Be Kind, Rewind

[MacGuffin]

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."

[modage]

i love this man but someone has to kill him before he writes another movie.

[grand theft sparrow]

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. 

Honest to blog.

Can we fast-forward to the point in time when NO ONE is saying this anymore?  Please?

[The Perineum Falcon]

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.

[pete]

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.

[tpfkabi]

in my skewed mind i really thought this had semi-blockbuster appeal, but i have yet to even see any kind of tv advertisement.

[72teeth]

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 ... probably the strong sense of community aspect. For me, it felt like the first film from Michel Gondry the music video director...

[john]

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.

[tpfkabi]

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?

[cinemanarchist]

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.

[pete]

then you have Mos Def that will bring in another demographic

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/2008/02/17/69-mos-def/

[brockly]

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

and i have to come clean about something: i loved science of sleep WAY more than eternal sunshine...

[john]

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.

[MacGuffin]

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.

[modage]

this was HORRIBLE.  i stand by my prophetic statement...

i love this man but someone has to kill him before he writes another movie.