Sometimes It Rains

Things change, as they always do, but even when this happens it can be impossible to feel like you’re really moving forward. BULL DURHAM opened on June 16, 1988, the same week as Walter Hill’s Schwarzenegger-Belushi team-up RED HEAT and the John Hughes-produced Aykroyd-Candy comedy THE GREAT OUTDOORS. Two films which were determined to be the ’80s formula they were always meant to be (I’ve gone into my semi-positive feelings about RED HEAT before; THE GREAT OUTDOORS is one of the weakest of the Hughes run) and another that is still very special all these years later, a film about the summer meant to be seen in the summer and how all those things in the summer which can feel like diversions become a part of us. And here I am right now writing about it in the fall so maybe I’m not fully ready for summer to go away just yet. To say that BULL DURHAM is for baseball what SLAP SHOT was for hockey isn’t totally wrong but really isn’t right either. Both films know that it’s not the big game at the end which becomes the true climax in our lives, but BULL DURHAM is more about the characters than the greater issue of what’s going on all around them. Whatever the minor leagues were really like back in the late ‘80s (I think I’ve been to exactly one minor league game in my entire life), the film seems like it was meant to be slightly out of time anyway, like the 1959 Volvo that Susan Sarandon’s Annie Savoy drives or maybe the much cooler ‘68 Mustang driven by Kevin Costner’s Crash Davis. They’re the ones who are really at home in Durham, a place where it seems like the present day still hasn’t quite arrived, more than Tim Robbins’ Nuke LaLoosh will ever be since he not only drives a Porsche, of course he brags about it too. In the world of BULL DURHAM, the future is going to happen elsewhere. The town in the movie feels like nothing much was ever going to change there but chances are some things have by now. The real team got a new ballpark in 1995, for one thing, and since 1998 they’ve been a Triple-A club which at least sounds like moving up in the world. But none of this has to do with BULL DURHAM. It’s a film about two people who suddenly discover that the thing they love isn’t treating them the way they want and the possibility of moving forward suddenly becomes real. This is all mixed up with a third person in there between them who in some ways keeps them apart but also serves as their child they need to send out into the world before realizing how much they were always meant to be together. When that happens, all the other stuff can simply fall away. And there’s baseball too. Baseball does matter.

Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon) is a baseball groupie living in Durham, North Carolina and a fan of the local minor league team, the Durham Bulls, with a tendency to mentor a young player in her own special way each season. As the new season begins, the big new prospect appears to be Ebby Calvin LaLoosh (Tim Robbins), a pitcher with a very promising arm but not much of a head. This is complicated by the arrival in town of Crash Davis (Kevin Costner), a catcher who has been sent down to A Ball with the express purpose of helping to shepherd the pitcher and get him prepared for the majors. Crash turns down the chance for a season with Annie and she takes on Ebby instead, giving him the nickname of ‘Nuke’ but the interest Crash and her each have in each other is still obvious. As the season progresses and Ebby is slow to be willing to learn from Crash while being taught by Annie in her own special way, they finally start to get through to him. But as the team improves and he finally begins to listen to what Crash’s lessons, Annie’s frustration with the situation grows but eventually both of them are going to have to face what will happen when Nuke gets so good he gets called up and the team has no use for Crash anymore.

It’s a strange time right now. Some things are good. Some are wonderful. Some are stressful and continue to be. In some ways, my life has a clarity it has never had before but so much still feels up in the air. I still love films. But sometimes I wonder why I’m still doing this. Maybe it’s because I haven’t come up with a good reason not to. It would be wrong to say that writing about films is the one thing I’m good at doing but when I see Crash Davis walking the streets of Durham late at night by himself, I understand. He’s a good ballplayer, nobody denies this, but maybe he just never had that very special extra something out on the field to allow him to get to the majors and stay there. He just doesn’t know what else to do. All he has for certain are the things he believes in, his knowledge of what it takes to win and a talent at hitting the ball which no one else knows about, at least until Annie looks up a few stats. She’s probably the only one who ever did. Crash should have known what that meant right away.

Thinking about all this is a reminder that right now at this moment in time the very idea of watching BULL DURHAM feels like total relaxation. The directorial debut of screenwriter Ron Shelton, it’s a movie about two people who look at each other and just know, with a rhythm and sensibility all its own, a calm approach to the characters and every joke which fits perfectly. The two leads each have a philosophy in how they approach their lives and they come at each other like a car crash. Nuke, the younger man in between them, has no philosophy and barely knows anything at all beyond the natural talent of his arm and even that needs plenty of discipline. Annie Savoy believes in the Church of Baseball, as she says right at the start, which she found after looking seemingly everywhere else. Me, I found the Church of Cinema long ago and the film comes to mind when I think of it this way. The Road of Excess leads to the palace of wisdom, as Annie defensively says at one point, and there are days where that excess is all about watching as many films as possible. And if that doesn’t lead to the palace of wisdom, I don’t know what does. That’s the way my brain works. In the eyes of the film, the ultimate goal of all the wisdom that comes from what you believe in is to set it aside and just sit there for a few moments in silence with the one you love, nothing else mattering for a few moments. That sounds like peace. This is all a roundabout way of saying that it’s a film about baseball, but it’s a film about other things too. It’s been a long time since I read up on my baseball history. It’s not something I do anymore. I was just a kid when I visited Cooperstown, back in those days when I read about baseball as much as humanly possible. This was before I really discovered films and things changed. But I remember enough to know how much that history matters, to know what the meaning of a certain photo of Babe Ruth during the opening credits is. And BULL DURHAM isn’t a movie about being a kid. The baseball angle matters, but it’s about people who love it and it never went away for them, who love all that history, who want to be a part of it and who don’t want to be a part of anything else. They’re trapped in it all too.

Of course, along with baseball you could say it’s a film about sex and the delayed satisfaction of it as well. Either way, BULL DURHAM is a romantic comedy about people putting things off because of what they love, with a literary style to both the dialogue as well as the very nature found in each character which makes it continually rich and layered. Annie paints herself as a literary figure already, the heroine of her own story and each page of her life is what she decides it is, living as a groupie in this town where she’s the big fish in the small pond and no one can tell her otherwise, every movement she makes showing how much she’s in charge of a situation. Sarandon uses every inch of her body to become this character, along with a narration spoken by her which is like music in how it feels like a perfect fusion of her voice and all those wonderful words. You believe in her sense of control that comes out of reading poetry to the man tied up in front of her, the way she gets Nuke to discover his own sense of control by wearing those garters on the mound and breathing through his eyelids as she insists he must. And when Annie loses some of that power over things she has no idea what to do, things have been thrown off the axis of what she’s in charge of for the first time ever. The film makes it clear how much Crash and Annie want each other but it’s just as clear what’s going to get in the way, so clear that we know exactly what he really writes on that note to her in the dugout without seeing a closeup. And when they come together it really matters. Their attraction for each other becomes one more reminder of how much they’ve been spending too much time putting off what they need to do.

Crash Davis has been to the majors, “the show” as everyone in this world calls it, even if it was just for a brief time and now can’t believe that he’s back in A Ball, ready to quit but he knows he’s not going to do that, not yet anyway. And whatever he’s thinking about when he’s wandering the streets of those small towns by himself at night, he keeps it to himself. Crash carries an air of not caring but also caring too much and fighting that bitterness inside himself, still thinking about the best 21 days of his life. That inner turmoil is always there and he’s too old to pretend he’s anything he’s not, laying out his beliefs in that famous long speech to Annie, whether the small of a woman’s back, good Scotch or those slow kisses he could maybe have one day with Annie if things work out. The film holds on his face at certain times during his frustrations and his victories so just the sight of Crash in his rooming house where he’s ironing while drinking Scotch remains one of the best little Costner moments ever. It lets us get inside Crash’s head when he’s up at bat which lays out all his annoyances and his frustrations at trying to get Nuke to listen to him, telling hitters up at bat what’s coming when he won’t. If someone has achieved something real in this game, even if no one knows about it, they have Crash’s respect. When Nuke comes looking to give him the big news, Crash makes sure to tell him how tenuous it all is, how one more hit a week can get you where you want to be. Crash got close enough to taste it and he knows. He played as good as he ever did and it didn’t matter. When it’s all over and he’s told, “You know how it is,” that’s all there is to say.

