What a treat -- There is new very complete web site for the great Dirk Bogarde
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
The Whole Crew - The Sopranos
I know --- this isn't film in the strict sense, but we should add good TV to this blog mix -- Here are pictures at WireImage of the showing of the first two episodes of the final season for The Sopranos. More on this as we all begin to watch April 1.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Will I ever eat lunch in this town again?
Here's an interesting behind-the-scenes article about a Hollywood producer and his difficulties in trying to get a script made into a movie. It's quite informative and a bit sad as well, in more ways than one. Not a business for the faint of heart, that's for sure. I've said many times before, sometimes I wonder how any movies ever get made.
Timesonlineuk.com
March 22, 2007
Will I ever eat lunch in this town again?
Mr X, an Oscar-winning producer, attacks the industry he relies on as he tells the story of his hit movie that wasn’t
Ostensibly, I produce movies for a living. The most recent movie I had a hand in producing won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Pretty heady stuff, to be sure. The reality, though, is slightly less fulfilling. We shot that film two years ago and, since then, I’ve produced nothing. Zilch. Not a frame of film, a byte of sound, a kernel of popcorn.
How, you may ask, does one survive in the film business without actually making any movies? Or, more relevantly, what the hell have I been doing for the past two years? Good question. Here’s the answer, which is really a guide for those of you looking either to become a producer or waste your time completely. The two are often indistinguishable.
This is how it starts: I read hundreds of scripts, articles and books, watch countless films for remake possibilities, listen to tons of ideas – and most of them are crap. It’s like a beauty pageant where everyone has either a monobrow or two noses. When you are reading a script, only one thing truly matters, which I learnt from my old boss Harvey Weinstein: is it a movie? Not is it a good idea, or is it well written, or is there some big star attached. Is it a movie?
Two years ago, I read a script from a first-time screenwriter with several novels under his belt that left me giddy. The characters were real, the structure was sound and the story was captivating. That’s not to say it didn’t have some issues; no script comes out perfectly formed. It would be the genetic equivalent of a baby emerging with Brad Pitt’s face. But it was pretty close.
It was about a patrolman on the border between California and Mexico. He had done time in Iraq and was now serving his country in a different way. The reality of his life, though, was grim and fairly hopeless. No matter how many illegal activities he and his cohorts stop, countless criminals slip through the cracks. It’s a numbers game, and the odds favour the bad guys.
So here you have a good man in an increasingly desperate situation. He’s trying to keep his wife and young daughter intact, provide for them, but he knows he’ll never get to where he needs to be. Faced with this bleak reality, he is approached by some Mexican criminals with an offer: let a particular vehicle pass through and he’ll be paid handsomely. It’s a victimless crime – no drugs or terrorists, merely high-priced foreign call girls who can’t easily enter a post9/11 America.
He decides to look the other way and take the money, which enables him to support his family for a year. Unfortunately, he’s asked soon afterwards to let another car through, then another and another. The Mexicans have him, and they dictate the rules of the game, including threatening his family if he doesn’t continue to comply.
It read like a classic thriller with characters you really cared for, plus the added bonus of being extremely topical. Stories about border corruption were splashed across the covers of every newspaper, and the writer had clearly done his research. I thought to myself, yes, Harvey, it’s a movie!
I bought it. The movie had all the earmarks of a critical and commercial success, with a great role fora leadingman. Already feeling a fat producer’s fee burning a hole in my pocket, I called my travel agent and asked her to look into renting a villa for two weeks in St Barts in the West Indies.
Then it all went wrong. I sent the script out to several agents, who had many of their top director clients read it. I found myself fielding calls from many of my heroes, film-makers I’d dreamt of working with, along with several exciting up-and-comers. I finally decided on someone in the middle: he’d just directed a very well received film whose lead actor was nominated for an Academy Award. Actors would line up to work with him, I was assured, and every studio was dying to make his next film.
The first thing he did was get the writer to rewrite the script, tipping it slightly into more “character drama” territory. Not satisfied, he then rewrote it himself, shoving it completely out of “commercial thriller” territory. I called my travel agent, asking if a week in a hotel in Miami wasn’t a more practical idea.
