The following was originally published 17 August 2008. This lazy attempt at recycling is my contribution to Ibetolis’s “Counting Down the Zeroes” series at Film for the Soul, in which he compels the Internet to rhapsodize on the best films of the ’00s. one year at a time.

High Fidelity (2000)
Screenplay by John Cusack & D.V. DeVincentis & Steve Pink. Based on the novel by Nick Hornby
Directed by Stephen Frears
Produced by Dogstar Films/ New Crime Productions/ Working Title Films/ Touchstone Pictures
Running time: 113 minutes

What the *&#! Is This About?
“What came first, the music or the misery?” Rob Gordon (John Cusack) asks the audience as his girlfriend Laura (Iben Hjejle) moves out. When his record collection fails to soothe his heartache, Rob recounts his “Desert Island, All Time, Top Five Most Memorable Breakups, in chronological order.” He tells himself that Laura doesn’t crack the list. Rob owns the Chicago record store Championship Vinyl. “I get by because people make a special effort to shop here,” he continues, “Mostly young men who spend all their time looking for deleted Smiths singles and original – not re-released, underlined – Frank Zappa albums.”

Bookended at the store by the shy and awkward Dick (Todd Louiso) and the manic Barry (Jack Black), Rob broods over Laura and makes a half-hearted attempt to win her back. A shared friend (Joan Cusack) reveals that his ex has moved in with “this Ian guy.” Rob deduces that Ian (Tim Robbins) is their flaky former upstairs neighbor and torments himself imagining Laura having sex with him. He finally admits that Laura is indeed in his top five breakups of all time. His wounded, sensitive side appeals to singer Marie DeSalle (Lisa Bonet) who poured her breakup woes into her music and has a compassionate one-night stand with Rob.

With the encouragement of Bruce Springsteen, Rob tracks down the rest of his Top Five breakup list, including the introspective Sarah (Lili Taylor) and the obnoxious Charlie (Catherine Zeta-Jones). None of the women boost Rob’s ego to the extent he needs to get over Laura, but when her father dies, she invites him to the funeral. In her grief, Laura decides to give Rob another chance, helping him promote a record release party for two skateboarding punks whose album Rob produces. This brings him to the attention of Caroline Fortis (Natasha Gregson Wagner), a music columnist who has Rob second guessing his relationship status all over again.

Who Should Be Held Responsible?
Published in 1995, High Fidelity was the first novel by English essayist Nick Hornby. It told the story of Rob Fleming, a self-absorbed record shop owner in London who soothes a breakup with his girlfriend Laura by generating trivial “top five lists” with Dick and Barry, the audiophiles who work in his store. According to Hornby, “People would come up and say, ‘This book is about me – literally, this book is about me.’ I’ve been told, I don’t know how many times, ‘I know the record shop you wrote about,’ and the shop’s in some part of the country I’ve never been to. It’s a fairly depressing indictment of the state of things, I think.”

Mike Newell optioned the novel and set it up at Disney, where Scott Rosenberg wrote a draft. Looking for a better take, the studio ultimately sent the book to John Cusack, who’d rewritten Grosse Pointe Blank with two high school buddies from Chicago named D.V. DeVincentis & Steve Pink. The locations and characters Hornby described reminded Cusack of his hometown, and the actor also felt “that many young men can identify with Rob’s inner monologue, which is spoken through great, incisive writing. It’s a very funny book, but he also captured this particular type of character with brutal honesty. And it’s actually kind of strangely romantic in a way, so I felt the combination of all those things was really remarkable.”

After receiving Hornby’s blessing to relocate his narrative from London to Chicago, the scribes went to work. Cusack recalls, “We’d go through the book and structure it out and then Steve and D.V. would go off and write and then I’d read what they do, and then sometimes I’d go off and I’d write for a while and they’d read it. Finally when we were getting it all together, we’d sit with two or three different computers and say ‘All right, well here’s a checklist of things we need to get done … So, each person would then check something off the list and take a pass at it and then three of us would edit it together.”

Cusack had signed with William Morris Agency to represent him as a screenwriter. Stephen Frears – who directed Cusack in The Grifters – was also a William Morris client, and when he heard the news, asked what the actor was working on. Though skeptical of High Fidelity being taken out of England, when Frears read the script, he changed his mind. “I liked the idea of it being in America. It had a sort of, this sort of more optimistic way in which Americans live, seemed to me to add something to it, rather than taking it away. So it lost some of its stoicism and became slightly more romantic.”

