All You've Learned

A few nights before the Academy Awards I decided to prepare for the occasion by once again watching 1966’s THE OSCAR starring Stephen Boyd, Elke Sommer and Tony Bennett. Deadly serious and almost unbearably funny from the first scene to the unforgettable finale it has to be one of the most entertaining bad films of all time. I should write about it some day. Late at night after the actual awards ended, when I was completely worn out from all the nonsense of the evening, I decided to wind things down with a considerably more bizarre 60s foray into the dark side of Hollywood, Robert Aldrich’s THE LEGEND OF LYLAH CLARE, released in 1968. It probably isn’t a stretch to call it one of the stranger films to ever come from Hollywod, let alone one of the stranger films about Hollywood, but that would probably make it sound better than it is. It’s still interesting enough, not to mention bizarre enough, that just trying to figure it all out after seeing it again makes me want to write about it for what marks my 400th post on this site. By a strange coincidence, the great Joe Dante’s essential and addictive site Trailers From Hell which features a variety of directors doing commentary on a wide range of film trailers from all eras, recently ran its 400th trailer. I don’t think they’ve covered THE LEGEND OF LYLAH CLARE yet but considering a few of the films that have turned up there they’ll probably get around to it sooner or later. For now, I’ll just write about it because if I don’t try to figure out THE LEGEND OF LYLAH CLARE then who else is going to?


When aspiring actress Elsa Brinkmann (Kim Novak) who bears an uncanny resemblance to legendary movie star Lylah Clare (a fusion of Monroe, Dietrich, Garbo, Harlow and probably others), who mysteriously died twenty years ago, the icon’s director and husband Lewis Zarkan (Peter Finch) decides to press forward with a revealing biopic on the star, making what is to be his first film in twenty years. But as he presses forward with transforming Elsa into Lylah with dying agent Bart Langner (Milton Selzer) dialogue coach (and former lover of Lylah’s) Rossella (Rossella Falk) and studio chief Barney Sheean (Ernest Borgnine) who all once knew Lylah around them, Elsa begins to uncannily resemble Lylah in behavior as well as looks. Secrets surrounding Lylah’s mysterious demise begin to come out as Zarkon falls in love with Elsa—or is he just still in love with Lylah?—and it begins to seem as if history is about to repeat itself.


The genuine weirdness of the mood that the film gives off sticks in the mind long after seeing it but very few of the specifics of what goes on ever do outside of a moody opening credits sequence featuring Kim Novak wandering down a deserted Hollywood Boulevard which looks like it has to have really been shot very early in the morning (Aldrich’s own THE DIRTY DOZEN is seen on a marquee—researching some dates shows it probably was actually playing at the time) and an unexpected ending that I’ll get to shortly. THE LEGEND OF LYLAH CLARE is strange, no doubt about it, but considering it could be looked at as an attempt by Robert Aldrich to recapture the success of his previous dark-side-of-Hollywood’s-past WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? the resulting film is pretty much totally insane yet still never comes off quite as hysterical as you might be expecting. Too much of the background of this story is never really clarified, too many tantalizing elements aren’t really explored—have Zarkan and Rossella really been living together in this huge mansion for twenty years doing nothing but sniping at each other? Why? What could have happened during that time almost sounds like a more interesting movie than the one we got.


In his review when it was released Roger Ebert refers to it as “an awful movie, but fairly enjoyable,” as if the very concept of so-bad-it’s-good was still pretty new at the time. But in terms of camp, satire, whatever, way too often it feels unclear just what the movie is trying to say or do and on a very basic level it feels like if Robert Aldrich had a concept that was clear to him, he was never able to impart that to anyone else involved with the film. Whether looked at as shrill camp, satire or thriller WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? is certainly over the top but it irrefutably works with an ending that comes crashing down like the end of the world, a veritable showbiz apocalypse. LYLAH CLARE has the logic of watching something half-drunk on the late show in the middle of the night with every other scene cut out but even saying that might be overstating the case.


Tying the basic concept into VERTIGO certainly sounds like an interesting concept for Kim Novak as a comment on the early part of her career at Columbia Pictures but it ultimately just comes off as odd, as if the movie itself isn’t clear on what to do with the reference point. In 1996 Novak told the Washington Post, “That was a weird movie. It didn’t have to be that bad,” adding that she didn’t know until the night of the premiere that Aldrich had dubbed in someone else’s voice for the scenes where the German-accented “Lylah” supposedly takes over. It’s not even clear what is going on at these points. Elsa Brinkmann is a woman with no past, no character, nothing beyond an undefined fascination with Lylah, so who is she? Is she a brilliant actress? Is she actually possessed by the legend? Is she some kind of acting savant? Since these scenes just come off as simply weird and nothing else it kind of winds up killing the movie right there. It’s not that these are points that necessarily needed to be answered but it feels like even the movie doesn’t know quite how to play it all so we’re not sure how funny or serious to take it. It’s interesting just to watch Novak in this context but she never gets any sort of character to play on a coherent level.


With a screenplay by Hugo Butler and Jean Rouverol from a teleplay by Edward DeBlasio and Robert Thom, too much of the movie focuses on the wrong things with not enough happening at times. I suppose this is one way to say that it’s fairly dull stuff. You want laughs? Watch THE OSCAR, seriously. THE LEGEND OF LYLAH CLARE’s odd tone is certainly hypnotic at times with an appropriately haunting score by De Vol but too often it’s not all that compelling. Sitting here right now I’ve just rewatched the first hour and I can barely tell you what happens during most of it. I suppose it consists of scene after scene of characters arguing over whether Finch is going to make this film, whether Borgnine’s studio is going to release this film, who is going to produce this film and so on. There’s a seemingly endless scene of Finch and Borgnine in the Brown Derby arguing over financing and how much they hate each other but not enough attention paid to what’s going on with Novak’s character. She’s certainly not some sort of Joe Gillis-type audience surrogate dragged into this world and irrevocably changed by it—at least, if she’s supposed to be it doesn’t read as such and since the production of what is apparently called LYLAH CLARE: FILM STAR (what a dull title) where you would imagine this transformation would take place, doesn’t even start until close to ninety minutes into this 130 minute movie so everything is just lopsided.


Even the tone feels off—there’s a slight dream feel to everything which makes sense but something about the photography makes it look cheap—maybe shooting the whole thing in black and white a la BABY JANE wasn’t an option by the late sixties (though the flashbacks are presented this way) but the dullness of the colors give it a flat look that makes everything kind of sleepy. The set of Zarkan’s mansion looks about as phony as the movie version of it we later see on a soundstage. Which may be the point, but since there’s no feel that the movie is toying with reality versus fantasy it’s just kind of confusing. It’s tough to know what to make of how the story resolves itself—part of the point seems to be its inevitability but it’s not clear if the movie is treating this as deadly serious, as satire, or something else entirely so when Finch muses how he’s just reliving the same mistakes he’s already made it doesn’t have much effect. The film certainly doesn’t need to outright state what it is but if it seemed to know then we’d be able to take it however we want (just like BABY JANE). That clarity isn’t there, though there are enough haunting grace notes that cause the whole thing to stay with me, like a high shot near the end of a nearly empty Grauman’s Chinese, that make it all continually fascinating even if very little of it actually works. I can’t help but imagine Blake Edwards being fascinated by it as well and figuring out what to do with the potential of the humor in the material in order to write S.O.B. You could call it Aldrich’s angriest statement about the industry, you could call it a camp classic, but it never reaches the boil it feels like it needs to and just winds up as a head scratcher. Enough of a head scratcher for me to watch it multiple times as I try to figure the damn this out, but still.

