Good and Evil in the Films of Gene Hackman

Once upon a time, I felt the big mystery involving Gene Hackman was exactly why he got fired in 1967 from the plum role of Mr. Robinson, spouse of the notorious middle-aged housewife who beds young Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate. When I  researched the film for my Seduced by Mrs. Robinson, I put this question to producer Larry Turman. He had no good answer for me, saying only that this was a choice made by director Mike Nichols. The firing hardly hurt the finished film: Murray Hamilton was unforgettable in the role. And Hackman recouped by playing Buck Barrow in the same year’s Bonnie and Clyde, landing himself an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actor.

Today, of course, there’s a much sadder mystery to ponder:  what killed the 96-year-old retired actor, his decades-younger wife, and one of their three dogs inside their Santa Fe home? A report last Friday concludes Hackman died from a combination of Alzheimer’s and heart disease, following his wife’s very sudden death from Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome. (No word yet about what killed the dog.) All we fans can do now is remember Hackman in his prime, as an actor’s actor. Though he was never a handsome leading-man type, he carried his films with an artistry and power few can match.  

I’ve hardly watched all of Hackman’s 70-plus screen roles, but I’ve deeply admired his performances in films like The French Connection (for which he won his first Oscar) and The Conversation. Though he was most recognized for his work in dramas, I enjoyed seeing his comedic side emerge in projects like The Birdcage (in which he played a conservative U.S. Senator who discovers his daughter’s about to marry the son of a flamboyant gay couple). The sight of the straitlaced Senator Keeley dodging the press by dressing in drag and dancing to “We are Family” is matched in hilarity only by Hackman’s goofy scene as the cheery blind man in Young Frankenstein. 

Still, it was in serious dramas that Hackman found his permanent niche.  In his memory, I’ve just (re)watched two of them, 1988’s Mississippi Burning and 1992’s Unforgiven, the Oscar Best Picture recipient that won Hackman his second Oscar. Seeing them back to back, and remembering Hackman’s other celebrated roles, I came to an interesting conclusion. In Mississippi Burning, which chronicles the 1964 search for three missing civil rights activists in the American South, Hackman is on the side of the good guys. Though a former Mississippi sheriff, he now works for the FBI, assisting the by-the-book agent played by Willem Dafoe in tracking down the killers of the three young men. Certainly we can admire his values (as well as his gentleness toward the young woman married to a local deputy with clear Klan connections), but he can also be infuriating. He’s first seen cheerfully belting out a KKK theme song, and he’s prone to telling jokes that might certainly be offensive in this context. Moreover, his strategies for catching the perps are not entirely ethical (though they do work). In other words, he’s a good guy we’re not sure we like very much.

In Unforgiven, he’s again a lawman, this time in a small Texas town, circa 1880. He claims to have banned firearms, but Big Whiskey is rife with crime and violence, and he’s ultimately taken down (by star Clint Eastwood) late in the game. Still, he’s a fascinatingly genial guy, and we almost agree with his final insistence that he doesn’t deserve what he gets. Gene Hackman’s good bad-guys and bad good-guys will long stay with me. Hail and farewell. 

 

Losing It At the Movies: Memories of Local Movie Houses

Sean Baker, the newly minted king of the movie world, has publicly pleaded with studios and moviegoers to support local cinemas. This is a subject about which I too feel passionate. And so does my new friend Kendra Nordin Beato, a staff writer at the venerable Christian Science Monitor. Here’s a link to her recent—and fascinating—CSM article, titled ‘I didn’t know I needed it.’ Why neighborhoods rally to save movie houses.’ And here’s a companion link to a CSM audio featurette, A documentarian’s take on the magic of moviegoing, about a filmmaker currently chronicling the movement to preserve neighborhood theatres. 

Growing up in L.A., I was surrounded by a wealth of movie houses. Beyond exotic palaces like Grauman’s Chinese and the Egyptian, both glamorous venues on Hollywood Blvd., there were friendly local spots like the Picwood (where Pico met Westwood Blvd.) and the Picfair (yup, at Pico and Fairfax). Also the Stadium (now a synagogue), where generations of kids hung out at Saturday matinees. And Santa Monica’s own Aero, which during World War II played movies ‘round the clock, to accommodate shift workers at nearby aircraft plants. All of these were stand-alone theatres, usually featuring double-bills along with the occasional newsreel and a batch of cartoons.  (Joe Dante’s great little 1993 film, Matinee, captures what it was like for young movie-goers in 1962, though he also interpolates the Cuban Missile Crisis.) 

But the times they were a-changin’, and the stand-alones were either leveled or replaced by multiplexes. You picked one film from a menu of several of the latest releases . . .  and when it was over, you couldn’t hang around to watch it again. And forget about having a choice of seating in advance. 

Here are a few of my most vivid movie house memories: 

(1) The Graduate (1967) – Part of the thrill of this legendary romantic comedy was rooting for Benjamin and Elaine in their flight from the domination of their parents. Closely studying this film years later for my Seduced by Mrs. Robinson, I realized that the charm of the ending came from seeing young people openly defying the will of the previous generation. Movie theatres rocked with the cheers of young cinephiles. It wasn’t until years later, watching on our couches at home, that we all started to wonder: where will this newly-minted couple go from here? 

 (2) A Clockwork Orange (1971) – I remember seeing this bold Stanley Kubrick translation of the Anthony Burgess novel at the storied Grauman’s Chinese. The house was packed. When the cruel, sadistic rape scene (performed to the tune of “Singin’ in the Rain”) came on screen, all the men in the theatre seemed to erupt with gleeful laughter. Never have I ever felt so female . . . or so vulnerable. 

(3) Rocky (1978) – I’m hardly a fan of prizefighting. Still, I was all in for Rocky Balboa in his climactic fight against the champ, Apollo Creed. Watching this is a medium-sized house in the San Fernando Valley, I truly felt I was ringside for the fight of the century. Everyone in every seat felt the same way: we were all wonderfully united in cheering on the underdog in his bout against the pro. 

Then, as a young film critic, I watched Teshigahara’s 1964 Japanese masterpiece, Woman in the Dunes, completely alone in a large revival house. It’s a film about isolation—and I felt it in every fiber of my being. 

Kudos to Hollywood’s Quentin Tarantino, Jason Reitman, and others who’ve taken on the mission to preserve some legendary local theatres, like the UCLA-adjacent Village.  

 

And the Oscar Goes To . . .

The Oscar awards broadcast last Sunday night was fascinating, infuriating, and a bit dull—in other words, it was not much different from the shows of the recent past. New host Conan O’Brien added a bit of impish charm to the event: blessedly, he had a few effective political zingers, like the one praising ultimate top winner Anora for taking down powerful Russian oligarchs in a way that our political leaders recently failed to do. There were also splashy musical numbers, some of which were relevant (Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande encoring the big song from Wicked) and some which were decidedly not. Why the show felt the need for a musical salute to the James Bond franchise, featuring Margaret Qualley in a sexy dance number and then three (count ‘em) pop singers belting out Bond theme songs, I can’t begin to guess.

Mostly, the results of the Oscar balloting left me happy. It was great to hear Anora’s Sean Baker (who won a record-breaking 4 Oscars—for writing, editing, directing, and producing a single film) champion independent filmmaking as well as the importance of supporting neighborhood movie houses. 

Speaking of which, I’m newly back from New York City, where I visited the kind of local movie house that would warm Baker’s heart. Nitehawk Cinema, a stone’s throw from Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, specializes in indies, oldies, and oddities. A pre-show curtain-raiser is a fascinating compilation of old movie trailers and offbeat interviews, and you can order a nosh or a cocktail at your seat. My evening at the Nitehawk allowed me to watch the entire list of Oscar-nominated live action shorts. 

