Weekly Top 10: Cinema's Greatest Offscreen Feuds, Part 2
5/17/2007 4:30:00 PM
Quentin Tarantino and Jane Hamsher, Natural Born Killers (1994)
Hamsher and her producing partner, Don Murphy, were a couple of USC graduates trying to get a foot in the door of the movie business when they managed to purchase a screenplay written by the then unknown Tarantino. In her book Killer Instinct, Hamsher described how they managed to use the script to reel in Oliver Stone, then coming off the failure of Heaven & Earth and desperate to find a project that would let him reassert his hipness and connection to the zeitgeist. She also delivered a vivid word cartoon of QT as a motormouthed junk culture idiot savant and described how, his loutishness amplified by the success of Pulp Fiction, he ran into her again and slipped her some nightmare fuel by hitting on her aggressively, asking if she'd "gone blonde" just to get his atttention. Ever the gentleman, Tarantino dealt with the situation by publicly assaulting Don Murphy after spotting him in a restaurant, then telling reporters that his hitting Murphy was "just a little bitch slap." Murphy filed suit; he's since started his own production company and become something of a specialist in comics-related properties (including From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and the forthcoming Transformers movies). As for Hamsher, she's now best known as the propietor of the blog Firedoglake, a forum that takes full advantage of her talent for nasty cracks and apparent inability to censor what she thinks, qualities that likely would be wasted in a Hollywood producer.
Sam Peckinpah and James Aubrey, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
Peckinpah had been feuding with the guys with the suits and the money since at least his first feature, The Deadly Companions. Aubrey, known as "the smiling cobra", had been in charge of CBS during a period when it totally dominated the Nielsen ratings, thanks to his determination to get really stupid shows on the air even if it meant fighting those CBS executives who had a sense of shame. ("The American public," he once sneered, "is something I fly over.") After being driven out of CBS, Aubrey was installed as head of the dying MGM, where he had a mandate to save the studio. He pursued that aim by downsizing the employee rolls, cancelling films set to go into production, selling off the company's assets, and slashing the budgets of those films that actually got the go-ahead. Murray Kempton once compared Aubrey to Caligula, but whoever decided to put Peckinpah on the MGM payroll while Aubrey was in charge must have been thinking more along the lines of Nero, and trying to dampen the fires with gasoline. Things started heating up as soon as the first rushes of Peckinpah's ambitious, wandering Western were screened for Aubrey. In response to one of the film's most famous scenes, with James Coburn's Garrett in a Mexican standoff with a man floating upriver on a raft containing his family and their possessions, Aubrey actually shouted, "What the fuck was that!?" A helpful young assistant volunteered that it was "a scene of existential violence." Aubrey, showing uncharacteristic restraint, allowed him to live but announced that anyone who ever used the phrase "existential violence" in his presence again would be fired on the spot. When Peckinpah was in the editing room, he and Aubrey warred over the picture until the director was moved to take what, for anyone besides himself, might have seemed like drastic measures: He called one of his own helpmates and ordered him to hire "a couple of pistoleros" to come in from Mexico "and kill Jim Aubrey." When the man politely declined the assignment, Peckinpah gave him a death's-head stare and said, "I thought you were a friend of mine." In the end, the director, weakened by bad health and alcoholism, had the movie wrestled from his grasp and released in an Aubrey-approved version that wasn't a hit and didn't do anybody's reputation any favors. An attempt to re-edit the picture more along the lines Peckinpah had hoped for wouldn't bear fruit until 1988, four years after the director's death.
Sean Young vs. James Woods, The Boost
1988's The Boost is the very definition of a forgettable flick. A workmanlike director, a noisy but unmemorable script, a mediocre cast, and a nightmare-descent-of-the-wealthy-into-cocaine plot that probably seemed a lot more riveting to the coke-fired studio execs of the eighties than it does to audiences today all added up to a movie that, if it was remembered at all, should have been remembered for its basis in a novel by game-show-host/right-wing pundit/Ferris Bueller droner Ben Stein. But something happened during the filming of The Boost: co-stars Sean Young and James Woods started schtupping each other, beginning a love affair that would echo through the ages — as one of the ugliest and most disastrous of all time. Woods, a larger-than-life Hollywood stalwart with a taste for much younger women, dumped Young after only a few months; then, to hear him tell it, she began a campaign of harassment against him that involved creepy phone calls, photos of dead babies, hacked-up doll parts, and other stalkerish behavior. Young denied everything (though her other, er, questionable activities, ranging from confronting directors for parts she didn't get to showing up uninvited at Hollywood shindigs, didn't help her credibility), and lawsuits were mutually exchanged; by the time it was all over, the coupling was one of the most infamous in Hollywood history and Sean Young's name was briefly synonymous with 'psycho'. In the end, though, Woods' telling of the tale, which is widely regarded as gospel, may be as suspect as his 9/11 hijacker story: It was he who ended up paying her hundreds of thousands of dollars in an out-of-court settlement.
