Thursday, October 03, 2013
Sirota already did it: Bye bye 'Bad' Part II
that STILL has yet to watch Breaking Bad in its entirety, close this story now.
By Edward Copeland
When envisioning the epic farewell I felt I must write upon the conclusion of Breaking Bad, I didn't anticipate an important section of the tribute would begin with a South Park reference to The Simpsons. (If, by chance, you missed Part I, click here.)
Now, anyone with even a smidgeon of understanding of the basic tenets of comedy knows that if you need to explain a joke, you've failed somewhere in the telling. Despite this rule of humor, forgive me for explaining the title of the second part of my Breaking Bad tribute, but I can't assume that all Breaking Bad fans reading this also hold knowledge of specific South Park episodes. Way back in that animated series' sixth season in 2002, poor Butters' alter ego, Professor Chaos (six years before any of us knew Walter White and his inhabiting spirit Heisenberg), finds every scheme he devises greeted by some variation of the episode's title: "The Simpsons Already Did It." I just spent a long way to travel to the point of my headline, which refers to the great columnist David Sirota's article, posted by Salon on Sept. 28, the day before "Felina" aired, titled "Walter White's sickness mirrors America." (If you didn't understand before, I imagine you comprehend now how explaining a joke tends to kill its punchline.) In his piece, Sirota posits:
the specific pressures and ideologies that make America exceptional at the very moment
the country is itself breaking bad.
The most obvious way to see that is to look at how Walter White’s move into the drug trade
was first prompted, in part, by his family’s fear that he would die prematurely for lack
of adequate health care. It is the kind of fear most people in the industrialized world
have no personal connection to — but that many American television watchers no doubt do.
That’s because unlike other countries, Walter White’s country is exceptional for being a place
where 45,000 deaths a year are related to a lack of comprehensive health insurance coverage.
That’s about ten 9/11′s worth of death each year because of our exceptional position
as the only industrialized nation without a universal public health care system
(and, sadly, Obamacare will not fix that)."
Aside from the fact the Sirota misses the mark a bit concerning Walt’s original motives for entering the meth-making business and makes it sound as if his family encouraged the idea and raised money concerns before he even started to cook (more specifics on that later), Sirota’s piece covers ground that I always planned to discuss as well. Sirota might not be the first person to voice this hypothesis, but I’ve only seen and read his article (post finale, as I purposely tried to avoid other pieces to make mine my own as much as possible). I also saw the funny package envisioning how Walter's tale would play out if set in Canada. Health care costs in the U.S., significant in Breaking Bad, secured itself as a crucial aspect of my retrospective since the first half of season five given that I’ve
existed as a permanent patient for nearly the exact same time period as Breaking Bad’s television run. Unfortunately, my experiences give me much in the way of first-hand knowledge on the subject through which to view the series' take. While Sirota argues that Walt began his criminal career to pay for his exceedingly costly cancer treatments and White indeed used his ill-gotten gains toward those bills, he never expressed a desire to make a load of money to keep himself alive. Walter White already resigned himself to the idea of his impending death. The meth money’s only purpose originally, according to Walt, merely meant leaving behind a nest egg for Skyler, Walt Jr. and his as-of-then unborn child. He said as much in the great scene from the first season episode “Gray Matter” (written by Patty Lin, directed by Tricia Brock) where the entire family gathers at Skyler’s behest to stage a pseudo-intervention of the health care variety, passing around the “talking pillow” to take the floor and address Walt as to why he should accept the Schwartzes’ offer to pay for his treatments. The scene turns particularly grand
when Marie surprises (and pisses off) her sister by agreeing with Walt about not wanting to suffer through the chemo treatments and succeeds at changing Hank’s mind as well. A wonderful example of how the show (as all the best dramas do) successfully mixed levity with tragedy. One of the funniest moments in the history of The Sopranos came in its fourth season episode “The Strong, Silent Type” (story by David Chase, written by Terence Winter, Robin Green & Mitchell Burgess, directed by Alan Taylor) when Tony’s crew attempts a drug intervention on Christopher with disastrous and hilarious results. The night that episode aired, the premiere of “The Grand Opening” episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm (directed by Robert B. Wiede) followed it, with Larry David’s own singular attempt at an emergency intervention for his new restaurant’s chef (Paul Sand) who had Tourette syndrome. My stomach hurt from laughing so hard that night. What makes interventions so easily comical? When Walt agrees to treatments and uses his meth money to pay (while lying to Skyler that he accepted Elliot and Gretchen’s offer to help), what motivates him isn’t (at least consciously) a sudden desire to fight the cancer but the need to live longer and build up a bigger bequest for his family. While the insanity of medical costs floats around the series at this time, this isn’t where Breaking Bad truly takes aim on our broken system.
As I wrote in my sole previous piece on Breaking Bad prior to this post-series wake/celebration, I came to the series late and only began watching it live in the third season that premiered March 21, 2010, and ended with Gale Boetticher opening his apartment door to an emotionally fragile and gun-wielding Jesse Pinkman on June 13. As
proved to be the case with each season of Breaking Bad, each new season topped the one that preceded it, even though no bad seasons or mediocre episodes exist. Breaking Bad tackled the high price of medicine, if not as an overriding concern, or motivation, in the first two seasons not only through the obvious costs of Walt’s cancer treatments, but also when Heisenberg first appeared and marched into the headquarters of the psychotic Tuco, demanding not only advance payment for his “product” but reparations as well to cover Jesse’s hospital bills from Tuco beating poor Pinkman within an inch of his life. For myself (and, admittedly, this came from overidentifying with someone losing the use of his legs, albeit not because of an assassination attempt by vengeance-seeking lookalike cousins), the series’ most direct discussion of the flaws in this country’s health care system came in the hospital scenes dealing with the aftermath of Hank’s shooting. In the early days, when Walt coughed up cashier’s checks for cancer bills
since his health insurance coverage through his school district didn’t approach the needed benefits to pay for his treatments, viewers saw some of the costs, but we never received a final bill, especially after Walt went the surgical option, handled by Dr. Victor Bravenec, played by Sam McMurray. McMurray also played Uncle Junior’s arrogant oncologist, Dr. John Kennedy, in the classic Sopranos episode “Second Opinion” (written by Lawrence Konner, directed by Tim Van Patten), where Tony and Furio used some not-so-friendly persuasion on the golf course to convince Kennedy to treat Junior right. (When McMurray showed up on Breaking Bad as an oncologist, part of me wondered if his character wasn’t Kennedy, having relocated under a new name to Albuquerque out of fear of mob repercussions, unaware that his new patient might be deadlier than anyone in that northern New Jersey crew could be.) Back to Hank. We know the extra needed to get Schrader on his feet again. That even came up again in the final eight episodes: $177,000. Pretty pathetic that a loyal public servant such as Hank Schrader, whose job constantly required him to put his life on the line, didn’t get the kind of catastrophic coverage he required when he needed it. For all the times, she could annoy him and cause him grief with that little kleptomania problem, Hank Schrader could not have chosen a better mate than the former Marie Lambert. Marie might only work as an X-ray technician, but she spoke the truth as she yelled at the various people in the hospital that Hank had to begin work on regaining the use of his legs immediately because a delay of even two weeks would be too late. I actually cried when I watched the episode where Betsy Brandt spoke those lines as Marie because I’d yelled those words myself at people in the hospital when I went in there in May 2008. (For those unfamiliar with my personal plight, click here.) I already had limited use of my legs because of my primary progressive multiple sclerosis. Two weeks stuck in bed can do irreparable damage to a marathon runner. Quite some time ago, I was able to make contact with Ms. Brandt and shared my tale with her about how I wish that I’d had someone like Marie back then to fight on my side. She graciously wrote back, “Edward, Marie would have definitely been your champion…and we all need a champion at times.”
