A death in "Twin Peaks"

Actor Don S. Davis, best known for a recurring role in seven seasons of the sci-fi TV series Stargate SG-1, died June 29 after a heart attack.

To me, though, Davis was Major Garland Briggs, the Air Force officer from Twin Peaks whose son Bobby was always causing trouble in town.

Major Briggs, whose secretive work may have had something to do with Project Blue Book, was abducted by aliens during the show's second season. Upon his return, he uttered my all-time favorite line of Twin Peaks dialogue, which had been previously heard during a dream sequence: "The owls are not what they seem." This confirmed my long-held suspicion that owls are, in fact, extra-terrestrials, sent here to surreptitiously study the human race.

R.I.P., Mr. Davis.

Pushing for "The Promotion"

Foreclosure, divorce, the economy and the workplace are unusual building blocks for a comedy. But filmmaker Steven Conrad believes just because you're trying to make people laugh doesn't mean you can't sneak in a little drama, too.

The Promotion, the directorial debut of Conrad (the screenwriter of The Weather Man and The Pursuit of Happyness), incorporates all of the subjects above - and still manages to be very funny.

"I watched Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd movies like crazy when I was growing up, because my dad was a silent movie fan," said Conrad, a Fort Lauderdale native, pictured below at Lincoln Road's Sushi Samba with actor Seann William Scott. "Those movies were set in the real world and showed people needing food because they were hungry. But they were still funny."

In the silent era, there weren't yet enough movies for audiences to think in terms of genre, so filmmakers made whatever kind of movie the wanted, often combining sadness, tragedy and comedy within the same film.

But today's studio comedies - which are usually tailored to a specific demographic and pre-approved via test screenings - tend to stick to one particular tone.

"There's a push from studios not to confuse the issue too much, because audience test scores prove their appetites have been compartmentalized," Conrad said. "And I get that. When you go to a dinner party and someone is walking around with a tray of appetizers, you always ask what it is before you eat it. You don't want to eat something without knowing what it is first, because then you can't get ready for it. It helps to have a menu."

Neither audiences nor distributor Paramount Pictures had a menu for 2005's The Weather Man, the first in an unconnected (and purely accidental) trilogy of films written by Conrad about men struggling to balance family and career. Released in the Oscar-baiting fall season, the movie - which starred Nicolas Cage as a TV weatherman contemplating a job that would move him away from his estranged kids and ex-wife - proved too dark and melancholy for audiences expecting the wacky comedy the film's marketing promised.

Conrad fared better with his script for 2007's The Pursuit of Happyness, a straight-forward drama that drew on Will Smith's charisma to bring humor to its fact-based story of a penniless single father struggling to raise his son while pursuing his career aspirations.

With The Promotion, Conrad has honed the perfect balance between laughs and pathos. The film centers on the growing rivalry that develops between Doug (Seann William Scott) and Richard (John C. Reilly), two assistant managers at a Chicago supermarket vying for the same manager's post at a new store scheduled to open in the neighborhood.

Although Conrad says the three films were never intended as a trilogy, he also recognizes their similarities. "It's all I write about now - how hard it is to come by success, how it challenges us, what weaknesses it draws out of us in order to compete," he said. "Mostly it comes from having been unemployed and having had trouble finding work after becoming a father. Before I wrote The Weather Man and Pursuit, I was writing stories about the things we want, not the things we need. That difference was elemental for me."

The often-hilarious passive-aggressive war that Doug and Richard wage against each other will be recognizable to anyone who ever competed with a co-worker for a promotion while trying to maintain a workplace veneer of camaraderie and friendship. But The Promotion also presents a realistic portrayal of working-class families struggling to make ends meet, headed by men quietly ashamed of their inability to fulfill their traditional role of provider.

In one scene, Doug's wife (Jenna Fischer) offers to ease their financial angst by taking on a night job, an offer he interprets as a failure of his masculinity. "Female lions do the hunting," she says as a way of making him feel better. "I'm not a lion," Doug replies. "I'm a guy."

