“The Devil Wears Prada 2” Hits Too Close to Home; “Michael” is Merely Moments; “Mother Mary” Nails the Music; Lena Dunham’s Memoir

Pepsi Prebiotic Cola in original and cherry vanilla that Pepsi taste you love with just 30 calories and no artificial sweeteners. Pepsi Prebiotic Cola, unbelievably Pepsi. Welcome to Screen Talk, Indiewire's weekly podcast, bringing you up to speed on the latest goings on in Hollywood. I'm Anne Thompson back in Los Angeles

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and back on the podcast. This is Ryan Lattanzio in New York. This week we're gonna catch up on three new movies, two of which star Anne Hathaway. And that would be Mother Mary and The Devil Wears Prada 2, as well as the Michael Jackson biopic Michael. And we're going to take a look at what to expect from Cannes now that the festival has added 16 new movies.

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Well, I was in New York last week. I got to see John Lithgow's Broadway hit Giant, which Ryan and I will deb along with Lena Dunham's new book Fame Sick. I was up late last night, actually, really having fun reading that, I have to say.

0:50

Well, you're a longtime Lena Dunham fan, Ann, and you were supportive of her during Tiny furniture, which was 15 years ago when you were in New York. We went to the Algonquin at a book launch party where Dunham, very well spoken, was moderated on stage by her C Word podcast co host, Alyssa Bennett, and very good friend. And she. I saw you. I saw. She came up to you and greeted you warmly and said, there she is.

1:06

Aw. No, I was really delighted with that. I've been tracking her ever since. You know, Lena Dunham is an interesting. You know, I mean, I did interview her for Tiny Furniture after it won the jury prize at south by Southwest. My daughter and I watched Girls. We debated too much. And I've been watching her ever since with a mix of admiration and cringe, which I'm sure I'm not alone. You know, she's. But she's been doing really entertaining interviews for the book, which is also a great read. I love her writing. And this witty, candid memoir rings true. I don't know how else to say it. When you read it, you believe it. You don't think she. There's one place. There is one place where she talks about. Whenever she talks about Adam Driver, which is a complicated relationship in the book, I find myself going, hmm, what really happened here? I don't believe that, for whatever reason, I don't believe what she writes about Adam Driver completely.

1:31

You don't believe that he threw a chair in her direction?

2:31

No, no. All the action. I believe she has Sort of a crush on him. She's working with him. She is his boss. He is obviously a very complicated guy to engage with. He holds back. And so she's going through that thing. Does he love me? Should we do something? So he's supposed to come and it's supposed to be the time that they do get together. That's the implication. And she leaves him outside the door. She does not let him in, and

2:34

she does not answer her phone. It's almost too cinematic an image. There's something that's a little stagey about it. Right.

3:06

There's something missing. I don't know what it is. Do you feel that way, too?

3:12

Yeah. I agree with you. It seemed like something out of one of her movies or out of her series Girls. Like, it just was a little too directed in some ways. Yeah. No, he's painted as being kind of a recalcitrant collaborator. I mean, we've both interviewed him. We kind of know what. What that.

3:15

I mean, we know exactly what we're talking about here.

3:31

Yeah.

3:33

And she says, I had better luck with him in some ways than. Than you did. I did a tribute with him. This was interesting. It was up at Santa Barbara, the film festival, and it was supposed to be with his co star on Marriage Story, Scarlett Johansson, with whom he legendarily did not get along, and she bailed.

3:34

Who did he get along with?

3:50

I know that seems to be the issue. So she bailed and it was just him and me. And I was really nervous, actually, because I know what he's like, and he came through. He was actually really, really forthcoming and nice and let it work. It was good.

3:51

He is good at delivering when there's something specific that you need. Plus, when you're doing a tribute, you've got like, what is it, an hour to basically wear them down. So they have to submit to you to some degree, obviously. She is such a good writer. She's really a North Star of mine. I. She's a couple years older than me, but when Girls first came on hbo, I really felt like. Strangely, I felt very seen. I felt very represented on TV in a way I hadn't felt in a while. There's.

4:08

I think my daughter, your friend Nora, felt the same way. We watched it together sometimes. That was cringy.

4:34

Yeah. There's a part of her that is like a gay man trapped in a woman's body a little bit. It's very dishy is the thing. And she names names. There's not too much dancing around. Certain aspects and certain gaffes There is one episode where she said she's not going to talk about what it is. This is, of course, defending a writer on the series Girls Against a rape accusation. But it turns out she did this in a Vicodin pill haze, basically because she, you know, she was on all this medication over the years. So she really is very candid about her, her drug abuse.

