Reel Talk with Stephen Farber

Stephen Farber, one of the country’s leading film critics and historians, has a continuing film series called Reel Talk with Stephen Farber, which gives audiences in Los Angeles advance screenings of many of each year’s top Oscar contenders, accompanied by thought-provoking discussions with the filmmakers or the actors involved. Last year, for example, he previewed The Queen, Blood Diamond, Dreamgirls, The Last King of Scotland, The Lives of Others, Little Miss Sunshine, Notes on A Scandal and Babel. This year, he’s got Juno, Sweeney Todd and, most recently, The Savages - and you can see the transcript of his recent talk with Laura Linney and wirter/director Tamara Jenkins here.

Farber’s been doing this for over 25 years, personally assembling the series by working closely with studios and filmmakers to get the good prints and the good guests that you can’t really get outside of film festivals. He is currently the film critic and contributing editor for Movieline’s Hollywood Life magazine and a regular contributor to The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Hollywood Reporter. Farber has also written reviews and articles on film for Esquire, New York, New West, Harper’s Bazaar, Premiere, Film Comment, and other national publications. He’s lectured at universities around the world, including Sweden, Norway, New Zealand and Australia.

Farber produced three episodes of the Arts & Entertainment network’s acclaimed “Biography” series in conjunction with Peter Jones Productions about Anthony Perkins, Spencer Tracy and Roman Polanski. He has also written several acclaimed books on film; The Movie Rating Game (1972, Public Affairs Press), Hollywood Dynasties (1984, Delilah/Putnam), Outrageous Conduct: Art, Ego, and the Twilight Zone Case (1988, Arbor House/Morrow), and Hollywood on the Couch (1993, Morrow).

I got to talk with Farber about the Reel Talk series the day after the screening of The Savages, to get to know a little more about how and why he does what he does.

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Q: What got you into this? What’s your background in the entertainment industry?

I went to film school. I got a Masters in Film at UCLA in the late 60s, but I actually started writing about movies when I was in high school and college. I started publishing articles in smaller film magazines in the late 60s, even before I was in film school. I’ve been writing a lot for many different publications over the years and for a lot of film magazines, general audience magazines, newspapers. So I’ve got a background as a film critic and I’ve always been a movie buff ever since I was a kid.

Q: Was there any one movie that galvanized you to spend your life doing this?

I never necessarily thought I was going to spend my life doing this, but growing up in the 50s, I loved all these movies. Singin’ in the Rain, Bridge on the River Kwai, Giant, many different kinds of movies. Ivanhoe is one of the earliest I remember seeing. I was an English major in college, so I was interested in literature, also, but always into a lot of movies. That was always my passion. I never really thought about going into it seriously, but when I was in high school in 1960, I won a contest in Cleveland, where I grew up, sponsored by the Cleveland press - a movie review contest for high school kids. The prize, which I won in the citywide contest, was a week’s trip to Hollywood to visit studios and meet the stars, so that sure got me even more hooked. The idea was certainly planted.

Q: What brought about Reel Talk?

I used to do a similar series for a UCLA Extension, which was called Sneak Preview, and I had done that starting in 1979 for more than 20 years, and I left there in 2004 to start my own film series. First, with Landmark Theaters, then the old Westside Pavilion and it grew and we moved to the Nuwlshire in Santa Monica, which was bigger, but we still were completely full, outgrowing these theaters. So then I went to the Wadsworth theater where the UCLA program used to be done and I proposed doing it with them. So we’ve been doing it there for the last year and a half, two years at the Wadsworth. We’re getting a big crowd. It keeps growing. Some of these people used to take the UCLA Extension program – they still do a program, but these people liked me more than the people that they now have at UCLA, so they followed me to my series. I’ve got a lot of those same people, and new people keep finding out about it also. It’s great.

Q: How do you get the access and cooperation from the studios and the filmmakers?

