Saturday, March 10, 2012
Bringing Up Babs
By Damian Arlyn
I remember working in the video store one day when a regular customer came in to check out a few titles. He glanced at the enormous flat screen we had behind the counter, saw Barbra Streisand belting out some catchy show tune and uttered a question I got asked a lot in those days. "What are you watching?" he said. "Hello, Dolly!" I answered. He smiled, shook his head and exclaimed, "See, now, here's where I break with the stereotype. I'm a gay guy who doesn't like Barbra Streisand." I just laughed and replied, "That's OK. I'm a straight guy who does."
And it's true. Although she is by no means my favorite actress (nor would I ever see a film simply because she's in it), I happen to enjoy watching her onscreen. Funny Girl, Meet the Fockers and the aforementioned Hello, Dolly! are all films I love, but my favorite movie of hers would have to be the hilarious What's Up, Doc? which celebrates its 40th anniversary today. Nowhere is Babs' gift for comedy and sheer charisma on display better than in this film. They even find an excuse to show off her incredible voice once or twice: namely, in the film's opening and ending credits where she sings Cole Porter's "You're The Top" as well as the scene at the piano when she croons a few lines of "As Time Goes By."
It also doesn't hurt that What's Up, Doc? happens to be a really great movie. Hot off of his success with The Last Picture Show, Peter Bogdanovich originally conceived it as a remake of Howard Hawks' Bringing Up Baby, but wisely decided (much as Lawrence Kasdan would do later with his film noir tribute Body Heat) to use Hawks' film merely as an inspiration rather than a template and to give What's Up, Doc? its own identity. As a result, it comes off more as a love letter to screwball comedies in general as well as to iconic Warner Bros. feature films (such as Casablanca) and classic animated shorts. Hence, when Barbra's character, Judy Maxwell, is introduced first to Ryan O'Neal's nerdy Howard Bannister, she's seen munching on a carrot a la Bugs Bunny and/or Clark Gable from It Happened One Night. With her brash, fast-talking, trouble-making personality and his stiff, bespectacled, long-suffering demeanor, the two leads clearly are based on Baby's Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. (Interestingly, Streisand shared a best actress Oscar with Ms. Hepburn only four years earlier in one of the Academy's rare ties. Streisand won for her film debut in Funny Girl while Hepburn earned her third best actress trophy for The Lion in Winter. Hepburn's prize was her second consecutive win in the category having taken the 1967 Oscar for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.) Aside from Judy constantly getting Howard into trouble and a reminiscent coat-tearing gag, the similarities between Doc and Baby essentially end there.
Also, What's Up, Doc? lacks a leopard. Instead the chaos revolves around four identical carrying cases containing such varied items as clothes, rocks, jewels and classified government documents. When moviegoers first see the quartet of cases at the start of Doc, it's the filmmakers signaling audiences that much confusion and hilarity awaits. At this point I have to confess that, although I've seen the film at least a dozen times, I cannot to this day follow which case is which throughout the course of the film. Every time I sit down to watch, I swear I'm going to keep track of the cases, but I always give up about 20 minutes into it. I take some comfort, however, from the fact that even the great Buck Henry, in the process of re-writing the screenplay, reportedly phoned Bogdanovich to say, "I've lost one of the suitcases. It's in the hotel somewhere, but I don't know where I put it."
The gags come fast and furious in What's Up, Doc? More than a decade before Bruce Willis and Bogdanovich's ex-girlfriend Cybill Shepherd resurrected rapid-fire banter on TV's Moonlighting, Streisand and O'Neal fire a barrage of zingers at each other so quickly that you're almost afraid to laugh for fear you'll miss the next one. The behind-the-scenes team also populates the What's Up, Doc? universe with a whole host of kooky characters, each bringing his or her unique comic flair to those roles. There isn't a single boring person in What's Up, Doc? Everyone (right down to the painter who drops his cigar into the bucket) amuses. At the top of the heap resides the great Madeline Kahn in her feature film debut as Howard's frumpy fiancée Eunice Burns. Two years before she joined Mel Brooks' cinematic comedy troupe, she proved to the world her status as one of the funniest women ever to grace the silver screen. Another Mel Brooks' regular, Kenneth Mars, plays Hugh Simon, providing yet one more strangely accented flamboyant nutball to his immense repertoire. A very young Randy Quaid, a brief M. Emmet Walsh and a very annoyed John Hillerman also show up in hilarious bit parts.
All of this anarchy culminates in a spectacular car chase through the streets of San Francisco that actually rivals the one from Bullitt. Apparently it took four weeks to shoot, cost $1 million (¼ of the film's budget) and even managed to get the filmmakers in trouble with the city for destroying some of its property without permission. Nevertheless, Bogdanovich pulls out all the stops in creating this over-the-top action/slapstick set piece that overflows with both thrills and laughs. When watching it, one can't help but be reminded that physical comedy on this grand of a scale doesn't even get attempted anymore. One wishes another director would resurrect the kind of awesome stunt-comedy on display here and in The Pink Panther series.
The film's dénouement takes place in a courtroom where an embittered, elderly judge (the brilliant Liam Dunn) hears the arguments of everyone involved and tries to make sense of it all. Howard's attempt to explain only serves to frustrate and confuse the judge further and results in this gem of an exchange that owes more than a little bit to Abbott & Costello's "Who's on First?":
HOWARD: First, there was this trouble between me and Hugh.
JUDGE: You and me?
HOWARD: No, not you. Hugh.
HUGH: I am Hugh.
JUDGE: You are me?
HUGH: No, I am Hugh.
JUDGE: Stop saying that. [to bailiff] Make him stop saying that!
HUGH: Don't touch me, I'm a doctor.
JUDGE: Of what?
HUGH: Music.
JUDGE: Can you fix a hi-fi?
HUGH: No, sir.
JUDGE: Then shut up!
The tag line for What's Up, Doc? read: "A screwball comedy. Remember them?" Well, whether people remembered screwball comedy or simply discovered it for the first time, they certainly embraced the film as it was an enormous success upon its release. It took in $66 million in North America alone and became the third-highest grossing film of the year. Since The Last Picture Show was released in late '71 and Doc came out in early '72, Bogdanovich had two hugely successful films playing in theaters at the same time. Unfortunately, his career, which had just started to rise, also had neared its peak. Although he would follow Doc with Paper Moon his directing career would only see sporadic critical successes after that such as Saint Jack and Mask. He even filmed Texasville, the sequel to The Last Picture Show, but he'd never again see the kind of commercial or critical success he had achieved in the early 1970s. Bogdanovich would eventually end up working in television, often as an actor such as his long recurring role as Dr. Elliot Kupferberg, psychiatrist to Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Bracco) on The Sopranos. The most recent feature film he directed was 2001's fairly well-received The Cat's Meow starring Kirsten Dunst as Marion Davies and Edward Herrmann as William Randolph Hearst. Based on a play of the same name, The Cat's Meow concerned a real-life mystery in 1924 Hollywood involving the shooting death of writer/producer/director Thomas Ince (Cary Elwes) on Hearst's yacht.
