Joe Dante

[MichaelB]

I went to a talk by Roger Corman in the early 1990s, and someone in the audience asked him what he thought of Joe Dante.

Corman replied that he was "the best trailer editor I've ever had, and if he ever falls on hard times and wants his old job back, he can have it!"

[Dylan]

Matinee trailer

Not a bad trailer, and an incredible amount of memories flooded back (and hey, I liked the teen stuff). In 1993 I had just discovered Harryhausen and old monster movies like Invasion of the Saucer Men and I was really excited about this, and I remember loving it at the time. Before this thread I hadn't thought of this film in ages. Too bad it's out of print, it'd be fun to see it again.

Oh, and courtesy of Combustible Celluloid, here are Dante's top ten favorite films:

Citizen Kane
City Lights
8 1/2
Children of Paradise
The Dead (Brakhage)
Rashomon
Psycho
Raging Bull
The Searchers
Once Upon a Time in the West

[swo17]

Too bad it's out of print, it'd be fun to see it again.

I found a copy of Matinee. Anyone interested, PM me.

[HypnoHelioStaticStasis]

The sets and lighting are terrific (in a way, almost as if Argento or Greenaway filmed a live action cartoon)

Dylan, I immediately thought of "The Bird With Crystal Plumage" when you mentioned that. Very similar color scheme. As far as Greenaway is concerned, I've only seen "The Pillow Book," which was an interesting failure (in my estimation). Is there a particular film of his Dante's episode reminds you of.

The Movie Orgy is supposedly over four hours long, no intermission. I'd be curious to see it, Dante probably owns it lock, stock and barrel, but I bet there are rights issues holding up some kind of video release. It really seems like nothing more than a glorified student film.

[Dylan]

Dylan, I immediately thought of "The Bird With Crystal Plumage" when you mentioned that. Very similar color scheme.

Suspiria and Inferno, as well.

Is there a particular film of his Dante's episode reminds you of.

I was thinking specifically of the set design and use of red in The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (the only Greenaway film I like, but it's a masterful picture with some of the finest cinematography you'll ever see).

Meanwhile, this is a good representation of the cinematography and imagery in Dante's film. His other films aren't nearly as color crazy as It's a Good Life, but he does have a very apparent shooting style for most of his films.

It's very disappointing that he's been shunned in Hollywood. I used to know a few people who worked on Small Soldiers, which apparently was a disheartening experience for Dante - the script was re-written several times (the final re-write being weeks into the shooting), many of his directorial decisions were rejected by the producers and his director's cut, which apparently had a very different flow, was not considered. Reportedly, he had a similar experience with Looney Toons, which was being cut and pasted right up until a couple of weeks before release (I hear this one turned out better, though, and I'd like to see this louvre sequence everybody's talking about).

The Movie Orgy is supposedly over four hours long, no intermission. I'd be curious to see it, Dante probably owns it lock, stock and barrel, but I bet there are rights issues holding up some kind of video release. It really seems like nothing more than a glorified student film.

I read that it was screened a few months ago in LA, with an introduction by Dante. I'd be very curious to see it.

[HypnoHelioStaticStasis]

Well, I can't say I liked the script that I 'saw' (if that even makes sense) in regards to "Small Soldiers". Two of the credited writers were the team of Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott, writers of the execrable "Pirates of the Caribbean" films. 'Nuff said.

It is sad to see Dante by the wayside; he's a genuinely idiosyncratic director, has a sense of style that is instantly recognizable (he does wonders with shades of orange and green), and has a curatorial love of film. The '80s, in a sense, was the perfect time for him as a filmmaker: the nostalgia of baby boomers was pure box-office, hence the success of Indiana Jones, Back to the Future and the like. Unfortunately, Dante decided to stick with this milieu until it went out of fashion. "Looney Tunes" failed to make buck because it was far too esoteric and witty for today's kids and their placid parents (check out Area 51... a smorgasbord of camp cinema). Sad to say, the audience for the types of films Dante wants to make are only big enough to fill a few cineplex theaters.

Another question to those who have seen the film: can anyone give their thoughts on the end to "The 'burbs"? Gotta love it, but is it just me, or does the ending seem to negate the entire point of the picture, taking a rather conservative tack? Or am I reading too much into what is essentially a Hollywood ending? Was this imposed upon Dante by producers? Doesn't really fit his worldview.

