Billy The Kid - Q&A

The official Billy the Kid site includes this synopsis:

"BILLY THE KID is a sensitive and humorous vérité portrait of Billy, a 15-year-old outsider growing up in small-town Maine. Billy appears, in many ways, like other teenage boys. He's into heavy metal and martial arts, is desperate to find a girlfriend, and aspires to a career as an actor and rock star. Yet in other ways Billy is unique. A troubled past and ongoing behavioral issues have left him marked. But he is unapologetic about his personality and refuses to be victimized, creating his own techniques to help him survive in an environment of pain, conformity, and prejudice. Billy is funny, sharp, strangely wise for his age, and remarkably candid. We witness life from his perspective—from intimate conversations with his mother, to being bullied at school, to his fantasies of becoming a superhero. We also experience the exhilarating pangs of first love as Billy pursues Heather, a shy 16-year-old waitress. Will Billy get the girl? Will his community accept him on his own terms? BILLY THE KID challenges viewers to imagine themselves beyond labels."

Theft of the official synopsis is an editorial decision driven not entirely by sloth. The facts are set forth briefly and lucidly, we can do no better. The questions are subjective and evoke the films merits, which are significant. We must, however, add some Q & A of our own.

Why did the lady next to me bring a purse full of wax paper and spend the first ten minutes of the movie crinkling it? There is no known answer to this question, but we can't blame it on Jennifer Venditti, a veteran casting director making her directorial debut.

Why did the same lady begin snoring halfway through the picture? Tough day, warm theater, recurring struggle with narcolepsy - all possible, but Billy The Kid was making a lot of people drowsy - this is real cinema verite (someday I will learn how to do accent marks- until then you must live with that troubling verite/real redundancy) and the pace of life is slow sometimes.

Why was Billy so incredibly comfortable in front of the camera? A) It was there so often he just got used to it, like many documentary subjects B) Billy constantly gushes his inner thoughts. Fifteen year olds generally self -censor any utterance that might subject them to the disdain of their peers, but Billy never pauses for a coolness edit. Unlike his peers, he's living in the open all the time, adding the camera just doesn't dent this guy's psyche. C) Billy is lonely and desperate for listeners, the microphone and camera, and Heather for that matter, are a welcome opportunity to gush to an audience. D) With few peer relationships, Billy learned life from the movies, now he gets to live one. E) All of the above.

What will happen to Billy? - Middle school and high school are the pits - the years when conformity matters most and even casual contact with a misfit like Billy can brand you a geek by association. Billy has some big problems, villainous father, vanishing step-father, Asperger's -but he has some real assets. He's a bright, noble, courageous guy with a caring mom who might become a happy lawyer, blogger or a comedian someday if he can just survive high school.

Where can I see this movie, should I see this movie? Watch Cinemax and HBO listings, Billy the Kid should appear soon. Billy comes right at you and grabs you (unless, perhaps, you were very popular in high school). Watch the first twenty minutes carefully, if the pace is putting you to sleep you will still leave the TV on while you are doing something else, I don't think you will shut Billy off totally.

Look: Robert Altman - Security Guard

Look - Imagine you are sitting through a classic Robert Altman film. You cut between seemingly unrelated characters and stories, each developing on their own, then gradually intersecting. Make the stories and characters a little bit simplistic, nothing unbearable, still somewhat Altmanlike, but with a slightly heavy hand. Now add a new perspective, everything you see is shot by security cameras - the predatory Lolita, the department store Lothario, the sympathetic teacher fending off Lolita, the criminal lawyer (with secrets of his own), the stalking pedophile, the quickie mart clerk with friends and the bad guys on a crime spree - all caught on security videos.

The security camera perspective sounds like a gimmick, but it works on two levels. First, it adds credibility to characters that would otherwise seem too broadly drawn, individual plot lines that would feel too predictable, plot intersections that would be just a little too coincidental. Second, the security cameras themselves are food for thought. They preserve enough data to satisfy even the most voracious voyeur, but they don't often save the victims or punish the truly malicious.

Look's writer/director Adam Rifkin grabs your attention, holds it with simple, sexy stories that crash together and leaves you wondering about those security cameras on your way home. Cast and crew all deserve credit but there is too much movie and too little time. Lolita (actually Sherri) was well played by Spencer Radford (pictured) in one of the film's largest roles. Rather than attempting to name all names I will note that I saw this film late at night as the second half of a double feature, after missing supper and while knowing I was missing a Steeler game on Monday Night Football - and I still enjoyed it.

The Cake Eaters: What Is A Cake Eater?

