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Memo, Aug 20 2003 TO: CSB So the summer movie season is always a love-hate for any film fan. It's the season when high concept is charted out with its greatest potential, only to have us all disappointed at unsatisfying executions. It gets so that if braindead junk with a dumb concept is done with a shred of wit, it's "hey, that wasn't bad!" (Charlie's Angels Charlie's Angels Charlie's Angels) and the stuff we really hope is good ends up being, at worst, the brain-dead molestation of worthy ideas, or, at best, a big slice of the ole' dick pie. The harshest realities are when you realize that great source material has been bastardized and turned into the regular sloppy, slapped-together, whiz-bang crap. "The Latest Star Studded Crap!" reads the marquee, and it's surmised by the money people to be utterly arbitrary how much money is made. If we put together a good package, we make a hundred million at least, and if everybody has done their job maybe something will hit. UNLESS the money people are watching (in their little plush screening room) something they don't understand. What don't they understand? Anything that doesn't immediately resemble other movies. Originality in big-budget film-making has been ritually squeezed out by execs who don't want to take chances. And yet ANYTHING can be a movie. Right? Even a flick about a bunch of English guys in the turn of the century who have superpowers and no electricity. If we get Sean Connery we might get an audience. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a great idea; all literary characters are real, and many of them know each other. So in 1899, you got Quatermain alive at the same time as Dr. Jekyll, the Invisible Man, Captain Nemo, and the survivors of Dracula and the Holmes adventures and so on. Since they get into so much trouble by themselves, together they might even have some kinda grand adventure, huh? They resemble a kind of turn-of-the-century bridge club for incredible Brits, like when comic books heroes team up, except this time it's classic characters from books, all done with a streak of harsh seriousness and intelligence. Pretty cool, eh? The comic is dark, literary, clever and knows a bit about the humanity of wretched souls and a lot about how educated Brits bitch at each other. The ads for the movie proclaim "The Summer's most original adventure!" which, at worst, is just not true in any way (I mean, it is an adaptation of a comic book, right?) and, at best, suggests the spirit has carried over. Except every little detail that made the comic book an original, distinctive piece of work is then CHANGED in screenplay form to make it... like EVERY OTHER MOVIE. Comic book has: A semi-professional non-platonic cynical relationship between a geezer in his seventies and a gal in her thirties. They are attracted to each other, as people sometimes are, because they have been thrown into a small group that takes up all their time and find they have the most respect for one another and the most similar mindsets out of the bunch. No romance, just: Mina: "Well, you're clearly the smartest dude and I'm desperate to impress you somehow. I'll fuck you." When was the last time you saw that done in a comic book movie? Can't have it, everyone will wonder why the gal isn't fucking the younger guys. Invent a romantic interest for the gal, invent a son-figure for the guy. In the comic: Everybody's British and middle-aged! Where's the American? We'll stick one in there, some corn-fed White boy to titillate the post-Titanic preteen girls. Make him the son-figure, have the old guy teach him lessons, give the old guy a son who died to provide backstory... yeah, that's good. I seem to recall that working in something else. Let's pick somebody people might have heard of; forget Horatio Alger or Tom Swift. Let's make it Huck Finn... no wait, what was the smart kid's name? (by the way, the addition of Tom Sawyer is not only completely time inaccurate and fucks up the continuity to all the literary works, but also shows that the screenwriter is an utter douchebag) In the comic: Characters are flawed. Main good guy is pulled out of an opium den in the beginning. So he's frail. Can't have that. Add scenes of old guy kicking ass. People love that, Connery kicking ass. Okay, now let's invent a villain, put in some twists and double-crosses, make all the good guys more sympathetic, make the villain more Bond-like, invent another character so he can betray the group, replace all the vague, subtle dialogue and character interplay with one liners, and make sure there are lots of races against time. Rip off the less confusing parts of the plot of Mission Impossible, stick in a vampire, cut out all the cliff-notes stuff and make the characters bitchy, no... SASSY, and voila! It's like Mission Impossible! We're even shooting in Prague, on leftover sets from From Hell! That did some good business, right? And we'll throw in some cheeky references, y'know, for the fans. "Call me Ishmael," ha ha, somebody'll like that probably I guess. And great, original source