RIGHTS-CHILE: Personal Stories Bring the "Disappeared" to Life

Movie projector: 'Basterds' could have a glorious $30-million-plus opening

The Weinstein Co. might be getting some much-needed good news this weekend.

The financially beleaguered independent movie studio opens Quentin Tarantino's World War II action film "Inglourious Basterds" tomorrow and all indications are that it will have a solid and potentially very strong opening. It's the first major release for the Weinstein Co., which is attempting to strip away its widespread media interests and focus on movies and television, since "The Reader" last December.

According to people with access to pre-release audience polling, "Basterds" should sell more than $25 million worth of tickets in the U.S. and Canada this weekend and could very well top $30 million.

The movie cost about $70 million to produce. The Weinstein Co. split that cost with Universal Pictures, which is handling overseas distribution. "Basterds" is opening in 22 foreign countries this weekend including most of Europe. Weinstein Co. and Universal will split the movie's worldwide proceeds 50/50.

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It's very likely to be the biggest ever opening for Tarantino, not accounting for ticket price inflation. His highest domestic launch previously was $25.1 million from "Kill Bill, Vol. 2," which the Weinstein brothers' old studio Miramax released in 2004.

A strong opening, however, won't guarantee a great overall performance for "Inglourious Basterds." The movie clocks in at over two and a half hours and may generate some negative reactions given its explicit violence, so word-of-mouth will be critical. In addition, movie attendance in late August is typically slow. The biggest-ever opening in the second half of the month is 2007's "Superbad," which earned $33.1 million its first weekend.

Reviews for "Basterds" thus far have been largely positive, with some notable exceptions like Times critic Kenneth Turan, who called it "unforgivably leisurely, almost glacial, a film that loses its way in the thickets of alternative history and manages to be violent without the start-to-finish energy that violence on screen usually guarantees."

The movie is tracking strongest with male moviegoers. That could put it in conflict with "District 9," which opened to a very strong $37.4 million last Friday. Sixty-four percent of its opening-weekend audience was men, although Sony Pictures is hoping to attract more women on its second weekend.

"District 9" will almost certainly be the No. 2 movie this weekend, as three other low-budget releases are all expected to gross well under $10 million. Fox has the comedy "Post Grad," from its now-defunct Fox Atomic youth unit, for which its Fox Searchlight specialty division has handled marketing. Disney is releasing documentary "X Games 3D" on 3-D screens only. Warner Bros. is releasing the Robert Rodriguez-directed family movie "Shorts," which was financed by Media Rights Capital and Imagenation Abu Dhabi.

With no new film aimed at adult women this weekend, Warner Bros. will likely be watching to see if "The Time Traveler's Wife" demonstrates strong staying power by dropping less than 40% after its mediocre $18.6-million debut last weekend.

-- Ben Fritz

Talking to Edie Falco and 'Nurse Jackie's' co-creators about the Showtime gem

In 2007, the year Edie Falco finished playing the iconic role of Carmela Soprano on “The Sopranos,” her friend and fellow actor Matt Malloy uttered a phrase she had come to dread.

“He said to me those scary words, ‘My friend has script he wants you to read,’” Falco said in a recent phone interview. “Immediately my heart dropped and I’m already writing the [polite rejection] e-mail, ‘Thank you so much for thinking of me…’”

It wasn’t just that many writers want to give the former “Sopranos” star scripts, it’s that most of what she reads isn’t good.

“So often I read something and by the second page, I’m disheartened,” said Falco.

Falco was not disheartened by “Nurse Jackie,” the story of a no-nonsense, highly competent nurse with a secret drug addiction. (The show’s first-season finale airs 9:30 p.m. Central Monday on Showtime.)

But the actress and Showtime executives thought Evan Dunsky’s original script, which was quite dark and surreal, needed some alterations.

“It was more like a Fellini-esque view of the world,” Showtime president Robert Greenblatt said of the first version of “Nurse Jackie.”

When Greenblatt met with Falco and learned that she was interested in the project, the 2007 Writers Guild of America strike was looming. Before the strike, Greenblatt called an old friend, Linda Wallem,  whom he has known since they did community theater together in Rockford three decades ago. Wallem, a television comedy veteran (“Cybill,” “That ’70s Show,” “The Comeback”) and her writing partner, Liz Brixius, got eight days to rewrite “Nurse Jackie.”

What made the process easier, both women said over a recent lunch in Los Angeles, was the fact that they were retooling the script with Falco in mind.

“Let’s say you could find another actor of Edie’s caliber to do this,” Brixius said. “She wouldn’t have the likability and goodwill behind her that Edie does, which is why so much of [Jackie’s] stuff is forgiven. You accept her as a whole and flawed person.”

What emerged from the show’s lengthy birthing process was worth the wait. “Nurse Jackie” is the best new show of the year, and Falco’s deeply empathic, beautifully nuanced performance is a joy to watch. Showtime was so pleased with the series, which garnered 1.35 million viewers in its first two airings on June 8, that it ordered a second season two days after the show’s debut.

One of the funnier things about “Nurse Jackie,” at least from a behind-the-scenes perspective, is that at first, Falco thought she was going to be starring in an hourlong drama. She admits with a hearty laugh that she may not have been the best listener when the details of the project were explained to her.

“All of a sudden we’re making this half-hour [comedy] and I thought, ‘Hmm, that should be interesting,’” the actress said.

 â€œNurse Jackie” is actually a hybrid that cable television has embraced with gustoâ€"the half-hour drama with comedic elements. At its best, this format allows writers to tell concise and concentrated stories about people with unusual lives (and the “comedy” label also improves some shows’ chances with awards-giving organizations, it should be noted). Programs such as Showtime’s “Weeds,” “United States of Tara” and “Nurse Jackie” are looser and more subversive than broadcast-network sitcoms, which usually feature predictable characters and a rigid setup-punchline structure.

