Wednesday, May 29, 2013
"A game-legged old man and a drunk. That's all you got?" "That's what I got."
BLOGGER'S NOTE: This post is part of The Howard Hawks Blogathon occurring through May at Seetimaar — Diary of a Movie Lover
By Edward Copeland
After the opening credits end, Howard Hawks begins Rio Bravo with a sequence somewhat unusual for a Western, or, for that matter, any film made in 1959. On the other hand, beneath the surface of Rio Bravo
you'll find many more layers than your typical Western. The scene almost plays as if it hails from the silent era as a haggard-looking Dean Martin tentatively enters a large establishment providing libations, meals and even barber services. Martin's character's face tells you that he wants to resist liquor's siren call, but he's weak and he struggles. A man at the bar (Claude Akins) spots him after purchasing his own drink. He flashes Martin a smile, gestures at his glass and asks with his eyes whether Martin desires one. Aside from the film score and the ambient noise of the establishment's environs, no dialogue emanates from any of the characters that Hawks' camera focuses upon in this scene that's practically choreographed in mime. Martin's character replies with an eager but wordless "yes" and Akins
tosses a coin — into a spittoon — laughing with his buddies (the closest thing to a human voice heard in this building) as Martin's character's desperation outweighs his pride and he
gets down on his hands and knees, prepared to retrieve the money from the spit-out tobacco. Before he can, a foot kicks the spittoon out of the way and he looks up to see John Wayne towering above him in a great low-angle shot looking up at The Duke and giving him one of his many great screen entrances. His character's arrival also sets several of the story's strands into motion. You see, the man (Akins) taunting Dude (Martin) happens to be Joe Burdette, the blackest sheep of a powerful clan that gets away with practically anything it wants to do. Joe oversteps this time though as he continues to tease Dude after a brawl that includes the man who kicked over the spittoon, Sheriff John T. Chance (Wayne), Dude's boss when he's sober enough to carry out duties as deputy. Joe and his buddies keep harassing Dude when a sympathetic patron (Bing Russell) steps in, urging Joe to cut it out — still through gestures, not words. Joe Burdette doesn't take criticism well and shoots the unarmed man to death and exits the building to stagger to another saloon. Chance soon enters behind and speaks the film's first line, "Joe, you're under arrest."
Burdette and his buddies don't take the sheriff seriously and seem intent to mow the lawman down when a still-shaky Dude arrives as backup, having composed himself enough to shoot the guns out of a couple of bad guys' hands. Seems Dude might have a drinking problem, but he's also Chance's deputy, and the lawmen take Joe into custody where the movie's waiting game begins. Can Chance, Duke (always battling the battle) and Chance's other deputy, Stumpy (Walter Brennan), aging and falling apart physically, keep Joe locked up until the U.S. marshal's arrival several days later to take Joe into custody for trial before Burdette's clan tries to free him In a few short minutes of screentime, the main story that drives most of Rio Bravo's 2 hours and 20 minutes has been set. Sideplots await, but all basically will converge in the main thread. Though nearly 2½ hours long, Hawks doesn't rush his film along, yet somehow he still keeps it moving and it holds its length incredibly well.
I'm not reporting earth-shattering news when I inform readers that Howard Hawks belongs to that select group of directors who excelled in every genre he attempted. One thing that sets Rio Bravo apart from Hawks' other works is that, while it resides in the Western genre, it snatches from many others — romantic comedies, war tales, detective stories, social dramas, even musicals. As film critic Richard Schickel says on a commentary track for Rio Bravo, Hawks liked saying
that he loved to steal from himself. He'd do it again by practically remaking Rio Bravo as El Dorado eight years later, once again starring Wayne but with Robert Mitchum in the Dean Martin role. The plots diverge enough, as do the characters, (Mitchum plays a drunken sheriff as opposed to deputy while Wayne took on the role of gunfighter for hire helping a rancher's family get even with the rival rancher who killed their patriarch) to prevent it from being an exact facsimile. (Another shared aspect between the two films: screenwriter Leigh Brackett, who co-wrote Rio Bravo with Jules Furthman and wrote El Dorado by herself.) In the case of Rio Bravo, dialogue in the romantic sparring between Chance (Wayne) and possibly shady lady Feathers (Angie Dickinson) sounds lifted directly from To Have and Have Not, which Furthman co-wrote with William Faulkner. The relationship between Chance and Stumpy seems like a continuation of the one Wayne's Dunson and Brennan's Groot had in Red River, only minus Dunson's darkness. Part of Howard Hawks' greatness grew from his gift of swiping things from his previous films while changing the recipe just enough to make it fresh — a skill other self-plagiarists such as John Hughes never pulled off since they lacked Hawks' inherent talent, skill and imagination.Hawks originally intended the action and imagery that runs beneath the opening credits to be its own sequence in the film, but later decided just to use it to accompany the list of cast and crew to a quieter piece of Dimitri Tiomkin's score before the set piece in the bar officially launches Rio Bravo. He films the footage of a wagon train caravan at such a distance that you can't readily identify its contents or characters, but a careful viewer connects it later as being the approach of the wagon train of Pat Wheeler
(Ward Bond), who turns up shortly after the opening incident. At first, the audience can't be certain how to take the arrival of this man and his large crew, which includes a young gunman named Colorado (played by Ricky Nelson, teen idol and sitcom star at the time, who turns in a solid performance). For all the audience knows, these could be people sent to break Joe Burdette out of the jail where Stumpy handles most of his supervision. Dude, by then sobered up and handling more of his duties as deputy to Chance's Presidio County Texas sheriff, stops the wagon train in the middle of the town's main thoroughfare and insists that Wheeler and all of his men remove their weapons and hang them on a fence. They'll be free to collect the firearms when they depart the town again. (Wouldn't you love to watch Rio Bravo with the National Rifle Association's head flunky Wayne LaPierre and see how he reacts to law enforcement working for John Wayne in a Western that enforcing those rules?) Wheeler and those in his employ grumble at first, but soon comply. When Chance shows up, we realize he and Wheeler go way back on friendly terms, though Wheeler advises the sheriff they need to be careful where they store their cargo — it contains a large amount of dynamite. (Paging Chekhov if you don't think that's going to pay off somewhere down the road.) Labels: 50s, Angie Dickinson, Blog-a-thons, Dean Martin, Faulkner, Hawks, John Hughes, Mitchum, Movie Tributes, W. Brennan, Wayne
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Friday, February 17, 2012
There is no point. That's the point.
By Edward Copeland
Tilda Swinton amazes. Each year, she delivers an incredible performance in a film that, in the hands of a Harvey Weinstein or experienced studio marketing team, would most assuredly land her in the best actress Oscar field. Granted, Swinton won an Oscar in the supporting category for Michael Clayton, but she's missed the cut three years running for Julia, I Am Love and now We Need to Talk About Kevin. The big difference this year is that I believe more saw We Need to Talk About Kevin than the two previous films since Swinton won several critic awards and was nominated for both the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards. Academy voters tend to skew more conservatively and I suspect they couldn't bring themselves to mark their ballots for a performance in a film so distinctly bizarre.
Directed by Lynne Ramsay from a screenplay she and Rory Kinnear adapted from the novel by Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin tells, in a very disjointed fashion, the story of Eva (Swinton), an artist by trade, suburban wife and mother by choice, attempting to come to grips with her guilt over the wreckage caused by her son, Kevin. The movie isn't told in a linear direction, perhaps in an attempt to surprise the audience by dropping out-of-sequence clues like breadcrumbs left to mark a meandering path back out of the woods. However, given the title, the visuals and snippets of scenes that obviously come after the incident happened, it should be clear what kind of horror took place, if only in the abstract and not the specific. The trailer and discussion of the movie pretty well gives it away anyway, so fretting about spoilers seems pointless. However, if you don't know what occurs in We Need to Talk About Kevin, plan to see the film and suspect foreknowledge could ruin that experience, just cease reading this now.
