Movie Nation

Japanese actor Ken Watanabe is most famous for his work in such global blockbusters as “Inception,” “Batman Begins,” “The Last Samurai” and “Memoirs of a Geisha.”
At 53, he’s of a stature that Hollywood knows if there’s a movie to be made in Japan, Watanabe is the go-to Japanese star. Gus Van Sant called on him to co-star in his Japanese-set drama, “Sea of Trees,” and Martin Scorsese’s film of Shûsaku Endô’s “Silence,” about Jesuit missionaries in 17th century Japan, has Watanabe in a featured role.
And there’s probably a cinematic law that says you cannot make a “Godzilla” movie without a major Japanese star in it. In the newest incarnation of the “King of the Monsters,” Watanabe plays a Japanese scientist who seems to understand the monsters that have burst into the Pacific better than the American engineers, soldiers and sailors who are battling them.
Question: What was your first exposure to “Godzilla,” growing up in Japan?
Watanabe: “I was nine, ten years old when I watched four or five films on TV, Godzilla battles this creature or that one (“Godzilla vs. Monster Zero,” etc.). It was great entertainment for a kid!”
Question: As the chief Japanese member of the cast, did you feel protective of Godzilla, how he’d be presented, what he’d represent in this movie?
Watanabe: ” I met (director) Gareth Edwards and told him, ‘To me, Godzilla is symbolic of human cultures. His roar is like something sent down from the ancient gods, a mythic warning. I wanted to know from him what kind of story he had in mind for Godzilla, today. He admires Godzilla, and how much fun those movies were. He seems to love Japanese comic books, Japanese culture. He knew all about Godzilla, very deep knowledge of his background, the meanings of those early films when we learn how Godzilla was born. I knew I wouldn’t have to worry about what kind of Godzilla movie he would make. He gave me great confidence.”
Question: So, what does a ‘Godzilla’ movie need to be about, then?
Watanabe: “When I saw this movie, finished, I got the most excited whenever Godzilla let out his roar. That sound, ‘Rooooooooooarrrrr,’ filled me with pride. But also sadness. To me, it’s like Godzilla is calling out a warning to humanity’s foolishness. Radiation from bombs, from power plants. That’s what brings him back.
‘Godzilla’ was born out of fear of nuclear weapons after World War II. But after we experienced the collapse of our nuclear power plant in Fukushima, due to the earthquake and tsunami, it was like the fear was back — the same fear we had sixty years ago when ‘Godzilla’ was born. It made me, as a Japanese actor, want to join this project, be in this film.
“My character’s background made me want to play him. His father was a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. This guy ended up studying nuclear energy, nuclear power. What does that say about him? He hopes he is doing something meaningful for humanity with this very destructive energy. But he is still struggling with that issue. He sees this conflict as nature vs. science…He comes to believe that science does not have power over nature. We have a type of power we cannot control. That is what ‘Godzilla’ is about.”

“Neighbors” had a slight fall-off on Saturday at the box office, as is the way of things with films that aren’t children’s cartoons. R-rated comedies open Thursday night, have a rush on Friday by the “gotta see it first” crowd, and the Friday night date people, and that sucks away some of their Saturday and Sunday opening weekend audience.

A Big Thursday night, a huge Friday and nearly as huge Saturday means it could hit $50 million. Sunday will be telling. It stands at close to $40 Sunday AM.

“The Other Woman” continues to appeal to its target audience, girls’ night out ladies. It will fall just short of $100, by the time it finishes its run.

“Heaven is for Real” will be around $75 million by Sunday night. That’s a huge take for a movie that didn’t cost much, the second biggest faith-based movie of the year (after “Noah,” which did not have nearly the push from the nation’s pulpits that the simpler tale of a little boy’s account of the afterlife).

“Amazing Spider-Man” did not plunge enough to doom this lucrative, cynical, yawner of a series.

“Moms’ Night Out” won’t hit $5, despite the faith-based Mother’s DAy push.

“Legends of Oz” won’t be keeping Disney or Dreamworks up at night. Under $5.

