SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
One of the buzziest films playing at the Venice Film Festival this past week was "The Smashing Machine," starring Dwayne Johnson, aka The Rock, as real-life MMA fighter Mark Kerr.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE SMASHING MACHINE")
DWAYNE JOHNSON: (As Mark Kerr) Winning is the best feeling there is. There's no other high like it in the world.
DETROW: Even though Johnson came from the world of professional wrestling, critics are saying they have never seen The Rock this vulnerable in a movie before. It is a far cry from his action or family movies, and many pundits are wondering whether Johnson might get awards recognition for this performance. So this got us thinking about other instances when people in front of or behind the camera take on a project that is wildly different from their past work and whether it pays off or doesn't. To discuss this, it's the same panel as last week.
MARC RIVERS, BYLINE: Hooray.
DETROW: We've got ALL THINGS CONSIDERED producer Marc Rivers. Hey, Marc.
RIVERS: Hey, Scott.
DETROW: And NPR editor Barrie Hardymon. Hi, Barrie.
BARRIE HARDYMON, BYLINE: Hi.
DETROW: You know, we have talked a lot in these segments about how movies will just do the exact same formula over and over and over and over and over and over again until you're sick of it and stop paying money for them.
HARDYMON: Like how we sometimes have the same panel week after week.
DETROW: (Laughter).
RIVERS: Exactly.
DETROW: It's true.
HARDYMON: We're comforting.
DETROW: But when somebody goes wildly off the rails or does something completely different, it can be exciting. Like, Marc, what to you are a few examples? Let's start with people on camera.
RIVERS: Yeah.
DETROW: And I feel like usually it's a very funny person getting very serious.
RIVERS: I feel like it's very common to see a comedian or actor known for more comic roles pivot or transition into dramatic roles. And I think the exciting thing about those kind of situations is it shows new layers to an actor that we hadn't seen before. It shows that person in a new light. I think about someone like Jim Carrey in "Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind"...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND")
JIM CARREY: (As Joel Barish) I remember that speech really well.
KATE WINSLET: (As Clementine Kruczynski) I had you pegged, didn't I?
CARREY: (As Joel Barish) You had the whole human race pegged.
WINSLET: (As Clementine Kruczynski) Hmm. Probably.
CARREY: (As Joel Barish) I still thought you were going to save my life, even after that.
RIVERS: ...Which, you know, I know many would say that "The Truman Show" was kind of Jim Carrey's first instance of doing serious dramatic roles. But I think in that movie, he's still kind of playing things for laughs. You know, there's still a little bit of mugging for the camera, the good morning, good morning, kind of thing.
DETROW: Yeah.
RIVERS: And "Eternal Sunshine" was just so - it just showed just how little he needed to do...
DETROW: Yeah.
RIVERS: ...To elicit a reaction from the audience. You can kind of see the melancholy, like, in his shoulders...
HARDYMON: Body, yeah.
DETROW: Yeah.
RIVERS: ...You know, the physicality of it. There are a number of other ones. I mean, I think about Tyler Perry in "Gone Girl"...
HARDYMON: Oh.
RIVERS: ...Which, to me, not only...
HARDYMON: I forgot.
RIVERS: ...The best thing he's ever done, probably the best thing he ever will do.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "GONE GIRL")
TYLER PERRY: (As Tanner Bolt) You came to the right guy. This is what I do, Nick. This is why I have $100,000 retainer. I win the unwinnable cases.
BEN AFFLECK: (As Nick Dunne) A hundred thousand dollars?
PERRY: (As Tanner Bolt) We'll figure something out.
DETROW: Barrie, what about you?
HARDYMON: I mean, I just wanted to just say the person we're not talking about is Leslie Nielsen, who is the clear winner.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "AIRPLANE!")
LESLIE NIELSEN: (As Dr. Rumack) Captain, how soon can you land?
PETER GRAVES: (As Captain Clarence Oveur) I can't tell.
NIELSEN: (As Dr. Rumack) You can tell me I'm a doctor.
GRAVES: (As Captain Clarence Oveur) No, I mean, I'm just not sure.
NIELSEN: (As Dr. Rumack) Well, can't you take a guess?
HARDYMON: I think people don't remember before he was...
DETROW: Surely, you can't be serious.
HARDYMON: (Laughter) Surely, I can. And in this case, I think people don't remember that before "Airplane!" he was the kind of guy - he was a very serious actor.
DETROW: Yes.
HARDYMON: I was just saying to Marc, the last movie I was aware of him in is called "And Millions Will Die."
