My favorite part of David Carr’s NYT profile of Robert Downey Jr (and, judging by the way he foreshadows it in the story’s second paragraph, maybe Carr’s favorite, too):

[Downey's] romance with mood-altering chemicals didn’t end after he got out of prison. By 2003 he was an uninsurable serial relapser famous for being pulled out of hotels or other people’s homes in an addled, disheveled state. As a movie star with a lot of pals, he lived a life beyond consequence until he finally wore out the endless mercies of the entertainment business. After he was fired from his spot on Ally McBeal, the bottom finally came, at a Burger King of all places.

On or around Independence Day in 2003, he stopped at a Burger King on the Pacific Coast Highway and threw all his drugs in the ocean. And while he was sitting there chewing on a burger, he decided he was done. This being America, five years later you can walk into that Burger King, and if you order a Kids Meal you can get your own Robert Downey Jr. action figure, wrapped up in gadget ware. (And what does Tony Stark want when he escapes his kidnappers? A good old American cheeseburger — from Burger King, natch.)

Isn’t it funny how it all comes together? Downey’s recovery, his personal victory over almost-certain death. His character’s victory over almost-certain death within his big Hollywood comeback movie. The marketing of said big Hollywood comeback movie. It all revolves around Burger King, and specifically, the Burger King cheeseburger as touchstone of both near-death experience and synergistic lunch. “Is this a great country or what?” Carr asks––smirkingly, maybe, but not totally disingenuously. Surely, nowhere else in the world could an actor’s biography be modified to better showcase a studio’s corporate sponsor.

Eugene Hernandez at indieWIRE is asking “filmmakers, critics, publicists and other festival organizers” to weigh in on a new rule instituted by the Tribeca Film Festival press office. Here’s the text, as it appears on the Festival’s credential application:

“Embargo” regulation for world premieres
Reviews of films that celebrate their world premiere at the Festival may only be published after the official premiere. All journalists seeking accreditation to the Festival declare their acceptance of this “embargo.”

When I applied for credentials, I saw this text and rolled my eyes, but I wasn’t really surprised. In my experience with the Tribeca Film Festival press office, it’s always seemed like they prioritize coverage of red carpets and parties far above reviews or any sort of serious consideration of the films themselves; every year, much of the program seems to be about courting the attention of Access Hollywood, rather than cementing Tribeca’s reputation as a venue for quality films. But sniping aside: really, Tribeca demanding that journalists refrain from writing about World Premieres before they screen for the public will not end in a materially different result than what happens at Sundance, where all press screenings take place either during or after World Premieres, and as press the only way to see a film before ticket buyers is to obtain a screener from a sales agent, publicist or distributor.

So I’m not exactly outraged by the embargo, but it certainly will change the type and quantity of coverage that I’ll be able to do of the festival. …Read more

There’s an LA Times story this morning about how Paramount has promoted Apatow-com Drillbit Taylor around the fact that star Owen Wilson has done no interviews, in fear of having to answer questions about last summer’s suicide attempt. Instead of talking to reporters, Wilson taped “Drillbit-themed introductions to Fox’s Sunday-night prime-time lineup.” If there are three steps to managing a celebrity scandal––denial, confirmation, confession––the Wilson camp has chosen to remain mired in Step 1 for going on seven months, a stunning and curious feat in the era of confession as commodity.

After enumerating a number of projects fatally wounded by the unsavory off-hours activity of their stars, LAT writers John Horn and Gina Piccalo note in the last paragraph that Nine Months, the Hugh Grant film that was released just two weeks after the star was caught with a prostitute, grossed $70 million––according to this chart, more than Dumb and Dumber, Bad Boys or Babe, all of which spawned sequels.  The Hugh Grant scandal seems to represent a turning point in spin: by appearing on any show that would have him the day before his movie’s premiere and talking about the hooker incident directly and self-mockingly,  Grant was able to completely deflate the issue, successfully turning confession into commercial.

