Saturday, September 10, 2011
Cliff Robertson 1923-2011
Ordinarily, when someone with as long and as illustrious a career as Cliff Robertson passes away, I would try to be as comprehensive as possible in my appreciation. Unfortunately, because I've been so underwater in projects, I didn't receive the news until much later than I should have and the due dates of the projects require that I can't take myself away from them for too long a stretch. Before I write my short look at the career of Mr. Robertson, who died Saturday one day after his 88th birthday, I'd like to express regret for not finding a better photo of him as the slimy and manipulative presidential candidate Ben Cantwell in the 1964 film adaptation of Gore Vidal's play The Best Man. His at-any-costs maneuvers to wrestle the nomination away from Henry Fonda's William Russell, for me at least, was the best work Robertson ever did on screen.
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Labels: Aldrich, Crawford, De Palma, DeVito, Fosse, H. Fonda, John Carpenter, Mailer, Mankiewicz, Obituary, Oscars, Raimi, Redford, Television, Tennessee Williams, Theater, Vidal, Walken, Walsh
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Sunday, June 27, 2010
From the Vault: Pulp Fiction
As a filmmaker, Quentin Tarantino works like a crafty pickpocket, approaching strangers and diverting their attention with entertaining conversation. It's only later that the victim realizes something more serious has transpired. This is definitely the case with Tarantino's second film, Pulp Fiction. There is so much energy and joy overflowing in Pulp Fiction that the viewer has too much fun to realize there is a deeper film at work. It takes awhile for the film's full wallop to register.
Like Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction is a true ensemble work with a brilliant cast. Pulp Fiction builds on the unique structural technique Tarantino utilized in Reservoir Dogs and takes it several steps further, telling disparate stories out of chronological order. To tell too much of the story would diminish the visceral and comic impact of the film, which Tarantino also wrote from stories he and Roger Avary conjured up.
From the tale of a prize fighter (Bruce Willis) paid to take a dive to the amazing speech that Christopher Walken gives that lurches from the reverent to the absurd, Tarantino's words are almost quicker than the ear's ability to catch them. The performances are all top notch, with special notice given to Walken, John Travolta, Amanda Plummer and Tim Roth. Samuel L. Jackson, who gives one great performance after another, paints perhaps his most vivid portrait as Jules, a verbose hit man considering a career change.
Harvey Keitel, one of the most intrinsically interesting actors around, pops up late in the film, steals his scenes and makes a hasty exit. In a vengeful mobster's drug-taking wife, Uma Thurman finally finds a role that capitalizes on the potential she's shown. The actors are able to perform well thanks to the script itself. No one writes dialogue like Tarantino. Every word sounds as if it came from the same mouth, yet every character has humanity and individuality.
Tarantino's direction has grown more polished. He's got a great eye. His gift isn't really an animalistic passion like Martin Scorsese, but a biting comic brilliance rarely seen. What's so fascinating about Tarantino is as much what he takes out as what he leaves in. He tells a boxing story without showing a fight, makes the contents of a briefcase important without revealing them.
In fact, Tarantino's method is reminiscent of a passage from U and I, novelist Nicholson Baker's autobiographical essay about his imagined relationship with John Updike. Baker talks about his fascination with the "narrative clogs" of fiction, the passages that give a work its flavor even though they might be extraneous. He writes: "... the trick being to feel your way through each clog by blowing it up until its obstructiveness finally revealed not blank mass but unlooked-for-seepage points of passage."
In the end, that's where Pulp Fiction excels, showing the passage of time and of various criminal lowlifes in a sometimes disturbing but consistently comic way.
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Labels: 90s, Keitel, Samuel L. Jackson, Scorsese, Tarantino, Travolta, Updike, Walken, Willis
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Saturday, May 29, 2010
Dennis Hopper (1936-2010)
How many odd turns can one man's life and career take? There's probably no limit, but Dennis Hopper, who died at 74 after a long battle with cancer, took a lot of them: From young actor of film and TV in the 1950s to counterculture icon of the 1960s and '70s (while adding director to his resume and still working with the likes of John Wayne); from nearly unemployable because of drugs to a career comeback in the mid-1980s before frequent returns to TV. On the side, he managed to find time to be a prolific photographer, painter and sculptor. His later years also brought the strangest twist for the hippie hero: he became a Republican. Still, it's his film and TV work that will be his legacy.
An interest in acting led Hopper to the fabled Actors Studio in New York where he studied under Lee Strasberg for five years. As was the case with many of the studio's actors, much of his early work was on 1950s television, but he made his film debut with friend and fellow student James Dean in 1955's Rebel Without a
Cause. He worked again with Dean in the last of Dean's three films, Giant, in 1956. Much of his early work both on television and on film was spent in westerns including 1957's Gunfight at the O.K. Corral as Billy Clanton opposite Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster. The same year, Hopper got to be an emperor, Napoleon no less, in Irwin Allen's The Story of Mankind. For the next several years, his work was restricted mainly to television, including The Twilight Zone and The Defenders. His first crossover toward the counterculture might have occurred in 1964, when he played the title role in an episode of Petticoat Junction titled "Bobbie Jo and the Beatnik." Hopper still did plenty of westerns, appearing opposite John Wayne for the first time in 1965's The Sons of Katie Elder. Two years later brought Hopper's first full-fledged entrance into the drug culture as far as movies were concerned as he co-starred with Peter Fonda in The Trip, which was directed by Roger Corman and written by Jack Nicholson. That same year, he appeared in Cool Hand Luke. In 1968, Hopper appeared in Clint Eastwood's Hang 'Em High.With 1969, Hopper embarked on his first directing project: starring with Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson in the counterculture classic Easy Rider. The same year, he also got to be one of the bad guys opposite Wayne's Rooster Cogburn in True Grit. Two years later, he starred and directed again (and provided the story) in The
Last Movie, which even featured an acting turn by director Samuel Fuller. Following a few other films, he became the second of many actors to put their stamp on Patricia Highsmith's famed serial killer Tom Ripley in Wim Wenders' 1977 The American Friend. During his days of heavy real life drug use, Hopper danced through the role of a photojournalist in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. Despite his out-of-control private life, Hopper still managed to snag roles, though nothing of real significance either on film or television, despite small roles for major directors such as Coppola's Rumble Fish, Sam Peckinpah's The Osterman Weekend and Robert Altman's O.C. and Stiggs. Then came 1986 and Hopper's huge comeback. Two roles brought him back on the radar and earned him respect. First, came what may end up being his most memorable role as Frank Booth in David Lynch's Blue Velvet. Booth was one of the most bizarre villains ever dreamed up for a movie, frightening and funny, prone to use nitrous oxide as he assaults the woman he's obsessed with and seldom producing a sentence without at least one use of the F word. The second film was far more conventional. Hoosiers, the tale of an Indiana high school basketball team, gave Hopper the role of an alcoholic assistant coach opposite Gene Hackman. Both movies were the stuff of Oscar buzz and come nomination day, Entertainment Tonight even set up cameras and watched with Hopper as the nominations were announced on TV. "They went with Hoosiers," he said as his name was announced. You could tell he was happy to be nominated but at the same time slightly disappointed that the Academy went with the safer choice. There was a third 1986 film, one which Hopper publicly disowned, but which I think he shouldn't be ashamed of. He gave an over-the-top turn in an over-the-top and absolutely great satire Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. He should be proud of the avenging Texas ranger, venturing through caves with mini-chainsaws in a holster while he sang, "Bringing in the Sheaves."After that, he worked steadily, though often as the broadest of villains. There were still textured performances to be found such as the hermit with the blowup doll in 1987's River's Edge. He got to be one of Theresa Russell's wealthy victims in Black Widow. In 1988, he returned to the director's chair with Colors, a police vs. gang drama starring Sean Penn and Robert Duvall. When Penn took his first try at directing, Hopper snagged a role in Penn's The Indian Runner. One of his most enjoyable later turns comes in the very
underrated 1990 film Flashback, where he played a long-on-the-lam '60s activist who is being taken back to jail by FBI agent Kiefer Sutherland. The movie is funny and full of fresh twists and deserves a better reputation than it has — hell, it deserves a reputation, period. In 1993, he was a truly busy man with a mix of good and goofy performances in films that ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. He was charming in the so-so Boiling Point, part of the solid ensemble in John Dahl's Red Rock West and the evil King Koopa in Super Mario Bros. His finest 1993 moment though came in a superb acting duet with Christopher Walken in the Quentin Tarantino-scripted, Tony Scott-directed True Romance, really the best part of the entire film.
