Black hits 'Rewind' for Gondry
Source: Hollywood Reporter
NEW YORK -- Jack Black is set to star in Michel Gondry's eccentric comedy "Be Kind Rewind," playing a junkyard worker whose brain is magnetized, destroying every tape in his friend's video store and forcing the pair to remake the lost films.
Focus Features International has nabbed international sales rights to the under-$20 million Partizan production, which begins a two-month shoot Sept. 6 in New York.
In the film, Black plays Jerry, a man whose headaches lead him to believe his brain is melting. His brain is magnetized, leading to the unintentional destruction of movies in his friend's store. In order to keep the store's one loyal customer, an elderly lady with signs of dementia, the pair re-creates a long line of films including "The Lion King," "Rush Hour," "Back to the Future" and "Robocop."
Producer Georges Bermann of Partizan said Gondry, who has partnered with Partizan since 1989, came to him in November with several ideas. "Michel is a super-fast writer," Bermann said. "He handed in a draft in three weeks. Focus was interested the second they heard the pitch and made the deal within a week."
"We are thrilled to be working with Michel Gondry again," FFI president of sales and distribution Alison Thompson said. "We are especially excited that Jack Black, whose comic genius is perfectly placed within this imaginative script, has been brought into the fold."
Focus released the Gondry films "Dave Chappelle's Block Party" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."
No domestic or international distribution deals have been lined up for the film, which FFI plans to launch into the international marketplace this month at the Festival de Cannes
"I know EVERYTHING!"
NL, Gondry push 'Rewind' for Black
Source: Hollywood Reporter
New Line Cinema has picked up domestic rights to writer-director Michel Gondry's newest project, "Be Kind Rewind." Jack Black is attached to star in the film, which is being produced by Georges Bermann, Gondry's partner in Partizan Prods. Black will portray a junkyard worker who attempts to sabotage a power plant that he believes is melting his brain. But when his plan goes awry, the magnetic field that he creates accidentally erases all of the videotapes in a local video store where his best friend, Mike, works.
I have tremendous faith in Gondry and the idea of Jack Black remaking Robocop already makes me laugh... but this sounds like the joke won't sustain a feature.
New on video: Dunst eyeing 'Rewind' mode
Source: Hollywood Reporter
Kirsten Dunst is in negotiations to join Jack Black in Michel Gondry's "Be Kind Rewind." The move would reunite her with Gondry, who directed her in 2004's "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."
The story, by Gondry, follows a junkyard worker (Black) who attempts to sabotage a power plant that he believes is melting his brain. But his plan goes awry and the magnetic field he creates erases all of the videotapes in the local video store where his best friend works. Fearing that the mishap will cost his friend his job, the two team to keep the store's only loyal customer -- a little old lady with a tenuous grasp on reality -- from realizing what has happened by re-creating and refilming every movie that she decides to rent.
Georges Bermann, Gondry's partner in Partizan Prods., is producing. Shooting is scheduled for late September.
Guy Stodel and Toby Emmerich will oversee for New Line Cinema, which is releasing the movie domestically.
Dunst is shooting "Spider-Man 3" and will fly to France next week for the premiere of "Marie-Antoinette," which opens in the U.S. in October. She is repped by WMA and Management 360.
What's Jack Black's Role In Michel Gondry's Next Film? Pick One ...
Source: MTV
Kirsten Dunst is in talks to join wacky 'Be Kind Rewind.'
Imagine Jack Black and Kirsten Dunst starring in a movie together, directed by the quirky mastermind behind "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."
Now, imagine dozens of movies like that.
That's the winning concept of "Be Kind Rewind," the bizarre-sounding script that has Dunst in negotiations to reunite with "Sunshine" director Michel Gondry. Written by Gondry, the film will follow a junkyard worker (Black) who is convinced that a local power plant is gaining influence over his brain. When he attempts to sabotage the plant, the resulting magnetic field erases all the tapes in the video store where his best friend works.
Afraid that the mishap will cost the friend his job, the two become determined to maintain the membership of a little old lady who is the store's only loyal customer. Enlisting the help of anyone they can find, the group sets out to re-enact every movie that she decides to rent — including "Robocop," "The Lion King" and "Back to the Future" — filming each one themselves and passing it off to her as the original version.
Gondry, sought-after by actors and musicians alike for his unique take on the world, rose to prominence directing the Lego-filled music video for the White Stripes' "Fell in Love With a Girl" and several Björk videos, starting with "Human Behavior." He recently directed the Dave Chappelle concert film "Block Party," and will soon release his trippy "The Science of Sleep," starring Gael García Bernal.
Dunst and Black have a long line of high-profile projects in the works, many of which will be pushed back by "Rewind," if all goes according to plan. The film is expected to start filming in September, with at least one more major casting announcement due soon.
Glover minds 'Rewind' store
Source: Hollywood Reporter
Danny Glover is in final negotiations to star in Michel Gondry's "Be Kind, Rewind" for New Line Cinema.
Gondry wrote and will direct the story about a man (Jack Black) who becomes magnetized at a local power plant. He accidentally erases all the videotapes at the local video store owned by Glover's character. Instead of telling the stubborn, old-fashioned store owner what happened, Black and his friend decide to re-create the films using the townspeople as actors.
The film is produced by Georges Bermann, Gondry's partner in Partizan Prods. Guy Stodel and Toby Emmerich are overseeing for the studio.
New Line Cinema has domestic rights, and Focus Features International will handle distribution abroad.
Focus released the Gondry films "Dave Chappelle's Block Party" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."
Glover also is signed on to Antoine Fuqua's action drama "Shooter" at Paramount Pictures and next appears in DreamWorks' "Dreamgirls" in December.
"Rewind" is set for a late-September start.
Mos Def Tells You To "Rewind"
Source: Dark Horizons
Mos Def has been added opposite Jack Black in Michel Gondry's "Be Kind Rewind" reports Blackfilm.
In the film, Black plays Jerry, a junkyard worker whose headaches lead him to believe his brain is melting. While trying to sabotage a local power plant, he becomes inextricably magnetized and leads to the unintentional destruction of movies in his friend's video store.
In order to keep the store's one loyal customer, an elderly lady with signs of dementia, the pair re-creates a long line of films including "The Lion King," "Rush Hour," "Back to the Future" and "Robocop."
Focus Features will release the film, which starts shooting in New York for two months starting September 6th.
Dunst Off Rewind?
Source: JoBlo
BE KIND REWIND, the comedy that will star Jack Black trying to recreate every movie in a video rental store, is set to begin filming in my Jersey backyard in a few weeks and the cast is starting to take shape. Director Michel Gondry (ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND) was originally in in talks with Kirsten Dunst and Dave Chappelle to co-star but both appear to have left the project. The two have been replaced by relative newcomer Melonie Diaz and Mos Def. The two actors will play the workers at a video store whose tapes are accidentally erased by Black's character who gets magnetized trying to sabotage a power plant. The three hatch a plan to recreate the movies rented by the store's only loyal customer. Mia Farrow has signed on to play the store's customer with Danny Glover taking on the role of the store's owner. As I said before, filming is scheduled to begin in Passaic, NJ on September 5th. Black can be seen next in another New Line comedy TENACIOUS D AND THE PICK OF DESTINY.
In the Future with Michel Gondry
Source: Edward Douglas
When film historians look back at the first decade of the 21st Century, one of the filmmakers who will be remembered as a true innovator is French director Michel Gondry, who first started getting attention after his second collaboration with Charlie Kaufman, 2003's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Gondry's latest film, The Science of Sleep, is the closest a filmmaker has come to capturing the feeling of being in a dream on film.
ComingSoon.net spoke with Gondry a few months ago for the concert film Dave Chappelle's Block Party, and when we had another chance to talk to him, we wanted to find out how things were going on his next few projects.
Since speaking to him a few months ago, Gondry signed onto his next movie as writer and director, the New Line comedy Be Kind Rewind starring Jack Black, Kirsten Dunst, Danny Glover, Mos Def and Mia Farrow. Considering Gondry's growing popularity in Hollywood and this being a major studio release, we wondered whether the movie would still have Gondry's normally quirky sensibilities. "I'd like to have a big blockbuster, but I think I can't help myself," he admitted. "It's the story of about these two guys who erase all the films at a video store, so they reshoot the films themselves, but there is another layer. It's what I started with Dave Chappelle and 'Block Party' about community and different ethnicities. These guys, by recreating these films, bring the community back together, they give life to a city that was a little dead. So that's my message, and they want to shoot this film about this guy, Fats Waller, who they pretend to have lived there but never did, and he becomes a hero that has kind of been invented by them. Maybe I should not tell you too much about the story. Basically, they do their own story but reinvent it."
Does this mean that Black will be spoofing the various movies he is trying to remake? "Well, it's not spoofing," he replied. "They're trying to do these movies, first just so that people can see the tapes that they erased, so they do it seriously, but obviously, they're only two and then they have their mechanic dressed as a girl, so it's going to be comical."
And how have things been going, working with Jack Black to prepare for the movie? "I met [Jack] years ago and we kind of evolved separately," Gondry told us. "Obviously, he's a big star now, but we started around the same time, so I'm pretty aware. We started to rehearse already and it's going great."
Since Gondry just finished working with Dave Chappelle, one of the country's most popular comedians who's well known for his movie spoofs, we wondered whether Gondry considered having Chappelle play a role in Be Kind Rewind. "We talked about it and then he didn't want to do a movie, so Mos Def is doing it," Gondry explained. "But it's not like he said yes and then he said no. We talked about it and then he explained to me that he didn't want to do a movie at this time. I'd like to, but I'm not sure that he's willing to be in a movie. Unfortunately for him, he didn't get to do movies that he liked very much, so he's not really crazy about moviemaking. I think he got more out of doing his TV show and doing stand-up comedy. He's always going to return to stand-up because he likes this contact with an audience, and he also doesn't like to be bothered by someone telling him what to do to be funny. Maybe he's already talking to Spielberg for a project, I have no idea."
