What the *&#! Is This About?
Emerging from his home on the southside of Dublin, Martin Cahill (Brendan Gleeson) is shot in his driveway. Moving back in time, a young Cahill (Eamonn Owens) is chased home by police after nicking groceries for his family. Cahill’s petty robberies land the boy in a Catholic reformatory. 18 years later, he’s released from prison for his latest offense. His wife Frances (Maria Doyle Kennedy) notifies him that the flat where they grew up and still live is being demolished to make way for a new development. Cahill files suit and refuses to budge, even as crews tear the building down around him. He holds out for a replacement flat in Rathmines, which prompts exasperated authorities to ask if he’d rather live closer to his own kind. “No, I’d sooner live closer to me work. All the big houses.”

Cahill supports his family of four as a burglar. When Frances urges him to buy a house, Cahill deposits $80,000 in a bank, which his men Noel (Adrian Dunbar) and Gary (Sean McGinley) promptly steal back for him. To establish an alibi while his gang is at work, Cahill hangs around the police station waiting for Inspector Kenny (Jon Voight). The cop fails to compel Cahill that there’s only one way that things can end for him if he keeps this lifestyle up. Arrested for robbing coins from an arcade, Cahill plots a heist big enough to support his family if he’s convicted, as well as humiliate the police in the process: O’Connor’s Jewelers. “Two million in gold and jewels, waitin’ for us.” So heavily fortified that even the Irish Republican Army walked away from the score, Cahill’s ingenuity results in the biggest heist in the history of Ireland.

While Cahill fathers a child with his sister in law (Angeline Ball) – with his wife’s blessing – he also studies enough Irish penal code to win an acquittal at his highly publicized trial. Even after nailing one of his men (Eanna MacLiam) to a pool table believing he stole, loyalty in his circle remains strong to the man the press calls “The General.” When the IRA demands half of the O’Connor’s loot, Cahill refuses, “There’s nothin’ as low as robbin’ a robber!” Though he manages to stay ahead on the law, twenty-four hour police surveillance takes its toll on Cahill’s health. Stealing priceless works of art proves to be his downfall when Cahill finds a buyer in the Loyalists, sworn enemies of the IRA.

Who Should Be Held Responsible?
Wanting to make a film about contemporary Ireland, filmmaker John Boorman arrived on the tale of Martin Cahill, the infamous Dublin robber who was shot and killed by the IRA in 1994. Boorman was familiar with the exploits of the General because in 1981, Boorman’s home was burglarized. Among the objects lifted was a faux gold record the director had been presented for the soundtrack to Deliverance. He was notified that Cahill was likely responsible. Boorman recalled, “At that time, he was really just a cat burglar – he wasn’t doing any of these big things, but he was very audacious then, and provocative. The police recognized his modus vivendi, but also he always wanted to be known when he pulled off these things. He wanted the credit for them. It was also a challenge, you know: ‘Well, OK now try and prove it. I did that, now prove it.’”

Crime reporter Paul Williams chronicled the details of Cahill’s life in his 1995 book The General. When Boorman and his producing partner Kiernan Corrigan inquired about the film rights, they discovered that producer P.J. Pettite had already scooped them up. Receptive to working together, contract negotiations dragged on for so many months that Boorman turned his attention to a film version of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. He spent nine months in pre-preproduction before Paramount balked at Boorman’s $85 million budget for Narnia. He was set to direct A Simple Plan for much, much less when a dispute between producer Scott Rudin and Paramount’s financing partner scuttled that film two weeks before shooting was to begin.

Returning to Ireland, Boorman learned that Pettite was ready to sell the rights to The General. Optioning them out of his own pocket, the filmmaker discovered that a rival Cahill project already had a script and was out to financiers. In March 1997, Boorman plunged into a script of his own. With Paul Williams on hand to provide information not covered in his book, Boorman wrote, “The gang members were shadowy enough and I simply invented a group of characters and gave them the names of people in my village. Cahill himself sprung to life on the page. I had heard his voice. I knew his wiles. Frances Cahill and her sister Tina were a more difficult problem. They were not involved in criminal activities … I considered contacting them. Paul Williams advised against it. He said they would refuse contact with anyone outside their world. This was to be a fiction based on fact. The frameworks would be built of incidents that occurred. Beyond that I would rely on the truth of the imagination.”

Finishing a first draft in three weeks, Boorman had a script – titled I Once Had A Life – and a budget ready to present to buyers May 1997 at the Cannes Film Festival. Gabriel Byrne and Gary Oldman were both suggested as potential leads, but Boorman had settled on Irish character actor Brendan Gleeson to play the General. Financiers were even more skittish about the tone of the project. Boorman recalls, “Because of the way Hollywood is, people are led to expect that the heroes are people you can root for, they’re sympathetic. When I was trying to finance the picture, Americans all said two things. One was, ‘Well, put a star in there.’ The other was, ‘Well, does he have to do these brutal things, and why does he have to die?’ They could see it as a kind of Robin Hood thing, but they didn’t want the complexity and they didn’t want the tragedy. I always said when I was making the film that this has to have a tragic dimension. If it’s not seen as a tragedy, it’s not going to work.”

Taking out bank loans in order to get production off the ground, Boorman opted to shoot The General in black & white. Apart from his stylistic preference for the dreamlike nature of black & white film stock, the director felt that an unsaturated look would give audiences safe distance from events that had transpired so recently. A casting director, a production manager and cinematographer Seamus Deasy were each hired. Soon – with a budget of $13 million USD – an eleven week shooting schedule commenced August 1997 in Dublin. In a concession to potential buyers, Boorman had agreed to shoot on color film stock so that a color version of The General could be sold to television. Theatrical prints, however, would be struck on a black and white negative. A distribution deal was at last reached with J&M Entertainment; The General would be released by Warner Bros. in the U.K. and Sony Pictures Classics in the States.

As the film’s May 1998 release grew near, many in Ireland already had an opinion on The General. Boorman recalls, “There was something in this picture to offend everybody. The police weren’t very happy about it being made. We were nervous as to how the criminal community would take to it, or not take to it, and whether they would take action against us. It attacks the church, and the government, and corruption, and hypocrisy. So there was a lot of controversy. Then the press started to dig up victims of crimes, people who felt offended just by the act of us making the film. This was all before it came out. When it came out, all the controversy disappeared. All the bits I was being accused of, like glamorizing crime. Clearly, the film doesn’t do that. It’s a balanced picture of the guy.”

Critics greeted The General warmly upon its release in December 1998. Derek Elley, Variety: “With The General, his first feature in three years, the 65-year-old Boorman has not only come up with a pic that puts many British New Wave filmers half his age to shame in its energy and ’60s esprit, but he has poured all his love of his adopted homeland, Ireland, into a movie that says more about the rebellious Irish psyche than any heap of overtly political pictures.” Janet Maslin, the New York Times: “And he presents this film (photographed by Seamus Deasy) in such seductively beautiful black and white that it has the visual precision of a photo essay. The black and white tones (shot on color stock) are so rich that the ski masks of the burglars wind up looking like velvet.” But despite hope for Academy Awards nominations, The General never expanded beyond 41 screens and was completely ignored by the industry. It grossed only $1.2 million in the States.

