条条大路通德罗宁
这是2019年电影中的一个关键场景 陷害约翰·德罗林, 一个部分的纪录片, part-biopic, part-documentary-about-the-biopic, 亚历克·鲍德温站在讲台上, transformed into the late automobile executive by a team of makeup artists borrowed from 周六夜现场.
Hitting that cue from inside the car was Dan Greeney’01, who co-wrote the scripted scenes that punctuate 陷害约翰·德罗林. Greeney was invited onto the project by 塔米尔墩’02, 它的生产者之一, after the documentary aspect of the film had been completed. “我们(包括导演Sheena M. Joyce 和 Don Argott] were working on figuring out the right dialogue, 和 we knew Dan would be perfect for that,阿登最近说.
He was confident in Greeney’s screenwriting savvy because 陷害约翰·德罗林 was far from the first time Ardon 和 Greeney had collaborated. In fact, it wasn’t the first time they’d collaborated on a project involving the DeLorean automobile. 在《菠菜白菜吧》的开头!” a Y2K-era video that spent some time on 贝洛伊特.Edu最早的招聘页面, a college student version of Ardon arrives on 贝洛伊特’s campus in his personal DeLorean, complete with a novelty license plate stamped “OUTATIME,” to offer viewers a tour of the college.
真正的迷
Ardon was initially infatuated (along with the rest of his generation) by the car’s starring role in the 1985 adventure-comedy 回到未来, but his interest in the DeLorean 和 its lore quickly came to have 更多的 to do with the man who had put his name on it. 等他从伯洛伊特大学毕业的时候, 阿登已经见过约翰·德罗林了, after it occurred to him that calling DeLorean’s New Jersey estate might be worth a try.
图片来源:塔米尔墩提供
最终, Ardon built relationships with DeLorean’s children, 扎卡里和凯思琳, 还有他身边的人, 和 even had a stint as president of a DeLorean fan club. Ardon secured the rights to produce a film, 还有一部独立的纪录片, about the mogul’s life after DeLorean passed away from a heart attack in 2005. 莱斯利·基德的02, a close friend of Ardon’s 和 Greeney’s, 相信到那个时候, Ardon had earned the trust of even the most jaded of the supporting characters in the DeLorean story, 和 that’s why the project was eventually possible.
Both the dramatization 和 the documentary were realized simultaneously, nearly 15 years after Ardon’s initial idea to make a film (or two) about DeLorean was spoken aloud. 在一起, both projects also attempted to answer a question almost as enigmatic as their subject: Why is it so hard to make a movie about John DeLorean? As Zachary DeLorean summed it up in the documentary part of the film, 他父亲的人生故事有“可卡因”, 热小鸡, 跑车, 被炸毁的房屋, 玛格丽特•撒切尔(Margaret Thatcher), 罗纳德•里根(Ronald Reagan), 联邦调查局特工, 还有顽固的毒贩.” It was conspicuous that it had never been successfully dramatized.
电影总理
More than a decade before the release of the car that he’s best known for today, John DeLorean was already an icon in America for his movie-star lifestyle 和 his boldness as a General Motors executive. 1973年，他离开了G.M., 创立了德罗宁汽车公司, 和 eventually built a manufacturing facility in Northern Irel和. 没过多久, he’d encountered a series of production delays, 低迷的市场, 和 tepid critical responses that postponed the DeLorean Motor Car’s release by eight years, then plunged the company into financial crisis.
In 1982, DeLorean (the man) was charged with cocaine trafficking after an FBI sting. The very public trial that followed was watched by the American public as a kind of Icarus-like cautionary tale. He was ultimately acquitted of all charges.
To finally bring such a legendary story to the screen required casting a legendary lead, 就阿东而言. That’s often hard to achieve for a biopic, 他说, but Alec Baldwin was “immediately intrigued” when the 陷害约翰·德罗林 团队联系了他, in no small part because DeLorean himself had confided in Baldwin before he died that he wanted the actor to portray him in a film. Baldwin was also satisfied by the promise that the 周六夜现场 makeup team he’d come to trust during 17 turns hosting the show—和 dozens 更多的 Emmy-winning transformations into Donald Trump for cameos—would be brought on board as well.
图片来源:Nicole Rivelli
The rest of the film was approached with just as much rigor. The very same prototype that DeLorean revealed to the public in 1981 was shipped from Florida to the 陷害约翰·德罗林 set in New York for 48 hours, to be used in the recreation of that moment.
