HEY MAN . . . I'VE GOT A WIFE!

This one goes out to all my friends who have gotten and are getting married. It's even better if you picture Harrison Ford doing a J and going over his lines with his massive earring glinting.



(thanks to Youssef Kerkour for posting it on Facebook and Avaryl Halley for an excellent editing job).

IT'S ABOUT THE MUSIC!!!

As a movie lover, I find myself torn between being terribly frustrated at squandered potential and cutting movies and their makers enormous amounts of slack for having ambition. There's enough shared ground in that Venn diagram—ambitious movies that succeed—that the outlying, non-shared parts aren't too annoying, but periodically I see a movie and go “Movie . . . why can't you have succeeded in your aims?” One such is Eddie and the Cruisers.

The story of a popular, groundbreaking rock 'n' roll band torpedoed by the untimely death of its saxophone player and disappearance (and presumed death) of its frontman/musical mastermind Eddie Wilson, Eddie and the Cruisers is immediately in a gigantic hole dug by co-writer/director Martin Davidson's decision to appropriate Citizen Kane's structure; journalist Ellen Barkin's investigation of the story by interviewing the remaining band members serves as the picture's skeleton (and the interview with Eddie's girlfriend and backup singer is almost shot-for-shot the bit where the guy interviews the Marion Davies character in Kane, but without the flair). While the decision to bite Citizen Kane displays impressive ambition, you've got one big condom to fill if you're going to rip off Citizen Kane. And Eddie and the Cruisers just ain't quite packin' that much heat.

Apart from the derivative structure and occasionally stiff performances (though Michael Pare, in spite of some clunky line readings, is absolutely perfect as Eddie), the biggest problem the picture has is with the music. John Cafferty & The Beaver Brown Band, who wrote and performed the original songs, had a couple moderately successful singles on the soundtrack with “On the Dark Side” and “Tender Years,” the Cruisers' two big in-movie hits, but the reason for this is that the soundtrack dropped in the mid-80s, and Cafferty et al's sound bore an immense similarity to a certain Mr. B. Springsteen and the merry band of E Street, who enjoyed some success at the time. For what they were—Bruce-y mid-80s Jersey rock—“On The Dark Side” and “Tender Years” are not bad at all; in fact they're just as good if not better than Bruce's shittier stuff of the period. On its own merits, it's one of the better original (except for a couple covers by Cafferty et al) song score soundtracks you'll find.

Only problem is, music in 1963 (when the movie takes place) sounded fuck-all like music in 1983 (when the movie was made). Not only is two decades a long time, the first of those two was The Sixties. And we all know that during The Sixties . . . Everything Changed. Boomer hyperbole aside—if there were as many fucking people at Woodstock as those one-rusty-brain-cell-havin' ass motherfuckers claim, Abbie Hoffman would have been elected God—popular music basically has to be divided into pre- and post-60s, and not just because of the Beatles, but the ensuing Brits, and Dylan, Motown, drugs, the Velvet Underground, drugs, and drugs and a few other individuals, genres, and movements I'm probably forgetting. (Ed. Note: coughcoughdrugscoughcough). Not only all that, but then there was the 70s, with even more shit.

Something I remember faintly, that scared the living shit out of music nerds like my dad (who, rest in peace, was a massively accomplished and passionate music nerd) was that in the late 70s and early 80s so few people actually gave a shit about the history of music that whole genres were in danger of dying out. Steely Dan griped about this in “Hey Nineteen,” with Donald Fagen's kvetch that the teenager he wanted to fuck killed his boner by not knowing who Aretha Franklin was. Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, two music nerds in good standing, formed the Blues Brothers and exhorted audiences to buy rhythm and blues records. These noble efforts—and others with other endangered genres—eventually paid off, as while the study of music history remains a niche interest, it does exist.

But there was another problem, that plagued every single movie made about music during that no-giving-a-shit late 70s/early 80s period. No one paid any attention whatsoever to the fact that recording and amplification technology took just as massive a leap during that same time span. You don't need to be a sound nerd (even an amateur one like me) to tell the difference between a Beach Boys record from 1963 and a Duran Duran record from 1983. Even if you don't know a mic from a mixing board, they just fucking sound different. This brings us back to Eddie and the Cruisers: no visible (or, more appropriately, audible) effort was made to make a record made in 1983 sound like it did in 1963. It doesn't even sound like a conscious choice to highlight how revolutionary the Cruisers were, either: the early part of the movie sounds like Springsteen covering Dion and the Belmonts, the middle part where the Cruisers get big sounds like Springsteen road-testing future B-sides, and the later part where they get “weird” sounds like Springsteen paying homage to the Doors but making the fatal mistake of not getting high first. It ultimately reads as pandering to the Bruce-mad masses rather than giving a fuck about getting it right.

It's a shame because the character of Eddie Wilson is a very promising one. They got the perfect actor, in Michael Pare, to portray Eddie: he's stunningly beautiful (yeah, that's not a typo, fuck off), wears a leather jacket like a god, looks perfect miming guitar and lip-syncing, and projects the necessary simultaneous emotional vulnerability and insecure intellectual and artistic ambition necessary to make a proper Rock Star. He makes a plausible type for an ambitious blue-collar artistic type from the early 60s—someone who likes rock 'n' roll and doo-wop but read some poetry books and has a burning urge to try something new. He's two hits of acid, a bottle of Scotch, and a more privileged background away from being Jim Morrison. It might have made for a more interesting story to follow Eddie Wilson a little further into the 60s to see how the changing times shaped his music, outlook, pharmaceutical experimentation, and so forth. It is, however, plain fact that with the paradigm shift made by Western popular music in the middle 60s, there is no way whatsoever that the singer from a bar band never seen playing a concert outside its home state, with a total of two hit singles in 1963, would suddenly be #1 and the biggest rock star in the world 20 years later. He would need to have been famous for longer, and to have had a national profile. That the movie attempts to sell us what it does is a similar lack of attention to detail.

Oddly, in spite of all this ranting about the flaws, I do rather enjoy Eddie and the Cruisers. Martin Davidson's lack of attention to details that would have made his movie better seem more like things that never occurred to him due to intellectual and aesthetic limitations rather than deliberate oversights made out of pure commercial venality. That is to say, his idea to make his fictional band equal parts Dion & The Belmonts, The Doors, and Bruce Springsteen (his own professed vision) is not the problem. That that mix of influences is a paradox of anachronisms, impossible due to the laws of cause and effect, is. But, weirdly, I cut Davidson a bit of slack for not realizing that the whole thing was a Kobayashi Maru, partly because he does understand the genuine excitement inherent in loving music, and comes very close to being able to articulate it, despite his limitations.

I also give Davidson a lot of retrospective credit for refusing to have anyfuckingthing to do with the sequel. The original, for all that was wrong with it, was still a real movie. It had the consistent solid performance you get out of Tom Berenger that you always get. Ellen Barkin managed to make a character that was kind of a dipshit interesting by being Ellen Barkin. Michael Pare wasn't particularly polished but he was exactly right as Eddie. Joe Pantoliano plays creeps so well that anytime a movie has within it a creep of that particular high-pitched amoral “don't leave your daughter alone with him” rodent-like variety, it should be called “the Joe Pantoliano character” (this will be applicable when he's no longer in ten movies and three TV shows a year playing the part himself). And the last scene, where Eddie watches Ellen Barkin's TV report through a store window and smiles, is actually kind of a cool twist; after the whole thing where Joe Pantoliano faked being Eddie and that was supposed to make us think that Eddie was dead, having him actually be alive and living in quiet anonymity was kind of cool. Kind of. Mildly. Like the rest of the movie.

But the sequel. Whoa. Fuck.
Eddie and the Cruisers II: Eddie Lives! is a staggering feat of retardation. It is bad in just about every way a movie can be bad. Every time I've seen it—and, oh, do I love returning to it and sipping from its exquisiteness—I end up spending the entire movie screaming in agony, laughing hysterically, and generally scaring the shit out of any civilians in the room. Let us count its glories:

--It's a cash-in on a movie that barely made back negative costs
--None of the famous people who were in the first one returned
--They had to cut around Berenger in the flashback scenes because he refused to let his likeness be used.
--They doubled down on the anachronism and had a “lost recording” of Eddie Wilson jamming with Bo Diddley and an all-star team of black musicians that sounded like a fucking deep cut on fucking Phil Collins' 1985 No Jacket Required. This was not only totally anachronistic but five years late to a record that wasn't even hip when it was new. Though “Take Me Home” was great in that one scene at the end of the Calderone two-parter on Miami Vice.
--The rest of the new songs are goddamn awful, but everyone oohs and ahhs about how great they are, much like everyone talking about how beautiful that potato-faced twat in The Room is.
--It was shot in Canada because it's cheaper to shoot in Canada.
--There are “non-union” Canadian equivalents (they're probably in Canadian SAG, I'm not calling them scabs, I'm just being mean) for Rosanna Arquette, Billy Dee Williams, and River Phoenix, all of whom they probably could have gotten fairly easily if it had been a real movie.
--Even though Eddie is supposed to be the biggest rock star in the world, talked about in the same breath as Elvis, no one notices when Michael Pare is walking around Montreal with that stupid fucking mustache. That stupid fucking mustache is not only fucking stupid, it's the flimsiest disguise since Clark Kent's glasses.
--Furthermore, even if we posit that everyone in Canada is either retarded or blind, we're supposed to accept that they're so fucking tone deaf that even though Eddie is fucking touring and playing fucking gigs where he's the fucking singer, no one notices that he sounds exactly fucking like the biggest fucking rock star in the world until that chain-smoking broad talent booker at the end of Act Two. Child please.
--Rick Diesel

This last is particularly special. Bernie Coulson's turn as Rick Diesel in Eddie and the Cruisers II: Eddie Lives! may well be the most schizophrenic, confusing performance in cinema. There are isolated scenes that Bernie Coulson plays fairly well; there's one band rehearsal fight late in the second act where he and Michael Pare actually do a decent, organic job of yelling at each other, but it's brief. Most of the movie leaves us to revel in one of the worst-written parts ever committed to page in any medium, a character with inconsistent, changing motivations based in no one's most feverish delusions of real life, played by a young, energetic actor whose inexperience led him to rocket around the movie like a pinball coated in nitroglycerin, overacting fiercely. His accent is equal parts Canadian, Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and not-half-bad New York, but frequently braying in an overwhelming Phil Spector Wall of Sound (wall of Canadian/Californian stoner/surfer drawl?) way that drowns all else out.

