Author page: mrqe

Set at a conference for “thought leaders,” “The Way We Speak” is an ambitious drama that puts its cameras on a handful of characters wading into an arena of intellectual combat while dealing with emotional, psychological and in some cases physical challenges that threaten to unravel them. The performances are uniformly excellent. That all the key players (save for the lead) are not yet in-demand names is even more impressive. They carry themselves like stars (or endlessly reliable character actors) even if we don’t know them.

Faith versus Reason is the main attraction: a middle-aged writer named Simon Harrington (Patrick Fabian of “Better Call Saul”) who is finally starting to have a breakthrough is brought in to have a series of debates over three days with another rationalist, his longtime best friend and colleague George Rossi (Ricco DiStefano). When Rossi bows out due to health problems, he ends up squaring off against a last-minute replacement, Sarah Clawson (Kailey Rhodes), a young Christian essayist whose latest book has sold over a million copies. 

Offstage, Simon has an unsteady and sometimes heated relationship with his wife Claire (Diana Coconubo, possibly the cast’s MVP, at least in terms of the role’s degree of difficulty). She’s a famed medical researcher who has been in cancer treatment for years and is a rock for Simon even though her body is betraying her and she’s worried about survival. Simon, already a prickly sort and a drinker as well, begins to crack while worrying about his sick friend and sick wife and his own career ambitions, increasingly viewing Sarah not just as his opponent but his enemy, creating a ripple effect of ill-will that impacts other characters and makes the conference increasingly tense.

Written and directed by Ian Ebright in his feature debut, “The Way We Speak” has already been compared to the work of Aaron Sorkin. The comparison fits not just because nearly every single person in the story is fantastically, at times theatrically, eloquent, but because the structure, look, and overall tone channel the underappreciated “Steve Jobs,” a Sorkin-penned, Danny Boyle-directed movie set around three product launches. As it turns out, this movie has a lot of the virtues of a Sorkin joint, in particular a gift for snappy patter and keen insight into the dynamics of relationships between smart, accomplished, ambitious people. However, it also has some of the flaws, chiefly an overconfidence in its ability to confront and articulate the big ideas and timeless themes that are believed to be hallmarks of Important Drama. 

The content of Simon and Sarah’s onstage clashes is so basic as to seem beneath an institution lauded in the screenplay as a gathering place for the world’s brightest minds. The debates don’t go much deeper than an intro class. “How can you justify a righteous deity that allows so much suffering to play out without direct intervention?” is one of the questions posed by Simon, in a self-satisfied tone (like so much of what he offers) that suggests he believes this will be a knockout blow. When it comes to cinematically representing the substance of the faith and reason dialectic, Ingmar Bergman or Terrence Malick this film ain’t. 

Maybe we’re not supposed to think that the verbal combatants standing at those lecterns are as profound as they think they are? That’s a more charitable reading. Another is that the main event onstage is a pretext to externalize what happens internally when accomplished, ego-driven people get stuck under a spotlight for a few days while coping with intensely demanding personal matters (Sarah’s got her own issues, somewhat related to what Simon’s going through) and start to crack and behave poorly.

This is where the film most impresses. Ebright is ruthless, in the best way, when it comes to showing how people can be selfish and thoughtless in personal and romantic relationships, even when they think they’re behaving in an exemplary or at least decent manner.

Simon is already right on the edge of assholery when we first meet him. Fabian’s demeanor and vocal style in the part are reminiscent of Michael Douglas in some of his classic ‘80s and ‘90s charismatic heel roles. But he digs deeper into self-sabotaging unpleasantness and weakness than Douglas ever did, and as the film goes along, the character becomes increasingly difficult to excuse or tolerate, because he’s pretty clearly losing it and has no real sense of the damage he’s inflicting on himself and those around him (including the hosts of the conference). 

Sarah doesn’t emerge from the story pristine either, but one can at least make the case that extended exposure to Simon brought out bad elements in her personality (or perhaps suppressed anxiety/misery related to her own marriage) that might not have manifested until she showed up at the conference.