The R-rated farce “Neighbors” did well enough with the critics, considering its director’s track record. At the box office? It’s a smash, $45-48 million and climbing, far exceeding any notion that it wouldn’t open in “Bridesmaids” territory. Another Seth Rogen hit, a much-needed bust-out for Zac Efron.

The middling “Spider-Man” lost about 60% of its opening weekend oomph, maybe more. Saturday’s numbers will tell

“Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return” will be lucky to manage $4 million. Indian animators, vast numbers of investors, a decent voice cast. A deathly dull script cursed this one. Terrible reviews.

“Moms’ Night Out” doesn’t hit the faith-based angle hard enough to get that endorsement from the pulpit thing it needed to join the other faith-based hits this year. Some laughs would have helped.

Jon Favreau makes “Iron Man” movies and crummy blockbuster comedies. What’s he doing getting his cooking chops down and stepping in front of the camera, and behind it, for “Chef,” a mouth-watering culinary wish fulfillment fantasy?
Take this script, which he wrote, directed and stars in, as a metaphor for his film career. “Chef” is Favreau’s most personal film since “Swingers,” an overlong comedy full of his food, his taste in music, his favorite places and a boatload of his favorite actors.
And the actor Favreau brings his A-game patter to this romp about an embattled Los Angeles chef, once celebrated, now in a rut, who has to take a road trip in a food truck to find his soul, and his food, again.
Carl Casper’s big night at the swank Galouise eatery is ruined by the passive aggressive owner of the joint.
“Be an artist on your own time,” Riva (Dustin Hoffman) whines. Stick to “your greatest hits” menu.
That’s how Carl gets the bad review from the cranky online food critic (Oliver Platt). Carl’s kid (Emjay Anthony) introduces him to Twitter. Big mistake. Carl insults the guy.
That leads to a flame war and that, in turn, leads to Carl’s shout-down/meltdown in the middle of the restaurant. He’s out of a job and he’s infamous, thanks to the viral video of his hissy fit.
“I’m a MEME.”
It’s time to take stock, not make stock. It’s time to find what made him passionate about food, to remind himself that he can “touch people’s lives” with his cooking. It’s time to go to Miami and maybe crank up a food truck.
“Chef” has adorable, PG-13 worthy father-son bonding, with Favreau really clicking with the kid. It has a wonderful supporting cast, with fellow cooks played by John Leguizamo and Bobby Cannavale, the restaurant manager/hostess played by Scarlett Johannson, Sofia Vergara as Carl’s party planner ex-wife and Robert Downey Jr., leaning into the sort of eccentric word play that only Favreau brings out in him (He’s another ex-husband of the party planner).
All of it comes off thanks to wonderful early scenes that establish Favreau’s comfort in the kitchen, his steady hand with a knife. He seems at home in this world and relishes explaining what makes it special. He wants to seduce the hostess?
“Let me cook you something.”
The food is mouth watering — calamari to die for, squab, even a work-of-art grilled cheese sandwich which he stoops way over the grill to make, as we’ve seen Emeril, Mario and Gordon Ramsey do on TV — every one of his senses committed to getting it perfect.
Carl shudders at the idea that he’s now suitable for a role in a Gordon Ramsey reality show (“Hell’s Kitchen” is pitched, they must have meant “Kitchen Nightmares”).
And knowing what it means when a chef gives a young cook his first knife is touching.
The “wish fulfillment fantasy” here is the whole overlong rosy road to redemption part of the movie, which tries to sell us on Carl’s utter ignorance of social media and his ten year-old hooking him up and making him a star. That stuff, the idea that any true chef would not realize how hot the food truck movement is — and was give years ago — and several abrupt, illogical leaps in the plot are the only sour ingredients in this delightful, savory comedy.
It’s nice to see Favreau can still bring it once he’s put down the comic books and the soul-sucking blockbusters they demand. Welcome back. Now, let’s eat.
　
　
MPAA Rating: R for language, including some suggestive references
Cast: Jon Favreau, Sofia Vergara, John Leguizamo, Emjay Anthony, Scarlett Johansson, Bobby Cannavale, Dustin Hoffman, Robert Downey Jr., Oliver Platt
Credits: Written and directed by Jon Favreau. An Open Road
Running time: 1:53

