Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Sounds like it was a good SXSW this year. I wish I could have gone. I’m curious about this first film that today’s reviewer, Monty Cristo, mentions, especially after reading Harry’s ranting and raving about it. I got a lot of mail in the aftermath of Harry’s piece, tons of it from people who are currently living in Venezuela. One thing’s for sure... President Hugo Chavez does not seem to have the hearts of his people. So much of what was sent to me was angry, hurt, even betrayed. People did believe in him at one point, but the last few years seem to have been marked by such flagrant corruption that it’s crippling the citizenry. My own reading on Chavez has left me deeply uncomfortable regarding this film and its agenda. There is no doubt... our government lies to us sometimes. But before I start jumping up and down to declare Chavez an innocent man who’s been wronged, I need to see this, read more, and talk with the readers who have been so kind in writing to us to discuss their personal observations of how things are in Venezuela right now.
Anyway... I’ll leave Monty to it:
THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED
Harry already wrote this up, so please read his for a more thorough breakdown of the film itself. Think of this as supplementary reading.
The Revolution Will not Be Televised, we were told prior to the screening, was the inadvertent end-product of what began as a feature piece for the BBC on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, put together by Kim Bartley & Donnacha O’Briain. During April of 2002, roughly the middle of the period of time Bartley and O’Briain were in Venezuela, they experienced first-hand the first coup of the 21st Century. Most Americans, however, got a completely different view on the matter as a result of Washington directing the US media’s attention to misinformation.
Before seeing this film, I didn’t have much faith in the possibility of fair, unbiased news in America. We haven’t had a true newsman (or newsperson, depending on how P.C. you want me to be) since Walter Cronkite, someone who gets on the TV, radio, or writes in the newspaper (or online, these days), says what he thinks and believes to be true, and is heard by most of the US general public. This is a big, big problem, ladies and gentlemen, and as for hoping against hope that our government won’t lie to us more often than not...
One of the earliest clips in the film is from a statement made by Ari Fleischer at a press conference. The real beauty of this film is best appreciated through listening to audience reaction. Fleischer was greeted by fierce hissing and boo’s from the Friday night crowd I was sitting amongst. The hissing was so loud, you could barely hear what he was saying. Later in the film, a clip of Colin Powell (a man who even I, a liberal, felt I could trust to some extent) was inserted. Here’s where the tiny bit of faith I had disappeared. He didn’t get hisses, and he didn’t get boo’s. Honestly, among Bush II: Electric Bushaloo’s cabinet, he is the one guy I didn’t really mind being in office. I thought I could trust him.
After seeing what I did from Bartley and O’Briain’s cameras, and thinking about what he knew when he said that President Chavez was not acting for the benefit of the Venezuelan people, I only have four words for you, ladies and gentlemen:
DO NOT TRUST HIM.
He lied to the American people. He lied because he left out one word. He meant to say that President Chavez was not acting for the benefit of the wealthy Venezuelan people.
Picture this: a wealthy oil businessman leading an organization of the wealthiest citizens of a country decide that they want to regain control of their country’s government, so they make a trip to see the leader of the world’s superpower nation. Within the week, a coup happens, and the oil businessman takes power, dissolves their Congress, Supreme Court, and all other semblances of a democratic government by using the world’s new most feared weapon: Media Spin, certainly more threatening than a trade embargo, and more destructive than an atomic bomb. I wonder who helped supply the international component to that weapon?
Whereas an embargo can starve a country into compromise, and a nuke can incinerate hundreds upon thousands of people, the kind of damage Media Spin does never heals. If not for Bartley and O’Briain’s work, the Media Spin engendered by the wealthiest of Venezuela and the US Government would have destroyed history. No one who wasn’t there would ever know. The stories those who were there could tell would be relegated to the level of rumor and heresy. No one believes what he or she hears without proof, or evidence that it definitively happened.
This documentary simply cannot be missed. I spoke with many people directly following the screening, as well as throughout the following week, including staunch Republican conservatives, and even they agreed that they couldn't trust the current US government anymore, because no matter how they sliced it, they couldn't condone its role in the coup last year. When all the difference in the world is made by one camera angle that not just their “interim” government, but also our nationally semi-elected government chose not to show us, it makes you wonder at the simplicity involved in deceiving an entire country when you’re in charge (or think that you are).