So much more to say. Who knows when I will get them posted? As I posted on Facebook, odds are this is psychosomatic or coincidental, but my M.S. symptoms have spread to parts of my body they had avoided before since Breaking Bad ended. Perhaps sheer force of will held them at bay until I saw the series until its conclusion. I haven't written all I planned to yet, but this makes for a good stopping point for Part II.
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Labels: Breaking Bad, Curb Your Enthusiasm, David Chase, Larry David, South Park, The Simpsons, The Sopranos, TV Tribute
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Friday, April 13, 2012
Pragmatic anarchy
If you started reading here, click this and read the first part of the post before you read this.
When we met Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins), he already carried a heavy load of burdens. Rumors swirled that his financially struggling studio would replace him soon, a hot executive at Fox named Larry Levy seemed to be "in his face" all the time and a screenwriter whose calls he never returned kept sending him threatening postcards. Oh, how Griffin longs for those good old days. Now, Pasadena police suspect he killed screenwriter David Kahane (Vincent D'Onofrio) — which he did, Levy (Peter Gallagher) has landed at Mill's studio and, perhaps most distressing of all his plights, it turns out that Kahane wasn't the writer threatening him — and those continue. Only one bright spot shines in the dark hole that Griffin dug himself into and she happens to be the intriguing June Gudmundsdottir (Greta Scacchi), girlfriend to the late David Kahane. Trying to date her would look improper so soon after David's death and it wouldn't be a nice thing for Griffin to do to his girlfriend and executive assistant Bonnie (Cynthia Stevenson), the film's most decent character. My return visit to the Hollywood of Robert Altman's The Player clarified to me the pivotal roles the two women, particularly June, serve in making The Player much more than just a satire or even a thriller.
I never read Michael Tolkin's original novel The Player, but I did read his sequel The Return of The Player. While on the DVD commentary, Tolkin ultimately blamed himself for what changed in the movie from his novel, much of his tone on the disc tasted bitter, including frequent references to how he never wanted the novel turned into a film in the first place (something that sounds particularly odd given that he wrote and produced the movie as well as created and wrote a pilot for a proposed TV series version that never aired). Though Tolkin's name appears alone as the credited screenwriter, based on the sequel novel and what Robert Altman
said on the DVD, I have to believe that the director sparked the transformation of the novel's June into the June of the film. Based on The Return of The Player, June isn't a cypher of a character who says she comes from Iceland (though when asked by Griffin at a later time if she really hails from there, she responds, "Did I say that?") Altman said that he wanted June to be like an alien, almost to the point that you could believe she exists only in Griffin's imagination. I don't think Altman meant anyone to take that literally — June Gudmunsdottir definitely exists — but she does function as the only person in the film who doesn't speak Hollywood. She and Griffin both may communicate in English, but they speak entirely different languages and that's part of the attraction. June paints and creates other types of art, but when Griffin asks where she shows her work, she tells him she doesn't. For a man who greenlights movies for production so they eventually can be seen, this makes no sense to him. He inquires why June doesn't try to display her works in a gallery and she explains that it's because she never finishes them. The reason for their renewed contact after one phone call comes courtesy of David Kahane's funeral, which Griffin feels compelled to attend. When the graveside services end, June approaches him, recognizing immediately that he doesn't look like the other mourners, all writers. When Griffin explains who he is and that they spoke the night of Kahane's death, June remembers, adding, "You're the only person I know here." Griffin offers the standard funeral apology and tells June that David "was a real talent." She looks surprised. "You think so? I always suspected he was uniquely untalented," June declares, free of emotion before begging Griffin to drive her home because she can't deal with what's expected of her from the others. These people.I don't like it here. They're all expecting me to grieve and mourn. I can't talk to them. David's gone and I'm somewhere else already," she tells Griffin, who seems to be showing more genuine regret about Kahane's death than the slain writer's girlfriend.
Cynicism seeps from the pores of all the characters in The Player to some degree, though most would call it a pragmatic and realistic attitude spawned by the industry in which they work. Bonnie Sherow and Griffin Mill speak the same language — that's why they work (and play) well together. Admittedly, Griffin keeps his guard up, even with Bonnie. As they relax in his hot tube one night where she reads him part of a horribly lurid script, Griffin tries to talk to her about the threats he's received, but he phrases it in the form of a movie pitch, making the victim someone who works in advertising. He wants her opinion on how many months of these threats it would take before the sender should be considered dangerous. Thinking he's actually discussing a pitch someone gave him, she responds sourly, "Does he have to be in advertising?" Bonnie can be tough on her assistant Whitney (Gina Gershon) and likewise Griffin can point out when Bonnie makes a social faux pas ("Never bring up script changes at a party"), but, at least at the beginning, nothing comes off as mean-spirited. She also displays a wit as cutting as anyone when the opportunity presents itself. When Larry Levy conducts his exercise in picking newspaper stories to show he can envision movies without needing a writer, Bonnie latches on to the headline, "Further bond losses push Dow down." Before Levy responds, she quickly adds, "I see Connery as Bond." Bonnie's unambiguous sense of right and wrong and her streak of moral clarity distiguish her from the rest of her universe. It almost goes without saying that some sort of doom awaits her.
