Telluride Publish-Fest Evaluation: Feinberg and Keegan on Rocky Mountain Highs and Lows

Per annual custom, The Hollywood Reporter’s govt editor (awards) Scott Feinberg and senior editor (movie) Rebecca Keegan huddled on the final day of the Telluride Movie Competition to dissect their Labor Day weekend within the Rockies…

KEEGAN Scott, we’re penning this from the nook of the bar on the New Sheridan Resort, situated on the principle avenue of Telluride, on the fifth and closing day of the fest (an extra day was added in celebration of its fiftieth birthday). Most attendees are on their approach out of city. And a tumbleweed actually simply blew previous us.

FEINBERG It’s good to have an additional day in paradise, Rebecca. However paradise appeared a bit totally different this 12 months: Due to the strikes, among the largest names on the fest weren’t “movie folks,” however relatively the likes of Grammy-winning musician Jon Batiste (topic of the doc American Symphony, a gross sales title), swimming coach Bonnie Stoll (who’s performed by Jodie Foster in Netflix’s Nyad) and Mr. Chow himself, restaurateur Michael Chow (topic of the HBO doc aka Mr. Chow).

KEEGAN Nicely, due to SAG-AFTRA issuing some last-minute interim agreements to movies made outdoors the AMPTP system, a few conventional actors have been right here — amongst them, Julia Louis-Dreyfus (star of A24’s Tuesday), Ethan Hawke, Laura Linney and Maya Hawke (director and stars of the gross sales title Wildcat), Dakota Johnson (star of the gross sales title Daddio), and many others. And, as a non-public citizen, so was Emma Stone. Stone didn’t seem at any Q&As for her Searchlight film, Poor Issues, nor did she do any press, since Searchlight is a subsidiary of AMPTP member firm Disney.

One factor we’ve puzzled is how motion pictures whose stars can’t do promotion on the fall festivals could be impacted. I do assume the strike is hurting some movies’ capability to to interrupt by means of. George C. Wolfe’s Netflix movie, Rustin, for example, rides on the electrical energy of Colman Domingo’s efficiency because the Civil Rights chief, however Domingo couldn’t attend. And the movie has essentially the most well-known backers within the enterprise, Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, whose manufacturing firm, Greater Floor, produced, however as an honorary SAG member and a vocal labor supporter, the previous president couldn’t attend. He did file a video assertion in regards to the movie, pre-strike, that Netflix performed earlier than its screenings, however are you able to think about how an in-person look would have made an occasion out of not simply Rustin, however your complete competition? Additionally, Gael Garcia Bernal was to have obtained a competition tribute for his efficiency in Roger Ross Williams’ Cassandro, which dazzled critics at Sundance and would have benefited from the publicity right here forward of Amazon releasing it in theaters Sept. 15.

FEINBERG Among the many actors who have been in a position to promote their work right here have been a number of non-American stars of non-English-language motion pictures that weren’t made/won’t be distributed by AMPTP firms. Take, for instance, this week’s THR cowl topic, the German actress Sandra Hüller, star of each Anatomy of a Fall (Neon) and The Zone of Curiosity (A24), the primary and second place finishers at Cannes, who may conceivably land noms in each the lead and supporting actress classes. Attending with one among her new U.S. power-publicists, she was — very deservedly — in a position to appeal to far more consideration than she would have in a standard star-packed 12 months on the fest.

KEEGAN Primarily based on my extremely scientific polling on gondolas, in theater traces and whereas ready for my breakfast sandwich at The Butcher & The Baker, Poor Issues was the one film nearly everybody appeared to like. Which is admittedly saying one thing when you think about that it options, amongst many, many different oddities, Stone flicking a cadaver’s penis and referring to intercourse as “livid leaping.” In an earlier period of the Academy, Poor Issues would have been too bizarre and too lusty for voters. However that is the post-Form of Water and Parasite Academy, and I believe they’ll embrace the movie’s audacity.

FEINBERG I’m completely with you. In truth, Poor Issues may wind up with as many Oscar nominations as any movie this season — as additionally was the case with Lanthimos’ final movie, 2018’s The Favorite, which additionally was written by Tony McNamara, counted Stone amongst its stars and was launched by Searchlight — and Stone, who’s simply 34, has an actual shot at selecting up a second finest actress Oscar.

Different movies at this 12 months’s fest weren’t as universally cherished, though features of them have been. It was very onerous to seek out individuals who didn’t assume that Annette Bening was out of this world as marathon swimmer Diana Nyad within the Oscar-winning documentarians Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi’s narrative debut, Nyad (Netflix); I, for one, assume the 65-year-old actress, who has been nominated and misplaced on the Oscars 4 instances over the previous 33 years, is now the perfect actress frontrunner.

