For Your Consideration, Delaney

EXT.SPANISH VILLA, LOS ANGELES-DAY

LEONARDO DICAPRIO walks up the drive to the villa and rings the doorbell.

 

TITLE: LAST SATURDAY MORNING IN HOLLYWOOD…

 

While he waits he takes out his phone and scrolls down a list of names.

 

CLOSE ON: Delaney. Agent, friend of Micawber-Mycroft, likes potted plants.

 

DELANEY, an agent to the stars, opens the door, looking more confused than usual.

 

DICAPRIO: Well, good morning, Delaney.

DELANEY: Uh, hello.

DICAPRIO: (Brushing past him) Thanks for inviting me into your home.

DELANEY: I didn’t actually…

 

INT.CHEZ DELANEY-DAY

Delaney shuts the door and turns around to see DiCaprio stroking the leaves of a fern.

 

DICAPRIO: It’s nice to see someone else who appreciates the comfort a good potted plant can give to a residence.

DELANEY: Do you like potted plants too?

DICAPRIO: Absolutely. Absolutely! I knew when Christopher Nolan mentioned that you were a devotee of potted plants that you were my kind of man.

DELANEY: But, I don’t know Christopher Nolan.

DICAPRIO: Pssshh! Nolan knows Micawber-Mycroft, you know Micawber-Mycroft, and so I feel like I really know you. We men of potted plants.

DELANEY: Did Mycroft give you my address?

DICAPRIO: No, I looked it up in the Academy’s records office.

DELANEY: Are they allowed to just give out members’ addresses like that?!

DICAPRIO: Well, it’s not strictly speaking legal. (He gives Delaney a dazzling smile. A smile that understood him just as far as Delaney wanted to be understood, and believed in him as Delaney would like to believe in himself. Delaney blinks.)

DICAPRIO: I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve called on you this fine morning.

DELANEY: It had crossed my mind. It’s very early.

DICAPRIO: Early?! Good God man, it’s very nearly 9am. You’re the fourth person I’ve called on this morning. I’d like to talk to you about my Oscar.

DELANEY: You want an Oscar for The Revenant?

DICAPRIO: Yes, I do. Let’s face it. It’s time.

 

DiCaprio turns and walks into the kitchen. Delaney picks up a watering-can from the floor beside the fern, and follows him. He sets to loving work on a potted plant sitting on the kitchen island that DiCaprio is now lounging against.

 

DICAPRIO: We gardeners, we understand the virtue of patience. We understand nourishing. I’ve paid my dues. What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? The Aviator. Blood Diamond. The Wolf of Wall Street. Now, like a yucca, I am finally flowering.

DELANEY: But, about The Revenant…

DICAPRIO: It was so cold, so bitterly cold, but I acted my heart out. Let me explain something of my method. When I was lighting gunpowder on my face to cauterise a wound how did I convey the appropriate amount of pain?

DELANEY: I don’t know.

DICAPRIO: I thought about how I got beaten for my subtle portrayal of intellectual diffability by Tommy Lee Jones doing his Tommy Lee Jones gruff shtick.

DELANEY: Yes, but about The Revenant…

DICAPRIO: When I dragged myself out of the shallow grave I channelled the fury and determination that I felt when, after saving Scorsese from making Nicolas Cage movies and Tibet travelogues, I didn’t win an Oscar for playing a true-life figure struggling with mental health issues.

DELANEY: See, about The Revenant…

DICAPRIO: When I had to float down through rapids in freezing water I thought about how with Blood Diamond I’d made a socially responsible film with a socially responsible director, nailed a tricky accent, and still didn’t win an Oscar. What is freezing water compared to that agony?

DELANEY: It’s just that The Revenant…

DICAPRIO: When I had to eat raw bison liver I just howled inwardly, thinking if I act like an actual wolf maybe they might regret snubbing me as The Wolf of Wall Street.

DELANEY: Mycroft thinks The Revenant is a Discovery special, not high art!

 

DiCaprio stares at Delaney. Delaney looks at the floor. DiCaprio sighs.

