out of Comic-Con two years ago.

The trailer hit the Web this week, and the HD version is stunning. I love trailers where you don't know what the hell is going on. Of course afficionados of the Alan Moore comics can identify the origin story of Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) and the shadowy bipolar Rorshact Rorschach, among others.

Snyder himself explains some of his secrets here. UPDATE: And here's EW's Snyder and Alan Moore interviews. And Comic-Con preview.

Today I talked to someone who has seen the movie, Legendary Pictures producer Thomas Tull, who goes 50/50 with Warner Bros. on such films as Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, Superman Returns, 300 and The Lady in the Water (the only film he didn't actually produce). An old Watchmen comics fan, Tull wanted in on the film as soon as Snyder pitched it, even though many people have regarded the complex, layered sci-fi narrative about superheroes who are real as unfilmable. After Tull saw a cut of the movie he told Snyder, "You got it. You nailed it the spirit of it and made it come alive."

"It's a smart visually stunning movie," he told me. Of course he's vested.

He's also vested in making the next Superman installment, which is still years away, come to life. While Bryan Singer has been working on Valkyrie, Tull and the folks at Warners have been listening to various screenwriters pitch their solutions to how to make the next Superman work. "It's an iconic character," says Tull. "After everything that went into the first film, it's important to make sure that nothing is rushed and we come out with a fantastic second film." One thing they all agree on: Superman needs a powerful antagonist, a "worthy opponent," he says.

Coming sooner is Louis Leterrier's follow-up to Incredible Hulk, Clash of the Titans. And no, Leterrier is not being talked about to direct Superman. "He's laser-focused on Titans," says Tull.

Where The Wild Things Aren't

When you think about it, the first inkling that director Spike Jonze wanted to use animatronic puppets for his adaptation of Maurice Sendak's beloved children's book Where the Wild Things Are was a warning sign. First of all, just look at Jonze's movies and sensibility and you know he's a maverick indie spirit, an artist. It's no shock that he ran into trouble making a mainstream studio movie with family appeal--especially at straight-arrow studio Warner Bros., which is better at making tentpoles than anything else. Which may be why they gave the guy $80 million??!!

While I applaud Warner chief Alan Horn for giving the director some time to figure things out, I agree with Patrick Goldstein that this may not have been an ideal match (much like the Wachowskis and Speed Racer) between director and subject. As exciting as it is to have Dave Eggers write the screenplay, again, Eggers + Jonze does not = family movie for all audiences.

That's what Warner Independent was supposed to be for, guys. (For a lot less money.)

Red Cliff: Woo's Part One Opens in Asia

Part One of John Woo's two-part, four-hour Red Cliff will open in Asia on July 10. Woo and his producer Terence Chang took on the Herculean task of mounting--on their own, with backing from five Asian countries--the $80-million production, the biggest ever in China. Part Two of this period epic romance, based on 2000-year-old Chinese history, comes in January, plus a 2 1/2 hour edit for western audiences. After that cut is complete, Woo and Chang will seek a North American distributor.

One Asia spy writes: "It is great. This feels like the film that John Woo has been saving up his skills to make for the last decade. Two hours 20 went by in a canter. Lots of strong action, but not as gory as some I've seen. It should be an absolute smash in Asia where the story and 22 characters are well known. Elsewhere, will it be the breakthrough or a new CTHD? Not sure as it is not Jackie Chan style chop socky."

At Cannes, Woo unveiled some pretty stunning battle footage. He told the film's global buyers that he was thrilled to be able to bring western movie techniques--including VFX, special effects and CGI (like The Orphanage from the U.S.)-- to the Chinese film community via his "dream project," which he had wanted to make for over 18 years. The movie's pan-Asian ensemble is led by Tony Leung and Takeshi Kaneshiro.

Even Woo seemed staggered by the film's scale and scope. "Thousands of horses, 800,000 soldiers, so many battle ships." Woo burned three large boats, and sixteen smaller boats. With CG, it looks like 2000, he said. The great battle was 50,000 against 800,000, he said. "They needed great wisdom and smarts and skill to win it. I wanted to make this the biggest action sequence ever." Woo enjoyed working with freedom away from the constraints of commercial Holllywood filmmaking. "I did whatever I want," he said.

The weather didn't help. "It was extremely hot and extremely cold," he said. "Some scenes needed 100,000 people running in the heat. A lot of people got heat fever. It took a lot of time and patience to let the crew know how to make the shots work. After this experience they can handle all kinds of movies."

"Welcome home, director Woo," said veteran actor Zhang Fengyi.

The LAT's Rachel Abramowitz talked to Chang about what happened on the set of Red Cliff, when a stuntman was burned to death. When the wind turned and fire headed for the Red Cliff stuntmen, Chang said, "It was horrible, truly horrible."

Peirce Markets Stop-Loss DVD on Facebook

Facebook is catching up with MySpace as a key marketing tool for filmmakers. Kimberly Peirce, for example, posted the following DVD promo letter to her Facebook friends:

Hello,

Just wanted to let you guys know that...

STOP-LOSS is ON DVD TODAY JULY 8.

The DVD is loaded with tons of great features, including a commentary track, deleted scenes, a making-of documentary and footage of the actors going through boot camp.

