After 4 consecutive Marvel blockbusters Anthony, 51, and Joe Russo, 49, have left ‘The Avengers’ empire to create their own. Last year they produced — but didn’t direct — the Netflix Chris Hemsworth action hit ‘Extraction’ and now they are streaming on AppleTV+ the gritty sex, drugs, war and angst ‘Cherry’ with Tom Holland taking a break from Marvel and Spidey for his first ‘adult’ role. Currently they are preparing their own franchise ‘The Gray Man,’ teaming Ryan Gosling in a hoped-for comeback as Court Gentry and Chris Evans, no longer Captain America, as his nemesis Lloyd Hansen.
All of this seems perfectly natural – hits for Marvel, hits for themselves, A-listers atop the Hollywood heap. But these are siblings who refer to themselves as ‘2 guys from Cleveland,’ as if to emphasize non-existent blue collar roots. Their father, a Cleveland councilman turned judge, did imbue them early with a sense of social justice. Yet the odds that 2 guys from, in Hollywood terms, Nowhere would become what they’ve become are simply extraordinary. And fittingly extraordinary is the word for how luck has been crucial to their being seen and having the drive and talent to make it bigtime in one of the world’s most competitive industries. Here is a look back with the Russos, where they started and what’s coming, courtesy of a joint phone interview that has been slightly edited.
Q: OK, so you were both English majors when you graduated from college. I remember people looking at me when I said, I’m an English major, saying, What are you going to do – teach? What were your plans when you finished school with English degrees?
ANTHONY RUSSO: Well, for me, our family is very involved in local politics in Cleveland and when we grew up, working for various causes and campaigns, politics had a little interest for me. I thought that might be in my future. Maybe law school was in my future. Growing up I had quite a passion for film at the time but the practicalities of actually becoming a filmmaker hadn’t started yet.
Q: And for you Joe?
JOSEPH RUSSO: I was going to be a writer. I started writing in high school, I was a finalist in a couple of national writing contests, so I made my way to Iowa to study English. Then I fell in love with theater and theatrical writing. Then I fell in love with acting and found myself getting an MFA in acting. Then I realized I did not want a career while waiting for someone else to give me a job. So I started transitioning into directing theater instead of acting in it. That led to directing movies. It was an interesting journey. But I started as a writer.
Q: When did you corral Anthony to come in with you? It seems like you two have been a directing duo forever. Is that not true?
JR: I got an assist from law school. He was in law school and he and I just worked in our spare time, we put together a comedy troupe that was playing to a really big audiences at the college we were both going to together. I was getting an MFA in acting in Case Western and he was studying law at Case Western. So, we’re having fun with the comedy troupe and decided to try our hand with a feature script. And that’s what led to ‘Pieces.’
Q: That’s your first film right. Anthony, you mentioned political causes and stuff here. Your dad was a judge in Cleveland, that’s kind of a big deal. Do you think that’s influenced your filmmaking perspective? In some kind of conscious or unconscious way?
AR: I think so, for sure. Before he was a judge he was a Cleveland city councilman, the youngest Cleveland city councilman ever elected and then he actually ran for mayor. This was a time where Cleveland became the first major city in America [in 1978] to go bankrupt since the Great Depression. Cleveland was falling apart and our dad was very much an activist on the part of the poor and the working class. The conflict and the drama of that time left a big impression on us: heightened human emotion, this grand drama playing out in front of children’s eyes. That experience was very intense.
Q: That fits in beautifully with ‘Cherry’ and its social concerns: The tragedy of war, the horrible opioid crisis that’s been continuing for a decade-and-a-half now and shows no sign of stopping. Would you say that’s right?
AR: Absolutely, I mean that’s definitely the part of the human experience that we’re exploring and sharing, the people who are feeling left out. People who the system is failing. That is very much the type of person our dad was always looking out for as a community activist and politician. I think our storytelling is certainly exploring those issues from another direction.
Q: It seems like starting with your first movie ‘Pieces,’ it’s amazing that these incredibly famous powerful people would come along at each stage — I’m thinking of Soderbergh or Clooney who were there as mentors, encouraging you. That’s very rare. Did you feel like you were under a lucky star? Or this was unbelievably so good it couldn’t be true and couldn’t last? Or something?