When Bogdanovich was good, he was great and What's Up, Doc? is, in my opinion, the jewel in his crown. It made a once-forgotten genre popular again, it jump-started a lot of comic careers and it reminded us all that love meaning never having to say we're sorry is the dumbest thing we've ever heard.
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Labels: 70s, Abbott and Costello, Bogdanovich, Buck Henry, Cary, Cole Porter, Cybill Shepherd, Dunst, Gable, Hawks, K. Hepburn, L. Kasdan, Mel Brooks, Movie Tributes, R. Quaid, Streisand, The Sopranos, Willis
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Saturday, October 22, 2011
"A person can't sneeze in this town without someone offering them a handkerchief"
How come you treat me like a worn-out shoe?
My hair's still curly and my eyes are still blue
Why don't you love me like you used to do?
•••
Well, why don't you be just like you used to be?
How come you find so many faults with me?
Somebody's changed so let me give you a clue
Why don't you love me like you used to do?
By Edward Copeland
Even if Hank Williams Sr. weren't well represented with songs that play throughout Peter Bogdanovich's film adaptation of Larry McMurtry's novel The Last Picture Show, somehow I think the movie would play as if it were a cinematic evocation of the music legend. Despite the fact that today marks the 40th anniversary of the film's release and The Last Picture Show took as its setting a small, depressed Texas town in 1951 and 1952 (even going so far as to have cinematographer Robert Surtees shoot it in glorious black & white), it contains a universality that resonates today both in human and economic terms. Williams' hit "Why Don't You Love Me (Like You Used to Do)?" that I quote partially above are the first words we hear, before any character speaks a line. In the movie's context, the lyrics could be describing the first person we see — high school senior Sonny Crawford (Timothy Bottoms). With the way the U.S. has been going of late, I know very few people who don't feel like a "worn-out shoe" and wish fondly for past, better days and these feelings stretch from one end of the ideological spectrum to the other. Fortunately, The Last Picture Show itself hasn't changed. Age has served the film well, helped in no small part by its amazing cast.
McMurtry, who based the town in the novel on his own small north Texas hometown of Archer City, co-wrote the screenplay with Bogdanovich, the former film critic who was directing his second credited feature film after the fun and tawdry thriller Targets that gave Boris Karloff a great, late career role. (Under the name Derek Thomas, he had filmed a sci-fi feature called Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women in 1968 starring Mamie Van Doren.) In the novel, McMurtry renamed the town Thalia, but the film gave it another moniker — Anarene.
The movie opens on Anarene's main stretch of road and passes the Royal movie theater. The wind howls ferociously, blowing dust, leaves, trash and anything that isn't tied down through the air and down the street. The flying debris leads us to Sonny and that Hank Williams song, which comes from the radio of his old pickup that he's having a helluva time getting started. Actually, the pickup only half belongs to
Sonny — he shares it with his best friend Duane Moore (Jeff Bridges), who always seems to get it first on date nights so he can neck with his girlfriend, Jacy Farrow (Cybill Shepherd in her film debut), widely considered the best-looking teen in town. Once Sonny gets that old pickup running, he spots young Billy (the late Sam Bottoms, Timothy's real-life younger brother) standing in the middle of the street with his broom, trying to sweep up the dust. Sonny honks at him and Billy smiles and climbs in the pickup with him. As he usually does, Sonny affectionately turns the mentally challenged boy's cap around backward and the two head to the pool hall owned by Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson). Sonny pays for what looks like a sticky bun and a bottle of pop, prompting Sam to shake his head. "You ain't ever gonna amount to nothing. Already spent a dime this morning, ain't even had a decent breakfast," Sam tells Sonny, but not in a mean-spirited way. "Why don't you comb you hair, Sonny? It sticks up…I'm surprised you had the nerve to show up this morning after that stomping y'all took last night." Sam's referring to Anarene High School's final football game of the year, where the team took a real beating. "It could've been worse," Sonny replies. "You could say that just about everything," Sam says. "It could've been worse" applies to most of the situations in The Last Picture Show, which can be described accurately by the overused phrase "slice of life." 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 even after the lights come up in the theater and the projector shuts off. Wherever the movie finishes will resemble a chapter stop more than a finale. (As if to prove the point, McMurtry returned to Thalia in four more novels, though Duane becomes the main character in the followups as opposed to Sonny, who decidedly takes the lead here. Bogdanovich even filmed the first sequel, Texasville, in 1990 with mixed results.)
