Rocket Science (2007)
Written by Jeffrey Blitz
Directed by Jeffrey Blitz
Produced by B&W Films/ Duly Noted, Inc./ HBO Films
Running time: 101 minutes

By Joe Valdez

So, What’s This About?
While arguing against farm subsidies at the New Jersey State High School Policy Debate Championships, Ben Wekselbaum (Nicholas D’Agosto) — the greatest public speaker that Plainsboro High School has ever known — suddenly loses his voice. Back in Plainsboro, high school sophomore Hal Hefner (Reece Daniel Thompson) and his kleptomaniac older brother Earl (Vincent Piazza) watch as their exasperated father (Denis O’Hare) walks out on their mother. The stutter that makes it impossible for Hal to order pizza in the school cafeteria, much less talk to other students, leaves his special needs counselor (Maury Ginsberg) wildly grasping at solutions.

Hal is “ferreted” by the stunningly articulate Ginny Ryerson (Anna Kendrick) to join the debate team. After her ex-partner Ben washed out at state and mysteriously dropped out of school, Ginny covets a championship trophy and believes that beneath Hal’s “deformity” lies a deep resource of anger that can help her win. Studying their debate topic — abstinence — with Ginny, or spying on her from the bedroom of her goofy adolescent neighbor (Josh Kay), Hal falls in love. But after sharing a whirlwind kiss in the janitor’s room, the relationship between the academic partners sours. To get revenge on the debate stage, Hal goes in search of Ben Wekselbaum.

Who Made It?
Jeffrey Blitz and his producer/sound recordist Sean Welch financed their debut feature — the spelling bee documentary Spellbound — by piling up debt on 14 credit cards. After Spellbound received some of the best reviews of 2002 and was nominated for an Academy Award, Blitz and Welch didn’t have to apply for more plastic to get their next film going. At the Independent Spirit Awards, Blitz met Effie Brown, who was accepting a Producers Award for Real Women Have Curves. Brown had a deal at HBO Films and initially worked with Blitz on the script for a spelling bee movie.

How’d They Do It?
Brown stated, “He has such a wicked sense of humor; and that’s something that people don’t nail. His humor is smart and not malicious, but it’s definitely a bit self-effacing. That’s what drew me to him. His film, Spellbound, completely had me riveted. I was trying to spell words and I was so rooting for all those kids.” The idea of scripting a spelling bee movie didn’t work out, but in talking with Maud Nadler — the senior VP of theatrical films at HBO — Blitz shared his experiences attending high school in central New Jersey with a serious speech impediment and how he attempted to overcome it as a member of the debate team.

Everyone agreed that the high school debate script was the one Blitz should be writing. The filmmaker recalled, “Teen movies don’t interest me, is the thing. They don’t interest me at all, so the only way I was going to do a teen movie is if I felt like I could try to be more honest about what the actual experience of being a teenager is like. I guess teen movies want to be escapist fantasies for high school students, but to me they’re bullshit because they’re all formulaic. As soon as you can predict where the movie is going, which is the first 10 seconds of any teenage movie, you know exactly how it’s going to resolve. It’s completely uninteresting to me.”

Blitz continued, “I wanted to feel like I could create a story that felt like it follows the contours the world a little more, but at the same time it’s not strictly a piece of realism. There’s absurdist comedy that I wanted to bring into it also and try to find that balance. That’s why for me people like Billy Wilder and Hal Ashby are the guys that I look towards to figure out how to bring realism, naturalism into a movie that still has outlandish characters and people who do things that are really funny!” Brown added, “Jeff created fabulous, well-rounded characters that you don’t get to see everyday. But no one’s made fun of. You root for them all.”

After another actor dropped out over scheduling, Vancouver native Reece Daniel Thompson was spotted on an audition tape; he was flown to Baltimore to audition and won the role of Hal. Anna Kendrick had auditioned in L.A. Blitz recalled, “She’s just about the only person who came in to read who could actually handle the dialogue. Jinny talks so fast, I mean, she just sort of blazes through it, but the person saying those lines needs to understand what she’s saying, even though she’s going, you know, a million miles an hour. And Anna just nailed it.” Budgeted at $6 million, Rocket Science began a 30-day shooting schedule July 2005 in Baltimore.

To serve as director of photography, Blitz turned Jo Willems, who’d collaborated with Blitz on “spec” commercials the director had used to break into the industry. Blitz hoped the Belgian cinematographer’s European sensibility would balance the emotional side of the movie with its deadpan humor. The result was a drably lit and everyday high school look. Yana Gorskaya — who had cut Spellbound – was brought in as editor. While cutting, Blitz and Gorskaya used temp tracks from the band Clem Snide, whose singer/ songwriter Eef Barzelay ultimately wrote the film’s instrumental score.

Rocket Science was very well received at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2007, where Blitz won the Dramatic Directing Award for his work. Critics were also effusive with praise. Roger Ebert, The Chicago Sun Times: “I suspect a lot of high school students will recognize elements of real life in the movie, and that the movie will build a following. It may gross as little as Welcome to the Dollhouse or as much as Clueless, but whichever it does, it’s in the same league.” Justin Chang, Variety: “This unusually voluble comedy is as eloquent about love, self-realization and adolescent angst as its protagonist is endearingly tongue-tied.”

Distributed by Picturehouse, Rocket Science opened August 2007. Audiences ignored it completely. Never expanding beyond 59 screens, the film grossed only $714,943 in the United States. Blitz would muse, “I think sometimes marketing campaigns hit and the whole thing works and sometimes they don’t at all. Some of this has to do with knowing the audience and really understanding to whom you’re marketing.” He added, “I think in the future I’ll try to be stronger in sharing my sense of the audience and the right tone of the marketing. But it’s hard to say. Each project seems like it comes with its own fresh set of challenges.”

Should I Care?
No stars. Low budget. Content that left me to shift nervously on my sofa. These were elements that Jeffrey Blitz’s debut Spellbound and his sophomore effort Rocket Science both share. The follow-up isn’t nearly as good because of several defects in its script. There’s an attempt at a storybook feel in the form of a narrator, which not only chills the film a bit emotionally, but calls attention to how much better Wes Anderson is at whimsical mood setting. As hilarious it is at turns — I busted out laughing three or four times — just as many bits stop the movie cold, especially a subplot involving a Korean judge (Stephen Park) dating Hal’s mom that falls totally flat.

While Blitz made a few rookie missteps as a screenwriter, he’s without a doubt a director to watch. The performances in Rocket Science are wonderful. I wouldn’t be surprised if Reece Thompson, Anna Kendrick and Vincent Piazza are all stars 10 years from now. Piazza sorta reminds me of Matt Dillon. Kendrick recalls Reese Witherspoon’s hilarious performance in Election, while Thompson superbly captures every awkward impulse — romantic or otherwise — we all had in high school. The joy of Rocket Science is that it gets those growing pains absolutely right.

Your thoughts?

Where’d You Get All of This?
“Rocket Science: An Interview with producer Effie Brown” By Wilson Morales. BlackFilm.com, 6 August 2007

“Jeffrey Blitz on Rocket Science” By Max Evry. ComingSoon.net, 8 August 2007

“Jeffrey Blitz Practices Rocket Science” By Jennifer M. Wood. MovieMaker. 15 January 2008

“The Making of Rocket Science” Rocket Science. HBO Home Video (2008)

Synopsis
After whipping a trio of Russian mobsters in a pub brawl, Irish Catholic twins Connor McManus (Sean Patrick Flanery) and Murphy McManus (Norman Reedus) are paid a visit by their pissed off foes. Mopping up the bodies of the Russians afterward, Boston police are aided by outrageous FBI agent Paul Smecker (Willem Dafoe), who theorizes the deaths were personal; one of them had a toilet bowl dropped on him. The McManus boys – fluent in seven languages and plying their intelligence as meat packers – turn themselves in and plead self-defense. But after receiving a vision from God to destroy all that is evil so that good may flourish, they embark on a vigilante murder spree against the Boston underworld. The boondock saints have so much fun that they let their dense buddy Rocco (David Della Rocco) in on the team. To retaliate, the mob turns to Irish super assassin Il Duce (Billy Connolly).

