Thursday, August 08, 2013
Karen Black (1939-2013)
Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, Karen Black occupied a singular place in movies, hovering in that rarefied atmosphere that placed her somewhere between character actress and star. It landed her roles in many of the decade's classics as well as some of its silliness (such as Airport 1975) As the '80s came along, more of her work came on television and in low-budget horror films, but her early work kept her a recognizable name. Black died today at 74 after a battle with ampullary cancer diagnosed in 2010.
Born Karen Ziegler in Park Ridge, Ill., the actress attended Northwestern University before heading east and attending The Actors Studio with Lee Strasberg. She appeared in several off-Broadway plays and as an understudy in the 1961 comedy Take Her, She's Mine starring Art Carney before making her starring debut in 1965's The Playroom whose cast also included Bonnie Bedelia and Richard Thomas. Her second feature film made a mark for many people when she joined the cast of Francis Ford Coppola's 1966 comedy You're a Big Boy Now starring Elizabeth Hartman, Geraldine Page, Rip Torn and Tony Bill, among others. She made lots of episodic television appearances until she gained noticed in the small role of a hooker named Karen who drops acid in a cemetery with Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda in 1969's Easy Rider. Her counterculture journey continued the following year when she played the role of Rayette, the country-music loving waitress who becomes crazy in love with the alienated Robert Dupea (Jack Nicholson) in Bob Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces. The part earned Black her sole Oscar nomination as supporting actress.
Black teamed with Nicholson again the following year, only Nicholson sat in the director's chair as she starred opposite Bruce Dern in Drive, He Said. She soon followed that by assuming the part of the Claire Bloom surrogate Mary Jo Reid or The Monkey opposite Richard Benjamin in Ernest Lehman's adaptation of Philip Roth's comic novel Portnoy's Complaint. In 1974, she joined Zero Mostel when he brought his Tony-winning role from Eugene Ionesco's Rhinoceros to the big screen co-starring Gene Wilder. That same year she assumed the role of Tom Buchanan's mistress, Myrtle Wilson, in Jack Clayton's version of The Great Gatsby starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow and the film won Black a Golden Globe for best supporting actress — and she did it in two dimensions! Finally, she completed 1974 by playing the scrappy stewardess trying to fly a crippled jumbo jet whose flight crew got taken out when a small plane crashed into its side in the funniest of the Airport movies, Airport 1975 (which I'll always love for having Gloria Swanson playing herself dictating her memoirs into a tape recorder as the plane is going down).
Black found herself busy again in 1975, beginning with the cult classic horror film Trilogy of Terror where she starred in three shorts all based on stories by the recent passed Richard Matheson. She also co-starred in John Schlesinger's film of the Nathanael West classic novella Day of the Locust. Her epic piece for that year though involved her first collaboration with Robert Altman in his masterpiece Nashville. Black played country superstar Connie White, filling the bill for another ailing star Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakeley), during events surrounding the political campaign of Replacement Party candidate Hal Philip Walker. In 1976, Black worked again with Nashville co-star Barbara Harris and frequent co-star Bruce Dern as well as William Devane to appear in what would be the final film of the Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock's darkly funny tale of crooks, con men and kidnapping, Family Plot. In 1982, she returned to Broadway under Altman's direction as part of the ensemble of Come Back to the Five & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. Altman's impossible-to-see film version featuring Black came out later that same year. Aside from some notable television appearances, most of her post-1982 career has been in horror and science fiction, but Karen Black delivered so much great work when her career was hot, she won't soon be forgotten. RIP Ms. Black.
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Labels: Altman, Awards, Coppola, Geraldine Page, Gloria Swanson, Hitchcock, Hopper, Mia Farrow, Nicholson, Obituary, Oscars, Redford, Rip Torn, Roth, Television, Theater
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Wednesday, July 17, 2013
What he really wanted to do was be an actor
BLOGGER'S NOTE: This post is part of The Sydney Pollack Blogathon occurring through July 22 at Seetimaar — Diary of a Movie Lover
By Edward Copeland
For 40 years, from 1965 to 2005, Sydney Pollack directed 19 feature films. His last directing effort appeared as an installment of PBS' American Masters series on the architect Frank Gehry. Prior to that, he directed lots of episodic television. As Pollack reached the end of his life (and beyond it) he produced projects more than he directed and toward the end he also resumed the artistic endeavor where he started, acting more
and more often. When he ventured into show business, he aimed toward acting. His father hoped that Pollack would pursue a career in dentistry, but after catching the theater bug in high school in South Bend, Ind., he left for New York following graduation and studied with legendary acting teacher Sanford Meisner at Meisner's Neighborhood Playhouse (The same year he directed the American Masters special on Frank Gehry, he executive produce another episode of the series on Meisner). Eventually, he became an assistant to Meisner and even taught acting to others, though in a 2006 interview with Venice Magazine, Pollack resisted calling the technique he learned and passed on "The Method." "People call a lot of things 'The Method,' but there really isn’t one Method," Pollack said, "but it’s all derived from Stanislavsky. It’s all derived from Stanislavsky, but Stella Adler taught it different than Sandy Meisner and Strasberg taught it differently from both of them, and Harold Clurman taught it differently than the three of them, and Bobby Lewis took it in his own direction, as well. They each took The Moscow Art Theater of Stanislavsky and basic principles, and then developed their own approach. The goal was always the same: to find a way to analyze the construction of truthful behavior within imaginary circumstances."As he acted a lot in television of the 1950s, Pollack's interest turned to directing. While Pollack directed and produced some great and good films (my favorite being 1982's Tootsie, where he took his first substantial acting role since an episodic television appearance on a 1964 episode of the crime drama Brenner starring Edward Binns and James Broderick), after Tootsie, he acted or did voicework in more films and TV shows than his entire filmography. In many ways, I found Pollack more interesting at times as an actor than as a filmmaker, and that's where his career in the arts began, with his single Broadway role in 1955's The Dark Is Light Enough by Christopher Fry and starring Katharine Cornell, Tyrone Power and featuring Christopher Plummer.
Pollack began directing episodic television in 1961 and had ceased television acting in 1964 with that appearance on Brenner. As he jettisoned acting to concentrate on directing, he made a single movie: the 1962 Korean War drama War Hunt. The film starred John Saxon and Charles Aidman, but in addition to Pollack's supporting role, the movie offered appearances by Gavin MacLeod, Tom Skerritt and uncredited work by another future director, Francis Ford Coppola, as an Army truck driver. The biggest name among the ranks (at least he would be eventually) turned out to be a young Robert Redford. Pollack would direct Redford in seven films: This Property Is Condemned, Jeremiah Johnson, The Way We Were, Three Days of the Condor, The Electric Horseman, Out of Africa and Havana. Redford served as one of the producers of A Civil Action which featured Pollack in an acting role.
