While 2000’s The Next Best Thing was a critical flop, another more personal tragedy happened behind the scenes.
Rupert Everett recently reflected on starring in the John Schlesinger-helmed romantic comedy and how it put a “strain” on his friendship with co-star Madonna, which is why he now looks “the other way” when the film is on TV.
“It was not a failure as such really at the box office because of video sales in those days – Madonna sold a lot of videos – but the film itself didn’t work, even though for a long time, it was the only film that dealt with this issue that was actually then happening and being born,” Everett said on the How to Fail podcast.
Written by Tom Ropelewski, The Next Best Thing starred Madonna as Abbie and Everett as her gay best friend Robert, with whom she has a baby after a drunken night of intimacy.
Rupert Everett recently reflected on starring in the John Schlesinger-helmed romantic comedy and how it put a “strain” on his friendship with co-star Madonna, which is why he now looks “the other way” when the film is on TV.
“It was not a failure as such really at the box office because of video sales in those days – Madonna sold a lot of videos – but the film itself didn’t work, even though for a long time, it was the only film that dealt with this issue that was actually then happening and being born,” Everett said on the How to Fail podcast.
Written by Tom Ropelewski, The Next Best Thing starred Madonna as Abbie and Everett as her gay best friend Robert, with whom she has a baby after a drunken night of intimacy.
- 10/4/2024
- by Glenn Garner
- Deadline Film + TV
IFC walks with Genius' 'Tigers'
IFC Entertainment announced Tuesday that it has purchased North American rights to the Sundance film Wild Tigers I Have Known from Genius Products.
The coming-of-age drama will be distributed on IFC First Take with day-and-date release theatrically and on local cable's On Demand platform. The New York-based company intends to debut the film on Feb. 28.
Wild Tigers, which has toured the film festival circuit, is the first feature by writer-director Cam Archer. The film is executive produced by Gus Van Sant and Scott Rudin and stars Malcolm Stumpf, Fairuza Balk and Patrick White. It recently received a 2007 Independent Spirit Award nomination for best cinematography (Aaron Platt).
The deal was negotiated by Elizabeth Nastro and Ryan Werner for IFC with Genius Products and executive producers Lars Knudsen and Jay Van Hoy.
The coming-of-age drama will be distributed on IFC First Take with day-and-date release theatrically and on local cable's On Demand platform. The New York-based company intends to debut the film on Feb. 28.
Wild Tigers, which has toured the film festival circuit, is the first feature by writer-director Cam Archer. The film is executive produced by Gus Van Sant and Scott Rudin and stars Malcolm Stumpf, Fairuza Balk and Patrick White. It recently received a 2007 Independent Spirit Award nomination for best cinematography (Aaron Platt).
The deal was negotiated by Elizabeth Nastro and Ryan Werner for IFC with Genius Products and executive producers Lars Knudsen and Jay Van Hoy.
- 1/31/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Film review: 'The Next Best Thing'
Madonna and Rupert Everett are a complete mismatch in "The Next Best Thing". But then, they are only one among many in a film that looks like it was put together by several political action committees with a concern more for engineering audience reaction rather than telling a vivid story. The result is a movie that starts out as a lightweight comedy but devolves into an unlikely and thoroughly unconvincing courtroom melodrama.
Mostly, though, the film wants to deliver messages. But at times it does so like an absent-minded professor who, mixing up his lecture notes, continually shifts topics from unconventional families and the need for tolerance to parental rights, the meaning of fatherhood and the benefits of yoga. Pitched by Paramount as an offbeat comedy, the film will surely disappoint all but the most die-hard Madonna fans. Theatrical prospects look poor despite a snappy soundtrack and production sheen.
Director John Schlesinger and his DP, Elliot Davis, start the film off as though it were an update on Noel Coward, a sort of "Design for Living 2000". Madonna plays a Los Angeles yoga instructor, luckless in love and yearning to settle down with that special guy. Everett is her best buddy, a terribly witty and often quite caustic landscape architect, luckless in love and yearning to settle down with that special guy.
When Madonna suffers her latest breakup with a callous lover (Michael Vartan), Everett manages to put a comic spin on her heartbreak. This causes her to laugh again, and they settle back into their best-buddies mode, singing "American Pie" at a funeral and cocooning with a cozy evening of cocktails and 1930s show tunes.
That particular evening, however, leads to a startling event. They wake up in each other's arms, which leads a few weeks later to an even more startling development -- they are about to become parents. Determined to do the right thing, they move in together, not as lovers but certainly as parents.
Cut to six years later -- with not even a hint of aging for either star -- and everything is running smoothly in this unconventional household. Their son (a lively Malcolm Stumpf) and his playmates occasionally ask embarrassing questions, such as why doesn't Mommy sleep with Daddy. But the couple cheerfully shrug off these queries, saying they'll explains things at a later date, presumably before he graduates from college.
Then an investment-banker stud (Benjamin Bratt) enters their lives. Madonna falls in love with him, causing the expected pouting on Everett's part. But when marriage and the prospect of separation from his son loom -- Bratt lives in New York -- Everett goes berserk and files a custody suit, which lets lawyers, witnesses and a judge swamp the movie's concluding act.
For this jerry-built plot to work at all, an audience must be convinced of the emotional connection between the two soul mates. But Madonna and Everett operate as though they were in different movies.
Everett's smug British flippancy works well in a supporting role such as Julia Roberts' buddy in "My Best Friend's Wedding", where he can act as Greek chorus and foil to the heroine's romantic misfortunes. But in a movie in which he is in nearly every scene, his arch mannerisms prove a drawback to real character development.
