To me, Al Pacino sounded less-than-forthcoming during a recent press conference to promote HBO’s Phil Spector, a David Mamet-directed and written drama about the murder trial of Phil Spector (Pacino) and his relationship with attorney Linda Kenney Baden (Helen Mirren), who represented the ’60s pop music maestro in his first trial for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson.
Helen Mirren and Al Pacino in David Mamet‘s Phil Spector, airing next month on HBO.
He said he “didn’t feel the necessity to meet” Spector because the jailbird Spector “would have been…a different person. The person I’m playing is the guy who was there before he was convicted.” Fine, but then he said “I played him as what I believe David Mamet wrote and how I believed to interpret him.” And that was it?
I’m going to ask a three-month-old question again, and this time it’s addressed to Pacino and well as Mamet. Are you guys telling me that neither Pacino nor Mamet has watched Vikram Jayanti‘s The Agony and Ecstasy of Phil Spector? Are you telling me that the idea to make a Spector film wasn’t at least partly inspired by Jayanti’s doc, which aired on British TV in 2008 and opened at the Film Forum in June 2010?
Your film came together in (I believe) either late 2010 or early 2011 and was shot sometime between the middle and final-third of that year, and you’re telling me the idea just occured to Mamet or producer Barry Levinson all on its own & out of the friggin’ blue?
No offense but I don’t think so, guys. You should do the decent thing and give credit to Jayanti, if not contractually then at least in interviews.
“The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which has a reputation for making occasionally head-scratching choices when picking Globes nominees and winners, has faced further criticism for this year’s slate of nominations, which did not include several Black-led Oscar contenders such as Da 5 Bloods, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Judas and the Black Messiah in the nominees for the group’s top award.” — from another Perman-Rottenberg 2.21 article, this one titled “Golden Globes voters in tumult: Members accuse Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. of self-dealing, ethical lapses.”
Everyone understands the current system of check-list requirements when it comes to major org memberships and the big awards shows, which is why it’s perplexing that the HFPA doesn’t just wise up and play along.
HE especially believes that Shaka King‘s Sidney Lumet-like Judas and the Black Messiah completely merited a Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture, Drama, and that Lakeith Stanfield‘s performance as the traitorous Bill O’Neal — far more mesmerizing and penetrating than Daniel Kaluuya‘s Fred Hampton — should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor.
And I’m still lamenting the absence of Steve McQueen‘s Mangrove — easily the finest feature film of 2020, but wrongly lumped into Emmy contention because it was originally offered on British TV last November as part of a five-part anthology called Small Axe.
THR‘s Scott Feinberg: “Will the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, shamed by the backlash, not just add a couple of Black members, but also make substantial structural changes?
“It seems the organization could address multiple concerns about its current composition — among the lifetime members is at least one who is legally blind — by taking a page out of the film Academy’s book and significantly expanding its membership to include people who are more active and legitimate. But to make it possible for such people to join the organization, the HFPA would also have to reform its ethics rules, and it is a big question mark if it would be willing to do so.
“Alternatively, studios, networks and talent could band together and boycott the Globes until things change — but it seems unlikely that anyone would want to risk being identified as the organizer of such a movement in case it fails to yield results.
“At the end of the day, it will probably once again fall upon the HFPA’s broadcasting partner for the Globes, currently NBC, to decide whether or not all of this behavior and attention is so bad that it needs to take action. I haven’t been able to obtain a copy of the broadcasting deal that was signed in 2018, but I suspect that NBC must have an out if it wants one — or wants to use one as a threat to demand change. Because without TV money, the HFPA would be cooked.
“I, for one, want only the best for all of my fellow journalists, both inside and outside of the HFPA — but I also want all of my fellow journalists to behave in a manner befitting our profession. Now, more than ever, we don’t need to give people a reason to dismiss us as ‘fake news.'”
Phil Spector, the once-great music producer and guilty-as-charged murderer of Lana Clarkson, is dead of Covid at age 81. In a prison hospital, but basically in prison. Convicted of Clarkson’s ’03 murder in ’09, Spector would have been eligible for parole in 2024.
