BEFORE: Musicians in relationships has become sort of a running theme this February here at the Movie Year - "Save the Date" and "Happy Endings" featured people currently in rock bands and "Frank and Cindy" had an ex-rocker, then "Grace of My Heart" told the story of a singer/songwriter and "Some Kind of Wonderful" had a high-school drummer in it, and a drummer is almost like a musician. Musicians are probably tied with writers this month ("Private Life", "Long Shot", "Professor Marston and the Wonder Women", maybe "Love Happens") but I've still got a long way to go in the romance chain.
Johnny Simmons carries over from "Frank and Cindy".
Tomorrow on Turner Classic Movies, George Arliss links from "The Green Goddess" to the day's first film, can you fill in the other links? Answers below.
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 18 on TCM (31 Days of Oscar, Day 18)
7:15 am "Disraeli" (1929) with _____________ linking to:
8:45 am "Raffles" (1930) with _____________ linking to:
10:00 am "The Prisoner of Zenda" (1937) with _____________ linking to:
12:00 pm "49th Parallel" (1941) with _____________ linking to:
2:15 pm "Vacation from Marriage" (1945) with _____________ linking to:
4:00 pm "Goodbye Mr. Chips" (1939) with _____________ linking to:
6:00 pm "In Which We Serve" (1942) with _____________ linking to:
8:00 pm "Brief Encounter" (1945) with _____________ linking to:
9:45 pm "Sons and Lovers" (1960) with _____________ linking to:
11:45 pm "Pygmalion" (1938) with _____________ linking to:
1:30 am "Of Human Bondage" (1934) with _____________ linking to:
3:00 am "Little Women" (1933) with _____________ linking to:
5:00 am "Father of the Bride" (1950)
Damn it, another near-total loss today. I've seen "Goodbye Mr. Chips", but not this version, I watched the later remake with Peter O'Toole. And I have "The Prisoner of Zenda" on my list, just haven't been able to link to it. The only one I can really claim is "Father of the Bride", I just know I watched that back in the day, way before I ever started this project. But one seen out of 13 today only gets me up to 66 out of 208, or 31.7%.
THE PLOT: Part-time pianist Monty Fagan begins a May-December romance that upends his home life.
AFTER: If you're playing along at home, please note that there are several different films with the title "Dreamland", which is why I noted the year of release, 2016, in the heading of this post. There's a 2006 drama with the same title about a woman living in a desert trailer park, then there's a 2019 comedy/fantasy film starring Juliette Lewis and a 2019 drama about a teenage bounty hunter with Margot Robbie in it. Then there's ANOTHER drama titled "Dreamland" coming out later in 2020 about the illegal drug trade, starring Gary Oldman and Armie Hammer. Unless you're on the IMDB every day like I am, it can be hard to keep it all straight - and I bet that the 2020 film changes its title before release.
But all this highlights an odd little legal quirk - you can't copyright a film's title. You can copyright a screenplay or a finished film, but not the title. So if I wanted to make a documentary about people studying tornadoes and call it "Gone With the Wind", I'm within my legal rights. One of the documentaries that was nominated for an Oscar this year was titled "Les Miserables" and had nothing directly to do with the famous Victor Hugo work. Yet when that documentary finally airs, it's going to be easy for some fans of the 2012 musical (or of any of the other filmed versions of Hugo's novel) with the same title to accidentally record the wrong film. It's a different animal, but with the same title it ends up sowing confusion in the marketplace. You'd better believe that if I made an animated film about native Inuit people and called it "Frozen" that I'd be hearing from Disney's lawyers, or beaten up by costumed characters.
So, to be clear, this is a 2016 romance film set in Los Angeles and the central character is a pianist who has a troubled romantic relationship and dreams of opening up his own club. Hmm, there was another 2016 film that also fits that description, and also ends in "--Land". I wonder if this is another case of two studios (Lionsgate and Orion Pictures) somehow ending up with very similar films on their release schedules - "Dreamland" premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2016, while "La La Land" opened the Venice Film Festival in October 2016. "Dreamland" was released in theaters in November 2016 and then "La La Land" followed a month later - there's no box office info on IMDB for "Dreamland", but "La La Land" made over $450 million, so there's a clear winner and there's an also-ran. (Oddly, there were other films titled "La La Land" released in 2010 and 2012, which nobody ever saw, and now probably never will.)
