Sunday, February 02, 2014
Philip Seymour Hoffman (1967-2014)
Boogie Nights marked Hoffman's second film with Anderson following Hard Eight. They would team again in Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love and The Master, which earned Hoffman an Oscar nomination as best supporting actor, his fourth overall. He also received supporting nods for Doubt and Charlie Wilson's War and won on his first try, his only nomination in the lead category, for Capote.
Though his film career only began in 1991, it proved to prolific. Once his fame and reliability grew, even if some of the films he appeared in weren't so great, I never saw him give a bad performance. A cattle call of some of my favorite Hoffman performances: Happiness, The Talented Mr. Ripley, 25th Hour, The Savages, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Moneyball and The Ides of March.
The performance perhaps closest to my heart was his turn as legendary rock journalist Lester Bangs in Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous. I also loved his work in two less well-known films: Owning Mahowny and Jack Goes Boating, a role he originated in the off-Broadway production and he also directed the film.
He appeared on Broadway three times and received a Tony nomination each time. His first came in the inaugural Broadway production of Sam Shepard's True West, where he and John C. Reilly alternated the lead roles at different performances. He earned a featured actor nod in the star-studded, highly praised revival of O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night starring Brian Dennehy and Vanessa Redgrave. His third nomination came for taking on Willy Loman in a revival of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.
RIP Mr. Hoffman.
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Labels: Arthur Miller, O'Neill, Obituary, Oscars, P.S. Hoffman, Shepard, Theater, Vanessa Redgrave
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Monday, May 21, 2012
Centennial Tributes: Richard Brooks Part III
By Edward Copeland
It isn't often that a masterpiece of literature begets a masterpiece of cinema yet both retain distinct identities all their own, but that's the case with In Cold Blood, Truman Capote's "nonfiction novel" and Richard Brooks' stunning film adaptation of his book. Capote often gets credit for inventing the genre of adapting the techniques of a novelist to that of straight reporting, but earlier attempts existed — Capote's stood out because In Cold Blood 's excellence made everyone forget any other examples (at least until more than a decade later when Norman Mailer added his own brilliant take on the genre with The Executioner's Song). Brooks, with his job as a crime reporter in his past, on the surface appears to follow Capote's approach, but the director, forever the activist, skips the objectivity that Capote tried to evoke in his book. Brooks didn't want to minimize the horror of the crime that occurred at the Clutter farm in Holcomb, Kans., but he also wanted to humanize the killers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. In a way, Brooks' film inspired the path for the two films made decades later telling the story of Capote's writing of the book and his getting to know the killers first-hand as they waited on Death Row. Even today, Brooks' 1967 film remains more powerful and better made than the two more recent tales. Undoubtedly, In Cold Blood remains Brooks' greatest film. If you got here before reading either Part I or Part II of this tribute, click on the respective links.
The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call "out there." Some seventy miles east of the Colorado border, the countryside, with its hard blue skies and desert-clear air, has an atmosphere that is rather more Far West than Middle West. The local accent is barbed with a prairie twang, a ranch-hand nasalness, and the men, many of them, wear narrow frontier trousers, Stetsons, and high-heeled boots with pointed toes. The land is flat, and the views are awesomely extensive; horses, herds of cattle, a white cluster of grain elevators rising as gracefully as Greek temples are visible long before a traveler reaches them.
Capote begins his book with that paragraph in the first chapter titled The Last to See Them Alive. Brooks begins the film of In Cold Blood introducing us to The Last to See Them Alive in the forms of Robert Blake as newly paroled inmate Perry Smith and Scott Wilson as an acquaintance he met in prison who had been freed earlier, Dick Hickok. Brooks gives Blake — and the movie — a memorable entrance, especially thanks to his decision to go against the grain of the time and film in black-and-white Panavision. We see a bus driving down a two-lane highway, passing signs showing the distance to different Kansas towns, including the horrific Olathe. On the bus, a young female stumbles down the aisle to get a closer look at the pair of pointed-toe cowboy boots with buckles on its heels before creeping back. The shadowy man who wears the boots also has a guitar strung around his neck. A flame suddenly illuminates Robert Blake's face as he lights a cigarette and Quincy Jones' ominous yet jazzy score kicks in to start the credits. The sequence not only sets the tone for the film that follows, it also introduces us to the movie's most important participant — cinematographer Conrad L. Hall (though he didn't need to use the L. yet since his son, Conrad W. Hall, wasn't old enough to follow his dad into the business).
The movie spends its opening minutes introducing us to the soft-spoken Perry and getting him hooked up with Dick. Whereas Blake's Perry comes off as a puppy repeatedly kicked by his owner, Scott Wilson portrays Hickok as a cocky, livewire and a chatterbox — and Brooks gives him great lines, especially in the scenes where he and Blake drive around. "Ever seen a millionaire fry in the electric chair? Hell, no. There's two kinds of laws, one for the rich and one for the poor," Dick imparts as wisdom to Perry. When the two buy supplies for the planned robbery of the Clutter farm, Dick shoplifts some razorblades for no good reason, leading Perry to chastise him for taking such a risk for something so small. "That was stupid — stealin' a lousy pack of razor blades! To prove what?" Perry asks. Smiling, Dick replies, "It's the national pastime, baby, stealin' and cheatin'. If they ever count every cheatin' wife and tax chiseler, the whole country would be behind prison walls." Though in the two recent biographical films about Truman Capote's research into the case, it's strongly implied that Capote at least developed a crush on Smith and that Perry may have been gay. In Cold Blood never explicltly claims that Perry Smith was gay, but throughout the film Dick taunts him by
calling him "honey," "baby" or something along those lines. Hickock on the other hand chases every skirt he gets near and during the robbery/murder, Perry intervenes to stop Dick from raping the Clutters' 16-year-old daughter Nancy (Brenda Currin). Wilson made his first two feature films in 1967 and he landed roles in two of the biggest — this one and the eventual Oscar winner for best picture, Norman Jewison's In the Heat of the Night. The jaws of younger readers should hit the floor when they see Wilson's great work here and it slowly dawns on them that playing Dick Hickok is a younger incarnation of Herschel on AMC's The Walking Dead. When Perry and Dick do get together, they meet at Dick's father's house where Dick tries to aid his old man, who's slowly losing his battle with terminal cancer. (Veteran character actor Jeff Corey, who co-starred in the Brooks-scripted 1947 classic Brute Force, plays the elder Hickock.) Contrasting Capote's take with Brooks' version fascinates in the ways the works reflect each other yet, like a mirror, many things appear on the opposite side. The book introduces its readers to the Clutter family first before Perry and Dick enter the story (by name anyway). Brooks' screenplay reverses the order, beginning with the killers then letting us meet the Kansas family. However, both aim to draw parallels between the victims and their eventual murderers. "That morning an apple and a glass of milk were enough for him; because
he touched neither coffee or tea, he was accustomed to begin the day on a cold stomach. The truth was he opposed all stimulants, however gentle. He did not smoke, and of course he did not drink; indeed, he had never tasted spirits, and was inclined to avoid people who had — a circumstance that did not shrink his social circle as much as might be supposed, for the center of that circle was supplied by the members of Garden City's First Methodist Church, a congregation totaling seventeen hundred, most of whom were as abstemious as Mr. Clutter could desire," Capote described the Clutter patriarch. A few pages later in the first chapter, Perry Smith makes his entrance into Capote's book. "Like Mr. Clutter, the young man breakfasting in a cafe called the Little Jewel never drank coffee. He preferred root beer. Three aspirin, cold root beer, and a chain of Pall Mall cigarettes — that was his notion of a proper "chow-down." Sipping and smoking, he studied a map spread on the counter before him — a Phillips 66 map of Mexico — but it was difficult to concentrate, for he was expecting a friend, and the friend was late. He looked out a window at the silent small-town street, a street he had never seen until yesterday. Still no sign of Dick," Capote wrote. Brooks uses a visual link to draw victim and killer together, showing Herbert Clutter (John McLiam) performing his morning shave. As Clutter leans into the sink to rinse the remaining shaving cream from his face, the face that rises up and looks in the mirror sees Perry Smith, excising his excess whiskers as well.