The other memorable element of the film, which everyone who’s seen it always seems to mention, is the very end which features a certain dog food commercial unlike any ever seen before (it’s also kind of an extension of a similar joke in BABY JANE) and, placed in this context, drives home Aldrich’s total contempt for everything related to what’s happened—there’s no point in trying to describe it and you really need to see it for yourself anyway. It feels like an ultimate statement about Aldrich’s feelings regarding Hollywood but, as Woody Harrelson in NATURAL BORN KILLERS once observed, “I’m not exactly a hundred percent sure what it’s saying. ” But I’m willing to make a few guesses. If anything, it succeeds in wrenches us away from this film before we’re expecting it, refusing to give us any sort of satisfaction just as Hollywood often does, churning out junk, tossing aside its finest talent as everyone within consumes themselves and everyone around them. The abrupt ending KISS ME DEADLY once had before it was correctly restored is nothing in comparison to this.


Coming near the end of her run as an above-the-title star, Kim Novak is still extremely beautiful but obviously somewhat older—older than this character should be, anyway—as well as being visibly more full-bodied. Her very presence certainly adds to things but as the muddled nature of the tale goes on it becomes very clear that though she’s doing her best the actress is as lost as everyone else and the dubbing issues certainly don’t help matters (Aldrich several years later: “I really didn’t do her justice.”). But I’m not sure what any actress is supposed to do with scenes where she walks around in a bra and a sweater tied around her neck as she does at one point—maybe this is where SEINFELD got that idea. Much of the cast seems stranded but they at least seem to be trying as well. Finch acts gravely serious but doesn’t always seem to be in the same frame as people which, considering he’s supposed to be an egomaniac could be part of the point. Ernest Borgnine, sneering “I make movies, not films!” is enjoyable as always as the studio head (he’s even watchable in THE OSCAR as far as I’m concerned), Coral Browne brings more depth to her shrewish Hedda Hopper-like columnist than might have been on the page and 8 ½’s Rosella Falk as Lylah’s long-ago lesbian lover has a fascinating presence and is maybe one of the key elements that makes the movie as bizarrely compelling as it ever is. Valentina Cortese has a few showy moments as the wardrobe mistress and Michael Murphy, as the son of the studio head, doesn’t seem to have much reason to be in the movie making me wonder if there was something between him and Novak that got cut. Aldrich veteran George Kennedy can be spotted in an unbilled cameo as an actor in one of Lylah’s old films and Dick Miller turns up in one scene as a reporter.


Going back to that dog food commercial, since I mentioned Joe Dante’s Trailers From Hell site it reminds me that several years ago in a piece that I wrote on THE HOWLING here I wondered if an appearance of a dog food commercial at the very end was in fact a LYLAH CLARE reference which several days later was confirmed here by none other than Joe Dante, saying that I was the first person to ever pick up on that. I’m not sure what that says. Maybe it’s a reminder of how close I’m looking into these films sometimes. Maybe it doesn’t say anything other than that I was once lucky enough to see THE LEGEND OF LYLAH CLARE which is rarely screened and until the Warner Archive made it available on DVD I don’t think it was ever released on video in any format. Maybe it doesn’t make any difference. Beginning to write this blog was probably one of the smartest things I’ve ever done. I’ve met people I wouldn’t have met otherwise and after 400 posts I find myself loving films, and loving looking at films, even more than I already did. Even if it’s THE LEGEND OF LYLAH CLARE.

The Moment Of A Lifetime

Yes, at one point before the Academy Awards began I made the crazily bold prediction that INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS was going to win. I was being ornery, what can I say. I was going out on a limb and it’s what I was hoping for anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I really did think that THE HURT LOCKER was terrific, I just wasn’t sure that the Academy was going to give the award to what would be the lowest grossing Best Picture winner in modern times. And coming a year after SLUMDOG MILLIONARE this makes it two years in a row that the Best Picture winner probably came close to getting next to no theatrical release at all. It would be nice that all this would mean that the studios wouldn’t put all their resources into making nothing by mammoth tentpoles in 3D and start releasing a few films that could use this sort of attention but by this point I think we all know better. By the way, I saw ALICE IN WONDERLAND in 3D over the weekend. But let’s move on. Some might say that THE HURT LOCKER didn’t get much of a release anyway. Maybe because of the economy, I never felt like Summit tried to get the film out there as much as they could or should have. Ultimately they probably put more effort into the Oscar campaign than actually getting it into theaters which kind of annoys me. But it’s on DVD now and everyone can see it. So it’s all over now. I don’t have to worry about the handful of titles that I never got around to. I no longer have to pretend that I might go see AVATAR a second time. I can watch my DVD of INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS all I want. Or just see any movie that I want to see for my own reasons like I usually do anyway. Truthfully, I thought the Oscar show itself was pretty terrible but not in a horrific Allan Carr train wreck kind of way—it was as if lots of little things were arranged in such a haphazard fashion to make it all feel totally lumbering and out of control before even the first hour was up. Yes, there were plenty of gorgeous women looking great (looking at the tape again a few really do stand out) but I couldn’t care less what they were wearing so I’m the wrong person to talk about that stuff anyway. It makes you ask the question what are the Oscars in 2010, what does the show want to be? Because I’m not sure it wants to be about movies.


Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin are almost always very funny doing this sort of thing and I’ll admit I laughed a number of times during their monologue (face it, jokes about Meryl Streep and Hitler are funny) but by a certain point that section began to feel way too shapeless, feeling like it was building up to something—a big musical number? A surprise appearance? A joke on the joke?—that never happened. Anyone who’s seen their running ‘feud’ on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE knows that the two of them can play off each other but there wasn’t enough of a chance to do that here, although I did enjoy the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY spoof. Maybe the room is too big for that sort of interplay, maybe stuff got cut. Way too often in these shows the host(s) seems to disappear for long stretches of time and we wonder where they’ve gone. Shouldn’t the host always be around to, I don’t know, host? When Billy Crystal made all those running Jack Palance jokes back in the day it’s because he was actually on stage to make them but somehow those fun chances have been squeezed out of this show in an effort to keep things moving and it still runs long. What we did get at the beginning was a musical number featuring Neil Patrick Harris that I guess was designed to introduce these guys who were going to be around all night—except they really weren’t and I’m not sure why that number was needed at all. Couldn’t we have gotten one of those Chuck Workman history-of-movies montages to get us all excited? Instead of that we got a line in the song about dropping the soap in prison—thank you, Marc Shaiman! That’s the glamour of Hollywood for ya.

And part of it just felt like the rhythm and pacing of the whole thing was off, which made it all seem even longer than it was. The camera seemed to be continually swooping around presenters as they were opening the envelopes like someone behind the scenes was trying to show off a new camera rig and shots of the audience showed people who looked as if they had been told that family members had just died. I guess the joke of the Steve Carell-Cameron Diaz bit was that it was intentionally awkward but the timing wasn’t sharp enough so it just became confusing. Miley Cyrus tried to excuse her nervousness by saying it was her first time there except it wasn’t. Meanwhile George Clooney had some kind of runner with Alec Baldwin that really didn’t work but by a certain point he even acted goofy for the camera so maybe by staying seated he clearly had the right idea. Maybe someone needed to pump more oxygen into the room to keep everyone awake. We also got interminable clips showing the actors and actresses in the supporting categories along with the displays of sound editing and those short film segments with Zoe Saldana and Carey Mulligan which seemed to go on for hours (plus the crazy lady rushing the stage) then certain other things were raced through way too quickly as if somebody had suddenly decided to pick up the pace. And they cut the songs? How was this whole thing timed? By the time we got to friends of the lead acting nominees singing their praises it felt like whiplash with everything slowing down when it actually did need to get moving so the whole thing could just end already. The John Hughes tribute felt like it happened way too early in the show, coming at a point where things needed to get going not stop for this long digression and things just felt out of whack. Plus, Judd Nelson was really scary looking.