Also complicating things is the fact that Eddie, posing as Montreal construction worker Joe West, might be the most emo fucking fagbasket ever. (Ed. Note: the barrage of superlatives and the frustration-induced homophobia are things you need to have seen this singular motion picture to understand). In a direct contradiction to the end of the first movie, which showed Eddie mildly pleased that people were finally hearing and appreciating his music, the Eddie of the sequel—and it's not even altogether clear whether the audience is supposed to know it's Eddie; the people who made this piece of shit were such dumb, cynical, incompetent profiteurs one never knows—starts practically sobbing in public whenever someone on TV starts talking about him or the Cruisers. He leaves a liquid lunch with his construction buddies to drive from Montreal to New York City just because an Eddie Wilson lookalike contest is mentioned on TV. Rather than enter and win (which would have been awesome) he mopes around the periphery and then drives back to Montreal. And doesn't get fired for missing half a day of work at the building site (they specifically mention it being lunch).

Contrivance brings an “artist” into Eddie's life (Rosanna Arquette's non-union Canadian equivalent), and some of the worst dialogue ever written about the arts (Ed. Note: there's more hyperbole to come, I'm telling you, this movie really is that bad) ensues. Nothing about Eddie's new girl, or the snooty, baselessly elitist Montreal art world to which she aspires rings true at all. Her paintings are awful. She comes across more like a white-collar executive type, and after a certain point is only there to say stuff like “What are you talkin aboot, Joe?” and “You need to do what you believe in” and “Tell them who you really are” (this last after Eddie, tears in his eyes like every other scene, confesses his true identity).

Plot necessity draws Eddie back to music, in the form of a mildly wanky but extremely polished bar band, featuring one Mr. R. Diesel on lead guitar and Billy Dee Williams' younger non-union Canadian equivalent on saxophone. Eddie, in a candid moment, tells the sax player he reminds him of Wendell Newton, the sax player from the Cruisers (whose smack OD was an inciting event in Eddie flipping his shit and going Brian Wilson in the studio for an off-screen year in the first movie). The sax player—the only smart person in the whole movie—immediately goes to himself “Is this Eddie?” Eddie and Rick Diesel talk a little trash, leading the sax player, who sees an opportunity to test his thesis that this is Eddie, to suggest that Eddie sit in with the band. In a ludicrous scene in which Eddie jerks off shamelessly with a guitar, he improvises a slick, professional recording of a terrible white blues song, and convinces Rick Diesel to start stalking him to get him to join his band. After a shameless and interminable bout of Hamletting, Eddie agrees to join and assume control of Rick Diesel's band, retaining Rick Diesel—whom Eddie accuses, hilariously, of excessive guitar masturbation, when all Eddie does is jerk off with his guitar whenever he picks one up—and the Billy Dee sax player, 86ing the rest of the group. They hire a shirtless butt-rock drummer (for some bizarre reason), an Australian bass player with hair like the middle Heather in Heathers (the one with the football player boyfriend), and River Phoenix's non-union Canadian equivalent, a classical pianist. They proceed to rehearse the shit out of Eddie's terrible new songs (and holy fuck are they bad), and start touring under the name Rock Solid. Yes, Rock Solid. Yes. Wow.

Eddie, on top of being so emo it's like he stepped out of some alternate world remake of The Outsiders by Douglas fucking Sirk, is a fascist asshole with the band. He barks nonsense about being “in the pocket” at them when they're like “dude, we're miming along to the slickly produced, hideously mixed pre-recorded track, ease up.” He throws gigantic shitfits about everything from playing gigs to going on tour to playing some Montreal music festival to recording a demo—I guess because he's scared to face the world or something exasperatingly stupid like that—but always goes along with it.

The whole movie, two record company reptiles (one of whom is supposed to be the one who refused to release Eddie's Brucian Wilsonsteen album in the first movie, but played by a different actor, making all the flashbacks confusing) have been ruthlessly exploiting Eddie's music in ways that involve cameos by everyone from Martha Quinn to Larry King to the above-mentioned Bo Diddley. After Rick Diesel surreptitiously sends them a covertly-recorded demo tape, they jet on up to Canada.

Eddie shaves off his mustache and begins to confront his past, first in a scene with Sal—his boyhood chum and bass player from the Cruisers with a nauseatingly self-effacing streak—that is the gayest thing in existence that doesn't involve one guy's dick going inside another guy. Every shot looks like they're going to jam their tongues in each other's mouths. This would all be fine except Sal's kids are standing ten feet away out of frame, which makes it hilarious: “Mommy, why is Daddy making out with that man in the leather jacket?”

So the big concert happens, complete with repeat performances of Rock Solid's two terrible songs and some jaw-dropping editing (they frequently cut from Eddie holding his guitar by his side to a shot of Eddie strumming like hell and then back to him holding the guitar) followed by Eddie revealing his true identity to a cheering crowd. This brings up the best part of the whole shitty movie: it ends right at the interesting part! What the fuck happens when someone whose most interesting feature was the mystery surrounding his disappearance and presumed death returns? I DEMAND ANSWERS!

There are all kinds of other stupid/terrible things in Eddie II. There's this amazingly bad scene where Eddie and his girl are sitting by a stream on a snowy winter day (neither of them are visibly cold at all) talking in refried Springsteen lyrics about New Jersey and then, randomly, Billy Dee the sax player starts playing his sax—which sounds like he's playing in a recording booth in a studio—and posing on top of a promontory. Eddie points this out to his girl, and the camera pans over to watch him posing, in one of the most hideously photographed shots ever (the white off the sun hitting the snow is blinding, and not on purpose). Rick Diesel barges into a date Eddie's on with his “artist” girl to, obliviously, talk about the band (in another parallel to The Room, with Rick Diesel playing Denny). The whole mythology of the missing tape is laughable to anyone who knows anything about music; Eddie summoning the likes of Bo Diddley and King Curtis to a jam session in the middle of the night in Lakehurst, New Jersey is fucking absurd, not to mention the song they “improvise” sounds like, and is just as over-produced as, a bad Steve Winwood solo track (Ed. Note: the phrase “bad Steve Winwood solo track” is meant to inspire every last bit of cold, horrified disgust as you just experienced).

And yet . . . there's no such thing as not watching Eddie II whenever it comes on cable, or not clicking play when you see that it's on Netflix Instant (which it is, not that I'm suggesting that you watch it or anything). Live-tweeting it the other night was a blast. There really is something about a gloriously, legendarily bad movie. Good movies, genuinely good movies, are a wonderful thing to experience, but so are their counterparts on the opposite end of the quality spectrum. Eddie and the Cruisers II: Eddie Lives! is just about as bad a movie as you'll ever see. It has no reason to exist. It has Rick Diesel. It is, as an experience, a delight of the kind only the greatest superlatives can describe.

Eddie indeed lives, but that is his greatest tragedy. This ridiculous movie is the most perfect example yet that, the Rolling Stones exemption notwithstanding, rock stars are not meant to ever be old. They are supposed to be frozen in time, perfected by the lens of memory. There is no value in a comeback, in returning to reality, other than by making the version from the past seem even better, and that is the greatest achievement of Eddie II and the proof of its timeless shittiness: it makes the first one look really, really good.

IN PRAISE OF WINTER'S BONE

(Note: this post contains spoilers)

Now that it's December and I don't feel like a total dipshit talking about awards season, let's kick things off with Winter's Bone, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, is up for a couple fistfuls of Independent Spirit Awards, and may even be a dark horse for an Oscar nomination or two. I have mixed feelings about Serious Film People (the drawling, condescending way they talk about movies, their flagrant overuse of the word “film,” their tendency to let liberal guilt boners blind them to the fact that Serious Message Films aren't always that good), but if not for Serious Film People, there wouldn't be a lot of people talking about independent pictures, and the cinematic ecosystem needs independent pictures. At their best they're a reminder that movies can be something more than big shitheaded things where Sam Worthington has to defeat the Kraken to free the Na'vi from Skynet. Sure, at their worst independent pictures are directors jerking off to themselves and forgetting to set up the lights and have a script, but it's worth risking the bad for the good: genuine artistry, real shit to say, controversial/unprofitable subject matter, chance for actors to actually act instead of just running in slo-mo in front of a green screen screaming “NOOOOOoooooOOOOOOoooOOOOO!!!!”

I was mildly apprehensive about Winter's Bone when I first heard about it. The milieu, the tweaked-out, brutally impoverished Ozarks, is one that would be very easy for some coastal Serious Filmmaker to come in and be all condescendingly “oh LOOK how much I fucking CARE because I'm making a FILM about something SERIOUS” (I'm not going right-wing on you, fear not, I just think exhibitionism is for tits, not compassion) and forget to have a story, or worse, have a story rooted in assumptions that have more to do with the sociopolitical point the Serious Filmmaker was trying to make rather than reality. Most dangerously, I knew that no matter how good or bad Winter's Bone was, given the milieu, it was going to get orgasmic reviews and awards, because of the subject matter.

To my great relief, Winter's Bone turned out to be a wonderful little picture, a fascinating story told simply and well. With a cast featuring many fairly prominent roles played by locals with little to no acting experience (ringers John Hawkes and Garret Dillahunt blend in seamlessly, with John Hawkes in particular turning in a fucking extraordinary performance that requires an Oscar nomination), it feels organically of its setting, and nary a wrong, unrealistic note is struck the whole picture. Lead Jennifer Lawrence can thankfully stop referring to herself as a veteran of The Bill Engvall Show, and start introducing herself like “Hi, I'm the girl who was fucking amazing in Winter's Bone. The one who takes a beating like Philip Marlowe but keeps getting right back up again because she has shit to do. Remember me? Of course you do. Nice to meet you, I'm going to be around for awhile. Because I'm extremely talented. Now fetch my sedan chair and let me feel the breeze of palm leaves. Feed me a fig.” Or not. It's up to her, she was good enough in this movie if she wants to be hailed as Jennifer The Magnificent, Empress Of Cinema, I'll sigh quietly about the ego but do as she says.

Winter's Bone executes a nifty bait-and-switch fairly early on, at first presenting itself as a minimalist, naturalistic portrayal of a deeply fucked-up and neglected part of the country, but rather than wallow, it changes up and reveals itself to be a noir story about Jennifer Lawrence needing to find her missing tweaker father, who's put up the house she lives in with her two young siblings and her mother (who has fuckin' checked the fuck out, leaving Jennifer Lawrence in charge) as his bail, which he's apparently skipped. She finds him or she loses the house. She loses the house, they're all pretty much literally going to die.

The narrative thereafter consists of Jennifer Lawrence's search for her dad. We're introduced to the cast of characters, none of whom want anything to do with helping her out (Dad is, apparently, bad, but nowhere near as bad as the company he keeps). Her uncle Teardrop (John Hawkes), her dad's older brother, is initially reluctant to the point of threatening violence upon Jennifer Lawrence and his wife (“I already told you to shut up once . . . with my mouth”) but later realizes he cares more about finding out what happened to his brother than he does avoiding trouble.

