The Spirit drove straight into Tanksville last weekend, earning only $6.5 million dollars. But before we can claim that we saw it coming and gloat over its still-warm corpse, it might just be a sign that old-school comic book / radio / serial heroes just can’t make it with today’s audiences. Why is it that Batman and Superman can rake in hundreds of millions of dollars, but heroes that are arguably just as interesting end up tanking at the box office?
Producers have tried to revive the nostalgic exploits of the cadre of “The” named heroes of yesteryear ranging from The Lone Ranger to The Shadow, but each time the box office take has been far less than the studios had hoped for, and the grand plans for a franchise of movies, action figure tie-ins, and a breakfast cereal get canceled. Below is a list of the high-profile attempts to revive old heroes that have fallen flat on their masked faces.
Garrison Keillor’s sleepy-voiced radio monologues from the A Prairie Home Companion radio show might be the only way you know the native Minnesotan, but he’s also an author of more than 17 books. He’s published numerous short stories and poems since being published in the New Yorker in 1970, he hosts A Writer’s Almanac daily on NPR stations around the country, and posts regularly to his blog on the Prairie Home website. He’s also a daily columnist at Salon.com, which makes you wonder how he finds time for the rest of his life.
But despite all the books he’s written, Keillor hasn’t had anything made into a movie. Robert Altman directed a fictional feature film version of A Prairie Home Companion, but to a Keillor fan it came off as more of a parody of the radio show than anything else. So where are the movies? Here’s a guide to the five Keillor books I’d really like to see on the big screen.
Why did Kurt Anderson conduct a radio interview with Synecdoche, New York director/writer Charlie Kaufman in the middle of the dog run at Washington Square Park? Presumably, so we could have the pleasure of watching the above video, in which Kaufman tries to explain is desire “to give the world something that isn’t crap,” but is distracted when pounced on by adorable puppies. Cue Jon Brion’ “Little Person,” and watch grown men reach for the Kleenex. The full Studio 360 segment with Kaufman can be listened to here.
If you don’t listen to Elvis Mitchell’s radio program on KCRW, The Treatment, you should start. A while back he interviewed Todd Field about his new film, Little Children. As Field laments how taxing it is to direct a film involving so many characters, Mitchell compliments Field on how attentive he is that each character act differently around each of the other characters. It’s a subtle nuance in Field’s films, but it’s one of the things making Little Children and his earlier film, In the Bedroom, so distinct. And, unfortunately, it’s a rare thing to see in cinema.
We all act differently around different people. We naturally gauge things, like how intimate we are with somebody, what their education is, if we share things in common, if they scare us, bore us, excite us, and whether or not they’re somebody we want to impress. All these little processes happening beneath the surface influence how we act around a person.
In most movies, though, the protagonist walks through life acting the same way around everyone they see. (Maybe it’s one of the things we admire in a hero, their ability to be unwavering–something we wish we were better at.) But these characters who don’t alter which parts of themselves they present to different people are..well…unbelievable. They’re caricatures.
“We go to the movies to watch people,” Field says. Regardless of how beautiful the cinematography or music may be, most of us are there to watch people. Todd Field provides some of the best people-watching out there. For that, I think he’s one of the most distinct–and hopefully influential–filmmakers of our time.
(I was able to have a very brief conversation with Field at Telluride, where I also wrote a post about Little Children.)
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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