In the new rock biopic, The Runaways, a glum Kristen Stewart sits poolside, suckling vodka from a water pistol before pushing it suggestively down the front of her stomach. In a separate scene, she coaches a bathing teenage band mate on how to get wet using a mental image of Farrah Fawcett and a shower head. And then there’s co-star Dakota Fanning, better known as Hollywood’s 15-year-old precocious precious, who hoovers enough blow on an airplane to soar with Kenny Powers. These scenes are presented as the on-tour lifestyle of the titular ‘70s all-girl rock band, assembled and curated by the group’s wiry and rude L.A. producer, a man named Kim Fowley. Foreseeing the popularity of The Runaways for their jail-bait appropriation of the aggression, punk music, and horniness typically associated with adolescent males, Fowley had no qualms with solidifying a legacy by way of the girls’ quicksilver paths to self-destruction.
Actor Michael Shannon plays Fowley with a commitment and intensity welcome and familiar to any viewer who saw his performance in the new Southern indie classic Shotgun Stories or as the best part of Revolutionary Road (which earned him an Oscar nom for Best Supporting Actor). In recent days, Fowley has come out in support of Shannon’s performance, calling him the Christopher Walken of a generation. Given Shannon’s unflattering if amusing portrayal of the guy as an id swimming in midnight oil and the naivety of young girls, the endorsement is mildly surprising. But the comparison is astute. After interviewing the actor this week in a hotel in NYC, I couldn’t shake similar comparisons with the cornhusk steeliness and alertness of a 30something David Letterman and the seen-a-lot-of-shit-ness of Ray Liotta. In our below interview, Shannon discussed the contradictions of Fowley, HBO’s forthcoming Martin Scorsese series Boardwalk Empire, and the time he hid in a doghouse.
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Scanning across the web it seems at first glance that Michel Gondry has a slate of upcoming projects to compare with even Guillermo Del Toro’s monster heap. On closer inspection, however, it might appear that he’s only got a handful described in various different ways, and certainly not too many to handle. Every one sounds like a winner, though.
After The Green Hornet, which is hitting cinemas in December, Gondry’s pick for his next picture is The We and The I. Originally set to go last summer it was postponed when he went to play big budget games with Seth Rogen and co. Here’s how he describes it:
It’s about the group effect, how people in groups transform when the group is dislocated, because everyone jumps out of the bus at different times, there is a smaller group and how the relationships evolve.
Bus? What bus?
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In devising the soundtrack for Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Edgar Wright has chosen specific bands and artists to sub for the fictional musicians of the comic strip. Pilgrim’s band Sex Bob-omb have had their tunes supplied by Beck, Broken Social Scene will be providing the noise of Crash and the Boys and Metric were tapped to bring The Clash at Demonhead to life, at least in terms of the music they make.
Today, Metric have made their first Scott Pilgrim track available via their Facebook Fan Page. It’s simple enough - you become a fan and the streaming player is activated. The song is called Black Sheep and while it was not written specifically for the film, it seems that this recording was done specifically for the soundtrack.
One such fan has already commented on the song featuring guitar whereas the band in the strip don’t have the instrument in their live line-up. Hardly a deal-breaker is it? Indeed, I’m relieved that Wright is fiddling with the fine details and hope he’s not held back at all in his adaptation. There’s not much I find more disappointing than a slavish big screen translation of a comic or novel that just wasn’t going to work unaltered in cinema.
Via Edgar Wright
Almost a year ago, we pined over the freakishly original, disorienting and bizarre trailer for Totally 4 Teens, a proposed series for [adult swim] that appropriated the zany format of a vintage Nickelodeon kid’s show and then aspired to melt viewers’ faces off. You may remember that we recently interviewed the show’s creator and frizzy-haired host, Derrick Beckles, about his psychedelic workout tape and a music video he directed starring fresh-faced pal and fan Michael Cera.
