Tuesday, May 08, 2012
Something familiar, something peculiar, something for everyone
By Edward Copeland
If I'd located one, a photo of the number "Everybody Ought to Have a Maid" from the first Broadway revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum in 1972 that starred Phil Silvers as Pseudolus would be resting between the still from the original 1962 production starring (from left to right) John Carradine as Marcus Lycus, Jack Gilford as Hysterium, David Burns as Senex and the magnificent Zero Mostel as Pseudolus, which opened 50 years ago tonight, and the photo below it showing the cast of the second Broadway revival in 1996 that starred (from left to right) Nathan Lane as Pseudolus, Mark Linn-Baker as Hysterium, Ernie Sabella as Marcus Lycus and Lewis J. Stadlen as Senex. (Sadly, not only could I only find two black-and-white photos from the 1972 revival, they
never made a cast recording either, so we can't hear what Silvers sounded like singing the part. The song link takes you to the 1962 original Broadway cast recording) This musical comedy registers as a theatrical landmark on many levels, the most significant being that it marked the first time Stephen Sondheim wrote both the lyrics and the music for a Broadway musical. Stellar support surrounded Sondheim on all levels: I just named some of the cast, the future director of his landmark 1970s musicals, Harold Prince, produced Forum and the legendary George Abbott (then 75) directed. Jack Cole, currently undergoing a bit of a resurrection in terms of his reputation, choreographed the show and the book, based on three works by Plautus, famed playwright of ancient Rome (c. 254-184 B.C.). came from the pens of Burt Shevelove, a writer-director from early TV, and Larry Gelbart, whose best known credit at the time was as part of the many talented writers working for Sid Caesar on Your Show of Shows but who would go on to turn Robert Altman's MASH into the hit TV series M^A*S*H, be one of the Oscar-nominated (and credited) co-writers of Tootsie, writer of one of the first great HBO movies, Barbarians at the Gate, and author of the book for the Cy Coleman/David Zippel musical City of Angels. On a personal level, Forum holds a special place in my heart because it happens to be the first musical that I ever saw performed live — and Carradine played Marcus Lycus in the production. No, I'm not much older than you thought. I was only 10 at that time and it happened to be a touring summer stock production 17 years after he created the role in the original Broadway show. Somehow, it seems only appropriate that both the first Broadway musical and the last Broadway show I saw featured scores by Sondheim (Passion and Assassins, if you're curious) and so did my irst live musical, even if at 10 I hadn't the slightest notion who Sondheim was. Anyone who knows me personally or has read this blog for any length of time realizes what a devoted Sondheim acolyte I am and, without question, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum certainly must be considered the most entertaining and crowd-pleasing of all musicals for which he composed the score. As much as I love his music, it's also sadly true in far too many cases that Sondheim's scores often end up being vastly superior to the books of his musicals. With Forum, that cannot be said. When you read what Sondheim wrote in his book Finishing the Hat or heard what others said in reviews, Forum may stand as the rare instance of a Sondheim musical where the book actually supersedes the score in quality. Hey, it was Sondheim's first produced show as composer as well as lyricist after all. Before that, he'd only served both functions on his unproduced musical Saturday Night. His Broadway experiences had been limited to being the lyricist (to Leonard Bernstein's music) on West Side Story and (to Jule Styne's music) on Gypsy. As we begin, I should tell you that if you see a link, by all means click on it. For example, at the top the first link on a song title takes you to the original Broadway cast recording of that song from the 1962 production. Sometimes the links direct you to videos, other times just to the songs, but I wanted to get as much comparison in as I could.
Now, a lot of funny things did occur on the way to the Forum (though, technically speaking, no character in the show ever discusses a trip to that famous location in ancient Rome), but getting the musical to Broadway proved to be an entirely different matter. That trip encountered many bumps that threatened to scuttle the production before Forum ever crossed the New York state line, let alone landed on a Broadway stage. Those associated with the show who still walk among us might be able to look back with some relief now (though in Finishing the Hat, Sondheim does deal himself some heavy self-criticism about his work on the show even now, despite the fact that Forum remains the biggest hit of his career). Sondheim writes that he, Gelbart and Shevelove wrote Forum over a four-year period and that the show went through two major producers, two major directors and a major star before getting to the rehearsal stage. Meryle Secrest's biography, Stephen Sondheim: A Life, spells out the specifics of his statement.
Secrest quotes Sondheim about the dogged pursuit of Jerome Robbins, who would never settle on a decision about whether to direct the show or not. "The problem was we went to numbers of producers and directors. Jerry Robbins kept saying yes, then no, and then yes, and then no. We went to Joshua Logan and he wanted more naked boys and things like that. I went to Hal (Prince) and he said, 'Listen, kid, you know me. I hate farce.'…David Merrick agreed to produce. Then we were trying to get Jerry Robbins again. And Jerry said, 'OK, I'll tell you what. I'll do it, but I won't do it with David Merrick. You have to get it away from him." In Secrest's book, Sondheim expresses guilt for making up a lie to Merrick about the show not happening and returning an advance to Merrick but it did convince Prince to sign on though Robbins bailed again. Evemtually, they got George Abbott on board as director, but Robbins would return to play a pivotal role. The search for a lead also proved difficult. Their first choice, Phil Silvers, who eventually would portray Marcus Lycus in Richard Lester's 1966 film version and Pseudolus in the 1972 revival, rejected it out of hand because he couldn't perform while wearing his glasses and he'd be unable to navigate without them. Milton Berle agreed to star but when Gelbart and Shevelove turned in a draft of the book that would have run about four hours and received orders to make cuts (which they did), Berle claimed they removed his best stuff and quit. That's how Mostel got the part. In Secrest's book, Sondheim said that years later Mostel would claim that he didn't want to do Forum, but the truth was he needed the work badly and leaped at the part. Mostel's career, as had many others, had suffered during the McCarthy era, the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings and the Hollywood blacklist. One hitch: When Robbins returned to help the troubled show later, he'd face the glare of Mostel because Robbins had served as a friendly witness at the HUAC hearings. To make things worse, one of the names he named was Madeline Gilford, wife of Jack Gilford, who was playing Hysterium. Sondheim though sensed other problems.
Sondheim sought the advice of his friend James Goldman, who at this point in his career had written an original play that made it to Broadway and later would pen both the play and movie of The Lion in Winter as well as the book for Sondheim's Follies. Goldman also did some songwriting, so Sondheim let him look at the book for Forum and listen to the songs he had at that point, when the opening number was a song called "Love Is in the Air." According to what Sondheim wrote in Finishing the Hat, Goldman labeled Gelbart and Shevelove's book as "brilliant" and expressed enthusiasm about Sondheim's score. "The problem," Goldman said, "is they don't go together." Sondheim knew what Goldman meant, but he didn't start doing anything about it right then. Sondheim wrote that he'd been "trained by (Oscar) Hammerstein to think of a song as a one-act play which either intensifies a moment or moves the story the forward.…Prodded by my academic musical training as well as by Oscar, I had become accustomed to thinking of songs as being structured in sonata form: statement, development and recapitulation. For Oscar, it was first act, second act, third act. He tried to avoid writing lyrics that confined themselves to one idea, the traditional approach of every lyricist in the theater and the standard function of songs before he came along and revolutionized the way writers thought about musicals. Show Boat hadn't convinced them but once Oklahoma!, Carousel and South Pacific had become enormous hits, most songwriters converted. The success of those were not entirely beneficial however." In Finishing the Hat, Sondheim noted something Gelbart wrote in his introduction to the published libretto of Forum. "Broadway in its development of musical comedy had improved the quality of the former at the expense of a great deal of the latter," Gelbart wrote.
