Saturday, June 11, 2011
“Bueller...Bueller”
By Rhett Bartlett
An appreciation of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off must point out the irony that one of the greatest comedies in the 1980s was also the film that ended the long line of successful “teenage angst” movies.
Throughout the decade, films such as Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Pretty in Pink spoke to its generation about love, loss, and rebellion. But when Ferris Bueller’s Day Off hit the screens in 1986, it was an encapsulation of all three, set against the backdrop of the hatred of school, one of the few shared experiences most teenagers lived through.
And so since 1986 there has not been a single film that has come close to capturing the story of childhood friends rebelling against an establishment and their parents.
The success of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off can be pinpointed to several layers. On the surface, it is a very simple film. No special effects, explosions, or camera tricks — just a strong screenplay by John Hughes himself that brings the supporting cast into the spotlight.
Consider the minor but important role of Edie McClurg as Grace (secretary to Ed Rooney, Dean of Students), who only has two scenes but comes across as conniving, simple, and old-school. A suitable sidekick for Rooney, but a woman who has a revenge streak herself.
Then there’s the attendant at the garage where Ferris valets the expensive car that isn’t his. This brief but equally important scene in the screenplay shows that it’s not just Ferris who believes he is above the establishment — even the valet can break the laws (and in slow motion).
Ben Stein’s quick scene as the monotonic Economics teacher perfectly expresses the feelings that teenagers have towards their teachers. His lecture on “Voodoo Economics” and the repetitive “Bueller” roll call remain some of the best delivered lines from the 1980s.
And then there are the two unsuspecting parents. The determined-by-work father (Lyman Ward), who on several occasions almost figures out Ferris’s plot, but instantly dismisses it on the assumption that his son is too kind and committed to wag school, and the mother (Cindy Pickett), so concerned about her son’s health that it nearly leads her to the revelation that he’s taking the day off.
But the character of Ed Rooney (Jeffrey Jones), the suspicious, stubborn, determined dean on the case of Ferris Bueller, is what raises this film above others from that decade. Perfectly cast and perfectly acted, we almost forget that Rooney is the only character in the movie that is right. His suspicions of Ferris’s fake sick day are actually correct, but the joy in the screenplay comes from us hoping that he never finds out. There is nothing better than knowing you can continually upstage your dean.
I would be remiss not to mention the performance of Matthew Broderick. Ferris Bueller was his sixth acting performance, and one that he is still remembered for the most. At an Oscar tribute to the film’s late director John Hughes, Broderick admitted that not a day goes by where someone doesn’t go up to him and say, “Hey, Ferris.” Matthew encapsulates the cheekiness of the ’80s generation and the carefreeness that teenagers had before computers, the internet and social media. He even speaks directly to the camera: “I asked for a car, I got a computer. How’s that for being born under a bad sign?” Ferris doesn’t want to be stuck behind a computer or shackled to a school desk, he is longing for freedom so he can actually experience life as a teenager.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off couldn’t be remade for this generation. Social media devices within the plot would ruin the carefree spirit of the film. Ferris’s best moments are those that involve direct contact with other people — the baseball discussion with Cameron (Alan Ruck) during a game, the visit to the art gallery, his girlfriend greeting him in front of his school, those songs on the float. All have a realism attached; each of these messages is delivered face-to-face.
Yet the smartest moments in the film are when Ferris talks directly to the camera. Near the film’s beginning he outlines the ways you can pretend you’re sick to get out of going to school. There are even bullet points on the screen to articulate his point, and by the end of the scene, the teenage audience is on the side of Ferris without even knowing yet what he plans to do or who his antagonists are.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is a rare intersection in film history where the right script and the right casting meet to deliver a nostalgic snapshot of every teenager’s unfulfilled dream.
Rhett Bartlett blogs at Dial M for Movies and can be reached on Twitter at @dialmformovies. He also can be heard on ABC Radio 774am Drive Show in Melbourne, Australia, every Monday night from 5:30 p.m. local time.
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Labels: 80s, John Hughes, Matthew Broderick, Movie Tributes
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Wednesday, November 03, 2010
Back to Wine Country
By J.D.
Alexander Payne is part of an exciting new wave of filmmakers who grew up during the 1970s and were subsequently influenced by the movies from that era. His contemporaries include the likes of Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, and David O. Russell, to name but a few. And like his fellow filmmakers, Payne eschews the Hollywood trend of placing an emphasis on special effects and trendy actors in favor of character-driven, comedy-drama hybrids with character actors such as Laura Dern, Matthew Broderick and Kathy Bates.
Payne’s About Schmidt (2002) continued his fascination with American cinema in the ‘70s by featuring one its biggest (and most prolific) stars, Jack Nicholson. His next film, Sideways (2004), continued the road movie motif from Schmidt and combined it with the buddy film. Jack (Thomas Haden Church) is a failed actor about to be married. He decides to go on one last weekend of uninhibited fun with his best friend, Miles (Paul Giamatti), a school teacher and struggling author. They go on a wine-tasting tour through California’s Central Coast and squeeze in a bit of golfing as well.
Miles is an avid (nay-elitist) wine aficionado while Jack is completely ignorant of wine beyond what tastes good to him and what doesn’t. Miles is trying to get his book published with little success and he’s grown cynical and a bit defeated as a result. Initially, he comes off as an unlikable loser not above stealing money from his mother. Jack counters Miles’ repressed nature by coming off as something of an instinctive kind of person who indulges in his raging id. He was on a hit television show... 11 years ago and is now relegated to doing commercials. Along the way, Jack and Miles meet Maya (Virginia Madsen), a beautiful waitress who Miles knows from way back when, and Stephanie (Sandra Oh), who works at a winery and catches Jack’s eye.