Production history
After spending childhood in Exeter, New Hampshire amid a large, lower middle class Irish American family, Troy Duffy was accepted into the premed program at Colorado State University. Realizing his dream was rock ‘n roll, he dropped out of school and headed for Los Angeles in 1993. By day, Duffy served coffee in Westwood and by night, flipped burgers at a titty bar. After taking on odd jobs in home repair, Duffy found himself tending bar at a watering hole on Melrose called J. Sloan’s. With his brother Taylor and two buddies he’d put together a band they called The Brood, but Duffy’s primary occupation soon became movies. He recalled, “The straw that broke the camel’s back was Jean-Claude Van Damme’s Sudden Death. All I could think was, ‘I can do better than that.’ ”

Titled The Boondock Saints, the script Duffy wrote concerned two Irish brothers who embark on a spiritual crusade to cleanse Boston of “evil men”, putting a flamboyant FBI agent on their trail. Duffy recalls, “The idea for the script was just borne out of poverty and frustration. Me and my brother living in Hollywood in this freaking crackhouse, apartment vandalized and his truck broken into, and just living in shit. Getting frustrated and wondering why no one ever does anything about this, and the police just have no real control over it. We had that fantasy. You know who broke into your apartment, and you see that guy in the halls, and you just want to take a baseball bat to his head, but something stops you. I think we had that question in our heads of, ‘What if something didn’t?’”

A friend named Chris Binder who’d gotten a job as an assistant at New Line Cinema made sure The Boondock Saints was passed up the food chain. The heat around Duffy and his writing sample began to build; producer Robert Fried dropped by Sloan’s to meet him. In February 1997, the William Morris Agency took Duffy on as a client. Within a month, they’d inked a $500,000 deal for Duffy to write two original screenplays for Paramount Pictures. That got the attention of Harvey Weinstein, chairman of Miramax Films. Two weeks after the Paramount deal – while in town for the Academy Awards – Weinstein put in an appearance at Duffy’s workplace. Weinstein stated, “I loved the script that he wrote. Then he told me all the ideas for other films that he had, and I said, ‘A guy who thinks like this won’t be around on a one-shot deal.’ The proof is in the words. I read a lot of scripts that get near Boondock Saints but that don’t close the deal. They’re imitations. They’re mechanical. These characters come from Troy Duffy’s soul.”

In a deal celebrated in newspapers around the globe, Weinstein purchased The Boondock Saints for the following terms: $300,000 for Duffy’s script, $150,000 for Duffy to make his directorial debut. The film would carry a budget of $15 million. Duffy’s band The Brood would produce the music. Duffy would retain casting approval and final cut over the film. Last but not least, Weinstein agreed to buy J. Sloan’s outright and split ownership of the bar with his new discovery. No sooner than Duffy was throwing a backyard barbecue to celebrate, Mark Wahlberg dropped by to discuss starring in the movie. Jake Busey, Jerry O’Connell, Billy Zane, Matthew Modine, Vincent D’Onofrio, Jeff Goldblum and Emilio Estevez were among the actors who showed up at Sloan’s to hold court with Duffy.

Over at Miramax, it was hoped The Boondock Saints would follow the blueprint established by Pulp Fiction and followed by Cop Land: edgy, character driven crime dramas with roles so rich that name actors would waive their salaries for the chance to participate. Duffy had written the nutty FBI agent with Jim Carrey in mind. When the superstar comic passed, Miramax suggested Bill Murray, Mike Myers or Sylvester Stallone. Duffy countered with Patrick Swayze. When the studio proposed making an offer to Brad Pitt to play one of the title characters, Duffy shot that idea down too, reportedly telling friends he didn’t think much of Pitt’s Irish accent in The Devil’s Own. Duffy rejected Matt Damon for not being gritty enough. In private, he called Keanu Reeves a “punk” and Ethan Hawke “a talentless fool.”

Ewan McGregor was interested enough in The Boondock Saints to take a meeting with Duffy. Tony Montana – a co-manager of The Brood, who was shooting a documentary about the Troy Duffy phenomenon – remembered, “Troy thought he could go out, meet with Ewan and get drunk, have a Scottish-Irish love affair, as he called it, and sign him lickety-split. That’s what he said. So he went to New York, and when he came back, things got very quiet. It turned out that they had a bad meeting, got into an argument over the death penalty, and Ewan wasn’t interested. And at that time, Ewan was really one of Miramax’s rising stars.” Unable to lock a cast, Duffy found it harder to get Weinstein on the phone. In November 1997, the studio notified Duffy’s agents that they would not be producing The Boondock Saints.

Duffy recalls, “I told them I’ll jibe with them on every other domain. If you want to cut my budget, if you want to film half of it in Toronto and half in Boston, I’ll jibe with you everywhere except when it comes to casting. So they said, ‘Well, Troy, we just can’t deal with that.’ ” Duffy was permitted to keep his writing fee, but potential buyers were on the hook to reimburse Miramax $700,000 for development costs, plus the $150,000 they’d promised for Duffy to direct. Producer Robert Fried mused, “Troy was very raw and outspoken, and it hurt him. When actors met with him, he didn’t always sound like a polished filmmaker, and it put some people off. But that’s part of what makes such an original. He’s not fake – he’s the real thing.”

Riding to the rescue was Elie Samaha, a former nightclub owner whose Franchise Pictures had carved out a niche bankrolling the pet projects of major stars – Bruce Willis (The Whole Nine Yards), John Travolta (Battlefield Earth), Kevin Costner (3000 Miles To Graceland) – that no one was else wanted to finance. After attaching Sean Patrick Flanery and Jon Bon Jovi to the title roles, Duffy met with Willem Dafoe in April 1998 at the actor’s experimental theater company in New York. As soon as Dafoe signed on to play the FBI agent and Franchise had a name actor they could use to sell the picture, The Boondock Saints commenced shooting August 1998 in Toronto on a budget of $6 million (Norman Reedus became available and was cast in Bon Jovi’s place.)

The München Fantasy Filmfest in Germany was where The Boondock Saints held its world premiere August 1999. It also played theaters in Denmark before a limited release January 2000 at five theaters in the United States. During its three-week run, The Boondock Saints grossed $30,471. But in what may have been the first viral marketing outbreak in Hollywood history, many who discovered the movie on DVD told a friend, who told another friend, who told more friends. Ultimately, more than 430,000 units were sold. The official website boasts a fan section (whose devout members refer to themselves as The Flock) and a store, which sells merchandise from Boondock Saints shot glasses to rosary beads. The DVD grew popular enough for Duffy to secure financing for Boondock Saints II: All Saint’s Day, which commenced shooting October 2008 in Toronto. Peter Fonda, Judd Nelson and Julie Benz join Sean Patrick Flanery, Norman Reedus and Billy Connolly in the sequel.

At “The Hunt for the Worst Movie of All Time: Boondock Saints” on videogum, viewers submitted their opinions. H.F.G.: ”My ex-boyfriend loved this movie and tried to get me to watch it. I got half-way through this movie before I just looked at him and said ‘If you wanted to break-up with me, you should have said so.’” jess: “It is poorly made, poorly acted, poorly written, non-sensical, and stupid. I love violent movies AND stupid movies, for that matter. But Boondock Saints definitely represents one of those weird cultural phenomenon moments for me when everyone is saying, ‘You’re going to DIE this movie is so awesome.’ And then, it’s clearly not awesome. Not at all.” Manvnature: “I hate this movie. I hate the people who made it. I hate the cameras that were used to shoot it. I used to love Willem Dafoe. Then I saw this movie. I try not to judge people too much for their personal artistic taste, but I definitely use this film as a litmus test. If you like it, our paths shant cross again.”

