Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 175 Shares159 Views

      in Movies

      ‘We’re All Going to the World’s Fair’ Review: Is It Horror, or Just Ennui?

      by

      In Jane Schoenbrun’s first feature, a teenager finds terror and distraction in a multiplayer online game.Way back in the 1965, Susan Sontag observed that “we live under continual threat of two equally fearful, but seemingly opposed, destinies: unremitting banality and inconceivable terror.” Still true, but with the added wrinkle that nowadays it can be hard to distinguish banality from terror.“We’re All Going to the World’s Fair,” the debut narrative feature from Jane Schoenbrun, exploits the overlap between tedium and fright, and locates both in the everyday dystopian realm of the internet. Part of a sturdy genre of web-based horror, the movie turns the familiar rituals and hacks of online life into a source of dread.A bored teenager named Casey (Anna Cobb) seeks diversion in a scary multiplayer game — a “creepypasta” — called the World’s Fair Challenge. After an initiation ritual that involves daubing blood on the screen of her laptop, she contributes videos to a growing body of lore purporting to document the game’s sinister consequences. People claim to lose feeling in their bodies, to find themselves turning into inanimate objects, to gradually and irreversibly lose their grip on reality.How terrifying is that? It’s hard to say, since for many of us the slackness, anxiety and dissociation of the World’s Fair Challenge is just another name for Tuesday.Rather than jolt you with gimmicky scares in the manner of the“Paranormal Activity” movies (an explicit point of reference for Casey and her fellow fairgoers), Schoenbrun goes for quiet, spooky effects, accompanied by a glum score by Alex G (for Giannascoli). The film also resists ostentatious found-footage gimmickry. While a lot of what’s onscreen is video collected by Casey’s devices, there are also moments when the camera — the cinematographer is Daniel Patrick Carbone — explores off-line moods and realities.Not that we learn much about Casey. She lives in a town that looks like it might be somewhere in the Northeastern U.S. — patchy snow on the ground, battered strip malls off the highway, tree-covered hills in the distance — with her father, who is heard but not seen. He keeps an assault rifle in the barn, where there is also a video projector. Casey watches ASMR videos when she has trouble sleeping.Most of what might count as her real life — school, work, friends — is either nonexistent or none of our business. Cobb, making her first appearance in a film, has a knack for simultaneously soliciting and deflecting curiosity about Casey’s inner life. Is she a troubled adolescent putting her mental health and physical safety at risk, or a canny role-player using her wide eyes and soft features to construct an avatar of vulnerability?She isn’t entirely alone. Sometime after starting in on the Challenge, she receives messages from a player named JLB (Michael J. Rogers), whose avi is an unnerving hand-drawn figure with sunken eyes. The camera follows him offline too, into a mostly empty modern mansion that seems worlds away from Casey’s attic bedroom.His presence in the movie has the effect of dialing up both the terror and the banality, and creating a certain amount of suspense about which will win out in the end. In the tradition of internet science fiction, “World’s Fair” teases the boundary between the actual and the virtual, though in a frame of mind that is quietly ruminative rather than wildly speculative. This isn’t “The Matrix” or a fantasy of sentient A.I. It’s a slice of drab, everyday 21st-century Americana and a daydream of something more intense.We’re All Going to the World’s FairNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Women of the White Buffalo’ Review: Speaking Out on the Reservation

      by

      This documentary sheds light on the destitute conditions in two South Dakota reservations through the stories of the communities’ women.The documentary “Women of the White Buffalo” explores the myriad challenges experienced by Indigenous people on reservations, as well as the historical roots of these social maladies. The story is told through Lakota women living on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Indian reservations in South Dakota, where rampant alcoholism, drug addiction, poverty and violence threaten the Lakotas’ way of life and future generations.The director Deborah Anderson features first-person interviews with nine women (and one man), ranging in age from 10 to 98, who are trying to heal generations of trauma in their communities. And though the film lacks a clear narrative arc, put together, these stories draw a line between the historical genocide and displacement suffered by Indigenous people and the present destitution on reservations.Vandee Khalsa-Swiftbird is a survivor of sex trafficking who now works on behalf of other victims and fosters a young girl whose troubled mother could no longer care for her. Julie Richards founded the nonprofit Mothers Against Meth Alliance after her own daughter became addicted to methamphetamine. And SunRose IronShell is a high school teacher who helps her students process their traumas through art.Children are featured prominently throughout the film, whether riding horses or dancing in traditional garb. This choice helps plant the documentary firmly in the present, illuminating the past but not dwelling on it. Indeed, the Lakota women appear more interested in solutions and in instilling in Native children a sense of self-worth and self-determination. The way forward, they seem to agree, is to return to their spiritual roots. Delacina Chief Eagle, a young woman who became addicted to meth after her brother died, said of her recovery: “I found myself, through my culture, through my family, through the children.”Women of the White BuffaloNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      Only Gilbert Gottfried Could Be So Dirty and So Heartbreaking

