Drillbit Taylor

Year 12, Day 165 - 6/13/20 - Movie #3,571

BEFORE: Owen Wilson carries over again from "Wonder", and this will mark his 8th appearance here in Movie Year 12, and as I'm only about a month away from the 2/3 checkpoint for the year, that's not a bad place for him to be.  Maya Rudolph also has 8 appearances, so they're tied for the lead, but neither actor appears in any other films currently on my watchlist, as far as I can tell.  There are always uncredited cameos, and archive footage appearances in documentaries, so I never really know this for sure.

Speaking of which, I can announce my planned topic for my documentary break in July - once again I've got a backlog of music documentarys, of course I tend to lean towards classic rock, but there will be some soul mixed in there too - plus those two documentaries about the Fyre concert disaster a couple years ago, so I'm thinking of this as a Summer Concert series, since right now we don't even know if there will be rock concerts IRL this summer.  Maybe some in NYC if coronavirus recovery continues in a positive direction, but for the states that opened too early and may face closures due to a second wave, not so much.

And speaking of closures, of course I felt bad a few weeks back when they announced that there would be no San Diego Comic Con this year, partly because it's not safe to have so many people gathered together during a pandemic, social distancing would be impossible in that convention center, and anyway they've been using that building to house homeless people, so think of how badly that building would need cleaning and disinfecting first.  (The joke I told about using the Javits Center, the annual site of New York Comic-Con, as a Covid-19 field hospital, was that things would be different this year - usually they have to disinfect the Javits AFTER Comic-Con...).  Look, I get how much of a hassle it would be, I worked at that convention for about 15 years in a row, and I usually came home sick afterwards with a cold I'd caught either at the Convention Center or on the plane ride.  One year I got a UTI, perhaps from using a public restroom there or in an airport.

But word came out today that the 2020 San Diego Comic-Con is back on.  Sort of.  It will be a virtual edition, so they'll be screening on-line much of the same programming and panels that they would have presented in person, and now nobody will catch Covid or cooties or the nerd flu, they can hold a virtual cosplay contest and screen trailers for next year's big movies and all that.  Sure, it's kind of hard to buy an autograph from a famous sci-fi actor this way, but it's a bold move for an event that usually has to limit the number of badges it sells, and now there's no limit to how many people could tune in for a FREE virtual convention.  They could have millions of people watching this year, which is also great publicity if they break some kind of record, plus they're preserving their brand and not just rolling over and cancelling their season, like some sports organizations I could name.  (By the time Major League Baseball figures out whether they can have a shortened 2020 season or not, it will probably be time to plan spring training for 2021...)

I stopped going out to San Diego in 2017, it just became too much physical work for me as I was getting close to 50 - I realized running a booth at a convention is something of a young man's game. Plus our booth hadn't been profitable in a while, once you factor in airfares and hotel costs, shipping all the merchandise out there, shipping back what didn't sell, and paying for the booth, which got more expensive every year.  Plus that last year really pissed me off, a lot of the rules got changed around, I argued with staff members who didn't know as much as I did about their own procedures, and I ended up in a foul mood, and with duct tape holding my pants together on the last day. (Long story...).  But a free virtual convention this July?  Yeah, I may just have to sign up and see what that's all about.

THE PLOT: Three kids hire a low-budget bodyguard to protect them from their high-school bully.

AFTER: Hey, there's footage from "The Untouchables" movie that appears in this film, so I'm going to credit both Kevin Costner and Robert De Niro with an appearance - and that means that De Niro has also appeared in 8 films so far this year, and we've got a three-way race!  This just got a little more interesting.  Of course, if I had watched "Hall Pass" as originally planned, Owen Wilson would be in the lead by himself, but I still say I made the right call by re-scheduling that film for next February.

Well, this really expands on the conversation of bullying that I started last night - in this film three high-school freshman find themselves being bullied by the same two upper-classmen, only really there's one alpha dog and I guess the other kid is the beta.  Only one kid ever gets accused in the principal's office, and that kid, for some reason, is always given the chance to deny it and for some other unknown reason, the principal always believes him.  This seemed a little far-fetched after a while, but then, we have to remember that 2008 was a different time - not every kid had a smart-phone with the ability to record video back then.  Bullied kids today have a big advantage, they could just record their bully doing something wrong, or have another kid snap a video of the beatdown taking place, and boom, instant evidence to show to the principal.

We've also seen a social shift since then, I think, with many schools adopting zero tolerance policies in recent years.  Plus, if the bullied kid is any particular ethnic group, then it becomes a hate crime, and an older high-school kid could be looking at some real jail time or even some financial liability.  On top of all THAT, kids today also have the power of social media at their fingertips, so going public with their bullying could really get the word out about their unfortunate situation, and could bring everyone in town rushing to their defense.  But in "Drillbit Taylor", mired in the social politics of 2008, these kids never think to ask for help from the online community, but if they'd just thought outside the box a little more, they could have alerted a local news reporter, who could have been willing to champion their cause, even if it was just for the ratings.  If the principal's in your way, go around the principal and expose the bully in the news, and also mention how the principal's done nothing to stop it - it's a hell of an idea.

But instead the kids here pool their money and hire a bodyguard - sure, because schools allow that sort of thing all the time, bodyguards walking around the school, protecting three of the kids but not others.  Who is this adult, and why is he walking around the halls between classes?  Could be a sexual predator, better get him out of there.  The guy they hire, "Drillbit" Taylor, is actually a homeless veteran, but he talks enough of a good game to convince these kids that he's on the level, with both fighting experience and the willingness to protect them around the clock, but really he's planning to rob their homes with his other street-people friends.  In the meantime, he lives in the woods, takes showers at the beach and hits the kids up for bowls of cereal after every training session.  Drillbit is really hoping to get enough money together so he can travel up to northern Canada, where he can make a fresh start - there are rumors that if you travel far enough north, the country will just give you some land if you're willing to live on it.

Drillbit's initial advice was to befriend their bully, who's probably acting out to overcome some kind of personal dissatisfaction with himself, and find some common ground and shared interest, which is really not a bad plan.  As I said yesterday, fighting a bully doesn't work, snitching on a bully doesn't work (unless you go REALLY big with that hate-crime stuff) so the common ground thing might be the best bet - only it doesn't work here when one of the geek teens beats him too badly in a rap battle. So Drillbit initiates Phase 2, which involves following the teens around and pretending to be a substitute teacher at the school.  Umm, bit NITPICK POINT here, nobody in the school administration checks this guy's paperwork?  Doesn't anyone realize that he's not on the school's payroll, nobody knows his real name or had him fill out a W-4 form?  The school would be in huge trouble if it became known that they let an uncertified stranger interact with their kids, so there would no doubt be systems in place to prevent this.

And what are the chances that all three lead characters here would have absent parents, or at least parents who didn't take a very active role in knowing where their kids are after school, and who they're hanging out with?  Speaking as a former teen geek myself, I had a very over-protective mother who was very clear that I had to come home straight after school, I couldn't even go hang out at another kid's house without permission, I had to come home first.  (My mother taught music in elementary schools a couple towns away, but my grandmother was always there to make sure I came home on time.).  I guess it's been a mixed bag for parental concern in movies lately, the parents in "Booksmart" and "Love, Simon" were rather hands-off, but in "Good Boys" and "The 15:17 to Paris" they were more like helicopter parents, and then in "Beautiful Boy" the father was extremely controlling, until a certain point anyway.  Way on the other end of the spectrum was "River's Edge", where all parents were nearly non-existent and all the teenagers just did whatever they wanted.

Meanwhile, Drillbit (or as he's known at the school, "Dr. Illbit") gets romantically involved with an English teacher at the school, the relationship goes well until she reveals her history of falling for "loser" guys and liars, and of course he's both.  This is pretty formulaic, even for a story that was originally written by John Hughes, a man who practically demanded that every character be some kind of walking stereotype (think how archetypical everyone was in "The Breakfast Club").  You can almost predict exactly how this whole scenario is going to fall apart, but at least there were a couple of nice surprises in the climax and the denouement.  As they often say to bullied teens these days, don't worry, it gets better. (But, does it though?  Surely not for everybody?)

