Edward Copeland's Tangents

Tuesday, May 08, 2012

Bring on the lovers, liars and clowns!

By Edward Copeland
Without a doubt, one song stands heads and shoulders above all others written by Stephen Sondheim for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and "Comedy Tonight" holds that perch. Even people unaware of the movie or the stage show of Forum probably know that infectious number that opens and closes both versions. No more proof need be delivered to back this claim than the sheer number of performances, spoofs and use of the song as background music for clips and slideshows that I stumbled upon on the World Wide Web. Who knows how many more are out there? One used the song to back scenes from The West Wing, but the quality of the video was so poor, I wasn't going to use it until I stumbled upon a better version. Another person did three separate Bewitched montages, two of which employed identical moments only one used Zero Mostel's 1962 original cast recording version while the other took Nathan Lane's 1996 revival recording. I chose not to toss those in this collection because each montage only lasts 42 seconds, cutting off the song early. Never fear though, that still left me with plenty of options. Before I "open up the curtain," I thought I'd start with a clip of "Invocation and Instructions to the Audience" from The Frogs, a 1974 musical staged and "freely adapted" by Burt Shevelove (co-author of Forum) from the play by Aristophanes (written in 405 B.C.) and staged in the Yale University Swimming Pool with a cast of Ivy League students whose ranks included one Meryl Streep. Sondheim originally composed "Invocation" as the opening number for Forum when his first attempt ("Love Is in the Air") wasn't working during out-of-town tryouts. The show's legendary director George Abbott, according to Sondheim's Finishing the Hat, didn't find "Invocation" "hummable enough" — no doubt inspiring the producer's complaint in Merrily We Roll Along. Thankfully, that led to the blessing of "Comedy Tonight" and "Invocation" returned with the addition of the hysterical "Instructions to the Audience" when Sondheim and Shevelove collaborated on The Frogs. The clip below comes from the BBC Proms program given July 31, 2010, to celebrate Sondheim's 80th birthday. With the backing of The BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by David Charles Abell, Daniel Evans, a Tony nominee for best actor in the 2008 revival of Sunday in the Park with George, and Simon Russell Beale, a Tony nominee for best actor in the 2004 revival of Tom Stoppard's Jumpers, perform the number.

As I mentioned, people love to use "Comedy Tonight" as a backdrop to scenes from their favorite television shows or, in one instance, a series' cast actually performed the song themselves. I thought I'd start with TV and go chronologically from the oldest to the newest. First, this variety show's ensemble performed the number in the show's third episode ever on Oct. 18, 1976. Honestly, it's pure coincidence that I led into this with the number from The Frogs.

Anyone recall the last time they saw a rerun of this hit 1980s detective series with romantic banter between the leads? No, not Moonlighting. I refer to Remington Steele, the series that made Pierce Brosnan a star during its run from 1982-1987. What did happen to Stephanie Zimbalist?

The English certainly aren't immune to the charms of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Five major productions of the musical have played London since 1963 (with its original Pseudolus, Frankie Howerd, reprising the role in a 1986 revival) and a company that toured throughout the United Kingdom. Some enterprising fan of the musical combined the song with the long-running British spy series MI-5 (originally titled Spooks) that ran 10 seasons beginning in 2002.

This West Wing fan not only sets scenes to a version of "Comedy Tonight" but tosses in some of "Love Is in the Air," the first opening song that Sondheim wrote for Forum as well.

Finally, since in some ways the farcical elements of Forum almost make it a cartoon, its final television salute should, most appropriately, pair it with an animated work, namely Avatar: The Last Airbender, which ran from 2005-2008.

The song brings out the fun in everyday folk as well as we see here where "Comedy Tonight" underscores a year-end slideshow presentation for players, coaches and fans of the Long Beach State track and field team.

What happens in Vegas doesn't stay in Vegas if you post it on YouTube as with this parody of "Comedy Tonight" performed by the master of ceremonies (officially named MC Vegas) for an annual Edwardian Ball.

Now, I haven't heard much of them lately but the concept of flash mobs shouldn't be an unfamiliar one to most reading this. Apparently, at University of Western Ontario, you might be able to get course credits for participating in them since they appear to do them so often. The campus' improv broke out once into Handel's "Messiah." They interrupted this lecture with — you guessed it — "Comedy Tonight" Impressively, they choreographed some moves as well as learning the words.

I'm not sure what's funnier: That this boy named Ben (I believe his last name is Lerner) would perform this spoof of "Comedy Tonight" at his bar mitzvah (interrupted by his younger sister Nina) or that the explanatory note by his father informs us that when dad posted it years ago, the video and audio had problems, so we're watching a corrected version that he has labeled Take 2. I didn't try to track down the promised one that Nina later sang at her bat mitzvah.

Also on YouTube sits, as you'd expect, the song playing against photos of various Republican presidential contenders. I almost included it, but that's really like shooting water in a barrel, isn't it? Why waste the space? They make the point so much more brilliantly when they open their mouths than when we just look at them, even if we do see Rick Santorum chowing down on a very phallic-looking food item. Instead, we'll skip to the movies. As with television, I'm going to do this chronologically, starting with the oldest and we're going way back to 1928 and one of the last gasps of silent German Expressionism, Paul Leni's The Man Who Laughs starring Conrad Veidt as the creepy villain Gwynplaine, 14 years before Veidt became best known as Major Strasser in Casablanca.

For pure ambition, you have to give it to the students at The College of New Jersey Musical Theatre staged at the Ewing, N.J., campus a full-fledged musical based on the original Star Wars trilogy spoofing songs from a wide variety of musicals. The show opens with "Trilogy Tonight."

The title for the single best-edited video that I found involving a single subject probably deserves to go to the true identity of puddleglum128 for mating Zero Mostel's version to scenes from Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs. I'd call it perfect if it didn't contain the strange audio splice in the middle, but the right moments of Anthony Hopkins, Jodie Foster and the rest get used.

Christopher Nolan's second take on Batman, The Dark Knight, earns two takes of "Comedy Tonight!" The first, staged by The Pauper Players of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as part of the group's annual Broadway Melodies in 2009 where they parody different works. (The other two that year were Lost and Super Mario Bros.) The second video features photos from Nolan's film set to Nathan Lane singing the finale version of the song and also includes stills of Gerard Way.

For the last montage, which must have required a tremendous amount of time and effort by CRAIGSWORLD1427, he asked people about what movies throughout film history tickled their funny bones the most and then assembled various bits and pieces (including dialogue) with the song for this nearly 10-minute long package. It's worth it though. Chuck Workman, be damned.

Labels: Animation, Books, Christopher Nolan, Demme, Hopkins, Jodie Foster, Lost, Music, Musicals, Sondheim, Star Wars, Stoppard, Streep, Television, Theater

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Saturday, February 11, 2012

If anyone believes these two families should not join together…

By Edward Copeland
Has a movie wedding ever gone off without a hitch? Now, some can turn out to be enjoyable messes from the old (It Happened One Night, The Philadelphia Story) to the more recent (My Best Friend's Wedding, I Love You, Man). In the past few years, even when arguably taking the form of "dark" comedy, dysfunction or worse has tended to be the main dish served at the reception ranging from the blahs of Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married, the blech of Noah "Just go see your shrink" Baumbach's Margot at the Wedding and the boneheaded bombast of Lars von Trier's Melancholia. NOTE: I've purposely omitted the turd that goes by the title of Bridesmaids from either category because it belongs in a separate one called Overlong, Poorly Written Movies That Claim to Be Comedies but Wouldn't Have Any Laughs If They Didn't Cast Melissa McCarthy. All of this preamble brings us to the film I'm actually writing about in this post, Another Happy Day. Ellen Barkin produced the film and leads a strong ensemble in another tale of tensions that erupt when severed and estranged members of a large melded family must intermingle for the wedding of a shared son. What differentiates Another Happy Day from others of its ilk is that, while it's not a great film, most of the cast and the screenplay succeed at being engaging enough that the movie manages to earn laughs and rip scabs off old wounds at the same time.

It's easy to see why Barkin would help see this film get made so she could play Lynn — it's easily the best part she's had since probably This Boy's Life in 1993 (other than the just-for-kicks Ocean's 13). Barkin plays the perpetually frazzled Lynn, mother of the groom Dylan (Michael Nardelli), the oldest of her four children and one of two from her first marriage by her ex-husband Paul (Thomas Haden Church) and raised by his second wife, a real piece of work named Patty (Demi Moore).

Paul and Lynn's daughter Alice (Kate Bosworth) has been away at college, doing what she can to avoid both parents, though rumors have circulated throughout the extended family that Alice has been cutting herself. As her goofy aunts (Diana Scarwid, Siobhan Fallon) discuss it, they suspect it's some kind of new generational thing and wonder what happened to anorexia — they understood anorexia: Who doesn't want to look good?

Then again, Lynn's second brood presents a handful of its own. Her second husband Lee (a delightful, but underused Jeffrey DeMunn, who also is the best part of The Walking Dead as Dale) seems quite pleasant and at ease with the fact that their 17-year-old son Elliot (Ezra Miller, as wry and funny here as he was frightening in We Need to Talk About Kevin) just finished his second stint in rehab and can be quite rude and nasty to anyone, and their youngest son Ben (Daniel Yelsky), just beginning adolescence, who has a mild form of Asperger's syndrome and constantly videotapes most moments of their lives.

Even before Lynn and the boys arrive in Annapolis for the wedding events, Lynn is second-guessing most of her decisions in life and battling depression. She blames many of her problems on her parents, the bottled-up Doris (Ellen Burstyn), who doesn't recall depression running in her family though Lynn's grandfather did shoot himself to death, and her now-ailing father Joe (George Kennedy). Lynn feels they didn't support her during her divorce, siding with the idea that Paul should get custody of Dylan and Alice.

Another Happy Day marks the directing debut of Sam Levinson (son of Barry), who also wrote the screenplay and won the Sundance Film Festival's 2011 Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award for his script. What separates it from other recent films that tapped into this area is that Levinson manages to earn both his laughter and his pathos whereas everything, especially in Baumbach's film, just plays flat and maudlin. Levinson must be eternally grateful that he was able to assemble the cast he did, because they're key.

