Saturday, March 17, 2012
Round is funny
This post originally ran as part of The Slapstick Blog-a-Thon held at Film of the Year in September 2007. I've revised the piece slightly to mark the 25th anniversary of the release of the Coen brothers' second feature on March 13, 1987.
They say he's a decent man, so maybe his advisers are confused." — H.I. McDunnough
By Edward Copeland
The frenetic slapstick nature of Raising Arizona doesn't kick in immediately. As it begins, the movie restricts most of its wackiness to wordplay. The first (and I still think the best) instance of the Coen brothers milking laughs by creating dimwitted characters that spout purple prose in thickly painted-on accents, churning out phrases that people such as these never would utter if they existed in the real world. The Coens would recycle that formula many times in films such as Fargo, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and the ill-advised remake of The Ealing Studios classic The Ladykillers, having Tom Hanks assume Alec Guinness' memorable turn by impersonating Colonel Sanders. However, the Coens never would go that route with as much hilarious and charming success as they did in Raising Arizona, which holds up strongly 25 years later.
What impressed me first when I saw Raising Arizona a quarter-century ago was its opening prologue, which lasts a full 11 minutes before the title even appears. It's an amazingly efficient 11 minutes as well, setting up nearly all the main characters and situations. We meet habitual convenience store robber H.I. McDunnough (Nicolas Cage), whose parole board he frequently visits (and which frequently frees him) warns that he's only hurting himself with this "rambunctious behavior." We also meet his prison friends Gale and Evelle Snoats (John Goodman, William Forsythe). Most importantly, we meet the police officer who takes H.I.'s mugshot and prints each time he returns to prison. The
officer goes by the name Ed, short for Edwina (Holly Hunter). We get to see the attraction grow between her and H.I., especially after Ed's fiancé dumps her and, during one of his releases, H.I. finally works up the courage to ask Ed to be his bride, even though he'd previously said, referring to his chosen profession of armed robbery, that "sometimes your career comes before family." Unfortunately, family doesn't seem to be in the offing for the McDunnoughs as they learn from doctors that Ed's "insides were a rocky place where my seed could find no purchase." That bit of narration from H.I. perfectly illustrates what I mean about the contrast between the characters' character and their speech. In Raising Arizona, the Coens excel at crafting this type of incongruous dialogue. The brothers followed up with two completely different films — Miller's Crossing and Barton Fink. After that, they tended to keep returning to a formula of dumb characters speaking flowery language in plots usually involving kidnapping and/or murder.
All that comes later. Today, we're praising when it worked in what was just their second feature. At the same time that the childless McDunnoughs are beginning married life, furniture kingpin Nathan Arizona (the late Trey Wilson) and his wife, thanks to fertility drugs, end up having quintuplets which prompts Nathan to remark is
"more than they can handle." It gives Ed the idea that perhaps it would be OK if she and H.I. just took one of the five off the Arizonas' hands so she and H.I. would have a little one to raise as their own while they eased the Arizonas' burden at the same time. That's where the madness truly begins. What's remarkable about the Coens' work in Raising Arizona is that it's not just pure slapstick, but a brilliant blending of slapstick and suspense, beginning with the first outright slapstick sequence as H.I. climbs through the window of the Arizona household to try to snatch one of the infants, setting off a tense comic scene of toddlers gone wild. Set to Carter Burwell's musical score, which has more than a passing resemblance in this scene to John Williams' theme from Jaws, the babies roam, one perilously approaching the steps leading downstairs. You can't decide whether to laugh uproariously or in fright. Once the stolen baby rests comfortably in the McDunnoughs' trailer, things get really complicated. H.I.'s prison buddies Gale and Evelle literally burst through the mud outside the prison and escape, or as Evelle puts it, they released themselves "on their own recognizance." After briefly cleaning themselves up in a gas station rest room (Dr. Strangelove fans, check the
acronym that's been spray-painted on the bathroom stall's door), the brothers arrive at H.I.'s trailer, looking for a place to stay and insisting to Ed that they "don't always smell this way." The police officer in Ed doesn't like fugitives in her family's home,
even though she herself is a felon now, albeit a good-intentioned one. Another complication arises with a visit from H.I.'s boss at work, Glen (Sam McMurray), his wife Dot (Frances McDormand) and their seemingly endless stream of diabolical children. "Mind you don't cut yourself, Mordecai" and "Take that diaper off your head and put it back on your sister" are just two of the many things Glen yells as his brood goes wild. While Dot rapidly lectures Ed on the need for insurance, avoiding orthodontic work and making sure the baby stays up to date on his "dip-tet boosters," Glen confides to H.I. that Dot wants another one, because these have grown too big to cuddle, but something has gone wrong with his semen. H.I. tries to lie about how he and Ed got to "adopt" a child so fast, but more trouble arises when Glen suggests to H.I. that they swap wives because he and Dot like to swing. H.I. punches Glen, who takes off like a madman and runs smack into a tree. Glen flees H.I., telling him not to bother coming into work anymore and promising to sue.
From that moment on, Raising Arizona essentially becomes an extended free-for-all chase. Since H.I. figures that Glen will make good on his word and fire him, he finds himself passing by convenience stores again "that weren't on the way home." Ed puts her foot down and wants Gale and Evelle gone. "I'd rather light a candle than curse your darkness," Gale tells H.I., while trying to convince him to help with a bank robbery. H.I. declines, but with Ed and the baby in the car, he does proceed to rob a convenience store for money and Huggies, setting off a loopy, more than five-minute long pursuit sequence. A pissed off Ed drives off with the baby, leaving H.I. to escape on foot. The Coens' hyperkinetic camera doesn't stop for a second as it rolls through groceries, streets and houses while clerks and dogs join the H.I. hunt.
Of course, the deadliest pursuit has yet to occur. H.I. already has had visions of a strange biker who takes no mercy on anyone or anything, and the vision turns out to be Leonard Smalls (Randall "Tex" Cobb), a self-described tracker, "some say hound dog." He meets with Nathan Arizona and offers to find his boy, but for a higher price than the reward the furniture magnate has offered. Arizona refuses, but Smalls insists he'll find the baby anyway and take whatever price "the market will bear." Back at the trailer, the chaos escalates as Glen figures out where H.I. and Ed got the baby and demands they turn the tot over to him and Dot. Before H.I. can even contemplate what to do, Gale and Evelle, who
overheard the conversation, decide to steal the infant for themselves. Gale and H.I. tear the trailer apart in a residence-wrecking fight that takes place while Evelle shields Nathan Jr. The fugitives prevail and take off with Nathan Jr. with plans to hold him for ransom (and use him as a third man on the bank holdup). When Ed returns home to find H.I. tied up, she frees him and the couple leave to rescue the child, though Ed makes it clear that they aren't good for each other and should split once the baby is safe. The raucous slapstick melees run nearly nonstop after that as the convicts grow too fond of Nathan Jr. to part with him and Smalls arrives to whisk the baby away for his own nefarious purposes, leading to a final showdown with H.I. and Ed. Despite the frenzied pace and over-the-top nonsense, Raising Arizona even manages to conjure some warmth as the film winds down, though perhaps what touched me the most re-watching the film this time is remembering how much I loved the Coen brothers back then, until I felt their career went off the rails beginning with The Hudsucker Proxy. At least their upcoming film, No Country for Old Men, shows some promise as the vehicle marking their return to filmmaking I love instead of just doing variations on the same gags and gimmicks that I still love in their first four films, but has grown old by now.