Also starring Nate Hartley (last seen in "Movie 43"), Troy Gentile (last seen in "Nacho Libre"), David Dorfman (last seen in "The Singing Detective"), Alex Frost (last seen in "The Most Hated Woman in America"), Josh Peck (last seen in "The Wackness"), Leslie Mann (last seen in "Welcome to Marwen"), Danny McBride (last heard in "The Angry Birds Movie 2"), Stephen Root (last seen in "Selma"), Ian Roberts (last seen in "The House"), Lisa Lampanelli (last seen in "The Last Laugh" (2016)), Lisa Ann Walter (last seen in "Killers"), Hynden Walch (last heard in "Teen Titans GO! to the Movies"), Valerie Tian (last seen in "21 Jump Street"), Beth Littleford (also last seen in "Movie 43"), David Bowe (last seen in "Cheaper by the Dozen"), Cedric Yarbrough (last seen in "The Boss"), Robert Musgrave, Shaun Weiss, Steven Brill (last seen in "Sandy Wexler"), Mary-Pat Green (last seen in "In Her Shoes"), Mary Pat Gleason (last seen in "Fat Man and Little Boy"), Casey Boersma, Dylan Boersma, Da'Vone McDonald, Jareb Dauplaise (last seen in "My Life in Ruins"), Robert Allen Mukes, Tichina Arnold (last seen in "Top Five"), Jerry Minor (last seen in "Junebug"), Barry Sigismondi, Steve Bannos, with cameos from Adam Baldwin (last seen in "Filmworker"), Matt Besser (last seen in "Between Two Ferns: The Movie"), Kevin Hart (last heard in "The Secret Life of Pets 2"), Rance Howard (last seen in "The 'Burbs"), David Koechner (last seen in "Still Waiting..."), Chuck Liddell, Matt Walsh (last seen in "Other People"), Frank Whaley (last seen in "Hustlers"), and archive footage of Kevin Costner (last seen in "The Highwaymen"), Robert De Niro (last seen in "Joker"), Edward Norton (last seen in "Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind"), Brad Pitt (last seen in "The Tree of Life").

RATING: 4 out of 10 bowls of Cap'n Crunch

Wonder

Year 12, Day 164 - 6/12/20 - Movie #3,570

BEFORE: If you remember, 2017 was a big year for the word "Wonder" - in movies there was "Wonder Woman", "Wonder Wheel", and "Professor Marston and the Wonder Women" all released that year.

You might ask, why didn't I link here directly from "Good Boys"?  Well, good question.  This year's Father's Day chain has been set for a while now, and after I got it the way I wanted it, then it became about landing the right film on the holiday itself.  If I came here from "Good Boys", it would have been too soon, which would have necessitated some down time.  Just look at how many other films I squeezed in between "Good Boys" and this one!  (don't bother, it's 14, two weeks worth.). Now, if we had taken that vacation in May, and I'd had to go dark for five days, it might have been a fine idea.  For that matter, one of the kids in this film was also in "The 15:17 to Paris", which I watched last week, but there would have been the same problem, I would have arrived here 6 or 7 days too early, which would have required me to take a week off.

Sometimes it feels like the universe is pushing me toward certain films, or all roads are leading to Rome or wherever, but I can drop other films into the mix or eliminate certain ones to determine when I get there.  In a sense it's like going to a party, after you find out where it's being held and how to get there, then it's just a matter of arriving at the right time.

Owen Wilson carries over from "Father Figures", to another film that I hope is at least partially about a father-son relationship.  It's got to be, right?

THE PLOT: The inspiring and heartwarming story of August Pullman, a boy with facial differences who enters fifth grade, attending a mainstream elementary school for the first time.

AFTER: Look, I'm just going to go ahead and apologize right now to the director and producers of "Wonder", and let's throw in the author of the book it's based on as well, because you guys all meant well and I think you perhaps did a great job of drawing sympathy for this kid that was born with Treacher Collins syndrome, or something similar, having to navigate fifth grade and socializing with other kids his age for the first time.  But my score today is probably going to be on the low to medium side, because, and this may be the luck of the draw, by the time I got around to your movie, there were much bigger concerns in the world than one kid who's self-conscious about his appearance.

I know, I know, if you show a small story we can usually extrapolate, and if this kid faces his fears and stands up to his bullies and overcomes the prejudices of others we can all draw hope from this or find some small comfort that with the support of family and friends, life can be better and maybe all things are possible.  But this is set in New York City, a place that has lost over 21,000 citizens to date because of the Covid-19 pandemic, and I find that I can't really make the shift from being anxious and regretful over the deaths of the last few months to care about the insecurities of a small boy.  I mean, he's alive, right?  And he's got a loving, healthy family to support him and... wait a minute, he's not even real?  This is a completely fictional character?  Forget it, I can't even muster up some sympathy right now for a kid in a story that's not even "based on a true story".

I guess it's not completely fictional, because the author of the book noticed her son's reaction to a girl he saw in public with a similar facial difference, and after her son felt sorry for that girl, that became the inspiration for the story.  The author extrapolated the rest from there, but whatever happened to good old-fashioned research?  Couldn't the author have tracked down that real kid, or found another one with a similar facial deformity and highlighted that individual's struggles?  I mean, come on, what are we doing here if we're getting the movie-going audience to care about Auggie Pullman if there's no real Auggie Pullman?  Now I just feel like I've been manipulated if the whole thing's a piece of fiction.

Plus, this kid is white and lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn with two parents - and the family seems pretty well off if they're living in a Brooklyn brownstone and he gets to go to one of those magnet schools.  Also, we've got a whole movement going on reminding us that Black Lives Matter and there are people of color who've been mistreated and killed by the police, and now protesters who are getting gased and beaten in response to their rising up against police brutality.  (Do they not realize that if they beat the protesters, they're kind of proving their argument?). But no, "Wonder", please go ahead and explain to me how the self-image and confidence issues of a smart and charming little white boy should demand my attention right about now.  Again, sorry, this is probably all just bad timing, but as a result, I may have to get back to you later when I have a little extra sympathy to muster up.  Right now, I'm fresh out.

(I did something today that I rarely ever do, I gave some money to a panhandler on the subway.  I know panhandling is illegal, and campaigns are out there reminding everyone to ignore them and not give them money, but instead direct them to social services.  But this was a guy I've seen many times, and I think he's seen me almost as many, so I hope I did the right thing, I gave him all the change in my pocket, which was 75 cents.  Right after he left the subway car, another guy came on and asked if anybody had some food to spare.  I didn't, but the guy next to me did, and gave him a full pre-packaged meal, like one bought from a supermarket hot food bar.  The beggar then stood there, holding the meal he'd just received, and kept asking for food, saying he hadn't eaten in three days.  Dude, you're holding a container of food, so it's clear you're going to eat today - it's probably best if you move on, because right now nobody on the subway car is taking you seriously.)

I think the filmmakers realized that the concerns of one small boy aren't really going to add up to a lot of drama, like once this kid goes to school and makes a couple of friends, that crisis is over, to some degree at least.  So there are other sections of the film, one for Auggie's sister Via, one for his friend Jack, and one for Via's friend, Miranda.  These other sections show some of the same events from the main timeline but from different perspectives, so we can gain a little more insight on how Auggie's condition and special needs affects some of the other people around him.  For example, his sister Via has learned to be more independent because her parents have had to focus more on Auggie's home-schooling, plus his self-image and personal development.  She's used to being in the background, but finally sees a way to grow a little bit when she joins the drama club, and gains her first boyfriend in the process.  However, she tells that boyfriend that she's an only child, which may not mean that she's embarrassed about her brother, but possibly she just wants someone to get to know her for herself, without people thinking of her as that girl with the "different" brother.