[domino harvey]

That the strange immigrant family actually was guilty of something and thus the neighbors were justified in their essentially ethnic-based fears? I think Rosenbaum talks about this in Essential Cinema, but I can't remember for sure. Wikipedia says the Tom Hanks character was killed in the original draft of the screenplay but then obviously the family would still be murderers so it doesn't really change anything.

[HypnoHelioStaticStasis]

I dunno... you think the fears were ethnic-based?

The Klopeks were indeed foreign, probably Slavic, perhaps seen as Jewish by the whitebread denizens of the cul-de-sac, but I never saw Hanks' character as a racial bigot. The incredibly annoying noises and phenomena that surround the house; the neighbors burying something in the backyard; the whole debacle involving the neighbor's mail; weird behavior like that is the catalyst of Hanks' paranoia, not their ethnicity.

Privacy seems to be the point of "the burbs," a reaction towards vigilante "neighborhood watches" popping up around the country at the time. I like the ending, but I still if it negates the point of the film, that it essentially is not Hanks' business what the Klopeks do. Making them guilty seems like a bit of a cop-out, reassuring inherent prejudices (re: social prejudice, conformity) in the audience. Its as if Bruce Dern's character may have the sanest viewpoint.

With that said, Henry Gibson's entrance into the picture is classic. Goldsmith's score is exhilarating at that moment.

[domino harvey]

I dug up some interesting Rosenbaum reviews of Dante. I'm only consistently talking about Rosenbaum in this thread because he's the only esteemed critic I know of who considers Dante to be a great filmmaker.

the 'Burbs
Gremlins 2: the New Batch
Matinee
Small Soldiers

and his write-up for Small Soldiers in his year-end list:

4. Small Soldiers. Satire, according to George S. Kaufman, is what closes on Saturday night. But judging from the critical response to Joe Dante’s high-spirited satire of watching wars and war movies, it’s also what gets pilloried in the Friday papers. I’ve seen this pleasurable and highly visceral extravaganza twice in Chicago and once with thousands of other viewers at the outdoor piazza of the Locarno film festival, where it was showing on a double bill with There’s Something About Mary. All three times I had the delightful experience of being surrounded by viewers of all ages who were laughing as much as I was, all of them clearly in tune with Dante’s pointed but far from mean-spirited agenda. Friends who’ve shown Small Soldiers to ten-year-olds on video have described how much these kids love it and how none of them is so foolish as to confuse toys with human beings. Yet most adult reviewers wrote the picture off as a violent, cynical, and potentially traumatic piece of exploitation with no higher agenda than matching the high-tech shenanigans of Toy Story. The satirical intent–not to mention Dante’s love for the noble Gorgonite monster toys, programmed (like so many of their real-life counterparts) to lose–clearly sailed right past them.

This isn’t the first time Dante has been misunderstood, nor, I suspect, will it be the last. (His previous picture, the 1993 Matinee, was about war fever, and critics who connected its treatment of the Cuban missile crisis with our periodic eviscerations of Baghdad were few and far between.) Though all his movies are about the ethics and ramifications of spectatorship, Dante prefers to keep a low profile within the studio system and works without a personal publicist, so you won’t catch many critics treating him like an auteur. For me the satire of Small Soldiers was so powerful and persuasive that when I saw Saving Private Ryan a week later, the Spielberg film seemed like derivative, warmongering claptrap. Now that Private Ryan has been hailed as the movie to end all wars, I can only wonder whether we’ve chosen Spielberg as our filmmaker laureate because we implicitly understand that he’s every bit as innocent about his motives as we are–meaning that we can all remain children as long as he’s the grown-up in charge. “I think World War II was my favorite war,” the late Phil Hartman says wistfully in Small Soldiers while showing his wife his fancy new home-viewing setup–or media arsenal. Judging from the success of Private Ryan, Spielberg has lots of company, but now that the critical obfuscation has abated, I hope that home viewers able to laugh at their own worst impulses will discover the year’s best studio picture.

Looney Tunes: Back in Action which also includes a strong argument for Dante as an Auteurist.

[colinr0380]

Well, I can't say I liked the script that I 'saw' (if that even makes sense) in regards to "Small Soldiers". Two of the credited writers were the team of Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott, writers of the execrable "Pirates of the Caribbean" films. 'Nuff said.

It is sad to see Dante by the wayside; he's a genuinely idiosyncratic director, has a sense of style that is instantly recognizable (he does wonders with shades of orange and green), and has a curatorial love of film. The '80s, in a sense, was the perfect time for him as a filmmaker: the nostalgia of baby boomers was pure box-office, hence the success of Indiana Jones, Back to the Future and the like. Unfortunately, Dante decided to stick with this milieu until it went out of fashion.

