Thursday, September 15, 2011

 

After 40 years, I have far more
than just one thing to say about Columbo

"That's me — I'm paranoid. Every time I see a dead body, I think it's murder.…But that's me. I'd like to see everyone die of old age." — Lt. Columbo, "Étude in Black" (Season 2, Episode 1)


By Edward Copeland
Actually, television audiences met Lt. Columbo three times before his series debut 40 years ago on this date as part of the NBC Mystery Movie — and the first time he wasn't even played by Peter Falk. Though most who are old enough probably remember the series as part of a Sunday night rotation with NBC's other mystery series, McMillan & Wife and McCloud, the "wheel" actually started on Wednesday nights. The troika didn't move to Sunday until the second season. As far as the Columbo character goes, actor Bert Freed first played the cigar-chomping lieutenant in an episode of NBC's The Chevy Mystery Show , a summer anthology series hosted by Walter Slezak, that aired July 31, 1960, titled "Enough Rope." William Link and Richard Levinson, the creators of the Columbo character, adapted the teleplay from a story "Dear Corpus Delicti" that they published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine with Richard Carlson playing a murderous doctor. Two years later, the writers expanded the story into a stage play called Prescription: Murder which starred legendary Oscar-winning character actor Thomas Mitchell as Columbo with Joseph Cotten as the homicidal physician. By 1968, they decided to return Columbo to television with a movie version of Prescription: Murder. They sought Lee J. Cobb to play Columbo, but he was unavailable, but consider this frightening possibility: Their second choice was Bing Crosby. Fortunately, Bing's golf game proved more important to him than a television series and, though they thought he was too young for the part, Peter Falk won the role with Gene Barry playing the killer. They did a second TV movie, Ransom for a Dead Man, that aired in early 1971 with Lee Grant as the murderer (for which she received an Emmy nomination), and come that fall Columbo became a regular series as part of that mystery wheel and Falk's portrayal of the scruffy homicide detective with his junky car, tattered raincoat and ever-present cigar became an irreplaceable TV icon. In the first season episode "Lady in Waiting," a socialite mother (Jessie Royce Landis) arrives at her son's mansion after he's been shot to death and doesn't immediately recognize exactly who or what Lt. Columbo is. When he introduces himself as a police detective, she says, "I must say you hardly look the role." That may have been true, but no one but Peter Falk could have played the role any better.

I was too young to catch the early years in first run, but I remember how excited Henry Mancini's spooky theme music for The NBC Mystery Movie with the unknown figure waving a flashlight in all directions at whatever shows were in the rotation at the time followed by the announcer's booming voice announcing, "Tonight's episode —" It always punctured my balloon if he finished his statement with McMillan & Wife, McCloud or even Hec Ramsey. Thankfully, in this example, it is Columbo.


If you have never seen an episode of Columbo (and if that's the case, I must ask what the hell you've been doing with your life), you needn't worry that for a mystery series I'm being so carefree in identifying the various killers because what made Link & Levinson's creation (in this case the series, not the detective) so great was that you know from the outset who the murderer is. Spoiler alerts aren't necessary here because Columbo begins by showing the culprit plotting and carrying out his and her crime and Falk's intrepid homicide detective doesn't show up until later to play cat-and-mouse with the killer. In the first season, the movies (which, in essence, is what they were more than a series) ran 90 minutes with commercials while in later seasons they alternated between 90 minute and two hour installments. Sometimes, Columbo didn't turn up until as late as 30 minutes into the show. In the first episode when Columbo was a regularly scheduled series, "Murder By the Book," Falk's lieutenant first appears as a faint figure at the end of an office hallway as he approaches the wife (Rosemary Forsyth) of apparently kidnapped and possibly dead mystery writer Jim Ferris (Martin Milner), who is getting a drink from a water fountain. It's about 15 minutes into the story and the audience already knows that Ferris' soon-to-be-ex-writing partner Ken Franklin (Jack Cassidy) has lured Jim to his lakeside cabin, killed him and staged the entire kidnapping. Cassidy will be one of the show's favorite actors to cast as a killer: he'll play the villain two more times. Others in this rogues gallery include Robert Culp (three times as a murderer, once as the father of a murderer) and Patrick McGoohan (a killer four times, taking home Emmys for two of them; he also directed five episodes, one of which he wrote). It's also one of several Columbo mysteries that involve writers. Most interesting of all, the series premiere was written by the show's story editor at the time, Steven Bochco, who would go on to co-create Hill Street Blues, and was directed by a 24-year-old kid named Steven Spielberg.

Many directors whose names you'd recognize helmed a Columbo, though no one else who'd become a Spielberg. The other director who would probably go on to the most notable career would be Jonathan Demme, who directed an installment in its seventh season. Many known better for their acting gave it a try as well as some whose names might not ring a bell but who did direct some interesting features such as Jack Smight (No Way to Treat a Lady), Boris Sagal (The Omega Man), Richard Quine (My Sister Eileen, The Solid Gold Cadillac), Robert Butler (The Barefoot Executive, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes), Jeannot Szwarc (Somewhere in Time), Ted Post (Hang 'em High, Magnum Force) and James Frawley (The Muppet Movie). Other writers who would pass through included the prolific Stephen J. Cannell, Dean Hargrove, who went on to create or co-create The Father Dowling Mysteries and Matlock, and Larry Cohen who would go on to write and direct such quirky horror films as It's Alive and Q.

While the two previous made-for-TV movies had set the basic mold for what a Columbo mystery would be, it truly wasn't until it became a regular network fixture that Falk could really cut loose as the lieutenant and the show could become a comedy as much as it was about catching the bad guy. That's really why I think Tony Shalhoub's Monk gets compared to Columbo so often — it's not because Columbo has a mental disorder but because Columbo and Monk both emphasize comedic elements. In fact, Monk tends to be more dramatic than Columbo with Monk's underlying mourning for his murdered wife while Columbo just got funnier the longer it went on. "Murder By the Book" really sets the template for the entire series and even if you have no interest in Columbo, it's fascinating to watch just as one of Spielberg's earliest credits. "Murder By the Book" opens with the sound of typing (sigh…typewriters) while the visual shows a car driving down an L.A. street. We soon see that Milner's Jim Ferris busily types away. On the wall, (Homage to Rear Window or not? You decide.) are plaques, painting and photos charting the partnership of Ferris and Ken Franklin (Cassidy). As the typing continues to be the only sound, the car we're watching pulls into the building's garage and parks on the roof. A hand reaches inside the glove compartment and removes a gun. A man exits the car and shuts the door and we see it is Franklin whom Spielberg films at a low angle as credits continue. The director throughout the episode uses a lot more adventurous angles and quick cuts than I've seen from him in years, but he was young and trying to gain notice. Upstairs, something only a grammarian or a copy editor would notice — Ferris types a quote but places the period outside the quotation mark. It turns out the gun was a joke — it's not even loaded — and he's not wearing gloves. Franklin was just trying a good-natured ruse to show Ferris that there aren't any hard feelings about severing their partnership and asks him Jim to his lakeside cabin near San Diego to mark the end of a fruitful relationship. Ferris doesn't know that it also will mark the end of his life.