Most of the obits are going to repeat the standard line about Spector having been a brute and a fiend — an appropriate description, yes, for anyone who maliciously ends the life of another human being outside of armed combat.
But we’re all a blend of good and not-so-good elements, angels and goblins and all kinds of in-between, and I’m sorry but Spector wasn’t all fiend. (Just ask Greta Gerwig, who once told me she’s a big fan of Spector’s classic-era music.) Because for a certain period in his life, despite the fact that he was regarded as a bizarre permutation and an aloof prick by nearly everyone for decades…for a certain period he was touched by God. Or was God’s conduit…whichever.
Spector was the first maestro-level rock music producer, the creator of the famous “wall of sound” jukebox signature that peaked between 1960 and ’64, and was occasionally imitated by Brian Wilson and several others (Spectorco–produced George Harrison‘s All Things Must Pass) for years following — “Be My Baby”, “Chapel of Love”, “Just Once in My Life”, “There’s No Other (Like My Baby)”, “Then He Kissed Me”, “Talk to Me”, “Why Don’t They Let Us Fall in Love”, “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'”, “Da Doo Ron Ron”, “I Can Hear Music”, and “This Could Be the Night”.
Please, please watch Vikram Jayanti‘s The Agony and Ecstasy of Phil Spector, which has been on YouTube for nearly a decade. I wish it could be seen in HD. I would buy a copy if it was. It’s one of the best documentaries about a music industry superstar ever made — perhaps the best ever.
Here’s a piece I wrote about it on 6.28.10 — “Dark Star“:
I’m into Spector more than most people in my realm. Jayanti’s doc is what got me there. I’ve known Spector’s musical signature all my life — that “wall of sound” thing that gave such ecstatic echo-phonic oomph to all those early to mid ’60s hits (“Be My Baby”, “Walkin In The Rain“, “River Deep, Mountain High”) and Beatle songs he produced a few years later. But I’d never heard Spector speak or gotten to “know” him until I saw Jayanti’s doc.
Spector is a fascinating man — there’s no getting around that. A brilliant, oddball X-factor “character” of the first order. I’ve known a few guys like Spector. They’re egotists and half-crazy and it’s always about them, but they’re a trip to talk to and share stories with. If you love show business, you can’t help but love how these guys are always sharp as a tack and don’t miss a trick and are always blah-blahing about their genius and their importance.
Except Spector’s blah is backed up by truth. He really did shape and inspire rock ‘n’ roll in its infancy, and touched heaven a few times in the process.
Yes, he probably shot Clarkson, a 40 year-old, financially struggling actress, on 2.3.03 when she was visiting his home. Or maybe he threatened to shoot her and the gun accidentally went off. Or whatever. And maybe Spector telling a Daily Telegraph reporter two months before the shooting that “he had bipolar disorder and that he considered himself ‘relatively insane'” was a factor. And maybe he deserves to be in jail for 19 years. The guy is obviously immodest and intemperate with demons galore.
But you can tell from listening to Spector that he’s some kind of bent genius — that he’s brilliant, exceptional, perceptive — and that it’s a monumental tragedy that these qualities co-exist alongside so much weirdness inside the man — all kinds of strutting-egoist behavior and his having threatened women with guns and all of that “leave me alone because I’m very special” hiding-behind-bodyguards crap. Because life is short and the kind of vision and talent that Spector has (or at least had) is incredibly rare and world-class.
That’s why Jayanti’s film is so absorbing, and why the title is exactly right. Why do so many gifted people always seem to be susceptible to baser impulses? Why do they allow bizarre psychological currents to influence their lives? What kind of a malignant asshole waves guns around in the first place?
I’ll tell you what kind of guy does that. A guy who never got over hurtful traumatic stuff that happened in his childhood (like his father committing suicide), and who decided early on that he wouldn’t deal with it, and so it metastasized.
It’s another tragedy that this BBC doc, originally aired in England in 2008, is only viewable on YouTube, and in such cruddy (480p) condition.