Tupac Shakur and Janet Jackson, Poetic Justice
Fresh off his infamous role as Bishop, a high school b-boy turned out of control murderer in Juice, Tupac was cast in John Singleton’s sophomore directorial effort, which, thanks to the almost universally acclaimed Boyz N The Hood, had a healthy Hollywood budget and Janet Jackson in the lead role. While filming, representatives for Miss Jackson, perhaps taking Tupac at his word after seeing the video for I Get Around, asked that the rapper turned actor take an HIV test. Understandably, Tupac not only refused, but went berserk, telling Singleton he wanted Jackson off the movie altogether. He also claimed that if they were going to have sex, he’d gladly be tested, but wasn’t going to go through it when all they were going to do was kiss. Their one real love scene in the film was cut down to a single kiss and a lot of inference. Tupac may have used the incident to fuel his performance, particularly early in the film, when the two characters are openly hostile to one another. (Apparently Jackson was civil to him for the remainder of the shoot, but changed her number the day after filming wrapped.) Only a few months later Tupac, incensed at being cut from a critical role (O-Dog) in the Hughes brothers debut film Menace II Society, ran into the brothers at a video shoot and immediately went after them, sending one brother to the hospital and the other one running. Singleton had said he wanted Shakur to be the DeNiro to his Scorsese, but due to the rapper’s growing reputation and more than one pending criminal case, the studio funding Singleton’s next film, Higher Learning, wouldn’t allow him to use Tupac in the lead role. It went, instead, to his Juice co-star Omar Epps.
Warren Beatty vs. Robert Altman, McCabe & Mrs. Miller
One of the perils of bringing together strong-willed creative types is that a power play will ensue. Such was the case with Altman’s masterpiece McCabe & Mrs. Miller. Beatty’s career was still riding high after starring in and producing the era-defining hit Bonnie and Clyde, and Altman was a hot property following the release of M*A*S*H. But once they were together on set, the styles of the two quickly clashed. Beatty, accustomed to directors who would indulge his creative impulses, demanded multiple takes even after Altman was satisfied. But Altman would have none of it, at one point leaving the set and letting an assistant director shoot thirty more takes at Beatty’s request. Eventually, Altman struck back at his star, forcing him to do 25 takes of a scene taking place during a snow storm. Happily, the film turned out fine — McCabe is one of Altman’s crowning achievements and perhaps Beatty’s best work as an actor. Years later, Altman remembered his experience with Beatty by saying, “I think he’s a good actor. He was great in McCabe. But I wouldn’t go through that again. It’s no fun... He has to be hands-on and doesn’t trust people. He’s very suspicious of everybody.” He also continued to call Beatty an “asshole” well into the 2000s. The actor was just as blunt about the matter. When asked about the film, he reportedly said, “had I been a producer on the film, I would have had [Altman] killed.”
HONORABLE MENTION:
Alfred Hitchcock vs. Tippi Hedren, The Birds
It was very tempting to call this entry "Alfred Hitchcock vs. everybody". The director who was famous for comparing actors to cattle (with actors coming out on the losing end of the comparison) didn't exactly endear himself to his casts, or to his leading ladies in particular; for all his genius as a filmmaker, he tended to treat women considerably less gently than did Scottie Ferguson in Vertigo. For Hitch, the icy-blonde women he cast in his movies were not so much coworkers as they were possessions, and if they stopped doing what they were told, they could be discarded and replaced with a newer model. At no point was this more apparent than with Hitchcock's last great blonde leading lady, Tippi Hedren; his casting of her in The Birds was calculated in the extreme, setting a manipulative tone from the very beginning. When she rejected his awkward romantic advances ("It’s difficult to be the object of someone’s obsession if you’re not interested in being that object," she said in a cagey interview with the Times of London recently), he became extremely bitter, vowing to break her with the same strength with which he'd made her. Showing more respect for the late Hitchcock than he did for her, Hedren won't fully disclose even to this day what ultimately caused the break between the two, but afterwards, Hitchcock did his best —which was considerable — to keep her under wraps, burying her under his considerable industry heft and keeping her ignorant of offers from the many directors (including, reportedly, Francois Truffaut) who wanted to work with her. Hedren's career finally recovered, but Sir Alfred had proved himself a villain worthy of one of his own films; Hell hath no fury like a Master of Suspense scorned. Just ask Kim Novak.
