In Character: Patricia Clarkson

This is by far the most difficult In Character I’ve done. Not because there weren’t many good performances to choose from, quite the opposite – it is because Patricia Clarkson has such a vast, flawless body of work that it makes it basically impossible to pick her top five performances, let alone a surefire best.

I am truly hard-pressed to think of a Clarkson performance that I have not enjoyed. Whether she’s starring or supporting, you can always expect her subtlety to shine through.  After spending a few days working on this, I have but just one question concerning Clarkson’s career: Where is this woman’s Oscar? Here are a few performances that should've garnered an award (or two) by now.

Five Essential Roles

High Art (1998)

Greta

Nearly unrecognizable as a red haired German lesbian with a wicked dependence to heroin, Clarkson’s role as Greta, while lauded with critical praise, often falls through the cracks for admirers of her work. Why? Because she’s just that good. She is so hidden in Greta that there appears to be no Patricia Clarkson within the character. At least not the actress I’ve grown to love over the past decade.

To be clear, her role as Greta is flawless, but there is a good chance that the unaware film watcher may not have a clue who they are watching. Clarkson is so immersed in Greta – in her sadness, her kindness, her pity and doubt – that she utterly disappears.

Far from Heaven (2002)

Eleanor

As Eleanor, Clarkson is the perfect personification of American ‘50s suburban repression. Wealthy, miserable, bigoted – an immaculate façade concealing the fact that she’s nothing more than a suppressed winch. Eleanor is the kind of woman that refers to gay men as “one of those,” and has little to zero regard for people of color.

So when Eleanor discovers that her best friend, Cathy (Julianne Moore) has befriended a black gardener, she’s ungodly embarrassed. Embarrassed to be associated with Cathy, but also embarrassed for Cathy. Mind you, director Todd Haynes is far to brilliant to paint Cathy as a stereotypical villain, instead, Clarkson portrays Eleanor as a modern woman in modern times. Cathy, with her liberal, progressive tendencies, is the abnormal one, not Eleanor. A brilliant, deceptive performance.

Dogville (2003)

Vera

Although Clarkson’s Vera is a brief, critically ignored performance, the impact she has while on screen is as significant as any other actor in the film (which is saying a lot). Take, for instance, the scene in which Vera, along with other women from Dogville, accuse Grace of heinous acts that Grace did not commit. Vera berates and physically abuses Grace before ultimately cutting her a deal: Vera will break two of Grace’s prized porcelain figurines, and if Grace can keep herself from crying, Vera will end the punishment and not break anymore.

There’s something I’ve never been able to shake about Clarkson's unrecognizable Vera. If you haven’t seen Dogville, this scene may sound pithily and insignificant, but, considering the similar method in which Grace seeks her revenge on Vera, “insignificant” couldn’t be more far off.

Pieces of April (2003)

Joy Burns

For the most acclaimed role of her career, Clarkson plays a tired, sarcastic, spiteful mother who is losing a battle to breast cancer. While Joy and the rest of her immediate family travel to New York City for her fuck-up of a daughter’s impromptu Thanksgiving dinner, Joy has time to reflect on why she is the way she is, which spawns frighteningly honest results.

It’s rare that a mother in a film can ponder aloud how much she hates her own daughter without coming off as a vengeful bitch. But Clarkson gives Joy a particularly fascinating amount of humility. She may indeed loathe her own daughter, but isn’t her daughter almost exactly like her? Questions like these plague Joy, and when she’s not getting high with her teenage son in rest stop bathrooms, or playing cancer-fueled jokes on her family, she’s debating if the trip is worth it. The trip to New York, sure, but also the trips to reclaim motherhood and life.

Leave it up to Clarkson to find this much depth within the throes of a self-admitted bitch.

Elegy (2008)

Carolyn

In Isabel Coixet’s little-seen, remarkably tender romance, Clarkson has a brief role as Carolyn, a successful, unmarried business owner who occasionally sneaks away for intimate trysts with her old college professor, David (Ben Kingsley). The two meet, sleep together, eat something, then go about their business. It’s just for sex, as Carolyn frequently reminds David.

Why then does Carolyn become furious when she discovers that David is sleeping with a current student behind her back? After finding a tampon in David’s bathroom, Carolyn, in a brilliant moment of articulate anger, unleashes her life’s fury on David, explaining that they had the perfect relationship, and he threw it all away.  Although that isn’t the last time Carolyn and David meet, that scene represents one of best, most daring moments of Clarkson’s career.

