The Screengrab : joan cusack

Scientific Research Proves That Romantic Comedies Are the Work of the Devil

Phil Nugent — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 19:00:00 GMT

We all know that Kate Hudson is on a mission to find out how many multiplexes she has to stink up before studios will stop paying her to do it--perhaps in some kind of ultimate homage to her mother, the star of Protocol, Wildcats, and Overboard--but did you know that she's also destroying your chance for romantic happiness? It's true! Scottish researchers have concluded an enquiry into effect of exposure to the cliches of formula romantic comedies, and the results are not encouraging. "We have this idea," says psychologist Bjarne M. Holmes, "that out of six-and-a-half billion people, we're somehow going to meet our predestined soul mate, who happens to live in the same neighborhood or work in the same place. I love how that always happens." (If this were a romantic comedy, Dr. Holmes would be the wisecracking best friend played by Joan Cusack. Tip your hat.) The Los Angeles Times reports that "In the study, recently published in the journal Communication Quarterly, Holmes and fellow researcher Kimberly Johnson selected 40 top-grossing romantic comedies released from 1995 to 2005 -- including such titles as What Women Want and You've Got Mail -- and analyzed their content, cataloging each scene of romantic action such as gift-giving, kissing, declarations of love, weddings, involvement with exes and even acts of deception in the pursuit of love."

In the process, they seemed to find "a correlation between the preference for such entertainments and the students' curdled concepts about love." People who watch enough of the things seemed to take as gospel some of the more dubious "messages" that are repeated over and over in movie after movie: the "predestined soul mate" concept; the always helpful idea that the strongest relationships are those built on lies and deception, and even that these relationships, after a brief spell of soul-searching, will only grow back stronger after your loved one discovers that you understand him so well because you've been reading his mail and also that you're now really the long-lost Princess Anastasia; the clinically idiotic concept that your partner should be able to divine your deepest thoughts through some kind of lover's ESP, which means that your relationship would be sullied if you stooped to actual, straightfroward communication; the inexplicably popular notion that men and women are totally different species and that the secret of romantic success is to crack the gender-based code of behavior that governs each of us. (This last one has apparently gotten a big boost from He's Just Not That Into You, despite the fact that it is universal knowledge that anything that comes out of Justin Long's mouth has got to be horseshit.) Researchers also failed to find a single successful marriage that involved an incident of one partner blurting out a lengthy declaration of undying love to the other in full view of a bemused crowd while breaking up their wedding to an unamused third party or after a mad chase to the airport.

Film critic David Thomson agrees that the researchers are onto something more than a cute conceit here. "How can we not assume that the works we produce for ourselves, the stories we tell each other, are going to affect us in some way? I grew up thinking you really have to fall in love with someone and marry them and it will last forever and you'll be happy. None of these things is true. I think the comedies of the '30s and '40s, some of them stand up among our best films. But there was a kind of code of family life that has probably been very destructive because it's left a lot of people feeling, 'My family didn't work out that way.' It's a lot to live up to." The question that remains is whether people imitate these patterns because they've seen them in movies--and, says Holmes, "The average American sees more examples of relationships in popular media than in their own lives"--or if the movie cliches grew out of common preconceptions that people already had and that they wanted to hear restated again and again when they were being entertained. Whichever is the case, the movies pound these half-baked ideas that much harder into people's brains, with long-term unfortunate consquences; as Holmes sees it, "people sometimes spend ten years going through a series of relationships that, if they had put time and energy into, might have actually gone somewhere instead of having this prior idea of what they're expecting." Arguing otherwise is Laurie Puhn, author of Instant Persuasion: How to Change Your Words to Change Your Life, who argues that her clients are actually less thick than they may appear. "What I find about people who come in for family mediation is that they're not deluded; they don't think, 'He should be able to read my mind.' They just don't know how to express what they're thinking." But if they don't know how to express what they're thinking, how do you know they're not thinking that their partners should be able to read their minds? Huh!? Thanks for playing!

John Cusack: Political Poet

Andrew Osborne — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:00:00 GMT

As a senior in high school, I fancied myself a John Cusack-y sort and loved The Sure Thing (oh, Daphne Zuniga, we hardly knew ye), and since then, the guy with the boombox has generated a pretty impressive body of work: Stand By Me, Eight Men Out, Say Anything, The Grifters, Bullets Over Broadway, Being John Malkovich, High Fidelity...

...but somewhere along the way, Cusack also contracted a bad case of Garafolo Political Syndrome, exacerbated by symptoms of the acute humorlessness and self-regard usually associated with stage one Sean Pennitis.