If nothing else, the scope of the story of the West Memphis\Robin Hood Hills
murders should have given “Devil’s Knot” director Atom Egoyan pause. A 1993
tragedy compounded by a laughably incompetent police investigation and the
efforts of the cops, the ham-fisted prosecutors and an already
made-up-his-feeble-mind judge to railroad three heavy-metal-loving young men
accused of a Satanic/witchcraft ritual murder, this decades-long case was
notorious without a feature film treatment.

The intrepid filmmakers/activists behind “Paradise Lost” made three long
award-winning documentaries that covered the crime, the trials, and efforts
afterward to raise questions that eventually got the accused set free. Peter
Jackson even parachuted in for his own documentary.

But Egoyan, perhaps reaching for some of that sublime, understated grief that
earned him kudos with his most acclaimed film, “The Sweet Hereafter,” plunged in
with a truncated, perfunctory and utterly straightforward version of this “true
story.” The last thing it needed was that sort of treatment.

Reese Witherspoon stars as working class Pam, whose adoring eight-year-old
son Stevie was one of three who rode his bike off the end of their West Memphis,
Arkansas, street, into dense woods, only to be found naked, murdered in shallow
“Devil’s Den” creek.

And even though, right from the start, clues pointed them elsewhere, the cops
started looking closely at a bunch of goth-minded teenage boys.
They had the wrong addresses– trailer parks. They wore the wrong haircuts,
listened to the wrong music, read the wrong books. They had the wrong names — a
“Damien” and a “Jason” among them.

They had to be guilty. Of something. As a detective admits, with no
consequences for his stupidity, the murders were destined to happen because
“We’ve been expecting something like this to happen around here for quite a
while.”
Elias Koteas is a probation officer who has listened to one troubled teen’s
many stories of witchcraft sacrifices with the gullibility of a backwoods rube.
Bruce Greenwood is the judge who saw nothing wrong with botched evidence
handling, mail-order college certified “experts” on the occult and massive
evidence of police and prosecutorial misconduct.
And Colin Firth is Ron Lax, the recently-divorced local private detective who
makes this case his cause.
“I think three dead kids is enough,” he says, throwing himself into the
defense team’s efforts to save three boys from the death penalty for crimes they
almost certainly did not commit.
Firth’s character might have been the focus, as Lax and Witherspoon’s mother
character come to a meeting of the minds over what is being done to the accused,
and who might be getting away with murder. But Egoyan got lost in the casting
and editing, struggling to find screen time for Dane DeHaan as a kid who was an
earlier suspect, for the fathers of two of the boys ( Alessandro Nivola, Kevin
Durand), whom the documentaries frame in a sinister light.
Egoyan does well by the awful, sad search for the kids and the distraught
cops and grief-stricken parents when they discover them. He struggles to find
any heart to the story once the clumsy cops and bad police work come to dominate
the story. And he loses track of Firth’s PI Ron Lax, who should be the moral
center of the piece.

There’s too much tragedy, grief and outrage here for a single movie. Egoyan
may realize that now. And there’s scant hope that Monte Hellman, who directed
“West Memphis Three,” starring Chloe Sevigny, due out this November, made out
any better with this long, convoluted and ugly saga of small town justice’s
shortcomings. It’s a epic tragedy, and summing it up in under two hours does
nobody justice.

