Adaptations from book to screen: 11.22.63 (James Franco) and The Spectacular Now (Miles Teller)

Hulu's miniseries adaptation of Stephen King's 11.22.63 released its final episode on Monday, a climax that saw James Franco's Jake make his attempt to prevent the assassination of President Kennedy, get a glimpse at how his actions changed the future and make a difficult decision involving Sadie (Sarah Gadon). While showrunner Bridget Carpenter and the series' production team had to make many changes from King's bestseller, the book's romantic, but profoundly bittersweet, ending was left intact, a rarity when it comes to King adaptations. Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com


11.22.63 - Ending Scene featuring James Franco as Jake Epping & Sarah Gadon as Sadie Dunhill.


Miles Teller: "Acting is such a high art, and coming from theater, I know how hard it is and respect the craft. I want to look back when it ends, and say I challenged myself. I wanted to be an actor you always remember, and those who are the great ones. That's just a personal journey that it's just you and your internal drive. The Spectacular Now was the best script I'd ever read. It had all those elements in it. He's a cool charming guy but with a lot of depth. In a lot shallower script, you wouldn't see the problems he's having, or the fact that he's searching for a father figure, and the broken home life that's revealed, and looking for guidance in life while just having that empty feeling. Sutter in the book is painted differently than how I was playing him. I was actually struggling to finish the entire book because I could see my image of Sutter getting a bit warped.

I tried to steer clear of it in the end. But it's such a well-written book. He says things like "I'm the Sutterman" and "Fabioloso" - I tried to work those things into the movie, but I couldn't say them with a straight face. Then a year later it came around again with James Ponsoldt, we met in a bar and had a couple drinks, and I got it I was excited, but nervous about being able to do it. It's for mature audiences even though it seems like a young adult story. It reminds you of your first love, that time in your life."

Miles Teller is magnetic. He's only been in a few movies - and a couple of those we will kindly skip over when doing future retrospectives about him - but in each of them he has been the beating heart of warmth, humanity and - most unusual these days - sheer naturalism. You don't even see Teller acting, he just is the character. Which means those who know him from Rabbit Hole or the surprisingly excellent Footloose remake will still be surprised by his performance as Sutter, the always buzzed, always cool boy at the heart of The Spectacular Now. It's a great role, and one that Teller invests with an extraordinary amount of nuance and truth. Source: www.esquire.com

Miles Teller "Tell Him" video. Roughly half an hour of pictures of Milles Teller, his co-stars (Shailene Woodley, Brie Larson, Anna Kendrick, Mackenzie Davis, Analeigh Tipton, etc.) and girlfriend Keleigh Sperry. Soundtrack: "Tell Him" by The Exciters, "Photograph" & "Smile" by Weezer, "Let It Bleed" by The Rolling Stones, "I Got Stung" & "Stuck on You" by Elvis Presley, "Crazy About My Baby" by Randy Newman, and "Ooh Wee Baby" by Jeff Barry.

Miles Teller, Bradley Cooper, and their Hot Model Girlfriends Keleigh Sperry and Irina Shayk

Miles Teller and Jonah Hill in "War Dogs" (2016)

A bidding war between several studios and major financiers is under way for Max Landis‘ spec script “Deeper,” which now has Bradley Cooper attached to star and Kornel Mundruczo (“White God”) attached to direct. “Deeper” is a drama about a disgraced astronaut who embarks on a mission to reach the bottom of a newly-discovered oceanic trench, which some speculate may be the lowest point on Earth. Facing great danger, he quickly finds himself in a physical and psychological fight against mysterious forces.Cooper recently starred in “Joy” and “Burnt,” and will soon be seen alongside Jonah Hill and Miles Teller in Todd Phillips‘ “War Dogs,” which he also produced. Additionally, he has lent his voice to a trio of films — “10 Cloverfield Lane,” “A Dog’s Purpose” and Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” in which he’ll return as Rocket the raccoon. The movie’s expected to shoot in the first or second quarter of 2017. Source: www.thewrap.com

Bradley Cooper and Irina Shayk have been dating since April of 2015, meaning they are fast approaching their one-year anniversary. 

