Just Surviving

On October 5th of this year I was fortunate to attend a special event at the Motion Picture Academy celebrating the history of music in the James Bond series, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the release of DR. NO in England on that very day. It was an enjoyable evening, featuring appearances by the likes of FOR YOUR EYES ONLY composer Bill Conti, lyricist Don Black and best of all legendary guitarist Vic Flick who performed the James Bond Theme on the same guitar he first played it on in 1962. Throughout the night clips from the films were naturally shown—a number of the famous title sequences but also various scenes that spotlighted the music featured, seemingly at random, on both 35mm and digital (you can guess what looked better). It was a reminder of how these movies in particular gain from seeing them on the largest screen possible—I wonder if anyone there got as much of a kick out of seeing the climax of A VIEW TO A KILL projected more than I did. One other such clip shown was from DIE ANOTHER DAY which in just a few minutes managed to spotlight some of both the good and bad of that film in equal measure, moving from the cool enjoyment composer David Arnold brought to the Cuban section to the misguided spotlight put on its female lead.

Probably the most spectacular entry starring Pierce Brosnan and a huge hit besides, its success didn’t stop the producers at EON from making the surprising decision to reboot on the next film with a new star beginning completely from scratch and now a full decade after its release the reputation of DIE ANOTHER DAY seems to have maybe spiraled downward as an offshoot of that decision. The first thing that comes to mind revisiting the film is the terror upon realizing just how fast time has gone since November 2002 but once I’ve calmed down I find myself placing it in the context of the time—the overriding feeling of CGI sound and fury that was really beginning to be prevalent during that period while also coming at a point before the BOURNE influence really began to be felt all through the action genre. I can’t bring myself to totally dislike the film since I can never allow myself to be that negative about any Bond film but it remains a case where throughout there are elements that I find myself enjoying that are continually negated by all the noise and effects. Even though I’m not quite ready to put it on the list of all time worst Bonds that some do—there’s at least an energy found in all the mayhem a few entries that might be worse really don’t contain—I still wish the film would at least try to meet me halfway.

After a mission to North Korea is botched resulting in Bond (Pierce Brosnan) being held captive and the presumed death of Colonel Moon (Will Yun Lee) Bond is held captive for 14 months and when he is released in a prisoner exchange for Zao (Rick Yune), Moon’s second in command. After M (Judi Dench) informs him that his status as a 00 has been compromised Bond escapes heading on the trail of the diamonds and of Zao, who he learns has headed to Cuba. There, while preparing to infiltrate a private gene therapy clinic Bond meets the mysterious Jinx (Halle Berry) who clearly has her own interest in whatever is going on that intersects with what the rogue agent is investigating. The diamonds Bond recovers on the site leads him to a mysterious billionaire known as Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens) sending him back to England where he encounters Graves’ assistant Miranda Frost (Rosamund Pike) and another encounter with M that sends him off to Iceland on the trail of Graves and what he may really have in store for England, Korea and the world.

As I write this it’s November 2012. SKYFALL has happened, quickly becoming an enormous success and I’m still trying to process exactly what the film is. Whatever that might be, it feels so different from what has come before, not just in a light/dark way, that much as I admire some of the film I’m still trying to place it in the context of the series. Due to the nature of the ending I’m very curious where things might possibly go from here but as for DIE ANOTHER DAY the series as we then knew it of course went nowhere from there. Eventually it was learned that Brosnan was out, done after four films, sent off to the character actor salt mines. The rumored Halle Berry/Jinx spinoff movie never happened. Any arguments over how the concept of canon could possibly work in the James Bond universe were null and void. As Daniel Craig made his first appearance in the opening of CASINO ROYALE, none of them happened. James Bond as we knew him was dead. Long live James Bond. We didn’t see any of that coming on opening night of DIE ANOTHER DAY which at the time felt like it had more hype attached to the release than any of them ever had before. I think they all will from here on to the end of time.

Directed by Lee Tamorhori, the film at the very least feels more dynamic in its staging than the somewhat anemic Michael Apted-helmed THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH but, like the opening gunbarrel which this time adds a bullet zooming directly towards the viewer, it also feels more hyperactive while at the same time considerably more overbearing and leaden in its approach. It’s as if it’s trying way too hard to get excited about every single piece of action, adding in the occasional swooshing camera effect as if trying to boost up the excitement by any means necessary--even the opening bursts of the familiar theme at the start of the gunbarrel feel just a touch overblown. Part of the film’s reputation in memory seems to be centered around the prevalent invisible car Bond is given by Q which quickly became a Jar Jar Binks-type shorthand for everything wrong with the film and maybe even everything wrong with the series up to this point. To be charitable, this may be one of those cases where the good becomes a little forgotten due to how much the bad stuff is allowed to overtake everything else. There are elements in there (written by Neal Purvis & Robert Wade) that feel right if you look for them but they’re just on a different scale and belong to a different film than they’re making--the enjoyable interplay between Bond and the Kerim Bey-type Cuban sleeper agent Raoul played by Emilio Echevarría never really amounts to anything beyond just a pleasant stop along the journey but it’s a nice diversion in the middle of all the mayhem while cutting 007 loose from Universal Exports for much of the first half allows for a looser approach both from the film and Brosnan’s own performance, looking ahead to how he would really loosen up while playing this sort of role in THE MATADOR a few years later.

From the moment Bond in tatters strolls nonchalantly into that Hong Kong hotel to the point he reaches Iceland for the big Gustav Graves presentation I honestly feel ok with the plotting of it all. There’s some funkiness, some eccentricity that comes from Bond wandering around Cuba with his tour around the Cuban gene therapy clinic briefly taking on a certain MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN vibe and Bond’s clandestine meeting with M feels like an opportunity to not only fill things in on the exposition front but also to settle down and in this unusual location of a mysterious abandoned Undergound station (“I’d heard of this place. Never thought I’d find myself here.”) acknowledges the mystique as well as the tradition of the entire series, lending a genuine sense of weight to all that surrounds it. It’s sort of a revenge story allowing Bond to get back at who betrayed him in North Korea, but not really—the Brosnan entries generally seemed unwilling to focus on one clear goal in the stories and too much of the time the film goes for the spectacle it all has to culminate in, that overwhelming feeling of sound and fury to the point where many things are barely noticeable or just too much overall--the opening surfing sequence which was probably hell to shoot but goes by so fast you barely noticed it while the fencing sequence where Bond and Graves spar off goes on so long and so loud with music blaring everywhere (this sequence aside, I like David Arnold’s score for the most part this time out) that all the fun just seeps out of things and it becomes too much of a slog. It’s a sequence that may have played as nimble during the Roger Moore era of shooting a henchman out of a tree and simply walking away with an eyebrow cocked but here just becomes too overwhelming for the sly ridiculousness that maybe should be felt.