The biggest difference between the book and the movie came with Brooks' introduction of a Truman Capote surrogate, a magazine reporter named Jensen, who travels to Holcomb to cover the case. Jensen isn't played in a way similar to the extremely distinctive Capote — such as the way that won Philip Seymour Hoffman an Oscar for Capote, that Toby Jones played even better in Infamous or that Tru himself played best of all as Lionel Twain in Neil Simon's 1976 mystery spoof Murder By Death. Brooks wrote the Jensen character straight (no pun intended) and conventionally, even giving him a narrator's function at times. He doesn't precisely follow how Capote researched the story though because Capote didn't arrive in Kansas until after Smith and Hickok had been apprehended. In the movie, Jensen arrives almost from the beginning of the investigation. For the role of Jensen, Brooks cast another veteran character actor — Paul Stewart, whose first credited screen role was the butler Raymond in Citizen Kane. His 42-year film and television career ended in 1983 with an episode of Remington Steele and he died three years later, a month shy of his 88th birthday. After starting with Kane, a few of Stewart's eclectic highlights included Champion, Brooks' Deadline-U.S.A., The Bad and the Beautiful, Kiss Me Deadly, Hell on Frisco Bay, King Creole, Opening Night, Revenge of the Pink Panther,
S.O.B. and appearances on nearly every episodic police or detective show between the 1950s and the 1970s, including The Mod Squad. The Jensen character arrives around the same time that the Kansas Bureau of Investigation joins the case led by John Forsythe as Alvin Dewey, what may be Forsythe's best performance. Brooks gives him a lot of speeches — and some come off as less pristine than others, but Forsythe succeeds at selling most of them. Forsythe gets so identified with Dynasty or as a voice on Charlie's Angels that I think people forget that he really act when the material was there for him as it was here or in the short-lived and underrated Norman Lear sitcom The Powers That Be and having fun with Hitchcock in The Trouble With Harry (though no one could help Topaz much). He also was a replacement performer of one of the major roles in Arthur Miller's All My Sons on Broadway. Granted, didn't see him, but he had to show some chops to land that one. Of his filmed work though, I think In Cold Blood stands as the best. Sure, this speech reads as overwrought, but he pulled it off as he delivered it to Jensen. "Someday, someone will have to explain the motive of a newspaper to me. First, you scream, 'Find the bastards.' Till we do find 'em, you want to get us fired. When we find 'em, you accuse us of brutality. Before we go
into court, you give them a trial in the newspaper, When we finally get a conviction, you want to save 'em by proving they were really crazy in the first place. All of which adds up to one thing — you've got the killers," Dewey tells Jensen as he's taking down to the basement of the Clutter house. Dewey also serves as Mr. Exposition, explaining why these two numbskulls just out of prison would decide to go to this one particular farmhouse and rob this family, making sure to "leave no witnesses," even though Dick and Perry only gain $40 from the crime. A fellow investigator asks Dewey if Clutter might have been rich and Alvin sort of laughs knowingly. "Ahh — the old Kansas myth. Every farmer with a big spread is supposed to have a secret black box with lots of money in it." It isn't until the ending that you realize the Brooks gave Dewey some of that dialogue because he's supposed to symbolize the parts of the system that disgust him. Brooks ardently opposed capital punishment and he made no secret that he wanted the ending to make clear that it was murder. At Smith's hanging, another reporter asks Dewey about how much the executioner makes. "Three hundred dollars a man," Dewey answers. "Who does he work for? Does he have a name?" the reporter follows up and then poor John Forsythe has to deliver the clunkiest line of dialogue in the entire film. "Yes. We the people." Earlier, it had been the topic of discussion between Jensen and an imprisoned Hickock.DICK: Perry's the only one talking against capital punishment.
JENSEN: Don't tell me you're for it.
DICK: Hell, hangin' only getting revenge. What's wrong with revenge? I've been revenging myself all my life.