Altman always had a great eye for casting, even if he did tend to return to his unofficial repertory company time and again, but hiring Cynthia Stevenson to play Bonnie might have been the best choice since, of the performers in The Player's major roles, she was the least-known to most. I had followed her for some time, first noticing her on a very short-lived, quirky and one-of-a-kind show called My Talk Show which was an unusual sitcom where she played a young woman who hosted a Wisconsin talk show from her living room mostly with friends and neighbors as guests, often while she did other things, though celebrities wandered through town sometimes such as William Shatner and, to my joyous surprise, there's a YouTube clip. Altman said that he came close to hiring Julianne Moore for the role of Bonnie, but decided she was "too glamorous" and he wanted someone who didn't look like an actress. He'd seen Stevenson on an episode of Cheers (She appeared twice in the later seasons as Norm's secretary who suffered from extremely low self-esteem.) When Altman informed Stevenson that the role required her to take off her top for the hot tub scene, the actress couldn't believe it. "Why me? No one has ever asked me to take my top off?" Altman said she asked him. "That's the reason," he responded. As he explained, that afforded him another chance to upset expectations and Hollywood conventions. "You never see Greta Scacchi nude," he pointed out. He wanted to use Stevenson's nudity to comment on the beauty in all types of female nudity, not just the usual kind you see in movies, as well as the state of Bonnie and Griffin's relationship.
While Bonnie, like Alan Rudolph's movie pitch, has heart in the right spot, the question of whether a cardiac organ beats within June's chest remains unresolved, despite Kahane telling Griffin sarcastically that Mill and June both were "all heart." The late screenwriter's nicknames for his girlfriend and the movie executive though seem to be honest assessments: June's the Ice Queen, Griffin's The Dead Man. Bonnie gave Griffin a tenuous hold on humanity and, ironically, his killing of Kahane actually brought Mill to life. "Although the novel was very much about Hollywood, I also was really writing about guilt," Tolkin said on the DVD. June's manner, tone shows stays at a constant level no matter what has happened, almost like a flatline on a heart
monitor. When Griffin takes her home after David's burial, she immediately starts working on the art she never finishes or sells. She asks Mill why he met with Kahane that night and Griffin tells her that he planned to share an idea he'd thought of that would improve his script. When she says, "the Japan story," Griffin fears he'll be caught, so he gets vague, suggesting that it needed an "up" ending before asking June what she thought of the ending. "I never read it. I don't like reading," she admits. This woman intrigues Griffin further. She doesn't go to movies/ She doesn't like reading. "Do you like books?" he inquires. "I like words and letters, but I'm not crazy about complete sentences," she tells him. June then asks Griffin to place his face behind this shower curtain so she can photograph it. She plans to put him in one of her paintings, one of an Icelandic hero. "He's a thief and he's made of fire. You might not like that," June says. Griffin asks her why. She figures that given his job, he couldn't see thieves as heroes. "I don't know about that. We have a long tradition of gangsters in movies," Griffin informs her with a smile. The exchange that follows illuminates Griffin's thoughts clearly, but makes June more mysterious.JUNE: Yes, but they always have to suffer for their crimes, don't they?
GRIFFIN: We should pay for our crimes, shouldn't we?
JUNE: I think knowing you've committed a crime is suffering enough. If you don't suffer, maybe it wasn't a crime after all. Anyway — what difference does it make? It has nothing to do with how things really are.
GRIFFIN: Do you really believe that?
JUNE: I don't know what I believe, Mr. Mill. It's just what I feel.
GRIFFIN: You know what you are, June whatever-your-name-is? A pragmatic anarchist.
JUNE: Is that what I am? I never was sure.
Of course, if Griffin succeeds at juggling his women and getting away with murder, he still must contend with the matter of the shaky hold on his job and the stalking screenwriter who lurks somewhere, probably with a fair idea of why David Kahane got killed in a movie
theater parking lot and who did it. (The film never spells out explicitly the identity of the real stalker, though Altman did on the commentary track of the old Criterion laserdisc edition of The Player. I wrote about it in my sidebar Untold Stories of Robert Altman's The Player or Who the Hell is Thereza Ellis? if you haven't read that and would like to know.) While looking at dailies at the studio, he gets a message from a Joe Gillis telling him to meet him at the patio bar of the St. James Club that night alone. Griffin actually has to ask the others in the screening room if they've heard of a Joe Gillis and studio president Levison (Brion James) informs him that Gillis is the name of the character William Holden played in Sunset Blvd. "You know, the screenwriter who gets killed by the movie star." Mill tries to laugh it off, saying the guy called before claiming to be Charles Foster Kane. When he goes to the hotel that night, he runs into the two most over=the-top characters in the film — writer-director Tom Oakley (Richard E. Grant) and Andy Civella (Dean Stockwell). If the movie they corner Griffin into listening to a pitch for weren't so pivotal to one of the biggest laughs in movie history, they might a bit too annoying. Griffin does his best to get rid of them, but he relents and Tom takes over.TOM: We open outside the largest penitentiary in California. It's night. It's raining. A limousine comes through the gate past demonstrators holding a candlelight vigil. The candles under the umbrellas glow like Japanese lanterns.GRIFFIN: That's nice. I haven't seen that before.
TOM: A lone demonstrator, a black woman, steps in front of the limousine. The lights illuminate her like a spirit. Her eyes fix upon those of the sole passenger. The moment is devastating between them.
GRIFFIN: He's the D.A. She's the mother of the person being executed.
ANDY: You're good! I told you he's good.
TOM: The D.A. believes in the death penalty and the execution is a hard case — black and definitely guilty. The greatest democracy in the world, and 42 percent of people on death row are black. Poor, disadvantaged black. He swears the next person he sees to die will be smart, rich and white. Cut from the D.A. To an up-market suburban neighborhood. A couple have a fight. He leaves in a fit, gets in a car. It's the same rainy night. The car spins out and goes into a ravine. The body is swept away. When the police examine the car, they find the brakes have been tampered with. It's murder, and the D.A. decides to go for the big one. He's going to put the wife in the gas chamber. but the D.A. falls in love with the wife.
GRIFFIN: Of course.
TOM: But he puts her in the gas chamber anyway. Then he finds that the husband is alive. That he faked his death. The D.A. breaks into the prison, runs down death row -- but he gets there too late. The gas pellets have been dropped. She's dead. I tell you, there's not a dry eye in the house.
GRIFFIN: She's dead?
TOM: She's dead because that's the reality. The innocent die.
GRIFFIN: Who's the D.A.?
TOM: No stars on this project. We're going out on a limb on this one. This story is too fucking important to risk being overwhelmed by personality. We don't want people coming with any preconceived notions. We want them to see a district attorney.
ANDY: (whispering) Bruce Willis.
TOM: Not Bruce Willis or Kevin Costner. This is an innocent woman fighting for her life.
ANDY: (whiapering) Julia Roberts.
Griffin tells Tom his pitch had more than 25 words. "But it was brilliant. What's the verdict?" Andy asks. Griffin doesn't betray his thoughts one way or the other when a waiter comes by with a postcard he says a man left for him at the front desk. It reads, "I TOLD YOU TO COME ALONE!" Mill gets up, telling Tom and Andy that the person he was waiting to meet isn't coming. Andy pushes again for an answer about a deal and Mill admits it's an intriguing idea and suggests they call him at the studio the next day. Griffin returns to his Range Rover and finds a note on his steering wheel suggesting he look beneath his raincoat, which covers something on the passenger seat's floor. He lifts the coat and finds a metal box that reads, "DO NOT OPEN TIL XMAS." He flips it open anyway and discovers a live, hissing rattlesnake inside. Scared shitless, he drives erratically until he gets to the side of the road, gets an umbrella from the back of the vehicle and beats the snake to death while cursing the mystery writer. In his rage, paranoia and vulnerability, Griffin drives to June's.
