Trick ‘r Treat (2009)
Written by Michael Dougherty
Directed by Michael Dougherty
Produced by Legendary Pictures/ Bad Hat Harry Productions
Running time: 82 minutes

So, What’s This About?
In “Warren Valley, Ohio” on Halloween Night, a Yuppie couple (Leslie Bibb, Tahmoh Penikett) are paid a visit by a demonic trick ‘r treater with a burlap sack for a head. In the first of four tongue-in-cheek horror tales to follow, a junior high school principal (Dylan Baker) poisons an obnoxious candy seeker and attempts to dispose of the body before his young son finds out. Three sexually aggressive party seekers (Lauren Lee Smith, Moneca Delain, Rochelle Aytes) get separated from their more precocious friend Laurie (Anna Paquin). Costumed as Little Red Riding Hood, she soon draws the attention of a psycho killer dressed in black.

Four adolescent trick ‘r treaters (Britt McKillip, Isabelle Deluce, Alberto Ghisi, Jean-Luc Bilodeau) let an outcast named Rhonda (Samm Todd) join their expedition to the local quarry. The trick ‘r treaters intend to make an offering of eight pumpkins to the eight children who as legend has it were driven off the quarry by a homicidal bus driver; their ceremony does not go as planned. Finally, the reclusive Mr. Kreeg (Brian Cox) wants to be left alone on Halloween, but receives a visit from the burlap headed trick ‘r treater, who’s been wandering in and out of all the stories. The imp seems to have retribution on its mind for All Hallow’s Eve.

Who Made It?
Michael Dougherty was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio. He attended New York University, graduating in 1996 from Tisch School of the Arts. Dougherty spent three years toiling on Nickelodeon’s Blue’s Clues, while an animated short he’d written and directed titled Season’s Greetings made it to television. Director Bryan Singer read a spec script Dougherty had written titled Trick ‘r Treat — expanding the character and themes from Dougherty’s short — and introduced him to aspiring filmmaker and screenwriter Dan Harris. After moving to L.A. independent of each other, the duo won jobs writing X2 (2003) and Superman Returns (2006) for Singer.

Championed by late makeup effects maestro Stan Winston — originally slated to produce the film — Trick ‘r Treat was developed by Legendary Pictures, the Burbank based production company behind Superman Returns, Lady In the Water and 300, co-financing and co-producing in partnership with Warner Bros. Bryan Singer of Bad Hat Harry Productions came on board as a producer in the fall of 2006 and was present on the set of Doughtery’s live action directing debut in Vancouver. Despite overwhelmingly positive word of mouth, Warner Bros. backed away from giving Trick ‘r Treat a theatrical release, finally rolling it out on DVD in October 2009.

How’d They Do It?
Seasons Greetings (1996) was a 4-minute, hand drawn and hand colored short film, which writer-director Michael Dougherty spent nine months drawing with pencils and paper at NYU. Each frame was colored with magic markers instead of paint with fellow film students helping him color many of the cels. The short — about a trick ‘r treater with a burlap sack for a head being menaced by a stalker — was broadcast on MTV’s Cartoon Sushi and Sci-Fi Channel and played a few film festivals. As Dougherty brainstormed ideas for short films or short stories he noticed they all ended up being about Halloween.

Dougherty recalled, “So I started thinking, well how neat would it be to put them all together into one movie and I guess it was kind of my way of cheating and saying here’s, look, here’s my feature film screenplay, it’s an anthology movie. But then they also started interweaving and it became one movie, just with a lot of characters whose lives start intersecting. I realized I could take this character and make him the next door neighbor of that character and make these trick-or-treaters show up at the door of this guy and so it all ended up coming together. And Sam became a character that wandered though all of their stories.”

He continued, “The first story is really just about a father and a son and introducing the son to the holiday and its traditions. The next one, it’s a group of kids who are between ages 12 and 15 and it’s when you break away from your parents and you’re walking around the town by yourself trick-or-treating. And then the next one, you’re in your twenties and the holiday becomes about nothing but partying and having sex and trying to find the hottest costume possible. The fourth one is the twilight years, when you’re old and alone and celebrating the holiday by yourself, which hopefully none of us end up like, but it’s kind of these weird four seasons of Halloween in a sense.”

Dougherty’s spec script — Trick ‘r Treat – became his calling card to meeting the director of The Usual Suspects and X-Men, Bryan Singer, in 2000. After working with his writing partner Dan Harris on drafts of X2 and Superman Returns, executive producers Thomas Tull, Jon Jashni and William Fay of Legendary Pictures were prepared to give Dougherty a shot making the transition from screenwriter to director of Trick ‘r Treat. Dougherty revealed, “I think the transition was made easier by the fact that Bryan Singer always had me and my writing partner Dan Harris on set throughout X2 and throughout Superman Returns and it’s interesting to realize how much I picked up just from osmosis.”

Dougherty added, “In terms of preparing, interacting with the crew, knowing how to set up a shot, getting your coverage, etc. I think I’m blessed in that I’ve had Bryan to show me the ropes as well as my writing partner Dan who directed a feature film a few years ago called Imaginary Heroes. They’ve both been available to give me pointers and tips and help me out. As well as Alex Garcia; he’s been on the set of Bryan’s movies and produced his TV projects. It’s been good, but I definitely know that those two movies, Superman Returns and X2 were basically boot camp. I’d be twenty times more terrified doing this if I hadn’t been on set for 131 days on each of those two movies.”

With Bryan Singer and Alex Garcia of Bad Hat Harry Productions as producers, Trick ‘r Treat commenced filming November 2006 in Vancouver. Singer was reportedly on set throughout the film’s nine-week shoot. Also working with Dougherty was NYU alum Breehn Burns, who’d come on board as a concept artist and would also design the film’s comic book panel title sequence. Of Burns, Dougherty added, “He referred me to a storyboard guy named Simeon Wilkins, who’s a young guy who has an amazing resume. He worked on The Ring, Monster House, he just finished Beowulf for Bob Zemeckis, and we click really well too.”

Scheduled for release October 2007, Halloween came and went without Warner Bros. giving audiences Trick ‘r Treat. Legendary Pictures screened it December 2007 at the annual Butt-Numb-a-Thon in Austin, Texas, an invitation-only film festival hosted by the architect of Ain’t It Cool News, Harry Knowles. Avid dispatches from film geeks who’d seen the movie would trickle through the popular website for the next two years. “Massawyrm”: “Horror fans are going to have a ton of fun with this and I fully expect this to take its rightful place as the holiday classic that gets pulled out every year, much the same way Halloween was for many of us in our youth. It is a film very much about the holiday and its spirit, and it captures that wonderfully.”

Warner Bros. began to license Trick ‘r Treat T-shirts, graphic novels and action figures, but the studio was at a loss over how to market the movie. Dougherty mused, “I remember having a conversation with, you know, an executive who shall remain nameless about this, and he said, ‘Oh, it’s a horror movie.’ And I said, ‘Well, yeah.’ He goes, ‘Well, we’ll target the Saw and the Hostel demographic.’ And I said, ‘No, no, no, that’s not them.’ ‘Well but they’re the horror audience.’ ‘No, they’re not this horror audience.’ Horror itself isn’t just a genre. There’s so many subgenres to it, just like there’s so many types of comedy. You have your Wayans Brothers comedies and you have your Judd Apatow comedies. Very different audiences. And so, sometimes it can be difficult to try to explain horror as a genre to people.”

Despite successful screenings at Screamfest L.A. in October 2008, Comic Con in July 2009 and recently at L.A.’s New Beverly Cinema, Warner Bros. shuttled Trick ‘r Treat onto Video On Demand and DVD in October 2009. Reviewers were effusive with praise. Bill Gibron, Pop Matters: “Almost too clever for its own good, Trick ‘r Treat is a really good film. In fact, it’s so unusual in its practical F/X approach and retro direct to video charms that a second viewing is definitely needed before confirming its almost masterpiece status.” Alex Billington, First Showing.Net: “There hasn’t been a horror movie this original and this inventive since Wes Craven brought us Scream in 1996. I guess it only took twelve years to finally find the next great horror franchise.”

Commenting on his film’s winding road to release, Dougherty suggested it was caught between two business models, one dying out, the other taking its baby steps. “We’re reaching a day and age where the generation of kids growing up expect to have the option of going to the theater or watching a movie at home. I think that window is going to close completely, soon. But I think, in the meantime, I think it’s smart for distributors to look at that limited-release fan demand method of distribution.” He added, “Why not try to open it in two cities and let the fans post on Facebook or send out tweets about getting it in their hometown? I really wish we could have tried that model with Trick ‘r Treat, but by the time the decision had been made it was too late.”

Should I Care?
Here’s a movie stoked by such an outpouring of love from its target demographic that I’m left to ponder whether I even saw the same film the fanboys did. Trick ‘r Treat isn’t really for people who read reviews, it’s for the people who love those movies that aren’t screened for critics. It’s also blatantly the work of a first time screenwriter and director. At 82 minutes with credits, Doughtery gets in a hurry introducing too many characters without giving us a reason to care about a single one. Some of his ideas are sketchy and poorly executed. Burlap head — referred to as “Sam” in the credits for reasons that are never explained — never makes the leap from doodle to compelling screen creep.

There’s a segment here — the film’s best — about 13-year-olds trick ‘r treating that recalls those Saturday afternoon, kids on a mission movies I grew up with like The Goonies or The Monster Squad. That’s nice, and so is Breehn Burns’ gorgeous title sequence with comic book panels illustrated with scenes from the movie flipping by. Douglas Pipes supplements this with a fantastic musical score that easily surpasses anything Danny Elfman has composed in 16 years. Trick ‘r Treat isn’t a bad movie. I can name 10 recent horror movies that were a lot worse. But if this is destined to become a Halloween standard, I’ll be watching It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

Where’d You Get All of This?
“Superman Returns Writers Ride a Wave of Success” By Torquin Hedd. Moving Pictures Magazine, July 2006

“Quartet are in for Treat” By Pamela McClintock. Variety, 9 November 2006

“Trick ‘r Treat: Writer/Director Michael Dougherty, On Set in Vancouver, BC Canada” BloodyDisgusting.com, 11 January 2007

“Director on what the long-delayed release has meant for Trick ‘r Treat” By Patrick Lee. Sci-Fi Wire, 28 July 2009

“Q&A: Trick ‘r Treat writer-director Michael Dougherty” Heat Vision Blog. The Hollywood Reporter, 8 October 2009

Trick ‘r Treat. DVD audio commentary with Michael Dougherty. Warner Home Video (2009)

Surveillance (2008)
Written by Jennifer Lynch & Kent Harper
Directed by Jennifer Lynch
Produced by Lago Film/ Arclight Films/ Blue Rider Pictures
Running time: 97 minutes

So, What’s This About?
Following a gruesome murder, FBI Special Agents Sam Hallaway (Bill Pullman) and Elizabeth Anderson (Julia Ormond) arrive at a rural police station to interview three witnesses. A drug whore (Pell James) recounts driving out to the middle of nowhere with her boyfriend (Mac Miller) to score; the couple stops to assist a family station wagon stranded by a flat tire. The family’s only surviving member — an observant 8-year-old (Ryan Simpkins) — recounts noticing a strange van earlier in the day, but her mother (Cheri Oteri) and stepfather (Hugh Dillon) ignored her when The Violent Femmes tune “Day After Day” came on the radio.

Officer Bennett (Kent Harper) is a wreck following the murder of his partner out on the road. Under questioning, Bennett admits that his partner (French Stewart) and he liked to pass their time shooting out the tires of passing motorists and victimizing the drivers. Each surviving witness recounts the arrival of two masked killers along the roadside differently. Also participating in the investigation is Captain Billings (Michael Ironside), a receptionist (Caroline Aaron) with intimate access to coroner’s reports, an eager to please rookie cop (Charlie Newmark) and another local policeman (Gill Gayle) hostile towards the FBI.

Who Made It?
Jennifer Lynch is the daughter of painter Peggy Reavey and filmmaker David Lynch. Growing up in Michigan, she would serve as a PA on the set of Blue Velvet and adapt The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, the bestselling book tie-in to her father’s heralded TV mini-series Twin Peaks. Lynch made her screenwriting and directorial debut at the age of 23 with the critically reviled Boxing Helena (1993). The gothic drama about a surgeon (Julian Sands) who kidnaps the object of his desire (Sherilyn Fenn) and amputates her arms and injured legs incurred a frenzy of bad press when producers took the picture’s original star — Kim Basinger — to court for backing out of the film at the behest of her agents.

Taking time to recuperate from several spinal surgeries, kick drug and alcohol addiction and raise a daughter by herself, Lynch paired with a friend — Kent Harper — to rework a script he’d written about witches into a Rashomon-like take on the serial killer genre. After numerous rejections, David Lynch agreed to lend his name to his daughter’s project as an executive producer. Germany’s Lago Film agreed to finance Jennifer Lynch’s second feature film at a budget of $10 million. American audiences got a look at Surveillance in May 2009 on video-on-demand, followed by a limited theatrical release the following month.

How’d They Do It?
Jennifer Lynch recalled the genesis of the Boxing Helena fiasco. “I was reading poetry at a fucking nightclub before I was old enough to drink. This person came up to me and said ‘I have this screenplay I’d like you to write about a woman who is cut up and put into a box.’ I said ‘I won’t do it.’ They said, ‘What would you like to do?’ I said ‘I’ve always had a fascination with the Venus de Milo, who has no legs and no arms. I have a story I’d like to tell based on that.’ But I didn’t think in a million fucking years — I mean I was reading goddamn poetry, which is the most schmaltzy fucking thing you can do in L.A. — and I never fucking thought it would go anywhere.”

