BEFORE: I'm on the road to Mother's Day now, just about one month away. I don't want to reveal the target film just yet, but last year I had a couple featuring Sally Field, "Not Without My Daughter" and "Norma Rae", plus "End of the Road" with Queen Latifah. I may only have one this year, the one that makes the most sense in this crazy Movie Year, but who knows, there may be more.
Lenny Henry carries over from "Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl"
THE PLOT: Famous movie actor Jay Kelly embarks on a journey of self-discovery, confronting his past and present with his devoted manager, Ron. Poignant and humor-filled, pitched at the intersection of regrets and glories.
AFTER: Somebody clearly tried to make an Oscar run with this film, I'm sure there were guild screenings and trade ads were taken out, but it only resulted in some Golden Globe and Critics Choice nominations, I guess it was too much of a leap from there to any Oscar nominations, because they just didn't happen. Perhaps somebody over-estimated how much the audience would care about George Clooney playing a successful actor looking back on his life. Was this story intentionally based on him, was he playing a version of himself? It doesn't matter, because if the actor in question is portrayed as TOO successful then he (Clooney or Kelly) could come off as entitled, and that's a big no-no these days. If you act like you deserve an Oscar, you're kind of turning off the voters at the same time, and then you won't get one.
Oh, they tried to portray Jay Kelly as a sympathetic figure - sure, famous, rich, successful, but also a broken marriage or two and two daughters who are convinced he was never there for them. Sure, a great actor can be a bad parent, they're just like us, after all, only there's a feeling like maybe they're supposed to be better? It almost doesn't make sense that somebody can be so good at one thing and terrible at another, but then if you think of career, family and love as a triangle of sorts, consider that some people only manage to lock down TWO of these things at a time, and that's with trying, all THREE could be damn near impossible, if you know somebody who can juggle some form of success in all three arenas, buy them dinner and give them a pat on the back, I guess, because they're winning at life.
The film shows Jay Kelly as he wraps shooting one film and has a bit of a break before starting the next one, so he tries to spend time with his younger daughter, only she's about to leave for a trip through Europe before college. Then Kelly learns that the director who first cast him in a film has died, so he attends the funeral. At the funeral he re-encounters Tim, his former roommate from acting school and they go out for drinks. Tim eventually accuses Jay of tagging along on an audition and stealing the role that WOULD have made Tim famous, only Jay got it. They have a fist-fight in the parking lot and Jay Kelly gets a black eye.
The next morning, Jay ditches rehearsals for his upcoming film and books a trip to Europe, to secretly follow his daughter. To have a cover story, he has his manager, Ron, agree to a tribute screening at a film festival in Italy, which he had previously declined. But now it's back on, even though Ron arranged for another one of his actor-clients to get the screening and award. So now the festival has to give out TWO awards and have TWO tribute screenings. Jay's whole entourage flies by private Jet to France so they can all get on the same train as Jay's daughter, headed toward Italy.
Jay Kelly is immediately recognized on the train, but he interacts with everyone on his train car, like, why hide it, and meanwhile his manager and publicist are dealing with the negative publicity and lawsuit caused by Jay punching that guy in a parking lot. Jay is now being sued for assault, but it all seems like this is par for the course. While on the long train ride, Jay has some flashbacks that clue us in about his strained relationship with his older daughter, and an affair he had with a co-star, cheating on his wife and his daughter's mother. So yeah, it's so weird how they think that he abandoned them, but he kind of did.
More stuff happens, like a cyclist on the train steals an older woman's handbag, and as the train is stopped, Jay chases after the guy and retrieves the bag, the cyclist was off his medications and allegedly did not know what he was doing. Umm, sure. But now there's some GOOD viral video of Jay doing a good deed, to maybe offset the roommate fight thing. Jay's publicist and another member of the entourage get off the train early, I guess to go back to their lives, and his hair person takes a side-trip to give a haircut to the French President. Somebody PLEASE tell me this is all going to add up to something relevant - I got a feeling at this point that was becoming an incredible long-shot.
Finally the train arrives in Tuscany and Jay's father is in attendance, that appears to be yet another strained relationship in Jay's life. Meanwhile his manager, Ron, meets with that other client, who fires him and there's also word from Jay's lawyers that they made the whole assault lawsuit go away. This plus the tribute means that everything once again seems to be going Jay Kelly's way, except that neither daughter wants to attend the ceremony, but they both seem pretty OK with cutting him out of their lives, one to go on her own filmmaking adventure in Italy and the other stays home in California for her twice-weekly therapy sessions. Finally, Jay's manager quits, too, because he needs to start putting his own family ahead of Jay's needs, but Jay convinces him to stay for the tribute, as a friend, because they share in his professional success. Sure, and I'm the Tooth Fairy.
This film is hitting for me at an extremely coincidental time - now I can't tell if this is fate, karma, coincidence or just my own darn luck, but if you're a longtime reader of the Movie Year you know that I worked for an independent animator for over 30 years, and I was fired about a year ago. Well, that animator has a birthday coming up, and I've been asked (twice, no three times) to not only attend the show, but help put it together, maybe make a video about how I got the job and what working for that person meant to me, oh, and if I've got access to any photos from working at the studio, or pictures of my boss with celebrities, could I help organize them into a tribute for his special birthday screening of his films?