In the meantime, the fest produced at the least three bona fide finest actor contenders. Along with Rustin’s excellent Domingo, who folks love on display screen and off, there’s Paul Giamatti, who performs a hardened boarding faculty instructor in The Holdovers (Focus), which reunites him together with his Sideways collaborator Alexander Payne and will deliver him the perfect actor nom of which he was robbed for his efficiency in that movie 19 seasons in the past. And there’s Fleabag’s “sizzling priest” Andrew Scott, who actually popped for his flip as a homosexual man who supernaturally reconnects together with his useless dad and mom in Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers (Searchlight).

KEEGAN Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders (twentieth Century) landed the coveted Patron’s Preview screening slot. The film is an ode to a sure model of all-American powerful guys, however largely attracted reward, together with yours, for its feminine star, Jodie Comer. Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn, in the meantime, was a dependable competition argument starter. As with Fennell’s Oscar-winning debut, 2020’s Promising Younger Lady, Saltburn has a particular standpoint and a beloved actor at its heart, on this case Barry Keoghan, who completely commits to his character. However not everyone at Telluride was up for the Amazon film’s over-the-top thrives. The Oxford-set class satire might fare higher subsequent month because the opening evening movie of BFI London.

FEINBERG Good level. However, on the identical time, one factor that I used to be reminded of this weekend was to to not make assumptions about how sure demographics of individuals will react to sure movies. Living proof: I assumed that Saltburn would play a lot better with youthful folks than with older folks, given how risqué it’s. Nevertheless it seems the movie’s largest champion on the town was my pal of a sure age, veteran publicist Gary Shapiro, a longtime Telluride attendee and one of the crucial social of Academy members, who was proselytizing in regards to the movie to everybody he is aware of.

KEEGAN It was attention-grabbing to take heed to the chatter about among the biopics that featured difficult topics, like Wildcat, about author Flannery O’Connor, who each skewered in her work and typically embodied in her non-public correspondence the values of the Jim Crow South. Wildcat is among the fest’s acquisition titles, and whichever distributor buys it should determine the best way to market that nuance. In the meantime, Nyad was hit with a intestine punch on the primary day of the competition, within the type of an extended Los Angeles Occasions piece that lays out the swimmer’s historical past of typically exaggerating her accomplishments. Once I requested Chin and Vasarhelyi about that, they advised me they acknowledge it within the movie in scenes the place Foster’s character chides Nyad about it. “This movie shouldn’t be a few file,” Vasarhelyi stated. “It’s a few girl who wakes up at 60 and realizes she’s not executed.” These sorts of tales can forged a pall over a movie throughout awards season, however it feels price noting that anyone attention-grabbing sufficient to make a film about goes to have some flaws.

FEINBERG Completely. Plus, Academy members are supposed to judge the deserves of a movie or a efficiency, not the character of the one who impressed a movie. Folks have gained Oscars for enjoying Idi Amin, Aileen Wuornos, Claus von Bülow and Henry VIII. Was the Academy endorsing these people and every thing that they ever did? I believe not.

As at all times, among the strongest movies on the fest have been non-English-language titles that had already premiered overseas however had not beforehand been proven stateside. Along with the aforementioned Cannes darlings Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Curiosity, Telluride additionally screened the German grasp Wim Wenders’ Excellent Days (Neon), for which Kôji Yakusho gained Cannes’ finest actor prize in recognition of his quietly shifting portrayal of a Tokyo rest room cleaner. We discovered throughout the fest that it has been chosen by Japan as its finest worldwide function Oscar submission over an acclaimed movie directed by a Japanese filmmaker, Monster from Hirokazu Kore-eda, who’s finest recognized for the Cannes winner Shoplifters.

Then there was The Style of Issues (IFC), previously often called The Pot-au-Feu, a tremendously romantic and hunger-inducing film about grasp cooks (performed by real-life exes Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel), for which the Vietnamese-born French filmmaker Tran Anh Hung gained Cannes’ finest director prize. France appears to have a really powerful name on their palms, so far as whether or not to submit Anatomy of a Fall or The Style of Issues as its Oscar entry.

