Monthly Archives: February 2019

Film Review: Extremities (dir by Robert M. Young)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1986 film, Extremities, begins with a woman named Marjorie (Farrah Fawcett) getting into her car and getting attacked by a masked rapist named Joe (James Russo).  Though Marjorie manages to escape, Joe grabs her purse.  Later, we watch as Marjorie gets no help from the police while Joe goes home to his loving family.

One week later, Marjorie is alone at her house when Joe lets himself inside.  At first, Joe pretends that he just needs to use the phone.  When Marjorie lies that her husband is taking a nap upstairs, Joe starts to call for him to come downstairs.  As Joe reveals, he’s been stalking Marjorie for days.  He knows that she’s not married and he knows that her roommates will not be home for a few hours.

However, what Joe doesn’t know is that Marjorie has a can of bug spray and, as soon as Joe lets his guard down, she sprays it in his eyes and his mouth.  When the stunned and temporarily blinded Joe stumbles back, Marjorie pushes him into the fireplace and ties him up.  Realizing that he may have ingested toxic chemicals, Joe begs to be released but Marjorie has other plans….

And I was all for it!  I was really looking forward to watching Marjorie torment her attacker.  Unfortunately, Marjorie’s two roommate show up before Marjorie can really get started.  Terry (Diana Scarwid) is shocked when Marjorie explains that she’s planning on burying Joe alive but, as a rape survivor, Terry also knows that, even after all of this, the police will still not be of any help.  Meanwhile, Pat (Alfre Woodard) is a social worker, which means that she has to be the tedious voice of moderation.  She’s the one who says that they can’t kill Joe and that Joe might not even actually be the man who attacked Marjorie….

And that, right there, is one of the main problems with Extremities.  We spend a lot of time listening to Pat argue that it’s not right to torture anyone and that Marjorie might be mistaken and maybe Joe really was just some innocent guy who needed to use the phone.  However, we know that Marjorie’s right, Pat’s wrong, and Joe’s the attack.  As a result, it’s impossible not to get annoyed when Pat keeps going on and on.  We know exactly who Joe is and what we want is to see Marjorie get both justice and her revenge.  We want to see Joe suffer.  What we don’t want to do is spend 30 minutes listening to two thinly drawn characters debate the ethics of what Marjorie’s doing.  Perhaps if the film had begun with Pat and Terry coming home and discovering Joe already trapped in the fireplace, Pat’s concerns would have carried more weight.  There would have been a hint of ambiguity and we’d have to decide if we believed the word of the obviously traumatized Marjorie or the obviously desperate Joe.   But we already know that Marjorie’s right about who Joe is so who cares what Pat thinks?

If you didn’t already know that Extremities was based on a stage play, you’d be able to guess it after watching the movie.  With the exception of the film’s opening scenes, Extremities plays out in one location and, as a result, the film feels very stage-bound.  While the late Farrash Fawcett gives a brave and emotionally raw performance as Marjorie, Alfre Woodard, Diana Scarwid, and James Russo all give overly mannered performances that add to the film’s staginess.

In both its visual aesthetic and its cultural outlook, Extremities is very much a film of its time.  With the exception of Fawcett’s harrowing performance, Extremities feels like a relic of the past.  If the film were made today, there’d be no question that Joe would end up dying in that fireplace.  The only suspense would  be rather Pat or Terry would be the one to dig the grave.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trhDAL-3V78

Film Review: I Was A Teenage Serial Killer (dir by Sarah Jacobson)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

A 27-minute underground film from 1992, I Was A Teenage Serial Killer tells the story of Mary (Kristin Calabrese).  Mary has killed 19 men, one for each year of her life.  To some, that may sound extreme but, as Mary explains it, she had a good reason for every one of them.  When a character identified as Asshole Drug Dealer (Jeff Stein) suggests that maybe Mary shares some of the blame, Mary yells at him, “It’s not my fault!”

Of course, since it’s a short film, we only get to see a handful of those 19 victims.  One guy tries to force himself on her and gets stabbed to death.  Her bother complains about Mary’s nosering and gets shot.  Another man, who we’ve just seen saying goodbye to his girlfriend, catcalls Mary and then demands that he thank her for telling her that she has a “nice ass,” which results in Mary pushing him in front of a truck.  Briefly, Mary lives with another serial killer.  He swears to her that he only kills straight men but he soon turns out to be a liar.  When he brings home a woman for them to kill, Mary demands to know why all men lie and then beats him to death….

