Having Enough Time

There are nights when it seems like L.A. goes on forever. A city without end. A future that stretches into infinity. And no matter how far you drive, you can never leave. You have no choice but to stay there. You need to stay there to create your own story, your own myth, the person you want to become and there’s nowhere else to do that. Before you know it, it’s like you’ve become one with the place. It’s part of you. And, hopefully, you’re part of it even if it’s only part of the mythology in your own head. Watching HEAT sometimes I can’t help but think to myself, is this the L.A. where I’ve been living all this time? Is this what L.A. was when it was made? Is this what it still is now? And how much have I changed in all the years since I first saw it? Kate Mantilini, the restaurant in Beverly Hills down the street from the Academy where Vincent Hanna and Neil McCauley go for coffee closed for good over ten years ago. Is it still the L.A. we know and love if that place is gone? Bob’s Big Boy in Toluca Lake, one of the other unnamed restaurants in the film and where McCauley recruits Donald Breedan to be their driver on the big job, is at least still there, which is a relief but it’s not quite the same thing. Maybe each of these places will always be there in our heads, so we can keep the mythology of our own lives going for as long as we can.

The experience of watching HEAT, because it is an experience, goes with the mood of watching it, because the whole film is a mood, and it’s still an exhilarating one all the way through, an epic which comes out of the feeling you get from that portrayal of Los Angeles through the lengthy running time, an epic because of who the people in the film become as you watch it. An epic because of the place and the people, but maybe they’re one and the same. The rush of the film comes out of who they are and what they are thanks to that place. It’s an almost simplistic cops-and-robbers story that gets fused into a visual and sonic experience allowing us to place ourselves in this story that becomes almost overwhelming the more they stay in our heads. And it feels like that’s what it was always supposed to be since back then it was impossible to imagine any other film that could possibly feature both Al Pacino and Robert De Niro together in the same scene for the first time. Just about my strongest memory of seeing the film at the Chinese Theater on opening weekend back in December 1995 was the applause heard at the end of the coffee shop scene between the two of them. Everyone there knew how important this moment was. This feeling has always stayed with me and for a long time I almost couldn’t imagine seeing the film anywhere but the Chinese, nothing else ever seemed good enough. That theater was built for a film like HEAT. It’s what the film deserves as well as the theater, appropriate for a film that creates its own myth.

In Los Angeles, professional thief Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) and his crew which includes Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer) and Michael Cherlitto (Tom Sizemore), rob over a million dollars in bearer bonds from an armored car but the job goes wrong when new addition Waingro (Kevin Gage) gets trigger happy in the middle of the robbery but he escapes before Neil can take care of him. The unexpected body count catches the attention of Robbery Homicide Detective Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) who begins to investigate and soon gets on the trail of the next job McCauley is going to pull. At the same time Hanna is also trying to save his marriage to Justine (Diane Venora) while McCauley has just met graphic designer Eady (Amy Brenneman) and started a relationship with her. With Hanna and his own crew on the tail of them, McCauley and his crew soon become aware of the heat close by as they plan one last bank job before breaking off for good.

Thirty years on, HEAT remains an overwhelming film, one which should be seen on the biggest ‘Scope screen imaginable with a Dolby system as loud as possible and if only this is the way it could always happen yet the most epic things in it are still the faces of all these characters along with what Michael Mann finds in them. He understands these people so much through what gets revealed in those faces and it feels like for the writer-director that this film was his big statement, it was what he’d been building towards in his career beyond his directorial debut THIEF and serving as executive producer of MIAMI VICE, the purest expression of what he wanted to portray cinematically in how he saw the world and its people, the clothes, the music, the vibe, all of those things that fascinated him so much, always feeling tangible in a way that makes you feel the essence of every scene. HEAT is spectacular and always has been, a phenomenally well-made film and one that has a power to it all the way through, staying in the mind for all these years as we wonder about these characters and the choices they make, playing back certain scenes in our heads repeatedly. Watching it again, it all feels like what I want a movie to be deep down maybe more than I ever realized. It takes a crime story which is essentially pulp and makes it become an epic through that sense of pure visual and emotional intensity. And, it should be said, ultimately, it is pulp. Beautiful, glossy, rich pulp. Maybe this is part of why I don’t approach what the film is as something out of the real world and only take it so seriously as an actual drama since this isn’t strict realism and these aren’t people in the real world, almost none of them are. They’re archetypes, they’re symbols, they’re what we find ourselves projecting onto them, all a part of this story that is sprawling, willing to linger as the characters try to understand what’s in front of them yet it always feels tightly plotted, moving like a freight train towards the big job and what follows. It’s a story set in Los Angeles but it also somehow feels like it takes place on the edge of the world, which may be the same thing.

“I felt like being alone,” Vincent Hanna’s pre-teen stepdaughter Lauren played by Natalie Portman tells him when he picks her up in his car after not meeting her mother as expected. So much of the film is about people being alone and what they are when they’re alone, no matter how much they want to be with someone else. Much of the time L.A. is about being alone too and it’s the perfect city for this to be set in. Neil McCauley is the one who distinguishes between alone and lonely with the way De Niro embodies the character felt right from the start as he moves quickly through all these places, past all those regular lives he’ll never know anything about or understand. Al Pacino’s Vincent Hanna, meanwhile, is introduced making love to his wife, his third of course, and it seems like it was a pretty strenuous session for the early morning but the roller coaster of their marriage is going to make things go bad again pretty soon and the fighting will start up once more, the pretense he is able to put up about being with someone only lasting for so long. Characters in this film are with people they seem comfortable with if only on a surface level but the real person only comes through when they’re without them and that’s usually when the real choices happen. Portman’s character only appears for a few moments before she figures into the third act in a way that changes everything for her mother and stepfather but the broad strokes of what she’s going through are so well-defined, nothing to do with the crime story but fits in perfectly as another piece of the world Vincent Hanna has chosen to be a part of.

The film is about all of them alone but it’s also about all these people together, filtered through a story about a few armed heists and everyone on both sides of the law affected by what happens but is ultimately about these two guys. Hanna zeroes in on McCauley immediately, as if he somehow knows they’re the same and the plotting moves so fast that at times it can be easy to miss the details through all the fury of the sound mix but they’re there, things like the linchpin of their plan to rob the bank involving cutting the alarm twenty minutes before and the bodyguard played by Henry Rollins tipping off when it’s happening seeming brushed over but this is still plot stuff, not always what needs to be worried about. Introduced as a badass and nothing else, inserting Waingro back into the story as a serial killer is kind of a blind alley in terms of plot, dropped almost as soon as it’s brought up as he moves onto other matters, there to keep him in the film and a reminder of how dangerous he is plus to give Pacino a big moment that can lead into his own marital dilemma. But it’s also one of those things that makes the film more of a mosaic than a tight, condensed structure, a tapestry where things flow in and out, sometimes moving away from us but then coming back in ways we never expected.

