Thursday, February 16, 2012
The waiting isn't the hardest part
By Edward Copeland
Glenn Close's fascination with the story of Albert Nobbs began in 1982, the same year she made her film debut in The World According to Garp where she vividly brought John Irving's character of Jenny Fields to cinematic life and was robbed of an Oscar for her efforts by Jessica Lange's win for Tootsie, when Lange wasn't even the best supporting actress in Tootsie. Before I watched the film of Albert Nobbs, I hadn't heard many complimentary things about the movie but it surprised me. Much of Albert Nobbs, especially in the earlygoing, plays more as a comedy and a solid ensemble brings its canvas of characters to entertaining life, most notably Oscar nominee Janet McTeer. To be sure, Albert Nobbs contains flaws and, ironically, its biggest weakness lies in the performance of the actress whose perseverance got the film made in the first place.
For those unfamiliar with the story of Albert Nobbs, it began life as a short story by Irish novelist George Moore called "The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs" in 1918 about a woman who lives disguised as a man for 30 years in 19th century Ireland in order to find work. Nobbs finds employment as a waiter at an upscale Dublin hotel and hopes to save enough money to open his/her own shop. A chance meeting with a painter leads Albert to discover another woman who lives as a man and has taken a wife as well, giving Albert the idea that perhaps she should take a bride when she makes her escape as well, setting her sights on a young maid who is having a torrid affair with another worker with plans to escape to America.
Simone Benmussa adapted the short story into a play and directed Close in the starring role in the summer of 1982 in a production presented by the Manhattan Theatre Club at Stage I of New York's City Center. Close won an Obie Award for her performance. In the nearly 30 years that followed, Close made it her mission to play the part on film. Close met one of her co-producers, Bonnie Curtis, on the film The Chumscrubber where Close handed Curtis a draft of a screenplay for Albert Nobbs and told her, "I must play this part on the big screen before I die." Now that she finally has achieved that dream, she not only plays Nobbs, Close also co-produced and co-wrote the film as well as the lyrics for an original song sung by Sinead O'Connor over the film's credits.
Albert Nobbs almost came to the screen first under the guidance of Hungary's great director Istvan Szabo (Mephisto) who directed Close in the 1991 film Meeting Venus. She gave Szabo a copy of Moore's short story and soon he handed her the first treatment for an Albert Nobbs movie so he still receives screen credit (though not on the Inaccurate Movie Database) for the treatment along with Moore for his story and Close, John Banville and Gabriella Prekop for screenplay.
In the majority of her duties on Albert Nobbs, Close seems to have performed well. She earned an Oscar nomination for best actress, but a lot of mediocre performances have been nominated (and won) before. Close's take on Albert Nobbs comes off as so stilted and mannered when compared to the performances of everyone else in the cast that she acts as if she's in a different movie. It's only accentuated because the actors and actresses that surround her carry themselves with such ease and that goes for seasoned vets such as Pauline Collins as the hotel's owner, Brenda Fricker as on, Brendan Gleeson, Phyllida Law and newer discoveries such as Mia Wasikowska and Aaron Johnson (the young John Lennon in 2010's Nowhere Boy).
Now, it isn't merely because Close portrays a woman pretending to be a man in the 19th century and Albert Nobbs isn't a comedy, though it does contain a fair amount of humor in it, because Janet McTeer also plays a woman pretending to be a man and she's brilliant. I was fortunate enough to see McTeer live on Broadway as Nora in the 1997 revival of A Doll's House and she was spectacular (and deservedly won the Tony). She wowed again when she earned a lead actress Oscar nomination for her role in the 1999 film Tumbleweeds directed by Gavin O'Connor when he made interesting movies before he turned to junk such as Warrior.
In the lead paragraph, I brought up Tootsie (in a different context admittedly) but Dustin Hoffman's work as Dorothy Michaels in that film is so great because after awhile, you not only forget that it's Hoffman, you believe it's a woman. I wouldn't go that far with McTeer, but I find it more believable that her character of Hubert Page could pass for a man in 19th century Dublin than I could Close's Albert Nobbs. Hell, I'm not sure Nobbs would pass for a human.
You would think when the main character turns out to be a film's major deficit, the film itself would be doomed, but miraculously I enjoyed Albert Nobbs in spite of Albert Nobbs. Somehow, the rest of the cast, the script and the surefooted direction by Rodrigo Garcia (Mother and Child) more than compensate for Close's performance. (It's somewhat ironic because Close gave the only great performance in Bille August's awful 1993 all-star adaptation of Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits that featured the rare bad Meryl Streep performance and a cast that also included Jeremy Irons, Winona Ryder and Vanessa Redgrave.)
I do sense that significant sections of the film were edited out based on the presence of actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers. He plays a viscount who checks into the hotel with his wife. We see one brief scene that shows a naked man waking up in his bed in the morning and then we don't see him again until he and his wife check out. Something must have been left on the cutting room floor. It didn't add anything, so they might as well have cut out all those scenes.
Much of the behind-the-scenes work succeeds at a high level including cinematography by Michael McDonough (Winter's Bone), production design by Patrizia von Brandenstein (Oscar winner for Amadeus) and costumes by Pierre-Yves Gayraud.
Albert Nobbs always will mystify me. I can think of major problems with the film, but I can't dispute the fact that I enjoyed it anyway. In a way, it's sort of a corollary to my idea that the purest test as to whether a movie works for you or not is if your mind wanders and you get bored. Albert Nobbs held my interest and I didn't have an unpleasant time watching it, even if a lot of Glenn Close's acting choices made me cringe. It's sad. I'm surprised that no one has mentioned that when Close loses come Oscar night, that will make her 0 for 6, tying her with Deborah Kerr and Thelma Ritter among actresses with the most nominations without winning (though Kerr's were all in lead and Ritter's were all in supporting while Close splits hers evenly three in each category).
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Labels: 10s, Awards, Deborah Kerr, Dustin Hoffman, Fiction, Glenn Close, Irving, J. Lange, Jeremy Irons, Oscars, Streep, Theater, Thelma Ritter, Vanessa Redgrave, Winona
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Saturday, November 26, 2011
"It's a miracle these people ever got out of the 20th century"
By Edward Copeland
Conventional wisdom about the Star Trek films considers Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan the movie franchise's best offering. While Wrath of Khan certainly remains a very good film (and what wouldn't have looked great following that bore called Star Trek: The Motion Picture?), I've long held that finest film featuring the original crew happens to be Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, which was released 25 years ago today. It may be my general bias toward genre series: I gravitate toward the installments packed with humor and Star Trek IV is damn funny. If you disagree, well — double dumb ass on you!