From top to bottom, all the actors hit exactly the right notes for the movie. Forsythe and Goodman make for a hysterical pair of not-so-swift criminals. Cobb displays just the right amount of menace to remain a cartoon without pushing the film off its comic tone and into a terror mode. The late Parker gets some great material as Nathan Arizona as well as when he yells at the multitude of cops loitering at his house. "Dammit, are you boys gonna chase down your leads or are you gonna sit drinkin' coffee in the one house in the state where I know my boy ain't at?" Even the small roles of bank customers and store owners get priceless moments, especially Charles "Lew" Smith who plays the store owner who utters the response that gives this post its title when Evelle asks a question about some balloons. Cage still was in the early years of his career and Arizona marked the middle film of a three-film run of great Cage performances that started the year before with Peggy Sue Got Married and would concluded later in 1987 with Moonstruck. The breakout actor though was undoubtedly Holly Hunter as Ed. Hunter had appeared in a handful of films and TV movies, but Raising Arizona gave Hunter her biggest exposure so far, but it was just an appetizer for the gourmet meal Hunter would serve fans of great movies and acting in December 1987: Broadcast News.
UPDATE March 17, 2012: As we now know, my hopes for No Country for Old Men ended up being more than fulfilled. That same year, the brothers wrote and directed "Tuileries," one of the best shorts in the great compilation film, Paris, je t'aime . The Coens took a minor step backward with the so-so Burn After Reading that came next. However, the next movie they made ranked as one of their all-time greatest. A Serious Man also introduced me to the great actor Michael Stuhlbarg, who had mostly toiled upon the stage but would go on to impress me in a completely different type of role than his Larry Gopnik in A Serious Man when he became 1920s gangster Arnold Rothstein on HBO's Boardwalk Empire. Most recently, the Coens accomplished that rare feat of remaking a film and producing a greater version. Granted, the original True Grit wasn't a masterpiece, but it did contain John Wayne's Oscar-winning role as Rooster Cogburn which Jeff Bridges took on, easily besting the Duke. What really made the Coens' True Grit exceed the 1969 film version was young Hailee Steinfeld playing Mattie Ross. Yes, the Coens I loved early in their career have matured and returned better than ever. It's good that they can produce great works again and we continue to have their older classics such as Raising Arizona holding up after 25 years.
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Labels: 80s, Blog-a-thons, Boardwalk Empire, Coens, Guinness, Hanks, Holly Hunter, Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, John Williams, McDormand, Movie Tributes, Nicolas Cage, Oscars, Remakes, Wayne
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Wednesday, February 09, 2011
Not the same old song
By Edward Copeland
That was the definition, according to the famous mystery writer, who made the phrase common vernacular in his novel Red Harvest and which the Coen brothers gave new life to in their feature debut Blood Simple. The great Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou specifically cites Hammett's definition in the trailer for his remake of the Coens' film, A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop, which opened in the U.S. last year. As big a fan as I am of both Zhang and the Coen original, I'm afraid that the adjective addled turns out to be very appropriate, both for most of the characters in Noodle Shop and in Zhang's approach to the film as well.
Obviously, the setting for A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop no longer takes place in Texas, but its time period has been transferred as well, to an nonspecific feudal period in China's past where the title weapon actually is a novelty that comes into the hands of the noodle shop owner's wife (Yan Ni) by a Persian merchant (Julien Gaudfroy) passing through their village selling his wares. Yan Ni's character, who never gets a first name as is credited merely as Wang's wife — Wang (Ni Dahong) being the noodle shop owner — bears absolutely no resemblance to Frances McDormand's Abby in Blood Simple.
While the women in both films may be cheating on brutish, abusive husbands with their spouses' employees, Wang's wife's portrayal comes off as scheming, loud and boisterous and shows little regard for anyone, including her lover Li (Xiao Shenyang), one of the most addled of the addled characters I referenced in the lead.
In fact, the entire tone of Zhang's film plays a lot like the portrayal of Wang's wife: It's a frenzied, manic farce that seems more like Zhang is paying homage to the Coens' style in Raising Arizona more than Blood Simple, except Raising Arizona works.
It takes about a third of the 90-minute film before Noodle Shop begins to resemble Blood Simple's plot very closely. After a group of policemen arrive to investigate the cannon that was fired by the Persian merchant (who looked about as Persian as Eddie Albert in the film version of Oklahoma!, though it might have been more interesting to follow his character and see Zhang try to adapt that Rodgers & Hammerstein musical landmark to a Chinese setting).
Instead of Wang hiring a private eye to find out if his wife is cheating on him, one of the policemen, Zhang (Sun Honglei), informs him that he's being cuckolded because he stumbled upon Li and Wang's wife accidentally. Wang explodes, furious at the news, and offers Zhang some money if he'll kill the both of them for him. Wang will leave town on a fishing trip for an alibi.
Unlike the great M. Emmet Walsh's investigator in Blood Simple, who was as entertaining as he was sleazy and dangerous, Zhang's demeanor remains stoic throughout. So much so that he seems out of step with all the loony characters and farcical goings-on that surround him.
The plot details don't make sense either. Since there aren't photos in the era depicted, he has to prove he "killed them" with pieces of Li and Wang's wife's clothing with slash marks. Why he panics to retrieve these for fear they'd implicate him doesn't compute the way the doctored photos and dropped lighter did in Blood Simple, let alone cause Zhang to kill a minor secondary character and forget his pipe where he buried him, making him fear that losing that will finger him as Wang's killer.
At the film's very end, which tries to duplicate Blood Simple's ending exactly with Wang's wife telling Zhang to tell Wang she's not afraid of him anymore, Zhang lets out a laugh that seems completely out of place for his character in Noodle Shop when it was the perfect punchline in the Coens' film. To make matters worse, Zhang keeps laughing as he sees the approaching drop of water as opposed to the look of horror on Walsh's face in the original.
The visuals, especially scenes shot outside, contain very vibrant colors, so vibrant in fact that it makes the film look artificial, which might be appropriate since its slapstick approach and one-dimensional characters seem just as fake. Also, as much as I complain about film scores that step on the dialogue and action, this film actually could have used one. It doesn't have one and perhaps if it had some music to match its zaniness, all its disparate elements wouldn't seem so incongruous.
I've never been more disappointed by a film made by Zhang Yimou, even though when I first heard of this idea it excited me, I should have stuck to my usual rule: Don't remake great films. It hardly ever pays off. Perhaps this is karmic payback to the Coens for when they made the unnecessary and terrible remake of the classic Alec Guinness comedy The Ladykillers.