在脚本场景中, “如果我们有创造性的自由, it was because there was no evidence” of what might have really happened in that moment, 墩说. “我们从未创造过任何废话.”
The film premiered with a “big red-carpet moment” at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, 墩说, 它是《十大菠菜台子》的 纽约时报, where film critic Glenn Kenny called it “unfailingly engrossing.”
“None of this would have happened without Tamir working his ass off,” says Greeney.
“Watching it brought tears to my eyes,” says 基德. “I’ve known Tamir since we were 18, 和 this is his life’s work realized.”
Dr. T和保罗
图片来源:Max S. 美国格柏公司When Greeney first arrived at 十大菠菜台子, he had already spent a year studying screenwriting at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, but he found himself wishing for 更多的 opportunities to “do his own thing” there. 当他找到伯洛伊特时, he says he was “looking for something that was the photo-negative of a big-city university,” a place where he might be granted 更多的 creative breathing room.
The same semester that Greeney transferred to 贝洛伊特, Ardon 和 基德 met while taking Professor of English Shawn Gillen’s First-Year Initiatives course, called “How Alfred Hitchcock helped America win the Cold War.不久之后，两人又见到了格林尼.
Gillen recalls the Hitchcock course as one of the best FYIs he’s taught. The potential among that batch of first-years was “eye-popping, to say the least,” 他说 recently.
Within a year of arriving at 贝洛伊特, Ardon 和 Greeney were producing 和 starring in a 贝洛伊特公共电视 节目叫做 的博士. T和Paul Show, featuring Paul Ternes’02 (who also took Gillen’s class), 基德, 和 a number of other students 和 professors. Each 15-minute episode parodied romance 和 sex advice shows that could be found on television at the time. Its format foreshadowed the self-referential nature of 陷害约翰·德罗林 by including scripted “behind the scenes” footage, in which Ardon played the show’s resident romantic expert “Dr. T,” 和 Greeney his evil producer, “Dan the Man.”
基德 struggled to characterize the show, eventually insisting, “you have to see it.”(今天, 大多数剧集都可以在Vimeo上找到.) She recalled that students who owned televisions would host watch parties when a new episode aired. Gillen guesses that a number of 贝洛伊特 city residents tuned in regularly, on top of at least half the student body.
Gillen considers it “the best student show on [贝洛伊特公共电视] ever,” although he noted that it probably “was outrageous in 1999, 但就2019年而言，情况并非如此.” He remembers Ardon as the “eccentric visionary” behind the show, 而格林尼则是“更亲力亲为的人”.”
In other words, Greeney had gotten his wish for creative leeway when he transferred from NYU. “在贝洛伊特, 没有人对他们说“不”,’”基德说, a fact that she’s still not sure Ardon 和 Greeney fully realize.
电视和电影
图片来源:Max S. 美国格柏公司After earning his degree in creative writing from 贝洛伊特, Greeney moved to New York City to work as a post-production assistant, then returned to the Midwest to obtain a master’s degree in screenwriting from DePaul University in Chicago. 与此同时, with a degree from 贝洛伊特 in philosophy, Ardon completed a master’s program at Rush University’s Medical College in Chicago before deciding that his heart was in film 和 earning a degree in the subject from the University of California-Los Angeles.
They’ve both remained in television 和 film since then. 今天, Ardon is head of documentaries for the company XYZ Films, 和 his upcoming projects include a documentary about the 1995 film 歌舞女郎这部电影将于2020年上映. Greeney is a freelance screenwriter 和 producer. Another XYZ Films documentary in development, this one about the life of stop-motion animation pioneer Will Vinton, 已经有格林尼附在上面了.
Ardon claims that with his first big DeLorean project out of the way, he’s no longer as intensely seeking to scratch that itch. 但 陷害约翰·德罗林 has merely been a milestone in both Ardon’s 和 Greeney’s DeLorean Motor Car-related media careers: They’re now developing an eight-part television series together on John DeLorean’s life. 在那之后? Only a time traveler could say for sure.
克莱尔·艾根布罗德20岁 环境研究 和 西班牙语 major 和 a Midwest transplant, originally from Moscow, Idaho. She is currently co-editor in chief of the student newspaper 圆桌会议.