For a long time, Gondry has been attached to direct a movie based on Rudy Rucker's novel Master of Space and Time, and earlier this year, it was announced that comic artist Daniel Clowes (Ghost World, Art School Confidential) would be writing it. When ComingSoon.net spoke to Clowes, he thought that it would be a hard movie to adapt, and Gondry agreed. "It's very hard, because all of the reasons why we both like the book are reasons why the studio would not do a movie," he said. "It's quirky, it's unpredictable, it's absurd, it's funny, and it's not slick at all. It's rough and grotesque. It's like if you would try to do 'Superman' now the way it was done in 1978 or 'Superman III,' for instance, which was really f*cked up and quirky with Richard Pryor. To me, that is the only superhero movie I liked. I don't like the serious superhero."
Gondry mentioned that writing the film is kind of on hold until he has a chance to meet with the studio to discuss it. "Right now I'm busy doing this one, so I'm going to see, but definitely, I want to work with Dan Clowes, and maybe we'll do something else together. He's a really great guy."
The Science of Sleep opens in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, September 22. You can read more with Gondy about this fascinating film closer to that date.
Jack Black Playing Muhammad Ali? Hit 'Rewind' And You'll See
Actor 'remakes' 'When We Were Kings,' 'Ghostbusters,' 'Driving Miss Daisy' in Michel Gondry's demented comedy.
Source: MTV
BEVERLY HILLS, California — It may have been as a member of Tenacious D that Jack Black rose to stardom, but it's his role in a remake of "RoboCop" that could launch the actor to even further heights. Or maybe "Ghostbusters," some say. Even his work as Muhammad Ali in the documentary "When We Were Kings" could turn heads. And that's not to mention his performance as a black chauffeur in "Driving Miss Daisy."
If you have a hard time believing Black would take on any of those roles, try wrapping your head around this: The "remakes" are all part of his next flick, "Be Kind Rewind," the demented story of a man whose magnetized brain erases every tape in his friend's video rental store. That means the two have to quickly refilm every movie in order to satisfy the store's most loyal customer.
"There [were] tons of movies that we did," Black said of the upcoming Michel Gondry-directed film. "We did 'When We Were Kings,' the documentary about Muhammad Ali — I play Muhammad Ali, strangely. We did 'Superman.' I probably shouldn't say that ... we had to change the name of it to something else — 'Incredible Flying Man,' I think. We did 'Ghostbusters,' we did 'Robocop,' we did 'Driving Miss Daisy,' just to name a few."
For someone who suddenly found himself as the pseudo star of some of Hollywood's best-known classics, Jack Black did surprisingly little research, he admitted.
"We were under strict orders not to watch any of the movies again, and if we had not seen it, [not to] see it," he explained. "[Gondry] wanted it to look that way, [like it] was based on the commercials that you had seen of the movie. Because there was no time in the movie for us to do any research, he wanted to keep that consistent with us as actors — to not have time to research the movies we were remaking."
Call it controlled anarchy or planned spontaneity — contradictions that Gondry purposively fostered on set, Black said.
"He is a very spontaneous director and super-creative on every level," Black explained of the "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" director. "I guess a lot of the time I felt like nobody knew what was going on except for him. I think he likes to create a little bit of chaos on the set and then, at the last minute, focus it."
Our first review of Michel Gondry's BE KIND, REWIND starring Jack Black and Mos Def!!!
Source: AICN
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Yes, the review is very positive and yes, the reviewer wants to be called "Plant! Plant!" but having read the script for this, I tend to believe everything "Plant! Plant!" says. It sounds like what I read was translated perfectly to the screen. The script was incredibly sweet and funny and it sounds like that's exactly what we'll end up with the finished film. Enjoy this very early look at Michel Gondry's BE KIND, REWIND!
Hey, I saw a test screening of "Be Kind Rewind" last night in Pasadena and thought it was great. It's not what I expected, because the film's premise is a little one note. For anyone not in the know, it's about Jack Black and Mos Def as two guys from a run down little vhs video store who accidently expose their library to magnetism, and destroy all their tapes. In an effort to keep from going under, they decide to remake a bunch of the films using a camcorder and a little elbow grease to keep renting them out to people.
Michel Gondry hasn't made a movie like this before, I'm so used to his romance films and focus on what makes our minds work. This is as close to a "studio picture" as he's going to make, but there are no fart jokes here. It's very classy and weird, but mainstream audiences can definetly get into it. Jack Black is pretty standard Jack Black, but Mos Def is great. He and Black's friendship is very fun to watch and is remiscent of the best onscreen duos we've seen in the past. There's a lot of physical comedy, probably inspired by the old time Laurel & Hardy type shorts from the 30's. If they still made those kinds of shorts today, this plot could fit perfectly for one.
I was surprised that Danny Glover was in it. He plays the owner of the video store. It's no wonder he doesn't want to make any more Lethal Weapon movies and wants to make small stuff like this. He's really great in it, and it's probably my favorite role he's had so far. The recreations of the movies were classic Gondry makeshift lunacy. I wish they would've shown more of them, but he seemed to know when enough was enough. The scene where they remake GHOSTBUSTERS will have film geeks rolling in the aisles, this I will promise you. It's the hardest I've laughed in the theater since BORAT. The ending was great, I thought from it's build up that it was going to fall flat, but ended up being the sweetest part of the film.
It's not a think piece, but it left me very satisfied. I think for the hard core film geek, they'll get a little bit more out of the movie because the love for cinema in this movie isn't portrayed as a casual hobby, or a prentious academic analysis. It's more about the fun that comes from the making and watching them. It doesn't have a release date yet, but I think it might come out this summer. The version I saw was pretty complete.
If you post this, call me "PLANT! PLANT!"
From MTV:
By now, you might know the setup for "Be Kind Rewind," the new Michel Gondry-directed flick about two video store clerks (Jack Black and Mos Def) who have to quickly refilm the shop's entire VHS library. But which movie re-creation will have the most fans talking? " 'Robocop' is the movie fans are going to geek out over," co-star Melonie Diaz enthused. "It's funny. I'm a cop, and Jack is Robocop, and it's the three of us singing." A musical version of "Robocop"? "You know, like: 'Robocop! Robocop'!" crooned "The Guide to Recognizing Your Saints" star, invoking the melody of the Robocop theme. "It's really silly." The 22-year-old actress said her character also has a hand in remaking "Rush Hour," "The Lion King" and "Ghostbusters." "Michel is amazing in reinventing these films — they're really authentic because they're made by the characters in the film who don't know anything about movies," Diaz gushed. "They're really low-budget looking, but really beautiful."
gonna go for an early REWIND this eve. i'll report back asap of course, my horses.
how does he do that?
Quote from: modage on March 22, 2007, 12:23:35 PM
how does he do that?
pozer is actually Harry Knowles.
hey folks, pozer here...
let me start by quoting future joel siegel... "Be Kind, Fast Forward." now mind you, this was the roughest cut of a movie i've ever seen at a screening. so rough in fact, that i don't think it was ready to show by far (even for feedback purposes) with its poor character development, horrible pacing, missing dialogue and special effects, etc. if you're looking for the 'what it's about' part of the review, maybe go read one at 'taint tit tool news or something.
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i'll just say (keeping it spoiler free) that it opens cool with this old time movie sequence, then gets really slow and really unfunny really fast, then picks up and gets really funny with the first recreation of a movie then gets old with other recreations then tries to have a heart but fails then picks up with some more funny/zany bits then has one of the coolest long camera shots ever then drags some more then goes to a place no one could possibly care about. jack b and mos d have their moments, however, a lot of little subtle moments (specially with md) are just awkward and unnecessary. there are a lot of jokes and dialogue that are NOT pulled off and need to be cut. the 2001 ASO and ghostbuster scenes were the best bits of the movie. GB definitely got the biggest reaction/laughs. but they were in fact only bits. overall, this is a forgetable film :shock:
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there is no doubt gondry is clever and writes funny bits, but i think he needs to take much MUCH more time with his projects. at least let his pal chuck k take a look at his scripts - or maybe invent some sort of proof read machine gimmick. this felt like they went off of a first draft. as of now, i hold this no higher than a movie like click or envy :shock: X2 in fact, gone dry could have easily written either one of those flicks. he would have executed them more properly, but the story is no greater. saw him in the lobby surrounded by geeks telling him the parts they liked. the joel siegal part of me wanted to yell out "yo, gondry, be kind... rewrite!" but thankfully the cool part of me always kicks the joel siegal part's ass.
you broke the internet.
WARNING: HONEST OPPINION ONLY HERE. NO SPOILERS THO.
i don't intend to break spirits... this was my #7 most anticipated of '07, and i was really disappointed by it. you know how you watch a movie you were looking forward to, and you keep thinking, 'this can't be it, can it?' it's really weird, it's like half gondry and half not. and the half that is gondry is trying way too hard. i really mean what i say about his writing here. it's a great concept but needed to be gone over and over much more and certain plot points needed to take different directions. i'm really hoping it can be salvaged into a decent film. the person i took felt about the same way i did (i rated it fair by the way and have never put as much thought and notes into one of those rate cards as i did with this one) so it was not hated. they really did show it way too early, and here's to wishes of more clever shaping :yabbse-smiley:
I refuse to believe you.
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.twitchfilm.net%2Fpics%2Fbekind.jpg&hash=8d773886f3ecd20199049b5ee4262c6f87b9e6e5)
It's the First Image From Michel Gondry's Be Kind, Rewind!
Source: TwitchFilm
And it features stars Jack Black and Mos Def wrapped in tin foil. Considering this is a Gondry film I'm not surprised in the least. Grinning like an idiot, yes. Surprised, no.
Jack Black stars in this new comedy from the wild imagination of Academy Award winner Michel Gondry about two best friends, one electromagnetic field, and every movie you've ever loved.
When Jerry becomes accidentally magnetized while trying to sabotage the power plant he believes is melting his brain, the magnetic field he gives off ends up erasing all of the tapes in the video store where his best friend Mike works. Now Mike may lose his job, and the only way the friends can think to save it is to keep the one regular customer they have - a little old lady with a tenuous grasp on reality - from recognizing what has happened. The way they do this? By recreating and refilming every movie that she decides to rent of course! From Driving Miss Daisy to Ghostbusters to Rush Hour, these two friends become the biggest stars in their neighbourhood by starring in the biggest movies in the world.
goddamn, it's still a great idea..
and that's weird how they replaced jack black with toby radloff.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvC_ZzXv_Lc
i don't see how this couldn't be the best movie ever. looks like a good trailer, not sure.
