The WonderBoys

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Movie
German title The WonderBoys
Original title Wonder Boys
Country of production USA ,
Germany ,
UK ,
Japan
original language English
Publishing year 2000
length 107 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Curtis Hanson
script Steve Kloves
production Curtis Hanson,
Scott Rudin
music Christopher Young
camera Dante Spinotti
cut Dede Allen
occupation

WonderBoys is a feature film by US director Curtis Hanson from 2000. The tragicomedy is based on the novel of the same name by American author Michael Chabon and was produced in association with Paramount Pictures by Scott Rudin and Curtis Hanson.

action

Grady Tripp is an English professor of creative writing at a college in Pittsburgh . At the age of fifty, he has published a book to date. The novel The Arsonist's Daughter met with great acclaim from critics and was awarded the renowned PEN / Faulkner Prize. Since then Grady has been working in vain to repeat the success of seven years ago and not to let the stamp of the burned-out author be put on him. Grady's follow-up work has grown to over 2,600 pages and is still not finished. In his private life, the professor is going through a little crisis, as his young wife Emily has finally moved out of the common house after several attempts to separate. He treats the stroke of fate with the consumption of marijuana . On the weekend of Wordfest , a multi-day literary event, he is invited to the opening ceremony in the home of the college's chancellor Sara Gaskell and her husband. He has a long, secret affair with Sara. At the party, Sara Grady announced that he was pregnant. She suggests that they both leave their current significant other and begin a future together, but Grady is not ready to make this decision. Another problem for Grady is Terry Crabtree. The bisexual editor who helped publish Grady's successful novel years ago comes to town to inquire about the progress of the second novel. Crabtree is accompanied by a transvestite named Miss Antonia Sloviak, whom he met shortly before on the flight. Another problem is the attractive student Hannah Green, who feels more than just sympathy for her literature professor.

When Grady smokes marijuana in the Gaskells garden, he meets James Leer, one of his students. Leer is considered a talented writer, but has many envious people due to his successfully told stories and takes on the role of an outsider at college. He also knows all the suicides of famous actors by heart. James surprises Grady with the fact that he has a gun. It is said to have come from his mother, who won it at an amusement arcade in Baltimore while attending a Catholic school there. It serves as a good luck charm, as he tells Grady. The professor tries to cheer up the chronically melancholy student and secretly leads him into the Gaskell's bedroom, where Sara's husband keeps an original Marilyn Monroe costume that she wore to her wedding to Joe DiMaggio . James is touched by the sight and bursts into tears. When Grady is attacked in the stairwell by the blind dog of the Gaskells, James shoots him with his gun in self-defense.

To cover up the dog's death, they load the dead animal into the trunk of Grady's car. When shocked, the literature professor accepts codeine and encourages his students to take some too. James Leer is very dazed after his first use of drugs and at Wordfest he interrupts a speech by guest of honor Q , a respected writer who publishes a bestseller every 18 months, with constant laughter . Grady Tripp also had to pay tribute to his longstanding drug use during the speech. He leaves the classroom and faints in the hallway. When he wakes up again after a short time, he sees Sara in front of him. Grady tries to gently teach her about her dog's death, but Sara misunderstands him and believes that Tripp does not want to leave his wife Emily. In fact, Grady doesn't dare to make a decision, even though a future together is at hand.

While Grady Crabtree's eccentric acquaintance is driving home, he learns of his editor's problems. Crabtree's last professional success was five years ago, and he is said to be fired soon in New York. This is how Crabtree came to Pittsburgh, believing that Grady's new book will be successful again and that he will be able to keep his job at the publishing house. While Grady, Crabtree and the completely absent-minded James take a trip to a bar, Grady and Crabtree indulge in wild mental games. They call an African American Vernon. When the three want to set off with Q in Grady's 1966 Ford Galaxy, they are stopped by Vernon, who adamantly claims that he is the rightful owner of Grady's car, but can shake it off. When they return to retrieve James 'lost backpack from the college classroom, Grady discovers that it contains a manuscript for James' first novel, The Love Parade. When he returns, Crabtree, James and Q have disappeared with Grady's car and he has to be driven home by the strange janitor of the college, where he finds James sleeping on his couch, as well as Marilyn Monroe's jacket, which he steals from the Gaskells vault Has.

