Posted on 8/11/2005, 9:03:46 AM by beaversmom
LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com)-
When James Woods talks, people listen.
Part of that has to do with Woods' resume, which includes two Oscar nominations (for "Salvador" and "Ghosts of Mississippi"), two Emmys (for the telefilms "Promise" and "My Name is Bill W.") and becoming a human VCR in "Videodrome."
A larger part of the listening equation, though, is based on pure biology. Over the years, Woods has seemingly evolved beyond the need to breathe. Name the subject and Woods can embark on a punctuation-free staccato monologue, leaving both reporters and co-stars occasionally unable to interject or contribute. Talking with the press to promote his upcoming indie comedy "Pretty Persuasion," Woods is paired with Evan Rachel Wood, but within minutes Wood, the 17-year-old star of the high school satire, is reduced to giggling nervously.
"I'd really decided I don't want to act anymore," Woods says. "People say 'Why?' and I go, 'Have you been to the movies lately?' They're just horrible, as everybody knows now. They've gotten so bad."
It's true that Woods, once one of the industry's most prolific actors, basically took 2004 off before returning this year with "Be Cool" and now "Pretty Persuasion," a Sundance entry in which he plays the virulently racist father of a troubled teenager. It's not that Woods hasn't been tempted. He tells of unearthing a pile of some 30 or 40 scripts he was offered and realizing that while every single one had been made and released, he didn't regret a single miss.
"Not one of these movies was anything but a cast-iron turkey," he says. "It was just horrible. They'd all been made. They were all with talented people, just badly done because the marketing departments and some politically correct people at the studio thought they should be done a certain way and put their two cents in and destroyed the movie."
He continues, without pause, "If you ran any other business this way, you'd be out of business in 10 minutes. It's like, 'How about I make 100 cars and 98 of them stink and crash and blow up on the highway and two are like OK and they give us enough revenue.' Do you know how hard it is to get five nominees for the Oscars? They go, 'Are you kidding with that movie?' Well there's no other movies. The other 595 stink."
"Be Cool" was Woods' first studio movie in around three years and the big budget productions draw much of the actor's ire.
"I've been on movies where the money that's spent is so profligate that it's mindboggling," he says. "I'm not a big liberal, but I have to say, the first thing you think of is 'You could feed a nation with the money you're wasting on this movie, with people's vanity.'"
Woods mentions his "True Crime" director Clint Eastwood as one of the few people in the industry who know how to shoot fast, shoot cheap and shoot well while still working within the studio confines. Otherwise, he prefers working on smaller movies like "Persuasion," which was shot in just over 20 days.
"I've been on things where there are 15 motor homes and they've all got their punch-outs and everybody's complaining that they don't have their satellite dish and I'm thinking, 'Maybe you should be concentrating on the scene instead of worrying about your stupid satellite dish and your motor home.' But they reason they're having to worry about it is because they sit there all day because nobody bothers to think about the fact that they're human beings and maybe they don't want to sit in a tin box all day long for 14 hours and not be used, because they're taking so long and deliberating so long on some crappy little scene that should be done in two hours. But they're so spoiled and narcissistic."
He pauses, fleetingly, "Well you don't have time to be spoiled and narcissistic in an environment like this, so you end up doing good work."
Did he mention that he's not a big liberal?
"Independent films are a conservative's dream," gushes Woods. "They're a meritocracy. You either gotta do the work or you get fired, because you don't have time to give somebody a free ride and you don't have the money, so you've gotta actually do the work. You can't have nepotism and all that stuff. You've actually gotta do the job -- get the job because you deserve it and do it well and get out."
Of course, it's not just Woods' distaste for the studio system that has left him without a great desire to work. Woods, who may have already mentioned that he isn't a big liberal, has issues with the way most writers are choosing to represent his demographic these days.