Don't try to make a new version of a film that was damn near perfect in the first place. It seems odd that it happens to the Coens now when they remake a flawed but hardly untouchable film such as True Grit and end up with a remake that exceeds the earlier version in every conceivable way.
I realize that Zhang Yimou operates under terrible repression, but I so wish he could (or would) escape and get back to making those films that earned him his reputation such as Ju Dou, Raise the Red Lantern and To Live and abandon the Crouching Tiger-type films such as Hero and Curse of the Golden Flower and especially complete misfires such as A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop.
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Labels: 00s, Coens, Foreign, Guinness, Hammerstein, McDormand, Movie Tributes, Musicals, Remakes, Rodgers, Zhang Yimou
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Saturday, January 15, 2011
Let's not be that careful out there (so great TV can be made)
By Edward Copeland
Three days ago, I celebrated the 40th anniversary of the groundbreaking comedy series All in the Family, which not only addressed issues unheard of for a television comedy, but also introduced dramatic elements to the half-hour comedy format. Ten years and three days later, a drama premiered that almost did the reverse, upending what an hour-long dramatic series could be and injecting a healthy dose of humor, often of the darkest variety, into its story. That series was Hill Street Blues and 30 years later, it's still as strong as it was when it premiered.
When Hill Street Blues debuted, I was in sixth grade and had little use for what passed for hour-long drama at the time. Police dramas were pretty formulaic: crime committed, cops solve crime. Big hour-long shows when I was growing up contained too much goody-goodiness for me (see The Waltons, Little House on the Prairie). The only hour-long show I can recall liking much that wasn't a detective/mystery show was Lou Grant. I didn't tune in to Hill Street Blues
right away, but a classmate sang its praises so I started watching, albeit late, though I caught up with the early episodes in reruns. I was enthralled. The series came to me around the same time that I was discovering Robert Altman in general and his film Nashville in particular. As I've written before, I'm a sucker for large ensemble casts because they seem more realistic to me. My life has lots of people in it, not just a manageable handful. When I saw Hill Street Blues with its opening credits that began with 13 regulars and countless recurring characters (in later seasons, the opening credits would get as high as 17), I knew television had changed. (The photo I used includes Ed Marinaro, though his character, Joe Coffey, didn't appear until the 14th episode of the first season's 15-episode run and he didn't make the opening credits until season 2.) You almost can trace the bounty of quality dramas (albeit non-network ones) that we enjoy on TV today back to Hill Street Blues. Thankfully, it hit the airwaves at a time when the NBC executives in charge then (Fred Silverman, Brandon Tartikoff) actually had patience and kept it on despite miserable ratings. When it swept the Emmys in its first season, the audience began to grow. In fact, Mike Post's memorable instrumental theme became a hit sooner than the show itself, hitting No. 10 on the Billboard Top 100 singles and No. 4 on Billboard's adult contemporary chart in 1981. As much as the Emmys are a joke now, they always will have to earn kudos for saving one of the greatest shows in the history of television.
One type of television series did use large casts (and had been doing so for decades) and while that genre is often mocked, it doesn't get the credit it deserves, not only for its influence on what made Hill Street Blues different but for what makes most of the finest dramas that have come in its wake so involving. That genre is the soap opera. When Hill Street Blues premiered, nighttime soaps were making a comeback with Dallas, its spinoff Knot's Landing, Flamingo Road and Dynasty, which debuted three days before Hill Street Blues did. (On the comic side, there also was Soap, which I also loved and had a huge cast, though like daytime dramas, its credits were at the end.) In the same time period, networks were reaping big rewards from another format with large casts and continuing storylines: the miniseries. With hits that varied in subject matter as widely as the soapy Rich Man, Poor Man; the fictionalized look at the Nixon White House in Washington: Behind Closed Doors; the historical Backstairs at the White House following eight administrations from the point of view of the servants; and the landmark adaptation of Alex Haley's Roots tracing his ancestors from Africa through slavery until emancipation. These precursors seem to make the time ripe for a series such as Hill Street Blues.
The police drama created by Steven Bochco and Michael Kozoll was the first to take the elements of a soap — large casts, continuing storylines, cliffhangers — and transfer them to a different setting. Instead of the standard relationship drama that you'd find on a soap, Hill Street Blues was the first to camouflage those
aspects in a police story. As Bochco said in a DVD commentary recorded five years ago for the series' premiere episode, "Hill Street Station," he wanted Hill Street Blues not only to be true to the real spirit of police work but to examine the emotional consequences of the job as well. Prior to Hill Street, networks resisted the idea of stories that continued beyond one episode except for special two or three-part episodes for fear that viewers wouldn't make appointment television and the series wouldn't play well in syndication. Once the nighttime soaps showed they could be ratings hits and miniseries showed that audiences would make commitments for an entire week, let alone one night each week, it made the creation of a Hill Street Blues that much easier. Now, more shows, even comedies, contain continuing stories than don't. Some series would mix the continuing stories with standalones such as The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Comedies such as Cheers would end each season with a cliffhanger just like Dallas. Larry David would have standalones within season-long arcs, first on the Seinfeld season about Jerry and George writing the TV show and then every season on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Other comedies such as Friends were basically soap operas with laughtracks. All of them, to some extent, owed that freedom to the ground broken by Hill Street.As I mentioned in my All in the Family tribute (and other pieces), it usually takes about four episodes for new television series to work their way to what they want to achieve. Hill Street Blues happens to be one of the exceptions as it seems to almost have been born into perfection. Watch its very first episode, "Hill Street
Station," today and it's all already there. According to Bochco on that commentary, many of the series' trademarks that were there from the very beginning weren't planned to be things that would occur in every episode. They didn't originally have a plan to begin every episode with the morning roll call, led in those first three seasons and the early part of the fourth, until actor Michael Conrad's death from cancer, by Sgt. Phil Esterhaus. Neither was it planned for him to end each roll call with what would become the catchphrase, "Let's be careful out there." Some things did get decided based on that excellent template of an episode. Robert Butler, who directed "Hill Street Station" as well as the three episodes that followed, had originally wanted to film the entire episode using hand-held cameras, but Bochco felt it would make it look "too self-conscious." It was agreed though that from that point forward every roll call would be filmed that way. Another decision that was made before the series even hit the air was that each episode would cover one day. Bochco said part of the reasoning for that was to make continuity easier, but it was another nice touch, something that another of my all-time favorite series, Twin Peaks, did (for the most part) during its brief run. Despite its precarious beginnings, ratingswise, Hill Street Blues would go on to last seven seasons and 146 episodes. When I mentioned before that the Emmys helped save it, that was no exaggeration. The size and scope of its impact on the Emmy race the first year it was eligible to compete was so gigantic, that viewers simply couldn't ignore what the Emmy voters were saying. Granted, it helped that this was back when award shows and networks still had sway. Cable still was a fairly small blip and FOX didn't exist, so it basically was
ABC, CBS or NBC or you could read a book (unless you were one of those PBS types). The Emmy broadcast itself drew bigger ratings and when it showered such lavish praise upon Hill Street Blues, it convinced those watching to give the show a chance. It did the same trick a couple years later for a low-rated NBC comedy called Cheers because that network in particular then nurtured quality shows, giving them the time they needed to find their audience instead of killing them quickly when they underperformed. Let me get back to that first Emmy year for Hill Street Blues to illustrate how it basically swallowed most of the nominations (and deservedly). It received 21 nominations and won eight awards including best drama, best lead actor, best lead actress, best supporting actor, best writing and best direction. Its dominance was so great that it took three of the directing, supporting actor and film editing nominations. However, this was nothing compared to what it accomplished in its second season, when it took four out of five of the writing nominations and five out of five of the supporting actor nominations. The first year, its series competition was Dallas, Lou Grant, Quincy and The White Shadow. That second year, it was up against Dynasty, Fame, Lou Grant and Magnum, P.I. Needless to say, in those first few years it wasn't exactly a fair fight, but as other producers and writers saw what television could do, more quality dramas would appear and the network landscape would get markedly better because of the changes brought about by Hill Street Blues. Over its seven seasons, Hill Street Blues earned 98 Emmy nominations and won 25, including four consecutive Emmys for outstanding drama series. Actors who won were Daniel J. Travanti as Furillo (two in a row), Michael Conrad as Esterhaus (two in a row), Barbara Babcock as Grace Gardner, Bruce Weitz as Mick Belker, guest star Alfre Woodard and Betty Thomas as Lucy Bates (who had the unusual situation of an imposter who tried to accept on her behalf and steal the award as she was crossing the stage to get it herself).