It’s a lot of effort, let’s say. Some people contact me and they really want to do it. Other people, I pursue, sometimes strenuously. It’s not necessarily that they don’t want to do it, but schedules are complicated and they’re not sure who’s going to be here when, or who’s going to be available. I have to be very persistent and keep after them and keep trying to come up with suggestions. Sometimes I contact people that I know or have some contact with directly like a producer or a film director or writer, which can be helpful. Anyway, you have to spend a lot of time doing it, and I can’t rely completely on studio publicity departments because they have a lot of requests and people who want to show their movies for all different kinds of programs and they sometimes get a little blasé. So it does require a persistent effort to pin these things down.

Q: Has anyone been rude or brusque about turning you down?

I don’t know about that. Certain things you learn. From a studio’s point of view, they’re not likely to cooperate with some big summer blockbuster because there’s no upside for them. They have built-in audience interest. Why show it and risk some people not liking it in an advance screening like this? After having tried a few of those, I don’t really even pursue that kind of movie anymore because I realize that it’s not the type of thing that they’re likely to participate in.

Q: Is it a year-round thing?

Yeah, I do it all year, with some breaks. Different times of year, different kinds of movies are out. In the summer, it’s always a challenge because I’m not going to get these big studio tentpole movies, so I have to come up with alternatives. Fortunately, there are enough of those now, there’s a lot of counter-programming. Not everything is Pirates 3.

Q: Do you have any personal favorite interviews?

I’ve had a few people that have done it repeatedly, that have enjoyed it very much and been very cooperative. Sydney Pollack, I think I’ve shown eight of his movies. Ed Zwick, I think I’ve shown every one of his movies and he’s come to do it. Some people have really enjoyed it and had a good experience. They enjoyed holding forth before an audience and hearing what people have to say about it, so that makes it fun. Just this fall, when we did Kite Runner, that was really a high point because I ended up getting seven people from the movie to come and speak, including the author of the novel. That was unexpected, but he came at the last minute, he happened to be in town. The audience was so excited. He, to certain people, is as big a star as any actor, so that was exciting, plus the four stars of the movie, two of the producers. It was a very stimulating discussion with a lot of very important people involved with the movie. That can be a lot of fun, when you get a large contingent of people from the movie. The Killing Fields was another one from a long time ago, where we also ended up having the director, the two stars of the movie and the two real-life people whose stories had inspired the movie. Everybody happened to be there.

Q: How about in terms of fan response? Certain actors do draw crazy people.

That does happen. David Duchovny, we spoke about a movie he directed a couple years ago called House of D, and there was advertising that he was going to be there, so there were some stalker-types. People who you feel like they don’t really see a lot of movies, they just wanted to see him as a personality. I remember somebody asked him at one point “do you still live in Los Angeles?” Like they wanted his address. He was very funny about it. “Yes? What’s your point exactly?”

And then there was Andy Garcia – there’s some woman who tracks him all over the world, like a fan club or whatever. She came in from Tokyo or something and she knew he was going to be there that night.

Q: I wouldn’t have pegged Andy Garcia as the stalker-having type.

Everybody and anybody who is a good-looking actor is going to have some people like that, even if they’re not the biggest star in the world. An attractive actor or actress, yes, they’re going to have people who follow them. Neve Campbell, we had for one of her movies, and again there were people that were huge fans of hers. It’s maybe not large numbers, but all these people have their little fan clubs that are obsessed with them. So many people have this following.

Q: Have you had any particularly troubling or frustrating interviews?

I haven’t really had that problem, because generally people like that are just not going to come at all. We were showing a couple of movies this fall with Joaquin Phoenix, and I’ve interviewed him and it’s very hard getting anything out of him. They said ‘well, I think it’s highly unlikely that Joaquin is going to do this.’ He just doesn’t appear before audiences. He’s just not the kind of personality who enjoys that situation. It’s interesting – I find that generally when people do agree to show up that they’re willing to participate. Robin Williams I had once, and that’s a different problem, which is that you can’t control him. It’s not that he’s not going to have a lot to say, it’s that he’s not going to answer the questions. He’s going to go off on his own little riffs, which is fine. I just realized after a few minutes I’m gonna just stay out of his way. There’s nothing I can ask, whatever I could ask, he’’s just going to turn it around on me as some kind of a joke and go off on his own thing. But it was a lot of fun and the audience loved it. I just had to be a good sport about it.

