William Goldman, screenwriter of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Marathon Man, The Princess Bride, Misery and many other terrific movies, used to write for The New Yorker during the 90s. His columns are collected in a volume called The Big Picture, an entertaining look at Hollywood in a transitional period in its history. One of the columns reprinted in this book, "And Where Will You Leave Jimmy Stewart?" concerns an interesting idea about movie stars and how we remember them:
...I believe this: that the great stars provide us a legacy, a blizzard of images to remember. But one of those images - and it's a different one for every fan - is most important to us. And it is in that place that we park the stars, until we need to summon them back into memory.
There's definitely something to the notion. The right movie, at the right time and place, will imprint itself on our psyches, and a certain performance - framed and lit a certain way, solo or with other actors - can certainly become that go-to image whenever we think of the actor, whether they've had a long and prosperous career or became one-hit wonders. It's worth thinking about if you're a cinephile...
...and so I have thought about it. Next year I'll do the modern version, with living actors (although Goldman said that living actors might go on to do something even more memorable, which is true), but here and now, here's what I came up with for some of the classic actors:
I gotta start with Jack Lemmon. Why? Because to me, he represents so much of what made Old Hollywood so appealing. TCM devoted a day to him a couple of weeks ago, and I watched one of the films they showed, Days of Wine and Roses. It's a movie I had seen before and loved, though dealing with alcoholism as frankly as it does, it is mighty tough to sit through.
As I watched it though, it occurred to me for the first time that Lemmon was damn good at playing bastards. I tend to think of him primarily as a comedic actor, which, of course, he was excellent at, but when he did drama, he could embody some truly despicable characters.
Take Days, for example. His character is able to curb his drinking by the end of the movie, so he's not a total ratfink, but when he's off the wagon, forget about it. He's not unlike his character in The Apartment (who was also a bastard), only darker: corporate company man climbing the ladder of success, who hates himself for the compromises he has to make - hence the drinking.
The things he does while under the influence range from dickish to frightening, but perhaps the worst - and indeed, it informs the majority of the movie - was turning Lee Remick into a lush like him. By having two people struggle with alcoholism, Days raises the stakes that The Lost Weekend anteed up, and creates a co-dependent relationship that both parties have to struggle to escape from.
The final scene is so tragic, because Lemmon still loves Remick, despite everything, and wants to take her back, but he knows that if he does, she's gonna drag him back down from the heights of sobriety again. It was one of his eight Oscar-nominated performances (he won twice), but it was in the same year as Gregory Peck's Mockingbird and Peter O'Toole's Lawrence. You try picking a winner from that group.
Lemmon, like a number of actors of his era, such as Cary Grant and Spencer Tracy, effortlessly went back and forth between comedy and drama, in a manner rarely seen today, especially by the biggest male stars. This is something I've touched on before, with regard to romantic comedies. Perhaps it's a generational shift, perhaps it was a result of working within the studio system. I suspect the latter.
Lemmon, like Grant, wasn't afraid to look absolutely silly in his comedies. The man was Oscar nominated for spending a good two-thirds of a movie (at least) in drag, after all - and I think modern actors, as good as they are, might be missing out, in a way, by sticking so firmly to drama and action and so rarely exploring their comedic sides. But that's another post. (Quote from IMDB attributed to Lemmon: "I really can't be funny unless it's part of the character. It really bugs me when someone thinks of me as a comic. If I read 'comedian Jack Lemmon,' I gag. That means I'm not an actor - which I am.")
Lemmon made ten movies with Walter Matthau. (He also directed him in Kotch, an Oscar-nominated performance.) Maybe they weren't Laurel & Hardy, but for my money, they were one of the all-time great comedy duos. I know they're the Odd Couple, and always will be, but before I think of that great movie, I tend to think of the three they did with Billy Wilder: The Fortune Cookie, The Front Page and Buddy Buddy. I saw those during my video store years, when I was still learning about classic movies. I think The Fortune Cookie is the best of the three. The Front Page isn't bad, but it can't quite escape the shadow of the Grant/Russell version, and Buddy Buddy isn't that memorable.
Perhaps the greatest measure of an actor is how he's regarded by his peers - and not just his contemporaries. Kevin Spacey has said that Lemmon was a big influence on his career. They worked together on stage in a production of Long Day's Journey Into Night, and later, of course, they were in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross. Spacey was honored in a tribute here in New York last year. Check out what he had to say about Lemmon; it is quite a moving testimonial. Also, who can forget when Ving Rhames gave his Golden Globe to Lemmon?
