“Sideways”: Grapes, Nuts, and Flakes

Quaffed any good pinot noir lately? The grape got new respect in 2004 via Alexander Payne’s Sideways, a box office hit that was also a critical darling. (It was nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture, and won for the adaptation of Rex Pickett’s comic novel by Payne and co-author Jim Taylor.) I’ve long used it in my UCLA Extension advanced screenwriting courses as one way to approach various aspects of the screenwriter’s craft. Sideways provided a major boost to the acting careers of Paul Giamatti and his castmates, as well as a shot in the arm to tourism in California’s Santa Ynez Valley. It also upended the wine industry: after the advent of Sideways, merlot was considered by many to be a wine grape non grata.

 In 2024, Applause Books released Sideways Uncorked, described on its cover as “the perfect pairing of film and wine.” There’s no question that the authors know whereof they speak. Kirk Honeycutt was for twenty years a writer and then the chief film critic of The Hollywood Reporter. So he knows the film world inside and out. His in-depth understanding of independent films like Sideways was enhanced by his experience with low-budget maven Roger Corman on Final Judgement, a 1992 priest-and-stripper quickie for which Kirk wrote the original screenplay. (As Roger’s story editor I worked with Kirk on the project. I best recall a little moment in which the accused killer tries to get away from potential danger by climbing aboard a city bus. Roger refused to accept this quirky choice, reasoning that a badass required a motorcycle or something cooler than public transit. Thus my boss firmly rejected what I had found original and characteristic.) 

 In this book, it’s Kirk’s job to explain how Sideways came to be, how it was written, financed, cast, shot, and distributed.  Part of his focus is on the implications of Sideways being an indie film: by not allowing a studio with deep pockets to dictate key artistic choices (like the dream casting of George Clooney and Brad Pitt in the leading roles instead of the less glamorous Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church), Payne preserved his vision of this film as featuring two ordinary down-on-their-luck guys.

 Kirk’s insider stories about the making of Sideways, corroborated by the film’s cast and crew, are augmented by the contributions of his wife, Mira Advani Honeycutt. A longtime wine journalist, she puts her expertise to work in explaining the realities of the wine industry, especially as this applies to the Santa Ynez Valley. She begins by focusing in on the all-important physical properties of the area, what the French call “terroir.”  These are the environmental factors—relating to weather, soil quality, and the like—that determine which grapes can be most successfully planted in a given plot of land. Santa Barbara County’s Santa Ynez Valley offers vastly different climate conditions from Northern California’s famous grape-growing counties, and she traces the history of pinot noir cultivation in the region, showing in detail how this notoriously finicky grape (see Giamatti’s now-famous speech about the special needs of pinot) thrives in its soil. For wine lovers, she also advises on the best wineries for pinot noir in California, Oregon, and elsewhere. Nor does she neglect merlot, which is scorned by Giamatti’s character in the film, but certainly is worthy of having its own enthusiasts. It’s amusing to note that the book is dedicated “to Cinephiles, Pinotphiles, and Merlot Mavericks.”

 Want to know how the real-life owner of a Solvang restaurant made a fortune off the success of Sideways? This book’s for you. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Going “Psycho”

The other evening, in the line of duty, I went back in time and watched Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 masterwork, Psycho. Ironically, I never saw it in a theatre back in the day. (I was a young teenager at the time, and not especially keen on horror.) Needless to say, I’d heard all the brouhaha, and was aware that Janet Leigh’s character didn’t fare well during her overnight stay at the Bates Motel. But the intricacies of her killer’s identity were beyond me—until I took a long bus ride with a gaggle of other girls, and one filled me in on the entire plot.

 I’ve since seen the film, of course, though it’s been a while. But because I was asked to comment on a new biography about a Hollywood regular (Christopher McKittrick’s Vera Miles: The Hitchcock Blonde Who Got Away), it seemed appropriate to check out Miles’ appearances in films by legends like John Ford (The Searchers) and Alfred Hitchcock. Miles was, I learned, slated to become Hitchcock’s next leading lady, once Grace Kelly decamped for Monaco. After portraying Henry Fonda’s long-suffering wife in The Wrong Man, Miles was his original choice to play the fascinating female lead in Vertigo (1958), until scheduling problems got in the way. Still, she was featured by Hitchcock in the drama that kicked off his well-loved TV series. And for Psycho she played the important (though not especially interesting) role of Janet Leigh’s sister,  searching for the missing Marion Crane and letting out an impressive scream when she learns the truth about the spooky old lady in the big Victorian house.

 Psycho may be today one of Hitchcock’s best remembered films, but it’s far from typical of his oeuvre. Yes, it features a pretty blonde woman in dangerous circumstances, but Janet Leigh’s role in Psycho is far removed from those played by such Hitchcock blondes as Madeleine Carroll, Eva Marie Saint, Grace Kelly and Tippi Hedren. Whereas the usual Hitchcock heroine is elegantly attired, Leigh’s Marion Crane is most familiarly depicted wearing a bra and slip. She’s attractive, but she’s no mysterious glamour girl caught up in international intrigue. The criminal act of which she’s guilty is the sordid little matter of stealing a wad of cash from her employer so that perhaps she can finance a marriage to her not-so-willing boyfriend (John Gavin, a future US ambassador to Mexico).  

 Hitchcock’s decision to cast Janet Leigh, a rising star with a well-publicized Hollywood marriage (to Tony Curtis) as Marion Crane meant that the bulk of his budget went toward her salary. The result was that other aspects of Psycho were necessarily simplified. It was shot, mostly by Hitchcock’s TV crew, in austere black & white, in contrast to such glossy full-color Hitchcock productions as 1958’s Vertigo and 1959’s North by Northwest. But in fact this austerity seems to suit the simple but macabre story.

 One thing I never realized until I read the Vera Miles bio is that Hollywood, in its wisdom, eventually decided to sequelize Psycho. Hitchcock was dead and gone in 1983 when Universal Pictures paid Richard Franklin to direct Psycho II, set 22 years after the original story. Marion Crane played no part, of course, but Anthony Perkins signed on to again play Norman Bates, newly released from a mental institution. And Vera Miles signed on too, to portray the still-grieving sister who thirsts for revenge. Naturally there are mysterious and macabre doings galore . . . and three years later, Perkins himself directed Psycho III, described as a psychological slasher film. Happily, I missed these cinematic gems.  

 

 

Peru Comes to the Vatican . . . and Hollywood

Understandably, there’s been much press coverage of Leo XIV, the newly anointed first American-born pope. Though a native of Chicago, Leo (born Robert Francis Prevost) has close link with the nation of Peru, where—after years of missionary work—he took on Peruvian citizenship. His strong emotional ties to that picturesque South American nation reminded me of Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian Nobel laureate who died this past April at age 89.   

 Vargas Llosa was a man of letters who in 1990 nearly became Peru’s president. (He was defeated in a landslide by Alberto Fujimori, who quickly claimed dictatorial powers and was run out of the country 10 years later.) A prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction, Vargas Llosa began his literary career circa 1960. Though I’ve read his charming early work, known in English as Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, I by no means pretend to be an expert on his entire oeuvre. Still, for a time I worked closely with his younger cousin, Luis Llosa Urquidi, familiarly known as Lucho.