By no means could you ever call me a Trekkie (or Trekker, if you prefer). When I was in my earliest years of grade school, I would watch reruns of the original Star Trek, but I doubt I've seen every episode. I do remember standing in a line with my parents at a Toys 'R' Us when I was in first grade, waiting to briefly shake hands with "Captain Kirk" William Shatner. I think I watched two complete episodes of the Next Generation series and none of its spinoffs. (Though, to be truthful, of all the Star Trek movies I've seen — and I skipped Insurrection and Nemesis — I think the best of the films actually is Star Trek: First Contact with the Next Generation cast.) On the commentary track for the Star Trek IV DVD, Leonard Nimoy, who directed the film and helped come up with its story in addition to playing Spock, says, "The idea going in was to do an adventure film that was funny. We had just finished a couple of films where a lot of
people died…there was a lot of pain and suffering. We decided it was time to lighten up…There was to be no heavy in this movie…" For some reason, when sci-fi, horror or fantasy series go the humor route, those end up being my favorite episodes or seasons. That's why season six was my favorite of The X-Files and I loved seasons three and six of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer the most. That's also why Star Trek IV, which starts firing one-liners and gags almost from the first frame, still cracks me up today. Actually, The Voyage Home doesn't immediately start out on a farcical level and while it doesn't present a villain per se, the story still requires a conflict to resolve. First, and unintentionally, the movie ended up being the final chapter in a trilogy they never set out to make. Nimoy talks on the commentary, which he shares with Shatner, that it had never been planned that way, but had developed naturally. In fact, sets that were destroyed after Star Trek III had to be rebuilt but, as Nimoy says, "We were used to being canceled." Wrath of Khan developed the Genesis Project story that leads to Spock's resurrection in Part III as well as the destruction of the Enterprise, whose crew takes over a Klingon bird of prey vessel, killing a Klingon crew that beams over to the Enterprise as it self-destructs. Part IV picks up with a new plot — a mysterious probe that sends out signals no one can translate and saps all the power from any ship in its path. Meanwhile, a Klingon ambassador (John Schuck) goes before the Federation Council and, standing before an enlarged photo of Kirk, demands his head for "war crimes" related to those events in Star Trek III. Spock's father, Ambassador Sarek (Mark Lester), arrives to defend Kirk's actions. "Vulcans are well known as the intellectual puppets of the Federation," the Klingon ambassador insists. Sarek reminds the Klingon that one of his vessels destroyed a Federation starship and his men killed Kirk's son. "Do you deny this?" Sarek asks. "We deny nothing. We have the right to preserve our race," the Klingon replies. Later, the Klingon ambassador threatens the body, telling them, "Remember this well — there shall be no peace as long as Kirk lives."
Meanwhile, the crew of the Enterprise has been exiled on the planet Vulcan for three months, trying to repair the Klingon ship so they can return to Earth to face court-martial charges and to get Spock re-energized back to his old self. It's really once we get to Vulcan and meet up with the regulars, that the comedy takes over. Even the Oscar-nominated score by Leonard Rosenman, with its bouncy, vibrant rhythm, seems to have been composed for a screwball farce. As most episodes of the series began, we get Kirk recording a captain's log, catching us up, including the fact that McCoy (the late, great De Forest Kelley, who always managed to get laughs whether they were embarking on a comic story or not) had given the Klingon ship an "appropriate name" and we see spray-painted on its side the words "H.M.S. Bounty."
Kirk, who has been promoted to an admiral by now in the movie series, assembles his crew, which consists only of the regulars since they stole the Enterprise in the last film (one of the Federation's main charges against them for which they are facing court-martial) to find Spock's physical essence and restore his mind which he conveniently implanted in McCoy's brain before he sacrificed his life (for a little while at least) in Wrath of Khan. The only extra character along for the ride was the Star Trek movies' creation — the Vulcan Lt. Saavik (played by Robin Curtis here and in Part III but created by Kirstie Alley in Wrath of Khan). Kirk quizzes Scotty (the late James Doohan) on how much long it will be until the Klingon ship can fly again. When he tells Kirk that it shouldn't take more than another day or so, the admiral wants to know why it is taking so long. Scotty replies, "Damage control is easy — reading Klingon, that's hard." As everyone gets to work, McCoy takes Kirk aside and starts bitching that they have to return to Earth in the Klingon ship — he thinks the Federation should have sent a ship for them. "It's bad enough to be court-martialed and spend the rest of our lives mining borite, but to have to go home in this Klingon flea trap," Bones complains. "We could learn a thing or two from this flea trap. It's got a cloaking device that cost us a lot," Jim argues. "Just wish we could cloak the stench," McCoy replies.Spock isn't pitching in with his crewmates yet, as he still is getting up to speed, wearing Vulcan robes and spending time with a computer that's testing his brain. He has no difficulty answering questions relating to history or scientific knowledge. (As an example,
the computer asks, "What was Kiri-Kin-Tha's first law of metaphysics?" to which Spock answers, "Nothing unreal exists.") Where Spock runs into trouble is when his human side gets tested and the computer asks, "How do you feel?" and Spock can't conceive of a possible response. As Spock puzzles over the question, he's surprised by his human mother Amanda (the late veteran actress Jane Wyatt), who tries to explain that the half of him comes from her will return as well. Since only the all-logical Vulcan side has developed at this point, both the question and his mother's words remain incomprehensible. (I know the recent Star Trek movie starts with the fabled original
characters at younger ages, but it still boggles my mind to see poor Winona Ryder, who just turned 40 a month or so ago, cast as Amanda and then knocked off in a muddled resolution that destroys the planet Vulcan.) Echoing the question that was asked repeatedly both ways in Wrath of Khan, his mother inquires, "Spock, does the good of the many outweigh the good of the one?" He tells her that he "would accept that as an axiom." His mother tries to break through by explaining, "Then you stand here alive because of a mistake made by your flawed, feeling, human friends. They have sacrificed their futures because they believed that the good of the one — you — was more important to them." Spock replies, "Humans make illogical decisions." "They do indeed," Amanda says. (I've always wondered, not being a serious Star Trek aficionado how an all-logic, emotionless Vulcan such as Sarek and a human such as Amanda would have hooked up in the first place.) That scene really is about as serious as Star Trek IV gets. Thankfully, Spock doesn't instantly find his human side because the fact that he isn't all there provides a great many of the laughs in the film. In the DVD commentary, Nimoy shares an interesting fact about the making of the film and Wyatt's longevity in Hollywood. One of her earliest films was Frank Capra's 1937 movie Lost Horizon. Working on the set as a second assistant director the day Wyatt's scenes were shot was his grandson, Frank Capra III.
The Klingon ship finally has been restored to a condition that allows the crew to leave Vulcan and fly back to Earth for their trial. Spock rejoins them but since there aren't any extra uniforms lying around, he remains cloaked in Vulcan robes. One person who doesn't come along is Lt. Saavik, who stays behind on Vulcan. On the commentary, Nimoy says there had been plans that, since Saavik had helped Spock through the rapid aging process of his regeneration, she would turn up pregnant with Spock's child from his second adolescence, but that plot never was pursued. Even if you're not an obsessive fan of Star Trek, it's always nice to see the entire cast when they're assembled on the
bridge, even if it's a Klingon bridge as in this case, which might as well be the stage of a comedy club. "Cloaking device available on all flight modes," Chekov (Walter Koenig) reports to Kirk. "I'm impressed. That's a lot of work for a short journey," Kirk compliments him. "We are in an enemy wessel. I did not wish to be shot down on our way to our own funeral," Chekov replies. It would be a funny line, even if it didn't have the added laugh that comes from Chekov's supposed Russian accent that makes vessel come out as "wessel," a running gag throughout the film. McCoy tries to engage Spock in conversation and immediately notices that the Spock they knew literally is not all there. He tries to warn Kirk. "I don't know if you've got the whole picture, but he's not exactly working on all thrusters," Bones tells him, but Kirk isn't concerned since the scientific side of Spock seems to be functional. Of course, they have no idea about the probe that has claimed more ships and now threatens Earth. Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) gets the first clue about the problem as she hears overlapping distress calls and the probe's strange signals. The crew gets a message from the Federation Council president (Robert Ellenstein) urging all ships to avoid Earth and informing those listening that the mystery probe has ionized almost all of Earth's atmosphere and vaporized two-thirds of its oceans. Spock shows that his mind definitely fires on all thrusters, having Uhura isolate the signal from the probe. From his memory, he believes it is making the sound of the humpback whale, a species native to Earth that went extinct in the 21st century. Kirk hits upon an idea: They will take the ship back in time when the sea mammals did exist, bring two back to the 23rd century so they can speak with the probe and begin to repopulate. Admittedly, the mission would be a long shot, but it might be the only hope Earth has for survival. McCoy thinks Kirk has gone bonkers.McCOY: You're going to try time traveling in this rust bucket?