This is only one example of how good Ron Shelton is with the dialogue he writes, finding the beats that bring out the humor but also done in a way that knows who the characters are which is what matters. The portrayal of the Bulls and everything around the team is all part of that ramshackle feel, the way it gives us moments between the players and all their insecurities, pausing to let Crash give the team a rainout while on the road through his own means. It’s not quite SLAP SHOT in its portrayal of the sport and the town around them never matters as much, just that the place feels a little empty and run down, maybe even forgotten by the rest of the world. The film is really interested in things like the scene at the mound where the players gather to talk about anything imaginable except for the game they’re playing with the comedy of the moment exactly what this film is supposed to be and it plays as totally natural. It’s those little moments, sometimes with a joke and sometimes not, which is more important than the plot which barely seems to matter at points. At one point the Bulls are losing. Later they’re winning. That’s about it. Figuring out what to get Millie and Jimmy for their wedding matters a lot more.

Still, it should be said that there is a plot in there and Shelton knows how to keep those beats moving, but even though a few montages jump things forward it’s mostly in no rush whatsoever. And it feels like that’s the way it should be. Crash and Annie are attracted to each other instantly like a couple right out of a Howard Hawks film as insistent as he is when saying he doesn’t dance, but the movie keeps them apart until there’s nothing that can keep them apart anymore. It’s about two people who want to fuck but can’t, mainly because of the barriers they put up in front of themselves. And it wisely keeps them apart for long stretches so we’re almost dying to see Annie and Crash end up together and when they are in the same frame it crackles, sizing each other up in the batting cage or the unforgettable moment of the two of them shouting “William Blake!” at each other during their most heated argument until they have no idea what they’re even fighting about. Because of this, when they come together it really feels like any reasons there were for keeping apart have been washed away and the moment is genuinely powerful. But until then, it’s about each person trying to teach Nuke in their own ways, with the pitcher caught between them and only confused until they get through to him. When Nuke finally accepts that Crash really does know a thing or two about all this, it’s done in a small way but even that matters. All through it, the blocking in scenes always shows relate to each other, which one has the upper hand, and Ron Shelton’s direction is casual but he knows the way to make a shot matter whether the intimacy of two people in a scene or the way it photographs baseball games with the camera right in there with the player it’s focusing on. The chemistry between the two leads pays off beautifully when they come together, the sex scenes worth the wait with one brief interlude when they’re talking about reincarnation while on a break that feels so natural. And there’s the last scene in the rain which is the right sort of payoff to everything.

Maybe BULL DURHAM is minor in the end, which is fitting since it’s set in the minor leagues after all, a film about people who could have gotten together much sooner if they weren’t being so stubborn about the whole thing. But they needed to learn that. And there are few things in all of cinema as purely sexy as that shot which pans from Sarandon in ecstasy with her hands tied to the bed down to Costner painting her toenails. Everything about BULL DURHAM feels just right. Somehow TIN CUP, Ron Shelton’s 1996 golf movie where he reteamed with his male star, is even more laid back, if that’s possible, and has its pleasures even if it’s not quite the same. Revisiting BULL DURHAM is so relaxing, so enriching and rewarding, no matter how many times you’ve seen it already, but what can be found is more than that. In your heart you might care more than anyone else does, love it more than anyone. No one else knows this. But that doesn’t matter. Some things you can’t control. Some things you can. Focus on that. Remember what you love. Play the game if you can. Have some fun. Find that woman. Dance.

It’s not Susan Sarandon who’s top-billed but she’s the one with the best role and it really is her movie in the end, she’s the one who narrates it and she alone is the one who makes it feel unlike anything else. There’s a lot to say about Susan Sarandon. None of that matters here. Her performance as Annie Savoy is one of the best of the entire decade of the ‘80s along with being one of her best ever and every moment is unforgettable and her very being is one of the sexiest things I’ve ever seen, with a sensuality and comic timing that it feels like no one else could have equaled. Kevin Costner matches up with her perfectly and every gesture he makes feels real, his being as a guy who knows how good he is, how smart he is, but it was never enough and he dreams of the day when it might be so when he lays in to his younger protege about all the things he’s doing wrong it feels effortless. Caught between them, Tim Robbins plays Nuke as a guy who knows that if he tries just hard enough, he might actually be able to have a thought and he sells his small amount of maturing just enough that you believe it demonstrated in how calm he seems in his last moment showing what he’s learned. Jenny Robertson as Annie’s friend Millie, who says just about every line that she has different than what you would expect but the film’s real secret weapons are both Trey Wilson as manager and Robert Wuhl as coach who has so many good line readings that it would take too long to list them. Anyway, lollygaggers.

But back to baseball movies, a tradition which BULL DURHAM is a part of and it’s the only one that comes to mind which features a shrine to Thurman Munson as the end credits roll. Thinking back to a few others for a moment, everyone in the world seems to love THE NATURAL but even though it’s got the famous imagery and score, to me it’s kind of a snooze. Please don’t throw stuff. MAJOR LEAGUE, unlike BULL DURHAM, is the one that really wants to be SLAP SHOT only from a much slicker, not to mention capitalistic, vantage point and it all rings hollow to me. Kevin Costner did a couple of others, of course. FIELD OF DREAMS is kind of its own thing which sets it apart from other baseball movies and it’s one which I have such a personal reaction to that I don’t even want to go into it right now. It’s that kind of film, as you surely know. FOR LOVE OF THE GAME, which I’ve written about before, probably needed a script polish and different female lead but has always been underrated. And it’s hard for me to not love THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES, of course. Leaving that one aside, I would say that THE BAD NEWS BEARS (original) and A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN are the two baseball films that definitively rank up there with BULL DURHAM which leads me to the harebrained theory that the best baseball films are the ones that don’t involve the major leagues at all. And BULL DURHAM is the only one of these three that doesn’t involve any sort of climactic game, one of a number of things that sets it apart from all the others. BULL DURHAM is also part of a run of great titles that came from Orion Pictures with their other summer ’88 comedy being Jonathan Demme’s MARRIED TO THE MOB, also featuring Trey Wilson who maybe gets the biggest laugh in that film. This is a reminder that the ‘80s weren’t so bad, not always. BULL DURHAM is a film about baseball but it’s also about finding a way to enrich your life beyond what you ever expected, helping you forget about those things keeping you down and helping you to move on to what your world should turn into. Maybe you can do it with a very special person too. Because no matter what, summer ends. It does every year. Life has to begin.

A Hard Grape To Grow

Some memories stay with you, like it or not. I can still remember where I was and what I was doing when it happened. In morning traffic, heading from my appointment to my job, going over in my head what had been discussed when right at that moment I made the decision to stop drinking. Just like that. This was a little over ten years ago now, the official anniversary was several months back as I write this, but at first there was no way to know what would happen. I had no idea if it would last, but it was the decision that I made, almost as if realizing for the very first time it was an option. It took about six weeks before I told anyone because you can’t tell people right off the bat. But it happened. It wasn’t even that hard because I made the decision and that was that, but there was a lot of thinking by me for some time about what it all meant. What did it say about me and my life? Had I just been drinking too much or was it something more than that? Did the difference even matter? Maybe the only thing that mattered was at one point I was drinking and then I stopped. And that hasn’t changed.

Now it’s been over ten years. A lot of other things have changed, of course. And in addition to everything else sometimes I’ve wondered about the various films that have explored the subject of drinking, but it still isn’t something I particularly want to write about. You might be able to think of a few of the titles. Billy Wilder’s THE LOST WEEKEND, Blake Edwards’ DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES. The little-seen SMASHED, which stars an excellent Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Edgar Wright’s THE WORLD’S END, which plays like a much different movie for me now than it did on opening night. Of course, there’s ARTHUR, which also means there’s ARTHUR 2: ON THE ROCKS but never mind about that one. But each of the others are worth remembering. And the alcoholism angle of THE VERDICT may be of secondary importance to the plot, but Paul Newman holding that coffee cup while defiantly not picking up the ringing phone in the last shot stays with me. But truthfully, as much as my life is spent connecting to films, I never gave much thought to all this in relation to myself. It was something I went through and then I took care of it, which is my own private journey. End of story. And I don’t regret it for a second.