Well since that time, the last we heard about Totally 4 Teens was that [adult swim] didn’t know what to do with it, and that other cable networks were interested. We love [adult swim] and practically inject Tim and Eric and Superjail into our morning cereal, but the idea that we would never see T4T (not to mention Neil Hamburger’s filthy ode to Family Feud) on the infamous programming block put pollen in our manly eyes. I mean, other visionairies behind T4T include a guy who produced The Daily Show and the weirdo who is the voice of Towelie on South Park and created Wonder Showzen.
But wait. There is hope yet. We can all vote for Totally 4 Teens—today and today only—to become a reality on the regular. Better still, the show has flirted with putting two members of the /Film staff on the program if it wins the entire contest! (If it wins today, it goes on to the quarter-finals and so forth, just like in sports.) You can go to the official voting site, where you can watch the full pilot episode, and place your vote! Check out the full trailer and a clip after the jump…
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Coming out of the European Film Market is our first piece of Attack the Block sales art - sampled above but revealed in its entirety and complete with tagline below the break - and an expanded synopsis for Joe Cornish’s film, “this year’s Shaun of the Dead“. There’s really not much spoiled by the new outline, but if you’re particularly keen to go into this movie knowing as little as possible, you may prefer to stick with the previous, less detailed synopsis, or perhaps just avoid them both outright.
Before we get to the EFM news, though, there’s a couple of other tidbits on the film that we haven’t yet covered - including the first ‘name’ casting.
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I hope you had a chance to read the Vanity Fair profile on John Hughes that we featured on the site yesterday. If you put it off, browsed by it, and just didn’t find the time — here is your second chance. I’ve been wondering since reading the piece, just how many screenplays Hughes completed in the period of time since he disappeared from Hollywood, and if we’d ever get a chance to see those stories published, or maybe even, produced into feature films.
One of the comments on the article was from a person claiming to be filmmaker Alan Metter, the director of Girls Just Want to Have Fun, Back to School and Police Academy: Mission to Moscow. Metter’s comment was a story about the biggest mistake of his life — a Hughes screenplay he had been offered to direct, which he turned down in selfishness, and was ultimately never made.
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Once the word broke that 500 Days of Summer’s Marc Webb has been officially inked to direct at least the next Spider-Man movie, if not indeed a whole trilogy, the trades hit with their takes on the story.
Firstly, it seems we can discount all of the casting rumours so far pushed forth because “a project insider said the studio wanted to lock down a helmer before turning its attentions to casting the Marvel superhero”. Of course, every rumour from here on out can’t be discredited in the same way. The wave of gossip and hearsay is only going to come faster and harder from now on. Do bear in mind, though, that the plan is to go for “a cast of relative unknowns”.
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The last name touted as front runner for directorship of the new Spider-Man series was 500 Days of Summer’s Marc Webb. Okay - there’s that infamous Freakonomics theory that your name can shape your life, but maybe it seems this Webb might not stick. Another new name has been put forward, and this time it’s none other than Nimrod Antal, director of Kontroll, Vacancy, Armored and the upcoming Predators.
So, what did he do to deserve this honor?
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Recently, I had the pleasure of interviewing author and renown pop culture critic, Chuck Klosterman, for /Film on subjects ranging from whether or not Avatar will be the cinematic equivalent of Chinese Democracy to the abstract theory that our society is unconsciously working for Don Draper. I’ll be posting the results shortly, but for the time being, here is what Klosterman had to say regarding the film adaptations in development of his books Killing Yourself to Live and Fargo Rock City, the latter of which we reported on back in October. Interview excerpt after the jump…
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Because you demanded it! Or because one movie isn’t enough for all of Breaking Dawn’s rib-breaking, belly-chewing, vampire-baby lovin’ goodness. Or because The Twilight Saga: New Moon made a metric fuckton of money. Whatever the reason, Summit Entertainment isn’t just promising to make a film based on the final book in Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series. They’re talking about making two. Read More »