— Paul Clark, Bilge Ebiri, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce, Bryan Whitefield
PREVIOUS WEEKLY TOP TENS:
- May 10, 2007: The Worst Mothers in Movie History
- May 3, 2007: The Greatest Remakes
- April 26, 2007: Nude Scenes We Could Really Have Done Without
- April 19, 2007: The Most Historically Inaccurate Films Ever Made
- April 11, 2007: Cinema's Greatest No-Sex Sex Scenes
- April 4, 2007: Chicks with Guns
- March 29, 2007: The Most Important Nude Scenes of All Time
- March 22, 2007: The Worst Accents in Movie History
- March 14, 2007: The Kinkiest Films Ever Made
- March 7, 2007: The Most Dangerous Films of All Time
- February 27, 2007: The Best Nude Scenes of 2006
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Weekly Top 10: Cinema’s Greatest Offscreen Feuds, Part 1
5/17/2007 3:15:00 PM
With massive egos, crippling neuroses, and hairtrigger tempers that make the English Romantic Poets look like a bunch of astronauts, the people who give us the movies – be they from Hollywood or Indiewood -- are a notoriously volatile bunch. So it goes without saying that angers often flare under the hot lights and pressurized work schedules of movie shoots. And reshoots. And edits. Movie lore is replete with all manner of disputes, ranging from the personal, to the professional, to the professional-turned-personal, to the personal-turned-professional. Here is our selection of the juiciest ones. We haven’t included some you may be expecting to see here: We decided that Klaus Kinski and Werner Herzog, despite their murderous back-and-forth, were kind of made for each other. (Besides, we already did them.) And Orson Welles’s infamous dispute with RKO over The Magnificent Ambersons was more just a studio crushing a filmmaker than a real dispute. What did make the list? Read on. Here are Cinema’s Greatest Offscreen Feuds.
George Clooney vs. David O. Russell, Three Kings
It says something about the bad blood between Clooney and his onetime director that nine years after their on-set altercation, people were still speculating that Clooney had something to do with the leak of a video featuring Russell blowing up during the production of another, unrelated film. Clooney, for his part, has vehemently denied that allegation, but he’s been painfully, gloriously frank about what actually happened on the Arizona set of Russell’s 1999 Iraq War drama. Apparently, after weeks of enduring Russell’s one-two-three punch of improvised direction, slavedriving tactics, and callous disregard for the safety of cast and crew on the desert set, Clooney, having had enough, wrote the director a letter criticizing his behavior and attempting to make peace. It didn’t work. Within days, the two had a real mano-a-mano (or should that be cabeza-a-cabeza?) when Russell became exasperated with an extra. (The director claims that he was merely showing the extra how to throw Ice Cube to the ground; Clooney maintains that Russell was himself manhandling the extra.) The actor confronted the director, to which Russell replied, “Why don't you just worry about your fucked-up act? You're being a dick. You want to hit me? You want to hit me? Come on, pussy, hit me.” (This is a man nominated for a WGA award?) Fists were exchanged, heads were butted. While the two eventually made peace and finished the film (which turned out to be some of the best work either of them has ever done) they’ve both said, understandably, that they would never work with each other again. Clooney has gone on to become renowned as one of Hollywood’s nicer guys. Russell has gone on to picking on someone his own size.
Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
You know that bitter, hateful vibe that throbs between the two veteran performers from beginning to end of this movie? Not acting. For decades before they were finally brought together for this, their only shared credit, Crawford and Davis had been known as the reigning "queens" of their respective studios, MGM and Warners. During that time, an impression was formed, not least in the two women's own minds, that Bette was the "actress" of the two and that Joan was the "star." Since Davis was not above wishing to be thought inhumanly glamorous and Crawford certainly not above wishing to be taken seriously as an artist, both probably saw these designations less as tributes to what they had than as insults referring to what they were thought to have less of than the competition. The nicest thing that Davis ever said about Crawford was probably her reaction to news of her onetime co-star's death: "I wish I could have liked her more." (More typically, a writer who confronted her with the quotation, "There may be a heaven, but if Joan Crawford is there, I'm not going," was met with the reply, "Would you?") After Baby Jane was a hit, its director, Robert Aldrich, was set to reunite the pair in Hush, Hush...Sweet Charlotte, but after beginning the picture, Crawford dropped out, claiming illness. In fact, it was being around Davis that made her sick. Regarding his stars' treatment of each other on Baby Jane, Aldrich had said that "it's proper to say that they really detested each other, but they behaved absolutely perfectly." In the interim, though, Davis had enjoyed the ego boost of being nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in Baby Jane, and had also endured the insult of news that Crawford was campaigning against her. It's generally agreed that she insulted, tormented, and generally hounded Crawford into bailing out of Hush, Hush; one of her subtler moves was to have a Coca-Cola machine installed on the set. (Crawford was the widow of the Alfred Steele, the president of Pepsi Cola, and had taken his place on the company's Board of Directors.) Both actresses would go on to appear in several of the aging-hag horror movies that followed in the wake of Baby
Jane, though Davis, who outlived Crawford by twelve years, would at least get the chance to take on a few more dignified roles towards the end of her life. More sadly, she, unlike Crawford, would live long enough to see her daughter publish a book about what a bitch she was.