Talking Boondock Saints in an interview with attrition.org, Duffy declared, “Yes, it has become a ‘cult’ film. Do you know what that is? It’s simple. A cult flick is a film that Hollywood missed. They made a mistake, plain and simple. After people’s love of the film is expressed the number one comment I hear is, ‘Why wasn’t this in theaters?’ I had my industry screenings a few weeks after Columbine occurred, when the president was forming judiciary committees against violent film. Studios were pulling back and Boondocks was black listed. If anybody had the nuts, we could have seen exactly what this movie could have done in theaters. But, fuck it. I have received mail from fans all over the world. The raw fact is, Boondocks hit the public and they loved it … I am sure in my heart that what happened here happened the way it was supposed to. I love this film. I am proud of this film.”

Opinion
If you let it slip that you’ve never actually seen The Boondock Saints and somebody gets in our face to demand that you watch it, these are the steps to follow: 1) Change the subject by asking them how they’re doing in school, 2) Remind them not to drink and drive, 3) Thank them for their recommendation, 4) Do not see the movie. The Boondock Saints is a gangsta rap demo recorded on film, a bro revenge fantasy that attempts to mix the symbolism of The Deer Hunter with the bullet worship of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. The result is feature length masturbation with an admittedly intriguing hook, but wretched execution all the way down the line, from writing to casting to editing. It’s so unwatchable you’ll want to snap the DVD in half and send Guy Ritchie a note on Facebook, apologizing for anything bad you ever said about his movies.

Troy Duffy should be congratulated for getting The Boondock Saints made and mesmerizing the crowd the movie seems designed for: 15 to 22 year old bros who always wanted to hang a neon beer sign in their room. For the sober moviegoer, there’s nothing to recommend about the film at all. Unable or unwilling to involve us in anything dramatically, Duffy tries to compensate by going wildly over the top and making a cheeseball action farce: Ron Jeremy has a cameo, a cat is shot, Willem Dafoe performs in drag. If Duffy had followed the example of Jon Favreau, channeling his Hollywood frustrations into a script about his barstool buddies wondering whether they should get a life, it might not have been as funny as Swingers, but at least it would have been honest. The Boondock Saints is so high on its own supply that the sequel may be the only picture with any chance of topping it as the worst ever made.

© Joe Valdez

Sources
“Hollywood’s Suddenly Drunk on a Bartender’s Idea”. Sharon Waxman, the Washington Post. April 14, 1997

“The Two Faces of Hollywood”. Sharon Waxman, the Washington Post. April 10, 1998

“Back Behind the Bar”. Patrick Goldstein, the Los Angeles Times. April 13, 1998

“Boondock Saints”. Amy Finch, the Boston Phoenix. November 2, 1998

Overnight (2003), directed by Brian Mark Smith & Tony Montana

Synopsis
Upon his release from Joliet Correctional Center, “Joliet” Jake Blues (John Belushi) is met by his brother Elwood Blues (Dan Aykroyd) in an old Mt. Prospect police car. Elwood takes Jake directly to St. Helen Blessed Shroud Orphanage to visit The Penguin (Kathleen Freeman), the nun who raised them. She reveals that the Cook County assessor has asked for $5,000 and is threatening to close the orphanage. Jake offers to have the cash for her in the morning, but The Penguin refuses to accept stolen money, and when the brothers curse up a storm, she kicks them out in disgrace. An old bluesman named Curtis (Cab Calloway) who raised the boys and also lives in the orphanage advises them to get churched up.

Standing at the back of the Triple Rock Cathedral to hear a sermon from the Reverend Cleophus James (James Brown), Jake is struck by the holy spirit. It occurs to him they can save the orphanage by reuniting their old band. Elwood reveals that might not be so easy; they all took straight jobs. Pulled over by a pair of Illinois State troopers for running a red light and driving on a suspended license, Elwood notifies Jake “We’re on a mission from God,” and leads the law on a wild car chase through a shopping mall. Laying low from the authorities, the Blues Brothers also dodge assassination attempts by a mousy brunette (Carrie Fisher) who has it in for Jake.

Steve Cropper (rhythm guitar), Donald Dunn (bass), Willie Hall (drums), Tom Malone (trombone) and Murphy Dunne (piano) are found playing a Holiday Inn. Trumpeter Mr. Fabulous (Alan Rubin) is lured away from his job as a maître’d when the Blues Brothers make a scene in his restaurant. Lead guitarist Matt Murphy and saxophonist Blue Lou (Lou Marini) are recovered in Calumet City working for Matt’s wife (Aretha Franklin) at a soul food diner. She doesn’t let her husband go without breaking into “Think”. In addition to state police and the Mystery Woman, the Blues Brothers are pursed through Chicago by a redneck band, Illinois Nazis and the state National Guard as they try to make it from their big gig to the county assessor’s office.

Production history
According to interviews given at the time, John Belushi pinned the birth of The Blues Brothers to the autumn of 1977 while he was stuck in Eugene, Oregon shooting Animal House. Belushi recalled, “There were a lot of rainy nights with nothing to do and this guy I met there, Curtis Salgado, began playing me all this music. It was fucking unbelievable. I was starving for it and Curtis kept asking me if I was really interested. Interested. I couldn’t stop playing the stuff! Magic Sam, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Junior Wells – I walked around playing that shit all the time. I bought hundreds of records and singles. And then I knew Danny had played the harp in Canada, and I always could sing, so we created The Blues Brothers.”

Dan Aykroyd traced the origin of The Blues Brothers to New York, where Belushi would warm up audiences for Saturday Night Live. Aykroyd recalled, “He used to sing rock stuff, and he introduced me to The Allman Brothers and Led Zeppelin. I introduced him to James Cotton and some of the white blues bands that were working up North, like The Lamont Cranston Band.” Aykroyd quickly got in on the act. “We just decided we’d go out and sing a couple of old blues numbers – and why don’t we wear the suits that you wore when you were doing Roy Orbison? That was the discussion. John did Roy Orbison once. He wore the thin tie and white shirt and black suit. And then the shades, you know? And we just added the hat to it and the digital watches and the locked briefcase.”

If TV audiences couldn’t decide whether The Blues Brothers were mocking someone or paying tribute, they weren’t alone. Aykroyd added, “Well, we thought it was a parody at first, but then we started to get in with these heavyweight musicians and we realized, ‘Hey, we’ve got to be pros here.’” Belushi – who played drums growing up in the suburbs of Chicago – was living out a dream. Aykroyd remained dubious about taking their act on the road. Then Steve Martin asked The Blues Brothers to open nine shows for him September 1978 at the Universal Amphitheatre in L.A. Under the guidance of Paul Shaffer, Aykroyd & Belushi assembled a band. The response was so overwhelming that when Atlantic Records put out a concert album – A Briefcase Full of Blues – it sold three million copies.

Pitching an idea for a movie over the phone, Aykroyd & Belushi found a buyer in Universal Pictures, which rushed The Blues Brothers into development. Belushi convinced Aykroyd to get to work on a script and summoned director John Landis to New York. Aykroyd recalls, “Then Landis came in and talked to me at Saturday Night one night, and said, ‘I want this, this and this in the movie.’ I took some notes, and said, ‘Fine, you’ll have it.’ And I sort of cut the script to what he wanted – including of course, the thought and myth that we knew. So from the beginning, it was like Landis and I putting it together. Landis saying, ‘I want the biggest car chase ever at the end of the movie,’ and I went, ‘Okay!’ And I said, ‘Well, I want to jump a swing bridge.’ And he said, ‘Fine.’ And you know, I turned in a three-hundred-plus-page script.”

