Dennis Quaid

‘The Substance’ – A Gloriously Bold WTF Movie

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

It has been an hour now since I witnessed Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance,” and I am absolutely convinced I will not see a more bug fuck crazy motion picture in 2024. It combines the extreme body horror of David Cronenberg’s films (“The Fly” in particular), the graphic effects of John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” and the brutal satire of “Network” to create a truly unforgettable motion picture which serves as a middle finger to unrealistic beauty standards, and also a reflection of our own internal biases which we don’t always face up to.

Demi Moore, in what may very well be her finest performance ever, stars as Elisabeth Sparkle, an Oscar winning actress who is currently hosting an aerobics show on television. It is also her birthday, her 50th to be exact, and while everyone is quick to wish her well, her boss Harvey (Dennis Quaid) is out to fire her as he sees her as being too old in a business which is constantly looking for young blood on an endless basis. In the process, what should be the happiest day of the year for her is now the worst ever as she is instantly rendered irrelevant in the eyes of many, and she barely survives a truly horrific car crash which would have killed anyone else.

Salvation, however, just might be coming her way when she is encouraged by a doctor to try a black-market serum which is simply called The Substance. It looks a lot like the one Herbert West used to awaken dead corpses in “Re-Animator,” and a sexy male voice, which sounds like it is about to say “I really am as sexy as I sound” tells her this serum will create a “younger, more beautiful, more perfect” counterpart of herself. This counterpart ends up emerging from a huge slit in her back in a style reminiscent of “Videodrome,” and while the situation might seem normal, we know this will eventually descend into an inferno no one could ever see coming.

The counterpart is Sue, and she is played ever so unforgettably by Margaret Qualley. Sue ends up auditioning for the job Elisabeth was fired from, gets hired for it, and she becomes a huge sensation in what seems like no time at all. Fargeat really takes the time to show off Sue’s alluring body and curves as she conducts her workout television show as if she is giving pointers on how to have great sex with your lover.

“The Substance” does take its time building up its characters and the serum both become a slave to, but it is all worth it as gives audiences much to enjoy before Fargeat rips the rug out from right underneath us and sends us all in a downward spiral Nine Inch Nails would have loved to make an album out of.

One term which stands out in this film is “respect the balance,” but it eventually becomes clear that Sue cannot as the demands on her become increasingly strenuous to where she uses more of the “stabilizer fluid” from Elisabeth than she has any right to. As a result, Elisabeth starts to see some startling deformations on her body which alarms her to a terrifying extent.

This is where the body horror of “The Substance” comes into full focus as Elisabeth realizes she needs to stop taking the serum, but losing Sue’s infinite success in a business which has pushed her coldly to the side becomes too terrifying to endure. As the story continues, it all becomes incredibly grotesque to where we as an audience become inescapably horrified than she is at the horrors none of us could ever be prepared for. How bad does it get? Well, let me put it this way; there is a track on Raffertie’s wonderfully propulsive soundtrack entitled “Golem.” Need I say more? Well, it’s safe to say this serum will not exactly be “my precious.”

There were a number of other movies I was reminded of while watching “The Substance.” The first was “Requiem for a Dream” in which we watch addicts struggle to obtain the American Dream by any means necessary only to find a pathway to a hell of their own making. Watching Sue continually drain stabilizer fluid out of Elisabeth reminded me of Jared Leto’s abscessed vein in “Requiem for a Dream” in which he injected heroin into. The abscessed veins in both movies are truly horrifying sights to see, and do not promise a better future for either character.

I am also reminded of David Cronenberg’s remake of “The Fly” while watching this film as body parts falling off the human body here have not been as mortifying as watching Jeff Goldblum’s ear fall off in front of Geena Davis. Sitting in a large audience while watching “The Substance,” there was no denying the strong reactions to t characters lose various body parts as it all kept leading to a horrific conclusion much like the one in Brian De Palma’s adaptation of “Carrie.”

Is this really Demi Moore’s finest hour? It may very well be, but this might imply that all her work before this doesn’t measure up, and that’s just insulting. I think she deserved more credit than she got for her work in “A Few Good Men,” and her performance in “G.I. Jane” is one I will never ever forget. In “The Substance,” she is perfectly cast as an actress whom many will be foolishly quick to say is past her prime as it says more about them than it ever will about her. She fully invests herself into the character of Elisabeth Sparkle, and she looks as fabulous as she ever has in the process.