      by

      He turned shocking jokes and “Howard Stern” appearances into something of an art form, one he practiced even when the occasion was a school fund-raiser.Some comedians unfurl yarns in the unhurried mode of a jam band, others display the taut rhythms of pop or hip-hop. Gilbert Gottfried, who came of age in a fraught New York City and died on Tuesday at 67, always felt like punk in the classic CBGB mold: nervy, artful, deceivingly intelligent, a tad unhinged, and blissfully — beautifully — obnoxious.The juiciest moments of his decades onstage crackle with impish grandeur. Some bits are renowned, especially his appearance at a Friars Club roast in the weeks after the World Trade Center attacks, where he dared crack a 9/11 joke. Greeted with boos, the comic pivoted to a standard bit known as “The Aristocrats.” It proved so dementedly randy, in his giddy telling, that it seemed to levitate the crowd, Gottfried’s potty mouth momentarily washing away the tension and grief.Other times, he brought opportune lightning bolts to dopey TV fare. In one notorious clip from “Celebrity Apprentice,” the silky host tells the comedian, “Gilbert, I’m proud of you.” Gottfried stares down his latest mark. “Thank you, mein Führer,” he responds, characteristically more concerned about landing his joke than his odds in that season’s competition.Better still is the episode of “Celebrity Wife Swap” in which Gottfried — a notorious miser — parades around town with Alan Thicke’s horror-struck wife, treating the set more like a Marx Brothers film than a reality show. At one point, his date balks at being forced to eat a gratis meal in the Friars Club kitchen. “What are you, the queen of England?” Gottfried charges.Along with his strangely endearing stand-up act, the comedian found his mightiest platform through his years as a guest on “The Howard Stern Show.” These are tapes that should be rocketed into space to alert the galaxy of the brassy attitudes that lurk in our neck of the woods — perhaps they will scare any hostile aliens away. With the simpatico host, Gottfried is Rodney Dangerfield on “Carson” or Andy Kaufman on “Letterman”; his every appearance offers a glimpse of a berserk, quick-to-boil New York of yore.Remembering Gilbert GottfriedThe gravel-voiced comedian, whose credits ranged from the family-friendly “Aladdin” to the unfettered vulgarity of “The Aristocrats,” died on April 12.Obituary: Gilbert Gottfried’s manic, loudmouthed stand-up routines mixed old-fashioned borscht-belt shtick with cringeworthy vulgarity.An Appraisal: The comedian could bring opportune lightning bolts to anything from dopey TV fare to school fund-raisers.The Dirtiest Joke Ever Told: A Times columnist recalled Mr. Gottfried’s notorious 2001 performance of “The Aristocrats” not long after 9/11.Offstage Life: The world knew the comedian for his abrasive style. But to his wife, Dara, he was a “gentle genius.”Gottfried’s perhaps most fabled minutes on the show occurred one late-’90s morning when he wasn’t even scheduled to appear. A German-accented woman called in from Los Angeles. She explained that she worked as a babysitter for the filmmaker Amy Heckerling, who had dispatched her to pick up Gottfried from the airport. (He was too cheap for a cab.) The woman furiously recounted how, during the car ride, she had informed the comedian that her parents were Holocaust survivors. Is it any surprise that Gottfried immediately began cracking Holocaust jokes? Such was his superpower.Stern got Gottfried on the line. The comic sounded as if he was still in bed — but, like a samurai who has been attacked in his sleep and leaps to battle, he gamely began peppering the poor woman with more Holocaust jokes. Eventually, horrifyingly, the comic invoked the child the caller was babysitting: “Can she sit on my lap while you tell her about the Holocaust?” he queried. Like his later “Aristocrats” recital, it is a brilliant double negative: Gottfried follows one ghastly subject with something even more distasteful. The world thus gets contorted into a joke, the punch lines batting away our deepest woes.A few years ago, I wrote about these Stern show segments for my comedy zine, The Lowbrow Reader. The essay grew from a chance encounter I had with Gottfried at the home of Professor Irwin Corey, the anarchic comedian and the other subject of the piece. Corey was deep into his 90s but, like Gottfried, emitted riotous humor in his every step. It struck me that Gottfried provided the rare connection to the fabled funny men of a much earlier era: unrestrained, uproarious and often Jewish comics who were set on gaining a laugh at the expense of all else.The Lowbrow Reader was moribund at this point — we had recently published a book anthology, neatly ending our little run. But I so yearned to write about Gottfried, Corey and Stern that I revamped the magazine and essentially assembled an issue around the essay. Most thrillingly, Gottfried consented to let us publish two of his wonderfully eccentric drawings, which brimmed with devilishly grinning ogres, Dracula, a tiny Hitler and penises.I was fully aware that nobody cared about my stupid comedy zine’s rebirth, but it was a huge deal for me. I nervously picked up the issue from the printer, then went downtown to sell some copies to a record store, only to find it closed for the night. I headed to an event lugging a backpack full of zines — never a suave look — then walked home, depressed at having unloaded precisely zero copies.It was late at night on a misty Memorial Day weekend, and the city had emptied out. At 13th and Sixth, I waited for the light to change, sharing the corner with the only other pedestrian in sight. I side-eyed the man to make sure that he was not preparing to stab me. Then, I did a double take. It was Gilbert Gottfried.He didn’t know me from Adam, but I hurriedly thrust a copy of the publication in his confused face. “Great,” he said. “I long for somebody to write a big article about me, and then when it happens it’s in … this.”We slowly walked up Sixth Avenue to our mutual Chelsea neighborhood. His famous stage bray was muted, replaced by the oddly calming cadence later familiar to listeners of “Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast,” his whipsmart showbiz series with Frank Santopadre. The roaring jokes and generous laughter remained. I like to think I can be funny enough when talking to my family and friends; walking with Gottfried, I felt like a weekend guitarist trying to jam with Hendrix.As we approached West 18th Street, a group of young women spotted the comedian and instinctively began laughing and, oddly, cheering. The comic gave a wave as he passed them. “Must be your article,” he said.Years later, my daughter enrolled in the same public elementary school as Gottfried’s two indisputably charming children, briefly overlapping with his youngest. Gottfried’s wife, Dara, was a P.T.A. hero — at her last meeting, she received a standing ovation — and she oversaw an annual comedy show to raise money for the school. Naturally, Gottfried would always perform.Although the show took place at a grown-up comedy club, the audience was essentially the crew from school: parents, some teachers, the principal. In a secular society, this can feel like one’s congregation. I had witnessed Gottfried’s club act. Surely, he would not be reciting his sex jokes for these gentle souls?Yet that would be like asking Pavarotti not to sing, or perhaps a dog not to bark. And so, Gottfried stood before his community, proudly screaming his fiercely idiosyncratic material. There were surrealist rants, crooked bits that gazed at the world in childlike wonder, and bizarre jokes that answered to their own logic. And, of course, there was riotously filthy, inconceivably revolting humor. It was all so irreverent it could break your heart. More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      Michel Bouquet, Award-Winning French Actor, Dies at 96