But "Dreamland" isn't a knock-off of "La La Land", that doesn't seem possible, given the time-frame. "La La Land" was supposed to be released first, but then the release was delayed - probably so they could get that Venice Film Festival opening night premiere, which couldn't have happened after a U.S. release. But given that Damien Chazelle had been developing "La La Land" for years, before he made "Whiplash" even, it's possible that he shopped it around to a few studios and some greedy executive green-lit a screenplay written by someone else that had some similarities, but how would that exec have known that "La La Land" was going to be successful? It's easier to believe that two separate creative entities came up with two films about L.A. pianists independently, and that those two films happen to share some story elements in common.
However, there are some key differences between "La La Land" and "Dreamland". The pianist in "La La Land" meets a woman in a traffic jam, and she later comes to hear him play in a club, and after a few magical dates and some dance numbers, they go on to have a rather complicated relationship, arguing over what it means to follow their dreams. The pianist in "Dreamland" is already in a relationship when the film starts, though it's a shaky one where they live with his girlfriend's mother and this causes tension, plus it seems like the spark has gone out of their relationship, they're no longer physically intimate. The lead character is working as a private piano teacher when he gets a temporary gig at a fancy hotel when their regular pianist has a heart attack, and his performance is heard by an older married woman with a ton of money, and so he ends up giving (and getting) a few private lessons, if you know what I mean. At the same time, his girlfriend fools around with a plumber who's visited her mother's house to unclog the upstairs toilet. I get it, he's big, muscular, good with his hands, plus a plumber probably has a steady income, unlike, say, a freelance musician.
See? Very different films, though both are about L.A. pianists in doomed relationships. (And which one made a gazillion dollars? The one with Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, duh.) But which one has Jason Schwartzman as a banker who won't give Monty the pianist a loan to open up his proposed piano bar? Schwartzman practically steals the film here, which not-so-coincidentally was written and directed by his older brother, Robert Schwartzman. Also appearing are Jason's mother (Talia Shire) as Monty's mother, and a son (?) or nephew (?) as a piano student. Hey, it's a family affair.
There's not a great portrayal of women here, of all the women in Monty's life, none are really ideal - his young girlfriend won't have sex with him, but his girlfriend's mother tries to seduce him at one point. I'm not sure if this was a fantasy sequence or genuinely was supposed to be happening - and if it was real, was this older woman crazy, or just trying to get some of what her own daughter was passing up on? Then there's the other older woman, the "cougar" who seduces Monty and keeps paying him for sex - she says the money should go toward opening his piano bar, but come on, she's really turning him in to a de facto gigolo. And it's possible that she doesn't love him either, she's only sleeping with him to make her husband jealous, which is exactly what happens. Is it any wonder that Monty doesn't know which way is up by the end of the film, and ends up making a pass at his piano student's (also married) mother?
This is the irony of relationships sometimes - a man might find himself chasing after women who are clearly out of his league, meanwhile he is pursued by other women who are either too old, or come with too many strings attached. Sometimes the only thing to do is to clear the deck, break off all ties and start fresh in a new relationship. Someone on his level, not too far over him and not beneath him either. And maybe that's the romantic lesson for the day.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that there's rock royalty in this film, one of the great songwriters of all time, Jeff Barry, played the pianist at the hotel that Monty subs in for. Songs he wrote or co-wrote include "Chapel of Love", "River Deep, Mountain High", "Leader of the Pack", "Da Doo Ron Ron", "Do Wah Diddy Diddy", "Be My Baby", and "Then He Kissed Me". Oh, and also "Sugar, Sugar" and "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" and the theme songs for "The Jeffersons" and "One Day at a Time". He was often teamed with wife Ellie Greenwich and Phil Spector, so I wouldn't be surprised that one of the characters in "Grace of My Heart" was a thinly-veiled version of Barry (perhaps the one played by Chris Isaak).
Also starring Amy Landecker (last seen in "Beatriz at Dinner"), Jason Schwartzman (last seen in "A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III"), Noël Wells, Alan Ruck (last seen in "Cheaper by the Dozen"), Beverly D'Angelo (last seen in "Wakefield"), Talia Shire (last seen in "I Heart Huckabees"), Shay Mitchell (last seen in "Mother's Day"), Frankie Shaw (last seen in "Stronger"), Nick Thune (last seen in "Venom"), Robin Thomas (last seen in "The Banger Sisters"), Lilli Birdsell, William Schwartzman, Brittany Furlan, Jeff Barry.
RATING: 5 out of 10 strange wigs with no narrative justification
ANSWERS: The missing TCM "360 Degrees of Oscar" links are David Torrence, Ronald Colman, Raymond Massey, Glynis Johns, Robert Donat, John Mills, Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Wendy Hiller, Leslie Howard, Frances Dee, Joan Bennett.
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