The Very Flexible Diane Keaton

In memory of the late Diane Keaton, I wanted to re-watch one of her films. But which one? Of course I remembered her hilarious teaming with Woody Allen in so many of his early flicks. I can still see the two of them in Sleeper (1973), elaborately pretending to be surgeons charged with cloning an assassinated political leader from his one remaining body part: a nose.  I’m also very partial to Love and Death (1975) and of course Keaton is justly adored for her Oscar-winning title role in the ultimate romantic comedy, Annie Hall (1977).

 In truth I fell for Keaton in her very first film: Lovers and Other Strangers (1970). In this charming ensemble outing, set amid the chaos of a big family wedding, she has the small role of Joan Vecchio, married to the groom’s older brother. Her appearance causes some tension at the festive gathering, because she and husband Richie are seriously thinking of separating. The problem: Joan has discovered that, after several years of wedlock, Richie’s hair no longer smells like raisins.

 Of course Keaton was later to play other wedding scenes, notably in The Godfather, where she was Michael Corleone’s naïve young wife-to-be, meeting the family at the lavish nuptials of Michael’s sister . But as she aged she hardly lost her on-screen sex appeal. In 2003’s Something’s Gotta Give, a wealthy playboy (Jack Nicholson) gives up an attractive young woman in order to woo her mother, played by Keaton, who was then almost 60. Still, the course of true love never does run smooth. In a 1996 comedy, The First Wives Club, Keaton (who in real life never married) is one of a trio of reluctant divorcees determined to get revenge on the husbands who dumped them for much younger cuties.

 Though Keaton was known for her flair for comedy, she also played highly dramatic roles. In 1977, the same year in which the world fell in love with her Annie Hall, she starred as a secretly promiscuous schoolteacher who meets a tragic fate in Looking for Mr. Goodbar. Four years later, she starred with Warren Beatty in Reds, an Oscar-winning epic saga of the Russian Revolution as seen through the eyes of real-life American activists John Reed and Louise Bryant. But I decided to re-visit Keaton by way of a much smaller drama. Released in 1996, it was called Marvin’s Room. And, like Reds, it earned Keaton an Oscar nomination for Best Performance by an Actress.

 If Keaton’s Louise Bryant in Reds was heroic, her Bessie in Marvin’s Room is downright saintly. (That’s a new one for me—Diane Keaton as a saint!) In this story of a medical crisis that brings s fractured family together, Meryl Streep is the bitchy Lee, unhappily raising two misfit kids by herself ever since her no-good husband walked out. (One of her sons, a teenaged Leonardo DiCaprio, has just burned her house down.) She’s received word that her younger sister Bessie (Keaton) has been diagnosed with cancer and desperately needs a bone marrow donor. So Lee and the kids reluctantly drive from Ohio to Florida to help out a relative with whom Lee has had no contact for 20 years.

 Keaton’s Bessie, who lost her first love to an accident many years back, has spent decades of her life looking after her bed-ridden father (Hume Cronyn) and her wacky aunt (an unrecognizable Gwen Verdon). Despite the physical challenge she herself is facing, she has a radiant optimism about the days ahead. In service to others, she finds joy, and we believe every word she says. 

 

Physically and Emotionally Naked: Remembering Sally Kirkland

So, I’m sorry to say, Sally Kirkland is no longer with us.  If, that is, she ever was. My personal feeling is that Sally came from another  planet, and only visited earth occasionally. She was, in any case, one of a kind.

 The highlight of Sally’s acting career was Anna, a 1987 indie in which she played the title role, that of a Slavic actress who has survived political persecution. The showy part won her a Golden Globe, and she was even nominated for a Best Actress Oscar. (Her competition included Glenn Close for Fatal Attraction, Holly Hunter for Broadcast News, Meryl Streep for Ironweed, and the winner, Cher, for Moonstruck.)

 But I knew Sally before all that, when she was one of the many aspiring movie people hanging around the Sunset Strip offices of Roger Corman’s New World Pictures. An Actors Studio alumna who had also spent time among Andy Warhol’s The Factory crazies, she helped out with casting, and also played small but flamboyant roles like “Barney’s woman” in Big Bad Mama. She performed in some major studio films too, like The Sting, Private Benjamin, and JFK, mostly in parts that called for big emotions and very few clothes.

 Sally, you see, had a thing for nudity. A former model, she was tall and lean, with augmented breasts. (Years later, she was to become a very public crusader against breast implants.) When I was researching my former boss for the biography that evolved into Roger Corman: Blood-Sucking Vampires, Flesh-Eating Cockroaches, and Driller Killers, she told me that on screen she had a gift for appearing both physically and emotionally undressed: “Combining the emotional nakedness with the physical nakedness—that’s something that Roger’s always loved about my work.” 

 The 1999 in-person interview I did with Sally for that book is something I’ll never, ever forget. We met at the Silver Spoon, a trendy West Hollywood coffee shop near her home. When I entered, she (fully dressed) was ensconced in a booth, beneath a large framed movie poster of herself in Anna. And she was not alone. There was a young male assistant sitting beside her, taking notes, and I realized I was expected to buy them both breakfast. She was also the only person I interviewed for the Corman book who required me to sign an agreement allowing her to check all her quotes and context before my book was published. (When I later complied, she kept tinkering with her own brief bio at the rear of the book to make sure pretty much every film she’d ever made was mentioned.)