Even the way the two men dress says something about them, the way McCauley wears his jacket, white shirt and no tie like his own armor to keep from being noticed, a nice contrast to the flash of Vincent’s suits that I envy so much and the relationships to their women feel a part of this. The chemistry Vincent has with wife Justine brings a pop to their scenes that fit just right with my weakness for Diane Venora in this film, the cool artsy woman dressed in black, going together perfectly on a surface level but they can never keep the streak on after the great morning sex when he checks out and heads to the next crime scene. It’s not as easy to imagine Neil with any woman so his pairing with the quieter Eady isn’t as obvious, but their tentative way with each other brings an unexpected tenderness to their first scenes as if what’s happening surprises each of them, two people looking for any kind of connection without knowing they need it. Just as Hanna might admit to himself in the end that it can’t work with Justine, no matter how much he would like it to, McCauley isn’t as quick to do that about Eady, denying what he’s always told himself about the possibility of the heat nearby and unable to accept that just because he would like the idea of going off with her doesn’t mean he ever really could. In their big confrontations Vincent and Justine are apart from each other, as if unable to be joined in the same shot while in their own key scene Neil and Eady are framed in a gorgeous tableau overlooking the water, together yet still separate, not looking at each other, close but far away. The people on the fringes of the story who attach themselves to others can’t entirely connect no matter how much one person might be reaching out, the way Donald Breedan’s girlfriend doesn’t find out what choice he made until she sees it on the news, the mother racing for a look at her dead daughter before Hanna stops her, the way Danny Trejo begs to be put down when he learns his wife has been killed and especially how much the layout of the fractured marriage between Val Kilmer’s Chris and Ashley Judd’s Charlene is given in just a few moments, the one pairing where it feels like an understanding was reached about who he is but that doesn’t mean it’s not going to fall apart no matter how much they still love each other in the end.

The L.A. of HEAT is not the real L.A. and yet it is, one familiar and not quite, just as sometimes the light hits through the darkness in exactly the right way, just as I always wonder about the strict geography at any point and imagine the missing sequence where McCauley follows behind Hanna for an hour as they drive to Kate Mantilini for coffee. I also wonder how Eady affords her place over Sunset Plaza on a bookstore salary but maybe some of these things were just easier back in the nineties and no one told me. Clearly the idea of strict realism doesn’t matter here, it’s the essence of it all that does. Much as this makes the city where it takes place about that feeling, the film also has a minimum of establishing shots unless there’s a specific purpose, like the one that leads directly into the location of the metals job done with a directorial flourish showing how empty the city can feel at night that takes us down into the scene before we expect it to. It’s the people in the film that are the establishing shots, their faces becoming as important a part of the L.A. landscape as any shot of a freeway or building, suddenly finding themselves in these spaces which become a part of them. How much of the film is made up of the characters in these voids, surrounded by so much yet completely alone because they can’t be any other way. Shot by the great Dante Spinotti, every frame looks like it belongs in a coffee table book, maybe sold exclusively at the bookstore Eady works at, showing places in the city that I know I’d never be able to find but also those places I thought I knew but suddenly look so different, a place where so much of life happens in these diners and restaurants and homes that look out on where it all takes place. This is particularly felt in McCauley’s empty pad overlooking the water he fears drowning in or the “dead-tech, post-modernistic bullshit” sterileness of Justine’s house which feels perfect for her character so you can almost imagine Hanna is all too happy to leave at the beginning of the day after the early morning sex. By the time he returns at night all he needs is his bottle of Jack Daniel’s and that house doesn’t feel like a permanent residence for him any more than Neil’s does.

As big as it feels, the story somehow becomes more compact on each new viewing, more about the emotions of these people than simple plot mechanics. The focus is on them more than the action but all that action is beautifully executed by Mann and nothing else made around this time is quite like it, whether the growing tension of the opening robbery, the nastily effective shootings in the abandoned drive-in sequence but especially the bank heist with Brian Eno’s “Force Marker” ticking along with the rising tension of the robbery until the gunfire erupts so deafening that it makes you want to duck down in the movie theater, too loud for any score, turning the streets into a warzone and even as I wonder about a suburban supermarket in the middle of downtown L.A. (again, it needs to be remembered that realism is not the issue here) there’s nothing else quite like it. Mann’s approach to action contains a true sense of danger to each moment that is always visceral as it builds through each shot, always intense as well as done with a sense of total clarity so as big as it gets, the danger always feels real and the sheer rush that comes from it all is undeniable. Mann doesn’t do unnecessary crashes and explosions if the scene doesn’t call for it, like the way the truck slows to a stop after the drive-in shootout as if a reminder that these flunkies should never have gone up against McCauley & crew, but sometimes he makes it clear that the loudest possible crash in the middle of a scene is the most necessary thing imaginable.

There’s an almost overwhelming feeling that comes from so much of the film even if the scene isn’t about action at all, the way Hanna races down the freeway in his car after McCauley to pull him over there for the pure sensation of the moment as much as anything, letting us soak in all that music and noise representing the soundscapes inside their own heads. The score by Elliot Goldenthal and others (little known fact, Moby’s “God Moving Over the Face of the Waters” heard at the end was actually written for its appearance in the 1993 short film SPACE WATER ONION directed by Paul Yates) along with the whole soundscape, all a reminder how there’s nothing like the experience of someone driving through L.A. at night in a Michael Mann film whether it’s shot on the most beautiful film stock imaginable like here or early digital in COLLATERAL later on, there’s a genuine sense of frisson to it all that seemingly no one else can ever achieve and it can be hard not to think of those times of driving on the 10 heading for the Harbor Freeway as the downtown skyline gets bigger, maybe with this soundtrack playing once again since there’s never been a better soundtrack to listen to while driving on those freeways late at night and there probably never will be.

Even the quiet moments feel deafening in their effectiveness with such a clarity of focus and briskness of plotting, the quiet of the metals heist leading to the disruption that causes the head-on shots of the two of them representing their first meeting even without knowing it, the way the film pauses before the bank job to show the women who will be affected by it, the calm yet direct way Mykelti Williamson lays out for Ashley Judd the life her child will have. The entire Dennis Haysbert plot line feels like a masterclass in how it’s laid out in just a few brief scenes and made even more effective thanks to that look he has in the moment by himself after he says, “Fuck it,” to De Niro. Sometimes quietly saying, “Fuck it” is all you can do. You are who you are, no matter how much something else makes sense.