The Player remains one of Tim Robbins' best performances and the scene where he arrives disheveled in the middle of the night at June's gives him his finest in the movie. It also provides the most solid evidence of the multiple layers the movie functions on. Altman may have called The Player at one point in his commentary possibly the "most contrived" film he ever made (which, quite frankly, I can't imagine a more ludicrous statement coming from the great filmmaker who had films such as Beyond Therapy, Quintet and Ready to Wear in his filmography), but Robbins gets to a deep core of emotional truth here. His brush with death via snake prompts him to try to confess to June, but it's as if she knows intuitively and doesn't want him to confirm it. He admits that she was all he could think about when he saw the snake and thought it would kill him. "Are you making love to me?" she asks. He says he supposes that he is; he knows he wants to make love to her. "It's too soon. It's so strange how things happen. David was here, then he left. You arrived. Maybe it's just the timing, but I feel like I
would go anywhere with you if you asked, but we mustn't hurry things. We can't hurry things any more than we can stop them," June tells him. Most of the many times I've watched The Player before, it seemed clear to me that Griffin pursued June. This time, it looked more to me as if she was pulling him into her web. Both the DVD and the dear departed laserdisc contain the same deleted scene that I found to be a rarity among deleted scenes. Most of the time, you view them and you see exactly why the scissors snipped them out of the final cut. One of The Player's cut scenes I've always thought to be an exception and I hadn't thought of it in awhile. When Griffin and June finally start dating, they go on a trip to the Two Bunch Palms resort. The film abounds with posters and references to noir and crime movies as it is, why not plant the idea that June could be a most unusual type of femme fatale? Immediately before they leave on the trip and Bonnie learns he's embarking with another woman, Altman shoots a close-up of a movie poster for M. At the resort, Griffin gets greeted as Mr. M. and his reserved seat at dinner has a card with the same shortened name and courtesy title. They stay in the cabin Al Capone used when he visited California. June leaves her purse open on a dresser and Griffin notices that she's packing a gun. She tells him that
Kahane got it for her and, in fact, had it in his satchel the night he got killed. She wondered why David wasn't able to use it. The cut scene set at the resort cast an entirely new aura of mystery about her character. One masterful scene set kept in the film captures the consummation of Griffin and June's relationship. Not only did Altman not use nudity, he filmed their lovenaking entirely from the neck up, but it never gets the notice it deserves when it's competing with eight-minute single takes and 60 celebrity cameos. Regardless, you definitely see with certainty that as the movie progresses and Griffin spends more time with June and less with Bonnie, he becomes a more soulless creature. If June isn't a femme fatale or an alien as Altman suggested, she's some kind of vampire, and on the ethical scale of the film, June doesn't even seem to register, floating above it in an amoral cloud as Bonnie stays on the moral side and Griffin weighs down the immoral one further and further. In the DVD video interview, Altman admits that the scene was the very last one to be taken out and, if he was making The Player when they did that interview, he would probably have kept it in. The tightrope that Altman walked while juggling the various styles and genres in The Player without ending up with a complete mess boggles the mind.
The final subversion of expectations comes with Griffin's ultimate victory on all levels. First, he tricks Levy into selling Levison on producing Tom and Andy's no-stars-woman dies movie (titled Habeas Corpus). Levy sound leery at first, especially about having no name actors playing the leads, but Mill tells him that Levison made his reputation on two hits with nobodies and his motto used to be, "No stars, just talent." Afterward, he confides to his secretary Jan that he just set Levy up with a dog of a script with no second act and a downbeat ending, but Levison will do it because he's hot to make a movie with him and when they both fall on their faces, he'll sweep in and save the day. Poor Bonnie though has been seeing through Griffin for a while.
"Why are you bullshitting me? You never used to bullshit me," she tells him at one point. The Pasadena police appear to be closing in on him, having found a witness, so Griffin faces a lineup. However, the lady with fairly poor eyesight ends up picking the police detective played by Lyle Lovett. "That's him! I swear on my mother's grave," the woman declares. Detective Avery asks the woman if she can be personal and then inquires, "Where the fuck is your mother buried?" As Griffin walks out of the courthouse a free man, his defense attorney states the obvious of how that witness really made his case by picking that cop out of the lineup. A title card appears telling us it's one year later and we see several stars, obviously playing parts before the witness room of a gas chamber. We realize that we're seeing the ending moments of Habeas Corpus. The camera moves down the hall of the execution unit and we see that, yes, Julia Roberts indeed is playing the part of the condemned wife. She's led off to the gas chamber, strapped in and fumes start to rise when suddenly a guard yells into a phone, "WHAT?!" A man comes running down the hallway. Understandably, it's Bruce Willis. He grabs a shotgun, blows out the glass of the gas chamber runs in and whisks Julia to safety. "What took you so long?" she asks. "Traffic was a bitch," he replies. THE END.
Many movies have made me laugh in my lifetime, but few offer moments so funny that just thinking about them — even months later — can cause convulsions of chuckling. Off the top of my head, I recall two. One comes from South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut when the Army
general tries to show his plan to his troops, but Windows 98 keeps crashing so he orders men to bring Bill Gates to him. "You told us that Windows 98 would be faster, and more efficient with better access to the Internet!" the general yells at Gates. "It is faster! Over five million — " That's all Gates gets to say before the general blows his head off to the cheers of his troops. I didn't hear the cheers. The theater audience and I were too busy laughing and applauding. Habeas Corpus in The Player takes the prize for the other moment. When I first saw this film in a screening and I saw Julia Roberts, I started to laugh, but then when Bruce Willis barrels in and grabs the shotgun, I literally was on the floor. I had to watch
the movie two or three times until I could concentrate on what took place after the moment. It pushed me into that heavy a fit of hysterical laughter. Eventually, I did see what happened as Bonnie turned to Tom Oakley in the screening room, asking him how he could have sold out. "What about truth? What about reality? she asks the writer-director. What about the way the old ending tested in Canoga Park? Everybody hated it. We reshot it, now everybody loves it. That’s reality," Tom tells her. Bonnie stands her ground, insisting that it didn't have to end this way. Larry Levy shakes his head, tells her it's a hit and that's why they work there before firing her. Bonnie promises to go over his head. As she marches toward the president's office, breaking a heel on the way, Claire
tries to stop her. She begs to see him. "I'm not just me. I'm also the job." Claire informs her, before feeling sorry and going in where Walter and retrieves basketballs that Griffin shoots from his spot in the president's chair. Claire tells him that Bonnie wants to see him. "Did Levy fire her?" he asks. "Looks that way," she replies. Griffin declares he can't talk to her now and gets up to head home. On the way out the door, Jan informs him that Levy is on the phone for him. He tells her to wait a few minutes then transfer it to the car. Bonnie tries
to get Griffin’s attention. "Bonnie, don't worry. I know you'll kind on your feet," Mill tells her as he gets in his car. He takes the Levy call and it's a pitch from a writer, but not just any writer, one who used to sell postcards. He describes a story about a movie executive who is being threatened by a screenwriter so he kills him, only he kills the wrong guy. The twist: He gets away with it. He ends up married to the dead writer's girlfriend and it's a happy ending. Mill asks Levy to get off the line so he can talk to the writer alone. "Can you guarantee that ending?" Griffin asks. "If the price is right, you got it," the writer replies. Griffin tells him that if it's guaranteed, it's a deal and inquires about the title. "The Player," the writer answers. "The Player. I like that," Griffin says as he pulls into his driveway where a very pregnant June waits. "What took you so long?" June asks. "Traffic was a bitch," Griffin replies as he puts his arm around her and leads her into the house. Altman and Tolkin's funhouse mirror has turned back around on itself again for its final, perfect closing moment. What started in flat-out satire, ends in irony with plenty of suspense, truth and reality managing to sneak into the picture along the way. Altman couldn't live forever, but don't we deserve someone close to his daring and talent? (First one to mention Paul Thomas Anderson gets spit on.) I fear a large part of my interest in new movies somehow died the moment he did.
