Listing All-American Movies

In the wake of this historic (and very unusual) 4^th of July holiday weekend, news outlets have been vying with one another to publish articles that are relevant to the story of the United States. This past Sunday, film critics at the Los Angeles Times joined together to produce a feature titled “10 Must-Watch Movies That Capture America in Times of Profound Change.” Here are their topic choices: (In every category there are also a few alternate suggestions.)

(1)   THE GREAT DEPRESSION: The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

(    (2)   POSTWAR OPTIMISM: The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

(    (3)   CAPITALISM, UNCHECKED: There Will Be Blood (2007)

((  (4)   POST-VIETNAM/WATERGATE CYNICISM: Nashville (1975)

((   (5)  MEDIA DOMINATION: Network (1976)

(6  (6)  GENTRIFICATION AND RACIAL TENSIIONS: Do the Right Thing (1989)

(7  (7) RISE OF THE YUPPIES: They Live (1988)

( ) (8) ‘80s WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE: Working Girl (1988)

(9 (9)  DIGITAL ALIENATION: The Social Network (2010)

(1 (10) POST-9/11 ANXIETIES: Team America: World Police (2004)

 To me this is, for the most part, an excellent list. I would certainly put The Grapes of Wrath, The Best Years of Our Lives, Network, and Do The Right Thing on any best-film list I was compiling. By the same token, I wonder about the criteria at work here. Why is the 19^th century (especially the Civil War) so completely ignored? Why does this list contain not a single work made in the turbulent 1960s? I am particularly passionate about a seminal film year, 1967, which captured for a mass audience the tensions both between races and between generations. (Here are four of the five Oscar Best Picture Nominees for that year in film: Bonnie and Clyde, Guess Who’s Coming to  Dinner, In the Heat of the Night, The Graduate). Every one of these very distinctive films, screened in a turbulent year, has something vitally important to say about the differences that keep Americans apart.

 I also don’t see on the critics’ list any representation of films shot in the 1990s. That was a period  that balanced social optimism with the belated acknowledgment of the scourge of HIV, especially as it applied to the nation’s gay community. Remarkably, it was America’s favorite Everyman, Tom Hanks, who starred in a mainstream Hollywood movie that  finally looked with compassion on the plight of a gay man dying of AIDS. Hanks’ willingness to take on this role, especially after other leading men had turned it down, marked a new era for audiences and for the motion picture community, which honored Hanks with his first Oscar for this acting challenge. (Just one year later, he won again, for the very different Forrest Gump, which contained—in many people’s eyes—its own much more subtle AIDS reference.)

 Another film I think should be noted was also made in the Nineties, and also starred Tom Hanks, who seems to have a special talent for representing what’s on the minds of his fellow Americans. The 1995 film Apollo 13 (perhaps the seminal achievement of director Ron Howard) is a celebration both of American technological excellence and of the brave astronauts who are vaulting us into the world of the future. Apollo 13 was made, with the full cooperation of NASA, to showcase the story of a near outer-space disaster that, happily, turned into a human triumph. It’s surprising indeed to me that the L.A. Times critics seem to have nothing to say about American technological mastery. Social media (as shown in such listed films as The Social Network) has certainly changed all of our lives, but our relationship to our planet has also certainly evolved, right? 

 

The Big Chill: Snow Days, Frozen Yogurt, and the National Film Registry

While much of the U.S. has been shivering through snowstorms, I’m almost embarrassed to say that we in SoCal are enjoying glorious weather: the kind that encourages you to be outdoors taking a walk, not inside watching a movie. Frozen yogurt sounds great to me right about now, and there’s a popular little shop nearby called “The Big Chill.” Which just happens to be named after a 1983 film that recently made it onto the National Film Registry administered through the Library of Congress.

 In 1983, The Big Chill was a hugely popular film peopled by some of Hollywood’s brightest new talents, including such stars-in-the-making as William Hurt, Jeff Goldblum, Kevin Kline, and Glenn Close. They play former college pals gathering in a comfy home in South Carolina to memorialize one of their number who has died, a suicide. It’s a film whose central subject is nostalgia: they’re all remembering back to the Sixties, to their college days at the University of Michigan, when they were young, optimistic, and full of ideas about how the world should be run.