18 years old when given the idea, 19 when she wrote the script, Lynch’s directing experience was limited to watching her dad work. To her amazement, Madonna expressed interest in starring in Boxing Helena. The pop icon would graciously back out to do Evita for Alan Parker and Andrew Lloyd Webber instead, but Kim Basinger came on board to replace her. Four weeks before shooting was to begin, Basinger’s reps at CAA coaxed her into dropping out as well. Main Line Pictures would retaliate with a breach of contract suit carried out in a televised trial. The jury awarded the producers $8.1 million in damages, but the ruling was later overturned.

Lynch recalled the tumult with Kim Basinger by stating, “If the creative folks had been left to themselves, it would have been settled over a dinner. But because suits got involved, they decided they were going to wipe the slate clean. You don’t bring an army sergeant into a sandbox with kids. She was ordered not to speak to me. I wasn’t allowed to speak to her. The whole thing was stupid. It became a nightmare for all of us. None of us look back on it well.” Scathing reviews, three surgeries to repair critical spinal injuries (suffered in an auto accident at age 19), getting clean from drugs and alcohol and raising a daughter as a single parent all kept Lynch from jumping behind a camera again.

Surveillance began when a friend of Lynch’s — actor/ producer/ screenwriter Kent Harper — approached her with a script he’d written. “It was called Three Witches, Tres Brujas, and it was a really great story, but I didn’t want to do something about witches and I wasn’t quite sure what had happened and this conversation was born about things that happen in the middle of nowhere and what terrifies you. We just started throwing things out on the table and he did have two very corrupt cops in the story. I said, ‘That interests me, and the clarity with which children see interests me, and I haven’t seen a serial killer film the way I want to see a serial killer film and I want to confuse people about what good and bad look like.”

Jennifer Lynch sent a rough draft of Surveillance to actor Bill Pullman. He turned it down, but Lynch remained a big enough fan to recommend her father cast the actor in Lost Highway (1997). Lynch would finally share her script with her dad, prompting an urgent late night phone call. Lynch was aghast at the way his daughter wrapped up the story and challenged her to write a more optimistic ending. Even after Jennifer heeded the fatherly advice, no one expressed much interest in bankrolling the movie. She recalled, “This was very hard to get off the ground. My father called me after he read the script a couple of years ago and he said, ‘You’re the sickest bitch I know!’”

She added, “But he called ages later and said, ‘What’s happening with your movie?’ and I said ‘Zilch.’ I told him I don’t know if it’s the material, if it’s the 15 years raising a kid, if it’s Boxing Helena, but nobody’s interested. And he said, ‘What if I put my name on it?’ I’m like, ‘C’mon Dad, you know how I feel about it.’ Because, believe me, it’s a big issue for me. But that day I typed: ‘Executive producer: David Lynch’, and within 48 hours I had more offers than I knew what to do with. I swear, any screenwriter wanting a little attention should just write ‘Steven Spielberg’ on their script. Who’s checking?” Kent Harper traveled to Germany and in November 2005, it was announced that he’d hooked producer Marco Mehlitz and Lago Film to provide $10 million in financing.

Nine months later, actor Billy Burke (Twilight) agreed to take the lead role and Surveillance was slated to begin shooting in October 2006. But Burke became the latest actor to get cold feet with Lynch and dropped out. Lynch phoned Bill Pullman and begged him to give her script another read. Lynch recalled, “He said, ‘Why did I say no?’ I said, ‘I don’t know. You never told me. Can I send it to you?’ He said, ‘Do it right now.’ And two hours later he called me and said, ‘I’m in.’ And Julia actually found me. She read the script and called and I said, ‘The Julia Ormond? You’re so classy and beautiful and awesome.’ And then I thought, that’s a genius idea. That’s the perfect FBI agent.”

Surveillance commenced a 22-day shooting schedule April 2007 in Saskatchewan, Canada near the town of Regina. “They call it the town that rhymes with fun. It’s just outside Big Beaver too so it’s just crude joke after crude joke.” Lynch had envisioned shooting the film in Santa Fe, but the New Mexico Film Office did not embrace the script. Lynch added, “There we were in Regina where they give amazing tax breaks because it’s Canada, incredible crews, incredible production facilities, and their prairies look like middle America and really afforded me the opportunity to aim the camera in any direction and just see that vast nothingness and feel how everything is seen and yet there’s nowhere to go. It’s like there’s all this space but you can’t go anywhere.”

Critics were not favorable to what they saw. Manohla Dargis, The New York Times: “It seems doubtful that Surveillance, a would-be transgression that tries to squeeze dark laughs from the spectacle of human suffering, would be taking up space in theaters if its director were not the daughter of a name filmmaker.” Robert Abele, The Los Angeles Times: “At the end, all is horrifically explained, the body count inflates, yet hardly anything makes sense. In Papa Lynch’s films, little is explained, yet because he’s so gifted at mining our deepest fears and scariest desires, logic is excused.” Scott Mendelson, Film Threat: “In the end, Surveillance is a puzzle box film that has nothing to offer except the various puzzle pieces. The characters do not stand out, the drama is not compelling, and the screenplay is light on even remotely interesting dialogue.”

After playing in Europe summer 2008, Americans got a look at Surveillance on HDNet Ultra VOD in May 2009 and in a limited theatrical release in June. Playing only three theaters, it took in $27,349 at the U.S. box office and grossed $974,522 overseas. Jennifer Lynch appeared content to have finished a film after her 15-year hiatus. “The good news is: everybody can make a film. The bad news is: everybody can make a film. And everyone should. It’s just really tricky so it makes those available spots and moments of financing really hard to get and you really earn it. Making a film is hard enough. Starting it’s hard, doing it’s hard, finishing it’s hard, and so I champion everyone who gets it done whether they’re doing it themselves or through a studio or independent financing.”

Should I Care?
Loaded with enough gore to win Best Director for Jennifer Lynch at the 2008 New York City Horror Film Festival — and to get her the job directing Nagin: The Snake Woman, a straight-up horror flick — Surveillance is more coherent than I remember Natural Born Killers being, so as Joe Bob Briggs might opine, if you liked that, you’re gonna love this. Lynch keeps the blood flowing, but her film is dry as a bone everywhere that counts. If you expect suspense, interesting characters, atmosphere or passable dialogue, don’t waste your time on this. Lynch is a fine person, I’m sure, but after two films in 15 years, she’s yet to demonstrate why she should be making movies.

Like The Boondock Saints — which was also ridiculous past the point of being watchable — Lynch is either unable or unwilling to involve the audience in anything emotionally and in an effort to compensate, goes for farce. Instead of Dennis Hopper or Robert Blake, Lynch’s boogeyman is played by … French Stewart, TV’s French Stewart, the guy most likely to be confused for Fred Schneider of The B-52s and least likely to terrorize anyone. Like the ultraviolence, Stewart’s mere appearance seems to be the joke. I didn’t laugh. What’s least amusing about Surveillance is seeing Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond — two actors still rolling strikes and not working near enough in film — wading through garbage like this.

Where’d You Get All of This?
“Jennifer Lynch: Life with David and the Turkey of the Decade” By James Mottram. The Independent, 22 February 2009

“Even Hitler Deserved To Be Loved” By John Patterson. The Guardian, 27 February 2009

“Director Jennifer Lynch Interview Surveillance” By Sheila Roberts. The Collider, 22 June 2009

“Jennifer Lynch” By Alex Simon. The Hollywood Interview, 25 June 2009

“LiC Interview: Jennifer Lynch — Surveillance” By Craig Kennedy. Living in Cinema, 25 June 2009

Stop-Loss (2008)
Written by Mark Richard & Kimberly Peirce
Directed by Kimberly Peirce
Produced by Peirce Pictures/ Scott Rudin Productions/ MTV Films
Running time: 112 minutes

So, What’s This About?
While manning a checkpoint in the Iraqi city of Tikrit, a U.S. Army infantry unit is sucked into an ambush in which three of its men are killed and one critically wounded. Staff Sergeant Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe) finishes his service and returns home to “Brazos, Texas” with two busloads of men on leave. These include his friends Steve Shriver (Channing Tatum) and Tommy Burgess (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). Steve is a marksman going on five years of promises to his fiancée Michelle (Abbie Cornish) that he’s coming home. Tommy is unable to cope as a soldier or civilian and his fiancée (Mamie Gummer) calls off their wedding.

Brandon is notified that he is to be shipped back to Iraq under a clause known as a stop-loss. Challenging the legality of this with his CO (Timothy Olyphant) earns Brandon a trip to the stockade. Overpowering the MPs and going AWOL, Brandon’s mother (Linda Emond) urges him to head to Mexico, while his veteran father (Ciarán Hinds) feels his son should turn himself in. Brandon hopes a senator he knows might help and Michelle drives him to D.C. Along the way, they visit one of Brandon’s men, the disabled and blinded Rodriguez (Victor Rasuk). Brandon comes to realize his options are Canada or Iraq, with the possibility of never coming home from either.

Who Made It?
Kimberly Peirce grew up in South Florida and bounced all over the globe after high school. She moved to the Windy City to enroll at the University of Chicago. Running low on money, Peirce landed in Kobe, Japan next, where she worked as an English instructor (to mob lawyers) and as a model. She also began taking photographs, until a motorcycle accident in Thailand prompted her return to the United States. She completed her bachelor’s degree at U of C — in English and in Japanese literature — and enrolled at Columbia University Film School, where Peirce became absorbed with the murder of Teena Brandon. This became the focus of her first feature film: the award winning Boys Don’t Cry (1999).

After being offered projects from virtually every major film studio, Peirce began dealing with the events of 9/11 and subsequent deployment of her brother to Iraq by interviewing hundreds of soldiers and combing through videos they’d shot within their unit. She considered a documentary, before funneling her research into a screenplay about an AWOL soldier, which she wrote with Texas novelist Mark Richard. With producer Scott Rudin and a 5-minute trailer consisting of soldier videos helping make her pitch, Paramount bought the script and immediately greenlit Stop-Loss, one of six politically charged dramas that would be released around the same time and go largely ignored by audiences.

How’d They Do It?
Kimberly Peirce considers herself a New Yorker and was there on September 11, 2001. She recalled, “New York was in a state of crisis and mourning. There were people still looking for their loved one wondering, ‘Did he miss going to work that day?’ For us, we were in that state of mind and then, it was like, suddenly the country is going to war and I realized we were in the middle of a seismic change here. I became immediately interested why soldiers were signing up, what their experiences in combat were and what was going to happen when they got home. As I started thinking about all that as a movie, that’s when my little brother enlisted.”

She continued, “It wasn’t that I had a problem with him enlisting. I understood the whole patriotic response, the whole wanting to get the guys who did this. I was just very curious what the experience was going to do. My brother is significantly younger than me. I brought him home from the hospital as a baby. This was literally like it was my little baby and he’s pure innocence. Who is he going to be? What’s he going to do?” After Peirce’s first feature film — Boys Don’t Cry — won Hilary Swank an Academy Award for Best Actress and Chloë Sevigny a nomination for Best Supporting Actress, Peirce was deluged with offers from the major studios.

Warner Bros. hired David Mamet to pen a script about John Dillinger for Peirce, which she loved, but the studio got cold feet with. Peirce was attached to direct an adaptation of Dave Eggers’ best-selling memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius for Universal, but that project never got off the ground either. She traveled to the Middle East to research the life and death of Israeli spy Eli Cohen; Columbia enthusiastically bought her pitch and hired Andrew Davies to pen a script, which didn’t work. DreamWorks offered her Memoirs of a Geisha, but Peirce didn’t cotton to the idea of directing a big budget, PG-13 movie about a Japanese courtesan.

Peirce spent years exhaustively researching the case of William Desmond Taylor, the silent film director whose 1922 murder was covered up by the film studios. Titled Silent Star, it almost became Peirce’s sophomore film. “I’d cast that movie: Annette Bening, Hugh Jackman, Ben Kingsley, Evan Rachel Wood, a dream cast. The studios said, ‘We love this movie.’ I was on the one-yard line. We were going to shoot it and they said, ‘We would love to shoot a $30 million version of this movie, but we would like to pay for the $20 million version.’ I was like, ‘Should I cut $10 million?’ They were like, ‘No, we want to see the $30 million version, but we want to pay for the $20 million version.’”

Peirce mused, “This is the thing that people should understand about directors’ careers. Unfortunately, if you want to do stuff that you really believe in and really love, it can take longer than you would like it to take. I was offered millions of dollars and I was offered a number of projects. As I would go down the road with them, for me, it really is about telling stories that I love and that are meaningful to me. I couldn’t just pick up a script and do it if I didn’t believe in it because every day of my life is living and breathing the movie.” On her own dime, Peirce had already begun interviewing soldiers and military families with her friend Reid Carolin.

Brett Peirce enlisted in the Army at the age of 18 and kept in touch with his sister through instant messaging. She recalled, “He came home on his first leave and he brought soldier’s homemade videos. It was shocking. It was like anthropology. It was like archeology. It was discovery. It was Thanksgiving 2003 and I was in my bedroom and I heard, ‘Let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies hit the floor.’ Came out the door to pounding rock music to see my brother just sitting there, staring at these images.” Peirce hit on the idea of a soldier-made video documentary and buying cameras to send to soldiers in Iraq. Participant Productions was willing to finance it, but Peirce’s research pulled her toward a fictional approach.

Peirce had met Mark Richard in 2005 to work on an adaptation of his short story collection The Ice at the Bottom of the World. That project never came to pass, but when Peirce made the decision to write a spec script about soldiers coming back from Iraq, she contacted Richard, who would quit his day job on the Showtime series Huff and move in with Peirce to work on their script full-time. By his count, they went through 65 drafts. Richard recalled, “I’m this Southern conservative, she’s this incredibly intense liberal, but I think by the end of the process, the scales had fallen off both our eyes. I’ve always respected soldiers’ sense of honor, duty, service to the country. Stop-loss abuses the faith of these guys. You can’t keep sending them back and chewing them up.”