When he sent the script for The Blues Brothers to producer Robert Weiss, Aykroyd wrapped it in the pages of the San Fernando Yellow Pages to blunt the effect. As written, each member of the band had been given their own story. Aykroyd recalls, “I didn’t even know how to write movies. I don’t think I’d even seen a screenplay. I was told most screenplays were 120 to 150 pages long, but when I sat down to write The Blues Brothers, there were so many descriptive passages in there, just paragraphs and paragraphs of shots, of concepts, of ideas, of descriptions and eventually it just kind of ballooned up.” The script ran 324 pages. Landis recalls, “When I read it and I got these calls from Bob Weiss and Sean Daniel and Ned Tanen, you know, hysterical, ‘What the fuck is this?’”

Landis adds, “So I basically distilled it, rewrote it, and then gave it back to Danny and then we worked together. But basically it was – don’t want to say streamlining because this movie’s anything but streamlined – but it was trying to make it as economic in the story as possible. I really wanted to simplify it to the point, I mean, it really is like Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, ‘Let’s put on a show and save the orphanage,’ just really make it a straight forward story on which we can hang all this craziness.” Shooting commenced July 1979 in Los Angeles. The musical numbers were largely shot on the Universal lot, while the climactic concert was filmed at the Hollywood Palladium. By the time the production moved to Harvey, Illinois to shoot a car chase in the shuttered Dixie Square Mall, the $27 million budget was climbing. It would end up at $36 million.

Released June 1980, The Blues Brothers was praised in its hometown; Gene Siskel ranked it #8 on his list of the year’s 10 best films, while Roger Ebert recommended the movie as well. Many critics outside of Chicago did not. Pauline Kael wrote in the New Yorker: “The film’s big joke is how overscaled everything in it is; this has an unfortunate result – Landis is working with such a lavish hand that his miscalculations in timing are experienced by the audience as a form of waste.” Richard Corliss, Time Magazine: “Alas, more is less, and The Blues Brothers ends up totaling itself.” Variety: “If Universal had made it 35 years earlier, The Blues Brothers might have been called Abbott & Costello in Soul Town. Level of inspiration is about the same now as then, the humor as basic, the enjoyment as fleeting. But at $30 million, this is a whole new ball-game.”

Speaking 25 years later, Landis commented that The Blues Brothers, “got the most hateful reviews. People wrote that it was Hollywood out of control. We had a bunch of films that were way over budget about that same time: Apocalypse Now, Star Trek: The Movie, 1941, Heaven’s Gate and The Blues Brothers. All of those films – with the exception of Heaven’s Gate – eventually showed a profit. But the press kept saying Hollywood had gone crazy, and The Blues Brothers took a lot of that rap.” The film grossed $57.2 million in the U.S. and another $58 million overseas, but due to its costs – and the fact that Animal House earned twice as much – was considered a wash commercially.

Asked in 2005 about the film’s impact, Landis stated, “When we made The Blues Brothers, it was all Bee Gees and ABBA. Now, I get questions like, ‘How did you get Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin and James Brown to be in the movie?’ And I have to tell them, ‘It’s because they were thrilled to get the job.’ To give you an idea of how different it is now, when we did The Blues Brothers, MCA/Universal refused the soundtrack album, because they said no one but old black people would buy it. Then we went to what was called a ‘black label’ – Atlantic – and they refused to put John Lee Hooker on the album! Fifteen years later, John had a platinum album. So The Blues Brothers was successful in its attempt to call attention to these guys.”

Opinion
If you hate musical numbers, car crashes, R&B, soul, gospel music or profanity, you’ll probably find a lot to dislike about The Blues Brothers, which brazenly – though a bit raggedly – serves up epic quantities of each. For its fans, time appears to have been very good to this film, which isn’t seamless, but stands as one of most enduring musicals or comedies ever made. Of the six or seven movies he appeared in, it’s probably the best testament to the immense talent and likability of John Belushi. Also documented are show stopping performances by James Brown, John Lee Hooker, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles and Cab Calloway that if nothing else, make the film a marvel in musical anthropology.

What’s truly awesome about The Blues Brothers is the vision of Aykroyd & Landis’ script, which is filled with enough music, characters and ingenuity for two movies (Landis intended the picture to have a retro, road show release, with an intermission and a running time of two and a half hours.) The difference between this flick and 1941 – which was bloated with zany ideas and cast members – is that unlike Steven Spielberg, John Landis knew his musical and comedy genres. Elwood’s closet sized apartment, the chicken wire in front of the stage at Bob’s Country Bunker, and Carrie Fisher popping up like Wile E. Coyote throughout the film are all terrific concepts, and Landis demonstrates the panache to get honest to goodness laughs from that stuff. Along with Aykroyd & Belushi, he should also be acknowledged for employing so many great R&B musicians who were on the verge of being forgotten.

D.J. Nock at DVD Times writes, “25 years later, it’s easy to see that The Blues Brothers is little more than the sum of its parts. Like a lot of popular films, its reputation seems to precede it; never possessing the quality that its status reflects. But don’t get me wrong – I find the film to be a very entertaining brew, but its ‘perfect’ reputation is probably unjustified. Director John Landis has certainly made better films (especially his masterpiece, Trading Places), and his skills as a filmmaker have been put to more efficient use elsewhere.”

Scott Weinberg at DVD Talk writes, “Easily of the most ebullient and smoothly enjoyable musical comedies ever made, The Blues Brothers boasts a roster of musical talent that must be heard to be believed: Cab Calloway, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, James Brown, and John Lee Hooker, all legends of the music industry, had their careers earn a well-deserved shot in the arm from their appearances in The Blues Brothers. And the musicians hired to play Jake & Elwood’s band? Top-notch artists across the board. The flick’s basically one-third blues music, one-third character-based comedy, and one-third car chase — and all of it’s grade-A prime American Comedy, brewed in the vintage year of 1980.”

© 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
In present day London, a tin box is opened in a bank vault revealing the personal effects of Dr. John H. Watson. This includes “other adventures, for reasons of discretion, I have decided to withhold from the public until this much later date. They involve matters of a delicate and sometimes scandalous nature, as will shortly become apparent.” Moving back in time to August 1887, Sherlock Holmes (Robert Stephens) and Dr. Watson (Colin Blakely) return to 221-B Baker Street from a case in Yorkshire.

Unable to find a case to engage his mind, Holmes indulges in his “seven percent solution” of cocaine. Watson accepts an invitation for them to attend a performance of Swan Lake, where a Russian ballerina (Tamara Toumanova) requests an unusual service from Holmes. He turns her down by insinuating that he and Watson have a relationship. Watson is livid at the scandal that might erupt, but before long, a challenge presents itself: Gabrielle Valladon (Genevieve Page), who arrives at Baker Street with no memory of how she came to London or what she wants of Holmes.

Distrustful of women, Holmes devotes himself to a quick resolution to the case so he can get rid of Valladon. He discovers she’s in search of her husband, an engineer who was brought to England on an assignment. His disappearance involves canaries, seven missing midgets, a sect of Trappist monks, the Loch Ness monster and the powerful Diogenes Club, a shadowy government organization which includes Holmes’ brilliant older brother Mycroft (Christopher Lee). Traveling to Scotland, Holmes finds himself drawn to Valladon, but all is not what it seems.

Production history
A lifelong fan of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries by Arthur Conan Doyle, Billy Wilder felt the social climate of the mid-1960s was ripe for a big screen, tell-all musical based on the sleuth. Wilder thought of Lerner & Loewe to create lyrics and music, while Peter O’Toole and Peter Sellers could possibly star. The plan never got off the drawing board. In 1968, Wilder revived the project – this time as a non-musical – and worked on a script with Harry Kurnitz. Unhappy with the results, Wilder waited for his frequent collaborator and screenwriting partner I.A.L. Diamond to become available.

Wilder & Diamond conceived The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes as a 165-minute epic that would include an intermission and tour the country as a roadshow. This meant that the film would be screened at only one of the best movie palaces in each city it played in, charging a higher admission price, but offering moviegoers souvenir programs and reserved seating. Lawrence of Arabia and My Fair Lady were among the many films presented in this format during the 1950s and ‘60s to great success.

