LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR E3
interview this week.
Beyond the prestige fac-
tor, “The Irishman” is part of
a larger push into quality
filmmaking that Netflix
hopes will draw subscribers
to its service as it faces an
onslaught of competition
from studios that have been
creating cinema since the
early days of the art form.
Burbank-based Walt Dis-
ney Co. is poised to launch
its Disney+ service on Nov.
12 with a huge catalog of
Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar
movies, along with its vault
of animated classics. AT&T
Inc.’s WarnerMedia on Tues-
day unveiled its ambitious
plans for HBO Max, which
will be the streaming home
of DC superhero films, the
“Lord of the Rings” fran-
chise and classic movies
from the Warner Bros. and
MGM libraries.
Pulled content
As competitors encroach
on its turf, Netflix is set to
lose much of the older film
and TV content studios sup-
plied to the service. As popu-
lar licensed material like
“Friends” and “The Office”
leaves Netflix, the company
will have to rely more on its
in-house content, including
film. To that end, the com-
pany is releasing 18 movies
this quarter — a company
record in terms of size and
scope for its film releases —
including the Eddie Murphy
vehicle “Dolemite Is My
Name” and the upcoming
Michael Bay action movie
“6 Underground.”
“At the end of the day
filmmakers want their films
to be seen, their work to be
out there in the culture, and
that happens on Netflix bet-
ter than anywhere in the
world,” Netflix Chief Con-
tent Officer Ted Sarandos
said in an recent interview
with The Times.
Some analysts worry
that Netflix’s spending lev-
els are unsustainable. The
company is expected to
spend $15 billion on content
this year, fueled by growing
long-term debt. But long-
time Netflix bull Rich Green-
field, a partner at New York-
based research firm Light-
Shed Partners, said the
company’s movie strategy
adds more value to the plat-
form and should help Netflix
retain customers, even as
the market gets more
crowded with lower-priced
services.
“It’s going to allow Netflix
to not only increase engage-
ment with the Netflix serv-
ice, but it’s also going to al-
low them a lot of pricing
power over the long term,”
Greenfield said of Netflix’s
movie slate.
And despite the influx of
competitors, the company
remains confident in its
strategy of attracting top-
tier filmmakers by promis-
ing high levels of creative
freedom and by being willing
to take risks. Netflix recently
cited three films as “early
Oscar front-runners”: Noah
Baumbach’s “Marriage
Story,” featuring Scarlett Jo-
hansson and Adam Driver;
“The Two Popes,” starring
Anthony Hopkins and Jona-
than Pryce; and “The Irish-
man.” A bold claim, to be
sure, but one that serves
Netflix’s aim to prove itself
as a bona fide studio.
“When I got here two
years ago, it was a place that
wasn’t perceived in that
manner,” Stuber said. “Itwas a lot of, ‘Oh, you guys
don’t make good movies.’
And, truthfully, the athlete
in me got mad about that
and got competitive. So I’m
glad we’ve hit some balls
pretty far this fall.”
“The Irishman” will be a
major test of Netflix’s evolv-
ing movie strategy, which
has faced resistance from
theater chains that are ac-
customed to long, exclusive
windows for Hollywood
movies before they’re avail-
able for home viewing. “The
Irishman” will be available
for streaming Nov. 27, four
weeks after it debuts in lim-
ited theatrical release. The
average big studio movie
gets a nearly three-month
theatrical window.
Netflix also has ruffled
feathers by not releasing box
office figures for its movies,
bucking a standard practice
among the studios.
After Alfonso Cuarón’s
“Roma” won four Oscars
this year, the film academy
faced calls to restrict awards
consideration for streaming
movies.
Amazon Studios, in con-trast, has largely conformed
to standard theatrical prac-
tices, though its movies have
struggled.
Many observers ex-
pected Netflix to secure a
longer theatrical window for
“The Irishman,” given
Scorsese’s stature as a cine-
ma giant accustomed to get-
ting the big-screen treat-
ment. But Netflix was un-
able to reach a compromise
and major chains including
AMC Theatres rejected the
film.
Still, Netflix is waging a
splashy theatrical rollout,
starting this weekend in
movie houses such as L.A.’s
classic Regency Village The-
atre, the Landmark, the new
Alamo Drafthouse down-
town and the Laemmle
Monica Film Center. The
storied Egyptian Theatre in
Hollywood, which Netflix is
in the process of acquiring
from American Cinema-
theque, is playing the film for
two weeks. The movie also is
being shown at the Belasco
Theatre in New York, a
Broadway institution.
Scorsese, asked by aTimes reporter whether he
felt caught between the
worlds of streaming and old-
school cinema, said the key
point is that Netflix enabled
him to make the film in the
first place. “In order to show
a film, you have to have a
film,” he said. “So let’s make
it. This was a real offer and it
made sense. The tradeoff is
this: an exhibition. But it’s
still in theaters. While it’s be-
ing streamed it’s still in thea-
ters.”
