JERSEY BOYS: Reviews and Features in the Media

[KC]

This will be the "official" thread for media reviews of Jersey Boys and current features about its cast and crew. Please try to keep it to major print, broadcast and online media, not random blog posts or tweets.

Remember that all quoted material should be formatted as such (surround it with [ quote] [ /quote] tags, without the spaces); only quote enough to give us the gist, not entire articles; and always, always give a link to the source (or publication information if it's not online). Also, please identify the author of the article, if it is not in the quoted material. The Moderators reserve the right to edit posts that don't follow these guidelines.

Please read through recent posts before posting new material to make sure someone hasn't already posted the same story or review. And remember that these are frequently reprinted, so try to find the original source if possible.

[KC]

Scott Foundas, who is now chief film critic for Variety, has a feature/interview with Clint as the cover story in the current issue:




(Platon for Variety)

http://variety.com/2014/film/news/clint-eastwood-jersey-boys-american-sniper-1201216714/

Here's an excerpt:

It’s early May, and with “Jersey Boys” now in the can, Eastwood is already several weeks into directing his 34th movie, the military drama “American Sniper,” on a sprawling Santa Clarita ranch that has been dressed to resemble a Fallujah military base. Inside the temporary, barracks-like structure that serves as the set cafeteria, he stands in the lunch queue with the rest of the cast and crew, dressed in light-green golf shirt, khaki pants and black sneakers, sporting a beard he grew during the film’s location shoot in Morocco. He takes a seat at one of the long picnic tables, and makes leisurely stabs at a plate of fresh salmon, broccoli and fruit (he gave up eating red meat decades ago).

He recalls traveling to Las Vegas to see a performance of “Jersey Boys,” and being surprised to find that the show differed considerably from Logan’s script — which, among other things, scrapped the play’s multiple narrators in favor of a single p.o.v. Upon his return, he was even more surprised to learn that there was an earlier version of the “Jersey Boys” screenplay, written by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, the authors of the original Broadway book.

“Only in Hollywood do they take a play that’s run for nine years on Broadway, six years in London, and five years in San Francisco, then go out and hire another writer,” marvels Eastwood, who’s nearly as famous for trusting writers’ first drafts as he is actors’ first takes. Back in 1971, when he teamed with director Don Siegel for the original “Dirty Harry,” the script had been rewritten so many times that the studio copy room had run out of shades of colored paper to differentiate the revisions. But when Eastwood and Siegel looked back at the original draft by the team of Harry Julian and Rita M. Fink, they deemed it superior to anything that had come after, and proceeded to put that version before the cameras.

“He’s never been one to bog himself down with development,” notes Lorenz, who joined Malpaso as a second a.d. on “The Bridges of Madison County” (1995), and earned his first full producing credit on “Mystic River.” “If something comes in, and it’s well written and it strikes him, then we do it.”

Armed with the Brickman-Elise script and a pared-back budget, Eastwood quickly moved into production on “Jersey Boys” last summer. Though he admits the studio “would have liked us to come up with a few names” for the cast, he insisted on cherry-picking his Four Seasons from among theater actors who had previously played the roles onstage, including John Lloyd Young, who won a Tony as Valli in the original Broadway production. “You’ve got people who’ve done 1,200 performances; how much better can you know a character?” says Eastwood.

Yet for all his fidelity to the Broadway source, the director has made a “Jersey Boys” movie that ultimately differs from the stage version in several key respects. It’s an altogether moodier, more real, edgier piece of work, more “Bird” than “Bye Bye Birdie,” giving equal weight to the personal tragedies of Valli and his bandmates — busted-up marriages, estranged children, embezzlement scams and dangerous entanglements with the Jersey mob — as to their professional triumphs. Onstage, misfortune was frequently softened by the show’s overarching uptempo mood. But onscreen, Eastwood hits as many blue notes as four-part harmonies.

“It was so interesting to sit there and recognize almost every single line of dialogue from the stage production, and yet experience something that couldn’t be more different,” says Young, who saw the completed version of the film after wrapping a return engagement as Valli in the London West End production of the show. “Clint definitely understands melancholy. That sort of darkness, which is authentic to Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons’ beginnings, is much more on display in this film than it is in that fast-paced treadmill of a slick Broadway show.”

