Saturday, September 10, 2011
I'm almost halfway finished/How do you like it so far?
By Edward Copeland
The 17 episodes of the second season of "It's Garry Shandling's Show." began on Oct. 25, 1987 and ran through March 18, 1988 on Showtime. As it turns out, 1988 proved to be a big year for the show. In March, Fox began airing reruns of the show from the beginning, eventually catching up with Showtime's schedule. More importantly, not just for this show but for all of cable, the TV Academy finally decided to allow cable programs to compete for Emmys and "It's Garry Shandling's Show." earned four of the first nominations ever given to a cable series. I'll mention them as the episodes involved come along. It would be the only nominations the show ever received. They didn't get any for the third season, which I'll also cover here, or the disastrous fourth, which is part of the final post. If you missed reading about season one, click here.
The second season premieres with "Who's Poppa?" and finds Jackie Schumaker with child — but Pete,
computing her menstrual cycle and the days they had sex, suspects he might not be the father. The conception coincides with the time Jackie went to her high school reunion and Pete suspects an old flame. Garry tells Nancy about Pete's fears and she also remembers that the reunion coincided with Jackie's fertile period, making Garry ask if he's the only person unaware of Jackie's cycle. He decides to fly to Chicago to confront Jackie's high school friend and we learn that Garry has his own plane — complete with stewardess. The show also launches the Name the Schumaker Baby Contest.
The second episode belongs in the pantheon of the top two or three episodes ever of "It's Garry Shandling's Show." This episode received two of those four Emmy nominations: outstanding writing in a comedy series for Shandling and Alan Zweibel and outstanding direction in a comedy series for Alan Rafkin. As with the opening monologues of many episodes, Garry tells the audience what the night's show is going to be about, though it seldom turns out that way. In "No Baby, No Show," this has created quite a dilemma for Garry as he has invited Pete and Jackie Schumaker over so she can have the baby during the broadcast but so far there have been no signs of labor and the three just sit around waiting. Eventually, Leonard drops by and joins the waiting party. Garry begins to express his frustration with the Schumakers for not delivering on time and ruining his show when
there is a knock on the door. We meet another resident of Happy Pilgrim Estates we weren't aware lived there — rock star Tom Petty (who for some reason happens to be carrying his guitar). Petty wanted to return Garry's hedge clippers to him. Anxious for anything to fill air time, Garry talks Petty into performing a song for them, which he does, selecting what really would be the only appropriate choice: "The Waiting." Now, don't stop to question why there's a standup microphone at the ready near Garry's bumper pool table or why they were prepared with special lighting for Petty — just go with the flow. When Petty finishes, he takes his place on the couch, with everyone sliding one spot to the right, and Garry places a table in front of his chair and brings out a copy of Petty's latest album to promote. Yes, the living room has been transformed into a talk show. On the commentary track for this episode, Shandling said he got this idea after hosting The Tonight Show for a week. This episode particularly
cracks me up because in my high school years, some of my friends and I would occasionally sit on various porches that had chairs and pretend that we were doing talk shows — and that was before this episode and long before Kramer re-created The Merv Griffin Show set in his apartment on Seinfeld. On a brief sidenote, on the DVD, Shandling also mentions that after the show got to be so overwhelming, he decided he had to give up his gig as one of the permanent guest hosts on The Tonight Show. When he called Johnny Carson and told him that he had to quit for the other show, at first Carson feared Shandling was pulling a Joan Rivers and starting his own talk show against him until he explained that it was the sitcom and it wouldn't air opposite The Tonight Show. Back to the "No Baby, No Show" episode: Nancy comes rushing in because she mistook some of Tom Petty's singing as Jackie going into labor. She takes the first seat
on the couch and everyone slides down again, which keeps getting funnier since they have to keep lifting the very pregnant Jackie to accomplish this. After briefly asking Nancy what's she's been up to, a strangely clothed Grant wanders in. It seems he's debuting that night as Tevye in his school's production of Fiddler on the Roof. Grant takes the guest No. 1 spot and discusses the musical with Garry, who tries to name Tevye's daughters only to be corrected by Tom Petty who names the five. "Tzeitel, Hotel, Chava, Shprintze and Bielke," the rocker lists. Grant then performs a brief excerpt of "If I Were a Rich Man" before leaving to head to the school. Periodically, Garry glances over his left shoulder and makes references to "Doc," as if Carson's bandleader Doc Severinsen is off camera somewhere. So far, though the living room and episode have been transformed into a talk show, all the guests have logical reasons to be there, even Petty, since they
say he lives in Happy Pilgrim Estates, but all pretense disappears with the next guest who walks in the door to take her place on the couch — Susan Anton. Anton doesn't get to say much because Jackie finally goes into labor. As Jackie is moved to the
floor, surrounded by everyone in the living room to help her, Garry calls for Doc to help as well and, sure enough, Severinsen crosses the living room carrying his trumpet. After some pushing on Jackie's part, the camera assumes the baby's point-of-view and the first face Baby Boy Schumaker sees (remember, there's a contest to give the baby a name, so he won't have one for most of the season) is Doc Severinsen. It's one of the very best episodes, and it shows, as Shandling attests to on the DVD, how funny Tom Petty can be, as he will make more appearances before the series' end, and on The Larry Sanders Show as well.
