As what used to be called The Entertainment Media melts down into one big, incestuous, pageview-mad morass, occasionally something happens that reminds us of why The Good Old Days — when the people who gossiped about startlets and their cocaine habits were not the same people assigned to even half-seriously analyze trends in cinema — were So Much Better. Today the movie nerd contingent on Twitter is piling on The Pool Movies That Ruined a Generation’s Greatest Directors, a Gawker listicle in which author NatashaVC cites where and when a number of “90s directors” (such as Steven Soderbergh, David Fincher and, um, Jonathan Demme) sold out by making movies obviously intended to pay for their luxurious lifestyles, embodied by new swimming pools. Even if we’re to take this post as being tongue-in-cheek, the author’s lack of long-term perspective and number of casual errors are fairly stunning. A refutation of points follows after the jump.
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According to Sasha Grey’s Twitter feed, the porn actress/star of Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience (of which I am a big fan) returned from Australia yesterday, where she was promoting the movie at the Sydney Film Festival, to learn that a Los Angeles-based porn actress has tested positive for HIV. The actress, who is being identified as Patient Zero, had two male partners in the industry who are in the process of being tested, and in the meantime, the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation is advising performers who have worked with the infected actress or people she has worked with “not to work.” Sasha Grey is apparently taking the same precaution; last night, she twittered: “I have my partners tested two days before I do a scene with them, but I’m abstaining until our industry hears more about this.” Follow her Twitter feed for further updates.
Porn stars can be smart; some are even PhDs. So it shouldn’t be that much of a surprise that adult film actress Sasha Grey, who currently stars (non-pornographically) in Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience, likes great films. In fact, Karina wrote about Grey’s cineaste tastes more than six months ago. But the movie geeks are nontheless excited this week over Grey’s recent appearance on The Rotten Tomatoes Show, where she counted down her top favorite films. They are, in downward order, Stroszek, Fat Girl, Pierrot le fou, A Woman Under the Influence and Escape from New York.
Okay, so I’m as excited as any other blogger commenting on her choices, even if I’m not as surprised by them. Why shouldn’t I be thrilled that someone has the same favorite Godard as myself? And how can I not be glad that someone else loves Stroszek, which is hardly a beloved movie, even for many Herzog fans. I’m not any bit a fan of her top pick, but that’s fine. We’re still plenty compatible…to produce a brand of pornos that parody classic art films.
Check out some other reactions from the blogosphere after the jump:
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“I have to say that the adult films have been a total pleasure. They were like getting paid to live out my greatest fantasies. The rest of the stuff … sometimes got to be a real grind.”
So sayeth the late, great Marilyn Chambers. And though porn star Sasha Grey, who makes her “mainstream” debut as a high-end call girl in Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience, would most likely disagree with the latter part of that sentiment, I couldn’t help but think of Chambers’ often wasted talent as Grey and I sat down to chat. This self-proclaimed “performance artist” is every bit as intelligent and articulate as Soderbergh’s latest HD fling is tedious and condescending. Here’s hoping Grey’s next experience is worthy of her wonderful lust for life.
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If you look at Steven Soderbergh’s body of work from the last dozen years or so, it seems with every film the director becomes more obsessed the way careerists lose themselves in their work. Out of Sight and Che join up thematically with the Ocean’s films, Erin Brockovich, Traffic, even the The Limey, as movies about work, in which the people who do the work are so single-mindedly focused on the tasks ahead of them that work and life become a continuum, and the identities they create to get through the former can’t get put away at the end of the day when it’s ostensibly time to attend to the latter. They’re films in which life ends up happening in sudden moments, organically, as an unexpected side effect of the job.