[KC]

From the Hollywood Reporter:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/jersey-boys-screening-clint-eastwood-710647

Clint Eastwood's 'Jersey Boys': Stage Stars Talk Big-Screen Differences

At a New York screening of the Warner Bros. film, the director and actors also speculated about the audience for the R-rated title based on the hit Broadway musical, and co-writer Marshall Brickman revealed what the Oscar-winning director brought to the project.

   Erich Bergen, who plays fellow band member Bob Gaudio, launched Jersey Boys’ first national tour before spending two years in the Vegas production. Like fellow cast member Mike Doyle, Bergen auditioned for the project when Favreau was set to direct, but the film’s former team didn’t see what Eastwood’s team did.

“After my audition, the casting director called my agent and said, ‘He’s not right for the role,’ and my agent asked, ‘You mean the role he’s played for three years?’ And he said, ‘Yeah.’ So we dropped it, we let it go and then this happened,” Bergen told The Hollywood Reporter at a pre-screening dinner at the Angelo Galasso House at the Plaza Hotel.

Indeed, working with Eastwood both Bergen and [John Lloyd] Young felt they could trust their instincts as actors, knowing the film was in the hands of the Oscar-winning director.

“I think what he really taught me was to have confidence as an actor, because especially as a theater actor, you’re micromanaged a lot because there’s set pieces coming in and there’s lights and sound and you have to make sure you do the exact same thing in the performance every single night. And when it came time to do the film, he was much more open and wanted me to trust my best instincts,” Bergen said of working with Eastwood. “He got me to do that, and I’m forever grateful to him because of that.”

Young added that unlike on Broadway where they actor’s responsible for telling the story, on film, the director’s responsible for telling the story.

“So for me it was a much more pure acting experience because I knew what I was doing for Clint was giving him the best raw material I could in every single set-up and every single take, and then it would be his decision and his editors’…to put together the story later and choose from what I gave them, the pieces that worked,” Young told THR.

[Dan Dassow]

Vanity Fair
3:00 PM, June 10 2014
Clint Eastwood Directs His First Musical, a Little Story About “New Joisey”
By Bennett Marcus
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2014/06/clint-eastwood-jersey-boys-musical

The whole article is worth reading. Although some of the material is covered in the Jimmy Fallon interview.

[higashimori]

" Clint Eastwood's "Jersey Boys" opens the Los Angeles Film Festival. "

 

This year, for instance, Clint Eastwood will walk the red carpet to launch his adaptation of the Broadway musical "Jersey Boys," which is being released by Warner Bros.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/la-et-mn-los-angeles-film-festival-laff-curtain-raiser-20140611-story.html

 

[ceinjapan]

is this a very first Movie Review from critic?

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2014-06-12/film/jersey-boys-movie-review/

[Gant]

I like the sound of that.... Kinda what I was hoping for

[antonis]

not that good ...

Clint Eastwood's first musical as a director never fully decides what kind of movie it wants to be.

http://variety.com/2014/film/reviews/film-review-jersey-boys-1201219427/

‘Jersey Boys’ Review: Clint Eastwood's Jukebox Musical Is Nice, Entertaining, Just Not All That Good

http://www.thewrap.com/jersey-boys-review-clint-eastwood-frankie-vallie-four-seasons/

[Perry]

Hah....The movie " Is Nice and Entertaining....But just not that good..".....Typical critic who sounds like the clowns who used to rag on Eastwood in the 70's...

[AKA23]

Clint was finally on The Today show this morning. Video of his appearance has been posted:

http://www.today.com/entertainment/clint-eastwood-identifies-good-bad-ugly-jersey-boys-journey-1D79806981

[Dan Dassow]

Clint was finally on The Today show this morning. Video of his appearance has been posted:

http://www.today.com/entertainment/clint-eastwood-identifies-good-bad-ugly-jersey-boys-journey-1D79806981

From the interview: "...  Eastwood has not abandoned his early days doing those spaghetti Westerns — during his chat with TODAY's Natalie Morales, he revealed his phone's ringtone is the theme to his 1967 movie "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly." 

[Lin Sunderland]

That is my ringtone too. 