The headline at the top of this piece isn't quite true. Pollack return to acting in 1982's Tootsie (aside from a brief cameo in 1979's The Electric Horseman) proved to be quite a reluctant one. He already had cast Dabney Coleman to play George Fields, agent to prima donna/unemployed actor Michael Dorsey (Dustin Hoffman) but Hoffman pushed Pollack into taking the role himself, seeing the dynamic they had in their disagreements over the script. Pollack didn't want to leave Coleman in the cold so he cast him in the role of movie's fictional soap opera's director instead. Hoffman's instincts didn't fail him or the film as his scenes with Pollack provide many of the movie's comic highlights. You get that in the scene above, in the scene in the Russian Tea Room where Michael surprises George by showing up as his new alter ego Dorothy Michaels and, in perhaps my favorite scene between the two of them, when Michael shows up at George's home late one night to try to explain the romantic complications, including the fact that the father (Charles Durning) of the woman he loves (Jessica Lange) bought Dorothy an engagement ring. Forgetting for a moment what this all means, Pollack's reaction to news of the proposal comes off as priceless.
Following Tootsie, Pollack returned to the directing-producing track for a decade. During this decade he won his two Oscars for Out of Africa, but looking at the projects in that decade on which he worked solely as a producer or executive producer actually look more interesting than most of the movies he directed in that time. Some examples of his producing output from 1982 to 1991: Songwriter, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Presumed Innocent, White Palace, (surprisingly) King Ralph and Dead Again. With Tootsie, Pollack displayed a grounded, realistic comic side, but when 1992 arrived and he began to act up a storm, his range
widened, even if for the most part Pollack got pigeonholed as either a lawyer or a doctor, he played distinct members of each profession. Ten years after Tootsie, he managed roles in three films (and found time to executive produce two movies as well: HBO's A Private Matter and Leaving Normal, which had the misfortune of being too similar to Thelma & Louise and coming out a few months after the other film). The photo at the top of this post shows Pollack in his first 1992 role, Dick Mellon, business lawyer to besieged studio exec Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins) in Robert Altman's The Player. As Mellon, Pollack plays a no-nonsense Hollywood figure who has seen it all and never changes his vocal tone, no matter how serious the situation becomes, and doles out truisms such as in this exchange with Mill. "Rumors are always true. You know that," Mellon tells Mill. "I'm always the last to hear about them," Griffin sighs. "No, you're always the last one to believe them," Dick corrects his client. Pollack, as in the case of his casting in Tootsie, hadn't been the first choice of the director. Of course, Pollack had helmed Tootsie and opposed casting himself as George Fields. With The Player, Altman tried to cast as many of the character parts with lesser-known faces because his film contained so many star cameos and he wanted to avoid as much audience
confusion as possible. Initially, Altman sought writer-director Blake Edwards, who also started his career as an actor, though he hadn't appeared on screen since 1948, for the part of Mellon, but it didn't work out and he went with Pollack, who only had that one role in Tootsie in 30 years. While The Player offers darker, satirical laughs than Tootsie did and Pollack doesn't get the laughs out of Dick Mellon that he did out of George Fields, he garnered more laughs in his most dramatic, deepest film role yet as Jack, the divorcing best friend of Gabe Roth (Woody Allen) in Husbands and Wives. I wasn't as crazy about the film as others, but Pollack delivered one of his greatest acting jobs, ranging from the at-ease midlife divorced man finding renewed vigor with a twentysomething aerobics instructor (Lysette Anthony) and then turning downright nasty on her at a party when she doesn't meet his standards for intellectual heft. He literally drags her from the soiree and tosses her toward his car, accusing her of being an "infant." It's a scary side of Pollack that we'll see more of in other roles. His third on-screen role of 1992 didn't receive a credit, but the cameo in Death Becomes Her provides what could be Pollack's funniest moments as an ER doctor examining Meryl Streep. The clip below leaves out his character's final punch line.Until his death from cancer in May 2008, seeing Pollack act became a much more common sight than spotting his directing credit. He turned up in legal entanglements again in films such as A Civil Action, Michael Clayton and Changing Lanes. He guided Tom Cruise into the sexual netherworld of the rich and powerful in Stanley Kubrick's final film, Eyes Wide Shut. He took roles in the last two films he directed, Random Hearts and The Interpreter. Pollack even provided the voice for the studio executive in The Majestic and the French film Avenue Montaigne. His final film role was in the romantic comedy Made of Honor where he played the father of the male maid of honor (Patrick Dempsey). On television, he did more voice work on comedies such as Frasier and King of the Hill. He also played a doctor on an episode of Mad About You and had a recurring role as Will's father on Will & Grace. He even played himself on an episode of Entourage, his last TV or movie appearance. Of all his late appearances though, the one that stands out to me also came in 2007 and put him in the role of another doctor. In the batch of the last nine episodes of The Sopranos, Pollack played jailed oncologist Warren Feldman, incarcerated with the dying Johnny Sac (Vincent Curatola) in the great episode "Stage 5." This scene I believe gives a great example of how talented Pollack truly could be as an actor.
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Labels: Altman, Blake Edwards, Coppola, Cruise, Dabney Coleman, Durning, Dustin Hoffman, J. Lange, Kubrick, Plummer, Redford, Streep, Sydney Pollack, The Sopranos, Tim Robbins, Woody
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Friday, August 03, 2012
Edward Copeland's Top 100 of 2012 (60-41)
Perhaps the crowning achievement of the Italian neorealist movement. This story of Italians fighting back against fascism and the Nazis during World War II plays as powerful and moving today as it ever did, with a great cast led by Anna Magnani, who appears in one of the film's most memorable sequences. Despite being generally hard on the film, Manny Farber declared Open City the best film released in the U.S. in 1946 and called Magnani’s performance “the most perfect job by an actress in years and years.”
A breathtaking debut that launched a mostly great film series about Truffaut's screen alter ego, Antoine Doinel, and containing perhaps the most famous freeze frame in film history. It's not bad as a coming-of-age picture either. While The 400 Blows stands alone as the best of the Antoine Doinel films, it’s fascinating to watch Jean-Pierre Leaud play the character from an adolescent to an adult. In its own way, the film resembles the first installment of a fictional version of Michael Apted’s Up documentary series only focusing on a single character.
Pollack didn't just direct and act in this comic masterpiece, he really played tailor as well, stitching together multiple versions of its screenplay to come up with the exquisite finished garment. Dustin Hoffman's brilliant performance as perfectionist pain-in-the-ass actor Michael Dorsey and Dorothy Michaels, the female persona he creates to get work, stands as the crowning achievement of his acting career. It doesn't hurt to be surrounded by an equally solid ensemble that includes Teri Garr, Dabney Coleman, Charles Durning, George Gaynes, Doris Belack, Geena Davis and a nearly all-improvised role by Bill Murray.
