In Network

I first decided to re-watch the 1976 film, Network, in tribute to the late Robert Duvall. Of course I (like pretty much everyone) had seen the movie when it first came out. This dark satire of the television news industry—written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Sidney Lumet—was a major hit in a very good year for movies. When Oscar nominations were revealed, Network was up for nine awards, including best picture. The top winner turned out to be Rocky, but other big films of that year included All the President’s Men, Bound for Glory, and Taxi Driver, so the competition was clearly fierce. Network won for its original screenplay, and also nabbed three of the four acting awards: for Beatrice Straight as a cast-off wife, for Faye Dunaway as a TV exec who’ll do anything to manufacture a hit show, and (most memorably) for Peter Finch. Finch, playing the newscaster whose firing because of low ratings sends him mentally ‘round the bend, was the first star ever to win an Oscar posthumously. He suffered a heart attack in January 1977, just after a TV talk-show appearance to promote the film, and died at age 60.

 Finch’s big line in Network—”I’m as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"—is still with us. And so, of course, is the idea that TV execs (like the one effectively played by Duvall in the film) are more concerned with ratings than with quality content. But in many respects, Network surprised me. First, of course, is the fact that television today is far from what it was in the 1970s. Back then there existed a limited number of major networks: CBS, NBC, ABC. Much of the American public got its news from respected anchors like Walter Cronkite and John Chancellor. The film invents a fourth network, UBS, for dramatic purposes: when its longtime anchorman goes berserk and starts hollering out of windows, a large slice of the nation pays attention. Today, by contrast, our news sources are so widespread and so splintered that it’s hard to imagine public attention being focused on a single individual in quite the same way.

 I was also surprised by the film’s shifting tone. From what I’ve read, this was quite deliberate on the part of Chayefsky and Lumet, with low-key realistic scenes at the start of the film gradually giving way to stylized moments full of manic energy. A beautifully played early scene features Finch, as the newly-fired anchorman, and the great William Holden as his longtime pal who’s now the news division president. Two veteran newsmen, they commiserate with one another about how times have changed, making jokes to cover their mutual dismay.

 But then Faye Dunaway’s Diana Christensen enters the picture, and the whole mood changes. She sees in the crazed on-air pronouncements of Howard Beal (Finch) a new direction for TV news broadcasts, and quickly turns a hard news show into “infotainment,” of a sort that (alas) would not be so surprising today. Moreover, while spinning journalism as a form of public amusement, she also captures the heart of the long-married Holden, with predictable results. Late in the film, as Diana looks for new stars-in-the-making, there are some pointed references to a group of Symbionese Liberation Army-style young radicals who’ll do pretty much anything to be featured on TV. It’s very dark and, sometimes, very funny. Though the Patty Hearst era and the near-shooting of President Ford by Squeaky Fromme seem like ancient history now, Network brings them back to those of us old enough to remember.  

 

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. 

A Tender Look Back at “Tender Mercies”

Robert Duvall has long been one of Hollywood’s most respected character actors, starting with supporting roles in such major films as To Kill a Mockingbird (as Boo Radley, 1963), MASH (as Major Frank Burns, 1970) and The Godfather films (as “fixer” Tom Hagen, 1972 and 1974). Unlike most character actors, he ultimately made the leap into leading roles. Having grown up in a military household, he brought aa fierce authenticity to the complex role of Bull Meechum in The Great Santini. In 1981, the part earned him his first nomination as Best Actor, but he was up against such landmark performances as that of Robert De Niro in Raging Bull (the eventual winner) and John Hurt in The Elephant Man. Three years later, though, he took home the Oscar for the role of country singer Mac Sledge in Tender Mercies.

  Also winning an Oscar for Tender Mercies was its writer, Horton Foote, the Texas playwright who adapted To a Kill a Mockingbird for the screen, and wrote both the stage and film versions of The Trip to Bountiful. Foote was a Texas country boy to the tips of his fingernails (though he died in Connecticut), and he could be relied upon to convey simply and directly a down-to-earth life. That’s why he was honored by the Academy for a screenplay some might call slight. (Leonard Maltin’s now defunct but invaluable guide calls it “not so much a story as a series of vignettes.”) In this particular Foote project, apparently written with Duvall in mind, the central character is a noted country-western singer, now on the skids, who finds resurrection in the home of a young widow running a motel and filling station in the middle of nowhere.