Spector’s story encompasses so much and connects to so many musical echoes and currents that people (okay, older people) carry around inside, and the way this history keeps colliding with what Spector probably did (despite his earnest claims to Jayanti that he’s innocent) and the Court TV footage and the evidence against him and the thought of a woman’s life being snuffed out…it’s just shattering.
Phil Spector and the Ronettes during a 1963 Gold Star recording session in Los Angeles.
I’ve seen Jayanti’s doc twice now and I could probably go another couple of times. Anyone who cares about ’60s pop music and understands Spector’s importance in the scheme of that decade needs to see this thing. It’s a touchstone trip and an extreme lesson about how good and evil things can exist in people at the same time.
90% of the doc alternates between interviews with the hermetic Spector, taped between his first and second murder trials, and the Court TV footage. But the arguments and testimony are often pushed aside on the soundtrack by the hits that Spector produced with the Ronettes, the Righteous Brothers, Ike and Tina Turner, the Crystals, Darlene Love, John Lennon, George Harrison, Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans (that rendition they and Spector recorded of “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” in ’63). It’s the constant back and forth of beauty and darkness, beauty and rage, beauty and warped emotion — repeated over and over and over.
I never knew that the title of Spector’s “To Know Him Is To Love Him” (which he wrote and performed with the Teddy Bears in ’58) was taken from his father’s gravestone. I’d forgottten that he wrote “Spanish Harlem” — an exceptionally soulful ballad for the 1960 pop market. I never gave much thought to what “Da Doo Ron Ron” meant — I never thought it meant anything in particular — but Spector says it’s a metaphor for slurpy kisses and handjobs and fingerings at the end of a teenage date. Spector also had a good deal to do, he says, with the writing of Lennon’s “Woman Is Nigger of the World.”
There are two curious wrongos. Spector mentions that his father committed suicide when he was “five or six” — he was actually nine when that happened. (How could he not be clear on that?) Spector also mentions that line about John Lennon having thanked him for “keeping rock ‘n’ roll alive for the two years when Elvis went into the Army” when in fact Spector’s big period began just after Elvis got out of the Army, starting around ’60 or thereabouts.
Spector mentions that if people like you they don’t say bad things about you, but it’s clear that if he hadn’t been such a hermit and hadn’t acted like a dick for so many years, and if he hadn’t been photographed with that ridiculous finger-in-the-wall-socket electric hairdo, and if he’d just gotten out and charmed people the way he does in the interview footage with Jayanti then…well, who knows? Maybe things might have turned out differently.
In a 3.19 Newsweek/Daily Beast article, Jayanti revealed/reminded that Spector’s case is being reviewed by a judge under the terms of federal habeas corpus. Spector’s two attorneys have argued that the judge in Spector’s second trial was biased in favor of the prosecution and that Spector’s rights as a defendant were trampled upon. A decision is expected within hours/days/weeks.
Last night I attended a special LACMA screening of David Mamet‘s Phil Spector (HBO, 3.24). It’s far from a typical big-murder-trial, guilty-or-innocent movie. It’s very tight and taut in the classic Mamet style, and it contains a pair of compelling, at times amusing, charismatic performances from Al Pacino as Spector-the-nutbag (brilliant, flamboyant, fickle, rambling of speech, bewigged, gnome-like) and Helen Mirren as his flinty defense attorney, Linda Kenney Baden.
Obviously Pacino and Mirren are destined for Emmy award nominations. Ditto Mamet for direction and screenplay.
Phil Spector runs a mere 91 minutes. That obviously indicates considerable discipline given the reams of material on Spector and his first Lana Clarkson murder trial, which resulted in a hung jury in September 2007. (The state re-tried Spector and got a conviction in May 2009 for second-degree murder. He’ll be eligible for parole when he’s 88 years old.) Mamet could have made an epic-sized thing, or at least one lasting two or three hours.
And yet it’s not so much about story-telling as the wielding of a blade that cuts in and around like a sushi chef. Great skill and flair and theatrical pizazz have been brought to bear.
The script may remind you in certain ways of Mamet’s script for The Verdict (’82) in that it’s much more about psychology than courtroom strategy, and also because it offers an ethically precise point of view. As The Verdict was about redemption, Phil Spector is about damnation.
