Tina Fey in All Seasons

I’m surely not alone in considering Tina Fey a national treasure. She has oodles of talent as a performer, and is a welcome MC at televised events. But I want to focus here on her brilliance as a writer, someone who can look at facets of our culture run amok and synthesize them into comedy gold.  

 Fey has been involved with television since her Saturday Night Live days (basically 1997-2006, though who can forget her return as Sarah Palin before the 2008 election?) In 2006 she created and starred in 30 Rock, an hilarious satire of a TV network, and she was also responsible for Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, which I found weird and funny. As a screenwriter, she made a brilliant debut with the 2004 teen comedy, Mean Girls. Who but Tina Fey would be smart enough to read a self-help book about adolescent bad behavior, sociologist Rosalind Wiseman’s Queen Bees and Wannabes, and fashion it into a hit movie?

 It helped a great deal that the film was populated by rising young stars, including Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Lacey Chabert, and Amanda Seyfried, along with Fey herself (in a teacher role) and best bud Amy Poehler, playing a particularly indulgent mom. This now-classic satire of high school girl-cliques has ultimately become a part of the American vocabulary, labeling self-improved and self-satisfied young women as “The Plastics” and introducing the concept of a “burn book” full of deliciously malicious gossip. (Clearly this reference is what led tech journalist Kara Swisher to publish in 2004 her Burn Book: A Tech Love Story. I’m also amused that the main non-conformist girl in the film, the one who aims to bring down The Plastics for reasons of her own, is dubbed Janis Ian, immortalizing the young singer/songwriter who had expressed her own teen angst through major pop hits like “At Seventeen.”)

 So potent has Mean Girls been that it was reincarnated, with Fey’s help, as a 2018 Broadway musical and a subsequent 2024 film adaptation. But Fey has not been idle since. It intrigues me that her most recent project is a mini-series which has just been renewed for its second season on Netflix. Again she chose her source carefully: a 1981 film written, directed by, and starring the wonderful Alan Alda. Alda’s The Four Seasons, which (natch!) features a lot of Vivaldi on the soundtrack, chronicles three well-heeled married couples who are close friends and always vacation together. Over the course of a particularly eventual year, one husband strays in dramatic fashion, and the others begin to question their lives and their values. The cast is first-rate (Carol Burnett plays Alda’s hyper-efficient wife, and Len Cariou, Sandy Dennis, Jack Weston, and Rita Moreno are the others in the friend-group). It was nice to see, at the beginning of the Netflix mini-series, the now eighty-nine-year-old Alda in a gracious cameo role.

 The first season of Fey’s Four Seasons miniseries essentially expands on the basic concept of Alda’s film, showing mature adults—long settled into marriages and careers—suddenly re-thinking their life-choices. It’s interesting to see Fey, who essentially plays the Carol Burnett role, wrestling with being a middle-aged person. We’re so used to her focusing in her projects on teenagers and on career gals: now she’s portraying a wife and the mom of a college-age daughter, someone who has made good choices but is starting to wonder what it all means. At 55, as a wife and a mother of two, Fey is clearly beginning to contemplate the full trajectory of a mature life. And we get to come along for the ride. 

 

Older Doesn’t Always Mean Wiser: “Nobody’s Fool”

Why’d I watch a 1994 character piece called Nobody’s Fool? Partly it had to do with the death in May of writer/director Robert Benton, whose down-to-earth work I’d long admired. As a complete unknown, he co-wrote (with David Newman) Bonnie and Clyde, one of the most remarkable films of the remarkable film year 1967. Over a decade later he both wrote and directed Kramer vs. Kramer, winning himself two Oscars. And there was another Oscar in 1984, honoring his original script for Places in the Heart, a film based—I’m told—on his own Texas family. He directed that one too.  