 When I was Roger Corman’s story editor at Concorde-New Horizons in the late 1980s, we shot many low-budget features in Argentina, taking advantage of the exotic locales and cheap labor costs that the current U.S. regime is striving to combat with tariff threats. At one point Roger was flying to Buenos Aires to check on a troubled production, but bad weather forced the plane to land in Lima, Peru. Screenwriter Fred Bailey told me what happened next: Roger “got off the plane, took a taxi into town, opened up the yellow pages, and got somebody to find motion picture production listings. Made a few calls asking who was the best filmmaker in Lima . . . they all said, ‘Luis Llosa.’ Called him up, made a deal, and was back on the airplane to Argentina within a couple of hours.”

 Through Lucho, Roger discovered a wealth of Peruvian locations: crumbling colonial cities, towering mountain ranges, a long seacoast, lots of jungle. There we shot everything from ecological thrillers (Fire on the Amazon) to a submarine drama (Full Fathom Five) to a rather fascinating Bonnie-and-Clyde-in-the Future project (Crime Zone). More than once we used the jungles of Peru to stand in for Vietnam in would-be war epics. What made shooting in Peru particularly exciting was the fact that this was the era of the Shining Path, an armed guerrilla group aiming to launch a People’s War against established government entities. One Corman production was actually briefly put on hold when the Shining Path took over a location. I’m certainly not complaining about the fact that I, as story editor, remained safe in my office in Brentwood, California.

 Of course Lucho, despite his thriving cinematic career in Peru, aspired to make American movies with prospects beyond those of the low-budget Corman world. His biggest success was a 1997 creature-feature called Anaconda, shot in South America with a big-name cast that included Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Jon Voigt, and Owen Wilson. This snake-infested horror movie grossed $136.8 million worldwide and quickly became a popular franchise. It earned money but not respect, ending up nominated for six Razzie Awards (including Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Actor, and Worst Screenplay), all of which it lost to Kevin Costner’s The Postman. Still, today it’s considered a cult classic.   

Another successful member of the Llosa clan is writer/director Claudia Llosa Bueno, niece of both Mario and Lucho.  Her second feature, The Milk of Sorrow, explores the folk beliefs of indigenous Peruvians. In 2010 it was nominated for the Best Foreign Film Oscar.

 

 

Water, Water, Everywhere: Life of Pi

Life of Pi is many things to many people. It can mean Yann Martel’s deeply philosophical novel, which after numerous rejections came out in 2001, immediately attracting readers and winning major prizes. It can mean the 2012 film version, which nabbed eleven Oscar nominations and won four statuettes, one of them for Ang Lee’s inspired direction. It can mean the stage adaptation I saw recently in Los Angeles, following residences in London and New York.

 The stage and film versions of course have to meet the challenge of depicting a boy on a small boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. And, oh yes, his companion throughout this watery journey is a large and very hungry-looking Bengal tiger. The production I saw at L.A.’s Ahmanson Theatre was heavily reliant on what we might call stage magic. The show effectively used both light and sound to suggest the briny deep. And that tiger? Here the production team turned to an artform that has earned respect on western stages only in the last fifty years or so: puppetry. When we think of puppets, it’s easy to focus on child’s play: on Punch and Judy or on their rather more sophisticated cousins, the Muppets. Other cultures, though, have made deeply serious and deeply adult use of puppets in their theatres and even in their religious rituals. (See the shadow puppets of Indonesia who act out sacred myths on behalf of the whole community.) I’m personally a big fan of Japan’s bunraku, in which large doll-like puppets perform traditional romantic stories that can be poignant, even genuinely tragic.

 I credit Julie Taymor with discovering that puppets belong on the Broadway stage when in 1997 she took on the challenge of directing The Lion King, a live-action version of the beloved Disney film. Ten years later, a best-selling novel called War Horse was dramatized in London, featuring life-size horse puppets manipulated by several well-coordinated actors. In Life of Pi, two highly-trained human performers slip under the skin of that tiger, and others in the cast make a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan, and a large turtle come to life before our eyes. 

 The movie version of Life of Pi poses different challenges. Movies by their nature need to look real; there’s not the willing suspension of disbelief that distinguishes an audience response to a theatrical performance. Filming on water is hardly easy. That fact was acknowledged by my former boss, Roger Corman  when he turned down a chance to make an early version of Water World. (Kevin Costner’s 1995 take on this futuristic story, in which rising sea levels have made dry land mostly disappeared, was seriously weighed down by a huge production budget.) Still, these days it’s not impossible for a well-trained movie crew to make a large tank on a studio lot look like an entire ocean.

 But the challenge of the cinematic Life of Pi was less the ocean than the animals. Here’s where modern CGI came into its own: the film’s central critters are almost entirely computer-generated, and the young Indian actor playing Pi was never in contact with a dangerous wild beast. (Needless to say, Suraj Sharma’s role was not an easy one: he had to react to the moods and moves of creatures who were simply not there.) 

 The Oscars won by Life of Pi are a testament to the film’s technical brilliance. In addition to Ang Lee’s directorial triumph, the film was honored for its remarkable cinematography and visual effects. To be honest, though, it’s not as riveting a movie as the eventual Best Picture winner, Argo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Losing the Invaluable Frances Doel

 It saddens me to report that Frances Doel is no longer with us. Frances, the right-hand woman of Roger Corman for many a decade, passed away last week at age 83. Late in life she had moved from Hollywood to Lexington, Kentucky to be tended by family members who loved her dearly. Honestly, she was dearly loved by everyone who knew her.

 Roger Corman met Frances at Oxford, where she was completing a degree in literature. Always a shrewd judge of character, he concluded she was smart enough and agreeable enough to make a good assistant. And so she was—learning from scratch pretty much every job involving a movie set or a production office. Her obituary notes that she ghost-wrote the first draft of many a Corman classic, and named among her official writing credits 1974’s Big Bad Mama, starring Angie Dickinson, William Shatner, and Tom Skerritt.  I was there, and I’m happy to share how this first Frances Doel screen credit came to be.

 Starting work as Roger’s new assistant in 1973, I immediately gravitated toward the New World Pictures story department, which was Frances. Roger wanted a seriocomic rural crime thriller à la Bonnie and Clyde. Back then, he was obligated to use WGA writers, and it was a lot cheaper to hire a union writer for a re-write than for an original script. That’s why he gave Frances an entire weekend to crank out a workable first draft. Of course she came through with flying colors, devising a story about a poor but feisty mother and her two nubile daughters who take up robbery in Depression-era Texas. She slapped a fake name on the draft, and we hired a veteran screenwriter to take over.

 William Norton, a very nice guy, seemed to enjoy story meetings with Frances and me. As we worked our way through characterizations and plot points, Bill started wondering aloud about the author of  the original draft. He went so far as to ask if this “man” could come in and discuss some story questions he had. At which point, Frances and I began to giggle. Eventually we couldn’t hide the fact that Frances herself was the screenwriter in question. A true gentleman, Bill insisted that she share script credit with him. It was the start of her string of Corman writing credits, which ultimately included such low-budget classics as Crazy Mama and Sharktopus.

 Did Frances get paid extra for her weekend labors? She couldn’t recall exactly, but suspected that Big Bad Mama earned her about $100. Over the years, her earnings increased, netting her $5000 each for quickie creature-features like Dinocroc. But she never entirely earned Roger’s full respect. As she told me in 2011, soon after her retirement, “Roger got very fed up with me,” because he didn’t feel she was writing fast enough. Ten script pages a day seemed to him a reasonable amount, even though she was putting in this work solely on evenings and weekends.