Once Frears came on board, one of his first questions to Cusack and his co-writers was who they thought should play Barry. Without hesitating, they answered “Jack Black.” Black had worked steadily in TV and film, but was unknown to the general public. Todd Louiso walked in to audition and quickly fell into the role of Dick. Settling on the woman Rob spends the film trying to win back did not go as smoothly. Frears was at the Berlin Film Festival in 1999, where a Danish actress named Iben Hjejle was starring in Mifune. Her mother was an English teacher and Hjejle spoke fluent “American.” Frears phoned Cusack to tell him that he’d found Laura in Germany.

High Fidelity commenced filming in Chicago in April 1999. To assemble a soundtrack, Frears gave Cusack and his co-writers free reign. Cusack recalls, “The film has 70 song cues, and we probably listened to 2,000 songs to get those 70 cues. We used our Rob and Dick and Barry dispositions a lot.” One scene in the script called for Rob to converse with Bruce Springsteen in his head. Cusack was sure The Boss would turn them down. To the actor’s surprise, “he kind of just laughed at the idea and said, ‘Send me a script.’ So when we finished shooting, we wrapped around 2 a.m., flew to New York, and taped him in his studio for an hour the next morning.”

Opening in the U.S. in March 2000, High Fidelity became one of the best reviewed films of the year. Stephen Holden, the New York Times: “Even more sharply than the book, the movie evokes the turmoil of urban single life with a quirky mixture of confessional poignancy and dry, self-deflating humor.” Marjorie Baumgarten, the Austin Chronicle: “A smart, funny, and youth-savvy relationship film.” Nick Hornby himself commented, “I never expected it to be so faithful. At times it appears to be a film in which John Cusack reads my book.” It grossed a modest $27 million in the States, quietly recouping its costs.

Why Should I Care?
One of the more sublime things about the film version of Nick Hornby’s hysterical novel is how Rob is altered from an Englishman obsessed with American R&B to an American obsessed with British New Wave and punk: Belle and Sebastian, Stiff Little Fingers, Elvis Costello and Sheila Nicholls all make appearances on the superlative soundtrack. The best news is that High Fidelity lives up to and then surpasses the emotional honesty, edginess and freewheeling creativity of the platters Cusack and company spin over the course of the film. If there’s such thing as a perfect movie, this is it.

Rob’s immaturity might remind women of their least favorite ex, and those too young to have experienced a painful breakup will likely be bored as well, but single urban dwellers with misplaced fetishes will find repeated enjoyment in the film. Stephen Frears deserves much credit for enabling Jack Black, Todd Louiso, Joan Cusack and Tim Robbins to go to another comic level here, while every concept in the script – addressing the audience, employing flashbacks, dramatizing Rob’s insecure psyche – shouldn’t work, but does. The movie contains not one tired plot element, but somehow manages an upbeat, hopeful ending all the same.

© Joe Valdez

Where Are You Getting This *&#!?
“The Cusacks” By Scott Tobias. A.V. Club. 2000 March 29

“Keeping Faith with High Fidelity” By Jamie Malanowski. New York Times, 2000 April 2

““Conversations with Cusack and Frears” High Fidelity DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment (2000)

Donnie Darko (2001)
Written by Richard Kelly
Directed by Richard Kelly
Produced by Sean McKittrick, Nancy Juvonen, Adam Fields
Running time: 113 minutes (theatrical version)/ 133 minutes (Director’s Cut)

So, What’s This About?
Teenaged Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes to find himself in the middle of a road overlooking “Middlesex, Virginia.” Donnie bikes back to his suburban home, where his older sister (Maggie Gyllenhaal) stuns their father (Holmes Osborne) with news that she’s voting for Michael Dukakis. Brother and sister start bickering and she urges Donnie to explain to their mom (Mary McDonnell) why he’s stopped taking his medication. Mom later questions her sullen boy about where it is he goes at night. “What happened to my son? I don’t recognize this person today.” That night, a supernatural voice wakes Donnie and lures him outside, where he encounters a six-foot tall figure wearing a demonic-looking rabbit costume.

Answering to the name “Frank,” the rabbit shares some vital information with Donnie: “28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, 12 seconds. That is when the world will end.” While Donnie is out wandering Middlesex in his sleep, a jet engine plummets out of the sky and crashes through his bedroom. Federal officials are at a loss to explain this; they can’t seem to locate the plane that the engine belonged to. At school, Donnie’s English teacher Miss Pomeroy (Drew Barrymore) pairs him with a bright transfer student (Jena Malone) whom Donnie becomes smitten with. There is no love lost between Donnie and a gym instructor (Beth Grant) who forces her class to watch the cheesy self-help videos of a local guru named Jim Cunningham (Patrick Swayze).