What began as a soldier’s story for the YouTube generation coalesced when a soldier Peirce was instant messaging with in Iraq told her about the stop-loss clause, referring to it as a backdoor draft. After 11 weeks, Richard & Peirce had draft ready to present to buyers, along with a 5-minute DVD trailer Peirce had cut together with Reid Carolin consisting of interviews with soldiers and their self-made videos. Peirce’s experiences in the studio trenches compelled her to seek an ally in producer Scott Rudin and in November 2005, it was announced that Paramount Pictures had outbid several other studios for Stop-Loss, promising a $25 million budget and a start date of April 2006.

Peirce enthused, “I don’t know if it’s ever happened before, but we greenlit a movie off of a script. That was a different experience than the one I’d had on the last movie, and to me it was a corrective experience. It will never take me that long to make another movie because I’ve already learned that lesson. Don’t put the things that are most precious to you in the hands of people who may not make them, whatever the cost.” Working with casting director Avy Kaufman, Peirce spent months auditioning actors and assembling the right cast: Ryan Phillippe, Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Abbie Cornish. Shooting commenced August 2006 in Lockhart, Texas. Morocco stood in for Iraq in the opening sequence.

Stop-Loss came on the heels of a slew of politically themed films in the fall of 2007: In the Valley of Elah, The Kingdom, Rendition, Redacted, Lions For Lambs. Each divided critics and was ignored by audiences. But hitting the road for a screening tour and Q&A, Kimberly Peirce wasn’t buying that audiences had Iraq War fatigue. “If you tell them the movie is going to be non-stop warfare they’re not going to go, it’s too threatening. But when you deliver a movie about people coming home and human emotions, they’ll go and they’ll love it. There is an appetite for that. I think that the reporting on Iraq and not making the stories personal has numbed the audience out.”

Screened at the South by Southwest Music & Film Festival in March 2008, Stop-Loss opened in the United States that month. Critics nudged it to the head of its class. David Edelstein, New York Magazine: “Stop-Loss doesn’t come together, but in its ungainly way it evokes the anguish of American shit-kickers who’ve lost all sense of autonomy.” Jessica Reaves, The Chicago Tribune: “While Stop-Loss doesn’t pack anything like the emotional wallop of her previous film, the movies do share Peirce’s clear-eyed refusal to answer difficult questions with simplistic answers.” David Denby, The New Yorker: “Stop-Loss is not a great movie, but it’s forceful, effective, and alive, with the raw, mixed-up emotions produced by an endless war.”

While Stop-Loss managed $10.9 million in the United States and $291,386 overseas, Peirce remained buoyed by how well her film had been received on the road. “We went to 24 cities, I showed it to soldiers who were both pro-the-mission and anti-the-mission at this point, wounded warriors, soldier’s families, and over and over what I got was: ‘Thank you for making an emotional movie. Thank you for making a movie that got it right. Thank you for making a movie that’s emotionally moving.’ Because it’s very cathartic for them to see reflections of themselves in the movies, and what they said is that people don’t always take the time to make it from a soldier’s point of view. That’s what was really satisfying — to bring it back to the community of soldiers.”

Should I Care?
With Boys Don’t Cry and now Stop-Loss, Kimberly Peirce has already demonstrated the empathy of a documentarian, the curiosity of a journalist and the eye of a first class filmmaker. Barely mentioning other movies in interviews, Peirce seems less keen on recreating her experiences as a film geek and more interested in answering questions nagging her as a human being. Peirce’s sophomore feature film isn’t bad; it’s exquisitely well made and very well cast, but feels like it needed to be run through the typewriter at least a few more times. Flying either too far over-the-top or so under-the-radar it barely registers as a blip, it’s also fatally flawed at its core.

Cinematographer Chris Menges (The Mission), production designer David Wasco (Kill Bill) and editor Claire Simpson (Platoon) each deliver Oscar caliber work. The movie features star making performances by Abbie Cornish and Channing Tatum. Ryan Phillippe almost had me convinced he was a rugged Texan, so the film totally loses credibility by having his character suddenly disobey stop-loss orders and go AWOL. The film just doesn’t earn this conceit and I didn’t buy it. The melodrama gets poured on too thick at times, while the story and characters just never hit me on a gut level. Victor Rasuk’s role as a disfigured vet committed to staying positive is a standout, but sadly, Stop-Loss never ascends good work to become a great film.

Where’d You Get All of This?
“Phenom Director Goes To War” By Katrina Onstad. The New York Times, 23 March 2008

“War and Peirce” By Karen Valby. Entertainment Weekly, 28 March 2008

“A Soldier’s Story” By Sarah Michelle Fetters. MovieFreak.com, 28 March 2008

“Interview: Kimberly Peirce, Director of Stop-Loss” By Monika Bartyzel. Cinematical, 8 July 2008

“Interview with Kimberly Peirce, Director of Stop-Loss” By Melissa Silverstein. Huffington Post, 8 July 2008

“Kimberly Peirce Interview Stop-Loss” By Sheila Roberts. MoviesOnline

“Unstoppable: An Interview with Filmmaker Kimberly Peirce” By Gregg Shapiro. Chicago Free Press

Wendy and Lucy (2008)
Screenplay by Kelly Reichardt & Jon Raymond, based on the short story Train Choir by Jon Raymond
Directed by Kelly Reichardt
Produced by filmscience/ Glass Eye Pix
Running time: 80 minutes

So, What’s This About?
Wendy Carroll (Michelle Williams) treks through the woods near a town in Oregon with her dog, Lucy. They stumble onto some young hobos gathered around a campfire, and Wendy reveals that she’s headed to Ketchikan, Alaska for summer work. She spends the night in her ’88 Honda Accord in a Walgreens parking lot. Come morning, an elderly security guard (Walter Dalton) politely asks her to move along, but Wendy’s car stalls. Marking time until a mechanic opens shop, she makes a decision that lands her in jail for several hours. By the time Wendy returns to the spot where she left Lucy, she discovers her traveling partner is missing.

Wendy puts in a call to her brother-in-law and antagonistic sister in Indiana, but we learn little about her background except where she came from, where she’s headed and that she has very little cash to make it on her own much longer. When Lucy fails to turn up at the local pound, Wendy spreads “lost dog” notices all over town. She finds the kindness of strangers in the security guard, as well as an honest mechanic (Will Patton) who regrettably has bad news about her car. Wendy finally reunites with Lucy, but the difficulties on the road ahead prompt her to reconsider taking the dog along on the journey.

Who Made It?
Kelly Reichardt grew up in Miami. The daughter of homicide detective father and narcotics agent mother, she immersed herself in photography after borrowing her dad’s crime scene camera in the 5th grade. Reichardt would drop out of high school and move to Boston, where she enrolled in the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Making non-narrative films on Super 8 led to a BFA. Reichardt returned to Florida in 1993 to shoot a feature film, River of Grass. Rather than making filmmaking her focus, Reichardt entered teaching — first at the School of Visual Arts in New York, later at Columbia and NYU. She returned to directing in 1999 with a 48-minute short she’d filmed in North Carolina titled Ode.

Reichardt met Portland based author Jon Raymond through her friend Todd Haynes. The positive experience on Ode led her to ask Raymond if he had any short stories they might adapt into a film together. Their collaboration resulted in Reichardt’s second feature: Old Joy (2006). They came up with the idea for another feature — Wendy and Lucy — together, with Reichardt working on a script while Raymond realized it as a short story titled Train Choir. Producer Anish Savjani secured financing and with Michelle Williams starring, Wendy and Lucy would prove Reichardt’s most critically and commercially successful work to date.

How’d They Do It?
After college, Kelly Reichardt worked as a property master and set dresser on Todd Haynes’ first live action feature, Poison. Reichardt went on to teach while Haynes rose to acclaim as director of Safe and Velvet Goldmine. Haynes later met Jon Raymond, editor of a Portland arts magazine called Plazm. Credited as “Slats Grobnik”, Raymond would serve as Haynes’ assistant on Far From Heaven in 2001 and publish a novel titled The Half Life in 2004. Haynes stated, “After reading The Half Life, I was amazed at Jon’s strong sense of regional identity, and then I spent some time around him and saw the sort of old-school way he related to his friends, the intimacy and warmth they shared.”

Raymond recalled, “I met Kelly through Todd, both here and then when I moved back East. Kelly was actively looking for a story to adapt for a new project. She had read a novel I had written called The Half Life, in 2004, and she liked that and was looking for something to do with people she knows. She wanted a story that had very few characters, largely took place out doors — so she would not have to deal with a lot of sets — and would have room for a dog to be written in. I had this story, Old Joy, although I couldn’t imagine anyone seeing a feature in it. But she did and went off and made it. It was an amazing surprise and blessing for me.”

Discovering Jon Raymond, Reichardt mused, “There is something elliptical about his writing. His stories are very open and leave a lot of room for the reader to bring their own experiences to the subject. This translates well to my approach to filmmaking. He also is very good at setting people into their environments so that whatever is going on with them internally is linked to where they happen to be. The landscape becomes more than just a place, but something like a character in the story. Which fits with my own long-term interest in representing the American landscape.” The success of Old Joy — a study of alienation between two friends on a camping trip — left Reichardt eager to collaborate with Raymond again.

Reichardt recalled, “It was very post-Katrina — what it was for everyone just to be watching, but also the conversation of, you know, ‘Those people, living in such peril,’ they wouldn’t be in the shape they’re in, the position they’re in. We just started pondering: If you don’t have a net and you’ve had a shitty education and you don’t have the benefit of family that’s in any better situation than you’re in, how does one improve their lot? Not even reaching the middle class, but how do you just get a toehold in the next level? That was the seed, and then Jon went off and wrote the story. The screenplay was just an adaptation of his story.”

Reichardt’s own traveling companion — a golden Labrador retriever mix named Lucy — had made her screen debut in Old Joy. The director added, “Two elements were there from the beginning: the dog and economics. We knew we had to have Lucy in the movie, since she came along anyway, and we felt like the times were right for a real financially driven plot-line. Jon wrote a few drafts of the story, with editing and commentary from me. And then I wrote the screenplay, making additions and subtractions, with editing and commentary from Jon. Once shooting began, the actors also made their own contributions to the dialogue and characterization.”

A former assistant to producer Scott Rudin named Anish Savjani established a production company — filmscience — in 2005. Producer of Old Joy, Savjani wanted to be involved in Kelly Reichardt’s next film as well. “With Old Joy, I came into the project during the post-production stage in order to raise money, and we stretched the budget. But Wendy and Lucy needed all encompassing financing, and the budget was a combination of financing from filmscience and private equity.” Todd Haynes again served as executive producer, putting Reichardt in touch with an actor he was eager to cast in I’m Not There – Michelle Williams.

Wendy and Lucy commenced an 18-day shooting schedule August 2007 in and around Portland on a budget of $300,000. Reichardt recalled, “It’s a small crew and we’re shooting on location so you just try and make the limits work for you aesthetically. That’s all you can do. Which it does, I think. I mean, we’re small enough that we can go shoot in these public places and nobody really notices us. I mean, it’s a struggle certainly, but the reward is that it’s a really private process. Jon and I, we don’t have anyone giving us script notes.” Reichardt then spent six months editing the film by herself in her apartment in Astoria, Queens. She added, “The process can continue and it’s just done when I’m like, ‘Okay, it’s done.’ There are very few hands in the pot and I’d say that it is the payoff.”

After screening Wendy and Lucy at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2008, Reichardt’s teaching semester was over and she was driving from New York to Portland when her “shitty cell phone” rang. Oscilloscope Laboratories — the film distributor founded and owned by Adam Yauch (alias MCA) of hip-hop pioneers The Beastie Boys — was calling. The company had distributed two documentaries — Dear Zachary and Flow: For Love of Water – but Wendy and Lucy would be their first narrative release. Reichardt recalled, “I sat in this parking lot, ironically, since the whole film takes place in parking lots and you know, it sounded like they just had a lot of energy and they seemed like they were really interested in focusing on theatrical. And that was really appealing to me.”

Premiering at New York’s Film Forum in December 2008 and expanding to other cities through January 2009, Wendy and Lucy was championed by critics. A.O. (Tony) Scott, The New York Times: “Much as Old Joy turned a simple encounter between two longtime friends into a meditation on manhood and responsibility at a time of war and political confusion, so does Wendy and Lucy find, in one woman’s partly self-created hard luck, an intimation of more widespread hard times ahead.” Michael Phillips, The Chicago Tribune: “If a Warner Bros. social-protest film from the early 1930s somehow got into bed with an American indie from the 1970s, how would the love-child turn out? Like this.”

Without expanding beyond 40 theaters in the United States, Wendy and Lucy grossed $865,695 domestically, and added $323,948 internationally. Kelly Reichardt remained humble about aspirations for her next film. “I don’t consider myself to be working in this industry. I didn’t find the industry that inviting. So to me it’s just been trying to figure out how to make films outside of it. Do it yourself. By any means necessary. And, you know, it’s nice. It’s been a really good ride.” She added, “I’m always prepared that I’ll go back to making smaller films at any given time. In between my two features I was making these sorts of films, but on Super 8. And when the well dries up, that’s where I’ll go back.”

Should I Care?
Wendy and Lucy stands apart from a lot of recent indie films by simply rejecting the quirk that has become standard issue for so many of them. This is a fine example of addition by subtraction. There’s no contrived romance with a young hunk Lucy meets at the laundromat. No local yokels are trotted out to provide laughs. There are no hugs, no lessons. There’s no hip music on the soundtrack. There isn’t any music, actually. As spare as this effort is, I can’t call it a great film, but it is great work, benefiting from the uncanny timing of the worst economic recession in anyone’s memory, as well as a beautiful performance by former teen soap opera star Michelle Williams.