As always, in the short-film categories, most of the 2025 nominees were from faraway places. All of them under 30 minutes in length, they came from such faraway places as India, Croatia, and South Africa. My companion and I wholly agreed on the likely winner, but it turned out we were far off-base. Here’s the rundown:

“The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent,” from Croatia, is a very brief (13 minutes) and disturbing tale of a man removed from a train, at a time of political repression apparently connected to the Chechen War early in this century. The L.A. Times reviewer deeply admired this film, but we felt it was too cryptic to sustain our interest.

“Anuja,” officially American but shot in India (Mindy Kaling was a producer), deals with a smart-as-a-whip street child who must make a difficult choice about her future. Definitely likable, but (to my mind) clearly in need of more time and more money in order to carry the story to its logical conclusion. I’d love to see this as a feature-length film. One fascinating note: the child who starred in the movie is an actual street kid reliving a version of her own life story. 

“I Am Not a Robot”—from Holland, a highly original concept, and one that—at least at the start—allows for some welcome humor. Alas, toward the end it bogs down in sentimentality. 

“A Lien” (U.S.) – the title is weird, but this story of a husband and father unexpectedly being picked up at a citizenship hearing and targeted for deportation struck me as powerful and extremely pertinent. I had this pegged as a winner.

“The Last Ranger” (South Africa) – a deftly told tale of rhino poachers, and my second favorite.

The winner? “I Am Not a Robot.” The question is—did voters genuinely like this best, or did they go for a great title, without really assessing the quality of the film? Did they actually  watch these films at all? 

 

No Small Parts: J. K. Simmons in “Break Point”

Though I’m hardly a tennis player, I’ve been wanting to see the much-applauded tennis movie, Challengers. The world in which it’s set reminds me of how many great movies of the past have included tennis in at last one key scene. Just think of the mesmerizing tennis tournament scene in Hitchcock’s classic Strangers on a Train. (The action is on the court, but the audience should be paying attention to a spectator sitting quietly in the stands.) Tennis shows up in movies as different as Annie Hall (Alvy and Annie first meet on a tennis court) and Gigi (Leslie Caron’s girlish character, who cavorts all over the court, stands in joyous contrast to the stiff demoiselles who can’t be bothered to move at all). In Pat and Mike, Katharine Hepburn’s character famously melts down while playing against real-life tennis celebrity Gussie Moran. The recent King Richard is, of course, all about the father who raised tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams.

The 2014 film Break Point (not to be confused with the 2015 surfing flick Point Break) is an amiable comedy in which tennis takes center stage. It’s written by and stars Jeremy Sisto as a slovenly tennis pro who’s forced to team up with his estranged brother, a wholesome substitute teacher, in order to win a berth in a major tournament. There’s lots of tennis action, but this is more of a human-interest story in which two siblings accept each other’s different choices and a lonely kid finds a substitute family. 

Part of why Break Point is worth watching is the presence of J.K. Simmons, who plays the gruff but loving father of the two tennis-playing brothers. He’s his sons’ biggest fan, always front-row center at their matches. To be honest, I’d never heard of Simmons until 2014. He started making movies back in 1994, and I’m sure I spotted his bald head and his low-register voice in big films like Juno, Up in the Air, and Burn After Reading. He’s pretty well disguised with hair and mustache as J. Jonah Jameson in several Spiderman flicks, which gives me an excuse not to have recognized him there. But in any case he didn’t come into focus for me until the year that Point Break was made. That’s became 2014 was also when Damien Chazelle released Whiplash, in which—playing the leader of a college jazz ensemble—Simmons demands perfection to the point where he’s downright maniacal. The role of Terence Fletcher was Simmon’s first big chance for a truly bravura performance, and he hardly wastes it. The role landed him major critical acclaim, and other more showy roles, like that of William Frawley (the original Fred Mertz) in Being the Ricardos. Still, a guy’s got to eat, and Simmons’ filmography is filled with roles in forgettable films like The Tomorrow War and Ride the Eagle It’s not unusual for him to release six films in a single year. And he also keeps busy using that wonderful basso voice of his in videogames and animated features. He also sings, and has appeared on Broadway as Benny Southstreet in Guys and Dolls

Like J.K. Simmons, there are hundreds of characters actors who’ve long been the backbone of the movie industry. Their names aren’t always familiar to us, but we know their faces and appreciate their reliable professionalism. I interviewed Robert Forster when Whiplash won Simmons an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Forster, an Oscar nominee himself for Jackie Brown, was thrilled for his colleague, a real pro who had truly paid his dues in the motion picture industry.  

 

The Winterly Beauty of “Small Things Like These”

So this year’s Oscar ceremony is almost here. Meanwhile I want to write about  a movie totally absent from the list of nominees, though its star—who’s also one of its producers—won last year’s Best Actor Oscar for playing the title role in Oppenheimer. Cillian Murphy, born and raised in Ireland, had fallen in love with Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These, a tiny but powerful 2021 Irish novella known as the shortest work to ever become a finalist for the prestigious Booker Prize. It was he who assembled a production team that includes Matt Damon. 

The resulting film, now on Prime, is acutely sensitive to Keegan’s themes as well as her taut use of language. It’s a small story, as befits a book barely100 pages long. But its concerns are large, because it takes on the horrors of Ireland’s Magdalen laundries, in which—until as recently as 1996—Catholic nuns welcomed unwed mothers into their convents, only to exploit their labor and steal their babies. (Contraception was then illegal in Ireland, and the power of the Church was such that no one spoke out for decades about the abuses occurring in their towns.)  

The horrors of the system have been covered in other dramatic films and documentaries. Part of what makes Keegan’s work, and the film it inspired, unique is that the focus is on a man—a middle-aged dealer in gas and coal, circa 1985—whose working-class life is upended when he comes in contact with a victim of the nuns’ double-edged hospitality. Bill Furlong (played, of course by Murphy) has made a comfortable if not a posh, living for himself and his family, which includes a hard-working wife and five school-age daughters. His girls, all of them promising and well-loved, attend St. Margaret’s, “the only good school for girls” in the vicinity, and so it’s vital that he remain on excellent terms with the Mother Superior (a frosty Emily Watson) of the convent next door. All the locals have a sense of what’s going on behind the convent walls, but (as Bill’s wife Eileen tartly reminds him), “If you want to get on in life, there’s things you have to ignore.”

But Bill, a man prone to introspection, sees in the plight of pregnant young women’s the situation of his own mother. Pregnant with Bill at 16, she was graciously accepted by the local wealthy Protestant widow as domestic help, rather than being treated as a “fallen woman” and sent to labor for the nuns.  And though his mother suddenly died young, the kindly and childless Mrs. Wilson raised Bill in comfortable surroundings, then helped him to find education, a wife, and a business of his own. Now he relishes his role as pater familias, but there comes a time when he finds himself forced to make a difficult but thrilling choice. 

The story takes place at Christmastime, and the cold, damp weather seeps into the film. This makes it all the more stunning when the Mother Superior invites Bill into her cozy study with its blazing fire. The imagery of the novel—its use of crows, for instance, as an ominous symbol of the nuns’ power—is faithfully preserved on screen, and of course the soundtrack is filled with Christmas carols that ironically remind us of comfort and joy. I’m  only sorry that the mystery of Bill’s paternity, sustained throughout the novel, is pretty well answered in the film version, in a way that invites its own questions. 

Not everyone will like this film, but its harsh beauty shines bright in the winterly darkness. 

