Treason Is Merely A Matter Of Dates

I’ve seen DIE HARD 2 so many times by now that I barely know what to think of it. The original DIE HARD is one of the greatest action movies ever made and I don’t wish to hear otherwise. No, seriously I will not listen to dissenting opinions on this point. Coming just under two years after the release of the film which promised to ‘blow you through the back wall of the theater’, the sequel which pledged to ‘blow you sky high’—and, contrary to the advertising, not actually called DIE HARDER—was no doubt one of the first times a follow-up turned out to be more successful, in this case partly due to how huge the original had become on VHS after its theatrical run. If anyone out there was complaining about the ridiculousness of John McClane being sucked into another terrorist assault on Christmas Eve they couldn’t be heard over the excitement the film engendered—this thing was huge whent released over the July 4th weekend in 1990. Gene Siskel somewhat infamously proclaimed it as “the best film of the summer” finally placing it at #6 on his year-end ten best list and with all due respect to the late critic he did overstate things on a few occasions. I’ve seen this film and hated it, I’ve seen it and enjoyed it, but when it comes right down to it when compared to the stunningly well made original, DIE HARD 2 comes off as more of a piece of hackwork than anything else. With super producer Joel Silver bringing in hotshot director Renny Harlin (who had just helmed THE ADVENTURES OF FORD FAIRLAINE for Silver—the two films wound up opening a week apart) to take the reins. It’s slick, it’s expensive looking and it does get the job done for 124 minutes. It still kind of bugs me.


One year after the event at Nakatomi Plaza, John McClane (Bruce Willis) is now an L.A. cop but is spending the Christmas holiday near the nation’s capitol with the parents of wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia). At Dulles Airport to pick up Holly (who pages him on an airplane phone to tell him the plane will be late—because airports don’t have any kind of system in place to inform people if the flights are on schedule) McClane notices some odd activity going on and his snooping turns out to have to do with the incoming General Esperanza (Franco Nero), South American drug lord and dictator being expedited to the US for trial—naturally, the state department is flying him into a crowded airport on Christmas Eve, with one lone soldier guarding him on that plane, no less. McClane runs afoul of Colonel Stuart (William Sadler) leader of a group of mercenaries (which include Robert Patrick, John Leguizamo and the guy who played ‘Meat’ in PORKY’S) intent on rescuing Esperanza and they’ll do anything to keep it from happening, starting with taking over the airport’s control systems so they’ll be unable to communicate with the planes so none can land. As the planes become increasingly low on fuel and with seemingly no one listening to him, McClane is intent on doing whatever he can to stop the terrorists and therefore save his wife, along with everyone else trapped up in the air.


The film recently screened at the Cinematheque on a double bill with DIE HARD, of course, appropriate for the season and a good opportunity to see these bigger-than-big action movies on the big screen for the first time in a while—at their release it played like a stylistic touch how both films used the full Twentieth-Century Fox fanfare as if to state flat out how big the coming film was going to be. Nearly twenty years after its release what is now interesting about this sequel is looking at how it tries to addresses the then-coming nineties and how old-school John McClane will deal with them but it also gives us a Hollywoodized look at what now seems like a quainter time in airport terrorism. This comes complete with a security chief played by Dannis Franz who never wants to take a single thing McClane says seriously, an old woman who brings a taser onboard the plane with her and a enormous airline crash figuring into the plot which could either be looked at as a low point for this sort of entertainment or a case of upping the action-stakes as high as possible for 1990. That summer also included hundreds of people getting killed in TOTAL RECALL and ROBOCOP 2 so this subject was getting a lot of ink at the time. I have to admit that I never really mind DIE HARD 2 particularly when compared to sequels that are genuinely lousy (like, say, SPEED 2: CRUISE CONTROL) but it doesn’t really come close to the first film and I’m always surprised how it seems to rank so highly. There’s very little credibility from the big points (why do they tell the planes to hold at the ‘outer marker’ instead of immediately sending them to another airport?) to the small (why is Dick Thornburgh being moved from First Class to, I assume, Business during what’s supposed to be the last half-hour of the flight? Why does Security Chief Lorenzo tell McClane that he just broke five District of Columbia regulations when they’re in Virginia?) but even on a purely stylistic level things it doesn’t feel like it measures up.


The elegance that McTiernan and company brought to that film amidst all the mayhem still makes it extremely satisfying to see and one of the reasons it plays so great at Christmas is that it keeps the notion of the holiday alive throughout, from witty dialogue to Michael Kamen’s music. Part 2 doesn’t really pay much attention to the holiday after the first few minutes and unlike McTiernan’s confidence in how his scenes, both dialogue and action, are staged to use the entire frame at times, Harlin’s approach seems to be to shoot every scene from as many angles as possible and he uses every single one before the scene ends and as a result the whole film has a very ‘cutty’ feel to it (Stuart Baird is oddly credited as both Supervising Editor and, with Robert A. Ferretti, editor). In his film McTiernan stages whole scenes with multiple actors from one angle and is willing to let it play out. Harlin barely lets a dialogue exchange, let alone an entire scene, go by without several cuts and this approach just becomes less satisfying as the film goes on. He holds it all together, but there’s no real wit or style to it and most of the ‘funny’ dialogue feels pretty crass this time (points for 'Just the Fax,' however).


Unlike the very specific L.A. setting of the first film, which still plays great today, the setting of Dulles International Airport just winds up feeling like a generic snowy location in comparison. I always enjoy flying in and out of Dulles, a very cool place which wasn’t used by the production—such a thing probably wasn’t possible but using that unique architecture and layout would have been cool and they don’t even bother to try to make it seem like the real place (the particularly sizable disclaimer over the end credits indicates that it wasn’t easy putting all this together considering all the real-life agencies they probably couldn’t name or even thank). Exteriors were shot at various points throughout North America as the production went hunting for snow but airport interiors were clearly shot in L.A., as evidenced by the famous blooper showing Bruce Willis clearly speaking on a pay phone labeled ‘PACIFIC BELL’ in big letters, something I remember spotting on the day it opened. Much of the time the overriding feeling from the script by Steven E. de Souza and Doug Richardson (from the Walter Wager novel “58 Minutes”) is one that is intent on racing to get itself done unlike the layered thematic elements of the first film. Look, I’ll admit that DIE HARD does actually have a few flaws but even the broadest characters in that film feel like vivid characterizations. Here, for the most part they feel like, at best, non-entities and, at worst, written as idiots. Some of the action does feel staged in a listless kind of way but I’ll admit that once we get to the fight-on-the-wing climax it really manages to deliver what it promises and in keeping all the narrative balls in the air throughout it does get the job done. Thing is, it doesn’t really do much more than that, so it all feels kind of empty. I know, clearly very few people have cared about these nitpicks through the years. Besides, it works up to a point…and since much of the mayhem still had to be staged for real at this point in time that certainly adds to the excitement watching it now as well.