Preminger’s crowning achievement could be a routine noirish mystery if it weren’t for its great ensemble of Dana Andrews, Gene Tierney, Judith Anderson, Vincent Price and, most of all, Clifton Webb delivering its wry and witty dialogue by Jay Dratler, Samuel Hoffenstein and Betty Reinhardt (with alleged uncredited contributions from Ring Lardner Jr.). A couple of examples: Price as Laura’s cad of a fiancé Shelby Carpenter declaring ,"I can afford a blemish on my character, but not on my clothes" and Webb as bitchy newspaper columnist Waldo Lydecker describing his work, "I don't use a pen. I write with a goose quill dipped in venom." Laura could be called the All About Eve of film noir mysteries.
Every time I hear that a friend or acquaintance is going to have a baby, I make the same simple request: Do everything in their power to keep all knowledge of this movie away from them until they see it. I would have loved to have seen it without knowing that the shower scene was coming or the truth about Norman Bates. I hope others can have that experience.
One of the biggest jumps of any films from the last list. When revisiting The Last Picture Show for its 40th anniversary last year after having not seen the movie in years, it truly captivated me with its stark beauty. Despite its setting in 1951 in a small Texas town, it contains a universality that resonates today both in human and economic terms. Plot doesn't drive the story — character, not only of the people but of the town itself, does. While you watch the movie, you aren't concerned with what happens next or how the film ends because you realize that life will go on for most of these fictional folks you've come to know. It's telling a coming-of-age story — several in fact — and not all concern the teen characters in the tale. It's also about love and loss, not always in the present tense.
Not only does Broadcast News hold up to repeated viewings, it holds such a special place in my heart that I almost can’t view it rationally. I overidentify with Albert Brooks’ character of Aaron Altman and I’ve known a couple of women with similarities to Holly Hunter’s Jane Craig. More importantly, James L. Brooks wrote and directed a very funny and touching valentine to the decline in television news standards and set it against an unrequited love triangle (with William Hurt’s Tom Grunick filling the third point as well as representing TV news’s deterioration). The supporting cast also aids the entertaining proceedings with the likes of Robert Prosky, Joan Cusack, Lois Chiles, Peter Hackes, Christian Clemenson and Jack Nicholson as the anchor of the network’s evening news.
Even people who view Capra as a sentimental sap tend to like this great madcap romantic romp thanks to the great chemistry of Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. The first film to sweep the top five categories at the Oscar continues to hold up thanks in no small part to the chemistry between Gable and Colbert. Memorable scenes pile up one after another involving great character actors such as Roscoe Karns and Alan Hale Sr. Perhaps the most magical scene comes when Colbert’s Ellie asks Gable’s Peter if he's ever been in love while on opposite sides of the blanket and he momentarily gets serious, wistfully describing his ideal woman while Ellie slowly melts on the other side of the blanket. May the walls of Jericho always fall.
Here comes Hitch again with his most personal and, in many ways, disturbing film about love and obsession and the need to replace what one has lost. It also happens to be another of my great moviegoing experiences, having been able to see the 1996 restoration at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York. Robert Burks’ cinematography never came across as vividly, especially the reds in the scenes set at Ernie’s. James Stewart delivered one of his best performances as a former cop, already damaged psychologically, pushed further to the edge when he falls for a woman named Madeline (Kim Novak) that he’s been hired to follow and later when he meets her doppelganger and attempts to make her over in Madeline’s image.
As the years roll by, many find themselves less enthused by Tarantino's film. I am not among their ranks, finding that I'm as enthralled, entertained and as giddy as I was the first time I saw it whenever I see any part of it again. Similarly, my faith in Quentin remains strong as well, especially in the wake of Inglourious Basterds, which I definitely could see on a list like this once it reaches its eligibility if it holds up as well as it has so far.
Billy Wilder made so many great comedies with varying levels of pathos that it's hard to pick just one. I considered Some Like It Hot and One, Two Three, but this one remains for me his best film among the ones played primarily for laughs. In the wake of Mad Men, the film proves particularly interesting to watch (even if Roger Sterling thinks female elevator operators defy reality).
Even before the recent passing of Andy Griffith, I had decided that I had to make a spot for A Face in the Crowd on this list. As far as I’m concerned, it undoubtedly stands as Kazan’s best film and as a bit of a prescient one. Without this film, I’m not sure Paddy Chayefsky would have been inspired nearly 20 years later to write Network. Budd Schulberg deserves the bulk of the credit, adapting A Face in the Crowd from a short story he wrote called “Arkansas Traveler.” The film broke ground in its depiction of the convergence and intermingling of the media, corporate and political worlds. In addition to Griffith’s stellar performance as Lonesome Rhodes, the cast includes exemplary work from Patricia Neal, Walter Matthau and Tony Franciosa. Mike Wallace, John Cameron Swayze and Walter Winchell even make cameos as themselves. The film’s reputation should only grow.
When one of the early moments of a movie shows Edward Norton squeezed against the man breasts of a sobbing Meat Loaf, it boggles my mind how many people who saw Fight Club when it came out didn’t immediately recognize the film as a satire. Every time I’ve watched this film, I’ve loved it more than I did originally. To further emphasize its strength, the first time I saw it, I already knew the twist because of an out-of-nowhere comment by David Thomson in a completely unrelated article in The New York Times. Based on Chuck Palahniuk’s novel, Jim Uhl’s screenplay and David Fincher’s direction spin a funhouse tour of the consumer culture, self-help groups and machismo. Norton turns in a great performance as always as do Brad Pitt as the devil on his shoulder and Helena Bonham-Carter as a twisted kindred spirit.
A running gag between Wagstaff and I in recent years is that I believe Die Hard is the greatest film ever made. OK, I don't really believe that, but this is one of the best, especially as far as action goes and Alan Rickman remains one of the all-time great movie villains. In addition to having a great bad guy, what sets Die Hard apart from other action films is that its hero, John McClane (Bruce Willis) isn't superhuman. By the end of the movie, he looks as if he's been through hell.
This film doesn't get mentioned as often as it should, but its portrait of the perils of vigilante justice comes through as strongly today as I imagine it did when it was originally released. Henry Fonda and Harry Morgan try to speak for calm and rationality against the horde ready to inflict mob violence.
The time is over for the debate as to whether the Oscar this classic silent won in the Academy's first year was the equivalent of "best picture." All that needs to be said is that is a great film, Academy seal of approval or not. It remains both heartbreaking and beautiful 85 years after its debut.
The Godfather Part II may have won best picture in 1974, but for my money it wasn't even the best Coppola film that year, let alone the best picture (not that it isn't good). This simple tale of an eavesdropping expert (Gene Hackman giving one of his best, most restrained performances) experiencing sudden moral qualms remains riveting and thoughtful to this day.