The next few hours will be a farce for Grady. He tries to finish his never-ending novel in order to secure the future career of his editor, find out more about James Leer and save him from the police who were turned on by the Gaskells, who meanwhile the disappearance of Marilyn Monroe's jacket from their house noticed. The excellent student keeps inventing new fictional life stories, and it is difficult for Grady to find out where a grain of truth can be found in James' stories. Grady eventually finds out that James is the son of a wealthy couple from the posh Pittsburgh suburb of Sewickley Heights. During a visit to Emily's parents' house, he discovers that he never really knew his young wife, and his student Hannah tells him about the great shortcoming in his life. Grady failed to make choices in his life, as evidenced by his endless novel full of useless details. The worn-out literature professor confronts his great lie and gives Marilyn's jacket to a pregnant waitress. He also confesses to his manager that he is in love with his wife. Grady is fired, but he begins a future together with pregnant Sara and renounces drugs that almost killed him in a dangerous fainting spell. He begins to process the experiences of the crazy weekend in a book. James spends a night with Crabtree, who publishes his novel and saves him from jail and expulsion from college. At the end of the Word Festival, James Leer is celebrated as one of the few students who have found a publisher for their first novel.

History of origin

The film the WonderBoys is based on the novel of the same name by Michael Chabon. The work is colored autobiographically and arose from his work on the never realized novel Fountain City , which was supposed to be about a baseball team in Nevada . Chabon decided to process this experience in a novel. The WonderBoys was adapted for the big screen by the established screenwriter Steven Kloves . Director Curtis Hanson, who wanted to film a lighter and more amusing subject after films like Die Hand an der Wiege or LA Confidential , was given Klove's script to read, was impressed by the characters and could not help but laugh several times while reading. Then producer Scott Rudin sent actor Michael Douglas the script. As a big fan of the screenwriter of The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989), Douglas decided to take on the lead role, who at the time was longing for an easier, more fun project, said Douglas.

The shooting took place without exception in and around Pittsburgh. The college scenes were filmed at the renowned Carnegie-Mellon University , one of the few universities in the United States to award a Bachelor of Arts in creative writing. The film crew found the home of literature professor Grady Tripp in the neighborhood of Friendship, where four blocks were cordoned off for two weeks for filming. Further filming took place at the Pittsburgh International Airport in downtown Pittsburgh and in two bars that represent the hi-hat club in The WonderBoys , the protagonist's favorite bar .

Difficulty turning to Wonder Boys who made film crew the weather. The film, which was shot from February to April 1999, was all about an early beginning of spring . A special crew was busy providing the surroundings of several film locations with a biodegradable white mass as a substitute for snow, while botanists hid the spring plants behind a wall of conifers they had transported themselves .

reception

Curtis Hanson's film, dubbed a serious comedy , was received largely positively by the critics, but could not match the success of his previous work LA Confidential . The film premiered in the United States on February 23, 2000 and was regularly released in North American cinemas one day later. In Germany, the film was released more than eight months later, on November 2, 2000. The WonderBoys took in an estimated 35 million US dollars in production costs in the US only 19 million US dollars and was considered a financial failure. Main actor Michael Douglas, who was awarded several film prizes as a formerly successful novelist and smoking professor of literature, and the film music, which featured several songs by the American artist Bob Dylan , including his then new composition Things Have, were particularly popular with critics Changed .