And I guess we could debate singling out John Hughes at all when you and I could easily name all the worthy people didn’t get such treatment when they passed away either this year or during years past. One of the only other ones I can think of is Kubrick so maybe you need to become a recluse. Of course, John Hughes hadn’t directed any kind of movie for twenty years and a fair amount of the things that his name appeared on—stuff not featured in this montage which included scenes from only six of the eight films he directed as well as several he wrote—were total garbage. I can’t dispute what these movies meant to people and hey, I grew up on them too. I just know that this didn’t happen when Billy Wilder died. And lots of other people as well. The weird thing is it felt like such a digression maybe because it was a segment that was actually trying to be about someone who made movies. Maybe they could have tried a few more of those while they were at it. And hey, a clip from WEIRD SCIENCE got shown on the Oscars.


Which makes this as good a time as any to discuss the Montage Of Death which featured all the people who apparently didn’t deserve their own segment and all the things wrong with it. For starters, they brought back last year’s massive screwup by placing the segment on a screen within the stage at the beginning, making it more about who was performing this number (James Taylor) than about the people they were supposedly paying tribute to. Patrick Swayze I could make out, but one or two others seemed to get the shaft (Mark Evanier says they were Maurice Jarre and Monte Hale). Not to mention how the visual layout of the segment looked ugly and the way they were obviously trying to race through each name didn’t go well with the tempo of the song. Not included were people like Dominick Dunne, Arnold Stang, Dan O’Bannon, Zelda Rubinstein and, as everyone seems to be talking about, Farrah Fawcett who though she’s mainly remembered for television did appear in a number of films during her career. The omission of Bea Arthur seems to make more sense to me considering how the actress really was more famous for TV (honestly the only film appearance of hers I can think of is the HISTORY OF THE WORLD PART 1 cameo) and you could argue that several of those absent like Gene Barry and Edward Woodward are also remembered more for their TV roles so—hey, you know what? I’m not gonna cut them a break. These people starred in legendary films like WAR OF THE WORLDS and THE WICKER MAN so they deserved to be included. You know who’s also known mostly for TV? Neil Patrick Harris! So what the hell was he doing on the show? And, maybe most unforgivable of all was the omission of Henry Gibson who deserved to be in there if only for work roles in Altman’s NASHVILLE (he wasn’t nominated for it, but he deserved to be) and THE LONG GOODBYE alone. Points however for including Fellini collaborator Tullio Pinelli, who I wouldn’t have expected to make the cut, among the screenwriters.

Barely getting more time themselves were lifetime honorees Roger Corman and Lauren Bacall, who received their awards at a non-televised ceremony in November (as did Gordon Willis, who probably declined to fly out from New York again just for the privilege of sitting in the Kodak). The two of them received a cursory introduction last night that wonderfully resulted in what felt like a completely spontaneous standing ovation which was almost the emotional high point of the night. Of course, it probably made the show’s producers break out in hives considering how quickly they shut it down so Robin Williams could come out to present the next award. Is there anyone who wouldn’t have loved to hear Bacall speak, however briefly, about what working in Hollywood with the legends she knew intimately meant to her? Wouldn’t an appearance by some of the legions of famous people who got their start with Corman have been one of the classic Oscar clips of all time? These two people from different worlds of the industry combined could have been a historic moment. It should have been. And the people putting on the show just didn’t care.


We all knew Christoph Waltz was going to win and he delivered a variation on the speech he’s given a number of times the past several months but it was still deserved and sadly just about the only time the film was heard from all night long.

I was glad that UP won, but that bit of interviewing the “stars” of the animated movies kind of made me wish that Dug the Dog from the film was hosting the show. He probably would have brought more energy to it all.

For history there was a montage to show the history of horror films or something but I’m not sure what the point of it was—it also included THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS which, in case you forgot, did come out after THE EXORCIST. It sure wasn’t to show off the greatness of horror films, considering how the person who assembled it (not Chuck Workman, the master of these things) thinks that BEETLEJUICE and EDWARD SCISSORHANDS qualify and it also contained way too much of a focus on early appearances by future stars (hey, it got LEPRECHAUN in there). At least there was a quick shot from EVIL DEAD 2 as well as CHILD’S PLAY but very little Romero or Corman (a shot of Nicholson in LITTLE SHOP and that’s it) and absolutely no Lewton let alone anything from the worlds of Hammer and Bava. For the most part, it was a wasted opportunity that probably existed only to give the stars of TWILIGHT time onstage. Maybe they should have just run a few minutes from TERROR IN THE AISLES.

At least we got Bob Murawski, one of the editors who won for THE HURT LOCKER, who in mentioning his obvious love for horror films (they should have gotten him to cut that package!) and Roger Corman, showed more genuine enthusiasm for movies than anyone else during the whole night. He’s one of the heads of Grindhouse Releasing and he’s also the editor on Sam Raimi films (a friend and I met him very briefly at a DRAG ME TO HELL test screening last year—we complimented him on all the sound effects culled from SUSPIRIA) so all congratulations to him.

Ben Stiller—less is more. Please.

Speaking of which, hey, STAR TREK won an Oscar!

After screenwriter Jeffrey Fletcher gave his moving acceptance speech upon winning for PRECIOUS one of the people they cut to, in addition to the film’s stars, was Morgan Freeman. Because it’s a black film, you see. And Steve Martin made the joke to Christoph Waltz about all the Jews being there they cut to one of the Coen Brothers. Oh, I get it! He’s a Jew! Why do they do this sort of thing year after year? It’s one thing to cut to George Clooney when someone makes a George Clooney joke, but STOP THAT.


Whenever groups of acting nominees were lined up together all I thought of how George C. Scott called the whole thing a “two hour meat parade” back when he declined to show up and yet I wondered how much more dignified it must have been in those days. Try to imagine a universe where George C. Scott would be up on stage in this sort of thing. Try to imagine George C. Scott even getting a job in a movie today.

Getting some people who had previously worked with the directors of the nominated films to introduce the clips—Keanu Reeves for THE HURT LOCKER, John Travolta for INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS—was a nice touch.

What is up with these dudes with their floppy hair and not-really beards? They’re not all Mark Boal and/or Jason Reitman, are they? That’s it, I’m not shaving today. The hair, however, there’s only so much I can do about that at this point.

Doesn’t it feel like there were people missing from this show? Some type of movie star who didn’t bother showing up? Are there movie stars anymore? Am I just really cranky?

I still wish that Tarantino could have won screenplay if BASTERDS wasn’t going to get Best Picture. Just wanted to toss that in there. That said, congratulations to Mark Boal.

The choice of what to play as presenters appeared mostly seemed to be classic songs—some connected to beloved films I guess, but not songs that came from films and certainly not any selections from actual film scores which isn’t exactly any sort of way to go about celebrating movies—one exception to this was when the theme from AMARCORD played as Tarantino and Almodovar came on to present Best Foreign Film, which was the most respectful nod to actual film scoring the show made all night long.

