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      ‘The Book of Delights’ Review: A Heady Romance

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      A schoolteacher’s odyssey into erotic self-discovery and existential desire fuels this Brazilian drama, which is based on a novel by Clarice Lispector.Lóri, the heroine of the decidedly grown-up Brazilian drama, “The Book of Delights,” is an unconventional sort — an elementary schoolteacher who encourages her young students to think about existentialism.Outside the classroom, Lóri, played by Simone Spoladore, spends her time exploring her own existential desires. She’s a woman with an active erotic life, and multiple lovers, men and women, come to her apartment for a night. (She has her own apartment in the city, an inheritance from her late mother.) This matrilineal gift is an opportunity for freedom that Lóri does not want to waste.But despite her fierce commitment to self-discovery, she is drawn to a particular partner, a philosophy professor named Ulisses (Javier Drolas). In a reversal of the Greek myth that inspired Ulisses’s name, it is he who waits for Lóri as she traverses the night. The pair are powerfully drawn to each other, but for their relationship to develop, Lóri must decide if she wants to incorporate partnership into her odyssey of independence.For this story of self-determination, the director, Marcela Lordy, who wrote the script with Josefina Trotta, adapted the film from the 1968 novel “An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures” by Clarice Lispector.The film does not share Lispector’s tendency for formalist innovation. It is a conventional-looking movie, with beautiful performers who deliver their lines in earnest close-ups. Even the film’s explicit sex scenes are shot in a straightforward manner, more informative than they are provocative or titillating. But to the movie’s benefit, it maintains the mature perspective that Lispector brought to her writing. At its best, shows its characters engaged in thoughtful conversations about independence and attraction.If this erotic drama doesn’t break new cinematic ground, it also doesn’t cede its conviction in portraying relationships as a matter of serious consideration.The Book of DelightsNot rated. In Portuguese, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Gigi & Nate’ Review: A Tender Bond

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      A young man with quadriplegia and his helper monkey pair up in this overstuffed feel-good drama.As far as by-the-book, feel-good dramas go, “Gigi & Nate” has a fail-safe formula, designed to jerk tears and warm hearts. The film tells the true story of an 18-year-old who becomes a quadriplegic after contracting meningitis from a lake swim. Unable to eat, sleep or do everyday tasks without help and crushing pain, the Nashville-based Nate (Charlie Rowe) struggles with despondence until Gigi, a capuchin monkey, transforms his life.Yet the tender bond between the titular pair gets short shrift in Nick Hamm’s bloated movie, stuffed as it is with subplots, characters and contrivances. After an overlong prologue shows Nate frolicking in the water on the Fourth of July with his siblings and friends, the film jumps cursorily through several years of his life with quadriplegia before he acquires Gigi.The film’s aggressively unsubtle score notwithstanding, Gigi’s effect on Nate is touching. Once she warms to him, she operates his phone, flips through the pages of the books as he reads and helps him with physical therapy, imbuing him with a renewed zest for life. There are also some high jinks involving Nate’s quippy, vodka-swigging grandma (a thankless turn by Diane Ladd) and a college party where Gigi goes viral.These antics earn the ire of local animal rights activists, who show up to Nate’s house in ape masks and pelt the walls with fake blood. As the battle between these cartoon villains and Nate goes to court, the writing becomes painfully platitudinous, skating around the real controversies surrounding the domestication of intelligent primates. Rather than offer insight into the difficult choices facing disabled people, “Gigi & Nate” opts for mawkish wish fulfillment, undercutting the film’s powerful emotional core.Gigi & NateRated PG-13 for scenes featuring seizures. Running time: 1 hour 54 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Peter Von Kant’ Review: Fassbinder and Friends

