Reviews: Esoteric, Exotic and Obscure

Standing Up, Sitting Down

Standing Up, Falling Down
WRITTEN BY Peter Hoare
DIRECTED BY Matt Ratner
RATING: R
RUNTIME: 91 minutes

Watching an actor do something unexpected can bring a welcome frisson to almost any project. Consider Daniel Craig’s rollicking turn as a redneck thief in Steven Soderbergh’s Logan Lucky, (my seatmate didn’t even realize she was watching Craig until the closing credits of the film) or Gene Hackman, in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein as the lonely good Samaritan looking to share cigars and espresso with Peter Boyle’s monster. It’s thrilling to see a performance that makes you realize how versatile some performers are and how their work livens up what could be an ordinary film. To the list of actors looking to broaden their range, we can now add Billy Crystal. Far removed from the days of such of his monster hits as City Slickers, When Harry Met Sally and Analyze This, Crystal has spent much of the aughts as a still-in-demand talk guest and touring with 700 Sundays, the one-man show that he wrote with Alan Zweibel. No matter the scope of the film, though, Crystal is still a welcome presence whenever he shows up. And he truly does show up in Standing Up, Falling Down, a charmingly modest dramedy about what we want from life and what it chooses to let us have. Set on Crystal’s native Long Island, Standing Up, Falling Down is the story of two guys who find friendship amid the relative wreckage of each of their lives. When we meet Scott (Ben Schwartz, House of Lies) he’s performing standup in an L.A. coffee shop in the middle of the day. Returning to his hometown and sheepishly moving back in with his parents, 32-year-old Scott lacks direction, motivation and has nothing more than the tight five that he can work at local open-mic nights. While his mother (Debra Monk, Mozart in the Jungle) is thrilled to have him back, Dad (Kevin Dunn, Veep) is less enamored of his grown, jobless son bunking at the homestead. Enter dermatologist Marty. Jovial, but emitting a whiff of loneliness, Marty frequents a local watering hole where he kibitzes, flirts and pesters the regulars. Marty and Scott become fast friends, with talk of regrets and disappointment leavened by joints and Jaeger bombs. Like an old comedy team, the lanky, angular Schwartz, with a blast of hair that appears to add three inches to his height, and the elfin Crystal, working without his hairpiece, are physical opposites, but emotional doppelgangers, who play off each other with a relaxed brio that reveals how vital each is becoming to the other. The edgy Scott is dealing with his first big disappointment, while resigned, melancholy Marty is navigating only the latest one in his own life and their May-December bromance is a soothing salve to the knocks each man has endured. While Peter Hoare’s script for Standing Up, Falling Down follows a linear and somewhat predictable path, Matt Ratner's direction keeps the film from veering too far into melodrama. In keeping the movie to a tidy 90 minutes, though, Ratner gives short shrift to performances which appear to have ended up being nearly excised; Jill Hennessy (Crossing Jordan), whose penetrating gaze and sweet, smoky voice are always welcome, is onscreen for only about a minute. Too, Nate Corddry (Fosse/Verdon), as Marty’s resentful son, isn’t given much to work with. However, Grace Gummer (Mr. Robot) makes the most of her screen time as Scott’s snippy and equally underachieving sister. The wintry Long Island locales give Standing Up, Falling Down a crisp look and center the film and its characters; you can see why Scott wanted to get out as much as you can understand what makes Marty stay. In addition, the setting reinforces the somewhat cliché plot thread of Scott once again pursuing the girl who got away – or, in this case, stayed home during Scott’s failed west coast sojourn. Though its story doesn’t break new ground, Standing Up, Falling Down is a welcome vehicle for Crystal, portraying a guy numbing the numerous pains in his life with a little pity and a little more booze. A true pro, Crystal never overplays for the audience’s sympathy – Marty owns his mistakes and the results of them, but he never stops trying to fix them. Crystal depicts a character struggling to maintain his dignity even as he tries to make amends to those close to him. Watching him do so is a reminder of the range of his abilities and what a winning performer he’s always been. Despite its flaws, Standing Up, Falling Down is a winner, with Ben Schwartz and Billy Crystal delivering observant, incisive and funny performances as two guys who take the lemons life gives them and grab the bittersweet zest from them.

This is damned impressive.

Acting! Brilliant! Thank you!
I finally remembered to record an episode of L&O:CI 90210 NCISLA with Goldblum in it. If you get a chance, grab an episode that he’s in and look at the opening. As they do on all the L&O shows, after they show the stills of the cast, there’s the part where all the principals stride purposefully toward the camera. Honest to God, I watched it ten times because I needed to make sure of this, but you can tell that Goldblum was fucking around every time they shot it and they ended up using the least objectionable one. He’s walking toward the camera with this fey little grin on his face and he’s almost skipping, and maybe three frames before they cut, you can see Bogosian starting to laugh. Priceless.

The Dea(r)th of Privacy

This was posted on someone's Facebook page, right out there for public consumption: "Whoever recommended against me for a job i am pursuing: shame on you. i am perfect for it. shame on you."