 Watching Nobody Fool was my salute to Benton’s talent for making the everyday seem special and unique. It was also my tribute to co-star Jessica Tandy, for whom this was a final film. (The original Blanche DuBois died at age 85, just before the film’s release.)  Many others in the film’s cast are also no longer with us: it’s particularly poignant to see Philip Seymour Hoffman in the small but goofy role of a small town cop who’s a little too quick on the trigger. But of course the biggest loss has been that of star Paul Newman, who—then just shy of 70 years of age—was nominated yet again for a Best Actor Oscar for this role. (He lost to Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump, but at this late point in his career Newman had already finally snagged a statuette for The Color of Money.) He would be nominated once more for 2002’s Road to Perdition, voiced a role in Disney’s Cars in 2006, and passed from the scene in 2008, at age 83. 

 Nobody’s Fool is poignant, but also quite funny. (At least some of the credit should go to novelist Richard Russo, who wrote the novel on which the film is based.) Set in the dead of winter in an upstate New York hamlet where everybody knows everybody’s business, it focuses on Donald “Sully” Sullivan, a sometimes-construction worker with a bum knee, an appreciation for poker, and a boyish enjoyment of playing tricks on his boss (Bruce Willis). He may seem happy-go-lucky, but there are dark memories of a drunken father and of his own greatest misstep: walking out on a wife and young son many years before. Though he only moved across town, Sully and his son have never re-connected. But the son is back now, with kids and problems of his own, and Sully finds himself in the odd position of needing to act like a grown-up. It’s a layered and thoroughly fascinating performance.  

 Part of what makes the film feel so lived-in is the casting of veteran actors who really help the fictional North Bath, New York feel like a community full of lovable eccentrics. There is, for instance, the rather inept lawyer (Gene Saks) who puts up his artificial leg as his stake in a poker game. Bruce Willis, who reportedly took a major pay cut for the chance to act with Newman, is memorable as the construction boss (and feckless womanizer) who makes Sully’s life miserable but owns a really classy red snow-blower that becomes a running joke. As Willis’s neglected wife, Melanie Griffith is her appealing self. 

 What’s really striking about Newman’s character is that—for all his reputation as a ne’er-do-well—he turns out to be one of the kindest souls in town. It’s his kindness that Jessica Tandy sees in him when she refuses to stop being his landlady, despite her own son’s bluster. Yes, he’s a nuisance, but we sure need more of his ilk.  

 

 

 

Scratching My Old Ass

My Old Ass, a dramedy that popped up at the end of 2024, seems at first glance a raunchy teen flick, full of lots of giggling, girl-on-girl sex, and gorgeous vistas of the Canadian countryside. It’s only later that the viewer discovers the film’s tender heart. And realizes that writer/director Megan Park, a Canadian multi-talent who has much more on her mind than teenage vulgarity, is headed for a bright future.

 It's the end of summer, a very poignant time if you’re about to leave home for college in the big  bad city. Elliott and her gal pals (why this trend of giving leading ladies masculine character names?) are camping on the shore of a local lake, celebrating Elliott’s eighteenth birthday and  pondering what the future will hold. There’s a ceremonial ingestion of magic mushrooms,  and Elliott wakes up in her tent to discover an unexpected visitor, a thirty-something version of herself (Aubrey Plaza).

 Elliott is skeptical, of course, but is finally persuaded that this older pal is a future incarnation of herself, sent to guide her on her pathway toward adulthood. It all sounds helpful . . . until Older Elliott sternly warns her not to have anything to do with a guy named Chad. No prob: she doesn’t know anyone named Chad. But then . . . a nice-looking young man comes paddling up, and she’s trying hard not to be smitten.

 The film’s central section has Elliott desperately trying to avoid Chad, for reasons that she can’t explain and her “old ass” (who’s just a phone call away) refuses to clarify. Chad is kind, smart, and good-looking: what’s not to like? It’s not until late in the movie that Elliott decides—despite all the warnings—that Chad is just too good to be removed from her life. It’s then that Older Elliott finally admits how and why a relationship with Chad will upend her life . . .  and belatedly agrees that, despite it all, he is worth the pain that will inevitably arise.

 Far be it from me to spill all the script’s secrets. Let’s just say here that this wacky teen comedy evolves into a serious exploration of the heartache that is all a part of growing up and moving out into the world. (Aside from the whole Chad business, Elliott needs to come to terms with her parents, who’re suddenly planning to sell the cranberry farm on  which she was raised, And she needs to make peace with her younger brothers, whose goals in life seem hugely different from her own.)