 

Color Me Movies (The Academy Museum Dazzles in Living Color)

The always interesting Academy Museum is hosting a big new exhibit until July of this year. Called “Color in Motion: Chromatic Explorations of Cinema,” it is part of the Getty organization’s latest ambitious region-wide arts festival. The festival, which used to be known by the umbrella term Pacific Standard Time, is now simply called PST Art, and the theme for the current iteration is Art & Science Collide. (Learn more at www.pst.art)   

Though I admit that “Chromatic Explorations of Cinema” sounds a bit dry, there’s plenty on the fourth floor of the Academy Museum to delight both adults and children. We start with a history lesson, about how color came to be added to the familiar black & white tones of early cinematography, often with the help of female employees who painstakingly tinted reels of filmstock by hand. (Walt Disney gets credit for figuring out how to colorize animated movies. His “Flowers and Trees” was the first commercially released film to be produced in the full-color three-strip Technicolor process,, while Snow White became America’s first feature-length cel-animated film.) But the exhibit also boasts huge introductory pops of living color, featuring clips from movies both American and foreign. Indian and Chinese filmmakers, it seems, have long been masters at using intense color to brighten romantic stories. Naturally we also get that most colorful of American stars, Marilyn Monroe—all red lips, yellow hair, and fabulous fuchsia gown—in a splashy number from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Not to mention Judy Garland’s Dorothy emerging from her drab Kansas home into the Technicolor dazzle of Oz  And the brilliantly clashing colors of Jets and Sharks in West Side Story.

One room, labeled “Color as Character,” features a rainbow display from the museum’s extensive costume collection, showing us how Jay Gatsby’s powder-pink suit, the baby-pink ensemble worn by Elle Woods in Legally Blonde, and Cruella de Vil’s outrageous black-and-red get-up from One Hundred and One Dalmatians shed light on the characters who wear them. Dorothy’s ruby-red slippers, we learn, were described as silver in L. Frank Baum’s original novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It was the geniuses at MGM who changed silver to scarlet the better to take advantage of color cinematography.  (And, of course, we get to see an exceedingly rare pair of the slippers, one of the museum’s treasures, displayed in a plexiglass case.) 

But from this point onward, the exhibit gets sublimely experimental. It seems that some avant-garde animators, sensing the power of color in the abstract, began shooting short films to show off the new artistic possibilities of the motion picture medium. The Academy exhibit displays samples of the work of Oskar Fischinger, a German-American artist who profoundly influenced the opening sections of Disney’s 1940 masterwork, Fantasia. Remember how the start of that animated film, in which Mastro Leopold Stokowski leads his orchestra through Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, is a vivid visual collage of intertwining shapes? Though Fischinger remains uncredited because of a falling-out with the Disney brass, his work was the starting point for this brilliant segment. But I found myself particularly entranced by a film credited to Mary Ellen Bute, whose visual artistry brings a whole new dimension to Franz Liszt’s entrancing Hungarian Rhapsody. She reportedly specialized in “visual music,” and her short films often played as curtain-raisers at prestige movie palaces like Radio City Music Hall.   

Of course, everyone loves do-it-yourself exhibits, and this one ends with opportunities for the spectator to play with color on a huge screen, to a musical accompaniment. A good time is definitely had by all. 

 

Liza Minnelli: A Star Was Born

The new documentary,  Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story, made me curious about the movie career of one of Broadway’s favorite song-and-dance divas, Liza Minnelli. After all, Liza (still alive and kicking at age 78) is the daughter of two charter members of the Hollywood pantheon, director Vincente Minnelli and the incomparable Judy Garland. 

Liza made her first screen appearance as a babe in arms at the end of one of her mother’s musical films, The Good Old Summertime (1949). Her first credited role came in 1967’s Charlie Bubbles, as an ingenue opposite Albert Finney, who both starred and directed. But it was in 1969 when she truly made a splash: her role as a needy college co-ed in something called The Sterile Cuckoo led to her nomination for a Best Actress Oscar, along with such dramatic icons as Genevieve Bujold (Anne of the Thousand Days), Jane Fonda (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?), Jean Simmons (The Happy Ending) and ultimate winner Maggie Smith (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie). The following year she was featured as a disfigured young woman in another highly emotional dramedy, Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon. The death by overdose of forty-seven-year-old Judy Garland on June 22, 1969 had left Liza bereft just as she was entering young womanhood. Judy’s own youthful screen career had seen her frequently cast as a girl-next-door type, even though her huge singing voice contained paradoxical notes of what one critic has called “fragility and resilience.” For Liza, I would choose the word “waif.” Directors seemed to see in her someone who was hurting, but knew how to cover her grief with sheer pizzazz.

It all came together for Minnelli in 1972, when she snagged the female lead in the film version of Cabaret. Director/choreographer Bob Fosse knew how to capitalize on her combination of little-girl-lost pathos and brassy insouciance (as well as her musical skills and her long, long legs) to fill out the character of Sally Bowles. Sally, who first appeared in Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin, was portrayed as the top chanteuse at the city’s seedy Kit Kat Klub, at a time when Hitler and his thugs were taking over German life. It was the perfect melding of performer and role, and it won her the Best Actress Oscar in 1973.. (Also in 1972, Minnelli scored another triumph with her televised concert film, Liza with a Z.)  

Though after 1972, Minnelli’s continuing screen success would have seemed assured, she ran into a series of roadblocks. Projects that looked good on paper—like 1975’s Lucky Lady and 1977’s New York, New York—turned out to be expensive flops. Liza herself faced health crises (exacerbated by recreational drug use) and went through a pack of mostly unsuitable husbands and lovers. She craved motherhood, but it was not to be. 

It wasn’t until 1981 that she had another bona fide hit movie, 1981’s Arthur, in which she plays a scrappy waitress who unexpectedly becomes the love interest of a childish (and generally drunk) millionaire, portrayed with gusto by Dudley Moore. To be honest, I watched Arthur again recently, and found  much of it rather repugnant. To me there’s nothing particularly hilarious about a falling-down drunk, even if he generally means well. But the film won an Oscar for John Gielgud’s portrayal of a cranky but endearing butler. And Minnelli and Moore have some charming moments—notably when, upon first meeting, they instantly launch into spritely husband-and-wife banter to conceal the fact that she’s just been apprehended for shoplifting an expensive tie. The waif, it seems, also rises. 

 

A Colorful Take on “Carmen”

I’ve been wanting to write about Carmen Jones, and the death of Olga James at age 95 gives me a good (though sad) excuse. Though I saw this film only recently, I’ve been aware of it for many years. My parents, who prided themselves on being open-minded, admired the special flair of Black entertainers like Lena Horne, Pearl Bailey, and Harry Belafonte. Their passion for the whimsical 1943 all-Black fantasy-film, Cabin in the Sky (starring Ethel Waters and Eddie “Rochester” Anderson) transferred to me, and I love watching it to this day, regarding it as essential comfort-cinema. When Carmen Jones made its screen debut (following a hyper-successful Broadway run) in 1954, I was much too young to see it. But now that I have, I can understand my parents’ enthusiasm. This despite the fact that the two lead performers, both well-known professional singers with movie-star looks and credentials, were dubbed by more operatic voices.

Admittedly, the score of Carmen Jones is not an easy one to sing. It is, at base, Georges Bizet’s Carmen, transferred by lyricist and scenarist Oscar Hammerstein II from the streets and bull-rings of Spain to a small military town in North Carolina, midway through World War II. Carmen, still a seductive vixen, now works in a parachute factory; the  opera’s Don José has become the clean-cut “flyboy” Joe, who’s bound for officer candidate school. The glamorous toreador of the opera has turned into a champion prizefighter, Husky Miller, who whisks Carmen off to Chicago and decks her out in diamonds and furs. Though the language of the songs is contemporary, the score is still highly operatic in nature. I’m told it was a then-unknown Marilyn Horne who supplied star Dorothy Dandridge’s singing voice for the film. The handsome, good-natured Joe, who fails to resist Carmen’s seductive moves on him, is appealingly played by Belafonte, but he (or rather his vocal substitute) is hardly singing calypso .Naturally, there’s a tragic ending.

