7/26/23
Newsletter #408
The Crack of Dawn
For the most part I have stopped watching movies. I’ve kept a list of every movie I’ve ever seen, which presently totals 5,433. So far in 2023 I’ve seen two movies: The Banshees of Inisherin (2022), about which I’ve already written; and The Whale (2022). I’ve probably started watching about 20 other films, but I bailed out long before the end. My theory is this: if you can’t pull off act one, I haven’t got the slightest doubt you’ve fucked up acts two and three, if indeed you even realize that stories have acts.
They say that hope springs eternal, and perhaps it does, but just because you’re hoping for a thing doesn’t mean you’ll get it – I certainly don’t. For instance:
Two nights ago, I thought, “Goddammit, I want to watch a movie.” Of the eight million shitty-looking choices, I settled on She Said (2022). Why? Because Harvey Weinstein is a fascinating character and seeing him get his comeuppance seemed like it might be fun.
My mind drifts back . . . It was 1998-99, I lived in L.A. and had recently started my website, Beckerfilms.com, and the Q&A caught on quickly and became very lively and adamant and sort of controversial. Two big reasons for my site’s liveliness were that I was directing Xena at that time, and I was acquainted with Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi, and I had been involved with making Evil Dead (1983). Oh, yeah, and to a minor extent, I had made some movies of my own, but they didn’t come up all that much.
Anyway – and this is a stupid story – the topic of the Weinstein brothers came up. Entirely uninhibited, I wrote something like, “Harvey Weinstein may be the best producer in Hollywood, but the sight of him gives me the creeps. He looks like an unshaven, unwashed child molester,” or words to that effect, then I impudently pushed send. Off it went to this new gigantic ocean called the World Wide Web. And for no apparent reason I had just called the biggest producer in Hollywood an unshaven, unwashed child molester. He had never been accused of anything, nor was there a single rumor of anything. He’d never done anything to me. And I was a struggling director-writer in Hollywood who needed work, why would I insult the biggest producer, whom I artistically admired? It was stupid, I was stupid, and now I’d never make a movie for Miramax, and why? He looked like a creep?
I could have taken it down any time I wanted, except that I never did. Every time I saw Harvey Weinstein in a photo or a clip, my creep alarm went off yet again, and therefore I had to leave my warning posted. When he finally was exposed, which this movie, She Said, is all about, I felt exonerated. I could just tell.
So, a movie about Harvey Weinstein’s career, exposure and destruction, seemed like a good idea to me. It still seems like a good idea to me, but I have very little doubt that it’s not contained in the movie, She Said. I don’t know because I bailed in 20 minutes; before the end of act one.
To my consternation, there were no front titles, so I knew that I had seen the lead female reporter before, but I didn’t know where. It’s Zoe Kazan, Elia’s granddaughter. The other reporter is Carey Mulligan, whom I like. Sadly, however, they only speak on the phone, not in person, and I have sad news for everybody in the whole world — close-ups of people speaking on phones is a drag. Anyway, it’s 2015 and they’re interestingly researching a fellow named Donald Trump and his nefarious sex life (which they could have done something with, but they didn’t) and they stumble across all of these women who keep mentioning Harvey Weinstein. Medium close ups of Zoe Kazan, here, there, everywhere, looking serious and concerned, which she has interpreted as looking like she just smelled shit, and Carey Mulligan with a child – so she’s a mother, as well as a reporter, which is certainly commendable – and she looks very serious, too.
Within 10 minutes it was dull. In 15 minutes, it’s stultifying. In 20 minutes, it was insufferable, and off it went. Bye-bye.
The movie that all of these women – the writer, the director, the producers, the stars – wanted to make was All the President’s Men (1976). There’s the irony, in this post-Ironic hellscape we find ourselves. I don’t know that any of these women knew that that’s the movie that they wished they were making, but it is, I assure you.
I haven’t seen All the President’s Men in a decade, but I’ve seen it a number of times – including in the theater when it opened – and for an elderly pothead, I’ve got a pretty good sense of it still. The screenplay is by one of my heroes, William Goldman, and he received his second Oscar for it. Given the scope of its story – much bigger than the exposure of a pervert movie producer – it’s an incredibly tight script. And what She Said needed so desperately in their act one, that I would venture they didn’t even know they needed, was handled in a beautiful, cinematic, short sequence – almost a shtick – in All the President’s Men.
Two reporters on the same story who don’t know each other. In She Said the beginning is entirely composed of shots of these two women on the phone spewing serious questions, “He did what?” “Who said that?” “She did?” “Will she go on the record?” It’s all bullshit. And Zoe Kazan, Elia’s granddaughter, manages to keep a perpetual grimace on her face. And Carey Mulligan, who I like (did I mention that?), is caring for a child. That’s admirable, right?
In All the President’s Men, as I recall, Bob Woodward (Robert Redford), is assigned the first story about the Watergate break in, and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) is really interested. Their desks are near each other, and the basket where you turn in your finished copy is located between them. Bernstein’s desk is in the foreground, Woodward’s desk is a few down in the background. Woodward files his copy, and Bernstein steals it, reads it, and returns it to the basket. This happens a couple of times, and Woodward notices. Finally, Woodward calls Bernstein out, and Bernstein says he can write the copy better, and a partnership is hesitantly formed. But Woodward gets the last line in the sequence, and I’m not looking it up, but it’s something like, “I don’t mind what you did, I mind how you did it.” We move on into the story, the plot, but I already have a good sense of both of these guys. I don’t have to like them, but I do have to know them a little.
It’s not quite dawn.