Cunningham preaches that all human decisions fall on a lifeline between love and fear. Donnie refuses to believe that life can be lumped into two categories at the expense of everything else. Meanwhile, his nocturnal encounters with Frank continue. When Donnie asks the rabbit where he comes from, Frank replies, “Do you believe in time travel?” Donnie’s science teacher (Noah Wyle) gives him a book called The Philosophy of Time Travel, written by a neighborhood spinster the kids call Grandma Death. The book appears to corroborate the mind bending visions Donnie has been having. His psychiatrist (Katharine Ross) believes that the boy may be a paranoid schizophrenic. Donnie keeps marking the days until the end of the world.

Who Should Be Held Responsible?
A native of Midlothian, Virginia, Richard Kelly became interested in movies due to a music video that made an impression on him as a teenager in 1989: Aerosmith’s “Janie’s Got A Gun,” directed by David Fincher. Accepted to USC four years later on an art scholarship, Kelly ultimately applied to and was accepted into the university’s popular film school. Graduating in 1997, he found work at a post-production house, but had larger ambitions than 3-D animation. Kelly recalled, “I came out of film school and I was broke, so started writing. I set out to write something ambitious, personal, and nostalgic about the late ‘80s. I thought about a jet engine falling onto a house, and no one knowing where it came from — it seemed to represent a death knell for the Reagan era — and I built the story around that.”

The resulting screenplay was Donnie Darko and it was written over a six-week period in late 1997. With the help of Kelly’s producing partner — an office temp at New Line Cinema named Sean McKittrick — the script was passed around and generated enough buzz to get Kelly representation by Creative Artists Agency. Meetings with potential buyers did not go very well. Kelly recalled, “A lot of people were responding to the script, but when they heard I wanted to direct it, they were like, ‘No.’ It was, ‘This is a great writing sample. This is un-producible. Come rewrite Valentine.’ They wanted to me write 13 slasher films. ‘Great writing sample, come write I Know What You Did Last Summer 3.’ That kind of thing.”

Donnie Darko was dead for about a year, until Kelly and McKittrick heard that actor Jason Schwartzman was interested. McKittrick recalled, “And we finally just heard through the grapevine that Schwartzman wanted to do it. So we immediately called his agent and said well listen, if he wants to do this and we attach him, it’s going to get made. He just came off of Rushmore. Obviously, he is very talented. When Jason came aboard then out of nowhere Nancy Juvonen and Drew Barrymore — they were obsessed with Jason — they wanted to know what Jason was doing or what Jason was planning on doing, because they just thought he was great. So Sharon Sheinwold, Jason’s agent at UTA, sent the script over to Nancy, and Nancy read it and just flipped out for it.”

As producer Nancy Juvonen recalled, “I read the script that night, was riveted, and Drew read it the next day. The part of Karen Pomeroy was originally written for a 46-year-old woman, but she felt like a teacher with such passion and conviction to change the system that she must be younger, at an age where she still thought those changes could occur. So Richard quickly rewrote her as a 28-year-old character and we had our first piece of talent attached. By the end of the week we met with Richard Kelly and Sean McKittrick, his producing partner. They also brought along a guy named Adam Fields who was later asked to step aside from the project, although he took money and arguably a part of our souls with him upon his exit. During that meeting we were convinced Rich should direct his own story, and from there we set about getting financing.”

Adam Fields had landed $4.5 million from Paris-based Pandora Films — a specialty division of Gaylord Entertainment — but Barrymore’s schedule necessitated Kelly be shooting in three months, by July 2000. The accelerated time frame came into conflict with Schwartzman’s availability, and a frantic two-week search for a new lead commenced. 19-year-old Jake Gyllenhaal won the role of Donnie Darko. In no particular order, Jena Malone, Noah Wyle, Mary McDonnell, Patrick Swayze and Katharine Ross joined the cast. Kelly explained, “All of the other actors, because of Drew mostly, felt comfortable working with a first-time director. She kind of stepped up to the plate. It takes one actor to break the ice or to RSVP to the party, then everyone feels comfortable RSVPing.”

In the hunt for a director of photography, A-list cinematographers were rejected due to budgetary restraints, while promising novices from the music video industry were passed over by Pandora due to the inexperience that Kelly was already bringing to the table. Going through resumes, Sean McKittrick found journeyman Steven Poster, who stood out because he’d shot Someone to Watch Over Me for director Ridley Scott. The producer commented, “Steven’s a brilliant guy and he’s one of the main reasons why the movie looks like it does. Right now he’s actually the President of the ASC … He’s just kind of like this living working legend within the cinematography community and he just did a brilliant job. He’s the nicest, sweetest guy you’ll ever meet in your life. He was just a Godsend. Sometimes things just completely work out and that was the biggest of them all.”