The Best of the Best

The Station Agent (2003)

Olivia

The year 2003 really was Patricia Clarkson’s year. Her Pieces of April performance merited an Oscar nomination, she showed us something new in Dogville, she stole scenes in Six Feet Under, had a small but memorable role on All the Real Girls, and, perhaps most significantly, delivered a performance of restrained turmoil and comic wit in Tom McCarthy’s tender little film, The Station Agent.

There’s something beautiful about the odd friendship and mutual understanding that takes hold between Clarkson’s Olivia and Peter Dinklage’s Fin. Fin, stuck in a lifetime of regret for being born a dwarf, and Olivia, stuck in a lifetime of regret for losing her young son, understand each other’s pain so well, that when they spend time together, there isn’t a lot that needs to be said to convey the dread they both feel.

Olivia is a bruised and battered woman who spends much of the film trying to convince herself that the pain she feels isn’t as strong as it truly is. Take, for example, the scene in which her and Fin watch their friend Joe play soccer with two young boys. Olivia’s face has a slight smile of admiration. “He sure does enjoy life,” she says to Fin. But watch as that proud smile subtly evolves into a sorrowful grimace. Her boy should be playing soccer with Joe. He should be here.

Later, when Olivia’s pain manifests itself in the form of cowardly rage, we can’t help but be shaken by Clarkson. She’s an actress that can convey a multitude of emotions within a single scene. Subtlety, so it seems, may be her greatest weapon.

Other Notable Roles

In Shutter Island

The Untouchables (1987)

The Green Mile (1999)

The Pledge (2001)

The Safety of Objects (2001)

Six Feet Under (2002-2005)

All the Real Girls (2003)

Miracle (2004)

Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005)

The Dying Gaul (2005)

Married Life (2007)

Lars and the Real Girl (2007)

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)

Shutter Island (2010)

Easy A (2010)

Previous installments of In Character include:
Heath Ledger
Danny Trejo
William H. Macy
Campbell Scott
Kevin Pollak
Erland Josephson
Richard Jenkins
William Fichtner
Guy Pearce
Shea Whigham
Viola Davis
Gary Oldman
David Morse
Michael Shannon
Emily Mortimer
John Hawkes
Jeffrey Wright
Elias Koteas
David Strathairn

Earrings: Influences – The Writing

The very few people I’ve told the full plot of Earrings to always immediately ask me the same question: “Where did you get inspiration to write such a story? It’s so dark, so haunting; how did you come up with it?”

And my answer is always the same: I point to my head and say, “Things just pop in and stay.” Sometimes I have no idea where they come from, sometimes I am precisely aware of their origins. Whether I know what caused them or not, if an idea lingers too long, then it needs to be exercised in print.

The origins for Earrings are extended and complicated; the film is rooted in several different inspirations, and after many months (years, actually) of lingering, the idea finally formulated itself into a cohesive script and will, I hope, become an intelligible film.

Disappear Here

About a year and a half ago, Catherine, who is the star of Earrings, contacted me about writing a script based on an idea she had. The idea was about loss, love, and redemption. It was about overcoming internal grief with absolutely no help from outside factors. It was an interesting, layered idea that Catherine gave me free reign to roll with. A month later, I handed her a 45-page script that we planned to film a few months later. Actors were cast, a small crew was established, but due to many outside factors that I’m not going to go into here, the project had to be delayed indefinitely. I was troubled by this, but I understood. When a project isn’t ready, it isn’t ready.

I moved the script aside and let it disappear from my mind.  Jump cut to seven months later, and I remained plagued with images of pain.

Images

When I get an idea for a script, it almost always manifests itself via visually imagery. The image can be anything: a young man driving a car with a slight smile, a man with a bruised face staring at a house, a slow-motion dolly shot of a woman’s face as she discovers something familiar – anything. And, when coupled with the right song, these images beg to be brought to life. I cannot escape them.

For example, I’ve had the image of a young woman walking aimlessly through a crowded nightclub for years. Years. Why? Fuck if I know. I suppose I like the juxtaposition of so much happening around her, and virtually nothing happening within her. And once I heard a specific song by Radiohead (which I’m not going to reveal), I played it over and over and over, knowing that it belonged somewhere. It needed to be accompanied with something. I thought I had brought that image and that song together perfectly in the script I wrote for Catherine, but I was wrong. It will be through Earrings that I will finally be able to put this idea to rest. 

These notions of imagery aren’t nagging annoyances, mind you, they are simply pictures in my head that must see light. It’s something I’ve lived with for decades – the thought of transferring the images in my head to the page or the screen, so last November, as I made my way through Ingmar Bergman’s autobiography Images, I sat literally dumbfounded when I came to the passage in which he describes how he formulates his scripts.

