THESE ARE THE ORIGINAL COSUMTES AND SHOES SCREEN WORN BY
ANTON YELCHIN AS CHARLIE BARTLETT DURING FILMING OF THE HIT MOVIE: "CHARLIE BARTLETT".
RECEIVED DIRECTLY FROM THE SET WITH COA FROM SIDNEY KIMMEL ENTERTAINMENT.
Charlie Bartlett is a 2008 comedy about a teenager (Anton Yelchin) who becomes the unofficial psychiatrist for the student body of his school.
The movie was originally set to be released on August 3, 2007, but was pushed back six months until February 1, 2008; it was again pushed to February 22, 2008.
PLOT:
Wealthy teenager Charlie Bartlett (Anton Yelchin) is failing miserably at fitting in at a new public high school run by the world-weary Principal Gardner (Robert Downey Jr.).
As he begins to better understand the social hierarchy, Charlie's charm and likability positions him as the resident "psychiatrist" dishing out advice, and prescriptions with his "business partner" and fellow student, Murphey Bivens (Tyler Hilton), to other students in need.
Along the way he decides to take some of his own advice, find romance, and learn to accept who he is.
PRODUCTION:
The majority of school scenes were shot in Toronto, Ontario, on the school campuses of Western Technical Commercial School and Ursula Franklin Academy. While many of the hallway scenes were shot in the Ursula Franklin section of the building, the boys' lavatory that is used as Charlie's office is one of Western Technical Commercial School's.
Also, the student lounge from the movie does not exist and was constructed and demolished specifically for the shooting of this movie.
Many of the interior and exterior scenes taking place at the Bartlett Estate were shot in Oshawa, Ontario, at the Parkwood Estate. Parkwood has played home to various well-off movie characters, including the likes of Billy Madison.
BIOGRPAHY OF ANTON YELCHIN:
Anton Viktorovich Yelchin (Russian Антон Викторович Ельчин; born March 11, 1989) is an American film and television actor. He began performing in the late 1990s, appearing in several television roles, as well as the Hollywood films Along Came a Spider and Hearts in Atlantis.
More recently, Yelchin appeared on the television series Huff and starred in the films House of D, Alpha Dog and Charlie Bartlett.
PERSONAL LIFE:
Yelchin was born in Leningrad, USSR (now Saint Petersburg, Russia), the son of Irina Korina and Viktor Yelchin, figure skaters who were national celebrities as stars of the Leningrad Ice Ballet for fifteen years.
Yelchin's parents qualified for the 1972 Winter Olympics, but because they were Jewish, were not permitted to participate by the Soviet authorities.
Yelchin's family moved to the United States in September of 1989, receiving status as refugees from political and religious oppression.
Yelchin's mother now works as a figure skating choreographer and his father as a figure skating coach, having been Sasha Cohen's first trainer. Yelchin's uncle is painter Eugene Yelchin.
Yelchin enjoys playing the guitar, saying that it gives him "a lot of fulfillment", and is a fan of acoustic blues music.
He attended the Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies, in Tarzana, California, and enrolled at the University of Southern California in the fall of 2007 to study film.
CAREER:
Yelchin began acting at the age of nine, in the independent film A Man is Mostly Water. His earliest roles include Jackson in A Time for Dancing, Milo in Delivering Milo, Tommy Warshaw in House of D, and "Jacob Clarke" in the mini-series Taken.
He made a guest appearance as Stewart, Cheryl David's nephew and a self-described magician (who only knows one card trick), in a season four episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, and starred as Byrd Huffstodt, the fourteen year-old son of Dr. Craig "Huff" Huffstodt (Hank Azaria) on the television series Huff, which ran from 2004 to 2006.
In 2006, he also had a role on an episode ("Tru Love") of the series Law & Order: Criminal Intent, playing the son of a dead doctor. His biggest film recognition came for the role of Bobby Garfield in Hearts in Atlantis (2001), for which he won Best Performance in a Feature Film - Leading Young Actor at the 2002 Young Artist Awards. He also appeared as Nathan Harris in Criminal Minds' episode "Sex, Birth & Death". In 2007, Yelchin starred in Alpha Dog, a crime thriller that received a U.S. release on January 12. In the film, he played Zack Mazursky, who is based on real-life kidnap and murder victim Nicholas Markowitz. USA Today's review described the performance as "heartbreakingly endearing".