For whose benefit was that posted? Was it someone she was friends with that slagged her and kept her from getting the gig? No. She was just pouting publicly. Why do people get off on that? And there are responses to it! About how people are just jealous or threatened.

Last night, another of my "friends" posted that she was going to "going upstairs to cuddle with her handsome hubby." When did nothing become private? And if you're going to announce to the world that you're going to have sex, don't be coy about it. Post positions, accessories, duration, method of birth control. Enquiring minds want to know!

I can’t really fathom the pathology of passing on the minutiae of one’s day, the minuscule crumbs of accomplishment – or lack thereof – that constitute the “updates.” And, yes, people often forget the difference between wall posting and messages, which makes for some interesting reading sometimes.

Maybe it’s a stretch, but I also think it’s the same culture that’s given rise to the “Town Hall” buffoonery of everybody screaming at their representatives as if they just had their houses TP’ed. The public displays, of grievance, violation, injustice, and anger, whether in the town hall or on Facebook, are just opportunities for self-indulgence, people trying to themselves believe that others care what they have to say.

I responded to an online posting for a writer/producer tonight.

Description
Television Writer / Producer (Senior) - NY, NY.

Hey, let's call a spade a spade before we go any further. We could not be any more excited about having this opportunity and this client willing to trust us. Who are we but some dopey small Recruiting firm and that these guys had enough faith in us to give us a shot at filling this is an honor I will take with me certainly to lunch...and possibly dinner but will absolutely be forgotten about by dessert so there you have it...

Let's get to it. The primary responsibility of this position is to WRITE & PRODUCE...Duh! Okay, more than that is to be a creative resource for all their network promotions on-air and online, as well as conceptualizing original show packages.

You'll be responsible for writing and producing compelling on and off-air promotion, radio spots and sales tapes that fully convey the tone of the network and oversee projects from inspiration to final delivery, including conceptualizing, writing, and managing editorial, graphics production, music composition and sound design.

You'll communicate concepts and ideas to editors, designers, talent, etc, making sure all elements conform to the brand look and the mission of the network as well as overseeing the writing and production of in-show and in-event promotions.

Sounds cool doesn't it? Well it is. Now how do you qualify for that job?

You'll need at least 5 years national cable or network television experience as a writer / producer and prior work in a sports or sports entertainment related role is an absolute must; and a related 4 year degree from a school you actually have to attend and not mail in for would be nice too. You'll also have a plethora or experience in short-form promotion required and unlike me have a top notch creative mind with equally impressive communications skills, especially writing, design and music direction.

So what else is it that you'll need? Well, experience overseeing shoots a plus. The ability to conceptualize beyond the ordinary is a must... and you must fully understand the value of brand building and be flexible, detail-oriented, deadline driven and a great collaborator.

So now you've read it (hopefully anyhow...hey a guy can dream can't he?) and are wondering does this one make sense for me financially? If $70-$90K works for you and you meet the requirements then we should talk right away...

The aggressively casual voice of the ad was weird but I sent a resume to the guy at about 6:30 this evening. At 6:32, the phone rang. His name was Mitch Beck and he was the recruiter. He told me almost immediately that the company was Versus, where I did one job over a year ago, so I knew there was nothing to talk about. He, however, had a lot to say.

The part of my resume about working as a producer for Howard Stern's show really got him talking, primarily about the fact that he was in radio for 25 years from the time he was sixteen and how he was doing Howard stuff before even Howard was. And how he was doing it in Michigan where there are “like, 45 or 50 counties and (he) was on in 26 of them.” How Stern was right about Imus being a washed-up hack and how he coasted for too long doing “Moby Worm” and how the FAN’s morning show is down from a 2.6 to a 2.1, “which doesn’t sound like a lot, but that’s almost a third of the audience. It’s all how you present it.”

And how he was being courted by Rush Limbaugh’s producer to be the “moderate Rush,” but he turned down the five million they offered because he was going to have to be something he wasn’t. And how he had a gig down in Orlando a number of years ago when he couldn’t get arrested and they were only going to pay him 50 grand, but the day the moving truck was to come to his house, the station cut the offer to 30k, which he was still willing to take. Finally, the next day they cut him loose because “they spent a million and a half to pick up Stern.” Soon after, he mentions that he was “number one in Reno” and that his stint at Real Radio 104 in Florida provided “the only positive press they got in four years.”

And he hasn’t even gotten started. Because he asks me about Stern and I launch into my boilerplate about seeing behind the curtain and all that shit. And he, weirdly, starts praising Stern for knowing that “he should never be bigger than the advertisers.”

He mentions his “cutting-edge” method for getting stations to listen to his demo in the pre-internet days: buying a “high-end” answering machine which would re-cue his demo reel every time someone called his 800 number. Then, when the bill arrived, he would check which caller listened to more than half of his five-minute demo. I asked him how many offers resulted from this space age method and he said “none.”

Then he claimed he had been blackballed by a major radio consultant and he’s been “miserable,” because all he “ever wanted to do was radio.”

(As this is going on, his toddler daughter is playing in the background and he periodically has to chide her for doing something to the dog. At one point, he actually says “do you want a spanking?”)