There are no punchlines per se in “Nurse Jackie,” unless you count the frosty putdowns from Jackie’s best friend, Dr. Eleanor O’Hara (Eve Best), or the skewed observations of the charmingly awkward nursing student Zoey Barkow (Merritt Wever). This bracingly unsentimental show’s humor is dry and observational, but as it proved with the standout July 13 episode “Tiny Bubbles,” “Nurse Jackie” can be extremely moving as well.

The most memorable thing about that episode, aside from the barbed and highly enjoyable interplay between a crusty veteran nurse (guest star Judith Ivey) and the All Saints Hospital staff, was Jackie’s wordless grief at losing an old friend.

“Nine times out of 10, [Falco’s feedback is] ‘This is a little too much. Can I say less?’” Brixius said. “How anti-actress is that?”

Falco said she has had to beg the writers not to tell her what’s coming in Season 2, which begins shooting in September. She doesn’t want to know anything, she said, in order to keep her performance fresh and spontaneous. Similarly, she said she doesn’t want the audience to be led to any particular conclusions about Jackie’s complicated life.

“Don’t pin it down. Leave questions. Treat the audience like they’re smart,” Falco said of her creative philosophy. “Let five people who are viewing it have five different ideas about what just happened in that scene.”

One of the aspects of “Nurse Jackie” that Falco felt most strongly about was the casting. She sat in on every casting session and “fought” for the eclectic cast, which includes Anna Deavere Smith as hospital administrator Gloria Akalitus, the impressive newcomer Wever as the hapless Zoey and Peter Facinelli (of “Twilight” and “New Moon”) as the handsome but clueless Dr. Fitch Cooper.

"I absolutely gave my input, because there are a lot of things I know absolutely nothing about, [but] I do know about acting," Falco said. Without getting into specifics, the actress hints that there was trepidation in some quarters about some of the casting decisions.

"Now they're like, 'We always knew they'd be great,'" she said. "Sometimes people need a little push to be brave."

Though the show’s writers, who include former Chicago playwright Rick Cleveland, have gotten a lot of positive feedback from nurses (“We get rock-star mammograms,” Brixius said), there have also been, not surprisingly, some complaints about the show’s depiction of a pill-addicted nurse. That kind of response, Falco said, got her “ire up a little bit.”

“This is the story of a woman. It’s not about nursesâ€"she happens to be a nurse,” Falco said. “If she was a plumber, she’d still be a drug addict. She’d be sniffing Drano or something.”

Brixius and Wallem, both of whom are in recovery from addictions, were excited to be able to put their own life experiences to use. Wallem went to the Betty Ford Center when she was 31, and Brixius spent her 21st birthday in rehabâ€"her third rehab.

“Linda was an expert in compartmentalizing her life,” Brixius said. “And I was an expert in burning things down.”

“We have no interest in someone who’s getting sober,” added Wallem. “I said to Lizzie, ‘She can’t be sober for at least five seasons.’”

Jackie's secret addiction to a variety of prescription drugs is only one of the complications in her life. She has a loving husband and two daughters, but she's cheating on her husband with hospital pharmacist Eddie Walzer ("Sopranos" veteran Paul Schulze), and her older daughter, Grace (Ruby Jerins) has problems with extreme anxiety. Add the pressures of a busy New York City emergency room to that mix and it almost seems, at times, that Jackie has too much to cope with.

"Having Edie -- it's like watching Tiger Woods play golf. It's more exciting if he has a really hard course," Wallem said, when asked about the many pressures on Jackie. "You can throw so much more at her than most actors can do. That's why sometimes the show feels like a lot. We said from Day 1 we want this woman to have a lot of spinning plates in the air."

"I'm reluctant to even say this, but part of what separates Jackie, maybe, from someone else is that she is able to feel the ramifications of the work that she does," Falco said. "It's not just 'Oh, we lost another one.' There's an apartment with books packed up and there's nobody to show up at the funeral. It's huge stuff that [nurses] deal with every day and they have to have a way to make that manageable in their lives."

A big part of what makes "Nurse Jackie" manageable, Brixius and Wallem said, is that they get only batch of network "notes," or feedback, for each episode. Unlike many network-TV showrunners, who often complain of being inundated with useless and contradictory notes, the “Nurse Jackie” producers talk to one person -- in their case, Greenblatt -- not hordes of network executives who want to weigh in on every line in every script.

And Greenblatt said that if a show's writers or producers feel very strongly about a certain idea or development, the people making the program -- not the network -- get the final say.

"I think you have to feel extremely confident about who you are and who you're in business with, so that you can give these producers and writers enough rope to do what they do and also build a relationship with them. Then if you think there's something that needs to be changed, you can make a suggestion that they want to take," Greenblatt said. "It has to be a real give and take, and I think we do that, I will say on the record, better than any network."

Wallem was thinking about leaving TV altogether when the opportunity to work on "Nurse Jackie" came up, and the onerous "notes" process she had experienced was part of the reason. By contrast, Showtime let Brixius and Wallem retain the final scene of "Tiny Bubbles" â€" a scene that the network had originally wanted to excise from the script.

It stayed in, despite the fact that the brief scene involved an expensive location shoot, and it turned out to be the finest moment in the episode.

And true to the show, it wasn't a big moment -- at least not the kind of "big moment" we typically see on medical shows.

"I loved 'ER,' but we're not going to do exploding helicopters," Wallem said.

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