August 28, 2020
When you are writing a movie blog in a year where theaters have been (largely) shutdown for almost six months, sometimes you have to get a little creative when thinking of topics to write about. This week I’m going to take us back twenty years and revisit the year 2000 in film. I could write about the pandemic, or politics, or the media, but those topics are kind of depressing (and besides, we all need an escape every once in a while, right?), so I’m going to stick with movies. After one quick detour.
Ever have one of those memories of a conversation that may not have had a memorable impact on your life, but you vividly remember anyway? No? Well, my brain works like that. While we are on the topic of the year 2000, in November of that year I was working as an auditor and we were on site in upstate New York at one of my client’s manufacturing plants for a few weeks. This happened to be right around the time of the 2000 election. A week or so after the election, when the results were still in doubt pending the recount in Florida, we were at lunch with the president of the division we were auditing. This was a multinational company, so he traveled to different locations around the world. I remember him saying that he was telling his overseas colleagues, “While it may look hectic because we don’t know who the president will be, this is not a big deal. We have laws, we have courts, we have a process, and when the process completes, we will have it sorted out. It’s under control – there are no tanks in the streets.” Let’s just say that I thought of that conversation in recent days and I can’t say that it makes me feel good ….
Moving right along…..
Speaking of elections…a few weeks ago, I mentioned a new documentary premiering in August on Apple TV+ called Boys State. It’s out, I’ve watched it and I have to say that it’s outstanding. Rarely does a documentary feel like a fiction film with rich characters, conflict, and a full story from beginning to end, but this accomplishes all of that. It is in one way a story about teenage boys at a political camp and in another way a reflection of our political world right now. My favorite movie podcast, The Big Picture, discussed the film last week and interviewed the film’s directors for more perspective on how they made the film. This one is a winner – I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Ok, now I’m really moving right along…
The Move Landscape in 2000
Luckily, most of my readers are in the same age demographic as me, so I won’t feel too old asking how it’s already been twenty years since the turn of the century (remember when Y2K was a big deal?) I went back and looked at a list of the films released that year and revisited some of my favorites and watched some I had never seen, and thinking back on it, it was truly an impressive year for movies. Let’s start with the box office. Here are the top five movies in 2000:
- Mission Impossible 2 – This franchise has been going strong for over twenty years, with the seventh film now in pre-production and an eighth edition also in the works. This installment was a decent movie, but it was probably the worst of the series – we won’t be discussing this one.
- Gladiator – Huge movie. Best Picture winner and catapulted Russell Crowe into superstardom.
- Cast Away – Peak Tom Hanks, still holds up as a great rewatchable film after twenty years. More to come on Hanks vs. Crowe in a bit.
- What Women Want – Hmm, feels like we might be slipping here. Mel Gibson loses consciousness when he falls into a bathtub holding a hair dryer and when he wakes up he can read women’s minds. Yikes.
- Dinosaur – Disney animated film about….what else, dinosaurs? Yeah, feels like we’ve gone off the cliff.
Speaking of bad movies, 2000 also saw the release of one of the biggest box-office bombs of all-time – John Travolta’s Scientology-influenced film about aliens…..or something….Battlefield Earth.
OK, maybe we really need to move on to why 2000 was actually a good year in movies. Here are some of my favorites that still hold up after twenty years.
An All-Time Classic Comedy – Meet the Parents
Even after seeing this film a number of times, it still cracks me up whenever someone says “C’mon Focker!” Admit it, you just chuckled reading that. Here we have Ben Stiller as Greg Focker, the hapless, idiotic nurse, traveling with his girlfriend Pam (played by Teri Polo) to attend her sister’s wedding, where he meets her parents (Robert De Niro and Blythe Danner). The cat and mouse game between and Stiller and De Niro, playing an ex-CIA agent trying to get dirt on Greg to prove he is not worthy of his daughter, makes for a lot of laughs. This one has some classic scenes – Greg lying about growing up on a farm, the pool volleyball scene where he breaks the bride-to-be’s nose, the scene where he inadvertently lights the backyard wedding altar on fire, and the sequence where he loses (and “finds”) the family’s cat are just a few of my favorites. Another winning performance comes from Owen Wilson, who plays Pam’s accomplished ex-boyfriend, further eroding Greg’s confidence. The film was wildly successful and spawned two sequels that I found rather forgettable. Stick with the original.