Still, to bring up another film in which drinking plays a part, there is Alexander Payne’s SIDEWAYS. A film about a writer, a film about a man who is depressed. Can’t imagine why I would relate to this. We don’t even need to get into to how it’s also a film about someone who likes to drink wine a lot and while I enjoyed wine myself very much it would be a massive stretch to claim I was ever any sort of expert. But I can certainly relate to having strong opinions about things. Also, even when I was drinking, I never liked Merlot and whatever the reasons are for the main character’s reaction to the possibility of drinking it, it feels like SIDEWAYS gets that part right. And it gets a lot of other things right too. This shouldn’t be forgotten. And maybe now I can look at it as a film about the sort of person that I’m not anymore. At least, I hope so.

When unpublished novelist and eighth-grade teacher Miles (Paul Giamatti) picks up his actor friend Jack (Thomas Haden Church) to take him away for a week to Santa Barbara wine country before getting married, Miles simply wants to spend the week relaxing and drinking wine. Jack, barely giving any thought to his upcoming wedding, is all too aware of Miles’ depression over his divorce and novel not getting published and is fully intent finding him a girl while they’re up there. And he has intentions along these lines for himself as well. Their first night out at dinner they meet Maya (Virginia Madsen) a waitress at the Hitching Post, who already knows and seems to like Miles. The second day they meet Stephanie (Sandra Oh), a pourer at one of the wineries who also knows Maya and a double date is quickly arranged for that night. Jack doesn’t waste any time with Stephanie but Miles is more hesitant and though things eventually begin to go better for him and Maya, his problems once again begin to weigh on him, not to mention the truth of Jack’s situation which the two of them have been keeping from both women.

The films directed by Alexander Payne are often about dreamers trapped in lives with dreams that feel like they’re getting further away all the time and it may already be too late. His films are set in a messy world. If he’s given the choice between an actor in a scene who has either combed their hair or not, he chooses to throw the comb as far away as possible, he’s never seen a car that he wanted to pull into a car wash to get clean. And there’s someone at the center of all that messiness who can’t stop dreaming of the way they want it to be, the life they wish they could live and they’re unable to figure out why it can’t always be that way, unable to get out of the rut they’re trapped in. So much of what their life is has already been planted into the ground and they didn’t even realize it before they’re stuck there in who they are, trapped in clutter and it all fits in perfectly with Payne’s approach to every single scene. His films are acerbic but somehow soothing, able to get under our skin with all the growing tension imaginable but also comforting in how painfully relatable they are and how the things the characters dream of are there, just barely out of reach. His characters are sometimes awful but they’re still recognizable through the things they do to achieve some sort of relatability in all that messiness. The specificity to this world is something I recognize and feel at home in, even if I don’t always want to. And SIDEWAYS (screenplay by Payne and Jim Taylor, based on the novel by Rex Pickett) finds the ideal balance to all this. It’s only Payne’s fourth film as director, which seems crazy now, but it feels like a culmination of so many of the ideas he wants to explore about people and who they are when forced to look at what they’ve been doing in their lives. The clothes they wear, the food they eat, the wine they drink, the cars they drive and the people they have become because of everything around them.

This is all centered around a lead character who seems like he’s already given up, who tells a blatant lie right at the start (a small one, but still) and before the movie is even twenty minutes old does something terrible involving his mother, something that she might even suspect he’s doing already. So much of Miles is in what he does and how he behaves, obsessing over a book that may never be published and is certainly longer than anyone on the planet should have to read, looking for excuses to not try anything that doesn’t have to do with a glass of wine he can describe in full detail to whoever might be listening. A character who is desperate to have the world become what he wants, believing all that reading of the New York Times and doing the crossword puzzles will suddenly allow the world to realize he’s a man of intelligence. There’s a lot going on in Miles’s head that we never know about, likely a few things that he doesn’t want to be reminded about. Memories of his ex-wife and what went wrong there, memories of certain bottles of wine he drank, continually rewriting sentences from that endless book of his, but we don’t need to know the details. So much is already there in the way Paul Giamatti is slouched over and his eyes that are focused on all the things he doesn’t want to remember.

Miles and Jack were college roommates and their friendship probably made much more sense then. Jack seems to have the attention span of about ten seconds and floats through each moment unaware of any consequences, mainly focused on his own pleasure but it’s almost a surprise to revisit the film now and realize that as horrible as some of Jack’s behavior is, he often makes total sense when trying to talk to Miles about his situation with his divorce and book and the possibility of another woman. Miles just doesn’t realize it and Jack doesn’t always put it in the right words anyway, particularly his suggestion to Miles about his book to ‘get it in libraries’, but one thing that happens when revisiting this film after several years away is realizing how Jack is both horrible in some ways but also not always as dumb as he seems. It all just gets mixed up in his own stuff as he tries to think about anything at all except for his upcoming wedding. For Jack it’s all about the pleasure of the singular moment and nothing else, actually believing that he might really move up to wine country and move in with this woman he just met, doing all this for reasons that to him are obvious and Miles will never understand any of it. They’re different guys, too different by this point in their lives to keep all this going. College was a long time ago, except Jack only seems to partly realize this.

The way the film goes from title cards reading ‘Saturday’ at the start to ‘Saturday’ at the end underlines how much this is a trip that goes on a little too long. Like any vacation, it takes longer than expected to get going and never goes quite the way Miles wanted. Even through each serene shot of wine country, he’s never fully able to take a vacation from his own head so it becomes a road movie that keeps making stops, for wine tastings that give him all the time in the world to explain everything he knows about what they’re sampling to Jack as well as the side trip to Miles’ mother which turns out to have its own reason beyond stopping to say hello to her. But it all leads to Maya. For all the shots focusing on Paul Giamatti throughout the film to let us into the darkness of Miles’ head it’s Virginia Madsen who gets the close-up that really matters, one of the greatest I can think of. In a scene that culminates the long conversation between Miles and Maya that gets broken up into three sections of where they are—kitchen, couch and out on the porch—and after Miles gets to explain his love for Pinot that feels awfully close to his own thin-skinned self, she gets the monologue all about where her love of wine came from and why, where without saying it tells Miles everything he needs to hear about himself, trapped in the middle of living his own metaphor and still unable to do anything about it but what she does says it to him in a way she wants him to aspire to in life, not just accept. It’s a beautiful scene and a beautiful moment so naturally Miles’ response to this is beyond painful and something that of course I can understand. Or at least used to. Here and elsewhere in the film Giamatti and Madsen, or I should say Miles and Maya, have a chemistry that feels perfect and the two of them in a shot together gives the film a sense of total calm and it seems as right as everything Miles could ever want.

This all goes along like a dream, with Alexander Payne giving each scene a touch that always feels rich, playful and totally free, everything feels correctly lived in. The editing by Kevin Tent knows when to be jittery, knows when to relax, and knows when to hold on just the right look that someone is giving. Shot by Phedon Papamichael, the look of the film is earthy and alive, the jazzy score by Rolfe Kent playing all through it to counteract the abrasiveness, catching the right sense of emotion and the carefree feel of the moments that connect. The dialogue, especially coming from Jack, always catches the right joke in a moment especially when it talks around things like trying to talk around the subject of his upcoming wedding or his completely bullshit way of telling Miles that the new draft of his book is better. The extended montage where everything seems to finally be going right and Miles is finally starting to relax, ending in picnic during a gorgeous sunset, even when we know in the back of our minds all the lies and deceptions underneath this. That feeling catches in the throat, just like the laughs catch in the throat. Even the touching moments in the film get caught there. The film cuts deep while being totally soothing in the way it understands how the two feelings can get caught in between each other, just as it knows that the way the right food and wine can make you think about life. And it all makes wine seem kind of cool and fun as well, which it is, and talking about it doesn’t have to be pretentious like the stuffed shirt seen lecturing at one of the wineries. “A ’95 Opus One, with smoked salmon and artichokes, but we didn’t care,” Miles says when remembering a day with his ex and we might not understand why this particular wine shouldn’t go with that pairing, but we know he does. There’s a beauty to the way Alexander Payne stages those moments between two people, that always catches the right sense of what the scene needs to be and just how screwed up each other those relationships really are.