Supposedly, Hitchcock often named this gem as his personal favorite of his films and it certainly remains one of his best with its dry, mordant wit and a great lead in Joseph Cotten as Uncle Charlie, worshipped by Teresa Wright as his niece Charlie. Much comic relief gets provided by Henry Travers as young Charlie's father and Hume Cronyn as his murder mystery-loving friend.
I'm not talking to you Travis, but about you, and Scorsese and Paul Schrader's dark, modern spin on The Searchers only grows more stunning as the years roll on. Robert De Niro gives one of his greatest performances and, for my money, this may remain Jodie Foster's finest work.
Jean Renoir made a lot of great films and at least two unquestionable masterpieces, including this one, yet you seldom hear his name come up unless you are talking with real cinephiles. Shameful — because his films don't belong to elite tastes: They belong to everyone. This vivid portrait of WWI prisoners of war proves that since it was the very first time the Academy bothered to nominate a foreign language film for best picture. It should have won too.
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Labels: Bogdanovich, Capra, Chayefsky, Coppola, Fincher, Hitchcock, Kazan, Lists, Murnau, Preminger, Renoir, Scorsese, Sydney Pollack, Tarantino, Truffaut, Wellman
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Edward Copeland's Top 100 of 2012 (40-21)
Fritz Lang made a lot of good movies, but nothing equaled this tale told in his native language. Peter Lorre made his mark as the hunted child killer in a film filled with atmosphere, suspense and thought.
Kept from the public for years after its initial release, the one plus to its exile was that I experienced this masterpiece of a political thriller — 50 years old this year — for the first time on the big screen in a crisp, black-and-white print. I hope that Jonathan Demme’s misguided idea of trying to remake this classic didn’t sour the original or scare younger viewers away from seeking out Frankenheimer’s version. The 1962 Manchurian Candidate contains many attributes that make it worth recommending, but every film lover must witness Angela Lansbury’s portrayal of Mrs. Iselin, a contender for the top 10 screen villains of all time.
My much-missed dog Leland Palmer Copeland didn’t usually watch TV, but whenever this classic came on, she was drawn to it. One time, Leland even seemed to sit on the couch and watch it from beginning to end. Maybe it was the music, maybe it was the colors. The sad side effect of Leland’s affection for this film that no one truly ever outgrows is that now that she isn’t here to watch it Dorothy and her friends with me any longer, Oz sometimes proves too painful for me to revisit.
No one gives this film the credit for its darkness that it really deserves. This isn't sappy sentimental drivel; this is about a man who feels as if he's been pissed on all his life and finally reaches the end of his rope. James Stewart's talent, Capra's gifts and the script by Frances Goodrich & Albert Hackett make George Bailey's journey plausible and touching. Only a Mr. Potter could hate this film.
Howard Hawks directed John Wayne to his second-greatest performance in this thrilling tale of a cattle drive and bitter rivalries. It also contains the perfect example of a Hawksian woman as Joanne Dru keeps talking, even with an arrow protruding from her body. I feel as if Hawks has slipped some in esteem among the old masters as far as the younger critics out there go. This master of nearly all genres seems long overdue for resurgence.
I wrote in my 2007 list that The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde constantly swap slots for my choice as the best film of 1967 and damn if they haven’t done it again five years later. One of the many great lines in 2009’s (500) Days of Summer comes when the narrator, in describing Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character, says that an early exposure to sad British pop music and a misreading of The Graduate led him to believe that the search for love always leads to The One. (If I’m still around to make another top 100 in 2019, I suspect you’ll find (500) Days of Summer there — after multiple viewings I believe it’s the 21st century Annie Hall.) Back to The Graduate itself, Nichols’ direction looks better with each viewing and the cast remains remarkable. It’s just that my reaction to the story itself that waxes and wanes. It’s never bad – it’s just that sometimes I find myself loving it a bit less than the last time.
The history of movies doesn’t lack for great teamings of directors and actors and the man who more or less made John Wayne an icon with the way he introduced him as The Ringo Kid in Stagecoach also directed the Duke to his best acting performance here. Wayne always worked as a good guy, but he proved his acting chops when someone inserted an element of darkness into his characters. The Searchers also has proved to be a useful template for many other films, most notably Taxi Driver and Paul Schrader’s Hardcore. Ford brought a lot of great imagery to this story and it arguably contains the greatest closing shot of his long career.
As I foretold a couple notches back when writing about The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde holds the higher esteem in my heart in this snapshot in time. Perhaps it’s a side effect of the journey I took through Penn’s entire filmography following his death, but it’s a great film regardless. Each time I watch it again I become more convinced — harrowing moments of violence aside — this truly plays as much as a comedy as The Graduate. At the time I re-visited it, watching how the Depression-era bank robbers became folk heroes to the masses, the resonance with the destruction 21st century Wall Street bankers wreaked on our nation’s economy was easier to identify with than ever before.
In the 1927-28 contest for "Artistic Quality of Production" at the Oscars, this film faced off against Sunrise and Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness. While Sunrise won and I wouldn’t argue against its status as a superb film (It’s not that far back on this list after all), I admit to preferring Vidor's film and its tale of striving to succeed as everything in the world appears to conspire to keep you down.
There's a good reason that so many cite Robert Towne's screenplay as one of the great examples of writing for film. If only all scripts (including some of Towne’s) were this superb. It remains one of the best examples of a modern noir, filmed in color, as well as Polanski’s best work. Jack Nicholson’s Jake Gittes came in his unbelievable and unforgettable run of great 1970s performances that began with 1969’s Easy Rider. It also gives us one of the sickest screen villains in Noah Cross, played so well by John Huston. Chinatown always will live on in the pantheon of film’s with last lines so memorable even people who’ve never seen it know the words.
You know 1950 was a great year for movies released in the United States when a picture as great as All About Eve only finishes third on my list for that year (behind The Third Man and Sunset Blvd.). That takes nothing away from All About Eve though with its brittle and brilliant dialogue and multiple great performances, including Bette Davis’ best, Celeste Holm, Thelma Ritter and, most especially, George Sanders as Addison DeWitt.
Death comes in large doses in The Wild Bunch, but its violence, despite Peckinpah turning the carnage into quasi-ballet-like imagery, isn’t what makes the film so remarkable. The film delivers its true eulogy not for its human characters but for the death of an era and a way of life. As with so many of Peckinpah’s great films, too many misunderstood the film’s intent but The Wild Bunch only grows more evocative and timeless with age, thanks in large part to its ensemble of acting veterans who display the film’s themes through every crease and line on their faces. With the recent death of Ernest Borgnine, Jaime Sanchez (Angel) remains the last living actor who belonged to the bunch.
Billy Wilder (like Howard Hawks) had the talent to soar in almost any genre and this quintessential film noir is a supreme example. How it lost the Oscar to Going My Way and Fred MacMurray and Edward G. Robinson failed to get nominations still puzzles me. Wait — no it doesn't. The Academy picks wrong much more often than they pick right. Barbara Stanwyck gave a lot of great performances, but Phyllis Dietrichson may have topped them all — and if she didn’t, the others better look out.
