Sunday, June 03, 2012
Finishing the House
Before I finish my list of favorite episodes (we still have the top five to go), I wanted to take this intro space to again mourn the fact that it's highly likely that Hugh Laurie will go the entire run of House without being rewarded with a much-deserved Emmy. The Screen Actors Guild, The Golden Globes and the Television Critics Association each honored Laurie twice; it's only the TV academy that has yet to give him a prize. We can't be certain yet he'll even get a final nomination for the last season. His name has been omitted once, but for six out of the previous seven seasons, his performance made the cut of those in the running for outstanding lead actor in a drama series. I
decided to check the Academy records to see who beat him early on since I know he lost three of those to Bryan Cranston for Breaking Bad and it's hard for me to get upset about that since that series and Cranston exist on an even higher plane of greatness than the best episodes of House. Last year, Cranston wasn't in competition and the Emmy went to Kyle Chandler for Friday Night Lights, a show I never watched. The three years prior to that were the consecutive losses to Cranston (and those four years also made it zero for four for Jon Hamm for Mad Men. Is he heading toward the same fate? We're back to the third season of House now — and he lost to James Spader for Boston Legal, a show that never belonged in the drama category. It also was one of the two out of three eligible years they failed to nominated Ian McShane for Deadwood. Laurie received his snub for the second season, my choice for the best season. What five actors filled those slots? Peter Krause for Six Feet Under, Denis Leary for Rescue Me, Christopher Meloni for Law & Order: SVU, Martin Sheen for The West Wing and Kiefer Sutherland for 24. Give me a fucking break. Sutherland won, as if it matters. In the first season, the only one in which McShane got nominated and Laurie received his first, they both lost to Spader for his first win for Boston Legal, his second consecutive for the same role except the year before the show was called The Practice. House managed to receive Emmy nominations and wins in others categories including one writing win and one directing win and four nominations as outstanding drama but, amazingly, it never received any acting recognition beyond Hugh Laurie. Back to the countdown. 
Few things provoke laughs than getting shot at by a gang member and having the bullet ricochet off your flak jacket and pierce the base of your spine, releasing brain matter — unless you happen to be a neurologist treating the cop who finds it hysterical when the officer’s
condition gets worse. Perhaps I'm cheating by counting both parts of a two-part episode as one slot in my favorites, but you can't really divide one half of "Euphoria" from the other. Matthew V. Lewis wrote the first part while Russel Friend, Garret Lerner and David Shore penned part two. Deran Sarafian directed both halves. "Euphoria" stands out because it presents a medical mystery in which the viewer develops a real stake in the outcome since in involves one of the regular cast members, Foreman (Omar Epps). It doesn't dawn on the team immediately that Foreman's strange behavior indicates he's been infected by the same mystery
ailment that's afflicted the cop (Scott Michael Campbell), something he likely picked up while searching the officer's apartment. The first sign comes when House, seeking to test what a bullet would do to the exact spot it struck the cop, goes to the morgue and fires a gun into a corpse, prompting Eric to grin and giggle. "I think that an appropriate response to watching your boss shoot a corpse is not to grin foolishly," House tells Foreman. "The fact that I've grown bored by your insanity is proof of nothing," Foreman responds. Cuddy, to say the least, isn't pleased with House's use of the morgue. "I can't even imagine the backwards logic you used to rationalize shooting a corpse," she says to him in exasperation. "Well if I'd shot a live person there's a lot more paperwork." As the team runs through various ideas for what's causing the cop's problems, including Legionnaire’s disease, as each approach fails, Foreman gets giddier. With the cop shaking violently and bleeding, Foreman laughs, "He's screwed! We clot his blood he dies. We thin it, he dies!" He draws strange stares from Cameron and Chase. "Am I the only one who thinks this is funny?" Cameron suggests to House that they take Foreman off the case because he doesn't like cops, but House realizes it's more
serious and puts both Foreman and the cop in isolation until they can figure out the cause. When the cop dies, House wants to slice into his brain immediately but Cuddy won't allow it out of fear of what could be exposed to the rest of the hospital if he did, so House tries to talk Foreman into doing it within the isolation chamber. Unfortunately, they then realize
Foreman has lost his eyesight — he's developing all the symptoms the cop had only at a faster rate. Cuddy already has contacted the CDC and they remove his body and keep it under guard to prevent House from getting his hands on it. House doesn't mask his anger at Cuddy — and even Cameron takes her to task. House brings Foreman's father Rodney (Charles S. Dutton) to the hospital to try to manipulate Cuddy, but it doesn't work. House feels so frustrated that he actually performs clinic honors — a rare moment of comic relief in the episode with a mother (Leigh-Allyn Baker) concerned that her daughter Rose (Amber DeMarco) might show signs of epilepsy. House tries some moves and sounds to evoke a seizure prompting Rose to call House "a goof." "Takes one to know one, loser…wait, that means, I'm a loser, scratch that,"
House responds, before telling the mom, "In actuality all your little girl is doing is…saying yoo hoo to the hoo hoo." "She's what?" the mother asks. "Marching the penguin…ya ya-ing the sisterhood…finding Nemo?" Rose giggles on that one. "That was funny." House has to spell it out to mom. "It's called gratification disorder, sort of a misnomer. If one was unable to gratify oneself, that would be a disorder." The mother whispers, "You're saying she's masturbating." House mocks the freaked-out mom by speaking out of the corner of his mouth. "I was trying to be discreet. There's a child in the room." The mother expresses horror, but House reminds her that epilepsy is horrifying, masturbating isn't. She just needs to teach her child about privacy. Cuddy goes to visit Foreman and tries to defend her actions, telling him she had no choice because of the regulations, but he lays into her as well. "And the punishment for violating those regulations? Is it death? Hmm? Because frankly, I'm OK if you get a fine, a suspension…hell, you can spend a couple of years in jail, if it saves my life!" House suits up and decides to check out the cop's apartment again to see if the searches missed anything while Cameron weighs performing a brain biopsy on Foreman. Foreman's upset father talks to his son through the glass and tells him through tears, "I don't want to miss you." The two parts make one of the series' most suspenseful and compelling episodes.
