So that's intriguing, and let the Larry Craig jokes begin.
Mr. Sundance Goes Back to Washington By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
CALISTOGA, Calif.
ROBERT REDFORD walks into the “Lions for Lambs” offices here drenched from a run in the late-morning furnace of August in the Napa Valley. It’s good preparation; he’s likely to face plenty of heat this fall. He’s putting the finishing touches on his most political movie since “All the President’s Men,” and he’s bracing for a backlash.
As if to fire himself up for battle Mr. Redford has tacked op-ed columns blasting the Bush administration to a bulletin board in the rented house he turned into a postproduction complex. “A profile in cowardice,” reads one headline. “This time, don’t say we weren’t warned,” says another.
And on a yellow sticky note, in his own scrawled block letters, are the words “Frustration, Responsibility and Sadness.”
It’s just a reminder, a shorthand for the themes of his film. It’s certainly not the movie’s tag line (a more upbeat “If you don’t stand for something, you might fall for anything”). But Mr. Redford winces anyway when asked about the note. “Maybe eliminate ‘sadness,’ ” he suggests. “That’ll scare audiences away.”
Still, he adds, “I find it very sad.”
Mr. Redford, 71, has an unwieldy set of expectations to manage with “Lions for Lambs,” despite its modest budget of some $35 million. The film, which is set to open Nov. 9, is the first starring Tom Cruise since his run of bad press and his ouster from the Paramount lot last summer. It’s the first from United Artists since Mr. Cruise and his partner, Paula Wagner, took over the storied label last fall. It’s Mr. Redford’s first directorial effort since the disappointing “Legend of Bagger Vance” in 2000. It will have to live up to the collective billing of its stars, who also include Mr. Redford and Meryl Streep, and whose presence has already given rise to speculation about the film’s Oscar chances.
To top it off Mr. Redford is concerned that his film is being unfairly lumped in with several war movies coming to theaters this fall, though its combat scenes are secondary to the story. “I wanted to say to the studio, ‘Don’t make this about the war,’ ” he said in a long interview on a sizzling terrace. “It’s not about the war. The war’s catalytic, but it’s not about that. It’s bigger.”
The screenplay, by Matthew Michael Carnahan (who also wrote “The Kingdom,” one of those forthcoming war movies), loosely ties together three taut confrontations: A rising Republican senator (Mr. Cruise) tries to sell a new Afghan war strategy to a skeptical Washington reporter (Ms. Streep); a college professor (Mr. Redford) tries to inspire a talented but tuned-out political science student (Andrew Garfield); and two Army rangers (Derek Luke and Michael Peña) try to survive a firefight on a snowy Afghan ridge.
If “The Candidate,” the 1972 sendup of political campaigns, ended with Mr. Redford’s character asking a haunting question — “What do we do now?” — “Lions for Lambs” asks a different one, but much more insistently: “How did we get here?”
“What attracted me to the film was: What are the subsurface factors that lead us to this same place, over and over again?” he said. “Do you know that there are patterns of behavior that have cost us dearly over time, and now are costing us more than at any time I remember? That are costing us every bit of respect we had on the world stage? When I look at the arc of my time, when I look at McCarthyism, when I was about 11 years old, and then Watergate, and Iran-contra, and now this — if you look at all those events, there’s a thread running through them. The same sensibility: ‘Winning is everything.’ Power. And the consequences get greater and greater.”
The movie is harsh in its judgments of politicians, journalists, media conglomerates, young people — in short, everyone, except those who volunteer to fight for their country.
“I think it’s fair to say that this was pulling together, pulling forward, different things that I’d done in my career,” Mr. Redford said. He mentioned “The Candidate,” his political classic; “All the President’s Men,” which inspired a generation of journalists; and the spy thriller “Three Days of the Condor.” “And then there were also films about the absolute power of deception, as in ‘Quiz Show,’ ” he added.
For good measure Mr. Redford said he had also wanted for a long time to make a film about the politicization of universities, “about a teacher who was unorthodox, and who’d run up against the power of an institution that was conventional.”
