come anticipate HBO's MILDRED PIERCE with me (kate winslet star, todd haynes directs)

Todd Haynes' "Mildred Pierce" is headed to HBO.

The premium cable network has picked up the five-hour miniseries project starring Kate Winslet, which it will co-produce with MGM, Killer Films and John Wells Prods.

Haynes is directing the adaptation of James M. Cain's classic noir novel, which centers on Mildred Pierce Beragon (Winslet), a proud single mother struggling to earn her daughter's love during the Great Depression in middle-class Los Angeles.

Haynes and Jon Raymond co-wrote the script for "Mildred," which is being executive produced by Haynes, Pamela Koffler and Christine Vachon of Killer Films and John Wells. Ilene Landress serves as producer.

Casting for the other roles is under way, with production on the mini slated to begin in April in New York.

This marks the second major screen adaptation of Cain's novel.

The 1945 feature by Michael Curtiz earned Joan Crawford an Academy Award for the title role.

HBO had been considered the leading candidate for the Haynes/Winslet take on "Mildred Pierce" ever since word on the project surfaced last summer.

Winslet is hot coming off her Oscar win for "The Reader" last year. After starting off on British TV, the actress has been focused on features for the past 16 years, earning six Oscar nominations. In 2005, she made a rare TV appearance with a guest turn on Ricky Gervais' HBO/BBC comedy "Extras."

Haynes' writing/directing credits include "I'm Not There" and "Far From Heaven."

For HBO, the green light for "Mildred Pierce" follows the critical success of another longform project toplined by feature stars, the movie "Grey Gardens" headlined by Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange.

MILDRED PIERCE

huh. i wonder what it'll be like. i love the joan crawford film so much..

oof, I thought this was Todd Solondz & got excited. I'm sure this will be just fine though.

Guy Pearce and Evan Rachel Wood on board

huh. i wonder what it'll be like. i love the joan crawford film so much..

― daria-g, Friday, February 12, 2010 5:22 AM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark

samesies

I love the book way more.

Haynes is just one of a number great filmmakers who have been brought onto HBO projects this season. The likes of Kathryn Bigelow, Michael Mann, Martin Scorsese and Jonathan Demme are all helming upcoming pilots for the network while David Fincher, Charlize Theron, Simon Beaufoy, Russell Crowe and Zooey Deschanel all have producing interests.

well, goddam.

I started reading the Cain book yesterday, 100 pages in -- it;s ridiculously entertaining, but has a nice amount of naturalist grit along with the melodrama, I hope Haynes keeps that in, it was never an option w/ Joan Crawford.

Who will play Joan Crawford's shoulder pads?

Agree completely with the Morbs -- Cain was so much better than everyone thought, except Cain himself, So curious about this adaptation, about Haynes' approach, about Winslet being the exact opposite of Joan Crawford in every way I can think of.

a new Ida has a tall task in following Eve Arden (only intentionally funny perf in the WB version)

Heresy, perhaps, but in the sassy underling role Eve Arden >>> Thelma Ritter

Haynes in late '08:

I read the book recently, and it’s so different from the Joan Crawford film. And it was something that I really thought would be amazing to do on TV. And it seems so fitting: It’s really about the Depression-era economy—not the film, [which] was switched to a 1940s setting—but the book, which spans the 1930s Depression in L.A. It feels particularly prescient right now.

SPOILER

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I'd heard the Crawford-Curtiz movie likely made hash of the book -- but the novel doesn't even have a murder in it!

is the book worth reading?

oh hell yes. It drips with guilt, fevered madonna/whore confusion, and perhaps barely suppressed incest.

xp Definitely. It's one of Cain's best.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzgL7emRnXs

Coming March 27! Amy Taubin interview with Haynes:

http://www.artforum.com/inprint/issue=201103&id=27590

When I began reading the novel, I discovered that it bears scant resemblance to the film version. The book felt so shockingly current. It reflected what was happening right now. And then, of course, Mildred’s sexuality and the details of her erotic life are so frank and surprising and vivid and not at all what you expect—since we presume that there was no sex before the ’60s, which is utter malarkey. And so you learn a lot more about the sexual politics of that time and about the contradictions and complexities of this female character and, maybe most important, about the nuanced, mutually projected relationship between mother and daughter....

