Tuesday, January 17, 2012
"Life's a mess, dude — but we're all just doing the best we can"
By Edward Copeland
When perusing year-end award nominations for films that escaped my notice, often the result can prove disappointing (as in the case of Sundance Grand Prize winner Like Crazy). Other times, they turn out to be gems such as Terri, which lost that Sundance prize to Like Crazy, but whose script by Patrick de Witt from a story by Azazel Jacobs and de Witt has been nominated for best first screenplay by the Independent Spirit Awards — and deservedly so.
In a way, Terri resembles a superior, off-kilter version of the largely forgotten (and flawed) 1995 film Angus about an overweight teen's struggles in life and school. While Angus tended to be more conventional in its approach as the title character dreamed of the class beauty, had a gawky friend and lived with his single mom (Kathy Bates) and colorful grandfather (George C. Scott), Terri's approach couldn't be more different. Terri Thompson (Jacob Wysocki) is 15 and lives with his Uncle James (Creed Bratton of The Office) since his parents abandoned him and attends school wearing pajamas.
Life at home isn't easy. Uncle James' health tends to rise and fall, so Terri cares for him as often as the other way around. At school, his attire targets him for even more razzing than usual but it also catches the attention of the high school's unusual principal, Mr. Fitzgerald (another great John C. Reilly turn), who schedules Terri to have regular Monday meetings with him. Soon, Terri realizes that Fitzgerald sets these conferences with many of the school's outcasts, yelling at them sometimes — though he admits to Terri he just does that for the benefit of his secretary, Mrs. Harnish (Mary Anne McGarry).
The odd relationship that develops between Terri and Mr. Fitzgerald drives Terri, thanks to de Witt's great screenplay and Wysocki's performance. He and Reilly create a great rhythm between them, one that takes on a third measure when another of the school's outcasts, Chad Markson (Bridger Zadina), latches on to Terri.
Also giving a fine performance and becoming part of this unusual circle is Olivia Croicchia (Denis Leary's daughter Katy on Rescue Me) as Heather Miles, a precocious girl caught in a sex act during home ec and then ridiculed throughout school.
Describing Terri in details that come off too vivid would be doing a disservice to work as delicately wonderful as this. It isn't a matter of ruining twists by revealing spoilers — simply, I wish people to experience Terri for themselves, knowing as little as possible, the way I did.
Jacobs shows himself to be quite deft as a director by never hitting the wrong tone in this dramedy or trying to force laughs or pathos onto a scene. His cast helps him accomplish most of this, particularly Wysocki in his breakout role and the always reliable Reilly.
Terri belongs to that group of films that's likely to disappear eventually. It shouldn't — movies this special shouldn't vanish once the glare of awards season has passed, especially when only the smaller prize-givers noticed it in the first place.
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Labels: 10s, George C. Scott, John C. Reilly, K. Bates
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Wednesday, December 28, 2011
An antidote for the emptiness of existence — at least for 90 minutes
By Edward Copeland
Seventeen years later…
Woody Allen makes another good movie. That's not entirely true. Since Bullets Over Broadway's release in 1994, I have liked two of his films — Match Point in 2005 and Whatever Works in 2009. However, Midnight in Paris definitely deserves the label as the first great Woody Allen film since Bullets. As Donald Rumsfeld said of the Iraq war, it's been a long, hard slog for Woody fans who used to anxiously anticipate each new Allen offering before his films turned into retreads of previous works and tasted like a fifth night of leftovers. With Midnight in Paris, his muse returns and blesses us with a fully formed, funny, thoughtful piece of cinematic inspiration.
Most people heard the news that Midnight in Paris stood tall in the Allen canon months ago when the film opened, earning raves and becoming his highest-grossing film ever. I had to wait for DVD and retain a healthy skepticism until I saw it. I simply had no other choice. During the nearly two decades that Woody toiled in the artistic wilderness, people burned me far too often by insisting Allen's latest belonged in his win column only to discover the opposite when I viewed the film. After I finished watching Midnight in Paris, it seemed as if those 17 years had been erased magically. I actually had to check IMDb because my brain couldn't conjure the titles of some of the forgettable films he churned out in those years — Small Time Crooks, Melinda and Melinda, Scoop, Cassandra's Dream, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. That doesn't even take into account the ones so bad I couldn't bleach the stain they left on my cerebrum such as Celebrity, Curse of the Jade Scorpion and Hollywood Ending. Midnight in Paris washes away those transgressions, clears the slate and renews my hope that inside the 76-year-old filmmaker there still exists things worth saying and movies worth making.
As many of Allen's films that he doesn't star in do, Midnight in Paris features a Woody surrogate and, in what might appear to be an unlikely casting choice, Owen Wilson gets to be his stand-in here. Selecting Wilson as the Woody Allen substitute turns out to be the first of many grand decisions the writer-director makes. In fact, I'll go further and declare that Owen Wilson makes the best faux screen Woody yet (and let's hope we never endure one worse than Kenneth Branagh's in Celebrity). Wilson plays Gil Pender, a successful Hollywood screenwriter with an attractive fiancée named Inez (Rachel McAdams). The couple tag along with Inez's ultra-conservative parents (Kurt
Fuller, Mimi Kennedy) on a trip to Paris where Inez plans to be lazy and sight-see while Gil hopes the City of Lights ignites his first attempt at writing a novel. Paris casts a spell on Pender almost immediately, even though it's raining at the time, something that annoys Inez. "Why does every city have to be in the rain? What's so wonderful about being wet?" asks Inez, a woman Gil unconvincingly describes to strangers as charming but who looks to outsiders as a high-maintenance, judgmental snob. It doesn't take long in France for Gil to suggest that they should move there, but Inez doesn't understand what's so terrible about living in Malibu and being a rich screenwriter, especially with as much trouble as Gil tells her he's having with his novel. "I'm having trouble because I'm a Hollywood hack who never gave literature a real chance until now," he replies. Pender hates his job because he doesn't write anything of value and before we even get to Allen's major themes in Midnight in Paris, he appears to be submitting himself for some self-criticism over his output in recent years. When he made the atrocious Hollywood Ending, the movie was a one-joke notion that the industry had devolved to the point that a director no one realized had gone blind could make a movie and still deliver a box-office smash. In Midnight in Paris, (at least I hope this is the case) he's taken the same complaint and aimed it inward and disposed of it in pieces of dialogue as appetizers to a bigger and better cinematic dinner. (Besides, as far as Hollywood Ending goes, I'd submit Kurosawa and Ran as a counterargument for what blind directors can accomplish.) Gil's novel's plot teases us as to what the main course will be as it tells the story of a man who owns a nostalgia shop, selling memorabilia relating to bygone days.
While Gil and Inez wander the city with her parents, they bump into Inez's old friends Paul and Carol (Michael Sheen, Nina Arianda) and soon the two couples visit all the sites together where Paul, an unctuous know-it-all on all subjects makes it a point to show off his expertise to anyone and everyone, even telling the tour guide at the Rodin museum (played by French first lady Carla Bruni) that she has her facts wrongs). Paul embodies a 21st century representation of the man pontificating in a movie line in Annie Hall that Alvy fantasizes about bringing Marshall McLuhan out to chastise. Watching the laid-back Wilson do the annoyed Woody dance at this character type not only proves hilarious but a refreshing twist on the familiar routine. Every word Paul utters, of course, enthralls Inez, who believes he's as brilliant as he thinks he is. It's also a nice change of pace for Sheen to play a fictional creation for a change instead of impersonating famous British people. Paul probes Gil about the subject of his novel and at first, Gil resists discussing it, but Inez spills the beans and the movie's argument gets rolling — namely, is the grass really greener in the other era? Gil romanticizes the Paris of the 1920s, when so many great artists from America and elsewhere flocked there. Paul pooh-poohs the notion immediately. "Nostalgia is denial. Denial of the painful present," Paul declares. Inez, the woman who allegedly loves Gil and wants to spend the rest of her life with him, takes Paul's side in the browbeating. "Gil is a complete romantic. I mean he would be more than happy living in a complete state of denial," she says of her fiancé. Paul isn't able to discuss any topic unless he does it at length and in long-winded lectures, so he has to show everyone what he knows of this "syndrome." "The name for this fantasy is Golden Age thinking. The erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one one's living in now," he pronounces.
