At the Movies with Governor Tom: Snow Angels

Whoa. Now this was one. Powerful flick. Tonight at the ArcLight Hollywood I caught a sneak preview of Snow Angels, the fourth and newest flick from Texan filmmaker David Gordon Green. If you keep up with my posts, you'll already be familiar with Dave from a post I did about him a couple weeks ago after the Egyptian held a screening of his 2000 debut, George Washington. As with the Egyptian, Dave was at the ArcLight tonight for a Q&A following the film. The moderator this time was USA Today film critic Claudia Puig. Like last time, his producer Lisa Muskat was there, but she didn't come out until the very end. While I enjoyed the film, I do have to warn you: This sucker is dark. Did you ever see House of Sand and Fog (and/or read the novel of the same name)? It came out in 2003 and starred Jennifer Connolly and the always awesome Ben Kingsley. Anyway, Snow Angels reminded me of that in that the story depicts a series of events that precipitate a family's tragic undoing. I actually preferred Snow Angels because the characters here are making more believable decisions. Plus, the cast is bigger and the story is more interesting. And the acting, of course, is top notch.

That's what makes this film extra interesting. You've got these actors who normally do comedic roles now doing heavy dramatic stuff, like Sam Rockwell, Nicky Katt, and Amy Sedaris. I mean, Amy Sedaris of all people, of Strangers with Candy fame. She's not trying to be funny here at all, but is playing it totally straight. Her presence here is a terrific example of against-type casting, which is my favorite kind of casting because it can make the character dynamics that much more fun to watch. Don't get me wrong, the film's not all somber. If you've seen any David Gordon Green stuff, you'll know he's got kind of a quirky sense of humor that seeps through even during the more dramatic scenes.

Like House of Sand and Fog, Snow Angels is adapted from a novel. In this case, it's the 1993 debut novel of Pittsburgh native Stewart O'Nan. Set in Butler, Pennsylvania in the early months of 1974, Snow Angels tells the story of 15-year-old Artie, how he falls in love with a classmate named Lila, how he watches his parents' marriage dissolve, and how his former babysitter Annie ends up dead. The novel has a sort of dual structure. It alternates between the first-person narration of Artie as he relates the various events 20 years after the fact, and the third-person narration that follows the doomed Annie.

In adapting the novel, David Gordon Green took the novel out of that very specific time and place and made it, as he said during the Q&A, "timeless." In other words, the movie could take place in the seventies, but it could just as well be today. That's the gist of the instruction he gave his production designer Richard Wright (who has now done production design on all four of Dave's films). He wanted a contemporary feel to it without actually grounding it in either 1974 or 2008. I have to say, though, that when I saw it, I just assumed it was present day. I suppose it didn't have to be. No one used a cell phone, and none of the cars looked new, now that I think about it. But then again, I neither saw a single pair of bellbottoms nor heard one track of disco the entire time. And although the town is never given a name, you will notice the occasional Pennsylvania license plate if you're paying attention.

I shouldn't say too much more about the story. Although, please, can I just take a moment to give a shout-out to Griffin Dunne? It was awesome seeing him again. He plays Artie's dad, this really weird commitment-phobic guy playing mind games with Artie's mom as their marriage slides down the proverbial slope. At one point, for instance, he's living elsewhere, and this relationship he's pursuing with a younger woman isn't exactly going to plan, but at the same time he sends a mix tape to Artie's mom featuring all their favorite songs. Oh yeah, that's another thing that kept this from being totally present day. No one listened to CDs. It was all about the tape cassette. But back to Griffin. Two flicks he starred in during the eighties were two that I watched more times than Einstein could count: American Werewolf in London and Johnny Dangerously. His acting career has tapered off in the last decade or so as he focuses more on directing. Although, did you happen to catch Game 6, which came out a couple years ago? It was nice seeing him on the big screen again with Michael Keaton, his "older brother" from Johnny Dangerously.