My response so far has been "No" - followed by "Hell, no." and I'll have to answer an e-mail from his wife next telling her the same. I can't tell you how many times it fell on me over 31 years to organize screenings of his work at this festival or that one, plus at least three times I was paid to compile photos of him with famous people, for this book or that web-site or some kind of promotional reel. And now that I'm no longer working for him, you want me to do this all again, for FREE? Yeah, I was born on a Sunday but it wasn't last Sunday. If nobody saved the work I'd done in the past putting these photos and tributes together, that's not my problem. As for the video, he didn't want to hear my input on running his studio over the last two years, in fact he would usually tell me my suggestions were horrible ideas and then two days later he would ask me to implement those exact same things, which were now GOOD ideas because HE thought of them. Did he think that I would forget that he told me those were terrible suggestions when I made them? And NOW somebody wants me to make a video where I talk about what a delight it was to work for him? I don't think he wants to hear what I have to say on a video.
So yeah, I'm not helping to put this tribute together, because now he seems to have forgotten that he fired me after I made one too many suggestions that he didn't like. OK, sure, he hired me back but he wanted me to work from home, which was impossible, so then I quit. I don't work for free, so I'm not working on this tribute screening, let someone else put it together for once. His studio was supposed to fall apart without me, and that hasn't happened yet, but I'm still hopeful. The only tool I still have to allow him to feel my absence is to stay away, and not get involved.
My experience has also been that when people say they want a "roast" as a tribute, they don't really mean it. So me not getting involved here is better for everyone, I think.
Jay Kelly represents, to me, someone with "artist brain", and I have known a couple over the years. These are successful people who surround themselves with managers, assistants, hair and make-up people, publicists, and interns so THEY can remain in control of their lives, but God forbid any of those people disagree with him, or point out his failings or shortcomings. If they do they'll most likely be fired and replaced with people more unlikely to speak out. The thing about people with "artist brain" is that they ensure that nobody will say "No" to them about doing all the anything they want to do, but unfortunately that's exactly what they need to hear, at least once in a while.
Directed by Noah Baumbach (director of "De Palma" and "White Noise")
Also starring George Clooney (last seen in "Ticket to Paradise"), Adam Sandler (last seen in "Happy Gilmore 2"), Laura Dern, Billy Crudup (last seen in "Too Big to Fail"), Riley Keough (last seen in "The Discovery"), Grace Edwards (last seen in "Asteroid City"), Stacy Keach (last seen in "Valerie"), Jim Broadbent (last seen in "Paddington in Peru"), Emily Mortimer (ditto), Patrick Wilson (last seen in "The Assistant"), Eve Hewson (last seen in "Tesla"), Greta Gerwig (last seen in "White Noise"), Charlie Rowe (last seen in "Never Let Me Go"), Louis Partridge (last seen in "Enola Holmes 2"), Alba Rohrwacher (last seen in "The Lost Daughter"), Josh Hamilton (last seen in "Landscape with Invisible Hand"), Nicole Lecky, Thaddea Graham, Sadie Sandler (also last seen in "Happy Gilmore 2"), Isla Fisher (last seen in "Burke and Hare"), Jamie Demetriou (last heard in "Strays"), Patsy Ferran (last seen in "Mickey 17"), Parker Sawyers (last seen in "Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre"), Lars Eidinger (last seen in "Proxima"), Giovanni Zeqireya, Kyle Soller (last seen in "Marrowbone"), Tom Francis, Giovanni Esposito (last seen in "Book Club: The Next Chapter"), Stanley Townsend (last seen in "The Song of Names"), Erica Sweany, Kevin Shen (last seen in "Unlocked"), David Neumann (last seen in "White Noise"), Dean Wareham (ditto), May Nivola (ditto), Leila Farzad (last seen in "Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy"), Juliet Cowan, Eleanor Matsuura (last seen in "The Love Punch"), Lucas Aurelio, Tuwaine Barrett (last seen in "The Personal History of David Copperfield"), Martha West (last seen in "Creation"), Philip Arditti (last seen in "Happy-Go-Lucky"), Nigel Whitmey (last seen in "Shining Through"), Doug Cockle (last seen in "Criminal"), Helene Maksoud, Ruthie Rogers, Josh Berger, Penny Mortimer, Carlos Jacott (last seen in "Omni Loop"), Eloise Jacott, John Macmillan (last seen in "The People We Hate at the Wedding"), Andreas Munoz, Ferdi Stofmeel, Rosita Raffaelli, Antoinette Aaron, Philippe Spall (last seen in "Final Portrait"), Annabel Mullion (ditto), Nasser Memarzia (last seen in "All the Old Knives"), Christophe Guybet, Federico Scribani, Francesco De Vito (last seen in "When in Rome"), Sharon Rooney (last seen in "Barbie"), Hannah Onslow (last seen in "Empire of Light"), Amber Mendez-Martin, Janine Duvitski (last heard in "The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim"), Pippo Crotti, Yinka Awoni (last seen in "Last Christmas"), Theo Augier, Alex Jarrett, Alais Lawson, Cassius Hackforth, Emily Piggford, Danielle Lewis (last seen in "The Son"), Monica Nappo (last seen in "House of Gucci"), Galatea Ranzi, Fabio Vannozzi, Arianna Becheroni, Lucian St. Aubyn, Marco Conte, Donald Sabourin, Matilda Thorpe, Morgan Beale, Ruby Stokes, Alastair Coughlan, Andrew Malik, Joe Hewetson, Max Beken, Carly-Sophia Davies, Debora Weston (last seen in "Patriot Games"), Martin McDougall (last seen in "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning"), Kit Rakusen (last seen in "The Phoenician Scheme"), Sadie Stallcup, Daniel P.D. Smith, with a cameo from Noah Baumbach (last seen in "Kicking and Screaming")
RATING: 5 out of 10 clips from other George Clooney films (you thought it was going to be slices of cheesecake, didn't you?)
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