Garry, in the boy's room to feed his fish, reads a poem Grant wrote to a girl he has a crush on, causing the embarrassed adolescent to run off. We also get a Florence Henderson cameo and the introduction of The Garry Shandling Dancers.
Garry asks her to move in. In part two, which earned an Emmy nomination for comedy writing for Tom Gammill, Max Pross and Sam Simon, Angelica tries to get used to life on TV. She accidentally drives Garry's car off the pier. Chuck Woolery eventually drops by to try to help them with their problems, and Angelica admits that one of hers is the audience: "They're always there." At the end of the credits, we see Grant reading Boys Life with a cover story on their breakup.
justify it — Zweibel and Shandling admit this themselves. Thus, the slim story thread of Garry's never-mentioned neighbor Mr. Sparks (the late Dick O'Neill) who gets along with everyone in Happy Pilgrim Estates except Garry. When Grant puts a hole in the wall between Garry and Mr. Sparks' condos while trying to help Garry install a stereo VCR, the neighbor comes over to complain. Later, Grant makes Garry fulfill a promise he owes him, and what Grant wants is a trip to Shandlingland. Yes, Garry has an amusement park based on his life and show. Mr. Sparks, Pete and Nancy decide to tag along. Among the attractions: a parade of the characters with huge heads, Garry's Hall of Allergies, Garry's Haunted Bedroom, a merry-go-round where you sit in what look like beauty parlor hair dryers, and a new addition that Nancy is curious about, Nancy's Dream House.
Nancy thinks the attraction is ridiculous, but it makes both Garry and Mr. Sparks cry, and they resolve their differences and become friends.
to a party at Jeff Goldblum's house. Nancy talks him into going to both, so he ducks out of the Schumakers when they pull out Win, Lose or Draw (his ears literally start burning, so he knows the Schumakers are talking about him) only to arrive at Goldblum's to find that they are playing the game there — with the late Bert Convy actually hosting. Since Garry had told the Schumakers where he was going and Grant had said Goldblum was one of his favorite actors, Garry and Jeff decide to surprise Grant the next day by bringing Goldblum to Grant's birthday party. Unfortunately, Goldblum's cook who was supposed to make treats for a charity event falls ill, so Jeff has to make them himself and he cancels, but Garry goes over to help speed up the process. While there, Garry accidentally traps himself and Goldblum in Jeff's walk-in freezer. The two are rescued when Goldblum's then-wife Geena Davis (though she doesn't appear) opens the freezer looking for microwave pancakes. Goldblum and Garry go to Grant's, wake him up and explain why they missed his party.The final episode of the second season is well known as it marked Gilda Radner's return to television for the first time in several years following her diagnosis with cancer. What isn't remembered as well is that the show's title was "Mr. Smith Goes to Nam" and concerned Leonard's flashbacks to his war experiences, when he meets
Gilda's nurse Blake (comic Blake Clark again), who was a member of his unit in Vietnam that got captured, and who spent nine months in a POW camp while Leonard escaped. The plot really was extraneous, though — Radner's return was the highlight. Alan Zweibel was her writing partner when both worked on Saturday Night Live, and while she was going through treatments, he and Shandling sent her tapes of the show. She said they helped her get through the treatments. When she went into remission, she decided she wanted to return to television and thought of "It's Garry Shandling's Show." As she told Zweibel, referring to the cancer, "My comedy is my only weapon against this fucker." The audience's applause at her appearance — which was a surprise since her visit wasn't announced ahead of time — really inspired her to go back to work. She developed with Zweibel and Shandling and was in talks with HBO for a series where she would be the star of a variety show, but would also show her home life. Unfortunately, the cancer returned before the show could get off the ground and she died in May 1989. Her appearance in this episode did earn her an Emmy nomination as guest actress in a comedy, the series' fourth Emmy nomination.
The third season of the show had many funny things in it but even the episode that I recalled most fondly doesn't play as well now, making it understandable why Zweibel and Shandling believed the show had fallen into a rut. However, their solution — suddenly adding a major new character in the fourth season, Garry's girlfriend-eventually-wife — actually made the situation worse. The best thing to come in the third season was the addition of Ian Buchanan as Nancy's odd Scottish boyfriend Ian, a role he was playing during the same time that he was a daytime heartthrob as Duke Lavery on the soap opera General Hospital. Buchanan would later appear on several soaps, a hysterical first season episode of Larry Sanders as a friend of Larry's filling in for Artie (Rip Torn) and trying to steal his job as producer, and play Dick Tremayne in the second season of Twin Peaks.
That so many shows have done this now (and better) may be part of the problem, but this might have been the first to do it. L.A. Mayor Tom Bradley is in the audience and Garry worries that he only likes musicals, so the episode is done as a musical — a musical about Grant going through puberty. The singing plumbers still are funny though: "And there's hair where there wasn't hair before."
