Category Archives: Movies

Paramount Planning Upgrades to Lot

link to LA Times story: Paramount Pictures plans $700-million upgrade to Hollywood lot

Jim A. sitting in front of Paramount Gate, earlier in 2011

Great to see that the powers that be at Viacom find the opportunity to reinvest and upgrade the studio a good idea.

I worked there in the late 80s to mid-90s; still probably the most fun location to ever have a paying job, at least in my working life. And that was before the on-lot Coffee Bean, which in my way of thinking adds much currency to the entire idea.

When reading this piece, it was like a deja vu: Frank Mancuso’s name was mentioned not once, but twice, and in reverence both times. It was like my old boss there (Deborah Rosen) had a hand in the story (maybe she did, who knows) – as it was her job to get favorable corporate communications for the studio. Interesting certainly that the names Brandon Tartikoff, Stanley Jaffe and Sherry Lansing were not brought up at all, and Brad Grey only in passing.

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That’s another thing about Paramount: as much fun as it was being a nice place to go to work, what with all the flowers, fountains, movie stars and whatnot, I and just about everyone I knew there (well, almost everyone) eventually got fired (including the aforementioned boss) – kind of like that water tower which isn’t really a water tower at all, just the top of an enormous meat grinder.

There is no grudge, I know all too well that everything ends. So I’m glad they’re in the process of creating jobs for future Paramount ex-employees.

Nothing Much Happened.

Dear Documentary Filmmakers: Road Trips | what (not) to doc.

From a road trip, in Texas

It’s one of those days where I’m too pooped out to think of much of anything, much less anything original and weighty. Maybe it was the buffet breakfast at the Casino this morning. Maybe it was the time change last weekend just catching up with me. Perhaps it’s just a flaw of my adult-onset ADD.
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But I love this post from Basil Tsiokos. Good advice for documentary filmmakers, just ’cause you’re on a road trip and going places where perhaps you’ve never been, doesn’t mean we want or need to go with you. Also, I would add to Basil’s sage advice – if you’re young, please note that you’re not inventing life although it seems that way to you – so best to have something original to say about whatever it is you’re seeing with that camera.

So, read the link to Basil’s important and funny comment. Regarding the picture here, it’s from a road trip. It was not a movie. I was driving from Wisconsin to California in November, and this abandoned truckstop/gas station/campground/Quonset paradise in Texas intrigued me, so I took a picture. But I didn’t make it into a movie. I knew you wouldn’t want that! Have a great weekend, everybody. I hear Spring returns on Sunday.

This is what globalization can “do” for you: California’s visual effects firms fading as foreign competition mounts

Hollywood visual effects: California’s visual effects firms fading as foreign competition mounts – latimes.com.

Link above to the disturbing trend among entertainment professional jobs that are racing to the bottom internationally. Here, it’s the computer whizzes that make the digital effects modern movies rely on to make any kind of money the conglomerates must have.

I was sad to see this, but not surprised, as I’ve seen it with professional writing already. With the advent of internet outsourcing, why pay someone in West L.A. $500 for a press release or something similar when you can find someone who will think it’s a bonanza to do it for $50 somewhere in India?

The situation with computer programmers and effects geniuses might even be more dire, as English facility is probably not as important a requirement as it is with, say, English writing.
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And I’m sure it’s the tip of the iceberg. What else can entertainment companies offshore for less, so that they’re more profitable at home? Legal services? Set Design? Production accounting?

Plan A would be regulations to keep these jobs in the United States, but I don’t see that happening, do you? The Corporations which control profits certainly won’t allow that to happen. Plan B would be for the cost of living and doing business to rise around the world so that it’s equal to the U.S., or lower it so that it’s equal to the cheaper costs in the rest of the world.

And I have no idea how that would ever happen, either. Thoughts?

Bibliotheque Pascal

Bibliotheque Pascal Site

The third movie I saw at the Palm Springs International Film Festival between shifts supervising cashiers was Bibliotheque Pascal.

From Hungary, Bibliotheque Pascal is about a young woman who is trying to get her daughter back from local child care authorities, after supposedly leaving her with an older relative (a fortune teller!) because she had to accompany her father to another country (Germany) so he could get an operation.

The reality of the situation is that the woman went to England to be a prostitute, it didn’t work out, and now she’s trying to get her old life back (or, at least that is what I got from it).

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Many twists and turns are part of the journey, from a one-night stand with a repentant gay basher on a beach somewhere (the father of the child) to a vicious assault at a train station – and of course, the kinky sex at the BP, where all the prostitutes play characters from literature – Desdemona, Lolita, etc.

I enjoyed the journey, which reminded me of other European wandering tales, where the hero/heroine learns some big thing on the journey that ultimately benefits them when they return home (Bergmanesque but more accessible? Herman Hesse, esp. Narcissus and Goldmund?)

The filmmaker almost lost me at the beginning, which is an extended scene with the child care guy where he reads the law/instructions to Mona. Note to filmmaker Szabolcs Hajdu (and filmmakers everywhere), they call them “movies” for a reason. Reading a report in closeup gets really boring after about 5 seconds. Perhaps you wanted to emphasize the gravity of the situation, but it was stupor-inducing for this viewer.