At one point — frustrated as he tried to unlearn all he knew about composing and fearing he did the show more harm than good — Sondheim even suggested Forum should just be a straight play, but Shevelove said it would be too frenetic and the audience would have no space to breathe (without songs). He informed the composer that the few surviving plays by Plautus sll had songs. Sondheim did end up composing an opening song more in keeping with the spirit of the show that would follow called "Invocation." That also would be dropped but would return in a 1974 farce that Shevelove "freely adapted" from Aristophanes called The Frogs and to which Sondheim added "Instructions to the Audience," which is the only way you can listen to that number now, as in this cut from its 2004 Broadway debut sung by Nathan Lane, Roger Bart and the ensemble. Sondheim writes honestly in his book that he didn't think much of George Abbott's talent or sense of humor — saying they had to explain a joke to the old man once, but Abbott's reputation for saving shows had achieved legendary status and as the show suffered in Washington to scathing reviews and small audiences in big houses (50 people filling 1,000 seats) not laughing a bit, Sondheim described to Secrest the only time Abbott made him laugh "when he said, 'I dunno. You had better call in George Abbott.'" Obviously, that wasn't an option, but given Robbins' worship of Abbott, that made it easier to call him in, though they worried about Mostel's reaction. Part of this can be seen in a clip from a one-man show called Zero Hour written and performed by Jim Brochu and presented at the West Coast Jewish Theatre.
At the time Robbins named names before the House Un-American Activities Committee, he didn't really have a career beyond New York, so his motives always have proved puzzling and he never settled the question before his death, The most pervasive theory, as seen on an American Masters profile on PBS a couple of years ago and detailed in biographies such as this one on The Official Masterworks Broadway Site that he got blackmailed into testifying out of fear that the rather open secret of his homosexuality would be revealed. (He felt secure
enough to declare himself gay to get out of service in World War II.) The site says, "Robbins was booked for an appearance on Ed Sullivan’s Sunday night variety show (The Toast of the Town), but three weeks before the event, Sullivan, convinced that Robbins was a Communist (he had attended the notorious Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace at the Waldorf-Astoria in 1949), canceled the contract. It was Sullivan — threatening at one point to expose him as a homosexual if he did not deliver (directly to Sullivan himself!) a list of names of leftists in show business — who set the machinery in motion that brought Robbins under investigation by the FBI and landed him, two years later, before the House Un-American Activities Committee." Whatever the truth might be, Robbins' uncredited contributions to Forum not only saved the musical, they also changed the way new musicals got their starts forever.
Earlier in the flirtation process, before tryouts had started and Robbins continued to flirt with the idea of directing the show, he demanded that the principals cast the show, get them all in a room to read the script for him while Sondheim performed the songs. In essence, Robbins invented the theater workshop. Prince and Sondheim actually found it helpful at pointing out flaws in the show and repeated the process with their classic collaborations in the 1970s, though Sondheim doesn't like what the practice ended up evolving into later. "What had begun as a learning experience for the authors became transmogrified into thinly disguised backers' auditions," he wrote in Finishing the Hat. As for his contributions to Forum, as soon as he saw "Invocation," Robbins recognized the problem. Secrest wrote in her biography of Sondheim, According to Sondheim, (Robbins) said, "The opening
number is killing the show. You open with a charming number and the audience does not know what it's in for, that it's a real farce. You've got to write an opening number that says baggy pants." Sondheim went back to the drawing board and the show's most famous song, "Comedy Tonight," was born and Robbins did the staging, specifically telling Sondheim to leave the jokes to him. Sondheim wrote in Finishing the Hat that Robbins also staged the massive Act II chase, meaning that though he received no official credit, Robbins essentially choreographed the two most important pieces of movement in the show. Still, it isn't as if no one realizes he did it. When Robbins directed his own tribute show, Jerome Robbins' Broadway, re-creating his most famous stage creations the show included "Comedy Tonight" with Jason Alexander taking on the Pseudolus role for that number. In fact, three men have been nominated for Tonys for playing Pseudolus in the three Broadway productions of Forum and a fourth inhabited the role for one scene in another show and all four — Zero Mostel, Phil Silvers, Jason Alexander and Nathan Lane — took home Tony Awards. No other part in theater history can make that claim. The song has attained a level of such popularity you'd be amazed by the permutations you can find on the Internet. In fact, I did a separate post on those alone. Unfortunately, no visual record of the 1962 version exists. Instead, we'll start with a poorly shot bootleg of the 1996 revival starring Nathan Lane as Pseudolus (and Prologus, the character the lead actor plays when introducing the show.) If unfamiliar with the show or what I'm talking about, the song spells it out pretty clearly. I actually got to see the 1996 revival.After the disastrous runs in Washington and New Haven, Conn., once Robbins had put the bug in Sondheim's ear about the opening number, he writes in Finishing the Hat that "Comedy Tonight" was composed over the course of a weekend. What is it about pressure
and/or inspiration that some of the greatest works seem to be created when it gets to be crunch time? Most people know the story of Arthur Miller writing the first act of Death of a Salesman in less than a day. Forum opened 50 years ago tonight at The Alvin Theatre where it played through March 7, 1864 when it transferred to The Mark Hellinger Theatre for two months before completing its run through Aug. 29, 1965 at The Majestic Theatre for a total of eight previews and 964 performances. In 1966, a film version with Mostel and Gilford repeating their stage roles and featuring future Phantom of the Opera Michael Crawford opened. Richard Lester, hot off directing The Beatles' films A Hard Day's Night and Help!, helmed the Forum movie. The film eliminated some songs but it also gave Sondheim his first opportunity to design a song specifically for a movie. In Finishing the Hat, he writes about penning a different version of "Free," heard here from the 1962 cast album. He confesses to being a lifelong movie buff and having made some home movies where he especially enjoyed the editing process. (Who doesn't want to see some of these as long as they're suitable for general audiences?) Lester told Sondheim, the composer wrote, that he approved and that his idea would work but Lester never filmed the sequence. "(A)lthough in the finished print, there's a curiously clumsy cut at the place where I'd cued the song, which makes me think it was at least planned. Rereading it now, I wish he had. I didn't get the chance to design another for 26 years, when I wrote two sequences for the movie of A Little Night Music, one of which was filmed the way I wrote it, one of which was not." This clip shows Mostel doing the song during the movie's opening credits.While Sondheim accepted Shevelove's notion that the musical numbers allowed the audience a chance to take a breath from the chaos consuming the stage, he still disagrees to this day about the suitability of stopping a farce for a song. In Finishing the Hat, he wrote, "Although I do think that the book of Forum is the tightest, most satisfyingly plotted and gratifyingly written farce I've ever encountered, I don't think that farces can be transformed into musicals without damage — at least, not good musicals. The tighter the plotting, the better the farce, but the better the farce the more the songs interrupt the flow and pace. Farces are express trains; musicals are locals." We can't see what Mostel looked like onstage singing "Comedy Tonight" in 1962, but we do have a clip of him performing a condensed version of the song at the 1971 Tony Awards.
"I had to write one-joke songs so I picked spots for them where the situations would supply substance: Songs like 'Impossible' and the drag version of 'Lovely,' which were dramatically static but theatrically funny. My mistake was that in trying to unlearn everything Oscar (Hammerstein) had taught me and write static songs which were nothing more than playful, I felt I had to justify them with cleverness, by juggling with words, leaning on rhymes, puns, alliteration and all the other boilerplate devices of light verse," Sondheim wrote. (Links: "Impossible" and "Lovely (Reprise)" both from 1962 original cast album.) Both in his own book and Secrest's, Sondheim praises producer Hal Prince's faith in the show, saying that most producers who endured the tryouts that Forum did in New
Haven and Washington would have closed the show down and never brought it to New York. Prince didn't — and it paid off. The show would turn out to be a blockbuster, admittedly one with a few more hurdles to clear before it reached that point. When Robbins came in to help, everyone worried about the volatile Mostel's reaction. However, he'd behaved as a complete professional with nary an explosion up to this point in the chaotic production, according to Secrest's book. As they hurriedly rehearsed "Comedy Tonight" in New York, the stress weighed on the actors as Sondheim recounted in Secrest's book. "'We got to the afternoon of the first preview with our opening number, the one we hoped would change the show. And we were rehearsing and Zero kept screwing up his lines.' So once when Robbins stopped to consult with Tony Walton, the set designer, Sondheim went down to the footlights — 'I never, never give an actor a critical note in front of other people' — to correct one of Mostel's lines. 'Right, right, right,' Mostel said impatiently. They began again, and again Robbins stopped. Mostel was still making mistakes. 'And I said, "Please, I know you've got a lot on your mind, but it's the plural, not the singular." "Yeah. Yeah." The third time, Jerry stops again — 'Zero, it's the plural!' — and Mostel says in a booming voice that fills the entire theater and makes everyone start and turn around, he says, "Well, maybe if you'd write me a funny line, you cocksucker!" In front of everybody.' There was a silence that lasted for about four seconds. 'And in the back of the house, Mr. Abbott went, "All right, from the top please" and clapped his hands." Sondheim goes on to describe how Abbott defuse the tension that quickly and he realized that was part of the man's greatness. He also believes that Mostel made him the scapegoat for the anger he wanted to hurl in Robbins' direction.
