Tomorrow comedian Chris Rock adds a new entry on his resume: Documentary filmmaker.
After a career spent making people laugh, in Good Hair, Rock is tackling a subject that sounds light hearted, but has deeper roots — the relationship African-American women have with their hair.
“When people first heard I was doing it they kind of thought it was going to be frivolous,” he says. “They thought it would be some version of Punk’d where I exposed people for not having their own hair or whatever and they see the movie and they are surprised.”
Surprised perhaps that Rock uses the subject of a cultural obsession with hair as a starting point to address larger issues.
“It’s hair,” he says. “It’s self esteem. It’s race. It’s how we look at ourselves. It’s the beauty industry. It’s a black movie. It’s a white movie. It’s an American movie. It’s a world movie. It’s a really gay movie. It’s a lot of movie.”
Rock’s formal foray into the culture of hair was inspired by a question his daughter asked — “Daddy, how come I don’t have good hair?”— but he had his own experience with toxic hair relaxers years before.
“I’ve had my hair relaxed and it burned,” he said. “It feels like having your head set on fire. I stopped when I got Lethal Weapon. It was literally like, ‘I got a million dollars and burning my scalp … that is not being rich.’ I dreaded it. I thought if I can’t make money without doing this then I’m just not going to make any money.”
He has, of course, made money without sacrificing his scalp.
His career is thriving — he has two features coming out next year, including Grown Ups opposite his old SNL partner Adam Sandler — and, he says, Good Hair may not be his last documentary.
“I just have to find the right topic,” he says. “You can’t just do it because you have a slot. ‘OK, it’s been a year!’ That doesn’t work for me. This one was really from my heart.
“I’m not gonna get rich off of this, but this really, really came from heart.”
If aliens learned about Thanksgiving from movies and television, they’d get a skewed idea of what the day is all about. In real life we express our gratitude for life’s bounty, but on screen it’s a different story.
“Thanksgiving is an emotional holiday,” joked Johnny Carson. “People travel thousands of miles to be with people they only see once a year and then discover once a year is way too often.”
Being less than thankful for family is a common theme in entertainment. The House of Yes saw queen of quirk Parker Posey ruin Thanksgiving when her favourite brother brings home his fiancée, and in Pieces of April a pre-Cruisized Katie Holmes not only has to deal with a broken stove but a broken family as well.
Home for the Holidays has a heart warming title that promises sweetness and light but director Jody Foster’s Thanksgiving tale is anything but an ode to the holiday. It’s the family reunion from hell for the Larson family, culminating in fist fights and emotional distress. The film’s tone is summed up by Robert Downey Jr. who invites everyone to the dinner table with the words, “Let’s eat dead bird!”
The Larsons didn’t gel on Turkey Day, but as James D. Turner remarked in Trading Places, “It ain’t cool being no jive turkey so close to Thanksgiving,” so I dug deeper for examples of film families enjoying the holiday.
No luck.
The Ice Storm’s backdrop of ’70s suburban ennui sets the tone for a tragic climax on Thanksgiving Day and Christina Ricci’s acidic prayer. “Dear Lord,” she says, “thank you for this Thanksgiving holiday. And for letting us white people kill all the Indians and steal their tribal lands. And stuff ourselves like pigs, even though children in Asia are being napalmed.”
Cheery stuff! But not as grim as the Thanksgiving horror trailer from Grindhouse. “White meat, dark meat,” cackles the announcer. “All will be carved.”
At least Planes, Trains and Automobiles, about odd couple Steve Martin and John Candy trying to get home for Thanksgiving, is jammed packed with laughs, even if Martin isn’t the most thankful man.
Also grin worthy is Hannah and Her Sisters, the Woody Allen film book ended by Central Park West Thanksgiving dinners.
If Thanksgiving really was like it is in the movies the only thing we’d be giving thanks for is that it only comes around once a year.
“We always say the age range for The Wizard of Oz is from fetal to fatal,” jokes Oz expert John Fricke. It’s a funny line, but there is a ring of truth to it.
The movie, whose birthday is being commemorated by the lovingly restored Wizard of Oz: 70th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition Blu Ray, is beloved by old and young. For the surviving cast members the appeal is easy to define.