Why Should I Care?
John Boorman – who wrote, produced, directed and comes as close to being an “auteur” here as you get – has had a gloriously erratic career, celebrated for Point Blank and Deliverance, mocked by some for Zardoz and Excalibur and generally ignored for everything since the mid-1980s. He makes up for the absence with this film. The General works beautifully in so many different modes: as an independent film, cops versus robbers flick, foreign film, tragedy, social satire. It’s brilliantly acted, impeccably photographed, scored superbly well and acutely written, comically exposing the hypocrisy of various institutions in the state of Ireland and affectionately celebrating the character of the country Boorman has called home for 30 years, in the humor, intelligence and resiliency of its people. So I guess I liked it.

While Boorman does frame the cunning Cahill as something of a folk hero, The General doesn’t escape scrutiny for lining his pockets at the expense of his community. Brendan Gleeson – who became heavily in demand as a supporting player in Hollywood after this film – is so real that he made me forget Gabriel Bryne or Gary Oldman were ever suggested for the role. Boorman’s decision to shoot in black & white – the DVD features both the theatrical version and the colorized one – gives the film a noble, elegant sheen unmatched by most movies from directors far younger and supposedly more vigorous than Boorman. Irish jazz saxophonist Richie Buckley composed the sensual musical score, while Van Morrison’s “So Quiet In Here” and “It Was Once My Life” add considerable panache to an already class production.

© Joe Valdez

Where Are You Getting This *&#!?
“A Personal Account on the Making of The General” By John Boorman. The General – Production Notes. Sony Pictures (1998)

“Safe haven” By Charles Taylor. Salon, 1998 December 17

“John Boorman” By Joshua Klein. A.V. Club, 1999 January 20

Synopsis
Dorothy Gale (Fairuza Balk) lies in bed unable to sleep. Aunt Em (Piper Laurie) confides to Uncle Henry (Matt Clark) that it’s been six months since the tornado, and all the girl does is talk about some place that doesn’t exist. On their farm in turn of the century Kansas, Dorothy finds a key with the word “Oz” emboldened on it. Aunt Em tells her it’s just the key to the old house, but Dorothy refuses to believe it. Leaving Toto behind, Dorothy is checked into a hospital run by the pompous Dr. Worley (Nicol Williamson) and the nefarious Nurse Wilson (Jean Marsh). When a storm knocks out the clinic’s electricity, Dorothy escapes with the help of another young patient (Emma Ridley). The girls fall into a river and are swept away.

When Dorothy regains consciousness, she finds herself in the company of a talking chicken named Billina, stranded in the Deadly Desert of Oz, which turns any living thing that touches it to sand. They escape and locate the house that fell on the Wicked Witch of the East, but the Munchkins are nowhere to be found, and the Yellow Brick Road is in ruin. Walking to the Emerald City, Dorothy finds the citizens of Oz – including the Tin Woodsman and the Cowardly Lion – turned to stone. All that’s left are the bizarre Wheelers, hoodlums who have wheels for feet and hands.

Dorothy activates a mechanical soldier named Tik Tok, who grabs one of the Wheelers and learns that the Nome King conquered the Emerald City, stealing back his emeralds and imprisoning the Scarecrow. To find him, Dorothy and Tik Tok are directed to Mombi (Jean Marsh again), a witch who changes heads as easily as wigs. Imprisoned by the witch, Dorothy befriends Jack Pumpkinhead, a stick man with a pumpkin for a head, who Mombi created with a Powder of Life. Dorothy steals the powder and is able to escape by bringing to life a flying sofa with the head of a moose. Dorothy and her new friends head to the mountain of the Nome King (Nicol Williamson again) to save Oz.

Production history
In the mid-1930s, Walt Disney was searching for a follow-up to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. He inquired about the first in L. Frank Baum’s best-selling fantasy series. The Baum estate had sold the film rights to Samuel Goldwyn for $60,000, and Disney just missed out being able to make an animated version of what became The Wizard of Oz. Disney never lost enthusiasm for Oz. When eleven of Baum’s books became available in 1957, Disney bought them. At one point, he intended for The Rainbow Road to Oz to become a live action musical with the Mousketeers filling many of the major roles. For a myriad of possible reasons – too expensive, too inexperienced a cast, a weak script or a lackluster book of songs – that never happened, and Oz languished.

In 1980, the studio’s young production chief Tom Wilhite contacted Walter Murch, a sound designer and film editor who won an Academy Award for Apocalypse Now. Murch recalls, “it was just a fishing expedition on both of our parts. But one of the questions he asked was, ‘What are you interested in that you think we might also be interested in?’, and I said, ‘Another Oz story.’ … And Tom sort of straightened up in his chair because it turned out, unbeknownst to me, that Disney owned the rights to all of the Oz stories. And they were particularly interested in doing something with them because the copyright was going to run out in the next five years.”

Working with Gill Dennis, Murch wrote a treatment based on Baum’s The Land of Oz and Ozma of Oz and when the studio responded favorably, the pair returned with a script in the spring of 1982. Darker than what the studio anticipated, Wilhite moved forward on what was then known simply as Oz, footing the bill for art director Norman Reynolds to begin designing sets, and work to begin on animatronic puppets. $6 million had been spent when in November 1983, Disney’s new head of production Richard Berger pulled the plug on Oz. He cited the film’s $27 million price tag, along with the failure of that summer’s dark and costly Something Wicked This Way Comes, which Disney had produced and had not gone over well with audiences. Shaving the budget down to $25 million by shooting the film on five soundstages at Elstree Studios in England – with the Salisbury Plains standing in for Kansas – Murch revived the project and filming commenced February 1984.

Murch recalls, “There were 114 days of shooting, which is a lot, and the character of Dorothy, played by Fairuza Balk, is in almost every shot. She was absolutely great, a fantastic ally in the making of the film, but there are laws in England and the United States that limit the amount of time you can shoot with a child actor, so it put great strains on how much we could do each day. Add on top of that all of the creatures she was with: puppets and claymation and animals. That old adage about never making a film with a child or an animal; we had not only a child and animals – talking chickens and dogs and all of that – but also puppets, each operated by three or four people, radio controlled devices, front projection, and claymation (for the nomes) that wasn’t there at the time of shooting.”

Return to Oz proceeded so slowly that Murch was fired after five weeks. After George Lucas guaranteed he’d step in for his friend the first time director if needed, the studio rehired Murch after a few days. But by the time the film was in post-production, Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg had arrived to manage Disney. Murch recalls, “And they were not really interested in Return, probably because it was so dark, and not a musical, and particularly because it had been started by an executive two generations earlier, and so they mostly ignored it after it did not do so well in previews, which was both good and bad. The good part was that I was able to complete the film I wanted to make, the bad part was that they didn’t really get behind its release. Having said that, it was a difficult film to distribute, as we found out, given the zeitgeist of the mid-’80’s. Maybe any zeitgeist.”

Opening June 1985 with a lavish premiere at Radio City Music Hall, Return to Oz was blasted by critics. From the Los Angeles Times (Sheila Benson) to the New York Times (Janet Maslin) to At The Movies, the overwhelming consensus was that the film did not measure up to The Wizard of Oz, and was too intense for children. Gene Siskel: “Kids under six are gonna get nightmares from this picture. Kids over six, they’ll just have a bad time at the movies.” Roger Ebert: “Somebody should have thought at the very first when they were starting out with Return To Oz. somebody should have had this thought: ‘It oughta be fun, it oughta be upbeat, it oughta be sweet, it oughta be wondrous. It shouldn’t be scary.’” Return To Oz grossed a dismal $11 million in the U.S.