4:41

We both recommend the book and we all. And I went on, I didn't know about the C word podcast, so I went on to check it out and I listened to an episode about, of all people, Bai Ling, the Chinese actress. And these two women, Alyssa and Lena, do a good job. They do their homework and they examine each of these. It's all about. The subject of the C word is women like Judy Garland or Lindsay Lohan who have been dismissed or labeled as crazy. And so this book is Lena Dunham's examination of her own warped identity and how it was reshaped by fame. So I do recommend it and I recommend the C word as well.

5:15

She has a movie coming in the fall called Good Sex with Natalie Portman. I'm really excited to see Lena Dunham get back to feature filmmaking.

5:56

There have been a number of announcements from Cannes. I'm looking forward, for example, to seeing. I think I'm going to miss it because it's on like the last day. Tilda Swinton is giving a talk. She's the one I'm most interested in. They're doing Kate Blanchett, they're doing Peter Jackson. You and I are debating whether we're going to go to the opening night movie, for example, and we're figuring out, you know, which interviews with all the most exciting auteurs in the world we're going to do.

6:05

Last week, Cannes added a bunch of movies, including Paper Tiger by James Gray, Cannes perennial. That completes the number of films in the competition lineup to the customary 22. And this is a movie that Thierry Fremeau says is very much like an indie James Gray, sort of back to earlier movies like We Own the Night. And then In Uncertain Regard, a number of international movies were added. But then a film called Victorian Psycho with It's a horror movie and Mike Irvin Monroe's in it. So of course she is the horror movie Scream Queen du Jour. And this is by Zachary Wigan, who did a movie called Sanctuary with Christopher Abbott and Margaret Qualley a few years ago. That was at tiff, another, of course, Christophe Honore film ever a French filmmaker who appears at Cannes. And then Diego Luna has a Feature

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called Ashes that I'm interested in and he's directed before. He's actually a very good director. So I'm really curious about that. That's a Spanish language movie about a Mexican going over to Spain. So that'll be interesting.

7:21

There's plenty to see this year and the.

7:39

The Fortnight actually has a decent lineup of interest. Sometimes the Fortnite is a Wash or the Critics Week. Sometimes there's not much going on there, at least on paper, but I would suggest there's quite a lot going on there this year.

7:43

Yeah. The opening of Fortnite is the Cantamere Boligov film. And this is the director of Beanpole. I like this guy a lot. He's very young. He's younger than me. He's a Russian filmmaker. He's in exile now. He's left Russia at this point ever since the invasion of Ukraine. And that was on the shortlist being pulled that, you know.

7:57

Yeah.

8:16

And this is with Harry Melling and Barry Cogan and.

8:17

Well, that's a good cast. Very good cast. Excellent cast. And then. I know you saw Michael yesterday. I'm sorry, did you. Did you stay awake? I mean, I found it a bit by the numbers, dull, even if you have fond memories of the songs that his nephew Jafar is recreating. But I found Colman Domingo, a great actor, by the way, who I really admire. But he made a snidely whiplash villain out of Joe Jackson, the father. The villain, obviously, of the piece. What did you think?

8:21

Yeah, some of the makeup and eyebrows on Colman Domingo were a bit of a cry for help.

8:55

They kept coming in on him in close up, you know, like his tears was leering, you know, really. It was right out of something, you know, some 19th century thing, a melodrama.

9:00

To me, this movie was no worse than Bohemian Rhapsody, honestly. It probably was better edited and better looking in some respects. This is Antoine Fuqua, director of Training Day.

9:14

He's a good director. The movie looks fine. Yeah.

9:23

Yeah. And I think Jafar Jackson is actually. He's quite good. Very good in this, almost. I don't know what the word would be for, like, uncanny valley when it's an actual human who's approximating another human. But there it is. It is a chilling likeness.

9:26

Absolutely. Yeah.

9:42

And no, it's not a great film, but it did drum up memories of. You know, I was a big Michael Jackson fan as a small child until my parents pulled me aside and said, you should put a pin in that for now. What I noticed Is that a lot of the negative reviews for this movie are reviewing a movie that this isn't and was never going to be.

9:43

We have a source, obviously, his name is Matt Bellany, who read the original script. And so the original script was attempting to whitewash all of these accusations and make Michael Jackson whole. That was the attempt in the original. And then they couldn't do it because of legal issues with one of the families that are accusing him of sexual abuse. So it's gonna be interesting to see what they do with the sequel. Ryan, you know, the inevitable sequel. I mean, this thing opened really, really well. What was the opening?

