Posted on January 31, 2014 at 8:00 am
Richard Linklater (“Before Midnight,” “School of Rock”) is going to direct a remake of the Don Knotts fantasy The Incredible Mr. Limpet
The film had some innovative use of animation combined with live action. And its highlight is this wonderful song.
I hope the remake keeps the sweetness of the original.
Posted on November 7, 2013 at 8:00 am
This week’s release of the fact-based “Dallas Buyer’s Club” inspired me to recommend some of my favorites of the dozens of other movies set in the Lone Star State.
1. Giant
2. Dazed & Confused
3. Red River
4. The Alamo
5. The Sugarland Express
Posted on April 27, 2012 at 8:00 am
Richard Linklater has directed some of my favorite movies like “Waking Life,” “Before Sunset,” “School of Rock,” and “Dazed and Confused.” He talked to me about his new film, “Bernie,” starring Jack Black as the real-life Bernie Tiede, the most popular man in the small Eastern Texas town of Carthage even after he confessed to killing a wealthy widow and stuffing her in a freezer for nine months. Tiede, now in prison for the murder, was a funeral director who became friendly with octogenarian Marjorie Nugent, known as “the meanest woman in east Texas.” She lavished him with gifts and trips and made him her heir, but then became possessive and demanding and abusive. He shot her, hid the body in her freezer, told everyone she was in assisted living, and spent a lot of her money helping people in the community. Shirley Maclaine plays the widow and the prosecutor is played by Matthew McConaughey. As Ms. Nugent’s nephew wrote in the New York Times:
There are little things in “Bernie” that aren’t exactly true, bits of dialogue, a changed name here and there. But the big things, the weirdest things, the things you’d assume would have to be made up, happened exactly as the movie says they did. The trial lawyers really did wear Stetsons and cowboy boots and really were named Danny Buck Davidson and Scrappy Holmes. Daddy Sam’s barbecue and bail bonds, just a few blocks from the courthouse in Carthage (population: 6,700), really does have a sign that says, “You Kill It, I’ll Cook It!” And they really did find my Aunt Marge on top of the flounder and under the Marie Callender’s chicken potpies, wrapped in a Lands’ End sheet. They had to wait two days to do the autopsy. It took her that long to thaw.
One of the highlights of this film is the commentary from the people in Carthage. Are those real townspeople really talking about their own experiences?
Oh, they’re definitely, mostly real people, I mean, “non-actors,” but some are actors. Most are people from the area of the state near Carthage and surrounding towns. Some of them were actually intimate with Bernie and Mrs. Nugent, so it’s kind of a mix.
It feels so natural. Was it unscripted?
No, it’s scripted, but they kind of put it in their own words, quite often. I looked at a lot of people and found people that could be themselves, doing material and throwing in. You know, some of my favorite ones were things that people just threw in there. When Sonny Carl Davis, who’s an actor, goes off on the town, “He’s my daddy, he’s my cousin,” you know, he’s got a way with words. And Juli Erickson saying, “Honey, there are people in this town who woulda shot her for five dollars,’ stuff like that.
What made you decide on this quasi-documentary format?
I really never thought of it much as documentary, because the stories were dramatic. I saw a story told from town gossips—and Southern gossip is such a huge thing. I attended the trial, and read and got my hands on everything. I was going through Skip Hollandsworth’s journalistic notes where he had interviewed everybody, and what they were saying was really kind of funny, I felt, and very telling of the town and of the situation. If you think about it, Bernie was in jail, Ms. Nugent was gone, and they’re not there to speak for themselves. As in small towns, with any event like this, all that’s left is the community itself reverberating around with opinions. If you were to go to Carthage, anybody over a certain age would be able to tell you what happened; how they knew Bernie, about the nine months she was in the freezer, how he preached at church, “we hung out, went to a party at his house,” maybe how he should’ve killed her to get away with it—everyone has their own idea, how they would’ve done it? You know, it’s just one of those crazy things. It’s a very rare event, such a notorious crime in that area. The guy says on closing credits, “we don’t have stranger killings, usually it’s family.”
You certainly deglamorized Matthew McConaughey. I love the choice of the glasses, they were wonderful.