And in that one year, they’ve quickly ascended to becoming serious contenders for Hollywood’s hottest couple. After a year of courting, romantic outings, media appearances, and rumors of breakups, what does the next year together hold for this beloved pair?

Bradley Cooper, who most recently had a vocal cameo in 10 Cloverfield Lane and will soon be providing his voice once again to Rocket Raccoon in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, met Irina Shayk—a model whose full name is Irina Valeryevna Shaykhlislamova—following the two having both come out of long-term relationships. Cooper had just split from longtime girlfriend Suki Waterhouse (also a model) in February 2015, though the two chose to remain friends; meanwhile, Shayk had just called it quits with soccer megastar Cristiano Ronaldo following Christmas and allegations that Ronaldo had cheated on her. Source: www.earnthenecklace.com

Bradley Cooper and Miles Teller are hot properties right now, both versatile actors with comedic wit and unconventional heartthrob looks. Also, both share hard work ethics, admiration for Martin Scorsese and love for feisty model girls. Teller isn't a fan of Las Vegas blonde plastic look, though. He never dated co-star Shailene Woodley because: "She would probably be repulsed by the thought. She saw me eat a Honey Bun two years ago."

-What's the best advice you've ever received about women? -My dad always told me, "One in the hand is worth two in the bush." Source: www.elle.com

Miles Teller with Martin Scorsese.

Martin Scorsese with Bradley Cooper.

Another interesting thing is both having famous 'movie wives': Jennifer Lawrence and Shailene Woodley respectively, who are the famous leading women from the dystopic sagas "The Hunger Games" (Katniss) and "Divergent" (Tris).

Jennifer Lawerence with Bradley Cooper attending the premiere of "Joy" in New York.

Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley attending the premiere of "The Divergent Series: Insurgent" in New York.

Before Irina, Bradley Cooper had dated British model Suki Waterhouse for two years (2013-2015).

Miles Teller started dating model Keleigh Sperry in 2013. The pair have attended numerous red carpets together, and love snapping seriously cute selfies! Miles recently opened up about how close he and his girlfriend are, and how much he loves when she visits him at work! He revealed, "She's lovely. It's been pretty easy because right now, her full-time gig is kind of being with me and before her, I would never invite a girl into that world because I didn't think I could have both."

"She's allowed me to be able to really focus on acting and do what I want to do. She can come to set and visit me and hang out and doesn't really distract me from it." That's cute that Keleigh gets to spend so much time with her handsome beau! Miles also spilled about all of Keleigh's Instagram snaps of them, "She does have a very active Instagram account so people can see where I'm at. Probably too much. What are you going to do? I'm not going to stop traveling because she likes Instagram." Source: www.j-14.com

Keleigh Sperry reminds me a bit of Denise Richards mixed with French singer and dancer Alizée:

Specially in these photos Keleigh bears a resemblance to a young Denise Richards:

Keleigh Sperry worked for One 1. Modeling Agency and APA Talent.

Keleigh considers Miles one of her "best friends."

Out of  all of his co-stars to date,  I think  Miles Teller has shown the most sincere chemistry  with Shailene Woodley (in "The Spectacular Now"), although he gave off fervent sparks with Analeigh Tipton in "Two Night Stand", with Mackenzie Davis in "That Awkward Moment" and with Anna Kendrick in "Get a Job."  See below picture of  Miles Teller  between co-star  Anna Kendrick  and girlfriend Keleigh Sperry:

Anna Kendrick, Miles Teller and Keleigh Sperry attending the celebration by Giorgio Armani in Beverly Hills of Martin Scorsese's Academy Awards nomination, 2014.

Some of my favorite snapshots of Miles Teller and his girlfriend Keleigh Sperry (real life chemistry):

Keleigh Sperry video. Soundtrack: "Pretty Girl", "Twenty Flight Rock" & "Something Else" by Eddie Cochran.

Two Night Stand: online romance, Miles Teller (Moonlight Miles) video

Modern dating is a jungle of random hook-ups, Internet dating sites with questionable profiles, and other hurdles When Harry Met Sally never had to contend with. 