material is turned into a painfully shitty movie. Really. It sucked. Worst time I've had in the theater in quite a while. Barf. Now they could have just made an unoriginal hackneyed movie without ripping cool source material, right? They could have just made a movie that kind of ripped off the comic, without calling itself the comic, right? Because maybe one day somebody would want to do the material right... right? But no one will ever do it right, because as long as big money is on the movie, they'll make sure that not a minute goes by that would confuse the morons in the Midwest. That's their audience. No matter what the movie is, if it opens on more than a thousand screens... THAT'S your audience. All those morons. That's who we make movies for. But even those people, whose intelligence is a constant source of anxiety for the money people, are not going to accept a movie that just does the same old crap. When you dumb down your movie and take out all trace of originality, all you do is reduce its appeal to its most superficial elements, and then the audience reacts to ONLY the package. What do you want tonight, folks? A romantic comedy with Harrison Ford? Or an action romance with The Rock? A movie which has almost the exact same plot as a 1980's insert movie star here starring whoever the new insert movie star here is? Or a sequel? I feel the above-described process is the very reason why most flicks have absolutely no staying power. The marketing pulls in a hundred million, then... it just depends on how well the director did. Did he make sure the lines didn't make the audience groan? Did he make sure the performances didn't make the audience groan? Did he give the movie a quality that makes it stand out, maybe even do repeat business? Check out that Pirate movie, and you'll see why it's a surprise hit; it transcends the package. Not because of the rote story or the boring romantic leads (which is what they call actors who are there primarily to be "hot"). It's because the film-makers knew how to make a fun flick. Cool, living skeletons. A sense of humor. Everyone loves Johnny Depp as a drunk Han Solo. Standard summer fare with some invention and as little dumbass as possible, except that ending made me gag audibly. It would have been perfectly acceptable if they'd jumped off the cliff, instead of the PC garbage that never would have flown in the 1600's, or the 1950's for that matter. In a perfect world, somebody would have shoved them off the cliff. Anyway, the Depp was excellent. Now that movie was based on a RIDE. Those script writers looked at an amusement park ride and came up with a story that ties together features of... AN AMUSEMENT PARK RIDE! They INFORMED THE SOURCE MATERIAL with their movie! Their SUMMER MOVIE! What was the question? Why do you hate Brett Ratner? Because he was given the chance. He had all the resources at his disposal. He had the chance to deliver one of the all time great movies. He had RED DRAGON. A Great book. Begging to be a great movie. Potentially better than Silence Of The Lambs. Maybe even better than SEVEN. Could have been, man. Stronger characters, a plot that twists and turns within the parameters of reality, and stronger viscera. Even the ideas are more provocative... a hero who is very close to the mindset of a villian, and an utter monster who is very nearly heroic. And the logic of the movies, the money man equation, all that shit WAS NOT forced upon Ratner in any way. Dino DeLaurentis was his producer. Dino is famous for trusting his directors (to many ill results, but...), and he said in many interviews "Ratner hasn't done a movie like this, but he's young and enthusiastic. I feel he's like Speilberg before he made Jaws." But instead of a faithful adaptation of Red Dragon, or even a good serial killer flick, Brett Ratner took a great book and made it into The Latest Star Studded Crap. Every time the opportunity is presented to take an original path, or even to really copy the spirit of Silence of the Lambs, Ratner chooses instead to make a change that forces the whole thing into a safer area, closer to the constructs of a Hollywood thriller. Thriller thriller with big neon letters. It's an R-rated movie shot through a PG-13 lens. It's glossy and shiny and has not one moment that sets it apart from movies like, say, Copycat. Or The Bone Collector. Or Kiss the Girls. Instead of a film by Brett Ratner, it should really read, "A Film by Film School." If Speilberg had made Jaws with this little style and skill, its 25th anniversary re-release would have had all the fanfare of The Car on DVD. In the first scene, Hannibal Lecter is captured. In the book, this is described by one of the characters as occurring like this: Protaganist Will Graham, an FBI man, is talking to Lecter in Lecter's psychiatric office about a former patient who may be connected to some murders, kind of routine and not really exciting for Graham, and half-way through the conversation he glances at a poster on the wall, and suddenly realizes that Lecter is the killer they're looking for. What tipped him off? He saw the standardized