“I finally realized that the only way I was going to get my career jump-started was if I created my own project and then held onto it tenaciously, like an abalone, until somebody would put up the money for it. So I conceived a project that had the imagery I could create cost-effectively with my experience in visual effects. It had some of that imagery but not so much that the budget was proportionately large, because I knew no one would trust me with a large budget.” James Cameron interviewed by Robert J. Emery for The Directors: Take One

The Terminator (1984)
Directed by James Cameron
Written by James Cameron with Gale Ann Hurd
Produced by Gale Ann Hurd
107 minutes

By now, anyone with ears should have heard of The Terminator, a down and dirty science fiction action thriller about Adam and Eve on the run from a killer cyborg played by the future governor of California. A surprise box office hit that was championed by enough critics to qualify as a success on every level, few at the time may have realized how extraordinary it was that this movie ever got made, while those studying the DIY production techniques today might miss what a great movie it is. In Los Angeles of the year 2029, machines have risen from the nuclear apocalypse they triggered against mankind to wage what has turned into a losing war against the survivors. In a last desperate act, a cybernetic organism known as a Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is sent to Los Angeles of the year 1984.

Also traveling back in time naked as the day he was born is Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn). After the Terminator visits an unlucky gunsmith (Dick Miller), it begins assassinating every “Sarah Connor” in greater Los Angeles. The next Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) realizes she’s in danger and calls police from a nightclub. The steady Lt. Traxler (Paul Winfield) urges her to stay in public until LAPD can get to her, but the Terminator displays no regard for witnesses as it attacks. Reese rescues Sarah and explains that the Terminator has targeted the young waitress to eliminate her unborn son, who’s destined to lead mankind to victory against the machines. Once captured by police, Traxler, his partner (Lance Henriksen) and a psychologist (Earl Boen) offer Sarah a rational explanation for her ordeal. Their theory lasts as long as it takes for the Terminator to track Sarah to the police station.

While on the payroll of Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, James Cameron was promoted out of the fx department with battlefield speed. When his first gig as director — Piranha II: The Spawning — ended badly for all interested parties, Cameron had to create a project for himself. Mixing low cost locations with a sci-fi element that favored special effects, Cameron backed into the idea of a robotic hitman sent through time, arrived on the title Terminator and wrote most of a screenplay. A former production manager at New World named Gale Ann Hurd helped polish the script, which Cameron sold to her for one dollar in a pact that he’d direct it. Hurd spent two years struggling to raise money for that, finally cajoling Hemdale Film Corporation to finance Terminator and Orion Pictures to distribute it. Shot with a single camera, the picture caught critics and the industry by shock when it opened #1 at the U.S. box office.

The Terminator is the ultimate B-movie. Like the relentless killing machine that became the best known role of the Austrian Oak’s career, Cameron locks in on his target audience and in terms of artistry and intensity, keeps coming. Over-delivering became standard operating procedure for Cameron but in a departure from his big budget action movies, the violence here is as uncompromising as it is audacious, with police officers and even women mowed down or blown apart by gunfire. What lifts The Terminator out of the grindhouse and into the Library of Congress (where it was preserved in 2008) is its foreboding of how dependent we’ve truly become on machines and where we’re headed if we surrender our humanity completely. Unfolding over a 24-hour time frame, the cast is well picked for the nonstop physicality of the story, while the electronic score by Brad Fiedel strikes a powerful doomsday vibe.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 685,301 users: 81% for The Terminator

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: N/A

What do you say?

“We sent Barry Bernardi, who was our location manager, who also served as our associate producer, on a sort of all-expense paid trip across the country looking for the worst city in America. He stopped off at various places and they were much too clean and unworkable. He eventually called us up from St. Louis. There had been a recent fire, which had destroyed about 20% of the downtown area. Block after block was burned-out rubble. In some places there was absolutely nothing, so that you could see three or four blocks away these brownstone buildings in the distance.” Debra Hill interviewed by Michael Beeler for Cinefantastique, September 1996

Escape From New York (1981)
Directed by John Carpenter
Written by John Carpenter and Nick Castle
Produced by Larry Franco, Debra Hill
99 minutes

Juggling dire predictions for the United States as the nation dragged itself out of the 1970s and the creative freneticism of filmmakers in complete rapture with their medium is Debra Hill‘s production of a John Carpenter film, Escape From New York. One of the most enduring B-movies ever made, this low budget cirque du soleil stretched its budget and its vision to the limits, delivering a show quite unlike any action picture, sci-fi movie or western had up to that point in time, or for that matter, since. In the near future of 1997, soaring crime has resulted in modifications to the city of that never sleeps: Manhattan is now the country’s one maximum security prison. Waterways and bridges are mined. Paramilitary units and a containment wall surround the island, where the only rule is that once you go in, you don’t come out.

When Air Force One is hijacked and the president (Donald Pleasance) is jettisoned en route to a summit, Police Commissioner Bob Hauk (Lee Van Cleef) opts for a one-man rescue by convict Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell), nihilist with attitude who “volunteers” when he discovers tiny charges have been injected into his arteries. Given 24 hours to return the president, Plissken lands a glider atop the World Trade Center and with the clock ticking, navigates a Big Apple now the domain of deadly gangs and the worlds they’ve created. Plissken is rescued from cannibals by a cabbie (Ernest Borgnine) who reunites the gunslinger with his compadre Brain (Harry Dean Stanton), who occupies the Public Library solving problems for The Duke (Isaac Hayes), feared leader of the gang that runs New York and have taken the president.

Intrigued by the potential for NYC as an urban jungle after he sat through Death Wish in 1974, USC Film School grad John Carpenter wrote a strange, violent and apocalyptic script no studio wanted to touch titled Escape From New York. Six years later, Carpenter and his producer Debra Hill dusted it off to fulfill the second of a two-picture deal with Avco Embassy Pictures, bringing in a college buddy named Nick Castle to inject some irreverence into the nonstop action. Carpenter dreamed of Clint Eastwood playing Snake Plissken, while his financiers lobbied hard for Charles Bronson. Going against type, a child actor all grown up named Kurt Russell was cast, while the urban decay the filmmakers were desperately searching for was found in St. Louis, where a fire in 1977 had reduced 20% of downtown to ruins.

