Letter From LA

Producer Jordan Horowitz explains how The Kids Are All Right became the summer'ssurprise sleeper hit

From left, producer Gary Gilbert, actress Mia Wasikowska and producer JordanHorowitz at the premiere of "The Kids Are All Right" in Los Angeles
Photo by Michael Caulfield
A scene from the movie, which is shaping up as a potential surprise sleeper hitof the summer.
The movie also has its share of critics.

Editor's Note: Former Houstonian and High School for the Performing and Visual Arts grad Ellie Knaus is now an actress and writer in Los Angeles. She will file periodic reports about the entertainment industry and life in LA for CultureMap. This is her first column.

Amid all the special effects summer movies, a little independent film, The Kids Are All Right , racked up the highest per-screen average gross this year and will likely be on Oscar's short list. Jordan Horowitz, V.P. of Production & Development at Gilbert Films, produced the movie, which stars Annette Bening, Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo, and also Meet Monica Velour, starring Kim Cattrall.

Horwitz talks to CultureMap about how the film, now showing at River Oaks Theatre, got made and why it's been a surprise hit. (The Los Angeles Times noted that The Kids Are All Right produced the highest opening box office weekend of an indie movie this year — averaging a $72,127 gross for the seven theaters it opened at in the U.S. and Canada, the highest per-screen average of any movie in 2010).

CultureMap: Director Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg spent five years working on the script for The Kids Are All Right. How long did you all have to actually shoot the film?

Jordan Horowitz: We shot the film in ... wait for it ... 23 days. The cast and crew on this picture were just OUTSTANDING. I've never seen folks move so fast.

CM: The acting ensemble in the film is transcendent; the relationships are spot on. What was the casting process like?

JH: Julianne had been attached to the film for about five years. Annette for less time, but she'd been with the project for a bit. Mark was attached, then not attached, and ultimately Julianne called — or texted ... I can’t remember — Mark's wife and told him that he had to do the film. So he did it. Thank God for wives!

CM: Did the story change at all over the process of filming and editing?

JH: Change? Not really. It just kept getting tighter and tighter and better and better. One of the consequences of having only 23 days to shoot the film was that Lisa and Stuart had to cut just about everything that wasn't essential to the story. So a lot of the stuff that may have otherwise ended up on the cutting room floor was removed from the film before we ever even shot a frame.

CM: My little brother just graduated from Episcopal High School and he's off to New York in the fall. What do you think this film says about growing up and flying the nest?

JH: It's hard on everyone — kids and parents alike. But ultimately, you'll be OK. Everyone — and everything — will be OK.

CM: How do you think Twitter, blogs, and online sites have influenced the success of this film?

JH: Certainly they have helped the buzz grow to almost deafening levels, but the real effect still remains to be seen. I know I personally use things like Twitter to track audience response to the film and to do some promotion — of this film and other things in my life — of my own. I can be found on Twitter at @jehorowitz, but I think the real test will come as the film continues to expand into markets that aren't New York/LA/Chicago.

As I said, so far the buzz on Twitter and Facebook and blogs and the like has been extraordinary, so I can only cross my fingers and hope that it will translate into success for the film. I think it will ... but you never know till it happens, right?

CM: The film is a critic's darling, but not without controversy. What is your response to critics like Andrea Peyser of the New York Post, who accuses the film of “gay proselytizing”?

JH: I don't even want to dignify her with a response. People see what they want to see.

CM: Agreed. The soundtrack feels integral to the film. What is your favorite song in the soundtrack and how did it influence the scene in which it played?

JH: It's absolutely essential to the film — Lisa was talking about the music in the film from the first day I met her. Personally, I love the David Bowie "Black Country Rock" cue — it’s the track that hits as Mark is driving up to the house on his motorcycle right after the moms say they want to meet him. It's really masculine and sexy and just a bit dangerous and captures the tone of his character perfectly.

I also love when Annette sings "All I Want" but, I mean, who doesn't? It's one of the best scenes I've had the pleasure of seeing — both while it was being shot and in the final cut in the film — in quite some time.

Follow Ellie Knaus' blog at myprincipality.com. Her comic sketches can be found at ellieknaus.com

unspecified

Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

---

Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

movies film