In the Middle of Blood and Violence

I feel sadly lacking when it comes to knowledge of Charles Bronson films. Of course I’ve seen his classics from the 60s along with a few of his better-known vehicles from the 70s. But it feels like there are so many more out there, from oddball entries he made in Europe to his later years I the 80s making films for Cannon that all look the same in the trailers. One that I have seen a few times, and it’s not even one of his better known titles, is VIOLENT CITY aka THE FAMILY. It’s a film that actually has some pretty terrific stuff in it and while it doesn’t necessarily all come together it still holds up pretty well.

The deceptively simple plot has Bronson’s hitman left for dead and sent to prison after an unsuccessful attempt on his life. Once released, he is intent on seeking out the ones who tried to kill him while dealing with the woman (Jill Ireland, of course) he loved and a mob boss (Telly Savalas) intent on luring Bronson into his organization.


The description on the DVD box claims that the inspiration is LE SAMOURAI. That’s not much of a help for me, since I’ve never actually seen LE SAMOURAI (I have seen some films by Melville like LE CERCLE ROUGE and LE DOULOS, though), but I’ll try to get on that. The plot of VIOLENT CITY plays like a mish-mosh of various noir/revenge storylines familiar to all, particularly POINT BLANK which it bears a slight resemblance to stylistically due to some elliptically plotted flashbacks. It’s consistently a genuinely cinematic movie with at times striking imagery as well as a handful of truly memorable action scenes. There’s a terrific car chase, one of the best of this period, filmed in the Virgin Islands which comes almost immediately after the opening credits and as it happens there’s not a line of dialogue spoken for the first ten minutes. This neat RIO BRAVO-type idea of making the story purely visual even extends to other sections of the film, no real surprise considering this is Charles Bronson we’re talking about. I doubt he has a hundred lines of dialogue over the entire running time and yet it’s probably one of the best post-60s examples of how Bronson, along with his physical persona, was used within the frame. Like a number of other Italian films made around this period, some of it is actually shot in America and in this one there seems to be more than usual, with a lot of location footage filmed in and around Louisiana. The French Quarter is briefly seen, yes, but so are a number of other local sights of the sort not usually seen in films, ranging from slums to old fashioned southern backyard parties and it continually gives it a unique flavor. Adding to all this is the phenomenal score by Ennio Morricone, with a main title that is probably listed in the dictionary when you look up ‘cool’.


It is, however, a decidedly odd viewing experience, in how various sections seem to come from totally different movies, as if you’re switching channels and coming across different Bronson-Ireland films all at once. Along with the action, there’s a very long sequence of Bronson trying to pull off a hit at a racetrack which goes on so long and takes its time observing so many different elements of the goings on at the racetrack, practically in documentary form, and by a certain point it begins to come off as practically a mini-remake of LE MANS. The basic narrative almost feels like it reaches a sort of conclusion around fifty minutes in and what follows comes off as a continuation rather than the rest of the movie. Character motivation and even relationships feel unclear at times, something which is expected in a plot that involves multiple double-crosses, but it still helps to feel like you’re able to have a handle on what exactly is going on. It feels like some surprises are revealed before they should be and others remain murky beyond the point where they should be clear. The movie, directed by Sergio Salina and bearing the names of multiple writers in the credits (including, surprisingly, Lina Wertmuller), contains some scenes and imagery within which feel like they could very well be a part of a minor genre classic but other sections just seem to drift along, content to pad time for a reel or so. One of the sequences where all the elements come together is the finale (no spoilers) which is genuinely startling and is just one of those cinematic moments that you remember years after the rest of the film has been forgotten. It’s interesting that, as good as it is, this ending isn’t really built up to in a particularly strong way (we lose track of one character in the buildup, blunting some of its effectiveness) so, like the best things in the film, it almost seems to exist as just a sequence on its own. But that doesn’t diminish how well it truly works. For the record, what is now known as VIOLENT CITY was originally released in the U.S. as THE FAMILY, in a slightly different version than what is now on DVD. Like a number of other Italian genre titles from this period, scenes that were never dubbed into English are presented in Italian with subititles.


Bronson, with his small amount of dialogue and all, is excellent, somehow managing to lend the role a human touch even as he seemingly isn’t doing a thing. Telly Savalas, second-billed but playing a role that may as well have “Special Guest Star” attached to it, is playing a key role but never has the weight it needs (his office does come with a well-stocked bar which includes several bottles of J&B, however). He may be the only one of the leads who only worked at Cinecitta in Rome and ultimately the oversize glasses he sometimes wears make more of an impression than he ever does.


Jill Ireland’s presence is presumably due to Bronson and while it’s possible that she was never more beautiful than she is here (and there is nudity, though possibly by a body double) I’m still unconvinced in regards to how good she is. When called a bitch at one point she replies, “Of course I’m a bitch,” and the problem is everything about her as a person comes off as very un-bitchlike. Still, she photographs great and, like her husband, is at times used very well within the frame (there’s a great shot showing her in close-up in the center of the Scope frame, both leading men in the background on either side of her, showing us visually what we don’t need to be told in dialogue). With her long blonde hair and penchant for getting slapped around, I found myself imagining Barbara Bouchet in the role, especially since there is a very slight resemblance. But since this is a Charles Bronson movie that of course wasn’t going to happen and it could be argued that the obvious tenderness felt between the real-life couple adds an emotional potency to the film, which may not have otherwise been there. It’s one of a number of touches that keeps VIOLENT CITY from playing completely like a film you’ve already seen more than a few times.

How does it rank in the Bronson canon? I’ll still have to see a few more of those films to begin to find out. The disjointed nature of VIOLENT CITY probably prevents it from being at the top of that list but its very best moments, especially the beginning and end, are ultimately worth it, making it a film that deserves to be better known than it is.

Land of the Real and the Unreal

The 1961 Jerry Lewis vehicle THE ERRAND BOY is set at a big-time movie studio in Hollywood. That studio in question is Paramutual Pictures, but any small child could figure out that the name is a slight play on Paramount, the studio where Jerry was working at the time. The famous Paramount lot also fills the role of playing Paramutual which allows the film to double as a nice little time-capsule of how the studio looked at the time. Not too different from now, as it turned out. Yes, it’s changed and gotten considerably bigger but some of what can be seen in the Lewis film is still very much like how it is now. The famous gate is still there, although it’s now located inside the studio proper. The configuration of some of the soundstages can still be recognizable, as well some of the buildings housing the executive offices. The film is little more than an excuse to have Jerry Lewis wreak havoc on every square inch of the studio that he can find and that’s just about all you need.

