After Hours in Nighttown

Circa 1988, when I came to work at Roger Corman’s Concorde-New Horizons Pictures, a strange new script crossed my desk. Called Daddy’s Boys, it was an outrageous dark comedy about a family of Depression-era bank robbers. If it read like something that had been cranked out in a hurry, this was because it had. It seems that Roger, looking at the rather effective period sets that had been built for Big Bad Mama II, became nostalgic for those early days when he’d shoot an outlandish movie (like Little Shop of Horrors) over a weekend, on sets left over from someone else’s project. My soon-to-be buddy, Daryl Haney, wrote the weird and wacky screenplay, while also playing the film’s hillbilly lead.. And its director, making his very first feature, was Joseph Minion.

 I doubt it was accidental that Roger knew Joe Minion’s work, because Joe had written the screenplay for one of Martin Scorsese’s most unique small films, 1985’s After Hours. Scorsese, of course, was one of Roger’s outstanding protégés, having made Boxcar Bertha for Corman’s New World Pictures in 1972. But after such major artistic and commercial successes as Taxi Driver (1976) and Raging Bull (1980), Scorsese had hit the skids. His 1982 The King of Comedy was not well received, and a major studio had backed out of funding his passion project, based on Nikos Kazantzakis’ controversial novel, The Last Temptation of Christ. At a creative impasse, Scorsese decided to take a chance on Minion’s eccentric little script, teaming with Griffin Dunne, who also played the hapless lead.

 After Hours is not the obvious Scorsese film: no gangsters, no major production values. It’s a simple but riveting story, set on the streets and in the seedy byways of Lower Manhattan, over the course of one very long evening. Dunne plays Paul, an uptown Manhattan office worker, now heading down to artsy, scruffy SoHo at the invitation of a quirky young blonde (Rosanna Arquette) who appreciates his taste in Henry Miller novels. He finds her in an artist’s loft, where her mostly undraped roommate (Linda Fiorentino) proves challenging company. I won’t go into too many details: suffice it to say that Paul is thwarted at every turn: his last $20 bill flies out the window of a cab; a new acquaintance abruptly commits suicide; he’s drenched by a sudden rainstorm; every woman he meets quickly turns against him, to the point where he’s racing through back alleys because someone suspects he’s the burglar who’s been preying on the neighborhood. All he wants is to go back home, but somehow that doesn’t seem to be in the cards.  

 After Hours presents am increasingly phantasmagoric view of the world as the night plays out south of Houston Street. (One detail I’ll long remember: Paul fleeing through the mean streets of Lower Manhattan, chased by a Mister Softee ice-cream truck driven by none other than the late Catherine O’Hara. And then there are those strange moments involving hippie comics Cheech & Chong, as well as the papier-mâché bagel-and-lox paperweights that keep showing up when least expected.) Film scholars have some fascinating things to say about Scorsese’s borrowing of stylistic elements from surrealists like Hitchcock and Kafka, I’d add that there’s something here reminiscent of the “Circe” section of James Joyce’s greatest novel, the part that became an unlikely 1958 Broadway hit titled Ulysses in Nighttown.    

 Which hardly means this film is for intellectuals only. It should appeal to anyone who looks for a way out of a humdrum existence but finds the adventure ultimately too much to bear.  I’ve been there; have YOU?   

 

 

 

Los Angeles Plays Itself

I’ve long been convinced that Hollywood writers of romantic comedy secretly pine for their own early years in New York, when they had no money but a great capacity for love. Just look at When Harry Met Sally, You’ve Got Mail, and of course Annie Hall. On film, Manhattan often seems like a playground for lovers, who stroll through Central Park, nuzzle one another on subways, and find inspiration at the top of the Empire State Building. But if cinematic New York is for lovers, my L.A. hometown sometimes seems reserved for disasters: like earthquakes, fires, and terrorist attacks upon skyscrapers on Christmas Eve.

 The Los Angeles Times, obviously determined to show that there’s more to L.A. than Die Hard, recently published an Entertainment section devoted to the topic of “101 Best L.A. Movies.” Their sleuthing (and the follow-up section that features angry readers’ own suggestions) has served to remind me that L.A. is many sorts of places in one. It’s, of course, where movies are (or used to be) made: its agreeable weather and its amorphous nature have allowed it to pose as many other cities and countries. (Did you know that Martin Scorsese’s quintessentially New York-based Mean Streets was mostly shot in L.A.?) But a true movie fan knows that a Los Angeles location can imply many different aspects of life in the SoCal megalopolis. First place on the Times list went to Chinatown, showcasing crime, corruption, and a certain exotic flavor (“Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.”) Near the top of the Times 101 there’s also the weird fantasy world of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive and, of course, the faded movie-star glamour of Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard. The Times’ top five also include the ersatz flair of the Beverly Hills nouveau riche (Clueless) and the futuristic nightmare of Blade Runner.

