Talking Movies

As the title suggests, so forth.

Babylon or Who the f*** needs f****** research?

A decade ago Emmet Ryan consulted me on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s proposed novel featuring the early adventures of Mycroft Holmes. (Which has since blossomed into an actual series) I speculated on the potential of the period: “If Mycroft is in his late 40s/early 50s (say) in 1895 at Bruce-Partington, then fresh from college he’d been in the mid 1860s and the end of Palmerston’s reign of gunboat diplomacy, and British intrigue over the US Civil War on the side of the Confederacy, and Bismarck is just starting to make noises”. I then warned of the danger that Abdul-Jabbar might intend “just using Victoriana as set dressing”. As Hollywood is wont to do. Well, Damien Chazelle, j’accuse! You, sir, are just using the 1920s as set dressing in Babylon, with nary a concern for getting anything accurate about the period, or taking it seriously on any basic level. These are 2020s people in 1920s clothes. This is just arrogance pushed so far it betrays its extreme idiocy. The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there. Sinners, while leaning too far into Mamet-speak, at least has Omar Benson Miller be shocked when a Smokestack twin drops an F-bomb in front of his wife. Babylon, by contrast… I would really love to see Chazelle’s source for the profanities that festoon his script like confetti at a Beverly Hills rager as having any basis in reality. It may sound like prudishness, but recall the saga of Die Hard 2. When Fred Dalton Thompson opined there was too much cursing going on everyone thought it was just a case of Republican be Republicaning. Then he elaborated that he felt the cursing had reached such farcical proportions that it was going to make the film unintentionally funny as people laughed to cover their confusion and discomfort. Oh yeah, he’s got a point, was the verdict after reviewing the rushes. It’s not hard to see why – if you let actors improvise they will quickly head towards Mamet-speak, and that gets out of control fast, but fast. The most notable writers of profanity, the likes of Mamet, McDonagh and Tarantino, do not use it without obvious thought going into it. And in the 1920s there is still enough of a base of the classical virtues running thru the culture that cursing the way Babylon’s characters curse would be regarded as what it is – a total, abysmal failure of emotional regulation. So, 2020s people in 1920s clothes. As Jay Gatsby said – Bogus, dude.

More thoughts on Doll

So, who should play Happy (Hank) Doll in a film adaptation of Jonathan Ames’ novels? There are now three books in the series. But reading the first one again made me wonder – who could play this part? A 50 year old red-haired lean permastoned 6 foot 2 inches half-Irish half-Jewish ex-cop ex-NCIS PI, with a penchant for books, meals of tinned fish, gherkins, sauerkraut, and wearing the same outfits on rotation. Oh, and a dog called George. Ryan Gosling still sounds like a good choice. And Stephanie Beatriz now comes to mind after a second reading for the tough bartender with an on and off, mostly off, involvement with our hero. But it’s alarming that John Krasinski is the only really good back-up that comes to mind should Gosling pass on the part. And if Shane Black’s Play Dirty is a hit presumably he will be off the board as writer/director because there is ample material for more Stark adventures. (Even if everyone has obsessed over Point Blank thus far)

Mengele on Mengele?

I rewatched The Boys from Brazil recently enough with the Engineer, who had not seen it. After twenty odd years I had oddly remembered a scene about an hour in as being the cryptic opening scene. Perhaps because Ira Levin’s story, like his Rosemary’s Baby, is one of those unfortunate films where the (cough) twist is universally known as being the actual plot of the film. So that after nearly two hours when the characters realise this is a diabolical plot to (gasp!) clone Hitler (!) (gasp!), you’re left scouring a la Tom Stoppard for a dictionary entry “Brazil, Boys from – that film in which they clone Hitler” But there is something truly astonishing that I had not realised the first time round. When this movie was released in America, Dr. Josef Mengele; in hiding from the Mossad; was still very much alive. … … … There is therefore a span of five months when the fugitive monster would have been painfully aware that he was being caricatured in a major film, and, if someone smuggled in a pirated copy to Brazil, could even have seen himself played by Gregory Peck, and critiqued his performance; in the manner of the probably apocryphal Confederate Soldier who saw Gone with the Wind’s signature shot of Scarlett O’Hara walking among the war wounded of Atlanta and muttered -“If we’d a had that many soldiers we’d have won the damn War”. Odd to imagine a derisive Mengele muttering “this is mere fantasy”.