Non-Bootleg Trailer here. (http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809761737/video/3631941/)
Quote from: JG on August 08, 2007, 12:14:09 PM
i don't see how this couldn't be the best movie ever. looks like a good trailer, not sure.
yeah,
looks like.
Yeah, the trailer definitely works.
I feel exponentially more positive and excited about this now.
My worries have washed away. I'll put my trust in M. Gondry.
Quote from: JG on August 08, 2007, 12:14:09 PM
i don't see how this couldn't be the best movie ever.
perhaps the upcoming release of other actual best movies ever has something to do with it.
mos def acts kinda hokey in the trailer, and i still don't get why they replaced jack black with toby radloff. :yabbse-huh:
Quote from: Pubrick on August 09, 2007, 06:35:36 AM
mos def acts kinda hokey in the trailer
I was a little concerned about that too. I hope he doesn't do what he did in Hitchhikers and turn out a great performance that just doesn't fit in with anything around him.
I have high hopes for this and I'm praying that the trailer people know what they're doing for once and are saving the best parts of the movie for the movie. The trailer's good and all but if it doesn't get any better than this... but what am I worried about? It's got to be better than Human Nature and I liked that one. Plus, Paul Dinello.
i will be there opening day.........if it is widely released.........which it seems it would be.
i'm going to have to see all those movies i should've seen a long time ago.
if this does suck it would be appropriate to remake it.
Quote from: Pubrick on August 09, 2007, 06:35:36 AM
mos def acts kinda hokey in the trailer
Quote from: pozer on March 23, 2007, 01:47:11 PM
a lot of little subtle moments (specially with md) are just awkward and unnecessary.
Michel Gondry Makes Jack Black A Hero In 'Be Kind Rewind'
'I like to make things with garbage,' the 'Eternal Sunshine' director says of new film.
Source: MTV
NEW YORK — Embark on a trip to the Tribeca office of Michel Gondry, inarguably one of the most wildly imaginative filmmakers working today, and you might conjure up visions of an "Alice in Wonderland"-inspired lair. Perhaps there would be a series of artisans creating an oversize shoe made of nothing but CD covers or something similarly and deliciously absurd. Really, though, it's just an office with desks and workers, like any other.
Still, at the center of it all is the inspired and slightly eccentric madman himself. The 44-year-old French director welcomed MTV into his lair after screening for us the finished print of his latest film, "Be Kind Rewind" (set for release January 2008), a work many are calling his most mainstream yet. That's not too difficult a label to affix after previous work like "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," wherein Jim Carrey has his memories erased in the middle of the night by a stoned Mark Ruffalo, or "The Science of Sleep," a very personal trip of a flick most memorable for a scene in which star Gael Garcia Bernal runs around with giant hands.
"Be Kind Rewind" is accessible, though, if for no other reason than the comforting comic presence of Jack Black, in a role that fits him to a T. Here, the "School of Rock" star is Jerry, a childlike doofus who becomes magnetized and mistakenly erases all the VHS tapes at the video store his friend Mike (a winning Mos Def) has been charged with minding while the boss (Danny Glover) is away. The three leads are rounded out by newcomer Melonie Diaz in a role that was offered to past Gondry collaborator Kirsten Dunst early on.
What happens next is what makes the film both high-concept and, well, Gondry-ish. Jerry and Mike decide that the only way to keep Be Kind Rewind (the store shares the name of the film) going is to re-create movies on their own, in a decidedly low-rent style. Montages of hilariously demented versions of everything from "Ghostbusters" to "The Lion King" ensue. The director summed it up thusly: "It's about two guys trying to cover their mistake in the most absurd way, and in the process [they] get overwhelmed. It's a typical story. By mistake someone becomes a hero." Yes, it doesn't take a subscription to Variety to figure out that their hare-brain scheme works better than anticipated.
Without a doubt, the re-created movies will be the most talked-about aspect of "Be Kind," and it's the element that is most characteristic of Gondry's work. "I like to make things with garbage," he said without a note of embarrassment. All five of his films have possessed a made-from-scratch aesthetic that can't be mistaken for any other filmmaker's. Here, his two protagonists use much of that can-do Gondry attitude to save the day.
Finding the right films to re-create was not without its challenges. Gondry admits that he was unable to gain permission to film his versions of "Back to the Future" or "Superman" (though he says if you look carefully, you'll see a flying man in the background at one point). Many of the films Jerry and Mike re-create are classics from the '80s, an era for which Gondry clearly has affection. He lit up at the suggestion that the film itself recalls the era: "There is a sense of enterprise in this that is very much like an '80s film."
It's not just the plot that harkens back two decades. "Ghostbusters" star Sigourney Weaver has an extended cameo in the film. It's an appearance that Gondry relished. "She came on the set, and we had shot already the re-enactment of 'Ghostbusters.' We showed it to her and she was very moved by it," he said with pride.
Gondry cites two ideas that inspired "Be Kind Rewind." One came from his realization that the old practice of remaking films and creating sequels on smaller budgets back in the 1960s wasn't always so bad. "After the first 'Planet of the Apes,' they all got cheaper, but sometimes they became more interesting. I thought, 'Let's take that process and push it even more," he said.
The other source of inspiration for the film goes all the way back to Gondry's home country. He recalls, "When I was in Paris in the 1980s, I was living in 18th arrondissement, which was the one with the most theaters. And they all got shut down. And I thought, 'One day I'm going to revive one of these theaters and create a community among the neighbors. We would shoot anything we want and finance it ourselves.' "
"Be Kind Rewind" is set in Passaic, New Jersey ("Passaic" sounds poetic in Gondry's heavy accent). While not exactly a mecca for filmmaking, Passaic represented exactly the kind of melting-pot town Gondry felt was perfect for a flick all about community. Of course, even the way Gondry found the setting was uniquely random: "We decided to shoot there because my mechanic, who plays one of the mechanics in the movie, works there. I went to visit him once, and I saw this body shop/ junkyard next to this freeway. It was this little town that was very friendly with Polish, Dominican and African Americans."
Passaic, Gondry explained, is a long way off from the "white suburb in France" where he grew up, a place he says "had no sense of community at all." After working on "Dave Chappelle's Block Party," Gondry said he began to understand what community can mean. "Be Kind Rewind" is a continuation of that.
In the end, the true heart of "Be Kind Rewind" lies in Mos Def's Mike, a good-natured worker for his mentor at the store. Mike idolizes jazz musician Fats Waller, whose story has been passed on to him by Glover and figures prominently in the final act of the story. For Gondry, who himself grew up idolizing greats like Waller and Duke Ellington, the link to jazz is clear. His filmmaking is all about the balance between structure and improvisation on the set. Gondry calls Waller a "punk," and it's clear he could put himself in the same category.
Of course, he's been a punk who's had some big-name collaborators on his side, from Björk to Charlie Kaufman. "Eternal Sunshine," one of the most acclaimed films of the last decade, has clearly been a tough act to follow for Gondry as the specter of Kaufman (who penned that memorable script as well as Gondry's first under-appreciated effort, "Human Nature") looms large for the Frenchman. "Be Kind Rewind" represents just the second film Gondry has directed from a script of his own.
Gondry summed up the arc of his career: "The first film I did with Charlie was not appreciated, and the next was overwhelmingly appreciated. Then the first one I wrote myself ['The Science of Sleep'] was a little less appreciated. The main [challenge] for a director is just to be able to make another movie."
Surely that adoration for "Eternal Sunshine" gives him confidence. "If this movie is not trashed by people, I will start to feel confident," he said with a smile.
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re: Danny Glover's name
go big or go home.
unfortunately, this movie is going to be TERRIBLE. i can feel it.
i predict this will top the box office at least one, if not two, consecutive weeks - i say this with no knowledge of same week competition.
you wouldn't say that if you had read the script.
Quote from: bigideas on November 26, 2007, 04:22:26 PM
i predict this will top the box office at least one, if not two, consecutive weeks - i say this with no knowledge of same week competition.
Rambo.
Quote from: modage on November 26, 2007, 04:24:23 PM
you wouldn't say that if you had read the script.
no i have not.
i'm just going on what the public will see:
jack black
trailer
poster
now knowing Rambo is opening the same week i retract my statement.
Selling 'Be Kind Rewind' with a slapdash of humor
Off-kilter marketing spins off from the writer-director Michel Gondry's tale of minimalist moviemakers.
By Chris Lee, Los Angeles Times
In Oscar-winning writer-director Michel Gondry's upcoming comedy "Be Kind Rewind," Jack Black and Mos Def play accidental auteurs -- a couple of knock-around film novices who end up making movie magic with a minimum of resources: tin foil and cardboard, a junkyard back lot and an ancient camcorder chief among them.
Portraying, respectively, a well-intentioned video store clerk and his amped-up best friend, Def and Black must reshoot a trove of beloved movies -- reenacting and playing all the key roles in "RoboCop," "When We Were Kings," "Driving Miss Daisy," "Rush Hour 2" and "Ghostbusters," among others -- after Black's bumbling character accidentally erases the store's entire inventory of VHS tapes. They call their charmingly slapdash recreations "Sweded" movies (as in Sweden) to persuade the store's skeptical customers to keep renting. "It's a faraway, expensive country," Black explains to one patron.
It's precisely the sort of so-naive-it's-ingenious conflict resolution that prevails in Gondry's filmic universe -- a place where reality is just a poor substitute for surreality. Now, leading to "Be Kind's" Jan. 25 theatrical release, marketers for its distributor, New Line, are giving the film a promotional push that involves Sweding the Internet, the Sundance Film Festival and one of New York's hippest art galleries. As well, it may even result in a number of famous directors' giving reciprocal Sweding treatment to "Be Kind Rewind."
But a clarification about Sweding first.
