Me and Orson Welles

They say you shouldn’t meet your heroes as you’re liable to discover they have clay feet, rarely living up to one’s expectations. Me and Orson Welles (2008) explores the good and bad aspects of hero worship. Based on Robert Kaplow's novel of the same name, the Richard Linklater-directed film chronicles the eventful week in a life of teenager Richard Samuels (Zac Efron) who finds himself cast in a minor role in Orson Welles’ (Christian McKay) legendary stage adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in 1937. The aspiring, 22-year-old wunderkind set the play in modern times as a bare-stage production with comparisons to the rise of Fascism in Italy and Nazi Germany.
 
We meet the 17-year-old Richard when he arrives in New York City with dreams of becoming a working actor. In typical Linklater fashion, he meets Gretta Adler (Zoe Kazan) in a record store and they break the ice over a mutual admiration they have for Richard Rodgers as “There’s a Small Hotel” plays in the store. The young woman says, “They’re like lullabies, aren’t they?” She’s in the city trying to make it as a playwright, hoping that one of her stories is published in The New Yorker.
 
The scene is a sweet, unassuming meet-cute that is vintage Linklater. “What I want is for one person on this earth to read something I wrote and say, ‘You’re terrific,’” Gretta says wistfully in a moment that echoes Jesse and Celine at the beginning of Before Sunrise (1995). Like that couple, Richard and Gretta are two young people that meet by chance and connect instantly over their respective aspirations. This opening scene could be a self-contained film unto itself and one almost wants to follow these two-young people getting to know each other in the Big Apple.
 

By chance, Richard stumbles across Welles attempting to put on a production of Julius Caesar and impresses him with his drumming and singing (a jingle for Wheaties no less). He appeals to his vanity while also showing his knowledge of theater. Richard soon finds himself immersed in the sights and sounds of the Mercury Theater with Sonja Jones (Claire Danes) putting him to work immediately, answering phones. He finds himself drawn to her only to find out that every man in the company is pursuing her with little success. Claire Danes is fine in the role and Sonja is nice enough but the actor does little to suggest why all the men in the Mercury Theater lust after her.
 
Welles casts Richard as Lucius but soon finds that “the principal occupation of the Mercury Theater is waiting for Orson,” as fellow actor Norman Lloyd (Leo Bill) puts it. Me and Orson Welles goes on to chronicle the tumultuous production of Caesar, from the rough rehearsals to the problematic previews to its eventual triumph juxtaposed with Richard’s coming-of-age story.

Zac Efron captures Richard’s earnest romanticism that comes with youth and a lack of worldly experience. This lack of knowledge gives him the courage to approach Welles in the first place as he has nothing to lose. He’s hardly an innocent, though, as he goes in on a bet with two other actors to see who can bed Sonja first and, later, sets off the theater sprinkler system, sabotaging the play and then refusing to admit he did it when Welles confronts him. Richard is a rebellious teenager that doesn’t know any better.
 

His wholesome aspects come out in Gretta’s presence. Zoe Kazan’s natural charisma and her character’s playful zest for life are infinitely more interesting than Sonja’s seen-it-all attitude. It is obvious right away that Richard and she don’t have the same kind of easy-going connection that he has with Gretta. While Richard is physically attracted to Sonja, it is with Gretta that he connects with on a more meaningful level.
 
Christian McKay and Eddie Marsan are perfectly cast as the arrogant Welles and his long-suffering business partner John Houseman respectively. The former plays Welles as a pompous ass who doubles as a genius. He does an excellent job approximating the man’s distinctive voice and affectations. The latter matches him as the one person in the group willing to stand up to the him as he tries to keep the lights on while Welles follows his muse. McKay’s layered performance goes deeper than mere impersonation with moments that show his humanity, the strain of carrying the entire production on his back, and his ability to take credit for every aspect of the production in one moment and make someone feel like they are the most important person in the company in the next.
 
Linklater immerses us in Welles lore, such as how he would take an ambulance from the theater to his radio gigs so he could run red lights and make better time. We also see his famous affinity for magic and he even reads from The Magnificent Ambersons, a book that he would adapt into a one-hour radio play in 1939 and a film in 1942. The filmmaker also presents several examples of fascinating behind-the-scenes drama, such as one actor (Ben Chaplin) experiencing paralyzing stage fright minutes before going on stage until Welles talks him down through sheer force of will. We see the fragile egos of some actors and others that brim with confidence. They may have all sorts of weaknesses and inadequacies as people do but when they are on stage, radio or film they are brilliant artists that make art come vividly to life. The reward is the adulation from the audience, which is a unique high that some actors chase their entire career.
 

Me and Orson Welles started out as a young-adult novel by Robert Kaplow. He had been inspired of a photograph he had seen of 15-year-old Arthur Anderson playing a lute, cast as Lucius in Welles’ production of Julius Caesar. Kaplow sought out Anderson, found out that he was still alive and living New York City, and based much of the novel on the man’s recollections from that time. Richard Linklater was so taken with Kaplow’s book that he paid for the rights and made it independently. Linklater identified with Welles as a fellow indie filmmaker: “He was doing in the 40s and 50s what everyone else was doing in the 80s and 90s.”
 