While the geopolitical landscape of Escape From New York remained purely speculative, Carpenter’s prophecy of rising gang activity and rioting actually came to pass, at least on the West Coast, where a deliriously overcooked 1996 sequel, Escape From L.A., was set. The joys of the original are the character actors who are as solid in front of the camera as the poor and hungry crew is behind them. In addition to Isaac Hayes, Adrienne Barbeau and Tom Atkins bring an understated nobility to their respective roles as gun moll and deputy warden. Carpenter composed a crackerjack musical score synthesized by Alan Howarth, while Dean Cundey utilized newly developed Panavision lenses to light exterior shots with remarkable depth. A classic western at its heart, the film’s “fuck you” attitude toward authority seems to embody the best punk rock music bombarding airwaves at the time.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 65,662 users: 72% for Escape From New York

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: N/A

What do you say?

Promoting I’m Gonna Git You Sucka in 1988, Steve James, who appeared as “Kung Fu Joe” in the blaxploitation spoof, commented: “I always hated that label ‘blaxploitation.’ I wondered, why couldn’t there just be films with black stars? You know, you’d go around the corner from a theater showing one of them, and there’d be Dirty Harry. And nobody was calling it ‘whitesploitation.’” Right on, Steve! So in February, I’ll take a look at ten films featuring black stars from a certain era.

Across 110th Street (1972)
Directed by Barry Shear
Screenplay by Luther Davis, based on the novel Across 110th by Wally Ferris
Produced by Ralph Serpe, Fouad Said
102 minutes

Short on pimps, prostitutes or private dicks, long on urban decay as New York caught a peek at itself in the mirror, Across 110th Street is one of the few legitimate A-movies to emerge from the “blaxploitation” genre. Hitting bookshelves in 1970, Across 110th was the first and last published novel by Wally Ferris, a career television cameraman who worked at WNEW in Manhattan for many years. United Artists acquired film rights and Film Guarantors — a motion picture completion bond company — made what would be a brief splash into production. Producer Fouad Said hired veteran playwright/ screenwriter Luther Davis to adapt a script and Barry Shear, whose only notable feature was the ’60s cult movie Wild In The Streets, to direct; Shear did have hundreds of hours of TV credits on his resume, from Hawaii Five-O to Julia to The Streets of San Francisco.

Anthony Quinn came on board as executive producer, but when the role of Frank Matelli was apparently turned down by John Wayne and Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster, Quinn stepped in front of the camera. Across 110th Street barely qualifies as “blaxploitation”; the same production could have been staged a decade earlier (or later) and would be far better known as the morally complex, street smart film noir it actually is. The bleak but fast moving story examines how one robbery ripples across a community, from the cops struggling to keep the peace, to the perps looking to make a clean getaway, to the civilians trying to make it through the day. While Quinn doesn’t seem fully committed to his character of Archie Bunker cop, Yaphet Kotto and Paul Benjamin are electric. Bobby Womack wrote (with J.J. Johnson) and performed five smooth tunes.

Summer gets a whole lot hotter when three black men — epileptic ex-con Jim Harris (Paul Benjamin), dry cleaner Joe Logart (Ed Bernard) and driver Henry Jackson (Antonio Fargas) — rob a bank operated by the Italian mob in Harlem. The brazen heist ends with two blacks, two Italians and two New York City police officers dead and flips the neighborhood upside down. Don Gennarro (Frank Mascetta) dispatches his dilettante son-in-law Nick D’Salvio (Anthony Franciosa) to restore order by capturing the perpetrators and making an example of them. Meanwhile, Capt. Frank Matelli (Anthony Quinn), a veteran of enforcing his own style of law in Harlem, is disconcerted to learn that the investigation has been handed to Lt. William Pope (Yaphet Kotto), whose youth and ethnicity reflect the new NYPD.

Sent uptown to crack skulls, D’Salvio is greeted as little more than “a punk errand boy” by Doc Johnson (Richard Ward), the kingpin who runs Harlem on behalf of the Italians. Doc dispatches his fearsome right hand man Shevvy (Gilbert Lewis) to piece together information on the robbery, one $100 bill at a time. Shevvy approaches a dancer named Laurelene (Gloria Hendry) for help, unaware that her boyfriend Jim Harris is the man they’re after. Trying to stay one step ahead of the hoods, Matelli and Pope are slowed by contrasting methods in everything from how to question a suspect to how to do favors in Harlem. As the night drags on, the 55-year-old cop realizes that his era is over. Mobsters, police and thieves finally meet atop an abandoned tenement on Lenox Avenue & 142nd Street, where Harris is holed up and armed to the teeth.

What do you say?

“Portmanteau” is French for “coat rack”. Lewis Carroll appropriated the word in 1871 for Through The Looking Glass to explain two words merged into one; “chortle” is a portmanteau Carroll invented, while “Internet”, “blog” and “sexploitation” are three he did not. In the month of January, I’ll take a look at portmanteau films, where we find different coats hanging in the same closet, whether tailored by one filmmaker or the collaborative effort of several.

Four Rooms (1995)
Directed by Allison Anders (segment: The Missing Ingredient), Alexandre Rockwell (segment: The Wrong Man), Robert Rodriguez (segment: The Misbehavers), Quentin Tarantino (segment: The Man From Hollywood)
Written by Allison Anders (segment: The Missing Ingredient), Alexandre Rockwell (segment: The Wrong Man), Robert Rodriguez (segment: The Misbehavers), Quentin Tarantino (segment: The Man From Hollywood)
Produced by Lawrence Bender
97 minutes

A victory lap by the studio that brought you Pulp Ficton, Four Rooms turns into a demolition derby. Alexandre Rockwell hit upon the idea for a portmanteau film tied together by the hijinks of a bellhop on New Year’s Eve after he befriended Allison Anders and Quentin Tarantino at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival, where their career calling cards In The Soup, Gas Food Lodging and Reservoir Dogs were on the bill (Robert Rodriguez joined the club when he met Rockwell and Tarantino at the Toronto Film Festival with his calling card El Mariachi). The role of the bellhop was conceived with Steve Buscemi in mind, but when he declined, Tim Roth took the part. With Miramax Films footing a budget that settled at $4 million, Four Rooms was rushed into production while Tarantino was being crowned master of the universe on the press tour for Pulp Fiction in the fall of 1994.

Author Peter Biskind’s account — in Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance and the Rise of Independent Film — was that Four Rooms was produced in complete acrimony, with studio co-chairman Harvey Weinstein taking a 160-minute cut and lopping over an hour off, eviscerating segments by Anders and Rockwell, who blamed the toxic end product on the hubris of Tarantino. Officially the worst effort “QT” has yet written and directed, the concept behind Four Rooms is completely (and refreshingly) bug nuts to begin with, as if Jerry Schatzberg, Elaine May, George Lucas & Steven Spielberg agreed to make an anthology film together in 1976. There are excellent ideas at play here, an animated title sequence for instance, but like almost everything else in the movie, it’s indicative of how rushed the whole enterprise appears. Rodriguez’s contribution is far and away the most coherent.

