By Joe Valdez

What the *&#! Are They About?
In the mines of the Roman province of Libya, slave Spartacus (Kirk Douglas) sinks his teeth into the ankle of a guard, earning himself a death sentence. Recognizing an unbroken spirit he could mold into something great, slave merchant Batiatus (Peter Ustinov) purchases the condemned and returns with him to the city of Cupua, where Batiatus operates a gladiator school. Spartacus proves as agile intellectually as he is physically, though fellow slave Draba (Woody Strode) refuses his friendship, given that they may have to fight each other one day. Granted time alone with slave girl Varinia (Jean Simmons), Spartacus becomes enraptured with her.

Roman general Marcus Crassus (Laurence Olivier) arrives with a small party and requests to see two pairs of gladiators fight to the death. After the blood spectacle, Crassus buys Varinia, so outraging Spartacus that he launches a slave revolt. Moving from town to town, the rebellion grows in strength. In the Roman Senate, Gracchus (Charles Laughton) shrewdly dispatches the garrison of Rome to extinguish the uprising, paving the way for Julius Caesar (John Gavin) to take control of Rome and hold the ambitions of Crassus in check. Reunited with Varinia and befriending an escaped slave (Tony Curtis), Spartacus moves on Rome.

Kirk Douglas and Jean Simmons in Spartacus

In the year 180 A.D., General Maximus (Russell Crowe) leads 5,000 Legionaries in a spirited victory over the last Germanic tribe holding out against the Roman Empire in northern Europe. Visiting the battlefront, the aging caesar Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris) bequeaths protection of Rome to Maximus in the hopes that the people will resume control of the Senate from corrupted politicians. When hearing of the secession, the caesar’s ambitious male heir Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) murders his father, while his sister Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) aligns herself with Commodus in order to protect her young son Lucious (Spencer Treat Clark) from harm.

Maximus escapes execution in the forest, but is unable to save his wife and son from crucifixion. Taken for a deserter, he ends up in Zucchabar, the property of a freed gladiator and merchant named Proximo (Oliver Reed). Expected to meet a quick death in the gladiatorial pits of Morocco, Maximus, along with slaves Juba (Djimon Hounsou) and Hagen (Ralf Moeller) survives and becomes a favorite of provincial crowds. In Rome, Commodus assumes power by reviving the spectacle of gladiatorial contests in the Roman Coliseum. There, Maximus wins over the urban mob and vows to stay alive long enough to have his revenge over Commodus.

Russell Crowe and Djimon Hounsou in Gladiator

Writing
The genesis of Spartacus was with author Howard Fast — a member of the American Communist Party — who in 1950 was sentenced to three months in a federal prison for contempt of Congress, refusing to name suspected Communist contributors to a home for orphans of Spanish Civil War veterans. Once a prisoner, Fast used the prison library and his newfound sympathy for the disempowered to research the Roman slave rebellion of 71 BC. Fast would self-publish Spartacus in 1951. The book came to the attention of the wife of producer Edward Lewis in late 1957. Lewis was the business partner of Kirk Douglas in the actor’s Bryna Productions.

Douglas took Spartacus to United Artists, which was moving ahead with their own Spartacus project: The Gladiators, set to star Yul Brenner. Undeterred, Douglas renegotiated a 60-day extension on the property with Fast. When the author was unable to turn in a suitable draft quickly enough, Lewis and Douglas turned to Dalton Trumbo, the highly regarded screenwriter who’d spent 11 months in prison for contempt of Congress. On the strength of an adaptation Trumbo cranked out in three weeks, Laurence Olivier, Peter Ustinov and Charles Laughton signed on, The Gladiators folded and Universal Pictures stepped up to finance Spartacus.

Kirk Douglas and Peter Ustinov in Spartacus

Dalton Trumbo had been in steady employment after his prison term — working on Roman Holiday, among others — but Kirk Douglas insisted that the screenwriter receive screen credit, breaking the decade long Hollywood blacklist against talent with former ties to the Communist Party. Douglas, Olivier, Ustinov nor Laughton treated Trumbo’s dialogue as scripture, allegedly generating much of their own. Regardless of who what wrote line, Trumbo’s craftsmanship is evident. The unyieldly source material is given powerful dramatic momentum throughout, while a strong sense of character is never lost amid the tremendous and tremendously expensive set pieces.

David Franzoni became interested in gladiators after he’d dropped out of grad school. Bumming around the world, he was in Baghdad when he swapped a book on the Irish revolution with one titled Those About To Die, a 1958 study of the Roman Coliseum by Daniel Mannix. 20 years later, a biopic Franzoni had written on George Washington came to the attention of Steven Spielberg. While adapting Amistad for the director in Rome, Franzoni began researching what became Gladiator. Franzoni took some of his research to producer Douglas Wick, who saw contemporary parallels to a society distracted from the important issues by entertainment.