And as much as the film pays lip service at the start to presenting a Bond in a somewhat different place things soon return to how they usually are—based on M telling him “While you were away the world changed” his reply “Not for me” indicates that even 9/11 doesn’t change James Bond (I guess it took the producers of the series to ultimately do something about that). By a certain point Bond just becomes another figure within all the CGI madness and it’s possible that the apparent aim to also make the film something of a vehicle for Halle Berry, maybe the biggest star to ever be a Bond Girl, makes things somewhat lopsided. Certain early reports had the actress playing a villain—whether true or not (it’s understandable that they would have wanted the recent Oscar winner to be the lead, not to mention any touchiness that may have come from an American portrayed as a bad guy soon after 9/11) and if this was how Michael Madsen as CIA agent Falco was originally going to be a part of things that would make sense of why his character never seems to serve any purpose. In the case of Berry’s Jinx this is the rare Bond film where the first girl Bond meets is also the final girl he winds up with in the end—not that this is automatically a bad thing it just turns them slightly more problematic in terms of the focus in relation to what the established formula is. The script seems to portray Jinx as a somewhat enigmatic figure from the start but the way the film presents her and how Berry plays the character she really can’t turn out to be anything other than what she is and in terms of dialogue she’s never written very much beyond wisecracks—all we know is that she’s named Jinx because she has bad luck from being born on Friday the 13th, but that never really matters. Much of Bond, even during the Brosnan era, is meant to remain an enigma but he’s James Bond, with decades of association to him and Berry never gives off any indication that there’s anything going on under the surface to make her the she badass needs to be. She’s just kind of a showoff and it’s not enough. Plus the lack of any mystery to her makes it a little too obvious where the plot is going--on first viewing I thought the film might pull some kind of triple bluff with the revelations involving Rosamund Pike’s Miranda Frost but instead of intricacy to the plotting it just goes in straight for the kill, maybe only interested in the action that things have to build to and ultimately it’s not very satisfying.

The plotting of Bond’s investigation leading to involving Gustav Graves is kind of a mashup of DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER with LICENCE TO KILL along with dashes of a few others in there and I can’t even bring myself to say very much about it since I find most of the stuff involving Graves and North Korea to be uninteresting—the detail of the character not being able to sleep, a presumed side effect from the genetics surgery, feels like just another one of those details tossed in that never amounts to much, like Robert Carlyle’s bad guy in THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH having a bullet in his brain. As the 20th film the film has subtle and no-so-subtle tributes to each of the other films throughout including the beats I’ve already mentioned but one favorite of mine might be Brosnan aping a Connery THUNDERBALL move by popping a grape in his mouth while slinking through the gene therapy clinic. These touches are in DIE ANOTHER DAY if you want to look for them but the film is more interested in the big stuff to allow for a satisfying narrative—the CGI, the gargantuan action setpieces, trying to keep Brosnan happy by giving him enough to do in scenes while also tailoring it as a stealth vehicle for the other star. With all these pieces taped together the structure that is DIE ANOTHER DAY is sort of able to remain standing but not very securely. The Iceland setting is fantastical which I don’t mind but all the sneaking around soon turns into action that goes on forever, with some terrible CGI and after a half-hour of all this there’s still the climax to go. It’s at least not a half-hour climax like TOMORROW NEVER DIES but fun as it sounds to have it all take place on a burning plane cutting back and forth between the two fights happening simultaneously it’s all just more noise. Maybe that’s all these movies are meant to be in the twenty-first century. Of course, CASINO ROYALE found another answer to the question of ‘what should a Bond film be?’, so I guess I’m allowed to continue asking.

Whatever he may have thought of the material, Brosnan exudes total confidence in the role by this point, confidence that comes through in the character’s declaration that he threw away his cyanide capsules years ago. Whether or not he knew this was the last shot at it he’s fully comfortable in the character’s skin, particularly during the first half when the character goes rogue. Berry is more problematic—I honestly prefer her in roles outside of her ’00-’04 career peak (BULWORTH mainly, but she’s also very good in the recent CLOUD ATLAS) but here she doesn’t seem to be playing anything other than “Halle Berry Movie Star”. She looks great, no complaints as far as that goes, but there’s no character and during those moments where she puts a ‘scared’ expression on her face she doesn’t seem to realize how playing it this way kills how cool she could possibly be here. Toby Stephens manages the appropriate sort of arrogance as Graves, while Rosamund Pike as Miranda Frost feels like a character that could have used some sharpening in rewrites but she does a terrific job, bringing an unexpected intensity to even a few lines during her quiet briefing with ‘M’ and is one of those cases where it feels like a little bit of a letdown when she’s revealed as ‘just’ a bad guy, nothing more. Colin Salmon as Charles Robinson, Samantha Bond as Moneypenny and John Cleese as Q make their final series appearances (I’ll bet Cleese in particular just assumed that he’d be playing this part until the end of his days), Dench does solid work as ‘M’ with maybe the strongest tension ever felt between Brosnan and her, Madonna sings the (not very good) title song while also appearing briefly as Verity during the fencing sequence (“I don’t like cockfights,” she intones flatter than a pancake) and Michael Madsen plays CIA agent Falco, looking as if he has no idea what he’s doing there but the bit where he pops a cigarette in his mouth as soon as the threat is vanquished at the end is the most human moment in the entire film. Too bad he never got to play the role again either in further Bond films or whatever that Halle Berry spinoff movie was going to be.

Speaking of those small moments--on opening night at the Cinerama Dome the big stunt in the film, that awful CGI effect that’s supposed to be Halle Berry diving off that cliff, got absolutely zero response from the crowd. On the other hand, a throwaway gag with Moneypenny paying off the tension between Bond and her near the very end caused the place to absolutely explode. Sure, these were hardcore fans so they didn’t care very much about Halle Berry but somewhat indicative of how the film didn’t seem that interested in the things that weren’t about all that bombast. The film broke all the expected records at the time but maybe somewhere deep down this feeling was part of what caused EON to change course for the next film. It’s always been a little puzzling to me why they went so drastically different on CASINO ROYALE, a film I absolutely love, and whatever the reasons were they certainly went beyond not wanting to pay Pierce Brosnan’s fee anymore. It’s still a shame that his tenure as Bond seemed to fall short for reasons not so much having to do with him. On the other hand, DIE ANOTHER DAY is still a James Bond film. And considering the drastic changes that have occurred in the series since it’s almost as if it’s is the last Bond film, or at least the last with any real ties to the ‘classic’ continuity. So I can’t completely hate it even though my wishes that I could like it more than I do it will always fall short. As the YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE-influenced David Arnold love theme swells to a conclusion DIE ANOTHER DAY ends with a cheap joke (no surprise) of Jinx asking Bond to ‘keep it in a little longer’ until we get to see what she’s actually referring to. I’ll bet Pierce Brosnan wanted to play the character a little longer too. Of course, even when you get to embody one of the most famous characters ever life sometimes falls short. Maybe I’ll never get the perfect James Bond movie that’s in my mind. Maybe nobody will. Pierce Brosnan certainly never got to star in one, whether his first or his last. SKYFALL really isn’t but none of these are QUANTUM OF SOLACE either so I’ll try to look at the bright side. These films will continue to be fought about by people like me who spend way too much time thinking about them and I suppose as long as we have James Bond films to look forward to over many Thanksgivings in the future there’s always going to be a chance that the perfect one will come along sooner or later.

MR. PEEL WILL RETURN

Nothing Simple About Any Of This

It’s not Brian De Palma’s fault. It’s just a coincidence. After all, much of what happens in life is made up of coincidences. Earlier this year on the night of his birthday I decided to take a look at my Criterion DVD of SISTERS, his early film from 1973. As things would have it Brian De Palma’s birthday is also September 11th and this really isn’t the place to discuss all the feelings that date brings up but there is an unusual moment early on in this particular film where Margot Kidder and Lisle Wilson are taking the ferry out to Staten Island where her apartment mysteriously is located (“Isn’t Staten Island in New York?” she innocently asks him). We pause to linger for a moment as they cross in the dead of night gazing at the World Trade Center, looking as unreal in the night fog as it always did as Bernard Herrmann’s eerily romantic score plays on the soundtrack, one of those moments that certainly plays different now than it did at one time. And there’s not a thing we can do about it. I could point out that this isn’t even the only De Palma film to have some kind of WTC connection—the famous Steadicam shot at the start of BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES filmed right around there, Windows on the World was used as a setting in DRESSED TO KILL and the lobby was even going to be featured in the climax of CARLITO’S WAY before the February ’93 bombing forced that production to change plans. This is all true but there’s not very much to gain from pointing out all this either. Maybe films don’t affect real life very much but real life certainly affects the films, how we forever see them. That’s just the way it is.