Before today I had never heard of Olga James, and was wholly unaware of her showbiz career. But a photo that accompanied her obituary in the Hollywood Reporter quickly brought her back to me. For the film version of Carmen Jones James was cast as Cindy Lou (think Micaëla), the sweet country girl whom Joe is planning to marry before Carmen gets her hooks into him. James, who hailed from a showbiz family, trained at Juilliard for a career in classical music, and so she was well equipped to sing arias like “My Joe” and the mournful “He Got His Self Another Woman.” She does so beautifully and poignantly; of all the tragedies in the story, hers is doubtless the saddest, because she does everything right but still loses out on love. (Interesting sidenote: James was married to jazz sax great Cannonball Adderley until his death at age 45.)   

The notion of a Hollywood musical with an all-Black cast is of course something out of a very different era. (Similarly, musicals in which the entire cast is white now seem hugely retrograde.) Though I’m hardly a fan of segregation on movie screens or anywhere else, I remain glad that talented Black performers of earlier eras got to show what they could do, and weren’t always stuck in supporting roles as cheery Pullman porters and feisty kitchen help. One other sidenote: African-American dancers who lived near Hollywood could count on occasional movie work in musicals like this one. In the film’s big dance scene, I love spotting Carmen de Lavallade, my very first dance teacher, and later a major star of the American dance world. 

 

Ripley: Believe Him or Not

A few months back, following the death of Alain Delon, I watched the 1960 French thriller, Purple Noon, which helped launch Delon’s career as a screen idol. It was a colorful flick about deception and mayhem, and boasted not one but two impressive twists at the end. It wasn’t until recently that I learned that this film was based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 The Talented Mr. Ripley, the first in a string of five novels featuring a young American who’s adept at impersonating others, for his own personal gain. Much more recently, Netflix showcased Ripley, a eight-part miniseries based on Highsmith’s first Ripley novel. I watched the critically acclaimed series from start to finish, thrilling to its take on the Ripley character and on its spectacularly detailed black-and-white cinematography.

Though the Texas-born Highsmith spent her adult life in Europe, her story has always had an All-American hustler at its center, and of course Hollywood eventually provided us with an American take on her plot. The 1999 film written and directed by Anthony Minghella (known for his Oscar-winning The English Patient) starred a  youthful Matt Damon in the title role. Key supporting parts were played by Gwyneth Paltrow, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Cate Blanchett, with a very young Jude Law in the key supporting role of the wealthy, feckless Dickie, Ripley’s first victim. (It won him an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actor.)

Though I confess I’ve never read the novel that started it all,  the contrast between the various screen versions has been fascinating. The French-language film much admired by Highsmith stands out for its gorgeous leading man, its spectacular Italian locales, and some nifty surprises that make a sequel unlikely. The TV miniseries apparently sticks far closer to the mood and plot of the original. I was fascinated by Andrew Scott’s playing of Ripley not as a charismatic rogue but as a sort of nonentity, a quiet con artist who succeeds because he seems to blend in everywhere he goes, with no one quite able to spot the fact that he’s dangerous. A snake in the grass, without question. 

Then there’s Minghella’s Hollywood version. The leading role is played by Matt Damon, clearly chosen in part for the youthful innocence of his looks. (I’ve read that Leonardo di Caprio was an earlier choice for the part.) Whereas the Tom Ripley of the TV miniseries is an experienced grifter, bilking the unwary whose medical bills he’s stolen, Damon’s Tom starts out looking like a clean-cut young man, a pianist sensitively accompanying a classical singer at a house concert. He doesn’t seem to be on the make until opportunity suddenly drops into his lap, giving him a trip from NYC to an Italian beach resort to persuade the scion of a wealthy American family to quit loafing around and come home. 

Damon’s Tom Ripley and Jude Law’s Dickie Greenleaf quickly bond over a passion for jazz. (The role of music in the film is an effective change from the miniseries, in which Dickie—though by no means talented—aspires to a career as an artist and Tom claims to share his interest in Caravaggio.)  As we see from the start, Damon’s Tom really does love music . . . and quickly comes to love the handsome, mercurial Dickie. Every bad thing his Tom does seems almost accidental; his most dastardly deeds stem from spur-of-the-moment decisions made in time of crisis. He’s played, in a low-key way, as a closeted homosexual, one whose self-loathing leads him in dangerous directions. We’re supposed to end up feeling sorry for the guy. I ask you: what’s the fun in that?

 

Over the Rainbow: “The Florida Project”

My enthusiasm for Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or- winning Anora led me to wonder about Baker’s earlier films. At fifty-three, he’s not exactly a boy wonder, but until now his work has mostly been seen on the indie circuit. Starting in 2000, he’s been writing, directing, and editing small films that explore the lives of marginalized Americans of all stripes. He seems to have particular sympathy for undocumented immigrants and sex workers, and has placed them at the center of many of his stories. He also relishes using non-actors in central roles that reflect their own shaky situation in life. 

Years ago, I couldn’t resist watching Tangerine (2015), after I found out how it was made. This Christmas-eve tale of a transgender sex worker who’s being cheated on by her lover/pimp was shot on the mean streets of Hollywood by Baker and his crew using (instead of conventional cameras) three iPhone smartphones. Remarkably, it worked. Though the story sounds impossibly grim, there are also moments of great poignancy and even humor in Tangerine. This, Baker’s fifth film, brought him major attention from critics’ groups like the Independent Spirt Awards. The Palm Springs Independent Film Festival, for one, named him a Director to Watch.

Baker’s sixth feature, The Florida Project (2017) was filmed more conventionally, and debuted in the Directors’ Fortnight section of the Cannes Film Festival, It was the first of Baker’s films to feature a major Hollywood actor, Willem Dafoe, but the film’s real star is Brooklynn Prince, a veteran actress who began her career at age 2. She was about 7 when she starred in The Florida Project as Moonee, a plucky kid who lives with her mom in a cheap motel managed by Dafoe’s sympathetic but often frustrated landlord. 

Moonee’s mom Halley was played by first-timer Bria Vinaite. Halley is a well-tattooed ex-stripper who’ll try just about anything—including drug sales, larceny, and prostitution—to house and feed herself and her daughter. (Needless to say, there’s no dad around.) She’s an angry young woman with a talent for scrounging and a very foul mouth, but at the same time she’s a loving mom who, when in a rare good mood, can delight Moonee with offbeat adventures. 

The Florida Project, named for an early codeword for Disney World, wants us  to see life chiefly from Moonee’s youthful perspective. For her and the other kids who live in the seedy but colorful Magic Castle Motel, there’s always time for fun, especially in summer. They try spitting on cars from the motel’s second- floor walkway; they gawk at the lady who sunbathes topless near the motel pool; they start a small fire that nearly destroys an abandoned housing project. Adult supervision is almost nil, and Moonee’s future may be bleak.  But meanwhile she’s enjoying her freedom.

