Tuesday, July 30, 2013

 

Eileen Brennan (1932-2013)


Eileen Brennan, one of our most treasured character actresses, particularly when it came to roles with a comic spin, lost her battle with bladder cancer Sunday at 80. Her death was announced today. The prolific actress turned in many memorable performances, but probably will be best remembered as Capt. Doreen Lewis in the 1980 comedy Private Benjamin opposite Goldie Hawn and the subsequent television spinoff where Lorna Patterson took over for Hawn. The role of Capt. Lewis earned Brennan her sole Oscar nomination and three consecutive Emmy nominations, one of which she won.

After moving from her native California, Brennan performed some stage work with the Mask and Bauble Society at Georgetown University in Washington before returning west and beginning her film and television career. In 1966, she made her first television appearance in a production of Maxwell Anderson's play The Star Wagon where she starred opposite Orson Bean and whose cast included Dustin Hoffman and Marian Seldes. The next year, she made her film debut in Bud Yorkin's 1967 comedy Divorce, American Style with a cast that included Dick Van Dyke, Debbie Reynolds, Jason Robards and Jean Simmons. She was a regular on the first 14 episodes of Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In in 1968 and put in guest appearances on the TV series The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and The Most Deadly Game. With 1971 came the release of her second feature film and a true classic. This showed more of Brennan's abilities on the dramatic side of things as Genevieve the waitress in Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show. She even earned a BAFTA nomination as best supporting actress, quite a feat given the spectacular assemblage of female performers Bogdanovich gathered for his film. Along with her many episodic TV appearances, around the same time she appeared in the memorable All in the Family installment "The Elevator Story." In 1973, she had roles in two significant films: Scarecrow starring Gene Hackman and Al Pacino and that year's Oscar winner for best picture, the delightful caper comedy The Sting opposite Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

Brennan appeared in both of Neil Simon's 1970s film spoofs, usually attached by the hip to Peter Falk, in Murder By Death and The Cheap Detective. She guest-starred in a particularly memorable episode of Taxi, "The Boss's Wife," and earned an Emmy nomination as lead actress in a comedy series (the same year she won supporting actress for Private Benjamin). To get even with her husband, Mr. McKenzie, once a year, Mrs. McKenzie (Brennan) picks an employee of the Sunshine Cab Company to have an affair with, resulting in her husband's anger and the worker's firing. Louie (Danny DeVito) delights in the annual ritual — only this time she picks De Palma. Guest appearances on Newhart, thirtysomething and Will & Grace also brought Brennan Emmy nominations. Back on the big screen, she brought the game piece Mrs. Peacock to life in Clue and reprised Genevieve in the 1990 Last Picture Show sequel Texasville.

RIP Ms. Brennan. When you appeared on screen, I knew that whatever I was watching would be getting a lift.


Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,



TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
# posted by Edward Copeland @ 4:30 PM 1 comments

Monday, May 21, 2012

 

Centennial Tributes: Richard Brooks Part III


By Edward Copeland
It isn't often that a masterpiece of literature begets a masterpiece of cinema yet both retain distinct identities all their own, but that's the case with In Cold Blood, Truman Capote's "nonfiction novel" and Richard Brooks' stunning film adaptation of his book. Capote often gets credit for inventing the genre of adapting the techniques of a novelist to that of straight reporting, but earlier attempts existed — Capote's stood out because In Cold Blood 's excellence made everyone forget any other examples (at least until more than a decade later when Norman Mailer added his own brilliant take on the genre with The Executioner's Song). Brooks, with his job as a crime reporter in his past, on the surface appears to follow Capote's approach, but the director, forever the activist, skips the objectivity that Capote tried to evoke in his book. Brooks didn't want to minimize the horror of the crime that occurred at the Clutter farm in Holcomb, Kans., but he also wanted to humanize the killers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. In a way, Brooks' film inspired the path for the two films made decades later telling the story of Capote's writing of the book and his getting to know the killers first-hand as they waited on Death Row. Even today, Brooks' 1967 film remains more powerful and better made than the two more recent tales. Undoubtedly, In Cold Blood remains Brooks' greatest film. If you got here before reading either Part I or Part II of this tribute, click on the respective links.
The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call "out there." Some seventy miles east of the Colorado border, the countryside, with its hard blue skies and desert-clear air, has an atmosphere that is rather more Far West than Middle West. The local accent is barbed with a prairie twang, a ranch-hand nasalness, and the men, many of them, wear narrow frontier trousers, Stetsons, and high-heeled boots with pointed toes. The land is flat, and the views are awesomely extensive; horses, herds of cattle, a white cluster of grain elevators rising as gracefully as Greek temples are visible long before a traveler reaches them.


Capote begins his book with that paragraph in the first chapter titled The Last to See Them Alive. Brooks begins the film of In Cold Blood introducing us to The Last to See Them Alive in the forms of Robert Blake as newly paroled inmate Perry Smith and Scott Wilson as an acquaintance he met in prison who had been freed earlier, Dick Hickok. Brooks gives Blake — and the movie — a memorable entrance, especially thanks to his decision to go against the grain of the time and film in black-and-white Panavision. We see a bus driving down a two-lane highway, passing signs showing the distance to different Kansas towns, including the horrific Olathe. On the bus, a young female stumbles down the aisle to get a closer look at the pair of pointed-toe cowboy boots with buckles on its heels before creeping back. The shadowy man who wears the boots also has a guitar strung around his neck. A flame suddenly illuminates Robert Blake's face as he lights a cigarette and Quincy Jones' ominous yet jazzy score kicks in to start the credits. The sequence not only sets the tone for the film that follows, it also introduces us to the movie's most important participant — cinematographer Conrad L. Hall (though he didn't need to use the L. yet since his son, Conrad W. Hall, wasn't old enough to follow his dad into the business).