Jerry plays a low-level Paramutual employee named Morty Tashman (or, has he stammeringly puts it when asked, “Tashman. Morty Tashman. Morty S. Tashman.”) who is recruited by studio head Tom Paramutual (THE GREAT McGINTY’s Brian Donlevy) to work in the mailroom (“It doesn’t pay much.” “But at least the hours are lousy.”) so he can keep an eye on what’s happening on the lot, allowing the studio board to hopefully learn why so much money is being spent there.


And that’s about it for plot. You were expecting more than that? The rest of the film is almost entirely composed of scene after scene of Jerry getting into some kind of trouble and all the chaos that ensues. Like any Jerry film from this period some scenes work, some don’t. It’s not my favorite of the mostly plotless films he directed in this period—I think I prefer THE BELLBOY and THE PATSY to this—but there are enough laughs throughout. There’s also some extremely mawkish stuff involving some puppets that Morty Tashman pours his heart out to in multiple scenes and it’s extremely corny. At least we still get the bits involving the kids asking for jelly beans, Jerry in a crowded elevator, Renee Taylor trying to teach him how to pronounce the names of certain bigwigs, the multiple scenes involving his mailroom supervisor played by Stanley Adams (Cyrano Jones in the classic STAR TREK episode “The Trouble With Tribbles”), not to mention others sprinkled throughout. Lots of familiar faces pop up throughout from Kathleen Freeman (uncharacteristically not speaking) to Sig Ruman to the cast of BONANZA, meaning that this is the second post in a row where I mention a film that includes Lorne Greene in the cast. I don’t know when that’s going to happen again.


I watched my DVD of THE ERRAND BOY the other day for purely sentimental reasons. I’ve spent the past several years working on the Paramount lot but now the job is moving elsewhere in town and I’m of course going with it so it seemed like the right time to watch it as a way to say goodbye. I’ve loved working on the lot and have always gotten a thrill at walking around that studio, thinking about all the legendary cinematic moments that have happened there. The soundstages have plaques on them listing some of the films that have shot there, but I wish there were more details. I wish I knew which soundstage they shot the party from BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S or Spock’s death from WRATH OF KHAN or that great long take from the beginning of SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS or any random scene from DOUBLE INDEMNITY. I do know that CHEERS and FRASIER were both shot on Stage 25 and a few weeks ago I was passing it in the late afternoon when I saw the door open. I looked inside and it was totally empty. I walked in, went to the center of the large stage and stood there, trying to soak in all the history that it had been witness to. SUNSET BOULEVARD is of course another ideal film to look at which shows off the studio and that second-floor row of offices where Nancy Olson’s character works still looks pretty much the same today although when William Holden enters the studio gate we can also see how much that area has changed. And when Holden & Olson go for their late night walk around the studio, it’s impossible to tell exactly where they are. I don’t have a particularly favorite section of the lot, but I do have a soft spot for Lucy Park, a small area named for Lucille Ball which is immediately recognizable from various BRADY BUNCH appearances. I always looked forward to taking a moment to stroll through the area on my way into work in the morning, breathing in the nature before diving into the madness of the day.


In this day and age you don’t get the cowboys and showgirls and aliens milling around a studio that you’d like, but I did get the privilege of seeing Rose McGowan walking her dog, Carla Gugino in costume for a show she was starring in, Jennifer Tilly nodding a quick hello at me, Jeremy Piven shooting ENTOURAGE. When out on a lunchtime walk one day I fell into conversation with a woman dressed in a way that made me assume she was there for an audition. I glanced down at the drive on she was holding in her hand and realized it was Leilani Sarelle, Sharon Stone’s girlfriend in BASIC INSTINCT. Right then I flashed on how the Jerry Goldsmith track “Roxy Loses” had been named for he character and how she came to a bad end in that car chase with Michael Douglas. I did not tell her this. Early one evening I was walking by a building and through a window I quickly spotted Cameron Crowe involved in what looked like a very serious conversation. It was just a few weeks before the release of ELIZABETHTOWN and I suspect he knew what was coming. And since it was Paramount, home of HAPPY DAYS, it was appropriate that I once got to see Henry Winkler but, frustratingly, only from a distance.

Though the occasion is a little sad, there’s the fact that I got to spend as much time there as I did. When you come right down to it, it is just a series of buildings and stages but it’s not to think about how you’re getting to walk among the ghosts of Hollywood past. The lure that feeling has is powerful and if it catches you in the right way it just might stay with you forever.

Ultimate Knowledge

Things didn’t quite go according to plan the other night when I went to see the double bill of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and THE BLACK HOLE at the New Beverly. Several people cancelled on me, including my longtime friend Mojo who works on the visual effects of the current incarnation and probably knows more about old school GALACTICA than anyone. Well, anyone I know anyway. And then when I started talking to a cute blonde girl dressed in black there to see the movies in front of the theater I got a call from a co-worker that I had to take. He had a valid reason for calling, but did it really have to be the one time in my life that a cute girl asks me a question about FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR? At least I had the double bill to look forward to.


Full disclosure: I’m maybe a few years too young to have any real memories of watching the original BATTLESTAR GALACTICA when it originally ran so I don’t have any real sentimental attachment to the show (weirdly, I do remember watching BUCK ROGERS and maintain a fondness for Erin Gray to this day, not that I think it’s any better because of that). What I’m saying is that I can get into the spirit while watching the BATTLESTAR GALACTICA movie, but the fact still remains that it’s not really a movie. It was never meant to be, of course, since it’s just the first few episodes strung together with a few modifications (I guess the theatrical release occurred after the series had run and this has always confused me). Considering it runs two hours and change, it could have used a few more modifications to cut it down to workable length as well. The film is made up of three parts: the setup where the Cylons seek to exterminate humanity, the middle portion where we get to know the characters and the final section which feels like a self-contained adventure roughly the length of an episode. And then it pretty much stops and rolls credits since, naturally, the story doesn’t end at this point. There’s some fun in there in a nostalgic 70s way, but the look of it, obviously meant for television, isn’t very interesting. The costumes don’t magnify to the big screen very well and the design of all the control modules kept making me think of the “lights blinking back and forth” joke in AIRPLANE II. The middle section focusing on the characters goes on for what feels like a long time, and since none of this is going to be resolved in the movie, it makes me wish they had cut a lot of this down. It’s a knockoff of STAR WARS meant for kids and, well, that’s about all I have to say about it. Jane Seymour is very cute, however. Points to the New Beverly for including a vintage Sensurround disclaimer explaining the revolutionary process that would be used in the movie we were about to see. Of course, we didn’t get to actually see GALACTICA in Sensurround, but it was nice to be reminded of it. Even nicer was how beautiful the print was, looking as if it had been struck in 1978, then sealed away until it would be used thirty years later.