      by

      One of his country’s great theater actors, he went on to appear in over 100 films during a decades-long career.Michel Bouquet, a French actor whose talent for suggesting passion and turmoil beneath a bland, middle-class facade made him a favorite of New Wave directors, has died. He was 96.The Élysée Palace, the office of the French president, on Wednesday announced Mr. Bouquet’s death. The news release did not give a cause of death. Mr. Bouquet, one of France’s great theater actors, found a special niche in film in the late 1960s and ’70s playing ordinary Frenchmen, somber and reserved, with complicated inner lives and deep reserves of emotion, a contrast heightened by his impassive, guileless face.He played the lethally jealous husband in Claude Chabrol’s “Unfaithful Wife” (1969) and the advertising executive leading a double life in that director’s “Just Before Nightfall” (1971). He was also one of Jeanne Moreau’s hapless victims in the François Truffaut film “The Bride Wore Black” (1968).An actor of considerable range, Mr. Bouquet was equally at home in comedy and drama, and both in sympathetic and unsympathetic roles, like the unsavory detective Comolli in Mr. Truffaut’s 1969 film “Mississippi Mermaid.”Mr. Bouquet appeared in more than 100 films, and won a new generation of admirers with his performance in 1991 as the older incarnation of the title character in “Toto the Hero.” His two best actor Césars, the French equivalent of the Oscar, came when he was in his 70s. The first was for his understatedly menacing performance in “How I Killed My Father” (2001), as a feckless parent who sows emotional chaos when he re-enters his sons’ lives.“He’s a greatly original actor,” Anne Fontaine, the director of “How I Killed My Father,” said of Mr. Bouquet in an interview with The New York Times in 2002, noting that she had written the role with him in mind. “Even if he has a very relaxed and smiling air, there’s something in his acting that’s disconcerting, destabilizing, that provokes strangeness all the time.” He sometimes described himself as “a calm anarchist.”Mr. Bouquet won a second César for his tour de force as François Mitterrand, the ailing French president, in “The Last Mitterrand” (2005).“Charming, arrogant, childlike and teasing in turn, Bouquet offers up a master class in understated character acting, and delivers an indelible interpretation of a complex, infuriating man,” The Daily Telegraph of London wrote of that performance.Michel Francois Pierre Bouquet was born on Nov. 6, 1925, in Paris, to Georges and Marie (Monot) Bouquet. His mother was a milliner. His father was an officer in the French Army who was taken prisoner by the Nazis soon after the invasion of France. To help support the family, Michel worked as an apprentice to a pastry maker and as a bank clerk.Encouraged by the actor Maurice Escande, he began studying at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts in Paris and, after appearing in a production of Albert Camus’s “Caligula,” took his first major role in Jean Anouilh’s “Roméo et Jeannette.”He went on to build a distinguished theatrical career, in which he was known especially for his work in plays by Molière, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Eugène Ionesco and Thomas Bernhard.“This is a very lonely job, just like painting,” he told the French newspaper Sud Ouest in 2011. “One does it in public, but the essence of it is secret.”He made his first film appearances in 1947, as an assassin in “Criminal Brigade” and as a consumptive in “Monsieur Vincent,” a biography of St. Vincent de Paul. Two years later, he offered a hint of things to come in “Pattes Blanches,” based on a play by Mr. Anouilh, in which he portrayed a beaten-down aristocrat hopelessly infatuated with the young girlfriend of the local innkeeper.He later provided the narrator’s voice in Alain Resnais’s landmark Holocaust documentary “Night and Fog” (1956).In 1965, he made the first of his half-dozen films with Mr. Chabrol, the campy secret agent film “The Tiger Smells Like Dynamite,” which was followed by his signature performances in “The Unfaithful Wife” and “Just Before Nightfall.”Mr. Bouquet’s talents were ideally suited to Mr. Chabrol’s chilling explorations of love, violence and moral ambiguity. As Charles Desvallées, the jealous husband in “The Unfaithful Wife,” he seethed, schemed, suffered and eventually dispatched the lover of his wife, played by Stéphane Audran.Mr. Bouquet’s marriage to Ariane Borg, an actress, ended in divorce. She died in 2007. In 1970, he married Juliette Carré, who survives him, according to the Élysée news release. Ms. Carré, also an actress, often appeared alongside Mr. Bouquet onstage.Mr. Bouquet (who was unrelated to the actress Carole Bouquet) continued to act well into his later years, appearing in Molière’s “Hypochondriac” on the stage in 2008, and in the films “La Petite Chambre” in 2010 (released as “The Little Bedroom” in U.S. theaters in 2014) and “The Origin of Violence” in 2016. In 2014, he was nominated for another best actor César for his performance as the title character in “Renoir.” More

    • 100 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Mississippi Masala’: A Love Story Among the Displaced

