In Contention

Tag: The Soloist

  • 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.”

  • Could Robert Downey Jr. own this year?

    I remember when Robert Downey Jr. was cast in the role of Tony Stark for Jon Favreau’s “Iron Man,” my colleague David Poland made the shrewd observation that the former drug-addled wash-up was once again insurable.

    Not that I like putting such language to an actor I love so much, but the truth is, he hit one of the deepest downward spirals a star of his caliber could imagine, all of it following nearly 10 years of Brat Pack fame and a heralded Oscar nominated performance in 1992.

    But how about the turnaround? After the bad days of the mid-to-late 90s, and some major relapses in the first part of the new millennium, Downey finally turned the corner. A new role on one of television’s hottest shows wasn’t enough to get him bonded for Woody Allen’s “Melinda and Melinda” (which waited another four years to hit screens, with Will Ferrell ultimately taking the role), and there were pitfalls ahead still, but the upward curve seemed on the horizon somewhere, lurking.

    And here, eight years later, Downey is one day away from the release of one of the year’s most anticipated, likely highest-grossing films. Insured doesn’t say the half of it. Robert Downey Jr. is vindicated.

    But it doesn’t end with Tony Stark. The actor has two other very high profile performances landing in 2008, one of them set to be a laugh riot as he sports black face opposite Ben Stiller in “Tropic Thunder,” releasing in August. To cap off the year, Downey will star in Joe Wright’s “Atonement” follow-up, “The Soloist,” an awards season hopeful for DreamWorks SKG and perhaps a ride to a second Oscar nomination for the actor.

    I bring all this up because it is the story people should be writing, however much publicity would likely prefer to shine the light elsewhere. David Carr wrote a superlative piece that touched the finer points for The New York Times a few weeks ago, and my colleague Blake Rutherford offered his own thoughts in that light as well. But there isn’t enough patting on the back going around for my taste — sue me. An actor taking this big a stumble, looking like straight-to-DVD material if ever a career could be salvaged, and then pushing back with a creative and hard-working fury such as this — it is cause for celebration.

    When all is said and done, I have a feeling Robert Downey Jr. will be the toast of Hollywood in 2008. Entertainer of the year? Maybe. But it’s certainly the story of the year.

    Bravo. And here, here.

  • 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.

  • On Robert Downey Jr.

    It was only a few years ago that the inimitable Robert Downey Jr. was in our living rooms as a result of repeated drug arrests. I recall several instances where I felt as if he’d never recover. Fortunately, he did, and on May 2 Mr. Downey will appear as a comic book hero in “Iron Man.” Advance buzz for the film has been strong, and David Carr of The New York Times filed this profile in today’s paper of the actor once labeled “the best of his generation.”

    “Iron Man,” I suspect, will be an enjoyable film. Jeff Bridges, Gwyneth Paltrow and Terrence Howard also star. Based on what I’ve seen thus far, it has some technical appeal that may catch voters come awards season. It’s this film – and the remaining work on Mr. Downey’s schedule in 2008 – that should finally complete his remarkable comeback.

    Later this summer, he stars as Kirk Lazarus in the film “Tropic Thunder” from Ben Stiller. Downey’s character, a method actor who undergoes a pigment alteration, has many people curious. And this fall he appears in Joe Wright’s latest film “The Soloist” opposite Jamie Foxx.

    Mr. Downey has only been nominated once for an Academy Award, in 1993, for his role as Charlie Chaplin in Richard Attenborough’s film “Chaplin.” He did not win. Since then, he’s appeared in more than thirty five films — some quite memorable (“Wonder Boys,” “A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints,” “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” and “Zodiac,” especially). But none of these roles caught the attention of the awards community.

    Seven years ago this month, Mr. Downey was fired from his recurring guest role on “Ally McBeal.” This year, he’ll release three films, one of which, “The Soloist,” may earn him a second Oscar nomination. And his past seems to be well behind him. As he remarked to Mr. Carr, “I’m not in that sphere of activity anymore, and I don’t understand it any more than I understood 10 or 20 years ago that somehow everything was going to turn out O.K. from this lousy, exotic and dark triple chapter of my life. I swear to God I don’t even really understand that planet anymore.”

    I’m certainly grateful for that.

  • 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:

    [display_podcast]

  • ‘The Soloist’ based on the new book?

    We all know Joe Wright’s upcoming film “The Soloist,” written by Susannah Grant, was taken from the articles of Steve Lopez a few years ago. In the film, Robert Downey Jr. will play the LA Times columnist while Jamie Foxx will star as Nathaniel Ayers, the homeless Julliard-trained musician who became the subject of Lopez’s writings.

    In most cases, as we learned twice over last year, screenplays based upon magazine or newspaper articles have a tough road to adapted screenplay consideration, given the general lack of narrative structure and the tendency to stray from the material presented in the actual articles. With that in mind, I figured “The Soloist” would be headed for original screenplay consideration in the fall. BUT…

    I came across this today. It seems Steve Lopez will be reading from his new book “The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship and the Redemptive Power of Music” in Pasadena on Friday. The book actually releases tomorrow in bookstores nationwide.

    So…now I wonder. The screenplay was obviously registered before the book was published, which puts it in the realm of original work, but these things can be tricky. And perhaps the book is simply a conglomeration of Lopez’s articles, in which case, nothing to see here. But we’ll have to keep our eye on it for now.

  • 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.

    (more…)