VARIETY calls the DVD “worthy viewing for those who missed the film the first time around” and Peter Travers of ROLLING STONE says that Stop-Loss is “the first major movie of the new year that touches greatness.”

You can purchase the DVD through this link:

And you can go to stoplosscontest for a chance to WIN ONE OF THREE PARAMOUNT PRIZE PACKS (or just suggest a reason why I should send you one)

I'd love to hear what you think of the DVD and the extras.

Best,

KP

Here she talks to Current TV:

Dark Knight as Written by Michael Bay

A screenplay has leaked on the Internet, of a recently unearthed Dark Knight script by writer-director Michael Bay. (It's a send-up.) Warners clearly opted to go another way.

Dark Knight Review: Nolan Talks Sequel Inflation

Finally, I would have preferred to see The Dark Knight in 35 mm, not IMAX. (I will go see it again when it opens July 18.) While the sequences that were shot with giant cameras were stunning at the IMAX venue--especially the deep detailed helicopter shots over Gotham and the amazing car/truck chase filmed in Chicago's freeway tunnels--I found the movie overwhelming. My brain starts to shut down when it gets over-pixillated, and this film goes on for two and a half hours. (Here's Justin Chang's review.)

My instincts told me when I first saw The Dark Knight trailer: Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins follow-up would fall into the trap of the summer tentpole sequel. It's not entirely his fault. The studio gives him his marching orders: top the last one. Make it bigger, better, bolder, more FX, more action, more scale and scope and characters (read toys). What else should a poor boy to do with $180 million?

Nolan delivered on the first Batman reboot and he does it again here. The Dark Knight will work at the boxoffice and keep the franchise alive.

In many ways, this movie functions as a western, with an honorable sheriff (Gary Oldman's lovable police detective Gordon), a nasty outlaw (Heath Ledger's extraordinary, anarchistic Joker), a lone gunman hero operating outside the law (Christian Bale's Batman) with loyal veteran sidekick (Michael Caine as Alfred), and the lovely lass that the outsider cannot have (Rachel Dawes, the delightful and wily Maggie Gyllenhaal).

And then--here's where the movie starts to go off the tracks--we have Aaron Eckhart's Harvey Dent, the too-virtuous-to-be-true D.A. who is in love with Gyllenhaal, thus forming a love triangle, as well as another Batman accomplice, inventor Lucius Fox (read James Bond's Q), played by the over-exposed Morgan Freeman. Then add a bunch of mafia guys led by deliciously wicked Eric Roberts.

Somehow, David S. Goyer (who wrote the story), and screenwriter Nolan brothers Chris and Jonathan manage to play out all these plot strands. But they wind up with a half-hour finale on top of the two hour main movie, which is really about Batman vs. Joker, who wind up in an iconic face-off on a main street in Gotham. (Ledger dominates Dark Knight news coverage, natch. The LAT addresses the movie from that angle, while EW goes way overboard. Clearly, Warners is making an Oscar push for the film. Ledger's acting nomination is inevitable; while James Dean and others have been nominated after their deaths, only Network's Peter Finch has won a posthumous Oscar.)

Oddly, because The Dark Knight is busy servicing all these other characters, the movie doesn't spend enough time with its leading man, Bruce Wayne/Batman (BTW, Batman's basso-growly voice is silly).

After twists and turns aplenty, some more satisfying than others, the movie comes to a gratifying conclusion (setting up the next sequel). But while Eckhart is winning as Dent, his character detour as Two-Face does not pay off.

I suspect that the filmmakers should have figured out the shorter version of this movie before they shot it, not after, because by then they couldn't cut it, according to Nolan (the full Q & A from one of my Guild spies is on the jump). Nolan shot The Prestige before he came back to work on the final drafts of the script. And by then he was locked into studio-mandated start and delivery and release dates.

My fantasy of the ideal version of this movie doesn't matter a whit, because it will play. The complexities of the plot are more fun to talk about than anything since Wall-E or Iron Man, and that makes Dark Knight one of the best movies of the summer. Maybe some dark over-nourishment is better than a simpler, structurally perfect masterpiece, after all.

Mitchell Hosts New TMC Interview Series

While there's no denying that critic/personality Elvis Mitchell can be charming, don't count on him to turn in a piece on deadline or show up for dinner.

But he has always done well with low-stress interview situations that call upon his considerable charisma. This film.com interviewer managed to grab Mitchell for a self-serving phoner about his upcoming new TMC show, Under the Influence, which debuts July 7. Mitchell, who also conducts weekly interviews on KCRW's The Treatment, makes his subjects feel welcome, comfortable and chatty. But Terry Gross he is not.

Among his upcoming subjects are the late great Sydney Pollack, Bill Murray, Joan Allen and the always engaging Quentin Tarantino.

Tell-Alls: Weinsteins and 48 HRS.

Just because the New York Post reports that someone who used to work at Miramax is writing a Weinstein tell-all does not mean it will ever see the light of day.

Much as I would love to read it.

But what goes up, must come down. Michael Eisner, Mike Ovitz, Joel Silver and the Weinsteins are not what they once were. Haze your way up in this business, and it's rougher on the downward slope. Your friends can become your enemies. And when things are rough, as they are now for the Weinsteins--many folks are asking how long Goldman Sachs will support their company's current scale and scope--all the knives come out.