When I described the movie's story as being told in a nonlinear way, that's a bit of an understatement. This isn't simply a film that's not told in chronological order like innumerable works throughout cinematic history such as Orson Welles' Citizen Kane or Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. For one thing, only in director Lynne Ramsay's dreams would We Need to Talk About Kevin be mentioned in the same breath as Citizen Kane or Pulp Fiction, at least as far as quality goes. Secondly, the film has been edited by Joe Bini as if all the movie's scenes had been handed over cut into single frames and then tossed in the air as if someone had asked him if he'd ever played 52 Card Pickup. We don't stay in one spot very long. It makes Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge, which I once described as being made for people with the attention spans of gnats, look as if it moved at the pace of Tarkovsky's Solaris. This isn't meant to be complimentary. Bini has edited practically everything Werner Herzog has made both fictional and documentary since Little Dieter Needs to Fly, so this is not his usual style even if he did have to cut the execrable The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call — New Orleans.
It's a shame that Ramsay chose to employ this method to tell the story because it drains We Need to Talk About Kevin of any emotional power. For that matter, it also saps the opportunity to approach the material in any of the myriad ways it hints that it might in the brief segments that will pop up occasionally such as dark satire or horror. It never slows down long enough to explore the idea that Eva's husband Franklin (John C. Reilly, who seems either terribly miscast or was directed to play his role as if he were a clueless parent in a John Hughes film) raises that Eva resented her son Kevin from birth and every time she accuses the little bastard of doing some awful thing, Franklin insists, "He's just a little boy" and buys him fancier and more expensive bow and arrow sets as he ages.
We don't get those conversations in depth though because that would require stopping the fast-forward button and watching a scene play out. It takes their young daughter losing one of her eyes "in an accident" and the 15-year-old Kevin finally showing Dad his callous side for Franklin to catch on that he and his wife should have been on eBay looking for a Dagger of Megiddo to slay their own little Damien. The movie tosses in a brief scene of humor that seems out of place where men come to Eva's door after the high school massacre selling Christianity. One asks if she knows where she's going in the afterlife. "Oh! Yes! I do as a matter of fact. I'm going straight to hell. Eternal damnation, the whole bit. Thanks for asking," Eva replies before shutting the door.
That this chopped-up mess of a movie actually produced two great performances almost makes me believe in miracles. I assume that happened because they filmed scenes whole and then just butchered them later, but they couldn't ruin the performances trapped within. Swinton, as you would expect, delivers one of the two great portrayals. The other bravura turn comes from young Ezra Miller, so good in a completely different type of role in Another Happy Day, who plays Kevin from age 15 on. I also should praise the even younger Jasper Newell, who plays Kevin from ages 6-8. He's very good as well and matches Miller well physically.
As funny as Miller was in Another Happy Day, he's frightening here, even when forced to deliver some of the kitchen sink of topics that get thrown against the wall for a few minutes. Miller gets a good speech where he blames what he did on everyone's favorite target (after violent video games) — television. Never mind that the movie shows no scenes indicating the tube exerted undue influence on Kevin. It's just required to list one of those easy scapegoat favorites: It's the "Why did the teen go mad?" equivalent of Claude Rains' Renault's order in Casablanca to "Round up the usual suspects." Now, it isn't clear if Kevin really is appearing on television or if Eva, who's sleeping on a couch, just dreams his appearance where he says:
"I mean, it's gotten so bad that half the time the people on TV, the people inside the TV, they're watching TV. And what are all these people watching? People like me. And what are all of you doing right now but watching me? You don't think they'd change the channel by now if all I did was get an A in geometry?"
It may be true, but it ain't Paddy Chayefsky. I wasn't the biggest fan of Gus Van Sant's Elephant, but it had more to say coherently about school violence in the post-Columbine era. The brief bit that touched upon the subject in the HBO miniseries Empire Falls packed a bigger punch and came as more of a surprise. Just on a purely realistic level, once we finally see the sequence where Kevin massacres many of his classmates, how in the hell would he have been able to go on that long using a bow and an arrow as his weapon? We're supposed to believe that no one in that school could have swarmed him one of the numerous times he had to load a new arrow which was every time?
The filmmakers behind We Need to Talk About Kevin undermined their film in practically every conceivable way. It's a shame because two talented performers poured their hearts into characters for a film that treated their work as little more than jigsaw puzzle pieces and obviously had no idea in their collective heads what tone they wanted, what message to convey or even if they had any ideas lurking in their skulls at all.
Tweet
Labels: 10s, Awards, Chayefsky, H. Weinstein, HBO, Herzog, John C. Reilly, John Hughes, Oscars, Rains, Tarantino, Television, Tilda Swinton, Van Sant, Welles
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
From the Vault: Beethoven
Good family films make you feel like a child again. In one respect, Beethoven succeeds on that level — it certainly made me want to lie down and take a nap.
Charles Grodin, the latest victim of a career setback caused by co-starring in a film with Jim Belushi, returns as the gruff, money-obsessed father of a family who adopts a lost dog. Grodin's character hates dogs — especially large St. Bernards like Beethoven that he fears will wreck his life.
Grodin should have been more concerned with a movie this lame wrecking his career.
Beethoven tells the story of the young St. Bernard's life from puppydom to maturity. It seems that Beethoven was stolen from a pet store where he was destined to be used for experiments by the requisite evil authority figure.
Happily, a canine pal escapes with Beethoven, sparing both from the dastardly plot. Alas, the moviegoer has no such luck.
Dean Jones (ironic, considering he once was The Shaggy D.A.) plays the veterinarian who earns money by testing new forms of ammunition on the heads of dogs. Now, that will certainly making kids seeing the film more comfortable the next time dad takes Fido to the vet, won't it? ("Don't worry son — it's not like the doctor is going to shoot Fido in the head.")
The film itself contains nothing else so original. It takes every cliche from every dog story ever told. From urination to drool in the shoes (a sly reference to Turner & Hooch), every plot development conveniently provided alongside typical superdog twists.
I checked the writing credits and lo and behold — guess who gets half credit for concocting this mess? None other than John "King of Formula" Hughes.
This St. Bernard truly earns his sainthood — he gets the oldest daughter a date, allows the son to get the better of bullies and saves the youngest girl from drowning. The kids are your standard sitcom variety — bland and talentless Stepford Child performers.
As in most family TV shows, Grodin's family contains the requisite three kids. A sappy musical score even accompanies the film, substituting for the fourth child TV families inevitably get in the third or fourth season.
Yes, all the TV elements show up — yuppie foils, sensible mother, frazzled father, bullied kid, little daughter who speaks rhythmically, oldest child with a streak of rebellion, evil authority figure, the dog's canine pal. Beethoven houses neither anything new nor good. The movie needed to be put to sleep so the audience could be put of its misery.
Tweet
Labels: 90s, Grodin, John Hughes
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Monday, August 22, 2011
Like death eatin' a cracker
By Edward Copeland
When you hear people talk about those rare instances when a movie sequel turns out to be better than its predecessor, the usual titles spring up: Aliens, The Godfather Part II, Bride of Frankenstein, the original
Dawn of the Dead, etc. However, there is one sequel that I feel has been unjustly neglected for its superiority to the original and today I come to praise it. Twenty-five years ago today, Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 hit theaters to the resounding thud of overwhelmingly negative reviews by people who probably remembered the original a lot more fondly than they should have and didn't recognize the sequel for the hilarious, albeit grotesque, satire that it is. This isn't just your run-of-the-mill followup to a famous slasher film — this is a sharply written parody about the perils of the small businessman, who in this case happens to make his living by turning humans into chili. I never saw the original until shortly before the sequel opened — I didn't want to be hopelessly lost — but I found it terribly disappointing. It didn't seem that suspenseful to me and the sequence that worked best was when they hauled Grandpa out for dinner to kill the girl they captured, a scene echoed in the sequel for even funnier effect than in the first outing.
