By D.K. Holm
December 24, 2004
[nota bene: The following column, by necessity, contains some spoilers! If you don't want to know the ending of the movies mentioned, don't read on, and perhaps you should stop reading the Internet.]
THE AVIATOR
Air Head
What do the Dalai Lama, Jesus, and Howard Hughes have in common? Aside from being exiles of one kind or another, and world-renowned figures, they all share the quality of inspiring Martin Scorsese to make a movie about them.
As the long year 2004 recedes into history, it is a pleasure to go out contemplating a Martin Scorsese movie. America's "greatest living director" doesn't make films all that often, and when they arrive it is a real occasion. That's why we tend to have high expectations of his films, the way we did when a new Kubrick finally hit the screens. And as with Kubrick, initial disappointment, when it occurred, usually evolved into heightened respect as the years mounted and the more popular contemporaneous films that surrounded the release at the time begin to pale and show wear as Scorsese's (and Kubrick's) proves lasting.
I don't know the fate of THE AVIATOR, of course. I don't know if it will leave audiences cold, like KUNDUN, or lukewarm, like GANGS OF NEW YORK, or become an instant classic, like GOODFELLAS. Nor do I know if it will finally garner Scorsese his best director's Oscar, an award so many people seem to long for him to win.
But I do know this. It is certainly the kind of movie that wins Oscars. It is big and brassy and "epical" and tells someone's life story; it has enough British actors in it to qualify; and it is about a disabled person.
THE AVIATOR takes a sliver of Howard Hughes's life and puts it on the screen. Granted it is an important portion, the time from the late 1920s, when he was making HELL'S ANGELS, to the early 1950s, just before the time, the movie wants to tell us, Hughes finally succumbed completely to his obsessive-compulsive disorder. The bulk of the film focuses on a brawl with competing airline executive Juan Tripp, fought in the arena of a congressional hearing. The film also dallies with Hughes's various plane-building projects of the time, and the productions of HELLS ANGELS, which went from a silent to a sound film, and THE OUTLAW, which revolutionized the history of the brassiere.
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The thing is that not much of this seems like a Martin Scorsese film. It's a long, talky, somewhat chilly movie that shows some sympathy for Hughes's mental condition (as POLLOCK did), but for the most part feels outside Hughes. In neither his film and book PERSONAL JOURNEY, nor in any early interview, does Scorsese mention Hughes, and Scorsese has already covered the general period in NEW YORK NEW YORK. And at this point in time Hughes seems like a tangential figure in American history, especially in film history.
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Which isn't to say that Hughes hasn't beguiled numerous predecessors, from Harold Robbins in his novel THE CARPETBAGGERS, to Warren Beatty, who supposedly had a long gestating film about the lunatic, and Orson Welles, who incorporated Hughes into his film essay F IS FOR FAKE. What was it about Hughes that so fascinated these titans of art? He must have represented someone whom they feared becoming, or who dealt with the same issues of out of control publicity and megalomaniacal dreams.
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But the fact of the matter is that Hughes was a rat, a man who never met or designed a plane he couldn't crash. He was also a man of highly compromised ideas, ideals, and impulses. Charles Higham makes a case in his trashography that Hughes was at least bisexual, and that his associations with Errol Flynn and Cary Grant were more than examples of Don Juans having meetings of the mind. Hughes was also a rat, buying up and then destroying RKO, and turning the studio into a terrarium for red bashing. In his novels, James Ellroy makes Hughes out to be a public figure actually in bed with the gossip magazines that in Scorsese's film victimize him.
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Suffice it to say, very little of this view of Hughes makes it into the film. Scorsese basically appears simply to have shot John Logan's script without necessarily "Scorsizing" it up. It's a job for hire and you can feel that Scorsese is not fully invested in it. Scorsese or one of the movie brats said somewhere in an interview that there was an impulse among the young Turks of Hollywood to do one of everything, to emulate the hacks of the studio system who took on whatever film in whatever genre that the bosses threw at them. It's as if he was saying, "OK, I've made a boxing film, a gambling film, a period piece, a religious epic, a musical, and a screwball comedy. This is my BioPic." What's next? A western? A women in prison film?
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Stewart Klawans has a very clever review of the movie in THE NATION (online only to subscribers) in which he asserts that THE AVIATOR is Scorsese's remake of CITIZEN KANE (not unlike my notion that Gangs of New York is Scorsese's spaghetti western). He makes interesting connections between Hughes and Welles (Hughes after all did buy the studio that make CITIZEN KANE).
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Klawans likes the film quite a bit and I'm not suggesting that THE AVIATOR is bad, not by a long shot, but that it is just a little impersonal. Here's one thing I did like about it, however, and that is the fact that it is written. Unlike in most biopics, especially those made for television, Scorsese's film pause to let the characters talk to each other. The heart of this movie is its dialogue, and in long conversations between Hughes and, say, Cate Blanchett's Hepburn, the characters are permitted to reveal themselves in a good solid entertaining dialogue that isn't rushed through as in most biopics, especially the ones done for network television.
For an example of that kind of lousy filmmaking you can turn to THE AMAZING HOWARD HUGHES (Anchor Bay, 1977, $19.98, Tuesday, December 3, 2002) which is one of those whiz-bang all-you-can-eat shopping marathon biopics that races through the life cramming as much in as possible and in the end communicating very little.