The idea that grew into “Lions for Lambs” hit Mr. Carnahan, the screenwriter, only a year ago when he was flipping channels in search of a U.S.C. football game. “I’d just ranted and raved about how ridiculous the war was, and how dare we elect a guy who doesn’t care to read any military history before he starts not only one war but two, when the absolute worst thing you can do is fight a war on two fronts,” Mr. Carnahan, 34, recalled. “And I came upon a CNN story about four or five soldiers who’d drowned when their Humvee flipped in the Tigris or the Euphrates. And I thought: My God, what an awful way to go out. And then I kept flipping, and I couldn’t find the game fast enough.
“And it really did hit me that night,” he continued, “that I’m the same hypocrite that I so can’t stand in our country, the kind of people that will flip right past the news to get to ‘Access Hollywood.’ So that really did become ‘Lions for Lambs.’ It was my way to exorcise that, to put it out there, and see if it resonated with anyone.”
After imagining it as a stage play but quickly turning it into a movie, Mr. Carnahan said he sent a finished draft to his producer, Tracy Falco, with a note: “I don’t know if it’s any good, but I think it might be important.”
The project may have set a new record for speed. The Creative Artists Agency championed it and swiftly packaged it with its clients Ms. Streep, Mr. Redford and Mr. Cruise, who was looking for a splashy new movie with which to kick off his new venture into studio moguldom at United Artists. “It’s the tightest schedule I’ve ever worked with,” Mr. Redford said: just shy of a year from announcement to release.
Mr. Redford said he worked with Mr. Carnahan to streamline the writing, “making the words have as much power as they can by stripping them clean.” Mr. Carnahan said that streamlining could go only so far: “I don’t know how you do it without laying out the arguments I imagine they lay out in real life, in Congressional offices, newspaper offices and combat situations.”
And, Mr. Carnahan added, no matter how sparely written, the story’s intrinsic argumentativeness held another risk. “It might backfire,” he said. “People might think: How dare you preach? But I think it’s got to be said: You can castigate the Republicans and the Democrats and lob whatever insult you want at the political process, but when you point the finger at someone, three point right back at you.”
In Mr. Redford’s telling the film is “about what we’re fed, and what we choose to eat.” But he too expressed some concern that “America doesn’t like to look at itself.”
“That’s why Carter got booted,” he said. “He had the gall to tell people, ‘We’re not doing so good.’ That’s why Reagan got elected: ‘Morning in America.’ ”
Predictably, some conservative bloggers have assailed the unfinished movie as not only antiwar but anti-American, inferring that Mr. Cruise’s character will have to be the villain to conform to the filmmakers’ liberal worldviews. “I’m ready for misinterpretation,” Mr. Redford said. “But the easiest thing in the world would have been to make him a mustache twirler and just enjoy taking him down. But I thought: No, you’ve got to give him a legitimate place in this argument.”
Mr. Cruise’s senator lands some of the film’s most powerful rhetorical punches. “The better he is, the more frightening he will be,” Mr. Redford said. “You’ve got to have similarities to what we’ve faced the last six years: staying on message, doublespeak, not answering questions directly, all those manipulative things. But just better.”
Mr. Redford said that he hesitated to direct himself, but that he loved the role he played and savored what he called the duel between professor and student. For the student — a role he said he “absolutely would have played when I started” — he searched in vain for an American newcomer before settling on Mr. Garfield, a British stage actor, whose accent no doubt was helped by his having an American father. And he still made the young actor endure five auditions.
“He really likes to be sure about something,” Mr. Garfield said, adding that he found their duel terrifying at times.
Mr. Garfield said he experienced a bit of a political awakening during the production. He read Noam Chomsky between takes. And recently he found himself arguing to Mr. Redford that “what we need is a draft, to unite people, because until privileged people like me are forced to stare what’s happening in Iraq and Afghanistan in the face, it’s too easy to ignore it.”
Sounding all of his 24 years, he added, “I hope this film is a call to arms for my generation.”
Mr. Redford’s ambition for the movie is not as, well, ambitious. “I would simply hope for someone to think,” he said. “To be entertained in a way that made them think.”
Copyright 2007 The New York Times
― Dr Morbius, Monday, 10 September 2007 14:47 (eighteen years ago)
sounds like a breakout, play-against-type role
― gabbneb, Monday, 10 September 2007 14:50 (eighteen years ago)
he seems totally the type.
― Dr Morbius, Monday, 10 September 2007 14:52 (eighteen years ago)
Mr. Garfield said he experienced a bit of a political awakening during the production. He read Noam Chomsky between takes
LET HIS ENLIGHTENMENT BEGIN
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Monday, 10 September 2007 14:52 (eighteen years ago)
Previews look extremely stupid.