Sadly, rather than sending the condition into remission, the inspiring victory of Barack Obama may actually have made things worse, if Cusack’s recent douchey outbreak of post-election poety on The Huffington Post is any indication:

Real Shock And Awe
By John Cusack

More powerful than was imaginable,
We are almost in a state of collective shock/awe.
The promise -- Antigone before the king comes to mind -- wonderfully hard to process.
He looked as a man with providence; the opposite mirror of Bush.
There was humility inside it.
He was even careful not to get too frenzied -- gave a soft landing.
Sober, reflective, determined... emotional beyond words.
The world looked to America... we showed our best.
For one night at least, the world was sane.
The planet sighs in relief and deserves a righteous party.
We have beaten back the worst in ourselves, the old and inevitable forces of cynicism and greed.
No more patriotic primates to rule the roost.
Real change will take sacrifice, vigilance and will.
The bailout of Wall Street, the wars and the final gorge of the right wing must be stopped now, a return to Keynesian balance.
Bottom up instead of top down.
The gold standard that every human has value -- be awarded respect, dignity and opportunity --
The currency of grace.
A wave of renewal and possibility.
And now the real work begins.

The Screengrab wishes Mr. Cusack a speedy recovery, and hopes the poetry doesn’t spread to Joan.

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The Barack Obama Film Festival

Tribeca Film Festival Review: "War, Inc."

Phil Nugent — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 14:00:00 GMT

John Cusack gets his smug on in War, Inc., a satiricial action comedy with a touch every bit as light and precise as its sledgehammer title. Cusack, who co-produced the movie with Grace Loh for his New Crime Productions, and splits the screenplay credit between himself, novelist Mark Leyner, and Bulworth scripter and Huffington Post blogger Jeremy Pikser, plays a hit man who is hired by Tamerlane, a Halliburton-like corporaton that is staffing America's first war that has been fully outsourced to the private sector. The movie intends an attack on how big business profits from, and may even influence, American foreign policy, but its ideas about how that's reshaping the world seem to have only gotten as far as slapping company logos on the sides of tanks and in smoking urban war zones, a device that mainly results in some really questionable product placement deals. (The Get Smart-style entrance to the lair of the American intelligence officers is through a Popeyes chicken joint, arguably the most prominent space that franchise has been awarded in a major Hollywood production since the Adam Sandler vehicle Little Nicky established that the denizens of Hell thought quite highly of their product.) The movie hits its targets only once in a great while, particularly when it goes after the gullibility and culpability of the media. There's a choice sequence about an imbedded group of reporters who get a taste of what it's like in a war-ravaged country by being treated to a Sensurround-style simulated ride through rough terrain. (They cheer with excitement, just like Geraldo every time he sees his name in the paper spelled right.)

War, Inc. positions itself as a sort-of-sequel to the 1997 New Crime Production Grosse Pointe Blank; it doesn't continue that movie's story or revive its characters, but it does reunite some if its key personnel while aiming for something similar in tone and approach. Cusack's emotionally confused master assassin with a streak of white in his dark hair is Martin Blank with ten years on him in all but name; Joan Cusack is once again his personal assistant (but this time, infuriatingly, is subjected to unflattering lighting and funhouse lenses and camera angles), and Dan Aykroyd turns up to do his Dick Cheney impression as the self-satisfied master of the universe dealing Cusack his orders. (They are joined by Marisa Tomei, who, as usual, pumps an incredible amount of sexiness and vitality into her corner of the vaccuum, and Ben Kingsley, who attempts what I think is meant to be a Texas accent, though it could just as easily have labeled his character as an Australian, a Venusian, or just a raving nut.) This is actually a clever approach--just as it was when the cast of A Fish Called Wanda did it in Fierce Creatures, a movie that didn't work either--but it mainly serves to highlight how opportunistic the difference between the two pictures feels. Grosse Pointe Blank, which came riding in on the last fumes of the Pulp Fiction bandwagon, treated murder as a hip slapstick joke. War, Inc. has the same kind of what-me-worry approach to violent chaos and the same admiring attitude towards its hero's murderous prowess, but it expects to be taken as being on a deeper, more meaningful level of smirking cynicism because Cusack has sunk to working for Republican CEOs. (In both films, Cusack is paired with a heroine--Minnie Driver in Grosse Pointe Blank, Marisa Tomei here--who expresses horror at his violent side until she needs rescuing.) War, Inc. is set to go straight to DVD after a non-victory lap of the festivals and a token New York/Los Angeles theatrical release, and Cusack and company are welcome to console themselves with the thought that their movie was punished for the sharpness of its bite. But its "satire" is the kind of thing that The Daily Show regularly makes fun of.

Trailer Review: War, Inc.

Paul Clark — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:00:00 GMT

In theory, I support any film that takes on the hot-button topic of war profiteering. So why do I have absolutely no interest in seeing this? Could have something to do with the assault of shrill satire in this trailer- repeated shots of a Popeye's Chicken in the middle of a war zone, a dance line of people wearing prosthetic limbs, the final LeBron James reference, etc. The wayyyyyyyyyy-over-the-top supporting turns don't help matters. Joan Cusack and Marisa Tomei appear to have been directed to outdo each other in terms of volume and quirkiness, while Ben Kingsley scarcely seems to have been directed at all. Meanwhile, John Cusack could give this performance in his sleep by now. But hey, if you're a middle-aged guy who's been jonesing for Hilary Duff to show off her naughty side in a movie you won't feel weird about paying to see, then War Inc. is the movie for you. It's just, y'know, not the movie for me.