Part of the film's brilliance stems from the way Brooks structures the scenes detailing the crime itself. Toward the beginning of the movie, he presents what probably remains the greatest sequence of his directing career without actually showing the murder. Then, as the film winds down, he shows us what we didn't see and it's horrifying. Through a window of the farmhouse, we can see Nancy kneeling beside her bed saying her prayers. At that moment, it isn't made clear who could be seeing that — are Dick and Perry outside her window or are we simply the voyeurs right then? A split second later we spot Dick and Perry still sitting in the car beneath the cover of night. I guess it was us. The discordant sound of a doorbell suddenly fills the soundtrack and the viewer realizes he or she has moved inside the Clutter house — and sunlight shines through the windows. The camera tracks slowly around the furniture of the living room as it makes its way toward the front door. A woman and some other people open the door calling out for the Clutters. We faintly hear church bells tolling and the visitors wear their Sunday best. The woman continues to call out the Clutters by their first names as she ascends the stairs to the second floor. The film cuts quickly to the house's
exterior just as we hear the woman let out a horrified scream. Coming on the heels of The Professionals, it's as if somehow Brooks transformed himself from a competent director and damn good writer into a master of both. I don't know if the fact he had Conrad Hall working as his d.p. on both films made any sort of difference or if that proved to be just fortuitous, but that one-two punch sealed Brooks' artistic reputation forever beyond what respect he'd earned before. I've never been fortunate enough to see In Cold Blood on the big screen and allow Hall's haunting and beautiful mix of light and shadow to bathe me in its glow, but I did get the next best thing when in 1993 at the Inwood Theater in Dallas I saw Arnold Glassman, Todd McCarthy and Stuart Samuels' documentary Visions of Light, a film devoted to the art of cinematography and highlighting some of its greatest practitioners and their best moments. One of the highlighted scenes comes from In Cold Blood when Robert Blake as Perry gives an emotional monologue about his father in his prison cell while he looks out the window at the rain coming down. The reflection of the raindrops cast shadows on Blake's face that make it appear as if he's crying. The moment stuns in its beauty — even when you learn that as so many say, accidents ends up producing some of the best parts of film. Hall admitted it hadn't been planned but the humidity in the prison set had pumped up the window's perspiration so much (as well as everyone else's) that's how the magic happened. Thankfully, YouTube had that clip.It must be said how good a performance Blake gives while at the same time acknowledging that it can't be viewed the way many of us assessed it originally. When a Naked Gun movie pops up and you see O.J. Simpson play an idiot and constantly take a beating, somehow that's OK. When you watch In Cold Blood again and see Blake give such a convincing and chilling performance as a mass murderer (especially when Forsythe's Alvin Dewey engages him in conversation during the ride to jail and Perry tells him, "I thought Mr. Clutter was a very nice gentleman. I thought it right till the moment I cut his throat."), you can't help but recall that a few decades later, the actor stood trial and received an acquittal for killing his wife. It doesn't stand out as groundbreaking now, when last night's Mad Men said shit twice, but in 1967, In Cold Blood became the first major release to utter the word bullshit. For the second year in a row, Brooks received Oscar nominations for directing and adapted screenplay and Hall got one for cinematography. Quincy Jones also picked up a nomination for original score, though Jones didn't receive one for his music for In the Heat of the Night. I don't understand how the nimrods at the Academy left it out of the top five for best picture. They nominated two films that deserved to be there: Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate. The film that won, a fine film but certainly expendable: In the Heat of the Night. A perceived prestige project of social significance that's overrated as hell: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. The fifth nominee that would make no sense in any year: Doctor Dofuckinglittle. Basically, three out of the five films could have been tossed to make room for In Cold Blood. A few other more deserving 1967 titles: Cool Hand Luke, The Dirty Dozen, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Accident, Wait Until Dark, Point Blank, The Jungle Book. The National Board of Review did honor Brooks' direction. Brooks also received his sixth Directors Guild nomination and his sixth Writers Guild nomination. With the exception of the WGA, Brooks would never be named for any of the top awards again. In Cold Blood marked his best, but from there things went downhill fast.
One of the most difficult films to find (I've never seen it) for that recent a film with a best actress nomination. Brooks wrote his first original screenplay since Deadline-U.S.A. as a vehicle for wife Jean Simmons. From descriptions I've read, Simmons plays Mary Wilson, who was raised on romantic notions of marriage from the movies, finds herself in a funk on her anniversary and flies to the Bahamas on a whim, running into a free spirit (Shirley Jones) while there.
I missed this one as well. From TCM's web site; "In Hamburg, Germany, American Joe Collins (Warren Beatty) is considered by bank manager Kessel (Gert Fröbe) to be the most honest, hard-working bank security expert in the world. Unknown to Kessel, Joe has been devising a plan with his girlfriend, American expatriate prostitute Dawn Divine (Goldie Hawn), to take the contents from bank safe-deposit boxes owned by several criminals and place them into one owned by Dawn. Roger Ebert gave it three stars in his original review.
I wanted to see this one, but just ran out of time. Here's what qualifies as TCM's full synopsis: A former roughrider (Gene Hackman) matches wits with a lovely but shady lady-in-distress (Candice Bergen), as a drifting ex-cowboy (James Coburn) and a young, reckless cowboy (Jan-Michael Vincent) join in on a 700 mile journey. Ebert gave it three and a half stars in his original review.
I've actually seen this one. In fact, as we near the end of Brooks' career, I've watched two of the last three movies. As an unrelated sidenote, this year also marked the end of Brooks' 17-year marriage to Jean Simmons. If by chance you aren't familiar with this movie, think of it as sort of the Shame of the 1970s — and I don't mean the Ingmar Bergman movie. Diane Keaton stars as a teacher of deaf students whose affair with her college professor ends badly. She reacts as anyone would to a breakup — she starts cruising New York bars and picking up strangers for one-night stands while also developing a taste for drugs. The film definitely didn't belong in the genre of liberated women films of the 1970s as Keaton's character will pay. I saw this when I was a young man and I found it distasteful then, though it did have more sensible plotting than last year's Shame. Brooks directed his last performer to an Oscar nomination with Tuesday Weld getting a supporting actress nod. Keaton won the best actress Oscar for 1977 — but for Annie Hall. Brooks adapted a novel by Judith Rossen that was loosely based on a real incident, but most reviews by people who had read the novel seemed to indicate that Brooks changed key elements. Then, that matches the speech Brooks gave the movie's cast and crew on the first day of shooting, according to Douglass K. Daniel's Tough as Nails: The Life and Films of Richard Brooks. "I'm sure that all of you have your own ideas about what kind of contributions you can make to this film, what you can do to improve it or make it better. Keep it to yourself. It's my fucking movie and I'm going to make it my way!" Daniel wrote. Goodbar also featured Richard Gere in one of his earliest roles. This clip plays off the tension of whether fun and games are at hands or something more dangerous.
Brooks referred to this film as "the biggest disaster" of his career. Later, he amended it slightly, blaming TV for purposely not coverage the film because the movie criticized "checkbook journalism." Having watched Wrong Is Right for the first time recently, this compels me to ask, "It did?" Sean Connery stars as a globetrotting reporting for what appears to be a CNN-like news station. The opening sequence contains some amusing moments, (including a young Jennifer Jason Leigh, nearly 30 years after her dad Vic Morrow played the worst punk in Brooks; Blackboard Jungle) but what could be cutting-edge satire of a media form just being born transforms into a scattershot satire involving fictional oil-rich African countries, the CIA, a presidential race and arms dealers trading suitcase nukes, Based on a novel, I hope that it had a plot, but Wrong Is Right just ends up being one of those strange satires like The Men Who Stared at Goats where once it ends you still don't know what the hell happened. This clip shows the opening sequence. Nothing after it deserves your attention.
I've got good news and bad news when it comes to Richard Brooks' final film. The good news: it brought him awards consideration again. The bad news: It was at the Razzies where it earned nominations for worst picture, worst director, worst screenplay and worst musical score. I'm not sure whether or not it relieved him that the film lost in all four categories, with Rambo: First Blood Part II taking worst picture, director and screenplay and Rocky IV winning worst score dishonors. I have not seen Fever Pitch which TCM hasn't even given a synopsis, but I know enough to tell you that Ryan O'Neal plays an investigator reporter doing a story on compulsive gambling who discovers he suffers from the problem. The subject of the movie came up on my Facebook page and Richard Brody, critic at The New Yorker, commented, "I saw Fever Pitch when it came out and loved every overheated second. Haven't seen it since then. Seeing The Connection has brought it back: no detached observer but a participant almost instantly in over his head." At the time of its release, it became one of the rare films that Ebert gave zero stars.
Following Fever Pitch, Brooks toyed with the idea of writing a screenplay about the blacklist, basing it around an incident in 1950 when fights broke out at the Directors Guild over the loyalty oath, but he didn't get around to it. The man who could be quite a bully on the set, had quite a bit of bitterness toward the industry by now as he showed in the second half of that 1985 interview.