Bruce Willis is once again fun as McClane and, totally freed by TV by this point, he clearly has the confidence throughout in the role even though by the film’s nature he doesn’t have as much dramatic stuff to play. At the least, his character is still not portrayed as a super hero at this point and that level of humanity is certainly something. The other actors do what they can with the script but it’s not their fault that the material isn’t as vivid as the other film. Fred Dalton Thompson maintains his dignity and projects quiet authority as Dulles head Trudeau—few people deliver a line like “That stupid, arrogant son of a bitch” like he does. Dennis Franz certainly makes an impression as Carmine Lorenzo but that’s partly due to his shouting. Spaghetti Western mainstay Franco Nero makes zero impression as Experanza and William Sadler, who has done lots of great work over the years, is fairly bland as Colonel Stuart when compared to Alan Rickman—I get the feeling that Harlin and D.P. Oliver Wood enjoyed framing the contours of his face to project how evil he is, but that’s about it. John Amos plays the leader of the Special Forces unit called in to handle the crisis and Tom Bower, seen recently as Nicolas Cage’s father in BAD LIETENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS plays Marvin, the airport janitor because, of course, an airport this size only needs one janitor. Bonnie Bedelia (nothing to do, but she still manages to make it credible), William Atherton and (briefly) Reginald VelJohnson reprise their roles from the first film. Tons of familiar faces appear throughout, including Dick McGarvin, Ted Farley in Michael Ritchie's SMILE, as an anonymous air traffic controller. At least it’s well cast and this film is an enjoyable reminder of a time when using such familiar faces was more the norm, instead of just hiring cheap non-entities to back up the film’s star. Michael Kamen’s score does away with the arch Christmasy licks that helped make the first film stand out so what’s left is the same type of straight action music which is still good, but, like the film itself, not as noteworthy. If Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” was the big musical concept in the first film, here it’s “Finlandia” by Sibelius which is probably a nice in joke for the film’s Finnish director and works fairly well but it’s still not quite the same thing.


The double bill at the Cinematheque was introduced by co-screenwriterwriter Steven E. de Souza who talked about the creative genesis of both films, including how they really did approach Frank Sinatra first for DIE HARD to get him to reprise his role from THE DETECTIVE as the source novel “Nothing Lasts Forever” by Roderick Thorpe was a sequel to the book that film was based on. Even crazier, when the studio was trying to get costs on the sequel down on the sequel they explored the possibility of doing it without snow. Since the film revolves around planes that can’t land due to a snowstorm the temporary solution was to have them unable to land due to heavy fog. Fortunately, saner heads prevailed even if the resulting shoot was apparently pretty hellish. For whatever reason, the DIE HARD series went in a different direction after this film which I’ve always suspected had more to do with things going on behind closed doors (I assume resulting in how Joel Silver was never involved from this point on) than with any feelings of creative stagnation. I admit I’ve always kind of liked 1995’s DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE but thought the fourth film, which has a title I can’t bring myself to type out, was a reprehensible insult to anyone with any fondness for the original and I maintain that it was made by people who hated DIE HARD. Some things I do not forgive. Anyway, DIE HARD 2 comes from a time when you could have a giant plane crash killing hundreds of people then an hour later everyone’s smiling and grinning as the credits role. The world has changed considerably since then but back in 1990 we could avoid thinking about those possibilities for a few hours. Besides, Dennis Franz says at the very end, “What the hell! It’s Christmas!” and that line could sum up everything about the first two films in the series as well. Vaughn Monroe is of course famously heard singing Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow as the end credits start up…and, even now, DIE HARD 2 doesn’t want to say anything more than that either.

As Long As The Circulation Is Rising

I suppose there’s only one thing better than a newspaper movie and that’s a newspaper movie in black & white, the kind with wisecracking reporters who wear hats, snappy-looking Lois Lane-types to spar with at the desk across from them, gruff editors overseeing the operation and the clack of the typewriters going endlessly. It may be simple romancing of the whole idea of it, but so what? 1952’s SCANDAL SHEET, directed by Phil Karlson, is a pretty enjoyable example of this—I feel like it would make perfect sense if I sat here chomping on a cigar and called it a “damn good picture”. Speaking of people who chomped on a lot of cigars in their time, the film was based on Sam Fuller’s novel “The Dark Page” and not being involved in the production, Fuller merely refers to the final product in his autobiography as “disappointing,” adding that he wished that Howard Hawks, who once owned the rights, had wound up directing (he doesn’t mention any desire to have made it himself). This didn’t stop Columbia from including the title as part of their recent Fuller DVD box set, in which his widow Christa can be seen in the supplements speaking well of it. I can imagine a few points in there which could have been made stronger on a psychological level and something more than just a potboiler but it’s not meant at all disparaging to say that’s ultimately what it is. A version of the story directed by Fuller, or someone else even, may have allowed for some of these points but simply put, there are any number of old noirs which once you get accustomed to the cool old-school feel you realize that the plot simply isn’t connecting—it’s enjoyable but not all that satisfying as a story. That’s not at all the case with SCANDAL SHEET, which clicks together during its 82 minutes and even if it’s not a classic, it’s comes off as just the sort of thing to sometimes watch late at night and dream of that black & white world.


Mark Chapman (Broderick Crawford), recently placed editor of the New York Express, has seen his cheap tabloid approach to journalism (speaking as someone who has recently departed a TV show with a similar take on things, all I can say is the more things change…) pay off with a rise in circulation and he’s intent on bringing it as high as possible, putting much of his trust in rising young reporter Steve McCleary (John Farrow). Steve, pretty much Chapman’s protégé, is all for anything his Editor wants to do to sell a newspaper, as much as it angers fellow scribe Julie Allison (Donna Reed) who has no interest in this tabloid garbage. At the night of a Lonely Hearts Ball, Chapman’s latest headline-grabbing event, he is quietly recognized by a woman named Charlotte Grant (Rosemary DeCamp) who turns out to be the woman he married years ago under his former name George Grant, which he changed when he desperately abandoned her—he doesn’t seem to have done this out of anything other than boredom and hatred—as he says, his biggest mistake was, “I fell for an attractive hunk of flesh.” When he goes to confront the woman in her tiny apartment they quarrel which leads to a fight, resulting in her accidental death (so, was it deliberate in Fulller’s original novel? That wouldn’t surprise me). Soon enough, Steve stumbles onto the crime and begins to investigate, leaving Chapman with no choice but to allow his reporter to begin snooping—after all, it means a rise in circulation and maybe he can even influence what happens as he hopes that his reporter won’t discover the deadly secret.


Broderick Crawford pats his sweating brow a few times here and there but aside from that SCANDAL SHEET doesn’t deal with the psychology too much. The basic idea here would presumably be how the younger reporter is betrayed by his older mentor/editor he’s learned all his tricks from but all this is lost is how fast the plot moves forward. This is certainly a difference between how this may have been in a version that might have starred, say, Edward G. Robinson and directed by Fritz Lang which would have been all psychological subtext (THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW and SCARLET STREET come to mind as this type of approach). Of course, that’s not what SCANDAL SHEET is meant to be about and the plot could pretty much be described as THE BIG CLOCK only without the younger lead being set up as a suspect. It’s not always clear what endgame Crawford’s character has in mind beyond the paper’s rise in circulation—he seems to not want to pull his reporter off the story but also hopes that it’ll all just fade away. The result is smoothly put together by director Phil Karlson (helmer of many things including 5 AGAINST THE HOUSE and THE SILENCERS) who brings a great deal of lucidity to the narrative, executing the script in a skillful way that wasn’t always the case with these films (Screenplay by Ted Sherdeman, Eugene Ling and James Poe, from the Fuller novel)--some shots are skillfully executed in how they allow the story to reveal itself as they play out. During one sequence, a character leaves one location and is then seen arriving somewhere else a short time later in nearly a real-time context tying both settings together to keep us alert to everything going on, point of clarity that the movie pulls off very well. And even in the context of the fast narrative there are touches which seem unique to this type of movie, from the somewhat depressing glimpses of the people at the Lonely Hearts Ball as well as how the film pauses to examine the faces of the bowery winos who might be helpful (“That does it, I’ll never touch another drop for the rest of my life,” someone says). It may have mostly been shot on the Columbia backlot but it still has a punchy New York feel with touches that give it a considerable amount of realism and slick style.


