By Jason Apuzzo. We’ve been speculating for some time here at Libertas that Disney’s Tron: Legacy might go political. The early, key indication of this was an interview with Bruce Boxleitner in which he suggested that the big bad villain of Tron might be a wicked defense contractor.
Collider: Watching last night I sort of got some political undertones in the film –
Wilde: Absolutely. There’s a totally anti-fascist message here.
Collider: She really believes she’s doing the right thing, having this war on imperfection. Do you get that now having seen the whole film?
Wilde: Yes, absolutely, and I saw it more than ever in the movie last night. I knew that was there in the script, but I was really excited to see, like, ‘Ooh, good. We have a little bit of a political slant.’ Maybe no one will notice but you and me, but I think the message, again, is that imperfection is beautiful, the idea of accepting flaws. The story is of a dictator who has ethnically cleansed this universe and what’s left is this desperate and miserable world. The message I think of course is that compassion, humanity and humility are important in our own lives as well as in politics. Again, that makes me think about how incredible Jeff’s performance was because to create a character like Clu who was this merciless dictator who really kind of sends chills up your spine as you think of maybe who he resembles in actual history, but I think it does have a message as well, a political message as well as one just about humanity in general.
I would love to know exactly who Wilde thinks Tron‘s “merciless dictator” resembles “in actual history,” wouldn’t you? Why do I think I already know? Hint: I doubt she’s talking about insane Islamic theocrats eager to wipe out Jews, or any actual fascists in today’s world; she’s more likely talking about America’s ‘virtual,’ imaginary fascists that haunt the current liberal imagination. And we all know who those guys are …!
The young, CGI Jeff Bridges as a "merciless dictator."
In any case, I think perhaps we’re starting to get the vibe of what this film will be saying. As we’ve said here on almost a hundred different occasions recently, sci-fi is the new medium through which the big, ideological statements are being made in the cinema. (Although, truth be told, sci-fi has actually being doing this for decades.) If Avatar didn’t make that point clearly enough, the many new sci-fi films coming in its wake will.
By Jason Apuzzo. So that you can get a feel for the man, I wanted to share with everybody some interviews that recently appeared on-line featuring my late friend and mentor Irvin Kershner. The interview above, which he did about a year ago, deals with making The Empire Strikes Back. It’s classic Kersh, in full storytelling mode. (You can see Part Two of this interview here.)
Kersh with Carrie Fisher.
One of the things I should have mentioned in my remarks about Kersh from Monday was his tremendous sense of humor, which you get a flavor of above. His humor was typically of the earthy, Jewish – and occasionally ribald – variety, and it’s what kept you hooked on the man, even if he’d just given you a verbal pounding.
I’ll never forget a time when Govindini and I had been up to his place, and Govindini had accidentally left behind a sweater, a blue cardigan. We asked Kersh later if he still had it. “No,” he said, with a wry grin. “I sold it to the Rag Man when he came by.” Classic Kersh. (With a cheeky grin, and with his typical old World courtliness, he then gently brought forth the sweater – neatly folded.)
Anyway, Kersh (born ‘Isadore’ Kershner) certainly came a long way from his youth in Philadelphia in the 1920s, when his Ukranian father supported the family selling fruits and vegetables from a street cart. It’s nice seeing him finally get his due right now in the media. It would’ve made him feel good, although – ever industrious, ever motivated – he wouldn’t have liked it distracting from his work …
Here are some of the better quotes I’ve seen about Kersh over the past few days:
George Lucas: “I considered him a mentor,” Mr. Lucas said in a statement after Mr. Kershner’s death. “Following ‘Star Wars,’ I knew one thing for sure: I didn’t want to direct the second movie myself. I needed someone I could trust, someone I really admired and whose work had maturity and humor. That was Kersh all over.”
“I didn’t want ‘Empire’ to turn into just another sequel, another episode in a series of space adventures,” he said. “I was trying to build something, and I knew Kersh was the guy to help me do it. He brought so much to the table. I am truly grateful to him.”
Francis Coppola: “We all enjoyed knowing Kersh, learning from him — and admired his creative spirit and indomitable will,” Coppola said in a statement released by Kershner’s publicists. “It was always exciting to talk with him about all aspects of cinema and life.”
Barbra Streisand: “He had the most incredible spirit, an exuberance for life. Always working, always thinking, always writing, amazingly gifted and forever curious. We met doing ‘Up The Sandbox’ in 1972 and remained friends ever since. I loved him,” she said in a statement.
Billy Dee Williams: “[A]n extraordinary mountain of a man with whom I’m proud to have shared the world of art.” “I bet he’s smiling at us right now with that wonderful impish smile,” Williams said in a statement.