The famous coffee shop scene is quiet in its own way with the natural steadiness to each of their voices adding to the power of it and these few moments were so much of what the movie was known for at the time, wondering about why the two stars were in so little of the film together, urban legends that they didn’t even film it at the same time but with that photo showing the unused angle of the two of them hung over the door at Kate Mantilini so many years after for all to see. This scene quickly becomes about the myth of these two guys as they become more open with each other the more they talk, vulnerable in ways that they’ll never reveal to anyone else, each of them with nothing to prove but are still looking to show what they can do being played by two legendary actors with nothing to prove but still looking to show what they can do. They are who they are and the film reveals who they are when no one else is looking whether De Niro’s smile when he knows he’s going after Waingro and it can’t be any other way or Pacino running down the stairs after he gets the call with that undeniable excitement in his step.

Neil McCauley calls Los Angeles the city of lights but while looking out at the skyline at night next to Eady to him it looks more like the iridescent algae of Fiji, a place he’s never actually been. In the world of this film, sometimes in the film we’re living as well, L.A. is whatever you want it to be, a city about creating your story, creating your myth. It’s about what you do when you’re there and we all have those moments where we find ourselves feeling isolated even when we’re in the middle of a crowd or maybe can’t figure out why the woman the next seat over is even talking to us at first. We also have those nights where we just want to shove our goddamn television, or whatever we’re carrying around without thinking about it anymore, out of the car at a red light. Sometimes you want to be alone. Sometimes you have to be alone. But then there are those moments when you should be with someone who understands and hopefully you realize that. The power of HEAT is in what Mann finds in this loneliness mixed in with all the action and people desperately trying to hope things might be different, even if taking inspiration from the past it still becomes its own thing. After all, does the part of the climax on the airport runway take inspiration from the end of BULLITT? Would HEAT even exist without BULLITT? Does it matter? Maybe what does matter are moments like the sheer ferociousness of De Niro’s performance as he repeatedly demands, “LOOK AT ME” to Waingro in his last moment and the way Kevin Gage breathes in after being shot as if a demon who is finally being vanquished accompanied by a cue in the Goldenthal score that feels like the pure embodiment of McCauley’s own soul exploding.

Once a long time ago I agreed to take someone to the airport in the early morning hours. That feeling of driving with this person from the 10 onto the 405 heading to LAX in the dead of night on an empty freeway brought HEAT to mind, that feeling of floating over the city, somehow part of the place yet far away from everyone else there, feeling completely real and unreal all at once. Even if there’s not actually a tunnel there to pass through like in the film where a blinding white light reveals who you really are, you can sense the feeling anyway and there are a few lens flares that appear in the shot around when De Niro says, “Nothing, we’re home free” which feel almost supernatural and have to be some of the best I’ve ever seen. When Vincent chases Neil down with the planes coming in for a landing overhead past any of the LAX runways, it feels like the edge of the world with the two characters having nowhere left to go, the outskirts of the city that goes on forever, a chase that becomes more than just an action scene because the overwhelming feel to the visuals and deafening sound of all those planes but also because of how inevitable everything was. Of course they were going to meet again. And they knew it too. All this leads to that overhead angle featuring the two of them at the end after the shots have been fired, both actors finally joined together in a shot. It’s not a movie simply about cops and robbers, good and evil, but these two men who are going to be who they are. When Neil first met Eady he held out his hand not so much to apologize but as if to find some sort of connection to someone and here he does it again as he dies, holding out his hand for Vincent, this time for the one person who he knows understands him. For that one moment, they’re not alone.

If Al Pacino decided to give a normal, measured performance to play Vincent Hanna, it wouldn’t be enough. He needs to be as big as he is so he can take over every room, he needs to make his character this kind of oversize personality to command whatever room he’s in. And through how big that is it shows his sheer sense of focus that Hanna brings to doing his job and how nothing else comes close for him, chewing his gum to throw people off and the way he can rattle off any number of details at his job but can barely remember how to say the word ‘chicken’ during his tired late night spat with Justine. Any number of lines that Pacino has here are justly famous now but it’s the silent looks he gives at any moment that are amazing and show what’s going on inside more than anything.

This balances beautifully with the sense of control felt coming from Robert De Niro as Neil McCauley all through the film which works as a contrast to that showing his brutality but also the innate isolation from everyone around him. There’s an energy to his presence here that almost feels like this film contains the last vestiges of what we’ve always known as the younger De Niro, showing a vulnerability and uncertainty seen in his face when no one else is looking, contrasting perfectly with the deadly glare that he’s much more willing to let others see. It makes the two leads the ideal pairing through the entire film both in terms of what they bring to it as well as their obvious iconic status even if they barely meet with that smile between the two of them at the end of the coffee shop scene about what their characters realize but it’s also about who these two great actors are and what they mean to each other. What each of them do with their eyes alone throughout is amazing to see and it adds so much to every moment they are onscreen. In 1995 Pacino and De Niro were already legends, even if they’d been famous for less than 25 years at that point, leading to the rewards of all the screentime they shared in the greatness of THE IRISHMAN, but let’s just forget that RIGHTEOUS KILL ever happened.

Val Kilmer’s own smile when Chris looks up at his wife on the balcony in his final scene is part of how iconic all this is as well and it’s one of the shots of him seen during his moment in the TCM Remembers 2025 video, a reminder of how much it’s now part of his legacy but it’s also that sense of sheer intensity coming from him even with not much dialogue and it makes when he says about his wife, “For me the sun rises and sets with her,” one of Kilmer’s best moments ever. As that wife, it’s amazing to realize how little of the film Ashley Judd is actually in and she does so much in just a few minutes, playing someone who isn’t going to be intimidated easily no matter who is making the threats and her final scene, looking out at the arrival of Kilmer with barely any dialogue, is a killer. Diane Venora meets every glare Pacino gives her with a force that says she’s not going to back down with the uncertain shyness that Amy Brenneman projects while playing things with a disbelief that gets deeper the more she realizes, not knowing what’s going on in that hotel as she waits in the car but she knows something is very wrong. The barely recognizable Jon Voight as the mysterious Nate who has all the answers for Neil while seeming to exist entirely apart from where everyone else is living their lives, with the actor speaking in that gravely whisper that always makes you pay close attention and giving each scene a knowing acceptance that anyone is going to do what they’re going to do.

Everyone brings so much depth to their characters, giving the sort of impression that feels like so many of them have more screentime than they really do, whether Tom Sizemore with his deadly glare at the guy in the diner as well as Dennis Haysbert on one side of the law or Wes Studi, Ted Levine, Myktelti Williamson and Jerry Trimble in their scenes with Pacino. The intensity of Kevin Gage as Waingro is perfect in how he’s less recognizable than the others which makes him that much more dangerous and William Fichtner as Roger Van Zant, maybe a higher class of thief than McCauley ever is but one who misreads the situation he’s gotten mixed up in but still can’t fully shed his cockiness. Natalie Portman gives a totally believable look at a depressed young girl who clearly seems to think that everything is her fault and plenty of bit parts, both famous and not, make an impression throughout, Tom Noonan with the idea for the bank job saying how he got all this information because “this stuff just flies through the air”, Xander Berkeley (the one actor who also appeared in Mann’s L.A. TAKEDOWN, the 1989 television pilot that didn’t go to series but is basically the first draft of this story) as the infamous Ralph who Vincent finds at home with Justine and the uncredited Bud Cort as the loathsome coffee shop manager who lets Breedan know where he stands at his new job right away.