Kurosawa gets routinely mentioned by many as a master (and deservedly so), thanks mainly to his great sword-laden epics, but for me this "modern" film stands high as one of his strongest, telling the sad story of a long suffering bureaucrat who seeks meaning in life when he's diagnosed with terminal cancer. A truly touching, remarkable film.
Has there ever been a more touching image placed on film that the ending of this silent film, made well after silent films were dead, when the newly sighted blind girl realizes her benefactor was a little tramp? I don't think so either.
The film that marked Woody’s leap from pure comedy to something more still stands as one of his very best 35 years later. With a structure that deserves comparisons to Citizen Kane in that you’re never quite sure what comes next that guarantees a perpetual freshness no matter how many times you’ve seen it. Allen threw almost every trick he could think of into Annie Hall — animated sequences, subtitles to translate what characters really thought, split screens (even if they actually filmed scenes in a room with a divider — and produced an instant classic. Diane Keaton delights as the title character, the film overflows with priceless lines and timeless sequences and the first great Christopher Walken monologue.
It's almost become shorthand to argue that Part II bests Part I in The Godfather trilogy, but I disagree. The original still takes the top spot in my book. I don't think the crosscutting of Michael and young Vito ever quite meshes and instead interrupts the rhythm of Part II. No such problem in the original, an example of making a movie masterpiece out of a pulpy novel. Examining the film more closely again earlier this year for its 40th anniversary while I enjoyed and admired it as much as ever, for the first time I had to acknowledge that unlike later mob classics such as Goodfellas or TV’s Sopranos, The Godfather does romanticize the Corleones. You never see innocents suffer from their line of work — Vito even denies they’re killers. It doesn’t change the film’s status as a fine piece of cinematic art, but it did make me think harder about it than I had before.
Many directors deliver great one-two punches in terms of brilliant consecutive films and Lumet pulled off one of the best of them in 1975 and 1976, beginning with this masterpiece based on a true bank robbery. Al Pacino delivers what may be one of his top two or three performances. It also contains the best work of the sadly too brief career of John Cazale and a peerless ensemble. Lumet’s direction aided by the editing of Dede Allen produced one of the most re-watchable films of all time. If I run across it on TV, even cut up, I stay glued to the end.
After more than 70 years, John Huston’s directing debut still sizzles. Watching Bogart embrace his first real role as a good guy exhilarates the viewer as he thrusts and parries with the delightful supporting cast of Mary Astor, Ward Bond, Elisha Cook Jr., Gladys George, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Barton McClane and Lee Patrick. What many forget about the film comes in that unforgettable climax that basically consists of five characters talking to each other for nearly 30 minutes — and it’s riveting.
The film that really put Spielberg on the pop culture map remains to me his greatest accomplishment. Two distinct and perfect halves: Terror on the beach followed by the brilliance of three men on a boat. It's also an example of how sometimes trashy novels can be turned into true works of film art in a way great novels usually miss the mark in translation (though Peter Benchley's novel at least killed Hooper off as well leaving nonexpert waterphobe Brody as the victor and sole survivor, which would have made for a slightly better ending but I'm nitpicking).
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Labels: Arthur Penn, Capra, Chaplin, Coppola, Hawks, John Ford, kinpah, Kurosawa, Lang, Lists, Lumet, Mankiewicz, Nichols, Polanski, Schrader, Spielberg, Towne, Wilder, Woody
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Monday, April 16, 2012
Centennial Tributes: Catherine Scorsese
around the world, there would be no need for social workers."
— Nicholas Pileggi on Catherine Scorsese at a family-style dinner serving her recipes
held in her honor following her death at 84 in 1997.
By Edward Copeland
Pileggi, the author of the nonfiction books Wiseguy and Casino, and co-writer of their film versions, Goodfellas and Casino, with Martin Scorsese was speaking of the director's late mother, who engendered that feeling in many in Martin Scorsese's extended film family. At the same time, her frequent appearances in her son's films (and other directors' movies as well) made Catherine Scorsese one of the most
recognizable filmmaker's mothers who didn't work in show business to make a living. When Mrs. Scorsese did hold a job, she worked as a seamstress in New York's Garment District where she met Marty's father, Charles Scorsese, who toiled there as a clothes presser and also frequently appeared in their son's films as well until his death in 1993. Catherine Cappa, born 100 years ago today in New York to parents who emigrated from Sicily, also was a helluva cook, a gift passed down through generations of her family and Charles'. In fact, Catherine's culinary talents inspired the memorial dinner party that Suzanne Hamlin wrote about in The New York Times in February 1997. Catherine had gathered some of the best of the Scorsese and Cappa family recipes and published them in Italianamerican: The Scorsese Family Cookbook, which reached store shelves in December 1996. Unfortunately, her bout with Alzheimer's had advanced too far to allow her to promote the cookbook and she passed away the following month. I love Italian food and imagine consuming one of her dinners would have been one of the highlights of my life. However, her family recipes' reputation ring up resounding endorsements, but I imagine that her greatest creation of all goes by the name of Martin Charles Scorsese and her role in delivering that gift to the world prompted me to write this tribute to her today. In the 1990 American Masters episode "Martin Scorsese Directs," Charles and Catherine discussed what their son's early life was like growing up in New York's Little Italy. The sound in this clip is missing at the beginning, but then it kicks in.
Martin Scorsese started putting his mother into small roles in his films from the beginning (Charles didn't show up on camera until Scorsese's 1974 short documentary on them, Italianamerican) for financial reasons: He couldn't afford to pay actors. Catherine's personality not only proved made for the camera but she also displayed a charming gift for improvising dialogue. She appeared in her son's very first short, a 1964 comedy called It's Not You, Murray, which co-starred Mardik Martin who co-wrote the short with Scorsese and would go to co-write the screenplays for Mean Streets, New York, New York and Raging Bull. The comedy short about an accidental crook also featured future SCTV star Andrea Martin (no relation to Mardik). Catherine turned up again in Who's That Knocking at My Door? and Mean Streets, both of which starred Harvey Keitel who attended that memorial dinner and said of Mrs. Scorsese, "In my memory, Catherine was the epitome of a warm, loving Italian mother. She enjoyed watching me eat as much as I enjoyed eating her cooking." Then, as his feature filmmaking career had started to really take off, Martin took some time to make that 45-minute short documentary Italianamerican where the real Catherine Scorsese shines in all her glory. This segment details his parents' recent visit to Italy.
The end credits for Italianamerican actually ran the family recipe for spaghetti sauce and meatballs. The next time that Catherine contributed to one of her son's films, she only put in a vocal appearance as Rupert Pupkin's hector mother constantly yelling at him from upstairs in the great The King of Comedy with longtime fan of her homemade pizza, Robert De Niro.
