Best Films of 2015

As Valentines Day comes screaming toward us, and the Oscars--and all their attendant screaming, especially this year, get ready to go in the next two weeks--I am finally ready, upon reflection, to say what I think were the best offerings from Hollywood on 2015.

"The Best From Hollywood" will always be my broad statement to mean the film industry, and particularly the American Film Industry. It is what I have been a fan of my entire life; it is where I work now. No disrespect to the movies coming out of other nations, at all. (I get that we Americans make Bond Villains out of actors who do fine work in other places.) They just aren't what I study or follow, so I leave them to those who do.

Please also remember that my list is not merely a reflection of that industry. It is a reflection of myself within it. What has resonated with THIS PERSON this year? Professional critics may or may not like to pretend otherwise, but everything in this business, outside of "Could you see and hear what was happening on the screen?" is subjective. Honestly, I think that is why friends (or people without a lot of time) working in the same circles end up with the same movies on their lists. All. The. Time. I'm no doubt gonna have a few of the Must See Movies here, too, but I hope I will surprise you. A little.

As usual, there will be ten, but they will not be ranked. They will just be.

Bridge of Spies Watch here.

The story of an Insurance Lawyer, played by Tom Hanks, defending an accused and pretty much guilty (but nevertheless deserving of a fair trial) Soviet Spy, played by the great Mark Rylance, and the dividing of a nation. Well, not really. Everybody pretty much hated them. The story sure divided our family while we watched it, though. More than any movie had done in a long time. The Mrs. and I yelled at the screen and yelled at each other as we compared the social issues of 1957 to today, to then, and as we discussed vehemently whether Hanks was right to do what he was doing. Surprising me most pleasingly, I was identifying with Hanks, while my wife, a professional woman with two giant organizations at her feet, worried for Hank's at-home wife and her issues, played stoically well by Amy Ryan.

Home Watch here.

Yep, I'm already diverging from what ANYBODY else has on their top ten list, aren't I? I don't know why this little animated gem was overlooked this year, even in the animated category. (Well, of course I do. It's a road picture. The Academy has been there, done that.) I loved it. It made this guy blubbler at Toy Story 3 levels. And it has the SHUSHER, so . . . . Glad Mad! Best Day Ever!

Taken 3 Watch here.

I love "Take-you-down-I'm-Sexy-and-I-know-it-BOOM" movies. I watched this one as part of a triple feature with the other two, on a day in January when I really wanted to hit something. A nice touch with this film was that they added the Hitchcock "wrong-man" plot that the Master of Suspense used so often, but it was like: Imagine if the cops and bad guys had tried to pull that crap on Liam Neeson?

The Revenant Pre-order now.

From the release of the trailer, this movie surprised me. Oh, I don't mean the plot. Revenge movies are revenge movies. But The film it reminded me of, in so many ways and in so many areas of its artistry, was Never Cry Wolf from 1983. That's a good thing because I loved Never Cry Wolf. After that all things pretty much ended. It was its own thing. It was like other films in the way that Stagecoach was like Maverick because they both had stagecoaches in them. Those who have complained (or at least casually commented) that it was somehow magnificently shot and yet simple minded in its storytelling, are frankly wrong. The screenplay in this film was one of the most beautiful I have ever had a chance to watch. It was lovingly structured, strongly-built, took its time but did not feel boring, and what I found especially effective, was that even though this was essentially the story of two men, all of the side characters had depth and weight and were easy to identify with no matter how much screen time they had. I particularly identified with Domhnall Gleeson's Captain. Frankly he was my most identifiable character, even above DiCaprio's character, and he did not spend all his screen time telling me who he was, he simply Was. That is a very difficult task for a writer, which the screenwriters pulled off brilliantly.

The Martian Watch Here.

A movie about surviving by your wits in space. Essentially, Apollo 13 on Mars. Not true like the other film, but oh so possible. This one did a great job of making us believe in human ingenuity again. Did you know Matt Damon was in it?

Ant-Man Watch here.

I wasn't interested in this movie in the least when it was announced, nor when the trailer came out. Never cared for the character. Especially not in the comics. (What kind of sense am I making now?) I thought he was, well, stupid. And so was the concept. This film from Marvel studios, a study in basic plot points right down the line (Misunderstood hero making mistakes, check. Estranged family, check. Rich benefactor, check. Crazy estranged family member of rich benefactor, check.) soars and sails and SINGS on its actors and the help given them by the writer and director alone. The sole direction (I imagine)? Have fun!

Creed Pre-Order Here.

I haven't seen it, yet. (Give me three days.) It came and went too fast in my area. I have it on my list as a representative of sheer filmmaking prowess by Ryan Coogler. He did something that Sylvester Stallone did almost 40 years before, in a day when people thought film people couldn't do that anymore. And Stallone got the Oscar nom out of it. Go figure.