Stuber declined to com-
ment directly on theater ne-
gotiations. However, he
noted that Netflix has begun
granting theatrical windows
to more of its films, not just
Oscar contenders like
“Roma.”
“Last year, we moved into
theatrical to show we under-
stand that the audience
wants that choice, and this
year we’ve moved even fur-
ther,” Stuber said. “We’re
trying to find the right ca-
dence to give the filmmakers
what they want and give the
consumers what they want.”Costly technology
By any measure, “The
Irishman” was a major risk.
The movie, based on the
2004 nonfiction book “I
Heard You Paint Houses,”
was in development for
years at Viacom’s Pa-
ramount Pictures, but the
studio grew worried about
ballooning costs and al-
lowed Scorsese to shop it
elsewhere, according to a
person familiar with the
matter who was not author-
ized to comment. The film
required new technology,
developed by Industrial
Light & Magic, to dramati-
cally de-age De Niro and the
other actors without intru-sive motion-capture tech-
niques. Netflix was willing to
foot the bill.
Stuber and Sarandos
were wowed by ILM test
footage in which De Niro, 76,
re-created a scene from
“Goodfellas,” portraying his
much younger self with the
age-defying tech. This past
spring, Stuber and Sa-
randos trekked to ILM’s
Northern California offices
to view the effects and were
similarly awestruck.
“It was one of those great
moments when you get that
giddiness of seeing some-
thing remarkable that’s go-
ing to help evolve the busi-
ness,” Stuber said.
Jason Helfstein, a man-
aging director at Oppenhei-
mer & Co., said Netflix bet-
ting on “The Irishman” is “a
way to attract talent who
may not have worked with
Netflix before to see that
they are a good partner.”
Stuber, a former Uni-
versal Pictures executive,
stressed that Netflix must
continue to attract quality
directors and producers in
order to build its film library
from the ground up. For ex-
ample, Netflix in August se-
cured a film and TV deal
with “Game of Thrones” pro-
ducers David Benioff and
D.B. Weiss.
“When you’re starting
from scratch, and you don’t
have a library where you can
remake ‘Charlie’s Angels,’
and you don’t have things
like Marvel or DC, you have
to build off great filmmak-
ers, unique stories and mov-
ie stars,” he said. “And we’ve
been building that pace.”Times staff writer Jeffrey
Fleishman contributed to
this article.Netflix spends big to keep hold of viewers
[Netflix, from E1]
“THE IRISHMAN,”with Al Pacino, was picked up
by Netflix after Paramount got nervous about its cost.NetflixHave a heart to
heart with chef
Jonathan Gold, food
critic for the L.A. Times and
Pulitzer Prize winner, called
Guelaguetza, the mole
mecca on Olympic Boule-
vard since 1994, “the best
Oaxacan restaurant in the
country.” Bricia Lopez, one
of the Guelaguetza chefs
who has taken over the
family restaurant with her
siblings, has released her
first beautifully designed
cookbook, “Oaxaca: Home
Cooking From the Heart of
Mexico.” At Vroman’s, she’ll
be in conversation with food
writer Javier Cabral (L.A.
Taco) and chef Carlos Sal-
gado (Taco Maria).
3 p.m. Sunday. Vromans,
695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasa-
dena. Free.Insights into
a tangled tale
Huge buzz precedes
“Wild Game,” a memoir
that was bought in a heated
auction between several
U.S. publishers, and for
good reason: The story is
jaw-droppingly lurid.
Adrienne Brodeur, age 14,
was enlisted by her narcis-
sistic but charismatic
mother, Malabar, to help
enable an affair she was
having with her husband’s
best friend, Ben. The affair
lasted for years, and the
situation got even more
tangled when Adrienne
married, wait for it,
Ben’s son. The title comes
from a cookbook that Mala-
bar and Ben, a chef and a
hunter, respectively, were
going to write together.
Brodeur, who founded
Zoetrope with Francis Ford
Coppola, will share more
details of love and betrayal
at Vroman’s.8 p.m. Monday. Vro-
mans, 695 E. Colorado
Blvd., Pasadena. Free.Wisdom from
the wild side
Wildlife activist Boyd
Varty’s experiences as a lion
tracker have led him
through the South African
wilderness to the TED stage
and finally to Book Soup,
where he will discuss his
memoir, “The Lion Track-
er’s Guide to Life.” Growing
up with lions, leopards,
snakes and elephants on
the Londolozi Game Re-
serve in South Africa, Varty
will share wisdom gained
from his nonhuman family
with the book-reading
members of the animal
kingdom.
7 p.m. Wednesday. Book
Soup, 8818 Sunset Blvd.,
West Hollywood. Free.On the trail of
life, California
In order to understand
his native California, writer
Nick Neeley walked 650
miles along part of El Ca-
mino Real. The “Royal
Road” from San Diego to
San Francisco was travers-
ed by Spanish explorers in
1769, an expedition Neeley
kept pace with for 12 weeks
nearly 250 years later. Ne-
eley will discuss his “Alta
California,” a collage of
history, chance encounters
and personal reflection,
with environmental jour-
nalist Dean Kuipers, author
of “The Deer Camp,” a
memoir about his late fa-
ther’s relationship to his
sons and his rural Michigan
land.
