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Revision as of 20:27, 2 February 2008 by Arsonist's Daughter (talk | contribs) (→External links)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff) 2000 film| Wonder Boys | |
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| File:Wonder Boys film.jpgRe-release poster | |
| Directed by | Curtis Hanson |
| Written by | Novel: Michael Chabon Screenplay: Steven Kloves |
| Produced by | Curtis Hanson Scott Rudin |
| Starring | Michael Douglas Tobey Maguire Frances McDormand Robert Downey, Jr. Katie Holmes Rip Torn |
| Narrated by | Michael Douglas |
| Cinematography | Dante Spinotti |
| Edited by | Dede Allen |
| Music by | Christopher Young |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures (USA) Universal Studios (UK) Warner Bros. (Brazil, Argentina, France) |
| Release dates | February 22, 2000 |
| Running time | 111 minutes |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $35,000,000 (est.) |
| Box office | $33,426,588 |
Wonder Boys is a 2000 film adaptation of the Michael Chabon novel of the same name. It stars Michael Douglas, Tobey Maguire, Frances McDormand, Katie Holmes and Robert Downey Jr. Film critic Roger Ebert described it as "the most accurate movie about campus life that I can remember."
Directed by Curtis Hanson, Wonder Boys was filmed in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, including locations at Carnegie Mellon University, Chatham College, and Shady Side Academy. Other Pennsylvania locations included Beaver, Rochester and Rostraver Township. Released February 22, 2000, the film reunited Holmes and Maguire, who had appeared together three years earlier in The Ice Storm. After Wonder Boys failed at the box office, there was a second attempt to find an audience with a new marketing campaign and a November 8, 2000, re-release, which was also a financial disappointment.
Plot summary
Professor Grady Tripp (Michael Douglas) is a novelist who teaches creative writing at an unnamed Pittsburgh university. He is having an affair with the university chancellor, Sara Gaskell (Frances McDormand), whose husband Walter is the chairman of the English department, and thus Grady's boss. Grady's third wife, Emily, has just left him, and he has failed to repeat the success of his first novel, published years earlier. He continues to labor on a second novel, but the more he tries to finish it the less able he finds himself to invent a satisfactory ending - the book runs to a couple thousand pages and is still far from finished. He spends his free time smoking marijuana.
His students include James Leer (Tobey Maguire) and Hannah Green (Katie Holmes). Hannah and James are friends and both very good writers. Hannah, who rents a room in Tripp's large house, is attracted to Tripp, but he does not reciprocate. James is enigmatic, quiet, dark and enjoys writing fiction more than he first lets on.
During a party at the Gaskells' house, Sara reveals to Grady that she is pregnant with his child. Grady finds James standing outside holding what he claims to be a replica gun, won by his mother at a fairground during her schooldays. However, the gun turns out to be very real, as James shoots the Gaskells' dog when he finds it attacking Grady. James also steals a very valuable piece of Marilyn Monroe memorabilia from the house. Grady is unable to tell Sara of this incident as she is pressuring him to choose between her and Emily, so Grady is forced to keep the dead dog in his car for most of the weekend, and also to allow James to follow him around, fearing that he may be depressed or even suicidal. Gradually he realizes that much what James tells him is untrue, and is designed to elicit Grady's sympathy and so that he can hang out with Grady.
Meanwhile, Grady's editor, Terry Crabtree (Robert Downey Jr.), has flown into town on the pretense of attending the university's annual WordFest, a literary event for aspiring authors. In reality, Crabtree is there to see if Tripp has written anything worth publishing, as both men's careers depend on Grady's book. Terry arrives with a transvestite whom he met on the flight, called Antonia Sloviak (Michael Cavadias). The pair apparently become intimate in a bedroom at the Gaskells' party, but immediately afterwards Terry meets, and becomes infatuated with, James Leer, and Miss Sloviak is unceremoniously sent home. After a night on the town, Crabtree and James semi-consciously flirt through the night, which eventually leads up to the two end up spending an awkwardly intimate night together in one of Grady's spare rooms.
Tired and confused, Grady phones Walter Gaskell (Richard Thomas) and reveals to him that he is in love with Walter's wife. Meanwhile, Walter has also made the connection between the disappearance of Marilyn Monroe's jacket and James Leer. The following morning a policeman arrives with Sara to escort James to the Chancellor's quarters to discuss the ramifications of James actions. The jacket is still in Grady's car, which has conspicuously gone missing. Given to him by a friend as payment for a loan, over the weekend Grady has come to suspect that the car was stolen, as he has been repeatedly accosted by a man claiming to be its real owner. Using his writer's sense of creativity and much to Crabtree's astonishment, he eventually tracks the car down, but in a dispute over its ownership the majority of his manuscript blows out of the car and is lost. The car's owner gives him a ride to the university with his wife, Oola, in the passenger seat, wearing the stolen jacket. Remembering James Leer's distress at how lonely the jacket looked in its own special closet, Grady finally sees that making things right involves having to make choices. Grady tells Oola the story behind the jacket and allows her to leave, symbolically filling the void that possessed James and himself. Worried what the cost of Grady's choice will be To James Leer's future, Crabtree asks Professor Tripp what's next. Grady gives Terry the simple advice to improvise. Terry takes the advice and convinces Walter not to press charges by agreeing to publish his book about what he synopsizes, "a critical exploration of the union of Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe and its function in American mythopoetics," tentatively titled The Last American Marriage.
The movie ends with Grady recounting the eventual fate of the main characters - Hannah graduates and becomes a magazine editor; James wasn't expelled, but drops out anyway and moves to New York with Crabtree to rework his novel for publication; and Crabtree himself "goes right on being Crabtree." Grady finishes typing his new novel (now using a computer rather than a typewriter), then watches Sara and their child arriving "home" before turning back to the computer and clicking "Save."