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Labels: 90s, Altman, Books, Connery, Dean Stockwell, Fiction, Holden, Julianne Moore, Movie Tributes, Shatner, South Park, Television, Tim Robbins
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Sunday, May 15, 2011
“Tired of ordinary television?” Oh, you have no idea.
By Richard von Busack
Thirty years ago today, SCTV began broadcasting on NBC as a replacement for the Friday night music show The Midnight Special. Titled SCTV Network 90 (the 90 eventually was dropped), NBC conceived SCTV as another Saturday Night Live, just on tape and a different night. Though SCTV had comedy sketches and variety, that’s about all it had in common with SNL. SCTV Network followed the programming day of a small and strange Canadian TV network, essentially a mom-and-pop operation broadcasting in Melonville and the Tri-County area.
That loose theme allowed them to have movies of the week (elaborate, brilliant film parodies conducted on the show’s teeny budget). Just the mention of the titles is enough to make some people start laughing: Grapes of Mud, The Man Who Would Be King of the Popes, Lust for Paint, Scenes From an Idiot’s Marriage. Best remembered is the Godfather parody that cast the actual John Marley (the unfortunate owner of the racehorse in Coppola’s film) re-creating his most famous on-screen moment.
I could go on; happily the show’s run is preserved on Shout Factory!’s fine, comprehensive and expensive DVD set. Let’s also get something out of the way. Sentimental as people are about their Killer Bees and their Blues Brothers, in all categories except the all-important ratings, SCTV smoked Lorne Michaels’ much-vaunted SNL.
In Canada, SCTV had been on the air since 1976; a bare bones production rooted in the improv scene of Chicago and Toronto. For tortured financial reasons (the finances of the show went through everything but waterboarding, as Dave Thomas’ book on the show outlines), SCTV was filmed for a while in Edmonton. We can only guess how much that prairie city gave to our notion of Melonville.
SCTV shared performers with SNL, losing some talent to 30 Rockefeller Plaza (most irreplaceably Martin Short); the actors, writers and directors were lured to Hollywood. Harold Ramis was following his own successes all the way up to Ghostbusters for instance.
Certainly early 1980s SNL had its moments and it loosened up the concept of what could be done on comedy television, but I do have a grudge and I’ll air it. When I see the likes of Tina Fey — a witty performer who also is one of those endless legions of relatively normal people who consider themselves an outré weirdo…when I hear her called a comic genius, who single-handedly fractured the glass ceiling as a writer for a show that is, when all is said and done, a sitcom…and ultimately, when I compare the very best work I’ve seen Fey do with, say, Catherine O’Hara in even a middling SCTV sketch circa 1980…or when I compare Fey to the memory of the soulful Andrea Martin in leopard prints and cat’s-eye glasses as Miss Edith Prickley, snorting back a nasal laugh marinated in smoker’s phlegm…more than the usual embitterment sets in at the end of the day.
It is the women of SCTV that strike my memory most — Robin Duke was one of them and should be mentioned — but Martin and O’Hara were ultimately what one loved about SCTV first.
The lovely and talented O’Hara came close to an Oscar not too long ago for A Mighty Wind. The scarifying For Your Consideration was O’Hara’s rich payback for not being nominated. I’m planning on watching that film before every Oscar broadcast just like I watch Bad Santa before every Dec. 25.
In A Mighty Wind, O’Hara played it seriously as a lightly masked version of folk singer Sylvia Tyson. Her partner, the phenomenal Eugene Levy was mostly Ian Tyson, but also Phil Ochs in his crazier stage as well as some other shaky performers. Of course, most of our colleagues in the critical fraternity went, “Uh, are they supposed to be Sonny and Cher?”
Key to the poignancy of this film about folkie has-beens and never-weres was the real-life backing beneath the fiction. Indeed, O’Hara and Levy were performers who had worked together back in the day, who had been loved, but who hadn’t ever made the big time. In a just world, O’Hara would have been huge. In this one, she was merely one of the greatest comic actors of the last 50 years. It is O’Hara as tight-nerved and sadly overmedicated chanteuse Lola Heatherton that I think of, when thinking of the single finest moment of SCTV’s six-season run.*
In the familiar two-camera double-exposure fades used on daytime variety shows, O’Hara’s Lola has a splendid meltdown while performing a parody of Carly Simon’s hit, “That’s The Way I Always Heard It Should Be.” What was the song title? Of course: “You’re All Just Parasites Draining Me For Love.” Miss Lola, ripped to the pectoral muscles on some kind of pharmaceuticals, is in a semi-autobiographical fugue. The song is aimed like a ninja throwing star at the jittery president of the SCTV Television Network Guy Caballero (Joe Flaherty), a snazzy-looking spiv who uses a wheelchair. He doesn’t need it — it’s for respect.
O’Hara loved “cheesers” as she called them, odd ducks who’d never have a place anywhere outside of show business. Below, her performance as “Dusty Towne,” a Rusty Warren-style red hot mama hosting a completely inappropriate Christmas special. Martin, about whom there’ll be more in a moment, plays the zonked adagio dancer in the bleached fright wig.
