50/50

How you go create a movie about one young man’s battle with cancer that manages to respect its subject and still be funny is a mystery to me—even though the screenwriter, Will Reiser, is essentially telling his own story. Still, it’s a pretty neat trick to blend comedy with a story that’s moving and relevant; it helps to have a smart screenplay, a strong cast, and an overall good vibe. Those qualities make 50/50 one of the bright—
—spots on the fall movie map.
The ever-likable Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a 27-year-old public radio employee in Seattle who doesn’t smoke or drink, or even cross the street when the light is red—but all the same he’s diagnosed with a rare form of spinal cancer. How he and the people around him—his girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard), his overprotective mother (Anjelica Huston), and most of all his best pal (Seth Rogen)—react to his illness as it progresses is the crux of the film. There’s also a green young therapist (it’s a teaching hospital, they explain), played by Anna Kendrick, who plays a significant role in Gordon-Levitt’s ability to cope with feelings he’s never had to confront before.
There couldn’t be a more serious subject, yet Gordon-Levitt and especially Rogen (who co-produced the movie) make the comedy seem both spontaneous and organic. They do what all guys try to do by masking their emotions and using humor to deflect the real problems that are staring them in the face.
Director Jonathan Levine, who did such a good job with The Wackness several years ago, keeps the tone of the movie on-target at every turn, which is no small achievement.
50/50 had me crying by the finale, and gave me more satisfaction than many more ambitious films I’ve seen lately. If you, or someone close to you, is dealing with a serious illness, you might not be in the mood for it, but I can’t imagine anyone doing a better job of turning this material into a piece of uplifting entertainment.

Semper Fi: Always Faithful

The US Marine Corps prides itself on being the most devoted of all military branches and of taking care of its own. This makes it doubly surprising to learn, while watching the riveting new documentary Semper Fi: Always Faithful (now playing at the Laemmle Sunset 5 in Los Angeles), that approximately one million Marines and their family members stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina from 1957-1987 were exposed to water contaminated with a variety of toxic chemicals. Many deaths and congressional hearings later, the Marine Corps has yet to acknowledge its negligence in this incident.
One courageous retired Marine, Master Sgt. Jerry Ensminger, has led the charge against the Corps leaders' cover-up since his 9-year-old daughter died of a rare form of leukemia in 1985. As Ensminger heartbreakingly recounts in Semper Fi, his dying daughter refused pain medication until he was offered some as well since, as she told her doctor, "My daddy's hurting, too."
Filmmakers Rachel Libert (Beyond Conviction) and Tony Hardmon (a veteran cinematographer on such acclaimed docs as The Boys of Baraka, Sicko and Jesus Camp making his directorial debut) follow not only Ensminger but several other former residents of Camp Lejeune. These include Major Tom Townsend, whose son died at six weeks of age; Mike Partain, who was born at Camp Lejeune and was diagnosed as an adult with rare, male breast cancer (as were an unusually high number of other men); and Denita McCall, a former Marine and resident at the camp who passed away during production of Semper Fi.
The first congressional hearing on Marines' claims of illness related to the since-discovered water contamination at Camp Lejeuene wasn't held until 2007. Much of the hearing is preserved here, including Major General Eugene Payne denying any connection between the site's dirty water and residents' health problems. Cinematic and journalistic exposes of military and government cover-ups are fairly routine nowadays, but Semper Fi documents blatant lies in such detail that it truly infuriates.

Having won significant awards at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival, Semper Fi: Always Faithful is more than worth an investment of time and money on the part of both military personnel and civilians.

Queer as Folk

Like every American gay man in 2000, I was glued to the TV for the premiere of Queer as Folk, the US version of the critically-acclaimed yet controversial British series of the same name. I had heard about the "no-holds-barred" show from across the pond, with its frank depictions of gay life in Manchester and all its notorious scenes of sex, drugs and house music, but was still floored by what I saw onscreen. Was this really on TV? (To paraphrase their competitor's slogan, no "it's Showtime".)
I became an instant fan of the US QAF, even if the writing tended to be over-the-top and the acting was questionable at times. Naturally, as with most "Americanized" adaptations of British television (from The Office to Being Human), there were plenty of cries of "the original is better", yet I was never able to actually watch the UK QAF to see if all the nay sayers were right... until now.