Before very long at all, Jennifer Lawrence finds herself at the house of the very dangerous Thump Milton, head tweaker redneck in charge, and a relative (as is just about everyone we encounter in the movie with the exception of the neighbor lady, who is damn near the only person who shows any kind of compassion or support toward Jennifer Lawrence). Thump's wife, Merab, played by the extraordinary Dale Dickey (who I think was one of the lesbian aunts in The Incredible Adventures of Two Girls In Love, and was also in The Pledge and Domino) is at first firm but courteous, telling Jennifer Lawrence, “You'd best be getting home,” emphasizing the last word in a way that implies deep menace. Being no fool, Jennifer Lawrence gets home. But later, when the trail leads inexorably back to Thump, Dale Dickey and her terrifying butch country Valkyrie sisters beat nine kinds of shit out of Jennifer Lawrence.

Jennifer Lawrence: “You gonna kill me?”
Dale Dickey: “That idea was talked about.”

Jesus Christ. Dale Dickey scares the fucking shit out of me in this movie. Anyway, before they can get to talking about it any more, John Hawkes shows up, and basically lets them all know that they can probably kill him if they try, but he's going to take about six of them with him first, so they might as well just let him escort Jennifer Lawrence off the premises. (The whole time they're beating the shit out of her, she never backs down a bit. It's a horrifying sight watching her all bloody like that, but by the end of this sequence you can't help but be in awe of her resolve and ability to maintain when scared shitless . . . this girl was 19 when they shot this. 19. Holy God she's amazing in this movie).

After a certain point, Jennifer Lawrence knows her dad's dead. Rather than get weepy about it, she just wants to find proof that he didn't jump bail and was in fact killed, so the bail bondsman doesn't take the house (which didn't quite cover the bond, but some mysterious stranger paid the balance in crinkled up meth dealer cash). At wit's end, Jennifer Lawrence considers running away and joining the army to get the money to pay for her family to stay in the house, but the recruiter (played by a real military guy in a really good performance) firmly discourages her from joining up for the wrong reasons. (Ed. Note: with all the stories about military recruiters pulling sneaky shit to get unqualified kids to be cannon fodder for Bush's fetishistic Iraq obsession, it's nice to see a military guy be a good, compassionate person).

Eventually, a solution presents itself in the form of Dale Dickey and her terrifying sisters showing up and offering to take Jennifer Lawrence to her father's body. Their motivation, Dale Dickey says, is to get Jennifer Lawrence to stop talking about how they had something to do with it. Jennifer Lawrence, irritated at the implication that she runs around yapping about shit, denies that she's been talking about anything. Dale Dickey, however, is so averse to the idea of talking she doesn't even want anyone thinking that there's a possibility that Jennifer Lawrence might be talking (Ozark omerta is some deep fucking shit) that she shleps her out to the middle of a lake in the middle of the night, her father's final resting place. Proof shall be obtained by chainsawing her father's fucking hands off (only chainsawing one would imply that dad had chainsawed it off to throw the cops off his scent . . . sorry, that was me shivering, moving on). This, Jennifer Lawrence doesn't handle so well, but by this point, you know what? Let her cry. She's 17 fucking years old and the sole breadwinner for her family, her dad is dead, and some crazy mountain dykes are chainsawing his corpse while she holds his hands steady. She ain't no punk.

The cops accept the severed hands as evidence of his death, and don't give enough of a fuck that Jennifer Lawrence's story about how she came to possess them (“Somebody flung 'em on my porch”) is radioactive horseshit to look into the matter any further. Sheriff Garret Dillahunt clearly isn't buying that story, but he lets it slide. She gets to keep the house. She gets to keep the cash that the mysterious stranger left with the bail bondsman. And when John Hawkes tells her he knows who killed her dad, she doesn't particularly need to know. It's not like the tweaker piece of shit ever did anything for her other than complicate her life and leave her in charge of everyone's survival.

When Winter's Bone ends, it's time to exhale and go, “wow, I was holding that breath for like half the movie, or at least since the scene when John Hawkes chops out Thump's minion's windshield with the axe just to let him know who's gangsta.” For a deliberately paced study of character and place with the framework of a noir detective story that ultimately ends up being an existential meditation on eternity, Winter's Bone is fuckin tense. It's certainly a great picture to show any asshole who thinks independent pictures are boring. And holy shit, if you want to see some fucking acting, this is something you want to watch the bejesus out of. Even the kids are good in it.

Between this and launching Vera Farmiga's career in Down To The Bone, director Debra Granik's already given greatly to the cinema. May the cinema give back to her in kind, and may she not have the bullshit problems women directors all too frequently have. I mean, it wouldn't kill her to cheer up a little bit on the next picture, but she can fucking direct, and I anxiously await her future work.

THE GEORGE WASHINGTON OF MT. NERDMORE, OR "IS THERE SUCH A THING AS THE FUTURE?"

The time has come to talk of Steven Spielberg. Of the many celebrated directors to launch or hit stride in their careers during the 1970s, Spielberg has been the most consistent, enduring, and by far the most successful. He was never one of the cool kids—while friends with Brian De Palma, Martin Scorsese, et al, he was regarded with polite amusement for his Middle American mannerisms and gently mocked for preferring Claude Lelouch to Jean-Luc Godard—but as happens in high school, the nerds so frequently go on to bigger and better things, while the pretty and cool are all too often left to mourn their lost youth. Steven Spielberg is, with all due respect and reverence, a nerd. He is our George Washington.

Obviously, the whole Mt. Nerdmore thing is inexact, the chronology doesn't line up, the Rushmore face Spielberg's making a movie about is Lincoln, blah blah blah. But I'm determined to come up with four nerdy visages to carve into a fuckin mountain, and none of your common sense or logic is going to stop me. Seriously, of American nerd movie directors, who else is going to be George Washington than Spielberg? George Lucas is Alexander Hamilton, the guy who counts the money. Peter Jackson's a goddamn foreigner. We'll figure out Jefferson and Lincoln some other time. For now, back to Spielberg.

Since Jaws dropped in 1975, damn near every picture Spielberg has directed has made an assload of money, and nearly every single one of them has been really good. He's directed a couple lousy pictures, but his successes far outweigh his failures, both numerically and in aggregate fucking awesomeness. Behold:

Duel
Jaws
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Raiders of the Lost Ark

That's all before he turned 35. Yeah. Badass. He kept on with it, and even though he'd occasionally make a bad picture, they were never boring. Spielberg is very much an American, in the sense of being uncomplicated, optimistic, and a touch sentimental, and given that perspective he's been ambitious in terms of tackling different subjects and genres. Despite that sentimentality leading to criticism from many, and an image as a big ol' softie, Spielberg's always had a bit of a dark side. The four above-mentioned pictures have quite a few genuinely dark and scary moments. E.T. is a hell of a lot darker than most people remember. His WWII movies (Empire of the Sun, Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan) are hardly sunshine and flowers. Until the brainfart at the end when the velociraptors forgot to guard the helicopter pad, and about fifteen minutes too little of dinosaurs eating people, Jurassic Park was solid.

Because I can't let my retarded and irrelevant George Washington parallel go, dig this: the 70s were like Spielberg's French and Indian War, wherein he showed precocious talent but the establishment (Euro-worshipping film nerds/British army) wouldn't let him in. But the early 00s were his Revolution. Washington became the commander in chief of the rebel army against England, and Spielberg finally started directing movies that were set in the future. Sure, that analogy holds as much water as a paper colander, but Steven fuckin Spielberg directing movies set in the future. This is motherfucking win.

The first one, A.I., sat a little weird with me. The online game that started a couple months before the movie came out was massive cool, and I nerded out with my bird out for weeks on that joint. Going to all the fake websites, “decoding” them to get the clues, calling the fake voice-mails, getting the clues there, working out just who killed the fictional scientist, mmm mmm mmm, good times. Then the movie came out and I was like “Huh, this has nothing whatsoever to do with the game at all. This is an SF remake of Pinocchio; while Haley Joel Osment and Jude Law fucking rock, the picture never quite satisfies. The aftertaste, that this is a pale shadow of Kubrick, leaves one, while respectful of the clearly loving homage paid by Spielberg to his late friend, hoping that Stanley had lived to make the picture himself.” (Ed. Note: sigh . . .) When I saw A.I. again I realized it wasn't as bad as I'd originally thought, and that it's actually a pretty good SF movie. And Haley Joel Osment and Jude Law were both still ridiculously awesome. But it's Spielberg's second future picture, the main topic of the rest of this post, that makes me curl up and purr.


Minority Report is one of my very favorite pictures Steven Spielberg has ever done, for many reasons. It's based on a Philip K. Dick story, as are Blade Runner and Total Recall, two very special pictures for me. There's a lot of “there” there with Philip K. Dick; he poses questions that make for good movies, A Scanner Darkly also among them (the shitstorms that were Paycheck and Next were not Phil's fault). Minority Report is not content to merely be an SF story set in the future, it is about the meaning of the future, and whether such a thing even exists. Mmmm, delicious existential philosophical questions. Seconds, please.

For his table work, Steven Spielberg took advantage of being a billionaire and did what might be the coolest thing in the history of pre-production: he threw himself a conference on futurism, and brought in a whole bunch of scientists, architects, philosophers, SF writers, advertising dudes, and Douglas Coupland to shoot the shit about what they thought the year 2054 would look like while a staff nerd or two took notes. This would seem to fly in the face of the story's point about the inherently unknowable future, but bear with me here. Spielberg's nerds happily yakked away and came up with all kinds of cool shit like maglev expressways, jetpacks for cops, guns that fire soundwaves, newspapers that update in real time while you read them, ads that use retinal scanning to get you to greet you by name to convince you to buy shit, and computers that you wear a Nintendo Power Glove to operate by making hand movements that look like conducting a symphony. Now, it's tempting to giggle a bit about the fact that Tom Cruise's computer was taller than he was (Ed. Note: that is not a joke about Tom Cruise being short) and that everything both it and those newspapers (Ed. Note: no one except old people will remember what a newspaper is in 2054, sorry) can do was being done on a portable telephone five years after the movie came out, not fifty. This still misses the point. The future being inherently unknowable and always subject to change guarantees that everything in the movie was going to be bullshit, giving Spielberg the best excuse in the history of SF if something in his movie (like the hypertrophic computer and those anachronistic “newspaper” thingies) ended up being dated. But rather than not give a fuck, Steven Spielberg said, “Ya know what? Let's make shit look really cool.” Because he's Steven Spielberg, and that's one of the many things so awesome about him: his appreciation for cool-looking shit.

Among the cool-looking things in Minority Report is its lead actor, Tom Cruise. Before his 2005 mushroom cloud of batshit, Tom Cruise was a mighty (albeit secretive and strange) cinematic force. He got $25 mil a picture and a quarter of first dollar gross because he was fucking worth it. Sure, not everything he was in was good, but it all made pots and pots of money. Tom Cruise himself was mostly responsible for that success, too: while some of his acting choices were twitchy, gesture-y, and flat-out weird, 85% of his performance was guaranteed to be pure, focused intensity. Sure, Far and Away sucked but if you thought Ron Howard trying to direct a Western and being fucking stupid enough to cast Tom Cruise as an Irish guy was gonna work, you deserve to have wasted every dollar watching that fucktardery that you did. It's not Tom Cruise's fault. Opie paid him a lot of money to do that shit.