As Richard Kelly put it, Donnie Darko was equally blessed when it came to hiring a composer. “I was very lucky that I didn’t have a crew forced upon me by the financiers. A lot of times they force you to hire people because they want the music to sound like music from ‘that’ movie. But with $4.5 million, you can’t afford Thomas Newman or Danny Elfman or any of these guys. You’ve got to just go find somebody who is young and hungry, and really talented. Nancy Juvonen’s brother recommended Mike Andrews. He’s from San Diego, actually. Gary Jules, who did the ‘Mad World’ cover with him, is also from San Diego. Jim Juvonen, he’s really good at knowing who’s the shit before anyone else knows who’s the shit. He said, ‘This is the guy. This guy is a genius; you’ve got to work with this guy. No one knows about him.”

Filmed in the Los Angeles area — where Loyola High School stood in for Donnie’s alma mater — in 28 days, a hastily edited cut was playing at the Sundance Film Festival just a few months later, in January 2001. The traditional lack of special effects oriented films at the indie film showcase and the picture’s buzz combined to make the screening much anticipated. Those in attendance were muted in their response; gossip columnist Jeffrey Wells reported the mood “subdued (if mostly respectable)”. Donnie Darko would leave Park City without a distributor. Kelly mused, “Sundance is a dangerous kind of marketplace because if you don’t strike at the right time and you don’t get an initial interest in your film, all of a sudden, it’s over. People like to dismiss it as something that doesn’t work. So after Sundance we sort of deemed it as a failure, an impressive, interesting failure, but as an experimental film that just doesn’t work.”

Production executive Aaron Ryder of financing company Newmarket offered a slightly different perspective on the film’s Sundance verdict. “We saw the movie and we really liked it. Everybody thought, ‘It’s a good film but it’s going to be hard to market. It’s too long and it’s got problems.’ So we didn’t buy it at Sundance, nobody did. At this time we hadn’t yet released Memento. However our aspirations were to build a distribution company so we put an offer on it saying that we needed to talk about re-cutting the film with the director as it was well over two hours. We spent six months editing, allowing Richard to have the cut he was proud of.” Through a service deal with IFC Films, Newmarket agreed to distribute and promote Donnie Darko. In turn, Kelly was obligated to cut 10 minutes from the running time and make do with ‘80s pop tunes whose clearances would be less expensive.

Opening October 2001 in the United States, Donnie Darko notched plenty of positive reviews. J. Hoberman, The Village Voice: “The events of September 11 have rendered most movies inconsequential; the heartbreaking Donnie Darko, by contrast, feels weirdly consoling. Period piece though it is, Kelly’s high-school gothic seems perfectly attuned to the present moment. This would be a splendid debut under any circumstances; released for Halloween 2001, it has uncanny gravitas.” Kimberly Jones, The Austin Chronicle: “Donnie Darko is an unnerving, electrifying debut film from 26-year-old writer/director Kelly, one that elucidates the universal traumas of growing up, but does so with a startling uncommonness. So much here is equally baffling and beguiling; I caught myself leaning in toward the screen repeatedly, trying to somehow get closer to the gorgeous impenetrability of the story, of the boy.” Andrew O’Hehir, Salon: “Donnie Darko is a stunning technical accomplishment that virtually bursts with noise, ideas and references, but it’s fundamentally a gracefully crafted movie that’s about human beings and not images.”

The critical raves fell on deaf ears. Donnie Darko failed to expand beyond 58 screens in the United States, where it grossed $515,375. Aaron Ryder admitted “We put it out at the wrong time as it was just after 9/11. We thought we could make an alternative Halloween movie, which is a bad idea. I think that we learned a lesson. If you have a film starring a young protagonist or young people in it, it doesn’t necessarily mean that film will attract a younger audience. The core audience for Donnie Darko is the same as Memento, which is an older audience. We probably should have released the film in February. There were just too many films out at the time and people weren’t going to the movies at that time … Everybody loved that movie and they think, ‘Wow, he’s such a good filmmaker, but boy did they fuck up the distribution of that movie.’”

In January 2002, Phil Hartman – co-owner of the Two Boots Pioneer Theater in Manhattan’s East Village – was looking for a movie to program at midnight screenings. He stated his criteria: “You need something that is a visual trip, that works on repeated viewings and is open to reinterpretations, something that you can watch in altered states.” His son recommended Donnie Darko. Far from a blockbuster – filling on average half the theater’s 100 seats – the late night engagement ran for 28 straight months. Revival houses in Washington and Boston caught on and when the film opened in England that fall, it was a modest box office hit, grossing $2.5 million USD. The Mike Andrews/ Gary Jules cover of “Mad World” even cracked the U.K. top ten pop charts. When released on DVD, Donnie Darko would sell $15 million in units.