Richard Brooks died of congestive heart failure on March 11, 1992, at 79. He did have close friends, but most of them had died themselves by then. The stepdaughter he basically raised as his own when he married Jean Simmons, Tracy Granger, made certain, his tombstone bore the only appropriate epitaph for the man.
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Labels: Arthur Miller, blacklist, Books, Capote, Connery, Diane Keaton, Ebert, Hackman, Hitchcock, J.J. Leigh, James Coburn, Jean Simmons, Jewison, Mailer, N. Lear, Neil Simon, P.S. Hoffman, W. Beatty
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Friday, January 27, 2012
I'd rather be lucky than smart
By Edward Copeland
More than two years after it was announced that Michael Mann would direct the pilot for a possible new HBO series written by Deadwood mastermind David Milch and starring two-time Oscar winner Dustin Hoffman (Kramer Vs. Kramer, Rain Man) and three-time Oscar
nominee Nick Nolte (The Prince of Tides, Affliction, Warrior), that series — Luck — makes its official debut Sunday on HBO at 9 p.m. EST/PST, 8 p.m. CST. The premiere episode of Luck's nine-episode inaugural season actually debuted in December following the second season finale of Boardwalk Empire. Mann and Milch both serve as two of the series’ executive producers and Hoffman bears the title of producer as well. Thanks to my good friends of HBO, I've seen all nine episodes of Luck and will be able to post full-fledged recaps the moment each episode has finished airing. For now, I offer this brief, spoiler-free preview of the series that I've found to be a nice addition to the HBO family of dramas. Having that unmistakable rhythm of Milchian language resonating in my ears again certainly pleases me. On top of that, Luck captures the excitement of horse racing, particularly in a Mann-directed/Milch-written sequence in the premiere, like nothing I've seen before. As someone who enjoyed going to the track (even being clueless as far as handicapping horses goes), watching Luck made me miss being able to go. With only its brief run of nine episodes as a barometer, the show's forecast looks good with its future chance at greatness hovering around 75%. Luck isn't there yet. It's no Deadwood — but few things are. More importantly, it's no John From Cincinnati either. As I write this, the first two episodes are the only installments I've watched more than once but, unless I missed others, viewers will get through all nine episodes with only two utterances of cocksucker. 
What makes that racing sequence in the Luck premiere mimic the experience of a real race parallels the premise of this new drama. The race gets shown from the various perspectives of those involved in horse racing and Luck tells those sides outside of race scenes as well. Its large cast encompasses owners, trainers, jockeys at different points in their careers, jockeys' agents, track veterinarians and the serious gamblers — and those just include regulars. The world David Milch has created also will cross paths with other track officials and employees. In their own ways, the horses develop distinct personalities as well. While scenes occur away from the fictionalized Santa Anita Park that serves as the focal point of the series, all stories lead back there in some way. As for that race sequence, much of the credit for it has to fall to Michael Mann's direction and the editing team of Michael Brown, Hank Corwin and Kelley Dixon. The cutting of that race should earn the pilot next year's Emmy in that category now.
Mann steered two of the '80s most influential crime dramas to the airwaves — Miami Vice and Crime Story — though he hasn't produced for television since the short-lived Robbery Homicide Division in the 2002-2003 season and he last directed for TV when he helmed the 1989 telefilm L.A. Takedown. It's not that Mann has been loafing — he's directed and/or produced several feature films including Heat, The Insider, Ali, The Aviator and Hancock. The Insider brought Mann three Oscar nominations for producing, directing and co-writing the film. He also was nominated for producing The Aviator.
Milch created Luck, which marks his first new work to air since John From Cincinnati. He wrote a pilot for a series called Last of the Ninth in 2009, but no one picked it up. Milch forever holds a place in the hearts of quality television fans as the maestro behind the prematurely ended Deadwood, whose two two-hour wrap-up movies never came to be. Milch has received an astounding 24 Emmy nominations for writing or producing for Deadwood, Hill Street Blues, Murder One and NYPD Blue. He won four Emmys, two for writing NYPD Blue episodes and one as a producer of that series when it won outstanding drama. He earned his fourth Emmy (actually his first) for writing a Hill Street Blues episode.
In addition to Mann and Milch serving as executive producers and Hoffman as producer, Luck's behind-the-scenes producing team also includes Carolyn Strauss (Game of Thrones, Treme) as executive producer; Henry J. Brochtein (The Sopranos, where he also directed) as co-executive producer; and Eric Roth (Oscar-winning screenwriter of Forrest Gump and Oscar-nominated writer of The Insider, Munich and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) as co-executive producer.
Hoffman is the series' ostensible lead, though Luck boasts 13 regulars in its opening credits who all get screen time as well as many recurring characters. In fact, in the premiere, some of the other character get more scenes than Hoffman's character, Chester "Ace" Bernstein. We meet Bernstein first as he leaves federal prison after serving three years. The audience won't learn why Ace, a wealthy man who has spent his life operating around gambling enterprises and organized crime, ended up incarcerated in the first episode other
than the fact he took the fall for other people. While imprisoned, he spent $2 million to buy an Irish race horse, using his faithful driver/bodyguard Gus "The Greek" Demitriou (Dennis Farina, star of Mann's Crime Story) as a front, acting as the thoroughbred's owner. One of Luck's strongest assets proves to be that chemistry between Hoffman and Farina, especially in the duo's late-night bull sessions in the hotel suite that Bernstein calls home. They board the horse, named Pint of Plain, at Santa Anita, the race track located in Arcadia, Calif., about 14 miles northeast of downtown L.A. Bernstein's motivation for picking Santa Anita turns out to have two purposes. The first figures in with long-term plans he's had to purchase the track and add casino gambling while getting even with some of his shady business associates, played by guest star Alan Rosenberg in the premiere who's joined in later episodes by Ted Levine and Sir Michael Gambon, returning to a character closer to his Thief in The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover than Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films. The second reason resides closer to Ace's heart. Santa Anita serves as the home track for a talented and temperamental Peruvian-born trainer, Turo Escalante (John Ortiz).In my eyes, Escalante — and Ortiz — could prove to be the breakout character and actor on Luck. Ortiz's name may not be as recognizable as Hoffman, Nolte or even Farina, but he's worked with some big name American directors since making his film debut in Brian De Palma's Carlito's Way in 1993. He also appeared in Ron Howard's Ransom, Steven Spielberg's Amistad and Ridley Scott's American Gangster. Luck's
premiere doesn't mark Ortiz's first time being directed by Mann either — he acted in the 2006 film adaptation of Miami Vice as well as Public Enemies. Ortiz also executive produced and repeated his stage role in Philip Seymour Hoffman's directing debut, Jack Goes Boating. The play originated as an off-Broadway production by the theater troupe LAByrinth, where Ortiz served as co-artistic director. It's impressive, but if Luck succeeds,
Turo Escalante will be the vehicle that launches Ortiz's career to the next level. Not only does Ortiz give a phenomenal performance, but Escalante, by far, shows himself to be the most fascinating part of the series as well as the character that interacts with more of the other players than anyone else, including the track's head veterinarian Jo Carter (Jill Hennessy), who turns out to be Turo's secret girlfriend. As with everything created and written by David Milch, he implies key things as much as he verbalizes them. Viewers will get the distinct impression that Escalante may be covered in infinite layers that could be peeled and examined in future seasons. In the meantime, Turo will be there, lashing out at jockeys for not following his instructions on how to run a horse during a race — even if the horse won anyway or acting as if he's a polite servant to a new horse's owner. Ortiz, as the best performers on a Milch show must know how to do, is as adept at making Escalante funny as frightening and even touching when needed.
