Just as we were about to record this week’s “Screen Talk,” we found out that one of our favorite auteurs, David Lynch, had succumbed to emphysema at age 78. In this episode, we explore his legacy, catch up with awards news from the PGA and BAFTAs to the WGA, and report on a new development in the Blake Lively vs. Justin Baldoni case.
Plus, we each picked five must-see films at Sundance, which launches January 23, the same day as the Oscar nominations are announced, after some postponements. Co-host Ryan Lattanzio interviewed Robert Schwartzman, who runs Utopia distribution with Cole Harper. The company partnered with Lionsgate on “Megalopolis,” from Schwartzman’s uncle Francis Ford Coppola, and hawked sales for Gia Coppola’s “The Last Showgirl” back at Cannes. That movie is out now from Roadside Attractions. But Utopia has also released indies from rising directors we know now, including Jane Schoenbrun’s “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair,” Kristoffer Borgli’s “Sick of Myself,” and Emma Seligman’s “Shiva Baby.” Utopia will be at Sundance this year, potentially looking for more acquisitions.
But back to the terrible news of Thursday: We both revere David Lynch. No one had ever seen anything like “Eraserhead” in 1977. And he went on from there, from the Mel Brooks-produced studio film “The Elephant Man,” nominated for eight Oscars including Best Picture and Director, to “Dune,” his highest-grossing film, even though it was a failure in relation to cost. He was nominated for Best Director for “Blue Velvet” and “Mulholland Drive,” as well. He eventually was given an honorary Oscar. The TV series “Twin Peaks” was such a must-see destination that, for the Season 1 finale in 1990, the American Pavilion at Cannes set up a remote viewing site for all the Americans there.
Other movies in the Lynch canon include the transgressive “Lost Highway” and “Wild at Heart” and sweet portraits of Americana like “The Straight Story.” But his greatest achievements were “Mulholland Drive” and “Twin Peaks” and its prequel film and sequel series — as well as setting an example of an independent creative entrepreneur who set his own path and listened to the beat of his own dreams. And we miss his weather reports.
On the awards front, the BAFTAs and PGAs cleared things up considerably. Big questions: Will Jamie Lee Curtis get a supporting actress nom for “The Last Showgirl”? She landed both SAG and BAFTAs noms. Pamela Anderson probably can’t, because ahead of her are Fernanda Torres, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Nicole Kidman, and possibly Angelina Jolie.
There’s a new countersuit on the ongoing Blake Lively vs. Justin Baldoni fracas. We discuss the movie that this is all about, “It Ends With Us” ($350 million worldwide), and why it’s a bad idea to have a filmmaker starring in a movie in which he makes love to his costar. It’s asking for trouble.
Ryan has been screening films ahead of the Sundance festival to review. He recommends five must-sees, including Ira Sachs’ latest, “Peter Hujar’s Day,” which reunites him with his “Passages” star Ben Whishaw. He plays the photographer who worked in New York in the ’70s, opposite Rebecca Hall. Like many films at Sundance, “Peter Hujar’s Day” is seeking distribution. Ryan also likes Argentinian-American director Amalia Ulman’s “Magic Farm” (Mubi), which stars Chloë Sevigny, Alex Wolff, and Simon Rex as a crew trying to shoot a documentary on a remote Argentina location, as well as Emilie Blichfeldt’s “The Ugly Stepsister” (Shudder), a Victorian feminist body horror fairy tale. And Amy Berg’s latest music documentary is “It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley,” the first nonfiction feature-length film about the musician who tragically died at 31.
Anne lays out out Sundance films she can’t wait to see: Bill Condon’s musical adaptation of “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” starring Jennifer Lopez and Diego Luna; veteran writer-producer James Schamus’s new Korean take on his and Ang Lee’s New Queer Cinema classic from 1993, “The Wedding Banquet” (Bleecker Street), co-written and directed by Andrew Ahn and starring Lily Gladstone and Bowen Yang; “The Thing with Feathers,” starring Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays a father dealing with grief and having to take care of his young sons; and “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” starring Rose Byrne as a Long Island mother whose life comes crashing down. Word is also hot on Grace Glowicki, who is the star and writer and director of “Dead Lover,” which is in the Midnight section.
Listen to the episode below or watch in the video above.
Screen Talk is produced by Azwan Badruzaman and available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify, and hosted by Megaphone. Browse previous episodes here, subscribe here, and be sure to let us know if you’d like to hear the hosts address specific issues in upcoming editions of Screen Talk.
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