First-time director Max Nichols (son of director Mike Nichols) chose wisely with his leads, Miles Teller and the lesser-known but bubbly Analeigh Tipton. She makes for an unconventional romantic lead which works because the same applies to Teller, an actor who has shown incredible range in more serious films in the past. Nichols and screenwriter Mark Hammer have an ear for millennial lingo, crucial considering the film is basically a two-hander set in one cramped apartment. Megan hits an online dating site for a quick hook-up, something she's never done before. She quickly meets Alec (Teller), who seems to be exactly what she's looking for; meaning he's cute, uncommitted, and not a serial killer. A quick scan via webcam confirms no bodies hanging on his apartment walls.

It's not until the film takes a more serious turn that Nichols and Hammer start dropping a few pearls. A frank conversation about men and women helping one another have better sex has some real insights. And once we see Megan and Alec put all of their emotional cards on the table it also opens up the performances by Teller and Tipton. Both strike a believable vulnerability as two people who have been bruised by love and are reluctant to give it another shot. Teller seems to be able to build chemistry with anybody, a rare talent that should take him far. Tipton has the much flakier role to play and she manages to be endearing rather than irritating. Ultimately, Two Night Stand is about the way such people use whatever is at their disposal to protect themselves from more hurt. Sometimes that's a convenient half-truth, or a dating profile that needs an update. Source: www.examiner.com

Miles Teller "Midnight Miles" video. Soundtrack: "Stuck on You," "I Got Stung," "Got a Lot O' Livin' To Do" & "Paralyzed" by Elvis Presley, "Moonlight Mile" by The Rolling Stones, and "You Never Know" by Wilco.

Nearly 40 million Americans utilize online dating sites. California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris partnered with three major dating sites — EHarmony, Match.com, and Spark Networks — to create company guidelines that would make online dating safe for its users. There is a misconception that these relationships are doomed to fail, but the survey showed that couples who met online were less likely to divorce than those who met through traditional methods. Only 5.96 percent of relationships that began online ended in divorce or separation. Of those who remained married, they reported higher levels of satisfaction than those who met offline. Source: www.inquisitr.com

Michael Rosenfeld: -One of the things I have found out as part of my research is that people who meet online actually progress to marriage faster than people who meet offline. If you look at the couples who stay together, about half of the couples who meet through online dating have transitioned to marriage by year four of the relationship. The need for love, romance, relationships and sex — these are pretty basic human needs. And the ability to match people who would have otherwise not found each other is a powerful outcome of the new technology. About 75 percent of the people who meet online had no prior connection. They didn’t have friends in common. They’re families didn’t know each other. So they were perfect strangers. And prior to the Internet, it was kind of hard for perfect strangers to meet.
Source: www.washingtonpost.com

Not Missing a Beat: Miles Teller in "Whiplash" and "The Spectacular Now"

Submerging oneself in the recently released Whiplash soundtrack—which includes classic jazz standards like Duke Ellington's Caravan and Stan Getz's Intoit—and the compilation Complete Buddy Rich: 1946-1956/1957-1962, it's easier to connect with Charlie Parker's ghost. Bird became an obsession for genius drummer Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller) in the three-Oscar-winner film Whiplash (2014). In Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker (2013), the biographer Stanley Crouch affirmed: "Charlie Parker knew how to listen and hear, instant by instant, and how to respond with aesthetic command to that instant, gone now and never to return."

By comparing Damien Chazelle's milestone Whiplash with Sundance Film Festival's darling The Spectacular Now (which earned Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley the Special Jury Award for Dramatic Acting in 2013), we'll notice many similarities between their outwardly disparate filmic concepts.

Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), the ruthless jazz instructor at Shaffer, transforms Andrew's admiration for Buddy Rich into Charlie Parker's renewed greatness, turning a dangerously unhealthy obsession into predetermined and irrevocable success, whatever the cost may be. In Andrew's case, the resurrection of Charlie Parker's spirit will bestow on him an absolute dissociation with the world outside of music. In real life, Parker maintaned an obscure business relationship with his benefactor Ross Russell and was committed to Camarillo State Mental Hospital in 1946 after his "Lover Man" breakdown, echoing the parallel confrontation between Neiman and Fletcher in the film.