The Promotion's themes of personal disappointment and existential crisis are strongly reminiscent of The Weather Man. But Conrad says that film's failure taught him a lesson as to how far he can push the audience and still keep them laughing.

"The lighter tone of The Promotion was definitely a conscious reaction to The Weather Man," Conrad said. "That is not to say I wasn't satisfied with that movie: I was, absolutely. But I think that movie compounded some harsh observations about how hard personal happiness is to come by and how unlikely it may be for most of us with the dead of winter, which is already somewhat of a downer.

"We also had a character die in the film, and those three things together were too much. So in The Promotion, I dealt with private dissatisfaction in a sunnier environment, because feeling blue or uncertain about your future is not relegated to the winter. I feel that way spring, summer, winter and fall."

Made for a modest $6 million, the budget of The Promotion was low enough to convince executive producers Bob and Harvey Weinstein to give Conrad his shot at directing. Despite the brothers' notoriety for occasionally being too hands-on, Conrad says they left him alone to make the movie his way.

"The only thing Bob asked me to do was stress that these are guys who are trying to do their job well," Conrad said. "He had a beef with workplace comedies in which the characters do their jobs ironically or half-assed. That doesn't square with the way Bob sees the world. He thinks most people get up in the morning and work like hell in order to get ahead. And if you don't, you're going to get passed up."

A bigger and better "Hulk"

Here's my interview with The Incredible Hulk director Louis Laterrier and producer Gale Ann Hurd, which appeared in today's Weekend section.

Laterrier on what he wanted to accomplish with the movie: "I wanted to bring to it what I remembered from my childhood, which was the story of a fugitive with a twist -- the twist being the Hulk. Bruce Banner is always on the run, always alone, and there was something heartfelt about that. That's what was missing for me in Ang Lee's Hulk."

You can also check out my review here.

Oliver Stone talks about his President Bush movie

Screen Daily has scored an interview with Oliver Stone about his upcoming biopic on the life and times of President George W. Bush. Some quotes:

"It's about his inner workings and his people," says Stone, who adds that Saddam Hussein is characterised in the movie "in a pretty funny way".

Stone says the tone of the film is "ideally in the vein of Network or Dr Strangelove. I was a young man when I saw Dr Strangelove and it still stays with me. It took a very grim subject and turned it into a serio-comic story and it worked. So those would be great models for the movie to live by."

"I have been so trashed for JFK, Nixon and others that I just pass on and say, OK, I am just going to do my perception of what happened. I am flitting through my time and all I can do really is to reflect what I see of that time."

.

How can this movie turn out to be anything but awesome?

Sex and the City: The Interviews

You can check out my interview with the cast and director of the Sex and the City movie here. Check out a sample of what awaits below.

Me: I recently described the sex in the show as ''raunchy'' in a story, and a reader e-mailed me and called me a prude. But I always thought part of the show's appeal was that it was kind of raunchy. And so is the movie.

Writer-director Michael Patrick King: It's frank and graphic and comic. When you wrote raunchy, you were probably thinking fun. The thing about Sex and the City is that yes, there was sex, but it wasn't dark and black. It was pink and bubbly. If you could have sex after an episode, then you were pretty good, because ours was about an uncharted sexual landscape of talking about sex in an uncensored way. The movie is R-rated for a reason. One of the first discussions they had at New Line was would people trust a PG Sex and the City?And the answer was no.

Me: All the actresses appear nude in the film except Sarah. How come?

Sarah Jessica Parker: I got a no-nudity clause. What can I tell you? It's been there since I was 8!

Kim Cattrall: For me to play Samantha, that's an area I would have to be particularly fearless in (laughs).

Playing "Funny Games" with Michael Haneke

When directors decide to remake one of their own films, it is usually because there was something about the first version that they felt could be improved.

Alfred Hitchcock gave his 1934 black-and-white British thriller The Man Who Knew Too Much a Technicolor makeover in 1956, emphasizing the allure of Hollywood stars James Stewart and Doris Day. Dutch filmmaker George Sluizer retooled his 1988 arthouse hit The Vanishing in 1993 with a bigger budget, big-name stars (Kiefer Sutherland, Jeff Bridges, Sandra Bullock) and -- gasp! -- a happy ending.