The movie spends its opening minutes introducing us to the soft-spoken Perry and getting him hooked up with Dick. Whereas Blake's Perry comes off as a puppy repeatedly kicked by his owner, Scott Wilson portrays Hickok as a cocky, livewire and a chatterbox — and Brooks gives him great lines, especially in the scenes where he and Blake drive around. "Ever seen a millionaire fry in the electric chair? Hell, no. There's two kinds of laws, one for the rich and one for the poor," Dick imparts as wisdom to Perry. When the two buy supplies for the planned robbery of the Clutter farm, Dick shoplifts some razorblades for no good reason, leading Perry to chastise him for taking such a risk for something so small. "That was stupid — stealin' a lousy pack of razor blades! To prove what?" Perry asks. Smiling, Dick replies, "It's the national pastime, baby, stealin' and cheatin'. If they ever count every cheatin' wife and tax chiseler, the whole country would be behind prison walls." Though in the two recent biographical films about Truman Capote's research into the case, it's strongly implied that Capote at least developed a crush on Smith and that Perry may have been gay. In Cold Blood never explicltly claims that Perry Smith was gay, but throughout the film Dick taunts him by calling him "honey," "baby" or something along those lines. Hickock on the other hand chases every skirt he gets near and during the robbery/murder, Perry intervenes to stop Dick from raping the Clutters' 16-year-old daughter Nancy (Brenda Currin). Wilson made his first two feature films in 1967 and he landed roles in two of the biggest — this one and the eventual Oscar winner for best picture, Norman Jewison's In the Heat of the Night. The jaws of younger readers should hit the floor when they see Wilson's great work here and it slowly dawns on them that playing Dick Hickok is a younger incarnation of Herschel on AMC's The Walking Dead. When Perry and Dick do get together, they meet at Dick's father's house where Dick tries to aid his old man, who's slowly losing his battle with terminal cancer. (Veteran character actor Jeff Corey, who co-starred in the Brooks-scripted 1947 classic Brute Force, plays the elder Hickock.) Contrasting Capote's take with Brooks' version fascinates in the ways the works reflect each other yet, like a mirror, many things appear on the opposite side. The book introduces its readers to the Clutter family first before Perry and Dick enter the story (by name anyway). Brooks' screenplay reverses the order, beginning with the killers then letting us meet the Kansas family. However, both aim to draw parallels between the victims and their eventual murderers. "That morning an apple and a glass of milk were enough for him; because he touched neither coffee or tea, he was accustomed to begin the day on a cold stomach. The truth was he opposed all stimulants, however gentle. He did not smoke, and of course he did not drink; indeed, he had never tasted spirits, and was inclined to avoid people who had — a circumstance that did not shrink his social circle as much as might be supposed, for the center of that circle was supplied by the members of Garden City's First Methodist Church, a congregation totaling seventeen hundred, most of whom were as abstemious as Mr. Clutter could desire," Capote described the Clutter patriarch. A few pages later in the first chapter, Perry Smith makes his entrance into Capote's book. "Like Mr. Clutter, the young man breakfasting in a cafe called the Little Jewel never drank coffee. He preferred root beer. Three aspirin, cold root beer, and a chain of Pall Mall cigarettes — that was his notion of a proper "chow-down." Sipping and smoking, he studied a map spread on the counter before him — a Phillips 66 map of Mexico — but it was difficult to concentrate, for he was expecting a friend, and the friend was late. He looked out a window at the silent small-town street, a street he had never seen until yesterday. Still no sign of Dick," Capote wrote. Brooks uses a visual link to draw victim and killer together, showing Herbert Clutter (John McLiam) performing his morning shave. As Clutter leans into the sink to rinse the remaining shaving cream from his face, the face that rises up and looks in the mirror sees Perry Smith, excising his excess whiskers as well.

The biggest difference between the book and the movie came with Brooks' introduction of a Truman Capote surrogate, a magazine reporter named Jensen, who travels to Holcomb to cover the case. Jensen isn't played in a way similar to the extremely distinctive Capote — such as the way that won Philip Seymour Hoffman an Oscar for Capote, that Toby Jones played even better in Infamous or that Tru himself played best of all as Lionel Twain in Neil Simon's 1976 mystery spoof Murder By Death. Brooks wrote the Jensen character straight (no pun intended) and conventionally, even giving him a narrator's function at times. He doesn't precisely follow how Capote researched the story though because Capote didn't arrive in Kansas until after Smith and Hickok had been apprehended. In the movie, Jensen arrives almost from the beginning of the investigation. For the role of Jensen, Brooks cast another veteran character actor — Paul Stewart, whose first credited screen role was the butler Raymond in Citizen Kane. His 42-year film and television career ended in 1983 with an episode of Remington Steele and he died three years later, a month shy of his 88th birthday. After starting with Kane, a few of Stewart's eclectic highlights included Champion, Brooks' Deadline-U.S.A., The Bad and the Beautiful, Kiss Me Deadly, Hell on Frisco Bay, King Creole, Opening Night, Revenge of the Pink Panther, S.O.B. and appearances on nearly every episodic police or detective show between the 1950s and the 1970s, including The Mod Squad. The Jensen character arrives around the same time that the Kansas Bureau of Investigation joins the case led by John Forsythe as Alvin Dewey, what may be Forsythe's best performance. Brooks gives him a lot of speeches — and some come off as less pristine than others, but Forsythe succeeds at selling most of them. Forsythe gets so identified with Dynasty or as a voice on Charlie's Angels that I think people forget that he really act when the material was there for him as it was here or in the short-lived and underrated Norman Lear sitcom The Powers That Be and having fun with Hitchcock in The Trouble With Harry (though no one could help Topaz much). He also was a replacement performer of one of the major roles in Arthur Miller's All My Sons on Broadway. Granted, didn't see him, but he had to show some chops to land that one. Of his filmed work though, I think In Cold Blood stands as the best. Sure, this speech reads as overwrought, but he pulled it off as he delivered it to Jensen. "Someday, someone will have to explain the motive of a newspaper to me. First, you scream, 'Find the bastards.' Till we do find 'em, you want to get us fired. When we find 'em, you accuse us of brutality. Before we go into court, you give them a trial in the newspaper, When we finally get a conviction, you want to save 'em by proving they were really crazy in the first place. All of which adds up to one thing — you've got the killers," Dewey tells Jensen as he's taking down to the basement of the Clutter house. Dewey also serves as Mr. Exposition, explaining why these two numbskulls just out of prison would decide to go to this one particular farmhouse and rob this family, making sure to "leave no witnesses," even though Dick and Perry only gain $40 from the crime. A fellow investigator asks Dewey if Clutter might have been rich and Alvin sort of laughs knowingly. "Ahh — the old Kansas myth. Every farmer with a big spread is supposed to have a secret black box with lots of money in it." It isn't until the ending that you realize the Brooks gave Dewey some of that dialogue because he's supposed to symbolize the parts of the system that disgust him. Brooks ardently opposed capital punishment and he made no secret that he wanted the ending to make clear that it was murder. At Smith's hanging, another reporter asks Dewey about how much the executioner makes. "Three hundred dollars a man," Dewey answers. "Who does he work for? Does he have a name?" the reporter follows up and then poor John Forsythe has to deliver the clunkiest line of dialogue in the entire film. "Yes. We the people." Earlier, it had been the topic of discussion between Jensen and an imprisoned Hickock.
DICK: Perry's the only one talking against capital punishment.
JENSEN: Don't tell me you're for it.
DICK: Hell, hangin' only getting revenge. What's wrong with revenge? I've been revenging myself all my life.