Murch – who would win two Academy Awards in 1996 as both the film editor and sound designer for The English Patient – never directed after Return To Oz. In 2000, he mused, “We knew going in that it was going to be risky, but it had been 45 years since the original film came out, and I thought enough time had passed for a different sensibility to have a chance, to present a somewhat more realistic view about Dorothy and her life on the farm, and have the film not be a musical … I definitely felt that if we had tried to really do a sequel, which is to say, do something in the style of an MGM musical, we would have been in even greater trouble, because there’s just no way you can reinvent that particular combination of people, technology, and attitude, which really reached a peak in the late 1930s and never recovered after the war.”

Opinion
The two components of this film’s disastrous reception were probably its title – Oz might have led to a little less buyer’s remorse among moviegoers – and the fact that Murch was simply ahead of his time here. In the 1980s, E.T. and its message of hope and reassurance were what most ticket buyers needed. Return To Oz is one dark, perilous and morally complex place to venture into. It’s also as majestically rendered a fantasy as you’re ever likely to see, grander than anything Jim Henson would produce in the same period, as textured and thrilling as the Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings franchises, but black as gunpowder. It’s the quintessential adaptation of L. Frank Baum, striking out from the lighthearted, vaudevillian approach of The Wizard of Oz and right into the heart of darkness.

Just as much – if not more – genuine love went into the making of Return To Oz as the 1939 original. The screenplay is even more inventive in the way it establishes each character Dorothy will meet in Oz; the wheel of a gurney becomes a Wheeler, a wicked nurse becomes Mombi. That’s cool. The film is peerless in terms of set design and camera movement and spares no expense in its grandeur. Fairuza Balk – nine years old at the time she was cast – does a sublime imitation of Judy Garland’s voice, while matching Baum’s vision of Dorothy when it comes to her age; Balk gives a terrific performance. David Shire’s musical score is just as enthralling. Critics condemning the movie for being scary apparently forgot all about Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Return To Oz, much maligned, is just as much a classic.

Jenny Jediny at Not Coming To A Theater Near You writes, ”While it is highly emphasized in The Wizard of Oz that Dorothy is purely in the midst of a dream, the argument is more ambiguous in Return to Oz; Murch has stated he never intended for this to be a sequel, but instead a version more akin to the vision in the Frank L. Baum novels, a decision that enhances the film and sets it apart from the shadow of the 1939 classic, bringing instead an edge of terror that is found in many fairy tales, particularly those of the Brothers Grimm. Having viewed Return to Oz at least a dozen times by this point in my life, I have to express my penchant for this vision of Oz.”

Matt Gamble at Where The Long Tail Ends writes, “Return to Oz is a decidedly different children’s film, with its dark themes and horrific moments it is not the typical candy coated fare released in American theaters. But it is this unique aspect of the film that makes it both so memorable and endearing. Return to Oz is a film that challenges its viewers, both young and old, and attempts to create a fascinating fantasy world that will be both remembered and revisited by the viewer. And while some special effects driven children’s fantasy films of the 80’s haven’t held up well over time, I’m looking at you The Neverending Story, Return to Oz is a film that has not only aged well, but has become even more enjoyable with each viewing.”

© Joe Valdez

Synopsis
As an old man threads a fishing line on the Big Blackfoot River, a narrator (Robert Redford) begins: “Long ago, when I was a young man, my father said to me, ‘Norman, you like to write stories.’ And I said, ‘Yes, I do.’ Then he said, ‘Some day when you are ready, you might tell our family story. Only then will you understand what happened, and why.’” Moving back in time to 1910 and the town of Missoula, Montana, the Reverend Maclean (Tom Skerritt) teaches his sons fly fishing the Presbyterian way, against a metronome. Seven years later, the strong willed Norman (Craig Sheffer) and the charismatic Paul (Brad Pitt) test their mortality by shooting a rowboat down the local falls.

Graduating from Dartmouth six years later, Norman returns to Montana. His mother (Brenda Blethyn) apologizes for his brother’s absence from the homecoming, while his father presses Norman for details of what he plans to do with his life. Norman seeks out Paul, now a reporter with a taste for staying out late, drinking and gambling. Though his brother is perilously in debt, Norman seems unsure how to best extend help. They bond over a shared love of fly fishing. When his relationship with a feisty Methodist named Jessie (Emily Lloyd) turns serious and he accepts a teaching job in Chicago, Norman asks Paul to come with them. His troubled brother makes the decision to stay.

Production history
Retiring from teaching English literature at the University of Chicago in 1973, Norman Maclean wrote a book that had been gestating for thirty-eight years. Titled A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, it wasn’t fiction – tracing Maclean’s relationship with his brother Paul between 1910 and 1935 in Montana – but it wasn’t quite a memoir either, devoting more print to the art of fly fishing than to family history. Published in 1976, the book was embraced by critics. Four years later, author Tom McGuane sent a copy to actor Robert Redford, citing the book as an example of fine western writing. Redford recalled, “I read it, and the arrow went in right away. I thought, ‘I really want to do something about this.’”

“There were such deep parallels to my own life. And the ethic that shaped these people’s lives shaped early America’s life. It was a sort of Christian ethic of stoicism in the face of adversity, a sense of honor and grace, not asking for help, not complaining. This was a slightly troubled family that, like so many others, dealt with silence as a virtue and strength as a weapon. They had enormous difficulty expressing feelings and emotion.” Despite winning an Academy Award in 1981 for directing his first film – Ordinary People – Redford discovered that Maclean had no intention of seeing his book turned into a movie.

Redford recalls, “I think the reason Norman resisted for so long was that he was fearful the book would be turned into pornography, a story of a brother going bad, gambling and whoring and then getting killed. He also was afraid that his deeply loving family would be portrayed as disturbed. I assured him that was not my intention.” Redford offered to come to Chicago on three occasions – letting two weeks pass between each visit – to talk to the author. “He kept challenging me. Asked me how I could really understand the Scots ethic since I was really Scots-Irish.” Maclean ultimately agreed to option film rights for A River Runs Through It to Redford.

Following a pass by William Hjortsberg – a literary contemporary of Tom McGuane’s – Redford turned to Richard Friedenberg to adapt a screenplay. Friedenberg had won an Emmy in 1986 for scripting the Hallmark Hall of Fame production Promise, which also dealt with brothers whose relationship is forged by fishing. Friedenberg moved some of Maclean’s events up ten years to when the brothers were becoming men, while strengthening the character of Jessie, whom the screenwriter saw as a strong-willed, Roaring Twenties flapper. Maclean’s daughter Jean Snyder recalls, “Friedenberg worked very hard to get real events into the film. He drew on other writings of my father and on research into my mother’s family as well.”

