Flirting With Disaster is one of those Miramax productions that brings very little attention, and then BOOM!!! - everybody is running around trying to find out where it came from.
David O. Russell's Flirting With Disaster is one of the best-received films in the US this year, opening small and exploding out from the initial screenings in LA and New York. Part of its initial charm is that it was totally unexpected and, hopefully, audiences on Monday will just sit back and let one of the wittiest pieces of ensemble acting and sharp scriptwriting wash over them.
The film has no major box-office draw in the credits, but should make or re-establish the career of many of its key players; for instance, comedian Ben Stiller, who is back in the US editing Cable Guy which he directed for Columbia; Patricia Arquette, who on Monday should be accompanied up the red carpet by husband Nicolas Cage; Téa Leoni, a striking talent for the world to discover; and, from the old guard, Mary Tyler Moore, George Segal, Alan Alda and Lily Tomlin. "Directing eight principals in nearly every scene…I won't do that again," Russell told Moving Pictures in Cannes. He admits, however, that the cachet behind the Miramax name was a huge help when it came to casting.
"The script speaks loudest," Russell explains, when describing how and why Miramax took a chance on the project. "Spanking the Monkey showed I could direct, and I suppose they liked me!" Spanking The Monkey's director made that feature for US$80,000, and the film garnered a number of Independent Spirit Awards in 1995, as well as the Audience Award at Sundance Film Festival in 1994.
No writer who sees the film can do anything but admire Russell's final screenplay - it hardly has a wasted syllable from start to finish. The secret, he says, is a lot of drafts: "Fifteen in all. Ten before we started to film and five during rehearsals, which lasted a full five weeks. The cast loved the script from the start, but eventually stopped me rewriting because they couldn't remember their lines!"
The freshness of Flirting With Disaster, explains the director, is in the editing, which ironically lasted a full seven months. He wonders how Stiller will cope with the short six-week editing schedule for Cable Guy. "I cut down a number of scenes," Russell says, "which defied credibility." Asked the secret of comedic writing, Russell cites two key elements. "Firstly, natural environments where the emotions, both serious and funny, are real and not cartoon," he says. "Secondly, you have to have many absurd turns of event that fit in those natural surroundings."
For those that still don't know, Flirting With Disaster tells the story of Mel Coplin (Stiller), a neurotic young man who embarks on a madcap dash across America in search of his biological parents. Accompanied by his wife (Arquette) and their new baby, with psychologist (Leoni) from the agency where he was adopted in tow, Coplin might just have met the women who can make all his dreams come true.That's just the appetiser and to reveal more would spoil a film that is at its best when it sneaks up from behind.
Thanks to Giles Jacob's choice of Flirting With Disaster as the closing night film, a lot of people will leave Cannes with a smile on their face and a tear in their eye. This after they realise that after 12 crazy days, which even saw Russell locked in his apartment by the maid, it's all over until next year's gathering for the big 50th on the Croisette. If you're not around for the closing night screening, try and catch Flirting With Disaster when it comes to a theatre near you. It revives the dulled senses - the perfect antidote to the screening room blues - and proves that watching movies can be fun after all.
Christopher Pickard
Prod Co: Dean Silvers Production
Prod: Dean Silvers
Dir: David O. Russell
Scr: David O. Russell
Ph: Eric Alan Edwards
Art dir: Judy Rhee
Prod des: Kevin Thompson
Cos: Ellen Lutter
Mus: Stephen Endelman
Ed: Christopher Tellefsen
Cast: Ben Stiller, Patricia Arquette, Tea Leoni, Alan Alda, Mary Tyler Moore, George Segal, Lily Tomlin.
Running time: 92mins
International sales: Miramax