The most sympathetic character is Claire, who’s married to a seething mass of resentment in the form of a man. Simon, we learn, has been in her shadow for decades (supporting her, in his mind, emotionally if not financially) and has resentments that he should know better than to admit, mainly about the fact that his wife’s cancer is getting in the way of his long-deferred dream of being a famous writer. The movie is most compelling and spot-on observant when it’s deflating Simon. When he gets drunk at dinner, Claire heads out early and drafts a waiter to watch over him until he’s ready to leave. Simon asks his minder, “Are you familiar with futurism? Because I’m kinda famous for it.” “Oh,” the waiter says politely. “Right on!”

Before we get too deep into the story of Lou Pearlman, a pop music kingmaker who built his empire on a Ponzi Scheme, something needs to be addressed about Netflix’s three-part docuseries “Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam.” As technology advances, there are going to be deeper and deeper questions about what’s allowed in non-fiction filmmaking, and the creators of this series wade into what I would call some professionally murky waters. Pearlman himself died in 2016, but he published an autobiography titled Band, Brands, & Billions and the series uses passages from that book but puts them into the form of an A.I.-generated Pearlman, as if he’s being interviewed or giving a sort of presentation about his life. While no one is here to defend Pearlman, the decision feels a bit wrong to me. Written words in a book are not the same as an interview. How do we know a word or two aren’t missed in the translation? How do we know the emphasis on a certain word or idea is the right one? It feels like an incredibly slippery slope to turn books into something that looks like an interview.

Of course, morally gray areas are appropriate for the story of Lou Pearlman, a man who made pop stars in the ‘90s and ‘00s in a way that really changed music forever. The great revelation of “Dirty Pop” is that the whole thing was a scam as Pearlman was basically getting people to invest in these bands with little to no intent of ever getting them a return on their investments. Pearlman started his career selling blimps he didn’t own to companies, transitioning to actual plane rentals through Trans Continental Airlines before he noticed the success of New Kids on the Block, and set about to recreate it on a massive scale. He basically created the best-selling boy band of all time in The Backstreet Boys, but that is just the tip of the pretty boy iceberg as Pearlman went on to manage and shape NSYNC, O-Town, LFO, Take 5, Natural, and many more.

It was all a scam, and “Dirty Pop” does a decent job of recounting the facts. The Backstreet Boys were the first to notice that they weren’t really getting paid, filing a lawsuit against Pearlman. NSYNC followed suit, and the house of cards fell. As Pearlman scrambled to find the money he had mostly spent on other artists, people suffered. How much the people around Pearlman knew about his illegal and immoral wheelings and dealings is a bit of a gray area in “Dirty Pop.” The series is surprisingly defensive at times of Pearlman and his legacy, perhaps indicative of how much people want to defend something they love like the music he helped create. If you’re a Backstreet Boys or NSYNC fan, it can be hard to morally reconcile how something that brought you so much joy could have been so corrupt.

And yet “Dirty Pop” seems hesitant to dig into this complexity. The interviews with former boy banders are the highlight, but several of the big names are missing (including Justin Timberlake), giving the already-thin project a further sense that it’s incomplete. By the time Pearlman was caught, his crimes were labeled the longest-running Ponzi scheme in history. He used companies that only existed on paper to get investments that he basically spent on himself or further projects to keep the scheme going. The intersection of business, greed, and pop culture is a fascinating place, but it’s also perhaps too ethically complex for a flashy Netflix docuseries. How can something so beloved also be so painful to so many? Pearlman isn’t here to really answer that question, and the series can’t quite get there, even with their version of his own words.

Whole series screened for review. On Netflix on July 24^th.

Looking back at their last collaboration, 2019’s bloody cult horror hit “Come to Daddy,” you’d be surprised to see New Zealand writer-director Ant Timpson and actor-producer Elijah Wood turn their attention to a charming family-adventure flick. But “Bookworm,” which just premiered as the opening night of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival, still carries that signature Timpson DNA: The aching pathos of fragmented parental dynamics, a deep debt to the genre films of the 1970s, and surprising twists and turns that pivot a seemingly simple story down wild new routes. 

