Tuesday Minute
No. 38 | February 23, 2010

Women Behind the Camera II

Our theme this week
Women directors of notable films from 2009

Featured this week
Monday         —   Anne Fontaine

Featured last week
Monday         —   Lone Scherfig
Tuesday         —   Nora Ephron
Wednesday    —   Claire Denis
Thursday        —   Anne Fletcher
Friday            —   Kathryn Bigelow

Betty Thomas

The essentials
Notable 2009 film:  Alvin and the Chipmunks:  The Squeakquel; worldwide box office (to date), $425 million

I have vague recollections of hearing the rodent trio of Alvin, Simon, and Theodore, along with their father-figure, David Seville, back in the 1960s.  I may have watched the TV show, but it’s the Christmas song (still heard every December) that stuck in my head.  That funny, squeaky sound the Chipmunks made with their voices was music to a small boy’s ears.  (The original gimmick came from speeding up the playback on a tape recorder.)  I don’t recall my mother’s reaction, but I’d bet there were moments when she wanted to scream, “Turn that damned thing off!”  (She was too nice to scream, though I like to think there were times when she wanted to.)  A few decades later, the appeal of Alvin and the gang probably hasn’t changed much.  A movie that’s made more than $200 million at the U.S. box office and more than $400 million worldwide is, safe to say, a hit with a new generation of kids.  The reaction of the critics, on the other hand, is much what I imagined my mother’s to be.  The Metacritic score is 41 (out of 100), well below the other films covered this week.  Kids, bless them, don’t read critics.

Betty Thomas, for her own sake, shouldn’t either.  Not for this film.  Thomas’s film directing career is filled with family-friendly fare, middle-of-the-road entertainments well-suited for the megaplex, not the art house.  She had worked in television previously—best known for a dramatic role (Lucy Bates on Hill Street Blues) though she had started in comedy with the Second City troupe in Chicago.  She has been nominated for ten Emmys, winning twice (once for acting, once for directing).  Thomas’s film work includes The Brady Bunch Movie (1995), which had a retro appeal for a certain audience, and Private Parts (1997), with Howard Stern starring as Howard Stern.  Both were modest hits making a decent profit.  She had a bigger budget and scored a bigger hit with the Eddie Murphy vehicle Doctor Dolittle in 1998.  I Spy (2002) again starred Murphy but was a dud.  The Alvin sequel won’t win any awards but it’s made a lot of money, setting the U.S. box office record for a film directed by a woman (second worldwide to Mamma Mia!, directed by Phyllida Lloyd).  That’s not everything, but in Hollywood it’s indeed something.

Beyond the final credits
If you had tried the FilmFest 101 puzzle in the MAD Launch Contest last month, you may remember a part about Alfred Hitchcock cameos.  Perhaps you had taken a look at this video.  In Rear Window, the famed director appears winding a clock behind the back of a songwriter playing a piano (2:14 on the video at the link).  So?  That piano player was Ross Bagdasarian—better known by his stage name, David Seville—who went on to create Alvin and the Chipmunks.

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Alvin and the Chipmunks:  The Squeakquel (2009)
Betty Thomas, director

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Interview with Betty Thomas, on I Spy and her start in Hollywood

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Famous Firsts
The first American movies featuring nudes scenes were the silent films Inspiration (1915), starring model and actress Audrey Munson, and A Daughter of the Gods (1916), with film and swimming star Annette Kellerman (she was the first woman swimmer to attempt crossing the English Channel and has been credited as the inventor of synchronized swimming).  The latter film was a Fox production and the first by a U.S. filmmaker to cost one million dollars.  No copy of either film is known to exist today.

…58…59…60.