BEFORE: OK, so I got my work schedule for the start of my new job, and this might be a little rough. So far my two jobs aren't going to overlap, but they will run on the same day sometimes - so that means I'll be managing an animation studio from 11 am to 5 pm, then heading downtown to the movie theater and ushering from 6 pm to 1:30 am. That's like a 14-hour workday, which I've done before, mostly during Comic-Cons - but I'm older now and a workday like that could really take a lot out of me. But it seems like I'll have the whole next day to recover, so even if I get home at 2:30 am, I could always crash when I get in, sleep until noon and get myself ready for the next workday - and obviously it makes sense that my work schedule would include nights, weekends and holidays, because that's when most people want to go out to the movies, right?
But I've been living for the last 13 years as someone who starts watching a movie (almost) every night between 11 pm and midnight - that's not going to be possible for me now, going forward. I may have to get creative and watch two movies on my days off, because if I get home at 3 am, I may be too exhausted to START a movie then - I'll be asleep before the opening credits are done. So maybe I'll cram in two movies tomorrow, and spread out the reviews. Then I may have to cut back to 5 or 6 movies a week, after July 4 anyway, because I still want to hit that holiday on the button. But thankfully I already reduced my June schedule because of our 4-day Chicago trip. So that's a relief. Maybe I should spread the upcoming Summer Music Concert (and Documentary) series out over a longer period, who cares if that takes me all of July and August, right? Spreading it out over two months would then just mean less of a break in November, I think. Anyway, I've got options, and as long as I have the strength to continue, I'll find a way to make it work - I've come too far to turn back now.
Jon Hamm carries over from "The Jesus Rolls".
THE PLOT: A disgraced former marketing executive plots revenge against his former boss, who made billions from the electric car company they had started together.
AFTER: Speaking of careers, this film's about a man who worked for an electric car company, back in 2003. He owned a minority share in the company, and was a personal friend of the CEO, and worked in the marketing department. But when that CEO decided to name the new electric car "Howard" after his son, well, that probably brought up visions of Henry Ford naming the infamous Edsel after HIS son - and the Edsel, of course, was a tremendous flop. So our main character here, Nathan Flomm, has serious reservations about whether this Howard car will succeed, and this causes an argument between him and the company's CEO, Will Haney.
Nathan sort of quits, sort of gets fired and takes a severance package to give up his 10% share in the company, convinced that the business is about to go under. But as you might be able to guess, the Howard electric car takes off, and Nathan's move suddenly seems like the worst business deal in history, his 10% would have worth a BILLION if he'd only believed in the product and stayed the course. Wow, this rings true with me tonight, as someone who's just taken on a new job - I've been plagued with self-doubt and indecision for the last few months, ever since getting a few interviews in places like the m&m store, and an ice-cream shop and a movie theater (not the one I'm starting work at soon, a different one). Even after accepting a job, I've had to force myself to not self-sabotage the process. Now as my start day gets closer and closer, that sinking pit in my stomach feels worse and worse. What if I can't handle the job? What if the hours are too tough? What if I don't get along with the new boss and the new co-workers? Jeez, I haven't even started yet and I'm already looking for reasons to quit. And of COURSE I got another interview request right after signing up, and that didn't help. The right path's just not clear when there's another option.
For Nathan, the result was very clear - he sabotaged his own job, and then he was out in the cold with no share in the profits. The whole world suddenly knew his name, after making the biggest bonehead move in the history of business. Imagine somebody who sold their stake in Amazon or Microsoft right before the company became super-successful. (I'd use Tesla as an obvious example, but are they doing well? I don't really follow the business news as closely as I should.). Nathan's wife walks out, and then to avoid the shame, regret and jokes, Nathan moves to Martha's Vineyard, cuts his hair, changes his looks and starts going under a new name, Rolly DaVore. He gets a new set of friends, and works as a caretaker for an elderly woman.
It seems like a great move, though his new life may be a little boring, at least he's known in the community, plays poker with his buddies, had a couple short-term relationships with the locals, and while life may not be spectacular, at least it's...fine. Here's where I have to admit that I haven't watched ANY of Larry David's long-running TV series "Curb Your Enthusiasm", but from what I have seen, Larry David here is playing essentially the same character, himself. The kind of guy who's always the butt of the joke, but also very opinionated, demanding and claims to always know the best way to do everything, and then complains until he gets his way. I think. Well, he's the same George Costanza/Larry David/fictional Larry David type here, only he's named Nathan. Or Rolly. Either way, he's a Larry David type.