Tony Kaye vs. Edward Norton, American History X
Before he had even directed a single feature, self-promoting British commercial director Tony Kaye had already bought an ad proclaiming himself “the greatest British director since Hitchcock.” So it goes without saying that he was a bit upset when New Line cinema, prior to releasing American History X in 1998, gave final cut not to its self-proclaimed genius director but to the movie's hot young star, Edward Norton. The subsequent film received a generally warm critical reception from almost everyone — with the major exception of its director. Kaye, who hadn't been consulted on the edit, went absolutely apeshit: He publicly excoriated Norton and New Line, demanded his name be taken off the picture (and replaced, reportedly, with the pseudonym "Humpty Dumpty", which you have to admit is a lot catchier than "Alan Smithee"), and took his fight public through the medium of the trades, placing full-page ads in Variety denouncing Norton and the studio for betraying his vision. Here he made his biggest mistake: Director's Guild of America bylaws forbid filmmakers from publicly stating the reasons for having their names removed from credits, and so, when they refused his request on technical grounds, Kaye filed a massive quarter-billion-dollar lawsuit against the DGA (and New Line, for good measure). Norton at first tried to stay out of the fray, but the heat of a nasty feud got to him, and he and Kaye engaged in a very ugly battle of words for several months. Ironically, given the movie's focus on racism, religious fanaticism and white supremacy, deploying crucifixion metaphors and other poor choices of imagery: Kaye's lawsuit claimed that he was owed $250 million because his civil rights had been violated as a result of not being allowed to bill himself as "Humpty Dumpty". And all across America, millions of dispossessed minorities nodded sagely and said, 'We feel your pain, brother.'
Burt Reynolds and Dick Richards, Heat
The term "Hollywood feud" usually conjures up images of glamorous titans battling it out in editing rooms and gossip columns, pitched battles that are often the result of tiny irritations that have beeninflated through the pressurizing effects of riches and fame. But when a has-been tangles with a never-was, that's when things can really get nasty. Heat, which has no connection to the later Michael Mann film of the same name, was one of several D.O.A. action flicks that Reynolds cranked out in the eighties after Stroker Ace served as an official announcement that he had reached his sell-by date. The movie was directed by Dick Richards, who had seemed to be a promising, rising director at the same time that Reynolds had been establishing himself as one of the biggest stars of the seventies. Richards's The Culpepper Cattle Co. (1972) and Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins (1975) established him as a filmmaker with a pleasingly relaxed, low-key style, a way with actors, and a real flair for unappealing titles. Unfortunately, Richards's career peaked and flat-lined in the same meeting. It began with producers David Brown and Richard Zanuck informing him that they'd like to hire him to direct their hot new property, Jaws. The meeting, and the upward trajectory of Richards's career, ended with Richards saying that he'd love to sign on, but would it be okay if he changed the shark to a whale? A decade later, when he'd had plenty of time to stew over how things had turned out, he found himself sharing a set with Reynolds, who had just begun considering the possibility that his own career might have suffered from excessive loyalty to Hal Needham. Trapped together working on a movie that no one would see, the star and director clashed non-stop, with Richards reportedly indulging in acts of petty tyranny against the crew and bit players to help himself feel that he was in charge of something. In the end, Reynolds made his displeasure felt by punching Richards, knocking the director unconscious. Some reports have it that when he came to, he discovered that the crew had been so moved by the sight of their fallen general that they'd drawn a chalk outline around his body and then gone to lunch. News of the on-set beatdown made it into the papers, but when Heat was somehow completed and released totheaters, nobody cared anyway. Reynolds finally realized that he was done as a major lead and slowly crawled his way back to employability as a TV star and character actor in movies. Richards hung up his spurs and hasn't directed since.
Terry Gilliam vs. Sid Sheinberg, Brazil
Terry Gilliam’s career as a director is something of a paradox — his films are so visually intricate and ambitious that they tend to be very expensive, yet his puckish personality practically demands that he bite the hand that feeds him. Never was this more the case than with Gilliam’s most acclaimed film, Brazil. Having sunk millions of dollars into the film, Universal head Sid Sheinberg was dissatisfied with the strange direction Gilliam’s costly project was taking. Because of this, he attempted to force Gilliam to prepare a shorter, more audience-friendly cut of the film, with more time devoted to the love story involving Kim Greist — whose performance Gilliam didn’t much like — and a happy ending (this cut, as well as a more detailed analysis of the feud, can be found on Criterion’s indispensable DVD set). When Gilliam balked at the proposed changes, Sheinberg effectively buried the movie. It’s at this point that Gilliam began one of the most legendary pieces of sustained public theatre ever mounted by a director in Hollywood history. First, he appeared with Brazil costar Robert DeNiro on Good Morning, America, holding up an 8x10 photo of Sheinberg while speaking of his difficulties with him. Then he took out a full page ad in Variety that simply read, “Dear Sid Sheinberg, when are you going to release my film? Signed, Terry Gilliam.” But what eventually swung the battle Gilliam’s way was a film lecture he gave at USC. Gilliam brought his cut of Brazil to be used as an audiovisual aid, but when word got out that he was showing the film, the studio intervened. After much back-and-forth, Universal decided to allow him to screen a clip from the film, but Gilliam screened the entire thing anyway. He then repeated the screenings over several weeks, in which time the members of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association were able to see it and later choose it as Best Picture at their annual awards. In light of the acclaim, Universal relented, releasing Brazil to the public, and the film soon became a bona fide cult classic. Strangely enough, Gilliam ended up making two more films for Universal — 12 Monkeys and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, neither of which produced nearly as big (or as entertaining) an imbroglio.
— Paul Clark, Bilge Ebiri, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce, Bryan Whitefield
Part 2 will appear later today.