Since completing this list and tribute took much longer than I expected, it became much easier as the days passed to avoid other choices for the best and favorite House episodes. Some selections probably ended up being pretty obvious and showed up on most of the lists, but I suspect I'm one of the few to single out "Airborne." This installment always has tickled me to no end. House and Cuddy spend most of the episode in the air, returning from a medical conference in Singapore where House gave a short speech and Princeton-Plainsboro earned
World Health Organization accreditation. Cuddy isn't happy with the excessive charges House tallied on his hotel bill, then he didn't enjoy airport security confiscating his cane because it contained a corkscrew so he has insisted on being wheeled at all airports for plane changes. "And the room service thing was just spiteful," Cuddy chastises House. 'I was hungry," House says in his defense. "Three hundred dollars for a bottle of wine," Cuddy continues to tally. "I was thirsty," he replies. "One hundred and twenty dollars for video services!" she exclaims. "I was lonely," House responds with mock sadness. As they board the last leg of their journey home, their conversation keeps being drowned out by an infant child wailing for her blanket. House finally addresses the mother. "Give her 20 milligrams of antihistamine. It could save her life. Because if she doesn't shut up, I'll kill her," House tells the woman. Meanwhile in New Jersey, a fiftysomething woman named Fran (Jenny O'Hara) invites a female prostitute name Robin (Meta Golding) into her home. When Fran gets a good look at Robin's skimpy getup, she faints, bonking on the head. Robin feels she has no choice but to call 911 and accompanies Fran to Princeton-Plainsboro. Wilson notices a motion sickness patch on Fran's neck and suspects that caused her dizziness and she blacked out when she hit her head. They prepare to discharge Fran, but she collapses and begins having a seizure so Wilson admits her and grabs House's team to take on her case. In the skies, a Korean man named Peng (Jamison Yang) doesn't look so hot. Everyone assumes that he's drunk, but then he barfs on his plate of food. The stewardess Keo (Tess
Lina) asks if anyone speaks Korean or happens to be a doctor. House, who took a first class seat while making Cuddy suffer in coach tells the flight attendant he'll get her and walks back and offers to exchange seats with Cuddy out of a sense of chivalry. She soon learns what he was up to and comes back to get him — because she fears that Peng might have meningococcus and all the passengers could be put at risk. Laurie's performance as the sardonic calm at the center of the growing, panicking storm makes "Airborne," written by David Hoselton and directed by Elodie Keene, stand out for me. As he attempts to relax in his new seat while the blonde passenger Joy (Krista Kalmus), seated in front of him, keeps turning around at every scary word she hears to try to plumb info from House. At one point, House finally tells her to look the other way. "Why?" Joy asks. "Because you're going to throw up, and I don't want it on me," he tells her, which she promptly does. Despite his best efforts not to get involved, House soon finds he must when Cuddy exhibits some of the symptoms showing up in the other passengers. Back at the hospital, the team argues incessantly about what course of action to take concerning Fran's case, leading Wilson to sigh, "I think I'm starting to feel sorry for House." High above the ground though, House does miss his team and tries to jerry-rig one on the plane, enlisting a 12-year-old boy (Connor Webb), a man of Middle Eastern origin named Hamid (Pej Vahdat) and a disapproving looking businesswoman as he gets out a marker to write on the plane's movie screen.
HOUSE: Can you say "Crickey Mate"?
BOY: Crickey Mate.
HOUSE: Perfect. Now, no matter what I say, you'll agree with me, OK?
BOY: OK.
HOUSE: Nicely done. You, disagree with everything I say.
HAMID: Sorry, not understand.
HOUSE: Close enough. You get morally outraged by everything I say.
[House writes the symptoms on the movie screen]
WOMAN: That's permanent marker, you know.
HOUSE: Wow, you guys are good.
The 12-year-old turns out to be particularly helpful and curious, even downright excited when House decides they need to operate on Peng. The episode even signals a bit of a new closeness between House and Cuddy as he helps her when she's ailing. At the end of the trip, the flight attendant Keo even makes a special point of thanking House and letting him know she's in New York every Monday. "Are you handicap accessible?" he asks as she wheels him off the plane and Cuddy rolls her eyes.
Placed in the hands of just about any other medical drama, the plot of "Autopsy" concerning a preternaturally brave 9-year-old girl named Andie (well played by Sasha Pieterse, whom, I was shocked to discover, now plays a teen sexpot on a show called Pretty Little Liars) dying of cancer but suddenly facing unrelated hallucinations, would come off as a maudlin, manipulative exercise. Now, you don't think Greg House would let that happen, would you? This episode turns out to be a rare one with sizable clips showing the highlights, so I have no need to spell them out. What's bad about this YouTube montage is that it cuts out the money shots, if you will. It shows Andie telling Chase that she's never kissed a boy, but cuts away before he grants her wish. It leaves out Christina Aguilera's version of "Beautiful" that opens the episode and cuts short the version recorded specifically for the show by Elvis Costello where we see that Andie did affect House after all as he takes a motorcycle for a spin. Of course, the clinic comedy of the do-it-yourself circumcision just flat-out wouldn't work so you don't get to hear House say, "Stop talking. I'm going to get a plastic surgeon. To get the Twinkie back in the wrapper."