AR: What’s strange about it is it came out of nowhere. We learned how to make movies in Cleveland; we made our first movie there. We had a brief stint at film school simply because we didn’t know where to go or how to move forward as filmmakers. And then the movie we had made in Cleveland started making the festival circuit. And it just literally randomly got seen by Steven Soderbergh. Even though Joe and I were very passionate about what we’re doing and we loved filmmaking, we knew it was what we wanted to spend our lives doing but we weren’t getting a whole lot of response to our work to be honest with you. I mean we did make it into the Slamdance film festival which was a big achievement. But when we screened it at Slamdance, there wasn’t a whole lot of interest in the film from anybody coming from the business side. So when we did get a call from Soderbergh, it was kind of out of the blue.
And unexpected that he responded to the movie. Responded strongly enough that he actually wanted to help us move forward with our next film. Steven was the one who connected us with George Clooney; they had just formed a partnership at that time to make ‘Ocean’s 11.’ George became a mentor as well and they produced ‘Welcome to Collinwood’ for us. We do say we owe a cosmic debt to the universe. That Soderbergh could find us in obscurity and to help us find a road as filmmakers was something we could have never dreamed would happen. It’s something that we’ve now try to do for other filmmakers because we feel like we owe it to people for what he’s done. By the way Soderbergh not only did that for us, he’s done that for so many filmmakers.
Q: How did your lives change with the Marvel Universe, starting with the first ‘Captain America’ movie [in 2014]? It seems like you went from semi-obscurity — publicly perhaps but the industry knew who you were — and became this gigantic Dynamic Duo with the 4 Marvel movies.
AR: Good question! I think, the timing was really good. We had started off with these filmmakers and then we basically had a decade in television, mostly in comedy. That went very well, we were loving what we were doing. But as that period of our career was going on, we were starting to want to go back and do a feature. When all of a sudden the opportunity of ‘Captain America – Winter Soldier’ kind of, again, came out of nowhere. We just got a call from our agent one day that said, Marvel’s got a list of 10 directors. They want to talk about the next ‘Captain America’ movie and you guys are on it.
That ended up turning into a couple of months’ conversation with Marvel, then evolved into us directing the movie. Part of the fun of directing ‘Winter Soldier’ for us was we were bringing a lot of creative energy — things that we couldn’t explore during our TV run. We’d been sort of overdue I would say for a while to do a feature. So when we did that feature we really brought a lot of the thinking we’d been doing over the years about various things. And that movie worked so well for us.
But it’s so funny for Joe and I to talk about how our lives changed because we just love what we do: making movies. And we love making big movies, small movies. We like making TV comedy, drama. We shoot commercials. We love the entire range of what you can do with cinema. And we love exploring it, and we love finding opportunities to do things we haven’t done before. So, you know every step of our career has been immensely valuable to us. And very enjoyable to us. But certainly the Marvel work was unique in the sense that, because those movies were working so well on a financial level, that we really did have access to filmmaking tools that we never had before. And you can’t have access to those unless your budget is extremely high. So, we were able to, you know, the opportunity to make films on the grandest scale, was a really unique opportunity and one we thoroughly enjoyed. I think that that’s kind of how it changed us that we were finally able to use anything that you can dream up. As a filmmaker, if it was important enough to us we could find a way to use it on those movies.
Q: I talked to Chadwick Boseman when ‘21 Bridges’ came out, and I look back on it and it’s so ironic because I said, Your life is going to now be half Marvel and Black Panther for the rest of your life and then the other half is things that you’ll do to stay apart from that. I thought you two would be in the Marvel Universe for the rest of your lives — and then this big movie ‘Cherry’ is AppleTV+ and you’ve got something with Netflix for ‘The Gray Man’ and a Sony movie. So, are you freelancing all over town?
AR: We loved our run at Marvel and I think we have a fantastic relationship with Kevin Feige. And we may at some point in the future for the right movie do another Marvel movie or do more than one. But yeah on the success of those films we set up our own company called AGBO. We’re well financed enough for us to acquire and develop our own material here in house so for the past several years Stephen McFeely and Chris Marcus, the team that wrote all the Marvel movies that we made, are partners in this company with us.