Following the next year, he created another memorable screen villain in the surprise hit thriller Speed staring Keanu Reeves and boosting Sandra Bullock to stardom. His 1995 villain was not nearly something to be as proud of, but then neither was the movie as he got trapped in the Kevin Costner disaster
Waterworld. The next year, he got a smaller role as a bigwig in art in artist Julian Schnabel's directing debut, Basquiat. 1999 brought him parts in EdTV and the nearly forgotten Jesus' Son starring Billy Crudup. One of his last memorable villains came late in the run of the first season of television's 24, when the writers realized they had killed off all their villains too early and needed a big one to fill out the remaining hours in their first day. Hopper filled the part as Victor Drazen, a Serbian war criminal with a bad accent and a grudge against Jack Bauer. Most of his films after that were forgettable, though he did appear in another installment in George Romero's zombie series, Land of the Dead, a right-wing try at making a satire about a Michael Moore-type character called An American Carol, a short-lived TV series titled E-Ring and a part in a TV version of the movie Crash. Despite his late turn toward the GOP, Hopper did admit, as did many Republicans, that in the 2008 election that after voting for Bush twice, he was voting for Obama. During the long final months of his illness, Hopper did manage to make a public appearance March 26 looking very frail to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. According to IMDb, an unconfirmed report places him in a completed film and another one in post-production, so there may be some more Dennis Hopper to see. As prolific as he was though, I doubt anyone has seen all his work that's out there now. R.I.P. Mr. Hopper. In dreams, we walk, with you.
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Labels: Altman, Coppola, Corman, Duvall, Eastwood, Fuller, Hackman, James Dean, K. Douglas, K. Sutherland, Lancaster, Lynch, Nicholson, Obituary, Peckinpah, Sean Penn, T. Scott, Tarantino, Walken, Wayne
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Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Oh, The Plays You Can See
By Hannah W
Now that Tony nominations are out, we might be kicking ourselves for not seeing this play or that play, especially the ones that earned four, five or maybe even six of these honors. How can you predict the Tony winners if you haven’t seen the productions? Luckily, many of the nominated plays are still up and running on Broadway, and you have until June 13 to make your predictions.
Amazingly, every play that opened this season (and therefore is eligible for a Tony) and is still running has been noticed in at least one category. No matter what you decide to see, you’ll see a show that has earned a Tony nod.
As expected, Fences, the August Wilson revival that opened at the Cort Theatre on April 26, is the leader in Tony nominations. With a total of 10 recognitions, including Best Revival of a Play, Best Direction, Best Leading Actor and Actress, one has to assume that there is something to this production.
Though the commercial power of the show stems from its Tony nominated leading stars, Denzel Washington and Viola Davis, the show has also been hailed for its scenic design, costume design, lighting design, sound
design and original score. Yes, score. Though Fences Branford Marsalis wrote jazz music for the scene breaks that can have you dancing in your seat. This music is seamlessly incorporated into the production so well that you almost forget you’re really waiting for the actors to return. Fences is the story of Troy Maxson (Washington), a trash collector in 1975 Pittsburgh. Troy is dreamer with dashed dreams. He constantly tells stories to his wife, Rose (Davis), and his best friend, Bono (played by Best Featured Actor nominee Stephen McKinley Henderson) of amazing things in his life, past and present. However, he is terrified his son, played by Chris Chalk, will go farther and become something more than Troy ever could.
Another leading contender that comes as somewhat of a surprise is Red, John Logan’s play about famed expressionist painter Mark Rothko. As with Fences, Red is up for Leading Actor, Featured Actor, Best Direction, Scenic Design, Lighting Design and Sound Design, but this play’s seven acknowledgements are rounded out by a Best New Play nomination.
Red is about Art. Through the years, we’ve seen a number of Broadway plays and musicals question Art, what it means to create Art and why Art exists. Perhaps the most well known is Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George, last seen on Broadway in 2008.
Though both shows deal with artists struggling with what they want from their art, the Mark Rothko of Red has already achieved his fame. Red takes place during the two years he spent creating a series of murals for the Four Seasons Restaurant in New York City. The discussions that take place between Rothko, played by Alfred Molina, and his fictional assistant, Ken, played by Eddie Redmayne, unveil the two men’s opinions on Art, what Art means and the kinds of people who are able to see Art, versus the ones who should have that privilege.
The play is completely staged in Rothko’s art studio, with red paint on the floor and large expressionist paintings line the walls. During each scene break, a new painting is displayed to the audience, giving an idea for how Rothko wanted these murals to exist. The deep reds, crimsons and blacks of these paintings reflect the growing despair Rothko feels in sharing these murals with diners who can never appreciate them as he does.
Most of the time it seems that the only plays nominators take notice of are heavy dramas. Not this year. Ken Ludwig’s 1986 farce Lend Me a Tenor is up for Best Revival of a Play, among others. Though the cast consists of well known comedians such as Tony Shalhoub (TV’s Monk) and Justin Bartha (The Hangover), the standout performance is giving by Jan Maxwell, for which she has received a Best Featured Actress nod. Maxwell plays Maria, the jealous wife of a famed Italian tenor, who travels with her husband to Cleveland. A comedy of errors ensues in a Cleveland hotel between the opera manager, his assistant, his daughter, the chairwoman of the board, the opera diva and the bellhop. And we cannot forget the costumes in this production. If you remember Roger De Bris’s Anastasia (or Chrysler Building) dress from The Producers, be aware that it makes an encore appearance.