Kelly Reichardt has the heart of a jazz artist, both to her credit and detriment. There’s a tremendous sense of freedom in setting her film outdoors, with shots of Michelle Williams lingering where it seems obvious the production had no permits to shoot. But like a lot of jazz, the movie is pretentious to the point of being anti-people. Will Patton is outstanding in his two scenes, but I would have preferred fewer shots of trains or trees and more time with the people Wendy encounters on her journey. In the plus column, Williams — who received an Academy Award nomination for her role in Brokeback Mountain — again conveys the restraint of an actor who’s at the top of her craft.

Where’d You Get All of This?
“By Any Means Necessary: Wendy & Lucy Director Kelly Reichardt” By Peter Knegt. indieWIRE, 10 December 2008

“Interview: Kelly Reichardt on Wendy and Lucy” By Alison Willmore. IFC, 10 December 2008

“Writer Jon Raymond sees his work realized in Oregon films” By Jeff Baker. The Oregonian, 5 January 2009

“Interview with Anish Savjani, the producer of Wendy and Lucy” By Eren Gulfidan. Film Annex, 19 January 2009

“Filmmaker Eyes The Frayed Edge Of Social Fabric” By Laura Winters. The Washington Post, 25 January 2009

“Jon Raymond’s Portland” Film In Focus, 27 February 2009

Wendy and Lucy – Production Notes

Down to the Bone (2005)
Screenplay by Rich Lieske & Debra Granik, additional material by Jean-Michel Dissard and Anne Kugler and Alex MacInnis
Directed by Debra Granik
Produced by Susie Q Productions
Running time: 104 minutes

By Joe Valdez

So, What’s This About?
In a rural area of upstate New York, Irene (Vera Farmiga) finishes another day’s work as a clerk at a big box retailer. She returns home to get her two sons (Jasper Moon Daniels, Taylor Foxhall) dressed for Halloween. As Irene takes a hit of cocaine in the bathroom, it’s not clear that she’s been able to keep her drug use much of a secret from her kids. Her dealer (Terry McKenna) draws the line when she tries to score using a personal check her mom mailed for her son’s birthday. Irene checks herself into a rehab program, where she meets a tattooed male nurse named Bob (Hugh Dillon) sympathetic to her struggles with addiction.

Despite the recreational marijuana use of her well-intentioned boyfriend Steve (Clint Jordan) and her performance at work suffering now that she’s sober, Irene manages to stay clean. To keep herself on the straight and narrow, she becomes intimate with Bob, who springs for the nose piercing Irene has always wanted, as well as a pet snake for her sons. Irene takes a housecleaning gig with a friend from rehab, Lucy (Caridad De La Luz), where even a whiff of glass cleaner becomes a temptation for the women to get high. A trip to the city with Bob puts Irene’s life into another tailspin, but offers her yet another opportunity to go straight.

Who Made It?
Debra Granik spent a decade shooting industrial films before entering the graduate film program at NYU. Assigned a 7-minute documentary, Granik traveled to a haunted hotel in upstate New York, but the only employee she could get on camera was a housecleaner named Corinne Stralka. Granik recalled, “She was at a tenuous and suspenseful crossroad in her life, being newly sober. Her boyfriend was in the midst of a pretty bad relapse. They also had children in tow, making it a very complicated set of circumstances. I was compelled about what was going to happen to her and how she was going to get through, and stayed with the story for quite a few years.”

Granik’s friendship with the couple resulted in a 23-minute short titled Snake Feed, in which Stralka, her two kids and her boyfriend Rich Lieske played themselves — filmed in their own home — in what Granik described as “narrative fiction” based on the family’s experiences. Nominated for a Short Film Award at the 1997 Austin Film Festival and winner of a Short Filmmaking Award the following January at the Sundance Film Festival, Snake Feed was so well received that Granik collaborated with her subjects on a feature length script. She whittled down a first draft “which was as thick as a phonebook” by focusing the narrative on Stralka.

How’d They Do It?
Using Snake Feed as her calling card on the festival circuit, Granik met producers Susan Leber and Anne Rosellini. Instead of hoping and waiting for studio financing, the producers brought in casting director Ellen Parks — whose work included Spanking the Monkey and Secretary — and began assembling a cast. Referring to Parks, Granik enthused, “She is a profound friend of independent films and will take risks with some stories she can get behind. That got the cogs rolling. We discovered a lead actress that massively inspired us, who is from the area the film was made. Vera Farmiga was willing to put her blood and soul into the film.”

Vera Farmiga — whose most visible role had been the Eastern European hairdresser who witnesses a murder in the Robert DeNiro flick 15 Minutes — stated “I love playing women with survival issues. This was the kind of role I would audition for, but always lose to Robin Wright Penn or one of the Kates.” With a working title of Down to the Bone and a budget of $500,000, Granik began a 24-day shooting schedule in Woodstock and surrounding Ulster County, New York in February 2003. Granik mused, “Enough positive things started to gel, and that helped us make the movie. It’s like that saying: if you keep showing up, you can do it. We kept showing up.”

Using a Sony PD-150 PAL, director of photography Michael McDonough resorted to a cinema vérité style. He recalled, “We wanted the look of the film to be realistic and had always planned to shoot mostly hand-held for it’s immediacy and it’s association with vérité. In the end we walked away from principal photography with a 95 percent hand-held movie. Our decision was also based upon the simplicity of the production in relation to the amount of filmmaking clutter around the actors and the sets. Where possible we lit the spaces in advance of shooting entire scenes and attempted to shoot 360 degrees when we could.”

At the Sundance Film Festival in January 2004, Down to the Bone won Debra Granik a Dramatic Directing Award, while Vera Farmiga’s performance garnered the actress a Special Jury Prize. Critics would shower the film with praise. Lawrence Van Gelder, The New York Times: “The kind of movie most independent films strive in vain to be: a small, beautifully faceted gem.” Kevin Thomas, The Los Angeles Times: “Down to the Bone emerges with an aura of authenticity so strong as to be mesmerizing, thanks to a superior script brought to life with infallibly natural performances.” Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: “Down to the Bone achieves what only the best independent films have: making life, at its most unvarnished, a journey.”

But despite the enthusiastic reception at film festivals, distributors ran away from Down to the Bone. Granik mused, “The reason why boils down to the word ‘dark’. It is the scariest four-letter word in American storytelling and in this culture. Our film had a strong reception in Europe and achieved distribution, but that was not the case here. We received so many responses like, ‘We love the film, but we cannot do anything with it or we’ll lose our shirts. We’re sorry.’” Finally, in February 2005, Laemmle/Zeller Films stepped up to distribute Down to the Bone in the United States. It was released in November on just two screens, where it tallied $30, 241.

Recording an audio commentary together for the release of Down to the Bone on DVD, Debra Granik and Vera Farmiga were thankful that that film garnered such positive word of mouth at screenings. But the actress admitted, “It’s disappointing though. It was really disappointing to me. I wanted people to see — I wanted a lay audience to see it — and not just privileged industry. It was disappointing.” Of the 1,400 screeners of Down to the Bone that Laemmle/Zeller Films sent to the Motion Picture Academy, one arrived in the mailbox of Martin Scorsese, who cast Farmiga as the police psychologist in his 2006 thriller The Departed.

Should I Care?
Down to the Bone is a type of movie I typically can’t stand. Whether in a bid for minimalism or as a cost shaving measure, scenes seem to start too late and end too early. The result is that not nearly enough of the film is allowed to unfold in a natural or unforced manner. What does someone who checks herself into a drug rehab center go through to get clean? I’m still not entirely sure on the basis of Down to the Bone, which features a little too much artifice for a documentary-styled film. Pain and discomfort are a part of life, but so is humor, which is virtually absent here, and music, which Granik also banned, forcing her feature debut to play out in awkward silences instead.

Vera Farmiga. Upstaged by blood squibs in The Departed, the actress comes across with illuminating intelligence and honesty, assets that make her one of the most exciting performers working in movies today. Debra Granik may have inflicted some beginner driver’s damage on Down to the Bone, but deserves credit for keeping the performances in the film low key. Hugh Dillon gives a terrifically nuanced performance. Natives of upstate New York, Granik and Farmiga convey what winter in these slush covered cow towns feels like. By examining the effects of drug use in a rural environment, the film on the whole is a novel entry in the rehab genre.

Your thoughts?

Where’d You Get All of This?
Down to the Bone Press Kit. Laemmle/Zeller Films. 2005

“Cutting Close to the Bone” By Jeremiah Kipp. Filmmaker Magazine. 21 November 2005

Down to the Bone. DVD audio commentary with Debra Granik & Vera Farmiga. Arts Alliance America (2006)

By Joe Valdez

What the *&#! Are They About?
In the Pacific Northwest, John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) drifts into a small town in search of a buddy he served with in Vietnam. After receiving word that his friend has died, Rambo draws the attention of Sheriff Will Teasle (Brian Dennehy) who doesn’t care for the stranger’s dirty look or sullen attitude and shuttles him to the city limits. Rambo stubbornly tries to return to town, earning himself a trip to jail. There, Teasle’s deputies attempt to clean the prisoner up, triggering Rambo’s memory of being a prisoner of war.

Overpowering his captors, Rambo escapes into the chilly rain forest above town. The police learn that their fugitive is a decorated Green Beret, an expert in guerilla warfare tactics and survival. 200 National Guard troops are mobilized to help track him down and Rambo’s mentor Col. Traughtman (Richard Crenna) is sent in by the Pentagon to advise. Traughtman notifies the authorities that he’s not here to protect Rambo from them, but the other way around.

When a chopper carrying a cabinet minister goes down in Central America, a seven-man Special Forces team is sent on a rescue mission. Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is reunited with Vietnam buddy Dillon (Carl Weathers) who’s gone to work for the CIA and insists on participating in the operation. Rappelling into the jungle, the team discovers the skinned bodies of a Green Beret team that appears to have been sent in before them.

After assaulting a rebel camp, the squad — which includes a macho gunner (Jesse Ventura) and Indian tracker (Sonny Landham) — realize the story of a captive cabinet minister was cooked up to get them to strike the guerillas, who Dillon believes shot down the chopper of Green Berets. Heading to the evacuation site with a prisoner (Elpidia Carrillo), things go from bad to worse when the squad falls prey to a seven-foot tall, heavily armed and camouflaged alien big game hunter.

Writing
First Blood and the character of Rambo had their genesis in a 1972 novel by David Morrell, a Canadian born professor of English at the University of Iowa who experienced the effects of what became known as post-traumatic stress through students who were returning from the Vietnam War. Morrell’s action thriller was optioned by Warner Bros., where the best of many, many drafts was written by the team of Michael Kozoll & William Sackheim in the mid-1970s, when it was ultimately decided by the studio that audiences didn’t care much about Vietnam anymore.

By 1981, Sylvester Stallone had accepted a $3.5 million offer from producers Mario Kassar & Andrew Vajna to play Rambo. To keep the star aboard the project when he got cold feet, the producers encouraged Stallone to rewrite the script to his particular sensibility. The resulting story tapped into the rooting interest of the underdog that Stallone had developed so well in the Rocky pictures. Despite its superb visceral elements — including a frenzied pursuit through the Pacific Northwest rain forest and a claustrophobic sequence where Rambo is trapped in a mine — the original First Blood never veers into comic book territory, revealing both Rambo and his adversary Sheriff Teasle to be men of duty. Both are seen bending under the stress of their ordeal.

Predator began as a spec script written by Jim Thomas & John Thomas. Titled Hunter, their concept was human beings being stalked by a dilettante from another world, like big game hunters stalking exotic animals and returning home with a trophy, I guess. The Thomas brothers completed their script in September 1983 and sold it in early 1984 to Fox, where producer Joel Silver ultimately developed it as a vehicle for Arnold Schwarzenegger.

After an uncredited polish by David Peoples, Hunter would become The Predator during its production and ultimately, Predator. While the personalities of the badass Special Forces unit are allowed to bubble to the surface of a ceaselessly entertaining conceit, there’s not a terrific amount of suspense here, with Arnold’s triumph over the Predator never really in question. The inclusion of a female POW who comes along for the ride and a needlessly convoluted set-up do get in the way of the film’s roll licking factor.

Writing edge: First Blood

Casting
Behind his image as a monosyllabic he-man, it’s often overlooked how good an actor Sylvester Stallone can be. The original First Blood is one of the best performances of his career. It’s easy to imagine Rambo as an orphan; yeah, he’s a trained killer, but instead of emphasizing invincibility, Stallone plays the character’s loneliness and disquiet beautifully. Kirk Douglas was eagerly pursued to play Col. Traughtman and reported for work before bowing out when director Ted Kotcheff and the producers demurred over Douglas’ script revisions, which included Rambo dying at the end. The late Richard Crenna is no Spartacus, but does a credible job.

The Stallone flicks that are worth revisiting are the ones where Sly was given a great adversary — like Nighthawks, or to a much lesser extent, Rocky III and Demolition Man — and First Blood is no exception. In addition to being a tremendous character actor, Brian Dennehy takes what in the sequels would have been just a brutal redneck sheriff and here, gives him the texture of a real man doing a job. Never entirely likable, he’s never unlikable either, much like a real sheriff. Lisa Freiberger did a yeoman’s job casting Jack Starrett, Chris Mulkey, David Caruso and Michael Talbott as deputies.

Arnold Schwarzenegger was still pretty much developing his chops as an actor when he was offered the lead in Predator, but his sense of self, his ability to toss out one liners (“Stick around” as he impales a rebel with a machete) and physique made him perfect for this type of flick. But personally, I find Predator 2 a much better take; even though Danny Glover is playing a tough cop, he’s much more vulnerable and the outcome is called into greater question than if you have the Terminator as your hero.