We have been developing our own film and streaming series that we are slowly starting to bring out. ‘Gray Man’ is sort of the first step. ‘Cherry’ was produced by this company as well. ‘Cherry’ was a uniquely difficult movie to make and I think the fact that we had AGBO was critical in terms of how we were able to bring that movie to the screen to happen. So yeah we have our own company where we have a bunch of favorite projects.
We can direct outside the company. But we have a bunch of stuff we’re really crazy about that we’re going to be getting to over the next couple years.
Q: I just saw the Esquire cover story on Tom Holland, where they bring up the idea of ‘Cherry’ as a career risk. Do you see this as a risk for the two of you in terms of, I don’t know, your reputation? Can box-office be charted if it’s an Apple streaming movie?
AR: The only risk was we felt an obligation to take the financial side of the equation seriously. When you take money in order to make something you have to respect that and ideally you want to make sure that people who put the money into the movie, make it back. So really, the only risk for us was making sure that it worked financially. Fortunately, since we sold the movie to Apple, the movie has worked financially. Once you take that off the table, there’s really no risk, other than Joe and I just finding a way to best explore the story we wanted to tell. It’s a creative opportunity for us to do something and make a movie that we feel like, not only is it important to us, it might be important to other people as well. That’s our job. We learned long ago that the people we need to satisfy most, the storytellers, is ourselves. As long as we’re doing that, as long as we’re challenging ourselves and surprising ourselves, we feel like we’re in a good place. As far as storytellers go, we can’t control whether or not an audience connects with the movie. All we can do is do our part as filmmakers and pour our vision and our passion into the film, and simply hope that it connects with audiences. But the good news with ‘Cherry,’ the risk was over the second Apple bought it. We knew at that point the movie was going to be okay financially.
Q: When I saw ‘Extraction’ last year it was like a Marvel extravaganza. I felt so strongly watching it, that I wished I could see it on IMAX. How is this pandemic with smaller screens affecting how you guys make movies?
JR: We do think theaters are gonna come back. I don’t know if you’ve seen the numbers from China from last weekend — their theatrical box office set a 3-day record. So, hopefully when the pandemic is in the same place here, we’ll see a similar resurgence in terms of theatrical. But it has created new opportunities. The fact that there are more places now to show your movie as a filmmaker is only a positive thing. The fact that Apple was there as a buyer for ‘Cherry’ during this pandemic and that they are going to get that movie to the right people, you know that’s an incredible thing. And that’s an opportunity that didn’t exist a few years ago.
Q: How do you work together as directors? Do the actors work with just one of you and the other one takes care of the technical things?
AR: When we first started working together back on ‘Pieces’ we discovered early on we both like doing everything. The process that works best for us is we like both of our brains in everything. Our process is we basically have a nonstop dialogue with one another. We just work through the movie through our dialogue with one another. As the movie starts to become more and more real we just put more people into that dialogue, more of our collaborators. So we have a very easy process. It’s not very studied. And it’s organic, it’s kind of grown out of a working relationship that now spans 25 years. I think every directing team probably works differently with one another in the same way that any individual director works differently from another individual director. It’s really a function of personality and taste.
Q: Picking a project like ‘The Gray Man,’ which I understand is intended to be a franchise, are you besieged by actors’ agents all over town saying, ‘My guy will be the best guy in the world for this’? Would you create a dream cast and then just send out queries to make it come true? I mean, how does it work? Especially now when you’ve got this high profile and can seem seemingly do anything you want?
JR: That’s a good observation on your part. Certainly our run has been made people respect the work that we’ve done, and people are eager to work with us. You’re right and it is very helpful. It helps us not only get the right cast, it helps us get them in an immediate way. You know we don’t have to wait. That’s really amazing. I think part of it comes from the fact that we got to work with a number of top Hollywood actors through that period. That was just massive.
So we had a big exposure to a large number of top actors. And we had great experiences with them. And when you work with people who are excited by the collaboration and feel good about the work that you’ve done together, you know that kind of word gets around. And that creates more energy in terms of who you know. When agents are looking for the right people to put their clients in business with, I think our track record, not only our external track record in terms of how our movies have performed, but I think our internal process of how we treat people, how we empower actors, how we make people feel included in the collaborative process of filmmaking, I think that’s also a big factor in terms of people wanting to work with us.
