MikeWhite Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Not pleased with the likes of our latest serving of A Christmas Carol? Want a little more originality served with your ho-ho-ho's? This might be the answer: Variety reports that Paramount Pictures has tapped Mike White to write the script for a new comedy called Santa Wars. Oh yes, it's just like you'd imagine.

This project will follow the story of two rival factions that emerged within a group of professional Kris Kringles, and how they "became arch enemies during a Santa Claus civil war." And I should probably point out -- this concept is based on a true story. It all stems from a segment on Ira Glass' radio show This American Life, which aired last December and talked about how two professional Santas formed the Amalgamated Order of Real Bearded Santas, only to become bitter rivals.

Talk about picking the perfect pen. White is the writer of all things weird, whether that be with creepy stalkers, transcript trouble, discontent with mundane life, rock 'n' roll classes, strange wrasslers, or dog obsession. Furthermore, he's jumped back and forth between mainstream and edgy indies, which means the potential for a film that will appeal to more than just the casual, family fare moviegoer. Let's just hope Paramount ignores this year's strange release schedules (Valentine's Day in the summer, Christmas before Thanskgiving) and serves this puppy up during the right season.

Last night, Fantastic Fest got underway in Austin with the world premiere screening of Gentlemen Broncos, the latest comedy from director Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite). Although most of the movies at this genre film festival screen at the Alamo Drafthouse, the festival has expanded to bring premieres to the larger Paramount Theatre downtown, which could hold all the fest attendees plus just about anyone who wanted to buy a ticket. Judging from the crowds outside and in the theater, it was a fairly full house.

Cast and crew from Gentlemen Broncos arrived in Austin for a red carpet event before the film, and a Q&A afterwards. Not only that, but Jemaine Clement (The Flight of the Conchords) appeared onstage before the film started, in character as renowned science-fiction author Dr. Ronald Chevalier, to read some science-fiction haikus.

I was lucky enough to take the above photo on the red carpet when the Gentlemen Broncos actors and filmmakers were all in one spot. From left to right: Sam Rockwell, co-writer Jerusha Hess, director/co-writer Jared Hess, Mike White, Jemaine Clement and Michael Angarano. Check out Peter Hall's review of the film..

It's official! According to Variety, the School of Rock band is getting back together. Jack Black is returning to reprise his role as Dewey Finn, Richard Linklater will be sitting in the director's chair again, and Mike White is writing the script. Talk of a sequel has been flying for weeks, so this really comes as no surprise.

In School of Rock 2: America Rocks, Finn will lead a group of summer school students on a cross-country field trip that delves into the history of rock and roll. Expect lots of cameos as the students study the roots of blues, rap, and country. I'm putting my money on B.B. King already and Snoop Dogg. Maybe Bono and Bruce Springsteen, too. (Actually, that would be pretty cool.)

I'm of two minds on this. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the first movie; in fact think it was probably the first Jack Black movie I actually liked. But does it really lend itself to a sequel? While it's encouraging that the entire team is coming back, we all know that's never a guarantee of comedic success. How many awesome comedy sequels can you name?

Plus, there was that whole story about White weeping as he wrote the script. I'm still weirded out by that. Barring a fiery schoolbus crash, or the children discovering that Britney Spears was allowed to cover the Rolling Stones, why would you shed tears? Hmm. I think my official position has shifted from lukewarm to DO NOT WANT. What about you?

Back in May, Jack Black was chillin' in Cannes, talking about Angelina's twins, and then letting loose some surprising news: a script was written for School of Rock 2. He didn't say much else, so it seemed like one of those early Arrested Development rumors -- something that could be great, but was so vague that it could easily be nothing more than a rumor or a hope.

But it's not! Defamer reports that on Sunday, School of Rock writer Mike White was part of a screenwriting panel at LAFF with Catherine Hardwicke and Craig Gillespie. He said: "I actually just completed a draft of what's potentially the sequel [to School of Rock], and I'm still, like, crying as I'm writing the script. I try to come at it from a personal place..."

Wait. A sequel -- a real sequel -- has been written, and it made him cry? He wouldn't say what it's about, but that he just turned it in, and doesn't know if it will even get made. Perhaps they were just tears of personal happiness, but he did go on to discuss his writing process and said: "But at least now I have a better sense of what it was we created -- what worked and what didn't. I can kind of reboot it." Reboot? What!?

What say you? Are you ready for a rebooted School of Rock?

Today YouTube launched a new section of its site titled The YouTube Screening Room, which it calls a "platform for films from around the world to find the audiences they deserve." Here, they will showcase four short films every two weeks and will even offer an occasional feature. Some of the films have been previously screened at film festivals and some have been nominated for or have won an Academy Award. But others will be premiering on the site. Apparently, the filmmakers will be paid a percentage of YouTube's ad revenue based on views and each film will also feature a "Buy Now" button so that you can purchase that film or other films.

Today's debuts include Are You the Favorite Person of Anybody?, a 2005 short written by Miranda July (Me and You and Everyone We Know), directed by Miguel Arteta (The Good Girl) and starring John C. Reilly, Mike White and July. I've embedded it above for your viewing pleasure. The other three are The Danish Poet, which won the Oscar for Best Animated Short in 2007, Love and War, which is a stop motion opera from Sweden, and Our Time is Up, which was nominated for Best Live Action Short in 2006 and which stars Kevin Pollak.

