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| SXSW '08 Interview: "Do You Sleep In The Nude?" Director & Film Critic Marshall Fine |
by Erik Childress
The “Do You Sleep In The Nude?" Pitch: A documentary about writer Rex Reed and his impact on celebrity journalism.
How did this film get rolling at the beginning? Give us a brief history from writing to production to post to just last night.
MARSHALL: It was the summer of 2005 and I had finished writing my biography of John Cassavetes, “Accidental Genius,” and was waiting for it to be published. I was thinking about my next project and also thinking that, gee, I didn’t really want to write another biography because I’d written three and knew how to do that. So I wanted to try something new.
I knew Rex and was friendly with him (we’re both members of the NY Film Critics Circle) – and just sort of had this flash in which I thought he would be perfect for a documentary because he’s one of the funniest, most unfiltered people I know. And part of that flash was that I would make the film myself.
I approached Rex and he agreed, if I could find the money. Most of the publicists I know said, “Wow, what a great idea – I know just who you should talk to for financing,” but most of those studios said, “Sure, we’d love to see it -- when you’re done with it.”
As it happens, I host a film series at a theater in Westchester County north of New York and, in Oct ’05, I screened “The Dying Gaul.” The producer, George Vanbuskirk, came along with director Craig Lucas and star Patricia Clarkson, who were doing the Q/A after the film. I knew George slightly and said, casually, “I’ve got a great idea for a documentary about Rex Reed.” He said, “I totally get it. We could do that.” And that’s how it started.
We shot in New York, L.A. and New Orleans, where Rex was a participant in the annual Tennessee Williams Literary Festival, mostly during 2006. We edited in 2007. And here we are.
Where does the title come from?
MARSHALL: “Do You Sleep in the Nude?” was the title of Rex’s first book, a best-selling collection of his celebrity profiles, published in 1968.
What is it about Rex Reed that cried out to you, "yes, this man needs a cinematic document of his contributions to cinema?"
MARSHALL: When I was in high school in Minneapolis in the 1960s, I would read Rex’s profiles in the Sunday NYTimes and in Esquire in the school library and think, “He’s doing what I would like to do – and he’s doing it in a way that other people aren’t.” So Rex was a role model for me as a journalist.
As I thought about making the film, I realized that there is a whole generation or more of people who aren’t familiar with Rex’s work and have no idea the impact Rex had in changing celebrity journalism or that Rex’s celebrity profiles – which really pulled back the curtain on celebrities, rather than simply echoing studio puffery – were as relevant a part of the New Journalism of that era as the work of Tom Wolfe or Gay Talese or Nora Ephron or any of the other names associated with that term. To me, Rex was the first “celebrity” celebrity journalist and the first superstar movie critic.
During production did you ever find yourself thinking ahead to film festivals, paying customers, good & bad reviews, etc?
MARSHALL: Sure. Who doesn’t?
Is this your first trip to SXSW? Got any other film festival experience? If you’re a festival veteran, let us know your favorite and least-favorite parts of the ride as a critic.
MARSHALL: This is my first trip to SXSW and to Austin. This film previously screened at the Hamptons Film Festival in Oct 07. I also made a short doc in 2002 that screened at the Woodstock and Amsterdam film festivals.
I’ve been attending Toronto Film Festival off and on since 1984 as a critic and entertainment writer; New York Film Festival since 1987; Sundance since 1998. I’ve also been to the Mill Valley, San Francisco and Tribeca film festivals. My least favorite part is standing in line for screenings but I accept that as part of the whole gestalt (as long as I get in). My favorite part is sitting down to see a movie I know nothing about – and discovering something transcendent.
Tell us of your own travails as a film critic. What got you started?
MARSHALL: I’ve always written and I’ve always been interested in the arts. So, by the time I graduated from high school (having written for my high school paper), I knew I wanted to be a journalist and work for a newspaper, where I would write about the arts. At the University of Minnesota, I wrote reviews for my college paper, the Minnesota Daily, and I wrote about everything: movies, theater, popular music, TV, books – whatever I encountered. As a freshman, I was also hired as a stringer for the Minneapolis Star, writing reviews of rock concerts and albums, which I did through college.
After college, I worked at newspapers all over the country, usually as a reporter covering something else but, on my own time, writing reviews of, again, whatever there was to have an opinion about. I finally got a job writing about entertainment full-time at the Jackson (Miss) Clarion-Ledger. But then I was fired there in 1977 for panning an Anita Bryant concert. So I got a job with the Gannett newspaper in Sioux Falls, SD, as entertainment writer and spent 25 years with Gannett – the last 17 at their newspaper in Westchester County, the suburbs north of New York, which was where I first specialized as a film critic (though I still wrote about Broadway and other things). I became film/TV critic on the staff of Star magazine in 2004 and continue as their critic on a freelance basis. I’ve been a member of the New York Film Critics Circle since 1989 and have been chairman 3 times: 1992, 2002 and 2005.
Of all the Muppets, which one do you most relate to?
MARSHALL: Statler and Waldorf, the two old guys on “The Muppet Show” who sit in the balcony and hurl insulting wisecracks at the performers. Sort of like critics wish they could do.
