Happy Feet first and last

Posted by Reinaldo Massengill on Wednesday, January 17, 2024

George Miller talks about absence from behind the camera

George Miller is beyond happy having made two “Happy Feet” features despite the extended absence behind the camera from one pic to the next.

“People think, what happened to me?” Miller said at Monday’s Beverly Hilton Hotel press junket for the Warner Bros. sequel. “But I love ‘Happy Feet.'”

But what did happen?

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“I never know what film I’m going to make next,” Miller explained. “Common and I were going to make a ‘Justice League’ movie, and it was almost greenlit and fell away. No one’s fault: It happened. I was about to do ‘Fury Road,’ the next Mad Max film, and we’re to shoot in the Australian desert — and unprecedented rains came. The dry earth is now a flower garden, and the massive salt flats where they do record speed trials is now full of pelicans and fish. So we’ve lost the wasteland. Luckily, all of these projects have been with Warner Bros.”

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Can Miller tap his way into yet another “Feet”?

“If you put a gun to my head and said, ‘Come up with a story for ‘Happy Feet 3,’ I’d say, ‘Shoot me. I have no idea.’ I’ve found you have to let the stories come; the stories creep up on you. If that happens and we’ve got the energy, we’ll do a third one.”

– Stephen Schaefer

* * *

Hollywood geeked out Tuesday night for the launch of “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” at downtown’s Belasco Theater. Who knew that videogame preems drew everyone from Christina Aguilera to John Cho?

“Whenever I come to L.A., it’s one of these, so I expect this is a regular Tuesday night,” joked East Coaster Todd Howard, director of “Skyrim.”

Jane’s Addiction played an hourlong set complete with nearly naked backup dancers, a climactic blast of confetti and profane rants about Modest Mouse fans from frontman Perry Farrell.

“You don’t care,” Farrell told the crowd. “You came for the free drinks.”

– Todd Kushigemachi

* * *

Chris Weitz’s better life these days means politics and promoting Demian Bichir, star of his “A Better Life.”

“It’s really interesting where directing can take you,” said the driving force behind the Summit pic. Tuesday’s lunch took place at Rosa Mexicano, where Bichir used to serve up great guacamole.

“As people are summing up the great performances of this year, Demian is being recognized and in the hunt as it were,” added the helmer-producer.

Weitz’s riff on current immigration issues has also meant “a politicization of me by the film. I haven’t decided what’s next as a filmmaker. My concentration is on these little political attack ads I’m making on the Internet.”

– Stephen Schaefer

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