Meanwhile, Miranda has come back from camp and finds it difficult to hang out with Via again, because Miranda's been telling everyone that SHE has a brother with special needs, because she enjoyed the attention she got from it, and also it (somehow) helped her not deal with her parents' divorce.  Umm, that's kind of apples and oranges, isn't it?  I don't really see how one untrue thing helped her deal with the true thing, but OK, whatever.  To make things right, Miranda plays sick on the opening night of the school play, "Our Town", so that Via, her understudy, can perform on stage in front of her parents.  I'm not sure, however, if that's enough good karma to make up for hijacking Via's brother to enhance her own personal story.

Like most Hollywood films on the topic of bullying, this film has no clear ideas on how to strike back against bullies.  As I've said before, fighting a bully is a terrible idea - they're already picking on people weaker than themselves, so they'll almost certainly win in a physical fight.  Snitching on a bully will only make them strike back harder, unless the bullied party can build up enough evidence to get that bully permanently thrown out of school.  But even that's not the best answer, because then that bully's life could be ruined, he could end up in a worse place, or find a weapon and shoot up the school in retaliation.  I dealt with several high-school bullies, but only resorted to violence once (I got my ass kicked, but somehow also won the bully's respect - still, I don't recommend this.). The best methods for dealing with a bully, I think, are either ignoring them completely (difficult, but do-able) or buying them off.  I purchased one bully's comic book collection for $40 and he didn't bother me again - why would he harass his best customer?  Perhaps getting him the social services or mental help he required would have been better, but I did what I could do.

On one level, I think by watching this film I'm right where I need to be, at the intersection of school graduations (even if that's just graduating from the fifth grade) and Father's Day - it's the perfect June film, I guess, even if some parts of it take place at Halloween and Christmas - but since watching "Selma", "Just Mercy" and even "On the Basis of Sex", I'm afraid I've moved the goalposts on what constitutes social relevance.  Sorry.

Also starring Julia Roberts (last seen in "Eat Pray Love"), Jacob Tremblay (last seen in "Good Boys"), Isabela Vidovic, Mandy Patinkin (last seen in "Wish I Was Here"), Daveed Diggs (last heard in "Ferdinand"), Sonia Braga (last seen in "Kiss of the Spider Woman"), Danielle Rose Russell (last seen in "A Walk Among the Tombstones"), Nadji Jeter (last seen in "The 5th Wave"), Noah Jupe (last seen in "Ford v Ferrari"), Bryce Gheisar (last seen in "The 15:17 to Paris"), Millie Davis (also last seen in "Good Boys"), Elle McKinnon, Ty Consiglio, Kyle Harrison Breitkopf (last seen in "Parental Guidance"), James A. Hughes, Ali Liebert, Nicole Oliver (last heard in "Sausage Party"), Rachel Hayward, Emma Tremblay (last seen in "The Judge"), Crystal Lowe (last seen in "Snakes on a Plane"), Steve Bacic, Benjamin Ratner, J. Douglas Stewart.

RATING: 5 out of 10 projects at the science fair

Father Figures

Year 12, Day 163 - 6/11/20 - Movie #3,569

BEFORE: It's very strange going back to work after 10 or so weeks at home - even though I'm only working three days this week.  Easing into things by working part-time, but something's still off - our studio is one of very few offices open in our building, plus the police have barricades sealing off our block because there's a police precinct on it.  So I have to tell a cop what address I'm going to just to get there, there are new rules all around about where I can go in Manhattan and what I can do there.  Major restaurants are still closed, and even when it comes to take-out places, some are open and some are not.  A couple of my favorite lunch places are open, but with limited menus, and if they don't have anything I like, then I have to wander around from block to block looking for something to eat that I might enjoy.

The post office (whose motto, I believe, said something about delivering through snow, rain, gloom of night and any other condition) hadn't delivered mail to our office for two months, instead they sort of piled it up somewhere and just waited for NYC to re-open Phase 1.  Did they think every office building would suddenly attract burglars who would notice the pile of mail by the front door?  When I asked on Friday about getting the missing mail, a clerk at the post office told me to come back on Monday with a note on letterhead signed by the company president requesting service to resume, but when I did that on Monday, they told me our mail was already in another location, being sorted and prepped for delivery, which MIGHT happen later in the week.  If I submitted the letter I had in hand, they'd have to move all that mail back to window services, and I couldn't get it until Friday.  So I took a chance and did nothing, thankfully the backlog of mail all got delivered the next day, since I had also put a sign up in our building lobby with our suite number, stating that we were open for business.

Ryan Gaul carries over from "Between Two Ferns: The Movie", and as promised, I'm back on Owen Wilson films. He's going to be tough to beat this year, now that I'm past the halfway point and about a month away from being 2/3 done with Movie Year 12. But I've still got some documentaries coming up in July, so you never know, with enough archive footage any 1960's rock star or popular talk-show host could still pull out a win.

THE PLOT: Upon learning that their mother has been lying to them for years about their allegedly deceased father, two fraternal twin brothers hit the road in order to find him.

AFTER: I guess unofficially it's "road trip" week, since Zach Galifianakis took a road trip with his camera crew to make shows on the way across the country to Los Angeles, and before that, the cast and crew of "The Other Side of the Wind" (the fictional one) all took a road trip from the shooting set to the director's house in Arizona to watch a rough cut of the film.  But my focus is shifting towards Father's Day, obviously, and here two brothers go off on a quest to find their biological father, after their mother initially tells them that it's football legend Terry Bradshaw.

I guess if you can get Terry Bradshaw to agree to play a fictional version of himself, then you probably roll with that, right?  But there are some questionable narrative choices here, like using the nature of the "free love" movement of the mid-1970's to showcase a female character who doesn't really know (or won't say) who fathered her children.  Most people get a little creeped out just thinking about the fact that their parents had sex at some point, these brothers have to deal with the fact that their mother slept around quite a bit, and that many of the men she slept with are willing to relate graphic stories about her lovemaking skills.  I mean, sure, go feminism, and if men can brag about their sexual escapades women should feel free to do that, too, but when that's your MOM, probably a little bit of the sex stuff is more than enough.

It turns out that one brother, Peter, is a big Steelers fan, and is totally in awe of Terry Bradshaw, proud to start thinking of himself as the former quarterback's son.  The brothers fly to Miami, track the NFL star down at the opening of his new car dealership, and Terry's happy to meet them (again, after relating a few stories about how hot their mother was, and stuff they did together.).  Terry's wife, however, is not so thrilled that her husband's brought home two complete strangers that he's treating like prodigal sons.  Well, one, anyway, Terry chooses to ignore Kyle, even constantly calls him by the wrong name.  He does understand what twins are, right?

So that's it, the boys find their father, a famous sports star who accepts them, and everything works out, movie over after the first half hour.  No way, it's not that easy, this opening bit was just a jumping off point, because they find some reason why Terry Bradshaw couldn't possibly be their father - this sets up the pattern for the rest of the film, because this odyssey is actually going to take the brothers around half of the country, eliminating several parental candidates before they finally uncover the truth about their heritage.  And wouldn't you know it, each potential father (who again, slept with their hot mom) has JUST enough reason why he can't be their father, plus remembers JUST enough information to send them off to their next candidate.  Hey, if you can remember the mid-1970's, it turns out maybe you weren't really doing it right.

I don't know, after these guys were wrong twice, don't you think they would have called up their mother and said, "Hey, mom, what's the deal?" or "Hey, why did you lie to us about the first guy?"  For that matter, this story feels really outdated because we have these things called DNA tests now, and perhaps that's where this story should have started.  For one thing, any celebrity like a famous sports star would probably have to deal with people claiming him as an errant parent all the time, and his reaction probably should have been to tell potential offspring to contact his attorney AND then take a DNA test to prove it.  Just saying.  I also think these brothers should have done one of those genetic profiling tests in the first place, that could have told them a lot about who their father was, and saved everybody a lot of time, myself included.  So big NITPICK POINT there.

But being out on the road together does give these brothers the chance to settle a bunch of their long-standing disputes.  Even though they're fraternal twins, they have VERY different approaches to life, one's an uptight divorced proctologist and the other's a free-wheeling Hawaiian surfer dude who prefers to let the universe bring good fortune his way - now see if you can guess which brother Owen Wilson plays.  Yep, you got it.