Nick Nolte, whose stardom took flight on television in the 1976 miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man, returns to the medium for the first time since for Luck — just days after receiving his third Oscar nomination (his first as a supporting actor) in Warrior. As Walter Smith, the
grizzled veteran horse trainer-turned-owner from Kentucky, Nolte's role on Luck plays as a supporting one as well. In fact, he's absent from one of the nine episodes. Called "The Old Man" by many at the track, Smith shares something in common with Ace
Bernstein: the first episode plants seeds of a mystery surrounding his story. In Walter's case, it has nothing to do with a prison sentence, but questions concerning the origin of his "big horse," Gettn'up Morning, that will be resolved rather quickly though the issue will hover over Smith and Gettn'up Morning through the show's short season. Walter also has an important decision to make about the horse — picking the jockey who will ride Gettn'up Morning once he's ready. The two main contenders are his exercise girl, Irish lass Rosie Shanahan (Kerry Condon), who longs to be a jockey, and Ronnie Jenkins (real-life National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame jockey Gary Stevens), who used to be a great but has moved into a universe of drink and drugs. Condon should be familiar to longtime viewers of HBO dramas from her role as Octavia on Rome or to moviegoers as Tolstoy's daughter in The Last Station. While acting isn't Stevens' first career, Luck isn't his first role. He played the famous 1930s and '40s jockey George Woolf (who happened to be based out of Santa Anita) in Seabiscuit. 
Trying to keep Ronnie Jenkins sober and secure him the mount on Gettn'up Morning is his stuttering agent Joey Rathburn (Richard Kind) who also represents an apprentice jockey at the track, Leon Micheaux (Tom Payne), also
known as Bug, the name given to most beginning jockeys because the asterisk by their names in racing forms resembles an insect. Joey's career as an agent isn't going well and we get hints that his personal life has crumbled into disarray as well. Leon hails from Louisiana and has problems maintaining the weight he needs to qualify for races. He also doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut — so he manages to keep pissing off Escalante, much to Joey's annoyance. Leon also has a mutual attraction with a certain red-haired girl — who may become a professional competitor down the road. Kind's a familiar face from film and television including his regular role on Spin City, his recurring role as Larry's cousin Andy on Curb Your Enthusiasm and as troubled Uncle Arthur in the Coens' great A Serious Man. Leon may be from Louisiana but Payne hails from England and most of his credits so far come from British TV. Payne's best-known work in the U.S. may be the film Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day.
The final quartet of regulars belongs to a syndicate, but it's not the kind of syndicate that's crossing your mind. It's just the name given to a group of serious gamblers who
pool their money so they can make bigger bets that cover more options and, hopefully, reap big benefits such as the more than $2 million payout that would go to someone lucky enough to correctly handicap the races involved in the Pick Six contest in Luck's premiere. The four men make for a colorful group, to say the least. The unofficial ringleader, Marcus Becker (Kevin Dunn), suffers from a variety of health conditions that force him to use a wheelchair and take frequent hits of oxygen from the tank attached to it. He's rude to everyone and seems as if he were born in a cranky mood. The true brain of the group belongs to Jerry Boyle (Jason Gedrick), who possesses a true gift for picking the right horses. Unfortunately, he likes to gamble all
the time so anything he wins at the track he's liable to lose that night playing poker at a casino — and when Jerry gets tapped out, he becomes easy prey for a track security guard (Peter Appel), who works as a loan shark on the side. Marcus calls Jerry a degenerate, but the two of them have a special relationship that's almost
like a father and son or two close brothers. The other two members of the group truly are misfits and you have to wonder how Marcus has let them hang around. The first is Renzo Calagari (Ritchie Coster), who lives on disability checks that he takes straight to the track. The newest member that Renzo has recruited is Lonnie McHinery (Ian Hart), a man who never gets the point of what's going on and has stumbled upon a bankroll supposedly from two women who are paying him to be their personal gigolo. Dunn has been a familiar face in lots of movies and TV shows since the mid-1980s. Even though he didn't have any scenes with Nolte, he also appeared in Warrior. Gedrick has appeared in a lot of television series either as a guest or in shows that didn't last long. He was the murder defendant in the first season of Murder One and one of the police officers in Boomtown, the NBC series that started out great until they mucked with its premise and destroyed it. Coster and Hart, like Payne, are Englishmen playing Americans. Name any crime procedural on TV and Coster has more than likely played a role on it. On the big screen, his films include Let Me In, The Dark Knight and American Gangster. Early in his career, Hart took on the role of John Lennon in two films in a row: The Hours and the Times and Backbeat. He's also made four films with director Neil Jordan including The End of the Affair, where Hart was especially good as a private detective with problems of his own.Even with such a short season, Luck — already full of award winners and nominees in front of and behind the camera — attracted even more for recurring guest roles including Oscar nominees Joan Allen and Bruce Davison and Oscar winner Mercedes Ruehl. There's also guest appearances by Barry Shabaka Henley, Jurgen Prochnow and W. Earl Brown (Deadwood's Dan Dority).
When the credits roll for the first time on Luck, in case you don't recognize the song playing beneath the images and artists' names, it's a trimmed version of "Splitting the Atom" by Massive Attack. Below are the lyrics, the show uses. Click here and you can see the video on YouTube for the complete song. Every listing of the lyrics (including the captions) insists that the band sings "eternited leave." I find no evidence of such a word as "eternited" and almost changed it automatically to eternal, assuming it was a misprint but apparently songwriters Robert Del Naja and Damon Albarn invented a word for their song.
The evening it chokes, the candle, it burns
This disguise covers bitter lies
Repeating the joke, the meaning it dies
It's easy, don't let it go
Don't lose it
The bankers have bailed, the mighty retreat
The pleasure it fails at the end of the week
You take it or leave or what you receive
To what you receive is eternited leave
It's easy, don't let it go
It's easy, don't let it go
It's easy, don't let it go
Don't lose it
As readers who have followed any of my previous series recaps know, my format has evolved. The first show I covered was the great fourth season of The Wire, but I basically just regurgitated what happened with a little criticism tossed in. I didn't go crazy and learn all I could about Baltimore.