 We were studying our menus when two very attractive young blondes walked through the door. They were wearing low-cut blouses and short-shorts, and they looked to be identical. Twins? They were, it turned out, Sally’s acting students, and she’d invited them along. And then . . . a third young lady arrived. Yes, triplets. Sally proudly told me that, like her, they’d been featured in a Playboy spread, and that they now—under her tutelage—were getting ready to pursue acting careers. And I discovered I’d be buying breakfast for myself and five other people. (The triplets sat, looking awestruck, as Sally praised Roger to the skies for encouraging her directing aspirations and for treating her like a member of his family.)

 Sally Kirkland was, among many other things, a crusader for a variety of causes. I of course have no way of knowing where she is now. But I’m sure of one thing: wherever she may have ended up, it’s where the action is.

 

 

 

A Tale of Three Swingers: “Trapeze”

When I was a kid, I was entranced by the ads for Trapeze, a circus drama featuring lots of high-flying action and three bona fide Hollywood stars : Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, and Gina Lollobridgida. The sets and spangly costumes looked dazzling to a small girl. I wouldn’t have much cared that the film’s director was Carol Reed, a Brit who’d helmed such taut masterworks as Odd Man Out (1947) and The Third Man (1949). (In 1968 he was to have his big Hollywood moment, winning the Best Director Oscar for his work on a delightful film musical, Oliver!)

 Flash forward to 2025. After watching 1957’s Sweet Smell of Success, produced in part by Burt Lancaster’s own company, I read that Tony Curtis was cast as the ambitious young press agent kowtowing to Lancaster’s sinister gossip columnist largely because Lancaster had enjoyed working with Curtis on Trapeze. So, thanks to the goodly supply of vintage films on DVD at my local library, the time seemed right to check it out.

 The story of Trapeze is simple enough: every character is in love with the drama and the spectacle of the circus. This particular troupe is based in Paris, and boasts the usual combination of clowns, animals, dancing girls, and acrobats. We immediately get to the heart of things as aerialist Mike Ribble (a buff-looking Lancaster) climbs to the rafters to swing into a daring triple somersault. Once he’s performed the dangerous stunt, he’s supposed to be caught by the waiting hands of a second trapeze artist. But something goes awry, and he falls, bouncing out of the safety net and onto the ground. All of this happens before the opening credits: when we next see Mike he’s an embittered man, working for the circus as a rigger and effortfully walking with a cane. 

Along comes Tony Curtis as brash, bouncy Tino Orsini, American son of an old-school aerialist. He’s heard that Mike is the only flyer in the world who can teach him the triple somersault. Refusing to accept Mike’s rejection, he uses his talents and his easy charm to worm his way into the older man’s heart. (One of the film’s most endearing moments shows the two walking down a Paris street. The irrepressible Tino upends his body to continue walking on his hands. That’s when Mike, not willing to be totally upstaged by his new protégé, does the same. The scene fades out on the two of them, side by side, traversing the Paris trottoir upside down.)  Tino wants to learn; and Mike discovers he wants to teach. What could be better? 

 But of course there has to be a fly in the ointment. And Lola, as played by Italian “it” girl Gina Lollobrigida, is a pretty fly indeed. Originally the only female on a team of Italian acrobats, she slithers her way into the aerial act by using her sex appeal to alternately romance both Tino and Mike. Of course it all comes to a head on the night when American impresario John Ringling North is visiting, looking for acts to import.

 Frankly, I was rather disappointed by the big aerial climax when, without a net, the triple somersault is once again attempted. After all the build-up, I’d expected something far more spectacular. But the film has an effectively rueful ending in which some achieve greatness and some turn it down. Lancaster and Curtis once again make a memorable team. As for the busty, glamorous Lollobrigida, I couldn’t really decipher what her character was about. Maybe, simply, a combination of Eve and the serpent. 

 

Fanning the Flames: Portrait of a Lady on Fire

 Portrait of a Lady on Fire: what a scintillating title! Céline Sciamma’s 2019 French-language historical drama was originally called Portrait de la jeune fille en feu, which sounds almost as good. But the English-language version allows for an interesting mental connection to a Henry James classic from 1881, The Portrait of a Lady. In that novel, one of James’ most admired, young Isabel Archer is a feisty American who attracts several European suitors, but turns them down because she’s  determined to preserve her independence. Ultimately, though, she marries an American expatriate . . . only to find that he’s a schemer, and totally unworthy of her affections.

 James’ novel has a lot to say about love and marriage, but it never enters into the territory that Sciamma broaches in this fascinating and beautifully photographed film. Set in the late 18^th century or thereabouts, it begins with an art instructor (Noémie Merlant). Facing a classroom full of eager young girls, she ruefully admits that a painting one of them has unearthed in a storeroom is her long-ago work. Its title: Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Flashback to decades earlier, when the same woman-- traveling via a small rowboat to an island off the coast of Brittany—leaps into the choppy water to rescue some of her work that has been washed overboard.

 Marianne, self-confident and determined, has been summoned by a French countess to produce a portrait of her daughter, Héloïse, who’s on the brink of marriage to a wealthy Milanese nobleman. The assignment is a tricky one. Héloïse was mostly reared in a convent; it was her older sister who was destined to marry. But that sister is now dead—a suicide?—and so Héloïse (Adèle Haenel)  is being groomed to be given away in marriage in her place. Héloïse is a fascinating character; our sense is that she’s as of yet unformed: she doesn’t quite seem to know who she is or what she wants. She does know, though, that she does NOT want to pose for a commemorative portrait. And so the plan is for the talented Marianne to befriend her and then paint her portrait in secret, using herself (in Héloïse’s gown) as a model for the painting’s upper body.