As for the present, there’s a new Brian De Palma film out there in the world, a remake of the French thriller LOVE CRIME entitled PASSION. I assume that at some point in the future, hopefully in 2013, I will see it. I do not know when. I only know that as a longtime fan of the director I hope for the best so if you have seen it already and are negative about the whole thing, well, let me find out for myself. Maybe I’m a defender of the guy but that doesn’t mean I’m saying he’s infallible. For a long time now I’ve stalled on writing a BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES piece because whatever would be said (not very good) doesn’t go much against what the film’s general reputation is and what would be the point of doing that? Still, for me Brian De Palma’s best films live, they remain vibrant, within every ounce of whatever illogic that is going on within them they make me want to burst out into song from how glorious they are. An early example of homage coming from the New Hollywood, SISTERS came as his style was still developing so for a few reasons it’s not quite as potent or memorable as some of his later films would be but so much is already right there, bursting full born from the womb of his madness—stabs at social commentary, the staging of certain moments within the frame, the offhand humor, the music, the actors, the fearlessness at getting the ever-elusive answers to what should by all logic be right in front of you. Some may disagree, which is fine, but SISTERS really isn’t a masterwork. And yet it’s clear now that it’s very much the work of someone who would go on to make a few.

When Phillip Woode (Lisle Wilson) and Danielle Breton (Margot Kidder) have a meet cute appearing on the hidden camera game show “Peeping Toms” she kindly helps herself to coming along with him to the dinner he’s won at Manhattan’s exotic African Room. While there she is accosted by her ex-husband Emil (William Finley) and even after getting thrown out he even turns up outside Danielle’s Staten Island apartment when Phillip takes her home, along with the deluxe set of cutlery that she won on the show. After spending the night, Phillip discovers that it’s not only Danielle’s birthday but also that of her twin sister Dominique in the next room. Clearly a nice guy, Phillip goes out to pick up Danielle’s much-needed prescription after which he takes a few minutes to pick up a birthday cake to bring home to the twins…but what happens in the apartment next is witnessed by local reporter Grace Collier (Jennifer Salt) who is determined to prove what has happened and what is really going on in the building across her courtyard.

The subject of Hitchcock in relation to SISTERS is unavoidable whether we’re talking about PSYCHO or REAR WINDOW or ROPE or certain other films and it was no doubt obvious at the time of release, just as even Hitchcock himself was taking his dabblings with sex and violence further that he ever had before with the previous year’s FRENZY. We’ve long since gotten used to shocking twists that kill off presumed lead characters early on by now the schematics of the SISTERS plotline doesn’t feel as daring as it once might have and the details aren’t as crystalized as they would feel in some of De Palma’s later films such as how the staging of the murder makes it unclear just how much Grace is really able to witness. Plus on a basic screenwriting level the lack of a McGuffin equivalent to PSYCHO’s $40,000 that tracks the whole way through makes the switch at the half-hour mark almost feel like the film is restarting more than it would otherwise. When the film hits the climax soon after the hour mark it feels like not much in the way of plot has actually happened but, of course, maybe this doesn’t matter very much at all and in some ways makes everything all the more off kilter, more experimental, all the more willing to go in directions that wouldn’t be expected. It’s the showiest scenes in SISTERS that make the most impression whether the shock of the murder that things have been carefully built up to or the extended post-murder section largely presented in split screen, a pair of twins itself, where we’re not following the plot so much as the carefully composed process of what’s happening in each half affecting our own interpretation of what is going on down to the climax which isn’t a climax of plot so much as a climax of complete and total delirium, finally crashing into a brick wall that doesn’t allow anything to be resolved because sometimes in life nothing can ever be.

The opening CANDID CAMERA-like TV show PEEPING TOMS (probably not many more people get that reference now than they did then) that opens the film lays out exactly what we’re going to see—what we choose to focus our gaze on, what we turn away from even if it’s right in front of us—that’s what the film ultimately is about. Phillip chose not to keep watching Danielle when in front of that hidden camera but he’s very happy to gaze at her when she strips down for him in real life (giving us a nice glimpse at crazy hot early 70s Margot Kidder, incidentally). Throughout the film images seem to comment on other images, culminating in the madness it all builds to. Even the primary setting of Staten Island (a place which is very much in the news now after Hurricane Sandy but that’s just a coincidence too) that sits apart from Manhattan where the recently built twin towers sit oh so prevalent seeming not just a beacon from the city but also strangely representative of the mysterious twins that Grace is investigating. The process of how she learns things is strangely matter-of-fact all things considered, essentially given most of her information by watching a film within this film, provided to her by the helpful editor at Life Magazine played by Barnard Hughes and it’s what it all builds to in her discoveries, leading to the ultra-zoom into Grace’s eye revealing her ultimate nightmare it’s not a revelation of plot but rather a surreal Felliniesque landscape, total madness with every shriek ringing out in the Bernard Herrmann score.

All things considered, I’m not even sure what the climax is supposed to be a climax to. It’s a dream with imagery that comes not only from the film-within-the-film Grace was shown but also from the lunacy of the movie itself as well as the forever unspoken insecurities of the more-or-less lead, appearing uneasy next to the more glamorous Margot Kidder until she’s safely back in her childhood bedroom totally lost from any sort of reason. Nothing makes sense because people don’t (can’t) make sense, so everything can’t all be cleared up Freudian-style a la MARNIE or via Simon Oakland’s endless explanation in PSYCHO. Unlike Hitchcock as his most formal, logic has nothing to do with it. The famous final shot, which gets people to throw up their hands as much as anything also seems somewhat out of PSYCHO as well only this one reveals a character who doesn’t quite know the significance of what he’s looking at, waiting for someone who will never come, watching, forever watching, ultimately seeing nothing and everything all at once. There was no body because there was no murder. It’s all very simple. It’s all madness. De Palma knew it then. It’s still that way now.

The nature of the plot means that there isn’t quite a lead—Margot Kidder certainly has screen presence, shaky French accent aside and expresses total vivaciousness while being just off kilter enough that we can still believe in whatever madness lies within. Jennifer Salt more than holds the screen when she comes to the forefront—her anger seems totally believable and, frankly, if I ever met the actress I’d almost expect her to act just like Grace Collier—and it’s interesting to compare her determined nature with the more confident presence of Kidder. Even their personal environment adds to their performances--compared with the total blankness of Danielle’s anonymous apartment is Grace’s bedroom at her local childhood home, still covered with posters from her teenage years. Wilson expresses a casual likable nature almost immediately from his patient response to his prize on the game show and it’s the supporting performances that stand out even more and where the greatest eccentricities come to the forefront—Charles Durning as private detective Joseph Larch insisting that he knows the right way to do things, William Finley (best known for playing Winslow Leach in De Palma's PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE) as mysterious doctor Emil Breton, Barnard Hughes and his absent-minded curiosity as Life editor Arthur McLennen, Salt’s real-life mother Mary Davenport playing her onscreen mother as well, the abrasive weariness of Dolph Sweet as the investigating police detective as well as an early appearance by Olympia Dukakis as one of the bakery employees who beams as she moves into frame to give the correct names on the cake as if trying to upstage her coworker.