― Alex in SF, Monday, 10 September 2007 15:25 (eighteen years ago)
he seems totally the type
irony fails again
― gabbneb, Monday, 10 September 2007 15:26 (eighteen years ago)
Can't waiting for the color-coding for each sequence.
― Ned Raggett, Monday, 10 September 2007 15:27 (eighteen years ago)
^
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 10 September 2007 15:29 (eighteen years ago)
How does the writer know if the confrontations are "taut"?
― Tracer Hand, Monday, 10 September 2007 16:12 (eighteen years ago)
preview for this is unimaginably bad
― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 10 September 2007 16:17 (eighteen years ago)
I didn't like The Kingdom all that much, pretty forumlaic, and this one's by the same writer.
― Eazy, Monday, 10 September 2007 16:45 (eighteen years ago)
'the kingdom' felt tampered with.
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Monday, 10 September 2007 16:46 (eighteen years ago)
you know how I know this movie is "taut"? The thing runs 88 minutes. Audiences will miss half of it at the popcorn stand.
― Dr Morbius, Tuesday, 6 November 2007 15:30 (eighteen years ago)
that's definitely how i know it's short.
― s1ocki, Tuesday, 6 November 2007 15:33 (eighteen years ago)
well "taut" is how publicists and other whores translate "short"
― Dr Morbius, Tuesday, 6 November 2007 15:42 (eighteen years ago)
this is the sort of movie i want to see even thos i know i wont like it
― jhøshea, Tuesday, 6 November 2007 15:44 (eighteen years ago)
i'm not sure what you're angry about morbius
― s1ocki, Tuesday, 6 November 2007 15:45 (eighteen years ago)
whaddya got?
― Dr Morbius, Tuesday, 6 November 2007 15:46 (eighteen years ago)
44 minute long popcorn line
― jhøshea, Tuesday, 6 November 2007 15:46 (eighteen years ago)
ya that would piss me rite off
― gff, Tuesday, 6 November 2007 15:47 (eighteen years ago)
88 minutes is an admirable length.
i bet this is shit, but just saying.
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Tuesday, 6 November 2007 15:47 (eighteen years ago)
88 minutes is a fantastic length for a film. when a flick hits the 121-minute mark I start looking at my watch and thinking "you better be going somewhere with this, asshole" (what I am saying is, fuck you, peter jackson, fuck you and all of your lords of rings)
― Will M., Tuesday, 6 November 2007 15:48 (eighteen years ago)
For a comedy it's an admirable length, for self-important Oscar bait it suggests disastrous previews followed by mega-cutting.
― Dr Morbius, Tuesday, 6 November 2007 15:49 (eighteen years ago)
i think morbs is prob on to something here guys
― jhøshea, Tuesday, 6 November 2007 15:50 (eighteen years ago)
DUNG DUNG
― sexyDancer, Tuesday, 6 November 2007 15:51 (eighteen years ago)
88 minutes for 44 terrorists
― El Tomboto, Tuesday, 6 November 2007 15:59 (eighteen years ago)
I'd rather lose a limb than see this movie.
― Bill Magill, Tuesday, 6 November 2007 16:30 (eighteen years ago)
I'm actually curious about how all these Iraq movies play out their third act. I want to know what message they'll go for, whether its a small victory "but the battle is not over" or total "there is no hope" nihilism or maybe just the word VOTE will fill the screen.
― da croupier, Tuesday, 6 November 2007 16:38 (eighteen years ago)
the heroes infect the terrorist mothership with a virus and the whole world unites to destroy them while their shields are down.
― El Tomboto, Tuesday, 6 November 2007 16:40 (eighteen years ago)
LETTERS! Mr. senator! TENS OF THOUSANDS OF LETTERS asking you to STOP THIS WAR!
― da croupier, Tuesday, 6 November 2007 16:42 (eighteen years ago)
The sudden introduction of an e-mail petition on the floor of congress just won't have the same effect.
― da croupier, Tuesday, 6 November 2007 16:43 (eighteen years ago)
all of this season's "ISSUE OF THE MOMENT" movies look fucking horrible (as they inevitably are)
― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, 6 November 2007 16:46 (eighteen years ago)
I'll see Redacted (DePalma natch) but otherwise no interest.
