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Run, Ross Geller, Run
by Richard Horgan |
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9/19/2007 at 6:25:19 PM |
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Predictably, David Schwimmer - the only principal cast member of Friends who doubled as a director on the NBC sitcom (for ten episodes) – has become the first to make it to the feature film director finish line.
What was not so expected is how cleverly he managed the opportunity. By focusing on a country where Friends remains exceedingly popular (United Kingdom), partnering with a known local quantity (Simon Pegg) and aiming for a brand of comedy only slightly removed from the kind of TV hijinks that he knows, Schwimmer has landed himself with Run, Fatboy, Run the number one movie at the British box office for the past two weekends in a row. It even, amazingly, survived the arrival on UK screens this past weekend of foul-mouthed smash Superbad, experiencing a weekend-to-weekend drop of only 23%.
True, this strategy could have backfired, with an early September 7th overseas bow that was poorly received harpooning the buzz ahead of a much later U.S. arrival (October 26th).* But even Ross knows that you don’t get the girl unless you’re willing to take a few risks and blimey, Run is a commercial smash and sitting at press time at a decent 63% on RottenTomatoes UK.
The rest of the Friends gang have followed their own linear paths since the end of the program. Courtney Cox Arquette has become a producer; Matthew Perry and Lisa Kudrow have sampled the joys of critically acclaimed TV cancellation; Matt LeBlanc has experienced the brunt of critically reviled TV cancellation; and Jennifer Aniston is doggedly pursuing mainstream film stardom while caught in the tiresome gossip-paparazzi bubble.
At the recent Toronto International Film Festival, it was duly noted that Schwimmer was peddling his big screen directorial debut alongside the maiden efforts of another major U.S. sitcom star, Helen Hunt. In Hunt’s case, she has chosen to go the passion project route, nurturing for over a decade her adaptation of Elinor Lipman’s much beloved 1990 novel Then She Found Me and banking that Bette Midler (her main co-star) has at least one more great big screen bellow left in her.
Greeted at the end of its gala festival premiere with a standing ovation, Then She Found Me is not slated to open until sometime in early 2008. And while the buzz is that Midler is indeed great, Hunt does not appear to have the option of a Schwimmer-like pre-U.S. release strategy. For better or worse, Dr. Ross Geller was always the smartest one on Friends, and that seems to have bled into his filmmaking instincts. And with the high concept comedy The Persuaders up next, it looks like he will continue to get the girl.
*Update - 09/21/07: Inexplicably, Picturehouse has postponed the U.S. release of Run, Fat Boy, Run until March 28th, 2008. No reason has been given, but perhaps it was the notion that releasing this one during fall Oscar season would amount to a false start.
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