Venice, Day 5: Shame, Alps, Wilde Salome & Sal

[Editor's Note: Manolis, TFE's Greek correspondent at the Venice Film Festival chimes in briefly on a very busy screening day. Notes on four films, the last of them a probable prize winner. -Nathaniel]

Alps
The Greek entry of the festival divided the critics assembled here, just as Dogtooth did two years ago. The Italian critics that are featured at the Daily Variety issue of the festival here have given it from 1 to 5 stars. So it’s difficult to say what it’s chances are with the jury. In Dogtooth the protagonist was trying to escape from a fake world, but in Alps the protagonist is trying to enter one; she feels she must belong to another reality, not her actual one. Aggeliki Papoulia gives an excellent performance and Yorgos Lanthimos’ fans will not be disappointed. But that said, he won’t win any new fans with Alps.

Wilde Salome
This isn't quite a film or a documentary but something inbetween as Al Pacino chronicles his attempts to make a film out of Oscar Wilde’s Salome shortly after the play was staged in Los Angeles. In Wilde Salome we watch the plays’ rehearsals and see Pacino’s attempts to solve the various production problems that are created by his insistence to film the play simultanously with the live performances. We also watch him researching Oscar Wilde and we get information on the famous playwright through interviews featuring Tony Kushner, Gore Vidal, Tom Stoppard and… Bono. Jessica Chastain is magnetic as Salome and the film will surely be interesting to theater fans. Unfortunately, though Pacino may have had a vision, but he doesn't quite know how to share it through storytelling.

Franco and his star Val Lauren in VeniceSal

James Franco presents and emotional biography of Sal Mineo, or rather a small detail. Sal takes place on the last day of the star's life. Franco relies heavily on close-ups in this very low budget attempt to capture Mineo's spirit, to sketch an emotional impression of he was.  

I did this film for artistic reasons. Making a film is not just for entertainment or to make money."
-James Franco at the press conference

Though the film is slow and overly long, it captures the atmosphere of the time well and it's easy to forgive it its flaws; it's obviously a labor of love. 

Shame

Today I also saw the winner of the festival. I don’t know whether it will win the Golden Lion, Director or Actor prizes, but there is no way Steve McQueen’s Shame will leave Mostra empty-handed.

Shame is the story of Brandon (Michael Fassbender), a man who has lost his moral compass and wanders New York looking for one night stands, while what he needs is intimacy. Fassbender gives an astonishing performance and manages to combine Brandon's fragile nature with his sexual confidence. The actor presents his journey of despair brilliantly. Carey Mulligan is also remarkable as his sister, a nightclub singer. Her vulnerable blues rendition of “New York, New York” is more than enough to put her in the Oscar race of Best Supporting Actress. The explicit nature of the film and the many nude scenes (including full frontal nudity from both stars) may hurt the film's reception with some audiences and possibly Oscar voters, but McQueen and especially Fassbender won't end the year without popping up at various critics awards. 

The response at today’s premiere was enthusiastic. That five minute standing ovation was an obvious vote of approval for McQueen and Fassbender's post-Hunger reunion.

Hit Me: Natalie Wood and "Rebel Without a Cause"

It's time to wrap up the Hit Me With Your Best Shot season with a 1955 classic. Why this one? Well, today would've been Natalie Wood's 73rd birthday and we love ourselves some Natalie Wood. She was, in fact, Nathaniel's first actress obsession, an obsession formed in the late 70s while watching TV airings of various 50s & 60s movies (with an emphasis on West Side Story which has its 50th anniversary this fall!).

Natalie suddenly died in 1981, drowning as you know, after falling from a yacht during a break from filming her last picture Brainstorm (which was later released in 1983). Wee Nathaniel was heartbroken. Enough with the third person but I needed the distance; this one hits so close to home. Let it suffice to say that it was the first time I'd ever lost anyone I loved, virtual or otherwise. I hadn't even lost a pet at that point in life! The heartache maybe felt as formative as Natalie's in Splendor in the Grass; a first love never to be forgotten if you will.

Today we're talking about Rebel Without a Cause (1955) because it gave Natalie her first of three Oscar nominations and because we've been thinking about "first love" and high school lately. (See, we've recently started rewatching Angela Chase falling for Jordan Catalano on Netflix.)

The Nicholas Ray movie -- part of that unassailable James Dean Trinity -- is a spectacularly enduring piece of teen angst. It's as mesmerizing and febrile with feeling today as we assume it was in 1955 even though it's now most decidedly a period piece. But this happens to all contemporary entertainments... the period part I mean. (The enduring part only happens to the lucky or the brilliant. Have you seen My So Called Life lately? It's just as great 17 years later only now it's as much a period piece as Rebel -- it's soooo '90s.) Time marches on.