As I said, things are relatively swell until Will Haney ALSO decides to move to Martha's Vineyard, like, come on, what are the ODDS? But he's a rich CEO moving there, so naturally he's got to have a mansion built just for him, and even though he encounters Rolly, Rolly no longer looks anything like he once did as Nathan, so thankfully Haney doesn't recognize him. You'd think that he would recognize his long-term associate by his distinctive voice and his mannerisms and his very complain-y nature, but you'd be wrong. So Nathan/Rolly has a chance to get revenge on his old boss, while remaining more or less invisible and harmless. Sure, it's a bit of a stretch, but at least it's FUNNY, unlike a few other comedies I could name that I watched earlier in the week that forgot to be funny. Maybe "Clear History" just looks better by comparison, I'm not sure - but I did find parts of it funny.
There are asides that I'm betting would have been right at home on an episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm", like Nathan causing a break-up between two people just by saying the wrong thing to the female part of the couple, then having the black boyfriend accuse him of racism. Or Rolly wrongly thinking that Haney's wife is really into him, just because they spent a fun day together at the annual Harvest Fair. I haven't been to Martha's Vineyard in a long time, not since 1994, I think. It's a long story, but this was during my first marriage, and we spent a couple nights in Walter Cronkite's house - and this was before AirBnB, she was working for Walter's son's production company, and they were making a documentary about Walter's career, and that meant someone had to drive up there and collect some of his memorabilia from his World War II reporting days. (Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention the other day that I once met Walter Cronkite.). Anyway, from what I gathered, there's a very tight-knit community with a bunch of famous people who live there seasonally, and everyone sort of knows everyone else, so this film really nailed that aspect of this small Massachusetts island.
None of this was really filmed on Martha's Vineyard, though, except for a few aerial shots - according to the IMDB trivia page, anyway. Filming locations did include Marblehead, North Gloucester, Beverly and North Andover, MA, and that's the Topsfield Fair in the "harvest festival" scenes. It makes sense, they hired a bunch of Boston-area comedians to play Rolly's poker buddies, and getting all those actors, plus a film crew, out to the island would have been a logistical nightmare. See, THIS is what I like about filmmaking, learning all the logistical stuff that makes it possible. On the screen, you can't tell the difference between one small Massachusetts town and another, not unless you're a local. So they probably saved a bundle by NOT filming out on Martha's Vineyard., they just found another beach town on the North Shore with a marina in it, and nobody's the wiser, except for me.
OK, so the plot pieces don't all completely come together here, who cares? At least somebody remembered that being funny is the most important thing in a comedy - just let Larry David be himself, I guess, that's the key. And yeah, it's a movie made for HBO - again, who cares? A cable movie is still a movie, not every movie has to be in theaters, especially not these days.
Also starring Larry David (last seen in "Whatever Works"), Bill Hader (last seen in "It: Chapter Two"), Philip Baker Hall (last seen in "The Last Word"), Kate Hudson (last seen in "The Killer Inside me"), Michael Keaton (last seen in "The Trial of the Chicago 7"), Danny McBride (last seen in "Hot Rod"), Eva Mendes (last seen in "Cleaner"), Amy Ryan (last seen in "Beautiful Boy"), J.B. Smoove (also carrying over from "The Jesus Rolls"), Liev Schreiber (last seen in "Sphere"), Amy Landecker (last seen in "Project Power"), Patty Ross (last seen in "Spenser Confidential"), Mary Klug, Marianne Leone (last seen in "The Thin Blue Line"), Lenny Clarke (last seen in "Stronger"), Dorothy Dwyer, Peter Farrelly (last seen in "The Bill Murray Stories"), Jimmy Tingle (last seen in "Head of State"), Paul Scheer (last seen in "Opening Night"), with cameos from Conan O'Brien (last seen in "Becoming"), Wolf Blitzer (last seen in "Shock and Awe"), the band Chicago (last seen in "Now More than Ever: The HIstory of Chicago") and archive footage of Gary Cooper (last seen in "Walt: The Man Behind the Myth")
RATING: 6 out of 10 Chicago songs on the diner jukebox.
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