“Everybody can enjoy it,” says Karl Slover, age 91, who was just two feet tall when he played the first trumpeter. “There’s no filthy language in it. I don’t see no bikinis! No nudist colonies! Kids can watch it and parents don’t have to worry because there’s nothing bad in there.”
Slover is one of just six actors left of the 124 “little people” assembled to play the Munchkins in the film. He had some previous film experience but not all the actors were Hollywood regulars.
“I was in the movie because I was the right size and that’s all they wanted,” says Villager Munchkin Ruth Duccini, age 91, who adds that she can’t sing or dance very well.
“I grew up in a small town in Minnesota and I didn’t know there were other little people.” But once she got on set she found she wasn’t alone. “I remember all the little people and that was so great; 123 people that you could stand and talk to without talking to a bellybutton.”
Ruth adds that star Judy Garland was just as excited about having all little people in one place as she was and Munchkin Flowerpot Hat dancer Margaret Pellegrini (age 86) says Garland treated all the Munchkins to candy and a keepsake at Christmas.
“On Christmas Eve morning when she came to work she opened the door to her (dressing room) and there she had a whole stack of black and white pictures and she invited each and every one of us in and gave each a picture. Mine says ‘To Margaret from your pal Judy.’ I still have it.”
Garland’s daughter Lorna Luft says her mom loved working on The Wizard of Oz. “This movie was special for her. She told me the hardest thing about the film was being afraid of (Wicked Witch) Margaret Hamilton because she was very sweet. She also told me that unfortunately the dog had the worst breath.”
The TIFF film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is destined to become best known as Heath Ledger’s last movie.
The young actor passed away midway through production, but rather than scrap the film, director Terry Gilliam pressed on, replacing the Aussie actor with three famous faces.
“I just started calling friends of Heath,” Gilliam said. “It’s as simple as that. Johnny (Depp), Colin (Farrell) and Jude (Law) turned up. It was important that they were friends, because I wanted to keep it in the family. I wanted people who were close to him because, as Colin said when he was doing his part, he was channelling Heath part of the time, so Heath was very much still alive in some sense.
“I didn’t know whether this would work until I got back to London. We were working on autopilot. Working because that’s what we decided to do and we got back to London and I showed the first cut to the post-sound guy, who hadn’t been involved in the process, and he just assumed it was written that way. I thought, ‘It works.’”
It works not because Gilliam changed the script, but because of a quirk of the original story — a mirror that acts as an entry to a magical world of imagination.
“Nothing was changed from the original script after Heath died,” he said. “It was that lucky element of a magic mirror. Once you decide that faces could change as you go through the mirror, we were free. I’m simplifying it, but that’s effectively what happened. There was some kind of movie god, and the problem with gods is that they’re both evil and wondrous. There was one that got it made and one that punished us.”
Gilliam sees the finished film as a tribute to Heath, both as an actor and a man with many friends who stepped in to complete the film. A credit where the director’s name usually sits is a tribute to the late actor and the respect he earned.
“Contractually, it was supposed to be a Terry Gilliam Film,” he said. “That’s what the lawyers said, but I said, ‘No way it’s going to be that. It’s going to be a film from Heath Ledger and friends.’ The cast sat around one night and that idea came up and I said, ‘This is it. Perfect. That’s how we do it.’”
Hoodie heartthrob Michael Cera doesn’t know who Jack Benny is. When I mention that Cera’s style puts me in the mind of Benny’s trademarked deadpan comedy the Brampton-born actor says, politely, “I’ve never gotten too familiar with Jack Benny.”
After a description of Benny’s low-key approach to selling a joke, Cera chimes in, “That’s such a secret in comedy. Charles Grodin is such an inspiration to me because he is so small, and yet you see everything he does. It’s really perfect and just enough.”
In Youth in Revolt, his third TIFF film (he was here with Juno in ’07, and with Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist in ’08), Cera again displays his knack for subtle, gentle humour. He plays an anachronistic Sinatra-loving teenager who falls for the anachronistic Belmondo-loving girl who lives next door. When circumstance steps in to keep them apart, he changes his life to be with her.
For Cera the movie is a passion project.