Six months had passed. We sent the new draft out to all the top actors, and the responses felt like what models must hear every day – too dark, too small, too thin. One well-known actor, possibly the most humourless man I’ve ever met – which, in my business, is saying a lot – loved the script but was “looking to branch out into comedy”. I wasn’t quite sure which branch, and I certainly didn’t want to find out.
The director got a very well respected actor to read it, and the actor loved it, with one caveat: he wanted a rewrite done, with his input. They huddled together for weeks and emerged with a script that was basically a 90-minute monologue about a guy who works at the border. At least, I think he worked at the border.
Burying my concerns, I sent the “package” out to all the major studios. The silence was deafening. One by one, various executives read it and, one by one, they passed. There was a nibble here and there, but it was usually by someone in the mail-room with – sadly – no authority to greenlight a $30 million movie. (But they obviously had immaculate taste.)
After months of waiting and pleading, I found a studio that was willing to finance it – for roughly the budget of a documentary short.
A year had passed since I bought the script.
It was time to regroup. After much Sturm und Drang – mostly on my part – the director and I parted ways. I decided on a different approach. I went back to the original script and tried, once again, to court a big-name actor. Surely someone would see in it what I first did.
Miraculously, it worked. After several months of near-meetings and almost-conver-sations, I finally sat down with a recent Oscar winner who was perfect for the part. He loved it, he said, one of the best scripts he’d ever read. I sat and listened, waiting for the other shoe to drop – he’d want the character to be deaf, he’d want the story to take place in Kazakhstan, he’d want a competent producer. But all I got was a yes, he was in, and let’s go get ourselves a director.
Now I had a movie star. The directors started calling again, and I even heard from one I’d originally passed on because he wanted to add chase scenes and explosions – just stick ‘em in anywhere, he’d said, that’s what audiences really wanted nowadays. Now we had a 30-minute conversation where he pretended to forget his earlier thoughts and proclaimed the script was “perfect as it is”.
This was shaping up to be quite a movie, and the star promised me this would be his next film, even mentioning it on a talk show while promoting another movie.
Two weeks in St. Bart’s: $15,000.
There was a buzz around town, which always happens when a star commits to a project, and I returned to the ring for the easy part – going back to the studios with my shiny, new, glorious package. Only I quickly discovered that the package wasn’t so glorious after all.
The star was (and, in fact, still is) African-American. His wife would be as well, and the “other woman” in the movie would be played by a Latino actress. For some reason everyone was calling my movie an “urban film” (code for a movie for black people).
The part had been written for a white guy, but this was a fantastic actor, and people of all colours and ethnicities work on the border. Even so, my casting choice would prove to be a huge problem; apparently, there are many countries in the world where movies starring African-Americans other than Will Smith need not apply.
Nobody in town would finance the movie, because it had literally no appeal overseas. My weak protests – wouldn’t people go if it were actually a good movie? – were met with laughter. What does a “good movie” have to do with anything?
It had now been a year and a half since I last stepped foot on a set.
People in the industry were beginning to wonder – what was I working on? Calls were going unreturned. I developed the unmistakable stench of desperation. My wife started leaving the mortgage payment notices (and her shopping receipts) on my bedside table.
A producer friend once told me: “You’re either making a movie or you’re not. Everything else is just talk.” (He hasn’t worked in five years, but that’s another story.)
I clearly wasn’t making a movie. What I was doing was bleeding money. I had rung up a profoundly large credit card bill (wooing the various talents), ludicrously high legal fees (negotiating everyone’s deals) and astounding costs for therapy and medication (very poor health care system in America). This was in addition to actually buying the script, paying for rewrites and flying people back and forth for meetings.
Stuck in Purgatory, I’m currently faced with several decisions. Find a new actor? Hire a different director? Wait for the studio regimes to change and pray that someone responds to my script? Fire my travel agent? Get a good divorce lawyer?
It’s now been two years since I last produced a movie, and the script sits prominently on my desk, taunting me daily. Help me, it pleads, get me to the screen where I belong. Heed the signs, people tell me, this one just wasn’t meant to be. And still I carry on, for some unknown reason. Passion? Stubbornness? Desire? Stupidity? Who knows – it’s probably a combination of all of the above, but mainly the latter. For these are the tools of my trade. I’m a producer.
Timesonlineuk.com
March 22, 2007
Will I ever eat lunch in this town again?