surgery chart on the wall, and it resembled the wounds on one of the victims found. Graham adds it up in his head and realizes that Lecter fits the profile perfectly. So Graham excuses himself to make a phone call, goes down the hall and calls the FBI for immediate backup, disclosing his location. As he does this, Dr. Lecter slips off his shoes, sneaks up behind Graham in his sock feet, and attacks him with a knife. Backup arrives after Will is severly wounded, and Lecter is detained before he can gut Graham. Cool, huh? Great way to open the movie. The MOVIE opens really well, with Lecter at a symphony, reacting with pained reactions as the first-chair flute plays sloppily, if earnestly. Too subtle for most of the audience, but we see Lecter honing in on the inferior player, and we are reminded that Anthony Hopkins can be an absolutely arresting actor. He really pulls off the whole scene with restraint, naturalism, and utter clarity. That's forty seconds in. Hopkins is still good in the second scene, surrounded by the worst fucking actors ever, a group of people who are supposed to be the Board for the orchestra, all played by horribly cast (I'm guessing local) actors, who are literally turning up their noses as they speak eloquently about Lecter's little dinner parties and how Grand everything is and already I'm remembering how in Silence of the Lambs ever single little part, no matter how small, was cast with an utterly convincing character actor. Even the limo driver in Baltimore, with no lines, is memorable in Silence. All of these actors appear to have taken the Shakespearean standard of FEELING the words through their performance, so that a scene that is made up of dinner conversation is full of weighty pauses and drawn out inflections. It's two minutes into the movie, and it's clear that somebody in charge of casting was a douchebag. In the MOVIE, Graham comes to Lecter's house, late at night. No other Feds know Graham is there. Lecter is cleaning up after the dinner party. They go to Lecter's study, chat. Will Graham (edward norton) says he feels like he can "think like this guy, really get in his head." Already, the talents of Will Graham in the book are being spun into quasi-psychic powers that midwest morons can recognize. Graham's gift for empathy and inhabiting mindsets is presented as an involuntary process that God has forced upon him. It's not helping that Edward Norton doesn't look or sound anything like an FBI lifer, coming off instead like a plucky but annoyed Yale boy who's never been in a fight. Hopkins plays this scene really well, never giving up for an instant where it is going. An awkward pause lets us know that Graham is suspecting Lecter, however briefly. Lecter excuses himself. So far, the scene is still okay. We're excited. We suspect what will happen. Graham gets up, stretches, looks at the office, lightly brushes his hand over a quill full of arrows... that just happens to be in Lecter's office as a decoration... Norton touches these arrows as if he were an actor who has been told to indicate the presence of a prop to be used later... oh wait. Graham looks at a book that is sitting a little further out from the shelf than the others, because as we know, Lecter is sloppy like that, as we've learned from the other movies, and he opens it to the bookmarked page, where there's a lot of French, but one English word written in pen, a translation: sweetbreads. Y'know, organ meat. Lecter has obviously written this because I guess his French is rusty. Norton opens his eyes really wide and raises his head. This conveys that he is suddenly aware of something. He spins around... AND LECTER STABS HIM IN THE STOMACH with a letter opener, COOL! Although in a house probably full of knives, why'd he use a letter opener--ah, fuckit, he stabbed him! Lecter speaks to him in a soothing voice, forcing Graham's gun arm down, trying to get Graham to cease resisting and let shock overcome him... Graham goes to the floor, knocking over the arrows. Lecter says, "Remarkable boy. I think I'll eat your heart." Cool line, Ted Tally line. He's the guy who adapted Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs, he's also one of the main reasons I had hope for this film. And BAM! Graham stabs Lecter with one of the arrows! Wait, why didn't Lecter see him reaching for that? And why did Lecter leave arrows in his study... well, no matter. With an arrow in him, Lecter staggers back, which Hopkins performs like an actor who has been scripted to stagger back. Then he pulls out the arrow. Then he looks at Graham. Thanks to the fact that Lecter staggered back, now there is enough distance that, rather than just dive onto Graham and kill him, Lecter will have to re-approach Graham, and in the time it takes to start walking towards him, Graham pulls his ankle gun and shoots Lecter twice. The Doctor topples backwards over the desk... and we see his face. Not blinking. THIS is how Hannibal Lecter, the man who runs mental rings around all other humans, the man who escapes traps seemingly at will, the man who has sunk into our hearts and consciousness as