"I wanted a name that meant nothing," Paris native Gondry said in Clouseau-esque Franglais about the invention of the verb. "I had in mind, like, the suede shoes -- a fake velvet. A sort of ultra-suede? But I always get the word wrong because I'm French."
In the "Be Kind" characters' reductive reasoning, it's more straightforward to reshoot all the films from scratch than to stock the store with new videotapes. With necessity as the mother of their lo-fi invention, the characters use pipe cleaners to stand in for ectoplasmic tractor beams in the Sweded version of "Ghostbusters." Spray-painted cardboard cutouts substitute for animated wildlife in the Sweded "Lion King." And cheese pizza is meant to evoke pooling blood -- the aftermath of a drive-by shooting in the Sweded version of "Boyz N the Hood."
Aaron Sugarman, New Line Cinema's senior vice president for interactive marketing, said the promotional aesthetic was designed to fit the film's broader theme of individual expression via humble means in the Information Age.
"Everyone's taken by this idea of taking these great movies you love and remaking them into your own thing. It's what half the stuff on YouTube is," Sugarman said. "So we wanted to inspire people to do their own Sweding, to tell them what Sweding is and give them the tools to make their own Sweded pieces. We wanted people to be inspired. Because you can Swede a movie, a Web page, a bicycle -- you can take Sweding and extend it to almost anything in life."
Toward that end, the operating idea behind www.bekindmovie.com is that Black's character has also accidentally "erased the Internet" and visitors to the site are responsible for creating a Sweded replacement. Google has been crudely reborn as "Goolge." MySpace has undergone a primitive makeover to become MyFace (a social networking site for the "Be Kind" characters). Another section of the site allows visitors to Swede photos of themselves onto VHS movie covers from New Line films, including "The Wedding Singer," "Blade" and "Freddy vs. Jason." (You can also see clips of some of the movies Sweded in "Be Kind.")
As well, "Easter eggs" -- hidden features computer programmers plant on some Web pages, intending them as inside jokes or personal asides -- abound on BeKindMovie.com. Taking visitors to nearly 20 ancillary websites, they include Sweded dancing cats, Sweded news and weather pages and a Sweded "arcade" that allows visitors to play the proto video game Pong. A PDF download instructs visitors on how to Swede other sites. There are plans for a channel on YouTube dedicated to fan-generated Sweded films.
Most of "Be Kind" takes place in and around a Passaic, N.J., video store (owned by Danny Glover's retirement-age character) that's rapidly losing market share to a nearby Blockbuster franchise. To hear Gondry explain it, he hopes the film -- and particularly that subplot -- will engender a critical dialogue about consumer culture. As such, the writer-director said he will allow marketers to go only so far with their promotions.
"I want to make sure we're not contradicting ourselves by doing too heavy marketing," Gondry said. "Blockbuster wanted a partnership -- advertising in common, television commercials. But my movie is about an indie video store defending itself against a larger corporation! I said no because using our movie to promote Blockbuster and vice versa would be shooting ourselves in the foot."
He added: "Now I hope our movie will be in their shop."
A more natural place to raise awareness for the film is the Sundance Film Festival, which opens Jan. 17 in Park City, Utah. There, Gondry said he plans to perform music from the "Be Kind" soundtrack, backed by Mos Def and Jean-Michel Bernard, who wrote the film's score. New Line is also planning on creating a "Sweding suite" in a house near Main Street (mostly likely done up to look like the video store from the movie) where people can stop by and participate in Sweding, such as inserting themselves into photos from the film.
And on Jan. 24, one day before "Be Kind" hits theaters, Gondry will also bring Sweding to downtown New York's hippest art gallery, SoHo's Deitch Projects. There, for the better part of a month, he will set up a temporary Sweding movie studio.
"Groups of people walk in and will have access to a workshop," Gondry explained. "There is a very simple protocol: You shoot in camera, edit while you shoot -- which means you stop the camera when you want to go to the next scene, you don't edit. Story lines last five to 10 minutes. And most of the exhibition will be a mini back lot with 15 little sets."
"In two hours, you can walk in, create a story, shoot a movie, watch it in the screening movie. Then you leave and take a copy."
Deitch Projects head Jeffrey Deitch arranged a gallery exhibition in conjunction with Gondry's last film, 2006's "The Science of Sleep," and explained the director's appeal in art circles.
"One of the reasons there's interest in the art world is this handmade quality to what he does," Deitch said. "Even though some of his films are big studio films, there isn't a sense that it's all manufactured studio product.
"People love taking modest material and turning it into art. It connects with a strong new trend where anyone can make a movie in their bedroom and backyard and put it on YouTube and take on the whole world."
Over the last few weeks, in a fittingly meta-narrative marketing twist, New Line has beenreaching out to some of the directors whose movies are Sweded in "Be Kind Rewind" -- Robert Zemeckis, Brett Ratner and Ivan Reitman among them -- offering them the chance to Swede Gondry's film.
"I can't tell you what will or won't come to pass," Sugarman said. "But we think it's as much fun for Ivan Reitman to play with 'Be Kind Rewind' as it is for us to play with 'Ghostbusters.' A lot of people in the film industry have a great sense of humor about this stuff."
For his part, Gondry is proud to help subvert the very studio machinery that enables him to make his movies -- especially if that means empowering the people who go see them.
"When you Swede, you create the product you are going to consume for your own pleasure," he said. "Of course I'm doing movies for a studio. Of course I'm part of the system. But I'm using the space given to me to express a different perspective -- people can create their own entertainment."
Who Wants to Meet Michel Gondry?
Source: Cinematical
As a part of an ongoing series that brings indie filmmakers to you at Apple stores, our good friends over at indieWIRE are bringing you Michel Gondry, director of Be Kind, Rewind, which we'll be reviewing at Sundance. This time around, indie film fans in New York, San Francisco and Chicago will have an opportunity to hear Gondry talk about his latest film. Here's all the scoop:
Apple Store, San Francisco
Monday, January 7th - 7:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m
http://www.apple.com/retail/sanfrancisco
(This event will be moderated by SF360's Susan Gerhard.)
Apple Store, North Michigan Avenue, Chicago
Tuesday, January 8th - 7:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m
http://www.apple.com/retail/northmichiganavenue
(This event will be moderated by Time Out Chicago's Ben Kenigsberg.)
Apple Store, SoHo, New York City
Friday, January 11th, 7:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m
http://www.apple.com/retail/soho
(This event will be moderated by indieWIRE's Editor in Chief Eugene
Hernandez.)
Seating for all these events is first come, first served, so you might want to show up a tad early. If you're in any of those cities and go to the event, come back and let us know how it goes.
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APPLE STORE CHAT | Director Michel Gondry Talks "Be Kind, Rewind," Bjork and some Excrement
A standing room-only crowd filled the Apple Store Soho on Friday night to get a glimpse of perennial favorite director Michel Gondry's latest freak-out, "Be Kind, Rewind" as part of indieWIRE's ongoing conversation in film series. The director sat down for an in-depth talk with iW editor-in-chief Eugene Hernandez about the film, as well as his previous work in film and music videos.
The film stars Mos Def as a video store clerk and Jack Black as his idiot man-child best friend who becomes temporarily magnetized after a power plant accident and inadvertently erases all of the tapes. The two attempt to videotape their own crude recreations of the films with props they find around their store (starting with "Ghostbusters," and continuing through "Boyz in the Hood," "Rush Hour 2," and "The Last Tango in Paris"), calling their process "Sweding"; as the films become popular throughout their town (Passaic, New Jersey- in the spirit of the film, a lot of the local residents played extras), the residents start Sweding their own ideas, as the film comes to an ersatz Capra conclusion about the power of filmmaking amongst ordinary people.
"I noticed in my district in Paris there were so many abandoned movie theaters," said Gondry, explaining the origin of the idea. "I had this Utopian philosophy that I could gather people who live next to this theater and give them a camera, and basically the principle will be that they create their own film all by themselves and they watch it all together one week later, and every week they make a new film. It would be very poor technically, but it would be totally compensated by the fact that you look at yourself and your friends."
Hernandez noted that this was, in fact, happening more often, with the spate of current production technology and such websites as Youtube, but Gondry brushed it off, saying "This technology, it was always there since the Super 8 and even the first VHS cameras... Youtube, and all that is...just for the ego, it's to get many many hits." He then added, "I don't want to seem nostalgic."
Of course, the charm of Gondry is that he IS nostalgic (who else would base a story on a video store that refused to convert from VHS to DVDs?), filling his movies with ingeniously analog technology as an ode not as much to a better time as to his own childhood. There is a good deal of artful childishness throughout Gondry's work; the script for this film, as with that of his previous film "The Science of Sleep," seems not to have been written so much as free-associated by a six year-old (it's easy to miss his collaborations with Charlie Kaufman; particularly when working with an actor as mercurial as Jack Black, Gondry could do with a little discipline). A documentary on the director's video box set is entitled "I've been Twelve Forever," but even this seems a little bit generous; when one audience member asked "What was the first thing that you created that you remember being happy about", he answered, without hesitation "My poop." Director Michel Gondry and indieWIRE editor-in-chief Eugene Hernandez at the Apple Store SoHo in New York Friday. Photo by Brian Brooks/indieWIRE
Regarding the term "Swede" for the films, Gondry said, "Initially I thought I would 'Pimp' the movies, but my editor told me it would age very quickly, this term, so I came up with a completely blank name, a name that meant nothing to me." Gondry did not want the actors to study the films being Sweded, saying "I didn't want to just make a copy, I wanted the film to be recreated from collective memory" (much like the recreations in "Son of Rambow" or the grade schoolers' "Raiders of the Lost Ark" project).
What Gondry's films and videos lack in discipline is more than made up for in an intuitive understanding of unconscious association, particularly in his conceptual music videos (think of the lego White Stripes in "Fell in Love with a Girl," or the dancing instrumental monsters in Daft Punk's "Around the World"). This has led to a particularly fruitful collaboration with fellow lunatic pixie Bjork, and the director showed his latest marvel for the singer's "Declare Independence" (their first video together in 10 years), in which a clanging machine spits colored rope into a megaphone, which Bjork shouts into the heads of an industrial audience. Somehow, it makes sense.