Mr X, an Oscar-winning producer, attacks the industry he relies on as he tells the story of his hit movie that wasn’t
Ostensibly, I produce movies for a living. The most recent movie I had a hand in producing won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Pretty heady stuff, to be sure. The reality, though, is slightly less fulfilling. We shot that film two years ago and, since then, I’ve produced nothing. Zilch. Not a frame of film, a byte of sound, a kernel of popcorn.
How, you may ask, does one survive in the film business without actually making any movies? Or, more relevantly, what the hell have I been doing for the past two years? Good question. Here’s the answer, which is really a guide for those of you looking either to become a producer or waste your time completely. The two are often indistinguishable.
This is how it starts: I read hundreds of scripts, articles and books, watch countless films for remake possibilities, listen to tons of ideas – and most of them are crap. It’s like a beauty pageant where everyone has either a monobrow or two noses. When you are reading a script, only one thing truly matters, which I learnt from my old boss Harvey Weinstein: is it a movie? Not is it a good idea, or is it well written, or is there some big star attached. Is it a movie?
Two years ago, I read a script from a first-time screenwriter with several novels under his belt that left me giddy. The characters were real, the structure was sound and the story was captivating. That’s not to say it didn’t have some issues; no script comes out perfectly formed. It would be the genetic equivalent of a baby emerging with Brad Pitt’s face. But it was pretty close.
It was about a patrolman on the border between California and Mexico. He had done time in Iraq and was now serving his country in a different way. The reality of his life, though, was grim and fairly hopeless. No matter how many illegal activities he and his cohorts stop, countless criminals slip through the cracks. It’s a numbers game, and the odds favour the bad guys.
So here you have a good man in an increasingly desperate situation. He’s trying to keep his wife and young daughter intact, provide for them, but he knows he’ll never get to where he needs to be. Faced with this bleak reality, he is approached by some Mexican criminals with an offer: let a particular vehicle pass through and he’ll be paid handsomely. It’s a victimless crime – no drugs or terrorists, merely high-priced foreign call girls who can’t easily enter a post9/11 America.
He decides to look the other way and take the money, which enables him to support his family for a year. Unfortunately, he’s asked soon afterwards to let another car through, then another and another. The Mexicans have him, and they dictate the rules of the game, including threatening his family if he doesn’t continue to comply.
It read like a classic thriller with characters you really cared for, plus the added bonus of being extremely topical. Stories about border corruption were splashed across the covers of every newspaper, and the writer had clearly done his research. I thought to myself, yes, Harvey, it’s a movie!
I bought it. The movie had all the earmarks of a critical and commercial success, with a great role fora leadingman. Already feeling a fat producer’s fee burning a hole in my pocket, I called my travel agent and asked her to look into renting a villa for two weeks in St Barts in the West Indies.
Then it all went wrong. I sent the script out to several agents, who had many of their top director clients read it. I found myself fielding calls from many of my heroes, film-makers I’d dreamt of working with, along with several exciting up-and-comers. I finally decided on someone in the middle: he’d just directed a very well received film whose lead actor was nominated for an Academy Award. Actors would line up to work with him, I was assured, and every studio was dying to make his next film.
The first thing he did was get the writer to rewrite the script, tipping it slightly into more “character drama” territory. Not satisfied, he then rewrote it himself, shoving it completely out of “commercial thriller” territory. I called my travel agent, asking if a week in a hotel in Miami wasn’t a more practical idea.
Six months had passed. We sent the new draft out to all the top actors, and the responses felt like what models must hear every day – too dark, too small, too thin. One well-known actor, possibly the most humourless man I’ve ever met – which, in my business, is saying a lot – loved the script but was “looking to branch out into comedy”. I wasn’t quite sure which branch, and I certainly didn’t want to find out.
The director got a very well respected actor to read it, and the actor loved it, with one caveat: he wanted a rewrite done, with his input. They huddled together for weeks and emerged with a script that was basically a 90-minute monologue about a guy who works at the border. At least, I think he worked at the border.
Burying my concerns, I sent the “package” out to all the major studios. The silence was deafening. One by one, various executives read it and, one by one, they passed. There was a nibble here and there, but it was usually by someone in the mail-room with – sadly – no authority to greenlight a $30 million movie. (But they obviously had immaculate taste.)
After months of waiting and pleading, I found a studio that was willing to finance it – for roughly the budget of a documentary short.