KIRK: Well, we've done it before.
McCOY: Sure, you slingshot around the sun, pick up enough speed — you're in time warp. If you don't, you're fried.
KIRK:I prefer it to nothing.
McCOY: I prefer a dose of common sense. You're proposing that we go backwards in time, find humpback whales, then bring them forward in time, drop 'em off and hope to hell they tell this probe what to do with itself.
KIRK: That's the general idea.
McCOY: Well, that's crazy!
KIRK: You've got a better idea? Now's the time.
Kirk sends a garbled signal to the Federation about their plan and they set a course for the late 20th century — and that's when the fun really begins. Parts of the DVD back-and-forth between Shatner and Nimoy comes off nearly as funny as the scenes set in "the past,"
particularly the exchange where Shatner tells how he hated the idea for Star Trek IV when Nimoy and producer Harve Bennett, who shared the story credit with Nimoy and was one of the film's four credited screenwriters, brought it to him. "I never abided time travel — it was too easy to solve things by time travel. You could get out of the deus ex machina by saying, 'Oh well, we corrected that,'" Shatner says on the DVD. "The alarm clock rings and the hero wakes up and it's all been a bad dream. So I said to Leonard and to Harve that I didn't think time travel was a good idea and was quite adamant in my opinion. Luckily, they paid no attention to me whatsoever." That prompts Nimoy to interject, "We actually said that to each other, 'Let's not pay him any attention whatsoever.'" Shatner reminds Nimoy, "And add the word 'again.' Let's not pay him any attention whatsoever again." Nimoy then explains a general principle, "If Bill says, 'Don't do it,' you just do it." Given how Star Trek V: The Final Frontier turned out when they allowed Shatner to direct, you can't help feeling that Nimoy wasn't necessarily joking. With two people credited with the story on Star Trek IV and four with the screenplay, the movie provides a rare example of a film with multiple names credited with its script that doesn't turn out to be a disaster. After the disorientation that comes with a time warp, Kirk awaits confirmation as to whether or not they arrived in the past. "Judging by the pollution content of the atmosphere, I believe we have arrived at the late 20th century," Spock reports. Almost immediately, Uhura picks up whale songs. Once they enter the 20th century atmosphere, Spock suggests tracking devices might detect them so, thanks to Klingon technology, they turn on the cloaking device. When they hone in on where the whale songs are strongest, it leads them to San
Francisco, which puzzles them at first wondering why whales would be in a city, speculating that the whales could be in captivity. Scotty calls to the bridge with a bigger problem — those damn dilithium crystals! They're breaking up and Scotty doesn't think they can keep the ship cloaked for more than a day and certainly won't have enough power left to get them out of orbit, let alone back to the 23rd century. Kirk asks if there is any way to recrystallize dilithium crystals, but Scotty doesn't know any, but Spock has a suggestion available in the 20th century. "If memory serves, there was a dubious flirtation with nuclear fission reactors resulting in toxic side effects. By the beginning of the fusion era, these reactors had been replaced, but at this time, we should be able to find some," Spock suggests, theorizing they could rig a device to collect the high energy protons safely and inject them into the dilithium chamber, hopefully causing recrystallization. Kirk asks
where they would find them and Spock recalls nuclear-powered Naval vessels. As they descend into San Francisco, Sulu (George Takei) mentions that he was born there. That's the last remnant of a story they had to scratch because they ran out of time shooting in San Francisco. Nimoy says on the DVD that originally Sulu was to aid a young Japanese boy in trouble only to discover that the kid was his own great great grandfather. That might explain why of all the crew members, Sulu seems to have the least San Francisco story of the 23rd century visitors. Kirk gives his crew what amounts to a coach's halftime speech, warning them about what they'll encounter in 1986. "Many of their customs will doubtless take us by surprise," Kirk tells the crew. "This is an extremely primitive and paranoid culture." When Star Trek was on TV, Gene Roddenberry incorporated topical issues but framed them within the sci-fi format. The movies had avoided this approach so far, but not only was The Voyage Home funny, it was satirical, taking pot shots at the year it came out without being specific, and adding an environmental message as well. Kirk also realizes that no one in 1986 would have encountered an extra-terrestrial before so Spock tears off part of his robe, fashions it into a headband and wraps it around his skull to mask those distinctive ears. "We talked endlessly about should these people change clothes when they get out on the streets of San Francisco," Nimoy says on the commentary. "After a couple of location scouting trips, I saw people wearing such outlandish things I said, 'Forget it — they'll go as they are.'" When they venture out of the ship for the first time, Kirk says, "Everybody remember where we parked." They are divided into three teams: Uhura and Chekov will try to find the uranium, Sulu, McCoy and Scotty will construct a whale tank and Kirk and Spock will find those humpbacks.
When daytime comes and they hit the streets, The Voyage Home practically becomes bedroom farce without the bedroom, even with horndog Kirk leading the way. The crew assembles in busy downtown San Francisco to discuss their plans of action. Kirk notes a newspaper machine where the headline reads Nuclear Arms Talks Stalled, which prompts Kirk to speak the title of this post, "It's a miracle these people ever got out of the 20th century." He also sees a man inserting coins to get the paper out and realizes that they still use money. He tells the rest to wait when he spots an antique store with a sign that says it buys and sells. It starts the movie's premier running gag on profanity as Kirk darts in front of a cab (Spock tagging along), nearly getting run over and the driver yells, "Watch where you're going, you dumb ass!" A flustered Kirk responds with "And double dumb ass on you!" Kirk gets to the antique shop and sells a pair of 18th century spectacles for $200. Spock asks Kirk if those weren't a present from Dr. McCoy. "And they will be again, Spock. That's the beauty of it," Kirk tells him. They return to their shipmates, divide the money and go on their separate adventures. While Spock tries to use his logical
mind and massive internal warehouse of information to transfer the coordinates for those whale signs to a street map they find at a bus stop, Kirk stumps the Vulcan by finding the answer when the bus shows up bearing an ad for humpback whales named George and Gracie on display at the Cetacean Institute in Sausalito (once they conquer the problem of exact change). A sign helps McCoy and Scotty as well as they see one for yellow pages to find a manufacturer to help construct the 20th century equivalent of transparent aluminum, which won't exist for 150 years. The biggest comedy comes from Uhura and Chekov, who also use a phone book to find the location of a Naval station, but have less luck getting people to explain to them where it is. The funniest encounter comes when they ask a stoic motorcycle cop how to get to the Naval base in Alameda. "Where they keep the nuclear wessels," Chekov adds, forgetting he's in a time where Russians looking for nuclear anything don't go over well. The sequence goes on as everyone they ask tell them the same information they asked. 