Connie Nielsen and Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator

Franzoni’s pitch to Spielberg and DreamWorks executives Walter Parkes & Laurie MacDonald for a movie set in the gladiatorial pits of the Roman Coliseum was enthusiastically received. The “sword and sandal” genre had been dead in the 40 years since Spartacus, but Franzoni and Wick thought the ancient world could be brought to life not just by computer imagery, but developing the story as a modern day morality play. Though Franzoni had provided a blueprint for Gladiator, playwright John Logan was brought in to improve the characters. Logan was credited with crafting most of the best dialogue that made it into the film.

After a cast reading at Shepperton Studios two weeks before the start of shooting, it was felt the script still wasn’t ready. Douglas Wick reached out to playwright William Nicholson, who streamlined the plot and made the characters more likable. Instead of a revenge story, Nicholson hinged Gladiator on the love Maximus felt for his family and highlighted his transience toward a pagan afterlife. “Script by committee” is usually a recipe for disaster, but Gladiator is an exception. The toil of numerous scribes, producers and studio executives resulted in exciting action sequences, terrific dialogue, complex characters and a story with a deep emotional core.

Russell Crowe in Gladiator

Writing edge: Gladiator

Casting
Howard Fast was not thrilled about Kirk Douglas playing Spartacus — finding the actor and some of his choices lacking in nobility — but along with the star, Laurence Olivier, Peter Ustinov and Charles Laughton were always the first choices for their roles. Searching for a female lead with a Germanic look after Ingrid Bergman and Jeanne Moreau passed, Douglas settled on Sabine Bethmann, who lost the role of Varinia after three weeks of filming, replaced by Jean Simmons. The supporting cast is just as notable: Woody Strode, Herbert Lom (as a Sicilian pirate) and Charlie McGraw as the freed gladiator who proves Spartacus’ tormentor in particular.

Tony Curtis and his Brooklyn accent are not the easiest to buy as an escaped slave who becomes Spartacus’ most trusted advisor. The rest of the main cast is one for the ages. Some of the greatest screen actors in Hollywood history were available when Spartacus went into production and at least three are in the movie. Olivier and Laughton show no conscience gobbling up the scenery as longtime foes in the Roman Senate. Ustinov brings much needed wit and humility to the role of the slave merchant Batiatus. The athleticism and intensity of Kirk Douglas seem better suited to the role of Spartacus than perhaps any in his stoic film career.

John Hoyt and Laurence Olivier in Spartacus

There was some talk of Mel Gibson being offered the role of Maximus, but Russell Crowe was quickly settled on as a better fit for the part. After leading roles in two critically acclaimed films — L.A. Confidential and The Insider – Crowe was more familiar in Hollywood than by name in the general public. Casting Commodus, Jude Law was screen tested, but director Ridley Scott had worked with Joaquin Phoenix on a movie he’d produced called Clay Pigeons and was intrigued enough to push for him as the morally bankrupt caesar. Connie Nielsen and Djimon Hounsou bring strength and agility with their obvious physical attributes as performers.

Louis Di Giaimo was the casting director and to whatever degree he was responsible for filling out the supporting roles, Gladiator was extraordinarily well cast. Richard Harris seemed reinvigorated on screen as the dying emperor; his moments with Crowe and his death scene are tremendous. Oliver Reed returned from 20 years of anonymity and steals the film as the charismatic slave merchant, the last father any of his men will have. Reed unfortunately died of a heart attack at the age of 62 with three weeks of shooting to go. Derek Jacobi, Ralf Moeller and bodybuilding legend Sven-Ole Thorsen (as the tiger gladiator) give commendable performances.

Ralf Moeller, Djimon Hounsou and Russell Crowe in Gladiator

Casting edge: Even

Production value
Spartacus went into production January 1959 in Death Valley under the direction of Anthony Mann, who’d shot a number of successful westerns for Universal. Good with action and crowds, Mann was overwhelmed by Douglas, Olivier and Ustinov, prima donna writer-directors each pushing to do things their way. After three weeks, Mann asked to be let go. Douglas called up a promising 30-year-old director under contract to his production company. Busy developing a screen adaptation of Vladimir Nobokov’s Lolita, Stanley Kubrick agreed on a Friday night to take over the $12 million budgeted Spartacus. He arrived on the set Monday morning.

Unable to make changes to the script he’d inherited, Kubrick did benefit from the work of Saul Bass, the acclaimed graphic designer who’d created title sequences for Anatomy of a Murder and North By Northwest. In addition to the majestic title sequence he would design for Spartacus, Bass had also been tasked with location scouting and with designing the gladiator school. Three weeks of second unit photography took place in Spain — utilizing the Spanish army for the shots of thousands of marching soldiers — though most of the battle was actually shot on the Universal backlot. Russell Metty served as director of photography.

