For several years, when I was editor-in-chief at the Los Angeles paper Entertainment Today, the venerable Brad Schreiber covered the Palm Springs International Film Festival for us in his bi-weekly column, Development Hell, and did a slam-bang job, it’s worth mentioning.
Two
hours from the city, the Palm Springs Festival has earned its international status by way of including the majority of films
offered up for nomination for the Best Foreign Film Oscar at the Academy Awards. This year’s festival, its 18th incarnation, screened 254 films from 74 countries, and offered plenty of star-gazing into the clear, desert night sky, as well as at its
annual awards gala, where honorees included Sydney Pollack, Kate Winslet, Todd Field, Cate Blanchett, composer Philip Glass and Babel director Alejandro
Gonzalez Inarritu.
Schreiber caught over 30 films, but it was his thoughts on writer-director Michael Traeger’s The Amateurs, which has since been retitled The Moguls, that caught my eye. This film has had its own hellish post-development track, well chronicled, but this was my first run-in with someone who’d seen it firsthand, in completed form. To wit, Schreiber’s review, redacted below:
“Perhaps
it is not surprising that the release of The Amateurs has been long in
the making. It is, after all, a sweet comedy about pornography and its premise
is enough to melt the synapses of your average filmgoer. To be honest, we in
America have a strong puritanical streak, despite the accessibility of adult
entertainment and its remunerative power.
It
is just that financial lure that guides loveable loser Andy Sargentee (Jeff
Bridges) to hit upon the idea of gathering a group of friends in the bucolic
town of Butterfield Faces to make a blue movie and cash in. Andy’s ex Thelma
(Jeanne Tripplehorn) bears his lack of money, discipline and goals, even when he
shows up to give their son a basketball, one that Andy pretends, unsuccessfully,
is signed by Michael Jordan.
Andy is
good-natured. But he just seems incapable of doing anything. He brings in on his
scheme his closeted gay friend Moose (Ted Danson), nerdy locals Barney
Macklehatton (Tim Blake Nelson) and Otis (William Fichtner), who claims he just
wants to watch, and thus, is made an executive producer. There’s lovelorn Helen Tatelbaum (Glenne Headley),
cinematographer Emmett (Patrick Fugit) and Some Idiot (Joe Pantoliano) who is
writing the script, such as it is. “Hollywood has a lot of people like me,” he
trumpets, “who are multi-gifted.”
The
wrong vernacular is the least of their troubles. Learning it is not enough to
simply get a group to pony up $2,000 apiece, Andy has to entice two girls
working at a fast food restaurant and then a few black guys who he assumes are
well-endowed. This reverse-racism results in a shockingly funny argument in a
café and The Amateurs, written and directed by Michael Traeger, certainly
has its charms in portraying the doltish production of a porn flick into goofy
fun, rather than a seamy indictment of society’s underbelly. Pantoliano is
hilarious in his conviction as a great screenwriter and artist and sad sack
Bridges is priceless when reading aloud narrative like, “Boris gives it to
Bianca in the butt as she defuses the bomb.”
The
film is not without its moments best left on a cutting room floor, including a
final product that looks a lot better than it would have, based on the group’s
ineptitude. Talented performers like Headley and Lauren Graham are
underutilized. And there’s a feel-good ending that pushes our acceptance of this
whole porno-as-empowerment premise. But Bridges, as always, is an actor who
provides not only believability but a cohesiveness. He struggles to put into
words his benevolence when he tells his collaborators, earnestly, touchingly, “I’ll give anything if someone can get some destiny from this.” And there is
something very desirable about wholesome, smalltown folks who refuse to see
anything wrong with filming sex in their local Softy Freeze.”
For more of Schreiber’s writing, check out his site, A Critical Moment, by clicking here.