MPAA Rating:  unrated, violence, partial nudity, blood
Cast: Reese Witherspoon, Colin Firth, Dane DeHaan, Bruce Greenwood</P>
Credits: Directed by Atom Egoyan, screenplay by Paul Harris Boardman and
Scott Derrickson, based on the Mara Leveritt book. An RLJ Entertainment release.
Running Time: 1:54

“Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return” is a harmless but almost charmless adaptation of a book by L. Frank Baum’s grandson. It’s a derivative hash of grandpa’s story, set in the present day, given forgettable new tunes by pop songsmiths such as Bryan Adams which are sung by the likes of Lea Michele, Martin Short, Hugh Dancy and the operatic Megan Hilty of TV’s “Smash.”
And it’s in 3D. Of course.
But lest this child’s play be written off all altogether, let’s look on the bright side. The bottom rung of big screen computer-generated animation’s ladder, entry level stuff, is decades beyond where it used to be. This work, animated at Prana in India, has decent production design — a dark, abandoned Emerald City, a shiny, porcelin sheen its scenes set in “Dainty China Country” and luscious-looking 3D sweets in Candy County.
And the animated characters are beautifully rendered, even if their faces don’t have the expression and plasticity that Pixar, Blue Sky, Disney and Sony have managed in their recent films.
Dorothy (Michele), Toto, Auntie Em and Uncle Henry survive a tornado that trashes their corner of Kansas. An unscupulous real estate hustler (Martin Short) is ready to buy out the whole, shattered town. But before Dorothy can stop this foreclosure fraud, a rainbow snatches her and drags her back to Oz, her and her little dog, too.
Scarecrow (Dan Aykroyd) has smartly summoned her to save the land, which is under the thumb of The Jester (Short, again), the evil brother of the Wicked Witch of the West. And Brother carries a grudge.
Dorothy, on arrival, teams up with Wiser, the chatterbox owl (Oliver Platt), the candy soldier, Marshal Mallow (Dancy) and the haughty China Princess (Hilty) and sets off down the ruined Yellow Brick Road to save her old friends.
Kelsey Grammer plays a mercurial Tin Man who now has a heart.
“I had no emotions before,” he wails. Now, “I want to try them ALL out!”
Jim Belushi voices the lion, and Bernadette Peters is perfectly cast as Glinda, the Good Witch, now just a puppet of Jester.
“No good can come from the reign of a fool,” she trills.
With unknown animation entities, the rule is that the more impressive the voice cast, the weaker the script. Hire Great Brits Patrick Stewart (as a boat), Brian Blessed and Dancy (who croons a tune or two) and maybe you can cover up the startling lack of humor on the page.
These films — even the bad ones — are gold mines. So there’s no point in complaining about the cynicism that exists in this genre. Not with Disney, inexplicably releasing a sequel to its embarrassing fiasco “Planes” later this summer.

MPAA Rating:PG for some scary images and mild peril
Cast: The voices of Lea Michele, Martin Short, Hugh Dancy, Oliver Platt, Bernadette Peters, Megan Hilty, Dan Aykroyd, Patrick Stewart, Jim Belushi
Credits: Directed by Will Finn and Dan St. Pierre, written by Adam Balsan and Randi Barnes, based on a Roger. S. Baum book. A Clarious/Prana Studios release.
Running time: 1:28

He’s an actor’s actor, the very best that American film has ever produced, by some estimations. Including mine. I can name his bad performances on one finger (science fiction movie, Earth doomed, guess).

Robert Duvall does a turn in “A Night in Old Mexico,” a movie that plays like “Hud” and “The Reivers,” any picture about a comically colorful coot who heads to some version of “Sin City” for a little hell raising. With just a hint of “No Country for Old Men” about it.

He’s 83. And he’s still liable to get the girl, intimidate the band hombres and impress the hell out of the grandson he never knew he had who has come along for the ride (in a vintage Caddy, naturally).

I’ve interviewed him many times over the years, about every film from “The Scarlet Letter” to “A Family Thing,” “The Apostle” to “Get Low” to “Assassination Tango.”

So now it’s your turn to ask him some questions. Post’em as comments, and thanks for the help.