Eyes Wide Shut? I'm perfectly happy being the one guy in the world who liked Tom Cruise's performance in that movie. That scene in Sydney Pollack's billiards room, where Sydney Pollack casually rules ass (“Okay Bill, let's cut the bullshit, alright? You've been way out of your depth for the last 24 hours! You want the truth? You want to know what kind of charade? I'll tell you exactly what kind. That whole play-acted, "take me" sacrifice that you've been jerking off with had nothing to do with her real death. The truth is, nothing happened to her after you left that hadn't happened to her before. She got her brains fucked out. Period!”)? Tom Cruise holds it down pretty good in that scene. It's Nicole Kidman who sucks in Eyes Wide Shut, not Tom Cruise, and that was Stanley Kubrick's fault. And Magnolia, well, Magnolia was special.

In Minority Report, Tom Cruise doesn't play his usual focused, intense superhero, he plays a cop tortured by the disappearance—and all but certain death—of his young son. His wife has left him and now all he has are his holographic home movies of them, and his future space asthma inhaler kazoos full of drugs. Giving Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise—two guys who've never gotten high on anything stronger than Ovaltine their whole lives—the benefit of the doubt, it would appear that future drugs are pretty well-designed, because this “Clarity” shit gets Tom Cruise smacked out of his motherfucking mind for about five seconds, he nods off, and then he wakes up with no hangover or nothing, is never visibly jonesing, and later in the movie when he stops getting high you never see him going cold turkey or anything. I'm not going to say Spielberg should have invited Hunter Thompson to his futurist conclave or anything, but either those boys don't know shit about getting high or there really is no downside whatsoever to being a junkie in the future, if kicking is just a matter of getting distracted by cops chasing you. Having a cold turkey car chase in a movie would be kind of fucking rad actually: vision cutting in and out when you're not hallucinating, thus just making turns that avert certain death, ralphing out the window of the car and maybe even nailing a gun-toting bad guy with the spray with the speed and everything. Our junkie hero could nod out, crash the car, and then be woken up when the car flips, just in time to start driving again. (Ed. Note: when the author directs Minority Report 2: Smack Into Traffic, remember this post).

The title Minority Report refers to something that officially doesn't exist. Tom Cruise is the commanding officer of the “precrime” unit, which prevents murders from happening before they do, and safely ensconcing the “murderers” in the set of a Daft Punk video with Tim Blake Nelson riding around a wheelchair braying in a Boston accent (Ed. Note: punitive surrealism actually WILL be the law of the land in 2054, put that in the bank). Precrime is entirely dependent on three “precognitives,” or “precogs,” who can see the future, but only murders, for reasons that are never adequately explained, but which I'm perfectly willing to write off to cosmic perversity. The precogs, collectively, form a hivemind that projects all the details of the murder into Tom Cruise's computer, which etches the name of the victim(s) and perp(s) into a unique, can't-be-faked piece of wood. (Crimes of passion, in a fun subtle nod to IRL DC/Bawlmer po-lice, are etched into red wood and called “red balls”). They are, we are constantly told, “never wrong,” but as Lois Smith—who invented precrime—tells Tom Cruise after he sees something he shouldn't and gets framed for murdering someone he's never even met, the precogs “sometimes . . . do disagree.” The two males, Arthur and Dashiell, will see one thing, but Agatha, the dominant of the three, will see something else, making her take on shit the “minority report.”

Tom Cruise isn't aware of any of this at the outset. All he knows is, his boss (Max von Sydow) has a Swedish accent even though his name is Lamar Burgess, and there's this young slickster (Colin Farrell) from the Justice Department poking around implying that precrime might be something other than perfect; he's convinced that human error could fuck everything up (if that's the sound of you nodding sagely in response to his very wise insight, continue to do so). And since we know Tom Cruise does all that future space crack that he buys from an eyeless Peter Stormare in the middle of the ghetto at 1 in the morning, we suspect that Tom Cruise will be Colin Farrell's first target.

We see the precrime unit bust some limpdick whose wife is cheating on him, because the precogs insisted in their passive aggressive non-linear video footage fashion that limpdick was about to dispense absolute justice. He's hauled off yelling “But I didn't do anything!” Colin Farrell raises the same point to Tom Cruise, who makes an analogy with a rolling ball of wood that Colin Farrell catches as it falls off the table, saying the murder is like that ball of wood. Trademark snappy Spielberg visual explanation, if a tad simplistic. Colin Farrell is a sharp one in this picture (his accent and his suit are on pace with his mind; it's really a fucking good performance by the lad) and isn't buying that shit. He keeps digging, seemingly obsessed with Tom Cruise (which is supposed to make us think he's the bad guy, except Tom Cruise is a junkie working for a totalitarian police force, he fucking should be worried about Tom Cruise). Then the precogs start uploading footage from a premeditated murder, and it looks like Tom Cruise is the one lighting up a scruffy Mike Binder, sending him crashing through a high rise building. Tom Cruise shits a brick, and starts running.

Cue long, elaborate, amazing chase sequence. Some condescending jerkoff once called Steven Spielberg “the greatest second unit director in America,” and while that description omits so much of what's great about Spielberg, it's still factually accurate. The action sequences in his pictures are awe-inspiring. You can always see who's doing what to whom, who's going where, the choreography is inspired, the attention to detail exacting, and there are moments of dark humor made hilarious by the sheer tension established by Spielberg's nonpareil technical mastery.

What makes this chase sequence so interesting is that, like a later sequence where Tom Cruise is hiding from some of the coolest robots ever devised (they'll get their due in a minute), there are all these brief tableaus of people and groups of people in the apartment building through which either Tom Cruise, cops, or robots, are hauling ass. These sequences are a little puzzling, as these people are treated as extras and punchlines, yet they constitute a very important part of the environment created by the movie. They go a long way toward the future seeming less constructed of ideas to prove a point (like a lot of intellectual SF) than constructed of people, like an actual world. It's a nice subtle, very Spielberg touch; one of the things that makes him great is that people (even if a lot of the time they're just archetypes) matter to him, even if all that matters is the simple fact of their existence.

When Tom Cruise manages to elude the bad guys, he makes his way to eccentric genius Lois Smith's place, since she invented precrime and can presumably tell him how he's been set up, even if the why will have to wait. She fills him in on what a minority report is, which makes Tom Cruise think, hey, all I gotta do is kidnap the female precog and I'll clear my name. Good ol' Lois Smith totally gets to kiss Tom Cruise at the end of the scene too, which makes no sense, but if Lois Smith wants to kiss Tom Cruise, she gets to kiss Tom Cruise.

Tom Cruise then looks up Peter Stormare, who in a very creepy scene, removes Tom Cruise's eyeballs and gives him new ones under horribly unsanitary conditions. With Big Brother keeping track of people by retinal scanning—and the movie's running visual theme of “what is sight?” and lots of closeup shots of eyes—it's a necessary step if he's going to lay low. But for personal reasons, people having their eyes fucked with deeply bothers me (I was in the process of going blind before having Lasik surgery at 21, which has made me even more sensitive about my eyes) so this sequence always fucks with me. It's a mark of Spielberg's restraint and non-sensationalism, though, that I'm able to re-watch Minority Report and only cringe rather than having to turn the fuckin movie off.

So there's Tom Cruise alone with bandages over his eyes, Peter Stormare and his lovely assistant with the ball-bearing mole on her face having fucked off. And here come the pigs. Tom Cruise's colleagues, still annoyed with him for the first chase sequence, happen upon the rundown apartment complex where Tom's waiting for the time to elapse so he can un-bandage his eyes without going blind. The level of suspense in the sequence is already astronomical—as it always is when the protagonist is trapped and can't go anywhere—but the future fuzz ups the stakes . . . with spiders.


To say that the spiders are the coolest thing in Minority Report should not minimize how good the rest of the movie is. It's just holy fucking shit these things are cool. They're small, efficient, they shoot electricity, they display amazing teamwork . . . and they're fucking smart. The last thing I ever want looking for me when I'm hiding in a bathtub full of ice to mask my body temperature while holding my breath underwater are these damn things, meaning I wouldn't trade places with Tom Cruise in this scene for all the first-dollar gross points in Hollywood. Fortunately, they do catch him, they do lift up his bandage so they can scan his eye, but it comes up “Not Tom Cruise” and he doesn't go blind.

Once he can see properly with his new eyes, Tom Cruise breaks into precrime HQ and kidnaps precog Agatha. Once he does so, that disables the precognitive abilities of the hivemind trio, thus meaning people can kill each other again with no advance warning. Dum dum dum DUMMMM . . . After all that, when Tom Cruise brings Agatha to his hacker buddy to get the minority report that he assumes will clear him . . . there isn't one. He's gonna kill Mike Binder.

The cops show up again, and another chase sequence ensues, this one notable for Agatha being around to see the future (and she can, conveniently, now see things other than murder, apparently) and directing Tom Cruise through a shopping mall, starting with a non sequitur instruction to grab an umbrella, which, in a great moment, becomes necessary when they get outside and it's raining and everyone has umbrellas, so the cops can't tell which one is Tom Cruise plus precog.

It's a half hour til murder time, and Tom Cruise has conveniently ended up right by the scene of the “crime.” He does a bit of fairly schmancy detective work and ends up in Mike Binder's room, where there are photographs of kids all over the place, including Tom Cruise's missing son. Deciding that Mike Binder is the murderer of his son, Tom Cruise beats the shit out of Mike Binder when he gets back, causing Agatha to beg him, in tears, not to kill him, that he has a choice because he's seen his future, it's not set anymore. Tom Cruise, in a moment of heavy drama and Serious Acting, declines to kill Mike Binder, placing him under whispered, intense arrest.

At this point Mike Binder reveals that he's a desperate convict who agreed to pretend he killed Cruise fils in order that his family would be looked after by some shadowy benefactor. Tom Cruise is confused—he has been set up after all—and Mike Binder grabs his gun and offs himself for the sake of his family, leaving Agatha sobbing.

Colin Farrell, arriving on the scene, immediately sees something fishy, because he's really fucking smart in this movie, and, in a surprise twist revealed in this scene, is one of the good guys. Now that he realizes Tom Cruise has been set up, he goes back and looks at this mysterious bit of precog footage—seized from the hacker's place earlier—that Agatha has been trying to get Tom Cruise to pay attention to for the whole movie, of a woman being drowned. Comparing Agatha's footage with Arthur and Dashiell's footage, Colin Farrell sees that it's of two different murders of the same victim, one fake, one real. The real footage was discarded, as it looks virtually identical to the faked.