Garry is a Ping-Pong phenom who must save Happy Pilgrim Estates in their match against Trugman Towers.
and sprinkles a few moments here and there worth mentioning. It seems that entrepreneur Alan Trugman (named after the show's costume designer) now owns the lease on the legendary comedy club and is going to tear it down. Garry spearheads a benefit to save the club. It introduces Bruno Kirby as Garry's manager Brad Brillnick (a combination of Brad Grey and Bernie Brillstein). The main goal is to reunite Mr. Peck (Danny Dayton) and Red Buttons, who had a falling out in the 1960s when Peck briefly fell under the spell of Satanists and called Buttons the antichrist. The highlights: Garry gets Buttons to the club by chloroforming him and kidnapping him with the help of Father Guido Sarducci. The best line goes to the late Steve Allen who says on stage, "Here is a little song I wrote while I was playing that last one."
Garry is having a date with a woman named Christine (a young Marcia Cross), Ruth drops by to give a live ad for her pet shop. It inspires Leonard to do the same and he interrupts to plug Leonard Smith Cigarettes. When Garry asks his mom not to do that anymore, Ruth stops talking to him. When he turns on General Hospital one day, he sees she's invaded their set to plug her shop on their show. He rushes to the soap's set with Christine and Nancy to talk with Ruth when the soap's Dr. Tom Hardy (David Wallace) starts hitting on Christine, though she chooses Garry. As Garry, Christine, Nancy and Ruth leave, they pass Duke Lavery (played on the soap by Ian Buchanan) and Anna Devane (Finola Hughes). Garry asks Nancy if that guy was Ian, but she says it didn't look like him. In the hospital, Anna asks Duke if that man was Garry Shandling. "I would hope he looked better than that in real life," Duke replies.
stupider so he employs his brain X-ray to see what things look like, and discovers his brain (Stuart Pankin) is asleep on a hammock. He also meets his voicebox (Dave Coulier).
Garry tracks down his audience who, it turns out, all live together in one apartment in riser-type seating.Tweet
Labels: 80s, Awards, C. Reiner, Carson, Geena Davis, Jeff Goldblum, Larry Sanders, Seinfeld, Shandling, Sid Caesar, TV Tribute
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Monday, August 15, 2011
The Insect Who Dreamt He Was a Man
By Damian Arlyn
In a time when films of all shapes and sizes are being remade, re-imagined or rebooted, it's very easy to get jaded and cynical about Hollywood's complete lack of originality. Fortunately, once in a while a movie comes along that restores our faith in the potential of the filmmaking industry to produce genuine art…even when it's a remake. David Cronenberg's The Fly is one of those movies. Based on the 1958 B-movie that starred Vincent Price, it tells the frightening story of a brilliant scientist who develops a way to teleport matter through space but when he tests the machine out on himself ends up making a tiny mistake with horrifyingly tragic consequences. A common housefly makes its way into the pod with him resulting in his biology being fused with that of the insect on a genetic-level. Slowly and very painfully he watches himself transform into a bizarre, monstrous creature with both bug-like and human-like characteristics. Despite its decidedly sci-fi/horror trappings, it is an incredibly intimate story that has lost none of its emotional power in the 25 years since its release (although its gore, in our "post-torture porn" culture, has lot a little bit of its potency). It is unequivocally one of the best movie remakes ever and arguably Cronenberg's best film.
One of the most surprising elements of The Fly (especially considering its big-budget genre picture status) is its relative dearth of characters: basically three. The first is the scientist, Seth Brundle, who invents the telepods. He's played by Jeff Goldblum in a quirky, eccentric and yet still remarkably vulnerable and sympathetic fashion. It was the first of this kind of role for Goldblum (though he played variations on it in
both Independence Day and the Jurassic Park movies). His soulful performance helps carry the film through many of its more gruesome segments. The reporter who discovers Brundle's invention is played by Geena Davis (the actress with whom Goldblum actually had a relationship in real life at the time of filming). Her performance is as heartbreaking as Goldblum's since she is forced to sit idly by and watch in horror as the man she loves deteriorates before her very eyes. The third corner of the "love triangle" (and probably the most under-appreciated actor in the film) is Davis' editor and former boyfriend Stathis Borans, played by John Getz. Though he starts the film out as an almost comically villainous creep (selfish, jealous, obnoxious, etc), it's interesting to see him undergo his own gradual metamorphosis (of sorts) over the course of the film. As the hero becomes more monstrous, the "monster" becomes more heroic, eventually saving Veronica's life in the end…though not without suffering some major injuries in the process.Though he was not the original director tied to the project (Cronenberg was working on adapting Total Recall for Dino de Laurentiis at the time), David Cronenberg was the perfect filmmaker for The Fly. When a family tragedy made the original director attached to The Fly unavailable and the remake's producers learned that Cronenberg and De Laurentiis had parted ways on Total Recall, they approached Cronenberg. His independent background helped direct the film's focus away from the spectacular special effects and Oscar-winning make-up (courtesy of Gremlins designer Chris Walas) and toward the characters. He understood that the more the audiences cared about the people to whom these grotesque things were happening, the more sad and suspenseful the incredible events depicted would be. His re-conceptualization of the transformation the protagonist undergoes (a far cry from the human scientist with the massive fly's head in the '58 original) also gave him an opportunity to work with one of his favorite themes: namely, the human body and our complex relationship with it. In the '80s, with the AIDS epidemic claiming millions of lives and scaring millions more, The Fly's portrayal of a helpless victim of his own body's gradual malfunction and breakdown really hit home. Apparently Cronenberg never intended the metaphor to be quite so pertinent to the moment but instead intended it to be more universal and timeless: namely, the decline of health suffered by all humans beings through the aging process. As with many of his other films (such as Scanners and Videodrome), Cronenberg gets the opportunity to shock us with lots of shots of sticky, gooey viscera that is both repugnant and familiar to us. The flesh, as Ronnie points out within the film itself, makes us crazy.