"In concert," explained Gondry, "she would jump on the stage and sing with great energy and give this energy to the audience, and then the audience would give the energy to her, and it would effect not only her but the musicians, and the musicians would feed her this energy, and I could see it as a big thread that was giving energy, and I wanted to reflect that with this machine."
To conclude his show, Gondry brought down the house with a Sweded recreation of the "Be Kind, Rewind" trailer, starring himself, which will-- whether he approves or not -- probably find its greatest audience on Youtube. "Be Kind, Rewind" opens on February 21.
Sundance Interview: 'Be Kind Rewind' Director Michel Gondry
Source: Cinematical
Writer-director Michel Gondry's Be Kind Rewind follows two small-town friends, Jerry (Jack Black) and Mike (Mos Def) as disaster at a VHS-only video rental store forces them to try to replace the wiped tapes ... by re-shooting the films they once contained. When their ultra-low-budget, ultra-high-spirit remakes of films like Ghostbusters, King Kong and The Lion King become hits with customers (who are told the tapes are Swedish imports), Jerry and Mike's absurd yet logical attempt to save the store becomes an unexpected starting point for their own artistic journey -- and a celebration of movie making and movie watching. Gondry brings Jerry and Mike's collaborations to life with the mix of big-idea film making and intimate wonder he's demonstrated in all his work, including Human Nature, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep and Dave Chappelle's Block Party. Be Kind Rewind will premiere at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival; Gondry spoke with Cinematical about everything from the joy of creation, racism in film and popular culture, and how Sundance feels different from other film festivals: " (At Sundance) ... I felt encouraged to continue; in Cannes, I felt really like people were asking me to stop doing my job."
Cinematical: I guess the first, and easiest question is where did the idea behind Be Kind Rewind come from for you?
Michel Gondry: It comes from a utopia I had -- do you say 'having a utopia?' -- a belief I have that people can create their own entertainment. I always wanted to create this community that would come and tell their own story, shoot it -- and watch them. The idea is to not have one entity who creates the work, the project, and another entity who consumes it; the idea is people create their own work, like somebody cultivating his garden.
Cinematical: And in the film, we see the characters go from imitation to actual creation; that was always part of the idea?
Michel Gondry: Yes; it's very important to me that they go through this journey; I don't want to advocate imitation; I want to encourage creation. In this case, they start with imitation because their goal is not being creative; they don't realize they're being creative until they become successful and they are forced to be creative. And actually Alma (Melonie Diaz), who's sort of the smarter, the smartest guy of the band -- she's a girl -- tells them that they are much more creative than what they think they are. And then they realize that they don't have to copy movies; they can create their own. And I think it's very important that people not just make their own entertainment, but that they create it, that they really invent the story.
Cinematical: I was sort of taken by comparing Be Kind Rewind to The Science of Sleep, which was very well received, very stunning film visually -- but a lot of viewers, critics and audience members felt that it was a bit airy on a narrative level, that it didn't really have a plot engine to it; was part of Be Kind Rewind's "We have to save the store ..." plot because of that, to give something to move the movie forward?
MG: Ehhhhh, it's not my favorite part of the film, the fact that they have to save the building; in fact, at the end, you don't even know if they save it or not; what's important is that everybody can recognize they fought, and they brought the city together. I think that's more important than the building. Even if the building goes (away), they're going to find another space. But it's true; in fact, it was an idea from my producer, this idea that the building had to be demolished. I was not really in favor ... but if it can help the plot move forward and then the film is more accessible, then fine, I don't mind.
Cinematical: I was very curious about how you chose the films to "Swede" (Jerry, Mike and Alma's term for the re-shot, re-invented films the store rents); was the engine for that affection or admiration? Was it "Oh, this'll be funny to 'Swede,' or ...
MG: It was more affection; it's more effective, as well, when the movies are more iconic, when everybody remembers them. They cannot be too modern, because they aren't in VHS anymore; the store has to be in VHS in order to be erased for the story. But there is not much nostalgia about (the films chosen) -- although you could find a parallel between, for instance, Ghostbusters and Be Kind Rewind in the way that it's about a business that gets started and it's kind of very '80s; I like this idea that three losers start a business, and it becomes huge, and it's absurd. I always loved that; it's a very good comedy principle. But except from that, I didn't mean to "tribute" movies ... it's not about that; it's about people creating their own entertainment.
Cinematical: Was it tricky getting the permissions to do the "Sweded" versions of the films?
MG: It was tricky to get permission to use the box's artwork; that's what's protected. The film, you can copy the story, it's not forbidden; you can make any spoof of any movie you want. But we had to see the boxes because they make reference to them; sometimes, they shoot the movie only based on what they see on the box. So, every time we had to show the box, that was the difficult part.
Cinematical: On a lighter note, why Sweden?
MG: Completely random.
Cinematical: It's very interesting the film's playing Sundance this year, because in many ways it's about the joy of creation. Do you feel like that's a nice happy accident, that this movie about the joy of making movies wound up at a film festival that we still, correctly or not, think of a beginner's or experimental or avant-garde festival?
MG: Yeah, I think it's a good place for this movie to be; I'm still a beginner anyway, so I feel it's completely justified.
Cinematical: Do you remember what it was like when you had Human Nature, your first full-length feature, here at Sundance?
MG: Yeah, it was much nicer than Cannes, I can tell you, because I've been in both places for the same film. (Sundance) was much more friendly, and welcoming. Although, I know (Human Nature) was not really a big hit (at Sundance), but I felt encouraged to continue; in Cannes, I felt really like people were asking me to stop doing my job.
Cinematical: When you're at something like Sundance, do you get the chance to sneak out and actually see a movies?
MG: Yeah; generally, I see two other (movies), or something like that; it's great but ... I wish I could see all of them. It's just ... (Gestures at the lunch he's finished.) I have to eat while I'm talking to you, and (Sundance) is the same. It's not like I'm busy like a president, but I spend a lot of time talking about the film because I want people to know about it and go and see it, so combined with the time it takes to make a movie, (there's) not much time left. Especially when I go to a festival; it's very close to the opening, so I have other stuff to do, I can only stay two days. But we're going to play music (at Sundance) -- with Mos Def, and Jean-Michel Bernard, the composer of the film, so it's going to be good fun.
Cinematical: It's kind of simplistic, but you take on so many different roles in the making of this film; does making Be Kind Rewind just feel like a slightly larger version of making one of Mike and Jerry's efforts (in the film) where everyone does a little bit of everything?
MG: A little bit, yeah; all those techniques I wanted to use, and of course I couldn't use them in a traditional film, because some of them are so simplistic that you would not believe the world you're creating. So, it was a great opportunity to use all these ideas I constantly have. ...
Cinematical: Was it working on Dave Chappelle's Block Party that introduced you to Mos Def and made you go "I want to write for him?"
MG: Yeah -- well, I didn't write for him; I didn't have him in mind. I didn't have anyone in mind on the first draft; second draft, I think had him in mind. But definitely working with (Mos Def) and, as well, working with Dave Chappelle, made me want to do a movie more about community, about racial issues -- about more American elements; because I'm a foreigner, I would not dare do a story about that, but after Block Party, I felt much more engaged into this type of story.
Cinematical: And race really only comes up once in Be Kind Rewind, when you have to explain to Jack's Black's character Jerry that he cannot, in fact, play Fats Waller. ...
MG: There are a couple of other times; re-enacting the Fats Waller stuff, they talk about him being rejected from (boarding) the plane, and you see the black people sitting on the wing ... and I think another time we talk about the fingers (of people's hands, used as a mock piano keyboard for Jerry and Mike's Fats Waller biopic,) being black and white, but not too much. It's a delicate subject (race), but maybe by hanging with Dave a lot, I felt more comfortable bringing the subject up ...
Cinematical: ... And maybe in a more organic way, not saying, "Let us stop the film to have a heavy moment ..." but just putting it through (the film) it where it belongs ...
MG: Humor is great for talking about important subjects; I mean, if you look at the history of films, they were all paved by super-racist movies. I was talking (about D.W.) Griffith before; his movie (Birth of a Nation) is advocating the Klu Klux Clan; the first talking (picture) is The Jazz Singer, and it's a guy (in) blackface. Movies are really racist, and it's kind of amazing now how the biggest star is actually Will Smith; it's sort of a good revenge in a way. Pop culture has been invented by, I think, people coming from an African ancestry -- maybe not African ancestry, but in more recent centuries if you look at pop music -- or sports, one of the most prominent elements of pop culture -- and it's primarily performed by African-American or Black people. So it's sort of a good turnaround, how do you say?
Cinematical: Reversal?
MG: Reversal, that now the biggest star (is African-American), and there are more and more African-Americans that become big stars.
Cinematical: Looking through all of your films -- and even back to things like the stunning video for (Bjork's) "Bachelorette," which I'm a huge fan of -- storytelling seems to be a big element in your films, whether it's a magical book, or people telling their stories into the camera in Human Nature or people remembering the story of their lives in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind ... do you feel like that's something that you're especially interested in, or does it feel more like it's impossible to tell a story without talking about the nature of storytelling?
MG: It's very intriguing to try to understand: What is a story? My girlfriend and I tried to put in words what a story is, and we wrote a list of our ten favorite stories, and trying to figure out what it is. Because people tell you what a story should be in the film industry, and it's very restrictive; I think a story can be a lot of different things. But it's interesting, what makes something be a story; to me there is something I like in storytelling -- you have an event, you have some characters and locations, you have an event that later is going to interfere with the storyline and change the course of it. And I like to visualize the story in geometric shapes, to understand and compare ... that's why it was great to work with Charlie Kaufman, because he has this geometrical sensibility as well; he likes to talk about story in a geometrical way.
Cinematical: And it's good to know the rules before you break them.
MG: Yeah, but I'm not talking about rules, necessarily; I'm trying to understand what it is that makes me feel I'm following a story. What fulfills my sense of "Oh, I heard a story, I lived a story." It's not something I want to learn, it's something I want to find out by myself.