And that includes the interpretive dance thing to present the Best Score nominees which was godawful, yes, and certainly bizarre in how it had nothing to do with anything we tuned into this show to see but it came off as disrespectful to film scores and the people who create them—hell, not to mention the people who actually enjoy them—as well. Does anyone think it’s actually a good idea to somehow relate THE HURT LOCKER to dancing? I guess show producer Adam Shankman did. I just had to look up who actually won Best Score (congratulations to Michael Giacchino) since I think I had blocked this part of the show from memory. Wasn’t this sort of thing outlawed due to the Debbie Allen Act of 2002?

Come to think of it, maybe Tarantino and Almodovar should host next year. These guys actually like movies.

In case anyone was wondering, the clip from INTO THE LOOP shown during the screenplay nominations was the most they could show without getting into bleeping issues. Seriously, you should see INTO THE LOOP.


I never saw THE BLIND SIDE (actually I never saw three of the ten up for Best Picture--the other two are AN EDUCATION and PRECIOUS. What can I say, I'm unemployed) so I can’t speak to Sandra Bullock’s performance at all but I’m going to guess that no one who voted for her saw Tilda Swinton’s brilliant, searing work in JULIA which is seriously just about the best performance I’ve seen anyone give in years. Of course, no one saw that film. I only saw it myself on DVD a few weeks ago. JULIA is long, messy, at times a little insane and absolutely amazing. It should be seen. That has nothing to do with anything, I just thought Tilda Swinton’s performance in this film warranted mention.

Jeff Bridges abides.

“Well, Kathryn Bigelow won for Director, I guess they’ll go to commercial. Maybe I’ll get something from the kitchen to drink—hey, there’s Tom Hanks, is he presenting? Wait, what’s he saying? Is he reading the list of nominees? What? THE HURT LOCKER won? It’s over? Hey, wait up!”

To make another slam about music, when Kathryn Bigelow walked off the stage after winning Best Director the orchestra actually played “I Am Woman”. Are you kidding me? Does someone think it’s still 1972? Is Don Draper producing this show? Does someone think it’s cute and quirky that a woman is actually trying to direct movies? Do they think that all she needs to do is find a man and she won’t want to make messy, nasty action movies anymore? Maybe they never saw BLUE STEEL.


So since the actual show didn’t seem to have any real appreciation for the moment I’ll just congratulate Kathryn Bigelow, a terrific director who, even if some of her past films have been flawed, is always willing to push the material as far as it can go. Her work has continually been ferociously cinematic and pulsating with a brutal rhythm that can be tough to shake. She's enormously beautiful, yes, but it needs to be said once again that she didn't get this award because she's a woman who's a director. She got it because she's a damn good director. I truly hope that we have yet to see her best work.

I didn’t notice until I was looking at the tape this morning but the show’s closing credits included a credit for a piece directed by Laurent Bouzereau titled “What Winning An Oscar Meant To Me” but I’m guessing it got cut for time—the show did seem to begin awfully abruptly. Maybe that’s what was missing—not just a love for movies but a love for this tradition of Hollywood and instead what we’re left with are a lot of would-be stars who people watching aren’t really tuning in to see. Those like Bacall and Corman don’t get to speak and moments celebrating them are truncated. It’s embarrassing. It’s short sighted. But I suppose it’s to be expected. The old guard of Hollywood’s golden and silver ages have pretty much died off with those who might take up the mantle today having fallen off the radar or at least aren’t showing up anymore. Those from those eras who are left are relegated to, at best, a quick shot of them sitting in the audience. So I suppose this means that Tom Hanks (interestingly, March 9th marks the 26th anniversary of SPLASH, his starring debut) can now officially be deemed the old guard, beloved by all. At least for now. Maybe someday he’ll be the one sitting out there who the camera can’t wait to cut away from. So congratulations to THE HURT LOCKER, a film that absolutely deserves the exposure it’s going to get from this. Even though the big winner of the night wasn’t the massive CGI spectacle that everyone thought it would be at one point that’s probably where the concept of movies seems is headed anyway so as far as I’m concerned it’s a good thing for something else to be celebrated. But in watching this year’s Oscars I’m very aware that more than ever it’s beginning to feel like history just isn’t what it used to be and the people in charge of these shows aren’t very interested in it anyway. As I long as films are still screened somewhere on celluloid (which I guess as long as I live within driving distance of the New Beverly), as long as I get to watch old black and white noir films, bizarre car chase movies from the seventies, Italian horror movies from the sixties and who knows what else then I’ll find a way to live with it. And now, since this is all over and done with, I’m going to go watch my DVD of INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS once again.

Into The Or What Category

There’s a lot that could be said about John Landis but right now, at this moment in time, I’m just going to say how much I genuinely enjoy INTO THE NIGHT. That’s right, INTO THE NIGHT, the Landis-directed comedy thriller that opened to little box office in February 1985 and was forgotten soon after, probably by the time his next film SPIES LIKE US opened for the Christmas holiday at the end of the year. Forgotten, that is, except for a handful of people out there in the world who have maintained a quiet admiration for its sneaky and at times genuinely screwed up charms. It’s one of a handful of movies from the director that, since it is freed from having to serve as a vehicle for Aykroyd/Belushi/Murphy/Chase/Whomever, revels in the chance to play as pure, unfiltered Landis and that’s where a good chunk of the screwed up element comes into play. But maybe life in Los Angeles is like one giant dark John Landis comedy anyway, where some twisted combo of comedy and danger in our lives is always teetering on the brink of madness. INTO THE NIGHT screened at the New Beverly recently on a double bill with FLETCH, which despite what you may think isn’t a John Landis film (that film’s director would be Michael Ritchie) but it did serve to make the night a double bill of ‘films released by Universal in 1985.’ In case that’s what they had in mind. Have I said before that the 70s-80s Universal logo is my favorite of all time? It feels like it goes perfectly at the front of INTO THE NIGHT coming just as the sound of a plane taxiing in for a landing starts to be heard. Whatever the studio, I was looking forward to seeing it and as the film unspoiled I found myself not just enjoying it, but flat-out loving how the movie had clearly taken such pleasure in creating itself.


Depressed and insomniac aerospace engineer Ed Okin (Jeff Goldblum) sees his problems only get worse when one day he drives home from work early desperate to get some sleep and discovers his wife having an affair. He doesn’t confront her but late that night, still unable to sleep and presumably following a co-worker’s suggestion to spend a night in Las Vegas, he drives to the airport when while in the parking lot he stumbles across a beautiful woman named Diana (Michelle Pfeiffer) who is being chased by four mysterious men who obviously want something she has. Ed rescues her and drives her off into the Los Angeles night but as he takes Diana several different locations throughout the city in search of safety, they soon realize that not only are the four men still in pursuit but several other interested parties are as well.


Sort of the L.A. equivalent of AFTER HOURS, INTO THE NIGHT sets itself apart by not only placing its darkly comic atmosphere in the middle of a complicated smuggling plotline but in the very distinct tone that Landis gives every moment, one where in just a few seconds things can turn more deadly than you may have expected. Billed as “A Dangerous Romance” on the poster, most of the romantic element seems to be implied more than anything and the character of Ed Okin, who admits that he feels “like I’m from another planet or something” barely seems capable of entering into one at this point in time anyway. It’s not really a romance at all but a collision of a guy from an allegedly real world with a gorgeous blonde who comes from a world he barely could have dreamed of, one represented by a superficial world of beach houses, huge yachts, sleek cars and movie studios where nothing whatsoever is real. One thing I was slightly surprised by on this viewing that I didn’t remember is that the two lead characters do actually kiss at one point but it comes off as a surprisingly human moment in the middle of all this, not a lame bit of romance that just feels shoehorned in. The rest of whatever’s going on between the two of them you just have to take on faith. They seem to trust each other because there’s no one else for them in their own world’s that they can depend on. It’s all set in a Los Angeles of blah people living blah lives in blah houses as Cal Worthington ads play nonstop on TV seemingly unaware of what’s going on right around them in the dead of night, a city that also seems like it’s from another planet and is much more beautiful and foreboding at the same time with beautiful women, including our lead character, living lives with rich older men without any apology whatsoever from them or the movie.