 Frances stayed with Roger in various capacities for decades, earning the genuine praise of such celebrated Corman alumni as John Sayles and Ron Howard. But the time came when she got a better offer, moving on to Disney, and then ultimately joining with Corman alum Jon Davison to produce hits like Starship Troopers. Eventually she hit on hard times, and Roger—in a burst of generosity—gave her my job as Concorde-New Horizons story editor. It hurt, but I couldn’t blame Frances. She was too gracious and too special for that.   

 And I could never have written my Roger Corman bio without her.   

Bruce Logan: On the Beach and On the Moon

I first met Bruce Logan when he was getting married. Well, sort of. Back in 1974 I was serving as production secretary on the Roger Corman gangster romp, Big Bad Mama, which starred the odd triangle of Angie Dickinson, William Shatner, and Tom Skerritt. (Yes, there were some wild and crazy sex scenes.) Part of my job was to keep track of cast and crew. So I knew it was a very big deal that Bruce Logan was our director of photography. After all, he had been a young visual effects whiz, working directly with Stanley Kubrick and SFX master Douglas Trumbull on 2001: A Space Odyssey. A self-taught animator, he began work on 2001 in 1965, at age 19,  and stayed with the project through the film’s release in 1968. That same year, he left his native England, coming to California to collaborate with Trumbull on Antonioni’s apocalyptic Zabriskie Point (1970).

 Given his classy resumé, we were all impressed that Bruce Logan was willing to work on low-budget Roger Corman fare. But there he was, fitting in nicely with our misfit crew. The last day of our three-week Big Bad Mama shoot, we threw ourselves a wrap party on the site of our final location, Malibu’s Paradise Cove. To add to the fun, we staged on the sand a mock wedding for Bruce and his girlfriend, who were apparently planning to get hitched for real in the near future. A veteran actor, Royal Dano, had played a scoundrel of a minister in the film: he was persuaded to put on his clerical robes and conduct the ceremony with great theatrical flourish. If memory serves, most of the ad hoc wedding party ended up splashing in the waves. And a good time was had by all.

 I didn’t think much about Bruce over the years, until filmmaker friends invited me to a gathering at which he was being given a lifetime achievement award. This was around 2009, and his filmography had swelled to include providing visual and optical effects for the first Star Wars film (1977) and cinematography for the ambitious sci-fi epic, Tron (1982), in which a computer hacker is abducted into a digital world. I was then working on a book that took readers back to the film year 1967, and I had a hunch that Bruce would have some opinions about that era in which both he and I were youthful film enthusiasts.  He graciously invited me to his Pacific Palisades home for what turned out to be a long, fascinating chat. He was an imposing figure: tall, with white hair and beard. His clothing was conservative, except for a beaded necklace and that heavy silver skull bracelet on his left wrist. Underneath it all, I suspect, Bruce Logan would forever be a bit of a hippie, though he no longer had the long flowing locks of his 2001 days.

 Our conversation was wide-ranging. Of course we discussed Kubrick’s prescience in making 2001, which features convincing-looking computer screens and read-outs decades before desktop computers actually existed. With the advent of the U.S. space program, new data was coming in about the lunar surface, at the very same time that Kubrick and company were deciding what their moon’s back side should look like. They thought of altering their concept to match the science, then decided that, frankly speaking, “the moon looks kind of boring.” Ultimately, they stuck by their own artistic vision, one that would prove inspiring to countless Baby Boomers.

 Bruce Logan died on April 10, 2025. I wish we could have had another long, fruitful chat.

 

 

Shooting Day for Night

Day for Night, in common movie parlance, is the process of shooting film during daylight hours but using filters to convince the audience that the scene takes place after nightfall.  Day for Night is also the English-language title of a 1973 film that was a labor of love for French cinéaste François Truffaut, who directed, co-wrote, and played a central role as, bien sûr!, a director. (The film’s original title is the term that is the French equivalent of “day for night”:  La Nuit américaine. How apt that this wholly artificial but often cost-effective process is linked to American savvy.)  

 In this film about the making of a romantic melodrama called Je vous présente Paméla (or Meet Pamela), Truffaut takes a loving look at the very essence of cinema. Films may seem to reflect life as it is lived, but in fact they are wholly dependent upon artifice. So it follows that those who make movies accept—and thrive on—unreality.  Like the fact that the pretty girl in the speeding car is—temporarily—a stuntman wearing a dress and a wig.  That’s why movie sets are (believe me, I know!) little worlds unto themselves, with emotions running wild. Offscreen romantic partnerships can change from day to day, and few in the cast and crew are on their best behavior.

 Day for Night begins with what seems like an everyday street scene somewhere in the south of France. Passersby stroll along a leafy avenue, a deliveryman makes his rounds, a woman walks her dog.  Then, cut! It all has to be done again . . .  and again. As the director and his loyal assistant try to keep things under control, the film’s stars are creating their own brand of havoc. Jean-Pierre Aumont, as the veteran actor Alexandre, keeps making mysterious trips to the local airport, little knowing that one of these jaunts will have disastrous consequences.  Fellini veteran Valentina Cortese plays Séverine, an ageing actress so worried about her fading looks and diminishing skills that she imbibes heavily, leading to an hilarious scene in which she can’t quite manage to say her lines and open the proper door. (She was ultimately Oscar-nominated for this role, and singled out by winner Ingrid Bergman as the more deserving nominee.)  

 While cast and crew await the arrival from America of leading lady Julie (Jacqueline Bisset), her film spouse Alphonse (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is struggling with an on-again off-again romance with the novice script girl. (Léaud’s presence will spark a frisson of recognition from film buffs who well remember him as the fourteen-year-old Antoine Doinel at the center of Truffaut’s cinematic breakthrough, 1959’s The Four Hundred Blows.) When the oh-so-passionate Alphonse discovers his inamorata has decamped with the hunky stuntman, his agony knows no bounds. He’s determined to quit the production on the spot; in placating him, Julie inevitably puts her own new marriage at risk.

 My favorite among the minor characters may be Joëlle, the assistant director. She’s always at the director’s right hand, making smart suggestions when asked, generally taking care of business.  This doesn’t stop her, though, when out in the countryside cleaning up someone else’s mess, from stripping off her clothes and announcing to a surprised crew member that she’d enjoy a quickie.  Later, after the script girl’s sudden departure, Joëlle makes her own feelings clear. She can’t imagine leaving a production to pursue a romance. But would she quit a romance for the sake of a production? Bien sûr!  As Irving Berlin once put it, “There’s no people like show people . . . .”