It’s all “factual” in a sense, but it’s also a fantasia of sorts. It’s a visit to Mamet-world. His strategy is to focus on the relationship between Spector and Baden, but in so doing explore all the key arguments that suggested Spector was guilty of deliberately shooting Clarkson in the mouth and also that he may not be. The idea is that in a certain foolish or theatrical way Clarkson may have been holding the gun and that it may have gone off accidentally. It does seem likely that what happened was accidental. It does seem likely that there would have been more blood found on Spector’s white jacket if he had been holding the gun. The evidence is the evidence.
Mamet has said over and over that Phil Spector is about the “mythological possibilities” in Spector’s life and personality and in the murder trial itself. In line with this he tries a little mumbo-jumbo tap-dancing right out of the gate. “This is a work of fiction,” a statement reads before the film begins. “It’s not ‘based on a true story.’ It is a drama inspired by actual persons in a trial, but it is neither an attempt to depict the actual persons, nor comment upon the trial or its outcome.” I don’t know what the hell that really means.
And yet Mamet’s film states quite clearly that (a) the facts indicate that Spector didn’t deliberately kill Clarkson, and (b) she may well have been holding the gun when it went off.
I think that’s pretty close to taking a side, don’t you? Mamet looks at the facts of the case and conveys a conclusion. I was persuaded by his presentation.
Mamet’s bottom-line view is that Spector basically screwed himself by being himself. He was convicted of “we don’t like you.” He was convicted for not opening himself up to People magazine and admitting he’d been a snarly, selfish fuck and asking for forgiveness. He was convicted for having owned several guns and having threatened other women with them. He was convicted for having acquired a reputation of being a reclusive shit. He was convicted for wearing a series of appalling wigs.
Pacino has a lot of fun with Spector. It’s a beautiful virtuoso performance. He rolls around like a pig in shit. But honestly? Pacino makes Spector seem a little bit goofier and wiggier than he seems in Vikram Jayanti‘s The Agony and Ecstasy of Phil Spector. Here’s an excerpt from my 6.26.10 piece about the doc, which I first saw three or four years ago:
“[Spector is] a fascinating man — there’s no getting around that. A brilliant, oddball X-factor ‘character’ of the first order. I’ve known a few guys like Spector. They’re egotists and half-crazy and it’s always about them, but they’re a trip to talk to and share stories with. If you love show business, you can’t help but love how these guys are always sharp as a tack and don’t miss a trick and are always blah-blahing about their genius and their importance.
“Except Spector’s blah is backed up by truth. He’s a serious maestro who really did shape and inspire rock ‘n’ roll in its infancy, and who touched heaven a few times in the process.
“Okay, so he probably shot Lana Clarkson, a 40 year-old, financially struggling actress, on 2.3.03 when she was visiting his home. Or maybe he threatened to shoot her and the gun accidentally went off. Or whatever. And maybe Spector telling a Daily Telegraph reporter two months before the shooting that ‘he had bipolar disorder and that he considered himself relatively insane’ was a factor. And maybe he deserves to be in jail for 19 years. The guy is obviously immodest and intemperate with demons galore.
“But you can tell from listening to Spector that he’s some kind of bent genius — that he’s brilliant, exceptional, perceptive — and that it’s a monumental tragedy that these qualities co-exist alongside so much weirdness inside the man — all kinds of strutting-egoist behavior and his having threatened women with guns and all of that ‘leave me alone because I’m very special’ hiding-behind-bodyguards crap. Because life is short and the kind of vision and talent that Spector has (or at least had) is incredibly rare and world-class.
“That’s why Jayanti’s film is so absorbing, and why the title is exactly right. Why do so many gifted people always seem to be susceptible to baser impulses? Why do they allow bizarre psychological currents to influence their lives? What kind of a malignant asshole waves guns around in the first place? I’ll tell you what kind of guy does that. A guy who never got over hurtful traumatic stuff that happened in his childhood (like his father committing suicide), and who decided early on that he wouldn’t deal with it.”