Making its Broadway debut is another comedy, this one dark, starring the Tony nominated Christopher Walken. Martin McDonagh’s new play, A Behanding in Spokane, might be a disappointment to those who loved his earlier work. True McDonagh fans might leave upset over the relatively blood-free stage (though this is not true of body parts). The true genius of Walken, plying a man who has spent half a century looking for his dismembered hand, is evident by his comic timing and dry humor, so that you might not miss the gore.
Two of the recognized plays, Collected Stories and Race, are structured to make you deconstruct both sides of an argument that doesn’t have a clear right or wrong answer. While that might sound like it can’t possibly result in entertaining theater, the performances give life to these very wordy plays. Collected Stories, the second Donald Margulies play produced by Manhattan Theatre Club this season, is essentially a series of discussions between two women, a celebrated author and her up-and-coming student. Linda Lavin, who plays the author, is up for Best Leading Actress for this strong performance. Race, the second David Mamet play to be seen on Broadway this season, uses the backdrop of a law firm defending a white man charged with raping a black woman to discuss the difficult topic of race relations. Noticed for Scenic Design, Race also received a Featured Actor nomination for David Alan Grier, playing the black lawyer on the case.
Much more plot-based than either Race or Collected Stories, Geoffrey Nauffts’s Next Fall is extremely
thought-provoking in a different way. Next Fall presents two different ideas of Christianity and religion in general, seen from both an agnostic and Christian standpoint. The play centers around a gay couple, Adam (agnostic) and Luke (religious), as they try to overcome this major disparity in their relationship. At times funny (Jesse McCartney music makes an appearance) and at times heartbreaking, the struggle of these two men is shown without judgment. The audience members are the judges, most of whom picked a side before entering the theater. Next Fall is recognized for Best Play and Best Direction, due to Geoffrey Nauffts' ability to present different views on religion and write a compelling love story at the same time.
Originally a limited run at Manhattan Theatre Club, Time Stands Still closed March 27, but if you missed this Best New Play contender with Laura Linney, a Best Leading Actress nominee, you’re in luck. The first Donald Margulies play of the season is coming back to Broadway in the fall as a commercial production. Time Stands Still tells the story of photojournalist Sarah (Linney) and what happened to her life after she is injured while on assignment in Iraq. Sarah is so devoted to her job of observing the world that she finds it hard to participate and connect without her camera. We can’t escape the news reports of the war our country is currently engaged in, but rarely do we stop and think about those people who bring us our information. Time Stands Still places them firmly in our consciousness.
Of the eight plays currently running on Broadway, seven are Tony nominees for the 2009/2010 season, and God of Carnage, the only other play, is last year’s Tony winner for Best New Play, though it will close June 27. You have your pick of comedy or drama, new play or revival. The season has been kind to the playgoing theatergoer, as every play has something to offer. Which plays are you going to see?
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Labels: Awards, Denzel, Laura Linney, Mamet, Sondheim, Theater, Viola Davis, Walken
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Wednesday, April 21, 2010
From the Vault: True Romance
When Reservoir Dogs came out last year, some critics suggested writer-director Quentin Tarantino had spent too much time working in a video store. While I still admire Reservoir Dogs, those critics may have had a point based on Tarantino's screenplay for Tony Scott's film True Romance.
A strange puree of various genres and memorable plot devices, True Romance frequently is a likable though ultimately unsatisfying romp.
Christian Slater stars as Clarence, a young Detroit man who spends his life working in a comic book store until an apparent chance encounter with a woman named Alabama (Patricia Arquette) begins a strange chain reaction of events.
As the plot unfolds, so much deja vu washes over the audience that the viewer risks drowning in nostalgia. The script snatches bits from Easy Rider, bits from countless on-the-run films and a final result that plays like a poor man's Wild at Heart, including a dream Elvis (Val Kilmer) who offers Slater advice.
Scott downplays his usual glitzy style for this low-end road picture but as is usually the case, the Top Gun director fails to deliver anything substantial.
True Romance does have some merit. It contains some strong acting, especially a small role by Bronson Pinchot, James Gandolfini as a ruthless gangster named Virgil, and, in the film's most memorable scene, a memorable duet between Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walken.
On the whole, True Romance ends up being a quirky film whose positive factors can't overcome its negative attributes.
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Labels: 90s, Elvis, Gandolfini, Hopper, Meg Ryan, T. Scott, Tarantino, Val Kilmer, Walken
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Friday, September 18, 2009
The light goes out
By Edward Copeland
I'm not going to pretend to be a regular, or even sporadic, viewer, of Guiding Light , but my mom is and my grandma was. At times in my life, I did. Summers as a child, bored afternoons as I waited to go work as a nighttime copy editor. Still, any drama that lasts a combined 72 years on radio and television deserves some notice when its time comes to an end, as the CBS soap opera will today. 72 years. That simply will never be equaled no matter how many times Law & Order refreshes its cast. Guiding Light began as a radio drama in 1937, at the beginning of FDR's second term. It began its television version in 1952 and kept the radio version
as well for the first six years. The first few years of the radio version featured the voice talents of none other than future Oscar winner and future voice of the possessed Linda Blair in The Exorcist, Mercedes McCambridge. The title came from the central character, a reverend who tried to advise and give strength to his town's citzens and he was voiced by Arthur Peterson (seen on left), who would be noticed 40 years later as The Major on Soap. Another of the radio voices belonged to Betty Lou Gerson, better known as Cruella De Vil. Guiding Light boasts an impressive lists of actors who either served time on the show as characters or appeared as guests, among them: Sandy Dennis, Christopher Walken, Barnard Hughes, Joseph Campanella, Blythe Danner, Kevin Bacon, Sherry Stringfield, Melina Kankaredes, Teresa Wright, Joan Bennett, Dick Cavett, James Coco, Dorothy Loudon,
Chita Rivera, Leslie Uggams, Tammy Grimes, Cindy Adams, Joan Collins, Philip Bosco, Jan Sterling, Allison Janney, Ruth Warrick (before All My Children), Chris Sarandon, Ed Begley Sr., Jesse L. Martin, Taye Diggs, Sorrell Booke, Everett McGill (Big Ed of Twin Peaks), Giancarlo Esposito and Adolph Caesar. The B-52s even dropped by once. Inside the Actors Studio host James Lipton acted on the show from 1952-1962. James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson played a couple and when they left were replaced by Billy Dee Williams and Ruby Dee. Both of the Sopranos' neighbors the Cusamanos, Robert LuPone and Saundra Santiago, appeared at different times, though Santiago had the far more significant role as vindictive mobster Carmen Santos who, at last word, was still lying in a coma. She was deliciously bad, though you always had to blame her for killing off the great character of Ben (Hunt Block), which may have been one of the show's final, fatal missteps. The late Larry Gates had a long run as oil patriarch H.B. Lewis after a long career that included the films In the Heat of the Night, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Some Came