The trip is never in a rush, thanks to all the detours caused by both men, but the film isn’t in a rush either and any of those moments when it can pause for just the right character beat adds to the effect it has. There’s a moment where Miles and Jack are playing golf then get confronted by other players on the course and the way they deal with it shows them totally in synch with each other for just a few moments, probably like the friends they used to be and seems to give Miles a lift in a way nothing else in the film does, making him ready for Maya in a way he doesn’t even realize. The way the film pauses at times as they drive past these vineyards, filled with the grapes making all the wine that gives Miles some kind of clarity towards everything, the Pinot that he identifies with so much. So much of the time Miles and Jack are dealing with each other, trying to talk to each other about what they don’t want to talk about, as if neither one is ever listening to what the other is saying. Even when Miles is at his lowest after having finally learned his book is not going to sell, Jack is still making the attempt, trying to talk to him about things in a way that Miles never tries to do with him. Jack continues to go too far after everything goes wrong near the end and after lying about telling Maya (a slightly bigger lie than before, but still), there’s a very small piece of comeuppance involving his car but the way he helps Jack out of the biggest jam imaginable, which comes complete with a Bush-Rumsfeld cameo that seems so quaint now, is a small victory. It shows that Miles can achieve something if he’s forced to, no matter how screwed up all the reasons around it are.

To name a few of the later Alexander Payne films which received similar acclaim, THE DESCENDANTS and THE HOLDOVERS both work very well but they also feel like the director is doing a version of this thing again, however confident he is about it, the thing we’ve come to know and love. In SIDEWAYS he’s not trying to do it. He’s doing it. Following up his previous films CITIZEN RUTH, ELECTION and ABOUT SCHMIDT, SIDEWAYS feels like he’s perfecting the form and returning to it all these years later with very different thoughts going through my head it still feels close to perfect, a human comedy which cuts deep while completely understanding the people without excusing them and knowing their flaws. I kept away from this film for some years, partly because of all the drinking it contains but also the fear that because of those things maybe it wouldn’t speak to me anymore. Or maybe I was just afraid of all the bad feelings it would bring up. But it’s a wonderful surprise to find how beautifully the film has held up and I feel even closer to it now. I do still think about my own life while watching this and some of the things I don’t do anymore. All that drinking is in the past for me now but even if I’m in a completely different place deep down, I know some of those feelings are still there, just different, just as the stress is different as well as the depression, the fear, the regrets. Of course they exist. And SIDEWAYS knows that they’re always going to be there. The point is just not to drown in all that. I learned some time ago that when it comes to certain things in life, you need to move on. And maybe where that leads you to just might be the answer.

Maya is the dream woman in the film’s eyes, even if Miles can barely admit it to himself at first. She’s also one of those women who turn up in life when you don’t expect it and the film is clearly aware that she’s someone with her own past and regrets. It’s a woman who looks at you a certain way which can have such a power you don’t even notice it, because this has never happened before. And maybe all that matters is if you get an answering machine message like the one Maya leaves for Miles at the end. A message that tells you the exact right thing and now is the time to act on it. Because there’s no point in waiting, even if it also doesn’t hurt to sometimes pause and appreciate how good certain things are. SIDEWAYS begins and ends with a knock at a door. The first one wakes up the main character, irresponsible as always. The second comes when he’s ready. Ready to look someone else in the eyes and admit that things can be another way. Those things can be good. There’s no guarantee it’ll work out, but you never know.

Paul Giamatti’s performance feels like a miracle. There isn’t a thing he says, a gesture he makes in the film that ever feels wrong. I could go on listing all the moments here, beginning with his reaction to being told by someone the reason that reading fiction doesn’t interest them, the way he looks up when he first sees Maya at the restaurant, the sting in his voice when he calls his mother by her first name. The way he walks, the way he keeps silent when outraged, the way he keeps that smile on his face when told a certain piece of news near the end and a few minutes later, the look on his face when eating a certain burger and there’s more in the satisfaction of that moment each time I see it. Before this film, Thomas Haden Church had made me laugh in movies that didn’t quite deserve his comic timing and here finds the absolute ultimate version of that, trying to talk to his friend in the most clueless way possible and totally shutting out every possibility of consequences from his mind until it’s absolutely too late. There are so many levels and yet so much is in the way he says ‘oaky’ to describe a wine he’s just tasted. Virginia Madsen is a lifeforce, so much in her big speech but it’s also in her eyes and the looks she gives Miles in every scene, how she reverts to level-headedness when everything about the situation becomes clear. She deserved the Oscar for this. The best of Sandra Oh is in the little moments and how much she puts into just a little bit of screentime, beginning with saying she should be spanked and I particularly like how vulnerable she first seems when they first pull up for her what turns out to be her last moment, with Jack having no idea of the pain that’s coming. Marylouise Burke as Miles’ mother in just a few moments finds a certain balance between total flightiness and seemingly complete awareness of what’s going on and Jessica Hecht is also memorable as ex-wife Victoria when she turns up at the wedding, offscreen when she says her biggest revelation but also clearly trying to be kind to the ex-husband that she doesn’t need to be kind to anymore.

Alexander Payne has said that one of the key inspirations for SIDEWAYS is Dino Risi’s wonderful and funny 1962 film IL SORPASSO, a comedy about two very different personalities who take an unexpected road trip together with surprising results. Introducing the film on the Criterion Blu-ray, he talks about how he was once approached about doing a remake and though he doesn’t say it flat out, I imagine he liked the idea of doing a movie similar to IL SORPASSO (no surprise, Scorsese has spoken highly of the film as well so you should see it) but didn’t want to remake it, then when SIDEWAYS turned up it was a eureka moment. SIDEWAYS isn’t quite a road movie the way IL SORPASSO is but it is about two people who have driven away from their usual lives for a few days and what happens when they veer off the expected path. It’s the point in life where you’re old enough to have regrets and may have gone too far down the wrong road but it doesn’t have to be that way. I liked wine. In my mind I still do, I suppose. Wine is good, after all. But I don’t miss it and I don’t miss those other things I liked to drink either. There are other things out there for me now. What happened was I stopped drinking. And eventually something good happened. All this likely means that I missed my chance to take a decent tour of the locations up in Santa Ynez since it would involve a lot of wine tasting I wouldn’t want to take part in. My loss, but that’s ok. SIDEWAYS is one of the best films, one of the most human films of that early 2000s period and it’s felt in each moment. Those emotions tend to stick around. And sometimes the right thing happens to create another memory that gives you a reason to keep going. Because there is one. And there will be.

No Hands On The Clock

So many things change. Few things ever change. Long ago, barely any time at all, I went to see Paul Thomas Anderson’s BOOGIE NIGHTS at the Hollywood Galaxy on opening weekend in 1997 when about halfway through the film broke. Oddly enough, this happened only seconds after the shocking end of the New Year’s Eve sequence which, everything else aside, might be the perfect place to put an intermission. The crowd reaction to this was not good, as you would imagine, and they let the theater know this. But in the middle of all those people complaining and along with my own annoyance at having the film interrupted, this was also a slight issue for me that day because I was supposed to meet a friend immediately after right down the street at the Chinese to see DEVIL’S ADVOCATE which also opened that weekend. After several minutes of worrying the film finally started up again, eventually ended and I made it to see Keanu Reeves & Al Pacino just in time. All these years later that double bill feels like one of the best afternoons at the movies I’ve ever had. And there I was only some months back now, so long ago, down the street at the Vista in the fall of 2025 seeing the latest Paul Thomas Anderson film ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER playing on its first afternoon to a sold out house in the full glory of VistaVision when at roughly forty-seven minutes in the film broke, actually burning up in the frame. Considering all the hype around the format of the presentation it was easy to be concerned, even though this time I had nowhere else to be. But everyone in the theater stayed calm as if they correctly knew the theater would get it fixed shortly and that’s exactly what happened. The film played without further interruptions and went on to its lengthy run at the theater. This may not be much of a story, but it did happen.