The Cake Eaters -Mary Stuart Masterson makes a small budget picture that succeeds on its own terms in her debut as a director. Two families intersect in small town upstate New York. Bruce Dern as Easy Kimbrough, owner of the town butcher shop, is the patriarch of one clan. At first Easy undervalues his son Beagle (Aaron Stanford), a school cafeteria worker who stayed at home and stuck by Mom's side as she died from cancer. Easy basks in the glow of Guy (Jayce Bartok, also the screenwriter), the returning prodigal, back after three years as a struggling musician in New York City, so far out of touch that he missed his mother's funeral. Elizabeth Ashley as Marg, grandmother and matriarch of the Kaminsky family, lives on the wealthier side of the tracks. Marg's daughter is a photographer, nervously micromanaging the life of her daughter and subject (photographically and otherwise), Georgia, a fifteen year old with Friedreich's Ataxia. Friedreich's Ataxia is a debilitating, incurable and progressive neural disorder and Georgia (Kristen Stewart) decides to live her life before her disease progresses too far. Georgia sets her sights on Beagle, who tumbles head over heels at breakneck speed, stumbling upon a long-standing affair between Easy and Marg on his route to romance with Georgia.

At times the film captures the pacing of the small town, the Kimbroughs bond, and feud, over seemingly uneventful breakfasts. A lazy flea market provides the backdrop for a critical, yet leisurely, meeting between a pair of couples. Georgia and Beagle really see each other for the first time, as Easy and Marg, ill-at-ease and apart since the recent death of Easy's wife, reunite with some small talk in public. At other times Masterson moves swiftly, the denouement to Guy's pursuit of his former girlfriend is told, completely, in a single glance.

The Cake Eaters has some distracting loose ends. Jesse Martin has a small part that adds little but unanswered questions to the story line. Georgia's relationship with her mother starts as fast and fascinating and dead ends with no real exploration. Melissa Leo gets a mystery credit as an actress when she should have been listed as a crew member - "leaf raker". These oddities suggest some very major editing was done after the shoot - probably to focus more narrowly on the story line growing out of the relationship between Georgia and Beagle at the expense of other elements from the original script. Good decision, Ms Masterson. Kristen Stewart is brilliant as Georgia in a role reminiscent of your own work in Benny & Joon. The cast (particularly Dern, Stanford and Ashley), score (including works by Duncan Sheik and Glen Hansard), and cinematography all had exactly what it takes to make this film work. If you don't see it in the theater it is worth renting the DVD. No details on release date or distribution plan available at this time.

If you google "cake eaters" you will see many references, but if you know that Jayce Bartok is originally from Pittsburgh and you notice that Elizabeth Ashley, in character as a tipsy Marg, roars mysteriously that her family is from Upper St. Clair, then you know cake eater can mean only one thing. In the Pittsburgh area, "cake eater" is a derisive term applied by blue collar kids to the privileged upper middle class, especially those from suburbs like Mt. Lebanon or Upper St. Clair. As Good As News is betting that Jayce Bartok is from Upper St. Clair, that the original script was set in Western Pennsylvania and that it included an even greater emphasis on the class difference between the Kimbrough and Kaminsky families. This theme was developed as a significant element in the Easy-Marg relationship, but was there even more on the cutting room floor?---------------------------------------------------------------------------

-ps - thank you mary-stuart-masterson.com for the referral and link. As Good As News posts weekly reviews of unreleased films, generally on Tuesday, but occasionally on Wednesday. Some weeks include a double feature. See the review of Look -"Robert Altman - Security Guard" also posted on Nov. 6 or go back for Canvas, Love In The Time of Cholera and other new releases.

-pss - the term "cake eaters" resurfaces in Charlie Wilson's War - spoken by Phillip Seymour Hoffman playing a CIA agent from Aliquippa. Very enjoyable film, funny and better than its reviews.

Starting Out In The Evening: Write Your Next Thesis on Dracula

Starting Out In The Evening - Leonard Schiller (Frank Langella), a seventy year old out of print novelist, is seduced by the energy and ambition of Heather (Lauren Ambrose), a graduate student, into cooperating with her masters thesis. Heather wants the world to rediscover Leonard's work and she plans to make her own reputation in the process. The two form an odd, sometimes interesting relationship, as Leonard, normally driven by his work, can't seem to say no to Heather's sometimes intrusive quest. Leonard's daughter Ariel (Lili Taylor) wants a child as she nears 40, but ends up rekindling a relationship with Casey (Adrian Lester), a relationship she had ended because Casey was uncompromising in his wish to avoid fatherhood.

Heather's research veers quickly into an uncomfortable examination of Leonard's personal life, adding tension as the relationship edges into a strange romance. Leonard is struggling to finish his last novel. He has followed his characters for ten years, waiting for them to do something interesting, and they have failed him. The film follows the same course, tracking Leonard closely for weeks as little happens, a parallel that may work in the original novel, but does not translate well to the screen. Although both Leonard and Ariel eventually find paths that preserve the meaning of their lives, the story moves at a glacial pace, as if the director and coscreenwriter Andrew Wagner fears that a stronger story line will distract from the delicate character study. A subtle and persuasive performance by Langella sells the relationship with Heather as believable, even somewhat interesting, but it isn't quite enough to sell the film.