 

DICAPRIO: Look, I didn’t want to bring it up. But, for The Revenant’s big scene I, I… Well look, I’ll just come straight out and say it. I was… ((leans forward to Delaney’s ear, whispers inaudibly).

DELANEY: (recoils in horror) NO!!!! NO!! Really?!

DICAPRIO: Yes, for the sake of art. Whatever it takes to get the Oscar, Delaney, whatever it takes.

DELANEY: Well that changes everything. I’ll have to call Janine right now.

DICAPRIO: Who?

DELANEY: My secretary. She handles all my paperwork.

DICAPRIO: Oh. Well, you call right away. I’ll just sit here. (Smiles at him again.)

DELANEY: (fumbles with his phone) Janine! (beat) Yes, I know today is Saturday, but Leonardo DiCaprio is in my villa. (beat) Really! (beat) He’s doing the Gatsby smile, Janine, I think I can tell whether it’s him or a conman. I want to give him my vote for Best Actor. The poor guy was… (whispers inaudibly).

 

DiCaprio smiles, takes out his phone and starts scrolling down a list of names again

 

DELANEY: What do you mean he wasn’t? He’s sitting right here, I’m telling you, and he says he was.

 

DiCaprio pockets the phone, and leans forward, looking concerned.

 

DELANEY: What difference does it make if the bear was female? What are you trying to say? Is this a trick question to make me commit a micro-aggression? Wait, the bear was CGI? So he couldn’t have been–

 

DiCaprio bolts from the kitchen island, and glad-hands Delaney in passing.

 

DICAPRIO: Delaney, it’s been great catching up. Keep watering that plant now.

Six Years, what a surprise

Previous milestones on this blog have been marked by features on Michael Fassbender and a vainglorious, if requested, list (plays to see before you die). But as today marks exactly six years since Talking Movies kicked off in earnest on Tuesday September 1^st 2009 with a review of (500) Days of Summer I’ve rummaged thru the archives for some lists covering the various aspects of the blog’s expanded cultural brief.

Top 6 Films

There’s been a lot of films given a write-up and a star rating hereabouts. So many films. Some fell in my estimation on re-watching, others steadily increased in my esteem, and many stayed exactly as they were.

 

Here are my favourites of the films I’ve reviewed over the past six years:

 

Inception

X-Men: First Class

Shame

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Skyfall

Mud

 

And that’s a selection from this list…

Iron Man, Indiana Jones 4, Wolverine, (500) Days of Summer, Creation, Pandorum, Love Happens, The Goods, Fantastic Mr Fox, Jennifer’s Body, The Men Who Stare at Goats, Bright Star, Glorious 39, The Box, Youth in Revolt, A Single Man, Whip It!, The Bad Lieutenant, Eclipse, Inception, The Runaways, The Hole 3-D, Buried, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Let Me In, The Way Back, Never Let Me Go, Cave of Forgotten Dreams 3-D, Win Win, X-Men: First Class, The Beaver, A Better Life, Project Nim, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Glee: The 3-D Concert Movie, The Art of Getting By, Troll Hunter, Drive, Demons Never Die, The Ides of March, In Time, Justice, Breaking Dawn: Part I, The Big Year, Shame, The Darkest Hour 3-D, The Descendants, Man on a Ledge, Martha Marcy May Marlene, A Dangerous Method, The Woman in Black, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance 3-D, Margaret, This Means War, Stella Days, Act of Valour, The Hunger Games, Titanic 3-D, The Cabin in the Woods, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, Lockout, Albert Nobbs, Damsels in Distress, Prometheus, Red Tails, Red Lights, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter 3-D, Ice Age 4, Killer Joe, Magic Mike, The Dark Knight Rises, The Expendables 2, My Brothers, The Watch, Lawless, The Sweeney, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Liberal Arts, Sinister, Hit and Run, Ruby Sparks, On the Road, Stitches, Skyfall, The Sapphires, Gambit, Seven Psychopaths, Lincoln, Men at Lunch – Lon sa Speir, Warm Bodies, A Good Day to Die Hard, Safe Haven, Arbitrage, Stoker, Robot and Frank, Parker, Side Effects, Iron Man 3, 21 and Over, Dead Man Down, Mud, The Moth Diaries, Populaire, Behind the Candelabra, Man of Steel 3-D, The East, The Internship, The Frozen Ground, The Wolverine, The Heat, RED 2, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, Diana, Blue Jasmine, How I Live Now, Thanks for Sharing, Escape Plan, Like Father, Like Son, Ender’s Game, Philomena, The Counsellor, Catching Fire, Black Nativity, Delivery Man, 12 Years a Slave, Devil’s Due, Inside Llewyn Davis, Mr Peabody & Sherman 3-D, Dallas Buyers Club, The Monuments Men, Bastards, The Stag, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Calvary, Magic Magic, Tracks, Hill Street, X-Men: Days of Future Past 3-D, Benny & Jolene, The Fault in Our Stars, 3 Days to Kill, Boyhood, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes 3-D, SuperMensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon, God’s Pocket, Hector and the Search for Happiness, The Expendables 3, What If, Sin City 2, Let’s Be Cops, The Guest, A Most Wanted Man, Wish I Was Here, Noble, Maps to the Stars, Life After Beth, Gone Girl, Northern Soul, The Babadook, Interstellar, The Drop, Mockingjay – Part I, Electricity, Birdman, Taken 3, Wild, Testament of Youth, A Most Violent Year, Kingsman: The Secret Service, Son of a Gun, Patrick’s Day, Selma, It Follows, Paper Souls, Home 3-D, While We’re Young, John Wick, A Little Chaos, The Good Lie, Let Us Prey, The Legend of Barney Thomson, Hitman: Agent 47.

