Playing Around with “The Player”

A happy coincidence—on the same day I spent two hours being interviewed about what it was like to work for 8 years as Roger Corman’s story editor, I devoted my evening to rewatching one of Robert Altman’s very best films, 1992’s The  Player. It’s a funny, quirky thriller, starring Tim Robbins and what seems like half of Hollywood. When I first saw this film, I think I was most invested in its clever plot: about a mid-level studio honcho who accidentally murders an over-eager would-be screenwriter and (spoiler alert!) lives happily ever after.

 This time, though, I couldn’t ignore Altman’s brilliant dissection of life at a Hollywood studio. Stylistically, there’s a tremendous amount of wit: the film opens with a tour-de-force 8-minute tracking shot, one that takes us all over the studio property, introducing us to many of the film’s major players and letting us eavesdrop on their casual conversations. Over the years, what I’ve remembered best from that opening was the fact that it featured a writer-friend of mine, Adam Simon, playing an actual writer named Adam Simon who is frantic to sell his latest idea to Robbins’ Griffin Mill. Other genuine Hollywood screenwriters also make brief appearances, including the great Buck Henry, who earnestly proposes that Mill back his idea for a lucrative sequel, The Graduate, Part II, in which star-of-the-moment Julia Roberts will have a featured role as the daughter of Benjamin and Elaine.  

 The joke is that Griffin Mill, who’s reputed to be great with writers, is very much a studio guy. When he takes meetings even with established screenwriters, he manages to subtly twist their ideas until everything (whether proposed as a thriller, a romantic comedy, an outer-space drama, or a taut exploration of social wrongdoing) comes out as a cookie-cutter flick containing violence, sex, humor, and—of course—a happy ending. And there’s always room for Julia Roberts and Bruce Willis in leading parts.

 At Roger Corman’s low-budget Concorde-New Horizons Pictures, we didn’t have the luxury of attracting big-name stars. But we too had our formulas, featuring almost exactly the same elements that Griffin Mill’s studio favored: violence, sex, humor, a whisp of social commentary. (We further demanded—as the big studios would not—breast nudity of our leading ladies: that was very much the Corman way)   

 The irony in The Player is that both Griffin Mill and everyone else on his lot pretend that they’ve entered the film industry in order to make art. Posters of classic art films hang on the walls of studio offices. In that elaborate opening segment, many of the conversations we overhear involve references to famous films of the past, like Bertolucci’s The Sheltering Sky. (Invariably, when one studio regular refers to an arty movie by Orson Welles or a European master, his conversation partner has never seen it, or even heard of it.) As for Mills’ fatal journey to Pasadena to accost a writer he feels has wronged him, their meeting takes place in an art house that has just screened Rossellini’s 1948 masterpiece, The Bicycle Thief. 

 In the course of The Player, Griffin Mill is understandably rattled by the news that a flashy exec from another studio is heading his way, thus putting his own job in jeopardy. The newcomer, Larry Levy (Peter Gallagher) is the star of a meeting where he endorses—while waving around a copy of the L.A. Times-- making movies “ripped from the headlines,.” Roger Corman occasionally came up with similar ideas: of actors improvising on timely subjects, thus essentially putting actual writers out of work. 

 (Did anyone else catch the name of the crass CEO who lords it over Seth Rogan in TV’s The Studio? He’s – what else?-- Griffin Mill.) 

 Dedicated to two of my favorite Roger Corman buddies, Adam Simon and Steve Barnett

 (In case you're interested, here's the soundcloud link to my Roger Corman-related interview with Nathan Wardinksi of Sounds of Cinema: 

https://soundcloud.com/nathan-wardinski/interview-beverly-gray.)  

 

 

Returning to the River of No Return

Sometimes I enjoy checking out movies that were big in my childhood. I was far too young to see 1954’s River of No Return, and in any case my family was hardly enamored of westerns. But the film’s schmaltzy opening ballad (“There is a river/ called the River of No Return/ Sometimes it’s peaceful/ and sometimes wild and free”) was popular on the radio, and remains stuck in my head to this day. After seeing a big Marilyn Monroe exhibit at L.A.’s Academy Museum, I decided to check it out. What struck me was how predictable this Otto Preminger epic is, and how it remains enjoyable, though relying on every cliché in the book.