Mission Impossible - Rouge Nation Watch here.

Action movies are supposed to be fun, and this movie was fun.

Maze Runner: Scorch Trials Watch here.

What can I say? I'm a fan. Not everything is supposed to me a Very Important Movie. And it can still turn out better than most of the VIM's out there. Even more than SPECTRE??? Well, no. Maybe not. But then this is MY list of the best films to watch from 2015. And I had consistently more fun in this film than that. So maybe yes. So perhaps you'll have to see both. Which is why people make lists. (SmileyFaceEmoticon)

The Walk Watch here.

Watch it with all the lights off, and as close to the 55' (or better) screen as you comfortably can.

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So that's the list according to some guy who runs a production company in Tulare County, California. I love the movies. I love stories.

 I hope you enjoyed a few this year as well.

Academic Malfeasance: The Movie - Full Pitch

Academic Malfeasance: The Movie - Full Pitch from Eric Clermont Player on Vimeo.

Newest pitch for "Academic Malfeasance: College Funding With One Simple Felony," for the next Kickstarter Campaign by Panther Pictures, LLC. Includes references to the reel of writer/director Eric C. Player, and the latest teaser.  http://www.am-themovie.com

"Academic Malfeasance: College Funding With One Simple Felony" is a comedy about the state of both education in America, and Prisons.  Because the world needs more Prison Education Comedies.  Come to think of it, this might be the first one.  It's about one high school graduate's idea to use the prison system to get his college education, even if he's never stolen a pencil.

Best of 2014

The Golden Globes are on tonight, the First Official List of What Hollywood Thinks of Itself of 2015. Thanks to the reshuffling of Awards Season a few years back it is the opening gun of all the Official Lists. Lots of people make a list of what they think were the best films of the previous year about this time of year. And here, in the tradition of Perd Hapley, is another one (mine).

10) Chef
9) Boyhood
8) The Imitation Game
7) The Good Lie
6) Life After Beth
5) Sharknado (Theatrical release, Rifftrax Night At The Movies)
4) The Hundred-Foot Journey
3) Captain America: The Winter Soldier
2) Guardians of the Galaxy
1) The Lego Movie

I believe animated films are just as entitled to "best of" lists as any other, without being segregated away from the "real films." and "The Lego Movie" was just the best movie made this year. No contest. It is full of joy, wisdom, love, laughter, and technical mastery on a level that Lucasfilm used to achieve.

I'm aware there are other "important" films that were released this last year, many that you will hear about tonight. I tip my hat to them. I look forward to adding them to my collection. And I enjoyed George Clooney and Michael Keaton's speeches along with everyone else. But THIS is MY list.

Conduct on Set

I just found this excerpt from the writings of Edward G. Robinson--THAT'S RIGHT, EDWARD GUN-IN-YOUR-FACE ROBINSON--about dealing with difficult actors on set. It comes from a time when he was working with Miriam Hopkins (never heard of her? There's a reason!) On a Howard Hawks picture called Barbary Coast. It is a lesson in throwing away your opportunities.

Enjoy:

Barbary Coast (1935)
Production Company: Paramount
Director: Howard Hawks
Cast: Edward G. Robinson (Luis Chamalis) - [Left Pic]
Miriam Hopkis (Mary 'Swan' Rutledge) - [Center Pic]
Joel McCrea (Jim Carmichael) - [Right Pic]
Walter Brennan (Old Atrocity)
Frank Craven (Co. Marcus Aurelius Cobb)
Brian Donlevy (Knuckles Jacoby)
Clyde Cook (Oakie)
Harry Carrey (Jed Slocum)
Donald Meek (Sawbuck McTavish)

"Miriam Hopkins was a horror to work with. I worked with her in Samuel Goldwyn's Barbary Coast. Well, you couldn't exactly say that. I tried to work with her. She made no effort whatever to work with me.

"However, Sam Goldwyn, who denied absolutely that he fired me out of the silent film he'd made with the Selwyns (Fields of Glory), worked very hard to persuade the Warners to loan me out for Barbary Coast. While they were gleeful about the success of the Columbia film (The Whole Town's Talking), they now thought me hot again and wanted me for their very own. What they wanted to put me in was quite another matter more of that miserable gangster, a character of whom I was growing wearier and wearier all the time. The Goldwyn film, written by Ben Hecht and Charlie MacArthur, offered good writing, a fascinating character, and a director named Howard Hawks.

"I shall spare you the titles and the directors Warner's offered me and certainly the miserable scene that went on in the front office as I turned down every script and simply looked haughty when they mentioned suspension, that dread word that meant you'd not be paid and could not work for anyone else. While their other troubles with Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland and, I suspect, Errol Flynn and Jimmy Cagney, were matters of public notice, I tried to keep my differences private. I had long since learned that you could do anything to Jack Warner except humiliate him. (It is easy to do; under that tough clown's façade he is easily hurt. Despite his wealth and power, I have always felt him to be insecure. I mean it as a compliment.)