the only truly classic literary monster to be produced in the last twenty-years... THIS is how he got caught? Cue the SINGLE WORST Danny Elfman music ever committed to film, and Ladies and Gentlemen, RED DRAGON the MOVIE!! No, really, the music sucks. It is screechy and stringy and sounds like Bernard Herrman sampled by a 12 year old in his camcorder horror movie. Its worse than any early DePalma feature. Quick Ratner quote: Rat: "Danny Elfman's scores have always been light-dark, but this one for Red Dragon really is very Bernard Herrman, it makes the people in the audience know something creepy will happen, it really makes your skin crawl." Well, he's right, it did. It made me realize that after the insinuating Cronenberg-like creepy sadness of Howard Shore's music in the original, and the distracting lush romantic orchestra and cold lonely piano of Hans Zimmer in the sequel, this movie will include the ugliest, most annoying musical stings this side of a Scream ripoff. Oh, but it's not Elfman's fault. In fact, this summer, I thought his Hulk score achieved a certain beauty. I remember reading a Gear article where Danny got pissed off because Ratner wouldn't lock the picture until the music was "y'know... scarier." Ratner apparently didn't realize that when he told Anthony Hopkins that baroque performance is not scary, this same principle can be applied to music. Hence, a clumsy Hitchcock score ripoff. Now the plot to the movie is the same as the book, the basic broad outline the same. I don't deny that the events alone have their interest. But then again, the Psycho remake was almost exactly like the original. Watch the two back to back, remake first. After about ten minutes, you realize that not only does the remake feel boring and awkward, how can the original hold up if it's exactly the same? Then you watch the original Psycho and it's amazing how great a film it still is. The remake is more dated than the original. It's a simple case of what a director brings to details. Gus Van Sant is a great director, but he couldn't recapture the magic of the original Psycho. Brett Ratner is not a great director. He creates no magic in Red Dragon. Rat: "I think I was born to make this movie." Ratner said this because he personally knew the production designer of Silence of the Lambs and the director of photography of Manhunter. No, really, that was the reason he gave to indicate he was born to make Red Dragon. Edward Norton's limited range is becoming more apparent to me with every movie he does. His constant physical transformations aside, whenever he does vary his characters it's with the posturing of a high school drama king. Watch Death To Smoochy as Norton seems to try so hard to create a character who is different than himself that in some scenes he sounds like he's choking on his own voice. Watch American History X as he plays a skinhead with the glee of a guy who finally gets to look scary... but put it next to his performance in Fight Club and is there really any difference in his delivery? Plus in Fight Club he was much scarier; a disgruntled white collar with narcissistic rage is a lot more frightening than an actor with a DeNiro jones exorcising pent-up anger by playing a racist... and the former is far less typical in movies. I thought he was very effective in Fight Club, and The People Vs. Larry Flynt, and The 25th Hour, where he plays a semi-spoiled former-Ivy League Irish boy who is a drug dealer, has a huge chip on his shoulder, and is generally unpleasant to everybody. He plays Will Graham in Red Dragon in the exact same way. In the second scene, where Crawford is trying to recruit Graham to track a new serial killer, Norton is basically a complete prick to Crawford. When Crawford speaks of Graham's "gift," Norton laments it like a college boy complaining of pressure from his parents. It doesn't help that in this entire scene, the actors SOUND like the dialogue is only exposition and there is no way to make it interesting, so they find all kinds of little acting beats to hang on the lines. It results in two people who react to FBI business the way regular people would, or rather, the way actors who focus on their emotions would. Both Norton and Keitel seem to be more off-guard about serial murder than still-in-training Clarice Starling did in Silence of the Lambs. They seem to be trying hard to get out how the characters feel about perfunctory expositional dialogue. They don't seem to trust that the material itself is interesting. There is also no recognizable relationship between the two men, and Graham shows no respect or affection for Crawford, in this scene or in any other. This is not the fault of the writing. Instead of fighting to get the Florida location, Ratner might have put that energy into creating an effective scene. Rat: "[on exposition] These scenes are really hard! [repeated every time an expositional scene occurs]" Demme made it look easy. By the way, this is the single worst performance I've ever seen Harvey Keitel give. I kept wondering if he was stoned during shooting. He seems to be tripping over all his lines. At