Saturday, March 10, 2012
Bringing Up Babs
By Damian Arlyn
I remember working in the video store one day when a regular customer came in to check out a few titles. He glanced at the enormous flat screen we had behind the counter, saw Barbra Streisand belting out some catchy show tune and uttered a question I got asked a lot in those days. "What are you watching?" he said. "Hello, Dolly!" I answered. He smiled, shook his head and exclaimed, "See, now, here's where I break with the stereotype. I'm a gay guy who doesn't like Barbra Streisand." I just laughed and replied, "That's OK. I'm a straight guy who does."
And it's true. Although she is by no means my favorite actress (nor would I ever see a film simply because she's in it), I happen to enjoy watching her onscreen. Funny Girl, Meet the Fockers and the aforementioned Hello, Dolly! are all films I love, but my favorite movie of hers would have to be the hilarious What's Up, Doc? which celebrates its 40th anniversary today. Nowhere is Babs' gift for comedy and sheer charisma on display better than in this film. They even find an excuse to show off her incredible voice once or twice: namely, in the film's opening and ending credits where she sings Cole Porter's "You're The Top" as well as the scene at the piano when she croons a few lines of "As Time Goes By."
It also doesn't hurt that What's Up, Doc? happens to be a really great movie. Hot off of his success with The Last Picture Show, Peter Bogdanovich originally conceived it as a remake of Howard Hawks' Bringing Up Baby, but wisely decided (much as Lawrence Kasdan would do later with his film noir tribute Body Heat) to use Hawks' film merely as an inspiration rather than a template and to give What's Up, Doc? its own identity. As a result, it comes off more as a love letter to screwball comedies in general as well as to iconic Warner Bros. feature films (such as Casablanca) and classic animated shorts. Hence, when Barbra's character, Judy Maxwell, is introduced first to Ryan O'Neal's nerdy Howard Bannister, she's seen munching on a carrot a la Bugs Bunny and/or Clark Gable from It Happened One Night. With her brash, fast-talking, trouble-making personality and his stiff, bespectacled, long-suffering demeanor, the two leads clearly are based on Baby's Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. (Interestingly, Streisand shared a best actress Oscar with Ms. Hepburn only four years earlier in one of the Academy's rare ties. Streisand won for her film debut in Funny Girl while Hepburn earned her third best actress trophy for The Lion in Winter. Hepburn's prize was her second consecutive win in the category having taken the 1967 Oscar for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.) Aside from Judy constantly getting Howard into trouble and a reminiscent coat-tearing gag, the similarities between Doc and Baby essentially end there.
Also, What's Up, Doc? lacks a leopard. Instead the chaos revolves around four identical carrying cases containing such varied items as clothes, rocks, jewels and classified government documents. When moviegoers first see the quartet of cases at the start of Doc, it's the filmmakers signaling audiences that much confusion and hilarity awaits. At this point I have to confess that, although I've seen the film at least a dozen times, I cannot to this day follow which case is which throughout the course of the film. Every time I sit down to watch, I swear I'm going to keep track of the cases, but I always give up about 20 minutes into it. I take some comfort, however, from the fact that even the great Buck Henry, in the process of re-writing the screenplay, reportedly phoned Bogdanovich to say, "I've lost one of the suitcases. It's in the hotel somewhere, but I don't know where I put it."
The gags come fast and furious in What's Up, Doc? More than a decade before Bruce Willis and Bogdanovich's ex-girlfriend Cybill Shepherd resurrected rapid-fire banter on TV's Moonlighting, Streisand and O'Neal fire a barrage of zingers at each other so quickly that you're almost afraid to laugh for fear you'll miss the next one. The behind-the-scenes team also populates the What's Up, Doc? universe with a whole host of kooky characters, each bringing his or her unique comic flair to those roles. There isn't a single boring person in What's Up, Doc? Everyone (right down to the painter who drops his cigar into the bucket) amuses. At the top of the heap resides the great Madeline Kahn in her feature film debut as Howard's frumpy fiancée Eunice Burns. Two years before she joined Mel Brooks' cinematic comedy troupe, she proved to the world her status as one of the funniest women ever to grace the silver screen. Another Mel Brooks' regular, Kenneth Mars, plays Hugh Simon, providing yet one more strangely accented flamboyant nutball to his immense repertoire. A very young Randy Quaid, a brief M. Emmet Walsh and a very annoyed John Hillerman also show up in hilarious bit parts.
All of this anarchy culminates in a spectacular car chase through the streets of San Francisco that actually rivals the one from Bullitt. Apparently it took four weeks to shoot, cost $1 million (¼ of the film's budget) and even managed to get the filmmakers in trouble with the city for destroying some of its property without permission. Nevertheless, Bogdanovich pulls out all the stops in creating this over-the-top action/slapstick set piece that overflows with both thrills and laughs. When watching it, one can't help but be reminded that physical comedy on this grand of a scale doesn't even get attempted anymore. One wishes another director would resurrect the kind of awesome stunt-comedy on display here and in The Pink Panther series.
The film's dénouement takes place in a courtroom where an embittered, elderly judge (the brilliant Liam Dunn) hears the arguments of everyone involved and tries to make sense of it all. Howard's attempt to explain only serves to frustrate and confuse the judge further and results in this gem of an exchange that owes more than a little bit to Abbott & Costello's "Who's on First?":
HOWARD: First, there was this trouble between me and Hugh.