 But not every film on the Times list showcases the rich and famous. I was pleased to see the inclusion of Tangerine, Jackie Brown, and particularly Boyz N The Hood, all of which pay attention to the down-and-out, as well as to the pervasive racial tension affecting L.A.’s misfits. There’s also suburbia (Valley Girl, Fast Times at Ridgemont High) and the ethnic pockets where English is not really the lingua franca (Real Women Have Curves, Mi Vida Loca). L.A. as a place of aspirations is showcased beautifully in everything from The Karate Kid to Bowwfinger, while LA. as the land of dashed dreams shows up in movies as different as Barton Fink and Slums of Beverly Hills. And the list also covers films that dive deeply into local occupations we Angelenos would rather ignore, like the San Fernando Valley pornography biz in Boogie Nights.

 When I first beheld the Times list, I anxiously scanned it to make sure it included The Graduate. (It’s #37, capturing the soignée lives of the swimming-pool set.) But some Times readers expressed dismay at the non-appearance of such films as the Oscar-winning Crash (a slightly overwrought movie definitely attuned to L.A.’s  car culture)), the screen adaptation of Nathanael West’s classic Day of the Locust (for me it misses its mark) and the hilarious Get Shorty. My own biggest complaint is the absence on the main list of 2009’s poignant romantic comedy, (500) Days of Summer.

This film, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, is a 2009 charmer in which a young  couple fall in and out of love while living and working in Downtown L.A. Local landmarks (the Bradbury Building!) and hidden corners are given their due. Hey, this is a “New York is for Lovers” movie set in my own hometown! 

 

 

 

 

Crowning the King of Comedy

We’re all aware, at least if we watch American television, that right now talk-show hosts are something of an endangered species. Gone are the days when a man like Johnny Carson (or Jay Leno) was a friendly face in our living rooms, poking impish fun at celebrities and politicians without fear of retribution. Now Stephen Colbert’s months at CBS are numbered. And Jimmy Kimmel seemed to have gotten the axe when the powers-that-be disapproved of one of his jokes. (Surprisingly, the backlash was such that he was quickly reinstated.)

 But itl makes you wonder why anyone would risk it all to tell jokes on late-night television.  What exactly is the attraction? The money? The laughs? The opportunity to take on the status quo? The need, pure and simple, to connect with an audience?

 These thoughts flitted through my mind as I sat down to watch an unlikely 1982 film by Martin Scorsese, one that contains no gangsters and no boxers. (Yes, there’s a taxi-driver or two, but not in a role of any significance.) You could say, though, that this—like so many other Scorsese projects—is a film about an obsession. Robert De Niro, starring in his fifth film for Scorsese, plays Rupert Pupkin, an intense young man determined to make it as a stand-up comedian. None other than Jerry Lewis, then in his fifties, plays Jerry Langford, a comedian of the Carson ilk with a wide base of adoring fans. By happenstance, Pupkin protects Langford from a frenzied mob, then tries to worm his way into the great man’s home and heart as a way of launching his own career as a comedian. What does he want? To commence his own climb to fame and fortune via the opening spot on Langford’s nightly broadcast. How does he go about achieving this? With the manic determination that marks so many Scorsese protagonists. And, of course, a little touch of mayhem.

 It's fun to see De Niro, hyper-familiar in brutal parts, desperately playing at being ingratiating. And Lewis, eschewing his usual comic shtik, is convincing as a very private man forced to make nice, much against his nature, to someone who has obviously gone off the rails. For me the big surprise is comedian Sandra Bernhard, who essentially plays De Niro’s partner in crime, working her own surprisingly sexual obsession with Langford while helping clear the way for Pupkin’s leap into the big time.

 This is not, despite its title, a movie that is full of chuckles. But it does use very black humor to probe the excesses of fandom, something which continues—thanks to the Internet—to be more and more a part of our everyday world.  The King of Comedy builds to a climax and then a coda that have aroused much discussion: the movie doesn’t end in the likeliest of ways. Some moviegoers (like me) have appreciated its heavy-duty irony; others are not so sure.

 Admirers of Scorsese are apparently divided on the merits of this film. Some critics of the day embraced De Niro’s character as the flip side of Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle; others (including the influential Pauline Kael) were convinced Scorsese had lost his way. If Wikipedia is to be believed, such cinema wonderworkers as Akira Kurosawa and Wim Wenders have ranked The King of Comedy among their very favorite films. Fans in today’s Hollywood include Steve Carell and Jack Black, who would like to star in a remake. I don’t suspect that this will happen anytime soon, if ever. But the nature of comedy, as a subject, never truly grows old. 