Not only was Hill Street Blues unlike any drama that had aired on network television before, its large cast lacked anyone who could be called a star or a household name and that's because the show was the star. No one really knew who Daniel J. Travanti was before he appeared in our living rooms as police Capt. Francis Xavier Furillo, assigned to try to keep a handle on the chaotic Hill Street precinct. They couldn't have cast a better center for the show for Travanti was magnificent, miraculously adept at handling both the most dramatic and comic of scenes. In fact, his skills as a deadpan comic on the series may have been unsurpassed. His two consecutive Emmys as outstanding lead actor were quite deserved as he played Furillo, trying to keep peace between rival street gangs, dealing with his ever-present and annoying ex-wife Fay (Barbara Bosson, Bochco's then real-life wife), his own status as a recovering alcoholic (and some falls off the wagon) as well as countless administrative headaches dumped on him by his superiors, especially the recurring character of the politically ambitious Chief Daniels (Jon Cypher).
Travanti's revered Furillo sat at the top of a very talented pyramid of actors playing a collection of diverse and distinctive characters. For those first three seasons and part of the fourth, his right-hand man was Conrad's Esterhaus, his dispatch sergeant and a true original from the moment he appeared, winning him two
consecutive Emmys. Esterhaus' prosaic use of language set him apart from the other characters, though he could be just as rewarding not speaking at all. One of my favorite moments occurred in that first episode as he took Frank's ex Fay aside to try to calm her down after another argument with Furillo. Fay tries to make small talk, asking Phil how his wife is and learns that they also have divorced, but that he's found someone new and she's turned his life around. Fay asks if they plan to wed and Phil tells her that they might after she graduates. Naturally, Fay jumps to the conclusion that Phil, a man well into his 50s, is now dating a college student, but he has to correct her misconception by telling her that his new lady is a senior in high school. Fay collapses in tears and the silent reactions and moves of Conrad's head are hysterical. Phil and the high school senior won't last though, because he will soon meet Grace Gardner (Emmy winner Barbara Babcock). Grace arrives at the precinct by order of Chief Daniels to redecorate the place. At first, Phil finds her a nuisance, but an attraction develops between the sergeant and the widow of a former police officer and before you know it the sexually voracious Grace has enveloped Esterhaus' life.
I know I may sound as if I'm repeating myself, but the "Hill Street Station" episode's excellence on so many levels almost makes it worth writing about alone in this tribute. It's a perfect introduction to nearly all the characters (only Betty Thomas' Officer Lucy Bates basically gets silent background shots), it's wonderfully constructed with not one, but two big twists that almost guaranteed the small but discerning number of viewers who were there from the beginning would return for episode two. It's also almost entirely played on a humorous level until more than half the episode is over even though the story has included a tense hostage situation at a convenience store, but before any moment of the standoff can get too serious something always restores the levity. You've got the serious with the conscientious Lt. Henry Goldblume (Joe Spano) trying to talk the two young gang members into releasing their captives and leaving the store and with Furillo back at the station
trying to get their gang's leader Jesus Martinez (the late Trinidad Silva, another wonderful recurring character whose arc through the course of the series amazed) to help the situation. For the funny side, you could always count on James B. Sikking as the pseudo fascist buffoon Lt. Howard Hunter, leader of the precinct's tactical unit. He always recommended overwhelming force no matter what and, without authorization, with Furillo on the scene trying to get the teens to surrender, Howard brings in helicopters that blow everything to hell as his team storms the store and decimate the place. Fortunately, no one dies or is hurt but the store's owner berates Hunter for the destruction. Howard's response is to tell one of his men to check on the owner's immigration papers as he taps his almost-always present pipe against the shop's display window and it shatters. Howard could easily have been a cartoon as could other characters, but as the series went on, they all became terribly and vulnerably human. Howard in particular became multidimensional in later seasons' episodes that found him trapped in the rubble of a collapsed building with another officer (and ugly hints of what he might have done to survive) and when a mistake he made as young officer returns to haunt him and label him as corrupt and he puts a gun to his head, pulls the trigger and the episode ends with the sound of a shot.
Howard was hardly the only member of the ensemble that risked being a caricature, but Bochco, Kozoll and their team of talented writers and actors took that gamble and that's how they made characters so distinctive from that very first episode and no one proved to be more of an original creation than my own personal favorite, Detective Mick Belker as portrayed brilliantly by Bruce Weitz, who did eventually win an Emmy for the role. Belker looked completely unkempt with his tossled hair and bushy mustache and he often acted as something beyond human, prone to growl to show his displeasure. He took great joy pouncing on perpetrators, often sinking his teeth into them as part of his detention technique. His preferred epithets for people were dogbreath, hairball and dirtbag. Belker had his tender side though, befriending a mentally unbalanced man (Dennis Dugan) who believed he was a superhero from outer space named Captain Freedom (one of many misfits who seemed to be drawn to him over the years) or keeping a pet mouse in his jacket pocket. When it
counted, he still could be a convincing undercover cop and when he was at his desk hunting and pecking out an arrest report on his typewriter, he turned into the good Jewish son when his mother inevitably called to complain about his aging father. (His people skills also turned out to be a family trait, based on the time we met his sister.) In "Hill Street Station," we get to see the first "Hi ma" call with his usual collar and we also get to see the absolute glee on his face when he leaps off a desk to join a pile against a suspect gone mad, even though Furillo warns him, "No biting!" You can see his disappointment as he tells his captain that it isn't fair. "One lousy nose and I'm branded for life." Eventually, without losing his color, he managed to get a wife and child too. I even confess: When I was exiled in seventh and eighth grade in an awful northeastern Kansas town (but isn't seventh and eighth grade hell no matter where you are?), I often growled like Belker at the jerks in junior high.