Running and the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Really, whether or not you ever watched any daytime drama, and if you don't soon you may not get the chance, because it's a dying breed in the expanded television universe, two paycheck households being the norm and the ratings of the survivors not justifying their costs, they are an amazing achievement. Some time they are bad, then they rebound. Some display some of the best television acting you'll see. Some also display the most awful amateurish acting you'll witness. However, when you consider they are on year-round for decades, the quality control is pretty remarkable. Some prime time shows have a hard time coming up with 22 good episodes in a season and run out of steam after a few seasons. Soap operas jump the shark, rise again, jump the shark again and repeat the whole cycle over and over again. That was the certainly the case with Guiding Light, at least with the times I watched. It
had one of the best daytime villains (and actors) ever in the late Michael Zaslow as the nefarious Roger Thorpe. As with any good villain, he was thought dead and came back but he was a bit different that he was never a cartoony bad guy as some soap villains become. As dastardly as he could be, he also was defiantly human. You could hate him, but at times you could understand and even sympathize with him without the character doing a complete 180 from where he started. He was even part of a landmark soap storyline of the 1970s when his wife Holly (Maureen Garrett) accused him of marital rape. Zaslow was far from the only great actor/character to grace the show. Justin Deas will be on until today's last episode as blue collar good guy with rough edges Buzz Cooper who originally arrived as a Vietnam vet who had faked his death in that war. Between Guiding Light, As the World Turns and the canceled Santa Barbara, Deas has been the recipient of six Daytime Emmy Awards. Of course, one of the most fabled of all the show's characters is Reva (Kim Zimmer), herself the winner of four Emmys despite being stuck in some of the show's
most ridiculous storylines. She was cloned. She had amnesia and became Amish after spending life in an island nation as its princess and having a secret child. After "dying," she came back as a ghost. There was a time traveling storyline, a period when she was suddenly psychic. She went through menopause and then years later became pregnant. It's a credit to Zimmer that she managed to keep Reva having any credibility at all. One of the best performances I ever witnessed on the show (which earned an Emmy) was Cynthia Watros as Annie, a nurse who became a woman scorned when her husband's former wife (Reva) came back from the dead and she slowly transformed into a double-barrelled psycho. It wasn't an abrupt change and included addiction to pills and drink that precipitated her fall but Watros was so great I often wonder why we don't see her in other venues. The character was so great, Annie even went so far as to kidnap a policewoman from another town and have plastic surgery to look like her to insinuate herself back into Springfield anonymously. Unfortunately, the face change meant no Watros. While soaps are often thought of mostly for the romance and trial and tribulations, not enough is made of their humor and Guiding Light was often very good at it, especially during the years Nola Reardon (Lisa Brown) was around with her crazy fantasies. So, even if you've never watched a soap and never plan to, raise a toast today to the passing of Guiding Light. The Bauers, the Spauldings, the Shaynes, the Coopers, the Lewises and the Reardons (are any of them left?) will live on in memories and an unaired Springfield after today and 72 years is one helluva broadcasting achievement. Replacing the show? A new version of Let's Make a Deal hosted by Wayne Brady. Now, that's depressing.Tweet
Labels: J.E. Jones, Joan Bennett, Kevin Bacon, Law and Order, TV Tribute, Walken
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Monday, December 10, 2007
Dragging down the party
By Edward Copeland
As Odienator expressed so well a while back, John Waters' original Hairspray in 1988 was quite fun. I never got to see its stage incarnation, though I've listened to the original cast album numerous times and seen several clips of production numbers. Now, I've seen the film version of the musical version of the original movie and it's mostly a charming affair, though it's sunk frequently by the grotesque miscasting better known as John Travolta as Edna Turnblad.
Every detail of the Travolta Edna is wrong. Why does it always seem that when film makeup goes bad, it goes horribly bad, as it does here. The latex and body suit harnessed to Travolta creates something that not only looks fake and rips you violently from the 1962 Baltimore that the film is trying to create, sometimes it repulses you.
Unfortunately, all the blame for why Travolta just does not work doesn't lie with what he's wearing, it's with the performance itself. Not only did Divine and, in what I've seen of Harvey Fierstein, make Edna a real woman with minimal makeup tricks, they also created actual characters. Travolta for some reason has chosen to adopt a fake Southernish accent that seems like a bad parody of Dustin Hoffman's voice as his Dorothy Michaels character in Tootsie, another case where a man in drag created a plausible female character.
Fortunately though, Travolta's screen time is limited to some extent and when he is off, it truly allows the others in the cast to shine, especially newcomer Nikki Blonsky as Tracy. The rest of the ensemble also is mostly fine across the board, including Christopher Walken (though imagine how good he could have been doing his number with someone other than Travolta as his partner), Amanda Bynes, James Marsden, Queen Latifah, Elijah Kelley and and Taylor Parks, to name but a few.
Michelle Pfeiffer does get to have more fun than she's had in a long time as the film's villainous Velma von Tussle, though the story change of making her the station manager and trying to seduce Walken, dowsn't really work. (Also, I have to admit, that I regret not giving her a husband as co-conspirator and a climax involving a time bomb hidden in a bouffant hairdo.)
With all the digital wizardry out there at talented people's fingers these days, maybe someone can alter the film and somehow insert Divine back into the role and let Fierstein do a Marni Nixon for the late actor.
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As Odienator expressed so well a while back, John Waters' original Hairspray in 1988 was quite fun. I never got to see its stage incarnation, though I've listened to the original cast album numerous times and seen several clips of production numbers. Now, I've seen the film version of the musical version of the original movie and it's mostly a charming affair, though it's sunk frequently by the grotesque miscasting better known as John Travolta as Edna Turnblad.
Every detail of the Travolta Edna is wrong. Why does it always seem that when film makeup goes bad, it goes horribly bad, as it does here. The latex and body suit harnessed to Travolta creates something that not only looks fake and rips you violently from the 1962 Baltimore that the film is trying to create, sometimes it repulses you.
Unfortunately, all the blame for why Travolta just does not work doesn't lie with what he's wearing, it's with the performance itself. Not only did Divine and, in what I've seen of Harvey Fierstein, make Edna a real woman with minimal makeup tricks, they also created actual characters. Travolta for some reason has chosen to adopt a fake Southernish accent that seems like a bad parody of Dustin Hoffman's voice as his Dorothy Michaels character in Tootsie, another case where a man in drag created a plausible female character.
Fortunately though, Travolta's screen time is limited to some extent and when he is off, it truly allows the others in the cast to shine, especially newcomer Nikki Blonsky as Tracy. The rest of the ensemble also is mostly fine across the board, including Christopher Walken (though imagine how good he could have been doing his number with someone other than Travolta as his partner), Amanda Bynes, James Marsden, Queen Latifah, Elijah Kelley and and Taylor Parks, to name but a few.
Michelle Pfeiffer does get to have more fun than she's had in a long time as the film's villainous Velma von Tussle, though the story change of making her the station manager and trying to seduce Walken, dowsn't really work. (Also, I have to admit, that I regret not giving her a husband as co-conspirator and a climax involving a time bomb hidden in a bouffant hairdo.)
With all the digital wizardry out there at talented people's fingers these days, maybe someone can alter the film and somehow insert Divine back into the role and let Fierstein do a Marni Nixon for the late actor.