Sam's reference to the previous night's football debacle displays an excellent example of what captivates the citizens in a so-called "one-stoplight" town such as Amarene, as the team's players (mainly Sonny and Duane, since they are the teammates we know best) get repeatedly berated by their elders the day after the loss. A common refrain becomes variations of the question, "Have you ever heard of tackling?" That even continues when Abilene (Clu Gulager), one of the many oil-field workers who live in Amarene, when he comes straight from work to Sam's pool hall, changes clothes and takes billiards so seriously that he has his own cue stick that he keeps in a case and assembles. While he's there, he collects on a bet he had with Sam on the game. Abilene isn't faithful in most areas of his life and that's telegraphed right away when we see that he'd bet against the hometown high school football team. "You see? This is what I get for bettin' on my own hometown ballteam. I ought'a have better sense," Sam says as he forks over the cash. "Wouldn't hurt to have a better hometown," the emotionless Abilene declares. Soon enough, football will fade from the town's collective memory as they move into basketball season. While sports may be important in holding this dying town
together, we never see an actual game of any kind. The closest we come is one instance of basketball practice in the school gym. That's because high school sporting events aren't what The Last Picture Show wants to show us. 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. Of course, at its core, The Last Picture Show also deals with community and by community, I mean gossip. In this small a town, very few secrets can be kept, yet at the same time its citizens seem fairly discreet about what they know and staying out of other people's business. I've never read the novel, but I can see how easily it would work in book form. There's a story that Bogdanovich, who was then married to multi-hyphenate Polly Platt, who died earlier this year, read the jacket cover of the book and didn't see a way it could work as a film until Platt outlined it for him in chronological form. She must have done a brilliant job since she not only changed Bogdanovich's mind but led him to the road where he ended up directing and co-writing one of the best films of all time. the balancing act needed to transfer The Last Picture Show to the screen would have been very tricky for anyone to pull off, but I think the reason it worked boiled down to two key elements: its look and its cast.Platt, in addition to being the person who gave Bogdanovich the vision to turn McMurtry's novel into a feature film also served as the film's production designer and its uncredited costume designer, seamlessly taking the actors and Archer City, Texas, back in time nearly 20 years. Her work was helped in no small part by the legendary director of photography Robert Surtees' exquisite black & white images, which earned one of The Last Picture Show's eight Oscar nominations. Surtees received a total of 15 Oscar nominations for
cinematography in his career and won three: for King Solomon's Mines, The Bad and the Beautiful and Ben-Hur. He actually lost twice in 1971 — he was nominated for Summer of '42 as well as The Last Picture Show. He earned four consecutive nominations from 1975-78, when he made his last film before he retired. Other nominations included The Sting, The Graduate and Oklahoma! He showed a strong gift for using both color and black & white and his stark look in The Last Picture Show perfectly captured the time and place of the setting without letting any nostalgia sneak into the proceedings, which it really shouldn't. No one is looking back at the events from the future, so that element shouldn't be there. In a way, it's interesting to compare it to George Lucas' American Graffiti two years later. Both films look at high school seniors and eschew musical scores in favor of soundtracks full of the pop hits of the era. The difference is that Graffiti, while good, revels in a "good old days" spirit with barely a mention of sexual curiosity let alone activity while The Last Picture Show depicts an entirely different economic class that's having very few good times, but certainly getting drunk and laid. Of course, adults didn't exist in Graffiti whereas their roles prove integral in The Last Picture Show. Admittedly, I haven't seen American Graffiti in some time — Lucas hasn't re-edited it to make the drag race CGI and digitally replaced all the cars out cruising with hybrids, has he?
Despite the film's ensemble nature, Sonny truly serves as the center of this movie's universe. Timothy Bottoms wears such deep, soulful eyes that it made him a natural to play a role that required deadpan humor as well heartbreaking drama. While the other younger cast members mostly continue to flourish in the industry if we can still count Randy Quaid, who made his film debut as Lester Marlow, a rich kid from Wichita Falls who lures Shepherd's Jacy to a nude swimming party, but has now transformed himself from a talented character actor into a fugitive from justice on the run with his wife and being pursued by Dog the Bounty Hunter), Bottoms' star never seemed to take off after such a promising start. The Last Picture Show was his second feature following Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun and in 1973 he starred in The Paper Chase, but it has been mostly TV. low budget movies and downhill since then. (I suppose his most recent highlight was playing the title character in Trey Parker and Matt Stone's short-lived Comedy Central sitcom That's My Bush!) It's a shame because he's the key to so much of The Last Picture Show. Of those eight Oscar nominations that I mentioned it received, four went to acting and two won. All were much deserved, but Bottoms deserved a slot as well. I didn't add it up, but I imagine he appears in a great majority of the movie's scenes and a case could have easily been made for pushing him for lead — not that he stood a chance to win against Gene Hackman in The French Connection, but I would have nominated him before Walter Matthau in Kotch, George C. Scott in The Hospital or Topol in Fiddler on the Roof. However, I don't know if I could have evicted Peter Finch in Sunday Bloody Sunday for him.
Bottoms' Sonny though really serves as the line upon which so much of the movie's clothing hangs to dry. He's the first character we meet, introducing us to Billy, whose origin never gets explained, and more importantly Johnson's Oscar-winning Sam the Lion, who not only owns the pool hall but the diner and the Royal movie theater as well. Sonny takes us to the Royal for the first time, arriving late because of his delivery job. Miss Mosey (Jessie Lee Fulton), the kindly manager of the place who never has popcorn since she long ago forgot how the machine worked, tells Sonny that he already missed the newsreel and the comedy and the feature has started, so she only charges him 30 cents for admission. Imagine being able to see a movie for that cheap — and I imagine it wasn't that much more to get two movies and a newsreel, Now, the prices go up and up and up while, in general, the quality goes down further and
further. Once inside, he hooks up with his girlfriend Charlene Duggs (Sharon Taggart), who gets annoyed that he doesn't realize what an important day it is. It seems it's their one-year anniversary of going steady. With that perfect deadpan aplomb I mentioned earlier, Bottoms as Sonny simply says, "Seems longer." The main feature playing that night is Father of the Bride starring Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor. Though Sonny and Charlene have relocated to the back row so they can make out, it's clear that Sonny finds the giant image of Liz Taylor more alluring than the girl who is kissing him, While we met Duane earlier when he got off work from the oil field and went to the diner with Sonny, he and Jacy show up and take the seats in front of them and it's clear that Duane finds it very satisfying to be kissing Jacy because they don't seem to be watching the movie at all. When the movie is over and all the kids exit, they tell Miss Mosey they enjoyed it, but I bet they wouldn't want to take a quiz on it. However, that wind still howls giving the older woman trouble putting up the poster for the next attraction so Sam gives her a hand teasing the return of Sands of Iwo Jima starring John Wayne. The town can boast having a movie theater, but it certainly isn't first run. After the show, Duane lets Sonny have the pickup, so he drives Charlene out by the lake and they begin to make out. You can tell this is a choreographed routine for the teens because Charlene immediately unhooks her bra and hangs it from the rearview mirror, which is followed immediately by Sonny's hands going to her bare breasts as if they were magnets and her chest was built out of metal. Charlene complains that something's wrong
with Sonny — that he's acting as if he's bored or would rather be somewhere else. However, when Sonny does venture to place his hand somewhere else, Charlene goes nuts. "You cheapskate — you didn't even get me an anniversary present. Now, you want to get me pregnant," she barks as she starts to put her top back on. Sonny argues that it was only his hand, but she says she knows how one thing leads to another and she's waiting until she gets married. Sonny, a hangdog expression on his face, tells her that they should break up then. This shocks Charlene, but she gets mad, not upset. "Now don't go tellin' all the boys how hot I was," she warns him. "You wasn't that hot," Sonny sighs sadly in a monotone. He can't decide if he's depressed or relieved to be rid of Charlene when he shows up at the diner and tells the ever faithful manager/waitress Genevieve (the great Eileen Brennan) about it. "Jacy's the only pretty girl in town and Duane's got her," Sonny tells her. "Jacy will bring you more misery than she'll ever be worth," Genevieve declares. What a font of wisdom her character will turn out to be. Sonny remembers hearing the news that Genevieve's husband Dan finally is able to return to work, so he figures that means she won't be working much longer. In another moment from a 1971 film set in 1951 that could be taking place in 2011, she responds, "We've got four thousand dollars in doctor bills to pay. I'll probably be making cheeseburgers for your grandkids." If the bills are that high in 1951, calculate them now.