AND
WILSON'S HEART
(Season 4,
Episodes 15 and 16)
Though the two episodes that closed out Season 4 bore different titles and aren't billed as your standard two-part episode, one doesn't really work without the other and together the pair created the most powerful ending of any House season. "House's Head" set up the puzzle, "Wilson's Heart" dealt with the aftermath once it was solved. The team of Peter Blake, David Foster, Russel Friend and Garrett Lerner wrote the teleplay for "House's Head" from a story by Doris Egan. Greg Yaitanes' direction won the series its only Emmy ever for direction. "House's Head" starts with a disoriented House receiving a lap dance, but he has a terrible headache and vaguely remembers something about a bus crash, but has no idea how he got there. He leaves the club and finds himself wandering through an emergency scene where a
bus lies on its side and rescue crews frantically work on the injured. House intuitively realizes that he had been on the bus when the accident occurred and someone needs his help but he can't recall who it is. He returns to Princeton-Plainsboro where Cameron and Wilson tend to his injuries but House can't put his preoccupation aside — so much that after seeking out the bus driver (Henry Hayashi) and getting nowhere, House even yells a fake quarantine to keep all the passengers there until he gets a chance to speak to them in hopes of unlocking the mystery. House's colleagues try desperately to get him to calm down and take care of himself, with Cameron recommending that he be admitted overnight to monitor for brain swelling. "How much bigger could it get?" House responds as he continues to harass passengers on the bus for any clue as to who might be in danger. Since the hospital staff gets nowhere in its attempt to calm House down, Chase attempts to mollify him by placing him under hypnosis with Wilson nearby. House recalls himself at a bar where the bartender (played by Fred Durst of the band Limp Bizkit) forces him to turn over his keys to his motorcycle because he's too drunk to drive. Now House knows why he got on the
bus, but Wilson asks why he was drinking alone. Suddenly, Amber inserts herself into House's subconscious. "I can't even have a conversation with you in my subconscious without her tagging along," House says with annoyance. House, still hypnotized, finds himself on the bus again, this time with a mystery woman in black (Ivana Milicevic) but that vision gets interrupted by a Goth punk (Isaac Bright) that House notices picking his nose. He snaps back to consciousness and tries to find him in the ER, convinced that he has a brain tumor, but that diagnosis isn't correct. A commotion occurs as the bus driver complains that he can't move his legs. The team works to diagnose the bus driver, but another
memory flash reminds House of someone drinking coffee. He decides that smell might trigger what he needs. He asks where they've gathered the collected clothes of the passengers, swallows a mouthful of Vicodin and then falls face first into the pile to get a good whiff. "Whoever wore this shirt…hasn't showered since Sunday. Without the Vicodin, I'd have never been able to remember that," House reports, but it's another dead end. House continues to drift in and out of reality so Wilson forces him to have an MRI performed. House can't explain why it's so important to him to figure this out about the crash. The MRI reveals that he sustained longitudinal fracture of the temporal bone. As House goes to the cafeteria, a debilitating headache takes him down so Thirteen places him in an Epsom salt bath to get him in a state similar to sensory deprivation. He starts fantasizing about being on the bus, only Cuddy has joined him — and begins performing a striptease. During her pole dance, Cuddy and House discuss possible ailments that the bus driver could have. When House suggests Parkinson's disease, the woman in black reappears and tells him that she is the answer. He awakes from the bath, promptly pukes on the real Cuddy and passes out. She sends him home with a nurse and a security guard to keep him there while the team continues to try to diagnose the bus driver. When House swipes the nurse's cell phone to tell his team what tests to administer, Cuddy
personally goes to his apartment to supervise him. As he falls asleep, Cuddy transforms into the
woman in black again, pointing to her necklace. House awakes in a panic and tells Cuddy that they've diagnosed the wrong person. Someone else remains out there dying. He proposes re-creating where all the passengers were sitting. Cuddy reluctantly agrees and House pops some pills, only it isn't Vicodin, but Alzheimer's medication to accelerate his neurons. The woman in black reappears and asks what her necklace is made of. "Amber," he says. The woman transforms into Amber and House visualizes the wreck in his mind with another vehicle smashing into the bus right where Amber sat. Everyone went flying and he tried to get her to hang on. One of the bus's poles penetrated her leg and House tied a tourniquet around it. When House awakes, Wilson and Cuddy are performing CPR on him. He has had a heart attack. When House comes to, calling out Amber's name. "You almost kill yourself and all we're getting is drug induced fantasies!" Wilson responds. He asks Thirteen if any Jane Does were taken to other hospitals. "Female late 20s. Kidney damage. Does Amber have a birthmark on her right shoulder blade?" Thirteen asks Wilson as she reads from the list of passengers. House, recalling everything. tells him that Amber was on the bus with him. "She's the one who's dying!" ("Wilson's Heart and my choice for No. 1 will be...Labels: Awards, Breaking Bad, Cranston, Deadwood, House, K. Sutherland, Law and Order, Lists, M. Sheen, Mad Men, TV Tribute
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Monday, January 23, 2012
The Trier of strife
By Edward Copeland
As Lars von Trier's Melancholia opens, I thought for a moment that the DVD I was watching wasn't his movie but some sort of mashup of images merging von Trier's film, Terrence Malick's more cosmological portions of The Tree of Life and perhaps a little Return of the Jedi thrown in for good measure. (How else do you explain scenes of Kirsten Dunst cavorting beneath a dark hood and sending lightning bolts from her fingers unless it's an homage to Emperor Palpatine?) As for Lars von Trier himself, Melancholia provides more evidence that this emperor has no clothes or, at best, covers his privates with a fig leaf occasionally.
I haven't seen the complete Lars von Trier filmography. I haven't even disliked all of his films I've seen (I did like Dancer in the Dark) and someday I actually would like to watch The Kingdom. I also admit that the idea behind The Five Obstructions intrigues me, since it's not a traditional remake and Martin Scorsese plans to take part in a new version of the experiment.
Now that I've said a few nice things about von Trier, let's get to my problems with the Danish director: Must he make most things such a chore? It's miraculous Emily Watson delivered such a good performance in the teeth-gnashing Breaking the Waves. I think the course for my cinematic relationship with von Trier was set the first time I saw a work by him — Zentropa. My good friend Matt Zoller Seitz summed up that film best when he said he kept expecting Max von Sydow's voicover to start intoning, "You are getting very sleepy" because that's the overriding way Zentropa affected me. It only lacked the image of a swaying pocket watch to put me in a hypnotic trance, but not in the good way some films can but like professional tricksters do where afterward you recall absolutely nothing that transpired.
Last year, von Trier gave us Melancholia, which has been on an awards and nominations spree since the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, hailed by those who confuse piss-poor screenplays lacking the depth of '80s TV perfume commercials as profound, and believe half-baked ideas and cookie-cutter metaphors are insightful. Melancholia reaps rewards from the type of critical reviews that drive me up the wall. While it's true that all opinions about movies are subjective, so no one's positive or negative take on a film can be wrong, these types of assessments put that truism to the test. When boiled down, these write-ups scream, "I have no idea what [insert film here] is about — it must be genius." When you read between those laudatory lines, you detect the whiff of people not being truthful for fear they'll be ridiculed by the intelligentsia if they don't lionize movies such as Melancholia.
Melancholia revolves around two sisters — Justine (Kirsten Dunst) and Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg). The film divides itself in two halves, one devoted to each sibling. Part I is titled "Justine" and details the reception being thrown for her and new husband Michael (Alexander Skarsgård) at the mansion belonging to Claire and her husband John (Kiefer Sutherland).