Linklater was faced with the daunting task of casting someone to play the iconic Welles. Kaplow told him about a one-man show entitled, Rosebud: The Lives of Orson Welles, written by Mark Jenkins and starring Christian McKay, that was arriving in New York City for Off Broadway run after rave reviews at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. He saw the play and was so impressed by the actor’s portrayal of Welles, from a young genius to an old man filled with regrets, that he cast him in the role. To prepare for the part, McKay listened to hundreds of hours of interviews and recalled his own arrogant youth. Linklater worked with the actor for months on portraying Welles.
 
Principal photography began in the Isle of Man in February 2008, shooting the Mercury Theater scenes in an old theater before moving on to Pinewood Studios in England where the exterior scenes of 1930s New York City were shot. According to Linklater, “We built one little street in Pinewood with a greenscreen at the end and every single exterior was shot on it, from different angles, dressed a different way.” The film crew went to New York City to shoot some photographs and a small amount of footage for digital effects.

“You know, sometimes you remember a week for the rest of your life,” Richard says partway through the film. In his brief tenure with the Mercury Theater, he does a lot of growing up, learning important lessons in life courtesy of Welles. Some of Richard’s mistakes can be attributed to his young age and his lack of life experiences as well as immaturity. He’s a hormonal teenager ruled by his libido. It is Gretta that keeps him grounded and the film ends on a wonderfully optimistic note as she and Richard are reunited. What will happen to them? Who knows but as she tells him, “It’s all ahead of us.”
 
 
SOURCES
Brooks, Xan. “Richard Linklater: ‘I’m not like Orson Welles. I’m a quiet director.’’ The Guardian. November 30, 2009.

Byrnes, Paul. “Me and Orson Welles.” The Sydney Morning Herald. July 31, 2010.

Dawtrey, Adam. “Director P.O.V.: Richard Linklater.” Variety. October 16, 2008.
 
Express. “Very Wellesian: Richard Linklater Discusses His New Film, Me and Orson Welles.” Washington Post. December 9, 2009.

Lim, Dennis. “Citizen Welles as Myth in the Making.” The New York Times. November 20, 2009.

Richards, Olly. “Claire Danes, Me and Orson Welles. Empire. February 1, 2008.

Home for the Holidays

Christmas holiday movies are a dime a dozen but how many Thanksgiving movies are there? Sure, many are set during this holiday but Home for the Holidays (1995) is the Thanksgiving movie. Director Jodie Foster captures the hassle and the horror of traveling during the holidays and presents an instantly relatable premise: going home for Thanksgiving dinner and having to put up with your relatives. Everyone has been stuck next to that annoying person on a long plane ride or have had to deal with a crowded airport or stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Everybody has a Thanksgiving history and stories that go with it. Home for the Holidays collects several of these stories into one entertaining movie.

Claudia Larson (Holly Hunter) is having the worst Thanksgiving ever. She has just been fired from her job, made out with her 60-year-old boss and found out that her daughter Kit (Claire Danes) is going to have sex for the first time. To add insult to injury, Claudia is going to spend Thanksgiving with her parents. Her mother (Anne Bancroft) reads Dear Abby and constantly nags her daughter (“Claudia, I can see your roots.”) while her father (Charles Durning) has selective deafness and weaves in and out of lanes of traffic. The antagonists are represented by Claudia’s sister Jo Ann (Cynthia Stevenson), her boring husband (Steve Guttenberg) and their annoying kids. They provide the friction and conflict, exposing Jo Ann and Claudia’s deep-rooted sibling rivalry issues.

The film really comes to life when Robert Downey Jr. as Claudia’s gay brother Tommy arrives with his business partner, Leo “Go” Fish (Dylan McDermott) in tow. Downey’s introduction ranks right up there with Jack Black’s equally memorable first appearance in High Fidelity (2000). He’s the mischievous sibling who knows exactly which buttons to push to drive his sisters crazy and Downey plays the role with obvious glee as evident from the way he works the kitchen, improvising his ass off as he interacts with the cast, most memorably Anne Bancroft (“Spin mommy, spin.”), during his whirlwind introduction. Foster remembers that, “the cast pretty much stuck to the script once we had honed it down. The only person I let make up whatever he wanted was Robert Downey Jr. He just has this incredibly fertile mind.” The scene where Tommy tells the story about how Leo once injured his nose is a brilliant bit of comic acting on Downey’s part that is hilarious and slightly disgusting simultaneously. Only he has the fearless conviction to pull off this kind of throwaway anecdote that typifies the kind of gems that are peppered throughout Home for the Holidays.

