Milan Ryzl Parapsychologia praktyczna
Hannay Barbara Wymarzona randka
Nawrocka Magdalena Po drugiej stronie tćÂczy
Sullivan Vernon [Vian Boris] I wykośÂczymy wszystkich obrzydliwców
Dziesieciu murzynkow Agatha Christie
28. Darcy Emma Niewolnica zmysśÂów
Norton Andre Gwiezdny zwiad_2
Eileen Wilks [Tall, Dark & Eligible 02] Luke's Promise (pdf)
MikośÂaj Kopernik Pisma wybrane
Emma Hillman A Question of Trust [EC Taboo] (pdf)
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
assignment and begins to follow the trial, studying all things Jim Williams,
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997) 125
who may be a murderer but is a most charming one. Into the nightlife of
Savannah he is drawn, where he encounters voodoo, sorcery, and the belief
in all things evil, which to say the least startles the writer. Charmed by
Williams, he slowly peels back the root of the story and comes to find that
Williams is a homosexual, though not publicly, even though virtually every-
one who knows him knows it, with the exception of his mother. One of the
things bothering him most at the trial is that his mother may find out. The
friendship between Williams and Kelso ends when Williams lies in court, thus
getting off the murder charge and leaving the courtroom a free man.
However, that night in his home, he suffers what appears to be a massive
heart attack and drops dead on the floor, almost as though the spirits that
walk the streets of Savannah had cursed him.
Like all Eastwood shoots, this one went without incident on location, and
the film, the second of the year for Eastwood, was ready for the fall of 97 as
Warner Brothers major Oscar contender. Before the film was released, the
campaign for Academy Awards attention had begun, but when the reviews
began rolling in, the campaign s horns were quieted.
While most reviews were at least appreciative of the artistry with which the
film was created, the consensus seemed to be that Eastwood s film was but a
pale shadow of the dense and superbly detailed book. John Berendt made
the foolish public statement thanking Eastwood for making a 50 million dol-
lar commercial for his book, which enraged Eastwood and the executives at
Warner Brothers to whom the author apologized, recognizing his arrogant
mistake.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is an outstanding, lean film
trapped in a fat film s body. Clint Eastwood s screen version of John
Berendt s phenomenally successful non-fiction tome about a sensational
murder case in genteel, eccentric old Savannah vividly captures the atmos-
phere and memorable characters of the book. But the picture s aimless,
sprawling structure and exceedingly leisurely pace finally come to weigh too
heavily upon its virtues, wrote Todd McCarthy in Variety.
Clint Eastwood s film is a determined attempt to be faithful to the
book s spirit, wrote Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times, but something
is lost just by turning on the camera: Nothing we see can be as amazing as
what we ve imagined. In a way the filmmakers faced the same hopeless task
as the adapters of Tom Wolfe s The Bonfire of the Vanities. The Berendt book,
on best seller lists for three years, has made such an impression that any mere
mortal version of it is doomed to pale. Perhaps only the documentarian Errol
Morris, who specializes in the incredible variety of the human zoo, could
have done justice to the material.
Perhaps the most stinging comments came from Owen Gleiberman in
Entertainment Weekly. By the time Midnight in the Garden of Good and
Evil is over, it may send more than a few viewers scurrying off to the book-
store. They ll surely want to see what all the fuss was about.
126 Clint Eastwood
Listless, disjointed, and disconnected, this meandering two-hour and
30-minute exercise in futility will fascinate no one who doesn t have a blood
relative among the cast or crew, penned Kenneth Turan for the Los Angeles
Times.
The performance of Kevin Spacey drew the most praise for the film, and
indeed Spacey was terrific, bringing to the role the smarmy, intellectual arro-
gance that quickly became his trademark. Hiding behind those manners and
genteel attitudes, Williams really is the sort of man who can get away with
murder, leaving Kelso walking away in disgust.
The Lady Chablis character drew some strong notices; however, one has
to wonder if it was more because she did not ruin the film. Alison Eastwood
was barely mentioned, not even for her singing on the film s soundtrack,
which also was populated by Spacey and Clint Eastwood. Like the film, it
seemed no one really noticed it.
21
True Crime (1999)
This crime thriller represents possibly the single greatest miscalculation of
Eastwood s career as both an actor and a director in terms of his casting.
Understand by that statement I do not mean that True Crime (1999) is the
worst film of his career it most certainly is not but rather his choice of
casting himself was a grave error.
At the age of 70, he chose to cast himself as Steve Everett, a rogue jour-
nalist with a past that haunts him and a confirmed horndog willing to bed
virtually any woman he sees. He is a lousy husband and father, a drunk, and
in the middle of an affair with his boss s wife that he does not even attempt
to hide. Though once considered a great reporter, he is on the downside of
his career, seeing most of it through a whiskey bottle. What is interesting
about Everett is that deep down inside he knows he is a rotten father and
husband, but he truly does not care. The issue is not that Eastwood was
beyond playing the role. He certainly possesses the range, which he had
proven in Unforgiven and again in The Bridges of Madison County, but rather
the type of role it was and whether he ever asked himself if he was really the
right actor for the part. Clearly written for a younger man, and Eastwood,
for the first and only time in his career, miscast himself in the role, not seem-
ing to see that his age had finally caught up to him. For one of the first times
in his career, he looked sadly out of place in bed with a much younger
woman, and when he hits on a pretty young thing at the film s end, he looks
like a dirty old man, and frankly a little silly. One has to wonder why he did
not step behind the camera and allow another to take the part, perhaps James
Woods who was in the film, or Alec Baldwin, a vastly underappreciated actor.
Richard and Lilli Zanuck had the project and sent it to me. I read it and
thought it was a very interesting story, he explained. It was the character of
Steve Everett that drew Eastwood to the project.
The character I play, Steve Everett, is a guy who s on the road to self-
destruction. This job he s got is his last shot. He s been slowly demoted
through the ranks of journalism to where he s now working, a smaller
128 Clint Eastwood
newspaper in a small city. His life is all screwed up. He destroyed his
marriage, and he s jeopardizing his relationship with his daughter. He
believes a man on death row is innocent so he goes on a tangent, the actor
explained to Robert J. Emery.
Though he has a family that adores him, he can t . . . that doesn t seem
to be enough. He has to destroy it, and the thing that makes the story inter-
esting is that the victim who is falsely accused, at least we think he is, is very
much a family man who is trying to keep his family in order and do all the
things our hero isn t, he continued. But our hero s tenacity sort of carries
him through to make him successful. Even though in the end he s not a
totally successful person, he seems to have accomplished what he wanted to
do, his doubts about this person s guilt, finished Eastwood.
The screenplay was based on the book by Andrew Klavan, which in turn
was based on a true story of a newspaper reporter who helped a man prove
his innocence of a crime for which he had been convicted. Ray Herndon was
a reporter working in Dallas, Texas, when he received a letter from an inmate
in prison proclaiming his innocence, which the writer took with a grain of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