As Neil McCauley says late in the film, whatever time you get is luck. Nothing stretches out into infinity, after all, much as it sometimes seems like it will. Nothing is forever, not even living in Los Angeles. Maybe L.A was built to be the city where HEAT was set, just as the Chinese Theater was built to show it. And I was lucky to see it there so at least there’s that. All these years later HEAT is as great as it’s always been. It’s greater. I love looking at it, listening to it, getting lost in it, always remembering it. The film is a part of what I remember the nineties to be but it’s also now. So much time has passed, no time has passed at all. Maybe this film was the peak of so many of the things I wanted to love about films in the first place. Maybe so much of it is what I still want films to be, at least while watching it again. The film remains great even if I wish Michael Mann hadn’t tinkered with the film for the Definitive Edition on Blu-ray just a little, removing Diane Venora’s line “You sift through the detritus” to Vincent during their calm talk late at night in the empty restaurant, and, keeping with my fondness for her here, I miss it. But if that’s what HEAT is now, so be it. All this makes me wonder what my own future is at this point. Some days I feel like I’ve run out of time here myself. Then I remember the smile of the woman who came into my life out of nowhere and how everything changed. This city is where I made my life. Maybe it isn’t much of one but it’s mine and it’s something. It’s my mythology. Now if only Kate Mantilini would somehow reopen, it can really be the Los Angeles that we dream of and somehow turn ourselves into the myths we still want to become. At least for a little while.

An Unusual Place To Be

Much as we may try to do something about it at times, we are who we are. Just as the people in James L. Brooks films are all exactly who they are the first time we see them. And so much of the time they’re trying to be something more than that. They have no choice but to deal with the world, after all, which doesn’t always know what to make of them. His characters are messy, which they need to be in that world, and the way he freely examines who they are through all that messiness makes it clear that he has an undeniable love for almost all of them, no matter how desperate and screwed up they seem to be. Maybe they’re all just lonely, no matter how many other people surround them. They’re always very much his creation but the best examples feel real, as real as the busy newsroom of BROADCAST NEWS still feels. Through the way he portrays these people and that world it feels clear that he knows who they are, even if he hasn’t figured out all the answers that they’re looking for any more than they have, any more than we have. Because the thing is, we want things to be the way we want them to be. And that’s not the way it is right now. Maybe the best we can hope for is progress as we find our way through and try to make any changes happen, overcoming some of those obstacles we place in our own way and try not to get too bogged down in things like fear and regret. Maybe I’m better now than I was a few years or a decade ago, even as there’s still so much to worry about. I’m still trying to be better. I still sometimes need to convince myself to believe in the possibility of good things happening if I help make them happen.

As for the film that is BROADCAST NEWS, as far as I’m concerned this is the one that Brooks got right more than any of the others. Even if we don’t know all the mechanics of the news world these people work in, we understand who they are and it all feels totally genuine. I’ve wondered if part of the incentive of making the film was to explore the world of television journalism in a way that was believable unlike THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW which Brooks was one of the main creative forces of and which, great as it still might be, never managed to seem like an actual newsroom. Not that anyone ever cared. Of course, for all I know it’s exactly what putting on a local Midwest news show in the ‘70s was like but I doubt it. So BROADCAST NEWS, released at Christmas 1987, was an attempt to actually explore these people who interested Brooks so much at that moment in time, when few things in journalism felt as prestigious as the network evening news and something like CNN was there but hadn’t yet taken over the way it would or even when a network news show was actually about news and not something like a promo for a film being released by the same corporation or a weekly murder show. Those things can be compulsively watchable but, of course, the character of Aaron Altman would hate me for saying that. Please don’t tell him.

When local news anchorman Tom Grunick (William Hurt) meets network news producer Jane Craig (Holly Hunter) after she gives a speech at a seminar they’re immediately attracted to each other but when he comes clean to her about how little he really knows about the news he reports on she becomes cold towards him, only to learn shortly after that he’s accepted a position as correspondent with the Washington bureau she works at. Jane’s best friend is network correspondent Aaron Altman (Albert Brooks) who is extremely intelligent but also pines for her even as their relationship seems so easy. When Tom starts work his lack of intellect means that he doesn’t exactly fit in but his ease on air and the way he delivers the news makes him increasingly popular with the network and as his position continues to grow Jane becomes more conflicted about her own attraction to him while Aaron, learning about possibly budget cuts to come, starts to become worried about losing both his job and Jane all at once.

Still rewatchable, still close to perfect, BROADCAST NEWS is like a warm bath to return to no matter how many times you’ve seen it and yet what the film is warning about makes it all feel darker and sadder today than it ever has. If it ever seemed too mild a portrayal of the media, a calmer younger sibling to NETWORK, it doesn’t anymore. It does what only the best films do. It grows. It changes. It changes as we change and grow older, seeing the characters for all their flaws making them less likable than we thought at first until we circle back around and finally understand how much we really are like some of them. It’s a film where you wake up one day and realize how much of it is true. I still feel this, no matter how many times I watch it. After all these years, it’s clear that BROADCAST NEWS remains the best James L. Brooks film as well as one of the best films of the late ‘80s, the purest expression by the writer-director (along with his collaborators; certainly Polly Platt’s name in the credits jumps out now) of what he wants to say about people and the world they want to be a part of with seemingly unlimited pages of the best dialogue ever. The film was immediately, obviously great when it first opened. It’s gotten better as the years have passed. It’s funnier. It’s sadder. The characters seem deeper, richer, the message feels sharper as it feels more desperate to be watching it right now with everything around us. What the film does in showing them who they are deep down makes it about people fighting with their intelligence to fit with what the world wants them to be and the actors are fully a part of this, giving some of their best performances while living up to the exacting quality of the material which is all in the service of asking the key question of how important it is to have someone whose main talent is being good on television with no other significant qualities. And how that affects our own perception of what it causes to happen.

Brooks is exploring the idea of what television represents and how we respond to it but opening the film with a look at the main characters as kids makes it clear how much it’s really about them, allowing for a few broad laughs but it also makes the point in showing what they always were and where they were going to end up, that it was all inevitable and they’re not going to change who they are. The way they clash and sometimes even make sense together helps to make them more believable as they face off and challenge each other to decide who is more wrong than the other. All this makes BROADCAST NEWS one of the best romantic comedies ever as well as containing the best characters in a romantic comedy ever, always unique, always aware of their shortcomings, knowing that none of these stories can possibly end just because the lead couple make up, kiss and the credits roll. The film always knows that these people are just trying their best even at their worst and Brooks clearly loves how flawed they are along with how they question themselves. The only person who doesn’t question himself is the one in charge of the whole news bureau, the one who only seems to care that being a good boss is about intimidation. He’s the worst person in the film and when he can’t intimidate someone anymore, he’s powerless. Just as it should be. Just like we should remember sometimes.