But moreover, Moore has an unforgettable scene in which we see her preparing to go out on a date with an old school friend, only to hate what she sees in the mirror. Watching her violently wipe the makeup off her face reveals a self-hatred we have all experienced at one point in our crazy lives, and the effect this has on her is quite profound thanks to Moore.

Margaret Qualley makes Sue into more than a sex symbol of her time. Instead, she makes her into a person who is instantly gifted a stardom many others spend their lives striving for while the odds remain as astronomical as ever. Seeing her handle this newfound fame is something she makes all the more palpable throughout even as Sue descends into a hell of her own making which results in one of the bloodiest climaxes ever seen in a motion picture.

Just when you think “The Substance” cannot get crazier or bloodier than it already has, you are thrillingly proved wrong in epic fashion. But while I thought this film would descend into the same cinematic chaos which would leave forever psychologically scarred as “Requiem for a Dream” did, Fargeat gives the proceedings a good deal of satirical humor which helps to soften the blow. In fact, it makes everything all the more insidiously fun as we come to see this story will have an inevitably dark ending.

While we are at, I do have to single out Dennis Quaid’s unabashedly shameless performance as Harvey, the producer who heartlessly casts Elisabeth aside and hires Sue because she is ever so young. Quaid is truly sublime and hateful as he takes this heartless character and makes even more heartless than he already is. Seeing him gorge on an endless number of shrimps at the movie’s start is enough to make you see how selfish and thoughtless this guy is, and it is presented us in truly disgusting detail. Basically, he is as slimy as the shrimp he eats, but you all can see this even before he eats the last one on his plate.

“The Substance” is not a cinematic experience I will ever forget, and it is one of the best movies of 2024. In the process of giving us such an insane film, Fargeat gives a huge middle finger to those who continue to hold beauty standards to an obscene and unrealistic standard even this period of the Me Too and Time’s Up movements. It offered up an insanely good time, and watching it with a large audience made it all the more thrilling. If there is any movie out right now which invites you to see and experience it on the big screen, it’s this one.

* * * * out of * * * *

Jason Reitman Talks With Luke Wilson About ‘Bottle Rocket’

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

WRITER’S NOTE: This article was written back in 2011.

Jason Reitman completed his guest programming at New Beverly Cinema with a screening of Wes Anderson’s directorial debut, “Bottle Rocket.” This film also marked the movie debuts of Luke and Owen Wilson, the latter who co-wrote the screenplay with Anderson. Before seeing this movie, Reitman admitted he was actually scared of becoming a filmmaker especially because he was the son of a famous one (Ivan Reitman). He did see all the great movies of the 1990’s like “Clerks,” “Slacker,” and he checked out all of Quentin Tarantino’s movies, but he said none of them had the same effect on him as “Bottle Rocket” did. For Reitman, this was the movie which made him want to direct films. And of discovering Anderson, he said, “This is the voice that I am going to follow forever.”

Joining Reitman for this special screening was actor Luke Wilson, and it was nice to see him take a break from all those AT&T Wireless commercials he has been doing endlessly. Ironically, the movie Reitman showed the same evening before it was “Breaking Away,” and Wilson said he is actually good friends with one of that movie’s stars, Dennis Quaid. Quaid was away in Hawaii so he was unable to attend the screening with fellow co-stars Dennis Christopher and Daniel Stern. This coincidence did, however, allow Wilson to talk about how Randy Quaid told Dennis he already made the family name and suggested he change his. Dennis ended up asking his brother, “How about McQuaid?”

Anyway, Luke told the audience Wes and Owen originally wanted to shoot “Bottle Rocket” guerilla style so they could shoot it cheaply as Richard Linklater had done the same thing with “Slacker.” However, they ended up meeting a producer who told them about the Sundance Film Festival and advised them to start off by making a short film they could take there. So they made the short and got it entered into Sundance, but nothing happened and they didn’t win anything for it. Despite that, they managed luckily to get hooked up with a producer named Polly Platt who had worked on such movies as “The Last Picture Show” and “Terms of Endearment” among others.

The project went on from there as Platt brought the Wilson brothers and Anderson to the attention of famed writer/producer/director James L. Brooks. Anderson ended up getting everyone to do a read thru of the script at some office in Texas during the summer. Turns out the air conditioning there wasn’t working all that well, and they were reading a screenplay which was two hundred pages long. Luke said he ended up sweating profusely throughout the whole read, and this made Owen glare at him as if to say, what the hell are you doing?

