The 2012 Sundance Film Festival films were announced recently. And while the list of those that made it looks interesting, Sundance may not have the star power of previous seasons. Several movies that were anticipated simply vanished and didn’t make the cut. One that I thought might have a Sundance start, Lawrence Kasdan’s “Darling Companion,” with Diane Keaton and Kevin Kline, is instead opening the Santa Barbara Film Festival on January 26th. Also missing: Penn Badgley as Jeff Buckley in “Greetings from Tim Buckley.” I know the people who made that film thought they were heading to Sundance. Oscar nominated director/writer Terry George has a lovely film with “Whole Lotta Sole.” Somehow, it didn’t make the cut. A natural for Sundance, Walter Salles‘s “On the Road,” was not even mentioned. And the James Franco-(John) Carter art film collaboration, “Maladies.” also is MIA. I had heard it was supposed to go into the New Frontiers section, but there was a snafu. And still, weirdly, nowhere despite a lot of interest: Darryl Roodt‘s “Winnie” with Jennifer Hudson and Terrence Howard; and Geoffrey Fletcher’s “Violet and Daisy,” with Alexis Bliedel and Saorise Ronan. I’ve actually seen the latter, and it seemed like it was prfect for Sundance. It’s very hip and fun. There were probably more than just these films. If you know of more, please don’t hesitate to comment at bottom.
Diane Keaton on Al Pacino, Warren Beatty, and “Godfather III”
The absolutely terrific actress and filmmaker, now bestselling author, Diane Keaton, published her memoir about a month ago. I’m just getting around to reading “Then Again,” and getting quite a kick out of all the softly delivered gossip in this can’t put down read. Keaton is circumspect, but she does dish about past loves Warren Beatty and Al Pacino, as well as about the many endings that were proposed or shot for Francis Ford Coppola‘s ill fated “Godfather III.”
In 1989, Keaton had been dating Pacino on and off for quite a while. They’d gone through several hreakups and make ups. But interestingly, there is no mention of Pacino’s daughter Julie, who was born a month before the shoot began, to acting coach Jan Tarrant. Keaton, sources have said, didn’t learn that Pacino was the father until they were shooting the film in Italy, which led to the break up. The set was full of tension.
Keaton writes: “As we waited for the twelfth rewrite of the ending of Godfather III, I thought about the other versions. There was one where Talia [Shire] kills Eli Wallach, Al is blinded, and Andy [Garcia] breaks off with Sofia [Coppola] the minute before she is assassinated. After blind Al discovers his dead daughter on the steps of the theater, he blows his brains out.
“There was the one where Al is assumed dead but comes back. There was one where he is shot but lives, only to be killed on Easter Sunday on his way to church. There was the version where Al is gunned down at Teatro Massimo but Sofia lives. No one of us knew what to expect. Would this be the final, final draft or just one in a continuing series of attempst to end the safa of our erratic and entirely brilliant leader Francis Coppola?”
As it happened, it didn’t quite end the Coppola saga, but the great director never really recovered.
As for Beatty. Keaton writes that when she first saw Beatty on screen in “Splendour n the Grass,” that was it. “I’d never seen anyhing like Warren Beatty. By thing, I mean he wasn’t real. He was to die for.” Then she met him. After their first meeting he wrote her a note telling her she was a movie star and could do anything she wanted. (This was after she’d won the Oscar for “Annie Hall.”)
“After I confessed how terrified I was to fly, Warren surprised me as I was about board a flight to New York. took my hand. walked into the plane, sat down still holding my hand, and never let go until we landed. Once safe on the ground he kissed me, turned around and flew back to L.A. On Valientines Day he bought me a sauna for one bathroom and a steam room for the other. He was full of magnanimous gestures.”
After reading Keaton on Beatty, you will have no doubt who Carly Simon wrote “You’re So Vain” about. Well done!