Geraldine Chaplin, as the family’s eccentric Aunt Glady, all but steals every scene she’s in with her surreal non-sequiters (“Wanna see a really big boil?”) and matches Downey for memorable comedic moments in the movie. For example, there is a scene where Glady tells a story at dinner that stops things cold as she speaks wistfully about how, one Christmas Eve, Claudia’s father kissed her and for one moment she felt special like how she imagined her sister felt. It’s a scene that starts off funny and then becomes poignant thanks to Chaplin’s heartfelt performance. Foster remembers that she “came up with wonderful choices in Holidays. She was the most eccentric character of the bunch, so I allowed her to push a little bit more some of those strange behaviors. But I didn't want to push the other actors into wacky, campy idiosyncratic levels. These are real people; they're complicated, but they are very real.” David Strathairn even pops up for a memorable cameo as Russell “Sad Sack” Terziak, a guy with the worst hard luck story, ever. It’s a rare comedic turn as the veteran character actor is cast against type. He is able to put a slightly tragic and uncomfortable spin on his scene.

Castle Rock was originally going to finance the film but canceled and Foster’s own production company, Egg Productions, acquired W.D. Richter’s screenplay. She worked with him on it so that the film ultimately reflects her point-of-view and her own life experience. She spent two weeks rehearsing with her cast before principal photography began in February 1995. Foster used this time to get input from the actors about dialogue – if a scene or speech did not ring true, she wanted to be told. According to Richter, “We all drive each other nuts at holidays like Thanksgiving. I think there is great tragedy and great humor in that. I wanted some sense of a family pulling together in spite of all the problems.”

Holiday movies are like Madlibs: they present a structure and archetypes for you to impart your own experiences. Home for the Holidays contains every archetypal character so that you can identify with at least one if not many of the characters. Richter’s script perfectly captures the dysfunctional family that everyone experiences on some level, like how parents know just what to say to get under your skin. The dialogue is idiosyncratic yet very familiar and memorable, especially everything Downey says. It has a conversational tone that is delivered naturally by the excellent ensemble cast. The film also doesn’t follow the usual beats associated with this kind of movie. For example, early on Claudia’s mother reads to her a Dear Abby letter and the tone of the film shifts to a melancholic one for a few minutes before veering back into comedy.

Foster sets up an idealistic façade but balances it with a realistic depiction of the family dynamic. Richter’s script nails the interplay between retired parents and how they constantly nag each other but really do love one another. And there are the little details that ring true, like how Claudia’s mother makes lists of things to get or do. Sure enough, by dinner time there’s a big blow out argument as old grudges come to the surface. The friction between Tommy and Jo Ann echoes those old arguments that we’ve all had with siblings when one was eight years old and then comes bubbling to the surface whenever you get together with them, no matter how much time has passed. Regardless of all the bad mojo – Tommy having been secretly married to his boyfriend (Chad Lowe), Claudia guilty over being fired and Jo Ann’s bitter resentment with her two free-spirited siblings – coming together for dinner will, they hope, resolve some of these issues. It is a moment where the film gets serious as real issues and true feelings are addressed but it is consistent with what came before and doesn’t take you out of the film. Like real life, some issues are resolved and some aren’t. According to Foster, “At no point did I want the comedy so raucous and exaggerated that you could not believe in it. I wanted people to be able and look at it and say, ‘This is life.’”

The film received mixed reviews but most of the major newspaper critics liked it. In his three and half star review, Roger Ebert praised Foster's ability to direct "the film with a sure eye for the revealing little natural moment," and Downey's performance that "brings out all the complexities of a character who has used a quick wit to keep the world's hurts at arm's length." Janet Maslin, in her review for The New York Times, praised Holly Hunter's performance: "Displaying a dizziness more mannered than the cool, crisp intelligence she shows in Copycat, Ms. Hunter still holds together Home for the Holidays with a sympathetic performance.” However, in her review for the Washington Post, Rita Kempley criticized some of the performances: "Downey brings a lot of energy to the role, but his antics can be both tedious and distracting. Hunter has a lovely scene with her disgruntled sister, but there's no time for that relationship to develop, what with a romantic interest yet to explore.” USA Today gave Home for the Holidays three out of four stars and wrote, “Home has the usual hellish ritual. They come, they eat, they argue, they leave. It’s the stuffing in-between that makes it special.”

Home for the Holidays is not a straight-out comedy because it does have its moments of reflection and even a melancholic tinge of nostalgia. One of its underlying themes is the old chestnut that the more things change, the more we want them to stay the same. That is what makes this film so good. These characters will always be there for us to revisit and enjoy time and time again. Foster’s film has a timeless quality that allows it to endure and hold up to repeated viewings. No matter how much you’ve changed, you revert to your old self when you come home for Thanksgiving.

SOURCES

Allen, Tom. "Becoming Jodie Foster." Moviemaker. December 2, 1995.

Bibby, Patricia. "Jodie Foster Looks Home to Heal." Associated Press. November 12, 1995.

Hunter, Stephen. "Foster Feels at Home Adding Fun, Meaning to Holidays Clan." Baltimore Sun. November 19, 1995.

Kirkland, Bruce. "Downey to Earth." Toronto Sun. November 6, 1995.

Portman, Jamie. "Home for the Holidays No Ordinary Family Film." Montreal Gazette. October 31, 1995.

Young, Paul F. "Foster Moves Home to Par." Variety. November 19, 1995.

Here's an excerpt from the original short story that the film is based on.