Top 6 Film Features

There’s been a lot of film features, from me obsessing over ignored inflation at the box-office and omnipresent CGI on the screen to the twaddle of Oscar ceremonies and thoroughly bogus critical narratives of New Hollywood.

 

Here are my favourite film features from the last six years:

 

A Proof – Keanu Can Act

Snyder’s Sensibility

What the Hell is … Method Acting?

Terrence Malick’s Upas Tree

5 Reasons to love Tom at the Farm

A Million Ways to Screw up a Western

 

Top 6 TV Features

There’s been quite a bit of musing about TV here, usually in short-form howls about The Blacklist or other such popcorn irritants, but sometimes in longer format, like two disquisitions on Laurence Fishburne’s stint in CSI.

 

Here are my favourite TV features from the last six years:

 

TARDIS: Time And Relative Dimensions In Smartness

Double Exposure: Cutter’s Way/House M.D.

Medium’s Realism    

2ThirteenB Baker Street, Princeton

Funny Bones

An Arrow of a different colour

 

Top 6 Plays

Since I decided to start reviewing plays in summer 2010 there’s been a steady stream of reviews from the Dublin Theatre Festival and regular productions at the Gate, the Abbey, the Olympia, the Gaiety, and Smock Alley.

 

Here are my favourites of the plays I’ve reviewed over the last six years:

 

John Gabriel Borkman

The Silver Tassie

Pygmalion

Juno and the Paycock

The Select: The Sun Also Rises

A Whistle in the Dark

 

And that’s a selection from this list:

Death of a Salesman, Arcadia, Phaedra, John Gabriel Borkman, Enron, The Silver Tassie, The Field, The Cripple of Inishmaan, Attempts on Her Life, Pygmalion, Translations, Hay Fever, Juno and the Paycock, Peer Gynt, Slattery’s Sago Saga, Tom Crean: Antarctic Explorer, Big Maggie, Hamlet, Improbable Frequency, Alice in Funderland, Glengarry Glen Ross, Travesties, The House, The Plough and the Stars, The Lark, Dubliners, The Select: The Sun Also Rises, A Whistle in the Dark, Conversations on a Homecoming, The Talk of the Town, King Lear, Major Barbara, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, The Critic, Desire Under the Elms, Neutral Hero, Macbeth, A Skull in Connemara, The Vortex, An Ideal Husband, Twelfth Night, Aristocrats, Ballyturk, Heartbreak House, The Actor’s Lament, Our Few and Evil Days, Bailegangaire, Spinning, She Stoops to Conquer, The Walworth Farce, The Caretaker, The Man in Two Pieces, Hedda Gabler, The Gigli Concert, A Month in the Country, The Shadow of a Gunman, The Importance of Being Earnest, Bob & Judy, By the Bog of Cats.

