There's so many different reasons to see a movie! Sometimes, you will be walking by a theater, and it will be playing A Serious Man, starting in fifteen minutes, and you'll think "What the hell!" And then, 110 minutes later, you'll be like, "Hey, that was a kickass, awesome godamned movie, why did I not see it before?" Or sometimes I, like many people in America, will go to a film just see an actor (which is why I have seen every Julianne Moore and Frances McDormand and Holly Hunter movie ever). By those standards, Up in the Air is a damn fine bit of bait. George Clooney, at 48 still outrageously sex-up-able, turns out to be great as a compulsive traveler, romance-avoider and layer-offer of people. ("A mammoth performance," gargled Rex Reed!) Vera Farmiga, equipped with what she called her post-childbirth "giant porn boobs", is not overwhelmed by that chestiness and is for real just wonderful. Pointy-faced little Anna Kendrick? Totally awesome. Like, delightful. She is a great sidekick/foil, and Farmiga is a great sexual (not particularly romantic) interest. (Also, awkward times for the Supporting Actress promotion departments, which, whatever.) But sometimes when you go to see a movie for the performances, even when you are satisfied or pleased or awed, you are left troubled.
The film-it is about a loner, yes, who travels about laying people off, then sometimes getting with Farmiga's character? This you know?-has a number of brief segments of people getting fired from their jobs, performed for the camera, with, as I recall at least, Clooney sometimes cut in. (Clearly he was not present for that bit of shooting.) So the real story is, as Doree Shafrir wrote the other day, about the screening we both attended:
[W]hen I went to a screening of Up In the Air a few weeks ago, [director Jason] Reitman said in a Q&A afterwards that he had placed ads in the local papers saying that he was shooting a documentary about people who had been laid off, and when the people showed up for their "audition," he never told them that their wrenching confessions of what it felt like to be laid off were going to be not in a documentary about the economy, but a $25 million feature film half-backed by his father Ivan (Ghostbusters!). Who knows, maybe he told them later (though he didn't mention this in the Q&A), and clearly this guy Kevin Pilla is now aware how his "performance" was used.
In the Q&A Reitman seemed really thrilled at the authenticity of the performances he had gotten out of these "real" people. But knowing how he got them made me feel icky.
It is so icky. But, the other thing is that these reenactments of getting laid off that he asked people to perform are not particularly good! They tend to slip into past tense, or start describing, instead of performing, and in no way does it look these people are actually being terminated as part of the script. It just doesn't actually work, and it leaves these lingering questions about Reitman and his disclosures. (On the plus side-he did pay them! So that's great! Yay Reitman!)
Also, the picture above is of Bush 41 introducing the film at a screening, to the much-Twittered delight of the director. I have formed a fairly bad impression of Reitman, based on what little I know of him-what I've heard from people who've interviewed him, and that screening and his Twitter. And that Tom Ford profile today. He may be a pretty nice guy! But the egotism is off-putting. You make movies, honey! Though I'll give you this: you're not bad.
Because it's unfortunate that this thing happened with the unemployed non-actors, because it's bad for a pretty good movie. You will enjoy this movie, I suspect. It is fun to watch! Its plot is happily unpredictable! I do not however think it is the movie "for our times" that everyone keeps saying it is, just because it has a lot of unemployed people in it. I mean, Twilight has a lot of horny high school teens, just like real life, but that doesn't mean it's the chronicle of our age or whatever. Or wait, is it?
Cripes, Vera Farmiga gets Matt Damon AND Leo DiCappy AND now The Cloon too? I wish I had a pointy face :<
Oh and Frances McDormand YES OH YES. She knows all about your valhalla of decadence, yes she does.
There always hope for the next life...or shelling out now for plastic surgery.
Katiebakes, get yourself a head shot and stalk Scorsese. She gets cast because her quote is very low and the male lead took up all of the acting budget for the picture.
Reitman's methodology sounds like the same as the one used to make the documentary-cum-porno series "Milf Money," except the "milfs" were paid for their performances of course.
"But sometimes when you go to see a movie for the performances, even when you are satisfied or pleased or awed, you are left troubled."
It's never easy with you, is it?
wait..so they thought they were going to be in a documentary? (like signed release..etc) and then ended up being in the Film? reenacting getting fired?sorry I'm dumb.
CORRECT. (About the first part. Not about you being dumb.)
This is so slimey. He gets away with the "documentary" claim in the ads because, bottom line, he's "documenting" their loss of job. He's not lying, he's just not revealing everything.
I have no doubt the release these people signed gives the company rights to use the video/audio/images in any way they see fit, in perpituity.
The sad thing is, most of these people probably would have agreed to tell their stories anyway if he had been upfront with them. And they probably would have still done it for whatever paltry sum they were paid in the first place.
AND they can't fill out a 1040EZ now that they have to fill out a schedule C for that 1099!
I haven't yet seen the film, so I can't weigh in about whether or not what seems like the desired affect--"real" people having real time reactions that could not otherwise be simulated--is apparent, but I do feel like he must be disconnected from the trauma factor. I can't imagine he would use a similar mode for footage of people reacting to other traumatic news, like a loved one dying.
Twilight is the movie for our time because the whole werewolf/vampire treaty thing is an allegory for the collapse of the US/Russia arms control treaty process. These Twihards are deep, yo.
There need to be more films about which Rex Reed gargles mammoth performances.
Hearing "Rex Reed" makes me want to smash windows with bricks. Grrrrrrrrrrrr.
We are so used to considering the ethical implications of what documentaries do and how they are made .. this throws me for a loop.
On the one hand, I assume that everyone who made the final cut became aware of the end for which they were means, and maybe they felt really positively about it. And getting paid is a good thing. And maybe the exact scenes could not have possibly have existed without that duplicity .. but I cry foul. Maybe I am just a sucker for placing a higher value on a code of respect for humans.
He was probably trying to recreate the veracity of the Sasha Baron Cohen school of casting. It worked for Sasha but in this instance it detracted rather than added any value.
The book was released in 2001 so it really does not reflect the current economic environment. This just felt like a filler movie to me. I doubt it would have gotten the release it did if he were not Ivan's kid.
They need to make a movie version of THEN WE CAME TO THE END. I would watch it and chuckle sadly about how we really did vulture the comfier chairs of the off-laid.
Why did 41 introduce the movie? Is it a presidential perk?
Maybe it's because he's unemployed?
I saw that photo caption, and I'm like, "President of what, the New School?"
Choire, you've hit the nail on the head with the "tense" thing.
When you are shooting a show...oh, I don't know, maybe a competition reality show of some type...there's usually a point when you want the people in the competiton to retell what happened to them. The fantasy is to get them to speak in present tense, so you can cut back and forth between the action and their reaction to it.
But these are not actors, they are regular human beings who either don't get what you are asking, or slip in and out past tense because they're so damn tired. Some shows do this better than others...especially if you're shooting one show over the course of a season. The one-off specials, or the shows that have new competitors every week are more hit and miss.
Before I wanted to see this movie to stare at Clooney. Now I actually want to go to see what the hell this re-enactment thing is about.
This shit is my job, and I tend to avoid weighing on film and television posts here because I would get exhausted.
But nice.
Probably good advice. I should take it.
I come for the ambiance.
Up in the Air, like 40 Year Old Virgin, is an ok film that inevitably suffers from the overly-clever shadowing of "the man" with "the man's life." Like a bottle to the temple. He's constantly on the move and fires people, he cannot commit! He never opens his collectible toys to play with them because they're too valuable, he's a virgin! Meaningful character depth is abandoned for quirky adorableness and the actors are likable enough to distract us from this fact for 110 minutes.