From the opening frames, with its closed-off matte aspect ratio, soothing folk soundtrack, and yellowed shots of taxidermied animals and esoterica, “Bookworm” firmly establishes its eponymous character, precocious 11-year-old Mildred (Nell Fisher), in the atmosphere of the 1970s. An avid learner and self-sufficient scholar of animals, Madeline suddenly finds herself adrift when her mother lapses into a coma. The solution to their rising medical bills, she thinks, is the hefty reward offered for footage of the fabled Canterbury Panther, a mythical cat lurking somewhere in the New Zealand wilderness. One catch: Her only companion is her newly-arrived father, washed-up magician Strawn Wise (Elijah Wood), whom she’s never met and who seems ill-prepared for the rough and tumble adventure ahead of them.

What follows is a charmer of a daddy-daughter picture, with the cheeky vibes and bright, Wes Anderson-ian charm of “Moonrise Kingdom” mixed with the deadpan wit of “Hunt for the Wilderpeople.” The pair scour the wilderness, build an erstwhile bond, and learn to grow and be patient with each other’s shortcomings. As for Wood’s Strawn, he gets the chance to be the father — or the man — he never got to be.

Ahead of its premiere at Fantasia, RogerEbert.com sat down with Timpson and Wood over Zoom to talk about the origins of the film in Timpson’s wild childhood, the long process to discover their brilliant child star in Fisher, and the links between Wood’s meek protagonists in both of Timpson’s films. 

This interview has been condensed for clarity.

I know that “Come to Daddy” was born partially from your father’s recent passing, and both it and “Bookworm” deal with these kinds of fragmented father-child relationships. Is there anything that you wanted to explore here that evolved about your understanding of your father or parenthood?

Ant Timpson: Look, this is a love letter to the ’70s in terms of filmmatic themes and the types of films I was obsessed with. But also, there was no helicopter parenting in that period of my life; the kids were free to roam. There were no GPS tags on us. The safety circumference around a house was probably 25 miles versus now, which is just the house. I grew up in a period in which kids had absolute freedom, and it feels very nostalgic to talk about it. 

So this came about from [screenwriter] Toby [Harrold] and I discussing the number one fear we had as fathers and parents: seeing total terror in our kids in a crisis situation, looking to us to step up, and seeing our fear reflected at them. It was based on a crazy family adventure I had a while back, which started as a nice Sunday afternoon walk with the kids and ended in complete disaster. There was an emergency call out and everything else. That hammered home the main theme for me, and I’ve always got to have this personal connection to the material. And Toby wrote a wonderful script with all these elements we’ve talked about for so long.

You mentioned the films of the ’70s; were there any that acted as specific influences?

You don’t use any things as Xerox; it’s more a flavor to explain to other people the sort of tone poem we were going for. It wasn’t things like “Deliverance” [laughs]. I love the wilderness survival films of the ’70s, the sort of man-alone style. This was more honestly “Robinson Crusoe on Mars,” “Swiss Family Robinson,” “The Wilderness Family.” These staple films. Like Robert Logan, the guy who was the stud father of the 70s who stepped up: he was in five of these types of films, where it was him and his family against nature and against all odds. I call them ‘general entertainment,’ you know. They didn’t pander to children at all, they were just pure family films. They weren’t really message-heavy, it was just about familial bonds and how people pull together under duress. They were really sweethearted. 

We wanted to capture that feeling that’s lost in cinema today. There’s a very genuine purity to it, but you have to find the right balance because it can become really saccharine. So you’ve got that sharp humor undercutting it all the way through, even through the personal trauma. That’s my escape valve for anything horrific in my life.

Elijah, when it came time to inhabiting the character of Strawn Wise, obviously I think there’s an interesting progression between Strawn and Norval [from “Come to Daddy”]. They’re both very nervous people, unable to fit into the surroundings they’re in, and have a strange delusion of grandeur about them. 