Perhaps the funniest extended sequence of the film comes once Kirk and Spock get that exact change for the bus and take it out to Sausalito to meet George and Gracie. First, they try to talk on the bus but an obnoxious teen (Kirk Thatcher) blasting his punk rock makes it impossible. Kirk tries being polite, asking him to please turn it down, but the kid ignores him. Kirk tries a second time and the punk turns it up, Finally, Kirk yells, "Excuse me! Would you mind stopping that damn noise?" The punk flips Kirk off. Without much fanfare, Spock leans across and gives him the Vulcan nerve-pinch, rendering him unconscious to the applause of the entire bus. Now that they can talk, Spock seeks permission to ask Admiral Kirk a question, which annoys him. "Spock, don't call me Admiral. You used to call me
Jim. Don't you remember?" The blank look convinces Kirk this isn't worth going into so he let's Spock proceed with his question. "Your use of language has altered since our arrival. It is currently laced with, shall we say, more colorful metaphors, 'double dumb ass on you' and so forth," Spock says. "Oh, you mean the profanity…Well that's simply the way they talk here. Nobody pays any attention to you unless you swear every other word. You'll find it in all the literature of the period," Kirk explains. Spock seeks examples. "Oh, the collected works of Jacqueline Susann, the novels of Harold Robbins," Kirk cites. Then Spock brings it home for the final punchline: "Ah, the giants." In a way, Star Trek IV reminds me of Airplane!, not that it tosses something that might earn a laugh against the wall every second just to see if it sticks, but that you never know where it will veer off for a joke next. It could have simply limited itself to the fish (or, more accurately, whale)-out-of-water style of comedy, but it's ready to go everywhere. It has jokes at the expense of the 20th century and with the Star Trek characters as the targets. The film may not have a villain, but Earth's future is at stake, yet the light tone in which most everything is played makes the whole probe-may-wipe-out-the-human-race backstory seem as if it's merely a MacGuffin. They never bother to explain where the probe comes from or what it needed to hear from the whales. In its simpler, less mysterious, more accessible way, it almost can be viewed like the monolith in 2001, though we get that the monolith shows up at significant moments in man's history. Why the probe shows up — who knows? If it's merely to save the whales, it sure took its sweet time (two centuries) to do it.As tempting as it is to detail the entire film or give away every gag or joke (what Spock would call "a story with a humorous climax"), it would eat up too much space and perhaps some haven't seen it. Not that it will come as a shock that they succeed in their mission — after all, this is a series that subtitled Star Trek III: The Search for Spock as if they weren't going to find him. Nimoy succeeds at every role
he attempts in this film. His direction proves sharp and clever as does his new take on Spock, especially when Spock tries to start integrating those "colorful metaphors" into his language and doesn't quite have a handle on them yet. The one major character introduced in the film is Dr. Gillian Taylor (Catherine Hicks), the whale expert at the aquarium who doesn't understand what these strange men are up to and eventually helps them in their plan to take George and Gracie to the future. She first meets up with Kirk and Spock when they come see her show and she delivers all the sad facts about the species' fight for survival against whalers and how they are being hunted to extinction. "To hunt a species to extinction is illogical," Spock says. "Who ever said the human race is logical?" Gillian responds. Later, Spock dives into their tank to talk to George and Gracie personally. When he gets back out, she wants to know what he's doing with "her whales." Spock replies, "They like you very much, but they are not the hell 'your' whales." Kirk, excited being near a female, tries to assure her that Spock is no one to fear, but he can't get his words quite right either. "He's harmless. Part of the free speech movement at Berkeley in the '60s. I think he did a little too much LDS." When Kirk and Gillian have dinner, she jokingly says to him, "Don't tell me, you're from outer space." Kirk answers, "No, I'm from Iowa. I only work in outer space." 
Of the other crew members, Scotty, Chekov and especially McCoy all get their moments. McCoy and Scotty go to a plastics manufacturer and Scotty describes to the boss there what he would think of a substance with the attributes of his transparent aluminum. The man thinks it would be impossible, but Scotty asks for a computer so he could show him. "Computer! Computer?" Scotty talks at it. Trying to be helpful, McCoy hands him the mouse and Scotty speaks into it, "Hello, computer." The man suggests that Scotty just use the keyboard. "Keyboard? How quaint," he responds, but for not using one, he types out a three-dimensional diagram for the formula pretty damn fast, astounding the man. Bones takes Scotty aside while the man looks at his work. "You realize that by giving him the formula you're altering the future," McCoy warns. "Why? How do we know he didn't invent the thing?" Scotty says. Uhura and Chekov find the nuclear "wessel" (appropriately, the Enterprise) and beam aboard and grab their protons, but Scotty's losing power fast, so he only can beam back one at a time. They decide to let Uhura go back with the protons. Unfortunately, before they can get power restored and get a read on Chekov, he's captured, leading to some hysterical interrogation scenes by officials wanting to know how a Russian breached security and a man from the 23rd century completely puzzled by their inquiries. When Chekov finally gets a clue that he might be in real trouble, he tries to use his phaser, but the radiation affects it and he makese a run for it, taking a huge fall that leaves him seriously injured. When word gets back to the crew, McCoy yells, "Don't leave him in the hands of 20th century medicine!" That leads to a wild set piece where they disguise themselves as doctors to get into the hospital and save him.
Having endured 21st century medicine myself, McCoy's prejudices hit home to me even more now. The entire sequence showcases Kelley's finesse at playing the grumpy doc. As he walks down the hall and notices an elderly woman (Eve Smith) groaning on a gurney, he stops to ask what's wrong. "Kidney. Dialysis," she answers weakly. "Dialysis? What is this, the Dark Ages?" he asks and starts to move along,
but he turns back and gives her a big pill. "Here. You swallow that, and if you have any more problems, just call me!" he tells her, giving her a pat on the cheek. As subterfuge, he and Kirk put Gillian on a gurney to try to get to Chekov. On the way, he overhears doctors joking about treatments such as chemotherapy, horrifying McCoy. When they get to where Chekov is, he's being guarded. Kirk tries to force their way in and Gillian moans, but the guard insists he has orders. Finally, Bones tells him, "My God, man. Do you want an acute case on your hands? This woman has immediate postprandial, upper-abdominal distention. Now, out of the way! Get out of the way!" and the guard lets them pass. Kirk asks what he said she had. "Cramps." Inside, he has to fight with the doctor who wants to relieve the cranial pressure on Chekov's brain by drilling holes. "My God, man. Drilling holes in his head isn't the answer," McCoy insists. Kirk takes the medical team aside, pretending he's on their side and needs to talk with them, but instead uses his phaser to lock them in an adjoining room until McCoy can work his magic. As they wheel Chekov out, the guard asks how the patient is doing. "He's gonna make it," Kirk tells him. "He? You came in with a she," the guard says, sounding the alarm. "One little mistake," Kirk quips as the chase begins. As they flee, they pass the elderly woman who is telling everyone, "The doctor gave me a pill, and I grew a new kidney!"When I decided at the beginning of the year what anniversary tributes I wanted to write, I hesitated about Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. I had not seen the film almost since its original release and this was the fourth film in a series, after all, based on a TV show. Could it possibly hold up? I was prepared to chunk this piece if once I re-watched it, my memories turned out to be more glowing than the reality. (It also glows literally thanks to Donald Peterman's luscious cinematography which managed to snag an Oscar nomination.) Thankfully, that wasn't the case and it even included an entertaining and informative commentary track as well. If anything, I appreciate Star Trek IV more now than I did then. I remembered how funny it was, but I'd forgotten how many levels it played on. There are two parts I haven't squeezed in that I must. The classic Scotty line when he successfully beams George and Gracie onto the Klingon ship, "Admiral, there be whales here!" Also, the resolution of the court-martial where pretty much all is forgiven except that no one likes calling him Admiral Kirk, so they demote him to Captain Kirk again and then they get that moment when the crew sees their new starship for the first time. So, I end with two photos: George and Gracie free in the 23rd century and the sight of the crew's new starship.