My recaps for the first seasons of Treme and Boardwalk Empire pretty much followed the same pattern until I noted historical moments on Boardwalk Empire I suspected casual viewers wouldn't get, so I added explanatory links. For the second season of Treme, I started seeking explanations to references that I didn't get and each recap became like a puzzle, adding the context of real New Orleans events, info on the music — I even began to learn the geography of that city without ever having been there. When the second season of Boardwalk Empire premiered, I beefed up those recaps as well, not only on historical points and characters but even the origins of words and phrases.
Now, I start the nine-episode run of Luck. The recaps will evolve as I write them, but I suspect that if you didn't know the ins and outs of horse racing and betting before the show premiered and parts of the series leave you in the dark, I'll do my best to help fill in those gaps as I learn as well. The first recap ended up in two parts, but that had to do with exposition I believe. I do have to say it's probably a good thing that AMC didn't think me worthy enough to receive Breaking Bad screeners or I probably would know how to make crystal meth.
Luck premieres on HBO Sunday at 9 p.m. EST/PST, 8 p.m. CST with each of the subsequent eight episodes in the nine-episode first season airing at the same time.
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Labels: Boardwalk Empire, Breaking Bad, Coens, Curb Your Enthusiasm, De Palma, Deadwood, Dustin Hoffman, Farina, Gambon, HBO, Luck, Michael Mann, Milch, Nolte, P.S. Hoffman, R. Scott, Spielberg, The Sopranos, The Wire, Treme
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Friday, January 20, 2012
Idealism, disillusionment go hand in hand
By Edward Copeland
After watching Ryan Gosling transform himself into one bundle of tics after another in torturous dramas such as Blue Valentine and lame attempts at quirky comedy such as Lars and the Real Girl, what a tremendous relief to see Gosling once again deliver a great, relaxed performance and do it in the best American political drama in years.
The Ides of March marks George Clooney's fourth time in the director's chair (Leatherheads slipped my mind and I never saw it). Clooney, as he did in the superior Good Night, and Good Luck., also takes a supporting role and co-wrote the screenplay with Grant Heslov. Beau Willmon, who wrote the play Farragut North, upon which The Ides of March is based, also contributed to the movie's script.
Gosling stars as Stephen Meyers, an idealistic 30-year-old campaign adviser to Gov. Mike Morris (Clooney) who is closing in on the Democratic presidential nomination. Stephen shows real talent for what he does, but he's still young enough that he'll only work for politicians in whom he really believes. Meyers hasn't worked in the game long enough to develop a pragmatic, cynical shell like Morris' campaign director Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman) or Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti), the man running Morris' last real rival for the nomination, Sen. Pullman, ahead of the crucial Ohio primary.
Someone says to Stephen at one point something similar to a moment from the great fourth season of the HBO series The Wire. The chief of staff for Baltimore's recently defeated mayor has a drink with the campaign adviser of the man who won the office as they watch him go back on a pledge on the bar's TV. The ex-chief of staff tells the adviser, "They always disappoint you in the end."
For those who haven't seen The Ides of March yet, I'll let you learn on your own in what way Clooney's seemingly perfect candidate doesn't live up to Stephen's standards and what choices he makes as a result, though other twists complicate Stephen's decision.
I haven't had the chance to see Drive yet, but this film demonstrates a return to form by Gosling, who I feared would be lost forever in a realm that confused mechanized existential angst with actual acting. Gosling produces some terrific moments of perfect stillness where he doesn't even need dialogue to convey Stephen's thoughts as opposed to Blue Valentine where you wanted to strap his limbs to a table so he'd stop being so fidgety.
Of the four jobs that Clooney performs on The Ides of March, his efficient direction with some interesting shots (including a great closing one) probably ranks on top. He's good as the governor, but it's the type of role he can do in his sleep.
The rest of the cast performs as well as you'd expect them to do. In fact, Hoffman and Giamatti could have swapped roles and the movie wouldn't have skipped a beat. Both actors play these types so often and brilliantly, it isn't as if either will spring surprises. Marisa Tomei gets some nice moments as a New York Times reporter. Evan Rachel Wood fits nicely as an intern on the campaign whose father happens to chair the DNC. Jeffrey Wright doesn't get enough to do as an ambitious senator dangling his delegates in front of both contenders and Jennifer Ehle gets completely wasted as the governor's wife.
The Ides of March belongs to Gosling, Clooney's direction and the screenplay in the end. We've had many good political satires in recent memory, but I can't recall the last time someone produced a good political drama as a feature. The Adjustment Bureau was good, but it had that Philip K. Dick element that took it out of the realm of the realistic, so I don't think it counts. The best recent one might have been about Italian politics, Il divo.
The Ides of March doesn't quite rise to the level of the greatest political dramas or thrillers such as The Candidate, the original Manchurian Candidate or The Last Hurrah, but it's the best in quite some time. If The Ides of March has no other legacy, at least it has returned Ryan Gosling to a career in acting,
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Labels: 10s, E.R. Wood, George Clooney, Giamatti, Gosling, P.S. Hoffman, The Wire, Theater, Tomei
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Sunday, January 15, 2012
Adapt or die
By Edward Copeland
Brad Pitt, as far as I'm concerned, always has received a bit of a bum rap as an actor. Granted, he doesn't have the breadth of abilities of others in his generation such as Edward Norton or Philip Seymour Hoffman (who actually co-stars with him here in Moneyball), but when Pitt gets a role that falls into his narrower range such as in Fight Club or The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, he truly excels. In fact, the older Pitt gets, the more his talent grows and there hasn't been a better example yet than his performance as Billy Beane in Moneyball where he delivers his best work yet. It also doesn't hurt that he's working from an incredibly strong script by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin.
Zaillian and Sorkin's screenplay, with a story by Stan Chervin, was adapted from Michael Lewis' book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. While there have been many films about baseball and several I've liked a lot, Moneyball may revolve around the game, but it doesn't resemble other baseball movies though it manages to be just as compelling — if not more so — than other sports movies where the climax involves a Big Game. Bennett Miller helms Moneyball, his first film since his feature debut, Capote, six years ago. While I liked Capote well enough, Moneyball represents a quantum leap forward in quality for Miller.
Billy Beane works as the general manager of the Oakland A's and the movie begins when the team faced off against the New York Yankees in the October 2011 American League Championship Series. At the time, the A's boasted some talented up-and-coming players such as Johnny Damon and Jason Giambi and Oakland almost pulls off the win, but the Yankees prevail. Figures on the screen put the disparity between the teams in very stark terms: It isn't really the Yankees vs. the A's, it's $114,457,768 vs. $39,722,689. Teams with smaller payrolls just can't compete (especially once the season ends and the Yankees poach Damon and Giambi from the A's). As one sports radio talk show host comments, "It's like we're a farm system for the New York Yankees." I don't follow baseball, but that is a ridiculous disparity. It's much like the political system has become following the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling.
