The Return of Brian Selznick

IF you’re the kind of grownup who enjoys smart, well-drawn children’s novels, you might be as excited as I am to hear the Brian Selznick has a new novel, Wonderstruck, coming in September.

I met Selznick a few years back on the publication of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, his nearly wordless  book about an orphan hiding out in a Parisian train station. (I have another, more recent connection with his work: He illustrated Barbara Kerley’s The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse and Hawkins, a favorite of my dinosaur-loving son.)

Selznick – who is descended from film producer David O. Selznick – and I spoke about the literary tradition of orphans, silent movies’ genius of telling stories through images, and the groundbreaking work of Maurice Sendak. I’m not the only one interested in the Cadecott Medal-winning book: Martin Scorsese’s 3-D adaptation, with Jude Law and Ben Kingsley, comes out comes out in November.

Here is my LATimes interview with Selznick.

Wonderstruck, according to a story in the latest School Library Journal, will involve “two interconnected  tales,” one all text, the other in black-and-white images. The first will tell of “12-year old Ben Wilson as he leaves rural Minnesota for New York City, a few months after his mother’s death, in search or a father he’s never known. And the wordless companion story follows a New Jersey girls who’s deaf and who embarks on a risky quest of her own, in 1927.” 

Taxi Driver It Is

THOUGH I am a Raging Bull man myself, happy to see Taxi Driver take the win in my Favorite Scorsese Film poll.

At least one voter was frustrated he could not vote for The Last Waltz, the director's swan song for The Band and a whole generation of rock, blues and folk musicians. I love that film as well -- in fact the complaining voter took me to see it when I was 10 years old at the Brattle theater -- but realized if we included that one, we'd have to include Scorsese's wonderful documentary on Dylan, No Direction Home, as well as his homage to Italian neo-realism and others. Some of these docs will show up on future polls.

Back to Taxi Driver, a film which captures the '70s better than any movie I know: Surprised to say that Goodfellas nearly won -- for most of the last few days it was leading.

Take a bow, Travis Bickle!

Contemporary Classical Music and "Shutter Island"

Mostly, Martin Scorserse is associated with rock 'n' roll, especially the early Rolling Stones and Phil Spector. But he's turned out one of the best contemporary-classical soundtracks in history with the music for Shutter Island.

A lot of people, some of them licensed film critics, really didn't like Scorsese's new film, which stars Leo Di Caprio investigating a home for the criminally insane swept by wind and rain in Boston Harbor. (Okay, okay, I've heard from all of you by this point.)

But the film, whatever else it does or doesn't do, set longtime Scorsese friend Robbie Robertson free to round up a fairly grim and quite adventurous musical assortment that goes way beyond the usual atmospheric or Bernard Herrmann ripoffs that often accompany psychological thrillers or horror films. Because the film is set in the early '50s, just before rock music's emergence, and there is a wartime Europe backstory, a baffling John Cage tribute by Nam June Paik (pictured) makes a lot more sense than "Jumping Jack Flash."

Here is Mark Swed's excellent piece on Robertson and the film's music in today's LAT. (I like what he says about the movie's marketing as well.)

I'm especially pleased to know the RR was behind the mix. Scorsese's The Last Waltz, about the final concert by Robertson's old group, The Band, was the first serious film about music I ever saw: My dad took me to see it at the Brattle when I was 10, I think. (I was not, coming in to this, happy to be led to a film about waltzing, but went because it was paired with "Singin in the Rain.")

Also pleasing to see so many West Coast composers -- John Adams, Lou Harrison, John Cage -- and other favorites like Alfred Schnittke and Brian Eno (who really should have collaborated, by the way.)

One of only a few non-classical pieces is Lonnie Johnson's rendition of "Tomorrow Night," which some of you know from Elvis's Sun Sessions. Again, a triumph of good taste... Who's cooler than Lonnie Johnson?

Martin Scorsese vs. "Shutter Island"

THIS winter in LA it has been raining, as we used to say in high school, like a mofo, and every times the heavens open I think of the upcoming Martin Scorsese film, Shutter Island. The film, which opens on Friday the 19th, is based on a novel by Dennis Lehane that is so gripping, so full of twists and turns, that it almost ruined a vacation last summer since I kept retreating to the basement to read it. (Much of the film takes place in pouring rain and driving winds, as this isle in Boston Harbor is hit with a hurricane.)

So it was a rare pleasure to see that the director was able to adapt the novel faithfully AND to turn out a kickass film that is also a showcase of great acting -- Mark Ruffalo, Patricia Clarkson, Ben Kingsley and Max Von Sydow in addition to a strong Leo DiCaprio in a complicated role.

Here is my piece from Sunday's LA Times, which comes mostly from an interview I did out here with Scorsese and conversations with Lehane and DiCaprio. Meeting the director was a real thrill, it was fun to go down tangents about his own work -- long conversation about The Last Waltz, which weirdly was the first of his films I ever saw -- as well as subjects like film noir and the work of Samuel Fuller.

The film is in some ways a departure for the director, and it may be too grounded in genre for his following and not gory enough for the horror-movie fans that are the film's natural audience. (And its move to the dead of February will not be good for the box office or Oscar noms.)

Scorsese comes, famously, from the first generation of American directors to attend film school en masse, and even in that company he stands out for his commitment to film history. Here is a sidebar about the films he shows his cast and crew so they have a common vocabulary of film references. "We would watch one or two movies," DiCaprio told me, "just to capture the tone of a specific scene."

"I'm not very good on plot," Scorsese told me. "I prefer character and mood, and atmosphere and music."

As for the plot of the novel and film, the less said the better. But see it.