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Labels: 80s, Capra, Movie Tributes, Nimoy, Oscars, Sequels, Shatner, Television, Winona
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Monday, March 28, 2011
The Best High School Movie You've Never Heard Of
By John Cochrane
When Corey Haim died suddenly of pneumonia and cardiovascular complications on March 10 last year at the age of 38, a lot of people probably thought of him as a reality TV star — the latest Hollywood casualty of childhood fame, a career derailed by a lifetime of drug addiction and unreliable behavior. Other people possibly thought of his most famous film role as Sam, an adolescent vampire-killer in the movie The Lost Boys (1987). I immediately thought his unforgettable starring performance in the film Lucas (1986), a buried gem that I saw when it was released 25 years ago today. It remains one of the best movies I’ve ever seen about being a teenager and trying to navigate the often-painful processes of attending high school and falling into unrequited love.
The story begins with Corey Haim as Lucas Bly, a 14-year-old accelerated high school student spending a late summer day wandering around town with a bike and a butterfly net, looking at insects. He comes across a new girl in town, Maggie — played by Kerri Green — who is hitting balls on a tennis court. Once they begin talking, we realize that we’re not watching a typical '80s movie about hip high school students in improbable circumstances, but a film about genuinely interesting people. Lucas is obviously very bright and articulate, but he’s also socially awkward and by the looks of his clothes and big glasses, an
outcast. Maggie is a beautiful and shy 16-year-old with flowing red hair, and when she responds to Lucas with kindness and interest, he is immediately smitten. Their friendship develops over the rest of the summer, as the two have deep conversations about art and life — though Lucas is oddly evasive any time questions about his family come up. The film’s opening passages culminate with Lucas and Maggie exploring an underground sewer and listening to an outdoor classical music concert through a manhole. As they sit, back-to-back staring up into the light, Maggie is entranced by the music, and Lucas is entranced by her. The scene ends on a foreboding note though, with Lucas quietly dreading the beginning of the school year. 
On campus, Lucas is not the confident master of his domain that he was during the summer, but a small and easy target for jocks and would be tormentors. The film’s depiction of high school and its inherent stress and social anxiety is timeless, and if you don’t experience some hint of recognition from your own high school past, maybe you weren’t really there. We meet some of his classmates, including Ben — a chubby tuba player and video camera enthusiast who’s not afraid to stand up to bullies, Cappie — a varsity
football star who cares about Lucas and tries to defend him from ridicule, and Rina — a quiet member of the marching band who has a crush on Lucas, and would probably be his girlfriend if he was older and wiser. Lucas suffers humiliations and tries to tightly hang on to his close friendship with Maggie, but she also wants to have fun and meet people. Lucas despises the high school cliques that so cruelly reject him, and when Maggie tells him that she wants to try out for the cheerleading squad, he accuses her of being superficial. When he shows up on her doorstep in an ill-fitting tuxedo to take her to the school dance, Cappie is already there. Cappie and Maggie invite Lucas to skip the dance and go for pizza with them, but reality becomes painfully clear. Lucas loves Maggie and idealizes her, but Maggie only cares for him as a good friend — one who follows her around like a lost puppy. Soon afterward, in a bold and potentially dangerous bid for attention, Lucas decides to try out for the football team. If you think this sounds like a typical teenager movie with a predictable ending, it’s not. First-time director David Seltzer doesn’t use flashy filmmaking techniques or cheap jokes, but instead smartly places his emphasis on his own screenplay with its nature motifs of transformation and fragility. In doing so, he delicately captures situations, dialogue and emotions that are sometimes funny, sometimes embarrassing or sad, but always real. In his original 4-star review, film critic Roger Ebert praised the film as one of the five best of the year, saying that “half-a-dozen of the film’s scenes are done so well, they could make short films on their own,” and compared its portrait of adolescence to Francois Truffaut’s new wave classic The 400 Blows (1959). If you know both films, it’s a credible comparison. I would also add that you could watch Lucas with the sound down, and still understand the story. The visuals and performances are so strong, that it would still work as a silent movie.
The characters in Lucas are people that you know and recognize — sometimes clumsy, insecure or awkward, but likable and always trying to do the right thing. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the character of Lucas himself. Ebert said about Corey Haim’s performance:
“He does not give one of those cute little boy performances that get on your nerves. He creates one of the most three-dimensional, complicated, interesting characters of any age in any recent movie. If he can continue to act this well, he will never become a half-forgotten child star, but will continue to grow into an important actor. He is that good.”
The other actors also seem not to perform their parts, as much as embody them. High praise should be given to Kerri Green, who first appeared in Richard Donner’s The Goonies (1985), but really shines here. Lucas would not work nearly as well if we didn’t think Maggie was worthy of Lucas’ total affection, and Green comes across as a genuine beauty both inside and out. (Truth be told, I had a teenage crush on her when I saw this movie, and it’s been reported that Haim did too during the film’s production — a believable possibility that only enhances their chemistry on screen.) Also memorable are Charlie Sheen as Cappie and Winona Ryder in her first on-screen role as Rina — both creating earnest, believable characters — free of clichés and before tabloid hysteria overtook their careers.
Both Lucas and The 400 Blows end with freeze frames of their lead characters. The last shot of The 400 Blows is one of the most famous endings in film — with Antoine Doinel escaping reform school, ending up at the beach and enigmatically regarding the camera with the ocean behind him. Lucas concludes with a shot of Lucas at his locker — the climax of a moving finale, which shows Lucas returning to school after an extended absence. Both characters are yearning for parental love and social acceptance. Both act out desperately to achieve it. Corey Haim’s life and career ended tragically and prematurely — sadly never fulfilling the promise that Ebert mentioned, but Lucas and Haim’s performance will be remembered by anyone who values great films and characters. The lasting image I have of Haim is not from The Two Coreys, but of the freeze frame of Lucas Bly — in his oversize jacket, smiling with his arms in the air.