Wilder described the 220-page screenplay he and Diamond spent over a year writing as “a symphony in four movements.” A modern day prologue featured Dr. Watson’s grandson (also played by Blakely) arriving in London to open a lockbox containing four Holmes cases unpublished by the doctor due to their personal nature. “The Curious Case of the Upside Down Room” concerned Watson concocting an odd crime scene to distract Holmes from his cocaine habit.

In “The Dreadful Business of the Naked Honeymooners,” Watson investigates a murder abroad a cruise liner, while Holmes observes the disastrous results. “The Singular Affair of the Russian Ballerina” toyed with possibility of Holmes’ homosexuality. All three episodes were intended to be humorous, followed by an intermission and “The Adventure of the Dumbfounded Detective,” a mystery that leads to Loch Ness and Holmes’ feelings for Gabrielle Valladon, concluding the film on a more serious note.

With a budget of $10 million, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes was Wilder’s most ambitious film to date. Shooting commenced in May 1969 in Pinewood Studios outside London and lasted through November. Wilder then screened his symphony to United Artists. It clocked in at three hours and twenty minutes. In the time since Wilder had conceived of his roadshow, one Hollywood extravaganza after another had flopped; Star!, Paint Your Wagon, Doctor Doolittle. Believing the roadshow was out of fashion with audiences, UA urged Wilder cut the film down to two hours.

The director was so discouraged by the reception that rather than insist on his contractual right of final cut, he departed for Paris to work on another project, entrusting editor Ernest Walter and producers at The Mirisch Company to make the necessary subtractions. The prologue, two of the first three episodes and a flashback to Holmes’ college days at Oxford – which illustrated his distrust of women – were all left on the cutting room floor. Wilder was left despondent. “When I saw the way they had cut it, I had tears in my eyes. It seemed longer when they had made it shorter.”

Released November 1970 in the wake of Easy Rider and M*A*S*H, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes was dismissed by critics at the time, many who felt neither the plot, nor the postmodern take measured up to Doyle’s literary mysteries. Wilder’s confidence that youth audiences would embrace a great story – regardless of the changing times – never panned out. The film was a box office failure. In ensuing years, some critics and scholars have rediscovered it and hailed the film as an overlooked masterpiece.

Opinion
Tempting as it might be to ponder Peter O’Toole & Peter Sellers possibly playing Holmes and Watson, or at the very least, an hour and fifteen minutes restored to its running time, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes retains the magnificence of a jewel retrieved from a safety deposit box. The film comes from a time when event movies weren’t produced by a computer, but were rendered even more impressively with story, character and dialogue. It absolutely belongs in a discussion of Wilder’s best comedies, including Some Like It Hot and The Apartment.

While the plot requires a degree of patience and lacks a strong villain (Professor Moriarty is mentioned, but never appears to threaten London) what’s striking about the film is how Wilder & Diamond refresh a 19th century literary icon by infusing that world with contemporary attitudes about men, women, society and friendship. The cast is terrific, particularly Colin Blakely as Watson. Miklós Rózsa – whose violin concertos Wilder had listened to while writing the script – composed one of the most beautiful film scores of all time.

Bill Chambers at Film Freak Central writes, “That alliance of comedy and drama which proved so pivotal to the success of Wilder’s The Apartment keeps The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes afloat through the sinking realization that we are watching the I’ll Do Anything of its generation (and I would argue that I’ll Do Anything’s director James L. Brooks, much more than Brooks’ protégé Crowe, is the modern Wilder), a feature-length retraction of romantic ambition too poignant in its own right to discount.”

“Sherlock Holmes comes just behind Dracula as the most portrayed fictional character on the movie screen, but few films about the great sleuth hold claim to greatness. One of the few is Billy Wilder’s elegiac The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. It was a dismal flop on release even after being shortened drastically from its original three hours plus, which is a true pity, as it stands as probably Wilder’s best post-The Apartment work in his unique genre of films, so ruthless in observing human nature but so deeply sympathetic to it,” writes Roderick Heath at Ferdy on Films, etc.

Glenn Erickson at DVD Savant writes, “Viewers who haven’t seen The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes are in for a big surprise, for it is a loving valentine to old-fashioned moviemaking. The photography of the lush Scottish landscape is beautiful, and the scenes backstage at the ballet are a riot of soft colors and balalaika music. The script is a witty delight, with Wilder and Diamond decorating their mystery plot with a constant stream of arcane clues and character-driven jokes … Even in this shortened form, it’s a movie gem hiding in plain sight.”

© Joe Valdez

Synopsis
In Seattle, Jack Baker (Jeff Bridges) leaves his latest one-night stand in her bed. “You’ve got great hands,” she tells him on his way out. Jack dusts off his tux and shuffles to a gig at the Starfire Lounge. Performing a dual piano act with his partner of 31 years – his older brother Frank (Beau Bridges) – Jack can barely mask his contempt for his job, his surroundings and his employer. His only happiness seems to come from his dog, the 10-year-old neighbor (Ellie Raab) who’s adopted him as a surrogate dad and performing his own brand of sophisticated jazz piano at an after hours joint.

With audiences drying up, Frank holds auditions for a singer. Thirty-seven “singers” later, Susie Diamond (Michelle Pfeiffer) enters. While her entertainment experience is limited to being on call for the Triple A Escort Service, Susie’s voice is elegant and powerful. After a rocky start, the Fabulous Baker Boys and the Sensational Susie Diamond start drawing crowds. But the more intimately Jack and Susie get to know each other, the more nervous Frank becomes. “This isn’t some hat check girl you can leave behind at the Sheraton. You’ve got two shows a night with her!” Jack ignores the advice. Both he and Susie come to regret it.

Production history
A love for movies brought Steve Kloves from Sunnyvale, California to UCLA, where he worked at a campus deli and found little time for class. He dropped out his sophomore year and took an unpaid internship with an agent. Barely old enough to drink, he wrote a script called Swings, an “’80s version of Diary of a Mad Housewife” about women in the suburbs. The script brought Kloves to the attention of Paramount, which put his third screenplay – a coming of age tale set against World War II titled Racing With The Moon – into production in 1983 with Richard Benjamin directing and Sean Penn and Nicolas Cage starring.

Kloves started work on his next script. “I had spent a lot of time in bad hotels and I would occasionally go down to the bar and hear some guy play the piano, and some of them were pretty good. The way my mind tripped off on it was that this guy’s parents gave him piano lessons to improve his life and give him an opening into culture and there he was, twenty years later, at a Holiday Inn playing ‘Feelings.’ ” Kloves finished writing The Fabulous Baker Boys in 1985 and sold it to producer Paula Weinstein. She took the project to Mark Rosenberg, president of production at Warner Brothers.

Chevy Chase and Bill Murray were proposed to star. Kloves wanted Jeff and Beau Bridges and spent the next three years holding out for the opportunity to direct the film himself. Mark Rosenberg left Warner Brothers, partnering with producer/director Sydney Pollack to form Mirage Productions. Pollack read The Fabulous Baker Boys and recalled, “The first thing that struck me was its sense of atmosphere, mood and leanness. Steve is a minimalist, and there is something extremely evocative in the understated way he writes.” But even with the Bridges, Mirage was unable to interest a studio. Finally, in 1988, Fox agreed to finance the film at $11.5 million.

For the role of Susie Diamond, Kloves hadn’t considered anyone except Michelle Pfeiffer. It was hoped she would be able to do her own singing, but it had been seven years – for Grease 2 – since Pfeiffer had sang or had a voice lesson. Composer Dave Grusin suggested a singer/songwriter named Sally Stevens coach Pfeiffer’s vocal performance. After taking the actress to the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel to hear a nightclub singer and get the ambiance down, they spent six weeks rehearsing for two hours a day at Pfeiffer’s Santa Monica home. Stevens recalls, “I can swear that every single note in that movie was hers.”