Jack and Miles are complete messes as human beings. They lack direction and are hypocrites. Miles says he’s an author but his book is going nowhere, while Jack is getting married but hits on anything in a dress. They are hardly a sympathetic pair. And yet Payne is able to get a lot of comedic mileage from the pair. Miles is a wine snob who rambles on about the taste, color, and so on, only to have Jack sum up his opinion simply, “I like it,” which comically deflates Miles’ pontificating.
An interesting thing happens during the course of the film. At first, Miles starts off as an unsympathetic character while we warm up to Jack’s funny repartee as the charming rogue. Halfway through the film they flip roles and its Jack who is exposed as a pathetic womanizer and Miles becomes more sympathetic thanks to Maya’s influence. She humanizes him. Maya is easily Miles’ intellectual equal. She knows her wine and this clearly impresses Miles. She’s smart and beautiful so why is she even wasting her time with a sad sack like Miles? She gets to know him beyond his looks and liquefies the pretension of his character. Maya pierces his wine-speak armor that he throws up all the time with her easy-going nature and Miles realizes that he doesn’t need to constantly impress her. Like a fine wine, she allows him to breath and he gets better as time goes on. She’s a romantic who is able to cut through his cynicism and soften his hard edges.
Fresh off the success of American Splendor (2003), Paul Giamatti is one of those actors who makes it look so effortless as he inhabits the characters he plays so completely. Miles is a neurotic mess; a depressed cynic who is definitely a half glass empty kind of guy. Giamatti is able to tap into his character’s deep reservoir of pain and anger. In some ways, Miles is a variation of Giamatti’s take on the equally acerbic Harvey Pekar in Splendor. Ever since his stint on the short-lived T.V. sitcom Ned and Stacey, Thomas Haden Church has been an untapped resource and with Sideways he’s been given the role of his career. As Miles’ crass, philandering best friend, he plays Jack as a middle-age frat boy who still calls women, “chicks.” Haden Church’s dead-panned delivery of smart-ass lines works well against Giamatti’s uptight straight man. Together, they make an excellent team.
For years, Virginia Madsen has been biding her time in direct-to-video hell and so it is great to see her in a high profile role like this one. From The Hot Spot (1990) to Candyman (1992), she’s always been an interesting actress to watch and with Sideways, Madsen is given strong material to sink her teeth into and she delivers a nuanced performance. Sandra Oh has been quietly building a nice body of work over the years and has been unfairly overlooked in the numerous awards that have been lavished on the film. Granted, of the four main cast members, she has the least amount of screen time but she makes every moment she has count.
The men are idiots in Sideways and it is the women who are smart and truthful. The men lie, cheat and are forced to face the repercussions of their actions. This provides them with a chance at redemption as embodied in Miles who learns to loosen up and finally let someone new into his heart. Payne’s movie hearkens to classic character-driven movies, like Five Easy Pieces (1970) and King of Marvin Gardens (1972), by rejecting traditional mainstream tastes in favor of presenting unsympathetic characters and a conclusion that refuses to wrap things up neatly.
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Labels: 00s, Giamatti, K. Bates, Matthew Broderick, Nicholson, Payne, Wes Anderson
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Tuesday, July 20, 2010
The Godfather Part IV: The Farce
By Ali Arikan
One of the more esoteric behaviors of the male Homo Sapiens is his tendency, within minutes of being in the company of another male, to talk about The Godfather. It’s in our blood, and we can’t help it. Begin the sentence “If Clemenza can figure a way to have a weapon planted there for me,” and someone else will impulsively finish it: “Then I’ll kill ‘em both.” Just say the name Enzo (Gabriele Torrei), and the other person will recall not only his profession, but why he so desperately wanted to stay in NYC. Hum the first few notes from Nino Rota’s Love Theme, and our eyes will glaze over, like Michael’s (Al Pacino) in the third film, as he remembers his darling Apollonia (Simonetta Stefanelli), and the cruel fate that befell her and her pert little breasts. Sure, some might say this is not unique, and that Star Wars, This Is Spinal Tap and Jaws also inspire the same reaction. But The Godfather is different: in its unabashedly romantic portrayal of the most despicable form of capitalism, it speaks to men’s basest instincts: it’s OK to be a manipulative murderer as long as you’re loyal, a terribly uncomfortable and totally unflinching theme. We quote it, we mimic it, we laugh at it; and maybe we do so because of these qualities. The Godfather (the first film; though to a lesser extent the second, and the least the third) is the ultimate male wish-fulfillment fantasy: great power and no responsibility. It’s cinematic masturbation.