Luke also took some time to talk about Brooks who became one of the chief supporters of “Bottle Rocket,” and he described him as being very nice. However, he also said Brooks can immediately “cut to the truth and be painfully funny.” Of course, Brooks was going through problems of his own. While working on “Bottle Rocket,” he was also busy with his film musical “I’ll Do Anything” with Nick Nolte. For those who remember, it ended up getting released without any of the music as the movie tested poorly (and that’s being polite).

Reitman went on to talk about how he related to the voice of the film and how it had a “strange innocence” to it. Luke replied the film’s voice came from Anderson and Owen, but he said he never got the feeling he was working on anything special. Columbia Pictures, which distributed the movie, wanted to make “Bottle Rocket” but with different actors. When it was all shot and in the can, the studio didn’t like or knew what to make of it. Looking back, Luke said bluntly he was “stunned that the movie got made.”

When it finally came to making “Bottle Rocket” as a feature length film, Luke remarked Wes knew exactly how movies were made. He and Owen, on the other hand, did not. They didn’t understand certain jobs the crew on set had like the boom mike guy. Luke said he and Owen wondered out loud, “How can that guy just stand around like that?”

Also, Anderson did not want the actors to watch dallies of the day’s work, but this didn’t matter much because neither Owen nor Luke wanted to watch them anyway. Luke says he still doesn’t understand what compels actors to watch dallies as he feels it will likely mess you up in terms of how you go about developing your character.

The cast and crew also had the fortune of working with James Caan who had a bit role in “Bottle Rocket,” and Luke recalled he was going through a rough patch at the time, but that he did warm up to the rest of the cast during shooting. At one point Luke, Owen and Wes asked Caan what it was like working with the late Marlon Brando on “The Godfather.” To this Caan replied, “It’s like you guys working with me.”

“Bottle Rocket” did go through the rather unnecessary realm of test screenings. For a movie like this, it must have felt like a waste of time because this is not one which just sells itself to mainstream audiences, but the studio executives decreed that Anderson screen the movie for focus groups nonetheless. So, there was a test screening done in Santa Monica, and out of a crowd of 250 people, 75 walked out. The ones who stayed through the whole thing, as Luke remembered it, wrote nothing but shit about the movie. To date, it remains the one movie with the worst test screenings in the history of Columbia Pictures. Luke said he, Owen and Anderson were convinced they would never get to make another movie ever again.

Despite all that, “Bottle Rocket” did get discovered by audiences through cable, video and DVD. Luke says he still sees it on cable every once in a while, and Reitman remarked it became the “touchstone for those who want to make movies.” Martin Scorsese ended up naming it as one of the best movies of the 1990’s. Still, everyone involved with this little film had a hard time getting over it feeling like a failure. But when these guys got around to making the brilliant “Rushmore,” they found themselves re-energized and have since gone on to make one great movie after another.

Jason Reitman Talks With Dennis Christopher and Daniel Stern about ‘Breaking Away’

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

WRITER’S NOTE: This screening took place back in 2011.

Jason Reitman described the last double feature he presented as part of his guest programming at New Beverly Cinema by saying, “Whereas the last few movies I chose were sad in some respects, these two just make you feel good.” After dealing with the downfalls and missed opportunities which were major parts of “Shampoo” and “Boogie Nights,” he finished off his slate of favorites with “Breaking Away” and “Bottle Rocket.”

The first movie shown was “Breaking Away” which was directed by Peter Yates, the same man who made the Steve McQueen classic “Bullitt.” For years it has been considered one of the best sports movies ever made, and it’s also a movie where several young actors got their start together like in “Taps” or “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” Among those actors were Dennis Quaid, Dennis Christopher and Daniel Stern. We even got to see a teenage Jackie Earle Haley in it, and he has since gone from career oblivion to critical acclaim for his performances in “Little Children” and “Watchmen.”

Reitman asked how many people in the audience were seeing this film for the first time, and many hands, including mine, immediately went up. To this he replied, “I am so jealous!”

On “Breaking Away,” Reitman described it as a movie you associate with watching with your father, and one which captures the lives of twenty somethings very well in the indecisions of where to go from high school; unsure of what to do with the rest of their lives. It’s also a great story about class wars in society; of those who have everything and those who never have enough. Upon looking for trivia about “Breaking Away,” Reitman found the film was originally two screenplays. One was called “The Cutters” which became the name of the people from the working-class environment, and the other one was about the bike race the characters train for.

