Eggs Mayonnaise
All In With The Nuts
Sitting in his undies, unwashed/unkempt, because his movie flopped at Sundance:
A Brushback for Loner Tale
By BROOKS BARNES
January 23, 2010, 3:56 pm
And you thought “Howl” got a soft reception. In what feels like Sundance’s first full-blown critical wipeout, “Hesher” got pushed face down in the slush by the trade magazine critics and prominent movie bloggers after its premiere on Friday.
Variety’s quickie review said that the first-time director Spencer Susser – whom people associated with the film were hyping as “the next Paul Thomas Anderson” pre-festival – went “out of his way to spike every scene with gratuitous provocations and repetitive vulgarities that become old very quickly.” And then: “The value of the journey for the audience … is highly questionable.”
TheWrap.com deemed the movie, which marks Natalie Portman’s producing debut and stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Ms. Portman, as “more of that self-indulgent Sundance curse,” while IndieWire went straight for the jugular. Its headline was “Messy ‘Hesher’ Disappoints.”
All of which has left the movie’s big-league sales agents, Creative Artists Agency and William Morris Endeavor, picking up the pieces, hoping to find a buyer for a story about a grungy, bizarre loner whose obnoxious behavior helps pull a boy out of overwhelming grief.
“Rough” was how one person affiliated with the picture summed up prospects. On the plus side, there were buyers galore at the screening – Harvey Weinstein, Summit Entertainment, Fox Searchlight – and the critics predicted that young audiences, particularly guys, might like it.
And many of the Twitter responses were upbeat. “Floored me,” wrote yogoldsmith. “My favorite script so far. Funny, depressing, unexpected and flat-out odd.” AjMeadows tweeted, “I feel like I just had my brain thrown in a blender, splattered with hot sauce and nails.” Well, at least we think that one is positive.
Ouch.