Casting director Jackie Burch had room to maneuver with the supporting cast and this is where Predator goes into another gear. Carl Weathers — who briefly played linebacker for the Oakland Raiders – brings as much charisma here as he does athletic prowess. Producer Joel Silver had previously worked with Bill Duke and Sonny Landham, two heavies you would not want to fuck with in a bar, and brought them aboard. Jesse Ventura — a former Navy SEAL, bodyguard and professional wrestler — adds even more color to the film, while 7 foot, 2 inch tall Kevin Peter Hall was both menacing and graceful as the title villain.

Casting edge: Predator

Production value
One of the reasons First Blood is so fucking good is the approach taken by director Ted Kotcheff, best known for this film and the even more masculine North Dallas Forty, but who probably wouldn’t have been influenced by MTV even if it had been around a decade earlier. This is a classically mounted picture, with certain restraint taken to making things look and feel as real as possible, while delivering entertainment in the process. The cinematography by Andrew Laszlo — framed in anamorphic format — is nothing short of stunning, soaking up the mist covered rain forests of Hope, Canada.

John McTiernan had a B-movie called Nomads to his credit when he was hired to direct Predator. His energy and ideas are all over the picture — essentially a Tarzan flick with guns — but this is firmly a B-movie produced by a major studio. While makeup effects maestro Stan Winston saved the day by coming in near the end of production to redesign the creature, the shooting location is a slightly less than exotic Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and the optical effects dated. The film has some nice compositions, but the lighting by Donald McAlpine is nothing to rave over.

Production value edge: First Blood

Music
No contest. Jerry Goldsmith is my favorite film composer/ conductor in modern Hollywood, and his score for First Blood — commissioned between Poltergeist and Psycho II — is as emotionally rousing as his best. Chords of Goldsmith’s theme for this film, which put Mario Kassar & Andrew Vajna on the map as Hollywood players, would later be heard over the logo of Carolco Pictures during the early 1990s.

Alan Silvestri then and now is probably best known as the composer of Back to the Future, but always struck me as someone you approached if John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith were unavailable. His work for Predator is pretty serviceable, rising to the level the production probably had to pay a good composer. It might still be one of the more recognizable themes of the genre, right up there with Brad Fiedel’s work on The Terminator. It does get the job done.

Music edge: First Blood

Cultural impact
Opening in October 1982, First Blood was a huge hit with audiences, pulling down box office receipts of $47.2 million in the U.S. and $78 million overseas, back when tickets were three bucks. The decision not to kill Rambo off made somebody a billionaire; by the end of the decade, Rambo had spawned two cartoonish sequels and an actual cartoon titled Rambo: Force of Freedom. Rambo: First Blood Part II transformed David Morrell’s scarred war vet into a symbol of American military muscle, spawning bumper stickers, knives and bubble gum and name dropping into media addresses given by President Reagan, much to the chagrin of liberals.

Hitting theaters in June 1987, Predator also went over well at the box office, grossing $59.7 million in the U.S. and adding $38.5 million overseas. It helped Joel Silver on his way to becoming the Action King of Hollywood and for a brief spell, put John McTiernan at the top as well. An Arnold-less sequel attracted significantly less business in 1990, but the uber-equipped Predator seemed to resonate with genre fans, returning in 2004 (Alien vs. Predator) and 2007 (Alien vs. Predator: Requiem), sort of making him the Frankenstein Monster of the new millennium. A full “reboot” can’t be too far around the corner.

Cultural impact edge: Even

Winner: First Blood

Your thoughts?

What the *&#! Is This About?
In the town of “Castle Rock,” Maine, a powerful electrical storm sends a tree through the lakeside home of graphic designer David Drayton (Thomas Jane), his wife (Kelly Collins Lintz) and their nine-year-old son Billy (Nathan Gamble). Surveying the damage the next morning, David tells her, “It’s just stuff, you know. We’re safe, that’s all that matters.” His wife appears anxious about a strange mist drifting off the mountains and headed toward them across the lake. Father and son are more interested in a tree belonging to their obstinate attorney neighbor Norton (Andre Braugher) that has flattened the Drayton boathouse. The men put aside past differences when David offers Norton a ride into town for supplies. Taking Billy along, they pass an army convoy. The soldiers are stationed at a base in the mountains known to the locals only as “the Arrowhead Project”. The convoy appears to be in a hurry, prompting Norton to comment, “Maybe their power’s out too.”

At the Food House, David chats with a teenage clerk (Alexa Davalos), amiable assistant manager (Toby Jones), Castle Rock’s resident nutter Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden), schoolteacher (Frances Sternhagen) and realtor (Susan Watkins). David also observes an MP abruptly cancel leave for three soldiers. Everything at the store comes to a dead halt when an air raid siren sounds. A monstrous mist overtakes the town on the heels of a panic stricken local (Jeffrey DeMunn) who makes it to the store covered in blood. Warning the others to shut the doors and not to go outside, a shopper decides to make a break for his car. Disappearing in the mist, the last that’s heard of him are his terrified screams. One theory voiced is that the mist may be a chemical explosion from the local mill. Mrs. Carmody believes this is the end of days. Norton tries to keep the crowd calm, while David is more focused on trying to calm his hysterical son.

Searching for a blanket in the storeroom, David hears something outside attempt to rip down the loading dock door. A mechanic (William Sadler) copes with the disaster by trying to get the store’s generator working, with a bag boy (Chris Owen) eager to go outside and clear whatever’s blocking the duct. When David is unable to convince them that this is a bad idea, the door is raised; tentacles slither inside, tear into Norm’s skin and drag him into the mist. When confronting Norton with this, the attorney’s logic prevents him from accepting it. He organizes a group to venture outside for help, but a rope one of them ties to their waist only makes it 300 feet before returning a torso. As Mrs. Carmody begins spreading her Old Testament gospel of a stern and vengeful god – slowly converting frightened followers – David, a third grade teacher (Laurie Holden) and a few others start worrying more about the monsters inside the store than the ones in the mist.

Who Should Be Held Responsible?
The Mist began with a phone call Stephen King received in 1980 from his literary agent Kirby McCauley. King recalled, “Kirby McCauley was putting together an anthology called Dark Forces and he wanted all these original stories from people who wrote in the genre. I said, ‘You know, Kirby, I don’t think I can do that because I’m blocked, I’m not writing anything.’ And I hadn’t. I had just finished three books. There was Carrie, ‘Salem’s Lot, Night Shift, and I was kind of stuck, really. I happened to be in the local market one time and a lot of people were shopping. I looked at the front windows and thought, if something bad happened, those windows would all blow in — because that’s the way I think. It’s not necessarily a good thing, but it’s been a profitable thing over the years.” The resulting story – The Mist – unblocked the author and a slightly re-edited version appeared in King’s 1985 short story collection Skeleton Crew. At 155 pages, it qualified as a novella.

A couple of years later, Frank Darabont was getting his feet wet as a screenwriter. He recalled, “Nightmare on Elm Street 3 was my very first credit as a writer and there was The Blob remake and there was The Fly II. I remember sitting on the set of Nightmare on Elm Street 3 one night and thinking I’d love to have something in my pocket that I could nurse along and try to get made as a director.” Darabont had taken advantage of Stephen King’s “Dollar Babies” initiative, in which the author makes available to student filmmakers the movie rights to select King short stories for the fee of only $1. In 1983, Darabont directed a short based on The Woman In the Room. Searching for a feature length project, it came down to either The Mist or Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption. In choosing the latter, the emotionally resonant 1994 prison drama starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman earned seven Academy Award nominations and set Darabont on the path to prestige.

Darabont’s company Darkwoods Productions entered into a first-look development deal with Paramount Pictures, which was where the filmmaker brought The Mist in 2004 when he was ready to return to his horror roots. Darabont recalled, “What always appealed to me about it was, okay, here’s this story about monsters, very basically, on the surface of it. Underneath, Steve King was telling a completely different story. He was telling a story about the fragility of human behavior under pressure. What he was saying was that civilization has a very thin veneer and it can crumble very quickly, especially when you apply fear. And people turn against one another when subjected to stress and fear. It winds up being great sociological context for how we are as a species, how screwed up we are, how fearful we are.” Paramount agreed to put up $30 million to produce The Mist, provided Darabont reconsider the ending he’d written, which was … downbeat, to say the least.

Darabont concluded, “Obviously not a studio movie. That’s the ultimate horror for a studio, is a horror movie that might actually horrify people. You give ‘em something that might upset the audience they run screaming in the other direction.” He added, “Through this whole set of circumstances I wound up with Bob Weinstein at Dimension. He was the only guy who said, who had the balls to say, ‘Yeah, I love this ending, I love this movie, let’s make it.’ With the understanding of course that it had to be done very quickly and very inexpensively. Let me put it this way: A lot of great horror movies that I love, that I grew up watching have a tradition of being done under extreme duress of time and on very, very low budgets. And I thought, okay, if we’re really going to embrace what I love – horror movies – let’s embrace that tradition as well. Let’s embrace the tradition of shoot it as fast as you can, shoot it as cheaply as you can.”

In October 2006, it was announced that Dimension Films would bankroll The Mist, with a spring 2007 start date. The budget was roughly $17 million. Casting the lead, Darabont’s first choice was Thomas Jane. “I had met him a few times and he read for The Green Mile I always remembered his work. I’ve seen roles that he’s done, smallish roles in other movies. He’s one of those guys that I just knew had way more depth that he’s generally been elicited to show in other roles that he’s done. So I called him and I said, ‘I got this script and I’d love for you to play the lead. Let’s read it and let’s discuss it.’ And our very first conversation once he’d read it was, ‘Tom I think you have more depth than something like Deep Blue Sea allowed you to show. What I don’t want is a square-jawed action hero here. What I want is a really flawed, well intentioned guy who loves his son and it’s a movie about a guy trying to protect his little boy. As far as you’re concerned that’s what the whole movie is about. Are you ready to take that leap?’ And indeed it was something he had been hungry to do.”

The rest of the cast quickly fell into place. Darabont recalled, “Jeff DeMunn and Bill Sadler, both of them were those roles, and Laurie Holden, she was also always in my head for the role of Amanda. Others you have to think about a little bit, and there’s where you really have to depend on a great casting director, is, okay, who’s going to play Mrs. Carmody? Who’s going to play Billy? Where do we find a nine-year-old boy who’s got that kind of ability? Deb Aquilla and her associates, they found Nathan Gamble and she brought him to my attention and we hired him immediately. It was Deb’s inspiration to cast Toby Jones as Ollie, which I couldn’t be more delighted with. Toby’s a brilliant guy and gave us a fantastic performance, but he’s not the obvious actor. I’m also the very grateful beneficiary of a lot of good will, so I get to work with people like Andre Braugher and Marcia Gay Harden who wouldn’t necessarily be lookin’ for a horror movie to do, but suddenly, bam, they’re there.”

Darabont added, “We prepped the movie in six weeks, folks. I’ve never prepped a movie in less than five months, but this was part of the spirit of this movie: Get in, do it, don’t over think it, don’t second guess, do it fast, do it loose, and that’s pretty much the way it went.” Darabont signed up for a crash course in guerilla style filmmaking by directing an episode of the FX cop drama The Shield in late 2006. The experience proved so invigorating, Darabont tapped the show’s cinematographer – Rohn Schmidt – and camera operators Bill Gierhart and Richard Cantu to shoot The Mist. Filming commenced February 2007, mostly on a soundstage at StageWorks of Louisiana in downtown Shreveport. Nearby Cross Lake doubled for lakeside Maine, while the exteriors of the Food House were shot in the Louisiana town of Vivian.

Opening November 2007 in the U.S., even critics who admired The Mist seemed to object to it, in part. Anthony Lane, the New Yorker: “The Mist is itself a supermarket of B-movie essentials, handsomely stocked with bad science, stupid behavior, chewable lines of dialogue, religious fruitcakes, and a fine display of monsters.” Marjorie Baumgarten, the Austin Chronicle: “The Mist has extended passages that pause to preach, to demonstrate the dark impulses of irrationality, magical thinking, and mob mentality. Sadly, these interludes only take away from the magnificent moments in which the stunningly crafted beasties in the mist … come out to prey.” Justin Chang, Variety: “Much nastier and less genteel than his best-known Stephen King adaptations (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile), Frank Darabont’s screw-loose doomsday thriller works better as a gross-out B-movie than as a psychological portrait of mankind under siege, marred by one-note characterizations and a tone that veers wildly between snarky and hysterical.”

In April 2008, Eugene Novikov – who ranked The Mist among the best films of 2007 – opened the floor on website Cinematical to a discussion of what viewers thought about that ending. John: “In regards to the ending: it’s one of the better twist endings I’ve seen in a while. Nowadays, I feel like twists or reveals have become cheapened by how frequent they have become in movies, and most of them just happen to trick the audience. But with The Mist, the twist ending was surprising AND thought-provoking.” Gary Triestman: “Balderdash and hogwash! I saw The Mist yesterday, and am utterly pissed at the ending. Pissed not such because it was bleak and useless, it was, but because it absolutely did NOT fit into the personalities, drives or character motivations of the people who allegedly assented to being sacrificed.” Okie: “I thought the ending was perfect. Its what made me recommend this movie to so many people. Most don’t like the ending because they don’t think they could ever do that to their child. But the alternative was definitely worse.”

The Mist would gross $25.5 million in the U.S. and $31.5 million overseas, then quickly dissipate from theaters. Even a two-disc DVD – which supplemented the theatrical version of the film with a black & white version closer to Frank Darabont’s retro vision of the material – did little to spark a reevaluation of the film. Less than enthralled with many of the flicks based on his work, Stephen King mused, “This movie has echoes of political and religious situations that we find ourselves in now, it raises a lot of interesting topics that have been debated in the press and current events over the last couple of years and all of those things obviously played a part when Frank got around to writing the screenplay and directing the movie, casting the movie – which is part of direction – but they’re not for me to say, other than to say he and I share some political convictions. As to what they are, the viewer who comes to the movie with an open mind and a clear eye will see that for themselves.”