At least in THE AVIATOR you end up feeling as if you know what it was like to be Howard Hughes, or to know him. This TV movie, directed by long time TV director William A. Graham, can't penetrate Hughes or make you feel as if you are watching a real person. It's more closed out than Scorsese's film. Based on Noah Dietrich's "insider" memoir, which itself is tilted in a self-flattering light, it begins from the position that Hughes can't be understood, so why bother.
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Much of what happens in THE AVIATOR overlaps with this TV movie, and it is entertaining to contrast how Graham on a limited budget has to get around things that Scorsese can lavish attention on, such as the fabled suburban plane crash. In THE AVIATOR, it is a major set piece. Here, Graham uses smoke and mirrors and stock footage and discreet cutaways to disguise the fact that he's got nothing. At the very least the Hughes story provides the chance for a little cheesecake, but in the climate of late '70s television the movie can do little but suggest things, such as the censorship issues surrounding THE OUTLAW, in stolid poses.
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The documentary HOWARD HUGHES: THE REAL AVIATOR (Shout Factory, 2004, $12.95, Tuesday, November 16) tries to get around the alien nature of Hughes's madness by using the conceit of Hughes narrating the film himself, via the medium of actor Michael Ferreri. With a wealth of newsreel footage and new video interviews with friends of Hughes, plus his ex-wife Terry Moore, HH tells the same story as the other two discs but with a patina of authenticity. It still doesn't address the whole matter of Hughes's redbaiting, and his setting up of the film THE WOMAN ON PIER 13 (AKA I MARRIED A COMMUNIST) as a "loyalty test" for RKO staffers. Unfortunately, the information that is there is sometimes wrong. For example, in news footage of a celebrity all start cross-country flight, passenger William Powell is identified as Dick Powell.
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The disc comes with about seven bits of unedited newsreel footage, including Hughes's Capitol Hill testimony, along with extended interviews with Robert Maheu, Moore, and other idolizing Hughes cronies. There is also a picture gallery. All in all there is a lot of material packed into this disc, but again it soft sells Hughes's real role in the world.
FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX
Sand Dooms
Curiously, in that pattern that so afflicts the movies, there is another aviational film out at the same time, a remake of Robert Aldrich's 1965 adaptation of Elleston Trevor's novel about a planeload of guys crashed landed in the, here, Gobi desert. It's a weird phenomenon, isn't it? With all the movies that come out in a year, every couple of seasons Hollywood comes out with two movies at the same time with the same subject, be it volcano eruptions or asteroids or virtual realities. FLIGHT isn't exactly like THE AVIATOR but still. I'm just saying.
I had an ephemeral encounter with Dennis Quaid once, back in the fall of 1989. Quaid was in Portland, Oregon, secretly scouting locations and talking about the film COME SEE THE PARADISE, the dreadful film about Japanese internment that Alan Parker was going to shoot. Parker apparently felt obliged to maintain the tradition that all movies made in Portland must be shit.
Anyway, I was sitting in a bar called the Brasserie Montmartre with my friend Mary Johnson when word spread that a special party was on its way and that no one in the restaurant was to disturb its two members. This of course made us all intensely curious to find out who it was and what the secrecy was all about. Well, it turned out to be Parker and Quaid out for a quiet meal so they could figure out how to make COME SEE THE PARADISE even worse than it already was probably turning out to be.
Remembering Quaid's breakthrough role in BREAKING AWAY, I bummed a cigarette from Mary and planted the unlit stick between my teeth and waited for Quaid to walk by to use the rest room, as he would have to do sooner or later. When my chance arose, I looked at him as he walked by, made eye contact, and wiggled the cigarette up and down, in silent acknowledgement of what his character Mike, who was trying to quit smoking, did in the 1979 film.
My silent movie tribute did nothing for Quaid. He gave me a sneering, lid lowering glance of hate and anger as if I'd put his salad fork on the wrong side of his plate. I'm not even sure he "got" what I was doing. Instead I think he was just pissed off that someone was daring to look at him in violation of the pre-sent instructions to the restaurant. I realized then that Quaid must be some kind of a butthole, one of those guys like Michael Keaton who look really mean and nasty in real life, their eyes pinched and angry.
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I say this not out of anger, despite the fact that Quaid is one of those actors, like Warren Beatty and Bruce Abbott who get to bang in real life all the actresses I have movie crushes on. In Quaid's case that would be P. J. Soles and Meg Ryan. No should you detect the least hint of bitterness or revenge when I add that I wonder how Quaid gets along in the movie business at all, given that he's never had a mega hit. THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW doesn't count, because people went to see the world end, not him.
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Quaid never looks very happy about being an actor. He scowls and mumbles and his voice is getting increasingly ragged, like Al Pacino's and Paul Newman's. He must be one of those guys who thinks that acting is beneath him, woman's work, like James Caan, but stays in it for the easy money and the dames. On the other hand, I admire him for playing a repressed homosexual in FAR FROM HEAVEN, and for willing to play secondary roles in films by masters, such as TRAFFIC and ANY GIVEN SUNDAY. Quaid has never had the drawing power of a Tom Cruise, so he's never had the pick of directors. And he may not care. He may not really know or care enough about movies to want to do good ones, and he certainly never looks like he is having fun, like a George Clooney or a Johnny Depp do. Which is too bad, because he can turn on the charm, as in THE BIG EASY, and he can do outstanding work in difficult parts, such as FLESH AND BONE.