Matthew Robbins: “To many, he represented the best in what American film making could do with its enviable resources and catholic traditions,” Robbins said. “He believed in emotion as the basis for all dramatic storytelling. For him, the worst cinematic crime was flatness, or lack of feeling. “Few who encountered Kershner either on the set or in the classroom will forget his almost ruthless pursuit of honesty and recognizable, complex human motivation,” Robbins said.
The interview below, conducted in his wonderful living room – full of artifacts from his many travels – is a more personal interview that deals with his youth, and his development as an artist, covering some of his early period as a painter and a photographer.
Part 2 of this interview can be seen here. I’ll be reviewing The Making of the Empire Strikes Back in coming days.
By Jason Apuzzo. The Hollywood Reporter today has an interesting piece on Iraq’s official foreign-language Oscar submission, Mohamed Al-Daradji’s Son of Babylon. It looks like a bit of a tearjerker.
It’s worth noting that there would not, of course, be any official foreign-language Oscar submissions from Iraq if that country were not now free.
Some years back we were honored to show short films from Iraq’s first film festival here in Los Angeles at the Liberty Film Festival. They were small, personal, humble efforts – so I’m very glad to see the artistic fruits of Iraqi freedom now appearing in such ambitious, large-scale form on the big screen.
By Jason Apuzzo. This is a very hard day for me, and a very difficult post to write. My friend and mentor Irvin Kershner passed away this weekend.
Kersh had been ill for some time. Govindini and I talked to him a month ago, and although the fire was still there, he sounded physically weak. We had hoped for the best, of course, but time and age are unforgiving – even for someone as robust and vital as Irvin Kershner.
For those of you who may not be familiar with Kersh, he was an extraordinary director of major Hollywood films – interestingly, the only director ever entrusted with both a Star Wars film (The Empire Strikes Back) and a James Bond film (Never Say Never Again; in fact, Kersh is the only American to have directed a Bond film) – and also of independent, art-house films, little gems like Hoodlum Priest, The Flim-Flam Man, The Luck of Ginger Coffey or A Fine Madness.
Kersh was a consummate actor’s director, who worked with such famous stars as Sean Connery (twice), Robert Shaw, George C. Scott, Barbra Streisand and Faye Dunaway. He also directed what many people still consider to be one of the best made-for-television movies of all time: Raid on Entebbe, about the famous Israeli hostage rescue. And he was furthermore an exceptionally gifted documentarian and fine art photographer, and would likely have made a major name for himself as a still photographer had he not been so talented a filmmaker.
Director Irvin Kershner.
These are some of the details – important, professional details – that you’ll read about Kersh in the articles written about him today (see George Lucas’ reminiscences of Kersh here), particularly with respect to his absolutely perfect direction of The Empire Strikes Back. Nonetheless, I’d like to offer my own, personal observations about the man.
Hollywood – and the filmmaking world generally – are hard, competitive, challenging environments. People are not always kind to one another; what’s worse, these environments do not always bring out the best in people, but very often the worst. It’s for this reason that when you find someone who exhibits qualities of kindness, generosity, open-heartedness, old-fashioned gentlemanliness and wisdom, you hang on to them. Kersh had all of these qualities and more – and so, like a lot of other young people he mentored, I turned to Kersh at a time in my life when I was in acute need of wisdom and guidance.
Because all of us at certain points in our life need mentorship. Mentorship constitutes the bone and sinew of what we are, and so much of what we accomplish.
And when Kersh mentored you, he gave you everything he had. His generosity – his deep desire to encourage and nurture the best in others – was limitless. I can never recall an instance when I called on Kersh for anything and left disappointed. That’s how large-hearted a man he was.
Of course, Kersh seemed to mentor everyone he was around. He’d lived a long, colorful and endlessly fascinating life – but more than that, he’d learned things from his many experiences, things that he was eager to impart to young people willing to listen. I remember spending evenings with him in his home up in the hills over Beverly Hills, a place that became a refuge for me, listening to wild stories about his early days in the Middle East right after World War II, when he retraced the footsteps of Alexander the Great; or his early days in filmmaking, getting his first professional break from Jack Warner; or the time Satyajit Ray almost accidentally burned down his house(!); or the fun he had palling around with Peter Sellers; or absorbing his insights on Buddhism, Christianity and other world religions. I’ll never forget one special evening when Govindini and I had dinner privately with Kersh and Ray Harryhausen, and listened to those two men trade stories back and forth; it was like listening to two men who’d been present at Creation trading secrets on the special luminosity of the dawn. It was that extraordinary.
With Harrison Ford, on the set of "Empire."