Beane, once a promising player himself, pleads to the Athletics' owner for more money to try to level the playing field with the richer teams, but the owner balks. During a meeting with Cleveland Indians General Manager Mark Shapiro (Reed Diamond) to obtain replacements for his lost stars, Beane gets shot down at every turn by what he can afford. While he's there, he notices a young man (Jonah Hill) whispering advice that appears to be taken. Beane zeroes in on the guy and learns his name is Peter Brand. Brand advocates a different approach to team building. Instead of chasing star players who cost a fortune and may or may not deliver championships, Brand proposes following a statistical formula based on which players get on base most often, usually at lower salaries.
Oakland's veteran baseball scouts and his manager Art Howe (Hoffman) resist this new system and it falls flat at first as Howe continues to use the players the way he always has, ignoring Beane's suggestions. Finally, Beane makes moves that force his Howe to give his new player acquisitions to get game time. Eventually, the new method reaps rewards and the A's go on an incredible and historic winning streak. Even if you aren't a baseball fan, it's difficult not to feel the excitement when a home run comes at a crucial time.
The only criticism I had with Moneyball is that it dips a bit too often into flashbacks to Beane's life as a promising baseball player coming out of high school (It doesn't help that the actor playing the younger Beane doesn't look that much like Pitt). They could have made all the same points they make in those scenes in less time and without so much repetition and shortened the film's 133-minute running time. However, that's a minor complaint against an otherwise solid film.
Pretty much from top to bottom, the cast excels, including brief appearances by Robin Wright as Beane's ex-wife and Arliss Howard as the head of the Boston Red Sox. Hoffman turns in a fine performance as always, but he lays back since this isn't his movie and makes no scene-stealing attempts. Hill gets to show he's capable of playing a role unlike anything he's played before. He's been fine in most of the comedies in which he's appeared, most from the Judd Apatow Factory such as Funny People, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Superbad and Knocked Up, even if the movies' quality varied, but it's nice to see him given the opportunity to portray a completely different type of character and do it well.
Combining the screenplay and Pitt's best-ever performance proves ultimately to be the winning formula that makes Moneyball so compelling. Pitt (who also was a producer) never strikes a false note and the film rarely does either. Even though Moneyball tells a true story, I didn't know what happened in 2002 so the ending came as a genuine surprise, yet one that felt wholly appropriate — and not the way a fictional script would choose to finish its tale. That's another reason Moneyball belongs on the list of 2011's best films.
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Labels: 10s, Apatow, Books, Brad Pitt, Capote, Edward Norton, Jonah Hill, Nonfiction, P.S. Hoffman, Robin Wright, Sorkin
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Saturday, April 09, 2011
Sidney Lumet (1924-2011)
I want you to get up right now. I want you to stand up, out of your chairs. I want you to get up, go to your window, open it and shout, "I'm as sad as hell. Sidney Lumet has died." One of the all-time great film directors, whose debut in 1957, 12 Angry Men, earned him his first Oscar nomination, and who 50 years later still was capable of producing as great a film as Before the Devil Knows You're Dead died today in New York at 86.
Lumet actually began his career as a child actor, making his first appearance on the Broadway stage in 1935 in the original production of Dead End. He'd act on Broadway multiple times until 1948 when directing for
television caught his eye. He only directed on Broadway three times. His direction for television began in 1951 and included both episodic television and the many live playhouse shows until the chance to direct 12 Angry Men as a feature came along in 1957. Its origins as a play clearly showed, but there was no point trying to open this tale up since the claustrophobia of that jury room heightened the drama and Lumet used to his advantage, as in the moment when they discuss the unusual knife the defendant had and that the victim was killed with and Henry Fonda suddenly whips out one of his own, tossing it so the blade sticks in the middle of the table. The film contained a great cast including, in addition to Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, E.G. Marshall and Jack Warden. In fact, of the 12 members of that jury, only Jack Klugman remains with us today.Lumet continued his television work, not directing another feature until 1959's That Kind of Woman starring Sophia Loren. The following year, he got more notice when Tennessee Williams adapted his own play Orpheus Descending into The Fugitive Kind which Lumet filmed with Marlon Brando and Anna Magnani. In 1962, Lumet made a film of another stage classic, Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, starring Katharine Hepburn as the opium-addicted Mary Tyrone.
In 1964, he filmed two of his most underrated movies: The Pawnbroker, featuring a great performance by Rod Steiger as the Jewish title character, a Holocaust survivor, who has given up on mankind; and Fail-Safe, a tense nuclear thriller starring Henry Fonda that got overshadowed by the satire of Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove which came out first the same year.
He kept quite busy for the rest of the 1960s and early '70s, directing The Hill, The Group, Bye Bye Braverman, The Sea Gull, The Appointment, Last of the Mobile Hot Shots, The Anderson Tapes, The Offence and Child's Play. In 1971, Lumet and Joseph L. Mankiewicz co-directed the documentary King: A Filmed Record...Montgomery to Memphis about Martin Luther King Jr.
Beginning in 1973, Lumet started what was the most creatively fertile and rewarding period of his filmmaking career, one that earned him four consecutive nominations from the Directors Guild. Starting with Al Pacino in Serpico, it was one of many times in Lumet's career he'd turn his lens on the issue of corruption among police. In 1974, he went in another direction, casting Albert Finney as Agatha Christie's famed Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot and assembled an amazing cast for Murder on the Orient Express.
Then came the first of an amazing one-two punch with 1975's Dog Day Afternoon, one of Lumet's greatest achievements and a film I never tire of watching. With Al Pacino and John Cazale attempting to rob a bank and having it turn into a hostage situation and a media sideshow, it's a wonder. It brought Lumet his first Oscar nomination for directing since that initial one for 12 Angry Men. It's not only proof of what a great director Lumet could be but when they released the special two-disc DVD edition of the film, Lumet also showed that he's one of the few people who actually recorded DVD commentaries that were worth listening to, sharing many interesting details about the production of this great work which deftly blends the humorous, the tragic and the absurd.
He followed Dog Day up in 1976 with the incomparable Network. While much of the credit for this satirical and prescient masterpiece deservedly goes to Paddy Chayefsky's Oscar-winning script, Lumet's direction
shouldn't get short shrift. The way he filmed the chaos of the network control rooms and its overlapping dialogue and always found the right pacing for whatever craziness was going on. Also, as in Dog Day, Lumet didn't have a musical score. Except for the opening song in the 1975 film and the network news theme in Network, he eschewed any musical underscore. Neither film needed one. He also assembled some great visual compositions, such as the long view down the canyons of New York with windows open as far as the eyes could see with heads sticking out screaming "I'm mad as hell" to Ned Beatty and the lighting as he's at the end of that long conference table about to give Peter Finch his corporate cosmology speech. Brilliant. Lumet received his third directing nomination.Things got a little bumpy filmwise after that. Next came the adaptation of the play Equus followed by what many count as his biggest mistake: casting a too old Diana Ross as Dorothy in the big screen version of the Broadway musical The Wiz, which also featured Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow. Next came a rather lame Alan King-Ali McGraw romantic comedy (Yes, you read that correctly) called Just Tell Me What You Want.