For Cries and Whispers, Bergman describes how he was “plagued” by the image of a room bathed in red. The red room haunted him, it kept him awake at night, begging, pleading. He wrote the script for Cries and Whispers based around that red room, which, if you’ve seen the film, plays a vital part in the movie. When I read this, I sat dumbfounded because that is precisely where my screenplays come from, that persistent image that won’t go away. It’s similarities like these that no doubt make Bergman my favorite filmmaker.

The Hunger for Shame

The first time I watched Steve McQueen’s Hunger represents one of the most jarring film-viewing experiences of my life. It was bold and raw and honest and gut wrenching. And it was nearly dialogue free. Sure, there is a centerpiece conversation that takes up a few dozen script pages, but for the most part, very little is said in Hunger. Why then does the film speak immeasurable volumes?

The first film I made (in the summer of 2008) had not a single line of dialogue, so, naturally, when I saw Hunger (in the fall of 2009), I was taken with it immediately. In the special features on the Criterion DVD, McQueen says that dialogue isn’t needed for the first act of the film, the images are the dialogue. That’s a notion I identify with wholeheartedly, and it’s something that most definitely influenced Earrings.

Creating (whether you’re writing, filming, painting, whatever) is something that opens your world up to fantastic little ironies that you wouldn’t find anywhere else. Irony may not be accurate. Coincidence is more precise.

When I wrote the script for Catherine, I included an extended, balls-out sequence in which the main character goes slightly mad. All of the emotions and problems and sufferings that were teasing the character came out in about four pages of script. It was going to be seven filmic minutes of pain and blood and sweat and tears. With Earrings, I’ve made that sequence tighter, and more impactful. It’s going to be the film’s Hail Mary. Abandon all faith, ye who enter here.

And it is partly because of this sequence (which I wrote last November), that I became so enamored with McQueen’s film Shame.

If you’ve seen Shame, then you know there is a sequence late in the film that is rather similar to what I’ve described in regards to Earrings. And, much like when I read Bergman’s book, I sat literally dumbfounded the first time I saw that Shame sequence. It was exactly the torment I was trying to capture. As soon as I got home that night, I pushed the sequence in Earrings further. I added more depth, more pain. I wasn’t inspired by Shame to pen that sequence, but you can be damn sure Shame helped propel it.

Images and coincidences, that’s what my writing stems from. The images force me to write, the coincidences make it worth it.

Click here to read more about Earrings.

American Reunion

How does one even begin to formulate coherent criticism concerning a film that is so undeserving of the two hours you spent watching it, let alone the time after to draft a review?

American Reunion is the fourth film in the American Pie franchise (there have been about a dozen straight-to-DVD American Pie’s, none of which are relevant to these more popular Pies) and nothing at all has changed. The characters are still exactly the same, making the same mistakes yet finding the easiest ways out, and the movies themselves remain laughably bland, laced with humor that is based entirely on homophobia, the male reproductive organ, the female reproductive organ, and human excrement.

Jim is still jerking off into tube socks, Stiffler is still… Stiffler, Oz is still a brain dead hunk, Finch is still a pontificating douche, Jim’s Dad is still awkward, and the rest of the characters (whose names I don’t care to recall) are still set in their cookie cutter ways.

For this go ‘round, the gang returns to their old town for their 13^th high school reunion (13^th because, apparently, the school “couldn’t get their shit together in time for the 10^th reunion,” i.e., the studio didn’t think people would still give a shit about American Pie in 2009. But it’s 2012, so why not?!), and hours haven’t gone by before they are getting themselves into all sorts of trouble and, you know, driving drunk, naked, barely legal girls all over town, and shitting into beer coolers (this is no sarcastic exaggeration, a beer cooler is literally shat into, which proves to be about as funny as watching a guy drink semen or get pissed on).

Look, bottom line, if you liked American Pie (which I did), then you may enjoy American Reunion. If you liked American Pie 2 and American Wedding, then American Reunion will be your favorite film of 2012. Me? Having settled into the notion of pointless Hollywood remakes/rehashes/rethinkings/sequels/whatevers years ago, I can’t hate on the fact that directors Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg (whose only other directed feature is the much lauded Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay) fought to get another American Pie made. The film has done decent at the box office, so I’m sure we can expect a few more of these ventures before American Retirement Home is released 30 or so years from now.

Has anyone ever seen Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant? The film is basically a series of events in which an absurd, and absurdly corrupted, cop (played flawlessly by Nicolas Cage) gets himself deeper and deeper into shit, which will certainly end with his demise. In one brief sequence in that film, every single problem Cage has is made better within a matter of seconds. The corruption charges against him are dropped. The thug he ruffed up admits he no longer has beef with him, his girlfriend is going to be okay, his drug abusing isn’t going to be uncovered – everything. The scene is ingenious in its absurdity, and you cannot help but laugh at the intentionally bullshit scenario.

