- We’re happy to announce that “Chasing Amy”, Kevin Smith’s 3rd film, is now available on video shelves for RENTAL across the country here in the U.S. NOW you can watch the Jersey trilogy AND play all 3 of the View Askew drinking games in the comfort of your own home! If anyone “plays the trilogy” and lives, do drop us a line and let us know. Oh, and enjoy the movie. If you haven’t seen it, what are you waiting for!?!? And if you have, go rent it and watch it again.
Archive for November, 1997
Hanks & Affleck In New York Times Magazine
- Twilight Man was kind enough to send us this article from the New York Times Magaine, which featured an interesting pairing of Tom Hanks and Ben Affleck chatting about film.
At 41, Tom Hanks is the biggest star of his generation: back-to-back Oscars for his lead roles in “Philadelphia” and “Forrest Gump”; total domestic box-office receipts in the last 10 years of $1.3 billion, and a reputation as a very nice guy.
Ben Affleck pretty much summed up the industry’s feeling about Hnaks when he strode inteo the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel and exclaimed, “When I told them I was coming to talk with Tom Hanks, they let me off work today.”
“They” are the people making “Armageddon”, a big-budget Bruce Willis-starring action moive with Ben Affleck, who is 25, will also star. He was the lead in “Chasing Amy” and co-wrote “Good Will Hunting”; now he is venturing into the world of megamovies for the first time. Hanks, who starred in “Splash” and never looked back, has in the 90’s known nothing but the studios.
“Don’t let them corrupt you,” Hanks teases, as Affleck settles himself onto a couch. “And end up like you? Never,” Affleck shoots back, laughing.
Both actors are easy with each other, as if they were old buddies. True to his reputation, Hnaks is funny and disarming; Affleck is ambitious but not smarmy. They are somewhat alike: comfortable with the spotlight and engagingly confident of their appeal.
Affleck : When you started, were Roger Corman films the only independent movies?
Hanks : Well, eveybody the was making, essentially, slasher movies, Knife-rack movies, where the girl is washing the dishes and she hears a noise. Right next to her on the counter is a knife rack and it’s got eight knives in it, and she goes off and looks around and says, Gee, there’s nobody outside. And then she comes back and keeps washing the dishes, and then you realize there are only seven knives in the knife rack. That’s how I started. Those movies were made for like $800,000. Which is to say, independents didn’t get the kind of respect back then that they do now.
Affleck : They have respect now?
Hanks : [laughs] Sure. Of course, independents are not really as independent as they used to be. They’re all owned by megaglobal corporations now. Partly that’s because things have gotten vastly more expensive — the average cost of a studio movie in 1980 was probably about $8 million. Ten million was an expensive movie.
Affleck : “Top Gun” was maybe a $14 million movie. And in ’97 dollars, thats $20 million, which now would be a modestly budgeted movie. “Top Gun” which made $177 million or something in this country. Do you pay attention to the business side of the business?
Hanks : I do in the same way I pay attention to how the Seahawks did on Sunday. Like a football fan.
Affleck : I think everybody is sort of fascinated by it. Haven’t you noticed an increasing sort of attention now? All the box-office returns are printed in all of the newspapers — it’s not just variety. And people get really invovled in it now. I don’t think that was the case so long ago.
Hanks : No. When I was growing up, I thought “Black Sunday” was the biggest hit of all time just becuase it had big ads. I had no idea how these things were made. And the rare movie would be brought up as an example of something. Like I always heard that “Cleopatra” cost a lot of money and didn’t make it back. I mean, that’s abot it. But now you can read in the Red Bluff Daily News that “The Peacemaker” only fell off 17 percent.
Affleck : The big home-run thing is the goal. Somebody says “Independence Day” made a billion dollars and you think, Well, that’s big news. Although you never hear Procter & Gamble saying, We sold baby powder to the tune of $290 million this year.
Hanks : Well, Procter & Gamble doesn’t have Will Smith.
Affleck : That’s true.
Affleck : When Matt Damon and I wrote a script, “Good Will Hunting,” we saw is a s a way in. But we never thought anyone would see it.
Hanks : But it was good enough. That’s really what the lifeblood of this whole thing is: there is nothing more valuable than a good idea.
Affleck : I want to write more screenplays.
Hanks : Well, you must have some time there on the set of “Armageddon.”
Affleck : A little bit.
Hanks : You’re sitting in your trailer.
Affleck : Yeah, I;ve has some time. Yesterday I didn’t shoot till 6:30 at night. Came in at 8 in the morning: all right, let’s go! It’s been 24 days and, on an independent movie, we would be done by now. On “Armageddon,” we probably shot a minute and a half of screen time. I didn’t say a line all week. And I have a big part. I mean, I’m the only guy there. You think of action films as frenetic and crazy and it’s actually much more boring.