10:02

70 million, 97 million.

10:44

It exceeded expectations.

10:49

It did. And it's less of a movie than a collection of moments. It's almost like Michael Jackson greatest hits, the Early Years, you know, because it kind of takes us up to the. To the edge of the 80s here. One incident that I kind of forgot about is this Pepsi commercial gaffe in which his hair caught on fire, and then he's hospitalized and then donates all this money to the burn unit. But then there is a bit of foreshadowing of his struggles with addiction later on where there's kind of a focus on the Demerol that he's taking in the hospital. So there are moments where. And also there's moments where he's interacting with children that, to certain corners of the room might feel sort of fraught. So I think there are moments where Fuqua is laundering in some of the stuff that I think he wanted introducing to the movie that he came up against a lot of rejection of.

10:52

Yeah, I'll be curious to see. There was, obviously Lionsgate, which is having a very good year. They had the housemaid also. And now you see me. So they're having a great year. Lionsgate doesn't always have good years. So this is a surprise. And they picked up this movie that a lot of other people weren't interested in or were staying away from. And that's because of the documentary Leaving Neverland, which I have still not recovered from, honestly. It is so upsetting and so disturbing and so believable and convincing. I mean, I do not have any doubt that Michael Jackson did all the things that these kids are accusing him of, these grown kids.

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And it's been wiped clean off of HBO Max. But you can find it illegally on the Internet, which I managed to do the other day.

12:26

Did you watch it?

12:33

Oh, I saw it. When? Immediately when it came out. I wasn't at Sundance that year, but I saw it as soon as it premiered on HBO in all four hour glory of it. But I did kind of. I looked at it again the other day. I found a copy online, but you're not supposed to be able to find it.

12:34

Okay, well, I do recommend it. And my own view of the singer will be forever tainted by that movie. I mean, there's no, no way that I can embrace Michael Jackson the same way again. I was a fan too. I saw him in concert, you know, he was amazing. Okay, so the next movie we're going to do, what did you think of David Lowery's latest, Mother Mary?

12:52

I really want to turn the mic on you and ask what you thought of it, but I will, because I have my theory of what you will have thought of it. But here's what I will say. I saw this movie a while ago, actually, you know, it just opened in limited two weeks ago. A24 expanded it onto 1100 screens last weekend. It doesn't. It didn't do especially well. There was a PTA of under 500 for each day over the weekend. Not.

13:16

That's too wide. That's way too wide.

13:41

Well, it is a niche film and the budget was a reported 20 million, which is probably some of that was the star salary. Um, but it is. That's 5 million more than the Green Knight, which, you know, that is. He did a lot with that movie with finite resources. What I will say about Mother Mary, it's very emotive filmmaking and I think that Anne Hathaway and Michaela Cole are excellent.

13:43

They're both great.

14:05

Like, this is one of the best Anne Hathaway performances ever. And she's playing a pop star who has had a falling out long ago, had a falling out with Michaela Cole, who was her best friend. But as she ascended into the limelight, she kind of left her for dead, basically. But now Michaela Cole is a very successful fashion designer. And so Anne Hathaway comes to her needing a dress for what's going to be her swan song tour. And the nature of their relationship and of this movie can be very abstruse. You're sort of wondering, is it Sapphic? Who are these people as artists? I would say that Mikaela's artist character here is more thinly drawn than the one in the Christophers. But I think even as the movie goes into under the Skin, Twin Peaks type of visuals of floating orbs and becomes very pretentious and gets sort of lost in its own ether, I found it very mesmerizing.

14:07

So this is an example I mean, David Lowery is a fascinating filmmaker. One of those people who I admire and like. I like him very much personally. And I just. I think he came out of, you know, kind of Mumblecore Texas, you know, back in the south by Southwest days. And he's really, really good. For every one of his movies that really works, there's another one that just doesn't quite make it. And he seems to. What I think. I actually think he lacks an understanding of what the audience wants. This movie shows the danger of trying to do like Steven Soderbergh with a tiny budget, got away with what is effectively a two hander. Two people talking in a room in the Christophers. Right. This movie could have been that, but it couldn't be. He wanted to do this other thing. So Anne Hathaway is great in the concert sequences and the costumes are amazing and the visuals are amazing and the music is really good, actually. And there's a whole story behind who wrote the music and so on. The thing about Mother Mary is that I think Lowry couldn't just do two people talking in a room. So he came up with this other supernatural spiritual. Maybe it's surreal, maybe it's not actually happening, but it's shared between the two women, this red spiritual entity that needs to be exercised at a certain point. And all of that doesn't work. It just doesn't work. And so you're left hanging. You hang on to Anne Hathaway and Macola Kahl, they're great. You hang on to the concert stuff and then you have to deal with this other thing that. That really isn't at all much comprehensible, much less engaging.