SISTERS is the rare De Palma film that came out so long ago I have no recollection of how it was received so maybe because of this the film has always seemed that much more enigmatic to me. In some ways I’m not even sure how to place it in context with those other films outside of just the director getting started on what was going to be the rest of his career. So what do I respond to? The gazing. The split screen. The Herrmann score. Margot Kidder stripping down. William Finley glancing up at the TV camera as it pans past him in the audience of PEEPING TOMS. The endless way the movie holds on the frame during the first murder scene. The African Room. What Jennifer Salt’s Grace Collier is defiantly insisting on at the very end. That music box-like theme as the ‘Happy Birthday’ greeting is carefully written out on that cake, later on heard again as we view that absurd final shot. Memories of the World Trade Center, still there as characters travel back and forth to Staten Island, insistent there in the reality of this movie and gazing back at me as I stand there at a point in my youth that now feels like very long ago. And there’s not a thing I can do about that. There’s not a thing anyone can do about it.

Friends Can't Be Perfect

If anything, I’ve tried to keep my mind open through the years, stay open to the possibilities of what I’m going to respond to in films whether we’re talking about high or low art, inscrutable elegance or sleaze-filled nastiness. There are some people out there who seem to feel that the films they like are the films they like and they’re so set in those ways that they have long since passed the point where they can waver in those beliefs. Therefore, anything that goes against this dogmatic viewpoint is simply incorrect. Wrong. Bad. I disagree with this way of thinking at least partly because it indicates a certain closed-off mindset but also because it seems to completely suck out any enjoyment of movies. It’s good to analyze films, it’s good to break them down, leading to a fuller appreciation of what they are and what they can be. But there also needs to be pure enjoyment out of it all which is what sometimes seems to get forgotten. This leads to my honest admission is that I haven’t always been a fan of director Tony Scott through the years. Not that I don’t appreciate a good joke about TOP GUN but in my younger days I found his style of visual overkill not a little joyless and downright pummeling. But when TRUE ROMANCE came out in 1993 I found myself not only loving the film for Tarantino’s script but the mix of that with the style Scott brought to it all that seemed absolutely right. As the years went on I continued to find myself admiring some of his films including CRIMSON TIDE, ENEMY OF THE STATE, with MAN ON FIRE in particular thrilling and undeniably powerful in its intensity, a huge step forward for him. Even going back to the very beginning of his feature career, some of the best moments in THE HUNGER remain vivid in my mind years after the last time I saw it. And UNSTOPPABLE, which turned out to be his last film, was an absolute blast and compelling in all the right ways. And then in August of this year the director left us through horrible means that remain baffling and truly sad.

The funny thing is that Tony Scott and his filmmaking style have become so ubiquitous in what has become common cinematic language that even if I haven’t always liked it I’ve gotten used to it so by this point it’s safe to say that it’s ingrained in what I expect from the modern day action film. In the wake of his death I rewatched BEVERLY HILLS COP II which I’ve never really liked and in all honesty still don’t but I’ve just gotten so used to whatever it is--a flashback to the Simpson-Bruckheimer 80s, a reminder of Brigitte Nielsen, memories of a childhood spent seeing movies at Yonkers Movieland, whatever, I’m just kind of glad it’s there in case I need a hit of that particular brand of cinematic crack. Because to be completely honest every now and then I kind of do. And I’ve more than come around on THE LAST BOY SCOUT which I also was hesitant towards way back when, film school-era snobbery I suppose, preferring the DIE HARD/LETHAL WEAPON end of producer Joel Silver’s oeuvre, then such a major part of pop culture (recent news that his long association with Warner Brothers ended made me sad, it really did). I like it more than I did then, but still do have some minor issues and maybe as insane as the film is I almost wish it could be crazier or maybe just cut loose from the expected action formula even further than it does. But in all this mixture of Tony Scott/Joel Silver/Shane Black/Bruce Willis/Michael Kamen that is gloriously violent and profane in all the right ways…ultimately what is there not to like? Can’t I just enjoy myself? Head or gut? Ask me how fat your wife is. Turn up the volume. Cue the explosions. Let’s have some fun.

Private detective Joe Hallenbeck (Bruce Willis) hasn’t even started his new job when he discovers the one who recommended him, best friend Mike Mathews (Bruce McGill) sleeping with his wife which is shortly followed by being killed when his car explodes. And then he’s barely able to begin his assignment of protecting stripper Cory (Halle Berry) who believes someone is threatening her when she’s brutally killed by gunmen in the middle of the street. And so Joe along with Cory’s boyfriend, ex-football star Jimmy Dix (Damon Wayans) team up to find out what happened to Cory leading to a conspiracy involving the owner of the Los Angeles Stallions owner Shelly Marcone (Noble Willingham), Joe’s own pre-teen daughter Darian (Danielle Harris), the Senator who former secret service agent Joe has a history with and a hell of a lot of gunfire.

More than anything when I think of Tony Scott’s films, whether I like them or not, it’s the undeniable energy that comes to mind, a determined force that brings unfettered life to the feeling that there’s a determination to get the footage needed for this film in the can at all costs as well as a sense of joy that, I don’t care what you say, has never been present in any of Michael Bay’s films. And when he’s faced with having to shoot something as ridiculous as Bruce Willis running down the middle of the street in slow motion firing two guns at once it’s like he just says, “Fuck it” and films it with every ounce of the most iconic gusto possible. In the best moments of THE LAST BOY SCOUT, it builds to a fever pitch of excitement through every bad joke and nasty comeback that gets spit out in a way that’s kind of glorious. It’s a style that also has its drawbacks—with all those long lenses and smoke there’s sometimes the honest feeling that even in close-ups we’re not necessarily getting a good look at anyone’s faces and there are moments where, yeah, I wish he’d just linger a few beats longer than he does. I sat down to look at THE LAST BOY SCOUT for the first time in several years in memoriam to its director and found myself almost thinking more about the film in relation to some of the people Scott was working with in collaboration, possibly not always that easily.

Throughout its 105 minutes THE LAST BOY SCOUT seems like a unique combination of what I always think of as the Simpson-Bruckheimer aesthetic as displayed in the ferocity of his visual approach mixed with what was then the house style of the Joel Silver excessive violence done in good time 80s pop-style stable, also represented here by the presence of Bruce Willis, Shane Black and even composer Michael Kamen who only worked with Scott this one time--the typical bombast that comes from his action music familiar from many of the films produced by Silver during this period seems oddly like an afterthought as if for the director the feel just didn’t go with his style so it was kind of buried in the mix.

As for Shane Black and his script (Story by Black & Greg Hicks, Screenplay by Black) the plotting is very much of the LETHAL WEAPON school—maybe a little too much, it could be argued—but, though part of the film’s reputation seems to come from how allegedly misogynistic it is there’s also the first thematic inklings later seen in his 2005 directorial debut KISS KISS BANG BANG’s exploration of how women can be treated by the men in charge in the noir-tinged city of angels. But as intriguing as this plays during certain moments there really are just a few inklings of this concept since the focus is ultimately on Joe, Jimmy, the corrupt world of professional football and the revelations of the gambling conspiracy they uncover, so maybe Black didn’t fully know how to address these thoughts burrowing in his brain at this stage, or in this particular storyline, to do something with it that would make people think of it all as more than simple misogyny.

Black’s LAST BOY SCOUT screenplay sold for what was then a record-breaking $1.75 million and it’s strange to be talking about this film that celebrated its 20th anniversary last year (released 12/13/91—after all, some of the best cinematic Christmas gifts to the world are the most violent) like it’s a piece of ancient history now. The pairing of Bruce Willis and Damon Wayans did decent business—while never becoming the sensation that LETHAL WEAPON was it also didn’t fall as short commercially as what happened with Black’s next big spec sale THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT several years later. More than any number of films made around ’91-’92, THE LAST BOY SCOUT has survived because of its humor and action and just general over-the-topness and, yeah, I like it more than I did then. I probably laugh out loud sitting in my apartment watching this more than I do with some outright comedies and when things propel forward at a nonstop rate once we hit the hour mark the combination of humor, action and incessant nastiness (“Touch me again and I’ll kill you”) feels like it all mixes together in the right way more than it doesn’t. Sure, some of the most memorable touches have more to do with Shane Black’s dialogue and no surprise how quotable some of these lines still are--there are plenty of lines that I could single out but in context ‘we’re being beat up by the inventor of Scrabble’ might be my favorite.