Popular demand prompted Newmarket to approach Richard Kelly for a “new and improved” version of Donnie Darko. An investment of $290,000 enabled the filmmaker to restore 20 minutes of footage, substitute new musical cues, touch up the sound mix and add chapter headings from The Philosophy of Time Travel, which were inserted to enhance the science fiction aspects. Donnie Darko: The Director’s Cut opened in limited theatrical release July 2004. Kelly mused, “The first release just wasn’t meant to be. I feel like the film was meant to fail before it could succeed. It was meant to be this cult item before it could be more mainstream. There are always people who want Donnie Darko to be the cult film, the one they discovered. If there’s any way this film could ever cross over a bit more to the mainstream it would just allow me to continue to make these kinds of films. I think any time a counterculture piece of art infiltrates the mainstream, that’s a good thing.”

Why Should I Care?
Of all the ways you can approach Donnie Darko – as a portrait of teenage angst, a psychological horror movie, a nostalgic trip through the ’80s, a science fiction tale concerning time travel, or a satire of all of the above – what’s most exciting about Richard Kelly’s debut is how the audience ends up being empowered to give the movie its form and definition. It doesn’t barrel its way down any one genre or crib from other filmmakers for its inspiration. This is a movie truly in a class of its own. The screenplay is teeming with wonderful details – a Bush/Dukakis debate, a dance troupe called Sparkle Motion, a debate over The Smurfs – that may be part of a larger puzzle, or might not mean anything at all.

The writing features much sharp wit – laced with barbs toward the public school system – while engaging all sorts of cool ideas about time travel and alternate universes in the process. An alternate title might have been It’s A Miserable Life, as the novel approach could be summed up as It’s A Wonderful Life in reverse. The cast is stronger than any first time director could possibly hope to ask for, particularly the Gyllenhaals, Patrick Swayze, and Holmes Osborne and Mary McDonnell as Donnie’s sympathetic parents. Steven Poster lends the cinematography a vivid, dreamlike feel, while the original music by Michael Andrews compliments that mood as well. I doubt that Kelly has any better fucking idea what’s going on in this movie than anyone watching for the first time will, but your guess will be at least as good as the person sitting next to you.

© Joe Valdez

Where Are You Getting This *&#!?
“Interview with Sean McKittrick” By Chadwick Clough. Script P.I.M.P., 19 July 2002

“Richard Kelly” By Jason Korsner. BBC, 21 October 2002

“Interview with Nancy Juvonen” Richard-Kelly.net, 25 May 2004

“Getting Inside Donnie Darko with Writer/Director Richard Kelly” By Rebecca Murray. About.com, 27 May 2004

“The Resurrection of Donnie Darko” By Robert Levine, 18 July 2004

“How Donnie Darko Refused To Die” By Nathan Lee. The New York Sun, 20 July 2004

“Richard Kelly’s Second Chance” By Jennifer Soong. Moviemaker, 21 June 2004

“Donnie Darko The Director’s Cut: The Strange Afterlife of an Indie Cult Film” By Adam Burnett. indieWIRE, 22 July 2004

The Guerilla Film Makers Handbook. By Genevieve Jolliffe, Chris Jones. Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004

Blue Velvet (1986)
Written by David Lynch
Directed by David Lynch
Produced by De Laurentiis Entertainment Group
Running time: 120 minutes

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)

Scarface (1983)
Screenplay by Oliver Stone, based on a screenplay by Ben Hecht
Directed by Brian DePalma
Produced by Universal Pictures
Running time: 170 minutes

What the *&#! Is This About?
In 1980 – following the expulsion by Fidel Castro of 125,000 Cubans, many less than desirable – U.S. immigration officials question Tony Montana (Al Pacino). His bid for asylum falls short when the scar on his cheek and the prison tattoo on his hand brand him less than desirable. Tony explodes. “What do you want me to do, stay there and do nothing? I’m no fucking criminal, man. I’m no puta or thief. I’m Tony Montana, a political prisoner from Cuba. And I want my fucking human rights, now! Just like the president Jimmy Carter say. Okay?” Tony is interned at Freedomtown with the other Cuban refugees, including his best friend Manny (Steven Bauer), who secures them green cards by agreeing to kill a Castro lackey who arrives at the camp for their new benefactor. A job at a sandwich stand in Miami awaits, but Tony has his sights set on bigger fish.