JUDGE: You and me?
HOWARD: No, not you. Hugh.
HUGH: I am Hugh.
JUDGE: You are me?
HUGH: No, I am Hugh.
JUDGE: Stop saying that. [to bailiff] Make him stop saying that!
HUGH: Don't touch me, I'm a doctor.
JUDGE: Of what?
HUGH: Music.
JUDGE: Can you fix a hi-fi?
HUGH: No, sir.
JUDGE: Then shut up!
The tag line for What's Up, Doc? read: "A screwball comedy. Remember them?" Well, whether people remembered screwball comedy or simply discovered it for the first time, they certainly embraced the film as it was an enormous success upon its release. It took in $66 million in North America alone and became the third-highest grossing film of the year. Since The Last Picture Show was released in late '71 and Doc came out in early '72, Bogdanovich had two hugely successful films playing in theaters at the same time. Unfortunately, his career, which had just started to rise, also had neared its peak. Although he would follow Doc with Paper Moon his directing career would only see sporadic critical successes after that such as Saint Jack and Mask. He even filmed Texasville, the sequel to The Last Picture Show, but he'd never again see the kind of commercial or critical success he had achieved in the early 1970s. Bogdanovich would eventually end up working in television, often as an actor such as his long recurring role as Dr. Elliot Kupferberg, psychiatrist to Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Bracco) on The Sopranos. The most recent feature film he directed was 2001's fairly well-received The Cat's Meow starring Kirsten Dunst as Marion Davies and Edward Herrmann as William Randolph Hearst. Based on a play of the same name, The Cat's Meow concerned a real-life mystery in 1924 Hollywood involving the shooting death of writer/producer/director Thomas Ince (Cary Elwes) on Hearst's yacht.
When Bogdanovich was good, he was great and What's Up, Doc? is, in my opinion, the jewel in his crown. It made a once-forgotten genre popular again, it jump-started a lot of comic careers and it reminded us all that love meaning never having to say we're sorry is the dumbest thing we've ever heard.
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Labels: 70s, Abbott and Costello, Bogdanovich, Buck Henry, Cary, Cole Porter, Cybill Shepherd, Dunst, Gable, Hawks, K. Hepburn, L. Kasdan, Mel Brooks, Movie Tributes, R. Quaid, Streisand, The Sopranos, Willis
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Saturday, October 22, 2011
"A person can't sneeze in this town without someone offering them a handkerchief"
How come you treat me like a worn-out shoe?
My hair's still curly and my eyes are still blue
Why don't you love me like you used to do?
•••
Well, why don't you be just like you used to be?
How come you find so many faults with me?
Somebody's changed so let me give you a clue
Why don't you love me like you used to do?
By Edward Copeland
Even if Hank Williams Sr. weren't well represented with songs that play throughout Peter Bogdanovich's film adaptation of Larry McMurtry's novel The Last Picture Show, somehow I think the movie would play as if it were a cinematic evocation of the music legend. Despite the fact that today marks the 40th anniversary of the film's release and The Last Picture Show took as its setting a small, depressed Texas town in 1951 and 1952 (even going so far as to have cinematographer Robert Surtees shoot it in glorious black & white), it contains a universality that resonates today both in human and economic terms. Williams' hit "Why Don't You Love Me (Like You Used to Do)?" that I quote partially above are the first words we hear, before any character speaks a line. In the movie's context, the lyrics could be describing the first person we see — high school senior Sonny Crawford (Timothy Bottoms). With the way the U.S. has been going of late, I know very few people who don't feel like a "worn-out shoe" and wish fondly for past, better days and these feelings stretch from one end of the ideological spectrum to the other. Fortunately, The Last Picture Show itself hasn't changed. Age has served the film well, helped in no small part by its amazing cast.
McMurtry, who based the town in the novel on his own small north Texas hometown of Archer City, co-wrote the screenplay with Bogdanovich, the former film critic who was directing his second credited feature film after the fun and tawdry thriller Targets that gave Boris Karloff a great, late career role. (Under the name Derek Thomas, he had filmed a sci-fi feature called Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women in 1968 starring Mamie Van Doren.) In the novel, McMurtry renamed the town Thalia, but the film gave it another moniker — Anarene.
The movie opens on Anarene's main stretch of road and passes the Royal movie theater. The wind howls ferociously, blowing dust, leaves, trash and anything that isn't tied down through the air and down the street. The flying debris leads us to Sonny and that Hank Williams song, which comes from the radio of his old pickup that he's having a helluva time getting started. Actually, the pickup only half belongs to
Sonny — he shares it with his best friend Duane Moore (Jeff Bridges), who always seems to get it first on date nights so he can neck with his girlfriend, Jacy Farrow (Cybill Shepherd in her film debut), widely considered the best-looking teen in town. Once Sonny gets that old pickup running, he spots young Billy (the late Sam Bottoms, Timothy's real-life younger brother) standing in the middle of the street with his broom, trying to sweep up the dust. Sonny honks at him and Billy smiles and climbs in the pickup with him. As he usually does, Sonny affectionately turns the mentally challenged boy's cap around backward and the two head to the pool hall owned by Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson). Sonny pays for what looks like a sticky bun and a bottle of pop, prompting Sam to shake his head. "You ain't ever gonna amount to nothing. Already spent a dime this morning, ain't even had a decent breakfast," Sam tells Sonny, but not in a mean-spirited way. "Why don't you comb you hair, Sonny? It sticks up…I'm surprised you had the nerve to show up this morning after that stomping y'all took last night." Sam's referring to Anarene High School's final football game of the year, where the team took a real beating. "It could've been worse," Sonny replies. "You could say that just about everything," Sam says. "It could've been worse" applies to most of the situations in The Last Picture Show, which can be described accurately by the overused phrase "slice of life." Plot doesn't drive the story — character, not only of the people but of the town itself, does. While you watch the movie, you aren't concerned with what happens next or how the film ends because you realize that life will go on for most of these fictional folks you've come to know even after the lights come up in the theater and the projector shuts off. Wherever the movie finishes will resemble a chapter stop more than a finale. (As if to prove the point, McMurtry returned to Thalia in four more novels, though Duane becomes the main character in the followups as opposed to Sonny, who decidedly takes the lead here. Bogdanovich even filmed the first sequel, Texasville, in 1990 with mixed results.)