14:56

Yeah, it's definitely a vibe movie. And more about Sensation than Sensibility Certain, certainly. And there's a whole part of it where FK Twigs is a conduit for this being in a seance. And then it gets.

16:51

That's when it goes wrong right there.

17:03

Yeah, there's a Ouija board involved. I think that scene didn't work either. But I think where the movie ends up, which is at a place of emotional catharsis between these two women, I found very moving. Yeah, this was never going to be. When you stack together the recent A24 films, the drama and Mother Mary, you see why the drama did so well and why that is way more of a crowd pleaser than this was ever going to be. People compare this to Vox Lux, the Brady Corbett movie where Natalie Portman is playing a pop star, but I actually think this works a lot better in Some ways than that one. Because in that one, the Songs by Sea, I think the songs are bad. I don't think Natalie Portman's a very convincing pop star or a great singer, whereas Anne Hathaway is all of those things. So that's what really works well in the movie.

17:05

In those concert sequences. Everything is right on. The way she walks, the way she talks, the way she sings, the way she looks, the way she dances. Everything is good. I give her a great deal of credit. I'm a big Anne Hathaway fan. I think she's a very talented woman. And as she comes into her own, I think she actually is showing her her chops. And this leads us to The Devil Wears Prada 2, which I really enjoyed. I really did. Didn't have high expectations, but I expected it to be because it brought together every element of the original David Frankel and Aline Brosh McKenna and the cast, obviously, I was excited and it played well for me. Is it better than the first one? I would say in some ways it has more depth than the first one. I actually think it's about something that we can relate to, Ryan. In our world, you know, the media world, there's a lot to worry about and a lot to be anxious about, and that's what this movie's about. And so instead of having Meryl Streep as the ultra villain, you know, the bad boss, it's not that simple. She's actually under threat, and her world is under threat. Now, you could say her world is bullshit. And you don't want to. You don't care about it. But this movie is actually defending fashion and defending art and defending beauty and defending journalism. One of the things I love about it, we expect Meryl to be very good at what she's doing. And she is, with all the. I love the idea that she's imitating or channeling or inspired by Mike Nichols. I loved that. I thought that was great. You know, not Anna Wintour, but she isn't playing Anna Wintour. You can tell she's not playing Anna Wintour. Anna Wintour would be caught dead in some of the outfits that Meryl's wearing in this movie.

17:50

No, Meryl said on Colbert. That's right. That she was more inspired by Mike Nichols and Clint Eastwood.

19:44

Right, right, right, right, right. Now, we all remember that the word on the street was that she had an affair with Clint Eastwood during Bridges of Madison County. I always love that idea that they

19:49

had a thing is very plausible, given what we see on screen in that Movie. Yeah. That is a movie that I will cry every time. And I watch it on the plane every time. Devil Wears Prada, original, also somewhat of a plane movie for me, and really one that's very irresistible, and you just feel compelled to watch it anytime it's on this movie. Devil was Prada 2. It's not disappointing necessarily. I think people will say, you know, it gave them what they needed, which there is a dose of nostalgia, but it also is. There's more to it than that. What I will say is that it gave me what I didn't need, which is a reminder of the fallibility and futility of the industry that I work in and a reminder that only a wealthy patron's largesse is probably going to be able to save it. In this film, we see that Runway, the magazine that Meryl Streep is editor in chief of, is losing advertising dollars. There. Sponsors, like a larger conglomerate comes in to take over, and they want to make all these cuts and change the editorial direction. And it's. You know, that's something that we are experiencing. I was actually across the board.

19:59

No, we are. We are. Contraction is our future, and we know it. But. But the. And it's not just us. It's everyone in the media universe. You know, figuring out how to survive is. Is key. But what happens. What I love is that Anne Hathaway remains sort of skittish and. And idealistic and sort of giggly. You know, she's still the same. They know their characters really well. And Anne Hathaway didn't ditch that goofiness in order, you know, in the interest of being more powerful or having more agency as an older person, she kept it. And I thought that was a smart move. It's charming. And the relationship with Nigel, of course, Stanley Tucci is lovely. And of course, you're gonna go in the room and get outfits, you know, so that she can go to the Hamptons and hang out with Kara Swisher and Tina Brown and all the players at the party in the Hamptons. And there's a part of it that's that kind of wealth fantasy. You know, you get a kick out of that world that you don't belong to. But it's fun to watch.