According to Bochco's DVD commentary, part of the reason Weitz won the part was that during the audition he leaped off a desk shrieking and growling and he scared the late Grant Tinker, whose production company MTM produced Hill Street Blues, so much that he didn't want to tell him if Weitz didn't get cast. If you recall, the MTM production company logo was a cat (like MGM's Leo the Lion) in a circle meowing. For Hill Street Blues, the kitty wears a policeman's cap. For St. Elsewhere, the cat would have a doctor's surgical cap and mask (and in that show's final episode, the cat would be hooked up to a heart monitor and then flatlined when the credits finished). For Newhart, Bob Newhart would do the meowing.
I loved this show so much that I could probably write lengthy paragraphs about all its characters, including recurring ones, but then this piece would likely never end (or even more likely I'd miss my own deadline of the show's 30th anniversary), so I'm going to keep concentrating on that "Hill Street Station" installment to focus on the characters most pivotal to its developments. The main representatives of the beat cops on the show were the partners Bobby Hill and Andy Renko (Michael Warren, Charles Haid). Bobby was a laid-back, African-American officer who in the second season is upset when the black policemen's organization elects him vice president in absentia. He doesn't want anything to do with politics, but the other black members of the group tell him they picked Bobby precisely because of his nonthreatening demeanor that they feel they can use to pressure the department into promoting more black policemen. Renko always seems to have a run of bad luck and, though Hill Street Blues takes place in an unnamed urban
city (Bochco says it was loosely based on Pittsburgh, but second unit scenes were shot in Chicago), seems to have a redneck air about him. One of the calls the partners answer in the premiere is a domestic disturbance where a mother prepares to wield a knife on her towel-wearing teen daughter because she caught her bedding her husband, who is hiding in the bathroom. Bobby manages to defuse the situation, but when he and Renko return to the street, they find their squad car stolen. They search in vain for a working pay phone to call it in and then comes the most shocking and dramatic moment of the show. As they enter a building, they stumble upon some drug dealers who open fire, leaving Hill and Renko lying bleeding on the floor. The original plan was for Renko to die, but the pilot Charles Haid had filmed didn't get picked up, so they made a change and he lived. It's an interesting parallel to Bochco's later series NYPD Blue where Dennis Franz's character Andy Sipowicz (Renko and Sipowicz had the same first name. Weird.) also got shot in the premiere and was slated to die but they changed their mind then too. (Franz, by the way, played two characters on Hill Street: the corrupt Detective Sal Benedetto and later as a regular, the colorful Detective Norman Buntz.) It was an easier fix than Joe Coffey though. They not only shot him in an episode, they showed a chalk outline where his body had been only to bring him back to life.
Two regulars actually weren't playing cops. The previously mentioned Barbara Bosson as Furillo's ex-wife Fay became a regular at the urging of Fred Silverman who suggested that the series needed a character who was a civilian so there would be a viewpoint unrelated to the legal system. The other was Veronica Hamel as public defender Joyce Davenport. In his commentary, Bochco says Hamel was the last person cast — they'd already started filming the first episode without a Joyce when Hamel walked in and saved the day. When we meet Davenport, she's storming in to hammer away at Furillo about the treatment of one of her clients who has been lost somewhere in the system. She's a fierce advocate for her client and fiery at what she sees as constant abuse by the actions of overzealous officers. That's why the ending of "Hill Street Station" comes as such a surprise when you see that Frank and Joyce, who have exhibited nothing but rancor at each other throughout the episode, are secret lovers. In fact, most episodes of the series ended with the two in some sort of steamy sexplay. Hamel also got some of the most dramatic moments of a series that tended toward the darkly humorous, ranging from the murder of a
colleague that made her rethink her chosen profession to an episode involving the execution of a client who was convicted and headed to death row and sought her as a witness to his last moments. Travanti and Hamel had great chemistry and one of the biggest mysteries to me since Hill Street Blues went off the air is where did these talented actors go? IMDb shows that Travanti has done a lot of one episode shots on other series, the most recent being the new version of The Defenders with Jim Belushi and Jerry O'Connell, but he's never had a role post-Hill Street that came close to Furillo. Hamel's career has followed a fairly similar path, with her most recent work being three episodes of Lost. Sadly, some of the cast members are no longer with us. Michael Conrad of course died during the show's fourth season. Robert Prosky, who joined the show as the new dispatch sergeant, Stan Jablonski, died in 2008. Kiel Martin (Detective J.D. LaRue) died of lung cancer in 1990, the same year Rene Enriquez (Lt. Ray Calletano) succumbed to pancreatic cancer. Trinidad Silva (gang leader Jesus Martinez) died in a car wreck in 1988.The show also was blessed with many guest stars or near regulars playing roles before they achieved fame elsewhere. Some of those actors included: two Larry Sanders Show alums Jeffrey Tambor as a shady lawyer turned cross-dressing
judge, and Megan Gallagher as an officer; David Caruso as the leader of the Irish street gang The Shamrocks; Jane Kaczmarek as an officer; Pat Corley as an overworked and incompetent coroner; Jennifer Tilly as a gangster's moll who dates Henry; Frances McDormand as a public defender with a drug problem; Dan Hedaya as a crooked cop; Lindsay Crouse as a lesbian officer accused of sexual harassment by a hooker; Linda Hamilton as Coffey's girlfriend who is raped; Danny Glover as a former gang leader who returns under the guise of a social reformer; Edward James Olmos as an apartment tenant being harassed by a landlord trying to force his dwellers out so he can raise rates; Alfre Woodard (who won an Emmy for her work) as the mother of a little boy shot to death by mistake by an officer; Ally Sheedy as a senior criminology student that J.D. takes a shine to despite the age gap; and legendary character actor Lawrence Tierney (best known to younger readers as Joe in Reservoir Dogs and Elaine's dad on Seinfeld) as the night shift dispatch sergeant who got the last line of the series, answering the phone and saying, "Hill Street."Lots of television shows had good and great acting, even if the series themselves weren't that special. What set Hill Street Blues apart was what went on behind the scenes. Its creators, writers and directors who changed the medium with its structure and storytelling. It doesn't seem like that radical an idea to have story
arcs that ran over multiple episodes, but bringing that form to a police drama was revolutionary. It paved the way for the technique to be used in other Steven Bochco series such as L.A. Law which took the format to a law firm; the short-lived Bay City Blues which tried it out on a minor league baseball team; and Murder One, which attempted to cover a single murder trial over the course of an entire season. Other non-Bochco shows that found the freedom to embrace the large cast/dark humor/multiepisode arc in the medical world (St. Elsewhere) or much later to paint a portrait of an entire city (The Wire). Some of the writers who worked on Hill Street would go on to make their own cultural landmarks such as Anthony Yerkovich, who would create Miami Vice; Mark Frost, who would co-create Twin Peaks; Dick Wolf, who birthed the Law & Order empire; and, of course, David Milch, who would not only create NYPD Blue for Bochco but the incomparable Deadwood. Even Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet wrote an episode, "A Wasted Weekend," an unusual entry for the series where the bulk of the action concerned Jablonski, Goldblume, Hill and Renko on a hunting trip.On a more general level, what I've found fascinating in the post-Hill Street era is how durable and versatile the police show genre is. When I become a fan of a certain type of show, it's pretty difficult for me to sample another in the same genre because they don't live up. Take the medical drama for example. I loved St.