      by

      In Mira Nair’s sweet, sexy film from 1991, an Indian American woman falls for a Black cleaner played charmingly, as ever, by Denzel Washington.Mira Nair’s “Mississippi Masala” begins with a bit of family history that is also a history lesson — the expulsion of Uganda’s sizable South Asian population, ordered from the country by the military strongman Idi Amin in 1972.A prize winner at the 1991 Venice Film Festival, still fresh and newly relevant, “Mississippi Masala” has been restored for a run at the IFC Center in Manhattan, starting Friday.After a vivid prologue, the movie jumps ahead 18 years to pick up on its displaced central family, resettled in Greenwood, Miss. Jay (Roshan Seth), a barrister in Uganda, manages a hot-sheet motel while his wife, Kinnu (Sharmila Tagore, the star of Satyajit Ray’s “Devi,” among other films), runs the adjacent liquor store.Jay still dreams of Uganda; Kinnu is more resigned to exile. Their daughter, Meena (Sarita Choudhury), who cleans rooms at the motel, is beyond that — so robustly American she could stand in for the Statue of Liberty, albeit Liberty in chains. “I’m 24 years old, and I’m still here — stuck here,” she tells her uncomprehending parents.Luckily, Meena is also a reckless driver. Early on she rear-ends the van belonging to a carpet-cleaning business run by straight-arrow but cool Demetrius (Denzel Washington). It is “the first in a series of collisions,” the New York Times critic Vincent Canby noted in his favorable review, between her world and his.As its title suggests, “Mississippi Masala” is a movie of continuous juxtaposition. The first is a cut from Uganda’s verdant paradise to a Piggly Wiggly’s consumer cornucopia in America. Another follows a flashback to the family’s hilltop villa in Uganda with the mock plantations of wealthy Greenwood. Nair came out of documentary filmmaking, and thanks to Ed Lachman’s vibrant cinematography, “Mississippi Masala” the landscapes are also characters.There’s a documentary aspect to the cast as well. Choudhury, a neophyte who grew up in Jamaica where her father was a biologist, is playing a version of herself (at one point she wears a Bob Marley T-shirt). She was so close to the part that, despite the movie’s success, it took her some time to start an acting career. (Most recently, she was featured in the “Sex and the City” reboot, “And Just Like That.”) Washington, a decade older, already awarded an Oscar for best supporting actor, can be seen as guiding her through the film.Hoping the avoid a lawsuit, the wealthier Indians seek to make common cause with Greenwood’s Black population. Meena’s connection is more profound. “You’re like us,” Demetrius’s younger brother tells her. “You’ve never been to India. We’ve never been to Africa.” Meena and Demetrius are both cleaners and correspondingly low-caste. Both must escape family obligations and transcend tribal prejudices. A stolen weekend in Biloxi and a motel room fight sets the phone lines buzzing, involves the Chamber of Commerce and an arraignment before a judge.The pop iconography of chain restaurants, motels and gas stations (as well as Hindu shrines) is characteristic of 1980s independent films. But Nair’s storybook ending is more ’90s, recalling the post-Cold War golden age when it seemed that American notions of “freedom” and self-invention reigned supreme.Mississippi MasalaOpens Friday at IFC Center, Manhattan, ifccenter.com More

    • 63 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Father Stu’ Review: Screwball Salvation

      by

      Mark Wahlberg throws himself into the real-life story of an oddball priest in Rosalind Ross’s debut feature.Mark Wahlberg dials himself up to 11 in “Father Stu,” a never-say-die story of religious redemption and all-American hustle. Wahlberg’s career is full of characters who totally believe in their own game, and here, he throws himself into the oddball role of Stuart Long — a Montana boxer turned beloved priest who developed a degenerative muscle disease and died at 50.Three movies’ worth of underdog hooks fuel Wahlberg as the story winds him up and watches him go. Stu boxes until his jaw cries uncle; heads to Hollywood to be a star; converts to Catholicism to woo a devout woman (Teresa Ruiz as Carmen); nearly dies in a projectile motorcycle crash; and enters the seminary to become a priest. As if that wasn’t enough drama, Mel Gibson and Jacki Weaver play his trash-talking, separated parents.Rosalind Ross, a writer directing her debut feature, and Wahlberg buck the expectations of the religious-salvation story by mostly keeping it light and barely taking a breath, with an extra nudge from a country-heavy soundtrack. (It’s no surprise that Wahlberg previously tried to develop Long’s story with David O. Russell, the director of the screwball existential comedy “I Heart Huckabees.”)Stu’s travails feed into his salty homilies about getting closer to God, delivered with Wahlberg’s usual bluffness. That doesn’t automatically translate into a religious experience, and watching the movie can feel like a two-hour hearty handshake. But judging from the audience member at a preview screening who sang along with the credits song, it’s all part of the movie’s appeal.Father StuRated R for salty irreverence throughout. Running time: 2 hour 4 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      Let Him Entertain You: Billy Crystal Returns to Broadway

