In Contention

Tag: Steve Lopez

  • Steve Lopez’s would-be Jackson column

    Steve Lopez as Vromans in PasadenaSpeaking of David Carr, he points us (via his must-follow Twitter page) to a Ventura County Star story today concerning Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez’s recent keynote address for the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.  The part that caught my eye was a segment dedicated to Lopez’s description of his Michael Jackson column, had he decided to write one.

    I heard Lopez speak a little more than a year ago, when he was promoting his then-forthcoming book “The Soloist” (the story of his relationship with Nathaniel Anthony Ayers that was translated to the screen earlier this year with Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx in starring roles).  He spins a good yarn with the best of them.

    Anyway, Lopez’s piece would have begun in Iraq, when he was covering the Gulf War in 1991 and attempted to gain access to Saddam Hussein’s nearby summer palace.  He took two photographers with him and went as far as they could go, Lopez says.  When soldiers approached them with machine guns and began grilling the three journalists about their thoughts on George Bush and Saddam Hussein, however, one of the photographers started to make too many waves.

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  • ‘The Soloist’ poster and behind-the-scenes featurette

    Lots of stuff happening on the promotion front this week.  Posters and trailers galore.  More on all of that in tomorrow’s “Off the Carpet” column, but for now, it looks like Joe Wright’s “The Soloist” has landed a one-sheet:

    DreamWorks SKG's The Soloist

    Meh.  Shades of “Brokeback Mountain.”  And I’m not crazy about the tagline either.  I like the scribbling along the edges, though.

    Additionally, Apple has released a behind-the-scenes featurette of the film.  Have a look:

    The offical website for “The Soloist” went up this weekend as well, and as always, you can keep track of the latest over at the film’s buzz page.

    While I’m on the topic, I should point out that Steve Lopez is one of the coolest cats in town, bar none.  I met him a few months back at Vroman’s in Pasadena.  He spoke at length to a crowd of eager bookworms about his encounters with Nathaniel Anthony Ayers on the streets of Los Angeles, which of course led to numerous articles in the paper and the inevitable book.

    (I’ve always thought the best part of that audio recording from Vroman’s was when Lopez talks about how he and Ayers call each other Mr.s Lopez and Mr. Ayers.  No one tells a story like Lopez.)

    As for the film version, I think Robert Downey Jr. has really nailed Lopez’s look.  I half-expected there to be no particular interest in mimicking it, so thank God for small miracles.

  • Robert Downey Jr. to join the lead actor race in ‘The Soloist?’

    Robert Downey Jr. in The SoloistI’m hearing (not altogether surprising) rumblings that Robert Downey Jr.’s role in Joe Wright’s “The Soloist” is larger than Jamie Foxx’s homeless violinist Nathaniel Ayers and that he’ll be pushed as a leading actor contender by the good folks at Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks SKG.  Apparently this is coming from a place of beaming confidence from the studio and Downey Jr. is said to be fantastic in the film.

    “The Soloist” is, of course, largely Steve Lopez’s story.  It is told from his perspective and is about, as the title of the book lets us know, “the redemptive power of music.”  That would be Lopez’s redemption as much as Ayers’, seeing as the LA Times columnist has picked up his guitar again as a result of his relationship with the man.  (Listen to Lopez discuss his interaction with Ayers and the process of committing that story to print here).

    Of course, actors with star power have a say in these things.  I can’t imagine Paramount would want to put both of these guys in the same category, but I’m starting to get more of a “Resurrecting the Champ” vibe out of Foxx’s role than before.  Perhaps he’d be better suited in the supporting arena, but again, these are decisions that have yet to be finalized.

    It goes without saying that Downey Jr. is having a hell of a come-back year.  I’m still having conversations with industry folks that think he has a shot at Oscar gold for his work in “Iron Man,” but perhaps Paramount can spin that goodwill into the Best Actor group think for “The Soloist.”

    Downey Jr., DiCaprio, Rourke, Jenkins, Langella, Penn, Mortensen, Eastwood, Pitt, Sheen……it’s gettin’ crowded in here.  And Heath Ledger may have just seized the supporting prize.