Reviews

  • "Great class." ( Journal Frankfurt )
  • "Wonderful comedy." ( TV listening and viewing )
  • “Smart, sarcastic and full of tension! The new masterpiece from 'LA Confidential' director Curtis Hanson is a clever comedy with an all-star cast, in which a blind dog, a piece of clothing by Marilyn Monroe and a new song by Bob Dylan play additional roles. " ( Dirk Jasper FilmLexikon )
  • "Men on the verge of a nervous breakdown - great!" ( TV feature film )
  • "An extremely amusing comedy with ingredients from the 'Série Noire', carried by fabulous actors who combine their obvious fun in the game with a good deal of self-irony." ( Film-dienst )
  • “Waiting for the successor to the Oscar-winning 'LA Confidential' (1997) was worth it: Hanson takes us into a bizarre world with weird, extremely lovable and very closely observed characters. The great ensemble skilfully captivates the audience with biting dialogues and warm-hearted humor. " ( TV Movie )
  • “Instead of serving the crisis of his lethargic hero as a juicy screwball comedy, director Curtis Hanson ('LA Confidential') backs off halfway into chaos. In the end, Tripp becomes a better person - and 'Wonderboys' becomes a worse film. ” ( Der Spiegel )
  • “It's the multi-layered characters that make this film so worth seeing and that move the plot forward quickly. Tobey Maguire plays the inscrutable James, a real heart: with a sour face, he poses as a young writer. Michael Douglas is so wrinkled, annoyed and weird as never before. Disoriented wandering around, he ends up in the port of a quite conventional happy ending. " ( Rhein-Zeitung )
  • “Superstar Michael Douglas plays a stoned literature professor in the midlife crisis and Tobey Maguire plays his brilliant but depressed student. Wonderful, winking character cinema . " ( Cinema )
  • “Curtis Hanson has had one disappointment with the audience since 'LA Confidential'; why he redeems it with a bloodless campus film remains his secret. " ( Kultur Spiegel )
  • "Disrespectful comedy in the best Hollywood tradition." ( Meeting point cinema )
  • “Director Curtis Hanson, who last impressed with the James Ellroy film 'LA Confidential', is entering comedy realms for the first time with this punchy midlife crisis humoresque. In addition to its strong actors, such as Michael Douglas, who was wonderfully cast against the grain, the work impresses above all with his intelligence, punchy dialogues and leisurely pace. But it is possible that this unspectacular presentation of the highly acclaimed work could scare off the general public. " ( VideoWoche )
  • “With his elegant staging, Hanson strikes an original offbeat narrative tone that not only awakens certain parallels in content to the subtly surreal suburban cosmos of 'American Beauty'. There are no fantasy sequences here, and the only violent demise is a vicious dog. That doesn't reduce the impact of the story. Because the film has perfect comic timing, and Hanson, who has always shown a sure hand with his actors, animates the ensemble to outstanding performances. Songwriters like Neil Young, John Lennon and Bob Dylan (contributed a new song) dominate the soundtrack, which gives the intellectual milieu its appropriate acoustic background. " ( Blickpunkt: Film )

Remarks

  • Pittsburgh is crossed by three rivers: the Ohio River , the Monongahela River and the Allegheny River . Because of this geographic feature, Pittsburgh has more bridges than any other city in North America. This motif was also used in the film and in many important film scenes bridges can be seen in the background, whether as real buildings, or in photos or paintings.
  • The footage that shows the exterior of a sports shop in the film is actually a local bowling hall, which can also be seen at the beginning of the film Kingpin (1996).
  • The first sentence of the manuscript, which Grady Tripp finds in James Leer 's backpack, is the beginning of the novel The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon, who is also the author of the novel for The WonderBoys .
  • Writer James Ellroy , whose novel was filmed by Curtis Hanson under the title LA Confidential in 1997 (Hanson's previous film), plays a party guest at the Gaskells' house at the beginning of the film.
  • The combination to the locked closet in which Marilyn Monroe's jacket is located is 5641 . In 56 consecutive baseball games, DiMaggio achieved a so-called hit . The 41 stands for the year 1941, in which Joe DiMaggio achieved this record.
  • James Lee's description of the sky as a greenhouse is a reference to John Boorman's film Zardoz (1974), which is based on a fictional utopian society whose followers live in crystal houses.
  • When Grady Tripp returns to his house and finds that Crabtree is having a party, the Leonhard Cohen song Waiting for the Miracle is played when Grady arrives . This song was also played in the opening sequence of Natural Born Killers (1994), which also features Robert Downey Jr.
  • At the party at the beginning of the film, James Leer impresses the guests with his knowledge of film stars who have committed suicide, including George Sanders . Later in the film, George Sanders can be seen on television , in a scene from the film The Portrait of Dorian Gray (1945).
  • As Grady and Crabtree James Leer from his home liberate want one sees the desk of the gifted students at the Albert Camus ' The Plague (1947), Truman Capote's last unfinished work Answered Prayers (1987) and Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon (1958) in which the author uncovered a whole series of scandals of the rich and famous Hollywood .
  • The list of famous suicides that James reveals at the party comes word for word from a list in Kenneth Anger's book Hollywood Babylon II (1981), including the notorious reference to Alan Ladd's demise.
  • While listing the actor suicides, James forgets when Carole Landis took her own life with sleeping pills . She voluntarily passed away on July 5, 1948 in Pacific Palisades , California .