Having had enough of being a foursome one night as Paul suggests they all go dancing, Gil begs off, choosing to return to the hotel and perhaps work on his novel. Instead, he walks the streets. As he sits on some steps, a clock strikes midnight and an old yellow Peugeot pulls up as if it's the pumpkin that turned into Cinderella's carriage. The antique automobile bears '20s-era Frenchmen and Frenchwomen (who may have been mice once — who can say?) drinking champagne and beckoning Gil to climb in for a ride. That's when the real sparkle of Midnight in Paris begins and it involves another Woody Allen venture into a magical realm. Gil doesn't speak French, so he's clueless as to what his fellow passengers might be saying as they take him to a party where everyone dresses decidedly retro. Fortunately, most of the other guests appear to be American or at least speak English, so communication isn't a problem. A young man (Yves Heck) sits at a piano, playing and singing, "Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love." He mentions to one guest that he's a writer and they introduce him to Scott (Tom Hiddleston) and his wife Zelda (Alison Pill) — the Fitzgeralds. Gil finally realizes that
somehow, that mysterious Peugeot took him on a very long drive — one that traveled nearly 100 years in reverse to his ideal Golden Age where he could mix and mingle with his long-dead artistic inspirations. In the past, when Allen employed these fantastical devices it began to feel as if, to paraphrase one of his oldest jokes, he'd resorted to cheating by looking into the soul of the guy sitting next to him, only in these instances, he wasn't seeing another person but staring at himself in a mirror. Magic tricks which first played a key role in the "Oedipus Wrecks" short of New York Stories would return in Curse of the Jade Scorpion and Scoop or, to a lesser extent, assume the form of magical herbs in Alice. Actual Greek choruses would arrive to comment on the action in Mighty Aphrodite or see-through characters would pop up in the form of Robin Williams in Deconstructing Harry. This is a well that Woody drinks from often except that it works best when he employs it in service of larger ideas such as in Zelig, The Purple Rose of Cairo (which I still consider his best film), and, now added to that list, Midnight in Paris. As Midnight in Paris enthralled me, a small detail leaped out early on. In both Purple Rose and Midnight, he names one of the leads Gil. In the case of Purple Rose, most tellingly, the actor that Jeff Daniels plays who creates the role of Tom Baxter, the movie character who steps off the screen and into 1930s New Jersey, bears the name Gil Shepherd, only that Gil embraces his burgeoning stardom and hopes a B-picture such as "The Purple Rose of Cairo" raises his stature high enough to nab the lead in a Charles Lindbergh biopic — as long as his doppelganger in the pith helmet doesn't wreck his career. Gil Pender in Midnight in Paris may work in the same industry, but he fears he's sold his soul to it and he wants out.
The first night that Gil takes his trip back to the 1920s he also encounters Ernest Hemingway (played by Corey Stoll in the film's most entertaining performance). Fitzgerald introduces them and Gil gets the envious position of talking writing with Papa in the movie's best exchange on writing that'll appeal to anyone who has ever put pen to paper. It begins with Gil being self-deprecating about the subject of his novel (of course, no one in the 1920s has the faintest idea what a nostalgia shop is), calling it a terrible idea. "No subject is terrible if the story is true and if the prose is clean and honest, and if it affirms grace under pressure," Hemingway tells him. Gil then works up the nerve to ask if the author would look at what he's written and offer suggestionss.
HEMINGWAY: My opinion is I hate it.
GIL: But you haven't read it yet.
HEMINGWAY: If it's bad, I'll hate it because it's bad writing. If it's good, I'll be envious and hate it all the more. You don't want the opinion of another writer.
Hemingway does offer to give Gil's manuscript to Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates) to read, because he's always trusted her opinion. They agree to meet the following night and Gil leaves but suddenly remembers he forgot to ask Hemingway where to meet him, but when he turns back the coffeehouse has turned into a laundromat and Gil finds himself in 2010 again.
In the morning at his hotel, he attempts to explain his adventure to Inez, asking her what she'd think if he told her he met Zelda Fitzgerald and she's exactly like they had read and Scott really loves her and worries endlessly, but she hates Hemingway because he's right that she's standing in the way of his writing. When Gil completes his enthusiastic rambling, Inez replies, "I'd think you had a brain tumor." Gil manages to convince Inez to go back with him the next night to wait for the Peugeot, but she grows impatient and takes off before the clock strikes midnight. After Inez has left, the Peugeot arrives and takes him to Gertrude Stein's apartment where Hemingway awaits and Pablo Picasso (Marcial Di Fonzo Bo) paints his current mistress Adriana (Marion Cotillard), who catches the eye of both Gil and Hemingway. Despite the many larger-than-life figures than circle Adriana's world, she finds herself just as drawn to Gil — until she learns of his engagement. She also shares Gil's Golden Age thinking, While he thinks that she lives in the greatest time period, she thinks it's awful and wishes she could have been in Paris during the Belle Epoque of the late 19th century. Meanwhile Gil's behavior in the 21st century becomes so bizarre that his father-in-law-to-be hires a private eye to tail him on his midnight walks to see what Gil does on them, since he doesn't trust anyone who says such nasty things about the Tea Party.
Even when Allen had fallen into his long slump, he still had the ability to attract some pretty solid ensembles, not that they were given much to do. In Midnight in Paris, the casting shines with a mix of lesser-known performers and bigger names, all bring their A game to Allen's greatest screenplay in 17 years. In addition to Wilson and Stoll who I've mentioned, the cast's standouts include a zany single scene by Adrien Brody as Salvador Dali, Kathy Bates, Michael Sheen, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard in the first performance she's given that I've enjoyed and, most worth noting, Alison Pill as Zelda Fitzgerald. Pill to me proves again she's an actress just waiting to break out. She's funny and touching here after giving a good dramatic turn in Milk and being part of the fun ensemble in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Given how many great lines Woody's script for Midnight in Paris delivers, it's tempting to rattle them all off, but I'm resisting the urge for those who have yet to see this charmer, but I have to mention one of my favorite gags when Gil runs into a young Luis Buñuel (Adrien de Van) and gives him an idea for a movie — basically the plot of his film
If there has been any debate about Midnight in Paris, it's been where Allen comes down in the end on the question of nostalgia and Golden Age thinking. It seems pretty obvious to me based on what Gil's last line to Adriana is, even though he sends mixed signals by having Paul, the film's most pompous character, ridicule the idea of Golden Age thinking first. Also, as others have pointed out, throughout most of Allen's career his choices in music and references have screamed nostalgia, but Midnight in Paris plays as one of the most entertaining self-critical works any artist has ever made. At the same time, Allen does acknowledge the natural reflex to long for an earlier, better time — if not in another era, at least in one's own life.
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Labels: 10s, Branagh, Buñuel, Cotillard, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Jeff Daniels, K. Bates, Kurosawa, O. Wilson, Robin, Woody
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Monday, October 03, 2011
Love Among the Torts: 25 Years Later
By M.A. Peel
The sexy sax riff wailing over the black screen to the declarative thump of the car trunk, both primal and urban. As opening credits go, it offered the total package.