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      The prolific French director François Ozon puts a metatextual spin on “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,” the classic German tale of amour fou.With “Peter Von Kant,” the prolific French director François Ozon pays homage to one of his most enduring influences, the New German Cinema icon Rainer Werner Fassbinder, nearly 20 films after first adapting a Fassbinder play with his early feature, “Water Drops on Burning Rocks” (2000).The film puts a metatextual spin on the classic Fassbinder play-turned-movie “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,” a menage-à-trois melodrama about a fashion designer, her assistant and her muse, largely inspired by Fassbinder’s own tempestuous affairs of the heart. Ozon makes these parallels literal, placing a doppelgänger of the renegade director — complete with a mustache, a portly physique and a few of his signature statement pieces like his leather vest and white suit — in the title role.The filmmaker Peter Von Kant (Denis Ménochet) spends his days barking orders at his tight-lipped, gangly number two, Karl (Stefan Crepon), until, one day, Sidonie (Isabelle Adjani), the aging diva whose career he helped start, drops by with her latest boy toy, Amir (Khalil Gharbia). Instantly smitten with the younger man, Peter fast-tracks their romance by casting Amir in his new film and giving him a set of keys.Modeled after the North African actor El Hedi ben Salem (Fassbinder’s lover and the star of his masterpiece “Ali: Fear Eats the Soul”), Amir, a gin and tonic-guzzling libertine, drives Peter wild with jealousy, unfolding a series of cruel power plays and spittly shouting matches until the couple hit their breaking point.Admittedly, there’s a baked-in appeal to such an adoring resurrection of the man and the myth, through the prism of one of his most beloved works (the casting of a Fassbinder collaborator, Hanna Schygulla, as Peter’s mom, doesn’t hurt).But there’s a mocking air to Ozon’s chamber-piece histrionics, in part because Ménochet plays Peter like a self-pitying ham, oohed and aahed at with every breakdown. Fassbinder’s work finds a kind of truth in the artifice of emotionally plumped-up dramas, but Ozon’s often tedious tragicomedy never hits such a stride, trusting that the material will automatically confer greatness; instead, “Peter” comes off like top-shelf fan-fiction.Peter Von KantNot rated. In French and German, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Waiting for Bojangles’ Review: Endless Love

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      Set in Paris in the 1960s, the film tells the story of two irrepressible lovers, and their young son, whose tale turns tragic.Régis Roinsard’s “Waiting for Bojangles,” based on the novel by Olivier Bourdeaut, is a film so unabashedly romantic that it could only be French. It tells the story of two boundless, irrepressible lovers, Georges (Romain Duris) and Camile (Virginie Efira), and the life they share in Paris in the 1960s with their young son, Gary (Solan Machado-Graner).Their home, brimming with warmth, is crowded nightly with friends and family, like a madcap salon fueled by cocktails and lively conversation. Their tale eventually becomes tragic, however, as Georges and Camile’s relationship is strained by Camile’s battle with mental illness. But the film’s vision of a life of immeasurable joy and passion — one lived solely for love, without limits or qualifications — is beautiful and, for this critic and helpless romantic, powerfully intoxicating.The infectious brio at the heart of “Bojangles” is a testament to the performances of the ensemble cast, but especially Duris and Efira, whose chemistry is magnetic. Duris, as Georges, is introduced as a carefree mechanic posing as a worldly socialite at a party on the coast — a role he embodies with effortless charisma — when he meets Camille, downing glass after glass of Champagne and dancing wildly. One instantly roots for them.Now, the exuberant, sentimental esprit of “Bojangles,” from its impassioned sex scenes to its moments of tender longing, puts it in constant jeopardy of seeming maudlin or, worse, a little corny. But it’s an admirable problem. If you commit to romance, seeming corny is a risk you have to take.Waiting for BojanglesNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours and 4 minutes. More

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      ‘Burial’ Review: Corpse Ride

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      The film, about a Russian intelligence officer’s covert mission at the end of World War II, begins on a suspenseful note, but the tension soon dissipates.