Saluting “An Officer and a Gentleman”

The recent passing of actor Louis Gossett Jr. at the ripe old age of 87 reminded me, of course, of his greatest screen triumph, in 1982’s An Officer and a Gentleman. For his portrayal of a tough drill sergeant whose brutal methods mask a tender heart, Gossett became the first African-American ever to win an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor. It was a groundbreaking moment: the role had been written for a white man, but the production team had come to recognize that Black drill sergeants were not uncommon in the post-Vietnam military services. And Gossett gives it all he’s got.

 Gossett is a marvel in the film, but so is the rest of the cast, led by Richard Gere, Deborah Winger, and David Keith. What struck me in rewatching it recently is how well it fits the dictum of screenwriting guru Paul Lucey, who advises newbies to “write simple stories with complex characters.” Like the Top Gun films, An Officer and a Gentleman is all about would-be flyboys, going through a tough round of training to prepare to pilot combat jets. But whereas Top Gun, starring action hero Tom Cruise, relies heavily on aerial stunt sequences, An Officer and a Gentleman sticks close to the ground. The main thrust of its story involves a thirteen-week training session at which hopefuls (including one plucky woman) go through a series of exhausting physical and mental exercises designed to scare off those unfit to achieve their dreams of flight.

 Zack Mayo (leading man Richard Gere) is a particularly hard case. A loner who’s pretty much mad at the world, he has survived his mother’s suicide and his father’s sordid lifestyle as a drunken and womanizing naval petty officer stationed mostly in the Philippines. Having made the surprising decision to enter Officer Candidate School, Zack is determined to leave the program with no strings attached. Which is why Gunnery Sergeant Foley’s warning to avoid getting serious with the marriage-hungry local factory girls makes perfect sense to him. But somehow he makes a friend (David Keith) who is quickly smitten by a buxom blonde ready to play any trick in order to land herself a pilot. And Zack himself is soon making sweet music with her best friend, the feisty Paula (an Oscar-nominated Debra Winger).

 As week follows week, the Officer Candidates face more and more pressure, both in their training sessions and in the bedroom. (Director Taylor Hackford, who’d responded particularly to the script’s blue-collar landscape and to its complex characterizations, was frank enough with the script’s enthusiastic sex scenes that the film was originally given an X-rating.) At midpoint Zack, having tried the patience of Sgt. Foley once too often, is hounded into volunteering to quit the program. His stubborn determination—and the final, deeply emotional, acknowledgment that he has nowhere else to go—keep him from leaving of his own accord. Later, though, once he’s faced the dire consequences of a pal’s bad choices, he’s ready to leave the Navy behind. That’s when Sgt. Foley steps in again, leading to a fiercely dramatic confrontation that helps Zack put his life into perspective.

  Those who’ve seen An Officer and a Gentleman back in the mists of time will probably remember best its deeply romantic ending, when Zack (resplendent in his white dress uniform) carries off the loving Paula from her place on the local assembly line. It’s fairytale-ish, to be sure, and the filmmakers weren’t originally sold on it. But after all that’s gone before, I believe we feel we and the characters have completely earned this moment of joy. 

 

 

Love with an Ethnic Stranger

In 1963, the same year that Steve McQueen became America’s favorite action hero via his role in The Great Escape, he also starred in a modest romantic drama opposite Natalie Wood. Its name was Love with The Proper Stranger. It was a black-&-white indie (though released through Paramount Pictures), shot on and around the streets of New York, by director Robert Mulligan and his longtime producing partner, Alan J. Pakula. The two men, both early television veterans, specialized in small, tough, relatively low-budget films that appealed to audiences tired of Hollywood glitz and glamour. The duo triumphed in 1962 with their film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird, which was to win three Oscars, including a Best Actor statuette for Gregory Peck. Today it seems obvious that a strong film based on Harper Lee’s classic novel would reap generous rewards at the box office. But such was not the thinking in the early Sixties, when studio films played to audiences looking for romance and fancy clothes.

 One year after To Kill a Mockingbird, Pakula and Mulligan were back with a film that was in fact a romance, though hardly a conventional one. Steve McQueen plays an out-of-work jazz musician, first seen trolling for gigs at the local union hall. There he’s confronted by Natalie Wood, a pretty young clerk at Macy’s. He has no recollection of going out on the town with her, but apparently he’s left her something to remember him by. Yes, she’s pregnant. Though she’s hardly the weepy type, he’s by no means a heel eager to escape responsibility. Calling in favors from his live-in girlfriend (Edie Adams), he locates an abortionist who’ll take care of matters in an empty apartment for a substantial fee. (It’s a plot detail that’s starting to feel all too modern, now that Roe v. Wade is history.)