Elsewhere and so I never understood how anyone could say they liked it and then watched ER, Chicago Hope or Grey's Anatomy. It took Scrubs (which as a comedy was different anyway) and House to break my bias on that and that's because House has a completely different approach to the medical show. It's the same thing on the comedy side. It baffles me how anyone who has ever seen the brilliance of The Larry Sanders Show and its behind-the-scenes look at an entertainment TV show can then watch the terribly overrated 30 Rock and not see it for a pasty pale imitation much in the same way Tina Fey's movie Mean Girls was a defanged Heathers lite. Both pull their punches. The police drama didn't take as long as the medical drama did to find new quality examples after Hill Street that weren't just copies: Cagney and Lacey, Miami Vice, Crime Story, NYPD Blue, Homicide: Life on the Street, all the variations of Law & Order and CSI, The Shield, The Wire (even though its scope was much wider than merely police, that's how it was essentially sold in Season 1) even the short-lived such as Boomtown and much-maligned such as Cop Rock. In its twisted way, Dexter is essentially a police drama. I'm even leaving out ones I've never seen or that I don't care for but others do such as The Closer.
Hill Street Blues' lasting legacy remains as the starting point for the higher level of quality drama that has continued to get better to this very day. Television always has been good at comedy, if not challenging or topical until All in the Family, but the best TV dramas before Hill Street usually were anthologies such as The Twilight Zone with different stories each week or just generally entertaining such as Columbo (on which Bochco served as a writer and story editor in the early seasons) or The Rockford Files, but hardly challenging. Lou Grant did get into some issues, but imagine how interesting a newspaper drama made in the Hill Street template could have been. Since Hill Street Blues hit the air, even though it slipped in its last couple of seasons, it seems as if there's always been some quality drama on and when cable exploded, it's been a smorgasboard where now the situation is reversed and television (non-network at least) does drama better than it does comedy. Perhaps this is because Hill Street Blues showed artists that you didn't have to be only purely drama or purely comedy and series such as The Sopranos, Deadwood, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, etc., satisfies the audience's need for both.
Hill Street Blues, aside from the technology, hasn't aged much when you watch it today because it tells stories about people you care about and spins tales that capture your attention and seldom lets go. Except in the weaker later years, I can't recall any storylines that were real duds as is often the case in the best of
shows (think Donna and Medavoy on NYPD Blue, the "D Girl" episode of The Sopranos, James' noir excursion in season 2 of Twin Peaks). Re-watching some of its key episodes, I still marvel at the ability of Hill Street to shift emotional gears so fast and so smoothly, cracking you up in one scene then touching your heart in the next. Not every show can treat death as both profound and absurd like Hill Street did, going serious with an execution or certain murders and then having a character drop dead in his plate of food at a fundraiser or a politician plunging through a high-rise window screen while trying to score points by taking the press on a tour of the building's deplorable conditions. It could even combine them, taking the comic team of Belker and the crazy Captain Freedom and breaking your heart when Freedom dies while staying in his dementia until the end. Remember, the power is in the glove. It always was. Even Sgt. Esterhaus didn't get a break. It must have been heartbreaking to the cast and crew to lose the actor Michael Conrad, but that didn't prevent them from letting Phil check out while having another session of strenuous sex with the insatiable Grace.What makes me sad is how you don't see reruns of Hill Street Blues on TV anymore. TV Land used to show both it and St. Elsewhere back-to-back until it made the decision to fill its schedule with as much crap as possible. Only the first two seasons are available on DVD, though you can see later episodes for free on IMDb. It's a damn shame. Greatness such as Hill Street Blues must be available for future generations.
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Labels: Altman, Bochco, Breaking Bad, Deadwood, Homicide, House, Larry David, Larry Sanders, Law and Order, Mad Men, Mamet, McDormand, Milch, Seinfeld, Tambor, The Sopranos, The Wire, Twin Peaks
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Thursday, December 16, 2010
The adults — not so much
By Edward Copeland
Back in 1998, writer-director Lisa Cholodenko made the overrated High Art with the extremely overpraised performance of Ally Sheedy that was lauded as some sort of comeback for the actress. Mostly, she's concentrated on television work though in 2002 she did make another cinematic mess which at least had a good performance from Frances McDormand, even if McDormand's character defied logic at times.
She's back on the big screen again this year with what is, admittedly, her best feature yet in The Kids Are All Right but it's a case of a talented cast pulling her predictable script and sluggish direction out of the fire and earning the film praise it otherwise wouldn't get.
Annette Bening and Julianne Moore star as Nic and Jules, a longtime lesbian couple with two teenage children, each the product of the same anonymous sperm donor. Nic has been the breadwinner of the family as a successful physician while Jules has floundered in various attempts at jobs and businesses. When Joni (Mia Wasikowska), the daughter Nic gave birth to, turns 18, her half-brother Laser (Josh Hutcherson) gets her to track down their natural father.
The donor turns out to be Paul (Mark Ruffalo), a laid-back, scruffy-looking restaurateur whose eatery's food is supplied by the rather large organic garden he tends himself behind his home. Even though Laser initially sought the meeting, Joni turns out to be the one who likes Paul more after their first encounter.
When their parents learn that Joni and Laser sought their natural father out without telling the first, they are a bit upset, especially the uptight, controlling Nic who seems to have a stick wedged up her ass most of the time. (When Jules performs oral sex on her while Nic watches gay male porn to get aroused, she seems so disinterested, she not only continues to sit up straight in bed, she doesn't even remove her glasses.)
Of course, Nic and Jules find themselves just as curious about the father of their children as the children were, so they invite Paul for dinner. While it goes fine, Nic, as seems to be her nature, stays in hypercritical mode and skeptical of everything he says. Jules, on the other hand, who has just started trying to launch a landscape design business relishes the opportunity when Paul asks her to help him get a handle on his unruly garden.
You would have to have never seen a film before not to guess where this is heading, with a plot twist as inevitable, uninspired and predictable as when there is a plot about a Catholic priest involved in some close way with a woman: you know that celibacy vow is going to break before the film is over.
What really puzzles me, not so much about its classification by the waiters and florists at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association but by all the reviews that have come before, is the insistence on calling it a comedy. There are some laughs, but not a lot of them. Maybe the correct term should be bad comedy.