Thinking about all this also reminds me that maybe, like BEVERLY HILLS COP II, THE LAST BOY SCOUT reveals that directing scenes for comedy wasn’t always Tony Scott’s strong suit—for that matter, I still can’t quite get onboard with the broad satire in DOMINO but I’m open to trying it again one of these days. Watching COP II and SCOUT close together, each film at the very least containing similar establishing shots of the Beverly Hills Police Department, actually reveals how much stronger he already he was by this point just four and a half years later, pushing both the actors and action in a way that just feels more ferocious, more energetic, not as fixed in to whoever the star was and willing to go more towards the absurdly profane world he wanted to present. It feels like he’s moving away from being so much under the thumb of Simpson-Bruckheimer towards using that visual style for his own purposes as well as being an early example of not only populating his films with the strongest actors possible whether the size of the part warranted it or not, he makes those moments pop in a way that other directors aren’t always interested in exploring. And it’s a nice, nasty look at L.A. as well—in addition to making it seem like cars blowing up or getting punched in the face are just normal, everyday events the light shining down during daylight hours always seems to be that of a Los Angeles that has just been rained on, making it not as welcoming as it often seems.

Its presentation of a Shane Black script also reveals some of which elements he was interested in when compared to other directors working with that material—Richard Donner in directing LETHAL WEAPON (as well as its sequels which Black stepped away from) seemed to think nothing of basically stopping the plot for extended periods for no reason other than to let us just enjoy the characters. There’s no equivalent of Mel Gibson trying to talk a jumper down from the roof of a building and I’ve never read Shane Black’s script for THE LAST BOY SCOUT but if such scenes were in there it feels like the sort of thing that Tony Scott doesn’t have much use for, instead continually insistent on propelling the plot forward as fast as possible (or at least giving the impression of this) which prevents it from ever being dull and works just great when it comes to the action scenes—the propulsive nature of the car chase to the Coliseum framed from mostly low angles moves so fast that it barely even has a chance to announce itself as ‘the car chase’—but also makes me wish there could have been a little more breathing room, at least to build the relationship between the leads. The notorious attention-grabbing opening sequence doesn’t do much for the plot beyond grab the attention of anyone watching (still, it certainly does that) and Taylor Negron’s Mr. Joshua-equivalent bad guy doesn’t even turn up until over an hour in—of course, he’s the voice heard on the phone in the opening and considering how Gary Busey and Mitchell Ryan were presented in a ‘introduce the bad guys’ scene in their movie I wonder if one was originally here too.

It could be said that until Joe Hallenbeck is captured leading to the events that quickly spiral into the climax plotwise the second act doesn’t consist of much beyond the two of them wandering around looking for clues, finally almost bonding in the requisite hanging out before the tension between the two boils over. In other words, it almost feels like not quite enough happens for the friendship to build to the fadeout, that Scott doesn’t have the patience to hold on the two stars just bickering with each other for a few minutes. Richard Donner wasn’t always the greatest at tonal shifts (his films also have an incessantly cheerful pop flavor that, truthfully, makes me wonder how well they’re going to age) but he at least knew that it was sometimes a good thing to at least do that. When you are going to provide that energy in your films at the expense of every single other element sometimes it’s a good thing, sometimes it isn’t. That’s just the way it is.

For Bruce Willis I suppose this film was considered a minor comeback after the response to HUDSON HAWK earlier in the year but since that film has a villain who proclaims “I’m the villain” and THE LAST BOY SCOUT has a bad guy who announces “I am the bad guy” so maybe they’re not that different after all. Either way, Willis slips into Hallenbeck with every ounce of contempt for everyone oozing through his stubble with a bitterness going beyond his smirk, a decent guy who’s lost his faith in a cynical world where heroes don’t matter anymore. I can appreciate an action movie hero who looks at himself in the mirror and says, “Nobody likes you. Everybody hates you. You’re gonna lose.” Just like I do every single morning. He makes it work. He and Damon Wayans play off each other all right but never seem to fully click, maybe because Wayans doesn't quite have the right weight for the part. This time around I found myself wondering how this would have played with Eddie Murphy sticking to the Shane Black dialogue. Chelsea Field of Blake Edwards’ SKIN DEEP and Danielle Harris of HALLOWEEN 4 & 5 spar well with Willis as Hallenbeck’s wife and daughter, each seeming more than willing to get in his face with their insults, but of course they’re now overshadowed by Halle Berry as Jimmy’s ill-fated girl Cory who’s in and out in just a few scenes. She’s raw in some of her line readings, but looking absolutely gorgeous she’s already clearly got something. Taylor Negron oozes his way across the screen as ‘the bad guy’, pulling off just the right balance of making it seem like he’s enjoying playing the bad guy and making it genuinely seem like he’s thinking the most vicious thoughts imaginable. It’s also fun to see some of the familiar character actors who turn up throughout like Bruce McGill, Clarence Felder and Joe Santos as Hallenbeck’s cop nemesis. He isn’t playing his ROCKFORD FILES character but, even so, I’m not quite sure what the difference is.

I think I could have had more fun back then. I’m referring to the first time I saw THE LAST BOY SCOUT on opening weekend but probably also to a lot of things as well. I’m more willing to now, especially because I’m all too aware of how much of a schmuck I am. Not to mention that it’s also nice to be reminded of an action movie that really is a fucking action movie. As well as being a movie that says you shouldn’t let the good part of you die in a cynical world. It’s a message that rings true today since, as Hallenbeck says at the end, ol’ Satan Claus is still out there. But thinking about it now I do wonder how those involved with THE LAST BOY SCOUT felt about the finished film. Tony Scott didn’t work with Joel Silver again, not to mention either of the stars—at that point he was still a few years away from hooking up with Denzel Washington for five movies. Silver and Bruce Willis, who struck gold with DIE HARD 1 and 2 then had to deal with all the HUDSON HAWK brickbats earlier in ‘91, apparently parted ways after this. Damon Wayans never became the big time movie star he seemed like he might for about five minutes and several years later co-starred with Adam Sandler in BULLETPROOF, definitely one of the worst buddy action movies of any kind ever made. THE LAST BOY SCOUT deservedly has its fans but maybe has fallen through the seat cushions a little as if it was a film made by certain people when they badly needed a hit and afterwards just moved on to other things. When Edgar Wright attempted to program the film at a festival and get Scott come to discuss it the director convinced him to change the selection to TRUE ROMANCE which, it should be remembered, features a Joel Silver-like producer played by Saul Rubinek. Maybe THE LAST BOY SCOUT is meant to be kind of the ugly stepchild of all this but it wears that badge with violently profane pride, an admirable and valuable piece of Tony Scott’s cinematic legacy. One that I may not always be able to embrace, but deep down have a certain amount of love for anyway.