“Burial” begins suspensefully enough. It opens in 1991 at the London home of a Russian Jewish woman, Anna (Harriet Walter), as she watches TV news of Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s resignation as the Soviet president.It’s quite the historic evening for a neo-Nazi (David Alexander) to break into Anna’s home. Fortunately, Anna gets the jump on him and cuffs him to a radiator. He thinks that Anna, while serving as a Russian officer at the end of World War II, covered up evidence that Hitler survived. She decides to tell him how wrong he is.The movie, from the writer-director Ben Parker, flashes back to Berlin in 1945 — and the tension dissipates. We learn that the young Anna, who was known then as Brana (Charlotte Vega), was part of a covert mission to carry a conspicuously coffin-shaped crate to Moscow. Parker intends for viewers to speculate about its contents, but the trailer reveals what’s fairly obvious — that it’s Hitler’s remains. Stalin needs to look his enemy in the eye, we’re told, and Brana wants the world to see that Hitler was mortal and a coward.The story is invented, and not particularly exciting as such. While die-hard German soldiers — armed, ridiculously, with hallucinogenic lichens — are eager to recapture the corpse and manufacture evidence that it’s a fake, the transport of a dead body is not exactly a “Wages of Fear” situation, and the murky nighttime visuals don’t help. Furthermore, the inconsistent linguistic choices — the Russian and German characters mostly stick to English, but the Poles sometimes speak Polish — only add to the muddle.BurialNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Saloum’ Review: A Paranormal Showdown in the Desert

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      A team of African mercenaries encounters supernatural foes in this fable-like adventure.Revenge, trauma, child exploitation and environmental degradation — all of these, to one extent or another, undergird the feverish momentum of “Saloum,” a picture that proceeds with more visual brio than narrative clarity.And that’s before we even encounter the story’s supernatural elements. Skipping blithely across genres — for simplicity’s sake, let’s call it a paranormal adventure — the movie opens in 2003, in the middle of a military coup in Guinea-Bissau, West Africa. Under cover of the chaos, three infamous mercenaries known collectively as Bangui’s Hyenas (robustly played by Yann Gael, Roger Sallah and Mentor Ba) abscond with a Mexican drug lord (Renaud Farah) and his gold bullion. En route to Dakar, Senegal, their plane comes to grief, forcing them to land in the remote Saloum region to repair and refuel.Posing as innocent travelers, the men arrive at a coastal vacation camp run by the suspiciously magnanimous Omar (Bruno Henry), who dispenses chores to his guests in lieu of rent. The environmental boon of some of these tasks — planting mangroves to stabilize the coastline; fighting poachers who fish with explosives and destroy the ecosystem — is touched on only lightly, but they add gravity and texture to a screenplay, by the movie’s Congolese director, Jean Luc Herbulot, that’s often skittishly unfocused. References to the region’s history and ancestral myths whoosh past, the emphasis always on eyes over ears, action over explanation. This is a movie that’s constantly exhorting us to keep up.Occasionally, things slow to allow the resort’s other guests to pose particular threats. There’s a police captain who might be tailing the mercenaries, and a mysterious woman (a wonderful Evelyne Ily Juhen) who can neither hear nor speak. Her bold exchanges with the Hyenas, conducted entirely in sign language, are every bit as creative as the whirling clouds of evil that are eventually unleashed. These dark dervishes, seemingly comprised solely of dirt and leaves and primal malice, are ingeniously symbolic, as if the land itself were rising to avenge past crimes.Punctuated by Gregory Corandi’s gliding, God’s-eye shots of meringue-colored desert and placid shoreline, “Saloum” has the extravagance of fable and folklore. The plot is ludicrously jam-packed, but the pace is fleet and the dialogue has wit and a carefree bounce — right up to the moment when our Hyenas realize their greatest danger could come from one of their own.SaloumNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 24 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Michael Schultz on Breaking the Mold for Black Directors

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      When Michael Schultz began work on his first film, in 1971, there was no road map for a lengthy career as a Black director in Hollywood. The first two studio movies to employ Black directors — Gordon Parks’s “The Learning Tree” (1969) and Ossie Davis’s “Cotton Comes to Harlem” (1970) — had only relatively recently left theaters. And the movement that would soon be known as Blaxploitation — mimicking the work of Davis, Parks and the trailblazing independent filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles — did little to suggest a promising future.Schultz was 32 at the time and a rising star of the New York theater scene. He had been tapped to direct a public television documentary, “To Be Young, Gifted and Black.” Though he didn’t know it, Schultz had already begun an improbable course that would take him