Judd Apatow’s Funny People feels like an attempt to graft the writer/director/producer’s patented brand of semi-raunchy character comedy of latent male adolescence on to the template of a certain kind of studio film rarely made today — think 1980s Oscar bait, like Terms of Endearment, The Accidental Tourist or even Beaches: the gently melancholic dramedy in which someone in early middle age is suddenly forced to reconcile their lives. This unlikely hybrid serves as the vehicle for a meta-epic work of autobiography that pays tribute to one of the writer/director’s oldest friends/collaborators, diverges into a love letter to his wife, contrives to get the wife and the friend in bed together, and then drags in Eric Bana to get them out. All the while, Seth Rogen is milling about, mostly as a surrogate for the filmmaker, until he suddenly switches over and starts speaking for the audience — during the film’s draggiest stretch, he is very vocal about not wanting to be there.
If this sounds bizarre, it is. What’s more bizarre is that this mix of personal project-as-product actually succeeds — at least intermittently. Though not formally bifurcated, Funny People practically plays out in two sections (another 80s flashback: it feels like the kind of film that used to come packaged on two VHS tapes). It peaks emotionally at about three-quarters of the way into the first section, makes good on track laid in that scene about a third of the way into the second section, and then rapidly devolves from there into a domestic sitcom that can only resolve itself in a “girls may come and go, but bromance is forever” fade out. The film is so self-referential, so quick to pounce on and twist what the audience thinks it knows about Apatow and his players (from multiple references to Seth Rogen having recently lost a lot of weightto Adam Sandler repeatedly begging Rogen to show him his dick) that to reaffirm the bond between two men this way almost seems like an act of defiance. “Yes,” Apatow seems to be saying. “This is a movie about me, and yes, my primary concern as an artist is platonic male love. So … suck it.”
Catherine Hardwicke hit one out of the park for female directors this past weekend, but she had a lot of help. Not only was she working with a pre-sold property, she also had a very manageable budget of $37 million. Quite different from the $2 million she had to work with on Thirteen a few years back. Of course, she had similar budgets on Lords of Dogtown ($25 million) and The Nativity Story ($35 million), and both were box office disappointments. Still, she’s going to keep on being trusted with more money — if Summit is smart they’ll keep her on for at least the first Twilight sequel, which will surely come with a higher price tag — and as long as she continues with genre films, she’s sure to remain a profitable director.
Not every talented filmmaker does well with more money. Danny Boyle, for instance, typically bombs with bigger budgets. And a lot of foreign auteurs strike out when handed costly studio-produced genre or franchise pics (Jeunet’s Alien Resurrection is a favorite example). But there’s the occasional filmmaker who, like Steven Soderbergh or Christopher Nolan, can make something worthwhile out of any budget they’re allotted. And then there are the many indie filmmakers who quickly find themselves at home with modestly priced broad comedies, such as the case with Seth Gordon easily transitioning from the Slamdance doc The King of Kong to the star-studded Hollywood holiday pic Four Christmases, out this week.
Who will be the next small-scale filmmaker to successfully rise up and prove him or herself worthy of bigger budgets? SpoutBlog has selected five directors we’d like to see given an economic boost, each because he or she would likely deliver something more interesting and popular than the usual Hollywood product.
I missed it when it aired over the weekend, but apparently there was a short film on Saturday Night Live this past Saturday starring guest host Paul Rudd, Bill Hader and an out-of-Obama-costume Fred Armisen, directed by none other than Noah Baumbach. Via Whatevs, I’ve embedded it above. It’s a cute bit of bromance–they’re all sleeping with the same girl, because they all really love each other! It’s noMr. Jealousy (ah, Chris Eigeman and Peter Bogdanovich, together at last), but at the very least, it’s considerably more subtle than anything I’ve seen on SNL in awhile.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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