I feel Small Soldiers was excellent but it does have a couple of major problems - the town under siege by creatures superficially plays like Gremlins but with early teen characters in place of the young adults of the earlier film, and the toys coming to life with all the associated wish fulfillment and pathos of abandonment for newer models and the latest fad meant it shares similarities with both the earlier Toy Story and the later Toy Story 2 (which could maybe suggest that this particular millleu didn't exactly go out of fashion but was overwhelmed by other, similarly themed films).

They're difficult issues to get over but I do feel that the film is good enough to stand on its own merits - the anti-militarism message is quite different from anything in Toy Story's "we can all live together in harmony in spite of our differences" message. Instead the toys, even the good Gorgonites, are simply fulfilling their programming rather than being fully conscious beings and something 'more than' their costumes, as the toys in the Toy Story films are. The big story arc of the Toy Story films is how Buzz Lightyear learns to be more than just a space toy and how he is changed by his child's bedroom environment and the friends he makes - it is telling in Small Soldiers that the ending is just a continuation of the toy's manufactured back stories as the war toys get to die gloriously on the field of battle and the gorgonites get to continue on their unending mythical journey (prefiguring A.I.?)

In a way the toys perfectly fulfill their function rather than 'going crazy', it is just that the function they were created for is a problematic one. They don't change but the kids do in the process of 'playing' with them.

It could be suggested in Small Soldiers that if you create war toys you have to expect them to be used for war, in both the child and adult sense of the phrase. The final big battle could be both necessary in filmic terms as an action climax but also is important in showing the way that the kids and their neighbourhood are drawn into a conflict they never wanted to be a part of and are almost sullied by in having to fight back themselves. They're traumatised by this no longer being a game and come to deeper understanding of what war really means rather than just using their toys as a safe preparation for future adult conflicts. But that trauma leads to a greater respect for life. That's what I mean by catharsis!

[Dylan]

I've just perused some excellent recent interviews with Dante:

Audio Interview (May, 2008) (highly recommended for fans)
Kinematrix interview (2008-ish)
Den of Geek Interview (February, 2008)
Latino review (August, 2006)

Many, many, many subjects are tackeld in these interviews, including discussion on the project Dante is currently trying to get off the ground: a screenplay about Roger Corman making The Trip for American International Pictures.

[colinr0380]

I hope it is OK to post some frame grabs from the Looney Tunes film. I actually think the film works better in the form of stills! Really the main problem of the Looney Tunes film is that a sense of desperation seems to come across in the way that the film is jumping so quickly from one thing to another without there being enough time spent with any of the various ideas for the audience to be able to sit back and enjoy being in space or the Louvre and so on - that would be fine if there were a more compelling main story holding everything together (like the town under siege in Gremlins). But having said that it is quite entertaining anyway and the references are fun to spot!

[King Prendergast]

Rosenbaum's review pairing Small Soldiers and Saving Private Ryan is legendary. A perfect case study in modern-day, classically-cahiers-influenced auteurism. Phil Hartman's character in Soldiers reminds me of the war nerd.

[Zumpano]

I saw the Looney Tunes movie in the theater and remember being pleasantly surprised that it wasn't the disaster that I was expecting. I haven't seen it since, but I remember that film having a couple really good inspired sequences, some nice Dean Cundey photography, humor reminiscent of the old days of Looney Tunes cartoons (at least in some places), two bland leads (Fraser & Elfman, who else?) and Steven Martin in "wacky" mode. My girlfriend and I had taken her younger nephew to see it (he was maybe 9?) and he loved it.

I remember reading, on AICN (?) at the time, about Dante's battles with the Brothers Warner but I don't remember anything about it now. It's interesting to read those interviews Dylan linked; I'd like to hear more about Dante's vision for the film. I think "Back In Action" deserved better treatment from the studio and audiences than "Space Jam"...

I saw "Innerspace" again last weekend for the first time in a long time, around the same time this thread popped up. Both have put me into a big Dante kick. I'm trying to bulk up my viewing for the 80's list. Thanks guys!

Does anyone have thoughts on "Innerspace" beyond the surface level stuff? I think the cast is right (I'm pretty forgiving of Martin Short during this phase of his career, I still love "Three Amigos"), the specials effects hold up, the story's a bit predictable yet still enjoyable. I've never loved this film as much as I have "Gremlins", "Matinee" (which I would love to find on DVD), or even the "The Burbs", but it was a perfectly fine way to pass a lazy Saturday afternoon...