It was the second movie on the bill that night which was the real reason I was there, a film that I made sure I was sitting in the front row to see. I can remember desperately wanting to see THE BLACK HOLE when I was a kid, but my parents never took me. Beats me why and it would be pointless to ask my mom about it. But to this day, if I see the poster or the trailer which contains the graphics from the opening credits I’m immediately shot back to when I was a kid. It’s safe to say now that if they had taken me I probably would have been bored or confused by it, the first PG-rated film released by Disney, and the stature the film attained it my head later on would never have happened. This was my first time seeing it in a theater and I couldn’t help feel thrilled when the lights went down and the film began immediately with the playing of John Barry’s majestic overture (this film, along with the concurrently released STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE was the last to ever contain such an overture). The film may have a few issues—hell, it may have a lot of issues--but I’m not really sure if I care.


The plot details the USS Palomino and its discovery of the long lost ship the Cygnus near a black hole. Once onboard, the Palomino’s crew discovers the long lost ship’s commander, Dr. Hans Reinhardt, alive and well, in charge of a group of robot sentries controlling the ship and fully intent on entering the black hole or, as he puts it, “In…through…and beyond.” What’s interesting about THE BLACK HOLE is that it seems stuck between the basic Disney nature of it (goofy robots, cardboard characters) and the feel that it has genuinely loftier goals which its creators are either being prevented from fulfilling or it’s simply beyond their abilities. One of the biggest problems with the film is that it seems to spend its running time promising something incredible and then doesn’t fulfill it (again, like STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE. The two would really make the ideal double bill). The extremely ambitious look of the film easily sets it apart simply being inspired by STAR WARS, making for some incredible imagery.


The leads, including Robert Forster, Yvette Mimieux and Joseph Bottoms, seem directed to by as colorless as possible. Anthony Perkins and Ernest Borgnine come off more interesting, maybe because their acting styles don’t allow them to ever come off as so bland. Maximilian Schell as the great Dr. Hans Reinhardt (an intimidating name if there ever was one) truly does seem like an intelligent lunatic and his performance almost comes off as too unhinged for the stagey sets he has to work on. There’s also the added weirdness of the giant robot Maximillian, who Schell calls by name a number of times, giving an added subtext which makes perfect sense in context of Maximillian being some kind of outgrowth of Reinhardt’s personality battling in the mind of its master. Pairing that with the, um, interest Anthony Perkins’ Dr. Durant takes in Reinhardt’s plan (“Shall we discuss that over dinner?” Reinhadt asks Durant). There seems to be subtext all over the place in THE BLACK HOLE—it doesn’t necessarily make it any better but at least provides the film with stuff going on along with the visuals. There’s a moody, dreamlike feel throughout much of the movie that only feels interrupted occasionally by elements like the robots voiced without credit by Roddy McDowall and Slim Pickens (but even they are presented in relatively sober fashion), or the goofy rescue scene where Robert Forster attempts to save Yvette Mimieux from a conveyor belt-type device which is scored as heroically as possible by John Barry and almost feels like it could come from that Science Fiction film that Albert Brooks is editing in MODERN ROMANCE. Feeling out of place for a different reason is an infamously violent death scene which, even though nothing is actually shown, is still surprisingly grisly for a Disney film (the shock of the scene is probably one of many reasons for the cult around the film to this day). John Barry’s score ranges from the pomp-and-circumstance feel of the opening march to the moody expanse of the title them to a feel of genuine romance and danger which it feels at times like the movie wouldn’t have otherwise—some of it slightly resembles his work on that year’s Bond film MOONRAKER, another good double bill idea for this one.


And then there’s the ending, which has puzzled people for years and I can’t think of anything to say which would help. I imagine a few Gen-Xers sitting in an old folks’ home, forty years from now, still arguing over what happens and getting nowhere after all that time. Like much of the rest of the film, it’s striking looking but the confusion it provides in no way disguises how much it doesn’t fulfill what’s been promised over the course of the film (again, like STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE).

But even with its problems, I still found myself sitting through THE BLACK HOLE with a goofy grin on my face, enjoying it immensely. Some of it is rather sleepy and it does lack compelling personalities in its characters, but it has a weighty feel it its tone that you don’t get in other post-STAR WARS film from those years. When the credits rolled on that baffling ending, I listened to John Barry’s theme one more time and got up to leave the New Beverly. As I was heading outside, I found myself exiting at the same time as the cute blonde girl dressed in black. She turned to me and asked what I thought. I carefully started to say, “Well, I’m glad I finally saw a print. Sure, it’s a little slow, but it’s also…” Before I could figure out what else to say, she simply stated, “It was fantastic.” To which I immediately responded, “Yes, it was.” Because I realized that the cute blonde girl dressed in black was right. I got to see THE BLACK HOLE in a theater, something I’ve wanted to do for years. In the end, the night was worth it. And it really was fantastic.

It's As It Always Was

There are kids going off to college right now who never had the opportunity to see a Cannon Film in the theater. What a sad, incomplete life they must be leading. How do you explain Cannon Films to someone who wasn’t alive to witness the glory of Charles Bronson and Chuck Norris vehicles every few months, movies devoted to breakdancing, contracts with Godard signed on cocktail napkins? And the infamous SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE, an attempt by the studio to break out into the big leagues by taking an established franchise and making it their own. By now everyone knows of course that didn’t happen. Really, it’s never a good idea to take a film that runs 135 minutes and cut it down to 90. I saw it on opening day way back in July 1987 and thought maybe the theater had left out a reel or two. I went back a few days later to make sure. Nope, same film. It’s always been the same film. I actually purchased the Young Adult novelization, which I was too old for, just to find out what was missing. By now I’m sure the script can be found somewhere online as well. If you look further around the net you’ll find fans talking about that missing footage, addressing the subject as if debating what’s missing from THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS and I’m sure the appearance of some of this footage on the recent DVD provided more things to argue about. Many, many stills from these and other scenes have long been available. But I’ve long since come to the conclusion that while a more complete version of the film would definitely have been more coherent, it still wouldn’t have been very good. That just wasn’t to be.