Best Shot

This beautifully sustained shot (it lasts for over a minute) captures two era-defining icons of youth in what can accurately be described as langurous mutual auto-eroticism. Judy (Wood) and Jim (Dean) barely ever look at each other in this sequence, letting their bodies and their voices do all the communicating. But aren't they still in their own little worlds, only dreaming of colliding?

Directors rarely hold the camera on two faces simultaneously anymore and that's nothing but one of the greatest losses for the cinema. All great movie stars are auto-erotic, their principal love affair being with the camera rather than co-stars, but when they share a frame the power can feel infinite. (For a comic counterpoint example of this same face-pressing double whammy magic, see The Lady Eve with that sensationally funny scene where Barbara Stanwyck babbles incessantly while rubbing her face against an overheated Henry Fonda.) In this case the dual star magnetism doubles as youthful dreaming, disconnected from reality, though Judy and Jim are, in fact, speaking about connection. Judy is philosophizing about friendship, character, and love. She's about to launch into her famous "I love somebody" speech, the "somebody" is telling as she's caressing a man who is still more of an abstraction than a reality to her. Jimmy interjects.

We're not going to be lonely anymore. Ever ever. Not you or me.

The scene is heartbreaking for any number of reasons both for what precedes it and for what follows (poor Plato!), but mostly because you recognize it as a false prophecy, born of the loneliness it's trying to banish. Judy & Jim have long long lives ahead of them even if Dean and Wood didn't. Loneliness never stays away for good.

Rebels of the 'Best Shot' Cause

• Film Actually sees Rebel for the first time and contemplates that issue-heavy love triangle.
• Movies Kick Ass "Let's not ask the moon" is there a world larger than teenage problems?
  
• Clearly Up To No Good --- this is really cool. It's four themed photo folders. I love "Plato's Closet" and "Living on the Edge". Lovely
• Awww the Movies the looks.
• Stale Popcorn a dynamic shift in "family"

Links: Voldemort, Mineo, Britton, Lynch, Cruise

Slate a lovely positive post-mortem of the Harry Potter series with a well reasoned argument for the indispensability of one Alfonso Cuarón and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban as the lynchpin of the series's enviable franchise longevity. 
Movie|Line "nine milestones in the evolution of Ralph Fiennes." Damnit. Why no Strange Days (1995)?

Boy Culture first behind the scenes stills from Sal, that James Franco directed Sal Mineo biopic starring Val Lauren
Boy Culture also discovers that the actor Frederick Weller (remember him? I always liked him) has the world's greatest memory.
The Other Paper a fascinating history of that "You and Me" song in Blue Valentine (hat tip) 
Natasha VC "so much hope" or... (my title) What can happen when the Oscars all go to still-young performers who you think you'll love forever. Oops! 
Awards Daily lists their reader determined first half of the year nominations 
Pajiba is way angry about the film adaptation of the novel One Shot. I don't know the source material but apparently the lead is supposed to be a towering figure, like 6'5" towering; so naturally, 5'7" Tom Cruise is your man! 
Scott Feinberg falls for "blank slate" French girls Melanie Laurent (Beginners) and Marion Cotillard (Midnight in Paris)
The Wrap picks the MVP actors of the summer 

Boing Boing contributor Rob Beschizza decided to reedit and abbreviate David Lynch's much-derided Dune without its problematic script. It's much shorter and the imagery takes over. Interesting. Here's a sample. 

Finally, in my ongoing tiny and useless campaign to win Connie Britton a Best Actress Emmy for Friday Night Lights, I present Grantland's  fine Oral History of Friday Night Lights. The section on the casting of Connie Britton as Tami Taylor is A-MAZ-ING because it makes clear everything I'm always saying about how lame the "supportive spouse" role always is and how much more capable the nation's actresses are than the lame sleepwalking shit they're always given to do in these roles. Here's a sample.

Berg: [In the original Friday Night Lights movie], Connie Britton's role was sort of Pretty Wife Clapping in the Stands, which is about the shittiest job an actress can have...

Connie Britton (Tami Taylor): ... I was like, "No way!" The only thing worse than playing a nothing part in a movie is [playing it] for years and years on TV.

Berg: She said, "Are you fucking kidding me? You think I'm going to spend 10 years sitting on a hard-wood bleacher getting splinters in my ass and cheering on Kyle Chandler? You're out of your mind." I said, "I promise. We'll create a character. We'll give you a job. We'll give you dimension. We'll give you a real voice."