So Griffin Dunne's on and off relationship with Artie's ma forms one of the storylines here. Then of course you've got Artie and Lila (played by that gal from Juno, Olivia Thirlby). Annie and Glenn's relationship (Kate Beckinsale and Sam Rockwell) is already over, but then it seems they might at least become friends again. Then all hell breaks loose when something awful happens about halfway through. Like Dave's first film, George Washington, it's something that sort of comes out of nowhere and which of course I won't spill here. Anyway, that one event pretty much assures that Annie and Glenn will never make up. But wait, there's yet another couple to follow: Nate and Barb (Nicky Katt and Amy Sedaris). When the film starts, Nate's been having an affair with Annie, who in turn waits tables with Barb at a Chinese restaurant. It doesn't take long before Barb gets hip to what's going on, which suffice it to say makes working with Annie unbelievably awkward. You'd think Nate and Barb could never make up, but in a weird way and thanks to that awful event I mentioned above, they sort of do. Anyway, that's the gist of it. Snow Angels is about these couples, some of whom are on their way up, others of whom are heading down down down, and yet more who seem to be on their way down but may not be. Yes, it's all over the place, but Dave does a yeoman's job not giving short shrift to any of these very complicated characters. Check it out when you get a chance. Just make sure you've got a nice light comedy lined up to see afterward to balance things out.

One thing I admire about Dave is how he surrounds himself with the same talent from film to film. I don't mean the actors, but the folks who toil with him behind the scenes. I've already talked about his producer Lisa Muskat, who's been with him since his college days at the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem. And I also mentioned his production designer Richard Wright. You've also got Tim Orr, his director of photography. If you know anything about filmmaking, you'll know that the DP is essentially the director's right hand, so if you're a director, it would be ideal if you had the same right hand from film to film so that your working relationship becomes a well oiled machine. Tim's been with Dave forever. During the Q&A Dave talked about how he goes out of his way to surround himself with the same staff because they've all known each other for so long. It makes the set a fun place to hang out. That ties into why he cast funny actors, so that when the cameras weren't rolling, there'd be plenty of people making everyone else laugh. I like the way he put it: He didn't want to cast overly serious actors who sit and brood and try to "out-Oscar each other."

He took advantage of all the comedic talent he had at his disposal by having them improvise a lot. Good comedians tend to be experts at improv, and Dave thought it'd be neat to challenge them to improvise a drama. If you read my George Washington post, you'll know that Dave doesn't exactly hold his actors prisoner to the script. Quite the opposite, he encourages them to make up as much as they want so long as they remain true to the scene's tone and raison d'etre. It's kind of amazing he let them do all that and still get a film like this wrapped in six weeks (George Washington took 19 days to shoot). He filmed Snow Angels in January and February 2006 and got it into Sundance in January 2007, where Warner Independent scooped it up.

Speaking of old friends, Dave told an interesting story about the two composers he hired for this piece. First there's David Wingo. Dave's been composing the scores for the other Dave's films since George Washington. They met during freshman orientation at NC Arts in the fall of '94 and have been pals ever since. When not composing, Dave is the frontman of a Brooklyn-based band called Ola Podrida (they were just at South by Southwest). They have a MySpace page if you're interested. The music is mainly acoustic and gentle. It reminded me of The Deer Hunter theme song when I first heard it. Now the other composer goes even further back. His name's Jeff McIlwain, and he and Dave met in third grade when they saw The Karate Kid together. And Jeff's music? It's electronica. In other words, it's a full 180 from Dave Wingo's stuff. Jeff lives in Seattle and releases electronica albums under the stage name Lusine. Yes, Dave intentionally wanted two composers of vastly different schools for this piece. Just for fun. I told you he was quirky, didn't I?

Another thing that makes this film's six-week shooting time all the more impressive was that the weather didn't cooperate at all. Dave was determined to have snow. Real snow. So he shot in Halifax during January and February. Part of the reason, of course, is that it's cheaper to shoot in Canada. Another reason, though, was that Dave read in the Farmer's Almanac that Halifax has had plentiful snow in January and February every single year since the thirties. Sure enough, though, he shows up to make a movie there, and it never snowed. Ever. Not one flake the whole time. It was especially maddening because the temperature was below freezing the whole time. So if they'd just gotten some clouds, snow would've been a guarantee. Dave couldn't get over how weird it was to have it that cold but with a clear blue sky all the time. So you know what he did? Dude had no less than eight dump trucks of the powdery stuff hauled in from Newfoundland every single day. Yes, every day. That's how he learned that the best kind of snow to get, if you can pick and choose, is hockey ice shavings. His DP Tim Orr loved the shavings because they created a much more photographic landscape of snow than regular snow would have.

Speaking of hockey, since that's the primary sport in Canada and football is much less popular, the high school fields up there aren't very conducive to having bands. Those fields aren't designed the same way they are this side of the border. Dave wasn't prepared for that at all. Growing up in Texas means he comes from a place where high school football is the end-all be-all for many communities. So it was tricky trying to film those band scenes and not make it look too goofy. That's where the magic of editing came into play.