The VistaVision element was a huge part of how the film was being sold at the time, complete with actual punch cards handed out at the Vista detailing all the formats you could see it in. Now, with all of that over but hopefully with revival screenings in the future whether in 70mm, 35mm or even actual VistaVision, what we’re left with is the film itself which can easily be called the best of 2025 and possibly even the best of the years surrounding it. This is also a film that means so much right now, so much more than others do, and now still less than a year after it opened, ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER already feels like an essential film of the moment as well as an essential part of what’s going on around us. It already feels like a film that matters and will continue to matter, that what it’s saying means something as so much is spiraling out of control. Along with the very serious notions that it confronts about the past, future and present we’re being forced to live in, every moment of the film is infused with an undeniable feeling of pure intensity as it builds through the increasing suspense of the ongoing chase that keeps going through the second half, as well as some of the funniest moments in any film over the past few years. But it also contains an emotional power that I can’t shake and even after multiple viewings, the film remains a completely exhilarating experience. Down to the very last frame, it feels like what a film is supposed to be, what a film needs to be, at this moment in time. And it feels like it’s going to continue to be exactly that.

“Ghetto” Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an explosives expert for the revolutionary group the French 75, intent on breaking out immigrants held in migrant centers and spreading their message through various means, wreaking havoc on banks as well as politicians. He’s also the lover of fellow French 75 member Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) who comes from a long line of revolutionaries, unlike Pat. When she encounters Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), one of the commanding officers in charge, during one of their breakouts and he becomes immediately obsessed with her which includes coercing her into sex with him. She soon gives birth to a baby girl and though Pat is now focused on the baby, Perfidia continues her revolutionary activities which soon go bad when a security guard is killed during a bank robbery. She is arrested, then after pressure from Lockjaw whose interest in her has continued, gives up her cohorts and as she goes into Witness Protection, Pat flees with the baby. But Perfidia quickly abandons her new situation and escapes across the border to Mexico. Sixteen years later, Pat is now living under the identity of Bob Ferguson with the girl (Chase Infiniti) now known as Willa Ferguson, sixteen years old and very much her own person who, like most teenagers, is always arguing with her father. Lockjaw, meanwhile, has risen in the ranks of the military and now has the chance to join the ultra-secret white supremacist group known as the Christmas Adventurers Club but he must use his authority to track down the girl he believes to be his daughter and wipe every trace linking him to Perfidia away.

Sometimes you can feel how special a film is down in your bones as you experience it for the first time and you know that this is only going to be the first viewing of many. How the very act of seeing that film is going to become addictive. And sometimes I can’t stop watching ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER or at the very least I don’t want to. Right from the start the film offers a feeling of exhilaration which becomes so entertaining, so full of life, so moving and terrifying, always willing to embrace the ideas that keep on popping through it and always willing to confront them, turning every scene into yet another extension of all the ideas it wants to explore. Through its examination of what people become in this version of the world we’re currently living in, how they grow and change through different times, along with how much what we do affects the generation to come, it fits in perfectly with every single film Paul Thomas Anderson has made up to this point. In many ways, it feels like a sort of culmination of so many of the ideas that he’s been exploring. Every moment is thrilling, each character pops even if they only appear for an instant, every scene feels so finely honed down to its essence and what it needs to be. The way the film makes its choices is fearless, finding the correct tone between the outrageously satirical and the deadly serious nature of the time we live in which is unavoidable as well as feeling all too recognizable. Through this, it becomes one of the few films to acknowledge how dangerous the current moment really is as well as how absurd, somehow finding a way to satirize what already feels too much like satire in the first place no matter how hateful and reprehensible it is, no matter how much what these people truly are feels worse than we ever imagined. But the film also knows what can be found in the sense of joy which can come out being unrelentingly defiant against that hatred and it fits in perfectly with Paul Thomas Anderson’s other films while at the same time becoming more of a crowd pleaser than they have ever been before. Being a crowd pleaser isn’t what makes it great. But the rush you get from that effect by the end of the film is undeniable.

So much of what the film is can be found in the sense of movement. The film begins in motion, after all, and the uneasy feeling begins right from the first notes of music played over the Warner Bros. logo, the feeling that what’s about to happen matters. Perfidia Beverly Hills is the one seen first, her steady walk facing the oncoming trucks on the freeway checking out the scene of the immigrant detention center before their attack. ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER, written by Paul Thomas Anderson and inspired by "Vineland" by Thomas Pynchon, barely sits still for a moment, with a sense of jagged momentum that keeps moving every second forward, a fusion of camerawork, editing and music which becomes seamless in a way that makes them all fit together. “Ghetto” Pat, the ostensible main character, appears soon enough but Perfidia is the one seen first, through his eyes as well as ours, and she’s the one who is really causing this forward motion even as she remains an enigma to us and everyone else in the film, one of several strong, extremely sexualized women of color among these revolutionaries and only willing to explain themselves on their own terms. The first half-hour of the film is in some ways an enigma as well, plot details getting revealed with an exhilaration to each movement and every single cut but there’s little to understand that can’t be read in her face, a Mona Lisa who doesn’t let anyone know her motivations even though the men around her think they can. The mystery of what she does through what feels like the complete denial of her pregnancy both before and after which is never explained and instead of trying to understand it herself, in the end she merely flees. And the film becomes about the hole her absence creates, especially considering how unusual it is for such a prominent character to exit a film this early unless they’ve been killed off, and it’s the hole anyone’s absence leaves when you don’t fully understand so nothing can feel complete ever again. Perfidia was basically the main character, then suddenly she drops out of the film so her daughter Willa essentially assumes the mantle of the film’s main character from her mother because there’s no one else around who can live up to it.

And the film does keep moving through all this, but it also starts nowhere in particular. It’s set in a time that could be this moment, it could be 16 years ago for us or maybe not, even with all the references to social media and Tom Cruise, whenever that really is. The way Terry Gilliam’s BRAZIL began with a title card reading “Somewhere in the 20th Century” this film could be set somewhere, anywhere, in the 21st, a century in which so many things have collapsed into a bland sort of sameness, just like how in the Gilliam film things stay the same while nothing seems to work anymore. Partly set in the sanctuary city of Bakton Cross, wherever this is supposed to be, there’s a reference to Bob drinking at the Rustic Inn although presumably not the one down the street from me in Los Feliz where I used to go all the time but could very well be named for it anyway. The French 75 is partly a fantasy version of what a true revolutionary group would be if it existed now leading to absurdist extremes but the film only takes that idea so far and knows they’re a bunch of fuck ups, good at the speeches but not so much at the actions, the way Shayna A. McHayle’s Junglepussy gets everyone’s attention during the bank robbery but is immediately thrown off by what her colleague Perfidia is doing off to the side to change the narrative. Unlike the other side they still seem human, no matter how dangers they still might be. They’re the side that knows how to fuck without getting hung up about it, even if Perfidia knows how to keep her secrets from Ghetto Pat. And the other side doesn’t know how to handle this at all. In other words, the film is set right now.

Among other things, Paul Thomas Anderson films are also about family. This really doesn’t need to be questioned. Of course, what a family really is can mean any number of different things and whether it’s literally that or the people who become a family as they become part of each other’s lives. Sometimes this is about the idea of parents and what they are as we try to understand the hold that they have over us forever, like it or not. HARD EIGHT is about a man who essentially becomes a surrogate parent to his protégé while keeping his own secret about what he knows about the younger man’s real father. BOOGIE NIGHTS is about a family created after the main character flees his real mother who is last seen heartlessly screaming at him in a way that always hits a little too close to home for me. MAGNOLIA has Tom Cruise’s Frank T.J. Mackey refusing to forgive until he breaks down but it still feels ambivalent, uncertain of forgiveness and whether it can ever be deserved. This can go on, but after PHANTOM THREAD which ends with a birth when two people have finally come together as the union they have created becomes undeniable and in LICORICE PIZZA which ends with Gary and Alana also coming together, whatever that really means, ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER begins at things fully from the point of view of the parents, aware of who they’ve been and how they’ve screwed things up with the offspring needing the entire film before they can come to peace with where they came from but the relationships also blur the line on which is which.

