Splashing the pot with talent

There's no doubt Joe Swanberg has come a long way since his mumblecore roots, but I'm not sure anyone realized he'd come quite this far.

Not in his filmmaking style or the subject matter that interests him. That's about the same as his first film, ten years ago. (Or so I would tell you if I'd actually seen that film, called Kissing on the Mouth.)

Rather, it's the fame of the actors chosen to execute only a slightly more polished version of that decade-old mumblecore.

Swanberg has collected a lot of really famous friends along the way, and in Digging for Fire, they all show up.

I'll take you through my thoughts as I watched the opening credits -- one by one with each set of credits that appeared together on the screen.

Jake Johnson

"Right, knew about that. He was in Swanberg's breakthrough movie, Drinking Buddies. And he's on the poster."

Rosemarie DeWitt

"Right, knew about that. She's in all these Duplassy type movies. And she's on the poster."

Jane Adams
Steve Berg
Mike Birbiglia

"All right, this is interesting. One of the cast members of Happiness, and a Marc Maron-style breakout comic. Don't know who Steve Berg is."

Orlando Bloom
Tom Bower
Sam Elliott

"ORLANDO BLOOM?? And Sam Elliott? Don't know who Tom Bower is."

Anna Kendrick
Brie Larson
Judith Light

"Now wait now. You're talking about two of the hottest commodities in Hollywood under 30. (One of whom was in Drinking Buddies, and also last year's Swanberg-directed Happy Christmas.) And ... Angela from Who's the Boss?!?"

Ron Livingston
Melanie Lynskey
Chris Messina

"Okay, now just get right out of town. Two solid indie character actors who have had their share of Hollywood crossover success (one of whom appeared in Drinking Buddies), plus a great Kiwi actress who should be more famous than she is (and was also in Happy Christmas)."

Kent Osborne
Sam Rockwell
Timothy Simons

"Okay, now it's starting to get a bit obscure except HOLY SHIT! Sam Rockwell?!?!?"

Jenny Slate
and
Jude Swanberg

"Another breakout comic, and of course the director's son. Who was also in Happy Christmas."

That's enough recognizable names and faces for three regular movies, let alone one Joe Swanberg movie.

Remember that part in Rounders when the etiquette of "splashing the pot" -- or more properly, not splashing the pot -- is discussed? It's considered bad form to throw your poker chips with such little regard for their landing spot that they either bowl over the existing sense of order of the other chips, or become indistinguishable as a separate bet that has not yet been assimilated into the pot. Well, here, Swanberg is just splashing his movie with talented people, tossing them almost indiscriminately at the production.

And though it's nice to see all those familiar faces, pretty much all of whom I have at least limited affection for, it does seem a bit like overkill. Elliott, Lynsky, Messina, Livingston, Light and Slate all have exactly one scene, but because they seem to demand something greater than just a throwaway role, each kind of seems to start on a bit of a character arc that of course never goes anywhere. I suppose that could be part of the design of a movie like this, which is meant to put across only the faintest of messages while concentrating more on providing us a slice of real life. But especially with someone like Slate, who is only the woman who DeWitt and Johnson are housesitting for and doesn't even get to say a single funny thing, it seems like a bit of a waste of talent.

Still, what I find really promising about this is how much it demonstrates the yearning of these actors to be in something they consider to have meaning. Some of them have got the meaning pretty well covered, appearing mostly in indies that are mostly pretty good, but then you take someone like Bloom, whose movies have grossed more than almost anyone else in history between the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and the two Tolkien trilogies, and who spends more time starring on the covers of tabloid newspapers these days than appearing in movies. (Or is it only in Australia where we get constant updates on the status of his relationship with Australian model Miranda Kerr?) He's desperate for an indie makeover, though I'd hardly say this qualifies as the start of it. (He's fine but unremarkable.)

In any case, at the very least, no one is doing this for the money. They probably each got paid a buck twenty-five to appear in Digging for Fire, with an invitation to pocket as many bagels from the craft services table as they care to.

All in all it's a nice and perceptive little movie, not quite reaching the heights of Happy Christmas but far clearing the low bar that (I thought) was set by Drinking Buddies. (And where is Olivia Wilde in this cast, anyway? She's the only person of any note that Swanberg has worked with who's missing.)

Now that I've seen three of Swanberg's films and have about 19 more to go, I can't decide if I'm more excited to look forward to his next project or back to the ones I haven't yet discovered (Hannah Takes the Stairs is a name I hear discussed with some regularity.) The path forward may be more studded with stars, but it's possible the path backward will feel more honest.

Either way, I like this director and look forward to seeing more of his movies ... whether he splashes them with talent, or just with truth.

Christmas in July in December

One of the most unusual movies to come out this summer had to be Happy Christmas, which released in the U.S. on July 25th.

As a movie, there's nothing "unusual" about it at all. In fact, writer-director Joe Swanberg would probably wear its "usualness" as a badge of honor, as the ostensible goal of mumblecore films (he helped found that movement) is to depict everyday life.

The unusual part is that a movie with the word "Christmas" in the title came out nowhere near Christmastime. Though they did throw the marketing team a bone by releasing on the 25th of July, which is the informal date of "Christmas in July." (We held our Christmas party that night at my old summer job, I can tell you that much.) The fact that the 25th happened to be a Friday, the traditional release day for new movies, meant they didn't even have to bend over backwards to make it work.

Still, salvaging a gimmicky release date doesn't mean that the move makes a lot of sense from a marketing perspective.

However, it does go with the film's sensibility. Movies about Christmas actually released at Christmastime inevitably carry big expectations ... big expectations that a Joe Swanberg movie was never meant to satisfy. A Joe Swanberg movie was better off being consumed by most of us on Netflix ... and its July release date meant that it was perfectly situated to be watched by most of us at Christmastime.