Edit: One more thing: Am I the only person who absolutely loves early Amblin productions? They don't quite make children's/young teen movies like this anymore.

[HypnoHelioStaticStasis]

I'm addressing a few posts at once, so bear with me....

re: Dylan- Thanks for those links, those are amazing! Good to see him in good humor and still pursuing getting stuff off the ground. Along with the movie about "The Trip," he's got "Bat Out of Hell", about a monster in the cargo area of an airplane (doesn't sound too promising), and something called "The Hole," about two people who wake up next to a hole, wondering whether or not to go in and face the horrors or stay (sounds too vague to be anything...). I'd love to see Corman's initial acid trip visualized, despite the fact it spurned him into making one of his dumbest films.

re: Colin- One of the problems I had with "Looney Tunes", along with the erratic storyline and the distracting leads, was the technical qualities of the film: the cartoons don't look like they are actually physically interacting with the humans. "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" is an impeccable example of special effects expertise, creating an entirely believable world, through clever cinematography (also by Dean Cundey) and the way the characters were drawn (literally). They made incredible use of shading, shadow and angle. In Dante's film, the computer rendering of the characters is too slick. They have the same shading in every scene, and there wasn't as much in care in making them a physical presence in this world. When Roger Rabbit touches dust, he leaves fingerprints; when Daffy Duck grabs Brendan Fraser's shirt, the shirt remains remarkably uncreased. This is a good example of the lack of believability vis a vis CGI and hand drawn animation.

re: Zumpano- "Innerspace" is wonderful. Its not a revolutionary film (well, maybe its FX) by any means, but is the perfect example of special effects used to serve the story instead of overwhelming it or being the impetus behind the making of the picture (a la the ghastly "Sin City" and "300"). The actors are indeed perfect for the roles, seemingly tailored for them (although that was probably not the case). The chemistry between Short and Quaid is remarkable considering they actually share roughly two minutes of actual screen time! And as I mentioned earlier, Goldsmith's score is scary good: ethereal (not a word I use lightly) and exciting, but unlike John Williams, unobtrusive. I dare say check it out!

[Dylan]

I remember reading, on AICN (?) at the time, about Dante's battles with the Brothers Warner but I don't remember anything about it now. It's interesting to read those interviews Dylan linked; I'd like to hear more about Dante's vision for the film. I think "Back In Action" deserved better treatment from the studio and audiences than "Space Jam"...

It sounds like the entire production was comprised of rejection, debate and compromise. As Dante said, "the longest year and a half of my life." I'm surprised he was able to convince the studio to let Jerry Goldsmith score it (and thank God he did - this was Goldsmith's final score before his death). The stills posted make it look like a very slick, glossy production, and I wonder if the absence of cinematographer John Hora (retired?) has something to do with it not looking particularly "Dante-esque" to me. Aside from Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Fiend Without a Face, what classic monster films does this reference? I heard the This Island Earth monster is in a few shots...?

"Does anyone have thoughts on "Innerspace" beyond the surface level stuff?"

Another I haven't seen in a decade. I remember Martin Short being really good, Dick Miller as a cab driver and some great, old fashioned ILM effects. I don't remember a note of Jerry Goldsmith's score, which means I have some hunting to do.

One more thing: Am I the only person who absolutely loves early Amblin productions? They don't quite make children's/young teen movies like this anymore.

Part of it may have to do with the fact that these were all made by filmmakers who really seemed to have an inimitable grasp of awe, who were also weened on classical cinema and (barely) broke into Hollywood before it stopped advocating reasonably original ideas. Also, to quote Dante,

The business has changed. There are less movies made, more people, more directors who want to make them. The competition for every movie is large, the business is now run by giant corporations of whom the studios only own a small part, and the question tends to be: how can we make a so-called "tentpole" movie that we can make twenty more of over the next twenty years? You know, we don´t wanna just make one-little-movie, we wanna be able to make a "series", we wanna be able to make a "franchise", we wanna be able to make SPIDERMAN 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10! Ah...which is ok, you know, we´ve always done that...there´s always been series-movies....but there´s really not much real interest in cinema in the studios right now. I think it´s all about business. It´s all about "what´s gonna sell", it´s all about "how can we get the kids in to, you know, watch people FUCK PIES, or whatever it is they do in these movies... Compare this with the 60´s, or even the 70´s, when the movies were content-oriented, they were about things, people were excited about the filmic possibilities and I see now the people who control the pursestrings are kind of giving up on that.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

Here's a couple more Dante interviews:

Suicide Girls

and

Onion A.V. Club

[colinr0380]

Aside from Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Fiend Without a Face, what classic monster films does this reference? I heard the This Island Earth monster is in a few shots...?