 The coming of age dramedy has always been popular with movie-going audiences, dating back to Mickey Rooney in the Andy Hardy films. In my own generation, The Graduate (1967) was the movie that spelled out the joys and pitfalls of impending adulthood. The year 1978 saw an exuberant high school musical based on the stage hit, Grease. The previous year had brought us the star of Grease, John Travolta, girding up to move beyond Brooklyn in Saturday Night Fever. The Eighties were, of course, the era of John Hughes, who—in films like Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Pretty in Pink—explored the pain and pleasure of high school.

 The eighteen-year-olds of M y Old Ass are hardly as innocent as the Andy Hardy gang or even John Hughes’ youthful ensembles. Sex and drugs are definitely a part of their lives. Still, they remain good kids, tentatively checking out the world they’re going to inherit. I defy you not to be touched..

 

 

“Sideways”: Grapes, Nuts, and Flakes

Quaffed any good pinot noir lately? The grape got new respect in 2004 via Alexander Payne’s Sideways, a box office hit that was also a critical darling. (It was nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture, and won for the adaptation of Rex Pickett’s comic novel by Payne and co-author Jim Taylor.) I’ve long used it in my UCLA Extension advanced screenwriting courses as one way to approach various aspects of the screenwriter’s craft. Sideways provided a major boost to the acting careers of Paul Giamatti and his castmates, as well as a shot in the arm to tourism in California’s Santa Ynez Valley. It also upended the wine industry: after the advent of Sideways, merlot was considered by many to be a wine grape non grata.

 In 2024, Applause Books released Sideways Uncorked, described on its cover as “the perfect pairing of film and wine.” There’s no question that the authors know whereof they speak. Kirk Honeycutt was for twenty years a writer and then the chief film critic of The Hollywood Reporter. So he knows the film world inside and out. His in-depth understanding of independent films like Sideways was enhanced by his experience with low-budget maven Roger Corman on Final Judgement, a 1992 priest-and-stripper quickie for which Kirk wrote the original screenplay. (As Roger’s story editor I worked with Kirk on the project. I best recall a little moment in which the accused killer tries to get away from potential danger by climbing aboard a city bus. Roger refused to accept this quirky choice, reasoning that a badass required a motorcycle or something cooler than public transit. Thus my boss firmly rejected what I had found original and characteristic.) 

 In this book, it’s Kirk’s job to explain how Sideways came to be, how it was written, financed, cast, shot, and distributed.  Part of his focus is on the implications of Sideways being an indie film: by not allowing a studio with deep pockets to dictate key artistic choices (like the dream casting of George Clooney and Brad Pitt in the leading roles instead of the less glamorous Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church), Payne preserved his vision of this film as featuring two ordinary down-on-their-luck guys.

 Kirk’s insider stories about the making of Sideways, corroborated by the film’s cast and crew, are augmented by the contributions of his wife, Mira Advani Honeycutt. A longtime wine journalist, she puts her expertise to work in explaining the realities of the wine industry, especially as this applies to the Santa Ynez Valley. She begins by focusing in on the all-important physical properties of the area, what the French call “terroir.”  These are the environmental factors—relating to weather, soil quality, and the like—that determine which grapes can be most successfully planted in a given plot of land. Santa Barbara County’s Santa Ynez Valley offers vastly different climate conditions from Northern California’s famous grape-growing counties, and she traces the history of pinot noir cultivation in the region, showing in detail how this notoriously finicky grape (see Giamatti’s now-famous speech about the special needs of pinot) thrives in its soil. For wine lovers, she also advises on the best wineries for pinot noir in California, Oregon, and elsewhere. Nor does she neglect merlot, which is scorned by Giamatti’s character in the film, but certainly is worthy of having its own enthusiasts. It’s amusing to note that the book is dedicated “to Cinephiles, Pinotphiles, and Merlot Mavericks.”