For solid evidence of the satirical intentions of Hooper and his screenwriter L.M. "Kit" Carson (and Carson has a long satiric history since he "was" David Holzman in David Holzman's Diary), one need look no further than to compare the posters on the left and the right sides of this paragraph. The one on the left side for John Hughes' 1985 film The Breakfast Club, has its five central characters posed with Judd Nelson's rebel pumping his fist into the air. Now, look at the poster on the right. The brilliant poster they came up with for Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 the following year exquisitely apes the angst-ridden detention students by placing its assortment of misfits involved in the man-as-meat chili business in a nearly identical tableau with, as appropriate, Leatherface assuming the Judd Nelson spot since in the sequel's terms, he is sort of the rebel among the cannibal family. You see, in this slasher sequel, Leatherface, the grunting butcher for the family business finds, of all things, love. Alas, it turns out to be an unrequited one. I'll get back to that later.
A little background on the story is probably necessary at this point for the uninitiated: An opening title crawl informs the viewer that 13 years after the events of the original film (which for the sake of argument — long before The Blair Witch Project — actually happened), strange chainsaw slayings still occur in Texas though the story the sole survivor of the original film told could never be confirmed by authorities and the cannibal family (their actual surname is Sawyer) was never found. As the sequel opens, it is the fabled OU-Texas football weekend (another brilliant satirical touch) and two drunk preppie-looking guys are heading to Dallas for the festivities and taunting a disc jockey with phone calls from their car at the same time.
Unfortunately for the football fans on the road, they piss off the wrong drivers — and they encounter Leatherface and his deadly weapon. The chainsaw gang makes a crucial mistake though — as they are dismembering the two young men, the victims are still on the phone with the DJ, Stretch (Caroline Williams) who records their death throes and the sounds of the chainsaw bringing about their demise. Stretch is suitably horrified. Enter former Texas ranger Lefty Enright played by Dennis Hopper in the same year he brought Frank Booth to life in Blue Velvet and scored an Oscar nomination for Hoosiers. Lefty has been searching for the butchers for years — he is the uncle of some of the victims in the original — and he's been vengeance-minded ever since.
After stumbling upon the dead preppies, Lefty gets a newspaper to print his plea for any information — and Stretch answers his ad at the hotel where Lefty is staying (and which overflows with soused OU and Texas fans
in Dallas for the big game). In another of the film's funniest sequences, Lefty goes chainsaw shopping to prepare for battle, purchasing a large main one and two smaller pair which he attaches to his belt like a pair of six shooters (though firearms would really be more efficient, but it would deprive us of a chainsaw joust). Part of what makes the scene so laugh-out-loud funny is watching the unabashed joy expressed by the manager (James N. Harrell) of the store (called Cut-Rite) where Lefty buys the equipment as Lefty tests them out on tree stumps in front of his shop. Meanwhile at the radio station, apparently Stretch's station management doesn't pay close attention to what she plays because she heeds Lefty's request to start playing the tape of the slaughter on the air — and the Sawyer family hears it and realizes they've made a mistake.
The news comes soon after oldest brother and family leader Drayton Sawyer (Jim Siedow) has achieved yet another victory at a chili contest for his cannibalistic catering business. (As he tells the judge, the secret's "in the meat.") Chop Top (Bill Moseley), the hippified Vietnam vet of the Sawyer clan, calls to tell Drayton the bad
news about the radio broadcast and Chop Top and Leatherface (Bill Johnson) are dispatched to the radio station to take care of the evidence — and Stretch. Unfortunately for the Sawyers, Leatherface gets distracted from his mission at the radio station when he encounters Stretch and does something you don't often see in nonspeaking maniacal chainsaw killers — he falls in love. Something about Stretch calms the killer inside Leatherface and he can't bring himself to off her. In fact, during their encounter he almost tries to accomplish the phrase Heather Chandler (Kim Walker) would make infamous in Heathers three years later — he tries to fuck Stretch gently with a chainsaw. He and his brother do get a body though in the form of Stretch's compulsively spitting co-worker L.G. (Lou Perry). When Leatherface and Chop Top depart the station with L.G., Stretch feels compelled to follow them to the roadside attraction that serves as the family's cover: Texas Battle Land. Of course, Lefty is not far behind — he even admits he used Stretch as bait.
When Stretch accidentally falls into the lair, Leatherface discovers her and does his best to protect his "girlfriend," even attempting to dance with her at one point, though Stretch tries to explain to him that their relationship isn't working out. Eventually, his brothers find her and decide it's time to serve her up to Grandpa, a veteran of the
cattle industry who quit when the slaughtering process got too modern (and whose makeup to me always seemed very reminiscent of the old Salieri in Amadeus). While there are some standard sudden shocks, it's not really suspenseful, which is fine — because it's there to be funny. The comedy is sprinkled throughout, but many of the best bits occur once all the characters are below ground. (One of the best jokes references the original when Lefty finds the remains of his nephew Franklin in his wheelchair and now, 13 years later, that damn flashlight works.)
You don't often hear praise for the acting in films such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and I wouldn't suggest they were robbed of Oscar nominations, but Siedow and Moseley give absolutely terrific performances, especially Moseley who gets the bulk of the hilarious nonsequiturs sprinkled throughout the movie, including the title of this post and lines that make no sense out of context such as "You ruined my Sonny Bono wig" and his insistence that Texas Battle Land be transformed into Nam Land because, "It's what the people want." Siedow gets assigned the task of underlining the film's satirical content
with his obsession with the business, worrying about property taxes and decrying that the small businessman "always gets it in the ass." In fact, when he finally encounters Lefty, who has been systematically destroying their lair with his chainsaw, Drayton jumps to the conclusion that he's been sent by a rival caterer and tries to pay him off. He also gets some of the best lines when he discovers Leatherface's affection for Stretch, accusing him of "turning traitor for a piece of tail" and explaining to him that sex is a swindle and only the saw is family. The final confrontation between Lefty and the Sawyers still trots out the laughs instead of the horror and as Drayton senses the end is near, he laments that he "wouldn't wish this life on a one-eyed ferret with mange." I understand that for many, the satirical elements of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 have and will be lost, but I stand by my assessment: This is a sharp, hysterically funny film and Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 — I salute you on your birthday. If most people fail to appreciate you, take heart — I'll always be on your side.
BLOGGER'S NOTE: This piece originally ran five years ago for the film's 20th anniversary. There have been a few minor revisions and art changes. Happy 25th Sawyers.
Tweet
Labels: 80s, Hopper, John Hughes, Movie Tributes, Sequels
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Saturday, June 11, 2011
“Bueller...Bueller”
By Rhett Bartlett
An appreciation of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off must point out the irony that one of the greatest comedies in the 1980s was also the film that ended the long line of successful “teenage angst” movies.
Throughout the decade, films such as Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Pretty in Pink spoke to its generation about love, loss, and rebellion. But when Ferris Bueller’s Day Off hit the screens in 1986, it was an encapsulation of all three, set against the backdrop of the hatred of school, one of the few shared experiences most teenagers lived through.
And so since 1986 there has not been a single film that has come close to capturing the story of childhood friends rebelling against an establishment and their parents.
The success of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off can be pinpointed to several layers. On the surface, it is a very simple film. No special effects, explosions, or camera tricks — just a strong screenplay by John Hughes himself that brings the supporting cast into the spotlight.