The camerawork by Burnett Guffey that is extremely rich and layered--one shot of Rosemary DeCamp approaching someone at the dance is extremely ambitious for this type of picture and at another point there’s even a neat trick effects shot involving an el train to give the effect that we’re actually in New York. It’s also hard not to notice how Cawford moves himself in and out of the light as he learns certain things in one scene near the very end, one of those touches that black & white is just perfect for. Crawford and Farrow do have nice interplay together in their scenes set amidst this backdrop but it still feels like the potential complexity of their relationship is only paid lip service so the climax doesn’t have quite as much punch as it should. With a little more than the workmanlike approach that’s there, SCANDAL SHEET could have been a minor genre classic but what’s there anyway is still pretty cool. It’s in black & white, it’s set at a newspaper, it keeps its crackerjack story going right up until the end and is just the sort of film you want to see when, well, you’re looking for some of these films that you haven’t seen yet.


Crawford is excellent, never making his character sympathetic but still always keeping him more interesting than just a brutish villain. This complexity may be about as deep as the film gets, but it certainly gives one something to chew on. Donna Reed is snappy and cool in her role which frankly feels just shy of underwritten and Rosemary De Camp is extremely effective in her scenes with Crawford, with the two ripping at each other in a ferocious way. John Farrow seems a little lightweight as the nominal lead but he has his moments like that glint in his eye as he tells a sobbing woman, “I have to have the facts,” willing to stop at nothing for the story. Anyway, he works better when he keeps his hat on, maybe because I wasn’t getting distracted by his pompadour. Harry Morgan, incidentally also in THE BIG CLOCK, plays the wisecracking, cigar-chomping photographer, still using Henry as his first name in the credits.


It may not be as historically notable as Fuller’s own PARK ROW, his tribute to the the rise of New York journalism in the late 1800’s, but SCANDAL SHEET is still very enjoyable on its own. Fuller may have been disappointed in it, but it in no way feels like a betrayal of his lifelong fascination with the newspaper trade although if anyone out there who is much more of a Fuller expert than myself disagrees, feel free to chime in. Anyway, for those times when I have a desire to only see black & white films that I haven’t caught up with yet, this is exactly the sort of thing I’m looking for. And, speaking from a certain amount of experience, if you just substitute ‘ratings’ in place of ‘circulation’ the very things that some of its characters are obsessed with remain true even in this day and age. The clack of those typewriters, however, is sorely missed.

In The Right Way

This is a tough town, filled with insecurity, doubt and self-loathing. And that’s only what goes on in my apartment. I’m not sure if I have the necessary experience to be the guy to write a screenplay that focuses on the hell of a long-term relationship. Too much time by myself, I guess. But that doesn’t mean I can’t understand every single frame of the anguish in Albert Brooks’ essential MODERN ROMANCE, his 1981 comedy that succeeds so well it’s almost the only Albert Brooks film you’ll ever need. Of course, a few of his other films, as well as his great album COMEDY MINUS ONE, can easily be placed in the pantheon but this one is just extra special in its own way. It plays like the purest expression of the man’s own comic persona that he ever pulled off and possibly the closest to pure, honest discomfort that any form of American comedy took until Larry David decided to get in front of the camera full time. By this point, it’s a fair question why Albert Brooks has never actually appeared on CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM. Maybe the dialogue he crafts is carefully worked out into the proper syntax and because of that his individual approach just wouldn’t work in that type of improv environment. Maybe there is no good reason. Only the second feature Brooks directed, MODERN ROMANCE was according to accounts a favorite of Stanley Kubrick who had long wanted to make his own film on jealousy—Brooks once told Entertainment Weekly, “…one day I was sitting at home and the phone rings. It's Stanley Kubrick. He had seen the movie and wanted to know how I did it. That's the first thing he said -- 'How did you make this movie? I've always wanted to make a movie about jealousy.' I said to him, The guy who did 2001 is asking me how I did something?''' One wonders why no one has ever run a double bill of this film with EYES WIDE SHUT. I say that the New Beverly should get right on that.

Film editor Robert Cole (Albert Brooks) decides to break it off with girlfriend Mary Harvard (Kathryn Harrold). Surprised that she won’t stay for dinner after the breakup (“Wait a minute, come back, we can at least eat.”), he returns to work where he is editing a sci-fi film for his director David (James L. Brooks) and assistant editor Jay (Bruno Kirby). Unable to concentrate on work, he sets out to rebuild his life to do whatever he can to get his mind off Mary. This is of course easier said then done and the pattern of what their relationship is going through proves impossible to break. Meanwhile, his film’s director has come up with the perfect way to make the whole last part of the picture work: footsteps.


If pressed, I would probably admit that Brooks’ LOST IN AMERICA which came several years later is his most purely enjoyable film with the most quotable dialogue and some of REAL LIFE is pretty damn near brilliant as well but it’s MODERN ROMANCE, written by him and Monica Johnson, more than any of the others that can really get under your skin. When I was younger I thought while some of it was hysterical, other parts were a little too bland—the use of “You Are So Beautiful” seemed clichéd, the arguments a little too monotonous. But now that I’m older I can see that these elements are how Robert Cole sees it all and his tiny house in the hills with his record albums (“Look at all my albums!”) and his Porsche should be enough but every single step he takes has to be overanalyzed before he breaks down and admits every fear that he has. The prolonged scene of him at home after taking the ‘ludes that assistant editor Jay gives him, wandering his house, looking at his albums (“God I have so many great albums! I love my albums! I love ‘em, I love ‘em!”), making phone calls to people (including one back to Jay after the ‘ludes have ‘kicked in’ to say that he loves him “in the right way”) shows us the guy unexpurgated and seemingly things can only get better after that. Or so we think, as we follow him make attempts to start his post-breakup life, prefacing every time he goes shopping for life-improvements with an explanation of what he’s doing (“I just broke up with somebody and I’m trying to start a new life and I feel that running should be a major part of it.”) It’s not a visually distinguished movie in the slightest but it’s really not supposed to be. In following Robert Cole around everywhere looking at it through the direction of the man playing him it does exactly what it’s supposed to do cinematically and its unflinching manner makes it clear why Kubrick was apparently such a fan. And unflinching in terms of the discomfort—I’ve made it through certain awkward scenes on CURB without fleeing the room but the aborted date with HERO AT LARGE’s Jane Hallaren (“What does she look like?”) is almost too painful for me to watch without fast-forwarding.

It’s tempting to say that the whole movie should have been just Brooks by himself, torturing the world with his troubles (“I broke up with sombody, I’m just gonna buy a few gifts!” he tells a parking attendant) since the tension does calm down a little after Harrold reenters the picture. After all, the pre-credit sequence where they break up at Hamburger Hamlet the breakup seems to encapsulate everything we need to know about that relationship, peaking all the tension right away--trying to say that they’re in a no-win situation which Mary says she’s never heard of Robert asks, “Really, you’ve never heard of one? Vietnam. This.” In some ways the movie’s final stretch is almost its least satisfying part, something which is probably what ranks this one below a few of his other films. It makes sense to finally isolate the two characters in a cabin away from everyone by a certain point but the ultimate inspiration that is present in the rawest moments when Brooks is by himself isn’t quite there. Endings have never exactly been Albert Brooks’s strongest point but the truth in MODERN ROMANCE is what finally matters and even if the accoutrements surrounding the lead have changed in this modern world the truth still holds. After all, guys still do drive by the houses of women even when they shouldn’t be. So I hear. I mean, I’ve certainly never done that and don’t believe anyone who ever tells you otherwise.