And so L.A. Law announced itself to weekly prime time with a classic Mike Post back-beat composition on Oct. 3, 1986 (after its two-hour pilot movie was shown twice the month before). From the close-up of the license plate for the Golden State we see bright sunshine bouncing off the windows of the tall, glass, L.A. buildings. It’s the same brightness we enjoyed in the '80s Remington Steele and Moonlighting, both zeitgeist influences on the lighter side of Law. Bochco’s own Hill Street Blues, with its large ensemble cast and interweaving storylines, was the more direct model for the legal drama. No longer on the gritty streets of the anonymous urban city, L.A. Law brought interesting, contemporary issues into the pristine, modern offices of McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney & Kuzak and mixed them up with quirky romantic entanglements and a dash of the bizarre.
Howard Rosenberg wrote of the premiere:
“There should be a law requiring more series like NBC's new L.A. Law. Its premiere, at 9 tonight immediately raises the level of the fall season about a dozen notches…Though vastly different in tone and texture, L.A. Law honors the tradition of that fine old CBS courtroom series of the 1960s, The Defenders."
That’s what’s hard to remember 25 years hence: what the landscape was before L.A.Law. We live in a world that knows Ally McBeal, Bobby Donnell of The Practice, Alan Shore and Denny Crane of Boston Legal, Patty Hewes of Damages. But before them audiences knew and loved Perry Mason (1957 to 66), Lawrence Preston, The Defenders (1961-65), Judd, for the Defense, (1967-69), Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law (1971-74). These characters were fairly one dimensional, stiff, less “life like” than those we know today. The TV naturalism that broke through in the '70s (as surely as color did the decade before) with likes of All in the Family and Maude and continued with Hill Street and St. Elsewhere in the '80s first hit the legal profession with L.A.Law. That’s one reason it was such a hit. It also was fresh and engaging, with good dialogue and smart perspectives on difficult issues. It earned 15 Emmys, with four for outstanding drama series in 1987, 1989, 1990 and 1991.
What pulled me in as a viewer was the Grace Van Owen/Michael Kuzak romance. Grace was a model for young women in the '80s: reserved (which became dour as the seasons went on), good at her job, and the love interest of Harry Hamlin and Jimmy Smits. Who wouldn’t want to be her? Her style of dress started a trend. Rose Marie Turl of The Los Angeles Times reported in 1988 that “what has become known in the retail trade as 'the 'Law blouse' is surfacing all over Los Angeles. ‘I don't remember a blouse like this: the V-neck, the softness and the fact it works with any jacket,’ marvels Lee Hogan Cass, fashion director for the Broadway. ‘Wrap blouses have been in existence for a long time, but this is a little different version. It's a very feminine way of softening a suit.’“
I also got hooked into the surprise romance of Ann Kelsey (Jill Eikenberry) and Stuart Markowitz (Michael Tucker). Their romance became even more popular than Van Owen and Kuzak/Sifuentes, helped by the never defined Venus Butterfly. A storyline that transcended the series was Diana Muldaur as Rosalind Shays. She comes to the firm as a rainmaker, then maneuvers to oust Leland McKenzie (Richard Dysart). They become involved amid the doublecrossing, which was interesting enough, but it’s the scene at the elevator where Leland thinks Roz is upset that he won’t marry her, when she turns to enter the elevator and falls down the shaft to her death. (An episode mischievously titled "Good to the Last Drop.") It ranked No. 81 on TV Guide/TV Land's list of 100 Most Memorable TV Moments and it’s part of the bizarre edge to the series, which started with the partner Chaney dead at his desk.
The comings and goings of the creative team of L.A. Law would make its own interesting series. Suffice to say it was created by Steven Bochco and Terry Louise Fisher and through the years saw the talents of David E. Kelley, John Tinker, John Masius and William Finklestein in creative control. By season six, ratings had dropped. Here’s the ever curmudgeonly John J. O’Connor from The New York Times on Oct. 17, 1991:
“The formula, with its office politics here and court cases there, has gone flat. The scenes in court have all the fizz of a set-in-concrete Matlock encounter as dramatic outbursts alternate regularly with brooding stares of significance, the camera lingering pointedly. The issues are current, but the scripts are strictly fill-in-the-blanks exploitations of topics like spouse abuse or the legal status of Vietnam M.I.A.'s. In short, L.A. Law has become totally predictable.”
In 1992, both Steven Bochco and David Kelley returned to the show, to see if they could bolster its popularity. It continued on to an eighth season, ending on May 19, 1994.
In 2009 the ABA Journal ran a poll for the best legal TV shows. Not surprisingly L.A. Law was voted No. 1, 15 years after it left the air. The editors’ comment is very telling: “For lawyers of a certain age, Leland McKenzie is the managing partner they are still looking for. Douglas Brackman Jr. is the manager they seem to end up with.”
John Leonard had some harsh words for its impact on its descendants in a 2008 review of Raising the Bar:
“But Bochco’s next big hit, L.A. Law, after a long and lurid run of big money and soap shenanigans, inspired so much contempt in the popular culture for private-practice law that subsequent noble-noodle shows like Shannon’s Deal, Eddie Dodd, The Wright Verdicts, The Trials of Rosie O’Neill and Sweet Justice never stood a ratings chance.”
Were we really poisoned by the money and slickness of McKenzie, Brackman? Perhaps. There were many cultural casualties of the 1980s. We’ll see if Kathy Bates and Harry’s Law purifies the image of our legal profession for a new generation.
Back in 1993, Steven Bochco and the cast and creative team of L.A. Law were the honorees of the gala of the then-Museum of Television & Radio, now The Paley Center for Media. Bochco filmed a short piece for it with the partners at McKenzie, Brackman debating whether they should go to the gala. You can see this never-seen-outside-of that-dinner video on The Paley Center for Media site. So pop on over to see Leland McKenzie, Douglas Brackman, Ann Kelsey, Arnie Becker, Jonathan Rollins and the gang in the conference room, one last time.
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Labels: 80s, Awards, Bochco, K. Bates, Lists, TV Tribute
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Sunday, December 05, 2010
A person who don't look out for himself is too dumb to look out for anyone else
By Edward Copeland
The best films grow in your esteem over time and that is the case with The Grifters, which debuted 20 years ago today. I liked the movie when it debuted, but each time I've seen it since, again most recently, it just gets better and better.
As I mentioned two days ago when I reviewed this year's The Killer Inside Me, this remembrance of The Grifters is the third time this year I've written about a film adaptation of a Jim Thompson crime novel (the
third being After Dark, My Sweet). What I've found most interesting in comparing the three films is the approach to what time period they set them in. All three of the novels were pretty much set in the same era that Thompson wrote them: roughly the late 1940s through the early 1960s. In the film After Dark, My Sweet, it was updated to modern times. The Killer Inside Me, the most faithful adaptation in all respects, was a period piece that took place in the same era as the novel. The Grifters, produced by Martin Scorsese and directed by Stephen Frears, takes the most unusual course of all by placing its tale in sort of a time limbo. The women dress as if they are in the 1940s, everyone drives cars that look like they're from the 1970s and John Cusack's character wears 1980s Armani suits and tries to pull off his initial short con at a Bennigans.Then again, of the three Thompson novels I've read that were turned into films, The Grifters is the least faithful, even though the book is short. However, the changes make for a leaner, sleeker, better film. The nurse who appears fleetingly in the movie has a larger role in the novel and the movie makes no mention of
the fact that Roy Dillon (Cusack) holds down a job as a salesman in addition to his part-time action as a hustler. They even changed the spelling of Annette Bening's character's first name from the novel's Moira to Myra. Still, the changes that the late screenwriter and crime novelist Donald Westlake made actually improves the film over the novel while the same cannot be said for the other two Thompson films I've discussed. There are a couple of weaknesses (and this may lead to spoilers for those who haven't seen the film or read the book). The novel makes a point early on of having Roy comment on the physical resemblance between his mother Lilly (Anjelica Huston) and Moira (height, hair color, body type, facial structure), but you can't really say that about Huston and Bening. Also, Lilly is supposed to look young enough to be Roy's sister since she had him at 14, but Huston does look old enough in her nearly white wig to have given birth to Cusack, even though she actually was the right age in real life for the character. These are minor criticisms though because the performers, Huston and Bening especially, are so superb that it doesn't matter."Grifters got an irresistible urge to beat a guy who's wise. There's nothing to whipping a fool. Fools are made to be whipped, but to take another pro, who knows you, who has his eye on you, now that's a score."