It's obvious why they would re-team Falk with an actor such as Jack Cassidy more than once because some performers' chemistry with Falk's Columbo reached a perfection that you expect came from a lab and since the interplay between the lieutenant and the killer drove the show, why not go back to a proven winner as they did with Cassidy, who would return in seasons 3 and 5. He might have appeared again if he hadn't fallen asleep with a lit cigarette and died in 1976, 10 months after his third Columbo aired. Cassidy excelled at what was the most common Columbo scenario — a villain who's not only a killer, but a snob. In most cases, class comes into play with the murderer always assuming he or she is smarter and better than that rumpled lieutenant, but no one plays dumb on purpose better than this detective so when he makes the case on the cultured killer, they inevitably are surprised that this little man in the tattered raincoat, always seeming to be forgetful and driving that Peugeot 403 convertible that looks as if it could crumble into a million pieces at any moment beat them. In "Murder By the Book," it takes 35 minutes for Columbo to say his first, "There is one more thing." The comic highlight, harbinger of many to come in the series, occurs as Ken Franklin is being interviewed by a magazine writer and her photographer tries to take photos of him while in the background Falk does some great slapstick as Columbo, juggles an armful of books, cigar stuck in his mouth, looking for a place to put the books down.

The second episode of its first season had another three-time killer, Robert Culp, as Brimmer, the head of a big private investigation agency hired by Ray Milland to find out if his much younger wife (Patricia Crowley) is cheating on him in "Death Lends a Hand," which won Columbo creators Levinson & Link the Emmy for outstanding writing in a drama series, the only writing Emmy the series ever received though it earned a lot of nominations in that category. Brimmer proves she did, but lies (with the wife in a nearby room) and says she's faithful. She asks why he would do such a thing. "Oddly enough, I'm a moralist," he tells her. So moral that he lied to her husband to hold the truth over her head so she can feed him information about her husband's powerful friends and business interests. She balks, saying she'll expose the private eye instead and he kills her in a rage — the cleanup and coverup of which gets wonderfully filmed as reflections in the lenses of Culp's glasses. He stages her death to look like she was robbed and dumped in a vacant lot. Some interesting facts about L.A. life in 1971: 187 already was the police code for a homicide and when Brimmer tries to woo Columbo to take a job at his agency, Columbo learns a top position there can pull in $30,000 a year. That doesn't seem like much and in the first episode of season two, Columbo says his salary is $11,000 a year, which is the start of the poverty line for a single person today and the oft-mentioned Mrs. Columbo is a housewife. When they tried to spin her off in the form of Kate Mulgrew when Columbo ended the first time in 1978, she had a part-time job writing for a weekly neighborhood newspaper, until they decided to change her name to Callahan and forget that she was supposed to be related to Columbo at all (though at the start of Mrs. Columbo she even took their unnamed basset hound Dog with her).

Falk won the first of his four Emmys (out of 11 nominations) for playing Columbo for that first season. The sole time the show won an Emmy for best series, it actually was shared ith the other NBC Mystery Movie members for outstanding limited series. Throughout its two runs (the original NBC run from 1971-78 and the ABC return from 1989-2003), it earned 38 Emmy nominations and won 11 awards. Because of the shared time slot, it also meant shorter seasons than a regular series. Where a normal network show would be producing around 26 episodes a year at that time, Columbo only had seven installments in season one. Some of the other actors who played killers that year were Eddie Albert, Ross Martin, Susan Clark (in "Lady in Waiting" which featured Leslie Nielsen when he could still play it straight and was directed by veteran actor Norman Lloyd, who fell off the Statue of Liberty in Hitchcock's Saboteur and would play Dr. Auschlander on St. Elsewhere), Patrick O'Neal, who played a homicidal architect in "Blueprint for Murder," the only Columbo episode that Falk directed himself, and perhaps most fun of all, Roddy McDowall in an episode titled "Short Fuse." Did you hear the one about the exploding cigar? You will in "Short Fuse," where we also learn aboute Columbo's famous fear of heights. Because McDowall's character Roger Stanford is a playboy and a prankster (oh — and there is that murder), he does fool around with things such as those cans that spray strings of sticky colored plastic. When Columbo snoops around his darkroom, he accidentally sets it off on himself and an entire scene consists of McDowall picking the goo out of Falk's hair.

As I mentioned when I sadly had to write my appreciation of Peter Falk when he passed away in late June, there was much more to the actor than just Lt. Columbo, as great and iconic as Columbo is. Between the time he made his first Columbo movie Prescription: Murder and prior to filming his second Ransom for a Dead Man and beginning the series, Falk began another important creative relationship — with John Cassavetes. The two actually had worked as actors in 1969 first in the Italian gangster flick Machine Gun McCain, which also featured Gena Rowlands but didn't open in the U.S. until October 1970. The important film they made together though was Husbands (subtitled A Comedy About Life, Death and Freedom) that was written and directed by Cassavetes and co-starred Ben Gazzara. Falk became a vital part of Cassavetes' unofficial repertory company appearing in A Woman Under the Influence, Opening Night (as himself) and Big Trouble. The two also co-starred in Elaine May's Mikey and Nicky. The Cassavetes troupe all played with Falk on Columbo in some capacity. Rowlands appeared as the wife of a killer, Gazzara directed two episodes and Cassavetes starred as the killer in the second season premiere, "Étude in Black," one of the series' best episodes thanks to chemistry these two fine actors already had with one another.

Cassavetes plays gifted conductor and composer Alex Benedict who kills his pianist mistress (Anjanette Comer) after she threatens to tell his wife Janice (Blythe Danner) about their affair if he doesn't leave her. Benedict tries to make it look like a suicide, but Columbo sees through the ruse rather quickly. He and Mrs. Columbo also are big fans of Benedict, who is prepping a big concert at the Hollywood Bowl. The scenes between Cassavetes and Falk prove positively electric as their relationship switches from a killer who thinks Columbo's swooning will save him until he figures out that the lieutenant actually has more on the ball than he ever suspected and he starts challenging the cop to find the evidence. The episode has time for laughs as well as Benedict stumbles upon Columbo waiting for him on stage at the Hollywood Bowl playing "Chopsticks" on a concert piano. The cast also includes Myrna Loy as his mother-in-law and patron of the orchestra, concerned over the P.R. when another member of the orchestra who was the murdered woman's ex-boyfriend turns out to have a criminal past. Benedict defends the musician, telling the woman who played Nora Charles that it's not like she didn't drink gin during Prohibition. This excellent episode was written by Bochco from a story by Levinson & Link and was directed by none other Nicholas Colasanto, best known as Coach on Cheers. This also is the episode where Columbo gets the basset hound that he never bothers to give a name.

For a network series to have more good episodes than bad, especially when it involves a set formula that they didn't tinker with much, Columbo truly stands as a monumental television achievement. Of course, I refer only to NBC years from 1971-1978. In a way, they had the luxury that cable series have now by not having to deliver so many episodes a year. While they call it seven seasons, it only adds up to 45 episodes. The sixth season only produced three episodes and no season made more than eight. In a way, it was the Curb Your Enthusiasm of mystery shows: A formula and a limited number of shows per season. When ABC revived Columbo in 1989, they tried originally to pair it with other mysteries, but they all eventually flopped and it just turned into occasional movies. Some were OK, but they had a hard time getting worthy killers except for the two appearances by McGoohan and had some silly outing where Columbo went undercover in disguise with accents and one where there wasn't even a murder but a kidnapping. Faye Dunaway won a guest actress Emmy for what really was a controversial one, "It's All in the Game," because Columbo purposely lets the killer get away because of the victim's loathsomeness. They had two seasons where they were regularly scheduled between 1989 and 1991 and then just TV movies. They made 24 in all.

