‘The Help’ — Writer/Director Tate Taylor and Producer Chris Columbus

Posted on July 13, 2011 at 8:00 am

More from the set of “The Help:”

Tate Taylor, writer and director of the film, told us, “I grew up coming to Greenwood. It stopped in time in 1963. These homes, these locations, these trees – we put together a look book. They asked, ‘Where do you want to film, Vancouver?’ We gave the book to Spielberg and he went, ‘Wow.’ Louisiana has tax breaks – it is Southern, but has a very different feel.” So they came to Greenwood, which stood in for Jackson in 1963, and he brought along Mark Richter as the production designer because he was from the South — they had worked together as production assistants on a Gap catalogue photo shoot for $100 a day. Taylor said Northerners don’t understand much about the South. “I’ve been asked if we have malls here. They don’t understand why people are being so nice – What do they want?” He told us about adapting his friend’s novel. “I had to get the first 200 pages of the book into 30 pages of screenplay.” He had just one disagreement with Kathryn Stockett and admitted she was right. “People do not know about the Jim Crow laws. We had to leave that in.”

Chris Columbus, producer, described Greenwood as “In a sense, frozen in time. ‘The Reivers’ was shot here.” He said the production team was energized by the excitement of the community and pride. And they all appreciated “the friendliness – everyone knows what everyone else is doing.” The house where they were filming that day (Elizabeth Leefolt’s home in the movie) “was built around 1958 but it had to have a shimmer of newness about it.”

“I knew Tate because his sister’s kid and my kid were in school together and were friends. I saw his short film, ‘The Chicken Party” and we stayed in touch. He sent me the manuscript and I said, ‘It’s a woman’s book’ and gave it to my wife.” But it turned out to be more than that. He urged the studio to use Taylor even though he was a newcomer. “He seems to really know this world inside out.” And he told us that it was important to have accurate detail but keep the focus on the story: “History is the backdrop. It’s all about the characters. You don’t want it to be a PBS special. What was going on creates a sense of tension and danger. When there’s too much Hollywood [casting big name stars) the authenticity disappears.” Columbus, one of Hollywood’s most successful directors (including the first two Harry Potter films) told us he wanted to be in Greenwood to see the filming. “I’m here almost every day because I love it. It is very inspirational. Why can’t we go back to making films that inspire us? Times really haven’t changed that much in terms of the way we deal with each other. And I love to be working on a movie where you really want to hate the villain. It’s learning an entirely new culture, accent, food. There was a time when the studio was talking about a cookbook, but the food is horrendous!”

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Behind the Scenes Directors

I Love You, Beth Cooper

Posted on November 3, 2009 at 8:00 am

Paul Rust is 28, and looks it, maybe a little older. But in “I Love You, Beth Cooper” he plays Denis Cooverman, a high school valedictorian. Jack T. Carpenter, last seen playing a college student in “Sydney White” two years ago, is 24, and looks it. But he is also playing a graduating senior, Cooverman’s best friend Rich Munsch. As the movie opens, two actors who look like they should be playing guys in lab coats and stethoscopes wearing suits and carrying briefcases are wearing cap and gown and pretending — badly — that they are at their high school graduation. They look older than their principal, clue number one that no one is paying much attention to making sure this movie is going to work on any level.
Clues two through twelve that this movie is a mess come very quickly, and that is all that comes quickly in this slow-moving, sour-tasting disaster. It is possible — unlikely, but possible — that there is yet some unexplored humor to be made out of difficulty in opening a champagne bottle, but what this movie gives us instead is an excruciatingly drawn-out extended sequence with the most unimaginative of pay-offs. The characters race from one place to another for no purpose — either in story or in comedy. There are more locations than there are laughs.
Cooverman, the high school valedictorian, gets up to give his graduation speech and instead of the usual, “as we go forth,” he decides this would be a good time to tell the school’s mean girl that she is an insecure witch, the school bully that he is cruel because he was abused, Munsch that he should come out of the closet, and the school cheerleader, Beth Cooper (Hayden Panettiere of “Heroes”) that even though they have never spoken, he loves her. So the rest of the movie consists of the consequences of these poorly-timed revelations as Cooverman has to run from Cooper’s crazed and coked up boyfriend and Munsch keeps telling everyone he’s not gay. Oh, and everyone gets to break in on Cooverman’s parents having sex in a car. Cooverman’s father is played by Alan Ruck, who must have spent every minute on set wondering how he could be in both one of the all-time best teen movies (“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”) and one of the worst (this one). Every single character is a dull paper-thin caricature, from Cooper’s roid rage boyfriend to Cooverman’s despised ex-girlfriend, whose unforgivable failing is that she is not pretty and she likes him.
The wild last night of high school party movie can be done well (“Can’t Hardly Wait,” “Dazed and Confused,” “American Graffiti”). Here, however, director Chris Columbus seems to have taken the tiredest and most predictable elements from each of them, wrung out anything resembling an authentic or appealing detail, and then dragged out every single set-piece to the agonizing breaking point. I can’t say I’ve never seen a clumsy attempt to open a champagne bottle go wrong on screen before, but I can say I have never seen one so poorly staged and lugubriously paced. It look Cooverman less time to get through high school than it felt like I spent watching this film.

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