When I made my image book of the film to use in discussing the look with the production designer, the cinematographer, the costume designer, and whichever actors were interested, I pretty much took historical photography of Los Angeles in the ’30s and interlaced it with this new naturalism of ’70s filmmaking. It was different from the stylized sort of language of ’30s cinema vis-à-vis the ’50s that I had explored in Far from Heaven. I was also looking closely at Bound for Glory [2004], a collection of the work of WPA-era photographers, and some of it is color as early as the late ’30s. The quality of the color is like nothing you see anywhere else—not in the early color films of the ’30s or in late-’40s or ’50s color photography. It’s totally distinct. It has a muted palette but still maintains its full spectrum. It doesn’t look like hand-tinted photography or like early Technicolor. That was a real influence.

2nd best song on Goo

(sorry Morbz; book sounds great)

http://www.artforum.com/uploads/upload.000/id27590/article00.jpg
http://www.howtobearetronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/13.-The-Faro-Caudill-family-eating-dinner-in-their-dugout.-Pie-Town-New-Mexico-October-1940.-Reproduction-from-color-slide.-Photo-by-Russell-Lee.-Prints-and-Photographs-Division-Library-of-Congress-520x354.jpg

beautiful images from bound for glory here. todd haynes otm about the colours.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf1tUgxMwAA

cannot wait for this.

when does this happen?

end of the month

starts Sunday. need a host w/ HBO.

I don't even have TCM. There's a nice article in the New Yorker.

need a host w/ HBO

try craigslist?

Todd Haynes Fan w/ Benefits

unreasonably excited for this. will probably have to resort to next-day downloading, tho.

uhhh this looks pretty amazing!

M Z Seitz loves it, David Thomson doesn't:

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/3037

Makes me wish I had HBO definitely.

really liked this

give k8 the emmy right now tbh

Well made, well acted (with possible exception of girl who plays little Veda -- not sure it's her fault though, the character is pretty cartoony). Love the immersion in the period and the place. Winslet's real good, though there was much discussion among my viewing companions about where exactly her ass had gone.

Looking forward to the rest.

amusing that all the dissenting reviews say "well, the Crawford film improved on the book, which isn't very good"

i thought this was pretty great.

with possible exception of girl who plays little Veda -- not sure it's her fault though, the character is pretty cartoony

Yes, which makes her class aspirations during the Depression all the more poignant. I thought the actress was great.

Article in this week's New Yorker.

no way!

lol

also Stephen King gave it a glowing review in Newsweek, but their site is a pain

Morbz I'm v interested in hearing what you think abt this

You'll hear it when the DVD hits libraries, looks like

cool!

wait what does that mean?

it means, like most of us, he doesn't have HBO

Just need to trade some light drugs for HBO, Morbs. This could be an idea for a kind of Colin Firth After Hours movie.

xp :(

no way!

really

Armond hates this, no surprise -- also says Mildred is a banal name

http://www.nypress.com/article-22256-todd-haynes-flunks-melodrama.html

I was also touched by the maturity and patience with which the relationship between Bert and Mildred develops.

xpost

I'm happy too! :) Much as it pains me to say it, the 1945 movie is slipping out of favor with me. I watched it again a few days ago and I sorely missed Ida's expertise. I loooooove the scene in the novel/miniseries when she takes over on the opening night of Mildred's restaurant.

Then again, the Curtiz version has some all-time staircase wit: "Leave something on me - I might catch cold!"

No surprise that Curtiz and the writers softened Ida -- and augmented her role in Mildred's life. But Eve Arden could have played Cain's Ida.

I think it's wrong that the novel devolves into melodrama (as if melodrama were an inherently bad area to devolve into anyway)

i haven't read the novel (need to fix that, i do like the other things i've read by cain) but the tv series definitely follows a path away from the "documentary" concerns with economics into domestic melodrama. i don't think one ever entirely supersedes the other but there is an unmistakable shift in emphasis (which several folks mention above). like you i don't make a value judgment on that basis, though oddly i found my attention wavering a bit more in the latter half. the stuff about running and managing a restaurant, not to mention pie-making, was fascinating. but then i've always liked stuff in films about _process_.

xxposts yeah Alfred otm, Cain is just so great at...richness? I guess that's the word I want. You know the characters and how they talk but you know what *life* is like in the place where these characters dwell. I mean, I love Chandler and Hammett to heaven and back but yeah, Cain is really a very complete storyteller.

21 Emmy nominations :o

this isn't on dvd yet is it?

about to hit DVD... Haynes talks about MP and possible future HBO projects:

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/todd-haynes-talks-the-contemporary-parallels-of-mildred-pierce-his-possible-next-project-with-julianne-moore

thru 2 episodes, pretty good. James LeGros and Mare Winningham shockingly unrecognizable (ie older).

need to rewatch this.

Guy Pearce's pursed lips are starting to annoy me a little, even tho it's the character.