Another challenge that was a side-effect of shooting in Canada was that many of the actors were cast locally and therefore sounded, ya know, Canadian. Two examples are the middle-aged women who play Kate Beckinsale and Sam Rockwell's moms. Dave brought in a dialect coach who could not only help Kate Beckinsale hide her English accent but help all the locals hide their native accents as well. Actually, I shouldn't say hide their accents, but rather affect an American accent, since of course from their point of view we're the ones who sound weird.

One of the funnier moments of the night came when someone asked Dave what the title means. Dave admitted flat out that he had no idea. There's a scene in the novel where Sam Rockwell's character Glenn makes a snow angel, but Dave chose not to include it because it seemed like he was forcing a scene whereby the title was made literal. I think that was a wise choice. The title, I'm pretty sure, refers to all the various people in these relationships, some of whom are on their way up while others are on their way down. Despite all the changes Dave made to the novel, though, he did point out that he got Stewart O'Nan's seal of approval. Apparently Stew told him later that after the big premier at the Egyptian two weeks ago, he drove home with a smile on his face.

When asked why all his films feature young puppy love, Dave said that was because he was a hopeless romantic. In high school he was a "cry baby," he admitted. As for the two young leads here, that kid who plays Artie, Michael Angarano, was someone Dave had been admiring since Almost Famous. He played the younger version of the main character William (whom Cameron Crowe based on himself). Dave ran into Mike in an elevator once and couldn't stop gushing at him about Almost Famous. Then when it came time to cast this film, he didn't even bother auditioning. He invited Mike to New York, where Olivia Thilby was, and videotaped the two of them reading some dialogue. This was 2005, well before Olivia was cast in Juno. So Dave, in other words, didn't audition either of the leads, which is extremely rare if your lead characters are young. Like for the Harry Potter films, they auditioned hundreds of people for most, if not all, of those characters. That's the norm.

Although he has lots of friends in Los Angeles, Dave still hasn't faced up to moving out here. At the George Washington Q&A, he talked about coming out to L.A. right after college and living here for about eight months while taking every oddjob known to man in an effort to scrounge enough cash to make George. The city intimidated him then, and it still intimidates him today. It just goes to show, though, that you don't necessarily have to live in Hollyweird to make it in the biz. He reflected on how nice it was to live in a place of his choice (North Carolina) and still find movie work. Snow Angels was his fourth film, but it was the first for which he was hired. At first he was just hired to adapt the novel into a script. Then the original director dropped out and handed the reigns to Dave. He would've been perfectly happy just being the screenwriter, he said. That's what led him to talk about one of his idols, John Sayles. If you read my John Sayles post from January for the film Honeydripper, you'll know that his game plan since the early eighties has been to make a fortune ghostwriting other people's scripts and then use that money to direct his own projects. Dave said he wouldn't mind that kind of career.

Right now that's sort of what he's doing. Since wrapping Pineapple Express for Judd Apatow and company, which he directed but didn't write (it was penned by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, the same two cats from Superbad), he's been hired to write the adaptation of (but not direct) Goat, a college memoir by Brad Land. No doubt he'll pocket a phat check for that. I can't wait to see the movie he makes with it.

At the Movies with Governor Tom: The Wonder of It All

And now it's time for my first movie post about a documentary. Last night at the ArcLight Hollywood, the American Film Institute hosted a sneak preview of this doc called The Wonder of It All, which profiles seven of the Apollo astronauts who walked on the moon between 1969 and 1972. The main draw for me was that for the Q&A afterward, they had none other than Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, that one guy who, with Neil Armstrong, became the first to walk on the moon on the Apollo 11 mission back in July of '69. Also at the Q&A was the film's director, a young chap called Roth, Jeffrey Roth. Interviewing them was CNN tech guy Miles O'Brien. Miles probably walked to the ArcLight. CNN's L.A. office is literally just a couple blocks away. I have to admit that even though Buzz is getting up there in years (he just turned 78 in January), he's still very sprightly, very well spoken, and gives great long answers, all perfect ingredients for a good Q&A.

Before I get to the Q&A, though, let me give you the gist of the film. It's nothing artsy, really. If you've seen any documentaries, you'll know that a healthy portion of them are usually a lot of talking heads. With seven astronauts to talk to, The Wonder of It All is no exception. But it doesn't need to be clever. It's already got a great premise with these guys who are part of this very exclusive club of people. I mean, imagine being one of the only humans in the history of your species to have ever stepped foot on the moon.