Cast and characters
- Michael Douglas ... Prof. Grady Tripp
- Tobey Maguire ... James Leer
- Frances McDormand ... Dean Sara Gaskell
- Robert Downey Jr. ... Terry Crabtree
- Katie Holmes ... Hannah Green
- Rip Torn ... Quentin 'Q' Morewood
- Jane Adams ... Oola
- Richard Thomas ... Walter Gaskell
Soundtrack
| Untitled | |
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The soundtrack features several songs by Bob Dylan, including one new composition, "Things Have Changed"; Hanson also created a music video for "Things Have Changed," filming new footage of Bob Dylan on the film's various locations and editing it with footage used in Wonder Boys as if Dylan were actually in the film. The song eventually won both a Golden Globe and an Oscar for "Best Original Song." Tim Hardin's "Reason To Believe" and Neil Young's "Old Man" and other vintage recordings are featured in the film. Like with the film's poster, the soundtrack was re-released with a new cover.
The score for the film was provided by Christopher Young. Although never commercially released for sale, certain copies of this album exist.
Track listing
- Bob Dylan - "Things Have Changed" 5:10
- Buffalo Springfield - "A Child's Claim to Fame" 2:12
- Tom Rush - "No Regrets" 3:52
- Neil Young - "Old Man" 3:23
- Bob Dylan - "Shooting Star" 3:09
- Tim Hardin - "Reason to Believe" 2:00
- Little Willie John - "Need Your Love So Bad" 2:17
- Bob Dylan - "Not Dark Yet" 6:30
- Clarence Carter - "Slip Away" 2:32
- Leonard Cohen - "Waiting for the Miracle" 7:43
- Bob Dylan - "Buckets of Rain" 3:23
- John Lennon - "Watching the Wheels" 3:32
- Van Morrison - "Philosophers Stone" 6:03
Reaction
In its opening weekend, the film grossed a total of $5,808,919 in 1,253 theaters. As of November 29 2006, the film has grossed a total of $33,426,588 worldwide.
Roger Ebert, a film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times, praised Wonder Boys as "the most accurate movie about campus life that I can remember. It is accurate, not because it captures intellectual debate or campus politics, but because it knows two things: (1) Students come and go, but the faculty actually lives there, and (2) many faculty members stay stuck in graduate-student mode for decades." Emanuel Levy of Variety said that
"The movie's frivolous touches and eccentric details emphasize its dry, measured wit and the power of comedy to underscore serious ideas. Massively inventive, Wonder Boys is spiked with fresh, perverse humor that flows naturally from the straight-faced playing."
A.O. Scott from The New York Times wrote,
"What occupies the screen is a well-intentioned muddle. The problem with Wonder Boys is not that it's a bad movie, though if it had risked becoming one it might have been a lot more. The problem is that everyone involved seems to have agreed that it was a great idea for a movie and pretty much left it at that."
Looking back in his Salon.com review, critic Andrew O'Hehir felt that Hanson
"and cinematographer Dante Spinotti capture both Pittsburgh (one of the most serendipitously beautiful American cities) and the netherworld of boho academia with brilliant precision. If you went to a liberal-arts college anywhere in the United States, then the way Grady's ramshackle house looks in the wake of Crabs' enormous all-night party should conjure up vivid sense-memories."
Wonder Boys holds an 83 percent "fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes.
Rerelease
Many critics blamed Paramount's initial ad campaign for the film failing to find a mainstream audience. The Wall Street Journal's Joe Morgenstern praised Douglas' work in the movie, but criticized the movie poster, which featured a headshot of Douglas: "a raffishly eccentric role, and he's never been so appealing. (Don't be put off by the movie's cryptic poster, which makes him look like Michael J. Pollard.)" The Los Angeles Times' Kenneth Turan also slammed the poster: "The film's ad poster brings Elmer Fudd to mind."
In an interview with Amy Taubin for the Village Voice Hanson said, "The very things that made Michael and I want to do the movie so badly were the reasons it was so tricky to market. Since films go out on so many screens at once, there's a need for instant appeal. But Wonder Boys isn't easily reducible to a single image or a catchy ad line." Hanson felt that the studio played it safe with the original ad campaign. The posters and the trailer for the re-release highlighted the ensemble cast.
Awards
Bob Dylan won an Academy Award for Best Original Song for "Things Have Changed" in 2001. In addition, the film was nominated for Best Editing and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published.
Dylan also won Best Original Song at the 2001 Golden Globe Awards and was nominated for a Grammy for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media.
Michael Douglas and Frances McDormand won a Los Angeles Film Critics Association award in 2000 for Wonder Boys in categories Best Actor (Douglas) and Best Supporting Actress (McDormand).
References
- ^ Ebert, Roger (May 12, 2000). "Wonder Boys". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 2006-11-29.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help); Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - "Wonder Boys". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2006-11-29.
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - Levy, Emanuel (February 18, 2000). "Wonder Boys". Variety. Retrieved 2006-10-30.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help); Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - Scott, A.O. (February 23, 2000). "Wonder Boys: Marijuana, Manuscript and Marriage Equal a Mess". The New York Times. Retrieved 2006-11-29.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - O'Hehir, Andrew (February 25, 2000). "Wonder Boys". Salon.com. Retrieved 2006-11-29.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help); Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - ^ Brodesser, Claude (May 22, 2000). "Par to repackage Wonder". Variety. Retrieved 2007-05-23.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help); Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - Taubin, Amy (November 15, 2000). "Boys Keeps Swinging". Village Voice. Retrieved 2007-05-23.
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