 In a film that makes much of ethnic identity, both Wood’s and McQueen’s characters are the products of close-knit Italian families (Yup, we’re supposed to buy McQueen’s Rocky as Italian.) Wood’s character, Angie Rossini, lives at home with a domineering brother (Herschel Bernardi), as well as an old-world mama who wants her to stay on the straight and narrow. When she can’t bring herself to go through with the back-alley abortion arranged by McQueen, she tries dating a klutzy middle-aged gent who adores her and is willing to claim the baby as his own. (He’s played by none other than Tom Bosley in his first film role, long before he became the beloved paterfamilias on TV’s Happy Days.)  Alas, the match doesn’t take.

 Meanwhile, Angie’s indomitable spunk is starting to endear her to McQueen. (Given the strong ethnic vibe in this film, it’s easy to see her as a close cousin to Cher’s Oscar-winning Loretta Castorini from 1987’s Moonstruck.) I suspect you can guess what happens at the end, though in the case of these two firebrand lovers, nothing is going to come easy.

 Mulligan and Pakula must have liked working with both McQueen and Wood. In 1965, the two actors starred in separate Pakula-Mulligan projects. McQueen took the lead in another raw romance, Baby the Rain Must Fall, while Wood played the title role in the downbeat story of a Hollywood star-in-the-making, Inside Daisy Clover. Though they made a rather gorgeous couple, they never shared the screen again.The gritty but ultimately hopeful Love with the Proper Stranger is well worth seeing, both for its atmospheric look at ethnic New York and for the pairing of two stars on the rise. (It’s fun to imagine what a McQueen/Wood baby might look like!)   

 

Taking a Leap with O.J. Simpson

 I once saw Orenthal James Simpson at Los Angeles International Airport, walking at a steady clip, suitcase in hand. The moment stands out for me because, at the time that I spotted him, the airwaves were filled with the famous Hertz commercials, in which O.J., clearly late for something important, dramatically hurtles over airport barricades to reach the car rental counter. That series of commercials (starting in 1975) struck a chord with the public because they captured what everyone loved about O.J. in that era: the remarkable football skills, the charm, the handsome face and resonant speaking voice.

 As a UCLA student I had plenty of opportunity to root against O.J. and his USC Trojans on the gridiron. Later, I was well aware that he’d successfully made the leap from running back to media superstar. Aside from his commercials, he did TV sports commentary, and honed his acting chops with memorable comic roles as a police detective in three Naked Gun films (from the guys behind Airplane!). Like the rest of America’s media watchers, I thought of Simpson as a big, strong guy with an endearing smile.

 That all changed in 1994 when Simpson was accused of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman. Like millions of others, I watched on TV part of the baffling low-speed White Ford Bronco chase, in which an apparently suicidal Simpson tried to avoid the L.A. cops sent to arrest him. From that point forward, it was hard for a West L.A. person like me to ignore what was going on in O.J.’s world. At the time, I was working for Roger Corman at Concorde-New Horizons Pictures, which had its grubby offices on San Vicente Boulevard in the L.A. suburb of Brentwood. A short walk away was the neighborhood Italian restaurant where Goldman had worked and where Nicole had enjoyed her last meal. It quickly became a media hot spot, but then went out of business. And my daily drive home took me past the infamous condo where the two were stabbed to death. You can imagine how much the location’s notoriety added to the traffic on that stretch of Barrington Avenue.

 Of course all the grim excitement came to a head when the case went to trial—a “trial of the century” that would last a full year. In the course of it, many of the participants became famous,  including defense lawyer Johnnie Cochran, lead prosecutor Marcia Clark, and even judge Lance Ito (who found himself subject to comic parodies, including “The Dancing Itos” on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno). Also on the defense team was Robert Kardashian, now better known as the sire of a  fabulously wealthy social media clan. What I remember best about the announcement of the verdict was my personal fear that L.A. might erupt in civil violence. Thankfully it didn’t happen, though in many people’s minds O.J. would never be fully clear of the murder charges, despite his eventual acquittal.

Now Simpson himself has succumbed to cancer, but I suspect his fame will linger on. Once a media star, always a media star, right?

 

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“Getting to Know You”: My UCLA Students and Me

This week I begin, once again, teaching my advanced screenwriting rewrite course through UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program. I invented this course a decade ago, putting to use the story skills I honed in my Roger Corman days. The course is taught entirely online: I communicate with my 12 carefully selected students solely through the written word. Do you think, since we don’t meet in person, that they lose out on my up-close-and-personal attention? Think again!

 Because this course, like many offered through UCLA Extension, unfolds online, I interact with students from all over the world. Their work often reflects cultures far different from my own, and introduces me to corners of the globe I would otherwise know nothing about. There’s something unique about encountering a sex scene—well, a near-sex scene—featuring a Catholic priest on a mission to Africa, as written by a Catholic priest currently back home in Dublin. I’ve had students from China, several from Australia, and a number from India. Some have been trained filmmakers who are looking to polish material they can eventually direct. In one case, several years after a class was over, I enjoyed discovering what an Indian student’s script looked like when blown up on the big screen: it was about (yup!) an aspiring filmmaker from India who faces challenges galore when he comes to L.A. to attend film school. In no uncertain terms, lived experience was part of the script’s strength.  Another Indian filmmaker, who had already won a prize for his short film at the prestigious Venice Film Festival, took my class several times, struggling to expand his drama about Tibetan refugees in Dharamshala into a full-length feature. I can’t wait to see what becomes of this powerful project.