Q: What are your top five films of all time at the moment?

Lawrence of Arabia, I always put that on. 8 ½, which is such a great European movie. Anybody who loves movies – it’s just such a visual experience. Notorious, which I just saw again recently. A lot of Hitchcock movies you could put on there, but that’s just a perfect movie that holds up so well. I screened it for a group of people, some of whom hadn’t seen it in years, some of whom hadn’t seen it at all, and everybody just marveled at what a great movie it was. The Manchurian Candidate, the original one, I think is fantastic. I’ve seen that so many times. I marvel at the inventiveness of it, it doesn’t get stale. Meet Me in St. Louis, a musical that is also just irresistible any time you see it. I saw that just a few weeks ago again, so that’s why it’s fresh in my mind.

Q: Does Reel Talk ever have classic movie nights?

We thought about that. We did do a movie musical series because we were doing it with a group, a reprise that puts on these revivals of old musicals. That was fun, but we really didn’t draw that big an audience. We weren’t getting much of a response. I’d like to do that again. You’ve really got to get the word out to people, because my audience is not particularly interested in coming out to see older films. They want to see new movies. There are obviously other people who wanted to come out to see older films, and they go to the Cinematheque or some other place. We really have to tap into that and build a whole other audience, and that requires some effort. I’d like to do it, but it’s a big marketing push to make that work as a new enterprise. The Cinematheque has been doing it for a number of years, so they’ve built an audience.

Q: Do you have any thoughts the latest Reel Talk, with Laura Linney and wirter/director Tamara Jenkins of The Savages?

I thought both of them were very good, they had things to say and the audience enjoyed seeing them. I was thinking this movie might be a little close to home for some of the people in the audience. We have a lot of older people that could maybe find this movie a little painful, but they seemed to like the movie. Everybody was impressed by the performances. It played quite well, moreso than I thought it might. The questions were pretty good from the audience. Sometimes they’re not, but last night they were all on target.

Q: What’s the worst question from the audience you’ve heard?

We showed Juno. <a href=”http://www.fancast.com/people/Ellen-Page/19206/main”.Ellen Page plays this teenage girl who gets pregnant. This is just an example, but there were shots of her getting ultrasounds with her stomach, so someone in the audience asked “Was she really pregnant? She certainly looked like it!” I said “what do you know? There’s such a thing as acting and prosthetic devices.” Sometimes people are very literal-minded in their questions. I wouldn’t say that’s the worst one, but it’s a recent one that comes to mind that was pretty stupid.

Q: So you’ve got Romance and Cigarettes coming up. What do you think about that film?

Well, it’s a very bizarre, out-there movie. The cast is excellent and I admired the fact that it mixed all these different moods and tried to hit all these very discordant emotional notes. It was a very audacious movie. I wasn’t 100% behind it, but I just enjoyed the inventiveness of it.

Q: Do you get to screen every movie before you put it up?

Usually, yes. Sweeney Todd we’re showing, I haven’t seen that yet. I probably will before our screening on the 10th, but I booked it because I thought people would be interested. I have no idea what it’ll be like.

Q: Are there any movies you wouldn’t show, or subject matter you don’t take on?

I’d be wary of showing a horror movie that was really violent. The audience is pretty squeamish. I certainly wouldn’t show – and I don’t think they’d want me to show it, the studios wouldn’t give me a Saw movie. It’s not like they want me to show it and I’m turning it down, but that’s the kind of movie that the audience will not like. I don’t even know if a movie like No Country for Old Men might be too much for some of the people in the audience. I think they’d want to see it just because it’s been talked about, but it would be hard for some of the people to watch. I remember a number of years ago, I showed Shallow Grave, an arty horror movie that I really liked a lot and ugh, a lot of people just hated it. That was not as extreme as a lot of other movies in that genre, but it was beyond the tolerance level of a lot of people in the audience. That’s my main thing – violence in movies I have to be wary of.