Joining Reitman for this screening were Dennis Christopher who played the endlessly obsessive bike rider Dave Stoller, and Daniel Stern who played Cyril. Reitman usually had his guests hidden from sight before introducing them, but they were already in the theater giving autographs and posing for pictures which got posted on Facebook. Both Quaid and Stern also said they were so envious of those who were seeing this for the first time.

Reitman started off by asking them if they knew they were working on something very special. Stern was the first to reply:

“That was my first movie,” Stern said. “I had never been in a movie before, and so I thought they were all like that. There is a wonderful simplicity to the movie, to the script, to the way the movie was made and the way it comes across. It does have a lot of depth to it too. I look back at it thinking, that was just an incredibly unique experience. I didn’t know what I was doing, I didn’t know where the camera was, and I didn’t know anything about that!”

Christopher, on the other hand, had worked in movies before with acclaimed directors like Robert Altman and Federico Fellini, so he knew a bit about being on big sets. The experience of making “Breaking Away” proved to be a bit different though.

“The thing that really made it special was because after that horrible first day of being a big Italian impersonator, because they made me all dark and I had my hair slicked back, black shirt, a tight waistline, etc. He was supposed to look like a ‘Saturday Night Fever’ guy,” Christopher said. “He (Yates) wanted him to be that kind of Italian. And I thought, why the fuck did they hire me? I looked like Lily Tomlin would when dressed up like men! That’s exactly what I looked like! I was waiting for them to glue hair on my chest!”

“I was so shaken, and the next day I came onto the set and I just burst into tears,” Christopher continued. “I told Peter that I just can’t do this and he said I KNOW, I KNOW! And we had a big talk with Steven (Tisch, who won an Oscar for his screenplay) and Peter, and then the character evolved; the way he looked and the way he was. So for me that was the special thing of collaborating with a director who cared about what you thought. So, for me I thought whoa, this is amazing!”

Reitman then spoke for those who had this on their minds after Christopher spoke:

“So what you’re saying is that Robert Altman really doesn’t care…”

This got a big laugh from the audience.

After making all the changes with Christopher’s character and making it more like him, they reshot everything and had to wait three weeks to see how it all looked. For those who have seen this movie, you have to agree this was one of the smartest choices Yates made. If Christopher was forced to do an Italian impersonation, it probably would have wrecked the movie.

Reitman also asked Christopher and Stern what kind of bike riding they did before production began. Christopher replied he did the “regular kind” and was never involved in any bike competitions like his character. Stern, on the other hand, said he was not a bike rider which turned out to be perfect for his character.

This led Stern to tell everyone he didn’t even audition for “Breaking Away.” He came into the office to read for Yates, and he was on a phone call nearby and saw him. Once he got off the phone, Yates handed Stern a script and was asked to be on set in a short time.

Unlike a lot of the big productions he had previously been involved in, Christopher said this film was almost completely the opposite of them. They had a very small crew working on it, and there was no overabundance of trailers parked on every street corner.

Barbara Barrie played Dave Stoller’s mother, Evelyn, and she got nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. However, it turns out she was a little peeved when she read the script and found there was no big scene for her. Christopher even recalled her telling Yates quite loudly, “WHERE IS MY BIG SCENE?!” So Barrie, Tisch and Yates worked together and did an improvisation which led to that wonderful moment where Evelyn talks about getting her passport and how she always keeps it handy.

People did not expect much from “Breaking Away” while it was being made, but it turned out to be a surprising success which won many awards, and it even spawned a prequel television series in which Haley and Barrie reprised their roles for. Of course, like many movies adapted to television, it lasted only one season. Stern called it “the little engine that could kind of movie,” and he even came to this screening wearing his white “Cutters” t-shirt. Christopher said this and “My Bodyguard” were the first movies for kids which were taken seriously by adults, and he and Stern said people’s overall reaction to it today is still quite powerful.

Christopher also told the audience about when he took his dad, whom he was estranged from at the time, to see “Breaking Away” when it was first released. After it was over, he said his dad came out of it “ruined” and looked quite frail. His dad could not believe how great the movie was, and when people outside the theater asked Christopher for his autograph, he got in line with the others. His dad even acted as his security chief in getting people in the line to move along.