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With almost three months to go before opening night, the Tribeca Film Festival launched a publicity blitz this morning designed to rehab the festival’s troubled image. Before a press release hyping lowered ticket prices and a concentration of venues landed in my inbox around 9:30 AM, I had already read two interviews with the festival’s co-executive director Nancy Schafer, in the New York Post and the New York Sun. Why this much media, and why now? Who knows. But as Schafer acknowledges in the Post story that her festival has to compete with SXSW for post-Sundance premieres, it might be reasonable to assume they wanted to make a little bit of noise the day before South By releases their full lineup and proceeds to commandeer the attention of a certain sector of the blogosphere for a month and a half. They may not have the films, but they sure do have the publicists!

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Bloggy reactions are starting to float in on that whole MPAA vs. Taxi to the Dark Side thing, and although we’re sill seeing the predictable squabbling over ideology, pretty much everyone seems to be united on one thing: the poster itself is far less offensive than the MPAA’s stance on it.

AJ Schnack spoke with Taxi director Alex Gibney, who characterized the ruling as “a cover-up”:

Removing the hood is the ultimate cover-up. [The U.S.] didn’t use to do that sort of thing. Removing the hood sends the same message as the Bush administration with the CIA tapes. It’s OK to do it, it’s just not OK to show it.

Hammering home roughly the same message, The Cinetrix proposes a protest campaign:

This movie needs to be seen. These images need to be seen. Fuck, I’m willing to run the one-sheet image every day here until the decision is reversed.

Meanwhile, the boys at conservative film blog LIBERTAS think that the very idea of the film is reprehensible…which is why they’re mad at the MPAA for drawing more attention to it by giving the poster an air of snuff. In a post broken by images of the World Trade Center aflame, Dirty Harry writes:

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Is it just me, or do these alleged Dark Knight publicity images look more like packaging shots for a $10 Joker Halloween costume than promo stills for a summer franchise film? Wait–is that the point? More at Aint it Cool, via WeSmirch.

According to a press release sent via email by a Fox Searchlight publicist, the Juno release plan has been tweaked. Instead of rolling out wide on December 14, the film will now open in New York and L.A. on Wednesday, December 5 and roll out slowly after that. Seems significant: after all, Searchlight could easily have sold this thing as Superbad 2: The Taming of the Porksword. It looks to me like a  “let’s take advantage of critical interest in our hot young stars and screenwriter right before Oscar time” move if I’ve ever seen one. But I don’t know if have, so take my take with a grain of salt.

I’m getting ready to see a four-hour Tom Petty documentary directed by Peter Bogdanovich (yes, seriously) so I’ll have to be brief, but bits of news are trickling out that indicate Warner Brothers has essentially sabotaged its already half-assed wide-ish rollout of The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford by making it nearly impossible for critics in mid-size cities to see the thing. The evidence follows after the jump; if you’ve seen/heard similar stories from your part of the country, do post links in the comments.

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A few notes on my second day in Toronto while I make coffee and try to figure out what to eat for dinner and which movie to see in tonight’s late slot:

1. The above image was taken last night, about two blocks away from the main festival venue.

2. No one around here seems to be able to talk about The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford without dropping the word “masterpiece.” I saw it this afternoon, and I have to agree that it’s a really beautiful film. I also have to admit that I dozed off for about five minutes right in the middle (two totally inappropriate things that I do really well at afternoon festival screenings: cry, and fall asleep). I walked out wishing I could walk right back in and see it again–which I’m contemplating doing later tonight.

3. There are literally six ads from festival sponsors before every screening–even press screenings. It’s the price of running a festival this big, I guess, but the NBC-Universal ad in particular is really getting on my nerves.

4. Fox Searchlight hired a band of actors to jog around the line for the press & industry screening of Juno, wearing copies of Michael Cera’s track uniform. They posed for photographs and passed out Juno-emblazoned boxes of orange tic tacs. Most of them had the physiques of personal trainers, inspiring more than one catty comment from onlookers regarding how much “better” these guys looked in the outfit than Michael Cera. I, of course, begged to differ. Photographic evidence after the jump.