    More as it develops…

  • Jeff Wells says it’s Downey Jr. vs. Ledger

    Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic ThunderIn a review of Ben Stiller’s “Tropic Thunder” this afternoon, Jeffrey Wells has brought the “O” word into the conversation, specifically for Robert Downey Jr.’s performance as an actor who undergoes a pigmentation makeover to play an African American in the Vietnam film-within-the-film.

    Here’s what he has to say:

    It also feels to me like an Oscar-level thing for Downey. I know — who gives a hoot about Oscar nominations when a film is this funny? But Downey is amazing in this. This plus Iron Man — what a year for the guy. The Best Supporting Actor race is already down to Downey vs. Ledger.

    Obviously he forgets that Downey still has a role as Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez in Joe Wright’s “The Soloist,” due out later this year, which, judging by the subject matter and the fact that you’ve got the same studio pushing that film for awards fodder, may turn out to be his best shot at Academy recognition.

    Of course, we’ve been calling it the year of Downey Jr. around these parts for a few months now.  Not that it isn’t the most obvious aspect of the season.  And indeed, it is the story of the year.  Such a rise from the depths and into the spotlight as a star with impact yet again.

    I’m really looking forward to “Tropic Thunder,” as well as “The Soloist,” for that matter.  And I’d be lying if I didn’t say it had a lot to do with Downey Jr.

  • Bringing the truths of Skid Row to the masses

    The LA Times’ Steve Lopez is enjoying plenty of publicity this month for his latest book release, “The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship and the Redemptive Power of Music.” The book was drawn from a series of articles Lopez published three years ago in his “Points West” column in the Times about a Juliard-trained, homeless musician: Nathaniel Ayers.

    The story was cleverly recounted with amusing detail by Lopez at a book reading in Pasadena last month, which was when I first discovered that the film adaptation (releasing later this year and starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr.) might actually do some good in forwarding the issue of mental disorder in the U.S., a stigmatized subject that deserves more focus.

    Lopez and “The Soloist” are featured on newsstands this week as Dana Goodyear writes the story and the issue up as a “Letter from Los Angeles” in the pages of The New Yorker. And I’m happy to see that the film may actually take these issues seriously, rather than setting them aside in favor of what would obviously be a heart-warming story.

    Here’s a look at the abstract (I wish the full article was online, but it’s the May 5 issue for those interested):

    Since the nineteen-eighties, L.A. has been known as the country’s homeless capital. Skid Row, a fifty-block area covering less than a square mile between the L.A. River and the office towers of downtown, has the city’s highest concentration of homeless people. A January, 2007, street count showed that there were just over five thousand homeless people living in the area, thirty-three hundred of them in shelters and nearly eighteen hundred on the street. Many suffer from mental illnesses, drug addiction, or both. Thousands are in recovery.

    Joe Wright, the British director of the new Ayers film, decided to take the job on one condition: that the film be made with real people from Skid Row…Open casting calls for extras in the movie were held on San Julian Street, and hundreds of people turned up. Two miles east of the real San Julian Street, a set was built. The Skid Row cast members were asked to play recognizable street types. Some days there were four hundred extras on the set, the vast majority of them from Skid Row.

    “The humanness of the story has given people a rooting interest in Nathaniel’s life, and to that extent it has destigmatized homelessness,” Lopez said. “But Nathaniel pays a heavier price. He has to deal with the attention.”

  • The buried

    Okay, I think we’re done cleaning out all the kinks here for the night. I wanted to mention, however, that the old site is still out there in cyberspace for you to peruse. Check it out here. It’s a little buggy over there in the wake of the move, but I’ll iron all that out in due time. But now that the new design is out and about, I wanted to link back to a few posts from the last month by both myself and a few contributors, lest they be lost in the shuffle of today’s goings-on:

    1) Guy Lodge previews the Cannes line-up. (4/22)
    2) John Foote takes a look at Brad Pitt’s Oscar hopes this year. (4/21)
    3) Steve Lopez talks about his new book, “The Soloist,” in Pasadena. (4/19)
    4) The “Valkyrie” pile-on knows no bounds. (4/8) and (4/22)
    5) Anticipating the summer movie season. (4/8)
    6) Very brief notes on the “W” screenplay. (4/1)
    7) Remembering Anthony Minghella. (3/23)
    8) And of course, the year-in-advance Oscar column. (2/26)

    That should cover it.

