By: debbie lynn elias
I first met Chris Landon when he was a tow-headed young lad watching his dad at work. Dad just happened to be Michael Landon. I remember Chris as being a bit shy and having a grin to melt anyone’s heart. And you just knew the wheels were turning inside that little head of his. But little did I know that our paths would cross again 30 years later and I would have the privilege of screening Chris’ debut directorial feature – BURNING PALMS. Needless to say, as we have seen with some of Chris’ writing endeavors, such as “Disturbia”, those wheels of his have long been turning. However, with BURNING PALMS, his burning creativity jumps leaps and bounds as he not only writes the script but helms the project from beginning to end, giving us a brilliantly dark, funny, edgy, innovative, engaging and meticulously crafted film “that’s just balls to the wall crazy and different.” And I just love it.
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Comprised of five little vignettes, the film and each individual story within, is book-ended as a graphic novel. Innovative in its premise, no stories intersect, each stands on its own and with the variety of subversive taboo subjects fueling some of the most hilarious and blackest comedy I have ever seen, there is guaranteed something to whet everyone’s palette. Each story is rooted in the simplicity of “water cooler” kvetching but pushes the envelopes to the Nth degree of “what if” – Dad and daughter are really close, but what if they are too close? We adopted a daughter but what if she’s not really what we want; can we return her? The girl says she was raped but what if she really wasn’t; what if she was really just asking for it? Fueled by this “what if” sensibility, every scenario is pushed to a heightened, heated, burning crescendo that explodes with satiric aplomb and no political correctness. Set against the colorful backdrop of Southern California, BURNING PALMS explores five of the most distinctive and notable neighborhoods in the Los Angeles area – Santa Monica, Westwood, West Hollywood, Holmby Hills and Sherman Oaks.
In Santa Monica, we meet Dennis Marx and live in girlfriend Dedra Davenport. Dennis is anxiously awaiting the arrival of his 14 year old daughter Chloe, er, perhaps a little too anxiously. From the moment Chloe steps off the plane, red flags go up to the average eye on viewing this relationship between father and daughter. There are no boundaries. Dennis lets Chloe drink. Talk of sex and “style” between the two is restaurant table discussion. Hints of an unnatural sexual casualness between the two creates more than an uneasiness for Dedra, who is seduced by the Green-Eyed Monster (with a little help from Chloe) leading to some surprising results. Dylan McDermott and Rosamund Pike easily tackle the roles of Dennis and Dedra. With razor-edge sharpness, McDermott walks that fine line between right and wrong, giving multi-textural depth to Dennis beyond “what appears to be.” Very interesting crafting of the performance. Rosamund Pike is flawless as Dedra. Drawn to the film because “I loved the concept of the individual stories” and it is a “very very black comedy”, Pike embraced the experience with precision and intensity. And the admiration was mutual with Landon. “She was able to really find that quality [vulnerability] in the character. It doesn’t matter how on the surface put together they are, she’s still so broken.”
Over in Westwood, Ginny and Chad are a couple of crazy college kids in love. But what happens when Chad asks for a slightly unusual sexual favor from the somewhat prudish Ginny? Giving in to her beloved but consumed by guilt, Ginny’s obsessive-compulsive personality goes into hyper-drive in a dark, unique and hilarious fashion. Jamie Chung and Chad Bower have an easy going chemistry on screen and are enjoyable to watch, but Chung steals this short with an over-the-top compulsiveness that will have you in stitches. This is not the girl we saw in Disney’s “Princess Protection Program”!
Geri and Tom are the perfect life partners. Living the good life over in West Hollywood, there is one thing missing in their idyllic existence – a child. So what does any good gay couple do when they want a child? Go on the black market and buy one. Sadly, they forgot about Caveat Emptor for when their precious little “Mahogany” isn’t quite up their standards and exhibits some rather feral behavior, the couple faces a dilemma. We can’t return her and get our money back, so what do we do? Answer: Look for the nearest forest in LA. Anson Moun is a standout as Tom and perfect foil to the antics of Peter Macdissi’s Geri.