In case you aren’t one of the people obsessing over it, THE QUEST FOR PEACE begins with Superman (Christopher Reeve, of course) saving the life of a Russian Cosmonaut. Shortly after, we learn that arms talks between the U.S. and Soviet Union are breaking down. Just as this is occurring, the Daily Planet is acquired by publishing tycoon David Warfield (Sam Wanamaker) who, with his socialite daughter Lacey (Mariel Hemmingway) turns the paper into a trashy tabloid. As Clark, Lois Lane, Perry White & Jimmy Olsen react with horror to what’s happening to the paper, Warfield is of course thrilled by what the situation will do for business (“We could double our circulation with a good international crisis.”). Meanwhile, a young boy named Jeremy writes to Superman asking him to do something about all the nuclear weapons. As Superman makes his decision, Lex Luthor (the returning Gene Hackman) is freshly escaped from jail and is working out a plan to use all this to his advantage.


Working from a story idea by Christopher Reeve, the film seems extremely earnest in its approach to the basic premise, doing its best to move on from the Richard Pryor antics of the last film. There’s a definite through-line buried in there somewhere about how Superman is fully and completely ready to make the planet Earth his home. The problem is that the story is basically unworkable and all the good intentions the film may have can’t disguise the fact that the seriousness of this real-world issue doesn’t really belong in this context and there’s no way to do it without simplifying every aspect of it. Hey, I’d like Superman to show up and take care of all the problems in the world too, but we all know that this isn’t going to happen. At one point he makes a brief reference to the possibility of “warped individuals” who may be hiding the weapons but it’s implied that everyone everywhere is all for what he’s doing. So what exactly happens, then? What leads Superman to the realization that his tossing all the missiles into the sun isn’t going to stop all war forever? It’s tough to say and even in a complete version of the story it would have been hard for this film to seriously address such issues without turning into something completely different.


Just to clarify, that 45 minutes were taken out means that the story ceases to make sense on a number of occasions (Luthor’s plan is never clear, we don’t know how Superman knows that Nuclear Man is looking for Lacey). A lot of what’s left isn’t very good either. Compounding the problem is the fact that the film contains the absolute worst, cheapest looking special effects imaginable, a true embarrassment after the groundbreaking effects of the original film and a sign that the film was being bankrolled by people who either didn’t care about sustaining the quality or found themselves financially unable to. With some genuine sloppiness occurring because of this, SUPERMAN IV is about as incomplete and unreleasable as any major film that was released in the 80s. There’s a feel that in cutting down the movie to such a short length, they were aiming it at a younger audience but really, kids deserve better than this.


But what if the Salkinds or Warner Bros. had been in charge? What if Richard Donner or even Richard Lester had been at the helm? That’s a tough call because while the basic approach in the script by Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal is well-meaning it still faces the problem of being too much like what we already saw in the Donner original. Superman rescues, insults by Lex Luthor, the Lois-Clark relationship, battles with villains of equal strength of Superman, all of these things were done better before. When Clark/Superman is roped into a double date with Lois and Lacey, leading to a farcical setpiece, it’s actually not that good a scene (and it doesn’t really get a decent close), but at least it’s not something we’ve seen before. Some of the problems can be attributed to director Sidney J. Furie (THE IPCRESS FILE and THE BOYS OF COMPANY C, among others) but it’s also easy to imagine that the production realities put him in an impossible position. Still, there’s a very dry feel to many scenes almost as if he had just set the cameras up and let the actors say the dialogue without giving them much guidance. Many shots throughout have a very wide feel to them (at least it’s good Scope use) but it feels reminiscent of Scope movies from the 50s and 60s that would just set up a scene and have the actors play it in a long master, and not in a good way. Too often scenes feel like they’re played in masters and Furie just never bothered to get any coverage for close-ups or medium shots.


It’s hard to ignore these and a myriad of other problems but at least the film has Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder and I think it helps more than has ever really been stated. Reeve is thinner than he should be, both as Superman and Clark Kent, but more than the other films in the series this entry really feels like it is examining the character of Kal-El, which is of course who he is anyway. The film may be an embarrassment but Reeve never is and in this context that really is saying something. Kidder, given a full role again after the cameo of the previous film, seems to be playing it as if she knows Clark Kent’s secret but has psychologically buried that knowledge. I’ve always liked Kidder’s portrayal of the character and while it may not be as sharp as her performance in the first film (the material’s not there either) her presence helps immensely. Throughout the film there seem to be little moments coming from Reeve and Kidder, small bits of business within scenes, and while they seem to have nothing to do with the story they succeed in showing how familiar they really were with each other. It gives this aspect of the film a feeling that is more human (for lack of a better word) than it otherwise displays and is certainly something more of an emotional touch than we ever get from Bryan Singer’s recent film.


It’s nice to see Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor again and it’s hard not to get some enjoyment out of his scenes, but, along with not even wearing a bald cap this time, he clearly isn’t giving the part the same sort of energy that he once did (Lengthy aside: There’s an article in discussing actors who reprise roles, but don’t really seem to be playing the same character. That could be Heston in BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES, Brian Dennehy in F/X 2, maybe Shatner in STAR TREK:GENERATIONS and Hackman in this film). Mariel Hemmingway is likable, maybe too likable, but doesn’t seem to be getting the right direction from Furie to sell her character. Jackie Cooper and Marc McClure return as Perry White and Jimmy Olsen, but neither one gets to do very much. Jon Cryer is Luthor’s nephew Lenny, a more annoying comic relief than Ned Beatty ever was. I should have asked him about this movie when he showed up at the New Beverly for PRETTY IN PINK. Jim Broadbent and William Hootkins are a few of the arms dealers Luthor deals with. Jayne Brook, Dan Rydell’s psychiatrist on SPORTS NIGHT, plays a schoolteacher (was she living in England at the time?) but her voice is obviously dubbed, just as a number of bit players seem to be (the kid playing Jeremy is probably dubbed but he’s a kid, so let’s leave him be). Mark Pillow, who was never heard from again, plays Nuclear Man and is dubbed with Hackman’s voice which it commented on but one wonders what the real reason for that was. Did Gene Hackman get paid extra by Cannon for voicing a second character?