And, like both cinema and masturbation, The Godfather is a crucial part of civilization. We can question its morality, or lack thereof, but it would be unwise to fail to recognise its importance in popular culture. Apart from stimulating interminable quotathons and countless dreadful impressions, the film has shaped the way modern audiences enjoy a blockbuster, especially those as layered as Coppola’s masterpiece. One of the ways the film
managed to do this was, of course, through incredibly vivid characters (I might eat crow about this, but one of the reasons why I predict Avatar will all but disappear from the public consciousness in, say, 20 years is because it does not have one single interesting character). Even though the film’s cast had already enjoyed, or would soon achieve, varying degrees of greatness and fame, they became one and the same as the parts they played, which would stand apart from all the other characters in their filmographies. I like this observation by Roger Ebert: “All of the…roles are so successfully filled that a strange thing happened as I watched this restored 1997 version: Familiar as I am with Robert Duvall, when he first appeared on the screen I found myself thinking, ‘There's Tom Hagen.’” Ebert’s observation was perhaps most true of Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone. Of course, Brando arguably is the greatest of all screen actors, and between sweating through the Vietnam War and finding ever more ingenious ways of using butter, the ‘70s were probably the last decade in which his genius was allowed to fly free. Of course, if one felt inclined to stretch the metaphor, it was in the ‘70s that he soared so close to perfection that his hubris got the best of him in the ensuing decades, when he acted, and was perceived as, a parody of his former self. So, when Andrew Bergman approached him in the late ‘80s to reprise his most mannered performance in a spoof of The Godfather, he leapt at the chance to star in The Freshman as aging mobster Carmine Sabatini (a tip of the hat, surely, to Carmine Coppola). After The Freshman, 20 years old today, was finished, Brando famously denounced it, and then, a week later, retracted his statement. In hindsight, you could see that he was fucking with us, and that it was a part of his performance. Or he was batshit insane, which is an explanation I can also live with. There are two main
reasons why The Freshman works as well today as it did when it first came out, if not better: one major, the other minor. The first is, obviously, Brando, and his unrepentant self-mockery. In his eyes is the joy of revisiting an old character he relished, as well as the childish and naughty sense of fun. Brando was a true radical, and lampooning, arguably, his most famous character was right up his alley. Brando does not just stuff his face with Kleenex and lower his voice. Instead, he walks a very fine line between loving mimicry and grotesque travesty. At least 40 pounds heavier here than he was during The Godfather, he still has a bizarre grace, and, watching the film for the first time since Brando passed away, I found the infamous ice-skating scene terribly touching. These days, we laugh at him more than we appreciate his amazing talent, but, every now and then, it’s better to sit back and realize that, even in a film as fluffy as this, if he wanted to, the old man could bring it.
In fact, Marlon Brando doesn’t just ape Vito Corleone, he also pays homage to his own performance in The Godfather. When he is first introduced to Matthew Broderick’s character, Clark Kellogg, watch as Carmine says: “Just like the cereal.” Brando’s delivery is virtually the same as his “…read the funny papers” line in the garden from the earlier film. When he asks Clark to come to his house, the way he phrases the invitation and puts his arms round him is identical to a similar scene with the Godfather and Johnny Fontaine (Al Martino). Even the flickity-flick face scratch makes it in! These are all minor touches, sure, but they complete the illusion. This is arguably the very last film (apart from, perhaps, 1994’s Don Juan de Marco) where Brando doesn’t go through the motions.
The second reason is Bergman’s direction. Working from his own script, he fashions a wonderful sense of the world of The Godfather, and the film is always evocative, and never derivative. William A. Fraker’s cinematography and David Newman’s score pay tribute to Gordon Willis and Nino Rota and Carmine Coppola’s work respectively. Bergman has a solid cast (the late Paul Benedict is especially wonderful as an acerbic film professor), and what elevates the film from being a feature-length proto-Funny and Die sketch (aside: is it me or is pretty much everything on that site, what’s the word, shit?) is the masterful way Bergman’s direction weaves them into a fish-out-of-water comedy.
But that’s a pleasant side order next to the glorious main dish that is Brando’s performance (if I can’t use a food metaphor when talking about Brando, then the terrorists have already won). Both Marlon Brando and Don Vito Corleone have become such a huge part of the cultural establishment that it is impossible to imagine cinema, or, indeed, culture, without them. When he first walks into the working men’s club that Carmine uses as his office, Clark notices a portrait of Mussolini hanging on the wall. “The older ones like to have it up there for nostalgia,” Carmine says. “To remember the old times, the good and the bad.” The camera stays behind him and we see the portrait in the far back. On Sabatini’s desk, facing him, is a figurine of Dante Alighieri. In a single shot, we see one of history's most infamous dictators, one of its greatest poets, and one of its most celebrated actors. Don Corleone embodies everything they represent, mindless destruction and timeless art, and that's why he endures, even in the wake of such caustic parody. This is our culture. The good and the bad.
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Labels: 90s, Brando, Coppola, Duvall, Ebert, Matthew Broderick, Movie Tributes, Pacino, Star Wars
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Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Centennial Tributes: Frank Loesser
By Bill Russell
When I grow up, I want to be Frank Loesser. I love his songs and I love the shows many of them are from. They are just the kind I’d like to write — witty, accessible, fun, romantic, great for performers to sink their teeth into. I’m a lyricist. And a book-writer of musicals. Unlike Frank, I can’t imagine adding composer to those tasks. And for the sublime Most Happy Fella he wrote all three, as well as the Broadway musical Greenwillow (“Never Will I Marry” is from the latter).
Today is the 100th anniversary of his birth in NYC. Growing up in Spearfish in the Black Hills of South Dakota, there weren’t a lot of opportunities to see live musical theater, but Black Hills State, the college there, did a production of Guys and Dolls when I was in high school and I was transported. I’d heard some of the songs, probably on The Lawrence Welk Show which my parents forced me to watch — “Bushel and a Peck,” “If I Were a Bell.” But it wasn’t until I saw the production that I realized they were from a show. And “Adelaide’s Lament” absolutely killed me. It’s one of the great musical theater songs – hilarious and filled with character — and of course, catnip to performers.
Though I was familiar with and loved “Brotherhood of Man” and “I Believe in You,” I didn’t realize those songs were from a show until I saw the movie of How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying at Radio City Music Hall in 1967. Though this is mainly a film site, my perspective comes from musical theater. And the movies of Frank’s shows are not their most satisfying representations. Though it was kind of kicky seeing Brando, Sinatra and Jean Simmons in Guys and Dolls and fun to see Robert Morse re-create his Broadway triumph in How To Succeed.