Available today on DVD from Acorn Media is Queer as Folk: The Complete UK Collection, a three-disc set that includes all ten episodes of the original QAF (series one, originally aired as eight half-hours, is presented here as four one-hour episodes). Even though it has been 12 years since the series' faithful debut on England's Channel 4, QAF UK still feels fresh and vibrant and equally daring, and far from just a curiosity piece for those who have only seen QAF US.
For those viewers there will be plenty of deja vu moments while watching the original, as the US version borrowed heavily from it during its first year. And the basics are the same: Stuart (Brian in the US/played by Aiden Gillen) is the king stud of Canal Street (Liberty Avenue), always accompanied by his put-upon best friend Vince (Michael/Craig Kelly) and followed by the "one-night stand that wouldn't go away", 15-year-old newbie Nathan (Justin/Charlie Hunnam). Other familiar characters, such as Vince's overly-supportive mom Hazel (Debbie/Denise Black) and flamboyant fashionista Alexander (Emmett/Antony Cotton), are also on hand, but here the stories focus mainly on the three points of the dysfunctional love triangle at its center.

Minus the glitzy sheen that permeated America's, this QAF is grittier and more down-to-earth. This realism is no more so apparent than with episode three's tragic end to sad sack Phil (Jason Merrells), known as Ted in the US. Even so, the original still feels less cynical than its American counterpart, at least until its infamous final episode, where series creator Russell T. Davies seemingly gives up on any semblance of reality and logical character motivations half-way through and starts blowing stuff up.
Davies supplies a lengthy essay on QAF's origins for the set, which also features a healthy selection of bonus materials, including cast and creator interviews, photo galleries, deleted and extended scenes, trailers and the "making of" feature What the Folk?

West Side Stephen

“You are speaking indeed to the legend himself!”
With an introduction like that, you know that you are in for a great interview. Stephen DeRosa, a talented Broadway veteran and television actor, did not disappoint. The New York City native will be coming to a town near you in the West Side Story tour in the role of Gladhand, the male authority figure who tries to pacify the warring student gangs at the high school dance. “If you blink, you’ll miss me,” DeRosa joked. “I’m on for three minutes but I try to chew as much scenery as I possibly can.”
DeRosa, a graduate of the Yale School of Drama, was born and raised in Queens. “Don’t say it,” he exclaimed. “The joke’s already built in!” He went to school at Georgetown for politics, “but it involved too much acting.” Recently, DeRosa became an indelible part of the hit HBO series Boardwalk Empire, playing the role of comedian Eddie Cantor for director Martin Scorcese and Sopranos writer Terry Winter. He feels very fortunate to have parlayed a one-time role into three appearances, since the real Eddie Cantor was a friend of lead character Nucky Thompson, played by Steve Buscemi.

West Side Story is celebrating more than fifty years of exciting audiences with the battle between the white Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks in New York’s Upper East Side. Most of the songs have become standards that everyone knows, such as “Tonight”, “I Feel Pretty” and the satirical immigrant anthem “America”. This latest revival directed by David Saint, based on Tony Winner Arthur Laurents’ original work, is innovative in that the Spanish-speaking characters do speak in Spanish much of the time. DeRosa loves the production, and says that you will not have any trouble understanding the scenes where this happens. “That’s part of the fun of my character, he tries to speak Spanish.”
“(Stephen) Sondheim and Laurents always hoped that the show could be a little more authentic. You need to read the book Original Story by Arthur Laurents, because it’s delicious. It’s his autobiography. It is such a good read for anyone who’s gay and anyone who loves the theater. You will devour it. It’s about being gay in the 40s and 50s, it’s about the creative process, it’s about trying to have integrity in Hollywood and all of the crazy backstage drama that happened on Broadway.” DeRosa explained that Laurents and Sondheim got the chance to tinker with the show’s book and lyrics, and that audiences will enjoy it. “It’s a very timely piece, and Arthur wanted it to be even more timeless. He wanted it to be about “Us vs. Them”. There’s always an “Us vs. Them” mentality and usually one of the main things that gets in the way is language, communication. “

“David (Saint) has given the show a real pace, he’s really infused the show with younger actors who have more passion and more energy. And there’s a playfulness, too. The “Officer Krupke” number’s just going to blow your mind, it’s so much fun. And it’s surprisingly homoerotic, which came from the text and from giving the actors the freedom to be as stupid as they wanted to be. It’s amazing how when you get a bunch of (mostly straight) boys together to fool around, inevitably, weird gayish, fratty kind of shit comes up. It’s very interesting.”
Based on the immortal story of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Leonard Bernstein, Sondheim and Laurents moved the action to the disaffected youth in the Big Apple, where rival gangs of immigrants and those who used to be immigrants battle each other for turf, and a boy and a girl from opposite sides have little chance of finding love. Tony and Maria give it their best shot, even as all of their friends and relatives try to tear them apart.
DeRosa made his first big Off-Broadway splash in a historic revival of Charles Ludlam’s The Mystery of Irma Vep, playing opposite Everett Quinton (Devil Boys from Beyond) in the multiple roles that Quinton had originated. DeRosa also played opposite Vanessa Williams as the Baker in the revival of Sondheim’s Into the Woods.