I don’t care what you have to do to see this film, fly 1000 miles, bribe your local arthouse to find a way to bring it into town, do whatever you think could possibly work. Go to the website, contact the filmmakers, and organize an online petition drive to get it distributed. Call PBS and demand it be played. This film is a triumphant step in the effort to bringing about not only Chavez’s dream of a peaceful and happy Venezuela, but also the dream of true freedom of information, which we’ve only sort of realized thus far with the internet. There is plenty of space on the ‘net to say what you want, but wouldn’t it be nice if the people who think they’re in charge didn’t try to prevent us from making things like this known?
HAPPY HERE AND NOW
Be advised, there are a couple MINOR SPOILERS below.
The next day, I strolled up to the Paramount to see a film called Happy Here and Now, which stars Liane Balaban as Amelia, a woman desperately searching for her sister Muriel, played by Shalom Harlow. Before going too much further, I have to address a problem I had that started right there.
The film opens with an internet video chat between Muriel (Harlow) and a guy we later find out is Eddie Mars (Karl Geary). Now, maybe it was just me, but I didn’t quite get that within the film there was a technology that allowed you to make yourself appear as someone else onscreen until later on. At this point in the film, I just got confused, because Harlow and Balaban look somewhat alike (or maybe they don’t, and I’m easily confused), and... well, to put it succinctly, this particular device in the film just rather confused me. It seemed as if I wasn’t supposed to understand it at first, so yes, indeed I WAS supposed to be confused; however, at the point where this technology was explained, I had to pay too much attention to that explanation (coupled with realizing it was something I wasn’t supposed to understand at first) to keep myself “into” the film.
Ally Sheedy plays Lois, Amelia’s aunt. She takes care of Amelia while she is in New Orleans looking for her sister. David Arquette plays a guy who owns a fumigation business, who’s pretty eccentric and weird (go figure)... oh, and Clarence Williams III puts in a turn as a former government intelligence guy who helps Amelia with her problems.
Now, I could try to summarize the story here, but instead, I’ll try to sum up what I think the film was trying to get across. Happy Here and Now deals with people using different masks, whether they be emotional or digital (yeah, it sounds weird, but that’s how this flick works), to give others the impression you want them to have. The biggest problem Michael Almereyda (Hamlet (2000)) runs into with this film is that certain parts take you out of the flow of the film, and overall, too much of it feels like an inside joke, where maybe the people telling it “get it,” but their audience doesn’t necessarily. I have to give props for featuring Ernie K-Doe in a smaller role, which would be his first and last feature film credit. K-Doe was a popular figure from the days of James Brown’s heyday who really epitomized what was hot during the era when Soul was big, along with other members of the Big Five: Lil Willie John, Joe Tex and Jackie Wilson, as well as Brown himself.
As cool as I think Ernie K-Doe was, it couldn’t excite me enough about Happy Here and Now to enjoy it overall. The narrative was complex only for the sake of complexity, and it just felt unnecessary. If you happen to be at a film fest trying to kill time before seeing the premiere of something like Assassination Tango and can’t find something cool like Bubba Ho-Tep to see, then catch this one if you want to see it for the sake of seeing it, but don’t sacrifice seeing something you may not be able to see again for this.
MELVIN GOES TO DINNER
The directorial debut of Bob Odenkirk succeeds on so many levels, I could go on for days, and at the festival, I did. A friend of mine with whom I saw the first screening and I always drifted back to Melvin Goes to Dinner during our various conversations. Melvin was up for an audience award (which it won), and everyone in the audience got a slip of paper with numbers 1 through 5 on it, 1 for terrible and 5 for great. My buddy and I were scrambling to find the 6, we loved it so much, and evidently, the audience loved it too, as I found out at Melvin’s second screening. One of the SXSW programmers got up and told us that of all the people who turned in ballots, only one person gave Melvin a negative score. All those SXSWers aren’t wrong. Melvin rocks, plain and simple.
Director Bob Odenkirk discovered Michael Blieden’s play Phyro-giants! (which the film was adapted from) as a result of his wife (and one of the film’s Producers) Naomi attending a performance of the aforementioned play, which features a real-time hour-long conversation between four people sitting around a table. Among the things they talk over dinner about are marriage, religion, infidelity, death, and tragedy, as well as Phyro-giants, the Creatress, God, and Nids. That last bit probably made no sense, but hey, that’s why we go to see movies, to understand the crazy-sounding stuff people rave about being so good.
