..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

Underreported News Stories Of 2006
by Larry Gross

l. YOU ONLY LIVE IN THIS WORLD, SIR IAN MCKELLEN OWNS IT

Two of the hugest box office hits of this year, and all time really, The Da Vinci Code and X-Men: The Last Stand depended "creatively" on a strange looking gay British character actor in his seventies with a funny accent even by Brit standards. And if I'm not mistaken, they opened on successive weeks of the most competitive movie going weeks of the year.

This is a level of overpowering box-office impact for an actor that the Will Smiths and the Tom Cruises ought to be in awe of. What is the secret of Sir Ian's mojo, and how can other so-called superstars get some. And why has this important news gone unreported? More clandestine media homophobia, I guess.

 

 

2. THE YEAR OF DANNY HUSTON

A strong co-starring role in a very good, woefully unreported-on movie (The Proposition), the best single scene in a fascinating but flawed movie (Children of Men), and the best scene in an interesting flawed failure (Marie Antoinette - that's Danny Huston giving a good humored lecture on sexual mechanics to Jason Schwartzman's Louis). This trifecta makes this the year of Danny Huston.

He's the actor whose appearance in the credits is overwhelming proof the movie has some creative interest or ambition, or that the persons involved in casting the movie are on to some things. He's this year's "supporting actor," who will inexorably be given a chance to have a starring role in pictures because somebody has to be picked as a new white hope to rescue us from the drought of adult male movie stars. Given the studios unwillingness to make - and lack of skill at making - dramas starring adult males, this is an oddly hapless circumstance, like being invited with honors to be on the first assault wave of Normandy Beach.

In any case, this year, Danny Huston is happening.

 

3. JUDD APATOW IS ON A ROLL

Right now, the most artistically rewarding influential career in meat and potatoes mainstream Hollywood filmmaking is being enjoyed by:
A) Stephen Spielberg
B) Michael Mann
C) Brett Ratner
D) Judd Apatow

You got it. It's D. The guy you've never heard of, who wrote and directed last year's 40 Year Old Virgin, who wrote and produced this year's Talladega Nights (correctly described by MCN's David Poland as the only film among the year's top ten grossers with a shred of originality), and who apparently was hip to the movie significance of Sacha Baron Cohen before the rest of us. And rumor has it, he can get Vince Vaughan, Will Ferrell, Ben Stiller, Steve Carrell, and the aforementioned SBC on the phone any time he feels like it.

Is it any wonder that a movie superstar in career-reconstruction mode leaks it that he wants to be in business with Judd Apatow? Apatow doesn't quite bestride the current market like a colossus to the degree that John Hughes did in the mid-eighties, but then Hughes probably never made a single film with the complexity of cultural and political attitudes found in Virgin and Talladega.

On the other hand, Apatow has managed the trick of making fun, intellectually demanding comedies that reach huge audiences and help consolidate or launch movie stars and which contain among other things unabashed unapologetic liberal political content.

Cohen-to-Ferrell at the end of Talladega: "You taste like America." This is the single best line of dialogue in a Hollywood mainstream flick this year. Like the whole movie, the moment manages to both tweak and celebrate the NASCAR yahoo crowds and the effete intellectual snobs that look down on them.

In this respect, every Democratic party presidential candidate over the last eight years, especially Gore and Kerry, have something to learn - no… everything to learn - from the sophistication and balls of Judd Apatow. If there's any hope for the future of down-the-middle-of-the--plate-quality studio filmmaking from Hollywood, it currently rests on his shoulders. After all, Clint can't live forever.

- Larry Gross
December 20, 2006

Larry Gross is a 25 year screenwriting veteran and Winner of Sundance's Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award for his most recent release, We Don't Live Here Anymore.

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