However, those first 45, I could go on about them all. While it wasn't unusual in the NBC version to have killers who turned out to be more sympathetic than their victims, Columbo still took them to jail. Donald Pleasence's wine maker in "Any Old Port in a Storm" may be the best example. His playboy half-brother plans to sell the vineyards to another wine company, taking away his pride and joy and he kills him in a rage. He also was one of the few cultured characters who didn't look down on Columbo. When his longtime secretary (Julie Harris) figures out his guilt, she proposes he marry her to keep her quiet. Columbo solves the crime first and he gratefully confesses — finding prison preferable to marriage. "Freedom is purely relative," he tells Columbo, who brings out a special bottle of wine when he arrests him, which his high tastes approve. "You learn very well, lieutenant," he says. "Thank you, sir. That's about the nicest thing anyone has said to me," Columbo responds. All the Jack Cassidy episodes are great, but in the second outing, "Publish or Perish," it's neat to see him play a book publisher losing his biggest author and that they cast Mickey Spillane in the part. The episode also sends Columbo to Chasen's to interview some people and has the high-scale eatery whip him up some chili. Director Robert Butler also includes an imaginative triple split screen that shows Spillane's character at work dictating his book while the hired killer approaches down a hall and Cassidy is elsewhere, establishing his alibi. "Swan Song" from the third season proves to be another favorite of mine with probably the most unusual casting choice for a killer ever — Johnny Cash. He plays a gospel singer blackmailed by his controlling shrew of a wife (Ida Lupino) and turns in a solid acting performance. Cash's character drugs Lupino and a young girl singer that he had sex with when she was underage so he drugs the two of them when they are flying to the next concert site and bails out of the plane, making it look like a simple plane crash. As Columbo investigates, an air crash investigator asks Columbo if he flies. "My ears pop in an elevator. In fact, I don't even like being this tall," he replies. I can't leave out Patrick McGoohan, always great, but of his four I think his first episode, the one that got him the first Emmy, "By Dawn's Early Light," ranks first. His strict commandant at a boys' military academy would be a great performance on any series. Some of the best guest killers whose episodes I didn't have time or space to mention in detail (original 45 only): Anne Baxter, Leonard Nimoy, Laurence Harvey, Martin Landau (as twins), Vera Miles, Jackie Cooper, José Ferrer, Richard Kiley, Robert Conrad, Robert Vaughn, Janet Leigh, Hector Elizondo, Ricardo Montalban, William Shatner, Theodore Bikel, Ruth Gordon, Louis Jourdan and Nicol Williamson.

If I had to pick, the fourth season episode "Negative Reaction" might be my favorite Columbo of them all. Written by Peter S. Fischer, who would later create Murder, She Wrote and directed by Alf Kjelllin, it cast Dick Van Dyke against type as an asshole and a killer — even if what little we saw of his wife (Antoinette Bower) made it appear as if she had it coming. Van Dyke plays Paul Gallesko, an acclaimed photographer reduced to shooting portraits because he's under the thumb of his wife. He fakes her kidnapping and gets a recently released ex-con named Alvin Deschler (Don Gordon) he met while chronicling San Quentin to photograph possible houses for him to buy, unaware that Gallesko is setting him up to be the fall guy and eventually kills him and shoots himself in a faked ransom exchange gone awry. What makes "Negative Reaction" so great in addition to Van Dyke being a bad guy is that it also may be the funniest Columbo as well. When the lieutenant arrives in the beat-up Peugot at the junkyard where it was staged, he passes a sign that says "WE BUY JUNK CARS." It seems that Gallesko had an unexpected witness — a drunk bum played by character actor Vito Scotti who appeared in six episodes in vastly different parts. (In "Swan Song," he was a funeral director trying to sell Columbo on post-life planning.) After he gets sobered up and gives his statement, the police let him slip away and Columbo has to track him down at a Catholic mission where a nun (Joyce Van Patten, who will return in a later episode as a killer) mistakes Columbo as a homeless person and tries to find him a new coat and gets him a bowl of stew. Columbo keeps trying to explain that he's not homeless, but the nun replies, "No false pride between friends." When he finally finds the bum and talks with him, the nun returns with a coat and tries to take his and Columbo finally says, "I appreciate what you're doing ma'am, but I've had this coat for seven years and I'm very fond of it" and shows her his badge. The nun assumes he's undercover and compliments his disguise and promises not to blow his cover. Gallesko certainly isn't as friendly as the nun every time Columbo pops up to dig. "You're like a little shaggy-haired terrier. You've got a grip on my trousers and you won't let go. I can't turn around without you looking up at me with that blank innocent expression on your face," Gallesko growls. One of the other things that bothers Columbo is that Deschler was taking cabs everywhere until the last day, the day of the supposed ransom exchange, when he suddenly rented a car. It would have been a lot less expensive to rent a car earlier than taking all these cab rides, but then it dawns on the detective: He didn't have a driver's license yet. Columbo goes to the DMV to check it out and it turns out the man who gave him the driving test that day, Mr. Weekly (Larry Storch), is stuck out on a street because a car broke down. Columbo goes and picks him up to see if he can identify Deschler, but Mr. Weekly keeps being distracted over worries about the safety of Columbo's car and his reckless driving. It's a hysterical scene — and they chose to break for this bit of comedy with only 14 minutes left. On top of everything else, "Negative Reaction" contains one of those classic endings where Columbo tricks the killer by using his own arrogance against him to give himself away. That's why this YouTube clip of conductor Alex Benedict's parting words to Lt. Columbo sum him and his series up.


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



TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
# posted by Edward Copeland @ 9:00 AM 15 comments

Sunday, February 13, 2011

 

From the Vault: Ed Wood


Drawing inspiration from the passion of the "worst director of all time," Tim Burton has fashioned an entertaining biography of Ed Wood that evokes love of film better than anything since The Purple Rose of Cairo.

Wood gained his title by his unintentionally hilarious films of the '50s like Glen or Glenda?, which chronicled his own secret transvestism, and Plan 9 From Outer Space, the ultimate bad movie about an alien plot.
Burton, working from the script by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, embraces Wood's earnestness and treats his story with the same respect. While the laughs are nearly nonstop, they never come at the expense of Wood or his adopted family of eccentrics.

Johnny Depp stars as Wood. He disappears completely into the director's optimistic persona. Depp's infectious spirit energizes the whole film, even lending it legitimate pathos in Wood's relationship with the aging, morphine addicted Bela Lugosi.

Martin Landau doesn't just play Lugosi, he becomes Lugosi, thanks partly to Rick Baker's amazing makeup but mostly to Landau's consummate skill. He's funny and crude, pathetic and inspiring. Landau deserves this year's Oscar for best supporting actor.