Written by Ron Koslow, INTO THE NIGHT is certainly a different film to look at after having actually lived in L.A. for years, now fully knowing the geography of it all and realizing how much ground it covers making it even more fun to watch this time around. I do honestly wonder if the city streets were this much of a ghost town in the middle of the night even back in 1985 since it’s really not the case these days (Beverly Hills I could believe) but it provides the perfect atmosphere for this familiar yet strangely unreal world that we enter. There are continual laughs throughout and it is a comedy but one with a very skewered perspective and with people at times seemingly appearing out of nowhere things sometimes make about as much sense for Ed Okin as they would in any sort of dream—in this context, the few scenes that take place during daylight hours almost come off as more intimidating as a result. The whole thing is shot in Landis’s trademark DRAGNET dead-ahead style as if challenging us to decide what we make of some of this with the occasional quick cut away from something brutally surprising but some occasional forays into a certain kind of dark comedy go beyond even what he’d done before. The four Iranian secret police agents pursuing Diana, one of which is silently played by the director himself with a giant scar along his throat (guess who gets the most violent death during the climax?), come off as kind of the Four Stooges yet more than ever before for me their destruction of various people’s homes comes off as genuinely vicious and frightening—maybe it’s meant to be funnier than it comes off or maybe Landis is testing us to see how we respond to these luxurious places being trashed. Either way it leads to one particular sequence that starts off as darkly funny then almost before we realize it results in a character’s death, done in such a way that comes off as somehow wrong, going to a different level than even the darkly comic nastiness of AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON ever did. It’s particularly surprising considering the whole TWILIGHT ZONE-THE MOVIE thing, then still just a few years old, to a point where you almost want to say, “What the hell, Landis?” There’s the feeling that maybe he wants to say something about the destruction of material objects versus the objectified person who has been shockingly killed but it either comes off as too subtle or just something that he isn’t interested in exploring to any great effect. Maybe that’s the effect that Landis is going for or maybe he was just in need of some serious psychiatric help but for a few minutes in the second half the nastiness almost becomes too much.


Coming in the wake of what occurred on the TWILIGHT ZONE set the number of familiar faces who turn up in small roles feels like a show of support for him, not to mention all the infamous cameos by directors and others—Paul Mazursky, David Cronenberg (playing a scene with Goldblum a year before THE FLY), Roger Vadim, Waldo Salt, Jack Arnold, Don Siegel, Paul Bartel, Colin Higgins, Rick Baker, Jonathan Lynn, Jim Henson, Amy Heckerling, Lawrence Kasdan, Carl Gottlieb, Jonathan Demme and I’m sure I’m forgetting somebody. The story covers various points of the L.A. basin from the Marina to Hollywood to Beverly Hills to Century City to Malibu to Bel Air to downtown, along with a visit to the Ships Coffee Shop that used to be on La Cienega as well as several key trips out to LAX. The side trip to a studio filming a TV show gives us random but still pertinent jokes as Ed makes a fool of himself over all the things that aren’t real but this section also presents us with the most blatant exposition of the movie as Diana lays everything out for Ed in front of a brownstone facade, a blatant movie type-plot laid out in a blatantly phony environment.


Tied into these elements that reflect on what we’re watching the script is genuinely well-constructed with some clever dialogue sprinkled throughout though Goldblum does wind up saying a variation of “This is just too weird for me,” a few times too many to Diana as he tries to get away back to his boring life where he can’t fall asleep. But there’s never any shortage of inspiration with several terrific setpieces including a car chase through the deserted Century City and the parking lot of the Century Plaza towers, the climactic airport shootout (this is like a John Landis movie—lots of people panicking) and, best of all, a long, drawn-out sequence at the midway point as Goldblum slowly makes his way through a huge, seemingly deserted apartment with none other than ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN playing on TVs in each room (Bud, Lou, Lugosi and Chaney all justifiably are given screen credit in the end crawl). The way the sequence gradually builds to its payoff is extremely well put together (the film was edited by Malcolm Campbell who cut several other films for Landis around this time), wit the counterpoint of the older movie seen everywhere being one of the most unexpected and successful uses of this kind of device that Landis has ever achieved. Much of this mayhem is backed up by a fantastic score by Ira Newborn along with B.B. King and some of the most pleasurable moments throughout are when Landis has the confidence to just let the music play as Ed Okin goes from one place to the other and by a certain point this sort of thing just had me grinning from ear to ear. INTO THE NIGHT definitely isn’t perfect with those weird tonal issues but maybe that’s part of the point anyway since it’s not always easy to figure out the tone of where you stand here in L.A. But I will admit that I love it, crazy as it is. The movie, I mean. OK, the town too. The film almost shows who Landis is more than anything else he ever directed—a screwed up guy yet eager to get you to like him in a twisted way. I’ll say that it’s not only John Landis’s best film but for total entertainment value probably my favorite of his as well.


Goldblum and Pfeiffer play off each other extremely well and they have a genuine chemistry which really makes it feel like the two actors truly like each other so it makes it easier to like both of them as a result. It may not be a sexual chemistry but it’s definitely something and it’s a feeling that grows as the film goes on. Goldblum’s responses to this madness always stay grounded no matter what, maybe best exemplified when he catches a quick look at Pfeiffer walking around nude. The nonplussed look on his face at that moment feels totally genuine and he couldn’t be more likable as a result. He’s a complete rarity in this world, a menschy everyman who trusts in this beautiful woman, so she trusts in him. Just a guy who wants to know why he can’t sleep, he winds up bringing to the movie some kind of morality that it may not have had otherwise. Pfeiffer infuses her character with some kind of inner life that makes her endearing even though it could very easily have come off as too chilly. Her talent is still developing here but it’s impossible to miss how good she already is. And, yes, she’s stunningly beautiful as well. Among the supporting cast are a number of actors who are able to turn what are essentially jokey cameos that couldn’t have taken more than a day or two to shoot into full-blown characters--Bruce McGill as Pfeiffer’s Elvis impersonator brother is particularly good as is David Bowie (who winds up in a mortal struggle with Carl Perkins) playing the mysterious Colin Morris. Director Paul Mazursky has an actual role playing a producer, Kathryn Harrold is Diana’s too-willing actress friend, Dan Aykroyd (more than anyone else here, obviously doing a favor) makes a nondescript appearance as Ed’s co-worker, Richard Farnsworth is terrific in one scene as the rich old man Diana once loved and Irene Papas is appropriately intimidating as the powerful Shaheen Parvici figures into things late in the game. Not to mention that near the end we get a terrific appearance by Clu Gulager as a Federal Agent glaring at the two leads big time—for anyone curious, the veteran character actor is seen pretty regularly at the New Beverly these days and he was absolutely there that night. His main line when asked “Are we under arrest or what?” is “I’d say you’d fall into the or what category” which he repeats a variation of moments later and, maybe because of his character’s annoyance in delivering it, is one of those lines that you remember years after you’ve ever seen the film. The New Beverly audience gave his name a big round of applause when it appeared in the credits. For those looking for Landis trivia the same version of “The Girl From Ipanema” heard in the elevator in THE BLUES BROTHERS turns up here as well and a SEE YOU NEXT WEDNESDAY poster can be seen in Mazursky’s office.