Part of the film's brilliance stems from the way Brooks structures the scenes detailing the crime itself. Toward the beginning of the movie, he presents what probably remains the greatest sequence of his directing career without actually showing the murder. Then, as the film winds down, he shows us what we didn't see and it's horrifying. Through a window of the farmhouse, we can see Nancy kneeling beside her bed saying her prayers. At that moment, it isn't made clear who could be seeing that — are Dick and Perry outside her window or are we simply the voyeurs right then? A split second later we spot Dick and Perry still sitting in the car beneath the cover of night. I guess it was us. The discordant sound of a doorbell suddenly fills the soundtrack and the viewer realizes he or she has moved inside the Clutter house — and sunlight shines through the windows. The camera tracks slowly around the furniture of the living room as it makes its way toward the front door. A woman and some other people open the door calling out for the Clutters. We faintly hear church bells tolling and the visitors wear their Sunday best. The woman continues to call out the Clutters by their first names as she ascends the stairs to the second floor. The film cuts quickly to the house's exterior just as we hear the woman let out a horrified scream. Coming on the heels of The Professionals, it's as if somehow Brooks transformed himself from a competent director and damn good writer into a master of both. I don't know if the fact he had Conrad Hall working as his d.p. on both films made any sort of difference or if that proved to be just fortuitous, but that one-two punch sealed Brooks' artistic reputation forever beyond what respect he'd earned before. I've never been fortunate enough to see In Cold Blood on the big screen and allow Hall's haunting and beautiful mix of light and shadow to bathe me in its glow, but I did get the next best thing when in 1993 at the Inwood Theater in Dallas I saw Arnold Glassman, Todd McCarthy and Stuart Samuels' documentary Visions of Light, a film devoted to the art of cinematography and highlighting some of its greatest practitioners and their best moments. One of the highlighted scenes comes from In Cold Blood when Robert Blake as Perry gives an emotional monologue about his father in his prison cell while he looks out the window at the rain coming down. The reflection of the raindrops cast shadows on Blake's face that make it appear as if he's crying. The moment stuns in its beauty — even when you learn that as so many say, accidents ends up producing some of the best parts of film. Hall admitted it hadn't been planned but the humidity in the prison set had pumped up the window's perspiration so much (as well as everyone else's) that's how the magic happened. Thankfully, YouTube had that clip.


It must be said how good a performance Blake gives while at the same time acknowledging that it can't be viewed the way many of us assessed it originally. When a Naked Gun movie pops up and you see O.J. Simpson play an idiot and constantly take a beating, somehow that's OK. When you watch In Cold Blood again and see Blake give such a convincing and chilling performance as a mass murderer (especially when Forsythe's Alvin Dewey engages him in conversation during the ride to jail and Perry tells him, "I thought Mr. Clutter was a very nice gentleman. I thought it right till the moment I cut his throat."), you can't help but recall that a few decades later, the actor stood trial and received an acquittal for killing his wife. It doesn't stand out as groundbreaking now, when last night's Mad Men said shit twice, but in 1967, In Cold Blood became the first major release to utter the word bullshit. For the second year in a row, Brooks received Oscar nominations for directing and adapted screenplay and Hall got one for cinematography. Quincy Jones also picked up a nomination for original score, though Jones didn't receive one for his music for In the Heat of the Night. I don't understand how the nimrods at the Academy left it out of the top five for best picture. They nominated two films that deserved to be there: Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate. The film that won, a fine film but certainly expendable: In the Heat of the Night. A perceived prestige project of social significance that's overrated as hell: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. The fifth nominee that would make no sense in any year: Doctor Dofuckinglittle. Basically, three out of the five films could have been tossed to make room for In Cold Blood. A few other more deserving 1967 titles: Cool Hand Luke, The Dirty Dozen, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Accident, Wait Until Dark, Point Blank, The Jungle Book. The National Board of Review did honor Brooks' direction. Brooks also received his sixth Directors Guild nomination and his sixth Writers Guild nomination. With the exception of the WGA, Brooks would never be named for any of the top awards again. In Cold Blood marked his best, but from there things went downhill fast.

THE HAPPY ENDING (1969)

One of the most difficult films to find (I've never seen it) for that recent a film with a best actress nomination. Brooks wrote his first original screenplay since Deadline-U.S.A. as a vehicle for wife Jean Simmons. From descriptions I've read, Simmons plays Mary Wilson, who was raised on romantic notions of marriage from the movies, finds herself in a funk on her anniversary and flies to the Bahamas on a whim, running into a free spirit (Shirley Jones) while there.