There is also nice work by Sarah Jessica Parker as Wood's girlfriend as well as by Bill Murray, Jeffrey Jones and, in a late scene that sums up its ideas perfectly, Vincent D'Onofrio.

The essence of Ed Wood is the artistic impulse in everyone and though it's uncertain what guides Wood's passion for filmmaking, it's obvious that it's there and that maybe it should be enough. If only his films weren't so awful.

Burton pays homage to Wood's style of filmmaking by making his own film in glorious black and white cinematography by Stefan Czapsky. The technical credits, including Howard Shore's bouncy score, all hit their marks without being too showy.

Ed Wood succeeds as well as it does because it never looks down upon Wood and the people around him. It would be easy to sneer at the sheer badness of the movies Wood made, but this approach is smarter and, in the end, more satisfying. Despite being a tad overlong, Ed Wood is one of the best films of the year.

Ed Wood could have turned out to be a sad story. As the end credits inform the audience that Wood became an alcoholic and died at 53, Depp's beaming image smiles. They seem incongruous, but the film has exemplified the inexorable link between happiness and tragedy in the artistic process. It finds brilliance in the depths of mediocrity and should touch the heart and mind of any film lover.


Labels: , , , , ,



TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
# posted by Edward Copeland @ 9:02 AM 1 comments
 

From the Vault: Martin Landau


ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED OCT. 7, 1994
The first time the audience sees Martin Landau in Ed Wood, he's lying in a store's display coffin, complaining about its lack of elbow room. What's interesting is that if you didn't know in advance it was Landau playing Bela Lugosi, you might not recognize him at all.

Rick Baker's makeup transforms his features. With his real voice hidden by a Hungarian accent, Martin Landau the actor disappears and Lugosi, the long dead actor who played Dracula in 1931, comes vividly back to life.

The Lugosi of Ed Wood is not a happy one. He's in his 70s, debilitated not just by his age but by 20 years of morphine addiction. He's also out of work, an "ex-bogeyman" as he refers to himself, who finds work again, even if it is in the monumentally awful films of Edward D. Wood Jr.

While Landau's choice to play Lugosi was an inspired one that should hopefully land him his third Oscar nomination since 1988, the actor was surprised director Tim Burton chose him.
"I'm amazed that Tim thought of me. Well, in the sense that I'd never met Tim. I liked his work a lot ... He was one of those guys I said, 'Gee, I would like to work with that guy.' I got a call and he said, 'You are my first and only choice for this.'"

What Burton saw in Landau is clear from the performance he gives as Lugosi, whose relationship with Wood, played by Johnny Depp, is at the heart of the film.
"I met Johnny and loved him immediately. ... We became friends. Generation gaps — nonsense. I mean, Lugosi and Ed Wood, there was a lot of years between them. Johnny became — and is — my pal."

It's the rapport that develops between the two actors that deepens the movie.
"There is a sweetness in (the relationship between Wood and Lugosi), yet it's got layers ... It's an interesting relationship. You don't see that a lot in film. These are two guys who needed each other and they're two really weird, strange guys."

Landau credits his co-star for the screen relationship's success.
"I love an actor who comes in, ready to work. It's like a good tennis player. They hit the ball where you don't expect it and it's great."

Ed Wood marks the latest in a series of notable roles that have marked a resurgence in Landau's career. Following Tucker: The Man and His Dream in 1988 and Crimes and Misdemeanors in 1989, both of which earned him Oscar nominations, Landau finds himself more in demand than ever.
"The more complicated the character, the better I am. It's the one-dimensional crap that I had to do for years that drove me crazy. If you are in a meaningless, mindless movie playing a one-dimensional character, don't get too clever, because you're only going to dig a hole for yourself ... It's good writing and complicated stuff. When I got Tucker, and there had been a dearth of that stuff coming my way, I said, 'My God, this is a part.'"

He certainly welcomes the praise and Oscar buzz he's receiving for his work as Lugosi, saying it's much better than hearing nothing.
"I'd rather hear this talk than the alternative. I've walked off the stage and people have said, 'That was really great. You look really nice in that suit.' It's looks and feelings that you get. People never say, 'Jeez, you were awful."

In many interviews, Landau has referred to his work in Ed Wood as a love letter to Lugosi, with whom the 60-year-old Landau had a formative film experience.
"I saw (Lugosi) when I was a kid and he scared the life out of me. I literally didn't sleep for days."

The 63-year-old film's power hasn't diminished in Landau's mind.
"It was a revival of Dracula. I was maybe 8 or 9 years old and there was this incredible creature on the screen. Look at it again. It's startling, powerful."


Labels: , , , , ,



TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
# posted by Edward Copeland @ 9:00 AM 0 comments

Sunday, December 05, 2010

 

A person who don't look out for himself is too dumb to look out for anyone else


By Edward Copeland
The best films grow in your esteem over time and that is the case with The Grifters, which debuted 20 years ago today. I liked the movie when it debuted, but each time I've seen it since, again most recently, it just gets better and better.

As I mentioned two days ago when I reviewed this year's The Killer Inside Me, this remembrance of The Grifters is the third time this year I've written about a film adaptation of a Jim Thompson crime novel (the third being After Dark, My Sweet). What I've found most interesting in comparing the three films is the approach to what time period they set them in. All three of the novels were pretty much set in the same era that Thompson wrote them: roughly the late 1940s through the early 1960s. In the film After Dark, My Sweet, it was updated to modern times. The Killer Inside Me, the most faithful adaptation in all respects, was a period piece that took place in the same era as the novel. The Grifters, produced by Martin Scorsese and directed by Stephen Frears, takes the most unusual course of all by placing its tale in sort of a time limbo. The women dress as if they are in the 1940s, everyone drives cars that look like they're from the 1970s and John Cusack's character wears 1980s Armani suits and tries to pull off his initial short con at a Bennigans.

Then again, of the three Thompson novels I've read that were turned into films, The Grifters is the least faithful, even though the book is short. However, the changes make for a leaner, sleeker, better film. The nurse who appears fleetingly in the movie has a larger role in the novel and the movie makes no mention of the fact that Roy Dillon (Cusack) holds down a job as a salesman in addition to his part-time action as a hustler. They even changed the spelling of Annette Bening's character's first name from the novel's Moira to Myra. Still, the changes that the late screenwriter and crime novelist Donald Westlake made actually improves the film over the novel while the same cannot be said for the other two Thompson films I've discussed. There are a couple of weaknesses (and this may lead to spoilers for those who haven't seen the film or read the book). The novel makes a point early on of having Roy comment on the physical resemblance between his mother Lilly (Anjelica Huston) and Moira (height, hair color, body type, facial structure), but you can't really say that about Huston and Bening. Also, Lilly is supposed to look young enough to be Roy's sister since she had him at 14, but Huston does look old enough in her nearly white wig to have given birth to Cusack, even though she actually was the right age in real life for the character. These are minor criticisms though because the performers, Huston and Bening especially, are so superb that it doesn't matter.
"Grifters got an irresistible urge to beat a guy who's wise. There's nothing to whipping a fool. Fools are made to be whipped, but to take another pro, who knows you, who has his eye on you, now that's a score."