least in Manhunter, the Chicago actor (William L. Peterson) and the former Chicago cop (Dennis Farina, recruited from the force for the movie) sound like professionals. Remember how the Scott Glenn/Jodie Foster scenes went in Silence? You got the sense that this is what FBI agents are like. How I would have loved to have seen Scott Glenn back as Crawford, and a real actor playing Graham. Somebody who disappears into a character, not in a superficial, Nortonesque way ("Holy shit his voice is different! So is his weight!") but in the way that Billy Bob Thornton looked like a man who could have worked as a death row guard all his life. That's when it hit me, in the scene where Graham fights with his wife. First off, Mary-Louise Parker plays Molly so fragile you think she'd break if you touched her. Norton (no suprise) is completely condescending to her--"It'll be all right, I promise,"--as well as acting like she just doesn't understand him. From this scene, it's clear that these people are not married. And in real life, probably never married to anybody, and don't know what people who have been married for seven years sound like when they talk to each other. Norton talks to her like she's a girlfriend, not the mother of his child. Then I thought: Billy Bob. I would have cast Billy Bob. There's a guy you'd believe could catch Hannibal Lecter. And you know he knows what it's like to be married. Boy does he ever. The Crawford/Graham scenes with Scott Glenn and Billy Bob would have been somethin'. And who knows what would happen if you put Billy Bob and Tony Hopkins head to head. But that's me. I like my anti-heroes with a minimum of glamour and a lot of conviction. Billy Bob might have actually looked and sounded like a burnt-out Fed. And shit, if you wanted a hot younger actor for the part, why not just get Johnny Depp and stand back? In Red Dragon, Bill Duke sounds very convincing as an Atlanta detective, and a villain from Rush Hour shows up as a passable FBI lab rat. Otherwise, not one person sounds like an FBI agent in Red Dragon, and it doesn't help that Graham condescends to everybody, speaking to each day player like they're an idiot and have never dealt with what he has before. There's a real sense of "You haven't seen what I've seen" in every moment of Graham's performance, and all the other characters let him get away with it. Once again, not the writer's fault. By the way, in the first scene? Graham got stabbed in the stomach. In the rest of the movie, there's a little scar on his stomach, which is revealed in a really staged moment where Graham pulls his shirt off just in time for his wife to comment on it. In the book they talk about how Graham was slashed up and had to undergo extensive therapy to recover, first physically, then mentally. In the movie, you honestly wonder what the big deal is with him returning to investigating. Also, he didn't use ingenuity or his resources to catch Lecter, he used a lucky arrow and... I mean, all the minor characters regard Graham like he's Supercop, but it honestly doesn't feel like he does anything special in the movie. You keep wondering how this dweeb caught Hannibal the Cannibal, and why aren't the other characters constantly bitch-slapping him for sounding like such a prick? And let's talk about that... in all of his scenes, Anthony Hopkins is pushing hard to make Lecter interesting, but the presence to his character is robbed by Ratner's sloppy detailing... instead of the underground sounds in the Baltimore asylum, there's silence and then the Danny Elfman run-dunt-dunt score. Instead of harsh close-ups and hard light, there's static medium closeups where Hopkins looks tired as he speaks into the camera. There's no reflections on the glass. And instead of Jodie Foster's reaction shots of unease and bitter fear, there's Edward Norton acting like a kid kept after class being lectured by a windbag teacher. Y'know, in Manhunter, two infinitely less appreciated actors made these scenes tick, and the guy playing Graham in that didn't show fear to Lecter either... but his acting still raised the stakes. It was still clear that this was not pleasant for him. Norton seems to want his character to appear bullet-proof. I don't know if it's an ego thing, but it appears that Norton wants Graham to be cooler than Lecter. As a result, the scenes just sit there, no life. Hopkins is playing anger and resentment towards Norton, and the kid just doesn't seem to notice. And that cute little beat where he has big pit stains after speaking to Hannibal? From the way Norton plays it, he could of just been hot in the car. Graham the character is quite weak in this movie. Voice-over describes him as "alert, purposeful," but we see neither. Lecter taunts him, "You caught me because we're just alike," but never is a threat presented in the movie to Graham's sanity, nor is it suggested that he might identify with serial killers in a way that scares him. CSB suggested that Sam Rockwell should have played Graham, and after seeing Confessions of A Dangerous Mind, I can say it sure would have been a better choice. Lecter says "You stink of fear but you're not a coward!" but Norton has done nothing with his performance to motivate him to say that. And the pivotal worst crime Norton commits with his performance... when he talks into his little tape recorder, he actually acts the notes he's giving, emoting up a little tight-lipped storm with each observation, rather than just... observing. He indicates like crazy that these crimes sicken him, but he doesn't do much else. He makes William L. Peterson look good by comparison. At least that guy looked like he was on to something. Plus, he also looked like he might have a screw loose. And he actually seemed to value his wife and kid without overdoing the sentimentality. By the way, I still think Manhunter is a shitty movie. But it's better than Red Dragon. Ratner doesn't even steal the best stuff from Manhunter, like Graham's talk to his son in the grocery store, or keeping the pictures of the Dragon's victims off-screen (yeah, you see them, briefly, when Lounds see them, in all their makeup fx glory. Remember the picture of the nurse in Silence of the Lambs? "Even when he ate her tongue..."). The big shot stolen from Manhunter (following Dolarhyde through his work) is remarked by Ratner on the DVD commentary as his "least favorite shot in the movie." "Why?" asks Ted Tally. "It looks like the camera is attached to his back," is the reply. My least favorite shot is the really awful wide-angle closeup of Edward Norton when he says, "You took your gloves off you son-of-a-bitch," followed closely by the shot where Norton hits his mark in the foreground and stands there while Hopkins talks in the background, all staged with the finesse of a junior high play. Ratner calls that one his editor's favorite shot. This is almost as weird as Ratner's own favorite shot being a two second close-up of Hannibal in the mask that could have been from any of the other movies, or his favorite cut being a good continuity match when two people hand off a piece of paper. Ted Tally reduces this goofy enthusiasm to typical director eccentricity, but he's wrong. This is how all the guys sound in their first film class, before they learn anything. Rat: "This line used to be on-camera, but you don't need every line on camera." By the way, there are a lot of indicators that the editor was the main shaper of the film. But if so, he did a pretty bad job as well. But being the director is not his job. Now, I knew the story going in. I also had read the book of The Silence of the Lambs before seeing that movie. Silence was totally engrossing. Red Dragon is so oddly uninteresting. I kept having to listen hard to hear the strength of the novel. Cool ideas like telling the story of Lecter and Graham through Dolarhyde's scrapbook, or the audio flashback while Dolarhyde is working out, are just kind of thrown on screen like the director just doesn't want to deal with them. The abuse that created Dolarhyde's illness is offered up like "His brother stole his rubber ducky, that's why he's a serial killer next scene." During the shot revealing said abuse, on the DVD, Ratner is talking about the production design. The fact that this killer is engaging in necrophiliac activities is presented in little flash cuts that are meant to unnerve the audience, but it's just confusing. Why not have a guy say, "he is having sex with his victims after they die." Instead, Ratner weaves an awkward dance, wanting to frighten the audience without having to, y'know, frighten them. While I appreciate his restraint in gory scenes, he also scuttles the reality of the horror, so much that we almost forget what the movie is about. If I hadn't read the book, I would have thought they were still chasing Lecter for the first half of the movie. When a crime scene turns up, the bloody aftermath is scored so heavily and sharply it's as if he feels he needs to remind us its scary. It's a toothless movie with no real insight as to why any of this shit is really terrifying. Which brings me to Ralph Fiennes. He's the best thing in the movie. And I've never been a fan. He plays a serial killer necrophile. From the moment he's on screen, he is so much more compelling than Edward Norton or anything else in the movie that I remember thinking... "Now that's a movie star." Then I had to remember... he's supposed to be a serial killer necrophile. Tom Noonan in the first movie looked like a serial killer and was pretty damn freaky, but the characterization is fuller and richer here. Fiennes and Emily Watson actually do a fine job and improve upon Manhunter with their scenes, except for the one with the tiger, which was shot much better in the original. The fact that their scenes are so well-done and so fluid suggests that they directed themselves. Although Ratner then ruins it with his shitty unnatural home video recreations, and by apparently instructing Emily Watson to go straight for the blowjob with a man she's barely kissed yet. Hey, remember when I said that somebody in charge of casting was a douchebag? Philip Seymour Hoffman wanted to play Dolarhyde initially. But Ratner wanted Ralph Fiennes instead. PSH