Kiss and Tell: Behind the scenes of Behind the Candelabra

HBO has released an extended behind-the-scenes look at Behind the Candelabra, the tv movie based on Scott Thorson's memoir about his life with Liberace. The Steven Soderbergh film starring Michael Douglas and Matt Damon airs this Sunday at 9PM EST.  The buzz, as I buzzed yesterday, is that it's brilliant.  The 15 minute piece includes interviews with the actors - including the question of kissing each other - as well as archival footage of Liberace and some of his opulent homes. The production and costume designers share some of the amazing stuff they created for the film - sumptuous costumes bedazzled with crystals, a cape hand-sewn with ostrich feathers; diamond-encrusted pianos,  a reproduction of the reproduction of the Sistine Chapel that Liberace had painted on the ceiling of one of his homes. There are no spoilers so feel free to view; unless you'd rather not know how they make delicious Rob Lowe look so hideous?

Rob Lowe plays a plastic surgeon in Behind the Candelabra

Behind the Candelabra extended behind the scenes look 14 minutes

Behind the Candelabra: Bling It On!

If Cannes has been a bit of a mixed bag for James Franco's adaptation of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, another adaptation I've been watching out for had a much more uniformly enthusiastic reception. Steven Soderbergh's movie Behind the Candelabra, based on Scott Thorson's memoir of his life with Liberace -Thorson is played by Matt Damon, Michael Douglas is the flamboyant entertainer - has blown most everyone away. Turns out it's the full-on glitz fest everyone expected but critics are just bursting that it works! Liberace was larger than life amplified when he was alive so it stands to reason that  'over the top' as a criticism doesn't apply. And Soderbergh, by all accounts, seems to have managed to capture Liberace's and Scott's time together in an honest and moving film without falling into schtick or caricatures.

Matt Damon and Michael Douglas both turn in powerful performances; Oscar blogger Sasha Stone called it "Soderbergh's best film in years," going on to say "were this movie released in US theaters* there would be Oscar nominations all around. Douglas might have even won his second." 

Major bummer for Michael Douglas his "Oscar-worthy performance" as Liberace isn't eligible because it's a TV movie, but not for us. We get to watch Behind the Candelabra when it airs this Sunday, May 26th at 9pm EST.*  I know what I'll be doing Sunday night. What about you? Maybe this trailer will help you decide; it's razzle dazzle drama.

* Good news for the UK - the film is being released in cinemas there on June 7th.

Behind the Candelabra Trailer

James Franco won't lay dying

James Franco is dividing critics, as usual, this time with his adaptation of William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying which screened at Cannes this week.  Interesting to note even the negative reviews grant Franco respect for the effort. An E for effort in the school-like references that critics like Mary Corliss in Time are making as a sort of snarky nod to Franco's grad student status. 

Franco brought it on with his own essay online in the online compendium Vice challenging the critics of Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby. 

 “The critics who’ve ravaged the film for not being loyal to the book are hypocrites.These people make their living doing readings and critiques of texts in order to generate theories of varying levels of competency. Luhrmann’s film is his reading and adaptation of a text – his critique, if you will.”

Feelin' Fine

Corliss begins her review of I Lay Dying by including the quote and going out of her way  to identify the author as "A Ph.D. candidate in English literature at Yale University" before revealing the author as Franco. Corliss goes for the collegiate dig, summing up the film this way 

"... the film of As I Lay Dying reveals itself as a successful summer project for a multitasking graduate student.  But that’s just one opinion of the film. For the definitive take, we must await James Franco’s review of his own film: his critique of his critique, if you will."

It's worth noting that most of the critics focus on Franco's use of split screens; Corliss puts it this way. 

"Faulkner told this story in a chorus of voices: 15 narrators in the 59 chapters. To locate an equivalent for the novel’s polyphonal scheme, Franco often employs split screens. They may give views of two characters, as when Ma is inside the shack beckoning to Cash outside; or additional perspectives of a single calamity, such as when Addie’s coffin is lost in a river. Sometimes we get two aspects of the same character from slightly different perspectives, as if showing Take One and Take Two. The device imposes a strange rhythm on the images. It distracts as often as it enlightens, and Franco himself seems to have tired of the tactic. He mostly dispenses with it halfway through the film."

