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Time Out
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Time Out
North by Northwest
Obviously Hitchcock's North by Northwest is a ludicrous film to adapt for the stage, especially for a modestly budgeted touring show with no set changes and a cast of seven. As much as anything else, Alfred Hitchcock's absurdist conspiracy thriller is best remembered for two of the most audacious setpieces in cinema history: an attack by a machine gun-toting crop duster plane on an Illinois cornfield, and a final showdown on top of Mount Rushmore. But whimsical auteur Emma Rice has long abandoned any fear of adapting impossible source material. She doesn't attempt to faithfully recreate a given film or book so much as drag it into her own private dimension, where it's forced to play by her rules. North by Northwes t is an interesting choice nonetheless, because it's so hard to classify. Despite its huge impact on the genre, it's not really an action film. And it's not really a comedy. But there's a definite twinkle in its eyes as it follows Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant in the film, Ewan Wardrop here), a mediocre middle-aged adman who gets dragged into an elaborate conspiracy after being mistaken for George Caplan, a spy who does not in fact exist. Arguably Rice disrupts a delicate equilibrium by making it overtly comic, with dance sequences, miming to '50s pop hits, and a spectacularly knowing, fourth wall-breaking performance from Katy Owen as shadowy spymaster The Professor, who serves as the show's narrator and tour guide. It's jarring at first, but Rice pulls it off because she does it on her own terms: she doesn't really bother with the action stuff that much, instead revelling in the story, which features bland nobody Roger getting sucked into a mountingly ridiculous conspiracy, the absurdities of which are enhanced by its untethering from those big pulse-pounding setpieces Not that Rice's production lacks thrills: Rob Howell's flexible set – basically made up of four '50s New York-style revolving doors – is very effective on the more intimate sections, particularly Roger's early abduction and his tense train journey to Chicago. And the cropduster scene is so obviously beyond the technical scope of the production that it's simply fun that Rice has a go, in adorably lo-fi fashion. The whole story is here, but the emphasis has been changed. And it's tremendous fun, a gleefully Ricean homage to Hitchcock, spy thrillers and generally cool things about '50s America. But then it hits a wall at what should be the most thrilling point. The final confrontation at Mount Rushmore just doesn't work. A pile of suitcases stands in for the monument and it sort of scans in a lo-fi theatre style, but the frantic action is hard to follow in such a confined playing area. Plus the tone becomes abruptly more earnest, which feels almost like a cop out. The trouble is North by Northwest does pretty much depend on Hitchcock's exact climax, and that simply can't be delivered here. I wouldn't say Rice has bitten off more than she can chew: but I would say that a lack of punch to the grand finale is a trade off for the larks we've had up to that point.
CBC
02-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
B.C.-born Holly Brickley's debut novel Deep Cuts to get movie adaptation
Holly Brickley's Deep Cuts begins in the year 2000. Boy bands and pop princesses are topping the charts, while music lovers thumb through CD binders looking for their favourite album, or even a special song, to play on their CD player. Percy, the protagonist, exchanges words about the popular music of the day with Joe, a songwriter and fellow student at UC Berkeley. From there, a love story between the two, but also between Percy and her music, develops. Brickley's debut novel, just released on Feb. 25, has already garnered interest from filmmakers; Brickley said The Iron Claw director Sean Durkin has been greenlit to write the adaptation himself, and stars Saoirse Ronan and Austin Butler have been cast as the film's leads. "It's a dream come true," said Brickley, who grew up in Hope, B.C., and now lives in Portland, Ore. "The best part about it is that everyone involved is really high-quality, high-calibre talent. Saoirse, in particular, has a fierce intelligence but also a tenderness, which is exactly what I was going for with Percy's character." Ronan will also produce the film, and Brickley will be an executive producer. The story follows Percy, "a young woman with lots of opinions about music but no real talent for it," as Brickley describes her. While the book isn't autobiographical, Brickley said there are certain aspects plucked from her own life — the cities Percy lives in, the jobs she has, the schools she attends and the music she listens to during the same period Brickley herself was doing all those things. "It was really fun to go back to that time," she told CBC's North by Northwes t host Margaret Gallagher. "I don't know what it's like to be young now, I think probably pretty similar in a lot of ways. A lot of that beauty and pain is evergreen." Brickley grew up in a musical family in the small B.C. town of Hope, 122 kilometres east of Vancouver. Her dad was a professional songwriter, and her mom, aunts, uncles and brother were all musically gifted. Though Brickley was passionate about music, she said she didn't have a natural talent like the rest of her family did. Instead, she focused her creative energy on writing. "I love thinking of music in the context of writing, even though I'm not dealing with notes, I am dealing with rhythm and the sound of words and the way sentences and words can kind of play off each other within a paragraph," she said. Nostalgia Durkin, who will adapt the book for the screen, is a big fan of the book and wants to stay as close to the original story as possible, Brickley said. Part of the interest in the story, she thinks, could come from millennials leaning into nostalgia for the early 2000s. Setting the story in the 2000s, or the oughts as they're known to some, meant fewer technologies for accessing music and communicating with others, something Brickley appreciated as she looked back on those years. "Now, [technology] follows us out into the bars and clubs and pulls us away from each other, but back then it seemed to only want to help us connect. The iPod, I think, was the most glorious moment in modern technology when you could have thousands of songs on a device in your pocket, but your boss couldn't email you on it. We should have stopped there." Setting the book at that time also meant referencing music from the 2000s or earlier. Brickley gives shoutouts to Canadian artists like Leonard Cohen, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. "Joni is a once-in-a-generation absolute genius," Brickley said.