Country western is not my music of choice, but my colleague Diane Diekman  has made a career out of exploring the lives of country music stars like Marty Robbins and (upcoming) Randy Travis. I’ve read her Live Fast, Love Hard: The Faron Young Story, about a singer whose considerable talent was eclipsed by his outrageous lifestyle, and I think I have some sense of what stardom can do to dirt-poor country boys. The norm for Young and others, when at the height of their powers, seems to have been fast cars, hot women, and cold brews, with a firearm or two thrown in for good measure. Duvall’s Mac Sledge is first seen as a down-and-out drunk. But his gentle connection with Vietnam widow Rosa Lee and her scrappy young son brings out the best in him. Through them he learns to live again, to forget the bitter marriage he’s fleeing, and to find comfort in family and faith.

 That last is key: Robert Altman had it right in Nashville (1975), in which the film’s many interpersonal struggles are forgotten on Sunday morning when everyone turns out to praise the Lord. In Tender Mercies (the title comes from a bedtime prayer that Rosa Lee fervently recites),  old-time religion becomes a counterweight to the heavy burdens Sledge sees himself carrying. By the film’s end, despite it all, he’s returning to the music he loves. And, even more important, he’s finally able to see himself as a happy man. Yes, he still mistrusts the notion of happiness, all too aware that bad things can happen to good people. Still, he’s now finally able to accept the positive taspects life and move on.

 This isn’t a great film, but it’s anchored by a great performance. However plodding and predictable the action might be, Duvall keeps us connected with life as it is lived.

 At a time of many religious holidays (Passover, Eastern, Ramadan), I wish all my readers well. Special thanks to Diane Diekman for helping me see the glories of country music. Write to her at djean@midco.net if you’d like to be added to the mailing list for her comprehensive country music newsletter.

  

 

 

 

Soaring and Crashing with The Great Santini

War is hell, but perhaps there are some for whom peace is worse. One such is Lt Colonel Wilbur “Bull” Meechum of the U.S. Marine Corps in the Pat Conroy novel that became a 1978 film. Meechum, who thrives on being in command (of his fighter jet, his men, all the members of his family) enjoys dubbing himself The Great Santini when he’s pulled off some flashy stunt. He’s played with panache by the always impressive Robert Duvall, who was Oscar-nominated for this role three years before he took home the statuette for Tender Mercies. A supporting actor nomination went to young Michael O’Keefe, for playing Meechum’s oldest son.

 O’Keefe, whose role is that of a sensitive high school senior with a talent for basketball, is in fact the eldest of seven children from a devout Irish Catholic household. Which made him an ideal choice to play Ben, the eldest of four kids reined in by their mother’s gentle devotion as well as their father’s strict, elaborate codes of conduct. The Great Santini treats his wife and children like members of his squadron, issuing commands, barking out reprimands, sometimes engaging in horseplay but always with the sense that he’s the one in charge. In an especially dramatic segment, a friendly one-on-one backyard basketball game between father and son turns into a violent confrontation when Meechum can’t bear being defeated by his own kid. The ramifications of this moment are huge, resulting in a disaster when Ben takes the court for real as part of his high school team.

 Though the film has other plot strands, its heart is in these fraught father/son clashes. That’s doubtless because Pat Conroy, the author of the original novel, was writing close to the bone, about his own memories as the eldest son of a Marine flyboy father whose commitment to military discipline, as well as military hijinks, threatened to tear a family apart. The word is that when the novel was published in 1976, other Conroys took umbrage at this spilling of family secrets, like Donald Conroy’s violent streak and his excessive drinking. Some in the family apparently picketed book signings, passing out leaflets urging would-be patrons to avoid buying Pat’s novel. Conroy has said that in later years his father would, with apparent good humor, autograph copies as follows: "That boy of mine sure has a vivid imagination. Ol' lovable, likable Col. Don Conroy, USMC (Ret.), the Great Santini." Happily, I’ve heard that in later years—partly as a response to the novel—the elder Conroy became a kinder and gentler man.

I was delighted to spot in the cast of The Great Santini (along with the always luminous Blythe Danner as Meechum’s Southern-born wife) an old Roger Corman chum of mine, Stan Shaw. Stan began his film career in 1974 with Corman blaxploitation flicks like Truck Turner and TNT Jackson. I knew him from the latter, in which—as the male lead--he enjoys both torrid sex scenes and violent kung fu clashes with the bodacious Jeanne Bell. When we worked together on publicity releases, I was impressed at Stan’s far-ranging artistic ambitions. Not content simply to be the hero or the bad guy, he aspired to do it all, even if this meant playing a baby, playing a dog. Still working, he’s had a long and varied career, mostly in television, small roles, and small films. In The Great Santini he plays Ben’s unlikely buddy, a sweet and simple soul who loves nature but falls prey to a white bully in one of the pivotal moments of Ben’s impressionable young life.