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Labels: 00s, Dustin Hoffman, Musicals, Pfeiffer, Remakes, Travolta, Walken
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Wednesday, July 25, 2007
This isn't Chicago after all — it's London
BLOGGER'S NOTE: In order to truly compare and contrast why the original British miniseries of Pennies From Heaven is superior to Herbert Ross' 1981 film version starring Steve Martin, many spoilers are necessary. So, if you plan to ever watch either and don't want plot details revealed, read no further.
By Edward Copeland
When I recently reviewed the 1981 film version of Pennies From Heaven, I guessed that the original British miniseries would work better and feel less truncated and now that I've seen it, I see that my intuition was correct. Whereas the movie focused so heavily on Steve Martin's version of sheet music salesman Arthur Parker that it seemed odd when other characters burst into song (or more accurately burst into miming songs). The 1978 British miniseries while still focusing on Arthur as the main character (here played by Bob Hoskins) also makes the characters of his wife Joan (Gemma Craven) and his eventual lover, schoolteacher turned prostitute Eileen (Cheryl Campbell) equally pivotal, so their musical turns make sense. In fact, the viewer meets Eileen before Arthur even does.
Also, the very minor character of The Accordion Man gets much more development and significance as played by Kenneth Colley in the miniseries version. Granted, it's easier to add depth when you are given six episodes running between 70 and 90 minutes each than when you are trying to squeeze everything into a two-hour film, but even then some of the choices the film version made seem counter to writer Dennis Potter's original vision. In the DVD commentary track of the miniseries' first episode, director Piers Haggard discussed the insistence by Potter for the first song to seem to come out of Hoskins' mouth be the version of a song by a female singer. Haggard told Potter they could find a rendition by a male singer, but Potter would have none of it because his goal was to create as much dislocation for the viewer as possible. The title for this post comes from a moment late in the series when Arthur goes missing, wrecking his music store ahead of time, leaving the impression of foul play. Joan tells the police investigator that Arthur couldn't have just gone missing because "This isn't Chicago after all — it's London" and that draws real contrast to the movie version which is set in 1938 Chicago as opposed to 1935 England as in the miniseries.
What really provides the crucial difference in making the miniseries superior (though I still prefer Potter's miniseries of The Singing Detective with Michael Gambon) is Hoskins and his portrayal of Arthur versus Steve Martin's Arthur. While both Arthurs certainly are selfish, Hoskins' Arthur proves much more sympathetic as a "right bleeding washout" who "dreams of a world where songs are true." Even more important, with a few exceptions, the miniseries avoids the film's tendency to make each musical number a lavish production that wouldn't seem out of place in classic 1930s movie musicals. For the most part, the songs are staged within the confines of the period setting. (An interesting television note, which was slightly distracting at first: All interior scenes are on videotape while exteriors are on film, but you get used to it after awhile.)
The plots of both versions mainly follow the same throughline, though the miniseries has room to add more story strands that didn't make the film and is all the richer for it. For one thing, the evolution of Eileen from naive schoolteacher to hardened prostitute seems less abrupt in the miniseries than Bernadette Peters' Eileen was able to do in the movie. In fact, Eileen in the miniseries becomes the hardest, most calculating character of them all, not only embracing prostitution as a way to make ends meet but even eventually committing a murder of opportunity. The character of Joan also gets much more to chew on in the hands of Gemma Craven than Jessica Harper got to work with in the movie, where she was entirely prudish and only turns on Arthur late and suddenly. The TV Joan has true misgivings about her husband from the beginning, including fantasizing with her friends about killing him. Even more touchingly, even after her betrayal sends him to the executioner for a crime he didn't commit, she still loves the cad anyway.
The miniseries also downplays more of the romanticized moments of the movie. Whereas Arthur and Eileen's first encounter is framed by a heart in the movie's image, the miniseries stays closer to its theme by inserting the new lovers within a piece of sheet music that Arthur keeps peddling. The pimp Tom, so well played in a single scene by Christopher Walken in the movie, only appears in one episode of the miniseries, but that allows him to achieve more importance in the hands of Hywel Bennett and to even interact with Arthur. The main plot turn, namely Arthur's arrest and conviction in the murder of a blind woman, plays much better in the series. The movie shows you the murder immediately, so you know that The Accordion Man is responsible. In the miniseries, you don't know for sure that Arthur didn't do it until a later episode when the guilt-ridden Accordion Man starts confessing to strangers and is haunted by the dead girl. In fact, it appears that Arthur has an alibi at first, making me think that perhaps he will get off without being implicated, but that still comes about once Joan talks too much about his unusual sexual preoccupations.
Hoskins truly is remarkable, especially for those more familiar with him from his later film work. He's much slimmer, but his more ordinary bloke plays much better than Steve Martin's, who never quite sells the idea that he's a complete putz creating his own catastrophes. It's also interesting to note how even nearly 30 years ago, British television was so much more mature than its American counterpart in terms of language and nudity. (If you ever longed to see Hoskins nude...) Pennies From Heaven the miniseries is well worth your time, especially if you've seen Herbert Ross' version. It makes clear what could have been.
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Labels: 70s, Gambon, Musicals, Steve Martin, TV Tribute, Walken
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Thursday, June 28, 2007
You must pay before you get them back again
By Edward Copeland
What happened to Steve Martin? He used to take such chances and even when they didn't work, such as is the case with 1981's Pennies From Heaven, his willingness to try something new was impressive. Now, he seems content to just coast through lame remake after lame remake and sequel after sequel to the same lame remakes. Will the great Martin ever return?
I recently caught up with Herbert Ross' film of Dennis Potter's Pennies From Heaven. While this curiosity has much to admire, it really doesn't quite work, especially when you think of Potter's great British miniseries The Singing Detective starring Michael Gambon, which had similar ideas but executed them so much more successfully. Martin plays failing sheet music salesman Arthur Parker, whose own depression almost rivals the Great Depression the country is suffering through at the time. Arthur is stuck in an unhappy marriage to a frigid spouse (Jessica Harper) and he often fantasizes of huge musical numbers as he tries to shake up his life for the better while he's hampered by his own innate selfishness. I should correct one thing: EVERYONE in the film fantasizes musical numbers, which I think is part of the problem. If it were only Arthur who had these dream-like diversions, it would make more sense, but nearly every character does the same thing, making the conceit seem even more like a gimmick than it is.
While The Singing Detective found the perfect balance between the dark and the light, Pennies From Heaven doesn't seem to pull off the balancing act as well. (There also was a miniseries of Pennies From Heaven prior to the film, but I haven't seen it.) It's a shame that something as imaginative as this movie
doesn't work out better. Still, there is much to like, from Martin's melancholy performance that doesn't downplay the fact that his character is a heel to the production numbers themselves. There's also a great one scene appearance by Christopher Walken, dancing up a storm as a man who meets a fallen schoolteacher (Bernadette Peters) in a bar and hastens her decline even further. Unfortunately, the visual flights of fancy don't come close to making what should be cruelrealism feel ever crueler. Instead, it just makes you impatient to get back to the dance sequences, since they are the touches that work. Fortunately, I see that the miniseries version starring Bob Hoskins is available on DVD, so I look forward to watching this soon and see if that explains better where this film version went wrong.