 I recently read that the plot of River of No Return borrows from Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 Italian neo-realist masterpiece, The Bicycle Thief  (originally Ladri di biciclette). Frankly, I’m not convinced. The Bicycle Thief, filmed on the streets of Rome, is about a post-war father and young son desperate to retrieve the stolen bicycle that would help them keep a job, thereby earning enough to support their hungry family. There’s certainly a father/son duo in River of  No Return, but their situation is far different. In remote nineteenth-century Idaho, a man newly out of prison (Robert Mitchum) locates the nine-year-old son (Tommy Rettig, later of Lassie fame) he’s never known. Mitchum’s Matthew is a tough but tender type (natch!), convicted of shooting a man who attacked his friend. Father and son are trying to homestead, when who should show up but a shifty gambler (Rory Calhoun) and his fiancée, Kay. She’s a dancehall cutie who had befriended Rettig’s young Mark in a western honkytonk before his father’s appearance in his life. (This allows Monroe to vamp her way through several musical numbers while wearing skimpy costumes.)

 Calhoun’s character proves his bad intentions by stealing Mitchum’s horse and rifle, the better to make his way to Council City and file the valuable goldmine claim he’s won in a crooked card game. So it’s left to Mitchum, Monroe, and Rettig to make it down the treacherous Snake River on a rickety raft to try to catch up with Calhoun in Council City. In so doing, they survive a large pile of movie cliches. Here are a few of them: (1) From time to time there are hordes of dangerous Indians sneaking around, but Mitchum dispatches one and all with ease. (2) Monroe is gutsy in the middle of raging rivers, but her clothing is fetchingly torn, so that she spends much of the film in a clingy camisole-type undershirt. (3) Little Rettig never ever complains.  (4) Mitchum is harsh to Monroe until midpoint, but can’t resist suddenly pulling her into a passionate clinch--  what’s a red-blooded male to do in her presence? She struggles out of his grasp, but (surprise!) she actually likes this kind of rough handling from a tough but tender guy. (5) There’s a surprise ending in which young Rettig, remembering his father’s teachings, improbably saves the day . . .  and they all live happily ever after.

 River of No Return was an expensive film for its studio, 20^th Century Fox. Not only were there star salaries to be paid but the movie was shot in Technicolor and Cinemascope, the better to show off the location footage of the towering Canadian Rockies. Of course stunt doubles helped with the more physical scenes, but there was still the challenge of Mitchum’s drinking habits as well as an injury that put Monroe’s leg in a cast. Still it’s fun, if forgettable. (What was it called, again?)  

 

Drawing from Life in Today’s Iran

Marjane Satrapi died this year, at the early age of 56. I knew her originally through her landmark graphic novel (she preferred to call it a comic book) which provides a vivid picture of her own eventful life story. Persepolis became an international bestseller, launching Satrapi on a major career as a writer, illustrator, and eventually filmmaker. From her adopted home in France she pursued her art, making sure none of us forget about the brutally disrupted lives of Iranian citizens who had once suffered under the Shah’s regime and then, even more so, under the theocratic rule of the radical Islamists who took power in 1979. Today, with the current U.S. actions against Iran threatening to become a “forever war,” there’s all the more reason to pay attention to Satrapi’s artistic legacy.

 It took me until now to watch the film version of Persepolis. I was prepared for the film’s story, but not for the beauty of its artwork, much of which conveys Satrapi’s eventful younger years in stark black & white. Her drawings, often done in silhouette and from distinctive angles, capture the stark lives of Iranian citizens, weighted down by heavy garments and denied the pleasures of secular music, dance, and jokes. She depicts herself as a perceptive and bold little girl, one who is quick to question a status quo she can hardly be expected to understand. Though her parents and wise grandmother love her dearly, they see how dangerous life can become for a child who is inquisitive and sometimes defiant. That’s why, at age 14, she is sent off to Austria, where she struggles to fit into a culture that’s hardly her own.

 Satrapi’s lively drawing pen shows young Marjane seeking companionship among Austrian dissidents and weirdos, initially pretending she is French-born. As she gets older, she goes through a series of not-very-welcoming landlords, and even finds herself  homeless for a time. A love affair ends in bitter disappointment, and at last—now a young woman with a distinctive beauty spot near her nose —she begs her parents to let her come back home.