In wrapping up this tribute's first half, I must praise the invention of Twitter, which introduced me to a man who not only witnessed the original production of Forum (as well as other original Broadway shows such as South Pacific with Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza, Fiddler on the Roof, also starring Mostel and featuring Bea Arthur, Bert Convy, Leonard Frey and Austin Pendleton and, the one that makes me green with envy, Ethel Merman in Gypsy — with Jack Klugman along as Herbie), but whose father became Mostel's doctor and, because of similar backgrounds, eventually the actor's good friend. Pietr Hitzig, also a doctor, wrote me briefly about his memories of those days. "I am 70 years old and as a NYC child had no idea what fantastic theater I was seeing.…Zero died at only 62 years old and had his most productive years destroyed by the witch hunters at the HUAC but is immortal for Fiddler, Forum and The Producers.…Nobody can play any of those roles today without remembering the bushy eyebrows and satanic leer," Hitzig wrote. On Twitter, Hitzig tweeted that his father saw Fiddler on the Roof at least 100 times. Imagine how inexpensive Broadway tickets cost to allow that back in the 1960s. I only paid to see one Broadway show twice (Rent) and saw another a second time because one ticket came to me as a freebie (Ragtime). (Piotr corrected me after I posted this that his father didn't pay all those times. He got free tickets.) "My father was a renowned Park Avenue doctor but lonely as hell as was Zero. They, children of the shtetl loved each other like brothers. Both were funny but had an angry side that alienated their families. After a busy day, rather than come home, my dad would head for Broadway and stand backstage as his idealized childhood in Fiddler was played out once again," Hitzig wrote. In The New York Times archives, I found a funny story that did illustrate Mostel's tendency to get riled. The British comedian Frankie Howerd, who would play Pseudolus in the London premiere of Forum in fall 1963, came to see the U.S. version earlier in 1963. Seated in the front row, Howerd tended to cover his mouth when amused so Mostel misinterpreted that he wasn't laughing at the show at all. "He is not laughing." the article says Mostel complained between numbers. The next day, Howerd, in an apologetic tone, insisted that he enjoyed the show. "I'm not a laugher. I don't lean back and flash my teeth. Actually, if anyone was frightened that night it was me, seeing how good Mostel was," Howerd told Louis Calta at The Times.
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Labels: Altman, Arthur Miller, Awards, Beatles, blacklist, Books, Gelbart, H. Prince, Hammerstein, HBO, J. Carradine, J. Robbins, Merman, Music, Musicals, Phil Silvers, Sid Caesar, Sondheim, Theater Tribute
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Tuesday, March 13, 2012
There are things in that paper which nobody knows but me, or ever will
By Kevin J. Olson
Through a Glass Darkly is interesting if for no other reason than Bergman didn’t seem to really care for it all. One could chalk it up to the usual case of the artist’s self-deprecation, but when reading his book Images: My Life in Film you understand that Bergman had a different film in mind before he shot Through a Glass Darkly, and the result — which is certainly one of the most seminal foreign films of the ‘60s — was not to his liking. I think Bergman is too hard on himself and critiquing the movie he had in his head instead of the one he actually filmed. What’s important about this film, aside from helping Americans ingratiate themselves into the foreign film world (along with Fellini and Antonioni), is that it marks a shift in tone for the auteur. With Through a Glass Darkly, Bergman worked out the kinks and used its aesthetic and its themes as a catalyst for what would be the Bergman tableau that everyone recognizes today.
Sparse seems the appropriate way to describe the film — Bergman himself declared the film a “chamber film” with its use of only four actors, minimal sets and essentially no music apart from the occasional chord of Bach’s “Sarabande from Suite No. 2 in D minor” (which is used effectively). Bergman and frequent collaborator Sven Nykvist use the film as a kind of practice round to establish the kind of aesthetic they would become known for, especially in terms of close-ups and two-shots that have an eerie way of simultaneously having the effect the shot is supposed to have but also being able to show the distance between two characters or a character and inner turmoil.
This is a “chamber film” due to its simplicity. It doesn't establish where or even who these characters are; they simply emerge from the waters, hand-in-hand, in the film's opening shot. The characters are a family that consists of Karin (Harriet Andersson), her husband Martin (Max von Sydow), her somewhat estranged father David (Gunnar Bjornstrand) and her brother Minus (Lars Passgard). The family is vacationing somewhere off the Swedish coast, and it is here that I will stop for a moment to recognize the film’s setting. There’s an opaque beauty to the location and sets (the broken-down ship being my favorite set piece). Nykvist always was a master at shooting anything anywhere, but these characters inhabit a real sense of place here. The film’s location actually was Fårö, which would be the setting for future Bergman pictures and, eventually, his home. The austerity of the island — its remoteness — seems an apt place for the director to call home.
Back to the plot: The film's events take place over 24 hours as we learn about Karin in the opening scenes as she walks along the shore with her brother. Karin has been released recently from a mental hospital where we find out that she endured electroshock therapy. While on the island, the family celebrates David’s birthday during his visit before he must run off again. Running off to do other things is somewhat of a habit for David, and we soon learn that he always was distant with Karin and her mother — and apparently Minus, who tells Karin that all he wants is to be able to talk to his father — and that he really is using this time on the island with his mentally unstable daughter to overcome a bad case of writer’s block. Disgusted by this, Martin confronts David who confesses his intention of exploiting his daughter’s illness. One night, Karin hears a distant foghorn and follows it up to the attic. As she stands in the middle of the attic, she begins to hear things that cause her to collapse; it’s the voice of God — and it’s coming from behind the wallpaper. And so it goes for Karin as she slowly devolves before she finally gives up and admits to Martin and her father that she can’t go on living between two realities.
The film has an eerie light to it — most everything happens during daylight adding to this effect — and it reminded me of what Roger Ebert says in his “Great Movies” review where he likens Nykvist’s lighting to being “another character,” and that you could “freeze almost any frame of this film and be looking at a striking still photograph” that mirrors the disconnect and unreliability of what our heroine sees and hears. Even when characters talk in close-up, something still is visible just enough in the background that is canted or split or decaying (my favorite set piece being the ship Karin finds herself retreating to near the end of the film; it’s one of the most perfect set pieces in all of Bergman’s films). It’s a perfect example of how Bergman and Nykvist were masters of stark mise-en-scene; despite its seemingly simplistic aesthetic, there’s something profound in every shot.
Sound is used to great effect in the film: the sound of rocks being walked upon, water breaking against the shore and, most significantly, of the foghorn that beckons Karin to the wallpaper where she begins to wait for something — a god or God — to emerge from the walls. I love the scene where Minus simply looks out at the sea, hears the foghorn and utters, “God.” I think for Bergman, God does seem that distant here; Like the boat, God makes Its presence known in a way that almost mocks the characters, letting them know via foghorn that something exists out there — you just can’t see it snd it won't intervene. Multiple sounds such as that echo in the film, and that’s one of the things that always affects me most about Bergman’s films: his attention to silence accentuates even the most mundane sounds so they become haunting.