Shooting commenced in December 1988. Though set in Seattle, much of the film was shot in L.A., with the production utilizing the Biltmore Hotel, the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel and the Ambassador Hotel for key musical sequences. Nominated for four Academy Awards – including a Best Actress nomination for Pfeiffer – and a darling of nearly every critic that reviewed it, audiences stayed away. Kloves recalls, “Baker Boys was considered a difficult, quirky movie. Dark. Anything in the present state of Hollywood where people have real arguments is considered dark.” It wasn’t until the film was released on home video that moviegoers warmed up to it.

Opinion
Jazz music, a conflict that stays mostly internalized in the main character, and a dry sense of humor are only a few of the challenges Kloves imposes on the audience here, the number one being that his screenplay doesn’t tell us much more about these characters or their music than we’d soak up tending bar at one of their gigs. The reason that The Fabulous Baker Boys endures as a classic is precisely because it refuses to impose any artificial plot devices, jokes or dialogue on the audience, transporting us right into those dingy lounges with their blue collar musical acts.

Using the success metric coined by Howard Hawks, this movie has three great scenes and no bad ones. Pfeiffer’s audition to “More Than You Know” is magic, as is her show stopping performance of “Makin’ Whoopee” atop a piano. And any screenwriter should envy the way Kloves bookends his story. While Susie Diamond is still the best role of Michelle Pfeiffer’s career, Jeff Bridges walks away with the movie, playing a worn out rake who’s heard the same lines and played the same tunes one time too many. Cinematographer Michael Ballhaus brings an Edward Hopper/“Nighthawks” vibe to the film, aided immeasurably by Dave Grusin’s mellow musical score.

Nathan Rabin at The Onion A.V. Club writes, “American studios turned out plot-light, atmosphere-heavy observational gems like this throughout the ’70s, but when Baker Boys hit screens in the late ’80s, its understated, world-weary sophistication stood out like a Cole Porter ballad sandwiched between generic Top 40 R&B hits … Though it lacks momentum as it ambles to a close, Baker Boys is nevertheless a touching, sly, resonant look at the joy and pain of collaboration, and the way jaded souls cut themselves off from their emotions to keep heartache at bay, but ultimately end up hurting each other all the same.”

“Even by the standards of leisurely paced films, The Fabulous Baker Boys takes its sweet time to kick its dramatic arc into gear. The movie, especially its final act, could’ve used tighter editing. But those are minor complaints. Both Bridges are excellent; it might be the pinnacle of Beau Bridges’ filmic career. Pfeiffer initially overplays the brassy broad routine (perhaps still channeling her performance from 1988’s Married to the Mob) … but her performance transcends vocal prowess. Heterosexual males might have trouble watching Pfeiffer’s rendition of “Makin’ Whoopee” without drooling on themselves,” writes Phil Bacharach at DVD Talk.

Vince Leo at QWipster’s Movie Reviews writes, “This is the film that contains the classic scene of Michelle Pfeiffer in a red dress laying on top of the piano, belting out the standard, ‘Makin’ Whoopee’, and there are several other moments that make this a worthwhile watch for those who enjoy thoughtful fare with lots of good music. It’s an efficiently made film made by consummate professionals, and for a night of quality sights, sounds, and good performances, the price of the rental should be well worth it.”

© Joe Valdez

Synopsis
John “Goldie” Mickens (Max Julien) and his partner Slim (Richard Pryor) are ambushed by rival gunmen in a junkyard. Two white detectives (Dan Gordon and William Watson) arrive on the scene and debate whether to kill Goldie or arrest him. Six years later, Goldie is released from prison and returns to Oakland. He visits his mentor, the Blind Man (Paul Harris) who advises Goldie, “Pimpin’s big business. And it’s been goin on since the beginning of time. And it’s gonna continue straight ahead until somebody up there turns out the lights on this small planet. Can you dig it?”

Goldie catches up with an ex-girlfriend (Carol Speed), an “outlaw” turning tricks to pay the bills. She implores Goldie to manage her. Goldie’s militant brother (Roger Mosley) is a political organizer dedicated to running pimps and drug dealers out of the community, but Goldie notifies him that he has some things he wants to do. He gets himself cleaned up, buys some new clothes and decides, “to be the meanest mack who ever lived. They’re gonna be talkin about Goldie like they used to talk about Jesus!”

Rising to such success that he is awarded “Mack of the Year” honors at the annual Players Ball in Oakland, trouble arises when Goldie’s former employer Fatman (George Murdock) gets word of his protégé’s success. He demands Goldie come back to work for him. The vile detectives who busted Goldie are also intent at taking him down. To get out of the game with his life intact, Goldie turns to his brother for help.

Production history
Robert Poole was an ex-con who – according to legend – wrote a 40-page treatment for a movie idea he had on prison toilet paper. His story concerned an ex-con who returns to the streets to become the greatest pimp of all time. Titled Black Is Beautiful, Poole ultimately approached producer Harvey Bernhard with his idea. Fascinated with how a man could “control a bitch’s mind,” Bernhard hired a young filmmaker named Michael Campus, who had shot a few television documentaries for ABC, to direct.

Max Julien was the first actor Bernhard approached. Julien had written the screenplay for Cleopatra Jones and was looking to direct, but Bernhard gave him carte blanche to rewrite the script. Traveling to Oakland, Julien and Campus sought the help of the Ward brothers, four men who ran the city’s criminal underworld. Frank Ward agreed to take the filmmakers into his world, if they took him into theirs. In addition to being awarded a cameo in the film, Ward inspired the basis for Goldie’s character.

Frank Ward not only met with Julien to make sure the actor portrayed him correctly, but provided protection for the cast and crew. Trouble came when Huey Newton and the Black Panther Party – who ran the political side of black Oakland – felt the production had infringed on their turf. The Panthers rained bottles down on the crew on the first day of filming. Julien was friends with Newton and met with him to cool tensions, but before filming could be completed, Frank Ward was shot in the back of the head and killed.

The Panthers were blamed for the hit and without Ward’s protection, the filmmakers retreated to L.A. to finish the film. They dedicated The Mack to Frank Ward, but as if to show who really ran Oakland, Huey Newton insisted the premiere benefit the Panthers’ milk fund in the city. Critics decried the film as “Blaxploitation” at the time, but it’s since come to represent ‘70s style finer than perhaps any other movie. Scenes later showed up in True Romance and Friday, and informed Snoop Dogg’s entire career.

Opinion
Other than the clothes, the cars and the music – Willie Hutch wrote and performed nine classic tunes, including “I Choose You,” “Theme of The Mack” and “Brother’s Gonna Work It Out” – one reason The Mack has endured is the message at its core. The tension between those seeking self-sufficiency through political change and those pursuing criminal enterprise – tension in the Black community that plagued the production – is richly conveyed in the relationship between Roger Mosley and Max Julien’s very memorable characters.

The movie is still a shoot ‘em up straight from the pages of Iceberg Slim and tends to get somewhat repetitive, but it also has an improvisational charge to its dialogue, thanks largely to Richard Pryor. Instead of feeling artificial, The Mack plays like a documentary feature on Oakland of the early ‘70s. And despite a comically low budget, nearly every scene is infused with a love for movies. Goldie’s makeover – where Julien throws dollar bills into the air and is captured in slow motion – is a joy.

Bill Gibron at DVD Verdict writes, “The Mack is indeed a neo-realistic, honest story of one man’s journey through the dark world of organized street crime. It is also incredibly preachy, disjointed, and esoterically insular … People seeing this film without a thorough knowledge and understanding of the jargon and manner of 1970s black society will probably find their head reeling from the excessive use of street jive and indecipherable pimp code names.”

“I see on the one hand a rather racist film filled with stereotypes and narrow attitudes, while on the other hand, Goldie maintains that a sense of empowerment and justice, however skewed, is served. A good argument for both stances could be made, but watching this film today, the blended themes are awkward and unnerving and bring back thoughts of how far we still have to go in terms of equality for everyone,” writes Ryan Cracknell at Apollo Movie Guide.