I’m not sure when I realized that all of these songs I liked so much were penned by the same writer, but here’s an odd coincidence. In 1969, I took a semester off from college and worked in New York City. I went to an employment agency and I guess because I was a theater major, they sent me to Frank Music — Loesser’s publishing company. Unfortunately, he had died a few months before (in July from lung cancer). But they hired me for Music Theatre International, the licensing company he had started and which licensed his shows (and many others including The Fantasticks and Fiddler on the Roof). And one day at the office I met his second wife – Jo Sullivan, who starred in the original production of Most Happy Fella.
Apparently Mr. Loesser’s office Christmas parties were legendary. They were always at the Plaza Hotel (the ballroom, I think) and huge affairs — he invited many show biz friends, not just people who worked for the company. That year was the first Christmas party without Frank, so it was limited to those of us who worked in the office, but it was still at the Plaza (in a small private room) and oh so elegant — a tube of filet mignon sliced by a chef, beautiful flowers, copious drinks. I felt so lucky to have a little taste of that legacy.
I guess it wasn’t until the 1990s that my appreciation for Frank’s talents reached the full esteem in which I hold him today. That decade was rich in Broadway revivals of his work: Guys and Dolls (with Nathan Lane and Faith Prince) and The Most Happy Fella in 1992 and How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying in 1996 starring Matthew Broderick and featuring the then-unknown Megan Mullally. How To Succeed will return to Broadway in Spring 2011 with Daniel Radcliffe in the role of J. Pierrepont Finch.
The original productions of Guys and Dolls and How to Succeed were more or less showered with awards. Loesser won Tonys for the music and lyrics of both shows and was nominated for all three of his writing credits (book, music, lyrics) for Most Happy Fella. However, How to Succeed earned Loesser one honor unusual for authors or composers of musicals: the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. How to Succeed was only the third musical ever to receive the honor and only four more have won it since, the most recent being Next to Normal just this year.
The 1992 revival of The Most Happy Fella was a revelation. I didn’t know the show at all and this wonderful production, directed by Gerald Gutierrez, revealed all its treasures. The superb cast was accompanied by two pianos. I’ve yet to see a production with a full orchestra. But the richness of his music definitely came through in this version. And such heart! That score includes fun numbers like “Standing On the Corner” and “Big D” but “My Heart Is So Full of You” and “Joey, Joey, Joey” are the loveliest of ballads.
The range of his writing revealed in those three shows is quite remarkable — the lovable low-lifes of Guys and Dolls, the biting corporate satire of How To Succeed and the heartfelt, heart-breaking romance of Most Happy Fella. If you didn’t know those scores were by the same writer, I doubt you would jump to make the connection. They’re so distinctly different in style. Yet knowing they came from the same pen makes a certain sense – they’re united by their craft, their accessibility, their wit and their heart. Or should I say by their “Heart and Soul” — another big Loesser hit written for the movie A Song is Born (he only penned the lyrics for that one). He had a very successful movie career – writing such standards as “On a Slow Boat to China,” “Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year” and “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” and receiving five Oscar nominations.
Has there ever been a better duet than “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”?! Frank had written it in 1944 for a housewarming party with his first wife, Lynn. Apparently, they often performed it at parties. He later included it in the film Neptune’s Daughter (1949) and deservedly won the Oscar.
According to his daughter, Susan, Mr. Loesser didn’t care about what posterity might think of him, he wrote for his peers and the particular moment. But his work will undoubtedly endure because it brings audiences such joy. From what I’ve read and heard I gather Frank was a lot of fun to know. I only wish I had. But reveling in his music, his lyrics, his classic Broadway shows, I sort of feel like I do.
Bill Russell received 1998 Tony nominations for his book and lyrics for the Tony-nominated best musical Side Show about the famed conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton. His latest musical, with composer Peter Melnick, is called The Last Smoker in America.
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Labels: Awards, Brando, Frank Loesser, Jean Simmons, Matthew Broderick, Musicals, Oscars, Sinatra, Theater
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Tuesday, April 20, 2010
NY theater flashbacks: 1995
By Edward Copeland
It took me a year to get around to writing my second installment of my New York theater memories (if you missed the 1994 installment, click here). Of course many things have interfered in the interim and, quite honestly, the second installment doesn't contain shows that generated the excitement in me as a novice N.Y. theatergoer as the ones I saw in 1994 did. Still, I want all the years chronicled and as they go forward, the titles will become somewhat of a misnomer as well as they are identified by year but they really cover season, which always are split years in Broadway parlance. The first two outings just happened to actually occur in the post title years.
ARCADIA
Tom Stoppard is one of the most clever, cerebral playwrights working today and sometimes that can be a hindrance. It had been so long since I'd seen this play, I was fortunate that the Playbill had some notes to give me a vague idea of its subject matter which spanned time periods and concerned itself with geometry and styles of English garden landscaping. I do remember the cast, who all did a good job with the very dense subject matter, and included Blair Brown, Paul Giamatti, Robert Sean Leonard and the play's standout, a relative newcomer on the scene named Billy Crudup. Even with the help of the notes though, my memories are but a fog beyond Crudup and Jennifer Dundas and the fact that my seats in the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center were directly behind the late Garson Kanin and his wife Marian Seldes, whom I'd seen the year before in Edward Albee's Three Tall Women.