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But back to the review of FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX, already in progress. Quaid plays Frank Towns, who flies around the world picking up the employees of closed down oil rigs. As this film starts, he is picking up Miranda Otto and her team of "losers," to ship them home. But on the way out of the country they fly into a dust storm and the plane crash lands in the middle of nowhere, in a blend of FX and whatever else that rivals similar crashes in CLIFFHANGER and ALIVE. The survivors soon realize that the company would find it cost inefficient to go looking for them (which strikes me as doubtful).
The rest of the film concerns the group getting along from day to day, deciding to refashion a working plane from the remnants of the old one, weathering a few more storms, and fighting off some nomad scavengers. In other words, all the things that happened in the original movie, but with the temperature down several thousand degrees.
I'm not exactly sure why the need was felt to remake this film, aside from the fact that Robert Aldrich's son has the rights to several movies and can do it. It's not like the film is tailor made for any of the thespians, and the filmmakers don't have anything new to add to the story.
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There are too many people in this story, or director John Moore (BEHIND ENEMY LINES) doesn't know what to do with them all. The most interesting character (I think it's Kevork Malikyan's Rady but it is hard to identify the cast) gets little screen time and Miranda Otto is wasted. She starts out promisingly tough and caustic in her pert khakis and man's sports watch (which comes and goes from shot to shot), and it appears that for a few minutes a nice rebarbative relationship will pop up but then it too fizzles out like everything else. In light of these failings notice must be made of the credited screenwriters, the prolific Scott Frank and actor-writer-director Edward Burns. Traffic cop is one of the key roles a writer plays.
Under THE WIRE
This last Sunday, December 19, THE WIRE closed shop for the season, both literally and figurative. You'll have to watch it to know what I mean figuratively (it may well be the end of the series), but also literally it was the last show of the third season for what is surely a candidate for the best show on television. But you wouldn't know that from the Golden Globe announcements.
The GGs used to be the laughing stock of awards season. SPY magazine ran an amusing history of the organization, and few people watched and few celebrities attended the ceremony. But in the late 1990s America went movie biz mad, reading "the grosses" and boosting the viewership of most awards broadcasts. With the attendant increase in awards consciousness, the Globes, being the first aired show of the season, took on increased prominence and importance and now quietly the GGs are no longer a laughing stock.
Therefore, being so important all of a sudden, the foreign press, which supposedly votes this nominees, should endeavor to be less "American" and conventional in its award thinking. For the most part, the nominees are the shows that you would expect to see here: WILL AND GRACE, THE SOPRANOS, THE SHIELD, ALIAS, LAW AND ORDER, all fine shows, but the Globes could be more global in their vision and less ratings driven in its selections and isolate programs like THE WIRE which go unheralded, or shows on the Sci Fi Channel or elsewhere that do weird and unusual things of merit. Not that I have many examples, beyond THE WIRE. But then, that's just me, and I don't really believe in awards anyway.
♥ of the Matter
There is a new genre out there. I guess you could call it Existential Romance. It is a variation on the romantic comedy, but with a head as well as a heart. Its main practitioners are David O. Russell, Wes Anderson, Charles Kaufman, and James Brooks. Movies in this genre include RUSHMORE, AS GOOD AS IT GETS, ADAPTATION, FLIRTING WITH DISASTER, with recent additions being SPANGLISH, I ♥ HUCKABEES, THE LIFE AQUATIC, ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, and IN GOOD COMPANY. It's Antoine Doinel — or Jean-Pierre Leaud — is Jason Schwartzman.
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In an effort to understand this burgeoning genre better, I picked up a copy of the script to I ♥ HUCKABEES (Newmarket Press, 150 pages, $19.95, ISBN 1 55704 656 5). I read through the script for this film that I was lukewarm about, and the interview in the back with writer and director David O. Russell. The interview provided some insight into why I was mostly unmoved by the film. Russell is a very serious fellow, and his movie, ostensibly a comedy, is at root not all that funny. That may or may not be a problem, depending on your perspective.
Russell is one of those guys who actually went to Central America as an activist for human rights. He's a fairly political guy who lays claim to getting into lots of arguments just like the hero of his film (who is duded up to look not unlike Russell himself). Russell notes that he is a follower of Buddhism, and that Robert Thurman (Uma's dad, the Tibetan scholar) is a big influence on him.
I find myself caring less and less for the film the more I think and read about it, but nevertheless it's great to have the script available and Russell's detailed, explanatory, and heartfelt views.
For example, Russell goes into detail about the warring philosophies at the heart of the film. "Hoffman and Tomlin are more informed by Thurman and go into more Indo-Tibetan ideas, whereas Isabelle Huppert is sort of a cocktail of Sartre and Zen and nihilism."
Nihilists, Dude.
Design for Reading
I once worked for a weekly newspaper whose owners could never decide what their paper was about. Losing older readers, like most print papers, and desperate to get younger readers, this paper became fixated not on good writing and important stories but on its look.
As a consequence, the paper suffered about four complete redesigns in 10 years (and I noticed the other day, is enjoying yet another one). The most recent iteration of the paper has lots of white space crowding out or minimizing the words (they being the least important aspect of a newspaper, apparently).