The Comedy Film For My Fellow Music Nerds – High Fidelity
One of my all-time favorite actors is John Cusack. I grew up with his movies, starting with The Sure Thing and Better Off Dead in 1985. He has done some great work over the last thirty years – we’ll be covering one of his best performances next week and another Mount Rushmore performance in the next comfort movie edition. In 2000, he starred as Rob, the owner of a Chicago record store in High Fidelity, based on the novel by Nick Hornby. Rob just broke up with his girlfriend and throughout the film, is recapping his tortured love life, counting down his top 5 breakups. You see for Rob, and his co-workers (Barry and Dick), everything in life relates to music and you can make a top 5 list out of anything. The three of them debate the silly arguments that music lovers often have (top 5 opening tracks of an album, for instance) and ridicule their customers’ musical tastes (for instance, when one asks for a popular record for his daughter). All the while, Rob is debating what he wants to do with his life (professionally and romantically), breaking the fourth wall by talking directly to the camera as he debates life’s big issues. As a music nerd who cares about things like what song or artist is better than another, I can relate to this film and this world. Cusack is excellent (as always), Jack Black (who I normally don’t like) is very funny as Barry, and the film features a cameo by Bruce Springsteen. What more could you ask for?
An Underrated Understated Comedy – Wonder Boys
In 1987, Michael Douglas had a double hit year, with Fatal Attraction and Wall Street (for which he won an Oscar). He did it again in 2000 with a film we’ll discuss later and Wonder Boys, the rare “adult” comedy that’s not made much anymore. He plays Grady Tripp, an English professor at a small college, who is also a tortured writer trying to follow up the success of his debut novel, but stuck in a perpetual hell of constantly writing, but not knowing where his story is going. During the movie, we see that it is currently over 2000 pages. The film takes place over the course of a weekend when Grady is faced with a number of crises coming together to cause him to rethink his choices in life. In short, he is dodging his literary agent (Robert Downey, Jr.) who wants to see a draft of his new novel, trying to help a troubled student who may be the next great writer (Tobey Maguire), mentoring another student (Katie Holmes) who rents a room in his house, and dealing with a major event in his life when the woman he is seeing (Frances McDormand), who also happens to be married to the chairman of the English department, reveals she is pregnant with his child. Grady’s life is a mess and he hops from one comical event to the other and it’s a fun ride. It’s a different kind of role for Douglass and with a strong supporting cast, this is a nice film, directed by Curtis Hanson as the follow up to the excellent L.A. Confidential, for which he won an Oscar for co-writing the screenplay.
A Sad Reminder That Politics Doesn’t Change – The Contender
First of all, this is a great film. Yes, there are some ugly parts of it that make you realize that politics is still nasty, but that doesn’t diminish the movie. Joan Allen plays a Senator who is nominated to replace the recently deceased Vice President, and faces a nasty confirmation process led by Gary Oldman, playing the committee chairman with the evilness of what we hate in politics. When accusations of sexual promiscuity emerge, Allen’s character refuses to engage in the conversation, reiterating over and over that her private life is not up for debate in the sacred halls of Congress. She plays the role stoically, standing up to Oldman and the President’s handlers, led by Sam Elliott. This is a solid, political drama with a strong cast, particularly Jeff Bridges as the President and Christian Slater as a freshman Congressman who is also on the committee. It shows the ugliness of politics, but also the good that can come from people who stand up to bullies and stand by their principles.
