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

0:00Morning decisions. How about a creamy mocha frappuccino drink? Or sweet vanilla? Smooth caramel maybe? Or white chocolate mocha? Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits. Find Starbucks frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries.

0:21Welcome 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.

0:31Ryan Lattanzio:And back on the podcast, this is Ryan Latanzio in New York. This week, we're going to 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. Well, I was in New York last week. I got to see John Lithgow's Broadway hit, Giant, which Ryan and I will debate, 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.

1:06Ryan Lattanzio:Well, you're a longtime Lena Dunham fan, Anne, 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 I saw you. I saw she came up to you and greeted you warmly and said, there she is. 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.

1:44My 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?

2:26I don't believe that. For whatever reason, I don't believe what she writes about Adam Driver completely.

2:32Ryan Lattanzio:You don't believe that he threw a chair in her direction? 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 over, 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 she does not answer her phone. It's almost too cinematic an image. There's something that's a little stagey about it, right?

3:12There's something missing. I don't know what it is. Do you feel that way too?

3:15Ryan Lattanzio: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 that... We know exactly what we're talking about here. Yeah, and she says in the book that... I had better luck with him in some ways 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.

3:50And she bailed.

3:50Ryan Lattanzio:Who did he get along with? 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. 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. She's a couple years older than me.

4:25Ryan Lattanzio: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. I think my daughter, your friend Nora, felt the same way. We watched it together. Sometimes that was cringy. 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.

5:04Ryan Lattanzio: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. She really is very candid about her her drug abuse. 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, Be 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.

5:45And 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.

5:55Ryan Lattanzio: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. 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 Cate 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.

6:33Ryan Lattanzio:Last week, Can added a bunch of movies, including Paper Tiger by James Gray, Can Perennial. That completes the number of films in the competition lineup to the customary 22. And this is a movie that Thierry Frameau 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 a horror movie and Micah Monroe's in it. So, of course, she is the horror movie Scream Queen du Jour. And this is by Zachary Weigand, who did a movie called Sanctuary with Christopher Abbott and Margaret Qualley a few years ago.

7:13Ryan Lattanzio:That was at TIFF. Another, of course, Christophe Honoré film, ever a French filmmaker who appears at Cannes. And then Diego Luna has a feature 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. uh and then there's there's plenty to see this year uh and the obviously the fortnight actually has a decent lineup of yeah sometimes the fortnight is a wash you know or the critics week sometimes there's not much going on there at least on paper but i i would suggest there's quite a lot going on there this year yeah the opening of fortnight is uh the kantamir balagov film and this is the director of beanpole i like this guy a lot he's very young he's younger than me.

8:06Ryan Lattanzio: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 short list being pulled. And this is with Harry Melling and Barry Kogan. Well, that's a good cast. Very good cast. Excellent cast. And then I know you saw Michael yesterday. I'm sorry. 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 Coleman 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.

8:54What did you think?

8:55Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, some of the makeup and eyebrows on Coleman Domingo were a cry for help. They kept coming in on him in close-up, you know? Yeah, a lot of close-ups. Like, here's this leering, you know. Really, it was right out of something, you know, some 19th century thing, you know, a melodrama. 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. He's a good director. The movie looks fine. Yeah. 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.

9:38Ryan Lattanzio:But there it is. It is a chilling likeness. Absolutely. Yeah. 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. 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.

10:21And 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 going to 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? 70 million?

10:46Ryan Lattanzio:97 million. 97 million. It exceeded expectations. 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 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.

11:23Ryan Lattanzio:So there are moments where and also there's moments where he's interacting with children that just 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 introduced into the movie that, you know, he came up against a lot of rejection of. Yeah, I'll be curious to see. There was, you know, and obviously Lionsgate, which is having a very good year. They had 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 that and they, you know, they they picked up this movie that a lot of other people weren't interested in or were staying away from.

12:02And 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 growing kids.

12:26Ryan Lattanzio: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. Did you watch it? Oh, I saw it 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 looked at it again the other day. I found a copy online, but you're not supposed to be able to find it. 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 way that I can embrace Michael Jackson the same way. Again, I was a fan, too. I saw him in concert.

13:09You 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?

13:16Ryan Lattanzio: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 1 ,100 screens last weekend. It didn't do especially well. There was a PTA of under 500 for each day over the weekend. That's too wide. That's way too wide. Well, it is a niche film. And the budget was a reported$20 million, which is probably some of that was a star's salary. but it is that's five million more than the green night 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 uh i think that anne hathaway and michaela cole are excellent they're both great 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 uh who was her best friend but as she ascended into the limelight.

14:19Ryan Lattanzio: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 Michaela's artist character here is more thinly drawn than the one in the Christopher's. 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.

14:56So 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, he's really, really good for everyone that of his movies that really works. There's another one that just doesn't quite make it. And he, he seems to what I think, I actually think he lacks an understanding of what the audience wants. This movie shows the, the danger of trying to do like Like, Steven Soderbergh, with a tiny budget, got away with what is effectively a two-hander, you know, two people talking in a room in the Christophers, right?

15:42This 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.

16:27And all of that doesn't work. It just doesn't work. And so you're left hanging. You hang on to Anne Hathaway and McCullough Kale. They're great. You hang on to the concert stuff. And then you have to deal with this other thing that really isn't at all much comprehensible, much less engaging.

16:50Ryan Lattanzio: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 that's when it goes wrong right 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 but yeah this this was never going to be when you when you stack together the 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 I can people compare this to Vox Lux the Brady Corbett movie for 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 Sia I think the songs are bad I don't think Natalie Portman is 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.

17:50Everything works 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. It 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.

18:32I was excited and it played well for me. Is it better than the first one? I would say in some ways it's more, 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 is 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.

19:08But 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 not 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.

19:44Ryan Lattanzio:No, Meryl said on Colbert, that's right, that she was more inspired by Mike Nichols and Clint Eastwood. 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 had her thing. Which 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 watched 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.

20:18Ryan Lattanzio:This movie, Devil Wears 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. I know! 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. Sponsors. Like a larger conglomerate comes in to take over, and they want to make all these cuts and change the editorial direction.

21:00Ryan Lattanzio:And it's, you know, that's something that we are experiencing all across the board. No, we are. we are. Contraction is our future and we know it. But it's not just us. It's everyone in the media universe. You know, figuring out how to survive is key. But what happens, what I love is that Anne Hathaway remains sort of skittish and idealistic and sort of giggly. You know, she's still the same character. 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.

21:42And 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 going to 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, you know, that kind of wealth fantasy, you know, you get a kick out of that world that, you know, you don't belong to. But it's fun to watch.