I laughed my ass of reading Sydney Falco's comments from his sarcastic fingertips. And it sounds like FOOTSTEPS could be one of those sorts of films... you know... read on you'll see....
A couple of weeks ago I attended a really weird premiere. I never thought it worth mentioning except for the stunningly bad moviemaking at hand and the pretention to go along with it should be a stern forewarning to anyone aspiring to make independent films. Now here this: Please do not mix social justice with entertainment or "Footsteps" could be the result.
It was 4:55 and I was mud-wrestling with Hallenbeck. He had just delivered a right blow into my gnads when the phone rang. It was my semi-well known actor friend asking me if I wanted to go to a premiere. I delivered a thorough kick to Hallenbeck's shins: "That's for the 'The Last Action Hero'" I hopped in my car and took off before he could find time to tie me down and make me squeal like a pig.
When I get to the premiere, I expect it to be a sort of a low-tech screening room thing, since this is a low-budget B-movie. At first I thought I was in the wrong premiere. because there are at least a hundred well-dressed Beverly Hills fossils, armani clad execs and junior agents in Moe Ginsburg suits. As well as the usual publicity babes with their Jewish last names Anglacized. I'm the only one in jeans. I get to the door and I'm not on the list. Immediatley I see people writing checks(!). Apparently I had waltzed into some kind of fundraiser for a charity of which the name now escapes me. "Footsteps" is the movie and it starts Damian Chapa (Streetfighter, Blood in Blood Out), Maria Conchita Alonozo, Karina Lombard (The Firm, Kull the Conqueror), Martika (!)...
well, I got into the DGA theater and it's not even half full. About an hour goes by sitting there and by now I am in a daze having been subjected to a barrage of speeches from well meaning but frightfully boring charity heads. Apparently, this movie "Footsteps" is supposed to raise money for a boullabaise of organizations, most of which have something to do with abused children. Then the director, Daphna Edwards (another jew with an anglacized last name) takes the podium and she is wearing David Koresh tined sun glasses. She goes on and on about how she wanted to make the world see that "reunifying" children with their abusers is bad for society, and how we must change their family lives in order to cut down on the crime committed by society, yada yada yada.
The funniest moment is when they played a tape of Hilary Clinton -- yes, I am not joking. Hilary Rodham Clinton, FROM THE WHITEHOUSE, in a video taped statement, congradulates the director for her humanitarian efforts, etc...
Okay, I admit that I am a tad moved by her efforts, I come from a liberal jewish family and this is all important stuff... to her, at least. But we came to see a movie, right? So, finally it starts. Now after reading the above what are you expecting? A sincere drama? A heart-wrenching Douglas Sirk melodrama full of tarnished dreams, abuse parents, high emotions and realized truths?
NO.
Daphna Edwards has made a hopelessly lurid, 3 am cable, Ed Wood-level Fatal Attraction rip-off. What sheer horror in the fact that someone wasted this much money instead of donating it directly to the charity! Nobody is going to see this mess and go out and help abused children. The audience won't even feel guilty about it, because this movie has nothing to do with goddamn abused children! All they will remember is the sex scenes, the hopelessly fake blood, and the large plot holes. Prentention bundled with hyprocracy have never been grander bedfellows than in this case!The plot: a mish-mash of melrose place and Fatal Attraction cliches: a reporter, a mysterious woman in a one night stand, a family and children in jeapordy, you know the rest.
In the tech department: bad sets, bad cinematography, out of focus, etc. Lame lesbian songs written by the director. All of which could have been forgiven if the direction or story was more well-meaning. But it is not! This is a purely commercial enterprise packed by some opportunistic Beverly Hills housewife. In order to raise the money to direct a film, she went to all her rich, well meaning and guilty friends and soliticted money on the backs of abused children. The result is surely a piece of celluoid which will never be coming to a theater near you.
After the screening, everyone is trying to be polite, not say anything bad. There IS food, thankfully. And I happen to be standing with a middle-aged gentleman, a friend of the director's family, who hated the film as much as the rest of us did. However, he is vocal about it. "Why don't they tell her the film stinks!" Then the director's 80 year-old mother comes over. "Daphna was very creative as a child. "the man is nodding. No one speaks about the film itself. "She used to paint."
Sometimes sticking to watercolors is doing the world a favor.