But when Michael Haneke set out to remake his 1997 Austrian thriller Funny Games, he wasn't interested in changing a thing, other than using English-speaking actors. The new Funny Games (reviewed here), which stars Naomi Watts, Tim Roth and Devon Gearhart as the family held hostage in their vacation home by a pair of young psychopaths (Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet), is so similar to the first film it is practically a shot-for-shot remake, employing near-identical angles, sets and dialogue to the original.

''There really was nothing more to add,'' Haneke said via telephone about his decision not to tinker with what had worked the first time around. ``I wanted to remake it in English to attract a larger American audience, and because I have always felt this story is of the most relevance to the U.S. But the script felt just as relevant and timely today than it did 10 years ago, maybe even more so. I couldn't think of anything else I needed to say.''

Some preview audiences have had plenty to say about Funny Games: One Internet report claims a viewer stood up after an advance screening and yelled ''F--- you!'' at the screen. But Haneke takes that as a compliment, since the fiendish Funny Games accomplishes exactly what the original did: It seduces the thrill-seeking audience with a suspenseful tale about an innocent family subjected to psychological and physical torture, then throws the viewer's interest in this sort of material back at them, forcing you to contemplate why, exactly, we derive entertainment out of watching such sadistic pictures.

Watts, who also served as executive producer on Funny Games, said the film's violent nature initially gave her pause when Haneke contacted her about the project and told her he would make it only if she agreed to play the role of the distraught wife and mother.

''I was concerned how it would land in America,'' the actress said via telephone. ``So I had to talk to him to make sure that the reactions I had when I saw the original film were the same reactions he was going for. I think Michael uses Funny Games to have us question our role as an audience member and make us think about the things we crave. And I think he definitely succeeded. That's what makes him such a provocative filmmaker: His movies really get under your skin.''

Watts said it was a challenge to make Funny Games, because Haneke wanted to recreate the original so scrupulously that even her performance had to be a near-mirror reflection of Susanne Lothar's work in the first film (pictured above).

''I'm used to walking onto a set and discovering a scene with the director and the other actors in an organic way,'' Watts said. ``But that wasn't the case with this film, because since it was a shot-for-shot remake, the blocking was automatically dictated by the first film. Michael said this was the way he was making the movie, so I just had to go with him. But I don't think I could have done it with any other director. He is so consumed with every tiny detail and every piece of minutiae that you just trust him.''

The German-born Haneke has enjoyed increasingly larger audiences in the United States through his last few films, including The Piano Teacher and Cache (Hidden). But although both of those pictures were unsettling experiences, they don't begin to compare with Funny Games, a film of such intensity and harrowing power that it takes some people a while before they're able to formulate an opinion about it.

"'The first time I saw Funny Games, it angered me and got me very upset,'' said Pitt, who plays one of the two charming, boyish, demonic psychopaths terrorizing the family. ``It took me a day or two to realize that I thought it was really good. At first, the movie affects you so strongly that it feels brutal, almost like an assault. But once I started thinking about it, I couldn't get it out of my head.''

Brutal is one of the words most commonly used to describe the original Funny Games, and the same will be true for the new version. But a close viewing of the film reveals that despite the plentiful violence that transpires, there is barely any actual violence onscreen. Whenever blood is shed, Haneke always cuts away from the act, depicting only the emotional suffering and agony felt by the other characters in the film as one of their loved ones is harmed.

''Violent films have almost become chic among critics and audiences, even more so in the 10 years since I made the original,'' Haneke said. ``When you sell or depict violence as a consumer article, then you are showing the thrill of the perpetrator. But if you turn that around and show the suffering of the victims instead, it's not a lot of fun to watch.''

There is, however, one explosive act of violence in Funny Games that is shown onscreen and is usually greeted by a roar of approval from audiences. But the roar is short-lived. The most controversial moment in the original film, that scene is also duplicated in the new version, which works even better the second time around, because you can see how skillfully Haneke is toying with the viewer.