$ (1971)

I missed this one as well. From TCM's web site; "In Hamburg, Germany, American Joe Collins (Warren Beatty) is considered by bank manager Kessel (Gert Fröbe) to be the most honest, hard-working bank security expert in the world. Unknown to Kessel, Joe has been devising a plan with his girlfriend, American expatriate prostitute Dawn Divine (Goldie Hawn), to take the contents from bank safe-deposit boxes owned by several criminals and place them into one owned by Dawn. Roger Ebert gave it three stars in his original review.

BITE THE BULLET (1975)

I wanted to see this one, but just ran out of time. Here's what qualifies as TCM's full synopsis: A former roughrider (Gene Hackman) matches wits with a lovely but shady lady-in-distress (Candice Bergen), as a drifting ex-cowboy (James Coburn) and a young, reckless cowboy (Jan-Michael Vincent) join in on a 700 mile journey. Ebert gave it three and a half stars in his original review.

LOOKING FOR NR. GOODBAR (1977)

I've actually seen this one. In fact, as we near the end of Brooks' career, I've watched two of the last three movies. As an unrelated sidenote, this year also marked the end of Brooks' 17-year marriage to Jean Simmons. If by chance you aren't familiar with this movie, think of it as sort of the Shame of the 1970s — and I don't mean the Ingmar Bergman movie. Diane Keaton stars as a teacher of deaf students whose affair with her college professor ends badly. She reacts as anyone would to a breakup — she starts cruising New York bars and picking up strangers for one-night stands while also developing a taste for drugs. The film definitely didn't belong in the genre of liberated women films of the 1970s as Keaton's character will pay. I saw this when I was a young man and I found it distasteful then, though it did have more sensible plotting than last year's Shame. Brooks directed his last performer to an Oscar nomination with Tuesday Weld getting a supporting actress nod. Keaton won the best actress Oscar for 1977 — but for Annie Hall. Brooks adapted a novel by Judith Rossen that was loosely based on a real incident, but most reviews by people who had read the novel seemed to indicate that Brooks changed key elements. Then, that matches the speech Brooks gave the movie's cast and crew on the first day of shooting, according to Douglass K. Daniel's Tough as Nails: The Life and Films of Richard Brooks. "I'm sure that all of you have your own ideas about what kind of contributions you can make to this film, what you can do to improve it or make it better. Keep it to yourself. It's my fucking movie and I'm going to make it my way!" Daniel wrote. Goodbar also featured Richard Gere in one of his earliest roles. This clip plays off the tension of whether fun and games are at hands or something more dangerous.


WRONG IS RIGHT (1982)

Brooks referred to this film as "the biggest disaster" of his career. Later, he amended it slightly, blaming TV for purposely not coverage the film because the movie criticized "checkbook journalism." Having watched Wrong Is Right for the first time recently, this compels me to ask, "It did?" Sean Connery stars as a globetrotting reporting for what appears to be a CNN-like news station. The opening sequence contains some amusing moments, (including a young Jennifer Jason Leigh, nearly 30 years after her dad Vic Morrow played the worst punk in Brooks; Blackboard Jungle) but what could be cutting-edge satire of a media form just being born transforms into a scattershot satire involving fictional oil-rich African countries, the CIA, a presidential race and arms dealers trading suitcase nukes, Based on a novel, I hope that it had a plot, but Wrong Is Right just ends up being one of those strange satires like The Men Who Stared at Goats where once it ends you still don't know what the hell happened. This clip shows the opening sequence. Nothing after it deserves your attention.


FEVER PITCH (1985)

I've got good news and bad news when it comes to Richard Brooks' final film. The good news: it brought him awards consideration again. The bad news: It was at the Razzies where it earned nominations for worst picture, worst director, worst screenplay and worst musical score. I'm not sure whether or not it relieved him that the film lost in all four categories, with Rambo: First Blood Part II taking worst picture, director and screenplay and Rocky IV winning worst score dishonors. I have not seen Fever Pitch which TCM hasn't even given a synopsis, but I know enough to tell you that Ryan O'Neal plays an investigator reporter doing a story on compulsive gambling who discovers he suffers from the problem. The subject of the movie came up on my Facebook page and Richard Brody, critic at The New Yorker, commented, "I saw Fever Pitch when it came out and loved every overheated second. Haven't seen it since then. Seeing The Connection has brought it back: no detached observer but a participant almost instantly in over his head." At the time of its release, it became one of the rare films that Ebert gave zero stars.

Following Fever Pitch, Brooks toyed with the idea of writing a screenplay about the blacklist, basing it around an incident in 1950 when fights broke out at the Directors Guild over the loyalty oath, but he didn't get around to it. The man who could be quite a bully on the set, had quite a bit of bitterness toward the industry by now as he showed in the second half of that 1985 interview.


Richard Brooks died of congestive heart failure on March 11, 1992, at 79. He did have close friends, but most of them had died themselves by then. The stepdaughter he basically raised as his own when he married Jean Simmons, Tracy Granger, made certain, his tombstone bore the only appropriate epitaph for the man.

Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,



TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
# posted by Edward Copeland @ 6:00 AM 1 comments

Saturday, May 19, 2012

 

Centennial Tributes: Richard Brooks Part II


By Edward Copeland
We pick up our tribute to Richard Brooks in 1956. If you missed Part I, click here. Of Brooks' two 1956 releases, I've only seen one of them. The Last Hunt stars Stewart Granger as a rancher who loses all his cattle to a stampeding herd of buffalo. Robert Taylor plays a buffalo hunter who asks him to join in an expedition to slaughter the animals, but the rancher, an ex-buffalo hunter himself, had quit because he'd grown weary of the killing. Brooks may be the auteur of antiviolence. Filmed in Technicolor Cinemascope, I imagine it looked great on the big screen. Bosley Crowther wrote in his New York Times review, "Even so, the killing of the great bulls—the cold-blooded shooting down of them as they stand in all their majesty and grandeur around a water hole—is startling and slightly nauseating. When the bullets crash into their heads and they plunge to the ground in grotesque heaps it is not very pleasant to observe. Of course, that is as it was intended, for The Last Hunt is aimed to display the low and demoralizing influence of a lust for slaughter upon the nature of man." The second 1956 film I did see and given the talents involved and the paths it would take, it's a fairly odd tale. The Catered Affair was the third and last film in Richard Brooks' entire directing career that he also didn't write or co-write.