A five year struggle to secure financing ended when Columbia Pictures agreed to a reduced budget of $12 million. With Redford in the director’s chair, shooting commenced June 1991 in Montana. The fishing scenes were filmed south of Bozeman on the Gallatin River, south of Livingston on the Yellowstone River, and south of Big Timber on the Boulder River. The film premiered quietly at the Toronto Film Festival in September 1992. Opening in theaters the following month, critics responded favorably, while word of mouth among moviegoers unaffected by the film’s measured pace propelled A River Runs Through It to grosses of $43 million in the U.S.

Opinion
As a filmmaker and as a chairman of the Sundance Film Festival, Robert Redford has been called out by the left as being stodgy and attacked from the right as being self-important, and while A River Runs Through It did little to silence his critics, the film remains Redford’s finest work as a director, rising to the status of a classic for its pure storytelling craft, which is as natural and deeply affecting as the Big Blackfoot is to the Macleans. With a meager budget (by Hollywood standards,) it’s also more majestic in its design and far richer in its humanity than Redford haters may have wanted to admit at the time.

It can be said that neither Craig Sheffer or Brad Pitt – who doesn’t look a day older than the 27 years he was here – ever break out and make these roles their own, but stillness and the space between words is what Maclean’s book was all about and what makes the film so powerful. Both actors are superb in their performances. There’s a great deal of wit here, namely during a disastrous fishing expedition Jessie pressures Norman to take her vain Hollywood brother (Stephen Shellen) on. The film captures all sorts of natural moments that pass between families through the years, while cinematographer Philippe Rousselot won a well deserved Academy Award for his pristine outdoor lighting.

Don Willmot at Filmcritic.com writes, “A River Runs Through It is part travelogue and part tragedy, and running right through the middle of it, of course, is the river, a painfully obvious yet still touching metaphor for time’s inexorable flow. The impact does build, and no one will mock you if you find yourself in floods of tears as Redford reads Maclean’s final haunting words and gives us one final sparkling river vista. It’s beautiful, it’s sentimental, it’s nostalgic, it’s the West. Just let it wash over you.”

“The on-location filming in the Montana wilderness is breathtaking, and the scenes of the fly-fishing were exceptional. However, partial nudity, an overabundance of profanity, and an excessive amount of drinking and smoking ruin this film. A River Runs Through It is based on a true life story, but it isn’t even exciting. The movie drags is in many parts, just plain boring,” writes Ryan Kelly at Christian Spotlight In Entertainment.

Margo Reasner at DVD Verdict writes, “The slow pace of this film is going to lose some viewers looking for more action and the middle part of the film dealing with Norman’s love interest may lose viewers that like the rest of the film. However, if you like drifting down a river and watching the scenery float by on a warm sunny afternoon then this film will be for you; if you like shooting the rapids while hanging on for dear life then you might want to pass on this one.”

© Joe Valdez

Synopsis
Celebrating his 7th birthday in a park near Washington Square, Josh Waitzkin (Max Pomeranc) discovers benches full of men playing chess for cash. Though Josh’s father Fred (Joe Mantegna) is a sportswriter, his son loses interest in baseball and fixates on a chess piece he recovered in the park. Josh surprises his mother Bonnie (Joan Allen) by later asking her if they can go back to see “the men in the park.” Then he stuns her by taking a seat at one of the benches and competing with a wizened Russian in a game of chess.

Fred is skeptical that his son knows how to play. He asks for a demonstration, but Josh loses intentionally, not wanting to beat his dad. After realizing what his son is capable of, Fred seeks out a chess player once highly regarded named Bruce Pandolfini (Ben Kingsley) and hires him to tutor Josh. Bruce tries to teach his pupil a regimented, cerebral approach to the game, while Josh’s mentor from the park, Vinnie (Laurence Fishburne) favors a fast paced and aggressive style used by hustlers to intimidate their opponents.

Josh proves so adept at the game that Fred enters his son in a tournament. Bruce advises against this, believing that “winning and losing” has nothing to do with chess. Caught up in his son’s gift and the thrill of competition, Fred pushes Josh to excel. Josh’s weakness as a sportsman is his kindness, which Bonnie fears Fred will beat out of him in his efforts to make his son a winner. When he encounters another prodigy (Michael Nirenberg) who dispatches his opponents with cold-blooded efficiency, Josh has to decide for himself how important winning and losing is.

Production history
Published in 1989, Searching For Bobby Fischer: The World of Chess, Observed by the Father of a Child Prodigy was a collection of essays by journalist Fred Waitzkin dealing with the chess world, primarily, Waitzkin’s role as “caddy and coach” to his prodigious son, Josh. Producer Scott Rudin purchased the screen rights, and the book ended up in a stack that the producer sent to screenwriter Steven Zaillian. Rudin felt that Zaillian wrote like a director and had been urging him to get behind the camera for years.

When Zaillian picked up the book for the first time, he recalled, “It was the photograph on the cover that really got my attention, It was of a kid studying a chess position on a board. He was only seven years old, yet he was so adult and intense. This prompted questions in my head. Why was this kid doing an adult job? What kind of pressure does that put on the kid?” Zaillian – who knew little about chess – conducted his own research, hanging out in Washington Square, attending a national scholastic chess championship and meeting characters in both worlds that ended up in his screenplay.

Searching For Bobby Fischer had very little commercial potential, but Rudin enjoyed a relationship with Paramount Pictures, having produced The Addams Family for the studio to great commercial success. Shooting of Zaillian’s directorial debut commenced in June 1992 under the modest budget – for a studio picture – of $17 million. 8-year-old Max Pomeranc had been discovered several months earlier at a chess tournament in New York. According to Zaillian, “He had no acting experience, but we decided to gamble. It turned out that he was so natural that he’s incapable of a false moment.”

By the time the film was finished, the regime at Paramount had shifted from the late Brandon Tartikoff to Sherry Lansing, but executives were so moved by the picture, they threw their support behind it. Released in August 1993, the movie drew rave reviews, but failed to connect with audiences, grossing a mere $7 million in the U.S. Some questioned the studio’s release strategy, but Rudin didn’t fault Paramount for the film’s reception, “It’s just what it is. It doesn’t play down to the audience. The real question is, ‘Can you make a movie for families that’s not dumb, that doesn’t necessarily have to aim low and works for adults as well as children?’”

Opinion
The uniqueness of this film lies in its ability to reject the notion that the 1970s was the last golden age of Hollywood, that studios have lost the craftsmanship necessary to make great movies. The 1990s belongs in that equation and here’s one movie that demonstrates why. There’s no mistaking Searching For Bobby Fischer for anything other than a Hollywood product, but it’s one in which every major element – writing, directing, casting, photography, music – is perfectly in tune, exploring the nature of competition with humor, intelligence and depth.

Zaillian’s superb script attracted one of the greater casts in recent memory: Joe Mantegna, Joan Allen, Ben Kingsley and Laurence Fishburne are supported in minor roles by David Paymer, William H. Macy, Tony Shalhoub, Dan Hedaya, Laura Linney and Austin Pendleton. Of all those names, 8-year old non-actor Max Pomeranc gives the most mesmerizing performance. Renowned cinematographer Conrad Hall lit the film in what he called “magical naturalism” – conveying a child’s sense of imagination – while James Horner’s music reflects that spirit with equal mastery.

Sheila O’Malley at The Sheila Variations says, “All of these characters are beautifully drawn, and perfectly played. And the story itself … I don’t care if it’s a formula. What – you think there are a gazillion different stories to tell? There aren’t. There are maybe 10 stories – told over and over and over – in different ways. Formulas can WORK if they are imbued with life, humanity, surprise. This film is one of my favorite films ever made. It just works.”