Based on Cholodenko'a previous films, she hasn't shown much evidence of having a sense of humor. The Kids Are All Right does have a co-writer, Stuart Blumberg, who wrote the great underrated comedy Keeping the Faith, so I know he has the ability to make me laugh.
Still, as I said before, The Kids Are All Right is a huge improvement over Cholodenko's previous features, even if I didn't think the film itself succeeds, and that's because of its cast.
Bening's Nic is one of her best creations. Devoid of makeup and any glamour, she's mostly a sourpuss, but not in the grating way her character in American Beauty came off. It's really unlike any role Bening has played before and she's great in it.
Moore's earth-mothery Jules resembles characters she has played in the past, but she does those roles damn well. However, the similarities to her other parts, just add lesbianism, may be why Bening has been scooping up most of the kudos for the film.
Ruffalo's Paul also reminded me of characters from his past except that he's not a loser. He's a success businesswise with the attitude of some of his previous roles such as You Can Count on Me or a younger version of the part he played on stage in Kenneth Lonergan's This Is Our Youth.
Bening, Moore and Ruffalo turning in strong performances isn't really a surprise, but what really props up the weak structure of The Kids Are All Right are the kids themselves.
Wasikowska, who was Alice in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, works wonders as Joni, the 18-year-old itching to go to college and get out of a household she's begun to find suffocating.
Hutcherson gives an even better performance as Laser, the 15-year-old son of Jules whose short attention span wouldn't be uncommon for someone his age but perfectly complements someone who is supposed to be the product of Ruffalo and Moore's characters. He makes the most convincing case that the film might be a comedy because he certainly seems to get the best lines and funniest moments. I'll be curious to see where Hutcherson's career goes from here.
If for the performances alone, I can't say I regret seeing The Kids Are All Right, but it's not something I'd want to see a second time and, with a weaker cast, I think most of the praise it has received would evaporate rather quickly.
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Labels: 10s, Bening, Julianne Moore, McDormand, Theater, Tim Burton
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Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Darkman is everyone — and no one
By Damian Arlyn
Although it may be hard for young people to imagine, there was a time when the name "Sam Raimi" did not arouse any excitement in movie lovers. Indeed there was a time when Sam Raimi was just another unknown, ambitious director trying desperately to carve out a place for himself in the world of cinema. Like a lot of filmmakers who made a name for themselves in the late '80s/early '90s — including Spike Lee, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Steven Soderbergh and the Coen brothers (with whom Raimi was friends) — he was an independent, but what he really wanted was to make mainstream "Hollywood" movies and with only three features under his belt (including the "no-budget" horror flick Evil Dead and its semi-sequel/remake), Raimi was given the opportunity to helm a major studio picture. The result was Darkman and it was released (unleashed?) 20 years ago today.
The genesis of Darkman lay in Raimi's troubles securing the rights to make a movie of The Shadow (something Russell Mulcahy would do with mixed results four years later) which eventually forced him to concoct a superhero of his own. While the imprint of Walter B. Gibson's famous crimefighter on Raimi's character is apparent, so too is the influence of classic monster movies: the "mad scientist-creation" of Frankenstein, the bloodlust of The Wolfman, the split-personality of Jekyll and Hyde, the bandaged visage of The Invisible Man and the scarred, ominous figure of The Phantom of the Opera to name just a few (It is very appropriate that Raimi's film bore the Universal logo). In fact, Darkman is just as much a horror film as it is a superhero movie. The story of a horribly disfigured innocent seeking revenge on the despicable criminals who made him so provided Raimi the chance to indulge not only in some spectacular action sequences but in some delightfully gruesome acts of violence.
I could talk about the hammy performances delivered by a group of game actors doing the best they can with the material (including a "pre-Oskar Schindler" Liam Neeson attempting some kind of American accent and wife to one-half of the team of Raimi's filmmaking friends, the Coen brothers, Frances McDormand, with whom presumably Raimi had some difficulty working), but the truth is that Darkman isn't really about the acting because it isn't really about its characters. Darkman is about its visuals and they are stunning. Raimi has always been a purely "cinematic" filmmaker and Darkman feels like the work of a child finally allowed to play with big toys. His unbridled passion and enthusiasm infuses (infects?) nearly every frame of the film. Classic "Hollywood-style" montages, extreme camera angles, outrageous special effects and an ostentatiously operatic music score provided by frequent Raimi-collaborator Danny Elfman (who, sadly, is currently estranged from the filmmaker) all testify to the fact that this is a movie made by a director who doesn't have a single subtle bone in his body. His two subsequent films (Army of Darkness and The Quick and the Dead, both of which I love for the exact same reason as I do Darkman) exhibit the same "no-holds-barred" approach to filmmaking. It wasn't until 1998's A Simple Plan that Raimi pushed himself as a storyteller and fashioned a moody, atmospheric thriller-drama that then allowed him to deal with more mature, complex themes in future films (such as the under-appreciated For Love of the Game and the creepy Gift). When the Spider-man series brought Raimi back to the comic book genre, he was able to create a far more "balanced" product than he had attempted to do more than a decade earlier (likewise with his return to horror on Drag Me to Hell).
Though reviews were mixed, Darkman was successful enough at the box office to spawn two direct-to-video sequels. I was 14 when it came out and remember very well the thrilling trailer, TV ads and movie poster tantalizingly declaring "Who is Darkman?" I missed seeing it in the theater but viewed it finally when it came to video. The violence disturbed me somewhat, but I loved the film nonetheless and even purchased the novelization. I caught it again once or twice in the following years but hadn't seen it in a very long time when I sat down to watch it again recently. I found my affection for the film had not waned in the slightest and, in fact, my appreciation for what Raimi was able to accomplish (given his relative lack of experience and the number of obstacles he reportedly had to overcome) only increased. However, much of the film not only seems incredibly silly but patently absurd to me now. The fact that lean, 6'4" Liam Neeson could possibly pass himself off as the 6-foot-tall, overweight minion Pauly just stretches credulity pass its limit. It occurred to me while watching Darkman that the film was made only three years after the similarly cartoonish and ultra-violent Robocop, but that the latter holds up much better today. Raimi's vision is perhaps not as dated as Verhoeven's (except in the area of special effects) but it is also not nearly as moving or intelligent.
The most important thing that Darkman provides for contemporary audiences is a chance to see a supremely talented and eminently creative artist at a crucial point in his career. Though still a little "wet behind the ears," Darkman displayed the enormous potential that Sam Raimi possessed. It was a potential that he would fulfill much later with projects that were just as visually sumptuous but which didn't sacrifice characterization and emotion in the process. Now, when his name is mentioned (as it has been in connection with the upcoming comic book-inspired action-thriller Priest), movie-lovers have good reason to get excited.