Whatever the critical verdict Franco won't be stopped. He's already got the adaptation of Andres Dubus III  Garden of Last Days in development; he'll direct and likely star. 

Below, links to a few of the reviews. First up, THR's Todd McCarthy's rather glowing one!
I'm intrigued.

The Hollywood Reporter

"James Franco has pulled off a devilishly difficult literary adaptation with this faithful yet cinematically vibrant version of William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. "

The Guardian               

"But with As I Lay Dying Franco can chalk up a qualified but distinct success, and another chapter in what is becoming a very notable career."

TIME                                 
"And the movie, whose script he adapted with his Yale classmate Matt Rager, could be an elaborate summer project: attempting to find a cinematic language for Faulkner’s text — Franco’s critique, if you will. The effort is honorable, a mixture of mannerism and earned emotion."

The Independent            
"Franco’s approach to the task is bold and yields some startlingly beautiful sequences but, as feature length drama, it is also lumpy and very uneven"

My take on the movie: What Maisie Knew is an inspired adaptation.

Kudos to screenwriters Nancy Doyne and Carroll Cartwright for extracting the essential truth of Henry James' novel What Maisie Knew and implanting it in a thoroughly modern context. Released from the dreary schoolroom, hansom cabs and grey skies of Victorian era London, 'Maisie' feels fresh, new and right at home in Manhattan's upper west side, circa now.

The directors chat with Onata over a Shirley Temple

Directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel dismissed any need to be slavishly devoted to James' novel. As McGehee told Scriptlab;  "It’s really the spirit of the book that you need to preserve, not the plot points; not the character relationships even. You have to identity what it is that you love about the book and make sure you don’t lose that. It’s not a book report; you’re really trying to invent something brand new." They left the hard work to the screenwriters. Following James' lead, Doyne and Cartwright tell the story from Maisie's perspective; it took them years to get it right. Luckily the directors found a really remarkable young actress, Onata Aprile, to channel the character just as flawlessly.

Julianne Moore's character has a way with words

Julianne Moore, tatted over her freckles, plays Maisie's mother, Susanna (Ida in the novel); a self-involved rocker who loves her daughter but would rather party and bestow pricey presents like giant stuffed ponies and guitars, than be a parent. Maisie's dad, Beale, is an equally self-centered art dealer played by a younger-looking, skinnier Steve Coogan than I remember from The Trip. 

Kelly McGehee nails the design concept for Susanna's Manhattan home

These two really despise each other; When Susanna locks Beale out of the apartment - an uber-cool and multi-leveled floor plan designed by production designer and McGehee's wife, Kelly McGehee - for one transgression too many, - the couple hurls F bombs at each other through the front door, the hatred escalating when he comes inside, while Maisie listens, pale and confused.

Maisie loves her daddy played by Steve Coogan

And so the battle for custody begins. Coogan catches the right cavalier note of those formerly charming 'boys will be boys' types, smirking at Maisie, making his daughter a confidant in his war against 'her' but young Maisie, like daughters everywhere, loves her daddy, despite his faults. The truth is he has no clue what to do with Maisie, no more than Susanna does.

Margo (Joanna Vanderham) and Maisie

Both would rather leave the actual care and feeding of the little girl to her nanny, Margo (Joanna Vanderham) while they pursue their more worldly and separate affairs. Ultimately - and all in an offscreen rush - Beale marries Margo, gaining a live-in babysitter for Maisie and a friend with benefits situation for himself. He treats her so thoughtlessly it's not surprising that she and Lincoln are thrown together.

Susanna /Julianne Moore + Lincoln /Alexander Skarsgard

Alexander Skarsgard: "stepdad" or manny?

In a desperate stab to hold onto her custody rights,  Susanna responds to Beale's marriage by taking up with the much younger, Lincoln (Alexander Skarsgard), an awkward, overgrown puppy and hanger-on who Maisie quickly grows to adore. There's a slight turning in of the toes of Skarsgard's  Converse-clad feet that accentuates the gawky giant's sweet and uncomplicated nature. Helping Maisie open juice boxes, striding the High Line in Manhattan as Maisie dangles from his bicep, Lincoln comes off like a true manny who adores his tiny charge as much as she does him.