The slow, relaxed pace of the storytelling encourages us to revel in the gorgeous Florida landscape. The film—dazzling in its sunny cinematography--was shot in Kissimmee, a stone’s throw from Walt Disney World, and a would-be fantasy environment hangs over everything. Moonee’s motel ($38 a night) is a startling shade of lavender, and the nearby Futureland Motel, home of new buddy Jancey, is painted pink and turquoise. We’re on the outskirts of Disney’s sprawling theme park, but a good distance from the well-curated fantasy venue enjoyed by well-heeled tourists. In recompense, Moony and her friends enjoy brilliant sunsets, dramatic rainstorms, lush foliage, and exotic waterfowl. The film’s endling essentially slips into their romantic dreams.  Too bad they will one day have to grow up and discover the harsher, darker world their parents know. 

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Creeping Through a House, Darkly

Does Neil LaBute dislike women? A common complaint about this award-winning playwright and film director is that he’s a total misogynist who goes out of his way to vent hostility toward what used to be called “the fair sex.” I don’t agree with this assessment: yes, his view of humanity is dark indeed, but I don’t think (judging from what I know of his body of work) that he favors one gender over the other. His characters can be brutal—and sexuality can be the spark that ignites their rage against one another—but he’s an equal opportunity misanthrope. From what I’ve seen, on the screen and in theatres, he doesn’t like anybody very much.

This is not to say that LaBute is a brute in real life. He is married, he has children; for all I know he’s a reliable friend and neighbor. Formerly, during his college years at Brigham Young University, he apparently became (like several good friends of mine) a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Though I’ve corresponded briefly with Neil, I can’t pretend to have anything like a close connection with him. I gather, though, that the sunny optimism of the Mormons in my life doesn’t entirely mesh with his outlook, or with the thrust of his writing and directing career.  

I think what fascinates LaBute is dominance: the way people are prone to seek control over those around them. And, at times, the way the victims contribute to their own subjugation. Those who suffer most usually deserve what they get, either because they’re naïve or because they’re greedy for something to which they’re not really entitled. The latter possibility shows up in the 2022 film I’ve just seen, one that LaBute both wrote and directed. House of Darkness seems ominous from the beginning, when a car pulls up in front of a creepy mansion in the woods. It’s late at night, of course, and no one is around except for the car’s occupants. Hap (Justin Long) is an ultra-cool finance bro, full of quips and self-confidence. Mina (Kate Bosworth) looks angelic, with her filmy white dress and long golden tresses. They’ve just met at a bar in the city, quickly bonded, and he gladly agreed when she asked for a ride home. It’s absolutely clear what’s on his mind, and this is confirmed when (as she goes off to fix some drinks) he has a cellphone chat with the buddy he left behind. He’s gloating about his good fortune . . . but his high spirits don’t last long. 

LaBute likes chamber pieces, in which a very few actors (often in an enclosed space) carry the film. This aesthetic preference also makes good sense: it’s certainly much easier to finance and produce a movie with a small cast and a single location. About half of House of Darkness takes place in what seems to be a mating dance between Hap and Mina, but then several new arrivals appear, changing everything. Mina’s name should give us a clue, but the sudden emergence of someone named Lucy makes it obvious: LaBute is playing with the dramatis personae surrounding Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I love the fact that in LaBute’s film these are tantalizing women in charge of their own destinies. The classic cinematic view of Dracula comes to us by way of Bela Lugosi’s 1931 film portrayal. In the movies, he’s a sexy man who lures innocent young women to a fate worse than death. Here LaBute has fun flipping the script, but Hap deserves (almost) everything he gets. 

 

Liza Minnelli: Getting By With a Little Help from Her Friends

I have a faint recollection of seeing Liza Minnelli perform on television when she was a mere teenager. She was coltish, even gawky, and I suspected that she owed her spot on the tube to her legendary parents, singer/actress Judy Garland and director Vincente Minnelli. It’s certainly true that Liza has had, all her life, the twin advantages of money and connections. But the label of Poor Little Rich Girl truly fits her. She was all of twenty-three when her mother died of a barbiturate overdose. True to form, she jumped in to make the necessary arrangements, while also taking in hand her younger half-sister and half-brother.

Bruce David Klein’s new documentary, Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story, captures the now seventy-eight-year-old Minnelli in all her ebullient glory. We see her as she is now, still chain-smoking, still belting out that memorable cackle, still enjoying life to the fullest, and we also catch glimpses of her back when she was just starting out. Klein is a veteran TV writer, director, and producer whose work has explored a number of wildly assorted topics. I heard him speak at a screening presided over by my long-ago UCLA film critic buddy, Stephen Farber, and it was clear that Klein—like most of the world—had fallen under Liza’s spell. 

In crawling out from her mother’s shadow, Liza was blessed by a series of formative friendships. Always modest about her own accomplishments, she does credit herself with a talent for choosing mentors. Her godmother,  Kay Thompson, helped teach her to put pizzazz into her life. (Thompson, known for her “Think Pink” role in the film Funny Face, was also the author of the Eloise books about a precocious child who lives at New York’s Plaza Hotel. Minnelli herself is often considered one model for this supremely self-assured tyke.) The musical theatre team of John Kander and Fred Ebb were strong influences on her performance style, leading to her Oscar-winning performance in the film Cabaret as well as the much-lauded TV special, Liza with a Z. Bob Fosse served as her choreographer, finding unique ways to showcase her dance skills. When she needed to develop a personal style that distinguished her from her mother, Halston was on hand to create for her the glittery costumes that showed off her long dancer’s legs. (I learned from Klein that Liza, when on stage before a live audience, performs with such intensity that she tends to get sweaty. That’s why Halston turned to sequins to detract, with their sparkle, from her inevitable perspiration.)  

Though Liza’s circle of friends may seem glamorous, she doesn’t only hobnob with fellow celebrities, Much featured in the documentary are a retired dentist and his wife who’ve been close friends of Liza’s for decades. Over the years, she’s been closely connected with their children as well, and everyone who knows her speaks of her generosity. An example: when one Kander and Ebb musical, Chicago, was playing in its original Broadway run, star Gwen Verdon had to leave the production for several weeks to undergo surgery. There was a very real chance that her absence would cause the show to close. When she learned of the situation, Minnelli jetted in from Europe to play the Roxie Hart role, but insisted there be no big press release to tout her appearance. This was simply, in her mind, something she wanted to do to help friends who had always been there for her.  

Minnelli’s instruction  to documentarian Klein: “Don’t put in anything foolish.” What we see is the unvarnished Liza, not foolish at all. 

“Nickel Boys”: Style Over Substance

I was looking forward to seeing the cinematic adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s acclaimed 2019 novel about two young Black men stuck in a brutal reform school in 1960s Florida. (The Nickel Academy is modeled on an actual Florida school, now thankfully closed, at which students—especially those of color –were long badly mistreated, sometimes sexually assaulted, and even murdered.) 

The story of Nickel Boys seemed an important one, and I was fascinated by reports that the film was shot entirely through what filmmakers call POV (or point of view), so that the world of young Elwood and Turner was shown exclusively through their eyes. In other words, the audience would see precisely what the characters themselves were seeing, as a way of drawing us into their lived experience. Movies have included this technique almost from the beginning: when the hero is gazing at a lovely vista, or a pretty girl, or a herd of bison, we briefly glimpse these things as though we shared his exact perspective. But, under the direction of RaMell Ross, Nickel Boys pushes this conceit a great deal further, telling virtually his entire story subjectively.

Clearly, Ross’s goal is to pull us in to the lives of two unfortunate young men by immersing us in the sights and sounds of what they experience. Critics have responded to his attempt with enthusiasm, nominating Nickel Boys for many awards. The Film Academy too was suitably impressed, placing the film among its ten nominees for Best Picture. I gather that—for whatever reason—the Directors Guild was less admiring. Ross was not among the five nominees for the Guild’s top award this year, nor was he chosen by the Academy’s directors branch as one of the five up for the Best Director Oscar. 

