Be Kind, Rewind

[modage]

Be Kind Rewind sweded trailer by Michel Gondry
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFN27E34BKg&eurl=http://www.cinematical.com/

[Pozer]

he is brilliant.

[Bethie]

oh my god.

[cine]

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.

[MacGuffin]

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.

[MacGuffin]

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!

[©brad]

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.

[cine]

ebert gave it 2.5 stars. CMBB and now this... fuck that guy!

[Ravi]

ebert gave it 2.5 stars. CMBB and now this... fuck that guy!

68% at Rotten Tomatoes.  I'm seeing it anyways.

[Pozer]

doesnt sound like it got much (if any) better.

[cinemanarchist]

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!

[john]

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.

[cinemanarchist]

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.

[bonanzataz]

damn, mia farrow and sigourney weaver's faces looked TIGHT. kinda creepy. "there is no dana, only zuul."

this movie was fun enough.

[ponceludon]

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.