Brooks is so clearly fascinated by the minutiae of all this, even as he keeps the focus on the people and why they’re this way, why they’re attracted to this world of journalism, which goes beyond politics and the simple reporting of the news. It’s what sets Tom Grunick apart from them at first but it’s also what sets him on the road to success beyond what any of them have been able to achieve. He’s a journalist who’s not really a journalist, let alone one who knows anything about ethics and if he doesn’t know how the profession really operates, he clearly knows how the world works and what it really cares about. He believes in what it can all be, just in his own way, knowing how to play the moment in a way that also helps him in the long game. Maybe the people already there at the Washington bureau think they know how things work but he always seems to know what he’s doing and how that affects others. It’s all about the performance to him and what he knows is to make the story he’s reporting on about him and the emotion he's feeling where he’s always the main character.

Sensing what Tom might represent almost from the start, Aaron Altman is defensive about it and he can’t seem to be anything else, as if he started off thinking that being the smartest one in the room was all you ever needed and even as he knows the truth can’t entirely walk away from that idea because if his intelligence doesn’t matter then nothing does. The basic Albert Brooks character, so perfect in the films he directs himself, now plays as a little abrasive in what is a softer story but even this makes sense, less likable than he should be just as the more likable Tom is ruthless at what he wants but knows to smile the whole time he does it. Aaron doesn’t have the X factor of camera presence that his rival does and even when he mocks Tom’s use of alliteration at one point it’s hard not to think that even the alliteration in his own name always sounds slightly awkward no matter how many times you hear it. Great for reporting the news but just not great for television, he’ll always feel like he needs to prove himself and the way he tries to do this with no one else in the room while the special report is going on without him is just about my favorite moment in the whole film. Tom is the one who correctly believes that what makes him successful is making news he reports on not about the information but the performance, it’s the only way to get people to care about whatever it is, making the story he reports on a tale of pure emotion where he’s the lead character. Through this, it feels like people in the media took Aaron’s sarcastic “Let’s never forget, we’re the real story” to heart in subsequent years and simply followed Tom’s lead.

Caught between them without realizing it, Jane is the beating brain of the film, always wanting to make the rules for the room and setting her own schedule down to the microsecond, including her ritual of crying in the morning when no one is around. Jane always wants to be the one in control and all those details make her what may be Brooks’s best creation ever in how she’s written, how she reacts to people, never wanting to let them off the hook if they’re not following the rules that she’s laid down in her own head. Her relationship with Aaron is like a double act, everyone in the office probably knows about them, and it’s almost like the romance part of what they have isn’t necessary. But of course it is. She gets her pleasure from the job along with her gleeful geekiness in things like noticing the ‘wrong missile graphic’ in a competitor’s report and she knows that there’s nothing she could ever be as good at which makes her unable to do the math at how much she’s drawn to someone who doesn’t live by any of it.

But to go along with the screwball feeling that comes out of these personalities, the film never loses sight of the fact that it is a comedy, not even when all this causes pain. The best moments, particularly the race to finish that piece at the last minute, provide the rush of what this job can be, as if to Jane and Aaron if there isn’t that stress, it can’t really be news. From the famous Joan Cusack run to get the tape to the control room which is a tremendous display of physical brilliance to the sheer interplay between the various characters trying to figure out just what Jane’s relationship with Tom really is and the highlight of Aaron’s disastrous night as anchor is the best possible payoff to what he wants. It’s all a joy, with the rhythm of the incessantly memorable Bill Conti score always ticking away through the emotions. The depth of the film is knowing what it’s like to be inside someone’s head, be more connected to them than you ever thought possible, feeling that attraction to them while avoiding the truth that it doesn’t always go together. Brooks understands these people deep down just as he also understands what keeps them apart.

The canny structure to the script is dictated by the characters as well, wisely introducing them as adults away from what will become the main location and once the story settles down in D.C. is always about the decidedly non-tourist spots of the location shooting, not counting the glow of the Jefferson Memorial during Tom and Jane’s date, add to this, they keep away from those places and only go to where they know, the “place near the thing we went that time” as Aaron puts it in one of the films best examples of shorthand between two people. But it’s also Brooks’ direction that feels so intricate, the sort that all too often gets easily dismissed since this is merely A Film About People Talking but something like his staging of the party while moving from one point of view to another is so elegant in its clarity and how it moves from one section of the party to another is undeniable. And the long stretch detailing the special report anchored by Tom gives the film several of the best split diopter shots ever, joined together to show Tom and Jane joined together, the visual representation of the great sex Tom is talking about no even knowing about her finger hovering over the button connecting to him on the floor, practically caressing it. Brooks was the one director that year of a Best Picture nominee not to get a nomination himself, the year that THE LAST EMPEROR mostly swept things, even though cinematographer Michael Ballhaus did get a nomination and together the two make each shot of a piece with each other, all flowing together beautifully. Brooks’s plotting in his script goes perfectly with how he directs it all, confident in the staging of scenes and how he lets the pauses make the film settle down when mere behavior overtakes things and it can’t just rush through moments anymore. You feel this sense of craft through the way each of the sections of the film are willing to take their time to just have the characters exist, especially when it stops to have Glen Roven and Marc Shaiman perform the new news theme, where the film seems like it’s not doing anything but it’s really doing everything and is simply enjoying itself.

Watching the film again now, I found myself thinking about Tom more than ever, whether he’s just a nice guy with his own take on things or something worse. Back in the nineties when Entertainment Weekly ran an article with the headline, “Is Michael Bay the Devil?” it was Tom Grunick I thought of thanks to Aaron’s big speech about what he represents, very aware that each man could each be the Devil in his own specific way, even as such an idea seems so quaint now. On this viewing I found myself asking, is Tom a sociopath or is he just good on television? These days, is there a difference? If he were the former, he probably wouldn’t be so insecure around Jane at the start, even if no one believes him. When he does what he does in cutting together his date rape piece, he doesn’t know it’s anything wrong. He approaches everything he does, whether his work on air or sex after hours with the same amount of confidence and maybe gets uncertain about what he knows but the level of neurosis displayed by Jane and Aaron is something totally foreign to him. And his immediate affection for Jane feels genuine, maybe because she’s the only one who sees right through him, as if he thinks that somehow it might make him better. But it’s clear that he can never change that much. More than that it’s like he sees the way things are going and how he can be a part of it, staying likable on the surface and a total blank underneath, even if he only partly understands why. Aaron sometimes seems like he doesn’t know how to be likable but he’s smart, he gets the job done and knows how important his job is. What Tom knows is that the media reports what it wants and there’s no reason he shouldn’t be the one to deliver the message. The film isn’t about what the message is as much as it’s asking about who delivers that message, the answer of which can be turned into something insidious.