Many consume too much liquor and say things they shouldn't. All sorts of strangeness seems to be transpiring. Justine's boss (Stellan Skarsgård) interrupts the beginning of the reception to try to get all the guests to think of a tagline for his ad campaign. Justine keeps making excuses to disappear and notices a bright star in the sky which John, a noted astronomer, identifies as Antares — only the star eventually vanishes. John explains it's because the "rogue planet" Melancholia has passed in front of it, but he doesn't get around to explaining that to Justine until Part II so her mood just gets worse. One of the many things that amuses me about the pomposity of Melancholia stems from the notion that a new planet would be discovered by astronomers on Earth and they'd name it Melancholia. That's simply because whenever people on Earth find new planets and label them, they always give them cheery names such as Melancholia. I assume it resides in the small Woeisme galaxy that also includes the planets Anhedonia, Fullofhimself and Onemoodysonofabitch.
At least the wedding reception half of the movie includes the two most welcome presences in the film: John Hurt as Justine's sloshed father Dexter and Charlotte Rampling as her bitter, divorced mother Gaby who makes a speech about why she didn't attend the wedding because of her opposition to the institution of marriage. Her character eventually locks herself in a bathroom (perhaps hoping that no one noticed she agreed to appear in the movie) alienating hosts John and Claire because the reception's strict scheduling requires cutting the cake at a certain time. John knocks on the door and pleads with Gaby to come downstairs to view the slicing of the dessert. "When Justine took her first crap on the potty, I wasn't there. When she had her first sexual intercourse, I wasn't there. So give me a break, please, with all your fucking rituals," Gaby tells John through the door.
All of the chaos, much of which Justine causes herself, prompts the wedding planner, played by director/iconoclast Udo Kier, to declare, "She ruined my wedding! I will not look at her!" Besides being badly written, this section reminded me of two vastly superior films. Toward the beginning, the sculpted trees arranged in rows in front of the mansion brought to mind Alain Resnais' incomparable classic Last Year at Marienbad, in which I've been immersed of late in preparation for an upcoming tribute. The second, and more generalized, similarity belongs to a very good work by one of von Trier's fellow Dogme 95 practitioners, Thomas Vinterberg's 1998 film The Celebration. What happened to Vinterberg anyway?
In Part II, titled "Claire," Justine has sunk deep into depression, presumably because she assumed that she was the sole lead of the movie and now her sister has taken over. Claire, who in Part I was annoying and a bit high maintenance about the details of a wedding reception (Justine didn't even throw the bouquet fast enough for her schedule, so Claire took it from her and tossed it herself), now has become obsessed with this rogue planet Melancholia. John assures her that while Melancholia now can be seen by the naked eye, it will pass Earth safely and she needn't fear collision. Claire isn't convinced and fears for the lives of John, Justine and her son Leo (Cameron Spurr). It's an interesting coincidence that two films released in 2011 — this and Another Earth — should both have Earth-like planets appear in the sky out of nowhere, except Another Earth, with a budget of less than $200,000 and no major stars versus Melancholia's $9 million budget and well-known cast, told a better, more moving story and grossed almost exactly half what Melancholia has in the U.S.
John keeps on a brave face for his wife, but he has his concerns as well. Justine thinks that the possibility of the end of the world sounds sort of cool. The two sisters have one exchange of dialogue so ridiculous that I actually laughed out loud at it because it reminded me of the scene in Woody Allen's Love and Death between Woody's Boris and Diane Keaton's Sonja the night before he's going to fight a duel. Boris confesses his love as they discuss death and God, but somehow the talk keeps coming back to closeups of Woody rambling about the harvest and various forms of wheat. "The crops, the grains. Fields of rippling wheat. Wheat. All there is in life is wheat.…Oh, wheat! Lots of wheat! Fields of wheat. A tremendous amount of wheat!…Yellow wheat. Red wheat. Wheat with feathers. Cream of wheat."
I couldn't believe that someone actually put down the Melancholia exchange between Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg in IMDb's memorable quotes section.
JUSTINE: The earth is evil. We don't need to grieve for it.
CLAIRE: What?
JUSTINE: Nobody will miss it.
CLAIRE: But where would Leo grow?
JUSTINE: All I know is, life on earth is evil.
CLAIRE: Then maybe life somewhere else.
JUSTINE: But there isn't.
CLAIRE: How do you know?
JUSTINE: Because I know things.
CLAIRE: Oh yes, you always imagined you did.
JUSTINE: I know we're alone.
CLAIRE: I don't think you know that at all.
JUSTINE: 678. The bean lottery. Nobody guessed the amount of beans in the bottle.
CLAIRE: No, that's right.
JUSTINE: But I know. 678.
CLAIRE:Well, perhaps. But what does that prove?
JUSTINE: That I know things. And when I say we're alone, we're alone. Life is only on earth, and not for long.
What differentiates the sequence in Love and Death from the one in Melancholia though (besides the humor that is) is that Allen's 1975 spoof of Russian literature actually has more significant things to say on the big philosophical issues than Melancholia does. The comedy holds deeper thoughts in its hilarious head than the emptiness of the Melancholia vacuum. Trust me: Rent Love and Death instead of this von Trier time-waster. You'll be better off.