The Top Ten Uncompleted Movies, Part 2

Phil Nugent — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 20:30:00 GMT

APT PUPIL

Bryan Singer's adaptation was not the first version of this Stephen King novella. In 1987, British Director Alan Bridges had Nicol Williamson and Ricky Schroder in the leads of this story concerning a teenager discovering his elderly neighbor's Nazi past. Unfortunately, the film ran over budget and with ten days of filming left, the financing ran out and the film shut down. Accounts vary of just how much was left to shoot. Stephen King had reportedly seen a 3/4 rough cut and commented it was "really good" while the writers, Ken and Jim Wheat, reported seeing an assemblage of forty minutes' worth of footage. By the time financing was found to complete the shoot a year later, Schroder had grown too too old to continue in his role and there was no way to finish the film short of a full re-shoot. To date, the footage has never been shown to the public, though if there's ever a special edition of Bryan Singer's version, one hopes that the director would be able to snag the rights to include Alan Bridge's version as a bonus feature.

IN GOD'S HANDS

It is a tragic fact that many early feature films have been lost forever due to negligence and poor preservation. What's horrifying is to find out that even in the 21st Century, an entire feature film can be lost due to an accident, especially when its not the new Eddie Murphy comedy but it comes from someone like filmmaker Lodge Kerrigan. In God's Hands was produced by Stephen Soderbergh's Section Eight outfit and starred Peter Sarsgaard and Maggie Gyllenhaal as a couple who've lost their child. Unfortunately, the entire camera negative of the film was damaged, causing it to be lost. I'm still stunned that someone on the film didn't realize something was wrong after the first few days of shooting just by checking the rushes, but the damage had been done. Kerrigan, who bounced back with Keane, has expressed no interest in trying to re-shoot In God's Hands. This is one of those cases that could be used as a backhanded argument for abandoning film to shoot digital.

THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER

This British animation has the distinction of having had the longest production phase ever. Renowned animator Richard Williams started the project in 1965, animating it part time and financing the project through the odd commercial jobs and work on other films, such as Murder on the Orient Express, The Charge of the Light Brigade, and the credit sequences on some of the "Pink Panther" films. After endearing himself to the powers that be by serving as animation director on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Williams was finally able to get financing to complete the film, but a variety of factors resulted in its being taken away from him by Mirimax and handed over to television animator Fred Calvert. Despite numerous promises from various parties to try and complete the film according to Williams's original design, this probably won't be happening anytime soon. The original workprint of the film can be found on YouTube. The "completed" bastardisation edition can be bought from your local Blockbuster Bargain bucket, hidden under a couple hundred copies of Norbit.

MY BEST FRIEND'S BIRTHDAY

Unofficially considered by those in the know as Quentin Tarentino's directorial debut, this is a far cry from Reservoir Dogs. Shot on Super 16mm over a few years, the completed 70-minute cut was lost in a fire, and so what survives is about 30-40 minutes of rough footage. Is it watchable? It has certainly has had a cult following grow around it, and despite its technical issues, it is in, IMHO, a far more enjoyable time waster than Death Proof.

ARRIVE ALIVE

Jeremiah Chechik is one unlucky man. His second film was supposed to be a comedy featuring Willem Dafoe as a hotel manager who falls for Joan Cusack as one of the guests. It was co-written by National Lampoon and Saturday Night Live veteran and self-styled "dangerous comedian" Michael O'Donoghue and produced by Art Linson. Unfortunately after two weeks of shooting, Linson pulled the plug and wrote off a couple of million dollars. Why? Apparently, it was due to Dafoe's performance, an attempt to bring "edge" to a romantic-comedy leading-man part that Linson, in his book A Pound of Flesh, described as "terrifying". Chechik managed to bounce back with Benny & Joon before his career was nearly destroyed with The Avengers, one of those productions where 50% of the production ended up on the cutting room floor.

QUE VIVA MEXICO

This was to be Sergei Eisenstein's first film made outside Russia, co-produced by renowned American novelist, Upton Sinclair. Unfortunately, after cost-overruns and other problems, Eisenstein was summoned back to the Soviet Union by Stalin (who can refuse an invitation like that?) leaving behind over 200,000 feet of unedited footage. Despite promises to send the footage to the USSR for the director to edit, this never came to pass, and instead several different edited versions of the film have appeared under different titles over the years, most of them falling into obscurity. None of the versions come close to what Eisenstein may have wanted but the film is still inspiring people to take a shot at it. (This YouTube clip is a trailer to promote the latest attempt at a restoration from Lutz Becker).

--Phil Nugent; Faisal A. Qureshi

Click here for Part 1.