Sam's reference to the previous night's football debacle displays an excellent example of what captivates the citizens in a so-called "one-stoplight" town such as Amarene, as the team's players (mainly Sonny and Duane, since they are the teammates we know best) get repeatedly berated by their elders the day after the loss. A common refrain becomes variations of the question, "Have you ever heard of tackling?" That even continues when Abilene (Clu Gulager), one of the many oil-field workers who live in Amarene, when he comes straight from work to Sam's pool hall, changes clothes and takes billiards so seriously that he has his own cue stick that he keeps in a case and assembles. While he's there, he collects on a bet he had with Sam on the game. Abilene isn't faithful in most areas of his life and that's telegraphed right away when we see that he'd bet against the hometown high school football team. "You see? This is what I get for bettin' on my own hometown ballteam. I ought'a have better sense," Sam says as he forks over the cash. "Wouldn't hurt to have a better hometown," the emotionless Abilene declares. Soon enough, football will fade from the town's collective memory as they move into basketball season. While sports may be important in holding this dying town
together, we never see an actual game of any kind. The closest we come is one instance of basketball practice in the school gym. That's because high school sporting events aren't what The Last Picture Show wants to show us. It's telling a coming-of-age story — several in fact — and not all concern the teen characters in the tale. It's also about love and loss, not always in the present tense. Of course, at its core, The Last Picture Show also deals with community and by community, I mean gossip. In this small a town, very few secrets can be kept, yet at the same time its citizens seem fairly discreet about what they know and staying out of other people's business. I've never read the novel, but I can see how easily it would work in book form. There's a story that Bogdanovich, who was then married to multi-hyphenate Polly Platt, who died earlier this year, read the jacket cover of the book and didn't see a way it could work as a film until Platt outlined it for him in chronological form. She must have done a brilliant job since she not only changed Bogdanovich's mind but led him to the road where he ended up directing and co-writing one of the best films of all time. the balancing act needed to transfer The Last Picture Show to the screen would have been very tricky for anyone to pull off, but I think the reason it worked boiled down to two key elements: its look and its cast.Platt, in addition to being the person who gave Bogdanovich the vision to turn McMurtry's novel into a feature film also served as the film's production designer and its uncredited costume designer, seamlessly taking the actors and Archer City, Texas, back in time nearly 20 years. Her work was helped in no small part by the legendary director of photography Robert Surtees' exquisite black & white images, which earned one of The Last Picture Show's eight Oscar nominations. Surtees received a total of 15 Oscar nominations for
cinematography in his career and won three: for King Solomon's Mines, The Bad and the Beautiful and Ben-Hur. He actually lost twice in 1971 — he was nominated for Summer of '42 as well as The Last Picture Show. He earned four consecutive nominations from 1975-78, when he made his last film before he retired. Other nominations included The Sting, The Graduate and Oklahoma! He showed a strong gift for using both color and black & white and his stark look in The Last Picture Show perfectly captured the time and place of the setting without letting any nostalgia sneak into the proceedings, which it really shouldn't. No one is looking back at the events from the future, so that element shouldn't be there. In a way, it's interesting to compare it to George Lucas' American Graffiti two years later. Both films look at high school seniors and eschew musical scores in favor of soundtracks full of the pop hits of the era. The difference is that Graffiti, while good, revels in a "good old days" spirit with barely a mention of sexual curiosity let alone activity while The Last Picture Show depicts an entirely different economic class that's having very few good times, but certainly getting drunk and laid. Of course, adults didn't exist in Graffiti whereas their roles prove integral in The Last Picture Show. Admittedly, I haven't seen American Graffiti in some time — Lucas hasn't re-edited it to make the drag race CGI and digitally replaced all the cars out cruising with hybrids, has he?