On New Year’s Eve at the once glorious “Hotel Mon Signor” in Los Angeles, the crusty bellhop (Marc Lawrence) passes the torch to his heir apparent, Ted (Tim Roth), advising him to “stay clear of night clerks, hookers, kids and married arguments.” In the first of four misadventures, Ted escorts a coven of witches (Valeria Golino, Madonna, Alicia Witt, Sammi Davis, Lili Taylor) to the honeymoon suite, where their ritual to resurrect a 1950s pinup queen from the afterlife hits a snag and requires the aloof Eva (Ione Skye) to elicit a specimen from Ted. Summoned to refill the ice for a Yuppie party in Room 404, Ted then bumbles into a room where a deranged husband (David Proval) has bound and gagged his wife Angela (Jennifer Beals) and lies in wait with a gun for her supposed lover to join them.

In Room 309, a couple (Antonio Banderas, Tamlyn Tomita) depart for a night on the town. The man offers Ted $300 to check on his children (Danny Verduzco, Lana McKissak) every 30 minutes. Making it $500, the “pain the ass” kids torment Ted by discovering a hypodermic needle and the body of a hooker in the room. On the brink of quitting, Ted phones the apartment of his boss, where a stoner (Marisa Tomei) answers and tries to lift his spirits. The boss (Kathy Griffin) talks Ted into staying long enough to service the penthouse, where movie star Chester Rush (Quentin Tarantino) has requested a block of wood, a bucket of ice and a meat cleaver. Chester’s love for “The Man From Rio” episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents has inspired a wager with his assistant (Paul Calderon) that Ted discovers he has a role in.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 14,449 users: 72% for Four Rooms

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

What do you say?

As days get shorter, nights get longer and All Hallow’s Eve beckons, I can say that I won’t be wandering the streets dressed as Chewbacca begging for candy. What I can’t say is whether or not at my age, horror movies still have any surprises left in them. In the search for originality, it’d be a good idea to start anywhere but Hollywood. For the month of October, I take a trip around the globe to see what’s scaring some of my favorite countries these days.

The Strangers (2008)
Directed by Bryan Bertino
Written by Bryan Bertino
Produced by Doug Davison, Roy Lee, Nathan Kahane
86 minutes (theatrical version)/ 88 minutes (unrated DVD version)

Freaks, psychos and a leprechaun have launched horror franchises, but The Strangers includes three of the best villains to come along in a while with a kitchen sink thriller that among other things actually offers a point of view. Bryan Bertino had written four scripts in his life and was working as a grip on a low budget movie. Bertino had read Helter Skelter as a kid after his father actually gave him a copy and he was inspired to write a thriller that focused not so much on killers, but the victims who never knew who was targeting them or why. In the fall of 2004, Bertino’s script The Strangers landed him a manager, who found buyers in Doug Davison and Roy Lee of Vertigo Entertainment. The producers partnered with Nathan Kahane, president of Mandate Pictures, who had a distribution deal with Rogue Pictures.

After other directors were considered, Bertino was offered the chance to make his feature film debut on a budget of roughly $9 million. The exterior of the ‘70s era ranch house was found in Timmonsville, South Carolina. Interiors were filmed in a warehouse in nearby Florence, where the production constructed a collapsible house they could shoot inside. While the couple in Bertino’s script is never really engaging, Liv Tyler gives a gutsy performance that’s in another league from the dead teenagers of the horror genre. When it comes to terror, the rookie filmmaker delivers with the aid of a sensational sound mix. The Strangers is not a movie to be watched alone in the dark. Finally, the masked boogeymen are a gift of imagination, conjured out of darkness with identities and motives left mysteries for the viewer to interpret.

On February 11, 2005, Kristen McKay (Liv Tyler) and her boyfriend James Hoyt (Scott Speedman) return from a wedding reception in the wee hours to the rustic summer home of the Hoyt family. With their relationship on the rocks after Kristen turned down James’s marriage proposal, the couple are in the throes of making up when they’re interrupted by a knock on the door. Obscured in shadow, a blonde asks: “Is Tamara home?” Turning the stranger away, James offers to pick up some cigarettes for his soon to be ex-girlfriend. Left alone, Kristen hears another knock from the same woman asking the same question. Kristen calls James on the house phone and urges him to come back, but the line goes dead. Surrounded by frightening noises, she looks out a window to find Man In the Mask (Kip Weeks) staring back at her.

Convinced that someone has been in the house, Kristen retreats to a bedroom until her boyfriend returns. From the garage, the couple observes Dollface (Gemma Ward), the strange blonde, standing in the street with a mask covering her face. James leaves the house to retrieve his cell phone out of the car, but is spooked by a third masked stranger, Pin-Up Girl (Laura Margolis). Attempting to flee in their car, Kristen & James are rear ended by a pickup truck in the driveway. James manages to locate and load the family shotgun and when Man in the Mask takes apart the door with an axe, James repels the home invasion. A friend (Glenn Howerton) drops by to check on the couple but does not live long enough to render assistance. Without knowing who their attackers are or what they want, Kristen & James try to survive the night.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 55,773 users: 48% for The Strangers

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 47 for The Strangers

What do you say?

As days get shorter, nights get longer and All Hallow’s Eve beckons, I can say that I won’t be wandering the streets dressed as Chewbacca begging for candy. What I can’t say is whether or not at my age, horror movies still have any surprises left in them. In the search for originality, it’d be a good idea to start anywhere but Hollywood. For the month of October, I take a trip around the globe to see what’s scaring some of my favorite countries these days.

[Rec] (2007)
Directed by Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza
Written by Jaume Balagueró, Luis Berdejo, Paco Plaza
Produced by Julio Fernández
78 minutes

In terms of thrills, [Rec] offers everything in the carnival except corndogs. The film was willed into existence out of a conversation between directors Jaume Balagueró (Darkness) and Paco Plaza (Second Name) over horror films, what they considered scary about them and what they didn’t. Agreeing that credibility seemed to be key, they came up with the idea of co-directing a first person, single camera thriller in the style of a TV news report. Sketching a scenario with Luis Berdejo, the project attracted Julio Fernandez, chairman of Barcelona based Filmax Entertainment, which put up a budget of roughly €1.5 million ($1.9 million USD). Casting unknowns and using director of photography Pablo Rosso to “play” the cameraman in the film, Balagueró & Plaza shot [Rec] chronologically, without giving their actors dialogue to recite or scripted events to anticipate.

