Thelma Adams: Novelist, Critic, Oscar Expert

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What is Jennifer Lawrence’s Favorite David O. Russell Movie? Hint: It’s not ‘American Hustle.’

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David O. Russell SBIFF 2Jennifer Lawrence hearts David O. Russell’s “I Heart Huckabees,” a jovial Russell told the Santa Barbara International Film Festival audience at the Outstanding Director Tribute in his honor last Friday.

“That was Jennifer Lawrence’s favorite film,” said Russell. Almost a year ago to the day, Russell had accompanied his “American Hustle” star down those very same dark stairs in the Arlington Theatre for her Santa Barbara Tribute — and she was singing as they walked.

While the 2004 film has its enthusiasts, like Lawrence, the ensemble comedy with Jason Schwartzman and Lily Tomlin about existential detectives was a professional low-point for the director. “I was not happy with myself at the time,” Russell confessed, going on to explain that it coincided with his divorce to Janet Grillo, the placement of his young son in a special boarding school, and financial pressures.

[Related: 2013 Top Ten List]

“I call that my head-in-my-ass period,” Russell said. And yet the director could recognize a silver lining in hindsight. “If I didn’t go stumbling through that period I couldn’t have made ‘The Fighter.'”

The failure of “I Heart Huckabees,” compounded by Russell’s personal problems, and criticisms of egomania, became a wake-up call for the Director: “Ego is really fear,” he told the audience. “When someone is acting important, it’s really fear.”

And the worst was yet to come: a movie that never got made. “Nailed,” Russell’s unfinished collaboration with Al Gore’s daughter, Kristin, got shut down nine times, according to the Director. The uncompleted film starred Jessica Biel and Jake Gyllenhaal. Russell described “Nailed” as the ‘nadir,” the low-point, of his professional career.

Mark Wahlberg helped turn Russell’s career around when he brought him “The Fighter,” Like a one-two punch, along came “The Silver Linings Playbook,” Russell’s first collaboration with Jennifer Lawrence.

Of casting Lawrence, Russell said: “She skyped her audition from her parents’ home in Kentucky. She killed a spider in her father’s bathroom behind her. She’s a gift. She’s a great discovery.” And her career is on the rise in no small part thanks to Russell.

Making Lists Gives me ‘Vertigo’

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This is the first in a series of original posts that combine memoir and movies, but land strongly on the personal essay end of the spectrum. These intimate, highly subjective pieces will appear under the heading “Ten Movies That Shook My World.” Or Should it be 8 1/2?

Making Lists Gives me Vertigo

Making Lists Gives me Vertigo


Vertigo was probably the last straw, a straw I would have set alight like the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, a movie that means so much more to me, and that I’ve watched more than any other. When Sight & Sound’s “Top Fifty Greatest Films of All Time” – a Barnum & Bailey title if ever there was one — came out with Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo on top like an intellectual cherry it included one solitary movie directed by a woman: Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman: 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.

Mel Brooks could have captured my spit take on camera. That would have been an overreaction shot because I’ve almost (almost) become accustomed to a world where movie list-making is a sport like fantasy baseball. Nearly all these superlative lists reflect a bias toward men, and men trying to impress other men with their taste and intelligence.

Even if we began our fifty-finest list with Hitchcock, who I adore, I would have opted for my favorite, North By Northwest, or Rear Window. Or even Psycho, which viewers tend to remember for the Bates Motel shower scene and the sexually aberrant reveal. I admire its matter-of-fact mature opening in a cheap downtown L.A. hotel room with the adulterous affair of Janet Leigh and John Gavin in the bland light of a midday lunch hour.

All of this is to say that, although I’ve been a film critic for twenty years, and drafted my share of top-ten lists, I’ve always thought it was a bit of a load – but a load that got attention. There is no objective top ten, or fifty, or one hundred films. From what country – what about all the films from Egypt or India or that brilliant censored film from Kazakhstan that never crossed its borders? And films from what decade? And, of course, my personal province: from which gender?