Peter Ellenshaw was a matte artist on Spartacus

Stanley Kubrick would sever his business relationship with Kirk Douglas following Spartacus, resenting his lack of creative control over the production. After decades of disowning the blockbuster, the visionary director conceded late in life that Spartacus turned out better than he felt at the time. In spite of being a director for hire, Kubrick did replace Sabine Bethmann with Jean Simmons and insisted on playing classical music during a number of key scenes, heightening the performances of Douglas, Simmons and Woody Strode. Elegantly composed visually, Spartacus has a more humane feel than any picture Kubrick would ever direct.

Ridley Scott was on the short list of directors whose finesse for creating worlds and spectacle was well suited for Gladiator. Knowing that Scott was a graphic designer, Douglas Wick and Walter Parkes presented him with a 19th century painting by Jean-Léon Gérômeen titled “Thumbs Down”. More so than their pitch or the script, it was the gladiatorial painting that won Scott over. The exacting director was used to taking his time, but seemed reinvigorated by his experience with Gladiator. At one point, Scott wanted Maximus to fight a rhinoceros and storyboarded the sequence, before the reality of working with either live rhinos or a $1 million CG facsimile scotched the idea.

John Nelson and Mill Film supervised visual effects for Gladiator

Gladiator commenced shooting February 1999 in Surrey, England, in an area the Royal Forestry Commission had slated for deforestation. Collaborating with director of photography John Mathieson, Scott had the entire German front sequence — the first act of the film — finished in just over three weeks. For the provincial scenes, production designer Arthur Max built an arena into the side of an ancient village at Ait Ben Haddou, Morocco. The third act of the film was shot in Malta, where the Roman Coliseum was partially rebuilt out of plaster and plywood at a cost of $1 million, with the upper tiers and other elements added in with CG.

I didn’t care for Gladiator when it opened. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon had the narrative elegance and emotional power and Gladiator was buttered popcorn to me. But the 155-minute theatrical version of Gladiator has been supplemented on DVD with an extended cut clocking in at 171 minutes. Reinserted are a conspiratorial scene between Lucilia and Graccus, Commodus hacking away at a bust of his father and a terrific scene where Commodus supervises the execution of two Centurions. As with Kingdom of Heaven, the extended cut of Ridley Scott’s epic contains more texture and intelligence than the box office friendly version.

Kirk Douglas and Charles McGraw in Spartacus

Production value edge: Gladiator

Music
With the exception of Stanley Kubrick, the greatest contributor to the success of Spartacus would be Alex North, who composed the vibrant musical score. For the film’s preservation on laserdisc by the Criterion Collection in 1991, Peter Ustinov would comment that the only thing that ages the film for him is its music. It is hard to imagine Stanley Kubrick going with something so romantic if he’d had his way, but North’s marvelous score is Old Hollywood at its finest. It doesn’t punctuate the action as music by John Williams or Jerry Goldsmith would have years later, but sets the table for a big time movie going experience.

Again, time has evened out the grouchy reaction I had of Gladiator after it swept the Academy Awards over Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, particularly where music is concerned. Normally a big time hater of the bombastic scores Hans Zimmer turns in for Jerry Bruckheimer productions, I’m actually enamored of his work on Gladiator. Instead of coming on like a psychic jackhammer, Zimmer’s score is mysterious and majestic, the soundtrack I would have between my ears if transported to the Roman Empire. Zimmer collaborated here with Australian vocalist Lisa Gerrard, whose Mediterranean flavor is used in just the right doses.

Kirk Douglas and Woody Strode in Spartacus

Music edge: Gladiator

Cultural impact
Through its original theatrical run, re-release in 1967 and restoration in 1991, Spartacus would earn $11.1 million in the U.S. That was enough to make it the third highest grossing film released in 1960, back when tickets were 25 cents. Nominated for six Academy Awards, it won four: Best Supporting Actor (Peter Ustinov), Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design. Beyond its legacy as one of the most entertaining roadshow epics of the 1960s, Spartacus defied social conservatives like the American Legion, which vilified the film for giving two “Commies” a writing credit. As a result, Spartacus broke the Hollywood blacklist.

Opening May 2000, Gladiator was a global blockbuster, grossing $187.7 million in the U.S. and $269.9 million overseas. A hit all over the world, the film definitely had its impact felt in Hollywood, which quickly greenlit Master and Commander, The Last Samurai, Cold Mountain, Troy, King Arthur and finally, Kingdom of Heaven, briefly restoring the historical epic to prominence among studio production slates. Gladiator would be nominated for 12 Academy Awards and win five: Best Picture (Douglas Wick, David Franzoni, Branko Lustig), Best Actor (Russell Crowe), Best Costume Design (Janty Yates), Best Sound and Best Visual Effects.