Those who’ve seen and can recite whole pages of dialogue from MODERN ROMANCE by heart probably also love it for the side stuff as much as anything, namely Robert’s film editing job in which he is cutting a sci-fi film, apparently for AIP. We never hear the title of the opus but we do get a few glimpses of it as they work on it, complete with use of old-style Steenbecks. The exact plot of the film being directed by the character played by James L. Brooks (who at this point had yet to make his first feature but of course later used Albert in several he directed) is never clear but it clearly does star George Kennedy whose big scene seems to consist of screaming about a secret code then shouting down the immortal line “You know nothing!” at one of his underlings who claims to know that code. We see the editors played by Brooks & Kirby figure out a way to lose the line to help the plot but the director insists it stay in because, well, he loves the line. After all, don’t you love “You know nothing!” also? In the ADR session that follows in which Brooks and Kirby try to deal with the issue of “footsteps” they are also confronted with the audio library track “Hulk Running” which brilliantly introduced that simple phrase into the lexicon. This probably played as mundane in-joke at the time (HEAVEN’S GATE, the short version, is the next film coming into the looping stage during the ADR scene) but now comes off as flat-out absurdity and in its way is probably as believable a look at the Hollywood creative process that there’s ever been. And seriously, the glimpse of Kennedy in the film has to be one of my favorite things ever—he also appears as “himself” later in the film as well, making this not only the second consecutive film I’ve written about featuring George Kennedy, but the second one made by a director who also stars in it. For Brooks fans there’s a few hints of films to come as well, with some phone conversations with an unseen mother character of course looking forward to 1996’s MOTHER and there’s even an EASY RIDER mention that prefigures LOST IN AMERICA.

A few points also give a nice look at zoned out L.A. circa 1981 as well with a party scene that contains bit parts from a few behind-the-scenes people Brooks was probably friends with, Kennedy as “Himself” telling a long story that his director wants him to use on Merv Griffin and even Meadowlark Lemon in a random cameo that is presumably meant to be a comment on, well, random cameos in movies. The sequence also seems to contain some casual offscreen drug use by one of the film’s leads (“You have some white on your nose”) and the observational nature of it seems to come from someone who has definitely been to more than a few of these types of parties. For anyone who knows L.A. there are a few interesting locations spotted as well—the Hamburger Hamlet where the opening scene occurs was still there until some point in the mid-90s. I miss how there used to be Hamburger Hamlets scattered around the city and MODERN ROMANCE seems to be a record of a time when this was the case. For the record, there’s some fairly liberal nudity from Kathryn Harold and to mollify those who complain about lack of equality we also get to see just how hairy Albert Brooks was.


It’s impossible to talk about Brooks as an actor in this film without also dealing with him as director since it barely seems like there’s a frame in the film he’s not in. He’s fearless, never seeming to worry about trying to make this guy in the slightest bit likable which almost makes him more relatable. There’s no distance so we can absolutely identify with him. It should also be stated that Brooks performs the best fake taking down of a phone number ever seen in a movie. Some of the best stuff in the movie is just him dealing with people on the phone. Kathryn Harrold is a very good level-headed personality for him to bounce of off in all this and even if her part isn’t as strong as what Julie Hagerty would have a few years later opposite Brooks she gets you to absolutely believe how she feels about this guy at both ends of the spectrum. James L. Brooks is generally not an actor so his effectiveness as the director makes you wonder if this is what it’s like to really work on one of the real guy’s films. Albert’s brother Bob Einstein (amazing as Marty Funkhauser on, whaddya know, CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM) is perfect in his deadpan way as the sporting goods salesman ready to get Robert Cole to buy as much in his store as humanly possible (“Where’re you gonna carry your money? You gonna run broke?”) and as for George Kennedy, his reading of “You know nothing!” is, if I didn’t make it clear, without a doubt one of the finest moments of his career. As James L. Brooks says, I love that line.

Albert Brooks has spoken of how he resisted attempts by Columbia to get him to add a psychiatrist scene which would allow the film to explain why the character acts the way he does. Such a scene would not only have bee unnecessary it would have thrown things out of whack because in its strict observational fashion the film shouldn’t be answering this anymore than Robert Cole could or any of us could about our own private versions of this film. Maybe MODERN ROMANCE doesn’t keep up its own level of painful brilliance all the way to the end, but its best sequences are so dead-on in how hysterically accurate they are much of the time that it always feels necessary to have a copy of this DVD close by. And I still wonder how that George Kennedy movie finally turned out.

Involuted Style

If you’re looking for some kind of Clint Eastwood auteurist link between INVICTUS and THE EIGER SANCTION then I might not be the guy to give it to you. I just happened to see this movie right now, though I did find it amusing that I was seeing two such diametrically opposed films directed by him within a day or so. I’m not even sure what to say about THE EIGER SANCTION, released in July 1975. Part of me wants to take it as a goof on the sort of international thriller that was being made during this decade, a comment on how ridiculous they were but I’m not sure that Eastwood was the sort of person to really do that sort of thing. It’s got a plot I can barely decipher, a tone I can barely make sense of, some wildly un-p.c. elements and some genuinely stunning mountain climbing setpieces. Set on a slightly larger scale than the sort of project that Eastwood has ever done at any point in his directing career, it’s overlong but kind of fun. More enjoyable than INVICTUS, anyway though I’m certainly aware that wasn’t the point of INVICTUS.


Famous art professor/mountain climber Dr. Jonathan Hemlock (Clint Eastwood) is also a retired assassin for a secret government agency run by “The Dragon” (Thayer David, the boxing promoter in ROCKY) an albino who cannot be exposed to sunlight. Reluctantly, Hemlock gets dragged back in after a friend is killed to carry out a “sanction” first to Zurich, then the more treacherous task of using his mountain climbing skills to scale the mountain Eiger in Switzlerland, a treacherous face and kill one of his fellow climbers, the exact identity of which is not yet known. After working out a deal that will give him a generous payment as well as authentication of his extensive art collection, Hemlock brings on his old friend Ben Bowman (George Kennedy) to help train him but certain factions are intent on stopping him before he ever gets to the Eiger which, of course, may prove to be the most dangerous part of his mission at all.


I really barely know what to make of THE EIGER SANCTION and I’m not even certain I got all of the plot right (for the record, the screenplay was by Rod Whitaker, Hal Dresner and DESTROYER author Warren B. Murphy from the novel by Trevanian—does it all play with greater clarity in the book?). It’s such a mish-mosh of different elements and it’s possible it may not have been ideal for Clint Eastwood, either as director or screen personality. As a filmmaker the combination of tones feels uneasy like maybe even he didn’t know how to approach it all and maybe it even have had something to do with how his films became more straight-ahead as the years went on. The character plays a little bit as a reluctant American Bond (he only drinks Wild Turkey on the rocks, which everyone seems to know) and his status as art professor with girls swooning over him gives him a pre-Indiana Jones feel (Clint seems to handle the attention better). The albino agency chief kept alive by continual blood transfusions is just bizarre and the mountain climbing stuff in comparison just seems like it’s a part of, well, Clint starring in a movie about mountain climbing. The star apparently did at least some of his own stunts, which is definitely evident at times and it certainly helps these scenes. The wide array of elements means that it’s more entertaining than something like FIREFOX (which, in fairness, I haven’t seen for a few years) but it’s still tough to tell how seriously any of this is supposed to be taken. Like any type of thriller made in the 70s the overall approach feels more adult than it would be today yet everything is so ludicrous from the start it feels like the idea of taking it even halfway seriously makes it all feel genuinely strange, like Clint misunderstood what the whole thing was supposed to be. Or maybe I do. Forget about likeability—it’s tough to tell what reason there is on any level to care about a hitman who is mostly interested in his art collection. “Friends…enemies. Where do I fit in?” asks someone at one point and I guess I was continually wondering the same thing.


The film is made even more wonky by the stereotype of the gay hitman adversary played by Jack Cassidy who even has a little dog named something I won’t write here but I’ll just say it starts with an ‘f’. By my count there are also two rape jokes scattered in the movie as well as a fair amount of leering at the various girls in the film including some of the ‘swinging singles’ at George Kennedy’s climbing school—some of whom are quite something to look at, I’ll say that much, but it still gives it all a weird sort of vibe. I guess it was just the 70s. To make up for it—or hell, maybe just to confuse things—is Eastwood’s relationship with the surprisingly named Jemima Brown played by BLACULA’s Vonette McGee in a romance that is at the least somewhat progressive for the time. Considering the typical strong female presence in Eastwood’s films even then it’s possible that he was going for something unique with a role that would be pretty nondescript otherwise.