People in Hollywood love to jump gleefully on a once-fierce competitor when they aren't so strong anymore. But the Weinsteins have many friends in New York politics and publishing, so we shall see.

The would-be Weinstein book author attached a seven-minute audio file to his pitch to Page Six:

The recording is of a Dec. 12, 1996, phone call between Harvey and Joe Roth, then president of Walt Disney Studios, in which the two complain about the $138 million severance deal that Mike Ovitz negotiated to leave Disney after 16 months.

"Please fire me," Weinstein facetiously tells Roth. "I'll split whatever I get . . . I'll meet you in St. Barts. We'll buy both halves of the island . . . If you don't fire me, then I think we should make bad movies next year. Let's make a series of [bleep]y movies."

Roth replies: "I obviously made a mistake. I made good movies." Harvey says, "Joe, you are a success, so therefore you are a failure in this town." The two then name Peter Guber, Michael Fuchs and Jon Peters as having won huge golden parachutes.

"Everybody got wealthy on failure," Weinstein says. Roth replies: "You know what the problem is with you and me? We care about the movies." Weinstein laughs: "We have character flaws that must be overcome."

Here's the podcast (in California, isn't it illegal to record someone without their knowledge?), which is amusing and I see their POV, actually:

Speaking of Joel Silver, he does not come off so well, nor does producer Larry Gordon (Hellboy2), in screenwriter Larry Gross's juicily candid memoir of working on Walter Hill's 1982 48 HRS., which helped to define the Hollywood buddy comedy genre for decades to come, and made Eddie Murphy into a star. MCN is publishing the pieces in serial form; part four is up now. It's a must-read, and I understand that it is making Silver and Gordon none too happy. The person who emerges smelling like a rose is director Hill, whose Broken Trail and Undisputed should put him back on the must-hire list. Hill can do comedy, tragedy, action, and subtle character work. But does Hollywood have work for someone who doesn't do tentpoles? That is the question.

Waters Talks Fruitcake

Baltimore filmmaker John Waters takes questions on USA Today's PopBlog from his fans, about his upcoming film Fruitcake, due at Christmas, and the DVD release of his true-crime DVD series, Till Death Do Us Part.

UPDATE: Karina Longworth points out that Johnny Knoxville is the new Divine.

Trailer Watch: Eagle Eye

What do the movies Wanted and Eagle Eye have in common? They're fish-out-of-water scenarios that posit that an everyday schmuck --James McAvoy in one, Shia LaBeouf in the other--gets caught up in something exciting and scary involving a lot of action and danger and guns. It's the oldest trick in the book.

But the commercial recipe here is also to take a star with cred with the young male demo that opens movies (In Wanted's case, it's actually Angelina Jolie) and add them to the thriller genre mix with an older star (Wanted's Morgan Freeman, Eagle Eye's Billy Bob Thornton).

DreamWorks took this story idea by Steven Spielberg, got it written by John Glenn & Travis Adam Wright, Hillary Seitz and Dan McDermott, and when Spielberg didn't want to direct, added their Disturbia star-on-the-rise LaBeouf to the mix with his director, D. J. Caruso.

Here's the trailer for Eagle Eye, due in September.

DreamWorks should only dream that Eagle Eye does as well as Wanted--a great match of strong narrative and fab visual style that raises it above the ordinary--otherwise it's just another formula thriller.

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army Closes LAFF

Universal threw yet another Westwood block party premiere Saturday night, this time for $100-million summer sequel Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, the closer of the Los Angeles Film Fest, which lured some 100,000 attendees, up from last year. Hellboy 2 director Guillermo del Toro handed out two jury prizes worth $50,000 each to documentary filmmaker Darius Marder (Loot) and feature director Sean Baker (Prince of Broadway).

His "insanely ambitious movie" Hellboy 2, Del Toro said, "comes from an exotic country inside my brain and my gonads. People think I do two types of movies: strange little Spanish films and big studio movies. This movie comes from a different place. It's the first of those big movies that belongs to the same world as Pan's Labyrinth. The imagination in it is unbridled."

True enough. Hellboy 2 is a hybrid of those two things. And thus some moviegoers, especially the core fanboys who loved the Dark Horse comics and the first installment, will embrace Hellboy 2's fantastic eccentricities, while others will be left behind, scratching their heads. I doubt the visually sumptuous pic will break out into wide acceptance, especially given the stiff summer competition. The first Hellboy was not a global hit in 2004 (it topped out at $98 million worldwide) but sold well over the years on DVD.

At the party, Del Toro admitted that the film's war between the ancient magical underground universe and modern humans is far from black-and-white. Like Del Toro himself, red-skinned warrior Hellboy (Ron Perlman) is ambivalent, caught between the rich primal forces that spawned him and his powerful human masters. Here's the trailer:

No matter how well this movie does, Del Toro is about to enter a new fantasy portal that will take four years of his life: J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. Working closely with producers Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, phase one will involve writing for three weeks in L.A., one week in Wellywood, phase two will reverse that (one week in L.A., three weeks in Wellywood) and then the directing and post-production phases will take Del Toro to New Zealand full time.