But this was a big problem for me, the two actors look nothing alike, so how am I supposed to believe that they're fraternal twins?  Was their mother's ovum fertilized by sperm cells from two men?  It's extremely rare, but I've heard that it's technically possible, plus this is sort of backed up by their mother's long list of sexual partners.  Still, I'd expect better choices to be made by a casting director in finding two actors who somewhat resembled each other.  Damn, if only Owen Wilson had a brother who was also an actor - but I guess we shouldn't wish for things we can't have.  Wait a second....  Originally Jason Sudeikis was cast to be in this film, and I could probably have bought him as Ed Helms' brother, why didn't they go that way with it? I guess because Helms looks a bit older?

I liked some of the paths this film went down, such as the brothers' debate over whether the universe is subtly pushing them in the right direction, or whether doing good deeds produces good karma as a reward, but while there was a comedy payoff on some things (like the results from picking up the hitchhiker) there was no payoff on others (like the hotel clerk who can't speak above a whisper for some unspecified reason).  So the end result was rather hit-or-miss, and if you find it's more miss than hit, I could certainly understand and respect that.

Also starring Owen Wilson (last seen in "Are You Here"), Ed Helms (last seen in "The Clapper"), Glenn Close (last heard in "Tarzan 2: The Legend Begins"), J.K. Simmons (last seen in "Spider-Man: Far From Home"), Katt Williams, Terry Bradshaw (last seen in "Hooper"), Ving Rhames (last seen in "Mission: Impossible - Fallout"), Harry Shearer (last seen in "The Last Laugh" (2016)), June Squibb (last seen in "Other People"), Christopher Walken (last seen in "Stand Up Guys"), Jack McGee (last seen in "The Finest Hours"), Ryan Cartwright (last seen in "Independence Day: Resurgence"), Ali Wong (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Retta (last seen in "Good Boys"), Jessica Gomes, Katie Aselton (last seen in "Bombshell"), Debra Stipe, Zachary Haven, Robert Walker Branchaud (last seen in "The Leisure Seeker"), B'nard Lewis, Robert Pralgo (last seen in "The 15:17 to Paris"), Niki Davis, Andrew Wilson (last seen in "How Do You Know"), Taylor Treadwell, Jim France (last seen in "Selma"), Brian Huskey (last seen in "Opening Night") with archive footage of Mariska Hargitay, Edward Hibbert (last heard in "Mary Poppins Returns")

RATING: 5 out of 10 bottles of BBQ sauce

Between Two Ferns: The Movie

Year 12, Day 162 - 6/10/20 - Movie #3,568

BEFORE: This is another one of those movies that has a huge cast, so it links to nearly everything.  I count at least five actors who were in the "Avengers" movies making cameos in it, for example.  Plus the star of "Wonder Woman", people like Jon Hamm and Awkwafina who seem to be in everything these days, so this film could have fit just about anywhere.  It almost seems a shame to use it to just connect two films, it feels like it should have been more useful somehow.

Still, whether it's good or not, it's serving a purpose, it's getting me from the lead-out film from those Orson Welles movies to the start of the next leg of the Father's Day marathon - by comparison, it would have felt like more of a waste to just drop this between two films with Matthew McConaughey in them.  This is exactly what films with big casts should be used for, to get me out of a linking jam.  This may be a mockumentary, but I used a couple of documentaries last year for similar purposes, like "Filmworker" and "Always at the Carlyle", which also had huge casts and enabled me to connect the end of one long chain with the start of another.  So even though I was semi-saving this one because it happens to connect two Christmas films on my list, I've moved it up in the plan because it's going to help get me to the right films on Father's Day and then the Fourth of July - a noble purpose indeed.

Keanu Reeves carries over from "River's Edge" to appear as Keanu Reeves today.

THE PLOT: Zach Galifianakis and his oddball crew take a road trip to complete a series of high-profile celebrity interviews.

AFTER: Sometimes it's all about tone where comedy is concerned, and this one's really deadpan most of the time.  But that's OK, because I'm still in the middle of Season 4 of "Arrested Development", and the humor is so overblown, so over-the-top that some deadpan humor is really appealing to me now.  And that's what Zach Galifianakis brings to the table, I guy who's so out of touch with reality that he doesn't realize how much of a loser he is, or maybe he does but he soldiers on anyway, and then acts more like a diva to cover up his shortcomings.

The premise is that he hosts a talk show that airs on some public access channel in North Carolina, but because the show also airs on Will Ferrell's Funny or Die web-site, Ferrell keeps making his showbiz pals stop by the station if they happen to be in North Carolina, so somehow this nobody in the middle of nowhere finds himself interviewing famous people, even if he's not sure who exactly they are, or how to pronounce their names.  The celebrities play themselves, and Galifianakis and Ferrell play fictional versions of themselves, kind of like Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon do in those "Trip" movies.  Zach G. ignores his celebrity to play a nobody, and Ferrell goes the other way,  and arrives by limo to offer him a deal for his own network talk show, if he can provide 10 more episodes of "Between Two Ferns" and deliver them to L.A. in just two weeks.

The big problem is, there was a big plumbing disaster, pipes in the studio broke while Zach was interviewing some actor named McConaughey, who nearly drowned when the studio filled up with water.  Zach's big plan to sound-proof the studio also prevented any water from escaping, you see.  So Zach takes a camera man and sound crew on the road with him (umm, plus an additional crew that's conveniently following him around to make a documentary about the show) and they cross the country looking for celebrities (and somehow, conveniently finding them) to make their next 10 episodes, running up large hotel bills and then staying in unorthodox locations once their money runs out.

Look, I could get really nitpicky here and point out that they could have used only one crew instead of two, the same people filming the documentary could have easily filmed the show-within-the-movie, but that wouldn't have been as much fun, and the characters in the crew wouldn't have had such great and awkward interactions.  I could point out that there's no way that a single-camera documentary crew could have produced what is clearly a multi-camera low-budget narrative film, and  there's also no way the documentary crew could have gotten THOSE shots, like were they riding on the outside of the car in the middle of the night?  Of course not.  But I don't want to be a real dick here, the movie's funny enough to dispel most of these concerns.

I watch a lot of TV shows that tour the country, looking for "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives", or places that count as "Food Paradise", or feature "Man vs. Food" eating challenges or "Bizarre Foods", and honestly, I'm fascinated by the logistics of it all, just like I'm fascinated by the logistics of bringing a rock band and all their gear to 30 or 40 cities around the country.  Like, who plans all that?  Clearly somebody with a head for organizing things in an obsessive-compulsive fashion.  (Hint, hint...). Do they have two camera crews, one that drives around the East Coast and another that handles everything west of the Rockies?  Or do they have a local crew in each city on standby?  When they find one cool restaurant in Hawaii, do they look for three or four other interesting places nearby, to justify the cost of the trip?   Similarly, I enjoyed seeing a crew of four drive from North Carolina to Los Angeles, the only thing missing here was one of those "Indiana Jones" style graphics to show me their progress across the country, so I could always tell what state they were in.  (other than the states of confusion and exhaustion, that is...)

What web-sites did Zach's producer use to figure out which celebrities were shooting on location where?  You know what, it's probably better that I not know, it doesn't matter.  All that matters is that the trip paid off with awkward interactions with celebrities, who all seemed either disturbed or frustrated with Zach's stupid or insulting questions.  (Finally, during the closing credits, all is revealed, the celebrities were in on the joke!  And most, if not all, were willing to poke fun at their own filmographies or public images for the sake of comedy.).  The crew makes it ALMOST all the way to L.A. before a car accident sidelines them and Zach comes very, very close to giving up on his dream.  Thankfully, inspiration comes from an unlikely source, a game show airing in a bar on a rainy night, and just like that, the dream is back on track.

All they have to do is interview one more celebrity in the L.A. area and while they're in his mansion, steal something valuable enough to fund the last leg of the journey.  Fortunately, that celebrity doesn't just have a Fabergé egg, he's got a whole carton's worth!  That guy's so rich, he probably won't even miss them.