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Labels: 10s, Diane Keaton, Dunst, John Hurt, K. Sutherland, Malick, Rampling, Remakes, Resnais, Scorsese, Von Sydow, von Trier, Woody
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Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Sun-baked noir drawn from a dime store novel
By Edward Copeland
As I watched After Dark, My Sweet again, in preparation for this 20th anniversary piece, I was struck once again by the melancholy that often hits people like myself who have spent much of their lives trying to
devour works in various fields of artistic endeavor. My readers realize my film obsession and my brief and expensive addiction to New York theater, as well as to various television shows. I've also tried to be a voracious reader, which I have been for most of my life except for frequent periods when severe headaches interfered. There simply isn't enough time in the day to watch and read (and listen: I like music too) and then write about them. I feel like Burgess Meredith in the classic Twilight Zone episode, though at least my eyesight is holding out so I don't have to worry about breaking my glasses after the bomb falls. Anyway, among the many regrets in my life is that I've never read any of the classic Jim Thompson pulp fiction novels, which enjoyed a resurgence in terms of film adaptations in the late 1980s and early 1990s of which James Foley's After Dark, My Sweet was the finest example. Even though my finances always hover in a precarious state and Thompson's books can't be bought for two bits anymore, after I rewatched the film, I did put out $7 to read the novel before sitting down to write this tribute. Of course, I had heard Thompson's words before because he'd also worked as a screenwriter, most notably on Stanley Kubrick's The Killing and Paths of Glory.What makes Foley's film work so well is its casting of Jason Patric in the lead role of former boxer and recent mental institution escapee Kid Collins. One difference between the novel and the movie: His first name in the
book is William, but the screenplay by Foley and Robert Redlin christens him Kevin, though it hardly matters since he's almost always referred to as Collins or, once he encounters the widow Fay Anderson (Rachel Ward), Collie. The book also describes him as blond, which the dark-haired Patric certainly is not. The movie, which like the novel, is narrated by Collins, doesn't make it clear what his problem is. Has he been punched a few too many times in the ring? Did guilt over killing another fighter in the ring set him off? Maybe he just has criminal tendencies, though at times he seems as gentle as Lennie in Of Mice and Men. Still, he's also prone to sudden rage that you don't want to find yourself on the receiving end of. On the first page of the novel, Collins shows the reader the classification card that has accompanied him through four mental institutions:William ("Kid") Collins: Blond, extremely handsome; very strong, agile. Mild criminal tendencies or none, according to environmental factors. Mild multiple neuroses (environmental) Psychosis, Korsakoff (no syndrome) induced by shock; aggravated by worry. Treatment: absolute rest, quiet, wholesome food and surroundings. Collins is amiable, polite, patient, but may be very dangerous if aroused...
Except for the name change and the updating of the time period, the film sticks fairly closely to the book. Both are narrated by Collins, except the book shows that he isn't the swiftest guy in the world in terms of mastery of the English language while some of the internal lines the film gives him come off as a bit too well-formed for the character. The novel also makes his motivations much clearer than the film which by leaving things out make some scenes seem like a cheat or purposely vague. In a way, the Collie of the film is even more of an unreliable narrator than the Collie of Thompson's novel.
Of course, noir purists might dismiss a story set in modern time and filmed in sun-drenched color (to match its southwestern locale, it even includes a nice score from Maurice Jarre, the great composer of Lawrence of Arabia), but it hits all the marks. Still, as good as Foley's film is, Patric holds the key to its success in his
portrayal of Collins. It's the best role of the talented actor's odd film career. Whether Collie has just been hit in the head one time too many or is just naturally mentally unbalanced (or perhaps he's smarter than we think and it's all a put on), Patric handles the turns of uncertainty in his part beautifully. The year following After Dark, My Sweet he had another good role opposite Jennifer Jason Leigh in Rush playing an undercover cop who becomes too involved in the drugs he is investigating, but that film and performance were overshadowed by Patric's tabloid fame as the man who broke up Julia Roberts and Kiefer Sutherland before they could wed. Given that Patric also is Jackie Gleason's grandson and the son of Jason Miller, Oscar-nominated actor for The Exorcist and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of That Championship Season, I can't help if all that attention has played a role in a purposeful obscurity. If so, it's a shame, because Patric has remarkable talent that's not seen nearly enough as it's on display in After Dark, My Sweet or in a handful of other films such as Your Friends and Neighbors.The plot's engine ignites simply enough. Collins steps off the hot road into a saloon to get a cold beer from a disinterested bartender named Bert (Rocky Giordani) while sitting further down the bar is an attractive woman whose name he'll learn is Fay (Ward). Collins, as is his habit, tends to ramble, but in a good-natured
way, telling about how he's lost track of his friend Jack Billingsley, but he's certain he'll wander in that bar at some point. Bert and Fay, recognizing that Collins may be a bit slow, have a bit of fun at the kid's expense, until it ceases to be fun for them anymore because Collins just won't shut up. Bert grabs the beer back before Collins can even finish it and tells him to get out. Collins insists that he hasn't done anything wrong: He's a veteran and just waiting on a friend. Bert doesn't care and reaches across the bar and grabs Collins' shirt. That's a mistake. Before you know it, Bert lies sprawled and Collins has hit the road again. He's surprised when Fay pulls up alongside him in her car, offering a ride. He thinks it's a scam and she'll take him back to the bar and the cops, but Fay insists that Bert is the last person who wants to be involved with the police. Reluctantly, Collins climbs in the vehicle and they drive to Fay's rundown plantation.At her place, Fay reveals to Collie that she's a widow (she doesn't need to reveal that she's an alcoholic; even someone as slow as Collins can figure that out) and offers him a trailer on her property as a residence. As the two are getting acquainted in the main house, a car pulls up and Fay rushes out to see the man, almost as if she wants to steer him clear of Collie. That doesn't last long. As Collie and Fay go out that night, the man stumbles upon them again. His name is Garrett Stoker (played with a wonderful sleaze quotient by Bruce Dern), but everyone knows him as Uncle Bud. Thompson's, i.e. Collins', description of Uncle Bud in the novel truly hits the mark in a delightful introductory sequence:
You meet guys like Uncle Bud — just over a drink or a cup of coffee — and you feel like you'veknown them all your life. They make you feel that way.
The first thing you know they're writing down your address and telephone number, and the next thing you know they're dropping around to see you or giving you a ring. Just being friendly, you understand. Not because they want anything, you understand. Sooner or later, of course, they want something; and when they do it's awfully hard to say no to them. No matter what it is.
Uncle Bud says he's a former police detective and, yes, he does want Collie for something: to be part of a scheme he's been trying to sell Fay on for several months: kidnapping the young son of a wealthy family and collecting a big ransom. Fay and Collie both humor Uncle Bud, but later at Fay's house, she tells him that Uncle Bud has been trying to find a third for his cockeyed plan for a long time and it would be in Collie's best interest to get as far away from both of them as fast as he can.
Collins takes Fay's advice and stops off at a diner, where he bring his own booze much to the counterman's anger (as well as his usual spiel about waiting for Jack Billingsley). The counterman asks him to at least go wait in an out-of-the-way booth so he won't get in trouble and Collins complies, though being slightly tipsy, he
stumbles into the booth of a man who turns out to be a doctor named Goldman (George Dickerson). The doctor recognizes the signs in Collins of someone who's been in a mental health facility and offers him some help. Collins refuses, though the doctor gives him his card anyway. Later, without any prospects, Collins looks up Doc Goldman, figuring he has nothing else to lose, so he might as well work some odd jobs and maybe find a nice place to stay for awhile. The doctor, who practices out of his home, is glad to see him and lets him do yard work in exchange for room and board. He tries to talk to Collins about his past and whether or not he needs to go back to an institution or, at the very least, quit boozing, but Collins isn't receptive to the idea. The biggest problem concerning Collins is that he can't get Fay out of his mind and he wonders if she's safe from Uncle Bud's plotting. His worry eventually leads him to flee again, back to Fay and getting himself neck deep in the kidnapping plan.