But Mitch Beck’s eleven-o’clock number was still to come. Now that the door to raunch radio was open, Mitch took the opportunity to walk right through it by offering that he hopes that Opie and Anthony contract “dick cancer.”

“Those two shitheads,” according to Mitch, have been making his life a living hell for the last two-plus years. It all started innocently enough when O&A started to enlist their fans to disturb live, on-location news reports by acting like imbeciles in the background. So far, so good. Just another wacky radio prank. But then two of these sub-literate morons incited channel 2’s Arthur Chi’en to ask them “what the fuck” they were doing with an open mike. Chi’en gets shitcanned, ends up at channel 11, two halfwits laugh all the way home to their mother’s basements.

A few days after the incident, Richard Huff, who I think writes for the Post, writes a column excoriating the duo for encouraging the behavior. Mitch Beck, who says he often pens stories for Hockey magazine (and appears on some of the XM hockey shows, “not as a fan, but, like, an analyst”), writes an e-mail to Huff, who publishes it online with Beck’s e-mail address.

O&A read the letter on the air and broadcast not only Beck’s e-mail, but his home address and phone number. Remember, I’m quoting Mitch Beck here. As a result of his information being made public, Beck claims he was subject to death threats, inundated with subscriptions to gay porn magazines, bombarded with over 17,000 harassing e-mails, and was the recipient of packages full of everything from human feces to drugs to a raccoon head.

He claims that some of the O&A “pests” put his picture on gay websites. He got hundreds of invasive and menacing phone calls. He ended up closing his executive recruitment business for nearly three months to try to regain control of his life.

At one point, Beck claims, he answered a call on his speakerphone with his then-two-year-old son present. The caller made threats that Beck says terrified his son, who was plagued with nightmares and needed professional help. Mind you, I get this part of the story after Mitch claims that “my son is very smart! He was talking at seven months! Full sentences at ten months!”

His monthly nut is 13k. He told me that as a means of letting me know that his life savings are gone and he’s gone from yearly income of 400,000 dollars to about 150,000 last year.

He e-mailed Opie and Anthony in the hopes that he could appeal to them to stop attacking, but he was blown off by them, and, he claims, by XM management and by Richard Huff, who refused to get involved.

“I was on the air 25 years and I never attacked anyone!” he says, at about the 35-minute mark in the phone call. “Howard makes fun of people but he’s laughing with them, not at them. He’s not…”

He struggles for the word and I offer “hateful.”

“Yeah, hateful.”

You talk about plucking crazy right out of the ether. I should have known something was awry when he responded to my e-mail less than three minutes after I sent it. I just thought I had great luck and this guy just happened to be sitting there when my one-of-a-kind resume came zooming onto his screen and he wondered where I’d been hiding myself all along and has he got an opportunity for me!

To get some idea of how far it was from that, read below.

Chris,

Do me a favor and go to www.versus.com and fill out the application on line for the Senior Writer Producer position. It’ll ask you for the way that you were referred to them and if you would please write my company’s name, Crossroads Consulting, LLC in that place. I think it also asks for a cover letter and if you could put that in there as well it would help me an enormous amount.

Once again, I want to thank you for the conversation. I know I did most of the talking and I’m sorry if I chewed your ear off, but as you might imagine it’s a pretty sensitive issue for me. You showed me a lot of compassion and heart and because of that I’m going to make every effort I can to help you find something.

Again, thank you and have a great evening…

His website is http://www.crossroadsconsulting.com/

Does a Second Career Necessitate a First One?

If you had asked me at 24 whether I would be teaching preschool at 44, the answer would have been "I certainly hope not." Actually, it would have been "fuck, no." Such is the folly and faux-foresight of the young, as here I am, an almost-old man in a world of mostly-young women. Be careful what you don't wish for.

So twenty years of working among virtual children in the form of network executives has given way to spending my days with actual ones. I had had enough of going into every new gig with eyes wide open, free of guile and suspicion, only to find myself as the returning champion in another game of "Watch Your Back." ("With your Watchmaster, Jim Lange!")

Twenty years of guys who needed it taken "to the next level," but who rigged the staircase that went there with explosives. Network execs who were self-described "aesthetes" and came bearing offbeat music choices, ironic eyewear and hilarious tales of being the sole sporters of bowties in their high schools. Guys who had graduated summa cum buttmunch from the University of Mediocre with a degree in post-modern sycophancy.

So it gets to a point. The slowly-closing window of opportunity draws nearer the sash. Or you find yourself writing one too many lines like that. Or the business changes, as they all do. Once, in the early 90s, it was Big Sky country, as cable nets like Comedy Central and Nick at Nite ran like stallions and grazed in the fertile pastures of creative freedom, with nary a land baron in sight. But at century's turn, they broke those pretty horses, sapped them of their spirit, slapped a corporate name on 'em and penned 'em.

Thanks for joining us tonight on "Troweled-On Metaphor."

So you start to wonder what to do next. And not next like what the investment companies say it should be, collecting pre-Cambrian artifacts outside Morocco or building a teakwood sailboat to dock at your winery. Next like, mid-40s with a good 25 years of work ahead. Next like, a profession where ideas aren't subject to the whims of people who think...well, people who don't think.

And that has led me here.