to the heart of the mainstream film and television industry, where he has essentially remained for the past five decades.Although he has cast a more modest shadow than some of his peers, Schultz holds a singular résumé. He has directed more than a dozen films, including the classics “Cooley High” (1975), “Car Wash” (1976) and “Krush Groove” (1985); is responsible for the first feature-film appearances of Denzel Washington, Samuel L. Jackson and Blair Underwood; and has worked consistently in television since the 1990s.At 83 — and due behind the camera this fall, for Season 5 of the CW drama “All American” — he is probably the longest-working Black director in history.Last month, I met Schultz in New York at the offices of the Criterion Collection, which in December will release a remastered special edition of “Cooley High” — a coming-of-age drama set in the 1960s at a school in Chicago. Schultz is slim and energetic, with an easygoing manner and a guitar-pick-shaped face framed by wavy silver hair. In a darkened editing suite, he directed a sound engineer to raise the soundtrack of a pivotal scene by four decibels.“I wanted to make sure that people can hear it,” he said. “They’re going to be watching at home, and all kinds of stuff is happening at home.”At lunch later that afternoon, and over several earlier phone and video interviews, we discussed the winding trajectory of his career. These are edited excerpts from our conversations.From left, Corin Rogers, Joseph Carter Wilson, Glynn Turman and Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs in “Cooley High.”Olive FilmsWhen you look at “Cooley High” today, what do you see?I see really good performances by Glynn Turman, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, Garrett Morris. I see some things I wish I could have done better.Like what?Like showing Larry as a basketball superstar. That little swish he does is pretty hokey. It would be nice to set his character up a little better. Little nitpicky things like that.Do you always have that feeling when you’ve completed a film?You’re never satisfied. Because there’s always something you missed or something that you didn’t think of in the shooting of it. But there’s also always wonderful things that happen that you didn’t think of because of the communal creativity of the actors and the cameraman and all of the elements that make up the film. It’s a dual universe: good and evil, black and white, up and down.How did “Cooley High” come to you?The editor of a film I’d done, “Together for Days” (1972) [a kind of gender-swapped, post-civil rights-era update of “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”], connected me with the producer Steve Krantz. He had met the writer, Eric Monte, and they had a script based on all of these incredible stories Eric had from growing up in the Cabrini Green [housing project] of Chicago. But the script wasn’t really a script — it was still mostly just stories. So I met with Eric for seven or eight hours a day for four weeks. Every night, me and my wife [Gloria Schultz] would cut everything down until we had the completed script.What did you see in Eric’s stories? What was the vision?It had this perfect dramatic twist in the death of a friend that sends the main character off to pursue his dreams. That really happened to Eric. And I thought it could be a window into the lives of Black kids that had never been seen before. My theory was that if it was as culturally specific as possible, and as Black as possible, it would translate across the racial divide and people would fall in love with these kids and their humanity.It’s become famous for its soundtrack, as well, which is wall-to-wall Motown — The Supremes, the Temptations, Smokey Robinson. How did you get all of those songs?I was using Motown music on the set and in the editing room, just because I loved it. But nobody valued that music at the time.Really?Yeah. We were able to get it for a very reasonable fee, which was good because the budget for the whole film was like $900,000. The problem came when they wanted to put it out on cassette, because by then the music had had this resurgence and the studio couldn’t afford it. It wasn’t until much later, after Motown got bought by Universal, that they were finally able to do a deal.You started out in the theater in New York, with the Negro Ensemble Company. How did you end up there?I had moved to New York after studying theater at Marquette in Milwaukee, where I grew up. My wife and I were working with the McCarter Theater in New Jersey when Douglas Turner Ward and Robert Hooks were just starting the Negro Ensemble Company. My wife suggested I drop my résumé off with them before we went on the road to do a play that she was acting in and I was directing. Douglas Turner Ward ended up coming out to Yellow Springs, Ohio, to see