Mintz (Eddie Jones), the grifter who schooled Roy on some of the tricks of the trade, tells him that in a flashback explaining how Roy got his start taking suckers. It's those cons that unite the three principals of the story, though each has a different approach. Roy is a solo artist who does the quick hit. Myra, especially back when she had a partner (J.T. Walsh in flashbacks) before he went nuts, prefers the long con with the bigger payoff, where you work someone over a long period of time before you take him. Lilly is almost a professional, working for Bobo Justus (Pat Hingle, in a frightening performance) purposely placing large amounts of money on horses with long odds to bring those odds down before the start of a race. Of course, she's also taking discarded losing tickets here and there and grabbing some winnings for herself to keep in a stash hidden in a compartment in the trunk of her car. She just has to make sure Bobo doesn't find out. He's not a forgiving boss.
Westlake's streamlining of Thompson's novel makes for a truly efficient film, aided by Frears' direction and Elmer Bernstein's great score which seems to accelerate the momentum as it goes on. In the commentary, Frears gives Westlake the credit for introducing the three characters through the brilliant tri-screen opening
that perfectly sets up where Roy, Lilly and Myra are at this stage in their various nefarious careers. Lilly is the pro. She know exactly what she is doing, how not to get noticed, either by the authorities or (at least she tries) the unforgiving Bobo. Roy, the youngest of the three, has become pretty good at what he does, but he's still strictly small time and sometimes has the misfortune of getting caught by would-be marks. Myra, who works well with a partner, is a bit at sea on her own and finds herself relying on sex more and more often to get what she wants, even if it means banging her landlord (Gailard Sartrain) because she needs to hang on to what little cash she still has (and the roof over her head) or putting the moves on a geeky jewelry store proprietor (Stephen Tobolowsky). What separates Myra from Roy and Lilly is she is the only one of the three who has an air of desperation about her, though she tries not to let it show.Fate more or less brings these three into the same circle. Even though Lilly is Roy's mother, they've been estranged for years, though when Bobo, who is based out of Baltimore, assigns Lilly to California tracks, she decides to look Roy up in Los Angeles. Myra and Roy have been lovers for quite a while. In fact, for a long
time during their relationship, Myra didn't even realize Roy was in on the grift until they took a train trip and she spied him taking a group of young sailors (again dressed outside of any discernible period) in a common dice con called the "tat." (Look close: one of those young sailors is Jeremy Piven.) After that, she's always trying to get Roy to join her as a partner in the long con, to re-create the glories of her past, but that's one lesson Mintz emphasized to him in his tutelage: Work alone. Myra keeps trying though, comparing her institutionalized ex-partner and Roy, "I kissed a motherfuckin' frog and you're my prince." When it turns out that a would-be mark injured Roy worse than he thought, Lilly takes over and gets him hospitalized, that's when she and Myra meet and take an instant dislike to one another. They are like jealous lovers fighting over a man.
Unfortunately, because Lilly's maternal instinct chose this time to reassert itself (She tells the doctor she finally gets to take her seriously that he knows who she works for and if Roy doesn't make it, she'll have him killed), she missed some races she needed to cover and cost Bobo some money and Bobo doesn't like to lose money. He makes a special trip to the coast to mete out punishment. Anyone who has ever seen the late Pat Hingle in his countless roles, be it as Commissioner Gordon in the Tim Burton Batman films or countless
television appearances such as the original owner of Cheers who comes back and tends bar for a night, they won't be prepared for his malevolent Bobo Justus. The scene isn't quite as explicit as it is in the novel, but if you've read it, you know what Lilly is in store for when he asks her if she has a long coat to cover her dress. His abuse is equal parts physical and psychological, making Lilly wrap up oranges in a towel and having her explain what happens if people don't hit others with them correctly, causing her to stutter in fear, then faking her out and letting her off with just a cigar burn on her hand. Then, everything's back to normal and he's having a friendly conversation with her on the veranda, even joking with her about if she's stealing that much from him and acting as if he doesn't mind and she's going along with it — because she knows she got off easy. "A person who don't look out for himself is too dumb to look out for anyone else," she tells him with a nervous grin. Lilly may be the pro of the three main characters, but she always has to be looking over her shoulder. Her paranoia is well justified, given her employer.As I mentioned in the review of The Killer Inside Me, Westlake says that Thompson belongs to America's second generation of crime novelist, following his forefathers such as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, only Thompson, based a lot on the life he actually lived, was far more nihilistic than either of the
earlier writers. Thompson also had a source that Chandler and Hammett didn't, Westlake pointed out: the early movies and film noirs as wells as the novels. Thompson though was a true crime novelist. It's a mistake to place his works exclusively in the noir column. Granted, I've only read the three books and seen Coup de Torchon, Bertrand Tavernier's 1981 film that transferred Thompson's novel Pop. 1280 to a 1938 French colony in Africa. Of all those though, only After Dark, My Sweet comes close to the usual noir trappings, and even that's by the loosest definition of the term. Thompson didn't play by the numbers in anything he wrote. Even though The Grifters concerns con artists, unlike the innumerable films about the subject there aren't the twists, reversals or set-ups you'd expect. The usual con artist tale can't help but get you wrapped up in the fun of the scheme, but The Grifters isn't that type of story. It's dark and unsettling; a character study where you can't be certain where the characters will end up. In one of the extras on the DVD, Frears told Westlake and others repeat similar ideas: Thompson wrote a Greek tragedy for the underclass.
What keeps this from being a grim undertaking is its stellar cast. Annette Bening had a few films under her belt before she made The Grifters (including Postcards from the Edge the same year and Milos Forman's Valmont, ironically playing the role Glenn Close did in another version of the same story Frears directed as Dangerous Liaisons), but her performance as Myra might as well have been her debut because from the moment she slinks into the film, a star is born. Myra doesn't just seduce the various men in her path, but the camera as well. She's sexy, funny and moves like a cat, earning a well-deserved Oscar nomination for supporting actress in the process. That Bening, Diane Ladd's crazy turn in Wild at Heart and Lorraine Bracco's work in Goodfellas all lost to Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost can be labeled nothing short of ridiculous. She's really what keeps some lightness in the film. It's as if her performance actually skips along in tune to Bernstein's evocative score.