The Fly received positive reviews and was a huge commercial hit when it came out in '86 despite the fact that many patrons were completely grossed out by the graphic content. A vastly inferior sequel (this one directed by Chris Walas) was released in 1989 and an opera written by the film's composer, and frequent Conenberg collaborator, Howard Shore premiered in 2008. Despite these sequels and spin-offs, nothing has managed to duplicate the artistic and financial success of the '86 film. The Fly became an indelible part of pop culture and justifiably so. Very few other remakes not only match the quality of their source of inspiration but actually surpass them, though it has been known to happen (Soderbergh's Ocean's 11 and the Coens' True Grit). Although the high-pitched cries of "Help me! Help me!" heard in the '58 original are still referenced/parodied occasionally today, David Cronenberg's The Fly has made the rare achievement of supplanting its predecessor as the definitive incarnation of that particular story.
I suspect even Kafka himself would've been jealous.
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Labels: 80s, Coens, Cronenberg, Geena Davis, Jeff Goldblum, Movie Tributes, Remakes, Soderbergh, Vincent Price
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Monday, August 10, 2009
No matter where you go, it's 25 years old today
By Edward Copeland
There's no set formula for concocting a successful cult classic. Many a film has flopped when its specific aim was to be some sort of underground or small-level phenomenon. When it hits though, as The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across the 8th Dimension did 25 years ago, it seems as if it were all part of the plan. I can't even remember what excited my friends and I to the theater to for this film on opening weekend or to get into its unique groove, but after re-visiting it for this piece, I found we were mere pikers in the Banzai obsession which grew to be more elaborate than I ever knew. Much of this new knowledge came from the DVD I rented which was released in 2001 and was loaded with extras but, alas, is no longer in print. The commentary track by director W.D. Richter also includes the "real Reno," one of Buckaroo Banzai's faithful team played in the film by Pepe Serna. The commentary track alternates between real tales of the making of the film such as arguments with David Begelman over how many times Banzai could be shown wearing red spectacles in the film to Richter talking about how he didn't realize until he was filming that the story and characters were "true" and giving insights into "real" events before and after the movie takes place and how some violence was "toned down" from the truth to avoid an R rating.
Buckaroo Banzai (Peter Weller) is a neurosurgeon. He also plays with a band in unannounced concerts on the side. He's also a scientist interested in all sorts of fields related to physics and a noted adventurer, frequently
saving the world with the help of Team Banzai and the Banzai Institute for Biomedical Engineering and Strategic Information. He even gets help from his own sort of militia called Blue Blaze Irregulars, trained civilians who are called upon in a pinch like Army Reserves. Buckaroo has even inspired his own series of comic book adventures. His scientific interests are an inherited one from his Japanese father and American mother (played in a deleted scene by Jamie Lee Curtis). As the film opens, after finishing some surgery, Banzai is ready to test his Jetcar and its oscillation overthruster to see whether it can pass through the solid matter of a mountain, enter the 8th Dimension and emerge from the other side unscathed. According to the commentary, he takes only three items with him: the overthruster, a turkey sandwich and Einstein's brain. (An interesting sidenote: Part of the equipment inside Buckaroo's Jetcar resembles the flux capacitor
that will be the key to time travel in the following year's Back to the Future.) It's an experiment that killed his parents (perhaps due to sabotage by the evil and mysterious Hanoi Xan) and even earlier in an attempt gone wrong by Dr. Emilio Lizardo (John Lithgow) who was possessed by nasty aliens from Planet 10 who reside in that dimension and brought many of those aliens back to Earth with him back in 1938. Banzai's experiment succeeds and he returns unharmed and with evidence of a the simultaneous plane of existence within our own. The crazed Dr. Lizardo sees news of Buckaroo's success from his place in a mental hospital and thinks it's time for him to gather his forces and return to Planet 10 where he is known as Lord John Whorfin. The other bad aliens (known as Red Lectroids, but who look like humans without a key formula) who were released during Lizardo's 1938 experiment created and operate Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems, a major U.S. defense contractor. Did you follow all that?