Q: Have you begun filming ‘Gray Man’?
JR: We were supposed to start in the middle of January. Because of the health situation now we’re supposed to start in the middle of March. I think on a safety level we’ll be able to shoot.
NEW DVDs:
A HOMICIDAL AFFAIR Wonderfully unsettling and an ideal pandemic antidote, HBO’s 6-episode murder mystery series ‘The Undoing’ (Blu-ray + Digital Code, HBO, Not Rated) works for many reasons, starting with its galaxy of stars – Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant as the upper-crust marrieds, Donald Sutherland (a Golden Globe winner) as Kidman’s mighty mogul dad, Lily Rabe as a questionable best friend, Noah Jupe as the couple’s traumatized son and Edgar Ramirez’s cynical and determined NYPD detective.
Then there’s the Denmark’s mighty Susanne Biers (‘Bird Box’) directing David E. Kelly’s original script. As a pandemic release, ‘The Undoing’ offers a look back at Manhattan when it was normal to walk among crowds minus masks or worries about social distancing. As glossy as ‘Undoing’ is, the violence is intentionally disturbing, shocking even, as is the climax. Special Features include ‘Creating The Undoing’ and ‘Eleven: The Undoing Revelations’ Featurettes.
A HOLLYWOOD LEGEND’S FINAL BOWS ‘Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments’ (4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital, Paramount, G) and ‘Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth’ (Blu-ray, Paramount Classics, Not Rated) were the final 2 blockbusters delivered by the Hollywood pioneer, a producer-director who beginning in 1914 established his own unique filmmaking style. These 2 DeMilles demonstrate how shrewdly he was able to take formulas, reshape them and make them personal. Both pictures come alive in their gigantic scale.
‘Greatest Show,’ an all-star 1952 circus melodrama that won DeMille his only Oscar as Best Picture, has a cast led by James Stewart, Betty Hutton, Cornel Wilde (The Great Sebastian indeed!) and, significantly, Charlton Heston, whom DeMille would turn into a superstar with the 1956 ‘Commandments.’ ‘Greatest’ showcases actual circus acts and positively revels in its hokum while ‘Commandments’ is a reverential if spectacular and unabashedly sexy Biblical epic illustrating the leadership of Heston’s Moses who demands of Egypt’s Pharoah, ‘Let my people go.’ These people are the enslaved Jews who have built the Pyramids. DeMille’s Grade A cast is led by Heston’s towering performance as the Egyptian Prince who renounces his privilege because God has spoken to him. He’s more than matched by Yul Brynner’s magnetic Pharaoh (‘So it is written, so it shall be’) and Anne Baxter, a long way from ‘All About Eve,’ as the scheming Royal consort who takes Moses’ rejection very personally. ‘Commandments’ is now available in 4K Ultra HD for the first time, while ‘Greatest Show’ is newly restored from a 4K film transfer of the original negative.
BAD, OFTEN MAD BORIS Once Boris Karloff became famous as the monster in the now-classic 1931 ‘Frankenstein’ he continued to star in horror entries until his death in 1969 when he was 81.
Karloff’s 1945 ‘Isle of the Dead’ (Blu-ray, WB, Not Rated) has 2 behind-the-scenes maestros: Producer Val Lewton (‘Cat People’) who became famous by making the most of low-budgets to induce fright in filmgoers, and future A-list director Mark Robson (‘The Inn of Sixth Happiness,’ ‘Peyton Place,’ ‘Valley of the Dolls’). This ‘Isle,’ set off Greece in 1912 illustrates the creepy creeping horror and paranoia that can befall a plague-driven populace who go insane and believe a young woman (Ellen Drew) is actually a…. vampire.
ARGENTO’s TOUCH A late entry from the Dario Argento, Italy’s influential horror meister, the 2001 ‘Sleepless’ (Blu-ray, Scorpion, Not Rated) is distinctive in having an international superstar, one of the globe’s great actors, Max von Sydow as its star. 