No family or girlfriend can rescue the lost innocence of Andrew Neiman, who will exist virtually outside of society from then on, having ceased to distinguish between passion and madness, love and hate, humanity and cruelty. But nothing will ever tarnish the legendary magnitude of his triumph in that sublime instant that's never to return, and that's why genuine art is often so strange and scarce. That painful divorce of heart and reason in Whiplash was narrated in more relatable terms through Teller's performance as Sutter Keely in The Spectacular Now the previous year.

A high school senior bereft of ambition or plans for the future, only fortified by his abuse of alcohol and fake parties, Sutter Keely casually meets introverted A-student Aimee Finecky (Shailene Woodley), whom he vows to save from her downtrodden life: "I’m not a lifestyle accessory to her. I’m a necessity. I’m the guy that’s going to crack open her cocoon. She doesn’t need to change me—she needs me to change her. At least until her little butterfly wings get strong enough to fly away."

The same focus on the need of saving someone from affliction or mediocrity was manifested in the reveal that Andrew finally obtains from Fletcher in a rare bonding moment: "I wasn’t [at Shaffer] to conduct. No, it’s about pushing people beyond what’s expected of them. And I believe that is a necessity. Because without it you’re depriving the world of its next Armstrong. Its next Parker."

In the scene when Andrew's ex-girlfriend Nicole, an unambitious theatre concessionist, confesses to him on the phone she's dating another man and she will not come back, Chazelle's script says: "You can see it in Andrew’s eyes - real hurt. And surprise at how hurt he feels."

Sutter, unlike Andrew, is not surprised by the feeling of hurt, he simply has learned to hide it socially. "God’s own drunk... he’s looking out for you in your beautiful intoxication but you end up spending half the day feeling like the Antichrist when the fact is you didn’t do a thing to hurt a soul."

When Andrew makes love to Aimee (she's been sexually victimized in the past and Andrew behaves cautious yet nonchalant about it), he feels for the first time something more than sexual pleasure, a painful sensation he cannot conceal: "I look down at her face. Suddenly, I feel all the layers that have grown over my own purity stripping away. The faster we go, the more layers burn away, until magic time hits, and there’s nothing left but the original me, as pristine as her body, shining and glorious."

The final solo scene in Whiplash: "It’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen... 450 beats per minute... trying to go even faster... trying to reach that mythical place where only the greats live... Andrew tearing a hole through the stage, blood gushing from his hands and staining the cymbals... A second of pure silence. Fletcher turns to the band, raises his hand... and cues the final note. The whole band roars it out, horns hitting their highest C’s, and Andrew rolling around his drum set like a madman, eyes about to pop, the next Buddy Rich, Fletcher’s only Charlie Parker on that very last hit of hits... cut to black."

Sutter's most pessimistic observations are found in the Chapter 66 of Tim Tharp’s novel The Spectacular Now: "We’re not the Faster-than-the-Speed-of-Light Generation anymore. We’re not even the Next-New-Thing Generation. We’re the Soon-to-Be-Obsolete Kids, and we’ve crowded in here to hide from the future and the past. We know what’s up—the future looms straight ahead like a black wrought-iron gate and the past is charging after us..."

An experiment conducted by the neuroscientist David Eagleman in 2010 on time perception in drummers illustrated that drummers have different brains from the rest of us: "Establishing the beat is a drug for drummers," Brad Henderson (author of Drums: A Novel) concluded.

Andrew Neiman and Sutter Keely both probably suffer from depression and alexithymia. According to psychoanalyst Joyce McDougall, the disaffected individuals "experienced overwhelming emotion that threatened to attack their sense of integrity and identity." Jazz and alcohol are indulged thus methodically in order to numb their emotional damages. Sutter masks his psychogenic unrest with a blasé party-boy façade whilst Andrew unmasks the secrets of artistic greatness, whose center is sheer bright pain. Sutter swaps his own happiness for Aimee's future. 

Andrew sacrifices part of his soul for brief immortality. Their stories simultaneously mutate into a prolonged coda that marks their slow-tempo self-destruction, a shut-down from the outside world that they'll enact as the ultimate form of compassion towards others. Miles Teller nails both performances without missing a beat: 'bad boy' Sutter who courts redemption in The Spectacular Now, and the remoteness of the genius in Whiplash.

Published previously as In ‘Whiplash’ and ‘The Spectacular Now,’ Miles Teller Isn’t Missing a Beat on Blogcritics.