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jrfunke
I was writing for Fortune Magazine about what it was like for volunteers to knock on doors for John Kasich, the last man standing against Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican primaries. Kasich had bet everything on a single district around Madison, and placed a shocking third. Within the month, his gig and mine were both over.
The feeling was familiar: I’ve spent half my life finding the right words for underdog stories. I’ve written speeches for Governors about how democracies fail, and the fight against human trafficking for Archbishops. I ran marketing for the social media company I co-founded, until we basically sold it for cab fare. Before that, at the late great New York Press, I wrote reviews of Buddhist sex-art and hip-hop poverty ministries, irrepressible drag queens and jazz giants who refused to fade.
And when my wife’s college roommate’s husband called to say he needed someone to be the writers’ assistant on a gangster project eventually sold to Netflix (VIVA LA MADNESS), I flew to L.A. the next day. It took four AirBNBs and five months on a friend’s couch, but I didn’t leave until I’d hustled my first writing credit.
When not crafting business strategies for nonprofits, I’m now hawking my own TV pilots. They're mostly rooted in my experience in politics, crisis management and “this thing called life.”
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Reviews
Down (2001)
Did This Movie Really Get Made?
So let's play Management Consultant Interview and do some quick math. Let's assume 15 million folks in the LA area, each of whom writes at least a screenplay every two years, and, what, like, another 15 mil around NYC...let's say only one in three in NY actually spends every waking moment writing screenplays, but that they're a lot more disciplined about it -- so say one per year.
So that's, like, 12.5 million screenplays PER YEAR -- and they decided to make this one? No new ideas, no script to speak of, no OLD ideas, no obedient tribute to past flicks in the genre, no budget in evidence, no clever way to say "look, ma-no budget!" -- and not even awful in that fun-to-watch way.
Check out my other reviews. I prefer to give praise where it's due. This was a straight-up waste all around.
Noise (2004)
Serviceable Effort That Gets NYC Psychic Tolls Half-Right
I watched this at home under optimal conditions: with the dimly employed music-industry exec next door blaring his stuff full blast at midnight in my rent-stabilized East Harlem building. (He's a nice guy and doesn't mind me banging away on my piano, so we're cool.) So maybe I'm unduly sympathetic to this piece, which admittedly suffers from insubstantial and generally unsympathetic characters, an insufficiently established final twist, and a host of rude and spoiler-prone commenters here on IMDb.
Still, "Noise" is refreshing in elements. Key decisive moments are amply teased ahead, producing more tension than you see in a lot of indy "psycological thrillers." The accrual of stresses on a frustrated NYC studio-dweller ring rough and rudimentary, but true. The protagonist's choices are as much to blame for her decline as her antagonist's boorish provocations, and the subway shots and outdoor scenes lack the stylized glamour (and/or overly glorified dinginess) that mark them as false in mainstream productions. This flick is nothing if not quotidian in its trappings.
There are also a handful of lines that really could have dangled like cigarettes from the mouths of European-inflected windbags in the publishing industry 'round these parts. But couldn't they have come up with something better than "Gotham" as a standin for New York Magazine? (If that's a spoiler for you, you probably need a Metrocard more than you need "Noise" on your Netflix list.)
There is a smattering of homage to classic apartment thrillers like Single White Female and Rosemary's Baby, but they only serve to highlight Noise's thin budget, cinematography and script. A half-dozen lines, including the detective's final valediction, suggest the playwright longs for something better, and knows it ain't quite happening here. Give it a shot if, like the protagonist, you're stuck at home on a rainy Tuesday with a bottle of hooch and nothing else worth trying on Video On Demand.
Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
A Biting Send-Up AND Utterly Classic on Its Own Terms
It took me a couple of viewings to recognize that, like Romeo & Juliet, this nothing-but-black-hats drama is actually constructed like a comedy. If the subject wasn't the control of persons and information, at least one character managed to end happily, and the cigarette smoke and other staples of noir cinematography weren't so seductive, the effect might be entirely comic.
I dare anyone to compare the two instances in which J.J. asks Falco for a light -- the one at 21, and then again before J.J.'s show airs -- and tell me that everything between the two frames isn't skillfully contrived to increase the comic effect, daring us to keep laughing as terrible events spiral out of control.
Plenty of other examples are proof for this, but I won't spoil them. Just rent it, and keep your eyes peeled. It's not just Walter Winchell who gets sent up: it's the entire genre, guffawing and crying at the same magical time -- all according to a lost movie lexicon that, pushed far enough, can't help but mock itself.
Was it Emerson who said being able to maintain two contradictory ideas simultaneously was the sign of genius?