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The Leisure Class

Tara Ariano

By Tara Ariano
in Project Greenlight [V]

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Tara Ariano

Tara Ariano

A dashing English con man's scheme to marry into a prominent East Coast family is threatened by the arrival of his unhinged, ne'er-do-well brother on the eve of his wedding to the daughter of a U.S. senator. Feature directorial debut for Jason Mann, the winner of the fourth season of HBO's "Project Greenlight."

 

Premieres Monday, November 2, at 10 PM ET.

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Quilt Fairy

Quilt Fairy

(edited)

How long did the initial cut run? Was it and hour and 51 minutes or 151 minutes? Because HBO has it in a 90 minute slot now, which means it's several minutes under that. Wouldn't they put the 'average' made-for-HBO movie in a 2 hour slot, even if they were going to pad it a bit with commercials?

 

It's more than pathetic that I'm actually anticipating this airing tonight.

Edited by Quilt Fairy
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Julia

Julia

(edited)

Wow, so, is the brother the force of anarchy or Doctor Phil? Would you describe what took place for Fiona as growth? And do you think Jason thinks "rich people's shit stinks" is an original observation?

So, the best-looking parts of that (which was not close to all of them) looked like Four Weddings and a Funeral, and ironically enough, the best film came from the rehearsal dinner he spent so much time whining about. The car crash was fine. And the plot was deeply stupid, and the performances were pretty bad,

That was just terrible.

Edited by Julia
  • Love 3
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Muffyn

Muffyn

I didn’t laugh once.  Not once.  Not even a moment when I felt slightly amused by the plot.  Wow.  That was bad.

 

There were some decent moments in the performances but I find myself wondering if those were when the actors went off script.  There was no chemistry between Fiona and William so there was no reason to care if they married or not.  I did find myself wondering what they added that was supposed to create the great change in Fiona so that she would become a heartless, mercenary person and go through with the wedding.  It was just a bad script with flat, nonsensical characters.

 

I did see three POC at the wedding.  I almost wondered if the flashes to them were pushed in the editing since this had been a storyline on PG.

 

The movie is poorly structured, seems to have nothing new to say and shows a terrible vision of marriage and of women.  So there it is, Jason Mann’s vision.  Cheers to him!

  • Love 6
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Julia

Julia

If they had shown the condescending bullshit at the pool or in the car, or, you know, the fraud, making Fiona decide that she didn't care if he got hurt if it helped her political career there would have been some arc. Then maybe he could have reacted to that like someone who just heard Fiona's mom talk about the hell her life has been married to someone just like his new wife and looked mildly uncomfortable about it? And then a tracking shot from the reception to the Senator's basement gun dungeon and the dead stare of his brother, who was willing to irretrievably fuck up his life for pure amusement, so when he threatened to stop the wedding they killed him and his hooker friend. And then close back out on the lawn with the happy couple holding large, large drinks.

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Julia

Julia

(edited)

Because the fiancé's brother talked Fiona's maybe-mentally-challenged sister the virgin into driving drunk, and she hit another car, maybe injuring the other driver and creating something for the father to use his influence to cover up.

Edited by Julia
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kalamac

kalamac

Bridget Regan would have been the reason for me to give this one a go. I've liked her since Legend of the Seeker. Of the other movies, The Battle of Shaker Heights is the only one I find tolerable.

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terrymct

terrymct

I am watching now and it's every bit as shitty as you'd expect.

 

 

It's worse than I expected.  OMG, those belly laughs we saw when the producers and staff were viewing the director's cut.  What were they laughing at?

  • Love 4
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clack

clack

Turns out Jason is a good technical director, but not a natural storyteller. Which is fine -- with luck, humility, and perseverance, looks like a career as a journeyman TV director is possible, if he is able to put aside his dreams of being some great film artist.

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Muffyn

Muffyn

It's worse than I expected.  OMG, those belly laughs we saw when the producers and staff were viewing the director's cut.  What were they laughing at?

Perhaps they were laughing at the idea that Jason thought this was funny?  And brilliant?

  • Love 8
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scrb

scrb

I haven't seen any of the PGL movies and this probably won't be different.

 

Did people watch the red carpet premier that they're suppose to show before the movie?

 

Would it be possible to watch one of the PGL movies unaffected by the show?  Maybe it would be better to watch the movie first and then the show?

  • Love 2
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calliope1975

calliope1975

Did people watch the red carpet premier that they're suppose to show before the movie?

 

I did. It was short - 10 or 15 minutes, and most of it was people telling Jason how great he and his movie are. The premiere was well received with what seemed like a lot of laughter. However, there was a nice bit with Len where he said it's always great and easy when friends, family, and crew screen the movie, but that doesn't necessarily mean the general audience will like it. Dude totally knew. 

  • Love 3
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RemoteControlFreak

RemoteControlFreak

(edited)

The movie isn't even enjoyable bad. It's just bad, on almost every level.  The characters don't make sense. The dialogue is boring and repetitive. The story doesn't really make sense. And it's not funny.