"Finally, after Goldwyn must have offered more than twice my salary, Jack let me go, assuring the newspapers the loan had been mutually agreeable, and even letting one columnist say that he was so concerned over my career that he had ranged over every studio to find something suitable for my talents. The inference was that, if not minimal, they were certainly limited. Jack Warner was always certain of the last word, and we talk of it often and laugh about it. Jack would rather laugh than anything in this world except have the last word.

"Without consciously affecting the posture, I decided it was necessary to act younger than ever, more aggressively, more affirmatively, more conscious that each day must have meaning. Howard Hawks was the first recipient of that attitude. Or was it Miriam Hopkins?

"It seems remaining with me still were some of the remnants of my childhood chiefly an almost instinctive reaction to people: from the very beginning, when I was introduced to somebody, or even saw him from a distance, I either liked or disliked him instantly. I have a psychoanalyst friend who tells me in a very scholarly way that this is not in the least unusual among the foreign born and minorities. They (we) tend to be suspicious of an attitude, a look, narrow eyes, thin lips, blond hair. I cannot agree that this is altogether a fact. If you will remember, when I discussed long ago the Principal of Public School 137, she automatically had all the things I was taught to dislike. She was tall, Anglo-Saxon, thin-lipped, but at the same time she was warm and outreaching and friendly. Above all, she did not patronize me.

"So I think my psychoanalyst friend is wrong. But people do give off auras and I respond to them automatically. It is not only with human beings that I have this weakness of character; it is also with paintings.

"At the time of Barbary Coast, my character flaw of first impressions was at its height. All of which, of course, brings me back to Howard Hawks and Miriam Hopkins.

"Howard seemed to be patrician, aristocratic, and I sensed he was looking down his nose at me. I've learned to know him well since, and my initial assessment of him was wrong. His manner was concealing his own doubts, his own fears, his own insecurities at starting a new picture with a bunch of temperamental actors.

"I do not propose to say the same thing about Miriam Hopkins. She was puerile and silly. There was one thing I recognized in her that could have made us friends: She, too, had come from the stage; she, too, felt that movies were beneath her. I had gone through the same thing; I had been graduated from that stage.

"How odd, then, for me to be the recipient of the kind of snobbery that I, myself, had indulged in for so long! Even though I didn't know it then, it was clear (in the words I spoke over and over again on the screen) that I could dish it out but I couldn't take it.

"In addition, the set of Barbary Coast was highly politicized. As I look back on it now, I really don't know the individual political stances of the company, but I'm sure of this: Hecht and MacArthur were liberals; Howard Hawks, Miriam Hopkins, Joel McCrea, Walter Brennan, and Harry Carey were not liberals. We were two warring camps, and that kind of deep dispute was going on in every studio and every living room.

"The arguments on the set were appalling; as a result, there was little socializing among us. There was a good deal of polite freezing and occasional bursts of rage.

"This political sentiment took its toll in many ways. Miss Hopkins complained bitterly about every line, used every trick in the book to upstage me. I had long ago learned that these upstaging manoeuvres would not work at all in films. The cutter could attend to them.

"But when Miss Hopkins refused to stand on her marks, those little triangles of masking tape that set the actor within the proper range of the camera, it was too much. What was really too much was that Miss Hopkins, in period costume and headdress, was taller than I. When we did a scene together, Miss Hopkins wanted me to stand on a box. I refused, not only because it was undignified and made me self-conscious but because I was unable to play with any sincerity high on an insecure perch. My suggestion was that Miss Hopkins take off her shoes. When I think of it now, I suspect she could not play with any sincerity standing in her stockings.

"There were other problems between us. In the making of a picture, frequently a scene between two people is broken up so that you get a closeup of one and then the other. When the closeup is of you, you play a love scene to a camera lens, and the other actor reads the off-scene lines from beside the camera. This is common courtesy in the making of a picture, and even the most illustrious of stars are willing to do this difficult chore. But Miss Hopkins was not.

"When they did my close-ups, I read my lines and Miss Hopkins lines were read by the script girl. This infuriated me, and my revenge was to elaborately read the off-scene lines when it was Miss Hopkins turn for a closeup. This taught her nothing.

"Miss Hopkins is recently gone, and I'm sorry about that, of course. However, since these matters might help other young actors, I'm forced to proceed with them. The indictments:

1. Miss Hopkins was always late.
2. Miss Hopkins would never read a line precisely as it was written, thus not cuing me.
3. Miss Hopkins would make us all stand around and wait while she complained bitterly about her costumes.
4. Miss Hopkins indulged in every trick to delay, to confuse, to obstruct and to prove that she and not I was the star.