Catherine Scorsese's next two film roles actually occurred in films that weren't directed by her son. First, in 1986 she played a birthday party guest in Brian De Palma's alleged comedy starring Danny DeVito and Joe Piscopo. The next year, she waited to be served as a customer at the bakery in Norman Jewison's Moonstruck. Later, she would play a woman in a cafe in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part III. She also appeared in a 1994 movie called Men Lie that played a lot of film festivals, but I'm not sure if it ever received a theatrical release. Watch this promo and try to count how many actors in it eventually showed up on The Sopranos.
Catherine's next appearance in one of her son's film remains her longest and most memorable role as the lovable mother of Joe Pesci's psychotic mobster Tommy DeVito in Goodfellas. Pesci also attended the memorial dinner party for Katherine and told The Times, "Katie was one of the sweetest ladies I ever met. She was a true innocent. She never did anything bad; she never knew anything bad. In terms of her cooking, it's a toss-up as to who's a better cook, Katie or my mother." The hysterical scene where Tommy, Jimmy Conway (De Niro) and Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) drop by her house in the middle of the night looking for tools to dispose of a body in the trunk of Henry's car and she wakes up and insists on feeding them remains a classic scene in a film that's wall-to-wall classics. Of course, embedding Goodfellas clips from YouTube strictly won't be allowed, so you'll just have to click on that word "scene" to watch it again. However, we do have a clip from an AFI special where Jim Jarmusch interviews Martin Scorsese about his mother's role in the scene.
The next movie her son made, the role wasn't as plum as Tommy's mother — she merely shopped at a fruit stand in his Cape Fear remake. To promote the film, Marty appeared as a guest on Late Night with David Letterman in November 1991, and even took Catherine along to make some of that homemade pizza that De Niro loves so much for Marty, Dave and another guest we all know and love.
I so dearly wish I could have found a screenshot or YouTube clip of her appearance in 1993's The Age of Innocence because it's such a touching gift to his parents. Charles Scorsese died on Aug. 22, 1993 and The Age of Innocence would end up being his last appearance in one of his son's movies. The movie itself didn't get released until Oct. 1, but the image Scorsese filmed of his parents, showing them moving slowly toward the camera in a snowy, white haze couldn't have been a lovelier image. His mother managed to appear in a character role in a scene in Casino, his next movie, and that would be her last appearance.
What a gift Catherine Cappa Scorsese and Charles Scorsese gave the world. It's the American story. They were first-generation Italian Americans, struggling to raise two sons in New York while eking out livings in the Garment District. Keeping careful watch on the one boy, an asthmatic child who couldn't go play sports as the other children could but discovered a grand universe in the movies his father took him to at a young age. Charles Scorsese's centennial doesn't occur until next year, but honestly this tribute belongs to both of them (Catherine couldn't have created Marty by herself or we would have an entirely different story on our hands). If you haven't seen it, try to watch Italianamerican. I'm not the biggest believer in otherworldly things, but I'm grateful for fate, higher powers or whatever joined Charles and Catherine together to give us the unbelievably wonderful gift of their son.
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Labels: Books, Coppola, De Niro, De Palma, DeVito, Documentary, Jewison, Keitel, Letterman, Liotta, Murray, Pesci, Scorsese, The Sopranos
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Wednesday, April 11, 2012
"If we can just get rid of these actors and directors, maybe we've got something here."
"It's just a satire on the way people behave in the movie studios. There was such a fuss started about it. People started saying, 'Oh people are afraid you are going to do this and do this.' So the more afraid they got, the more ideas they gave me. Looking back on this whole picture, it's a pretty tame satire. It's no big indictment. Things are much, much worse than this picture seems to say." — Robert Altman on the DVD commentary for The Player
By Edward Copeland
To begin a post on the 20th anniversary of Robert Altman's film The Player by showing the clip of his fabled eight-minute, one-take opening and then waxing rhapsodic about all manners of ingenuity in that shot puts me at risk of sounding like Fred Ward's character in that sequence, railing about how everything in movies these days is "cut cut cut cut" and teaching Jimmy the bike messenger (Paul Hewitt) about Orson Welles' famous tracking shot that started Touch of Evil (Unlike Ward's studio security head Walter Stuckel though, I would recognize Absolute Beginners when Jimmy brings it up). Despite any negative connotation I may endure for choosing the most obvious part of Altman's 1992 film to launch my tribute to The Player, I stand by my decision and commence my piece discussing those eight glorious minutes, not only because the work that went into creating that sequence still amazes me two decades later, but because that bite-size morsel of cinematic art serves as a microcosm of the entire film. As Altman himself said in a video interview on the DVD, "The film actually is like a snail — it kind of turns in on itself and becomes itself." When Francis Ford Coppola held a news conference at the Cannes Film Festival to tout Apocalypse Now, he famously declared, "My film is not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam." You could say that Altman's film isn't about Hollywood either — it is Hollywood — and who truly can determine on which battleground more blood has been shed. Watching The Player now, you discover (as you find in many Altman films) that wily director had been operating on several planes at the same time during filming and, as funny and dead-on as its humor may be, The Player doesn't exist exclusively as a satire. An audience's boisterous laughter distracts a viewer from noticing Altman's use of some directorial sleight-of-hand. When the humor subsides, a surprised viewer realizes that the film now plumbs much darker depths. That Altman successfully coordinated all these disparate instruments into the orchestral composition we know as The Player remains miraculous. Now, about that opening shot…
Assuming anyone reading this watched the clip or has seen The Player, the actual preparations that Altman, his crew and the actors involved in the sequence took required planning — lots of meticulous planning. Often, you hear people mistakenly
refer to this eight-minute take as a tracking shot when that isn't the case. A camera didn't run on rails as Akira Kurosawa did for The Woodcutter's long walk in Rashomon and isn't exactly equivalent to the move Martin Scorsese loves to do as in Raging Bull and Goodfellas, to name just two of his. Even a casual observer, seeing how the camera moves in those eight minutes, would realize that laying down tracks for all those angles and positions without any being caught on film by the camera as it switched heights and directions would be damn near impossible. No crews could remove or replace tracks that fast. On the DVD commentary track, Altman explains the steps he went through to achieve the scene. The director actually built a scale model of the studio set along with a scale-size crane that allowed him to see where he would be able to travel and reach and where he couldn't go. Using the model, he visualized roughly how the crane would circulate based on which characters and cameo players should appear in what order. "I had to set up the movie studio
and I wanted to set up the characters that we were going to be dealing with and I wanted to get the audience's attention," Altman said. The director went to the real set with the real crane and choreographed the take. While he knew who would be in the scene, Altman hadn't the slightest idea what words would emanate from their mouths as everyone with a speaking part in the opening improvised his or her dialogue. The amount of time on a single reel of film determined the take's total length, so they had to plan how much time to spend at each spot. Altman said everyone rehearsed for a day while the actual filming took half a day, employing 11 microphones and a mere 15 takes. For such a complicated undertaking, while it required intricate preparations, they managed to lock it down rather quickly. It's far from the only time The Player displays a self-reflexive moment — that happens in the film's first image as a hand enters the frame with a clapboard (and if that's an honest clapboard, it means take 10 ended up being used in the film) as you hear offscreen voices asking for quiet on the set, marking the scene and, finally, calling, "Action" so the film can begin — and similar instances occur all the way to its final frame. For his part, Altman emphasized the show in his showpiece. "It's a very conceited thing — this shot with no cuts in it.…It draws attention to it. It's showing off.…It got attention to the picture," he admits. 