      by

      The comedian is starring in “Mr. Saturday Night,” a musical version of his 1992 movie about an aging performer who won’t accept that his time in the spotlight is up.“The worst nightmare is, do you wake up one day and you’re not funny anymore?” Billy Crystal, 74, said of the anxiety that comes with being an aging comedian. “Do you wake up and you’re not relevant?”Philip Montgomery for The New York TimesA funny thing happened in the rehearsal room of “Mr. Saturday Night” a few weeks ago. Billy Crystal was performing a scene from this new Broadway musical in which his lead character, an aging, out-of-touch comedian named Buddy Young Jr., has learned that he was mistakenly included in an in memoriam segment on the Emmy Awards.Invited to appear on the “Today” Show to correct the error, Buddy sees an opportunity to reclaim the spotlight he once commanded. With that motivation, Crystal turned to his co-star David Paymer, who plays Buddy’s endlessly loyal brother, Stan, and he began to sing a song about his deep yearning for a crowd’s attention:What I was, way back thenI could have that back againI could be — still could beThat guyIt’s an essentially comedic song, delivered in the warm, warbling voice we heard Crystal employ each year when he was a ubiquitous comedy star and a reliably genial Academy Awards host.“Mr. Saturday Night,” which opens April 27 at the Nederlander Theater, is a throwback to the era of Crystal’s hegemony in the 1980s and early ’90s, when he straddled the cultural landscape with his standup specials and hit films like “City Slickers” and “When Harry Met Sally…”Crystal as the out-of-touch comedian Buddy Young Jr. (who is mistakenly included in an awards show’s in memoriam segment) and Randy Graff as Buddy’s wife, Elaine, in the new musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe film version of “Mr. Saturday Night,” which Crystal starred in and directed in 1992, felt like a strange misstep at the time. Far from the eager rib-ticklers he was known for, Crystal — then 44, under layers of old-age makeup — played Buddy as a selfish curmudgeon who has alienated his family and refuses to accept that his career is over.Now 74, Crystal is not that guy — if he doesn’t enjoy the outsize dominance he once had, he doesn’t share Buddy’s desperation to reclaim it, either.Still, as Crystal told me a few days before the rehearsal, there is a certain pleasure he finds in revisiting this singularly disagreeable character: “To play him 30 years later, they actually have to make me younger,” he joked.But seriously, folks: Crystal explained that when he performs as Buddy in the stage musical, he isn’t weighed down by elaborate prosthetics or an aura of likability, and it brings a newfound ease to his performance.“When he’s cantankerous and edgy with people, it’s in front of a live audience,” he said excitedly. “I feel them get upset with him and I hear them go, ‘Ooh.’”Having lived long enough to match the character in age and to experience the kinds of setbacks and regrets that shaped him, Crystal understands that Buddy is not a bad guy. “He’s misunderstood and confused, bitter and regretful, and time is running out,” he said.This is the point where Billy Crystal and Buddy Young Jr. really intersect: at the realization that there is more life behind them than in front of them, and the anxiety that they might never again be as good as they once were.For himself, and for any comedian who cares about the art, Crystal said, “The worst nightmare is, do you wake up one day and you’re not funny anymore? Do you wake up and you’re not relevant? When does that happen?”He added: “There’s a magic about when it’s good, and when it’s bad, it’s really something incredible. There’s a terrible feeling of, I’m losing them.”“It’s not an Ahab thing — it’s not his white whale,” the screenwriter Lowell Ganz said of why Crystal is revisiting “Mr. Saturday Night.” “He has a real affection for the character because he loved those guys.”Philip Montgomery for The New York TimesNot that Crystal lets this fear keep him up at night — “I’m a bad sleeper, anyway,” he said. “I don’t need to worry about more than I’m worrying about” — but the best solution he has found is to focus on projects that put him to the test, like “Mr. Saturday Night.”