The English magazine My Weekly has a two page spread about The Jersey Boys. From their website there is only a small picture on the index page showing the poster picture.

http://www.myweekly.co.uk/current-issue     You can see it on the moving pages under the cover picture.  Sorry I can't get a close up of the pages.

I think the movie will be a hit over here in the UK.

[Sylvie]

http://info.sfr.fr/culture/articles/jersey-boys-cette-com-die-musicale-qui-a-inspir-clint-eastwood,2155049/



French article 

[KC]

Tim Grierson in Screen Daily:

http://www.screendaily.com/5073161.article

Clint Eastwood may not be the first filmmaker who comes to mind as an ideal candidate to bring a jukebox musical to the big screen. So what’s intriguing about his treatment of the Tony-winning Jersey Boys is how he homes in on the material’s qualities that most suit his style: the meticulous re-creation of period detail, the subtle questioning of how our impressions of history don’t always square with the facts. Unfortunately, Eastwood’s intelligent, unfussy chronicling of the popular musical act The Four Seasons is undermined by a painfully familiar rise-then-fall biopic structure, which nullifies this drama’s potentially more interesting elements.

But without the moral weight and melodramatic gravitas Eastwood usually brings to his films, Jersey Boys ultimately doesn’t seem to have much to say about The Four Seasons, the mid-century America that spawned them, or the burgeoning musical scene to which the band was connected. This is even more frustrating because the final scenes, though undoubtedly meant to be uplifting, provocatively (but subtly) undercut the feel-good tone in such a way that we’re meant to wonder about the artifice of everything that came before. Over the last few decades, Eastwood has wilfully skewered and complicated our relationship with history. With Jersey Boys, he seems a little more forgiving, which isn’t nearly as interesting.</a>

[Lucky Punk]

http://www.empireonline.com/reviews/reviewcomplete.asp?FID=138437

Review from British cinema magazine Empire.

[higashimori]

 '' Jersey Boys, Clint Eastwood turns Tony-Winning Play Into Scintillating Spectacular! ''

Excellent ( xxxx )

http://www.towntopics.com/wordpress/2014/06/18/jersey-boys-clint-eastwood-turns-tony-winning-play-into-scintillating-spectacular/

[higashimori]

 '' Clint Eastwood Tells Four Seasons Story in Jersey Boys ''

 Written by Dwight Brown NNPA Film Critic

 http://www.theskanner.com/entertainment/theater-movies/21397-clint-eastwood-tells-four-seasons-story-in-jersey-boys

 

Four guys stand under a street lamp, singing their hearts out. That’s the iconic vision of Doo-wop/pop groups like The Four Seasons. The Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Jersey Boys puts a name and face to that image. Clint Eastwood’s screen adaptation, triumphantly for the most part, makes their tale cinematic

 

As this 134-minute film comes to an end, you crave more of The Four Seasons. In fact, if you haven’t seen the stage musical, the film won’t spoil that experience.  After witnessing the highs and lows of these street singers from Newark on screen, you will want to see their lives on stage all the more.

 

[higashimori]

 '' A stage smash finds extra dimensions on film. ''

 http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie/jersey-boys/review/711919

 

STORY: Stage Stars Talk Big-Screen Differences In Clint Eastwood's 'Jersey Boys'

But while his work may lack the snap and precision of a Bob Fosse, not to mention the dynamic cutting of directors of the music video generation, it must be recalled that Eastwood has always displayed an enduring affinity for American popular music, an interest expressed in his music scene-oriented features (Honkytonk Man and Bird, not to mention his still-unrealized remake of A Star Is Born), the many music-based documentaries he has produced and the scores he has written for seven of his films.

 '' Clint Eastwood Almost Hits The Right Notes with ‘Jersey Boys’. Almost.''

 http://www.contactmusic.com/article/jersey-boys-reviews-clint-eastwood_4248381?track=mail_news

 

The Jersey Boys musical has grossed $460 million worldwide an although Clint Eastwood’s movie won’t get near that total – it offers enough to be considered an excellent retelling of the Four Seasons’ incredible story.