HAMLET
Shakespeare's great play lured Ralph Fiennes to Broadway and he picked up a much-deserved Tony for his effort. For me at least, it's damn hard to screw up Hamlet (though Kenneth Branagh tried with some of his stunt casting in his uncut film version). Admittedly, this Broadway production was the first time I'd ever seen the play staged and, as one would expect, cuts were made which I'm sure set purists' hair on fire. However, Fiennes' work was a wonder to me. Far too often, it seems to me that when people perform the Bard, they speak too deliberately, as if they are afraid the poetry will shatter in their mouths if they act too much. For the first time, Fiennes' Hamlet seemed to me as if he were spontaneously thinking the things he was saying, not just regurgitating memorized text. You can fake that on film sometimes, but in a live production, you can't and I was very impressed, even if the rest of the production didn't quite live up to Fiennes' standard.
HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING
When I was in elementary school, my first contact with Frank Loesser's musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying was the movie version with Robert Morse repeating his Tony Award-winning Broadway
role as J. Pierrepont Finch and I loved it. I'd seen it many times since, so I was anxious to see a stage version. Matthew Broderick now had the Morse role and Megan Mullally, who was new to me last year in the lame revival of Grease with Rosie O'Donnell, had the role of Rosemary that Michele Lee played in the film. For added fun, the narration of the book that gives the musical its title was recorded by none other than Walter Cronkite. The entire cast proved to be a blast from Victoria Clark as Smitty and Jeff Blumenkrantz as Bud Frump to Ron Carroll as J.B. Biggley and Jonathan Freeman as Bert Bratt. Plus, it's a show that's so entertaining with so many great songs by Loesser, that it's nearly impossible for someone to undermine it too badly, even though I thought Broderick mugged a little too much and his singing voice did leave something to be desired. The showstopper turned out to be a surprise when Lillias White, playing the secretary Miss Jones, really belted out her part of "The Brotherhood of Man" and brought the house down, despite it being a number that involved the entire company. On the celebrity sighting side, seated directly in the row behind me in the Richard Rodgers Theatre were Meat Loaf, his wife and his (I'm guessing) teenage daughter.
LOVE! VALOUR! COMPASSION!
Terrence McNally's play about a group of gay men who gather together during three separate holiday weekends at a remote lake house about two hours outside of Manhattan won the Tony for best play. It's not a
bad play, but it did have the misfortune, in my mind, of following on the heels of the epic two-part Angels in America. Love! Valour! Compassion even played in the same theater that Angels did, the Walter Kerr, and its director was Joe Mantello, one of the Tony-nominated actors from Angels in America. As I mentioned in my 1994 theater flashback, Angels remains my greatest Broadway experience, so returning to the same theater and, though McNally's play's ambitions were nowhere near that of Tony Kushner's, it couldn't help but feel as if I were watching Neil Simon opening a comic take on The Seagull the week after Chekhov opened his original. Granted, McNally's play leans toward the comic, but it has its serious moments as well and it really was only the strength of its cast that lifted it for me. Justin Kirk was very good as the blind member of the group and Anthony Heald did a very good job in the role that Stephen Spinella had originally played when the show began off-Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club. By the time I saw the show, Nathan Lane had left the show and been replaced by Mario Cantone, probably still best known for his work on HBO's Sex and the City as Anthony, Charlotte's wedding planner friend. I wasn't familiar with his work at the time and it seemed to me that Cantone was trying too hard to do a Nathan Lane impression. The show's standout (for which he deservedly won a Tony) was John Glover in the role of twin brothers, one a bitter man, the other a sweetheart dying of AIDS. It was a wonder to see him pull off a scene with himself when he's doing it live. He was even more impressive in the film version when you saw how he modulated the characters for the new medium and was still just as great.
SUNSET BOULEVARD
Glenn Close owes me tickets to The Late Show With David Letterman. Let me explain. At this point, my Broadway obsession had grown beyond reason. Ignoring the fact that I disliked pretty much all things Andrew Lloyd Webber and that every instinct in my body told me that a musical made out of Billy Wilder's classic film,
one of my 10 favorite movies of all time, was a bad idea and sacrilegious, when they opened up ticket orders, which had to be done by mail, I sent one in. The minute I received my ticket and knew the date, knowing Letterman tickets also were hard to get, I wrote off for tickets to his show for that same time period and I got them. Then damn Glenn Close decided to take a vacation for that week. If I was spending that kind of money to see the damn show, I better see her, so I canceled my tickets and asked for replacement ones. Not only did that mean I lost my chance to see Letterman live, the replacement ticket they sent me was for summer, once Betty Buckley had replaced her as Norma in the show. To make matters worse, George Hearn also was gone and I had to sit through the god-awful show as well. At the time, I used to frequent the Playbill chat room on AOL and there would be endless debates about "Who was the best Norma?" Glenn Close? Patti LuPone? Faye Dunaway? Karen Mason? Betty Buckley? Screw them all. The best Norma still is and always will be Gloria Swanson. As far as the musical goes, have you ever seen the classic Simpsons episode "A Streetcar Named Marge?" That's what I couldn't get out of my mind because a lot of the lyrics were like that, trying to incorporate the film's classic lines into songs. She's still big/it's the pictures that got small. As for Buckley as Norma, all she really played was the vulnerability. You didn't get any sense of the manipulator, let alone the psycho. An impressive staircase does not a show make. What a waste.
