TheAmateurs Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Junket Report: The Amateurs -- Interviews with Jeff Bridges & Ted Danson
Filed under: Comedy », Drama », Romance », Casting », New Releases », Scripts », New in Theaters », Interviews »
The Amateurs (formerly The Moguls), the directorial debut of writer/director Michael Traeger, is an underdog comedy about a group of small-town losers who decide to raise money by making a porno film. It's got a wonderful supporting cast that includes Joe Pantoliano, William Fichtner, Tim Blake Nelson, and Lauren Graham. Cinematical recently attended a press junket with the film's stars -- Jeff Bridges and Ted Danson, who were interviewed separately. Needless to say, meeting The Dude and Sam Malone in the same day was kind of a big deal! First up was Mr. Bridges...
What attracted you to the The Amateurs and the role of Andy?
Jeff Bridges: Like most of the movies I get involved with, I resisted it as long as possible. I always try to figure out why I shouldn't do it, and with this one there were plenty of reasons not to do it. What attracted me to it in the first place is that it was so unusual. It put this porn aspect and this Frank Capra aspect together, and I thought that was really interesting, very ambitious. But I didn't know if this guy who had never directed a film would be able to pull it off. Also, I've done movies in the past that have a lot of characters, and I find them hard to follow and you wind up not caring about any of the people, and I thought that might be the case with this one. But my representatives kept telling me I should do it, so finally I said "Alright. I want you guys to organize a reading, and I want you to see that this thing's not going to work at all." So we had a table read, and it just flew, it was just great. I think it works very well.
When the release started to get delayed, did any of that old skepticism start to come back, like maybe something did go wrong?
JB: No, I didn't really get all the ins and outs of why it didn't get released, it's very convoluted and I haven't heard all the sides and the stories, but it wasn't because of the nature of the film or anything like that. I think it was more business type stuff.
Review: The Amateurs
Filed under: Comedy », Romance », Casting », New Releases », Theatrical Reviews », Scripts », Distribution », Exhibition », New in Theaters »
Filmed in the summer of 2004, The Amateurs has been in the can for over three years. The movie's title has gone through several changes, and imdb still lists it as The Moguls. The film has had a whopping six release dates going back to 2005, but it finally sputters into theaters today -- in Los Angeles and Dallas, anyway. Movies often have distribution trouble (you can read more about the problems this one faced in the Los Angeles Times), but the struggle of The Amateurs surprised me because it had all the makings of a sleeper hit. It's got a killer premise (think The Full Monty with porno) and an amazing cast. The film's struggle surprised me...until I saw it.
A queasy mixture of Boogie Nights sleaze and Patch Adams sentimentality, The Amateurs takes place in the small town of Butterface Fields (ho-HO!). That's where you'll find Andy Sargentee (Jeff Bridges, in shaggy dog Lebowski mode), a divorced dad who is down on his luck. His son (Alex D. Linz) is now living with a wealthy stepfather (the typically solid Steven Weber), and this makes Sargentee insecure. He's got to make some money, and fast. So, naturally, he decides to enlist the help of his friends and make an amateur porno flick.
Trailer Park: Buckshot Edition
Filed under: Comedy », Drama », Horror », Music & Musicals », Trailer Trash », Trailers and Clips »
Finding a theme to bind together five trailers for this column every week can be tricky. Sometimes a common element jumps out at me, and other times I have to spend some time searching before I find one. Still other times there's no similarity to be found, which leads us to this week's topic. We're firing a barrel of buckshot (metaphorically speaking) at some new trailers, and we'll talk about the first five we hit. Ready? Lock and load.
Starting Out in the Evening
Frank Langella plays an aging novelist who can't get publishers to even look at his new book, but a young female grad student thinks she can revive people's interest in his work. Langella's character is so old school he actually uses a typewriter, and this looks like a truly great performance. The plot reminds me a bit of Finding Forrester, but only on a superficial level. James reviewed the film at the Toronto International Film Festival, and you can read that right here.
I am Legend
There's a new full-length trailer for this third adaptation of Richard Matheson's classic novel about a lone human in a world overrun with mutated survivors of a global plague. I'm not clear on whether the plague victim's in the movie are actually vampires like they are in the book or some other kind of mutation, but you finally get a peek at them here, as well as some mutant dogs. Beyond the basic premise, this doesn't look like it's going to be a particularly faithful adaptation, but I've always felt a film should judged for what it is and not how similar it is to the source material. This should be good.
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