 The friendship thrives, and then – in the countess’s brief absence—becomes something far more. The two young women discover that a deep sexual bond exists between them. There’s a dazzling bonfire scene on a local beach that seems to reflect their passion, and the moment of Héloïse’s long skirts catching fire hints at both the ardor and the danger of their burgeoning relationship. There’s also a provocative scene in a local peasant hut where the housemaid in the countess’s chateau matter-of-factly undergoes an abortion, with the abortionist’s own very young children nestled by her side. 

 I won’t give away what ultimately happens between Héloïse and Marianne, though the film gives us several interesting glimpses of their future lives. Suffice it to say that the ancient Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice plays a key emotional role in what ultimately transpires. Sciamma, clearly a master filmmaker, makes creative use of music both old (Summer, from Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons”) and new (a haunting a cappella number for female choir and rhythmic clapping). 

Portrait of a Lady on Fire was nominated for countless awards, and won many. At its Cannes debut, it was nominated for the Palme d’Or, and won for Sciamma’s screenplay. As a filmmaker devoted to the female gaze, Sciamma was doubtless pleased to have won the Queer Palm as well. 

 

Horror Comes Home: My Visit to MoPop

A few months back, I visited Seattle’s Museum of Popular Culture, otherwise known as MoPOP.  It was a memorable experience, complicated by the challenge of parking in a central Seattle area packed with tourist attractions: sports stadiums, the Space Needle, the wonderful exhibition hall displaying monumental glass work by Dale Chihuly, lots of recreational space for children’s activities. MoPop, which  in its current form dates back twenty-five years, was begun by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. It’s now housed in a typically eccentric Frank Gehry structure that I did not find visitor-friendly, partly because an urban train that runs through the building keeps you from, in many cases, getting from here to there by any direct route. (A big personal gripe: the museum doesn’t seem to believe in distributing handheld maps to visitors, and signage is extremely limited, so navigating the building’s multiple levels means relying on desperate cellphone scrolling. A sign of the times, I guess. I only found out about the train track situation by overhearing a guard talking to another museum-goer who was as confused as I was.)

 Pop culture is such a broad subject that the museum’s internal chaos is not surprising. A lot of space is devoted to pop music of various kinds: there’s a wow of a sculpture featuring guitars and other contemporary instruments. And there’s also a big emphasis on gaming (at times you can meet with an expert to devise your own game).  This in addition to a nicely organized Science Fiction Hall of Fame, and sections on comic books, sound recording, and the so-called highlights (on video) of various cultural eras. Naturally, I gravitated toward the level devoted to movies, which focused on three key cinematic genres: science fiction, fantasy, and horror.

 The science fiction and horror memorabilia are crammed into an appropriately eerie basement of sorts, where glass cases are filled with costumes, props, and other cinematic treasures. There are also small enclosures in which you can hear commentary from masters of the genre like (natch!) my late boss Roger Corman. I consider the section’s premiere attraction a so-called Scream Booth in which you can be recorded while flexing your vocal cords to the fullest. (No, I didn’t get to try it; too many horror fans were in line ahead of me, alas!)

 For me the most thought-provoking part of the horror exhibit was the  huge placard analyzing (in bold black and red letters) the appeal of horror as a genre. It kicks off with a provocative question: IF HORROR FILMS SCARE US, WHY DO WE LIKE IT? It all starts, we’re told, with FEAR. Fear is then analyzed as a basic human survival instinct that keeps us alive and competitive as a species, guards against the breakdown of society by warning against outside threats, and leads us to collectively stave off horror, which in its movie form is simultaneously conformist and subversive. (If you’re a bit baffled by this last point, do know that I am too.)

 I DO appreciate the five quick points on the placard about why moviegoers are attracted to horror films:

It is a rite of passage and test of courage

It reinforces notions of good and evil

It creates a rush of heightened emotions

It allows us to safely experience taboo subjects

It reflects the landscape of our nightmares and dreams

 This, to me, makes perfect sense: that horror movies help us fight against our fears by reflecting them back to us in a safe environment. Which is what I hope Halloween does for all of my readers. Stay safe out there, y’all! And BOO!

 

 

Putting the Pieces Together: “The Misfits”

The Misfits (1961) is an ambitious contemporary western that seems to be laced with tragedy. The film, written by Arthur Miller and directed by John Huston, was shot on location in rural Nevada, and placed heavy demands on cast and crew. Top-billed Clark Gable, age 59, suffered a heart attack two days after filming ended, and died ten days later. Though Miller’s script was tailored to the talents and the persona of his wife, Marilyn Monroe, their marriage was fracturing by the time production began. An exhausted and emotionally unstable Monroe was hospitalized for two weeks in August, forcing Huston to suspend filming. Ultimately The Misfits would prove to be the last picture Monroe ever completed: in 1962 she began work on the ill-fated Something’s Got to Give before dying of a barbiturate overdose at age 36. Co-star Montgomery Clift, suffering from substance abuse and emotional trauma following a serious car wreck, made only three  more films before his death at age 45. (Happily, character actor Eli Wallach, the third of the ageing cowboys who lust after Monroe’s character in the film, remained with us—an invaluable cinematic presence—until the ripe old age of 98.)