 Want to know how the real-life owner of a Solvang restaurant made a fortune off the success of Sideways? This book’s for you. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Going “Psycho”

The other evening, in the line of duty, I went back in time and watched Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 masterwork, Psycho. Ironically, I never saw it in a theatre back in the day. (I was a young teenager at the time, and not especially keen on horror.) Needless to say, I’d heard all the brouhaha, and was aware that Janet Leigh’s character didn’t fare well during her overnight stay at the Bates Motel. But the intricacies of her killer’s identity were beyond me—until I took a long bus ride with a gaggle of other girls, and one filled me in on the entire plot.

 I’ve since seen the film, of course, though it’s been a while. But because I was asked to comment on a new biography about a Hollywood regular (Christopher McKittrick’s Vera Miles: The Hitchcock Blonde Who Got Away), it seemed appropriate to check out Miles’ appearances in films by legends like John Ford (The Searchers) and Alfred Hitchcock. Miles was, I learned, slated to become Hitchcock’s next leading lady, once Grace Kelly decamped for Monaco. After portraying Henry Fonda’s long-suffering wife in The Wrong Man, Miles was his original choice to play the fascinating female lead in Vertigo (1958), until scheduling problems got in the way. Still, she was featured by Hitchcock in the drama that kicked off his well-loved TV series. And for Psycho she played the important (though not especially interesting) role of Janet Leigh’s sister,  searching for the missing Marion Crane and letting out an impressive scream when she learns the truth about the spooky old lady in the big Victorian house.

 Psycho may be today one of Hitchcock’s best remembered films, but it’s far from typical of his oeuvre. Yes, it features a pretty blonde woman in dangerous circumstances, but Janet Leigh’s role in Psycho is far removed from those played by such Hitchcock blondes as Madeleine Carroll, Eva Marie Saint, Grace Kelly and Tippi Hedren. Whereas the usual Hitchcock heroine is elegantly attired, Leigh’s Marion Crane is most familiarly depicted wearing a bra and slip. She’s attractive, but she’s no mysterious glamour girl caught up in international intrigue. The criminal act of which she’s guilty is the sordid little matter of stealing a wad of cash from her employer so that perhaps she can finance a marriage to her not-so-willing boyfriend (John Gavin, a future US ambassador to Mexico).  

 Hitchcock’s decision to cast Janet Leigh, a rising star with a well-publicized Hollywood marriage (to Tony Curtis) as Marion Crane meant that the bulk of his budget went toward her salary. The result was that other aspects of Psycho were necessarily simplified. It was shot, mostly by Hitchcock’s TV crew, in austere black & white, in contrast to such glossy full-color Hitchcock productions as 1958’s Vertigo and 1959’s North by Northwest. But in fact this austerity seems to suit the simple but macabre story.

 One thing I never realized until I read the Vera Miles bio is that Hollywood, in its wisdom, eventually decided to sequelize Psycho. Hitchcock was dead and gone in 1983 when Universal Pictures paid Richard Franklin to direct Psycho II, set 22 years after the original story. Marion Crane played no part, of course, but Anthony Perkins signed on to again play Norman Bates, newly released from a mental institution. And Vera Miles signed on too, to portray the still-grieving sister who thirsts for revenge. Naturally there are mysterious and macabre doings galore . . . and three years later, Perkins himself directed Psycho III, described as a psychological slasher film. Happily, I missed these cinematic gems.  

 

 

Peru Comes to the Vatican . . . and Hollywood

Understandably, there’s been much press coverage of Leo XIV, the newly anointed first American-born pope. Though a native of Chicago, Leo (born Robert Francis Prevost) has close link with the nation of Peru, where—after years of missionary work—he took on Peruvian citizenship. His strong emotional ties to that picturesque South American nation reminded me of Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian Nobel laureate who died this past April at age 89.   

 Vargas Llosa was a man of letters who in 1990 nearly became Peru’s president. (He was defeated in a landslide by Alberto Fujimori, who quickly claimed dictatorial powers and was run out of the country 10 years later.) A prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction, Vargas Llosa began his literary career circa 1960. Though I’ve read his charming early work, known in English as Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, I by no means pretend to be an expert on his entire oeuvre. Still, for a time I worked closely with his younger cousin, Luis Llosa Urquidi, familiarly known as Lucho.