The Girlfriend Experience is no exception, though this is not exactly the meticulous document of process that Che was. Starring porn star Sasha Grey as a high-end escort who alternately goes by the names Chelsea and Christine, Soderbergh’s quick and cheap digital feature is not the graphically sexual verite that fans of Grey’s previous filmography might have expected/hoped for. Instead, it’s a cold (although understandably, necessarily so), hands-off portrait of a certain New York City life about a month before the 2008 presidential election. Though improvised based on a linear outline and shot in sequence, as edited Experience jumps back and forth in time somewhat frantically. At Sundance, Soderbergh cited his own The Limey as an inspiration for the new film’s construction, and though there are similarities, this seems slightly more methodical. Here Soderbergh often jumps ahead to sketch out an events or conversation, then moves on to something else, then goes back to color in the details of the sketch. (The version available now on VOD and premiering in theaters next week felt slightly tighter to me than the rough cut shown in January, but that might have been an illusion; I might have just been more ready for its non-linearality the second time around.)
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It’s fitting that a trailer for Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience has finally shown up this week. Just a few days ago, the film’s star, Sasha Grey, was being compared to the late Melanie Chambers in obits for and tributes to the latter actress. Now we get a better look at Grey’s crossover into non-porn films, which in the spot is called her “mainstream debut.” That might be a poor choice of wording, especially if Grey ever continues her attempt at a mixed career by showing up in a Michael Bay movie (unless its his ’small’ project) or something similarly, actually mainstream. Sure, thanks to the sexy premise (though no promise of actual sex), The Girlfriend Experience should be more popular than Soderbergh’s previous little HD movie, Bubble, but it’s very likely to be just as dull (at least it fascinated Karina at Sundance).
Check out a roundup of what bloggers are saying about the trailer, which just made me very sleepy, after the jump:
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Marilyn Chambers was the first porn star I knew by name. My mom’s boyfriend had an autographed copy of “My Story,” her ‘erotobiography,’ which wasn’t shielded from my young eyes, and I recall being told that she lived in my neighborhood. The latter part was probably false (and/or remembered incorrectly), though she was apparently born in my hometown, so who knows?
In any event, I never did see any of her films (I swear!), not even her early non-porn titles, which include Herbert Ross’ The Owl and the Pussycat and David Cronenberg’s Rabid. According to her Wikipedia page, she might have pursued more of a mainstream acting career if Hollywood hadn’t been so nervous, and she had even recently appeared in some more non-pornographic films, such as 2008’s Solitaire. Now, on the day after her death, I’m wondering if she could have had another life in the movies had she not been convinced to star in Behind the Green Door.
I also wonder if today it’s any easier for a woman to find a balance between the two film industries. For instance, will it be possible for Sasha Grey to continue finding dramatic roles after starring in Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience?
Here are some quotes from the blogs that are paying respect — or at least some sort of notice — today:
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The rest of the line-up of the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival has been released — that is, the Encounters, Spotlight, Showcase, Restored/Rediscovered and Midnight sections. As expected, Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience is there, as are quite a few Sundance holdovers, and the Oscar Winner That No One Has Seen, Departures. Earlier this week, I summed up the competitions; my picks for the most-promising-looking of the rest, with descriptions provided by the festival, follow after the jump.
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Yesterday, for the second time in two weeks, In Contention’s Kristopher Tapley confessed to being done with 2008 and noted a bunch of anticipated 2009 films. These aren’t necessarily titles he’s looking forward to seeing, though; it’s basically a preliminary jump on next year’s Oscar season. Because apparently this year’s Academy Awards are all but handed out, the winners properly predicted and expected, and now it’s time to think about what will be up for what in 2010. Those titles Tapley lists are Rob Marshall’s Nine, Peter Jackson’s Lovely Bones, Michael Mann’s Public Enemies, Clint Eastwood’s “Mandela“ (formerly The Human Factor), Richard Curtis’ The Boat That Rocked, Scott Cooper’s Crazy Heart and the latest from Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life), Steven Soderbergh (The Informant), Paul Greengrass (Green Zone), Martin Scorsese (Shutter Island) and James Cameron (Avatar).
Oh, and then Jeff Wells had to go and hint that Spielberg’s Lincoln is likely to arrive by year’s end. What and who else is being foreseen as nominated this time next year? Check out the links after the jump.
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I think that people are looking at Che not as a film, but as a indie miniseries. It’s four hours long, in two parts, and is all in Spanish. They overlook the fact that it had a very successful screening run, despite it’s massive runtime, and look at it only as a VOD property, or as some sort of artistic folly.