it and offered me any of the plays in the Negro Ensemble Company’s opening season. I chose “Song of the Lusitanian Bogey” [Peter Weiss’s drama about Portuguese colonialism in Angola], which ended up being their very first production.Schultz, left, with Douglas Turner Ward, working together at the Negro Ensemble Company.Edward Hausner/The New York TimesYou made the transition to features in the same year “Super Fly” (1972) came out; right after “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” and “Shaft” (both in 1971). What did you make of Blaxploitation?I thought what Melvin [Van Peebles, the director of “Sweet Sweetback”] was doing was very inspirational. He self-distributed that film. And I learned a lot from watching Gordon [Parks, the director of “Shaft”]. But when it devolved into all this stereotypical stuff, “Hell Up in Harlem,” “Sheba, Baby,” all the pimps and fur coats, I said, “Wait till I get my break, because I’m gonna do it a lot better than this.”There was a huge backlash at the time within the Black community — in editorials in Ebony; from the Coalition Against Blaxploitation, which included the N.A.A.C.P.; from Jesse Jackson. The argument was that the movies were degrading and setting us back. Did you participate in those debates?I agreed with [the criticism] in a way. But to me, providing work for actors who couldn’t get work was a very important thing to do. And so it wasn’t so black and white. Yeah, they’re putting white people on top of the pyramid [most Blaxploitation films, after the initial wave, were directed by white men], but they’re keeping Black people working. I was against the tired imagery, especially given the power of the medium and the influence that it has on people’s minds. Unless you have a counter, unless you can see other versions of who we are, it’s damaging.When you started working in Hollywood, did people ever think that you were white, because of your name?All the time. And there was an assumption that I was Jewish, even though it’s a German name. It happened in New York, actually. My agents got me a meeting with the producers of a big Broadway show. They had seen my name on other hit shows in town, but they had never seen my face. I’ve never done a lot of PR. So I walk into this meeting and all of the faces in the room just fall. They couldn’t even keep it together.Oh, wow. What happened?I didn’t get the gig. It was “Oh. Oh — we thought … well, it’s good to meet you.” And then I didn’t hear from them again.Do you have German in your family?Not that I know of. I did the DNA thing and there’s significant European [ancestry], but it’s so far back that who knows?After “Cooley High,” you did “Car Wash,” which was a big hit for Universal. It was also the first of three movies you did with Richard Pryor [followed by “Greased Lightning” and “Which Way Is Up?,” both released in 1977]. What was your bond with him?Richard and I were supposed to do another movie before “Car Wash” called “Simmons From Chicago,” a comedy about a pimp who becomes president. It never got made, but I went to his house to talk about it and we got along very well. I thought he was a brilliant comic — my friends and I all loved listening to his stuff — but he hadn’t really broken onto the scene in films yet. And he respected the work I had done in the theater. We were simpatico. Even though we had completely different backgrounds, we had similar energies. We were both dedicated to the work and wanted to make an impact.Schultz on the “Carbon Copy” set with George Segal and Denzel Washington.Avco Embassy Pictures/Getty ImagesYou also cast Denzel Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, and Blair Underwood in their first feature films (“Carbon Copy” in 1981, “Together for Days” and “Krush Groove”). What was your secret?Sam was a student at Morehouse. We were shooting “Together for Days” in Atlanta and he came in to audition for a background role. When I watched him, I said this guy needs a speaking part. He was very natural. He was the kind of kid who you didn’t see the acting with — there was a certain ease.When Denzel came in for “Carbon Copy,” [a race comedy, also starring George Segal, about a white businessman who finds out he has a long-lost Black son], I knew immediately that he was the guy. He was centered and focused, with a real self-assuredness that made him seem mature for his age. He wasn’t in awe of any of the things around him. And he was very handsome. I did tell him, though, “Hey, if you want to be a leading man, you better get that gap in your front teeth taken care of.” [Laughs] And he did.Wait …He did. I said, “It’s not a requirement. You got the part. But I’ll tell you one thing, I’ve never seen a leading man with a gap in his teeth.” [A representative for Washington declined to comment.]And Blair?Another audition [for “Krush