 

Top 6 Colour Pieces

It must be admitted that I’ve written fewer colour pieces for the blog than I would have liked, but I’ve greatly enjoyed the occasional adventures of Hollywood insider Micawber-Mycroft; a homage to PG Wodehouse’s Mr Mulliner.

 

Here are my favourite colour pieces from the last six years:

 

How to Watch 300

Mark Pellegrino gets ambitious

Great Production Disasters of Our Time: Apocalypse Now

Micawber-Mycroft explains nervous action directing

Alfred & Bane: Brothers in Arms

Kristen Bell, Book and Candle

 

Six years, my brain hurts a lot…

Kristen Bell, Book and Candle

INT.HOLLYWOOD OFFICE-DAY

CHRISTIAN BALE and KRISTEN BELL sit in the waiting room of their agent’s office. The celebrated Delaney, agent to a galaxy of stars, well, some, is in a meeting with fellow agent Montgomery Moncrieff Micawber-Mycroft, and his terrifying secretary Janine has banished his two clients from her office to the outermost reaches of the Delaney establishment; a room entirely devoid of potted plants. Bale and Bell sit on opposite sides of the room with a large candle on the desk in between them. Bale is idly flipping thru a screenplay. Bell is slowly reading a bound book.

BALE: (sighs, putting down screenplay, glances at Bell) What is that thing? A new Paul Thomas Anderson script?

BELL: (looks up) What? No. It’s a, it’s the book for a new musical on Broadway.

BALE: You can sing?

BELL: (puts down the book, offended) Yes I can sing!

BALE: I didn’t know.

BELL: Did you not watch Veronica Mars?

BALE: No!

BELL: What about solidarity between stable-mates?

BALE: Oh, come on. Did you watch Reign of Fire?

BELL: Yes!

BALE: Oh… My apologies.

BELL: I sang Blondie in a karaoke scene. (sings) “One way or another I’m gonna find you, I’m gonna gonna gonna gonna getcha, one way or another”.

BALE: Okay, you can sing. That’s a pretty good song to use on a detective show.

BELL: It really is, isn’t it? That’s what we thought when we decided to freaking use it, you Welsh moron.

BALE: Hey! I was about to be nice!

BELL: Oh yeah? How?

BALE: Maybe you might to take a look at this. (tosses his script to her)

BELL: (she flips thru the first few pages). Ugh! An Abba musical.

BALE: You don’t like Abba?

BELL: I love Abba. I hate that musical. It’s so badly written it’s not funny. I’ve been in Reefer Madness. I’ve done Sondheim. I want something that’s at that level.

BALE: Picky picky.

BELL: Well, not all of us can recover from choices like Reign of Fire…

BALE: HEY! I apologised for that already!

JANINE enters from the door on the right.

JANINE: Sorry to keep you waiting, but Mr Delaney will be about another 10 minutes.

BALE: (groans) AWWWWW… Fine, whatever. Can I get a coffee?

JANINE: I’m afraid we’re not allowed to give you coffee anymore Mr Bale after the incident regarding the espresso…

BALE: THAT WAS A TOTALLY LEGITIMATE COMPLAINT ON MY PART!!!

(Janine stares at Bale for 30 seconds without saying a word, during which time he becomes slightly cowed, and then she lights the candle on the desk.)

BELL: What’s the candle for?

JANINE: It makes people calm.

BELL: I’ve never seen it there before.

JANINE: You’ve never had to wait with Mr Bale before.

BALE: I wanted a triple espresso and I got a double espresso. Anyone would freak!

BELL: (ignoring him) What’s the hold-up with Delaney?

JANINE: Mr Delany is in a meeting with Mr Micawber-Mycroft.

BELL: Who?

JANINE: When the time comes to know who he is, he will find you.

Janine walks back into her office. Bell stares after her, nonplussed.

BELL: Well that was fairly Yoda like… (looks over at Bale and sees multiple scripts flying up in the air) What are you doing?