Another film from the P.S. Intl Film Festival: Little Murder

Little Murder

Dreamy Josh Lucas

I mean, another film I saw while working for the festival. BTW, this list of films – Double Hour, Little Murder and Bibliotheque Pascal – are being featured here because they were the only movies I saw. Of the three, I’d say that Little Murder was probably the most popular, totally based on my unscientific survey and my memory of what was and what was not on rush sale tickets.

Little Murder, which stars studly actors Josh Lucas and Terrence Howard, and is directed by Predrag Antonijevic (say that fast 3x before your morning bowl of Wheaties), is a post-Katrina NOLA film/thriller-something.

I’m not sure how The Storm really figures into the plot except for things like having flood-damaged furniture sitting out by the sidewalks as set dressing. Anyway. Josh plays a sweaty cop who shoots an innocent kid by mistake and gets put on leave. He starts drinking. Heavily. It’s southern drinking – or rather, the southern version of drinking as portrayed in the movies – whiskey, no glass, no shaving, dirty wifebeater, more sweat, lace curtains and a veil of self-pity only partially palatable due to the handsomeness of the star.

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Dreamy Terrence Howard

One day Josh gets a call from the boss who wants him back on a case to find a serial killer – is it just me, or have serial killers really overstayed their welcome? – and sets him up in a house to watch eccentric smartypants neighbor-suspect Terrence Howard.

Josh isn’t very good at spying on his neighbors, especially since he’s still drinking. For the discerning viewer, however, he lies on the bed a lot, shirtless in his stupor, which isn’t such a bad thing after all. So, he sort of becomes buddies with Terrence, and by now we’re convinced that the police must have their sights on the wrong man.

Meanwhile, the house Josh was set up in is haunted and he sees the ghost of a girl (Lake Bell) who was murdered – who wants his help in finding her “real” killer. So Josh just suddenly gives up drinking, starts jogging, and by the end of the movie solves both the serial murder case and the murder of the ghost girl. Quite redemptive, indeed.

As a genre film, it’s not bad, though pretty much anybody who’s seen a few movies will see the denouement coming like a looming paddleboat on the Mississippi. Still, it’s got those fun touches we demand in our fiction of the south: murder, good old boys and girls, paranormal activity, interracial lust, class warfare, decay – of both morals and the physical world, police corruption, and lots of water everywhere. My sense is that this film got an outsize reception at a film festival, but will have a much harder time finding an audience in general release.

The Double Hour (la doppia ora)

One of the films I saw at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, when I wasn’t supervising the Regal boxoffice.

It’s a twisty-turny Euro-thriller about Sonia (pictured here, Ksenia Rappoport) who works as a hotel maid and spends her nights going to speed dating events in her northern Italian town of Turin.

One night she meets Guido (handsome Filippo Timi) a widower, who she ultimately starts an affair with. It’s nicely idyllic, two beautifully lit Italian people falling in love, as only they can.

One weekend they’re off to an estate where he seems to work part-time as a security guard, pretending to be rich while the owner is absent. As luck would (or would not) have it, a very sophisticated, armed gang sabotages them, ties them up and begins to loot the estate of its many art and furniture treasures. When done with the looting, the gang’s leader has one more task, which is to assault Sonia. Of course, Guido interferes, getting shot in the process.

SPOILERS, STOP READING NOW IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW….

Sonia makes a recovery, but then begins to see the ghost of Guido around – in her apartment, at work, in photos of places she’s never been with him, etc. She wonders if he really died, or if she’s going crazy, or if it indeed is a paranormal experience – which reverts back to the idea of the “double hour” – defined as the time once per hour when then hour and minute are the same number (5:05, 7:07, etc) and a portal to alternate worlds opens up.

At this point, the story opens up, and the possibility is that she’s in a coma dreaming this whole post-crime scenario. But – there are other worlds, as well: is she an accomplice of the gang, in on the planning of the heist from the beginning, actually having engineered her “meet” with Guido at the speed date?

Or, in a final twist, is it Guido, a former police officer, who has infiltrated the gang and begun this relationship with her to eventually break them all? I’m not sure, I’d have to see it again to really come up with a final workable theory, but I do believe the soft and somewhat sweet ending is a real European treat – and very different from what would have been the Hollywood ending.

“The Double Hour” also has it share of thrills and shocks – from vulnerable woman in the bathtub (you just know when there’s a naked woman in a bathtub and the soundtrack gets quiet, then something’s about to shock you) to apparitions in dark hallways, it certainly delivers in that genre.

I also very much liked the idea that a hotel maid and a security guard could have solidly middle-class lives, which I’m not sure would have ever been presented here in the U.S., at least in the same way.

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Record crowds flock to Palm Springs International Film Festival

link: Record crowds flock to festival | mydesert.com | The Desert Sun.

Yesterday was my final day of working for the Festival as one of their box office supervisors.