It began life as a teleplay by the great Paddy Chayefsky in 1955 called A Catered Affair starring Thelma Ritter, J. Pat O'Malley and Pat Henning before its adaptation for the big screen the following year, the same journey Chayefsky's Marty took that ended up in Oscar glory. This time, Chayefsky didn't adapt his work for the movies — Gore Vidal did. Articles of speech changed in its title as well as the teleplay A Catered Affair became The Catered Affair for Brooks' film. (Chayefsky apparently wasn't a particular fan of this work of his — it never was published or appeared in a collection of his scripts.) We're at the point where the project just got screwy. The simple story concerns an overbearing Irish mom in the Bronx determined to give her daughter a ritzy wedding because of the bragging she hears her future in-laws go on about describing the nuptials thrown for their girls. Despite the fact that the Hurley family lacks the funds for it, Mrs. Hurley stays determined while her husband Tom sighs — he's been saving to buy his own cab. On TV, the casting of Ritter and O'Malley for certain sounded appropriate. For the film, which added characters since it had to expand the length, the cast appeared to have been picked out of a hat because they certainly didn't seem related, most didn't register as Irish and as for being from the Bronx — fuhgeddaboudit. Meet Mr. and Mrs. Tom Hurley, better known to you as Ernest Borgnine and Bette Davis. Unlikely match though they be, somehow their genes combined and out popped the most Bronx-like of Irish girls — Debbie Reynolds. The new character of Uncle Jack does add a bit of real Irish flavor by tossing in Barry Fitzgerald for no apparent reason. Unbelievably, it made the list of the top 10 films of the year from the National Board of Review who also named Reynolds best supporting actress (nothing against Reynolds in general — just miscast here). You would think that this Affair would fade into oblivion, but you'd be wrong. In 2008, it changed articles again and re-emerged on the Broadway stage as the musical A Catered Affair. Faith Prince and Tom Wopat(Yes — that Tom Wopat of Luke Duke fame) earned Tony nominations as the parents, Harvey Fierstein wrote the book and played the uncle (named Winston) and John Bucchino wrote the score. Why did Brooks make this one? Easy. He was under contract. MGM told him to make it, so he had no choice. From Tough as Nails: The Life and Films of Richard Brooks, some of the cast talked on record about how Brooks could be a bit of a prick as a director. "I didn't know it at the time, but Brooks ate and digested actors for breakfast," Borgnine said later. "If things weren't working, he let you know it, and not gently." When a particular scene was not working to his satisfaction, (Brooks) ordered Borgnine and Davis to figure out the problem. Borgnine suggested a different pacing and Davis agreed the scene was better for it — as did (Brooks), though he offered Borgnine not praise but a putdown. 'Goddamn thinking actor.'" Reynolds also tells the author Douglass K. Daniel that from the first day she met Brooks he told her that he didn't want her in the part, but it wasn't his decision. "'He said he was stuck with me and he'd do the best he could with me,' Reynolds recalled. 'He hoped I could come through all right with him, because everybody else was so great, but he wasn't certain I could keep up with the others. He actually said he was stuck with me. And he said so in front of everybody, too. He was so cruel.'" Davis and Borgnine coached Reynolds on the side and Bette, not known to be a shrinking violet, told Reynolds once, according to the book, "'Don't pay any attention to him, the son of a bitch,' Davis told her. 'The only important thing is to work with the greats.'" Davis did get help from Brooks in her fight against the studio that a Bronx housewife shouldn't be wearing movie star costumes they wanted, so he supported her decision to buy clothes at a store like Mrs. Hurley would shop at in real life. Years later, Davis referred to Brooks as one of the greats. This wasn't the first time Brooks had treated a young actress oddly on a set, Anne Francis told Douglass Daniel for his book that he practically ignored her during the filming of Blackboard Jungle and she received no direction at all. Daniel suggests and, given the way Brooks ordered Borgnine and Davis to come up with an idea to fix a scene, that writing had been his greatest gift, he grew into a solid visual storyteller, but Brooks proved limited when it came to directing actors. Daniel wrote, "…(the accounts of Francis and Reynolds) suggested he had a limited ability to communicate what he wanted. He either paid them little attention…or tried to bully a performance from them." Despite that problem, 10 actors in Brooks-directed films earned Oscar nominations and three took home the statuette.

The following year, Brooks made another film that revolved around the hunt of an animal, though that just leads to much bigger issues in Something of Value, sometimes known as Africa Ablaze. Starring Rock Hudson and filmed in Kenya, the film, which I haven't seen, concerns tensions that erupt between formerly friendly colonial white settlers and the Kenyan tribesmen. It also began a run of films that Brooks adapted from serious literary sources. Something of Value had been written by Robert C. Ruark, a former journalist like Brooks, who fictionalized his experiences being present in Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion. In 1958, the two authors he adapted carried names more prestigious and recognizable. The first movie released derived from a particularly literary source and Brooks didn't do all that heavy lifting alone. Julius and Philip Epstein did the original adaptation, working from the English translation of the novel by Constance Garnett before Brooks began his work writing a worthwhile screenplay that didn't run more than two-and-a-half hours out of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. It wasn't easy. Brooks told Daniel that he "wrestled with the book for four months." What surprised me to learn, also according to what Brooks told Daniels, MGM assigned Karamazov to him. Brooks also said that he never initiated any of his films while under contract at MGM. I love Dostoyevsky. Hell, even a master such as Kurosawa couldn't pull off a screen adaptation of The Idiot. The only aspect of this film that holds your attention — actually it would be more accurate to say grabs you by your throat and keeps you awake for his moments — ends up being any scene with Lee J. Cobb playing the Father Karamazov. I don't know if Cobb realized that somebody needed to step up or what, but the brothers, with only Yul Brynner showing much charisma, also include William Shatner. It's almost embarrassing except for Cobb who got a deserved supporting actor Oscar nomination, the first of the 10 from Brooks-directed films.