Director Sarah Jacobson reportedly made this movie with equipment and volunteers from the San Francisco Art Institute.  The film’s final budget was $1,600 though the end result is intentionally designed to look cheaper.  The black-and-white cinematography is harsh and sometimes so overexposed that it’s hard to look at.  The cast was made up of amateurs, the majority of whom stiffly deliver their lines.  The gore effects are (deliberately, I assume) over-the-top and cartoonish.  The film’s rough aesthetic is mirrored in the character of Mary.  Both of them are deliberately challenging.  Neither one of them cares what you think.

It’s a satirical film, one that is designed to provoke.  After decades of films that sought to entertain audiences with scenes and images of women being stalked, attacked, and murdered by men, I Was A Teenage Serial Killer dares to flip the script and treats men the way that movies have traditionally treated women.  Whatever legitimate complaints can be made against the acting and the cheapness of the production, there’s something deeply cathartic about Mary’s revenge.  When Mary tosses that catcalling stranger out into the middle of incoming traffic, she’s simply doing what thousands of women fantasize about doing every day.  When Mary is shocked to learn that her boyfriend lied to her about only killing heterosexual men, she’s feeling the shock of every woman who has ever been betrayed by someone who claimed to love her.

This is an unapologetically angry film and perhaps not for everyone.  For students of underground and experiment cinema, however, it’s a must see.  Unfortunately, it’s not particularly easy to see, though it does occasionally air on TCM Underground.  Sadly, Sarah Jacobson went on to only complete two more films — a feature and a short documentary — before passing away, at the age of 32, in 2004.

Film Review: The Basketball Diaries (dir by Scott Kalvert)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

When exactly did Leonardo DiCaprio become a good actor?

That may seem like a strange question because, today, Leonardo DiCaprio is often and rightfully described as being one of the greatest actors around.  He regularly works with the best directors in Hollywood, including Martin Scorsese.  His performances in The Aviator, The Wolf of Wall Street, and The Revenant should be viewed by any aspiring actor.

And yet, it’s easy to forget that Leonardo DiCaprio has been around forever.  Long before he was Martin Scorsese’s go-to actor, he was appearing in movies like Critters 3.  He started his career when he was 14 years old and spent a few years appearing in commercials and sitcoms before making his film debut in 1991.  (He was 17 when he made his first movie but, as anyone who has seen any of his early movies can attest, he looked much younger.)  When you watch those early DiCaprio films, you’re left with the impression of an actor who had some talent but who definitely needed a strong director to guide him.  Watching those early DiCaprio films, it’s always somewhat amazing to see both how good and how bad DiCaprio could be, often in the same movie.  If a scene called for DiCaprio to be quiet and introspective, he was a wonder to behold.  But whenever a scene called for big dramatic moment or gesture, DiCaprio would often become that shrill kid who made you cringe in your high school drama class.  I think that part of the problem is that the young DiCaprio was often cast as a passionate artist and, when you’re a certain age, you tend to assume that being a passionate artist means that you spend a lot of time yelling.

Take a film like 1995’s The Basketball Diaries, for instance.  In this film, Leonardo DiCaprio plays a real-life poet named Jim Carroll.  The film deals with Carroll’s teenage years, which were basically made up of going to Catholic school, writing poetry, playing basketball, committing petty crimes, and eventually getting hooked on heroin.  It’s pretty dramatic stuff and, with his face that’s somehow angelic and sardonic at the same time, the young DiCaprio certainly looks the part of a teenager who split his time between private school and the streets.  Though the young DiCaprio was way too scrawny to be believable as a star basketball player, he’s convincing in the scenes where he’s writing out his thoughts and his poems.

