VARIOUS: GWYNETH PALTROW STARS AS SINGER IN "DUETS" DIRECTED BY HER FATHER BRUCE PALTROW

Record ID: 390145

  • Title: VARIOUS: GWYNETH PALTROW STARS AS SINGER IN "DUETS" DIRECTED BY HER FATHER BRUCE PALTROW
  • Date: 1st October 2000
  • Summary: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (RECENT) (REUTERS) SCU (SOUNDBITE) (English) BRUCE PALTROW SAYING "Well, directing is directing. I mean, you still have to direct, but the dynamic is you're working with someone you know intimately well and you have shorthand of stuff. I mean, I can tell from the way she rolls her shoulders if she's getting a little edgy, or she's re
  • Embargoed: 16th October 2000 13:00
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  • Location: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES/TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA/ VARIOUS FILM LOCATIONS
  • Country: USA
  • Reuters ID: LVA16B1NX7K4AJO0FCNIOUITVQZD
  • Story Text: Gwyneth Paltrow is directed by her TV veteran father Bruce in "Duets," a cross-country road movie about three twosomes headed for a karaoke contest in Omaha, in which the big-screen "it" girl gets to display her previously unheralded singing chops.
    Ricky Dean (Huey Lewis) is a professional musician who hustles locals at smalltime nightspots by pretending to not even know what karaoke is, then knocking the competition dead.
    Called to Las Vegas to attend the funeral of a long-ago ladyfriend, he for the first time meets the daughter he had with the woman, Liv (Paltrow), who, as the granddaughter of a 'Fifties Sinatra showgirl (Angie Dickinson), plausibly remarks, "I'm as close as you get to an aristocrat in this town." Ricky wants no part of her, but it's clear that ditching her might not be that easy.
    Then there's Todd Woods (Paul Giamatti), a milquetoast salesman who, after days on the road, can't even rouse a kiss or a nod of acknowledgement from his family when he wearily returns home.
    Finally becoming unhinged, "I'm just a little tired of the American Dream," he later admits, he hits the road to oblivion and somewhere in Utah picks up hitchhiker Reggie Kane (Andre Braugher), a black escaped convict, a philosophically articulate fellow with little to lose himself. On a whim, they team up for a rendition of "Try a Little Tenderness" in a saloon and decide to head for Omaha on a lark.
    The third couple are Suzi Loomis (Maria Bello), a hard-bitten waitress with a desperate ambition to make it as a singer, and mild-mannered taxi driver Billy (Scott Speedman), who agrees to take her from the Midwest to California on her provocative promise to "be nice" to him throughout the trip.
    Although she's more than willing to provide Billy with her discounted favours, Suzi quickly reveals herself to be a scheming bitch.
    Perhaps the film's biggest revelation is the singing voice of Gwyneth Paltrow. "I was nervous about it," said Gwyneth, "but I just sort of went in and recorded it and it was really intimate and I didn't really think about having to sing it in front of people and hearing it on the radio, which is a little bit weird."
    As she smokes her way through "Bette Davis Eyes" before an admiring karaoke audience, her on-screen father Lewis is grudgingly amazed to discover that some of his performing genes have been passed along. Real-life father Bruce professed no such wonderment. "It was absolutely a no brainer," he said, in explaining his choosing Gwyneth for the role. "She's been singing harmonies with her mother since she's a baby, from "Sesame Street."
    By far the most engaging of the duos, is Giamatti and Braugher. Giamatti steals the movie as the meek little pushover who becomes a liberated monster of risk and freedom, a self-declared terrorist against the homogeneity of America as represented by the strip malls and chains which are the film's principal settings.
    Paltrow, the man behind the "St. Elsewhere" and "The White Shadow" TV series, directed just one feature previously, "A Little Sex," in 1982. For him, having his daughter in his second feature film outing helped tremendously. "The dynamic is you're working with someone you know intimately well and you have shorthand of stuff, which is fabulous in a work situation."
    For daughter Gwyneth, the chance to work with her father provided her with familial comfort at a particularly trying time in her life. "I was very overwhelmed (so) it was nice to go to Vancouver (British Columbia, where the film was shot) and be with my mom and dad and brother and it just felt safe."
    British Columbia locations stand in for various Western and Middle American locations.
    "Duets" is currently on screens in North America.
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