Armed with this new mystery, Colin Farrell brings his evidence to Max von Sydow . . . who shoots Colin Farrell in the chest and then, as Colin Farrell gives him this “I never trusted you motherfucker, you got to keep your real accent in this movie, I shoulda known you were the bad guy” look, discreetly follows it up with a headshot.

Tom Cruise then does something really dumb. With all the future cops in the goddamn galaxy hot on his trail, he brings Agatha to his ex-wife's house in the country, which is dumb in and of itself, but then they have this big weepy emotional scene about the missing/dead son, which of course results in the future cops showing up and busting Tom Cruise.

Without Colin Farrell around to be smart—and boy are we talking about a singular achievement in cinema if Colin Farrell is the alpha intellect up in this piece—everyone starts going full retard, as master villain Max von Sydow makes a really stupid slip of the tongue that confesses his villainy to Tom Cruise's ex-wife (the lady from Cold Case). Armed with this knowledge that her (once-again) beloved hubby is innocent, she goes to the Tim Blake Nelson prison and pulls heat on Tim Blake Nelson, politely asking that he free Tom Cruise.

The conclusion is a big dramatic showdown wherein a newly head-shaven Tom Cruise lays out Max von Sydow's paradox to him over Bluetooth. Max von Sydow had the woman in Agatha's footage killed because she was Agatha's mother and wanted to take Agatha away from the precrime program and raise her as an ordinary kid. So now, with Max von Sydow having decided to red ball Tom Cruise for being a smartass, he has the quandary: kill Tom Cruise and prove that precrime works, but go to jail forever for murder, or spare Tom Cruise and prove that precrime doesn't work. Max von Sydow, to whom precrime means so much he's compromised his own soul and killed for its sake, looks behind door number 3 and puts a bullet through his own heart.

In light of this fiasco, the powers that be decide to scrap precrime and send the precogs out to an idyllic cabin in the woods where they can read peacefully. The fact that it's now safe to murder people without being pre-emptively ratted out by the precogs is a broken egg in the service of the omelette that is not employing a flawed system to imprison people who are guilty only in thought.

Spielberg caught a little shit for playing up the “oh, isn't it nice that the precogs are now free” angle rather than “crime has returned to mid-21st century DC.” But it's not like it's not the fucking future and they don't have other future shit to catch criminals with. Shit's not going to go Mogadishu just cuz the space triplets aren't uploading grainy black and white pre-visualizations to the police computers anymore. So let Spielberg have his happy ending. The same people bitching at him for ending this picture too sappily would be on his dick if he ended it on a darker, more ambiguous note, too: “Well, Steven Spielberg is obviously trying to be a Real Filmmaker by giving his picture an unhappy ending, but he just as obviously doesn't have the feel for such Artistry.” Such is life, and fortunately for him, with his net worth of $3 billion, if you bust Steven Spielberg's balls, he can hit you with his wallet and that's you done for.

While it's true that the movie takes a slight dip after Colin Farrell gets killed, that's primarily due to how great his performance is, as well as the fact that all the action happens before then, and we're left with a simplified, heavily altered version of Philip K. Dick's original story with nothing to distract from it. However, the fact that it's imperfect doesn't mean it isn't pretty good SF, and there's still that amazing, noir-inflected cinematography by Janusz Kaminski, with almost all the color taken out of the image except for that one, random thing that still has color, that your eyes are immediately drawn to (a subtler version of the girl in the red coat in Schindler's List).

In the end, Minority Report lives up to every bit of promise the description “Steven Spielberg directing an SF noir picture” holds. It may not be perfect, but it manages to ask some Big Questions while simultaneously providing a visual feast, and Tom Cruise does some fairly decent thesping. He'd go on to be pretty damn good in War of the Worlds, too, even though that picture had massive problems. That's a post for another day, though, and it doesn't change the fact that the leftmost, prominent face on Mt. Nerdmore is, indisputably, Steven Spielberg's.

EVERYBODY NEEDS MONEY. THAT'S WHY THEY CALL IT "MONEY"

Two things CHANGE when a MAN turns 63. "FUCK" and "ALL." That's what changes. The same broad turns up her nose at you, same guy tries to screw you over. It's fuck or walk.

Happy birthday, David Mamet.

DON'T CALL US, WE'LL CALL YOU: A LOOK AT CASTING

Note: Some shitheadedness has been redacted from this post that distracted from its actual intent. Be advised and enjoy:

Today's topic of discussion is a thought experiment proposed by Salon's Matt Zoller Seitz outlined in detail here.

The what-if game can be interesting to play sometimes, and casting is certainly a very large element of a picture's success or failure. Here are five of mine:


Fired: Diane Keaton, The Godfather Parts I-III


Recast: Mia Farrow


One Woody Allen girlfriend is as good as another, right? Diane Keaton's performance in The Godfather has annoyed me for a long time, and while a good deal of the blame can probably be assigned to Francis Coppola, who had other things on his mind than Kay in this picture, there's still the problem of Diane Keaton being a little weak at heavy drama. Make no mistake, if you've got a light comedy with a mildly neurotic heroine, you want to cast the shit outta Diane Keaton, get the fuck out of her way, and make sure the camera's pointed in the right direction, because she's about the best there ever was at that kind of role. Kay Adams-Corleone, though? No. The first movie doesn't give her all that much opportunity to fuck up, because all she really has to do is stand around and look confused at Michael. Still, she's a little vacant and tremulous. But the second one . . . I've seen a lot of movies, and with my love for shitty movies, I've seen a lot of shitty acting, but the “It was an abortion, Michael” scene might be the worst acting I've ever seen. That you can't blame on Francis, that's Diane Keaton about twelve miles out of her element as an actor.

Mia Farrow, inversamente, could have played that part in her sleep. The whole point of the role of Kay (as created by Mario Puzo and refined by Puzo and Coppola) is that she's the achievement trophy Michael Corleone unlocks in Assimilation: The Video Game, by beating the “son of an immigrant marries a WASP” mission. Admittedly, not the meatiest part for an actress, as she has no purpose outside of a man's use for her, but there are two prerequisites: a) be hot in a dignified, WASPy way, and b) be able to create the character on your own and make your own choices, because the director, in this case, only cares that you look pretty and hit your mark. Diane Keaton is a solid B+ on the first, but struggled like hell with the second, and of course, in fairness, was playing a part for which her skill set was useless. Mia Farrow, on the other hand, had proven many times over—most notably in Rosemary's Baby—that she was both attractive and able to do good work with a sexist director who didn't care about anything other than her attractiveness (delivery for Roman Polanski's chin, package: these nuts). One gets the feeling, as Kay, she'd have probably said to herself, “Boy, this part sucks, what the fuck am I doing here playing this nothing role as the trophy wife, this is bullshit, I'm gonna quit—oh, wow, look at that paycheck. Eh, suppose I'll soldier on for another week or so” and ended up giving a really subtle, perfectly calibrated performance, and she'd have kicked Francis Coppola in the balls for the “It was an abortion, Michael” line in Part II.


Fired: Jane Fonda, Julia


Recast: Glenda Jackson


First of all, she looks a hell of a lot fucking more like Lilian Hellman than Jane Fonda did. Second, Glenda Jackson could act her ass off, whereas Jane Fonda never could (though ya gotta hand it to her, Jane Fonda works like hell in everything she's ever done, you can see her sweating blood, just a shame it's all for naught due to the complete absence of talent). Third, if you pop Glenda Jackson in a movie where she has to go behind enemy lines and duck the Nazis to find Vanessa Redgrave, the two of them, upon meeting, would form like Voltron to constitute an unbeatable leftist juggernaut that would end any and all forms of fascism forever (and even, through its might, warp space-time to the point where fascism never would have existed in the first place).

Fourth is most important: Glenda Jackson gets no love anymore, which is fucking bullshit because at her peak, she was the best there was. She deserves better than to make the “name all two-time Oscar winners” trivia question a headscratcher because everyone always ends up going “Glenda Jackson won two Oscars? Who the fuck is Glenda Jackson?” A shining beacon of the Left, boy. Currently a member of Parliament for the Labour Party. She turned her back on movie stardom, not to let the other also-rans have a shot at the Awesomest Actress in the World crown, but because she thought she could do more important work in politics than in the arts. Most definitely the cinema's loss, because with Glenda Jackson being as aware and politically astute as she was and is, if you caught her in the right frame of mind with that script, she'd have been like, “You want me to play Lilian Hellman? Sign me up, let's do this. Get me a dialect coach to learn the American accent, which I will of course nail, because I'm Glenda fucking Jackson.”

Seriously, the one problem with Julia is Jane Fonda. Everything else about it is amazing. Swap her out for someone who can act at all and it's an all-time classic, but swap her out for Glenda Jackson and you've got a picture that would never leave my DVD player.


Fired: Denzel Washington, American Gangster


Recast: Chiwetel Ejiofor


Blasphemy, I know, since to speak ill of Denzel is not only a sin but usually puts the “tard” in retarded, but he was wasted in American Gangster. The movie isn't all that good to begin with, as it's way too long and has a few too many moving parts for a story so basic and—by this point—clichéd. The production history was more interesting than the finished movie (directors and co-stars fired, I'm pretty sure Denzel got his $20 mil twice due to a pay-or-play contract, all kinds of other weird crap), which suffered from director Ridley Scott being a little out of his element, and (credited) writer Steve Zaillian having a tin ear for street dialogue. That being the case, this movie was a little beneath Denzel.

This should not be taken as a slight against Chiwetel Ejiofor. The first time I saw him, playing the illegal immigrant/former doctor Okwe in Steven Frears' Dirty Pretty Things, I walked about of the movie theater with tears in my eyes going “Okwe is a fucking superhero.” He's pretty goddamn rad, but to date he's mostly played supporting roles in the bigger-budget stuff he's been in (like American Gangster, where he played Denzel's brother). I say, let Denzel go do something that needs a Denzel performance, and give the English guy a chance to flash a flawless American accent and be so dope that US audiences are willing to put forth the effort to learn how to pronounce his last name. Hey, we did it for Hakeem Olajuwon. And I think, in American Gangster's case, the narrative of “hey, check out how awesome the new guy is” would have helped it financially, as opposed to “hey, here's Denzel doing this shit . . . for some apparent reason.” Even if it didn't totally work, it'd be worth a try.


Fired: Michael Douglas, Traffic


Recast: Harrison Ford


This actually almost happened. When Steven Soderbergh was first putting the picture together, one of the first people he talked to was Michael Douglas, who looked at the script and went “you must be out yo damn mind, no way I'm playing this no-character-development havin' ass motherfucker” (Ed. Note: Michael Douglas' finest achievement as an actor has been hiding the fact that he's secretly black for decades) and Soderbergh was like, “Hmm, let's work on this a bit.”