When Jane gives a speech early on it quickly turns into her trying to connect with an auditorium filled with local broadcasters who barely care warns of this and feels a little too real right now, like someone from Generation X (like myself) trying to convince someone from Generation Z even some millennials (like all those weird young people) how important the movies are. How important all sorts of things are. Trying to convince them how important those feelings are that can make such work great. Going through her notecards reading, The Danger, The Hope, The Dream, The Question. They might all mean the same thing. “THIS IS IMPORTANT TO ME!” Janes screams at Aaron, as if realizing for the first time that her feelings can’t be programmed on a schedule the way she always thought. “How do you like that. I buried the lede,” Aaron says himself when proclaiming his love. When your feelings get in the way, doing the job you’re so good at suddenly doesn’t seem as important. Writer-director Brooks understands these people are feeling deep down and what keeps them apart and it makes them so genuine right from the first instant they appear so when the layoffs come, it’s like we’re getting to see the last episode of a long-running series we just tuned in for. It feels like a film made by someone who knew that the end of a certain way of doing things in this world was coming and one thing that stood out to me on this viewing was how the word ‘layoff’ isn’t used as much as the much blunter ‘firing’ when all those people are let go from the Washington bureau. The language has changed to sell the reality just as Tom Grunick would want it to be. The technology used to produce the news has changed by now, the truth under it all hasn’t.

At the end the three main characters are the same people they always were, just older and their relationships keep spinning while everything else in the world moves on. And it’ll all keep going for as long as it goes, past the end credits, up to now when these questions are still being asked. With this film, Brooks is asking questions more important than he ever thought to ask again. Later Brooks films (specifically SPANGLISH and HOW DO YOU KNOW; as of this writing, I’m still waiting to see ELLA McCAY) are never uninteresting but feel like the work of someone who was trying to figure out what the film was about while making it and they never quite seem part of the real world. This one does, as much as their behavior becomes a specific look at it all. It’s what makes it feel true, it’s what makes it hurt. It’s what makes it this good. The technology used to deliver the message has changed by now but the truth under it all hasn’t. We’re still screwed up, after all. That was inevitable. BROADCAST NEWS ends with two of the characters agreeing to be at work together and two of them operating still as friends away from it. Which one will matter more in the long run goes unspoken.

William Hurt finds the way to play someone who isn’t smart but make people believe he is, the perfect way to trick people and pulls off the perfect balance of not revealing how much he’s working the system in all this, just about the strongest use of his leading man persona that he ever achieved. Albert Brooks is the ideal casting for this version of his own persona, at least partly himself (or, at least, who we think he is) to display all that desperate arrogance so there’s not a false note shown the whole way through, going for the abrasiveness but letting down that veil when he needs to. Holly Hunter is the one who’s the revelation, with only RAISING ARIZONA and a few others behind her at this point, and she is remarkable, putting a spin on deceptively simple lines of dialogue that you never saw coming and so much more just in her body language, the way she flinches when Aaron professes his love to her as if she’s thinking, please don’t ruin what we have that was always unspoken. Whole volumes could be written just on what she does without saying anything in this film which is always a remarkable thing to observe. It’s an excellent cast, all natural and unique like Robert Prosky and Lois Chiles plus the great Joan Cusack is especially good as Jane’s assistant, a year before her first Supporting Actress nomination for WORKING GIRL, but she deserved one for here too. Peter Hackes, who plays the network executive in charge of the bureau, was mostly a correspondent himself and here plays someone so colorless that he can’t seem to say anything in a genuine way, all done with a hollow, colorless style that makes him perfect to play such an empty person. To single someone else out, I can’t help but fixate on the presence of Frank Doubleday, best known as Romero in ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, here playing the role of the mercenary interviewed by Brooks for a story and how he serves as the bridge between these two films that I love so much. And, of course, Jack Nicholson, the big star who is mostly kept off camera and usually seen on monitors, taking the moment to consider what he’s just seen after Tom’s tear but when he walks into the room to play the role of the big star finally all too happy to meet the man he can tell will be his successor one day.

Once a long time ago I asked a friend who worked at News 4 New York about the big plot turn in BROADCAST NEWS involving that extra camera angle to catch Tom’s tear rolling down his face. Was it something he was surprised by? He replied that he caught the use of another camera angle in Tom Grunick’s date rape story but didn’t think of it as a plot point so much as just one of those movie things that brushes past a small inaccuracy. This could open up the question of why Holly Hunter’s character didn’t catch it at first herself but never mind. I’m sure that there are any number of things in BROADCAST NEWS that don’t have much to do with the reality of a DC news office in the ‘80s but so much of it feels right that it doesn’t matter either. The ‘seven years later’ epilogue makes me think that when Tom walks away at the end he’s heading off to anchor network coverage of the O.J. Bronco chase. That was the future, after all, just as much as he was. Looking to the future to fix what isn’t broken is maybe the only thing that changes. Not us. We’re already set. Thinking about it now, I can’t help but imagine that the Washington media was flattered by this portrayal of how clever they are but didn’t pay attention to any of the warnings. And over the years it’s become even clearer that they still won’t, no matter how often they set aside some time to cry in the morning.

Everything Is Temporary

You need to believe that things can change. And hopefully they will. There’s a framed picture of my father nearby on a bookshelf that I look at often which shows him in front of a poster for MOONSTRUCK that he had hanging on a wall. Beyond simply knowing that he always liked the film, I never asked him about this. I might not have gotten much of an answer anyway, but it always seemed clear that it was a favorite and maybe he identified with it as a comedy about Italians who lived in New York, maybe one that didn’t feature Italians who lived in New York involved in organized crime. But I’ll never be able to have this conversation with him. The point is that because of this my father comes to mind every time I see MOONSTRUCK, thinking about the happy ending that he didn’t get to have. But I remember my father. I remember the good things and the bad. And I know that things can change, things I wish I could share with him now.

But you never get all the answers, especially when it comes to questions you have about your parents. Some of those are likely things you wouldn’t want to know anyway. But my father did love MOONSTRUCK which is a wonderful film, one of the very best romantic comedies but it feels like so much more than that containing a beautiful screenplay by John Patrick Shanley that finds so much life in every single line of dialogue along with direction by Norman Jewison that feels close to miraculous in getting the tone it’s going for absolutely right. MOONSTRUCK makes me think of the past. It makes me think of my family, just as it makes me think about any possible connections that I may have to those family members who fell out of my life long ago but something of that is still inside of me, some feeling of passion and trying to understand what all this is about. It’s a film about realizing that the answers you may never find don’t matter. What matters is accepting all the absurdities in life and embracing them, particularly when it results in a form of love that you never saw coming, knowing all the madness will never be fully understood anyway. The answers you do find are there and they matter to you.