I saw Nickel Boys in the company of three other moviegoers. One had read the novel; two had not. Though I had not read Whitehead’s work, I did have a sense of what the novel was about and what the filmmaker was trying to accomplish. All of us came away frustrated, feeling that we’d been bombarded by visuals that didn’t always make sense, and that the basic storyline had eluded us. Yes, there were things to admire, particularly in Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor’s sympathetic portrayal of Elwood’s grandmother. And I see why it was an attractive challenge to show Elwood overwhelmed by the world around him, including televised shots of freedom riders and Martin Luther King’s soaring speeches. Mostly, though, I found myself constantly aware of the camera’s tricks, of how the film relied on mirrors and shiny surfaces to occasionally let us see the two Nickel Boys of the story rather than just hearing them speak. Frankly, it all made me a bit dizzy. 

There’s a major scene near the end, one that’s setting up what is going to be a key revelation. It takes place in a bar, and the two characters in conversation are both older now—and both survivors of the hellish Nickel Academy. They’re surprised (and not entirely glad) to recognize one another, though both seem to be painfully making their way in the outside world.  For reasons that come clear only later, one has his back to the camera throughout the entire conversation. Was I paying attention to what they were saying? Or to the emotion beneath their words? Well, I tried to. But I kept being distracted by struggling to figure out whose point of view we were sharing, through whose eyes we were seeing this. That’s what happens when a movie puts style ahead of substance.  

 

 

Everything But the Bathroom Sink: “The Brutalist”

You can’t say that writer/director Brady Corbet lacks ambition. During the three hours and thirty-five minutes of screentime that make up The Brutalist, he shoehorns in such pressing topics as racial and ethnic bias, religious intolerance, drug addiction, sexual perversity, and what it feels like to be an artist in thrall to a wealthy businessman. I’d heard that The Brutalist is the story of a Holocaust survivor, and so it is. But for the Hungarian architect László Tóth, a proud product of Bauhaus training before Hitler came to power, America is not much of an improvement over Nazi Germany. In fact, the movie as a whole turns out to be an unrelieved diatribe against American life disguised as an immigrant saga.

Brutalism, as the film never gets around to explaining, is a school of design that became popular in the postwar years, one that features massive forms and heavy, raw materials like concrete. This is the style of the building project that dominates the film: Tóth’s design for an elaborate community center complete with library and chapel. The ideas are his (and a brief laudatory moment in the film’s epilogue finally makes clear to us how impressive they are). But the money comes from an impulsive and irascible tycoon who likes to be viewed (when it suits him) as a champion of modern art. He’s Harrison Lee Van Buren, and the name itself seems a ham-fisted way of reminding us that he’s American to the core. And, especially in a late-in-the-film scene where he’s truly—and unconvincingly—vicious to his protégé, he can be considered a brutalist too. 

The two main actors in this epic drama deserve praise. Adrien Brody, who won an Oscar back in 2002 for portraying a Polish Holocaust victim in The Pianist, is the ideal choice to play the long-suffering László. Tall and thin, with unkempt hair and a wild look in his eye, he seems about to cry even in moments when he’s genuinely happy. I was also impressed by Guy Pearce as the proud, mercurial rich man who holds László’s future in his hands. (I recall I first discovered Pearce, in a very different mood, as a drag queen in Australia’s 1994 hit, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.)  But in the key role of László’s wife, an invalid who is unable to reunite with her beloved spouse until the film is half over, the usually reliable Felicity Jones struck me as unconvincing. Her accent, for one thing, seems effortful. But she’s also been asked by the script to behave in ways that seem well outside the range of what’s possible for her. 

That’s my number-one problem with The Brutalist. The central characters in the film quite often behave not like human beings but like symbols I could cite many examples: moments of extreme love and extreme hate appear in the story not because they’re consistent with a character’s inner workings but because they make a point that the director (who’s also the writer) deems important. For instance, while I can understand László’s ardent natural sexuality coming to the fore at inappropriate times, what we see on screen always seems to be a message from Corbet to the viewer. 

My moviegoing companion— someone who shared my experience of this long, drawn-out, rather lugubrious story (thank heavens for that intermission!)—commented later that it was much more enjoyable to discuss the film afterwards than it was to sit through it. Yes, The Brutalist can’t be faulted for the strength of its ideas. But I couldn’t get past the clashing of all those symbols.  

 

Dancing through Time: “Wicked”

Time marches on? Time dances on? I only know that I seem to have become too grown-up to thoroughly enjoy Wicked. Yes, of course I still love watching what happens to Dorothy and her pals when they journey from Munchkinland to the Emerald City in the classic 1939 film. It’s a movie I’ve adored since childhood when, months before I actually got taken to see it, I pasted a newspaper photo of Glinda and Dorothy in my scrapbook. The screening I was so excited about was, of course, an encore presentation. The film’s debut occurred long before I was born—and long before the movie industry had adopted basic safety practices to protect actors from harm. I strongly recommend Aljean Harmetz’s The Making of the Wizard of Oz, first published in 1977 and now available in an illustrated anniversary edition, to anyone who wants to read hair-raising stories of the dangerous conditions on that set. 

The 1939 production was hardly the first attempt to film L. Frank Baum’s classic children’s tale. I’m told there’s a silent version dating back to 1925. But after the success of the Judy Garland vehicle, Hollywood tried several times to film other of Baum’s Oz books, with mixed results. (Does anyone remember Fairuza Balk in 1985’s Return to Oz?) More inspiring was the screen version of the Broadway hit, The Wiz, in which the familiar story of Dorothy and her friends is re-imagined in an African-American context, with such stars as Diana Ross (Dorothy), Michael Jackson (as the Scarecrow), Lena Horne (Glinda), and Richard Pryor (The Wizard of Oz) giving an urban twist to the saga, which starts on the mean streets of Harlem instead of on the Kansas prairies.  

I’ll say this for Wicked: it’s a thorough rethinking of Baum’s original story. Wicked began as a 1995 novel by Gregory Maguire, subtitled The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. I found its prose rather ponderous, but it cleverly explores the nature of evil by looking at the evolution of a young woman named Elphaba from pathetic misfit to incarnation of all things witchy. The novel became a 2003 hit musical, thanks at least in part to Stephen Schwartz’s songs, with a big assist from the performances of Adina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth. (Both get nice little cameos in the film version.)

The new movie, which is certainly doing its share of saving the financially precarious film industry, is actually Wicked, Part I. It’s also, I trust, introducing a new generation to the joys of movie musicals. Under the direction of Jon M. Chu, who had previously scored with Crazy Rich Asians and the Lin Manuel Miranda musical, In the Heights, it is visually impressive, with the palace of Oz, the complicated hair-do of Madam Morrible, and the frilly all-pink wardrobe of Galinda all given loving attention. The singers really sing; the dancers really dance. And Chu’s openness to casting actors of many backgrounds—especially Cynthia Erivo as the green-skinned Elphaba—adds a nice subliminal message about society’s scorn for those whose skin is a different shade. 

So what’s not to like? I guess for me (but not for the younger folks with me, including a starry-eyed ten-year-old) the movie felt overly long and overly effortful. The very earnestness of the film’s social issues (which get tangled up with a subplot about the mistreatment of animals) seemed overwrought to the point of dullness. Yes, I loved Ariana Grande’s rendition of the show’s best song, “Popular,” But I’m not counting the days until we get to see Wicked, Part II. 

 

Whatever Happened to Vera Miles?