21:05

Yeah. No, I mean, I found it satisfying overall, but it really. I was having it. I could not sleep that night. It really sent me into a spiral. I can't lie. And that's. And that's not what I want from a Devil Wears Prada movie. But that's, well, the problem is that

22:18

you and I can identify a little too strongly with. With that situation, that that's all journalists are going to respond like that.

22:35

Yeah. And that's going to go over the head of a lot of people in the audience. And that's not what they're going to cling on to in the movie.

22:43

No, no, absolutely not. So I went to see Giant, and I was. I didn't know much. I knew it was about Raoul Dahl, and I'm an old John Lithgow fan. I worked with him on a couple of projects back in the day. Terms of Endearment and Buckaroo Banzai. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, when I was a unit publicist in my youth, in my publicity youth. And so I really admire him, not only as a great actor, but as a human being. He's one of those people who's actually a very nice person. So here he is on Broadway playing Raou Dahl, and I didn't know. I knew he was supposed to be an anti Semite, but I did not know what this play was going to be. And the audience didn't know either. And they were all just like me. They were gobsmacked by the things that came out of his mouth, that came flowing easily out of his mouth. And it was horrible, horrible stuff. And I was, you know, people would go, or they would. They would, you know, you could hear it. You could hear the intake of breath at what we were hearing. So. So it was. It was really a surprise to me. I was, I was very riveted by it. What did you think?

22:48

It's funny. You talk about the audience gasping. And that. That was apparent in my performance of it as well. I do see a lot of Broadway shows, and whenever there is something that is, whether, whether it's a racial epithet or a joke that seems resonant with Donald Trump or there's another play that's on Broadway where there's kind of a joke about Hillary Clinton's botched election campaign. Everyone in the audience, they either gasp in unison or they're clapping hysterically because they want people in the room to know that they're opposed to what's being said or that they get the joke right.

24:01

Yes.

24:34

There's a little bit of a performative element to what's happening in there. No, the. The play is very handsomely done. The actors are terrific. I think that this actress, Aya Cash, who is in an effect show that I loved so much from 10 years ago called you're the Worst in this, she's playing a publishing executive, you know, at the publishing house that Roald Dahl belongs to, who really, you know, really beats him against the rocks by the end of the first act in a

24:35

way that's pretty amazing.

25:03

Yeah, that. That is a great scene. All the elements are there. I just, I, I couldn't help but feeling like there was some sort of Tony bait aspect to this play, which is fine, but it reminded me.

25:05

It reminded me of, like, for the Tony.

25:17

No, exactly. Yeah. It felt like a stage version of, like, a Harvey Weinstein or a Scott Rudin movie or something, which means that all, everything is very well done and all the elements are placed but in place. But I, I, I don't know. I felt like it lacked some feeling, but I would totally recommend it. You know, it's a very good season for Broadway for seeing some of your famous actors right now, even though, as Carrie Coon talked about when she was doing Bug, it's sort of pushing these, you know, Broadway mainstays out of the marquee because they need to sell tickets, so they need celebrities. There's a really funny Noel Coward play called Fallen Angels with Rose Byrne and Kelly o', Hara, where it's basically, like, absolutely fabulous, but in the jazz age, like, they're just good. They're just two girlfriends who are obsessed with the same guy, and they get really, really wasted. It's very funny.

25:19

And you liked this Wallace Sean thing.

26:10

Yeah. And that's what I talked to John early about last week. And this still has a few weeks left of it. If you're my Dinner with Andre fan, there's a play downtown called what We Did Before Our Moth Days that has a few that's closing on May 24, I think. Really good. It's directed by Andre Gregory and written by Wallace Shawn. It's basically three and a half hours of just monologues, but it's very, very.

26:15

It's a long play, though.

26:36

It is. And the seats are uncomfortable in that theater. It feels a little bit like sitting

26:38

there, he's talking me out of it. So next week we have a special guest. I'm very excited about this. We're gonna have Judd Apatow on the podcast. Not only is he one of the funniest people, and he's another one where I've interviewed him over the years and I love him. He's a n. And he's funny, and he's done this great series, doc series on one of the funniest men who ever lived, Mel Brooks. And he interviewed him and got a lot of good stuff out of him.

26:41

I gotta finish part two. I got distracted by Euphoria, the war show of our time. But my hate watching of that took my attentions away. But I will be finishing the Mel Brooks doc before we sit down with Judd Apatow. We're excited about that.

27:10

Okay, Ryan, talk to you next week.

27:25

Bye. Bye.

27:27