More difficult were the discussions with Kersh about his family, particularly his ancestors in the Ukraine with whom he’d never been able to have contact. As cosmopolitan as Kersh was, as erudite and well-travelled as he would become, I think a part of him always longed for the staedtle – the humble, small-town world of his Jewish ancestors. Kersh always seemed to me too sophisticated – and too deeply sentimental – to really feel at home in the rootless world of L.A. and Hollywood. Kersh was both a consummate insider in Hollywood – the man who injected humanity into franchises (he directed four different sequels in his career) – yet he was also the consummate outsider … a cerebral, Old World gentlemen and artist in an industry full of illiterates and “traffic cops,” as he liked to put it.
This, ultimately, is why Kersh was such a perfect choice to direct TheEmpire Strikes Back – a movie about a young man (Luke Skywalker) who is offered the keys to the kingdom … but refuses them, because he wants something better for himself. Kersh never quite fit in completely with the industry, even though his immense talent gave him opportunities others could only dream of. Kersh fit in perfectly, however, with the grand and idiosyncratic vision that George Lucas was creating up in northern California, by way of Star Wars. It wasn’t so much Kersh’s film resume, superb as that was, that made him perfect to helm Empire, so much as the size and quality of his heart – which was vast, sensitive and incorruptible.
Kersh with Yoda, his alter ego.
Empire is also the film, of course, that introduced us to the character of Yoda. And as many of Kersh’s acquaintances have pointed out – and as I in my small way can attest – Kersh was Yoda. If you want to know what the man was like, simply watch that film. What this means, of course, is that Kersh was a person who cared about his students – while sometimes coming down on them like a ton of bricks. That was how he – and many others of his generation – chose to do it. Kersh was a tough, hard mentor. He demanded the best. Isn’t that what mentors are supposed to do? I don’t remember feeling a lot of ‘self-esteem’ after leaving his house on the many occasions we visited, but I do remember feeling like somebody actually cared about me and gave a damn about what I was doing.
Kersh was part of that older generation who understand that what young people need isn’t ‘self-esteem,’ but self-discipline and training. So that’s what he instilled in young people – or perhaps better put, that’s what he amplified and channelled in young people, provided those qualities were already there. Because if they weren’t there, you’d never even get through the front door with him.
Kersh the mentor at work, with Mark Hamill.
In any case, I’ve lost someone whom I loved and deeply respected, and the world has certainly lost a brilliant filmmaker. He leaves behind him the best legacy imaginable for any mentor: a legacy of individuals, rather than merely acolytes.
If you want to know more about Kersh and how special he was, the best testimony is probably contained in the exceptional new book, The Making of The Empire Strikes Back. That book captures in ways large and small what Kersh did to not only prolong the Star Wars film series – under challenging circumstances – but enrich and deepen the series, as well.
I’d like to say a few words about Kersh’s children, who had been taking such good care of their father for the past several years as Kersh dealt with a series of difficult ailments. Their patience and enduring love for their father were evident to everyone who spent time with Kersh recently, and a father really could not ask for more devotion from his children. Our condolences to them and the rest of his family on this day.
By Jason Apuzzo. Those of us here at Libertas want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving.
If you live in America, in almost any circumstance, you have a great deal to be thankful for – because you’re living in freedom.
Today we wanted to celebrate Thanksgiving by giving everyone the opportunity to watch a great film from 11 years ago from Wim Wenders, called The Buena Vista Social Club. This extraordinary, Oscar-nominated documentary is about a group of artists who did not live in freedom – living, instead, in Castro’s Cuba – yet who refused to let their circumstances dim their spirits, or destroy their art.
If you’ve never seen this film, take the opportunity over this weekend to watch it – here (through SnagFilms), for free. The music is extraordinary, Ibrahim Ferrer is unforgetable, and you may find yourself shedding a few tears by the end.
Kim Kardashian channels Barbarella for a new ad campaign.
By Jason Apuzzo. There’s been an ocean of alien invasion news since our last Invasion Alert!, so let’s get right into it …
• Three major trailers hit the internet last week for: Battle: Los Angeles (actually, 2 trailers for that one, here and here), Cowboys & Aliens and Green Lantern. My verdict? I thought Battle looked fantastic, while Cowboys and Lantern left me cold. Battle‘s main trailer (see here) had a creepy, realistic, frightening vibe to it – especially with the weird, computer-synth voice on the soundtrack. A lot of the footage in the trailer had the look and feel of war footage from Iraq or Afghanistan – especially the gnarly urban street fighting. Battle actually seems to take its material (i.e., military invasion) ‘seriously’ – or at least, with a straight face – and for that reason clicked, as opposed to what the Strause Brothers just did with Skyline, which sometimes felt like a commercial for Skyy Vodka.
Howdy pardner: Ford & Craig.
I also liked Battle’s international trailer (see here), although the vibe of that was much different – more like something you’d see on The History Channel. In any case, I’m very much looking forward to this film, which opens in March in what’s becoming a crowded calendar.