 

Killers of the Flower Moon: On the Page and On the Screen

I saw Killers of the Flower Moon last fall, when it first arrived in theatres. There’s no question that a 206-minute film makes for a lengthy sit, but I was enthralled by a story I previously knew nothing about. I was fascinated by the realization that a Native American tribe had, thanks to the 1897 discovery of oil on tribal lands, become so fabulously wealthy that by the 1920s some were buying luxury cars, fancy clothing, and jewelry, sending their children to private schools, and traveling to Europe on vacation. It was not uncommon for them to hire white Americans as housekeepers and chauffeurs.

 Inevitably, this accumulation of wealth in Osage County, Oklahoma, attracted grifters and conmen of all sorts. Many were out to corner Osage riches for themselves, and there was a system in place that made this relatively simple. Congress, in its wisdom, had decided that the Osage were too childlike to hold onto their money without help, and so a system of “guardians” was established. Needless to say, the guardians were white men from the community. And suddenly the members of the Osage tribe were dying in great numbers, with whole families wiped out, from causes that were never adequately investigated. The years of the killings (mostly 1921-1926) are remembered by today’s Osage as a “reign of terror,” in which some 60 wealthy Osage mysteriously went to their deaths.

 I bring this up now because I’ve just finished reading the book on which the film is based, David Grann’s 2017 best-seller, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. I was aware from the start that virtually everyone I knew who had read Grann’s book was disappointed by the motion picture adaptation. Upon reading Killers of the Flower Moon, I could see why. Addressing the same historical subject matter contained in Scorsese’s film, Grann arranges it in an entirely different way. He chooses to divide his material into three “chronicles.” The first, “The Married Woman,” focuses on Mollie Burkhart, the Osage woman played memorably in the film by Lily Gladstone. Her mother and three sisters are among those killed off by greedy white men for their oil rights, and she herself barely survives being poisoned by her own Anglo husband (Leonardo Di Caprio), who loves her, but perhaps loves money (and his nefarious uncle. William Hale) more. This material, with its twisted love story, is where Scorsese focuses.

 The second “chronicle,” titled “The Evidence Man,” is devoted to Tom White, a serious-minded Texas lawman who arrives at the FBI at a time when J. Edgar Hoover is transforming it from the so-called Department of Easy Virtue to a serious law enforcement body. This was the era when detectives came into their own, both on the screen and in real life. White as a character has a small role in Scorsese’s movie, nicely played by Jesse Plemons. But the implications of his whole career could support a fascinating film, perhaps a more sophisticated version of The FBI Story (a 1959 James Stewart flick, heavy on heroics, that relied mightily on Hoover’s full cooperation).

 Finally, Grann spends his third “chronicle,” in the first-person, detailing how he himself, as an investigative reporter showing up almost 100 years after the crimes were committed, uncovered new evidence and was able to trace the long-term repercussions of the murders among today’s Native American community. As a reader who’s also a writer, I found it exciting to learn how much evidence a dedicated reporter can find, even decades after the fact. Maybe a documentary is in order?

 

Shine On, Flower Moon: Scorsese on the Prairie

Recently I’ve heard from several admirers of David Grann’s 2017 bestseller, Killers of the Flower Moon: the Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. These readers—including Jack El-Hai, a colleague known for his work as a biographer—are disappointed by Martin Scorsese’s new film adaptation of Grann’s book. They find the film, among other things, too long, too lacking in sympathetic characters, and too focused on one family’s egregious behavior to capture the magnitude of the problem the book confronts.

 I can’t agree with them, partly because I’ve never read Grann’s book. So I don’t exactly know what was lost in the transfer from page to screen. I do know that the filmmakers, deeply aware of the strong emotions invested in this project by indigenous groups, worked hard to avoid any accusation that this was a “white savior” project. They didn’t want this, in other words, to be one of those movies in which white-skinned men of good conscience rescue suffering Native Americans from their oppressors. Scorsese even goes so far as to make an appearance at the beginning of the film, spelling out his intentions. And I’ve heard that star Leonardo DiCaprio, a longtime Scorsese collaborator, made the gutsy decision not to star as an heroic FBI agent but rather to play a not-too-bright World War I veteran whose credulous nature contributes to the disastrous love story at the center of the film version.

 Taking the film as a film—and not as an adaptation of an important book—I have to say that I found it enthralling. Though well over three hours long, it caught me in its grip and wouldn’t let go. Partly this is a matter of a brilliant production design, best appreciated on an IMAX screen. I will long be haunted by the memory of Osage men, having sadly concluded that their traditional way of life is dead and buried, suddenly reveling in a spurting plume of crude oil on their land. And there’s a stunning moment much later in the film when firefighters battling an arson blaze seem like inhabitants of Dante’s Inferno.