7 p.m. Wednesday.
Chevalier’s Books, 126 N.
Larchmont. Free.BOOK IT, L.A.
For readers
with a sense
of adventure
By Margaret WapplerThis week’s book events take us into the wilds — of the
heart, of California, of Oaxacan cooking and the jungle. It’s a
slate of readings for the adventurous. Want to really play
with destiny? Try squeezing into sold-out events with Hilla-
ry and Chelsea Clinton (Wilshire Ebell Theatre on Tues-
day), and Ann Patchett (All Saint’s Church in Pasadena on
Tuesday), if you dare. If not, there’s plenty else on offer:You can’t go home again
— but you can never escape
it, either. Such is the mad-
dening paradox of family
ties imprisoning the charac-
ters in Sam Shepard’s “Bur-
ied Child” at A Noise Within.
With its uncompromising
mix of dark comedy, menace
and mystery, Shepard’s 1979
Pulitzer Prize winner shows
remarkable staying power.
The play’s recession-era set-
ting — a rundown house on a
once-fertile family farm in
Illinois — has particular res-
onance in light of the econo-
mic challenges again facing
today’s agricultural sector.
For this family, though,
the rot is coming primarily
from within.
The play opens with a
prolonged, escalating
coughing fit from the de-
crepit patriarch, Dodge.
He’s old, he’s dying, but as
played with magnificent
caustic crankiness by A
Noise Within co-founder
Geoff Elliott, he’s not about
to go gentle into that good
night.
Pity is a scarce commod-
ity in Shepard’s sharp-edged
plays, and Dodge’s aches
and pains — along with his
insults — are brushed off
with chirpy nonchalance by
his wife, Halie (Deborah
Strang), as she prepares for
an overnight fling with the
local preacher (Apollo Du-
kakis).
So much for heartland
values.
Having Halie taunt
Dodge from offstage for
most of the first act cleverly
represents the distance be-
tween them in physical as
well as emotional terms.
Merging the literal with the
metaphorical is one of the
play’s enduring strengths.
Halie later steps into the
limelight with a vengeance
in Strang’s fiery perform-
ance, unleashing rage and
frustration on Dodge and
their two loser sons.
Loud-mouthed Bradley
(Frederick Stuart) acciden-
tally cut off his own leg with a
chainsaw, and Tilden
(Michael Manuel), a grimy,
near-silent hulk, has re-
turned to the family bosom
following some kind of
trauma.Neither can measure up
to the deceased third son
that Halie idolizes in her fan-
tasies.
If the scathing initial vol-
leys between Dodge and
Halie invite comparison
with Edward Albee’s “Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” the
second act darkens into
something out of Harold
Pinter. It’s “The Homecom-
ing — American Style” when
estranged grandson Vince
(Zach Kenney) shows up
with his girlfriend (Angela
Gulner) in tow. Though it’s
been only six years, Dodge
apparently doesn’t even re-
member him. In Vince’s re-
sulting fight to reclaim his
place in the family lies a very
twisted coming-of-age story.Plot similarities to other
plays notwithstanding,
there is nothing derivative
about the way Shepard’s
dialogue treads a fine line
between hard truths re-
vealed and dark secrets con-
cealed in the hollow shell of a
deconstructed American
Dream.
“Buried Child” was the
gateway play that brought
Shepard’s muscular, sav-
agely funny and often ellipti-
cal writing from the avant-
garde theatrical fringes to
mainstream Broadway.
For this production, A
Noise Within Producing Ar-
tistic Director Julia Rodri-
guez-Elliott returns to Shep-
ard’s revised script, which
the company performed in- This time around, her
staging moves briskly
through material that could
easily clock in at three hours.
The lively pacing tends to
emphasize the play’s ab-
surdist humor over its creep-
iness, and some levels of
character weirdness could
be further explored.
Nevertheless, there’s no
mistaking this for “All in the
Family.” The production
gets all the fundamentals
right, and opportunities to
see Shepard’s masterpiece
done this well are few and far
between.
MARRIAGEand family have curdled for an Illinois farm couple played by Deborah Strang and Geoff Elliott.
Craig SchwartzTHEATER REVIEWFamily ties get all knotted
Secrets are briskly
uncovered in A Noise
Within’s revival of
Sam Shepard’s fiery
drama ‘Buried Child.’
By Philip Brandes
‘Buried Child’
Where:A Noise Within,
3352 E. Foothill Blvd.,
Pasadena
When:Runs in repertory
through Nov. 23; see
website for schedule
Tickets:$25-$93
Info:(626) 356-3121 or
anoisewithin.org
Running time:2 hours,
5 minutes