RIVERS: I only think of him as a comic actor.
HARDYMON: Exactly.
RIVERS: Like, I don't associate him with drama (ph).
HARDYMON: And it's an interesting point - right? - that you're making, which is that, you know, we - sometimes these going-against-the-grain becomes your grain.
RIVERS: Liam Neeson's following in Leslie Nielsen's footsteps...
HARDYMON: That's right.
RIVERS: ...You know, going from action to comedy with the new "Naked Gun" movies, so...
HARDYMON: That's right. The other one that I really - I know this is probably an obvious one, but I think bears mentioning is Jimmy Stewart in "Vertigo."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "VERTIGO")
JAMES STEWART: (As John "Scottie" Ferguson) Did he train you? Did he rehearse you? Did he tell you exactly what to do, what to say? You were a very apt pupil, too, weren't you? You were a very apt pupil. Well, why did you pick on me?
HARDYMON: You know, Jimmy Stewart is everybody's best husband and, you know...
RIVERS: Classic everyman, yeah.
HARDYMON: ...Classic everyman. And, you know, in "Vertigo," he's, like, mentally unstable. He's obsessive. He's this very, very disturbed person who is struggling with, you know, the phobias and whatnot.
DETROW: I mean, directors, too, it's the same thing...
HARDYMON: Yeah.
DETROW: ...Where somebody will establish a lane that they are known for that they do really well. But it's a natural human impulse to not want to be contained in a box and try something wildly different. Like, Barrie, what do you think of off the bat when you think of directors who make a surprising turn?
HARDYMON: The one that people say a lot in is certainly really important to me is Martin Scorsese's adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel "The Age Of Innocence"...
RIVERS: A very Barrie pick.
HARDYMON: ...Which is a very - it is, like - actually, it's my birthday movie, guys.
RIVERS: (Laughter).
HARDYMON: But I will say that that is a movie when you watch it where it seems like, I don't know, where's the...
RIVERS: Where are the gunfights?
HARDYMON: Where are the mobsters?
RIVERS: There's no cursing. No one's getting beat up with bats.
DETROW: Yeah.
HARDYMON: Right. Exactly. And the thing is, it's - everyone is getting emotionally beat up with bats, like, quite badly.
RIVERS: Yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE AGE OF INNOCENCE")
DANIEL DAY-LEWIS: (As Newland Archer) But you are the woman I would have married if it had been possible for either of us.
MICHELLE PFEIFFER: (As Ellen Olenska) You can say that when you're the one who's made it impossible.
DAY-LEWIS: (As Newland Archer) I've made it?
PFEIFFER: (As Ellen Olenska) Isn't it you who made me give up divorcing? Didn't you talk to me here in this house about sacrifice and sparing...
HARDYMON: And again, like, this is a person who obviously is really good at talking about power, and everything in that movie serves to show you how the characters are utterly dominated by the power structure. It's just not the mob.
RIVERS: Right. It's power dictated by certain behavioral codes, dictated by social kind of norms. They're dictated by the milieu, right? And like...
HARDYMON: Which you can say about every single mob - right, exactly.
RIVERS: Any of one his - "Goodfellas," "Casino," "Wolf Of Wall Street."
HARDYMON: Yeah.
RIVERS: Like, I think that movie proves that while on the surface, it feels like going against the grain, it's still right within his thematic wheelhouse. Similar for me, I think, where on the surface, it might feel like a departure, but I think it fits right in - I think, Scott, you talked about this movie when we talked about journalism films - but Michael Mann's "The Insider."
DETROW: Oh, yeah.
RIVERS: You know, this - he's coming off of - you know, this is a guy known for shootouts. He's - you know, he just did "Heat" a few years before, "Last Of The Mohicans."
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Before you die, know that I will put under the knife your children, so I will wipe your seed from the Earth forever.
RIVERS: And, you know, you think, what is this guy doing making a movie about Big Tobacco and corporate malfeasance and (inaudible).
DETROW: Dramatic scenes of people using fax machines and pay phones.
RIVERS: There's - that's - the scene when he would have fax machines being sent...
HARDYMON: Be still, my heart.
RIVERS: ...It's like a bomb being diffused.
DETROW: Yeah.
RIVERS: He, like, gives it that kind of suspense.
DETROW: It makes me sad that reporting is just sending texts now, as opposed to...
RIVERS: (Laughter) Right, right, right.
DETROW: ...Like, (inaudible) the fax machine.
HARDYMON: But the dot dot dot has a lot of inherent suspense.