The actor who Cobb lost that Oscar to that year had a major part in Brooks' other 1958 feature — the film adaptation of Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize-winning play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. However, Burl Ives didn't win the prize for his great turn as Big Daddy, but for his role as a ruthless cattle baron fighting with another rancher over land and water in The Big Country. As with nearly all of Williams' works, movie versions castrated his plays' subtext (and sometimes just plain text) and this proved true with Cat as well, though the cast and its overriding theme of greed kept it involving enough. The film scored at the box office for MGM, taking in a (big for 1958) haul of $8.8 million — Leo the Lion's biggest hit of the year and third-biggest of the 1950s. It scored six Oscar nominations: best picture, best actress for Elizabeth Taylor as Maggie the Cat, best director for Brooks, best adapted screenplay for Brooks and James Poe best color cinematography for William Daniels and best actor for Paul Newman as Brick, Newman's first nomination and the film that truly cemented him as a star.

After the success of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Brooks decided to take an ocean voyage to Europe as a vacation. The writer-director packed the essentials for a lengthy trip: some articles on evangelism, a Gideon Bible a copy of Sinclair Lewis' novel Elmer Gantry and Angie Dickinson. By the time the ship docked in Europe, a first draft of a screenplay, based on the novel by one of the men who stood ready to defend Brooks during The Brick Foxhole brouhaha with the Marines, lay finished. Dickinson, on the other hand, departed the cruise quite a while back, having grown annoyed by Brooks ignoring her for Elmer. For many lives, 1960 would prove quite eventful either professionally, personally or both. Brooks filmed the highly entertaining movie version of Elmer Gantry early in the year, directing one of his best friends, Burt Lancaster, for the first time in the title role, which is good since the film got made under the auspices of an independent Burt Lancaster/Richard Brooks Production. Lancaster gives one of his best performances and won his first Oscar. The film co-starred Jean Simmons, giving one of her greatest, most mesmerizing turns as Sister Sharon Falconer, the traveling tent show evangelist who gets Elmer into the biz. She fell for Brooks on the set. Within the calendar year, she ended her unhappy marriage to Stewart Granger and became Brooks' wife. Unfortunately, when the Oscar nominations came out the next year, Simmons got left out of the nominations for Elmer Gantry. It received five total. In addition to Lancaster's nomination and win for best actor, it received nominations for best picture; Shirley Jones as supporting actress, which she won; Andre Previn for best score for a drama or comedy; and Brooks for best adapted screenplay. That cruise paid off. Brooks won an Oscar and found a wife. Below, a bit of Lancaster at work — and singing too.


With his next film, Brooks finally received the key that unlocked the leg shackles that bound him to MGM. The studio once again assigned him to a Tennessee Williams play. Though Sweet Bird of Youth did moderately well on Broadway, it wasn't one of The Glorious Bird's triumphs and took a long time to get to New York, starting as a one-act, premiering as a full-length play with a reviled ending in Florida in 1956 and, finally, the revised version's opening in NY in 1959. (The play has yet to be revived on Broadway whereas, in contrast, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof has been revived four times, including twice in this young century, and A Streetcar Named Desire 's eighth Broadway revival currently runs.) Originally, its plot concerned a retired actress and a gigolo with dreams of Hollywood who brings her to his old Southern hometown to get away and runs into trouble with the town's corrupt political boss (Ed Begley) when he woos his daughter (Shirley Knight). Williams said he'd hoped for Brando and Magnani to play the parts on stage. Eventually, she became merely an aging actress and Geraldine Page and Paul Newman played the leads on Broadway. When it came time for the movie, according to legend, MGM desperately wanted Elvis for Newman's part, but the Colonel nixed that because he didn't like the character's morals. Instead, the great Page and Newman repeated their stage roles as did Rip Torn as the son of the political boss. Once again, Hollywood castrated a Williams play or, in this instance, literally didn't castrate it (people who know both the play and movie get that joke. Page and Knight received Oscar nominations in the lead and supporting actress categories, respectively, and Begley won as best supporting actor. In this clip, you can see Newman's Chance try to get a handle on Page's wasted Alexandra in their hotel room.

Now a free agent, Brooks decided to stay that way — in essence becoming an independent filmmaker toward the end of his career instead of the beginning, as the path usually goes. He also defied that typical indie move of starting small — this wasn't John Cassavetes — but beginning this stage of his career more like the final films (and current ones for 1965) of David Lean. He went BIG. He even nabbed Lean's Lawrence to star in his adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim, a longtime obsession of Brooks that he bought the rights to in 1958 for a mere $6,500. The filming took place in Hong Kong, Singapore and, dangerously in Cambodia as things grew tense. The movie crew's interpreter happened to be Dith Pran, the man the late Haing S. Ngor won an Oscar for playing in Roland Joffe's 1984 film The Killing Fields. O'Toole hated his time there, complaining about the living conditions — he isn't a fan of mosquitoes and snakes. Later, he also admitted he thought he'd been wrong for the part itself. Portions of the film ended up shot in London's Shepperton Studios as Cambodia became full of anti-American rage. When the film opened, it bombed and badly. Sony put it on DVD briefly, but it's currently out of print so, alas, I've never seen this one. Brooks did make an impression on O'Toole though, who told Variety when he died that Brooks was "the man who lived at the top of his voice."

Having a flop on the scale of Lord Jim the first time you produce your own film could really discourage a guy. However, it sure didn't show in what he produced next because The Professionals turned out to be the most well-made, entertaining film he'd directed up until this point in his career. (His next film swipes the most well-made title, but The Professionals continues to hold the prize for being one hell of a ride.) Based on a novel by Frank O'Rourke, the movie teamed Brooks with his pal Lancaster again. Set soon after the 1917 Mexican Revolution, early in the 20th century when the Old West and modern movement intermingle near the U.S.-Mexican border, it almost plays like a rough draft for Sam Peckinpah's admittedly superior Wild Bunch. Ralph Bellamy plays a rich tycoon who hires a team of soldiers of fortune to go in to Mexico and rescue his daughter who has been kidnapped by a guerrilla bandit (Jack Palance, hysterically funny and good despite making no attempt to appear Mexican). The team consists of Lancaster as a dynamite expert, Lee Marvin as a professional soldier, Robert Ryan as a wrangler and packmaster and Woody Strode as the team's scout and tracker. The film turned out to be a huge hit with audiences and critics alike and earned Brooks Oscar nominations for directing and adapted screenplay. The Academy also cited the cinematography of its director of photography, the master Conrad L. Hall, who would do some of the finest work of his career in Brooks' next film. Below, one of The Professionals' action sequences.