Madonna, however, gives the warmest performance of her film career, displaying an emotional vulnerability as well as maternal instincts in her scenes with young Stumpf. Unlike anyone else in the movie, hers is a full-blooded, well-rounded character, a caring, loving, tough yet sometimes insecure woman who continues to maintain high expectations of life despite all evidence to the contrary.
Alas, all other roles are mere caricatures -- disapproving parent, catty friends, sympathetic lawyer and sensitive boyfriend. Indeed when Bratt first appears on screen, he all but has "Madonna Love Interest" stamped on his forehead.
Throughout, Thomas Ropelewski's screenplay suffers from artificiality. Its contrived plot twists and character behavior seem dictated by the need to plant insights and drive home thematic points. Technical credits reflect this determination with a spit-and-polish surface in terms of design, costumes and cinematography, but one that is ultimately little more than a soulless studio glaze.
THE NEXT BEST THING
Paramount Pictures
Lakeshore Entertainment
Producers:Tom Rosenberg, Leslie Dixon, Linne Radmin
Director:John Schlesinger
Writer:Thomas Ropelewski
Executive producers:Gary Lucchesi, Ted Tannebaum, Lewis Manilow
Director of photography:Elliot Davis
Production designer:Howard Cummings
Music:Gabriel Yared
Costume designer:Ruth Myers
Editor:Peter Honess
Color/stereo
Cast:
Abbie:Madonna
Robert:Rupert Everett
Ben:Benjamin Bratt
Elizabeth Ryder:Illeana Douglas
Kevin:Michael Vartan
Richard Whittaker:Josef Sommer
Sam:Malcolm Stumpf
Helen Whittaker:Lynn Redgrave
Running time -- 107 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
Mostly, though, the film wants to deliver messages. But at times it does so like an absent-minded professor who, mixing up his lecture notes, continually shifts topics from unconventional families and the need for tolerance to parental rights, the meaning of fatherhood and the benefits of yoga. Pitched by Paramount as an offbeat comedy, the film will surely disappoint all but the most die-hard Madonna fans. Theatrical prospects look poor despite a snappy soundtrack and production sheen.
Director John Schlesinger and his DP, Elliot Davis, start the film off as though it were an update on Noel Coward, a sort of "Design for Living 2000". Madonna plays a Los Angeles yoga instructor, luckless in love and yearning to settle down with that special guy. Everett is her best buddy, a terribly witty and often quite caustic landscape architect, luckless in love and yearning to settle down with that special guy.
When Madonna suffers her latest breakup with a callous lover (Michael Vartan), Everett manages to put a comic spin on her heartbreak. This causes her to laugh again, and they settle back into their best-buddies mode, singing "American Pie" at a funeral and cocooning with a cozy evening of cocktails and 1930s show tunes.
That particular evening, however, leads to a startling event. They wake up in each other's arms, which leads a few weeks later to an even more startling development -- they are about to become parents. Determined to do the right thing, they move in together, not as lovers but certainly as parents.
Cut to six years later -- with not even a hint of aging for either star -- and everything is running smoothly in this unconventional household. Their son (a lively Malcolm Stumpf) and his playmates occasionally ask embarrassing questions, such as why doesn't Mommy sleep with Daddy. But the couple cheerfully shrug off these queries, saying they'll explains things at a later date, presumably before he graduates from college.
Then an investment-banker stud (Benjamin Bratt) enters their lives. Madonna falls in love with him, causing the expected pouting on Everett's part. But when marriage and the prospect of separation from his son loom -- Bratt lives in New York -- Everett goes berserk and files a custody suit, which lets lawyers, witnesses and a judge swamp the movie's concluding act.
For this jerry-built plot to work at all, an audience must be convinced of the emotional connection between the two soul mates. But Madonna and Everett operate as though they were in different movies.
Everett's smug British flippancy works well in a supporting role such as Julia Roberts' buddy in "My Best Friend's Wedding", where he can act as Greek chorus and foil to the heroine's romantic misfortunes. But in a movie in which he is in nearly every scene, his arch mannerisms prove a drawback to real character development.
Madonna, however, gives the warmest performance of her film career, displaying an emotional vulnerability as well as maternal instincts in her scenes with young Stumpf. Unlike anyone else in the movie, hers is a full-blooded, well-rounded character, a caring, loving, tough yet sometimes insecure woman who continues to maintain high expectations of life despite all evidence to the contrary.
Alas, all other roles are mere caricatures -- disapproving parent, catty friends, sympathetic lawyer and sensitive boyfriend. Indeed when Bratt first appears on screen, he all but has "Madonna Love Interest" stamped on his forehead.
Throughout, Thomas Ropelewski's screenplay suffers from artificiality. Its contrived plot twists and character behavior seem dictated by the need to plant insights and drive home thematic points. Technical credits reflect this determination with a spit-and-polish surface in terms of design, costumes and cinematography, but one that is ultimately little more than a soulless studio glaze.
THE NEXT BEST THING
Paramount Pictures
Lakeshore Entertainment
Producers:Tom Rosenberg, Leslie Dixon, Linne Radmin
Director:John Schlesinger
Writer:Thomas Ropelewski
Executive producers:Gary Lucchesi, Ted Tannebaum, Lewis Manilow
Director of photography:Elliot Davis
Production designer:Howard Cummings
Music:Gabriel Yared
Costume designer:Ruth Myers
Editor:Peter Honess
Color/stereo
Cast:
Abbie:Madonna
Robert:Rupert Everett
Ben:Benjamin Bratt
Elizabeth Ryder:Illeana Douglas
Kevin:Michael Vartan
Richard Whittaker:Josef Sommer
Sam:Malcolm Stumpf
Helen Whittaker:Lynn Redgrave
Running time -- 107 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
- 3/3/2000
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.