Jack Lemmon was one of the greatest stars of Old Hollywood, but he continued to be relevant in the modern era as well. Very few actors you can say that about.
Next: Jean Arthur
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Jack Lemmon movies:
Mister Roberts
Some Like It Hot
How to Murder Your Wife
Welcome to The One Year Switch. I've temporarily abandoned my usual format of writing about new and old films, and will spend 2015 writing (almost) exclusively about old ones, drawing primarily from the silent era through the mid-60s, and possibly a little bit from the 70s and 80s as well. As I said when I first announced this change, I'm doing it not just to explore the old-school material, but as a writing challenge. It's my hope that this will inspire different kinds of posts, not simply critiques of classic films.
Everything else is going okay. My novel's coming along well - closing in on 30,000 words as of this writing. I haven't shown it to my writing group yet, but I think I probably will sometime within the next few weeks. I know that my draft is far from perfect - sections crossed out, notes to myself, etc. - but from what I've learned, at this stage it's okay to write badly because one can always correct it later.
The important thing is to get the words down, and it's proving to be a bigger commitment than I realized, partly because I'm going back and forth between the book and this blog. A bit of a juggling act, but the upside is that between the two, I'm writing every day. And I hope I'm learning something.
A few links to kick off the new year:
Becky compares the recent live TV performance of Peter Pan with the 1960 version and finds the former lacking.
Danny's anthology e-book about The Thin Man is now available.
Fritzi saw a lot of classic movies for the first time in 2014.
One of Jacqueline's final posts in her year of Ann Blyth regards the actress/singer's last film, the flawed but noteworthy The Helen Morgan Story.
Jennifer went to the Florida Keys and visited the home of an author well associated with classic Hollywood - Ernest Hemingway.
Here's a funny story about attempting to turn a sibling on to classic movies.
I was thisclose to seeing The Interview. The Kew Gardens Cinemas, I'm proud to say, was one of the many indie theaters nationwide that agreed to show the movie after distributor SONY declined to release it; you all know the story by now. After reading about the film itself, though, and already having a general idea of the kind of humor that stars Seth Rogen and James Franco indulge in, I thought that supporting the right to freedom and free speech may not be that important in this particular case.
Still, I'm grateful for the fact that I am able to see The Interview if I want to, and we have those indie theater owners to thank for that, in particular the awesome Tim League of the Alamo Drafthouse and his associates in the Art House Convergence. In an age where movie theaters have become less and less necessary to see a film, I find it wonderful that they not only came through for the movie, but that they also helped uphold the rights that America stands for (most of the time). And that's all I got to say about that.
Buy the new issue of Newtown Literary with my short story in it if you haven't already, and let me know what you think of my story after you read it.
The One Year Switch begins on January 5, when WSW will spend 2015 as a classic film blog. I hope you'll join me for this experiment. We'll have some fun and I think you and me both will learn a few things as well. Happy new year.
Selma
seen @ AMC Loews Lincoln Square 13, New York, NY
12.26.14
Love and hate. You can't have one without the other, and ever since the dawn of time, it seems like they've gone at each other like battering rams. We try to use love to rise above our baser instincts, but hate inevitably does its best to drag us down.
Are we forever doomed to be locked in this cycle? I certainly hope not, but for every step forward we seem to make in the struggle to transcend ignorance, intolerance and bigotry, we end up taking two steps back, and - to address the elephant in the room - I'm not just talking about the events this year in Ferguson, Missouri. Horrific as that was, it's only the latest in a long line of examples. All around the world, similar injustices continue to take place, and not all of them get a similar level of attention.
It has been difficult for me to hang on to hope. Not that these are things that I think about every hour of every day, but sometimes, I truly believe the world would be much better off if society as we know it were to be torn to pieces so that we can start over - presumably in order to not make the same mistakes again. I don't believe in God, so I'm not convinced that the answer will come from an omnipotent father figure who fails to make his presence known. So what's left?
The way I see it, we as a species cannot continue to go on this way. We cannot continue to tear away at each other, hating for no other reason than to hate. We not only destroy each other, we destroy the earth itself. So I think that sooner, rather than later, we're gonna reach a tipping point, and when we do, we're gonna fall either one way... or the other. No in-between.
Still, victories do count for something, which leads us to Selma. I had said last year, when I wrote about 12 Years a Slave, that I didn't want its success to lead to more period pieces about blacks and civil rights at the expense of movies about the current black experience. What I failed to realize is that the one informs the other, for better or for worse.