Britton: It really was a leap of faith, initially, because I only had three scenes in the pilot script. So I remember even going into the pilot and saying, "OK, Pete, just so we're clear: What's here on the page in the pilot, that's not what we're talking about, right?"

Heh. Television needs more Tami Taylors. And so, too, does the cinema.

Sal (Mineo) & Val (Lauren)

You may have heard the news earlier today that James Franco, Man of One Thousand Projects (half of which we assume will never see the light of day), has found the actor for his Sal Mineo biopic and it's Val Lauren. A lot of people were saying "who?" 'round the net but I'm here to tell you that he's a real talent, not just a lucky "unknown".

Sal Mineo and Val Lauren who may play him in a biopic

I'm not sure how old Lauren is -- IMDb doesn't offer up much info -- and the picture above is three years old (I wanted them both in hats. Sue me). Sal Mineo was most famous in his early 20s and was murdered at only 37 years of age and for all we know Franco's vision might have to do with the later years of Mineo's life. But fine acting is the most crucial element of biopic success anyway and acting chops have very little to do with age. Starpower is the other necessary Biopic element. By starpower I don't mean "Famous Person" but screen presence, the ability to hold a camera in an iron grip. If you don't have it and you're playing someone with it the disconnect is great. 

I have only ever seen Val Lauren in one picture, back in 2008, but he had it.

The film was called True Love, a contemporary ensemble romantic drama that, as far as I know, was never released.  I thought that he was mesmerizing. At the time I wrote.

Its title make it sound just stiflingly clichéd. But it isn't and it works. The characters were compellingly flawed and in not immediately recognizable ways, either. Best in show is Val Lauren who plays an unceasingly aggressive self-made man. If this film gets distribution I expect it'll do major things for his heretofore minor career (lot of TV guest spots and the like).

I was wondering when he'd blow up but he never did. Maybe now?

Here's the trailer to True Love. He's the one you see wearing the cute hats, the one you hear monologuing about Disney, and the one you glimpse thrusting in a sex scene and smashing up defenseless cars.

Sal Mineo and Gay Hollywood

My friend Matthew, who wrote the book Boy Culture (which his blog is named after), recently interviewed the late Sal Mineo's boyfriend Courtney Burr, who is an acting teacher, in connection with a newish book on one of the most important Young Hollywood stars of the 1950s and 60s. The book in question was written by Michael Gregg Michaud. Burr had previously declined requests to help with other Mineo related books because he felt they were just after the sensationalistic aspects of the actor's legend (his sex life or his murder in the 70s -- famously none of the legendary trio from Rebel Without a Cause lived long enough to die of natural causes).

It's a lengthy interview for those of you who are interested in Sal Mineo or the difficulties for "exotic" actors or queer actors in showbiz history. The bit where Burr talks about Sal's career choices and if a comeback would have been in the cards if he hadn't been killed was interesting.

He was a wonderful director, but I think if he’d gotten the roles he wanted, like in The Godfather, which Al Pacino, a young, unknown, up-and-coming actor—it was certainly a role he could’ve played, and he said, "I’m ideal for that!" Midnight Cowboy...he was devasted—they wouldn't even see him. There were other roles he could’ve done and instead they started casting him as drug dealers…that Pancho Villa thing...I don’t mean that against Pancho Villa, but it just was not a great look for him.

He goes on to talk about those all-star epics of the time that faltering stars would appear in for the exposure and money not thinking about how it would damage their career. He likens it to has beens doing Dancing With the Stars today. Heh.

Sometimes Burr is quite honest and revealing. For instance he has a lot of interesting things to say about how Sal viewed himself (he preferred "artist" to "actor" because he also directed and drew and sang) and whether or not he would have come out in the modern era of stardom. He also claims that Sal Mineo's relationship with his Exodus co-star Jill Hayworth was an actually close friendship and sexual relationship though it's sometimes been described elsewhere as one of those infamous Old Hollywood publicity-created "relationships".

Other times the interviewee is frustratingly opaque with his stories. There's a confusing bit about Natalie Wood that makes her sound a bit homophobic though her friendships with gay men, famous and otherwise, are well known and documented. 

Farley Granger, Jane Powell, and Roddy McDowell. Old Hollywood pool party?

Though Burr didn't like the sensationalistic tone of most Sal Mineo books, he's okay with serving it up himself: Roddy McDowall in particular gets verbal smackdowns for being an evil "suburban" closet queen. Roddy is no longer around to defend himself of course but one this is factually certain from the stories: these two men CLEARLY did not get along.

There are also stories about working with Janet Gaynor and Rock Hudson in the interview so if you're interested in Old Hollywood, check it out.