Released November 2007 in Spain, [Rec] was a box office hit in its native land. It’s launched a 2009 sequel [Rec] 2, as well as a U.S. remake starring Jennifer Carpenter titled Quarantine (2008) which neither Balagueró or Plaza had a hand in. The Spanish language original is like an episode of Cops, if patrol officers and a camera crew were dispatched to an outbreak of living dead. Anyone adverse to shakycam or zombies might tire of the conceit quickly, but like a funhouse that someone put real ingenuity into, [Rec] is an enjoyable brand of cheap, with an intense beginning, no middle and terrifying ending that takes advantage of its medium well. Even at 78 minutes, there doesn’t seem to be anything that could have been added to reach a feature length running time, which says a lot about the limitations of this style, but also the dedication the filmmakers show to it.

News correspondent Angela Vidal (Manuela Velasco) and her unseen cameraman Pablo are escorted through a fire station on a segment for the TV show While You’re Sleeping. Embedded with rescue workers Alex (David Virt) and Manu (Ferran Terraza), a call comes in for a person trapped in an apartment. Entering the lobby, the rescuers confront bewildered tenants who report they heard an old woman screaming. Joining a veteran police officer (Vicente Gil) and his nervous young partner (Jorge-Yamam Serrano), they find the old woman semi-naked, bloody and disoriented. The older cop is attacked and bitten in the neck. Carrying the officer downstairs, the rescuers and tenants find that the building has apparently been sealed off by authorities and put under some type of quarantine.

Hell breaks loose. Alex plummets into the lobby with a bite mark on his cheek. A medical intern (Carlos Vicente) cares for the two victims. A hysterical mother (Maria Lanua) cares for a 4-year-old daughter suffering from tonsillitis. Authorities refuse to let anyone leave the building until a health inspector can check them for biological or nuclear contamination. Angela and Pablo continue to film as the two victims exhibit the same mindless aggression of the old woman and attack. The health inspector (Ben Temple) reveals that a dog treated by a veterinarian for these same symptoms was traced back to the building. The virus seems to spread through saliva. With more people being bit and transformed into freaked out killers, Angela and Pablo keep filming long enough to discover the truth behind what’s happening.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 30,079 users: 77% for [Rec]

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

What do you say?

Roman Polanski was born August 18, 1933 in Paris. The sordid details of his flight from the United States in 1978 have often overshadowed discussion of the director’s work, which at the age of 77, includes one of the best films of 2010. Is he a world class filmmaker? In the month of August, I take a look at ten directed by Roman Polanski.

Knife in the Water (1962)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Screenplay by Jerzy Skolimowski, story by Jakub Goldberg & Roman Polanski
Produced by Stanislaw Zylewicz
94 minutes

The biggest surprise in Knife in the Water is that the filmmaking is so in tune that the script doesn’t need surprises to hold our attention. Five years of study at the Polish Film School in Lodz led Roman Polanski to the idea for a feature length thriller to take place in a confined space, though the backdrop he selected was the Mazury lake district he’d camped and sailed. Receiving a go-ahead from “Kamera” Productions — a state owned film company in Poland — Polanski and his friends Jakub Goldberg and Jerzy Skolimowski finished a script in the summer of 1959. Skolimowski had hit upon the idea for the action to span a 24-hour period. Rejected by the Ministry of Culture on the grounds that the script had no social value, Polanski was given a year to resubmit it. By the spring of 1961, a loosening of Soviet control in the arts permitted Knife in the Water to move forward with Polanski directing.

Opening March 1962, Polish critics slammed Knife in the Water. Premier Wladyslaw Gomulka denounced it as a film that “displayed the kind of thinking for which there is no place anywhere in the Communist world.” But when it was shown at the Venice Film Festival in August, word of mouth began to build. The film arrived in the United States in October 1963 for the first New York Film Festival. A critical sensation, it even picked up an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film. Knife in the Water is an antidote to contemporary thrillers stocked with psychos or dead bodies. The subtle power games between the characters build to an inevitable clash while the nautical atmosphere and attractive actors keeps the picture exciting throughout. Krzysztof Komeda composed an elegant jazz musical score that is perfect for the film’s cool decadence.

The married couple of Krystyna (Jolanta Umecka) and Andrzej (Leon Niemczyk) take a Sunday drive in the countryside. Affluent enough to own a car but just barely able to conceal their contempt for each other, the afternoon suddenly becomes more exciting for the pair when a 19-year-old boy (Zygmunt Malanowicz) hitchhiking in the middle of the road is almost mowed down by Andrzej. The couple gives the kid a ride to a marina, where they plan to take their sailboat out for a day and night on the lake. Seeking to flex his superiority, Andrzej invites the kid to come with them. A drifter more accustomed to the woods than the water, the boy receives training in basic seamanship from Andrzej, a sportswriter and former sailor. Krystyna seems to enjoy the presence of the younger specimen, who reveals a switchblade knife in his possession.

Sensitive to being bossed around and dominated by Andrzej, the boy guts the afternoon out, perhaps due to his attraction for Andrzej’s wife, a skilled bosun in her own right. While husband and wife cavort in the lake — leaving the boy alone on the boat when he claims he can’t swim — the wind suddenly picks up and it’s Krystyna who climbs back into the boat and gets it under control. On their way back to dry land to drop their passenger off, Andrzej runs aground and when it begins to storm, the three of them take shelter for the night below deck. Krystyna and the boy wake early and feeling threatened by the attention she’s given him, Andrzej throws the knife overboard and in the tussle that follows, makes the boy disappear below the waves as well. The couple is forced to then decide what to do.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average 1,989 users: 85% for Knife In the Water

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

What do you say?