Mission Impossible 4 Rakes It In, with “Batman” as Value Added
“Mission: Impossible 4” or “Ghost Protocol,” took in a staggering $13.6 million weekend–and it’s only on 425 screens. The Brad Bird directed blockbuster is set to open wide on Wednesday in over 3500 locations, but it’s literally making a killing before that. Fans of Warner Bros.’s “Batman” series are claiming that the “MI” numbers were inflated because the trailer for next summer’s “Dark Knight” film preceded “MI” in IMAX theaters. But that’s quibbling–and “Dark Knight” fans could only have enjoyed “Ghost Protocol” anyway.
Meanwhile, the second “Sherlock Holmes” film with Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law is number this week in its debut. “Game of Shadows” made $14 mil on Friday night and was projected for a $40 weekend. Of course the first “Sherlock Holmes” movie did about $24 million on its opening day in 2009. But that was Christmas Day. If this film does 55% of the earlier one’s business, that’s pretty much ok for a sequel. It does suggest maybe that a third “Sherlock” isn’t a vital goal.
As for Oscar contenders: “The Artist,” “Hugo,” “My Week with Marilyn,” and “The Descendants” all continue to do very well. “Shame” is doing a little less well despite all its depravity, debauchery and full front nudity. Come on people! What’s wrong with you? “Shame” faces an uphill battle with its NC 17 rating and not much advertising as a consequence. Too bad there wasn’t an IMAX version.
Praying for the Legendary Etta James
Etta James. the legendary singer of “At Last” and “Tell Mama,” is dying from leukemia. Her family has issued a statement asking for prayers. Etta has been ill for some time. But now they say she’s terminal. According to Lupe De Leon, her manager of 30 years, via Entertainment Weekly, “Etta has a terminal illness. She’s in the final stages of leukemia. She has also been diagnosed with dementia and Hepatitis C. She’s in a home right now and mostly sleeps. She is under the care of a live-in doctor from Riverside Community Hospital and two others who have placed her on oxygen. Her husband is with her 24 hours a day, and her sons visit regularly. We’re all very sad. We’re just waiting.” We’re sending our prayers.
Extremely Good, Incredibly Intense: Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson, Gabby Sidibe, and 400 Security Guards
It was the penultimate movie premiere of the fall Oscar season– Stephen Daldry’s “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.” Or is it “Extemely Close and Incredibly Loud”? No one can remember. This is what we know: it’s Extremely Late and Incredibly Tearful. The movie is based on Jonathan Safran Foer‘s novel about a 10 year old boy whose father dies in the World Trade Center. That’s Tom Hanks. The mom is Sandra Bullock. The mysterious grandfather is Max von Sydow, who is so good he should be nominated for an Oscar. It will take members of the Academy to save him.
Along the way the boy–who was found on “Jeopardy!”–meets Viola Davis and Geoffrey Wright, among others. He walks from the Upper West Side to Fort Greene, Brooklyn. You either find it preposterous or very moving. Or both.
At the premiere at the Ziegfeld, all the stars and the director arrived. Everyone had to pass through massive metal detectors even though this film is not the biggest of the year and probably no one wants to pirate it. There were no metal detectors at the premieres of “War Horse” or even “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” This is called ‘overkill.’ There were dozens of very serious security people eying the guests as if they were recent residents of Rikers Island. It was kind of funny.
All the stars bunched up near the little green room just beyond the inside theater doors. Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson were briefly separated. “Where’s Tom?” Rita asked, nervously. She told me her album is coming on May 6th from Decca Records. She’s a good singer. Tom Hanks, stuck in this little passageway, said, “I want to keep everyone incredibly close.” I told him I’d seen the movie last week, and that he was very affecting in it. (He is.) He said, “Tell me, is at as good as, say, “New Year’s Eve”? He’s very funny. “New Year’s Eve” got the lowest score of the year just about, on Rotten Tomatoes.