“I just love the book,” he says. “It’s very cinematic and I thought the humour of the book would work very well on screen. That was the thought behind the movie; to capture the humour on screen. You can’t tell the whole story of the book because it is so huge, but the book exists for that reason. The book is its own enjoyment.”
His character, Nick Twisp, appealed to Cera because it had a ring of authenticity often missing from teen comedies.
“The character was real,” he said. “C.D. Payne wrote it really personally. It felt like he wrote it in his own voice. He wasn’t trying to write like a 14-year-old kid. He didn’t add in any false naiveté or didn’t try and sound less intelligent; he was just writing and it was personal. I think that’s why people connect to things; when they feel personal.”
Cera hopes audiences will connect with Youth in Revolt. “I hope maybe people will feel inspired,” he says. “That would be the best-case scenario … That’s a hard thing to accomplish but it is special when it happens.”
Since shooting her breakout performance in Mama Mia! in Greece, 24-year-old actress Amanda Seyfried has spent a lot of time in Canada.
Her two TIFF films this year were both shot in Maple Leaf land, but on opposite ends of the country. Jennifer’s Body was lensed in Vancouver and Chloe, her film with director Atom Egoyan, in Toronto.
“We actually got to use Toronto as a real setting,” she said. “You don’t normally get to do that because you’re usually using it to cover for another town or masking it as a made up town.
“(Using Toronto as Toronto) makes everything feel more real. It’s difficult for anything to seem completely authentic when you’re on a movie set but this is as real as it has ever gotten for me.”
In Chloe, Seyfried plays an escort hired by Catherine (Julianne Moore) to test her husband’s (Liam Neeson) fidelity. It’s her first real adult role and one that proves she’s capable of more than teen musicals or comedies.
She credits working with Egoyan with pushing her to deepen the character by exploring every facet of Chloe’s life.
“I’ve never worked with anyone who has discussed the character so in-depth with me,” she says. “Atom would reiterate things to me with different descriptions and with a twist from what he had said last time. Every time we’d go for dinner or have lunch or sit down for coffee the first thing he would go to was, ‘I was thinking that Chloe would do this or that.’
“It was almost completely overwhelming in the beginning but he couldn’t have said less because I don’t think I would have captured it otherwise.”
Chloe is a complicated character with many notes to her personality but with Egoyan’s help Seyfried brings her vividly to life on screen.
“It’s a broad spectrum of emotions the audience feels about her,” she says, “and in order to make the audience feel that way you have to play it right and in order for me to pay it right I had to have Atom Egoyan.
In order for a movie like this to work you have to have someone like Atom Egoyan and there aren’t many people out there like him.
“Mr. Egoyan is a genius and he’s what good filmmaking is all about. I know it’s going to be difficult for me to choose my next project based on what I just went through with him. It has raised the bar into a very high place.”
In the TIFF film Harry Brown, Michael Caine plays a widowed man who strikes back at the hoodlums who have terrorizing his community. It’s close to a British take on Gran Torino, but don’t suggest to Sir Michael that it’s Death Wish U.K.
“It’s not like that at all,” he said. “It’s a complete work on its own. It was made by a young director named Daniel Barber. The first film of his I saw was The Tonto Woman, which got an Academy Award nomination for best short film. I liked it. It was a western and this is kind of like a western. It’s Gary Cooper in High Noon.”
So you could call it a Teabag Western if you like, but instead of being set on the wide open plain, the action in Harry Brown takes place in the decidedly more urban terrain of the Elephant and Castle section of London, an area Caine knows well.
“I always said I come from the slums,” he said of the E&C neighbourhood where he was born, “and I do, but when I went back I didn’t realize how lucky I was. Because when we were shooting late at night, I’d talk to the neighbourhood boys, … I realized was I was quite lucky because I had two thing they didn’t have: I had a happy family life and I got an education. So I had two valuable things they didn’t have, and one thing they did have that I didn’t. That was drugs.”
Caine blames drugs for the rise in hoodlum culture that Harry Brown portrays. “In the end,” he says, “they wipe out all feeling for the other person.”
But despite strong feelings on the subject, Caine believes making Harry Brown taught him something.
“This movie changed me,” he said “in as much as I started out thinking, ‘Let’s go out and make a movie about killing all these scumbags,’ and then I met these people and realized they were helpless just as much as the victims and they had been neglected and they need help.”