Elijah Wood: For me, the biggest challenge with Strawn was [learning the magic tricks]. There are a couple of moments in the film where specific magic tricks give you a sense of his real ability. For me, the most important thing was to be believable. That came down to card dexterity, to show that I’m comfortable with a deck of cards, so I can make that character a believable illusionist or magician. 

There was a magician I saw in Los Angeles over a month, Mike Pisciotta [of LA’s Magic Castle], just sitting down and doing card fans, messing around with the deck, and picking up a card in such a way that it was comfortable in my hands. The thing about Strawn, to your point about the delusions of grandeur, is that he presents as more successful than he is. And when you start to get under his surface, he’s actually kind of a failure. But I wanted that element of him to be real: he was good at one stage. But the rest was just the fun of a character with a sort of inflated self that is a protective element. He’s trying to present himself to his daughter as this capable, successful person. And the cracks start to show, and he can’t hold onto it anymore. The two of them are then thrust into scenarios beyond even his daughters’ [ability].

There’s an eagerness to impress that’s a parallel with both characters, too. But speaking of the daughter, talk to me about how you discovered Nell Fisher in the role.

Ant Timpson: We did a nationwide search in New Zealand, and looked at a few hundred kids around that age — anywhere from nine to 14 — and there were a lot of auditions. It’s one of those characters that could have gone off the rails of precociousness, so we wanted to find someone with that X factor and had an instant connection. Nell just leapt out. We did chemistry reads with Elijah, and it really popped up when you both hung out together. Hopefully, this doesn’t sound offensive, but she looked like she could have been Elijah’s love child [laughs].

I did a bit of due diligence on her; she’d worked on a low-budget film in New Zealand called “Northspur” when she was only eight, and she was really good. You could see something was happening there. Then she got “Evil Dead Rise,” so we talked to Lee [Cronin], the director; I wanted to know how fun she was on set and if he had any pointers. He just said, “Look, hire her immediately. She’s incredible.” Honestly, she exceeded all expectations; she was incredibly well-rehearsed and prepped. She knew the entire script so well that she was giving me notes throughout. Not that Elijah ever drops a line, but when other people did, she knew theirs. That’s skill. She’s going to be in “Stranger Things,” too, so we know she will be huge. 

Elijah, what was it like working with her on set? It must be fascinating to play that dynamic where you’re sharing a movie with a child, but your character is on the back foot for most of it.

Elijah: We had a few days of prep and almost a week of rehearsals, which was beneficial because the locations had all been predetermined. I mean, 90% of the film is exteriors, so it had to be really well-planned and thought out. In those rehearsal days we would visit those locations and rehearse the scenes that take place there. That was hugely beneficial both for us as actors and dynamically for what Nell and I were having to portray. That preparation was really key, because we could get to those locations and know exactly what we were supposed to do. 

The dynamic of Strawn and Mildred came through within the context of those rehearsal periods, where we were able to get into it and play. The relationship between yourself and another actor happens through the experience of working, and Nell is so lovely and wonderful that we fell into place really quickly. 

To your point about Strawn being on the back foot, she’s so precocious and so great at portraying that character that the dynamic presented itself really naturally. It was fun for me to play back foot to an eleven-year-old. It was great. And she made it really easy and so fun. 

Strawn arrives in the film with a rather ostentatious magician’s outfit, a long leather jacket with tails, a wide-brimmed hat, and long hair. What’s the story behind the costume?

Ant: Originally, Strawn was going to be this Criss Angel type; we would push it with the tattoos, piercings, and jewelry and go to town. But then we came to an amalgamation between a few of those early 2000s illusionists and a little rock and roll star. The crazy hat he first arrives with wasn’t part of wardrobe; that was the makeup guy’s hat. When I saw it, I was like, “That is a hat,” and we wanted to keep themes from “Come to Daddy” when [Norval] reveals himself at the start of the credits. 

Elijah: The idea is that Strawn did not come to New Zealand with the expectation of being immediately thrust into the wilderness, and so he didn’t bring a bunch of things with him for that purpose. But like Norval, a lot of the inspiration started quite extreme, which is actually a great way to start because you can then break it down to something that feels somewhere between reality and outside of reality.