If you read the article linked above, you’ll see that Peter Bart (from Variety) says that the PSIFF has become more and more important in the film festival calendar, and that in many ways is a more important film festival than Sundance, which is or has become “more of a marketplace.”
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They beat attendance records. That’s good to hear; it’s the town’s signature event during the high season that pumps up the local economy.

Despite my work schedule, I managed to see a few films, including The Double Hour, Bibliotheque Pascal, and Little Murder. (more on them later)

A Primer on Gay Gym Selection

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYvnETRieXc[/youtube]

OK, I know I haven’t been blogging. The hours at the Film Festival are kicking my ass. It’s been a great little gig, but I’m pretty happy it’s all over on Sunday, or more accurately, it’s all over for me on Sunday.

They still screen Best of Fest this coming Monday, Martin Luther King Day. Buy your tickets now! I’m sure it will be busy. I went to a screening last night which was SRO for a Josh Lucas/Terrence Howard film called Little Murder. More on that later.

Since my brain is fried, I’m not writing anything original here, just reposting this video, which I just found very funny. If you don’t live in LA or you’re not a part of the U.S.gay demimonde, you might not find it instructive, but I know some of you will really enjoy this!

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Palm Springs International Film Festival anticipating record crowd!

Palm Springs International Film Festival anticipating record crowd | mydesert.com | The Desert Sun.

Hey, check out this story and the accompanying photo, which should include me but I’m obscured by intense ticket buyers. That is, if they took the photo yesterday, which I think they did, I was selling pre-sale tickets in this Regal window all day. So I’ve missed my claim to a photo-op in the Desert Sun? Drat!

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Go if you can. Even though ticket sales are great, there’s lots still available for this marvelous event.

Ronni Chasen, Lourdes Kelly, Brian McDevitt and my tenuous connection to the Gardner Heist speculation

Gardner Museum in Boston

Brian McDevitt

Continuing from yesterday – the weird coincidences between my script The Lourdes Kelly Story and the all-too-real murder of publicist Ronni Chasen in Beverly Hills last month.

When reading of the bizarre “suicide” of the person of interest at the Harvey Apartments near Santa Monica Boulevard and Western in L.A., reports said that other rumors regarding Chasen’s demise pointed to an art world fraud. (see comments section on that piece)

In The Lourdes Kelly Story, a feud between a high-powered female publicist and a crackerjack entertainment reporter ends in murder. The publicist’s fictional boyfriend is an art world conman whose most intense dream is to be a Hollywood screenwriter.

I based this character on someone I really knew, Brian McDevitt. As the Boston Herald story tells it, McDevitt had always been a suspect in the still-unsolved Gardner Museum Heist.

I met Brian in 1991, when I worked at Paramount and was tasked with helping put on a 50th Anniversary Celebration for the movie Citizen Kane. I got a call from him out of the blue. He said he was a staff writer on “The Wonder Years” and “was his name on a list or where would his tickets be sent?”

What?

Not wanting to piss off an important writer, I put his name on a list and told him if we had any extra tickets I would call him back. I thought, at the time, as an aspiring writer, it would be good for me to have a writer acquaintance who had an actual writing job and connections.

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I never checked his credential. Brian was the type of person who could sell you a sack of shit and not only have you believing that it was full of gold bullion but that it smelled like lilacs, too.

Of course, we did have a couple of extra tickets and Brian and his girlfriend made it to the CK party. After that, we developed a friendship. It evolved to the point where he was going to help me develop and hone my movie script; I would help him get a pitch meeting with Paramount brass who I interacted with (in my lowly way) every day (his script was about a Russian art theft…).

We would go to lunch, he would regale me with tales of WGA politics – he was involved somehow with them in administrating an early internet chatting protocol called a BBS.

He even gave me a script he said he’d written – it was a screenplay for Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One, which was odd, since it had already been made into a movie in 1965 with Waugh, Terry Southern and Christopher Isherwood as credited writers.

Then, one day all hell broke loose with the revelation in the trades that he had faked his WGA credentials and all his credits and was really just this Boston conman. He had apparently irritated the wrong person at the WGA, someone who actually had the interest and capacity to really check on his background. His crimes, lies, and the prison time, etc., all came tumbling out.

I remember calling his girlfriend that morning and telling her I just wanted to know “why.” I never heard from Brian again and I think he left Hollywood pretty much immediately.

In the Boston Herald piece, it says he died of kidney failure in 2004. Well, maybe. And perhaps that’s just a lie and he’s living the high life in Rio. I don’t know.

What I do know is that was the last time I ever trusted anyone in Hollywood, which is a valuable lesson to learn, even if it came a little later than it should have.

Yet – he was an absolutely delightful person. Pathological liar, maybe, but an engaging, smiling, articulate Irishman (you can’t tell from the B&W picture but his hair was mostly red). Wherever you are, Brian, I wish you well.

UPDATE 11/5/18 – If you’re a fan of true crime or art heists or whatever, let me direct you to this fabulous podcast “Last Seen,” which is about the Gardner Heist and Episode 8 is all about Brian McDevitt. Well worth your time! Produced by WBUR and The Boston Globe. Link:

http://www.wbur.org/lastseen