In contrast, though he was the youngest of the three leads, John Cusack was practically a veteran, having made his film debut in 1983 in Class. Still, The Grifters marked a real turning point in his career, showing that he could play a different type of adult role. Aside from being part of the ensemble in John Sayles' Eight
Men Out and a small but significant part in Fat Man and Little Boy, his roles were almost exclusively in teen romances and comedies, ranging on a realism scale from Say Anything and The Sure Thing to farces such as One Crazy Summer, Better Off Dead and Tapeheads. He even had that minor part in Sixteen Candles. He'd played leads before, but not like The Grifters' Roy Dillon. He really has to anchor the film between the two women, being a convincing lover for Bening and an estranged but still caring son for Huston. Cusack pulls the role off perfectly. When the film reaches its climax and one of the women tries to pull off an unbelievable lie (and perhaps go even further to pull it off), he excels at the shock and torn feelings he has at the moment. In another scene, where he's called to make an identification and realizes it's not who it's supposed to be, he gives the perfect sly, small grin, just enough for the audience to catch, but out of reach of the authorities.Which brings us to the magnificent Anjelica Huston. Five years after her father John directed her to an Oscar for her killer supporting performance as Maerose Prizzi in Prizzi's Honor and a year after she scored a second nomination for her delightful turn as one of Ron Silver's wives in Paul Mazursky's Enemies, A Love Story (the
same year she played Martin Landau's mistress in Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors), Anjelica stepped up to lead with her stellar Lilly Dillon. She lost to Kathy Bates in Misery (a mistake in my opinion, not that Bates hasn't deserved the prize at other times), but Huston's Lilly is a wonder. She's a tough cookie but like most cookies, she can break. It's difficult to point out how great she is because she gets the toughest scenes to pull off but to describe them in detail, except in cases such as the Bobo scene, would be spoilers for those who haven't seen the film. In the vaguest terms possible, Lilly is a survivor and she will do whatever it takes to prevail. The ends always justify the means for her, even if they're accidental or emotionally destructive. As long as Lilly lives another day, she'll live with the consequences. The way Huston plays Lilly, she's hard to get a beat on except in those moments when her entire being is an open wound and her body completes her tasks by instinct. There's a shot in the film where Lilly takes the elevator in the hotel where Roy resides that makes it appear as if she's descending into Hell, at least that's what Frears says his intention was. I don't buy it. Lilly Dillon was born in Hell and has resided there her entire life. The Grifters, on the other hand, isn't remotely hellish as far as film experiences go. It just gets better with age.
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Labels: 90s, A. Huston, Bening, Books, Fiction, Huston, Jim Thompson, K. Bates, Landau, Mazursky, Movie Tributes, Sayles, Scorsese, Television, Tim Burton, Woody
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Wednesday, November 03, 2010
Back to Wine Country
By J.D.
Alexander Payne is part of an exciting new wave of filmmakers who grew up during the 1970s and were subsequently influenced by the movies from that era. His contemporaries include the likes of Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, and David O. Russell, to name but a few. And like his fellow filmmakers, Payne eschews the Hollywood trend of placing an emphasis on special effects and trendy actors in favor of character-driven, comedy-drama hybrids with character actors such as Laura Dern, Matthew Broderick and Kathy Bates.
Payne’s About Schmidt (2002) continued his fascination with American cinema in the ‘70s by featuring one its biggest (and most prolific) stars, Jack Nicholson. His next film, Sideways (2004), continued the road movie motif from Schmidt and combined it with the buddy film. Jack (Thomas Haden Church) is a failed actor about to be married. He decides to go on one last weekend of uninhibited fun with his best friend, Miles (Paul Giamatti), a school teacher and struggling author. They go on a wine-tasting tour through California’s Central Coast and squeeze in a bit of golfing as well.
Miles is an avid (nay-elitist) wine aficionado while Jack is completely ignorant of wine beyond what tastes good to him and what doesn’t. Miles is trying to get his book published with little success and he’s grown cynical and a bit defeated as a result. Initially, he comes off as an unlikable loser not above stealing money from his mother. Jack counters Miles’ repressed nature by coming off as something of an instinctive kind of person who indulges in his raging id. He was on a hit television show... 11 years ago and is now relegated to doing commercials. Along the way, Jack and Miles meet Maya (Virginia Madsen), a beautiful waitress who Miles knows from way back when, and Stephanie (Sandra Oh), who works at a winery and catches Jack’s eye.
Jack and Miles are complete messes as human beings. They lack direction and are hypocrites. Miles says he’s an author but his book is going nowhere, while Jack is getting married but hits on anything in a dress. They are hardly a sympathetic pair. And yet Payne is able to get a lot of comedic mileage from the pair. Miles is a wine snob who rambles on about the taste, color, and so on, only to have Jack sum up his opinion simply, “I like it,” which comically deflates Miles’ pontificating.
An interesting thing happens during the course of the film. At first, Miles starts off as an unsympathetic character while we warm up to Jack’s funny repartee as the charming rogue. Halfway through the film they flip roles and its Jack who is exposed as a pathetic womanizer and Miles becomes more sympathetic thanks to Maya’s influence. She humanizes him. Maya is easily Miles’ intellectual equal. She knows her wine and this clearly impresses Miles. She’s smart and beautiful so why is she even wasting her time with a sad sack like Miles? She gets to know him beyond his looks and liquefies the pretension of his character. Maya pierces his wine-speak armor that he throws up all the time with her easy-going nature and Miles realizes that he doesn’t need to constantly impress her. Like a fine wine, she allows him to breath and he gets better as time goes on. She’s a romantic who is able to cut through his cynicism and soften his hard edges.
Fresh off the success of American Splendor (2003), Paul Giamatti is one of those actors who makes it look so effortless as he inhabits the characters he plays so completely. Miles is a neurotic mess; a depressed cynic who is definitely a half glass empty kind of guy. Giamatti is able to tap into his character’s deep reservoir of pain and anger. In some ways, Miles is a variation of Giamatti’s take on the equally acerbic Harvey Pekar in Splendor. Ever since his stint on the short-lived T.V. sitcom Ned and Stacey, Thomas Haden Church has been an untapped resource and with Sideways he’s been given the role of his career. As Miles’ crass, philandering best friend, he plays Jack as a middle-age frat boy who still calls women, “chicks.” Haden Church’s dead-panned delivery of smart-ass lines works well against Giamatti’s uptight straight man. Together, they make an excellent team.
For years, Virginia Madsen has been biding her time in direct-to-video hell and so it is great to see her in a high profile role like this one. From The Hot Spot (1990) to Candyman (1992), she’s always been an interesting actress to watch and with Sideways, Madsen is given strong material to sink her teeth into and she delivers a nuanced performance. Sandra Oh has been quietly building a nice body of work over the years and has been unfairly overlooked in the numerous awards that have been lavished on the film. Granted, of the four main cast members, she has the least amount of screen time but she makes every moment she has count.
The men are idiots in Sideways and it is the women who are smart and truthful. The men lie, cheat and are forced to face the repercussions of their actions. This provides them with a chance at redemption as embodied in Miles who learns to loosen up and finally let someone new into his heart. Payne’s movie hearkens to classic character-driven movies, like Five Easy Pieces (1970) and King of Marvin Gardens (1972), by rejecting traditional mainstream tastes in favor of presenting unsympathetic characters and a conclusion that refuses to wrap things up neatly.
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Labels: 00s, Giamatti, K. Bates, Matthew Broderick, Nicholson, Payne, Wes Anderson
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Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Where have you gone, Paul Brickman?
By Edward Copeland
Two films. Two wonderful films are all that Paul Brickman has directed for the world. The first was the smart teen sex comedy Risky Business in 1983 that launched the career of Tom Cruise and the second was the equally good dramedy Men Don't Leave, which was released 20 years ago today in 1990. That's it. It's how it was waiting between Kubrick or Kurosawa projects toward the end of their careers or, if you are so inclined (and I'm not) being impatient for a new Terrence Malick offering after Days of Heaven, though now he seems to have picked up his pace.
No one speaks with bated breath about Brickman. Though he has written or co-written two scripts in the past two decades: Clint Eastwood's True Crime in 1998 and the NBC 2001 miniseries Uprising about the (thanks to Peter Nellhaus for catching that I'd typed the wrong article here originally) Jewish revolt in the Warsaw ghetto during World War II (You can't say his subject matters aren't eclectic), I still feel his absence. Until (or unless) Mr. Brickman graces us with another of his own projects, we'll need to keep celebrating the two gifts he's given us, especially the underrated and neglected gem that turns 20 today.