In the source material, Maisie is supposed to alternate from house to house every six months; the movie's more modern equivalent makes the proposition 10 days with mom, ten days with dad. In both instances, Maisie is likely to hear the equivalent of 'you take her - no you take her' while her parents and caretakers constantly leave her stranded.

At which point quite a few audience members might be heard to call out 'I'll take her'  'No I'll take her'; Onata Aprile is that luminous as Maisie. Onata doesn't do much really; she doesn't have to do a thing except be that hardest of things to be; natural, authentic, a real child. Clomping up and down the stairs in cowboy boots, starred leggings, assorted hats and crowns and an expensive nouveau hippie chic wardrobe that mirrors her mother's from costume designer Stacey Battat, Maisie is a soulful, watchful, utterly loveable little girl who steals this particular show. It's painful to see this impish pixie repeatedly let down, and put in sickening situations as the adults conduct themselves shamelessly.

Sarsgard + Onata Aprile color together

Credit to Ms. Moore for layering her own character so richly; in a telling scene Susanna is working on some vocals in the glass sound booth in her home studio, while Lincoln Susanna' sweet and awkward bartender boy-toy cum 'husband' hangs out listlessly and Maisie sits coloring. The more Lincoln is drawn to Maisie, engaging with her, helping her to color a tricky drawbridge, both of their faces lit up with happiness and oblivious for a few moments of Susanna and her constant needs; the more we see her face darken through the glass booth. She finally storms out and pulls Maisie into the booth with her; so jealous is she, so unused to sharing the spotlight. Selfish to be sure, but still a mother; Susanna's maternal instincts do kick in a dreadful  moment when she sees fear on Maisie's face for the first time.

Julianne Moore is heart-wrenching as Maisie's extreme
slacker mom

"Are you afraid of me?" Moore almost wails, the cry a threat in itself somehow. It's her most dramatic moment of the film; her face crumbling as she sees herself through Maisie's young eyes.

Even when they've let her down the most, Maisie still responds to the sound of her parents' voices by running and jumping into their arms, calling out mommy mommy, daddy daddy. She will always love them; they're her parents, it's in the nature of children to love their parents - even when their parents are abusive or negligent.  By the movie's end, Maisie has learned someone is supposed to be looking after her. And that that somebody may just have to be Maisie herself.

What Maisie Knew is an emotionally moving story that is as vital and alive as ever thanks to an inspired script, directors who weren't afraid to let a little child lead them, strong performances on every level and along with skilled, modern, costume and production design, a solid score from Nick Urata.

Link to music from What Maisie Knew here.  Read my take on the book here. 

                                         

And enjoy the trailer here -

Leonardo DiCaprio says hello to The Deep Blue Good-by

This excites the hell out of me - Dennis Lehane, author of novels Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone, is adapting the great John D. MacDonald's The Deep Blue Good-by, the first of the Travis McGee books FOR LEONARDO DICAPRIO TO PLAY TRAVIS. I feel like a little kid but I can't wait, I can't wait, I can't wait. Leo as a beach bum? And as this particular cynical but romantic beach bum? Yes please.  If this goes well there could be a whole Travis McGee franchise opportunity - there are plenty more colorfully titled McGee books to keep going and going and going: The Quick Pink Fox, The Turquoise Lament, The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper, The Green Ripper, A Purple Place for Dying, etc etc. MLH turned me on to MacDonald; I haven't read him in awhile but I was always intrigued to see how the title was referenced. Do you know how it played out in The Deep Blue Good-By?  

Here's the overview of The Deep Blue Good-by from B&N
Travis McGee is a self-described beach bum who won his houseboat in a card game. He’s also a knight-errant who’s wary of credit cards, retirement benefits, political parties, mortgages, and television. He only works when his cash runs out, and his rule is simple: He’ll help you find whatever was taken from you, as long as he can keep half.

McGee isn’t particularly strapped for cash, but how can anyone say no to Cathy, a sweet backwoods girl who’s been tortured repeatedly by her manipulative ex-boyfriend Junior Allen? What Travis isn’t anticipating is just how many women Junior has torn apart and left in his wake. Enter Junior’s latest victim, Lois Atkinson.

Frail and broken, Lois can barely get out of bed when Travis finds her, let alone keep herself alive. But Travis turns into Mother McGee, giving Lois new life as he looks for the ruthless man who steals women’s spirits and livelihoods. But he can’t guess how violent his quest is soon to become. He’ll learn the hard way that there must be casualties in this game of cat and mouse in The Deep Blue Good-by.