Hanks : I have never made and out-and-out action film. And they are boring. I’ve talked to guys like Bruce Willis. Movie stars have a lot of friends hanging around on the set because there’s nothing to do. How long can you play video games in your trailer?
Affleck : You need an entourage. I’m trying to get an entourage. No one will be by entourage
Hanks : I’m going to hire you to be my guy, and please, bring a deck of cards. Becasue, man, we have hourse in which nothing goes on. You’re sitting there by yourself, somebody probably knocks on your trailer door to tell you’re released for lunch. By the way,the stunt guy just rolled off the wing of the ariplane — it looked really good.
Affleck : They say, Yeah, you just went through some fire. Oh, I did? That was really brave of me. I’m glad I did that. Am I doing it again?
Hanks : Are you planning to go back and forth between the independents and the studios?
Affleck : People tent to see this stark contrast between independent and studio movies, But “Dogma,” the next Kevin Smith movie, which I’m going to be in, has a higher budget than “Chasing Amy'” which cost $225,000 to get in the can.
Hanks : Wow. Isn’t that great?
Affleck : It was kind of great, except I was sleeping on Kevin’s couch. So, it’s like, you know, I’ve got to pay my rent. But you can’t make every movie that way. “Dogma” is a $5 million movie, and by Hollywood standards, that’s wildly low budget, but it’s kind of exorbitant for Kevin. It’s his “Heaven’s Gate.”
Hanks : [laughing] It doesn’t matter what the cost is. You feel an amount of responsibility anyway. I can tell you that me and Bob Zemeckis on “Forrest Gump” were looking at each other every day saying, Is anybody going to care? There are some photographs of me and him on the world-famous park bench there in Savannah, and we’ve got the script pages in our hands, and we’ve got the obligatory coffee cups, and we’re just sitting there looking at each other saying, What the hell are we doing here? Because you have no idea if the thingis going to work. Bob says, It’s a mine field, pal, it’s a mine field. Who knows id we’re going to step on something that’s going to kill us? But that’s the same is you’re making a little movie about two people in a car at a gas station. Who knows if anybody’s going to show up? Because it could still be good, and on one’s going to show up. That’s another thing that is gospel according to Zemeckis. “Movies are binary,” he says. “They’re either zero or they’re on.” Meaning, you don’t rate them between1 and 10. It either works or it does not work, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Except make another one. If you have that chance.
Affleck : The business is fickle. How many movies that are perceived as failures do you get before they stop giving you work? How many chances do you get before….
Hanks : Before you just drop off the face of the planet? You can still do stuff, it’s just that you aren’t goinf to be getting your big fee. But when it comes down to that mainstream, top-of-the-line, green-lighted, everybody-wants-to-make-it movie of the moment, where the studios are all jockeying, trying to get the people signed, well, you might not be able to be involved in that heady atmosphere. But there’s still stuff you can do.
Affleck : Do you sweat it?
Hanks : Well, sometimes you’re in there and sometimes you’re not. In an odd way, I think there are more people in that heady atmosphere now than there ever has been. And here’s the odd thing too: you’re only one movie away from being there.
Affleck : Really?
Hanks : You’re only one movie away from being there or being up on the stage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion — you’re only one movie away.
Affleck : So was “Big” that movie for you?
Hanks : It was “Splash.” I made this one thing that everybody else turned down, and based on that, suddenly I’m a guy that people want in their movie. That was it.
Affleck : Do you get offered everything? Would you do an independent film?
Hanks : Sure. I mean, I’m in a pretty good position. Because No.1, how much better can I eat? I mean, I’m doing fine. So that frees me up to do an awful lot of stuff. It’s never about money. It’s always about what the story is.
Affleck : Well, if you’re an independent and Tom Hanks wants to do yur movie, any major distributor is going to look at that movie. And then it’s not an independent movie, but it’s the exact same movie.
Hanks : So what’s an independent movie?
Affleck : Well, I guess the real definition of an independent movie is that it is financed independently. But what if your movie is financed by investors whoa re accustomed to investing in mocrochips? Well, it’s not Paramount or Warner Brothers, but it is Sun Microsystems, and they have ideas about how they think it should be, and so you’re getting notes from people like that.
Hanks : Really? I didn’t know. It’s hard enough to get this stuff done without having notes from Sun Microsystems. [laughter] “We feel that the character of Jasmine should be different. On page 30, could she say something about her father?”
