Best Review So Far

Now here's what we like to see.

The L.A. Times is one of the nation's biggest papers, there's a little picture from the movie on the front page of the "Calendar" section, and the review inside is the best one we've had so far. (Our distributor is very happy indeed.) More to the point, this is a review that actually reviews the film Marc made. All too often you get reviewers who wish the film had been something else, perhaps because they get too caught up in the idea of genre. The presence of "Noir" in the title, for example, causes them to believe that the film can only be This and This but definitely not This, when in fact the film uses Noir as a starting point and then veers way off in another direction.

(This is exactly why, as a writer, I've always hated the idea of genre: as soon as you label a work as being part of a particular genre, you either have to conform to the conventions of that genre--and your readers' heavy weight of expectations--or work very hard indeed to hack your way past all those conventions. My novel Thereby Hangs a Tale deliberately begins with four chapters written in vastly different styles, precisely so a reader will have any genre expectations thrashed out of them and can then approach the novel on its own terms.)

But Mr. Thomas, the Times reviewer, seems to have understood exactly what Zen Noir is--and what it isn't. He describes it as "a provocative, witty--and admittedly esoteric--experimental comedy." That's exactly right, and I think that helps prospective viewers: the movie isn't being sold as a mainstream noir, so--we hope--we won't end up with people who simply read a great review, walked in, and then were disappointed because they had been expecting something different.

Mr. Thomas is also complimentary toward a lot of the things that Marc is proudest of, like the crucial contributions from his collaborators Christopher Gosch (as Director of Photography) and Steve Chesne (who composed the fabulous music). He calls it "a high-styled film that is visually rich and stunning," and notes that "it could scarcely look richer or more elegant yet probably was made on a minuscule budget." Right all around--in fact, one of our earliest hints that we were doing a good job was that the people at the post house (the ones developing the raw footage after each day's shooting) started to comment on how great the footage looked, that there was a sumptuousness that belied its budget.

So here's hoping--we open in L.A. tonight, and now is when we see exactly what the power of a good review in a major paper can be. Will there be big crowds? Hope so. But more to the point, will there be big crowds walking away from the movie with the kind of reaction we saw from so many people in San Francisco? People for whom the film might just mean something? That's what we really hope for; that would be the best of all possible worlds.