Something in the water over in France has got Jack Black loose-lipped. First he lets it out that Angelina is indeed having twins. Now, according to film-industry.biz, he's claiming there's a sequel to School of Rock in the works. There's even a script already written, and Black is anxious to return to the role of music teacher Dewey Finn. But it's not a done deal just yet. As he explained from the Cannes Film Festival: "In a few weeks we have to decide if we go through with the project or not."

I may be one of the few people who didn't love the original School of Rock, but then, I'm one of those curmudgeonly fellows who can't stand Jack Black in anything. Of course, after watching his Eddie Murphy parody in the awesome new R-rated trailer for Tropic Thunder, I'm starting to think he could do some right in the film world. Or, maybe he has that one really funny moment and a whole lot of obnoxious moments, as usual.

Thanks to the wonderful Whit Stillman, we've gotten lots of elite Manhattanites in the eighties. Younger folks have acted like 40-year-olds in Metropolitan, and young yuppies have pulled the last little bits of dancing wonder from The Last Days of Disco. But now the whole rich eighties scene is switching coasts and coming from the hands of Mike White.

The Hollywood Reporter has posted that Scott Rudin and Miramax are bringing Sean Wilsey's high-society memoir called Oh the Glory of it All to the big screen, with Mike White signed on to produce and adapt it. Glory focuses on Wilsey's strange youth in San Francisco during the 1980s, tracking "his journey from dubious role models to a tour of boarding schools and an Italian 'therapeutic community.'" His father was a strict and distant man who drove Wilsey to rebellion, a man who divorced Wilsey's mother to marry her best friend. His mother, meanwhile, was the belle of the social scene, a woman who entertained everyone from movie stars to Black Panthers and inspired a character in Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City. But she also proved to be devoid of certain motherly traits, like, say, keeping her son safe -- she attempted to convince him to commit suicide with her.

Obviously, this is retro dysfunction at its finest, one that could make for a very funny movie in the hands of White, as long as there are actors to pull it off well. So, who would you cast?

It seems to be the time of questionable lawsuits. Last week, Scott Weinberg posted about the Canadian author, Rebecca Eckler, who is suing Judd Apatow for similarities between her book and his latest -- Knocked Up. Now, Mike White is getting sued for his recent Year of the Dog. It seems that his former friend, Laura Kightlinger, says that the idea came from her, although the claim seems a little weak. She's filed suit alleging that she gave him a script called We Are Animals (about a woman who loves rescuing cats), which became his doggie film.

Now, if you caught James Rocchi's interview with White in April, you might remember where the writer/director says that he got his material -- a stray cat he had inherited who had died: "this cat's death just totally spun me out in a way that I totally did not expect... I just thought, 'Well, that's an interesting idea for a movie premise -- somebody who has a relationship with a pet, and the loss of that changes their life in a way.'" If this is the case, I can't see her script being the source, unless he follows her plot closely. However, White says: "They are totally different scripts. I know there is a similarity in the sense that (the female leads) both have pets that they care about, but beyond that, everything she is saying that is similar seems like a real stretch to me." Meanwhile, Kightlinger's lawyer says: "There was an expectation that if she told him her idea and he was going to use it in some way, she would be paid and she would also be involved in the project." So, they'll continue going through a he-said, she-said with broken ex-friend egos, and potentially some undisclosed settlement.

In Mike White's directorial debut, Year of the Dog, Molly Shannon plays Peggy – a cube-stuck, quiet woman whose main source of joy is her beagle, Pencil ... who dies. White's best known for broad screenplays (he wrote School of Rock, and co-wrote Nacho Libre), but his scripts The Good Girl and Chuck and Buck have a smaller-wrought, more intimate feel to them. In many ways, Year of the Dog is a bridge between the two seemingly separate threads in his work. White, in person, is unassuming and mild; talking about his work, though, the level of thought he puts into his scripts becomes slowly and firmly apparent. Cinematical spoke with White in San Francisco. The technically-minded can download the entire interview here.

Cinematical: Year of the Dog came out of a pretty personal place for you -- The inciting incident being a stray cat had been living in your backyard literally dying in your arms. How long a relationship did you have with this cat?

Mike White: A couple years -- I had sort of inherited it when I moved into this house that I had bought. And I didn't have any animals up to that point -- I mean, when I was a little kid, I did -- I didn't even really realize how attached I had become to this cat. Over the years it sort of became my pet; it had come in, slept with me -- I was really just super-stressed, and kind of over-worked, and under-slept, and this cat's death just totally spun me out in a way that I totally did not expect. I just had a really emotional reaction to it, and it just gave me the idea – later, after the dust had settled – I just thought, "Well, that's an interesting idea for a movie premise – somebody who has a relationship with a pet, and the loss of that changes their life in away."

Cinematical: And you're not a psychologist, but obviously, you've thought about this to a certain degree – do you think that people put a lot of emotion into their relationship with their pets, because culturally, we're not supposed to it with work?

MW: Right. I think a lot of people do ... In the movie, people put a lot of their eggs in different ... I mean, Peggy's boss is really into his job, the parents with the kid, her friend at work who's obsessed with her boyfriend. ... Whether it's animals, or -- with animals, because they are a source of affection and because the relationship is relatively uncomplicated – there's not a lot of the bargaining that goes on in human relationships, and the needs of animals are pretty simple: being fed, and ...

Cinematical: Pick up the poop. ...

MW: Right. I think the movie – while it does sort of take her animal passion or animal love seriously, it also does gets into her projection on to the animals in her life and how some of it is a little absurd and kind of misguided at some points, too.