Thu, July 24, 2003
"Nnkkyehh– ghschht"
Music to my ears. The sound of Amy Smart weaving "Oookayy" into a bewildered, amused kind of gigglesnort on the set of "The Battle of Shaker Heights," this year's "Project Greenlight" movie. Her character is talking with Shia LaBeouf's character, who is four years her junior but still kinda flirting with her in an offbeat, nerdy way.
"Project Greenlight" is great. It's great to watch if you're interested in the making of filmed entertainment (like me) and enjoy uttering the phrase "Hwah. I coulda done better than that!" (also like me). One of the things they teach you in film school, aside from how to wrangle a drive-on, is that having accomplishments is kind of a liability. Without any, you can scoff at others' work; with 'em, they can just scoff right back. So, the key is to have potential and wield that with all the force you can muster. Your results can't be disappointing if they don't exist, so just stay in potential mode.
Tonight I had four minutes to kill, so I called up last week's P G'light on TiVo and skipped forward to Amy's shining moment. On the way there, I had to pass the whole first day of shooting sequence, which included producers Chris Moore and Jeff Balis second-guessing the directors at every possible turn, quite possibly for the sole purpose of maintaining the directors' uneasiness and asserting their own power.
Wow, Amy Smart is good. Meryl Streep she may not be, but she is excellent at tone, which can be the single defining element that makes-or-breaks a film or TV show. She achieves an unassuming reality that's engaging while still being hilarious in an elegantly subtle way. I like playing back her performance in the art store scene over and over, especially because of that little snarfle at the end.
I only watched that 40 seconds of tape. (Tape? Ha! It's TiVo time, baby! Where we're going, we don't need roads!) Watched it about three times and that's enough; I only needed to kill a couple minutes anyway. Isn't TiVo great? Anything, on demand, you're in you're out. But as I was saving it for later minute-killing use, I was reminded of the "scenes." (As in, "scenes from next week's 'Project Greenlight.'") I usually don't watch the scenes. Certainly not on "The West Wing" or "Ed." But on P G'light, there's no harm. It's all silly anyway. In the scenes, the directors are trying to come up with a solution to their communication problems with the rest of the crew. Kyle Rankin suggests notecards (out of context, who can say towards what end) and Chris Moore's response is along the lines of "Notecards?? Notecards?? I'm not doing notecards! I've made thirteen films!"
I just really hope Rankin's reply is "Yeah, but you're counting 'Stolen Summer' in there aren't you? Despite the fact that everyone agrees that was a big steaming pile of squirrel turd?" Oh, how I hope...