Here's the filmmaker's two-part Q & A at LAFF.

For his part, critic John Anderson likes Hellboy 2 a lot:

But the reason the movie plays so well has nothing to do with the leading man's paternal instincts; rather, it's rooted in del Toro's rococo instincts for the stylishly creepy and crawlingly macabre, his clockmaker's preoccupation with detail, and a flair for combining state-of-the-art technology with his taste for the antique, the gothic, the Catholic. Not to disparage the f/x guys, but what's onscreen in "Hellboy II" is all about the seismic eruptions in del Toro's head. Comparing his work to most fantasy cinema is like comparing cave drawings to the Cathedral of Cologne.

Dark Night: Wired Talks to Nolan, Rolling Stone Raves

The folks at Wired have posted a nice juicy Dark Knight production story/Chris Nolan interview. I'm working on seeing the movie--there's an L.A. junket this weekend--where they will be screening the pic in IMAX for folks who are doing interviews at the junket. I tend to stay away from junkets, roundtables etc. But I want in!

UPDATE: They're overbooked for the screening, actually turning people who thought they were coming away. The IMAX rooms are smaller than usual, it seems. :-(

They'll let us into their trade screening next week, they say. And meanwhile Rolling Stone has what Richard Roeper would call an "early review." It's a rave.

Shyamalan's The Happening Inspires Critics

M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening scored a dismal 20 % on Rotten Tomatoes; it opened decently, but critics had a field day giving the Philly filmmaker the shaft. Fox didn't screen the pic for me; they focused their efforts on a sharp marketing campaign. In this case, clearly, critics were not going to be their friend.

I'm curious to see the pic, because Shyamalan (SHA-MA-LAN) is an anomaly--a writer-director who makes an original every time out, and tunes into the beat of his own drummer, with occasionally risible results. He needs someone like Nina Jacobson, who when she was at Disney--before she gave him the feedback that led him to take Lady in the Water to Warners-- kept him on the right path.

Producer Scott Rudin worked with him once on The Village--in that case the often grandiose Shyamalan was so optimistic about that picture that he wanted Rudin to help him cast it upscale with the likes of Bill Hurt and Sigourney Weaver in hopes of landing a few Oscars.

I enjoyed The Village, while recognizing the ways that it could have been better. I've liked all of Shyamalan's films except Lady in the Water. They go off the rails in ways that could easily be tweaked at the script stage, or in the editing room. He seems to have a tin ear for where something too serious might go over the edge into unintended humor.

Shyamalan is the perfect example of the hazards of making these movies entirely on your own. Where he goes from here is another question. He needs a good producer he can trust, who will buffer him. Even the utterly independent Coen Brothers have a Rudin or Eric Fellner to interface with the studios for them.

The New Republic went out of its way to not review the movie.

Here's Variety.

MTV's Josh Horowitz twists the knife.

David Edelstein's New York Magazine review is hilarious.

Shyamalan talks to Cinematical.

UPDATE: In not surprising contrarian style, the NYT's Manohla Dargis is positive.

Zenovich Tweaks Ending of Polanski Doc Again

The dispute over the HBO doc, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, continues as director Marina Zenovich, who was asked by HB0 to rewrite the film's final "card" on the eve of its first broadcast June 9, tweaked the card again for its Saturday, June 14 airing. The question remains what the final card will read for its theatrical release by ThinkFilm on July 11th.

Finally, after all these years, it's still a case of he said, she said, as Zenovich makes tweaks and tries to keep her film's dramatic punch. And Polanski himself stays in limbo. (He finally saw the film in Paris just before he arrived in Cannes, where he lunched with Zenovich before the fest's closing night ceremony.)

The problem Monday was that the person talking was a Los Angeles Superior Court judge. HBO decided to back off the film's assertion that Judge Larry Paul Flider in 1997 demanded that any court hearing with Polanski be televised, should the exiled director return to the U.S. That's because right before the doc was due to air, L.A. court officials called the assertion "a complete fabrication." So Zenovich reworded the ending to say that the judge demanded an open court hearing.

Now the card refers to a dispute over what happened, stating: "the judge insisted the hearing be held on the record in superior court."

On Wednesday, in response to Monday's L.A. Superior Court statement and an L.A. Times story, former deputy district attorney Roger Gunson and Polanski's attorney Douglas Dalton, who are interviewed in Wanted and Desired, made a statement in support of the film's version of events--and talked to each other for the first time in a decade. "It is our shared view that Monday's false and reprehensible statement by the Los Angeles Superior Court continues their inappropriate handling of the Polanski case," they said.

(The full statement is on the jump; here's my prior story, Polanski Doc Wanted and Desired Changed for HBO. )

AFI Tributes Beatty; Clinton, Fonda and Nicholson Show

Yes, Jack Nicholson showed up after the Laker game, slightly hoarse, to honor his bud, Warren Beatty, at the 36th annual AFI Life Achievement fete. Count on Beatty, 71, to attract smarter-than-average tributes. "You drag me in with all these politicos," said Nicholson, who earned an Oscar nomination for Beatty's historic drama Reds. "I'm representing all the fair-weather friends you have in the city who went to the Lakers game."

