HOW BIG A MESS of a film's marketing and release can a studio make before they actually admit it? Step forward Paramount, US distributors of Curtis Hanson's Wonder Boys. First released in the US in February 2000 to unanimous critical acclaim, Hanson's follow-up to his award-festooned Ellroy adaptation LA Confidential sank almost without trace at the box-office, prompting some pretty serious recriminations from the director. Now, this isn't the first time a film went into the market-place without all hands 'on message' (the current Russell Crowe - Meg Ryan bomb Proof of Life is the most recent example), but it is surely the first time in history that the suits admitted the talent was right. For that is effectively what they did, pulling the film from theatres (not that there were many left where it was still playing) and re-releasing it, together with a re-thought marketing campaign, in time for Oscar consideration at the end of the year.
The result was that Bob Dylan shuffled off with the Best Song Oscar for the acerbic "Things Have Changed", but Steve Cloves went home empty handed for his adaptation of Michael Chabon's novel and the expected big beneficiary of the re-release, star Michael Douglas, wasn't even nominated. This was the closest this year's nominations actually came to a shock. Douglas, whose willingness to appear as physically unappealing as possible is surely some sort of weird extreme narcissism, is outstanding as Grady Tripp, the one time 'wonder boy' novelist whose life has become a pot-fuelled succession of unfinished manuscripts and tedious Creative Writing seminars. He is in virtually every frame of a beautifully shot film that also features Toby Maguire (his one student of real promise), Frances McDormand (the University Chancellor with whom the dissolute Tripp is having an affair) and, in absolutely top form, Robert Downey Jnr. as the self-destructive editor who built his career on the back of Tripp's.
There's no doubt that the film deserved a better fate at the box-office (it didn't fair much better second time around), although in truth it does suffer rather from the prevailing critical over-reaction that heaps unqualified praise on anything that isn't intended for sexually frustrated 17 year-olds. Droll rather than laugh-out-loud funny, this is really an over-extended shaggy dog story that almost threatens to outstay its welcome.
I saw Tim Robbins' Cradle Will Rock in a sell-out audience at the 1999 London Film Festival. This fact-based comedy drama centring on the near-abortive staging by Orson Welles of a politically sensitive play in 1930s America went down something of a storm and features a world first: Vanessa Redgrave giving an intentionally funny performance. The combination of high-wattage talent (Susan Sarandon, Emily Watson, Bill Murray, Philip Baker Hall, John and Joan Cusack), theatrical setting and multiple story lines adroitly handled marked it out as another potential Oscar pleaser with a marketing campaign to match.
Winning precisely zero nominations, the film was dumped into cinemas in the UK by Touchstone and Buena Vista the following spring where it played for about 20 minutes before clearing out of the way for Stuart Little. This is a classic case of 'right movie, wrong studio' (Touchstone). If Miramax can win Oscar nominations for fluff like Chocolat, just imagine what they could have done with a movie that was actually about something and has genuine flair in front and behind the camera. Robbins has a take-it-or-leave-it attitude about his political convictions and you must be prepared for a certain amount of Hollywood Leftist eulogising, but it's worth it just for the 'let's do the show right here finale' which brought a tear to my one good eye. Quite why it's taken a year after it's supposed theatrical release to get to video is anybody's guess.
A shortage of marketing support isn't a charge that'll stick to Artificial Eye with regard to In the Mood for Love, their big release last autumn, yet the rumours persist that it under-performed at the UK box-office. One hopes this is not the case as the distributor deserves plaudits for going at it hammer and tongs to drum up an audience for Wong Kar-wai's ravishing love story set in the Hong Kong of the early 1960s. Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung play neighbours whose respective spouses (who, cleverly, we never properly see) begin an affair with each other, leaving the cuckolds to explore their own feelings for each other. As in the directors earlier indie hits Chungking Express (1994) and Fallen Angels (1995), the plot isn't really the thing. It's about the visuals and the steady accretion of atmosphere, both of which here are incredibly rich. Wong tinkered with the film up to the very day of the premiere at Cannes 2000, where Leung was named Best Actor, and one wonders at the wisdom of the hastily shot epilogue set at the end of decade which almost shatters the languid, hypnotic quality that he worked so hard to achieve throughout. But this is a minor criticism of a film that deserved to become a cross-over hit every bit as big as Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and one that will age rather better. Think Brief Encounter in Hong Kong but with frocks to die for.
Video Drone