It’s far too easy to talk about how awful the special effects are (and they are), but there are also numerous issues with other aspects such as the basic ugliness of the film. From the dingy cinematography to the bland and cheap looking sets and production design to even the costumes which all look chintzy and designed by the same person. When Clark Kent visits Smallville to discuss the sale of the Kent farm, it’s a nice little scene and the farm, which I can only assume isn’t the same location as in the first film, actually does look right and is a reasonable facsimile of what was in the earlier film. It’s actually the rare thing the production seems to do right. None of the principal photography was shot in New York, of course, but it feels like there’s miles and miles of second unit footage shot there for the battle scenes as Superman and Nuclear Man fly around fighting (the World Trade Center is, as usual, very visible) and the way it’s shot just begins to feel repetitive after a while, even for a film that’s as short as this one is. If I’m pressed, I’d say that some of the model work throughout looks to be decent, but it plays alongside flying footage that is so terrible that you don’t really notice. The score is credited to John Williams, with it being ‘adapted’ by Alexander Courage. I think, along with his original music, Williams composed the themes for Lacey Warfield and Nuclear Man and again, pay close attention, there might be some interesting stuff in there, but it really is tough to tell.


There are so many other things wrong with the film that I could go on, but there’s no real point. I admit that there’s a degree of earnestness to it which can’t be found in SUPERMAN RETURNS (a movie that, for me, gets worse every single time I flip by it on cable for five minutes) and having Reeve & Kidder present here means I can’t entirely hate it. But, like SUPERMAN III, I find myself watching it again every now and then, marveling at how things were allowed to go so irrevocably wrong. The nuclear arms plotline of course dates it automatically now but, like the gas shortage subplot in SUPERMAN III, watching the Daily Planet scenes in THE QUEST FOR PEACE now makes it seem surprisingly relevant. This feels especially true in this town as the Los Angeles Times is currently being decimated by the tycoon who now owns that paper, what with mass layoffs and favorite sections getting cut. I don’t even buy the paper anymore because of that. It’s a shame, because I hate the idea of being without a hometown paper in what is, after all, a major metropolitan city. Just like I hate the idea of not having a SUPERMAN film with Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder. SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE may be a terrible movie and I may have only scratched the surface of all the things wrong with it, but at least it has that.

Good For The Department's Image

I’ve tried, but I can’t approach writing about THE DEAD POOL with any real degree of seriousness. It’s easily the goofiest of all the DIRTY HARRY sequels and nothing about it feels like anybody overexerted themselves too strongly in making it. But in spite of this I always find myself enjoying watching every last ridiculous second of it. Come to me on my death bed and ask me which of the HARRY sequels I want to see before it’s too late, I’ll pick THE DEAD POOL without even thinking about it.


As the film begins, Harry is getting some unwanted media attention after successfully putting crime boss Lou Janero behind bars. The credits are barely off the screen when as he’s driving along one night some of Janero’s goons come after him with machine guns. They give chase and run him off the road, but Harry manages to take care of them, with a shot to the head each for two and taking care of the last by shooting him in the back as he runs away (Jeez, Harry). His captain expresses his displeasure over the incident by yelling at Harry for trashing yet another squad car. All the attention Harry’s been getting is good for the department’s public image however (we see him on a magazine cover—how did any photographer ever get close enough to take a photo?) and to keep a leash on him, Harry is assigned a new partner, Al Quan (Evan C. Kim). Meanwhile, rock star Johnny Squares (Jim Carrey, credited as “James”) o.d.’s while shooting a horror film in San Francisco. Harry and his partner investigate, with suspicion naturally falling on the film’s egotistical director Peter Swan (Liam Neeson) but it soon comes out that Johnny Squares was a name on a Dead Pool game being played by Swan and other crew members…and Harry’s name is on the list as well. Harry’s attention is also occupied by beautiful television reporter Samantha Walker (Patricia Clarkson) who has her own interest in Callahan.


Made extremely quickly in 1988 (five months from start of production to release in theaters) and directed by Buddy Van Horn, THE DEAD POOL was presumably made as a tradeoff with Warner Brothers so Clint could direct BIRD, which was shot before this but released after. It’s a very silly movie but much of that was presumably intentional, especially the Captain’s repeated rants at Harry (“When I told you to stop wrecking our cars, I didn’t mean to go out and find something else to destroy!) and after the scuzziness of SUDDEN IMPACT it actually makes for a more enjoyable popcorn movie, so much that the few points where it approaches the extreme of the other movie seems maybe a little too much in this context. The nature of the media and celebrity circa 1988 is at least a nod towards some depth (Clarkson’s character is actually fairly believably written and played in this sense), but it’s tough to take too much of this very seriously particularly when it comes to some of the bad-TV level dialogue that overexplains things to all the dummies in the audience (one discussion of the case between Harry and Al includes: “The coroner said Squares was using Speedballs.” “An injection of cocaine and heroin?” “Yeah.” Gee, thanks for the information guys). The portrayal of the horror movie being shot is pretty ridiculous too—the production continues immediately even though the star has just died, the films Swan makes wasn’t being made by anyone in 1988 (we hear titles like HELL WITHOUT THE DEVIL and NIGHT OF THE SLASHER) and all the crew members are blatantly incompetent. When the cops sit down to watch clips from Swan’s films (represented by actual unidentified movies) they react to them as if watching something that came from a deranged mind. I guess violent action films are ok, but anyone watching violent horror films should seek immediate psychiatric help. But saying all this implies that I’m taking any of this seriously, which I of course don’t, and the total ineffectiveness of it as a mystery (Who’s killing the people on the dead pool list? Um, that guy, over there) almost underlines the point. Still, you could argue that this movie exists to see Harry Callahan blow people away with his Magnum, not to see him solve an intricate series of crimes. The best part of the entire film, almost its very reason for being, is of course the chase with the miniature car, outfitted with a bomb, pursuing Harry in his car through the streets of San Francisco in a pretty damn fun spoof of the car chase in BULLITT. Parts of this film are almost played for comedy and Eastwood does a good job playing it that way, but the chase is played totally straight and it’s all the funnier for it—much like BULLITT, also scored by Lalo Schifrin, it’s almost entirely played without music. The sequence doesn’t come at the end which means everything that follows seems anticlimactic, but it really is worth watching the entire movie for it.