Vera Miles? Whatever happened to her? And who was she, anyway? Miles, who’s alive and well at 95, was an Oklahoma-born, Kansas-bred beauty pageant winner who found her way to Hollywood in 1949. She played key supporting parts in films directed by John Ford (The Searchers) and Alfred Hitchcock (The Wrong Man, in which she was the wife of Henry Fonda, playing a real-life jazz musician falsely accused of robbery). She also was several times cast by the Disney folks as a lovable wife and mom, often in tandem with Fred MacMurray or Brian Keith, perhaps reflecting her own real-life role as the mother of four children. She also regularly appeared in featured roles on television. Despite all this, in her forty-five year career she never truly moved beyond second-tier stardom. 

Things might have turned out differently in the late Fifties if Miles, who was then under personal contract to Alfred Hitchcock, had gone through with Hitchcock’s plan to star her as the female lead in Vertigo. Hitchcock favorite Grace Kelly had moved from the soundstages of L.A. to the throne of Monaco, and Miles was singled out as a suitable replacement. Said the Master of Suspense, “Miss Miles is going to be one of the biggest stars of Hollywood because she has understanding and depth and ability and lovely legs.”  To that end, he ordered a fabulous wardrobe for Miles, and cranked up the Hollywood publicity machine. But life intervened. Hitchcock’s need for gall bladder surgery delayed the production, as did time-off requested by the hard-working male lead James Stewart. And then Miles had the nerve to become pregnant with her third child, a move that Hitchcock considered something of a personal insult. (He was to say in later years, “I hate pregnant women because then they have children.”)  So Kim Novak got the plum dual role of Madeleine Elster and Judy Barton instead, though Hitchcock did feature Miles in his television dramas and in a key supporting part as Marion Crane’s sister in Psycho.

I know all the above because of Christopher McKittrick’s new biography, Vera Miles: The Hitchcock Blonde Who Got Away, coming in March from University Press of Kentucky. There’s no question that McKittrick has done his homework. Though he never had the opportunity to speak to Miles directly, he seems to know everything there is to know about her life and times, and in passing fills us in on everyone with whom she ever connected. Though it’s interesting seeing her on the set of masterworks like Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, I was most impressed with Miles’ evolution in later years into a woman who knew how to stand up for herself, one who clearly saw the lack of meaty roles for women and became determined to do something about it. (I’d love to know what she thinks about the current crop of films like Anora, The Substance, and Emilia Pérez—as well as last year’s Poor Things—whereby today’s actresses are coming to dominate the industry in which she once played a significant part. As someone always considered ladylike, she might not be pleased by the outrageous roles Hollywood’s women are now undertaking.) 

McKittrick considers it refreshing that Miles, far from becoming a burned-out Hollywood cautionary tale, largely ran her career on her own terms. As he puts it, “If opportunities like that of Vertigo passed her by because she chose other, more personally fulfilling paths for her life, those were decisions she was happy to make and has continued to stand by in her retirement.”  

 

The Fire Next Time: Roger Corman and Disaster Movies

I haven’t wanted to write about the terrible conflagrations in my part of the world because it just makes me too sad. Life in West Los Angeles right now seems, in bizarre and tragic ways, to be mirroring the climactic Burning of Los Angeles as depicted in The Day of the Locust. (This 1939 novella was made into a 1975 John Schlesinger film, but for me its on-screen finale doesn’t match in any way the power of Nathanael West’s original prose.)

 I’m lucky, at least, to be in a Santa Monica neighborhood that’s currently not being threatened, though of course anything’s possible. But friends (some of them elderly) have lost everything, and the heartbreak around here is overwhelming. Still, with stiff upper lip I’m turning away from the tragedy here to write about my late boss, low-budget filmmaker Roger Corman, and how he tried to turn disasters to his advantage.

 While I was Roger’s story editor at Concorde-New Horizons, in 1989,  there was a major earthquake in the vicinity of San Francisco. It’s almost impossible to photograph an earthquake, since (believe me!) quakes happen without warning, so capturing the actual shaking on film wasn’t a consideration. Still, Roger dispatched a small film crew, which came back to L.A. with some unimpressive footage of cracks and rubble. Then there was the matter of a script. At first Roger got caught up with the issue of shoddy infrastructure, and wanted to make the villain of his piece a bureaucrat beholden to private interests who ignored safety protocols when issuing building permits. For this (with my encouragement) he hired a very good writer of prose fiction, Madison Smartt Bell, in hopes that he would become the next John Sayles, a man who could graduate from page to screen.

  Unfortunately Roger’s concept was too thorny for what was intended as an action flick larded with sex and violence. So the thoroughly-baffled Madison was canned, and Quake was ultimately written in-house by my colleague Rob Kerchner, along with Concorde regular Mark Evan Schwartz. Someone (probably Rob) had the good idea of using the post-quake chaos as a backdrop for a variation on a popular John Fowles novel called The Collector. In 1965 it had become a film starring Terence Stamp as a warped young man who abducts a beautiful woman (Samantha Eggar) and keeps her as a specimen for his “collection.” Our film, directed by Louis Morneau, starred Steve Railsback as a warped young man who abducts a young woman in the aftermath of the so-called Loma Prieta quake.  And what about that rubble footage that Roger had sent his minions to shoot? Quake (aka Aftershock)  was advertised as capturing the actual earthquake on film for the audience’s viewing pleasure.

 It didn’t always take a natural disaster to inspire Roger. The Los Angeles riots of 1992, sparked by the beating of Rodney King, led him to propose another “ripped from the headlines” film, to be called (prophetically, I now realize) Night of a Thousand Fires. He quickly gathered three eager young screenwriters (at least one of them brand-new to L.A.) to create a hard-hitting story that would take in the disparate perspectives of Black rioters, Korean shop-keepers, and the entrenched white hierarchy. With great fanfare, he held a press conference to announce the project. But then, in typical Roger fashion. he quickly lost interest . . . because he realized that with Spielberg shooting a cinematic version of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park it was high time for a quickie dinosaur movie, one that would beat Spielberg’s film into theatres.  And so 1993’s Carnosaur was born. 

 

“A Complete Unknown”: Bob Dylan Finds (and roars away from) Fame

Watching the Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, was like returning (yikes!) to my college years. Though never a hardcore Dylan fan, I attended a Hollywood Bowl concert that took place soon after Dylan shocked his fans at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival by playing a plugged-in electric set with members of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. As at Newport, there was booing at the Bowl, with audience members showing their fury that a man they regarded as an earnest young folkie (a poet and an one-man band, in Paul Simon’s terms) was turning toward rock-and-roll.

 Back then, as an atypical Sixties kid more interested in literature than protest, I didn’t quite see what the fuss was about. But in watching A Complete Unknown I was surprised how much I responded to those oh-so-familiar tunes: the wistful “Blowin’ in the Wind,” the ominous “A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall,” the jaunty "Subterranean Homesick Blues." And I realized, via the film, how much Dylan—a man who liked to be inscrutable—revealed about himself in his songs.

 It was smart of the filmmakers to focus on the very young Dylan, arriving in New York’s Greenwich Village in 1961 but then—feeling the burden of fame—lighting out for the territory in 1965. In Timothée Chalamet’s sensitive portrayal we see how much he owes to the friends he made along the way, but also how badly he wanted to cut ties that were all too binding.

  According to the film, perhaps the most important relationship he built was that with Pete Seeger, played by an excellent Edward Norton. They meet in the dismal hospital room where Pete is watching over the dying Woody Guthrie, a longtime Dylan hero. From the first, the two veteran folksingers are impressed by Dylan’s original ballads, and see him as the potential messiah who can bring young people into the folk music scene, with its emphasis on social awareness and the beauty of the acoustic guitar. Having survived two Dune films, Chalamet is clearly used to playing messiahs-in-the-making, but the point of A Complete Unknown is that he doesn’t want to be one.