Should I Care?
The Mist tries to be a provocative movie, one I was supposed to love or hate with a passion and occupy no middle ground on. While that’s true of he ending, as time passes, the film has actually inched into a twilight zone for me; not the failure I originally thought it was, but ultimately, not up to snuff with the nihilistic freakshows that inspired it, like Night of the Living Dead or John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing. But for all its flaws – and there are a gaggle here – it’s not easy to put The Mist out of your mind. For one thing, instead of the usual bag of bogeymen, Stephen King’s source material unleashes an ecosystem of hideous animals – equipped with tentacles, stingers, beaks, acid webs or giant pincers – that disturb on some primal level. Along with The Shining, this may be most terrifying story King has ever concocted.

Frank Darabont was inspired to adapt this material with the same thrift store economy Alfred Hitchcock brought to Psycho, but the results here are more amateurish than masterful. The abbreviated schedule not only handicaps the extensive makeup and digital effects, but turns what might have been an atmospheric and profoundly disturbing story about mass hysteria into a blunt, condescending and at times silly moral sermon. The Mist is short on B-movie nastiness and long on message. Ugh. Superbly cast in spite of the script’s high handedness – with local actors Robert Treveiler. Melissa Suzanne McBride and Kelly Collins Lintz doing outstanding work – the story might have been better realized with a more elegant, less in-your-face approach. The controversial ending is a failure simply because Darabont rushes headlong into a Big Message at the expense of credibility. The results are similar to trying on a bomb vest and plunging the detonator to see what happens.

© Joe Valdez

Where Are You Getting This *&#!?
“An Exclusive Interview with Mr. Frank Darabont!” By Edward Douglas. Shock Till You Drop, 16 November 2007

“Stephen King and Frank Darabont Step Out of The Mist” By Brad Balfour. Pop Entertaiment.com, 23 November 2007

“When Darkness Came: The Making of The Mist” The Mist (Two-Disc Collector’s Edition). Genius Products (2008)

What the *&#! Is This About?
In the “sunny, woodsy” town of Lumberton, the suburban idyll is broken when a man watering his lawn appears to be bitten by an insect and suddenly collapses. His son Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) returns from college to find his hospitalized father stricken in terror over his ailment. Strolling home, Jeffrey stops to throw rocks in a field. Sifting through the weeds, he discovers what appears to be a human ear. A police detective (George Dickerson) agrees with Jeffrey, but the eager young man fails to get details of the investigation divulged to him in a visit to the officer’s home. The detective’s teenaged daughter Sandy (Laura Dern) is game to share some things she’s heard through the walls, specifically, the name of a woman singer named “Dorothy Vallens” that has come up. Sandy takes Jeffrey to see the apartment building where Dorothy lives, on the edge of the suburbs in the dark side of town.

Desperate for “knowledge and experience”, Jeffrey hatches a scheme to snoop around Dorothy’s apartment by posing as a pest control man. Sandy goes along to protect Jeffrey, who steals a set of keys while undercover. The couple later goes to hear the mysterious and fragile Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) sing at a bar. Jeffrey’s curiosity leads him back to Dorothy’s apartment, where he is forced to hide in a closet and have things revealed to him that are best left unknown: an amyl nitrate inhaling psychopath named Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) has kidnapped Dorothy’s son and husband, cutting off her spouse’s ear to keep the songstress dependent on him. Jeffrey seems both repulsed by and attracted to Dorothy and sleeps with her. Frank and his gang find out and take the kid on a “joyride”, but after he makes it through the night alive, Jeffrey finds he can’t get Dorothy out of his mind.

Who Should Be Held Responsible?
David Lynch spent his formative years in Spokane, Washington. His family moved to Boise, Idaho, where Lynch attended 3rd through 8th grades before settling in Alexandria, Virginia, where Lynch went to high school. Of his childhood surroundings, Lynch recalled, “It was beautiful old houses, tree-lined streets, the milkman, building forts, lots and lots of friends. It was a dream world, those droning airplanes, blue skies, picket fences, green grass, cherry trees – Middle America the way it was supposed to be. But then on this cherry tree would be this pitch oozing out, some of it black, some of it yellow, and there were millions of red ants racing all over the sticky pitch, all over the tree. So you see, there’s this beautiful world and you just look a little bit closer, and it’s all red ants.” By the spring semester of 1966, Lynch was enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, participating in the school’s experimental painting and sculpting contests, and living with buddy Jack Fisk in a run-down, crime ridden, industrial section of Philadelphia.

As early as 1973, Lynch began getting ideas for what became Blue Velvet, beginning with Bobby Vinton’s version of the tune. “I don’t know what it was about that song, because it wasn’t the kind of music that I really liked. But there was something mysterious about it. It made me think lawns and the neighborhood. It’s twilight – with maybe a streetlight on, let’s say, so a lot of it is in shadow. And in the foreground is part of a car door, or just a suggestion of a car, because it’s too dark to see clearly. But in the car is a girl with red lips. And it was these red lips, blue velvet and these black-green lawns of a neighborhood that started it.” Following a critically acclaimed second feature – The Elephant Man, in 1980 – Lynch was approached by producer Richard Roth and asked if he had any other scripts. Lynch responded that he only had ideas, for instance, he’d always wanted to sneak into a girl’s room and watch her at night. Maybe, in the process, he’d see a clue to a murder mystery.

Returning home to write a treatment, Lynch then pictured someone finding an ear in a field. “It had to be an ear because it’s an opening. An ear is wide and, as it narrows, you can go down into it. And it goes somewhere vast. Then Richard said, ‘You gotta come with me and we gotta pitch this.’ So we went over to Warner Bros. and pitched it. I went out of the room or something and this guy said to Richard, ‘Is this a true story? Did he find an ear? Or did he make that up?’ And Richard said, ‘No, he made it up.’ And the guy said, ‘Jeez! I’ll do it!’ And so I wrote two scripts and they were horrible! And this guy at Warners who was excited at the beginning was screaming at me on the phone.” Lynch instead accepted an offer from producer Dino De Laurentiis to adapt and direct a $40 million screen version of Frank Herbert’s Dune. In addition to the filmmaker feeling artistically compromised throughout the massive production, the film was poorly received by audiences.

“Because Dune was not such a big success, and things went badly, Dino and I were ready to part company. But then he came back and said, ‘What is this, what is this Blue Velvet?’ You know? And I said, ‘Dino, you’re so crazy.’ I said, ‘You know about this thing, I told you about it before.’ But he said, ‘I must read again.’ And I said, ‘Well you can read the first half of it,’ because I liked the first half of it. And he read it and he’d really liked it. And I said let me fix the second half, and you know, we’ll do it. And that’s how it got started.” Lynch added, “My agent then was Rick Nicita at CAA and we were always going to visit Dino in the bungalow – or, as he says, ‘boongalow’ … Dino knew that I wanted final cut, but, like a great businessman, he used that to his advantage. He said, ‘No problem, just cut your salary in half, and cut the budget in half, and away you go.’”

Lynch wanted to work with Kyle MacLachlan again. The actor recalled, “And, you’ve gotta remember that, I mean, Dune was the first screenplay that I’d ever read, and Blue Velvet was basically the second screenplay that I’d ever read, so … I thought it was incredibly charged, very erotic. I thought, frightening. Kind of amazing, like in an overpowering way and frightened me and also sort of filled me with this desire to go into that world.” To play Dorothy Vallens, Lynch approached Helen Mirren. The actress helped Lynch fine tune the material before opting out of the part. Lynch had met Isabella Rossellini at a restaurant; realizing later that she was an actress – having appeared in White Nights – he offered her the role of Dorothy Vallens. Rossellini later mused, “I mean, I always imagined her as a broken doll – you know – one of these beautiful dolls that you put in the bed, you know, with the ruffles and the hair completely done, but something had happened and you know, the hair all down, the makeup is falling off, the dress are – the idea of a broken doll. So the glamour, some of it was still there. Some of it was erased. Some of it was being raped, broken, violently.”

When it came to finding someone to play Frank Booth, Lynch stated, “Dennis Hopper’s name had come up in meetings before, but as soon as it did, it was shot down because of his reputation. Not because he wasn’t right, but because his reputation was so strong that it was just out of the question. And that was sad, because he had been off everything for over a year and a half and no one really knew that. So his manager told me that Dennis was totally different and that we could phone the producers whom he had just worked with to check. And then Dennis called and said, “I have to play Frank because I am Frank.” Well that almost blew the deal right there. But he was truly great to work with.” Hopper emerged from the obscurity of drug and alcohol rehab for back-to-back-to-back roles in Hoosiers, River’s Edge and Blue Velvet, completing one of the greatest career makeovers in Hollywood history.

Under a budget of roughly $6 million, Blue Velvet commenced filming February 1986 in an unlikely place. Lynch recalls, “Well, Dino had just bought the studios in Wilmington, North Carolina. It had maybe one soundstage, but he was busy building others. They put a concrete slab down and these walls and ceilings go up in a twinkling of an eye. They’re not soundproof, and they’re two miles from an airport. They’re not soundstages at all. But we actually got one that was pretty good for Blue Velvet. Dino’s company was going public and we were the littlest film and therefore the one that they didn’t have to pay any attention to. And so there was a tremendous sense of freedom. After Dune I was down so far that anything was up! So it was just a euphoria. And when you work with that kind of feeling, you can take chances. You can experiment. You can really feel it. And I had final cut, which gives you another whole sense of freedom.”

Contrary to Lynch’s fears, when he screened Blue Velvet for De Laurentiis and the producer’s employees, it was greeted with enthusiasm. “And then Dino had this foreign sales guy showing it over in Europe. And the guy was saying to him, ‘Dino, people are diggin’ this film! We’re selling this film!’ So Dino called me into his office and he says he’s not sure but maybe a wider audience will like this film. He said, ‘We make tests!’ So there was a theater in the Valley showing Top Gun, and Dino sneaks Blue Velvet in there one night. My agent Rick Nicita and some other agents at CAA went to the screening and they left just as the film ended. They called me from the car and told me they thought it was great. So I’m, like, all pumped up, and I go to sleep that night so happy, because they were all screaming over the car phone and all this stuff.”

Lynch continued, “So Rick and I went over to Dino’s office and they had the cards from the screening. They were like: ‘David Lynch should be shot!’ Question: ‘What did you like best about the movie?’ Answers: ‘The dog, Sparky.’ ‘The ending!’ ‘When it was over!’ It was like the worst preview screening Larry [Gleason] – who’d been in the business for years – had ever seen. The cards were the worst he had ever, ever seen. And if it wasn’t for Dino, they might have put the movie on the shelf. I’m not kidding. But Dino said, ‘David. We took chance, and we see now it’s not a film for everybody. So we learn and we go on.’ So they geared up and got a lot of key critics who were seeing the film and really saying nice things. When it hit the theaters, it never really did any big business, but it was solid.” Without expanding beyond 188 theaters, Blue Velvet would gross $8.4 million in the U.S.

With a few minor exceptions, the mainstream media was universal in their praise of the picture. Janet Maslin, the New York Times: “For those with the temerity to follow it anywhere, Blue Velvet is as fascinating as it is freakish. It confirms Mr. Lynch’s stature as an innovator, a superb technician, and someone best not encountered in a dark alley.” Richard Corliss, Time Magazine: “Lynch and his film will surely be reviled, but as an experiment in expanding cinema’s dramatic and technical vocabulary, Blue Velvet demands respect.” Variety: “Picture takes a disturbing and at times devastating look at the ugly underside of Middle American life. The modest proportions of the film are just right for the writer-director’s desire to investigate the inexplicable demons that drive people to deviate from expected norms of behavior and thought.”

Blue Velvet was debated by Gene Siskel & Roger Ebert on At the Movies, with Ebert voting thumbs down, finding the film “cruelly unfair to its actors.” Ebert: “It’s not how Isabella Rossellini reacts … It’s how I react. And that’s painful to me, to see a woman treated like that, and I want to know that if I’m feeling that pain, it’s for a reason that the movie has other than simply to cause pain to her.” Siskel: “Well, I think that the reason is that the film is a thriller and a shocker. I mean, there are people that get hurt – badly – in real life, and I think that this is a legitimate one. This is not a simple mad slasher movie.” Ebert: “Okay, then why is it a comedy?” Siskel: “Because, he wants to set you up – he’s a director – and he wants to play you like all the directors, the great directors want to do; he wants to play you like a piano, which is have you smile and then swing you right into some depression.” Ebert: “Yeah well if somebody wants to play me like a piano he better get some music that’s worth listening to.” Siskel: “I think this is a good song.”

Members of the National Society of Film Critics voted Blue Velvet Best Picture of 1986, but in a year that also saw Children of a Lesser God, Hannah and Her Sisters, The Mission, Platoon and A Room with A View vie for Best Picture, Blue Velvet was left in the dark at the Oscars. David Lynch received the film’s only Academy Award nomination, for Best Director. Following the film’s release, the filmmaker mused, “Talking about it was so important to that film. I think some people could despise it. If you don’t like the story or what it’s saying, then you just end up hating everything. It’s not a movie for everybody. Some people really dug it. Others thought it was disgusting and sick. And, of course, it is but it has two sides. You have to have the contrasts. Films should have power. The power of good and the power of darkness, so you can get some thrills and shake things up a bit. If you back off from that stuff, you’re shooting right down into lukewarm junk.”