PREVIOUS WEEKLY TOP TENS:
- May 10, 2007: The Worst Mothers in Movie History
- May 3, 2007: The Greatest Remakes
- April 26, 2007: Nude Scenes We Could Really Have Done Without
- April 19, 2007: The Most Historically Inaccurate Films Ever Made
- April 11, 2007: Cinema's Greatest No-Sex Sex Scenes
- April 4, 2007: Chicks with Guns
- March 29, 2007: The Most Important Nude Scenes of All Time
- March 22, 2007: The Worst Accents in Movie History
- March 14, 2007: The Kinkiest Films Ever Made
- March 7, 2007: The Most Dangerous Films of All Time
- February 27, 2007: The Best Nude Scenes of 2006
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The Movie Moment: THE ELEPHANT MAN (dir. David Lynch, 1980)
5/17/2007 2:30:00 PM
One of the most famous figures in the history of Victorian England was Joseph Merrick, later referred to as John, but best known as the Elephant Man. Merrick, born in 1862, was incurably deformed, with a severely enlarged and misshapen head, an alarmingly curved spine, a near-useless right arm, and skin that was covered almost entirely by large tumors. Merrick lived a good deal of his short life in freak shows, being exhibited to gawking thrill-seekers, before spending most of his final years in hospitals under medical and scientific observation before dying at the age of 27.
David Lynch’s The Elephant Man initially introduces us to Merrick (played by John Hurt) through the character of Dr. Frederick Treves (Anthony Hopkins), an eminent physician and lecturer at the London Hospital during the 1880s. We first meet Treves at one of London’s many carnivals, sneaking into the freaks tent, no doubt to get a look at the legendarily monstrous Elephant Man. When the police close down the exhibit due to punter reactions, Treves has a young boy hunt down Merrick, and when they are found he pays Merrick’s keeper Bytes (Freddie Jones) for “a private showing.” When he sees the extent of Merrick’s deformity, he sheds a tear. He then offers Bytes more money for the chance to show him at a lecture. When Merrick has a spotlight shone on him and paraded in front of staring scientists, it’s tempting to think that, for Merrick, the difference between the carnival and the scientific lecture is mainly academic.
After Merrick is beaten by Bytes upon his return to the freak show, Treves comes and returns him to the London Hospital, where he tries to sneak the hooded and robed Merrick into the Isolation Ward in the attic. However, this catches the attention of the hospital’s House Governor, F.C. Carr Gomm, played by John Gielgud. After Treves comes down from the Isolation Ward, he runs to the kitchen and fetches a bowl of oatmeal for Merrick, but as he is on his way back upstairs, he is stopped by Carr Gomm, who inquires after the bowl in his hand.
“Good heavens, you haven’t acquired a taste for this sort of stuff, have you?”
Treves responds, “Yes, sir, it’s quite nutritious.”
“Possibly, but not quite the diet of a grown man.”
This exchange sticks out to me for two reasons. The first is because of how succinctly it illuminates the snobbery still in force during the supposedly enlightened Victorian era. A century and a half before, Dr. Samuel Johnson infamously defined oatmeal as “a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.” Carr Gomm, despite being a member of the medical establishment, still holds to the traditional view of oats as a food for children, and certainly not for gentlemen like himself or Treves, even with its nutritional benefits.
In addition, the use of food in this scene is something that would soon be a Lynch trademark. Rarely is the old adage “you are what you eat” more applicable in movies than in the world of David Lynch. Consider the dichotomy of beers in Blue Velvet (Heineken for the good characters, Pabst Blue Ribbon for Frank and his gang), the ice chest full of meats (frankfurters, braunschweiger) Alvin carts along with him in The Straight Story, or Agent Dale Cooper’s constant wolfing-down of high calorie foods like pie on Twin Peaks. And so key is coffee to Lynch’s worldview, especially in his more recent work, that he recently started his own line of coffee, available by mail-order.
Carr Gomm, recognizing that Treves is up to something, takes the bowl of oatmeal from him and gives it to a nearby nurse, directing her to “take this to the patient in the isolation ward, will you?”
Noticing the look of trepidation on the nurse’s face, Treves comforts her by saying, “Don’t be frightened. He won’t hurt you.”
It’s at this point that the scene goes in two separate directions. As the nurse walks away with the oatmeal, Carr Gomm takes Treves into his office. “A hospital’s no place for secrecy, Treves,” insists Carr Gomm. “Doctors spiriting hooded figures about in corridors is apt to cause comment.” He then questions Treves about the lapse in proper procedure and the nature of the new patient.
Treves, more than a little nervous (and who wouldn’t be in the presence of the formidable Gielgud?), becomes evasive, talking about Merrick’s deformity and the possibly shocking effect he might have on other patients, but never coming out and saying who it is. He finally admits that the new patient is “an incurable,” and Carr Gomm latches onto this point. He insists on the hospital’s policy on incurable cases, but Treves offers that “this case is quite exceptional.”
Then the scene cuts to the nurse, still climbing the stairs. She becomes even more anxious with each step she takes. The scene then cuts back to Carr Gomm.