Be Kind Rewind sweded trailer by Michel Gondry
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFN27E34BKg&eurl=http://www.cinematical.com/
he is brilliant.
oh my god.
i don't know why we don't see this stuff coming...
i am so fucking ready for this movie to kick my ass. thank GOD this and CMBB came out in separate years.
Jack Black in comical tribute to film pioneers
Actor Jack Black stars in a comical and nostalgic tribute to the pioneers of cinema and jazz in "Be Kind Rewind," which brings the 2008 Berlin Film Festival to a fitting close on Saturday.
Directed by Frenchman Michel Gondry, best known for "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," the movie tells the story of two friends who try to save a dying video rental business by making their own versions of films.
Black, as exuberant on screen as ever, plays Jerry, a delusional mechanic who is convinced the authorities are using radiation to contaminate and control people's minds.
His sidekick is Mike, played by Mos Def, who works with ageing Fats Waller fan Fletcher (Danny Glover) in a rental store threatened with demolition.
When Jerry is magnetized attempting a hair-brained sabotage mission on a power station, he accidentally wipes the videos.
The pair decide the only way to save the store is to make instant versions of the erased originals, triggering a madcap race against time to remake "Ghostbusters," "Driving Miss Daisy," "Carrie," "King Kong" and many more.
As their scheme becomes increasingly successful, the local community becomes involved and unites in a final bid to save the shop with an original biopic of Fats Waller.
"I always saw Fats Waller as some punk figure of the time," Gondry told reporters.
"He was completely disrespectful ... but yet his music was very elaborate and joyful," he said, speaking in English.
"There is a sense of resistance in the way the African-American community produced some of the most beautiful music of all time by creating their own form of entertainment."
"Be Kind Rewind" recalls the "rent parties" where jazz legends like Waller and James P. Johnson would play the piano and guests would contribute money to pay the host's rent.
It also makes a gentle dig at the film studios when a representative, played by Sigourney Weaver, rounds up the re-makes, has them steamrollered on the street outside and threatens Fletcher with life in jail and a billion-dollar fine.
The irony of using a major distributor and Hollywood stars to make the film is not lost on Gondry.
"The movies itself cost a certain amount of money, it's having quite wide distribution, it has people that you would recognize, so there is a contradiction here," he said.
"It was just trying to prove somehow that people can create their entertainment.
"It all comes from the sort of utopian concept I had for long years that if people gather together among friends or neighbors and did any type of shooting they would have a great time screening it the next week and watching it together."
The movie is released later in February.
Jack Black Q&A
Star talks Be Kind Rewind.
Michel Gondry's hotly anticipated new comedy Be Kind Rewind is released this Friday, and IGN UK recently caught up with the star of the film: Jack Black. The actor was on fine form and covered topics as diverse as working with eccentric French director Michel Gondry, pronouncing co-star Mos Def's name, and abusing his dog when he was a kid.
You and Michel Gondry seem like kindred spirits, but this is the first time you've worked together isn't it?
Black: It is, I met him years ago after I saw a music video of something, no actually I think he called me in because he liked School of Rock and wanted to do something together but he didn't know what yet. We had one of those Hollywood meetings and I was admiring of his work, and then I saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and then I really got desperate to work with him. I was like: "holy crap: a masterpiece!" So I guarded our relationship - our friendship - like a golden pearl... if one existed.
Obviously you're a rocker and Gondry's a jazz man, so where did those two sensibilities meet up?
Black: There was some jazz rock fusion! Not literally though. We never played music together and made a new form of music...
Working with Mos Def, what was it like, and how do you pronounce it properly?
Black: I believe its 'Mose' , as in if you're going to say "most definitely" and then take away the 't' and the 'efinately' - and you get 'Mos Def' - I'm pretty sure that's the origin of that name.
You two spend a lot of time together - did you have a rapport with him and had you seen what he'd done before?
Black: I had seen his work, and I would say we did. Right off the bat, there was chemistry, a chemical reaction in the room, and everyone was like 'whoa: what just happened?' I don't know, but it felt pretty good, and in the rehearsal we gelled pretty well.
I was wondering how Sigourney Weaver got on board, was there ever any discussion she'd play herself and did she get to see your version of Ghostbusters?
Black: I don't know if she ever did see our version, Michel might have given her a private screening, she got involved, uh, good question, I don't know, Michel just probably called her up and she, like I did, jumped at the chance of working with the 'boy genius'. But she was never going to play herself, she was always going to be the studio executive - the soulless bitch - and she did it very well...
Sigourney Weaver apart, I was wondering if there was any thought of remaking one of the films which the cast had starred in, I'm thinking Danny Glover and Lethal Weapon or yourself in the elder version of King Kong? Was that ever discussed?
Black: Was it ever discussed to do a crossover? No, he (Gondry) tried to avoid that thing. We didn't re-do High Fidelity because that would have been the thing where there's a tear in the time space continuum... and we didn't want that to happen; taking you to the movie within the movie. That's why we avoided Lethal Weapon 2 as well and did Rush Hour 2 instead.
Who was it who decided which movies you should do?
Black: That was Michel. I tried to get my ideas in... I was saying: 'let's do Road Warrior' and he said (he puts on a ridiculous French accent) 'no, no...!' He wanted to do the movies that struck a chord with him, except for Driving Miss Daisy I think, which he did because of his friendship with Dave Chapelle. He... did you see that concert he did - Dave Chappelle's Block Party, where he said he hates that movie and thinks its racist and horrible? Michel was giving him a little shout out there. But the rest of the movies were movies that inspired him... and Road Warrior didn't make the list!
Presumably you had to get clearances to remake the films, were there any you didn't get, and of the ones you did, did you go much further than you see in the movie?
Black: Yeah we did have to get clearances for the movies that we sweded - that's what Michel calls it - and we were unable to get Back to the Future. I don't know if it was Robert Zemeckis or someone else, but they said 'no!' and I think its because they were planning a musical version of the movie on Broadway, something like that... what a ridiculous reason! It was like, our take-off on it would have hurt their Broadway run...wait... is that true? I don't know if it was that or they were doing a Back to the Future TV series... but it was ridiculous. You missed out because it was pretty darn good in rehearsal.
You were the Christopher Lloyd character?
Black: Yeah of course; the crazy scientist. It would have been fun, but what was the other part of the question?
Was there more stuff we didn't get to see, and was there the possibility that you might be limiting future work prospects by taking the piss out of these films?
Black: Oh no, I wasn't worried about that, I mean every movie I do I always worry its going to be my last movie because I'm going to suck so bad, but there was no special worry on this one. You know, would Spielberg be pissed off that I made fun of one of his movies? No... They'll be flattered. I mean I'm doing a movie with Jackie Chan and he didn't seem angry... wait, maybe he doesn't know... of course he doesn't know it's not out yet... s**t.
That's King Fu Panda right?
Black: Yeah, does that count? It doesn't really does it? As an actor you don't go "oh, his greatest work was that cartoon", it's only half of a job.
Did you as a kid ever fool around with a camera as a kid?
Black: I didn't, I was more of a tape recorder kid, and I did funny voices and things like that on the tape recorder. What I did do was that I liked to take all the cushions from the chairs and couches in the house and build a maze and force my dog to run through the maze. And I would take a sleeping bag and slide down the stairs. Those are some of the experiments I remember. Also I put Coco Puffs - you have them here? - in my butt... for comedy. Actually it was for experimentation, I was a bit of a scientist...
And what did you discover?
Black:That you can put a lot in there... in your butt.
What is Michel [Gondry] like to work with? Does he give you lots of direction or the freedom to improvise?
Black: He's one of those that'll tell you just enough but not much because he wants you to be surprised by what happens during the scene, and that was pretty fun but also sometimes makes you crazy. It's like: 'why didn't you tell me you were going to do that? (French accent) 'Because yeeu will ave expected it and it will not ave been as good!'.
Is it a glorification of independent film-making?
Black: Is it ideas against big corporate film-making? Umm, yeah, Michel might disagree with anything I'm about to say, but the feeling I got from it was that even in the most depressed run-down parts of the world and parts of town where you wouldn't expect beautiful, creative stuff to happen, these are the places where they most likely will happen, because people are relying on their imaginations. Not very well said but it was a good question - for Michel - where is Michel anyway? Why does he send me out here all by myself, he's the smart one!
How much of the character is you?
Black: Yeah, there's a lot of me in the character, I've never worked in a junk yard but I definitely feel a kinship to the kind of haphazard life that that guy lives, and I feel sometimes when I'm in this industry making movies that I don't really belong there because I'm kind of a pig pen kid... but I don't know if he wrote it for me.
Did you input a lot into the script?
Black: Yeah I did just in terms of little dialogue things because I don't think that Michelle had any help translating his stuff, so a lot of the script was a mystery. I had to go: 'I think what he meant to say was this!'
Is it true you're thinking of doing a film with Edgar Wright?
Black: Yeah, we're developing something...
Because now you've worked with Gondry, Richard Linklaker and Peter Jackson as well; do you deliberately seek out interesting directors?
Black: I do look for good directors mainly, because if you do enough of these movies, where there's not a real creative vision behind it, you start to turn into a robot, and you want to jump of a bridge. So yeah, I was looking for a fresh perspective. I mean its fun to tell stories if it feels original and new in some way.
Are there any films you did that you felt were better than the actual films?
Black: Oh! Well the truth is I never saw Rush Hour 2 , so I don't know if ours is better than that one. I told Michel if I should watch Rush Hour 2 to get ready for that scene, and he said 'no, don't do eet!' and I said 'but I don't know what I'm recreating', he said 'it does not matteuur, it is better this way, do eeet, from what yeuu think it weeuld be, from the comercieeuls that yeeu ave seen', and I was like 'oh, oh right'. So we didn't re-watch any of the films so I can't really remember if they were better!
Michel Gondry on 'Be Kind Rewind' and How He'd Fix 'Back to the Future'
Contemporary cinema's preeminent pop surrealist Michel Gondry returns to theaters this week with Be Kind Rewind, starring Jack Black as a junkyard worker forced to reshoot well-known blockbusters from scratch after accidentally erasing the VHS tapes at his local video store. Gondry spoke with Vulture about the making of the film as well as his next wacky project — skinheads! Sodomy! Daniel Clowes! — currently in the works.