Why then do people not call bullshit on a movie like American Reunion? A movie that spends an hour and 45 minutes putting its characters in sticky situations that they cannot explain, only to have every single last one of their wrongs righted in the last 10 minutes of the film. Herzog knew what he was doing, and you’re supposed to laugh at his purposeful hyperbolic irony. But with American Reunion, we’re supposed to smile wide and leave the theater feeling good about ourselves? I call bullshit. D-

Titanic 3D

The first time I saw Titanic, I hated it. (But really, what 15-year-old boy didn’t hate Titanic?). I watched it again soon after it came out on video (for whatever reason), and then one final time just last summer. The summer viewing was done on a whim, at random. It was starting on HBO and I figured, What the hell, why not… let’s see if this thing is as bad as I remembered. (Hint: it was.)

Fast forward to two days ago where I sat through all 194 minutes of James Cameron’s epic disaster film. Two hours of forced love, hammed up “villainy,” lavish set designs, and flush cinematography. One hour of disaster. And 14 minutes of worthless epilogue. I sat and watched and paid attention. And when it was done, I was struck with two profound things: 1.) Titanic wasn’t as bad as I remembered, and 2.) Because of 3D technology, Titanic was worse than I remembered.

You all know the plot so let’s just skip right to the good stuff: What’s really wrong with Titanic? First is the acting. Aside from Kathy Bates’ “Those are your men out there,” pleas for desperate guilt, the acting in Titanic is universally dismal. Frankly, I don’t see how someone can argue against this point.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet sound like two elementary school kids awkwardly approaching how to conduct their first kiss, while 20 other kids stand around eagerly waiting for some action. They enunciate all the wrong words in all the wrong ways, their accents shift back and forth more times than one can count (Rose’s Philadelphia accent sounds rather British, and is that a country twang in Jack’s voice?). In short, every action exercised and every emotion evoked feels ungodly forced. Same goes for Bill Paxton, Frances Fisher, and especially Billy Zane. (Gloria Stewart gets a pass, simply because her character does nothing.) So, how is it that two kids who had already been nominated for Oscars (him for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, her for Sense and Sensibility) managed to put in such lousy work? Simple: lack of a script.

Since The Terminator was released in 1984, James Cameron has asserted himself as the most important figure of cinematic special effects since George Lucas. But with that in mind, Cameron simply has no earthly idea how to pen an effective screenplay, especially as it relates to dialogue. While the situational scene scenarios in his films may produce epic results, that is the action talking. His characters, on the other hand, say so much without saying anything. There’s a reason Titanic won 11 Oscars but wasn’t even nominated for Best Screenplay. (Cameron's films have garnered 41 total Oscar nominations. Best Screenplay has never been among them.)

How is it, for instance, that a movie told from the perspective of just one person has the ability to be privy to conversations in which the storyteller was not present? When did Jack explain to Rose all of those side conversations Jack had with Rose’s fiancé and his bodyguard? Granted, this is an all-too-common narrative flaw committed by many American films, but the hypocrisy of that storytelling device irks me to no end.

Another problem I have with this Titanic is no real fault of the film, and that is its new 3D conversion. Yes, 95 percent of the 3D movies we have seen have been converted to 3D in post-production, which makes Titanic by far the best post-production 3D conversion ever displayed on a movie screen. In fact, the 3D itself isn’t bad at all. There are no lame tricks of objects (or people) flying at the screen; like Hugo, Cameron made the 3D in his film completely atmospheric, and it works. The problem, and this can be said for every single 3D movie that has been made in the past 10 years, are the glasses.

Putting on those 3D glasses casts a notably dark hue over the screen, which isn’t good for a movie that takes place largely at night. I equate it to turning the brightness on your TV to 50 percent – it just doesn’t work. And in addition to the darkness, the glasses cast a puke green shade over everything. So when Rose is telling Jack she’ll never let go, that gorgeous, deep blue that they are bathed in is absent, instead replaced with a color that makes the characters look like they have gangrene, which I don’t believe is the purpose.

Left is what Titanic looks like on DVD, right is what in currently looks like in theaters.

Now, fair is fair so let’s be fair. Is Titanic a horrible film? No, it is not. The hour and four minute boat sinking sequence was revelatory in 1997, and it’s revelatory today. For better or worse, that sequence will be remembered and adored for the rest of our lifetimes, so fair enough. But if I’m giving the film its due credit, then lovers of Titanic have to meet me halfway and admit that the film is long for the sake of being long. It’s as if Cameron said, “Yeah, but if we break three hours, people will be forced to take us seriously.” No, Jim, they won't.