Consider the minor but important role of Edie McClurg as Grace (secretary to Ed Rooney, Dean of Students), who only has two scenes but comes across as conniving, simple, and old-school. A suitable sidekick for Rooney, but a woman who has a revenge streak herself.
Then there’s the attendant at the garage where Ferris valets the expensive car that isn’t his. This brief but equally important scene in the screenplay shows that it’s not just Ferris who believes he is above the establishment — even the valet can break the laws (and in slow motion).
Ben Stein’s quick scene as the monotonic Economics teacher perfectly expresses the feelings that teenagers have towards their teachers. His lecture on “Voodoo Economics” and the repetitive “Bueller” roll call remain some of the best delivered lines from the 1980s.
And then there are the two unsuspecting parents. The determined-by-work father (Lyman Ward), who on several occasions almost figures out Ferris’s plot, but instantly dismisses it on the assumption that his son is too kind and committed to wag school, and the mother (Cindy Pickett), so concerned about her son’s health that it nearly leads her to the revelation that he’s taking the day off.
But the character of Ed Rooney (Jeffrey Jones), the suspicious, stubborn, determined dean on the case of Ferris Bueller, is what raises this film above others from that decade. Perfectly cast and perfectly acted, we almost forget that Rooney is the only character in the movie that is right. His suspicions of Ferris’s fake sick day are actually correct, but the joy in the screenplay comes from us hoping that he never finds out. There is nothing better than knowing you can continually upstage your dean.
I would be remiss not to mention the performance of Matthew Broderick. Ferris Bueller was his sixth acting performance, and one that he is still remembered for the most. At an Oscar tribute to the film’s late director John Hughes, Broderick admitted that not a day goes by where someone doesn’t go up to him and say, “Hey, Ferris.” Matthew encapsulates the cheekiness of the ’80s generation and the carefreeness that teenagers had before computers, the internet and social media. He even speaks directly to the camera: “I asked for a car, I got a computer. How’s that for being born under a bad sign?” Ferris doesn’t want to be stuck behind a computer or shackled to a school desk, he is longing for freedom so he can actually experience life as a teenager.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off couldn’t be remade for this generation. Social media devices within the plot would ruin the carefree spirit of the film. Ferris’s best moments are those that involve direct contact with other people — the baseball discussion with Cameron (Alan Ruck) during a game, the visit to the art gallery, his girlfriend greeting him in front of his school, those songs on the float. All have a realism attached; each of these messages is delivered face-to-face.
Yet the smartest moments in the film are when Ferris talks directly to the camera. Near the film’s beginning he outlines the ways you can pretend you’re sick to get out of going to school. There are even bullet points on the screen to articulate his point, and by the end of the scene, the teenage audience is on the side of Ferris without even knowing yet what he plans to do or who his antagonists are.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is a rare intersection in film history where the right script and the right casting meet to deliver a nostalgic snapshot of every teenager’s unfulfilled dream.
Rhett Bartlett blogs at Dial M for Movies and can be reached on Twitter at @dialmformovies. He also can be heard on ABC Radio 774am Drive Show in Melbourne, Australia, every Monday night from 5:30 p.m. local time.
Tweet
Labels: 80s, John Hughes, Matthew Broderick, Movie Tributes
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Tic yak d'oh!
By Edward Copeland
I dread reviewing movies like Blue Valentine because I already anticipate the responses to my pan of this critical darling. Some will call me a contrarian (which I'm not — if I liked it, I'd admit it), others will misread my words, thinking I'm saying those who like it are dumb or have had the wool pulled over their eyes. Many of these comments will come from other critics who will forget the most important truism of criticism: all opinions are subjective. However, what makes me not look forward to typing my thoughts on Blue Valentine the most is that, it's not even the type of film you can have fun getting revenge on for wasting your time. Recalling it for a review just means reliving the experience and it was painful enough the first time.
Now that I've decided to leap in anyway and dredge up my memories of Blue Valentine, I'm filled with sadness. It's not because that's what much of director Derek Cianfrance's film aims to elicit from the viewer as it charts the rise and fall of the relationship between Dean and Cindy (Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams) (not necessarily in that order). No, it's because I know that Gosling and Williams have talent and it's being abused here.
It seems even more tragic in the case of Williams (though I guess her undeserved Oscar nomination will help take the sting out), who seems to be drawn to roles in bad indie films such as this one. Is this masochism on her part? Not only does Blue Valentine provide her with a poorly written character that, though quite different from Wendy from Wendy and Lucy, seems to force her to play the same notes she hit in that similarly overpraised indie. In fact, early in Blue Valentine, when Cindy starts making photocopies of the family's missing dog, I actually started experiencing flashbacks to Wendy and Lucy as if I suffered from a form of post-traumatic stress disorder. Two wildly hyped and unjustifiably acclaimed films striking me simultaneously. Almost more than I could bear.
What made me feel worse for Williams sort of goes with the old line about actresses saying they'd only do nudity if it were integral to the story. Much was made ahead of Blue Valentine's release about how they barely avoided an NC-17 because of the sex scenes between Williams and Gosling. Now, in no respect could you call me a prude nor do I mind seeing Williams in the altogether, but for all the hype, the vigorous humping the actors simulate ranks among some of the dullest movie sex scenes I've seen. As with most of Blue Valentine, it's porking without a point.
Since the movie jumps around to various points in the couple's relationship, it's not as if the sex really reflects the relationship's state at that time: It's neither lustful nor romantic, obligatory nor forcible. Most importantly, nothing seems intimate about it. It's not often that I refer you to a comment in another review, but since it's by my faithful contributor Josh R, I will. Go read his comment on the difference between how Gus Van Sant depicts gay sex in Milk versus how Ang Lee does in Brokeback Mountain (which had a very good performance by Williams) on my review of Milk and he explains exactly how I feel about the sex in Blue Valentine comes off.
Williams deserves so much better. Just see what great work she turned in for her small role in Scorsese's Shutter Island and it shines a big bright light on what little she's given to work with in this film. In Blue Valentine, as in Wendy and Lucy, it seems as if she's intent on creating the cinematic equivalent of slashing her wrists in attention-grabbing but ultimately harmless suicidal gestures. If she continues on this path, I fully expect to see her in a role carrying The Bell Jar or starring in a remake of The Hours.
Which brings me to Gosling, whose problem in Blue Valentine, other than the same bad script by director Cianfrance, Cami Delavigne and Joey Curtis, is one of his own making. Gosling has shown before that he can deliver very good performances as he did in Half Nelson . Unfortunately, he's also displayed a tendency to substitute actorly tics, quirks and gimmicks as a substitute for actually creating three-dimensional characters. For example, see Lars and the Real Girl.
He strongly displays the Lars scenario here. OH BOY, does he do it here — tenfold. He makes Dean such a collection of artificial traits that I doubt blood flows in his veins since he's obviously been built from a kit and doesn't resemble a human being. The blowup doll in Lars and the Real Girl was more lifelike than Dean. No wonder Dean and Cindy's marriage falls apart so quickly. I don't know how Cindy lasted one night with this manufactured oddball, let alone a few years. Gosling goes so eccentrically over the top that he makes Brando's work in Island of Dr. Moreau seem subtle.
So with Blue Valentine we have another example of a 2010 film where its cast (and Gosling and Williams are essentially the only characters who matter except for John Doman in the small role of Cindy's father that just made me wish I were watching The Wire) draws more attention to a film that would otherwise fade into deserved oblivion. Except in the case of something such as The Kids Are All Right, that film's entire ensemble turns in such excellent performances that they help compensate for its hackneyed, predictable screenplay. There's no such luck for Blue Valentine which strands Williams at sea while Gosling rollicks in some twisted land of awful, mechanical Method Acting.