A year had passed since I bought the script.
It was time to regroup. After much Sturm und Drang – mostly on my part – the director and I parted ways. I decided on a different approach. I went back to the original script and tried, once again, to court a big-name actor. Surely someone would see in it what I first did.
Miraculously, it worked. After several months of near-meetings and almost-conver-sations, I finally sat down with a recent Oscar winner who was perfect for the part. He loved it, he said, one of the best scripts he’d ever read. I sat and listened, waiting for the other shoe to drop – he’d want the character to be deaf, he’d want the story to take place in Kazakhstan, he’d want a competent producer. But all I got was a yes, he was in, and let’s go get ourselves a director.
Now I had a movie star. The directors started calling again, and I even heard from one I’d originally passed on because he wanted to add chase scenes and explosions – just stick ‘em in anywhere, he’d said, that’s what audiences really wanted nowadays. Now we had a 30-minute conversation where he pretended to forget his earlier thoughts and proclaimed the script was “perfect as it is”.
This was shaping up to be quite a movie, and the star promised me this would be his next film, even mentioning it on a talk show while promoting another movie.
Two weeks in St. Bart’s: $15,000.
There was a buzz around town, which always happens when a star commits to a project, and I returned to the ring for the easy part – going back to the studios with my shiny, new, glorious package. Only I quickly discovered that the package wasn’t so glorious after all.
The star was (and, in fact, still is) African-American. His wife would be as well, and the “other woman” in the movie would be played by a Latino actress. For some reason everyone was calling my movie an “urban film” (code for a movie for black people).
The part had been written for a white guy, but this was a fantastic actor, and people of all colours and ethnicities work on the border. Even so, my casting choice would prove to be a huge problem; apparently, there are many countries in the world where movies starring African-Americans other than Will Smith need not apply.
Nobody in town would finance the movie, because it had literally no appeal overseas. My weak protests – wouldn’t people go if it were actually a good movie? – were met with laughter. What does a “good movie” have to do with anything?
It had now been a year and a half since I last stepped foot on a set.
People in the industry were beginning to wonder – what was I working on? Calls were going unreturned. I developed the unmistakable stench of desperation. My wife started leaving the mortgage payment notices (and her shopping receipts) on my bedside table.
A producer friend once told me: “You’re either making a movie or you’re not. Everything else is just talk.” (He hasn’t worked in five years, but that’s another story.)
I clearly wasn’t making a movie. What I was doing was bleeding money. I had rung up a profoundly large credit card bill (wooing the various talents), ludicrously high legal fees (negotiating everyone’s deals) and astounding costs for therapy and medication (very poor health care system in America). This was in addition to actually buying the script, paying for rewrites and flying people back and forth for meetings.
Stuck in Purgatory, I’m currently faced with several decisions. Find a new actor? Hire a different director? Wait for the studio regimes to change and pray that someone responds to my script? Fire my travel agent? Get a good divorce lawyer?
It’s now been two years since I last produced a movie, and the script sits prominently on my desk, taunting me daily. Help me, it pleads, get me to the screen where I belong. Heed the signs, people tell me, this one just wasn’t meant to be. And still I carry on, for some unknown reason. Passion? Stubbornness? Desire? Stupidity? Who knows – it’s probably a combination of all of the above, but mainly the latter. For these are the tools of my trade. I’m a producer.
Friday, March 23, 2007
Tropfest - if you can!!
I know I don't post very often but I've just got back from the small fry London version of Tropfest and I wanted to make sure that anyone in a position to get to Tribeca next month does make the effort.
In London, it's cold, the venue is in an art centre (The Barbican) - an oasis in a cultural desert because the City of London (i.e. Downtown) is like a cold hard brick at night time.......SO you couldn't have a more different environment to Oz for seeing these wonderful shorts. No matter....within a few minutes of the start you are laughing so hard you are begging for the air con. If you add to that the fact that you are surrounded by Aussies In London swilliing the lager and specially shipped in TimTams quicker than you can say 'Where's Polson?'.
I have been enjoying the London Australian Film Festival for some years and many times accompanied by Poly. It's the one and only time I sit back and actually embrace the noise of sweets, crisps and beer burps because you just can't fight it. The audience (mainly ex pats) are completely different to any other cinema experience I have ever had and thankfully most of the films are comedies so it kinda works!