Barkin obviously relishes having this juicy a part for the first time in a long time, so much so that her histrionics do go overboard at times. She's at her best when she's grounded in scenes of truth with other talents such as the always brilliant Burstyn or selected scenes with Church and DeMunn. When she has to go one-on-one with Moore, things gets out of hand since Demi Moore only knows one note to play and it looks as if Barkin instinctively tries to play down to her level. Demi Moore can play "one dimensional bitch in heels" and that's it. That's pretty much how it always has been.

The two who really hold the film up are Ezra Miller and Daniel Yelsky as Lynn's younger sons, particularly Miller as Elliot. Between his work here as the constantly sarcastic addict (so much so that he keeps lifting grandpa's Fentanyl patches and licking the pain medicine off them to get high) and as the demon spawn in We Have to Talk About Kevin, this 19-year-old actor (surprise from all the other sources I checked, IMDb's birth month and year are wrong) definitely is someone to keep your eye on.

Levinson's career also will be of interest to monitor. While Another Happy Day isn't perfect, it's worlds away from something his father Barry would make, though it's interesting that the son gives Ellen Barkin her best part in more than a decade while his father gave her her first credited feature film role in his feature directing debut 30 years ago in the great Diner.

Labels: 10s, B. Levinson, Barkin, Burstyn, Demi, Demme, G. Kennedy, von Trier

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Monday, November 07, 2011

Walk on the Wild Side

By Phil
My, how times change. In 1986, Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild crackled with hip edginess. It was smart, sexy and subversive, a playful jab to family values in the Reagan era. But the passage of years hasn’t been particularly kind to the film, which saw its theatrical release 25 years ago today. While the picture still has its charms, enough to warrant the Criterion treatment earlier this year, nowadays Something Wild comes off as a bit more mild.

For Demme, the experience must have been a blast after the debacle of Swing Shift, a 1984 Goldie Hawn dramedy in which the director had lost control to the studio. Something Wild was an opportunity for the filmmaker — whose impressive oeuvre up to that point included Handle with Care and Melvin and Howard — to get back on track.

The story follows Charlie Driggs, played by Jeff Daniels, a mild-mannered banker in New York whose life is thrown for a loop after a chance encounter with a sexy free spirit named Lulu (Melanie Griffith). She catches him walking out on a bill at a corner restaurant, pegs him as a closet rebel and proceeds to pick him up in near-record time. The uptight Charlie goes along, albeit reluctantly (“I can’t just take the afternoon off! Are you nuts), but Lulu turns out to be more than he bargained for. She swipes money from a liquor store cash register, handcuffs him to a motel room bed for some raucous sex and makes a habit of testing Charlie’s ability to ditch restaurant tabs.

Eventually, she whisks Charlie away to Pennsylvania and she tells her homespun mom (Dana Preu) that they’ve been married for several months. It is there that Lulu dispenses with a brunette wig, takes off the gaudy jewelry and reveals to Charlie that her real name as Audrey Hankel.

Things quickly turn dangerous when the pair goes to Audrey’s 10th high school reunion. They run into the woman’s old flame, a disarmingly charismatic jailbird named Ray Sinclair (Ray Liotta). Audrey clearly is terrified of the guy, but Charlie doesn’t clue in until it’s too late. Ray brutally robs a convenience store, clocks Charlie and all hell breaks loose.

The jarring tonal shift of Something Wild remains its most interesting aspect. Still, Demme’s breezy direction and E. Max Frye’s quirky screenplay do provide considerable charm. The periphery is especially appealing, from a knockout soundtrack — veering from reggae to post-punk — to the film’s comforting conceit that life on the road is populated with open-hearted folks eager to lend a helping hand. Small kindnesses abound here; the picture’s most emotionally resonant moments stem from the random cashier or motel guest who Charlie and Audrey happen across on their journey.

The casting, however, is otherwise a mixed bag. Daniels certainly is likable in the Jack Lemmon Everyman role, and he displays strong comic timing as he unravels amid the force of nature that is Lulu/Audrey. But the audience is asked to suspend a staggering amount of disbelief with Melanie Griffith as that force of nature. She is a shockingly bland seductress here, making it tough to swallow that Charlie would so fully fall under her reckless spell. It almost feels as if Griffith is a placeholder for an actual performance that never quite materialized.

That void is all the more apparent when Liotta blasts onscreen. In his first major film appearance, he lends Ray Sinclair with generous doses of menace of charm — so much so that the movie winds up sagging when he isn’t around.

As a romantic comedy, Something Wild is a pleasant trifle but little more.

Labels: 80s, Demme, Jeff Daniels, Lemmon, Liotta

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Wednesday, October 05, 2011

Charles Napier (1936-2011)

Charles Napier, a longtime character actor who was a favorite of directors as diverse as Jonathan Demme and Russ Meyer, died today at the age of 75. Since first appearing in episodic TV in the late 1960s, Napier seemed to always be a recognizable presence in roles, usually small in size but almost always memorable.

His first credited television appearance was on an episode of Mannix in 1968. Throughout his early career through the mid-1970s, he also appeared on the TV shows Hogan's Heroes, Star Trek, Mission: Impossible, Kojak, The Streets of San Francisco, Baretta, The Rookies, Black Sheep Squadron and The Rockford Files.

During the same period, Napier also was active in feature films, making his debut as the lead in a 1969 film called The House Near Prado. The same year, he played the title role in a Western made by the same director, Jean Van Hearn, called The Hanging of Jake Ellis.

In 1970, he played Harry in Cherry, Harry & Raquel!, the first of four movies directed by Russ Meyer in which Napier appeared. The quartet included that same year's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, whose screenplay was written by Roger Ebert.

In 1977, he worked in Handle With Care, the first of 10 films with director Jonathan Demme. Demme and Napier would go on to collaborate on Last Embrace, Melvin and Howard, Swing Shift, Something Wild, Married to the Mob, The Silence of the Lambs (where he memorably guarded Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter and ended up displayed on Lecter's cage), Philadelphia, Beloved and the remake of The Manchurian Candidate.

Those credits just start to scratch the surface of his work in TV and movie work. Among the other notable films in which Napier appeared include The Blues Brothers, Rambo: First Blood Part II, Miami Blues, The Grifters, The Cable Guy, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.

Other television shows and TV movies he played roles in included The Incredible Hulk, The Blue and the Gray, Dallas, The Dukes of Hazzard, Night Court, The A-Team, War and Remembrance, L.A. Law, Murder, She Wrote, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Party of Five, Walker: Texas Ranger, The Practice, CSI, Monk and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Napier's distinctive voice also earned him much work in animated programming, most notably in the regular role as the Ted Turner-esque Duke Phillips on The Critic. He also contributed his vocal talents to animated shows such as Men in Black: The Series, God, the Devil and Bob, The Simpsons, Squidbillies and Archer.

R.I.P. Mr. Napier.

Labels: Animation, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Demme, Ebert, Hannibal Lecter, Hopkins, Obituary, Remakes, Television, The Simpsons

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Thursday, September 15, 2011

After 40 years, I have far more than just one thing to say about Columbo

"That's me — I'm paranoid. Every time I see a dead body, I think it's murder.…But that's me. I'd like to see everyone die of old age." — Lt. Columbo, "Étude in Black" (Season 2, Episode 1)

By Edward Copeland
Actually, television audiences met Lt. Columbo three times before his series debut 40 years ago on this date as part of the NBC Mystery Movie — and the first time he wasn't even played by Peter Falk. Though most who are old enough probably remember the series as part of a Sunday night rotation with NBC's other mystery series, McMillan & Wife and McCloud, the "wheel" actually started on Wednesday nights. The troika didn't move to Sunday until the second season. As far as the Columbo character goes, actor Bert Freed first played

the cigar-chomping lieutenant in an episode of NBC's The Chevy Mystery Show , a summer anthology series hosted by Walter Slezak, that aired July 31, 1960, titled "Enough Rope." William Link and Richard Levinson, the creators of the Columbo character, adapted the teleplay from a story "Dear Corpus Delicti" that they published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine with Richard Carlson playing a murderous doctor. Two years later, the writers expanded the story into a stage play called Prescription: Murder which starred legendary Oscar-winning character actor Thomas Mitchell as Columbo with Joseph Cotten as the homicidal physician. By 1968, they decided to return Columbo to television with a movie version of Prescription: Murder. They sought Lee J. Cobb to play Columbo, but he was unavailable, but consider this frightening possibility: Their second choice was Bing Crosby. Fortunately, Bing's golf game proved more important to him than a television series and, though they thought he was too young for the part, Peter Falk

won the role with Gene Barry playing the killer. They did a second TV movie, Ransom for a Dead Man, that aired in early 1971 with Lee Grant as the murderer (for which she received an Emmy nomination), and come that fall Columbo became a regular series as part of that mystery wheel and Falk's portrayal of the scruffy homicide detective with his junky car, tattered raincoat and ever-present cigar became an irreplaceable TV icon. In the first season episode "Lady in Waiting," a socialite mother (Jessie Royce Landis) arrives at her son's mansion after he's been shot to death and doesn't immediately recognize exactly who or what Lt. Columbo is. When he introduces himself as a police detective, she says, "I must say you hardly look the role." That may have been true, but no one but Peter Falk could have played the role any better.

I was too young to catch the early years in first run, but I remember how excited Henry Mancini's spooky theme music for The NBC Mystery Movie with the unknown figure waving a flashlight in all directions at whatever shows were in the rotation at the time followed by the announcer's booming voice announcing, "Tonight's episode —" It always punctured my balloon if he finished his statement with McMillan & Wife, McCloud or even Hec Ramsey. Thankfully, in this example, it is Columbo.