Williams should be grateful that enough Academy members apparently dislike Julianne Moore, fell for the category fraud of Hailee Steinfeld being supporting in True Grit and didn't see or remember Tilda Swinton in I Am Love to allow Williams to get a best actress nomination. Then again, they also nominated Nicole Kidman's icy work in Rabbit Hole, which I'll review later in the week, so maybe they were just filling in names and didn't actually see Blue Valentine or Rabbit Hole. (We do know at least the costume designers branch saw I Am Love.)
Plenty of great films have depicted decaying relationships and marriages, but Blue Valentine doesn't come close to joining that list. Some critics even had the gall to compare this film to the work of John Cassavetes. Blue Valentine doesn't even rise to the level of John Hughes and if you are a close reader of my reviews, you know what an insult that is.
Tweet
Labels: 10s, Brando, Cassavetes, Gosling, John Hughes, Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams, Nicole Kidman, Oscars, Scorsese, The Wire, Tilda Swinton, Van Sant
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Saturday, August 07, 2010
All Science and No Philosophy Makes Nerds Have Dull Lives
By J.D.
In the 1980s, Martha Coolidge’s films were a welcome antidote to the dominance of John Hughes’ output. On the surface, her films appear to be quite similar but whereas Hughes’ films ultimately play it safe and are conservative in nature (i.e. the status quo is preserved), Coolidge’s films champion the outsider in society — for example, Nicolas Cage’s punk rocker hooks up with Deborah Foreman’s Valley girl despite societal pressure in Valley Girl (1983). When it premiered 25 years ago today, Real Genius appeared to be just another mindless college comedy like Revenge of the Nerds (1984) but whereas that film had its outsiders ultimately become part of accepted mainstream society, the nerds in Real Genius rebelled against it and were proud to be different.
Mitch Taylor (Gabe Jarret) is a brilliant high school student recruited by Professor Jerry Hathaway (William Atherton) to become a student at Pacific Tech and join a special team working on an experimental laser. Hathaway tells Mitch and his parents in person at a science fair. The exchange between them is priceless. His parents obviously have no idea just how smart their son is and only want him to get the best education. At one point, Mitch’s mother asks Hathaway, “I saw your show the other night on radioactive isotopes and I’ve got a question for you. Is that your real hair?” He cheerfully replies, “Is Mitch by any chance adopted?” They are oblivious to the implied insult and Hathaway pulls Mitch aside and tells him, “We’re different than most people. Better.” Hathaway’s elitist attitude is established early on, setting him up as an arrogant snob that must be taught a lesson in humility by our heroes.
Hathaway rooms Mitch with Chris Knight (Val Kilmer), the top brain on campus — at least he used to be until Mitch showed up. We first meet Chris as he’s being taken on a guided tour of a top science laboratory. He has a t-shirt on that reads, “I love toxic waste,” and a set of alien antennae on his head that demonstrate he is the antithesis of Hathaway. He may be super smart but he’s not a stuffed shirt. At one point, his tour guide asks him, “You’re Chris Knight, aren’t you?” Without missing a beat, he replies, “I hope so, I’m wearing his underwear.” Val Kilmer’s deadpan delivery is right on the money and he demonstrates an uncanny knack for comic timing. The film could have so easily set up a rivalry between Chris and Mitch but instead they become friends and team up against a common foe: Kent (Robert Prescott), an arrogant senior student who also is working on the laser.
Chris is super smart but something of a loose cannon, always cracking jokes and never taking anything too seriously, much to Mitch’s consternation because he doesn’t know how to loosen up and have fun. Mitch also has trouble adjusting to campus life and this isn’t helped by Kent who enjoys tormenting Mitch when the senior student isn’t busy sucking up to Hathaway. Coolidge replaces the class warfare in Valley Girl with in-fighting amongst academics in Real Genius. The setting may be different but the tactics are no less mean-spirited as Kent delights in publicly humiliating Mitch. Meanwhile, Hathaway puts pressure on Chris to produce a working laser before the school year ends. Failure to do so will result in Hathaway making sure that Chris doesn’t graduate or work in his field of expertise. Unbeknownst to the ace student, his professor is getting pressured by a flunky and his superior from the CIA who want to use the laser for their own covert actions (assassinations from outer space?).
Every so often, Mitch catches a glimpse of a mysterious long-haired man who goes into his closet at random times during the day. His name is Lazlo (Jon Gries) and he lives deep in the bowels of the school. He used to be the smartest student on campus back in the 1970s but cracked under the pressure and now spends all of his time generating entries for the Frito Lay sweepstakes (enter as often as you like) so as to get as many of the prizes as possible. Jon Gries plays Lazlo as a shy genius, smarter than Chris and Mitch combined. He’s a gentle soul and a far cry from the arrogant blowhard he would go on to play in Napoleon Dynamite (2004)
Over the course of the film, Mitch finds himself attracted to Jordan (Michelle Meyrink), a hyperactive student who never seems to sleep. She sports an adorable Louise Brooks-style bob haircut and a nervous energy that is oddly attractive. I had a huge crush on her when I first saw this film back in the day, quite possibly one of my earliest cinematic crushes. She was the ultimate nerd sex symbol in the ‘80s with her undeniable beauty and brains. Sadly, after a few films she grew disenchanted with the movie making business and retired to Canada to become a Zen Buddhist.
Remember when Val Kilmer was funny? Between this film and Top Secret! (1984), he displays some impressive comedic chops. Kilmer excels at delivering smartass quips and jokes but also is capable of delivering an inspirational speech that convinces Mitch to stick it out at school and get revenge on Kent. There are two scenes where he dispenses with the jokes and has a relatively serious conversation with Mitch about life. They are refreshingly heartfelt and elevate Real Genius above the usual ‘80s teen comedy.
Gabe Jarret is perfectly cast as the helplessly square Mitch with his dorky haircut and his J.C. Penney wardrobe. We aren’t meant to laugh at him and Coolidge shows that he’s a good kid thrust into a new and strange environment. He’s smart but lacks the emotional maturity which he will acquire over the course of the film. Jarret does a nice job of conveying his character’s arc. He doesn’t totally transform into Chris but instead absorbs some of his traits while remaining true to himself.
In the ‘80s, William Atherton seemed to be the go-to guy for playing douchebag authority figures, with memorable turns as the unscrupulous journalist in Die Hard (1988), the “dickless” EPA guy in Ghostbusters (1984), and, of course, his turn in Real Genius. Atherton’s job, and man, does he do it oh so well, is to provide a source of conflict for our protagonists. He portrays Hathaway as the ultimate arrogant prick and we can’t wait to see him get his well-deserved comeuppance at the hands of Chris and Mitch.
Real Genius does plug in the usual tropes of ‘80s teen comedies with the now dated soundtrack of New Wave songs, most of them forgotten except for “Everybody Wants to the Rule the World” by Tears for Fears, which plays over the blissfully carefree ending of the film. There is the wacky comedic set pieces involving pranks. There’s also the T&A factor when Chris takes Mitch to an indoor pool party populated by sexy beauticians. Not to mention, the dorm that Chris and his classmates live in which vaguely resembles the chaotic frat house in Animal House (1978), only inhabited by really smart people.
However, it is how the film presents these generic elements that sets it apart from the typical ‘80s teen comedy. For example, the pranks are quite inventive, such as when Chris and Mitch manage to place Kent’s car in his dorm room. There are several and they all lead up to the mack daddy of them all which occurs at the climax of the film. While there is the requisite T&A factor in Real Genius, the PG rating assures that we don’t see much, just some girls in bikinis. Instead, we get the understated romance that develops between Mitch and Jordan, which is rather sweet in its own unassuming way. The dorm is certainly not the debauched chaos of Delta House, but it clearly is a place of fun, led by Chris and his various antics.
