Movies Til Dawn

Imagine my surprise when I heard that "City Island" opened last weekend in...the former USSR? Really? Before America gets to see it in wide release, the Russkie's do? But--delight of delights--it turns out that our Bronx based family comedy seems to have a fairly universal appeal. Below I pasted a blackberry-ish communication from our Foreign Sales company, who seems genuinely delighted with the business we did on opening weekend in...the former USSR? Subject: FYI: City Island - Russia - first weekend BO admissions: 37,133 $244,692 They are releasing with 120 prints or about, this is a very good start!!! Imagine--a hit in Kiev! A sell-out in Moscow! A smash in St. Petersberg (?)...To celebrate, why not post my favorite number from the only true Cold War musical, "Silk Stockings"--music and lyrics by Cole Porter, natch. The song is the "Red Blues" and the damsel who kicks it into gear is, of course Cyd Charisee. The number is magnificently staged and di...

Click here to read the Hollywood reporter piece announcing "City Island'" appearing at the prestigious (and wonderful) Deauville Film Festival, on September 11. Apparently the folks at Deauville are doing an homage to Andy Garcia--clips of his other films I imagine, perhaps full screenings?--and then presenting our movie. I love this idea as I very much want people to view Andy in "City Island" both as the character he portrays (and he effortlessly inhabits Vince Rizzo--never for a moment do you think it's Andy being Vince) as well as the wonderful movie star who you know from a pile of movies going back twenty years and who here is showing a side of his performing talent that you may not be familiar with. Andy's comic and emotional turn as Vince is, I say immodestly, a career highlight and I love that Deauville (and I hope other festivals) are interested in putting his work in perspective, and using "City Island" as a lens to filter it throug...

Apropos of inspiration seeking and the whole auteur-ism business of the bizness of the bidness, I'm reading Sam Fuller's massive autobiography "A Third Face". Nobody can dispute Fuller's place in the pantheon as an early auteur--though he didn't always operate within the studio system like his friend Richard Brooks (see previous two posts). Fuller frequently found independent financing back when that was even more unusual then Brooks taking no up-front money from a studio in exchange for artistic control was. Indeed, Fuller's earliest "angel" was a man named Robert Lippert, the owner of some drive-ins in northern California who had a hankering to produce his own movie. Somehow he and Fuller got hooked up and this led to Fuller's first feature as writer/director, 1949's "I Shot Jesse James". I haven't seen this film in years but remember enjoying it quite a bit on television as a young'n. It's bare bones stuff, to ...

The year is 1982. I'm a pisher of eighteen or so, intensely interested in and committed to filmmaking, film history, filmmakers etc. And one of the last of the old Hollywood characters to still be at it this late in the game is Dick Brooks (see previous post)--though I hesitate to think of him as "old Hollywood". The truth is, his best films were made later in his career and hardly feel like the work of a writer/director bred in the B unit at RKO and MGM (which he was, more or less). But Brooks always defied easy characterization--although he started writing for movies before World War 2, his breakthrough work wasn't a screenplay but instead a novel called "The Brick Foxhole" which was filmed as "Crossfire" in 1947. Even then, Brooks had a flair for the outrageous and lethally incorrect; the plot of "The Brick Foxhole" revolved around a group of war veterans who murder a homosexual. Forget the gay angle--daring enough in its day. The fact...

I'm sitting in my air-conditioned dustbin (aka converted garage) in the back of my house in LA getting ready to write my new screenplay. This is a fearsome prospect for some reason. As a young man, I thought nothing of sitting down, banging out a few scenes, seeing if there were characters and a story in there that I liked and proceeding onward, finishing up a draft over the next four to six weeks. Some of the scripts were good. A few have gotten made. Most were mere practice-- in Norman Mailer's classic phrase, "running existential errands". A few were lousy. But the older I get--and I technically entered middle-age last week as I turned forty-five--the more selective I get about what I think I'm getting into when I sit down to write. Actually that's crap. It's not just that I'm selective--I'm also less confident, less able to brush off failure. Although that's not exactly correct either--having experienced real failure, I no longer fear it as...

Re: City Island. Click on the above to read the marvelously positive notice about our movie in Film Comment magazine. Film Comment, snootiest of the snooty cinema rags, has never before (to my knowlege) deigned to write about one of my films. So Amy Taubin's excellent piece is a real thrill for me. Re: our "sponsor screening" the other night. The Tribeca Film Festival gave a little party for the executives who work for the various companies who sponsored the festival--Amex, Snapple, Heineken, Delta Airlines etc. were all represented. Our movie was the chosen entertainment--and Julianna Margulies and I showed up and did a little Q&A. Thank you to Tribeca for picking us and thank you Julianna for coming out for the movie once again--a peach of a pro. Click here for pictures of the event. Re: Cameron Crowe and "jazz abuse". Here's a very articulate post I dug up, reprinted with no permission whatsoever, written by somebody identified only as "lun...