Despite the film's ensemble nature, Sonny truly serves as the center of this movie's universe. Timothy Bottoms wears such deep, soulful eyes that it made him a natural to play a role that required deadpan humor as well heartbreaking drama. While the other younger cast members mostly continue to flourish in the industry if we can still count Randy Quaid, who made his film debut as Lester Marlow, a rich kid from Wichita Falls who lures Shepherd's Jacy to a nude swimming party, but has now transformed himself from a talented character actor into a fugitive from justice on the run with his wife and being pursued by Dog the Bounty Hunter), Bottoms' star never seemed to take off after such a promising start. The Last Picture Show was his second feature following Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun and in 1973 he starred in The Paper Chase, but it has been mostly TV. low budget movies and downhill since then. (I suppose his most recent highlight was playing the title character in Trey Parker and Matt Stone's short-lived Comedy Central sitcom That's My Bush!) It's a shame because he's the key to so much of The Last Picture Show. Of those eight Oscar nominations that I mentioned it received, four went to acting and two won. All were much deserved, but Bottoms deserved a slot as well. I didn't add it up, but I imagine he appears in a great majority of the movie's scenes and a case could have easily been made for pushing him for lead — not that he stood a chance to win against Gene Hackman in The French Connection, but I would have nominated him before Walter Matthau in Kotch, George C. Scott in The Hospital or Topol in Fiddler on the Roof. However, I don't know if I could have evicted Peter Finch in Sunday Bloody Sunday for him.
Bottoms' Sonny though really serves as the line upon which so much of the movie's clothing hangs to dry. He's the first character we meet, introducing us to Billy, whose origin never gets explained, and more importantly Johnson's Oscar-winning Sam the Lion, who not only owns the pool hall but the diner and the Royal movie theater as well. Sonny takes us to the Royal for the first time, arriving late because of his delivery job. Miss Mosey (Jessie Lee Fulton), the kindly manager of the place who never has popcorn since she long ago forgot how the machine worked, tells Sonny that he already missed the newsreel and the comedy and the feature has started, so she only charges him 30 cents for admission. Imagine being able to see a movie for that cheap — and I imagine it wasn't that much more to get two movies and a newsreel, Now, the prices go up and up and up while, in general, the quality goes down further and
further. Once inside, he hooks up with his girlfriend Charlene Duggs (Sharon Taggart), who gets annoyed that he doesn't realize what an important day it is. It seems it's their one-year anniversary of going steady. With that perfect deadpan aplomb I mentioned earlier, Bottoms as Sonny simply says, "Seems longer." The main feature playing that night is Father of the Bride starring Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor. Though Sonny and Charlene have relocated to the back row so they can make out, it's clear that Sonny finds the giant image of Liz Taylor more alluring than the girl who is kissing him, While we met Duane earlier when he got off work from the oil field and went to the diner with Sonny, he and Jacy show up and take the seats in front of them and it's clear that Duane finds it very satisfying to be kissing Jacy because they don't seem to be watching the movie at all. When the movie is over and all the kids exit, they tell Miss Mosey they enjoyed it, but I bet they wouldn't want to take a quiz on it. However, that wind still howls giving the older woman trouble putting up the poster for the next attraction so Sam gives her a hand teasing the return of Sands of Iwo Jima starring John Wayne. The town can boast having a movie theater, but it certainly isn't first run. After the show, Duane lets Sonny have the pickup, so he drives Charlene out by the lake and they begin to make out. You can tell this is a choreographed routine for the teens because Charlene immediately unhooks her bra and hangs it from the rearview mirror, which is followed immediately by Sonny's hands going to her bare breasts as if they were magnets and her chest was built out of metal. Charlene complains that something's wrong
with Sonny — that he's acting as if he's bored or would rather be somewhere else. However, when Sonny does venture to place his hand somewhere else, Charlene goes nuts. "You cheapskate — you didn't even get me an anniversary present. Now, you want to get me pregnant," she barks as she starts to put her top back on. Sonny argues that it was only his hand, but she says she knows how one thing leads to another and she's waiting until she gets married. Sonny, a hangdog expression on his face, tells her that they should break up then. This shocks Charlene, but she gets mad, not upset. "Now don't go tellin' all the boys how hot I was," she warns him. "You wasn't that hot," Sonny sighs sadly in a monotone. He can't decide if he's depressed or relieved to be rid of Charlene when he shows up at the diner and tells the ever faithful manager/waitress Genevieve (the great Eileen Brennan) about it. "Jacy's the only pretty girl in town and Duane's got her," Sonny tells her. "Jacy will bring you more misery than she'll ever be worth," Genevieve declares. What a font of wisdom her character will turn out to be. Sonny remembers hearing the news that Genevieve's husband Dan finally is able to return to work, so he figures that means she won't be working much longer. In another moment from a 1971 film set in 1951 that could be taking place in 2011, she responds, "We've got four thousand dollars in doctor bills to pay. I'll probably be making cheeseburgers for your grandkids." If the bills are that high in 1951, calculate them now.
You will have to forgive me for saying so much — I have an unfortunate tendency to ramble about films I love — but I also needed to get you to this point so we could talk about the most important part of film dealing with Sonny, something that begins with doing a simple favor for Coach Popper (Bill Thurman). The coach asks Sonny if he will drive his wife Ruth (Cloris Leachman in her Oscar-winning performance) to her doctor's appointment. In exchange, he'll get Sonny out of physics lab. Sonny will take any excuse to get out of that class so he agrees. Mrs. Popper is surprised when Sonny shows up at her door — her husband didn't tell her that he wasn't taking her. It's all quiet and above board on that trip. However, when Sonny sees her again at the town's sad Christmas dance, she asks him if he could help her take out the trash from the refreshment stand. He does and the two share their first kiss. Ruth asks the teen if he'd be able to drive
her to the clinic again next week. "You bet!" Sonny replies. Many movies and works of fiction have told stories of affairs between older married women and younger men of high school or college age, but none have done so with as much meaning or affection as The Last Picture Show does in its depiction of Sonny and Ruth, which tosses most of those clichés out. Ruth isn't some oversexed seductress — she's a lonely, needy woman of 40 trapped in a miserable marriage. The movie doesn't spell it out directly, but in the commentary on the DVD, Bogdanovich says that Coach Popper is supposed to be gay. To me what's so stunning about Leachman's performance is that I can't think of her in any other dramatic roles. She's a comic actress extraordinaire. but she's so frighteningly good as Ruth I wonder why we never saw her explore really juicy drama. When Ruth and Sonny make love for the first time, it's such a mixture of elements when you have the overanxious boy rushing to lose his virginity while the 40-year-old married woman cries because she feared she never know that feeling again. As their affair continues, she actually seems to grow younger. Sonny also finds himself surprised to learn how many people are aware of what's going on between the two of them.