Real Genius argues that nerds can have fun too but there needs to be a balance. You can love solving problems but it can’t be all science and no philosophy as Chris tells Mitch. People like Kent and Hathaway have no sense of humor and are self-obsessed egotists. They are ambitious to a fault, not caring who they step on along the way, while Chris and Mitch are aware of the consequences of their actions. There is sweetness to this film that is endearing and rather strange considering that Neal Israel and Pat Proft wrote the screenplay (authors of such paeans to sweetness, such as Police Academy and Bachelor Party), but Coolidge is firmly in charge and wisely doesn’t let Real Genius get too sappy. She also doesn’t let the funny stuff devolve into mindless frat humor, instead maintaining a proper mix that doesn’t insult our intelligence. The end result is a film that the characters in the film might enjoy, if they weren’t already in it. Achieving just the right alchemy may explain why the film continues to enjoy a modest cult following and is one of the few teen comedies from the ‘80s that stands the test of time.
Tweet
Labels: 80s, John Hughes, Meg Ryan, Movie Tributes, Nicolas Cage, Val Kilmer
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Saturday, May 22, 2010
From the Vault: Baby's Day Out
Like a mutant variation of Dave Bowman's transformation in 2001: A Space Odyssey, John Hughes continues his backward evolution in filmmaking, reaching a new career nadir with Baby's Day Out.
Think Home Alone with a baby instead of Macaulay Culkin and you've got the general high concept of this piece of Hughes-written drivel.
This isn't just a filmmaker going to the well once too often, it's Hughes diving into an empty one, cracking his skull on the bottom and repeating the dive because he keeps blacking out and forgetting there's no more water.
The story, such that it is, concerns a young, snooty rich couple (Lara Flynn Boyle, Matthew Glave) who face the abduction of their toddler Bink.
As is the usual Hughes course of action, he paints the family as gross caricatures then, without any developing scenes, expects the audience to care about them as they fret over their missing child.
This raises one of the many good points about what's wrong with this material. Whereas it's one thing in Home Alone to have a grade-school student stuck in a comically perilous situation, is there something really funny about having a child who isn't even a year old wandering around construction sites and across busy intersections while his parents worry about whether he's alive or dead?
Of course, the answer is not really. When baby Bink crawls on a girder hoisted high above the ground, what should the audience feel? Is it suspense about whether he'll fall? If he does, it's tragic and not a comedy. If he doesn't, it's just a pointless special effect in an absurd movie.
Despite its questionable taste, much could be forgiven if Baby's Day Out managed to induce laughs, but nary a giggle is provoked as Hughes resorts to his usual silly musical cues and plentiful hits to the groin. It's not that a funny, cartoonish film about kidnapping a baby can't be made -- it has been and it's called Raising Arizona.
Because the script has little interest in creating characters, the actors, many of whom have been good elsewhere, seem in visible pain. Joe Mantegna suffers as the lead kidnapper as he tries to express what it would be like if an infant set fire to your crotch with a butane lighter and your idiot friend proceeded to stamp it out. I don't think Stanislavsky, Lee Strasberg or Stella Adler could help Mantegna on that one.
Meanwhile, Joe Pantoliano fails to overcome the same problem as Mantegna's cohort and Cynthia Nixon struggles to maintain the English accent they feel a nanny is required to have. Director Patrick Read Johnson desperately tries to keep the pace moving, but most of the gags, such as one involving a gorilla at the zoo, get stretched beyond the point of humor or reason to pad out the film's running time.
Even the solitary, slightly amusing gag involving the baby and a revolving door gets repeated to the point that it loses what little charm it had. With a premise like this, it's as absurd as the movie itself to try to pick on plausibility problems, but even this film overreaches by trying to justify the baby's path through the city as being based on Bink's favorite book.
Admittedly, the kid (actually twins) is cute but, in the end, do you really want to pay to look at someone else's baby's pictures, especially when they are shots of humorless near tragedies?
Tweet
Labels: 90s, Cynthia Nixon, John Hughes
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Celebrate the me (and you) yet to come
By Edward Copeland
Last year, they released a remake of Alan Parker's Fame, which opened 30 years ago today. Of course, I didn't bother to see the new version, not only because of my general rule not to see remakes of films that I thought were good in the first place (though I'm sure many will argue with me about Parker's film) but also because the new version had a PG rating, indicating to me that the new Fame would take place in a sanitized world. Parker's Fame did not. (As Roger Ebert opened his review of the remake: Why bother to remake Fame if you don't have a clue why the 1980 movie was special?)
Set in the New York of the late '70s, it was a film for mature teens and adults, earning its R rating with subject matter and without the glossy-eyed "anyone can be a star" attitude that permeates our American Idol-soaked culture of today. Fame emphasized work and the risk of failure, not the chance for easy fame or fluke stardom. Alan Parker's Fame looked at the students of the High School for the Performing Arts with an unblinking eye in a world much closer to what it takes to achieve artistic success than the easy climb reality TV tosses as a lure like a drug pusher offering that first free taste of crack before the user realizes that the saccharine fantasyland dream being sold to them is going to come at a very high price with inevitable lows.
Though not necessarily thought of as one, Fame belonged to that group of films of the late 1970s and early 1980s that treated coming of age tales with respect. The characters sprang from wide ranges of locales and social circles and dissimilar stories (Breaking Away, Saturday Night Fever), even variances in age groups (Over the Edge, Diner, My Bodyguard) and quality (Rich Kids, Foxes). As time went on, these types of films became rarer beasts, degenerating mostly into teen sex comedies such as Porky's or The Last American Virgin or superficial comedies from the John Hughes School of Formula Filmmaking. A few within those groups would break out as great such as Risky Business or Say Anything, but for the most part, they were a rarity and the heyday was over soon after the release of Fame.
Granted, Alan Parker's filmography hardly equals perfection, but it puzzles me how far his star has fallen when so many of his films, in my opinion, are pretty damn good. Looking over the list of his directing efforts, I noticed that most of the ones I remember most fondly link themselves intricately with music: Bugsy Malone, Pink Floyd The Wall, Angel Heart (a great thriller, pumped by Trevor Jones' score), The Commitments and the film we're discussing here, Fame. Even though I'm not that big a fan of Midnight Express, can anyone who has seen it forget its pulsating Giorgio Moroder score? On the other hand, Parker also helmed the bloated bore that was the movie version of the musical Evita.
Since Fame is set at the New York High School for the Performing Arts, the film written by Christopher Gore divides itself into appropriate sections to show progression through the years, assuming the potential students make it in in the first place.
Following white-on-black credits, the first image we see in Fame is a photo of Laurence Olivier as Shakespeare's Othello before we plunge into the chaos of the countless would-be students trying to gain entry to the prestigious school to hone their crafts in dance, acting or music while learning the academic basics at the same time. For the most part, the actors in the film are auditioning for us as well, since many of the main characters are played by relative newcomers or actually are making their film debuts. Film editor Gerry Hambling and Parker make a great team, building a wonderful rhythm that smoothly moves from one scene to another without the need for clunky transitions; they just glide from sequence to sequence.
What I so enjoyed about Fame the very first time I saw it (and what I generally like about works as different from Parker's film as HBO's late, great The Wire) is that Fame doesn't waste time with exposition scenes introducing us the important characters. In fact, during the audition section, viewers are treated to quite a few scenes of characters trying out for the school that we will never see again. The moviegoer just has to watch and learn as the film goes on which students will be pivotal.