Jeffrey Anderson at Combustible Celluloid writes, “One of the seminal works of blaxploitation is actually a bit softer and more thoughtful than it may appear. This is partly thanks to the low-key, sleepy-eyed performance by Max Julien as ‘Goldie’ … The film is full of odd little touches, such as a man attacked by rats in the trunk of a car or battery acid injected into the veins of another. But in-between the (white) director Michael Campus employs an almost improvisatory approach, it’s as if the actors weren’t even aware the camera was running.”

Synopsis
In the sun drenched sleepy streets of Tulsa, juvenile delinquent Rusty James (Matt Dillon) receives word that Biff Wilcox is looking for him. His trusted friend Midget (Larry Fishburne) notifies Rusty James of the time and place, “Tonight, under the arches, behind the pet store about ten o’clock.” B.J. (Chris Penn) promises to back his friend up in the fight, while the clever Smokey (Nicolas Cage) and bookish Steve (Vincent Spano) urge Rusty James not to show.

Rusty James is excited because fights give him some vague memory of “the old days, when we used to have rumbles. A gang really meant something back then.” Things haven’t been the same since Rusty James’ older brother left town, but during the fight, the Motorcycle Boy (Mickey Rourke) returns triumphantly. With his mother somewhere in California and father (Dennis Hopper) a drunk, Rusty James eagerly anticipates the day he’ll be just like his older brother.

The color blind Motorcycle Boy seems withdrawn, distracted by a strung out floozie (Diana Scarwid) and the “rumble fish” at the pet store. Not the brightest of gang leaders, Rusty James falls into a trap laid by Smokey to separate him from his girlfriend Patty (Diane Lane), while a menacing cop (William Smith) waits for any excuse to kill Motorcycle Boy, jealous of how the kids look up to him. All that Motorcycle Boy can say is that the rumble fish wouldn’t fight if someone put them in the river.

Production history
On location in Tulsa shooting a film version of S.E. Hinton’s novel The Outsiders in the spring of 1982, Francis Coppola heard about another book the author had written when she was older – “and drunk, I think” – called Rumble Fish. Coppola added, “It had tremendous, really impressive vision and dialogue and characters and complicated ideas, the kind of ideas you don’t totally understand in your head but you feel that you understand them.” He quickly adapted a screenplay, which Hinton made suggestions to.

Coppola planned to stay in Oklahoma and shoot the movie back-to-back with The Outsiders, utilizing the same crew and some of the same actors. Mickey Rourke had auditioned for a role in The Outsiders and impressed Coppola enough to earn the part of Motorcycle Boy in Rumble Fish. His character’s color blindness got Coppola thinking about making the picture in black and white. In contrast to the warm Technicolor glow and mass appeal of The Outsiders, the director saw Rumble Fish as an art film for kids.

Coppola’s ability to make two movies in a seven-month span was due in part to a mobile electronic production facility he’d developed. An Airstream trailer was fitted with Betamax recorders and monitors that enabled Coppola to not only pre-visaulize the film during rehearsals, but edit it while he was shooting. The idea was to control the filmmaking process down to the tiniest detail. Coppola’s vision was that one day “we’ll be making movies with no sets at all. We’ll work with only a stage. And it will look totally realistic.”

Universal Pictures planned to build word of mouth by premiering Rumble Fish at the New York Film Festival in September 1983. The screening did not go well. Critics with the mainstream press launched an open revolt – Richard Corliss of Time Magazine appreciated the film, but remarked it was “a professional suicide note” – and audiences never gave it a chance. But in subsequent years, Coppola noted, “If someone asked me to show a film that I made that I liked, I would perhaps show Rumble Fish.”

Opinion
A recent release that jumps to mind while watching Coppola’s stark, highly stylized literary adaptation is Sin City, due in part to the huge ensemble casts and the presence of Mickey Rourke in both films. But while Sin City is dumbed down to the level of a hyper-violent video game, Rumble Fish goes the other way. It’s hyper-imaginative, embracing an experimental style that brings to mind the wild and hallucinatory classic German films of the 1920s.

Hinton never feigns interest in developing her characters, but one of the joys of Rumble Fish is waiting for which familiar face will pop up next. The opening scene boasts Larry Fishburne, Matt Dillon, Chris Penn, Nicolas Cage and Tom Waits. Mickey Rourke and Dennis Hopper turn in mesmerizing work. A percussion-heavy musical score by Stewart Copeland is oddball, but the expressive sound design and visual effects – including a scene in which Rusty James’ spirit floats out of his body – compels me to credit Coppola with making the greatest student film of all time.

Brett Cullum at DVD Verdict writes, “Guilty of being an exercise in pure gorgeous style, Rumble Fish stands as one of Coppola’s most divisive works. If you like artifice, and a so-hip-it-hurts approach, it’s a rich, rewarding journey. Universal has assembled a well-produced look at an auteur’s vision of what teenagers are—sexy, violent time bombs waiting for an escape. Ironically, that could also apply to the filmmaker himself.”

“A minor though wholly worthy entry into Francis Ford Coppola’s filmography, Rumble Fish is an evocative, gritty tale that’s laced with weighty themes and anchored by several stellar performances. Unfairly bashed by critics upon release in 1983, Universal’s excellent remastered package merits revisiting from detractors and fans alike. Highly recommended,” writes Preston Jones at DVD Talk Review.

Scott Weinberg at DVD Clinic writes, “Up until a few days ago, Rumble Fish remained as the only Coppola film that I’d never seen, and I’m not too surprised to discover that I quite enjoyed Frankie’s little ‘juvie’ experiment. If it reminds you of several other street gang stories, I suppose that’s because it’s supposed to — but the master filmmaker brings his own unique sensibilities to the movie, and the result is a flick that’s admittedly rather broad (and more than a little … weird), but pretty darn entertaining nonetheless.”

“That’s right, Rusty James. These are Siamese fighting fish.” View the pet store scene from Rumble Fish with Mickey Rourke and Matt Dillon.

© Joe Valdez

Synopsis
In Venice, California, Danny Vinyard (Edward Furlong) interrupts his skinhead brother Derek (Edward Norton) having sex with his girlfriend (Fairuza Balk). “There’s a Black guy outside. He’s breaking into your car.” Derek guns down two of the thieves on the lawn. Moving ahead a couple of years, Danny is called in for a chat with his high school principal, Dr. Sweeney (Avery Brooks). Though hyper intelligent, Danny has taken after Derek in dress and ideology, selecting Adolf Hitler as the subject of a paper on civil rights.

Danny is instructed to write a new paper with his brother as the subject. Released from state prison after three years, Derek reunites with his ailing mother (Beverly D’Angelo) and progressive minded sister (Jennifer Lien), but is also paid a visit by a repulsive White Power lug (Ethan Suplee). Writing his paper, Danny recalls how his charismatic brother rallied displaced kids in the neighborhood and fed them messages of White Empowerment fanned by an ambitious gang organizer named Cameron Alexander (Stacy Keach).

Derek emerges from prison a hero to some, but pays a visit to Cameron, tells him he’s done with the movement and to keep away from his family. Danny doesn’t understand why his brother has changed and to explain, Derek relates what happened to him in prison. It occurs to Danny that racism has been a part of their family since it was passed down by their deceased father. Both brothers begin to see things differently, but may have already made too many enemies to leave their old life behind.

Production history
Graduating from San Diego State, David McKenna set out to write a screenplay about the impact of racism. Most of the movies he could think of had presented racists as “stupid and moronic rednecks.” McKenna wanted to create a racist who “we could sympathize and maybe understand.” Buyers weren’t interested. When New Line purchased McKenna’s script Jello Shots (ultimately released as Body Shots) president of production Michael DeLuca decided to roll the dice on American History X.