You will have to forgive me for saying so much — I have an unfortunate tendency to ramble about films I love — but I also needed to get you to this point so we could talk about the most important part of film dealing with Sonny, something that begins with doing a simple favor for Coach Popper (Bill Thurman). The coach asks Sonny if he will drive his wife Ruth (Cloris Leachman in her Oscar-winning performance) to her doctor's appointment. In exchange, he'll get Sonny out of physics lab. Sonny will take any excuse to get out of that class so he agrees. Mrs. Popper is surprised when Sonny shows up at her door — her husband didn't tell her that he wasn't taking her. It's all quiet and above board on that trip. However, when Sonny sees her again at the town's sad Christmas dance, she asks him if he could help her take out the trash from the refreshment stand. He does and the two share their first kiss. Ruth asks the teen if he'd be able to drive
her to the clinic again next week. "You bet!" Sonny replies. Many movies and works of fiction have told stories of affairs between older married women and younger men of high school or college age, but none have done so with as much meaning or affection as The Last Picture Show does in its depiction of Sonny and Ruth, which tosses most of those clichés out. Ruth isn't some oversexed seductress — she's a lonely, needy woman of 40 trapped in a miserable marriage. The movie doesn't spell it out directly, but in the commentary on the DVD, Bogdanovich says that Coach Popper is supposed to be gay. To me what's so stunning about Leachman's performance is that I can't think of her in any other dramatic roles. She's a comic actress extraordinaire. but she's so frighteningly good as Ruth I wonder why we never saw her explore really juicy drama. When Ruth and Sonny make love for the first time, it's such a mixture of elements when you have the overanxious boy rushing to lose his virginity while the 40-year-old married woman cries because she feared she never know that feeling again. As their affair continues, she actually seems to grow younger. Sonny also finds himself surprised to learn how many people are aware of what's going on between the two of them.
As great as Leachman is, she didn't win that Oscar in a walk. Her toughest competition came from the same film. Ellen Burstyn scored her first Oscar nomination in the same category, supporting actress, for playing Lois Farrow, Jacy's mother. Burstyn always is brilliant, but she
manages to make us have sympathy for Lois at the same time we realize that her somewhat crazy ways have rubbed off on her daughter and turned her into the superficial cocktease that she is. Jacy claims she loves Duane, but her parents won't ever permit her to marry a boy like him without a future. The Farrows are one of the few well-off families in town, thanks to her husband striking oil. Not that it has saved the marriage any because Lois has been having an on again-off again affair with Abilene for quite some time. Jacy tries to convince her mother that she married her father when he wasn't rich. "I scared your daddy into getting rich, beautiful," Lois tells her daughter. Jacy insists that if Daddy could do it, so could Duane. "Not married to you. You're not scary enough," her mother replies. Later, when Lois informs Jacy about Sonny and Ruth's affair, Jacy's shocked, "She is 40 years old." Her mother quickly says, "So am I, honey. It's an itchy age." The big scenes for Burstyn (and Leachman) don't come until after other developments.The fourth performer to earn an acting nod from the film was the great Jeff Bridges as Duane. It was his very first. He's good, but Duane actually isn't that large a part despite the fact he becomes the central figure in the book sequels. Duane's love for Jacy goes beyond reason. When she ditches him at the dance to go to the nude swim party in Wichita Falls, he takes it. When she finally agrees to put out,
he can't perform (though Bridges' facial expression when she exposes her breasts to him is priceless). They try again and he comes out all smiles and she cuts him down, telling him, "Oh, quit prissing. I don't think you done it right, anyway." Finally, as she ducks him more often, he leaves town to take another job elsewhere, but gives Sonny explicit orders to watch if anyone starts seeing her. One night, Abilene stops by the Farrow house to tell her dad that a well came in, but he isn't home. He ends up taking Jacy to the pool hall and having sex with her on a pool table, her hands grabbing hold of the corner pockets. After awhile, when the boy she'd been dating from Wichita Falls runs off and gets married, she pursues Sonny, who is powerless to resist, no matter how it hurts Ruth. When Duane returns and finds out that Sonny and Jacy are dating, he breaks a beer bottle against his face, injuring his eye. "Jacy's just the kind of girl that brings out the meanness in men," Genevieve tells Sonny when she sees him with the patch on his eye. Soon after, he and Jacy drive to Oklahoma to elope, only Jacy left a long detailed note so the Oklahoma state troopers detain them until her parents arrive and get the marriage annulled. Sonny rides back with Lois who tells him he's lucky they saved him from her.
In a way, I have saved the best for last, except it isn't really the last. If Timothy Bottoms' Sonny provides the line from which all the characters and stories dangle, Ben Johnson's Sam the Lion provides the posts that anchors his line. The story goes that Johnson didn't want to take the part because he thought it was too wordy and Bogdanovich, who had just completed a documentary on John Ford asked Ford to talk him into it. Ford reportedly asked Johnson if he wanted to be the Duke's sidekick all his life and told him that if he played the part,
he'd win the Oscar for supporting actor and that's just what happened. There are so many moments in Johnson's performance that I'd love to pick, but so I don't go on forever, I'm concentrating on one, which also happens to be my favorite part of the film. Sam takes Sonny and Billy fishing at this reservoir on land he once owned and it opens him up about the past. He talks about this crazy girl he was involved with about 20 years ago after his wife had lost her mind and his sons had died and how they always came out there. She challenged him to ride horses across the water. He didn't think they'd make it, but somehow she did it. Sonny asks why he never married her, but Sam tells him she already was married — one of those young marriages people get into that makes them miserable. He figured some day it would end, but it never did. "If she was here I'd probably be just as crazy now as I was then in about five minutes. Ain't that ridiculous? Naw, it ain't really. 'Cause being crazy about a woman like her is always the right thing to do. Being an old decrepit bag of bones, that's what's ridiculous. Gettin' old," Sam declares. What makes the whole sequence and monologue even better is the way Bogdanovich films it. He starts out in a medium shot where you can see all three characters, but as the tale grows more romantic he slowly moves the camera in on Johnson's face. As he starts to tell how they never ended up together, the camera pulls back out again.