Why Should I Care?
Even if you were to take this movie only at face value, Blue Velvet may be the most primal tribute to Alfred Hitchcock ever conjured by another director. Where Shadow of a Doubt uncovered evil in a small town and Rear Window warned voyeurs about peeking in on the deeds of their neighbors, so does Blue Velvet, which is even more unsettling in its portrait of evil than Psycho. If David Lynch had been satisfied making a movie about other movies, this still would have been a classic. What makes Blue Velvet a masterpiece is its boldness, how it lifts the curtain on conventional filmmaking and shines a light on the freaks, demons and bizarre of human nature with a command usually reserved for filmmakers that have been working at this for a whole lot longer.

In terms of visual composition, Blue Velvet is a watercolor come to life, with cinematographer Frederick Elmes immersing the film in electric blues, verdant greens and nightmare black. Equally amazing is that even with extras looking like they were plucked from the circus, there’s not one bad performance in the picture; in fact, Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini and Dennis Hopper have never been stronger in a movie, with Hopper in particular cracking the screen with white trash intensity. Angelo Badalamenti composed a lush orchestral score and if further evidence was needed that Blue Velvet achieves perfection, Lynch lets his quirky, infectious sense of humor seep through the daylight scenes while at night, forcing viewers to question the nature of evil.

© Joe Valdez

Where Are You Getting This *&#!?
Blue Velvet press kit – DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group (1986)

Lynch on Lynch: Revised Edition. Edited by Chris Rodley. Faber and Faber (2005)

Blue Velvet (Special Edition) MGM Home Video (2002)

Synopsis
In the London neighborhood of Camden Town in 1969, Marwood (Paul McGann) leaves his flat for a cup of tea, only to work himself into a fit over the injustices he sees around him. He returns home to discuss his existential crisis with his pale flatmate Withnail (Richard E. Grant), whose most pressing concern in life is that they’ve run out of booze. Unemployed actors waiting for work, they’re so bored that the highlights of their day include battling the creatures they believe live under the dirty dishes in the sink, and waiting for the pubs to open so they’ll have somewhere warm to go. Marwood suggests they get out of the city for a while, to “get into the countryside and rejuvenate.” Withnail is not game for a holiday. “Rejuvenate. I’m in a park and I’m practically dead. What good’s the countryside?” Marwood urges Withnail to reach out to his uncle, who keeps a house in the country.

After a visit from Danny the Dealer (Ralph Brown) – a wacked out dope peddler who believes hairdressers are in the employment of the government – Withnail takes Marwood to have a drink with his eccentric Uncle Monty (Richard Griffiths), whose passions are carrots, vintage wine and once he lays eyes on him, Marwood. Obtaining a key to the country house, Marwood and Withnail make it through the driving rain to the village of Penwith. They discover the cottage has no food, no fuel and is almost completely isolated. Marwood hails a farmer to buy wood and a (live) chicken, but Withnail runs afoul with a local poacher who refuses to sell him a pheasant. The cowardly Withnail becomes convinced the poacher is stalking them, but an intruder turns out to be Uncle Monty. Marwood learns that his friend has pimped him out to his uncle in exchange for a weekend in the country.

Production history
In the late 1960s, Bruce Robinson attended Central School of Speech and Drama in London. It was not a pleasant experience, but Robinson embraced the friends he made there, whom he ended up sharing a flat in Camden Town with in near destitution. Robinson had an idea for a script called Private Pirates, about people who were pirates but didn’t know it. He was working on it with a flatmate named Michael Feast, who suggested they rent a cottage in the Lake District to write. Arriving in a downpour, the pair drove their car into a ditch. They then stumbled to the cottage, which they discovered had no electricity, no fuel and nowhere to buy food. Robinson recalled, “We had one piece of Camembert, a couple of apples and a bottle of whiskey. We couldn’t get the car out of the ditch, and we didn’t have any money to get back to London. We spent the whole week just trying to survive. There was nothing at all amusing about it. It was a nightmare.”

A life of cigarettes and booze eventually thinned Robinson’s flat down to himself and a friend named Vivian MacKerrell. Robinson mused, “He had this pomposity of the thespian, very smart guy, very bright. But he was sad too, because he was a jack of all and a master of none, you know. He always used to say to me, ‘If I wrote, I’d write a fuck sight better than you ever would’ or ‘If I painted, I’d paint a fuck sight better than you ever would’ or ‘If I was a photographer, I’d be a better photographer than Bailey.’ But the fact is he never did anything. All he ever did was booze, you know, and rant.” In the winter of 1969, MacKerrell got a job and left Robinson alone in the flat, unemployed and broke. In a mood of despair, Robinson sat down at his kitchen table and started writing about his experiences. Within a month, he had finished a novel titled Withnail and I.

After writing over twenty feature film scripts that were never produced, Robinson’s luck shifted in 1985, when The Killing Fields garnered seven Academy Award nominations, including a nod for its writer. This didn’t stop Robinson from voicing reservations about the movie to American producer Paul Heller, who recalled: ”I said, ‘Well, the only way you’re going to solve that is to direct yourself.’ And he said, ‘Who’d give me a job as a director?’ I said, ‘If you want to do it, I will work on it.’ He said, ‘The thing I really want to do is Withnail.’ And I said, ‘Let’s give it a shot.’” Heller raised half the film’s roughly $2.4 million budget, while another friend of Robinson’s – producer David Wimbury – walked the script into HandMade Films. Musician George Harrison founded the company with his lawyer Denis O’Brien to finance Monty Python’s Life of Brian and agreed to bankroll the remainder of Withnail and I.

To play the role of “I”, Paul McGann was hired and twice fired by Robinson. “He would not lose that Scouse accent. I kept saying to him, ‘You’ve got to dump it, Paul. You’re meant to be a lower-middle-class boy who’s gone to drama school, and you can’t speak like that.’ I got rid of him then reinstated him because he promised me he’d get rid of it, which he did.” Actors who circled the role of Withnail included Daniel Day-Lewis (”He didn’t so much turn it down as time passed and by then he wasn’t available.”), Bill Nighy (”He gave a very good account of himself in the auditions, but that was in Bill’s drinking days and I thought that one drunk on the set was going to be enough.”) and Kenneth Branagh (”He’s an excellent actor, Branagh, and he could have played Withnail, but it would have been a podgy Withnail.”) Though he’d never done a feature film, Richard E. Grant was ultimately cast in the part.

Shooting commenced August 1986. Robinson recalled, “The night before we were due to start shooting, I’m sitting down at a bar in this little hotel in Penwith with a bottle of vodka, three in morning, smoking myself silly, drinking myself daft, trying get arseholed so I could go sleep or anything, or escape somehow, navigate this fear that was coursing through my veins … And David Wimbury – who’s my old pal David – came in, sat down with me in this empty bar and had a couple of glasses, and he said something to me that is so true about the film industry. He said, ‘The thing is Bruce, it doesn’t matter how good your script is, how good your actors are, how good you may or may not be as a director, how good the weather’s going to be, if you haven’t got luck you’re fucked.’ All that doesn’t matter. Without the luck, you’re fucked, if you’re making a movie. Now, I’ve made a film without luck, and I was fucked. And the thing about Withnail is we had luck.”

Production kicked off with anything but good karma. When executive producer Denis O’Brien complained about how darkly lit and unfunny the film appeared, Robinson threatened to quit. “One of the problems with HandMade: HandMade had made a lot of the kinds of comedies I actually can’t stand, and I don’t say that in a particularly pejorative way, but I hate jokes. Humor to me has to be based on the reality, no matter how absurd and all the rest of it and HandMade were very much into sort of joke type of movies. At it’s very best – Life of Brian – it’s fantastic, but it isn’t my kind of thing.” He added, “Denis – for example – wanted Uncle Monty to be a real, sort of, hinged wrist job. Which firstly I find insulting to homosexuals, and secondly, I don’t find it funny. It’s like Are You Being Served? We’ve all seen that character. What makes Uncle Monty funny is he’s reality. The fact that he is, you know, one of the lads and all of that, and so I had all sorts of difficulties with Denis.”

After publicists arranged a screening in London – with German exchange students who didn’t speak a lick of English inexplicably recruited – Withnail and I went before a test audience in the States. Robinson recalled, “A week later we’re in New York for a screening. And here they all come in and lots and lots of Americans. Harsh audience, and does comedy travel? I have no idea. So we put the film up and they start laughing. Not immediately, about ten minutes in. Sort of that sense of, ‘Oh, this is a funny film. Is it funny?’ But now they’re laughing. And there were two girls in front of me; by about 35 minutes in, they were standing up to laugh, hanging over their seats in front of them. I thought they were going to choke to death, and it was the best noise I’ve ever heard, you know. I’m staring at their asses as they’re rolling on these seats. And the whole theater was screeching with laughter. So that was one of the best experiences of my life, because that’s what we’re all about. That’s what we did it for. Just to make people laugh.”

At the time of its release – June 1987 in the U.S. – Withnail and I was hardly worshiped by critics. Gene Siskel & Roger Ebert debated the film’s merit on At the Movies. Ebert: “I loved this movie. I thought Richard Griffiths as Uncle Monty gave a performance worthy of an Oscar nomination. And I liked the way that Grant & McGann – the other two actors – gave the impression they had known each other for years and had disliked every moment.” Siskel retorted, “I didn’t care much for this film; it wasn’t bad, it’s just that I never got excited about it, except for one guy … There’s this drug dealer who comes on, and is so funny, I thought he was the funniest character in the movie. The two guys – Uncle Monty is amusing – I thought that the two guys themselves were boring. And so what bored me actually was the center, and who they visited, and who visited them, was interesting. So, I can’t recommend the film.”

Withnail and I managed a meager $1.5 million in the U.S., $820,000 in England and seemed to vanish with little afterthought. Seven years later, Bruce Robinson was at a pub in rural Wales. “There were these young guys outside, surrounded by ducks from the garden. I don’t even know why I spoke to them, but I just said, ‘Oh, look at those ducks.’ And then, in unison, they came back with, ‘Raymond Duck – a dreadful little Israelite! Four floors up on the Charing Cross Road and never a job at the top of them!’ These boys looked like undergrads – 20, 22 years old – and they had no idea who I was. Now I’m looking back at them in my mind and realizing they all had long scarves on and clapped-out old coats. They were in the Withnail world.” The picture was on its way to becoming a seminal bonding experience among college students – mostly boys – in England. It formed a strong cult base in the U.S. as well.

As early as 1998, actor Paul Rudd had watched Withnail and I sixty times, stating “The true fanatics insist it’s nice to have a gem that is somewhat secret. But for the people involved, you want as many people to see it as possible. I’ve probably turned thirty people on to the movie, so I’m obviously not too private in my enjoyment of the film.” Comedian Margaret Cho – commenting around the same time – had seen the movie more than forty times. “I liked the look of the video box. I watched it and I just screamed and howled. It’s one of the funniest films ever made. But it’s not that simple. It reflects the changing of the times and of the seasons in someone’s life. My ritual is that when I have to leave early to go on a trip, I’ll watch a little bit of Withnail while waiting for the car so I will be soothed for my long journey.” Actor Donal Logue added, “For a movie like this to come together, where all the elements caught everybody at their stride, to me it’s a marvel, like a great musical experience when all the elements are chiming correctly.”

Opinion
Imagine Sideways with male characters so juvenile that holding more than a two second conversation with the opposite sex seems out of the question, replace the Golden Coast of California with the freezing drizzle of England, pour a lot more booze and you get an idea of what to expect from Withnail and I. The way to enjoy the film is to ignore the bellicose that has been built underneath it in England over the course of the last twenty years, where Ali Catterall with Channel 4 Film wrote, “The best British comedy ever made? Possibly. A masterpiece? Unquestionably.” The movie comes on like anything but a comedy classic. Its dingy look seems less art design and more to do with its bargain basement budget and limited visual skills of its first time director. Fortunately, the script is so fucking good – desperate, hilarious, engaging – that Withnail and I would have worked as a community theater production.

The center of Withnail and I resides in the craft of its dialogue and the relationship between its central characters. Bruce Robinson – whose silliness was not high in demand for The Killing Fields - penned some of the most off-beat film dialogue ever (my favorite from Withnail: “I feel like a pig shat in my head.”) The picture avoids sentimentality or pandering to college kids or Baby Boomers, while documenting a moment in time with such brutal honestly that it can resonate with both. I can’t think of many movies about the fleeting nature of a seemingly inseparable friendship that are as fun as this one. Its cocktail of destitution, despair and camaraderie might not register as much with women, but Ralph Brown steals the film as the sage dirt merchant. Richard E. Grant launched his film career with his bitter, boozing, wickedly funny performance as Withnail.

© Joe Valdez

Sources
“At the Movies: Putting on Weight” By Lawrence Van Gelder. New York Times, June 26, 1987

“A Bad Week In the 60’s Breeds A Comedy In the 80’s” By Leslie Bennetts. New York Times, July 5, 1987

“The Curious Case of Withnail & I” By David Kamp. GQ, October 1995

“Withnail and You: A Cult Fave Resurfaces” By Donald Liebenson. L.A. Times, 1998

Withnail & Us. Withnail & I: Criterion Collection. 1999

“Withnail and I in Camden” By Rachel Ong. Time Out, 2005

Withnail & I: 20th Anniversary Edition. Starz Home Entertainment, 2006

Synopsis
In Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Harvard College graduating class of the year 1870 – which includes James Averill (Kris Kristofferson) – assembles in a massive auditorium to hear a speech by their class orator, Billy Irvine (John Hurt). Irvine rejects the high-minded ideals mapped out by the reverend doctor of the university (Joseph Cotten), and advises his classmates to merely rise no further than each of them is capable. Twenty years later, Averill arrives by train in Casper, Wyoming after transporting an immigrant woman to St. Louis to be hanged. Averill is now sheriff of Johnson County, mountainous and pristine territory in which more settlers – mostly Polish, German or Ukrainian immigrants – are pouring into every day.