I've never watched the original interview series this is based on, which appears to have been produced quite sporadically between 2008 and 2018.  But there are only 22 episodes, and it looks like they might be available on AmazonPrime - hell, I've already watched 63 episodes of "Arrested Development", with 21 to go - so once I'm done with that, maybe I need to do a deep dive on "Between the Ferns".  Yeah, I realize I'd be working my way backwards, starting with the movie first, but there's nothing I can do about that now.

Also starring Zach Galifianakis (last seen in "Are You Here"), Lauren Lapkus (ditto), Will Ferrell (last seen in "Daddy's Home 2"), Ryan Gaul (last seen in "The Happytime Murders"), Jiavani Linayao, Edi Patterson (last seen in "Knives Out"), Rekha Shankar, Mary Scheer (last heard in "Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker"), Mary Holland (last seen in "Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates"), Mike Ivy, Bobby Tisdale (last seen in "Junebug"), Matt Besser (ditto), Phil Hendrie, Paul Rust (last seen in "Pee-Wee's Big Holiday"), A.D. Miles, Blake Clark (last heard in "Toy Story 4"), Paul F. Tompkins, Demi Adejuyigbe, Mandell Maughan, with cameos from Awkwafina (last heard in "The Angry Birds Movie 2"), Chance the Rapper, John Cho (last seen in "In Good Company"), Benedict Cumberbatch (last seen in "1917"), Peter Dinklage (also last heard in "The Angry Birds Movie 2"), Gal Gadot (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Tiffany Haddish (last heard in "The Secret Life of Pets 2"), Jon Hamm (last seen in "The Report"), Rashida Jones (last heard in "The Grinch"), Brie Larson (last seen in "Just Mercy"), John Legend (last seen in "Quincy"), David Letterman (last seen in "The Wizard of Lies"), Matthew McConaughey (last seen in "The Sea of Trees"), Paul Rudd (last seen in "How Do You Know"), Jason Schwartzman (last seen in "Wine Country"), Adam Scott (last seen in "Krampus"), Hailee Steinfeld (last seen in "Pitch Perfect 3"), Chrissy Teigen (last heard in "Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation"), Tessa Thompson (last seen in "Selma"), Phoebe Bridgers, Matt Berninger, Bruce Willis (last seen in "Breakfast of Champions") and archive footage of George Clooney (last seen in "Morning Glory"), Merv Griffin (last seen in "Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic"), Jay Leno (last seen in "Exit Through the Gift Shop"), Bill Maher (last seen in "Late Night"), Jerry Seinfeld (last seen in "Top Five").

RATING: 7 out of 10 mispronunciations of "Benedict Cumberbatch"

River's Edge

Year 12, Day 161 - 6/9/20 - Movie #3,567

BEFORE: Dennis Hopper carries over from "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead" - it doesn't really matter that he only appeared in archive footage there, I don't discriminate.  I could just as easily have flipped the two films by/about Orson Welles, it didn't matter, but I just preferred to watch the narrative film first, cold, and then the documentary about it.

My pandemic lockdown is over, but the countdown keeps moving on, and we don't stop until we get to the top - er, the end of the year, that is.  There's still progress to be made in New York City, I would like to be able to go to a diner or other restaurant some time in the near future, but that could take a few more weeks or another full month, assuming the stats stay low and there's not a second wave of Covid-19 caused by people gathering together in mass protests and yelling at cops without wearing masks.  We'll see.  I'd love to drive or take a train up to see my parents in Massachusetts, too, but it's still too early to think about travel - maybe the weekend after Father's Day or something.

THE PLOT: A high school slacker commits a shocking act and proceeds to let his friends in on the secret.  However, the friends' reactions are almost as ambiguous and perplexing as the crime itself.

AFTER: By coincidence, I've circled back to Keanu Reeves on the same day that the preview for "Bill & Ted Face the Music" has dropped.  This wasn't planned, of course, but I've had that upcoming sequel in my sights, which led to a debate over whether I should watch two movies with Reeves now, or save them for linking possibilities in August.  Since I still don't know for sure if movie theaters will be open in August - though I'm hopeful, so I can see "Wonder Woman 1984" and "The New Mutants" - I figured it was better to maintain the chain I want now, rather than hope for something that may not happen.  For all I know, there could be a second wave of the pandemic in summer, and everything that's opening up now will have to close again.

What I'm willing to do is add "Bill & Ted Face the Music" to my secondary watchlist, where I've got the cast lists for the other 2020 films that will (allegedly) get released in late summer.  For all of the films that have been delayed until 2021, like "Ghostbusters", "Bob's Burgers", "Morbius" and "Minions: The Rise of Gru", all I have on that list is the titles, no cast lists - because my entire overview could be completely different once 2021 rolls around.  But you never know, I may face a linking dilemma in August to connect "Wonder Woman 1984" to the start of my October chain, and maybe the new "Bill & Ted" movie could help me with that.

As for "River's Edge", I'm left once again scratching my head - I just didn't think there was much here, certainly not enough story to fill up 90 minutes of screen time.  One high school kid kills his girlfriend, but we never really find out why, and then he shows the body to a bunch of other kids, then the rest of the film is spent driving around and trying to figure out what to do.  One friend offers to bury the body, but he bungles that job, there's talk of the killer leaving town, but he never quite gets around to that, other than a couple of confrontations over who snitched to the cops and a younger brother threatening to shoot his older brother, not much else happens.  There's a weird older man who deals drugs to the teens, and he's got a sex doll for a girlfriend, but this all just seems like more filler.

I don't know, did I miss something?  Or was this the point film in the new "slacker" genre of the late 1980's and early 1990's, popularized by James Linklater and Gus Van Sant, moody films like "My Own Private Idaho" and "Slacker", where the goal was to focus on the mindset of the misfits and the oddballs, while having only enough narrative thread to hold all the nothingness together?  Sure, maybe when you're in high school it feels like every day is much like the last one and the next one, and maybe you're life's never going to change or amount to anything (a feeling also prominent during the last couple months of lockdown and isolation) but that doesn't mean that I want to see all that in a movie.  Movies should be about stuff happening, and ideally there's a set of actions and consequences that form some kind of story arc, making sense out of the randomness of the cosmic void.  Right?

This story was based on a real-life murder in Broussard, California, and though several students were taken by the killer to view the body that had been dumped into a ravine, none of those students alerted authorities for several days, either out of friendship or out of fear of getting in trouble themselves.  I guess there's something there in this movie along those lines, but it's not much.  And the symbolism of the little girl's doll being thrown in the river, and then the girl holding a funeral for her doll and making a mock grave-site for her, was just so obvious and basic that it barely even counts as symbolism.

Between this film and "The Other Side of the Wind", it's been a very rough week for dolls and mannequins.  Other than that, I feel like I just want to take a mulligan tonight and move forward - hey, some films are bricks, and others are mortar.  This is definitely just mortar that's going to connect to the next film and get me closer to Father's Day.

Also starring Crispin Glover (last seen in "The Con Is On"), Keanu Reeves (last seen in "John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum"), Ione Skye (last seen in "Four Rooms"), Daniel Roebuck (last seen in "We Were Soldiers"), Joshua John Miller, Roxana Zal, Josh Richman (last seen in "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang"), Phillip Brock (last seen in "Cheaper by the Dozen 2"), Tom Bower (last seen in "North Country"), Constance Forslund, Leo Rossi, Jim Metzler, Richard Richcreek, Taylor Negron (last seen in "The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas"), Danyi Deats, Christopher Peters.

RATING: 3 out of 10 cans of warm Budweiser

They'll Love Me When I'm Dead

Year 12, Day 160 - 6/8/20 - Movie #3,566

BEFORE: I'm scheduled to go back to work today, one of the animation studios I work for is going to re-open, and so I'll be on a part-time schedule of three days a week until the other studio re-opens.  I can still claim this past week with the unemployment office, so I'll get at least one more week of benefits, after that it seems I'll have to take a bit of a pay cut and be regularly employed again.  I did enjoy my little 10-week staycation, to the extent that I could, played through a couple video-games and binged on "Tiger King" and "Arrested Development" in addition to all my movies.