Be Kind Rewind spoofs — or "Swedes" — 2001, Ghostbusters, and Driving Miss Daisy. How did you choose the movies?
Well, the movies had to be on VHS so that set us back a little bit in the past. I didn't think too hard about it. I just needed movies that people had seen, so they'd be able to understand the humor. If I had picked obscure movies or ones that appealed to cinema buffs, I don't think my film would have had the same meaning. I notice how you pronounce it; phonetically "Swede" sounds like "sweet." I think that's the difference between spoofing and Sweding: Sweding is a sweet vision of the film. It's not mocking. Except in the case of movies like Driving Miss Daisy.
Were there any films you were dying to use but couldn't?
We really wanted to do Back to the Future. In fact it's secretly one of my favorite movies ever. It's a really good example of a broad comedy with a smart franchise. But I always got really offended when they had a little white guy explaining to a black dude how to play rock and roll. I wanted to reverse that. I wanted to have Mos Def explaining it to Jack Black! I also thought about Sweding a French New Wave movie in black-and-white, and having Mos Def and Jack Black pretend to speak French, you know— [mumbling] huhbuhdubudieu — with the subtitles painted on a piece of glass in front of them. I had many ideas, but we didn't have time to use them all.
It's almost limitless what you could have done...
Oh yeah, yeah. Maybe they could have gone to the all-porno section! But we decided to keep it somewhat limited.
You ended up shooting in Passaic, New Jersey. What was that like?
The mechanic in the movie is actually a mechanic who'd been working with me, and the junkyard body shop is the place he works. There's a power plant just behind it. That was perfect because at the time I was not sure how Jack Black's character would get magnetized, and the guy who was running the place complained about how the power plant was making him lose his hair and giving him headaches. The people who lived nearby were extremely friendly, and it seemed like quite a peaceful place, though it really felt like poverty, like they were living in quite limited conditions. We tried to include the people living there as much as we could. In the end, those are the kids you see watching the movies. And to me, the reason why they have this very genuine expression of pride and happiness on their faces is that they'd seen us shooting this movie that didn't make sense at the time, and once it was all put together, it was really fun to watch. That's one way I applied my theory about the movie, this concept that people would enjoy films better if they shot them themselves.
So, your next film is an animated feature that you're creating with your son. What kinds of things does he draw?
He draws comic books, he does paintings. He's very skilled and very distorted. He grew up with a lot of freedom to decide what he wanted to watch on TV. I sort of gave up on trying to channel his influences, so he has a lot of ways to express violence and sex. He's 16 years old, and his drawings can be pretty scary. He did the video for [the band] the Willowz based completely on this comic book he did based on the relationship between a dictator and a rebel, in a world where energy is made from hair and everyone is bald. We decided to take the next step and make it into a feature film. Dan Clowes is writing the screenplay, and we have the story line already. The goal for me is to try to integrate the dynamic between my son and myself and reflect it in the dynamic between the dictator and the rebel — my son is the dictator, and I'm being the rebel. It's going to be a little wild.
What was the most shocking thing your son's shown you?
Oh, his drawings? I can't say it! It's... inappropriate. Sodomy, sex. There are Nazis, Hasidic Jews, skinheads in his world, and they cut each others throats. The movie will not be so extreme.
ebert gave it 2.5 stars. CMBB and now this... fuck that guy!
Quote from: Cinephile on February 22, 2008, 03:25:15 AM
ebert gave it 2.5 stars. CMBB and now this... fuck that guy!
68% at Rotten Tomatoes. I'm seeing it anyways.
doesnt sound like it got much (if any) better.
Fucking train-wreck. I've got a friend who says all of Gondry's films are populated by creative retards and I've never minded that until now. The whole fucking town is full of morons and for no real reason except that it makes it easier to sell the idea of everyone loving their movies. You've seen 90% of the "sweded" footage in the trailers and most of their actual filming is done in montage...yay montage. It's like a terrible mix of Gondry and Chris Columbus. I feel dirty.
*Oh and they swede Boogie Nights for all of two seconds during one of the montages...As I recall it's just Black and the girl on a bed and him saying I want to have sex with you or something like that...How creative!
This worked for me.
I've heard such middling things about it for so long now, I didn't expect to be disappointed - so much as appropriately unimpressed. For all of Gondry's spectacular moments of cinematic innovativeness, also is responsible for plenty of daring failures that are more commendable then they are interesting.
As much as I wanted to like Science of Sleep, and there are things I do admire, ultimately it's more frustrating than anything else...
I rarely watch his commercials anymore...
I couldn't even get through his Declare Independence video, on fast-forward or otherwise...
But this succeeded. It took me about fifteen minutes to find a groove in it's pacing, and then I was hooked. It made me laugh out loud a couple times, and there was also a terrific, subdued sentiment to it all that caught me off guard.
Most of the sweded videos are ruined by the trailer, but the film presents more than that.
It's nostalgic, but not in a syrupy, indulgent way.
Hell, even if it doesn't work for any of you, it's still worth seeing. I don't think Gondry is so precious about his films that he worries how well they work, really - or how they'll be regarded in his filmography. It feels like he just, simply, needs to get get them out of his system... and that's something that excites me more and more. Can't wait to see what he does next.
Quote from: john on February 22, 2008, 09:54:03 PM
Hell, even if it doesn't work for any of you, it's still worth seeing.
I agree with this. This is really the only thing he's done that I haven't liked but he's still out there trying to tell stories in an original way and I respect that and will of course look forward to what he does next.
damn, mia farrow and sigourney weaver's faces looked TIGHT. kinda creepy. "there is no dana, only zuul."
this movie was fun enough.
If this movie didn't have the sweded films in it, it wouldn't think it was that great. But it did, so I can be pretty secure in thinking it was a pretty good movie, and I enjoyed it. I read really mediocre reviews before seeing it, thinking that it wouldn't be a big deal since the reviewers complained about stuff that didn't seem like they would bother me, like the fact that the film is silly and disconnected. Those things didn't really bother me, but I have the feeling that there were lulls or moments that were not worthy of the rest of the movie or the hype of it. At the end, I was satisfied with a good piece of film put down, but as I look back, there are moments when it seemed to be teetering on the edge of being a bad film.
The Science of Sleep was a movie that I only decided that I fully, truly liked after it was over, but while it was going, I was slightly bothered by some things that I couldn't really put my finger on. Be Kind, Rewind worked the opposite way. While watching it, I was truly entertained, I laughed in a lot of parts, and overall was charmed by Mos Def and Jack Black. But after it was over, I think about it, and I can tell that Jack Black and Mos Def weren't actually acting up to their full potential, and Danny Glover was pretty much playing a recycled role that I can't quite place.
I so wanted this movie to blow me away and be the next unbelievable flight of fancy, like Being John Malkovich or Eternal Sunshine, but in that respect, it did immediately disappoint. Michel Gondry, while I really enjoy his work, is clearly not as good a writer as Charlie Kaufman or director as Spike Jonze, and his completely solo work is too similar to theirs to avoid comparing. I think I like him better when he works in collaboration, and clearly the strongest link in this whole movie genre subset is Charlie Kaufman, whose next movie I eagerly anticipate.
Spoilers.
The old-timey movie was cute, and finding out how they did it showed the best of Michel Gondry's talents. I thought the Sigourney Weaver cameo was pretty clever. One of my friends that I saw it with thought that it was annoying that the old-timey movie saved the old shop, but I didn't interpret it that way; I just thought it was a sweet community moment that even the demolition team could recognize, but after the crowd thinned it would probably go back to business as usual, which might be why the movie ended where it did.
Gondry Preps 'Be Kind, Rewind' Sequel, Starts Race War, Kills Dog
Source: MTV
If you thought "Be Kind, Rewind" was off-beat or eccentric, wait'll you get a load of director Michel Gondry's proposed sequel, which could be called "Rewound" if I didn't already dub it "The Weirdest Friggin Thing I Have Ever Heard of In My Life."
"The sequel would happen this way: Mia [Farrow] and Danny Glover are together, Alma [Melonie Diaz] and Mos Def are together, Jack is left alone and so he's kind of depressed," Gondry explained. "But one day he finds a little dog and gets very attached to it."
So far, pretty normal. I could totally see Jack Black sublimating his feelings onto a dog. It fits. He's kind of a wacky outsider to begin with, and especially sympathetic if all is buddies mate up. You almost had me fooled Michel. I thought for a second there you were going to say something off the wall - like he's so angry he takes over City Hall.
"What happens is that they decide to take over City Hall," Gondry further explained. "So it's sort of a socialist collaborative system. They open a restaurant with free food, they refuse to send money to the war, and they get more [jobs] for people. Everything goes very well."
Ok, that's still kinda cool, since "Be Kind, Rewind" is all about the contributions we make as individuals. Taking it out of the video store and projecting that message to a larger community could be wry social criticism. I'm coming around.
"Unfortunately, Danny Glover wakes up with a sort of a pain in his brain. He becomes super racist, calls Jerry a dirty [ethnic slur] and asks him to leave the video store;" Gondry continued. "He blames the Polish for having brought the African-Americans [into] accepting the lowest wage jobs. It's terrible, frenzied, racism."
Wait, are you going to film a race war? An honest to god race war? In a comedy? I don't' believe it. There's no way it could happen, right?
"It gets worse and worse and at the end there is a [race] war that's starting," Gondry said. "Basically, segregation is reinstalled. Mike [Mos Def] is leading the African-American community, and Alma the Hispanic community, and Jack is leading the Polish community and they start to fight in a horrible fight."
How do you get from Jack rescuing a dog to a race war? Hey, whatever happened to that dog anyway? No, wait, I can see it coming. I take back my quest—
"As soon as the fight starts, the little dog dies, and everybody is so upset that they make peace and stop [fighting]," Gondry answered. "And it turns out that Danny had a brain tumor that was benign and so that's why he became racist. Everything restarts and goes back to normal."
I feel the need to clarify that this is 100% real. Honest to blog. Gondry even wanted to film it up at Sundance.
"[But] we didn't have enough time," he said. "I wanted to do the sequel in one hour because we had all the cast together, but some arrived too late or too early."
i love this man but someone has to kill him before he writes another movie.
