Between the early-90s demise of his Boston-bred boy band and their current resurgence, youngest New Kid on the Block Joey McIntyre established an acting career. He landed a regular role on the TV drama Boston Public, appeared on Broadway, and appeared in a movie called On Broadway. An indie drama also featuring Will Arnett and Eliza Dushku, McIntyre stars as an amateur playwright who mounts his premiere production not in New York’s famous theater district, but in the back of a Boston bar. WithOn Broadway debuting today for streaming and download on Amazon.com, we talked to Joey about the books, movies and music he used to amuse himself when he’s not contributing to NKOTB’s tour blog. Check out his answers below, and the trailer for On Broadway above.
Go to Variety.com this morning, and chances are you’ll be greeted by a full-page For Your Consideration ad on behalf of The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford. Which is interesting, considering that when the film premiered in September, Warner Brothers all but declined to promote it, spending the bare minimum on advertising and making it virtually impossible for non-coastal critics to write reviews. Whether it’s a last-ditch salvage job or it was part of the plan all along, maybe Warner Brothers understands that this is a film with limited mainstream appeal that nonetheless deserves a chance to play in the awards game?
Maybe, maybe not. For me, the overall takeaway from the ad (I took a screencap and pasted it above, just to make sure it wasn’t an early morning hallucination) is that the studio is still working against the movie’s strengths. Looking what they’re specifically flogging in the ad: Andrew Dominik for Best Adapted Screenplay, at the exclusion of Roger Deakins for Cinematography, which should be a lock? Sounds like a contractual obligation. Maybe more egregiously, the ad has room for the names of five producers, but no push for Casey Affleck as Best Supporting Actor?
I know, I know––gift horse, mouth, blah blah blah. Tell me why I’m wrong in the comments.
Descendants of the real Jesse James have posted a glowing review of Andrew Dominik’s The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford on the James family website. Someone in the outlaw’s family tree must be an SEO genius, because Brad Pitt’s name is all over this site. The actor’s publicist will surely be pleased will all the pullquotes; auteur theory loyalists will be up in arms. Here’s an excerpt:
Brad Pitt has stripped away the myth. He stripped away the legend and the lore. He stripped away the western and all the gratuitous violence…As T.J. Stiles’ book Jesse James, Last Rebel of the Civil War marked a turning point in the writing of Jesse James history, Pitt’s movie marks a turning point in movies about Jesse James.
It’s star worship for sure, but that seems to fit with the themes of the film, and elsewhere on the site the James family members prove themselves to be serious art film aficionados. Director Dominik gets his due on a separate page, on which the James family accuses Warner Brothers of “assassinating” Dominik’s “original, artistic vision” by insisting that his four-hour first cut be trimmed. And another page of the website carries the subheading, “Two of the performances in this film merit Academy Awards. But, are voting members of the Academy smart enough to know why?” The essay that follows is certainly more compelling and concise than any Oscar blogging I’ve seen recently.
At Hollywood Elsewhere, Jeff Wells has issued a plea for support of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. The film is opening in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto and Austin this weekend, and Wells implies that a wider release relies on opening weekend numbers. “If you appreciate the importance of giving this awesome film a decent reception, you’ll clap your hands and arm-twist as many friends as you can between now and Friday into seeing it this weekend,” Wells writes.
Wells has never been shy about supporting his faves, but it still seems a little out of the ordinary to see any blogger trying to rally the troops around a star-anchored studio film. It’s not that I don’t relate: it felt distinctly strange to walk around Toronto and answer the question, “Seen anything good?” with a ringing endorsement of a $60 million picture starring the most famous father of four in America. I’m sure it was just an accident of scheduling, but Jesse James far surpassed any of the microbudget indie films that I saw at that festival (you can find my Toronto review of the film here).
So Jesse James has a lot of blog support. The weirder thing is, the case could be made that it actually needs it. As I see it, there are two major issues to content with. More after the jump.
The two films that have hit me the hardest here in Toronto are Control, which I wrote about here, and The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford. Both films, based on real-life characters and incidents, are simultaneously technically superlative and heartbreaking. With one day left to go in my Toronto 2007 tenure, I find myself nursing heartache for two, studio-backed movies which I’ll soon be able to pay $11 American to see again at will. And sitting here in my hotel room, listening to Joy Division and New Order and thinking about Sam Riley’s performance in Control and Brad Pitt and Paul Schneider’s in Jesse James, there is no such thing as soon enough.
Two weeks ago, The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford was the film Warner Brothers had “no idea what to do with.” As of this writing, it’s the most gushed-over title at the Toronto Film Festival, and word has hit the wires that star Brad Pitt has won the Best Actor prize at the Venice Film Festival. If the folks at WB still havn’t figured out what to do with Andrew Dominik’s masterful, Malickean tragedy of celebrity envy, they probably don’t deserve to have their name on it.
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.
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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Descendants of the real Jesse James have posted a glowing review of Andrew Dominik’s 