It’s such a tonally strange movie vacillating between something genuinely likable and at times surprisingly violent that you begin to wonder who’s in charge of all this messiness. The answer, of course, is Landis, a madman who throws all these elements into this stew whether it goes together or not. Thinking about it as I write this I find myself almost feeling more critical about it than I first intended but that night I found myself sitting there in the New Beverly with a big grin on my face, feeling hugely satisfied by this film I first saw long ago and extremely pleased by how this twisted comedy with characters who I’ve always had a fondness for remains so enjoyable. The truth is that I think I like it even more than I'm saying. The truth is that I think I love it. When B.B. King singing “In The Midnight Hour” kicks in as that patented Landis cast recap starts as the end credits roll it feels like an absolute celebration of the movie we just saw which at its best is hugely entertaining and I was thrilled to see that’s still how it plays. It’s a movie that makes the line, “Can I have a ride to the airport?” sound like the most wonderful entryway to a more exciting life imaginable. If only it really did work out that way with the Dianas of this world but as I’ve learned any number of times by now, it’s usually not the case. At least there’s still INTO THE NIGHT to let us dream and I’m very glad it’s still there. And remember: When in Hollywood, visit Universal Studios. Ask for Babs.

They Don't Eat Dinner Until Midnight

Not too long ago a close friend of mine jokingly asked, “So, how’s daytime TV these days?” The thing is, and any number of people could confirm this, I had much more enforced exposure to that stuff when I was working at my place of employment. Now that it’s no longer the case I can revel in the freedom to shut the set off and not be exposed to any of that crap. Sure, I've watched a handful of movies in the middle of the afternoon, especially during rainy days, not to mention continually looking at stuff as I write pieces on them but that’s about it. If I’m watching TV during the day, it’s because it’s a movie. No other reason so the set’s usually off. Still, that mood of it being 2:30 in the afternoon and you’re just drifting through the day, nowhere to go, no desire to go anywhere, the feeling that maybe it wouldn’t so bad to just watch another movie…yeah, I feel that way sometimes. Featuring characters who do exactly that on occasion, JACKIE BROWN really is a good hangout movie for that time of day, capturing a lot of things just right but one of them is just the lazy feel of doing nothing in the middle of the afternoon, maybe watching Marisa Mell movies on TV (definitely preferable to the daytime TV options around today), waiting for that time when you suddenly have to rush out the door into the harsh world once again. Somehow I suspect that Quentin Tarantino has spent a few of these lazy afternoons himself. Even the most grounded, responsible character in the whole thing seems to prefer knocking off work for a few hours to catch a movie and maybe it says something that the one person who really is committed to his job is the one who also makes the least of an impression.


Based on Elmore Leonard’s novel RUM PUNCH, the reputation that Quentin Tarantino’s JACKIE BROWN acquired on its release has vacillated between the somewhat underwhelming response it first received to the general feeling that it shows a more ‘mature’ side of the director than we’d seen before or since—how much this level of ‘maturity’ has to do with the quality of any film will have to remain open to debate. It opened on Christmas Day, 1997 in the thick of the holiday rush at the time and I wonder if part of the initial response comes from the somewhat meandering feel of the first half-hour or so, something that goes beyond just being slow. There’s not a bad scene to speak of, a moment that I’m not engaged by, but there’s nevertheless something that feels off which even watching it now keeps me from fully locking into the film. Maybe it’s the rhythm of the thing, but I don’t feel it genuinely begin to come fully alive until Robert Forster in his first scene locks eyes with Samuel L. Jackson and flatly states “They do consider this a violation of his probation.” And I don’t fully connect with it on an emotional level until some time later when Pam Grier and Robert Forster first have a scene together, which is after all the heart of the film anyway--two actors whose careers peaked relatively early on and have been toiling away, if not in obscurity, than certainly without much notice. And in playing two characters who click almost instantly upon meeting it helps make what we’re watching very special. But either way it’s a film where the lead character, the one who it’s named after, doesn’t begin to play a role in the narrative until practically the half-hour mark so maybe there’s a pacing issue I can’t quite put my finger on that results in a vague dissatisfaction with the first part that feels like it’s not just an issue of length, like it wasn’t perfected in the editing somehow.


And though it’s long since stopped mattering at all, it was probably a mistake to release it at Christmas—or at least during that particularly crowded Christmas season (TITANIC, TOMORROW NEVER DIES, AS GOOD AS IT GETS, GOOD WILL HUNTING and that’s just for starters) and the more low-level energy that JACKIE BROWN has which gives it such a distinct tone may have been better served coming out during a quieter time of the year. Maybe it could have been marketed in a way that better prepared the audience for this pace more than just blaring “The new Q.T. flick!” and maybe this could have even resulted in greater acclaim than it received at the time—Robert Forster was the only Oscar nomination the film received. He lost to Robin Williams for GOOD WILL HUNTING which seems absurd but it’s just as ridiculous that Burt Reynolds lost for BOOGIE NIGHTS, so what are you gonna do? The performance, one of the very best seen on celluloid in the 90s, exists and that’s ultimately what matters.


There’s very little reason for me to recount the plot—hell, if you’re reading this then you’re no doubt already familiar with the story of 44 year-old Jackie Brown (Pam Grier), a stewardess who’s gotten in too deep with the law courtesy of associate and gun runner Ordell Robie (Samuel L. Jackson) so she figures out a way to try to get both Ordell and the law off her back with a little help from sympathetic bail bondsman Max Cherry (Robert Forster). Tarantino has said that part of his goal was to make his film a RIO BRAVO-type hangout movie which he winds up crossing with a certain 70s blaxploitation vibe, one that he obviously knows very well. But it’s done in a certain way that captures a vibe from those films that goes beyond simply making it an homage and comes off as nothing but totally sincere (which reminds me that both Grier and Forster were in Larry Cohen’s 1996 retro action movie ORIGINAL GANGSTAS, which I remember being pretty interesting but it’s been a while). He clearly doesn’t want to cast Pam Grier just because she’s cool (which she is, no doubt) but because he clearly loves her and everything she represents in her screen image. Considering how increasingly little interest Hollywood has in women of a certain age starting at 45, 40, 35, whatever and banshing them to crime procedurals on TNT at best, looking at how the film is built all around Grier as screen icon and actual person plays as downright rebellious.


As for the more mature approach, there is some truth to that, though it was always clear that some of the themes explored in RESERVOIR DOGS and PULP FICTION have a great deal more weight and depth to them than any of number of films released in their wake throughout the 90s. It almost feels like people just tacked the ‘mature’ tag on it without considering why beyond just the general impression of it being mostly about people in their 40s and 50s. The more I watch it the more it becomes clear as much as possible how he wanted to approach it totally as a 70s film in its aesthetic as possible for something set and shot during the 90s. He attempts this not in some goofy film-geek way but in a low-level technology kind of approach—the relaxed nature of the pacing as well as the framing, the only time he’s ever shot in 1:85 with excellent work by Guillermo Navarro, and a distinct lack of a reliance on technology either used in the film’s plot or in the actual production. And when what he’s doing is pulled off as skillfully as how we see the three separate looks at what happens during the money exchange, nothing else is needed. Many of the locations used also feel like they could have turned up in the sort of 70s action movie that used some hidden corner of Los Angeles County and never again since. He seems to know every corner of some of these buildings just as in his life he’s known the people that occupy them who, like his characters, may also have felt rundown and used up by a certain point in their lives. By treating them with such humanity and, yes, maturity, it’s like he’s honoring any number of these people who he once knew and who he imagines deserve to live forever in this 70s world of hanging out with friends at bars like the Cockatoo Inn, a place which has incidentally been torn down since the film shot there. This overriding feel of how Tarantino seems to know this corner of the world like no other place, like how you remain haunted by parts of the town you grew up in, makes me wish that Tarantino had made one or two other films in this area between this and KILL BILL in a similarly stripped-down manner. But maybe he felt that he put all he had to say about the place into this one and the ending could almost be looked at as a farewell to it all and, for that matter, to that youth.