BALE: (rooting around in his bag) I’m trying to find a decent screenplay.

BELL: Ha! Join the club.

BALE: I’m serious! That’s what I’m doing here. Delaney keeps sending me crap.

BELL: And again, join the club.

BALE: I mean look at this! (brandishes screenplay) It’s a raunchy comedy about some guy who breaks up with some girl and goes to Hawaii to forget her, but, wait for it, she’s gone there too, with her new boyfriend. Hilarity freaking ensues. What am I supposed to do with that?

BELL: Mug for laughs?

BALE: I’m not good at broad comedy. Or you know comedy comedy.

BELL: Comedy comedy?

BALE: I can do comedy when it’s relief in a dramatic setting, I can do comedy when it’s black and part of a role, but I can’t do comedy when that’s all there is. Underneath, I need to be more. In a comedy there’s nothing under the role.

BELL: Whatever. I’ll see your holiday comedy and raise you a pointless role as the love interest in some dumb Terminator reboot. Like I want to stand around beside John Connor and some other guy, pouting concernedly while stuff blows up…

BALE: Delaney sent you a Terminator movie?!

BELL: Have it if you like. (she tosses the script to him)

BALE: (flicks thru the first few pages) Ooh, nice! If I took John Connor I wouldn’t be the lead, strictly speaking, but I’d be the name if I could convince them to cast an unknown in the other part. That way it wouldn’t be my fault if it tanked, but I could claim I was the draw if it worked; and then BOOM – another franchise.

BELL: I thought you just wrapped on The Dark Knight, don’t you want something different?

BALE: I don’t want to do this all my life, no one would.

BELL: What, make franchise movies?

BALE:  Be Batman. I need a new franchise so I can make small films like Harsh Times.

BELL: I didn’t see that.

BALE: No one did. That’s why I need to make franchises. What else have you got?

BELL: Um, (rummages in her bag) I’ve got some truly boring love interest part with almost nothing to do except stand around and look concerned in a really long and painfully dull Michael Mann script about some 1930s bank-robber. I’ve got some absolutely whack-job script about some guy who pretends to be a priest during the Rape of Nanking and then starts to save girls from prostitution.

BALE: Doesn’t sound too whack-job…

BELL: The story’s not whack-job. But like, what the hell does Delaney want me to read it for? All the female parts are Chinese. I could maybe have played the lead Chinese prostitute in 1950 with awful make-up, but I wouldn’t want to do it even if I could somehow still get away with it now in 2007. It would be like you breaking out the boot polish to play Othello. And finally I have an actual good script. It’s a bit clichéd, about some underdog boxer who overcomes adversity, but the 4 main parts are all pretty juicy. The girlfriend is a good role but… it’s set in Boston and I can’t even do Mayor Quimby. What have you got?

BALE: (rummages in his bag) Playing second fiddle to some girl in Rome in a rom-com, this script is actually even worse than the Abba comedy. Oh, also, some raunchy comedy about a guy and a girl who might break up so they go Hawaii to reconnect, even worse than the other couples in Hawaii script I got. Also some bizarre movie about some chick who goes to a strip-club and thru a lot of backstabbing becomes the star stripper who sings. It’s weird. It’s like this campy PG-13 version of Showgirls.

BELL: There’s an oxymoron…

BALE: It’s truly terrible, but at least it stands out. There’s this other script which might as well just be 20 pages of set-up and then 80 blank pages with the words ‘Hilarity Ensues’ where the page numbers ought to be. Some girl finds that some girl she hated in high school is going to be her sister-in-law. I actually fell asleep reading it. And there was a truly diabolical script I didn’t get past 30 pages of where a woman chains her husband to a toilet just before his young squeeze arrives and then they get burgled. Chained to a toilet! Why in God’s name would I want to do that part?

BELL: Why is Delaney sending you so many godawful rom-coms?

BALE: I don’t know! That’s why I’m here. Maybe he thinks I need something different, light, but I need a franchise! And what’s with your scripts? Minor turns behind male leads?!

BELL: I mean is this how people think of Kristen Bell and Christian Bale?

BALE: (leans forward, stunned) Say that again.