“I realize that I’m in the minority of people who don’t think this isn’t really that good of a movie, although I’ll admit, it did hold my interest enough for me to think it still worthwhile, which for a film about chess means it deserves at least some props. Still, Zaillian’s film is like the professional class of chess, rather than the game played out in the park — disciplined, but too rigid to allow for much freedom for expression, with every turn pre-determined well in advance,” writes Vince Leo at QWipster’s Movie Reviews.

Sean McGinnis at DVD Verdict writes, “The film is riddled with small moments, which put a HUGE smile on your face … Suffice it to say that director Zaillian nails a lot of moments. Personally, this film falls right next to The Princess Bride on the McGinnis-Richter Scale. Both succeed for reasons you can’t quite comprehend. Both are terrific family fun with a few life lessons to be learned along the way. Both represent, in my view, the best of what moviemaking is all about.”

© Joe Valdez

Synopsis
When his conscience conflicts with his chosen faith, Christopher Boyce (Timothy Hutton) drops out of seminary school and returns home. His childhood friend Andrew Daulton Lee (Sean Penn) – on probation for possession of narcotics with intent to sell – travels between Mexico and his family’ home in California dealing drugs. Needing a job, Boyce is recommended by his father (Pat Hingle), retired FBI, for a position at “RTX Credit”.

Boyce is promoted from the mailroom to the aerospace division, which operates surveillance satellites the company manufactures and maintains for the CIA. Working in a communications vault, Boyce discovers a cable revealing the CIA has infiltrated a labor union in Australia in an effort to affect the political leadership of the country. Upset that the U.S. is mired in covert actions that have nothing to do with national security, Boyce presents Daulton with a business proposition.

Daulton travels to Mexico City, where he makes contact with a Soviet embassy clerk (David Suchet). Soon, he’s selling military secrets to the U.S.S.R. He’s also snorting heroin and becomes erratic as a courier. Boyce settles down with a girl (Lori Singer) and intends to quit his job to go back to school. His friend threatens to expose him if he dissolves their partnership. Boyce arrives in Mexico to terminate the operation personally, but the Soviets advise him that quitting won’t be that easy.

Production history 
Falcon and the Snowman: A True Story of Friendship and Espionage was a 1979 book by Robert Lindsey, Los Angeles bureau chief for the New York Times. Lindsey covered the trial of Christopher Boyce, a 24-year-old who became disillusioned with his job at TRW Credit, downloading data from a Pine Gap satellite tracking station in Australia. Boyce used a childhood friend to sell the information to the Soviets. Tried for treason, Boyce remained unrepentant, even after he was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Lindsey sold the film rights to Hemdale Films, which partnered with Orion Pictures to distribute the movie. Director John Schlesinger was offered the project. To adapt a script, Schlesinger hired a screenwriter named Steven Zaillian, who was not much older than Boyce. Zaillian was working as an apprentice editor on schlock like Breaker Breaker when he began writing scripts, one of which came to Schlesinger’s attention. The Falcon and the Snowman became Zaillian’s first produced script.

Shooting commenced in December 1983. Budgeted at $11.5 million, much of the film was shot at Churubusco Studios in Mexico City to shave costs. The film garnered good reviews and had a strong opening week at the box office, until competition from other movies in January 1985 quickly buried it. Schlesinger later blamed the weak reception on the fact that he “didn’t have time within the context of the movie to deal sufficiently with Hutton’s youth, to set up the complexity of his motives.”

Opinion 
This isn’t a great movie. As Schlesinger realized too late, even 131 minutes ended up being not enough time to clearly convey Boyce’s motives, lend his personal relationships depth, or tell a complete story. In spite of its flaws, The Falcon and the Snowman is at its center a riveting espionage tale, one that pushes against the political climate of its time, and features a brilliant performance by Sean Penn.

In its condensed format, the film version of Lindsey’s book makes the affable Timothy Hutton a co-star in his own movie, while Lori Singer and Pat Hingle are reduced to walk-on parts. It’s Penn’s portrayal of a squeaky voiced drug smuggler coming unwound with paranoia that makes the film worth seeking out. You can hear him channeling Robert DeNiro, but it’s riveting work. Schlesinger – director of Midnight Cowboy and Sunday Bloody Sunday – was not at his peak here, but the film is exciting.

The movie doesn’t mention it, but Christopher Boyce escaped from Lompoc Federal Penitentiary in 1980. Robert Lindsey’s sequel The Flight of the Falcon chronicled Boyce’s 19 months on the run and the global manhunt that ensued. Andrew Daulton Lee was paroled in 1998, and went to work as a personal assistant for Sean Penn, who had kept in contact with the convict since meeting him in 1983.

© Joe Valdez

31 days of October. 31 articles devoted to the screen’s maestro of suspense and the macabre, Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980). I’ll be jumping back and forth through five decades in this series. More than half of the films I’ve never seen before, but even the ones I have seen were viewed, researched and written about this month.

Synopsis
With Europe on the brink of war and no news fit to print coming in over the cables, the editor of the “New York Globe” demands “a good honest crime reporter” get to the bottom of events unraveling overseas. Johnny Jones (Joel McCrea) – close to being fired for assaulting a police officer – is handed the task. Renamed “Huntley Haverstock”, he’s dispatched to London to get news on Van Meer, a Dutch diplomat brokering a last minute peace deal between Germany and England.

The Globe’s lazy London man Stebbins (Robert Benchley) supplies Jones with an invitation to a luncheon being given by the Universal Peace Party. Jones snares a cab to the luncheon with Van Meer (Albert Bassermann). Jones fails to get an interview, but does infuriate Carol Fisher (Laraine Day), headstrong daughter of Stephen Fisher (Herbert Marshall), the head of the Universal Peace Party, when he tells her that the group is made up of “well-meaning amateurs.”

Sent to Amsterdam to cover a peace conference, Jones greets Van Meer, but the diplomat has no idea who he is. Moments later, an assassin shoots Van Meer in the face. Jones gives chase with Carol Fisher and a droll newspaperman named Ffolliott (George Sanders). The assassin disappears near a row of windmills, one of which Jones notices revolving against the wind. He sneaks inside and finds the real Van Meer in custody of foreign agents. They want something he knows. Jones returns with police, but Van Meer has vanished.

Jones escapes the clutches of agents at his hotel and convinces Carol to return to London with him. The pair falls in love. They go to her father for help, but Jones recognizes one of Fisher’s associates as the agent who kidnapped Van Meer. Carol’s father is revealed to be leader of a ring of spies and traitors. Fisher hires a private eye (Edmund Gwenn) to take care of the foreign correspondent before he unravels their plans to sabotage the peace accord.

Production history 
Two weeks into shooting his first Hollywood film – Rebecca – director Alfred Hitchcock was looking for his next project. He realized that producer David O. Selznick, who had brought Hitchcock to America under contract, would be too busy publicizing Gone With The Wind to develop anything for him. The director was given permission to talk to producer Walter Wanger, who suggested that Hitchcock take over a troubled project called Personal History.