Mintz (Eddie Jones), the grifter who schooled Roy on some of the tricks of the trade, tells him that in a flashback explaining how Roy got his start taking suckers. It's those cons that unite the three principals of the story, though each has a different approach. Roy is a solo artist who does the quick hit. Myra, especially back when she had a partner (J.T. Walsh in flashbacks) before he went nuts, prefers the long con with the bigger payoff, where you work someone over a long period of time before you take him. Lilly is almost a professional, working for Bobo Justus (Pat Hingle, in a frightening performance) purposely placing large amounts of money on horses with long odds to bring those odds down before the start of a race. Of course, she's also taking discarded losing tickets here and there and grabbing some winnings for herself to keep in a stash hidden in a compartment in the trunk of her car. She just has to make sure Bobo doesn't find out. He's not a forgiving boss.

Westlake's streamlining of Thompson's novel makes for a truly efficient film, aided by Frears' direction and Elmer Bernstein's great score which seems to accelerate the momentum as it goes on. In the commentary, Frears gives Westlake the credit for introducing the three characters through the brilliant tri-screen opening that perfectly sets up where Roy, Lilly and Myra are at this stage in their various nefarious careers. Lilly is the pro. She know exactly what she is doing, how not to get noticed, either by the authorities or (at least she tries) the unforgiving Bobo. Roy, the youngest of the three, has become pretty good at what he does, but he's still strictly small time and sometimes has the misfortune of getting caught by would-be marks. Myra, who works well with a partner, is a bit at sea on her own and finds herself relying on sex more and more often to get what she wants, even if it means banging her landlord (Gailard Sartrain) because she needs to hang on to what little cash she still has (and the roof over her head) or putting the moves on a geeky jewelry store proprietor (Stephen Tobolowsky). What separates Myra from Roy and Lilly is she is the only one of the three who has an air of desperation about her, though she tries not to let it show.

Fate more or less brings these three into the same circle. Even though Lilly is Roy's mother, they've been estranged for years, though when Bobo, who is based out of Baltimore, assigns Lilly to California tracks, she decides to look Roy up in Los Angeles. Myra and Roy have been lovers for quite a while. In fact, for a long time during their relationship, Myra didn't even realize Roy was in on the grift until they took a train trip and she spied him taking a group of young sailors (again dressed outside of any discernible period) in a common dice con called the "tat." (Look close: one of those young sailors is Jeremy Piven.) After that, she's always trying to get Roy to join her as a partner in the long con, to re-create the glories of her past, but that's one lesson Mintz emphasized to him in his tutelage: Work alone. Myra keeps trying though, comparing her institutionalized ex-partner and Roy, "I kissed a motherfuckin' frog and you're my prince." When it turns out that a would-be mark injured Roy worse than he thought, Lilly takes over and gets him hospitalized, that's when she and Myra meet and take an instant dislike to one another. They are like jealous lovers fighting over a man.


Unfortunately, because Lilly's maternal instinct chose this time to reassert itself (She tells the doctor she finally gets to take her seriously that he knows who she works for and if Roy doesn't make it, she'll have him killed), she missed some races she needed to cover and cost Bobo some money and Bobo doesn't like to lose money. He makes a special trip to the coast to mete out punishment. Anyone who has ever seen the late Pat Hingle in his countless roles, be it as Commissioner Gordon in the Tim Burton Batman films or countless television appearances such as the original owner of Cheers who comes back and tends bar for a night, they won't be prepared for his malevolent Bobo Justus. The scene isn't quite as explicit as it is in the novel, but if you've read it, you know what Lilly is in store for when he asks her if she has a long coat to cover her dress. His abuse is equal parts physical and psychological, making Lilly wrap up oranges in a towel and having her explain what happens if people don't hit others with them correctly, causing her to stutter in fear, then faking her out and letting her off with just a cigar burn on her hand. Then, everything's back to normal and he's having a friendly conversation with her on the veranda, even joking with her about if she's stealing that much from him and acting as if he doesn't mind and she's going along with it — because she knows she got off easy. "A person who don't look out for himself is too dumb to look out for anyone else," she tells him with a nervous grin. Lilly may be the pro of the three main characters, but she always has to be looking over her shoulder. Her paranoia is well justified, given her employer.

As I mentioned in the review of The Killer Inside Me, Westlake says that Thompson belongs to America's second generation of crime novelist, following his forefathers such as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, only Thompson, based a lot on the life he actually lived, was far more nihilistic than either of the earlier writers. Thompson also had a source that Chandler and Hammett didn't, Westlake pointed out: the early movies and film noirs as wells as the novels. Thompson though was a true crime novelist. It's a mistake to place his works exclusively in the noir column. Granted, I've only read the three books and seen Coup de Torchon, Bertrand Tavernier's 1981 film that transferred Thompson's novel Pop. 1280 to a 1938 French colony in Africa. Of all those though, only After Dark, My Sweet comes close to the usual noir trappings, and even that's by the loosest definition of the term. Thompson didn't play by the numbers in anything he wrote. Even though The Grifters concerns con artists, unlike the innumerable films about the subject there aren't the twists, reversals or set-ups you'd expect. The usual con artist tale can't help but get you wrapped up in the fun of the scheme, but The Grifters isn't that type of story. It's dark and unsettling; a character study where you can't be certain where the characters will end up. In one of the extras on the DVD, Frears told Westlake and others repeat similar ideas: Thompson wrote a Greek tragedy for the underclass.

What keeps this from being a grim undertaking is its stellar cast. Annette Bening had a few films under her belt before she made The Grifters (including Postcards from the Edge the same year and Milos Forman's Valmont, ironically playing the role Glenn Close did in another version of the same story Frears directed as Dangerous Liaisons), but her performance as Myra might as well have been her debut because from the moment she slinks into the film, a star is born. Myra doesn't just seduce the various men in her path, but the camera as well. She's sexy, funny and moves like a cat, earning a well-deserved Oscar nomination for supporting actress in the process. That Bening, Diane Ladd's crazy turn in Wild at Heart and Lorraine Bracco's work in Goodfellas all lost to Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost can be labeled nothing short of ridiculous. She's really what keeps some lightness in the film. It's as if her performance actually skips along in tune to Bernstein's evocative score.

In contrast, though he was the youngest of the three leads, John Cusack was practically a veteran, having made his film debut in 1983 in Class. Still, The Grifters marked a real turning point in his career, showing that he could play a different type of adult role. Aside from being part of the ensemble in John Sayles' Eight Men Out and a small but significant part in Fat Man and Little Boy, his roles were almost exclusively in teen romances and comedies, ranging on a realism scale from Say Anything and The Sure Thing to farces such as One Crazy Summer, Better Off Dead and Tapeheads. He even had that minor part in Sixteen Candles. He'd played leads before, but not like The Grifters' Roy Dillon. He really has to anchor the film between the two women, being a convincing lover for Bening and an estranged but still caring son for Huston. Cusack pulls the role off perfectly. When the film reaches its climax and one of the women tries to pull off an unbelievable lie (and perhaps go even further to pull it off), he excels at the shock and torn feelings he has at the moment. In another scene, where he's called to make an identification and realizes it's not who it's supposed to be, he gives the perfect sly, small grin, just enough for the audience to catch, but out of reach of the authorities.