Lo and behold, Harrison Ford was smoking weed one day and said to his agent, “Get me in one of those indemependement pictures, baby,” and his agent, smiling fondly at his client's eccentric syntax, started looking around for independent and “indiewood” projects. By the late 90s, Harrison Ford had stopped doing good shit like Blade Runner and Witness and started doing boring fucking shit like Air Force One (which sucks) and that romantic comedy with Anne Heche that looked so goddamn bad I wanted to piss on the screen every time the trailer came on. Word came to him, maybe from his weed dealer, about the interesting, increasingly commercial work originating from independent cinema. Big movie stars were taking the occasional part in one of these pictures, either cutting their rate or taking part of it in points, and having critics be like, “Look at [movie star x], with his best performance in decades, he's actually a really good actor.” Harrison Ford, lighting another joint, sighed to himself: it had been decades since anyone had said he was a really good actor. It was thus that he ended up talking to Steven Soderbergh about playing the drug czar in Traffic.

They futzed with the script and gave the character all kinds of new depth and cut all the dumb shit like him lighting up a crack pipe in solidarity with his daughter, and Harrison Ford kept on being like, yeah, this is great, I can't wait to work with a director of Steven Soderbergh's caliber. Still, people couldn't help but notice he hadn't signed anything yet, and there came to be a sense, shared by many of the Traffic peeps, that Harrison Ford might have been playing them while waiting for some more expensive movie-star thing where he wouldn't have to exert as much effort acting took shape. This sense was reinforced when they asked him to cut his rate and he went “Um, no, I'm Harrison Ford, I get $20 mil.” This after they pretty much told him, “sorry man, we don't have a ton o' money,” and he evinced chill down-with-it-ness. Eventually, he quit to go make some piece of shit with Bob Zemeckis and Soderbergh et al managed to get Michael Douglas to say yes (he liked the script changes they'd made with Harrison Ford, but insisted on his full $10 mil since they were going to give Harrison Ford his full rate; shit happens) and the rest is history and Traffic was fuckin awesome.

But still . . . I think Harrison Ford would have been a slight improvement over Michael Douglas. We're talking about the difference between an A- and an A here. If you could get Harrison Ford motivated and ready to show up and put in some work, the character of Wakefield gains a few je ne sais quoi points. He gets that quiet, reserved dignity that Harrison Ford radiates, and it's also all that more shocking that his daughter is a junkie/crackhead. Michael Douglas' one flaw in the movie is nothing he can really help, and the only time you really see it is when he gets in that shoving match with the dealer who's shlonging his daughter, when Michael Douglas Face makes a momentary appearance. I've tried to describe Michael Douglas Face before and failed, but the best I've got right now is that it's an air of “I've done cocaine out of a hooker's ass crack while my dick was simultaneously somewhere highly illegal” that happens when his eyes shift focus and his mouth shakes. The problem with a guy who can do Michael Douglas Face is that it you'd be surprised if his daughter didn't end up turning tricks for smack. And, not only that, it makes it a teensy bit of a stretch that a guy like that could pass confirmation hearings for a Cabinet post. Senator Jackweed McJesus (R-Mississippi) would look at Michael Douglas over his reading glasses and go, “Mr. Douglas . . . the prostitute was how old now?” followed by a frantic discussion with counsel and Michael Douglas nervously replying “All five of them were over 18, Senator.” Ya know what I'm sayin? Harrison Ford, you have none of those problems, the whole Senate would be sucking his dick and asking for autographs. He's just, outwardly, that slightest bit more “electable.” I know it's an appointed post, but Harrison Ford looks and sounds a hell of a lot more like someone who'd be successful in politics. Assuming, of course, he just did a pinner that morning and isn't too baked when he's giving the speech.


Fired: Al Pacino and Cameron Diaz, Any Given Sunday


Recast: Russell Crowe


and Hilary Swank


And finally, because it's Sunday, we close by getting ready for some football. Oliver Stone, jagoff to end all jagoffs, is, nonetheless, capable of making a good picture every ten years or so. Any Given Sunday was a pretty good idea: an attempt to look at the realities of the modern NFL and tackle issues like racism, the commercialization of the game and its effect on players, and how football players get their enormous balls in those tight pants. Stone made a number of inspired casting choices, like real-life football god Lawrence Taylor (who fucking kills it in this movie; when he's sitting in the sauna and says to Jamie Foxx “Nigga you led . . . but did anybody follow?” that shit's some thesping the pros envy) and the bizarre realizations that LL Cool J would make a good running back (he was) and that Jamie Foxx was capable of handing drama (which he also was). But he whiffed badly on two very important roles: the head coach and the new owner.

Al Pacino is Al Pacino, a living god, the one human being who could deliver the line “This city is like a great big pussy just waiting to get fucked” with a straight face, among his other lesser accomplishments (Michael Corleone, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, etc etc ad infinitum). But he ain't no head football coach in the National Football League. This is a head football coach in the National Football League:


Or, since there's only one Rex Ryan, this is an acceptable alternative:


Note the salient characteristics here. A proper head football coach in the National Football League must, at the very least, either be very very large or the type of Southern man who can spend 16 hours a day styling his hair in the morning without anyone ever accusing him of fagmosexuality. Al Pacino fits neither of these templates, nor the last acceptable alternative, the avuncular, zillion-year-old Tom Landry/Joe Gibbs God squad beloved dude whose playbook is ten years out of date but who is nonetheless an institution. Al Pacino would make a terrific high-blood-pressure college basketball coach, one of those little 5'6” dudes who made his college team with hustle, balls, and nonpareil hoops nerdiness and then became an assistant coach before getting the head coaching gig and going on to a couple NCAA titles and a few embarassing recruiting violations. (Ed. Note: someone call Hollywood, that story would fucking rule). But he's too little and not the right kind of badass to own an NFL locker room. He does try, and he has a couple scenes that he acts so well you forget that he's hideously miscast, because he's Al Pacino and a living god.

Cameron Diaz has the opposite problem: physically she's absolutely perfect for the role. Her lanky, rangy physique and tomboyish posture suggest plausibly that she's played sports and done so reasonably well. Cameron Diaz's problem is she's kind of a mediocre actress. She doesn't suck; she was quite good in There's Something About Mary and Being John Malkovich in two radically different roles, but in each case she had a solid script and/or really good director. In Any Given Sunday, she has an underwritten role and a space-case, drugtarded director, so she has no one to tell her that what she's doing sucks, which, as in Diane Keaton's case in The Godfather doesn't mean it's all her fault, but still, you'd want to get someone who, given that kind of apathy-bred autonomy, could come up with something cool.

So what do we do about this two-headed, movie-eating monster? The Al Pacino problem is easy: replace him with Russell Crowe. Russell Crowe may be a difficult cat to work with, and he really shouldn't have thrown that phone at that guy, but he's a goddamn genius actor, on Al Pacino's level talent-wise. More than that, he has the size and the right kind of physical vitality to be a head football coach in the National Football League. Plus, imagine the fucking pregame pep talk Russell could give by busting out some Maximus: “On my signal, unleash hell.” Large men on steroids with trace amounts of blood in their testosterone streams would respond very well to such exhortations. Also, I saw Russell on TV a few years ago talkin about football with the football guys, and he was simply dazzling with that rumbling Antipodean accent, demonstrating a beautifully erudite and insightful grasp on the sport, shocking the shit out of the American TV doodz, who by the end of the thing were eating out of his hand. Charisma, intelligence, balls: head football coach Russell Crowe will win you championships in the National Football League. Believe.

Replacing Cameron Diaz is a little trickier, because it's tempting to just find someone who's a better actress and leave it at that. Problem is, you can't go too girly, otherwise it's like “Okay, why the fuck didn't Barbie just sell the goddamn team.” So I recommend Hilary Swank. The timing doesn't quite work as far as her being someone a casting director would think to hire back then—Any Given Sunday came out the same year as Hilary Swank's breakthrough Boys Don't Cry—but she's the perfect match of really good actor and capable of balancing the “I'm clearly, unambiguously a girl” and “I know just as much about football as you if not more” requirements of the role. Even if she isn't actually a fan, she's the type who would do a bit of research and end up totally plausible.


I gotta hand it to Seitz, this is a fun thing to geek out about. Any other good ones? If you can figure out who to replace Woody Allen with in Hollywood Ending, someone who it's less laughable that he'd be choosing between Debra Messing and Tea Leoni, let me know.

THE LINK BETWEEN LOVERBOY AND NO WAY OUT

I'm up in Massachussetts, having an absolute fucking blast. I've been reading, writing, listening to tunes, getting into alpha-dominance battles with my mom's cats (man conquers nature, believe it), and of course, watching movies. Two in particular warrant mention, both childhood favorites, that you wouldn't think have anything in common . . . BUT THEY DO. Loverboy. No Way Out. What does a critically-dismissed, little-seen sex comedy that no one (much to their eternal discredit) still gives a fuck about have in common with a stylish, popular thriller that the average civilian remembers only for the limo shtup scene? I'm glad you asked, for the answer is simple: gay panic.

Now, I won't spend too much time sucking my own dick for being progressive, since that image works better as a joke than a reality (I'm not as flexible as I used to be), but I don't get why people trip about the 'mos. I regard the lesbians as natural allies; anyone who knows what it's like to be frustrated by women can drink whiskey with me anytime. Gay guys even more so: I'm a guy, they're guys, no more need be said. Recent years have seen the radical, shocking suggestion that gay people are normal people in movies. Colin Firth in A Single Man, for example: you could have replaced Matthew Goode and Nicholas Hoult with chicks and it'd basically be the same movie (well, except the whole Julianne Moore “why don't you want me?” subplot wouldn't make as much sense) and Colin Firth would be no less or more awesome (Ed. Note: he's massively awesome in that movie). But the fact that he is gay in it and he's a normal (if really smart and stylish) dude is great; I was actually rooting like hell for him to nail Nicholas Hoult for the whole second half of that movie.

They weren't making pictures like that in the 80s, alas. Progress had advanced to the point where you could mention that homosexuality existed in a movie, but it was this weird thing that freaked straights out. People used AIDS to excuse a lot of homophobic bullshit, but it really boiled down to the problem of your average civilian not realizing that s/he knew a whole lot more gays than s/he thought. And so your average civilian thought of the gays as being either flouncing, lavender jumpsuit-wearing faggots or linebacker-sized baritone broads in combat boots, if they were able to even process the concept. The unknown is always scary.


Loverboy, from veteran director Joan Micklin Silver, is a fairly progressive movie for the late 80s in that it laughs its ass off at gay panic. Young Patrick Dempsey (who, ironically, would go on to star on a TV show called Gay's Homosexuality) starts out the movie as a poseur punk college student with dumbass blond streaks in his hair whose sole use for his textbooks is to smash his hair into those dumbass “punk” spikes. We meet him listening to Edie Brickell (which isn't gay, but it does kind of make him a middle-aged woman) and making sincere but clueless romantic preparations for a quiet romantic evening with his girlfriend. The scene establishes him perfectly as a giant retard whose heart is in the right place.