The Last Picture Show has so many great moments, big and small, that I want to talk about them all but I do have to mention one final Sam moment before wrapping up Lois and Ruth. Earlier in the film, before Duane beats him up (they reconcile anyway) Duane and Sonny drown separate sorrows in sundaes at the diner when Duane decides that he just wants to get out of town — that night — at least for the weekend. He suggests to
Sonny that they go to Mexico. The two friends check their cash reserves and decide they can do it and get up and leave. Genevieve asks where they are going. "Mexico," they tell her. "Mexico?" As they drive the pickup down the street, they notice Sam sitting on the curb outside the theater. They tell him of their plans. He gives them some money, telling them that Mexico has a way of swallowing your money. Wistfully, he even says that if he were younger, he might go with them. There's something odd in the town — as if he has something else to say, but he just tells them he'll see them around and gives them a wave. Somehow though, even when you're watching The Last Picture Show for the first time, you know that will be the last time in the movie you'll see Sam. When Sonny and Duane come back, they go to the pool room and find it locked. They find that odd. They ask a man what's going on. He remembers that they've been gone so they don't know. Sam died. "Keeled over one of the snooker tables. Had a stroke," the man says. He adds the Sam left the diner to Genevieve, the theater to Miss Mosey and the pool hall to Sonny.
Back to that ride home from Oklahoma between Lois and Sonny. Before they get in the car, Lois tells him that he should have stayed with Ruth Popper. "Does everyone know about that?" he asks annoyed. She says yes. "I guess I treated her badly," Sonny admits. "Guess you did," Lois concurs. As she drives, Sonny says, "Nothin's really been right since Sam the Lion died." No, they really haven't, Lois agrees. Sonny guesses that she must have liked him a lot, but Lois says no, she loved him. Sonny mentions the story Sam told him about the girl and she's surprised. "He told you that? You know, I'm the one who started calling him Sam the Lion," Lois confesses as Sonny realizes that she was the girl that Sam talked about. She apologizes for getting slightly teary. "It's terrible to meet only one man in your life who knows what you're worth," Lois admits. "I guess if it wasn't for Sam, I'd have missed it, whatever it is. I'd have been one of them amity types that thinks that playin' bridge is about the best thing that life has to offer."
When Sonny gets back to town, he learns Duane, who has enlisted in the Army, is in town for a short visit. He asks if he wants to go with him to the Royal. Miss Mosey has to close the picture show. Duane agrees. The final movie is Howard Hawks' Red River. "No one wants to come to shows no more. Kid baseball in the summer, television all the time," Miss Mosey tells them. Imagine now. Out-of-sight prices, out-of-control crowds, declining quality of product, more at-home convenience, everything digital so there is in essence no difference between theaters and home. The next day, Duane boards a bus to his base to ship off for Korea. "I'll see you in a year or two if I don't get shot," he tells Sonny.
As Sonny works the pool hall, the scene mirrors the opening with the howling wind and blowing dust, only this time he hears a commotion. He runs outside and sees that a truck hauling cattle struck and killed Billy who, as usual was sweeping the middle of the street. A bunch of gawkers try to console the driver, explaining that the kid was "simple" and continuously asking why he had that broom. Sonny snaps. "He was sweeping you sons of bitches, he was sweeping!" he yells as he picks Billy's broken body up and lays it on the sidewalk.
Eventually, he works up the nerve to knock on Ruth's door and asks if he can have a cup of coffee with her. She apologizes for still being in her bathrobe this late in the day. Then, as she's starting to pour coffee, it's her turn to explode and she throws the cup and the coffee pot against the wall.
"What am I doing apologizing to you? Why am I always apologizing to you, you little bastard? Three months I've spent apologizing to you without you even being here. I haven't done anything wrong. Why can't I quit apologizing? You're the one ought to be sorry. I wouldn't still be in my bathrobe. I would've had my clothes on hours ago. It's because of you I quit caring if I got dressed or not. I guess because your friend got killed you want me to forget what you did and make it alright. I'm not sorry for you. You'd have left Billy too just like you left me. I bet you left him plenty of nights, whenever Jacy whistled. I wouldn't treat a dog that way. I guess I was so old and ugly it didn't matter how you treated me — you didn't love me."
Ruth sits down at the kitchen table across from Sonny. "You shouldn't have come here. I'm around that corner now. You've ruined it and it's lost completely. Just your needing me won't make it come back," Ruth tells him. He reaches out and takes her hand. She takes it and puts it to her face. He never says a word. The two of them just sit holding hands across the table.
Lots of people can quote the last lines of movies, but when you think about it, there aren't as many famous final ones as you would think. The Last Picture Show belongs in that exclusive company.
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Labels: 70s, B. Johnson, Bogdanovich, Burstyn, Cybill Shepherd, George C. Scott, Hackman, Hawks, Jeff Bridges, John Ford, Karloff, Liz, Lucas, Matthau, Movie Tributes, Oscars, R. Quaid, Sequels, Tracy, Wayne
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Sunday, March 13, 2011
This is more serious than you think
ROBERT: I haven’t been feeling good lately. I think it’s probably us. This is more serious than you think. I don't think we should go out anymore. I mean I just think it's over.
MARY: OK. So we're over again.
ROBERT: No, not again. This is the last time.
MARY: And you don't love me.
ROBERT: I do love you. Love has nothing to do with this. Yes, I do love you. That what makes this very confusing, but I just don't think...You've heard of a no-win situation, haven't you?"
(Mary indicates that she hasn't. Robert expresses disbelief that she's unfamiliar with the term.)
ROBERT: Vietnam? This? They’re around. I think we’re in one of them.
So begins the bulk of the opening of Albert Brooks' second feature as a director, Modern Romance, which premiered 30 years ago today.
By Edward Copeland
Before that conversation takes place, film editor Robert Cole (Brooks) sits alone in the all-purpose restaurant awaiting the arrival of his girlfriend Mary Harvard (Kathryn Harrold). When Mary arrives, he tells her he wants to order and eat quickly, because they have to talk seriously before he rushes back to work. They order, but his impatience gets to him and Robert starts to tell her their relationship hasn't been good for awhile but Mary, who has
been through this innumerable times with Robert, isn't ready, and wants to wait until after they eat, quickly changing the subject to how his work on a sci-fi movie is going. Robert indulges her briefly, telling her that the film's director told him he's the best editor that he's ever worked with, but then Robert stops, insisting that the relationship talk take precedence. After the conversation listed above, Robert suggests that it's a good time for them to be free and clear, but when Mary agrees, he suddenly changes his tune and assumes he's psychic and that she's already seeing someone else, demanding to know who it is. Mary just gives up, spitting back that he thought it was a good time but Robert denies he meant what he said. Mary walks out, telling him to drop dead as an instrumental version of "You Are So Beautiful" plays over the opening credits.