"In this politically correct era, the middle-aged heterosexual white guy gets to play one part, he gets to play the asshole in the suit," Woods grouses. "That's the only part they make anymore. That's the only part there is for a white heterosexual guy. Sorry, but it's the truth. Even when he's the hero now: Like Tom Cruise in 'War of the Worlds,' he's the hero, right? Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise, H.G. Wells, how do you top that? They do a remarkable job of how the make the movie and so on, but he has to be a father who's a lousy parent, a terrible ex-husband, blah blah blah."
After the desire for oxygen temporarily kicks in: "You can't be a heterosexual white guy and be a hero anymore. You've gotta be really flawed and really bad and a piece of crap. Otherwise, the marketing department says, 'You can't have white guys be decent people. They're the enemy. They only put a man on the Moon and wrote 'Hamlet.' Why should we let them have any cred?'"
It's something of a relief that at least Woods shows no interest in debating the veracity of the Moon landing or questioning the authorship of Shakespeare's plays.
"With all due respect, I don't want to be doing this [publicity], but I'm thrilled to be doing it for this movie with all of you, because (A) You care and (B) They care enough to have made a movie that's the kind of movie that should be made," he explains.
"Pretty Persuasion," the kind of movie James Woods thinks should be made, opens in limited release on Friday, Aug. 12.
One word: Videodrome.
We cut back on the cable bill by dumping the movie channels. So, I started watching the old movies on TV that are free.
I was really surprised.
The older movies include this thing that my Dad says is called a "plot". It's pretty cool someone should try doing that again someday, it makes the movie much more enjoyable.
The "I hate movies, but I'm promoting a movie" publicity pitch...And what the world wants to know about is that thing with Sean Young.
Thats Hollywood in a nut shell. Talentless people who got thier jobs because of who they knew or were related too. Proof that Hollywood now lacks talent - Rent Stone's Alexander. Terrible everything.
Computer Simulations (ie - computer games) are much more entertaining.
The left destroyed the American art scene.
..and it wasn't an accident.
bttt
Bump!
The commie pink-os have hijacked hollywood. And since all the halfway intelligent people are not commie pink-os, that means hollywood is only left itself with idiots. So now all the movies stink.
"In this politically correct era, the middle-aged heterosexual white guy gets to play one part, he gets to play the asshole in the suit,"
That's about the size of it.
Woods is great but, he is still playing a angry white guy in his new movie. I guess he said that's all they write.....
TCM and Fox Movie Channel gives me all I need. Last night was a double bill of "Two Girls and a Sailor" (the Harry James band and Jimmy Durante - awesome) and "Cabin in the Sky" with Ethel Waters, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, Lena Horne and Louis Armstrong (also awesome). You don't get that kind of star power in Hollywierd these days!
Movies were always "big money" projects, going back to the studio days. That's why Chaplin et al formed United Artists.
What's changed is that movies now have a global market. The film has to appeal to the guy in Cleveland and the guy in New Dehli and the guy in Paris.
Off of IMDB.COM:
User Comments:
1 out of 4 people found the following comment useful:-
Extremely Disappointing. Not worth the hype., 10 August 2005
Author: akflave from United States
Absolutely dreadful.
The movie is terribly written, with a pathetic attempt at social commentary at the end, and a plot that doesn't make sense.
Any attempt to shock the viewer fails, as the viewer loses interest in the movie's universe. Words become meaningless and the plot doesn't add it up.
The movie is alternately predictable and shocking in its failure to fashion a coherent plot.
The acting is solid. However, not even the actors can overcome a failed plot. I wanted so badly to find interest in the movie, but I left dumbfounded.
Not all of them.
I seldom watch movies in a theatre. What movies I do watch come my way through the cable. Occasionally, I'll find something quite good and sometimes something rather surprisingly good.
I really enjoyed "We Were Soldiers" especially since it pretty much conformed to the two or three documentaries I had seen about the battle of Ia Drang valley. I hope "The Great Raid" will be another movie that relies on a true story to make it great.
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