I certainly didn't plan things this way, but perhaps it's appropriate that my last film watched during lockdown is this one, which is about the craft of filmmaking itself - perhaps this will motivate me to get back to filmmaking myself, though I hesitate to compare myself or even my boss to Orson Welles.    Still, when I have moments when I doubt my own career path, it helps to look at the big picture, why I do what I do, and also to think about other people who have gone before and encountered doubts or struggles when trying to get things done.

I come down pretty hard on directors sometimes, including Orson, but I also understand that being the chief creative force behind the making of a movie is a tough row to hoe, I gave up on that during film school and decided instead to devote my time to helping other people make their movies, thus simultaneously insuring my future employment and also taking the coward's way out, creatively speaking.  If it's not my idea, and the film that gets made is bad, I'm not likely to get blamed for it, and chances are that I'll still get paid.  Yep, it's the coward's life for me.

Dozens of people carry over from "The Other Side of the Wind", starting with Orson Welles - the rest are listed below.  Some were interviewed here, others appear only in archive footage, but I'm tracking them all.

THE PLOT: In the final fifteen years of the life of legendary director Orson Welles, he pins his Hollywood comeback hopes on a film, "The Other Side of the Wind", itself a film about an aging film director trying to finish his last great movie.

AFTER: Some of the people who appeared in or worked on the production of "The Other Side of the Wind" are also, like me, of the belief that while Orson Welles claimed that the central character was NOT a stand-in for him, that this was an imcomplete or untrue statement.   Some even noted how "weird" it all was, once they realized that Peter Bogdanovich was essentially playing himself in the film, a producer/director who had attached himself to a more famous mentor under the guise of writing a book about him, and then becoming a friend and collaborator.

And while this is not conclusive proof by any means, the character Jack Hannaford died on his 70th birthday, and years later in 1985, Orson Welles also died at the age of 70.  Coincidence? Or did he know, somehow, what fate held in store for him?  But if he did, then why didn't he finish his final film?  Well, it turns out there were some strong forces that kept him from doing so.

However, this film only scratched the surface when it came to the production problems that occured while filming "The Other Side of the Wind" from 1970 to 1976.  Those scenes in the "film-within-the-film" that looked like they were shot on abandoned studio lots were exactly that, Welles and a crew would sneak on to studio lots in a van when they weren't being used and all that footage was shot renegade-style, without permission.  Forget any trespassing laws, this is a terrible idea because of the liabilities involved, if any crew member were to get injured during the production there would be no insurance covering that, so medical costs would need to be paid out-of-pocket, then there could be court cases, investigations, violations of labor laws, fines for filming without a permit, and so on.

I realize Welles was probably mad at the studio system, because he hadn't made a studio film in over a decade, but that's no reason to break the law and put all the cast and crew members at risk, is it?  Yes, it's cheaper to make a film that way, as long as everything goes right - but if one thing goes wrong, and suddenly there are lawsuits and legal fees, there goes your budget.

This does break down SOME of the problems that occured during the shoot - like the fact that Rich Little was originally cast as Brooks Otterlake, and the original plan was for him to do a different voice or impression in each scene (Bogdanovich is apparently also known for doing impressions, and was first cast as a film reviewer who followed Jake Hannaford around, and happened to sound a lot like Jerry Lewis.).  However, Rich Little had been told that the whole shoot would last about a week, three weeks tops, and after seven weeks of filming, he realized he missed his wife and/or was about to miss out on some scheduled appearances, so he split.  Some claim that he left when there was just one day of filming left, but this is a bit unclear.  Either way, all of his scenes then had to be re-shot with Peter Bogdanovich taking over the role, and his role of the reviewer was re-cast, and those scenes then required re-shoots as well.  But here's where the irony kicks in, because Bogdanovich ended up playing the part that everyone assumed was modeled after him, because his friendship with Welles closely resembled the friendship between Otterlake and Hannaford.

Another problem was that they started filming before John Huston was cast in the lead as Hannaford, so there were several weeks of shooting those party scenes without the main character present.  Which is something they keep up for a while, but at some point, you need the actors to appear in front of the camera - perhaps this is one of those things that turned Rich Little's one-week shoot into that seven-week shoot, I'm not sure.

Other actors and actresses were cast poorly, or for purely personal reasons on Welles' part.  The casting of a young local diner waitress with zero acting ability was done because Welles felt she resembled Cybill Shepherd, who Bogdanovich had started dating when she was 19, so Welles was making some kind of statement about Shepherd's acting ability because he had some kind of axe to grind, or was jealous of her hold over Bogdanovich, or something to that effect.  Welles lived in the same house in L.A. with Bogdanovich and Shepherd for a time while making this film, so perhaps it was a case of roommates getting on each other's nerves in the close quarters of a Hollywood mansion.

Eventually Bogdanovich moved on and made his own films, like "The Last Picture Show" and "Paper Moon", while Welles appeared on a late-night talk show with Burt Reynolds, where they both made fun of Bogdanovich's film "Nickelodeon", a box-office bomb that Burt had starred in.  The friendship between the filmmakers was shattered after that - Welles wrote both an apology and a non-apology to Bogdanovich and told him to treat whichever one he wanted as the truth.  Classy move.

I believe that film school students tend to make movies about people struggling to come up with an idea, that's pretty basic stuff.  Also I've noticed that I've seen a large number of movies centered around writers struggling to write, it's a common topic, because that's what writers know.  But filmmakers late in their careers, when they don't really have an idea, can always fall back on a story about a successful filmmaker who's got an idea, but is struggling to get it made.  Apparently one thing you learn as a mature director is that it's never YOUR lack of vision that's at fault, it's all the other forces at work around you, like the studio, lack of financing, actors who quit the production.  (Yes, you may notice that in the film-within-the-film, Johnny Dale quits before filming was completed, and in real life, Rich Little did the exact same thing.)

Welles also was making a film in the style of "New Hollywood" with a cast made up of directors from "Old Hollywood", one that also spoofed European art films in its "film-within-the-film", but what he didn't know was that the Age of the Blockbuster would soon arrive - films like "Rocky", "Jaws" and "Star Wars" in 1976 and 1977, so he kept on doing what he planned on doing, what he knew how to do.  He could adapt to the style of films like "Easy Rider", with the hippies and free love, but the film world was changing more rapidly than he realized, for six more years he acted as if the 1960's were still going on, which is a bit like the dinosaurs not noticing that the asteroid had already hit, and it might take a few years for the sun to be blocked out and the next ice age to hit.  They were doomed already, they just didn't know it.

(The whole film industry went through a similar change just in the past decade, with the conversion to digital production, storage and streaming - any filmmaker still shooting on film now is either a senior citizen, a throwback or someone who just didn't get the memo.  Either way, if that director didn't adapt, they're probably out of the business by now.)

I wanted to learn more about the financial troubles of the film - it seems there was an investor running off with the money.  Well, it was his money, so I guess technically that's not stealing from the production, it's just taking back his investment, but it still left the production hanging.  The documentary didn't really go into great detail about this, but there was a Spanish go-between who was supposed to deliver money from Iran, invested by the brother-in-law of the Shah.  The Spaniard claimed that the Iranians weren't sending the money, only they were, and he was pocketing it.  Another producer allegedly took off for Europe with $250,000 of Welles' money, and also didn't cover Orson's three-month hotel bill in Madrid like he was supposed to.

Then, once the film was finished, there was the question of whom the materials belonged to, because the Iranians wanted a return on their investment, even though most of the money never reached the production, and the film materials were held in a Paris vault until ownership could be established.  And while the Paris courts tended to side with film creators rather than investors on this point, they failed to do so in this case, putting Welles in the position of needing to raise money all over again, from a new set of investors, just to get his film reels back from the first set of investors!

Instead we get footage of Orson Welles pimping his upcoming masterpiece at an AFI tribute to himself, which would have been awesome if he had any footage from it to show, or a definite timeline for finishing the film - so instead he told the audience how great the film was going to be, but he neglected to tell them that they'd have to wait until 2018 to see it.  Reportedly there was an investment offer of finishing funds made after the AFI tribute, only Welles' producer turned it down, assuming that a larger offer would be forthcoming, only one never came.