RIVERS: It does have some power.
DETROW: It's true.
RIVERS: But, yeah, that movie, he gives what could have been a very standard, very square kind of muckraker drama and turns it into this, like, opera of ethical anguish...
DETROW: Yeah.
RIVERS: ...That's only gotten more relevant.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE INSIDER")
AL PACINO: (As Lowell Bergman) But since when has the paragon of investigative journalism allowed lawyers to determine the news content on "60 Minutes"?
RIVERS: It's also an example of a movie that, while on the surface looks different, it is about the things that a lot of Mann movies are about, and it's kind of about men doing jobs, you know...
HARDYMON: (Laughter).
RIVERS: ...Men working, the cost of the work that they do and the integrity that they do or do not hold onto. Like, it falls right into "Heat," falls right into "Heat" or...
DETROW: Men doing jobs.
HARDYMON: Men doing jobs.
(CROSSTALK)
DETROW: It is important to point out, though, that, like, it doesn't always work. And it doesn't always work in a way where you appreciate the effort, and sometimes it doesn't work when it's, like, someone somewhere along the line should have said no to this idea.
HARDYMON: That's right.
DETROW: Like, what to you falls into the, like, undo it, erase it...
RIVERS: Well, the one that really hurts my soul because this is one of my favorite working directors is Barry Jenkins doing "The Lion King" prequel, "Mufasa."
DETROW: You did a story on that as that was happening.
RIVERS: I did. I did. And so Barry Jenkins, who directed "Moonlight," "If Beale Street Could Talk," the James Baldwin adaptation, also "The Underground Railroad," the Colson Whitehead adaptation - and Barry Jenkins has gone on record saying that he wasn't comfortable in that digital CGI space.
DETROW: Yeah.
RIVERS: I think Barry Jenkins' work on "Mufasa" is indicative of a larger issue happening in Hollywood where you have these distinctive filmmakers coming from kind of an independent background kind of being fed into this Disney pipeline. I think he's just one of many filmmakers who's had to fight to have their identity break the surface of the Disney projects.
HARDYMON: Or they just haven't been able to knit it together.
RIVERS: Or they haven't been able to kit it together. With something like "Mufasa," there were traces of him in that movie with certain close-ups of the lions.
DETROW: Yeah, but...
RIVERS: But it felt like product. It didn't feel like a Barry Jenkins movie.
DETROW: Though, it felt like a hard task 'cause it was like, here's a sequel nobody asked for.
RIVERS: Prequel nobody...
HARDYMON: (Laughter).
DETROW: Yeah, here's a prequel nobody asked for.
HARDYMON: Who could tell (ph)?
DETROW: Like, nobody was like, I really want to know more about Scar's relationship with Mufasa. Like, it's pretty clear from "The Lion King." That's all you need. And also, like, I just feel like realistic CGI with talking animals...
RIVERS: It just doesn't work.
DETROW: ...Is not...
RIVERS: It really doesn't work.
DETROW: No.
RIVERS: The second you see an emotionless...
DETROW: Yeah.
RIVERS: ...Lion open its mouth, and a British voice or something comes out...
DETROW: (Laughter).
RIVERS: ...Like, it takes me out the movie. I'm like, all right, this...
HARDYMON: No, I'm like, whoops, I'm high.
RIVERS: (Laughter) Yeah, exactly.
HARDYMON: Yeah. No, I think - and, you know, one thing about Disney is that it's very similar to sort of the Marvel maw, which...
RIVERS: Oh yes, that gets right in there.
HARDYMON: ...Continues to just swallow them up. And, you know, Chloe Zhao, who's really an incredibly talented filmmaker who made "Nomadland," then goes and makes the "Eternals."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ETERNALS")
GEMMA CHAN: (As Sersi) We came here 7,000 years ago to protect humans from the deviants.
HARDYMON: And I think she's actually recently been talking about this, that the problem that - with the "Eternals," which did not do very well and is not a good movie - is that there was sort of too much budget. There was...
RIVERS: Yeah.
HARDYMON: She could say no to nothing.
RIVERS: Right.
DETROW: Yeah.
HARDYMON: And the main thing is, is that how are you going to get your sense of self into whatever the machine is and not have it be - and then sort of have it be knit together with a series of long chase fight scenes and boring monsters that are not real and...
RIVERS: The machine is too big, yeah.
HARDYMON: That's right.
DETROW: Marc Rivers, Barrie Hardymon, thanks again.
HARDYMON: You're welcome.
RIVERS: Always good to see you guys.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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