Lost (and Not So Lost) Causes: “Newsies”

 When a musical called Newsies was released by Disney in 1992, it was a box office bomb. This despite the presence in the cast of a sexy Ann-Margret, an earnest Bill Pullman, an oily Robert Duvall (playing newspaper tycoon Joseph Pulitzer), and—in a bravura role—a very young and dashing Christian Bale. The story was a good one, drawn from an 1899 strike by New York City newsboys furious that the city’s newspaper publishers were trying to bolster their own profits by increasing the sum they charged these scruffy street kids for the privilege of hawking their papers. Kenny Ortega, well known for choreographing such popular films as Dirty Dancing, signed on to make his directing debut. Alan Menken, who contributed memorable tunes to Disney hits like The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, came aboard to write the score.

 hat the Disney folks had in mind was a sort of nineteenth-century West Side Story, with ragtag youngsters expressing their social angst by singing and dancing through the streets of Manhattan. A good idea, perhaps, but in its execution not terribly convincing. Though the story of the strike is a real one, the production here seems clearly to belong to the backlot of a movie studio. This despite the fact that the dance moves, in particular, are thrilling, especially in a rousing number called “Seize the Day.” (I’m not sure these street urchins would know the English-language translation of the Latin “carpe diem,” but never mind.)  Perhaps this should have been a Broadway show from the beginning: when a revised version did open on the Great White Way in 2011, it ran for three years, racking up numerous nominations and awards.

 I caught Newsies on a Disney-issued DVD from 2002, courtesy of my local library. (Public libraries, as I hope everyone knows, are a great source of DVDs as well as books.). In the usual manner of DVDs issued by movie studios, the feature film I watched was preceded by enthusiastic promos for other movies that were, we were told, coming soon. What caught my attention was that each of the promos preceding Newsies was for a Disney animated feature that was a follow-up to a classic Disney hit. I was urged to see such movies as a Peter Pan sequel, Cinderella 2, and 101 Dalmatians II. Every single one of these breathlessly-hyped flicks was, I noted, apparently hand-drawn, in the traditional Disney way. No computer-generated animation here!

 Which made it seem that Disney—seven years after Pixar debuted Toy Story, the world’s first fully computer-animated feature film—was still trying to deny that the computer had changed animation forever. Clearly, this attempt at denial didn’t work. I doubt any of the sequels promoted on this DVD made the company much money. Four years later, in 2006, the Disney folks announced that they were buying Pixar, and folding it into the Disney universe, while also experimenting with ways to use computers on their own in-house projects.

 Personally, I love the look of hand-drawn animation (though I’m hardly opposed to the use of computers to simplify the animator’s job). But on the Newsies 2002 DVD, Disney seems to be stuck in the past, both in terms of technique and subject matter. The contents of the DVD imply that Disney wants to turn back the clock to a time that once was (or, perhaps, never really was). A time when animators drew by hand, and when big splashy musicals that aimed to be a cross between West Side Story and Oliver! were big hits at your local movie house. 

Simon Says: Watch Me Take on the World of Ballet in “Etoile”

I’ve always been intrigued by Simon Callow. There seems to be nothing he can’t do. In 1979 he set the theatre world abuzz with his portrayal of cocky young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus. (By the time the play became an Oscar-winning film, he had aged out of the part and taken a lesser role.) He later played memorable mostly-comic roles in classic British costume dramas like A Room with a View (as the jovial Reverend Beebe), Howards End, and Shakespeare in Love. I particularly relish his unforgettable performance in Four Weddings and a Funeral, one that prompts the film’s most touching moment. Clearly a man who is intellectually restless, Callow has tried directing too, and has published biographies of such major artistic figures as Oscar Wilde, Charles Laughton, Richard Wagner, and Orson Welles. I read the first volume of his Welles book, The Road to Xanadu¸ and found it a fascinating exploration of Welles as an actor, seen through the eyes of a kindred spirit.

 But it was Callow’s first book Being an Actor (originally 1984, but recently updated), that had a small impact on my own life. When I was still in my Roger Corman years, this in-depth primer on the theatrical arts was enthusiastically recommended to me by the actor David Birney. Having read it, I couldn’t wait to meet Callow, and the opportunity presented itself when he came to L.A. to direct an obscure drama at the Los Angeles Theatre Center. He was happy to be interviewed by me, partly because he hoped for an introduction to Roger Corman. (Yes, he had a film project in mind, but ultimately Roger didn’t cotton to it.) In any case, that’s how I ended up having a sumptuous breakfast with Simon in the dining room of  L.A.’s venerable Biltmore Hotel. To my not very great surprise, this was a man who truly enjoyed good food. I think it’s fair to say he has a real appetite for life in all its forms.

 I’ve been thinking of Simon of late because I just finished watching Etoile, the Amazon Prime mini-series in which he has a central role.  It was created by Amy Sherman-Palladino and husband Daniel Palladino, who both write and direct. As the folks responsible for Gilmore Girls and more recently The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, both know how to put together a series that blends comedy and human drama. Set in the ballet world, Etoile posits that major dance companies in Paris and New York City trade prime talents for a season, in order to goose ticket sales. Naturally there’s a lot of emotion involved, as well as some spectacular dancing. Top-billed Luke Kirby struts and frets as the artistic director of the New York Metropolitan Ballet. (He was Lenny Bruce in Mrs. Maisel.) Charlotte Gainsbourg is appealing as his beleaguered French counterpart. There are lots of storylines involving various dancers (as well as one extremely petulant but talented choreographer), but the most unforgettable is Lou de Laâge as Cheyenne Toussant, a Parisian “étoile” (prima ballerina) whose ego is as large as her talent, and whose sexual appetites are not easily satisfied. She’s a wonderful whirlwind of a character, one who seems perennially angry, though there are hints of her softer side. 

  Among all these talents lurks Simon Callow as Crispin Shamblee, a British oil baron who donates ostentatiously to both ballet companies, and expects their fealty in return. He is always popping up at the wrong moment, thoroughly enjoying his ability to make trouble for one and all. A man of many appetites indeed.

 

 

 

Two for the Show: “The Ballad of Wallis Island”

 

Every once in a while, it’s a pleasure to go to a cozy neighborhood theatre and watch an unheralded indie from somewhere far away. It helps, of course, if the actors are spot-on, the scenery is beautiful, and the message is life-affirming, though not corny. That’s how I felt after seeing The Ballad of Wallis Island, filmed on the rugged coast of Wales by a British director I know nothing about.  (His name is James Griffiths.) The story is an expanded version of a BAFTA-nominated short from way back in 2007: "The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island" I don’t know that film at all, but it obviously got enough attention that the talented Carey Mulligan signed on as female lead in the expanded film. But the real key figures are two friends who both wrote and starred in the original short version, and now fill the same roles in The Ballad of Wallis Island.

When an actor writes a leading role for himself or herself, there’s always the danger that the film will come off as a vanity project. Such is not the case here: while watching the film I had no notion that two men I’d never heard of were behind the creation of the characters they played. I only sensed that both Tom Basden and Tim Key were perfectly cast. Basden, who nicely sings and plays guitar, has the role of Herb McGwyer, a once-popular folk singer who has never gotten past the loss of his performing partner, Nell Mortimer (Mulligan).  (Think of them as the Ian and Sylvia of their day.) Herb may have once been a star, but now he’s something of a sad sack, hurting for money and feeling that the world has passed him by. He’s been invited to Wallis Island by an enthusiastic fan, Charles Heath (Key), whose adoration for the old McGwyer and Mortimer duo has no bounds. Charles—a big lottery winner—lives in solitary splendor, indulging in whims like bringing Herb to his island home for a private concert. What Herb doesn’t know right away is that Charles has also invited Nell, who arrives with her new  husband in tow. Uh oh! Everyone is mostly polite in a veddy British way, but the tension has suddenly ratcheted up to eleven.

