Dueling Spielbergs

Steven Spielberg can never be accused of lacking versatility. In the course of directing 56 films (and producing three times that number), he has explored virtually every genre. He’s made classic family movies (E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial), action-adventure thrillers (Raiders of the Lost Ark), blood-and-guts war stories (Saving Private Ryan), and thought-provoking science fiction flicks (AI Artificial Intelligence). Over a fifty-year career, he’s tried his hand at serious historical drama (Amistad, Lincoln) and off-beat whimsy (The Terminal, Catch Me If You Can). He’s been gutsy enough to tackle the intimate story of a black woman (The Color Purple), and ambitious enough to take on the Holocaust in Schindler’s List. This latter film, of course, has had global repercussions and has led to Spielberg’s establishment of the highly respected Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, through which the personal stories of Hitler’s victims are being carefully preserved.  

No question that Steven Spielberg has a strong sense of social responsibility. In some ways he comes across as a grown-up Boy Scout. Still, like some Boy Scouts I know, he enjoys scary tales told around a campfire in the dark. Remember when Jaws persuaded all of us to avoid the ocean? Yes, some Hollywood wag labeled this 1975 Spielberg fright-fest a Roger Corman film on a big budget, but it certainly did the trick, scaring the pants off of us while creating the whole idea of a summer blockbuster. And Spielberg’s genius for crowd-pleasing by way of crowd-scaring was certainly on display in 1993, when dinosaurs ran amok in Jurassic Park. This fascination with the scary – and even the demonic – shows up in 1982’s Poltergeist, which Spielberg co-wrote and produced but didn’t direct. (Tobe Hooper, of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, did the honors, in the same year that Spielberg himself helmed E.T..) Poltergeist, in which sinister forces appear via a family’s TV screen, clearly reflects Spielberg’s own childhood obsession with his own parents’ new television set.

So it makes perfect sense that Spielberg’s big Hollywood breakthrough came by way of television. It all began with a short story by Richard Matheson, who (in the course of a long career) wrote screenplays for such Roger Corman classics as House of Usher and The Pit and the Pendulum. Matheson was reportedly moved to write this story, which first appeared in Playboy, after he was tailgated by a trucker on what turned out to be the day of President Kennedy’s assassination. Matheson himself adapted “Duel” for the screen, and the result was a 1971 TV movie (later released as a feature film) that jumpstarted Spielberg’s career.

Steven Spielberg (somewhat alone among the great directors of his generation) never worked for Roger Corman. Still, Duel can be considered Cormanesque. It was made on a very low budget, along the highways and back roads of Southern California. Plot and characterization are subordinate to the fast-paced action on the screen; dialogue barely exists. At base, this is the story of a middle-aged middle-class Angeleno (Dennis Weaver) who’s driving his bright red Plymouth Valiant to some sort of appointment in the hinterlands. Suddenly he’s being threatened at every turn by a monstrously lethal Peterbilt 281 tanker truck. Its driver is barely visible, but the rusted-out truck (which takes on demonic characteristics as the film advances) clearly seems out to get him, and damn the consequences! The filmmaking is bravura, and Duel ended up turning Spielberg into the next big thing, allowing him to dream up bigger and costlier scares as his career advanced.

Who knows what scary critters will be next on his agenda?

Hollywood Flunks the Bechdel Test

So how did you celebrate International Women’s Day? For those not in the know, it’s observed in countries around the world every March 8. Though International Women’s Day had its origins (back in 1909) among leftwing working women in New York City, it was enthusiastically adopted within the Soviet bloc in 1917, following the Russian Revolution. In 1975, the United Nations formally recognized it as a day on which to honor women and the international movement against sexism. And in SoCal it’s gradually starting to become a time for protest marches and rallies.