Thanks to LACMA’s Elvis Mitchell for being a nice guy.
Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere to HBO publicists (sent today): I’m looking to jump in on any press events, junket interviews, DVD screeners or screenings that will allow me to full savor David Mamet‘s Phil Spector (HB), 3.24). I’ve been all over Phil Spector since ’09 and am a huge fan of Vikram Jayanti‘s The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector, which Mamet has said was an inspiration for his script. So please send me a screener or invite me to whatever press gatherings or you-name-it. Thanks.
I wrote a nice friendly letter this morning to David Mamet, director-writer of a Phil Spector movie that completed filming in the summer of 2011 but has been MIA ever since. I wanted to know when it’ll be seen, but the email address I used is no longer valid. I called HBO to ask when Mamet’s Untitled Phil Spector Biopic (as it’s called on the IMDB) will air, and they just said “2013” with no hint about what month or season. So I’m writing a public letter to Mamet as follows:
(l.) Al Pacino as Phil Spector in David Mamet’s HBO biopic; (r.) Real McCoy during first Lane Clarkson murder trial .
“David — So what’s up with your Phil Spector movie with Al Pacino and Helen Mirren? You finished shooting it…what, 18 months ago and it occured to me this morning that no one’s heard diddly squat about it since then, and I think most people expected it would be on HBO sometime in 2012. HBO movies don’t hang around in limbo for months on end — they shoot, they go into post, and they air a few months later. They never, ever take a year and half to appear (presuming your film will debut sometime early next year) after principal photography.
An HBO spokesperson just told me it’s due to air ‘in 2013’ with no indication of when. What is it, some legal issue? Something to do with Lana Clarkson?
“You’re impossible to reach so I thought I’d try the ‘open letter’ approach. We spoke once at Sundance years ago. It might have been for The Spanish Prisoner. I’m a radical liberal but I don’t hate you for becoming a conservative. I actually like righties on a personal level. They seem straighter and more plain-spoken about things than liberals. I actually admire them when it comes to personal loyalty and doing favors and “speaking from the heart.”
“Could we do a phoner in which we’d discuss the film and your work on it, the genesis of the project and how it’s all been going? Two, when in 2013 do you expect it might be seen — spring, summer, late summer? Three, what’s been the hold-up? And four, why haven’t you and yours ever acknowledged that Vikram Jayanti‘s documentary about Spector, The Agony and Ecstasy of Phil Spector, which opened at the Film Forum in June 2010, at least partly inspired the making of your film?
I’m into Spector more than most people in my realm. Jayanti’s doc is what got me there. wrote the following article, titled “Dark Star,” on 6.26.10:
I’ve known Phil Spector’s musical signature all my life — that “wall of sound” thing that gave such ecstatic echo-phonic oomph to all those early to mid ’60s hits (“Be My Baby”, “Walkin In The Rain“, “River Deep, Mountain High”) and Beatle songs he produced a few years later. But I’d never heard Spector speak or gotten to “know” him until I saw Vikram Jayanti’s The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector, which will play the Film Forum from 6.30 to 7.13.
And he’s a fascinating man — there’s no getting around that. A brilliant, oddball X-factor “character” of the first order. I’ve known a few guys like Spector. They’re egotists and half-crazy and it’s always about them, but they’re a trip to talk to and share stories with. If you love show business, you can’t help but love how these guys are always sharp as a tack and don’t miss a trick and are always blah-blahing about their genius and their importance. Except Spector’s blah is backed up by truth. He’s a serious maestro who really did shape and inspire rock ‘n’ roll in its infancy, and who touched heaven a few times in the process.
Okay, so he probably shot Lana Clarkson, a 40 year-old, financially struggling actress, on 2.3.03 when she was visiting his home. Or maybe he threatened to shoot her and the gun accidentally went off. Or whatever. And maybe Spector telling a Daily Telegraph reporter two months before the shooting that “he had bipolar disorder and that he considered himself ‘relatively insane'” was a factor. And maybe he deserves to be in jail for 19 years. The guy is obviously immodest and intemperate with demons galore.