In Sherman Oaks, we meet Sarah, a shy, skittish woman who has a very claustrophobic life; that is, until raped by the pizza delivery man. Not telling anyone of the incident and trying to figure out what to do, Sarah gets her answer when she finds the rapist’s wallet on her floor. Hunting him down with dogged determination, Sarah has only one thing on her mind – I want more. Zoe Saldana and Nick Stahl are amazing as Sarah and rapist Robert. Stahl brings a great sense of innocence to Robert while Saldana shows a side of her we haven’t seen before.
And then there’s the spoiled little brats in Holmby Hills who have nothing to do but torment each other and those around them. One of their victims is their maid, Blanca, whose dead baby’s umbilical cord that she has saved forever, is now missing. Playing judge and jury, the boys hold their own kangaroo court with findings and revelations more astounding than the OJ Simpson verdict. Be on the lookout for Austin Williams as Nicholas. Having seen him in “Phoebe in Wonderland” and now BURNING PALMS, he is destined for stardom.
Written and directed by Christopher B. Landon, a fresh, distinctive style of filmmaking emerges providing a wonderful balance of character’s mental imbalances, disturbing hush-hush scenarios and comedy, with stunning visual and emotional results. Standout is Landon’s use of satire and humor. Powerful yet tactful, he covers all the bases with dark humor, flat out laugh-out-loud funny humor, sexual humor, gay humor, parental humor, kid humor – none of which is contrived but just naturally flows from the topical scenarios created. Not the sort of film one would expect to pop off the top of the head, Landon had a creative process for BURNING PALMS. “I sort of keep a file of ideas, articles and thoughts. I was between studio gigs and I had wanted to write one of the stories [“Maneater”] so I just sat down one day and I wrote it.. I didn’t think about it. I just knew that it was going to be a short piece. When I finished it, I went back and reread it and I thought it was really interesting. Very intriguing. So I started tackling these other little ideas that I had and started putting them together…I went back and reread all fo them and thought this is kind of a “Creep Show LA’ piece. I was waffling between should I make this a series, a movie. Ultimately it linked on wanting to make it a feature.”
With a deliberately punctuated use of color, there is a lightness and breeziness within each vignette that is juxtopositioned against the disturbing elements of each story, all used to reel you in to the twisted hilarity of the situations. For Landon, the creation of each individual palette was critical to the film as a whole. “When it came to creating the palette [Landon and Tierney] had long conversations about what each story and how they felt. For instance, in Santa Monica, we talked about having a cool feel; almost an eerie kind of feel and wanted the red to pop. When we got into West Hollywood… I really wanted the pink to come out. That sort of innocent, childlike, bright cheery feel but obviously in sharp contrast to what’s really going on in the story.”
Clean edged, crisp lensing and artful balances of light make the film visually engaging and appealing. Directory of Photography Seamus Tierney’s framing is appropriate to each individual story with close-ups being used sparingly and appropriately, adding intensity only when necessary to fuel the emotional palette. With “an instant rapport” between Tierney and Landon, “He understood the tone. He understood what I was looking for. It was happy marriage from the very beginning.”
On watching BURNING PALMS, no one would ever suspect this was Landon’s directorial debut. The meticulous precision and polish of the film belies the work of a novice who tosses in everything but the kitchen sink. It is evident that every minute aspect of this production was methodically planned and calculated by Landon. Always wanting to go beyond writing, “I was also looking for something to direct. Initially I had no intention of directing BURNING PALMS but then I realized the really easy and obvious thing for me to do was to go off and make a relatively low budget genre movie. But my concern was that it would just get lost in the shuffle. So I went back [to my producer] and he said this is crazy for me to do it, but I thought this may be just what I need, so I did it.”
I believe Landon’s father would be proud of Chris for BURNING PALMS. In speaking with Chris, he has many of the same sensibilities and attention to detail that made his father even better behind the camera than in front. Chris understands story and character and he knows how to convey it both visually and through words. As Landon himself opines, “[BURNING PALMS] is a really unusual movie that’s a very mixed bag in terms of how people perceive it. There are people that absolutely love it and it’s dark, twisted sense of humor. And then there are people that are incredibly put off and offended. What’s important to me is that, it’s mine. I’m proud of the fact that we made something that I really feel that nobody else has made before. It’s not like I’m reinventing the wheel, but I really feel like we made a film that you can’t really compare to very many things.”
I am one of the people that absolutely loves BURNING PALMS and its dark, twisted sense of humor. And trust me, you will be too.
Written and Directed by Christopher B. Landon