Me? I spent the day thinking about the Bechdel-Wallace Test. Whazzat? Well, it all started with cartoonist Alison Bechdel and her friend Liz Wallace. Bechdel, who has recently been represented on Broadway by the Tony-winning musical, Fun Home, for years published a feisty comic strip titled “Dykes to Watch Out For.” Back in 1985, one of her strips, using an idea she credits to Liz Wallace, showed a woman insisting, “I only go to a movie if it satisfies three basic requirements. One, it has to have at least two women in it.  Who, two, talk to each other about, three, something other than a man.”

Out of that germ of an idea came the so-called Bechdel Test, as a way to judge which movies can boast a valid recognition of the female gender. When applied to contemporary Hollywood, the results can be startling. Naturally, most superhero movies don’t pass the test. But neither do a fair share of prestige pictures.This becomes clear when we look at the nine movies nominated as candidates for the Best Picture Oscar. Only one, Hidden Figures, truly adopts a female perspective. Both Hacksaw Ridge and Hell or High Water are pretty much female-free. La La Land has an early scene featuring Mia and her three roommates, but what’s on their minds is going to a party and meeting guys. Lion, Fences, Manchester by the Sea, and Moonlight do contain meaty female roles, but these women exist in support of a very central male whose problems dominate the film. Then there’s Arrival, in which (as in Jackie and Florence Foster Jenkins) the main character is decidedly female, but she’s the focus of a story in which she’s played off against a pretty much all-male establishment. (Unless, of course, Arrival’s aliens are girls.)

A few nights ago I was lucky enough to attend an American Cinematheque screening of a classic from 1952, High Noon. Though Golden Age of Hollywood movies often featured the clash of two powerful women (think All About Eve), High Noon perfectly illustrates what the Bechdel Test is all about. It contains a terrific scene between two strong and diametrically opposed women: blonde and beautiful Amy (Grace Kelly) and dark and sultry Helen Ramirez (Katy Jurado). The former projects dewy-eyed innocence; the latter bitter experience. But what exactly do they discuss? The plight of Sheriff Will Kane, the character played by Gary Cooper, who is the newly-wedded husband of Amy and has clearly been around the block with Helen.   

Alison Bechdel, whose Fun Home is currently having a triumphant run in L.A., is the author of not one but two graphic memoirs, autobiographical comic-strip-style books in which she reveals the secrets of her family tree through both carefully chosen words and vivid drawings. Bechdel’s great subject is her relationship—as a daughter and a lesbian—to her difficult, complicated parents. Her interaction with her mother, her female lovers, and her female shrinks are an essential part of the mix. I’d say she passes the Bechdel Test with flying colors.  

                        

Steven Spielberg: Mom Always Liked Him Best

Steven Spielberg’s mother, Leah Adler, made the news a few weeks ago when she passed away at the ripe old age of 97. Not only was she the well-beloved mater familias of the most successful filmmaker in today’s Hollywood, but she had one additional claim to fame. Many Angelenos (myself included) remember her as the spritely presence behind The Milky Way, a dairy restaurant still popular among Orthodox Jews living in the Pico-Robertson section of Los Angeles.

As soon as you walk through the door at the Milky Way, you can’t miss the Steven Spielberg connection. The walls in the entry area are hung with posters from movies like Jaws and Raiders of the Lost Ark. An E.T. doll is prominently displayed, as are other Spielberg-related tchotchkes. The food is, by SoCal standards, fairly standard: you order from an eclectic (though strictly meatless) menu that features salads, pastas, blintzes, and enchiladas. Leah Adler once delighted in making the rounds, checking on diners’ satisfaction, dispensing Steven anecdotes, and occasionally busting out a few dance moves. The last time I was at the Milky Way, in November 2015, I was disheartened to see a fragile-looking Leah leaning on a walker and accompanied by an attendant. It was clear her days were numbered, but she had not lost her sunny smile.

Ironically, I read of Leah’s death while I was reading film critic Molly Haskell’s Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films. This book was published by Yale University Press as part of a series that pairs major writers with influential Jewish figures, past and present. Haskell, who is not Jewish, is known as a film reviewer as well as the author of “Frankly, My Dear”: Gone With the Wind, Revisited and the pioneering From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies. In writing about the formative influences on Spielberg’s life, she points to his bond with Leah as essential to the molding of his character and the development of his talent.