“Yes, I quite appreciate your problem, Mr. Treves. But why not contact the British Home, or the Royal Hospital for Incurables? Perhaps they might have a place for him.”
Treves answers, “Yes sir, I’ll look into it. Would you like to meet him?”
Finally, the scene returns to the nurse slowly entering the room and seeing Merrick. She screams, drops the bowl on the floor, and runs out of the room.
Treves then excuses himself from Carr Gomm’s office and bolts up the stairs into Merrick’s room. The camera holds on Gielgud’s face as he realizes, simply, “It’s the Elephant Man.”
At its core, this scene is a marvelous piece of suspense filmmaking in the classical sense. Hitchcock once defined his philosophy of suspense by saying, “There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.” So it is here. Because we not only know what Merrick looks like but also how others react to his appearance, the climax of the scene is pre-ordained as soon as Carr Gomm places the oatmeal in the nurse’s hand. Treves knows this too, which explains his nervousness around Carr Gomm. The nurse has a pretty good idea of it too, having seen Treves sneaking the hooded figure up the stairs and fearing the worst. Only Carr Gomm is oblivious to the inevitable outcome, which makes his reaction to the scream the perfect punctuation to the scene.
But what makes the movie as a whole such an achievement is that it is never content to make Merrick the monstrosity he appears to be. Tellingly, Merrick reacts to the nurse’s scream by screaming himself, as frightened in his way as she is in hers. After this scene takes place, the focus of the film begins to shift away from Treves to Merrick himself, as we stop seeing Merrick through the eyes of those around him and start to observe him and his way of life. That the film is able to pull this off is due in no small part to John Hurt’s performance, which doesn’t shy away from Merrick’s physical condition — the suitably grotesque makeup allegedly took 12 hours to apply — but somehow projects humanity through the layers of latex. The most tragic thing about Merrick’s life wasn’t simply his appearance, but the way it kept most people from seeing him as a human being. Or, as Merrick himself infamously proclaims late in the film, “I am not an animal! I am a human being!”
— Paul Clark
Previous Movie Moment columns:
- May 10, 2007 -- Gilles’ Wife
- May 3, 2007 -- Babe: Pig in the City
- April 26, 2007 -- La Belle Noiseuse
- April 20, 2007 -- Phantom of the Paradise
- April 12, 2007 – Lolita
- April 5, 2007 -- Bus 174
- March 29, 2007 -- Belle de Jour
- March 22, 2007 –- Nashville
- March 15, 2007 -- A Fish Called Wanda
- March 8, 2007 -- 8 Women
- February 22, 2007 -- The Girl Can’t Help It
- March 1, 2007 -- Tree of Wooden Clogs
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This Week’s DVD Releases: Pan's Labyrinth and Lots of TV
5/17/2007 1:45:00 PM
The runaway release of the week is no doubt Pan's Labyrinth in a two-disc special edition from Warner. But in addition, Criterion is offering both the extras-packed Vengeance Is Mine, Shohei Imamura's film from 1979, and Mizoguchi's 1954 Sanshô the Bailiff . Also in the spirit of animation comes Luc Besson's Arthur and the Invisibles, yet another Weinstein company misfire, and from Warner, Tex Avery's Droopy: The Complete Theatrical Collection.
In the independent realm, there is the quasi-documentary Fired! from Sony, featuring a sizable chunk of outtakes, as well as the quasi-Election high school tale Casi Casi from Warner/HBO, with a director commentary track. Also available is the interesting episodic narrative experiment The Dead Girl, from First Look Home Entertainment, by actress turned director Karen Moncrieff.
Classic releases include the tedious Becket from MPI. Unseen by this reviewer, The Josephine Baker Collection from Kino presumably contains La Revue Des Revues (1927), Princess Tam Tam (1935), Siren of the Tropics (1927), and Zou Zou (1934).
Horror is well represented with Masters of Horror — Rob Schmidt: Right to Die, from Anchor Bay, with an audio commentary by Schmidt, along the with show's script, among other extras. Anchor Bay also offers The Thirst, with a yak track by director Mark A. Altman and composer Joe Kraemer, plus deleted scenes and more. Creepshow 3 from Warner, has a making of, and Curse of the Zodiac from Lions Gate, by the prolific Ulli Lommel, has a track by Lommel, producer Nola Roeper, and editor Christian Behn, along with deleted scenes.
TV shows lead off with M.A.S.H. — Goodbye, Farewell, Amen, from Fox, a three disc celebration of the show's climax with makings of, outtakes, bloopers, and an unproduced script. In addition, there is The Rockford Files: Season Four from Universal, Coach: The Second Season from Universal, ER: The Complete Seventh Season from Warner, Wings: The Fourth Season from Paramount, Wanted Dead Or Alive: Season 1, from Navarre, Home Improvement: The Complete Sixth Season from BV, and Frasier: The Ninth Season from Paramount.
Finally, the big Hollywood releases include the western Seraphim Falls from Sony, and also Stomp the Yard with an audio commentary by director Sylvain White, deleted scenes, and numerous featurettes.