The main reason I have been so hard on Titanic for the past few weeks is because I’m sick and tired of filmmakers of wildly successful films rereleasing their movies to make more money. You want to do this generation some good, digitally restore and colorize every single frame of Taxi Driver and release it in 3,000 theaters. But, given Titanic 3D’s rather embarrassing box office take this weekend (just $17.4 million), maybe people are just as sick of this gimmick as I am. It seems as though it’s time to let go. C- 

Earrings: Pre-Production Part 2

I’m in movie mode. There’s no better way to describe it. If I’m at a bar, I’m thinking about the lighting for the film’s club scene. If I’m trying to sleep, my mind gets stuck on fake blood and the self-mutilation habits of a depressed young woman. At work, my mind wonders occasionally to leftover props, the benefits of an increased aperture, how much of a pain in the ass looping sound will be, and so on.

My point is, I’m now a week away from filming what will potentially be the most important artistic venture I’ve ever embarked upon, and I can’t fucking wait.

For this post, I’m going to address some frequent questions people have asked me about Earrings, deliver an amusing anecdote (or two) and give some much needed shout outs.

FAQs

What am I shooting Earrings with?

I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of technical questions I received regarding filming – proof that there are as many film geeks as me out there.

I’m shooting the film with my Canon 7D using 20mm, 50mm, and 85mm prime lenses. I’ll also have a 4.5mm fisheye, and a macro extension tube for limited use. I have filters and soft box lights and titanium tripods and shoulder mounts and portable dolly tracks and, well, (hopefully) everything I’ll need to make production run smoothly.

What am I editing the film on?

I’m an Adobe Premiere guy, so I’ll be cutting the flick on that. I should consider getting into Final Cut at some point, but Premiere suits me just fine.

What is my directing style?

I treat a set like an actor’s sanctuary. Sure, the sound engineer, camera operator and other crew members all have tasks, and in a sense, everyone on a set is performing, but actors are the only ones performing. With this project especially, my lead actress Catherine is lending a lot of herself to the material. The script forces her to go to some dark places emotionally, so I think it’s chiefly important to be aware of the vulnerability an actor is giving to your film. 

Me (right) directing an actor on the set of my first film.

Aside from giving the actors an insane amount of respect, I like to play games on set. I lie and cheat and laugh in the corner as everything unfolds on camera. For example, four years ago, I was filming Catherine in a technically complicated scene for my first film. The scene was a three-minute tracking shot set in a hotel room in which the camera followed the lead actor, Andrew, through two rooms, paused as he spoke with Catherine, stayed with Catherine briefly, then followed Catherine as she went to talk with the lead actress, Claire, then followed Claire outside on the balcony where Andrew was sitting. Everyone had to hit their cues just right, I had to adjust the exposure while stepping onto the balcony (as to not over-expose the shot) and on and on.

But for Catherine’s brief time on screen, I told her to simply smile at Andrew, then walk away from the guy she was having a conversation with, who happened to be played by Catherine’s real life brother, Chris.

Smile and walk away. Simple enough.

My direction for Chris was a little different. I told him to not only NOT let Catherine leave their conversation, but to hit on her as well. So, during the scene, right after Catherine smiles at Andrew and prepares to walk away, Chris began blabbing about God knows what, leaning into her suggestively, not at all letting her walk away from the conversation. After a few awkward seconds (in which Catherine stayed perfectly in character despite her obvious annoyance), she forced herself to walk away from Chris and the scene continued on.

This was taken right before we shot the hotel room scene.
From left: Chris, Catherine, me, Andrew.

It’s little things like having a brother hit on his sister, without his sister’s prior knowledge, that can make a scene spontaneous and authentic. So, yeah, I’m a huge fan of giving opposing direction to actors playing a scene together. As long as they stay in character, greatness has the potential to be achieved.

Other than that, I don’t do a lot of takes, but I do film extensively. I like to let the camera run and have the actor stay in the moment. But if I get what I want on the first or second take, then that’s enough for me.

I don’t like to provide any direction on the first take, I like the actor to let the first take represent their interpretation of what’s in the script, which is a trick I learned from listening to Edward Burns’ commentaries for his films. If the first take isn’t exactly what I was looking for, then I’ll give some specific direction for the later takes.

The Old Mill

Has anyone seen David Mamet’s State and Main? The movie is about a Hollywood film crew who invade a small Vermont town. The name of the movie the crew is shooting is The Old Mill, but late in pre-production, they discover that the town no longer has an Old Mill. I bring this up because I have yet to purchase the titular item of my film.