While After Dark, My Sweet exists at its core as a thriller and contains the many twists you'd expect, Foley's keeps his pacing loose, yet it never loses your attention. I'll spare you the details, in case you haven't seen the film or read the book, but it's riveting and suspenseful without building tension so taut it breaks. The one misstep I think Foley makes is an extended sex scene between Patric and Ward. It is important for a plot development, but the romp wastes too much screentime and almost brings the film to a halt. In the novel, Thompson accomplishes the same thing in a mere paragraph that's mostly allusion but the film's version goes on way too long. As Orson Welles once famously said, the two things that always look fake on film are praying and making love, and Foley certainly proves that adage with the length of the boinking here.
Still, that criticism is a minor one for an otherwise great film anchored by such a magnificent performance. Since I read the novel after having seen the film multiple times, it's hard to say which is better, though the book certainly makes things clearer and works more efficiently. Foley managed to come up with a more ambiguous ending than Thompson did and how often does that happen in a film? Not nearly enough anymore really, but 20 years ago it did and thank goodness that Foley cast an actor as talented as Jason Patric to pull it off. I just wish we got to see Patric put his gifts to use in worthy projects more often.
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Labels: 90s, Books, Burgess Meredith, Fiction, J.J. Leigh, Jim Thompson, Julia Roberts, K. Sutherland, Kubrick, Movie Tributes, Welles
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Wednesday, June 23, 2010
One Chance Out Between Two Worlds
By J.D.
The 1990s have become known as the age of irony for the horror genre. Self-reflexive humor, as epitomized by the Scream trilogy, replaced the outrageous splatstick of The Evil Dead movies during the 1980s. One of the few films that went against this trend was Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992). David Lynch’s film is not usually regarded as a horror film per se, but if looked at closely, does contain many conventions of the genre (i.e. the final girl against the malevolent monster). However, the veteran filmmaker pushes these rules as far as they can possibly be stretched. Kim Newman observed in his review for Sight and Sound magazine that Lynch’s movie “demonstrates just how tidy, conventional and domesticated the generic horror movie of the 1980s and 1990s has become.”
Fire Walk With Me was a prequel to Lynch’s critically lauded cult television show, Twin Peaks. Instead of resolving several storylines left hanging at the end of its brief run, the film immerses the viewer in a highly stylized, surreal world of backward-talking dwarfs and FBI agents trapped in otherworldly dimensions with its initial focus being the murder investigation of Teresa Banks (Pamela Gidley) followed by an emphasis on the last seven days of Laura Palmer’s (Sheryl Lee) life.
Right from the opening credits, Lynch establishes the film’s horror genre credentials. A television is set to an abstract, white noise image with ominous sounding music provided by Angelo Badalamenti playing over the soundtrack. An axe comes crashing through the TV followed immediately by a woman’s piercing scream. This opening sequence establishes the dark, foreboding mood that will permeate the entire movie.
Like the beginning of Mario Bava’s Bay of Blood (1971), the events of Fire Walk With Me are set in motion by the murder of a woman. Lynch also presents an inhospitable world: FBI agents Chet Desmond (Chris Isaak) and Sam Stanley (Kiefer Sutherland) investigate and encounter resistance every step of the way. They are given a cryptic briefing by their superior; they are forced to deal with a belligerent local sheriff and his deputy (when they ask for the dead girl’s ring, the sheriff replies, “We’ve got a phone. It has a little ring.”), and the locals offer little help (“I don’t know shit from shinola!”). By and large, the detectives are unable to figure out the identity of the killer.
The settings for both murders are in small towns. Twin Peaks, especially, is a particularly atmospheric setting with indications that something ominous lurks out in the woods. Laura Palmer not only meets her demise in the woods but an entry point into an otherworldly dimension for the killer resides in a grove of trees. Another jarring location is the Canadian road house that Laura and Donna visit with two men. This sequence is an intense audio-visual assault on the senses. The entire frame is saturated by a hellish red color scheme, punctuated by a pulsating white strobe light. Over the soundtrack is a deafening bass-heavy song with a rockabilly guitar twang cranked up so loud that the characters have to yell over top of it.
Laura Palmer is the final girl archetype but deeply flawed. It is an unflinching depiction of a woman consumed by drugs, sex and, most harrowingly and disturbingly of all, a victim of incest by her father (Ray Wise) under the guise of being possessed by a malevolent supernatural force known only as BOB (Frank Silva). Laura Palmer is arguably one of Lynch’s most complex and fully realized characterizations. She immerses herself in all of these vices, which distracts from the painful incestuous relationship with her father and BOB’s desire to possess her. The push and pull of these opposing forces are too much for her and this only increases her self-destructive impulses.
Sheryl Lee does an incredible job conveying Laura’s overwhelming sadness at the realization that the sweet girl she once was is rapidly disappearing and try as she might there is nothing she can do to stop it. Lee is able to show the different sides of her character. There is the confident, aggressive side that picks up strangers and has sex with them. There is the scared little girl that is dominated by her father. And there is the sweet high school girl whose reserves of inner strength — that she uses to fight off BOB — are gradually being depleted. It is an intricate portrayal that requires Lee to display a staggering range of emotion.
BOB is ostensibly the monster of the film. With his disheveled, unshaven look of a dirty drifter, he is the evil side of Leland and a frightening metaphor for the incestuous relationship between father and daughter. BOB is a demon of some sort, a serial killer who delights in taking on hosts, such as Leland, and using them as instruments of evil and to indulge in his appetites. Kim Newman observes that, “In the monster father figure of Leland/BOB, Lynch has a bogeyman who puts Craven’s Freddy Krueger to shame by bringing into the open incest, abuse and brutality which the Elm Street movies conceal behind MTV surrealism and flip wisecracks.”