Which brings us to the magnificent Anjelica Huston. Five years after her father John directed her to an Oscar for her killer supporting performance as Maerose Prizzi in Prizzi's Honor and a year after she scored a second nomination for her delightful turn as one of Ron Silver's wives in Paul Mazursky's Enemies, A Love Story (the same year she played Martin Landau's mistress in Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors), Anjelica stepped up to lead with her stellar Lilly Dillon. She lost to Kathy Bates in Misery (a mistake in my opinion, not that Bates hasn't deserved the prize at other times), but Huston's Lilly is a wonder. She's a tough cookie but like most cookies, she can break. It's difficult to point out how great she is because she gets the toughest scenes to pull off but to describe them in detail, except in cases such as the Bobo scene, would be spoilers for those who haven't seen the film. In the vaguest terms possible, Lilly is a survivor and she will do whatever it takes to prevail. The ends always justify the means for her, even if they're accidental or emotionally destructive. As long as Lilly lives another day, she'll live with the consequences. The way Huston plays Lilly, she's hard to get a beat on except in those moments when her entire being is an open wound and her body completes her tasks by instinct. There's a shot in the film where Lilly takes the elevator in the hotel where Roy resides that makes it appear as if she's descending into Hell, at least that's what Frears says his intention was. I don't buy it. Lilly Dillon was born in Hell and has resided there her entire life. The Grifters, on the other hand, isn't remotely hellish as far as film experiences go. It just gets better with age.



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



TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
# posted by Edward Copeland @ 8:00 AM 2 comments

Sunday, November 28, 2010

 

From the Vault: Crimes and Misdemeanors


"Comedy is tragedy plus time," a character says in Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors which perfectly illustrates both dramatic subjects.

Crimes takes time to get into its rhythm, but the longer it goes on, the better it gets.

It has become almost a cliche to hear people complain about Woody's recent ventures into drama (September, Another Woman). They say, "We like his earlier, funny ones." They have missed the boat. Allen is as assured a writer-director of drama as he is of comedy, and this is just one of the many levels in which this film works.

Crimes and Misdemeanors tells two loosely connected stories. The dramatic one concerns an ophthalmologist (Martin Landau) who is being blackmailed by his jealous mistress (Anjelica Huston) who wants him to leave his wife (Claire Bloom). The comic one concerns a documentary filmmaker (Allen) who is forced into making a movie about his obnoxious, successful brother-in-law, a TV producer played by Alan Alda.

Allen is unhappily married and begins to fall for the documentary's producer (Mia Farrow). The twists of the stories are part of its enjoyment, so I won't delve any further. However, whereas Hannah and Her Sisters took his typical neurotic, God-doubting Jewish New Yorker and added a dash of optimism, Crimes goes the other direction.

This is a film of and about the 1980s. It is cynical and has a lot to say on all the topics Allen has specialized in for years — religion, relationships and success.

Religion is what binds the two otherwise unrelated stories together. Landau is treating Allen's other brother-in-law, an optimistic rabbi (Sam Waterston) who is slowly going blind. Waterston's character is, in a way, the most important character in the film, in keeping with the eyes motif established early on.

Landau and Allen both view the world as harsh and devoid of values while Waterston insists that there is a real moral structure out there involving forgiveness and a higher power. Waterston's blindness helps to show the film's message that in these times, a sin seems to be a sin only if you get caught.

Another strand of this philosophical approach is a professor that Woody's character wants to make a documentary about. The professor speaks of religious optimism and how a loving God is beyond man's capacity for reason. He talks about how love is a contradiction and life is painful but we need the pain. His words, and his later off-screen action, help lend the somewhat nihilistic view the film ultimately presents: that morality only exists for those who have it.

The film is full of great lines and great performances, something one expects from a Woody Allen film, but it also is the perfect fusion of Allen's filmic styles. There is Landau, discussing his problems with Waterston (in what may or may not be an imagined conversation) where he tells the rabbi that God is a luxury he can't afford. There is a virtual cascade of classic Woody lines such as "The last time I was inside a woman was when I visited the Statue of Liberty." It also contains some perfect casting choices: There's enough of a resemblance to believe that Landau and Jerry Orbach are indeed brothers.

There are the stylistic and story elements that stem from Allen's love of Ingmar Bergman. In fact, he even uses Bergman's frequent cinematographer, Sven Nykvist, and Nykvist contributes a golden, almost mildewy look to the proceedings. Technically, this is among Woody's best.

His direction has evolved over the years and fully complements his screenplay. Woody's character spends a lot of time taking his niece (Jenny Nichols) to old movies playing in revival houses: musicals, classic gangster flicks, the works. This contributes to the idea that, as much as Woody loves these films, he can't make them in this day and age. If you want happy endings, go to Hollywood. If you want reality, go to New York, especially if Woody Allen is your chauffeur.


Labels: , , , , , , ,



TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
# posted by Edward Copeland @ 9:00 AM 0 comments

Friday, July 17, 2009

 

“You gentlemen aren't REALLY trying to kill my son, are you?”


By Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
On this date in 1959, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released what many consider to be the quintessential thriller directed by the Master of Suspense, Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock. I say “quintessential” because if someone who had never seen a Hitchcock film approached me and asked for a recommendation, I would suggest North by Northwest (1959) without hesitation. I’ve been a fan of the director’s work since I can’t remember — but if I were to single out one film that I could watch over and over again and never — ever — tire of, Northwest would get the nod.

Are there better films in Hitchcock’s oeuvre than Northwest? Each of his films has their devotees. Vertigo (1958) is often advocated as the director’s most personal film (and by default, his best); I’ve also witnessed other vehicles such as Notorious (1946), Psycho (1960), The Birds (1963), Rear Window (1954), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Strangers on a Train (1951), etc. championed vociferously as well. Northwest is my favorite because it brings to a full boil all the essential elements present in his films: the “wrong man” on the run for a crime he did not commit; the icy-cold and blonde femme fatale who eventually rallies around the reluctant hero; the suave, debonair villain who is often more charming and attractive than the protagonist; the chaos that erupts from being bored in an otherwise orderly world; and the eventual plummet of the villain(s) from a great height, symbolizing a “fall from grace.” Even the celebrated MacGuffin — described as an item that moves the plot and motivates the characters, but is of little interest to the director (and the audience, by default) — is reduced to its lowest common denominator. When Roger O. Thornhill (the “hero” in the film, played by Cary Grant) asks “The Professor” (Leo G. Carroll) what the villainous Phillip Vandamm (James Mason) is trafficking in, he gets the response: “Oh…government secrets…” It’s like he read it off a grocery list.