The studio’s choice to direct was Dennis Hopper. When Hopper passed, DeLuca was able to hire his choice, Tony Kaye, a director of TV commercials for Nike, Volvo and Guinness Stout among others. Kaye had yet to make a feature film. He proposed some unconventional ideas, including serving as his own DP and camera operator, and casting a non-actor from the streets as Derek Vinyard. Edward Norton wanted the role bad enough to submit to a screen test and to cut his salary in half. He was cast instead.

Put before a test audience in the fall of 1997, Kaye’s first cut of American History X scored surprisingly well. New Line made the unusual decision of allowing Edward Norton to supervise his own cut of the movie. According to Kaye, Norton padded the film by 40 additional minutes, while New Line maintained they could hardly tell the difference between the two versions. In June 1998, a new cut by Kaye that incorporated changes by Norton also tested well. When the studio proposed releasing the film, Kaye threatened to remove his name from the project.

DeLuca compromised by giving Kaye eight weeks to work on the film. But instead of bringing in a new cut, Kaye came to a meeting with a rabbi, a priest and a Tibetan monk (“I was looking for some help from God, anything that would give me the 10 extra weeks I needed to recut the picture.”) New Line released the film without Kaye’s consent. He was also denied by the DGA in a bid to be credited as “Humpty Dumpty.” Though Norton received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, American History X went unseen in theaters.

Opinion
Before sabotaging a promising film career, Kaye demonstrated a sharp eye for close-ups and for stirring angles, yet most admirably, never lets style get in front of story. The fact that American History X has endured in spite of the furor between the director and studio speaks volumes about how good the movie is. No amount of bizarre publicity diminishes the strong material by David McKenna or the riveting performance by Edward Norton, one of the most memorable from any actor during the ‘90s.

What’s unique about the film is its gripping narrative, which uses a term paper to jump backwards and forwards in time. The story is bold in both its structure and its ideas, chronicling a racist’s path from impressionable teen, to intelligent yet volatile youth, and then as an adult who is confronted by truth. Edward Norton commands the screen, but receives excellent support as he does from the cast, particularly Furlong, and from Joe Torry as the convict who enables Derek to face the lies he’s conditioned himself to believe.

Jon Kern at Jiminy Critic writes, “American History X goes wrong when it relies on such hammy story points as a prison life education of reality. The film veers off into schmaltz in such moments. The emotionally obvious score by Anne Dudley and Kaye’s array of cliched ad techniques borrowed from Michael Bay leave an equally super sweet taste in your mouth, leaving you feeling bitter and cheated out of a potentially great movie.”

“When you think about it, American History X almost seems like what a very clever, very subtle white supremacist might produce. It seems like it is a riff on the problems of racism, but under the surface, the movie carries a slightly different message … In the end, because the filmmakers weren’t willing to delve deeper into the brutality of Derek’s deeds or the banality of his thought, the movie undercuts its own message,” writes The Warden at Prison Flicks.

Joshua Klein at The Onion A.V. Club writes, “Hype or no hype – or, for that matter, good movie or no good movie – it’s impossible to deny the power of Edward Norton’s portrayal of a young skinhead leader going through a moral metamorphosis … Where the movie falters, though, is in its tedious moralizing, cartoonish bogeymen, and ultimately naïve take on race relations in America today.”

“Can we just drop this Rodney King thing?” Edward Norton earns his Academy Award nomination in a scene from American History X.

© Joe Valdez

Synopsis
Investment banker Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas) – who arrives at work in a building named after his father – is wished happy birthday by his new secretary. “I don’t like her,” Van Orton confides to his loyal assistant Maria (Elizabeth Dennehy). She notifies her boss that he received a prank call from a “Mr. Seymour Butts” wanting to have lunch. Van Orton has her make a reservation for himself and Mr. Butts at his usual table at the city club.

There, Van Orton meets his nomadic brother Conrad (Sean Penn). Despite not having seen each other in three years, Conrad has a birthday present for him. “What do you get for the man who has everything?” It’s a gift certificate for “Consumer Recreation Services.” Conrad implores his brother to call the number. “It will make your life … fun.” The only other person that the icy Van Orton hears from on his birthday is his ex-wife, who remembers he is now the same age his father was when he committed suicide.

Van Orton believes Consumer Recreation Services must be a self-improvement cult of some kind, but is intrigued enough to drop by their San Francisco office. He meets with a V.P. of Engineering (James Rebhorn) who submits Van Orton to an entire day of psychological and physical testing. When Van Orton asks what exactly it is they’re selling, he’s told, “It’s a game. Specifically tailored for each participant. Think of it as great vacation, except you don’t go to it, it comes to you.”

Returning home, Van Orton finds a life sized clown doll in his driveway. Strange things begin to happen: an anchorman on TV speaks directly to him, his hotel room is littered with drugs and comprising photos, and strangers everywhere seem to be watching him. He meets a waitress (Deborah Kara Unger) who may either be part of the game or a victim of it. The pranks soon become life threatening, and she reveals that the people behind the game have accessed Van Orton’s bank accounts. Now they want him dead.

Production history
The Game was an original screenplay by John Brancato & Michael Ferris that spent the early ‘90s in development at MGM. The writers had served as script doctors on a made-for-Showtime movie called Flight of the Black Angel, where they worked with an up and coming director named Jonathan Mostow. Mostow spent years developing and trying to set up The Game, but without the clout needed to attract a star, ceded to the writers’ request that he relinquish directing duties.

Producer Steve Golin knew a director with even more potential than Mostow. He pursued David Fincher to direct the script, which had gone through a revision by Larry Gross. When Brad Pitt suddenly became available to star in Se7en, Fincher made that film instead. The psychological thriller established him as an A-list filmmaker. With a polish from Se7en scribe Andrew Kevin Walker, Fincher then turned his attention to The Game.

The first actor Fincher approached was Jodie Foster. The script was tweaked so that Van Orton’s brother became his daughter. Michael Douglas agreed to star, but the 51-year-old actor had second thoughts about the 33-year-old Foster playing his child. He wanted her to play his sister. The studio – Polygram – backed Douglas. Foster dropped out and filed lawsuit. Released September 1997, the film suffered critically and commercially in comparison to Se7en, but has a devoted following from who’ve seen it.

Opinion
Se7en, Fight Club and Zodiac are the movies that journalists typically question David Fincher about, but in terms of mind bending mysteries made with intelligence and an exquisite eye for detail, The Game is absolutely on that level. The film builds slowly – and seems to wander off occasionally – but ultimately succeeds in turning the audience upside down in an intellectual carnival funhouse, until we aren’t sure which trick is in store for us at the end.

A lot of credit goes to the screenwriters, who don’t dumb the script down with conventional bad guys or plot devices, but instead place the focus on a modern man who has taken his life for granted. Douglas and Penn – as they gradually come unwound – are terrific, while Fincher and director of photography Harris Savides cloak the film in sinister dread, recalling the best thrillers of the early ‘70s. For those who enjoy the journey, The Game is loaded with Easter eggs that make the film even more rewarding on repeated viewings.

Chris Coleman at Appreciating Great Trash writes, “David Fincher’s The Game is a thriller contrived to within an inch of the breaking point, a movie that, when taken literally, asks so much from an audience’s suspension-of-disbelief that it becomes taxing. Instead, it’s much more rewarding when viewed as a reflexive comment on cinema itself.”

“The Game is a tricky, sharp thriller that has some very interesting ideas and a core element of psychological complexity that makes it worthwhile viewing for those who enjoy paranoid thrillers, but one really has to overlook obvious flaws in fundamental story development in order to buy into it fully,” writes Vince Leo at QWipster’s Movie Reviews.

Pat Piper at Lazy Eye Theatre says, “To me the greatest question raised by The Game is not how did they pull everything off. It’s whether or not a series of traumatic events can truly change a man. The Game believes so as does A Christmas Carol. Of course it helps when we know that the man in question was good to begin with.”

“One day your game begins. You either love it or hate it.” View the theatrical trailer for The Game.