In the month of June, Joe Valdez “takes over” the programming of the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles with a series of double features on his favorite film themes. Joe is not a professional curator and may not even show potential as an amateur one, but comments and recommendations for future double features are welcome below.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)
Directed by Joseph Sargent
Screenplay by Peter Stone, based on the novel by Morton Freedgood (as John Godey)
Produced by Gabriel Katzka, Edgar J. Scherick
104 minutes

Listening to a Beastie Boys LP or watching The Taking of Pelham One Two Three will not only assist a visitor in the successful navigation of the New York subway system, but for 1 hour 44 minutes, the latter is an electrifying 1970s cops and robbers thriller that captures the magnitude of NYC as well as the mettle of many of the people you’re likely to encounter there. Based on a 1973 bestseller by Morton Freedgood — a PR hack who published several potboilers under the name “John Godey” — Hollywood came calling during a bleak time for the Big Apple, which was depressed economically and threatening to crack with crime and ethnic tension. In an effort to turn the city’s fortunes around, Mayor John Lindsey invited the film industry to use Manhattan as a back lot, but his office initially found in this script exactly the type of social distortion he was trying to clean up.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is one of those once in a blue moon entertainments that fires on every cylinder from start to finish, sharply adapted by Peter Stone and supremely well cast right down to walk-on roles. If anything is better than “Walter Matthau as Lt. Zachary Garber” and “Jerry Stiller as Lt. Rico Patrone”, I don’t know what is; the equivalent would be Ricky Gervais and Patton Oswalt starring in a $150 million summer action movie; in other words, unlikely. Even more so than The Fugitive, this is an E-ticket ride through a great metropolis, with accents and plot developments that feel singular to that city above any other. TV journeyman Joseph Sargent does a yeoman’s job balancing action across different locations, while the peerless camerawork by Owen Roizman and musical score by David Shire send this movie into another stratosphere.

On a subway train departing Pelham Bay Park Station in the Bronx at 1:23 in the afternoon, men sporting long coats, hats and wearing fake moustaches and eyeglasses move into position. Identifying each other as Mr. Blue (Robert Shaw), Mr. Green (Martin Balsam), Mr. Grey (Hector Elizondo) and Mr. Brown (Earl Hindman) and armed with submachine guns, the men access the motorman’s compartment and hijack the train, using Green’s expertise as a conductor to stop in a tunnel somewhere between 28^th Street and 23^rd Street. At the Transit Authority command center, the wry Lt. Zachary Garber (Walter Matthau) and Lt. Rico Patrone (Jerry Stiller) have their boredom interrupted when Blue radios threatening to execute hostages starting in one hour unless a ransom of $1 million is delivered.

While the Mayor (Lee Wallace) dithers over how New York voters will respond to his decisions — negatively, it seems, no matter what he does — his deputy (Tony Roberts) and wife (Doris Roberts) advise that it would be wise to pay the hijackers and avoid risking another Attica. Sparring with Blue over the radio, Garber is stumped over how the meticulous ex-British Army colonel plans to escape an underground tunnel. When a sharpshooter fires off a round on accident, Blue makes good on his threats and executes one of the hostages. With the ransom cash running late, Garber thinks fast and produces a ruse to prevent Blue from shooting anyone else, including an undercover transit cop whose identity remains unknown. As Pelham 123 gets moving again and hurdles toward Manhattan, Garber hits on how the hijackers plan to escape.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 208 users: 94% for The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

What do you say?

What the *&#! Is This About?
On May 28, 1976 – the last day of the school year at “Lee High School” somewhere in Texas – quarterback Randall “Pink” Floyd (Jason London) faces an existential crisis over whether to sign a pledge promising not to take drugs or engage in summer activities which might jeopardize the “goal of a championship season in ‘76.” His teammates (Sasha Jenson, Cole Hauser, Jason O. Smith, Ben Affleck) spend the last day of school sanding down paddles and chasing 8th grade boys home for their freshman initiations. This includes Mitch Kramer (Wiley Wiggins), whose older sis Jodi (Michelle Burke) seals his doom by asking her classmates to “take it easy” on her brother. The senior girls (Parker Posey, Joey Lauren Adams) organize the 8th grade girls and spill condiments on them in the parking lot for their initiation.

One of the 8th grade pledges (Christin Hinojosa) catches the eye of a journalism geek (Anthony Rapp). His friends (Adam Goldberg, Marissa Ribisi) plan to attend a big keg party, but when it’s busted, end up cruising around looking for something else to do with all the other kids. This includes Slater (Rory Cochrane), a stoner whose access to party favors makes him a VIP presence at whatever party is in the offing, and the beatnik Michelle (Milla Jovovich) who steals two bronze statues to paint them in the likeness of Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons of KISS. Mitch eludes his tormentors long enough to befriend Randall, who welcomes the self-respecting freshman into his social circle. Hanging around this scene is Wooderson (Matthew McConaughey), a grown adolescent who spreads word that the kegger will convene under the Moon Tower.

Who Should Be Held Responsible?
Born in Houston and raised in the town of Huntsville, Richard Linklater would drop out of local Sam Houston State University and take work on an oilrig in the Gulf of Mexico instead of finishing college. He saved enough money to buy a Super 8 camera and by 1985 had settled in Austin, where he began making short films and founded the Austin Film Society with cinematographer Lee Daniel. A feature film that Linklater shot in the summer of 1989 for $23,000 – a free form examination of Austin’s subculture titled Slacker – became a sensation in arthouses and film festivals two years later. This got the attention of producer Jim Jacks, who – with partner Sean Daniel – had a development deal with Universal Pictures. Linklater recalled, “I told him I had this teenage rock and roll film that I felt was my next movie.”

Richard Linklater added, “I’d always had this idea for a strange high school film. I remember being a high school freshman in Huntsville and driving around all night with three or four guys in a Le Mans, listening to an eight-track tape of ZZ Top’s ‘Fandango’. Eight-tracks never ended; a song would get quiet, you would hear a click, and then it would pick back up. So I wanted the film to start with a close-up shot of ‘Fandango’ sliding into the eight-track player and then have a whole movie in this car, meeting people who drove up next to you, going through the drive-through, getting out and getting beer – basically always in and around the car. But at that time, teen movies were John Hughes movies. There was so much drama. Maybe I’m an undramatic guy, but I remember a complete lack of anything big going on in high school. The essence of being a teen to me was a whole lot of energy and music but nothing much technically happening. On any given night there wasn’t a car wreck. There was no one impregnated, no huge love story from the wrong side of the tracks.”

To assemble a cast, Jim Jacks and Sean Daniel brought in Don Phillips. As he’d done for Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Phillips met virtually every up and coming actor and actress during the auditions in Los Angeles. Phillips recalled, “Vince Vaughn was there, but he was competing with Cole and Ben, and he didn’t get it. Neither did Claire Danes, whom Rick Linklater and I loved but was more of an Eastern-school type. And poor Ashley Judd – she never even got to meet Rick. Then I get to Austin, and that’s when I met Renée Zellweger. I went, ‘Isn’t this girl interesting?’ When Rick and I saw her together, we read her and thought, ‘Ahh, man! Too bad that everybody’s set, because she would have been perfect.’ So we gave her that teeny part in the parking lot.” Wiley Wiggins was walking out of Quackenbush’s when producer Anne Walker-McBay convinced him to audition for a part; the 15-year-old ended up cast as Mitch.