The aesthetic and its sparseness is a bit showy (there’s a reason why the sometimes super-serious Bergman is so easy for people to riff on), but I’ve always loved Bergman for that. In no way does he shy away from big ideas and his aesthete aims. In today’s cinema, it would be hard to get a film such as this made without the filmmaker being tempted to at least let a little bit of irony seep in (but, hey, that's postmodernism for ya, and I think that's part of the reason why so many people are uncomfortable with a film such as The Tree of Life because of Malick's super-serious pretensions). Sure, the final set piece in the decaying ship is showy, on-the-nose and pretentious. But so what? What’s wrong with being overtly arty? It’s a beautiful metaphor for Karin’s own dug-out and decaying psyche, and I think in today’s cinema the crucial mistake that would get made — and the reason people would jump all over its pretentiousness — would be that too much attention would be given to the metaphor and not enough to the subjects. Here, the ship works perfectly because we’re invested in Karin as Andersson is just absolutely brilliant in the final moments of this film as she confronts her father about their relationship and how it’s been affected by her illness.
Through a Glass Darkly would retroactively be a part of a trilogy that included The Silence and Winter Light. What would become known as the “faith trilogy” set the tone for what would be Bergman’s darkest decade and his increasingly harsh explorations into spiritual wrestling. Bergman himself declared the film’s part of a trilogy only after he saw similar themes running through the films: "These three films deal with reduction. Through a Glass Darkly — conquered certainty. Winter Light — penetrated certainty. The Silence — God's silence — the negative imprint. Therefore, they constitute a trilogy." The ‘60s are the decade of Bergman's work I appreciate most, perhaps because this period if Bergman’s films often reflect my own uncertainties surrounding religion. Not everyone loves Through a Glass Darkly the same way they revere other Bergman films. I think that Bergman's own quote explains why as the movie's ending displeased himh — a kind of trite addendum that too neatly explained things, but I think in the light of how Bergman describes the “trilogy” above, Through a Glass Darkly still holds a tremendous amount of truth and power. Sure, “conquering” certainty isn’t nearly as interesting a thesis as penetrating it or looking at it though a nihilistic lens (I suppose that’s the juicier stuff), but I think love is a pretty interesting theme, and I like the biblical approach Bergman takes at trying to understand love.
Bergman felt uneasy about the film, even when it was released, as he felt it let viewers off a little too easily:
“Through a Glass Darkly was a desperate attempt to present a simple philosophy: God is love and love is God…So here we started with a falsehood (on the part of the filmmaker), largely unconscious, but a falsehood nevertheless. In a weird way, the film floats a couple of inches above the ground. But falsehood is one thing; the weaving of illusions is another.”
His initial plans for the film were really to focus the lens on schizophrenia, specifically how schizophrenia affects someone with religious tendencies. The film's working title was The Wallpaper, suggesting that perhaps Bergman was going for more of a Charlotte Perkins Gillman feel for the film. In his notes on the film, Bergman states, “Karin wants Martin, her husband, to worship the god; otherwise the god might turn dangerous. She tries to force Martin to do so. He finally gets David to help him give her an injection. Then she disappears into her world behind the wallpaper.” Bergman later goes on to describe that he wanted the film to be more about Karin pulling Martin into her descent in order for him to understand the god behind the wallpaper better. Martin is a character who needs the tangible to understand, and so Karin’s schizophrenic downfall is a lonely one because Martin’s attempts to understand what she sees and hears and feels are in vain. The tone of these notes is eerier than the tone the film produces; however, that’s not the product on the screen, and I think what Bergman did put on there is profound and moving, and somewhat eerie, too.
I didn’t find anything false about the theme, no matter how simplistic it may be, of love. Bergman brilliantly juxtaposes the mission of modernity (there is a moment where, prior to David and Martin setting out to fish in the cold, they say, “if it’s good enough for Hemingway…”) with the mission of love. For David and Martin, confronting and dealing with Karin's schizophrenia requires an unending kind of love; the kind of love Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians (the book of the Bible from which the film gets its title), and completely
flies in the face of the modernist “go get what’s yours” mentality. David, as the struggling writer, seems at first OK with the exploiting his mentally ill daughter in hopes of finding some material for his latest bout with writer's block. This theme appealed most to Bergman. He himself states that he sees himself — the artist, the filmmaker, the writer — in these scenes, and it is not surprising when one looks at the film now to see Bergman so nakedly explicate this territory on screen; however, Bergman didn’t see the performance of David by Bjornstrand as something representative of himself. Bergman says, “The character of David […] became a problem. In him, two forms of unconscious lying came together: my own and actor Bjornstrand’s. Our combined efforts created a dreadful stew.” Bergman didn’t like the way Bjornstrand portrayed David (Bjornstrand himself recently had converted to Catholicism) and thought the performance was “poorly played” while Bjornstrand thought that his interpretation of the character was “splendid.” The truth is I don’t remember much of Bjornstrand’s performance because Andersson is so damn good here she trumps everyone else in the film. Andersson's portrayal of Karin seems to be the only thing, according to his notes, about the film that pleased Bergman. His notes on the film and its handling of Karin: “Don’t sentimentalize Karin’s illness. Show it in all its ghastly glory.” Because of Andersson’s performance and what she goes through, I buy the film as having something more to it than merely being the "safe" film with the toothless ending that Bergman thought he made. By the end of the film, David somewhat atones for his sins of misapplied love as he assures his son — after Karin has been helicoptered off the island back to the mental hospital — that the reality they live in is different than the one Karin does; and yet, they can help her — cure her in their own way — by loving her. As the apostle Paul writes:
"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have allfaith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. 4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part. 10 But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known. 13 And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love."
It seems to me that that is why, even 50 years later, Bergman’s film still holds up. It doesn’t move me the same way that Winter Light or The Silence moves me, but it’s an important film nonetheless because it marks a clear shift in Bergman’s tone; a shift toward the Bergman who wrestles with polarities: the darkly nihilistic and the light of grace — the kind of love — that saves.
So, yes, I don’t quite understand Bergman’s distaste with the ending. Sure, it may seem a little trite to some in how it so cleanly mitigates the problems the characters go through but, like the title of the film suggests — and what many Greek scholars talk about when they talk about Paul’s famous letter to the Corinthians — love, or better to understand God vis-à-vis love, is a riddle; there isn’t an easy answer just as one cannot look clearly through a murky mirror or dark glass. And so I like the dual endings presented in the film because it allows for the viewer to explicate those murky waters: is Karin, and our interpretation of God is love, “safe” because she’s surrounded by the people that love her most making it easy to better understand the pain she goes through, or do we understand God to be a passive one that allows for Karin to be haunted by some kind of demiurge shaped like a spider that will continue to emerge from walls, crawl up her body and possess and haunt her mind?
Just as easily as one could say, “God is love” so too could someone say, “God is not love” because it refuses to act on Karin’s behalf. That’s why, yes, even though the ending may seem sugary-sweet and wrapped up a little too neatly compared to how Bergman would fine-tune these ideas in better films such as Winter Light and The Silence, the film packs a punch because it leaves the viewer looking through the glass from all angles, trying their hardest to spy God and any kind of answer that helps make sense of the madness that surrounds us on a daily basis. Through the wrestling with these religious and existential quandaries that we learn the most (I firmly believe this, and it’s why I respond so strongly to Bergman’s ‘60s output). Through a Glass Darkly may contain an ending that seems too neat and tidy for some, but it’s an important film because it marks the beginning of the auteur's most inspired run of films. Looking back on it after a recent viewing, I understand even more clearly why the film still holds a special place for me: that ending gets me thinking and wrestling with the question of whether or not is as simple as just “love.” I believe it is.
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Labels: 60s, Antonioni, Beatles, Books, Ebert, Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Malick, Movie Tributes, Von Sydow
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Saturday, August 27, 2011
"No Cuffs!"
By M.A. Peel
Fred Astaire was born in the last year of the 19th century. Today, in the second decade of the 21st century, we pause for a moment to consider Swing Time — one of his greatest achievements — on its 75th anniversary.