The Leah Adler I see in my mind’s eye is short, compact, bright-eyed, with close-cropped blonde hair. She’s youthfully dressed, favoring neat pants suits, overalls, Peter Pan collars, and bright red lipstick. Haskell, who gives no sign that she’s met the woman I tend to refer to as “Mama Spielberg,” focuses in her biography on a much younger Leah, one who (in defiance of her religious upbringing) considered herself a bohemian at heart. Trained as a concert pianist, she had the instincts of a performer. She also had a special adoration for her eldest child and only son. In the various suburban communities where Steven and his three sisters were raised, she encouraged his pranks and his early movie-making experiments to the point where Spielberg himself spoke of the two of them as essentially “co-conspirators.” But she also shook up everyone when her love affair with a family friend led to divorce and remarriage.

Haskell finds in some of Spielberg’s early films possible portraits of Leah (see, for instance, the hippie chick in Amblin’). She also examines the Oedipal twist in the Spielberg-produced Back to the Future, in which mother and son meet as contemporaries. In any case, the close bond between Steven and Leah remained solid. I’m charmed by his answer when critics pondered possible Jesus parallels in his film, ET: “I’m a nice Jewish boy from Phoenix, Arizona. If I ever went to my mother and said, ‘Mom, I’ve made this movie that’s a Christian parable,’ what do you think she’d say? She has a kosher restaurant on Pico and Doheny in Los Angeles.”

Bill Paxton and Below-the-Line Hollywood

We’re all stunned by the passing of Hollywood good-guy Bill Paxton at the early age of 61. I remember him particularly from Apollo 13, where he played astronaut Fred Haise, and of course from TV’s Big Love. But his obits remind us that he started out in the business working for (who else?) Roger Corman. Like so many in Hollywood, Paxton was an alumnus of the unofficial Roger Corman School of Low-Budget Filmmaking.

Paxton’s first film assignment, back in 1974, was in the art department for Corman’s Big Bad Mama, a Depression Era romp starring Angie Dickinson at her sexiest and most deadly. Frankly, I don’t remember him. As the production secretary on that film, I was responsible for cast and crew getting paid. But most of my efforts were directed at the department heads, like art director Peter Jamison. I wouldn’t have had much to do with a lowly set dresser, which was Paxton’s credit on this film.

Those outside the film industry may not be quite aware of how many people it takes to make a movie. They see (if they bother to stick around) the long strings of names listed in a film’s end-credits, but they don’t understand the implications of the jobs we call “below the line.” A film crew is in fact something like an army going into battle. There are numerous departments, hierarchically arranged (e.g. the cinematographer holds sway over the camera and lighting crews), and department heads are largely responsible for hiring and overseeing those who work in subordinate positions. Even in the famously down-and-dirty Corman world, a certain discipline is imposed by this arrangement. If Paxton had not moved into acting with a tiny role in Corman’s 1975 Crazy Mama (a Cloris Leachman flick not to be confused with Big Bad Mama), he might have climbed up the chain of command into crew positions of greater responsibility. As it was, he continued to accrue art department credits until 1987, though a relationship with fellow Corman alum James Cameron moved him into big-time acting roles by way of  1984’s The Terminator and 1986’s Aliens (“Game over, man!”).

 Working production on Big Bad Mama, I discovered the life of a crew member. I’ll never forget an eager-beaver PA (production assistant) who was clearly raring to make his mark in the movie game. No youngster, he was rapidly going grey, and had a wife and kids whom he’d moved to L.A. in pursuit of his filmmaking dream. I wondered at his choice of vocation. If, in his forties, he was willing to take the lowliest of positions on a non-union Roger Corman crew, I didn’t see how his family would survive. Fortunately, I think he wised up. The IMDB lists his credits only on two Corman films. I’m hoping he went back where he came from and fulfilled his career goals some other way. 