Modern Romance marked the second time Brooks stepped behind the camera as a director, in front of it as the lead actor and provided the words as co-writer with his frequent collaborator, the late Monica Johnson. Coming two years after his mockumentary Real Life, Brooks' character of the insanely neurotic Robert Cole and his obsessively off-again/on-again relationship with Kathryn Harrold's Mary Harvard gave him the reputation at the time as the West Coast Woody Allen. It's funny that Harrold would play the part of his compulsive affection since more than a decade later, she'd assume a similar function as Francine, the ex-wife of another world-class neurotic during the second season of The Larry Sanders Show, only Francine at least had her feet planted more firmly on the ground than Mary Harvard does. Francine actually divorced Larry and resumed their relationship tentatively and decided rather quickly that going their separate ways was the better idea.
While comedies about romance among neurotics hardly qualifies as uncharted film territory, when placed in the hands of writers as talented as Brooks and Johnson, fresh angles and plentiful, if painfully realistic laughs, always can be found. One aspect of Modern Romance that does stake out territory you don't usually see in a film is the process of filmmaking itself, specifically the work of a film editor, which is what Robert does for a living. Following the split at the restaurant, Robert returns to the editing room with both meals to work with
his assistant editor Jay (Bruno Kirby). He gives both dinners to Jay, but you can tell he doesn't listen closely to Mary because when Jay asks what kind of dressing is on the salad he says it's the house dressing when we clearly heard her order herb. Jay tells Robert that David, the director of the film they're editing, had been watching at home and phoned in ideas for changes. Robert tells Jay they should never have started sending video tapes home with directors. Besides, the breakup, even though Robert instigated it, has left him in no mood to work. Jay volunteers to stay and make the changes but Robert decides that work might be the best thing to take his mind off Mary and he settles down to work. Jay asks him if he and Mary fought a lot. Robert says that all they would do was fight and then they'd make up and have really great sex. "Do you need to talk?" Jay asks. Robert changes his mind again and decides he's not in a film editing state-of-mind. Jay advises Robert to go home and try to relax, giving him two Quaaludes to help. "There are 10 million people in this city alone," Robert says, "it can't be that hard to find one perfect person." Jay reminds him that he's alone as well, but the self-absorbed Robert seems disinterested as he leaves for home.Once he's home, the weak Robert immediately checks his answering machine, but sees he forgot to turn it on. He then calls Mary, but no one answers. He interprets both of these things as signs that he's done the right thing. "Alone's kind of a nice place to be," he says to himself. Those Quaaludes have begun to kick in. The phone rings and he grabs it anxiously only to be disappointed to hear his mother on the other end and he hurriedly tries to get rid of her, lying that he's working at home and brushing past her inquiry about Mary. He
stumbles into the bedroom and switches his clothing to a robe and after a brief tumble to the floor, he calls Jay, telling him he wants to let him know that he's the best assistant editor he's ever worked with in his career. The less-than-lucid Robert continues, "Jay, listen — I didn't tell you this before, and I think I should tell you now. I love you. I mean, in the right way. I think you're an amazing guy, and I — I think I just love you." Jay — quite correctly — guesses on the other end of the conversation that the 'ludes have kicked in. Robert is up and wandering and Jay tells him he needs to get back to work because he thinks he's got it whipped. Robert asks if he could get him more Quaaludes and Jay asks how many. "I don't know. About 100?" Jay says goodnight and Brooks continue his hilarious solo scene as the loopy Robert. Out of his mind and sitting before a phone and a phone directory, Robert decides the best way to forget Mary is to leap back into the dating fray. He calls up a woman named Ellen and asks if she remembers him. He tells her that he's always sort of
loved her and wondered if she'd like to go out the next night, promising the best date of her life, full of surprises "like The Price Is Right." Ellen agrees to the date and Robert hangs up, telling himself that he'd be even more excited if he could remember what Ellen looked like and exactly who she was. The phone rings again, only this time it's from an assistant editor named Harry that Robert worked with once, asking for a job recommendation. Robert has no problem — until Harry says he always wanted to tell him how lucky he was to have Mary because he thinks she's a spectacular woman. Robert tells him that they are no longer together. Harry apologizes, saying he didn't know that and then makes the mistake of asking if it would be rude if he asked Mary out. The Quaaludes didn't relax Robert enough to keep him from going ballistic. He calls Harry a scumbag and Mr. Trashcan, even asks why he doesn't try to cozy up to his parents so he can take Robert's place in the will. A stunned Harry gets off the line and a furious Robert decides he better go out before something terrible happens so he climbs in his car and turns on the radio. The first song emanating from the radio is "Another One Bites the Dust." The next thing Robert knows, the sun is shining: He passed out in his car without ever going anywhere. However, Robert congratulates himself: He made it through the first night without Mary.After he freshens up, ready to start a new day, Robert decides that he better not push things by working, so he calls Jay and asks if he can get by without him. Jay has no objections, so Robert prepares for his new life. Unfortunately, he discovers that all his vitamin bottles are empty. He heads out to replenish his supplements and go on a new life shopping spree, telling the clerks at every store that he's coming off a breakup. This
leads the health food clerk (Dennis Kort) to recommend certain vitamins and supplements. He repeats the routine at a sporting goods store in one of the film's funniest scenes where the salesman is played by Bob Einstein, Brooks' real-life brother who is best known as Super Dave Osborne and these days as Marty Funkhouser on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Robert gravitates toward a display that contains all you would need to begin a running regimen, but the salesman steers him away, insisting that those shoes "are made of old tires. Is that how you want to start your new life?" He brings out more expensive Nike shoes. Then he adds an expensive jogging suit, saying the cheaper one will leave a rash, and says he'll need two. Robert questions the need for two. "What if one is in the wash?" Robert smiles. "I won't run?" The salesman starts to hang the suits back up. "I'm sorry. I misjudged you." Robert caves and the equipment piles up to include salt tablets, headbands, wristbands and a wrist wallet, though Robert doesn't understand why he can't just keep his wallet in the pocket of his jogging suit, but the salesperson just glares. It's hysterically funny.