Oh, you liked those? Let me think about it, he also had little plumpers in his mouth, and a little gut, an extra 25 pounds. He still had a ways to go to get to the real Danny, but he tried.
And you were at the trial? I never heard of a change of venue to a different city because the defendant was too popular!
Yeah, no one’s ever heard of that. I’ve talked to every judge, DA, defense attorney, since this trial. “Have you ever heard of a trial being moved because it was too because he was too well liked and they didn’t think they could get a conviction, so they had to move to get a jury of his peers?” People just kind of go, “No, I’ve never heard of that.” Skip’s article probably didn’t help Bernie—it just was not on terms that were any good. I think Danny Buck started feeling pretty confident at some point and there wasn’t a plea bargain, or it didn’t work out or something. At the end of the day he definitely got a really hard sentence. Well, the deck was stacked against him. First off, the change of venue, and then the judge disallowed the psychiatrist to examine him, who was going to speak on behalf of his disassociated moment, temporary insanity, and that got disallowed. That was his only hope. As Scrappy tells it, I had a guy who had confessed and told em’ everything and he didn’t have a lot to work with by the time he was with Bernie and yet he was really going for this thing…. The evidence that Danny was allowed to show him at trial, pulling Ms. Nugent out of the freezer, with some really horrific images and out of context. And he successfully prosecutes him as the other— not like us— flying first class, going to the opera.
Tell me about working with Oscar winner and old-style Hollywood movie star Shirley MacLaine.
There’s no one like her. I had always had her in mind for this part, I guess because she had played a Texas grand dame a couple times already, as Aurora in “Terms of Endearment” and the sequel, and I was just lucky she did it. I think she wanted to work with Jack. It’s not a huge part for her, but I think she had fun. It kept her laughing, but she was sort of perfect. What was funny, I think, Shirley liked Ms. Nugent. The first thing she told me was, “even after she’s dead, she’s still around. That’s how I’m going to be! That’s how I’m going to be, you can tell me, that’ll be me.” I think she’s right! There was so much historical record, there was so much testimony. It is a little bit of a dance of how much of a bitch, to what level the bitchiness should reach, but at the end of the day, Ms. Nugent was actually a lot worse than Shirley was in the movie, according to all accounts. Shirley kind of humanized her, but that was my goal. I think the fun part—and this is why I love Shirley for the part—is that she still has that little girl infatuation, she’s still very sensual. When they were first together we called it the honeymoon, the time where she was happy, when out of the blue this terminally miserable lady who could never be happy with anyone or anything, had some fun, a guy paid some attention to her, before she had to possess him and ruin it. There were some happy times there.
I know you’ve worked with him before, but Jack Black would not have been the first person to come to my mind for this part, because Bernie’s a very restrained character, a kind of repressed character—and I think of Jack Black as irrepressible.
Well, that’s what you know from parts you’ve seen him in—but I know him, and having worked with him before, I knew he could do it. I was just lucky he wanted to do the part and found it interesting. And you know, a good actor like Jack, you find there’s a part of Jack that could relate. Bernie is a guy who’s non-confrontational and Jack really is the sweetest guy in the world, a total nice guy. He saw Bernie very clearly, and could in some ways relate to him. And who else could sing like that? There’s really no one else at the end of the day who could play this part, who could sing to Bernie’s actual level.
I love the parts when he sang, when he steps in at that funeral and sings “Amazing Grace,” it was fantastic. What was it like to stage a big musical number from “The Music Man?”
Fun! A dream come true! Anytime, you’re making a musical, it’s just fantastic. I felt like, “I’m Vincente Minnelli, and it’s the fifties and I’m making a musical!”
Posted on December 2, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Director Richard Linklater (“School of Rock,” “Dazed and Confused,” “Before Sunrise”) and stars Claire Danes and Zac Efron talked to a small group of reporters here in Washington DC about their new film, “Me and Orson Welles.” It is a fictional story based on the real-life production Mercury Theater production of “Julius Caesar” in 1937. Welles, then a theatrical and radio prodigy and general enfant terrible was a few years from making “Citizen Kane” but already considered both brilliant and impossible. In this movie, based on the book
Q: What got you interested in this script?