The Q&A ended with both actors asking Reitman, “Is this a good print of the movie we’re showing tonight?”

“We’ll see,”Reitman replied.

Reitman said he had previously seen “Breaking Away” on VHS and laserdisc but seeing it with an audience was something else. The nearly sold-out crowd at New Beverly Cinema really got into the proceedings and cheered loudly throughout. You came out of the theater agreeing with Reitman that “Breaking Away” was as good as reputation has long since suggested.

Joe Dante Talks About the Making of ‘Innerspace’ at New Beverly Cinema

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

Innerspace movie poster

On August 22, 2012, UCLA’s Association of Movie Archivists (AMIA) student chapter concluded its “Something Old, Something New” festival at New Beverly Cinema with a double feature of “The Incredible Shrinking Man” and “Innerspace.” The audience also got a special treat when the director of “Innerspace,” Joe Dante, stopped by, and he took great delight in sharing his experiences in making the 1987 science fiction comedy.

Dante pointed out how both movies actually have something in common; William Schallert, who played Grant Williams’ doctor in “The Incredible Shrinking Man,” also plays Martin Short’s doctor in “Innerspace.”

“Innerspace” was originally meant to be a “serious spy movie” when Dante first heard about it, but he said wasn’t interested in directing it. Warner Brothers at one point even thought about making it into a movie about a crew exploring the human body, and Dante said he didn’t have the heart to tell the executives there was already a movie about this subject which was called “Fantastic Voyage.”

But when Jeffrey Boam, who would later write the screenplay for “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” rewrote the script, he turned it into a comedy. Boam described his script to Dante as “Dean Martin being shrunk and then put into Jerry Lewis,” and this got Dante interested in making the movie. The only thing was Steven Spielberg’s production company, Amblin Entertainment, was making the movie, and Spielberg wanted his protégé Robert Zemeckis to direct it. Zemeckis, however, decided he didn’t want to direct, and Dante said he “inherited it” as a result.

Dante said he had a “wonderful experience” making “Innerspace” mainly because of the cast which included actors Dennis Quaid, Martin Short, and Meg Ryan among others. The movie was shot in San Francisco, and things went fine even though Senator Dianne Feinstein apparently hates it when filmmakers come up north to shoot there.

In talking about working with Short, Dante said the actor “liked doing many takes” and that he “did a lot of improvisation” throughout. But when Dante had to tell Short that they had “more than enough takes” to work with, Short got on his knees and told him in his Katherine Hepburn voice, “No Joe! Please let me do just one more!”

What made “Innerspace” less fun for Dante, however, was that the studio found it to be “not funny.” After one particular day of filming, Dante recalled studio executives from Warner Brothers invited him out to lunch and told him what he was doing wasn’t funny and they thought he “should know that.” They also described Short as being “not very attractive” and wanted to recast the role with someone like Dennis Quaid instead. Upon hearing this, Dante asked them, “Did you even read the script?!”

Dante reflected there are many executives involved in the making of any movie, and they all want to “have their say” in what ends up onscreen. After hearing what they had to say, Dante said he wondered if he was the only one on the set who thought what he was doing was funny. While this conversation left him with a lot of anxiety, he decided to “plow on” and just make the movie he always intended to make.

When it came to test screenings, Dante said “Innerspace” got “one of the best previews” of any movie he had ever worked on. He even recalled how the studio executives who once doubted him were “high-fiving each other” and believed they had such a hit to where “they didn’t think it needed any advertising as a result.”

“Innerspace,” however, ended up flopping at the box office in the summer of 1987, and Dante said this was because Warner Brothers did not know how to promote it and that the original poster failed to include the movie’s actors on it. Dante even recalled the review from Los Angeles Times which said the movie “crashed and burned.” Regardless, it later became one of the first movies to find the audience it deserved on videotape and DVD, and it has since developed a strong cult following. It also won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects, and this was back when CGI effects were far from ever becoming a reality. Film critic Roger Ebert apparently thought the red blood cells we see in the movie were actually real, and Dante ended up having to tell him they were not.

Joe Dante said most comedies don’t work unless they are seen in a movie theater, and “Innerspace” is definitely proof of this. The audience at New Beverly Cinema was laughing constantly throughout, and the movie still holds up very well to this day. It was great to see Dante this evening as his presence was once again a reminder of how delightfully entertaining a filmmaker he truly is.