 On go the chador and hijab. Like her Iranian friends, she tries hard to conform externally, while  secretly finding fun pursuing her western-style passions (which in childhood have ranged from monster movies to Bruce Lee to punk rock). But the government goons are always around, people important to her are disappeared or killed, and eventually she finds herself—after a tearful farewell to her parents and her soon-to-depart-this-earth grandma—boarding another plane, this time to France, where the real Satrapi happily lived out the rest of her life.

Frankly, I’m in awe of the skill that went into making this film, whose story is simple but whose artistry is certainly unmatched by anything Hollywood has to offer. That’s why the movie version of Persepolis (whose title reflects the ancient ceremonial capital of Persia) is so stunning. At the 80^th Academy Awards ceremony in 2007 it was nominated for Best Animated Feature, making Satrapi (who co-directed with French artist Vincent Parenmaud)) the first woman ever to receive an Oscar nomination in this category. No, it didn’t win: the statuette went to another very special—and much less disturbing—film, Pixar’s Ratatouille. In Europe, though, Persepolis earned prizes galore, at the same time that it was banned (as anti-Islamic) from several international film festivals.

 I’d love to say that Satrapi lived happily ever after. But after her Swedish husband died of cancer in 2025 she had no will to continue living. The word is that she “died of sadness.”    

 

 

 

 

The Soul of a Senator: “The Seduction of Joe Tynan”

Election Day 2026, which may prove to be the most consequential midterm contest in our nation’s history, is a good time to check back on an Alan Alda film from 1979. It was made during the period when Alda was starring on television’s M*A*S*H, and it showcases the multitalented Alda’s work as a writer as well as an actor. The Seduction of Joe Tynan is a clear-eyed look at the challenges faced by an idealistic young politician whose aspirations just might include a run for the White House.

 Alda’s hugely popular M*A*S*H role as Hawkeye Pierce, an idealistic young surgeon operating near enemy lines during the Korean War, led audiences to view him as an idealistic young actor who just might make an appealing liberal politician, in a movie or perhaps in real life. In the film, directed by Jerry Schatzberg, Joe Tynan is a U.S. Senator from New York. He’s smart, witty, and squeaky-clean, with a brainy therapist-wife  played by Barbara Harris. Early on the two are seen cuddling in bed, engaging in sexy banter. It’s clear they truly dig one another, but the fact that Joe keeps gloating over on his latest triumph in the halls of Congress hints that he has more on his mind than marital bliss. There are also two kids at home, including a teenaged daughter bent on rebellion against her parents, come what may, so clearly Joe has a lot to think about.

 Then a crusty old colleague from the other side of the aisle (a late-in-life performance by Melvyn Douglas) asks for Joe’s help regarding a rival’s nomination to the Supreme Court. In the course of deciding whether this new nominee can meet his own high-minded standards, Joe is introduced to a feisty Southern labor lawyer played by a very young Meryl Streep. Thougb she too is married, she and Joe quickly fall into a torrid affair, helped along by their mutual yen for politics as well as for one another. For a guy on the national political scene, it’s all too easy to be discreet: wife and kids are safely at home in New York, while he tools around DC, scheduling “meetings” with his pretty new “advisor.”

 Frankly, I had expected to see Senator Tynan’s political dreams come tumbling down as a result of his sexual misstep. But Alda the writer has other ideas. Joe quickly sees the error of his ways when his wayward teenaged daughter gets into a small medical crisis. (She develops hepatitis after getting her butt tattooed—and tattooing in 1979 was a REALLY big deal.) Yes, what’s been going on suddenly becomes clear to his wife, but she’s enough of a good political spouse to look past his indiscretions and keep her anger to herself.

 We end with the confetti and the hoopla of the Democratic Party’s national convention, at which Joe shakes off his jitters in order to wow the delegates with a rousing speech, while his wife does what a political spouse is supposed to do: look on proudly from the sidelines. Apparently, they’ve both been seduced by the promise of future glory. Fade out.

 The Seduction of Joe Tynan is not a great film. I believe Alda, as a writer, did better with another story about sex and marriage, The Four Seasons. (Yes, it was the source of the current Netflix miniseries, which  in its opening episode graciously gave the now elderly Alda a nice cameo role.) But I like the way Joe Tynan takes an Alda-like liberal politician and shows what makes him vulnerable . . .  and it’s not just sex.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pumpkin Spice Time

Since I have a late October birthday, I’ve always had great affection for Halloween. It was always an evening of fun  and candy for American kids, but these days it seems to have much expanded, and drawn in a great many more people of all ages.