Of course, you could just ignore all this stuff and simply pay attention to everything in the movie that’s mountain climbing-related. Maybe even start the movie 40 minutes in to complete the effect and for a while it’s easy to forget that there’s a whole espionage revenge storyline since much of the exposition has already happened—it just comes off as Eastwood’s character setting out on preparing for a particularly dangerous climb with his buddy George Kennedy there to help him out. There’s also some truly striking location work at points throughout both the U.S. and Switzerland. The other climbers, who would probably be given full characterizations if the entire film were about the expedition, are each fairly nondescript and I had to try to keep reminding myself of who they were. There’s a disconnect through all this--since there isn’t much reason to be involved in Hemlock’s reasons for doing this and we barely know the other climbers involved all we can do is be involved in the basic suspense that comes out of the climb—which is, after all, nearly the final half-hour in a 128-minute film but is nevertheless extremely impressive, has the sort of careful, methodical pacing that Clint’s films excel in at his best and, with no post-production effects work to help this along, some of the best type of this sort of thing as I’ve ever seen—something like CLIFFHANGER plays pretty ludicrous in comparison. It’s appropriately impressive and suspenseful but not for any real reason related to the plot. THE EIGER SANCTION is too long, I didn’t know what the hell was going on part of the time and I would never want to look at myself in the mirror while defending it. But in its 70s way the thing is slick, exciting and when it comes to the main reason for its existence—namely, the mountain climbing—it’s pretty satisfying even if the overall effect had me scratching my head a little bit as I tried to figure out what to make of it at the end (which comes complete with a helicopter shot at the end credits similar to how the various Dirty Harry movies concluded) when certain revelations come to light.


Coming between MAGNUM FORCE and THE ENFORCER, this film gives us a Cint Eastwood who still feels most comfortable, at least in modern dress, in his Harry Callahan guise and there really isn’t much difference between the icon and Hemlock. Except that in this case I’m not sure I would actually care about seeing this character in another film. For the miscasting to work the film might have needed another director to do something with it. No surprise, but Clint just acts and directs it all as he does it. Under the right circumstances this can work great but in this context it just feels a little off. George Kennedy essentially plays the utility Joe Patroni role he excelled in and who gets to take part in one of the most impressive shots of the film but by the final third is relegated to mostly keeping tabs of things via telescope and filling us in on what’s happening. Vonetta McGee has some nice chemistry with Eastwood in their scenes together and familiar character actor Gregory Walcott has a nice supporting role as a Dragon associate, playing one scene in a particularly ugly sports jacket. The truly impressive Brenda Venus plays George, Hemlock’s trainer as he prepares for the climb and HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD’s Candice Rialson and her eyes make such an impression in her brief role at the start that you wish she could tag along for the rest of the film.


Looking at it now, THE EIGER SANCTION feels like Clint Eastwood as director trying to broaden his horizons, to see what type of film he was interested in directing. I can believe that it may not have been entirely to his taste but it is an example of an expansive, if strange, widescreen epic with Clint that has him developing his style yet it’s still slightly different from the other things he was making then or now, if only because of how off-kilter it all is. Now he’s moved onto INVICTUS and if that’s your thing then, well, fine. But taking in this piece of absurdity that also includes Eastwood and George Kennedy actually on top of a particularly treacherous-looking peak while the John Williams music swells it’s hard not to get caught up in it all and appreciate it for its best moments.

Throw A Rock In Here You'll Hit One

I’ve never gotten around to writing about BARTON FINK, but maybe there’s never been a reason to until now. Seeing it again at this point is probably my first viewing from beginning to end for quite some time but I think the film is always running on a continuous loop in my head anyway. The first time I ever saw it was at the now-gone Coronet Theatre in New York back in August 1991--I think it was opening night. Two hours after the film began I emerged out onto the street feeling absolutely shattered, unable to put into words how I felt about what I’d just seen. Needless to say there have been many viewings after that and I also went as the character for Halloween a few times—yes, I carried a box and whenever anyone asked what was in it I simply replied, “I don’t know.” Maybe a handful of people even figured out who I was supposed to be. Now suddenly the extent to which it’s a true favorite has come to mind as I wonder just how much the whole thing has really seeped into my head (appropriate, considering the movie) over the years. How much do I really identify with this film, this character? Strange but hey, what do you expect a guy in Hollywood who’s just been laid off close to Christmas to think about? At least I don’t have to pretend to care about reality TV anymore. Not that I ever really bothered to pretend. I never cared about reality TV. It has no place in the life of the mind anyway.


Winning the Palme d’or at Cannes in ’91, the film was somewhat famously written by Joel & Ethan Coen during downtime as they were crafting the screenplay to MILLER’S CROSSING. Having trouble cracking their increasingly labyrinthe scenario, they came up with this as a sort of response. Gabriel Byrne’s apartment building in that film is noticeably called the “Barton Arms” and the result of that writers block led to one of their most acclaimed works, even more than the film they were supposed to be focusing on at the time. It may have been eventually overshadowed by some of the pair’s subsequent films in pop culture but at least it did inspire a particularly good joke on THE SIMPSONS and I’ve certainly quoted reams of dialogue from it over the years. I may love their first three films—BLOOD SIMPLE, RAISING ARIZONA and MILLER’S CROSSING--but looking at BARTON FINK really does seem like the beginning of a truly adventurous creative path that the Coens continue down today. I don’t know how personal this one film is for the men who created it and they’ve never really said. It doesn’t really matter anyway, considering how personal it’s been for me since that very first time. Even looking at it now, I watch a few minutes now and I can’t shut it off even as if I feel like it’s strangling me from the insides even more than it used to? Am I contradicting myself? Maybe. Did I ever realize that my apartment is, after all, suspiciously similar to Barton’s hotel room where most of this movie takes place? Did I know at the time that I was basically moving into the Hotel Earle? Absolutely. But what the hell does that mean, anyway? Orphan? Dame? Which is it?


In 1941, playwright Barton Fink (John Turturro) is enjoying his first big wave of success with his Broadway production of BARE RUINED CHOIRS. Almost immediately an offer comes from Capitol Pictures in Hollywood to place him under contract. Though he feels that he’s on the verge of something big in New York as he pursues his dream of a theater “by, about and for the common man” he allows his agent to talk him into accepting the lucrative offer. Once in Los Angeles staying in the decaying Hotel Earle Barton meets with Capitol chief Jack Lipnick (Michael Lerner) who assigns him to write a wrestling picture for Wallace Beery insisting that “we’re all expecting great things.” Though every sign points to that Barton’s Wallace Beery script is not in any way expected to be anything but a B-picture (in spite of Lipnick’s protestation that “we do not make B-pictures here at Capitol!”) Barton suddenly finds himself blocked, unable to come up with anything and matters aren’t helped by his encounters with famous novelist M.P. Mayhew (John Mahoney) and his mysteriously evocative secretary Audrey Taylor (Judy Davis). His attention is soon taken up by his neighbor Charlie Meadows (John Goodman) a salesman who seems to represent the ‘common man’ Barton claims to have an interest in. But as Barton soon learns, there’s more going on in the mind of that common man than he realizes.