As great as Leachman is, she didn't win that Oscar in a walk. Her toughest competition came from the same film. Ellen Burstyn scored her first Oscar nomination in the same category, supporting actress, for playing Lois Farrow, Jacy's mother. Burstyn always is brilliant, but she
manages to make us have sympathy for Lois at the same time we realize that her somewhat crazy ways have rubbed off on her daughter and turned her into the superficial cocktease that she is. Jacy claims she loves Duane, but her parents won't ever permit her to marry a boy like him without a future. The Farrows are one of the few well-off families in town, thanks to her husband striking oil. Not that it has saved the marriage any because Lois has been having an on again-off again affair with Abilene for quite some time. Jacy tries to convince her mother that she married her father when he wasn't rich. "I scared your daddy into getting rich, beautiful," Lois tells her daughter. Jacy insists that if Daddy could do it, so could Duane. "Not married to you. You're not scary enough," her mother replies. Later, when Lois informs Jacy about Sonny and Ruth's affair, Jacy's shocked, "She is 40 years old." Her mother quickly says, "So am I, honey. It's an itchy age." The big scenes for Burstyn (and Leachman) don't come until after other developments.The fourth performer to earn an acting nod from the film was the great Jeff Bridges as Duane. It was his very first. He's good, but Duane actually isn't that large a part despite the fact he becomes the central figure in the book sequels. Duane's love for Jacy goes beyond reason. When she ditches him at the dance to go to the nude swim party in Wichita Falls, he takes it. When she finally agrees to put out,
he can't perform (though Bridges' facial expression when she exposes her breasts to him is priceless). They try again and he comes out all smiles and she cuts him down, telling him, "Oh, quit prissing. I don't think you done it right, anyway." Finally, as she ducks him more often, he leaves town to take another job elsewhere, but gives Sonny explicit orders to watch if anyone starts seeing her. One night, Abilene stops by the Farrow house to tell her dad that a well came in, but he isn't home. He ends up taking Jacy to the pool hall and having sex with her on a pool table, her hands grabbing hold of the corner pockets. After awhile, when the boy she'd been dating from Wichita Falls runs off and gets married, she pursues Sonny, who is powerless to resist, no matter how it hurts Ruth. When Duane returns and finds out that Sonny and Jacy are dating, he breaks a beer bottle against his face, injuring his eye. "Jacy's just the kind of girl that brings out the meanness in men," Genevieve tells Sonny when she sees him with the patch on his eye. Soon after, he and Jacy drive to Oklahoma to elope, only Jacy left a long detailed note so the Oklahoma state troopers detain them until her parents arrive and get the marriage annulled. Sonny rides back with Lois who tells him he's lucky they saved him from her.
In a way, I have saved the best for last, except it isn't really the last. If Timothy Bottoms' Sonny provides the line from which all the characters and stories dangle, Ben Johnson's Sam the Lion provides the posts that anchors his line. The story goes that Johnson didn't want to take the part because he thought it was too wordy and Bogdanovich, who had just completed a documentary on John Ford asked Ford to talk him into it. Ford reportedly asked Johnson if he wanted to be the Duke's sidekick all his life and told him that if he played the part,
he'd win the Oscar for supporting actor and that's just what happened. There are so many moments in Johnson's performance that I'd love to pick, but so I don't go on forever, I'm concentrating on one, which also happens to be my favorite part of the film. Sam takes Sonny and Billy fishing at this reservoir on land he once owned and it opens him up about the past. He talks about this crazy girl he was involved with about 20 years ago after his wife had lost her mind and his sons had died and how they always came out there. She challenged him to ride horses across the water. He didn't think they'd make it, but somehow she did it. Sonny asks why he never married her, but Sam tells him she already was married — one of those young marriages people get into that makes them miserable. He figured some day it would end, but it never did. "If she was here I'd probably be just as crazy now as I was then in about five minutes. Ain't that ridiculous? Naw, it ain't really. 'Cause being crazy about a woman like her is always the right thing to do. Being an old decrepit bag of bones, that's what's ridiculous. Gettin' old," Sam declares. What makes the whole sequence and monologue even better is the way Bogdanovich films it. He starts out in a medium shot where you can see all three characters, but as the tale grows more romantic he slowly moves the camera in on Johnson's face. As he starts to tell how they never ended up together, the camera pulls back out again.