 Basden and Key, in particular, are experts at playing off one another. The tall, lanky Basden endures all sorts of bad luck. Upon arrival at the island he falls into the ocean, drenching his luggage. His iPhone gets accidentally immersed more than once, necessitating a bowlful of rice that ends up contributing to the plot in surprising ways. And he never quite manages to take a bath without his host popping in to see how he’s doing. We never laugh at Basden’s woes, because he seems like a man who’s suffered deep disappointments. But Key, as his opposite number, is hilarious. He loves playing the cheery host to his celebrity guests, and—probably from years of living alone—has developed a stream of puns and other babble that he inflicts on anyone within earshot. (Watching him try to play a solo game of tennis is worth the price of admission.)  He’s funny and lovable and extremely aggravating, all at the same time. But it takes a while for us to appreciate how lonely he must be.

 There are a few other important characters, notably the always welcome Mulligan, who beautifully duets with Basden in a key scene. But basically The Ballad of Wallis Island is two for the show, And I wouldn’t want it any other way.

 

 

Ronald Colman: A Durable Life

The actor Ronald Colman, known for his dapper mustache and his mellifluous speaking voice, left us in 1958. But lovers of old cinema classics still remember him fondly. I recall my parents chuckling over their memories of 1947’s The Late George Apley and my mother developing a romantic fascination with Shangri-La, thanks to a hit Colman film from 1937, Lost Horizon. I’ve also come across Carol Burnett’s rambunctious take on a 1942 Colman romantic weepy, Random Harvest. (Burnett’s version, called Rancid Harvest, has heaps of fun with the story of a British ex-soldier, suffering from amnesia, who has totally forgotten his marriage to perky Greer Garson.) 

Colman’s film career, which stretched from the silent era to 1957, gave him a wide variety of roles. He was a courtly would-be lover in Lady Windermere’s Fan, a silent adaptation of the Oscar Wilde play directed back in 1925 by the great Ernst Lubitsch. He starred as a soldier, a jewel thief, a heroic doctor, an esteemed law professor, and a painter who has gone blind.  After multiple Oscar nominations, he finally took home the golden statuette in 1948 for A Double Life, in which he played a Broadway actor so caught up in his portrayal of Othello that he nearly murders his on-stage Desdemona. 

How to take in the whole scope of Colman’s illustrious career? My exceedingly prolific colleague Carl Rollyson has written a Colman biography, published in 2024, that’s both extremely thorough and unique in its focus. He has titled it Ronald Colman: Hollywood’s Gentleman Hero. Rollyson’s book contains the elements of many classic biographies: a timeline, a photo section, several useful appendices, a list of sources, and so on. But Rollyson chooses not to start with the familiar cradle-to-grave narrative. Instead, he devotes the long first section of his book to what he calls “A Gentleman’s Work.” Starting with the classic eighteenth-century delineation of gentlemanly behavior in Samuel Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison, he considers Colman’s film career as a creative working out of an English gentleman’s approach to life. Not that Colman always plays an Englishman; not that he’s wholly typecast as a wealthy aristocrat. Rollyson sees in Colman’s film roles an exploration of truly gentlemanly behavior, often featuring a character who must repent of his flaws and find true nobility within  himself. (Colman’s Sydney Carton in 1935’s A Tale of Two Cities certainly rises to the occasion as he heads toward the guillotine.) A particularly interesting section focuses on Lost Horizon, in which Colman’s role as an esteemed British statesman who becomes entranced by the promise of a life of seclusion and peace becomes, in his daughter’s words, “Ronald Colman stepping into his own image.”   

After thoroughly exploring the implications of Colman’s career, Rollyson delves deeply into the life itself, helped by input from Hollywood colleagues and from Colman’s daughter Juliet, who in 1975 probed her late father’s psyche in Ronald Colman: A Very Private Person. My favorite discovery is that Colman and his second wife, English actress Benita Hume, had a long, loving, exceedingly playful relationship, one captured in their popular radio broadcast, The Halls of Ivy (1950-52). The show briefly moved to television, but radio was their favorite medium as a couple, because in their later years it gave them more time for friends and for one another. And—who would have thought it?—the pair had a ball playing themselves as supposed next-door-neighbors of the cheap and cranky Jack Benny. He featured them frequently on his own radio broadcasts, with Benny heckling a dignified but prickly Colman, and Benita desperately striving to keep the peace. 

 

M is for Matriarch: “Greek Mothers Never Die”

With Mothers Day on the horizon, I’ve started thinking about movies in which mothers are front and center. All kinds of mothers. Noble, self-sacrificing mothers (Stella Dallas). Shrill harridans who make their kids’ lives miserable (Mommie Dearest).  In a dark comedic vain, mothers who mean well but drive their children crazy (Throw Momma from the Train).

In a special category are family films showcasing American kids who chafe against the rules and superstitions of their old-world mothers. Such films, comedies with a sharp edge, blend a scrutiny of family relationships with the humor we find in newcomers (or those remaining close to their immigrant roots) who don’t quite fit into their American surroundings. There was a time, back in the early Philip Roth era (let’s say the late 1960s) when Jewish mothers were considered comedy gold. The stereotype of the abrasive, all-consuming Jewish Mother shows up in movies made from works by such hot young novelists as Roth and Bruce Jay Friedman. See, of course, Portnoy’s Complaint (filmed in 1972 with Lee Grant in the mother role). And, in the same category, see portrayals by Shelley Winters in films like Next Stop, Greenwich Village and Over the Brooklyn Bridge. 

Of course, other ethnicities have their own humor focused on moms who refuse to let go of what they see as their duty to the families they’ve created. There’s a touch of this in the hit 1987 comedy, Moonstruck, which won Olympia Dukakis an Oscar for her portrayal of the Italian-American family matriarch. Ironically, although Dukakis came from Greek immigrant stock on both sides, she was nowhere to be seen in 2002’s huge indie hit, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, in which Mama was memorably played by Lainie Kazan. 

The longterm public enthusiasm surrounding My Big Fat Greek Wedding—which spawned two sequels and a 2003 sitcom—has seemed to propel Greek Americans into the ranks of funny foreigners with crazy accents and wacky beliefs. Just in time for Mothers Day, writer-director-actor Rachel Suissa gives us Greek Mothers Never Die, a well-meaning comedy that juxtaposes an epic mother/daughter clash with the kind of supernatural underpinnings that mark generations of movies like All of Me, Death Becomes Her, and (for those with long memories ) the Topper series.

 In the Topper movies and the later TV sitcom, a stuffy bank president is haunted by the ghosts of a fun-loving young couple (originally played by Constance Bennett and Cary Grant) who try to teach him to relax and enjoy life. The dead (and very Greek) mother in Greek Mothers Never Die constantly shows herself to her daughter, an aspiring singer now living on an island in Florida, to dispense maternal wisdom about life’s dangers. In Mama Despina’s mind, olive oil is the nectar of the gods, and pretty much everything else on earth (from butter to pre-marital sex) may well lead to cancer. But though she’ll never dispense with worry and warnings, Despina truly has daughter Ella’s best interests at heart. She can orchestrate a dandy makeover, and knows just which young doctor will be the right future mate for her late-blooming little girl. (A telling moment: on Ella and Nick’s first romantic night together, guess who shows up lying between them?) 