 The opening credits for The Misfits appear against a backdrop of puzzle pieces. It’s an effective hint at the film to come: the focus is on people of various shapes and sizes, people who come into close contact with one another but simple don’t fit together in neat combinations. We also know from the opening that The Misfits will unfold in black-&-white. It’s a good choice for a movie that is largely bleak. It’s also effective to see Marilyn Monroe removed from the Technicolor glory of platinum hair and ruby-red lips, so that we view her less as a movieland goddess and more as a human being, slightly wounded, slightly lost.

 Monroe reportedly disliked her role, and I can understand why. Though she has never looked more beautiful on film, her role as Roslyn, the recent divorcee who’s introduced by the cowboys  to the west’s wide open spaces, is underrealized within Miller’s script. At the beginning of the story, she’s staying in Reno in search of a quicky divorce But we never completely understand her marital problems, and much of the focus is on the always welcome Thelma Ritter, who plays her crusty but kind-hearted landlady. It’s Ritter’s character, Isabelle, who has a yen for cowboys, even while she’s quite clear about the downside of their itinerant way of life.

 Soon the newly-divorced Roslyn is heading out to the wide open spaces with the rough and tumble Gaylord (Clark Gable) and his pal Guido (Wallach). Their goal is to round up and sell the mustangs, now diminishing in number, who freely roam the plains. In search of a third man to help them, they come upon Perce Howland (Montgomery Clift), a rodeo cowboy who’s seen better days. Each of the three men has a tale of woe, and Roslyn—positioned as a life force—listens sympathetically to all their problems. But she doesn’t express her own will until she’s faced with the actual mustang round-up, and comes to realize that these wild and beautiful creatures will be captured and sold for pet food. Her pained opposition to the round-up becomes a catalyst for the men to respond, each in his own way, leading to an ending that doesn’t exactly convince.

 When Clift’s character says, “I think I love you,” Roslyn answers, “You don’t know me.” But no one here truly knows anyone . . . or anything.  

 

One DiCaprio After Another

Leonardo DiCaprio, who’s been making films since 1991, was first introduced to audiences as an appealing young teen. Over the years he’s scored in a wide range of roles, playing everyone from Romeo to the young Howard Hughes (The Aviator) to J. Edgar Hoover to Jay Gatsby. His choices have been remarkably diverse, but many of his best roles have been marked by two characteristics that I suspect are shared with DiCaprio himself: energy and shrewdness. Perhaps my very favorite DiCaprio role is that of real-life conman and charmer Frank Abnagale Jr. in Spielberg’s delightful Catch Me If You Can. That’s the 2002 crime film wherein he bamboozles pretty much everyone he meets.

One thing I’ve discovered about DiCaprio’s recent roles: he’s not afraid to look foolish. As an over-the-hill TV star in Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), he escapes death at the hands of the Manson gang by sheer luck. In 2023’s Scorsese-directed Killers of the Flower Moon, he’s downright stupid, unable to see that his uncle’s clear intention is to kill his own beloved wife as a way to steal her family’s fortune. From what I’ve read, DiCaprio—involved with the project from the start—was originally slated to play an early FBI agent. Thomas Bruce White Sr. was a key heroic figure in David Grann’s book, an historical account of the Osage murders and their aftermath. But when DiCaprio and longtime mentor Scorsese decided to focus the film version on the plight of the oil-rich but highly vulnerable Osage, DiCaprio agreed to play the distinctly non-heroic Ernest Burkhart, who genuinely loves wife Mollie but is blind to what’s being done to her.

Now, in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, DiCaprio is a man good with things that go boom. but not exactly smart about the world around him. Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic film is very loosely based on a 1990 post-modern novel, Vineland, by Thomas Pynchon. If I’d realized going in that Pynchon’s world-view was the basis for Anderson’s film, I would have been far less confused at the start. Pynchon’s writings about America capture the ethos of various eras in a comically exaggerated fashion. This particular novel is about the Reagan era, but Anderson has updated it to reflect the upheavals of today, particularly the militaristic treatment of the undocumented. But here’s the thing: no one is particularly virtuous. Certainly not the military (led by Sean Penn’s crazed Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw), but also not the wildly brutal rebels who confront the Armed Services with their own weapons of major destruction. (Their leader is Teyana Taylor’s unforgettably angry Perfidia Beverly Hills – yes, there are some bizarre names here.) With leaders like these, for which side should the viewer root?

DiCaprio, as “Rocketman” Bob Ferguson (in the course of the film he has several noms de guerre) is Perfidia’s lover and loyal follower, but there’s no real sense that he has any idea about the commitment he’s made to her cause. True,  he’s a dedicated rebel, but against what? In the film’s later innings, after she’s been captured and disappeared, his numbe-one interest seems to be lying on his living-room couch and smoking a lot of weed. But he has another interest too: looking after the feisty teenage daughter who may or may not be his.   

Before I saw this film, I was unclear about what genre it fell into. I heard it was violent; I heard it was very funny; I heard it had meaning for today. All true, but don’t expect to like any of the characters very much.  
 