Due to graduation ceremonies at the University of Texas, Don Phillips was making due with a room at the Hyatt and hanging out in the bar. A part-time waiter named Matthew McConaughey strolled in with his girlfriend. When the bartender mentioned that Phillips was in town to produce a movie, McConaughey went over to introduce himself. He’d appeared in a music video and a beer commercial, but had never acted in a movie. After drinking and talking golf with Phillips for hours, the casting director proposed McConaughey come in and read for the role of Wooderson. Linklater recalled, “I thought he was too good-looking. Matthew looked like he’d do fine with college girls; but I needed Wooderson to be a little creepier. But Matthew just sunk into character. His eyes shut to little quarter slots, and he said, ‘Hey, man, you got a joint?’ He just became that guy. I thought, ‘Okay, don’t cut your hair. Can you grow a beard and a mustache?’

After Jim Jacks and Sean Daniel had convinced Universal that Richard Linklater might be another George Lucas and Dazed and Confused could be the next American Graffiti, shooting commenced July 1992 in Austin on a budget of $6.9 million. In terms of style, Linklater wanted to make a movie that felt like it had actually been shot in 1976. He recalled, “I didn’t use a Steadicam, for instance. Had I been able to get film stocks from that era, I would’ve. I just wanted it to look like a ‘70s movie, in a way. Blown out windows, just a certain style. I was very much playing off that. The way music was used in movies pre-MTV, for instance. Sort of a storytelling narrative element to music, more along the lines of Easy Rider, Mean Streets, Graffiti, even, you go back to Scorpio Rising, films like that, but pre-MTV influence, so, I was very consciously looking at that era stylistically.”

With a 38 day shooting schedule, cast and crew worked on the fly. Linklater recalled, “I wanted a montage sequence at the beer bust to give the essence of the party. But it’s hard to script the essence of a party, and if you don’t have it in the script, you don’t have it on the shooting schedule. So we had about thirty minutes and a couple of cameras to get it. We cranked up the music, asked people to move, and followed them around. I’d run up to Rory Cochrane and whisper, ‘Okay, you’re trying to score some weed off somebody,’ and he’d go with it and we’d film.” When a scripted crush between Tony and Cynthia failed to spark much chemistry between Anthony Rapp and Marissa Ribisi, the director suggested maybe her character should go for Wooderson instead. Ribisi recalled, “I thought, ‘Oh, this is genius.’ He’s everything she’s against. She’s this girl with a future, kind of preachy, and suddenly she’s into this guy who only likes high school chicks. She’s so smitten she can’t speak.”

One of Richard Linklater’s first disputes with Universal concerned the film’s language. “They were in some delusion about this could be a PG-13 movie if we had less cussing. ‘I’m like, ‘Are you kidding? Teenagers drinking, driving, smoking pot, this is an R rated movie.’ But they: ‘Well, less. Maybe there could be less.’ They were afraid they were gonna offend people.” The real battle came over the soundtrack. In need of a $300,000 advance to begin obtaining the clearances for the songs he’d selected, the studio suggested that Linklater instead consider using contemporary bands singing cover versions. This was seen as a way to get the movie exposure on MTV. Linklater recalled, “At that moment we didn’t have any money, and I still needed it to finish the film. There was a threat that I’d have to start cutting songs. Dylan’s ‘Hurricane’ alone cost $80,000. Finally the studio said, ‘Okay, we’ll come up with the money, but only if you give up all your royalties from the soundtrack.’ I said, ‘Fine. Just don’t screw with my movie. You can rob me, take everything I have. Just don’t kill my family.’”

When released September 1993 in the U.S., critics were unequivocal in their praise. Marjorie Baumgarten, the Austin Chronicle: “Dazed and Confused is one of the most exciting movies of this, or any other, year. It’s smart, funny, and wonderfully crafted and performed. The movie is structured as a period ensemble piece about a specific group of teenagers on the last day of high school in 1976. But it also functions as a timeless social study of high school character types and a disclosure of commonplace abuses of power in this social system.” Peter Ranier, the Los Angeles Times: “It’s a highly enjoyable spree that doesn’t add up to a whole lot by the end. But you don’t necessarily want it to add up to anything – that’s part of its charm.” Janet Maslin, the New York Times: “No film whose plot involves the quest for Aerosmith tickets can take itself too seriously. So Dazed and Confused has an enjoyably playful spirit, one that amply compensates for its lack of structure.”

Unfortunately, Dazed and Confused had its box office fate sealed months earlier, when it went before test audiences in Los Angeles. Linklater recalled, “You’d watch the movie with a test audience – this is the down side of making a studio film – you’d watch the film with an audience, and they’d laugh and applaud and have a great time and then the cards would come back ‘Poor.’ You know, we tested poorly. So those audiences at those testings more or less killed this film for being a wide release and we just got marginalized. It was kind of a studio production with an independent release, sort of the worst of both worlds.” Never expanding beyond 214 theaters in the U.S., Dazed and Confused scored only $7.9 million at the box office. Over time though – as the film’s reputation among college students blossomed – sales of VHS tapes and DVDs would ultimately top $30 million. Two volumes of the soundtrack – Dazed and Confused and Even More Dazed and Confused – have sold more than two million copies.

Looking back on Dazed and Confused ten years later, Richard Linklater contrasted the experience to the one he had working independently on Slacker. “It was probably the biggest leap I’ve ever made. Like doing a film where someone else paid for it. It was technically my third film, I had done one film completely alone, then I did one film with a crew of about six or seven and that’s a big leap there, to communicate with a crew and throw your ideas out there. This was a bigger leap even still, like how you make it within the system with a really tight schedule with all the previews and all that stuff. A lot of people fall apart at that level. I think the studio was sick of me and didn’t like me by the end, but I was pretty happy to get out alive with the film that I wanted to make. If I had listened to them and done everything that they wanted, we wouldn’t be talking today, I’ll put it that way.”

Should I Care?
Gramercy Pictures – the short lived distributor launched in 1993 as a venture between Universal Pictures and PolyGram – had apparently exhausted their marketing ideas by the time they arrived on the High Times approach, issuing posters with taglines like “See It with a Bud”. The MPAA objected to the drug references and ordered Gramercy make alterations. Richard Linklater – who had no input into the campaign – lamented, ”They were marketing it for dumb teenagers, but what are you gonna do?” Ultimately, this is a movie that stoners just don’t deserve. Half Baked, they deserve. Dazed and Confused on the other hand is a film whose token toker ends up with maybe three lines of dialogue, tops. Instead of jokes, what Linklater seems to be going for is a brutally honest reevaluation of 18 hours of his childhood. Banned substances play a role, but so do music, clothes, healthy doses cynicism and the relationships recalled by someone who remembers being there.

