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Features
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Whipping Up Some Stormy Weather
With two Pirates sequels currently on his radar, director Gore Verbinski certainly isn’t hurting for work. But even he didn’t expect this small a blip for The Weather Man.
Tuesday, November 8, 2005
By Brett Buckalew
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Steve Granitz/Wireimage.com
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Filmmaker Gore Verbinski
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Even by the standards of Nicolas Cage’s more unconventional films (think Matchstick Men, Windtalkers and so on), The Weather Man ranks as a major disappointment. After earning $4.2 million its first weekend, it fell to an even paltrier $2.8 million this past weekend.
Still, for both its star and director, this will prove to be nothing more than a temporary cold front. In the case of Gore Verbinski, whose four films have grossed over $1 billion worldwide and featured such fantastical sights as a young dead girl’s ghost clawing her way out of a TV set and cursed pirates who turn into vicious skeletons as soon as nightfall descends, a movie such as The Weather Man - where what passes for action scenes are montages that subject Cage's anti-hero to fast-food-hurling attacks from passers by – could almost be considered a deliberate busman’s holiday.
“After Pirates, it was really just important to kind of slow down and go back to something where I could direct actors and not have explosions and cannons,” Verbinski explains during a recent interview with FilmStew. “Those movies, there are so many things going on, and in some ways, they’re much more taxing [to make] physically.”
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Michael Caufield/Wireimage.com
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At recent CineVegas
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Before The Weather Man, Verbinski’s most explosion-free outing was the sideways-moving The Mexican, which drew scathing reviews upon its 2001 release for ensnaring major celebrities Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts in a black comedy that was too violent and digressive for most of the stars’ fan base and too glossy for aficionados of the Peckinpah and Tarantino movies it mimicked. But for those of us who regard it as Verbinski’s most curiously appealing commercial film, its rambling shaggy-dog rhythms and unforgettable supporting performance by James Gandolfini as a hit man with hidden reserves of quiet decency more than make up for the schizophrenia.
Whether or not The Weather Man is a superior CGI-free, character-centered dark comedy from Verbinski, one certainty is that no one will accuse it of pandering to the mainstream. Working from a loosely structured screenplay by Steven Conrad (whose upcoming projects include Chad Schmidt, which features Mexican star Pitt playing both himself and a flustered look-alike), Verbinski portrays Dave as a man insecure in the shadow of his award-winning novelist father (Michael Caine), combative with his bitter ex-wife (Hope Davis), unhappy with his TV weatherman job, and unable to assist his kids (Nicholas Hoult, Gemmenne De la Peña) as they face the tortures of puberty.
Inevitably, the dysfunction-driven script wasn’t catnip to Hollywood studios. “We actually had to really fight to get it made,” Verbinski relates. “I mean, it was at Sony, and they passed on it. And for a while, it was gonna go to Dreamworks, and they passed on it. And then we couldn’t get arrested with the script, even with myself and Nic [attached].”
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Lester Cohen/Wireimage.com
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From Batman to Weatherman
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It’s easy to imagine Cage’s involvement eventually attracting the interest of Paramount and independently financed production company Escape Artists, seeing as how his experience transitioning from challenging dramas (Leaving Las Vegas, Adaptation) to popcorn fare (Gone in 60 Seconds, National Treasure) outranks Verbinski’s. In fact, the director is still humbled by his star’s versatility.
“This guy works more than anybody I know,” Verbinski marvels. “I mean, he just goes from movie to movie to movie to movie. And that in conjunction with [how] he oscillates between taking a commercial movie and then just diving bravely into something that he’s not afraid to do. I think he’s made four movies since The Weather Man. He keeps on going.”
And as tough a time as Verbinski and Cage had in finding a home for The Weather Man, Verbinski likens the experience to the hardships another unconventional fantasy director/big star combo encountered before hitting the big screen. “I remember talking to Bob Zemeckis early on,” the director remembers, “and he had a horrendous time getting Forrest Gump made. People will gladly have you make their movie, but when you want to make your movie, it’s a different story.”
Not that Verbinski is predicting a Gump-level gross for his newest. Rather, he claims, “it’s okay if a lot of people don’t like it, as long as it finds its audience.”
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Steve Granitz/Wireimage.com
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Co-star Gil Bellows
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Elaborating somewhat prophetically on why The Weather Man could rub some audiences the wrong way, the filmmaker observes of the film, “it’s a mirror, and I think some people don’t like to look in the mirror. I hope people say, ‘Yeah, I’ve come to a place in my life where I’ve had to come to terms with [how] I could’ve been other things, I could’ve done other things, and now those opportunities are gone.’ And here’s a character who’s come to terms with that, and moving on, and finding peace in that.”
For Verbinski, Cage’s character of Dave Spritz overcoming his professional and personal crises finds its perfect metaphor in the foodstuffs that disdainful fans of the weatherman often throw at him. “Dave’s father is filet mignon, and he’s an Egg McMuffin,” Verbinski humorously notes. “And he’ll never be filet mignon, but the sadness is him trying to be that, and the joy is him finally accepting that it’s okay to be an Egg McMuffin.”
“When you have a cup of coffee and a hangover, it’s not a bad breakfast. It’s American!”
While Dave is a complex character, even the most ardent champions of Verbinski’s newfound low-key side are itching to know what’s up with the director’s weirdest protagonist, Pirates’ Captain Jack Sparrow, who, as played beautifully by Johnny Depp, is less a filet mignon than an overcooked quiche. Verbinski is currently filming two Pirates sequels back-to-back, and according to him, his most pressing concern is making sure the second installment, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, is more Empire Strikes Back than Matrix Reloaded.
“We’re constantly telling ourselves the second one better be good or there’s no point in making the third one,” the director emphasizes. “I think a lot of times people go, ‘oh yeah, close with a bang!’ I think we’re trying to put our energy right now into making sure the second one works, because that’s the failure in those trilogies a lot of times.”
And if Verbinski wants to fall back into small-scale comedy/drama after the Pirates trilogy, at least now he has a precedent to boost his own faith in that arguably much tougher process.
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