"Mr. Hawks tried to cope with these four lunatic types of behaviour and, I'm sorry to say, I don't think Mr. Hawks coped very well.

"As a result, one day, I told Miss Hopkins off. I shouldn't have done it, but I was fed to the teeth. I reeled off a litany of her mischief. In the first place I told her that temperament had gone out of fashion that it had worked in the days of Fritzi Scheff, Mrs. Fiske, and Mrs. Carter but it simply did not have any place on a movie set. Then, thinking of her own good, I told her she was far too conscious of the camera; she hugged it and thus defeated herself. I showed her how, in her attempts to upstage me, she would back up on her own lights and I did all this, unforgivably, in the presence of the cast and the crew. They remained silent.

"The next scene we had to play was one in which I had to slap her. Slapping, to say nothing of hitting, punching, kicking, and general brutality in films is usually faked. I wanted to rehearse this fake scene with the lady. But she wouldn't have it. She looked me straight in the eye and spoke very loud so that the entire company could hear.

"'Eddie,' she said, 'let's do this right. You smack me now so we won't have to do it over and over again. Do you hear me, Eddie? Smack me hard.'

"I followed her instructions. I slapped her so you could hear it all over the set. And the cast and crew burst into applause.

"If you will examine the credits for that movie, you will see, almost at the end, the following: Sailor (thrown out of saloon) David Niven.

"Whether David applauded, I know not. I did not meet him for years. When it happened, we scrupulously did not discuss Miriam Hopkins or my atrocious behavior."

Excerpt from All My Yesterdays by Edward G. Robinson.

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I think it is so classy that in the end he points to his own "atrocious behavior" on set. Actors (and we all), should learn from this man and hold themselves to a higher standard when getting the work done.

Working For Free

Entertainment--specifically, film and TV (and politics)--may be the last industry in America where it is expected, even encouraged, that "newbies" work long hours for no wages whatsoever. In front of the camera, the insiders may joke about it ("I can't technically pay you." "You just described Slavery." -- Community, Season 5 Episode 1), but among themselves the culture of running an "Intern" into the hospital for a single college credit is seen as completely natural. I ended up there three times myself during Graduate school. The Black Swan case woke up many people outside the industry, but for how long, and what does it mean for the struggling entertainment dreamer right now?

Well first of all, it means that you should respect yourself. If someone is treating you poorly, say so. Yes, I went to the hospital, more than once, for exhaustion, but it was on projects I believed in and in some cases controlled. Never allow anyone to be a "slavedriver" to you externally or berate you in front of others. There are a lot of big egos in Hollywood, and most of them are just oversized balloons. They have no reason to be petty except that that they can. Nobody, as yet, has taken the time to pop them. Be the sharp object they need. Sure, Hollywood is all about who you know, but that means knowing, and being known by, the right people. People who want to work. To be professional. To treat other people like they ought to be treated. Trust me, there are more of them than any other kind.

Those are the ones worth carrying the water for.

TRAILERS

Ever wonder why Trailers are called "Trailers"? They of course are also known as Previews, Ads, and Spots, but movie trailers got their name from the simple fact that when movies used to be exclusively distributed on film rolls, the previews were sent along attached to the trailing ends.

A good trailer can create just the right amount of buzz for a project, but it can also give too much away, through plot spoilers, in a way that makes moviegoers feel they have no need to see the finished project. Of course, if you are too vague, the audience that comes in might think they were mislead about what they have come to see. It is one of the most difficult, and most underrated, art-forms in the industry.

Here's an example:

Content: For the Cause!

Over the last 17 years that I have spent in the entertainment industry, I have heard many different talking heads give their opinion about what will or won't get you a job in "this town."

You need to know somebody. You need to be a fresh face. You need to pay your dues before you come out on top. Only submit your work to the top companies. Submit it to everybody. Take classes. Stay away from classes, just get out there and work. Go to festivals, don't go to festivals. And on and on.

Screenwriting IS a language. There ARE patterns to follow. Otherwise, all you have is noise. Like the difference between a well-made film and a static-filled TV screen. But William Goldman is right when he says, "Nobody knows anything." There are a hundred "rules" out there, and I've heard all of them. You will too. Heck, I'll lay out plenty when I read your work. (I mean, you have to know the rules before you can break them.) But what trumps them all is YOU HAVE TO BE OUT THERE.

Don't paralyze yourself because you think you might not be doing it right. Write the screenplay. Make the short film (heck, make the whole feature if you have the time), enter that contest. Send it off to that agent, that producer--even if they are based in Hoboken, CA, as opposed to Hollywood, CA. (But by all means, knock on Hollywood's door first.) Because nobody ever got a "Yes," or a "No" for that matter (and you will get hundreds and hundreds) without making something for the rest of the world to judge, first.

And isn't that why you want to be in this business? :)