And then a staggering, awe-inspiring collection of 80s college-movie stereotypes all arrive at Patrick Dempsey's room and throw the massivest fucking dorm room party of all time. Within a minute of their arrival, people are funneling beers, breaking shit, and generally setting a new land speed record for total destruction. It's really pretty awe-inspiring how quickly and totally shit gets fucked up in this scene, as Patrick Dempsey, who tried impotently to get this nuclear decadence flash mob to leave so he could Edie Brickell his way into his lady's vagina (in the Biblical sense), succumbs immediately, and is dancing around shitfaced with a gigantic duck head on (as one does) when said lady, Jenny, arrives. She rather primly objects to her room—they live together—being trashed by the 110th Airborne Booze & Pussy Rangers, and kicks everyone out.

A very hung over Patrick Dempsey wakes up and fights through the taunting of yuppie jagoff Jory to get back in the room and sweet-talk Jenny into forgiving him. She tells him he needs to learn to nut up and not let people walk all over him. Patrick Dempsey assures her he absolutely will. He'll even—pick your jaws up from the floor—tell his father that they're dating. She's quite happy about this, until Patrick Dempsey's father shows up to pick him up for summer vacation, and Patrick Dempsey starts in with some bullshit lie about how Jenny's his tutor. Naturally, she storms out; who the fuck wants a spineless choad like that for a boyfriend, much less one with such retarded hair?

To add to his problems, Patrick Dempsey's hideous academic record (“Oh, those are incompletes. It's cool, I can make those up”) pisses off his blue-collar dad, who runs a construction business, off to the point where he says fuck you I ain't payin for this shit anymore, get a job fucko. Mom Kate Jackson thinks Dad's being a little harsh, but defers to his authority. For now.

Patrick Dempsey then gets a job at a pizza place called Señor Pizza, where he has to wear a hilarious fake mustache and a sombrero strapped to his back. The paychecks are going to be a bit light as well; as co-worker Rick Diesel (Ed. Note: Canadian actor Bernie Coulson, tragically, ensured that he will be called nothing other than Rick Diesel in perpetuity with his hilariously terrible, scenery-chewing performance in Eddie & The Cruisers II: Eddie Lives; sorry, there's nothing I can do about this, it's the rules) informs him, it will take Patrick Dempsey approximately forever to earn a semester's tuition. Patrick Dempsey is, as the kids say, crestfallen, though Rick Diesel exhorts him to appreciate the side benefits of the job, like there being plenty of chicks to flirt with. Rick Diesel demonstrates, putting on his suavest act, only to have his two bubblehead targets fascinated sexually by Italian stud Tony (former Cher boyfriend Rob Camilletti) and utterly oblivious to the Rick Diesel charm. “I can't believe they fall for that Pepe Le Pew shit!” says R. Diesel.

In a lesser movie, it would take Patrick Dempsey the whole movie to grow a pair, but in Loverboy it happens in the middle of Act One: he's out delivering a pizza, bemoaning the loss of his one true love, when he spies a well-dressed woman who smiles at him. Patrick Dempsey ignores the obvious possibility—that she's laughing at the fact that he's driving in a fucking blue Jeep with a sombrero on top—and decides to ask her out in an upscale clothing store. Stupid? Sure, but nonetheless an impressive demonstration of balls. She does, alas, turn him down (in a really mean way: “You're just a boy. I don't date boys”), but the richer, hotter, better-dressed Alex (Barbara Carrera), who owns the place, is impressed by Patrick Dempsey's bravery and starts an impromptu makeover, which is cut short by a traffic cop ticketing the pizza car.

Back at the pizza joint, Patrick Dempsey bemoans the missed opportunity for wild Bond girl sex to an impressed Rick Diesel. Lo and behold, Barbara Carerra is so taken with Patrick Dempsey that she places a massive order that'll take him all day to deliver, bringing him to her fancy hotel room for none other than wild Bond girl sex. Patrick Dempsey calls his parents to tell him he won't be home, as he's crashing with “a guy from work” named Alex. However, Barbara Carrera thinks it'll be funny if she starts sexing Patrick Dempsey while he's talking to his dad, and she's absolutely right, because the last thing Patrick Dempsey's dad hears when the phone call ends is Patrick Dempsey making an orgasm sound . . . with a “guy from work.” Hmmm . . .

Matters are complicated further when Rob Camilletti shows up at Patrick Dempsey's place with a jacket, which Barbara Carrera has bought him and included a note that says “Although you know I prefer you naked, if you must wear something, wear this.” It's signed Alex, and since Patrick Dempsey tells them that the flamboyant, European Rob Camilletti is Alex, the guy from work (Ed. Note: all European people are gay), Patrick Dempsey's dad announces to Kate Jackson, “Our son is a fruit.”

Although Patrick Dempsey is having fun—and wild Bond girl sex—with Barbara Carrera, he confesses to her that his heart belongs to Jenny, and that out of fairness he has to break off the fling. Barbara Carrera is disappointed, and though she's quite fond of young Mr. Dempsey, she nonetheless plays a rather elegant prank on him, extracting a very fond and gentle revenge: she distributes the phone number for Señor Pizza far and wide, with the instructions that all a bored and affluent woman of a certain age need do is ask for “extra anchovies” and personally request Patrick Dempsey, and for $200, Patrick Dempsey will sex her well.

This leads to much hilarity and personal growth for our intrepid hero. After his initial misgivings at becoming a prostitute, he grows to genuinely like his clients, most prominently the trio of Kyoko, who is kept as a trophy/geisha by racist fuckbag Vic Tayback (who sets a new standard in this picture), Kirstie Alley, the doctor wife of philandering doctor Robert Picardo, and Carrie Fisher, the photographer wife of a massive, jacked personal trainer (former NFL lineman Peter Koch) who is similarly shtupping around. They, in turn, are reintroduced to the concept of fun by young Dempsey, who is soon—due to Fred Astaire enthusiast Kirstie Alley's influence—flouncing around the house practicing dance steps, dressing well, appreciating fragrances, and thoroughly freaking his macho father the fuck out. Business starts booming.

Of course, one woman orders a pizza with extra anchovies, and actually wants the pizza, which is both an obligatory joke and a really fucking funny one, leaving Patrick Dempsey to scramble to put his pants on as he runs out the door to a very confused look. The comedy gods demand certain sacrifices.

Patrick Dempsey's boss doesn't seem to give a shit that he's never there, and happily counts money and restocks his anchovy supply. Rick Diesel both covers for Patrick Dempsey and gradually assumes the role of business manager.

Despite that smooth confluence of apathy and complicity on the Señor Pizza front, Patrick Dempsey's blissful run of success as a hooker is bound to end sometime, and it does as he's enjoying an afternoon bath with Kyoko and Vic Tayback comes home unexpectedly. Patrick Dempsey is forced to hide in a storage room where Vic Tayback has shelves and shelves of little toy robots from Japan that he intends to market as a home security system and reap massive filthy lucre. The beat where Patrick Dempsey sees the robots, and they all turn on in a wave and start hollering “VIOLATOR! VIOLATOR! BAD BOY! BAAAAAD DUDE!” and so forth is comedy perfection.

As is the moment when Vic Tayback realizes that Kyoko is getting some side dick because “You're too friggin' cheerful!” He does a little retarded amateur detective work and deduces that Kyoko is fucking Robert Picardo. Vic Tayback, upon confronting Robert Picardo, realizes that he's being cuckolded as well (Robert Picardo noticed that Kirstie Alley had her Fred Astaire records out, and was similarly too friggin' cheerful), and Robert Picardo has the idea that it might be personal trainer Peter Koch. They go over to Peter Koch's house and tire-iron his front door, with Vic Tayback yelling: “COME OUT! YOU, WHO'S BEEN PORKIN' MY WIFE!” (Ed. Note: Best. Syntax. Ever.) The maid, jabbering in Spanish, comes to the door and hands Vic Tayback a silver candleabra. Peter Koch comes home, a wounded giant, distraught by the news that Carrie Fisher, his wife, is cuckolding him as well. The three form an asshole husband triad and put their heads together to figure out just what the fuck (quite literally) is going on.

Eventually, due to Rick Diesel's decision to start letting Patrick Dempsey's clients pay by credit card, the husbands look at credit card bills and see a whole buncha $200 pizza orders. Even they, dumbasses of the highest order, realize that this means that the guy slipping their wives extra anchovies must be the pizza guy.

Meanwhile, Patrick Dempsey's parents are involved in an argument over the severity with which they should be regarding Patrick Dempsey's terminal case of The Gay (Kate Jackson, in typical mom fashion, is all for it, while Dad is devastated) and a series of misunderstandings wherein Kate Jackson has been led to believe that her husband is shtupping his squeaky young secretary (he sort of intended to, but was so shitfaced he just passed out) and having shower threeways with hookers (an accident involving a nicked water main at the building site, combined with Dad's matter-of-fact “Oh, that's just a coupla hookers, honey”). Kirstie Alley, Kate Jackson's doctor, gives her the number for extra anchovies. Patrick Dempsey, needing only one more delivery to make his tuition, goes to “deliver,” only to freak out and ask Rob Camilletti to deliver the pie and tell her “there are no anchovies.” (Rob Camilletti, confused: “But we have many anchovies.”)

Upon being confronted with Rob Camilletti and his “Pepe Le Pew shit,” Kate Jackson can't go through with it and declines Rob Camilletti's polite offer of sex. But, since no woman has ever turned him down before, Rob Camilletti becomes erotically obsessed and the two of them engage in a hilarious car/Vespa chase.

While all this shit is going on, Jenny finally gives in to all the heartfelt phone calls Patrick Dempsey's been making all summer and goes to see him at the pizza shop, only to be told by old rival Jory that Patrick Dempsey's been fucking cougars. Patrick Dempsey is in the process of throwing down with Jory in the parking lot when The Asshole Husband Brigade shows up with ass-kicking intent. They're after “the delivery boy” and are all about to beat nine kinds of shit out of Patrick Dempsey when Vic Tayback (an acquaintance of Patrick Dempsey's dad) stops them. “Wait a minute, it's not him . . . he's a homo!” And they drop Patrick Dempsey and start wildin' on Jory.

Patrick Dempsey tries to smooth things over with Jenny, who nonetheless takes the (admittedly reasonable) position that, hey, you've been schlonging every upper middle class MILF in southern California, dude, I as your girlfriend am mildly displeased with this. Still, he convinces her to accompany him to his parents' anniversary dinner or whatever the hell it is, which naturally becomes the nexus at which the entire cast converges for the climactic confrontation.

After much physical comedy, the following things happen: Patrick Dempsey's parents realize that he's not gay, even though they're totally fine with him being gay; the asshole husbands trash the place; Patrick Dempsey somehow manages to slapstick his way through it all with his ass intact; Vic Tayback's toupee gets set on fire; Rob Camilletti recovers from Kate Jackson's rejection and sweeps the squeaky secretary off her feet; Rick Diesel somehow gets laid without paying for it; a piano smashes the fuck out of a cop car; Patrick Dempsey's dad agrees to pay for him to go back to college and be with Jenny; and all the husbands get arrested.