The plot of North by Northwest is familiar to nearly all film buffs, but for the record (WARNING: spoilers ahead): An advertising man named Roger Thornhill finds himself mistaken for a government agent named “George Kaplan” and begins the adventure of a lifetime when goons employed by the chief villain (Vandamm) set out to terminate him with extreme prejudice — first by getting him drunk and placing him behind the wheel of an out-of-control car, then framing him for the murder of a U.N. diplomat. Fleeing from the authorities who want to question him about the murder, Thornhill decides to play the part of Kaplan and continue with the fictional agent’s itinerary. On board a train bound for Chicago, Roger makes the acquaintance of lovely Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), who helps him elude the long arm of the law and puts him in contact with the real Kaplan (who really doesn’t exist; “Kaplan” is merely a decoy to ward off suspicion from a counterspy who’s infiltrated the ranks of the enemy)—but all Roger gets for his trouble is another attempt on his life…this time from someone who shoots at him while flying a crop-duster over a deserted cornfield. Thornhill, realizing he’s being played for a sap, confronts Eve in her hotel room and when she steps out to keep an appointment, follows her to an auction house only to see her draped over the arm of Vandamm! It is that point that the U.S. Government (“FBI, CIA, ONI... we're all in the same alphabet soup”) steps in to help the hapless Thornhill, who learns to his relief that Eve is really the counterspy who’s infiltrated Vandamm’s inner circle. But he also finds out that she’s expected to keep up the deception…and having fallen for her in a big way, is determined to rescue her from her (since she’s unaware Vandamm and his boys are on to her) in one of the most famous chase climaxes in the history of cinema.

When you think back on Hitchcock’s 50-plus films, you can’t help but remember the famous “set pieces” that enthrall you while you’re watching any of his movies…and that create lasting impressions long after the film is finished. The shower murder in Psycho. The fall from the Statue of Liberty in Saboteur (1942). The fight on the carousel in Strangers on a Train; the Albert Hall assassination attempt in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956); the difficulty shown in taking a man’s life in Torn Curtain (1966) — these and so many more moments of suspense remain in the memory years and years afterward. Northwest is fortunate to contain two of the very best: the crop-dusting sequence (in which Hitchcock demonstrates how a man can be completely out in the open and still unable to find security as a biplane continually fires upon Thornhill in a brazen attempt to eliminate him) and a scramble down Mount Rushmore, as Roger and Eve desperately try to escape Vandamm’s thugs amidst the backdrop of the stone countenances of Washington, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and Lincoln (Hitchcock had originally wanted to call this film The Man in Lincoln’s Nose.)

In his film reference book Have You Seen…? critic David Thomson describes Northwest thusly:
You see, what I realized was that North by Northwest is only pretending to be a suspense thriller, an action-adventure picture or a road movie. It’s actually a screwball comedy — and one of our greatest. And I have reached a time in life where I’d rather have a great screwball comedy than a profound tragedy. After all, tragedy is all around us and screwball is something only the movies can do.

There are always moments of levity in Hitchcock’s work, but never more blatant than in Northwest, thanks to scribe Ernest Lehman (who, as Thomson remarks, “got himself into some awkward pictures, this must have been grace and reassurance”) and star Cary Grant, who brings the same sensibility of his Bringing Up Baby character David Huxley to the role of Thornhill in portraying a befuddled individual frantically trying to make sense of it all. There are so many great lines in this movie, but these are a few of my favorites:
TICKET AGENT (to Thornhill, who’s wearing sunglasses): Something wrong with your eyes?
THORNHILL: Yes, they’re sensitive to questions…

THORNHILL (to patrolmen in police car): Well, didn't you hear what I said? I want to be taken to police headquarters. I'm a dangerous assassin; I'm a mad killer on the loose…
DRIVER: You oughta be ashamed of yourself!

THORNHILL: Now you listen to me, I'm an advertising man, not a red herring. I've got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives and several bartenders that depend upon me, and I don't intend to disappoint them all by getting myself slightly killed.

But the one that tops them all is the title of this post, spoken by Thornhill’s mother Clara (Jessie Royce Landis) inside an elevator crammed with wall-to-wall humanity, two of which are stooges for Vandamm. I love how brilliantly this scene plays out: the entire population of the elevator car bursts out into laughter, with Landis — after first looking around with a quizzical “What-did-I-say?” expression — joins in the mirth shortly after. (There’s also Grant’s admonition: “In the world of advertising, there's no such thing as a lie…there's only the expedient exaggeration” — which I use every time I’m engaged in a phone conversation with a longtime friend who has a predilection for stretching the truth.)

In addition to these bon mots, Northwest contains some of the sexiest and suggestive innuendo I’ve ever heard outside a film noir or Samuel Fuller’s Forty Guns (1957):
THORNHILL: Tell me, why are you so good to me?
EVE: Shall I climb up and tell you why?

THORNHILL: When I was a little boy, I wouldn’t even let my mother undress me…
EVE: Well, you’re a big boy now…

EVE: I’m a big girl…
THORNHILL: Yeah…and in all the right places, too…

THORNHILL: Now, what can a man do with his clothes off for twenty minutes? Couldn't he have taken an hour?
EVE: You could always take a cold shower…

It’s not just the verbal banter between Roger and Eve that makes Northwest seductive and sexy — the entire film is riddled with suggestions of sex, from the short scene where an escaping Thornhill invades the hospital room of a female patient (she commands him to “Stop!” and then, after getting a closer look at how handsome he is, rephrases it in a plaintive wail: “Stopppp…”) to the gay campiness of Vandamm’s right-hand man Leonard (“Call it my woman’s intuition, if you will”). (If you’re still not convinced, the final shot of the movie will certainly drive the point home.)

The casting in this film is simply superb: Cary Grant plays…well, Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint was never more sultry and James Mason is in my opinion the perfect Hitchcock villain (even his name sounds like swearing: “Vandamm it!”). Add to this roster Landis, Carroll, Landau and character faves like Ed Binns, Edward Platt, Les Tremayne, Philip Coolidge, Josephine Hutchinson and Philip Ober…with that infectious, can’t-get-it-out-of-my-head “drunken tango” score by the incomparable Bernard Herrmann.

The very first time I saw North by Northwest, I was attending Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va., and film biographer Donald Spoto had paid a visit to the MU campus to promote his forthcoming book The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock. As luck would have it, I not only happened to have my copy of his reference book on Hitchcock’s films, The Art of Alfred Hitchcock, back at my dorm but was invited by a professor to attend a tête-à-tête to discuss Hitchcock with Spoto along with some other classmates…allowing me to get the book autographed. I was a bit nervous to ask any questions — and besides, the professor kind of monopolized the conversation in which we took part — but when I summoned up the courage to ask him to sign it, I also asked him if he thought we’d ever be able to see Rope (1948), Rear Window, The Trouble with Harry (1955), The Man Who Knew Too Much and Vertigo in circulation again (at the time, all of these films were being held back in some sort of legal limbo) he sadly remarked he didn’t think so. (I’ll bet it was one of the few times in his life when he was happy to have been proven wrong.)

Spoto had also agreed to give a lecture following a showing of Psycho that same evening, something that I was positively giddy about until I remembered I had promised my old college paisan Jeff Lane I’d do his Thursday evening shift at Marshall’s radio station, FM 88 — the Mighty Mule, as we often referred to it. Again, it was my day to think about buying a lotto ticket — I would be able to do the shift and get there just in time to see the conclusion and hear Spoto’s thoughts (I had by that time seen Psycho quite a few times, so I didn’t sweat missing the beginning) of the film. But during our earlier conversation, he told us students that he was bummed about not being able to see Northwest (which MU’s film committee had scheduled for three showings on Friday), which he considered a true Hitchcock picture — as for Rebecca (1940), slated for showing on Sunday afternoon and evening, he dismissed that as “a Selznick picture.” Having not ever seen Northwest (though familiar with some of the film, courtesy of a West Virginia Public Television showing of The Men Who Made the Movies: Alfred Hitchcock), I attended the Friday afternoon showing at 3 p.m.…and again at 7 p.m. …and again at 9:30 p.m. Twenty-five some years later, I still find myself moving “in a northwesterly direction” whenever TCM has it on its schedule…and I have a feeling I’ll be running from that crop-duster as long as I am able to draw a breath.