 Looking over the whole list of new inductees to the National  Film Registry, I’ve concluded that nostalgia is a central concept in many of them. Sometimes the movies themselves are thematically looking back on an earlier (and maybe better) era; sometimes it’s the modern viewer who’s transported by a classic film to a time when life seemed to hold much more promise than what we know today.

  What do I mean? Well, let’s start with two musicals from the 1950s that both made this year’s list. They were released by different studios (Paramount and MGM), but both, curiously, have the same top-billed star, Bing Crosby. Both are set in what was then the present-day, but the reality they portray is definitely candy-coated. White Christmas (1954) unfolds largely in and around an old country inn where two WWII army buddies who now have a nightclub act woo two talented singing sisters, while also trying to help the inn’s owner, their former commanding officer. Of course the plot climaxes with the singing of Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas,” a song originally written for a 1942 Hollywood film with a very similar premise, Holiday Inn. Listen to its hyper-nostalgic lyric: “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know.” And 1956’s High Society is a musical throwback to 1940’s The Philadelphia Story, portraying a ritzy but placid social environment that all of us would just love to experience.

 There are some serious dramas on the list too. Glory (1989) is a powerful historical drama portraying the 54^th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, an African American unit that fought (under white commander Colonel Robert Gould Shaw) for the Union during the Civil War. I suspect most of us are hardly nostalgic for the racism and blood of the War Between the States, but we can look back with admiration on the raw courage of Shaw and his men. Similarly, 1993’s Philadelphia graphically portrays the depths of the AIDS crisis. It’s not a time to which we’d want to return, but the story unfolds in a way that makes heroes out of its central characters. And Tom Hanks’ Oscar-winning portrayal of a dying gay man includes a heartbreakingly nostalgic scene in which he relives an operatic performance by Maria Callas.

 We can feel a much happier kind of nostalgia in recalling how we (or our children) loved The Incredibles (2004) or how Wes Anderson helped us look cheerfully back to a time that never quite was in 2014’s The Grand Budapest Hotel.

 

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.  

                                                                                    

“Here” Today, Gone Tomorrow

I wasn’t at all sure what I was going to feel about Tom Hanks’ latest film, directed by Robert Zemeckis and also featuring Hanks’ Forrest Gump co-star, Robin Wright. Frankly, Here sounded corny, if not downright weird: an entire movie in which the camera never moves, and the story toggles between various occupants of the very same place, from dinosaurs and Native Americans to disparate 20^th century families living in a large old house. All I could think of, going in, was a stage oddity by Thornton Wilder called The Skin of Our Teeth. In it, people representing Adam, Eve, and their kin somehow live both in the Ice Age and in what was, in 1942, the present day. The central theme? Survival.

 Here is based not on The Skin of Our Teeth but on a 2014 graphic novel by Richard McGuire, derived from his own comic strip. Clearly, its central topic is Time: how life evolves, personal values change and get overridden, individuals—no  matter how bright or how amiable—can’t stand up to time’s onslaught. It’s a motif that certainly has meaning for all of us. Poets have been writing about it for centuries. Here’s what  English poet Andrew Marvell published in 1681:  “At my back I always hear/ Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near.” (Marvell, it must be said, was trying to talk his coy mistress into bed by reminding her that youthful vigor doesn’t last forever. Yes, things change.)

 Zemeckis, who has never lacked for grand ambitions, seems determined to make a film for the whole human race. Certainly, while never moving from one fixed spot, he tries to cover a whole lot of ground. Along with the dinosaurs and Native Americans there are historical figures (Benjamin Franklin) and small children and decrepit oldsters and pioneer inventors and nice people who never quite amount to much of anything. The most recent owners of the house that becomes the film’s entire universe are African American. We learn frustratingly little about them, but I think they are popped into the story in an attempt to cover all (or, I guess, most) bases when it comes to American history.