There are some truly frightening and unsettling set pieces in Fire Walk With Me. Laura comes home for dinner and her father scolds her for not washing her hands. The scene goes from being one of typical domestic strife to one of unsettling horror when he starts questioning her about a necklace with an intensity that is not the sweet Leland Palmer we know and love from the TV series. It is an uncomfortable scene that is beautifully played by Ray Wise who never goes over the top with his performance. The next scene shows Leland getting ready for bed with a menacing look on his face — he is clearly under the thrall of BOB. Then, something happens. It is like something washes over him as his expression shifts to one of sadness and he starts to cry. BOB has left him temporarily and Leland is back in control again but with the knowledge of how badly he treated Laura at dinner. He goes into her room and tells her how much he loves her. It is a touching moment, one of love and compassion, in an otherwise bleak and cruel film. Wise does an incredible job at conveying the subtle shifts of personalities, from the menacing BOB to the sweet Leland and the inner turmoil that exists in his character.
There are little touches, such as the twisted wife (Grace Zabriskie) who is driven crazy by her evil husband a la Cry of the Banshee (1970) where an equally evil husband (played by Vincent Price) also drove his wife insane. There is the truly frightening moment where Laura goes to visit Harold Smith (Lenny Von Dohlen), a kindly shut-in to whom Laura delivers Meals on Wheels. She also confides in him and tries to convey the divided nature of herself and for a brief, startling moment, her evil nature makes itself visible to Harold, shocking both of them.
To this day, Fire Walk With Me remains Lynch’s most maligned and underappreciated film. Fans of the show missed the folksy humor but that is not what the film is about — it is Laura’s last dark days. By paring down many of these elements that made the show endearing to its fanbase, Lynch may have upset them but for fans of his feature film work, Fire Walk With Me is more consistent with their much darker tone. Once the film shifts focus to Laura’s descent into darkness, Lynch is relentless in his depiction of her downward spiral — one of the most harrowing depictions of a person coming apart at the seams. As a result, Fire Walk With Me is one of the best and truly terrifying horror films ever to come out of the 1990s.
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Labels: 90s, K. Sutherland, Lynch, Ray Wise, Television, Twin Peaks
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Saturday, May 29, 2010
Dennis Hopper (1936-2010)
How many odd turns can one man's life and career take? There's probably no limit, but Dennis Hopper, who died at 74 after a long battle with cancer, took a lot of them: From young actor of film and TV in the 1950s to counterculture icon of the 1960s and '70s (while adding director to his resume and still working with the likes of John Wayne); from nearly unemployable because of drugs to a career comeback in the mid-1980s before frequent returns to TV. On the side, he managed to find time to be a prolific photographer, painter and sculptor. His later years also brought the strangest twist for the hippie hero: he became a Republican. Still, it's his film and TV work that will be his legacy.
An interest in acting led Hopper to the fabled Actors Studio in New York where he studied under Lee Strasberg for five years. As was the case with many of the studio's actors, much of his early work was on 1950s television, but he made his film debut with friend and fellow student James Dean in 1955's Rebel Without a
Cause. He worked again with Dean in the last of Dean's three films, Giant, in 1956. Much of his early work both on television and on film was spent in westerns including 1957's Gunfight at the O.K. Corral as Billy Clanton opposite Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster. The same year, Hopper got to be an emperor, Napoleon no less, in Irwin Allen's The Story of Mankind. For the next several years, his work was restricted mainly to television, including The Twilight Zone and The Defenders. His first crossover toward the counterculture might have occurred in 1964, when he played the title role in an episode of Petticoat Junction titled "Bobbie Jo and the Beatnik." Hopper still did plenty of westerns, appearing opposite John Wayne for the first time in 1965's The Sons of Katie Elder. Two years later brought Hopper's first full-fledged entrance into the drug culture as far as movies were concerned as he co-starred with Peter Fonda in The Trip, which was directed by Roger Corman and written by Jack Nicholson. That same year, he appeared in Cool Hand Luke. In 1968, Hopper appeared in Clint Eastwood's Hang 'Em High.With 1969, Hopper embarked on his first directing project: starring with Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson in the counterculture classic Easy Rider. The same year, he also got to be one of the bad guys opposite Wayne's Rooster Cogburn in True Grit. Two years later, he starred and directed again (and provided the story) in The
Last Movie, which even featured an acting turn by director Samuel Fuller. Following a few other films, he became the second of many actors to put their stamp on Patricia Highsmith's famed serial killer Tom Ripley in Wim Wenders' 1977 The American Friend. During his days of heavy real life drug use, Hopper danced through the role of a photojournalist in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. Despite his out-of-control private life, Hopper still managed to snag roles, though nothing of real significance either on film or television, despite small roles for major directors such as Coppola's Rumble Fish, Sam Peckinpah's The Osterman Weekend and Robert Altman's O.C. and Stiggs. Then came 1986 and Hopper's huge comeback. Two roles brought him back on the radar and earned him respect. First, came what may end up being his most memorable role as Frank Booth in David Lynch's Blue Velvet. Booth was one of the most bizarre villains ever dreamed up for a movie, frightening and funny, prone to use nitrous oxide as he assaults the woman he's obsessed with and seldom producing a sentence without at least one use of the F word. The second film was far more conventional. Hoosiers, the tale of an Indiana high school basketball team, gave Hopper the role of an alcoholic assistant coach opposite Gene Hackman. Both movies were the stuff of Oscar buzz and come nomination day, Entertainment Tonight even set up cameras and watched with Hopper as the nominations were announced on TV. "They went with Hoosiers," he said as his name was announced. You could tell he was happy to be nominated but at the same time slightly disappointed that the Academy went with the safer choice. There was a third 1986 film, one which Hopper publicly disowned, but which I think he shouldn't be ashamed of. He gave an over-the-top turn in an over-the-top and absolutely great satire Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. He should be proud of the avenging Texas ranger, venturing through caves with mini-chainsaws in a holster while he sang, "Bringing in the Sheaves."After that, he worked steadily, though often as the broadest of villains. There were still textured performances to be found such as the hermit with the blowup doll in 1987's River's Edge. He got to be one of Theresa Russell's wealthy victims in Black Widow. In 1988, he returned to the director's chair with Colors, a police vs. gang drama starring Sean Penn and Robert Duvall. When Penn took his first try at directing, Hopper snagged a role in Penn's The Indian Runner. One of his most enjoyable later turns comes in the very
underrated 1990 film Flashback, where he played a long-on-the-lam '60s activist who is being taken back to jail by FBI agent Kiefer Sutherland. The movie is funny and full of fresh twists and deserves a better reputation than it has — hell, it deserves a reputation, period. In 1993, he was a truly busy man with a mix of good and goofy performances in films that ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. He was charming in the so-so Boiling Point, part of the solid ensemble in John Dahl's Red Rock West and the evil King Koopa in Super Mario Bros. His finest 1993 moment though came in a superb acting duet with Christopher Walken in the Quentin Tarantino-scripted, Tony Scott-directed True Romance, really the best part of the entire film.