So my wife and I watched it on Sunday night, December 21st, with our own tree twinkling just off to the left of the screen.

And darn it if I did not enjoy the hell out of this movie.

That wasn't a foregone conclusion. Even though I traditionally love mumblecore -- the Duplass brothers can do (almost) no wrong in my eyes -- I did not really dig Swanberg's last movie, Drinking Buddies, which was (quite surprisingly) the first Swanberg film I'd seen. The characters in that film may be raucous and playful with one another, but there was an essential off-putting quality to them and a lack of warmth in the film overall.

Not so with Happy Christmas. I felt Joe Swanberg's empathy seeping through every frame of this movie. And I wasn't necessarily sure Swanberg had empathy, having watched him as an actor this past year in movies like You're Next and The Sacrament -- both of which I liked (the latter a lot more than the former), but neither of which is what you would exactly call optimistic about humanity.

Happy Christmas gets the humanity just about perfect, and in turn becomes a perfect delivery on the promise of the non-ironic reading of its title. It's not like there's no conflict here, but the conflict is life-sized and believable, and deals with relatable human foibles. Everything is so low-key that you aren't bracing yourself for some operatic tragedy in the third act. It's just a small-scale human dramedy set against a Christmas backdrop, with delightfully intuitive improvised performances from its cast of seasoned pros. (I always love me some Anna Kendrick, and I don't always love me some Lena Dunham, but she worked very well here in a supporting role. Plus, how often do we get to see Melanie Lynskey speak in her native Kiwi accent? Meanwhile, Joe Swanberg is so cool that he doesn't even include his own name on the poster, though he's got about the same sized role as the people he does list.)

Then there's the fact that the movie operated on a very personal level for us, dealing as it does with how to maintain your sense of self and identity while having to adjust your working life following the birth of a child. Both my wife and I have had to deal with that before -- she initially, me more recently. To make matters yet more relatable, Lynskey's character is trying to find the time to get back to her writing -- something my wife has been struggling with, especially since the birth of our second, but even since the birth of our first. Then you've got a woman from New Zealand married to a guy from America, living in America ... well, that was us just 18 months ago, if you swap New Zealand for Australia. So yeah, this was "our movie."

And it made for quite the nice Christmas treat.

For most of you, this will post will publish on your Christmas Eve. That means you still have time to watch it on the 24th or the 25th, since you almost certainly have Netflix, and you may not have already figured out what your Christmas-themed viewing will be.

It would have been plenty delightful in July, but it's all the more so now.

Merry -- make that, Happy -- Christmas, everyone.

Wait, that's who?

You're Next is a film that contains a number of surprises, but for me, the biggest one -- or the biggest couple -- appeared in the closing credits.

Namely, the cast contains no fewer than three buzzed about independent filmmakers, none of whom I knew were in the movie.

Mumblecore king Joe Swanberg, horror wunderkind Ti West and Amy Seimetz (sorry Amy, no fancy description for you yet) are all cast members in the movie. (Seimetz may be better known to you as the lead in Upstream Color, but she also directed the indie film Sun Don't Shine.) I think they also appeared consecutively in the credits, each getting a picture of the character over the cast member's name, adding to the "Wait, what, wait, what, wait, WHAT?" factor.

I already knew what Seimetz looked like (but didn't recognize her), and had no real thoughts on what Ti West might or might not look like, but the appearance of Swanberg was what really threw me. I don't know what I was expecting from Swanberg, having only started to formulate an opinion about him recently in his career -- surprisingly recently, because I'm a guy who likes mumblecore quite a bit. Having only seen Drinking Buddies, I suppose I figured Swanberg looked sort of like Jake Johnson's character in that movie -- someone scruffy and cool, an auto mechanic who reads philosophy and enjoys good coffee.

Instead, this is Swanberg:

What? This looks like the kid who got beaten up in the schoolyard for his lunch money.

And Swanberg may have actually been that kid. And mumblecore is certainly not a genre that requires you to have been more than that. In fact, many successful filmmakers were outcasts in school. You never hear about the high school jock going on to have a successful directing career.

It's just that this doesn't confirm at all to what I was expecting Swanberg to look like, if I had been expecting anything at all. I suppose I imagined a starving artist, or at least someone with the kind of grizzly beard that doesn't look like it's been cared for in three months. Not this Swanberg, this closely cropped, preppy-looking dude.

It's very similar to another experience I had recently. My wife and I are very close to finishing The Wire, having started with season 1 possibly as long as five years ago. I don't recall exactly when we started, but we've taken down the final three seasons within the past year, and are only two episodes from the end as I type this.

When I noticed the name Tom McCarthy in the season 5 credits, I recalled that the director Thomas McCarthy -- The Station Agent, The Visitor, Win Win -- had also been an actor. I was fairly sure it was the same guy, and then concluded that the only character he could be was this guy:

It was the same feeling I had last night with Swanberg, that there was something too insubstantial about this guy to be a critically acclaimed director. Something too milquetoast.

I wasn't expecting McCarthy to be that grizzled mechanic with latte foam in his beard, but I did figure him to be somehow more ... imposing. Someone whose force of will seemed equal to the task of commandeering a team of cinematic collaborators.

I realized that like the villains in You're Next, directors are kind of "the men behind the masks." They have this mystique about them, something that makes them seem more than merely human. When you take off those masks, sometimes what you find is a bit disappointing. And the parallel with You're Next continues in that regard.

However, guys like Swanberg and McCarthy give hope to those of us who also do not confirm to that mythical notion of what makes a great director.

Me? I'm rocking that grizzled beard right now for the first time in over ten years, so what am I talking about?