Fully equipped, Robert heads out immediately to begin his training, i.e. his new life without Mary. As we've observed, Robert Cole doesn't seem to stick by resolutions because his obsessive nature gets in the way and currently its laser-like focus stays on Mary, restraining him from new ventures. He goes to a field and keeps preparing for his sprint. He crouches in a starting position, but it's hard to remove things from his mind, as he counts off, "One, two, three. And I don't even miss her, two, three. One, two, three. And I don't even miss her, two, three." Finally, he starts jogging, then checks his new wrist wallet. The run continues until he veers off the track and to a nearby phone booth where he takes change from that wrist wallet and makes a call to Mary's bank and asks for her. The voice on the other end says she's not sure if she and Jim are back from lunch yet, but she'll check. The woman returns and says she's not back. Robert hangs up and, as you would expect, immediately starts obsessing about this Jim person, though he decides this is yet another sure sign that he did the right thing. He called last night and she didn't answer, now she's not at the bank and is out with another man. Yes, he was right to sever things for good. Albert Brooks over the years has proved he's always a master of phone call scenes, but in Modern Romance, phones pop up so often, they practically end up being a recurring theme. I can't help but wonder how this film would play today in the age of cell phones, if Robert weren't constantly stopping at phone booths.
By the time Robert has returned home, the feeling that everything that has happened is for the best has evaporated again. He decides that he can't go out with Ellen that night, especially since he's still not certain what she looks like it or how exactly he knows her. He dials her up to call off the date, but gets her answering
machine. Instead of putting the kibosh on the evening's activities, Robert says he's just calling to confirm that night's date and tells the device how much he is looking forward to it. When he's done with the call, he starts thinking about his place. He realizes that he doesn't have any dope or clean sheets. "I'm not prepared to get laid tonight." He ventures out anyway and pulls his car up to a house and gently knocks on the door. You think he's there to pick up Ellen, but he's actually stopped first at Mary's. She is not pleased to see him on her doorstep. She tells him that she doesn't want to go through this again, but he's obsessed with her clothing. He thinks she's particularly well-dressed so she must have be getting ready for a date. In no mood for this, Mary tells Robert to go home and closes the door. As Robert walks backward toward his car, he shouts, " I don't know where you get this strength. I'm sure it's in stores. I'll find it." Once he's in his car, Robert wonders how Mary could have scored a date so fast. He at least was under the influence of pills, but he doubts Mary was.
Robert leaves directly from Mary's to pick up Ellen (and learn who exactly she is). He pulls her car up in front of her apartment building and parks (Note the black cat that's in front of his car). He rings the buzzer and announces his presence. Her voice asks if he wants to come up, but he declines and tells her to just come on
down and then he meets Ellen (Jane Hallaren) and remembers that they had worked together on something involving Peter Bogdanovich. Then, because at this point it would seem that it's the only way Robert knows how to begin a conversation, he tells her that he's just had a breakup but not to worry, they are going to have a great time. He asks her if she has any suggestions for a restaurant, but she doesn't and he picks what he says is a great place and they start driving. Silence descends on the car as the radio begins playing Michael Jackson's "She's Out of My Life." Brooks' expression says it all as the song plays; you can just read what's spinning in his head and the entire scene has a simple sort of brilliance as it's just these two actors, silent in a car as the song plays. Then you realize, Robert has made a complete circle and is back in front of Ellen's apartment building and tells her that he can't go out yet. He thought he could, but he's just not ready. He promises that he will call her again in a few weeks or months, when he's more emotionally ready to move on and then reaches across to open the passenger door for her and lets her out leaving her standing in front of her apartment building, looking dumbfounded.
Instead of going home, Robert heads to a strip shopping mall which, apparently in L.A., sometimes come with parking gates with attendants which (you can probably repeat along with me by this point) he tells, "I just had a breakup..." adding that he just needs to buy some gifts. So he goes to what seems more like a drug store annoying the employees about their selection and picking up toys such as a stuffed giraffe and looking for items that talk, but failing to find any that actually say, "Mary." He gathers them all together and heads back to Mary's, but she's not home, so he leaves them on her porch, along with a note, and begins his insanely long night waiting for a response. First, he heads home to his answering machine, but there's nothing. The phone rings, but it's his mother again and he struggles to get rid of her, telling her he's waiting for an important phone
call. Paranoid that she could have called while his mom tied up the line, he heads out again and drives by her house, but the toys are still on the porch. He drives around a bit and decides to call from a phone booth and, in a scene that could be from the future, he has to wait for an old man to finish his call and the man could be Robert several decades down the road. The senior citizen is grilling the woman on the other end of the line about another man, even accusing her of having him there with her at the time before saying someone is waiting to use the phone. Robert's travels go on for quite some time: driving by Mary's, back home to check his machine, back to check her porch and then finally back home to the message he's been waiting for: "I love the giraffe." 
"I don't know what makes me do these things. It's my lizard brain," Robert tells Mary as he shows up at her house and immediately takes her to bed. Though I love Modern Romance, I view it as Brooks finding his film footing for the better films he would go on to make such as Lost in America (his best, I think), Defending Your Life and Mother. The central weakness for me is that as Mary willingly and quickly reconciles with Robert that night, her character gets no development to explain what's wrong with her that keeps her going back to this neurotic extraordinaire. When you get down to it, even once they get back together, his essential quirks don't change that much, yet Mary stays with him. He never physically harms her, but honestly, he's a stalker during periods of their separation and paranoid and jealous when they're together. If he hurt her physically, he could end up being Jake La Motta. The morning
after their reunion lovemaking, Robert immediately frets about the outfit Mary is wearing to work, saying the dress makes her nipples look like eyeballs, yet nothing in the film really gives any indication that Mary is as neurotic as Robert or even slightly crazy to explain why she puts up with his crap. As they continue dating for the rest of the film, he always tries to blame his craziness on love. When toward the end, it looks as if he's finally gone too far for her, he proposes — and she says yes. Nothing explains what's wrong with her to want to hitch her wagon to Robert when it's obvious she can do better. Really, Modern Romance is a dark comedy, but not the type you usually associate with the term. Its humor comes dipped so much in pain that you're not always certain that laughter is the proper response.This shouldn't imply that Modern Romance relies solely on angst-ridden humor alone. Albert Brooks knows how to make people laugh and the other films he co-wrote with Monica Johnson (Real Life, Lost in America, Mother and The Muse) weren't in the same dark vein and Johnson also wrote episodes of classic TV sitcoms such as The Mary Tyler Moore Show and It's Garry Shandling's Show. In other words, these two could bring the funny. In fact, Brooks' big breaks were his hysterical shorts that aired on the original cast incarnation of Saturday Night Live.