"When I'm working, I have a group of people whose good opinion I'm always trying to win," Beatty said during a taped video interview. Many of that group were on hand Thursday night. "I'm still a liberal when it's coming back in style," he said after accepting his award from last year's honoree, Al Pacino, who starred in Dick Tracy. Beatty thanked his older sister Shirley MacLaine for leading him to Hollywood, which in turn brought him to his wife, Annette Bening. (Variety's Steve Chagollan profiles Beatty here.) One ex-girlfriend, Reds star Diane Keaton, made an emotional appearance, while another, Julie Christie, appeared on video, praising Beatty for choosing a mate, Bening, who was his equal, "after a fairly thorough search."

Ishtar co-star Dustin Hoffman teased his friend with google trivia, much of it not true, while constantly asking if Nicholson was in the house. "And I was here for dinner," he reminded his friend of 40 years. Hoffman praised Beatty for taking good care of his friends, such as cancer-ridden Hal Ashby, who Beatty flew via Warner Bros. jet to Johns Hopkins for treatment.

Beatty's frequent writing collaborator Elaine May did a delicious stand-up routine about Beatty's wacky ideas for such movies as Heaven Can Wait and Reds. May finally talked Beatty into directing Heaven Can Wait himself after no one else wanted to do it. It was the launch of a directing career. "Warren gives crazy a good name," she said. "I feel he is still crazy after all these years."

She was followed by her ex-partner, Mike Nichols, on video, who delivered an hilarious joke about Beatty being Jewish. On video, Barbra Streisand said of Beatty: "He's an incredibly gifted...gentile."

A luminous Jane Fonda started out the evening saying that she knew Warren longer than anyone, 50 years, from his days playing piano bar in New York. "We did our first screen test together," she recalled, a love scene for a Josh Logan movie that never got made. She kicks herself for not realizing at the time that this great-looking man surrounded by smart gay friends was actually straight. "It's nice to know somebody else who shares the same chunk of this town's history," she said.

When Beatty descended from the Kodak stage to the theatre for the ritual walk through his admirers (accompanied by live Earl Scruggs), he greeted politicos George McGovern, for whom he invented the celebrity concert fundraiser in 1972, California attorney general Jerry Brown, and Gary Hart, who admitted later that contrary to myth, he didn't think Warren Beatty ever wanted to be him, but he had always wanted to be Warren Beatty. Republican John McCain paid tribute in a funny clip.

Bill Clinton took the stage and told the story of how at age 26 at the 1972 Democratic convention, he ran into Beatty in an elevator just after an Arkansas delegate told him she'd only vote for McGovern if Beatty walked with her for 30 minutes on a beach. Beatty agreed to the task; she voted for McGovern, and turned up years later on the campaign trail wearing a Hillary Clinton button. "Over all these decades, you have shared with us as moviegoers this insatiable hunger for life," Clinton told Beatty. "You have this unbridled hunger to know and to share."

Beatty joined Bening and his closest friends on the dais, including May and Stanley Donen, Barry Diller, MacLaine, David Geffen, Robert Towne, and attorney Bert Field.

AFI chair and Sony honcho Sir Howard Stringer said that Beatty was "one of the few actors envied when he was single who continued to be envied after he got married. He's America's leading man: actor, producer, writer, director. He quite famously does it all, but not often. Not since George Lucas has a man gotten away with doing so little for such a high honor. You embodied what we wanted in a leading man: handsome, charming, brilliant, perfectionist, always reaching for something greater."

Quentin Tarantino gave a heart-felt intro to Bonnie and Clyde, saying that the 1967 movie launched the great era of American movies, the 70s. "It was a gangster genre film, a Hollywood movie without the cliches."

Faye Dunaway read a rhyming ballad (modeled after Bonnie Parker), praising Beatty, among other things, for having the guts to grab a piece of the back end on Bonnie and Clyde.

Robert Downey Jr. brilliantly hallucinated an evening as a nine-year-old concocting the movie Shampoo with Beatty and Hal Ashby.

Shampoo scriptwriter Towne remembered that it took nine years to get Shampoo made. "I've never known you to hold a grudge, reveal a secret or forget a phone call," he said to Beatty. "In 45 years you never opened yourself up. After all these years I've come to consider you as wise as Benjamin Franklin, who is also a ladies man. You're part Fellini, part Machiavelli."

Don Cheadle described the many-take tortures of working under Beatty's direction on Bulworth. "He never lets the good be the enemy of the great," he said.

The tribute will air June 25 July 8 on the USA Network.

[Photos courtesy Getty Images]

Spike Vs. Clint

I have avoided the Clint vs. Spike fracas about rival views of who did what during World War II.

UPDATE: Here's the London Guardian interview with Eastwood from Cannes, with quotes in context. Let's put it this way. Both of these guys know how to get attention.

It's an unfortunate PR slugfest between two respected, gifted Cannes-loving auteurs who should be applauding each other for being on the same side of the Hollywood fence. They are of different generations and backgrounds but in the crazy fractured world we live in now, Eastwood and Lee are both filmmakers to applaud, not criticize. Of course the media is drawn to this kind of cross-fire like moths to a flame.