But then, Jim’s best friend (played by Michael Imperioli) dies of leukemia and a despondent Jim goes from pills and inhalants to heroin and both the film and DiCaprio’s performance quickly goes downhill.  Playing drug addiction (and, even worse, drug withdrawal) tends to bring out the worst instincts in even the best actors and that’s certainly the case with DiCaprio’s performance in The Basketball Diaries.  Suddenly, Leo is shaking and yelling in that shrill way that he used to do and, when he has gets emotional, he overplays the emotions to the extent that you can actually hear the snot being sorted back up his nostrils and you, as the viewer, start to get embarrassed for him.  As soon as Jim starts screaming at his mother (played by Lorraine Bracco), you really wish that the director or the writer or maybe the other actors had stepped in and said, “Leo …. dial it down a little.”  If you need proof that DiCaprio’s a far better actor today than he was in 1995, just compare Leo on drugs in The Basketball Diaries to Leo on drugs in The Wolf of Wall Street.

When The Basketball Diaries does work, it’s usually because of the actors around DiCaprio.  In one of his earliest roles, Mark Wahlberg has such an authentic presence that you kinda wish he and DiCaprio had switched roles.  (Yes, there was a time when Mark Wahlberg was a better actor than Leonardo DiCaprio.)  Bruno Kirby is chilling in a few cringey scenes as Jim’s basketball coach.  Ernie Hudson bring some welcome gravitas to the role of an ex-junkie who tries to help Jim straight out.  And then there’s poor Lorraine Bracco, bringing far more to the role of Jim’s underappreciated mother than was probably present in the script.

The Basketball Diaries is one of those films that seems profound when you’re like 15 and you come across it playing on TBS at like 2 in the morning.  Otherwise, it’s mostly interesting as evidence that, over the past 20 years, Leonardo DiCaprio has certainly grown as an actor.

Film Review: Rescue Dawn (dir by Werner Herzog)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Dieter Dengler (Christian Bale) has been obsessed with flying ever since he was a child in Germany.  Towards the end of World War II, while his native country burned around him, Dieter would stare up at the skies and watch the American planes fly overhead and he knew that was not only what he wanted to do someday but also who he wanted to do it for.  Jump forward two decades, to 1966.  Dengler is now a lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force, an always smiling optimist who is considered to be something of a wild man.  When Dengler is reported as having been shot down over Loas, his fellow pilots are not only convinced that Dengler survived but that he’ll also eventually escape captivity.  Why?  Because they now Dieter Dengler is not the type to give up.

And they’re right.  Dengler not only survives the crash but he also survives in the wild.  After growing up in the rubble of Germany, Dengler is confident that he can survive anything.  Even when he’s finally captured by communist rebels, Dengler remains optimistic that he’ll make it back home.  When he’s told that he can go free if he signs a statement denouncing the United States, he refuses.  Dengler’s not going to turn on the country that allows him to fly.  Dengler soon finds himself being held in a POW camp with four other men, including two other Americans (played by Jeremy Davies and Steve Zahn).  The guards are determined to break Dengler but he’s just as determined to escape.  Hearing that it’s impossible to do so only makes Dengler more determined.

The story of Dieter Dengler and his eventual escape from captivity was originally told, by Dengler himself, in Werner Herzog’s 1997 documentary, Little Dieter Needs To Fly.  That Herzog saw Dengler as a kindred spirit is evident in the fact that, 9 years after the documentary, Herzog again told Dengler’s story in the 2006 film, Rescue Dawn.

On the face of it, a story about a group of Americans escaping from a POW camp might sound like an unlikely topic for a Werner Herzog film but it doesn’t take long for Herzog to put his own distinctive stamp on the project.  As played by Bale, Dengler is another one of Herzog’s obessessive heroes.  Dengler’s obsession is not just with flying but also with being free.  For Dengler, that’s what being an American means and that’s why he would rather be tortured than sign a simple piece of paper denying the existence of that freedom.  Much as how Grizzly Man portrayed Timothy Treadwell as being a man who would rather be eaten by a bear than live a life that’s been dictated by others, Dengler would rather suffer than betray his adopted country.

Rescue Dawn also centers around another common Herzog theme, the pitilessness of nature.  Watching Dengler trying to make his way through the jungle, we’re reminded that nature will always win in the end.  In Herzog’s world, neither nature nor the universe as a whole has any ideology.  Long after every warrior has died, the film tells us, nature will still be there.  The one thing that the POWs and their captors have in common is that they’re all at the mercy of the chaos of nature.  Just as the jungle threatens to swallow up Dengler and the other prisoners, their captors are slowly starving to death due to a drought.  As filmed by Herzog, the jungle is both beautiful and overwhelming.  Even at the film’s triumphant conclusion, it’s hard not to feel that, for all the planning, Dengler’s escape and survival was due to the random chaos of the universe.  How much can we control and how much must we simply leave up to the whim of nature?