― da croupier, Tuesday, 6 November 2007 16:46 (eighteen years ago)
ooh I forgot about that one. DePalma gets a pass.
― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, 6 November 2007 16:48 (eighteen years ago)
fuck you, peter jackson, fuck you and all of your lords of rings
i concur will. i'm probably gonna go see this though.
― Upt0eleven, Tuesday, 6 November 2007 17:26 (eighteen years ago)
Armond White, against the tide:
http://www.nypress.com/20/45/film/ArmondWhite.cfm
(I guess he must be preparing to love the de Palma film)
― Dr Morbius, Wednesday, 7 November 2007 14:48 (eighteen years ago)
On an unrelated note, I didn't know Armond was capable of liking a Coen Bros. movie. Maybe since their hipster moment has passed, he can feel free to.
― Eric H., Wednesday, 7 November 2007 14:50 (eighteen years ago)
But I recall him praising them in the past...
― Dr Morbius, Wednesday, 7 November 2007 14:53 (eighteen years ago)
yeah everyone says redacted is the worst ever :(
― jhøshea, Wednesday, 7 November 2007 14:57 (eighteen years ago)
no, not everyone.
http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/film_review.asp?ID=3253
― Dr Morbius, Wednesday, 7 November 2007 15:07 (eighteen years ago)
Nice line: "Streep and Redford have aged into people who look experienced." I'm tempted to change it to "Redford's face has aged into a salmon filet."
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, 7 November 2007 15:07 (eighteen years ago)
Worry Lines for Salmon
― Dr Morbius, Wednesday, 7 November 2007 15:09 (eighteen years ago)
Saw this on Saturday (only because my parents were visiting). SO bad
― admrl, Monday, 12 November 2007 17:54 (eighteen years ago)
It made me want to be Karl Rove!
― admrl, Monday, 12 November 2007 17:55 (eighteen years ago)
To my shock (and awe), I liked this a lot. Middlebrow agitprop doesn't get better than this.
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Monday, 12 November 2007 21:53 (eighteen years ago)
and, yes, 88 minutes was the perfect length.
The Redford strand was good, but the rest didn't add much. Streep's character in particular seemed incoherent. That scene with her boss was especially poorly written.
I liked the ending a lot, though. with Andrew Garfield's character in a daze and his friend just repeating "you know already? you know already". Films rarely follow through and deal with the post-defining moment comedown. He was much better than he was in Doctor Who.
― Alba, Monday, 12 November 2007 21:58 (eighteen years ago)
heh, the Redford strand was my least favorite.
Streep's character arc seems clear to me: she's Helen Thomas at the point of turning into Judith Miller. But you're right about how overplayed (and written) the scene was.
A lot of the monologues were rote, but they were never stupid.
I almost never fall for a movie this obvious.
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Monday, 12 November 2007 22:02 (eighteen years ago)
I guess I was just a lot more interested in the question of apathy and what a young, gifted student does with his promise than I was with a strand about that seemed cursory about making the point that America's wars have gone badly for fear of looking like it was just preaching to the converted so ended up doing nothing much at all.
Streep's character seemed odd to me, because I couldn't believe in whatever it was in the drama that was supposed to provoke her moment of clarity, or what it was that was unclear to someone like her before.
Maybe some of it comes down to my not understanding US TV news values. She seemed to be believing that it was impossible to tell viewers about the new strategy without that act being propaganda for the administration. But it was never clear to me what unspoken strings Senator Cruise or the network placed on the presentation. Did she ever even ask her boss if she could report it in a neutral, balanced way? All of a sudden we were placed into a "If you do this, you'll never work in this town again" scene, but I never understood what the choice really was. Was she saying "I'm only going to present this information if it can be in the context of a hatchet job on the US policy?" That "bald eagle" stuff she said she was happy with earlier in the war - does that really have to be slapped on all war reporting?
And her back-and-forth adversarial interview style with Cruise didn't work in the context of the film's arc. Was she still trying to do her old job in that hour? No, it seemed like she was already making a stand, potentially losing her the interview with her seat-shuffling "I'm an incredulous liberal" seat-shuffling talk of "scaremongering" and the like, but if she was, then why *didn't* Cruise kick her out and get someone more compliant? In fact, the reason he picked her in the first place seemed very flimsy.