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Labels: 80s, Gambon, Musicals, Steve Martin, Television, Walken
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Monday, April 23, 2007
Tales Told By Idiots: Bad Bard, Bad Bard, Whatchagonnado?
This post is part of the Shakespeare Blog-a-Thon being coordinated at Coffee, Coffee and More Coffee. Check there for links to other posts.
By Odienator
Shakespeare wrote some of the most stirring and beautiful lines trapped in paper, but you wouldn't know it listening to some of the actors who tried to speak them. For every Gielgud, O'Toole and Olivier, there are double the number of actors who just couldn't get their mouths around that iambic pentameter. Why do they even try? Is it the paycheck? Or the notion that reciting Shakespeare will win you an Oscar, as it did for Sir Larry O and Richard Dreyfuss?
In honor of the Shakespeare-Blog-a-Thon, here is a brief list of actors who should never have attempted to tell us what a piece of work man is, or who did so for nefarious Oscar purposes. Who should have taken Shakespeare's "and the rest is silence" seriously?
Stunt Casting, Thy Name is Kenneth Branagh
I used to think Kenneth Branagh was a great Shakespearean actor, but I am starting to question if he seemed so good because he cast people who were so bad and played scenes with them. I appreciate how he tries to bring Shakespeare to the groundlings of today, and I've liked most of his adaptations, but he sure likes his stunt casting. The phenomenon is not new — John Wayne as Genghis Khan, anyone? — but Shakespeare's dialogue is a perilous mixture of rhythm, elocution and emotion. It is not about the physicality of the actor, it is about their vocal delivery. Director Branagh, in his admirable desire to make the teenagers saddled with reading Shakespeare grow to love it, apparently ignored the train wrecks he witnessed in his viewfinder. For every great performance he recorded (Derek Jacobi, Emma Thompson), Branagh gave us:
Believe it or not, Keanu Reeves can be an effective actor. I'm not one of those people who pick on "Mr. Whoa" because it's fashionable; credit is deserved where it is due. While he is nowhere as bad as some have reported, he is still out of his league. Reeves has a perpetual scowl and a flat delivery; he is a verbal deer caught in the Bard's headlights. Reeves would have benefited greatly if Ted Logan had met Shakespeare in that time-travelling phone booth. I had an easier time buying that Reeves and Denzel Washington were brothers than anything coming out of Reeves' mouth.
Jack Lemmon was so effective in Glengarry Glen Ross because his vocal pauses, stammers and ticks fit well with Mamet's "cuss cuss cuss pause cuss cuss pause pause cuss cuss cuss cuss pause" style of writing. Like the Bard, Mamet's dialogue is musical and needs the right interpreter to make it sing. Can you imagine Bob Newhart doing Marc Antony's speech in Julius Caesar or Christopher Walken doing Hamlet? ("What ... a piece of work is man How noble ... in reason...") Lemmon's tics and Shakespeare's verse fit as well as Slowpoke Rodriguez singing a rap by Krayzie Bone, or Shirley Bassey doing Metallica. Every line is delivered differently as Lemmon tries in vain to bend the Bard toward his Lemmon-isms. It's painful to watch him flail. As much as I love Jack Lemmon, his performance here lives up to his last name.
In the court of Hollywood, I propose the Cruz-Depardieu Law, which states that Gerard Depardieu and Penélope Cruz should NEVER act in English. In Hamlet, Depardieu becomes Depar-don't, an amazing feat since all he has to say is "Yes, my lord" about 12 times. While I'm proposing laws, might I add the "Williams Anti-Caricature Law," which states that, if clueless on how to play a role, Robin Williams must never fall back on stereotypical racial and homosexual voices. Williams' Osric has an odd gay vibe that thankfully distracts from his horrendous line readings. Perhaps he was trying to get an Oscar; it worked for Richard Dreyfuss' Chelsea boy Richard III.
As Felix Unger Would say: Oscar! Oscar! Oscar!
Sometimes actors think they can tackle Shakespeare simply because they have been praised or honored for other work. Others believe their star is so big that they are invincible. Still others believe that Shakespeare is the way to that elusive Oscar. This is why some of these actors tried their luck at the Bard.
Look up "feast or famine" in the dictionary and you'll find a picture of Jessica Lange. Either she's superb (Men Don't Leave, All That Jazz, Frances, Tootsie) or superbad (God, where do I start? Hush, Big Fish, King Kong). The failure of Titus rests on the shoulders of director Julie Taymor whose film completely misses the point of the Bard's play: this is a sick parody. She turns it into a sick ABC Afterschool Special Done by MTV. The play's violence is so gruesome and over-the-top, and the situations so telenovela-dramatic that it is impossible to take with the seriousness and the underlying social commentary Taymor tries to push. If any Bard adaptation screamed out for the geeky, caressing hands of Quentin Tarantino, it's this one. After Lange played Blanche DuBois opposite daughter cusser-outer Alec Baldwin, she started adding Blanche to almost every role she played afterward. As the Queen of the Goths, she looks less Goth and more Glam, like Ziggy Stardust crossed with Divine, and she attacks her lines as if she were the Queen of the Southern Gothics. Vengeful lines come out goofy, seductive lines come out cold, and she is histrionic in all the wrong places. There is no rhythm nor rhyme to her performance, and for Shakespeare, that's the kiss of death.
I once heard this anecdote about A Double Life: during the course of the film, one of the audience members turned to his wife and said "So when does he sing 'Mammy?'" Whether this is true I've no idea, but Colman's performance as an actor driven mad by his performance in Othello couldn't have been any worse had he done Jolson's signature tune. While there is less Shakespeare in this film than in the aforementioned adaptations, what's here plays an integral part in this loony film noir directed by George Cukor. Colman plays the original Method Actor, a man who becomes the characters he plays. Knowing this, someone still suggests he tackle Othello. (Why not Joan of Arc? At least he wouldn't kill anybody.) Colman starts spouting Othello's lines at inopportune moments, then takes his delusion to its logical conclusion by giving Shelley Winters a really effective neck rub. Colman's Othello is so hammy it makes Vincent Price's turn in the superior Theater of Blood look like vintage Gielgud, and I found myself feeling envious for Shelley — at least she didn't have to listen to him anymore. Oscar fell for it, and they gave him Best Actor. Colman strangled the Oscar onstage during the ceremony. (Just kidding.)
Unless you can give me another reason why the Washington Wizards player even attempted Shakespeare in this film, I'm going to have to go with the Dreyfuss Defense: Quoting Shakespeare gets you an Oscar nomination! At least he didn't play a rapping genie like that OTHER basketball player.
in A Midsummer Night's Dream
Both Flockhart and the usually reliable David Straithairn have a hard time convincingly spouting their dialogue. Straithairn is stiff and uncomfortable and Flockhart is an 18th century Ally McBeal clone, as if that series had been reimagined as Black Adder. Her last scene in the film made me want to poke my eyes out and ram Q-tips into my ears.