I know what I want the earrings in my movie to look like – I know how much I want them to glisten, what color they should be, what size, what texture – but I have yet to find them. It’s a running joke that is becoming less and less funny with each passing day. Basically, I have some earrings shopping to do this weekend, which will mark the final major event of pre-production.

Shout Outs

I was really hesitant and nervous before posting my first Earrings write-up last week. The last thing I wanted was to come off as a pretentious wannabe filmmaker asshole, but having sucked it up and gone with it, I must say that the support and encouragement I’ve received from people has had a profound effect on me.

I’ve received every text, Facebook like, tweet, retweet, blog comment, e-mail, and so on, and every single one fills me with unspeakable gratitude. I expect nothing from readers in posting these updates, only that I hope they enjoy them, but the added level of support I’ve gotten from my digital family is truly inspiring. Most of the people lending encouragement on this blog and on Twitter are people I’ve never actually met, yet I have no problem calling them my friends.

Thanks again everyone, hope you all have a great weekend! 

Click here to read more about Earrings.

Urgent Message – The Double Hour, Now on Netflix

Never in the history of this blog have I called specific attention to a film’s availability for home viewing, but we have a very special occasion on our hands. I have just this minute discovered that Giuseppe Capotondi’s masterful romantic thriller, The Double Hour is available on Netflix Instant. This is notable information for a number of reasons.

When I wrote my original review of the film in June, the review itself got very little attention. Almost no hits, and zero comments. Why? Because no one had heard of it. Hell, I only saw it because I was intrigued by its one-sheet in the movie theater lobby. The fact is, The Double Hour made the festival rounds back in 2009 and was released on a very narrow scale last summer. I believe it ventured to a total of 12 U.S. theaters for only two weeks. Then it vanished. No wide theatrical release was hinted at, no DVD release date was published. I highlighted it as one of my top 10 films of 2011, but for all intents and purposes, it was gone.

Until now. Now, it sits there, not at all begging to be added to your queue, but rather, to be viewed instantly. If you’re a Netflix user, then check out The Double Hour. Others can rent it on iTunes or buy it from Amazon (as I just have).

I’m not even going to divulge a plot synopsis of the film here, because knowing next to nothing is better than knowing too much. If you want to read more, check out my original review here (don’t worry, I’m very discrete). Just know that The Double Hour is one of the most impeccably crafted, skillfully executed thrillers I’ve ever seen. It’s the kind of flick that makes Hitchcock smile smugly from beyond the grave.

One of the most puzzling aspects about the film is that it is only 96 minutes long. I have no idea how Giuseppe Capotondi managed to fit so many thrills into such a short period of time.

Pioneers of The Roger Corman Film School

From the beginning, Roger Corman was interested in doing it his own way. After getting famously screwed over by 20^th Century Fox (Corman provided many ideas for Gregory Peck’s The Gunfighter, but was given zero credit), Corman started making his own films on his own dime. He shot The Little Shop of Horrors in two days, took a few more to edit it, then peddled it around LA as best he could.

But Little Shop of Horrors is just one of the early films Corman had a hand in. Truth is, if a horror film came through Hollywood from the mid-‘50s to the early ‘70s, there’s a damn fine chance Roger Corman had a role in it, whether as producer, director, writer or all three.

After he developed a name for himself, Corman began enlisting help from eager kids who were looking for an in. A typical Corman-produced shoot would go like this: Corman would give a kid $10,000, and tell him he had two weeks to shoot a film. Do that (and make it somewhat good) and we can talk about the future.

Here’s a quote from Peter Bogdanovich that I love: “I went from getting the laundry to directing the picture in three weeks. Altogether, I worked 22 weeks – pre-production, shooting, second unit, cutting, dubbing – I haven't learned as much since.”

Corman cut deals and started careers, and he did it with class. It’s true, Roger Corman isn’t necessarily responsible for masterpieces of American cinema, but he is responsible for launching the careers of filmmakers who have crafted their fair share of masterpieces.

Today marks Corman’s 86^th birthday, and what better way to highlight him than by highlighting the influence he created? Here are some of the most known pupils of The Corman Film School.

Francis Ford Coppola

Has anyone ever seen Battle Beyond the Sun, Dementia 13 or The Terror ? I haven’t, but without the financial backing and emotional encouragement of Roger Corman, Coppola may not have made those movies, thereby gaining enough clout to direct The Godfather. 

Martin Scorsese

After Scorsese made the micro-budgeted Who’s The Knocking at My Door (which no one saw at the time) Corman financed his rather dismal Boxcar Bertha. When it was clear that Boxcar was going to tank, Corman demanded that Scorsese make something close to his heart, the result of which was Mean Streets.