While the script digs no more than skin deep into its characters, when it comes to casting, Dazed and Confused is a master class. Matthew McConaughey was the discovery of the picture, but Linklater gets terrific performances from both the pros (Adam Goldberg, Marissa Ribisi, Parker Posey, Cole Hauser) and the Austin area novices in his ensemble. The lengths Linklater went to accurately depicting his youth – in all its petty cruelties and substance use – gives the film a real edge, softened at the right moments by the presence of Wiley Wiggins as the empathetic freshman navigating his way through this madness. Linklater’s take on his teenage years refuses to lay any moralizing or tired plot devices on the audience. Instead of feeling phony, the experience is alive and fun, enabling us to become active observers in the rituals and celebrations of another decade’s youth. Dazed and Confused feels like one of the most truthful expositions on high school ever made. This is Linklater’s best film.

© Joe Valdez

Where Are You Getting This *&#!?
“Smoke Got In Their Eyes” By Jessica Shaw. Entertainment Weekly, 8 October 1993

“The Spirit of ‘76” By John Spong. Texas Monthly, October 2003

“Making Dazed – Catch You Later Dude, Ten Years Later” By Emily Christianson. Film Radar, 14 September 2005

Dazed and Confused. Criterion Collection (2006).

Synopsis
Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the citizens of Southern California brace for an invasion. In a spoof of Jaws (with the same stuntwoman, Susan Backlinie), a nude swimmer goes for a dip in the ocean, but instead of a shark, a Japanese submarine surfaces, dangling her on the periscope. The captain (Toshiro Mifune) is in search of something honorable to attack in California and settles on Hollywood, despite the objections of a German officer (Christopher Lee) that his crew will never find it. We’re next introduced to a busboy (Bobby Di Cicco) who dreams of winning a Jitterbug contest with his sweetheart (Dianne Kay). Serving coffee to a U.S. Army tank crew – which includes Dan Aykroyd and John Candy – the busboy’s dance moves upset one of the tank crewmen (Treat Williams) and a food fight ensues.

Army Air Corps pilot Wild Bill Kelso (John Belushi) lands his P-40 at a gas station in Death Valley. In search of a squadron of Zeros he believes he lost over Fresno, Kelso succeeds only in blowing up the gas station. We then meet the stoic General Stilwell (Robert Stack), who’s been assigned to protect California from attack. Stilwell’s aide (Tim Matheson) recalls that the general’s smoldering secretary (Nancy Allen) is aroused by planes and schemes to get her airborne in one. Meanwhile, the Japanese sub crew wanders ashore, where they abduct Christmas tree farmer Hollis Wood (Slim Pickens) to help them locate Hollywood. Also part of the insanity is a homeowner (Ned Beatty) whose lawn turns into an artillery range, two civilians (Murray Hamilton and Eddie Deezen) stuck on a ferris wheel, and Colonel Mad Man Maddox (Warren Oates) who’s convinced the Japs have an airfield in the alfalfa fields of Pomona.

Production history
Graduating from USC Film School, Robert Zemeckis & Bob Gale interned at Universal Studios. They wrote an episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker that made it on the air (in January 1975) but what they really wanted was to write and direct their own movies. One of their scripts was about a radical group that steals a Sherman tank and threatens to blow up the corporate headquarters of an oil company. “The Bobs” got their spec – Tank – to John Milius, a USC alum who’d been awarded a four-picture deal at MGM following the success of The Wind and the Lion. Zemeckis recalls, “He wasn’t crazy about the story, but he liked the way we wrote and he said, ‘Have you guys got any other ideas for any other movies?’ And we immediately came up with this outrageous concept of hysteria on the home front during World War II. I have to credit John; it was my recollection that John thought of the title, and he said, ‘Hey that’s a great idea and we’ll call it The Night the Japs Attacked.’”

Gale recalled their meeting with Milius by stating, “And we told him we had come across in the research for Tank, we’d come across this very fascinating historical event where the city of Los Angeles – it was actually February 1942 – thought that there was an air raid, that Japanese were bombing L.A. They blacked out the city for six hours and thousands of rounds of ammunition were shot up at the sky at nothing. And we thought it was just a wonderfully absurd historical event, could make a great movie.” Milius – whose deal at MGM stipulated two pictures he’d write and direct, and two pictures he’d produce – had researched General “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell for a script. “And it was Milius who said, ‘Yeah! We can put General Stillwell in this movie! He could be running around, being the voice of sanity in all this insane stuff.’ … So he hired Bob and me to write one of the pictures that he was going to produce and he said: ‘The title of it should be The Night the Japs Attacked.’ And for the first year and a half of it or so, that was what the title was.”

Zemeckis & Gale wrote two drafts of The Night the Japs Attacked for MGM, but production chief Dan Melnick was not amused, particularly by the word “Japs” in the title. Undeterred, Milius raved about the project to a buddy of his named Steven Spielberg, who recalled, “The first time I heard about 1941 it was called The Night the Japs Attacked. And I heard it during an afternoon when I was skeet shooting with my friend John Milius and our then two protégés Bob Zemeckis & Bob Gale. And the two Bobs had come up with this crazy screenplay they had written and they told me about it. And I think what got me to want to read the script was they described at one point the scene where the Japanese they think they’re attacking an important strategic target but in fact have targeted Pacific Ocean Amusement Park and blow the ferris wheel, which rolls down the pier and into the water … And I must say there’s a part of me in my nice conservative life that is probably as crazy and insane as Milius and the two guys who wrote that script that really got me attracted to the project.”

Immersed in pre-production on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Spielberg committed to direct what he was calling The Rising Sun next, inviting Zemeckis & Gale to the soundstage in Alabama where he was shooting his UFO epic to work on the script. Zemeckis recalls, “It was the opposite of a disciplined type of collaboration. It was an outrageous collaboration and we were just sort of topping each other with how we could just put more outrageous spin on every incident that we wrote. And of course Bob and my mission was every time Steven would get an idea, no matter how outrageous it was, we worked very diligently and spent hours and days to try and figure out a way to actually fit it into the structure of the story. So it basically just kept accumulating. That’s why I call it the kitchen sink. We just kept throwing everything into the screenplay, including the kitchen sink until it just became this mountain of gags.”

