The MacGuffin

If there’s one thing I hope I’ve done with this column so far, it’s show that though the overall percentages may be very skewed toward male filmmakers, there are many, many interesting projects out there being made by women. The numbers are getting better all the time, too—for this list of my five anticipated projects, I really had a hard time narrowing things down. Creating excitement and buzz for these films before they’re released is almost as important as seeing them when they are, so if I can contribute to that just a little bit, I’ll be a happier person.

Dear Ms. Marshall,

Charm is a very hard thing to achieve. Charm is borderline undefinable, yet when someone is reaching for it and not getting there, everyone can tell, and the result is awkward and painful. As I write this, I’m watching, probably for the fiftieth time, your wonderful film Big (1988). Not only does the film itself exude charm, its very storyline relies on it. We have to understand how Elizabeth Perkins’s character, Susan, can’t help but be drawn to Tom Hanks’s Josh, both despite and because of his 13-year-old boy behavior. His sincerity is crucial, and the rest of the film has to balance around that. Tom Hanks’s brilliant performance would have been wasted without the sure mood that surrounds it. That came from you. The combination makes for a film that charms completely, and is one of the few films to come out of the 80s to feel somehow timeless.

In desperate need of something to cheer me up after an awful day, and also in desperate need of something to write about for this column this week, yesterday I marched to the video store with one mission: get Wayne’s World. This was actually a bit of a gamble, because I hadn’t seen the movie in a good dozen years, and didn’t remember much beyond the most quoted bits. Would it hold up at all? Would it be the light, warm, funny rumination on male friendship I thought I recalled, or just a series of dated, silly gags? The suspense! My entire will to live was essentially resting on a comedy based on a Saturday Night Live sketch, made 19 years ago.

Like many pop culture junkies, I’ve followed the tales about the ups and (plunging) downs of the development of the Spider-Man musical on Broadway. Arguably ridiculous premise; record-breaking budget; actors getting injured; a seeming lifetime spent in previews; the interesting creative combination of director Julie Taymor—whose impressive Broadway credits include the incredibly huge hit The Lion King—and musicians Bono and The Edge, who, despite long careers in music, had never worked on a stage musical. Then, in March, there was the departure/ousting of Taymor from the production. The show had its official opening this past Tuesday, which Taymor attended, and she has only now begun speaking about her experience and frustrations with the project, as detailed in this article from yesterday’s New York Times. In what I’m sure is just a coincidence of timing (ahem), last night’s episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent was a riff on the Spider-Man situation, with some murder thrown in for good measure, of course. I didn’t watch, but word is that the depiction of the Taymor character was less than flattering.

It’s probably fair to say that Kathryn Bigelow is the most famous female film director working today. Maybe that’s why I’ve taken my time in getting to discussing any of her work in this column. Nobody needs to be told who she is. She has, for the most part, broken into the boys’ club. She’s an extremely technically skilled director, with a knack for creating tense sequences of action (or the anticipation of action). Hollywood loves the kind of films that she’s adept at making. Yet, it seems like discussion of her work pre-The Hurt Locker falls mostly under the category of “hey, betcha didn’t know a woman directed that!” Perhaps that’s a little cynical of me—I need look no further than this very site for a nice analysis of her film Near Dark—but it does seem that she’s still viewed through an “ain’t it nifty that a lady can do action” kind of lens more often than not. I’d much rather she be looked at simply as a director who is hitting the prime of a career that has produced some very good films, and some interesting but highly problematic ones. I believe the commercial failure that’s become something of a cult film, Strange Days, falls into the latter category.

I like a documentary that lets me realize how little I know about a subject. Hot Coffee, from director Susan Saladoff, makes that its goal. The film points out the ways certain areas can be information voids for most laypeople (even reasonably educated ones), without us realizing it. Specifically, it talks about the concept of tort reform—and I know many of my law-school-graduate friends will find it abhorrent that I didn’t really know the meaning of the term. I was definitely with the ignorant people-on-the-street in this case. Tort reform…that’s probably good, right? I feel like I’ve been told that’s good…

There’s a point in the film The Off Hours, from local writer and director Megan Griffiths, when our main character, Francine, answers a casual question about how long she’s worked as a waitress at a truck stop diner. An attractive and somewhat troubled woman, Francine seems like maybe she’s in her late twenties. So her answer—”Twelve years, on and off”—jolted me a little. Twelve years? I’m 28, I’ve worked at the same place for five years, and it feels like forever. How would twelve years feel, at this point in time? But it’s just a shrugged-off fact for Francine. It’s not that it’s insignificant to her story; it’s that it’s simply treated as another straightforward detail in the encompassing, plodding world created by the film.

There are many films that rest on the premise that people are awful to each other. Sometimes these films can be difficult to watch. The most difficult ones, for me, are the ones that show how awful children and adolescents can be to each other. In Ratcatcher (1999), from writer/director Lynne Ramsay, there are story threads to this end that absolutely broke my heart—especially as they contrast with moments of genuine kindness and connection, that always end up pushed aside because of group social pressure. Childhood looked at without a lens of nostalgia can be brutal.

You would think I had produced the film, with how desperately I wanted Bridesmaids to make a ton of money this past weekend. I’m not a person who makes a point to read box office predictions, and in this case I actively avoided it—any prediction, high or low, could only add to my anxiety. Now we know that it landed at number two in its opening weekend, with just under $25 million, around $10 million less than the second weekend numbers for Thor. I hear that this is good, about $10 million above where predictions were tracking last week. And yet, my exact words on hearing that number were: “And when The Hangover 2 makes three times that, I’ll weep.”

I had never known anything about the film Italian for Beginners, except that I remember seeing it in the video store back in the Blockbuster days and immediately dismissing it as a rental possibility based on the hideous box art alone. This is shallow of me, I know. But there are many, many more interesting films out there than I will ever have time to see in my lifetime, and some criteria has to be used to sift through them all and choose what to spend precious time on. Everything about that box art screamed that this would be a film that would annoy the hell out of me. Based on that picture, I figured this film would probably be about an American exchange student finding herself—and love!—while studying in Venice. Some Italian artist would teach her about life, passion, and wine. No thanks, box art. Not today. Not ever.