Is yellow the new color of comedy?

In an article about early horror film posters Stephen King mentions that yellow is never used for comedy. It’s hard to visualize many yellow posters although the one-sheet for The Shining (a horror film) comes to mind.
So along comes a comedy that’s not about to be painted into a corner. In the poignant and funny ensemble film Little Miss Sunshine not only does the poster glare with yellow, but one scene-stealing character is a yellow VW van.
For LMS’s directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris the decision to modify their character’s beliefs and feelings started with a color scheme. “People, whether they know it or not, tend to flock to certain colors,” Dayton told Free Press Houston while in town promoting the film.
With so many characters dominating the frame they didn’t want people to get lost or confused. Regarding the part of the suicidal uncle played by Steve Carell, Faris noted: “He was like this clean plate. He comes to stay with this family and he’s drained of all life and color.”
Adds Dayton: “We all go through calamity, but then later we can laugh at it, and learn.”
In LMS Carell wears complete white in every scene. His pajamas are white with a monogram, and even when he dons a pink shirt, it looks white. His sister (Toni Collette) and her family, including husband Greg Kinnear whose goal is preaching a nine-step self-awareness program that nobody cares about, a cynical teen Paul Dano who reads Nietzsche and refuses to speak, and the drug snorting grumpy grandpa (Alan Arkin), are multi-hued. When their daughter Olivia (Abigail Breslin) gets accepted in a children’s beauty pageant (sardonic shades of JonBenet Ramsey) the only way this dysfunctional Albuquerque family can come together is to hop into their family van and drive to California.
“We came up with a color scheme for the movie,” Faris related. “We picked three predominant colors. There’s turquoise that Richard wears (Kinnear), Olive always has some element of red, and then there’s the yellow of the car, and the house has a warmish gold color to it.”
Dayton and Faris made their mark with award winning rock videos and cutting edge commercials. Even though those particular film projects pay the big salary it’s a labor of love like Little Miss Sunshine to which they proudly point.
Dayton and Faris took as much care in choosing the car as they did in casting the superlative list of actors.
The VW van hails from the 1970s, a bit more conservative in its angles and lines as compared to the 1960s-era VW vans. “We didn’t want it to be so groovy,” says Dayton. “Or too cute” chimes Faris. “This wasn’t Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and as the movie progressed it became clear how important the car was as a character,” explained Dayton.
One audience pleasing sequence has the VW’s horn malfunctioning, over and over and over. The film only gets funnier with each languid beep. “The sound guy literally took a horn apart and dragged a bare wire across the connection to get that sickly sound,” laughs Dayton.

The Real Clerks

Film directors like Kevin Smith take the heat for not turning out a masterpiece every time. But all films are not destined to be instant classics, although Smith’s debut Clerks captured the zeitgeist of the mid-90s unlike any other phenomenon of its time. For your humble scribe, Smith’s films, good and bad, fill a void in my life, much like Eric Rohmer’s films with their unmistakable similarity are welcomed like friends at a reunion.
It was no slight thrill to interview the stars of Clerks and Clerks II, Brian O’Halloran (Dante) and Jeff Anderson (Randal) during their recent press stop in Houston. In a way, it’s the ultimate sign of coolness to have been the star of a single film that every member of a generation (gen-Xers in this case) can recite by memory. Kind of like the French director Jean Vigo who only made one full-length feature before he died, but a film that is still discussed relevantly by cinephile today (L’Atalante).
With the wide release of Clerks II (July 21) O’Halloran and Anderson are hardly residing in the where-are-they-now-file. Kevin Smith made Clerks II for a sweet $5-million, which has already been recouped by foreign pre-sales. Every penny this film makes is pure profit.
Anderson attended Henry Hudson Regional High School with Kevin Smith. When Anderson auditioned for Clerks it was an easy fit for Smith. “He didn’t go to college,” laughs Anderson. “ He enrolled so he could get the student discount on film stock.” How Smith used a few credit cards to pay for the under $30,000 Clerks is a feat which many have copied, and the success of which so very few have attained. Although they knew each other from high school Anderson and Smith formed a friendship when Jeff would stop by the video store where Smith worked. It’s the same strip store site where the original Clerks was lensed.
O’Halloran mentions the eight-minute standing ovation Clerks II received at Cannes. An actor on the legit stage since the original Clerks, O’Halloran comes off every bit as the opposite of Anderson in real life as the characters they portray on screen. His look is clean, nails polished and cut, clothes quiet.
Anderson on the other hand looks more like the rebel, jeans, pull-over shirt, a no-bullshit way of talking. I ask the duo if they had a back-end on Clerks II. Brian mulls over the answer and in a vague way and gives an answer that’s ambiguous.
Jeff smiles and arches his head, and replies just like Randal: “I would say that that’s a big no.”