A 1935 political memoir by newspaperman Vincent Sheean, Personal History had been optioned by Wanger and was stuck in development purgatory. The producer felt Hitchcock might be able to make something out of it. As long as it was about an American foreign correspondent, Hitchcock was given the green light to do anything he wanted with it. Hitchcock’s wife Alma Reville and screenwriter Joan Harrison began work on a treatment.

In February 1940, Hitchcock requested Charles Bennett – who’d helped write seven of his British pictures – adapt the script. British novelist and screenwriter James Hilton was later brought in to give the dialogue some flavor. American humorist Robert Benchley – whom Hitchcock was so amused by, he cast as Stebbins – was put on the payroll to give the script some comic relief. A young screenwriter under contract to Paramount named Richard Maibaum also served as script doctor.

With production designer William Cameron Menzies – who won an Oscar creating the sets for Gone With The Wind – the budget rose to $1.5 million, twice what Wagner was used to spending. Rebecca hadn’t even been released, but the producer had faith in Hitchcock. The director had fashioned the starring roles for Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck, but Cooper’s people were wary of Hitchcock, while Stanwyck was unavailable. Hitchcock settled on Joel McCrea and Laraine Day.

Released August 1940 in the U.S., Foreign Correspondent was hailed for its immediacy. Less than a month later, Germany began its bombing campaign against the UK. Hitchcock’s former ally, producer Michael Balcon, denounced the famous directors he felt were riding out the war in the States. Hitchcock responded, “The manner in which I am helping my country is not Mr. Balcon’s business.” Nevertheless, the film received a chilly reception from critics when it debuted in England.

Opinion 
The film was nominated for six Academy Awards – including Best Picture – but due to an absence of stars, or Hitchcock’s signature shocking style, it rarely figures into discussions of his best work. Foreign Correspondent is the lost gem of Hitchcock’s career, a supremely well made action/comedy/thriller that works flawlessly as both an entertainment vehicle, and as a social document of a culture on the brink of world war.

The set pieces Hitchcock devised are among the most ingenious ever created for a movie. The assassin’s escape through a sea of umbrellas. McCrea sneaking around a windmill. Edmund Gwenn (Santa Claus in Miracle on 34th Street) plotting to kill McCrea by shoving him off the observation tower of Westminster Catholic Cathedral. The climax – involving a clipper plane being shot down over the ocean – is a masterpiece of storyboarding, camerawork, special effects and editing.

Foreign Correspondent is a perfection of everything that makes movies great: strong narrative, three-dimensional characters, comedy (Benchley steals the show), romance, intrigue, action. There’s so much going on that this film demands repeated viewings to absorb it. The final scene – with McCrea broadcasting on the brink of the London Blitz – is a classic. It avoids feeling hokey because of McCrea’s affability, and because of the sincerity and geopolitical foresight of the filmmakers.

Andrew Wickliffe at The Stop Button writes, “Watching early, raw Hitchcock is an exciting experience and Correspondent is one of the two best of these raw films (the other is The Lady Vanishes).”

“‘The Thrill Spectacle of the Year!’ cries the poster for this thriller, and brother, they ain’t just whistlin’ Dixie. A fast-moving tale of international intrigue set against the backdrop of a world on the brink of war, it’s about as far away as you can get from the moody, gothic suspense of Hitchcock’s previous film, Rebecca,” writes Maurice Cobbs at DVD Verdict.

Jeffrey Anderson at Combustible Celluloid writes, “The film includes some of Hitchcock’s finest set-pieces, including a secret hideout inside a windmill, a murder in broad daylight and a plane crash, even if the romantic subplot tends to slow things down a bit.”

© Joe Valdez

Synopsis
As a frail Frida Kahlo (Salma Hayek) is carried from home in her bed, her memory takes her back to 1922, when she attends the National Preparatory School in Mexico City. Her sister Cristina (Mía Maestro) is getting married, but Frida flaunts society’s norms, dressing in a man’s suit for the family photo, and having sex with her boyfriend (Diego Luna) in a closet. She plans to be a portrait artist, but a fatal accident immobilizes her in bed, forcing Frida to turn her artistic focus inward.

She seeks an opinion of her work from famed muralist Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina). He takes her under his wing, introducing her to his radical friends, including photographer Tina Modotti (Ashley Judd). He asks Frida to marry him. She accepts, despite Rivera refusing to pledge fidelity. She later realizes that her neighbor is Rivera’s possessive ex-wife Lupe (Valeria Golino). She looks after Frida, trying to convince her that Rivera will never be anyone’s husband.

Frida accompanies Rivera to New York, where he’s been given a commission by Nelson Rockefeller (Edward Norton) to paint a mural in Rockefeller Plaza. After miscarrying a child, Frida takes Rivera back to Mexico City with her, where he sinks into depression. Their marriage dissolves, but the arrival of exiled Leon Trotsky (Geoffrey Rush) brings them together again.

The role of Frida Kahlo had been contested among several actresses for years. Madonna wanted to play her at one point. Laura San Giacomo won the part in a film to be directed by Luis Valdez, based on Martha Zamora’s biography Frida: Brush of Anguish. Objections over San Giacomo’s ethnicity by a vocal minority led to her eventual replacement by Jennifer Lopez. Produced by Francis Coppola, the Valdez project was to shoot in May 2001 after J. Lo finished Enough.

Production history 
Miramax Films had their own Frida Kahlo project – to star Salma Hayek and be directed by Julie Taymor – and what most considered to be the superior script, adapted by Clancy Sigal and Diane Lake and Gregory Nava & Anna Thomas and Edward Norton from the book Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera. Taymor was going to be ready to shoot two months before the J. Lo version, which conceded and was canceled.

Hayek – who shares an even more uncanny physical resemblance with Kahlo than Laura San Giacomo does – had been negotiating to play the charismatic painter for eight years, almost as long as she’d been recognizable in the U.S. By the time the film finally went before the cameras, she’d reduced her salary to the SAG minimum of $70,000.

Shot for only $12 million, Frida received good reviews and played well for audiences who saw it. Miramax threw the film in their Oscar cuisinart fall of 2002, along with Gangs of New York and Chicago. Frida received six Academy Award nominations – including Best Actress for Hayek – but never got the marketing push lavished on the gang movie, or the song and dance movie. The Frida movie came and went from theaters.

Opinion 
Frida was never going to be a hit with mass audiences – there’s no Hobbits in it – but for anyone with an interest in art or Mexican culture, this is the best narrative film that anybody could have possibly made about Frida Kahlo. Julie Taymor – who directed the stage version of The Lion King – employs a playful and highly imaginative approach to Kahlo’s life, with a very good script and one of the most prestigious casts of the decade.

There was a lot in the film that blew me away, from the courageous performances, to the vivid color palette, to some fantastic staging Taymor uses to express Kahlo’s internal landscape (puppeteers Brothers Quay designed one of the sequences). In the end, I don’t know if Kahlo’s life or her achievements are on par with even someone like Tina Modotti, but the film has a passion and sense of humor Kahlo might have recognized.

“Hayek delivers an emotional, intense and ultimately joyful film that touches the soul and grabs at the imagination,” writes Crazy For Cinema.

Nigel Watson at Talking Pictures says, “My overall impression of the film is that it’s just another glossy Hollywood view of a struggling artist.”