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Labels: 90s, Coens, Liam Neeson, McDormand, Movie Tributes, Raimi, Rodriguez, Spike Lee, Tarantino
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Monday, January 18, 2010
In Texas, you're on your own
By Edward Copeland
I remember seeing Blood Simple for the first time so clearly. I was a sophomore in high school and Siskel & Ebert had bellowed its praises on their show and now it had shown up on the "Bijou" screen of our local AMC theater. I went with my parents and my mind exploded. It was as if I were witnessing the birth, no scratch that, the major announcement of new filmmaking talent that you don't usually see in a debut. This must have been similar to what film aficionados felt the first time they saw Orson Welles' Citizen Kane or Francois Truffaut's The 400 Blows. Who starts a film career this assured? It was astounding and 25 years later after the Coen Brothers arrived on the national scene, Blood Simple still astounds.
I had seen the character actor M. Emmet Walsh before and I've seen him since, but he's never had a better role or given a better performance than that of the private detective in Blood Simple. (Some sources give his character name as Loren Visser, which is what he was named in the screenplay, but in the film's credits, he's listed simply as private detective.) It's Walsh's voice we hear first in this pseudo-noir as he explains that the world is full of complainers and go ahead and ask your friends for help and watch them fly, a lesson I've painfully learned from experience over the past couple of years. He extols the idea of the way it is supposed to work in Soviet Russia, with each person pulling for the other guy. However, as the private detective explains (not that we know who he is or what he does yet), we're in Texas and there you are on your own, because nothing comes with a guarantee. Walsh's cackle can produce laughter or shivers, depending on the situation. You're never certain if his character is a mastermind or a buffoon, but Walsh plays him brilliantly. In an ideal world, the Academy would have noticed. He certainly deserved an Oscar nomination at least, especially considering the prize went to Don Ameche, who wasn't even the best supporting actor in Cocoon, because Ameche's stand-in could breakdance.
Blood Simple actually began appearing on the American movie radar in 1984 when it started showing up on the film festival circuit, but it didn't get an actual distribution and release until this day in 1985, hence why I'm
marking today as its 25th anniversary. About a decade ago, a new DVD of Blood Simple came out which I'd never seen until last week, many years since I'd last seen the film. It comes with an introduction by Mortimer Young (really actor George Ives) and the pretense that technology had caught up with it and something called Forever Young Films has restored the film, not only digitally improving the film, but adding some things and "cutting the boring parts." Granted, it had been a long time since I'd last seen Blood Simple but nothing seemed new to me besides that introduction and everything I remember being there before, still was. More importantly, Blood Simple still plays as great as always and still amazes when you remember it is the work of debut filmmakers. In the Coen canon, I'd still place it in the top four or five alongside Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing, No Country for Old Men and their most recent, A Serious Man. In fact, though I usually frown on remakes of good films, I grant leeway with they are foreign adaptations and I have to admit I can't wait to see what the great Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou has come up with by filming his take of Blood Simple as a period film set in a noodle shop and emphasizing the comedy.Blood Simple, of course, was not set in a Chinese noodle shop. The center of its story is a popular Texas night spot owned by the angry, sleazy and apparently well-off Julian Marty (Dan Hedaya, better known as the even sleazier but much funnier Nick Tortelli on TV's Cheers). Marty hires the detective to see if his pretty young
wife Abby (Frances McDormand, who would meet future husband Joel Coen on this film) is stepping out on him. Indeed she is — with Ray (John Getz), one of his bartenders. Needless to say, Marty does not take the news well, telling Walsh that in ancient Greece, they killed the messenger who brought them bad news. The P.I. tells Marty he knows where to find him if he needs him or if he wants to chop off his head: He can always crawl around without it. When Ray returns for his final paycheck, Marty refuses to pay and warns him that if he sets foot on his property again, he'll consider it trespassing and would be justified in shooting him. Marty also makes sure to put plenty of doubts in Ray's mind about Abby's trustworthiness. Still, the betrayal eats at Marty and he returns to the detective to hire him to murder Ray and Abby. The detective expresses some reluctance that Marty isn't smart enough to pull it off, but he agrees to do it for $10,000. He tells Marty to go fishing for a few days and he'll tell him when it's done. Then things get complicated.
What doesn't get complicated though is the plot itself. That's not to say it isn't attention getting (detractors might call it gimmicky), but the story itself is told very efficiently. It would be easy to be confused as to what
the various characters are up to but even if you have a moment of brief puzzlement, the Coens steer you back on the right track. Simple proves an appropriate word to have in the title (as does blood, because there is a lot of it). It's essentially a five-character cast (the fifth character being another bartender, Meurice, played by Samm-Art Williams, who also is a playwright whose 1980 play Home received a Tony nomination for best play). However, as far as the Coens' filmmaking style goes, they grab you early and often. After some picturesque Texas visuals to go with Walsh's opening voiceover, we go to a conversation in a car between Ray and Abby during a driving rainstorm and each pass of the windshield wipers takes one of the actor's names with it. While film watchers have been used to hyperactive cameras for a long time, a fresh smell emanated from many of the
Coens' moves. When a shot follows the length of a bar, it stops to rise over a passed-out drunk blocking its way before resuming its journey. When Meurice jumps over the bar to change a song on the jukebox, the camera follows him back at shoe level, stopping to take note as his feet do a brief dance shuffle atop the bar. When Marty gives Ray his rather intense, profane warning about Abby, his speech gets punctuated by the sound of an insect frying in an electric bug zapper. When Marty surprisingly assaults his estranged wife, the Coens combine a zoom with a high-speed tracking shot before slamming on the brakes. The wondrous climax takes place between two people in adjacent rooms, which was referenced in its own way with the money hidden in the hotel vent in No Country for Old Men.
At the start of their filmmaking career, the Coens didn't share all the credits as they do now: Joel was the director; Ethan was the producer; and they shared writing credits. Even in their debut, some familiar collaborators were on board. Composer Carter Burwell, who has scored all the brothers' films except for O
Brother, Where Art Thou. Barry Sonnenfeld did the cinematography here as well as in Raising Arizona. Of course, Roderick Jaynes debuted as a film editor, though he had the help of Don Wiegmann. What still amazes me is how these neophyte indie filmmakers were able to secure the use of The Four Tops' "It's the Same Old Song" (used repeatedly and as a hilarious endnote in the movie), Patsy Cline's "Sweet Dreams" and "The Lady in Red" by Xavier Cugat and his Orchestra, given the unmitigated greed of the music industry which demands astronomical fees and often strip permission to use the works years later if more protection isn't paid. It was a great feat, no matter how it got done. Now of course, everyone knows who the Coen Brothers are, but 25 years ago and really through Miller's Crossing, I felt as if I was part of a secret fan club. It wasn't really until Fargo, when I'd lost my infatuation with them, that everyone seemed to discover them. I'm happy that with their work starting with No Country for Old Men, the Coens and I seem to be on the same cinematic wavelength again. Still, should we become estranged again, we'll always have Blood Simple.Tweet
Labels: 80s, Coens, Ebert, McDormand, Movie Tributes, Truffaut, Welles, Zhang Yimou
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