And maybe it is a folly. A more awards friendly strategy would have been to put out only part one in 2008 and part two (if you produced it at all) in 2009. An arthouse Lord of the Rings.
…[But] the new art house is your house and the sooner the business realities of film reflect this, the better off we’ll all be.
Web video pioneer Kent Nichols, who with partner Douglas Sarine is currently writing/directing the remake of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, blogs a refrain that’s been floating around in somewhat less concrete form for awhile: that the Academy’s total snubbing of Che, particularly its failure to nominate Benicio Del Toro for Best Actor, is a sign of bias against (if not a deliberate effort to punish IFC and Soderbergh for) the film’s non-traditional, quick-to-VOD release strategy.
This is one of a number of pieces I read over the weekend which essentially make the point that audiences are moving in one direction, and the Academy is moving in another. The biggest evidence of this trend is the fact that a number of Oscar-nominated films recently pushed into platform release by their indie arm distributors have failed to see the expected post-nomination box office bump, whilst “snubbed” films like Revolutionary Road are doing kind of okay.
…the structure of the film reminded me of that most formalist of children’s programming: the Teletubbies. For those of you who’ve never had a chance to experience the show, it’s important to understand that the structure is rooted in repetition. Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Po and Laa-Laa all take turns exhibiting short subject documentaries via the televisions embedded (in true Cronenbergian fashion) in their stomachs. Once a given clip concludes, the Teletubbies all jump up and down and shot “again, again!” And, indeed, the clip is shown again in its entirety. It’s astounding! This almost ritualistic format was developed around cognitive psychology studies, and I’d argue that what makes it so precisely appealing to its target audience is the same principal that makes Che so effective. In short, repetition engenders basic comprehension, and this comprehension can then be deepened by the introduction not of foreign elements but of that repetitive pattern itself into new contexts.
Drifting: A Director’s Log: Two more notes about Che
via Ryland Walker Knight’s Google Shared Items
Both are broadly classifiable as science fiction, but Alien is basically a horror flick and Aliens has all the conventions of a war film. That’s a pretty slick transition from one type of movie to another, especially since the switch was so immediate within the series. Most movie franchises don’t play with genre in such a way until they’ve gone through a number of sequels, and even then the series usually just simply takes its characters into outer space, a la Moonraker, Jason X and Leprechaun 4.
Genre jumping isn’t that easy, though, unless a franchise inhabits a whole universe in which to expand through. Like Star Wars, for example. Originally a film series, the Star Wars franchise spread out into novels, which has allowed for dips into the romance genre and now horror. That’s right, an upcoming novel by horror author Joe Schreiber, titled Deathtroopers, takes the Star Wars universe into frightening territory described by Schreiber as “in the vein of The Shining and Alien, with a little dose of William Gibson mixed in.”
So, if Star Wars can venture into the horror genre, what other movie franchises should attempt a genre jump? To toy with the idea, we’ve selected five film series in need of a change and suggested a possible redirection of genre for each.
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President Obama is magical. How else to explain how he found time in his busy pre-inauguration weekend to attend the Sundance Film Festival? He saw some films, attended some parties, pitched a high-concept movie idea and even met Steven Soderbergh, who admits he didn’t vote for the guy but wishes him luck. Filmmakers Jesse Epstein and Natalie Difford, of Chicken & Egg Pictures, managed to document our new commander-in-chief in Park City just before he was due in Washington for the swearing-in ceremony.
Okay, the real Barack Obama wasn’t there. Instead, the video short features an Obama action figure, one of the many popular products available last week in the great merchandization of Obama (one of these figures sits in my apartment, too, so I’m not judging). But the toy does at least represent the spirit of Obama, which was certainly present at Sundance throughout. That final moment is not staged; many festivalgoers abandoned screening rooms to see the inauguration. And no coverage of the fest was complete without reference to the concurrence of events.
Maybe one day the real Obama will find time to attend the festival. Sundance vet Al Gore can bring him.
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Stu at Defamer 
50 Cent 