Andrea Martin’s people were Armenian. I have the received idea (I received it from Armenians) that they are great storytellers, who prefer a method of storytelling in which parts of a story are nested in other parts…in the way a Russian grandmother doll contains doll after doll. (The Armenian who told me this said it explained Atom Egoyan’s films, particularly Family Viewing, Ararat and Adoration.) How this affects Martin’s comedy style is a matter of opinion, though SCTV was nested like that; you could follow threads, mull over backstories, glimpse the personal abysses of the characters. Martin was dark and could be either glamorous, or the old babushka on the back of the bus. She was good looking enough to be the smoldering Italian in the Fellini parody Rome: Italian Style). And she was also capable of tragedy, as suicidal pop singer Connie Franklin. She also was a superb physical comedian. There’s things Martin does in the movie that comes closest to the madness of SCTV, Harold Ramis’ 1986 Club Paradise, that are as good as anything Lucille Ball did.
“Bob and Doug were not the cleverest thing we did, by a long shot. Other characters we did were much smarter and more worthy of recognition. But Americans love dumb characters…”
That’s Dave Thomas in his book SCTV: Behind the Scenes on his partnership with Rick Moranis. Made up almost on the spot to fulfill the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the likable half-wits Bob and Doug McKenzie, emissaries of “The Great White North” became the mascots of SCTV. They deserve respect in a way. The two fools are essential to the growing concept of nationhood in a country where 90 percent of the people live within 100 miles of the U.S. border. The idea that Canadians say “eh?” is a result of that bit.
And if Americans like comedic saps (we still do: what are South Park’s Terrance and Phillip but descendants of Bob and Doug?) the two toque-wearing, Molson guzzling layabouts were even more popular north of the border. “I had never experienced any contact with the audience during my three years at SCTV.” That changed when he and Moranis were mobbed at the Edmonton airport by fans of “The Great White North.” The resulting fame of these two characters contributed to the jealousies and strain at the show. John Candy was gone to Hollywood, working in movies that were often beneath him; he deserves an article all his own, that comedian whose rise and early death makes him a figure you could mention with the same reverence as Fatty Arbuckle and Curly Howard.
Martin Short’s own ability to do classic Hollywood (and the most devastating impersonation of Jerry Lewis ever) served him well on Broadway and TV specials. (I, Martin Short, Go To Hollywood is the masterpiece among them). Levy and Flaherty, the utility players on the program, are as funny now as they were then.
Looking over the Shout Factory! discs, one notices that a lot of the topical references decayed with time; the barking voice of the KTEL-like salesman (Thomas, that was) hawking “Gordon Lightfoot Sings Every Song Ever Written” may seem hard to believe, but it’s strange how much of this stuff has aged well, and the fascination with old films and TV keeps them current: the divine sparkle of these performers still is remembered by a relatively few but rabid fans.
Richard von Busack is the longtime film critic for Metro Newspapers. His book The Art of Megamind was published last year.
EDITOR’S NOTE: By saying SCTV ran six seasons, it requires a bit of complicated explanation, since it doesn’t equate to six years or fit the standard definition of a television season. The original Canadian television incarnation debuted as a 30 minute show 35 years ago on Sept. 21, though it did eventually make it to America in syndication. It wasn’t a weekly program at first, airing just once a month for its first six episodes. When the next batch of seven Canadian TV episodes began to air in February 1977, it was shown once every other week. When the Global Television Network, the Canadian network on which SCTV aired, ordered another 13 installments in September 1977, it finally had a weekly slot – at least until December of that year. This surreal scheduling of its first 26 episodes (produced over the course of 15 months) were considered SCTV’s first season. Its second Canadian season was more conventional, airing weekly from fall to spring 1978-79, though it lost original cast member Harold Ramis as a performer after the third episode, though he retained the title of head writer for the rest of the season. (The other original performers were Candy, Flaherty, Levy, Martin, O’Hara and Thomas).
For the 1979-80 season, SCTV didn’t air at all on Canadian television. However a deal was reached for a third Canadian season for 1980-81 without Candy, O’Hara and Ramis. As replacements, Robin Duke, Rick Moranis and Tony Rosato joined the cast. Less than two months after the third Canadian season wrapped, NBC launched SCTV Network 90. Candy and O’Hara were lured back and Duke and Rosato were given their walking papers, which actually included directions to eventual spots on SNL. NBC practiced fuzzy math as far as what counts as a season as well, calling the episodes produced between May 15, 1981 and July 16, 1982 the fourth season, so long that Martin Short joined the cast during the latter part of it as O’Hara left once again, this time joined by Moranis and Thomas. Unfortunately, NBC only gave SCTV Network one more season, its fifth, which ran from October 1982 until its final NBC episode aired on March 18, 1983.
The reason SCTV is considered to have had a sixth season has another quirky explanation. After its NBC cancellation, it moved to pay TV (Superchannel in Canada, Cinemax in the U.S.). It also was rechristened SCTV Channel and only Flaherty, Levy, Martin and Short remained, though Candy, O’Hara and Thomas did some guest appearances during the sixth and final season’s 18 episodes that ended July 17, 1984. So that’s how a show can run six seasons over nearly eight years.
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Labels: 80s, Animation, Books, Coppola, Fellini, Jerry Lewis, L. Ball, Nonfiction, Oscars, Ramis, South Park, Theater, TV Tribute
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Friday, March 25, 2011
Mildred Pierce — nearly unabridged
BLOGGER'S NOTE: This contains mild spoilers for the new miniseries, the James M. Cain novel it is based on and the 1945 Michael Curtiz film starring Joan Crawford.
By Edward Copeland
If your only familiarity with the story of Mildred Pierce comes from Michael Curtiz's great 1945 film starring Joan Crawford in her Oscar-winning role and you've never read the James M. Cain novel from which it was adapted, the new HBO miniseries directed by Todd Haynes and starring Kate Winslet as the title character will barely seem like a remake to you at all. It's much more faithful to the original Cain novel and while the 1945 movie and this new 2011 miniseries share a title, similarities and many common characters (though often bearing different names), when you watch Haynes' version you'll feel as if you are seeing a completely new story — and it's a great one.
Though I've put the spoiler warning up top, I'm going to have to reiterate it again because this post will serve not only as both a preview and overall assessment of the five-part miniseries that begins Sunday night, I also will be comparing the 2011 Mildred Pierce with the 1945 version as well as with the James M. Cain novel itself, which I've done a quick read of to see what both versions kept and what they cut. So, after a few general paragraphs about the HBO miniseries, anyone who doesn't want to have anything ruined, best look away. I'll warn you again when it's time.
To get to the most important thing you are probably asking yourself about Haynes' Mildred Pierce out of the way first (How does it rate?), I have a simple answer: It is terrific. Originally, I was uncertain how to approach my coverage of the five-part miniseries. Should I watch the whole thing and write one piece and be done with it? Once I started watching it, I realized that wouldn't do. Haynes' production excited me so much, I felt compelled to write more on it. This Mildred Pierce proves too remarkable to finish discussing after one post. So today, you'll get my overall preview/review of the miniseries and I will follow up the next three Sundays with recaps of each installment after it airs. (Parts One and Two air this Sunday, followed by Part Three the following week and Parts Four and Five on the final night, so I'll have three recaps in all.)