Not only is this an approach I appreciate as a film or TV watcher, it also provides some of the funniest moments as when a potential drama student stumbles his way through Shakespeare, unaware that he's
reading Juliet's part and another where a girl's audition is re-creating O.J. Simpson's role in The Towering Inferno, which mostly consists of her standing and waiting for an imaginary elevator. It brought back memories of post-high school when I went back to judge drama contests for my high school drama teacher and one teen did a dramatic interpretation (a contest event where a person portrays multiple characters while standing) of Oliver Stone's Platoon. I know the young man didn't intend it to be funny, but as he shifted from side to side alternating shouts of "Barnes!" and "Elias!" interspersed with Charlie Sheen's stilted narration, the best acting in the classroom was mine for my ability to keep a straight face. I couldn't laugh out loud and it made me unable to ever see Platoon the same way again. Still, even the most casual movie viewer can discern which tryouts will land spaces in the school. When Montgomery (Paul McCrane) stumbles over the word depressed in his memorized monologue, that's a good clue.
It's funny that watching it now it should remind me of events from my own life, even though I never attended an arts high school, because even when I saw Fame the first time on cable around 1981 or 1982, it spoke to me, almost as if it were foreshadowing. Perhaps that's part of its appeal to me that remains lost on so many others: I recognized parts of it as things that would eventually occur in my life, even though it had to have been on a subconscious level. That didn't mean I knew or would know specifically a Coco (Irene Cara) or a Doris (Maureen Teefy); a Ralph (the superb Barry Miller) or a Bruno (Lee Curreri); a Leroy (Gene Anthony Ray) or a Hilary (Antonia Franceschi); a Lisa (Laura Dean) or a Montgomery (McCrane, whom ER fans will find delightful beneath his huge, bright red afro). Aspects of them may pop up in people in my life, but it was more the atmosphere that seemed familiar to a kid in junior high, even though I'd never been to New York City, never tried to fake tap shoes by attaching Pepsi bottle caps to the bottom of my tennis shoes or been convinced that I could replace an orchestra with the right assortment of keyboards and electronic equipment.
As the first school year begins to the strains of my favorite song from the soundtrack, "Dogs in the Yard," not only do we get to know the central students better, we also receiver tighter focus on the school's teachers.
What I always forget, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this regard thanks to the television series that followed the film and ran briefly on NBC before running even longer in syndication, Debbie Allen may have been the lead on the watered-down TV version but she appears in a single scene of the movie (in the audition sequence when Leroy is introduced accompanying his friend Shirley who is applying to the school as a dancer but gets rejected while Leroy is accepted, despite the fact he wasn't even trying to get in.) The real dancing tutelage in the film comes from Miss Berg (Joanna Merlin) who can be a taskmaster, especially to those who aren't pulling their weight such as Lisa, but really recognizes the innate gifts of a Leroy or a Hilary when it comes to the art of dance.Shepherding the would-be actors is Mr. Farrell (Jim Moody) who explains to his students from the outset what they are about to get into as "an underprivileged minority who are going to suffer for their craft" and he doesn't sugarcoat the fact that most actors are not working actors. One thing that is nice is that despite the
film's title and its Oscar-winning title song's lyrics (music by Michael Gore; lyrics by Dean Pitchford; Gore also won original score), most of the students do have moments where you see that the passion is for their craft not for the fame and fortune that comes to the fortunate few. Drama is where Ralph has landed (still hiding from his real name of Raul and his Puerto Rican heritage and still engaging in Freddie Prinze worship) as did Doris (still struggling with her overbearing mother, so interested in her future she even showed up at her audition to snap photos.) Doris still finds herself terribly "ordinary" but many of the students are excited at the perceived success of a graduating student named Michael (Boyd Gaines) who has won a prestigious acting scholarship but is passing it up for the lure of Hollywood and an offer from William Morris. Also taking the acting path is Montgomery who finally is getting the courage to admit that he is gay to people. In 2010, this seems old hat, but this still was fairly refreshing in 1980, even if we never see him find romance. He and Doris develop a tentative friendship but Ralph's desire to push everyone away with calculated hostility rubs Doris the wrong way. "I must remember this feeling and use it in my acting," Doris declares after Ralph belittles her and Montgomery.
Teaching the musicians is the great Albert Hague as Shorofsky and most of his conflicts come with Bruno, who resents the idea of having to learn actual instruments. Bruno also has a strong booster in his cab driver father (Eddie Barth), who plays Bruno's compositions for his passengers and spends a fortune on his equipment. When he and and his brother drag the equipment into the high school, the brother asks why Bruno couldn't play a simple instrument like their father played the accordion. "My son's head is in the future," Barth replies, "and dad could never play the accordion." During one classroom exchange, as Bruno struggles to make music come out of a violin, he tries to make the case to Shorofsky that his ways are old fashioned and that if Mozart were alive, he'd be composing music more like Bruno is. "What about an orchestra?" the teacher asks. "Who needs an orchestra?" Bruno replies, explaining that his equipment can ape all the appropriate instruments and he could perform any work all by himself. "That's not music, it's masturbation," Shorofsky responds.
One thing all the craft teachers agree on, in a well-edited sequence, is that the art they teach is the most difficult, be it acting, music or dance. Still, the kids also have academics to deal with and the teacher who symbolizes that aspect is Mrs. Sherwood (Anne Meara, giving the best performance she's ever given on screen and a rare dramatic one). She butts heads early and often with Leroy, who tries to hide the fact that he is illiterate. It is one of the film's weaknesses that they are still having this battle by senior year, by which time you'd expect Leroy would have been flunked out no matter how great a dancer he is, but that's not addressed. However, Meara soars so high that I'll let it slide.
Among the students, the one who is the most anxious for stardom and who views the school as merely a stepping stone to her inevitable rise to the top is Coco. She gets a reluctant Bruno to aid her by writing songs for her to sing, particularly after one impromptu lunch jam session that again as a young teen seemed to predict scenes from my future when myself and other bored teens would sit around various schools' gathering areas singing and dancing and awaiting results from drama contests in high school. What once played as something that I longed to be a part of, later reminded me of my current life and now drips in nostalgia for days long gone and friends very much missed. Sometimes reactions such as that trump any criticism you might have: a film strikes too many familiar chords for you to be able to distance yourself from it, especially when you fell for it at a young age.
As the students begin their second year, Mr. Farrell tells his drama students that their sophomore year will move them from simple observation to emotional states and the characters themselves begin to show more of this themselves, both in and out of class. Doris frets when Farrell assigns them to discuss one of their most
painful memories to share with the class but Montgomery assures her that if she gets stuck, she can always borrow one of his because he has plenty from his years of therapy. Of course, when his time comes to share his moment, his does deal with his homosexuality and the unfortunate crush he developed on his therapist. Ralph, who up until this point of the film always has played the role of a jester or provocateur, actually reveals the most of himself when he opens up about what Freddie Prinze means to him and his absolute denial that the comic actor committed suicide as everyone says. It had to be an accident, Ralph insists, Prinze had too much to live for. Miller already was good in the movie, but from this point on, Miller is by far the standout, which is not that surprising given that he had the most experience of most of the young actors in the cast, even playing Tony Manero's high school friend Bobby C., used for his car and meeting an untimely fate on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in Saturday Night Fever. It really makes me wonder where this talented man's career went since he was so good in both of these pivotal late '70s/early '80s films. He's worked steadily and won a featured actor Tony in 1985 for Biloxi Blues, but his career should have been bigger. Fortunately, youTube has a clip of a great Ralph monologue, though it's from the Junior Year section of the film, to give a better idea of how good Miller is in this film.
The two main girls on the dance track are facing quite different futures. Lisa continues to be more interested in being a chatterbox in class and, much to Miss Berg's chagrin, never seems to even work up a sweat. The teacher finally has enough and despite the girl's pleas, tells her it's time of her to go because she doesn't have the discipline to make it as a dancer. The story for Hilary is turning out quite different. She may come from wealth, but she lives for the craft and it shows, particularly in a lovely sequence where Leroy spies her practicing by herself and the street tough find himself wowed by her grace (and her body doesn't hurt either). Hilary returns the attraction and, always eager to shock her rich WASP parents, brings Leroy home with her "to study" just to see their jaws drop.