It is, in all honestly, the least visually distinguished of the series. It’s the only one not shot in Scope (at 91 minutes, it's the shortest too) and looks pretty much like a TV show—THE NAKED GUN probably has as much visual style. The fact that the opening or closing are pretty much exactly the same as in SUDDEN IMPACT (opening credits over the city at night, ending credits that start with helicopter shot from Eastwood and the leading lady) is the sort of thing that would indicate a continued use in a series but since the earlier films didn’t utilize this idea it just seems like it’s a case where it was used once before, they may as well use it again. Lalo Schifrin’s score isn’t all that memorable, but bits of themes from the earlier films can be heard if I pay close attention and it’s always fun to hear Schifrin music backing up Clint Eastwood anyway.


Eastwood’s a lot of fun to watch. Of course he is. He knows the part and seems relaxed enough this time to know how much to play some of it for the laughs. He also gets to say “Swell” a few times once again. Patricia Clarkson, not the sort of actress you’d expect in this sort of movie, is enjoyable to watch partly because of her height—she seems genuinely amused at how Clint Eastwood is at least a head taller than her and plays it as determined to use this to her advantage. Anyway, she’s pretty darn cute here. Evan C. Kim, whose immortality will be as the Bruce Lee figure in the “Fistful of Yen” segment of KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE, manages to make his character likable despite the fact that he tells some very bad jokes. He also uses a few martial arts moves during one shootout in Chinatown (the obligatory Harry-stumbles-onto-a-crime sequence). Michael Currie, reprising his role in SUDDEN IMPACT, plays the Captain who yells at Harry a lot. Liam Neeson and Jim Carrey, truthfully, don’t make much of an impression for me here, but it is cool to see them in such early roles.


There’s nothing about THE DEAD POOL that makes any nods towards it being a “final” Dirty Harry film. It simply allows Clint Eastwood to spend ninety minutes portraying his famous character one more time. In no way does it approach the level of seriousness of other films in the series, but even in that goofiness there is a slightly adult tone to it all, the sort you don’t get anymore, which reminds me how these films really do come from another time. I’m pretty sure that it’s not a favorite of any of the people involved but I still need to pull it out and watch it again every now and then, even if it’s just to see Clint Eastwood’s realization that a toy car is trying to kill him one more time.

A Pretty Girl is Never Ridiculous

It probably says something that I remember thinking 1972’s THE CASE OF THE BLOODY IRIS was a particularly sleazy giallo entry when I first saw it a few years ago. Looking at it again, that vibe is still there for me but maybe not quite as much. Maybe that says something about how many other giallos I’ve seen by now. Maybe it says something about how I’ve gotten used to all that 70s sleaze. The film isn’t the best or the most elegant or the most fun but it is pretty enjoyable in its own nasty way. And it has Edwige Fenech, which makes it even better.


A beautiful young woman is stabbed to death in the elevator of an apartment building (resembling a scene Brian De Palma would shoot a few years later—come to think of it, the woman even looks like Angie Dickinson) and soon after another young woman (TORSO’s Carla Braidt) who was one of the people who discovered her is also killed, by being tied up in her own bathtub, then drowned. Just then, the owner of the building Andrea Barto (George Hilton) happens to meet model Jennifer (Edwige Fenech) who, with her best friend Marilyn (Paola Quattrini) is looking for a new place to live. Since he owns a building and she’s Edwige Fenech, Andrea decides to help Jennifer out by leasing the two girls the now-vacant apartment. Marilyn, the ditz of the two, seems to find everything about the murders absolutely hysterical. Jennifer, a recent escapee from a sex cult (presented in hyper-real flashbacks) is still being stalked by her husband who was in charge of the cult, soon finds herself terrorized by the masked killer. But is it the killer? Is it her husband? Is it the mysterious lesbian down the hall? Could it be Andrea, who claims he has an aversion to the sight of blood? Why do all the men in these movies look like George Hilton? And why can’t I stop watching this thing?


IRIS, also released under the extremely awesome title WHAT ARE THOSE STRANGE DROPS OF BLOOD DOING ON JENNIFER’S BODY?, is a bit of an odd duck, containing more genuine weirdness than usual but also a surprising amount of intentional laughs, most of them coming from the police inspector who seems more interested in stamp collecting and bemoaning his salary than ever actually solving the crime (The actor playing him, Giampiero Albertini, also dubbed Peter Falk’s Columbo in Italy, which seems significant). He also has to deal with the incompetence of his unlucky second-in-command, leading to more laughs. As that detective follows Fenech & Hilton, in the midst of their new romance he reports in on the police radio what’s going on with the pair: “Don’t be surprised if instead of a corpse, we get a birth on our hands.” The sex cult subplot feels more than a little tacked on to everything, but I don’t think I’d want the movie to be without it and besides, it does go with the particularly sordid world view here. Everyone in the movie is abnormal somehow, even the old lady next door who’s addicted to horror magazines (“To really like horror tales, you have to be nuts,” says the news vendor who sells them to her).


It should be noted that the dubbing is particularly bad, even for these movies. It honestly doesn’t effect my enjoyment at all, but it might be a little tough to accept for somebody not already used to this sort of thing. I’m not sure how well it works in any language for a dead body to be discovered and then a few seconds later someone calmly says, “I think I’d better go now, I’ve gotta be at rehearsal in an hour.” Of course, maybe I need to do some research into how brutal violence may have been calmly accepted in Italy during the 70s. At one point George Hilton’s character, during a particularly heated confrontation with the police, blurts out, “You mean to say, Commissioner, that I might be a suspect, that I could go crazy and murder a girl like that?” and it’s stated with all the emotion of a radio reporter giving traffic updates. Anyway, the one time this feels at all damaging, for me anyway, is when we (briefly) hear the voice of the masked killer and, sounding like it comes from a twelve year-old, it drains any tension at all from the scene (I also don’t buy that whoever is playing the killer is also the character eventually unmasked, but whatever).