 But most of the screen time belongs to the couple played by Hanks and Wright. Through the very latest in de-aging technology, we meet them as young high schoolers in love, with pretty blonde Margaret meeting her beau’s parents, a bitter World War II veteran (an impressive Paul Bettany) and his devoted wife. We watch over the years as Richard and Margaret come to share the house with his ageing father and mother. They celebrate a quickie wedding, then there’s the birth of a daughter; Richard’s frustration with his workaday job; Margaret’s chafing at the bonds of matrimony; illnesses and other setbacks, sometimes interrupted by the narrative’s bounce into the lives of other couples with other joys and challenges.

 At movie houses, all trailers are carefully selected to match the upcoming flick. It was obvious, when I saw Here that the multiplex honchos were unclear on what kind of audience would  be watching this film. So I saw a terrifying trailer about American neo-Nazis, and another about actual Nazis in World War II. Then there were spots for benign family flicks like Moana 2 and Wicked. Confusing? I, for one, think it’s my own age group that should respond most thoughtfully to Here. We remember Tom Hanks from movies like Splash and Big, when he was as youthful and lively as his de-aged self in early scenes from this film. And so were we.

 

Bill Cobbs: That Thing He Did!

We all know who the big stars are, even if we haven’t always seen their movies. Their faces are on movie posters and magazine covers; their names are embedded on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and their footprints decorate the forecourt of the Chinese Theater on Hollywood Blvd. Long after they’re dead and buried, we still talk about Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe. Their bodies may not have survived, but their reputations certainly live on and on. Greta Garbo’s career was before my time, but her image remains in my memory banks. Such is the power of movies.

 Most working actors in Hollywood don’t achieve that kind of celebrity. Even those who land fairly steady paychecks for their film and TV roles can expect to remain unknown to the public at large. I remember once interviewing a wonderful actor named René Auberjonois in his lovely Windsor Square home, complete with a verdant garden and a yoga hut. I’d delighted in seeing him many times in local theatre productions, usually playing lead characters who were charming and flamboyant. My interview with him, for the Los Angeles Music Center’s program magazine, of course emphasized his stage roles. But stage stardom is a sometime thing, and can’t often support a cushy lifestyle. Auberjonois mentioned to me in passing that he was lucky indeed: his looks and skill-set were in great demand in Hollywood, and he was paid handsomely to take colorful character parts. Examples: he was Father Mulcahy in the original Robert Altman film version of M*A*S*H, and had small but significant roles in both Star Trek VI and The Princess Diaries. He was also featured on television, and  did a great deal of voice work for animated films, TV, and video games. A household name? Hardly. But a very comfortable life indeed. When he passed away in 2019 at age 79, there were small tributes in the press.

 Another of those great journeyman actors has just reached the end of the line. Bill Cobbs made it to 90, still active through 2022. His film roles were sometimes modest, ranging from Man on Platform in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) to Man in Lunchroom in Silkwood (1983). Happily, his parts gradually got larger. He had a significant presence as Moses, the clock expert, in the Coen brothers’ screwball The Hudsucker Proxy, and played a sneaky security guard  in the first Night at the Museum (2006).

I cherish his performance in the first film Tom Hanks ever wrote and directed, That Thing You Do! (1996). The light-hearted story, set in the rock ‘n roll Sixties, is about four young amateur musicians who record an original pop song that unexpectedly tops the charts nationwide. Hanks gives himself the role of the A&R record exec who spots the quartet. The Wonders (as in “one-hit wonders”) seem poised for genuine stardom until—inevitably—their very different goals pull them apart. The four nicely-cast musicians are Johnathon Schaech as the ambitious lead singer, Ethan Embry as the naïve bass player who’d rather be a Marine, Steve Zahn as the stoner lead guitarist, and Tom Everett Scott (a young Hanks lookalike) as the drummer who has a deep-seated love of music. It is Scott’s character who, late in the film, happens upon a legendary jazz pianist, someone who reinforces his true passion for great musicianship. The film’s climax is their impromptu jazz duet, one that reminds young Guy of what he truly values in life. This is a small role for Cobbs, but a deeply appealing one. Bill Cobbs will be missed.