 

Stealing the Crown Jewels

Ever since the news broke about the astounding jewel heist at the Louvre, I’ve had one big thought: what a great movie this could make! Of course, I’m also deeply sorry that the Napoleonic-era crown jewels on display in the Louvre’s galleries have been carried off by nefarious means. As a museum-lover myself, I don’t like shaking my head sadly over empty cases. Still, I’m a longtime fan of heist movies, and so I’ve got to admire the cleverness of the meticulous thieves who, in broad daylight entered the Louvre through an upper-story window and—in a mere seven minutes—made off with unspeakably fabulous gems.

 To be honest, I’ve enjoyed a lot of movies that center on the theft of jewels or precious minerals. The nature of the genre is such that we’re often rooting for the success of the thieves, though the films frequently end with a suspect in custody. Examples include The Italian Job, The Pink Panther (a series that started with the theft of an unusual pink diamond), and even—for a family audience—Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, in which an penguin who’s a ruthless diamond thief is pursued by our favorite man-&-dog duo. But I want to focus here on two outstanding crime caper films that take place in museums. 

 Topkapi, a 1964 caper movie, is very much on the side of the bad guys,  It seems there’s a certain jewel-encrusted dagger, once the prize possession of  Sultan Mahmud I, on display in Istanbul’s Topkapi Palace. Elaborate security measures are in place, but the presence of the dagger proves irresistible to an international jewel thief (Melina Mercouri), who recruits a former lover  (Maximilian Schell) to plan a brilliant heist. The two assemble a team with a wide range of skills: one is a muscleman, one an aerialist, one a slob who can be counted on to follow orders without thinking too clearly. (Peter Ustinov won an Oscar for this hilarious role.) Everything goes as planned, until – uh oh! By the by, Topkapi is directed by Jules Dassin, Mercouri’s husband. He’s also the director of a classic French jewel heist flick, Rififi, in which the audience is rendered breathless during a half-hour-long safecracking scene conducted in total silence.).

 Perhaps my very favorite film in this genre is How to Steal a Million¸ from 1966. This spritely caper comedy, directed by the great William Wyler, pairs Audrey Hepburn with Peter O’Toole as two unlikely folks who unite to steal a priceless antique statuette, known as the Cellini Venus, that’s newly on display in a Paris museum. The twist is that the statue is not an antique at all. It’s a clever forgery, and Hepburn desperately needs to get it back to save her father from disgrace (and probably prison). What makes the film lovable is the budding relationship between Hepburn’s concerned daughter and O’Toole’s “thief” who turns out to be not at all what he seems. If you’re a romantic who adores heist films with sunny endings, this is the movie for you.

 Right now we don’t know who stole the Napoleonic treasures or where they’ll end up. In their current form (as diadems, etc.), they’re probably too well known to be fenced, but of course they can be disassembled and the parts sold for very big bucks. It’s disheartening to know that art thieves sometimes manage to keep well-known works for decades. Consider Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, which in 1990 was robbed of 13 works of art, including a Rembrandt and one of the world’s 34 Vermeers. No one has seen them since.

 

 

 

Proclaiming Eleanor the Great

When you’re successful as an actor, suddenly you start wanting to direct.  Even the fabled silent star Lillian Gish tried it, in a film now lost. Warren Beatty won a 1982 Oscar for directing (as well as starring in) Reds, a tale about the Russian Revolution that also featured Jack Nicholson and the late—and very much lamented—Diane Keaton. Robert Redford, who like Beatty was perhaps eager to escape pretty-boy roles, made an impressive directorial debut in 1980’s Ordinary People. He had no acting role in this taut family drama that went on to be a huge financial and critical success. Ordinary People racked up six Oscar nominations and four wins, including Best Picture and Best Director. Buoyed by this success, Redford directed ten films in all, winning kudos particularly for Quiz Show, a mordant examination of the headline-making TV scandal of the 1950s, with John Turturro heading the cast.

 Ron Howard became a TV and movie star at the ripe old age of 5, thanks to regular appearances on The Andy Griffith Show and in such movies as The Music Man. But, as I discovered when researching Ron Howard: From Mayberry to the Moon . . . and Beyond. Howard had always wanted to direct. For one thing, he liked being in charge, as he was at age sixteen when he directed his father, his brother, and his future wife in a “A Deed of Daring-Do,” a short that marked his entry into a Kodak contest for youthful filmmakers. (He won second prize.) And, as he admitted after shooting scenes for Willow atop the snowfields of New Zealand, another advantage of directing is that you can dress for the weather and never worry about how you look.

 Recently Scarlett Johansson became the latest Hollywood megastar to try her hand at directing. Her vehicle is Eleanor the Great, a script by Tory Kamen about an elderly woman who finds herself in a highly awkward situation. At a time of great emotional distress, she has “admitted” to a support group of Holocaust survivors that she is one of them. Calling upon the horrific memories shared with her by her closest friend, now deceased, Eleanor spins a long, moving saga of her brother’s death at the hands of the Nazis. To her consternation, her story attracts the attention of an eager NYU journalism student who has suffered her own grievous loss, and Eleanor suddenly finds herself on the brink of being a media sensation. 

 Of course truth will out. There’s a hectic climax in which it looks as if everyone in Eleanor’s life has turned against her—and on the long-awaited day of her bat mitzvah yet! But Eleanor (marvelously inhabited by 94-year old June Squibb) is such a vivid presence that we instinctively hope she’ll come through the scandal with flying colors. And so she does, by way of a series of plot twists and turns involving a respected news anchor (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who puts her transgression into perspective and helps everyone understand the role of grief in encouraging bad behavior. It’s both heartening and a little too tidy to make for a good ending.