Obviously, no one could have foreseen that current events here in America would conspire to make this movie even more relevant. I think the filmmakers would agree that this is not the kind of publicity they would've chosen for their film. But the events of Ferguson have happened, and I think that if Selma has a purpose, it's to offer that hope that seems in such short supply lately. To see how Martin Luther King Jr. dealt with bigotry and systemic discrimination in his lifetime means something today, and that would be true no matter how 2014 turned out.
It's an unusual but fortunate coincidence that over the life of this blog, I've been able to track the career of Ava DuVernay, not just as a writer-director, but as the guiding force behind the black film distribution network AFFRM. Over the course of its brief life, they've been responsible for bringing quality independent films to theaters nationwide - not the art houses, but actual multiplexes in big cities. This is a remarkable feat that doesn't get talked about enough.
Even with the small success that Middle of Nowhere saw last year, if you had told me that DuVernay would go on to direct a Best Picture caliber-film as quickly as she has, I would not have believed it. Part of it is timing, of course, and to be brutally honest, I still wish she had done it with a screenplay of hers, but she has made the material her own, and seeing what she's capable of with a bigger budget and a major studio behind her has been breathtaking. And when she becomes the fifth woman to be nominated for the Best Director Oscar, it will be an extraordinary accomplishment indeed, as well as a hopeful one. (My money's still on Richard Linklater for the win, though.)
Nightcrawler
seen @ Cinemart Fiveplex, Forest Hills, Queens, NY
12.23.14
One of the things I remember quite clearly about the first few hours of September 11 was how often the TV news kept showing the footage of the second plane crashing into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, and their subsequent demolition. I remember thinking how unreal it seemed, that it looked like a scene from an action movie. Granted, it was tremendously newsworthy, to say the least, but as the day wore on and the networks continued to show the footage, it got to be far too much to have to look at over and over again. I suspect I'm not the only one who felt that way, either.
This is obviously an extreme example, but the point is the same: there are times when tragic news stories have a way of being exploited in the name of higher ratings or more website hits or higher circulation. Maybe it's intentional, maybe it's not, but in 2014-about-to-become-2015, we'd be fools to think this sort of thing doesn't go on.
Look at the coverage of the computer hacking of SONY, which is believed to have been the work of North Korea in an attempt to prevent the release of the controversial film The Interview - an attempt, I'm now proud to say, which was unsuccessful. Still, a great deal of private and personal information was stolen and publicized as a result of the cyber-sabotage, and a number of websites have not been shy about digging through this information for salacious tidbits, to SONY's dismay. None of this material was meant for public consumption, and the only reason we know about it now was because SONY was victimized by a foreign power with an intent to do harm. Given these highly unusual circumstances, did we "need" to know what was in those e-mails and memos?
Also, news media often approach tragic stories from a certain judgmental perspective, despite claims of objectivity. Local news outlets in particular are notorious for this. The livable streets movement, for example, often has to contend with local media who tend to favor drivers whenever there's a fatal or near-fatal collision involving pedestrians or bicyclists.
None of this can truly be said to be surprising, but the movie Nightcrawler approaches the notion from a different angle by taking us into the seedy world of freelance cameramen in modern-day Los Angeles, who prowl the streets at night looking for crime scenes they can film and then sell to the local TV news. Gyllenhaal's character gets a taste of this life and finds he likes it a whole lot, becoming the go-to crime scene cameraman for a struggling TV news program, but as his success grows, so does his ambition.
In the early-to-mid-20th century, there was Weegee, the photojournalist primarily known for his pictures of crime scenes in and around New York. He owned a police-band shortwave radio, which meant he often beat the police to a crime scene. He understood that pictures involving high society types made for more interesting and more profitable photos. During his time, he was recognized as an artist as much as a journalist.
Gyllenhaal's character is almost like a 21st-century version of Weegee, but he's quite different in temperament. From the moment we first see him, there's a pathological undercurrent to his psyche that leads him to this profession. He's drawn to crime scenes and car crashes and other such conditions and feels practically no compassion for the victims involved. He's almost preternaturally brilliant, but in a skewed and off-kilter way, and his drive to be a self-made success is relentless. The deeper he gets into his career, the more willing he is to use anyone to help him get what he wants - not unlike Faye Dunaway's character in Network, which this movie is evocative of in places.
Every year, there are movies that I have to pass on seeing because of limited money and time. I know I can't see everything I want to see and I accept that. Nightcrawler almost became one of those movies, even though I knew it was getting good reviews. But then it started appearing on critics' lists... and then Gyllenhaal got nominated for a SAG... and then a Golden Globe. Suddenly I realized that I needed to see this movie, and to my great luck, it was still playing at the local second-run theater, the Cinemart.