Cultural impact edge: Spartacus

Russell Crowe in Gladiator

Winner: Gladiator

Spartacus will always be one of the grand entertainments of the 1960s and significant for breaking the Hollywood blacklist along the way. Gladiator won lots of awards and made some people very rich. Both were being written as they were being filmed, an early indicator of total fucking disaster. Yet both have achieved status as classics. Personally, I find Gladiator to be the better film, the state of the art in story, casting, music and of course, visual effects. Maybe in 40 years, it will look as dated as Spartacus, but today, it reigns supreme among historical epics, with Master and Commander in its rearview mirror.

Your thoughts?

By Joe Valdez

What the *&#! Are They About?
C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) — accountant for Consolidated Life, or more specifically, “Ordinary Policy Department, Premium Accounting Division, Section W, desk number 861” — has made his West 60s apartment available to four executives who treat Baxter’s home as their extramarital playground. His neighbors, a Jewish physician and his wife, form the impression that Baxter is “a notorious sexpot” who scores with a different woman each night. Baxter is so accommodating with the arrangement that he sleeps on a bench in Central Park when an admin manager (Ray Walston) calls from a bar around the corner and requests use of the bachelor pad.

Baxter’s cooperation earns such high marks at the office that personnel director J.D. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) learns about the apartment. In exchange for membership in the key club, he decides Baxter is executive material. To celebrate his promotion, Baxter works up the nerve to ask out kooky but alluring elevator operator Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) completely unaware she’s the girl Sheldrake intends to take back to his place. Baxter finds out and receives a coveted promotion in return for his discretion, but has to choose between his climb up the corporate ladder and his feelings for Miss Kubelik.

Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise), a top agent at Sports Management International — “I handle the lives and dreams of 72 clients and get on average 264 phone calls a day” — is stricken with a bout of conscience late one night. He authors a “mission statement” calling on his peers to take fewer clients and make less money for the greater good. His vision inspires single mom Dorothy Boyd (Renée Zellweger), the only member of SMI who volunteers to leave with Jerry when he’s fired by his smarmy protégé (Jay Mohr). Jerry manages to take two clients with him, including the #1 pick of the forthcoming NFL Draft: Frank Cushman (Jerry O’Connell).

When Cushman defects on the eve of the draft, Jerry & Dorothy focus on their remaining client — a wide receiver for the Arizona Cardinals named Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr.) — and the contract extension the irascible athlete and his wife (Regina King) need for the future of their family. Jerry calls off an engagement to his driven fiancée (Kelly Preston) and to keep her from leaving L.A., rewards Dorothy’s loyalty by marrying her, much to the disconcert of her divorced sister Laurel (Bonnie Hunt). While his friendship with Rod empowers both men professionally, Jerry realizes his missteps with Dorothy threaten to make all of it meaningless.

Writing
The Apartment had fermented in the mind of writer-director Billy Wilder since 1945, when he wrote himself a note after seeing Brief Encounter. David Lean’s classic dealt with the affair between a married man and a married woman, but Wilder was more intrigued by the character that lends the lovers the use of his apartment and had to crawl back into a warm bed all alone. Unable to get around the Production Code or the Catholic Church’s Legion of Decency in 1948 or 1949, Wilder found tolerances had shifted dramatically in the wake of Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe and Little Richard. By the 1960s, audiences were ready for a movie with implicit sexual content.

Eager to make another film with Jack Lemmon following the success of Some Like It Hot, Wilder and co-writer I.A.L. Diamond dug out their ideas for The Apartment. According to Diamond, the story was drawn from the Hollywood scandal in which producer Walter Wanger shot talent agent Jennings Lang when he discovered Lang was sleeping with his wife, Joan Bennett; an employee at MCA had provided the apartment where his boss and mistress were shacking up. Wilder & Diamond brought The Apartment to producer Walter Mirisch, with United Artists footing a budget. A script was finished only four days before filming began November 1959 in New York.

Many consider The Apartment to be the best comedy Billy Wilder ever made. It is, but it’s still one black cup of coffee. While at his peak in the 1950s (Sunset Blvd., Ace In the Hole) Wilder was not content writing jokes; he wrote films about murder and deceit that had a lot of humor in them. The Apartment turns on lies, a suicide attempt and the corruption of the American dream, but the vital wit in Wilder & Diamond’s script make it all go down with a teaspoon of sugar. Their structure is waterproof — nothing is introduced that isn’t paid off later — and arrives at a happy, Hollywood ending without threatening to insult the intelligence of the audience.

Jerry Maguire came in the wake of writer-director Cameron Crowe’s poorly received second feature, Singles. By the time Warner Bros. released it in the fall of 1992, even some of Crowe’s friends accused him of exploiting the Seattle music scene. The disconnect Crowe felt from people he’d once known well would bleed into his next script. He’d been studying the work of master filmmakers like Ernst Lubitsch, Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder. The film that impacted Crowe the most was The Apartment, which he loved so much — in its comic yet biting portrait of a working stiff and his love for an elevator operator — it quickly became Crowe’s favorite film.