The big assessments all are available to read: Arlene Croce’s The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book; John Mueller’s Astaire Dancing: The Musical Films; Hannah Hyman’s Fred and Ginger. There you can read about George Stevens and Howard Lindsay and all the formal calibrations and comparisons that are the world of film studies.
For myself, one question stuck in my head: What does Swing Time offer us in the 21st century?
Well, it is stunningly fresh in so many ways. It sweeps us into lush monochrome beauty, offering a respite from the glare of the colors of real life. The absurd storyline is not alien in the age of Wedding Crashers and The Hangover, not in plot points per se but in plot probability: man’s friends waylaid him from getting married because they don’t want him to leave the act, and twice — not once but twice — important things happen because characters aren't CERTAIN that men’s morning trousers shouldn't have cuffs.
Fred’s first entrance as Lucky Garnett in full wedding suit regalia sets up the distinctive tone for our time together. His uncanny ease in formal attire never loses its power: authority of place and time, conviction of character, and an understanding of the tools of his trade of dancing wrapped in genuine nonchalance. His waistcoat, top hat and spats are his second skin, and his understanding of this gives us all permission to simply enjoy the visual beauty of the lines of his exquisite suits rather than being put off by them.
Calling Judd Apatow, Jon Lucas, et al.: No one is watching Swing Time for the story, but it has charms to offer the 2011 viewer.
Lucky Garnett (Fred Astaire) has a best friend, Pop Cardetti (Victor Moore), which makes him a rich man in the important ways. But it’s 1936 and people are still reeling from the Depression.
The boys in the act take the cash Lucky gambled from them, but that doesn’t stop him. He wants to “go to New York” to make his fortune so that he can marry his fiancee. With no money for a ticket he hops a freight train. Pop runs along the train with a suitcase of all their clothes. It bursts open and they lose everything but a toothbrush. But since this is not a drama, they keep laughing. That’s part of the fantasy. In New York, they will have to talk their way into an apartment, and then Lucky tries to gamble a tuxedo off of a mark so that he go to the dance audition with Penny Carrol (Ginger Rogers). This ease in the face of serious issues — being broke — pulls you in. Yes, I want to have that much chutzpah and courage in the face of economic strain.
La Belle, La Perfectly Swell Romance: To try to capture the songs and the dance of Swing Time in words is a little painful: It earthbounds what lives on a celestial plain of motion and soundscape. But words (and YouTube) are the best we have to share the experience of this piece of art.
Pick Yourself Up: The most exuberant of the duo’s dances, perfectly punctuated by the flare of Rogers’s biased-cut dress. Astaire’s sheer lightness of movement creates a visual definition of “joyous” that never has been topped. The advice to “dust yourself, start all over again” is welcome to all ages at any age. The dance and the songs spark with optimism and confidence.
The Way You Look Tonight: The great nondanced song from the ultimate song-and-dance man. Its opening lines are in imprinted into the psyche of several generations. I love that Penny is not waitin' on no man, she’s going on with the details of life, such as touching up the dye job on her hair. Astaire needs only to sit and sing to exude his considerable charisma.
Waltz in Swing Time: One of the great orchestral pieces with big, pendulous declarative riffs which Astaire and Rogers dance around, between, amidst.
A Fine Romance: I love the snow. I love the fur coats. I love the inside joke of a “fine romance with no kisses,” given Astaire’s dislike of onscreen kissing. He said that his lovemaking onscreen was in dance. Oh yes.
Bojangles of Harlem: Fred and his three shadows. Another song with a bracing beat and an imaginative chorus line sequence. While a tribute to Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, as many have pointed out the flashy jacket is Sportin’ Life, not Bill who dressed very plainly. The challenge for some today is the blackface.
Never Gonna Dance: Even if you’d never read that this is considered the pinnacle of the Astaire/Rogers art, you would know it after one viewing. (Click here for proof.) More accessible and less fussy than Top Hat’s "Cheek to Cheek," it actually is more sophisticated and “deeper” in how it tells the whole story of “boy meets girl/loses girl/boy is crestfallen” in six exquisite minutes with a spectrum of moods, steps, and rhythms amid twinkling Art Deco splendor. Rogers’ gown is stunning: a simple satin slip dress with rhinestones crossing under the bust and across the bare back. When Rogers starts to walk away midpoint, Astaire pulls her back, just like the audience wants him too. Then the motion up the stairs to the big finish, with an amazing series of fast pirouettes from Ginger, until with one final pirouette she pivots away.
The plot then winds its way through more absurdity until Lucky and Penny find themselves with each other free and clear, with one boffo reprise singing “A Fine Romance” against “Just the Way You Look Tonight.”
You Do, Something to Me: The Astaire/Rogers team tantalizes because of how much more is their whole than the sum of their considerable and lovely parts. It’s the alchemy that happens when certain people are together: The Beatles, Vivien Leigh & Clark Gable, Crockett and Tubbs, Brangelina. There are pairings that just make people want more, want to know more, want to BE a part of the pair somehow. That phenomenon is in full force in Swing Time. Fred and Ginger are the most equal of partners; the synchronizing of their parallel steps is magical. For me, I can’t take my eyes off of Fred. For me his unfailing virtuosity overshines Ginger’s. I’m in the camp of “Eleanor Powell is a more accomplished dancer than Ginger Rogers.” But Powell never had the rapport with Astaire that Rogers did.
And so Rogers and Astaire are in a pantheon all their own. I hope that pop culture points the younger generation toward this artistry sometime in a big way. As I said, there’s lot that will make sense to The Hangover crowd, and much that would jazz them. What they might not know is just how hard Astaire worked at his art.
"This search for what you want is like tracking something that doesn't want to be tracked. It takes time to get a dance right, to create something memorable." — Fred Astaire
Best tribute, go watch the film!
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Labels: 30s, Apatow, Astaire, Beatles, G. Stevens, Gable, Ginger Rogers, Movie Tributes, Musicals, V. Leigh
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Monday, June 13, 2011
Giving Rodney some respect
By Edward Copeland
There used to be a story that recurred year after year in Rodney Dangerfield's later years where someone would nominate him to become a member of the Actors Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and each time, his application would be rejected. It sounds like a setup for one of his jokes that would end in how he "don't get no respect," but it wasn't a joke, it was true. When you look again at his performance in Back to School, which was released 25 years ago today, there's a real actor there. His Thornton Melon is quite different from his Al Czervik in Caddyshack. Oh, and the movie itself holds up pretty damn well too.
Aside from the 1971 film The Projectionist, a 1977 TV movie and uncredited work as an extra in Stanley Kubrick's The Killing, 1980's Caddyshack truly marked the beginning of Dangerfield's acting career — when Rodney was nearly 60. Of course, his career as a comedian got a similar late start. After an unsuccessful early try, he gave it up for regular work until he tried again at the age of 40. In a movie full of funny people, Caddyshack really boosted Dangerfield's image. Unfortunately, his next film, 1983's Easy Money, didn't quite work, though no one could say his Monty Capuletti was a repeat of Al Czervik either.
As a rule, the more names you see credited with writing a film, the more likely the movie will be a mess. Back to School turned out to be a great exception to that rule with three people, including Dangerfield, receiving story credit and four people named as writing the screenplay. The four credited screenwriters were Steven Kampmann, who wrote seven episodes of WKRP in Cincinnati and played Kirk, the compulsive liar who ran the diner in the first two seasons of Newhart; Will Porter, who co-wrote two films with Kampmann and an episode of Newhart; Peter Torokvei, who wrote eight episodes of WKRP as well as co-writing Real Genius and Guarding Tess; and Harold Ramis, whose resume runs too long to list. With the exception of Torokvei, everyone, including the other two people who have story credit, Greg Fields and Dennis Snee, had ties to Dangerfield, often through TV comedy specials. Many also had separate ties to each other through other projects, so I think this familiarity helped Back to School break the multiple writer curse. What surprised me just looking up things for this post is that I forgot what a huge hit Back to School was. It grossed more than $91 million at the U.S. box office and in its opening weekend, beat Ferris Bueller's Day Off (though Ferris had a two-day head start, opening on a Wednesday) by $2 million. By comparison, Caddyshack's total gross was merely $39 million. (Ferris only ended up around $70 million.)