This is not the sort of movie in which traditional Greek religion occupies much of a role. The characters hardly feel a deep link to their Greek Orthodox faith. Still, there’s room for some amusing ancient Greek mythological deities (Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, and so on) to comment on the romantic action. But Mama is the true deus ex machina here.

The film is released by Gravitas Ventures and is now available on AppleTV+

 

Dancing Through Life: Patrick Adiarte

Sometimes when you read an obit of a showbiz figure, you are propelled back in time to movies you truly loved in your formative years. That’s what happened to me when I read about the death of dancer Patrick Adiarte at age 81. The name itself meant nothing to me. But when I read Adiarte’s credits, I realized that he had featured roles in two of my long-ago favorite musicals, one released in 1956 and the other in 1961. Now I can still see him in my mind’s eye, adding immeasurably to movies in which, as a teenaged actor, he shone brillliantly.

Born in the Philippines, Adiarte inherited his mother’s gift for dance. The two of them performed together on Broadway in The King and I (in which they were supposed to be Thai) as well as Flower Drum Song (where they portrayed Chinese Americans). (All Asian-American performers know that, while there aren’t many stage or screen roles specifically intended for those of their ethnicity, they are allowed by custom to slip into any part requiring an “exotic” look.)

Though young Patrick was a well-trained dancer, his role in the stage and screen version of The King and I hardly required him to bust out the dance moves. He played Prince Chulalongkorn, the King’s number one son and potential heir to the throne. What I remember from the screen version of this role is the tremendous dignity with which he conveyed his royal status. Just by noticing the shoulders-back chest-up  manner in which he stood and walked. I grasped that this young prince was determined to serve his people to the very best of his ability, whenever it was his fate to assume the throne. Those who love The King and I will remember the important role Prince  Chulalongkorn plays at the story’s end, while his father (Yul Brynner) is languishing on his deathbed and it falls to this young boy—in a moment of intense grief—to take command. 

Flower Drum Song provided Adiarte with quite a different role. In this romantic story set in San Francisco’s Chinatown, the older brother (James Shigeta in the movie) is caught between his yen for a sexy nightclub dancer (Nancy Kwan) and his growing appreciation for the picture-bride who has been imported for him from the Old Country (Miyoshi Umeki). Adiarte’s role was that of Shigeta’s impish brother, Wang San. Too young to be concerned about the prospect of an arranged marriage, he’s an All-American scamp, outraging the tradition-minded older family members and generally having boyish fun. Throughout most of the film, I recall him decked out in a Little League baseball uniform. In Flower Drum Song Adiarte gets full opportunity to sing and dance (notably in a comic number called “The Other Generation”), and he makes the most of it. 

Adiarte was featured in five movies in all, and made many TV appearances, most of them capitalizing on his “exotic” appearance. He played a Middle Eastern prince in the comic film, John Goldfarb, Please Come Home, a Native American on Bonanza, and an islander on Hawaii Five-O  His best TV role was as a Korean, Ho-Jon, on seven episodes of M*A*S*H. He must have especially enjoyed his guest appearance on a Gene Kelly TV special, one that occurred around the time of Flower Drum Song. There’s no ethnic cuteness here, just some bravura tap-dancing alongside Kelly. Am I allowed to say it? I think Pat outshines the master. 

When he was no longer young and cute, Adiarte retired from performing, going on to teach dance.. Surely a life well lived. 

Dedicated to my fellow dance enthusiast, Barbara Trainin Blank. 

 

“The Residence”: A House is Not a Home

It’s a classic location for a murder mystery: the grand old house that perhaps has seen better days. What can be grander and older than 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the home of every U.S. president since John Adams? And, at this time of political turmoil and stark predictions of disaster, it’s easy indeed to imagine something going very wrong in the east wing, where visitors come and go, and unlikely cronies of those in power take up residence for the long haul.

Not that Shonda Rimes’ eight-part miniseries, The Residence, pretends that it’s talking about what’s actually going on in today’s Washington. Political parties are never mentioned, and the President is contending with such in-house challenges as  a scruffy kleptomaniac brother, an acerbic and hard-drinking mother-in-law, and a same-sex husband whom no one seems to respect. A major terrorist attack the previous March has left everyone on edge, but life continues thanks to a well-trained staff (waiters, housekeepers, maintenance workers, gardeners, chefs) presided over by a formidable Chief Usher . . . . until all hell breaks loose. 

That first episode, in which the murder is discovered midway through a state dinner with the Australian diplomatic corps, is whimsically titled “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Fans of old murder mystery flicks will be amused at how each episode borrows the title of an appropriate classic, like Knives Out, The Last of Sheila, or The Trouble with Harry. Climactic episodes 7 and 8 initially struck me as oddly named: who ever heard of a movie called The Adventures of the Engineer’s Thumb or The Mystery of the Yellow Room? It turns out, though, that these are old prose works (one written in French and one featuring Sherlock Holmes) that were indeed put on film many decades ago.  

The tone of the series—witty but dark, with enough genuine emotion to keep us interested—is set by the detective brought in to solve the case. No, not Sherlock Holmes, but someone equally eccentric, and a lot more lovable.  Uzo Aduba, late of Orange is the New Black, is Cordelia Cupp, a solid presence, no-nonsense but not without empathy. She excels at detective work, but her real passion is for birding, and she somehow manages to make the two activities seem compatible, with the one helpfully informing upon the other. Her unflappability is highly useful in these circumstances, given the hysteria going on all around her. She’s matched with a young FBI sidekick (Randall Park) who at first regards her with suspicion, but their evolving relationship is such that there’s hope they’ll be re-matched in future adventures.

There are, of course, lots of other interesting folks along for the ride, including a loud-mouthed member of the wait staff, a  prickly pastry chef, the president’s manic social secretary, and a staff engineer who’s sweetly protective of one of the housemaids. They all bear grudges against the victim, but the whodunit revelation in episode eight is well staged, taking advantage of the complicated architecture of the White House’s upstairs floors for one startling revelation. 

Australian songstress Kylie Minogue has a small but key role, and the script enjoys poking fun at fellow Aussie Hugh Jackson, who is mentioned in every episode but never quite seen on camera. I should also mention the closing dedication to Andre Braugher, who was cast, back in 2022 in the central role of Chief Usher A. B. Wynter, but died midway through the shoot. The Residence is dedicated to his memory, and his role is more than ably filled by Giancarlo Esposito, as a man you love to hate. 

The Unexpected Mrs. Nixon, Superstar

Hollywood has always had a soft spot for movies about presidents. Both satiric comedies and heartfelt dramas have featured an American president in a leading role. There’s even a musical—an adaptation of the stage hit 1776—that features the song stylings of future U.S. presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

 Of all the American. presidents, it is Abraham Lincoln who has earned the most screen time. He’s been portrayed by Walter Huston in 1930; by Henry Fonda (as Young Mr. Lincoln) in 1939; by Raymond Massey in 1940’s Abe Lincoln in Illinois; and by an Oscar-winning Daniel Day-Lewis in 2012’s Steven Spielberg Civil War-era epic, simply called Lincoln. This is not to mention a more eccentric 2012 flick, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

 Among 20^th century American presidents, the inspirational story of Franklin Delano Roosevelt contending with polio gave rise to 1960’s Sunrise at Campobello. Oliver Stone’s  JFK (1991) is less about John F. Kennedy than about the nagging questions behind his assassination. The up-and-down career of Bill Clinton was pseudonymously handled in 1998’s Primary Colors, in which John Travolta portrays a Clinton-like presidential rogue.