After spending a year researching “stiffs with briefcases”, a friend showed Crowe a photo in the L.A. Times of a sports agent and his client. Far from a jock growing up, Crowe was drawn to the frenzied, big money backdrop of professional sports and with the help of sports attorney Leigh Steinberg, spent the next three years interviewing agents, athletes and owners in the pros. Along the way, producer James L. Brooks suggested they begin Jerry Maguire where an ‘80s movie would have ended: the guy who finds “the religion of goodness.” That guy would then spend the rest of the movie dealing with the consequences of his new philosophy.

The beauty of Jerry Maguire is in the dexterity of Cameron Crowe’s screenplay, which is about a bachelor romancing a single mom, the bonding of an agent and his male client, and a look at the business of pro sports in the 1990s. With Crowe’s perfectionist attention to detail, heartfelt wit, and ambition, any one of those stories would have probably made a good film. Here, we get all three. It’s also funny, with supporting characters of supporting characters entering and exiting to tremendous effect. The movie may have too much heart, but that’s just Crowe; he doesn’t pour sugar on for effect, but seems to really feel as much as his film does.

Writing edge: Jerry Maguire

Casting
After Jack Lemmon agreed to reteam with Billy Wilder in the role of C.C. Baxter, the director chose Shirley MacLaine to play Fran Kubelik, who accepted on the basis of a plot synopsis and the 30 script pages that had been finished. MacLaine was perhaps best known for the Rat Pack comedies Some Came Running and Can-Can, but Wilder hoped to push her dramatically. Paul Douglas — who’d appeared in A Letter To Three Lives — was cast as Mr. Sheldrake, but a couple of days before filming began, died of a heart attack. Wilder & Diamond both arrived on Fred MacMurray, who’d worked for Wilder on Double Indemnity in 1940.

Jack Lemmon & Shirley MacLaine have an undeniable chemistry on film. The only contemporary equivalent I can think of is Tom Hanks & Meg Ryan, except that Ryan has little emotional range and annoys me greatly. Like Hanks, Lemmon beautifully plays the dreams and struggles of an average guy with impeccable comic skill and without making him seem like a loser. MacLaine is a superb comedienne in her own right; this might be the finest role of her career. As for the limited supporting cast, it is fun to see Fred MacMurray play a rat bastard, as opposed to driving a flying car for Disney, while Ray Walston turns in terrific work as the conniving Mr. Dobisch.

Cameron Crowe wrote Jerry Maguire for Tom Hanks, who graciously declined in part because he didn’t buy Jerry’s marriage to Dorothy. Winona Ryder was a frontrunner to play the Shirley MacLaine part, but after four months of auditions, Ryder, Bridget Fonda, Marisa Tomei and Mira Sorvino were all passed over. The offbeat and melancholy quality of the virtually unknown Renée Zellweger sold her to the filmmakers. Crowe and Cruise made a personal plea to Billy Wilder to accept the part of Jerry’s mentor Dicky Fox, but the 89-year-old retired director brusquely declined. An executive VP of Intellectual Property at Sony Pictures named Jared Jussim filled the role.

It sure is hard to enjoy Jerry Maguire these days. Some ill-advised media outbursts have transformed Tom Cruise into the most despised movie star in the land. Renée Zellweger has been branded with mousy parts and Cuba Gooding Jr. has gone from Academy Awards to Daddy Day Camp. As celebrities, they get thumbs down, but as actors, each turn in fine performances. Credit goes to Crowe, James L. Brooks and casting director Gail Levin for filling the other roles. Bonnie Hunt, Jay Mohr, Regina King, Kelly Preston and Beau Bridges are amazing to watch here. Todd Louiso is a laugh riot as Chad the Nanny, while Jonathan Lipnicki (the kid) turned the whole movie. A parade of pro athletes appear as themselves to neat effect.

Casting edge: Even

Production value
While Billy Wilder initially shot exteriors for the apartment on West 69th Street, autumn in New York proved so chilly and unreliable after dark that the footage was reshot on a soundstage at Goldwyn Studios in Culver City. The artifice of the apartment and its sidewalk doesn’t detract from the story one bit, perhaps because in black & white, they don’t look nearly as phony as they would have in color. Production designer Alexander Trauner did a magician’s job creating the illusion of spectacular depth inside Consolidated Life by constructing desks and chairs that got smaller and smaller the further into the background they were positioned.

No style looks more dazzling to me in a movie than black & white film stock framed in anamorphic format. La dolce vita, The Hustler, Jules et Jim and The Haunting are just a few titles from the early 1960s that I can watch over and over just in terms of their presentation. The shadows of black & white film just have a dreamlike quality that resonates deep within the imagination, while the epic vertical horizon of anamorphic scope seems inherently suited to movies, even intimate dramas like The Apartment. If I was a big time film director in the ‘60s like John Frankenheimer, I would have shot in nothing but black & white anamorphic. Joseph LaShelle lit The Apartment.