Affleck : “Couldn’t the sisters take a shower together maybe?” [laughter]
Affleck : Mostly, I think there’s a difference between movies that are less expensive and therefore can afford to take more risks, and movies that cost more and, therefore, inherently need to appeal to a much wider range of people. And I think the conventional wisdom is that, in order to appeal to a wider audience, you have to have a few kind of prerequisites, like stars.
Hanks : Now you’re talking about the thing that I really does affect us all in the movie business — the marketing wing. In all honesty, it takes more precedence that other aspects of movie making. They want to make good movies, and they want to make to make unique movies, but you know what? There are guys who ran studios that said to Zemeckis, You cannot release a movie called “Forrest Gump” on July 8. You’re going to be killed. And the exact same thing was true of “Pulp Fiction.” Which was something that was sort of missed in the “Pulp Ficiton-Forrest Gump” superbowl of 1995. Which we won by the way!
Affleck : They both made money, they both won awards.
Hanks : You know that as soon as they start handing out those things, it’s all finished [laughter] You know, you get invited, it’s a great night, you dress up, your girl looks fabulous.
Affleck : You make a great speech. Your speech inspires a big movie.
Hanks : “In And Out.” That’s tremendous. I must say I have got some of the best reviews of my career for a movie that I wasn’t even in. But back to marketing. The audience is standing in line, and they have their $7 in their hands, and they’re standing in front of the sign that has, at the minimum, probably seven title on it. And they have to figure out which one of those movies they are going to see. That’s the thing that scares the marketing people to death. They want to be the only movie that evrybody wants to see. And, of course, that’s kind of tthe antithesis of the chaos of the free and open marketplace. Which, in fact, does allow independent movies to be made and viewed. The whole marketing thing is just something you have to overcome. And it is hard. You know, when the marketing wing has a very clear definition of what the movie is, and it is not the movies you think you made, that is a big, big problem.
Affleck : Did you know anything about marketing before you started acting?
Hanks : You’re tlaking to a guy who, in his first movie, meets a mermaid named Darly Hannah, and the next thing I know, man, I went off on a tear for probably six years of never not working.
Affleck : In “Splash” you get the girl. Have you found that studios want to put a happy ending on movies?
Hanks : No. There is no secret recipe for success. But, if you’re a studio and you’re going to be spending this vast, huge chunk of movie, you must have safety factors built in. Maybe one of those safety factors is the happy ending. In spite of the fact that with “Independence Day” millions of people are dead — the entire world — and still half the audience walks off laughing. Hah, hah, hah, hah! [laughter] Or they bet on an idea of the big, bankable movie star. But the thing is, the formula is inaccurate because the audience is hip now. People are incredibly hungry for that thing that is brand-new. They are. As soon as they get a whiff that there’s something brand-new out there, they will show up in droves.
Affleck : Which is only one movie away.
Hanks : You got it.
View Askew Office Tour Gets An Update
- Ming posted a really spiffy (and much needed) update to the View Askew Office Tour, and we gotta say the office (although we’ve never been there in person) looks MUCH better than the last time we took the online tour. We just started taking the tour to check things out and it was hard to break away to write this update! Be sure to drop by the site and check every frame of it out, it’s definitely worth your time.
Entertainment Weekly’s COMPLETE Amy Review
- We just got a hold of the entire text of Entertainment Weekly’s “Chasing Amy” review. It’s pretty harsh for a magazine that spent a lot of time praising the film at its release. Here it is. Sorry for the delay in getting this up, but we had some local server trouble today.
SAY EVERYTHING
Kevin Smith’s Chasing Amy is merely the most notorious of a trio of recent gabfests from the mouths of baby directors.
By Mike D’Angelo
Pity, if you can, the aspiring young filmmaker. On the one hand, twentysomething scribes want to heed the oft-heard maxim “Write what you know.” On the other, what most of them know isn’t exactly dazzling: college dorm rooms, the corner video store, Schoolhouse Rock, and late-night bull sessions about…well, college, videos, and Schoolhouse Rock. Dialogue comes easily to them after years of mentally filing conversational fillips, but telling stories cinematically is another matter entirely.
No movie better epitomizes this chattering genre than Walking and Talking, winner of 1996’s award for Most Accurate Title. The characters in Nicole Holofcener’s feature debut do virtually nothing but walk and talk; even gum chewing would tax their resources. To be fair, this is an accomplished rendition of the story being penned by so many recent film-school grads (Holofcener attended Columbia): Best friends struggle to come to terms with adult responsibilities but find their relationship threatened by a Disruptive Event (in this case, an impending wedding). Leads Catherine Keener and Anne Heche banter skillfully, and a subplot in which a lovestruck video-store clerk (Kevin Corrigan) seduces one of them, only to discover moments later that she’s been referring to him as the Ugly Guy, is surprisingly moving. Holofcener’s functional style, however–a nonstop series of close-ups and two-shots–makes Walking less like a movie than a pilot for a nifty TV series about female friendship.