FILM COMMENT has been going through a similar evolution, changing styles about four times in 30 years. The latest design appears to be a moderation of the most recent look, which was impossible to navigate. You could never tell when a story actually started or who wrote it. FC maintains that maddening over-use of white space, and maddeningly has its logo in all lower-case, but has improved navigational capabilities with stronger titles and by lines for its stories.
Still, the point of a magazine is its text, and though FC still employs that jaunty, snobby style that I personally find impenetrable, the magazine is doing good work in exposing readers to various world cinemas (not that most Americans will get a chance to see most of these movies). The current issue has a special section on Korean cinema that mixes new and basic information with good critical evaluations.
Cary On, Grant
There is a great essay on Cary Grant in the new NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, by Geoffrey O'Brien (not online). It's ostensibly a review of two recent bios of Grant, but O'Brien, in the time honored tradition of the REVIEW uses them as a jumping off point for his own views, which is to discuss Grant as a "hollow man," someone at odds with his own image.
He starts off with a nice trick in which he tracks Grant through three seven-year jumps, highlighting how far Grant had progressed in his career. Andrew Sarris did a similar thing in his assessment of John Ford in his directors book, and it is very effective. I'll have to use it some time.
He has an excellent paragraph just describing Grant at home in THE BACHELOR AND THE BOBBY-SOXER. Grant is merely settling in, but O'Brien turns it into a metaphor for Grant's whole career (the scene sounds a little like a fun house mirror image of Gene Kelly waking up in a super-cramped apartment and getting ready to go out at the start of AN AMERICAN IN PARIS). O'Brien has numerous insights into Grant's mysterious character and career, such as noting that Grant's own unique blended accent is "a flawed imitation of sophisticated speech that became a model of it."
If you are still in the mood for lengthy assessments of possibly gay movie stars, Wayne Koestenbaum has a very funny review of Emily Leider's bio DARK LOVER: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF RUDOLPH VALENTINO, in which Koestenbaum keeps arguing with the author that, yes, Valentino was gay.
Gifts and Gunk
I think that COLLATERAL (DreamWorks, 2004, two discs, $29.95, Tuesday, December 14) is one of the best films from last year, perhaps even the best film, and the DVD, which is one of the best DVD releases of the year, comes out at just the right time (though one wishes that DreamWorks actually supported the film by sending it to more reviewers). My views are presumably well known to this site's readers, but there are still a few things to say about it, in reflection after seeing it a couple of times in the serenity of one's own home.
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I guess that the film has its "problems." There is the implausibility of the villain thinking that using a cab would be a good way to get around town (why not just rent a car?). And some people have complained about the sound, that the music drowns out the important dialogue (although it sounded OK to me). But I think that the film coasts on that wonder conversation in the cab between Max and Annie at the start of the film. I think it is a great scene, defines the film, and gives you something to hold on to as the rest of the movie unfolds. It also has a tone that is perfectly in concert with the look of the film.
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Speculating wildly, I think that African American comedians such as Jamie Foxx seem to find it easier to evolve into serious actors than their Caucasian equivalents. Audiences have resisted Jim Carrey going all mopey and serious. Only Tom Hanks has truly made the transition from comic to Hamlet. I'm not sure about the reason, but it may be nothing more than that despite being on popular television shows the African American comics are ultimately not as familiar to the audiences as the white guys.
Michael Mann is also one of the few working modern directors who has an identifiable visual style despite the variety of DPs who he works with. I love the patented Mann shot, with the camera planted just behind someone's head as they walk through a crowded and real looking location. It is irrational, but I just love that shot.
I also love the famous coyote moment, when Max pauses on the street to let two wild coyotes cross the street. Both men in the cab are entranced with them, but most important they seem to really energize Max, who uses the moment to act with firm resolve.
It turns out that we don't have to wait for a special edition of the movie on DVD; it came first time out of the shoot. This is a two-disc set with most of the extras confined to the second disc; there is an informative, insightful audio commentary track on the first disc.
The first supplement on disc two "City Of Night: The Making Of Collateral," and at 40 or so minutes one of the best "making ofs" I have ever seen. It really gets you excited about the film you have just seen and makes you want to watch it again. The cast appears to have really respected Mann, who takes an actor's approach to directing, providing or researching the background of the characters for months before shooting.
This is followed by "Special Delivery," which shows Tom Cruise trying to go under cover (as a delivery man) in order to get into the head of his character, Vincent. There is also one deleted scene that shows Max, under orders from Vincent, losing a tail by taking a spin through an airport.
"Shooting On Location: Annie’s Office" is a brief extra whose title is self-explanatory, and "Tom Cruise And Jamie Foxx Rehearse" is too; on this one I found it fascinating how different the performances look without the panoply of lighting, make up, and other buffers of movie making.
Finally, there is "Visual FX: MTA Train is a two and a half minute featurette in which Mann explains why he used green screens for the final sequence (see the end of this column for more). The set rounds off with some trailers, cast and crew credits, and production notes. I didn't find the extras skimpy, but rather just right.
With KING ARTHUR: DIRECTOR'S CUT (Buena Vista, 2004, $29.95, Tuesday, December 21) coming out on DVD the same week as THE AVIATOR, you have something of a Franzoni v. Logan grudge match. David Franzoni wrote GLADIATOR, which was later re-written by John Logan, who did THE AVIATOR. Franzoni's KING ARTHUR is his second foray into the mythic past.