The Battle for Best Actor – Gladiator and Cast Away
The stars of two of the biggest films of the year battled it out for Best Actor at the 2000 Oscars and these are two heavyweight performances, by actors in the middle of an amazing run at this time. Russell Crowe would go on to win, playing a general in the Italian army who is forced to become a slave and fight as a gladiator in violent battles in the Roman Colosseum. Crowe is electric in this role, combining the leadership, brains, and brawn to consistently win battles, while looking to avenge the murder of his wife and son at the hands of the new emperor, played by Joaquin Phoenix. Gladiator would also go on to win a well-deserved Oscar for Best Picture. It is truly an amazing feat in filmmaking, combining the personal story of loss and redemption, with the complex battles and fight sequences. Director Ridley Scott combined real-life battle scenes with CGI special effects to weave together realistic sequences. I mentioned last week that he faced a challenge replacing an actor toward the end of filming All the Money in the World. He faced a similar challenge with Gladiator – actor Oliver Reed died midway through filming and Scott used a body double and digital images for scenes where his character was in the frame. While the film won Best Picture, Scott didn’t win Best Director (we’ll get to that winner in a minute), and he still has not won an Oscar, despite a very accomplished career. Look for his next film, The Last Duel with Ben Affleck, Jodie Comer, Matt Damon and Adam Driver, in 2021.
While Crowe won the trophy, I have to think that two-time Best Actor winner Tom Hanks was a close second. He reunited with Forrest Gump director Robert Zemeckis for Cast Away, the story of a Fed Ex logistics expert stranded on a deserted island after a plane crash in the South Pacific. Two amazing things about this performance: First, Hanks is onscreen alone for over half of the movie (interestingly enough, with no music to emphasize the isolation and loneliness he felt), interacting with nature, his inner thoughts and a volleyball (“Wilson!!!!!”). By the way, that scene where he loses Wilson still gets me – what a performance by Hanks during that sequence. Second, the production of this movie was definitely unusual as it was filmed over a two year period. Before the film, Hanks gained about 50 pounds to emphasize the transformation he would undergo while on the island. After the opening sequences were shot, they took a year off, so Hanks could lose the weight and grow out his hair and beard. After those scenes were shot, the film took another four month break so Hanks could regain some weight before the final scenes were shot. While Hanks was on his crash diet, Zemeckis took his crew and went off and made another movie, What Lies Beneath, the thriller with Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer that was also a top 10 movie in 2000. What a year for Zemeckis, and what a performance by Hanks. I think if he hadn’t already won two Oscars for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump, this would have been his win. You could also argue Crowe could have won the next year as well, when he was nominated for A Beautiful Mind, but he lost to Denzel Washington in Training Day. I guess these things have a way of working themselves out. Two great performances and two great movies that are still fascinating to watch twenty years later.
The Real Winner of 2000 – Steven Soderbergh
Last week, I mentioned that the year Steven Spielberg had in 1993 was one of the best in movie history, but I think it has to be a close second to the year Steven Soderbergh had in 2000. Considered one of our best directors, who has made some of the boldest career choices Hollywood has ever seen, Soderbergh was hitting on all cylinders in 2000, when he released Erin Brockovich and Traffic. Oh yeah, he was nominated for Best Director for BOTH FILMS, winning for Traffic. Think about that for a minute – of the hundreds of films that are released each year, there are only five nominees for Best Director and he got two of them. That’s crazy. Both films, of course, are excellent. Erin Brockovich features Julia Roberts in the role that finally brought her the respect of the critics and the Academy, when she won Best Actress. It’s a wonderful true story of a law firm investigator, taking on a large company for their horrific treatment of a small town when their chemicals in the drinking water result in many deaths and illnesses. Not only is Roberts great, but we have the legendary Albert Finney as the head of the law firm going toe to toe with Roberts throughout the film.