Loretta Castorini (Cher), a Brooklyn woman in her late thirties who lives with her parents in the family brownstone is proposed to by boyfriend Johnny Cammerini (Danny Aiello) right before he gets on a plane to Sicily where his beloved mother is dying. He asks Loretta to invite his estranged brother Ronny (Nicolas Cage), who he has not spoken to in five years, to the wedding. At home she informs her parents, Cosmo (Vincent Gardenia) and Rose (Olympia Dukakis), of the engagement while assuring her mother that she likes, but doesn’t love, him so there is no chance of her getting hurt. The next day she goes to find Ronny at his bakery and learns about his hatred for his brother, going back to the accident that caused Ronny to lose his hand in a bread slicer which led to losing the woman he was going to marry. After going up to his apartment to talk things out, Ronny soon kisses Loretta and takes her to his bed. The next day, Ronny promises he will never bother her again if she agrees to accompany him to an opera at the Met that night which she agrees to, but she can’t keep ignoring what is really happening between the two of them. And as Cosmo is sneaking around with another woman, Rose has her own encounter with an NYU professor (John Mahoney) that helps her understand the meaning of her marriage and what her husband is looking for.

Some years back after watching the film again I tweeted, “The last fifteen minutes of MOONSTRUCK take place in a kitchen.” This was meant to be a simple observation of amazement at how beautifully those fifteen minutes leading to the end worked, the film not needing to go anywhere else to tell the story while still feeling fully, richly cinematic but some seemed to think that I was jokingly slamming the film for doing this. Let me state for the record that I wasn’t in the slightest. Because MOONSTRUCK feels pretty close to perfect in how it takes such a simple story based on simple feelings with such a long stretch of the film set in a simple place like a kitchen and infuses it all with this feeling of full-fledged opera with all the complications that comes with it, while making each and every single line of dialogue both distinctive and sometimes so perfectly funny you can’t imagine that character saying anything else. The film is about love as well as how that love gets into us and infects us in the best way possible, making us want to cherish every second of that completely unexpected feeling.

There’s a sense of fate to it all, felt right from the start, through the opening credits that foreshadow the night at the Met to come, right up to the cheeky director’s credit over a body in a funeral parlor. MOONSTRUCK is tightly plotted yet it still finds a way to luxuriate in every single scene in its 102 minute running time no matter how brief, almost as if the plot doesn’t really matter when compared to all those emotions but of course it does, which adds to the overall effect while defying simple description on a rational level. And all this makes it feel completely glorious. Watching the film has always been enjoyable to me but it also somehow feels designed to mean more as time goes on and our hearts become more open to the mysteries that it delves into. Maybe at this point in my life I’m a little like Vincent Gardenia’s Cosmo myself, sitting up late at night listening to my own version of Vicki Carr records and wondering if I can find a way to evade death for as long as possible. But I also find myself understanding how it feels to be affected by the beauty of the moon, thinking that everything in life was already set but then something comes along to make it all so different, realizing how much love there is to find in it. The plot kicks off when the uptight Johnny proposes to Loretta, getting down on his knees in that Italian restaurant where she advised him against ordering the fish, but it also happens because of the moon and the feeling its appearance puts in the air when she goes to find Ronny at his bakery, in ways that can’t be rationally explained. It’s a plot that can’t rationally be explained but those sort of passional emotions and feelings are often so irrational anyway, so it all makes total sense.

The way that plot unfurls feels simple yet as complex as trying to understand all those distant memories where you’re not sure why your parents behaved as they did, the caring they had for you mixed up with all those very adult emotions you know they had but wouldn’t share. Loretta has no expectations of love, not since her first husband was hit by a bus as she so flatly puts it in a way that can’t help but be somehow funny in its deadpan way. The only expectations Ronny has is of his own ferocious anger, becoming greater with every loaf of bread that he bakes in that basement, the way Cage is introduced without seeing his face as if he were a mystical beast. All that it takes is for them to meet. The film is filled with moments that barely seem like they should fit yet they all do, character moments from people we never see again yet in those few seconds they reveal all the joy and pain in their hearts, the couple in the liquor store arguing over whether the husband is a wolf, the way Vincent Gardenia sells the couple on the glory of copper pipes in their home or the way the bakery employee played by Nada Despotovich gets a moment to talk about how much she loves Ronny but it’s something that he’ll never know. The way Olympia Dukakis opens her eyes and immediately asks, “Who’s dead?” speaks volumes, an awareness that no good news ever comes late at night. Even the way the waiters fret about Johnny getting down on one knee because he’ll ruin his suit. It all unfolds like a fable you’ve never heard yet it all seems inevitable. The coming together of Loretta and Ronny happens before you think it will, but the film doesn’t waste any time just as it doesn’t waste any time getting to the sight of that giant moon which gets everyone including the dogs in that mood, as if Ronny sees no point in wasting any time. As far as he’s concerned, by this point in their lives they’ve wasted enough time already.

But through all of that, there’s one particular moment in the dialogue stays with me. Well, many moments do in a film where every single line is just right, all the dialogue exacting yet flowing beautifully. But there’s that one line where Louis Guss, delightful as Rose’s brother Raymond (his wife Rita is charmingly played by Julie Bovasso who also served as the film's dialogue coach helping with the Brooklyn accents; Guss is also the one in THE GODFATHER who said, “I don’t want it near schools, I don’t want it sold to children, that’s an infamia.”), says to Cosmo over dinner, “I never told you this, because it’s not really a story…” when recounting his tale of seeing the moon long ago and the inflection in his voice as he recounts this very personal memory hits just the right chord for me. We all live in our lives, keeping our own secrets that aren’t really stories, those nights we need to forget and remember way too often, thinking it’s all set dealing with the scars that we have and how we can’t get past the hurt they caused. The old woman putting a curse on the plane becoming a reminder of siblings holding things back from each other just like Johnny and Ronny. But Loretta doesn’t believe in curses. She does believe in luck based on what happened with her first marriage but is still a sensible person, sensible in her work and what she wants to spend money on, even the depiction of passion she expects from a proposal is totally steeped in pragmatism. Which, of course, is the opposite of passion, but that’s what she wants, content with her grey hair until the time comes to turn it full on black to make her appropriately stunning for that night at the opera, a true Cinderella transformed by the moon. She even admits that she doesn’t get the opera at first when they go to see “La Bohème” but it’s the pure sense of intense emotion that gets to her and finally makes her open to what Ronny has to say when they’re out there shivering cold on the street.