In a quote we find both humorous and ill-conceived over at Criticwatch, Reed once called Punch-Drunk Love, The Royal Tenenbaums, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind nothing but "hollow, juvenile and superficial trash." As these are films attributed to the likes of Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson, George Clooney and Charlie Kaufmann, whom some would include on a list of the new mavericks of contemporary cinema, are we looking at a case where the old school of critic hasn't (or isn't willing) to adapt to a new school of thought, despite their roots in classic storytelling? Or is Rex just being cranky?
MARSHALL: I can’t speak for Rex but I will say that, of the 4 movies you mentioned, I thought Punch Drunk Love was slight, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind confused and Eternal Sunshine vastly overrated (though I loved Royal Tenenbaums). I’ve generally liked other work by the same directors – so what does that mean?
I think it’s jumping to conclusions to say that Rex is dismissing a new generation, just because he didn’t like those films. He likes what he likes (as do we all) – and his opinions tend to be outspoken when he doesn’t like something. That’s what makes him Rex Reed. Furthermore, it’s a tad doctrinaire to imply, just because someone is a new maverick of contemporary cinema, that he’s incapable of making a bad movie.
In Albert Brooks' Lost In America there's a famous clip at the beginning of Rex Reed on the television commenting on how he doesn't need an audience's reaction to inform his opinion. "If it's funny, I'll laugh," he says. What are your thoughts on the practice of studios forcing critics into evening promo screenings in the hopes that we'll laugh along with the latest Wayans Bros. monstrosity because the audience is?
MARSHALL: First of all, I’m just juvenile enough to laugh at some of (not all of) what the Wayans Bros. put out there (I’ll admit that I howled at “Scary Movie”); making someone laugh hard isn’t easy. It’s possible to laugh hard at a movie while recognizing that it’s not very good. Stop being such snobs.
But Rex is right: If it’s funny, I’ll laugh, even if I’m alone – and if it’s not, having a loudly laughing audience in the same room won’t sway me. I’ve sat through many an all-media screening without cracking a smile while surrounded by a crowd overcome with laughter. (Latest example: “Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins.”) The studios can try to influence critics by surrounding them with an audience. But that’s not going to convince me something is funny if it’s not.
If you could share one massive lesson that you learned while making this movie, what would it be?
MARSHALL: Two lessons: Collaboration is a two-edged sword. And get the money upfront.
What films and filmmakers have acted as your inspirations, be they a lifelong love or a very specific scene composition?
MARSHALL: I’ve written books about Sam Peckinpah and John Cassavetes, so that’s two. When asked what my favorite film is, I always say, “Chinatown.” I love the Coen brothers and Martin Scorsese as well.
But I guess those aren’t actually inspirations. So I’d have to say I’ve been inspired by every director I’ve ever interviewed who made a film starting with nothing and pushed forward to completion on sheer willpower and ingenuity. It made me think that, someday, I could do the same thing.
I was also inspired by my long-time friend Larry Sutin, who wrote THE book about Philip K. Dick, ”Divine Invasions,” who told me after he finished it, “You should write a biography. It’s what you do everyday as a journalist.”
Did you watch any movies in pre-production and yell “This! I want something JUST like this …only different.”?
MARSHALL: Not really. But I did play with Google Earth on my computer and wanted to use that effect of zooming in from outer space to the corner of 72nd and Central Park West where the Dakota is in NYC (which is where Rex lives) at some point in the film. We never did do that – and I just recently saw the same effect on a new TV sitcom called “Unhitched.” I thought of it first.
What actor would you cast as your favorite cartoon character?
MARSHALL: Steve Buscemi as Bugs Bunny.
Say you landed a big studio contract tomorrow, and they offered you a semi-huge budget to remake, adapt, or sequelize something. What projects would you tackle?
MARSHALL: Aside from scripts of my own? Nothing I’d want to mention because, God willing, if I ever get that opportunity, I don’t want to have named it here and then discover that someone read this and said, “Great idea – let’s do it now!” But I’ve got several works in mind: a novel I’d like to adapt, a couple of plays I want to remake.
Who would be the next film critic you would make a documentary about if you could? And who are some of the critics you really respect these days?
MARSHALL: One movie about a film critic from me is plenty.
As for critics I respect, well, let me put it this way: While I’m friendly with a lot of other critics and respect their work, the unspoken truth is that critics must have huge egos to put their opinions before the public on a regular basis. As a result, each critic thinks that he – and he alone – is the one with the correct opinion about and interpretation of any given work. If there is received wisdom to be dispensed, he should be the one to do so. So anyone who agrees with him is simply exhibiting native intelligence and anyone who doesn’t, well, you fill in the blank. Having said that, the critics I read regularly and enjoy – though don’t necessarily agree with – are David Denby and Anthony Lane of the New Yorker.
Honestly, how important are film critics nowadays?
MARSHALL: Important to whom? There are so many movies released every year that I believe critics are more important than ever to audiences to help them decide which movies they would enjoy, particularly given the cost of going to a movie. That’s especially true of critics whose audiences are able to read them regularly and, as a result, learn to correlate their taste with the critic’s, in order to read that critic’s reviews in a useful way.