Nothing in Brickman's pre-directing career as a screenwriter prepared the world for his deliverance of two works
of near perfection, separated by seven years, that couldn't be more dissimilar. He wrote The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training, one of the ill-conceived sequels to the original 1976 classic, in 1977. That same year he wrote the screenplay for Jonathan Demme's Handle With Care, which alas I have not seen. Released a few months after Risky Business in 1983 came William Friedkin's troubled production Deal of the Century starring Chevy Chase, Sigourney Weaver and Gregory Hines and though Brickman got sole screenplay credit, it included uncredited work by Robert Towne. Despite that, Brickman alone gave us Risky Business and then, working with Barbara Benedek who wrote the screen story and co-wrote the screenplay, the remarkable Men Don't Leave which I salute today.Men Don't Leave tells with humor and pathos what happens to a nuclear family such as the Macauleys when they are hit by an unexpected rupture. As the film opens, they are family of four: father John (Tom Mason), mom Beth (Jessica Lange), teenage son Chris (Chris O'Donnell) and youngest son Matt (Charlie Korsmo). As young Matt says in a brief opening narration, when he has those moments when the family are together, "Then I was saved." John
is a home builder. In fact, he's not even done with the family's own homestead as plastic covers the unfinished kitchen wall. In a sly joke in the movie's first few minutes that I'd either forgotten or slipped by me on previous viewings, dad takes the kids to a movie which Chris describes as being about a fat kid "who hasn't done it" so his friends hire him a prostitute and then hide in a closet and watch. Quickly realizing the film might not be something his mother would approve of, Chris tries to pass it off as "educational." John tries to assure Beth that it's no big deal and was harmless before eventually relenting and admitting "It was shit." If it's a reference to Brickman's previous film (In the early going, Thomas Newman's nice score even has echoes of Tangerine Dream) or, more likely, the many awful movies lumped in the same genre, it's just a brief moment of levity before the real story starts. A call takes John away before dinner can even be served because of a problem at the construction site. A little while later, it's not John who returns, but a police officer with the news that John has been killed in an accident at the site. The four now are three.I've never been the biggest fan of Jessica Lange as an actress (though I'm downright charitable when compared to how fellow ECOF contributor Josh R feels about her). I think she
has won two Oscars for roles she didn't deserve to win for in Tootsie and Blue Sky, but didn't get a nomination here for Men Don't Leave which, in my opinion, is the best work she's ever put on film. She's completely believable as the small-town housewife. Her portrayal of a woman being forced to keep her family intact when burdened with unexpected debt and the loss of the love of her life while adjusting to a new city when the family is forced to move to Baltimore where a job awaits her, plays as achingly real and heartbreaking, with just the right mixture of humor, sadness and, when it is called for, even indignation. Watching Beth, in a state of shock, trying to navigate the maze of a hospital after getting cold directions from a nurse as to where to go to identify John's body, Lange really delivers the goods. Brickman helps her as well with his dizzying direction in this sequence, even returning to it in a flashback.
Beth's uncertainty as to how to react to John's death extends to the boys as well. The stoic Matt tells her he won't cry and wanders through groups of mourners with a plate of food some man gave to him. Chris tries to hold it in because he thinks it's the right thing to do, though he lashes out a bit at times, as when he discovers that Beth has put the truck up for sale, a truck he feels is rightfully his and that she has no right to sell no matter how deep their money problems are. When Beth first suggests the idea of moving to Baltimore for a better job, neither child understands why she just can't get a better job where they are. When Chris catches Beth with a cigarette, he chastises her like a parent would, asking her if she's trying to kill herself, something that has a deeper meaning now in a one-parent household.
Despite the kids' misgivings (as well as her own), Beth and the family relocate to an apartment in Baltimore where they begin to encounter new people who will become important parts of their lives. An accidental meeting
in the building elevator thanks to a prank by Matt leads to a lengthy ride for Chris and a woman who appears to be a nurse (the always quirky and wonderful Joan Cusack in one of her very best performances). After the elevator finally gets to the ground floor, Chris makes a point of explaining to the woman that his little brother was the one who had pressed all the buttons and it wasn't him. He just wanted her to know that he wouldn't do something like that. Cusack is intrigued. "Why do you care what I think?" Cusack possesses such a unique talent and brings such a special quality to nearly every film she's in, that it's a shame that she doesn't work more, but it's understandable how she's difficult to cast consistently. She's one of a kind, be it here or in Broadcast News, Working Girl, In & Out or School of Rock, she's always a welcome addition to the movie in question.Beth meets her new employer at the job that was arranged for her in a bake shop/catering service run by Lisa Coleman, a divorced, chain-smoking bitch-on-wheels (Kathy Bates, who actually won the best actress
Oscar the same year for Misery) who didn't plan to train someone on the job, but reluctantly agrees to hire Beth anyway and immediately starts barking orders for what she needs her to run and fetch for her at the nearby grocery. Beth's determined to keep smiling' through, though you can sense the misgivings lurking beneath the surface of her new situation, though she eventually starts baking her own recipes at home and bringing them in to sell. Her first delivery doesn't go especially well as she hauls a large lunch basket up and down the stairs of a building, losing many pieces of fruit along the way, to feed lunch to a group of very unusual musicians who use, in addition to more typical instruments, typewriters and egg beaters. By the time she reaches them, both she and the basket collapse, but one of the musicians (Arliss Howard) comes to her aid and invites her to their performance.
At his new school, the always understated Matt doesn't have much to say when the teacher asks all the kids in class to share their summer memories since his is particularly painful. He does make a new friend, Winston (Corey Carrier), but unfortunately he is going to turn out to be a bad influence, showing Matt how to shoplift candy from stores. This leads to learning to break into homes and steals their VCRs and sell them to a guy named Mike (Kevin Corrigan), who likes to remove the dialogue from porn but keep or add musical soundtracks such as the theme from Rawhide. Matt sees this as a way to raise money to buy lottery tickets in the hopes he can buy back his mom's house.
The thrust of Men Don't Leave concerns the process of moving on and with the loss of a lifemate or a parent, no stores stock road maps, no clocks show timetables and life certainly doesn't hit the pause button to stop
other events from interferring in the time one needs since every single case is a unique one and Brickman and Benedek's script paints this beautifully without being maudlin but with the right mix of humor and sadness but, more importantly, the palpable pulse of truth. In other hands, the relationship that develops between the 17-year-old Chris and the adult Jody (Cusack) could play as sleazy or unreal, but it feels completely plausible here thanks to Cusack's performance. Jody might not be a nurse (in fact, she's an X-ray technician), but when she says she likes to help people, you take her at her word. Who knows how long her romance with Chris will last once the movie ends, but no matter how it ends you get the feeling that it will wind up being a positive force in his life at a crucial moment.