Not too long ago, Back to School was being shown on commercial TV a lot and I caught much of it many times, but re-watching the uncut version for this anniversary tribute was the first time I'd seen it from start to finish in a long time. I had noticed that the TV versions never showed the scene where Dangerfield sings "Twist & Shout" in the bar (and what strange synchronicity that two films that opened within two days of each other in 1986 both had that song in it, one sung by the star, the other with its star lip-synching The Beatles' cover), but there were quite a few scenes that seemed to have been excised from TV versions. I was relieved that "Twist & Shout" remains on the DVD. I feared it was another example of money-grubbing music industry strong arms forcing them to remove it because they didn't keep paying them extortion and the movie's producers and copyright owners were being threatened with broken legs and cement boots if they didn't keep coughing up the dough. Television does this re-editing of movies quite often and, surprisingly, it's not for content. Edward Norton's underrated Keeping the Faith has its entire framing device removed from the TV cut as well as the hilarious blind date scene Ben Stiller's character has with a woman played by Lisa Edelstein, better known as Cuddy on House. I know they do it to shorten films to squeeze more commercials in, but some of the cuts just seem odd and I wonder who makes these decisions.
My mind may be blanking, but I certainly don't remember the TV cuts opening with the nice black-and-white prologue. The first image we see is an old style phonograph player with the needle coming down to play some opera. We then see a city street scene identified as New York 1940 and a young boy (Jason Hervey, the older
brother on The Wonder Years) admiring a fancy car pulling out into the street before he steps into Meloni's Tailor Shop, where his father (Boris Aplon) is busy working. He asks young Thornton how school was and he reluctantly hands over his report card, which does not contain glowing grades. His immigrant father expresses outrage — how does his son expect to go to college unless he gets good grades? Young Thornton says he doesn't want to go to college. He wants to work with his dad in the family business. Mr. Meloni gets angry and tells his son, "No matter how rich or successful a man is, if he don't got no education, he got nothing." Hervey even does Dangerfield's signature move and pulls at his shirt collar. As the rest of the credits roll, it's a great mockup of Thornton's coming of age into Dangerfield, changing his last name to Melon and transforming that little tailor shop into a successful chain of Thornton Melon's Tall and Fat Stores. Among the mocked up clips of Melon acquiring wealth and fame, they even sneak in a shot of him from Caddyshack, only in black and white. It then goes from the credit montage to Thornton's latest television commercial, which starts Dangerfield's verbal entrance in the film with a rapid series of one liners:"When you go jogging, do you leave potholes? When you make love, do you have to give directions? When you go to the zoo, do the elephants throw YOU peanuts? Do you look at a menu and say, 'OK?'"
We realize he's watching the ad in the back of his limo, driven by his faithful chauffeur/man for all purposes Lou (Burt Young). You hear the ad espouse the store's sizes such as "heavy, stout, extra stout and their new Hindenburg line." It closes with his slogan: "If you want to look thin, hang around with fat people." Melon is en route to a board meeting at his corporate headquarters, where everyone at the conference table is chowing down. Among the ideas offered include a toy to compete with the-then popular Cabbage Patch Kids, only the Melon Patch Kids, instead of being adopted have been abandoned. The meeting gets cut short when Thornton gets a call from his son Jason (Keith Gordon) from college. His dad asks him how his fraternity and the diving team are going and Jason tells his father that everything couldn't be better, though we can see that he doesn't belong to a frat and he serves only as the towel boy for the diving team, where he's tortured by one of the team's members, Chas (William Zabka, the lead adversary in The Karate Kid). Then, Melon has Lou take him home to prepare for a party his wench of a wife Vanessa (Adrienne Barbeau) has planned and which he's dreading. As he confides to Lou, "She gives good headache." When they arrive, he tells Lou that he can't believe they've been married for five years. "It seems like yesterday — and you know what a lousy day yesterday was."
As Thornton says to a potential romantic interest later in describing his marriage to Vanessa (after decades of bliss with Jason's late mother), "I was an earth sign, she was a water sign. Together, we made mud." He hates her and she feels the same toward him, basically using him as a bank account to throw trendy parties
where people come to suck up to her. She doesn't try too hard to hide her infidelities. Thornton even catches her at the party with Giorgio (Robert Picardo). Melon does his best to embarrass her, saying how he hates tiny food and taking most of the hors d'oeuvres off a table and turning them into a sandwich. When she introduces him to a couple she's trying to impress and compliments the woman's dress and its lovely shade of green, Melon's response is "If that dress had pockets, you'd look like a pool table." That's the final straw for Vanessa who asks to see Thornton in private where she demands a divorce. "I knew we had something in common," Melon says, whipping out divorce papers he's already had prepared. Vanessa vows he won't get off that easy — it'll cost him. Melon disagrees and starts showing her Polaroids he has of Vanessa and Giorgio in various places, though he asks for an explanation on one. "There's you, there's Giorgio…What's with the midget over here?" Vanessa storms out and Thornton takes a swim, tells Lou he's free and decides to visit Jason at college.At Grand Lakes University (mascot: The Hooters), things aren't going well for Jason. In addition to not making the diving team or being accepted into a fraternity, his grades aren't doing well either. He's telling his iconoclastic dorm roommate Derek Lutz (a hilarious Robert Downey Jr., with splashes of blue and purple in his hair) that he's thinking of dropping out of the whole enterprise. It doesn't help that he's got a mad crush on
Valerie Desmond (Terry Farrell), a girl who is sort of dating Chas and who Derek reminds him is far out of the league of dorks like the two of them. Farrell, who would go on years later to be Lt. Dax on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is the movie's weakest link in a cast that otherwise amazes with the depth of its great collection of character actors. When Lou and Thornton arrive, Thornton first starts walking blindly into Greek houses looking for Jason, learning that he doesn't belong to a frat, and checks out the diving team, where he finds out he's really the towel boy. So, when Jason and Derek get back to the dorm, Thornton and Lou surprise them by already waiting inside. Jason's dad confronts him about what he's discovered and wants an explanation. Jason gives a straight-forward response, "I lied." His father hugs him but tells his son, "Jason, you don't lie to me — you lie to girls." When Jason tells Thornton that he's thinking of dropping out, Melon won't have it and repeats his father's words to him. "If you don't have an education, you don't have anything" and he decides, he's going to go through the process with him — Thornton Melon is going to enroll as a freshman at Grand Lakes University.
Now, Thornton can't just waltz into enrollment. He never finished high school, has no records or GED, ACT or SAT scores that the university can take into account when considering him, explains Dean Martin (admittedly, a cheap laugh they use too often) played by the always reliable Ned Beatty. Melon finds a way around those problems by suggesting he donate the money for construction of the future Melon
School of Business, which introduces Thornton's villain for the film, business professor Philip Barbay (Paxton Whitehead), who holds Melon in disdain and feels his admission makes the accomplishments of students who worked hard to get there lack meaning. He shows up at the groundbreaking to protest to Dean Martin, who replies, "In Mister Melon's defense, it was a really big check." The rivalry grows worse when Melon becomes a student in Barbay's class and embarrasses him when he proposes the class set up a pretend business and Thornton corrects him on all the steps he left out that you have to go through to build a factory in the real world. The final straw though comes when Melon starts wooing his English teacher Dr. Diane Turner (Sally Kellerman), who had sort of been dating the stuffy Barbay.