It’s been a long time since Caine lived in Elephant and Castle. After six decades of making films, he’s a film icon, which, true to his humble roots, is a title he has trouble accepting.
“There’s not a special icon bar where you go, meet up and learn what to do,” he says. “I just consider myself lucky.”
Q: How does one get their non-celebrity, non-media behind into a (good) TIFF film?
Richard: It helps if you strongly resemble someone famous. A few years ago a Bono look-a-like talked his way into screenings and parties and it wasn’t until much later that everyone realized he was an imposter. If you are not genetically blessed enough to look like Brad Pitt, however, you have to plan in advance and be prepared to stand in lines.
Q: So then what should we wear to the premiere (men and women)?
Richard: For men, a tuxedo. What, were you raised in a barn or something? For women, go on-line and see what Lindsay Lohan is wearing, then dress completely the opposite.
Q: What sort of persona should one adopt to make one self appear cooler and far wittier than they actually are?
Richard: Mine. It’s worked very well for me for years. Actually, I’ve always found that NOT adopting a persona works the best. Be yourself and don’t try too hard to impress and you’ll be fine. If that doesn’t work talk in film critic speak to get noticed. Say things like “Daybreakers is a meditation on violence,” and pepper your speech with words like “trope” and “zeitgeist.” You’ll fit in with the babbling festival party crowd. Don’t worry if you don’t understand what you’re saying, everyone will be too tired to notice.
Q: What are three things one must bring to the premiere?
Richard: A good attitude, a willingness to be swept away by the movie and, on a less ephemeral note, a snack. These things never start on time and there is nothing worse than watching a movie on an empty stomach.
Three things NOT to bring: a cell phone (unless you promise to turn it off before the movie stars), a snack wrapped in crinkly paper and a bad attitude.
Q: What do you say to the stars if their movie is horrible?
Richard: Most people know when they’ve made a bad movie and don’t need to hear it from you at the after party when trying to enjoy their Apple Martini. If you must say anything refer to my comments above and fall into meaningless movie-speak. Label the film a “tone poem” or tell them it was “quirky but inspiring” or use any of the following in any way that seems appropriate at the time: avant-garde, unconventional, innovational or causative. You’ll have kept the conversation going without offending anyone or actually saying anything worth repeating. Perfect for the party circuit.
Q: What’s the most indelible TIFF premiere memory you have?
Richard: There have been many. Falling asleep while sitting next to a very famous director during a screening of his film rates way up there. (I’m not saying who it was, but I was tired after seeing four other films that day and he was fine with it.) I think the most indelible memory I have from the TIFF premiers I’ve attended has to do with someone who is not a household name, but made a huge impression on me.
His name is Paul Rusesabagina and he was the real life inspiration for the movie Hotel Rwanda. I was tired and grumpy after a long festival stint of watching movies and doing interviews and a bit jaded by the whole affair but his uplifting attitude, particularly in light of everything he had been through in his life, wiped away all the world-weariness I was feeling. Chatting with him and watching him interact with others made me glad to be part of TIFF that year.
Long before I saw the Statue of Liberty in person I felt like a New Yorker. Woody Allen’s movies were my initiation and his romantic, idealized view of the Big Apple planted the seed for my longtime love of the city.
His latest film, Whatever Works, is the first of Allen’s films to be set in Manhattan in four years, and you get the sense he’s glad to be home. It’s his love letter to the city, showcasing only-in-New-York locations like Chinatown’s fish markets and the Yonah Schimmel Knishery (137 E. Houston St. near 1st Ave., 212-477-2858).
The movie will make you want to jump on a NYC-bound plane ASAP, which is exactly what I did.
There are no official Woody Allen tours of Manhattan, so I created my own daytrip to see Allen’s New York with my own eyes. With a good pair of runners, a map, a Metrocard (get a 1-Day Fun Pass for $7.50 US at MetroCard Vending Machines and neighborhood stores) and some determination you should be able to do this tour in about six hours.
The first stop serves a double purpose. The Dean & Deluca Café (560 Broadway at Prince St. in SoHo, 212-226-6800) is the perfect place to fuel up on coffee to get the day started — it’s also where Mia Farrow has lunch with the newly-single Judy Davis in Husbands and Wives.