— DK Holm
Permalink : http://www.nerve.com/nerveblog/screengrabblog.aspx?id=107e11501#11501 |
Video of the Day: Jackie Wants a Piece of the X-Men
5/17/2007 1:00:00 PM
Via Comics2Film, an amusing promo piece for the MTV Movie Awards, featuring Jackie Chan begging Brett Ratner for a role in the next X-Men movie. I know we’re supposed to laugh at the lameness of Jackie’s franchise-expansion ideas, but frankly, they aren’t any worse than dozens of flicks that get greenlighted every day. And what’s he so enthusiastic about, anyway? Didn’t he see the reviews of X-Men 3?
— Leonard Pierce
Permalink : http://www.nerve.com/nerveblog/screengrabblog.aspx?id=107e11498#11498 |
Red, White, and Blue States: The Politics of Georgia Rule
5/17/2007 12:15:00 PM
Georgia Rule is a Red State versus Blue State movie. In other words, it is made by Blue Staters to amuse Red Staters. In further words, it is made by the oblivious to entertain the ignorant. Garry Marshall's film trades in good ole American bedrock wisdom, such dependable precepts as that all a spoiled Los Angeles girl needs is a summer in rugged, conservative Bumfuck, Idaho (known here as Hull), and that a peoples' simple faith will get them through the trials of life; that everyone is savable ("and that's a rule").
Apparently a bunch of executives at Universal decided that Napoleon Dynamite being such an eccentric but popular film meant that Hollywood had to step in and show the young upstarts how this whole movie making enterprise is really done. Thus they proceeded to make a movie that is as unobserved and deeply unfelt as most other condescending hix flix that the sticks nix. The western country states (here continuously confused with The South) are, it turns out, full of quirky all-American types, rather than toothless sodomizing bible-thumpers. And hey, they aren't as dumb as they look! They play musical instruments and can play along with Jeopardy.
At least Georgia Rule is explicit about its focus on a Mormonism-ridden terrain, though Marshall and writer Mark Andrus (Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Life as a House, As Good as It Gets, Late for Dinner), ultimately don't "believe" in it. Yet the film is hesitant to state that Georgia (Jane Fonda), the middle class matriarch who is baby sitting her wild granddaughter Rachel (Lindsay Lohan) for a pre-college summer, is herself a Mormon, despite her strictures against booze and taking the Lord's name in vain. "Georgia rule," her continuous refrain, becomes as irritating as "So it goes." The script allows as how that Georgia's "hardness" is a defense mechanism against vulnerability rather than a religion-inspired cruelty and dispassion. Rachel is a real alien in this country: she reads books and has an easy familiarity with sex. Meanwhile, the woman in the middle, Lily (Felicity Huffman) is an alcoholic rebel in her own right who can't handle her misbehaving daughter. Rachel, it turns out, is just as good at issuing rules and dicta, as in her dressing down of Simon (Dermot Mulroney), the local vet who also does a little human patching up on the side, remarks which blow back on her as the fuel for the plot. Rachel's behavior, actually, is a lot like that of women who were molested as kids (seductiveness, recklessness, control issues). At least the Hullites are not child molesters and / or pathological liars, and Rachel is one or the other or both.
Looking like a slightly more expensive TV movie, the only stylistic arrow in Marshall's quiver is having the camera track gently away to show a character's self-imposed isolation. This being a Gary Marshall film, there is the inevitable presence of Hector Elizondo, who serves as some kind of good luck charm.
The movie is a mess that doesn't play fair with the viewer. It's not really a comedy, despite its ad campaign. Surprisingly, Lohan, Huffman, Fonda, as well as Mulroney and Cary Elwes as the wicked stepfather are all quite good, and elevating this contrived Lifetime channel tripe to something akin to moving. The film fails to acknowledge one thing, however. In the end, though the west coast may be a cesspool of hedonism, child molestation, and wretched excess, its roots lie in the country just to the east.
— DK Holm
Permalink : http://www.nerve.com/nerveblog/screengrabblog.aspx?id=107e11497#11497 |
“All It Leaves Behind is Bitterness”
5/17/2007 11:30:00 AM
Via IndieWire, we learn of the debut this week in Japan of Shinjo Taku’s For Those We Love. There was every reason to expect the film to trigger massive controversy, if not out and out rioting: after all, it’s based on a book celebrating the famous (or infamous) kamikaze suicide pilots of WWII — a book written by the ultra-nationalist governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, who has generated vituperative debate due to numerous public statements that have been interpreted as racist, sexist, and culturally insensitive. What’s more, the movie’s premiere comes at a time when Japan may vote to revise its constitution in order to allow massive military buildups for the first time since its defeat in 1945.
However, as Reuters reports, the film has generated far more talk of peace than of war. “The military leaders of the time were despicable,” Taku notes, pointedly distancing himself from any nationalist interpretation of the film; audiences seem to be responding the same way, interpreting For Those We Love’s message not as one of the glory of military sacrifice, but as one of the ultimate futility of war. “I don’t really feel proud of them,” a filmgoer who lived through the war is quoted as saying, and all told, the Japanese public seem to have a sanguine attitude towards the public madness that seizes a country at war that is often lacking in contemporary discussions of war movies in this country.