BELL: (quizzically) Kristen Bell and Christian Bale.

BALE: Mumble it like Delaney does, when he’s trying to hide his cluelessness.

BELL: Kristen Bell and Christian Bale…

(The penny drops for both of them simultaneously. Delaney has been mixing up their scripts for quite a while because of their soundalike names.)

BALE: (screams in fury) DELANEY!

BELL: (howls in anguish) DELANEY!

Janine pokes her head around the door.

JANINE: Oh God, what’s he done now?

Michael Caine cock(ney)s up shakespeare

INT.HOLLYWOOD DIOGENES CLUB-DAY
MICHAEL CAINE is sharing a brandy in the sedate library of this fabled haven of civility in an oftentimes torrid city with his agent, the celebrated MONTGOMERY MONCRIEFF MICAWBER-MYCROFT. Micawber-Mycroft though is wary. He knows only too well the fixed eye of the man with a grievance…

CAINE: You’ve been there ’aven’t you?
MICAWBER-MYCROFT: What, the rebuilt Globe? Yes, of course I’ve been there. I saw Macbeth there a few years ago, they had posters everywhere proclaiming ‘This is a bloody production of an extremely brutal play’; I had to stop myself from cackling with delight. That should draw in the crowds in Sarf London I thought to myself.
CAINE: And you’ve been around the exhibition part of it as well, yeah?
MICAWBER-MYCROFT: Yes, of course I have.
CAINE: So you know the booths where you can listen to all the old geezers speaking Shakespeare?
MICAWBER-MYCROFT: Um, yes I tried out the sound booths where you can listen to choice speeches, scenes and sonnets being performed by RADA’s finest graduates.
CAINE: And?
MICAWBER-MYCROFT: And what?
CAINE: Wha’ did you notice?
MICAWBER-MYCROFT: Well, I was rather surprised that the earliest recordings, of Edwardian era actors doing Henry V’s big speeches, made Larry Olivier sound like he was being restrained by contrast when he popped up later. In fact he sounded positively subdued, and, whisper it, naturalistic, when we both know he was an enormous ham.
CAINE: No, Mycroft, you’re missing my point. Wha’ did you notice, did you ’ear a lot of regional accents in them booths?
MICAWBER-MYCROFT: Eh, no.
CAINE: Yeah, Eh, No. And why is tha’, eh? Do all the people in England sound like Laurence bloody Olivier when they open their mouth? Not bloody likely. So why can’t someone who sounds like me be featured in the recordings in them booths?
(Mycroft quickly puzzles out in his head what this meeting is really all about…)
MICAWBER-MYCROFT: Do you want me to try and get your voice into those booths?!
CAINE: Yeah!
MICAWBER-MYCROFT: But, you’ve never really done Shakespeare…
CAINE: How bloody ’ard it can be? I’m not going to record a whole bloody play, I’ll just replace the one track they’ve go’ with Olivier doing Othello. Daft bastard shouldn’t be there doing that anyway, it’s an insult. Putting on blackface at age 58, in 1965 for Christ’s sake, what was he thinking? Until Chiwetel Eijofor remembers to record his bloody vocals for that fantastic exit scene he did with Ewan McGregor a few years ago I’ll ’ave a go.
MICAWBER-MYCROFT: Oh! That speech? The final soliloquy?
CAINE: Yeah, tha’ one.
MICAWBER-MYCROFT: I’m not sure that’s a very good idea, Michael.
CAINE: Why? Wha’? Do you think I can’t measure up to Larry?
MICAWBER-MYCROFT: No, we both know you can, it’s just I have grave fears that that particular speech might sort of, well, send you looping off in another direction, almost against your will, as it were.
CAINE: Nonsense, it’s easy. (not really listening to Micawber-Mycroft anymore….)
MICAWBER-MYCROFT: (shuddering) And then I might have to deal with an angry Nolan again. And I don’t like dealing with Nolan when he’s angry, especially not now when he’s already simmering at mildly furious with me for telling Delaney I fed him a pivotal line of dialogue for Batman Begins.
CAINE: I’ll go in, knock it ou’, and be back in time to film a cameo in a remake of Jaws IV.