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Labels: 80s, C. Sheen, Ebert, Movie Tributes, Television, Truffaut, Winona
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Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Just Don't Call Her Twinkle Toes
By Josh R
I have nothing against Darren Aronofsky, but I am sometimes given to wonder if he was held enough as a child. This is not to say that the writer-director of Black Swan, a grisly fairy tale set in the world of professional ballet, is in any way deficient as a filmmaker. On the contrary, he has always displayed an intuitive grasp of the mechanics of storytelling and suspense, a sure hand with actors, and a distinctive flair for the dramatic — his approach to mise-en-scène is visceral, exciting and uniquely his own. He is also (and this is not meant in the spirit of a put-down) a bit of a sadist. Above all, Aronofsky is a keen observer of human suffering, of the graphic physical variety. In Requiem for a Dream — by my estimation, the only film of his in which the bloodletting seemed genuinely gratuitous — there was a certain grim satisfaction in the way the main characters were essentially gutted like fish as a denouement to their battles with addiction. Even in The Wrestler, perhaps his gentlest film, the physically broken-down title character’s tortuous exertions in the ring were rendered with such bare-knuckled clarity that the viewer was left in no doubt as to the intense physical pain which accompanied them. The final scene — basically, a 10-minute coronary in progress — was as tough to watch as anything in Requiem.
There’s a certain kind of ethos at work here, and while the gore quotient can sometimes upset the balance of his films, I think I can see what Aronofsky is getting at. His films deal with the externalization of internal conflict — psychological torment which manifests itself in the form of physical pain. The wounds are a metaphor for something else, but the approach is very literal-minded; when Natalie Portman’s emotionally fragile ballerina is ripping the skin from her bones, she is literally tearing herself apart in order to prepare for the role of a lifetime.
This all goes to say that Black Swan is not recommended fare for the squeamish, or those who prefer fantasy-based drivel such as The Turning Point, which made ballet look very, very pretty, and ballet dancers look like shallow hedonists only capable of experiencing the big emotions — love, pain, loss, betrayal — at the high school cafeteria level. There’s nothing pretty, cute or sweet about Aronofsky’s treatment of his subject; if anything, being a member of the American Ballet Theatre corps de ballet often seems like one step up from life in a Turkish prison. If all the little girls who’d decided to become ballerinas after seeing The Red Shoes watched Black Swan afterward, their parents might have saved a fortune in toe shoes.
Then again, impressionable young women have been known to find a perverse sort of pleasure in pain (it’s the reason that eating disorders and small cutting never fall out of fashion), and Aronofsky knows exactly how to translate the kind of swoony, intoxicating hunger that fuels teenage fantasies of orgiastic self-mutilation into visual form. Portman’s pale, tremulous Nina is a promising young dancer in the corps de ballet. When the tempestuous prima ballerina (Winona Ryder, acting sufficiently crazy) is forced into early retirement, Nina is promoted to principal dancer and secures the coveted dual role in Swan Lake. The director of the company (Vincent Cassel), who is not above mental manipulation in order to bring the most out of his dancers, offers her the role with one proviso; while there is little doubt that she can embody the elegant, delicate White Swan to perfection, she must also find a way to convincingly inhabit the uninhibited, predatory Black Swan in order to keep the part. To pull off this coup de theatre, the repressed, emotionally stunted Nina must channel her darkest inner demons and invite them out to dance — to the point where she can no longer distinguish her own fevered hallucinations from reality. It’s less a question of life imitating art, or vice versa, than one of art and life becoming so inextricably linked that one can no longer exist without the other; she and the Swans have become one and the same. The performance of a lifetime cannot be far at hand, assuming Nina survives long enough to give it, and manages to do so without shedding any blood (hers or others) in the process.
There are intriguing elements to Black Swan, and they almost (if not entirely) coalesce into a very satisfying film. The underlying concept is basically the same as that of Bergman’s Face to Face, in which Liv Ullmann’s buttoned-down psychiatrist is driven to insanity by her own demonic, tormenting visions. Add to that a bit of All About Eve’s backstage skullduggery and the bloodstained shenanigans of De Palma’s Carrie, and you get a rather peculiar hybrid of arty psychodrama and gut-churning pulp shockfest. It’s not an entirely comfortable marriage — imagine if Holly Hunter started stabbing Harvey Keitel with a broken-off piano key as a means of alleviating sexual tension, or if I Know What You Did Last Summer featured a dream sequence inspired by the choreography of Pina Bausch — but it has its own kind of loony fascination, and is brought to life with such flourish that it still sends shivers down the spine at all the right moments. Visually, it’s the most exciting thing Aronofsky’s done to date, and grimly enveloping enough to make you mostly forget how nutty it is.
In case there’s any doubt on the subject, Black Swan exists very much in the vein of a director’s film, as opposed to an actor’s. Most of the characters seem to exist on a purely conceptual level — in other words, as literary constructs that make sense within the context of the film they’re in, but not as part of any larger reality. This doesn’t prevent the principal actors from making an impression; they’re not exactly flesh-and-blood people, but make for compelling figures nonetheless.
I’ve found many of Portman’s performances wanting in the past, but she’s very effectively used here. Her lean, anxious, haunted look, coupled with an air of seeming vapidity, is exactly right for Nina — an unformed person totally unequipped to grapple with the maelstrom of emotions funneling into her consciousness and fueling her metamorphoses from angel to demon. I’m still not sure how deep Portman’s talent runs, but it’s clear that she’s making a connection here — she understands what the role is supposed to be, and she’s up to the demands. Cassel was seemingly put on the earth to play villains, and strikes a perfect balance between smarminess and seductiveness; even while he bullies, berates and abuses his girls, you never doubt why they’d gladly follow him down the garden path to hell. It’s nice to see Barbara Hershey back in action again, even if her role as Nina’s overbearing, slightly unhinged mother is a tad underwritten to allow her to really go to town with it — it’s the one piece of characterization that could benefit from having gone a bit more over-the-top. The best, most interesting performance is given by Mila Kunis, bringing a feral sensuality to her role as the free-spirited rival dancer who may or may not be giving Nina the additional push she needs to send her over the edge. She’s a marvelously enigmatic presence — you’re never quite sure how much of her treachery is real, and how much is a product of Nina’s imagination (credit to the actress that she keeps you guessing right up until the end.)
If you really stop to think about Black Swan, you might conclude that it’s fairly ridiculous — it’s a testament to the element of showmanship Aronofsky brings to the proceedings that you don’t reflect on this until the film is over. He goes for the jugular without going out of bounds, and the film works, even when its disparate elements don’t always fit together the way that they should. It’s a close contest in terms of who’s the bigger head case — the director or his heroine — but as far as blood-splattered trips to Crazy Town go, this one has style.
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Labels: 10s, Barbara Hershey, De Palma, Holly Hunter, Ingmar Bergman, Keitel, Liv Ullmann, Natalie Portman, Winona
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Sunday, June 13, 2010
Centennial Tributes: Mary Wickes
By Edward Copeland
Where would entertainment be without the character actor or, in this case, actress? Mary Wickes, who was born 100 years ago today, spent nearly 60 years supporting the stars on the stage, big and small screens, usually with a crusty exterior and almost always leaving the audience laughing. Her Broadway debut came in 1936 in a play called Spring Dance written by Philip Barry of The Philadelphia Story fame and starring José Ferrer and her film debut came two years later in a comedy short titled Too Much Johnson that starred Joseph Cotten and was directed by none other than Orson Welles. Her name may never have reached household status, but at 5 feet 10 inches tall with a usual wisecracking demeanor, once someone showed you a photo or clip of her, you knew who Mary Wickes was.
Wickes was born Mary Isabelle Wickenhauser on June 13, 1910, in St. Louis, Mo., the daughter of well-off banker. While the vast majority of her roles came from the working class, Wickenhauser was a debutante who graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a degree in political science with plans to pursue a law degree until the acting bug bit.