Awards

Wonder Boys was in the 2001 Oscar nominated -Verleihung for three Academy Awards, but won only Bob Dylan film song Things Have Changed . Dylan, who was on tour through Germany at the time of the award ceremony , played the song and learned of his victory live via satellite TV. He took the Academy Award he had won on his tour and placed it on his harmonica amplifier during concerts.

Michael Douglas was honored for his unpretentious role as a worn-out literature professor in 2001 with nominations for the Golden Globe Award and the British BAFTA film award for best leading actor and was honored by the Los Angeles Critics' Association, among others . Frances McDormand was named Best Supporting Actress by the Florida and Los Angeles Critics 'Associations for her portrayal of Michael Douglas' pregnant mistress and for her performance in Cameron Crowe's film Almost Famous . Tobey Maguire's performance as the mysterious literature student James Leer, whom he shared with Jeffrey Wright ( Shaft ), was awarded the prize for best supporting actor .

Oscar 2001

  • Best movie song

Nominated in the categories

  • Best adapted script
  • Best cut

BAFTA Awards 2001

Nominated in the categories

  • Best Actor (Michael Douglas)
  • Best adapted script

Golden Globe Awards 2001

  • Best movie song

Nominated in the categories

  • Best film - drama
  • Best Actor - Drama (Michael Douglas)
  • Best script

Further

Boston Society of Film Critics Awards 2000

  • Best script

Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards 2001

  • Best Supporting Actress (Frances McDormand)
  • Best adapted script
  • nominated as best film

Chicago Film Critics Association Awards 2001

Nominated in the categories

  • Best movie
  • Best Actor (Michael Douglas)
  • Best script

Florida Film Critics Circle Awards 2001

  • Best Supporting Actress (Frances McDormand)

GLAAD Media Awards 2001

  • nominated as best film

Golden Satellite Awards 2001

  • Best Actor - Comedy or Musical (Michael Douglas)

Nominated in the categories

  • Best film - comedy or musical
  • Best movie song

Grammy 2001

  • nominated in the category of best movie song

LA Outfest 2001

  • Screen Idol Award for Robert Downey Jr.

Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards 2000

  • Best adapted script
  • Best movie song

Nominated in the categories

  • Best Actor (Michael Douglas)
  • Best cut

London Critics Circle Film Awards 2001

Nominated in the categories

  • Best Actor of the Year (Michael Douglas)
  • Best Screenwriter of the Year (Steven Kloves)

Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards 2000

  • Best Actor (Michael Douglas)
  • Best Supporting Actress (Frances McDormand)

Online Film Critics Society Awards 2001

Nominated in the categories

  • Best Actor (Michael Douglas)
  • Best script
  • Best acting ensemble

Southeastern Film Critics Association Awards 2001

  • Best Actor (Michael Douglas)

Toronto Film Critics Association Awards 2001

  • Best Supporting Actor (Tobey Maguire)

USC Scripter Award 2001

  • Best script

Writers Guild of America 2001

  • nominated in the best adapted screenplay category

literature

Web links