What Altman set out to do in that scene — the setting-up-the-characters-and-the-studio part, not the garnering-attention-for-the-film part — he accomplished quite efficiently. We begin with the woman who, truth-be-told, keeps the studio running through who knows how many regimes, the studio president's executive secretary Claire (Dina Merrill) telling the studio president's receptionist Sandy (Leah Ayres) the proper things to say about the boss's whereabouts; we hear the first mention of a name of a rival that will haunt our protagonist, Larry Levy; Speaking of our protagonist, he arrives. One of the top executives, Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins) pulls on to the lot in his Range Rover and we get an immediate sense of his importance as he gets a movie pitch from real-life writer-director Adam Simon before he's even closed the vehicle's door. Griffin tells Simon to talk to his assistant, Bonnie Sherow; next we see Walter and Jimmy have their tracking shot discussion and pass Griffin's office window where he gets updates from his secretary Jan (Angela Hall) and receives his first official pitch from Buck Henry and we get our first reference to a possible part for Julia Roberts; Adam Simon reappears and we meet Bonnie (Cynthia Stevenson) who begs him to slow down and write it down for her. A shriek is heard and they run over to find that a man driving a golf cart has run over Jimmy on his bicycle, scattering a huge pile of mail. On top of one stack, a postcard with drawings of old movie stars and the words YOUR [SIC] HOLLYWOOD IS DEAD; a young man (Randall Batinkoff) in a sports car pulls up to a young blonde sitting on the hood of a car and purposely mistakes her as Rebecca De Mornay in an attempt to pick her up; a low level exec (Jeremy Piven) sucks up to a group of Japanese visitors touring the studio; studio president Joel Levison (Brion James) arrives, driving to the door of his office and asking Sandy
to park his car for him; three other executives talk about the bank that owns much of the studio "putting the screws" to them and sending the owner's son out from Boston. They talk about how it happens at all studios every few years and rumors that Griffin may be replaced by someone else, maybe even Larry Levy; Griffin hears his second pitch of the day; Director Alan Rudolph asks Jimmy where Griffin's office is and Jimmy tells him and also mistakes him as Martin Scorsese. Rudolph goes in the door as Jan comes out and collects Griffin's mail from Jimmy; Walter now bends Buck Henry's ear, this time going on about Hitchcock's Rope while continuing to gripe about all those cuts. Henry brings up Bernardo Bertolucci's great tracking shot to Debra Winger in The Sheltering Sky. Walter, of course, hasn't seen it; Bonnie chastises her assistant Whitney Gersh (Gina Gershon) for having coffee with Alan Rudolph; Rudolph sees Griffin and gives him his final pitch of the opening scene as well as the film's first mention of Bruce Willis. Mill receives his mail, including that postcard which reads on the other side, "I HATE YOUR GUTS ASSHOLE!" Rudolph hasn't stopped pitching about his cynical political thriller comedy that's "got heart in the right spot" but he gets the last line of that bravura opening, "Of course someone dies in the end. They always do in thrillers." Beyond the technical virtuosity displayed in that opening
take, what an efficient introduction of most of the important characters and plot strands for the film. The single take goes beyond being a clever filmmaking stunt and prepares a viewer for most of what will be coming. If they didn't know what a movie pitch was, now they do. The film establishes the basic hierarchy of the studio's power structure. We know that shaky financial times embroil the studio and that its top development executive, Griffin Mill, could lose his job over it, perhaps to an executive who works elsewhere named Larry Levy. We've learned that someone representing the bank that owns most of the studio will be arriving to look things over. Griffin also has to contend with someone sending him threatening postcards. The movie even has laid the groundwork for the joke that leads to the final punchline. More ominously, as Rudolph says in the context of his movie idea, "Of course someone dies in the end. They always do in thrillers" as Griffin stares out the window after receiving his hate mail, the first scene of The Player doesn't end on a satirical note, but a suspenseful one, indicating the thriller blood flowing through its celluloid veins. Rudolph's description of the movie he wants to make inspires laughter, but it comes damn close to describing The Player as well: a cynical political thriller with its heart in the right spot, only its office politics and while the film does have heart in the right spot, the right spots occur only in isolated moments and not in the film overall.One final paragraph related to the opening, since it affords me the opportunity to share an anecdote from my days long past as a pseudo-professional film critic as well as illustrates that some of the funniest dialogue that just screams satire — well, as animated Springfield mob boss Fat Tony (voiced by Joe Mantegna) once said on The Simpsons, "It's funny 'cause it's true." Altman says in his commentary that the performers improvised all the dialogue in that sequence, including creating their own movie pitches. It shouldn't be surprising then that Buck Henry delivers the funniest one with his idea for a sequel to The Graduate. The other two pitches speak the ridiculous language that most assume has to be exaggerated. In Griffin's second meeting, he listens to writer-directors Patricia Resnick (on left in photo), and
Joan Tewksbury try to sell an idea about a television actress who takes a trip to Africa where a local tribe begins to worship her as an idol. "Kind of like The Gods Must Be Crazy, only instead of a Coke bottle, you have a television actress," Griffin says when he finally catches on to their concept. "It's like Out of Africa meets Pretty Woman," Resnick sums up. When Alan Rudolph spells out the basics of his story concerning a senator who develops the power to see what's inside a person's mind, his pithy summation of the film describes it as "Ghost meets The Manchurian Candidate." On Jan. 31, 1992, less than four months before The Player opened, another film finally made it to movie theaters. Originally scheduled as one of its studio's big year-end releases, the studio punted it to the January dumping ground because even they recognized how bad it was. If you review films outside of major markets, studios either contract local agencies to handle publicity and press relations or use regional offices, if they have one in close proximity. (At least, they did this once upon a time. Now, smaller markets get frozen out, if their newspapers haven't axed their film critics first.) In late summer 991, this studio's regional rep drove up to give me and my paper's other reviewer a preview of the studio's fall and winter releases. As he flipped through large photos featuring images from the films, he came to Shining Through starring Melanie Griffith and Michael Douglas. After a brief synopsis, the man described Shining Through in a way that forced me to summon every ounce of strength in my 21-year-old body not to burst into tears of laughter. "It's like Working Girl goes to war," he said with a straight face. Yes Virginia, movie folk do talk this way.