But you can tell from listening to Spector that he’s some kind of bent genius — that he’s brilliant, exceptional, perceptive — and that it’s a monumental tragedy that these qualities co-exist alongside so much weirdness inside the man — all kinds of strutting-egoist behavior and his having threatened women with guns and all of that “leave me alone because I’m very special” hiding-behind-bodyguards crap. Because life is short and the kind of vision and talent that Spector has (or at least had) is incredibly rare and world-class.
That’s why Jayanti’s film is so absorbing, and why the title is exactly right. Why do so many gifted people always seem to be susceptible to baser impulses? Why do they allow bizarre psychological currents to influence their lives? What kind of a malignant asshole waves guns around in the first place? I’ll tell you what kind of guy does that. A guy who never got over hurtful traumatic stuff that happened in his childhood (like his father committing suicide), and who decided early on that he wouldn’t deal with it.
It’s another tragedy that this BBC doc, originally aired in England in 2008, is viewable on YouTube. Perhaps this will affect ticket sales at the Film Forum, or maybe it’s generally understood that you can’t absorb a doc about a music legend unless you see it as a unified big-screen thing with decent sound pumping out of the speakers.
It mainly just needs to be seen, period. Spector’s story encompasses so much and connects to so many musical echos and currents that people (okay, older people) carry around inside, and the way this history keeps colliding with what Spector probably did (despite his earnest claims to Jayanti that he’s innocent) and the Court TV footage and the evidence against him and the thought of a woman’s life being snuffed out…it’s just shattering.
Phil Spector and the Ronettes during a 1963 Gold Star recording session in Los Angeles.
I’m adding Jayanti’s film to my list of the year’s best docs. I’ve seen it twice now and I could probably see it another couple of times. Anyone who cares about ’60s pop music and understands Spector’s importance in the scheme of that decade needs to see this thing. It’s a touchstone trip and an extreme lesson about how good and evil things can exist in people at the same time.
90% of the doc alternates between interviews with the hermetic Spector, taped between his first and second murder trials, and the Court TV footage. But the arguments and testimony are often pushed aside on the soundtrack by the hits that Spector produced with the Ronettes, the Righteous Brothers, Ike and Tina Turner, the Crystals, Darlene Love, John Lennon, George Harrison, Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans (that rendition they and Spector recorded of “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” in ’63). It’s the constant back and forth of beauty and darkness, beauty and rage, beauty and warped emotion — repeated over and over and over.
I never knew that the title of Spector’s “To Know Him Is To Love Him” (which he wrote and performed with the Teddy Bears in ’58) was taken from his father’s gravestone. I’d forgottten that he wrote “Spanish Harlem” — an exceptionally soulful ballad for the 1960 pop market. I never gave much thought to what “Da Doo Ron Ron” meant — I never thought it meant anything in particular — but Spector says it’s a metaphor for slurpy kisses and handjobs and fingerings at the end of a teenage date. Spector also had a good deal to do, he says, with the writing of Lennon’s “Woman Is Nigger of the World.”
There are two curious wrongos. Spector mentions that his father committed suicide when he was “five or six” — he was actually nine when that happened. (How could he not be clear on that?) Spector mentions that line about John Lennon having thanked him for “keeping rock ‘n’ roll alive for the two years when Elvis went into the Army” when in fact Spector’s big period began just after Elvis got out of the Army, starting around ’60 or thereabouts.
Spector mentions that if people like you they don’t say bad things about you, but it’s clear that if he hadn’t been such a hermit and hadn’t acted like a dick for so many years, and if he hadn’t been photographed with that ridiculous finger-in-the-wall-socket electric hairdo, and if he’d just gotten out and charmed people the way he does in the interview footage with Jayanti then…well, who knows? Maybe things might have turned out differently.
Chicago Tribune‘s Mark Caro has gathered quotes about the much-derided Golden Globes telecast, which will air this coming Sunday. “Rarely do meaninglessness and relevance, sham and suspense, smash up against one another with such flair as at the Golden Globe Awards,” he begins. “They’re a joke, truly — the result of fewer than 100 international junketeers rewarding films and the studios that have plied them with freebies and celebrity access during the last year.”