Writing about all of this is like attempting to find a rationale in that madness, as impossible as trying to put that real feeling of love felt between two people into words that make sense. But simply put, every moment of MOONSTRUCK feels beautiful to me. Every shot is something I want to live in. I want to eat all the food, I want to walk down the street wearing a big winter coat to protect me against the cold like the one I had way back then in New York, it makes me want to go to the opera at the Met for the first time in my life. And in Norman Jewison, a director who I always respected due to his general body of work more than ever felt any sort of passion for, it’s a perfect fit. He understood the absurdity and how all that makes it even more human. He’s not Italian, but he gets the heightened feeling of the story mixed in with the operatic feel that comes out of it which is so necessary, the cold felt in the New York street is always tangible and never turns those feelings into a joke. And the way Jewison makes use of the space in the house is also memorable, giving it such a lived in and genuine feel to see how the characters interact with each other in a place that really does feel like their home. From the outside, the NYU professor is awed by it, exclaiming, “It’s a mansion!”. Rose’s response of “It’s a house,” is the perfect reply for a place she knows as well as anything and from the inside it’s the place to live where the family makes the most sense. And the visuals from cinematographer David Watkin add to the magic with the close-up of Cher’s face with a single tear going down during the opera seeming otherworldly and more hauntingly beautiful than she ever looked in any other film. You have to accept certain things in life, something which John Mahoney’s NYU professor has never been able to do and never been able to grow up, old as he already is and seemingly playing the same scene with a student in that restaurant presumably over and over, always knowing that the same end is going to happen once again. And it’s in Ronny’s big speech played with every ounce of fire by Cage in the freezing cold where he convinces Loretta of his love as if without ever knowing it, he was waiting all along for her to appear before him in that basement. Bookended by Dean Martin singing “That’s Amore”, it’s a film that loves all these people, loves all the food, loves every place where it’s set, loves life, loves love as much as it knows how absurd all these things are. Without the absurdity, that love wouldn’t be there.

The way the film pauses in the early morning light for Loretta taking what has become that iconic walk down the middle of the street kicking a can and still in the glow of the previous evening, a moment of reverie that becomes the perfect way to lead into the scene where the entire family comes together, like it or not. And in those fifteen minutes at the end, set in that kitchen with oatmeal being served and the whole family turning up in a way that feels completely ridiculous yet totally natural, so the ending needs to take place there in this room that says family more than any other. That passion needs to be felt for the right reasons. You can’t create this. You can’t force that feeling into being out of nowhere. We are here to ruin ourselves in search of joy, as Ronny says. Part of that is the dream to somehow keep death away which can’t happen so, in a way, falling in true love is accepting the end. Accepting how fast all this is that we live. Accepting what that feeling can really be. The moon, which also made a key appearance in Shanley’s own JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO in a scene where Tom Hanks upon seeing how big it is expresses profound thanks for his life (not long ago I found myself rewatching that entire film just for this scene), is the sign for this. Our dreams are in there. Our regrets are in there. The ability to find beauty in it and make our lives better from that is what’s found in there. We think we know what our lives should be. But then things happen. And it’s like those who came before are laughing at us. They know how absurd we are. They know how ridiculous that pain can be. And they know that what’s happening is always what was meant to be. Maybe someday we’ll know it too. As Cosmo correctly says to Loretta, everything is temporary.

Any shot of Cher in this film feels like a miracle as well. Whatever else you want to say, this is a Cher performance, like her work in Mike Nichols’ SILKWOOD and Peter Bogdanovich’s MASK, where there’s not a trace of what we think of as Cher in her Oscar-winning performance and this feels vulnerable in a way that the others really aren’t. There are silent moments that she has, just watching the way she responds to others, which might have been as responsible for her Oscar win as much as anything, but through each screwy line of dialogue she takes this character and infuses it with every ounce of level-headedness, confusion and joy, turning it into something unforgettable. Playing against her, Nicolas Cage takes the automatic madness coming from his screen presence, and makes it feel completely right in this New York world, confronting the heightened dialogue in a way that takes each word spoken to its full potential, but he also transforms the lines with every ounce of fire in his big speech reaches to the height of that operatic feel. Just looking at his eyes when he gives Cher a certain look while inviting her to come inside with him, he doesn’t need to do anything else. All that passion is there, Cage correctly hits the ceiling with it, and yet the happily calm way he says “I would love some oatmeal” to Rose near the end in a way that says he’s not moving from this room might be my favorite moment of his in the whole film. Vincent Gardenia, Oscar-nominated, is also a joy and the way he uses his fingers in service to the grand points he needs to make in his arguments becomes a true marvel. Olympia Dukakis, Oscar winner, plays so much in just her looks at people and the way she drills in with her best lines to cut someone down has a power to it, the laugh that comes out of the moment unavoidable while feeling totally clear how much she means what she says. In his few scenes, John Mahoney cannily takes the surface level of charm coming off his NYU professor to use his smile in a way that doesn’t quite mask the character’s lack of understanding what he’s missing out on while the way Danny Aiello speaks the line, “I’m calling from the deathbed of my mother” on the phone call to Loretta somehow becomes one of the funniest things ever spoken in a movie. Also memorable is Fiodor Chaliapin as Cosmo’s father for the way he handles all those dogs as well as how he spits out the lines that he has with defiance, especially at the end when he tearfully declares, “I’m confused.”

As of this writing, I’m approaching the third anniversary of the night my mother died. It was late Thanksgiving night. And, of course, since the date when it happened and the actual holiday don’t always match up this means that most years it’ll feel like there are two days to mark the anniversary. Leave it to my mother to pull off that neat trick. Less than six months later, I met the woman who I plan to spend the rest of my life with. And right now, it feels like something that was always meant to be. Maybe I’ll even propose to her in a nice Italian restaurant, or at least maybe Musso’s. And hopefully that’s what sometimes happens in life. After all, if you’ve never collapsed sobbing on the sidewalk over someone you’ve been in love with, then what’s the point of any of it? If you’ve never been wracked with guilt over something involving your parents long after they’re gone, are you even human? Maybe it’s even possible that you’ll find your way out the other side of that darkness to a form of happiness you never imagined. Released at Christmas 1987, MOONSTRUCK is one of the films from that year which could likely be called perfect, up there with the likes of ROBOCOP and BROADCAST NEWS which put together could make for a good triple bill. They’re not only the funniest films of that year but they understand so much about the absurdity of it all, each in their own way. And so much of what happens to us is about just trying to figure out what it all means, the things MOONSTRUCK seems to know and understand. As for answers we’ll never get, maybe my dad simply thought it was a funny film with enjoyable characters, nothing all that complicated. But I still suspect there was something more to it than that, something connected to his own memories of the past and where he came from. Maybe there’s a secret about something that he never told me. But if you look up at the moon and think about all the possibilities still to be found in that magic it suddenly all makes sense. The people who loved you and are no longer here will laugh with joy. For once, you know what they know. And maybe then you can live the rest of your life finally able to understand.