In a brief epilogue where all the wives bail their husbands out of jail, Peter Koch and Carrie Fisher decide to let bygones be bygones and he carries her off in his big strong arms (if anyone deserves that, it's Carrie Fisher; she looks like she's rather enjoying herself as he carries her offscreen and into bed); Robert Picardo and Kirstie Alley slap each other and then embrace passionately, because they're kinky like that; and Kyoko lets Vic Tayback's ass rot and goes out to enjoy her freedom. Happily ever after.

Loverboy is, I only just realized this time through, a note-perfect, classically constructed farce. There's mistaken identity, a whole lotta dudes' wives get fucked, some good pratfalls, and a happy ending. The act breaks happen at the exact, textbook point where they should, no time is wasted, everything's just right. I don't say this to justify the fact that I've probably seen this movie twenty or thirty times over the years, but because it's true: Loverboy may be the most underrated comedy of the past 25 years. Joan Micklin Silver for the win.



No Way Out, a radically different movie, is similarly underrated. All anyone ever remembers about it are the scene where Kevin Costner gives Sean Young the high hard one in a back of a limo and the “stupid” twist ending. The first is not any more memorable than ten other great scenes in the movie, and the twist ending isn't stupid at all. This is the problem with things that “everybody knows,” most of them are bullshit.

Kevin Costner had a couple years in the 80s where he walked on water, which turned it into wine, the finest wine the world has ever known. The Untouchables, No Way Out, and Bull Durham mark a period of supreme, flawless badassness; three very different movies, three very different roles, three of the mightiest avatars of masculinity committed to celluloid. His was one of the saddest falls from glory in the annals of Hollywood, as he's known more now for directing three-hour, over-budget wankfests, and getting pudgy and humorless. I'm not knocking the pudginess—certainly not after my heroic performance at Thanksgiving dinner—but the humorlessness? Say it ain't so. This was a man whose apex was noted for the twinkle in his eye and the appearance of deft, intelligent wit. You asked him where Nitti was, he told you, “He's in the car.”

Anyway, No Way Out finds Kevin Costner at optimum levels of badass. Actually, let me get a little radical on you here: I think the best way to appreciate No Way Out is to go into the whole fucking picture knowing that he's a Soviet agent, instead of having it sprung on you at the very end. It certainly makes the picture, and Kevin Costner's reactions to stuff, more interesting.

It's not like No Way Out needs help being cool: it opens with a shit-hot helicopter shot starting at the Washington Monument, then slowly pulling back to reveal the Pentagon, then taking us into anonymous Virginia suburbs. With a dope Maurice Jarre synth score. We then cut to an apartment where Kevin Costner is being interrogated by some anonymous dudes. Their identity isn't revealed immediately, but fuck it: they're Soviets. Kevin Costner is one of them. Isn't that already cool as shit? Kevin Costner as a Soviet mole?

The story is told in flashback, how Kevin Costner, resplendent in finest Naval dress uniform, meets glamorous, funny Sean Young at a formal DC to-do. They immediately click, and it's like “Sex. Now.” They hop in the limo and the famous limo fuck scene ensues, followed by an exchange of first names. Sean Young's best girlfriend is Iman, which is almost as hot as the fuck scene. Sean Young sure did look pretty with her clothes off back in the day. Ahem. Where was I . . .

So the vagaries of fate take Kevin Costner off to the Philippines, and to a bit of night-time heroism aboard a Naval vessel in some shit weather, which lands ol' Kevvo in a nice little feature in The Washington Post: “BADASS MOVIE-STAR LOOKIN' DUDE DOES SOME BADASS MOVIE-STAR SHIT.” Secretary of Defense Gene Hackman, after briefly wondering why someone doing a bad Zodiac Motherfucker imitation is writing headlines for The Washington Post, having a highly reptilian meeting with a cracker senator and CIA director Fred Dalton Thompson, and bantering with sociopathic gay aide Will Patton, tells Will Patton to get Kevvo's ass back to Washington. Will Patton, being nothing if not good at his job (doing what Gene Hackman tells him to), complies.

Kevvo returns and immediately starts fucking the hell out of Sean Young at any and every opportunity (being a man of common sense). Gene Hackman has brought him back to DC to spy on the CIA, which is a pretty cool job for anyone, but for a Soviet agent like Kevvo that's got to be like the best fucking job in the world. Kevvo displays a gift for political/intelligence type work (natural, being a Soviet agent; under as deep cover as he is without having been caught, you'd expect him to be good), but not as much of a gift as he has for fucking Sean Young.

There is, however, trouble in paradise. Sean Young is also fucking Gene Hackman, and has grown quite accustomed to the privilege and comfort this affords her. Kevvo bristles, wondering why Sean Young doesn't just bow to the supernatural majesty of his cock and break up with Gene Hackman. Will Patton, since he wants Gene Hackman all for himself, encourages Gene Hackman to break up with Sean Young, causing Gene Hackman to be like “Bitch are you crazy? Have you seen how fuckin' hot she is?”

It's easy to look at No Way Out and go, “Oh, it's the 80s, people didn't know as much about The Gay as they do today, Gene Hackman was unaware Will Patton had The Gay.” I think the truth is a little more complicated than that: I think Gene Hackman knew Will Patton was gay (even if he only knew this subliminally), and that Will Patton was smitten with him, and he used that to get Will Patton to do his every bidding. This kind of selfish, cynical shit is perfectly in keeping with Gene Hackman's political lizard SecDef character.

In fairly short order, Gene Hackman has other stuff on his mind than Will Patton being a 'mo, as he accidentally knocks Sean Young off a balcony to her untimely death. Will Patton suggests that they cover it up and engage in a bit of misdirection, to wit co-opting a DC intelligence community urban legend about a high-ranking Soviet mole named Yuri, and claiming that Yuri killed Sean Young. Gene Hackman, in a panic, goes along with it.

Kevvo comes into work the next day, and they give him his new prime directive: rather than liaising with and spying on the CIA, Kevvo is being put in charge of the hunt for “Yuri” the Soviet spy. Kevvo asks who the dead woman is. Will Patton tells him it's Sean Young. Whereupon Kevvo excuses himself to Gene Hackman's executive washroom and FREAKS THE FUGGOUT.

Let's pause again and remember that Kevvo is a Soviet agent. You're supposed to think that he's freakin the fuggout because he was in love with Sean Young and that he's devastated by her death. Remember, though, he's a military superstar with a shitload of intelligence experience. As far as betraying emotion, let's just say that kind of cat would kick your motherfucking ass at poker. So Kevvo's just gonna melt down like that if all he's upset about is Sean Young? Nuh uh, if all he's upset about is Sean Young, Roger Donaldson (the director) pushes in slowly on Kevvo's face while a tortured look slowly crosses his face. Instead, Kevvo has to leave the room and completely loses control for about a minute. Why?

Because in that moment, everything he's been working for his entire life is in danger of being unraveled due to the capricious decision of one closeted homosexual. He is absolutely fucked. He's double fucked, actually, because he did fuck Sean Young and he actually is a Soviet agent. Will Patton's arbitrary decision to blame Sean Young's death on “Yuri” turned out, ironically, to be damn near accurate as Kevvo/”Yuri” was in Sean Young's house like ten minutes before she got dead. Tell me you wouldn't freak the fuggout at that revelation, you're a liar; I would shit my ass if that happened.

A whole lot of tense, well-filmed thriller stuff ensues, where Kevvo tries to keep one step ahead of anyone finding out that he's “Yuri,” since he is “Yuri,” and wheelchair-bound computer nerd/good pal of Kevvo's George Dzundza does a lot of funny stuff with 80s-vintage computers. Kevvo saves Iman from getting killed by Marshall “Kuato” Bell and the other gorilla-looking death squad motherfucker, and after some fancy thinking and subterfuge manages to create some proof that Gene Hackman knew Sean Young. Unfortunately, Will Patton kills George Dzundza (for knowing too much, since Kevvo confides in Dzundza and Dzundza retardedly tells Will Patton; not only is it really nasty to kill the adorable George Dzundza like that, it perpetuates the nasty implication that you can't trust gays with gossip) and Kevvo gets his arm cut by the gorilla.

When Kevvo finally confronts Gene Hackman with his fabricated evidence bluff, we notice something very interesting. Even though Kevvo knows Gene Hackman killed Sean Young, instead of demanding justice, all he does is ask Gene Hackman to call off the investigation into “Yuri.” Now, knowing that Kevvo is a Soviet agent, it's obvious, he's covering his ass, but why would our upright hero let Gene Hackman off the hook like that? Especially after, when confronted with the evidence that Will Patton's shenanigans went as far as murder, Gene Hackman immediately throws Will Patton under the bus. And Will Patton, devastated, blows his brains out right there.

Kevvo, with everything pinned on Will Patton, splits from the Pentagon and goes driving. Eventually, the big scary dudes from the first scene show up and take Kevvo to his interrogation, whereupon it's finally revealed that Kevvo is a Soviet agent, in a neat bit of irony. End of picture, but first another nice helicopter shot and some more hot Maurice Jarre tuneage.

No Way Out is a solidly scripted, well-directed thriller where Kevin Costner fucking rules. Its one problematic element is the demonic sociopath 'mo Will Patton. They come right out and out him, in the scene where Fred Dalton Thompson and Kevvo's CIA liaison guy are sitting around trying to figure out what the fuck's up with the Sean Young coverup.

Liaison guy: We think she's either David Brice's [Gene Hackman's] or Scott Pritchard's [Will Patton's] mistress. Well, she was seen with both of them. It didn't seem a high priority matter, so my people have been a little lax in following it up.
Fred Dalton Thompson: Well, spilled milk. And you can forget about Pritchard. He's homosexual.
Liaison guy: I'll be damned.
Fred Dalton Thompson: So will he, if you believe the Old Testament.

Now, it's perfectly natural to hear that line and think “Right-wing Christian God Squad bullshit.” But there's something in FDT's tone, a hint of deadpan sarcastic irony, that he's saying that line to be witty rather than because he really believes that.

Either way, even if that exchange is just two guys sitting in a room cracking jokes, there still is the matter of the movie's token gay guy being a creepy, closeted sociopath who kills people all for the unrequited love of Gene Hackman. And it's not like the rest of the movie is some kind of moral message about the dangers of being closeted, or some kind of character study of right-wing gays (there do seem to be a lot of them in Washington these days, but this movie is almost 25 years old . . .) It's a manifestation gay panic, and unlike Loverboy the movie doesn't tell the dummies panicking that they're being retarded. Instead it's just kinda like, yup, the villain's gay. And he kills himself.

Much as I love the rest of the movie, the Will Patton thing sits badly with me. So here, as an antidote, is a much more enlightened parting note:


Peace, y'all.