“Technically the film looks amazing … Still, the whole thing is a bit too mannered to let us in personally. It’s more observational than involving. But what an amazing story to watch,” writes Rich Cline at Shadows on the Wall.

“Alcoba Azul”. View Salma Hayek & Ashley Judd’s beguiling tango scene. Music composed by Elliot Goldenthal.

© Joe Valdez

Sam “Ace” Rothstein (Robert DeNiro) emerges from Tony Roma’s in 1983. He climbs into his car and when he turns the ignition, erupts in a fireball. Moving back in time to Las Vegas ten years earlier, Ace tells us his story: a gifted handicapper, Ace was so good that he could change the odds for every bookie in the country whenever he made a bet. The Chicago mob urges him to run the “Tangiers Casino” on The Strip. They send the feared Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci) along to protect Ace and their investment.

Ace and Nicky take us through the skims, the kickbacks and the ripoffs that occur with so much cash moving through the desert. With the help of his casino manager (Don Rickles, in a straight role), Ace lives for gambling. That changes when he meets Ginger (Sharon Stone), an accomplished hustler who brings high rollers into the casino and spreads money around. Ace asks her to marry him, and though Ginger is still in love with her former pimp (James Woods), she agrees, as a business arrangement.

Nicky marvels, “Look at this place. It’s made of money. You know what the best part is? Nobody’s gonna know what we’re doin!” With his right hand man Frankie Marino (Frank Vincent), Nicky shakes down the town’s bookies, pimps and drug dealers, and through ruthless violence, makes his presence known as the new boss of Las Vegas.

Ace excels at using entertainment to bring even more money into the Tangiers, and becomes the first to take bookies off the street and move them inside a casino. With Ace’s innovations and Nicky’s protection, they build the biggest operation on The Strip. But Nicky gets too big too fast, and draws the attention of gaming agents, who ban him from every casino in Las Vegas. Without permission from the bosses, Nicky starts knocking over almost anyone in town with money.

Ace fires an incompetent slots manager, played by Joe Bob Briggs. The father-in-law (L.Q. Jones) is a county commissioner. When Ace refuses to rehire the idiot, he has his application for a gaming license denied. Ginger resents Ace trying to control her and takes off with their daughter and her former pimp. Ace forgives her, but Ginger starts an affair with Nicky. The empire starts to crumble. When Ace is called to a meeting in the desert with Nicky, he gives himself “fifty-fifty” for coming back alive.

Nicholas Pileggi – who had adapted GoodFellas with director Martin Scorsese – had a pile of notes he was forming into a book about the casino business. Scorsese became excited about making it the third in a trilogy on organized crime. Mean Streets had been about kids hustling on the streets. GoodFellas, in a way, was about those kids growing up, but while they thought they lived big, were strictly middle class. Casino would detail the upper class of the mob world. Pileggi & Scorsese cobbled a screenplay together before the book was even done.

It was a sprawling epic that crammed enough detail – about organized crime, gaming and the history of Las Vegas – for three movies into one. Due to its 178 minute running time, the film was only a moderate success at the box office, but through cable TV and DVD, the picture helped renew popular interest in Vegas, the Rat Pack, and gaming in general.

Casino certainly wipes the floor with any gangster film made in the last decade. It’s one of the classic tales of a business rising to meteoric success, then through greed, crashing down in almost Biblical terms. As with GoodFellas, Pileggi & Scorsese do a beautiful job capturing the language of hoodlums. Pesci’s on-the-nose narration is a riot: “The coppers blamed me for everything that went wrong out here, and I mean every fuckin’ little thing too. If a guy fuckin’ tripped over a fuckin’ banana peel they’d bring me in for it.”

In a change of pace from his previous portrayals, Robert DeNiro barely qualifies as a gangster here. He’s an oddsmaker, a pencil necked geek essentially, whose gorgeous wife has him wrapped around her finger. At one point, he even parades around his office wearing knee high blue socks and no pants. That may not have been what people wanted to see, but I thought it was an interesting choice.

Scorsese worked with director of photography Robert Richardson for the first time, but didn’t lose a step. The picture is loaded with fantastic camera setups, beautifully assembled by editor Thelma Schoonmaker. The scene where DeNiro observes two card sharks at work is a masterpiece in camera movement, editing, performance, and music. The soundtrack is wall to wall with good stuff, with Jeff Beck and Rod Stewart’s “I Ain’t Superstitious,” The Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun” and The Rolling Stones’ “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” used to sublime effect.

Casino is fascinating in terms of actuary numbers and business strategy, not so much human drama. Sharon Stone was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress, and does the best work of her career, but by chronicling crime on a conglomerate scale, instead of a personal one, Scorsese overwhelms the characters. We’re told so much, yet allowed to absorb so little of who these people were. I wasn’t invested much in what happened to them. It may not be one of Scorsese’s best, but its parts are still greater than all the movies it influenced, like Ted Demme’s Blow.

Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), Jimmy Conway (Robert DeNiro) and Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) take a drive through the country. Henry wakes Jimmy and Tommy when he hears a knock in the car. He’s told to pull over, and popping the trunk, reveals a bloodied corpse still alive and kicking. Tommy stabs it with a meat cleaver and Jimmy shoots it. Henry slams the trunk and in voice-over says, “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.”

In 1955 Brooklyn, young Henry is enamored by the men who congregate in a cab stand across the street. It’s operated by Tuddy, whose brother Paulie Cicero (Paul Sorvino) provides protection for the neighborhood. Henry is so devoted to running errands for the cab stand that he stops going to school. His father beats him, but instead of letting him quit, Tuddy threatens the mail carrier with time in an oven if he delivers another letter from the kid’s school.

Henry meets Tommy when they’re put to work selling stolen cigarettes. He’s introduced to Jimmy – already one of the most feared criminals in the city – when he tips Henry $20 for bringing him a drink. As adults, Henry, Jimmy and Tommy frequently rip off cargo moving through their territory, which includes Idlewild Airport. Henry agrees to go along on a double date with Tommy, and meets Karen (Lorraine Bracco). When Henry ditches her on the group’s next date, she has Tommy drive her to the cab stand, where she yells at Henry on the street.

Henry is Irish/Sicilian, Karen is Jewish, but they’re soon married. Highlights of their relationship include Henry pistol whipping a guy who assaults her, and Karen waking Henry up with a gun in his face when she finds out he’s cheating on her. Jimmy puts together what was – up to that time – the biggest heist in American history, assembling a crew that steals millions in untraceable bills from Lufthansa Airlines.

Tommy’s psychopathic behavior – beating and even killing indiscriminately – culminates when he beats a gangster (Frank Vincent) from another family. Henry and Jimmy help dispose of the body. The men also start trafficking cocaine, despite Paulie’s order that they’re not allowed to. Henry and Karen’s drug habit gets so bad they start seeing helicopters following them. The law closes in, and Henry’s only alternative is to turn informer on everything he knows.

While shooting The Color of Money in 1986, director Martin Scorsese read a review in the New York Times for a book called Wiseguy: Life In A Mafia Family by Nicholas Pileggi, a contributing editor for New York Magazine. Pileggi, who’d been covering law and order since the late ’60s, based his book on the life of Henry Hill, a gangster who turned gang informant after being arrested in 1980.