SHOW BOAT
Widely considered the first modern American musical, Show Boat has long been a mainstay of musical theater since 1927 with its book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein but music by Jerome Kern prior to his more famous
pairing with Richard Rodgers. While I was more than familiar with the many famous songs from the show, I'd never seen it staged and hadn't even seen a film version. When I read that director Hal Prince had done some tinkering with the book to modernize it even further, I guess I was thinking even more broadly than anyone else. With the character of Julie (well-played by Lonette McKee), a light-skinned African-American passing for white, I kept expecting the revelation that Cap'n Andy, the owner of the title Show Boat, would turn out to be her father, but the show wasn't that far ahead of its time. Staged in the cavern that is the Gershwin Theatre, the talented cast did their best to overcome the hurdles of such a mammoth room. Unfortunately, Prince directs the show as if he wants to make sure you know it has a director. It always was busy to the point that you weren't sure where to look. Some of the montages to cover the passage of time truly were impressive, but much of it was just too frenetic so it was a relief when it slowed down and allowed its cast to sing its great songs. It also was no way to use the unique talent that is Elaine Stritch. In another celebrity sighting, the still alive-and-kicking (then anyway) Sylvia Sidney was in the audience.
THE HEIRESS
Who would think that the most satisfying theater experience I would have in this series of flashbacks would come in the revival of a 1947 play based on an 1880 Henry James novel and best known for its 1949 film
version, but that was indeed the case in 1995. Granted, a great deal of the credit for how wonderful a night of theater The Heiress turned out to be belongs to Cherry Jones in the title role, but the entire cast shone and the play held up well. Jones won a Tony for her work as did Frances Sternhagen as her aunt and both prizes were very much deserved in this Lincoln Center production that played at the Cort Theatre and also starred Donald Moffat and Michael Cumpsty. Praise needs to be given to Gerald Gutierrez's inspired direction as well. (He also won a Tony for his work, a prize he'd win again the following year for an even greater revival.) It seems funny that when I think of Jones, this is what I think of first while nowadays, what first comes to mind for most people is the president on TV's 24. If they'd seen Jones here, that wouldn't be the case. She'd make them forget Olivia de Havilland as well: Her work as the targeted spinster was that strong; it's forever seared in my memory. As for Sternhagen, as great as she was in the play, part of her was still Cliff's mom on Cheers to me, with some left over as Charlotte's awful mother-in-law Bunny on Sex and the City.
SYLVIA
The final play I took in for 1995 (or at least 1995 as far as this piece goes) was my only visit to off-Broadway for this year and it was a trip to the Manhattan Theatre Club at City Center to see A.R. Gurney's comedy about a romantic triangle between a husband (John Cunningham), his wife (Mariette Hartley) and his dog (Sarah Jessica Parker). Yes, Parker played a dog and this would seem, even if I were mean-spirited, an appropriate place to insert some sort of South Park joke. The play was very funny and Parker did play the bitch very well and you would think the gimmick of an actress pretending to be a dog would grow old after awhile, but Gurney and the rest of the cast managed to make it work for the entire evening. That doesn't mean Sylvia isn't a lightweight play, but I've certainly had worse nights at the theater. The real find of the evening though and the show's highlight was the least well-known member of the cast: Derek Smith. Smith played three roles, two of which were women, and he was an absolute riot. I would later to get to see him in other plays and it wasn't a fluke: Smith was a true comic acting find. Overall, my theatergoing experiences certainly were a letdown compared to 1994, but it didn't dim my enthusiasm. What's more, I was still traveling to New York from the middle of the country, which cut down on what I could see. However in the next year, I would move to Florida during the 1995-96 season, making N.Y. jaunts much easier, much more frequent and begin to spiral out of control. Hopefully, it won't take me a year to write about that year.
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It took me a year to get around to writing my second installment of my New York theater memories (if you missed the 1994 installment, click here). Of course many things have interfered in the interim and, quite honestly, the second installment doesn't contain shows that generated the excitement in me as a novice N.Y. theatergoer as the ones I saw in 1994 did. Still, I want all the years chronicled and as they go forward, the titles will become somewhat of a misnomer as well as they are identified by year but they really cover season, which always are split years in Broadway parlance. The first two outings just happened to actually occur in the post title years.
Tom Stoppard is one of the most clever, cerebral playwrights working today and sometimes that can be a hindrance. It had been so long since I'd seen this play, I was fortunate that the Playbill had some notes to give me a vague idea of its subject matter which spanned time periods and concerned itself with geometry and styles of English garden landscaping. I do remember the cast, who all did a good job with the very dense subject matter, and included Blair Brown, Paul Giamatti, Robert Sean Leonard and the play's standout, a relative newcomer on the scene named Billy Crudup. Even with the help of the notes though, my memories are but a fog beyond Crudup and Jennifer Dundas and the fact that my seats in the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center were directly behind the late Garson Kanin and his wife Marian Seldes, whom I'd seen the year before in Edward Albee's Three Tall Women.
Shakespeare's great play lured Ralph Fiennes to Broadway and he picked up a much-deserved Tony for his effort. For me at least, it's damn hard to screw up Hamlet (though Kenneth Branagh tried with some of his stunt casting in his uncut film version). Admittedly, this Broadway production was the first time I'd ever seen the play staged and, as one would expect, cuts were made which I'm sure set purists' hair on fire. However, Fiennes' work was a wonder to me. Far too often, it seems to me that when people perform the Bard, they speak too deliberately, as if they are afraid the poetry will shatter in their mouths if they act too much. For the first time, Fiennes' Hamlet seemed to me as if he were spontaneously thinking the things he was saying, not just regurgitating memorized text. You can fake that on film sometimes, but in a live production, you can't and I was very impressed, even if the rest of the production didn't quite live up to Fiennes' standard.