Col. Steven J. Lockjaw is given just enough power to make him a threat while being pathetic to his very core, refusing to admit his own sexuality to himself and looking only for what he believes he deserves, an Anakin Skywalker of the real world turned Darth Vader looking to destroy his own offspring, who in her own way might be a Luke Skywalker. Or maybe she’s just someone trying to make the world better, living in the shadow of what was her very pregnant mother, each of them seen at different points going through training, firing that giant machine gun followed by the similar framing of her daughter firing another weapon under the watchful eyes of the Sisters of the Brave Beaver (maybe the one section of the film which feels like it got short shrift in the edit even as the piercing voice of April Grace, also the reporter interviewing Tom Cruise in MAGNOLIA, as head nun Sister Rochelle is difficult to shake) as well as the haunted look of Regina Hall close by watching each time, maybe thinking of the past, maybe wondering if it can all go wrong again.

“Sixteen years later, the world had changed very little,” goes that very short piece of narration when the film jumps forward. Of course it has. It all goes by in a flash, and it cuts in right on that first shot of Willa, everything good and hopeful in the world in her beaming face. The film presents an exaggeration of our current moment but the way the other side is presented never feels exaggerated at all, maybe because there is no way to exaggerate it because, as someone once famously and correctly stated, they’re weird. In the calm, deadpan way Anderson shoots it, all he needs to do is simply display this. Lockjaw wants to be part of that world, he’s weird too after all, though he never can be. He’s human and he’s damaged, the way he walks and talks to people is almost the way a little boy does, his references like referring to kids as ‘teeny boppers’ has no connection to the world today, but there’s no way to feel sorry for him, using his command for his own personal reasons, a reminder of how much all the actions taken by the authorities are just for show and if other people get hurt by it, all the better. The world gets fucked with because people are trying to clean up their own shit in the guise of their fake assault on Bakton Cross which even manages to piss off the all-powerful Christmas Adventurers, the way their chicken nuggets they like so much get fucked with not to mention a business owned by someone who is on their side. These weirdos who clearly don’t know what to do with their feelings about that, the racism and the hatred as well as the belief that they’re in charge all mixed in with their very likely latent homosexuality. “We may be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us,” was the way it was stated in MAGNOLIA and it’s what ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER looks at, whether the characters know it or not.

Bob aka “Ghetto” Pat doesn’t know about any of this, or at least he’s trying not to think about it. He’s allegedly the lead of his film, just as Kurt Russell’s Jack Burton clearly thought he was the lead of BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA but even as Bob is apparently a legend among the French 75, we don’t see much evidence of this and he barely seems to matter at times to anyone else around him, just looking to sit around the house paranoid while getting high and watching THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS. Still, he seems to earn some points by at least trying to refer to Willa’s friend by the correct pronouns even as she still gets annoyed with him over this. Right from the start he’s always looking for direction, scrambling to get away from his house, desperately looking for where he’s supposed to go, desperately trying to get a piece of information from the people who called him in what feels like the most accurate portrayal of a customer service call ever and maybe one of the funniest sequences in any movie in years culminating in Bob shouting “Fuck you!” to Comrade Josh when he is told nothing more than what the correct response to the code words asking ‘what time is it?’ always was and hearing the totally obvious extra meaning to that password right away. His scrambling around throughout the film does nothing except to be there at the precise moment he needs to be to tell Willa who he is, who he really is but the way he’s helped by those women seems to remind him how necessary his fight is. Benicio del Toro's Sensei floats in and out of what’s happening around him, helping out Bob but also focused on all the other people he’s helping, so while Bob has accomplished nothing compared to him he does seem to understand that he’s not good enough, not even as good as the rioters out there on the streets or those skateboards who are leading him as they flee across the rooftops with a dreamlike lucidity that almost turns the sequence into a musical number for a few seconds, the imagery becoming like a ballet except for Bob who doesn’t know all the right steps.

The way ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER tells its story through every single shot it’s clear which side Paul Thomas Anderson is on. And which side the movie is on. The film doesn’t need speeches for that. It gets that feeling from each touch of humanity. It’s a movie about the moment and about decisions, not a movie about speeches or literal things or events. It’s not Sidney Lumet’s RUNNING ON EMPTY, to name one of the films that Anderson presented on TCM when his film came out; others included MIDNIGHT RUN, THE FRENCH CONNECTION, THE SEARCHERS and, no surprise considering its pertinent cameo in his film, THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS. They all make sense as an inspiration for him but the themes and ideas of the way the past connects to the present are there, done in the way people behave and the way Lockjaw’s selfish, arrogant defiance is made clear, the regret heard in Perfidia’s voice at the end. And it’s all about the chases, how so much the film is really one long chase, given a jagged momentum which eventually becomes relentless goosed on the by the incessant, jangling of the phenomenal Johnny Greenwood score which becomes passionately emotional any time it reminds us of Willa’s link to Perfidia. The camerawork by Michael Bauman which makes the faces and vistas equally important in that VistaVision clarity, from the intimacy of the closeups to the epic feeling as what happens when they confront each other, the standoff between Willa and Lockjaw. The editing by Andy Jurgensen which finds every single moment to make the scene about. It’s in the serenity of Sensei who doesn’t appear until the jump forward in time but he’s more of a true revolutionary than any of the French 75 ever are. Staying calm through every tense moment, repeating the mantra of ocean waves to Bob, ocean waves. That’s what Bob is searching for, those ocean waves to ride, ocean waves which are found in the form of those hills on the road that make up the big pursuit that develops with such perfect clarity that made it clear it was one of the most perfect cinematic chase scenes in decades, leading Bob exactly where he needs to be. And those ocean waves seen in those hills make perfect sense in how they lead Bob, fuck up that he is, to exactly where he needs to be.

In the end, what is ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER to me? It’s a film about what’s happening right now but it’s also about the past and the future and finding peace with it all for the right reasons, the way we look back on our life and try to understand what has happened to us, those moments of regret swirling in and out of our head. But if you don’t regret anything, if you don’t question anything, if you don’t try to understand your past and where you came from and why, are you even living? When you grow up, really grow up, you either understand certain things about the world and life around you or you don’t. Willa understanding her mother and understanding the man who she will always think of as her father. Lockjaw, too stupid to comprehend that he’ll never be what the Christmas Adventurers want and it all leads to the final image of Lockjaw just as Bob is telling the girl who is his daughter about the letter from her mother, the letter that will help her understand her mother in a way she never could. It's the dream that maybe your child will be the one who puts the world right, the dream that maybe you’ll be reunited as she willingly drives towards the fight, even if it is in Oakland which according to Bob is pretty far. Because there is no final battle. Things really do keep going. But it finds the possibility of a happy ending in the middle of everything happening now and, thinking of this, the final image of ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER means more to me each time I see it. This feeling of hope. That that maybe one day things will be made right, in spite of all the horrible evidence around us. I may not be so sure about this on some days, but ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER believes that it’s possible.

Leonardo DiCaprio is playing someone who doesn’t know a lot, who means well but he’s still a fuckup. And he’s tremendous here, with astounding comic timing, fierce determination and a haunted look in his eyes as he tries to come to terms with the way he’s failed Willa. That confusion in his eyes holds the movie together, knowing that he’s a few steps behind everyone and still trying to do the right thing, even if he doesn’t always know or care what that is. There’s only a brief moment in the film with both DiCaprio and Sean Penn but it’s one of the best in the film for each of them with the terror in Pat’s eyes suddenly realizing what’s happened and the nastiness of Lockjaw coming full bore. Penn, who basically won the Oscar the day this film opened, finds that line between pure satire as if he could have given this performance in DR. STRANGELOVE with an intensity filled with misplaced confidence that is always totally vicious and arrogant, each little gesture terrifying and absurd. Even his walk alone is unlike anything else.