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Australian filmmaker Rolf De Heer has been the recipient of much love here at Spout. Just a couple of weeks ago, Paul devoted an entire episode of FilmCouch to De Heer, calling the director “the most inspiring filmmaker alive.” I haven’t seen any of his films, but that podcast alone has me convinced that Rolf De Heer is some kind of cinema god.

So it’s with grand excitement that I learned, via Twitch, of the website for Rolf De Heer’s latest project, titled Dr. Plonk. It’s a black-and-white silent comedy set in 1907, about a scientist who invents a time machine in order to prove his theory that the world will end in the year 2008. The website boasts a trailer which, if in any way representative of the film as a whole, indicates that de Heer and crew have masterfully mimicked the look and feel of silent comedies of the early 20s. His protagonist seems to be semi-Chaplin-esque, but the antics remind me more of Fatty Arbuckle.

Not only is there a trailer, but the website also offers a amazing 40-page press kit (which you can download as a PDF) describing, in minute detail, Dr. Plonk’s conception and de Heer’s filmmaking process. The tome begins with a quote — “A good press kit is a pre-condition to a successful moving picture show” — attributed to Dr. Plonk himself. Page 10 outlines the process of buying a 90-year-old, hand-cranked camera, and how through trial and error, “slowly all ideas of precisely duplicating the past are consigned to the rubbish bin.” Page 11, titled “The Sound Recordist in Silent Film”, reads: (this page has been intentionally left blank). And so on.

After premiering last spring at the Adelaide Film Festival, Dr. Plonk will open in Australia later this month. It seems to have no U.S. distributor as of yet, but hopefully it will pop up at another festival or two this fall.

Our regular guest writer, Dodd (moviedodd at spout.com), tells us what’s the latest in movie rating news, and shares his mixed feelings about the proposed changes. Dodd is finishing up a Master’s degree in Film Studies at Ohio University.

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion about the current film rating system implemented by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Filmmakers have raised hell about it all on their own for the past few years, but now the documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated has served as an expose on the selective standards of MPAA members. The film seems to have had an affect already. Since its release, MPAA head honcho Dan Glickman has admitted to the organization’s vague guidelines for what sets an R picture apart from an NC-17 one, and that proper actions would be taken to fix that problem.

It seems that Glickman was not just throwing words around for publicity purposes. According to a recent Variety article, Dan Glickman has announced that the MPAA is developing a “hard R” rating, which is not to be confused with the original “soft R.” In other words, films like Little Miss Sunshine, with its occasional F-bomb and sex joke, will be branded with a regular R. However, movies with blood-spurting decapitations, hardcore sex scenes, and f**k thrown into every sentence will be awarded the new, hard R rating.

Not only will there be a new R-rating, but the NC-17 rating may be eliminated. The hardcore rating limits film distribution and advertising on television, so the organization wishes to lump anything that is extremely graphic in nature under the new hard R-rating, with hopes that audiences, exhibitors, and advertisers will embrace it more than the much-feared NC-17.

I feel a little torn on this issue. Apparently, the new hard R-rating is the result of parents complaining that their children are being exposed to graphic content in R films. First off, the film is rated R, which means that the content is not appropriate for those under 17. Parents who choose to allow minors to watch these films have been warned to be cautious. Secondly, R-ratings currently contain little descriptions indicting the nature of the content–anything from drug use to angry sex to graphic conversations. Finally, if these descriptors prove to be too vague, there is a wealth of information about the graphic content of movies on the Internet, from movie reviews to the MPAA’s website to Yahoo’s Movie Mom. Therefore, my question is whether or not a new R-rating will stop parents from complaining. Teens will be teens, and they will always figure out ways to see hardcore content. While the rating system is useful, it will never magically babysit kids.

On the other hand, I am happy to see the elimination of the NC-17 system. Yes, it can be affiliated with the cult disaster known only as Showgirls, but the rating has also sunk potential pictures like a rock for miniscule details. It has also locked its sights on unconventional sex rather than violence. It will be nice to see art house gems such as Bad Education not being ostracized like a sleazy snuff film.

What do you think? Does the MPAA need a new R categorization, or will people complain about it anyway? Are you ready to see NC-17 get tossed aside, or does it still serve a useful purpose?