The actors are all fine, and June Squibb (who after a long career in supporting roles became a genuine star in last year’s Thelma) is a national treasure. I’m sorry that none of the reviews I’ve seen have mentioned the very moving Rita Zohar, a genuine Holocaust survivor playing a genuine Holocaust survivor. Director Johansson, herself descended from Holocaust victims,, has chosen a thought-provoking story as her directorial debut.  I wonder what she’ll try next.

 

 

 

The Sour Stench of Success

My deep dive into the career of Burt Lancaster would not have been complete without reference to The Sweet Smell of Success, the 1957 noir in which everyone is more or less rotten. Hollywood filmmakers love to delve into the venal side of the entertainment world, often happily focusing on the crass materialism of their own industry. (See, off the top of my head, elements of Sunset Boulevard, Inside Daisy Clover, A Star is Born, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and the recent Babylon.) The Sweet Smell of Success, though, is based in Manhattan, mostly the glitzy stretch of Broadway between 42^nd and 57^th Streets. Lancaster’s character occupies an elegant penthouse apartment, and is a regular at swanky nightspots like the 21 Club, places where gossip is gospel.

 Lancaster plays J.J. Hunsecker, a media personality modeled after Walter Winchell. He writes a hot gossip column for the New York Globe, and is also a star attraction over the airwaves. The man is all-powerful: he knows just who is canoodling with whom, and can make even a congressman quake when he spots an inappropriate dinner companion. The comparison to today’s media climate is an interesting one: we gather he’s not on the payroll of any political party, but he still has a firm sense of how the world should work, and will gladly punish anyone who tries to cross him. We gather he has no intimate attachment of his own, but puts all his energy into overseeing the love life of his much younger sister, Susie, who has fallen hard for a clean-cut but independent-minded jazz musician (Martin Milner).

 Lancaster’s Hunsecker is unforgettable, but the film really belongs to Tony Curtis. (The two had earlier starred together in a box-office hit, 1956’s Trapeze)  Curtis, sick of accepting nice-guy roles, here plays a slippery press agent, one who’ll do just about anything to get his clients’ names in newspaper columns. Young and hungry for success, he’ll hustle, scheme, and try to blackmail the powerful into publicizing those on his roster. He feels he has a special “in” with Hunsecker, thanks to his willingness to clean up a certain small mess by any means necessary, and part of the energy of the story goes into seeing him twist himself into pretzels to please the man who holds the keys to the kingdom. Says Hunsecker, with a mix of scorn and appreciation, “You’re a cookie full of arsenic.”

 Sweet Smell of Success started out as a differently titled story in a 1950 issue of Cosmopolitan. It was written by a young Ernest Lehman, and reflected his own experience as an assistant to a New York publicist. Eventually Hollywood got wind of Lehman’s writing skills, and he started to rack up jobs as a screenwriter. Among his credits prior to the film version of Sweet Smell of Success were Sabrina, Somebody Up There Likes Me, and The King and I. Later, his major screenwriting hits included North by Northwest, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, and Who’s Afraid of  Virginia Woolf? But when it came to Sweet Smell of Success,  the dialogue-heavy script required a substantial rewrite that Lehman was too ill to handle. So the gig eventually went to one of Broadway’s most esteemed playwrights, Clifford Odets, who both restructured the story and heavily revamped the details, resulting in some taut, terse dialogue. Here’s one example I like: “The cat’s in the bag and the bag’s in the river.”  And I’ve got to put in a word for the great James Wong Howe’s spectacularly moody black-&-white cinematography.

 Dedicated to fellow biographer Beth Phillips, who knows everything there is to know about Clifford Odets.

 

 

 

 

“The Limey”: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

I’ve been aware of Terence Stamp since 1962, when he played the title role in a film adaptation of a Herman Melville novella, Billy Budd. The part, Stamp’s first in an American film, is that of a young 19^th century sailor whose optimism and blond beauty have tragic consequences. For Stamp himself the consequences were excellent, including an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe award. But he certainly didn’t confine himself to playing innocents, as his dangerous allure in The Collector (1965) made quite clear.

 Personally I associate Stamp, who died this past August at age 87, with two widely different roles. In 1967’s Far from the Madding Crowd, a lavish period film based on a novel by Thomas Hardy, he played a dashing military man who woos and weds the tempestuous Bathsheba Everdene (Julie Christie), only to squander her holdings and break her heart. In 1994, he was unrecognizable in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, a riotous flick about drag queens gallivanting through the Australian outback in a colorful tour bus. In this cult favorite, Stamp’s role was that of a transgender woman. It’s been revealed since his death that he had recently completed all of his scenes for Priscilla, Queen of the Desert 2, a film about the challenges of old age that’s currently still in production.

 In reading obits for Stamp, I came across reference to a Steven Soderbergh thriller I’d never seen. I’ve been a great admirer of Soderbergh’s diverse body of work ever since I saw his poignant breakthrough indie, Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989). Nine years later, he was widely recognized for Out of Sight, a Florida-set crime comedy. Based on an Elmore Leonard novel, it elicited sexy, stellar performances from George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. One year later, Soderbergh was still working in the crime genre. Stamp was the star of his The Limey, a film about a British Cockney crook who’s also a bereaved father. Fresh out of prison for the umpteenth time, he hightails it to L.A. to investigate his daughter’s sudden death somewhere off Mulholland Drive.  