Sadly, I believe that newspapers and magazines have come to believe that critics are of negligible importance because there are so many people blogging about and reviewing film on the Internet – and so their readers can get plenty of information elsewhere. The short-sighted thinking is, well, we have limited resources and we’re losing readers: We better give our readers something they can’t get elsewhere. But each critic’s voice is unique and can be a valuable asset to a newspaper or a magazine. Yet these publications stupidly assume that there is no value in having a critic on staff with whose work their readers can become acquainted and, on occasion, actually speak to in person.
The assumption, by newspapers in particular, is that all reviews are the same, so why spend money on having a staff critic when you can just pull reviews from a wire service? Which is a quick way to lose readers who DO care about criticism because, when a newspaper doesn’t provide a consistent critical voice and considers all wire reviews interchangeable, then none of those wire reviews are worth anything to the reader because there’s no consistency of critical voice.
What would mean more to you? A full-on rave from an anonymous junketeer or an average, but critically constructive review from a respected print or online journalist?
MARSHALL: I had the interesting experience, when my first book was published, of reading both positive and negative reviews and, in virtually every case, thinking, “Huh – I’ve written that exact same review at some point in the past.” I assume the same will be true with this movie.
Positive reviews, obviously, are important to the commercial life of the film. A constructive review would be nice but, really, by the time the movie gets in front of an audience, I’ve discovered, the filmmaker knows in minute detail what does or doesn’t work – and, at that point, it’s too late to change it, anyway. As a reporter, I’ve interviewed artists who have said that critics – and audiences – often make connections about the work that the artist was too close to see. I assume that there are things in my books and movie, themes and ideas, that I was unconscious of. So having someone else point those out would be nice.
Ultimately, and again, this is something I discovered with my books, the real fulfillment comes from doing the work. Everything else is out of your hands. Still, when my film got a good response – i.e., some big laughs – at the Hamptons Film Festival, it was very gratifying. After all, when you write a book, you don’t then gather a group of people together in an auditorium to read and react to it aloud.
Any thoughts on the junket system? Couldn't the studios save a lot of money by just getting quotes from the critics they already invite from Rotten Tomatoes? Most of the junketeers you can't even find online outside of Criticwatch.
MARSHALL: Movie junkets are a godsend to the studios: free mass publicity for a minimum investment. For actual reporters (as opposed to content providers), they’re generally a waste of time, if you’re forced to survive on material gathered from press conferences and round tables, where you’re at the mercy of a dozen or more other reporters with completely different agendas.
Really, I look at most movie ads, filled with quotes from critics whose work I never otherwise run across, and wonder what’s the difference between quoting them and quoting David Manning, the fictitious critic Columbia Pictures created to blurb in ads a few years ago. You can always find someone to say something positive about even the worst piece of shit, if it means getting their name in an ad. The question is: Does the audience even care who’s being quoted? Does it really matter to the reader of an ad if the quote is by Mark S. Allen or Manohla Dargis? To the average person, they’re both fictional creatures whose actual reviews they’ll never read.
You're told that your next movie must have one “product placement” on board, but you can pick the product. What would it be?
MARSHALL: You make product placement sound like some sort of obscenity, as though the audience sees a product and has the immediate reaction: “Wow, what a sell-out.” Which I don’t think is the case. Having said that, I’d love to have to feature a really good barbecue restaurant, whose food I wouldn’t mind having in my freezer after shooting was over.
You’re contractually obligated to deliver an R-rated film to your producers. The MPAA says you have to delete a sex scene that’s absolutely integral to the film or you’re getting an NC-17. How do you handle it?
MARSHALL: I’ve had many directors tell me that being confronted with unexpected limitations forces them to use their imagination and come up with better solutions. And really – if you know you’re obligated to deliver an R, and you know what a bunch of prissy assholes the MPAA is made up of, why try to stick your thumb in their eye?
What’s your take on the whole “a film by DIRECTOR” issue? Do you feel it’s tacky, because hundreds (or at least dozens) of people collaborate to make a film – or do you think it’s cool, because ultimately the director is the final word on pretty much everything?
MARSHALL: It’s not a credit I’d ask for or an issue I get very worked up about. I guess it depends on the director. A Film By Martin Scorsese? Absolutely. A David Dobkin Film? A Film By Andy Tennant? Not so much.
In closing, we ask you to convince the average movie-watcher to choose your film instead of the trillion other options they have. How do you do it?
MARSHALL: “Do You Sleep in the Nude?” is, first and foremost, highly entertaining and consistently funny. Rex is a great character who’s had an amazing life – and his story coincides with a fascinating period in Hollywood. You don’t have to be a movie buff to enjoy the film – but you may be one after you see it.
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Marshall Fine's Do You Sleep In The Nude? will screen at the 2008 South By Southwest Film Festival. Screening times will be announced on Friday, Feb. 15.
link directly to this feature at http://hollywoodbitchslap.com/feature.php?feature=2385
originally posted: 02/13/08 11:36:58
last updated: 02/13/08 11:37:42
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