 Nor does he want to be part of a permanent romantic couple. This lesson is ultimately learned by the women in his life. Elle Fanning’s Sylvie Russo (a re-naming at Dylan’s own request of the real-life Suze Rotolo) introduces him to social action, but is unable to penetrate his self-imposed inscrutability. Joan Baez, beautifully portrayed by Monica Barbaro, partners him on the stage and sometimes in bed, but can’t get him to play nice while on tour and refuses to be merely his occasional sexual conquest.

 Which brings me to the Dylan songs that explain it all. “It Ain’t Me, Babe” (a duet by Dylan and Baez in the film, while a stricken Sylvie looks on from the wings) makes clear he rejects any long-term romantic connection: “It ain’t me you’re looking for.”  The lyrics of “Don't Think Twice, It's All Right” seem to justify an itch to cut ties and hit the road. Most apt of all is the tune whose lyric gives the film its title. “Like a Rolling Stone” is the song of a loner “with no direction home,” one who is ultimately heading out on his motorcycle to points unknown. But perhaps the lyric that stays with me most is Guthrie’s own ditty as sung by Pete Seeger, depicted here as the gentle Mister Rogers of the folk music scene: “So long, it’s been good to know yuh . . . I’ve got to be driftin’ along.”

  

 

A (Semi) Golden Evening at the Golden Globes

Who votes for the Golden Globes, anyway? The top-of-the-year awards ceremony used to be hosted by the Hollywood Foreign Press, a small cadre of foreign journalists known for their eccentricity, their snootiness, and their willingness to be bought by the highest bidder. (A “new star of the year” statuette for Pia Zadora? Really?)

 After an outcry a few years back about the group’s ongoing racist inclinations, there was a complex reshuffling of the Globes’ voting bloc, and I don’t pretend to know who’s in charge now. I do know, though, several key things. First of all, that the event still tries to present itself as the awards season’s best party, with attendees served a festive dinner and booze flowing like water. Secondly, that awards go to both movie and TV bigshots (crafts categories are pretty much ignored). And, thirdly, that best picture and best actor awards are divided between dramas, on the one hand, and comedies or musicals on the other. This divvying up of films by genre perhaps made sense at one time: at the Oscars great comic performances have often been overlooked in favor of actors playing dead-serious roles. But the categorizing at the Globes often leads, as it did this year, to some head-scratching choices. Take the Best Motion Picture—Musical or Comedy category. It’s easy to see that Wicked belongs there. But what about Anora,  A Real Pain, The Substance, and the ultimate winner, Emilia Pérez?  Yes, they might contain hilarious moments, but films in which the heroine suffers a ghastly fate don’t strike me as fundamentally funny. Nor does a movie whose climax is a visit to a Polish concentration camp.

 Host Nikki Glaser, who’s been receiving major plaudits for her performance, got off some good lines in her opening monologue, which nicely skewered Hollywood pomposity. I enjoyed her intro of “two-time Holocaust survivor” Adrien Brody, but particularly appreciated her canny reference to “the hardest-working actors in the room,” the ones that were busy serving the meal on which celebrities in tight outfits were cautiously nibbling. In the later innings, though, Glaser didn’t seem to have much to say. She DID show up in a series of glamorous gowns, each designed to show us she has two breasts in working order.  (Breasts were definitely star attractions among the ceremony’s female contingent.) At one point Glaser started in on a song mashing up Conclave and Wicked’s “Popular.” I had high hopes for comedy gold, but her “Pope-ular” stopped almost as soon as it started. As for other great funny moments, fuhgeddaboudit . . . except when an impish Seth Rogen and a priceless Catherine O’Hara admitted to the awards they’d supposedly won (like The Golden Antler and The Beaver) in their native Canada. Theirs was the only appearance that had me laughing out loud.

 What about the winners? The prize for most emotional definitely went to Best Female Actor in a Supporting Role (yes, that’s how they put it), Zoe Saldaña, who seemed overcome by her win to the point of choking up, and then couldn’t stop talking. Having seen Emilia Pérez, I agree that she earned her award. Almost equally emotional (and equally voluble) was Adrien Brody, Best Male Actor in a Motion Picture--Drama for another much-honored flick, The Brutalist. Demi Moore was articulate and touching in explaining how The Substance (a comedy??) gave her a new lease on her professional life, in keeping with the film’s own themes. But the #1 surprise was Fernanda Torres of Argentina, for the Brazilian I’m Still Here, beating out some of Hollywood’s finest. This I’ve gotta see!  

 

A Change for the Better: “Emilia Pérez”

A friend with a strong interest in movies has chosen not to see Emilia Pérez.  He said he just couldn’t get excited about a film that focused on a Mexican crime lord’s sexual transition from male to female. The fact that it is a musical made it seem, to him, even odder. And I admit I had something of the same feelings. I’m a bit overwhelmed, right now, regarding movies (and other art forms) that focus intensely on gender dysphoria.

 But then Emilia Pérez showed up on Netflix, which meant I could watch it for free. And I was certainly curious (though not yellow) to see why this film set the Cannes Film Festival abuzz, and won a Best Actress prize to be divided among its featured female ensemble. The actresses included Latin American stars Zoe Saldaña and Selena Gomez, along with Karla Sofía Gascón, a Spanish performer who transitioned from male to female in 2018. Gascón has been mentioned as a possible Oscar nominee, and I can see why. In the film’s early going, she is featured as a gruff, tremendously fearsome cartel boss who is not in the least feminine. As Juan "Manitas" Del Monte  she summons a talented but underappreciated female attorney (Saldaña) and forcefully explains her desire to leave her current life—whatever the cost—and become a woman. There follow several rather goofy musical segments in which Saldaña travels the world, looking for doctors who are both discreet and adept at sexual reassignment surgeries. For the right price, it’s amazing how many services are available. An add-on procedure to remove the “Adam’s apple”? Sure.

 I enjoyed all of the above, but couldn’t see why French writer- director Jacques Audiard was racking up major honors for this film. But once Manitas becomes Emilia, the film radically changes its tone. Whereas Manitas was imperious and cold, Emilia is warmth personified. In her new and quite attractive body, she’s positively glowing. But she’s no longer just interested in self-satisfaction. Now, with Saldaña’s Rita as her lieutenant, she’s started a major charity to help mistreated women. (Rita’s mixed emotions are striking. When Emilia suckers a large group of drug lords into showing up at a banquet to support her group, Rita acts out her contempt for these potential benefactors in a remarkable fantasy number that shows off her stunning dance moves.) 

 The film’s musical numbers have the virtue of reminding us that this story is built on fantasy. But the fantasy co-exists with some tender moments that are deeply felt, like Emilia’s growing longing to be with the young children she once sired, and her little son’s hunch that his newly arrived “aunt” is somehow closer to his absent father than she might seem. Love is in the air in all its iterations: Emilia forms a romantic bond with a needy young wife who’s glad to be rid of her abusive husband. Meanwhile, Selena Gomez’s Jessi, believing herself the widow of the absent Manitas, falls for the slimy Gustavo and helps hatch a desperate plan that will dominate the film’s last section. Alas, surprises await. 

 What’s this movie saying? That women are better (if not necessarily stronger) than men? That seems much too simplistic a conclusion. And Gomez’s Jessi, for all her moments of self-reproach, is hardly saintly. Let’s just say Emilia Pérez is about the value of being true to your authentic self. Manitas was once hated and feared. But Emilia, at film’s end, is recognized as a hero, even a saint. As a woman, she brings her community together, instead of tearing it apart.