But King Arthur is not a Franzoni film, it is a Jerry Bruckheimer film. Thus it is big and broad but essentially simple in narrative and, like most Bruckheimer produced movies, concerns someone trying to give safe conduct to someone more vulnerable.
This is presented as the director's cut, which is a few minutes longer and has more blood in it. Other than that, it is still the same cumbersome, clunky story with took many knights in it. It takes too long to tell them apart (though having the captions on helps).
I was interested in seeing the film because I wanted to find out what all the excitement was for Keira Knightley. But my objectivity was assassinated by the fact that Knightley plays an archer, and I have this weird, low-level thing for female archers, be it Virginia Hey in ROAD WARRIOR, or Geena Davis in real life trying to qualify for the Olympics. Well, take it for what it is worth in this context but Knightley is totally hot as an archer.
Supplements begin with an audio commentary by director Antoine Fuqua, who has to dance around the fact that he is totally inappropriate as a director for hire on this project.
This is followed by an alternative ending, a little bit longer and "happier" with an optional director commentary in which once again Fuqua has to bend himself into a pretzel justifying something that he didn't really want to do. "Blood on the Land: Forging King Arthur" is a run of the mill 17-minute making of followed by the 14-minute "Round Table Video Commentary" with the cast and crew. There is also an infinifilm style feature, "Knight Vision," a pop-up trivia track with bits of info about the shoot and Arthurian history.
Finally, there is a preview of Konami's KING ARTHUR X-Box video game; a photo gallery, a THX Optimizer, and a few trailers. KING ARTHUR is a good looking movie, as are most Bruckheimer films, and one wishes that if they were going to burden the film with so many extras, that they had elected to issue a two-disc set.
There are two things that are fascinating about THAT '70S SHOW: SEASON ONE (MGM, 1998 - 1999, four discs, $49.95, Tuesday, November 26). One is that for all the years that the show has been on television the cast has changed very little. The second is that despite the fact that it is about high school students in the mid-1970s, few scenes take place in school. Therefore it is much different from FELICITY, MY SO CALLED LIFE, HEAD OF THE CLASS, UNDECLARED, and numerous other school sit coms and shows.
Another thing I like about the show is that it gets away deliriously with showing teens smoke pot (and this on a Murdoch owned network). You don't actually see them inhale. You just see a cloud of smoke in the air as the camera, positioned in the middle of the kids as they sit around a table, spins from one to the other.
But the real thing I love about the show is Laura Prepon as the tomboyish girl next-door love interest of the show's main character. I'd never seen the show before diving into the DVD set, but it only took me about five episodes to become totally fixated on her. I became equally fascinated by the credit sequence (at least in the first season) in which Prepon pretends to grip the dashboard in fear and then laughs before slipping into a sort of queenly but sensual mind wandering mode.
If you love the show, you'll want to have this set. But there aren't a whole lot of extras on it. There is an EPK style making of, '70s SHOW trivia promotions, and an anthology of episode teasers. It's not a lot but it does allow the show to stand on its own, unburied by hype.
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I now know where the title for KILL BILL came from: episode 15 of FREAKS AND GEEKS (Shout Factory, 1999 - 2000, six discs, $69.95, Tuesday, April 6; there is also an eight-disc version with even more extras and written memories by cast and crew). Hear me out: this is the ep in which Neal becomes a ventriloquist, thinking that throwing his voice into a ghastly dummy with shark's eyes makes him attractive to women. At one point his friend Bill, the tall, gangly nerd, tells Sam, the show co-lead, of his worries that Neal will become like Anthony Hopkins in MAGIC, a slave to the hostile desires of the wooden doll. The doll (Neal insists that it be called a "figure"), he fears, will take over Neal's mind and destroy Neal's life and friends with orders like, "Why don't you go kill Bill."
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No, this isn't just a coincidence of homophones. The show was produced for DreamWorks and NBC by comedian turned TV show writer Judd Apatow. As we know from the two-volume set of FREAKS AND GEEKS scripts, Apatow is a friend of Tarantino's. Moreover, movies by Tarantino such as RESERVOIR DOGS had a sly influence on F&G, such as the use (or re-use) of the song "Little Green Bag" in the pot episode (No. 13). And the show was broadcast during that long and mysterious hiatus between JACKIE BROWN and KILL BILL when, as is well known, Tarantino was watching a lot of television. In fact if you did the math you could probably compute how the original air date of this episode, which is the last that NBC aired in the program's bumpy history, fits into the chronology of Tarantino's crafting of the script for Uma Thurman, which he delivered to the actress, according to Tarantino lore, on her 30th birthday, 29 April 2000.
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(Sidenote: the 28-page booklet that comes with the boxed set starts off with a FAQ about the show written by Apatow, one question of which is, "Why are there so many audio commentary tracks? Who the hell do you think you are, Quentin Tarantino?" If Apatow is a pal of Tarantino's he should know that the director hates doing audio tracks for his movies, and in fact has only done one so far, for TRUE ROMANCE.)
I dig into this sort of minutia because like many other people I have become a FREAKS AND GEEKS geek. I started out a skeptic, never having seen a millisecond of the series, but after several days with the six-disc set I feel like Patty Hearst coming out of the closet ready to do battle on behalf of her new friends.