Bale, Davies, and Zahn all give excellent performances and Herzog keeps the story moving quickly.  It’s probably one of his most emotionally accessible films and it’s impossible not to shed a tear at that final scene.  That said, I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that there’s a good deal of controversy about the way that Rescue Dawn portrays Gene DeBruin, the POW played by Jeremy Davies.  The film often contrasts Dengler with DeBruin.  If Dengler is always hopeful and determined, DeBruin is portrayed as being unstable and unreliable.  However, by most accounts — including the one given by another one of the prisoners — DeBruin was actually the exact opposite of how he was portrayed in the film.  Instead of being selfish, he was a source of strength for the POWs and he actually refused to take advantage of a previous chance to escape because it would have meant abandoning the rest of the prisoners.  Herzog has said that he wasn’t aware of DeBruin’s heroism when he wrote and directed the film and that he now regrets the way that DeBruin was portrayed.  (DeBruin’s brother has said that Herzog refused to talk to the family while the film was in poduction.)  Rescue Dawn is a well-made and wonderfully acted film and it’s one that always brings tears to my mismatched eyes but, while watching it, it’s impossible not to regret the injustice that was done to Gene DeBruin.

Film Review: Cobra Verde (dir by Werner Herzog)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Klaus Kinski and Werner Herzog were a legendary team.

Klaus Kinski was the infamously intense German actor who was always in demand because of his talent but who was also reportedly impossible to work with.  So legendary was Kinski for his bad behavior that it’s actually been the subject of two documentaries — My Best Fiend and Please Kill, Mr. Kinksi.  

Werner Herzog is the famously obsessive and experimental West German director, the brilliant filmmaker who specializes in features and documentaries about men battling nature.  Inevitably nature always seems to win.

Along with directing the previously mentioned documentary, My Best Fiend, Herzog made five films with Klaus Kinski.  Herzog often described Kinski as being one of his first muses.  Herzog’s obsessiveness found the perfect reflection in Kinski’s intensity.  Together, they made films about four madmen and one vampire.  As much as Herzog sometimes hated him, he also considered Kinski to be a key part of his early success.

Klaus Kinski, for his part, often threatened to murder Herzog.  There’s a famous photo that was taken during the making of 1987’s Cobra Verde.  In the picture, an enraged Kinski appears to be attempting to drive a machete into Herzog’s neck.  In My Best Fiend, Herzog stated that he believed Kinski was just acting for the cameras.  The photographer, on the other hand, states that Kinski was definitely trying to kill his director.

 

(Herzog, it should be pointed out, often threatened to kill Kinski as well.  In My Best Fiend, Herzog tells a story of nearly burning down Kinski’s house, just to be scared off by Kinski’s dog.)

Cobra Verde was the fifth and final film that Herzog made with Kinski.  Reportedly, it was during this film that Herzog decided that he could no longer deal with Kinski’s erratic behavior.  (Interestingly enough, Cobra Verde was made around the same time that Kinski made Crawlspace, the film that inspired Please Kill, Mr. Kinski.)

In Cobra Verde, Kinski is cast as Francisco Manuel da Silva, a 19th century Brazilian rancher who is forced to take a demeaning job with a mining company.  When Silva decides that his abilities are being exploited to make his boss rich, he reacts by murdering his boss and going on the run.  (Interestingly enough, Kinski often complained that Herzog used him to get rich.)  Silva becomes a bandit known as Cobra Verde and eventually finds himself working as a slave overseer on a sugar plantation.  When Silva ends up impregnating all three of his employer’s daughters, he’s sent to West Africa on a mission to re-open the slave trade.  Silva’s employer figures that Silva will either be killed in Africa or he’ll end up sending him so many slaves that the sugar plantation will become the most successful in Brail.

Silva ends up becoming not only a very successful slave trader but also something of a powerbroker in Africa.  He arranges for one king to be overthrown and another one to elevated to the throne.  But, even as Silva finds success, he starts to grow increasingly obsessive and megalomaniacal.  He’s built himself a kingdom in Africa but he knows that, as soon as soon as the slave trade ends, so will his power.