Her career began on the stage (to which she returned frequently) and she became part of Welles' Mercury players. She appeared in the original Broadway production of Stage Door. She originated the role of Miss Preen in the Kaufman/Hart hit The Man Who Came to Dinner opposite Monty Woolley. When Hollywood decided to adapt the play to film, they kept Wickes and Woolley in their roles, though they did add Bette Davis and Ann Sheridan to the cast. Though Wickes did frequently return to Broadway throughout the 1940s, her career remained firmly anchored on the West Coast after that, except for a return to the Great White Way in 1979 to play Aunt Eller in a revival of Oklahoma!
The movie of The Man Who Came to Dinner was released in 1942, a particularly busy year for Wickes who also co-starred with Bette Davis in Now, Voyager. She appeared in the short Keeping Fit which also featured Robert Stack, Broderick Crawford and Andy Devine as Wickes' husband. Wickes also landed in the cast of two musicals: Private Buckaroo with The Andrews Sisters and The Mayor of 44th Street starring George Murphy that was part musical, part gangster story. She aided Penny Singleton in her popular series with the installment Blondie's Blessed Event and she teamed with Bud Abbott and Lou Costello in their comic mystery Who Done It? All of those released in what was essentially her first year in movies. The following year brought fewer roles as she headed back East for more stage work. A couple of film roles went uncredited, but she did appear in three more musicals: another with Andrews Sisters (How's About It?), another that featured Andy Devine (Rhythm of the Islands) and a third that featured a young singer named Frank Sinatra (Higher and Higher). Wickes didn't make another film until 1948.
When she did return to the West Coast, her first feature in 1948 was June Bride, once again with Bette Davis (whom she'd work again with in 1952's The Actress), but she really began to make her mark in the fledgling medium of television, beginning with two appearances on The Actor's Studio. She appeared on many of the live theater shows, including re-creating her role of Miss Preen in a production of The Man Who Came to Dinner (and she reprised it again in a 1972 TV movie). A friendship with Lucille Ball led to her guest appearance on an infamous episode of I Love Lucy as the ballet instructor Madame Le Mond. Ball and Wickes' friendship led to frequent guest appearances on every TV series in which Ball ever starred.
On the feature side of things, she appeared with Doris Day in On Moonlight Bay, whom she teamed again with in I'll See You in My Dreams, By the Light of the Silvery Moon and two episodes of Day's TV show. Once someone met her, they seemed to develop a loyalty to Wickes, working with her again and again. She worked with Glenn Ford in five films, the most notable being 1957's Don't Go Near the Water and the 1960 remake of Cimarron.
Aside from guest shots, Wickes had many recurring and regular roles on television series throughout her long career including Make Room for Daddy, Dennis the Menace, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, Doc, The Father Dowling Mysteries and, though some episodes appeared after her death, her voice was heard on the animated series Life with Louie featuring comic Louie Anderson. Two of her most memorable guest shots appeared on Sanford & Son as a housekeeper Fred and Lamont hire but can't bring themselves to fire, even though she's terrible and as Hot Lips' visiting supervising colonel on M*A*S*H who tries to seduce Frank.
Throughout her many decades an actress, there were still other notable feature films. She was housekeeper to Dean Jagger's general as Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye plotted to cheer the old man up in White Christmas. Her
voice graced Disney's original animated 101 Dalmatians. She helped populate River City in The Music Man. She put on a nun's habit alongside Rosalind Russell in The Trouble With Angels directed by Ida Lupino and its sequel (though Lupino sat that one out). She played Meryl Streep's grandmother and Shirley MacLaine's mom in 1990's Postcards From the Edge. She strapped on a nun's habit again as Sister Mary Lazarus opposite Whoopi Goldberg in Sister Act and its sequel. In the 1994 Little Women with Winona Ryder, she played Aunt March. Her final film, released after her death, again featured only that remarkable voice as she gave life to the gargoyle Laverne in Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame.Tweet
Labels: Abbott and Costello, Animation, B. Crawford, Bette, Disney, Doris Day, Ferrer, Glenn Ford, Joseph Cotten, L. Ball, Lupino, MacLaine, Mary Wickes, Musicals, Roz Russell, Sinatra, Streep, Welles, Winona
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Tuesday, March 31, 2009
When teen angst bullshit had a body count
"Dark comedy is a strange thing. What might strike one person as hysterically funny another may find just plain sick. There may be no better illustration of this fine line than Heathers, a very good film that can offend some just by a vague description of its plot."
By Edward Copeland
Greetings and salutations. Twenty years ago, that's how I began my review of Heathers when I was a sophomore in college. I hadn't heard much about the movie and there was no ad in the city paper, but I always tried to review EVERYTHING that opened in the metropolitan area, so I was there that opening weekend, though there weren't many others for the Friday matinee. As the film rolled and I watched in glee, I got a feeling that I don't think I've ever had before: I wish I made this movie. It's not that I thought I could do it better or that I thought it was the greatest film of all time, just that its sensibility seem to be so on my wavelength, that I could imagine coming up with something like it in a way I could never imagine dreaming up a Citizen Kane.
No matter how much I sang the praises of Heathers, few of my contemporaries had the chance to see it during its brief theatrical run, but
once it hit video...there was no stopping it. People using lines from Daniel Waters' screenplay seemed to be everywhere. To this day, when the situation calls for it, I'll still ask someone if they had a brain tumor for breakfast or to call me when the shuttle lands. While the film doesn't feel dated to me (except perhaps for its reference to Swatches. Do they still make those?), it definitely was made at a different time. Unless you were around in the mid to late 1980s, you can't quite appreciate what a big deal the media made of teenage suicide at the time. Think of it as the missing blonde and shark attacks of its time. There were countless made-for-TV movies, the more tolerable playing like glorified afterschool specials, the worse somehow turning out to be all about boomer parents. The worst of the movies, Surviving, was filmed in my hometown of Oklahoma City and several of my friends got extra work in the movie which starred Molly Ringwald, Zach Galligan and a young River Phoenix. The end result of the film was one of the parents, played by Marsha Mason, deciding to leave her husband and travel the world to "find herself." I can't speak for today's kids, but it seemed as if my generation was born with innate gallows humor, so Heathers was made for us. We were cracking jokes in bad taste within hours of the Challenger explosion.As a longtime student journalist, one of the lines in Heathers that cracked me up the most was when Veronica (Winona Ryder) was going to help Heather Duke (Shannen Doherty) regurgitate her lunch and Heather Chandler (Kim Walker) comments, "Bulimia is so '87." In the 1984-85 year in high school, we were doing a student paper centerpiece on anorexia and bulimia and we fought (but lost) to use the headline "Barfing for Beauty." So you understand the type of warped audiences that were there to greet Heathers while middle-age and older critics were dumbfounded. At least some were honest enough to admit it. Take the start of Roger Ebert's review for instance:
"I approach Heathers as a traveler in an unknown country, one who does not speak the language or know the customs and can judge the natives only by taking them at their word. The movie is a morbid comedy about peer pressure in high school, about teenage suicide and about the deadliness of cliques that not only exclude but also maim and kill.
Life was simpler when I was in high school."