Ron Howard

Corman told Howard that if Howard starred in one of Corman’s films, he would finance a directing gig for Howard. Several TV movies later, Howard directed Night Shift, then Splash then Cocoon…

Peter Bogdanovich

Bogdanovich’s first films were Targets (which, despite being based on two seemingly random ideas, that of the University of Texas sniper and old monster movies, isn’t all that bad) and Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women. What came next? The Last Picture Show.

Jonathan Demme

Nope, I’ve never seen the Corman-produced/Demme-directed Caged Heat, Crazy Mam, and Fighting Mad, but I’ve seen Melvin and Howard, The Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia many many times.

James Cameron

Although the production of Piranha II: The Spawning was a nightmare, and the film was eventually taken away from Cameron in post (which I hardly doubt made a difference anyway), Cameron’s next flick was The Terminator, so, enough said.

The list goes on and on. Curtis Hanson, Robert Towne, George Hickenlooper, John Sayles, Monte Hellman – all notable pupils of The Corman Film School. And for every director Corman helped launch, there are three actors he catapulted to fame, including Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Sylvester Stallone, Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Talia Shire.

Corman hasn’t directed a movie since 1990’s Frankenstein Unbound, but he has maintained a prolific career as a B-movie producer, while occasionally popping up for cameos in films directed by his protégés.

Here he is as the Director of the FBI in Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs:

And as an unforgiving witness in Demme’s Philadelphia:

And as a Congressman in Howard’s Apollo 13:

Today, I like to image Corman sitting back, eating some birthday cake and reminiscing on the empire he built based on bad movies, raw talent and an impeccable work ethic.

If you’re a moderate fan of contemporary cinema, then wish Roger Corman a happy birthday. American film wouldn’t be the same without him.

In Character Special Edition: Heath Ledger

I’ll never forget the moment I found out Heath Ledger had died. I was walking out of a night class, cutting across campus, when my dad sent me a text: “Heath Ledger found dead in apartment. No bullshit. All over the news.”

Once I got home and read every single news story I could find about Ledger’s death, I stepped away from the computer and allowed myself to be devastated. And after a few moments, I was hit with profound confusion. Why, I wondered, did I feel as though I’d just lost someone close to me? How could I have feelings of such loss over someone I never knew? And then another epiphany: I felt the way I did because I did know Ledger. Not in the real sense, but I knew him as a brooding, complicated figure that could forever imprint movie characters into minds.

I’m not disillusioned. I’m perfectly aware that loving an actor is in no way the same as loving a dear friend, but when you’ve invested your life into the art of film as irreversibly as I have, then a loss like Ledger’s seems as real as life.

Ledger would be 33 today, and if he was still alive, I’m sure his selectiveness in choosing roles would’ve merited a slew of other remarkable performances.  But since he’s gone, we’re left with what we’re left with, which is a rather immaculate body of work for one of the best, most in-tune actors of his or any generation.

Five Essential Roles

10 Things I Hate About You (1999)

Patrick

I’m no fan of romantic comedies, and finding a decent one that’s centered around teenagers is damn near impossible, but it is simply unfair to not draw attention to Ledger’s early performance as tough-guy Patrick in 10 Things I Hate About You. Sure, this movie is a perfectly decent compilation of teenage romantic pop garbage, but there was something about that guy with the long, curly hair that struck viewers. He was tall and dark and funny and real. He was, in a sense, far better than the material allowed him to be. And that song. He sang that song with such charm and wit and verve. He was someone we’d never seen before, and someone we couldn’t wait to see again.

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

Ennis Del Mar

After generating a few worthy performances in crap films, and a few worthy performances in worthy films, Ledger blew everyone away with his deeply controlled, ungodly conflicted turn as Ennis Del Mar is Ang Lee’s masterpiece, Brokeback Mountain.

From his first moment on screen, trying so hard to not stare at the forward Jack Twist, we know we’re in for something different. Everything Ennis does (or, more accurately, everything Ledger makes Ennis do) is done with the pretense of something else. That is, he is constantly pretending to be someone he’s not, and when we finally see the real Ennis (such as during the hard, passionate embrace he and Jack share after not seeing one another for years), we realize that Ennis is just a broken, lost little boy.

It’s a performance of remarkable, nearly unfounded restraint. Everything is in the emotion, the look, the subtle gesture. Ennis says very little, but he’s always speaking volumes. It’s a performance that will only become more celebrated over time, eventually joining the ranks of Brando in Streecar, De Niro in Raging Bull, Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon, and so on. It is, in a phrase, the role of a lifetime.