MLH isn't quite sure about Leo as Travis is the big and burly type; I think his charisma will sell it and everyone will fall in love with Travis. Is Leo what you pictured as Travis? Who would you cast?
Details to come - any John D. MacDonald fans out there as jazzed as I am?

What Maisie Knew ... my take on the Henry James' classic

What Maisie Knew is quite an old book - published in 1897 - but its' subject matter is just as timely in 2013 as ever. The inspiration for a new film starring Julianne Moore, Alexander Skarsgard, Steve Coogan, Joanna Vanderham and scene stealing Onata Aprile, here's the overview of the novel's storyline from Barnes and Noble.

"After her parents’ bitter divorce, young Maisie Farange finds herself shuttled between her selfish mother and vain father, who value her only as a means for provoking each other. Maisie—solitary, observant, and wise beyond her years—is drawn into an increasingly entangled adult world of intrigue and sexual betrayal until she is finally compelled to choose her own future. Published in 1897 as Henry James was experimenting with narrative technique and fascinated by the idea of the child’s-eye view, What Maisie Knew is a subtle yet devastating portrayal of an innocent adrift in a corrupt society."

My take on the book
While I read and loved Portrait of a Lady in my youth, these days I find Henry James' language a bit too archaic and convoluted; it's tedious to have to read and re-read some of James' more ambitious sentences several times before moving on! And moving on is quite often more of the same. Poor Maisie, when she's not being forgotten, she's constantly being pulled back and forth between fathers and mothers, governesses and stepfathers, in six months rotation periods; she's been exposed to a wide variety of bad behavior which only Mrs.Wix - her governess from her mother's household - and her stepfather Sir Claude seem the least bit concerned.

Maisie, constantly questioned by each parent about the other, learns quickly how best to couch her answers. Let's speak plainly; her self-obsessed mother is more concerned with securing new lovers than worrying where or how, her daughter is. Her father, similarly self-centered, gets to have it off with his daughter's pretty young governess; by marrying Miss Overmore he has convenient built-in child care and the worry of Maisie off his shoulders.  Miss Overmore and Mrs.Wix both rely on Maisie as a means to a living and a place to sleep. To put it crudely; no one gives a crap about the child except as she affects them. Sir Claude has genuine feelings for Maisie but he's little more than a kept man, with no money of his own, and helpless to change his nature.

cover art by Edward Gorey

In the novella, James wants us to know only 'what Maisie knew' nothing more or less; the constant question in the reader's mind, as adults talk over, around and far too much, directly to, Maisie,  is just what six year old Maisie does know and what does she make of what she's seen? How much does she understand the choices the adults in her life make, and what does she imagine those choices say about their feelings for her?

Maisie's welfare is a thin pretext for the adults in Maisie's world satisfying their own needs - ultimately every one in the book disappoints us, but not Maisie. All the while she's been watching, listening, learning; she accepts her lot at the story's end with a shrug. It's heartbreaking to see how little mind she pays, as if she had already assessed her value, the pure simple power of her innocence, and realized she could never compete against the temptations of the adult sexual world.

While I found the idea at the heart of the novel very compelling in its' contemporary nature, the experience of reading the book was - for me - just too exhausting to highly recommend it.

Will it make a good movie? Yes! Nancy Doyne has written an adaptation that captures the essence of the story but completely contemporized it. I've just seen the film and aim to get my take up shortly but in a word. LOVE. And obviously, loads better than the book.

Side note: As shocking, appalling and heartbreaking as Maisie's treatment in the novel, even more disturbing to me were the hateful words James put in Maisie's mouth to describe her father's newest 'friend'.

"Maisie in truth almost gasped in her own; this was with the fuller perception that she was brown indeed. She literally struck the child as more as an animal than a 'real' lady; she might have been a clever frizzled poodle in a frill or a dreadful human monkey in a spangled petticoat." 

I was so surprised by the inherent racism that I googled James only to learn to my horror that his nonfiction look at America - The American Scene - is rife with it. I'm depressed by my own ignorance about James; but how disappointing to see that level of ignorance put forth by a supposed intellectual!
Why should I want to read anything else by this bigoted old gasbag???