The plot, really never the point in Argento’s cinematic universe, involves a serial killer copycat. Or it should be a copycat because the original serial killer disappeared 17 years earlier. Von Sydow, the detective on the original case, comes out of retirement to answer all questions and find this multiple murderer. Many Special Features: An audio commentary, an interview with Argento, another with the screenwriter, still another with the production designer. And interviews with 2 cast members. In English and Italian with English subtitles
NOT SO WILD An unofficial sequel to Cameron Crowe’s autobiographical hit ‘Fast Times at Ridgemont High,’ the 1982 raunchy teen comedy that made Sean Penn a star, ‘The Wild Life’ (Blu-ray, KL Studio Classics, R) lets screenwriter Crowe consider what happens after graduation. Here Eric Stoltz leaves home for his own pad. His stoner, often stupid buddy (Chris Penn in an inevitable comparison with his brother) moves in with him and Elan Mitchell-Smith as Stoltz’s obnoxious kid brother behaves obnoxiously. There’s a lovely subplot with Lea Thompson’s high school donuts worker seduced by hot cop Hart Bochner. it ends badly. In this 1984 vision of Reagan’s America, the men are often liars or worse. Special Features: TEEN MOVIE HELL author Mike McBeardo McPadden’s audio commentary; a contemporary interview with Mitchell-Smith, just 15 when he did ‘The Wild Life.’
A YOUTHFUL RETURN It’s always helpful if a movie title imprints on your memory the day James Dean died at 24 in a speeding car crash. That movie is James Bridges’ aptly titled ‘September 30, 1955’ (Blu-ray, Scorpion, PG), a look not at the events in California that prompted Dean’s death but the effect it has on Jimmy J (Richard Thomas, forever John Boy on TV’s ‘The Waltons’ and more recently on ‘The Americans’), a sensitive fan in an Arkansas college town. Jimmy rounds up his friends (among them Dennis Quaid, Thomas Hulce, Lisa Blount ) for a solemn vigil that quickly morphs into campus hijinks, a séance and a liquor store robbery. 
Writer-director James Bridges (‘The Paper Chase,’ ‘Urban Cowboy,’ ‘The China Syndrome’) is in a personal groove for Jimmy J as a portrait of the filmmaker as a youth, shot (by the great Gordon Willis of ‘The Godfather’) in the small town where these events happened. Bridges (1936-93) was among the few Hollywood filmmakers of his era who were ‘out’ – he was partnered with Jack Larson, TV’s ‘Superman’ cub reporter Jimmy Olsen, since 1958. This 1977 effort is, according to ‘The Films of James Bridges’ author Peter Tonguette, a masterpiece, as described on his informative audio commentary. As for Dean, once as posthumously famous as Marilyn Monroe, his reputation as a Method actor who embodied teenage alienation rests on the 3 star-making vehicles he made before his unexpected death: Elia Kazan’s ‘East of Eden,’ Nicholas Ray’s ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ and George Stevens’ ‘Giant.’
ITALY’S MAFIOSO ON TRIAL Antidote? Or real-life homage? Certainly the 2-part ‘Corleone: Mafia and Blood’ (Blu-ray + Digital Code, Kino Lorber, Not Rated) is the real deal, a coherent examination of the 1993 trial of ‘The Godfather of All Godfathers’ Toto Riina. He had been on the run for 25 years when finally caught. Unlike fictional Don Corleone this 2-part series documents with input from prosecutors, judges, cops, lawyer and even a few now-sorry gangsters the fearsome hold this organized crime leader held for decades. In Italian with optional English subtitles.
OSCAR CELEBRATED NOIR Three Roberts – Mitchum, Ryan, Young — make ‘Crossfire’ (Blu-ray, WB Archive Collection, Not Rated) not just a distinctive film noir, one of the rare noirs to be Oscar-nominated – for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Supporting Actress and Adapted Screenplay. This 1947 detective story, fluidly told via director Edward Dmytrk’s weaving camera and a script that employs false flashbacks (this years before Hitchcock used the unusual method with ‘Rope’ and ‘Stage Fright.’) 