 Moviegoers who have watched loads of classic westerns will be enthralled by this apparently authentic look at the Osage people, circa 1920, following the discovery of oil. These Native Americans do not live in wigwams or hogans, nor do they dress in buckskin and wear feathers in their hair. Now wealthy because of their land rights, they speak good English, attend the local Catholic church, and glide into their squalid Oklahoma town in taxis driven by white men. Young women like Mollie may proudly wrap themselves in tribal blankets, but also cover their heads in stylish chapeaux. Played by rising star Lily Gladstone, Mollie is hardly the pathetic little squaw of many a western. Strong and spirited, she has no problem in choosing DiCaprio’s Ernest as her husband, and sharing with him (at least at first) an intense connubial life.

 If Ernest doesn’t seem worthy of his bride, it’s at least partly because of his allegiance to his uncle, played by Scorsese regular Robert De Niro as William King Hale. In his illustrious career, De Niro has played many bad hombres. But there must be a special circle of hell for the man he portrays here. King Hale speaks the Osage language and loudly touts his friendship with the Osage people. But ultimately his eye is on those lucrative Osage land rights, and the devil take the consequences.

 A clever (though controversial) device at the film’s end invites us to put this tragic story into perspective. Bravo, Mr. Scorsese.

 

“48 Hrs.” and “Taxi Driver”: The Buddies and the Loner

July appears to be my month for violent movies. Within the past week I’ve watched both 48 Hrs. (1982) and Taxi Driver (1976). I was impressed by them both, but the first strikes me as a guilty pleasure. And the second, alas, seems like a wake-up call.

 The success of 48 Hrs. at the box office helped kick off the whole buddy cop genre (see, for instance, the Lethal Weapon franchise). The pairing of big, burly, taciturn Nick Nolte and small, slim, gabby Eddie Murphy (in his very first movie role) also showed how the unlikely pairing of a white man and a Black one in Stanley Kramer's The Defiant Ones could evolve into the kind of spiky but eventually comedic relationship epitomized by action romps featuring Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder. But 48 Hrs. is no comedy. And Murphy’s character, Reggie, is not actually a cop. Instead, he’s a convict, a career thief released from prison for (yes!) 48 hours in order to help track down a vicious former associate who’s done him dirt.

  It's an unlikely premise, but one that plays exceedingly well, as Reggie butts up against Nolte’s my-way-or-the-highway Jack. Wearing a spiffy Armani suit and (after three celibate years in prison) endlessly on the hunt for willing females, Reggie eventually reveals that he’s deft enough and brave enough to help face down a killer. In this he wins the respect of Jack, a rumpled mass of a man who’s got his own female troubles and not much support from his superiors. Respect between Reggie and Jack grows slowly, though the early interactions between the two are laced with nasty jibes and racial epithets that are hard to enjoy. We know, of course, that all will be right in the end, though they still enjoy jerking one another’s chain up until the final fadeout. (Yes, the relationship survives in a 1990 sequel.) 

 Director Walter Hill is best known for action, and the film’s opening – a bold escape from a penal work camp, accompanied by James Horner’s thrilling music -- may be its most viscerally effective part. It’s rivaled by the lethal wrap-up in a misty San Francisco Chinatown haunt. But the centerpiece, of course is two mismatched men who find themselves becoming pals.

 Which brings me to Taxi Driver, Martin Scorsese’s deeply disturbing look at a military veteran adrift in the urban jungles of New York City. Unable to sleep, Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle takes a job as an all-night cab driver, cruising through Manhattan’s meanest, dirtiest, most crime-ridden streets. His is a solitary life. When a social relationship with a pretty blonde working on a political campaign (Cybill Shepherd) fizzles, he becomes obsessed with rescuing a child prostitute (Jodie Foster) from her sordid line of work. It’s easy enough for him to assemble an arsenal of weapons, and to transform himself into a muscle-bound mohawk-wearing killing machine with hair-trigger reflexes and a grudge against pretty much everyone. By the end of the film he is a lethal weapon, though a bizarre twist turns him into someone’s idea of a public hero.

 Bickle’s soul-crushing loneliness, combined with obvious PTSD from his Marine Corps days, makes him all too ripe to see himself as a potential toxic avenger. The ready availability of military-style fire power is what inspires him to take into his own hands the idea of cleaning up the world. Sadly, there are too many others out there today whose minds work in the same deadly fashion. If only our nation weren’t so ready to sell them the tools to fuel their obsessions.