And there’s also the total calm of Benicio del Toro as Sensei, living up to that Japanese poster for SUPERMAN on his wall while always showing no fear, complete frankness towards who he’s dealing with and knowing exactly what to do at every moment. Even if she doesn’t enter the film until well into it, Chase Infiniti is electric and fearless in her own way, fully formed right from when we see her but still the teenage girl she has to be, always ready to look someone in the eye and challenge them, no matter which one of her fathers it is. Teyana Taylor controls the first half-hour with that look on her face, the sound of her voice reading the letter at the end. The two halves that the film resists ever showing together at the same time. In some ways it’s felt in the haunted look on Regina Hall’s face and the deadly seriousness to her voice in each moment she gets. But there are so many moments. Tony Goldwyn for the way he reacts to Lockjaw, Jim Downey who gets to say both “punk trash and “semen demon”, Kevin Tighe whose phenomenal line reading of “we should all be able to eat off the floor” and the way John Hoogenakker who’s been called in to do that cleaning they need done says, “Oh no, I love their nuggets.” There’s also moments like the completely real nature of so many small parts like Tisha Sloan in her one scene as Willa’s teacher but also the true banality of evil that comes off non-actor James Raterman as the military officer in charge of finding Willa, a guy who knows how to get his job done more than anyone else in the film.

Our stories begin long before we’re here. They follow us through our past, our regrets, our failures, the way we run from one theater to another to make it to DEVIL’S ADVOCATE on time when nothing else could possibly be as important. Years later the Chinese Theater would become important to me for very different reasons. But one thing the past decade has done to me is make me miss satire. I want it back. And here it is. But the film has so much more. Willa leaves at the end of the film as Tom Petty singing “American Girl” plays at the end as Willa gets in her car and maybe the song is about her, maybe it’s a Jonathan Demme reference since it was once in THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, maybe the song is a reference to its appearance in FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH which happens to star one of this film’s main actors. That’s the way all these films seem to flow into each other like it or not, the way one trip to the movies can remind us of another so many years later. Through it all, the world changes very little. Which may be the only thing we can ever know for sure.

Politics Is Perception

The things you respond to in life change. This is inevitable. It should be, at the very least. Maybe I was sort of a political junkie long ago, but by a certain point it just started to make me too ill to keep paying attention to all that. And for a long time now it’s been getting worse, more depressing, more terrifying. I’d rather focus on better things in life like films but that gets difficult, especially these days. I also have zero desire to revisit THE WEST WING right now and the very idea seems too upsetting to me even if I was once a huge fan of the show (and SPORTS NIGHT too), at least the first four seasons. Which made me an Aaron Sorkin fan, I suppose. Maybe I responded to all the wit and idealism, maybe I always hoped that if I ever ran into him somewhere we could compare notes on being from Scarsdale or something. And forgetting that I have decidedly mixed feelings about what he’s done in the years since (THE SOCIAL NETWORK may be one of the best films of the 21st century but that doesn’t mean I don’t have further thoughts on the matter) something about THE WEST WING makes me feel a little uneasy now. Though I can remember being attracted to the very idea of the show focused on the supposed glorious tradition of the U.S. political system, shining a light on the people trying to make things better along with a politeness that was never really there and certainly isn’t now, too much of it doesn’t feel right anymore. Maybe it just reminds me too much of the real world instead of getting me to forget.

The seeds of THE WEST WING were of course planted in the screenplay Sorkin wrote several years earlier for the film that was Rob Reiner’s THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT, released in November 1995 on the same day as GOLDENEYE, and thinking about all this recently led to thoughts about the utter horror of what happened to Rob Reiner and his wife Michele. I don’t want to talk about that but of course it all led me to further thoughts of Reiner and his career. It led me to thoughts of what he believed in. And it led me to thoughts of how people reacted to what happened to this man who I never knew, who I only saw once at a movie long ago and another time at a Dodgers game but had been a presence in the world for me almost as long as I can remember, moving from TV stardom to a director of films that included one of the funniest ever made (THIS IS SPINAL TAP) along with one of the most endearing romantic comedies ever made (WHEN HARRY MET SALLY). In addition to his directorial work that followed there was his political activism as well as continuing to play numerous roles in other people’s films that seemed to be almost for the sheer pleasure of just doing it. THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT was Reiner’s follow up to the critical and commercial disaster of NORTH the previous year and everything about it felt like a film designed to be a huge crowd pleaser, to make $100 million along with receiving multiple Oscar nominations. In the end the film made “only” $60 million domestically, not a flop but not a smash either, then got just a single Oscar nomination, for Marc Shaiman’s score. When Rob Reiner turned up for a cameo in friend Albert Brooks’ THE MUSE a few years later to thank Sharon Stone’s title character for the film, the moment seemed a little disingenuous. Returning to the film now in addition to all the feelings it brings up about the way the world has gone in real life since then, it feels like an attempt by the director at a pitch right down the middle which maybe ended up just a bit outside, the desire to say something about the political world fused with the ambition of a Capraesque romantic comedy perhaps undercut by the abrasiveness to the story. The very particular rhythms to the Aaron Sorkin dialogue, meanwhile, feel like they wound up being perfected in those TV shows a few years later and here is all still being worked on. Conceptually, THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT might be as close to a perfect screenplay as anything that came out in 1995 but in practice my feelings about the actual film are a little more complicated.

President Andrew Shepherd (Michael Douglas), a widower and father of a teenage girl, is celebrating the release of a new poll that places him with a 63% favorable rating and has hopes to pass a crime bill off the strength of those numbers when he meets Sydney Ellen Wade (Annette Bening), an environmental lobbyist working for a firm that looks to pass a radical new fossil fuel package to reduce carbon emissions. Instantly smitten, Shepherd asks her to be his date at a state dinner for the French President where in full view of everyone they dance and their romance begins. As this happens and they get to know each other better, Senator Robert Rumsen (Richard Dreyfuss) of the opposing party and looking to run for President himself, begins to step up his attacks based on that relationship but even as the poll numbers dip, Shepherd refuses to comment to the press on the relationship. But as the bills they are working on begin to falter and Rumsen’s attacks become personal, the President soon realizes he not only might lose those bills he may be losing the woman he’s fallen in love with.

Almost everyone seems like they’re in a good mood through much of THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT. And why shouldn’t they be? It’s the nineties. Things are looking up. There’s a bright future ahead. The Monica Lewinsky scandal hasn’t happened yet. Fox News was still a year away from going on the air. The bad guys are, in theory, not anything to get too worked up over for very long. The people in this film have jobs where they get to exchange witty banter with co-workers and if they fight through the day’s troubles hard enough it can all turn out ok. In the end, isn’t that what it’s all about? The films directed by Rob Reiner were often about their subject and little else, like how WHEN HARRY MET SALLY focuses almost entirely on the character’s relationships and nobody talks about their job for very long. A FEW GOOD MEN, written by Sorkin, is pretty much the opposite in the way it keeps the focus on their jobs and the court case of the film all the way through, no romance or anything else between Tom Cruise and Demi Moore to distract us. THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT, meanwhile, is about the inevitability of mixing the personal with the professional, how there is no avoiding that and maybe combining the two is the only way a person can be who they really are.

However much the film is the closest Rob Reiner ever came to making a full-on statement about the world we live in, it’s certainly an idealized fantasy of how government works, or possibly how he thinks it should work, or wishes it could work. But looking at it now, the idea of a functioning administration filled with decent people trying to get the job done while the opposition party plots all the horrible ways to do them may not have entirely been a fantasy in 1995 but it was close, just as much of a fantasy now as a news day where you don’t hear anything about the President at all. What this Hollywood look at the office provides is the belief that people coming together to make the world work really do exist and the right decisions can be made, where a retaliatory strike after an attack in the middle east is merely a necessary evil of the job. It’s part of the Sorkin thing how much the characters enjoy the tradition to it all, to never call the president anything but “Mr. President”, and if the right answers are figured out, if the right words are used to make the argument, maybe this is all that’s needed. It’s a nice thought. But it still is a fantasy which means that when real issues are brought up there’s no real place for depth to what’s being discussed, not as much as the film would like.