[higashimori]

 '' Clint Eastwood on 'Jersey Boys,' taking risks and a life well lived ''

 By Stephen Whitty/The Star-Ledger

 http://www.nj.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2014/06/jersey_boys_clint_eastwood_director_four_seasons.html

 

So when I arrive at the Waldorf Astoria to interview Clint Eastwood, 84, I am very happy to notice that no one refers to him as anything but "Mr. Eastwood." That his flinty gaze is fierce, his voice a raspy "Pale Rider" whisper, and that he is completely in control.

Just as it should be.

The positive side of this alpha-male attitude is that interviews go on past their allotted time (he tells one publicist to leave when she tries to hurry him along). The mildly negative side is that I realize, early on, his answers don't necessarily have any relation to my questions, and very little to do with the movie we're supposed to be discussing.

 

I suppose I could rephrase, repeat, insist. But, as someone much smarter than I once said, "A man's gotta know his limitations." So I soon put the prepared list aside. And go ahead, and let him make my day as the wryly reflective star talks (very little) about next week's "Jersey Boys," (somewhat) about spaghetti Westerns and a lot about surviving 60 years of movies.

 

Q: Did you find the music itself influenced the filmmaking in "Jersey Boys"? Because I think of another very different film you did about jazz, "Bird," and the pace was a little slower there, the shots were a little more complicated. Here, in the pop movie, it's faster, more staccato.

A: It's probably... well, I don't have a good answer for that, but it's probably just the way I saw each movie at the time. "Bird," that was about someone I admired very much for his ability, not his lifestyle. The abuse of drugs, that's certainly not something I have any love for. What interested me was the tragedy, the waste of talent. I had another story like that, "Honkytonk Man," about a country guy trying to succeed but who also had this self-destructiveness in him. There are a lot of people like that. I lot of actors like that. I don't know, maybe it comes out of the fear you're not on the right track. I don't know that I was ever confident I was on the right track, but at least I was dumb enough to stay on the one I was on.

 

Q: You mentioned "Gran Torino," which is about prejudice. "Mystic River," another film you directed, is about vigilantism. Your two Iwo Jima films are about the horrors of war. It seems to me that, whatever image people may have of you as an actor, the films you've directed are often about the consequences of violence.

A: Well thank you, because that was my thought in doing them. And that's what keeps me going. I like to tell stories that have something to say, and are exciting to tell. You have the idea, and you run with it... Sometimes you're successful and sometimes you're not, but you've got to keep trying. If you swing at the ball and strike out — well, you can still wait for it to come up again. But if you don't take a swing, you're never going to hit it.

[higashimori]

 '' Clint Eastwood finds an unlikely, higher-pitched harmony with 'Jersey Boys' ''

 The Canadian Press By Jake Coyle

 https://ca.news.yahoo.com/clint-eastwood-finds-unlikely-higher-pitched-harmony-jersey-134745094.html

 

Amid the swirl of an early 1960s party scene in Clint Eastwood's latest, an adaptation of "Jersey Boys," the hit Broadway musical about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, a television screen flashes an unexpected face: young Clint, himself, in black-and-white.
The period-appropriate shot from the TV Western "Rawhide" — a wry Hitchcockian cameo — condenses in a moment the almost unfathomable breadth of Eastwood's career: fresh-faced cowboy to steadfast Oscar-winning director. Does it feel like a lifetime ago to Eastwood?
"Several lifetimes ago," chuckles the 84-year-old director. "Seeing myself in 1959 or '60 or '61 or whenever that episode was done, it was kind of like: Wow. I've travelled a long road since then."

 

Though Eastwood may seem like cinema's answer to a chunk of Mt. Rushmore, he has a warm presence and is quick to smile. He has a habit of pulling taught the skin of his cheek, as if making age an idle plaything. He chases a publicist who has come in to wrap up the interview with a scowl and a good-natured "Get out!"
He recently finished shooting the Navy SEAL drama "American Sniper," with Bradley Cooper, which he calls "a love story and a military story about a guy who's very talented at shooting people." It's two films in one year for Eastwood in what he notes is his 60th year in movies.
"It's fashionable to pigeonhole everybody," he says. "You're 60, you're a senior. At 60, I felt like I was about 40. At 40, I felt like I was about 18. It's just all mental attitude."