In the U.S., Halloween hijinks generally involve things that go bump in the night. We’re expected to enjoy being a little bit scared, sometimes by visiting elaborate pumpkin patches, sometimes by tuning into scary movies like Halloween (of course), Nightmare on Elm Street, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Each year seems to bring a new crop of cinematic scare-stories. But, as a new exhibit at the Academy Museum points out, horror is not exactly a recent movie phenomenon. Universal Studios, for one, made its name back in the 1930s by introducing eerie horror films like Frankenstein and Dracula (both 1931). Even earlier, German Expressionists launched disturbing silent films like 1922’s Nosferatu.

One small hint of the long-range attraction of horror is the continuing survival of the Michael Jackson’s Thriller music video. Though it was introduced in 1983, it is still very much alive almost 50 years later. For anyone who’s been living under a rock for the past few decades, here’s a brief summary.  We begin in what looks like the 1950s, as Jackson and a pony-tailed cutie (Ola Ray) drive home from a date. He runs out of gas,  and they’re forced to get out and walk through a spooky forest. Suddenly she discovers he’s turning into what one source calls a “werecat,” with eerie eyes—and he seems determined to pursue her. Cut to a contemporary (by 1983 standards) movie theatre. The two are now modern kids watching the ghoulish film, But she’s frightened and wants to leave, and he’s chivalrous enough to accompany her home. That’s when ghouls and ghosts suddenly appear, and he becomes one of them, shimmying to a creepy ditty set against the voice of Vincent Price. So we’re in a reality vs. fantasy world, and Michael’s unfortunate date is terrified by the dark possibilities ahead.

What’s amazing to me is how that ghoulish dance number has endured. A member of my family has been practicing a slightly toned-down version of it, the better to join with a lot of costumed would-be ghouls who’ll perform together Saturday night under California’s Manhattan Beach pier. From what I’ve heard, a really large performance of the number shows up annually in New York’s Times Square, with all comers welcome. On a much lower level, some distinctive moves from the routine made their appearance today at my weekly gym class, led by an instructor decked out for the occasion in a pink poodle skirt, frilly bobby socks, and pearls.

Halloween is of course also the time to remember our dead. So let me take this moment to hail two of Hollywood’s finest. Sir Patrick Stewart of Star Trek: The Next Generation fame passed away this week at the ripe old age of 86. But I was personally more shaken by the demise of 93-year-old Tom Skerritt. Most fans will remember him from his award-winning role on TV’s Picket Fences, or from one of his many big films (like 1979’s Alien). But I worked with Tom on Roger Corman’s Big Bad Mama (1974), on which he vied with William Shatner to romance (sans clothes) a sexy Angie Dickinson. There was not much dignity to the role, but Tom told me how his brand-new agent was prepping him for better things. I guess it worked. A Halloween farewell to both men.

 

 

 

 

Five Finger Discount: “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York”

I freely admit that I’m lousy with modern technology. Yes, I use a cell phone, but it’s hardly my favorite mode of communication, and the subtleties of texting sometimes baffle me. I’ve written three books on a personal computer, but I can be thrown into a panic by documents that aren’t where they’re supposed to be. Smart watches are for me a total mystery. All of which makes me feel really old.

 That’s why I’m able to identify with John Turturro’s character, Harry Lehman, at the center of the new indie, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York. Harry doesn’t even own a cellphone, and the electronic transfer of money via cryptocurrency is as much of a mystery to him as it is to me. (When Harry mentions that a particular computer disk might be “sick,” even I know he’s trying to indicate that perhaps it has a virus.)  Then again, I can’t pretend to know anything about Harry’s special area of expertise. He’s an old-school pickpocket, roaming the five boroughs of New York in a wonderful old salt-and-pepper overcoat, delicately relieving passers-by of their wallets and watches.

 Well, it’s a living. But time is rapidly passing him by. No one seems to carry cash these days, and expensive designer wristwatches are giving way to mysterious electronic timepieces that can perform their own complex transactions if you know the right codes. So Harry’s skilled fingers, far behind the times, are nearly as useless as a buggy whip. Which is not to say that he’s stopped trying. At home in a shabby Bronx walkup lies his comatose wife, whom he tenderly keeps trying to feed, clothe, and entertain with musical numbers from the old days.