There’s a smoothness to it all in the way the film moves from one scene to the next and Reiner’s direction is all about the way characters relate to each other in every scene, in close-ups, in two shots, facing each other in framing that takes care of the interpersonal relationships, giving us a big closeup of Michael Douglas when he knows that he’s just met someone special. Reiner rarely goes for sweeping camera movement and it feels like there’s barely a shot that isn’t at eye level but it’s always engaging and, expertly shot by John Seale, looks like the glossy widescreen Hollywood movie it clearly wants to be. Unless I’m mistaken, this film and A FEW GOOD MEN are the only ones that Rob Reiner ever shot in ‘Scope and those two are the ones that feel like they’re striving to be big, splashy, old fashioned Hollywood movie star movies more than any of the others. The film believes in that sort of tradition, as evidenced from the opening credits over Marc Shaiman’s syrupy main theme that speaks to such nobility of the past that has lasted through the years but it’s also the Hollywood tradition it wants to be a part of, the way Sydney Wade talks about the Capraesque experience she wants to have in the White House or even just the Hepburn-Tracy ADAM’S RIB clip seen on a TV.

The flow of Sorkin’s dialogue and scene structure are familiar now from all the TV work so right from the start that dialogue offers a comfort to each line, the way just about the first thing the President says is telling someone, “We need to schedule more events where somebody gives me a really big fish” and the pieces of the plotting all fit together in a way that feels like Aaron Sorkin studied very carefully under the tutelage of how William Goldman did these things. Like much Sorkin dialogue it’s about the cadence of the words flowing together as much as what is literally being said with a few names that would later turn up on THE WEST WING as would snatches of recognizable dialogue like asking about ‘the virtue of a proportional response’. A few other lines are also very much a part of the battles of the nineties with much talk of family values along with a mention of liberal bias in the press and though the reporters in the press room are briefly chastised for asking about when Sydney had dinner at the White House instead of the crisis at hand, the media gladly seems to keep chasing the story to become the ‘unwilling accomplice’ the other side cynically considers them to be. These days in the real world it feels arguable if the ‘unwilling’ part of that even applies, if it even ever did, and certainly the press in the film gives Bob Rumsen the chance to make all the baseless accusations about Sydney that he wants. The take on the media as presented seems to be lightly ambivalent at best and maybe portraying them as an accessory at worst but it feels like Reiner/Sorkin don’t want to go too far down this rabbit hole, simply portraying them as a necessary evil for whichever side to get their message out there.

The film still wants to be about the optimism found in the President and Sydney falling for each other as well as all the people at the White House working together and verbally sparring with each other, the arguments over ‘fight the fights that we can win’ and the ‘ones that need fighting’. There’s a wistful feeling that comes from looking at all this now, fighting for the environment and against the gun lobby, thinking about how all those years ago it felt like there was a shot at getting some of these things taken care of but instead of really getting to the heart of these matters the film spends time negotiating on where the votes are going to go and seems to feel at times like the characters have nothing to argue about but the President’s poll numbers going down. Maybe the problem is the more lighthearted dialogue with such a Sorkin flavor is what sticks and the more serious stuff doesn’t quite have the same punch, missing the sort of depth to its arguing about ideals that Sorkin seemed to get better at a few years later a few seasons into THE WEST WING. If that show came out of wanting to do more with those supporting characters, it’s hard not to think that at roughly 113 minutes a few more to spend time on those subjects and how these people get their job done wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world. The plotting is tight enough that it feels like it could use some breathing room, maybe a few extra beats with the President’s daughter who seems forgotten near the end or the staff members to make it all that much richer. The pieces of the plot go together in a smart way, but it almost feels like a few scenes are missing before it quickly jumps to the climax and the all-important big speech.

Seeing this film on opening weekend, one thing that impressed me was how, unlike so many other films that feature a President, this one made no bones about which side was which, even while avoiding actually naming the parties aside from maybe one briefly seen graphic on a TV news report but when Richard Dreyfuss’s Bob Rumsen speaks in front of the Conservative Coalition of America while decrying Sydney as working for ‘an ultra-liberal political action committee’, it’s not exactly left ambiguous. When that Senator is seen plotting while smoking cigars with several of his fellow evil compatriots on the right it paints them with as broad and villainous brush as possible, which I now suspect might be the most believable scene in the film. Maybe back then I also wondered how large amounts of people would feel about being thought of as on the side of the bad guys which may have possibly hurt the film at the box office, giving an ironic spin to when Douglas says, “I don’t think you win elections by telling 59% of the people that they’re wrong.” Now, all these years later, the nastiness of the Dreyfuss character coming from that side is too believable so whatever such people might have thought doesn’t seem to matter very much. We know what they are. It makes me think about how on THE WEST WING it sometimes played like Sorkin seemed to spend part of the time portraying the belief that coming to an agreement was ultimately possible, that if you could just sit down and talk reasonably with the other side it could all end in handshakes while here Reiner didn’t seem to mind presenting them so unredeemable and villainous especially in the nastiness of his old friend Richard Dreyfuss in portraying a sort of anti-avatar to represent what the director believes is everything bad in the world. And, sadly, back in 1995 he had no idea what was to come.

THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT wants to believe in those ideals of making the country better while at the same time making your own life better but, more than that, you have to do something about it. You have to act. You can’t just wait. You can’t just stand by while things happen and the other side takes over the conversation and wait for what you think will be your chance to do something about it. From the beginning the plot is clearly designed to build to the State of the Union but the big speech is instead done in the much more intimate setting of the White House Press Room, seemingly on the spur of the moment and the problems in the film are solved with those words when the President finally decides to speak, Paddy Chayefsky for people with an optimistic view of the world. If a woman can get you to feel her passion from all those words, maybe that’s the way to get the public to react too. They’re good words and inspiring thoughts. Some of it could have been written right now. But it’s also a speech that the movie’s bad guy never gets a chance to reply too, and if only it were this easy. If only the good guy saying, “Being president is entirely about character” was something that people could listen to and understand. What also depresses me is how the last thing Michael Douglas says to Annette Bening, which serves as the payoff to a running gag of attempting to send her flowers to illustrate the difficulty of combining the personal and the professional, is no longer possible because of what’s happened in the real world. It’s likely that the people who made THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT didn’t believe any of this was possible. It had too much faith in people.

Michael Douglas is a true movie star here, delivering a performance that is fully confident and a reminder of how good he always was, working his physicality to command every room as the President and always making the dialogue a totally natural part of the intelligence he exudes. Annette Bening is the perfect match for him, playing the part in a way that balances charm and intelligence with a natural quality that comes from everything she says. She brings complete life to every scene she’s in. She beams. It feels like this role was designed to anoint her as the star she hadn’t quite become yet which didn’t really happen as it might have but it really is a reminder of how good Annette Bening has always been. The supporting cast is pretty close to perfect as well including Martin Sheen, now looking like he’s waiting patiently to step into the lead role himself always showing the loyalty he feels to his President plus Shawna Waldron as Lucy Shepherd, Nina Siemasko as Sydney’s sister, Anna Deavere Smith as the press secretary, Samantha Mathis as the personal aide and especially Michael J. Fox making every utterance in his performance as the speechwriter always about the passion and what he believes in. The smarminess of Richard Dreyfuss is so potent you remember him as having a bigger part than he really does and there’s also the very welcome David Paymer as the Deputy Chief of Staff, especially for the way he delivers the extremely Sorkinian line, “I could explain it better, but I’d need charts and graphs and an easel.”

Politics are personal. More than it ever has for me, it feels like the way people behave and they’re passionate about is what they really are deep down. And I think of the way certain people reacted to what happened to Rob Reinder and his wife, the utter emptiness and hatred that must encompass such people deep inside where there is nothing good. There are also the movies that Reiner directed over the past thirty years since THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT that people don’t talk about. THE STORY OF US. ALEX & EMMA. RUMOR HAS IT. THE BUCKET LIST, which, helped by the star power of Jack Nicholson, was a hit but only seems to be remembered for its title and nothing else. Others that I have not seen and possibly will not. We don’t have to mention them. Ultimately, what matters is what matters. Certain films he made matter. The person who Reiner was matters. The way he screamed, “$26,000 WORTH OF SIDES???” in THE WOLF OF WALL STREET matters. Certain other people and their beliefs don’t not to mention the ones who may as well be on that side anyway. THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT might not be the Capraesque classic it clearly wants to be and maybe the way it believes that a firm speech will solve everything represents a denial of such things that I know are out there. But it also represents a dream of possibilities that I want to believe in. I just don’t have the heart for it right now. But maybe someday I will. If only certain things can change.