Now that you’re in a caffeinated, New York state of mind, exit Soho for the funkier streets of Greenwich Village.
You’ll pass the former home of The Bleecker Street Cinema (144 Bleecker St.) — where Allen’s character takes his niece to see movies that will improve her mind in Crimes and Misdemeanors — on your way to his favorite pizza joint, John’s Pizzeria (278 Bleecker St. in Greenwich Village, 212-243-1680).
John’s Pizzeria is also the place where Allen and his much younger girlfriend, played by Mariel Hemingway, have the “in six months you’ll be a completely different person” conversation in 1979’s Manhattan.
Moving north, our next stop is in midtown. The Carnegie Deli (854 Seventh Ave. between 54th and 55th streets, 212-757-9889) is virtually unchanged since Woody shot much of Broadway Danny Rose here in 1984.
In fact it hasn’t changed much since it opened in 1937 and Henny Youngman was a regular.
Take some time to check out the autographed pictures of celebrities have eaten there, and if you have the appetite of three people order The Woody Allen — “Lotsa corned beef plus lotsa pastrami; for the dedicated fresser only!” says the menu, and it’s not kidding. There’s over a pound of meat between two slices of rye.
Next, walk off the sandwich with a jaunt to the The St. Regis-Sheraton Hotel (2 E. 55th St., 212-753-4500). Woody has used this location twice. This is where Michael Caine and Barbara Hershey carried on their covert love affair in Hannah and Her Sisters and, in Radio Days, the hotel’s King Cole Room (with its Maxfield Parrish Art Nouveau mural behind the bar) was the site of the swanky New Year’s celebration Joe Needleman listened to on the wireless.
The next stop is the location of one of Allen’s most iconic New York images. The poster for Manhattan showing Woody and Diane Keaton sitting in silhouette on a bench was shot at Riverview Terrace on Sutton Square, just beneath the 59th Street Bridge.
It looks a little different than it did in 1979. The bench is gone (stolen by Woody fans perhaps?) and the landscape is a little different but the view is still spectacular.
You’ve seen the movies and the sights, now catch a glimpse of the Wood-man in person. Allen and his clarinet have been blowing up a Dixieland storm on Monday nights (from September to June) at the Café Carlyle (35 E. 76th St. on the northeast corner of Madison Avenue, 212-744-1600) since 1996. Reservations and jackets are required and tickets ($100 for the show, dinner is extra) go quickly so book ahead for the toe-tapping fun.
Not quite as exclusive or as pricey is Elaine’s (1703 Second Ave. between E. 88th and E. 89th St., 212-534-8103), which restaurant writer A. E. Hotchner summed up with the words, “What Rick’s place was to Casablanca, Elaine’s is to New York.”
On film it’s the location of one of Allen’s most famous one-liners: In Manhattan, he’s at Elaine’s complaining about the difficulties of seeing a 17-year-old. “I’m dating a girl who does homework,” he says.
Off-screen, it’s one of his favorite restaurants. “I ate at Elaine’s every night for about 10 years,” he said. “I’ve eaten alongside everyone from Don King to Simone de Beauvoir. There was no celebrity that didn’t show up there.”
One of the celebrities who ate there was Mia Farrow, who asked Michael Caine to introduce her to Woody one night at the restaurant, thus beginning their long and tumultuous affair. Soak in that storied atmosphere for the price of an entrée.
The tour finishes up with a trip to Pomander Walk, (260-266 W. 95th St. through to 94th Street between Broadway and West End Avenue). This beautiful village — built to resemble the London stage set from a romantic 1910 play — is made up of 27 Tudor-style houses and is the location of the architectural tour Sam Waterston gives Dianne Wiest and Carrie Fisher in Hannah and Her Sisters.
You’ll have to peek through the gate (it’s locked to the public) but its Alice in Wonderland aura and the fact that Humphrey Bogart used to live there make it a must-see for movie fans.
By the tour’s end you’ll see why Isaac Davis, Woody Allen’s character in Manhattan, famously said, “This is really a great city. I don’t care what anybody says, it’s really a knockout, you know?”
Tomorrow comedian Chris Rock adds a new entry on his resume: Documentary filmmaker.