 I’d hardly call The Limey a comedy, but there’s humor (of the fish-out-of-water variety) to be found in this rough and tumble crook experiencing the glitz of Hollywood, a place where no one seems to understand a word he says. His first contact is a down-to-earth Latino (Luis Guzman) who knew his pretty young daughter from (natch!) an acting class.  Various deadly escapades in the warehouses of Downtown L.A. lead him eventually to a slick music producer with a fabulous home in the hills. He’s played by a toothy Peter Fonda, who looks like an updated version of his hipster role in Roger Corman’s L.S.D.-laced The Trip (1967). He’s fabulously wealthy, he likes keeping beautiful young women on hand, he throws lavish parties, and it’s quite clear he’s up to no good. Somehow Stamp’s Wilson, while eluding both Fonda’s goons and some not-entirely-on-the-up-and-up drug agents, manages to accomplish his personal mission without ever getting his clothes mussed.

 Soderbergh has always been big on experimentation, and The Limey is shot and edited in a flashy style that some might find distracting. Nor is this film sexy in the way Out of Sight proved to be. (Who can forget Clooney and Lopez, on opposite sides of the law, trapped together in very close quarters in the trunk of a car?) But I enjoyed seeing Terence Stamp in a different phase of his long career, playing a man taciturn and tough, but a loving father all the same.

 

 

 

 

Dears and Bitches: “The Women”

Have times changed? Claire Boothe Luce’s bitchy 1936 social comedy, The Women, was a huge Broadway sensation. The rights were purchased by MGM for a 1939 film that, like the play, features only women in its large cast. That hardly means that men play no part in the Park Avenue world the work depicts. Virtually everything these soignée females do revolves around their intimate connection with (off-screen) men. For MGM, this property was a chance to give meaty roles to the many impressive actresses on its roster. Some, like stars Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford, apparently had their own off-camera feuds going. In any case, the on-screen bitchery struck audiences then and now as hilarious, and the film has been rewarded with a spot in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.

 The Women was vigorously helmed by George Cukor, known at the time as a “woman’s director.” Cukor (whom I was honored to interview late in his life) could produce work of great subtlety, but The Women is hardly what you’d call subtle. Even the opening credits tell us exactly what to think about the cast of characters. Each of the main women is introduced by her married name: for example, Shearer is labeled as Mrs. Stephen Haines (Mary). And before we see a tell-tale closeup of the actress in character, there’s a quick image of an appropriate (female) animal. Shearer’s sensible, amiable Mary is depicted as a doe. Her soon-to-be archrival Crawford, in the role of a  shopgirl who’s after Mary’s husband, is shown as a sleek, cunning leopard. Third-billed Rosalind Russell, whose capricious character stirs up much of the trouble in the film, is a black cat. Others on-screen are represented by a monkey, a fox, a lamb, an owl, a cow (we then see everyone’s favorite confidante, played by Phyllis Povah, essentially chewing her cud), and an old mare (that would be homespun Marjorie Main as a Reno landlady).

 The outrageousness continues in the film’s opening scenes, set in and around a posh Manhattan health spa full of fawning uniformed attendants . The first thing we see, at the spa’s front door, is two pampered pooches snarling at one another. Quite soon it’s the woman themselves who are snarling, while gossiping over the manicure table and pretending to be each other’s best friends. One spa patron, gazing at another’s face through a magnifying contraption, sweetly declares, “Your skin makes the Rocky Mountains look like chiffon velvet.” Even Shearer’s appealing Mary will eventually learn, while on a trip to Reno to divorce her straying (but still loving) spouse, that there’s no special virtue in being nice: “I’ve had two years to grow claws . . . . Jungle Red.” And speaking of claws, the screen erupts with more than one physical cat-fight among the ladies who lunch.

 Does The Women have any lessons for us? I’m not so sure. True, good-hearted Mary does regain her equilibrium and her spouse, and Crystal heads back to the perfume counter. (These are spoilers, true, but can certainly be predicted from the film’s opening moments onward.) Still, virtue doesn’t exactly triumph. In many ways, it’s bitchery that reigns supreme. It’s curious to note that a 21^st century film remake was attempted. It took fifteen years to develop the project, which ultimately, when released in 2008, starred Meg Ryan, Annette Bening,, Eva Mendes, Debra Messing, Jada Pickett Smith, Carrie Fisher, Cloris Leachman, Debi Mazar Bette Midler, and Candice Bergen. Diane English of Murphy Brown fame wrote and directed, but her attempt at an update left critics (and audiences) distinctly unimpressed. 

 

Robert Redford Goes Downhill

There are those who will tell you that Robert Redford was the original choice to play Benjamin Braddock in the 1967 romantic classic, The Graduate. He was certainly in the running, and wanted the role badly. And, as my Seduced by Mrs. Robinson clarifies, he had just finished starring for director Mike Nichols in a Broadway hit comedy, Barefoot in the Park, so he seemed to be in a good position to headline Nichols’ planned first film. But, as the film’s producer, Larry Turman, spelled out to me, neither he nor Nichols was entirely sure that Redford was the right choice to play an awkward lover who was funny precisely because he was in over his head with a sexy older woman. Enter Dustin Hoffman, who turned in a performance that was a comedy gem.