Understandably, Beth isn't thrilled that her teenage son is sleeping with an older woman, but then she finds trepidations about most aspects of her new life. She's hesitant to begin any sort of relationship with the musician Charles (Howard, a great actor who is almost as rare a sight as his wife Debra Winger), but yet she's clearly attracted to him and finds a need for his emotional support. Chris disapproves at first, especially when he thinks he's bringing Beth home too late following a
concert, prompting Charles to ask, "Is your father this rough on all the guys?" When they do actually have a real date at her apartment and he moves in for a kiss, Beth resists, telling him that having an affair is not high on her list of priorities. Charles reassures her about the relationship that, "If it can't be physical, let's go bowling." At one point, she shows up at the divorced father's door and says nothing more than, "I'm very sad." Charles tries his best to be a comfort and they even begin to kiss until a poorly timed nosebleed gets in the way. She also tires of Lisa's barked orders and finally snaps one day when Lisa tells her to run and get her something, telling her if she wanted someone to run, she should have hired a thoroughbred. Lisa fires her and Beth's unraveling really begins. Matt, despite his new criminal life, always tries to be the good son, but watching Winston's full and fun family life with both a mother and a father, starts longing to live there and even runs away to spend the night there.Beth takes to bed for days and despite the best efforts of Matt and Chris, they can't seem to get through to her. Since she's essentially cut off contact from the world, a desperate Chris even goes to visit Charles,
begging him to come see her, assuming that the way he acted was the reason he doesn't come around anymore, but he can't stand seeing his mom so sad and alone and she was happy when he was around. Charles and a friend do their best, coming by to serenade her through the door, but though Beth is on the other side listening, it fails to get her to respond. It takes Jody, the woman sleeping with her son, the woman she hates, to get through to Beth, simply because she refuses to take no for an answer, dragging her out of bed, pushing her into the shower, pouring coffee down her throat and talking with her. Jody tells her of a story Chris told her about John carrying Beth around a park when she broke her foot and she hoped to have someone love her that much someday. If someone loved me that much and he died, Jody says, "I'd be so sad, I'd get very tired.Of course, it's often the person who is the quietest who really needs the help and that turns out to be Matt who turns up missing. They eventually get a call and find that somehow he made his way back to their
old house in their old town, where they find him sobbing in the little house his dad helped him build. His mom reassures him that he doesn't always have to be such a good boy. Through tears, Matt says, "I want to see him again — just one more time," a sentiment that anyone who has ever lost anyone dear to them can relate to completely. The family returns to Baltimore again and Beth resumes baking goodies, which she takes to Lisa to sell on consignment. In a soft moment, Lisa tells her that while it's hard to have been left alone with two kids, when Lisa's husband divorced her two years ago, it's even harder to have been left alone. I don't know which is harder, but I do know that Paul Brickman has left movie lovers in the lurch by only leaving us his two gems. What are you waiting for, Paul? Please sir, we want some more, especially if they are as great as Men Don't Leave.Tweet
Labels: 90s, Cruise, Debra Winger, Demme, Eastwood, J. Lange, K. Bates, Kubrick, Kurosawa, Malick, Movie Tributes, Sigourney Weaver, Towne
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Friday, January 09, 2009
You never forget the truth; it just gets easier to lie
By Edward Copeland
No matter how well manicured the lawn, how well dressed and behaved the couple, you can never be certain what's going on once the front door is closed, especially in the 1950s suburbia of Sam Mendes' Revolutionary Road, a film some are finding depressing beyond words but which I found riveting and remarkable.
Kate Winslet has compiled an impressive body of work in nearly a decade and a half and she's only 33 and in my opinion Revolutionary Road may be the topper. As April Wheeler, the young '50s housewife whose life hasn't gone in any direction that she'd hoped for or enjoyed, Winslet is magnificent. When I mentioned on Facebook that Winslet has the Oscar in the bag, no matter what degree you like or dislike Revolutionary Road, someone wrote to the effect "unless the viewer had slit their throat first."
While it's certainly true that the film is not a laugh riot, I had nowhere near that reaction and I still think even the film's biggest detractors have to recognize Winslet's brilliance here (plus if she's a double nominee this year bringing her career total to seven, will they want to make her the losingest actress of all time?).
Revolutionary Road is not a film like The Hours, where after a screening a journalist asked, "Cyanide capsules for everyone?" Now, that was a film that made a viewer contemplate ending one's life. Unlike The Hours, Revolutionary Road is well acted, well written and well directed on every level.
As much as I love Winslet, I don't want to leave the impression that she's the whole show because Leonardo DiCaprio gives one of his best performances as well as her husband Frank, similarly given to uncertainty about where he's going and where he wants to be. He's not a faithful husband, but the film doesn't make him guilty for the marital fissure. Alice is equally responsible, yet neither is to blame.
In addition to the great work by the leads, there is solid support from Dylan Baker, Kathy Bates, David Barbour and Kathryn Hahn, among others. The prize among the supporting players though goes to Michael Shannon as Bates' unstable son. If Viola Davis deserves Oscar consideration for her single lengthy scene in Doubt, then Shannon is equally worthy for his two electric appearances in Revolutionary Road.
Sam Mendes beautifully tells the tale through Justin Haythe's adaptation of Richard Yates' novel in his best film since his Oscar-winning debut with American Beauty. While Mendes is again dealing with suburbia, albeit period suburbia, it's not a satiric take and the time period almost is irrelevant because the sadness and truths are universal and heartbreaking.
While I can see why the film would be a depressing time for some, for me Revolutionary Road is one of 2008's best films.
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Labels: 00s, DiCaprio, K. Bates, Michael Shannon, Viola Davis, Winslet
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Monday, November 19, 2007
Oscar's rules for GLBT characters
By Edward Copeland
This post was for the Queer Blog-a-Thon hosted at Queering the Apprentice, which apparently no longer exists. Be warned: the words below will contain spoilers for a lot of films, too many to mention, so don't read it and whine later.
The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has been fairly generous in the past 20 or so years in nominating (and sometimes rewarding) actors and actresses who play gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered characters on screen. However, this does come with a price. Not to their careers, but in deciding whether or not the role gets nominated in the first place.
There seems to be only two types of gay roles that get deemed worthy of Oscar recognition: ones that are comicly broad or one where the gay character in question either ends up dead or alone. Look at just a couple of highly praised roles that got snubbed come Oscar time. Everyone thought Dennis Quaid was a lock for a nomination with his tortured married gay man in the 1950s in Far From Heaven, but he didn't make the cut. In the end of the film, his character has accepted his sexuality and found a boyfriend: no nomination for him.
Rupert Everett was a lot of fun as Julia Roberts' best gay friend in My Best Friend's Wedding, but his character was out, proud and presumably in a relationship. Strike him from your nominating ballot.
Now, here come the spoilers, as I look at all the performers who did get nominated or won an Oscar for playing a gay character. I'm only counting characters that are explicitly gay, not implied ones such as Clifton Webb in Laura For sake of simplicity, I'm going chronologically.
Peter Finch in Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971)
The first openly gay character that I can find with a nomination set one of the patterns: He's alone at the end.
Al Pacino and Chris Sarandon in Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
Sarandon's character of Leon is already institutionalized (and wants nothing to do with Sonny) when we meet him. Sonny (Pacino) ends up alone and in prison.
James Coco in Only When I Laugh (1981)
The first instance (post Dog Day Afternoon) of Oscar nominating an openly gay character was for Coco's broad comic turn in this lesser Neil Simon outing.
John Lithgow in The World According to Garp
Robert Preston in Victor, Victoria (both 1982)
Preston's great turn definitely belongs more in the broad comic category, though he might also be an exception since he is allowed to have a boyfriend by film's end. Lithgow, as the NFL player turned transsexual in Garp, might be an exception. He's alive at the end, but his role is mostly played for laughs and the film never provides him with a significant other.
Cher in Silkwood (1983)
Another possible exception, though the film makes it unclear if she's alone at the end, though she certainly looks guilt-stricken over possible involvement in her friend Karen's death.
William Hurt in Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985)
Ding ding ding. We have a winner. While the movie was certainly a drama, Hurt does a lot of histrionic flouncing AND he ends up dead in the end, even after his straight cellmate (Raul Julia) gives him a mercy fuck.
Bruce Davison in Longtime Companion (1990)
It was five years before another gay character earned a nomination and Davison's character got the double whammy. First, he has to watch his lover die of AIDS, leaving him alone, and then he dies as well (and not even on screen).
Tommy Lee Jones in JFK (1991)
Here's another example of a broad performance in a drama and while Jones' character lives in the end, it is complicated by the fact that he is portrayed as a villain (and with some over-the-top gay orgy scenes that only Oliver Stone could dream up). In contrast, Joe Pesci playing the less showy gay character who does get killed, didn't earn Academy notice.
Jaye Davidson in The Crying Game (1992)
First, Dil's lover gets killed during an IRA kidnapping and then when he/she falls for his captor, Fergus (Stephen Rea) gets sent to prison and Dil waits patiently, even though Fergus shows no intention of abandoning his heterosexuality.
Tom Hanks in Philadelphia (1993)
Gay and dead takes home the prize again, though at least Hanks' portrayal wasn't a broad one, even if Denzel Washington gave the better lead role in the film.
