Movies

The Popcorn King

Continued from page 5

In her 1969 essay "Trash, Art, and the Movies," Pauline Kael wrote that "There is so much talk now about the art of film that we may be in danger of forgetting that most of the movies we enjoy are not works of art," and surely the two Rush Hour movies are easily enough dismissed if you're the sort of filmgoer looking for art with a capital "A." They're airy and light and completely insubstantial, but they're also whirligigs of deft action and precision comic timing, and they use Chan — the most physically gifted screen comedian of the sound era — better than any movie he has made in America before or since. That is, in no small measure, because Ratner — a childhood martial arts enthusiast — allowed Chan to choreograph the fight sequences in the actor's patented Hong Kong style (where pillows, tablecloths and other practical objects become makeshift weapons). The director did have a few basic ground rules, though.

"Our collaboration is interesting," says Ratner, "because Jackie is a genius, but if you let him, he'll design a 30-minute fight scene and it will go on and on and on. My job is to make sure that whatever he does, it's helping to drive the story forward."

"In Hollywood, they care more about comedy, relationship and so many things before action stunts," concurs Chan. "In Hong Kong, we go straight into stunts and action, but in America sometimes that's too much. So, now I'm making a film half and half — take some good things from Hollywood and some good things from Asia."

The end results are the kind of nearly perfect buddy movies often attempted but rarely achieved (for sterling counter-examples, see Nothing to Lose, Blue Streak, Showtime and any Lethal Weapon picture with a number higher than 2 — or, on second thought, don't). When Ratner tells you that, among the congratulatory messages he received in the wake of the first Rush Hour's release, one came from Silence of the Lambs director Jonathan Demme (who cut his teeth on similarly industrious genre fare back at the Roger Corman factory), it's hardly a surprise.

And what of Rush Hour 3? I'm happy to report that it is everything one could hope a movie with that title would be. It's fast and funny, with several superb action set-pieces (including a breakneck car chase down the Champs-Elysees, and the Eiffel Tower finale) and a scene-stealing performance by French actor Yvan Attal as a sad-sack cabbie with daydreams of becoming an American action-movie hero. In a summer movie season rife with "3"s (and one big, bloated "13"), it has no numeric equal. Best of all, at a time when a trip to the local multiplex increasingly results in a long day's journey into night, Rush Hour 3 has the good sense to get on and off the screen in just over 90 minutes. That's another Ratner-issued mandate, in fact — even if it means that certain entire scenes (including, as it happens, the one at the Paris—Le Bourget airport) end up on the cutting-room floor.

"Sitting through all these movies this summer, I'm like 'Fuck! What is going on? Why are they so long?," Ratner tells me during a break from the Rush Hour 3 sound mix, a few days after I attend a rough-cut screening. "These scenes can end up on the DVD. Why put them in the movie?" He prefers, he says, for his audiences to exit the theater with smiles on their faces rather than pained looks of weariness and exhaustion. "Leave the audience wanting more, you know?"

This is the first time Ratner and I have sat down to talk at length, away from the hubbub of the set. We're supposed to have a couple of hours, but after 30 minutes he's called back to the mixing stage. So I go with him, and throughout the night and into the wee morning hours, I watch as Ratner — flanked by his sound mixers, Davis, Sarkissian, Stern and Rush Hour 3 editor Mark Helfrich — raises and lowers music levels by as little as one half of a decibel, insists on changes to the timbre of gunshots, and identifies split-second moments at which the movie's soundtrack slips out of sync. It's an object lesson for anyone who thinks Ratner is less than a deeply committed, dedicated movie craftsman with a sharp eye for detail.

Whenever he can, Ratner ducks out for a few minutes and we resume our conversation. Of his widespread image as a social butterfly, Ratner says it's something that gives him pleasure but which he also views as a professional responsibility: "If I start staying at my house and never leaving, I'm going to lose touch. I'm at the center of pop culture right now not because I have some big secret — I'm just out there. I'm interacting with people, and I know how people are thinking — whether it's Lindsay Lohan or whoever. It doesn't matter if you respect these people or not: They're are part of pop culture, which is youth culture. I'm not doing it strategically. I happen to love it."

Of the recent addition of Democratic Party booster to his résumé, he says he's merely trying to set a philanthropic example for others to follow. "It's not about Hillary, or Obama or Edwards," he says. "I just want a Democratic president."

Finally, I ask Ratner the question that has been hovering awkwardly in the air ever since we first met — on the topic that earns him the most grief from the media and which seems to blind some people from seeing him in more than one dimension: I ask the man who has dated, among others, actress Rebecca Gayheart, tennis pro Serena Williams and (most recently) Romanian supermodel Alina Puscau about the women in his life.

"I like women," he says sheepishly, as if the world didn't already know. Then he elaborates: "Either you have a thing for women or you don't, because my grandfather has been with my grandmother for 60 years and he's never even looked at another woman. He's not interested. He's happier with one woman. I'm a different person. I'm a kid in a candy store."

"There are certain people who can get away with a reputation for flirtation and running around — the paradigm being George Clooney," says Toback, whose own reputation as a man about town was once satirized in an infamous Spy magazine article. "But very few directors can get away with that, and most of them are cagey enough to conceal what they're really doing. I think that just to enjoy a single life as Brett does is a serious detriment to being taken seriously. It's as if to be sexually curious and freewheeling implies some form of retardation instead of some form of advanced or enlightened consciousness, which is what it just as often is."

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
Next Page »