I hoped to complete this in two parts and considered breaking out the next film as a separate review because In Cold Blood stands firmly as Richard Brooks' masterpiece (and then there remain some other films to mention after that). So, another temporary pause.

CLICK HERE FOR PART III

Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,



TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
# posted by Edward Copeland @ 11:00 PM 1 comments

Friday, December 31, 2010

 

The Year in Appreciations

By Edward Copeland
Now this is hardly a comprehensive list of the artists who left us in the calendar year 2010, but just of those we had the time and energy to do write-ups on. Sometimes the death announcements hit at an inopportune time for me such as when we lost Dino De Laurentiis. I was on the way to a lengthy doctor's appointment and by the time I got home, I was so worn out the news was so old, I didn't have the stamina to type something out. Othertimes, even important artists who deserved mention, I wouldn't have had much to say about, even someone as great (and a Facebook friend) such as George Hickenlooper. I wouldn't have had much to say about Barbara Billingsley or Ronni Chasen, but they deserved notice as did Mitch Miller, Jerry Bock, Sally Menke and many others. It's meant as no slight on those we didn't. There are a lot of names, but I doubt that even this list is comprehensive.

Jean Simmons (January 23)


J.D. Salinger (January 28)


Peter Graves (March 14)


Robert Culp (March 24)


David Mills (March 31)


John Forsythe (April 2)


Dixie Carter (April 10)


Lynn Redgrave (May 3)


Lena Horne (May 10)


Dennis Hopper (May 29)


Rue McClanahan (June 3)


James Gammon (July 17)

in Major League


Patricia Neal (August 8)


Kevin McCarthy (September 12)


Harold Gould (September 13)


Arthur Penn (September 29)


Tony Curtis (September 30)


Stephen J. Cannell (October 1)


Tom Bosley (October 19)


Monica Johnson (November 2)


Jill Clayburgh (November 5)


Leslie Nielsen (November 28)


Blake Edwards (December 16)

Others who deserve remembering in alphabetical order: Corey Allen, Dede Allen, Sparky Anderson, Louis Auchincloss, Beryl Bainbridge, Roy Ward Baker, Eddie Barth, Martin Baum, Captain Beefheart, Martin Benson, Luis Garcia Berlanga, Lisa Blount, Denise Borino-Quinn, Vance Bourjaily, Robert F. Boyle, David Brown, Solomon Burke, Jackie Burroughs, Christopher Cazenove, Claude Chabrol, Maury Chaykin, Chao Li Chi, Alex Chilton, John Clifford, Art Clokey, Hank Cochran, Clay Cole, Gary Coleman, Paul Conrad, Leo Cullum, Joe Deal, Jimmy Dean, Richard Devon, George DiCenzo, Ronnie James Dio, Nancy Dolman, Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu, Donal Donnelly, Clive Donner, Paul Dunlap, Doris Eaton, Bill Erwin, Doug Fieger, Eddie Fisher, Maureen Forrester, Fred Foy, William A. Fraker, Dick Francis, David Froman, Frank Giering, Jackson Gillis, Greg Giraldo, Mark Gordon, Henryk Gorecki, John Graysmark, Kathryn Grayson, Bud Greenspan, Bob Guccione, Corey Haim, Barry Hannah, Capt. Phil Harris, Peter Haskell, June Havoc, Peter Hofmann, Alan Hume, Gregory Isaacs, Marvin Isley, Peter Jamison, Mitch Jayne, Lionel Jeffries, Lamont Johnson, Elliott Kastner, Larry Keith, Irvin Kershner, Andrew Koenig, Michael Kuchwara, Steve Landesberg, Jack Levine, Marcia Lewis, Abbey Lincoln, Art Linkletter, James MacArthur, Simon MacCorkindale, Tom Mankiewicz, Joe Mantell, Teena Marie, Jim Marshall, Grant McCune, Kate McGarrigle, Vonetta McGee, Malcolm McLaren, Caroline McWilliams, Justin Mentell, Don Meredith, James Mitchell, Willie Mitchell, Mario Monicelli, Elizabeth Moody, Ronald Neame, Edwin Newman, Kazuo Ohno, Merlin Olsen, Nikos Papatakis, Fess Parker, Robert B. Parker, Robert Paynter, Harvey Pekar, Teddy Pendergrass, Charles Pierce, Ingrid Pitt, Belva Plain, Sigmar Polke, Dorothy Provine, Pete Quaife, Irving Ravetch, Corin Redgrave, Frances Reid, Pernell Roberts, Eric Rohmer, Lina Romay, Aaron Ruben, Zelda Rubinstein, Bruno S., Jose Saramago, Furio Scarpelli, Robert Schimmel, Karen Schmeer, Daniel Schorr, Erich Segal, Robert J. Serling, Glenn Shadix, Ted Sorenson, David Soyer, Joseph Stein, George Steinbrenner, Joseph Strick, Gloria Stuart, Joan Sutherland, Hideko Takamine, Billy Taylor, Derek Vanlint, Shirley Verrett, Helen Wagner, Albertina Walker, Earl Wild, Norman Wisdom, David L. Wolper, Ilene Woods, Lorene Yarnell and Howard Zinn.