Teeth of the Hydra

You know how years are divided between A.D. and B.C. Nobody started selling calendars in 1 A.D. with new logos, that was a move decided years, centuries later. Well, civilization has reached a similar point for cinema, only it will be years from now before anyone will officially recognize such a line of demarcation.
This isn’t the before and after of sound and silent, nor of CGI versus analog effects, digital versus high-def, or Oprah versus Uma. Rather there is now a division in the way people perceive films compared to the way they used to perceive films.
In 2006 a cognizance exists concerning the tiniest details of movies for both people in the industry and civilians who make up the bulk of everyday audiences. Specifically websites track daily (not just weekend) grosses, films are reviewed the moment they are screened (even if the screening is private), visibility and advertising reflect the synergy of opening a single film on thousands of screens simultaneously worldwide. 2006 marks the year that a single film, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, blasted all previous opening weekend records based solely on its marketing.
POTC: DMC is a film so sloppy and haphazard that there’s no way it could become a box-office behemoth save for the marketing. Over 1000 POTC: DMC items have been trademarked, everything from cereal to bottled water to artificial eyelashes. Take a look at the top 100 grossing films in history and none of them sucks the abysmal wind of POTC: DMC. That being said, 2006 marks the year that the content of a film became truly irrelevant.
It doesn’t matter that The Devil Wears Prada displays no verisimilitude. It hardly counts that the horrific The Descent rates far below similar Lionsgate releases like Hostel, or even the B-level Saw. Who cares that You, Me and Dupree is so un-funny that it elicits weak smiles rather than laughs and guffaws. It’s not about what movies you like, it’s about the marketing of same. From now on critics should critique the cleanliness of theater bathrooms, efficiency of concession lines and availability of ergonomic parking spaces.
I’ve seen every film Johnny Depp has starred in save for Private Resort (1985) and The Astronaut’s Wife (1999), and I think the guy deserves the kudos as the Brando of the new millennium. In the sequels to Pirates of the Caribbean though, Depp is just jerking our collective wang.
In 1997 Depp directed and starred in the film The Brave (also with Brando). The Brave concerns an American Indian who agrees to star in a snuff film to help finance the dreams of his poverty-ridden family. The Brave was booed when it premiered at Cannes. It has never been released theatrically anywhere (but is available on DVD). Disney could release The Brave with the caption “a film directed by Captain Jack Sparrow” and that puppy would gross millions. Disney won’t of course because they just pink-slipped half their staff, and cut their annual slate of films by half. That’s the cinematic landscape that modern movie mavens must traverse.

I am quite sure they will say so

V FOR VENDETTA

SCENE between V and EVEY

V: I can assure you I mean you no harm.

EVIE: Who are you?

V: Who! Who is but the form following the function of what. And what I am is a man in a mask.

EVIE: I can see that.

V: Of course you can. I’m not questioning your powers of observation. I’m merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is.

EVIE: Oh, right.

V: But on this most auspicious of nights permit me then, in lieu of the more commonplace soubriquet, to suggest the character of this dramatis personae.
Viola! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi now vacant and vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. [Strikes poster with knife.]
The only verdict is vengeance. A vendetta held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and voracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. (Laughs.) Verily this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose so let me simply add that it’s my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.

EVIE: Are you like a crazy person?

V: I am quite sure they will say so.