"As a screenwriter, one gets used to sitting in the backseat on a film. One reason the writer is usually banned from the set by directors is so the writer's screams aren't heard on the soundtrack when they listen to all the changes being made," said Michael Tolkin, who wrote the screenplay for The Player, on the DVD commentary. Tolkin wasn't just writing the script for The Player, he was adapting it from his own novel and serving as one of the film's producers as well. Neither Altman nor Tolkin mention a Tolkin ban from The Player set on the DVD (in fact, he appears late in the movie with his brother Stephen as screenwriting siblings trying to make a deal). I guess Michael Mann kicking David Milch off the Luck set wasn't that unusual, but they both held executive producer titles, so how did that work? Oh well — horses under the tarp. While Hollywood at large goes beneath the microscope in The Player, how the film industry treats writers garners the bulk of the feature's focus — somewhat ironic given how often
Altman allows improvisation or creates scenes on the fly. (I just noticed how easily I slip into present tense when I write about what Altman "does." He died more than five years ago, but when you watch his best films again, the man seems so vibrant, vital and alive.) In the sidebar I posted Tuesday called Untold Stories of Robert Altman's The Player or Who the Hell is Thereza Ellis?, I covered many details of this, especially concerning the great scene at the Pasadena police station between the police (Whoopi Goldberg, Lyle Lovett and Susan Emshwiller) and Griffin that Altman acknowledges the actors worked out on their own and that Goldberg should be credited as the scene's writer and director. Despite the fact that Griffin keeps getting threatening notes from a pissed-off screenwriter whose calls he didn't return, his reputation has earned the label of "the writer's executive" in Hollywood. Though Griffin ends up physically killing a screenwriter, the rival executive, Larry Levy (Peter Gallagher) plays the role of the man who would kill them all symbolically if he could. One fateful night, Griffin drives to Pasadena looking for screenwriter David Kahane (Vincent D'Onofrio), the man he believes to be behind the threats. Mill learns he's gone to a movie theater to see The Bicycle Thief from his girlfriend June Gudmundsdottir (Greta Scacchi), who Griffin shares an odd and
voyeuristic phone call where he watches her through her windows while talking on his unbelievably large 1990s-era cell phone. He asks why she didn't go with David, but June doesn't go to movies. "Why?" Mill truly wants to know. "Life's too short," she answers. Griffin tries to calm Kahane after he locates him, dangling the possibility of deals and apologizing for not calling him back. Kahane won't allow Griffin's belated asskissing — June told Griffin on the phone his nickname for him was The Dead Man. Since Griffin found Kahane at the movie theater, he deduces June told Mill where he went. "Talk to the Ice Queen? You'd like her Mill — she's a lot like you — all heart," Kahane says before walking out on Griffin. Mill gives up and heads toward his Range Rover when Kahane, pissing in a corner, calls to him and taunts him about Larry Levy, who he has heard will make meaningful films again, and the impending loss of Griffin's job. His paranoia drives Griffin to follow Kahane to his parking lot in an attempt to get him not to tell anyone at the studio they spoke and to stop the postcards. "I don't write postcards! I write scripts!" Kahane yells when Griffin grabs his car door and Kahane shoves him, sending him sailing over a railing onto a loading ramp. Kahane checks to see if Griffin is OK, but Mill snaps and starts bashing Kahane's head into the cement, holding it beneath the water until the bubbles stop, quietly sneering, "Keep it to yourself! Keep it to yourself!" As Griffin snaps back into focus, realizing what he did and trying to fake a robbery, dialogue from the next scene, which takes place the following morning, bleeds into the murder cleanup. "Who wrote the new ending to Fatal Attraction?" Larry Levy asks. "The audience did," he responds to his own question.
Levy's conversation turn out to come from his first meeting as a newly hired executive at the studio. It hasn't quite started as Levison waits in his office and Griffin hasn't shown up on the lot. Claire tells Levison that with or without Griffin, they should begin and he agrees, telling Walter, whom we've learned by now runs the studio's security department to "keep our noses clean, Walter." Levy complains to everyone about the high fees paid to writers and how they should make pictures the people want not the type writers want to give them when Griffin shows up. Levy asks everyone when was the last time they paid to see a movie. "Last night. The Bicycle Thief," Griffin replies. "It's an art movie. It doesn't count. We're talking movie movies," Levy says dismissively. As an exercise, Levy passes a newspaper to different executives and tells them to pick a story. Steve Reeves (Jeremy Piven) reads, "Immigrants protest budget cuts in literacy program." "Human spirit overcoming human adversity. Sounds like Horatio Alger in the barrio. Put Jimmy Smits in it and you've got a sexy Stand and Deliver," Levy smiles. It goes on for a while, but a headline that says “Man Found Dead in Theater Parking Lot” distracts Griffin. When
they capture his attention, he focuses enough to zing Levy back at least. "I was just thinking what an interesting concept it is to eliminate the writer from the artistic process. If we can just get rid of these actors and directors, maybe we've got something here," Mill suggests sardonically. The frightening thing to me comes from the possibility that with the state of digital effects now, getting rid of the actors could be highly plausible. After the meeting, when Griffin returns to his office where Walter confronts him about David Kahane, he receives a fax with bad news. "SURPRISE!" it reads. Kahane wasn't
the screenwriter sending him the postcards. At another time, Griffin again shows himself to be a bit of a writer's defender when he sends Bonnie to New York to look at the new Tom Wolfe novel and discern if it could be a movie. If it does, he tells her to offer $1 million, which makes Levy choke over the price. "It's Tom Wolfe," Griffin says, as if that's the only explanation needed. There's a catch that comes with Griffin's "writer's executive" reputation. The script still must fall within the proper parameters. He isn't a risk taker. When he becomes involved with June, she asks him what he needs to make a good movie and he rattles off a list of attributes. "Suspense, laughter, violence, hope, heart, nudity, sex, happy endings. Mostly happy endings," he tells her. Damn if Altman — the maverick, the Hollywood outsider — doesn't manage to include every single one of those elements in The Player. "When people ask me, 'How much did Altman change the script into the movie?' I would honestly say if anyone betrayed me, it was me. As the screenwriter, I betrayed the novel much more than the director," Tolkin admits on the DVD. Altman also offers some words on his reputation as an outsider.and the kind of movies that I can make and like to make and make are not the type of films they know how to distribute.
So basically, we aren't in the same business. There's no point in calling me to make a pair of gloves for you when I make shoes."
Labels: 90s, Altman, Buck Henry, Coppola, Debra Winger, Fiction, Hitchcock, Julia Roberts, Kurosawa, Luck, M. Douglas, Michael Mann, Milch, Movie Tributes, Scorsese, The Simpsons, Tim Robbins, Welles, Willis
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