There were in fact a grand total of 12 astronauts who walked on the moon in the three-and-a-half-year span this film documents (July '69 to December '72). That's two astronauts from each of the six Apollo moon-landing missions (Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17). Of the 12, three passed away in the nineties, and two of them, including Neil Armstrong unfortunately, declined to be a part of this film. The seven included here are Buzz Aldrin from Apollo 11, Alan Bean from 12, Edgar Mitchell from 14, John Young and Charlie Duke from 16, and Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan from 17. Actually, though, the way it worked was that each Apollo mission had a grand total of three people. Two would go down to the moon, and the third guy would be the poor schmo manning the ship and missing the action. The titles of the three would be as follows: mission commander, lunar module pilot, and command module pilot. Those first two would be the moonwalkers. So take Apollo 11, for instance. Neil Armstrong was mission commander; Buzz was the lunar module pilot; and Michael Collins was command module pilot. And yes, Mike knew well ahead of time that he'd be third to Neil and Buzz. We're talking a year and a half to two years ahead of time, which is how long it took to train for these missions once you were selected.

The film did a great job giving all seven equal face time. It went back and forth between them during each of the film's segments, starting with their childhood and education and then how they each fell into the astronaut program and became pals and dealt with a healthy share of setbacks (including losing friends in tragic accidents), and what their lives have been like since, including how their legacies have impacted their families and personal lives. In some cases, like Buzz for instance, life hasn't always been a bowl of cherries. And when I say "fell into the astronaut program," that's pretty much what happened. In other words, none of them had any moonwalking aspirations as youngsters. You have to remember that all of these guys were born in the thirties and went to school in the forties and fifties. So when their guidance counselors asked them what they wanted to do with their lives, it was inconceivable that any of them would say, "Ya know, I'd love to walk on the moon some day." What they could have said, though, was that they wanted to fly planes, 'cause that's pretty much what they all started out doing. It was the perfect time to get into that for sure. All of these guys would've been in junior high and high school during World War II. That war really helped our nascent aviation industry, if you'll pardon the pun, blast off. During that war the U.S. manufactured more planes than every other country in the world combined had ever had. Yes, combined. And yes, we're talking mucho planes, kids. So if you were a kid at that time and were wondering what to do with yourself, suddenly you had an option available to you that your parents couldn't've dreamt of. And if you were a risk taker or a competitive type, then you may have taken it a step further and tried to work it out so you could fly the fastest and newest planes being made at the time.

And that's why all of the Apollo astronauts without exception were Navy test pilots prior to becoming astronauts. As a Navy test pilot, man, you'd be flying some of the fastest vehicles mankind had ever known. And not only would you be zooming along, but you'd be doing it very high up. Yes, naturally it was risky, but for these guys that was part of the appeal. In modern-day parlance I suppose you'd dub them adrenaline junkies. They were also very competitive, as Buzz confirmed for us during the Q&A afterward. So if one of your test pilot buddies had just flown in some such craft at a certain speed and altitude, then it was sort of an unspoken obligation on your part to 1-up him at your earliest (in)convenience.

Another neat thing about this piece was all the moon footage they showed that you normally don't get to see when watching, say, a TV program about the lunar landings. Those shows tend to show stuff you've seen millions of times, especially those shots of the Apollo 11 module soaring above the lunar surface and then Neil Armstrong on the moon saying those famous words. Here, though, we got to see footage of all seven guys doing various things on the moon. It wasn't all work, either. One of the more hilarious shots they showed was one of the astronauts, I forget who it was, sort of skipping and dancing along the moon while singing, "I was walking along the moon one day, moon one day, moon one day...", and so on.

A lot of these guys had pretty affecting personal stories, perhaps none other than Buzz. During the segment of the film that talked about the astronauts being selected and then preparing for the mission, Buzz talked about his mother committing suicide about a year before the Apollo 11 launch, when Buzz had already been training for several months. Depression does run in the Aldrin family, but according to Buzz, his ma also couldn't bear to think what the fallout would be after her son did the whole moon thing. Buzz never really elaborated on that, but you got the idea that either his ma was afraid he'd die during the mission, or that her son would get more publicity than he could handle. Maybe she was scared for his safety, though. You have to remember that the Apollo program got off to a God-awful start in January '67 when all three Apollo 1 astronauts--Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee--died during training when a fire broke out in the command module while they were all stuck inside. So poor Buzz lost his ma while training for the most important job of his life. And the tough bastard still pulled it off.