Of course, "truth" or fiction, describing Earl Mac Rauch's screenplay proves to be somewhat of a pointless exercise and that's what makes Buckaroo Banzai such a fun ride, though admittedly an acquired taste, for viewers such as myself. It's a deadpan action movie, a Zen adventure, a feature-length nonsequitur. It's one long MacGuffin with a helluva cast to boot. Dialogue has taken on a life of its own such as the immortal "No matter where you go, there you are" or the seemingly pointless "Where is that watermelon from" followed by the reply "I'll tell you later." The members of Team Banzai come with unique names and even snazzier costumes such as new recruit Dr. Sidney Zweibel (Jeff Goldblum), rechristened New Jersey, who wears the
cowboy costume of his grandfather, a silent film star. New Jersey uncovers a key piece of the film's puzzle when he realizes that all the Red Lectroids working at Yoyodyne appeared in Grover's Mills, N.J., on Nov. 1, 1938. Meaning, that Orson Welles' fabled War of the Worlds radio broadcast on Halloween 1938 wasn't a hoax at all but Welles was brainwashed into saying the alien invasion was one. Among the aliens at Yoyodyne waiting for Whorfin's return are John Bigboote (pronounced BigbooTAY) and John O'Connor (played by Christopher Lloyd, right, and Vincent Schiavelli, left). I feel as if I'm spending far too much time trying to describe the plot of Buckaroo Banzai instead of making a case for why it deserves a tribute, but it's such a unique hodgepodge, it almost defies praise as much as it's difficult to describe what it's about. It is what it is. “Nobody is nobody,"
Buckaroo says at one point. "Everybody has something to offer.” That certainly is the case with this movie, which really is a miracle for being made at all. Its origin could have gone two ways: As a feature or as an idea for a weekly TV show, but Rauch's script grew so long, the film won out and it actually got financed somehow. The film comes loaded with its own mythology, which is even expanded on the DVD, which even included spoilers for later chapters that were never filmed or told. For example, Penny Priddy (Ellen Barkin), the depressed woman Buckaroo rescues in the film who turns out to be the long-lost twin sister of Banzai's murdered wife Peggy will be slain two years later by his archenemy Hanoi Xan.
One thing I think I'm failing to emphasize about Buckaroo Banzai is what a funny film it is, even though its humor is no more conventional than its action or its plot. Even the score by Michael Boddicker, which at times
comes off sounding like an electronic whistle, seems to be composed for laughs. Every line Lithgow utters in his crazed pseudo-Italian madman guise comes firing at the audience as if it came from a maching gun loaded with gags. "Sealed with a curse as sharp as a knife. Doomed is your soul and damned is your life," Lizardo spits. Everyone gets in on the act though, as the confused and suicidal Penny Priddy confesses to Buckaroo, "You're like Jerry Lewis, you give me hope to carry on, then you leave me in the lurch while you strap on your six-guns." There are even sight gags as when the president, afraid that a possible war will be triggered with the Soviets by the Black Lectroids of Planet 10 (the good ones) if the Red Lectroids aren't stopped, whips out the Declaration of War — The Short Form. There is even more fun to be found on the out-of-print DVD which includes an extra where subtitles from Team Banzai member Pinky Carruthers gives you astounding facts about Buckaroo's life and the institute. Did you know that Banzai's mobile unit runs on hydrogen and the institute gets many requests from SUV owners who contact the institute to see if they can turn their vehicle into more environmentally friendly modes of transportation? Of course, the movie ultimately ends on a sad note because it had a teaser for the next chapter, a chapter we've never seen and now, 25 years later, it seems unlikely that we ever will. Still, on the off chance that this really was a true story, I think we best be training as Blue Blaze Irregulars since the DVD reports there still may be Red Lectroids out there and Lizardo/Whorfin may have survived that explosion. Even if that's not true, the evil Hanoi Xan remains at large. Try to rent the DVD and acquaint yourself with the backstory.Tweet
Labels: 80s, Barkin, Jeff Goldblum, Jerry Lewis, Lithgow, Movie Tributes, Welles
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Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Let them write the history, let the pilot fly the plane
By Edward Copeland
After some fellow fliers mocked Gus Grissom (Fred Ward) following his landing mishap, test pilot extraordinaire Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepard) silences them by saying, "It takes a special kind of man to volunteer for a suicide mission, especially when it's on TV." It takes a special kind of filmmaker to make a film as great as The Right Stuff, even if Philip Kaufman never has come close to equaling it again 25 years later.
It seems as if too many films these days are too long which makes it all the more amazing to re-watch The Right Stuff and feel how fleetly its 3-hour-plus running time flies by. It's a remarkable feat that its pacing holds up so well for someone pushing 40 and watching it on DVD from a bed as it did when he was 14 and saw it in a theater.
Part of this can be attributed to Kaufman's approach to the material. In an extra on the DVD, Kaufman says he attempted to adapt Tom Wolfe's stylized nonfiction book with a similarly stylized film (going so far as to hire an acrobatic comedy troupe as the slapsticky press corps). It's easy to forget what a cast the movie has, especially if it's been awhile since you've seen it. Fans of Robert Altman's Tanner '88 will enjoy seeing Pamela Reed and Veronica Cartwright interact as astronauts' wives years before their work in the great HBO series. Harry Shearer and Jeff Goldblum provisws fun comic relief as NASA recruiters. It's difficult to forget Donald Moffat's LBJ, shaking his limo in anger because John Glenn's wife won't cave to his PR desires. "Isn't there anyone that can deal with a housewife?" LBJ shouts in frustration. Of course, there are the movie's version of the Mercury astronauts and pilots themselves. I'd forgotten Lance Henriksen played Wally Schirra, though he has few lines. Ed Harris works wonders as John Glenn, seemingly imbued with a light and decency seldom seen in Harris' subsequent roles. Dennis Quaid oozes charm as Gordo Cooper and Scott Glenn lends a solid presence as Alan Shepard.