Jerry Maguire commenced filming March 1996 in more than 70 locations in the Los Angeles area, as well as in Tempe, Arizona. Janusz Kaminski — who became Steven Spielberg’s preferred DP starting with Schindler’s List – lit the film. Production designer Stephen Lineweaver constructed two major sets at Sony Studios in Culver City: Dorothy Boyd’s home and the interior of Sports Management International. Costume designer Betsy Heimann does a yeoman’s job doing what I typically ignore unless it’s a period film — costume design — finding the right wardrobe for sports agents, single moms, a kid and others in the same film.

Cameron Crowe is not a filmmaker who has ever seemed concerned with camera lenses or effects, but Jerry Maguire was directed with a tremendous amount of finesse. Beyond the script and casting, what I like most about Jerry Maguire was how neatly it encapsulates worlds that on the surface would seem totally exclusive to each other — locker rooms and broadcast booths, suburban living rooms and backyards, hotels and airplanes — and makes them feel alive. Jerry’s journey as a character is how he navigates each of these worlds and how he comes out on the other side. Crowe does an underrated job of taking us on that journey visually.

Production value edge: The Apartment

Music
The Apartment and Jerry Maguire are films of different eras. Other than the fact that one is in black & white and the other in color, in no other area is the year they were made more obvious than in the musical arrangements. Billy Wilder turned to Adolph Deutsch to compose the musical score for The Apartment. The results — other than a fine piano theme, “The Jealous Lover” written by Charles Williams — are undistinguishable from any other movie made 20 years prior. In fact, I would be hard pressed to recall music from any Wilder film of the period.

Next to Quentin Tarantino, no filmmaker today has a better vinyl record collection than Cameron Crowe. Jerry Maguire marked the first time in his career he really started putting the stamp of his personal tastes in rock ‘n roll or folk music on his films. “Magic Bus” by The Who, “I’ll Be You” by The Replacements, “Secret Garden” by Bruce Springsteen, “Shelter From the Storm” by Bob Dylan and “Wise Up” by Aimee Mann are all used to great effect. Singer/ songwriter Nancy Wilson would compose two acoustic guitar themes: “We Meet Again (Theme from Jerry Maguire)” and “Sandy”.

Music edge: Jerry Maguire

Cultural impact
Opening June 1960, The Apartment would earn $6.5 million in the U.S. and $2.7 million overseas, making it the 8th highest grossing movie released in 1960. It would earn ten Academy Award nominations and win five: Best Art Direction (Alexandre Trauner, Edward G. Boyle), Best Editing (Daniel Mandell), Best Original Screenplay (Wilder & Diamond), Best Director (Wilder) and Best Picture. A musical comedy based on the film — Promises, Promises — ran on Broadway for four years beginning in 1968, while Wilder’s sophisticated brand of human comedy and drama continues to inspire filmmakers. The Apartment was even Billy Wilder’s favorite among his own films.

Hitting theaters December 1996, Jerry Maguire was a blockbuster. It tallied box office of $153.9 million in the U.S. and $119.6 million overseas. After Singles, Cameron Crowe wanted to make a movie that people would want to watch on TV at night, and TNT has granted him that wish with repeat broadcasts of Jerry Maguire over the years, minting “Show me the money!” in the popular consciousness. This was the peak of Tom Cruise’s popularity: Rosie O’Donnell devoted an hour of her daytime talk show to her adoration of Cruise and his latest film, which was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture (only Cuba Gooding Jr. took home an Oscar).

Cultural impact edge: Even

Winner: The Apartment

The Apartment is, was and always will be a beautifully made motion picture. To the credit of Cameron Crowe, when it comes to comedy, a love story or a read on the fine print of the American Dream, Jerry Maguire is actually a slightly better written and directed film. But for reasons mostly beyond anyone’s control, it’s become bloated with the baggage that massive success can bring. I much prefer watching Jack Lemmon & Shirley MacLaine in beautiful black & white widescreen than hearing “Show me the money!” one more time.

Your thoughts?

By Joe Valdez

Frances McDormand was born June 23, 1957 in Chicago, Illinois. Adopted by a Disciples of Christ minister and his wife, McDormand grew up in towns across Illinois, Georgia, Kentucky and Tennessee due to her foster father’s work setting up congregations. At the age of 8, the family settled in Pittsburgh. McDormand attended high school in Monessing, a voracious reader, but otherwise unremarkable student. An English teacher noted her passion for Shakespeare and suggested she consider theater arts.

Playing Lady Macbeth, McDormand recalled, “I did the sleepwalking scene and it was the first time I’d ever done anything that I felt was mine. I took it much more seriously than the other kids. When we were backstage, for example, I knew it was important to be quiet when other people were acting. It seemed like I knew the ethics of the theater environment intuitively. It became clearer and clearer to me that acting was the only thing I knew how to do.”