takes the more typical role, and creates a nifty little sleazeball with it, a shrewd man who always appears to be waking up from last night's coke-binge. He plays the reality of the character. It's refreshing. Why do I fear that in an alternate universe, Phil is the perfect Will Graham, or plays the Red Dragon in a performance that scorches the very earth. Rat: "I pay as much attention to the smaller parts as I do the leads. I read 300 women for the part of Mrs. Leeds." Is that why every line Mrs. Leeds says in the movie (in the home video) sounds completely fake and staged? Frank Whaley as the walking hardon was cute, but why not just get Piven? Nice getting Anthony Heald back as Chilton, but did every line he said have to feel like "Ha ha you die in the next movie!" It was worse than Obi-Wan and Anakin. Oh, and the end of the movie "sets up" Silence of the Lambs... although Chilton walks up to Lecter's cell and says, "Hannibal, there's a woman here to see you, she says she's FBI but she's far too pretty. I said you probably wouldn't see her. I'll tell her you won't see her." Hannibal asks what her name is and the credits role. Rat: "I wish I'd had his wardrobe from Silence. That's the only mistake I made." Not only is that by far the least of the mistakes you made in your shitty adaptation, Rat, but by your continuity, Chilton would have to talk to Hannibal, then go back and walk all the way upstairs to his office, then sit down and talk to Clarice and have the "he's a monster/never one as attractive" conversation before walking all the way down AGAIN with Clarice and then saying the key line, which he says in Silence, that makes all the above impossible... "You might have said this in my office and saved me the time." Only mistake my ass, you fucking awful director. I rented the Red Dragon DVD specifically to listen to Ratner comment, as I wasn't going to rip on him before I heard him talk. I was even prepared to like him more after hearing him talk. In the commentary for Red Dragon, Ratner doesn't sound stupid. He sounds self-promoting, flip, superficial, self-possessed, self-congratulatory and naive. He doesn't sound smart. But he doens't sound stupid. Although he did say that in The Godfather, Carlo was married to Sonny's wife. Then he doesn't correct himself. And for a guy trying to shed his Rush Hour image, he sure mentions Rush Hour a lot. Rat: "One line can throw the movie off. There's not a line in here I'm not proud of." Norton as Graham: "Hey, hey! You write lying shit, Lounds, and The Tattler is an asswipe!" In the book: The Red Dragon has a voice, speaking to Dolarhyde. We hear his interior monologue, bringing much of his motivation to the forefront. Rat: "I couldn't make it work." I've seen two versions of the scene where Dolarhyde is debating on whether to kill his blind girlfriend. One had Frank Langella's voice speaking to Dolarhyde as the Dragon. It was pretty damn sweet. The other is in the release version with Ralph Fiennes just acting reactions to an unheard voice. It not only felt like other scenes in other movies with the same subject, but also, since the specifics of the Dragon's voice were removed, it was just plain goofy. Rat: "We took the safe route... it was a risk that people might laugh." But Rat! Without the Dragon voice taunting Dolarhyde and creating some sympathy for him, when he said "She's nice," in those big ole dentures, I did laugh. Ted Tally: "Brett and I worked quite a bit on the script before we started." Rat: "It was my job to save the script." And now the piece de resistance. The final scene. In the book: Case is closed. Everything is back to normal. Everybody thinks the bad guy is dead. We join Graham on the beach by his house. He watches his wife and son from afar. He is content. He got through this job safe, without being eviscerated by a maniac. Graham walks on the beach and, with no warning, Dolarhyde steps out from hiding and stabs him through his face. Graham's wife and kid take off for the house, so Dolarhyde, leaving Graham alone and mortally wounded, takes off, chasing the wife and kid into the house. The wife runs, urging the kid to not look back, run as fast as he can, she runs right up the stairs, the bad guy on her heels, she runs right into the bedroom to get the gun they hide there, whips around, bad guy is right there, she unloads into his face and kills him, he falls over dead with his hair on fire. The ending passages have Graham surviving, but at what mental cost? Man, that ending would have been so sweet. And it would have rocked the audience. They have no idea that the killer is still alive and there he is to stab the hero, and the wife ends up killing him. People would talk about that ending. And you could still tie it back to Hannibal like they do in the film. Hell, you could do the same ending, only instead of the goof-ass Chilton continuity, you have Hannibal finish writing his letter to Graham, then hear the buzzer sound down the hall at the door. Hannibal hears footsteps coming down the hall from a distance. Maybe hears Miggs hissing at someone faintly. He stands up, in