The second school year also brings us perhaps the film's most famous sequence, the one containing the film's Oscar-winning title song. It begins as Bruno's leading supporter, his father, parks his cab in front of the school, hooks up loud speakers and blasts the song "Fame," a composition in the movie's universe that Bruno composed using Coco's vocals. Coco couldn't be more thrilled. Bruno wants to hide away somewhere, he's so embarrassed. Everyone else just wants to dance in the streets, which they do, often on top of angry New Yorkers' cars, sparking a small scale riot over the traffic jam session. It's also an illustration of the universe where Fame resides, the old New York City, when it was grittier and scarier, before Times Square became the Disneyfied place it is today.
From this point on in the film, Parker and the Oscar-nominated screenplay by Christopher Gore does make what I think is their most serious mistake. Not that the remainder of the movie isn't good, it's just that from this point on, the school is largely forgotten. In this section in fact, there isn't a single scene involving the classroom at all. That's fine because the students' characters and stories continue to evolve, but it seems to undermine the movie's central premise at the same time. Early on, we do get one scene that takes place within the confines of the school where Coco sings the film's other Oscar-nominated song, the lovely "Out Here on My Own," (also written by Michael Gore with lyrics by Lesley Gore of "It's My Party" fame) which frankly I think is a vastly superior composition to "Fame" which won. Coco plays the piano as Bruno watches approvingly. I think this clip more that backs up my point.
We also begin to learn more why Ralph wants to escape his home life so badly as basically he is the surrogate father for his younger sisters as his unseen mother goes through husbands. Despite her initial animosity
toward him, Doris, growing more confident as time goes on, begins a tentative romance with Ralph and the two of them and Montgomery become sort of a trio, though Montgomery definitely feels and knows he is the third wheel in the situation. One thing I love about Fame are the many shots of the characters in windowsills, framed against the neon of the old nighttime New York. Parker doesn't do it enough for it to wear out its welcome, but it's nice, especially when you can look out on the period Times Square and see that among the shows currently playing Broadway are the original Grease and Annie. It works exceedingly well during a Ralph monologue and perhaps best of all in another of the film's strongest songs, when Montgomery, alone in a room with nothing but a guitar, sings, "Is It OK If I Call You Mine?"
The Ralph-Doris romance also introduced me to another phenomenon that was unfamiliar to me but which would later become a large part of my high school life, especially after returning from drama contests: The
Rocky Horror Picture Show (Though Montgomery first made a brief reference to it during the sophomore year section). When Fame came out, Rocky was only five years old. If you want to feel really old, it turns 35 this year. Ralph and Doris attend the midnight screening at the famous Waverly Theater hosted by none other than the legendary Rocky Horror Picture Show Fan Club President Sal Piro. It was another case of Fame foreshadowing what would become a major part of my life. Ironically, since midnight movies became a staple of high school, now lost to many of today's teens by terrified towns imposing curfews (sorry kids, you were born too late), the other main midnight showing that my gang of friends and I would revisit frequently happened to be Alan Parker's Pink Floyd The Wall. Anyway, back to the sequence in Fame.
By this, her third year in school, Doris really begins to lose her shell and at the movie partakes of her first toke of pot. To Ralph's surprise, it emboldens Doris to the point that she joins the performers on stage in front of the screen in "The Time Warp." The next day, Doris still glows from the experience as Ralph expresses surprise at her openness while they share the night's activity with Montgomery. Doris is pleased to say that it wasn't her up there taking a jump to the left and a step to the right, she was just wearing a costume. Everyone was looking at someone else, not ordinary old Doris. The three are surprised when they realize their waiter is former high school star Michael (Boyd Gaines). Things didn't work out in California the way he expected them to, though he shot an unaired pilot and got some day-player work on a soap. The reality of his plight casts a pall on the students.
For the most part, the senior year section also stays away from the classroom to look at what's happening to the students' lives outside of school, but I'm going to refrain from discussing too much of what happens to
them in this final part, just in case someone wants to check the film out for the first time and also because simple description would run the risk of making it sound as if it's turning into an afterschool special, if there are many young people out there anymore who even recognize what an afterschool special was. Besides, as I was preparing this post, I did peruse reviews by younger bloggers out there who didn't think much of the film. That's their right: All opinions are subjective and since senior year is when students decide their future and colleges evaluate possible admissions, I feel I should use this section more in the same way. One negative opinion of the film expressed relief that Montgomery, as a gay character, at least didn't contract AIDS or die in the end. I guess he wasn't aware that AIDS didn't even get its name until 1982, two years after Fame was released. Many of the social issues that get touched upon in Fame which, as I said
before, seem pretty routine now, were not routine in 1980 films. It's the same way that when I first viewed 1967's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, I could recognize how groundbreaking it might have been upon its initial release, but it seemed pretty tame as far as the subject as interracial romance was concerned. (What kind of film would it have been if Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy's characters weren't liberals to start with?) Heck, when Leroy and Hilary hook up in Fame, her parents may blink an eye, but no mention of it is made by anyone else in the film and as a viewer I didn't find it strange. It's also why 1947's Gentleman's Agreement seems so dated when a gentile (Gregory Peck) goes undercover to root out anti-Semitism. Another best picture nominee that year, Crossfire, was much more daring in dealing with anti-Semitism and the murder of a Jewish man — and that was changed from the book it was based on where the murder victim was gay. Issues evoke different treatments and different reactions in different times and sometimes need to be viewed in that context.The one character who does get a brief taste of success (and failure) in this section is Ralph, who finally lives up to his Freddie Prinze dreams by getting a chance at standup (introduced by a young Richard Belzer) and
announcing himself as a "professional asshole." Inevitably, the success goes to his head and begins to cause rifts between him and Doris, who urges him to stop trying to be Freddie. He's better than Freddie, she insists, "You are an original. You don't have to be someone else." As Montgomery reminds him of his acting training, he also tosses in the fact that in the Middle Ages, they didn't even want to bury actors. Ralph gets a burial of a sorts in a nice sequence that shows how the exact same comedy set can be a roaring success one night and then bomb another. The climax of the film returns to the school for a graduation concert that unites the musicians, dancers and the rest in a wonderfully staged number called "I Sing the Body Electric." As much as I adore this movie, this does beg some questions. First of all, most of the acting students sing in the number though the film never even hints at vocal training or a singing instructor. Also, since they were teaching acting, I would have enjoyed seeing some of the productions they had to have inevitably performed.
Now, as I've been honest in saying, Fame strikes too close to me in many ways for me to look at it with completely objective vision and, as a critic, it's not my job to be objective anyway. Any opinion will inevitably prove subjective, be it based on personal factors or just the way a person judges films. However, all critics (professionals, amateurs and those in between) or plain old moviegoers can't always turn those feelings off but if we do our jobs well and right, readers should be able to recognize the biases that figure into our opinions. My God, does anyone really believe that the late great Pauline Kael loved ALL those De Palma films? However, though I do think the animosity against both Alan Parker and the original Fame are overstated, re-watching it made me aware of the one thing it needed to take it from being a very good movie to becoming a true masterpiece: With its multiple characters, unusual structure and characters and stories that go unresolved, this may be an Alan Parker film, but inside a Robert Altman film is trying to break out.
Tweet
Labels: 80s, A. Parker, Altman, C. Sheen, De Palma, Ebert, Gregory Peck, HBO, John Hughes, K. Hepburn, Kael, Movie Tributes, Musicals, Oliver Stone, Olivier, Remakes, Shakespeare, The Wire, Theater, Tracy
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