 When I was Roger Corman’s story editor at Concorde-New Horizons in the late 1980s, we shot many low-budget features in Argentina, taking advantage of the exotic locales and cheap labor costs that the current U.S. regime is striving to combat with tariff threats. At one point Roger was flying to Buenos Aires to check on a troubled production, but bad weather forced the plane to land in Lima, Peru. Screenwriter Fred Bailey told me what happened next: Roger “got off the plane, took a taxi into town, opened up the yellow pages, and got somebody to find motion picture production listings. Made a few calls asking who was the best filmmaker in Lima . . . they all said, ‘Luis Llosa.’ Called him up, made a deal, and was back on the airplane to Argentina within a couple of hours.”

 Through Lucho, Roger discovered a wealth of Peruvian locations: crumbling colonial cities, towering mountain ranges, a long seacoast, lots of jungle. There we shot everything from ecological thrillers (Fire on the Amazon) to a submarine drama (Full Fathom Five) to a rather fascinating Bonnie-and-Clyde-in-the Future project (Crime Zone). More than once we used the jungles of Peru to stand in for Vietnam in would-be war epics. What made shooting in Peru particularly exciting was the fact that this was the era of the Shining Path, an armed guerrilla group aiming to launch a People’s War against established government entities. One Corman production was actually briefly put on hold when the Shining Path took over a location. I’m certainly not complaining about the fact that I, as story editor, remained safe in my office in Brentwood, California.

 Of course Lucho, despite his thriving cinematic career in Peru, aspired to make American movies with prospects beyond those of the low-budget Corman world. His biggest success was a 1997 creature-feature called Anaconda, shot in South America with a big-name cast that included Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Jon Voigt, and Owen Wilson. This snake-infested horror movie grossed $136.8 million worldwide and quickly became a popular franchise. It earned money but not respect, ending up nominated for six Razzie Awards (including Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Actor, and Worst Screenplay), all of which it lost to Kevin Costner’s The Postman. Still, today it’s considered a cult classic.   

Another successful member of the Llosa clan is writer/director Claudia Llosa Bueno, niece of both Mario and Lucho.  Her second feature, The Milk of Sorrow, explores the folk beliefs of indigenous Peruvians. In 2010 it was nominated for the Best Foreign Film Oscar.

 

 

Water, Water, Everywhere: Life of Pi

Life of Pi is many things to many people. It can mean Yann Martel’s deeply philosophical novel, which after numerous rejections came out in 2001, immediately attracting readers and winning major prizes. It can mean the 2012 film version, which nabbed eleven Oscar nominations and won four statuettes, one of them for Ang Lee’s inspired direction. It can mean the stage adaptation I saw recently in Los Angeles, following residences in London and New York.

 The stage and film versions of course have to meet the challenge of depicting a boy on a small boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. And, oh yes, his companion throughout this watery journey is a large and very hungry-looking Bengal tiger. The production I saw at L.A.’s Ahmanson Theatre was heavily reliant on what we might call stage magic. The show effectively used both light and sound to suggest the briny deep. And that tiger? Here the production team turned to an artform that has earned respect on western stages only in the last fifty years or so: puppetry. When we think of puppets, it’s easy to focus on child’s play: on Punch and Judy or on their rather more sophisticated cousins, the Muppets. Other cultures, though, have made deeply serious and deeply adult use of puppets in their theatres and even in their religious rituals. (See the shadow puppets of Indonesia who act out sacred myths on behalf of the whole community.) I’m personally a big fan of Japan’s bunraku, in which large doll-like puppets perform traditional romantic stories that can be poignant, even genuinely tragic.

 I credit Julie Taymor with discovering that puppets belong on the Broadway stage when in 1997 she took on the challenge of directing The Lion King, a live-action version of the beloved Disney film. Ten years later, a best-selling novel called War Horse was dramatized in London, featuring life-size horse puppets manipulated by several well-coordinated actors. In Life of Pi, two highly-trained human performers slip under the skin of that tiger, and others in the cast make a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan, and a large turtle come to life before our eyes. 