Labels: , , , , , , ,



TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
# posted by Ivan G Shreve Jr @ 9:15 AM 1 comments

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

 

Lead or supporting?

By Edward Copeland
It's a debate that's been going on almost from the moment the Academy Awards instituted the supporting acting categories in 1936. Most often, people get put in the "wrong" category for marketing purposes. For example, the producers of Ordinary People had to know in 1980 that Timothy Hutton was a long shot to win lead in a year with Robert De Niro's Jake La Motta in Raging Bull, so they followed the old young performer conceit and stuck him in supporting actor where he won. Here are some examples through the history of the Oscars where I though people were in the wrong category. At the Tony Awards the use the criteria (though it can be overturned) that if you are above the title you are a lead, if you are below you are featured. This had led to cases where Joel Grey got left out of a nomination for the Broadway revival of Chicago and when the same role can be featured some years and leads others (such as the King in The King & I and the M.C. in Cabaret. Feel free to agree or disagree or add your own.

1936: In the very first year, they really sort of messed up by putting Luise Rainer up as lead in The Great Ziegfeld. She won anyway.

1937: Even though Roland Young was as much a lead as Cary Grant and Constance Bennett in Topper, he got relegated to supporting actor where he lost.

1939: An insanely strong years for movies and performances, somehow Greer Garson made the cut as lead in Goodbye Mr. Chips when she shows up late in the film and disappears soon after.

1940: Walter Brennan won his third supporting actor Oscar in five years for his great performance in The Westerner, but he was as much a lead as Judge Roy Bean in that film as Gary Cooper was.

1944: The Oscars themselves got screwy this year nominated Barry Fitzgerald's turn in Going My Way in both the lead and the supporting categories. He won supporting and they changed the rules after that so the same performance couldn't pop up in both. In the same year, they relegated the great Claude Rains to supporting actor for his title role in Mr. Skeffington, where he is barely off screen for most of the movie.

1947: Many people argue over this one but I think that Edmund Gwenn's Santa Claus in Miracle on 34th Street is a lead, but he won in supporting.

1950: Some people think that Anne Baxter was supporting in All About Eve, but I think they were right to put both her and Bette Davis in lead.

1956: I think the great James Dean was clearly supporting in Giant and who knows — if they'd stuck him there, he might have won.

1958: Really the entire cast of Separate Tables was supporting, which made David Niven's win all the more ridiculous. The same year, it can also be argued that Shirley MacLaine was really supporting in Some Came Running, though she snagged her first lead nomination for it.

1959: Practically the entire field of best actress contenders could have been considered supporting. Only Doris Day and Audrey Hepburn were true leads. Neither Katharine Hepburn nor Elizabeth Taylor can really be called a lead in Suddenly Last Summer and that year's winner, Simone Signoret in A Room at the Top, is definitely supporting — though she is great.

1962: One of the first instances of sticking the young in supporting. Mary Badham's Scout is really the lead of To Kill a Mockingbird, but she got stuck in supporting with another arguable young lead — Patty Duke in The Miracle Worker.

1963: Patricia Neal deserved an Oscar for her work in Hud — but it should have been in supporting actress. There really is no question here — she's not a lead.

1967: Both Anne Bancroft's turn in The Graduate and Katharine Hepburn's in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner are arguably supporting turns.

1968: Ron Moody's delightful Fagin in Oliver! is yet another supporting role that sneaked in the lead field. In the same year, Gene Wilder's Leo Bloom in The Producers was on screen nearly as much as Zero Mostel's Max Bialystock, though he got stuck in supporting. When the musical version hit Broadway decades later, both Max and Leo were nominated as leads. When the musical was turned into a lame movie, Matthew Broderick's Leo was campaigned as supporting, to no avail.

1970: Again, they were reaching to fill out the lead actress slate and that's how Glenda Jackson got nominated there for Women in Love and won.

1972: Many people believe that Marlon Brando and Al Pacino are in the wrong categories for The Godfather, that Pacino is the true lead and Brando supporting. I go back and forth on what I think and I've never settled on a decision. That same year, Paul Winfield and Cicely Tyson were both nominated as leads for Sounder when young Kevin Hooks is the real star. Winfield is especially out of place, since he spends much of the film off-screen in prison.

1984: Haing S. Ngor won supporting actor for The Killing Fields, but I say he is a co-lead with Waterston, since the second half of the movie focuses on his character almost exclusively.

1988: Again, a young actor gets stuck in the supporting ghetto by virtue of his age. There can be no argument that Running on Empty was about River Phoenix's character, but he didn't get a shot at lead.

1989: To my eyes, Dead Poets Society is an ensemble about the kids and Robin Williams' teacher was supporting. The same year, I think a case can be made that Martin Landau was the lead of Crimes and Misdemeanors.

1991: We get to probably the most obvious of all cases of mistaken categorization: Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs. Hannibal Lecter is in the 2-hour film for less than 30 minutes, he doesn't enter right away and once he escapes, he's never heard from again until the film's coda. There is no doubt in my mind — Hopkins is supporting here and he should have won supporting.

1996: A less-argued case here, but one I feel strongly about. Frances McDormand should have been in supporting for Fargo. She doesn't enter the movie for 30 minutes and then she disappears for significant stretches. William H. Macy who was nominated for supporting actor actually has more screen time than McDormand. When you time it, the film is almost equally divided between McDormand, Macy and Steve Buscemi, so they are either all lead or all supporting in my book and I say supporting. Also in 1996, Geoffrey Rush's work in Shine is really more limited than you'd think for a lead performance. I've never timed it (because I didn't want to sit through it again) but I bet Noah Taylor has almost as much screen time as the younger David Helfgott.

2001: Another case where marketing trumpeted facts and Ethan Hawke got put in supporting actor for Training Day when he's in the movie before Denzel Washington and after him as well with no significant absences.

2002: A mess of issues involving The Hours, where there again is really no lead and it sure seems like the supporting-nominated Julianne Moore and the non-nominated Meryl Streep have as much if not more screen time than lead winner Nicole Kidman.

2004: One of the biggest miscategorizations and unnecessary nominations of all time: Jamie Foxx in Collateral. He's so clearly the lead in that movie, in it before and after Tom Cruise shows up. It's not like Foxx wasn't going to win lead for Ray, so this nomination boggles my mind.

2005: This year has one glaring questionable categorizations Is Jake Gyllenhaal any less a lead in Brokeback Mountain than Heath Ledger? I don't think so. Of course, I also think Gyllenhaal's work is noticeably weaker than Ledger's, but that's not part of this discussion.


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



TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
# posted by Edward Copeland @ 11:54 AM 13 comments

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

Follow edcopeland on Twitter

 Subscribe in a reader