Groove,” an early hip-hop film about the founding of Def Jam, in which Underwood plays a character based on Russell Simmons]. Matter of fact, I almost hired another kid. We were getting ready to make the call, but I saw Blair out in the hallway. I said, “Cancel the call. This is the guy.” He read and he was great. He just had this energy, this aura about him.You directed the Beatles musical “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” which was a big pivot and had a big budget and a high profile. How do you get an assignment like that?Robert Stigwood [the producer of the film and the manager of the Bee Gees] was a big fan of “Car Wash.” He had wanted me to do “Grease” [which Stigwood was also a producer on]. I tried to work it out, but I was editing “Which Way Is Up?” and Travolta had a hard out because he had to go back to his TV show [“Welcome Back, Kotter”]. So then Stigwood offered me “Sgt. Pepper’s” as a consolation prize.Did you ever wish you had done Grease?It wasn’t really the kind of musical I wanted to do. I never liked musicals growing up; they always seemed phony to me. So even if I had accepted it, I would have done it differently. “Sgt Pepper’s” wasn’t like a traditional Hollywood musical. It was more like an opera or an extended music video — a different approach to music as a filmic experience. Would it have been nice to have done “Grease”? Yeah. It made a lot more money than “Which Way Is Up?”Critics savaged “Sgt. Pepper’s,” especially the Bee Gees, who were kind of in an impossible position, standing in for the Beatles, who don’t appear in the film. How did it feel when you were shooting?The Bee Gees were cool when they were playing music, but trying to get them to act was quite tedious. Peter Frampton, as well. When the guys were singing, they were fine. But otherwise it was elementary school theater. Barry Gibb couldn’t get out of bed unless he had a stogie; he was high constantly. [A representative for Gibb didn’t respond to a request for comment.] Peter was a really sweet guy, but the Bee Gees hated him. I think they resented the fact that he had this huge hit album out [“Frampton Comes Alive!”]. They were always ignoring him and trying to make his life as difficult as they could. But I ended up really liking the movie and thought it was going to be a big hit. At the very first screening, the audience loved it. The studio was ecstatic. But it got really damning reviews. It was like “The worst musical in the history of modern Hollywood moviemaking.”How did you deal with that?It was a big hit internationally. I made more money on that film than on most of my earlier films put together. But the response in America was devastating, depressing, deflating. It took me about a year to recover. I had been doing one film after the other before that and was pretty wiped out. Going through that emotional disappointment and taking that break kind of slowed down the trajectory of my career.Schultz says, “It’s extraordinarily gratifying to see the talent” of Black directors today, “to see so many avenues for young people to develop and get in the mix. And they’re coming with the goods.”Nathan Bajar for The New York TimesSince the ’90s, you’ve worked most frequently as a television director. What do you like about the medium?When I was starting out, everybody in film looked down their nose on television. I always thought that was stupid. My feeling was, “Hey, television reaches millions of people.” It’s crazy not to want to get your story out to an audience of that size.But would you rather have been making features?No. [Pauses]. Because around that same time, our family was going through some personal difficulties. Our oldest son was stricken with schizophrenia and I had to have a steady stream of income coming in.I’m so sorry.Thank you. I had to keep working to get him the level of care that he needed. I couldn’t wait around for six months to get the green light for a feature.That sounds really scary.It was. But we had really good psychiatrists, therapists and these new medicines — psychotropics. The scary thing was when he would have a relapse. You’re always afraid that they’ll end up on the street and the cops will get involved, or shoot them down. But we just weren’t willing to let him go. Fortunately, our son is OK today.How do you think you’ve been able to survive through so many seasons of change in the industry?I’m good at what I do and focus on what’s best for the project. Maybe it’s my theater background, but I like to work very collaboratively and make everyone a part of the process. I don’t need to be Michael Bay or James Cameron, or whoever. I remember, after we finished “The Last Dragon” [a 1985 Black kung fu comedy, produced by the Motown founder Berry Gordy], Berry Gordy decided that he should be credited as the director. But the Directors Guild