 Then there’s Richard Nixon, whose checkered presidency has been scrutinized in everything from a biographical drama (1995’s Nixon, starring Anthony Hopkins) to an intimate fact-based post-resignation film (2008’s Frost/Nixon) to a wacky comedy, 1999’s Dick. In all of these settings, there’s a role for First Lady Pat Nixon, but she’s always a peripheral character.

 That remains true of most First Ladies. Moviemakers are not terribly interested in their stories, except as they intersect with their husbands’ moments of high drama. (The one big exception is Jacqueline Kennedy, whose post-White House life as the tragic young widow of JFK confirmed her movie star potential. Natalie Portman portrayed her in 2016’s Jackie, earning herself an Oscar nomination.)

 I don’t think anyone is about to make a movie with Patricia Ryan Nixon at its center. In her lifetime (1912-1993), Pat was known as the spouse of Dick Nixon, as an apparently prim and proper helpmeet good at smiling and waving. But my friend and colleague, Heath Hardage Lee, has recently published a biography that turns the spotlight on someone who preferred to remain in the background. Lee’s book, The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon: The Life and Times of Washington’s Most Private First Lady, was recently named to the longlist for Biographers International Organization’s prestigious 2025 Plutarch Award. This well-researched biography explores Pat Nixon’s many appealing qualities—her personal grit, her great skill as a goodwill ambassador roaming the world on the nation’s behalf, her strong commitment to preserving her country’s history and institutions. There’s also, eventually, some revelations about the way her husband’s shadier aides tried—in the second Nixon term—to curb her enthusiasm for the First Lady’s traditional mandate to further her spouse’s White House goals. To read about Pat’s efforts to enhance the role of women in American government and on its courts is to be impressed by a First Lady who was in some ways well ahead of her time.

 Heath Lee’s book, which contains the fruits of interviews with many Nixon aides, friends, and family members, portrays its subject as a woman well worth knowing, even by those who were not fans of her husband’s politics. One of many surprises: Pat and Dick had a cordial and long-lasting relationship with Jack and Jackie Kennedy, both before and after the brutal 1960 presidential race that set them against one another. What I learned in reading The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon is that it’s fascinating to read about the woman who willingly stood behind the famous man.

 

 

R.I.P. Val Kilmer (and Tombstone’s Doc Holliday)

Sometimes it seems that Val Kilmer made a specialty of portraying men who die young. At least, that’s the impression I got after watching his electrifying performances as Jim Morrison in The Doors (1991) and as a tubercular Doc Holliday in Tombstone (1992). Still, Kilmer remained very much alive as the warrior Madmartigan in George Lucas and Ron Howard’s fantasy epic Willow (1988), in which he was upstaged by tiny Warwick Davis but also chanced to meet his real-life wife-to-be, Joanne Whalley. (They fell for one another on the set, and Howard obligingly re-shot their love scenes to take advantage of the budding romance. Fairytales do tend to come to an end, however. Though they wed in 1988 and had two children together, the couple divorced in 1996.)

 Kilmer’s “Iceman” character in Top Gun (1986) was also a survivor, living long enough to show up in the film’s decades-later sequel, Top Gun: Maverick. Still, when the sequel was shot in 2022, Kilmer’s voice was so affected by treatments for throat cancer that it had to be digitally altered to add clarity. Sadly, Top Gun: Maverick was Kilmer’s final performance. He died on April 1, 2025: at sixty-five he was by no means a youngster, but many of us had hoped for additional cinematic brilliance from him.   

 Tombstone, at its essence, is essentially the story of two gangs—a group of local Arizona lawmen (three of them brothers) versus a loosely organized cluster of cattle rustlers and horse thieves who called themselves the Cowboys. At the infamous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, several men on both sides went down. The thirty-second shootout was followed up by later skirmishes, in which much blood was shed on both sides. Various versions of the story—which became widely known only after Earp’s death and a popular book about him—show up in a number of films, starting with 1939’s Frontier Marshal, which starred Randolph Scott and Cesar Romero. Then there was John Ford’s 1945 My Darling Clementine followed by the 1957 Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, which starred Burt Lancaster as Wyatt Earp and Kirk Douglas as his buddy, Doc Holliday.

 I suspect that Tombstone, directed by George P. Cosmatos, was intended to be the last word on the subject. Certainly, its cast is chockful of famous names.  It seems as though every red-blooded male in Hollywood wanted to take part in this semi-true tale of law-and-order on the American frontier. In addition to Kilmer and top-billed Kurt Russell (as reluctant lawman Wyatt Earp), the film features such established names as Powers Boothe, Sam Elliott, Bill Paxton, Jason Priestley, Thomas Haden Church, and Billy Zane. Dana Delany of China Beach fame is the female lead in a movie that is predictably short on women’s roles. (Yes, she plays  a gal with a checkered sexual history.) Ageing Charlton Heston , not long before his 2002 retirement from acting, takes on a small but key part in the proceedings, and none other than Robert Mitchum serves as the film’s narrator.

 Though Tombstone pits lawmen against renegades, the story is such that it’s often hard to tell them apart. Earp and Holliday seem at times no less bloodthirsty than the Cowboys. This puts me in mind of the response, back in 1967, to Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde, decried then by many for its level of on-screen violence. As film scholar Robert Alan Kolker put it, “Penn showed the way: Bonnie and Clyde opened the bloodgates, and our cinema has barely stopped bleeding since.”   Now Bonnie and Clyde seems rather tame. Today, there will be blood.  

 

Feeling “A Real Pain” on Holocaust Remembrance Day

April 23, which falls just after the joyous Passover season, is the date of this year’s Yom HaShoah, also known Holocaust Remembrance Day. It commemorates, especially in Israel, the approximately six million Jews senselessly slaughtered by the Nazi regime before and during  World War II.  Among local U.S. commemorations, I’ve just read about one planned for the very Catholic Loyola-Marymount University. But I was particularly struck by the upcoming event at UCLA Hillel, which plans to feature the screening of Jesse Eisenberg’s Oscar-honored 2024 film, A Real Pain.

What makes this choice so interesting is the fact that A Real Pain is not your average Holocaust movie. It’s not set during or immediately after what’s known as the Shoah. No one is in hiding, and we see no atrocities. (See, by contrast, such fine international films as Schindler’s List;, Au revoir les enfants; Europa Europa; Life is Beautiful; The Pianist; and Ida.)  A Real Pain, set in the present day, focuses on two American cousins whose distant Holocaust connection is their recently deceased Grandma Dori. In her will, she left the two young men the money for a brief heritage trip to Poland, where they could visit her former home and soak up the culture that made her the lifeforce she was. (No, she was not herself a Holocaust survivor, but any trip to Poland cries out for an acknowledgment of what happened on its soil.) 

In the course of their brief trip, we get to know their small group of fellow travelers: a mature married couple, an anxious divorcee, a deeply spiritual convert to Judaism who is a survivor of genocide in his native Rwanda. But the focus is on the two cousins: the tense, deeply-focused David (played by Eisenberg) and the free-spirited Benjy (Kieran Culkin), who mails a stash of weed to their first hotel and insists that David share it with him on the off-limits hotel roof. Part of the pleasure of the early going is seeing Benjy interact with his tightly-wound cousin, charming the other travelers with his ready sense of fun. Benjy also shows himself to be sensitive to their personal anxieties, but his manic insistence—as a Jew in Poland—on refusing to accept comfy first-class train accommodations leads to a worrisome outcome for all concerned. Gradually Benjy’s deeply troubled psyche comes into focus, along with David’s personal difficulty in accepting his cousin’s underlying sadness.