 The movie version of Life of Pi poses different challenges. Movies by their nature need to look real; there’s not the willing suspension of disbelief that distinguishes an audience response to a theatrical performance. Filming on water is hardly easy. That fact was acknowledged by my former boss, Roger Corman  when he turned down a chance to make an early version of Water World. (Kevin Costner’s 1995 take on this futuristic story, in which rising sea levels have made dry land mostly disappeared, was seriously weighed down by a huge production budget.) Still, these days it’s not impossible for a well-trained movie crew to make a large tank on a studio lot look like an entire ocean.

 But the challenge of the cinematic Life of Pi was less the ocean than the animals. Here’s where modern CGI came into its own: the film’s central critters are almost entirely computer-generated, and the young Indian actor playing Pi was never in contact with a dangerous wild beast. (Needless to say, Suraj Sharma’s role was not an easy one: he had to react to the moods and moves of creatures who were simply not there.) 

 The Oscars won by Life of Pi are a testament to the film’s technical brilliance. In addition to Ang Lee’s directorial triumph, the film was honored for its remarkable cinematography and visual effects. To be honest, though, it’s not as riveting a movie as the eventual Best Picture winner, Argo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Losing the Invaluable Frances Doel

 It saddens me to report that Frances Doel is no longer with us. Frances, the right-hand woman of Roger Corman for many a decade, passed away last week at age 83. Late in life she had moved from Hollywood to Lexington, Kentucky to be tended by family members who loved her dearly. Honestly, she was dearly loved by everyone who knew her.

 Roger Corman met Frances at Oxford, where she was completing a degree in literature. Always a shrewd judge of character, he concluded she was smart enough and agreeable enough to make a good assistant. And so she was—learning from scratch pretty much every job involving a movie set or a production office. Her obituary notes that she ghost-wrote the first draft of many a Corman classic, and named among her official writing credits 1974’s Big Bad Mama, starring Angie Dickinson, William Shatner, and Tom Skerritt.  I was there, and I’m happy to share how this first Frances Doel screen credit came to be.

 Starting work as Roger’s new assistant in 1973, I immediately gravitated toward the New World Pictures story department, which was Frances. Roger wanted a seriocomic rural crime thriller à la Bonnie and Clyde. Back then, he was obligated to use WGA writers, and it was a lot cheaper to hire a union writer for a re-write than for an original script. That’s why he gave Frances an entire weekend to crank out a workable first draft. Of course she came through with flying colors, devising a story about a poor but feisty mother and her two nubile daughters who take up robbery in Depression-era Texas. She slapped a fake name on the draft, and we hired a veteran screenwriter to take over.

 William Norton, a very nice guy, seemed to enjoy story meetings with Frances and me. As we worked our way through characterizations and plot points, Bill started wondering aloud about the author of  the original draft. He went so far as to ask if this “man” could come in and discuss some story questions he had. At which point, Frances and I began to giggle. Eventually we couldn’t hide the fact that Frances herself was the screenwriter in question. A true gentleman, Bill insisted that she share script credit with him. It was the start of her string of Corman writing credits, which ultimately included such low-budget classics as Crazy Mama and Sharktopus.

 Did Frances get paid extra for her weekend labors? She couldn’t recall exactly, but suspected that Big Bad Mama earned her about $100. Over the years, her earnings increased, netting her $5000 each for quickie creature-features like Dinocroc. But she never entirely earned Roger’s full respect. As she told me in 2011, soon after her retirement, “Roger got very fed up with me,” because he didn’t feel she was writing fast enough. Ten script pages a day seemed to him a reasonable amount, even though she was putting in this work solely on evenings and weekends.

 Frances stayed with Roger in various capacities for decades, earning the genuine praise of such celebrated Corman alumni as John Sayles and Ron Howard. But the time came when she got a better offer, moving on to Disney, and then ultimately joining with Corman alum Jon Davison to produce hits like Starship Troopers. Eventually she hit on hard times, and Roger—in a burst of generosity—gave her my job as Concorde-New Horizons story editor. It hurt, but I couldn’t blame Frances. She was too gracious and too special for that.   

 And I could never have written my Roger Corman bio without her.