Labels: , , , , , , ,



TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
# posted by Edward Copeland @ 7:00 AM 1 comments

Thursday, October 07, 2010

 

Original G


By Matt Maul
Today marks the 50th anniversary of Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus. The 1960 epic set in ancient Rome boasts an all-star cast led by Kirk Douglas and includes: Tony Curtis, Laurence Olivier, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov, Jean Simmons and John Gavin. Kubrick was called in to direct replacing Anthony Mann when creative differences with Douglas (who also was producing) caused him to be removed from the project. This may certainly explain why Spartacus doesn’t seem like a traditional Kubrick film. Unlike Kubrick’s other efforts (especially his later films) which tend to observe characters from a dispassionate distance, in Spartacus there's a stronger feeling of being ensconced in the narrative.

It’s interesting to ponder how the film would have turned out had Mann stayed on the project. 1964’s Fall of the Roman Empire, helmed by Mann, may provide some insight to that question. While certainly worth a look, Fall of the Roman Empire drags on and musters no more emotion than a boring history lecture as opposed to Spartacus which successfully drawings viewers into the drama.

Ironically, even though its storyline more closely follows that of the Mann film, Gladiator (2000) is often compared to Spartacus. While Spartacus may be dated with action scenes (though elaborate for their day) that are tame by today’s CGI generated standards, Gladiator suffers, in part, by seeming blissfully unaware that it asks the audience to root for a questionable status quo. Both Spartacus and Russell Crowe’s Maximus are martyrs to their cause. However, Spartacus dies trying to lead his army of followers in a futile effort to flee Roman oppression whereas Maximus gives his life to restore a Roman order that functions to buttress that oppression (but who cares, there’s a lot of blood, some neat decapitations, and lions).

Spartacus starts with its title character, a slave, about to be killed for attacking one of his captors when the owner of a gladiator school, Lentulus Batiatus (played with appropriately craven sycophantism by Oscar winner Peter Ustinov) happens by. Batiatus has an eye for talent and purchases Spartacus as the latest addition to his “portfolio.” Meanwhile, Marcus Licinius Crassus (Laurence Olivier) is locked in a bitter political battle with Sempronius Gracchus (Charles Laughton) for control of the Roman Senate. This contest heats up when Spartacus leads a slave revolt at the gladiator school that spills out onto the surrounding countryside and presents a potential threat to Rome. The film makes it clear that the Rome is never in serious danger. But this doesn’t stop Crassus and Gracchus from using the fear of a slave revolt, like pieces on a chess board, to advance their own respective political ambitions. Olivier and Laughton bring a matter-of-fact air to their scenes which give the film a contemporary feel that other period pieces often lack. Kubrick should receive a share of the credit for that as well.

Producer Douglas made it possible for screenwriter Dalton Trumbo to receive his first on-screen credit in Spartacus since before his original blacklisting. Thus, the motives of the major antagonists in the film would seem partly informed by Trumbo’s worldview based on his own past experiences.

Along with the geo-political struggle is a love triangle involving Spartacus, Crassus and slave Varinia (Jean Simmons). Of course, “love” may not be the right word for Varina and Crassus — who purchases Varina for his collection. On the other hand, Varinia’s affection for Spartacus is given voluntarily. This is a revelation for both of them as “free will” was a term not previously listed in their personal lexicons. To Crassus, Spartacus, Varinia and Antonisus are symbolic of Rome itself — something that must be conquered and controlled.

Widely known is the omission of the scene in Spartacus where Crassus delivers his infamous “snails and oysters” speech, implying bisexuality, as an overture to another of his slaves, Antoninus (Tony Curtis). It was added to the restored version. Because no sound track was saved from the original shoot (indicating that there was probably no serious intention of including it in the finished film) the scene was redubbed with Tony Curtis and Anthony Hopkins — who spoke Crassus's lines as Laurence Olivier had died.

In that vein, it’s notable that Crassus "loses" Antoninus to Spartacus as well. While many cinematic discussions have explored the homosexual undertones of Ben-Hur and Messala in the film Ben-Hur, it’s worth asking if there is a similar dynamic to the relationship between Spartacus and Antoninus as well. During their final fight to the death (staged by Crassus) Antoninus tells Spartacus, “I love you, Spartacus, as I loved my own father.” To which Spartacus relies, “I love you...like my son that I'll never see.” These qualifiers seem extraneous given the grave circumstances under which they're uttered. One wonders if the writers, almost as an afterthought, added “my own father” and “like my son" so as to prevent any other possible interpretation (which may mean that there is).

Just as the chariot race is to Ben Hur, the fight between Spartacus and Draba (Woody Strode) is the centerpiece of Spartacus. Ralphie Cifaretto’s (of The Sopranos) complaints about inaccurate Roman hairstyles aside, the scene rightfully ranks as one of the best remembered cinematic battles. It’s hard to imagine any such scene from Gladiator that audiences might specifically look out for upon subsequent viewings.

As stated earlier, this isn’t a traditional Kubrick film. In fact, Kubrick himself never really thought of it as his own and reportedly wasn’t happy with some of its more melodramatic elements. To be sure, there are moments of heavy-handed sentimentality, such as when the captured slaves all stand up and proclaim “I am Spartacus” to Crassus, which one doesn’t find in Paths of Glory or Full Metal Jacket.

On the other hand, a freed Varinia looking up at Spartacus, sentenced to crucifixion and tied to a cross (bookending his posture from the film's first scene), showing him their son, and praying that he “please die soon,” is a bombshell of an emotional ending which one won’t find in Paths of Glory or Full Metal Jacket either.


_________________________________________________________

NOTE: Because the timing of this write-up coincides with the recent death of Tony Curtis, I thought I’d include one of my all-time favorite film exchanges. It's from Sweet Smell of Success starring Burt Lancaster (playing Hunsecker) and Tony Curtis (who played Falco). This dialogue could very well be describing the character Curtis played in Spartacus and may unintentionally hit on why he never got the all the accolades as an actor he deserved:
SENATOR: Are you an actor, Mr. Falco?
GIRL: That’s what I was thinking. Are you, Mr. Falco?
Hunsecker half-turns in Sidney’s direction, amused.
HUNSECKER: How did you guess it, Miss James?
GIRL: He’s so pretty, that’s how.


Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,



TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
# posted by Matt Maul @ 8:00 AM 1 comments

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

Follow edcopeland on Twitter

 Subscribe in a reader