The Tropfest night is different again. The audience seem to be groups of people and because they are screening lots of short films (they show us all the main winners from all over Australia) there are constant trips to the bar....and I guess to the loo. It's all very casual. Naturally, I am welded to my seat because I don't want to miss a thing. I would say I was probably in the 2 per cent of non Australians in the audience tonight!. Every film is preceeded by the state it came from and whenever title came up there was a cheer from different parts of the audience.
The actual films are remarkable. They are so funny, so wonderfully observed and so diverse. There is live action, drawn animation, stop frame animation, composite - you name it....but the bottom line is the scripts are incredible. The ideas come out of a place in a way that you know could only be Downunder. Absurd humour seems like such a lame description.
If this year's New York version follows a similar form to last year's (which I was lucky enough to attend) it will have the added bonus of including a US competition too! In 2006 they started with a 'best of' from the last few years of Oz films and a wonderful film that John had put together showing the history of the whole festival. They showed that year's Oz winners, then they showed the US contenders and gave the audience voting paddles. It really was such fun because the films are good and you get a bit of Oz style entertainment (daft, lewd stand-up) and because it's towards the end of April you New Yorkers get to have it outside in some fairly decent weather. A trick I discovered is to not actually go into the Tropfest enclosure as such......grab yourself a table in one of the adjacent restaurants and you can eat & drink while you watch.
So - if you want to laugh till it hurts and be part of a really fun night without paying any more than it will cost you to get to NYC (Tropfest tix are free) I really urge you to try it one year. It's part of the wonderful Tribeca Film Festival and you'll have the added bonus of the undeniabley gorgeous John Polson attending ( I presume).
Just in case you don't know how it works........anyone can enter so long as your film meets certain criteria and includes the word of the year(the signature item) somewhere, somehow. In Oz this year it was SNEEZE and it's very funny the way people include it. Last year's US word was MANHOLE and that was hilarious.....This year the US signature item is SLICE. I can see some fun with that so I hope the films end up on-line.
I know some people live in or around the city so do yourself a favour.
In London, it's cold, the venue is in an art centre (The Barbican) - an oasis in a cultural desert because the City of London (i.e. Downtown) is like a cold hard brick at night time.......SO you couldn't have a more different environment to Oz for seeing these wonderful shorts. No matter....within a few minutes of the start you are laughing so hard you are begging for the air con. If you add to that the fact that you are surrounded by Aussies In London swilliing the lager and specially shipped in TimTams quicker than you can say 'Where's Polson?'.
I have been enjoying the London Australian Film Festival for some years and many times accompanied by Poly. It's the one and only time I sit back and actually embrace the noise of sweets, crisps and beer burps because you just can't fight it. The audience (mainly ex pats) are completely different to any other cinema experience I have ever had and thankfully most of the films are comedies so it kinda works!
The Tropfest night is different again. The audience seem to be groups of people and because they are screening lots of short films (they show us all the main winners from all over Australia) there are constant trips to the bar....and I guess to the loo. It's all very casual. Naturally, I am welded to my seat because I don't want to miss a thing. I would say I was probably in the 2 per cent of non Australians in the audience tonight!. Every film is preceeded by the state it came from and whenever title came up there was a cheer from different parts of the audience.
The actual films are remarkable. They are so funny, so wonderfully observed and so diverse. There is live action, drawn animation, stop frame animation, composite - you name it....but the bottom line is the scripts are incredible. The ideas come out of a place in a way that you know could only be Downunder. Absurd humour seems like such a lame description.
If this year's New York version follows a similar form to last year's (which I was lucky enough to attend) it will have the added bonus of including a US competition too! In 2006 they started with a 'best of' from the last few years of Oz films and a wonderful film that John had put together showing the history of the whole festival. They showed that year's Oz winners, then they showed the US contenders and gave the audience voting paddles. It really was such fun because the films are good and you get a bit of Oz style entertainment (daft, lewd stand-up) and because it's towards the end of April you New Yorkers get to have it outside in some fairly decent weather. A trick I discovered is to not actually go into the Tropfest enclosure as such......grab yourself a table in one of the adjacent restaurants and you can eat & drink while you watch.