McDormand earned her Bachelor’s Degree in theater at Bethany College, a liberal arts school in West Virginia affiliated with the Disciples of Christ. She recalled, “I was completely naive about the business of being an actor. My family didn’t go to the theater or to the movies. We watched television, like every 1960’s small-town American family, and I certainly never thought about being on TV. I thought I was going to be a classical actor in the grand tradition.” McDormand was accepted into Yale Drama School, where she befriended a classmate named Holly Hunter.

Receiving her master’s degree in theater, McDormand moved to New York in 1982, where she shared an apartment with Hunter in the Bronx and eked out a living waiting tables. Hunter had already made a Broadway splash in Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart and had even been offered the female lead in a low budget film noir shooting in Texas. Hunter informed rookie director Joel Coen and co-writer/ producer Ethan Coen that she wasn’t available, but suggested to her roommate that she go read for the part.

In 1984, McDormand made her film debut in Blood Simple – the critically acclaimed debut from the Coen brothers — and launched her New York stage career in Tina Howe’s Painting Churches. 16 years later, the actress would muse, “It’s a scary thing going into the workforce with a $50,000 debt and you’ve been trained as a classical theatre actor. There’s always a depression in the theatre. There’s only two givens with choosing acting as a profession: one is you will always be unemployed, always, and it doesn’t matter how much money you make, you’re still always going to be unemployed; and that you have no power. The only power you have is the word ‘no.’”

In short order, McDormand would say ‘yes’ to a six episode arc on one of television’s most prestigious dramas (Hill Street Blues, 1984), a tongue-in-cheek drive-in flick written by the Coens and directed by Sam Raimi (Crimewave, 1985) and a Coen brothers comedy (Raising Arizona, 1987). By this time, McDormand was also married to Joel Coen. While McDormand’s run on a promising cop show called Leg Work only lasted seven episodes on CBS in 1987, the following year, she would reap a lion’s share of attention playing the battered wife of a Klansman (Brad Dourif) in Mississippi Burning, receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress at the age of 31.

Accepting work in a number of high profile movies — the female lead in Sam Raimi’s big studio ticket (Darkman, 1990), Demi Moore’s gal pal (The Butcher’s Wife, 1991), a part in a Robert Altman ensemble (Short Cuts, 1993) – McDorman would be impossible to miss in ‘96. She played a boozing hooker in the heist comedy Palookaville and had an unforgettable scene as the “highly strung” football crazed ex-wife of Chris Cooper in John Sayles’ Lone Star. Appearing as a criminal psychiatrist in Primal Fear that same year, McDormand virtually disappeared into the fabric of the legal thriller starring Richard Gere, Laura Linney and Edward Norton.

McDormand would receive an Emmy nomination for her performance as a soulful mechanic in the 1996 Showtime movie Hidden In America. Holly Hunter had this to say about her friend at that time: “Frances always had wonderful instincts. She’s grown into herself mightily over the last several years, but even when I first knew her I felt she had a real strong sense of who she was. Some actors say they don’t know themselves at all and that’s why they act, because they can disappear into other people. But with Frances I think it comes from a sense of self.”

McDormand had popped up in four of her husband and brother-in-law’s films, but her starring role as Marge Gunderson — the very pregnant police chief of Brainerd, Minnesota — in the Coen brothers 1996 masterwork Fargo cemented her place in film history, earning McDormand an Academy Award for Best Actress in the process. Frances McDormand has grown into an actress whose exuberance and subtle willpower are impossible to miss, or forget: as a German Jew interned in a Japanese prison camp in Paradise Road (1997), a Tony nominated turn as Blanche Dubois in a production of A Streetcar Named Desire staged in Dublin in 1998, starring off-Broadway opposite Billy Cudrup in Dare Clubb’s Oedipus, or Academy Award nominated performances in Almost Famous (2000) and North Country (2005).

McDormand has also stayed active in the 52nd Street Project, a non-profit theater group that mentors kids from Hell’s Kitchen. She summed up her career in 1998 by commenting, “By saying I’m a character actor and that I play supporting roles in films, I’m not being self-deprecating. That’s my agenda — because character actors work until they decide not to work. Leading women can work forever on stage, but they have peaks and valleys in film work. By saying this is what I am, I have control.”

Where Are You Getting This *&#!?
“How Frances McDormand Got Into ‘Minnesota Nice’” By Graham Fuller. The New York Times, 17 March 1996

“I’d Love To Play A Psycho Killer” By Michael Ellison. The Guardian, 26 January 2001

Frances McDormand. Turner Classic Movies

John Goodman was born June 20, 1952 in Afton, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. His father — a mail carrier — died shortly before Goodman turned two, leaving his mother to raise him and two siblings with whatever she could earn working as a cashier at Globe Drug, a waitress at Jack and Phil’s Bar-B-Cue and taking on babysitting or ironing chores. Goodman recalled his entrance into acting. “The first moment was in eighth grade. Doing a play. I forgot my lines. I couldn’t look down and say I forgot my lines. So I got up from the dinner table, walked around, improvising, until I got the thread back. It just seemed natural. We had a good-looking acting teacher, and she gave me a big hug and a kiss.” Attending a local community college, Goodman transferred to Southwest Missouri State on a football scholarship.