''You have to know what you're doing in order for the audience not to check out of the movie after that point,'' Haneke said. ``You're basically making the viewer aware of his role as a viewer and the artificiality of the film they're watching, but then you have to get them to immediately forget that and get lost in the film again. Basically, you're enticing the viewer to mistrust the verity of cinema as an art form, then asking them to trust it again. It's a neat trick.''

Bowling for "Blood"

Much ado has been made about the wild last scene of There Will Be Blood, which takes place in a bowling alley and, among other things, includes the highly quotable line "I drink your milkshake!"

Some critics have even taken director Paul Thomas Anderson to task, saying that scene nearly ruins everything that has come before it. Here's a quote from Anderson talking about the sequence, taken from the story that ran in today's paper:

''Listen, I can completely understand whatever people's feelings about that scene might be,'' he says. ``But from the very beginning, when we started cutting the film, we always knew what we were doing was we were going to the bowling alley.

'It wasn't like `Yeah, we originally had this other ending, but Paramount asked us if we could do something kind of crazy and outlandish instead.' This movie was built to get to the bowling alley.''

Anderson was a little talked out by the time we got around to discussing the movie's title, which is apparently derived from the Book of Exodus, Chapter 7, Verse 19. ("There will be blood everywhere in Egypt, even in the wooden and stone containers.")

"We didn't want to call it There Will Be a Morally Ambiguous Ending," is all Anderson would say about that.

Getting away with it

I spoke to David Fincher via telephone this weekend about his upcoming Zodiac. Calling from New Orleans, where he's currently filming his next movie, Fincher talked about how he managed to get a major studio to finance Zodiac, despite its unconventional nature and unusually long (for a thriller) running time.

Fincher, of course, is already famous for having directed one of the most subversive films to ever come from a Hollywood studio. But he says he never felt like he was getting away with something similar with Zodiac, since everyone involved knew what they were getting into from the moment they read James Vanderbilt's script.

"I don’t think anybody made this movie in spite of their instincts," Fincher said. "I think they made it because of their instincts. People spent [money] to make this movie because they believed in the story, because it's a gripping yarn and because they believed there was something at the end of it. Although I’m sure there’s a lot of people who would have rather seen it at two hours and seven minutes."

Fincher says Zodiac's two-hour-and-45-minute running time was the result of the extensive research that went into the project, which was made with the cooperation of many of the surviving victims and investigators of the Zodiac killer.

"We tried to make the movie as short as we could," Fincher said. "But we also made promises to people that we were going to tell their story and they would not be turned into plot devices - Nameless Victim Number One. And whenever possible, we tried to make good on those promises.

"My goal from the beginning was to make a scary movie that would have the same effect on the audience [the real-life case] had on me. But I didn't want to pander and I didn't want the movie to be salacious. It's not just a Friday night at a scary movie."

The rest of my interview with Fincher will run closer to Zodiac's March 2 release. You can check out some clips from the movie here.

Viewing log

Saturday Feb. 10

Stranger Than Fiction (2006): Will Ferrell is surprisingly good in what is essentially a dramatic performance trapped inside a comedy, although I liked Dustin Hoffman's supporting turn as an eccentric literature professor even more. Doesn't quite overcome the aura of a Charlie Kaufman rip-off, but its transparently schematic nature is never annoying. Too bad the script loses its nerve in the last five minutes, though.

Sunday Feb. 11

* Reservoir Dogs (1992): Hadn't watched this one all the way through in seven or eight years. Still arguably Tarantino's best movie overall (although Jackie Brown gets better every time I watch it). The DVD contains some deleted scenes that include alternate takes of the infamous ear scene that are much bloodier and graphic, yet not nearly as disturbing as the one Tarantino ended up using.

Jack speaks

Here's my interview with Jack Nicholson about The Departed, which ran in today's paper but is buried so deep within the Herald's website, it's practically impossible to find.