The cast is amazing down to the smallest gestures and watching the film now over ten years after it was made (it’s specifically set in 1995 for reasons that have always eluded me) it’s hard not to think about how special it is to see all these people as their writer/director provides some of them with the most loving close-ups of their careers, giving us the chance to see just how great they can be. Everyone is great here, even the bit players down to every single bartender and salesgirl we see. And the way they all play off each other adds to it as well--You can see Jackson reacting to Forster in their initial scenes together as if both the actor and character are taking pleasure in the realization that this guy isn’t going to be just a pushover. This silent piece of business pays off when he comments on how Max Cherry has the Delfonics playing in his tape deck. Whether Ordell realizes at this point that Cherry loves Jackie or if he just thinks he likes the music either way it feels like he’s earned his respect—Forster’s “They’re pretty good” speaks volumes.


But much of the emotional pull is provided by Grier and Forster either in scenes together or when we know they’re thinking about the other—each of them emerge from their tangential presence in the early goings to take charge of the narrative, to remind us of what we’re missing thanks to a Hollywood who doesn’t care to give people like this decent parts anymore. The film is like one last great chance to see some of these people at their best. Samuel L. Jackson always works, yes, but Robert De Niro has imploded into lame comedies and seemingly low-stress gigs almost as if playing the slowly building rage of Louis Gara sucked some kind of life out of him. Bridget Fonda, turning up the volume on “Midnight Confessions” and bizarrely underappreciated for this role with some beautiful giant close-ups, has seemingly retired and Michael Keaton only seems to emerge on occasion from wherever he is. (As a side note, Keaton has some very strong moments, particularly when he and Grier muse about pocketing some of the money, but his character doesn’t resonate very much probably because, unlike everyone else, his character is just doing his job. This whole scheme isn’t everything for him.) Grier and Forster have continually worked through the years afterward in both movies and TV—Grier had actually been working fairly steadily through the years even before this but for Robert Forster what happened was almost akin to returning from the dead and I particularly recommend DIAMOND MEN, a small film that he starred in just a few years later. Though they definitely got a career boost from this, the parts they probably deserved weren’t really around for them to get the chance to do anything with, another reason this film is so special.


For Tarantino, JACKIE BROWN marks an ongoing evolution of him melding his films and narrative into ways that become increasingly a comment on the type of genre they are supposed to be a part of. Beyond just the songs he uses to make up a cool soundtrack he also uses songs from other movies (“Street Life” from SHARKY’S MACHINE, “Across 110th Street” from, of course, ACROSS 110TH STREET and even a piece from Jess Franco’s VAMPYROS LESBOS) and he also for the first time uses score from other movies, like Roy Ayers tracks from COFFY, heard in all their mono glory as if he’s scoring not just his own version of one of these blaxploitation movies, but the ultimate version that he always was seeing in his head while growing up when he was killing time while watching any number of movies in the middle of the afternoon and hiding away from the world. And it stars the one and only Pam Friggin’ Grier, maybe looking more beautiful than ever before (and yeah, she does look pretty damn cool in that suit she buys).


Usually pretty cagey about these things in interviews, the degree that JACKIE BROWN seems to be personal for Tarantino is probably what people respond to—even if the film is about crime dealings, something you and I may never be involved with, the yearnings of the leads are something we can definitely relate to. The acknowledgement and fear of getting older, wondering what the hell happened in life (“Your ass used to be beautiful.”) and wondering how much we can ever break away from our rut. Maybe Tarantino feels like he pulled a fast one just as Jackie Brown does at the end and he’s also taken off from the South Bay for places where “they don’t eat dinner until midnight”--the way Forster says that line, it’s one of most romantic-sounding things I’ve ever heard. And I just want to say more than anything that the look he gives at the end as Pam Grier drives off kills me, it absolutely just kills me. The way Tarantino allows the shot to go out of focus at that point to give Max Cherry his privacy may have been the most loving, respectful gesture he’s ever shown to one of his characters. The whole film doesn’t rise to that level, but at its very best JACKIE BROWN plays just beautifully and certainly holds up better than any number of other films that were released in 1997 to greater acclaim (TITANIC, TOMORROW NEVER DIES, AS GOOD AS IT GETS, GOOD WILL HUNTING and that’s just for starters).


When the surf track “Monte Carlo Nights” by Elliot Easton’s Tiki-Gods comes up midway through the end credits it doesn’t have much to do with the actual movie we just saw but connecting to how it appeared earlier when we see Max Cherry emerging from a movie in the middle of the day it functions as a sort of playout music as well as a reminder that, in the best James Bond style, “QUENTIN TARANTINO WILL RETURN”. It took a few more years for that to happen than we would have liked, but we were definitely rewarded for our patience and based on what INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS wound up being about as well as the recent news of his purchasing the New Beverly Tarantino’s love of film is as strong as ever. And if we’re lucky on some afternoon in the future when we want nothing more than to sneak off for a few hours, we’ll get even more from this director as he continues his ongoing quest to examine what the movies he loves mean to him and, for that matter, what they mean to us as well.

There Is No One Definitive Essence

Going over the latter part of Woody Allen’s career can be problematic a good amount of the time. Let’s face it, he doesn’t always make it easy for those of us who dutifully turn up on each opening weekend, particularly when it feels like he just shot the first draft of whatever emerged from his typewriter. When this happens it’s hard not to think that he didn’t bother to take the time to really try to bring out the potential in whatever the particular film is. And yet, we still faithfully go, hoping for some latter day triumph from the guy while at the same time knowing deep down that we’re not going to get another ANNIE HALL or MANHATTAN or PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO. The terrific VICKY CHRISTINA BARCELONA from 2008 probably comes closest to such a thing and I had a perfectly enjoyable time seeing WHATEVER WORKS on my birthday last year. But hey, when I was a kid I walked in a blizzard to see HANNAH AND HER SISTERS on opening day (what can I say, I was a weird kid) and I can’t help it, I still look forward to every single new film, hoping for the very best, knowing that probably won’t be the case. See, while I prefer some over others and a couple of times I’ve felt a big letdown (that first draft feel was particularly apparent in CASSANDRA’S DREAM) I’m very aware that this isn’t going to go on forever. And if we really stop to examine what he’s doing in a few of these films that he’s made recently it becomes clear that there are riches to be dug up. Even Quentin Tarantino told the LA Weekly last year when he was mentioned, “I think he’s in a renaissance, except for MELINDA AND MELINDA.” I’m glad that somebody out there noticed and, honestly, I don’t even think that MELINDA AND MELINDA, released in the U.S. in March 2005, is the one to single out as some sort of digression. That’s not to say I don’t know where Tarantino is coming from in making the statement. The film has its pleasures but it’s also fairly representative of how his work from the past decade can be frustrating while still containing some substantial rewards.