“You’ve got to keep pushing ahead and not let anybody leave you behind,” he said.In early March, I met with Crystal at his spacious penthouse apartment in downtown Manhattan. Dressed in a long-sleeved T-shirt, jeans and sneakers, he was a subdued but still quippy host as he showed off some of his artifacts: a desk nameplate for Dr. Benjamin Sobel, his “Analyze This” character; an enlarged photograph of celebrity guests at the 1937 Oscars. (“Even then, the show ran too long,” he said.)Crystal’s love of nostalgia and showbiz history helped inspire the character of Buddy Young Jr., a Don Rickles-like insult comic he played in segments on HBO specials and “Saturday Night Live” before giving him a full life in “Mr. Saturday Night.”That film, which he wrote with the “City Slickers” screenwriters, Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, was Crystal’s feature-directing debut. Back then, becoming the wizened entertainer required five hours a day to put his old-age makeup on and another two hours to take it off: “They’d cut a hole in my bald cap and you’d hear, whooooosh,” Crystal recalled. “It was like Jiffy Pop.”Paymer, who also played Stan in the film, received an Oscar nomination. But the movie was a commercial dud, grossing just $13 million domestically. (“City Slickers,” by comparison, made $124 million.) “It was the biggest disappointment that it didn’t do well,” Crystal said.His film collaborators said that Crystal was especially stung by the failure because he had intended “Mr. Saturday Night” as a tribute to the tenacious golden-age comedians he grew up admiring.“It’s not an Ahab thing — it’s not his white whale, and I don’t think he deals in that kind of neurosis,” Ganz said. “But he has a real affection for the character because he loved those guys.”In the years after “Mr. Saturday Night” was released, Crystal entered a foreseeable cycle of hits and misses. (“Analyze This,” yes; “City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly’s Gold,” no thank you.)This is Crystal’s first Broadway musical (he took voice lessons during the pandemic lockdown). His previous Broadway outing, the autobiographical one-man show, “700 Sundays,” won a Tony Award in 2005.Philip Montgomery for The New York TimesHe had seemingly hosted his last Oscars in 2004, until he got called in to pinch-hit in 2012 — an act meant to bring some dignity back to the show after its co-producer Brett Ratner resigned after making offensive public remarks and his chosen M.C., Eddie Murphy, exited after him.Rather than coast to his own emeritus status, Crystal has lately appeared in projects that have paired him with younger stars: the short-lived FX series “The Comedians” with Josh Gad; modest existential comedy-dramas like “Standing Up, Falling Down” with Ben Schwartz; and “Here Today” with Tiffany Haddish.He remained on the lookout for new projects to engage him. In 2017, he toured with the actress Bonnie Hunt, at appearances where she interviewed him about his life and career. Though he was planning to shape this material into a new show, Crystal said he backed off the idea: “One word came to my mind that pulled me away from it — easy. It’s not a challenge.”He had already starred in his autobiographical one-man show, “700 Sundays,” whose original Broadway run won a Tony Award in 2005. At that time, he said Mel Brooks had approached him about being a replacement cast member in his musical “The Producers.” (As Crystal recounted the story, “I said, ‘Do I really want to be the eighth guy to play Max Bialystock?’ He said, ‘You won’t be — you’ll be the 12th.’”)Crystal in the 1992 movie.Entertainment Pictures/AlamyBrooks also raised the suggestion of a “Mr. Saturday Night” musical, which Crystal said he’d do only if Brooks starred in it. (A representative for Brooks’s production company confirmed their conversation.) This casting didn’t come to pass either, but Crystal continued to reflect on the idea for another decade.Around 2015, Crystal said he got serious about the musical. At that point, when he contemplated playing Buddy Young Jr., he said, “It’s easier.”By then, he’d also become more familiar with the whiplash oscillations of show business that were mostly speculative when he made the movie. “I’ve had ups and downs and sideways and middles, and the middles may be harder than the downs,” he said. “The middle, that’s the weird one, because you’re looking up and looking down at the same time.”Crystal, Ganz and Mandel wrote a new book for the musical, one that charts Buddy’s trajectory from Catskills dining-room cutup to TV star to washout, and the show features songs with music by Jason Robert Brown (“Parade,” “The Bridges of Madison County”) and lyrics by Amanda Green (“Hands on a Hard Body”).Its