If you were once like me, than you only barely know that FREAKS AND GEEKS is this unique, precious 18-hour artifact that has legions of fans. Yet the show, which was cancelled mid-season, took four years to come out on DVD. Today, DVD is known as the perfect venue for shows such as this one, but back then the format was not fully exploited as the vital elephant's graveyard of episodic television. As the booklet explains, music rights issues delayed the release (in fact, if it ever takes a long time for a film or show to come out on DVD, and / or is quickly pulled and withheld for several months, the current situation with the second season of LA FEMME NIKITA, it is usually a music rights issue; the second season, originally slated for this past fall is now due out on March 15, 2005).
I started out a skeptic. I didn't really like the look of the show (only to learn from the audio commentaries that they deliberately adapted the style of NBC shows from the early 1980s when the show is set). I didn't "get" the credit sequence (which now looks like a brilliant synecdoche of each character's gestalt); I was kind of put off by the fact that it is more of a "dramady" than a comedy (yet now I can get teary eyed just thinking about the climax of two or three of the episodes).
Yes, after three straight days of confinement with F&G, the televisual equivalent of the Stockholm Syndrome has seized me, too. It's a great show. My favorite character is Lindsay (the other co-lead, and Sam's older sister, played by Linda Cardellini, now of ER). A poor man's Jennifer Connelly, she is the heart and soul of the show, the questioning agnostic who is lured from the conformist side of things such as "mathletes" to experimentation and lifestyle transplants with the "freaks," the cool kids whom half the school thinks of as dirtbags.
Unfortunately, the character who most resembles me autobiographically is Bill Haverchuck (Martin Starr), the geekiest of the three geek friends. In the (unaired) hour in which Bill takes part in a game of Spin-the-Bottle his geekiness reached a form of apotheosis, in which poor Bill seeks to avoid at all cost the look of revulsion on a girl's face when she faces the prospect of having to kiss the UberGeek. This is an expression I recall all too agonizingly from my own academic career (because I was so "repulsive" to the girl elites who ruled my high school, and later ran the committees that organized post-school events, I have never been invited to any school reunion).
In fact, when the program is not moving you emotionally, it is a little hard to watch. Because it is loaded with so many recognizable types, you feel you know the characters quickly. But also the show evokes so many painful memories about high school life that it can really discombobulate you, especially after a marathon viewing. The end of the last episode, the last sad ep for all time, really leaves you bereft, because you really wonder what the writers and producers had planned for these characters over another season or two.
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As you can see, FREAKS AND GEEKS is also not in the tradition of old fashioned high school shows, such as ROOM 222, which attempted uplift, or WELCOME BACK, KOTTER, which is referenced in the show. The show is more in the tradition of the equally short-lived SQUARE PEGS, about kids trying to fit in to no avail. But the cultural product that the series really reminded me of was — MEAN GIRLS, which also features a brainy girl who is good at math. And another coincidence is that in both THAT '70S SHOW and FREAKS AND GEEKS, the main character is the sole witness to their grandmother's death.
If you can't afford or find the 8-disc version of the show, there is an alternative: the two volumes of the published screenplays, FREAKS AND GEEKS VOLUME 1 (Newmarket Press, 616 pages, $19.95, ISBN 1 55704 645 X) and 2 (Newmarket Press, 674 pages, $19.95, ISBN 1 55704 646 8). Each script comes with an introduction by the writer (or producer), the scripts themselves are complete (with all the scenes that might have been deleted), and at the back of the book eight pages of uneven scrapbook material. It's a hefty package, and a delight for fans of the show (despite the occasional typo carried over from the original scripts, such as "pea" for "pee" on page 381).
The two books also do much of what the six-disc set does; allows the creator, Paul Feig, and other writers, directors, and the producer, to explain their intentions and lament the cancellation. In the set each show has at least one audio commentary track, with the cast and crew, and often two. The "novelty" track has actors Tom Wilson, Dave (Gruber) Allen, and Steve Bannos in character as officials at McKinley High. And as the producers of the ALIAS DVD later did, they've also invited some of the obsessive, outspoken fans to contribute to two of the tracks. And I must say that they live up to geekdom: the trio on the second track, for episode 9, are nervous, tentative, speak too softly alternatively with suddenly exploding with inappropriate or lame jokes. Typical nerd behavior. You want to beat them up. (On the other hand, the girl commentator, Tami Lefko, makes a quietly brilliant observation about the end of the episode that almost eludes you but acknowledges a running sight gag in the episode.) A track with the real life parents of three of the actors is also impatience inducing, as one of them sounds like a real stage parent invested in the show in a creepy way that piggy backs on its glory. Cleverly, the producers also have a round up with the executives at DreamWorks and NBC. OK, everybody loves Freaks and Geeks, but somebody didn't, else it wouldn't have been cancelled. This track is interesting for its perspective on what goes behind the scenes of a TV network, but I wish they had dragging into it kicking and screaming one of the NBC people who pulled the plug. But all those demurrals aside, the tracks are all highly entertaining and mournful. In addition, each episode has deleted scenes and gag reel moments. This might be the moment to acknowledge Becky Ann Baker as the matriarch of the family: she is subtly tender and real as the confused mom.
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According to its trailer, WICKER PARK (MGM, 2004, $26.95, Tuesday, December 28) is a thriller. It takes about 50 minutes in before you realize this is not a scary movie, but a romance, and not just a regular old romance, but a SLIDERS kind of romance, with lots of coincidences and narrative backtracking.