Traffic is a riveting tale of the country’s battle in the drug war, told from multiple perspectives in storylines that are messy and don’t tie together neatly at the end. We have DEA agents (including the always impressive Don Cheadle) looking to bring down a drug lord, whose wife (played by Catherine Zeta Jones) is dealing with the arrest of her husband and her world collapsing around her. We have the country’s newly appointed drug czar (played by Michael Douglas) balancing trying to solve an unsolvable problem, while dealing with his own teenage daughter’s spiral into a frightening drug addiction. Lastly, we have a Mexican police officer struggling to do his job, all the while knowing that it’s a useless exercise as the drug lords have all of the power. The officer is played by Benicio Del Toro, who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance. It’s an excellent film, featuring a wide variety of top performances and a script that also won an Oscar. Two nominations for Best Director for two wildly different films? Yes, I’d say Steven Soderbergh won the year. He would follow this up with Ocean’s Eleven in 2001. It’s safe to say he was at the top of his game.
My Favorite Film of the Year – Almost Famous
I know this has been a long piece, so thanks for staying with me. We finish with Almost Famous, my favorite film of 2000, written and directed by Cameron Crowe, who has created some of my favorite films, notably Fast Times at Ridgemont High (as screenwriter), Say Anything, Singles, and Jerry Maguire. He’s also a big Pearl Jam fan, directing the documentary celebrating their twentieth anniversary, Pearl Jam: Twenty, in 2011. Almost Famous is the autobiographical story of Crowe himself, when he began writing about music as a teenager, getting articles published in Creem magazine and Rolling Stone, while touring with legendary bands Led Zeppelin, The Eagles and The Allman Brothers Band in the early 1970s. Patrick Fugit plays 15 year-old William Miller (the fictional Crowe) who hooks up with the band Stillwater, led by guitarist Russell Hammond (played by Billy Crudup) and singer Jeff Bebe (played by Jason Lee). William cons his way into a big article about the band for Rolling Stone, and has quite the adventurous experience while on tour with the band and the women who follow them on tour. The group of fans, led by Penny Lane (played by Kate Hudson in a star-making performance), call themselves “Band-Aids” (not “groupies”) – they follow the band for the music, not to hook up with the guys (but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t also do that).
This is a very rich film, with a deep cast including Frances McDormand (as William’s mother), the late great Phillip Seymour Hoffman (as legendary rock journalist Lester Bangs, who helped Crowe as he began his writing career), Zooey Deschanel as William’s older sister, and Jimmy Fallon, as the band’s manager. As you would expect with a favorite film of mine, what makes Almost Famous special is the music. We have original songs by Stillwater (that sound like your classic 70s rock) and classics from Simon and Garfunkel, Elton John (in the famous scene on the bus), and Led Zeppelin (a notable inclusion for a band that is famous for not authorizing their music for film or television). Crowe has shown over the years to be a master storyteller, bringing together the perfect combination of cast, screenplay, music, and production design – you feel like you are living in the 1970s while watching this film. If you have never seen Almost Famous, it is definitely worth checking it out. And if you are also a fan of the film, I highly recommend a podcast called Origins with James Andrew Miller that premiered a five-episode series about the film earlier this summer. For the film’s twentieth anniversary, Miller interviewed Crowe and a number of cast members to discuss how the film came together. It is an entertaining journey through the making of the film, and you will learn some great facts – for instance, did you know who was originally cast as Russell, the lead guitarist of Stillwater? Brad Pitt. Yup, imagine that for a minute.
That’s all for this week. I hope you enjoyed my trip down memory lane and thanks again for reading. Next week, I’ll be back to discuss the work of one of the most creative screenwriters of the last twenty years. His name is Charlie Kauffman and he has a new film debuting on Netflix next week. We’ll look through his filmography and examine why some of his films are true masterpieces in storytelling. If you’d like to be notified of future posts, you can subscribe here.
A great read…..thanks for writing! Always a pleasant experience!!!
Thanks MB!