The film opens with the title character standing backstage as the final moments of his acclaimed play are performed on opening night. When listened to carefully, it becomes evident that the voice heard of the play’s lead offscreen in fact belongs to Turturro, the person we’re looking at. How literally we should take this doesn’t really matter. It could be a subtle joke on the part of the Coens (the voice of the actress heard, incidentally, is Frances McDormand) or it really could just be how Barton hears things in his own head. How much BARTON FINK is seen as a comedy may be up to the individual viewer—the film is overloaded with eminently quotable dialogue that makes it at times hysterically funny (“Writers come and go. We always need Indians.”) but these laughs combined with the Kubrick-Polanski vibe the Coens are going for helps to give it all a continual feel of unease and dread which at its darkest makes it ultimately, completely despairing to me.


“It’s really just a formula, you don’t have to type your soul into it,” is what Davis’ Audrey tells Barton as he desperately asks her for help but he can’t see any other way to do it and the idea of rich fat-cats excited, positively thrilled to find out what he’s got for them just makes him freeze. Whether what he ultimately gives Lipnick is really any good or if it really is just another version of his ‘fruity’ play, no matter what the studio chief says, is left slightly ambiguous. He says that he feels it’s his best work and, really, that’s all that matters. He earned the right to hang on to some form of dignity after everything he’s been through. When the character, crying, tells Charlie Meadows “You’re the only person I know in Los Angeles that I can talk to,” I sometimes know exactly what he means and it makes me want to burst into tears myself. Of course, we know that Barton hasn’t exactly been the best person to be in a conversation with, trapped in his own head. “Empathy requires understanding,” Audrey tells Barton and he can’t seem to get anyone to understand what he’s going through maybe because he can’t do the same. You could say that the Hotel Earle represents the warring factions of both Barton and Charlie’s minds coming together, eventually resulting in, well, an inferno that can’t contain itself once secrets are revealed and things can finally be put down on paper.


There’s not a bad performance, a bad moment from a single actor, even those with just one line. Turturro in his Cliford Odets/George S. Kaufman guise (the dialogue in BARE RUINED CHOIRS is strictly Odets, but just go look at a photo of Kaufman) is absolutely astounding in what may be his signature role and he’s probably never received enough credit for how good he really is. At times the character is blatantly unlikable—hell, every now and then there are glimmers that make me almost hate him in spite of how much I don’t want to—but the cumulative effect of the (literal?) hell that he goes through always gets me to be all the way with him through this torture. (And, though I think I’ve said this in the past--even more than MILLER’S CROSSING someone really should double bill this film with BRAIN DONORS). Goodman also does some of his best work, making his salesman, decent, likeable…and well, something else that we totally believe. This was the period for Judy Davis when she was kind of the thinking-man’s sex symbol, taking on this role in two 1991 films that prominently featured typewriters, and she’s brilliantly, scarily funny making every beat, every glance she has speak volumes (why did she get lost in the hell of bad TV movies and who knows what?). That long pause she has when she states, “I know this may look….funny,” to Turturro drives me crazy each time. Oscar-nominated Michael Lerner (who recently appeared in the Coen’s A SERIOUS MAN in a role that seems deliberately the exact opposite of this one), John Mahoney, Jon Polito, Tony Shalhoub and Steve Buscemi are each fantastic down to the smallest details as well and I could easily reel off favorite moments from each of them.


Never a film widely appreciated by the general public, the under-the-radar influence of BARTON FINK has continued through the years if only as a perverse in-joke—the code name for the Wachowski’s MATRIX sequels during production was THE BURLYMAN (the “scenario” Barton comes up with) and naming the ship used in each film the Nebuchadnezzar could have been taken directly from the title of W.P. Mayhew’s novel that the author autographs a copy of for Barton. Not to mention how for years the Coens have hinted in interviews that they would want to make a sequel to the film called OLD FINK and they’re just waiting for John Turturro to be the proper age for. Is this another Coen Brothers joke or are they serious? I’m still not sure, but I can safely say that I can’t think of any other sequel that I would be as excited to see if it ever happened. Or maybe I’m just living my own sequel as I reside in my own version of the Hotel Earle, dreaming of a beautiful girl staring out at the ocean as I sit here not trying to finish a screenplay that has no one waiting to read it. Anyway, as I sit here trying to figure out what to say about this film about writer’s block, I realize that I’ve been blocked too. Maybe I’ve been blocked for a long time, I don’t know. As of a few days ago, I’m not even employed anymore so maybe this should be a chance to do something about all that. I think I may still even have that box I used to carry around on Halloween somewhere around here so maybe I should put it on the desk here in front of me. After all, we eventually need to be reminded what it’s really like to live the life of the mind. “You’re very beautiful. Are you in pictures?” “Don’t be silly.” That’s the closest I’ve ever gotten to an answer as well.

Searching Low And High

I’m sitting here in my apartment writing this, wondering how I got here and wondering where this is all going. My head must be somewhere else these days or I would have been able to finish writing something sooner. I suppose I don’t know what to do anymore. Don’t know what to say. Keeping that in mind, I realize that without any attention being paid the 10th anniversary of the release of Steven Soderbergh’s THE LIMEY was passed a few months back. In some ways it’s actually fitting, as if this lean, nasty and adventurous effort by the director would want to stay under the radar, waiting to be discovered by those who would really care. Soderbergh has moved on to making numerous other things since its release, what some might consider a minor stopover between his career rejuvenation with OUT OF SIGHT and the critical and box office triumph of ERIN BROCKOVICH. Soon after that was his Oscar for TRAFFIC and of course the massive success of the OCEAN’S ELEVEN series. THE LIMEY, on the other hand, seems to be loved by a select few that includes those who respond to its deifying of star Terence Stamp as well as its determined non-linear approach to telling its story. The style may not be as extreme today as it was when it was first seen but it remains extremely daring, making it a film without any real present tense. Not to mention how within its tribute to films of the sixties and death knell of the dreams of that era is a film that gains in resonance as time goes on because of how it looks at memory, of loss, of regret. If it is forever consigned to modest status then it might almost take pride in being this scrappy little movie as determined itself as is that stare that Terence Stamp keeps on his face, gazing down at those in his path.


English career criminal Wilson (Terence Stamp) arrives in Los Angeles soon after completing his latest stint behind bars in search for answers as to the death of his daughter Jenny (Melissa George). Tracking down her friends Eduardo (Luis Guzman) and Elaine (Lesley Ann Warren) leads him to the trail famed record producer Terry Valentine (Peter Fonda) with whom Jenny had a relationship. Knowing that someone is after him, Valentine and security chief Avery (Barry Newman) set out to have Wilson dealt with but things don’t go as planned and Wilson soon makes it clear how far he is willing to go to find out just what happened to his daughter (“Tell me…tell me about Jenny”).


A bracingly simple plot which comes off as an attempt to cross GET CARTER with the art-house stylings of Boorman’s POINT BLANK and made more complex, more resonant by its director, more interested in the idea of exploring the concept of memory within this pulp genre setup. That specific feeling is also helped by the presence of its lead actor, someone who in his erratic career (a star in the 60s, vanished in the 70s and reappearing through the 80s and 90s) really does fit the title of “The Seeker” as the famous song from The Who blares out at us right at the start as he walks into sharp focus. In some ways the movie is about its own process, shredding its narrative into splices that cover the editing room floor. The conversation over the course of an evening between Stamp and Lesley Ann Warren is shown as occurring in four locations, cutting together the sections of the talk in a way that makes no logical sense but that’s clearly not what Soderbergh is going for. This approach was picked apart by screenwriter Lem Dobbs in the infamous DVD audio commentary with Soderbergh (one of the best ever, highly recommended) in which the man who first put all this on paper proclaims, “…I’d say it’s a good movie. I’d recommend it to my friends. But as a screenwriter, I think it’s crippled.” A more ‘normal’ version of the film could certainly have worked as well, with aspirations that would go beyond the normal action approach but Soderbergh seems to have been intent on stripping away as many of the elements that would conform to expectations as possible while still keeping the occasional action beat and shootout. In one of the film’s most memorable moments, the camera holds outside as Wilson goes inside a warehouse to nastily take care of some business and it plays beautifully (and, since Dobbs points it out, all from the script).