When I was in elementary school, my first contact with Frank Loesser's musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying was the movie version with Robert Morse repeating his Tony Award-winning Broadway
role as J. Pierrepont Finch and I loved it. I'd seen it many times since, so I was anxious to see a stage version. Matthew Broderick now had the Morse role and Megan Mullally, who was new to me last year in the lame revival of Grease with Rosie O'Donnell, had the role of Rosemary that Michele Lee played in the film. For added fun, the narration of the book that gives the musical its title was recorded by none other than Walter Cronkite. The entire cast proved to be a blast from Victoria Clark as Smitty and Jeff Blumenkrantz as Bud Frump to Ron Carroll as J.B. Biggley and Jonathan Freeman as Bert Bratt. Plus, it's a show that's so entertaining with so many great songs by Loesser, that it's nearly impossible for someone to undermine it too badly, even though I thought Broderick mugged a little too much and his singing voice did leave something to be desired. The showstopper turned out to be a surprise when Lillias White, playing the secretary Miss Jones, really belted out her part of "The Brotherhood of Man" and brought the house down, despite it being a number that involved the entire company. On the celebrity sighting side, seated directly in the row behind me in the Richard Rodgers Theatre were Meat Loaf, his wife and his (I'm guessing) teenage daughter.Terrence McNally's play about a group of gay men who gather together during three separate holiday weekends at a remote lake house about two hours outside of Manhattan won the Tony for best play. It's not a
bad play, but it did have the misfortune, in my mind, of following on the heels of the epic two-part Angels in America. Love! Valour! Compassion even played in the same theater that Angels did, the Walter Kerr, and its director was Joe Mantello, one of the Tony-nominated actors from Angels in America. As I mentioned in my 1994 theater flashback, Angels remains my greatest Broadway experience, so returning to the same theater and, though McNally's play's ambitions were nowhere near that of Tony Kushner's, it couldn't help but feel as if I were watching Neil Simon opening a comic take on The Seagull the week after Chekhov opened his original. Granted, McNally's play leans toward the comic, but it has its serious moments as well and it really was only the strength of its cast that lifted it for me. Justin Kirk was very good as the blind member of the group and Anthony Heald did a very good job in the role that Stephen Spinella had originally played when the show began off-Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club. By the time I saw the show, Nathan Lane had left the show and been replaced by Mario Cantone, probably still best known for his work on HBO's Sex and the City as Anthony, Charlotte's wedding planner friend. I wasn't familiar with his work at the time and it seemed to me that Cantone was trying too hard to do a Nathan Lane impression. The show's standout (for which he deservedly won a Tony) was John Glover in the role of twin brothers, one a bitter man, the other a sweetheart dying of AIDS. It was a wonder to see him pull off a scene with himself when he's doing it live. He was even more impressive in the film version when you saw how he modulated the characters for the new medium and was still just as great.
Glenn Close owes me tickets to The Late Show With David Letterman. Let me explain. At this point, my Broadway obsession had grown beyond reason. Ignoring the fact that I disliked pretty much all things Andrew Lloyd Webber and that every instinct in my body told me that a musical made out of Billy Wilder's classic film,
one of my 10 favorite movies of all time, was a bad idea and sacrilegious, when they opened up ticket orders, which had to be done by mail, I sent one in. The minute I received my ticket and knew the date, knowing Letterman tickets also were hard to get, I wrote off for tickets to his show for that same time period and I got them. Then damn Glenn Close decided to take a vacation for that week. If I was spending that kind of money to see the damn show, I better see her, so I canceled my tickets and asked for replacement ones. Not only did that mean I lost my chance to see Letterman live, the replacement ticket they sent me was for summer, once Betty Buckley had replaced her as Norma in the show. To make matters worse, George Hearn also was gone and I had to sit through the god-awful show as well. At the time, I used to frequent the Playbill chat room on AOL and there would be endless debates about "Who was the best Norma?" Glenn Close? Patti LuPone? Faye Dunaway? Karen Mason? Betty Buckley? Screw them all. The best Norma still is and always will be Gloria Swanson. As far as the musical goes, have you ever seen the classic Simpsons episode "A Streetcar Named Marge?" That's what I couldn't get out of my mind because a lot of the lyrics were like that, trying to incorporate the film's classic lines into songs. She's still big/it's the pictures that got small. As for Buckley as Norma, all she really played was the vulnerability. You didn't get any sense of the manipulator, let alone the psycho. An impressive staircase does not a show make. What a waste.Widely considered the first modern American musical, Show Boat has long been a mainstay of musical theater since 1927 with its book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein but music by Jerome Kern prior to his more famous
pairing with Richard Rodgers. While I was more than familiar with the many famous songs from the show, I'd never seen it staged and hadn't even seen a film version. When I read that director Hal Prince had done some tinkering with the book to modernize it even further, I guess I was thinking even more broadly than anyone else. With the character of Julie (well-played by Lonette McKee), a light-skinned African-American passing for white, I kept expecting the revelation that Cap'n Andy, the owner of the title Show Boat, would turn out to be her father, but the show wasn't that far ahead of its time. Staged in the cavern that is the Gershwin Theatre, the talented cast did their best to overcome the hurdles of such a mammoth room. Unfortunately, Prince directs the show as if he wants to make sure you know it has a director. It always was busy to the point that you weren't sure where to look. Some of the montages to cover the passage of time truly were impressive, but much of it was just too frenetic so it was a relief when it slowed down and allowed its cast to sing its great songs. It also was no way to use the unique talent that is Elaine Stritch. In another celebrity sighting, the still alive-and-kicking (then anyway) Sylvia Sidney was in the audience.