ZE: Rick talked to me about it and that was probably the most flattering thing in the world, I was kind of floored. Although it appears on the surface to be more serious or dramatic, I think for the kids who did see “High School Musical” and “17 Again,” for a younger audience, its an interesting transition. At a first glance theater in the 30s might appear a more stuffy, boring kind of story, but what the audience will find out is that it is every bit as fun as “High School Musical” and even more real world and practical. It doesn’t just have to be a fantasy land in which theater can be fun. It’s probably more exciting — the stakes are higher and it’s real.
Q: You just came back from the White House! What was that like? Were the Obama girls there?
RL: I secretly suspected that’s why we were invited but Sasha and Malia did not play sick. They were in school — Michelle would not allow it. We were meeting with the policy advisor on behalf of the Americans for the Arts. They’re hosting the screening tonight. It’s about arts education.
CD: We had our meeting in the “war room.” They do real things in that building!
ZE: It’s just a meeting room — no buttons to push! But it was still really cool.
RL: George Washington is on the wall — that war. It’s like Hollywood — all of the people are really smart! So how can they make such bad stuff?
Q: You created the tone of the book beautifully. Can you talk a little bit about doing a period piece because the details are so evocative.
RL: That’s the magic of cinema, you can re-create a moment in time like this. It’s November 1937, this theater, this stage design. But beyond the specifics, you try to create a mood, an atmosphere. That’s not just the history but also the genre. This movie has elements of screwball comedy, if you think of the films of the 1930’s, just in film history terms, to get that tone. This is a genre Orson Welles would never act in or make a film about! We put him in a film he would never put himself in for a fun ride through a week in his life. It’s one thing to make a period piece about something you remember intimately, which I have done. It’s another thing to go back in time.
Is there a politician you admire?
CD: Obama’s the man!
ZE: Abraham Lincoln!
Q: Did you grow up in homes where politics was talked about?
CD: I grew up in New York, we talked about politics. I am curious, but I do not follow it avidly. I am not a news or politics junkie like my husband.
RL: I admire anyone who has devoted their lives to public service. Someone who’s truly a public servant.
CD: We try to make movies that are going to influence people in positive ways. We want to entertain them but we also want them to empathize and understand themselves in a new way. It’s exciting to talk to people who are working on a more practical level.
RL: It is exciting to have a President who has such vast empathy. You can read his books and you can see he really has this bigger vision and really cares about people. You see how tough that job is and you have to be patient. But we felt like these people get it.
Q: How would you like to be remembered?
RL: We hope people will like it, we’d like them to see it in a theater preferably. There might be some kid who’s too young for it now but will catch up with it later on DVD. These stories travel.
ZE: Orson Welles was so ahead of his time and took a lot of risks, so unafraid. I think that’s something that is a great way to be remembered. He pushed mediums forward; he reinvented three mediums before he was 26 years old.
CD: I love that line of Bowie’s, “It doesn’t matter who does it first; it matters who does it second.” The innovators are often overlooked because they prepare people to appreciate that idea later on.
Q: You achieved such an authentic backstage feeling in the movie.
ZE: Putting on a play and being part of a show, there’s no way to explain or condense it. You live the highest highs and lowest lows. You feel on top of the world. It was interesting living in that world and re-creating the highlights of those moments, especially being directed by Orson Welles.
RL: But Christian McKay (who plays Welles) was the least experienced actor in the whole cast! He was the top dog but he would ask the most innocent questions.
ZE: He would even ask me questions!
RL: But it never seems out of the realm of possibility that even with so little film experience he would have a lead role in the film. That’s the Welles-ian element. And it’s not an imitation; it is a real performance.
Q: Did you do much research about Welles or the era?
CD: Like so many people, I discovered Welles in college, “Citizen Kane” in class. I definitely had an appreciation for him. And Rick made a care package for us of slang terms, a great compilation of songs from that time. I didn’t have to do a lot of research. My character was very relatable. But I was not the performer, more the Girl Friday, though she is starring in her own epic drama.
ZE: We had a pretty exciting time re-creating 1937 New York City in Pinewood Studios and we kind of felt we were living in that era. And we did talk about how my character would have admired Fred Astaire.