Stamp’s Wilson does speak of regret, of the lost relationship with his daughter but equally as affecting as that is the chance to just stare into the actor’s expression, lost after decades of ‘seeking’, alone without family or the friends who he long ago realized weren’t his friends at all. THE LIMEY is about loss, of looking back on the past with nothing but despair and realizing what your actions have truly resulted in. Where does a person go after these things happen? How much can they implode inward and still somehow function? The most powerful characters in this film share that regret even if they don’t speak of it or have anything else in common—Fonda’s Terry Valentine has long since lost any idealism he had back in ’66 and ‘early ’67 (The first time I saw this film I heard his introductory song “King Midas in Reverse” as “Easy Rider in Reverse” and as far as I’m concerned that applies as well). Warren’s Elaine has had some sort of acting career but it doesn’t seem to have resulted in much more than the apartment she lives in and groceries she walks in with at night—that quick shot of the Breyers ice cream container seems to say a lot. Valentine’s latest girl Adhara tells him that he’s not specific enough to be a person, he’s a vibe, and this seems to what has happened to several of these characters through the years, damaged by whatever non-linear series of flashbacks that are spiraling through their own heads. THE LIMEY keeps up its genre trappings just enough to be aware of what it’s supposed to accomplish but its how those things are twisted through the approach that has kept me returning to it through the years.


Some of the humor is of the Tarantino-90s variety but after all, it was the 90s and manages to help emphasize the difference in the two time periods. Though it’s hardly new ground, the observational humor in regards to this alien city as observed by Wilson, like how Eduardo first met Jenny, feels sharp and dead-on—it’s a terrific L.A. movie beautifully photographed by Ed Lachman. Maybe it’s a minor piece of work but it’s also a remarkable one as well and one of the times that Soderbergh’s own clinical examination of his subject matter has caused something much more resonant than might have been expected to result. There are so many things I love about this movie—watching Stamp walk as he makes his way into the downtown warehouse, the car chase that puts VANISHING POINT’s Barry Newman behind the wheel backed by some very cool Cliff Martinez music, the randomness of the whole party scene and how Luis Guzman just wanders through it, the nastiness of Nicky Katt’s character. As fast as it all moves, there’s also the occasional point where it just pauses for reflection like on the drive up to Big Sur. THE LIMEY is lean, nasty, emotional and it knows that you don’t have to worry about getting your movie past the 90-minute mark to give it depth. Just looking into Terence Stamp’s eyes for 88 minutes is really all you need.


Whether or not anyone else was discussed for the lead role, and it is interesting to imagine Michael Caine in the part, Terence Stamp makes it his own in every possible way. After a tortured period of stardom through the sixties which included turning down the film version of ALFIE after playing the role on stage (Caine has written of how he tried to talk Stamp into it before playing the part himself adding, “I still wake up screaming in the middle of the night as Terry takes my advice and accepts the role.”), Stamp disappeared for much of the following decade before his return to the spotlight as General Zod in SUPERMAN and its first sequel. As the eighties wore on he continued to work, often in minor bad guy-type roles (though I love him as Sir Larry Wildman in WALL STREET), but it could be said that to most people of a certain generation he IS General Zod. THE LIMEY uses the actor he had become by 1999 and fusing that with the screen persona he used to be (particularly in how it incorporates actual footage of him in Ken Loach’s POOR COW as flashbacks for Wilson) and the film uses Stamp as the star he was always meant to be. He’s tough, he’s endearing, he’s ruthless as he takes in this strange landscape and the performance justifies Stamp’s entire career. He’s remarkable in the film, even (maybe especially) when he’s doing nothing but staring into space musing about how his fellow crooks (fellow actors?) have long since abandoned him as they went off to their own lives (saying something about the possible fondness Soderbergh has for the film, Stamp briefly appeared again as Wilson for a jokey cameo in FULL FRONTAL).


Peter Fonda is a blast as the sleaze Valentine, letting equal amounts of his massive ego and self-hatred show through. Just as part of Wilson is Stamp, certainly part of Valentine is Fonda and while the two leads have very little screen time together that first moment when the two lock eyes as Wilson exits the party is a damn near perfect silent exchange. Barry Newman digs into Avery with massive relish, a role better than nearly anything the actor got to play for decades before this, while Lesley Ann Warren gives the few moments she has to herself a degree of silent sadness that indicates her relationship with Jenny meant more than she’s willing to express to the girl’s father. Amelie Heinle, coming off as a Denise Richards with intelligence, also gives off an interesting vibe as Valentine’s new girl Adhara, staying wet through most of her screentime almost as if it signifies her continued purity in the middle of all this. Bill Duke, given a memorable line that starts with “There’s one thing I don’t understand…” is uncredited in a key role and Soderbergh sticks his OUT OF SIGHT star George Clooney in there briefly, seen as himself on an entertainment news program acting like a total jackass.


When I first saw THE LIMEY when it was first released I remember being fascinated by the idea of relating it to what L.A. used to be… the sixties that these characters still feel stranded in. Now I look at it and think about the present that I’ve arrived in and wonder about the reflections of my own past, the things that it’s too late to change. Sometimes I wonder if I’m getting a look at the future in my head as well. After all the gunplay and mayhem, THE LIMEY closes on a brief glimpse of the past where there was still the possibility of a life for the character of Wilson to look forward to, the idea of “getting better,” and something that has long since past. As I sit here watching this film yet again after already spending years driving around this city and living my own history, I wonder which point I’m finding myself at. Right now I don’t have the answer but I’d like to think there’s still time.

In Violation Of Every Natural Law

I’m not really sure what to say about Robert Zemeckis anymore. At times a near master when it comes to comedy, to pacing, to experimentation in the field of special effects, he’s now fallen down the rabbit hole of that whole 3D mo-cap thing and seemingly abandoned the concept of focusing on story in favor of what new mind-blowing visual he can toss into his stew. I’ve seen his version of A CHRISTMAS CAROL and you know what? I don’t care. I’m not impressed by this type of thing anymore and I’d just as soon not be forced to wear those damn 3D glasses ever again. What was a fascinating gimmick when he made THE POLAR EXPRESS has now gotten old fast even if the technology has improved. Not to mention that in making A CHRISTMAS CAROL he’s gone with a story that everyone on the planet has already seen a thousand times and all this former master of screenplay structure has added to it are scenes of Jim Carrey’s Scrooge shooting around the sky like he’s on a rollercoaster. All that results from all this sound and fury is a waste of my time. This is the man who made I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND which gave the world the romantic pairing of Eddie Deezen and Wendie Jo Sperber—doesn’t he know that no technological development will ever possibly be as amazing as that? I guess I have to accept that he sees things differently from how I do. But I still don’t care.


But we still have those films from years past where the director actually decided to use human actors in front of his camera and make, you know, a movie. Years after I first saw it on opening day in 1992, I’m still not quite sure where to place DEATH BECOMES HER in his filmography. Coming between the completion of the BACK TO THE FUTURE trilogy and his critical/boxoffice triumph with FORREST GUMP, DEATH BECOMES HER now plays as a stopover from one act of his career to the other. It finds him continuing to dwell in the arena of dark comedy that he had played in a few times in the past while truly pushing the boundaries of what was possible with visual effects, something he has continued to do ever since. And one thing you can certainly say about this film is that the effects this time around at the very least genuinely add to the story being told. The problem, however, is his approach to the story which proves more than a little problematic and these tonal issues were most likely the reason for certain eleventh-hour fixes that occurred. It’s certainly a well-paced, enjoyable movie to sit through but as it goes on something becomes increasingly sour about it all. I don’t think this is a case of the director and everyone involved losing interest in the story being told so much as losing control of it.