  • Steve Lopez and ‘The Soloist’

    I stopped by Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena yesterday evening to hear Steve Lopez read from his new book “The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship and the Redemptive Power of Music,” fully expecting a run-of-the-mill book release PR thing. As it turns out, Lopez is a quick-on-his-heels delight of a public speaker, engaging, never tedious and insightful when it really counts.

    And actually, there was no book reading, since Lopez had “lost his glasses for the third day in a row.” Instead, the LA Times columnist simply recounted, in maybe an hour’s time, his relationship with Nathaniel Ayers, a homeless resident of downtown Los Angeles and Skid Row — and a Juliard-trained musician all the same, whose story might be hard to believe, but can be captivating to the most cynical.

    L.A. residents are quite familiar with Lopez’s “Points West” column that runs daily in the Times. One of the few living, breathing journalistic spirits of considerable heft at the paper, it seems, Lopez turns a phrase and transforms the mundane into the captivating with a truly gifted sense of the English language. He has introduced readers to members of an entire scale of notoriety, always with equal aplomb, and his articles about Ayers lit a spark for many Angelenos.

    The articles, of course, have been adapted by screenwriter Susannah Grant into a film to be released later in the fall by DreamWorks. And Lopez’s book release this week is the beginning of a long road for Ayers’ story, one that will bubble to the surface on a much larger scale when the film lands in November. But what I learned listening to Lopez speak yesterday was how much of a concerted effort the book was for forwarding the issue of mental disorder in the United States, ailments that leave the public stigmatized, a dirty secret, of sorts, that the country seems unwilling to deal with in any up-front manner.

    There are those, I’m sure of it, who feel this project seems a grating experience on the horizon of the film awards season. I, too, had my doubts as to something this potentially schmaltz-laden hitting the screens. But my view has shifted somewhat after hearing Lopez tell it. However opportunistic it might seem to the jaded for the film industry to seize upon a story like this, I have to say, I believe a lot of good could come of it in the end. I look forward to Joe Wright’s work even more so with this added context.

    In the film, Lopez will be portrayed by Robert Downey Jr., while Jamie Foxx will portray Ayers. Oscar nominee Catherine Keener also stars.

    I recorded Lopez’s talk, which runs right at an hour. I thought it would be a great way to initiate a new multimedia aspect of In Contention, and so, I offer it to you now. It’s a funny and insightful 60 minutes from one of the industry’s best columnists.

    Have a listen:

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  • OFF THE CARPET: 2008, a year in advance

    Another year, another set of wins…and another look ahead at what’s in store NEXT year.

    It’s never too late to take a long gander at what we might see dominating the film awards landscape in 365 days, and with that in mind, I’ve been doing my usual mulling over the possibilities for a few weeks to put together the sadly thorough examination of the 2008-09 award season that follows. Let’s get into it. There are some major considerations to take into account. right off the top.

    Like Leonardo DiCaprio, for instance, who is set to be the entertainer of the year. With performances in “Body of Lies” (Ridley Scott) and “Revolutionary Road” (Sam Mendes), DiCaprio is working with a duo of awards-proven talent this year. Perhaps that will work against him, much like it did in 2006, and no major Oscar success will come knocking. But we’ll wait until we see the performances. Each of them could be enticing.

    This year’s Best Picture Oscar victor Scott Rudin is back again, by the way, with “Revolutionary Road,” recently inherited by Paramount Vantage and probably one of the true “frontrunners” this far out that we could put our finger on. The only other film in Vantage’s arsenal is Edward Zwick’s “Defiance,” which could simply be a commercial success, but might find its way to multiple nods like “The Last Samurai” and “Blood Diamond” in recent years.

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