Greg Kinnear in As Good As It Gets (1997)
I don't think Kinnear's character had a significant other by film's end, but I do remember he took a bad beating.
Ian McKellen in Gods and Monsters (1998)
Here is an openly gay actor nominated for portraying a true-life openly gay director. Alas, James Whale dies in the end (as he did in real life) but the real travesty was that McKellen (and Nick Nolte and Edward Norton) lost to Roberto Benigni (Life Is Beautiful).
Kathy Bates in Primary Colors (1998)
Bates was great as a take-no-prisoners political operative working on the campaign of a Bill Clinton-like candidate. Alas, her lesbian character had principles and ended up firing a gun into her head.
Hilary Swank in Boys Don't Cry (1999)
Swank won the first of her two Oscars for lead actress by playing the gender-confused Brandon Teena. It also was the first of two times that Swank made it to the winner's circle by getting beaten to death.
Javier Bardem in Before Night Falls (2000)
Based on a real person, Bardem's character has to fight problems in Cuba before getting to N.Y. for one of the longest death scenes (from AIDS) I've ever seen.
Ed Harris in The Hours (2002)
The same year that the Academy snubbed Dennis Quaid for his fine work in Far From Heaven, they nominated this awful performance by the usually fine Harris as an artist dying of AIDS.
Nicole Kidman in The Hours (2002)
If Virginia Woolf hadn't walked herself into the river, this nomination and win probably would have never happened.
Julianne Moore in The Hours (2002)
In a way, her character here is similar to the one Quaid plays in Moore's other 2002 film. She's married, but unable to accept her sexuality. By the film's end, she appears to be alone, so she gets a pass while Quaid got snubbed. It may also explain one of the rare occasions where Meryl Streep didn't get an Oscar nomination since her lesbian character in The Hours had a lover in the end and doesn't die.
Charlize Theron in Monster (2003)
Another win based on a true story. Theron took the executed lesbian serial killer right up to the winner's circle.
Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote (2005)
This may be the true exception to the rule. Based on a real life character, the story didn't follow Truman Capote to his death and he did have a longtime companion. The closest this comes is denying him his crush on the executed killer.
Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Two nominated performances of gay character, so the Academy got to take one of each: Gyllenhaal's character ends up dead, Ledger's ends up alone.
Felicity Huffman in Transamerica (2005)
I'm not sure where to place this performance of an in-process transsexual. She doesn't die in the end.
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This post was for the Queer Blog-a-Thon hosted at Queering the Apprentice, which apparently no longer exists. Be warned: the words below will contain spoilers for a lot of films, too many to mention, so don't read it and whine later.
The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has been fairly generous in the past 20 or so years in nominating (and sometimes rewarding) actors and actresses who play gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered characters on screen. However, this does come with a price. Not to their careers, but in deciding whether or not the role gets nominated in the first place.
There seems to be only two types of gay roles that get deemed worthy of Oscar recognition: ones that are comicly broad or one where the gay character in question either ends up dead or alone. Look at just a couple of highly praised roles that got snubbed come Oscar time. Everyone thought Dennis Quaid was a lock for a nomination with his tortured married gay man in the 1950s in Far From Heaven, but he didn't make the cut. In the end of the film, his character has accepted his sexuality and found a boyfriend: no nomination for him.
Rupert Everett was a lot of fun as Julia Roberts' best gay friend in My Best Friend's Wedding, but his character was out, proud and presumably in a relationship. Strike him from your nominating ballot.
Now, here come the spoilers, as I look at all the performers who did get nominated or won an Oscar for playing a gay character. I'm only counting characters that are explicitly gay, not implied ones such as Clifton Webb in Laura For sake of simplicity, I'm going chronologically.
The first openly gay character that I can find with a nomination set one of the patterns: He's alone at the end.
Sarandon's character of Leon is already institutionalized (and wants nothing to do with Sonny) when we meet him. Sonny (Pacino) ends up alone and in prison.
The first instance (post Dog Day Afternoon) of Oscar nominating an openly gay character was for Coco's broad comic turn in this lesser Neil Simon outing.
Robert Preston in Victor, Victoria (both 1982)
Preston's great turn definitely belongs more in the broad comic category, though he might also be an exception since he is allowed to have a boyfriend by film's end. Lithgow, as the NFL player turned transsexual in Garp, might be an exception. He's alive at the end, but his role is mostly played for laughs and the film never provides him with a significant other.
Another possible exception, though the film makes it unclear if she's alone at the end, though she certainly looks guilt-stricken over possible involvement in her friend Karen's death.
Ding ding ding. We have a winner. While the movie was certainly a drama, Hurt does a lot of histrionic flouncing AND he ends up dead in the end, even after his straight cellmate (Raul Julia) gives him a mercy fuck.
It was five years before another gay character earned a nomination and Davison's character got the double whammy. First, he has to watch his lover die of AIDS, leaving him alone, and then he dies as well (and not even on screen).
Here's another example of a broad performance in a drama and while Jones' character lives in the end, it is complicated by the fact that he is portrayed as a villain (and with some over-the-top gay orgy scenes that only Oliver Stone could dream up). In contrast, Joe Pesci playing the less showy gay character who does get killed, didn't earn Academy notice.
First, Dil's lover gets killed during an IRA kidnapping and then when he/she falls for his captor, Fergus (Stephen Rea) gets sent to prison and Dil waits patiently, even though Fergus shows no intention of abandoning his heterosexuality.
Gay and dead takes home the prize again, though at least Hanks' portrayal wasn't a broad one, even if Denzel Washington gave the better lead role in the film.
I don't think Kinnear's character had a significant other by film's end, but I do remember he took a bad beating.
Here is an openly gay actor nominated for portraying a true-life openly gay director. Alas, James Whale dies in the end (as he did in real life) but the real travesty was that McKellen (and Nick Nolte and Edward Norton) lost to Roberto Benigni (Life Is Beautiful).
Bates was great as a take-no-prisoners political operative working on the campaign of a Bill Clinton-like candidate. Alas, her lesbian character had principles and ended up firing a gun into her head.
Swank won the first of her two Oscars for lead actress by playing the gender-confused Brandon Teena. It also was the first of two times that Swank made it to the winner's circle by getting beaten to death.
Based on a real person, Bardem's character has to fight problems in Cuba before getting to N.Y. for one of the longest death scenes (from AIDS) I've ever seen.
The same year that the Academy snubbed Dennis Quaid for his fine work in Far From Heaven, they nominated this awful performance by the usually fine Harris as an artist dying of AIDS.
If Virginia Woolf hadn't walked herself into the river, this nomination and win probably would have never happened.
In a way, her character here is similar to the one Quaid plays in Moore's other 2002 film. She's married, but unable to accept her sexuality. By the film's end, she appears to be alone, so she gets a pass while Quaid got snubbed. It may also explain one of the rare occasions where Meryl Streep didn't get an Oscar nomination since her lesbian character in The Hours had a lover in the end and doesn't die.
Another win based on a true story. Theron took the executed lesbian serial killer right up to the winner's circle.
This may be the true exception to the rule. Based on a real life character, the story didn't follow Truman Capote to his death and he did have a longtime companion. The closest this comes is denying him his crush on the executed killer.
Two nominated performances of gay character, so the Academy got to take one of each: Gyllenhaal's character ends up dead, Ledger's ends up alone.
I'm not sure where to place this performance of an in-process transsexual. She doesn't die in the end.
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Labels: Bardem, Capote, D. Quaid, Denzel, Hanks, J. Gyllenhaal, Julia Roberts, Julianne Moore, K. Bates, Lithgow, Neil Simon, Nicole Kidman, Oliver Stone, P.S. Hoffman, Pacino, Pesci, R. Preston, Tommy Lee Jones, Whale, William Hurt
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