Watching The Right Stuff now, you can't help but compare it to Apollo 13. Ron Howard's fine film thatlacks so much depth when compared to Kaufman's movie. The astronauts of The Right Stuff ccertainly come off as heroic, but they're also multidimensional — human and flawed, prone to hard drinking and hard living. You also get a sense of the manipulation and politics surrounding the Mercury program that's completely absent from Howard's film. One thing both films do have in common is the amazing ability to create suspense out of real-life events whose resolution the viewer already knows. Both films also amaze when you think that we were ever able to get into space with the technology available at the time.
However, of all the great aspects of The Right Stuff, to me the real star remains cinematographer Caleb Deschanel. Deschanel belongs on the short list of great directors of photography, yet amazingly he doesn't have an Oscar despite five nominations (in addition to The Right Stuff, he earned nods for The Natural, Fly Away Home, The Patriot and The Passion of the Christ. Other credits include Being There, The Black Stallion and the forthcoming Abraham Lincoln Vampire Killer as well as directing the films The Escape Artist, Crusoe and several episodes of Twin Peaks). Deschanel should have won here, though it's hard to argue with Sven Nykvist's win for Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander.
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Labels: 80s, Altman, Books, D. Quaid, HBO, Ingmar Bergman, Jeff Goldblum, Movie Tributes, Nonfiction, Shepard, Twin Peaks
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Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Durang me, Durang me, Ought to take a rope and hang me
By Edward Copeland
Hang me from the highest tree/Good Lord have pity on me. At least that's how I felt after enduring what takes the title of the absolute worst Robert Altman feature I've ever seen. Altman's 1987 screen adaptation of Beyond Therapy is beyond help — wasting a talented cast that includes Jeff Goldblum, Julie Hagerty, Christopher Guest, Tom Conti and Glenda Jackson in perhaps the worst idea for a play-to-film transfer ever by filming playwright Christopher Durang's equally abysmal play Beyond Therapy to the big screen. Back when the great Frank Rich reviewed theater for The New York Times, he summed up many of the problems with the movie when he reviewed the Broadway transfer of the play in 1981.
"Some day, I swear, the explosive comic brilliance of Christopher Durang will erupt on Broadway. The only question is when. ... (I)t didn't happen last night, when Mr. Durang's latest play, Beyond Therapy, pretty much wilted of its own volition at the Brooks Atkinson."
Both the play and Altman's film allege to be a farce of dysfunctional Manhattanites trying to find love and themselves through personal ads and psychiatry. Goldblum plays Bruce, a bisexual looking to explore hetero life, and Hagerty plays Prudence, a woman "who hates homosexuals" but keeps going back to Bruce anyway. In the middle is Bob, Bruce's gay lover (Guest, developing the prototype for his Corky St. Clair character in Waiting for Guffman) and on the sides are Bruce and Prudence's less-than stellar therapists played by Jackson and Conti, in an awful Italian accent which his character at least admits is a put-on late in the film.
I hate to keep leaning on Rich, but his review of the play said so much that's wrong with Beyond Therapy much better than I ever could.
"It contained some hilarious jokes, uneasily tied to a bland, dramatically amorphous romance ... Yet, for all the hard work, the final result is unchanged. We still don't care whether Bruce ... and Prudence ... ever get married or not. ... At the same time, however, the therapy gags are defeating: like too many jokes in this play, they compromise the credibility of the figures at center stage. ... Mr. Durang's jokey, throw-away rationalizations for this odd courtship provide no enlightenment.
Nor do the other lines fill in the blanks in these people; the playwright never summons up the passion for his leads that he does for their doctors. We're repeatedly told that Bruce must learn to take emotional risks, that Prudence must learn to accept people's imperfections. Both characters are apparently lonely and want children. And that's it. Otherwise, this is a colorless, if whiny, pair who keep coming together and splitting apart as aimlessly as billiard balls.
They remain empty, anonymous vessels for arbitrary one-liners.
Yet the real disappointment in "Beyond Therapy" is the script...
Even though Altman pitched in with Durang for the screenplay, no evidence that it helped appears on the screen. The most positive things I can say about Beyond Therapy is that it's short. I did chuckle once when Bob blames Bruce's exploration of his straight side on seeing that movie Sunday Bloody Sunday with that "English actress" who is of course Glenda Jackson, already trapped in this movie.
This isn't my first encounter with a wretched work by Durang — I had the misfortune of seeing his play Sex and Longing on Broadway with Sigourney Weaver and it remains the single worst Broadway production I've ever seen. I've not seen Durang's more acclaimed works, but based on these two, my guess is that either he peaked early or that his reputation was overblown to begin with. The only performer to emerge unscathed in Sex and Longing was the great Dana Ivey, who somehow managed a great performance in the slop of a script she was performing, something unfortunately none of the cast of the Beyond Therapy film were able to accomplish. I don't know what attracted Altman to film this piece of dreck, but I do think it's telling that it's one of the few DVDs of an Altman feature that contains neither a commentary track by the director nor a featurette where he talks about the film. Maybe Altman knows it's better to let this one slip away. Now that I've seen it, I'm inclined to agree. I guess I really have been too hard on Quintet, Ready to Wear and Dr. T. and the Women.Tweet
Labels: 80s, Altman, Jeff Goldblum, Sigourney Weaver, Theater
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Friday, March 03, 2006
Nashville's rise onto my Top 10 all-time list
By Edward Copeland
Joining in the Robert Altman Blog-a-Thon ahead of his overdue and richly deserved honorary Oscar on Sunday, I wasn't sure what approach to take. I could do a more detailed overview of his movies that I love or I could concentrate on one. I've chosen the latter tack because Nashville is on my short-hand list for my 10 favorite films of all time and I love it more each time I see it. I'm not going to waste time doing a full-blown review of it — I just want to get personal and chart the course of my relationship with his 1975 masterpiece.