Faith-based films have have become downright commonplace this year. But faith-based comedies? Comedies that work? That’s still a very short historical list — the George Burns blockbuster “Oh God,” and Andy Griffith’s “Angel in my Pocket” are the only two to come to mind.
“Moms’ Night Out” doesn’t join their ranks. A PG-rated romp that never romps, it lacks the jokes, sight gags, pacing and performances that are the stuff laughs are made of.
A funny movie doesn’t have to leave you with a “Hangover” to give you the giggles. But when you’re sending three mothers out for an “epic” night on the town, and you’re abstaining from alcohol, profanity and jokes about sex, you’d better make sure the gags you do include are killer, and that you’ve got a cast that can land those laughs.
Sarah Drew plays Ally, a stressed-out mother of three pre-school age tykes, a “Mommy Blogger” who brags online about being “a clean freak” who can “actually FEEL the house getting dirty,” but whose reality doesn’t measure up to that.
Her house is a wreck, her husband (Sean Astin) is always traveling and the kids are barely under control. And every so often, she loses it.
“I am the Bruce Banner of stay-at-home moms.”
She’s unhappy, so her husband urges her to take a night for herself. She talks her mother-of-two pal Izzy (Logan White) and, oddly, that icon of motherly virtue, her pastor’s wife (Patricia Heaton) into a girl’s “night out to remember.”
Izzy’s simpering, helpless husband (Robert Amaya) is lost without her calling the shots. Ally’s husband has a regular Saturday night video game date with an irresponsible, kid-hating pal (Kevin Downes, amusing). And Sondra, the preacher’s wife, is fending off a full-fledged revolt from her rebellious teenage daughter (Sammi Hanratty), who is threatening to sneak out while Mom’s away.
This could get interesting, “Adventures in Babysitting” interesting. Except it doesn’t.
As the night runs from losing their reservation at a pretentious restaurant to losing their phones to losing their minivan to losing a baby and their husbands losing their minds, overwhelmed by simple child care — “Mom’s Night Out” sets itself up for laughs that it rarely delivers.
For 45 minutes, the writing/directing Erwin brothers (“October Baby,” the abortion drama, was theirs) can’t manage so much as a smile, mainly due to the blandness of their leading lady. Drew is good at whiny, not good at amusingly whiny.
Then we hit the tattoo parlor and “Moms’ Night Out” starts to find its funnybone. Christian singer Manwell Reyes is hilarious as a goofball receptionist, country singer Trace Adkins just kills as a brassy, no nonsense biker-tattoo artist named Bones. Bones, who has a hint of hellraiser about him, thinks he knows the straight-laced Sondra from somewhere.
“Bonnaroo?”
“No.”
Lollapalooza? “
“No.”
“Live Aid?”
“NO.”
Missed communications, a lost parakeet and a lot of scenes of manic women, shrieking at cops, a stoner, and a British cabbie (Heaton’s husband, producer David Hunt) — “Moms’ Night Out” gets up a head of steam, for a few minutes, anyway.
The very best gag suggests a more promising direction the film might have taken. Heaton’s Sondra panics when a pile of empty beer bottles is left on their table at a bowling alley. She can’t have her parishioners thinking she DRINKS. A whole night of a “perfect” preacher’s wife/mom trying to protect her reputation might have been funny. Especially with Bones along for the ride.
A few simple sermonettes about motherhood and parenting work. But the Erwins learn, the hard way, that “Sermonizing is easy, comedy is hard.”
　
　
MPAA Rating: PG for mild thematic elements and some action
Cast: Sarah Drew, Sean Astin, Patricia Heaton, Trace Adkins, Abbie Cobb, Logan White
Credits: Directed by Jon and Andrew Erwin, scripted by Jon Erwin and Andrea Gyertson Nasfell. A Sony-Tristar release.
Running time: 1:38

“Neighbors” is an “Animal House” for “The Hangover” era, a frat boy comedy that pushes the rude and raunchy envelope into daring and dirty new territory. Hilariously coarse, reasonably shrewd and clumsily sentimental, there’s no reason it won’t earn a billion and inspire a whole new generation of party hearty “bros” to go Greek when they go to college.