Bitter Suite Francaise to shoot in Paris

Mon dieu! Can you get enough World War II period films set in France? This news from Cannes should strike a bittersweet note with Paulita over at the Dreaming of France meme - lots of fun French posts on Monday. Bitter because of the somber subject matter, sweet because it's still satisfies our fascination with France; an adaptation of the long-discussed movie based on Irene Nemirovsky's novel, Suite Francaise, is moving ahead. Nemorovsky's own story, by the way, is as dramatic and tragic as any novel.  Living in Paris as an extremely successful Jewish writer, Nemirovsky fled to the French countryside with her family when the Nazis invaded in 1940. They were caught in 1942, the Nazis arrested her in the midst of writing a five part epic, of which  she had completed handwritten drafts of the first two. The manuscript, hidden in her daughters' suitcase was taken with them eventually to safety. Irene Nemirovsky was sent to Auschwitz, she was dead a few months later; she was only 39. Sixty four years later the manuscript was discovered and in 2004, published together as Suite Francaise. 

Michelle Williams/Blue Valentine

The film based on Ms Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise - which was clearly informed by the horrors of her world and the world around her - will star Michelle Williams, Matthias Schoenaerts and Kristin Scott Thomas.  Producer and literature lover Harvey Weinstein describes the film's story as that of a young woman(Williams) who lives with her controlling mother-in-law(Thomas) in Nazi-occupied France. When refugees from the Nazi invasion flood the town, the Nazis follow and the young woman, Lucille, ends up falling for a German officer(Schoenaerts). Saul Dibb (The Duchess)who wrote the screen adaptation will direct.

Comparing that story line with the novel's description, it  sounds like the film may focus on Part Two of Suite Francaise, Dolce.  I've marked the passage in the book's Publisher's Weekly description below; doesn't that seem the most likely scenario in which love with a German soldier might occur? And to make maximum use of this trio of fine actors? As I read the first passage, the mother/daughter element doesn't seem to be in it much, if at all.

The first part, “A Storm in June,” opens in the chaos of the massive 1940 exodus from Paris on the eve of the Nazi invasion during which several families and individuals are thrown together under circumstances beyond their control. They share nothing but the harsh demands of survival—some trying to maintain lives of privilege, others struggling simply to preserve their lives—but soon, all together, they will be forced to face the awful exigencies of physical and emotional displacement, and the annihilation of the world they know. 

In the second part, “Dolce,” we enter the increasingly complex life of a German-occupied provincial village. Coexisting uneasily with the soldiers billeted among them, the villagers—from aristocrats to shopkeepers to peasants—cope as best they can. Some choose resistance, others collaboration, and as their community is transformed by these acts, the lives of these these men and women reveal nothing less than the very essence of humanity.

If you happen to be vacationing in France in late June, keep an eye out. The film starts shooting in Paris and Belgium June 24th. Bon Voyage!

The Spring Snow falls in The Fault in our Stars

We don't have 'spring snow' in L.A.  That's the annual Amsterdam springtime ritual when the Iepen (the elm trees) shake off their seeds, so beautifully described by John Green in The Fault in Our Stars. 

The elm trees cast off their seeds every spring

'There were elm trees everywhere along the canals, and these seeds were blowing out of them. But they didn't look like seeds. They looked for all the world like miniaturized rose petals drained of their color. These pale petals were gathering in the wind like flocking birds- thousands of them, like a spring snowstorm. 

The old man who'd given up his seat saw us noticing and said, in English, "Amsterdam's spring snow. The iepen throw confetti to greet the spring."

Jacaranda trees bloom briefly in May and June

We don't have Iepen (elms) in L.A. - at least not in any number to create the slightest sort of flurry - but every year in May and June the Jacaranda's purple the sky with their shock of color. 

The short-lived blooms ends up strewn across lawns and sidewalks in bright little pick-me-up pops of purple. There's no festival but it's an annual  brightening that brings me joy.


See the spring snow in Amsterdam at the Springsnow festival site here.  TFIOS director Josh Boone has indicated that he will be shooting in Amsterdam - what would a TFIOS movie be without a romantic dinner at the fictional canal-side restaurant Oranjee and a trip to Ann Frank's house? Since the production starts shooting in August - but the seeds are snowing now - are we doomed to faux CGI elm seeds scattering in the air?