moriarty@uw-june (Jeff Meyer) (05/27/84)
[Lord knows when you'll read this, we haven't gotten new news in days...]
Went to the American Premiere of John Sayle's latest film, "The Brother from
Another Planet" (it had been world-premiered at the Cannes festival the week
before). Sayle's previous movies (he is a fairly well-known American author
who turned to screenplays and then directing) have included "The Return of
the Secaucus Seven", "Lianna", and "Baby, It's You" as writer/director, and
"The Howling", "Pirhana" and "Alligator" as writer. I'll give a short
premise of the movie: A space traveller crash-lands on Earth -- in fact, in
Harlem. But he's black....
Obviously this is an interesting idea for a movie, and in other hands I
would have expected a strictly joke-filled movie-satire movie, a "Blazing
Saddles" of sci-fi. But Sayles has shown the ability to do two things: in
the latter set of three movies, he wrote screenplays for three would-be
horror movies and made them (especially in the case of "The Howling")
wonderful take-offs on the whole genre. I remember being dragged to "The
Howling", as I have a livid imagination which makes horror movies all too
real (and gore all too disgusting), and then laughing so long that my
stomach hurt during the last 15 minutes of the film. And while he doesn't
get that frantic in his humor in "Brother", there is lots of good stuff (the
audience was laughing pretty constantly through the movie). But Sayles has
also brought to this movie the characterization found in his other movies,
primarily "Secaucus Seven". He has populated his Harlem setting with people
who are anything but stereotypes, very interesting characters in themselves;
my one disappointment is that he left the movie with little explanation as
to what happens to the supporting characters. We may laugh at some of the
people in this movie, but it is a very gentle laughter, more of a smile,
really, as we can see quite a bit of ourselves, or of friends or relatives
in these characters. Cultural differences are not downplayed, they are
shown in such a way as to make them seem native to our own experiences
(mine, anyway -- I'm a W.A.S.P. (White Agnostic Software Person)). The only
two people who are played strictly for laughs are two white aliens hunting
down the black alien (one played by Sayles)... sci-fi fans will have a ball
observing how many in-jokes are going on in their mannerisms. This is not
an expensive movie, but don't turn it down because you may think it
"arty"... it is very good entertainment.
************************************
After the movie, Sayles and his producer, Maggie Renzi, had a 1/2 hour
question and answer period; several things of interest came to light:
This movie was made when Sayles was looking for a project to make
some money for a more ambitious project he wishes to begin next year. He
had several ideas (he was in a half-joking mood for much of the talk, so
take everything with a grain of salt) in dreams. The first was to have his
friend and collaborator Joe Dante (Dante directed "The Howling" &
"Gremlins"... he'll be at the Festival next Friday) work on a film called
"Attack of the Space Assholes", about used car salesmen and bureaucrats from
outer space invading Earth (well, *I* thought it had potential!). He
modified other ideas and came up with "Brother".
The person playing the black alien was Joe Morton... apparently he
does a soap opera called "Another World". Despite this, he is *excellent*
in this role (oops, flames from net.tv.soaps!); Sayles thought maybe they
should rename it "The Brother from Another World" :-) !
Sayles said he would like to get back to writing novels and short
stories, but due to the money needed to make independent films, he can't
just quit, write a novel, and then come back to movies... each film (if it
works) leads to a more ambitious film, and if you hold off, the money has a
tendency to disappear. He also writes *lots* of screenplays for movies to
support his own films.
Someone asked him what he thought of "The Big Chill" (a lot of
critics felt that it was a copy of his "Secaucus Seven"). He felt that it
was a totally different movie; in "Chill", he thought these were people who
had lost their ideals, and in "Seven", it was a group who had kept their
ideals but found the world had changed too much for them.
Lastly, he was asked how things had gone at Cannes; quite good,
apparently, because they had heavy bidding being done by distributors; they
have set some pretty stiff details in their contract, but it looks like
they'll be met. Sayles has had some bad experiences with distributors,
especially with "Lianna" and "Baby, It's You" (the latter surprised me, but
apparently it was shown in very few places).
It was very flattering to the audience when we found out it would be a while
before "Brother" is released... Sayles has gotten a lot of support out of
the Seattle Festival in years past ("Secaucus Seven" was "the discovery" of
a previous festival), and decided to show it here and in Cannes before
release. Apparently (as a recent article in "American Film" attested)
Seattle is very good for the "unknown" films which are brought to
prominence, like "Seven" and "The Stunt Man" and (hopefully) "The Brother
from Another Planet". Don't get me wrong... I haven't been dazzled by the
festival, I just think you'll really like this movie when it reaches your
area (hopefully next fall).
If dementia has a name, it must be...
Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
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