The hook here is not just the appeal of this band of brothers — drinking, dope-smoking, hard-living loverboys — to their peers. They’re also the sorts of guys Mac and Kelly used to be and wish they still were.

But Mac (Seth Rogen) has a office job that is pure drudgery. Kelly (Rose Byrne) is staying at home with Stella, their newborn. They have to lie to convince themselves that the obvious hasn’t come true.

“Just because we have a house and a baby doesn’t mean we’re old people.”

They strain to keep their old lives– sharing the occasional joint, spontaneous sex (in front of the baby), club hopping.

“We can have fun AND a baby! Baby’s first Rave!”

The trouble is, they can’t. And having the up-all-night kids of Delta Psi Beta move in next door just rubs their noses in it.

The kids, led by Teddy (Zac Efron) and Pete (Dave Franco), may feign neighborliness and high fraternity ideals.

“Chivalry above self!”

But they’re hedonistic beasts, living to make their legends with a fraternity that claims it invented the toga party, beer pong and the like. Telling them to “Keep it down” will never work.

And despite the “invite the old people in” flattery, despite Mac’s taste for the magic mushrooms, booze and other substances the Deltas have in mass quantities, this means war.

The random laughs are sprinkled throughout this Rogenesque comedy — the shock value profanity that the parents use in front of the toddler, the college dean (Lisa Kudrow) who will only do something about the fraternity’s behavior when they make “headlines.”

I love the stuff about the older couple straining to still seem “cool” to these kids who have no regard for anybody who isn’t at their frat house, partying like it’s 1979. The fun is supposed to build from the elaborate plots the marrieds and the bros engage in to foil each other. Only, it doesn’t.

Whoever the screenwriters, the Judd Apatow-trained Rogen makes sure there are a dizzying array of killer one-liners, such as Mac’s reaction to the first time he sees Teddy shirtless.

“He’s like something a gay guy designed in a laboratory!”

Byrne, as she proved in “Bridesmaids” and REALLY proved in “Get Him to the Greek,” can hang with the bad boys in terms of laying it all out there and cursing like a sailor.

But for such a short comedy, “Neighbors” drags. Director Nicholas Stoller (“Get Him to the Greek”) creates little momentum between the schemes and counter-schemes. Peripheral characters, while funny, show up and stop the action. Some of the “I love you, man” riffs between the bros are meant to be funny because they go on forever.

The outrageous stunts and boundaries-pushing gags are as riotously funny as anything in any “Hangover” movie. And telling this story from both the frat brothers’ and the indignant nearly-adults next door’s point of view broadens the appeal. Yeah, we used to be like that. In our dreams.

But in between the belly laughs, “Neighbors” feels like a pulled punch, a mean comedy with a soft streak, a “Hangover” that never delivers the buzz.

MPAA Rating: R for pervasive language, strong crude and sexual content, graphic nudity, and drug use throughout

Cast: Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne, Zac Efron, Dave Franco, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Lisa Kudrow

Credits: Directed by Nicholas Stoller, screenplay by Andrew J. Cohen, Brendan O’Brien. A Universal release.