When a knee injury landed him on the DL, Goodman gravitated toward Missouri State’s noted drama program, which counted Kathleen Turner and Tess Harper as students. Harper recalled, ”You could see even then that there was an intense struggle going on in his characters. And he was very handsome. He looked like the star football player cast in the lead for the school play.” Graduating in 1975 with a BFA in theatre, he borrowed $1,000 from his brother and lit out for New York. Within a month, Goodman had a job: the role of Thomas Jefferson in a touring dinner theater production of 1776. His New York theater debut came in 1978 alongside another struggling actor named Nathan Lane. Goodman recalled, ”I was Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. People didn’t seem to like the play too much, maybe because we did a disco version.”

At 6’3” and more than 200 pounds, Goodman won work in commercials; including a popular spot for Mennen Skin Bracer. “The people were nice, the money was nice, but I just kept telling myself, ‘I’m drowning here. This is not what I want.’ I started to develop this snotty attitude so I wouldn’t get cast. Sometimes I’d show up hung over. I was drinking a lot back then.” Goodman made his Broadway debut in 1979 in Michael Weller’s Loose Ends, starring Kevin Kline. More regional theater would follow before Goodman landed bit parts in a feature film (Eddie Macon’s Run, 1982) and a TV movie (The Face of Rage, 1983). His break came in 1985, when Goodman was cast as Pap Finn in the Broadway musical Big River.

In search of a big man who could belt out a tune, Talking Heads frontman David Byrne tapped Goodman for his directorial debut, True Stories (1986). More film work followed: an escaped convict in the Coen brothers comedy Raising Arizona (1987) and a crooked New Orleans cop in The Big Easy (1987). Goodman returned to the stage for a Los Angeles production of Antony and Cleopatra in 1987. In the audience was an ABC talent scout searching for someone to play Roseanne Barr’s husband on the sitcom Roseanne. Goodman’s role as Dan Conner would run 10 seasons. During hiatuses, he played Sally Field’s homely hubby in Punchline (1988) and an NYPD detective opposite Al Pacino in Sea of Love (1989). A pair of starring roles — in the comedy King Ralph (1991) and Babe Ruth in The Babe (1992) – were not well received, but Goodman found a fan in Steven Spielberg.

Interviewed for Inside the Actor’s Studio in 2003, Goodman recalled, “I did a movie called Always with Steven Spielberg and the first meeting, the first reading, got the whole cast together, and the first thing out of his mouth was, ‘Ladies and gentleman, I have found my Fred Flintstone.’ … I tried to talk myself out of it. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to hear ‘Yabba dabba do’ for the rest of my life. Then I lightened up and decided to have a little fun with it and we had a great time.” Goodman’s starring role in The Flintstones (1994) was eclipsed by 13 stints as the host of Saturday Night Live from 1989 to 2001. Buck Henry would later remark, “There were people outside the cast that I look at and say, ‘They could have been cast members’ — Tom Hanks, Alec Baldwin, John Goodman and Steve Martin. Those four people were essentially cast members, because they really fit into the format and they understood their work, and they were really great guest hosts.”

John Goodman’s natural affability and the apparent ease with which he improvises with other actors has extended from theater (he returned to Broadway in 2009 opposite Nathan Lane in Waiting For Godot), to TV (Goodman finally won an Emmy Award in 2006, for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series on Studio 60 at the Sunset Strip) to his voice work for Monsters, Inc (2001) and Bee Movie (2007). The Coen brothers wrote the part of the volcanic Charlie Meadows in Barton Fink (1992) for Goodman, as well as the role that remains the actor’s favorite: bitter Vietnam veteran Walter Sobchak in The Big Lebowski (1998). Goodman commented, “When I look at myself on film, I just see shit I should’ve done. I’m incapable of watching myself objectively. Unless it’s The Big Lebowski. The writing is so goddamned good, you can just enjoy it, go along for the ride like everybody else.”

© Joe Valdez

Where Are You Getting This *&#!?
“Being the Big Guy; Actor John Goodman: Funny and Formidable” By Peter de Jonge. New York Magazine, 10 February 1991

“Bat Man” By Allen Barra. Entertainment Weekly, 1 May 1992

“Down Mean Alleys with John Goodman” By Franz Lidz. The New York Times, 8 March 1998

“Big Man Tries Beckett” By Charles McGrath. The New York Times, 16 April 2009

Photo courtesy Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images