Love Is For The Very Young

I don’t know anymore. I don’t have any answers. If I did, I’d have an idea of what to do. At one point in Vincente Minnelli’s MGM opus TWO WEEKS IN ANOTHER TOWN several of the main characters sit down in a Cinecittà screening room to see a film made by legendary filmmaker Walter Kruger (Edward G. Robinson) and starring the recently arrived Jack Andrus (Kirk Douglas), a washed-up movie star who’s been flown in to Rome by his old director to help out on a troubled project. What they’re viewing is never named but the scenes we see are from THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL made a decade before also for MGM, also starring Douglas and also directed by Minnelli who is clearly engaging in a game of mirrors by using clips from this particular film, one that is extended through how both movies are themselves about the movies, the various array of mirrors that exists within them and whatever state the people working in that industry find themselves at that point in time. Released in 1952 in glorious black & white THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL is the one that seems to have been officially sanctioned by the world as a classic but 1962’s TWO WEEKS IN ANOTHER TOWN is the one I find myself continually drawn to, almost feverishly so.

I’m not saying that it’s better (although the presence of Daliah Lavi certainly helps) and if pressed I’ll admit to a few apparent flaws but there have been occasional stretches where I’ve found myself repeatedly returning to this film. Recently has been one of those periods, if that’s what you want to call watching it three times over the course of a week. I’m not even sure I can say why. Maybe part of it is wish-fulfillment, a fantasy of Rome and Cinecittà in the early 60s as seen through the Technicolor CinemaScope phantasmagorical eye of Vincente Minnelli. And from that eye is the fateful stare-into-the-abyss-the-abyss-stares-back-at-you delirium with the logic of a drunken party that you’ve stayed at way too long until suddenly discovering that you’re the only one left. Maybe that’s how I feel a lot of the time lately. The two films have a great deal in common in some surprising ways and if Jack Andrus had been paying more attention to watching what he starred in all those years ago—if it’s even the same film, which doesn’t really matter—then he might have noticed more than a few similarities in the rhyming nature of how some of it corresponds to what eventually happens to him during those two weeks in a faraway city. Films that aren’t sequels generally don’t acknowledge each other as much as BAD and TWO WEEKS do with even composer David Raksin getting into the game with a score that is at times so close to what he did years earlier it’s as if he was never told that it wasn’t really a direct follow-up. Whichever one I prefer, THE BAD AN THE BEAUTIFUL in all its height-of-studio-system glory is no slouch, not at all and I should probably admit that it’s ‘better’ even if the one that I really love is still the one that I really love.

But truthfully, I’m still not sure if THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL is a classic that deserves to be ranked among the greats. Even compared to other films that mine the depths of Hollywood despair it never really gets under my skin like SUNSET BLVD. or IN A LONELY PLACE. It’s a tribute to Hollywood, after all, not an indictment and maybe it’s the soap opera feel to it all, maybe it’s the undeniable MGM sheen of prestige and quality hanging over the whole thing which, at the risk of having the Self-Styled Siren throw something heavy at me, keeps me at some kind of distance aware of how perfectly in place everything is, how calculated every single gesture and emotion seems to be impeccably rehearsed well ahead of time. But regardless the full power of the film is so engrossing and so entertaining even if it all is in a trashy, faux-prestige nature it’s the sort of film that sticks in the brain enough in a CASABLANCA sort of way with scenes, performances, moments, lines, glances, that make me feel like I’ve seen the whole thing 25 times even though I know that I haven’t. But even if THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL is more sumptuous than nutritious it still plays as the sort of rich, juicy meal that could only be prepared by MGM back in the day with all the best filmmaking talents and facilities in the world at their disposal. So I guess it is a classic. Nothing wrong with that, not at all.

Successful Hollywood director Fred Amiel (Barry Sullivan), Pulitzer Prize winning novelist and screenwriter James Lee Bartlow (Dick Powell) and movie star Georgia Lorrison (Lana Turner) all refuse to take phone calls from Jonathan Shields, someone they all clearly have a past with, resulting in the three being summoned to the office of studio executive Harry Pebble (Walter Pidgeon) to try to convince them to hear Shields out on a new project. Pebble recounts to each of them through flashbacks the tales of their relationships with Jonathan (Kirk Douglas)—how Amiel rose up with him through the B-movie ranks and then was tossed aside after developing his own passion project, how Georgia was single-handedly turned into a star by him then cruelly abandoned and the bestselling author Bartlow who came to Hollywood with starstruck wife Rosemary (Gloria Grahame) and thanks to Shields suffered the greatest tragedy of all.

The ghost of CITIZEN KANE hovers over THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL (screenplay by Charles Schnee, based on “Tribute to a Bad Man” by George Bradshaw) all the way through, playing as a more streamlined version of depicting the fall of a great man shifting it from a tycoon to a Sleznic-Thalberg type and considering John Houseman produced the film, references in dialogue referring to Shields as “Genius Boy” probably mean there’s a little bit of Welles also. He’s a bastard, but one with his own reasons and ultimately one who wants to rule the industry not change it. Even the flashback structure is smoothly linear, simply moving from one person to the next and even keeping others alive both before and after their individual stories have been told. And there’s also the reliable presence of Paul Stewart as press agent Syd about as blatant a KANE nod you could make, playing a vaguely similar character and his very demeanor is such that you believe he’s someone who really does know where all the bodies are buried.

I don’t know if THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL is really an incisive view of the industry either then or now in the way it pulls away the curtain at all the backstabbing. In fact, I’m going to guess that it isn’t even if it once may have seemed so to audiences who only knew what they read in fan magazines. He’s definitely no Sammy Glick since Jonathan Shields’ ambitions actually include making good movies in addition to the power that comes from selling himself and the people screwed over by the title character of Budd Schulberg’s “What Makes Sammy Run?” were forever damaged by his actions—the ones hurt by Shields instead thrive so even if he’s abandoned them he’s put them in positions to be able to thrive. And nothing that happens is ever seamy enough for the Hays Office to object so there’s nothing like abortions, drug addiction, not to mention how for what’s supposed to be a biting look at the industry for the most part everyone who works there seems pretty supportive of each other, happy to let extras go a little early in the day to audition for a bit part across town with their ever-loyal agent, one the struggling actress stays with even after she becomes a star, no less.

But through every juicy behind the scenes business is a romance of old time Hollywood of up-and-comers desperately trying to scrape together a movie with nothing, with a card game, rushing the reels over to a test screening before waiting for the cards to come back so you know if the movie will be a hit. Looking up the film reveals a few of the real-life inspirations for its characters even down to the early bit Lana Turner’s Georgia Lorrison plays set in a drugstore playing off of the legend of being discovered. The most obvious would be the creation of the Val Lewton style of not showing very much of the horrors being depicted—a film called DOOM OF THE CAT MEN isn’t a reference that’s too hard to get but it also very obviously doesn’t have much to do with the filmmaker in question—in this tale making that kind of trifle is just a rung up the ladder to getting to the point where you can finally make a film out of that book you’ve been carrying around dogeared for years while crashing ritzy Hollywood parties that are strictly black tie. Through it all the film gets us to taste the addiction that comes from being part of this world, through the silvery eye of cinematographer Robert Surtees and Jonathan Shields remains an enigma, maybe one all the more fascinating in this glossy Hollywood, determined to throw the past as represented by his father and how Hollywood forgot him back in its own face while at the same time never forgetting it—if he sees a kindred spirit in hard drinker Georgia Lorrison’s own obsession with her father he never says so and Jonathan, whose one weakness seems to be the booze he almost never touches, never quite says everything that would completely explain him and his behavior, right to the very end of each of his relationships.

THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL presents a Hollywood that has (seemingly) always been there and presumably always would be, just as the 1954 version of A STAR IS BORN depicted the town only a few years later. By the time of TWO WEEKS IN ANOTHER TOWN a decade on everything is falling apart—the likes of Louis B. Mayer are for the most part dead and gone, the studio system is in its death throes and the money man in charge of what’s being shot cares even less about the quality of the end result than the “Give me a picture with a kiss in the end and black in the ledger!” exec Jonathan Shields had to deal with on DOOM OF THE CAT MEN. The town has been rendered so unimportant as filmmakers flee to far-off places in Europe that none of the film is even set there, only spoken of as a place where the past happened.