I was absolutely riveted to this movie from start to finish. Gyllenhaal dominates the screen and embodies a morally questionable yet fascinating character to watch, because at every turn, you keep wondering, how far can he push his luck, and at every turn, he keeps on surprising you. This is easily Gyllenhaal's best work since Brokeback Mountain and maybe his best performance ever. Really hope he makes the Best Actor cut for the Oscar.
It was also nice to see Rene Russo again (yes, I know she's in the Thor movies, but I haven't seen them). She had a nice run in the 90s with great films like In The Line of Fire, Outbreak, Get Shorty and Ransom (and yes, the Lethal Weapon sequels, too). She's the wife of writer-director Dan Gilroy (Nightcrawler is his directing debut), so that explains her presence here, but she's equally terrific in a key role as the TV news executive who deals with Gyllenhaal. I always liked her, and I like her in this one too.
They say that these days, it's hard out here for an Oscar-caliber film, and maybe we're in the middle of a sea change, but I hope not. I have to believe that there will always be a market for quality adult films like Nightcrawler.
Foxcatcher
seen @ Kew Gardens Cinemas, Kew Gardens, Queens, NY
12.19.14
Should athletes be heroes? I suppose it depends on how you define the word "hero." As a kid, the 1986 Mets were heroes to me, even though I hadn't even followed baseball all that long. I just happened to begin following them at a time when they were growing into a successful team, one that would go on to win the World Series in a dominating fashion. It was all certainly exciting, but would I have cared about them as much if they played .500 ball throughout the 80s instead?
Did I care about them as people? Well, I cared when Doc Gooden and Darryl Strawberry had their problems with drugs, but if I were to be totally honest, I suspect that I probably cared more about the fact that they wouldn't be able to contribute to the team as much. I was a kid, and even though I grew up in the "Just Say No" 80s, the full impact of what drugs could do to a person never truly hit me, especially not within the context of sports celebrities. From my perspective back then, it was as if Gooden and Strawberry were just really sick and needed time to get well again, and when they came back, I continued to root for them as if nothing had changed.
Did I think athletes could be a force for positive change in the world? That was the absolute last thing on my mind when it came to the '86 Mets. I don't recall Keith Hernandez or Gary Carter endorsing political candidates or advocating to save the whales or whatever, and even if they did, I certainly didn't expect them to. I imagine that any sports fan would agree that people watch sports to get away from the real world.
And yet this notion of athletes as heroes, or "role models," has persisted for a long time, despite the overwhelming evidence that they're as flawed, fallible, and human as the rest of us. Some say the very idea of athletes as role models is a fallacy. Others insist that this is an inherent, unavoidable by-product of fame as an athlete, and that may be true. If it is, then one has to wonder what we're teaching our children.
In Foxcatcher, a film based on a true story, Steve Carell, as millionaire John Du Pont, sells Olympic wrestler Mark Schultz, played by Channing Tatum, on the notion of athletes as heroes in order to get Schultz to agree to letting him be his coach. He comes across as a patriotic type, one who sees the youth of America in desperate need of public figures they can look up to, and a gold-medal-winning wrestler about to participate in the World Championships (and the next Olympic Games further down the road) fits the bill for him just fine - and though he talks a good game, Du Pont has issues of his own.
The movie doesn't delve very deeply into the athlete-as-hero concept. In fact, Du Pont remains largely an enigma from beginning to end, but Carell embodies the character masterfully, to the point where I barely recognized him in the role. I never knew he had these kind of acting chops in him, and I can see why he's getting serious Best Actor consideration.
This is my first time seeing Tatum, and he, along with Mark Ruffalo as his older brother, look very convincing as world-class wrestlers who, of course, employ different methods than professional wrestlers. The two of them have an excellent rapport with each other.
Foxcatcher is well made all around, but ultimately it left me feeling cold. It was difficult to care about what was going on, in part because the movie feels as deadpan as Carell's Du Pont, almost Kubrickian, in fact. At around the halfway point, I actually started nodding off (although in fairness, I was fighting a cold and didn't have much sleep).
I was unfamiliar with the true events behind this story, so the ending caught me by surprise, but otherwise, I can't see much to recommend about this movie beyond Carell's great performance. I went into this with the impression that it would be different than the usual wave of biopics we get year after year, including this one, and in a way, it kind of is, but emotionally speaking, I found it hard to care much about this film.