I've been mixed to negative on Haynes' work in the past, only strongly liking his Douglas Sirk homage Far From Heaven. His other films as a director that I've seen such as Poison, Safe, Velvet Goldmine and I'm Not There left me less than satisfied. Far From Heaven played for me as a glorious exception in his filmography — until now. His Mildred Pierce tops even Far From Heaven. As director and co-writer, it's the best piece of
filmmaking that Haynes has done so far. His visual compositions combined with a strong and clear narrative and a remarkable cast make this Mildred Pierce a wonder. Often, it seems as if Haynes found the perfect shot on which to end each episode and many times uses openings that echo the beginning of the previous installment. I was fortunate to be able to see all five parts in a compressed period of time, since it's addictive. I feel sorry for home viewers who will have to wait a week between parts. Granted, it probably isn't fair on some level to compare Haynes' version, which has more than five hours to play with, with Curtiz's, which ran less than two hours, but the new version actually lowered my opinion of the 1945 film when I watched it again while I was more than halfway through the miniseries. One thing should be clearly stated: This almost shouldn't be called a remake because the 1945 film strayed far from James M. Cain's novel and the miniseries adheres to the book almost as if it were sacred text.The technical credits also prove wondrous. The production had to re-create Depression-era Southern California in New York and nearby New York areas, but it looks great. The colors comes across vibrantly well through the cinematography of Edward Lachman, who also was d.p. on Far From Heaven. Part of me questioned
whether everything should be filmed looking so bright and beautiful in the Great Depression, but I got over that objection rather quickly, thanks in no small part to Ann Roth's expert costuming. A "making of" special says that Roth had to dress 2,000 extras a day. The same special shows Winslet worrying that Roth wouldn't take the job because she's so in demand, but Roth did. She's a four-time Oscar nominee for costume design, winning for The English Patient. She's also in high demand on Broadway where she's been a three-time Tony nominee and her latest work is for the controversial musical The Book of Mormon by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. The biggest surprise to me is that the score is an original one because it's so evocative and sounds as if it were lifted directly from the story's time period, but no, it's original music composed by Carter Burwell, who scores most of the Coen brothers' films.The key to what makes this Mildred Pierce so great belongs to the casting decisions, particularly putting Kate Winslet in the title role. It's been clear for quite some time that Winslet is one of the best, if not the best, actresses of her generation and she wows again here. You don't usually think of Winslet and Joan
Crawford in the same role, but even though Crawford won an Oscar for her Mildred, once everyone has seen all five parts of the 2011 version, when you think of the character Mildred Pierce, you will think of Kate Winslet first. Of course, Winslet overflows with so much talent, she could probably play just about any role Crawford ever did though I doubt you could say the reverse. Joan Crawford in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind anyone? Didn't think so. In that behind-the-scenes special, Winslet said that making this miniseries was the hardest work physically for her since she made Titanic. Now that I've seen it, I don't think that was hyperbole. The range and development that Mildred goes through and that Winslet plays truly is remarkable. Having had that image of Joan Crawford in my head for so long, Winslet seemed too young, but according to the character's construct, she's precisely the right age. She makes her obsession with her evil daughter's Veda's needs much more believable than Crawford did because with the expanded running time, you see from where Veda's attitudes first sprang. Winslet succeeds at making Mildred's changes realistic and never rushed, be it from housewife to a cheating husband to successful businesswoman or from a bit of a prude to a woman comfortable with her sexuality and a drink now and then.Winslet also gets able support from a superb ensemble cast that includes Brian F. O'Byrne, Melissa Leo, James LeGros, Guy Pearce, Mare Winningham and others who appear in just one or two scenes such as Richard Easton, Ronald Guttman and Hope Davis. Then there are the two Vedas: Morgan Turner as the younger Veda in Parts One through Three and Evan Rachel Wood as the older Veda in Parts Four and Five. Before I discuss in detail how these performers did, especially in comparisons to predecessors (if there were predecessors), here comes that SPOILER WARNING again. From now on, the movie, the miniseries and the novel shall all be discussed in minute detail, so stop reading now if you want to be surprised or are unfamiliar with the novel or 1945 film either.
If you were like me (before recently anyway) and had only seen the 1945 Mildred Pierce and never read the 1941 James M. Cain novel upon which it was (very loosely) based, you probably have no idea how much the book and the movie differed. Cain's reputation was that of one of the best of the early 20th century crime novelists. His other acclaimed works that became notable film noirs included Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice. Since Billy Wilder's film version of Indemnity proved to be a hit the year before Mildred Pierce was released, Warner Bros., the studio that made its name and fortune from its gangster films, tried to shoehorn Mildred Pierce into a crime story told in a similar fashion. They gave it a flashback structure that the novel didn't have and, most importantly, turned its focus into a murder mystery — when Cain's novel contained no murder at all. My faithful contributor Eddie Selover made me aware of a book published in 1980 that I wish I could read by Ranald MacDougall (credited screenwriter of the 1945 film), Albert J. LaValley and the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research (called Mildred Pierce, of course) that recounts the making of the 1945 film, including how many of the changes came to be.
In the Michael Curtiz version, Mildred's second husband, the bankrupt playboy Monte Beragon (Zachary Scott) receives the fatal bullets in the movie's opening minutes and the remainder of the film has Joan Crawford's Mildred telling her life story to a police detective to explain what led up to the murder. Guy Pearce plays Beragon in the HBO miniseries but, aside from not being killed, the main change to his character is the spelling of his name which reverts to Monty, the way Cain spelled it in the novel. Other names get changed to match Cain's that were renamed in the Curtiz version, that's how faithful Haynes and his co-writer Jon Raymond are to the novel. Though Cain may be pigeonholed as a crime novelist, Mildred Pierce does not belong in the crime category. Haynes and Raymond follow Cain's outline so
closely that Part One covers almost everything that happens in the first four chapters of the book with the exception of one scene, which they save to use as the opening for Part Two. Changing names isn't that big a deal, but what a difference inserting a murder mystery and flashback structure makes. It's sort of like the butterfly effect, changing the entire story, even the parts the 1945 film kept from Cain's novel. The new miniseries rectifies this, because there were a lot of other changes that made big changes. In a figurative way, Todd Haynes found a DeLorean with a flux capacitor and went back to 1945 to wrench Cain's novel from Warner Bros., and make history right again. (Of course, Time Warner owns HBO, but it was a silly metaphor anyway.)