― Alba, Monday, 12 November 2007 22:30 (eighteen years ago)
He picked her because she'd written that fawning article praising him as a "young gun" (top gun?), under the guise of "objectivity."
But it was never clear to me what unspoken strings Senator Cruise or the network placed on the presentation. Did she ever even ask her boss if she could report it in a neutral, balanced way?
Reporting yet another "strategy" in the war without including skeptical sources from the Pentagon, foreign policy community, or State Department -- which is how A LOT of the Iraq war coverage looked in 2002 and 2003 -- is playing into the hands of political operators. Unfortunately, the thought of a scoop in a 24 hour news cycle trumps the analytic virtues of serious journalism; that's why the scene with the editor works.
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Monday, 12 November 2007 22:35 (eighteen years ago)
A few big critics were respectful of it -- Gleiberman, Zacharek.
― Dr Morbius, Monday, 12 November 2007 22:43 (eighteen years ago)
Yeah, I know that's supposedly why he picked her, but I just didn't really believe it. I suppose his vanity was meant to be such that he thought he could still play a wily old character like her.
without including skeptical sources from the Pentagon, foreign policy community, or State Department
Yeah, I guess this is what I often receive from the my media (at least some extent) so as I say, it could come down to my just underestimating how flimsy US TV news is on this. I don't know. But couldn't we have at least seen her asking her editor for a little space for those voices? As I say, it seemed like her choice was made all too stark, all too suddenly.
And anyway, what about all that negativity in news reporting that Cruise was complaining about? Was he just making all that up? Maybe the film is saying that yes, the media reports how things have gone wrong in the past, but is like Charlie Brown with Lucy's baseball when it comes to each new strategy. I suppose that would make sense. Is that really the way it is? If so, what accounts for that? If journalists can adopt a balanced approach when looking at past strategies, why are their jobs suddenly on the line if they do this with new ones?
― Alba, Monday, 12 November 2007 22:50 (eighteen years ago)
football
― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 12 November 2007 22:51 (eighteen years ago)
Err - football, not baseball. I'm not that ignorant about America, honest.
― Alba, Monday, 12 November 2007 22:52 (eighteen years ago)
xpost, I promise!
he just making all that up? Maybe the film is saying that yes, the media reports how things have gone wrong in the past, but is like Charlie Brown with Lucy's baseball when it comes to each new strategy. I suppose that would make sense. Is that really the way it is? If so, what accounts for that? If journalists can adopt a balanced approach when looking at past strategies, why are their jobs suddenly on the line if they do this with new ones?
The film shows how in this post-Telecommunications Act world big media and Washington. Redford and the screenwriter are shrewd enough to suggest that pols like Cruise understand how modern media works: editors want scoops, and scoops don't translate into longer column inches.
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Monday, 12 November 2007 22:57 (eighteen years ago)
*er, hwo big media and Washington are in cahoots.
it's like Cruise is Palpatine and Streep is Anakin -- the charming sicko who flatters the worm.
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Monday, 12 November 2007 22:58 (eighteen years ago)
btw - I was thinking about this:
I hear a lot of people saying "Oh, this is the first wave of films dealing with these wars - as with Vietnam, wait a few years to get the good ones", but I don't like it! OK, from a historical point of view, distance can be useful, but I'm really interested in seeing what kind of cinematic response can be made right now (and no, not only so we can later look back on them as curios). And for a political film-maker, it seems all too cosy and safe to make a clever movie long after the event.
― Alba, Monday, 12 November 2007 23:02 (eighteen years ago)
[it is kind of funny how the pre-viewing section of this thread almost reads like it could come out of the mouth of Andrew Garfield's character.
― Alba, Monday, 12 November 2007 23:05 (eighteen years ago)
].
Actually, strike out "almost".
― Alba, Monday, 12 November 2007 23:06 (eighteen years ago)
His character works as a neat companion piece to Justin Long's in Die Hard 4.0. This is the quinessential question of our time: would you rather be pulled out of youthful cynicism by Detective John McClane or Professor Stephen Malley?
― Alba, Monday, 12 November 2007 23:19 (eighteen years ago)
macho cynicism vs rumpled-tweed cynicism?
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Monday, 12 November 2007 23:22 (eighteen years ago)