“It’s a great job, this job,” DeRosa exclaimed. “I got to work with the late, great Arthur Laurents who was so loving and generous and who rewrote some of my role, to try and bring a little more humor. It’s a great show and audiences love it. Plus, you get to go to work and be surrounded by gorgeous men in various states of undress. It’s a good job, I’m lucky. I’ll take it,” he said laughing.
“The bottom line is, it’s West Side Story. The score just blows your mind how beautiful it is, and the dancing... these kids are doing the original choreography and they’re all in their early twenties and strong enough and agile enough to (do it). It’s really exciting.”

The White Shadow

The unveiling last week of a nearly eighty-year-old British film on which Alfred Hitchcock served as assistant director, art director, and co-scenarist was another exciting event in the recent parade of major archival discoveries. On Thursday night, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences held the premiere screening of The White Shadow (1924)—or at least, the first half of the feature, which is all that survives. This is just the latest archeological “find” to emerge from a partnership of the New Zealand Film Archive, the American archival community, and the National Film Preservation Foundation that, most notably, unearthed—
—John Ford’s long-unseen 1927 feature Upstream last year.
The White Shadow, adapted by Hitchcock from a screenplay by Michael Morton, is a plot-heavy, often preposterous drama about twin sisters who lead different kinds of lives, because one has a soul (“a white shadow,” indicating purity) and the other is a hedonist. The favorite daughter turns her back on her stern father, who loses his mind as a result but somehow finds his way to Paris, where she has adopted a new identity at a Bohemian nightclub called The Cat Who Laughs. (Later, in what is described as “a vagrant flash of understanding,” he regains his senses—only to be struck by his daughter’s car back home in England. That incident, mercifully, occurs in the missing second half of the picture.) Meanwhile, a proper gentleman (Clive Brook) falls in love with the “bad” sister, so the “good” sister takes her place in his arms rather than see her sibling disgraced.

The film stars Betty Compson, a popular American actress who was lured to England by a lucrative salary of 1,000 pounds a week by producer Michael Balcon to star in Woman to Woman in 1923. It was a smash hit, unlike this follow-up, made by the same creative team.
A “new” Hitchcock film is tantalizing, of course. But, if you’ll forgive an expression I simply can’t avoid, it comes with a hitch: determining how much the future director influenced what we see. Graham Cutts is the credited director, but most histories agree that his young, ambitious assistant and jack-of-all-trades had a lot to do with what wound up onscreen. Hitchcock later said that he did the lion’s share of work as the official director was perpetually distracted. In Alma Hitchcock: The Woman Behind the Man, Patricia Hitchcock and Laurent Bouzereau write of her experience as the editor of Woman to Woman, “...She was apparently not particularly fond of director Graham Cutts. She did not think he was pleasant or professional; he knew very little and Alma felt she and Hitch were doing all the work.” (If one is looking for an objective view, it’s easy to trace Hitchcock’s rise and Cutts’ fall over the next decade by examining their filmographies.) In the same vein, cinematographer Claude McDonnell did nothing particularly distinguished in his brief career, which ended in 1930; Hitchcock chose to work with him only one more time, on Easy Virtue in 1928.
But just as it’s impossible to assess who did what, even on a contemporary film—where actors sometimes improvise lines, uncredited writers contribute to the screenplay, and a gifted production designer and cinematographer may compensate for a director’s shortcomings—it’s dangerous to be too certain about how a film from 1924 was crafted.
David Sterritt, current chairman of the National Society of Film Critics and author of The Films of Alfred Hitchcock, has done his homework, and comes to the conclusion in his Academy program notes that “even static images from The White Shadow convey a sense of Alfred Hitchcock’s early gift for creating drama by purely visual means. Betty Compson’s impish smile and half-open eyes framed by a jauntily angled hat and a wreath of artfully positioned smoke; the motley crew of men she effortlessly controls at the poker table; Clive Brook’s steely gaze set off by a slash of light across an otherwise dark background; the graceful shading of an ivy-draped window framing a wistful face. These and many other images confirm Hitchcock’s precocious talent for silent storytelling.”
There is no question that Sterritt’s overall assessment is correct, but I would be hesitant to credit anyone for a star’s impish smile or the jaunty angle of her hat unless I’d been on the set myself to see how the scene came to life.
As for content, it’s tempting to extrapolate that The White Shadow’s story of identity and duality is an early exploration of themes Hitchcock later pursued in Vertigo. Or the comparison might be ridiculous…who can say?
What matters is that another piece of film history has surfaced. I’m sure there are more discoveries yet to come.