director, John Rando (“Urinetown,” “The Wedding Singer”), said that where the film used younger performers to flash back to Buddy’s earlier days, the actors in the musical will play their characters at every age. In his initial conversations with Crystal, Rando recalled, “I said I want to see Billy Crystal play his 20-year-old self and his 40-year-old self and his 70-year-old self. This is the theater and we should capitalize on that.”In workshopping the musical, Rando said that the overall size of the cast shrank from about 20 people to a more intimate group of eight. “That made us discover the real heart and pulse of the show, which is Buddy’s family, and how each of them relate to him,” he said. (The principal Broadway cast also stars Randy Graff as Buddy’s wife, Elaine, and Shoshana Bean as his estranged daughter, Susan.)But just as “Mr. Saturday Night” was nearly ready to go before audiences, the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 halted work on the show. Crystal hunkered down with his family in Los Angeles, finding that his quarantine at least provided the time to focus on other writing projects. “It gave me a discipline.”For Crystal, who hasn’t performed in a full-length musical since 1981 (when he played the master of ceremonies in a Kenley Players production of “Cabaret” in Ohio), this was also a period he spent working with a vocal coach and practicing his songs.When “Mr. Saturday Night” was at last able to have an out-of-town tryout at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Mass., this past October, anxieties were running high. After hearing the audience clap and cheer for the show’s first performance, Crystal said he found Rando backstage and collapsed into his arms, crying with relief.“I felt like Dr. Frankenstein — it’s alive!” Crystal excitedly recounted. “We had a show.”Crystal on the set of the musical, which is in previews at the Nederlander Theater. Opening night is scheduled for April 27.Philip Montgomery for The New York TimesCrystal remained a persistent presence through the Broadway rehearsals at Pearl Studios in Midtown Manhattan, sometimes wandering its narrow room to joke around with his cast and stoke morale, but always watching fastidiously for opportunities to make refinements.“He’s more serious than I thought he would be,” said Bean, who has previously starred in musicals like “Hairspray” and “Waitress.”“If it’s a scene that he’s not involved in, he does listen in,” she said. “He stands there with his little arms folded and he squints his eyes and he’s paying attention.”Bean added, “I live for the moments when I can get him to crack a smile or laugh. It’s like the sun comes shining through on you for two seconds. And I don’t know if he’s just being polite or if he really thinks that I have charm, but it’s the greatest.”Paymer, who has now performed “Mr. Saturday Night” onscreen and stage, said that Crystal is constantly striving to find ways to reinvent the musical and keep it distinct from the film.“I said to him last week, ‘Well, in the movie, we did this,’” he recalled. “And he said, ‘Well, that was the movie.’ That, to me, was freeing. I found myself giving the same line readings at times. And then I stopped myself from doing that — don’t go back to the movie and say things exactly the way you did then.”However long “Mr. Saturday Night” runs, Crystal said that the physical and psychic demands of the show are exactly what he is looking for at this point in his life — a self-explanatory rebuttal to any potential argument that he’s running out of steam or should be looking to pack it in.“If you just do the math, you could say, all right, there’s less time to do stuff,” he said. “But why look at it that way?” Though there’s no established path for a comedian to follow at this point in his career, Crystal added, “the exciting thing about it to me is that there is no road map.”And making this incarnation of “Mr. Saturday Night” has taught Crystal that there is still so much more he wants to make, if he can just pace himself.As he explained, in a voice that was familiar for both its shticky-ness and its sincerity, “I have too much to do and I’m in no rush. When you rush, you make mistakes. That’s the old excuse: ‘How’d you fall?’ ‘I was rushing when I shouldn’t have rushed. I didn’t read the thing. I tripped and I fell.’ So, I’m just going to take it as it comes.” More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      National Endowment for the Humanities Announces $33.17 Million in Grants

