Mitch Glazer — “Passion Play”
A writing veteran whose work goes all the way back to the early ’80s when he wrote for “SNL,” Mitch Glazer‘s first major screen credit (and most well-known film) is 1988’s “Scrooged” starring Bill Murray. Other credits include 1991’s “Off and Running” starring Cyndi Lauper, 2003’s and “The Recruit” starring Al Pacino and Colin Farrell, but it wasn’t until 2010 when Glazer mounted his first directorial effort, “Passion Play” (which he wrote as well). And boy, was it a doozy, savaged at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival by critics — our own review called the film an “excruciating unbearable disaster.” It doesn’t get much worse than films like this. A ridiculous tone-deaf fairy tale, the film has a hell of a cast, but it doesn’t help. Mickey Rourke stars as a down-and-out jazz trumpeter whose luck isn’t getting any better. But his life changes when he comes across a mysterious, sideshow freak woman with angel-like wings played Megan Fox. Co-starring Bill Murray as a gangster who’s out to kill the two of them and Rhys Ifans, “Passion Play” was easily one of TIFF’s biggest debacles and reminds us of a similar disaster, “Boxing Helena.” Laughed out the door at the screening we were at, it’s a risible, brutal experience to say the least and the film limped onto DVD a year later without much fanfare (even Rourke himself publicly dogged the film before it came out). Cliche-riddled, and filled with dumb contrivances, you’d expect much more from a veteran screenwriter.
Subsequent Career: Glazer went on to create the Starz show “Magic City” starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Danny Huston and Olga Kurylenko, and it was recently renewed by the network for a second season and that should keep him busy for a while. In the end, “Passion Play,” as bad as it was, hasn’t hurt Glazer’s screenwriting career and as “Magic City” attests, there’s plenty of work to be found in TV, but the stain of that stinker will be hard to wash out and we wouldn’t be surprised if he has to wait several years before he gets behind the camera again.
William Monahan – “London Boulevard”
William Monahan started out as a magazine, alt-weekly writer and then became a novelist and in 2000, and Warner Bros. optioned the film rights to his book “Light House: A Trifle,” and that got the ball rolling on his Hollywood career. 20th Century Fox bought the spec script “Tripoli” which Ridley Scott was interested in making, but he soon became entranced by Monahan’s pitch to make a movie about The Crusades that became “Kingdom of Heaven,” his first properly produced screenwriting credit. And Monahan soon hit paydirt with “The Departed” in 2006, an adaptation of the highly regarded Hong Kong film “Infernal Affairs,” that not only won him a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar, but finally gave Martin Scorsese his first Academy Award for Best Director. Monahan would go on to write ‘Body Of Lies” for Ridley Scott and “Edge Of Darkness,” commanding high figures and generally being much in demand. But his career definitely got tripped up by his directorial debut “London Boulevard,” a film in the would-be mold of the classic British gangster films from the ‘60s and early ‘70s like “Get Carter,” Nicolas Roeg’s “Performance,’ and even Antonioni’s “Blow Up.” In fact, it so desperately wants to capture that beatnik-y place and tone where crime films and swinging London met that it just seems to try too hard, slathering the movie with music, trippy visuals and other elements that just can’t make up for the deficit of a weak and blandly told story about a ex-con (Colin Farrell) hired to look after a reclusive young actress (Keira Knightley) who finds himself falling in love, which of course puts himself in direct confrontation with one of London’s most vicious gangsters. It doesn’t really help that the two leads don’t have a lot of chemistry. If you want a much better modern take on the ‘60s British crime flick, just dial up “Sexy Beast.”
Subsequent Career: Despite this misstep, Monahan’s career hasn’t been hurt too badly. He’s still in demand (he rewrote “Sin City: A Dame to Kill For” for Robert Rodriguez) and unlike some of these other writers who may never direct again, he’s already in pre-production on his next filmmaking effort “Mojave” starring ‘Inside Llewyn Davis” co-stars Garrett Hedlund and Oscar Isaac.
Frank Miller — “The Spirit”
Sometimes there can almost be a sense of relief when we get to write about something that has absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever. So we’re really rather glad that Frank Miller, otherwise known in the screenwriting world for the ‘Robocop’ sequels and for gifting other screenwriters with comic book fodder in “Elektra,” “Sin City,” “300” and his gritty take on Batman, chose “The Spirit” as his solo directorial debut (he’s credited as co-director with Robert Rodriguez on “Sin City” but we believe that even less now having seen what he did when left to his own devices). Asinine, patronising to the viewer, unpardonably full of itself and thumpingly, thumpingly dull, “The Spirit” is one of the absolute worst times we’ve ever had at the movies, in a long life of movie watching. Ostensibly employing a similar comic-book-inspired aesthetic as “Sin City” yet making that film seem like a masterpiece of rich characterization and deep philosophical thinking by comparison, “The Spirit” features a cop (Gabriel Macht) returned from the dead who has to track a villain (Samuel L Jackson) across a city but is waylaid by a bunch of unlikely females in various fetish outfits (Eva Mendes, Scarlett Johannson, Sarah Paulson, Jaime King) who want to seduce him to stop him from carrying out his mission. Or something. It’s absolutely incomprehensible tripe and everyone involved should be completely ashamed of themselves.
Subsequent Career: Miller’s position in the comic book pantheon is assured, so we doubt he’s too worried about not having another solo directorial project lined up (though he’s back as co-director on “Sin City 2”), and frankly, we thank our lucky stars. Word on an adaptation of his comic “Ronin” has gone quiet of late, but hopefully the bundles and bundles of cash he must be making from the “Sin City” and “300” franchises, among others, mean he’ll stick, directing-wise, to the odd perfume commercial from now on.