Permalink : http://www.nerve.com/nerveblog/screengrabblog.aspx?id=107e11499#11499 |
Cannes Report: D’Angelo Reviews 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days
5/17/2007 10:45:00 AM
Ironically, my first blind screening turned out to be one of the few (I'm guessing) Competition films this year by a director I'd never heard of before. Reserving even its title for the closing credits, Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days looked to me as if it might be Cristi Puiu's followup to The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, which played here to nearly universal acclaim two years ago. But while Mungiu shares his countryman's wryly disgusted take on bureaucratic insensitivity, this closely observed, painstakingly naturalistic tale of two female college roommates and their attempt to secure one of them a back-alley abortion — the film is set in 1987, at the end of the Ceausescu era — could never be mistaken, as Lazarescu frequently was, for black comedy. Mungiu casually immerses us in a world of universal deprivation, introducing his non-pregnant heroine, Otilia (Anamaria Marinca, an instant front-runner for Best Actress) as she roams her dormitory hall in search of black-market soap and cigarettes; from there, events unfold methodically (and quite mysteriously, if you don't know the title!) in near-real time, culminating in a harrowing hotel-room rendezvous with an unlicensed "physician" who resembles Vera Drake in no way, shape or form. Negotiation and solidarity are the twin subjects of this quietly impressive docudrama, and Mungiu's commitment to verisimilitude is so scrupulous that he deliberately introduces the equivalent of Chekhov's famed gun without the slightest intention of providing a final-act payoff. Lazarescu troubled me because its protagonist seemed a mere victim of institutional indifference. Mungiu's film, by contrast, is all about agency, or, as Sean Connery croaked with his dying breath in The Untouchables, "What.are you.prepared.to do?"
Speaking of which, just what am I prepared to do? Apparently, I can't risk speaking to another living soul for the remainder of the festival. Here's an actual conversation I had tonight with another journalist who shall remain nameless:
ME: So listen, I need to tell you about this crazy thing I'm doing this year. I don't know any of the films in Competition. I'm trying to see all of them completely blind.
MAY HE ROT IN HELL: I don't know any of them either, actually.
ME (stunned): Really?
MAY HE ROT IN HELL: Yeah, I'm not paying much attention. I mean, I know the Coen Brothers have a film, and—
ME: [emits high-pitched alarm screech from the Phil Kaufman Body Snatchers remake]
I mean, I knew somebody was eventually bound to blurt verboten info by accident — no plastic bubble is that impermeable. But it never occurred to me that it might happen as I was actually explaining what I was doing. (Hello? Hello, McFly?) What's worse, I didn't even know the Coens had finally made another film — that was set to be the year's biggest and most pleasant surprise. Crud crud crud. From now on, it's all iPod all the time.
— Mike D’Angelo
Permalink : http://www.nerve.com/nerveblog/screengrabblog.aspx?id=107e11500#11500 |
Morning Deal Report: All-Remake Edition
5/17/2007 10:00:00 AM
- The classic British crime drama The Long Good Friday is getting remade. In Miami. By the dude who directed Resident Evil.
- ...Just as soon as he gets done remaking Death Race 2000.
- Taps is getting remade, too...
- ...As is Claude Chabrol’s 1987 film The Cry of the Owl.
- More St. Trinian’s films are on the way. Starring Mischa Barton.
- And, oh yeah, it’s about time for some new Fu Manchu flicks, too.
- Okay, here’s one non-remake: Elijah Wood is going to play Iggy Pop, in a biopic of the rock wildman. Why couldn’t Iggy Pop just play Iggy Pop? C’mon, he was great in Cry Baby.
— Bilge Ebiri
Permalink : http://www.nerve.com/nerveblog/screengrabblog.aspx?id=107e11503#11503 |
Video(s) of the Day 2: How Luc Besson Sees the World
5/16/2007 4:45:00 PM
With a stout resume that includes Writer/Director credits on such films as La Femme Nikita, The Big Blue and The Fifth Element Luc Besson can always be counted on for an exciting and original visual style that changes from film to film. Maybe due to claims that he was pandering to American audiences (most of his recent films have been in English, including The Messenger, his much-maligned version of the Joan of Arc story), maybe wanting to write a love letter to The City of Light, Besson this week releases his latest feature Angel-A. While the film features a slick black and white palette and two very watchable actors, the script is chock full of syrupy sentimental cliché. This makes it a prime candidate for my Top 10 Films To Watch On Mute, but it probably won’t find its way to many year end Best ofs. However Besson’s visual sense is among the best in the world and here are just two examples to prove it.
First, his penchant for casting models as well as mixing classic themes with modern settings are both on display in this sublime commercial for French cellphone company Orange.
And who could forget what many feel is his best film, The Professional? Blended perfectly here by a YouTuber regrettably named Skumball with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' “Y Control.” Enjoy!
— Bryan Whitefield
Permalink : http://www.nerve.com/nerveblog/screengrabblog.aspx?id=107e11472#11472 |