This continued irritant, reading the Top Fifty Greatest Films of All Time (what, no Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep?), or the year-end lists of my colleagues at “The New Yorker” or “New York Magazine,” launched my more intimate, subjective journey. Really, most of us write from this place, but the ability to know one’s own bias, and write from one’s heart, through the lens of a passion for, and knowledge of film, is the province of the great ones, like Andrew Sarris, or Molly Haskell, or B Ruby Rich or David Rooney or Stephen Holden. [Read more…]

Copycat Crime: That’s Flattery Not Mockery as Jimmy Kimmel and Paul Reubens Echo Melissa Leo’s Oscar ads

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Jimmy Kimmel,Melissa Leo,Academy Award,Consideration Ad

Kimmel and Leo do not-so-basic black

Maybe someone should tell Jimmy Kimmel that he shouldn’t lead with his cleavage. But, then, a lot of people told Melissa Leo — after the fact — that she shouldn’t pay for her own “Consider…” ads. And then she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for The Fighter and it was New Year’s Eve set to the anthem “I Did it My Way.” With both Kimmel and Paul Reubens posting copycat ads, nothing could be truer than the old adage that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery — er, except, flattery.

Full disclosure: I was at the Rhinebeck Mansion the night the Jason Downs produced the infamous photo shoot. I wasn’t sold on the idea. It was risky. In my heart, and as a member of the New York Film Critics Circle, I believed that Leo was at long last in her career the frontrunner. My daughter and I watched from the wings — Lizzie elated and me nervous — as they took the pictures of Melissa in a faux fur by the swimming pool, and later in glittery, glamorous dresses as an indie movie shoot threading it’s way through the location.

I am happy to say that I was dead wrong about the outcome of that night in upstate NY.

No doubt: Melissa looked gorgeous, and nothing like her tough-talking mama’s in The Fighter and Frozen River. She had the full “What Becomes a Legend Most” treatment. Sure, Paramount should have been paying for the campaign but they had two other “horses” in the race at the time: Hailee Steinfeld for True Grit and Amy Adams, also in The Fighter. But would the ads help or hurt?

There was a firestorm when the restrained ads came out in the trades, polarizing the pro-Leo camp that believed she was proactively seizing the day, and those critical of her brazen behavior. Deadline Hollywood took the middle ground, pointing out historical winners who did personal campaigns: American Graffiti’s Candy Clark winner; losers included Diana Ross, Chill Wills And Margaret Avery.

I talked to Melissa about the campaign last February for MarieClaire.com, and she laughed as she said: “In the true story, when we’re 90, we’ll giggle and write about the negativity. As we have witnessed before, it’s only the generator of the discussion. If there’s no negativity, there’s no discussion.”

And, now, in something we never would have anticipated — or at least I didn’t — those ads have been woven into the pop culture. They have not disappeared like “Kleenex,” to quote Melissa. Here we have that crazed weaver of Pop Culture, Paul Reubens aka Pee Wee Herman putting on the fur — in photo shop — and getting into the Leo act.

To quote our mutual friend Nina Shengold, who along with Melissa is a member of Ulster County’s Actors & Writers theatre collective: “Melissa & Pee Wee, ahead of the curve as usual!”

 

Paul Reubens,Pee Wee Herman,Tony Awards,Advertising,Melissa Leo, The Fighter

Pee-Wee's Poolhouse

Strike! HuffPo dis-content

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I’m ceasing my contributions to The Huffington Post. My purpose here is to get the word out as part of the strike effort.

Why strike the Huffington Post begs the question: Why write for it for free in the first place?

Sometimes I wanted to talk about a movie in more than 200 words. Sometimes I wanted to interview an actress that wasn’t in the Us Weekly or Marie Claire demographic. Sometimes I wanted to write a Mommy Essay that didn’t end in an uplifting nugget, and so got rejected at the usual paying outlets.

Of all the things I wrote since my first 2006 post, the July 2009 Melissa Leo interview proposing she be considered for best actress for Frozen River had the most impact and raised the most dust. The essay on my daughter running away from home the most heart; it connected with readers who all had their own running away from home stories.

It was never my intention to write without pay to make a rich woman richer. Now, when I see Arianna Huffington on the news, having used a leftist inclusive agenda to line her pockets, it sickens me. I feel burned. She exploited me, even if I wasn’t picking lettuce in the San Joaquin Valley, but stringing words together.

Striking HuffPo is not a bold step on my part – I have paid outlets, and I have recently created this website as a home for film writing and essays and novel promotion. But, if she’s not going to share the wealth – and clearly she isn’t – I’m not going to donate the content.