Blieden adapted his hour-long play into an 83-minute film that never drags and never loses its energy, through scenes of drama and comedy alike. Breaking from the play’s linear chronology is definitely one of the best decisions made in the translation, as film works in a completely different way than live theatre. The addition of on-the-way-to-dinner and post-dinner scenes also enables the progression of Melvin’s character to occur in a way that it doesn’t in Phyro-giants!, which is by no means a dig at the play (which I’ve never seen performed, mind you), but rather a compliment to Blieden’s masterful adaptation of his own work.
The original cast of the play, including Michael Blieden (Melvin), Stephanie Courtney (Alex), Matt Price (Joey), Annabelle Gurwich (Sarah), and Kathleen Roll (The Waitress), remained the same for the film. This was not only an advantage for Odenkirk (having thoroughly-rehearsed actors right at the outset), but also a really smart decision on his part, since most directors don’t take thorough rehearsal into account as an extremely important asset. Following the screening, Odenkirk told us that thanks to mainly that fact, they were able to blow through 63 pages of script in ONE DAY, and the fluidity of the conversation makes it show. If none of the other buzz you’ve heard piques your interest about Melvin, try to imagine that happening on most film sets (independent or studio, doesn’t matter).
Featured in smaller roles are Maura Tierney, David Cross, Melora Walters, an uncredited actor who looks an awful lot like one of the Tenacious D guys, and Odenkirk himself. The small amount of screen time they have doesn’t reflect on how big of a part they have in making the film as a whole work. This is the kind of ensemble work you don’t get to see every day.
Another bit that has to be mentioned is the original score provided by Michael Penn, composer of the music in PT Anderson’s Hard Eight and Boogie Nights, as well as Alan Cumming and Jennifer Jason Leigh’s The Anniversary Party. Penn’s score seamlessly blends into the flick’s narrative to the point that after the movie you say “wow, that was a great movie” after watching it, and someone sitting next to you says “wasn’t the music awesome?,” to which you say “yeah, I was about to say that too.” I got lucky (not like that) and scored (wow, heavy unintentional innuendo I notice only as I type this…) a copy of Phyrogiants: Music from Melvin Goes to Dinner, an unmastered CD that contains the film’s soundtrack, and I set it on repeat for the plane ride home, and only shut it off when the flight attendants asked us to shut off our electronic devices. It’s a good soundtrack folks, let’s get it distributed so that we can all go buy ourselves one, shall we?
Another thing that merits some notice is the fact that not only did Blieden write and act in this thing, but he edited it as well, and managed to not make it The Bleiden Show with Michael Bleiden and Some Other People. Bleiden’s choices as an editor, guided by Odenkirk (who, according to Bleiden, sat with him in front of a Mac in his apartment editing with him over Quizno’s) put together an end product that doesn’t disappoint in any way imaginable.
The sense I got of Odenkirk’s directing is that he put a great deal of trust in a number of people, and took a somewhat “hands-off” approach with not just the actors, but also Bleiden’s script, which is relatively unchanged from the source. Odenkirk deserves major kudos for letting artistic people do what they do best: be creative.
Odenkirk mentioned at a panel discussion the next day “what happened to dramedy?” and I’ll echo that sentiment by saying that Melvin Goes To Dinner is neither heavy drama nor Mr. Show-style full-on comedy. Fans of Mr. Show with Bob and David won’t be disappointed if they come into Melvin expecting a good time watching a good film, but this is not Mr. Show: The Movie. This is Melvin Goes To Dinner: a Movie So Damn Good I Don’t Know How You Could Pass Up Finding It At a Festival (And Hopefully Soon, a Theatre) Near You.
Thanks Harry, hope I'm helpful.
Oh, and if you'd like an alias, I'll go with Monty Cristo.
I’m so happy that Bob had a good experience with MELVIN at SXSW. He’s been bummin’ about RUN RONNIE RUN for over a year now, and it must be nice for him to run into a really positive reception for his new film. Can’t wait to check it out m’self, and thanks for the report, Monty.
"Moriarty" out.