Tony & Manny’s ragged but effective work as drug couriers gain the respect of their humble boss, Frank Lopez (Robert Loggia). With cash in his pocket, Tony attempts to reconcile with his mother (Miriam Colon) and his adoring kid sister Gina (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) who Tony harbors intense feelings for. He also sets Manny straight about America. “This country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women.” Coveting Lopez’s glassy eyed girlfriend Elvira (Michelle Pfeiifer), Tony takes the initiative on a business trip to Bolivia and negotiates a $75 million cocaine deal with the powerful Sosa (Paul Shenar). Lopez warns his protégé that the guys who last in their business are the ones who keep a low profile, but Tony has one ambition: “The world, chico. And everything in it.”

Who Should Be Held Responsible?
The genesis of Scarface was with Al Pacino. In 1974, the actor was performing in Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui, a satire on fascism that the playwright had modeled on the American gangster movie, particularly the 1932 classic Scarface, starring Paul Muni. Pacino recalled, “So I was one day walking along Sunset Boulevard of all places and there was – I believe it’s the Tiffany Theater now – and it was playing on a double bill with something else, I forget. And it was Scarface, and it was a few of us, so I said, well why don’t we just go and take a look at it. And we went in and it was, you know, an astounding movie, astounding. And the performance of Paul Muni’s was astounding and inspiring. And I thought after that, that I just wanted to, yeah, I wanted to imitate him, I wanted to do something and was inspired by that performance. And I called Marty Bregman, who then put together some people and they started working on developing this as a film.”

Producer Martin Bregman – Pacino’s former manager and producer of Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon – has also claimed credit for the idea. “The reason I did Scarface - or how it came to my attention – was I was watching the old Paul Muni film about three o’clock one morning when I couldn’t sleep … and it occurred to me that a film like that, a film like Scarface – the rise and fall of an American gangster – had not been done, certainly had not been done recently. Hadn’t been done since Scarface.” To direct, Bregman approached Brian DePalma, who in 1981 was in post-production on Blow Out. Collaborating with playwright David Rabe, DePalma attempted to retain the setting of the original Scarface, directed by Howard Hawks and adapted by Ben Hecht. When the results failed to meet with anyone’s satisfaction, DePalma dropped out and Bregman turned to director Sidney Lumet.

Academy Award winning screenwriter Oliver Stone – uninterested in remakes – had already turned down an offer from Bregman to adapt a script. He changed his tune once Sidney Lumet came aboard and Stone heard his take. “It was not until Sidney Lumet came into the picture – I think shortly thereafter – we had another conversation and he told me Sidney Lumet was very anxious to do the movie and wanted to do it Cuban, Miami, 1980, ’81, the Mariel Boat Lift. I started into the research of Miami. I went to Miami extensively and I got to know both sides. I got to know the law enforcement side, the attorney generals, the attorney’s office, the gangster elements through the lawyers, the ex-gangster elements. And then eventually I wanted more. I plunged into the Caribbean. I went down to Bimini. On another trip – a separate trip – I went to Ecuador and to Bolivia.”

Stone’s self-confessed “drug period” – beginning during his adaptation of Conan the Barbarian, which was written on cocaine and downers, and continuing through The Hand, which Stone also directed – was in full swing during his research on the drug cartels. Ultimately, the screenwriter absconded to Paris for six months in December 1981, went cold turkey and wrote Scarface. Sidney Lumet – who had hoped to explore the geopolitical ramifications of the cocaine trade, including what he suspected was the involvement of the CIA – didn’t care for what Stone turned in. He commented, “I didn’t want to do it on just a gangster or cop level. As it stood, it was a comic strip.” Stone maintained, “Sidney did not understand my script, whereas Bregman wanted to continue in that direction with Al.” When Lumet dropped out, the producer went back to his first choice for director.

Brian DePalma recalled, “When I had first started with David Rabe, we had more or less tried to start with the original Scarface. Italian. Chicago. The script that came to me ultimately that Bregman had developed with Stone was completely different. Nothing that I had ever envisioned, and that’s why I liked it so much, ‘cause it was a whole new way of approaching this material. And those elements were in the original script. I liked the material specifically because to me it was sort of like a modern metaphor for The Treasure of Sierra Madre, where cocaine becomes gold and it’s kind of the American dream gone crazy, where you have this product that can turn into millions of dollars but in the process you destroy your life. And it’s sort of like the capitalist dream gone bizarre and berserk and is crazy as you get and completely self-destructive.”