Following the next year, he created another memorable screen villain in the surprise hit thriller Speed staring Keanu Reeves and boosting Sandra Bullock to stardom. His 1995 villain was not nearly something to be as proud of, but then neither was the movie as he got trapped in the Kevin Costner disaster
Waterworld. The next year, he got a smaller role as a bigwig in art in artist Julian Schnabel's directing debut, Basquiat. 1999 brought him parts in EdTV and the nearly forgotten Jesus' Son starring Billy Crudup. One of his last memorable villains came late in the run of the first season of television's 24, when the writers realized they had killed off all their villains too early and needed a big one to fill out the remaining hours in their first day. Hopper filled the part as Victor Drazen, a Serbian war criminal with a bad accent and a grudge against Jack Bauer. Most of his films after that were forgettable, though he did appear in another installment in George Romero's zombie series, Land of the Dead, a right-wing try at making a satire about a Michael Moore-type character called An American Carol, a short-lived TV series titled E-Ring and a part in a TV version of the movie Crash. Despite his late turn toward the GOP, Hopper did admit, as did many Republicans, that in the 2008 election that after voting for Bush twice, he was voting for Obama. During the long final months of his illness, Hopper did manage to make a public appearance March 26 looking very frail to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. According to IMDb, an unconfirmed report places him in a completed film and another one in post-production, so there may be some more Dennis Hopper to see. As prolific as he was though, I doubt anyone has seen all his work that's out there now. R.I.P. Mr. Hopper. In dreams, we walk, with you.
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Labels: Altman, Coppola, Corman, Duvall, Eastwood, Fuller, Hackman, James Dean, K. Douglas, K. Sutherland, Lancaster, Lynch, Nicholson, Obituary, Peckinpah, Sean Penn, T. Scott, Tarantino, Walken, Wayne
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Friday, December 02, 2005
From the Vault: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
Way back when, Donna Hayward confided to her mother about the kiss she shared with her recently deceased best friend's boyfriend. "I feel like I'm having the most beautiful dream and the most terrible nightmare, all at the same time," Donna told her mother, describing both her situation and the television series where her character resided. Now, Donna is played by a different actress and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me only contains the nightmare.
If you didn't like or watch Twin Peaks, you will hate — or, at the very least, be horribly confused by — David Lynch's movie prequel to the TV show covering the events that led up to Laura Palmer's murder. If you were a big fan of the series, you also will be disappointed, able to take comfort only in familiar associations and more apparent answers to the series' nagging mythological questions.
The film's lack of structure proves to be its biggest drawback. The first 37 minutes, by far the best part of the movie, recount the murder of Teresa Banks and its investigation by two FBI agents (Chris Isaak and Kiefer Sutherland). While this sequence eventually outwears its welcome as the audience waits to get to Twin Peaks, its tone most closely resembles the delicate balancing act that the TV show achieved.
Once the film does arrive in Twin Peaks, what little coherence the film had goes out the window as the movie transforms into Laura's one, long nightmare which will make little sense to the uninitiated and little difference to the show's fans. For the already converted, the disappointments come in many ways, including the absence of many of the series' best characters and the underuse of the ones who are present.
It's Laura's last week, but Josie, Ben Horne, Dr. Jacoby and others are nowhere to be found — and don't blink or you'll miss Peggy Lipton's brief appearance as Norma.
Another difficulty stems from the fact that the series fleshed out the final week of Laura's life fairly well and what we are watching seems like old news. The biggest problem for Peaks freaks though is the alarming number of continuity errors and inconsistencies between the film, the TV show and the spinoff books. Among them are:
1. The wonderful Ray Wise returns as Laura's possessed dad Leland Palmer, but the film's darkness masks all of Leland's positive qualities. In the series, the revelation that BOB dwelled in Leland and forced him to kill his daughter actually saddened the audience. In the film, none of the good side of Leland appears as he's portrayed as such a monster that it's inconceivable that authorities didn't nab him as the killer sooner. On the continuity side, Leland has flashbacks in the movie to his murder of Teresa Banks when BOB made it clear on the show that Leland knew nothing of his crimes until after BOB departed his body and Leland remembered all on his deathbed.
2. Mrs. Tremond and her magician grandson appear in the movie as if they met Laura for the first time during Laura's final week but her published diary shows her writing about them earlier than that.
3. Leo's T-shirt, a key plot point early in the series, was revealed to have been covered in blood belonging to Jacques Renault when Leo hit him with a beer bottle. In the film, it's Leland who hits Jacques and it appears impossible for Leo to have had his shirt stained with Jacques' blood.
4. The series referred to Bobby Briggs killing someone and the diary describes it in detail, but the depiction of the slaying in the film doesn't match the diary's account.
The inconsistencies and the film's subject matter, which basically is incest, makes me wonder whether Lynch really takes anything seriously. Fire Walk With Me, if it weren't for the existence of Dune, would be Lynch's weakest film by far and does little to quell discussions about his intentions. Aside from the criticisms, some things deserve praise.
Lynch creates some interesting images even though the production values look lower than the series'. Sheryl Lee's performance as Laura is good. She didn't impress on TV as Laura's lookalike cousin Maddie, but she scores here as fiction's most famous murder victim.
For those caught up in the Peaks lore, the film does toss them some juicy tidbits, such as explaining what the dancing dwarf really is and what happened to Agent Cooper following the series' unresolved cliffhanger. Beyond that, little remains to recommend.
Die-hard fans should probably see it, but don't get your hopes up. If you never cared in the first place, this isn't the place to start learning about the mysteries that dwell in the woods of the Pacific Northwest.
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Labels: 90s, K. Sutherland, Lynch, Ray Wise, Television, Twin Peaks
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