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.
Spike Lee has spent his own money to acquire Time Traveler, “a memoir by Ronald Mallett, one of the nation’s first African-Americans to earn a Ph.D in theoretical physics.” He’ll co-adapt and direct.
Universal will release the second Da Ali G Show theatrical spin-off, Bruno, on May 15, 2009, a date already occupied by the sequel to The Da Vinci Code.
One of the most frustrating things in the world is the length it sometimes takes for a movie to go from its Sundance premiere to its theatrical release. For example, Snow Angels, the latest from acclaimed filmmaker David Gordon Green (All the Real Girls), screened at the 2007 festival and will not come out in theaters until 15 months later, on March 7, 2008. At least we now have this trailer to feast our eyes on, and while it isn’t the adaptation of Confederacy of Dunces starring Will Ferrell we all had hoped for next from Green, it is nonetheless a great leap in the direction of mainstream appeal. Never mind the film’s stars — Green has worked with popular actors before. Notice instead how much this trailer is cut to make the film resemble every other tragedy-laced, character-driven drama.
Not that this is a bad thing. I’m all for Green becoming popular, and successful (even if it means making a so-far awful-looking stoner comedy from producer Judd Apatow, which, written by Superbad’s Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, has to end up being hilarious). I just really hope he remains the David Gordon Green I’ve been excited about for the past five years (I got a late introduction), the guy who wows me with stunning cinematography and stunning dialogue, each respectively shot or written blatantly enough to be noticeably brilliant yet modestly enough to feel completely natural. Unfortunately, I can’t yet tell you if Snow Angels is the work of an auteur or if Green is slowly making his way to more mainstream waters. If I had gone to Sundance last year, or if the film had been available anytime in the twelve months since, I would have been first in line to see it. Oh well, I’ll probably still be first in line on March 7.
“You know neither of us are really very creative people, Joe. I mean, I have filmmaker friends who walk around generating plot ideas all the time, but shit, when I walk down the street, all I do is brood about my friends and my loved ones and really zero in on all the attending barbs and snags and accrued resentments that seem to get in the way of closeness.” Ronnie Bronstein pulls back the curtain on himself and Joe Swanberg in the latest installment of our Butterknife interviews. See also: Butterknife stills.
On this week’s podcast: An argument about No Country For Old Men, a love letter to Billy the Kid.
My post on Huey Lewis’ two, questionably classic contributions to the Back to the Future soundtrack garnered some impassioned responses. Ryan Stewart wrote in to defend the track that I called the lesser of the two, Back in Time:
Cassette? Um, I own the LP. Back in Time is the best example ever of a plot-song. It’s that 1/1,000 that actually work, and work really awesomely, and the kind of thing they’d never have the guts to do these days.
Oh yeah? Well, never underestimated the guts of David Gordon Green. A friend of Spout pointed me to this Stereogum item from Monday, in which Seth Rogen, writer and star of Gordon Green’s Summer 2008 comedy The Pineapple Express, confirms that none other than Huey Lewis was commissioned to write “a track reminiscent of Power Of Love” for the movie. My source says he’s heard the song, and he confirms that it incorporates “lyrics that tell the plot of the movie, with ‘Pineapple Express’ in the chorus.”
So is the plot song ready for its comeback? Are YOU ready for the plot song’s comeback? Can you even name the last film that featured a full-on plot song? I can’t. While you’re pondering all of that, watch the above clip from The Pineapple Express. I’ve heard one or two whispers that the film could very well show up at Harry Knowles’ Butt-Numb-A-Thon this weekend (which, sadly, I’m not going to be able to attend), so we might get a full review of Huey’s contribution sooner rather than later.
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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Spike Lee has spent his own money to acquire Time Traveler, “a memoir by Ronald Mallett, one of the nation’s first African-Americans to earn a Ph.D in theoretical physics.” He’ll co-adapt and direct.