If that sequel gets made, the idea that the studios let him make it would be so much more satisfying than the movie itself. Imagine if Gondry was directing features in the 70s and was on coke! Heaven's Gate would have looked like Gone With the Wind!
Overall, I liked Be Kind Rewind but that's because I'm occasionally a sucker for a "let's put on a show" kind of movie. As my friend said, it was like Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo but with movies instead of breakdancing. I'm going to say it's the weakest Gondry film, much more so than Human Nature, but it still manages to (barely) work. The lack of extended sweded sequences was disappointing but the Ghostbusters parody was one of the funniest things I've seen in ages. For the most part, Be Kind Rewind is a cute, cuddly waste of massive comedic potential.
Quote from: MacGuffin on February 26, 2008, 12:47:33 AM
Honest to blog.
Can we fast-forward to the point in time when NO ONE is saying this anymore? Please?
This movie was absurd. It fell flat. It was disappointing. I'm saddened. I was hoping by reading all the poor reviews here I'd have nowhere to go but up, instead it simply met the lowered expectations.
The end credits were the most inventive thing in the movie and the only aspect that truly worked for me, except for the last scene over all. It had its moments, but they weren't common enough.
Boo-hoo.
I loved it. I missed parts of the movie, but I thought everything was really funny. it seemed like the whole movie was building up to the film they showed at the climax as well as the end credits. I was a bit teary at the end. it was light, but it didn't feel fluffy. gondry had things to say, and he got to say them in efficient and funny ways.
in my skewed mind i really thought this had semi-blockbuster appeal, but i have yet to even see any kind of tv advertisement.
i really liked this too, and so did my audience... everyone laughed and clapped at all the right places, and it was the perfect movie to take both my girlfriend and my sisters to. For some reason, it got me very nostalgic for Mister Rogers :ponder:... probably the strong sense of community aspect. For me, it felt like the first film from Michel Gondry the music video director... :yabbse-thumbup:
Quote from: bigideas on March 03, 2008, 03:14:07 PM
in my skewed mind i really thought this had semi-blockbuster appeal, but i have yet to even see any kind of tv advertisement.
Yeah, me too... until about a week before it's release. I mentioned the film to my 13-year-old nephew, whose criteria for films he's interested in includes anything marketed, discussed, advertised, or mentioned in or near his presence... and he had no idea what the fuck I was talking about.
I imagine New Line could have put a little more effort into marketing to the Nickelodeon/Jack Black loving young teen demographic.
Quote from: john on March 03, 2008, 05:06:47 PM
Quote from: bigideas on March 03, 2008, 03:14:07 PM
in my skewed mind i really thought this had semi-blockbuster appeal, but i have yet to even see any kind of tv advertisement.
Yeah, me too... until about a week before it's release. I mentioned the film to my 13-year-old nephew, whose criteria for films he's interested in includes anything marketed, discussed, advertised, or mentioned in or near his presence... and he had no idea what the fuck I was talking about.
I imagine New Line could have put a little more effort into marketing to the Nickelodeon/Jack Black loving young teen demographic.
exactly.
it's PG-13 and pretty clean of content right?
you have the Jack Black audience (he just hosted or is going to host the Nick awards)
then you have Mos Def that will bring in another demographic
then it seems they could really advertise via video sharing websites like youtube, myspace, etc.
is the film structure/plot a lot weirder than i'm thinking, i.e. not for mainstream?
Quote from: bigideas on March 04, 2008, 03:07:33 PM
Quote from: john on March 03, 2008, 05:06:47 PM
Quote from: bigideas on March 03, 2008, 03:14:07 PM
in my skewed mind i really thought this had semi-blockbuster appeal, but i have yet to even see any kind of tv advertisement.
Yeah, me too... until about a week before it's release. I mentioned the film to my 13-year-old nephew, whose criteria for films he's interested in includes anything marketed, discussed, advertised, or mentioned in or near his presence... and he had no idea what the fuck I was talking about.
I imagine New Line could have put a little more effort into marketing to the Nickelodeon/Jack Black loving young teen demographic.
exactly.
it's PG-13 and pretty clean of content right?
you have the Jack Black audience (he just hosted or is going to host the Nick awards)
then you have Mos Def that will bring in another demographic
then it seems they could really advertise via video sharing websites like youtube, myspace, etc.
is the film structure/plot a lot weirder than i'm thinking, i.e. not for mainstream?
There is nothing weird at all about the plot structure. The only thing that I could see pissing off audiences it that they would want to see tons of movie spoofing/remaking and you've seen almost all of that in the trailers already. Certainly not the first time a trailer has given away the best parts and it rarely hurts box office receipts. If anything this movie is just too sweet/sappy for most Jack Black fans and I'm telling you, it's just not that good. There is a reason they've been pushing the release date of this back for a while now. Take your 13 year old nephew to see In Bruges instead...kidding...unless your nephew likes midgets on horse tranquilizers...and he should.
Quote from: bigideas on March 04, 2008, 03:07:33 PM
then you have Mos Def that will bring in another demographic
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/2008/02/17/69-mos-def/
Quote from: 72teeth on March 03, 2008, 04:37:50 PM
it felt like the first film from Michel Gondry the music video director...
of all the comments i've read in this thread, this one makes me want to see it the most :yabbse-thumbup:
and i have to come clean about something: i loved science of sleep WAY more than eternal sunshine...
I'd imagine that the studio believed this film's aesthetic, and most of it's cast, is a bit too "raw" to attempt to market to a wider audience. And, as a film, it does have a more organic look than most of the polished turds studios put out and audiences gobble up. But, hell, we're in an age where lazy-absurdist humor has become a mainstream crutch. Where in an age where they could probably market ninety minutes of viral video as a theatrical release and turn a decent profit. This film, on it's surface, doesn't seem like anything too wild for audiences to embrace if they just would've pushed up the marketing and the number of screens it was released on. Lord knows there wasn't any real competition.
But, as much as studios seem clueless, they probably know these things a lot better than I do. Everything I expect to be a hit usually dies miserably. A handful of years back, I went to see State and Main on one of the main holidays, I can't remember if it was Christmas or Thanksgiving... expecting a sold-out crowd and maybe being turned away at the door. I got a nearly empty auditorium and an almost laughless audience... so what the fuck do I know?
I do know that if my nephew isn't partial to midgets on horse tranquilizers yet, he damn well will be come this weekend. Time to start this kid on a proper cinematic path, nice and early.
...and while I'm ranting about audience reaction and my complete obliviousness to collective response... No Country For Old Men... I hear about a hell of a lot of people being dissatisfied with the ending... but I meet a whole lot more that fucking love that film. Across the spectrum, people I would never expect to let something like that sit with them. SOmetimes it feels like I give people way too much credit for their own good, other times not enough.
Exclusive: Michel Gondry Chat
Gallic helmer talks Be Kind Rewind
Michel Gondry's subversive and (occasionally) hilarious celebration of lo-fi filmmaking Be Kind Rewind goes on sale on DVD and Blu-ray today. So we decided to catch up with the enigmatic French helmer to talk sweded films, the perils of CGI, and why some critics hate his films...
IGN: Are you excited by the release of Be Kind Rewind on DVD?
Michel Gondry: I had this marketing idea that they should release the film on videocassette but they wouldn't do it.
IGN: But no one has a VHS player anymore?
MG: They could have done it, just as a present to me!
IGN: The film has already had a life after the cinema with many fans taking inspiration from Jerry and Mike and making their own 'Sweded' films and posting them online. Have you watched them?
MG: Yes. Not all of them. Some of them. A very good one was the remake of Tron. It was based on the chase scene from the film featuring a motorbike in the video-game world. They did it in a very simple way. It's very effective. They made it with cardboard and material like that.
IGN: Does it excite you that after people have watched the film they've been inspired by the film and interact with it in a new and different way?
MG: Yes. I always like it when people are not so passive, if they watch a film and they get stimulated to do something else - it's great.
IGN: A lot of your films make the most of lo-fi technology to express that people can do interesting stuff without using computer-generated special effects. Do you think it is more imaginative?
MG: Yes, but I would like to see this ingenuity when using computer imagery but it seems that as soon as you step into this computer world people become more conventional. In the late 80s there were people using computer imagery and they were more adventurous than today; now it seems that it has become possible for people to do pretty much what they want on computers but they're not really exploring the possibilities on offer.
IGN: Do you think computers have made filmmakers lazy?
MG: Yes. Computer technology gives a texture to films that I'm not a big fan of. I remember when I watched Starship Troopers I was blown away. Now they take so much money out of the budget, they should do a cheap movie with CGI it would be interesting to see how it looks.
IGN: Would you do a film like this?
MG: I'd like to do a big film, but I guess it's not going to be cheap.
IGN: So is Masters of Space and Time going to be made?
MG: No. It's too complicated. It's a great book and we tried hard but now I've burnt the idea of doing it from my mind. Maybe one day, but not now. I wouldn't mind doing it, but it's other people who give me the money that find it too difficult. For me the subject is good, it's a little bit complicated for the screen but the absurdity and the complexity is great but people get really upset when you don't follow the rules. They call you undisciplined or they call you quirky all sorts of names that are definitely a little bit insulting but it just comes from trying to be original.
IGN: Do you think critics or audiences don't like this type of originality?
MG: There is a tendency for people to call my work, and other directors too, quirky and it's really a judgment on the fact that we believe that we can create a world that is sufficient to itself or we believe that adults can make the leap to suspend belief and believe in fantasy. Some people or some critics get really upset about that because they want films to reflect reality.
this was HORRIBLE. i stand by my prophetic statement...
Quote from: modage on February 26, 2008, 10:43:01 PM
i love this man but someone has to kill him before he writes another movie.
You did a fantastic job of presenting your opinion, especially that part where you quoted yourself. It's rare you find someone who will so fully agree with themselves. I've done it.
I was pleasantly surprised by this movie and very happy to own it but some scenes just felt hollow to me. Like 72teeth I felt like this was the first real Gondry film that was completely his....Bits of the dialogue felt extremely on the nose though.