If you have never seen an episode of Columbo (and if that's the case, I must ask what the hell you've been doing with your life), you needn't worry that for a mystery series I'm being so carefree in identifying the various killers because what made Link & Levinson's creation (in this case the series, not the detective) so great was that you know from the outset who the murderer is. Spoiler alerts aren't necessary here because Columbo begins by showing the culprit plotting and carrying out his and her crime and Falk's intrepid homicide detective doesn't

show up until later to play cat-and-mouse with the killer. In the first season, the movies (which, in essence, is what they were more than a series) ran 90 minutes with commercials while in later seasons they alternated between 90 minute and two hour installments. Sometimes, Columbo didn't turn up until as late as 30 minutes into the show. In the first episode when Columbo was a regularly scheduled series, "Murder By the Book," Falk's lieutenant first appears as a faint figure at the end of an office hallway as he approaches the wife (Rosemary Forsyth) of apparently kidnapped and possibly dead mystery writer Jim Ferris (Martin Milner), who is getting a drink from a water fountain. It's about 15 minutes into the story and the audience already knows that Ferris' soon-to-be-ex-writing partner Ken Franklin (Jack Cassidy) has lured Jim to his lakeside cabin, killed him and staged the entire kidnapping. Cassidy will be one of the show's favorite actors to cast as a killer: he'll play the villain two more times. Others in this rogues gallery include Robert Culp (three times as a murderer, once as the father of a murderer) and Patrick McGoohan (a killer four times, taking home Emmys for two of them; he also directed five episodes, one of which he wrote). It's also one of several Columbo mysteries that involve writers. Most interesting of all, the series premiere was written by the show's story editor at the time, Steven Bochco, who would go on to co-create Hill Street Blues, and was directed by a 24-year-old kid named Steven Spielberg.

Many directors whose names you'd recognize helmed a Columbo, though no one else who'd become a Spielberg. The other director who would probably go on to the most notable career would be Jonathan Demme, who directed an installment in its seventh season. Many known better for their acting gave it a try as well as some whose names might not ring a bell but who did direct some interesting features such as Jack Smight (No Way to Treat a Lady), Boris Sagal (The Omega Man), Richard Quine (My Sister Eileen, The Solid Gold Cadillac), Robert Butler (The Barefoot Executive, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes), Jeannot Szwarc (Somewhere in Time), Ted Post (Hang 'em High, Magnum Force) and James Frawley (The Muppet Movie). Other writers who would pass through included the prolific Stephen J. Cannell, Dean Hargrove, who went on to create or co-create The Father Dowling Mysteries and Matlock, and Larry Cohen who would go on to write and direct such quirky horror films as It's Alive and Q.

While the two previous made-for-TV movies had set the basic mold for what a Columbo mystery would be, it

truly wasn't until it became a regular network fixture that Falk could really cut loose as the lieutenant and the show could become a comedy as much as it was about catching the bad guy. That's really why I think Tony Shalhoub's Monk gets compared to Columbo so often — it's not because Columbo has a mental disorder but because Columbo and Monk both emphasize comedic elements. In fact, Monk tends to be more dramatic than Columbo with Monk's underlying mourning for his murdered wife while Columbo just got funnier the longer it went on. "Murder By the Book" really sets the template for the entire series and even if you have no interest in Columbo, it's fascinating to watch just as one of Spielberg's earliest credits. "Murder By the Book" opens with the sound of typing (sigh…typewriters) while the visual shows a car driving down an L.A. street. We soon see that Milner's Jim Ferris busily types away. On the wall, (Homage to Rear Window or not? You decide.) are plaques, painting and photos charting the partnership of Ferris and Ken Franklin (Cassidy). As the typing continues to be the only sound, the car we're watching pulls into the building's garage and parks on the roof. A hand reaches inside the glove compartment and removes a gun. A man exits

the car and shuts the door and we see it is Franklin whom Spielberg films at a low angle as credits continue. The director throughout the episode uses a lot more adventurous angles and quick cuts than I've seen from him in years, but he was young and trying to gain notice. Upstairs, something only a grammarian or a copy editor would notice — Ferris types a quote but places the period outside the quotation mark. It turns out the gun was a joke — it's not even loaded — and he's not wearing gloves. Franklin was just trying a good-natured ruse to show Ferris that there aren't any hard feelings about severing their partnership and asks him Jim to his lakeside cabin near San Diego to mark the end of a fruitful relationship. Ferris doesn't know that it also will mark the end of his life.

It's obvious why they would re-team Falk with an actor such as Jack Cassidy more than once because some performers' chemistry with Falk's Columbo reached a perfection that you expect came from a lab and since the interplay between the lieutenant and the killer drove the show, why not go back to a proven winner as they did with Cassidy, who would return in seasons 3 and 5. He might have appeared again if he hadn't fallen

asleep with a lit cigarette and died in 1976, 10 months after his third Columbo aired. Cassidy excelled at what was the most common Columbo scenario — a villain who's not only a killer, but a snob. In most cases, class comes into play with the murderer always assuming he or she is smarter and better than that rumpled lieutenant, but no one plays dumb on purpose better than this detective so when he makes the case on the cultured killer, they inevitably are surprised that this little man in the tattered raincoat, always seeming to be forgetful and driving that Peugeot 403 convertible that looks as if it could crumble into a million pieces at any moment beat them. In "Murder By the Book," it takes 35 minutes for Columbo to say his first, "There is one more thing." The comic highlight, harbinger of many to come in the series, occurs as Ken Franklin is being interviewed by a magazine writer and her photographer tries to take photos of him while in the background Falk does some great slapstick as Columbo, juggles an armful of books, cigar stuck in his mouth, looking for a place to put the books down.

The second episode of its first season had another three-time killer, Robert Culp, as Brimmer, the head of a big private investigation agency hired by Ray Milland to find out if his much younger wife (Patricia Crowley) is

cheating on him in "Death Lends a Hand," which won Columbo creators Levinson & Link the Emmy for outstanding writing in a drama series, the only writing Emmy the series ever received though it earned a lot of nominations in that category. Brimmer proves she did, but lies (with the wife in a nearby room) and says she's faithful. She asks why he would do such a thing. "Oddly enough, I'm a moralist," he tells her. So moral that he lied to her husband to hold the truth over her head so she can feed him information about her husband's powerful friends and business interests. She balks, saying she'll expose the private eye instead and he kills her in a rage — the cleanup and coverup of which gets wonderfully filmed as reflections in the lenses of Culp's glasses. He stages her death to look like she was

robbed and dumped in a vacant lot. Some interesting facts about L.A. life in 1971: 187 already was the police code for a homicide and when Brimmer tries to woo Columbo to take a job at his agency, Columbo learns a top position there can pull in $30,000 a year. That doesn't seem like much and in the first episode of season two, Columbo says his salary is $11,000 a year, which is the start of the poverty line for a single person today and the oft-mentioned Mrs. Columbo is a housewife. When they tried to spin her off in the form of Kate Mulgrew when Columbo ended the first time in 1978, she had a part-time job writing for a weekly neighborhood newspaper, until they decided to change her name to Callahan and forget that she was supposed to be related to Columbo at all (though at the start of Mrs. Columbo she even took their unnamed basset hound Dog with her).

Falk won the first of his four Emmys (out of 11 nominations) for playing Columbo for that first season. The sole time the show won an Emmy for best series, it actually was shared ith the other NBC Mystery Movie members for outstanding limited series. Throughout its two runs (the original NBC run from 1971-78 and the ABC return from 1989-2003), it earned 38 Emmy nominations and won 11 awards. Because of the shared time

slot, it also meant shorter seasons than a regular series. Where a normal network show would be producing around 26 episodes a year at that time, Columbo only had seven installments in season one. Some of the other actors who played killers that year were Eddie Albert, Ross Martin, Susan Clark (in "Lady in Waiting" which featured Leslie Nielsen when he could still play it straight and was directed by veteran actor Norman Lloyd, who fell off the Statue of Liberty in Hitchcock's Saboteur and would play Dr. Auschlander on St. Elsewhere), Patrick O'Neal, who played a homicidal architect in "Blueprint for Murder," the only Columbo episode that Falk directed himself, and perhaps most fun of all, Roddy McDowall in an episode titled "Short Fuse." Did you hear the one about the exploding cigar? You will in "Short Fuse," where we also learn aboute Columbo's famous fear of heights. Because McDowall's character Roger Stanford is a playboy and a prankster (oh — and there is that murder), he does fool around with things such as those cans that spray strings of sticky colored plastic. When Columbo snoops around his darkroom, he accidentally sets it off on himself and an entire scene consists of McDowall picking the goo out of Falk's hair.

As I mentioned when I sadly had to write my appreciation of Peter Falk when he passed away in late June, there was much more to the actor than just Lt. Columbo, as great and iconic as Columbo is. Between the time he made his first Columbo movie Prescription: Murder and prior to filming his second Ransom for a Dead Man and beginning the series, Falk began another important creative relationship — with John Cassavetes. The two actually had worked as actors in 1969 first in the Italian gangster flick Machine Gun McCain, which also featured Gena Rowlands but didn't open in the U.S. until October 1970. The important film they made together though was Husbands (subtitled A Comedy About Life, Death and Freedom) that was written and directed by Cassavetes and co-starred Ben Gazzara. Falk became a vital part of Cassavetes' unofficial repertory company appearing in A Woman Under the Influence, Opening Night (as himself) and Big Trouble. The two also co-starred in Elaine May's Mikey and Nicky. The Cassavetes troupe all played with Falk on Columbo in some capacity. Rowlands appeared as the wife of a killer, Gazzara directed two episodes and Cassavetes starred as the killer in the second season premiere, "Étude in Black," one of the series' best episodes thanks to chemistry these two fine actors already had with one another.

Cassavetes plays gifted conductor and composer Alex Benedict who kills his pianist mistress (Anjanette Comer) after she threatens to tell his wife Janice (Blythe Danner) about their affair if he doesn't leave her. Benedict

tries to make it look like a suicide, but Columbo sees through the ruse rather quickly. He and Mrs. Columbo also are big fans of Benedict, who is prepping a big concert at the Hollywood Bowl. The scenes between Cassavetes and Falk prove positively electric as their relationship switches from a killer who thinks Columbo's swooning will save him until he figures out that the lieutenant actually has more on the ball than he ever suspected and he starts challenging the cop to find the evidence. The episode has time for laughs as well as Benedict stumbles upon Columbo waiting for him on stage at the Hollywood Bowl playing "Chopsticks" on a concert piano. The cast also includes Myrna Loy as his mother-in-law and patron of the orchestra, concerned over the P.R. when another member of the orchestra who was the murdered woman's ex-boyfriend turns out to have a criminal past. Benedict defends the musician, telling the woman who played Nora Charles that it's not like she didn't drink gin during Prohibition. This excellent episode was written by Bochco from a story by Levinson & Link and was directed by none other Nicholas Colasanto, best known as Coach on Cheers. This also is the episode where Columbo gets the basset hound that he never bothers to give a name.

For a network series to have more good episodes than bad, especially when it involves a set formula that they didn't tinker with much, Columbo truly stands as a monumental television achievement. Of course, I refer only to NBC years from 1971-1978. In a way, they had the luxury that cable series have now by not having to deliver so many episodes a year. While they call it seven seasons, it only adds up to 45 episodes. The sixth season only produced three episodes and no season made more than eight. In a way, it was the Curb Your Enthusiasm of mystery shows: A formula and a limited number of shows per season. When ABC revived Columbo in 1989, they tried originally to pair it with other mysteries, but they all eventually flopped and it just turned into occasional movies. Some were OK, but they had a hard time getting worthy killers except for the two appearances by McGoohan and had some silly outing where Columbo went undercover in disguise with accents and one where there wasn't even a murder but a kidnapping. Faye Dunaway won a guest actress Emmy for what really was a controversial one, "It's All in the Game," because Columbo purposely lets the killer get away because of the victim's loathsomeness. They had two seasons where they were regularly scheduled between 1989 and 1991 and then just TV movies. They made 24 in all.

However, those first 45, I could go on about them all. While it wasn't unusual in the NBC version to have killers who turned out to be more sympathetic than their victims, Columbo still took them to jail. Donald Pleasence's wine maker in "Any Old Port in a Storm" may be the best example. His playboy half-brother plans to sell the vineyards to another wine company, taking away his pride and joy and he kills him in a rage. He also was one of the few cultured characters who didn't look down on Columbo. When his longtime secretary (Julie Harris) figures out his guilt, she proposes he marry her to keep her quiet. Columbo solves the crime first and he gratefully confesses — finding prison preferable to marriage. "Freedom is purely relative," he tells Columbo, who brings out a special bottle of wine when he arrests him, which his high tastes approve. "You learn very well, lieutenant," he says.

"Thank you, sir. That's about the nicest thing anyone has said to me," Columbo responds. All the Jack Cassidy episodes are great, but in the second outing, "Publish or Perish," it's neat to see him play a book publisher losing his biggest author and that they cast Mickey Spillane in the part. The episode also sends Columbo to Chasen's to interview some people and has the high-scale eatery whip him up some chili. Director Robert Butler also includes an imaginative triple split screen that shows Spillane's character at work dictating his book while the hired killer approaches down a hall and Cassidy is elsewhere, establishing his alibi. "Swan Song" from the third season proves to be another favorite of mine with probably the most unusual casting choice for a killer ever — Johnny Cash. He plays a gospel singer blackmailed by his controlling shrew of a wife (Ida Lupino) and turns in a solid acting performance. Cash's character drugs Lupino and a young girl singer that he had sex with when she was

underage so he drugs the two of them when they are flying to the next concert site and bails out of the plane, making it look like a simple plane crash. As Columbo investigates, an air crash investigator asks Columbo if he flies. "My ears pop in an elevator. In fact, I don't even like being this tall," he replies. I can't leave out Patrick McGoohan, always great, but of his four I think his first episode, the one that got him the first Emmy, "By Dawn's Early Light," ranks first. His strict commandant at a boys' military academy would be a great performance on any series. Some of the best guest killers whose episodes I didn't have time or space to mention in detail (original 45 only): Anne Baxter, Leonard Nimoy, Laurence Harvey, Martin Landau (as twins), Vera Miles, Jackie Cooper, José Ferrer, Richard Kiley, Robert Conrad, Robert Vaughn, Janet Leigh, Hector Elizondo, Ricardo Montalban, William Shatner, Theodore Bikel, Ruth Gordon, Louis Jourdan and Nicol Williamson.

If I had to pick, the fourth season episode "Negative Reaction" might be my favorite Columbo of them all. Written by Peter S. Fischer, who would later create Murder, She Wrote and directed by Alf Kjelllin, it cast Dick Van Dyke against type as an asshole and a killer — even if what little we saw of his wife (Antoinette Bower) made it appear as if she had it coming. Van Dyke plays Paul Gallesko, an acclaimed photographer

reduced to shooting portraits because he's under the thumb of his wife. He fakes her kidnapping and gets a recently released ex-con named Alvin Deschler (Don Gordon) he met while chronicling San Quentin to photograph possible houses for him to buy, unaware that Gallesko is setting him up to be the fall guy and eventually kills him and shoots himself in a faked ransom exchange gone awry. What makes "Negative Reaction" so great in addition to Van Dyke being a bad guy is that it also may be the funniest Columbo as well. When the lieutenant arrives in the beat-up Peugot at the junkyard where it was staged, he passes a sign that says "WE BUY JUNK CARS." It seems that Gallesko had an unexpected witness — a drunk bum played by character actor Vito Scotti who appeared in six episodes in vastly different parts. (In "Swan Song," he was a funeral director trying to sell Columbo on post-life planning.) After he gets sobered up and gives his statement, the police let him slip away and Columbo has to track him

down at a Catholic mission where a nun (Joyce Van Patten, who will return in a later episode as a killer) mistakes Columbo as a homeless person and tries to find him a new coat and gets him a bowl of stew. Columbo keeps trying to explain that he's not homeless, but the nun replies, "No false pride between friends." When he finally finds the bum and talks with him, the nun returns with a coat and tries to take his and Columbo finally says, "I appreciate what you're doing ma'am, but I've had this coat for seven years and I'm very fond of it" and shows her his badge. The nun assumes he's undercover and compliments his disguise and promises not to blow his cover. Gallesko certainly isn't as friendly as the nun every time Columbo pops up to dig. "You're like a little shaggy-haired terrier. You've got a grip on my trousers and you won't let go. I can't turn around without you looking up at me with that blank innocent expression on your face," Gallesko growls. One of the other things that bothers Columbo is that Deschler was taking cabs everywhere until the

last day, the day of the supposed ransom exchange, when he suddenly rented a car. It would have been a lot less expensive to rent a car earlier than taking all these cab rides, but then it dawns on the detective: He didn't have a driver's license yet. Columbo goes to the DMV to check it out and it turns out the man who gave him the driving test that day, Mr. Weekly (Larry Storch), is stuck out on a street because a car broke down. Columbo goes and picks him up to see if he can identify Deschler, but Mr. Weekly keeps being distracted over worries about the safety of Columbo's car and his reckless driving. It's a hysterical scene — and they chose to break for this bit of comedy with only 14 minutes left. On top of everything else, "Negative Reaction" contains one of those classic endings where Columbo tricks the killer by using his own arrogance against him to give himself away. That's why this YouTube clip of conductor Alex Benedict's parting words to Lt. Columbo sum him and his series up.

Labels: Bochco, Cassavetes, Demme, Dunaway, Falk, Ferrer, Hitchcock, Joseph Cotten, Landau, Lee J. Cobb, Loy, Lupino, Nielsen, Nimoy, Pleasence, Ruth Gordon, Shatner, Spielberg, T. Mitchell, TV Tribute

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Monday, August 15, 2011

When Hannibal First Crossed the Screen

By J.D.
Before Jonathan Demme's Academy Award-winning The Silence of the Lambs (1991) graced the screen with Anthony Hopkins in all of his visceral glory, Michael Mann's little-remembered (and seen) thriller, Manhunter (1986), which was released 25 years ago today, presented a very different kind of Hannibal Lecter. While Demme's film opted for over-the-top performances and needlessly gory scenes of violence, Mann's film took a subtler, creepier approach to its material. Manhunter is less interested in depicting the actual killings (the main attraction of this genre when it became popular) than in the cerebral and actual legwork required to enter the killer's frame of mind and track him down.

Thomas Harris' novel, Red Dragon, was published in 1981. It explores one man's eerie trip into the mind of a serial killer. Profiler Will Graham (William Petersen) reluctantly comes out of retirement to track down Francis Dollarhyde (Tom Noonan), a man who slaughters whole families to fulfill his own power fantasies. Graham is able to pursue the killer by thinking and dreaming as he imagines the killer does. However, the last time he tried this technique it pushed him to sanity’s edge. The case involved a cunning psychiatrist named Hannibal Lecktor (spelling changed from the novel) who viciously killed his patients, scarring Graham both physically and emotionally. Now Graham must make the dangerous journey back into the mind of a killer to catch him before he kills again.

Richard Roth (who produced director Fred Zinnemann's penultimate film, the much-lauded Julia, starring Jane Fonda, in 1977) bought the film rights to Harris' novel for Dino De Laurentiis with David Lynch attached to direct. Lynch already had made the critical and commercial disaster Dune (1984) for the Italian movie mogul and was looking for a chance to redeem himself. "I was involved in that a little bit, until I got sick of it. I was going into a world that was going to be, for me, real, real violent. And completely degenerate. One of those things: No Redeeming Qualities." Lynch went on to make Blue Velvet (1986) and so Roth offered the project to Mann. Although, one wonders what Lynch’s take on the material would have been like.

After the failure of The Keep (1983), Mann went back to television and produced the very popular Miami Vice television series for NBC. The 1980s was a time when Ronald Reagan was president of the United States. The country was a consumer culture, a carnivorous, materialistic society that is reflected in the show with its stylish fashion and architecture. Manhunter also is a product of its time as it reflected that era's currency of popular culture in terms of fashion, style and music. Mann read Red Dragon not long after it was published and "thought it was the best thriller I'd ever read, bar none." Mann was intrigued by Harris' exploration into the nature of evil. As Mann wrote the screenplay, he decided not to graphically depict the murders as in the book. This is why Mann's film stands apart from the other Lecter movies and serial killer films in general.

The first Mann theme that Manhunter explores is the conflict of the individual versus the desire to preserve their family. Will Graham is a consummate professional and the best at what he does — profiling serial killers. His friend, Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina), seeks him out. Two families have been brutally murdered by the same killer: the Jacobis in Birmingham, Ala., and the Leeds in Atlanta. They talk on the beach in front of Graham's house. Crawford shows Will not pictures of grisly murders as we almost expect, judging from the way they're talking, but snapshots of two families frolicking in a recreational setting. This is quite shrewd on Crawford's part. He is obviously appealing to Graham's protective nature toward his own family. He knows Graham will feel empathy for the dead families and future ones and therefore offer his services.

This opening conversation between Graham and Crawford also is a teaser of sorts. Nothing is alluded to concretely — especially Graham's ability to get into the mindset of a killer. The closest we get to what happened to him before he quit is when Crawford says, "You look alright." Graham responds, "I am…alright."

That hesitation makes one wonder — is he really OK? How damaged is Graham? What is so fascinating about this scene is that so much is implied. The scene begins mid-conversation and alludes to Graham’s mysterious past, one that has caused an obvious rift between him and Crawford. The audience can only imagine what the source of this tension was and will only learn bits and pieces of what happened to him later on in the film. While Graham keeps in the tradition of Mann’s intensely professional protagonists who are the best at what they do, he is also one of his most layered characters. There is much more to Graham than a driven investigator. He also is an extremely sensitive person who is compelled to do what he does out of a need to save others from being brutally murdered. The process that Graham undergoes to catch these killers is what intrigued Mann in the first place.

The visual motif of imprisoning bars features prominently in the scene between Graham and Lecktor (Brian Cox) where the investigator goes to visit the killer in order to get the criminal mindset back. The first shot has Graham framed with bars in front of him. The film cuts to a shot of the imprisoned psychiatrist lying on his bed, his back to Graham with bars in front of him as well. In a way, both men are imprisoned. Lecktor literally and Graham metaphorically, trapped in the nightmare of trying to solve these murders. Graham almost is trapped in his nemesis' presence. Graham does not want to talk too long to Lecktor and risk exposing his mind to the psychiatrist's horrible thoughts.

As Hannibal gets up and faces Will, the camera slowly zooms in ever so slightly on him which creates a great dramatic effect. Lecktor resides in an antiseptic white prison cell and he wears white so that he almost blends into his surroundings except for his black hair and the skin color of his face and hands. It is a miniature disturbance in this immaculate and pristine place that effectively conveys how dangerous Lecktor is: those tiny bits of him are already disruptive to the immaculate white of the scene. It also throws everything off just ever so slightly as the focus is directly on Hannibal's face, forcing the audience to pay attention to what he is saying and how he is saying it. Even though imprisoned, he seems very clearly in control.

The two men engage in a verbal dogfight as Lecktor tries to push Graham over the edge, while Graham fights being exposed to the madness. The speed of this little exchange is like some kind of perverse screwball comedy. Cox is so effective by the way he underplays it: completely calm, yet always just a tad menacing — be it the affectations of his accent or the quiet and ruthless way he gives his lines an off-center spin.

Lecktor does not go for the easy insult and counters, "You're very tan, Will," and proceeds to analyze him, demonstrating how easily he can pick him apart. Then, Hannibal goes in for the kill when he says, "Dream

much, Will?" At this point, Graham has had it and gets up to leave. He cannot let Lecktor invade his thoughts or his dreams. In Mann's world,j this would be fatal. Finally, it gets to be too much for Graham as Lecktor presses his advantage: “You know how you caught me, Will? You know how you caught me? The reason you caught me, Will, is because we're just alike. You want the scent? (quieter, menacing) Smell yourself.” Lecktor starts off speaking quietly yet insistently. Graham can no longer stand it and begins pounding on the door, demanding to get out. Lecktor continues, increasing the volume of his voice until Graham, frantic at this point, runs out of the building. As Lecktor says this last line his voice dips to a threatening whisper. Graham runs down the many corridors of the psychiatric hospital, almost as if he is symbolically escaping Lecktor's brain, his cell being the vortex or center of it.

The scenes that take place at the Chesapeake State Hospital for the Criminally Insane were shot at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta while the scenes in Lecktor’s cell were shot on a soundstage in Wilmington, N.C. According to Cox, he and Petersen rehearsed this scene for 10 days and shot it during a period of four days. Not surprisingly, Mann shot the scene many different ways. "At one point," Cox remembers, "I screamed the line 'Smell yourself.' At another, I did it very quietly. I did it every way imaginable." Cox plays Lecktor as a polite man, but you can sense the menace seething underneath the cheery facade. He delights in probing Graham's mind, threatening to invade his thoughts and his dreams.

Another of Mann's preoccupations is showing the process of professionals hard at work, doing what they do best. This is showcased prominently in the scene where Graham and Crawford analyze Dollarhyde’s note to Lecktor. While cleaning Hannibal’s cell one day, a janitor finds the note addressed to the psychiatrist. Lecktor is taken out of his cell, giving the investigators just a few hours to decipher the note before Lecktor gets suspicious. First, the hair fibers are analyzed; second, the note is analyzed for fingerprints; third, they try to figure out what the missing section of the note says; and finally, they try to decipher Hannibal's reply in the National Tattler personal ads. Mann is meticulous in how he shows the hard work that these professionals do as they analyze physical evidence with state-of-the-art science and technology at their disposal. Everybody works and communicates together as a team racing against time. As a result, there is a believable tension between the haste of beating the clock and the patience Crawford and Graham exert as they supervise their expert forensic team.

Another stand-out scene is one where Graham decides to deal with the rift that has been created between him and his family by talking with his son. The scene between them features some of Mann's best writing. Fascinating insight into Graham's past and his special ability are discussed in detail. It also is a nice scene between a father and his son. It takes place in an everyday setting — a grocery store — but they are talking about extraordinary things. Kevin tries to understand what his father does and Graham explains how he caught Lecktor: "I tried to build feelings in my imagination the killer had so that I would know why he did what he did." They also talk about how catching Lecktor affected him. This scene beautifully underlines the danger that Graham faces. He runs the risk of hurting himself physically and mentally again. It also shows that he is able to compartmentalize his thoughts and his feelings. He recognizes that the thoughts of killing and hurting people are wrong where Lecktor and Dollarhyde do not and that is what separates Graham from them. This exchange is fascinating because we learn more about the internal struggle that exists within Graham and how much of a threat it is to his well-being. Graham and his son have a heartfelt talk about madness which is contrasted by their banal surroundings: brand name consumer goods. This nicely foreshadows what eventually happened to the serial killer genre: in the 1990s: It became riddled with cliches and stereotypes (i.e. the "normality" of the serial killer who is a symptom of our consumer culture). At the time that Manhunter was made, the genre was still quite fresh and new. Terms such as "profiler" and "serial killer" were not as commonplace. The scene ends with a final shot of Graham and Kevin, his arm draped protectively around his son's shoulder, heading to the checkout. Most importantly, this scene demonstrates that Lecktor was not successful in splitting up Graham and his family because they were able to communicate and talk to each other about their feelings.

Mann also provides insight into Francis Dollarhyde's day-to-day existence. This is an attempt to humanize the killer. He is not just some faceless, inhuman maniac or an obvious caricature a la Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs. Dollarhyde works at a photo developing lab. We see him walk into a room and look intensely at a photo of what will be the next family that he will kill. As he stands up, he rubs the sides of his head and looks up. We can see a shift in his facial expression — he has gone from being Dollarhyde to the Red Dragon, his murderous persona. The way Tom Noonan plays this scene is excellent and understated. He effectively conveys the sudden shift of personalities in Dollarhyde.

Mann goes to great lengths to make Dollarhyde more humane in the sequence where he and Reba (Joan Allen), a woman from work with whom he becomes romantically linked, lie in bed together after making love. He rests his head on her chest almost as a child would and much in the same way she did in an earlier scene with a tiger. She rolls over and puts her hand on his chest but he places it on his mouth. The camera zooms in and his expression transforms into one of sadness as he starts to cry. There is this realization that buried beneath those frightening eyes is a scared, abused child. The Red Dragon persona has not completely taken over. All that Dollarhyde really wants is what most people want: to be loved and needed. He has found this with Reba. Noonan's performance in this sequence is a revelation. He uses his big, awkward-looking body to menacing effect but is as sad as he is deadly in a child-like, almost uncomprehending way. With his very expressive face, Noonan conveys the tortured soul buried deep within and this brings a sense of humanity to his character.

Mann's theory on why a killer such as Dollarhyde does what he does is revealed in a great phone conversation between Lecktor and Graham. The first shot of Hannibal shows him lounging in his cell, his feet up like he is talking to an old friend. It is amusing because here is this very dangerous psychopath being completely casual. Lecktor unwittingly provides Graham with the key to understanding Dollarhyde, thereby allowing the investigator to find him. Lecktor explains why killing feels so good. "God has power. And if one does what God does enough times, one will become as God is." As Lecktor rambles on about what "a champ" God is, Graham is not even listening to him anymore. He has found the key to understanding Dollarhyde and he does not need Lecktor anymore. At this point it becomes readily apparent what Graham meant early on in the film when he said that Lecktor had "disadvantages." This is what allows Graham to finally surpass him.

Throughout the film, William Petersen portrays Graham as a low-key, brooding, tortured individual. He also maintains an incredible amount of intensity and this is no more apparent than in the scene between Graham and

Crawford where they talk about what motivates and creates monsters like Dollarhyde. Petersen takes the intensity of this scene up another notch when he delivers a disturbing monologue about the duality that exists within Dollarhyde with scary vigor. This scene is the heart of darkness in the film. Serial killers do not materialize suddenly, they are made, gradually, over many years, until they explode, expressing themselves the only way they know how: through violence. In a baffling move, Mann subsequently cut Petersen's monologue from the recent DVD versions of Manhunter that were produced by Anchor Bay. Perhaps Mann felt that it spelled things out too much but it also diminishes one of the most powerful scenes in the film. (Note: this footage has been restored in a bare-bones DVD by MGM)

Not everyone appreciated Mann's approach to filmmaking. Many crew members were stressed out from a grueling and intense shooting schedule. This was only exacerbated by De Laurentiis having financial trouble at the time and as a result the production was running out of money. They were forced to shorten their shooting schedule, which meant that the film’s exciting showdown between Dollarhyde and Graham would have to be shot in only one or two days. The special effects team quit prior to the filming of the scene. The gunshot effects, as Dollarhyde is killed by Graham, were done by Mann himself. The entire confrontation was shot in one day over three-and-a-half hours. Mann remembers that they were shooting so fast it felt as if they filmed the scene in real time.

Harris' novel was named after poet/artist William Blake's famous painting, "The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Rays of the Sun." Mann kept the name “Red Dragon” for the film right up to its release. The title was changed to Manhunter so that, according to Mann, the audience would not mistake it for a kung fu film. The "Manhunter" moniker came from a headline on the Tattler newspaper in the film. The cruel irony is that this change in name did nothing to help the film at the box office. Manhunter grossed $2.2 million on its opening weekend. It went on to make $8.62 million in North America.

In retrospect, Mann feels that "the project was probably doomed commercially from the outset." At the time, Harris had only written Black Sunday and was not the big name he is now. The movie's title still is a sore point for the director. "The film's backers all said, 'Red Dragon? It sounds like a Chinese movie. Who cares about kung fu movies?'…Manhunter was a compromise title and a bit too much in the mode of generic police thrillers." Mann’s film was dumped into cinematic limbo after the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group declared bankruptcy. However, Manhunter survived on video and cable television. With the film’s commercial failure, Mann returned to television and continued to executive produce Miami Vice and a new television series, Crime Story. In a few short years, Crime Story was canceled after only two seasons and Miami Vice ended its lengthy run soon afterward. He would not make another feature film until six years later.

Labels: 80s, Demme, Farina, Fiction, Hannibal Lecter, Hopkins, J. Fonda, Lynch, Michael Mann, Movie Tributes, Television, Zinnemann

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Monday, February 14, 2011

Quid Pro Quo

By Damian Arlyn
"Ready when you are, Sergeant Pembry."

Hannibal Lecter is just one of those characters. You know the type I'm talking about. They come around every once in a while and completely capture everyone's imagination. This particular character was created by American novelist Thomas Harris and introduced in his pot-boiler Red Dragon. Over the years he appeared in three other Harris novels and even showed up onscreen in Michael Mann's stylish thriller Manhunter (where he was portrayed by Brian Cox). However, it wasn't until 1991, when the film adaptation of The Silence of the Lambs premiered and the world was introduced to Hannibal Lecter in the form of Welsh actor Anthony Hopkins, that the character took on mythic status. It was 20 years ago today that a simple slurping noise would forever associate fava beans and a nice chianti with cannibalism.

It's hard to imagine, as it always is when an actor becomes so indelibly identified with a role, but Hopkins was well down on the list of those considered for the role of the psychotic psychiatrist. The list is like a who's who of Hollywood leading men (including Gene Hackman, Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall, etc.), but all either passed on the part or were eventually dropped from consideration before director Jonathan Demme had the simple, but brilliant, idea of casting a great actor rather than a movie star. Hopkins, having appeared in such films as The Lion in Winter, The Elephant Man and A Bridge Too Far may not have not been completely unfamiliar face to movie audiences at the time but he certainly wasn't a well-known one. His portrayal of Lecter earned him an Academy Award for best actor and made him a household name. Unlike many less fortunate actors, Hopkins has transcended the role, even after playing it in two more films, through his sheer talent and versatility.

The first time we see Lecter in the movie it's from the perspective of the film's heroine Clarice Starling (played by Jodie Foster) as she walks down an underground hallway past several cells of clearly deranged and dangerous criminals. We've heard talk of how crazy and deadly Lecter is ("His pulse never got above 85, even when he ate her tongue."), we've heard the nickname associated with him ("Hannibal the Cannibal") and we expect something on the level of, or perhaps even surpassing, the craziness being displayed by these other inmates. What do we see instead when we finally glimpse this so-called monster? We find a calm, composed gentlemen standing in the middle of is cell with his arms at his side staring directly at us, as if he were waiting for us. "Good morning," he says quite nonthreateningly. This is one of the best introductions of a character in the history of film. It sends shivers down our spine precisely because it is surprising. It subverts our expectations and consequently ends up being even more unnerving.

"Closer, please..... CLO-ser."

Hopkins' decision to play Lecter as a charming, educated and polite individual, who in any other context would certainly seem eccentric but nonetheless still sane, only serves to make his psychosis all the more frightening and powerful. It serves as an interesting counterpoint to Ted Levine's "Buffalo Bill" who is clearly batshit crazy and undeniably disturbing but really only about half as interesting as a character. Hopkins understood that evil can often be very attractive and that even a villain, if done correctly, can be engaging, fascinating and compelling (an approach echoed years later by Heath Ledger when he portrayed the Joker in The Dark Knight). Thus, the audience ends up going through a series of complex emotions with regard to Lecter because they can be, in one sense, drawn to him(perhaps even "like" him) and yet, in another sense, be completely disgusted by and despise him. Sherlock Holmes once said of Professor Moriarty that he "admired his mind" (since he clearly was a genius) and yet he hated his nemesis and everything that he stood for. It is this dynamic which, I think, partly explains Lecter's appeal to audiences.

I realize I'm spending most of this article talking about Lecter as if he's the sole reason the film was so successful, but that is not at all the case. The rest of the film is superbly crafted in all areas of its production: the claustrophobic cinematography by Tak Fujimoto, the eerie music by Howard Shore, the intelligent screenplay by Ted Tally, the visceral editing by Craig McKay, the sure-handed direction by Jonathan Demme and the excellent performances given by the cast. All of these elements combine to make an enormously effective suspense-thriller/horror movie experience and, in spite of the enormous controversy surrounding its lurid subject matter, its perceived attitude toward women and homosexuals, multiple Oscars (including one for best picture) were awarded to the film as a result. So, why is it that 20 years later, the most lasting memory that the film leaves is that of a single character who is onscreen for less than a quarter of its running time. Well, as I said before (rather inarticulately), I think it's because Hannibal Lecter is just one of those characters. He's one of those creations where everything, his personality, the actor playing him and the timing of his appearance on the scene all fuse together to become something that somehow sneaks past our defenses and embeds itself in our combined consciousness. Is it his cannibalism? His brilliance? His madness? His bizarre courtesy? Is it all of them together? Who can say? All I know is that Thomas Harris created Lecter but Anthony Hopkins immortalized him and as is seen in the final haunting shot of the film, he got away and is still out there somewhere. Maybe he'll always be out there and as long as he is, we'll have to be on guard... and never, EVER become census takers.

"You fly back to school, now, little Starling. Fly, fly, fly..."

Labels: 90s, Books, De Niro, Demme, Duvall, Fiction, Hackman, Hannibal Lecter, Hopkins, Jodie Foster, Michael Mann, Nicholson, Oscars

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# posted by Damian Arlyn @ 12:00 PM 3 comments

Sunday, September 19, 2010

As far back as I can remember, I always loved Goodfellas

NOTE: Ranked No. 8 on my all-time top 100 of 2012

By Edward Copeland
Some films' excellence hit you so hard with their greatness that once the end credits roll, you know that you will have to see the movie again — and soon — as you float out of the theater in a state of euphoria greater than a high any drug could produce. This feeling consumed me the very first time I saw Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas, which premiered 20 years ago today.

In 1990, I already had been a fan of Scorsese for quite some time, having seen every new film he made in a theater since The King of Comedy, including having to travel four hours to Dallas and stand in a long line in the rain to see The Last Temptation of Christ since my backward-ass state legislature actually passed a measure to prevent the film from playing here. Of Scorsese's films between 1983 and 1989 that I'd seen in a theater, After Hours was my favorite, though I felt Taxi Driver was his best, even though I'd only seen it in a cropped video version. Then Goodfellas came into my life and it changed forever. What grabbed me was not that I'd just seen an incredibly well-made, well-acted, well-written and well-directed film that provided one helluva entertaining time at the movies but that it seemed to me that hidden inside Goodfellas, Scorsese disguised a film school that all could attend. If you wanted to explain to any non-cinephile about any aspect of filmmaking, you could find a great example within Scorsese's gangster movie to illustrate to them simply and wonderfully what it was, be it a tracking shot, a pan, types of editing, great cinematography, use of music and sound, etc. It truly was a wonder to behold.

When I recently marked the 25th anniversary of After Hours, I noted that in the DVD extras Scorsese mentioned that part of what attracted him to that film was his negative experience of living in the lower Manhattan area of Tribeca and it seems to me that while

Scorsese can't not be a talented filmmaker, no matter what the material is, what lifts some of his films above the others is an unmistakably personal connection and that's most decidedly the case with Goodfellas. He may never have been in the mob, but he grew up on those Brooklyn streets in that time period, so he knows it well. After the brief prologue previewing the murder of Billy Batts (Frank Vincent) and the initial Saul and Elaine Bass opening credits, with its zooming words braking from side to side before stopping in the middle, the very first shot he gives us is a close-up of the eye of the 13-year-old Henry Hill looking out his window with wonder at the wiseguys across the street at the cabstand. The eyes may as well be Scorsese's, even if the narration belongs to the adult Henry (Ray Liotta). Though they like to call the three films an unofficial trilogy, this is why Mean Streets and Goodfellas are great and Casino doesn't work. Scorsese relates to the worlds of Charlie and Henry Hill, but the world of Ace Rothstein is an alien one so, combined with the familiar and unimaginative casting, Casino just plays like an uninspired retread.

When I was a kid, it was not unusual for me to go see films I was crazy about multiple times in the theater. Most were the usual suspects such as the original Star Wars trilogy, Grease — movies that I'd see again and again with new companions or relatives or even by myself. However, as I grew older and started reviewing (and tried to review just about everything out there, heaven help me), once was enough. Goodfellas became a glorious exception as I saw that four times in the theater in its original release, dragging new people to it to share in its wonder (usually following the film with an Italian meal). In the years since, it's become one of those films that if I flipped past it on TV, I'd inevitably watch it despite the cropping and censoring. Sitting down to watch the DVD of it for this piece was the first time in a while that I'd seen it unexpurgated and in its proper ratio. It excited me in a way that cut-up partial viewings had failed to do. It always was great, but it renewed in me how magnificent an example of moviemaking it remains.

It's also fascinating to watch the entire film again in the wake of The Sopranos which, let's admit it, probably never would have existed without Goodfellas. Granted, no one in Scorsese's film seeks psychiatric help, but it sets the template of the balancing of domestic life with criminal life. At one point, Henry's wife Karen

(Lorraine Bracco) actually says in voiceover on their wedding day that it's like Henry had two families, the exact theme of the original Sopranos promos. One big difference though concerns lifestyle: While the real-life gangsters whose story Goodfellas tells always have money, they don't live like rich suburban kings the way they do on The Sopranos. I think that's one reason the HBO series references The Godfather films more frequently since the Corleones resided in mansions. Even Paul Cicero (Paul Sorvino), the boss of the Goodfellas family, resides in a rather humble abode compared to a Tony Soprano or Johnny Sack. When Karen Hill says that none of it seemed like crime, it just seemed like their husbands were regular, blue collar guys, her words contain more than a grain of truth. I do think a drinking game could be invented out of watching Goodfellas though: Take a shot every time you spot an actor or actress who later appears on The Sopranos. A cursory check of IMDb (until I got too tired) discovered 17 in parts of all sizes. For the record, the first one to spot is Tony Sirico (Paulie Walnuts on The Sopranos) who plays one of the wiseguys who get out of the car and go into Tuddy's cabstand as young Henry watches from his window.

THE CAST
Since I've brought up Bracco, the performer with the most prominent roles in both Goodfellas and The Sopranos, this does make it as

good as time as any to point out the unusual role of Karen Hill in Goodfellas. Until Karen enters the film, Goodfellas basically functions as a first-person account of Henry Hill telling us his story through voiceover. When Karen arrives, suddenly we have a second narrator, something that's unusual for a film, though not unprecedented. At first, having a second disembodied voice tell the story jars the viewer a bit, but it doesn't take long to get used to it. The dual narrations don't really contradict each other, but it's interesting to hear both points-of-view during a conversation. (In a way, it's reminiscent of the subtitles translating Alvy and Annie's small talk in Annie Hall.) Though Bracco earned a well-deserved Oscar

nomination, she doesn't get the praise she deserves, especially since this came two years after her great work in Someone to Watch Over Me. It also goes without saying how many light years of difference there is between Karen Hill and Jennifer Melfi. Goodfellas gave her the opportunity to stretch her acting muscles much further than the television series, especially as it dragged on and found it harder to keep involving her in the story. In Goodfellas though, you get to see her euphoria as she twirls at her wedding and takes in the new universe she's entering as well as her anger of Henry's cheating, to the point that she pulls a gun on him, though she admits in voiceover she could never hurt him if she couldn't even leave him. That scene leaves her sprawled on the floor by the bed, screaming she's sorry. Bracco proves pretty amazing. As great as Melfi was, it would be nice to see her get a role this rich again.

Ray Liotta, so great as Henry, hasn't had the career he deserves. Since his breakout role as Melanie Griffith's psychotic ex in Jonathan Demme's Something Wild, which was followed up soon after by Goodfellas, he really hasn't had a chance at another great role to live up to those early successes. He's so good here and he more than holds his own with Robert De Niro's Jimmy Conway, one of the last times De

Niro turned in a performance that wasn't over-the-top or just seemed as if he's going through the motions; and with the scene-stealing, Oscar-winning turn of Joe Pesci. I checked IMDb to see what Liotta has been up to since the most recent movie I recalled Liotta appearing in was his role as the cop in the twisted mess Observe and Report with Seth Rogen. One of Liotta's most recent credits includes portraying the principal on an episode of TV's Hannah Montana. How depressing. Early in the run of The Sopranos, reports claimed that he turned down a two-season part. I'm guessing because of the length of the role and the time I read the report that he might have been Ralph Cifaretto, but could anyone picture someone other Joe Pantoliano in that part now? Still, it's puzzling how someone as talented as Liotta hasn't earned better roles after Henry Hill. He perfectly played his ability to charm his way out of problems, to laugh at the horrors he witnesses but still maintain the ability to be shocked when they go too far. He even gets drug addiction to boot. As the first person narrator, the weight of the film's story falls on his shoulders and he carries it with ease, fun and grace, yet somehow Liotta gets left out of the film's acclaim.

Which brings us to Pesci, who not only won a well-deserved Oscar as Tommy Devito, but really provides most of the moments of the movie that resonate throughout pop culture, even by people who have never seen Goodfellas. In fact, though he appears in the pre-credit prologue, the first time we see a grown Tommy and Pesci gets dialogue of any length it is the infamous, "What makes me so funny?" bit at the Bamboo Lounge. It's not only entertaining and a classic moment in film history, it quickly establishes Tommy's unstable nature and Pesci's frightening ability to change demeanor in a split-second. First, he's being scary, then he admits he's joking, then he's terrorizing the restaurant's owner (Tony Darrow) and a waiter and then it's back to kidding

around with no pauses in between. While you do see a bit of the adult Henry in the young Henry (Christopher Serrone), the young Tommy (Joe D'Onofrio) gives no such clues, though I suspect that may have been intentional. While Pesci's performance can be thought of just switching between the frightening and the funny, he does give Tommy other shadings as well. You see that when he does explode in unjustified rage, as he does against Billy Batts or the poor bartender Spider (Michael Imperioli), it stems from insecurity. (Of course, Imperioli got to pay homage to getting shot in the foot in The Sopranos' first season episode "The Legend of Tennessee Moltisanti" when Christopher feels similarly slighted by a clerk at a pastry store.) You also see the pride when he believes he's about to be made. We don't know what Tommy's upbringing was like, but we can guess that he's someone who craves praise and only knows how to earn it through comedy or bullying. You also see that moment of realization when he enters the empty room to be made and knows his life is about to end. He also loves his mom, so we're probably safe in guessing that it's his never-mentioned father who left the emotional scars.

Pesci provides so many of the movie's memorable moments, that I'd feel remiss (if only to myself) if I didn't single out the middle of the Billy Batts sequence. The attack proves brutal enough, though it's beautiful in its own way as Pesci and De Niro punch, pummel and kick Frank Vincent to the sounds of Donovan's "Atlantis." Actually, the film history of Pesci and Vincent amuses on its own. Pesci basically had

abandoned his plans for an acting career but had made a 1976 film called The Death Collector, which is what Scorsese spotted and led him to cast him in Raging Bull. In that film, he beats Vincent to death. In Raging Bull, they needed an actor for a part where Pesci's character lashes out and does some physical damage so the first person they thought of was Vincent. When the Billy Batts part came about for Goodfellas, they thought why not let Joe do some damage to Frank again? Vincent did get his revenge in Casino though, playing the character who kills Pesci's character. Anyway, with Batts in the trunk, Henry, Tommy and Jimmy stop at Tommy's mom' house to get a shovel. His mom, played by Scorsese's real-life mom Catherine, wakes up and insists on feeding them. She interrogates her son as to why he can't be like Henry and get himself a nice girl. "I get a nice one almost every night," he replies. She corrects herself that she means to settle down and he again says, "I settle down almost every night, but then in the morning I'm free." Then his mom brings out one of the paintings she's been working on and I don't know why, but it always has struck me and a former friend of mine as tremendously funny. As Tommy describes it, "One dog's looking east, one dog's looking west and the man's saying, 'What do you want from me?'" It cracks me up every time. The movie also sprinkles a lot of throwaway lines, some barely audible, some by minor characters that are very funny that viewers should keep their ears peeled for such as Tommy arguing with Frankie Carbone (Frank Sivero) about Frankie never being able to hit a certain number. Another great aside comes when Tommy's girlfriend (Illeana Douglas) brags to Jimmy's wife Mickey (Julie Garfield) that she's serious — if Tommy even caught her looking at another man, he'd kill her and Mickey meekly smiles and replies, "Great."

De Niro received an Oscar nomination in 1990, but it wasn't for his great work as "Jimmy the Gent" Conway, but for Awakenings. Put those performances side by side and, honestly, see which film you think he really gave the best performance in. It's not that De Niro has been turning in bad performances, but the amazing work of the hungry young actor certainly hasn't been present much in the past 20 years or so. The following year, re-teaming with Scorsese, he gave an entertaining but scenery devouring turn in the Cape Fear remake. Really though, since Goodfellas, I'd only count Heat and Wag the Dog as truly impressive work by De Niro (and I'm being generous) but it came alongside embarrassments such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. In other films, he turned in fine, workman-like performances that smelled suspiciously as if they

were being done for the money. This wasn't the case with Goodfellas where De Niro took a role that could have seemed routine for him and infused it with freshness and perfectly completed the film's male triumvirate. De Niro shows Jimmy's aging over the 25 year time span subtly and without the hindrance of any awful makeup. He's a welcome contrast to hothead Tommy, though he can be just as brutal if you get him started, but he holds himself back because he's marter and more cool-headed; when he kills, it's just business. One of the most impressive things De Niro does here (and in other films) and that most of the greats do is the way they manipulate props. Just watch him pour ketchup from a bottle or slightly tilt his drink and head while telling Batts that he did insult Tommy a little or something as simple as the way he lets his eyeglasses slip as he tries to get information out of Karen over what Henry may have said to the police after his arrest — these touches aren't necessary but they make scenes even more realistic. I really miss the De Niro who put that much effort into a role.

While Goodfellas boasts an exceptionally large cast, there really is only one other character large enough to be of separate note and that's Paul Sorvino as Paul Cicero, the boss of this particular Brooklyn crime family. One thing I've never quite understood about this film (or Casino for that matter) both of which were based on nonfiction books by Nicholas Pileggi, who in both instances co-wrote the screenplays, change the names of the

real-life people for the movies with the exception of Henry Hill. Cicero, for instance, was really Paul Vario, Jimmy Conway was Jimmy Burke and Tommy Devito's real name was Tommy DeSimone. Still, most of the events described in the movie are true, though a few have been changed or omitted. Sorvino does well as the strong but quiet Paulie, though the movie's portrayal is at odds with descriptions of the real life Vario. However, he is integral as a representation of two important parts of the mob culture: the older generation's reluctance to engage in the drug trade and that food, oh that glorious food. Sorvino later had regrets about the portrayal of Italian Americans as gangsters (though he also played one in The Firm) and swore he'd never play one again before starring in a short-lived TV series about non-mob-involved Italian Americans called That's Life. Sorvino's moratorium didn't last long: a year later he appeared as a mobster again in the TV movie Mafia Doctor. I have Italian blood in my lineage, but I've never had the reaction some do to stories about the Mafia. It's just a historical fact: Italians made up the mob, but it doesn't mean that all Italians were in the mob and some Italian Americans just need to lighten up and remember that the person who started the anti-defamation efforts on behalf of Italian Americans was Joe Colombo, himself a gangster. In fact, Paul Vario was part of Colombo's anti-defamation group until he resigned because he feared it was drawing too much attention to their "business" activities.

GOODFELLAS' BEST PERFORMANCE
As you can probably guess, my answer to that heading is Scorsese himself, since I consider Goodfellas to be the director's greatest film in a career filled with great films. I think the timing proved particularly auspicious for him to make Goodfellas. He'd re-energized himself with After Hours and three years later finally realized his longtime dream to bring Nikos Kazantzakis' novel The Last Temptation of Christ to the screen. Except for the lark of "Life Lessons," his segment (the best one) of New York Stories, Goodfellas would be the very next film he produced and it seemed as if he were at the peaks of his powers. As I mentioned earlier, watching Goodfellas seems as if you are attending film school in about 2 hours and 20 minutes since he displays practically every filmmaking technique possible. More importantly, they aren't used to call attention to themselves. He employs them because they are the best way to illustrate the scene and story he wants to convey at that time.

The sequences that Scorsese concocts with his collaborators such as film editor Schoonmaker and director of photography Michael Ballhaus, the temptation for me would be just to show, not tell, but despite searching the Web far and wide, Warner Bros. seems to have done a good job at preventing people from embedding clips from the film. That's fine. In the end, I'm a man of words anyway, even if language can't do justice to what Scorsese has assembled. Take for instance what's probably the film's most infamous sequence: the heralded Copacabana tracking shot. It's an amazing, unbroken take that begins outside the club as Henry escorts Karen on one of their first real solo dates and, eager to impress, guides her past the long line of people waiting to get in through a basement entrance and a labyrinthine

passage of rooms and the kitchen (where everyone knows him) until they find their way to the main room and the maitre'd sets up a special table for them right near the stage. An overwhelmed Karen asks Henry what it is he does for a living and he answers, "construction." She feels his hands and doubts his story to which he responds, "I'm a union delegate." This bravura sequence isn't just a stunt: It's a great piece of filmmaking illustrating how much power this 21-year-old man holds in this area and how enchanted his date is with his pull. Compare this to when someone such as Brian De Palma tries to do long tracking shots in Bonfire of the Vanities or Snake Eyes, which he admits he's doing to try to show Scorsese up, and it shows because those are stunts that add nothing to those films. In contrast, another talented director, Robert Altman, did a great eight-minute scene in one take, though not technically a tracking shot, to open The Player that simultaneously comments on tracking shots

and the growing tendency of Hollywood movies to overwhelm images with cuts and avoid long takes. Back to the Copacabana scene for a moment. One thing that doesn't get mentioned is the great transition he uses to end the shot and move on to the next scene. The Copacabana tracking shot ends with Henny Youngman on stage performing his act then we move to Idlewild airport where Henry and Tommy are preparing to pull off the Air France heist and Youngman's jokes continue on the soundtrack as the transition between the two locations. It's brilliant. It's just one example out of many of inspired transitions he employs either by use of sound or visuals. Another favorite of mine is when Henry gives a pistol-whipping to Karen's neighbor who got rough with her when she wouldn't put out and then Henry gives Karen the gun to hide. Her placing the gun in a metal box segues immediately to a rabbi covering a glass with a napkin and the couple stepping on it, officially becoming married, joined together in the eyes of God and in the commission of a crime.

Of course, that's hardly the only bravura sequence Scorsese and crew conjures for this masterpiece. In the DVD extras for After Hours, Michael Ballhaus, told how Scorsese gave him a shot list, a list that came from pseudo-storyboards that Scorsese drew on the script itself.

You know the phrase "the devil's in the details" but for Scorsese, it's the filmmaking and it's that attention to even the smallest bit that makes him one of our greatest. Take that early opening scene of young Henry watching out his window with fascination as the wiseguys pile out of their car to enter the cabstand for a night of cards or whatever. He doesn't have to add much to explain that scene, but he puts in the subtle little touches that bring it alive: Focusing on the pinky rings of the gangster's hands; watching as the classic car rises as the men exit it. Then there is the wonderful moment late in the film when a nervous Henry, after having been busted for his drug dealing, meets with Jimmy in a diner for fear he'd get killed anywhere else. It starts with a tracking shot from the diner's entrance to the booth where Jimmy is then Scorsese employs a reverse pan so that while Jimmy and Henry seem to stay where they are, the cars and objects outside the window seem to come nearer, as if the world is closing in. The middle of the conversation even tosses in a couple of freeze frames before reversing the reverse at the end again. Sequence after sequence, shot after shot, Scorsese simply takes your breath away in this film and it's part of the reason it requires repeat viewings: To appreciate it all: The story, the craftsmanship, the acting.

Then there is the food, that glorious food. Talk about scrumptious details. The entire prison sequence showing how Henry, Paulie, Vinnie (played by Scorsese's father, Charles) and others, prepare for meals that would make free people salivate. With the details of how Paulie

slices the garlic, Vinnie makes his sauce ("Don't put too many onions in there!") — is there anyone wonder that every time I saw the film in its original release a trip to an Italian restaurant was not far behind? On top of that, the entire sequence is set to the background music of Bobby Darin's "Beyond the Sea." Another genius of Scorsese. There is no original score, but the film boasts nearly wall-to-wall music, appropriate for its time span of 1955-1980. I've already referred to the Billy Batts' beating being backed by Donovan's "Atlantis" (Way down below the ocean where I wanna be she may be), but I neglected to mention that the incredible Copacabana tracking shot was set to "Then He Kissed Me" by The Crystals. To start with Tony Bennett singing "Rags to Riches" and end with Sid Vicious warbling "My Way" — that's one eclectic score. Some have referred to Mean Streets as the flip side of American Graffiti, given the age of the characters and the fact both came out in the same year, but really it's Goodfellas that is the gangster version of American Graffiti, it just doesn't have the conceit of the songs coming through car radios being introduced by Wolfman Jack.

As great a feat of movie magic as the Copa scene is, including its use of music, the absolute highlight of the film, at least in terms of using one piece of music, concerns the aftermath of the famed Lufthansa heist. Jimmy starts getting both nervous about the actions of the people who carried out the job (and greedy as well), so he finds it more fortuitous to cut all his ties by killing all of them. The sequence showing the discovery of the various corpses starts slowly, almost innocently, as some kids who appear to have been playing stick ball stumble upon a pink Cadillac. It's the same car Jimmy had chewed one of the men out for having bought on the night of the robbery and told him to get rid of. Then the music begins and it's the wonderful piano exit to "Layla" by Derek and the Dominoes (for the young'uns out there, Eric Clapton's old band) and you see close up the slain bodies of Johnny Roastbeef and his wife. The Cadillac's sales sticker remains on the passenger window. The song and Liotta's narration goes on as we see bodies falls in garbage trucks and discovered frozen in meat tracks. It's a perfect pop score for such a grisly sequence.

When I was in fifth grade, our music teacher assigned groups to create mix tapes that would splice together parts of different songs into some kind of creative collage. I'm not sure what inspired her to give us this project but that's how one of Scorsese's other great Goodfellas sequences plays, where he manages to depict about 16 hours of time in a day in 10 minutes of screentime with brilliant editing and constant changing of the music he's using in the sequence. It covers the last day before Henry's arrest on drug charges. He's drugged out on cocaine and convinced that a helicopter is following him. He has a busy day of errands: bringing guns to Jimmy, meeting his Pittsburgh drug connection to prepare a shipment that his nanny will take on a flight out of state, pick up his handicapped brother (Kevin Corrigan) from the hospital to bring home for dinner, help prepare dinner and placate his mistress (Debi Mazar). It's a daylong frenzy and it feels like it. The first time I actually timed it, I was shocked to realize that it only took 10 minutes because so much is going on at such a manic pace, it seemed an impossibility. With his use of so many different songs in the sequence, it's almost like one of those radio contests where they play short snippets of songs and callers have to identify them for a prize. Maybe that's where my music teacher got the idea.

I could go on endlessly about this film because for me it's as infectious to talk or write about as it is to watch. Pretty much without options, Henry and Karen Hill had to become government witnesses and go into the Witness Protection Program. They later divorced. During the trial sequence, as Henry testfies against Jimmy and Paulie, Scorsese even breaks the fourth wall, having Henry step off the witness stand and speak directly to the camera. He admits that what he misses most is the lifestyle. He later got into trouble again and was kicked out of the program. In the film, his last line is that he'd be forced to live the rest of his life as a schnook. Twenty years later, that is very true for Henry Hill. You can befriend him on Facebook. I wonder if he plays Mafia Wars. The real Jimmy and Paulie both died in prison as old men.

The movie about Henry Hill's life will outlast him by many, many years, as will the name Martin Scorsese. One of his quick final shots pays homage both to the gangster movies of the past and the infamous opening of Edwin S. Porter's The Great Train Robbery of 1903. That's why Scorsese is such a master. He doesn't just know how to make great films or how to relate to them personally, he's like an encyclopeda of film history. He's also more than willing to dive into something new, which he will be doing tonight as he becomes executive producer of a dramatic series for television for the first time and directs the pilot for HBO's Boardwalk Empire starring Steve Buscemi. (I've seen the first six episodes and it's very good.) That's why I love him and that's why I love Goodfellas.

Labels: 90s, Altman, Boardwalk Empire, Buscemi, De Niro, De Palma, Demme, HBO, Liotta, Movie Tributes, Pesci, Scorsese, Seth Rogen, Star Wars, Television, The Sopranos, Zemeckis

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# posted by Edward Copeland @ 8:00 AM 7 comments

Edward Copeland's Tangents

Tuesday, May 08, 2012

Bring on the lovers, liars and clowns!

Saturday, February 11, 2012

If anyone believes these two families should not join together…

Monday, November 07, 2011

Walk on the Wild Side

Wednesday, October 05, 2011

Charles Napier (1936-2011)

Thursday, September 15, 2011

After 40 years, I have far more than just one thing to say about Columbo

Monday, August 15, 2011

When Hannibal First Crossed the Screen

Monday, February 14, 2011

Quid Pro Quo

Sunday, September 19, 2010

As far back as I can remember, I always loved Goodfellas

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