My first exposure to Nashville came in the late 1970s when I was in grade school. This was back when the three television networks routinely and frequently filled their schedules with theatrical films. ABC in particular loved to promote upcoming titles and I believe that was my first exposure to Nashville — in an ABC promo of what movies were coming up. It looked interesting to me, but I don't remember it actually ever playing or having watched it then.
Flash forward to my junior high years when my Oscar obsession was in full swing, my family had finally relented and said goodbye to our Betamax in favor of a VHS and Blockbuster appeared. This was back when Blockbuster seemed to be a movie lover's utopia before I turned on it and never went back into a store. They had a cassette of Nashville so I took it home to watch. Of course, it was cropped, but I wasn't a proper ratio stickler then, and the print was really faded. Still, I fell in love with it almost immediately, even to the point of eventually hooking up two VCRs and dubbing an illegal copy of it, which was of even worse quality than the original.
I'm not sure what initially attracted me so strongly to the movie, but I'm sure part of it is the large ensemble. At the time, my favorite television shows were large-cast dramas such as Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere and Nashville's broad canvas of characters appealed to me, To this day, I still have a soft spot for multicharacter movies (unless they are undercooked and absurd Altman knockoffs such as Magnolia) and TV shows. (I worship HBO's The Wire — and even I sometimes lose track of who some of the characters are.) The large casts seemed more reflective of life, which at that time centered around school with several teachers and countless students interacting with me throughout the day. It was the same way through college and to my eventual career in newspapers — my life always had a large cast, so TV shows and movies with large casts made sense to me.
Over the years, I returned to Nashville again and again, finding new things each time. My interest in it even led me to watching O.C. & Stiggs on late-night pay cable. I had no idea at the time that it was an Altman movie, but it contained references to Nashville's political candidate Hal Philip Walker and I figured it must be worth a look. Of course, the movie really wasn't, but Nashville is one of those rare films that left me wanting more. There were rumors that Altman would cut a longer version for television and after the success of The Player in the 1990s, even talk of a sequel. I usually frown upon sequels, but I longed for the extended version or a chance to revisit those characters.
Finally, in 1998 or 1999, I happened to be in New York when Lincoln Center held a showing of a restored print of the film — and it was a revelation. Getting to see it in its widescreen glory with crisp colors, I fell in love all over again. I think I spent most of the train ride home humming "It Don't Worry Me." Finally, a few years back, it finally got the DVD release it deserved (and never got on laserdisc) using the restored print and with an Altman commentary. Altman is not only one of the all-time great directors, I've also found him to be the most consistently interesting on audio commentary tracks of his films.
Once I had a chance to interview Altman (alas, it was for the wretched Ready to Wear) and he said one thing that has always stuck with me and that I think certainly applies to Nashville. He said with most movies, it's always better watching them the second time, because the first time you are too preoccupied with what is going to happen. With a second viewing, you can relax and just let the film unfold before you. I think that is true of many of Altman's films —but it's not enough to convince me to look at Ready to Wear again.
I can't remember for sure when Nashville leaped onto my top 10 list — or even when I finally got around to making one, but it's remained there until this day alongside Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Dr. Strangelove, Goodfellas, Network, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Rear Window, The Rules of the Game and Sunset Blvd. My personal rule for a film to be eligible for my all-time list is that a film has to be at least 10 years old, so I can have time to revisit it and not to rush to overpraise it in my initial euphoria. Goodfellas is the most recent film on the list, unfortunately bumping Singin' in the Rain down to 11, but I haven't seen anything between 1991 and 1996 that I think has a shot of landing on this list some day. Perhaps it will happen, but Nashville's place on the list is fairly secure and I don't think it's going anywhere anytime soon. Now, if you'll excuse me, I feel like popping in my CD of the Nashville soundtrack.
P.S.: Here's where the 24 actors who made up the main ensemble of Nashville are today.
David Arkin (Norman) had previously appeared in the Altman films MASH and The Long Goodbye would also appear in Altman's Popeye. It was his last film. He committed suicide in 1991. He was 49.
Barbara Baxley (Lady Pearl) last appeared in the 1990 films The Exorcist III and A Shock to the System. She died the same year of a heart attack. She was 67.
Ned Beatty (Delbert Reese) remains one of our most prolific actors. The year after Nashville he received an Oscar nomination for supporting actor for his mesmerizing monologue in Network. He also worked with Altman in Cookie's Fortune.
Karen Black (Connie White) has really seen her star fall since her heyday in the 1970s. She died after a three-year bout with cancer in August 2013.