Also on Big Bad Mama I met Teri Schwartz, a young woman both efficient and good-humored. As the film’s second assistant director, she was a steady, calming presence. For those who don’t know, an assistant director is never going to make it into the directorial ranks. Rather, the job is largely administrative, involving taking care of actors’ paperwork. The A.D. also ushers actors and extras to the set at the right moment and makes sure to avoid snafus. Teri was so good at this that she became a producer on hit films like Sister Act. And now she’s the much-respected dean of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. Some below-the-line folks make it to the top with a vengeance.

Lights Out for “La La Land”

Well, I’ve just finished watching the most screwed-up Oscar broadcast in history. I’m frustrated and baffled . . . and how else is a viewer supposed to feel when a Best Picture winner is announced and then (mid-acceptance speech) the Oscar is rescinded?  Not that the eventual winner, Moonlight, is unworthy. Frankly, I’d like to watch this film again, because -- though I recognized some fine performances -- I wasn’t among those who fell in love with the total package. But in any case I was rooting for La La Land, for the honor of my hometown, and for the revival of musicals on the silver screen.

I’ve been thinking about musicals a lot since I finished reading a highly touted new novel by the British author Zadie Smith. Swing Time begins with two little mixed-race London girls who are wild about dance. Their passion is fueled by the hours they’ve spent in front of the telly, watching the great old musicals. One that figures prominently in the narrator’s recollection is Swing Time, in which (in a number called “Bojangles of Harlem”) Fred Astaire dances elegantly with three shadow-images of himself, all of them done up in blackface in tribute to Bill Robinson and the great black tap dancers of the era. And when watching something called Ali Baba Goes to Town the narrator is surprised to spot an actual African-American featured dancer, Jeni Le Gon (1916-2012), whose unusual legacy becomes part of the plot. As a more recent inspiration, Michael Jackson appears too, via his Thriller music video. 

In the course of the story, the two little girls grow up. One becomes a professional dancer, with some chorus-line successes on the London stage (she’s Hot Box cutie #1 in a revival of Guys and Dolls) until life takes its toll. The narrator, smarter and less agile, goes the university route. Unexpectedly, she becomes the personal assistant to a world-famous Australian singer-dancer whose character and blonde beauty obviously borrow from such gifted self-promoters as Madonna and Lady Gaga. The celebrity becomes temporarily infatuated with Africa, swooping down from her heights to play at philanthropy while taking on some new dance styles, a new lover, and an adopted baby girl. It’s cultural appropriation to the nth degree, and the playing out of this story is set against those of the narrator’s social activist mother and her childhood friend.  There’s much in this novel that’s grim and sad, but the joy of dance remains, both in the rituals of an African village and in a final image of a struggling little family group dancing on the balcony of a London tenement flat.

It was joy I wanted on Oscar night, and (despite some overly silly stuff from host Jimmy Kimmel) I was happy to see dance held in a place of honor. Justin Timberlake and his crew can dance down my aisles any day. There was lovely, magical dancing in the Moana number for which Lin-Manuel Miranda did not become an EGOT. And of course “City of Stars” from La La Land got the Astaire-Rogers treatment it deserved. But I’d like to dance some flamenco on the heads of Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, or those important-looking guys with the suits and briefcases from Pricewaterhouse-Coopers . . . whoever was responsible for the wrong name being read at what should have been the evening’s high point. But, come to think of it, La La Land is about melancholy as well as joy, and so maybe its fate is appropriate. I guess we should shrug our shoulders, face the music, and dance.

Postscript: The latest word is that there are two identical sets of Price-Waterhouse envelopes, one on each side of the stage. In the confusion of a complicated set change, Beatty was handed the wrong envelope, was confused by what he read (Emma Stone, La La Land) but passed the buck to Dunaway. So lots of blame to go around. 

Fred Astaire as "Bojangles of Harlem," Swing Time