Viola Davis came along. She’s been nominated by every award group this week for “The Help.” She’s also in this movie. She greeted Sandra Bullock. They immediately started talking about their adopted toddlers. They’re all very happy, which is nice. Gabourey Sidibe wandered through, and said hi to everyone. It was like an Oscar reunion.
Then came Stephen Daldry. He kisses everyone. He’s light as a breeze. Each of his movies has gotten lots of Oscar nominations, but this one has been late late late out of the gate. Can it overcome the obstacle? I think so. But the Hollywood Foreign Press didn’t like it–it was too much a “New York” movie. Inside the theater, Daldry spoke, and introduced lots of people from Tuesday’s Child, a 9-11 group. He also gave a shout out to the McGinly family, who participated in the film. They lost their son and brother Mark, who was 26, in the World Trade Center.
And so: I think there was an after party. I wasn’t invited (no press was, or little press, as producer Scott Rudin likes to keep it all a little hostile just to keep us awake). Instead I went to see “Lysistrata Jones” on Broadway. It is totally atrocious. I can’t even write a whole item about it. It started in a gym downtown, and it should have stayed there. No one wants to be hard on a new musical, but really. There are limits.
As I left the Ziegfeld, I had to go through the metal detectors. To get out. Of course, now I set them off. The alarms rang. The paramilitary crew hanging around the lobby looked worried. Who do you have to know to get out of this place?
Go see “Extremely/Incredibly.” It’s a good drama. Warner Bros. took a gamble on it, and it paid off. And it’s better than “New Year’s Eve.”
Golden Globes Nix All Network TV Dramas, Go Cable Only
The Hollywood Foreign Press didn’t win any points with the big TV networks this morning. Indeed, their choices for Best TV Drama look like the Cable Ace Awards more than the Emmys. They chose five shows that appear on cable and nothing from NBC, ABC, or CBS. They went for “American Horror Story” on FX, “Homeland” on Showtime, “Boss” on Starz, “Game of Thrones” on HBO, and “Boardwalk Empire” on HBO. That means no “Good Wife” from CBS, “Friday Night Lights” if it still exists, or any of the stuff on ABC since “Lost” went off the air. The networks have ceded so much time and effort to crappy reality shows, they’ve been forgotten. That’s a statement. The Globes didn’t even try to appease NBC, their host network, with a nod to “Harry’s Law.” And they totally missed Fox’s “Fringe.” Not only that–none of the five best actor nominees in drama came from a network show, either. Hello! Three of the five Best Mini Series or Movies came from HBO. The other two were from PBS and BBC. Talk about outsourcing!
Golden Globe Nominees: The Artist, Ides of March Rebounds, Viggo Returns
The Golden Globe nominations were pretty much scandal free this morning. Everyone got something with the exception of Stephen Daldry’s “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” which was incredibly late to be screened. But for the first time in years I can say I agree with the nominations, especially Rooney Mara for “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” And the Globes rescued a few films, by nominating Viggo Mortensen for “A Dangerous Method” and Glenn Close and Janet McTeer for “Albert Nobbs.” Woody Harrelson was not nominated, yet got a big laugh by giving a plug for “Rampart” before he read off his list of nominations. Very witty. The Hollywood Foreign Press also loves George Clooney so much they brought back “Ides of March” and nominated Ryan Gosling for Best Actor, Clooney for Director, the film for Best Drama. Because the Globes divide between Drama and Comedy in most categories, lots of people got nominated who will not be going to the Oscars. This guarantees NBC a nice full room of stars on January 15th. Strangest nomination: Angelina Jolie for Best Foreign Film with “In the Land of Blood and Honey.” I guess it’s hard to break all bad habits at once.