Q: Any issues with excessive sex?

Not so much, no. If something was really a hardcore porno movie, some people would balk, but on the whole, sex is not as sensitive a subject as extreme violence.

Q: Has there been anything that you HAD to turn down?

It’s interesting. I may have made a mistake with this, but you know Monster with Charlize Theron? They wanted me to show that, and I turned that down because I felt it was going to be too extreme for the audience. I think it would’ve been at the time before it came out. Once it won the Oscar and everything, then I think people would’ve been more prepared for it and would’ve wanted to see it, but I didn’t anticipate that that was going to happen. I just thought this was a little beyond the pale of what my audience can tolerate, and I may have been wrong about that. Things about a serial killer, that’s a subject that I’d be very wary of, no matter who was involved.

Q: You’ve got Look coming up, too.

That’s a much more out-there, kind of experimental indie film, but I think they’ll find it interesting. There are some people who are pretty square and prefer mainstream movies, but other people welcome the more experimental movies, I don’t know. Speaking of sex, I did show this movie last year called Sleeping Dogs Lie [a fun and oddly touching Bobcat Goldthwait-directed comedy centering around whether or not a woman should disclose to her fiance the fact that once, on a dumb whim while in college, fellated her dog], and that was the kind of thing that was a little too much for some of the people in the audience. It wasn’t anything that explicit, but the concept was just too much for some of the people there, but on the other hand there were some people who loved it, so I’m not sorry I showed it. Certain sexual things are a bit extreme for the conservative people in the audience, but it doesn’t stop me from doing it.

Q: Do you have a Bottom 5 of all time, worst movies you’ve ever seen? Anything that sticks out in your mind?

I don’t know if these are the worst movies I’ve ever seen, but the first Pirates of the Caribbean, I walked out of. I thought it was that bad. I could not tolerate it, and I didn’t see parts 2 and 3. That’s a movie that’s a huge box office success that I could not fathom.

Q: I know that feeling. I kinda hated The Matrix myself.

The Matrix, I did not like, either. I couldn’t stand it. I went to see part 2 and I don’t know why, because I didn’t like part 1. I don’t know I’d say that it’s one of the five worst, but I’m not a fan. Some people love it. Big Wednesday, a John Milius movie about surfing back in the 70s, that was one that I thought was horrendously bad. It was the most pretentious kind of thing. It’s one thing that if it had been a light-hearted surfing movie, but it was trying to be an epic, serious movie ode to surfers. I just found it idiotic.

Q: What’s the worst movie you’ve shown at your series, that you’ve maybe regretted?

There was one that was really bad called The Man with Bogart’s Face – a spoof of Humphrey Bogart – and I showed it sight unseen because the people who made it really wanted to show it, and I just thought it was awful, and yet a lot of the audience really liked it. So that’s an example where my own taste wouldn’t necessarily be in sync with the audience, because if I had seen it, I’d never have shown it. On the other hand, about violence again, but you probably never saw this movie – White of the Eye directed by Donald Cammell. It was about a serial killer, but kind of an artistic treatment of the subject. I thought it was a very interesting film, but that was one the audience so hated they were ready to string me up, and they were giving him a hard time, too, to the extent that he ended up actually killing himself a number of years later, the director Donald Cammell. He talked about in an interview – I don’t know if this was one of the things that led him to suicide, but it was a memorably bad evening for him, having it shown at my class and being lambasted by everybody in the audience. I’m a little more careful now. I haven’t had things recently that have outraged large numbers of people. It’s always interesting, because there are surprising things that they might like or not like as much as I would think they would.