A little research reveals that WICKER PARK is an American remake of a European film from 1996 called, in some quarters, THE APARTMENT, available only in region two, but reviewed at DVDBeaver.com. Like VANILLA SKY, it appears to be a fairly exact replica, only with "bigger" stars. Or at least bigger stars here; in Europe leads Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel are somewhat "bigger" than their American equivalents.
WICKER PARK isn't unlikable once you figure out what the hell is going on, but boy is that hard (different reviewers even set it in different cities, even though it is suppose to be Chicago, while shot in Montreal). And I would hazard to say that it ends on a much higher and self-indulgent note than the original. It's also one of those movies that valorizes the leads and views all the secondary characters are scum, and so is terribly mean to them, leaving them bereft and lonely so that the privileged couple can finally kiss in an airport for about five minutes.
There are a ton of extras on this disc, from a laid back audio commentary track by lead Josh Hartnett and director Paul McGuigan, to a whole raft of deleted scenes that fully flesh out the film, plus a gag reel, a music video, a photo gallery, and various promos and trailers.
Perhaps the only real connection between WICKER PARK and its inspiration is the name of a restaurant that the characters always seem to end up in, Bellucci's, named after the star of the original.
I was not aware that ANACONDA was all that popular but here it is, the sequel, ANACONDAS: THE HUNT FOR THE BLOOD ORCHIDS (Columbia Tristar, 2004, $26.95, Tuesday, December 21), which, like most horror films these days, has little if anything to do with the first one, while at the same time having the exact same story structure and basic character types.
Perhaps aware that the viewer won't be all that interested in how or why the film was made, the disc comes with little in the way of extras. There is a brief making of feature, plus a few key deleted scenes that make the film make more sense if mentally incorporated into the narrative. There are also a few trailers.
DVD QUOTE OF THE WEEK: From the audio track to the special feature "Visual FX: MTA Train" on COLLATERAL: "There's a train sequence we shot with a lot of green screen. And it wasn't because we were trying to fake a moving train and seeing a landscape go by outside. We could do that. The reason I shot it green screen was I wanted to customize the backgrounds. When Vincent is pursuing Max I wanted Vincent moving laterally against a slit-scan. In other words, I wanted something to contrast the movement of his body. There's a parking structure just west of LAX that has these white rectangles when you photograph it, so we shot those many different ways many times and then I was able to customize and put those backgrounds behind Vincent. And then they are also there behind Max and Annie. [Later, when he is shot,] Vincent repeats an anecdote that he had said earlier in the film about guy gets on the MTA and dies you think anyone's gonna notice, only this time there's nothing ironic about it, this time Vincent is sincere in his question, will my existence be noted by anybody, it's a kind of pathetic question. And I wanted behind Vincent at that moment in time a landscape that was devoid of streetlights, so that all your attention would focus on Vincent's face. And then also I was able to manipulate the backgrounds quite a bit independent of the foreground and make something very muted and dark red where I wanted to. When Vincent falls over and he dies, I wanted something that felt funereal so there's a very muted silhouette of a tree that just sort of emerges from Vincent. And that's why I shot that scene green screen." —Director Michael Mann on his ideas for the last sequence of COLLATERAL, Disc Two, 00:2:26 in all.
Letters
From From Samantha Walker:
"With almost an hour of added material, THE RETURN OF THE KING in its extended state has the potential to amaze. While the film is not lacking in appeal, it is not as enjoyable as the trilogy's other extended versions. It has neither the integrated additions of THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING nor the increased complexities of THE TWO TOWERS. It chooses the puzzle piece approach and while some pieces snap satisfactorily into place, some are not even from the same puzzle.
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The significance of the King's return is given more screen time, but not enough to really change your understanding of the event. Gandalf (Ian McKellen) recites to Pippin (Billy Boyd) the significance of Minas Tirith's White Tree; a conversation you are meant to recall at Denethor's (John Noble) later 'There is not hope for men' speech, which plays over a close-up of a flowering branch. The mystical side of the kingship is a more complex concept and if expanded upon at all, should have been done wholeheartedly to include Aragorn's (Viggo Mortensen) planting of the new sapling. Two random scenes, far apart in a long movie, are not worth mentioning.
There is a similar lack of elaboration given to the scenes involving the palantirs. We are given but a vague understanding of their use and power. Added dialogue lets us know Denethor is well aware of events outside his immediate purview and even says, 'There is no victory' against the power in the East — words very similar to Saruman's (Christopher Lee). And yet there is no explanation, no mention that Denethor has access to a palantir, no mention of how or why he has lost his mind. The psychological effect of the enemy, as seen previously with Theoden (Bernard Hill) at Edoras and with Saruman at Orthanc, plays a large role in the attack on the West. It is somewhat silly to add allusions to this thread without exploring it fully. You're better off with the subtle references of the theatrical version.
Unfortunately the extended Eowyn (Miranda Otto) and Faramir (David Wenham) scenes suffer the same fate. The added footage only muddies their relationship; the original coronation tip of the hat would have been sufficient in the absence of a more developed story. As it plays now, the healing and initial courtship appear to happen in a single afternoon, a suggestion brought on by the following scene which has Pippin out on the dusky battlefield still in search of Merry (Dominic Monaghan). A clearer editing hand please — or leave it out altogether.