More legal battles came after the Shah of Iran was deposed, and a new government took over.  Things got even worse after Orson died, and courts had to decide which assets belonged to his wife and daughter, and which belonged to his live-in girlfriend, Oja Kodar, who wrote "The Other Side of the Wind".  The documentary also fails to tell the audience who DID work towards completion of the film, after Orson's death - I had to look it up on Wikipedia, it was a coalition formed between Kodar, Bogdanovich, cinematographer Gary Graver, producer Frank Marshall, and critic Joseph McBride.  They screened a work-print in the late 1980's and early 1990's for people like Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Oliver Stone and Clint Eastwood, trying to find someone to finish directing the damn thing, but they all turned it down.  Lucas said it was too avant-garde to be commercial, and that he wouldn't know what to do with it.

More time passed, the Iranian investors finally allowed work to proceed, and Bogdanovich took up the project once again in 2004.  In 2008 he announced there was still about a year's worth of work to go, but at the same time, Beatrice Welles was trying to turn the same footage into a psuedo-documentary for Showtime.  More legal troubles with six different parties all claiming they had the rights to the footage, and by the time they got everything settled in 2011, then Showtime no longer wanted to be involved.  An Indiegogo campaign in 2015 to raise $2 million for for digital scanning and editing only raised $400,000, so still no progress.  Finally Netflix chipped in $5 million in finishing funds, but for a two-picture deal, to stream "The Other Side of the Wind" and this companion documentary.  Wow, what a long, strange trip it's been.

I really wish this doc had gotten into all of the twists and turns in the 1990's and 2000's, instead of spending so much time breaking down Orson Welles' career, like who doesn't already know about "Citizen Kane" and "Touch of Evil", geez, we're not morons!  Anybody who's ever studied movies could have just skipped all this, and if this doc could have, too, there would have been more time to break down what exactly went wrong with his final film.  After an hour of talking about the man and his work and his grand plan for his last film, I started to wonder if they were ever going to get around to the production problems, which would have made this an ill-advised puff piece.

Still, I enjoyed the film about the making of "The Other Side of the Wind" more than I enjoyed watching the film itself.  Because the documentary has a structure, a beginning, a middle and an end, while the narrative film, eh, not so much.

Also starring Peter Bogdanovich, Oja Kodar, Peter Jason, Larry Jackson, Joseph McBride, Michael Ferris, Henry Jaglom, Cybill Shepherd, Robert Random, Rich Little, Frank Marshall, Eric Sherman, Dominique Antoine, Pat McMahon, Howard Grossman, Cathy Lucas (all carrying over from "The Other Side of the Wind"), Alan Cumming (last seen in "Burlesque"), Steve Ecclesine, R. Michael Stringer, Neil Canton, Simon Callow (last seen in "Notting Hill"), George Stevens Jr., Jonathon Braun, Richard Waltzer, Glenn Jacobson, Louis Race, Josh Karp, Danny Huston (last seen in "The Constant Gardener"), Beatrice Welles, Andrés Vicente Gomez, Keith Baxter, Bob Kensinger, Freddie Gillette,

with archive footage of John Huston, Dennis Hopper, Gary Graver, Norman Foster, John Carroll, Claude Chabrol, Curtis Harrington, Paul Mazursky, Mercedes McCambridge, Cameron Mitchell, Paul Stewart, Susan Strasberg (all carrying over from "The Other Side of the Wind"), Warren Beatty (last seen in "Always at the Carlyle"), Jack Lemmon (ditto), Michael Caine (last heard in "Dunkirk"), Dick Cavett (last seen in "Jane Fonda in Five Acts"), Sean Connery (last seen in "A Bridge Too Far"), Joseph Cotten (last seen in "F for Fake"), Faye Dunaway (last seen in "Life Itself"),  Charlton Heston (ditto), Carrie Fisher (last seen in "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker"), Alec Guinness (ditto), Mark Hamill (last heard in "Batman: The Killing Joke"), Mary Hart (last seen in "Stuck on You"), Rita Hayworth (last seen in "Pal Joey"), Peter Jennings (last seen in "Straight Outta Compton"), Janet Leigh (last seen in "Who Was That Lady?"), Jeanne Moreau, Jack Nicholson (last seen in "How Do You Know"), Ryan O'Neal (last seen in "Filmworker"), Anthony Perkins (last seen in "Catch-22"), Burt Reynolds (last seen in "The Crew"), Charlie Rose (last seen in "Top Five"), Frank Sinatra (last seen in "Quincy"), Tom Snyder (last seen in "Love, Gilda"), Barbra Streisand (last seen in "Yentl"), Liv Ullmann (last seen in "Trespassing Bergman"), the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Shah of Iran.

RATING: 6 out of 10 fake noses

The Other Side of the Wind

Year 12, Day 159 - 6/7/20 - Movie #3,565

BEFORE: I'm going to get back to Owen Wilson in just a bit - it kind of feels like it's going to be his year, he's already scheduled to tie with Maya Rudolph for most appearances in 2020 - and I'm also going to get back to Zach Galifianakis in just a few days.  But first, a little detour - this film and the documentary about making it have been on Netflix since 2018, and it's taken me a year and a half to link to them, because of the odd mix of people in the cast.  But finally, I found a way.

Now, I've got a bit of a dilemma, because I've never had the opportunity before to watch a film AND a documentary about that film back-to-back - which should I watch first?  If I watch the documentary, then I'll go into the narrative film with more information about it, but then, on the other hand, there could be fewer surprises.  And wouldn't Mr. Welles want me to come into the narrative cold, with no preconceived notions about what's going to happen and what it all means?  That sounds like the best plan, because if I get totally lost, I can just watch the doc the next day and ideally, all will be explained.

Peter Bogdanovich carries over from "Are You Here".

THE PLOT: A Hollywood director emerges from semi-exile with plans to complete work on an innovative motion picture.

AFTER: Oh, yeah, I almost forgot, it's not just the year of Owen Wilson, it's the year of weird movies - and this is a weird movie.  Not because it's about something weird like an alien invasion (and Orson Welles might have known a thing or two about that) but because it's weirdly put together - and somehow directed from beyond the grave by Orson Welles, who died in 1985.  Obviously there's a story here, and it's one I'm going to have to research in a bit, but again, I've got the documentary about this scheduled for tomorrow, so anything I don't understand tonight, I may get explained to me tomorrow.  Today, I may just want to scan down the list of characters in this film, just so I understand who is who and what everyone's relationship is to the central film director, and then maybe I'll just give a few rough impressions and leave the rest for tomorrow.

I know that this was filmed over a six-year period in the 1970's - that may have a lot to do with how disjointed it all feels, and why every character needed to explain what was going on at every single moment, because the cast and crew were probably all trying to remind themselves what point they were at in the narrative.  Perhaps the only film that took a longer span to film might be "Boyhood", I'm not sure.  One imagines that instead of starting and stopping the production every time Orson Welles had a new idea or was able to scrape together some money for a new roll of film stock, it was probably cheaper just to keep a party constantly going at some house near Hollywood between 1970 and 1976, just in case Orson felt inspired on any particular day.  And I'm betting there were probably a few parties in Hollywood that never stopped during that decade.

Speaking of parties, there's a weird mix of both old Hollywood (directors from the 1930's) and new Hollywood (familiar sitcom faces from the 1970's), many of whom appear as party guests, or playing themselves as cinephiles, reporters or documentary filmmakers.  Earlier this year I was stunned to learn that Steve Guttenberg and Laurence Olivier had once been in the same film ("The Boys from Brazil"), but that seems almost normal compared to learning that Rich Little, William Katt and Cybill Shepherd all were directed by Orson Welles in the same film.  And THAT guy later produced "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and "Back to the Future", and THAT guy later directed "Jerry Maguire" and "Almost Famous", and THAT guy went on to become the chairman and CEO of CBS (umm, though he's not any more...). Also Paul Mazursky appears here, and a few weeks ago I found out from watching "The Last Laugh" that he used to know all these old comedians in Hollywood and hang out with them at a particular restaurant - just imagine how many people Orson Welles knew from all his years in Hollywood, and add to that all the people in the 1970's who would trip over themselves just to be in one of his movies.