After writer Helen Sharp (Goldie Hawn) introduces her fiancée Dr. Ernest Menville (Bruce Willis) to famous actress Madeline Ashton (Meryl Streep), the longtime rival between the two women results in Madeline marrying Ernest away from her. Years later, long after Helen has undergone a complete breakdown, Madeline and Ernest are living in wedded hell in Beverly Hills, her acting career over as she tries to hold on to her faded looks and Ernest reduced to drinking and working as a high-end mortician. When Helen reemerges as a successful author looking better than ever, Madeline’s jealousy rears its head again and she takes drastic action, courtesy of the exotic and mysterious Lisle von Rhoman (Isabella Rossellini)—a magical potion that allows the person who drinks it to have their aging process reversed and then live forever. But certain developments arising from what Ernest and Helen have planned complicate matters and though she might be immortal, her body is of considerably more fragile. Not to mention that it turns out that Madeline and Helen currently have more in common than they first realize.


It moves so fast that it certainly never becomes boring and there are genuine laughs throughout but within its technical ambition and thematic goals, DEATH BECOMES HER winds up feeling kind of empty. Actually, it’s a little strange to be saying that because watching DEATH BECOMES HER for the first time in a while, I did get a certain amount of pleasure from it. In addition to the at-times sharp humor, it’s continually engaging to look at and the actors are all game. But there’s such intelligence behind the filmmaking, such ambition, that it’s too bad that it’s not more satisfying in the end. There’s huge possibility in the material, written by Martin Donovan & David Koepp, with great amounts of clever dialogue and there’s a lot to mine in exploring the ugliness of beauty, particularly when a place like Beverly Hills comes into the picture. It’s certainly thematically consistent throughout, that’s for sure. But Zemeckis spends so much time focusing on not only the effects but the precision of every single extended take that the humor is sometimes lost in the extreme approach. There is at times extreme use of mirrors during those long shots, a concept which is attention-getting and certainly keeps a motif going but it doesn’t necessarily add to the satire or make it a more satisfying story. There are definite echoes of other Zemeckis films in its use of the passage of time as well as, more specifically, some of the ideas in the darker future portrayed in BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II, but I still wish that there was something more enriching to it. All throughout are the biggest, most opulent sets imaginable but what if it had a more naturalistic setting and paid more attention to the story but still contained the same effects?


To be perfectly fair as we’d expect from Zemeckis those effects are not only ground-breaking in how they portray “Mad” and “Hel” but they’ve also dated very well, not something you can say about every film that dotes on these things in a show-off kind of way. And some of his approach to humor, particularly during the first half, is very sharp, making it at times the rare comedy that is actually cinematic—technically, every part of the film is aces. The extended sequence where Rossellini sells the effects of the potion on Streep feels perfect in tone, performance and effects, building up with just the right pace. And even though the trip to a Beverly Hills hospital (actually, “L’Hospital Beverly Hills” as the sign tells us) feels a little scattered in how it’s put together, but it’s still hard not to appreciate how Zemeckis tosses in a split second valet parking joke in there as well as how the hospital curtains seem to intentionally resemble the famous Banana Leaf wallpaper in the Beverly Hills Hotel. That said, around this point is where things begin to go off the rails. Things become more and more frenetic as it goes on, with it finally feeling like the movie is more interested in the big climactic setpiece and chase instead of the characters who have been set up. Much of the story is also set during one of those nights that seem to go on forever which always kind of annoys me. It just feels like somewhere along the way Zemeckis drifted somewhat off-compass because he was focusing so much on the groundbreaking digital effects which would go on to win an Oscar. Some jokes scattered throughout, like the “Sweet Bird of Youth” musical aren’t as sharp as the movie seems to think they are and by the time we get to the celebrity ‘cameos’ of the climax the humor feels on the level of a sketch on an old Bob Hope special. Even the score by the usually reliable Alan Silvestri seems to consist mostly of generic licks which give the impression that he didn’t have any better ideas either. The final moments of the film make all the necessary points and conclude the story about as well as it could but when we get to the final joke it seems like it’s more interested in coming to a screeching halt than actually ending.


One additional point of interest to the film has always been the unusually large number of scenes featured in the trailer that are nowhere to be found in the finished product and with only an older full-frame DVD out there they remain unseen. An awareness of the story gives the idea that some of them were cut most likely for pacing (they might also account for that never-ending night). But the trailer also contains glimpses of things that were excised completely, particularly an entire subplot featuring Tracey Ullman as a bartender who became a sympathetic love interest for Willis and figured into the film’s ending. Her character would have led to what sounds like a gentler version of the denouement that is in the final product, both being set years in the future, one that really may have played better in a less frenetic film. Zemeckis even once said in an interview with Cinefex magazine, “The original ending was soft and didn’t keep with the tone of the picture,” a statement which indicates how much he may have veered away from the points the screenwriters had been trying to make. It could be a case of an approach to a script that is at least slightly misconceived…but considering how expertly some of it is actually put together I’m still not sure. It might be that the film winds up feeling more bitter than genuinely clever as well as the possibility of how misogynist the whole thing may be—heard from an offscreen TV as Bruce Willis is introduced in the present day section is a narrator stating, “The Beaver has always been of interest to man…it is the second largest rodent in the world,” and that may say it all in regards to what the film thinks of women. At the very least, something feels off and, ultimately, unsatisfying about the final product.


Even if the actors play things as big as the director’s approach requires, there’s no denying that each one is willing to completely throw themselves into the material. Streep is fantastic and works off Willis so well it’s interesting to think how he was actually a fairly last-minute substitute for Kevin Kline, who departed when he reportedly couldn’t come to a salary agreement with the producers. Hawn is fun in what isn’t necessarily a stereotypical ‘Goldie Hawn’ role but some of the plot structure means that she doesn’t have quite as much to work with. Isabella Rossellini, looking particularly impressive, is hypnotic to watch every time she appears and Michelle Johnson of BLAME IT ON RIO fame has one well-played scene in which her character drops her French accent without comment from anyone, one of the most nicely subtle jokes in the entire film. As good as everyone might be, the film is easily stolen by the uncredited Sydney Pollack playing the emergency room doctor examining Streep in one of his three screen roles that caught everyone’s attention back in ’92. Even if it is pretty much a ripoff of the equivalent scene in RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (a film which, let’s face it, completely works as black comedy when compared to this), Pollack manages to make it work hugely well and, maybe because he’s isolated from the rest of the film, he’s able to play things more real than anyone else and he gets the most laughs as a result. I particularly like when he refers to Streep and Willis as ‘kids’ in the dialogue, a touch which sounds like it came right from him. If the whole film had been as sharp as these few minutes then maybe all the revolutionary effects wouldn’t have been so necessary.


But that’s the thing. To Robert Zemeckis, these effects are completely necessary and in his ultimate goal to push the boundaries of what’s possible to portray on the screen—which, even I’ll admit, is admirable—he loses sight of whether it’s always necessary in trying to make the best possible film. DEATH BECOMES HER has many points that either work or come very, very close to working extremely well in its portrayal of the darkness that lies under beauty. Bruce Willis’s terrific response to the possibility of immortality that begins with the ultimate question “What if I get bored?” manages to get the point across more succinctly than any episode of STAR TREK on the subject ever did. The best of Robert Zemeckis can be found in this film as well as…well, maybe not the worst but it’s all part of an approach that I’m never going to have any interest in going along with him on. His talent is still there, it’s just interested in pursuing another kind of result right now. I suppose there’s always the chance that he’ll once again develop an interest in the things that made us love his films in the first place, but I’m growing increasingly unsure of that. So it’s safe to say that whether I’m going to have any interest in seeing any more films directed by Robert Zemeckis from this point on simply remains to be seen.