The Last Picture Show has so many great moments, big and small, that I want to talk about them all but I do have to mention one final Sam moment before wrapping up Lois and Ruth. Earlier in the film, before Duane beats him up (they reconcile anyway) Duane and Sonny drown separate sorrows in sundaes at the diner when Duane decides that he just wants to get out of town — that night — at least for the weekend. He suggests to
Sonny that they go to Mexico. The two friends check their cash reserves and decide they can do it and get up and leave. Genevieve asks where they are going. "Mexico," they tell her. "Mexico?" As they drive the pickup down the street, they notice Sam sitting on the curb outside the theater. They tell him of their plans. He gives them some money, telling them that Mexico has a way of swallowing your money. Wistfully, he even says that if he were younger, he might go with them. There's something odd in the town — as if he has something else to say, but he just tells them he'll see them around and gives them a wave. Somehow though, even when you're watching The Last Picture Show for the first time, you know that will be the last time in the movie you'll see Sam. When Sonny and Duane come back, they go to the pool room and find it locked. They find that odd. They ask a man what's going on. He remembers that they've been gone so they don't know. Sam died. "Keeled over one of the snooker tables. Had a stroke," the man says. He adds the Sam left the diner to Genevieve, the theater to Miss Mosey and the pool hall to Sonny.
Back to that ride home from Oklahoma between Lois and Sonny. Before they get in the car, Lois tells him that he should have stayed with Ruth Popper. "Does everyone know about that?" he asks annoyed. She says yes. "I guess I treated her badly," Sonny admits. "Guess you did," Lois concurs. As she drives, Sonny says, "Nothin's really been right since Sam the Lion died." No, they really haven't, Lois agrees. Sonny guesses that she must have liked him a lot, but Lois says no, she loved him. Sonny mentions the story Sam told him about the girl and she's surprised. "He told you that? You know, I'm the one who started calling him Sam the Lion," Lois confesses as Sonny realizes that she was the girl that Sam talked about. She apologizes for getting slightly teary. "It's terrible to meet only one man in your life who knows what you're worth," Lois admits. "I guess if it wasn't for Sam, I'd have missed it, whatever it is. I'd have been one of them amity types that thinks that playin' bridge is about the best thing that life has to offer."
When Sonny gets back to town, he learns Duane, who has enlisted in the Army, is in town for a short visit. He asks if he wants to go with him to the Royal. Miss Mosey has to close the picture show. Duane agrees. The final movie is Howard Hawks' Red River. "No one wants to come to shows no more. Kid baseball in the summer, television all the time," Miss Mosey tells them. Imagine now. Out-of-sight prices, out-of-control crowds, declining quality of product, more at-home convenience, everything digital so there is in essence no difference between theaters and home. The next day, Duane boards a bus to his base to ship off for Korea. "I'll see you in a year or two if I don't get shot," he tells Sonny.
As Sonny works the pool hall, the scene mirrors the opening with the howling wind and blowing dust, only this time he hears a commotion. He runs outside and sees that a truck hauling cattle struck and killed Billy who, as usual was sweeping the middle of the street. A bunch of gawkers try to console the driver, explaining that the kid was "simple" and continuously asking why he had that broom. Sonny snaps. "He was sweeping you sons of bitches, he was sweeping!" he yells as he picks Billy's broken body up and lays it on the sidewalk.
Eventually, he works up the nerve to knock on Ruth's door and asks if he can have a cup of coffee with her. She apologizes for still being in her bathrobe this late in the day. Then, as she's starting to pour coffee, it's her turn to explode and she throws the cup and the coffee pot against the wall.
"What am I doing apologizing to you? Why am I always apologizing to you, you little bastard? Three months I've spent apologizing to you without you even being here. I haven't done anything wrong. Why can't I quit apologizing? You're the one ought to be sorry. I wouldn't still be in my bathrobe. I would've had my clothes on hours ago. It's because of you I quit caring if I got dressed or not. I guess because your friend got killed you want me to forget what you did and make it alright. I'm not sorry for you. You'd have left Billy too just like you left me. I bet you left him plenty of nights, whenever Jacy whistled. I wouldn't treat a dog that way. I guess I was so old and ugly it didn't matter how you treated me — you didn't love me."
Ruth sits down at the kitchen table across from Sonny. "You shouldn't have come here. I'm around that corner now. You've ruined it and it's lost completely. Just your needing me won't make it come back," Ruth tells him. He reaches out and takes her hand. She takes it and puts it to her face. He never says a word. The two of them just sit holding hands across the table.
Lots of people can quote the last lines of movies, but when you think about it, there aren't as many famous final ones as you would think. The Last Picture Show belongs in that exclusive company.
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Labels: 70s, B. Johnson, Bogdanovich, Burstyn, Cybill Shepherd, George C. Scott, Hackman, Hawks, Jeff Bridges, John Ford, Karloff, Liz, Lucas, Matthau, Movie Tributes, Oscars, R. Quaid, Sequels, Tracy, Wayne
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Monday, October 11, 2010
Arthur Penn: The Missouri Breaks
By Edward Copeland
Marlon Brando could give some really wild, eccentric performances that had the effect of annoying the viewer or, as in the case of Arthur Penn's 1976 film The Missouri Breaks, amusing the audience in its audacity and strangeness as much as Brando's obviously was enjoying being silly. The film marks Penn's third venture into the Western genre, but each time he returns to that type of filmmaking he seems to venture further and further from its conventions. Raising the stakes to make The Missouri Breaks very different from your run-of-the-mill Western, it not only contains a nutty Brando performance, the lead actor is Jack Nicholson who, in comparison, comes off downright subdued.
