Michael Tolkin, author of “The Player,” “The Rapture” and several novels with emptiness and loss as their themes, wants everybody to know he’s not cynical.
“It’s not that I’m about emptiness and loss,” he explains in a New York hotel suite where he’s promoting his new film, “The New Age,” which is predictably about — emptiness and loss. It’s also a comedy. “It’s that emptiness and loss make good stories,” he explains. “The way people live now leads to emptiness and loss. That’s not my fault.”
It amuses Tolkin that people expect him to be a curmudgeon.
“I was at the Telluride Film Festival, and this man saw me smiling. He said, ‘I’ve never seen a picture of you smiling.’ I started to wonder if I should change my image. I’m actually a happy person. Well — at least half the time. Only a happy person is capable of a movie like ‘The New Age.’ Most of the people in Hollywood are in despair; that’s why they make the average comedy or action movie. You can tell from those films these people are devoid of wit, or satisfaction with their family.”
The couple in “The New Age,” played by Peter Weller and Judy Davis, are married L.A. yuppies who lose their groovy lucrative jobs and wind up suddenly down and out, both financially and spiritually. So they go beyond the favored activity of depressed yuppies — shopping — and open a trendy, shockingly expensive boutique just at the moment when everybody starts to tighten their Gucci belts. In the end, they have to turn to the New Age movement to soothe their aching souls.
“This is a movie,” Tolkin explains, “about people living on borrowed money. The whole country’s in debt. How many people do you know who aren’t 30 or 60 days away from financial ruin? These people think that good taste will protect them from anything bad happening to them. That their furniture, clothing, art are all amulets — and it’s very difficult to resist the religion of the purchase. This whole thing was all caused by some combination of Vanity Fair and Nancy Reagan. Good taste has become the religion in America.”
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Tolkin doesn’t think all expensive clothing is the enemy.
“We used a lot of Donna Karan’s men’s clothes on Peter Weller in the film, and she came to the set and said to me, ‘I’m not just saying this, but you’d look good in my stuff.”‘
Sure enough, he’s wearing one of her jackets during the interview.
“But this will last,” he justifies.
Tolkin didn’t start out as Hollywood’s Favorite Cynic.
“I wrote some very sweet films — for children, mostly — and gave them to the studios. They said, ‘Sweet,’ and didn’t buy them. That’s when I wrote ‘The Player.’ Now I want to write a children’s film again, or a film set outside of Los Angeles that’s filled with passion. You could never write a film filled with passion in L.A.”
It would seem Tolkin’s finally sitting pretty, with the ability to write and direct the more intelligent subjects that appeal to him. But he doesn’t quite agree.
“There are only 10 to 15 directors who can get any film greenlighted,” he says. “I am not a player at this point. But at least I’m at the table.”
Then he lets slip one tiny little smile.
“Besides,” he grins, “how could I be a player? I don’t live in Brentwood.”