In Modern Romance, the scenes played almost exclusively for laughs involve Robert's work as a film editor on the sci-fi film. Additionally, it provides extra depth in, as I mention, you seldom see this aspect of filmmaking shown in such detail in a movie, let alone a romantic comedy. It also helps in giving Robert extra layering. He's still the same neurotic man, but he does his work seriously and professionally and I believe it
helps the audience keep from being completely put off by his behavior. When he returns to the editing room to work with Jay, it's as if he'd not lost more than a day over his breakup. He immediately comes up with a suggestion on how to build suspense in a scene where the star of the movie, who happens to be George Kennedy, as Zeron is grilling his men over some nonsense about having to obtain a code. In the original cut, one of the men, Zeon (Rick Bleckner) steps forward and says he knows it, but Kennedy's character yells back at him that he doesn't know anything. Robert correctly points out that it will be another hour in the film before Kennedy will learn Zeon knows. Why not build suspense by cutting Zeon's line and just show him giving a little reaction and not have Kennedy respond at all? Jay agrees that it does play better and even though you can tell that the movie they are working on looks pretty silly, the actual process of cutting that way did improve it.
When the film's director David (James L. Brooks, the film director, but no relation to Albert Brooks) drops into the booth and Robert proudly shows him his work, he's not as impressed. It could be that David had dropped by with his own obsession and wasn't particularly interested in listening to anything else or that he really didn't appreciate the change. David had dropped by because he had become obsessed with a scene where George Kennedy is running through the hallways of the spaceship and it was filmed in carpeted halls and it doesn't really sound like
desperate running and he wants to dub it to make it sound like something metallic or thumping on the floor — he even goes into repeated detail to imitate the thumping — to accompany Kennedy's breathing. Robert and Jay agree they will do what they can. As David is leaving, he asks Robert to walk with him, peppering him with questions
about whether he thinks the movie is any good. Robert asks him what got him upset and he says he saw Alien and they referred the bowels of the ship and they used the same phrase and he's afraid audiences will think they are copying and wonders if they should change it to the basement of the ship. Robert says he shouldn't worry. "All ships have bowels." David then invites Robert to a party at his house that night and to bring a date. Robert's revised line now is that he just got back together with his girlfriend and he doesn't know but David blows that off and tells him to come anyway because George Kennedy will be there and he wants him to see his feet. In Los Angeles, everyone is neurotic in their own peculiar way. They do go, though Robert tries to keep his eye on Mary who runs into some old friends who she goes off into a room to do some coke while Kennedy regales him with a tale of showing up at the wrong studio on the first day of shooting. David suggests it will make a great talk show story. "Why? To tell the world I'm an idiot?" Kennedy replies. Once Robert finally finds Mary again, her friends offer him so coke, but he declines, saying, "I'm hyper naturally." When they get home, he regrets going, since they are in a "mending phase." "When aren't we in a mending phase?" Mary asks.
Welcome to the sound mixing room, another of the funniest and behind-the-scenes sequences of Modern Romance as Robert and Jay return to work the next day to find the right sounds to match George Kennedy running down an imaginary spaceship's hallway. Who really deserves credit for the hilarious success of this section of the movie is the actor Albert Henderson, the gray-haired man in the back row playing the role of the head mixer. His sardonic delivery of every line truly is a treasure. I had to look him up on IMDb afterward and the actor died in 2004 at 88, though his credits didn't begin until 1957. Most was episodic television but even in his film roles, he almost always played a cop. Anyway, back to Modern Romance.
Robert asks the sound guys what they think the surface Kennedy is running on looks like and, naturally, they all reply carpet, since that is what it is. Robert says that David is looking for a sound that's like thumping when he runs on some kind of surface such as a metallic or concrete sound. He asks if they might have some kind of effect like that. The head mixer says they have tapes of The Incredible Hulk running, but he run kinds of slow, but Robert's willing to give it a try. Once they set it up, if The Hulk's moving fast, you can't hear it over his grunting screams, so Robert immediately nixes that, asking why they call that The Hulk Running effect. "Mark that Hulk Screaming," he suggests.
Robert and the men decide they'll have to fake the effect themselves. They ask the sound men what they have available and, given the options, they go with a small metallic surface, which one of the mixers brings out and sets microphones around upon which Robert will be faking the sound of George Kennedy's running. Then Robert remembers that since Kennedy is carrying something in the scene, he needs to mimic that as well, so they begin speculating how much that
prop would weigh. "I don't know. Maybe it doesn't weigh anything — did you ever think of that?" the head mixer says. "Maybe it's on one of those planets that doesn't have any gravity." Robert dismisses the sarcasm and spots an empty bottle from a water cooler and starts practicing holding that. Jay agrees that that looks right so Robert starts running in circles to get his breathing heavy and has Jay chase him before he gets on the surface and runs in place in sync to the footage of George Kennedy in that goofy silvery costume jogging down the cheap-looking spaceship set carrying the plastic-looking plot and they record Robert. They then sit and wait for the playback. The result thrills Robert and Jay and Robert turns to ask the head mixer what he thinks and with that same great dry deliver, Henderson says, "I think you saved the picture." As all the men clear the room, there's a final voiceover punchline announcing, "We've got Heaven's Gate the short version here at 8." Of course, I laughed, but like the movie, that joke is 30 years old and I wonder if future viewers, even future film buffs, will be able to have knowledge complete enough to get the gag or will you have to have been alive in that era to truly appreciate that reference?Having not seen Modern Romance in a long time before watching it again for this piece, I have to admit that it does pale next to Brooks' later works, but it still provides plenty of laughs if you can find humor that comes from such a painful place. The mystery to me always has been why Brooks has had such a small output as a writer-director. For someone initially painted as a "West Coast Woody Allen," he's not remotely as prolific, but on the plus side, he doesn't repeat himself as a filmmaker the way Woody does. All of Brooks' films are easily distiguished from the others, even if his central persona might be similar. Brooks seems content to stick to acting more than writing and directing. He cast writer-director James L. Brooks in an acting part here and six years later James returned the favor by giving Albert his best acting role, his Oscar-nominated turn in James' best film, Broadcast News. Then again, Albert Brooks was acting in great films before he ever made one of his own, playing Cybill Shepherd's campaign co-worker in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver and now young generations might not know his name, but they'll recognize his voice as the anxious father searching for his missing son in Pixar's Finding Nemo. Thirty years later, Modern Romance might not represent the best of Albert Brooks' work as a writer-director but it's definitely fascinating to view it as a stepping stone in his overall artistic development.
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Labels: 80s, Albert Brooks, Animation, Bogdanovich, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Cybill Shepherd, G. Kennedy, Larry Sanders, Movie Tributes, Pixar, Scorsese, Shandling, Television, Woody
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