The commentary track on ep 3 is good, w/ Haynes talking about Winslet's "amazing chicken skills," the rather austere budget for a period piece, and Cain.

naked Guy Pearce makes up for it, surely :D

he's a bit too hairless and toned for my taste.

oh, and tan.

smdh

"amazing chicken skills,"

now that's a compliment

she had some Top Chef working with her.

Also when Monty and Mildred are fighting, and he grabs her and says "What this scene calls for is the crime of rape," Haynes says "What an awful line! Thank God we didn't make this in 1993 at the height of riot grrrrl."

naked Guy Pearce makes up for it, surely :D

This information should be the blurb on the dvd cover.

maybe he was cast because his name is a homonym?

Just received it! This weekend's viewing.

so yeah is this worth renting...? I like Haynes and the original. and Winslet, to some degree.

i'm liking it, we're about halfway through right now. maybe more successful in its melodrama than far from heaven?

well, FFH is hommage and critique, this is an adaptation w/ some aspects of hommage.

Pearce v funny when he tells her about recounting their number of boinks to her daughter ("she's impressed with me, and you").

shakey, it's nothing like the crawford MGM version. i like it much better tho. and winslet is v v good in this.

holy christ James LeGros is unrecognizable

ha, yeah he really is.

tsk tsk, elmo: Warner Brothers!

oh jeez, do i have to hand in my gay membership card now

no, just a warning kiddo

just a slap on the limp wrist, as it were

dug james legros' vibe in this

was kinda doing a fast-talking Laird Cregar thing?

his voice sort of really works better coming out a round body than a surfer one

the voice is not one I remember hearing him use before!

Finished.... it's good, butttt... I'm not sure it needed an exhaustive, 5-1/2-hour adaptation. Also barely glimpsed Evan Rachel Wood's merkin.

ep 6 commentary talks about this influence, esp the 1st photo here:

http://www.lensculture.com/leiter.html

I just reviewed the thing.

damn, you got your weekend viewing over in a hurry.

I dunno, I think the death of the younger daughter is supposed to be Veda's emotional ticket to stomp on Mildred for another 8 years. I bought that at least in a melodrama.

I kind of liked the leisurely pace, established a deeper sense of time and place than if they had cut it down to the (melo)drama

also that scene where they are listening to veda on the radio? that was some masterful shit.

most impressive performance was by Long Island and upstate NY as '30s LA.

:D

no, really, and I read that the imported palm trees nearly died bcz there was a cold spring.

what Sicinski had to say, re body politics and creativity vs labor:

http://academichack.net/reviewsApril2011.htm#Mildred

Took me a couple of episodes to get into this, but it got better and better towards the end; glad I took the time. I like the original--so many differences, though (the remake obviously goes back to the book), comparing them's pointless.

Carter Burwell's score is one thing I'll always remember. When I watch something involving multiple episodes, and there's a haunting score, the music just draws me in at each new episode begins; had the same mix of mystery and anticipation here as with Berlin Alexanderplatz, Twin Peaks, and Six Feet Under.

Three favourite scenes: 1) Treviso at the beginning of episode 5, explaining to Mildred why she needs to stay away; 2) Veda as she rises slowly from the bed and walks to the mirror near the end; 3) the end of episode 4, where they sit by the radio listening to Veda. That couple of minutes was just incredible--up there with Robert Crumb listening to Geeshie Wiley's "Last Kind Words Blues" in capturing the effect that music can have a person.

I went back and forth on Winslet and Pearce. I liked pretty much all the supporting performances, though, especially Brían F. O'Byrne and James LeGros.

Watching this for the first time, and Christ it’s good.

Love how the source novel comes from James M. Cain, and so the dialogue and setting feel noir without being a crime story. The dialogue is so sharp and flawless.

yeah it’s really remarkable

The scene in the second episode, maybe the third, where Mildred asks Bert for a divorce so she can work around some legalities and get the restaurant; they end by saying they need cause, at which point Bert playfully reaches across to pretend-hit her, and then they both break down crying. That's one of the most moving scenes I can think of in any film, certainly as breakup scenes go.

That scene is straight from the book, which I'm currently reading. It's not exactly what I was expecting from Cain after "Double Indemnity" and "Postman" but an interesting book, especially for its time and place. For a book from a woman's perspective written by a dude, he doesn't shy away from steamy action.

You haven't posted in this thread previously; not sure if you've seen this, but do, once you finish. (I should read the book, too.)

I haven't seen it, or the Joan Crawford movie either. Probably will catch that one first (since its shorter).

Great contrast between the two (I like the original too).