Is it possible to make a Talker worth looking at? Yes. Noah Baumbach’s little-seen Kicking and Screaming (1995), about four new grads who’ll stop at nothing to avoid entering the real world, traffics in the usual now-what? insecurities, but his dialogue is unusually distinctive (sullen guy to girlfriend: “Well, I haven’t been-to-Prague been to Prague, but I know that thing, I know that stop-shaving-your-armpits, read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, fall-in-love-with-a-sculptor, now-I-know-how-bad-American-coffee-is thing”). More important, Baumbach occasionally halts the conversation and lets the camera tell the story. One of the film’s best jokes, in fact, is unspoken: Max (Chris Eigeman) kicks shards of broken glass into a pile, carefully balances a sheet of paper reading “broken glass” atop it, and casually walks out of the room. To his credit, Baumbach understands that a scene like this can convey as much about a person’s state of mind as five minutes of witty banter.
Let’s hope that Kevin Smith (Clerks, Mallrats) figures that out in time for his next picture, because Chasing Amy (suggested alternate title: Chasing and Aiming), his ambitiously garrulous new-to-tape release, is as cinematically inept as it is dramatically audacious. A love story with a twist–a comic-book artist named Holden (Ben Affleck) falls in love with Alyssa, a lesbian (Joey Lauren Adams) who returns his affection–it features plenty of Smith’s trademark foulmouthed riffs, the strongest performances of any of his films to date (though Adams is sometimes a bit shrill), and an appealing and sometimes genuinely affecting romantic streak. For the first time, Smith actually appears to give a damn about his characters’ predicaments and neuroses; when Holden impulsively blurts out his love for Alyssa halfway through the film, the smart-ass posturing abruptly halts and an astonishing (for Smith) maturity takes over. Amy is also refreshingly gutsy in its subversive take on the bond between Holden and his best friend and business partner, Banky (Jason Lee), a mild homophobe who may well be deeply in denial.
Trouble is, Smith has now made three films without yet demonstrating that he has the slightest idea of how to wield a movie camera. His idea of ingenuity is to have his characters throw darts at the camera, or to none too subtly intercut the emotional violence of an argument at a hockey game with the violence in the rink. That he’s hardly alone in this inadequacy is small consolation. It’s time for the next generation of auteurs to demonstrate that they can walk the walk as well as talk the talk.
Walking and Talking: B-
Kicking and Screaming: A-
Chasing Amy: B-
Also, if you’re interested, read that article about Kev and Guin that we mentioned yesterday.
Did Kevin Smith date a lesbian?
What do you get when you put a couple of straight New Jersey guys and two urban lesbians together in a condo in Utah? According to filmmaking lore– Chasing Amy. It was January 1994 when the Go Fish girls, beautiful cowriter-star Guinevere Turner and her former lover and cowriter-director, Rose Troche, met the Clerks boys, director-star Kevin Smith and producer Scott Mosier, at Sundance. Both teams had festival hits, and both had made, in Smith’s words, “grungy little black-and-white films that were very concerned with sex.” They became fast friends–“I would drag Rose over to their condo, and we’d have endless conversations,” Turner says–and when Smith’s boy-meets-lesbian, boy-makes-it-with-lesbian story was released three years later, the rumors came with it: Guin had slept with Kevin. Or “Kevin couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t. He was obsessed, so he wrote the script,” as one New York production source recalls the folklore.
As usual, the truth is more complicated. Going on record on the subject for the first time, Turner says they’re all friends–that’s all. At Sundance the four had “a cultural exchange.” “We really got along and learned probably too much about each other,” she says. “They’d be like, ‘So, do you like women who look like men, or do you go out with really hot chicks?'”
But a crush on Guin? No way, says Smith. Mosier, however, fesses up: “It was like falling in love with your third-grade teacher–it’s impossible.” Except in the movies. Put-your-life-on-screen king Smith advised Mosier to write about his infatuation. Then, says Smith, “I thought, I should write that script,” and melded it with “a snapshot of my relationship with Joey [Lauren Adams, who plays Alyssa],” with whom Smith has since broken up.