Four friends are out at dinner in New York during a rainstorm arguing over the eternal question of whether life is inherently funny or tragic. One of them tells a story, which we don’t hear, to ask which one they think it is and two of them, both playwrights, offer up their own version—interestingly the one who argues that life is inherently tragic sees it as a romantic comedy and the one who sees life as comic comes up with a tragedy (these four people combined can be seen as Woody making these arguments in his own head). The serious version of the story is about a woman named Melinda (Radha Mitchell) who barges in on a dinner part being thrown by old friend Laurel (Chloë Sevigny) and her husband, struggling actor Lee (Jonny Lee Miller). Though Melinda has gone through some serious troubles in her past Laurel attempts to find a man to set her up with but when she meets piano player Ellis Moonsong (Chiwetel Ejifor) on her own, both women wind up attracted to him. The comic version is about another woman named Melinda (also Mitchell) who stumbles into a dinner party being thrown by struggling actor Hobie (Will Ferrell) and his director wife Susan (Amanda Peet) who takes on the task of trying to set Melinda up with somebody even while Hobie secretly falls in love with her. Certain specific themes and ideas recur from one story to the other, some more subtle than others.


The issue of how Woody Allen’s films have teetered between the serious and the comical has long been something he’s dealt with. As good as something like the underappreciated ANOTHER WOMAN might be, it’s hard not to acknowledge that some of his richest work has been the ones where he’s succeeded in combining the two. As the years went on towards titles like CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS and HUSBANDS AND WIVES as a director he seemed to get more confident in attempting such clashes of tone. The basic idea of MELINDA AND MELINDA feels almost like it could be some grand ultimate statement on his part of what the man as writer wants to say about his own creativity best exemplified when Wallace Shawn, in coming up with the humorous tale, offers, “He’s despondent, he’s desperate, he’s suicidal. All the comic elements are in place.” It makes it all the more unfortunate how the final film winds up feeling a little too much like just another toss-off, one that Woody actually did come up with while sitting at dinner with people and it diminishes the final result. Both stories we get come off as kind of half-baked and though they both do get better as they go along (the serious section has a particularly effective feel of lives unfulfilled that I wish had been developed more) too much of it comes off as stilted, too many of the characters are ultimately not all that compelling. These people inhabit a world of plays, classical music and dreams of vacation houses in the Hamptons that feels a little too insular, locked inside of Woody’s head and even when they manage to break out it’s not always a good thing--when we finally get to hear the serious Melinda’s full backstory I lose all sympathy or any other kind of interest I had in her and after this it makes every time she’s told by her friends what a catch she is ring hollow.


There are laughs here and there but very often the jokes, even the ones that work, seem to come from another time like the all-female film Peet’s character is making titled THE CASTRATION SONATA and a disparaging mention of an actor taking a job in a deodorant commercial just seems very 1974. Not to mention the occasional out-of-time phrases we hear like a reference to placing an ad in the personals or somebody mentioning their “laundress”, things that keep the story far away from the decade the movie has been made in. Also, while I can believe that Chloe Sevigny, Radha Mitchell and Brooke Smith are friends, they still don’t look like they’re all the same age. On the other hand, Woody seems to have realized that people are now using cell phones and there’s even a reference to prozac, so there’s a few points in his favor. The inconsistency of the film means that such little things are constantly standing out but then it also will surprise with a number of bracingly well done moments where the elements really do come together-there’s a strikingly intimate scene in a dark bistro between Sevigny and Ejifor that stands out. Credit for much of this could possibly go to the one and only Vilmos Zsigmond who served as D.P., presenting a crisp looking New York all throughout (even if it is an anachronistic, stylized New York that exists only as Woody Allen sees it) and such moments are there if you look for them. Maybe because of the cinematographer’s involvement the film has a slightly stronger visual style, without making a big deal about it, than a few other Woody films from recent years in which he would just plop the camera down and let the actors play out the scene. The film’s visual strength combined with how the two different stories cleverly wind up complimenting each other is much of the reason why it ultimately holds together as well as it does. The similarities and differences between both versions, such as the appearance of a lamp to rub, allows for more resonance on repeated viewings and gives us the chance to pay more attention to how they mirror each other—the running gag of Ferrell’s character always playing parts “with a limp” is silly, I’ll admit that, but it does have a certain thematic resonance.


If there is any particular problem with the film that goes beyond anything else, it’s that the most purely enjoyable part of it is the framing device with the friends played by Larry Pine, Stephanie Roth Haberle, Neil Pepe and, best of all, Wallace Shawn, each of them more likable than anyone else in the entire movie. Yes, it feels like they just walked over from a taping of The Dick Cavett Show in the early 70s but seeing this movie again for the first time in a few years I still find myself wishing I could sit down to join the four of them for dinner and coffee. They seem like they’d be interesting, fun people to talk with and it’s unfortunate that the film doesn’t spend more time with them (the comics in BROADWAY DANNY ROSE got more screen time), maybe even follow them into their own movie when this one ends while we’re at it.


Some of the film's issues extend to the casting, though both halves contain a variety of strong performances. Radha Mitchell has some excellent moments in both guises but the serious half is hampered by a shaky accent during some particularly serious moments and the lighter version of her character doesn’t play as quirky as maybe she could have been, not quite seeming worth building a movie (or even half a movie) around. Will Ferrell comes off as likable but at times seems unsure of how to play things at times in what is pretty much the Woody role but his proudly stating that he got a voiceover job followed by the embarrassing admission, “It’s the voice of a toothpaste” is a cute moment. Apparently Winona Ryder and Robert Downey Jr., Woody’s first choices for the roles, didn’t work out due to insurance issues which is a shame because it sounds like that could have been a much stronger movie, one that might not have felt so insular. The supporting cast contains several considerably stronger performances—Sevigny attacks the over annunciated phrases that have been scripted for her full-on, managing to make an ultimately unpleasant character always somehow compelling (honest admission: I sometimes find Sevigny fascinating and Allen uses the actress very well here, with her close-ups in the bistro scene particularly beguiling). Likewise, Ejifor takes his awkwardly scripted character from “Harlem, U.S.A.” and gives him an inner life that goes beyond his dialogue maybe more than anyone else here, making him someone always engaging to watch. Amanda Peet spars with Ferrell in an enjoyable way (“Of course we communicate. Now can we not talk about it?”), Josh Brolin gets a few funny moments bouncing on a trampoline as a rich dentist who one Melinda gets set up with and EYES WIDE SHUT’s Vinessa Shaw does a lot with her tiny role as a gorgeous investment counselor who once posed for Playboy (“Hard to believe that a Republican could be that sexual”) that Ferrell goes on a disastrous date with--based on her few minutes here, somebody needs to cast Shaw in a screwball comedy and fast. There’s some odd waste too-- Steve Carell, pre-THE OFFICE and THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN turns up in a few small scenes as Ferrell’s best friend to no effect at all—it’s like he was cast as a favor to Ferrell with Woody never realizing who he had in his movie. There is some nice use of music throughout from the expected standards but also some particularly effective use of Bartok as well as the way the soundtrack from THE BLACK CAT plays as we see Vinessa Shaw for the first time.


Fine, I admit it. I don’t mind this film. At its best, I even like it quite a bit. I’m sitting here now, watching some of it again and enjoying it just fine. True, it’s not MANHATTAN which is one of those films I could sit down and watch at a moment’s notice but when it works MELINDA AND MELINDA is a rewarding look at the concept of just what a story is and why we choose to approach telling one in a certain way, whether it’s inherently funny or serious. Or both. It’s not everything it could be but it doesn’t deserve easy dismissal either. And, to say it once again, there’s something fortunate about getting to live in a time when new Woody Allen movies still come out. We won’t always be that lucky.