Cowboys‘ trailer bored me to tears, if that’s possible in under 3 minutes. The trailer threw one big name out after another: Harrison Ford … Daniel Craig … Jon Favreau … Steven Spielberg … and apparently all those big names were supposed to make up for a listless, confusing storyline and muddy photography. Yawn. I was hoping Jerry Jones or Jessica Simpson might show up, just to liven things up a bit.
A lingering problem with Daniel Craig is that he has no personality; he’s apparently only capable of snarling at the camera. If there’s some other trick in his bag, I certainly haven’t seen it. And Harrison Ford appears committed to doing something he really shouldn’t be bothering with at this stage of his career – which is artificially ‘broadening’ his range as an actor by playing cranky eccentrics and/or bad guys. What a waste.
My friendly advice to Mr. Ford would be to speed-dial Skywalker Ranch and make sure that Indy 5 script gets finished, pronto.
As for Green Lantern, I have only one word: garbage.
• Some big news from last week was that Sam Raimi’s massive alien invasion thriller Earth Defense Force may now get a director, Pierre Morel (Taken). (It’s worth noting here that Morel only has room to take that film because he’s apparently backed out of helming Dune.) The original script for EDF, incidentally, was written by Andrew Marlowe (Air Force One). I’m getting the feeling this film may end up being fantastic. Also: the Timur Bekmambetov/Weinstein Co. alien invasion thriller Apollo 18 now has a director: Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego; and (bummer alert!) Colin Farrell has been offered the lead of the Total Recall remake. [Sigh.]
Pussycat Doll channels Princess Leia.
• The release date on Universal’s The Thing has been postponed from its original April window, apparently because the film isn’t ready yet … but I’m betting it also has to do with how crowded the Spring is looking (Battle: Los Angeles and Apollo 18 are both being released in March, assuming Apollo gets done that fast) – and how good Battle: Los Angeles is looking.
• Two more minor new alien invasion thrillers were announced last week: a Brit film called The Animators, and another titled Year 12, produced by Joe Roth. Click on the links to find out more about those – both seem a bit generic on first read. Another pseudo-alien invasion comedy called Pixels also now has Adam Sandler attached to it.
• It appears that Industrial Light & Magic will doing the VFX for most of these alien invasion thrillers, according to Variety. On ILM’s plate in the immediate future are: Super 8, I am Number 4 (see a new feature on I am Number 4here), Cowboys & Aliens, Transformers 3 and Battleship. ILM is also currently overseeing the conversion of the Star Wars saga into 3D.
Serinda Swan of "Tron: Legacy."
• Tron: Legacy is starting to be shown around, more clips are being released on-line, and as the release of that film approaches I imagine that people at Disney are holding their breath. My sense is that the film is probably going to do very well, but it’s not going to do anything like Avatar‘s business at the box office because it appears from everything I’m seeing that Disney is playing it safe with this film. I sense no risks being taken, no strong statement being made on any front – although the film is obviously going to look fabulous … essentially like a big, blue Chanel commercial.
I’m going to be really irritated, though, if it turns out – as we’ve speculated here before – that the big bad villain of Tron is going to be a wicked defense contractor.This is the key interview to watch on this subject, by the way, which only those of us here at Libertas seem to have noticed …
• It isn’t an invasion of aliens … but of KILLER BEES! Yes, in the wake of this summer’s Piranha 3D, and Sam Raimi remaking Day of the Triffids in 3D – about an invasion of extra-terrestrial carnivorous plants – we’re now going to get an invasion movie about killer bees, as director Ash Bolland is apparently on board to remake Irwin Allen’s The Swarm. I actually love this idea – although, admittedly, I’m a sucker for anything Irwin Allen did. No official word on whether this project will be done in 3D … but can there be any doubt?
Actress Rachael Taylor.
• Almost a year after it’s initial release, and we still have to deal with Avatar. One tries to pretend the film isn’t there, and yet that’s not really possible, is it?
The film is currently in the midst of another huge DVD/Blu-ray release right now, and more clips are now available on-line of deleted scenes (see here), including yet another politically charged scene such as this one … in which Sigourney Weaver and Sam Worthington fulminate on the military’s illegitimate provocations for war! [Sigh.] We’re not going to be rid of this film or this franchise anytime soon – Cameron’s endless provocations will make sure of that.
As an aside, Cameron also talks here today about his motivations for making the film – none of which apparently included copying other and better filmmakers (George Lucas and Ray Harryhausen, to name two).
As a Christmas present, I really wish somebody at Dreamworks would announce that they’re going ahead with a Halo movie so somebody gives him some competition on this front.
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … we thought we’d take a look at Aussie actress Rachael Taylor, who appeared in the original Transformers movie and next year will be battling alien invaders (in Moscow) in The Darkest Hour – although here she’s basically just selling ice cream.
And until next time … that’s what’s happening today on the Alien Invasion Front!