Lest you think my generation overflows with heartless bastards, when things do strike close to home, we do feel and we do get upset. We had a suicide in my high school class as well as a car wreck death and two heart-related fatalities and I don't recall much gallows humor related to any of those. The same
is true of Heathers, which did find brief moments of pathos within the dark comedy of the "double suicide" of Kurt and Ram (Lance Fenton, Patrick Labyorteaux) that becomes a double funeral where the corpses are decked out with football helmets and footballs and Kurt's dad (Mark Carlton) declaring that he loves his dead gay son while J.D. (Christian Slater) and Veronica, who killed the jocks, giggle about how he would react if Kurt's limp wrist had a pulse in it. Then Veronica sees what we assume is one of the jocks' devastated little sisters, clad in a letterman jacket, tears streaming down her young cheeks, and Veronica turns to stone and the deaths suddenly feel real and not a joke. The same thing happens when poor Martha Dunnstock (Carrie Lynn) aka Martha Dumptruck attempts her own very real suicide. Then it isn't funny. I'm curious not if Heathers is dated in the usual way (clothes, references, languages), because
Daniel Waters' script was fairly clever in getting around that problem with the invention of his own slang ("How very," "What's your damage?" and "You're beautiful") and costumes that seemed to defy any era. However, without the precursor of the media obsession with teen suicide, how does it play? In fact, the landscape has changed in the 20 years hence. I remember when Columbine happened, with its report of a Trenchcoat Mafia with pipe bombs, the first thought that entered my mind was that the lazy media would figure out a way to lay the blame for the massacre at the feet of Heathers. Somehow though, they all glommed on to a brief segment from the movie The Basketball Diaries that I didn't even remember (and I bet even fewer saw) but, let's face it, Leonardo DiCaprio was a bigger star right then. Would it seem as funny after more than a decade of school shootings? When each new news report bring the same mock anchor shock that such a thing could happen. How many school shootings have to happen until newspeople have to admit that it isn't shocking anymore? We also live in a time where parents seem more obsessed than ever with their children's self-esteem. Talent shows have no winners. You are a winner just for being in it! When Tina Fey's Mean Girls came out and they compared it to Heathers, I was suspicious, especially with a PG-13 rating. Sure enough, that's as "mean" as we can be today. Then again, maybe not. In a recent Entertainment Weekly, there was a report about plans to turn Heathers into a Broadway musical. Director Michael Lehmann confirms the project via correspondence, though he's just a friend of the project. He says screenwriter Daniel Waters is more involved. I wish them the best, though I'm always skeptical of movies becoming musicals since far more fail than succeed and I wonder how the subject matter will play. It's not like they can approach it like Sweeney Todd, though I guess something akin to Little Shop of Horrors isn't out of the realm of possibility.I've discussed so much of the background and the time that I don't want to neglect the movie itself which still holds up after 20 years. Watching it again, what really drew me this time were the bright color schemes,
show mainly through the cinematography of d.p. Francis Kenny but also by the production design of Jon Hutman and costumes of Rudy Dillon. It also was nice to be reminded of the subtlety of David Newman's score, which never steps on scenes the way so many scores seem to do these days. It's also a refreshing reminder of how assured Michael Lehmann's direction was when his only previous film was a student effort called Beaver Gets a Boner, which I would still love to see. Daniel Waters' script almost goes without saying. I'm a sucker for any screenplay that has so many memorable lines that I can find myself repeating decades after the fact. I can only imagine how many great lines were excised from his original vision of a three-hour Stanley Kubrick epic (including a 20-minute long cafeteria scene). Personally, though I've never read the long version, I'm betting the Lehmann version is better, especially when you watch again the nearly eight-minute long cafeteria sequence that fluidly introduces all the teen characters, major and minor. Of course, there's always arguments about the alternate endings that Waters wanted, such as having the school blow up and everyone mingling in heaven or Veronica approaching Martha, who shoots her saying, "Take that Heather" while a dying Veronica gurgles, "I'm not a Heather." Now, I'm still
a cynical man, but maybe it's just because I'm used to it, but I think Heathers has the right ending. Veronica takes the ribbon from Heather Duke's hair, declares herself the sheriff and makes nice with Martha. After all, Veronica said, she just wants her high school to be a nice place. Of course, while J.D. may be a psychopath, his point of view may be closer to correct than Veronica's utopian dream. The school didn't reflect society's ills, the school was society. While there seems to be more and more cases of bullying gone bad in the news these days, I have to wonder about decades before I was born, when parents urged them to confront their tormenters and it made them stronger for it when they had to move out to the evils of the real world. As Heather Walker told Veronica, "Real life sucks losers dry." I have to worry that some kids are being so sheltered and so coddled by squeamish parents that when they become adults, they will be stepped on time and time again. I know every time I turned the tables on someone who picked on me, I was usually the better for it, and I almost always used wit instead of physicality to get the better of jerks. Stymie their minds and their motor skills are hampered.
Upon looking at Heathers again, one thing that struck me that never had before is that, in a way, Heather Chandler and Jason Dean are two sides of the same coin. Both seek power through intimidation. While Heather would never actually kill someone, she has no qualms about destroying reputations. Both she and
J.D. consider themselves superior to their victims. The major difference is that Heather is social enough to attract followers while J.D. prefers to keep to himself. The subordinate Heathers never quite have the thrill for the kill that Heather No. 1 has, that is until J.D. basically turns Heather Duke into the new Heather Chandler for his own twisted purposes after Veronica finally dumps him. Heather McNamara (Lisanne Falk) never seems to easily fit into a category until Heather Duke decides to select her for victimhood. The move almost succeeds the way J.D. intended: Getting Heather Duke to have the school sign a petition that is really a suicide note, almost winning Veronica back and getting her to think of killing Heather Duke. Which really brings us to the film's greatest mystery: Veronica. She seems to be smart and strong, but why is she so susceptible to being a follower? Why does she want to be one? That's why I think the compromised ending works as well as it does: Veronica triumphs over the clique
and J.D. and promises "to be the new sheriff in town." As J.D. says, "Color me impressed. You've got strength. Strength I didn't think you had." Will she succeed? Who knows? We do know she's traveled far from when Heather Chandler berated her for being a Girl Scout cookie until she expressed interest in being part of the most powerful clique at Westerburg High and Heather rescued her. Then, that got old. As she described it to J.D., "They're like people I work with and our job is being popular and shit." Of course, J.D. has the added appeal of sexuality to woo Veronica. "Our love is God. Let's go get a Slushie!" Part of what makes Veronica seem so strong throughout the film is Winona Ryder, who unbelievably turned 16 while making Heathers. She was coming off her breakthrough in Beetlejuice and her agent begged her not to make Heathers, for fear it would sink her career. Later in 1989, she shone again as Jerry Lee Lewis' young cousin/wife in Great Balls of Fire.
There are so many great lines in Heathers that I feel I should keep writing until I squeeze them all in, but let them be enjoyed for the first or 50th time. I haven't had time to sing the praises of Penelope Milford as the loony teacher who represents the teen suicide obsession of the time (though I still want to know how a teacher got hold of a suicide note). No time to discuss how they pull the rug out from under you by presenting Veronica's parents as one-dimensional and then suddenly giving them depth. I do have to mention my favorite sight gag, in case you miss it. J.D. gets the idea to fake Heather's death as a suicide when he spots the Cliff's Notes for The Bell Jar. Heather couldn't even read Sylvia Plath's work.
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Labels: 80s, DiCaprio, Ebert, Kubrick, Movie Tributes, Musicals, River Phoenix, Winona
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