In some ways TWO WEEKS thematically picks up where BEAUTIFUL left off with a presumed reconciliation based on the excitement of a new project but the later film reveals the various emotions involved to be more complicated than that—loyalties aren’t always what they seem like they will be and parts, whether whole scenes or even brief dialogue exchanges, continually recall what has come before. A jovial scene on a beach where the leader of the gang seemingly orchestrates a marriage proposal for two lovers becomes a wistful musing on what never really was in the second film. The torch song “Don’t Blame Me” turns from an upbeat singalong by friends on the way home from an all-night party to Leslie Uggams sadly belting it out at a Roman gathering somewhat more unseemly (apparently presented as more of an orgy in the original cut) and a desperate, possibly suicidal drive through the Hollywood Hills filmed entirely from the inside of the car becomes a desperate careen willingly attempting to replicate another such drive as Cyd Charisse screams endlessly next to the frenzied Douglas, with a blatantly fake use of rearscreen projection that becomes genuinely hypnotic in its own unreality. Even the very first on-set encounter Lana Turner’s Georgia Lorrison has with Jonathan Shields in BEAUTIFUL is essentially what happens to her later on after he’s turned her into a star—the seduction followed by the abandonment. For Shields, it’s the only way to live. For Jack Andrus in TWO WEEKS his entire life is taking place after that final abandonment as he finds himself in another town searching for redemption from a father figure who may never have been able to offer it in the first place until he finally discovers that it doesn’t really matter. After all, if you do attach yourself to someone the only thing that can happen is getting hurt and in the end you’re just left there, all by yourself next to a phone that doesn’t ring. In the dead of night, drunk or sober, all you’re left with is yourself and that’s what you have to come to terms with if you’re going to come up with a decent reason to get up the next morning.

As for the man who stars in both films, watching Kirk Douglas as Jonathan Shields is most rewarding during those moments when we can watch the gears in his brain turn, showing the genius that makes him a success. On the other there are those over the top moments where we essentially see him as Kirk Douglas doing Kirk Douglas (making me think of the long ago “Kirk’s Greatest Kirks” sketch on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE). Top-billed Lana Turner, her eyes bugging out as he screams at her, maybe becomes better the more I see the film with the layers of what remains with her during her low points through the time when she’s a full-fledged movie star. The calmer portrayals of Dick Powell, making some of the best use of a pipe in screen history, and Barry Sullivan balance out well with them as does the forever memorable Gloria Grahame in her Oscar-winning performance as the always-interrupting Southern belle Rosemary. It’s a wonderful cast, also including Paul Stewart as Syd, the infectious enthusiasm of Gilbert Roland as Latin lover Victor Ribera (“Gaucho?” everyone in the world seems to reply when his name is spoken) to, Ivan Triesault as Von Ellstein whose lecture on making every scene in a movie a climax has sadly mostly been forgotten by filmmakers today. Even the bit players stick out particularly Kathleen Freeman, Barbara Billingsley and Ned Glass trying to push those damn cat men costumes on Fred and Jonathan. The ferociously beautiful Elaine Stewart shows up for only a few scenes but gets some of the best lines in the film—“Thought you were swell” is a pretty great kiss-off and her “There are no great men, buster. There’s only men.” is the sort of line which seems designed to be nothing more than a great line but that’s what most of the dialogue seems meant to be anyway which, considering how this movie trumpets each star as loudly as possible during the opening credits, is appropriate. It’s a film that seems designed to be great and important, or at least possess the illusion of that, in the tony style that only the finest artisans at MGM could provide filled with dialogue that feels like it’s trying to be great, memorable dialogue in all the best ways.

And just as appropriate as the proclamation “Filmed in HOLLYWOOD USA” that accompanies the end title card which seems a point of pride like never before in any other film released by MGM. It’s all about selling the illusion. Midway through the film as Jonathan takes an important phone call it’s made clear that he knows Georgia is listening in on another line. She picks up again on another call at the very end, joined by Fred and James Lee this time around and though we never cut to Jonathan in Paris it’s easy to believe that he once again knows very well that she, as well as the others, are listening in. It’s the thrill of wanting to hear what his surefire idea is, of course, but it’s also all about the seduction. We know it’s going to continue. That’s the way it always is. Until it isn’t and the film they made years later where that’s what happens only serves to make the final shot of THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL all the more complex. I can daydream of a third part to all this coming another ten years later—Kirk playing a mogul losing his grip in the EASY RIDER era. That old MGM didn’t really exist anymore by that point and Minnelli certainly didn’t have the same sort of power he used to so maybe that’s best left as a daydream. And since my general daily mindset lately is that of the desperation of Joe Gillis in the first ten minutes of his own movie these are the sort of things that stay with me. Is there anything to do once you feel nothing but that emptiness? Is there anything to do once that loneliness is staring you in the face? Is there anything to do to bring back that feeling of hope, that feeling that you really can accomplish something? Should I watch TWO WEEKS IN ANOTHER TOWN yet again tonight? Or should it be THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL? And, maybe most importantly, does anything that happens in Hollywood ever really happen? Even after living in this town longer than I probably feel like admitting, I’m still not sure.

Go With The Tie

Earlier this summer I had a birthday, just as I do around the time of the Summer Solstice every year, giving me yet another chance to take a long walk of the soul and ponder all those things I haven’t done yet in life. At the opening of AUTHOR! AUTHOR! playwright Ivan Travaliyan played by Al Pacino arrives home to find his family greeting him with a surprise for his 42nd (or maybe 43rd) birthday leading to various wacky hijinks. I haven’t gotten to this age yet but I’m pretty close and when I was a kid this kind of birthday probably seemed really old, the sort that only a full-fledged adult had. Alas, I don’t have a townhouse in Greenwich Village and I’m not in rehearsals of a play that I’ve written about to open on Broadway but considering I haven’t lived in New York for nearly two decades now anyway maybe I’m just looking for things to complain about. Plus I don’t have a roomful of kids yelling at me but there are friends whose houses I can always go over to for that.

Celebrating its thirtieth anniversary this year (released June 18, 1982) AUTHOR! AUTHOR! is pretty much forgotten by now except for (I suspect) anyone with memories of countless HBO viewings way back in the day. It’s an odd duck of a film considering the ‘Al Pacino family comedy’ subgenre doesn’t have very many entries in it and for the actor the film sort of falls in between the wirey, high-pitched first part of his career and the later, raspier Al starting with his comeback in SEA OF LOVE. The iconic nature of Tony Montana in SCARFACE always seems to fall outside of these periods but AUTHOR! AUTHOR! feels linked to some of his other films from both periods if only for its New York setting. Truth be told, there is a certain pleasant flashback vibe I get from it, down to how when at one point he walks through some slush on a winter New York street I can almost feel the sensation of how cold and wet it must be. Those New York winters stay with you. Idea for double bill: pair this thing with CRUISING just to weird people out. AUTHOR! AUTHOR! is the sort of film that I could never really be too harsh on because, really, there wouldn’t be any point but it never becomes all that great either. Buried within the material is maybe something that could have been more than just a genial family comedy if it had made an attempt to really address the pain and anguish that comes from trying to combine all sorts of things in life just to make it through the day. But it’s really just a pleasant movie. With some good actors. And kids. One that’s set in early 80s New York. A New York where seemingly everyone makes wisecracks from Pacino to Alan King (naturally) to the kids to waitresses in restaurants as they serve the food. I can think of worse ways to spend a few hours even if I’m not going to make a great case for it.

