Last weekend, thousands of the world’s most passionate and obsessive movie fans came down on Hollywood for the 16th annual TCM Classic Film Festivalthat provided opportunities to see everything from “Gunfight at the OK Corral” and “Weas No Angels” projected in true Showed To nitrate pressure of “Daisy Kenyon” and “Mildred Pierce” at the Egyptian theater, one of only five places in the country that can screen that format. There was also a restoration of a silent classic with live accompaniment (“Beautiful gesture“), A BFI restoration of Ernst Lubitsch’s timeless – and fast – comedy” to be or not to be “, and a tribute to the groundbreaking director Michael Schultz, among many other delightful programs.
It is difficult to choose a favorite event from such a stacked weekend, but for pure film -valid pleasure it was difficult to beat the 35th anniversary show of “Misery“As shown in the legendary TCL-Kinesian theater to a crowded crowd. The movie itself-a diabolically funny and scary two-hand there obsessive fan Kathy Bates Keeping author James Caan hostage after he suffers from a debilitating accident – playing better than ever, and after the audience was done and screamed for 107 minutes in a row, they were treated for an even more special treatment than seeing “misery” on a huge screen: hearing Bates and director Rob Reiner Discuss the movie Live with TCM -host Dave Karger.
Reiner started the evening by saying how happy he was to see that the movie was still playing for a crowd. “I was surprised at how many laughs are there,” he said, leaving that he was also surprised to see how well Caan and Bates came over on the screen together with regard to their different working methods. “They will act in very different ways. Kathy is a brilliant stage actress and Jimmy did not want any repetition, he just wanted to be instinctive. So we found a way to practice more than Jimmy Ville and less than Kathy Ville, but it works.”
Apart from not being as much repetition as she would have liked, Bates had only big things to say about her experience on “misery” – even though she acknowledged that she was disappointed that Reiner faded into the novel, and cut a scene where her character ran someone over with a lawnmower and downgrade of Caan’s footing to a silent. “I was crushed that you took it out,” Bates told Reiner, who defended himself by saying that he felt that Caan’s character should not have to lose anything after he had learned something. “I didn’t agree with it at all,” Bates said.
While Reiner said he knew Bates was his Annie Wilkes after only a few minutes of her audition, was to throw Caan’s role much more difficult. Actors who rejected the role included William Hurt, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Harrison Ford, Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Kline, Michael Douglas, Robert Redford and Gene Hackman. At one point, Warren Beatty was attached and did what Reiner says was an important contribution to the script rewrites.
“He said,” This is not a horror movie. This is not a thriller, “said Reiner.” “This is a prison movie. This man is in prison and he must be as smart as you to try to find out how to come out of prison.” Reiner says that he and producer Andrew Scheinman, who writes about the script after William Goldman left the project, spent on the history of The script that I thought was airtight. And then Beatty said: “I don’t know if I want to do it.”
Reiner also offered the part to Richard Dreyfuss, who had rejected Reiner’s before film And regret it. “I had offered him the leading part of” When Harry met Sally … “, and he said,” You have a good director but not a good script, “said Reiner.” I thought, “Jesus, it’s Nora Ephron, one of the big writers!” “After” Harry “came out and became a huge hit. is, I’ll do it. ”And then he rejected us! ”
Caan turned out to be the perfect person for the role, both because the differences between his and Bate’s approach created automatic tension and because his athletics made him feel so trapped in bed where he spent most of the film. “He was the biggest physical athlete,” Reiner said. “He was in Rodeo – the only Jewish cowboy that I ever met. I thought it was perfect that he would be so limited. I would be setting every day and just say to him: ‘Listen, Jimmy, in this scene … you’re in bed.’
Bates said that Caan’s physics made its climate fighting scene extremely convincing. “I think he played every sport known to the man,” she said. “He was built like a brick.” Bates credited stunt coordinator David Ellis, who would continue to direct two “final destination” films and “snakes on one plane”, with choreography of the struggle to look as violent as possible. “We worked out all the movements and everything, and when it was time to shoot it we put a bit in the floor so that my head would not be so badly hurt. But he really had to slap my head in the floor, and it was upsetting to be on the other side of it. Thanks and I have never been in a relationship like it – I guess it is still.”
It got a laugh from the TCM audience, as well as one of Bate’s other observations. “I had an interview recently where someone asked,” which character are you most, “and I said Annie Wilkes,” she said. “I become manic and I can come down, and sometimes I can be obsessed with someone really talented.” Reiner nodded and said about the psychotic Annie, “Everyone releases steam every now and then.”
Bates admitted that when she saw “misery” for the first time she had no idea what she and Reiner and Caan had pulled off. “I thought it was the end of my career,” she said. “I was frightened.” When Bates ultimately was nominated for an Oscar for her performance, Reiner told her that she knew if she wanted to, but there was little chance she won because the academy did not respond to horror films. She told Reiner that she could still remember his reaction when she won the Oscar award. “You just got up and went, ‘YEEAAAAAAH!’ ‘