So - if you want to laugh till it hurts and be part of a really fun night without paying any more than it will cost you to get to NYC (Tropfest tix are free) I really urge you to try it one year. It's part of the wonderful Tribeca Film Festival and you'll have the added bonus of the undeniabley gorgeous John Polson attending ( I presume).
Just in case you don't know how it works........anyone can enter so long as your film meets certain criteria and includes the word of the year(the signature item) somewhere, somehow. In Oz this year it was SNEEZE and it's very funny the way people include it. Last year's US word was MANHOLE and that was hilarious.....This year the US signature item is SLICE. I can see some fun with that so I hope the films end up on-line.
I know some people live in or around the city so do yourself a favour.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Friday, March 16, 2007
Hollywood's Manliest Directors
Double Viking.com: Blood, Guts & Balls - Hollywood's Manliest Directors
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Classic Versions of the Classics
I was quite excited when I saw this newly released collection of literary classics. I was most interested in "Billy Budd", which I remember viewing as a young woman, and which I loved. Robert Ryan, Peter Ustinov and Terence Stamp in his film debut (which garnered him a Best Supporting Actor nomination) in Melville's high seas adventure tale of good vs. evil. This release also includes a commentary of the film with Terence Stamp and Steven Soderbergh, who directed Stamp in "The Limey."
Other films in the set are: another shipboard saga, the 1950 Gregory Peck version of C.S. Forester's "Captain Horatio Hornblower"; "Madame Bovary," with Jennifer Jones, from 1949; "The Three Musketeers," starring Gene Kelly"; and two versions of "The Prisoner of Zenda,", from 1937 and 1952.
It looks like a terrific set to me and I think I'll be popping it on my amazon wish list right away. These films are also available individually.
DVD Times
Other films in the set are: another shipboard saga, the 1950 Gregory Peck version of C.S. Forester's "Captain Horatio Hornblower"; "Madame Bovary," with Jennifer Jones, from 1949; "The Three Musketeers," starring Gene Kelly"; and two versions of "The Prisoner of Zenda,", from 1937 and 1952.
It looks like a terrific set to me and I think I'll be popping it on my amazon wish list right away. These films are also available individually.
DVD Times
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
The Hollywood Reporter - Larry David
Such a nice story, and sort of film-related.....
David steps off 'Curb' to free innocent man
By Ray Richmond
March 13, 2007
The final chapter was written last week in a story as unlikely and ironic as it was utterly random. A man named Juan Catalan who had been unjustly imprisoned for nearly five months after being charged with a murder he didn't commit -- and exonerated by unused daily footage shot for the HBO comedy series "Curb Your Enthusiasm" -- received a $320,000 settlement of a lawsuit filed against the City of Los Angeles.
You might remember how it all went down. Catalan had been jailed as the primary suspect in the May 2003 killing of a 16-year-old girl. His alibi? He was attending a Dodger game with his 6-year-old daughter at the time of the murder. But because it couldn't immediately be proven, Catalan remained locked up.
Fortunately, Catalan's defense attorney, Todd Melnik, was a particularly industrious guy who went the extra mile. He pored through videotape of the televised ballgame hoping to spot his client, but found nothing. Then Catalan happened to remember that a camera crew was shooting something at the stadium on the night in question. However, he didn't know much more -- except for one thing.
"He remembered seeing Super Dave Osborne (actor Bob Einstein), who was doing a guest spot in that 'Curb,'" says Bob Weide, the series' exec producer who directed the Dodger Stadium episode titled "The Car Pool Lane" -- for which he earned Emmy and DGA Award noms. "So Catalan's attorney did some research and found out what show it was."
From there, Melnik received permission from HBO to view the raw footage from the episode in the "Curb" production offices. And there was Catalan with his daughter in the crowd. Better still, the footage was time-coded, confirming that he was indeed inside the stadium before the slaying occurred in Sun Valley.
"The chances of our cameras capturing the guy's face were so remote," says Weide, who is in preproduction on his first feature directing job -- the comedy "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People," starring Simon Pegg of "Shaun of the Dead" fame.
"It just so happened we had a camera rolling with a wide-enough lens to have Catalan in the shot. But we didn't shoot in very many sections that night. If we'd picked a different section, the man is still in jail."
That documentation, coupled with records of a cell phone call Catalan made from the stadium, shored up his alibi and convinced the judge to release him from incarceration. Reportedly, he hadn't been a fan of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" before, but the fact the show inadvertently saved him has turned Catalan into one.