The opening images are lovely: The camera sweeps over somewhat overgrown plains while three riders on horses can be seen off in the distance. The beautiful scene (painted by d.p. Michael Butler) gets appropriate musical accompaniment from a very un-Williams-like score by John Williams. We eventually see that the three horse riders are approaching what appears to be a picnic in a section of trees. There are women, children and other men, but the audience still can't be clear what's going on. Finally, one of the new arrivals asks if he should kick the horse or if the other man wants to do it. Then it dawns on us as we see a horse gallop away and a young man struggle in the noose from which he's hanging from a tree branch. The suddenness is startling, but this event sets into play the main action of the rest of the movie.
The man whose neck lays broken at the end of that rope had been a member of a loose band of horse thieves led by Tom Logan (Nicholson). The man leading the riders to the hanging was David Braxton (John McLiam), owner of a large horse ranch who was the victim of the wrangling and whose feisty daughter Jane (Kathleen Lloyd) finds his hanging of the thief repugnant.
When word reaches Tom of his associate's death from his other partners (Harry Dean Stanton, Frederic Forrest, John P. Ryan and Nicholson's Last Detail co-star Randy Quaid). Tom's torn between his desire for vengeance and the thought that perhaps it's time to leave the thieving life behind.
After a comically inept train robbery meant to acquire some cash, Tom heads to near Braxton's land to settle down and farm. He makes it a point to encounter Braxton and ingratiate himself with him. It's not as easy a task with Jane, who is surprised when he doesn't come to court. When she asks Tom why he hasn't, he tells her that it's because he's found her to be a huge bitch and just assumed everyone had been too courteous to point it out to her before. Of course, it breaks her down and a romance eventually develops.
Of course, something else happens with Tom's arrival, though the film never shows who is responsible. As Braxton and his daughter are riding toward home, Jane takes her father to task for not taking down the horse thief's body from the tree yet. He insists that he has and they realize that hanging from the same tree is the body of his ramrod. Braxton's outrage leads him to reach out to hire a "regulator" to find who was responsible.
Enter Brando and what an entrance he makes. Jane watches from her porch as two seemingly riderless horses gallop down the hillside to her place. When they stop at her home, Brando suddenly rises from the side of one of the horses, decked out in a white, fringed coat and an Irish brogue. A startled Jane says, "I didn't see you." "You weren't supposed to."
His name is Lee Clayton, apparently an Irishman, though at different points in the film he takes on other guises and accents and one can never be sure if this is the character's gift or Brando just screwing around because once he enters The Missouri Breaks, what was more or less a conventional Western becomes the Marlon Brando Tilt-a-Whirl of Insanity. It starts at that very first moment, continues as he shocks those attending the funeral of the ramrod and proceeds from there.
Of course, Nicholson certainly has the reputation and ability for going way over-the-top but he's a smart enough actor, that when he and Brando have scenes together, he doesn't even attempt to match Brando quirk for quirk and instead underplays, staying in character and subdued. At some point though, you know these two will have to come to conflict at some point, because Clayton's determination to complete his mission — finding out who hanged the ramrod and killing them — even when Braxton so tires of his eccentricities too much and fires him and refuses to pay. Clayton in a way acts as an Old West version of Anton Chigurh: give him a job and he's not stopping until it's finished, even if he's told otherwise.
Penn made three Westerns in his career and they couldn't be more different, starting with the pretty standard The Left-Handed Gun, the wonderful epic satire of Little Big Man and finishing with the shaggy dog story of The Missouri Breaks. I can't honestly say that The Missouri Breaks makes for a good Western or even a good movie, but it's never boring and if you enjoy watching Brando chew scenery in a way that no one else ever could, it's worth a look.
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Labels: 70s, Arthur Penn, Brando, John Williams, Nicholson, R. Quaid
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Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Crying on the inside, laughing everywhere else
By Edward Copeland
As "L-O-V-E" by Nat King Cole croons smoothly over the soundtrack, the camera pans slowly over the faces of the usual assortment of New York subway commuters until it lands on one man who sticks out: He's in full clown outfit and bearing balloons, but his facial expression certainly doesn't radiate joy. That's because beneath the makeup is Grimm (Bill Murray), an employee of the department of city planning who is about to carry out his plan to escape the city he's come to loathe in Quick Change, a woefully underrated film which turns 20 today and marks the only time Murray sat in the director's chair, though he shared the job with Howard Franklin, who adapted the film from Jay Cronley's novel.
Grimm's escape plan, which also involves his girlfriend Phyllis (Geena Davis) and dimwitted lifelong friend Loomis (Randy Quaid), is to rob a bank to finance their exit from the city they've come to despise. Of course,
I think NYC is the greatest city in the world and would do anything to live there, yet that doesn't prevent me from loving this comedy which takes aspects of Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon and Martin Scorsese's After Hours, tosses them into a blender and hits puree. There also are nods to other great bank heist films, even some that had yet to be made such as Spike Lee's Inside Man. Grimm's opinion of the city is not reassured as he begins the robbery. The guard (Bob Elliott of the great comedy team Bob & Ray and father of Chris) believes he's serious when he flashes the gun and shows the dynamite strapped to his chest, prompting the guard to ask Grimm what kind of clown he is. "A crying on the inside kind, I guess," Grimm replies, but the customers and other employees need more convincing other than shouts of "This is a robbery" so Grimm finally has to fire a shot in the air.