BEST FILM-DRAMA
The Artist
The Descendants
Hugo
The Ides of March
War Horse
BEST ACTRESS-DRAMA
Glenn Close
Viola Davis
Rooney Mara
Meryl Streep
Tilda Swinton
BEST ACTOR-DRAMA
George Clooney
Leonardo DiCaprio
Michael Fassbender
Ryan Gosling– “Ides of March”
Brad Pitt
BEST DIRECTOR
Woody Allen
George Clooney
Michel Hazanvicius
Alexander Payne
Steven Spielberg
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Kenneth Branagh
Albert Brooks
Jonah Hill
Viggo Mortensen
Christopher Plummer
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Berenice Bejo
Jessica Chastain
Janet McTeer
Octavia Spencer
Shailene Woodley
Meryl Streep and Viola Davis Will Not Make Good Oscar Rivals
Don’t we long for some hair pulling and cat fighting among the Oscar nominees? Well, with Meryl Streep and Viola Davis in the mix, it’s going to be very dullsville. First of all Streep–in the mix for “The Iron Lady”–has written a love letter to Davis in the current issue of Entertainment Weekly. Then, I’m told, that Davis is presenting to Streep on January 9th at the New York Film Critics Circle dinner. Davis, of course, is in the mix for “The Help” as lead actress. So much love! So little sniping! Actually none!
Last night I ran into Viola Davis and husband Julius at the premiere of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” Again, she only had nice things to say about everyone. And Davis got to meet Joely Richardson, so outstanding as Harriet Vanger in “Tattoo.” Viola said: “I have to sit down and ask Meryl how she has managed to live her life normally all these years. This is what I want to learn from her. She doesn’t let anything get to her.”
Meanwhile, the whole “Tattoo” crowd was there including director David Fincher, producer Scott Rudin, snazzy Sony chief Amy Pascal, plus Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer, Robin Wright and Stellan Skarsgard. Their movie has opened late in the awards season, so they’re hoping to still catch a Golden Globe or Oscar nod. (We’ll see this morning on the former.) Rooney Mara is eye popping sensational as Lisbeth Salander, the punk bi-sexual investigator who doesn’t take any you know what.
Plummer, meantime, is glowing. On Tuesday he turned 82. He’s in the Oscar mix for Best Supporting Actor in “Beginners.” He’s superb in “Tattoo.” He doesn’t stop. What a year, huh? “It’s not bad,” he said, with a Cheshire grin.
By the way, the excellent American version of “Tattoo” boasts a couple of cameos from actors we don’t see so often: Embeth Davidtz, who made her name in “Schindler’s List,” and Julian Sands. Plus Alan Dale, who played the evil Charles Widmore on “Lost” so memorably, is a police detective.
Mariah and Justin Bieber Were Too Expensive for “X Factor”
Last week I reported that Mariah Carey and Justin Bieber would be performing on “X Factor.” They were scheduled to sing “All I Want for Christmas Is You” on December 15th. But now I’m told that Carey’s set up — band, dancers, back up singers, make up, lighting, not to mention nannies (just kidding!) etc– was just too rich for the “X Factor” budget. The price would have come in around $300,000. Hey, it’s tough times for everyone!
“Mariah hasn’t performed live in about a year,” says a source. “She wanted to make sure everything was perfect. She certainly doesn’t sing to a track.” And so a dream dies. But the possibility still exists of Carey singing on next year’s premiere, Meantime, I am told also that Mariah’s album with under-the-radar manager Randy Jackson is proceeding well. This could be her last album for Universal Music Group if she decides to join L.A. Reid at Epic/Sony. And Justin Bieber? Despite his enormous teen popularity, his Christmas album is being outsold by Michael Buble at a rate of 2 to 1.
You’re So Wrong: New Carly Simon Book Is More Like Fiction
Carly Simon is fuming mad, and I don’t blame her. The legendary pop star is the subject of a new unauthorized biography by a former childhood friend named Stephen Davis. Davis, I can tell you personally, lifted quite a few interviews and quotations for his book from other sources without credit. This reporter is one of the people he stole material from. There are others.