      by

      In New York, the Tenement Museum, Women Make Movies, UnionDocs, LaGuardia Community College and more will receive funding.A book about Motown Productions, the film and television arm of the legendary Motown Records; preservation of the traditional language and lifestyle of Yup’ik and Cup’ik Alaskan Native people; and research on how communities — and insurance companies — in Bermuda understand risk caused by rising sea levels and climate change are among the 245 projects across the country that are receiving new grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities.The grants, which total $33.17 million, support historic collections, exhibitions and documentaries, humanities infrastructure, scholarly research and curriculum projects.Among the 13 categories in which the grants were awarded, the most money — $11 million — went toward 23 infrastructure and capacity building challenge grants, which leverage federal funds to spur nonfederal support for cultural institutions.Included in those were awards to the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, to make collections documenting Hawaiian and Pacific history and culture more accessible, and to the First Peoples Fund in Rapid City, S.D., to create outdoor classroom spaces for education programs about the Lakota cultural traditions at the Pine Ridge Reservation’s Oglala Lakota Artspace.Thirty projects in New York state will receive $4.4 million in total funding, with $3.76 million going to 16 groups and individuals in New York City.In Brooklyn, UnionDocs will get $644,525 for the production of a film about the First Amendment and the balance between free speech principles and other core values. (The project is titled “Speaking Freely: The First Amendment and the Work of Preeminent Attorney Floyd Abrams” and will be directed by Yael Melamede.)In Long Island City, LaGuardia Community College will see $34,991 to create a liberal arts health humanities option with an interdisciplinary curriculum for undergraduates that focuses on the social, cultural and historical contexts of medical ethics, health and medicine.And in Manhattan, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum will receive $400,000 to support guided tours exploring the lives of African Americans and Irish immigrants in 19th-century New York City. Women Make Movies, also in Manhattan, will receive $500,000 toward the production of a film that explores the life and work of the Caribbean writer Jamaica Kincaid. The movie, “Jamaica Kincaid: Liberating the Daffodil,” will be directed by Stephanie Black.This crop of grants is the first round of funding from the agency under Shelly C. Lowe, the first Native American to lead the agency.“N.E.H. is proud to support these exemplary education, media, preservation, research and infrastructure projects,” Lowe said in a statement. “These 245 projects will expand the horizons of our knowledge of culture and history, lift up humanities organizations working to preserve and tell the stories of local and global communities, and bring high-quality public programs and educational resources directly to the American public.” More