There's no question he had quite a reputation after "Citizen Kane" in the 1940's and "Touch of Evil" in the late 50's, but by the 1970's I think he'd become something of a punchline, no?  He hadn't really directed a feature since 1962, and I remember seeing him on TV during the 1970's, on a celebrity roast or maybe on "Hollywood Squares", poking fun at his own image.  And of course there were the famous commercials he appeared in for Paul Masson wines ("We will sell no wine before its time") and there are out-takes of him arguing with commercial directors while recording voice-overs selling frozen peas and fish filets (with a "crisp, crumb coating").  So my opinion is that by the 1970's he was running on reputation alone, Hollywood had pretty much passed him by, and he was running out the clock.

Hey, it happens to everyone - thankfully Hollywood is a place where dinosaurs can still find work, appear on talk shows and keep themselves busy before (or even after) qualify for assisted living.  After seeing this film, I'm going to take a stab at guessing that actress Oja Kodar was something of a muse for him later in life, either in a professional or personal way, or possibly both.  (Yep, I'm right - Welles was married at the time to his third wife, Paola Mori, and lived with her in Vegas, but Welles had a second home in Hollywood with Kodar.). So that's how he kept himself busy, and possibly why he never got around to finishing "The Other Side of the Wind".

Now, let me try to break down this film a bit, which is tricky because it seems a bit tough to separate reality from fiction, since fading director Orson Welles made a film about a fictional fading director, Jake Hannaford, so the safe bet is that the Hannaford character is a stand-in for Welles himself.  But if that's the case, and we've got a film about a group of people making a film, there's the film I watched, called "The Other Side of the Wind", and there's a film-within-the-film, which I think has the same exact title, you can see where things might start getting a bit confusing.  (Kind of like how the 2019 film "Little Women" had one character trying to pitch her novel, which was also called "Little Women", but the story-within-the-story was written by Jo March, not Louisa May Alcott).

So there's a fictional film-within-the-film called "The Other Side of the Wind", directed by Jake Hannaford, and the film is unfinished because the male lead, Johnny Dale, walked off the set one day after a dispute with the director.  The fictional story of making this film is the framing device, during which Hannaford screens a rough cut of the film for the cast, crew and various other film business people at a party (which later moves to a drive-in after the house's generators fail TWICE).  And this film (the one I watched) is also called "The Other Side of the Wind", and was also unfinished for many years, but for very different reasons - there were legal, political and financial problems, which I assume I'll learn more about tomorrow, but the main problem seemed to be Orson Welles himself.

(Why stop here? Why not continue this "Inception"-like thinking even further?  If Orson Welles was the creator of this reality that contained a fictional film and director inside his movie, then what if the life of Orson Welles was just a fiction created by some larger cosmic film director?  Does this mean that God is the bigger Orson Welles?)

According to Wikipedia, the film-within-the-film is a spoof of European art-house cinema - there's a lot of nudity (this could be one reason why the film couldn't get released in the 1970's) and a sex scene in a Ford Mustang where the actress starts having sex with a male passenger, then finishes by also having sex with the driver, and a scene in a psychedelic nightclub where many hippies are making out in the co-ed bathrooms, and then the two leads meet at a table, where he gives her a doll he has bought for her, and she proceeds to cut the doll's hair with a pair of scissors.  In the final reel, the man and woman meet again in a deserted railroad car, then have sex on a bed on a street in an empty studio street scene, after which the male actor walks off the sex, leaving the film unfinished.  Sure, it's easy to say these scenes represent a "spoof" of European movies, but isn't it just as likely that Welles was aiming for something, missed the mark completely and then labeled it as a "spoof"?  What's clear to me is that he was aware of the look and feel of films like, say, "Easy Rider", only he didn't really understand the culture well enough to make a similarly ground-breaking film, he could only imitate and not create.

The framing sequences, which take place in and around this movie set, then the party in the screening room at the director's house, and finally the rented drive-in, are a bit of a jumble.  Some shots are in color, some are in black and white, there are several shots of the same action from different angles, and there are a lot of rapid cuts to get us from here to there.  It's quite confusing as everyone pours out of the Hollywood lot, headed for the party, and it takes time for everyone to have some kind of dialogue or interaction that tells us who they are.  There's a lot of unnecessary detail about HOW each person is getting to the party, who's riding in which car, and there's also a bus full of mannequins and another (presumably smaller) one for the "midgets" (remember, it was the 1970's, before P.C. language was the norm - the lead actress is often referred to as "Pocahontas).  Then when we see all these people again at the party, they all need to remind us who they are and why they are there - that's probably because the scenes were filmed years apart, and everybody had to announce themselves and their reason for being, just to make sure they wouldn't be edited out of the film.

While Welles claimed that the Hannaford character was not based on himself, but perhaps was more reminiscent of Ernest Hemingway, or other similarly macho film directors like John Ford, of course there were bound to be some similarities.  Peter Bogdanovich played Hannaford's protege, and Bogdanovich himself became close friends with Welles after interviewing him on the set of "Catch-22" and so he may sort of be playing a character here based on himself.  (Although, a young Peter Bogdanovich in the 1970's reminded me very much of Rick Moranis in the 1980's, and now I'm thinking that if Moranis never played Bogdanovich in a skit on "SCTV", it's a damn shame.  I'm thinking this must have happened at some point.). Other film directors appear here either playing themselves, or a fictionalized version of themselves, or a thinly-veiled version of one of Orson Welles' own friends, like the enigmatic retired leading lady who probably represents Marlene Dietrich.

It seems that if Orson Welles wanted to take a personal shot at someone, this is how he did it, by casting someone else to play them, or a version of them, in this film.  There's an author who wrote an unflattering biography of Welles in 1970, claiming Welles was past his prime and had a "fear of completion" on new projects.  Welles tweaked his name slightly and put a character based on him into this film to slam him, but if you think about it, wasn't that biographer correct?  Welles never finished "The Other Side of the Wind", even though he had nine years to do so before he kicked it. In fact, a good portion of the cast died before the film was released in 2018 - one actor desperately wanted to see this, his own final acting role, but even though he lived to be 106, he died in 2002 and never got to see it.

But then, who did finish "The Other Side of the Wind"?  I guess, quite literally, that's a story for another day - and that day is tomorrow.

Also starring John Huston (last seen in "Chinatown"), Oja Kodar (last seen in "F for Fake"), Susan Strasberg, Norman Foster, Robert Random (last seen in "This Property Is Condemed"), Lilli Palmer (last seen in "The Boys from Brazil"), Edmond O'Brien (last seen in "Julius Caesar"), Mercedes McCambridge (last heard in "The Exorcist"), Cameron Mitchell, Paul Stewart (also last seen in "F for Fake"), Gregory Sierra (last seen in "The Trouble With Spies"), Tonio Stewart, Dan Tobin (last seen in "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer"), John Carroll (last seen in "Rio Rita"), Stafford Repp, Geoffrey Land, Joseph McBride, Pat McMahon, Cathy Lucas, Alan Grossman, Robert Aiken, Gene Clark, Peter Jason (last seen in "Streets of Fire"), Larry Jackson, Cassie Yates, Benny Rubin (last seen in "The Tender Trap"), Gary Graver (also last seen in "F for Fake"), Richard Wilson (ditto), Frank Marshall, Michael Ferris, Eric Sherman, Felipe Herba, Paul Hunt, Bill Weaver, Mark Turnbull, with cameos from Henry Jaglom, Paul Mazursky (last seen in "Miami Rhapsody"), Dennis Hopper (last seen in "The Pick-Up Artist"), Curtis Harrington, Claude Chabrol, Stéphane Audran, George Jessel (last seen in "Reds"), Angelo Rossitto, Rich Little (last heard in "Grudge Match"), Cameron Crowe, Les Moonves, William Katt (last seen in "Super"), Cybill Shepherd (last seen in "She's Funny That Way") and the voice of Orson Welles (last seen in "The V.I.P.s")

RATING: 4 out of 10 bedsprings