In “More Room for a Broken Heart,” to be published officially in January by Penguin/Gotham, Davis makes some serious mistakes and I’d say possibly commits plagiarism. Some mistakes I’ve checked with Simon and her staff. Others I have first hand knowledge of. Davis, for example, liberally quotes from lots of interviews Simon has given over the years without ever giving proper credit or citation. Penguin Books should be ashamed of itself for not asking Davis for research attribution.
More seriously: Davis asserts that Simon had an abortion at the end of a relationship with actor Jeremy Irons in 1984. Simon insists to me this is not true. Davis also says that the affair with Irons broke up his marriage to actress Sinead Cusack. Again, untrue, and they’re still together to this day.
She’s also extremely unhappy that Davis made up a story in which Simon purportedly called one of her best friends, Dick Ebersol, a “jerk” for allegedly giving away the “secret” subject of the song “You’re So Vain.” None of that ever happened.
A story in Davis’s book about Simon having an affair with Mick Jagger right before her marriage to James Taylor–also untrue. Davis claims that Bianca Jagger called Taylor and told him they must be sleeping together. That is why Taylor and Simon married quickly, Davis asserts. Again: untrue.
As well, Simon–as a matter of courtesy–tells me she gave Davis a few autobiographical pieces she’d written for him to read, with no rights to publish them. He ignored that and published them anyway. He’s reprinted them or paraphrased them without her approval or authority. Simon’s lawyers believe he may have violated her copyright. Since 1986, no one had ever read a short piece of memoir that Simon had written but yours truly, some of her family, and the late Jacqueline Onassis. I’ve held it in my files; I didn’t have the right to reproduce it. Davis didn’t either, but that didn’t stop him. The way he’s woven it into his book makes it seem like he wrote it himself. This is a major transgression.
Davis takes great pleasure in taking mean whacks at both of Simon’s ex husbands, James Taylor and Jim Hart. He gets most of it wrong, especially about Hart, one of the nicest guys ever. He makes it seem like Hart was an interloper who resented Simon’s fame and friends. This is an utter lie. And Hart was a poet with friends in the literary world, like “Ironweed” author William Kennedy. He was a man of substance before he met Simon.
But Jim was also a recovering alcoholic. In 2002, he fell into a serious problem with crack cocaine. He went into rehab and pulled himself together in a year’s time. Davis says this all happened in 1992. It did not.
The sad part of Davis’s book is that it’s a clip job. There is no interview with Carly Simon. She doesn’t exist as a person in the story, just as a bold faced name. There are no insights because no primary interviews exist. Davis did get Penguin to pay Simon’s brother Peter for personal family photographs. That gives the book a sense of authenticity. Penguin also uses a quote about Davis from Simon on the back cover which makes the book sound authorized. Simon says it’s out of context and should not have been used.
I found at least three instances of my work from pieces I’ve written about Simon in Davis’s book, without credit or attribution. I can tell you that anecdotes — about Marvin Gaye trying to stick his tongue down Simon’s throat, and another quote about her son Ben’s kidney surgery, and another about James Taylor’s heroin addiction– were lifted directly from an article I wrote in 1989 for Fame magazine. Davis has simply taken the quotes either verbatim or interpolated them. There are no citations.
I am told that Davis also liberally lifted from Sheila Weller‘s “Girls Like Us.” Weller has recently posted about this on her Facebook wall. She writes: “To my many journalist/author FB friends: What do we do with these unabashed clip-jobbers? Just roll our eyes and shake our heads, I guess. This anecdote was lifted whole (quote, verbatim) from exclusive (though, dare I say, far more nuanced ) material in my book. Davis has no source notes, no bibliography, not one single author/journo acknowledgement in his whole book. Disdainful bemusement for a Sunday morning…”
Shame on Davis and Penguin. There may be other instances like this. Davis should be made to produce all of his research material. He also spells the “Carlisle” Hotel name wrong (anyone knows it’s Carlyle). That should tell us something right there.
Penguin/Gotham is already starting to release publicity items on “More Room.” They planted one in the NY Post and another in the Boston Herald. My advice to them is stop doing that and verify what’s in that book.