wouldn’t let him. So Berry went and changed the title to “Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon,” just to get his name in there. I’ve never understood that kind of ego. [A representative for Gordy didn’t respond to a request for comment.]Were you angry?Well, I was not happy about it. But I wasn’t going to spend a whole lot of energy being upset. [Gordy] is very slick. It’s no wonder he made all that money.In the last decade, there’s been a real resurgence in Black filmmaking, with many more Black directors working regularly than in the past. What has it been like for you to see that evolution?It’s extraordinarily gratifying to see the talent, and to see so many avenues for young people to develop and get in the mix. And they’re coming with the goods. I don’t think it would have happened, though, if there weren’t Black executives, as well. Ryan Coogler had a Black executive supporting “Black Panther” [Nate Moore, Marvel Studios’ vice president of production and development]. When you have the creative and the executive in sync, that’s when extraordinary things can really happen. We saw that way back when with the Negro Ensemble Company.When you’re on set today, is it still as fun as it used to be?Oh yeah. I still get the butterflies when I’m starting something new — “Am I going to mess this up?” But once I’m in there, it just flows. People keep asking me when I’m going to retire and I always say, “Retire from what? Having fun?” I’ll retire when either my body gives out or it starts to feel like work. But, right now, I’m having fun — and they’re still paying me. More

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      Where Did Those Hot Dog Fingers Come From? Daniels Explain

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      The directors of “Everything Everywhere All at Once” have found the reaction to their film “humbling and inspiring and confusing.”When “Everything Everywhere All at Once” opened in March in a handful of theaters, its creators, the directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, weren’t sure what to expect. The film had stars — “I thought we could bill it as ‘Michelle Yeoh fights Jamie Lee Curtis,’” Scheinert said — but was otherwise tough to pigeonhole. It was a multiverse picture, sure, but instead of superheroes and spaceships, there were fights with fanny packs, cinematic shout-outs to Wong Kar-wai and Stanley Kubrick, and a singing raccoon. And then there was the pandemic, and who knew what that might do to box office numbers? “I went in with very low expectations, because there were a lot of unknowns,” Kwan said.Instead, the movie became one of the sleeper hits of the summer, expanding from 10 screens in three American cities to 2,200 theaters worldwide, becoming A24’s highest-grossing release in the process. Strong reviews helped: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film was rated 95 percent fresh, while The Times called it “an exuberant swirl of genre anarchy” and praised its “sincere and generous heart.” The film also benefited from exuberant word of mouth, which included viewers posting photos and videos of themselves on social media having a good cry or three. “It’s been very humbling and inspiring and confusing,” Scheinert said.In the film, Yeoh stars as a laundromat owner who must call upon various alter egos in parallel worlds to battle a mysterious power out to destroy the multiverse. On a recent morning, Kwan and Scheinert, known professionally as Daniels, spoke — via video call from their separate homes in Los Angeles — about the film’s slow-burn, still-burning success; how Yeoh and Curtis ended up with wieners for fingers; and why, with a movie about infinite possibilities, they wouldn’t change a thing.The film had a pretty small first weekend release. What was it like watching audiences discover the film?DANIEL SCHEINERT I’m grateful that it’s been slow, because I think it allowed us to process how people were reacting. At those early screenings, people would stay after to talk with us, and a good number of them would cry while talking about it.Inside the World of ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’In this mind-expanding, idiosyncratic take on the superhero film, a laundromat owner is the focus of a grand, multiversal showdown.Review: Our film critic called “Everything Everywhere All at Once” an exuberant swirl of genre anarchy.The Protagonist: Over the years, Michelle Yeoh has built her image as a combat expert. For this movie, she drew on her emotional reserves.A Lovelorn Romantic: A child star in the 1980s, Ke Huy Quan returns to acting as the husband of Yeoh’s character, a role blending action and drama.The Costume Designer: Shirley Kurata, whose work defined the look of the movie, has a signature style that mixes vintage, high-end designers and an intense