 The Only Living Pickpocket in New York has been called a heist picture, and so it is, but not in the usual sense. Harry’s daily routine is shattered once he delicately lifts a wallet from a young man in a flashy vintage car. This hot-headed young man, Dylan, turns out to have underworld family connections, and he’ll stop at nothing to get back what he’s lost, particularly his watch and a mysterious card that turns out to be a crypto wallet. With a little help from a street surveillance camera, Dylan connects Harry with the theft, and announces there will be hell to pay if that “card” that Harry has tried fencing isn’t returned to him, pronto. So Harry is soon scurrying all over the city to locate a device whose use he never quite understands.

 While trekking to Queens, he stops to try to re-connect with his estranged daughter, and takes time to instruct an aspiring pickpocket in the best way to steal a wallet on the subway. He also calls in favors from some longtime friends, among them a pawnshop owner played by the always welcome Steve Buscemi. But the fact remains that, because he’s shaken the complacency of some very scary people, his days seem to be numbered. So there’s a poignancy to this movie; the sense of time passing him by.

 A list of Turturro’s screen accomplishments includes some fascinating portrayals: like the title role of a talented but haunted writer in Barton Fink and the part of a brainy but hangdog contestant who’s part of a rigged TV competition in Quiz Show. Turturro is immensely talented, especially in quirky material, but he’s never quite been at the epicenter of the proceedings as he is here. His Harry may be a crook, but somehow his heart remains pure. He fully deserves all the acclaim he’s likely to get for this unlikely film. 

 

Going to the Car Wash

Boy, do I need a trip to the car wash! My trusty sedan badly needs a good cleaning. A recent overseas plane flight allowed me to re-watch a 1976 comedy that’s essentially an ode to the joys and sorrows of working at an urban locale designed for the cleansing of automobiles. This was the era when young Black filmmakers seemed to take special pride in singling out the idiosyncratic venues that anchored their own communities. (The trend stuck around: see the Barbershop series that debuted in 2002.)

 Car Wash was the third feature directed by a talented young African American named Michael Schultz (his father was German), following the success of another classic of Black cinema, Cooley High. I was surprised to discover that it was written by Joel Schumacher, his third produced screenplay before he moved on to a major directing career. (See, for instance, his The Lost Boys, and a number of action hits.) Car Wash features pretty much every established Black actor of that era. Ivan Dixon, Bill Duke, Garrett Morris are some of them, along with a splashy appearance by Richard Pryor as a shyster evangelist, Daddy Rich, who shows up in a stretch limo with the Pointer Sisters in the back seat. There are familiar white faces too, like George Carlin as a taxi driver who’s been fleeced by a passenger and “Professor” Irwin Corey, as a mysterious little man who might or might not be carrying a bomb.  

 The film takes place over the course of a single Friday, from opening to closing. Dee-Luxe Car Wash, an East LA. establishment that features old-fashioned handwashing, is owned by a white man with all the troubles of the world on his shoulders. (Among them is his college-age son who has developed an affinity for Chairman Mao and keeps trying to recruit his dad’s employees to the cause.) These employees are a motley crew: among them a jokester; a cowboy; an Indian; a guy with romantic troubles; two would-be song & dance men who keep rehearsing the new opening of their act. Most memorable is a flamboyant gay cross-dresser (played by Antonio Fargas) who disses one of his co-workers, “ "Honey, I am more man than you'll ever be and more woman than you'll ever get."

 The film pokes fun at the variety of customers who show up in expensive cars, such as the Beverly Hills matron who obsesses over the paint job on her luxury sedan while her young son endures a spate of projectile vomiting. There’s also fun to be had as patrons scurry in and out of the car wash’s public bathrooms with all sorts of deviltry on their minds. The film ends, though, on a serious note. Lonnie, the car wash foreman (Ivan Dixon) has a long-ago criminal record, but he’s trying hard to stay clean while raising two young children. As he’s closing up at the end of the day, he’s suddenly confronted by Duane (Bill Duke), an angry young Black man who, looking for a new approach to his apparently dead-end life, has discovered radical Islam and insists that he be addressed as Abdullah Mohammed Akbar. I won’t go into what happens between them, but it puts into perspective the fun & games of the rest of the film.

 Car Wash is hardly the sort of movie that wins Oscars. But the good folks at the Cannes Film Festival nominated it for the 1977 Palme d’Or, and director Schultz was given a Technical Grand Prize, with Norman Whitfield‘s funky musical score also hailed.