The film is directed by Giuliana Carnimeo, credited as “Anthony Ascott”, who helmed a number of spaghetti westerns, and it’s a continually interesting looking film. The visuals always feel slightly off kilter, slightly elegant in their trashy way and there are a lot–a lot- of zooms. There’s one murder sequence which has been pointed out by many as being similar to a scene Argento would later shoot in TENEBRAE and by all logic it should be one of the best scenes in the film. Unfortunately, it’s hurt in the cutting be being too dragged out (a few seconds less would really make all the difference) and also by having a character in the scene act in a completely illogical fashion, possibly to maintain their status as a suspect. On the other hand, this very sequence also contains a cut from the body in question falling to the police detective trailing the other character, yawning, putting his sandwich together. It zooms out from the sandwich, of course, and is an elegant little touch in the middle of the mayhem. For the record, the DVD contains an “Alternate Stabbing Scene” which is in fact shorter but actually cuts it down way too much. The script by Ernesto Gastaldi contains the puzzle-like structure you expect from these movies. It moves fast but not fast enough that it doesn’t leave a few plot holes behind. But it’s so enjoyable that I really don’t care. The score by Bruno Nicolai ranges from sharp, slightly up-tempo suspense tracks to the luxurious easy listening cues that you expect from this sort of film, especially when Edwige Fenech is in the middle of one of her deliriously erotic love scenes with George Hilon.


And it’s Edwige Fenech that I should be talking about it here. Introduced sporting body paint on herself for a photo shoot, at times dressed in some terrible 70s fashions and at other times wearing nothing at all, she really is mind-bogglingly beautiful here and is quite wonderful to watch as she is repeatedly terrorized over the course of the film. As for The Bloody Iris, it doesn’t figure into the plot all that much, unless you want to accept the film as a metaphor of all these people connected by their immorality being broken apart by the blood on that flower (looking at it that way, the fade-out almost manages to make sense). Jennifer is told in flashback by her sex cult leader-husband, “They are the symbol of what our group has formed. A single body made up of many members. As this flower has many petals.” It’s the best I can do for finding meaning in the name and if it helps, there are in fact very few drops of blood on Jennifer’s body during the film. It’s ridiculous and still pretty sleazy but still lots of fun. And remember, never waste a stamp by mailing a letter.

Summer's End

This past weekend, for the first time in over ten years, I did not go to the annual Sunset Junction Street Fair. The Junction is held down in Silverlake every year in late August and for a long time it was something I looked forward to every year. A fair with food, drink, booths to shop in, friends you’d run into, music and massive swarms of people. Up until a few weeks ago, Isaac Hayes was scheduled to perform on Saturday night. But in the past few years the admission price has gone from a reasonable suggested donation to a mandatory entrance fee culminating in what this year was raised to twenty dollars. This, combined with reports of local merchants upset over how the Festival is being organized, caused me to want to make other plans. Besides, twenty dollars for the privilege of walking down a street I always get to walk down anyway with no offering of free booze, no promise of a Lisa Edelstein sighting like in years past? I don’t think so. Several articles in the Los Angeles Times in recent days have detailed the unhappiness local store owners have expressed over elements of the Festival, like where the footprints would be. In response to this, the Times quoted the organizer as saying those people were unhappy because they never got “strawberry ice cream as kids.” Nice. Clearly, the Festival is being run by somebody eager to work with everyone in the neighborhood. Now I’m willing to pay a fair price, but this is just a step too far. I’m sure enough people showed up that my cash wasn’t missed, but I also know that I’m not the only one who felt this way. And now there are further allegations being made about the Festival, causing me to not regret plunking my cash down. So those are the sort of people we’re dealing with. It’s a shame because for a long time the Festival was a lot of fun. I especially liked the last-blast-of-August vibe and there always seems to be a certain point on the Sunday of the Festival every year where you can almost believe that the summer is just going to go on forever. But this time I found other things to do. On Saturday I went to see TROPIC THUNDER at the Vista (big and loud, some laughs but not enough of them) then soon went down the street from there to the Tiki Ti where I spent the next several hours and was eventually joined by a few friends who also chose to instead spend their hard-earned money on delicious cocktails. We had a great time and the ones who run the Sunset Junction weren’t going to stop that from happening.


Another excellent substitute for that end-of-summer vibe turned out to be VICKY CHRISTINA BARCELONA. Without going into too many details, it’s a terrific piece of work, probably Woody Allen’s best film in a number of years. This is a very pleasant surprise, considering the number of recent films of his where I’ve felt like I was bending over backwards a little to defend it or, in the case of something like CASSANDRA’S DREAM, felt disappointed by the whole thing. There’s none of that feeling in VICKY CHRISTINA BARCELONA, which not only feels more vibrant and alive than anything he’s made in a while, it shows that he still has something to say creatively, without merely going over beats and themes that he has covered numerous times in the past. Considering I’d sometimes wondered if he still had something this good in him, the result is a little thrilling.

Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Christina (Scarlett Johansson) are two young women who travel to Barcelona for the summer. Vicky is engaged to be married and Christina, a would-be artist “at liberty” as she puts it, is single. Soon after they arrive they meet an artist named Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem) who abruptly invites the two of them to Oviedo for the weekend where the three of them can sightsee, eat good food and, of course, make love. Christina is intrigued, Vicky is appalled. Where the three of them go from here turns out to be somewhat unexpected, a situation compounded by when his ex-wife Maria Elena (Penélope Cruz), with whom he had a somewhat volatile relationship, re-enters the picture.


I can’t imagine that this is how Woody Allen looked at it, but the film plays to me like a modern version of the sort of film I would imagine was made in Europe in the 70s. Funny, interesting, sexy, beautiful settings, weighty but not too serious. The issues of monogamy, desire and attraction are nothing new for Woody’s films, but it genuinely feels like he was reinvigorated by the change in locale. Or maybe it just put him in a good mood and that seeped into the film. After all, it’s hard not to be attracted by this setting. However it happened, for me VICKY CHRISTINA BARCELONA seemed to glide along seemingly without effort and it quickly became a true pleasure to sit through. All of the actors are good here, with Bardem and Cruz bringing a particular electricity to their roles, even if they aren’t really the leads. It's particularly hard to avoid staring at the screen, not blinking, every second Cruz in onscreen. The unknown Hall, playing pretty much the Diane Keaton part (she never actually says “I’m from Philadelphia, we believe in God,” but you can hear that in her voice) is a terrific find as well. And Johansson manages to pull off being interested in the romance of the artist’s lifestyle, but you can easily see how inexperienced the character is in such matters as well.