 By 1969, Redford had made a half-dozen films, both amiable comedies and action thrillers. But lightning struck when he joined with Paul Newman for a true blockbuster, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The two Hollywood hunks proved to have remarkable comic chemistry in a story less about the Old West than about the friendship of two rebellious buddies set against a rapidly changing world. Thinking back about the whole of Redford’s acting career, which includes some major thrillers and some films with strong political implications (see The Candidate and, of course, All the President’s Men), I’m convinced that as an actor Redford was at his best in roles that combined substance with comic flair. These include Butch Cassidy and The Sting, two brilliant pairings with Newman, as well as such more modest efforts as Sneakers (a caper comedy about hackers) and the late-in-life The Old Man & the Gun, shot when Redford was over 80.

 Which brings me to Downhill Racer, made in the same year as Butch Cassidy. Michael Ritchie’s first directorial effort, magnificently filmed on some of the world’s great ski slopes, is a gutsy look at the professional ski circuit, and grapples with the question of what it takes to be a winner. Redford plays an ambitious young racer, summoned by coach Gene Hackman to join the U.S. ski team after (in the film’s highly dramatic opening minutes) a talented skier suffers a bone-shattering fall. We know right away that Redford’s character, Dave Chappellet, is good—but also that he’s not particularly nice. He regards his new teammates as nuisances or rivals, and can’t be bothered to listen to his coach’s warnings. He’s willing to work hard on his own skills, but camaraderie is not for him.

 We understand something about Dave’s psychological makeup during the off-season, when he goes home to rural Colorado. His curmudgeonly dad, clearly a loner, greets him coldly, showing little interest in his son’s efforts to achieve Olympic gold on the way to fame and fortune. A local flame is thrilled to see him, but clearly it’s only sex he’s after.. The pattern repeats itself in Europe, where the sophisticated assistant (Camilla Sparv) to a manufacturer of ski equipment falls hard for him, only to learn that he’ll give her nothing beyond a roll in the hay.  He’s a loner and a user, that’s all.

 I won’t go into the end of the film, when his jest to the team’s #1 skier leads to an outcome he may or may not have anticipated. Is he a carefree hotdogger, or is there something more devious in the back of his mind? That’s an open question, one the film leaves us asking ourselves. I’d much rather watch Redford again in Butch Cassidy.

 

 

A Heartfelt “Miss Valentine”

The other day I had lunch with Peter Pan. Yes, really! Blayne Weaver has been the official voice of Disney’s classic Peter Pan character since 2001. Leaning into the classic sound of Bobby Driscoll, Disney’s original Peter,  Blayne records Peter Pan’s voice for films, TV, and Disney theme parks. Driscoll, I’m sad to report, came to a tragic end at age 31, a victim of drugs, alcohol, and Hollywood burn-out. Blayne, though much less famous, has found a way to keep his showbiz career moving forward. Though he started as an actor, and still loves the profession, he’s also kept busy in recent years as a screenwriter and director, mostly of indie movies of all stripes. Are you looking for a low-budget thriller? Or a romantic comedy? Blayne adores the whole process, challenges and all. His latest project, arriving this week on streaming service Xumo Play, is a holiday-themed rom-com called Miss Valentine. As he described it to me, “I’m trying to make When Harry Met Sally, with a tiny budget and without Tom Hanks.”

 At present he has almost a dozen credits as a director, nearly as many as a producer, and a number of writing credits as well. I met him through my once-upon-a-time Roger Corman pal, Mike Elliott, who has long specialized (through his company Capital Arts) in direct-to-video-style productions, of which he’s made scores. Capital Arts is backing Miss Valentine, which takes advantage of Blayne’s longtime connection with the state of Virginia where he holds a prestigious teaching post in Shenandoah University’s film department. It seems that nearby Winchester, Virginia hosts an annual springtime Apple Blossom Festival. But cable channels love holiday themes (Christmas, of course, is the big one), and so Valentine’s Day got the nod. Local pride allowed Blayne and company to shoot the apple-blossom festivities, with organizers permitting cast and crew to add Valentine’s Day hoopla to their parade and other events. The neighborhood turnout gave Miss Valentine a cast of thousands. They got to play themselves as townsfolk, and also gave a warm welcome to the film’s stars, who include appealing TV personalities Paris Berelc (as the beauty pageant winner guilty of an unforgivable faux-pas) and Luke Benward, as the young man who’s long fancied her. Many veteran players are featured too, including Marilu Henner (Taxi) as a no-nonsense pageant organizer. But despite the film’s big look, it was shot economically, over a Corman-like period of three six-day weeks.    

 Blayne is too practical a guy to be obsessed with any hyper-ambitious future project. (No Megalopolis for him, I suspect). Having finished Miss Valentine, his current dream is “getting the next one going.” He’s tried out many genres, but admits to a fondness for horror comedy, in which “bad things happen to funny people.”  

 Thinking back to Manic, a film that was his big break as a screenwriter, Blayne has strong feelings about the atmosphere he wants to create on a set. This 2001 drama about emotionally damaged teens was written with a starring part for himself, but the funders eventually pushed for big money and a big-name cast. It should have been a tremendous break, but the atmosphere on the set was so toxic that he vowed—when he started directing—to take the opposite route. As he says now, “You get the best work from artists when they’re encouraged.” He puts it succinctly: he starts each project with “a no-asshole policy.”  

 Nothing, I suspect, is going to stop Blayne from doing what he loves. As he told me, “I’m my best me when I’m on set.”