Peter O'Toole CAN do Shakespeare. My beef (and I realize I'm cheating here) is that he does it solely to get an Oscar nomination. There is no need for him to do it in this film, and considering that we already know how great he is at it, I saw his Venus recitation as a shameful pander. There really is nothing here that is Oscar worthy — O'Toole playing a dirty old boozy pussy hound actor is akin to me playing someone with a Y-chromosome — so this is thrown in to remind us how good O'Toole once was and why Oscar should be shamed into giving him the Oscar he so richly deserved elsewhere. Thankfully, it didn't work.
There are many others (Bruce Willis in Moonlighting's "Atomic Shakespeare" episode, to name one) but as Polonius said, "brevity is the soul of wit," so I shall exeunt here. Parting is such sweet sorrow.
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Labels: Blog-a-thons, Branagh, Cukor, Denzel, Emma Thompson, Gielgud, J. Lange, Lemmon, Mamet, O'Toole, Olivier, Penélope Cruz, R. Colman, Robin, Shakespeare, Shelley Winters, Television, Walken, Willis
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Friday, April 20, 2007
Touch my heart — with your film
By Edward Copeland
I'm not certain what year it was when I first saw Annie Hall, which turns 30 years old today, but I do remember the circumstance. I was still in grade school and a local TV station was showing it late one Friday night. I decided to watch, though I'd never seen a Woody Allen film at this point and all I knew was that this was the movie that stopped my beloved Star Wars from winning the Oscar for best picture. I thought it was funny and I liked it, though it would take years for me to truly appreciate all of its charms and jokes (and about the same time before I finally admitted that yes, the best picture had won for 1977).
"I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That's the two categories. The horrible are like, I don't know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don't know how they get through life. It's amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you're miserable, because that's very lucky, to be miserable."
Alvy Singer
It seems odd to me now how strongly I identified with the Woody Allen persona when I was young. Sure, I was funny and cynical, but I certainly wasn't middle-age, Jewish or a New Yorker and I hadn't endured a series of painful relationships. Hell, I was in grade school, really I had no relationship experience at all (though like Alvy Singer, I too never had a latency period). I think a great deal of my identification with Alvy came with the way I was introduced to him and, by extension, Allen: With him talking directly to the screen (i.e., me) and telling two funny jokes about relationships that seemed to make perfect sense to me even at the time. ("And such small portions" and "I would never belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member" seemed to ring particularly true to even my young self.)
Even the gags I didn't truly get upon first viewing (such as the classic Marshall McLuhan moment) were still funny, whether you knew who McLuhan was or what he stood for. The funny thing is that when I re-watched Annie Hall prior to writing this piece, I realized for the first time that the blowhard standing behind Alvy and Annie in line actually is right about Fellini being overly indulgent in terms of films such as Juliet of the Spirits and Satyricon. I could go on endlessly repeating the famous lines and memorable scenes, but I'll try to refrain myself as much as possible on the chance that some people who read this still might not have seen Annie Hall.
Instead, let me just recount some of the many reasons I love this movie. First and foremost, there is Diane Keaton in her Oscar-winning role and at her most effervescent as the charming, infuriating mess that is Annie Hall. Allen always has worked best when he has had a talented muse to center his films around. Keaton was his first great one, Mia Farrow his second. Now, Allen flounders, since Soon-Yi can't fit that bill and, as much as I like Scarlett Johansson, I don't believe she can fill that void either.
Then there are the hilarious flashbacks to his childhood though they could be anyone's childhood, to some extent). Who didn't think many of their classmates were jerks and idiots and who didn't have run-ins with teachers that you just knew intuitively didn't quite have enough on the ball? That attitude extends to adults as well (I still laugh every time Alvy describes intellectuals as people who can be completely brilliant and still not know anything). Then there is this: "Can I confess something? I tell you this as an artist, I think you'll understand. Sometimes when I'm driving... on the road at night... I see two headlights coming toward me. Fast. I have this sudden impulse to turn the wheel quickly, head-on into the oncoming car. I can anticipate the explosion. The sound of shattering glass. The... flames rising out of the flowing gasoline," which may well be the first in a seemingly endless series of great Christopher Walken movie monologues in his role as Annie's brother Duane.
Annie Hall marks the transition of Woody Allen's filmmaking from his flat-out early comedies (most of which are still priceless) to his ventures into other realms. (Allen once famously said that Annie Hall was hardly his 8½, more like his 2½. Who knew how right he was?) As great as Annie Hall was and still is, it really just laid the foundation for some of his greater works to come such as The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters and Crimes and Misdemeanors. Even if he's been in a cinematic slump for awhile, with a few exceptions, his work from 1977-1989 is astounding.
With Annie Hall, he also experimented with the medium, not in any remarkable ways really, but still in ways that impress, from the scene where subtitles translate characters' inner thoughts, to frequent, contrasting split screens and even an animated sequence. Unlike many films from the 1970s, Annie Hall seems fairly timeless (though you do have to gulp when Alvy is outraged to learn that Annie pays $400 a month for a lousy Manhattan apartment. Those were the days...) As Roger Ebert once wrote about Citizen Kane, that film's structure is such that no matter how often you've seen it, if you come in after it's started, you are never quite certain what scene comes next. Annie Hall works much the same way. While Annie Hall above all else is a comedy (and one of the rare times the Academy saw fit to honor a comedy), Alvy Singer does, if you look hard enough, share some superficial similarities to Charles Foster Kane. Both men are described as islands unto themselves and both just want to be loved, though Woody Allen got to speak frankly about sex in a way Orson Welles couldn't be allowed. ("Don't knock masturbation — it's sex with someone I love"; "As Balzac said, 'There goes another novel.'"; "That's the most fun I've had without laughing." Alvy also has his sexual prowess described as a "Kafkaesque experience," which the woman played by Shelley Duvall insists is a compliment.)
In Alvy's final joke, again spoken directly to the audience, he tells of a man who tells a psychiatrist that his brother thinks he's a chicken. The doctor asks why the man doesn't turn him in, to which the man replies, "I would, but I need the eggs." We need eggs such as Annie Hall and I still hold out hope that Woody Allen can rebound with some more great films before his moviemaking career ends, but even if he doesn't, he's left us more than enough quality eggs with which to cook some tasty cinematic omelettes.
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Labels: 70s, Diane Keaton, Ebert, Fellini, Johansson, Mia Farrow, Movie Tributes, Walken, Welles, Woody
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Friday, February 10, 2006
It's not the size of the role...
By Edward Copeland
With William Hurt's much-deserved (in my opinion) nomination for A History of Violence this year, my thoughts have turned to some of the great single-scene or particularly small roles that were able to grab the viewer's attention in unprecedented ways.
Hurt's brief bit is by no means the Oscar's only instance of short scene-stealers — Beatrice Straight won for basically one monologue in Network and Judi Dench won with very limited screen time in Shakespeare in Love.
Geraldine Page also snagged a nomination for essentially one scene in The Pope of Greenwich Village. Network also produced a great monologue for Ned Beatty that earned him an Oscar nomination. All those nominees were fine by me except for Dench, who was really just getting makeup Oscar love for losing for Mrs. Brown the year before to the wandering accent of Helen Hunt in As Good As It Gets. Then there were also some brief nominations that were a complete puzzlement like Ethel Barrymore's nomination for The Paradine Case, one of Alfred Hitchcock's worst films.