There had been books done about mobsters before, many of them full of boasts about their exploits, but when he interviewed Hill, Pileggi wasn’t interested in that. He wanted to know how it worked inside, the details. That turned out to be exactly what Scorsese was looking for, and he adapted the screenplay with Pileggi.

I go back and forth between which Scorsese picture is the greatest – Taxi Driver or this one – but GoodFellas is about as perfect a movie as can be humanly made. Script, casting, direction, editing, music, everything works together in perfect sync. Unlike a lot of gang related movies and TV shows, Scorsese and Pileggi had little interest in crime (the Lufthansa heist takes place entirely off-camera). Instead, it’s language, the seductiveness in which these guys tell their stories, that pulls you in.

Ray Liotta’s voice-over narration may be the best ever heard in a film. Recorded after filming had wrapped and his throat was hoarse from smoking, Liotta patiently guides us through the scams, the nightlife, the court proceedings and his own downfall with a wry detachment that sounds better every time I listen to this.

The cast is one of the greatest ever assembled, and there are too many classic scenes to list. Pesci’s “Do you think I’m funny?” bit – improvised by Pesci in rehearsal, written into the script by Scorsese – is a brilliantly timed piece of stagecraft. My favorite scene is a simple dialogue in a backyard between Liotta and Paul Sorvino, where the boss tells the man he thinks of as a son why it’s important to him personally that he stay away from trafficking junk. It dawns on us that Henry isn’t going to listen.

Visually, the movie has no peer. A tracking shot that follows Liotta & Bracco through the bowels of the Copacabana lasts three spectacular minutes without a cut. The climax follows a coked out Liotta as he tools around on what becomes his last day as a wiseguy, with George Harrison’s “What Is Life,” Muddy Waters’ “Mannish Boy,” The Who’s “Magic Bus” and The Rolling Stones’ “Monkey Man” on the soundtrack. The creativity and energy level here is often cited by other filmmakers, but I’ve never seen it duplicated.

GoodFellas was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Pesci won Best Supporting Actor, and gave one of the shortest acceptance speeches ever (he later said he didn’t think he was going to win). At decade’s end, the AFI ranked it #97 on their list of “100 Years, 100 Movies”, but the cultural impact the film made goes way beyond that. My favorite reference is probably in Swingers, where the guys agree that the Copacabana tracking shot is the greatest shot in a movie ever.

Jake La Motta (Robert DeNiro) is introduced middle aged, rounded and rehearsing lines backstage for his nightclub act, “An Evening With Jake La Motta” in 1964. His story moves back to 1941, when Jake La Motta, the young, vicious middleweight boxer loses his first fight by decision, when he lets his opponent wail on him for too long before knocking him down in the final round. The crowd riots.

Back in the Bronx, Jake laments to his brother and manager Joey (Joe Pesci, in his first major film role) that because of his weight class, he’ll never get to fight Joe Louis, “and I’m better than him.” Joey is being leaned on by Salvy Matts (Frank Vincent), middle man for the neighborhood Mafioso, who reminds Joey that without their help, Jake won’t get the title fight he desires.

Jake wants to do things his own way. He becomes infatuated with a 15-year-old neighborhood girl named Vickie, played with a quiet authority in her screen debut by Cathy Moriarty. Jake mows through his opponents until no one – except his skilled rival Sugar Ray Robinson – will climb into the ring with him. In 1949, Jake finally agrees to throw a match for the mob in order to be given a shot at the title.

Now champ, Jake eats and drinks his way out of shape, and through rampant paranoia, interrogates those closest to him until he sabotages his relationships. He retires from sports and opens a nightclub in Miami, but Vickie has had enough abuse and leaves with their three children. La Motta is indicted for abetting prostitution of a 14-year-old girl, before returning to New York and attempting to reconcile with his brother.

Robert DeNiro visited director Martin Scorsese on the set of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore with a book he liked, a ghostwritten autobiography of Jake La Motta. DeNiro told Scorsese there might be a movie in it. Irwin Winkler agreed to produce it, if they could get Scorsese to direct.

DeNiro and Winkler had a hard time getting Scorsese’s attention. He had no interest in boxing, no idea what the character was about, and after the failure of New York, New York, was emotionally drained. Winkler hired Scorsese’s friend Mardik Martin to adapt the book, but the script was not liked at United Artists.

DeNiro went to Paul Schrader on the set of his second film as a director, Hardcore. Schrader agreed to rewrite the script, letting DeNiro and Scorsese know he was doing them a favor. Schrader conducted his own research, and over the course of six weeks, tapped into tension he experienced with his own brother Leonard to develop the relationship between Jake and Joey. But even Schrader found the characters repellent.

United Artists still wanted no part of Raging Bull. Winkler, who produced Rocky for the studio, used a proposed Italian Stallion sequel as leverage. Scorsese continued to dither, and was later rushed to the hospital with massive internal bleeding from bad cocaine he’d consumed. DeNiro visited him and got around to asking whether they were doing the movie or not. La Motta’s self-destructiveness resonated with Scorsese now, and he said yes.

Scorsese announced he wanted to shoot in black and white, in order to give the film a tabloid look. After New York, New York, he was convinced this was going to be his last movie. He had no expectations to live up to, nothing to lose. With reckless creative abandon, Scorsese made what many consider the greatest film of his career.

Where Raging Bull ranks among Scorsese’s best is open to debate, but there’s no question this is a great film. There’s DeNiro. Production shut down for two months as he gorged himself on spaghetti and ice cream and gained 60 pounds to play the aged La Motta. In addition to that feat, he really pushes the envelope as an actor, playing La Motta as abusive and reprehensible a man as possible, while somehow, I never wanted to turn away.

DeNiro & Pesci’s chemistry is more apparent here than any film they’ve made together. Their improvisation, the way Pesci bounces lines off DeNiro (”So go kill everybody. You’re such a tough guy, go kill people. Kill Salvy, kill Tommy, kill me. You’re killin’ yourself the way you eat, ya fat fuck, look at ya!”) is a thing of beauty. DeNiro & Pesci explore the sibling dynamic in the script superbly. This could be the best movie about brothers ever done.

Visually, the film cuts glass. Scorsese doesn’t show much audience in the boxing scenes. He stays in the ring, and lets us experience the fight through the heightened emotional state of the boxers. The black and white look Michael Chapman created recalls old photographs in Life Magazine, while a sequence of faded 16mm home movies in color was personally scratched by Scorsese with a coat hanger to give them authenticity. Editor Thelma Schoonmaker cut the film masterfully.

DeNiro and Scorsese used Schrader’s structure, but rewrote his script as an actor’s movie, using impressions about La Motta’s life, as opposed to the hard and fast cliches of biographical movies. It drifts from year to year, and Cathy Moriarty disappears without much notice. But the music, notably the elegant Intermezzo from Mascagni’s 1890 opera Cavalleria Rusticana, lends the film a profoundness and redemptive quality that made me feel I was watching a funeral wake.

Raging Bull was not successful at the box office, but in addition to the acclaim it later garnered (a Premiere Magazine poll of critics ranked it the best film of the decade), it was also nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture. DeNiro and Schoonmaker were duly awarded Oscars, but Scorsese and his film were both given a cold shoulder by the Academy, who chose to honor Robert Redford’s directorial debut Ordinary People instead.