Minor annoyances include Gandalf's sudden smoker's cough, the use of addition dialogue as a plot device, Legolas' (Orlando Bloom) very non-Middle Earthean response to winning a drinking contest and an in-full-view conversation between two characters who are meant to be traveling incognito. Filmed scenes which would have solidified the friendship between Legolas and Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) are still missing despite the multitudinous endings. The Paths of the Dead are underplayed as well — especially the disappointing use of Gimli as constant comic relief in an environment that is meant to be horrifying.
The additional footage is by no means all misplaced. The infamously cut Orthanc scene, while awkward to the flow of the story (should it have been in THE TWO TOWERS?), finds a home here. Challenges are hurled, accusations thrown, predictions floated, possessions sunk and the bad guys get their comeuppance. Theoden's Peace Speech is pure Tolkien and Christopher Lee was not the only actor pleased to see the sequence restored.
Frodo's (Elijah Wood) stolen mithril coat is given its chance to torque the tension with the inclusion of The Mouth of Sauron (Bruce Spence) at the Black Gate. The remaining fellowship is dually alarmed even when the personage gloating over the trophy is wearing some most unfortunate headgear (think Statue of Liberty meets crown of thorns atop misguided 7th grade shop project). Earlier in the film, the missing fourth orc from Sam's (Sean Astin) Cirith Ungol battle is shown escaping with Frodo's possessions; a detail which makes you appreciate the additions all the more.
There are many shorter scenes which fit well into the existing movie, do not try to accomplish too much or are just damn good film. Pippin and Gandalf's confrontation with the Witch King (Lawrence Makoare), while not vital, plays very well in its renewed state. The defense of Osgiliath gets quite a bit more screen time, adding to the significance of the loss and increasing our dread of the forces issuing from Mordor. The re-inclusion of Eowyn's dream is a nice touch, being both a piece of Tolkienana as well as the original opening scene to the movie. Other welcome additions include: Merry offering his service to Theoden (remember the trailer!?!), Aragorn challenging Sauron (Sala Barker) via the palantir, Sam and Frodo's forced march across Mordor and a cameo-packed attack on the Corsair ships. Extended battle scenes show more squishing, more heroics and a scream from Eomer (Karl Urban) which trumps Aragorn's masterpiece from THE TWO TOWERS.
The extras are excellent and of a similar format to the other extended versions. Fresh material that covers every aspect of the project makes for tireless insight into sleep-loss, time crunches and dedication. The sources of inspiration are many and are discussed at length, always founding themselves in Tolkien's text. Special attention is given to the creation of Shelob and the design of Minas Tirith. The equestrian arts (both real and animated) are explored at length due to their prominence in this film.
We see the cast and crew build a life-sized mumakil, deep-fry synthetic polymer, test medieval weaponry and re-live the worst day of shooting three times. We learn the cost of renting walnuts, how many skulls there are to a cubic meter and how to effectively squeeze an alien's head. We enjoy their parties (wrap, mumakil, Oscar and 666) and their last days on set.
To flesh out the two discs of extras, we are treated to a mini-location diary of six New Zealand locations, design and production galleries, and an interactive map of Middle Earth which allows you to follow each plot line separately. An alternate climax is revealed in the form of a storyboard-animatronic sequence which gives Aragorn a different opponent at the Black Gate and changes Frodo's motivations on Mount Doom. As a special extra, the first 30 seconds of the mumakil attack is presented in a split screen display showing 6 separate elements as well as the final cut. Each segment can be played individually with optional commentary. There are two Easter eggs: an April fool-esque interview with Elijah Wood and an embarrassingly bad MTV Awards clip.
The full-length commentaries are also consistent with the quality shown in the previous extensions. Between the four tracks, all aspects of the project are covered and you get a broader notion of the complexities involved with the making of these films. I highly recommend listening to them all, and backtracking to the other parts of the trilogy if you missed those commentaries.
For the tattered, nonsensical additions, one could see this film as a watered-down version of the original. Scenes will always be interpreted and cut, but what is included should be tight, even if that means having a shorter 'extended edition.' Though flawed, this version is enjoyable, contains more pure Tolkien dialogue than the original and has superb extras. Even someone who does not enjoy these movies will have an appreciation for the innovative moviemaking that has taken place. Keep an eye out for public showings (several theaters have given this film special attention) and see this big movie on the big screen."
From From Richard Swank:
"In your latest column, you claim to have traced the genesis of the 'Disney fart joke' to the first week of the MICKEY MOUSE CLUB. Sorry, it goes back much farther than that.
Watch the original STEAMBOAT WILLIE. Mickey is piloting the boat, when Pegleg Pete comes to the bridge and chews him out. Pete turns around to leave and Mickey blows a raspberry at his back. When Pete turns around, Mickey, thinking fast, cops an embarrassed look and waives his hand down by his butt to 'disburse the fumes.'
They used to show STEAMBOAT WILLIE in the little movie theater on Mainstreet U.S.A. at Disneyworld, which is the first place I saw it. Needless to say, I was stunned, not only by the joke but by the fact that it was so prominently displayed in the family park. It shows that Disney and Warner's were a lot closer in the beginning, before their corporate missions sort of diverged."
NEXT TIME: Dystopian DVDs, THE LIFE AQUATIC, more Asian action films, movies on music, several STAR TREKS, and more!
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