Lumet began to get his bearings again by going back to police corruption with 1981's Prince of the City, which earned him his first Oscar nomination in a writing category. The next year brought him his final nomination as a director for The Verdict, starring Paul Newman as an alcoholic lawyer seeking redemption. That same year, he made the fun adaptation of the play Deathtrap starring Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve.
The remainder of his career mixed some OK efforts with some really bad ones. He made Running on Empty, which earned River Phoenix an Oscar nominaton but did his best when going back to corruption in movies such as 1990's Q&A and 1996's Night Falls on Manhattan. In 2005, the Academy finally saw fit to award him an honorary Oscar, back when they still televised those events. At least he ended on a high note, with the really good 2007 film Before the Devil Knows You're Dead starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke and Albert Finney.
RIP Mr. Lumet.
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Labels: Brando, Caine, Chayefsky, E.G. Marshall, H. Fonda, Hawke, Jack Warden, K. Hepburn, Kubrick, Lee J. Cobb, Magnani, Mankiewicz, N. Beatty, Newman, O'Neill, Obituary, P.S. Hoffman, Pacino, River Phoenix, Tennessee Williams
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Friday, February 04, 2011
If you want to swim, you have to get in the water
By Edward Copeland
As great a city as it is and despite its large population, no city makes a single person feel more alone than New York. That's certainly the case for a middle-age limo driver named Jack (Philip Seymour Hoffman, making his directing debut) in Jack Goes Boating.
Hoffman first played Jack off-Broadway with his theater troupe LAByrinth and the troupe's co-artistic director John Ortiz and actress Daphne Rubin-Vega re-create their stage roles in playwright Bob Glaudini's screen adaptation. Joining them for the movie version is the talented Amy Ryan, Oscar nominee for Gone Baby Gone and port police Officer Beatrice Russell on The Wire.
Jack's job as a limo driver comes courtesy of his uncle, who owns the company, and that's where he's developed a friendship with Clyde (Ortiz), a fun-loving, superconfident guy who is determined to change Jack's luck with women. Clyde's wife Lucy (Rubin-Vega) is similarly inspired to help find a match for Connie (Ryan), a co-worker at the funeral parlor where she works, so the spouses conspire to bring these lost, awkward souls together.
Connie, to put things mildly, can be a bit of a strange duck, with a run of bad luck, including being assaulted on the subway and being felt up by her boss. Ryan plays the part to eccentric perfection, especially at the film's climax when she must finally take charge of an unbearable situation at a dinner party.
Jack comes tailor-fit for Hoffman. He's a man not just uncomfortable in his own skin, but uncomfortable in skin in general, but he's determined to accomplish things such as learning to swim since Connie mentioned wanting to go boating when the weather's better. He also thinks that he should cook for her and Clyde gives him the name of a pastry chef he knows at the Waldorf Astoria, leaving out the fact that the man used to date Lucy years ago and Clyde still harbors bad feelings about it.
The action culminates with the big night when Jack prepares to unveil his new cooking skills at a dinner party for the two couples, only Clyde's drunken jealousy and a shared smoking of hashish turns things into a disaster. The four actors all turn in superb performances, particularly Ryan and Rubin-Vega when she finally gives Clyde the dressing down he deserves.
As a director, Hoffman shows some visual flair and, unless you knew ahead of time, it might not be readily apparent that Jack Goes Boating began life as a play and not just as a small indie.
It's not a great film, but its performers definitely make it worth seeing.
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Labels: 10s, Amy Ryan, P.S. Hoffman, The Wire
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Monday, July 26, 2010
Remembering James Gammon in Major League
By David Gaffen
For avid moviegoers one of the pleasures of the film-viewing experience is the chance to see recognizable faces again and again — character actors who are so instantly familiar that they bring a knowing smile upon their first appearance on the screen. Sometimes these people turn, however slowly, into the kind of name that ends up third- or fourth-billed in a movie, like Steve Buscemi or Sam Elliott, or into a strange sort of star such as Philip Seymour Hoffman.
More often than not, though, they appear in what seems to be every movie made, like M. Emmet Walsh. We lost one of those character actors recently, a gem of a movie presence, James Gammon, a longtime theater performer who was best known for his portrayal of Cleveland Indians manager Lou Brown in Major League.
Gammon had a bushy mustache and one of the most recognizable voices in the business, a raspy, gravelly croak perfectly suited for cowboys and weary authority figures. He shows up in Urban Cowboy and had a memorable bit in Silverado as a gunman incredulous that Scott Glenn’s character has brought a posse to one of his best hideouts.
Major League was released in 1989 and exists in the public consciousness as a sister to Bull Durham, which hit theaters a year earlier, because they share a subject matter (baseball) and they’re both comedies.
The reality is that Major League isn’t half the movie Bull Durham is, and without Gammon, it would be more or less unwatchable.
Looking back, with the exception of Bob Uecker’s moments as the team announcer, just about every amusing part of the movie involves Gammon in one way or another. He dismisses Wesley Snipes’ Willie “Mays” Hayes, who says, "I hit like Mays but I run like Mays," after he bats a pop-up with this terse summation: “You may run like Hayes, but you hit like shit.”
His early reaction to Dennis Haysbert’s breaking-ball challenged Pedro Cerrano is another great throwaway moment. Cerrano is crushing the ball during batting practice, and Gammon muses, “This guy hits a ton. How come nobody picked him up?” Cerrano then whiffs, badly, at a breaking ball, and Gammon, deflated, groans, “Ohhhhh.”
Frequent moviegoers are demanding of actors, generally not wanting to see big-name guys assume the same persona throughout each movie, which may be part of the reason certain stars seem to dim after they’ve been seen mining familiar ground. (Samuel L. Jackson’s shtick, for one, is really tired these days.)
Character actors get a good bit of latitude in this way, perhaps because their part in a production is limited, and so a familiar personality livens up the screen for a brief period of time before they fade into the background. Think of Dylan Baker in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment of glee in the underrated Changing Lanes, or Bill Nighy’s venomous pharma exec in The Constant Gardener.
Gammon will forever be one of those. He had a couple of good meaty roles in later years, playing another cowboy in Traveller, a little-seen, but interesting character study with Bill Paxton and Mark Wahlberg, and one of the only roles really worth a darn in the overwrought Cold Mountain.
But it will be Lou Brown for which Gammon is most remembered for movie fans. It’s fitting that the sequel, Major League II, was vastly less successful than the original. (The original grossed nearly $50 million; five years later, the sequel only made $30 million.)
On some level, that had to be for the disastrous decision by the writers to sideline the character with a heart attack, only to give more screen time to the sleep-inducing character played by Tom Berenger. Lou Brown, given the chance to look at the script, would have reacted to that in the same fashion he did when confronted with an annoying provision in Roger Dorn’s (Corbin Bernsen) contract — threw it on the ground and pissed all over it.
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Labels: Berenger, Buscemi, P.S. Hoffman, Samuel L. Jackson
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