Adapted from Richard Brooks’s novel – the same Brooks who would become a first rate director (‘Elmer Gantry,’ ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’) – there was no way Hollywood back then could ever even entertain the notion of telling Brooks’ story which was about the deadly homophobia in the military. That subject still rages today, on front pages and elsewhere. In ’47 Hollywood’s Production Code made it impossible to say the word ‘homosexual’ much less have an out homosexual in a movie. So ‘Crossfire’ tackled another, not quite as taboo, subject: Anti-Semitism with a man beaten to death simply because he’s Jewish. A hit, ‘Crossfire’ beat ‘Gentlemen’s Agreement,’ another powerful and then daring Hollywood expose of anti-Semitism, to the box-office by several months. Both pictures scored with critics and the public. The audio commentary is notable for having celebrated ‘Film Noir’ authors Alain Silver and James Ursini. They include Dmytrk’s audio interview where he talks about making this film, being among the ‘Hollywood 10,’ the first to be blacklisted and imprisoned, and by naming names the first to get off the blacklist.
SING MARIO! SING! From the 1930s through the ‘70s, Culture — with a capitol C — was a goal for many. Opera, which today commands a niche audience, was once as popular as symphony orchestras, frequently spotlighted in movies, television, radio. And there was no greater operatic icon than Enrico Caruso (1873-1921).
An ideal subject for a musical biopic, the 1951 ‘The Great Caruso’ (Blu-ray, WB Archive Collection, G) was a personal achievement for its star, tenor Mario Lanza, who idolized Caruso. Lanza took his stage name from his Maria Lanza. His real name was Alfredo Arnold Cocozza. A protégé of the Boston Symphony conductor, he studied with Leonard Bernstein and triumphed in his Tanglewood debut. Hollywood, in the form of an MGM contract in August 1947, and Lanza’s popularity – a trio of million selling records, hit movies – prompted a backlash from classical music critics. Lanza received the blessings of Caruso Jr, himself a tenor, to portray his father. ‘Great Caruso’ has 37 musical selections and that amazing voice, one often compared to Caruso’s. But Lanza proved to be his own worst enemy, binge drinking, overeating, damaging his health and work relations. He made just 8 movies over the final decade of his short life. He died in Rome while undergoing a controversial ‘sleep cure’ to lose weight for an imminent comeback. No autopsy was performed. He was just 38.
OFFBEAT? YES INDEED!!! How many series happily refer to themselves as ‘all cynical,’ ‘stupidly awesome’ and ‘all evil’? Well the absurdist variety show ‘Wonder ShowZen: The Complete Series’ (DVD, 16 episodes, 4 discs, MTV Paramount, Not Rated) does. 
These 16 episodes from MTV’s parody classic of ‘70s PBS educational shows are made up from old cartoons and ‘puppets from one’s worst nightmares.’ The mocking tone never ceases as essential Life Questions are tossed like so many hot potatoes – Where do babies come from?! When the Revolution comes where can you hide?!! Extras are unexpected but welcome: Commentaries on Genocide and Time Travel, Beat Kids featurette, ‘Extra Annoying Games’ and ‘Over an Hour of Time Wasted.’ There are even guest commentaries by Dick Gregory, Gordon Lish. Auditions, outtakes and ‘Storytime with Flavor Flav.’ There’s also a helpful WARNING that decrees ‘Wonder Showzen contains offensive despicable content that is too controversial and too awesome for actual children. The stark, ugly, profound truths Wonder Showzen exposes may be soul crushing to the weak of spirit. If you allow a child to watch this show, you are a Bad Parent or Guardian.’ Amen? Amen!
AMERICAN INDEPENDENTS Indie filmmaking pioneers are given their due with the comprehensive Blu-ray package ‘Little Fugitive: The Collected Films of Morris Engel & Ruth Orkin’ (Blu-ray, 3 discs, 4 feature films, Kino Classics, Not Rated). Here are their 4 feature films, beginning with the 1953 charmer ‘Little Fugitive’ and ending with their ‘60s counterculture movie ‘I Need a Ride to California,’ newly restored by the Museum of Modern Art and now in its home video premiere. The Special Features include Engel’s ‘Fugitive’ audio commentary, 3 commercials he directed, home movies, 4 short films, Orkin in a live TV interview and a pair of documentary portraits by their daughter Mary Engel.
"Hollywood" - Google News
March 19, 2021 at 10:41AM
https://ift.tt/3luAHpa
Stephen Schaefer’s Hollywood & Mine - Boston Herald
"Hollywood" - Google News
https://ift.tt/38iWBEK
https://ift.tt/3fdiOHW
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Stephen Schaefer’s Hollywood & Mine - Boston Herald"
Post a Comment