New York playwright Ivan Travalian (Al Pacino) is mounting his latest production “English with Tears” on Broadway dealing with the usual issues of finding directors and moneymen when the frenetic-but-normal world of his homelife comes to a halt when wife Gloria (Tuesday Weld) chooses to walk out on him leaving their five children, one his and the rest hers from various previous marriages, in the lurch. Ivan sends a few of the kids off to live with other parents and rehearsals for the play begin complete with inclusion of film star Alice Detroit (Dyan Cannon). But even when a romance between Ivan and Alice begins to brew and she moves in he can’t help but admit that not only are the kids the ones he really cares about he’s still in love with Gloria. And, with opening night of the play fast approaching, there’s still the pesky issue of the second act to worry about.

I spent enough time in a few certain places down in Greenwich Village back during the 80s that there’s a certain familiarity I get from some of AUTHOR! AUTHOR! which has to say something. Even if Al Pacino was trying to broaden his appeal by taking on a KRAMER VS. KRAMER family-type project (or maybe just trying to do something diametrically opposed from CRUISING) it still seems like a strange marriage with his particular kind of screen energy. While the film certainly goes down easy enough the conflict in the screenplay by Israel Horovitz (of course, a playwright himself as well as the father of Adam Horovitz—apparently the script is, no surprise, somewhat autobiographical) is too minor, the emotions never feel all that tapped in as if there wasn’t a real attempt to dig into any of the complexities and considering that the director was Arthur Hiller who I always imagine as being a genial sort with nice hair who never wants to upset anyone too much (still, any filmography that contains THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY, THE HOSPITAL, SILVER STREAK and THE IN-LAWS is in no way a washout), that could very well have been the case. In its own sort of less-jokey Neil Simon vein the whole thing is likable enough, fortunately never becoming overly cloying, but just a little too nice and polite.

Actually, considering the New York setting and various members of the cast I can’t help but imagine a version of this material directed by Sidney Lumet who wasn’t exactly known for family films either but he did know what to do with emotions and if his version wouldn’t have been quite so cuddly for the kids it might have had more resonance. Because as much as this world is familiar to me and as much as there are some stabs at a feel of an actual lived-in world it still occasionally feels a little too cute with behavior that has more to do with the movies than real life, like hitting someone in the face with their own birthday cake or hailing a cab on impulse to go from Manhattan to Massachusetts and back (kind of like what Tom Hanks did two years later in SPLASH). Truth be told, there is more of a feel of reality to it than there probably would be in such a film now and I keep going back and forth in my own mind about how good or not-good it really is, maybe just not wanting to be too harsh about it all--Tuesday Weld has a near-impossible part to play considering how awful her character has to behave but some distant memories of events I had a vague awareness of involving distant relatives make me think that some of it is sadly believable in terms of something that may actually happen between a divorcing couple and the kids affected by those actions. When the character finally has to explain herself the actress makes the words seem about as genuine as they could under the circumstances but even this beat is undercut by how when Pacino finally (and justifiably) chooses to dismiss her the way the beat is cut doesn’t even allow us to see her own reaction robbing the moment of its own emotional complexity so it all feels a little incomplete.

The film vacillates between emotional complexity (like how the chemistry between Pacino and Cannon’s characters doesn’t last beyond their initial tryst) and making things a little too neat (their inevitable break-up). It’s sort of nice to have the runner of characters bickering about the second act, comedy legends Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding lurking on the outskirts of scenes as the concerned producers dropping sly dialogue and various other pieces of business even if there’s the feeling that Pacino isn’t entirely comfortable with some of this rat-a-tat dialogue—just about his best moment in the film is when during a fit of writers block he accidentally crumples up a piece of paper before even putting it into the typewriter. The title is explained late in the film by a reference to a play where people screamed “Author! Author!” on opening night but it immediately closed anyway. The pleasures and rewards aren’t going to be trumpeted by the world but you still need to get through it anyway and maybe you can find your own rewards by doing that. The overall message of AUTHOR! AUTHOR! is a little pat but it never feels as cloying as it would in a Chris Columbus-type movie which is something that, looking at it now, is kind of refreshing. The kids all get along except for friendly bickering but it still treats them with respect and not just as joke machines—when one of them describes in detail the extent of their extended family it sounds outlandish but strangely, sadly, plausible as well. Of course, I doubt that it would be appropriate for any other Al Pacino movie to contain a main theme that features the lyric, “Coming home to you is like coming home to milk and cookies…” and in some ways that odd combination sums up the film—kinda nice and it honestly does provide me with more than a few smiles whether they have to do with nostalgia or just the pleasure of watching it now, but with Al Pacino at the center of everything a little more digging into all these emotions wouldn’t be so bad. It might even make the cheerful stuff mean that much more.

In the book “Al Pacino: In Conversation with Lawrence Grobel” the star doesn’t have much to say about the film beyond saying he liked working with the kids. But aside from seeming particularly engaged with them during many of these scenes his energy doesn’t feels totally there as if he’s realizing during production that there’s not as much for him as an actor to explore in this environment as he thought there would be. As a result it’s as if he puts himself into kind of a zen state with some genuine laughs poking through like when he mutters “Who is it?” after a phone rings at a moment of tension. The issue of the women feels unclear--maybe because the screenplay never fully connects with them, maybe because the character who is clearly the surrogate for the screenwriter never does. The movie star played by Dyan Cannon (who also appeared in DEATHTRAP which of course was the 1982 film about a playwright Sidney Lumet actually did direct), defined by taking aspirin when she drinks champagne more than anything, seems incomplete which is maybe to represent how the two of them don’t fully connect after she moves in and she’s nice enough to have around for a little while—the movie avoids easy jokes about her character being a stuck-up Hollywood actress—but can’t do much with the underwritten role. Weld’s character is also underwritten up until the edge of her final scene but even then it still feels like there needs to be more. I’m sure it’s totally unintended but the enigma that is Tuesday Weld’s career actually adds to the enigma of her character’s behavior here. The always enjoyable Alan King and Bob Dishy are fun to watch bounce off Pacino and Eric Gurry as his son (one of the kids who reprised the role in the later pilot of a TV version that didn’t go to series entitled FULL HOUSE, also written by Horovitz and which starred Dennis Dugan as Travalian) does a particularly nice job in scenes with his onscreen father. All of the kids (including Ari Meyers, later of the sitcom KATE & ALLIE) do at least seem somewhat real in various ways, I’ll give the film that much.

Amidst all the early 80s pleasantness one thing that also warrants mention is the Dave Grusin music heard throughout which gives me the vibe of his score for TOOTSIE, a film that didn’t open until six months later but the basic sound is similar enough that you could almost imagine characters from one film turning up in the other since they’re both set in New York, after all. When revisiting AUTHOR! AUTHOR! not too long ago I was surprised by how abruptly the movie goes to the credits at the very end, barely even giving a chance to see Pacino’s reaction to the all-important New York Times review for his play. I think my memory had the characters all walking off into the Times Square night in full celebratory mode but that’s me probably just confusing it in my mind with NIGHT SHIFT, also ’82, and a film that really does end in such a way with its own infectious pop melody. The film’s imdb page indicates that there may actually be a few different cuts out there (the version aired on FMC that I watched actually credits Johnny Mandel, whose score was rejected, with the music so there may be something to this) but whatever the truth is all this goes perfectly with my long-standing theory that every movie is just one big movie, moments from each of them swirling around in our collective memories until it becomes almost impossible to tell any of them apart. That may sound a little nuts but it’s not as crazy as the fact that I just wrote a piece on AUTHOR! AUTHOR!