 As you can tell, I like to follow my students’ progress, when I can. Of course, some students apply for my course mostly to challenge themselves, without serious hopes of starting a new career. A few are determined to put on screen some of the traumas they’ve faced in their own lives: this is a tricky business, because art requires a certain distance from one’s personal woes. But using life as the source of art can also make it memorable. Next time I’m in Ojai, California, I plan to go to the local library and take a gander at a certain mosaic armchair. The chair, made and donated by a prominent local family, reflects a tragic mother-and-sons story told, with great poignance, in the script of a student who lived it.

 Happily, my students tend to be interesting people doing remarkable things. Just days ago I checked in on a former student, originally from Texas, who now makes his home in Taipei. His scripts (I’ve read several) lean on his longtime experience working at local radio stations. I’m also in touch with an Hungarian who, when not writing charmingly eccentric screenplays, runs an eccentric café outside Budapest. And this past weekend I grooved to the sounds of a former student who, aside from winning a number of screenplay competitions, also performs around town as part of a very cool jazz and pop trio known as Guys & Doll.

 Ah, but you’re probably wondering if any of my students have made the big time. Some, over the years, have worked hard and found their own niche in the film industry. I’ve got to mention with great pride Shiwani Srivastava, whose  Wedding Season, was a Netflix hit in 2022. When I first encountered this romantic comedy with its Southeast Asian twist, I knew Shiwani had what it takes. And now – onward and upward! 

 Dedicated to Dominique Merrill, who knows as well as I do that (as Oscar Hammerstein once put it) when you become a teacher, by your pupils you’ll be taught.

 

Helen Mirren Slams The Door Shut

My women’s book group has recently been bypassing American pop novels (see, for instance, the enjoyable but thin Lessons in Chemistry) to focus on complex works by female authors like Maylis de Kerangal (from France) and Jenny Erpenbeck (from Germany). Of course we’re reading in translation, but the works of these women open up to us worlds we may never before have contemplated. I was particularly taken by Erpenbeck’s Visitation, an eerie recap of recent history, as seen from the perspective of a luxurious lakeside house deep in the German countryside. I had never previously heard of Erpenbeck, who’s considered a prime candidate for the Nobel Prize for literature. No question: her canon is worth exploring.

This past month, the book on our reading list was The Door, a newly translated 1987 short novel by veteran Hungarian author Magda Szabó. The narrator, a middle-aged Hungarian author much like Szabó herself, has moved to a small town, where she and her husband teach and pursue literary goals. In need of housekeeping help, the narrator approaches Emerence, an ageing woman who has accepted  household chores for a number of neighbors, while also taking upon herself the thankless drudgery of sweeping snowy sidewalks with a broom. It’s soon crystal-clear that Emerence has a mind of her own, accepting only those clients who suit her and being quick to voice opinions (usually negative ones) about the neighbors’ life choices at every turn.

I bring all this up because in 2012 the internationally acclaimed novel was made into a film which I recently watched, just after reading the novel on which it was based. Though the director, the screenwriters, and the vast majority of cast members are Hungarian, the film was shot in English. Partly this was (I assume) to facilitate international distribution; partly it was also a way of accommodating its star, the formidable Helen Mirren. Mirren, whose father was Russian-born, seems to have a real affinity for eastern European roles (see such films as White Nights and The Last Station, in which she plays the wife of the ailing author Tolstoy). And surely it takes someone with Mirren’s charisma to hold down the role of a woman who is proudly cantankerous,  as well as anti-intellectual and anti-social. The crux of the film is her give-and-take relationship with the narrator-figure, named Magda after the novel’s author. Magda, over the years, comes to appreciate the generosity behind Emerence’s tough exterior. She sees how much of herself Emerence gives to those in need, and appreciates in particular Emerence’s almost mystic bond with animals. Still, she can’t easily swallow Emerence’s unrelenting sense of her own rightness on every issue. She can’t bear dealing with a woman incapable of seeing herself in the wrong. Gradually, Magda comes to understand Emmerence’s inflexibility better and is able to see her forbidding nature as evolving out of the slings and errors of the history she’s endured. Still, the relationship remains a troubled one, even unto death.

The film version of The Door strips out some major plot details from the novel. And the key moment when Magda feels impelled to force open the door to an ailing Emerence’s flat doesn’t linger in the mind the way it does when we read about it. By way of compensation, the film makes many of the circumstances of Emerence’s past more compelling, especially those presented through vivid flashbacks. There’s also a small but key change at the film’s conclusion—the arrival of a long-sought visitor—that leaves us with poignancy but not anguish. The film’s worth recommending, though it’s not an easy journey.

A one-day-early salute to my former boss and biography subject, the ageless Roger Corman, on his 98th birthday.