It was Charlie Duke, by the way, the lunar module pilot for Apollo 16 and the youngest of all 12 moonwalkers, who coined the phrase used as the documentary's title. He was talking about how, during some downtime on the moon, he took a look back at Earth and pondered "the wonder of it all."

This was the first film for Jeffrey Roth. During the Q&A afterward, he said the inspiration for it came about four years ago when he and some pals were attending an astronaut convention. He himself isn't an astronaut--the man's practically a child--but it's like a Star Trek convention where the fans can go meet their heroes. So at some point during the convention, he and his pals were sitting in a restaurant having lunch. A lot of fellow attendees were also there, as were a bunch of astronauts. Being an avid fan of the NASA missions, Jeff was able to recognize which of the astronauts were among the 12 moonwalkers. These old codgers were sitting around eating as if they were regular Joes like everyone else, and Jeff was both amazed and appalled that no one else seemed able to recognize these heroes. He decided to remedy that problem. Thus was born the idea for this documentary, which took him three years to complete.

Buzz elaborated a little more on the depression that runs in his family. It hit him pretty hard as well, and very soon after his moon mission. He was 39 when he walked on the moon, and the depression bodyslammed him about a year later. Through his forties and early fifties (1970 to '85ish) Buzz said he was basically useless. He was depressed as all get out and drank his way through booze like a catfish goes through a lake. Eventually he got his shit together and even found a new woman. On Valentine's Day 1988, he married this gal named Lois. They're still happily married. In fact, Lois was at last night's screening as well.

Buzz talked about moving to Houston in the early sixties to further his Navy test pilot career. He moved into the house that had just been occupied by fellow pilot Jim Lovell (the guy Tom Hanks played in Apollo 13). Buzz's best friend at this time was Ed White (one of the Apollo 1 casualties). Buzz and Ed met at West Point where they ran track together. Guess who lived next door to Buzz? That's right, his eventual moonwalking partner Neil Armstrong. Neil, however, wasn't the most sociable of fellows. That's actually why he wasn't involved with the film. It was nothing personal. It's just not in his nature to be very public. Indeed, when he wrote his memoir a few years ago, he didn't even do a book tour. He did one interview on 60 Minutes and that was that. Suffice it to say that the actual Apollo 11 trip from the Earth to the moon was, er, very quiet. As the moderator Miles O'Brien put it very tactfully, the 11 crew "weren't exactly chummy." The extrovert of the trio was the one guy who wasn't allowed to set foot on the moon and therefore should've been the grouchiest: Mike Collins. Apparently he was the one who cracked jokes and kept Buzz and Neil entertained.

Buzz talked about how he went about taking a leak while wearing that giant suit and all that gear. Actually, he didn't volunteer that information. Someone in the audience asked him. Yes, that's right. Whereas Neil was the first to take that giant leap for mankind, it was Buzz who was the first to take that giant leak for mankind. It's not exactly surprising how they did it. Each astronaut had a sort of pack down in the nether regions that would collect all the waste, which would then be disposed of accordingly upon arrival back on Earth. You get the idea.

Buzz's most vivid memory of the trip actually didn't come from being on the surface but from when they were still approaching the moon. The most beautiful image he's ever seen to this day is the image of the moon as they were getting very close, so that it took up almost the whole vista outside the window, with the sun's light just behind it forming a sort of halo. Buzz insisted that Neil was not given a script to read for when he first stepped out of the module. To be sure, Neil had been thinking about what to say on the way there (it took four days to get there), but Buzz said he came up with that now immortal line all on his own.

So what have all these guys been doing since their moonwalking days? Buzz certainly seems fully recovered from his depression and just as active today as he was during his piloting days. He's written several books and articles that talk about the future of space travel. He also helps design rockets and goes deep sea diving when he gets bored. Alan Bean of Apollo 12 likes to paint, especially vistas of the moonscape that the cameras didn't capture. Edgar Mitchell of Apollo 14 is into paranormal studies, while Apollo 16's Charlie Duke found God. Harrison Schmitt of Apollo 17 went into politics and became a Senator.

Speaking of politics, I have to say I was a little surprised at Buzz's staunch conservatism. Toward the end of the evening he was saying stuff like how wonderful George W. Bush is for all he's done to help NASA but that NASA should stop worrying about the International Space Station. Buzz also said that global warming is alarmist, to which a young woman in the audience responded with, "Whoa." Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. But hey, who says our heroes can't be just as complicated as the rest of us?