Who would think that the most satisfying theater experience I would have in this series of flashbacks would come in the revival of a 1947 play based on an 1880 Henry James novel and best known for its 1949 film
version, but that was indeed the case in 1995. Granted, a great deal of the credit for how wonderful a night of theater The Heiress turned out to be belongs to Cherry Jones in the title role, but the entire cast shone and the play held up well. Jones won a Tony for her work as did Frances Sternhagen as her aunt and both prizes were very much deserved in this Lincoln Center production that played at the Cort Theatre and also starred Donald Moffat and Michael Cumpsty. Praise needs to be given to Gerald Gutierrez's inspired direction as well. (He also won a Tony for his work, a prize he'd win again the following year for an even greater revival.) It seems funny that when I think of Jones, this is what I think of first while nowadays, what first comes to mind for most people is the president on TV's 24. If they'd seen Jones here, that wouldn't be the case. She'd make them forget Olivia de Havilland as well: Her work as the targeted spinster was that strong; it's forever seared in my memory. As for Sternhagen, as great as she was in the play, part of her was still Cliff's mom on Cheers to me, with some left over as Charlotte's awful mother-in-law Bunny on Sex and the City.
The final play I took in for 1995 (or at least 1995 as far as this piece goes) was my only visit to off-Broadway for this year and it was a trip to the Manhattan Theatre Club at City Center to see A.R. Gurney's comedy about a romantic triangle between a husband (John Cunningham), his wife (Mariette Hartley) and his dog (Sarah Jessica Parker). Yes, Parker played a dog and this would seem, even if I were mean-spirited, an appropriate place to insert some sort of South Park joke. The play was very funny and Parker did play the bitch very well and you would think the gimmick of an actress pretending to be a dog would grow old after awhile, but Gurney and the rest of the cast managed to make it work for the entire evening. That doesn't mean Sylvia isn't a lightweight play, but I've certainly had worse nights at the theater. The real find of the evening though and the show's highlight was the least well-known member of the cast: Derek Smith. Smith played three roles, two of which were women, and he was an absolute riot. I would later to get to see him in other plays and it wasn't a fluke: Smith was a true comic acting find. Overall, my theatergoing experiences certainly were a letdown compared to 1994, but it didn't dim my enthusiasm. What's more, I was still traveling to New York from the middle of the country, which cut down on what I could see. However in the next year, I would move to Florida during the 1995-96 season, making N.Y. jaunts much easier, much more frequent and begin to spiral out of control. Hopefully, it won't take me a year to write about that year.
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Labels: Awards, Branagh, de Havilland, Dunaway, Frank Loesser, Giamatti, Glenn Close, Gloria Swanson, Hammerstein, HBO, Letterman, Matthew Broderick, Neil Simon, Ralph Fiennes, Rodgers, Shakespeare, Stoppard, The Simpsons, Theater, Wilder
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Thursday, December 04, 2008
Paul Benedict (1938-2008)
Paul Benedict, the British (EDITOR'S NOTE: This was my mistake, a rather common one, corrected in the comments) actor who has died at the age of 70, probably always will be best known as Harry Bentley, the U.N. diplomat who became neighbor to the Jeffersons once they moved on up.
However, Benedict's long career spanned TV, stage and screen. I was fortunate enough to see him play the hotel night clerk opposite Al Pacino in the 1996 Broadway revival of Eugene O'Neill's one-act play Hughie.
Still, for me at least, I think my favorite performance of Benedict's was that Professor Fleeber, Matthew Broderick's pompous NYU film professor starstruck by Marlon Brando's Don Corleone doppleganger in The Freshman.
RIP Mr. Benedict.
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Labels: Brando, M. Douglas, Matthew Broderick, O'Neill, Obituary, Pacino, Television, Theater
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Friday, December 02, 2005
From the Vault: The Freshman
With the grace of an ice skater and a large dose of self-parody, Marlon Brando returns in his largest (no pun intended) movie role in more than a decade.
The Freshman stars Matthew Broderick as Clark Kellogg, a freshman at New York University's prestigious film school. Broderick arrives in Manhattan from Vermont with a limited amount of cash, which he soon finds himself relieved of along with his luggage by Victor, an alleged cab driver (Bruno Kirby).
Once Clark catches up with the Vic, he receives a job offer from Vic's uncle, Carmine Sabatini (Brando), a man who bears a startling resemblance to Don Vito Corleone, the character Brando won (and refused) an Oscar for in 1972's The Godfather.
The plot's twists from there, while ludicrous, nevertheless add to the film's fun. The story's main thrust concerns Clark's first duty for Sabatini, picking up a rare Komodo dragon, an endangered lizard, from the airport.
Overall, director Andrew Bergman's script (Bergman also concocted the similarly silly but satisfying film The In-Laws) doesn't matter as the film weaves its funny and satirical web from its performers.
Paul Benedict, best known as Mr. Bentley on TV's The Jeffersons, brings great glee to his role as the tyrannical film professor who terrorizes Clark with comparisons of the philosophy of Kant to the Lake Tahoe scene in The Godfather Part II. Penelope Ann Miller provides some nice moments as Tina, Carmine's daughter who has an eye for Clark.
Kirby, usually relegated to sardonic sidekick roles in Billy Crystal vehicles, gets to shine as Carmine's henchman who delivers every bizarre line he's given as if it's the most common thing in the world. Maximilian Schell also shows up for some hysterical scenes as a chef working for Carmine.
Broderick is fine, though it's a bit difficult to believe that he is young enough to just be starting college.
However, the film belongs to Brando, who mumbles memorably as he mocks one of his most famous performances. Every gesture, every expression that the actor makes shows why some give him the title of the greatest American film actor of all time (and make sure to stay through the credits to see him toss in a sendup of On the Waterfront as well). Even more impressive, he really does don ice skates and he soars around the rink with amazing grace.
The Freshman is funny, light entertainment and screen appearances by the legendary Brando are too few and far between to let this one slip by.
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Labels: 90s, Brando, Matthew Broderick, Oscars
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