"It points up the lengths to which you have to go to convince people to watch your show today," Weide quips.
The absurd incongruity of a show like "Curb Your Enthusiasm" being the impetus for springing an innocent man from the pokey remains a wildly paradoxical exclamation point to the tale. It bathes star Larry David -- a legendary misanthrope whose disdain for schmaltz is well known -- in an altruistic light, albeit through no effort of his own.
"You know, I think Larry did enjoy this whole thing," Weide maintains. "The fact that it was so clearly inadvertent is what's most important to him. This didn't implicate him as having directly helped someone."
As for Weide, he recalls that after having been nominated for that "Curb" episode by the Directors Guild, he lost out to an episode of "Sex and the City" that "didn't save anyone's life. Not that it's sour grapes. I just think it's important to point out."
David steps off 'Curb' to free innocent man
By Ray Richmond
March 13, 2007
The final chapter was written last week in a story as unlikely and ironic as it was utterly random. A man named Juan Catalan who had been unjustly imprisoned for nearly five months after being charged with a murder he didn't commit -- and exonerated by unused daily footage shot for the HBO comedy series "Curb Your Enthusiasm" -- received a $320,000 settlement of a lawsuit filed against the City of Los Angeles.
You might remember how it all went down. Catalan had been jailed as the primary suspect in the May 2003 killing of a 16-year-old girl. His alibi? He was attending a Dodger game with his 6-year-old daughter at the time of the murder. But because it couldn't immediately be proven, Catalan remained locked up.
Fortunately, Catalan's defense attorney, Todd Melnik, was a particularly industrious guy who went the extra mile. He pored through videotape of the televised ballgame hoping to spot his client, but found nothing. Then Catalan happened to remember that a camera crew was shooting something at the stadium on the night in question. However, he didn't know much more -- except for one thing.
"He remembered seeing Super Dave Osborne (actor Bob Einstein), who was doing a guest spot in that 'Curb,'" says Bob Weide, the series' exec producer who directed the Dodger Stadium episode titled "The Car Pool Lane" -- for which he earned Emmy and DGA Award noms. "So Catalan's attorney did some research and found out what show it was."
From there, Melnik received permission from HBO to view the raw footage from the episode in the "Curb" production offices. And there was Catalan with his daughter in the crowd. Better still, the footage was time-coded, confirming that he was indeed inside the stadium before the slaying occurred in Sun Valley.
"The chances of our cameras capturing the guy's face were so remote," says Weide, who is in preproduction on his first feature directing job -- the comedy "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People," starring Simon Pegg of "Shaun of the Dead" fame.
"It just so happened we had a camera rolling with a wide-enough lens to have Catalan in the shot. But we didn't shoot in very many sections that night. If we'd picked a different section, the man is still in jail."
That documentation, coupled with records of a cell phone call Catalan made from the stadium, shored up his alibi and convinced the judge to release him from incarceration. Reportedly, he hadn't been a fan of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" before, but the fact the show inadvertently saved him has turned Catalan into one.
"It points up the lengths to which you have to go to convince people to watch your show today," Weide quips.
The absurd incongruity of a show like "Curb Your Enthusiasm" being the impetus for springing an innocent man from the pokey remains a wildly paradoxical exclamation point to the tale. It bathes star Larry David -- a legendary misanthrope whose disdain for schmaltz is well known -- in an altruistic light, albeit through no effort of his own.
"You know, I think Larry did enjoy this whole thing," Weide maintains. "The fact that it was so clearly inadvertent is what's most important to him. This didn't implicate him as having directly helped someone."
As for Weide, he recalls that after having been nominated for that "Curb" episode by the Directors Guild, he lost out to an episode of "Sex and the City" that "didn't save anyone's life. Not that it's sour grapes. I just think it's important to point out."
Monday, March 05, 2007
Forbidden Games
Husband and I are watching Forbidden Games (Jeux interdits). What a heart-breaking, life-affirming, truly French film it is. Rene Clement got an amazing performance from the little Brigitte Fossey as Paulette.
The view of farm life in the 1940's in France takes us right inside the home and barns and into the minds of the people.
The view of farm life in the 1940's in France takes us right inside the home and barns and into the minds of the people.
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