INT.ABBEY ROAD STUDIOS, LONDON-DAY
MICHAEL CAINE and BORIS, a sound engineer, stand on either side of the glass in a recording studio. Boris gives Caine the thumbs up thru the glass, and Caine picks up a battered old Penguin Popular Classic copy of Othello from the studio floor, bent open at the right page with a huge amount of annotation of the speech in question. He then proceeds to deliver a performance and a half; he invests the text with sub-text, pathos, nobility, nuance, and even that thing where his voice breaks when he gets very emotional – very emotional, indeed…

CAINE: Soft you; a word or two before you go:
I have done the Sta’e some service, and they know’t:
No more of tha’. I pray you in your le’’ers,
When you shall these unlucky deeds rela’e,
Speak of me, as Oi am. Nuffin’ extenua’e,
Nor se’ down augh’ in malice.
Then you must speak,
Of one that lov’d no’ wisely, but too well:
Of one, no’ easily jealous, but being wrough’,
Perplex’d in the extreme: Of one, ’ose ’and,
Like the base Judean threw a pearl away
(Twitches; self-restraining, then forlornly) The size, of a tangerine…
BORIS: CUT!
(Boris shakes his head, walks to the door, and opens it. Looks pityingly at Michael Caine and quietly says–)
BORIS: Get out.
CAINE: Yeah, alrigh’.

Micawber-Mycroft explains nervous action directing

INT.HOLLYWOOD DIOGENES CLUB-DAY

DELANEY, an agent to the stars, uneasily walks into the library of the well-appointed Diogenes Club. Yes, this may be a haven of civility in an oftentimes torrid city, but it is also entirely lacking in potted plants; which he likes to water to put his mind at ease. Thankfully he spots his friend and fellow agent MONTGOMERY MONCRIEFF MICAWBER-MYCROFT across the room and wanders over to where he is seated, only to be shushed into silence as he sits down.

MICAWBER-MYCROFT: Look at that agent over there! It’s hysterical. He’s been reading the Inception screenplay just like that for the past week and he still hasn’t grasped what it’s all about.

DELANEY: (hurt) Mycroft! You know that I don’t understand what it’s all about either!

MICAWBER-MYCROFT: Pshaw my good man! Pshaw! You don’t understand the philosophical ramifications and the apparent inner inconsistencies. He doesn’t understand how two levels of reality being depicted simultaneously can work on film. Someone tried to explain The Matrix to him yesterday and he had to lie down for the entire afternoon to recover…

DELANEY: Oh, wow.

MICAWBER-MYCROFT: Quite. (beat) Why are you here anyway?

DELANEY: You asked me to meet you here.

MICAWBER-MYCROFT: Well of course I did dear boy. I couldn’t possibly come to meet you in your office, my only vice is indolence and I’m loathe to move from my regular armchair here. Let me to try to remember which among the many brightly-coloured balls that I must keep juggling in the air in my capacity as an over-worked agent I wanted to warn you about. Ah yes! Bond.

DELANEY: James Bond?

MICAWBER-MYCROFT: Yes. The studio has sorted out nightmarish licensing and financial difficulties, the understanding of which defeated even my vast legal expertise, and so is ready to make another Bond movie with Peter Morgan making the gibberish action script legible to thinking humans and Sam Mendes at the helm.

DELANEY: At the helm?

MICAWBER-MYCROFT: Lensing it, as they say.

DELANEY: As who says? What’s he doing?

MICAWBER-MYCROFT: He’s directing it you twit! Really, you must try and keep up with the synonyms this business throws out, no wonder McAvoy and Pellegrino keep moaning…

DELANEY: How did you know about that?

MICAWBER-MYCROFT: I quite often breach the fourth wall not once but twice before breakfast. Anyway, that’s not important. What matters is that you must at all costs prevent all your stable of actors from taking over-prominent parts in this production.

DELANEY: What?! Why?? Mendes is a good director isn’t he? I thought that people won awards, or at least got nominated for awards when they appeared in his stuff.

MICAWBER-MYCROFT: Yes, that’s true.