And one different that I’ve to say is the movie that Germany has already designated as its Oscar consultant, 2015 Pupil Academy Award winner İlker Çatak’s The Trainer’s Lounge (Sony Classics), which is a heart-pounding drama about theft in an elementary faculty and the instructor (Leonie Benesch) whose efforts to cease it result in chaos. Quite a few high-profile competition attendees have been wowed by the movie, and Sony Classics co-chief Michael Barker advised me that he now intends to push it for recognition in classes by which non-English-language work doesn’t typically compete, together with finest actress and finest unique screenplay. I believe it shouldn’t be underestimated.

KEEGAN Final 12 months was the 12 months of the documentary at Telluride, which was partly a mirrored image of the power of the nonfiction area and partly a aspect impact of the pandemic manufacturing slowdown. There have been far fewer this 12 months, although, proper?

FEINBERG To make sure — however there have been nonetheless quite a lot of excellent ones. Amongst these which might be first charge: The Pigeon Tunnel (Apple), which Telluride common/Oscar winner Errol Morris constructed round interviews he carried out with the late writer John le Carré; Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss’ The Mission (Nat Geo), a few younger Evangelical missionary who sought to transform the inhabitants of a distant island; and Madeleine Gavin’s Past Utopia (Roadside), which facilities on a South Korean pastor and the folks he has tried to assist escape from North Korea. Additionally, one of many hottest gross sales titles of the fest was Oscar nominee Matthew Heineman’s aforementioned American Symphony, which I hear has a number of suitors and will shut a cope with one among them at any second, which has the potential to re-shape this 12 months’s finest doc race.

KEEGAN I made a degree of trying out among the different movies which might be in search of distribution, just like the Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn taxi-cab-set two hander Daddio from first-time filmmaker Christy Corridor. Johnson produced by means of her firm, TeaTime Footage, and recruited Penn, her Malibu neighbor, by strolling the script over to his home. The result’s one among Penn’s most interesting performances in years — heat and rascally, together with his expressive, deeply lined face impeccably lit by DP Phedon Papamichael.

I used to be additionally actually moved by Louis-Dreyfus’s foray into drama in first-time director Daina Oniunas-Pusic’s Tuesday, which A24 hasn’t dated but and should effectively find yourself being a 2024 title. It’s an actual reinvention for the Seinfeld and Veep star.

FEINBERG The Telluride Movie Competition, in fact, at all times overlaps with the Venice Movie Competition, by way of dates if not movies. What have you ever been listening to from the Lido?

KEEGAN Plenty of titles appear to be popping there, at the least with critics, together with Bradley Cooper’s Maestro (Netflix), Michael Mann’s Ferrari (Neon) and Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla (A24), all of which could have their North American premieres on the New York Movie Competition in a number of weeks.

Ava DuVernay’s Origin, which continues to be in search of U.S. distribution, is about to display screen at Venice on Sept. 6, after which on the Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition on Sept. 11. I do know you’re headed to TIFF later this week. Which movies that will likely be screening there are in your to-see record?

FEINBERG I’m very excited to see Origin, in addition to the TIFF opener The Boy and the Heron (GKIDS), the most recent from the legendary Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki. I additionally hope to catch Craig Gillespie’s Dumb Cash (Sony), which boasts an important ensemble; Twine Jefferson’s American Fiction (Amazon), starring Jeffrey Wright; the Nicolas Cage automobile Dream Situation (A24); Taika Waititi‘s long-gestating Subsequent Aim Wins (Disney); Maggie Betts‘ The Burial (Amazon), which stars Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones; Alex Gibney’s four-hour Paul Simon doc In Stressed Desires: The Music of Paul Simon (nonetheless in search of U.S. distribution); and James Hawes’ One Life (nonetheless in search of U.S. distribution), by which Anthony Hopkins performs Holocaust hero Nicholas Winton.

KEEGAN As I head again to LA, and to actuality, I can’t cease fascinated about the query I used to be requested most steadily this weekend: When are the strikes lastly going to finish? Really nobody appeared to know. There have been some moments that felt like a thaw, nonetheless. Once I confirmed as much as Lucasfilm president Kathy Kennedy and producer Frank Marshall’s annual occasion, a paper tacked outdoors the door that learn, “Switzerland.” And inside there have been indications that we have been certainly in impartial territory, as execs from AMPTP member firms mingled with members of putting guilds, many having come straight from a screening of Rustin. The city has been ready for a Lew Wasserman-like determine to swoop in and produce the studios and the guilds collectively. However perhaps progress towards a deal will begin extra incrementally, at small gatherings like this one. Folks did appear to agree at the least on one factor: this 12 months’s Telluride lineup, the primary to mirror the complete resumption of manufacturing for the reason that COVID-19 shutdowns, was exceptionally sturdy. Cinema had survived that extraordinary blow. The query is, can it survive one other?