Candy (2006)

Dan

In Neil Armfield’s little-seen Australian wonder, Candy, Ledger and Abbie Cornish play people who are deeply in love –with one another, certainly, but also with heroin. The film chronicles the life and death of drug addiction – from the ecstatic highs, to the hellish lows.

Spilt rather ingeniously into three distinct segments titled Heaven, Earth and Hell, Candy conveys how a relationship based on the shared addiction to a substance is never meant to go anywhere but down. But the film, largely due to Ledger and Cornish’s flawless performances, isn’t necessarily a downer. Both Dan (Ledger) and Candy (Cornish) are extremely kind and considerate people, fully aware of their troubles and their inability to deal with said troubles.

I’ve always been surprised that Candy never got the full, proper attention it deserved. There’s a lot here that people are missing, which, in hindsight to how Ledger died, makes the whole experience that much more painful.

I’m Not There (2007)

Robbie Clark

In Todd Haynes’ never-seen-anything-like-it I’m Not There, Ledger encompasses one of the best, most accurate personifications of the Arrogant Actor that I’ve ever seen. Robbie Clark is a young, handsome, talented actor portraying folk sing Jack Rollins (played by Christian Bale) in a new biopic. The problem is, Robbie knows he’s young, handsome and talented, so when his latest film is a flop, he slowly begins to blame everyone else for his failures.

This includes his steadfast wife, Claire (a candid Charlotte Gainsbourg), who begins to recognize the man she married less and less with each passing day. As Robbie becomes more consumed by his own conceit, which eventually causes him to stray from his marriage, Ledger and Gainsbourg embark on a tragic, doomed battle of fleeting love. Capped by Ledger’s performance is a virtuoso scene in which Robbie, at lunch with Claire and another couple, goes into a random, misogynistic rant, the final point of which is women are incapable of being true artists.

It’s a spot-on performance of a callous, egotistic man who, when no one is looking, let’s subtle glimmers of kindness shine through.

The Dark Knight (2008)

The Joker

What’s to say about Ledger’s Oscar-winning performance as The Joker that hasn’t already been said? It’s a role of such unhinged villainy, that it will be forever idolized in pop culture. When people ask me how I personally rank this role, I typically respond by saying it is a performance that completely merits the hyperbolic praise it has, and will continue to, receive.

Highlighting just one scene in particular from this performance is a completely futile exercise. The fact is, every single moment Heath Ledger is on screen, we are completely unaware that Heath Ledger is on screen. The man embodied a monster and became the devil incarnate.

I would, however, be remiss if I failed to mention that the introduction of The Joker in this film (the lifting of the mask, the swelling of the music, the creepiness of the voice, the smiling of the face) is one of my favorite character introductions in film history. Impossible to shake.

The Best of the Best

Monster’s Ball (2001)

Sonny

While Ennis Del Mar may be his technical best, and The Joker his most iconic, the Heath Ledger performance I’ve always been most drawn to is his brief turn as Sonny in Monster’s Ball.

As the gentle, tender son to Billy Bob Thornton’s unforgiving, racist Hank, Ledger did what virtually every teen icon does: he attempted to be taken seriously, but he did it with such revere and self-control, that it became impossible to not take notice of him. Sure, 10 Things I Hate About You and A Knight’s Tale may have put him on the map, but Monster’s Ball proved that the kid from Australia wasn’t fucking around; he was here to act. He was here to be remembered.

Take, for instance, the scene in which Hank, Sonny and a few other prison guards walk a prisoner (played by Sean “Puffy” Combs) to his execution. If you watch Ledger’s face (I’m mean really watch it) then you’ll see that he’s a lost, scared shitless kid on the verge a breaking down. His initial downfall manifests itself with a momentary bout of nausea, but Sonny’s pain is decades deep.

Ledger’s final moment in this film is as moving as, well, his final moment in Brokeback Mountain. It’s shocking in its honesty and desperate in its sentiment. He was here to be remembered, all right, and remembered he is.

Other Notable Roles

In Lords of Dogtown

The Patriot (2000)

A Knight’s Tale (2001)

Ned Kelly (2003)

Lords of Dogtown (2005)

Casanova (2005)

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)

Previous installments of In Character include:
Danny Trejo
William H. Macy
Campbell Scott
Kevin Pollak
Erland Josephson
Richard Jenkins
William Fichtner
Guy Pearce
Shea Whigham
Viola Davis
Gary Oldman
David Morse
Michael Shannon
Emily Mortimer
John Hawkes
Jeffrey Wright
Elias Koteas
David Strathairn

Listen to my podcast on Heath Ledger: