Wednesday, May 29, 2013
"My Rifle, My Pony and Me" (Rio Bravo tribute, Part II)
While Sheriff Chance took on a major task by arresting Joe Burdette and incarcerating him in his small Presidio County jail, with Stumpy left to guard the bad guy most of the time, he still bears the responsibility for maintaining the law elsewhere in his town, something he accomplishes through street patrols and his nights staying at The Hotel Alamo (of all the names to pick) run by Carlos Robante (Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez) and his wife Consuela (Estelita Rodriguez). One night, a poker game piques his interest as two of the players (Angie Dickinson, Walter Barnes) fit the profile of two hustlers warned about on handbills. After a cursory investigation, Chance arrests the woman, who goes by the name Feathers. She declares her innocence and Chance fails to find the crooked cards on her after she's left the table following a huge winning streak. When he returns though, he does find the stacked deck on the man, who has raked it in since her departure and tells him to return his ill-gotten gains and be on the morning stagecoach. He suggests that Feathers do the same, but she decides to stick around.
That next day, the Burdettes arrive as expected, led by Joe's smooth brother Nathan (John Russell, the gaunt, veteran actor of mostly Westerns where he usually played the villain. His second-to-last film was as the cold-blooded killer in Clint Eastwood's Pale Rider). He asks Chance why the streets appear so full of people. Chance offers no explanation, but suggests that perhaps gawkers came to town, drawn to the possibility that the Burdettes planned to put on a show.
Chance makes his nightly trek to the Hotel Alamo. When he gets there, Spencer pulls him over for a drink. The wagon master has heard of the trouble Chance faces. "A game-legged old man and a drunk. That's all you got?" Spencer asks in disbelief. "That's what I got," Chance responds. Spencer offers himself and his men as help against the Burdettes, but the sheriff expresses reluctance to take responsibility for others. He does ask about the confident young gunman Colorado that Spencer has hired. If he is as good as he thinks he is and lacks the family ties of the older men, Chance would be willing to take him on if Colorado agrees. Spencer calls Colorado over, but the young man politely declines, earning Chance's respect for being smart enough to know when to sit out a fight. Not long afterward, while Feathers flirts again and Chance urges her to get on the morning stage, shots ring out on the street and Spencer falls dead. Later, Nathan Burdette makes his first visit to see his brother Joe, despite Stumpy's withering verbal assaults, at the jail. First, Nathan wants the sheriff to
explain why his brother looks so beat up. "He didn't take too kindly to being arrested for murder," Chance tells Nathan while Joe denies the shooting was murder. Nathan asks how Chance can be so certain or, at the very least, why Joe isn't being tried where the alleged murder occurred. Chance nixes that idea, content to let the U.S. marshal handle Joe Burdette and try him elsewhere. Nathan silkily makes no overt threats, but certainly implies that Joe might not remain in the Presidio County jail by the time that marshal shows up, especially if the sheriff relies on a drunk and an old man as his backup. Chance isn't in a mood to hide his cards. "You're a rich man, Burdette. Big ranch, pay a lot of people to do what you want 'em to do. And you got a brother. He's no good but he's your brother. He committed 20 murders you'd try and see he didn't hang for 'em," the sheriff spits out. "I don't like that kinda talk. Now you're practically accusing me," Nathan Burdette says, but Chance continues. "Let's get this straight. You don't like? I don't like a lot of things. I don't like your men sittin' on the road bottling up this town. I don't like your men watching us, trying to catch us with our backs turned. And I don't like it when a friend of mine offers to help and 20 minutes later he's dead! And i don't like you, Burdette, because you set it up." If war wasn't brewing before, it was now.
The murder of Spencer fully incorporates the last two major characters more fully into the film and the action. With his boss dead, Colorado at first finds himself content to take his pay from the slain wagon master's possessions and remains determined to mind his own business. Once he witnesses some more of the Burdette brutality, Colorado decides to join up and Chance deputizes him. Colorado becomes part of the team and helps Chance escape an ambush, an ambush for which the sheriff seems prepared to occur, quickly pumping off rounds from his rifle. "You always leave the carbine cocked?" Colorado asks. "Only when I carry it," Chance replies. Originally, Hawks opposed casting Ricky Nelson, though the director admits he probably boosted box office. He had sought someone popular with young viewers, but felt Nelson — who turned 18 during filming — lacked age and experience for the part. Hawks had chased Elvis Presley for the role, but as often was the case, Col. Tom Parker demanded too much money for his client and the Rio Bravo production had to take a pass. The pseudo love affair between Feathers and Chance also heats up, though Wayne's discomfort with the romantic scenes with Dickinson is readily apparent. Wayne felt uneasy about the 25-year age gap between him and Dickinson. On top of that, nervous studio bosses wanted no implication made that Chance and Feathers ever sleep together. Double entendres and innuendos abound, but truthfully more sparks fly in brief scenes between Martin and Dickinson and Nelson and Dickinson than ever produce friction in the Wayne-Dickinson scenes. What becomes most interesting about the relationship between Feathers and Chance is Feathers' transformation into the sheriff's protector, keeping watch over him as he sleeps to make sure that no Burdette makes a move on him.
You don't need to know how the rest of Rio Bravo unfolds. Besides, part of what makes the film so fascinating and more than your ordinary Western comes from the multiple tones Hawks balances. A viewer seeing Rio Bravo for the first time couldn't positively predict what mood shall prevail by the final reel: light-hearted, tragic, heroic, romantic, some combination of those elements. At any given moment, you might change your mind. Most of this uncertainty reflects the nature of the character Dude. With the possible exception of Feathers, almost every other character in the film stays on a static path. Dude captures our attention the most because of the dynamics within him. Will he maintain the upper hand in his battle with booze or will he fall off the wagon again and if he does, what consequences does that
have for the others? Even sober, he's prone to depression, low self-esteem and self-pity. Still, he can croon a song or be a crack shot. A part this multifaceted requires a talented actor and back when Rio Bravo was made, Dean Martin wouldn't be one of the first names to jump to your mind. However, in the years 1958 and 1959, soon after the end of his partnership with Jerry Lewis, Martin turned in two impressive performances (perhaps three, but I haven't seen 1958's The Young Lions). In 1958, he gave a great turn as a professional gambler Bama Dillert in Vincente Minnelli's adaptation of the James Jones novel Some Came Running starring Frank Sinatra and Shirley MacLaine. He followed that with his astoundingly good work in Rio Bravo. While Martin continue to make entertaining films, for some reason those two years stand out as an aberration and he never got roles as good as Bama Dillert or Dude again.Hawks' behind-the-scenes collaborators provided as much of the magic of Rio Bravo as its cast. From Russell Harlan's crisp and lush cinematography to Tiomkin's score that complements Hawks' leisurely pacing well. Tiomkin also teamed with lyricist Paul Francis West for the film's songs — "Cindy" and "My Rifle, My Pony and Me" in the extended musical interlude by Dude, Stumpy and
Colorado as well as the title song. Reportedly, Wayne joined the singing at one point until they decided it inappropriate for the sheriff to take part (and also because the Duke allegedly could not carry a tune). In another instance of borrowing from past work, at Wayne's suggestion, Tiomkin actually reworked the theme to Red River into the song "My Rifle, My Pony and Me." Tiomkin also composed "Degüello," aka "The Cutthroat Song," which the Burdettes play to psych out the good guys guarding Joe. The film claims the music comes from Mexico where Santa Anna's soldiers played it continuously to unnerve those holed up inside the Alamo. Wayne loved the music and the story so much, even though the tale wasn't true, he used it in his film The Alamo the following year. His screenwriting team of Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett both had worked with Hawks as a team and separately before and after Rio Bravo. Previously, Furthman and Brackett co-wrote Hawks' classic 1946 take on The Big Sleep. Furthman also co-wrote Come and Get It and To Have and Have Not and did a solo turn on Only Angels Have Wings. The legendary Brackett, despite her extensive screenwriting work, made a name for herself as a novelist, largely in the male-dominated field of science fiction. In Schickel's commentary, he refers to Brackett as an example of a real life Hawksian woman. In fact, before her death, the last screenplay she co-wrote was The Empire Strikes Back. In another non-Hawks project, she returned to Philip Marlowe when she wrote the screenplay for Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye. In addition to the Hawks titles already mentioned for Brackett, she also wrote the screenplay for 1962's Hatari! and co-wrote 1970's Rio Lobo. The DVD commentary also includes director John Carpenter, who names Hawks as his favorite director, and paid tribute to Leigh Brackett by naming the sheriff in the original Halloween after her.Tweet
Labels: 50s, Altman, Angie Dickinson, Blog-a-thons, Dean Martin, Eastwood, Elvis, Hawks, Jerry Lewis, John Carpenter, MacLaine, Movie Tributes, Sinatra, Star Wars, W. Brennan, Wayne
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Thursday, April 05, 2012
Chosen — twice
to audition for Elvis. There were so many of us in line that day and I can't believe I got the part." — former actress Dolores Hart
— Mother Prioress Dolores Hart of The Abbey of Regina Laudis, Bethlehem, Conn.
By Edward Copeland
Dolores Hart's acting career spanned a mere six years from 1957 through 1963 on stage, television and, most famously, the silver screen, where she worked opposite such leading men as Anthony Quinn, Montgomery Clift, Robert Wagner and twice with Elvis Presley, where Hart received Presley's first onscreen kiss in 1957's Loving You. In 1963, Hart found a co-star for life with the biggest name she'd worked with so far — Jesus Christ — when Hart abandoned her stardom to devote her life to God as a Benedictine nun in a rural Connecticut abbey. The documentary short about Mother Prioress Dolores Hart's life today, God is the Bigger Elvis, which was among the nominees for the 2011 Oscar nominees for documentary short subject, debuts on HBO tonight at 8 Eastern/Pacific and 7 Central.
Hart's film career consisted of 10 films, admittedly none of which I've seen, but in director Rebecca Cammisa's film, you recognize that Hart, nearly 50 years removed from her former vocation, retains the charisma that captured the attention of those who cast the then-19-year-old Hart in her first film opposite Elvis. Mother Prioress Dolores Hart admits that she prayed that she would win the role — she converted to Catholicism at the age of 10 — but interestingly the documentary doesn't mention that her father, Bert Hicks, was a bit player in movies in the 1940s and that a visit to the set of the Otto Preminger film he appeared in, 1947's Forever Amber, put the idea of acting into young Dolores' head. (Another anecdote the film neglects: Mario Lanza was Hart's uncle by marriage.)
What the documentary does reveal about Hart's parents is that they had her as teens of 17 and 18 and her grandmother thought that the pair had created a situation so tragic, Hart's mother should abort her. That's a fairly startling anecdote, considering it occurred in 1938, that the subjects drops out as soon as it gets mentioned. On the other hand, while this documentary concerns a woman who abandoned stardom for life as a nun, the film doesn't come off as overtly religious (Director Cammisa's mother actually used to be a nun).
Even though God is the Bigger Elvis focuses on Hart and the works at The Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Conn., it does take time to speak to some other members of the order about what brought them such as novice nun Sister John Mary, who came from the corporate and political world and addictions to drugs and alcohol. She says she still gets stares when she attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in her habit. However, this short belongs to Mother Prioress Dolores Hart, which makes it all the more surprising the many details you can find in a cursory search of the Web that didn't make it into the movie. There seems to have been more than enough material out there for a feature. For example, though the short does talk about Hart's involvement in a performing arts program out of the abbey, the film omits any reference to the fact that the open-air theater at the abbey, The Gary-The Olivia Theater, that was built in 1982 came about largely through the aid of Patricia Neal, who was buried at the abbey when she died in 2010.
Commenting on Neal's death to Tim Drake at the National Catholic Register. I learned that while Hart left acting behind nearly 50 years ago, she didn't completely abandon Hollywood as she maintains an active voting membership in the actors' branch of the Academy. The interview also shares a story that seems awfully pivotal to her decision to become a nun. When the actress went to Rome in the early 1960s to play Clare in Michael Curtiz's Francis of Assisi. The young Hart got the opportunity to have a meeting with Pope John XXIII, where she informed the pontiff about her role as the future saint.
"It was quite startling when I met his Holiness. I wasn’t prepared for it. When I greeted him I told him my name was Dolores Hart. He took my hands in his and said, 'No, you are Clara.' I replied, 'No, no, that’s my name in the film.' He looked at me again and said, 'No, you are Clara.' I wanted to sink to the floor, because I wasn’t there to begin arguing with the Pope. It gave me great pause for a number of hours. Being young, I dismissed it as one of those things that happened, but it stayed very deeply in my mind for a long time."
The only other problem I found with the documentary isn't one of omission but what seems to be a deliberate conflation of chronology. The film makes it appear as if she first visited the abbey toward the end of her career, coming at the suggestion of a friend as the young
Hart faced exhaustion following nine months of appearing on Broadway in the hit comedy The Pleasure of His Company, which opened in 1958. The play co-starred George Peppard and was directed by and starred Cyril Ritchard and included a cast of old pros such as Walter Abel and Charlie Ruggles (who won the Tony for best featured actor in a play). The film also fails to mention that Hart's work in the show earned her a Tony nomination as featured actress in a play (which she lost to Julie Newmar for The Marriage-Go-Round) and won her a Theatre World Award, which goes to the six most promising male and female acting debuts in Broadway and off-Broadway shows in a season (included in Hart's 1958-59 class were Tammy Grimes, Larry Hagman, William Shatner and Rip Torn). While Hart visited the Abbey of Regina Laudis for the first time, she learned that as a Catholic, she shouldn't pursue a movie career because she could be "aroused sexually" and get involved with men. That leads to the saddest part of the film. Hart had become engaged to another good Catholic, an architect named Don Robinson. Even today, she describes it as a "terrifying time" as she found herself torn between her love for Don and the unmistakable call beckoning her life in the abbey. Needless to say, Robinson's heart broke and though he admits to dating some other women eventually (it never indicates that he married) he visits her once a year at the abbey. To watch this man in his 70s pine away for the woman he lost to God almost proves too much to bear.Overall, nitpicking aside, God is the Bigger Elvis provides an interesting profile of a woman who made a decision most people wouldn't make, even if the details deserved more fleshing out and it would have withstood more than its 35-minute running time. The documentary premiere on HBO at 8 tonight Eastern/Pacific and 7 Central. It airs several more times throughout April and will be available on HBO GO after its debut.
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Labels: 10s, Awards, Clift, Curtiz, Documentary, Elvis, HBO, Oscars, Patricia Neal, Preminger, Rip Torn, Shatner, Shorts, Television, Theater
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Wednesday, December 14, 2011
My Week with Halle
By Eddie Selover
Nobody knows about this but me and her. The tabloids never suspected. It was private, just between us. I want to protect that. But on the other hand, several days have passed since it ended, so I guess it’s OK to finally talk about it.
I spent a week with Halle Berry. Yes, me, Eddie Selover! Just a nobody. Until now.
It happened in Spain. Halle’s over there making a movie with Tom Hanks. She’ll be there for a while longer, because she broke her leg chasing a goat. Spain, ay caramba…there are goats everywhere. And the ground is so rocky! You really have to be careful. Anyway, she’s on the mend now, that’s the important thing. Heal fast, Baby.
On the set of this picture, I was at the bottom of the food chain. The lowest of the low. I mean even lower than the screenwriter. But there must have been something about me. Maybe because we’re the same age. Well, I’m ten years older, but you know. It was a chemistry we had, and I’m not just talking about the physical, though that was certainly there on my part. We had an understanding; we knew it the minute we looked in each other’s eyes. I’ll always remember how hers narrowed when she first looked at me. And her first words.
“Could you get me a cup of tea? Right away…?”
Soon we were inseparable. A gentleman doesn’t reveal the details, but there is one thing I want to talk about, and that was the night we watched a movie together. It was that new one about how Marilyn Monroe went to England back in the 1950s to make a film with Laurence Olivier. As an Academy member, Halle had a screener from Harvey Weinstein, and she insisted on watching it in bed. With me!
Who was I to refuse? So I climbed in with her.
“Watch my leg.”
“I can’t take my eyes off it.”
“And stop with the James Bond impression. It’s getting old.”
“Someone’s in a bad mood.”
She gave me that look I’d come to know so well. And then the movie began.
So turns out it’s about this guy, Colin Clark, who wangled a job as an assistant to Olivier and then worked on The Prince and the Showgirl, a film version of a play Sir Laurence had done on stage. In it, the Showgirl was played by Marilyn Monroe, who had bought the property, and hired Olivier to co-star and direct. Here, Olivier is played by Kenneth Branagh and Monroe by Michelle Williams.
I’ve seen The Prince and the Showgirl, actually. The plot is very thin: it’s a little one-situation comedy about a middle-European prince who invites a showgirl up to his chambers with the intention of seducing her, and how she evades him through a combination of innocence and guile. Olivier plays it with a monocle and a Dracula accent, very stiff and formal, and no humor whatsoever. Monroe looks fantastic, maybe the best she ever looked, and she’s very charming. But they don’t get any chemistry going. Partly because the film is nothing more than a very long tease (the best thing about it is the original poster, which shows Olivier pinning a ribbon on Monroe’s barely-there dress, and the words “Some countries have a medal for everything!”). Partly too it’s the difference in their acting styles: his all cold surface detail and polish; hers warm, spontaneous and messy.
The new movie gets a lot of comedy, in fact most of its comedy, out of this clash. The movie’s Olivier is arrogant, egomaniacal and rude — Monroe thwarts and frustrates him at every turn, and he’s driven half mad by her lateness, her poor memory, her retinue of coaches and enablers. What finally drives him over the brink is his realization that despite her lack of formal acting training, she wipes him off the screen when they’re on it together. (This isn’t really accurate; they both come across vividly in The Prince and the Showgirl, but the film is like a gleaming gold-plated serving dish with a mackerel and a marshmallow sitting on it.) Branagh makes a very funny Olivier, biting down on every last syllable and modulating his voice from a whisper to a roar. He takes many of the Great Man’s mannerisms and gives them a campy spin, for example rolling his eyes toward heaven in supplication, then lowering them suddenly and pursing his lips. He portrays Olivier and sends him up at the same time, and he’s the best thing in the movie.
Michelle Williams is not so juicy. She does an effective, almost eerie job of evoking Monroe, both the wide-eyed mock-innocent dumbbell and the pouting, soulful little-girl-lost. But it’s all evocation. Marilyn Monroe was ferociously, incandescently alive on the screen. It’s not just that Williams doesn’t have Monroe's looks or her amazing body. She doesn’t have her feral quality, the intense aggressive sexuality that flashes out in moments that are still startling to watch. Like Elvis Presley, Monroe was an extraordinary personality who bypassed traditional notions of “acting.” At her best, as with Olivier, she made conventional acting look stilted and contrived, but at her worst (usually in drama), with no real technique or training to draw on, she could be repetitive, self-involved, and amateurish. Williams is just the opposite — she’s all brains and technique, but no fire. It’s an Indie performance, small and readable and finely wrought. But this is a movie about giants (it also includes portraits of Vivien Leigh, Arthur Miller, Sybil Thorndike) and you can’t help noticing there are no giants around to play them.
In any case, the main character isn’t really Monroe, or Olivier. Like I said, it’s about this guy Colin Clark. The movie is supposedly based on his true story, as recounted in his published diary and in his book The Prince, the Showgirl, and Me. In Clark’s account, as a fresh-faced 24 year old, he was the only one on the set Monroe could relate to, and after her new husband Miller deserted her to return to America, she turned to Clark for comfort. The only person with no agenda, it seems (though he later went on to write two books and sell them to the movies). The central part of the movie is about Colin and Marilyn’s very special week, after they sneak away from the set to go frolicking around the English countryside. They walk aimlessly through a park, they go skinny dipping, she’s turned on by his innocence, and they share a kiss. If this seems like a particularly puerile fantasy involving borrowed bits of The Misfits, Something’s Got to Give, and Bus Stop, that’s because it is. You get tired of watching Eddie Redmayne's Colin stare wonderingly at Monroe, wet eyed and open mouthed, or for variety, the other way around. She opens herself up to him and reveals her hurts, her fears and insecurities, and they fall for each other, sort of. Alas, she has to go back to being Marilyn Monroe and he has to go back to being…well, who cares, really? All they had was their one magical time together, but it’s a time that changed them both. In fact, the movie is named for it: My Week with Marilyn.
What a coincidence, right? Especially considering who I watched it with! When it was over, Halle shifted discontentedly under the covers.
“This thing is unbelievable.”
“Why thank you.”
“Cut it out, Mr. Bond. I was talking about the movie. Harvey may manage to snag Michelle an Oscar, but I don’t buy a word of it.”
She saw my expression, and gave me one of her enigmatic smiles. Then she put her face close. The eternal temptress.
“Could you go for some popcorn?”
“Great idea, I’m starving!”
“No, seriously, I can’t get out of bed. Go get me some popcorn. Now.”
It was a long week we had together, Halle and me. But I will never, ever forget it.
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Labels: 10s, Arthur Miller, Books, Branagh, Elvis, H. Weinstein, Marilyn, Michelle Williams, Nonfiction, Olivier, V. Leigh
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Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Today, Tomorrow and Forever
By Eddie Selover
It's not difficult to imagine the reaction of Colonel Tom Parker watching the rushes of Viva Las Vegas in early 1964. There he is: Elvis, his only client, His Boy, up there singing and dancing and gyrating as usual. But there's something wrong. He's way back in the back of the shot, almost a stick figure back there. Right up in front of the camera, looming in the foreground, taking your eyes inexorably away from him, is Ann-Margret. Or rather, clad in a skin-tight dress and wiggling in unison, Ann-Margret's butt. I bet the Colonel damn near bit through his cigar.
In fact, Colonel Parker hated Viva Las Vegas. He peppered the MGM front office with complaints: the girl was stealing the picture; she had too many songs and too many close-ups; the director was favoring her and kept adding new material for her; the publicity was all about this great teaming when everybody knew Elvis was the one and only star and doing just fine on his own. Worst of all, the fancy production values and re-shoots were sending the picture over budget, cutting into Elvis' share: a half-million in salary and 50% of the profits, of which the Colonel was taking 25%.
As usual when it came to anything but cutthroat dealmaking, the Colonel was wrong. Not only was Viva Las Vegas the biggest hit movie of Elvis Presley's career, but it survives as one of the best of them, and probably the most sheerly enjoyable. It's not the best movie as a movie (by common consent, that's King Creole), or the one that presents the essence of Elvis best (that's Loving You, an underappreciated minor masterpiece). Vegas' script is pathetic, its characters one dimensional, its acting perfunctory. Amazingly, it manages to do almost nothing with its ostensible subject (auto racing) or its gaudy setting (despite the title song, performed three times). What makes it great is what the Colonel hated most about it: Her.
What a difference a co-star makes. Unlike most of Elvis' leading ladies, Ann-Margret doesn't seem even slightly afraid of him. And she doesn't make the mistake many of them made, trying to tune into his vulnerable side and get some kind of tender thing going. She's a tigress. At only 22, she's a tight little bundle of sheer talent that keeps threatening to burst its seams. She's so gorgeous she's like a special effect—days after watching the movie you can't get her figure or her huge mane of red hair out of your head. Normally Elvis looked at everything and everybody in his movies with the same expression of polite, amiable inattention. But all throughout this movie, he reacts to Ann-Margret with something close to astonishment, and his habitual good ol' boy smirk is replaced by what can only be described as delight. Their chemistry blows the movie to smithereens.
Her energy and his response to it infuse their musical numbers with playfulness and real sexual give and take. The first of them, "The Lady Loves Me," is set around a hotel swimming pool, as he sings about how hard to resist he is, and she puts him down mercilessly. The lyrics make him out to be pushy and egotistical, qualities Elvis doesn't project at all, but he makes it work with light self-mockery and the insistence of his attention toward her. By their second number, "C'mon Everybody," she's dancing along as he sings, looking up at him undisguised adoration. Her character isn't supposed to be that much in love with him at this point in the movie, but at this point in the movie, who gives a damn about the script? Not these two, and certainly not us. By the time they dance together near the end — to something called "The Squat" and then to Ray Charles' "What'd I Say?" — they're locked in on each other to the exclusion of everything else. The intimacy is so overwhelming you feel like a voyeur.
You feel the same way listening to the two other duets they recorded for the movie. "You're the Boss" is a great Leiber and Stoller song in which a man and woman trade teasing compliments about each others' bedroom prowess — the inverse of "The Lady Loves Me." Leiber, who just passed away in August, was a masterful American lyricist whose style owed something to E.Y. Harburg — both writers were great observers of human foibles, both had sly and witty senses of humor, and both joyfully celebrated the ways sexual attraction makes a person look, act and feel ridiculous. Plenty of Elvis songs simmer with sex, but with Ann-Margret purring and growling along with him, "You're the Boss" is in a class by itself.
The other duet, "Today, Tomorrow and Forever," is a love song in standard Elvis ballad style, tremulous and slow. It's not much of a song, but their rapport lifts it to an almost spiritual level. You can feel the emotion of their real-life love affair in this song, just as you could feel it in the interview she gave Charlie Rose 30 years later, gently but firmly maintaining their privacy as a couple.
You won't hear either of these performances in the movie, however: the Colonel had the ballad re-done with Elvis singing alone, and the other cut entirely. The soundtrack album didn't even have Ann-Margret's name on it. "You're the Boss," indeed.
There wasn't much else the Colonel could do about Viva Las Vegas though; the picture had gotten out of his control and was a total loss as far as he was concerned. However, he had learned his lesson. After shooting wrapped, he signed with Sam Katzman, a producer with absolutely no taste but an ironclad commitment to bringing pictures in under budget. A kindred soul. From now on, Elvis movies would have lower costs, tighter shooting schedules (Two weeks, down from the 11 weeks spent on Vegas), hand-me-down songs, no big production numbers, and nobody of sufficient talent to turn the boy's head. In his next picture, Kissin' Cousins, he would be his own co-star — he played an Army man who discovers his own look-alike hillbilly cousin in the backwoods mountains, tackily re-created on a soundstage. The psychological effect of this doppelganger plot on a man with a dead twin brother and a deep inferiority complex can only be guessed, but it was a glum shoot and there were times Elvis refused to leave his dressing room.
Kissin' Cousins cost only $800,000 to make, and earned $2 million in profit. Now there, the Colonel must have thought as he fondled his cigar, that's a picture.
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Labels: 60s, Elvis, Movie Tributes, Musicals
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Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Everything's Free In America, For a Small Fee in America
By VenetianBlond
Winner of 10 Academy Awards (including best picture), the second-highest grossing film of 1961, and the production that introduced powerhouse Rita Moreno to a grateful public, West Side Story was released 50 years ago today. Developed from the Broadway musical, which was itself a version of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the film won high praise from both critics and audiences. This Broadway show turned American musical theater in a new direction. The songs were more complex musically, the dancing was pulled into the forefront of the storytelling and although it was wrapped around the timeless boy-meets-girl storyline, it tackled major social problems such as racism and poverty.
Leonard Bernstein rarely wrote lyrics so he only composed the music for the score, leaving the lyrics to a then-unknown composer named Stephen Sondheim who made his Broadway debut. In the book by Arthur Laurents, who died earlier this year, and adapted by Ernest Lehman for the film, the Montagues and the Capulets became the Jets and the Sharks, two rival teenage street gangs. Not only are they at odds over turf, the Sharks are newly arrived Puerto Ricans. The Puerto Ricans suffer the disdain of the Jets, but also suffer discrimination from the police officers Schrank and Krupke. West Side Story opened the door for edgier musical theater when it debuted on Broadway in 1957.
The film was long in development, with a number of production and cast misstarts. Robert Wise was hired to direct because of his experience with New York dramas, but due to his inexperience with musicals, Jerome Robbins, choreographer of the Broadway show, was brought on to direct the musical numbers. The No. 1 “get” for Tony always was Elvis Presley. However, Elvis’ people didn’t want him associated with knife fighting. There also were rumors that the previous affair between Natalie Wood and Presley may have affected the decision to turn the role down. Natalie Wood was not even in contention until she read with her then-paramour Warren Beatty during his audition and was cast although Beatty was not. Former child actor Richard Beymer was given the job — even over triple threat Russ Tamblyn, who also had been acting since his early teens who got the role of Riff.
The trick in adapting a Broadway musical for film is to open up the world of the show from the space limitations of the stage to the wider world possible on film. The opening shots of the film show actual aerial footage of New York City. The view from above establishes New York as a warren of crowded buildings, gray rooftops and few distinctive features. From this angle, New York’s romance as a world class city is diminished, setting up the world of the working class people of the story. Another good use of the cinematic nature of film is in the “tunnel vision” the two lovers have when they are together. When they meet at the dance, the rest of the world blurs away. They only have eyes for each other.
Conventional wisdom holds that the two leads are the weakest part of a fantastic film. Marni Nixon dubbed Maria’s singing parts and Jimmy Clark sang the role of Tony. Natalie Wood wasn't entirely believable as a Puerto Rican, and Richard Beymer’s performance lacked spark. Certainly the performances of Rita Moreno as Anita and George Chakiris as Bernardo were so powerful as to outshine everything else. Chakiris’ performance went beyond mere generalized anger to a sense that Bernardo had collected every slight, every name he was called, every missed opportunity into a very specific sense of self and his place in opposition to the rest of “American” New York City. Moreno brilliantly walked the tightrope between mature woman with no illusions and American optimist. Her tour de force number is “America,” in which she counters every complaint about her new country. Anita so desperately wants everything to work out in America that her later admission that “Nardo was right” is just devastating.
The other problematic aspect of West Side Story in film is the supposedly deadly street toughs periodically breaking into song and dance. On stage, there is an expectation of stylized performance, but film is usually meant to be more “realistic.” Having a film cast with dancers though provides certain benefits. The physicality of the actors is as evident as in any action film. When they run, they are running flat out. They actually climb chain link fences and walls, and Russ Tamblyn actually performs those flips. The sweat and grime is real. When Ice spins on his knees in “Cool,” the knees of his pants come up dirty. The fight choreography is no more stylized than any kung fu film, where actors fight endlessly with no injury or effort.
The boy-meets-girl story is timeless, but so it seems is the issue of immigration as a hot topic in the United States. Recent restrictive legislation hinges on the question of “legality” or “illegality,” but the actual process of enforcement relies on an individual’s appearance. In addition, the “land of opportunity” has growing income inequality. When Anita sings, “you can be anything you choose,” but Bernardo retorts, “waiting on tables or shine shoes,” it still has resonance today. Bernardo’s is a hard lesson, because those with the most faith — Anita with her faith in America, and Maria, with her faith in love — lose those they love. It is not the usual musical happy ending, although Maria/Juliet survives in this version. In a scene that redeems Natalie Wood’s performance for me, Maria confronts both gangs over Tony’s dead body. She seems to have aged years in a moment, because “widowed,” she has gained the experience of a much older woman. “How many bullets are there?” she asks them. “Enough for you? And you?” Considering America today, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
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Labels: 60s, Elvis, J. Robbins, Movie Tributes, Musicals, Oscars, Shakespeare, Sondheim, Theater, W. Beatty, Wise
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Friday, September 23, 2011
Trust him. He knows what he's doing.
By Damian Arlyn
Cop shows are a dime a dozen. For as long as the medium of television has existed there have been cop shows. Consequently, in such an overcrowded genre, which includes such distinguished icons as Dragnet, Adam-12 and Hill Street Blues, it is very difficult for a new one to make a distinct impression on viewers let alone leave any kind of legacy. Thus, in a bold attempt to be different, some producers have had the brilliant idea of doing a comic cop show, but prior to Reno 911, those programs proved to be television poison. Car 54, Where Are You?, Cop Rock and Police Squad! all had notoriously brief runs (although the latter would spawn a very successful comedy movie franchise). Alas, the same fate also befell the satirical 1980s sitcom Sledge Hammer! Despite critical acclaim, Hammer! was consistently second-to-last in the Nielsen ratings and after running only two seasons was unceremoniously canceled. Like its “comic-cop” brethren, Hammer! has developed a cult following over the years but unlike its “comic-cop” brethren, Hammer! has aged remarkably well. In fact, watching it 25 years later it is painfully clear that Sledge Hammer! was, as the saying goes, way ahead of its time.
Needless to say, without Dirty Harry there would be no Sledge Hammer!. In 1971, 16-year-old Alan Spencer saw the iconic Clint Eastwood film and was very affected by it. While the movie was inciting heated debate over whether its portrayal of a gung-ho policeman more interested in protecting innocent people than following the law was fascistic, Spencer astutely grasped the absurd humor of the whole thing. He wrote a script that featured a central character with even less scruples and an even more destructive personality — sort of “Dirty Harry on acid” — and thus, Sledge Hammer was born. However, it would be many years before it reached the television screen. Originally intended for HBO, it was ABC that eventually took a chance on Hammer!. I wish I could report that risk paid off but, as actor David Rasche puts it, “it was not to be.”
I discovered Sledge Hammer! completely by accident. When it premiered on ABC in 1986 it initially followed a half-hour Disney show called Sidekicks (with Ernie Reyes, Jr., Gil Gerard and Keye Luke) that I wanted to watch because it was based on a Disney Sunday Movie I loved called The Last Electric Knight. At the time I thought it was great, but now I realize it was just another second-rate Karate Kid rip-off. However, I do owe the show a tremendous debt because if it weren’t for Sidekicks I wouldn’t have seen Sledge Hammer!. I
remember watching the Sidekicks episode on the TV in my room and when it was over I decided to leave the set on rather than turn it off and go to bed. When the next show’s opening credits began I heard this very energetic, macho-sounding theme music (which I would later discover was written by an up-and-coming film music composer named Danny Elfman who would go on to become one of my all-time favorite musical talents) playing over close-up images of a .44 Magnum with an insignia of a sledge hammer imprinted on the handle. After several almost erotic-looking shots of the gun resting on a satin pillow a hand reaches into frame and holds it up next to his face staring at it longingly. He twirls it several times, points it slightly to the left of the camera and then says “Trust me. I know what I’m doing,” before firing it and making what was presumably supposed to be a hole in the television screen. Interestingly, the original idea was to have Hammer shoot directly into the camera Great Train Robbery-style, but the network was nervous it would frighten viewers and possibly even result in heart attacks. Hence, the slightly off-kilter direction of the gun’s barrel was agreed upon as a compromise. Incidentally, I‘d like to make a snarky remark here about television executives overestimating the stupidity of viewers, but I won’t because, according to IMDB, on the night of its debut a Midwest ABC affiliate was indeed “startled by the opening sequence, panicked and threw on the station logo thinking something had gone wrong with their tape machine.” It’s the kind of turn of the events that would fit right in with the absurd spirit of the show itself.Sledge Hammer! was, as creator Alan Spencer aptly claimed, a “sitcom for people who hate sitcoms.” The main premise was apparently to take every cop show/movie cliché and exaggerate it to the point of absurdity. The humor ranged from pointed socio-political and commentary all the way to goofy, over-the-top slapstick.
It essentially did for cop dramas what Get Smart (an admitted influence on Spencer) did for spy stories. It may have been dumb but it was dumb in a very intelligent way. It also was, and this is no small feat, side-splittingly funny. I remember liking it an awful lot when I was 10 but I was genuinely surprised, as I reviewed most of the episodes recently, how often I laughed out loud. Much of the hilarity came from the series’ central character, the sadistic, misogynistic, nihilistic San Francisco homicide detective. Born to parents Jack and Armen (think about it) Inspector Sledge Hammer was the kind of cop for whom excessive force was standard operating procedure, the kind of cop who would brag about violating a criminal’s civil rights, the kind of cop for whom the observation “he shoots first and ask questions later” was not a criticism but a compliment.
REPORTER: We're here at the scene of a liquor store robbery that was thwarted by the man beside me, Inspector Sledge Hammer. Inspector Hammer, tell us what happened.
HAMMER: Well, miss, I was in this store when two thugs entered and threatened the owner with shotguns. At that time, I drew my Magnum and killed them both. Then I bought some eggs, and some milk, and some of those little cocktail weenies.
REPORTER: Inspector Hammer, was what you did in that store absolutely necessary?
HAMMER: Oh, yes, I had no groceries at all.
Hammer’s main ally in his fight with crime (nay, his all-out full-scale global thermonuclear war on crime) was his beloved .44 Magnum. Hammer so adored that gun that he always had it with him. He showered with it, slept with it (and not under his pillow like James Bond, but resting comfortably on the pillow next to him…like a lover) and even talked to it. Yes, talked to it. Hammer was clearly unbalanced and yet still sane enough to realize that talking to one‘s firearm is considered strange. It’s a very funny running gag throughout the run of the series that every time he is caught conversing with his weapon, he would try to shrug it off or make some feeble excuse ("Who are you talking to?" "Uh, nobody."). In spite of his sheer disregard for any kind of human decency, compassion or etiquette, Hammer is a very engaging character. To that end, the charm and charisma of actor David Rasche (The Sentinel, Burn After Reading) goes a long way. Rasche fully commits to Hammer’s more disturbing personality traits without even attempting to soften any of his hard edges, but still manages to make him bizarrely likable. Rasche is truly a revelation in the role and it is no surprise to learn that Spencer wrote the part for him.
Supporting Rasche’s Hammer is the beautiful but tough Dori Doreau, played by the sexy and talented Anne-Marie Martin. In typical cop show/movie fashion, the crazy cop’s partner is very by-the-book. Though she is often distressed at Hammer’s antics, she nonetheless
seems to like him. Martin essentially plays the straight man to Rasche’s anarchic antics (though she can be, and sometimes is, hysterically funny herself…especially in “Desperately Seeking Dori” were she gets hit on the head and believes she is Hammer herself). She’s the “99 to his Max.” Rounding out the solid cast is Harrison Page’s long-suffering Captain Trunk. Just as Chief Inspector Dreyfus was constantly irritated with Clouseau, so is Trunk forever upset with Hammer, always reprimanding him, but never able to let him go (because against all sense and reason Sledge somehow manages to get the job done), Trunk usually expresses himself in loud verbal tirades. Years before Frank McRae was shouting “SLATERRRRR!!!” at the top of his lungs at Schwarzenegger’s rogue cop character in Last Action Hero, Page’s police captain was shouting “HAMMERRRRR!!!!!” on prime time TV. Interestingly, Spencer never intended the character of Trunk to be African-American because, although he didn’t mind Hammer’s sexism, sadism and jingoism, he didn’t want Hammer to appear racist. It was Harrison’s sheer volume that won him the role. In his audition he decided to just let loose and go for it and his yelling brought people into the office from other floors in the building. Spencer hired him on the spot.Another element that contributed to the show’s caliber (sorry) was the pedigree of directors they got. Indeed some of the best episodes were helmed by some of the best directors working in television at that time, such as Jackie Cooper and Bill Bixby. The pilot (“Under the Gun”) was directed with style and confidence by Martha Coolidge (Real Genius) and helped set the standard for everything that followed. I vividly remember watching that pilot. The mayor of San Francisco — John Vernon, who also played the mayor of that same city in Dirty Harry — hires Hammer to bring his kidnapped daughter home. I hadn’t yet seen Dirty Harry at the time (though I’ve seen it since) but it was not necessary to enjoy the over-the-top action and obviously over-the-top humor. One of the most memorable scenes involve Sledge on his way to work one morning in his car (an ugly green Dodge St. Regis with bullet holes in the windshield and a dent in its side) when he encounters a road block. Told by another officer that there’s a sniper on the roof of a nearby building, Hammer asks if the building is empty, goes to his trunk, pulls out a bazooka, levels the entire edifice and calmly declares “I think I got him.”
Dirty Harry was, of course, not the only movie Hammer! spoofed. Robocop (“Hammeroid”), Crocodile Dundee (“Death of a Few Salesmen”), and Witness (“Witless”) were also among those sent up in other memorable episodes. However, the makers of Hammer! were not content to simply satirize then-recent films. They also set their sights on such classics as North by Northwest (“Comrade
Hammer”), Vertigo (“Vertical”) and Casablanca ("Play It Again, Sledge”). Hammer! didn’t just take down movies, of course. It also attacked other TV shows. ALF, Max Headroom and particularly Mr. Belvedere took a beating. One of my favorite moments comes when Hammer is in a bar watching a newscast on the TV when he gets up to leave, hears that they are returning to their broadcast of Miami Vice (one of the shows Hammer! was competing with) and blows away the set with his gun. In addition to movies, Hammer! also poked fun at significant cultural phenomena of the period, some of which would eventually become dated references (such the colorization of black and white films) and others which actually anticipated their widespread profusion (such as JFK conspiracy nuts). One of the greatest episodes (“All Shook Up”), written as a love letter to Spencer’s recently deceased friend Andy Kaufman, had Hammer going undercover as an Elvis impersonator (even going so far as to attend “Elvis impersonator school”) to capture a serial killer who’s targeting Elvis impersonators. Although the budget didn’t allow them include any actual Elvis songs, David Rasche wrote some great original Elvis-style music that was used instead. Occasionally, Hammer! would even tackle a serious subject (such as ageism in Hollywood or sexual harassment), albeit in a humorous fashion.As with all television shows not every episode is a winner, but when Sledge Hammer! was good, it was great. It was a show never afraid to take chances. For example, as the end of the first season approached and it became clearer and clearer that the show would not get
picked up, Spencer wrote a season finale that would allow the show to (literally) go out with a bang. In “The Spa Who Loved Me,” a terrorist group steals a nuclear warhead and threatens to set it off if their demands (which include new episodes of Moonlighting) are not met. Hammer, Dori and Trunk find the warhead in a spa and Hammer, after uttering his usual chilling assurance that he “knows what he’s doing,” attempts to disarm the thing only to have it explode destroying all of San Francisco. Partially intended as a desperate attempt to boost their ratings (a confession they got Robin Leach to make at the outset of the episode) and also partially intended as petulant thumbing their nose at the establishment, the outrageous gamble actually paid off. The finale was so highly watched that the network renewed for a second season, provided Spencer would find a way to get out of the apocalyptic ending. In typical Sledge Hammer!-style, Spencer's solution was yet another satirical jab at television…specifically lame resolutions to unresolvable scenarios (such as “it was all a dream”). In the premiere episode of season two, a title card informed viewers that the rest of the season actually occurs five years before the nuclear explosion. The usual credits then roll, only this time with the subtitle “The Early Years." It makes no sense (especially since Doreau was made Hammer's partner in the pilot and here she's seen working with him), but it's clever and hilarious.The primary sin of Sledge Hammer! was being too good and too provocative for its time. It’s easy to see why audiences didn’t embrace it. It's pretty gutsy stuff. Even if ABC had treated it right (i.e. not pitting it against Dallas and Miami Vice in the first season and moving it around to various time slots in the second season, ultimately setting it against that ratings powerhouse known as The Cosby Show), it still might not have ever caught on. The very subversive sensibility of the show fits in more with the hyper-cynical culture we find ourselves in now than the conservative, homogenized environment of Reagan-era America. The fact that the show, against Spencer’s wishes, included a “canned” laugh track for much of the first season (I vividly remember that) illustrates this very point. At the same time, however, the tone and tenor of the whole thing (even the violence) is all so silly and good-natured that it's hard to believe anyone could take it so seriously as to be offended by it (which many people were). After being canceled in 1988, Hammer! did very well in syndication and both seasons are now available on DVD (sans the insipid laugh track thankfully). My advice, if you haven’t yet experienced this woefully underrated show, is to check it out. You might be surprised. You also might find yourself wondering how on earth the show didn’t catch on…or as Sledge himself would say whenever someone tried to use logic or reason on him: “Don’t confuse me.”
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Labels: 80s, Eastwood, Elvis, TV Tribute
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Monday, August 22, 2011
Jerry Leiber (1933-2011)
In lieu of a full-fledged appreciation of Jerry Leiber, the lyricist half of Leiber & Stoller, the songwriting team whose incredible string of hit songs from the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s virtually defined the sound of the era, I feel what would be more appropriate is to list a great many of their songs and mention some of the artists who recorded them (There were so many who covered the songs, that would take forever). Leiber, who was 78, is the man pictured at the back in the photo above. The man at the piano is his songwriting partner Mike Stoller. Also, it's worth noting that the team's work inspired one of the more successful "jukebox" musicals on Broadway, Smokey Joe's Cafe. RIP Mr. Leiber.
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Labels: Elvis, Leiber and Stoller, Music, Musicals, Obituary, Theater
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Sunday, July 10, 2011
The Next 60 Seconds Are All That Matter
By J.D.
John Carpenter is one of those rare filmmakers that entertains while also trying to say something about the society in which we live in. It is a tough balancing act that few can maintain but Carpenter's films make it look easy. From the special effects opus/remake drenched in paranoia of The Thing (1982) to the two-fisted diatribe against Reaganomics of They Live (1988), he hasn't been afraid to sandwich a thought-provoking message in between action sequences. In this respect, his films are much more than genre pictures; rather they critique the problems of contemporary society. And for its time, Escape From New York(1981) was no different. Carpenter's film examined the validity of the presidency and the increase of crime and disguised it as a slick, futuristic race against time that was very prescient, going on to influence similarly minded and looking films for years, including a fascinating subgenre of Italian rip-offs.
Escape From New York is set in 1997 (?!) and crime in the United States has grown so bad that Manhattan Island in New York has become a maximum security prison with one simple rule: "Once you go in, you don't come out." One night, the president's plane is taken over by terrorists who crash it into the prison. The president (Donald Pleasence) escapes but quickly becomes a prisoner of the inmates led by the Duke (Isaac Hayes). It seems that the president is carrying a vital piece of information that is to be delivered to a historical summit in Hartford. Enter Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell), an ex-soldier, now legendary fugitive who has been captured by the government and is scheduled to be transferred into the prison. Instead, Police Commissioner Bob Hauk (Lee Van Cleef) offers him a deal: go into the prison, find the president, and bring him and the information back in exchange for a full pardon. Sounds easy, right? There's a catch: Snake only has 22 hours to do all this because by then the conference will be over and the world will be thrown into chaos. As an incentive he has two explosive charges lodged in his neck to keep him focused on the task at hand. With this enticing opening, the film kicks into high gear as Snake enters the world's most dangerous prison to find the president and save the world.
Carpenter had just made Dark Star (1974) and no one wanted to hire him as a director so he shifted his focus to screenwriting. Inspired by the Charles Bronson film Death Wish (1974), Carpenter originally wrote the screenplay in 1974. He didn’t agree with the film’s philosophy but liked how it conveyed “the sense of New York as a kind of jungle, and I wanted to make an SF film along these lines. He was also influenced by the Watergate scandal. "The whole feeling of the nation was one of real cynicism about the president. I wrote the screenplay and no studio wanted to make it" because the general feeling was that “It was too violent, too scary, too weird.” And so the director went on to do other films with the intention of making Escape later. After the successes of Halloween (1978) and The Fog (1980), Carpenter was in a position to make a motion picture with a big budget. He decided to revive his Escape script, but something seemed to be missing. "This was basically a straight action film. And at one point I realized it really doesn't have this kind of crazy humor that people from New York would expect to see." So, he brought in Nick Castle, a friend from his film school days at University of Southern California. Castle invented the Cabbie (Ernest Borgnine) character and came up with the film's humorous conclusion that offset the bleak tone of the film with a skewed sense of satire.
The film's setting proved to be another potential problem for Carpenter. It is apocalyptic in tone: a decaying, semi-destroyed version of New York. How could Carpenter create this world on only a budget of $6 million (his biggest at the time)? As fate would have it, in 1977 there was a big fire in St. Louis that burned out several blocks of the downtown area. Carpenter and his crew convinced the city to shut off the electricity to these blocks at night and then proceeded to transform the remains into a New York of the future. They even found an exact replica of Grand Central Station that was deserted and unused. It was a tough, demanding shoot that Carpenter had never experienced before. "We'd finish shooting at about 6 a.m. and I'd just be going to sleep at 7 when the sun would be coming up. I'd wake up around 5 or 6 p.m., depending on whether or not we had dailies, and by the time I got going the sun would be setting. So for about two and a half months I never saw daylight, which was really strange." This approach paid off, creating a dark, foreboding atmosphere of a futuristic film noir.
In addition, Carpenter shot parts of the film in Los Angeles and New York. He and his film company were the first ones ever to be allowed to shoot on Liberty Island, at the Statue of Liberty at night. They let Carpenter have free run of the entire island. He remembers, “We were lucky. It wasn’t easy to get that initial permission. They’d had a bombing three months earlier, and were worried about trouble.” With Escape, the director created two distinct looks: “one is the police state, high tech, lots of neon, a United States dominated by underground computers. That was easy to shoot compared to the Manhattan Island prison sequences, which had few lights, mainly torch lights, like feudal England.”
The heart of Escape From New York lies in its main character: Snake Plissken. His cynical, world-weary attitude flies in the face of the earnest authorities who send him off to the save the world. Snake could care less. All that matters to him is "the next 60 seconds," as Kurt Russell commented in an interview. "Living for exactly that next minute is all there is." It is this kind of intensity that makes Snake such an interesting
character. He is the ideal antihero — intent on getting the job done and content on being left alone. Snake doesn't need anyone. Russell's performance clearly echoes Clint Eastwood's style of acting — the strong, silent type. Snake is a clever hybrid of The Man With No Name and Dirty Harry. It is an amusing riff on Eastwood's two most famous characters, which is only reinforced by the appearance of Lee Van Cleef (who appeared in a few films opposite Eastwood). It is to Russell's credit that he makes Snake a character you want to root for, that you want to see win at the end. There is something charismatic about Snake that makes you automatically want to like him. What is so great about the character is that Carpenter and co-screenwriter Nick Castle remain true to him throughout. They don’t saddle him with a love interest or dilute his intensity by having him crack the occasional joke. Snake remains an unrepentant badass, the proverbial fly in the ointment with a surly disregard for authority right up to the last shot of the film.
And to think that the studio did not want Carpenter to cast Russell in the role. Up until then the actor had done a string of Disney films as a youth and worked with Carpenter on a TV movie about Elvis Presley. The studio did not see Russell as a tough action hero. In fact, Charles Bronson expressed an interest in playing Snake (Tommy Lee Jones also was considered). However, by Carpenter’s own admission, “I was afraid of working with him. He was a big star and I was this little-shit nobody.” Fortunately, the filmmaker had faith in Russell and Escape From New York continued a long-standing relationship between the two men — both personal and professional — that continues to this day.
Escape From New York also features a strong supporting cast of character actors such as veteran thespian Harry Dean Stanton as Brain, the smartest man in the prison, and Ernest Borgnine as Cabbie, a hack who stayed in New York even after it changed into a prison. Let’s not forget Adrienne Barbeau as the Brain’s girlfriend Maggie and yet she is anything but that, as the talented actress plays her character as the tough-minded female equivalent of Snake. The film contains an eccentric assortment of characters each of who get their moment to shine and this only enhances the enjoyment of watching Escape. One of the best things about it is how these characters interact with Snake and how he views them. The supporting cast also fleshes out more of this fascinating world. They continually offer all sorts of tantalizing tidbits that allude to Snake's colorful past, to conditions in the prison and how the inmates have created their own world.
Escape from New York received mostly positive reviews when it was released. Newsweek magazine felt that Carpenter had a “deeply ingrained B-movie sensibility — which is both his strength and limitation. He does clean work, but settles for too little. He uses Russell well, however.” Time magazine’s Richard Corliss wrote, “John Carpenter is offering this summer's moviegoers a rare opportunity: to escape from the air-conditioned torpor of ordinary entertainment into the hothouse humidity of their own paranoia. It's a trip worth taking.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, "[The film] is not to be analyzed too solemnly, though. It's a toughly told, very tall tale, one of the best escape (and escapist) movies of the season." However, the Chicago Reader’s Dave Kehr felt that the film, “fails to satisfy — it gives us too little of too much.”
First and foremost Escape From New York is a fast-paced action film that is never dull to watch. However, the film also contains a dark, satirical edge that never falters, even right up to the film's conclusion. One the most frustrating problems of most films is how they end. No one seems to know how to end a film without relying on tried and true clichés. Carpenter's film does not fall into this trap. Escape may be an action film but it also makes some very interesting comments about crime in the United States that are still relevant even today. One could argue that Carpenter's film is almost intended to be a warning. That if things get any worse, the world that is depicted in this film isn't that far off. It is these sobering thoughts that make Escape From New York as powerful and entertaining today as it was when it first hit the screens in 1981.
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Labels: 80s, Borgnine, Eastwood, Elvis, John Carpenter, Kurt Russell, Movie Tributes, Pleasence, Tommy Lee Jones
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Wednesday, April 06, 2011
He's got the world on a string
By Edward Copeland
To be perfectly honest, if you asked the average person or even some fairly knowledgeable film buffs what exactly it is that a producer does, they wouldn't be able to give an adequate definition, especially when the list and types on some movies and TV shows has grown so long. Watching Douglas McGrath's highly entertaining documentary His Way about Jerry Weintraub and his rise in the entertainment industry won't necessarily give you a better idea of a producer's role, because Weintraub's portrait as a one-of-a-kind self-made man amazes on a professional level and his private life will make your jaw drop in disbelief at the charmed and unorthodox life he lives.
His Way, which premiered Monday night on HBO, opens with quick shots of some of the luxury items Weintraub surrounds himself with, many emblazoned with the monogram JW while Sinatra sings, "I've Got the World on a String." Then a series of famous figures, including most of the major stars of the Ocean's 11 remake and its sequels which Weintraub produced, as well as others, try to describe Weintraub in a few words. Among those quotes:
Out of high school, Weintraub entered the Air Force, serving in Alaska, where his drive for success led him to get the midnight to 8 a.m. shift so during the day he could go into Fairbanks and work at a Woolworth's where his ingenuity eventually got him promoted to manager.
He had an early failed marriage to a high school sweetheart, but moved back to his native New York where he started his climb in the entertainment industry, beginning as an NBC page, then to the fabled William Morris mailroom and before moving on to the television division of MCA before transferring to its night clubs division. Eventually, he left to manage talent on his own, taking about any act and providing one of the main inspirations for the title character in Woody Allen's Broadway Danny Rose, which makes writer-director McGrath's involvement somewhat ironic since he co-wrote Bullets Over Broadway with Allen.
Weintraub's constant pursuit of more talent to manage led him to the well-known (in certain circles) singer Jean Morgan. Much of her success she gained in Europe, but she'd been performing since she was a child, including in Kennebunkport, Maine, which is how the elder Bushes came to know Weintraub. Weintraub not only became her manager, he also wooed her away from her husband and remains married to her to this date, but to say it's a conventional marriage would not be truthful, but more on that later.
As his acts grew, Weintraub decided he wanted to promote a tour of Elvis Presley. After a year of calling Col. Tom Parker every day and being rejected, Parker changed his tune one day and told Weintraub to show up in Vegas with a check for $1 million and they'd talk. With much scrambling, Weintraub managed to get a cashier's check for $1 million by promising a radio exec he knew that he'd give him half of his concert proceeds for all acts. So Weintraub set up a tour for Elvis, with Weintraub getting 50% of the profits and the Colonel and Elvis getting the other half. Elvis had only two demands: No empty seats and only fans in the front rows, no big shots. When his show sold out so fast in Miami Beach, Weintraub proposed adding a matinee, and Elvis said yes and the venue manager told him it was sold out.
However, when Weintraub arrived, there were all these rows of tickets for the matinee. He asked the venue manager why he lied and he said he told him what he wanted to hear. Weintraub told Parker they had a problem, but the Colonel corrected him that they didn't, he did. In a stroke of genius, Weintraub got the officials at the neighboring Dade County prison to have inmates move the empty 5,000 seats into the parking lot for the matinee and cover them with a tarp and put them back for the evening show. Elvis never said they had to sell out, he just didn't want any empty seats, though later he said they should rethink the matinees because the crowd wasn't as loud and excited as the one at night.
After the evening performance, Parker took Weintraub into a room with two locked briefcases. He unlocked them both which were filled with cash which the Colonel said were from the concessions. Weintraub said that didn't belong to him, but Parker insisted and after making an even pile of cash on a table, used his cane to divide it equally saying that half was Weintraub's. After that, Weintraub was a multimillionaire. It boosted his reputation to the point that Frank Sinatra came calling, saying he'd grown bored with what he was doing and he wanted Jerry to do for him what he did for Elvis.
Weintraub's stable of big music talent grew to include Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, Neil Diamond, The Carpenters and John Denver, but as successful as he was with the music management business, he always wanted to make movies. One day, Robert Altman met with him, wanting Weintraub to manage him, but Weintraub surprised him by saying he didn't want to manage him, he wanted to produce his next movie and he did. That movie was Nashville.
Other films Weintraub produced include Oh, God!, Cruising, All Night Long, The Karate Kid and, as mentioned, Ocean's 11, 12 and 13 (those films' director, Steven Soderbergh, is both an interview subject in and an executive producer of His Way). One of his biggest hassles came when he made Barry Levinson's Diner for troubled studio chief David Begelman. Weintraub warned him not to call during the screening, knowing that it had been turned down by all the studios in town, and within seconds of it ending, the phone began ringing. Weintraub ignored it, went to the projection booth and took the print.
He then arranged a special screening for Pauline Kael (after the studio had done a test screening in Phoenix, which obviously was the wrong audience) who loved it and penned a rave. Weintraub took the review back to Begelman and his minions and showed them Kael's review that she planned to run whether they released the film or not, so it was up to them if they wanted to look like idiots or not. Diner was saved.
The one misstep that Weintraub has seemed to have made in his career was when he opened his own independent film studio, the Weintraub Entertainment Group, but his skills weren't suited to be an executive and the company ended up losing him $30 million.
The most iconoclastic aspect about Weintraub actually concerns his family life. Throughout his life, Weintraub has been nothing if not honest. He tells the story of a good-looking young woman who walked into his office one day and told him she wanted to have sex with him. Jean was out of town, so Jerry took the young lady home when Jean unexpectedly showed up. He tried to keep her out of the bedroom, but she figured out what was going on. He tried to call Jean for hours and when she did talk to him, he offered her a divorce, half of everything, whatever she wanted. Jean made a different offer. She didn't want a divorce. She just asked him to open an account for her and deposit $1 million in it. From then on, he could sleep with any bimbo he wanted, but each time, she'd get $1 million.
That's not the strangest part. Later, while making the film Pure Country, Weintraub met a woman named Susie Elkins and they fell in love. Again, Jane didn't feel the need for a divorce and in fact, she and Susie have become good friends and the three can often be seen together. Weintraub's daughter Julie says that it's other people who are more uncomfortable with the unusual situation than they are, and most of the interview subjects seem to back that up such as Barbara Bush who says she'd have killed George if he had ever tried to pull something like that on her.
As George Clooney says, Jerry Weintraub may be 72, but everything about him acts as if he's 15. Brad Pitt closes by guessing, "I'm sure he has his funeral arranged and it will be a great show."
His Way certainly is, if not a great show, a tremendously entertaining one. I've just mentioned a handful of the anecdotes. It will air again on HBO at 1 p.m. EDT/noon CDT Saturday, 7:30 p.m./6:30 p.m. April 15, 11 a.m./10 a.m. April 17, 11 a.m./10 a.m. April 21 and midnight/11 p.m. April 25. It also airs on HBO2 at 10 a.m./9 a.m. and 8 p.m./7 p.m. April 13.
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Labels: 10s, Altman, B. Levinson, Brad Pitt, Documentary, Dylan, Elvis, George Clooney, HBO, Julia Roberts, Kael, Music, Sinatra, Soderbergh, Television, Willis, Woody
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