color wheel.DANIEL KWAN That first month was very emotional. It became this version of group therapy for certain people, especially at college campuses. For a lot of younger Asian American kids, especially children of immigrants, they’d come up to me, and they wouldn’t even be asking about the movie past a certain point. They’d be asking about their own life, like, so what do I do? How do I talk to my parents? And like, I’m not a therapist. My relationship with my parents is good, but it’s good for an Asian American immigrant relationship.Michelle Yeoh in a scene from the film, which Daniel Kwan described as “it’s like if my mom was in ‘The Matrix.’”A24“Everything” is hard to describe. How would you describe it?SCHEINERT Michelle Yeoh stars in an action-adventure movie, but it’s in the multiverse. So we get to interrupt that movie with a family drama and then interrupt that with a romance and then interrupt that with an absurdist comedy. And all of that is a fun way to play with how overwhelming life is these days. But at the end of the day, it’s a story about a family.KWAN And then the really dumb pitch is: It’s like if my mom was in “The Matrix.”In one universe, Michelle Yeoh (as Evelyn Wang, an embattled Chinese American laundromat owner) and Jamie Lee Curtis (as Deirdre Beaubeirdra, her I.R.S. auditor and nemesis) have hot dogs for fingers. How did that come about?SCHEINERT We were just high and hungry. No, that’s not true. When we were writing this, we were engineering that particular universe to be the one that pushes Michelle the furthest out of her comfort zone. It was like, how do we make Evelyn hate the multiverse? And so it was like, oh, well, you’re in love with your auditor, and you have floppy useless hot dogs for fingers.KWAN They’re just dumb ideas. The hot dog fingers idea is something a 5 year old would come up with. The only difference between us and a 5 year old is that we are adults with budgets to actually execute the ideas. A lot of these ideas are really dumb. They’re the kind of thing that anyone could come up with.You have an extended and weird shout-out to “Ratatouille,” which is already a really weird movie. Instead of a rat under a chef’s toque, controlling his every move, you have a singing raccoon riding atop Harry Shum Jr.KWAN There’s a phrase that we picked up from working with comedians. When a joke stacks on a joke and stacks on a joke, it’s called a hat on a hat. It’s a problem. It’s like, don’t put a hat on a hat. You’re messing up the purity of the joke and it’s not funny anymore. But we do the opposite. We love to put a hat on a hat on a hat on a hat.SCHEINERT The hope is that the tiny hat on top of the other hats is the one that makes you cry. It’s not good comedy writing, but it’s fun to play with.KWAN I think you saying that “Ratatouille” is already a really weird movie is probably why we love that movie, because it is weird. A rat controlling a man by his hair is hilarious and strange. And so that already feels like a hat on a hat. Or maybe a rat on a hat.SCHEINERT A rat under a hat.The famous hot dog fingers, which Daniel Scheinert said were devised in response to the question, “How do we make Evelyn hate the universe?”A24“Everything” deals with alternate realities and what one might do differently if you had a second shot at life. Is there anything you might do differently if you had a second shot at this film?SCHEINERT Not really. I think our takeaway from the whole exercise of making a movie about alternate lives is that it made me reflect on all the little forks in my life that got me here. How precarious and miraculous the good stuff in my life is. I feel like just one really charming [expletive] friend in high school and my life would just be garbage right now. Just one persuasive butthead who convinces me to join a cult or be a misogynist, and I wouldn’t be here.KWAN It was the same thing with this film. There were so many moments where we thought the movie was going to fall apart, and those moments ended up making the film better. So it’s like, I don’t want to touch it. It’s not a perfect movie. It’s very strange and messy. But I have no regrets.What’s coming up for you?KWAN We might try to make something really small. Just the opposite of this movie, you know, to disappoint all of our new fans. [Laughs] We think a lot about the way the Coen brothers work. Right after they did “No Country for Old Men,” which won the Oscar and is probably one of the best films of the past 50 years, they followed up with “Burn After Reading.” I love “Burn After Reading,” but it’s like a farcical, nihilistic, stupid joke about bureaucracy. I think they’ve been able to build a long career because they’re constantly playing with expectations, and just kind of doing whatever they want to do. I wish, I hope, that we can have that kind of bravery. More