Whether you are reading the novel, watching the miniseries or beginning the flashback portion of the 1945 version of Mildred Pierce, you basically start at the same point. Mildred's husband Bert holds no job, having been forced out of the company he started, Pierce Homes, and lost what money he once had in the stock market crash of '29. This has left the burden of keeping the family afloat to Mildred, a family which also includes their two daughters Veda, 11, and Ray (short for Moire which the Pierces mispronounced except in the 1945 version where they had no problem because her name was Kay), 6. They barely make ends meet on what she makes by selling pies and cakes she bakes in her kitchen.
On this day, after a long while of living with the open secret that Bert is having an affair with one Mrs. Biederhof, Mildred has had enough. There would be no more pretending that Bert and Mrs. Biederhof only played rummy together and when Bert refuses to commit to whether he'll be home in time for dinner or not, Mildred essentially tells him to take a suitcase and not come home at all. The scene comes off very well in the miniseries between Winslet and Brian F. O'Byrne, who plays the role of Bert, but it's a problem in the Curtiz version because they cast Bruce Bennett as Bert and he's horribly stiff and self-righteous and plays every scene he has in the movie as if his character has the moral high ground — even in this scene when he's leaving his wife and two young daughters for another woman. The children come off the same when they come home to a missing father, especially young Veda (played by Ann Blyth at all ages in 1945 and by the miraculous Morgan Turner in the miniseries), who already knew of the affair and tries to assure her mother that Mrs. Biederhof is "distinctly middle-class." Bert was the one thing that always bugged me about the original film. His sudden appearance as the hero and his reconciliation with Mildred didn't make much sense to me in the context of Curtiz's film, but seeing how he develops over the course of the novel and the miniseries, it makes more sense that he and Mildred should get back together and he should be the one to tell her to cut ties with Veda once and for all. O'Byrne can make that transformation work in a way Bennett's acting skills and the other film's running time prevented the previous Bert Pierce.
If you already are a fan of the 1945 Mildred Pierce, one of the major reasons probably is the character of Ida Corwin as hilariously played by Eve Arden. Mildred meets her when she happens to stumble upon a fight over stealing tips that gets two waitresses fired at a diner and, desperate for work, Mildred asks Ida, who manages the joint, for a job. She soon becomes Mildred's best friend and, later, business associate when Mildred begins a career as a successful restaurateur. Arden gets
most of the film's most memorable lines and the book about the making of the film, according to Eddie Selover, indicates that Arden improvised a lot of her material. More importantly, though Ida Corwin exists in the novel, she doesn't quite in the way the Curtiz film makes her out to be and it deletes an entire character, Mildred's real best friend, her neighbor Lucy Kessler, played in the miniseries by Melissa Leo. Lucy, still referred to as Mrs. Kessler most of the time despite being Mildred's closest confidant, advises her on her new single status and is the first to give her warning signs that something's not right about Veda. Ida in the miniseries meets Mildred in much the same way, but she's merely a waitress at that diner, not the manager. Mare Winningham gets her part in 2011, though Ida does end up becoming involved in Mildred's business. Leo and Winningham both give very good performances, but neither of their tongues are as razor sharp as Arden's was and, actually, both actresses probably were wise not to try to compete with Arden's ghost.
One of the more memorable speeches Lucy gives to Mildred comes after she learns she's given Bert the heave-ho and she informs her that she now belongs to a group known as the "grass widows," and that comes straight from Cain's novel. Since Lucy's character didn't exist in the 1945 movie and she hadn't met Ida yet, she got a shortened version of that speech from the character of Wally, probably the person who changed the most. In 1945, Wally Fay (Jack Carson) is a lawyer who was supposed to be someone who had known Mildred all her life and always had a thing for her, but ended up taking over her restaurants partly out of spite when Mildred ended up in money trouble because of the cash she wasted on Veda and Monty. In the book and the miniseries, his name is Wally Burgan (James LeGros), Bert's former business partner who forced him out of Pierce Homes, helped Veda scam a wealthy family by saying their son knocked her up and tricked Mildred into incorporating herself so that he could force her out too, though in the end, the company ended up in Ida's hands. Both actors play Wally very well, but the two Wallys are so different, it isn't as if they really are playing the same character.
There are countless other differences, some of which I will mention during the recap process, but I thought I would wrap this up with the character who is second in importance only to Mildred herself and that's her evil spawn Veda, because really, Mildred's obsession with her daughter Veda provides the crux of Cain's novel and the miniseries. It really takes the focus of the 1945 version as well, even if they put it in the form of a murder mystery, since Crawford's Mildred is quite willing to take credit for killing Monte even though
Veda did it and she'd just discovered they'd been having an affair. At least the Mildred of the novel and the one Winslet gets to portray would never do that. When she catches Monty and Veda in bed together, she finally tries to strangle the spoiled brat to death. Ann Blyth as well as the entire cast of the Curtiz version did have the production code to contend with, so some changes couldn't be helped. For instance, when Veda tries to snag money from the wealthy young man with a fake pregnancy, in the 1945 version she actually has to marry him. In the miniseries, Mildred wants to force the boy to marry Veda when all Veda wants is the money. Cain's novel goes further with Mildred suggesting, when she believes Veda really is pregnant, that perhaps she should seek an abortion, though the word is never used. 
You never see Crawford's Mildred express disdain for work that requires you to wear a uniform, though they do have one scene where it's clear she didn't want Veda to know she was working as a waitress. In the miniseries, while Winslet's Mildred only has those prejudices as far as herself is concerned, it makes more sense where Veda picked up her sense of entitlement and the idea that she's better than most people and doesn't belong with the common folk of Glendale, Calif. When comparing the actresses playing Veda — and really we are considering three here: Blyth, Morgan Turner and Evan Rachel Wood — I believe Turner comes off best. Granted, we spend the most time with her, but she seems to hold the perfect mix of being a child and a rotten know-it-all at the same time. Once Wood takes over, she's fine, but I found her performance far too mannered and when there are standoffs between Mildred and Veda, I actually think Turner holds her own with Winslet better than Wood does.
As someone who generally frowns on remakes, especially of really good movies, Todd Haynes' Mildred Pierce defies the odds because as big of a fan as I was of 1945's Mildred Pierce, the miniseries has lowered my opinion of it. I wish I could separate them since the 1945 movie really tells an entirely different story and the miniseries shouldn't be called a remake at all, but too many things are the same for the two not to be linked. Haynes has achieved something almost impossible: Produced a great work of cinematic art and lowered the worth of a classic film at the same time. If you have HBO or have a friend who has HBO or can see Mildred Pierce by hook or by crook, you must do so. See you here for the first recap of Parts One and Two at 11 p.m. CDT Sunday.
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Labels: Books, Coens, Crawford, Curtiz, E.R. Wood, Eve Arden, Fiction, HBO, Melissa Leo, Oscars, Pearce, Remakes, South Park, Television, Wilder, Winslet
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