the center of his cell, to receive whomever is approaching. Make the last words of the movie "Good morning," and-- Rat: "We changed the script because, I told Ted... I don't know how to shoot suspense on a beach." Well... it's not suspense, is it? It's a kinetic chase, right? In the MOVIE, case is closed. Everything is back to normal. Graham is on the beach with his family. The kid wants to make s'mores. They send him inside to get the s'mores fixins. Cut to FBI HQ. Crawford gets a phone call. "The killer's not dead! It wasn't his body!" Cut to Graham entering his house. The phone rings. It's Crawford. "Get out of there! The killer's not dead!" Graham sees a smashed mirror. HE'S IN THE HOUSE! WOW! JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER FUCKING MOVIE! So Dolarhyde has Graham's son with a mirror shard to his throat, and Graham uses psychology to talk to his son like Dolarhyde's abusive Grandma talked to him, so Dolarhyde lets go of the son and goes for Graham, and they stab each other, then the wife doesn't know what's going on, blah blah blah fake suspense the bad guy is shot twelve hundred million times the hero is shot in the chest but he survives blah blah blah blah blah. Wife gets a few shots in too. Ted Tally: "That's nice that we let the wife get the last shots in." As opposed to all of the shots, in the novel. That might have even been successfully empowering. Ted Tally: "I wanted an ending where Graham could be more heroic." Ted, you jag, he didn't need to be heroic. The ending in the book was that whole cathartic-for-the-audience ironic fate thing, y'know? If Graham's character had been set up in the movie as well as the novel, you wouldn't need to change shit. How the fuck did he know the killer would let go of his son? Oh, I know, because that whole psychology thing worked in other movies, specifically Psycho II and Friday the 13th, Part II. Rat: "I'm not making a horror movie." Well Rat, you're not making any other kind of movie either. Just a MOVIE MOVIE. You got hired by Dino, whose bottom line is money, and you got hired because all your other movies made a lot of money. And Red Dragon didn't even break a hundred million at the US box-office, did it? Made the least of the trilogy, didn't it? Rat: "I'm a positive guy. If I was a dark, negative person, watching this movie would be a miserable experience." You know, I'd categorize watching this movie as a miserable experience. You fucked up one of my favorite books with your paycheck flick. Since then, Ratner was signed to do the remake of Superman, but when his contract renewal time came up during pre-production, Warners did not re-sign him. He is currently signed to do Rush Hour 3. Too bad. On that DVD, there's a supplement called "A Director's Journey" in which Ratner yells at the crew, laughs with the cast, and tries to get a photographer to snap a shot that is identical to one of Paul Thomas Anderson. I'm not a PTA fan, but he's a real film-maker. Ratner's first student film is also included on the disk, and there is absolutely nothing in it to suggest any talent whatsover in any aspect of film-making. Brett Ratner reminds me of a quote from a true individual who had perspective and talent to spare: "We live in a world where good men are murdered and mediocre hacks thrive." It's about time Hollywood learned that paycheck directors do not sell tickets. The nice package is part one, part two is getting a director who puts that package together. Just because a young guy likes to have fun on the set and the actors like that, doesn't mean that you'll get your money back. If you go for somebody who can deliver a unique film experience, hell, you might even make a bundle. Meanwhile, maybe the Rat will continue making movies, maybe one day he'll stop. I don't care. I envy his money, his connections to the hip-hop community, and that he directs films for a living. I don't intend to watch any more of his films, or even mention him ever again. If he does make something I care about, like the sequel to Get Shorty (he's attached) or a film about my life (not yet optioned), I'll just have to pass on watching it. But it is a shame. Why, you say, why? I saw that movie, it wasn't so bad. See if you can identify... a band you hate covers your favorite piece of music. A team you love signs a quarterback who you can't stand. You've been in love with a woman for ten years... and she marries a self-important jackass who is rewarded for doing a job you feel you could have done as well and then better. But you're right, it's not so bad. When I returned the DVD this past weekend, there was a snafu in the computer and I ended up not having to pay for it. Life can be sweet. And I'll always hold out for the day when maybe I can make a film out of somebody's favorite book, and fuck it up so horribly that they start a web-page denouncing me, cursing my name and envying my life as I reap millions of dollars for the perceived massacre of a loved one. Oh man, will I have made it then. Well, that's it. Type it, post it, wipe your eyes, and don't forget to tell people how to get in touch with us. |