So, as they come to me, some of my favorite brief roles.
Alfred Molina in Boogie Nights. When you get right down to it, the scene is completely extraneous to the movie — the climax of a film about the evolution of the porn industry well into the 1980s should have involved AIDS, not a standard drug deal. Still, Molina is masterful with his drug-addled dialogue set to the tune of Night Ranger's "Sister Christian."
One of my favorite single sequence tour-de-forces is Bill Murray in Little Shop of Horrors. His masochist wouldn't come off as great without Steve Martin's sadistic dentist to play off, but he's great.
Christopher Walken is a master of the monologue, but his one scene telling a child-size version of Bruce Willis about the journey of a gold watch in Pulp Fiction is priceless.
Another role that is essentially a single monologue, Jack Lemmon in Short Cuts. A brief but great role that few besides me remember is Swoosie Kurtz in Against All Odds where she is delightfully flaky as the secretary of a crooked lawyer who decides to help Jeff Bridges.
The year Frances McDormand won lead actress (for what in my opinion was a supporting role, but that's an argument for another time) for Fargo, she also gave a great single scene performance in Lone Star. Throughout the film, Chris Cooper's character's unstable ex-wife is referred to and when the situation requires Cooper to visit her late in the film, McDormand nails the character in a way that brings earlier references to vivid life.
Michael Mann's Collateral offered two great one scene performances: Barry Shabaka Henley as a jazz musician targeted for elimination and Javier Bardem as a crime lord. In another Tom Cruise vehicle, Lois Smith had a memorable one-scene turn in a greenhouse in Minority Report.
For a while last year, there was buzz that Lynn Redgrave might get nominated for her great single-scene at the climax of Kinsey as a woman whose life was profoundly affected by the sex researcher, but when that film folded, only Laura Linney was left standing.
It's more than one scene, but Tony Shalhoub's cab driver of indeterminate origin in Quick Change is a riot. Another short one that cracked me up was Maximilian Schell in The Freshman. "Carmine said one boy, here are two."
The original version of Love Affair and its remake by Warren Beatty produced two great short turns by Maria Ouspenskaya and Katharine Hepburn, respectively. Ouspenskaya even managed an Oscar nomination for her performance. Another one scene wonder that earned an Oscar nomination was Sylvia Miles in Midnight Cowboy, though it's been a long time since I've seen that one.
Most of the ones that are springing to my mind right now are more recent ones, but I'm sure brief turns in older films will come to my mind once the conversation gets going. The ones that immediately occur to me are Leslie Howard, Anton Walbrook and Raymond Massey's brief bits in the Powell/Pressburger masterpiece 49th Parallel aka The Invaders.
I'll leave you with this one: while certainly not a nomination-worthy performance, Garry Marshall's turn as the manager of the Desert Inn in Lost in America always cracks me up. "We're through talking now."
He may be through, but I hope you aren't.
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With William Hurt's much-deserved (in my opinion) nomination for A History of Violence this year, my thoughts have turned to some of the great single-scene or particularly small roles that were able to grab the viewer's attention in unprecedented ways.
Hurt's brief bit is by no means the Oscar's only instance of short scene-stealers — Beatrice Straight won for basically one monologue in Network and Judi Dench won with very limited screen time in Shakespeare in Love.
Geraldine Page also snagged a nomination for essentially one scene in The Pope of Greenwich Village. Network also produced a great monologue for Ned Beatty that earned him an Oscar nomination. All those nominees were fine by me except for Dench, who was really just getting makeup Oscar love for losing for Mrs. Brown the year before to the wandering accent of Helen Hunt in As Good As It Gets. Then there were also some brief nominations that were a complete puzzlement like Ethel Barrymore's nomination for The Paradine Case, one of Alfred Hitchcock's worst films.
So, as they come to me, some of my favorite brief roles.
Alfred Molina in Boogie Nights. When you get right down to it, the scene is completely extraneous to the movie — the climax of a film about the evolution of the porn industry well into the 1980s should have involved AIDS, not a standard drug deal. Still, Molina is masterful with his drug-addled dialogue set to the tune of Night Ranger's "Sister Christian."
One of my favorite single sequence tour-de-forces is Bill Murray in Little Shop of Horrors. His masochist wouldn't come off as great without Steve Martin's sadistic dentist to play off, but he's great.
Christopher Walken is a master of the monologue, but his one scene telling a child-size version of Bruce Willis about the journey of a gold watch in Pulp Fiction is priceless.
Another role that is essentially a single monologue, Jack Lemmon in Short Cuts. A brief but great role that few besides me remember is Swoosie Kurtz in Against All Odds where she is delightfully flaky as the secretary of a crooked lawyer who decides to help Jeff Bridges.
The year Frances McDormand won lead actress (for what in my opinion was a supporting role, but that's an argument for another time) for Fargo, she also gave a great single scene performance in Lone Star. Throughout the film, Chris Cooper's character's unstable ex-wife is referred to and when the situation requires Cooper to visit her late in the film, McDormand nails the character in a way that brings earlier references to vivid life.
Michael Mann's Collateral offered two great one scene performances: Barry Shabaka Henley as a jazz musician targeted for elimination and Javier Bardem as a crime lord. In another Tom Cruise vehicle, Lois Smith had a memorable one-scene turn in a greenhouse in Minority Report.
For a while last year, there was buzz that Lynn Redgrave might get nominated for her great single-scene at the climax of Kinsey as a woman whose life was profoundly affected by the sex researcher, but when that film folded, only Laura Linney was left standing.
It's more than one scene, but Tony Shalhoub's cab driver of indeterminate origin in Quick Change is a riot. Another short one that cracked me up was Maximilian Schell in The Freshman. "Carmine said one boy, here are two."
The original version of Love Affair and its remake by Warren Beatty produced two great short turns by Maria Ouspenskaya and Katharine Hepburn, respectively. Ouspenskaya even managed an Oscar nomination for her performance. Another one scene wonder that earned an Oscar nomination was Sylvia Miles in Midnight Cowboy, though it's been a long time since I've seen that one.
Most of the ones that are springing to my mind right now are more recent ones, but I'm sure brief turns in older films will come to my mind once the conversation gets going. The ones that immediately occur to me are Leslie Howard, Anton Walbrook and Raymond Massey's brief bits in the Powell/Pressburger masterpiece 49th Parallel aka The Invaders.
I'll leave you with this one: while certainly not a nomination-worthy performance, Garry Marshall's turn as the manager of the Desert Inn in Lost in America always cracks me up. "We're through talking now."
He may be through, but I hope you aren't.
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Labels: Archers, Bardem, Chris Cooper, Cruise, Dench, Geraldine Page, Hitchcock, Jeff Bridges, K. Hepburn, Laura Linney, Lemmon, McDormand, Michael Mann, Murray, N. Beatty, Steve Martin, W. Beatty, Walken, William Hurt, Willis
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