Ronee Blakley (Barbara Jean) never got another role even close to her Oscar-nominated turn in Nashville. Her most recent credit on windup is a 1990 film called Murder By Numbers. She also appeared in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Timothy Brown (Tommy Brown) had a small role in Altman's MASH and would later go on to make several appearances in the TV version of M*A*S*H as Spearchucker Jones. His most recent film credit is 2000's Frequency.
Keith Carradine (Tom Frank) won the only Oscar that Nashville received for writing the song "I'm Easy." He's worked continuously since and also appeared in Altman's Thieves Like Us and McCabe and Mrs. Miller. He also has worked extensively with Altman's protégé Alan Rudolph. His most recent appearance of note was as Wild Bill Hickok in the first four episodes of HBO's Deadwood. Ironically, he previously had appeared in Walter Hill's Wild Bill as Buffalo Bill Cody, who of course was also the subject of an Altman movie.
Geraldine Chaplin (Opal) worked again with Altman in Buffalo Bill and the Indians and A Wedding. Her film debut was an uncredited appearance in 1952's Limelight, made by her father, Charlie Chaplin. Most of her work these days is in foreign productions, most notably Pedro Almodóvar's Talk to Her.
Robert DoQui (Wade Cooley) also appeared in Altman's Buffalo Bill and the Indians but as before Nashville, most of his work is guest shots on episodic television. He died in 2008 at 74.
Shelley Duvall (Marthe aka LA Joan) has worked extensively with Altman in Brewster McCloud, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Thieves Like Us, Buffalo Bill and the Indians, 3 Women and Popeye. Outside of those, her most notable films have been The Shining and Roxanne.
Allen Garfield (Barnett) still works steadily with his most notable recent film being 2001's The Majestic.
Henry Gibson (Haven Hamilton) also worked with Altman on The Long Goodbye, A Perfect Couple and HealtH. He works steadily in both film and television, appearing on TV's Boston Legal and in the box office hit Wedding Crashers. He died of cancer in 2009 at 74.
Scott Glenn (Pfc. Glenn Kelly) has been a constant presence in movies since Nashville including such notable films as Apocalypse Now, The Right Stuff and The Silence of the Lambs.
Jeff Goldblum (Tricycle Man) appeared in Altman's California Split prior to Nashville. He has worked nearly nonstop on stage, screen and TV in films ranging from The Big Chill and The Right Stuff to David Cronenberg's The Fly and blockbusters such as Jurassic Park and Independence Day. He also rotated as one of the lead detectives on Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
Barbara Harris (Albuquerque) always has been a rare presence in movies and television except for this period in the mid 1970s, which also included Family Plot and, close to my heart, her appearance in the original Freaky Friday. She was last seen on screen as John Cusack's mother in Grosse Pointe Blank.
David Hayward (Kenny) most recently appeared in 2003's A View from the Top. He has done lots of TV work ranging from ER to an appearance in the last season of Soap as Slim, a cowboy who gives Jodie (Billy Crystal) a tip as to whereabouts of his kidnapped daughter.
Michael Murphy (John Triplette) went from campaign manager in Nashville to the candidate himself in Altman's great HBO series Tanner '88. He reprised the role in the follow-up Tanner on Tanner and also worked with Altman on Countdown, MASH, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial and Kansas City. Other notable films include Manhattan and An Unmarried Woman.
Allan Nicholls (Bill) also appeared in Altman's Buffalo Bill and the Indians, A Wedding, A Perfect Couple, HealtH and Popeye, but most of his work has been behind the camera, often as an assistant director, including on Altman's Streamers, Secret Honor, The Laundromat, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, The Player, Short Cuts and Tanner on Tanner. He also has worked as a producer on all three of the films Tim Robbins has directed and Altman's Quintet.
Dave Peel (Bud) is a bit of a mystery. IMDb lists only one other credit besides Nashville and provides no other information.
Cristina Raines (Mary) has worked mostly on TV since Nashville, including as a regular on the nighttime soap Flamingo Road.
Bert Remsen (Star) was a frequent presence in Altman's films, appearing in Brewster McCloud, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Thieves Like Us, California Split, Buffalo Bill and the Indians, A Wedding and a cameo in The Player. He died of heart failure in 1999 at 74.
Lily Tomlin (Linnea Reese) followed up her Oscar-nominated turn in Nashville with much work on stage, screen and TV, including working with Altman again on Short Cuts and the forthcoming A Prairie Home Companion.
Gwen Welles (Sueleen Gay) also appeared in Altman's California Split. She died of cancer in 1993 at 42.
Keenan Wynn (Mr. Green) was a familiar character actor before and after Nashville. He also appeared in another of my top 10 films of all time, Dr. Strangelove. He died of cancer in 1986 at 70.
Because I can't get enough of Altman this weekend, I thought I'd also toss in a list of my 10 favorite Altman movies.
1. Nashville
2. McCabe and Mrs. Miller
3. MASH
4. The Player
5. Short Cuts
6. The Long Goodbye
7. California Split
8. Streamers
9. 3 Women
10. Thieves Like Us
Finally, a self-indulgent trivia question relating to my all-time top 10 list in this piece. Four performers appear in two movies on the list. Who are they?
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Labels: 70s, Almodóvar, Altman, Blog-a-thons, Chaplin, HBO, Hitchcock, Jeff Goldblum, K. Carradine, Lily Tomlin, Movie Tributes, N. Beatty, Television
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