Back to School was directed by Alan Metter and it can't really be said that he directed any notable films before or after this one (his most recent credit on IMDb is a 2005 Olivia Newton-John video) with a filmography that includes Girls Just Want to Have Fun, Moving, Police Academy: Mission to Moscow and, for television, The Growing Pains Movie. However, he has one bona fide winner on his resume with Back to School. It's almost wall-to-wall jokes, but it also has heart as well. No one can accuse it of being terribly original or having surprises in its plot (except for one delicious one which now, 25 years later, I'm sure every knows about). Thornton, who becomes a true party animal on campus treats college like
he does his business: He delegates, bringing in experts to do his homework. When Jason tells him that he's got a paper due on Kurt Vonnegut and he hasn't read any of the books, his dad tells him he tried, but he just didn't get them. Then, there's a knock on the dorm room door and who's standing there but Kurt Vonnegut himself. Then, to add another layer on the joke, Dr. Turner gives Thornton an 'F' on the paper because she says she can tell he didn't do it and "Whoever did write this doesn't know the first thing about Kurt Vonnegut!" For the final punchline, cut from TV because of language, we see Melon calling Vonnegut up to complain about the grade. "And another thing Vonnegut, I'm gonna stop payment on the check. Fuck me? Hey, Kurt, can you read lips? Fuck you! Next time, I'll call Robert Ludlum." 
What really holds Back to School together, other than Dangerfield himself and the high joke quotient, and helps it overcome its paper-thin, predictable plotting is the amazing cast assembled for it. In addition to the
aforementioned Gordon, Young, Beatty, Whitehead, Kellerman and Downey, we also get supporting actor extraordinaire M. Emmet Walsh as the diving team coach and a single scene of Edie McClurg (who appeared in both films with "Twist & Shout" that 1986 weekend) as one of Thornton's secretaries that he sends to Barbay's class to take notes on a dictation machine. Gordon really has the hardest role of them all because he's basically playing straight man to an entire cast as well as trying to shoulder the more "dramatic" parts of the story as he deals with the embarrassment his father causes him on campus. It doesn't help that Gordon must also moon over his would-be love interest Valerie, as played by Farrell, which provides the film's dullest moments since, to be blunt, Farrell's acting is horrid. That plot also entangles Zabka, whom you can't really judge since he's just there to be a one-dimensional frat boy asshole the same way he was a one-dimensional karate school asshole in The Karate Kid two years earlier, though we do get spared a moment at the end where his character suddenly has a turnaround and shouts, "You're alright, Melon!"
Perhaps the most memorable appearance of the film — though it was the only film in which the comedian ever appeared — is one that should ensure that the legend of the far-too-short career of Sam Kinison will go on. Discovered in his club by Dangerfield, he insisted on finding a place in the film for the brilliant wildman. There never was and never has been another comedian quite like Kinison, who was a huge influence on my friends and I during our high school years. I remember the night when I learned of his death and calling up a friend with the news, crying out, "Why couln't it have been Dice?" In Back to School, Kinison has a brief role as American history Professor Terguson, a shell-shocked Vietnam vet who has a tendency to explode into the type of rants you'd find in a Kinison standup routine. It's a hlarious, brief encapsulation of the comic's style that hopefully encourages people to seek out his actual comedy. Gone far too soon.
Of all the supporting performances that deserve special recognition, more must be said about the wonderfully droll work of Burt Young as Lou — driver, bodyguard, confidant and whatever job Thornton needs to be done. He's a man of few words, but he can earn so many laughs with no words at all, whether he's crushing a napkin
holder before proceeding to single-handedly beat up the university's football team or just laying in a chaisse lounge after Thornton and Vanessa finally split. He pulls off his one big speech when he tells Jason that he's being a big hard on his father, who needs his help for a change. "I know your pop 30 years. He understands. He's a nice guy and he's tough," Lou tells Jason. "Like me. I'm nice and I'm tough. I'll give you an idea what I mean. My two boys — I put one through college and the other I put through a wall. Your papa loves you. He's lookin' out for ya. Look out for him." Then, in one of my favorite moments, Lou gets to sit in the stands at the diving team event next to Derek who comments how no one heckles divers and blows an air horn when the opposing team dives (another scene cut for TV since it's an illegal act) prompting Lou to tell Derek, "I'm beginning to like you kid."
Back to School also offers one of the earlier Danny Elfman film scores, but it goes one step further. Elfman appears in the film himself with his band Oingo Boingo singing their song "Dead Man's Party" at a huge blowout that Thornton throws in the revamped dorm room that he, Jason, Derek and Lou share.
In the end though, this is Dangerfield's film and he deserves credit for giving an actual performance that goes beyond being a mere joke machine. True, Thornton Melon doesn't go too long without delivering a punchline,
but he's also a character with depth, a man whose love for his son truly comes through, who can register hurt. It's a shame that in his lifetime the Academy were such snobs to always refuse him entry, especially when you see some of the people who they have allowed to join. (Hell, they allowed Barbra Streisand to join before she had her first film even released). Dangerfield made some bad movies, but he did show he could act, even in a film I despised such as Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers. Back to School though I believe contains his best performance and it was his biggest hit. There was talk before he died about trying to do a remake. Don't even try. I can't imagine them finding an equal to Dangerfield or the rest of the cast. Leave well enough alone. If you've run out of new ideas, stop making new movies and just re-release the old ones. It would be better for the studios' bottom lines and audiences would be better served. Tweet
Labels: 80s, Beatles, Burt Young, Edward Norton, Kubrick, Movie Tributes, N. Beatty, Oliver Stone, Oscars, Ramis, Robert Downey Jr., Streisand, Television, Vonnegut
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Monday, January 10, 2011
These memories lose their meaning
By Edward Copeland
A little more than 30 years since his murder, films chronicling John Lennon and the formation of The Beatles almost have become their own genre. With Nowhere Boy, we get to see Lennon as a teen and see another portion of his biography fleshed out (and fleshed out well, thanks to the lead work of Aaron Johnson as young Lennon).
Nowhere Boy depicts the years when Lennon was a student constantly in trouble at school and more interested in his fledgling music career than anything else. He lives with his Aunt Mimi (Kristin Scott Thomas), who more or less raised John even though his mother Julia (Anne-Marie Duff) lives nearby.
His disinterest in academics causes many conflicts with Aunt Mimi, but Mimi does love the boy, going so far as helping him to buy a guitar so that his group The Quarrymen can play more, even securing paying gigs. However, when Mimi learns he's been suspended from school and didn't tell her, she sells the instrument, much to John's consternation.
Depending how much of a John Lennon/Beatles fanatic you are, many of the details that Nowhere Boy shares might be things you already know, but the film by director Sam Taylor-Wood and screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh paints such a vivid portrait of working class Liverpool in the 1950s, that it hardly matters. It would be a good story even if its main character didn't grow up to be a legend.
Johnson doesn't try to do a Lennon imitation and that makes his performance all the stronger. Instead of trying to sound or look like Lennon, he just plays the part and succeeds at capturing Lennon's essence in a way the role might not work if the emphasis was on casting a young facsimile.
The same goes for Thomas Brodie Sangster who plays the young Paul McCartney. The actor is 20 years old, but he makes a more-than-convincing 15-year-old McCartney. His character really occupies a small part of Nowhere Boy, but Sangster makes the most of his limited screen time.
Duff also gets a lot of nice moments as Lennon's flighty and absentee mother Julia. She tries to keep things on a fun level, knowing the disappointments she's brought to her son's life, but she gets to let loose late in the movie in scenes that are emotionally wrenching and heartbreaking.
Above all, Nowhere Boy is blessed to have Kristin Scott Thomas. Her career trajectory has taken a remarkable path. When she first gained a lot of notice around the time of The English Patient, she didn't really do that much for me. However, in the past few years, often in foreign language films, she's become one of the reliable actresses around, whether she's the lead (as in I've Loved You So Long) or in a supporting role (as she is here or in Tell No One).
For Lennon fans, Nowhere Boy really should be seen. For film fans in general, it provides a slice of life that's worth your time.
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Labels: 10s, Beatles, Kristin Scott Thomas
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Friday, March 26, 2010
Don't let the past remind us of what we are not now
By Edward Copeland
It's an old joke among some baby boomers (of which I'm very proudly not a member) that if they are of the right age and background, they all claim to have attended Woodstock in 1969. Of course, we know this simply isn't mathematically possible, but I think what confused the issue was Michael Wadleigh's remarkable Oscar-winning documentary of the event, released on this date in 1970. I think it's the pervasiveness of the images from that film that accounts for the collective memory of a generation.