After an ingénue named Michelle Pfeiffer flew to New York on her own dime and gave an intense audition with Pacino, both Bregman and DePalma were unanimous that she would play Elvira. Pacino was holding out for a leading lady with a bit more experience: Glenn Close. Bregman recalled, “I had a long, old relationship with Al, and I told him he didn’t know what the hell he was thinking. I told him he didn’t know his ass from his elbow. I said this character is partly a courtesan, and she has to be half a hooker. Glenn Close is many things, but she is not half a hooker.” In addition to warming up to Pfeiffer, Pacino worked with dialect coach Robert Eastson and co-star Steven Bauer – who was born in Cuba – to nail his character’s accent. Pacino became so immersed, he asked director of photography John Alonzo to speak to him only in Spanish throughout the shoot.

Under a budget of $21.5 million, Scarface was scheduled to roll September 1982 in Miami. The bullet riddled city did not celebrate. Fearing that the movie was set to portray Cuban Americans in a negative light, Commissioner Demetrio Perez Jr. introduced a resolution to City Council to deny permits to the production. The effort failed, but two weeks into filming, threats of demonstrations forced Bregman to shut down and move to Southern California. Costume designer Patricia Norris recalled, “I did think they’d have killed us if we stayed in Miami. There were members of the community who hated us because they thought we were doing a pro-Castro movie, which was absurd, but their anger was very serious. And then there were real drug people around, Colombians who came on the set. The day a fellow sat down in the chair next to me, and crossed his legs, and I saw a gun strapped to his ankle, I knew I wanted to get back to Los Angeles.”

The internment camp sequence was shot underneath the Santa Monica and Harbor Freeways in downtown L.A. The sandwich stand where Tony & Manny work was also shot in Los Angeles, in Little Tokyo. Tony & Elvira’s wedding was filmed at a 35-acre mansion in Montecito, near Santa Barbara, while Sosa’s Bolivian hacienda was also shot in Montecito. Many of the elaborate interiors were staged on the Universal Studios lot. To snag the Miami Beach exteriors, DePalma snuck back into town with a small crew for two weeks in April 1983. The director later stated, “It’s difficult enough to make a movie without adding more complications. Afterward, the governor and the mayor were upset, realizing that the company would have provided a lot of jobs in Florida. When we went back, there were no problems.” The delays added two months and $5 million to the budget.

When Scarface went before the MPAA, it returned with an X rating four times. Efforts by DePalma to trim the violence had no effect on the rating, which would have dissuaded exhibitors in many parts of the U.S. from booking the film. In early November 1983, Bregman called for a hearing, in which the producer joined DePalma, Universal distribution chief Robert Rehme and Broward County law enforcement official Nick Navarro to plead their case to the ratings board. DePalma maintained to Playboy at the time, “I didn’t take anything out except for the arm that was chainsawed off. You don’t really see it, just about twelve frames. I took it out, anyway. I sent the censors four versions and kept taking things out, and finally I said, ‘I’m not doing this anymore,’ and all four versions got an X for ‘cumulative violence,’ whatever that is. So I figured, ‘Hey, if we’re getting an X, let’s go with our first version.’” By a vote of 17-3, Scarface received an R rating and was clear to open December 1983 across the U.S.

Critics didn’t condemn Scarface, not completely. The New York Times (Vincent Canby) and Time Magazine (Richard Corliss) posted rave reviews. But the boo birds came out in equal force. Pauline Kael, the New Yorker: “The whole feeling of the movie is limp. This may be the only action picture that turns into an allegory of impotence.” Walter Goodman, in a New York Times op-ed: “Brian DePalma evidently believed that enough gore and mayhem could save a plate of cold fried bananas fifty years after it has been served up piping hot.” Dave Kehr, the Chicago Reader: “Brian De Palma dedicates this 1983 feature to Howard Hawks and Ben Hecht, authors of the 1932 original, though I doubt they would find much honor in his gory inflation of their crisp, 90-minute comic nightmare into a klumbering, self-important, arrhythmic downer of nearly three hours.”

On At the Movies, Gene Siskel & Roger Ebert flew into debate over Scarface, with Siskel turning thumbs down over what he perceived to be lack of character development. Ebert: “You think there’s some rule that says a guy has to be good at the beginning and bad at the end?” Siskel: “No, I say it’s more interesting.” Ebert: “He’s a criminal when he gets off the boat …” Siskel: “That’s exactly right, an uninteresting criminal.” Ebert: “He has a criminal’s version of the American dream, which is get a lot of money, build a big house and marry this blonde. And then he falls into drugs and because of his own fatal flaws it all comes crashing down, so it’s the story of a guy who’s bad at the beginning and bad in the middle and worse at the end. What’s wrong with that?” Siskel: “Who cares? I didn’t care about him in the slightest. His life meant nothing to me.” Ebert: “There are a lot of people like this guy, I think.” Siskel: “All of the famous gangster films are not about louses who got lousier. Some of them are about interesting characters who got lousier.”