 

Even the production aspects that Jason had a tantrum over -- shooting on film, shooting at night, having a mansion that looks like Connecticut, the car crash, are either not evident or detract from the movie.  The car crash, for example, would have been more effective if Jason simply showed the cars driving off and then cut in the sound of a huge collision.  Showing an actual collision with gratuitous shots like the stretcher-eye view as its being unloaded from the ambulance detract from what ever story there is.  And there was, what, one long shot of the mansion? And for this they considered shooting on the east coast?

 

Some of the acting was good and Jason has a good sense of how to shoot people in space. That's what got the attention of Matt, Ben et al in the first place.  It's not nearly enough to make this a good movie, or even an average movie.

Edited by RemoteControlFreak
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Julia

Julia

(edited)

There was a girl directly in the center of the audience reaction shot who didn't realize it was time to react and was applying lip gloss with a staggeringly bored look on her face. I was amused.

Edited by Julia
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Clanstarling

Clanstarling

I did. It was short - 10 or 15 minutes, and most of it was people telling Jason how great he and his movie are. The premiere was well received with what seemed like a lot of laughter. However, there was a nice bit with Len where he said it's always great and easy when friends, family, and crew screen the movie, but that doesn't necessarily mean the general audience will like it. Dude totally knew. 

I watched it too and started to laugh because the "praise" was essentially "welp, he made the movie he wanted" - even my daughter who was just passing through commented on the not-praise praise. And was it just me, or was Marc Joubert completely wasted (drunk) when he was talking to Jason? 

  • Love 4
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LADreamr

LADreamr

The thing with the car flip that keeps bugging me is that it would have been unrealistic and self-indulgent for that scene for the crash to be any more than it turned out to be, but also, the scenes that followed seemed too low key to make sense if the crash had been bigger. There would have been more serious damage and injuries, so it would have been out of place with the reactions that followed.

  • Love 2
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Latverian Diplomat

Latverian Diplomat

(edited)

Somewhere, in an alternate universe, this discussion is about Not Another Pretty Woman A Jason Mann film, which through it's subtle subversion of the three act structure, surprised and delighted the HBO audience. Also, that was one heck of a car flip they squeezed in there.

Also, they don't have shrimp. :-)

Edited by Latverian Diplomat
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mandigirl

mandigirl

OK... sooooo I didn't HATE it. I went in with low expectations and I could watch Bridget Regan read a phone book. It had some nice shots and some genuinely amusing moments (for example I lol'd when Carla said she was an 'affordable' not 'cheap' prostitute). And it has to be better than 'Not Another Pretty Woman'! I'm a sucker for movies about sibling bonding. The problems were with the pacing and the character arc of Fiona.

 

For all of Jason's whining, I thought the scene where Fiona decided to basically black-mail her father could have gone further because her motivation in going through with the sham wedding still wasn't compelling. Her character and the character of the Senator were all over the place. Having layers to both would have made the end pay-off much better. 

 

shooting on film, shooting at night, having a mansion that looks like Connecticut, the car crash, are either not evident or detract from the movie.

 

 

To varying degrees, I agree. I thought the daylight/night was noticeable, maybe because the show mentioned it so much. The crash was fine and as LA Dreamr said, actually made more sense with the response that happened later in the movie.  BUT the mansion looked nothing like Connecticut. At all. The location scout clearly did the best they could, but the mansion looked L.A. and I kept on getting confused momentarily when they would mention they were in Connecticut.  

  • Love 2
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Latverian Diplomat

Latverian Diplomat

(edited)

Turns out Jason is a good technical director, but not a natural storyteller. Which is fine -- with luck, humility, and perseverance, looks like a career as a journeyman TV director is possible, if he is able to put aside his dreams of being some great film artist.

If he can't get over his hangups about unnoticeable technical issues, getting his own way when production says no, and delegating when necessary, he could never succeed in television. I can't imagine a television producer who would come away from watching this season thinking "hire this guy." 

Edited by Latverian Diplomat
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Julia

Julia

Somewhere, in an alternate universe, this discussion is about Not Another Pretty Woman A Jason Mann film, which through it's subtle subversion of the three act structure, surprised and delighted the HBO audience. Also, that was one heck of a car flip they squeezed in their.

Also, they don't have shrimp. :-)

For the record, this is the second random plate o'shrimp reference I've bumped into today.

  • Love 1
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LADreamr

LADreamr

Visually it was very pretty, and I actually think the outside dinner scene being more dusk than night made it a prettier picture. But without just as much attention to characters, story and dialogue, pretty just isn't enough.

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RemoteControlFreak

RemoteControlFreak

BUT the mansion looked nothing like Connecticut. At all. The location scout clearly did the best they could, but the mansion looked L.A. and I kept on getting confused momentarily when they would mention they were in Connecticut.  

Really?  I thought it looked pretty authentic and I'm a New England native.

 

The one thing that did scream "California" to me was the attire worn by the cop who showed up at the car crash scene. He looked more like a California Highway Patrol cop than a Connecticut State Trooper.