Do we really need Fox News and MSN weighing in on this? Salon's Andrew O'Hehir lays out his own argument for just getting along.

What Just Happened? Will Go Out Via Magnolia

Finally, 2929 Entertainment has made the call to release its scathing Tinseltown satire What Just Happened? through its own Magnolia Pictures on October 3. Here's my interview with director Barry Levinson and producer-writer Art Linson in Cannes, where What Just Happened? closed the fest out of competition.

2929 owners Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner had hoped to land a domestic distributor for the $20-million Hollywood comedy starring Robert DeNiro at the Sundance Film Festival in January. What Just Happened? scored favorable reviews but the financeers were not able to close a distrib deal that they could live with.

So 2929 will just do it for themselves.

Magnolia has hired marketing-exec-turned-consultant Russell Schwartz, the former marketing prexy of New Line Cinema, to supervise the film’s release campaign. (He also works with National Geographic on such films as U23D.) At Cannes, Schwartz supplied marketing materials for What Just Happened? featuring the tag line, “In Hollywood, everyone can hear you scream.”

What Just Happened? was adapted by Linson from his own vitriolic Hollywood memoir. Studding the movie’s cast are Catherine Keener, Stanley Tucci, Robin Wright Penn, John Turturro, Michael Wincott, Bruce Willis, Sean Penn and Kristen Stewart. 2929 Productions and Linson produced with De Niro and Jane Rosenthal’s Tribeca Productions.

Polanski Doc Wanted and Desired Changed for HBO

Doc filmmaker Marina Zenovich was struck when she read a 2002 article in the LA Times about whether director Roman Polanski would be able to return to the US if he were nominated for an Oscar for The Pianist. Of course he won--and watched the show from his bedroom in Paris. After Zenovich learned more about why Polanski was forced to flee the country rather than turn up for his trial for seducing a minor, she embarked on the long journey to get Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired made.

Patrick Goldstein writes about Zenovich's doc, which has earned rave reviews since its January debut in Sundance, where HBO acquired the film; it also fared well at Cannes. The movie aired on HBO Monday night after a brief run in NY and LA for Oscar consideration. Financially beleaguered distrib ThinkFilm is scheduled to release the film theatrically in July.

A sidebar explores why Zenovich was forced to amend the ending of her movie, an issue also addressed by Slate's Kim Masters. (See UPDATE below.)

Last year at Cannes, Shootout's Peter Bart and Peter Guber conducted a rare Polanski video interview-- Zenovich did not do fresh on-camera interviews with him for the doc, and he did not participate in its promotion. (He turned up in Cannes this May just for the closing night ceremony.) When Bart and Guber asked him last year how he felt about returning to L.A., he responded, "I have black memories of that time. People forget that when I was in my 30s I suffered a tremendous loss and tragedy."

More recently, Bart and Guber interviewed director Marina Zenovich on Shootout: "What mattered to me was what happened to him after he committed the crime," she told them. "So many people think they know what happened that night, why he fled the country. I was interested in getting the facts straight."

UPDATE: Here's a response to Monday's L.A. Superior Court statement and the L.A. Times story from former deputy district attorney Roger Gunson and Polanski's attorney Douglas Dalton, who are interviewed in Wanted and Desired:

June 11, 2008 In 1997, Douglas Dalton, attorney for Roman Polanski, and Roger Gunson, prosecutor on the Polanski case, met with Judge Larry Paul Fidler in his chambers to discuss the Polanski case. Mr. Gunson and Mr. Dalton advised Judge Fidler of Judge Rittenband's conduct in handling the case that is accurately captured in the documentary, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. At the meeting, Judge Fidler advised Mr. Dalton that if Mr. Polanski returned to Los Angeles, that he, Judge Fidler, would allow Mr. Polanski to be booked and immediately released on bail, require Mr. Polanski to meet with the probation department, order a probation report, conduct a hearing, and terminate probation without Mr. Polanski having to serve any additional time in custody. That there was a deal worked out between Judge Fidler and Mr. Dalton was reported in the New York Daily News as early as October 1, 1997. One of the issues raised by Mr. Dalton during the meeting was the question of media coverage. All understood that any proceedings would be open to the public as required by law. During the meeting, Mr. Dalton pressed Judge Fidler for a resolution of the case that would allow for minimal news media. Mr. Dalton recalled that Judge Fidler would require television coverage at the proposed hearing due to the controversy. Mr. Gunson recalls television coverage discussed at the meeting. Mr. Dalton told documentary director Marina Zenovich of this requirement. It is our shared view that Monday's false and reprehensible statement by the Los Angeles Superior Court continues their inappropriate handling of the Polanski case. Roger Gunson Douglas Dalton

Trailer Watch: Australia's Kidman and Jackman as Range Rovers

Can Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge, Romeo + Juliet) pull off yet another high-risk venture, an epic WW II western romance set in a land down under called Oz? Australia cost $130-million, has been dubbed "Gone with the Wind meets Out of Africa," and stars homegrown matinee idols Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman (am I the only one distracted by her puffy lips?). The pic will open around the world in November and December.

Here's Luhrmann teaching a master class at iTunes.