Soon, once Grimm has secured all the hostages in the bank vault he makes phone contact with his newly minted nemesis, Rotzinger (Jason Robards), the heralded NY police chief who is on the edge of retirement. One of the thing that raises Quick Change above most bank heist films is that both the criminal and the cop are sympathetic characters and the viewer's loyalties are torn because you really don't want to see either foiled or embarrassed. Rotzinger is not a buffoon: He's sharp and a worthy adversary. While Murray's sparring with Robards is one of smart, sardonic politeness, Robards parries back well with the hard-bitten intelligence of a man who has seen it all and is doing his best to be a step ahead of Murray at every step of his plot. The two actors raise the level of Quick Change above that of a mere comedy.
When the criminal trio escape the confines of the bank (using new disguises and acting as if they are the first hostages released), the movie doesn't just retain its comic edge, it ups the suspense quotient and develops a bit of a surreal quality, thanks to the many fine actors in small character parts to just odd moments as when Grimm,
Phyllis and Loomis, lost and seeking directions to the airports, stumble upon a strange bicycle jousting ritual. That is just one of the weird and inspired touches, not one of the obstacles that appear in their path which include construction that remove road signs and road workers who have no idea which way the directions were supposed to point; several instances of having guns pulled on them, some by crooks, some by new apartment dwellers; anal retentive bus drivers; cab drivers speaking unidentifiable languages; accidental run-ins with the mob; and just general chaos, none of which is helped by Loomis (Quaid), who may be Grimm's best friends but leaves a lot to be desired in the brains department. As Rotzinger confides to his lieutenant, when he's frustrated that his stellar career could end on such a sour note if these bank robbers get away with it, "Our only hope is that they are mired down in the same shit that you and I have to wade in every day."
With co-directors, especially when both Murray and Franklin in this case are first-timers, it's difficult to know who gets the credit to for a film's magic (it's not as easy to guess as when Robert Wise and choreographer Jerome Robbins shared directing duties on West Side Story), but Quick Change has it, kinetic energy that begins as soon as Grimm the clown steps off the subway, onto the Manhattan street and into the bank and that energy doesn't let up until the film ends 90 minutes later. One of the movie's aspects that keeps it speeding along so well is its wonderfully infectious score by Randy Edelman. One other thing that Quick Change has that's reminiscent of After Hours is a supporting cast of top-notch actors in even the smallest of roles. Included in the roll call: the aforementioned
Bob Elliott, Victor Argo, Phil Hartman, Jamey Sheridan, Kurtwood Smith, Stanley Tucci and my two personal favorites here, Philip Bosco as the bus driver with the obsession with exact change and all other regulations and Tony Shalhoub as the cab driver who seemingly can only say one thing which, unfortunately, no one can translate since they can't even identify his language. Murray is as great as always and Davis gets quite a few good moments, especially as her own frustrations build, though at times Quaid overplays Loomis' stupidity. That aside, ever since I first saw Quick Change 20 years ago, it's held a warm place in my heart and re-watching it for the first time in many years did nothing to diminish that feeling. Franklin went on to direct the so-so Joe Pesci vehicle The Public Eye in 1992 and Murray again in 1996's Larger Than Life, which I've never seen, but Bill Murray has never stepped behind the camera again and since Quick Change turned out so well, I really wonder why.Tweet
Labels: 90s, Geena Davis, J. Robbins, Lumet, Movie Tributes, Murray, Pesci, R. Quaid, Robards, Scorsese, Spike Lee, Tucci, Wise, Zemeckis
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Thursday, August 17, 2006
Altman meets Sam Shepard
By Edward Copeland
Seinfeld always was classified as a show about "nothing" and for the first hour and 15 minutes, I was prepared to give that label to Robert Altman's film version of Sam Shepard's Fool for Love, minus the consistent laughs. Then, suddenly in the final 30 minutes, the movie comes to life — though it's still unclear what it's about and it's too late to save it.
Based on Shepard's play, in simple terms, Fool for Love concentrates on four characters at a desolate New Mexico motel. There is Eddie (Sam Shepard), a cowboy who seems intent on causing trouble for May, one of the hotel's tenants (Kim Basinger). There also is the old man who runs the motel (Harry Dean Stanton) and Martin (Randy Quaid), who arrives expecting a date with May.
I've enjoyed Shepard's plays, particularly Buried Child and True West, but Fool for Love seems particularly aimless. At one point, as Eddie is trying to finish a story about him and May (which may or may not be true), May accuses him of repeating himself. Eddie insists he never repeats himself, but May begs to differ, saying he always goes around in circles, never getting anywhere.
That's pretty much how the movie works, spinning forward without any sense of direction. May asks Eddie what the point of his story is and Eddie even admits it's pointless.
Fool for Love came out in 1985, when Altman was in a cycle of filming plays for both film and television. I haven't seen Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean or his network production of The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, but Fool for Love certainly pales next to Streamers, Secret Honor and The Laundromat for HBO.
Shepard, Stanton and Quaid are all good, but Basinger struggles mightily with her southwestern accent.
In a note on the DVD, Altman tells viewers he always was puzzled by people's reaction to stage versions of Fool for Love, asking if they saw the same play he saw. The movie begs the question what exactly it was that Altman saw.
The last half hour has its moments, but it's slowgoing getting there and the final product really doesn't add up to much.
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Labels: 80s, Altman, HBO, R. Quaid, Seinfeld, Shepard, Theater
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