 

Screen_Shot_2015_11_03_at_6_41_25_PM.png

 

Screen_Shot_2015_11_03_at_6_36_51_PM.png

 

Screen_Shot_2015_11_03_at_6_36_14_PM.png

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mandigirl

mandigirl

RemoteControlFreak, it might have been the foliage outside or maybe even the decor inside, but it just didn't look 'Connecticut' to me. The first and third one of your photos (particularly the third one) looks the most like Connecticut to me. The mansion in the movie looked very old Hollywood, though I don't know if I can even point specifically to a reason why. 

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RemoteControlFreak

RemoteControlFreak

(edited)

RemoteControlFreak, it might have been the foliage outside or maybe even the decor inside, but it just didn't look 'Connecticut' to me. The first and third one of your photos (particularly the third one) looks the most like Connecticut to me. The mansion in the movie looked very old Hollywood, though I don't know if I can even point specifically to a reason why. 

The first picture is the actual house used in The Leisure Class.

 

The second and third photos are of houses currently for sale in Greenwich, Connecticut.

 

You may be right that the vegetaton they brought in for the shoot is more common to California.  

Edited by RemoteControlFreak
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lidarose9

lidarose9

(edited)

Can't old money live in LA as well? Why not re-locate the script? Seems the story could have been told.

 

It's the same with the vast majority of the crap Jason insisted was absolutely necessary: it wasn't. There is nothing in this story that couldn't work in LA or NY or Tampa, FL. It would have taken a tiny bit of imagination to find ways to work around the constraints he had, and obviously that is something he does not have. 

 

I keep asking myself, is this truly the story Jason wanted to tell? I really can't tell. 

Edited by lidarose9
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pbutler111

pbutler111

While certainly fraught with problems, I didn't think the movie was that bad. On the other hand, for someone so obsessed with minutiae, there was a lot of real sloppiness in the filming. For example, in the scene where Charles/William is coming clean in the library, I couldn't help but focus just behind him, at the sign of the carpet that had fallen halfway off the stairs. Jason didn't notice that? Still, it would be really interesting to read a review of the film by someone who hasn't watched Project Greenlight and doesn't know the story behind the film's creation.

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Milburn Stone

Milburn Stone

(edited)

I made it about 10 or 15 minutes in (including the scene in which William offers Leonard $10K to get lost). I'll probably try to watch the rest of it.

 

But what I saw gave me the very clear impression that Jason, Pete Jones, and the two actors were using Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon as their template. All concerned had watched The Trip and The Trip to Italy a few too many times, with Ed Weeks now playing the Steve Coogan part and Tom Bell the Rob Brydon part. During writing and filming, the creative team and actors obviously thought they were catching that lightning in a bottle, which explains why they thought it was hilarious. Rather than pallidly second-hand.

Edited by Milburn Stone
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lidarose9

lidarose9

The problem with this film is the story. The direction, the acting, the production design, etc., all the rest is fine. But none of that will ever be enough to fix a bad script.

 

We will never know whether the original script as conceived by Jason would have been more successful, nor will we ever know how much it was changed in the editing process. Thanks to PG season 2, I have a much greater appreciation now how one can make a totally new/diff film in post-production. While trying to drum up more laughs (or whatever), Len may have done more damage than good, who knows. I would seriously be interested in Jason's own HONEST evaluation of the finished product, how close it came to his original vision, and how it differed. 

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RabbitEars

RabbitEars

(edited)

Why were the rehearsal dinner and the wedding exactly the same except for the clothing??

Because Effie hates Jason and his vision.

(Kidding.)

How the heck old is the little sister Carolyn supposed to be? She looks 26 at some angles, 19 in others.

Edited by RabbitEars
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terrymct

terrymct

How the heck old is the little sister Carolyn supposed to be? She looks 26 at some angles, 19 in others.

 

 

She...and Dean/Leonard...seem mentally challenged or emotionally stunted at the very least.

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Milburn Stone

Milburn Stone

(edited)

Have now made it another twenty minutes in. The car crash was perfectly adequate for the needs of the story. (As anyone with a knowledge of post-production might have predicted.) It came across as serious enough to put a scare into the characters, which is what it needed to do. A flipover would have been diminishing returns. The (boring) scene that followed the crash, with the two brothers alone in the car getting real with each other, felt just as motivated by the crash we saw as it would have by anything more spectacular.

Edited by Milburn Stone
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MasalaCurry

MasalaCurry

I slept through the film, woke up, rewind, then fell asleep again. It was hard to keep my eyes open. What I could not get over is how bad Bridget's makeup was. I could not get past the white highlighter below her eyes, her eyes always appeared to made up and that highlighter stood out above everything else. It was a very bad makeup job, I am surprised nobody noticed! The dialogues also seemed out of sync sometimes. Like when Ed Weeks told Bridget "if your father were here what would he say" and she took offense. It just seemed out of sync, like poorly delivered dialogues probably because the actors were improvising and the script was not tight.

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