One viewing doesn’t make me feel like I can write extensively on it, but I have a feeling that VICKY CHRISTINA BARCELONA might become one of those movies I return to repeatedly not just because of the additional layers I expect to find, but because I think it will be such a pleasure to live in this movie again. It’s funny and intoxicating, just like its setting appears to be, but it’s also weighty enough to be aware of the doubt that lies when those late-night dinners in Spain eventually end. Because, like summer, they always do. The film is like a really good white wine served with one of those wonderful meals and the buzz it provides is the sort of thing you gladly remember when the seasons finally do change. And there’s always the hope that we’ll get another one this good from Woody in the future.

More Humane That Way

As I was heading into the John Ford double bill on Friday at the New Beverly, I was talking on the phone with my friend Elina and when I told here what I was seeing she replied, “No giallos?” In spite of what Elina thinks, I don’t only watch giallos these days, although I won’t tell her what I’d just been watching on DVD the other night. Anyway, this particular John Ford double bill consisted of films that aren’t usually screened, so it caught my interest. Plus, I’m still technically on vacation, so I’m trying to stay relaxed. And I should see more John Ford films anyway.

1935’s THE WHOLE TOWN’S TALKING stars Edward G. Robinson as a meek clerk named Jones who, as it turns out, is an absolute dead ringer for the vicious crook ‘Killer’ Mannion (also Robinson, of course) who has just escaped from prison. Soon Jones is apprehended by the police and though they eventually realize their mistake and release him amidst a swarm of press, it’s only a matter of time before Mannion turns up to take advantage of the resemblance. Jean Arthur co-stars as Wilhelmina, the girl in the office Jones has a mad crush on.


The Columbia logo and presence of Jean Arthur make it seem as if this could have been directed by Frank Capra and though the film is essentially a comedy, Ford deals with the situation Jones finds himself in with the utmost seriousness. At one key stage when Jones approaches his apartment, as well as possible death, the stark lighting his building hallway is given looks like something out of a nightmare. The overall approach of the film, landing in that valley between screwball comedy and early film noir (make that very early, considering in 1935 film noir didn’t really exist yet), makes it somewhat unique. Considering the director, I assume it was the particular humanistic touch that Ford had which lends the film its own distinct tone which would no doubt come off differently in other hands. Actually, it’s not too hard to imagine the basic premise being used a few years later as either a total screwball comedy (possibly done in madcap style by Preston Sturges) or playing up the fatalistic aspect for a full-on noir ten years down the road when that genre was in full bloom. The script, by Jo Swerling and Robert Riskin, isn’t airtight—the first few scenes of the film seem strangely like the beginning of an entirely different scenario and when Robinson rushes out of his apartment leaving his bathtub faucet running it turns out to be a setup for a punchline that we never get (this feeling of odd disconnection seems to happen in some 30s films but it would take someone more knowledgeable than myself to expound on it). Arthur’s character is also thinly sketched, never becoming much more than a fast-talking 30s gal which, granted, was a role the actress was pretty well suited for. But these minor issues for a film that contains as much funny, fast-talking patter (“And Howe.”) throughout as this one does. And even though the weak nature required of Robinson’s lead character is at times frustrating, the story remains engrossing and unpredictable until the end. A running gag which threatens to become annoying turns out to directly effect the outcome near the end, a nice bit of construction. The effects that present both Robinsons onscreen at once—calling it simple split screen doesn’t do it justice—is excellent for the time with a particular shot involving a mirror getting a “How the hell did they pull that off?” out of me. Robinson, who of course played versions of both these parts throughout his career, is excellent. THE WHOLE TOWN’S TALKING may be minor Ford, but it’s still very enjoyable and worth a look for anyone who might be interested.


Jumping forward twenty-six years in Ford’s career, second on the bill was 1961’s western TWO RODE TOGETHER, starring James Stewart and Richard Widmark. Joseph McBride’s excellent Ford bio quotes the director himself as calling it “the worst piece of crap I’ve done in twenty years,” and McBride himself refers to the film as “one of the lowest points of the director’s career”. Which, I suppose, means I should have looked the title up in that book before I went to see it. Stewart and Widmark are a U.S. Marshal and Cavalry officer, respectively, who wind up on a mission to rescue whites captured years earlier by Indians. Widmark’s love interest is played by a young Shirley Jones, as in “Hey, that girl’s kinda cute---holy cow, it’s Shirley Jones!” As I sat there in the New Beverly while the plot unfolded I began to think, isn’t this just THE SEARCHERS slightly rewritten? This feeling was only compounded when the Indian Chief is revealed to be Henry Brandon, playing essentially the same role he had in that earlier film. And it is, but this film turns out to be so uninteresting, lacking in incident for long stretches of time that it comes off not as another attempt by the director to explore themes that interest him, but just a movie being made by somebody who didn’t really have any ideas beyond simply going out on location and shooting footage with these actors. There’s no real consistent tone or approach to the material and though there’s a hint of the genuinely darker cynicism that would come on full bore in his masterpiece THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, his film immediately following this one, it doesn’t really mean much in the end because the movie has no real effect, complete with a ponderous score by George Duning which seems to grind away, unending, through scene after scene. The likes of Andy Devine and John McIntire play essentially the Andy Devine and John McIntire roles. Woody Strode, who had played the lead role in SERGEANT RUTLEDGE the previous year, plays an Indian savage which seems like a step down but Ford was certainly keeping him employed. Much is made in the McBride book of a long, unbroken take between Stewart and Widmark sitting by a river bickering with each other and though it’s a pleasure to watch the two stars interact with each other (Widmark is particularly good in the film) the material just isn’t strong enough and by a certain point it feels like the scene is just going on and on. Which also kind of describes the movie. It is slightly odd that it’s a Ford western with no part for John Wayne, but as the script is it would be hard to imagine him being appropriate in either role. Since he was of course teamed with Stewart in VALANCE soon after, that’s really all that matters.

It wasn’t a very large turnout for the two films and, not surprisingly, some of the audience was older than the sort of people you usually see at the New Beverly. But it is nice to get a chance to see films which rarely get screened otherwise, another reminder how great it is to have a place like the New Beverly to go to. I went one-for-two on this pairing, but those are the chances you take. And it’s a pretty good percentage anyway.