DELANEY: So wouldn’t my guys win awards or get nominated if they did his new movie?

MICAWBER-MYCROFT: Not a chance, Bond movies don’t get awards no matter how Casino Royale they are.

DELANEY: Oh, but still, wouldn’t it be a good career move? Mendes directing Bond? He’s a name director after all.

MICAWBER-MYCROFT: Yes, but, is he an action director? No sir, he is not, he is an actors’ director, and whenever an actors’ director gets thrown onto an action movie their soul frets in the shadow of spectacle.

DELANEY: You mean they don’t know what to do with the CGI?

MICAWBER-MYCROFT: Pshaw sir! CGI is the least of their worries. Let me conjure up a scene for you…

INT.HOLLYWOOD BACKLOT-DAY

RODRIGO DELL’ARTE, an imaginary art-house director, arrives in thru the studio gate and is immediately pounced on by A GAGGLE of production heads bellowing questions and demands.

BORIS: Where are we going to shoot the car-chase?

MICAWBER-MYCROFT (O/S): Car-what? The man’s barely aware of what a car is, he gets public transport everywhere as a matter of principle. As for car-chases they hold no interest for him whatsoever, what can a car-chase say about the human condition?

(Dell’Arte shrugs his shoulders expressively to Boris)

JOHNSON: Are we going to do all the explosions for real or will we try and skimp by with CGI for some of them to free up their budget for the wire-work in the night-time museum sequence?

MICAWBER-MYCROFT (O/S): He’s heard the letters CGI, but has never had to have an actual conversation about them before. As for wire-work, that sounds more practical but still it scares the life out of him.

(Dell’Arte nods approvingly to Johnson)

GODUNOV: Have you made a final decision on which location you want to film the base-jumping sequence from, Hong Kong or Dubai?

MICAWBER-MYCROFT (O/S): What is this? A movie or a round the world cruise? Previously he’s only ever been offered choices between tiny sound-stages and cramped apartments…

(Dell’Arte throws his hands up in despair, and defers to his SECOND UNIT DIRECTOR)

INT.HOLLYWOOD DIOGENES CLUB-DAY

Micawber-Mycroft leans back in his chair.

MICAWBER-MYCROFT: In summary, this is a world they’ll never understand, and you’ll always fear what you don’t understand.

DELANEY: That sounds oddly familiar.

MICAWBER-MYCROFT: I may have said it rather loudly when a struggling director was dining here some years back.

DELANEY: So an art-house director on an action movie simply defers to the second unit?

MICAWBER-MYCROFT: Indeed he does! They have the experience and expertise he does not, he is simply terrorised by their smooth efficiency. He’s made to feel an interloper on his own production. He leaves so much to the blasted second unit that the first time he sees the cast is two months into a six month shoot and they don’t know who he is. This does not gel an ensemble…

DELANEY: So, well then at least the action is perfect, even if he stood back from it?

MICAWBER-MYCROFT: No, the action is perfectly fine because it’s being done by professionals without someone standing over them whipping them onwards. Martin Campbell gets all the action in Casino Royale perfectly perfect because he’s an action director merrily urging his second unit on to great heights, but then he also manages to get the actors to reach the same heights in the first unit stuff. Which may have been sheer luck, the great script, or, as I suspect, the ease they felt in knowing that this man was indeed on top of everything in the film.

DELANEY: And you think that a less commercial director will just get into a blind panic over the action, and sit back from it, thinking he can focus on getting the acting scenes top notch, but then the acting doesn’t compensate?

MICAWBER-MYCROFT: Of course the acting doesn’t compensate! No one goes to an action film to see people acting! Acting is merely what they do in between explosions, fights, and car-chases to keep the action from getting monotonous.

DELANEY: So you think the next Bond film will be a bit of a mess?

MICAWBER-MYCROFT: I don’t know what to expect. Mendes has a flair for comedy which is oft forgotten because he makes such downbeat films, so you can expect the next Bond film to be quite funny. And you can guarantee he’ll draw out top-notch performances. But, you cannot put money down on it being a great film without reservations…

DELANEY: How are you such an expert on this?

MICAWBER-MYCROFT: I’m British.