Yelchin felt awkward appearing in the swimming pool-set sexual scene in the film, specifying that he felt "uncomfortable" for his co-stars and that he could not "imagine enjoying it or taking pleasure" in filming the scene. Fierce People, a drama co-starring Yelchin, Diane Lane and Donald Sutherland, received a limited release on September 7 of that year.
Charlie Bartlett, in which Yelchin plays the title role of a wealthy teenager in a public high school, was released on February 22, 2008.
He will next appear in Finding t.A.T.u., which was filmed in Moscow during the summer of 2007, Middle of Nowhere, opposite Susan Sarandon and Justin Chatwin, and the eleventh Star Trek film, in which he will portray Pavel Chekov. In February 2008, he was cast as a teenage Kyle Reese in Terminator 4.
TRIVIA:
Charlie's limo is a classic 1969 Mercedes Benz Pullman - one of only 200 ever built.
Jake Epstein, the football captain, joined a football team to prepare for the role.
In the last scene the psychiatrists name is P. Sarossy, same as the cinematographer of this movie, Paul Sarossy.
REVIEW:
Charlie Bartlett is the directorial debut for Jon Poll, who's worked primarily as a Hollywood editor. Perhaps because it's his first film, the structure seems to be off-balance a little, and it goes on for about 15 minutes longer than I would have expected.
The characters don't always behave consistently wouldn't a smart kid who wants to fit in and make friends have figured out that he shouldn't wear his private-school uniform on the first day of public school?
And why is such a big deal made out of putting cameras in the student lounge area when no cameras appear to be anywhere else in the school, nor are there any compelling reasons given for the cameras (like a big scary campus incident)?
The movie isn't quite surreal enough for us to glance over these unrealistic flaws without pause, which is problematic for a movie that wants to be a smart comedy.
On the other hand, Charlie Bartlett works as a pleasant frothy comedy, a nice way to pass the time with a few laughs. Its messages about the problems that occur when adults don't listen and pay attention to teens, and about the tendency of medical professionals to over-medicate for mental problems, work well without being too heavy-handed.
But I had to rely on my notes heavily when writing this review after 24 hours, my primary recollections of the film were Davis singing like Ruth Gordon and Downey's character drunkenly piloting a remote control boat around a swimming pool. Everything else was so slight that it faded away soon after the movie ended.
ACTING:
Yelchin (Alpha Dog) is a Hollywood rarity: He’s an ‘it’ boy because of his acting, not his looks (sorry, Anton). Rarer still is the fact that Yelchin’s actual age is near that of Charlie Bartlett, and not since the days of Freaks and Geeks has that industry taboo been broken so successfully.
It’s all a credit to the young actor, who, in the span of Bartlett, oozes everything from vulnerability and precociousness to Ritalin-induced mania and the theatricality of a much older actor. There’s nothing he can’t do in this movie; the same goes for his acting future.
And the same goes for his adversary in Bartlett, Downey Jr., although that’s been abundantly clear for decades now. Downey Jr. is famous for making seemingly effortless work of a complex character, which is precisely what he does with Principal Gardner a concerned parent, recovering alcoholic and dutiful high school enforcer/villain.
He’s a force to be reckoned with on screen, and when Yelchin’s Charlie finally squares off with him, the scene is a thing of beauty. As an essential link between those two characters, Dennings (40-Year-Old Virgin) is a credible charmer and, refreshingly, the rare non-ditzy, non-clichéd high school-portrayed girl we’re used to seeing. Rounding out the cast is Davis (American Splendor), aka Laura Linney-in-waiting. Her clueless alcoholic mom is a source of laughs and, ultimately, sobriety--for the character and us.
DIRECTION:
For the first time in his decades-long career, Jon Poll trades the editing room for the director’s chair. And after seeing Bartlett, it makes sense that Poll, who has edited movies like Austin Powers in Goldmember and Meet the Parents/Fockers, is a behind-the-scenes veteran but a rookie helmer.
His debut is fresh and loose but also very sure-handed. The movie is constantly a pleasant, unclassifiable surprise, spurning both the raunchiness of teen comedies and the pretention of psychology dramedies.
The result is something far less precious and opaque than Wes Anderson’s Rushmore to which Bartlett bears a broad thematic resemblance yet a sharp commentary nonetheless.
To that end, Gustin Nash’s debut screenplay is just as impressive as his director’s rookie effort. His writing is clearly steeped in satire, namely how loose today’s doctors are with the prescription pads especially when it comes to our children but it’s also able to be sweet and real when necessary.
It’s the most impressive screenplay debut we’ve seen in a while gold standard Juno notwithstanding--and the directorial one isn’t too shabby itself.