Spielberg vowed “I will not make this movie if it costs a penny over $12 million” so many times that it ended up (as a joke by Zemeckis & Gale) on the title page of the script. But as the gags piled up, so did the budget. Columbia Pictures – now run by Dan Melnick – partnered with Universal Pictures to finance what would be Spielberg’s fourth feature film at a production cost of $26 million. Columbia attained international rights, while Universal was set to distribute the picture in the United States. Meanwhile, the script continued to undergo changes. Zemeckis recalls, “Mine and Bob’s, our first intention when we wrote the early drafts of the screenplay was that it was supposed to be a very black, black comedy and it was very dark and very cynical. And a lot of that was tempered by Steven and a lot of the cast that came in, so the film shifted from this very dark satire to more of a screwball comedy.”

Wild Bill Kelso was a minor character who flew in at the very end of the script, but was inserted into much more of the action once John Belushi took the role. The character of a farmer – who bumbled onto the Japanese after they wandered ashore – didn’t even have dialogue, but once Spielberg cast Slim Pickens in the part, Zemeckis & Gale were tasked with beefing up his role as well. Dan Aykroyd, John Candy, Tim Matheson, Nancy Allen, Bobby Di Cicco, Toshiro Mifune, Christopher Lee, Ned Beatty, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, Eddie Deezen, Warren Oates and Robert Stack (taking a role John Wayne and Charlton Heston both turned down) also joined the cast. Once the film’s immense miniature and physical effects work was factored into the schedule, 1941 took 247 days to shoot, wrapping in May 1979. The final budget would rest at $31.5 million.

When 1941 was ready to go before an audience in October 1979, Spielberg chose the Medallion Theater in Dallas, the scene of wildly successful test screenings for all three of his feature films. But as his latest entertainment began to unreel, audience satisfaction evaporated. Spielberg recalls, “That was a preview where, you know, people laughed and tittered at the beginning of the film, then as the film got noisier and more confusing and more riotous, the laughter became just kind of wonderment and wonderment became kind of amazement and I even saw people holding their ears. I actually looked over the whole preview audience and midway through the film – I had never seen this before at a preview – audiences, at least twenty percent of the audience, had their hands over their ears. I’ve seen audiences covering their eyes during Jaws, but never over their ears. That’s a whole new experience for me. And I knew we were in trouble at that point.”

1941 garnered varying degrees of praise from critics like David Denby in the New Yorker, but the bad news was plentiful. Vincent Canby, the New York Times: “It may possibly be that Mr. Spielberg has chosen gigantic size and unlimited quantity as his comedy method in the awareness that he has no gift whatsoever for small-scale comic conceits. The slapstick gags, obviously choreographed with extreme care, do not build to boffs; they simply go on too long. I’m not sure if it’s the fault of the director or of the editor, but I’ve seldom seen a comedy more ineptly timed.” Frank Rich, Time Magazine: “While it was generous of Spielberg to employ so large a percentage of the Screen Actors Guild, the huge cast almost immobilizes the movie. It takes too long to establish who everyone is and to knit all the plot strands together. Even though the film is relentlessly busy – there seems to be a physical gag in every shot – it has little of the director’s usual narrative drive. The movie’s story does not so much move forward as gradually selfdestruct.”

John Milius recalls, “We all knew that it wouldn’t get good reviews. We knew when we made the movie that it was politically incorrect and we loved it for that. As matter of fact the term that we used at that time was ‘social irresponsibility’ … We even had a Latin motto: ‘Civitas Sine Providentia,’ which means ‘a citizenry without prudence.’ And that was the idea, that this movie was truly socially irresponsible and that’s what we really loved about it. So we knew that critics would hate it because they were all gunning for Steven anyway.” 1941 grossed $31.7 million in the U.S. and $60 million overseas, but the revenues paled in comparison to Jaws or Close Encounters of the Third Kind and stigmatized the film as one of the biggest box office letdowns in memory. The film industry did bestow three Academy Award nominations on 1941: Best Cinematography (William Fraker), Best Sound and Best Visual Effects.

In the intervening years, an appreciative cult following has sprung up around 1941, which was released on laserdisc in 1996 and DVD in 1999 with a behind-the-scenes documentary by Laurent Bouzereau and 28 minutes of additional footage restored to the running time. Around the same time, Spielberg – who remains refreshingly candid about the failings of 1941 – offered his post-mortem: “Power can go right to the head. I felt immortal after a critical hit and two box office hits, one being the biggest film in history up to that moment. But 1941 was not a screw-you film, I can do anything I want, watch me fail upward. I was very indulgent on 1941, simply because I was insecure with the material. It wasn’t making me laugh, or any of us laugh, either in the dailies or on the set. So I shot that movie every way I knew how, to try to save it from being what I thought it actually became, which is a demolition derby.”

Opinion
If a movie is supposed to be a better union formed between material and a director, then 1941 is one of the all-time Hollywood marriages from hell. Below the pandemonium of glass breaking, houses crumbling, buildings exploding and bodies flying, there is evidence that Robert Zemeckis & Bob Gale set out to write a comedy that simply mocked truth, justice and the American way in an acidic, outrageous and frequently juvenile manner (for further evidence, see Used Cars). There’s a sly, “everything is not all right” sensibility buried in 1941 that may be responsible for winning it admirers, particularly in Europe or among people who’d read the Huffington Post. But Zemeckis didn’t direct this movie; Steven Spielberg did and in hindsight, this arrangement works out about as well as a geek taking a cheerleader to the prom. Actually, the results are more like the twister from The Wizard of Oz hitting the prom.

The scenes in 1941 dealing with children or vintage aircraft seem to elicit a sparkle in the eye of Spielberg, the greatest director of boys’ adventure movies of all time. But most anything involving his principal cast – particularly humor – flies around the room like a balloon with the air farting out of it. An end credits curtain call featuring most of the actors screaming sums up the approach here; nobody is given a character to play or the encouragement to deliver anything in an unhurried, unforced manner. Dan Aykroyd, Murray Hamilton, Slim Pickens and Wendie Jo Sperber (as a Jitterbug contestant with the hots for servicemen) are a lot of fun to watch, but they aren’t at any time permitted to be funny. John Williams – who Spielberg credits with writing a march for Belushi rivaling the one from Raiders of the Lost Ark – turned in a fantastic musical score for what amounts to a giant model train wreck.

© Joe Valdez

Sources
The Making of 1941. Directed by Laurent Bouzereau. 1941 (Collector’s Edition). MCA/Universal Home Video (1996)

Steven Spielberg: A Biography. Joseph McBride (1999)

Easy Riders and Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ‘N’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood. Peter Biskind (1998)