Woodstock functions as a true documentary, it documents an event as well as a time and a place. For film buffs, there also is a bit of movie history at work as well. It earned film editor Thelma Schoonmaker her first Oscar nomination while she worked alongside a young assistant director and editor named Martin Scorsese,
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which began a collaboration that continued through every feature Scorsese has made as a director. It also earned an Oscar nomination for sound in addition to its documentary feature win. Something must have been in the air at the Academy that year: the original song score Oscar went to The Beatles for the documentary Let It Be. In the process of chronicling Woodstock, more than 100 miles of films were exposed and 16 cameras were employed, which seems as if it's that an amazingly small number given how much is captured on screen as the images hover, float and glide above and through the crowds, around the stage, take side trips into the neighboring town and that's not even mentioning the infamous split screens (sometimes divided into three).While the movie's reputation is that of a concert film, it's often the nonmusical portions that prove most fascinating. The film opens with one Sidney Westerfield, owner of an antique tavern in Mongaup Valley, N.Y.,
expressing amazement about the event, when 50,000 concertgoers and nearly a million people who showed up. He even had nothing but praise for the young people, finding them nothing but polite. The congestion and traffic tie-ups didn't even bother him, even though that meant he couldn't get out for food and had to live on corn flakes for two days. It was "too big for the world," Westerfield said. In fact, the film was so big that despite its reputation and acclaim, Wadleigh added unused footage (including a performance by Janis Joplin) and released a director's cut which is now the only version of the film available. It's just as great as the original but the changes are almost imperceptible except for the epitaph at the end listing all those who have died since Woodstock was held in August 1969.
Since I was a mere infant at the time, learning of the turbulent late '60s through history and other documentary artifacts, it's always surprising to see how peaceful and what a lack of conflict occurred during the Woodstock Festival, which took place just a little more than a year after the chaos of the Democratic Convention in Chicago. While Vietnam is certainly present, the peace part of the event predominates as
much as the music and the few citizens in the nearby town who complain seem to be the exception rather than the rule. All of the other adults seem to find these mostly long-haired young people taking over their area "like an army invading a nation" charming and polite. The businesspeople welcomed the economic boost, others reveled in delight at the politeness of the young people and even took offense when one young man referred to himself as a freak, believing he was being critical of himself. "From what I've heard from the outside sources for many years I was very, very much surprised and I'm very happy to say we think the people of this country should be proud of these kids, not withstanding the way they dress or the way they wear their hair, that's their own personal business," one man said, "but their, their inner workings, their inner selves, their, their self-demeanour cannot be questioned; they can't be questioned as good American citizens." The official who said that was the police chief. Given the lack of civility that has developed in this country over issues as innocuous as health care, I wonder if these sort of reactions would even be possible today. Would people have welcomed and complimented large groups of Iraq war protesters attending a concert like Woodstock like this if one had been held? Somehow, I doubt it.Max Yasgur, owner of the farm where the concert was held
It took nine months of planning to bring off the concert at a cost of a couple of million dollars and it began as a paid event but as it became a cultural event and young people trampled the fences, the organizers decided to let it be a free event and take the monetary loss, deciding that the people's welfare and the music were "a helluva lot more important than the dollar." Imagine something like that occurring in the Age of TicketMaster.
The original crowd expectation ranged from 50,000 to 200,000 but no one has ever nailed down an exact count, with somewhere north of half a million people being the best guess. With interstates tied up, artists had to be flown in by helicopter. With so many cameras roaming the grounds, you get a lot of great nonsequitur images: nuns flashing peace signs; an interview by kazoo; a naked guy standing in the crowd and dancing with a sheep. One of the film's most compelling moments is a lengthy interview with a young couple, though they might not call themselves a couple. "We ball and everything but we're not in love or anything," the girl explains. The boy gets deeper, speaking of his immigrant father who doesn't understand his aimlessness in America, the land of opportunity. Why aren't you playing the game? his father wants to know. The sincere young man displays a degree of insight when he says that most people at Woodstock are looking for an answer when there really isn't one and they are all sort of lost.The sincerity of the participants is why the film holds up so well 40 years later after all the mockery and parodies of the 1960s youth culture and mindset. Even the moments that lend themselves to laughter are unmistakably real as the P.A. announcements (somewhat reminiscent of those in the same year's fictional
film, Robert Altman's MASH) warning concertgoers to steer clear of the brown acid but later adding that the acid isn't poison, it's just bad and if one felt the need to experiment, it's best to try just half a tab. Then when a downpour of rain turns the field into a muddy mess, there are some conspiratorial-minded attendees who are convinced that helicopters they see hovering overhead are really the government seeding the clouds to spoil their party. It's ironic, because the Army National Guard helicopters that were there were brought medical teams to help with anyone who need medical aid (a baby was born at the festival after all). Pretty incredible considering that this was during Vietnam and the Nixon Administration. Compare that to how slow the response was to a national disaster such as Hurricane Katrina but a hand was lent to natural opposition attending a concert. The times, they have-a-changed, and not for the better. Could Nixon have been the real compassionate conservative?
As for the film's techniques itself, it is the use of split screens that are understandably most celebrated. Unlike films such as Mike Figgis' Time Code, the use of the device comes off appropriate instead of as a gimmick or a distraction. In fact, often the juxtapositions prove quite perfect as in one section where the left half shows an interview with a concert organizer talking quite seriously about what's going on while on the right an anonymous couple prepares to lay down in tall grass to make love. The device is used extensively during the musical acts, showing the same performer from different angles or different members of the band or
contrasting the performer with the crowd enjoying the show. You get different ways of seeing Crosby, Stills and Nash perform instead of a simple three shot. One thing I had forgotten was how new an act the trio was. "This is the second time we've ever played in front of people, man, we're scared shitless," Stephen Stills told the crowd. Even though Woodstock is a long film, there still isn't enough room to include all the musical acts who participated or all the songs they played because the movie is first and foremost a documentary and that's what makes it superb. As the festival did, it begins with Richie Havens, it includes a young Arlo Guthrie (whom I never noticed before, but bears a striking resemblance to Bob Geldof), Joan Baez speaks of her imprisoned husband and federal inmates hunger striking his imprisonment over the draft, Country Joe McDonald and the Fish perform (and the film adds a sing-along bouncing ball and lyrics), Joe Cocker does what he does and makes John Belushi's spasmodic impression seem like less of a parody, The Who hits the stage and Pete Townshend forgoes smashing his guitar in favor of giving it as a gift to the audience and, for some reason, Sha Na Na sings "At the Hop." To close the festival, Jimi Hendrix shows his absolute mastery of the guitar with a unique rendition of the "Star-Spangled Banner" which then blends seamlessly into "Purple Haze" as the camera captures the messy aftermath once everyone had left.
Woodstock, both the event and the documentary, was a once in a lifetime occurrence. There have been similar attempts such as the massive charity concert Live Aid, but those were all so prepackaged that they lacked the certain improvisational feel that came with the Woodstock Nation. Of course, that didn't stop them from trying to spawn a sequel. If followups are good for Hollywood and Broadway and books, why not try to re-create a once-in-a-lifetime zeitgeist, which is precisely what they attempted on the 25th anniversary in 1994, broadcast on MTV of course. At the time, I dreamed of making a documentary of the event, though it would have been of a particularly satirical bent. I envisioned a three-way split screen with a featured artist in the center, a twentysomething decked out in the proper corporate wardrobe and drinking the right sponsor's beverage on the right and an aging baby boomer on the left, watching at home on television while working out on his or her StairMaster. Alas, I didn't make that film. It's difficult to make the same history twice, and it shouldn't be tried, but it's a great thing Michael Wadleigh and his crew were there in August 1969 to record a lasting document of what happened on Max Yasgur's farm. The documentary already resides in the Library of Congress' collection of historic films and it is great for future generations to have this movie to learn from and look back on. The music isn't too bad either.
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Labels: 70s, Altman, Beatles, Documentary, Movie Tributes, Music, Oscars, Scorsese
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