Running time: 1:36

Sports agents, as “Jerry Maguire” taught us, make their mark by finding value where others don’t see it.
That’s the hook to “Million Dollar Arm,” a Disney movie about a real-life agent — J.B. Bernstein — who decides the answer to his bottom-line is finding future Major League Baseball pitchers amongst the millions of young cricket bowlers of India.
No, they don’t play baseball in India. There’s no system set up to scout for baseball talent. And the simple mechanics of hurling a cricket ball, a straight-armed (no bent elbow) motion augmented by taking a running start, isn’t much like a pitcher’s motion at all.
But Bernstein found an investor, created an “India’s Got Baseball Talent” type contest and brought in a baseball scout to find out who might have a “Million Dollar Arm.”
“What he realized was that in a country that big, there was talent out there — athletic ability,” says Jon Hamm, who plays Bernstein in the movie, which opens May 16. “The problem is simply that there isn’t a value, over there, placed on being able to throw this ball the way we do over here. What he figured out, wisely, was that there are a billion kids in India and you’ve got to figure that are some who have the build, the raw athletic ability, to be able to throw a baseball at major league speeds.”
In other words, “Juice’ (pitching velocity) is juice. It’s quantifiable,” Hamm says. “This guy can bring it, or he can’t. ‘We can teach you the rest’. The reality of the story was a guy thinking so outside of the box, and having his gamble pay off.”
The guy he’s playing in the film, the real J.B. Bernstein, was beyond flattered that a guy with Hamm’s Hollywood heat elected to play him in the movie. The Access Group sports agency founder got to relive his story — with all its wince-worthy moments — with a rising A-list star driving his Porsche, making his same mistakes, makes him shake his head. Especially that first, thrown-together big league showcase for his Indian stars, staged in a parking lot in Arizona,
“I watch that scene and I am right back there in Arizona watching the train wreck I created
unfold,” Bernstein says. ” By far, the worst day of my life. Jon really captured what I felt like that day.”
Another gamble in “Million Dollar Arm” is the one the actor is taking. Hamm, 43, is trying to set the table for his post-“Mad Men” career with a culture clash comedy in which he plays straight man to Alan Arkin (playing the jaded scout) and a trio of Indian village boys thoroughly lost when J.B. brings them to Los Angeles to prep them for a big-league tryout.
“The tone of the film helps me out, and this guy is significantly different from Don Draper (from “Mad Men”),” Hamm says. “The emotional journey that he takes is beautiful and uplifting and inspiring, even. Heartwarming. Not one of those words has ever been used to describe Don Draper. Ever.’
Hamm laughs. Even though his “sexiest man alive” chiseled good looks convinced Hollywood that “straight arrow” characters — cops and federal agents (“The Town”) — might be his future, he’s drawn to comedy. He’s been in a long-term relationship with comic actress, writer and director Jennifer Westfeldt (“Kissing Jessica Stein”). His turns on “30 Rock” and appearances on “Saturday Night Live” show he can find the funny. And he laughed at the idea of playing Bernstein.
“I get to play a ‘fish out of water,'” Hamm says of his high-living agent out of his depth in India. “You go to India, you can’t figure out how anything works. You’re in the middle of this sea of people and cars, in traffic. And it works. Wow. J.B.’s reaction to that is like any Ameican’s reaction to things working in that chaos — pretty funny.”
A third gamble? Disney, reaching for that huge Indian market with a film about an agent who sold MLB on the same idea — that there’s money to be made on those Bollywood-loving billions in South Asia.
“Our biggest concern was, we didn’t want to offend anybody,” Hamm says. “We didn’t want the Indian characters as cartoonish cliches. Craig (Gillespie, director) walked a very fine line with that. . But you can say that and show that without offending people…You want to be culturally sensitive at all times. Bollywood films and Indian cinema is a lovely art form, beautiful. It’s also very specific to that culture. But plainly there is a place for Hollywood in India.”
No Indian player recruited by J.B. Bernstein has yet made it to the Major Leagues. But given time, the odds are that one could. “Million Dollar Arm.” Visit any major league ballpark this year and it’s pretty obvious the game need to find fresh pitching blood — somewhere.
Hollywood’s product makes inroads into the Indian marketplace, even with films that aren’t tailor made for that audience.
And Hamm’s gamble? It’s hardly an all-or-nothing shot. A summer comedy about India and baseball might not seem like a sure thing, and a James Franco-directed adaptation of William Faulkner’s “The Sound and the Fury”, which Hamm has finished, seems even less commercial. Heck, he might even do another TV series, limited run or otherwise.
“I would never say ‘No’ to doing another TV show. I love doing it and the opportunities there are more exciting than they’ve ever been.”
And if his lady friend and in-demand muse Westfeldt can squeeze in the time, “I’m sure she”ll put something on paper and we’ll pour our energy into making it. As hard as it is being a sports agent, or getting an acting career going, getting an independent film written, cast, financed, made and distributed is even harder.”