That’s when the little group pays a visit to the Nazi concentration camp known as Majdanek. (The film was shot almost entirely in Poland, with the full cooperation of the Polish government, which eventually made Eisenberg—a descendant of Polish Jews—an honorary citizen.) It’s a quiet and eerie segment, capturing the reverent silence with which the travelers absorb what little was left behind by their slain Jewish ancestors. No jokes here; Benjy is, for once, in full control of his behavior.

What follows, for the cousins is the long-awaited brief stop at the apartment complex where their grandmother once lived. It’s somewhat gratifying, somewhat not, to find themselves walking in her footsteps. In any case, the film ends as it ought to, with some smiles, some hugs, and some big questions. Benjy’s and David’s complicated inner worlds can’t be entirely blamed on the Holocaust, from which they are two generations removed and a continent away. But, over the years, I’ve known the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. They’ve been spared the agonies we know about, but their lives are still stamped with the aftereffects of what happened back then . . . what shouldn’t happen to anyone.

 

Leaps of Faith: “Lady Bird”

Wasting time on the Internet, I spotted a recent run-down of the 25 all-time best religious movies. I expected the list would contain a lot of Bible epics as well as faith-based old clunkers like The Nun’s Story and Going My Way. (Yes, both have their charm, but they seem awfully far away from life as we know it in the 21st century.) Instead, what I saw was an intelligent cluster of films in which religious faith and religious affiliations of multiple sorts take center stage, even if the central characters are grappling with religion rather than simply believing.  

The list contains some oldies, like Black Narcissus (1947) as well as Ingmar Bergman’s astonishing duo from 1957, Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal. Some of the choices reflect religious traditions other than our familiar ones: see Atanarjuat The Fast Runner, a 2001 prize-winner from Canada that meticulously reflects Inuit culture and language. The luminous Ida, a 2013 Polish film about a nun-to-be who uncovers her Nazi-era past, is a natural for this list, but I hadn’t expected to find Minari or 12 Years a Slave or There Will Be Blood, all of which do in fact have something to say about faith. Of course I was gratified to see the great Schindler’s List in a place of honor. But the inclusion that surprised and pleased me most was that of a film I recently watched for the second time, Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird (2017).

Lady Bird, which apparently hews closely to writer/director Gerwig’s own early life, is the story of a seventeen-year-old girl finishing up high school in Sacramento, California. (She’s played with conviction by Saiorse Ronan, who was 23 at the time.)  Lady Bird is a proudly independent thinker who has given herself a new jazzy name in place of the much more predictable one with which her parents gifted her at birth. But despite the fact that she yearns to boldly enter the adult world, she’s got to finish out her classes at a benign but deeply conventional Catholic high school, where her teachers are priests and nuns. She auditions for the school play, struggles with math, and occasionally butts heads with visiting anti-abortion speakers, while also hanging out with her best pal, falling in and out of love, (with both Lucas Hedges and Timothée Chalamet) and pretending that she lives in a mansion-like local residence instead of a slightly shabby tract home.

As Lady Bird sees it, the biggest cross she has to bear is her mother, a kind-hearted but outspoken nurse who struggles to do what’s best for her headstrong daughter. Mom (Laurie Metcalf) is the practical member of the family, unlike Dad (Tracy Letts), an out-of-work dreamer who would deny his child nothing. Lady Bird has her heart set on an east-coast college (in “a city with culture”) and Dad somehow scrapes together the financials. But it’s only when she’s far from home, and dealing with an acute physical and emotional crisis of her own making, that Lady Bird comes to recognize how much she relies on both an actual home and a spiritual one. For the first time, she reverts to her birth name (Christine) and enters a church of her own volition.

It’s a simple but wholly convincing story, anchored by strong performances and Gerwig’s sure hand on the helm. Ultimately it was nominated for 5 Oscars, two for Ronan’s and Metcalf’s work and three for Gerwig in her various functions. Alas, it won none of them. Moonlight, Manchester by the Sea, and the ill-faced La La Land were the big winners. 

 

Cinema and the City: New York, New York

I’m newly back from New York City, a place where you’d think the locals would look down on Hollywood. New Yorkers, after all, have Broadway, as well as some of the world’s best museums and attractions. Yet Hollywood loves making movies about New York City, even giving them evocative titles like Manhattan and New York, New York. In films, New York City seems made for romance—see everything from Splash (where a mermaid comes ashore in front of the Statue of Liberty) to Moonstruck to You’ve Got Mail. And of course there are celebrated TV series like Sex and  the City, in which every central character is hot, funny, and out looking for Mr. (or Ms.) Right. 

What I learned on my most recent trip to the Big Apple is that New Yorkers too are secretly infatuated by the lure of Hollywood. They support funky little neighborhood cinemas, and gather in local eateries for Oscar watch parties. They’re proud of landmark locations like the exterior of Carrie Bradshaw’s Sex and the City apartment on Perry Street in the West Village. If you visit the museum near the top of the Empire State Building, you’ll find yourself surrounded by reminders of how many films include the famous skyscraper in pivotal moments. There are tearjerkers like An Affair to Remember, in which an attempted meeting at the top of the building leads to near tragedy. (The famous Cary Grant/ Deborah Kerr scene was to be mirrored, decades later, by the romantic climax of Sleepless in Seattle.) There’s also a joyous dance number in the World War II classic, On the Town, that takes place on a soundstage re-creation of the building’s observation deck.

But of course the most famous use of the Empire State Building (or a Hollywood facsimile thereof) occurred back in 1933 when a giant ape climbed the skyscraper with Fay Wray in its arms, only to be shot down by a passel of buzzing biplanes. Today the building’s museum can’t get enough of King Kong: there are posters and models, and you can pose looking horrified while in the grip of the ape’s enormous fist. (I admit that I couldn’t resist trying it out.)  

Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where generations of immigrants have crowded into tenements while trying to pursue their own American dreams, also has movie and showbiz connections that go back generations. This slightly squalid but picturesque area is home to a cramped little shop called Orchard Corset. It’s been around since 1949, and in the same family since 1968, but these days it doesn’t cater solely to buxom mamas from the neighborhood. This is the place from which none other than Madonna orders her sexy custom bustiers. And Orchard Corset is also beloved by theatrical costume designers, who count on the shop to supply period-appropriate undergarments. Remember the 1950s-era torpedo bosoms featured in the TV series, Mad Men? Where do you think those imposing bras were found? (Improbably, Orchard Corset also does a lively mail-order business from a site in Wenatchee, Washington.)   

Visitors to the Lower East Side would be well advised to check out the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, where you can book tours of what once were the cramped little quarters of Jewish and Italian immigrants. What’s special is that these tiny apartments reflect the actual daily lives of specific well-researched families. In one flat, circa 1935, the children’s bedroom reflects a fascination with Hollywood glamour. On the wall over a young girl’s bed you can see vintage images of her movieland favorites: a very young Katharine Hepburn and Joan Crawford.