Yes, in the lab scene there are tons of monsters - including Robbie the Robot as an assistant, the This Island Earth monster, the Daleks and the distinctive sound made by the giant ants from Them!

[HypnoHelioStaticStasis]

Don't forget the creatures from "The Man from Planet X," "Robot Monster," and a triffid! That scene is loaded with goodies for fans of pulp sci-fi. And I thought I was the only one who spotted the ants from "Them!"

That scene also features a great cameo from Peter Graves, doing what he does best: talking deadpan nonsense.

[colinr0380]

By the way watch out for an early appearance in an American film by Naomi Watts in Matinee as the female star in a quick widescreen take off of those 60s Disney family comedies titled The Shook Up Shopping Cart. In a premise which managed to spoof such films long before the Simpsons did the Love-a-matic Grandpa, the spot on parody film in Matinee seems to involve an "Uncle Cedric" who has been turned into the titular wheeled vehicle by a spell with unforeseen and hilarious consequences!

[Zumpano]

Because of this thread and those interviews, I watched Explorers again over the weekend. Only my second time to watch it, my first time was last year. Unfortunately (for me), I never saw this when I was younger/when it was released. I just know I would've loved it back then though. It could've gotten me more into science. I can imagine it making me want to build my own spaceship the same way that The Goonies made my want to treasure hunt and The Monster Squad made me want to start a club against vampires. I can imagine I probably would've wanted to be more like River Phoenix's character, when in actuality I was more like Ethan Hawkes: all excitement and naivety.

Thoughts While Watching Explorers:

If made today, the kids would've tried out their ship/first trip twenty minutes earlier than they do. It's about 40-45 minutes before they attempt to launch it and I think the film is better for it.

When one of the aliens listens to Jason Pressman's walkman, he looks at Jason questioningly. Jason says "It's 80's music. It's cool!". My girlfriend and I started laughing. You would think that would be a time-stamp on the film, but I know a lot of people who would say that now (myself included).

Spoiler (?):
What's with the girl in the end? When Ethan sees the spaceship in the classroom and they "go flying", she's there and they kiss midair Superman style. But why is she there? Is this a dream and she's there because she's the girl of his dreams? Or, now that she believes Ethan about the ship (since she saw it with her own eyes) she can go "flying"...? Anyway, the ending is simultaneously poetic, cheesy, and satisfying. Loved it; wish I had seen it more as a child.

Edit: Does anyone have any info about the scenes that Dante rearranged for this film between theatrical release and home video/cable? This is mentioned on AllmovieGuide and I believe elsewhere...

[HypnoHelioStaticStasis]

Zumpano, sorry for the late response, but better late than never...

As far as I know, the situation with "Explorers" is rather cut-and-dry: the studio simply cut the last 20-30 pages off the script and told Dante to stop shooting at the scene you see at the end. Dante was a pretty hot director at the time, so if he did actually shoot anything else he wanted in, he probably would have gotten it. So its my guess that the resolution is what it is; no other footage was shot elaborating on it.

But you're right about the film and the ending: its really superior to the kind of children's entertainment made today. It takes its time in getting to the set-pieces, focusing on the very believable interactions between the kids. Jason Presson was particularly great. And it really has something profound to say about the effects of pop-culture on the minds of outside cultures and the impressionable people within the offending culture.

[Dylan]

Does anybody know what the final 20-30 pages consisted of? I imagine Cinefantastique and Cinefex would've covered it at the time.

And yes, Explorers was Dante's first film after Gremlins, which was one of the biggest box office draws of its time, and I can't imagine why he didn't have more power and control over the Explorers screenplay.

[Antoine Doinel]

Both Gremlins films are coming to BluRay.

[Dylan]

A wonderful new interview with Joe Dante where he discusses his upcoming "eighties style" 3-D horror film The Hole, his Trailers from Hell website and "Dante's Inferno" cinema series (which includes another edit of The Movie Orgy and a director's cut of Gremlins running six minutes longer than the previous version), and (more or less) his past, present and a little of the future. Reading it I was reminded of how much I adore this guy, and I can only hope that his venture into 3-D yields success and more opportunities to get films made.