Turner is clear about the moment the film deviates from personal history: “[Alyssa] turns straight in the middle of the movie. That’s not something that happens all the time.” So no rain-soaked declarations of hetero love? “The way I live it,” Turner explains, lesbianism “is a given, not a conflict.” Smith, however, is incorrigible. To this day he likes to remind Turner of the nuptial scene in Go Fish. Says Turner, “He’s like, ‘You look so good in a wedding dress,’ and I [say], ‘So do a lot of chicks.'” –Allison Gaines
View Askew NewsBites™
- There’s been some news & rumors circling “Dogma”, so stop on by Dogma: Rumor Control for the latest info.
- The illustrious Brian Lynch reports that his epic, Big Helium Dog, is halfway through the editing process. However, don’t expect to see him at Vulgarthon with any footage, he’s got an inherent fear of anyone that posts on the WWWBoard. Rightfully so, we suppose. Can’t wait to see some footage from this flick!
- Project: Pocketwatch will appear on Art Askew on November 26th. That’s all my contract allows me to say at this point.
- Violent BoB let us know about an amusing group of pics of the View Askew crew, from, let’s say, a few years back…Check it out HERE.See if you can guess who’s who!
Kev Speaks…
- Kevin dropped by the WWWBoard last night to post one of his famous summary messages, covering a little bit about everything. Here it be:
So Mewes and I had a great trip to Virginia for the JMU Q&A. It’s pleasant to hit the road periodically with a narcoleptic at your side.
Today was the TLA Video signing. Met some nice folks, signed many books and posters, and picked up a pair of Eric Rohmer flicks. Ran into Guin (you know – the love of my life, according to EW), and she came back to the ‘burbs with us to hang out and catch some ‘Vulgar’ action (that’s right, E – she’ll be seeing your genius scenes).
Some cats have been asking about Daredevil, but I don’t know what they’re talking about…
From all reports, the tix on the Vulgar-thon are going to blow out pretty fast when they go on sale. I hope no one gets left out in the cold.
By the by – if anyone out there sees/finds any 12″ Cantina Band Member dolls from the ‘Star Wars’ line, please give me a shout. Mewes has been bugging me about these for the last two weeks.
Of ALL The Pages To Screw Up…
- Good old Entertainment Weekly (Who lately seems to be pretty fickle in their opinions towards Kev, for some reason) decided to write an apparently scathing review on Chasimg Amy, then decided that they wanted to cut of the second half of it, which included the film’s final rating. Looks like all the copies of the magazine have the same error, so we’ve contacted EW in the hopes of getting a full copy of the review for you all. Thanks to Nolan Reese (whose mail carrier must be just a LITTLE bit faster than mine) for getting the scoop in first.
In addition to this, they also (for some reason) decided to write a small piece on Kev himself regarding his “relationship” with Guin Turner, the star and co-writer of 1994’s “Go Fish”. Turn to page 87 (and nowhere else) of November 28’s EW to read all about it, at least until we can get you a local copy of the review here.
Amy Video Release On The Horizon!
- We were fortunate enough to get our hands on an advanced copy of the Chasing Amy cassette yesterday (Which explains the lack of updates, we were busy watching it!). Anyway, here’s some scans of the box for you, front and back. Click the thumbnails for a larger image. Also, for the interested, here’s the blurb on the back of BlockBuster video’s cases, as reported by Turk 182 :
Chasing Amy
with Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren-Adams,Jason Lee, Dwight Ewell,Jason Mewes
Directed by Kevin Smith
A disaffected New Yorkartist finds that when love finally strikes, it’s with awoman who happens to be a lesbian.
Also by Smith: CLERKS
MPAA Rating: R for strong graphic sex-related dialogue language, sexuality and drug content.
1997 113 min Color
Most of you out there should see Chasing Amy out on your video shelves in just 2 days. And PLEASE, PLEASE don’t ask: You can NOT purchase this video yet, unless you’ve got $100 or so to spare and have the right connections!
Frameless Versions Of All Pages Now Available!
- We are pleased to announce that, due to YOUR comments and requests, we’ve finally implemented versions of News Askew (and all its archives and special features), Drinks Askew, and Dogma: Rumor Control that do NOT require frames! This involved quite a bit of changes, so please let us know if you find any mistakes, but we feel the speed gain for our Web TV users and folks who just hate frames should make this all worthwhile. Your comments are always welcome and appreciated as we try to make News Askew a more enjoyable site to visit on the net!
*** EDITOR’S NOTE: This has since changed to a page that uses TABLES. Frames are history.
Editor’s Note:
- This may have been discussed a million times over, but I know there was concern about folks knowing who each other is at VulgarThon…What about those stupid stick-on nametags? I mean, I hate them as much as the next guy, but it’d be a lot easier for people to spot board regulars and talk to them (or avoid them, heheh) if something like that was done. Again, sorry if this conversation was already had on the board, but I just wanted to bring it up while it was on my mind.