Scarface grossed a subpar $45.4 million in the U.S. and $20.4 million overseas. But instead of going away, audiences remained fixated on Tony Montana. Al Pacino mused, “You make a lot of pictures, and you realize some don’t have it. I knew there was a pulse to this picture; I knew it was beating. And then I kept getting residuals from the movie, kept getting checks. And wherever I was filming, in Europe, people would come up to me and say, ‘Hey, Tony Montana.’ In Israel the Israelis came up to me and wanted to talk about Scarface. The Palestinians wanted to talk about Scarface.” Due to popular demand, Universal has granted more than forty licenses for merchandisers in the U.S. to crank out Tony Montana T-shirts, action figures, belt buckles or money clips. When Universal announced the Scarface Two-Disc Anniversary Edition DVD in 2003, advance orders swelled to 2 million, the highest of any title in the studio’s library.

Tony Montana has even been resurrected as a video game – Scarface: The World Is Yours – allowing xBox and Wii users to rampage through Miami. Oliver Stone summed up the enduring appeal of the film by stating, “A lot of young businessmen quote me the dialogue and when I ask them why they remember it, they say, ‘It’s exactly like my business.’ Apparently, the gangster ethic hit on some of the business ethics going on in this country. Scarface has probably got me more free champagne than any film I’ve ever worked on. I’ve bumped into Spanish and Jamaican gangsters throughout the Caribbean and South America and gay gangsters in Paris, who bought me champagne all night long. I’ve even read reports in newspapers where gangsters have modeled themselves on Tony Montana.”

For the film’s 20th anniversary, Def Jam met with Brian DePalma to propose Scarface be re-released, updating the Giorgio Moroder score with a hip-hop soundtrack. Bregman and Pacino had given a blessing to the idea of a rap music reboot. DePalma scotched it. The director stated, “If this is the ‘masterpiece’ you say, leave it alone. I fought them tooth and nail and was the odd man out, not an unusual place for me. I have final cut, so that stopped them dead.” Def Jam pressed a tribute CD instead, compiling tracks by Jay-Z, The Notorious B.I.G. and others, loosely connected to the gangster classic. DePalma noted, “The hip-hop community was seeing all around them what was happening in the film: that cocaine makes you feel all powerful, and you surround yourself with entourages and palaces and outrageous clothes and women, and you lose all touch with reality; you become numb. Ultimately you divorce yourself from the people you knew in the past. You ultimately explode, you perish because of your own excess.”

Why Should I Care?
With characters exiting the movie almost as tissue paper thin as they were when they came in, only someone with a Tony Montana hoodie would say this picture is perfect. But one of the reasons it’s become enormously popular all over the world is how well it plays regardless of its audience. Arthouse, grindhouse, bootleg VHS, mall crowd or country club set, no matter what your setting, there is something to marvel over in Scarface, undeniably one of the greatest shoot ‘em ups of all time, as well as one of the most hilarious satires of that same excess. The visual palette of the picture is unmatched, with the finest possible recreations of early ‘80s Miami high life, courtesy production designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti. When it comes to Technicolor violence, the film is gruesome in a way that few Hollywood action movies are, with the possible exception of The Untouchables, also directed by DePalma.

What makes Scarface so potent isn’t its carnage or how well it was photographed, but the penetrating script by Oliver Stone. Bursting with lively one-liners – “Me, I always tell the truth. Even when I lie. So say goodnight to the bad guy!” – and street corner sagacity about the nature of power, the film is full of color and excitement at the beginning before slowly taking a turn toward darker territory. Written as a swan song to cocaine, Scarface is the personal best screenplay Stone has ever cranked out of his own typewriter. Second best might be Wall Street, another warning about the blind alleys of capitalism that instead of being taken as a cautionary tale has become a training video for would-be entrepreneurs who completely miss the point. If Al Pacino’s lunatic raving about banking, trust and pelicans while immersed in a giant bubble bath isn’t the centerpiece of a great black comedy, I don’t know what is.

© Joe Valdez

Where Are You Getting This *&#!?
Al Pacino: A Life on the Wire. By Andrew Yule. Dutton Adult (1991)

Stone. By James Riordian. Hyperion (1995)

“The Healing of Scarface” By Elaine Dutka, Los Angeles Times, 17 September 2003

“A Foul Mouth With a Following; 20 Years Later, Pacino’s Scarface Resonates With a Young Audience” By Bernard Weinraub. New York Times, 23 September 2003

Scarface (Platinum Edition). Universal Home Video (2006)

Scarface Nation: The Ultimate Gangster Movie and How It Changed America. By Ken Tucker. St. Martin’s Griffin (2008)