Quote #1: “As an influencer, no one can deny that the Globes is one of the truly big guns — not just because 17 million people tuned in to their show last year, but because the media pays so much attention to their choices to gauge what films are picking up momentum in the Oscar race” — Sony senior vp media relations Steve Elzer.
Quote #2: “They’re not respected, but they do provide a really big TV show for talent to show themselves and to get themselves into the bloodstream.” — myself.
Quote #3: “I think they’re actually less influential now than they’ve ever been. Winning at the Globes or being in the thick of the argument at the Globes is significant only in that you’re not left out of the party.” — MCN’s David Poland.
Here’s a chart that Caro assembled that shows that while the Globes are a decent indicator as to which films may be Oscar-nominated, in four of the last five years they’ve handed out best picture awards to films other than the Best Picture Oscar winner. (Did I rephrase that correctly?)
I still maintain that Vikram Jayanti‘s 2003 doc, The Golden Globes: Hollywood’s Dirty Little Secret, is one of the funniest and most revealing examinations of the HFPA ever assembled.
Congrats to the 15 feature-length docs that have been short-listed by the Academy: (1) Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, d: Alex Gibney; Enemies of the People, d: Rob Lemkin, Thet Sambath; (3) Exit through the Gift Shop, d: Banksy; (4) Gasland, d: Josh Fox; (5) Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould, d: Michele Hoze, Peter Raymont; (6) Inside Job, d: Charles Ferguson; (7) The Lottery, d: Madeleine Sackler; (8) Precious Life, d: Shlomi Eldar; (9) Quest for Honor, d: Mary Ann Smothers Bruni; (10) Restrepo, d: Tim Hetherington, Sebastian Junger; (11) This Way of Life, d: Thomas Burstyn; (12) The Tillman Story, d: Amir Bar-Lev; (13) Waiting for ‘Superman’, d: Davis Guggenheim; (14) Waste Land, d: Lucy Walker; (15) William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe, d: Emily Kunstler, Sarah Kunstler.
Lamentable Omissions (possibly due to technicalities or whatever): Errol Morris‘s Tabloid, Kate Davis and David Heilbroner‘s Stonewall Uprising; Vikram Jayanti‘s The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector; Werner Herzog‘s Cave of Forgotten Dreams; Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg‘s Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work; Don Argott‘s Art of the Steal and Leon Gast‘s Smash His Camera.
The most frequently cited contender for the just-announced 2010 Gotham Independent Film Awards is Debra Granik‘s Winters Bone, which was nominated for Best Feature, Breakthrough Actor (Jennifer Lawrence) and Best Ensemble Performance. Lisa Cholodenko‘s The Kids Are All Right and Lena Dunham‘s Tiny Furniture received two nominations each.
The 20th annual Gotham Awards’ ceremony will be held on Monday, 11.29 at Cipriani Wall Street. Besides the awards presentations Robert Duvall, Hilary Swank, Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky and Focus Features CEO James Schamus will each be presented with a career tribute.
Best Feature nominees are Black Swan, Blue Valentine, The Kids Are All Right, Let Me In and Winter’s Bone. Wells to Gotham Awards committee: If you decide not to give the award to Black Swan, obviously the finest film in this bunch, please give it to poor little Let Me In, which really needs the attention.
Best Documentary nominees are 12th & Delaware (what’s that?), Inside Job, The Oath, Public Speaking and Sweetgrass. (And the reason that Amir Bar Lev‘s The Tillman Story, Alex Gibney‘s Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, Banksy‘s Exit Through The Gift Shop, Kate Davis and David Heilbroner‘s Stonewall Uprising, Vikram Jayanti‘s The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector and Leon Gast‘s Smash His Camera weren’t nominated is….why again? I’m not clear on the criteria.)
Breakthrough Actor nominees include Prince Adu (Prince of Broadway), Ronald Bronstein (Daddy Longlegs), Greta Gerwig (Greenberg), Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone) and John Ortiz (Jack Goes Boating).