Here's the trailer:

Cannes Update: Tarantino, Soderbergh's Che, Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York, Egoyan's Adoration, Hamer's O'Horten, Sorrentino's Il Divo

At the Adoration dinner-party on the roof of the Palais Thursday night, Sony Pictures Classics execs were huddling in the corner talking deals. But producer Robert Lantos and Cinetic Media's John Sloss were relaxed and enjoying the balmy moonlit evening.

They had approached SPC before the fest and showed them the latest opus from brainy Canadian helmer Atom Egoyan, whose work ranges from the high of Sweet Hereafter to the low of the muddled Armenian history lesson Ararat. SPC snapped up this smart, thoughtful, intense drama about a teenager trying to make sense of the death of his parents through provocative fictional theater pieces and chats on the Internet. This way Adoration came to Cannes with an experienced distributor behind it and no anxiety about having to sell.

There's something to be said for this old-fashioned approach. Pick the distrib who best suits your movie and nail down an exclusive sale in advance of a big fest. Harvey Weinstein denies that he was in that position on Steven Soderbergh's Che. French sales co. Wild Bunch is trying to unload North American rights to the four-hour, 18 minute biopic.

The word on the Croisette is that jury prexy Sean Penn will somehow coax his politically-aware jury into making a statement by awarding the Palme d'Or to Che. The movie is so flawed that I find this scenario implausible, but it would certainly make a statement. I could see Benicio del Toro deservedly winning an actor prize. On the other hand, Toni Servillo, the star of two strong Italian entries here, Il Divo and Gomorra, may beat him out.

At Thursday night's AMFAR Cinema Against AIDS benefit in Mougins Harvey Weinstein made a passionate plea to the jurors in the house to award the fest's big prize to Che. But will he put his money where his mouth is and acquire the film? He may well be the only willing stateside buyer, no matter how enthusiastic some of the film's critical supporters.

Here's a clip from Il Divo, which I enjoyed thoroughly. (Here's Variety's rave review.) Even though the movie is a densely-packed exploration of the intricacies of corrupt Italian politics, it managed to be an accessible, entertaining and perceptive portrait of controversial political enigma Giulo Andreotti. Steven Soderbergh could learn from Paolo Sorrentino.

At fest's end, several pics remain unsold, including James Gray's polarizing Two Lovers. Here's my column on the Cannes sale issues faced by Che, Two Lovers and Synecdoche, New York.

But after saying they might leave town empty-handed (like many of their rivals), SPC moved in on a few titles after sampling more movies at the fest than ever before--they combed through the stuff that was available in the fest and market--and went on a late-fest buying spree, bidding on James Toback's Tyson and closing North American deals on Norwegian director Bent Hamer's O'Horten and the Dardenne brothers' The Silence of Lorna.

What was left of the Cannes contingent finally saw Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York, long after the distribs who attended an early buyer's screening had been spreading bad word all week. The job of buyers is to assess commerciality. Not just artistic achievement. I went to see the movie Friday night and kept waiting for the supposed incoherent indecipherable parts to kick in. The movie was clear as a bell and well-executed. No problem. High-end sophisticated art-house crowds will eat this up.

Charlie Kaufman's genius has always been a crafty blend of ingenious surprise, unexpected whimsy and genuine heartfelt human emotion.

If this movie was played as straight drama it might have a problem. But this is far more clever than that. Synecdoche has a mother-lode of humor and comedy running through it. Sure, Philip Seymour Hoffman's character is sad, bereft, lonely, plagued by Job-like maladies, deluded, obsessed with achieving artistic cred etc., but Kaufman is also laughing at him, his crazy German-speaking tattooed daughter, his problems with women, and his insanely ambitious out-sized theatre installation. The actors, especially Hoffman (below, after the press conference on Friday with co-star Tom Noonan and producer Spike Jonze), are all excellent. (Not enough of Catherine Keener, sadly.)

I had no trouble following this at all. And I might add I seemed to be the only person in the Palais laughing my head off. UPDATE: Apparently, the NYT's A.O. Scott was too. Here's his elegant Cannes wrap-up.

Synecdoche is much like Memento or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Being John Malkovich--the very thing that makes people want to see it a second time will make it worth debating and discussing. SPC's Michael Barker told me that years ago he bought a movie at Cannes after he witnessed the LAT's Kenneth Turan and me having a big debate over it. The French pic The Dreamlife of Angels turned out to be a huge hit in France and a small hit in the U.S. A movie that gets people arguing always has a chance. (Here's SPC's Michael Barker at Wild Bunch's offices with the other hardest-working man in Cannes: IFC's Jonathan Sehring.)

While some have suggested that I should cut Soderbergh some slack on Che, I will argue that as hard as he worked on the pic over many years, he did not figure out the appropriate, disciplined shape the movie should have. By contrast, equally ambitious but thought-out is Synecdoche, which is not at all self-indulgent. Audacious and bold, Kaufman wrote carefully and well and delivered something brilliantly executed as his first directing gig. Soderbergh may have a bit of John Sayles-itis. You don't have to do it all yourself. Let some professionals help you.