Averill can’t help but notice Casper is teeming with mercenaries. By the time he drops by a saloon operated by his friend John Bridges (Jeff Bridges) in the town of Sweetwater, Averill has learned that the local cattle association, led by the unscrupulous Frank Canton (Sam Waterston) has drawn up the names of 125 settlers suspected of cattle rustling or troublemaking and put them on a death list. The most efficient of the assassins is Nathan Champion (Christopher Walken), who roams Johnson County hunting down and executing immigrants who’ve stolen livestock. Averill returns to his pastoral home and to his girlfriend Ella Watson (Isabelle Hupert), who manages a bordello and accepts stolen cattle as payment.

After adjourning to the town reception hall – Heaven’s Gate, which hosts music and roller skating – Averill asks Ella to leave the county, not wanting to tell her that her name is on the death list. Champion – who in addition to being one of Ella’s customers is in love with her – offers to take her away under the protection of his men (Geoffrey Lewis and Mickey Rourke). She rejects both offers and chooses to stay. Three of the killers make their way to Ella’s bordello and rape her. Averill arrives in time to dispatch the men with his pistols, while Champion rides to Canton’s camp and kills the mercenary who planned the raid. After debating the matter, the town chooses to stand their ground and repel the invasion.

Production history
In 1971, a filmmaker no one in Hollywood had heard of – putting his pictorial eye and camera skills to use in New York directing commercials for Kodak, Pepsi and United Airlines – wrote a screenplay titled The Johnson County War. The screenwriter was Michael Cimino and his script was loosely based on a range war that took place in 1892 between cattle ranchers and settlers, many of them immigrants, who flowed into Johnson County, Wyoming after passage of the Homestead Act. Producer David Foster set the project up at Fox, only to have production head Jere Henshaw put it into turnaround in 1972. Henshaw later told American Film, “It looked to us like a pretty downbeat story at a pretty heavy cost.”

An idiosyncratic caper Cimino wrote titled Thunderbolt and Lightfoot fared much better, with Clint Eastwood enjoying the script enough to gamble on the first time director. Co-starring Jeff Bridges, the picture was very favorably reviewed and a modest box office hit in the summer of 1974. Four years later, Cimino was riding a tidal wave of industry buzz for his second film, an ode to brotherhood and sacrifice set against the Vietnam War titled The Deer Hunter. Among those in Hollywood who were high on the movie was David Field, a production executive for United Artists. “We saw an advanced print of Deer Hunter – I don’t know how many weeks before it was released – and we were blown away.”

Cimino’s agent submitted a package for his client’s next film – The Johnson County War – to United Artists. UA’s head of production Danton Rissner read the script in August 1978 and was cool to it. His story department concluded: “If it were not for Cimino, I would pass.” What distinguished the script from the typical western was its assertion that the U.S. government had sanctioned the range war in what amounted to ethnic genocide. Rissner remained dubious that theater exhibitors would welcome such liberal revisionism of a fading genre. But by September, UA agreed to a pay-or-play package of $1.7 million for The Johnson County War: $250,000 for Cimino’s script, $500,000 for Cimino’s directing services, $100,000 for Cimino’s producing partner Joann Carelli and $850,000 for Kris Kristofferson to star, all to be paid whether the movie was made or not.

Cimino continued to tune his script. He inserted a prologue introducing the characters of Averill and Billy Irvine at Harvard twenty years before the events in Wyoming, and added a brief epilogue, taking place 10 years after the range war. Averill is moored in a yacht off the coast of Rhode Island, still haunted by the events of the film. The script concluded with the quote, “What one loves about life are the things that fade.” Cimino had also arrived on a new title, and in April 1979, one week after The Deer Hunter won five Academy Awards including Best Picture, principal photography began on Heaven’s Gate. Glacier National Park at Kalispell, Montana had been selected as a filming location and a release date of December 1979 set. The accelerated schedule dictated a budget of $11.5 million, $15 million at most.

Recalling Cimino’s exacting work methods, cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond stated, “It was very unusual the way he worked. He would actually paint by selecting extras and put them in the right place in a set. It was like a painter would paint them. He painted by picking up people and put them into the right place. Then, once we started to shoot, you know, sometimes we would go for three takes, sometimes you would go for ten takes. And many, many times you had to go for forty takes.” In the first six days of shooting, Cimino had fallen five days behind schedule, with roughly 90 seconds of usable footage in the can. After twelve days, Heaven’s Gate was ten days behind schedule.

In his book Final Cut, former United Artists head of worldwide production Steven Bach recounted the expenses that accumulated: “It was true, as later press reports informed, that Michael Cimino was building sets and rebuilding them, hiring 100 extras, then 200, then 500, adding horses and wagons and hats, shoes, gloves, dresses, top hats, bridles, boots, roller skates, babushkas, aprons, dusters, buckboards, gun belts, rifles, bullets, cows, calves, bulls, trees, thousands of tons of dirt, hundreds of miles of exposed film, and all this mattered economically. But what mattered most was that what he was adding was takes and retakes and retakes of the retakes. And retakes of those. Michael Cimino was taking – and retaking – time. Getting it right.”

To get it right, Cimino was shooting many, many, many takes of shots and printing nearly every one, burning through $200,000 a day and $1 million per week. Actor Brad Dourif recalled, “I’m not used to seeing 57 takes. I’m really not. I’m not used to doing a minimum of 32 takes. He wanted to try a bunch of different ways. It was like workshopping on film, you know, we did the happy version, we did the crying version, we did the furious version. I mean, each scene was taken to these degrees, beyond which you weren’t going for the ultimate take, you were going for a lot of choices.” At its current rate, Heaven’s Gate was on track to exceed its budget by 500% and end up costing United Artists a then stellar sum of $35 million.

United Artists got its first peek at Heaven’s Gate on June 6, 1979 when Bach and David Field made the trip to Kalispell to view about thirty minutes of the film. Bach recalled, “The footage was ravishing. There was nothing that anybody on Earth could say to criticize the footage, so we knew it wasn’t the case of a production that was falling apart. We never thought it was a case of Michael sitting in his trailer eating chocolates and watching television when he should have been out on the set. That was never the issue. The issue was we didn’t agree that you could take this much time to achieve perfection. And if you continue to take this much time to achieve perfection, you’re going to break our bank and there’s not going to be any company to release the picture.”

Jeff Bridges recalls, “From somebody on the outside it would look like it was almost too much, but it never appeared that way to me. It was like, this guy really cares.” But with John Hurt due to start work on The Elephant Man in October and the mountain roads in Montana closing for winter, Cimino heeded United Artists’ pleas to pick up the pace. UA pushed the release of the film back a year, settling on Christmas 1980. The studio planned exclusive reserved seating 70mm print engagements in New York, Los Angeles and Toronto for November 1980. Heaven’s Gate would then expand to additional cities in December before a general release in February 1981 to benefit from the many Academy Award nominations the film industry would bestow on the picture.

On June 26, 1980, after eight months of editing, Cimino was ready to show United Artists the film. Studio executives assembled in Los Angeles for a private screening. Bach recalls, “I thought Michael looked exhausted, truly, truly depleted. I remember asking, ‘How close are we to a final cut?’ And he said, ‘It’s a little long. I can lose maybe fifteen minutes.’ And we sat down and we watched the movie. And the movie that we saw was 5 hours and 25 minutes long. The battle sequence alone was as long as most feature motion pictures. I was angry, I was angry, I was angry. The company had been put through turmoil … And the internal hope that had kept us all going for those two or three years at this process now – which was that it was going to be a masterpiece, and that would justify everything that we had gone through – was suddenly gone.”

By mid-October, Cimino had Heaven’s Gate down to 3 hours and 39 minutes. No one at United Artists bothered to see his cut until its public unveiling in New York one month later. Jeff Bridges recalls “I can remember going to the first screening, the premiere in New York, and we were all very excited and Mike was quite anxious because I don’t know if he even saw the film before it was shown, you know, it was wet right out of the soup. He had just put it together and just barely made the deadline to get it all together. And the movie comes on. I remember my first impression of seeing it was, you know, kind of the splendor of it was wonderful, but the rhythm of it was so unusual and so kind of slow and not what you expected to see that the audience certainly was frustrated. And you hear that [smattering of applause] terrible applause at the end. Ugh, it was terrible.”

The next morning, Cimino, Joann Carelli and Bridges were on their way to Toronto for the next screening when they picked up a copy of the New York Times. The opening paragraph of Vincent Canby’s review read: “Heaven’s Gate … fails so completely you might suspect Mr. Cimino sold his soul to the Devil to obtain the success of The Deer Hunter, and the Devil has just come around to collect.” Brad Dourif recalls, “Well I read Vincent Canby’s – I don’t read reviews, that’s the first thing – I read Vincent Canby’s because it actually had the line in it, ‘like being given a four-hour tour of your own living room’ and I just wanted to see how bad a review could be and it was really scathing. Angry review. I mean, basically, everything that people hated about the direction of film was piled onto Michael.”

Interviewed by Jean-Luc Godard in 1982, film critic Pauline Kael defended the stoning Heaven’s Gate took in the mainstream media. “I did think Canby’s review was rather brutal. On the other hand, the fact is the picture does not have one good scene, or one good character, and it goes on for several hours. I think it’s very interesting visually, but there is nothing that can carry it with an audience. If the company had thought that the critics were wrong, they would have put in millions in advertising and they might have recouped on the picture. A lot of terrible movies get by if the companies believe in them … But they were dismayed because they could see the justice of what the reviewers were saying, that there was nothing there.”

Steven Bach disagreed. “I think the critics were reviewing the production history. They were rewriting their reviews for The Deer Hunter, which they thought they had over praised. They were getting back at what they perceived as hostile treatment from the director. I think they were slapping United Artists for having allowed this to happen. But I never felt that there was a real serious attempt to see what is this picture trying to do and does it succeed on its own terms. It didn’t succeed on the terms they wanted to lay on the picture and that was what they were writing about, was their terms for the picture, not the picture’s terms.” After playing for a week in New York, Cimino took out ads in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter asking UA to withdraw the film from release so he could rework his 219-minute cut.

A 149-minute version of Heaven’s Gate opened in 810 theaters nationwide in April 1981. But audiences ignored it completely, buying $3.4 million in tickets in the U.S. Tom Brokaw introduced a segment on Heaven’s Gate for the NBC Nightly News by proclaiming “a $40 million film from an Oscar winning director may be the biggest bomb in Hollywood history.” The loss to United Artists was tabulated at $44 million. Within a month, Transamerica decided it was done with the movie business and sold UA to rival studio MGM. Michael Cimino and Kris Kristofferson were at the Cannes Film Festival in May when the news broke. UA’s new president Norbert Auerbach maintained that while Heaven’s Gate had not been directly responsible for the collapse of the prestigious 62-year-old studio, it hadn’t saved it either.

Naturally, the first audiences to appreciate Heaven’s Gate were French. In December 1982, celebrated film magazine Cahiers du Cinema sponsored a screening of Cimino’s 219-minute cut in Paris. Word reached Los Angeles, where Jerry Harvey and Fred Grossbud of pay cable’s Z Channel persuaded MGM/UA to let them air the long version of Heaven’s Gate starting on Christmas Eve. It marked the first time a wide audience had been permitted to see the film at its original length. In the Los Angeles Times – whose film critic Kevin Thomas had been one of the few to submit a rave review of Heaven’s Gate while it was in theaters – Charles Champlin wrote, “Not a damn thing was gained economically by forcing Cimino to eviscerate his work, but audiences were denied the chance to see fully whatever it was that Cimino had in mind.”

In August 1983, England’s National Film Theatre booked the long version of Heaven’s Gate for six performances, with Cimino on hand to introduce the film. Derek Malcolm wrote in The Guardian: “The full version, I can assure you, is quite an experience – an extraordinary attempt to make a major American movie at a time when only the minors held sway.” The long version was released theatrically at the Plaza 2 theater in London, but its box office was so negligible that MGM/UA nixed plans to re-release the uncut Heaven’s Gate elsewhere. Michael Cimino – who has not directed since 1996 and refuses requests to discuss his infamous magnum opus – had this to say in 1990: “I would respond to Heaven’s Gate the same way Jack Kennedy responded to the Bay of Pigs. I’d take full responsibility and all other questions are answered by the film itself.”

Opinion
Some academics still accuse Heaven’s Gate of vaporizing the Golden Age of the director and putting the controls of Hollywood back in the hands of the studio, a process that was under way long before Michael Cimino ever got to Montana. What ultimately matters here is what’s on screen and what isn’t. On that basis, it’s time to call Heaven’s Gate what it is: the last great American film of the 1970s. It has nothing to live up anymore – making a fresh eyed and open minded reappraisal a win-win situation – but the movie is really that good. For all its excesses, what Cimino does is capture a lyrical beauty virtually missing in filmmaking since the days of David Lean. Heaven’s Gate is all at once one of pictorial brilliance, almost unparalleled scope, terrific performances and haunting grandeur.

Micahel Cimino’s screenplay not only visualizes the Old West in a way I imagine it really was – crowded and sparse, violent and peaceful, ugly and beautiful – but features dialogue of surprising depth and pathos. The cast featured no stars, but Kristofferson, Walken, Huppert, Jeff Bridges, John Hurt, Brad Dourif, Sam Waterston, Mickey Rourke, Richard Masur all do outstanding work. Few films recreate a bygone era with the detail of this one, assisted by majestic cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond and a heartbreakingly beautiful musical score by David Mansfield. Unlike so many cinematic turkeys of the last 30 years that truly qualify for “worst ever” status, for all the money spent on Heaven’s Gate, there’s never any question of where those bucks ended up.

@ Joe Valdez

Sources
Final Cut: Dreams and Disaster in the Making of Heaven’s Gate by Steven Bach (1985)
Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven’s Gate (2004), directed by Michael Epstein