I had to miss Quentin Tarantino's Master Class because it was opposite yet another panel about the new distribution future that I moderated at the American Pavilion. But the night before at the Hotel du Cap, Tarantino, Marina Zenovich (Polanski: Wanted and Desired), Tim Robbins and I had a blast talking about Sam Fuller (Robbins tapped Tarantino for his doc on Fuller which has yet to be cleared for DVD, though Robbins is working on it), how hard it is to set up movies if you don't have Harvey Weinstein as your benefactor (Robbins is in town trying to push a few things through) and how if you find a great editor like Sally Menke, you stick with her for life.

Tarantino is wrapping up writing his magnum WWII opus Inglorious Bastards. Hopefully he will learn from Soderbergh and not make it too long--he got away with releasing both Kill Bill I and II but not the double feature with Robert Rodriguez, Grindhouse--unless it goes to HBO. I could also see Che go out in long cable form. Time's Richard Corliss calls both Soderbergh and Tarantino Warrior Auteurs. Agreed: listening to Tarantino talk is almost as much fun as watching his movies.

Cannes: Polanski Stays in Paris

Director Roman Polanski is a frequent visitor to Cannes: he famously walked out of the Chacun Son Cinema press conference last year in a huff when a journalist asked a question that he didn't like. But he's staying in Paris this year, even though he has a doc about him here, partly because he hasn't seen Marina Zenovich's doc on the justice that he did or did not receive in the U.S. before his exile, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.

The director has given Polanski, who lives in Paris, many opportunities to see the film about his 1977 rape trial. But he told her that he'd rather that Zenovich do the talking in Cannes and be the spokesperson for the film. He just may not be ready to deal with revisiting his painful ordeal.

Cannes: Soderbergh Talks Che

Here are some of the high points of the Che press conference Thursday:

"The process of editing was intense," said director Steven Soderbergh. "The further you get into it, you need context. That's why you need two movies."

Soderbergh visited Cuba five times but never met Che Guevara cohort Fidel Castro: "I was told, 'Pedro may call you.' He has a reputation for calling at 2 am and saying 'Come over. Let's talk.' I also heard that he likes to stop the film and talk about it when it moves him to. This film he may not survive."

Soderbergh admired Water Salles' The Motorcycle Diaries, starring Gael Garcia Bernal as the young Ernesto Guevara: "Walter's movie is really an Act One. With these, now it's a trilogy."

He defended his film's friendly approach to the iconic and polarizing revolutionary: "I've read the anti-Che literature out there. I get the arguments. I feel there's no amount of barbarity I could put on the screen that would satisfy them."

The shoot was rough and tumble:

"On the set I told the actors that I'm not going to be able to take care of you. I'm just trying to get this movie shot on schedule. And they formed a support group to survive it.

It sounds like he wants to use Smello-vision: "I wish we could transit the smell to the screen. There was a smell on the set."

[Photo of press conference by Jeffrey Wells]

Cannes: Che Meets Mixed Response

"A folly." "A mess." "Great." These words came from critics coming out of Steven Soderbergh's four-hour 18 minute Spanish-language Che Wednesday night. At the end there was slight applause; no boos. My own description: noble failure. Click here to read Todd McCarthy's review.

The global press corps jammed into the Debussy for the 6:30 PM screening. After two hours and nine minutes of The Argentine of the double feature, the press tucked into tasteless white-bread sandwiches in brown paper bags labeled "Che" and started dissecting part one. If you left the hall, you couldn't come back-- some took off. (After all, there was a major soccer match under way.) But many stayed for part two--which was even less dramatic.

Benecio del Toro gives a great performance, but Soderbergh's roving HD camera keeps its distance as Che trains guerillas in the jungle, leads his troops through various skirmishes and the takeover of Santa Clara, talks to TV interviewers and gives moving speeches at the U.N. The movie is well made and watchable. I was utterly inside it. I wasn't bored with the the first half, which offers plenty of narrative cut-backs and diversity; some periods are shot in black and white, some in color. There are ideas and dialogue galore.

But the second--which is also two hours and nine minutes--becomes a focused cinema verite account of Che's doomed adventures in Bolivia, the point of which becomes clear and inevitable. As my pal Larry Gross put it, the film is about "process." Soderbergh isn't interested in the things that compel moviegoers to engage with characters: drama, psychology, motivation. He doesn't dwell on the relationship between Che and Castro. He doesn't tell you how "Ernesto" turned into "Che." He doesn't share the inside of Che's relationship with the woman who becomes his second wife. He doesn't let you see the iconic photo being taken. He withholds the takeover of Havana.

Soderbergh didn't think he could finish the film in time for Cannes. Why don't these guys ever learn? Remember Richard Kelly's Southland Tales, Wong Kar Wai's 2046, Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny, and Edward Norton-starrer Down in the Valley? DON'T TAKE AN UNFINISHED MOVIE TO CANNES!!!! Wait. Give the film the time you need.

The good news: there is plenty of fine material here to be edited into one releasable long dramatic feature and hopefully French producer/sales co. Wild Bunch, which paid for 75 % of the $61 million film, and Telecinco, which came up with 25%, will give the filmmaker the time he needs to find this promising film's final form.

One thing is likely: it will not be released stateside as it was seen here. And it will not sell overnight--unless a distrib promises to help Soderbergh to find hi