It’s a bit disappointing that this was Herzog and Kinski’s final collaborations because it’s not only one of Herzog’s weaker films but it’s also one of Kinski’s least interesting performances.  I mean, don’t get me wrong.  It’s evident what Herzog was going for, showing how a man went from being exploited to becoming the exploiter.  And, even if it’s not Kinski’s performance, he’s still always watchable.  But, when watching the movie, you get the feeling that, on his way to making an important statement, Herzog got lost and the story got bogged down.  Oddly, Herzog doesn’t seem to be quite sure how to get Silva from one point of his story to another and, as such, the film has an uneven quality.  We never get the feeling that we understand what’s motivating Silva.  In some scenes, he’s a cynical but committed rebel.  In others, he’s a comical libertine.  And then, in others, he’s a fanatical slave trader.  None of the different sides that we see of Silva ever seem to come together to form a whole.  Of course, Herzog and Kinski were apparently at each other’s throats during the making of the film so perhaps that explains why the end result seems so disjointed.

And yet, it’s a Herzog film so, of course, there are isolated moments of brilliance.  An early scene where Silva meets a young man in a room illuminated with candles is dream-like and shows that Kinski could be a subtle actor when he wanted to be.  Another scene, where Silva exhausts himself trying to push a boat to the ocean, takes on an obsessively self-destructive grandeur.  Littered about, there are moments of beauty and unforgettable mania.  It may be a disappointing film but it’s still a Herzog/Kinski film, after all.

Film Review: Crawlspace (dir by David Schmoeller)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Before moving into a new place, always do a little research.

That would seem to be the main lesson that one can take from the 1986 horror film, Crawlspace.  As the film begins, Lori Bancroft (Talia Balsam) thinks that she’s found the perfect little apartment.  It’s clean.  It’s roomy but cozy.  It’s got space for all of her stuff.  It’s perfect for hosting friends.  You can bring a date back to the place without feeling embarrassed.  The apartment even comes with a charmingly eccentric landlord, an older German gentleman named Karl Gunther.  Gunther is played by Klaus Kinksi and….

Wait …. he’s played by who?

Klaus Kinski?  You mean the infamously difficult actor who appeared in not only a countless number of horror films and spaghetti westerns but also Doctor Zhivago?  Would this be the same Klaus Kinski who was briefly Werner Herzog’s muse?  That Klaus Kinski?

Uh-oh.  That’s not good.

It soon turns out that Gunther is not quite the friendly man that he pretends to be.  Gunther’s got some issues.  For instance, he spends a lot of time intentionally burning his hand and then smiling afterwards.  And there’s his habit of playing Russian Roulette.  Throughout the film, we see him sitting at a table and putting one bullet in a gun, just so he can then point it at his head and take his chances.

Gunther also has a thing for ventilation shafts.  He loves to crawl around in them, specifically so he can spy on his tenants.  When we first meet him, he’s obsessed with Sophie (Tane McClure) but he soon turns his attention to Lori.  Often, he’ll release rats into a tenant’s apartment.  When Lori merely laughs at the rat as opposed to screaming in fear, Gunther is impressed.

Of course, Karl Gunther wasn’t always a landlord.  He used to be quite a respectable doctor.  Of course, then all of his patients started dying and Gunther’s career went downhill.  Gunther, of course, claims that he only murdered his patients because they were in pain and suffering.  However, it could be more likely that his actions had something more to do with the fact that Gunther’s father was a Nazi war criminal, a doctor who justified his crimes with the same excuses as Gunther.

If all that’s not enough to convince you that Gunther’s got some issues, you should just take a look in the attic.  That’s where Gunther spends most of his time, writing in his journals.  It’s also where he keeps jars that are full of body parts.  One jar has a tongue in it.  A pair of eyes float in the other.  There’s a finger in another.  The attic is also where Gunther keeps one of his previous tenants in a cage.  Gunther says that he likes to talk to her, despite the fact that he long ago removed her tongue….

Plot-wise, Crawlspace is pretty much your standard low-budget 80s horror film.  There’s not much here that could really be called surprising but director David Schmoeller does find some creative ways to film all of the expected mayhem and the frequent shots of Kinski crawling through the ventilation shafts are genuinely creepy.  Kinski, giving a performance that’s even more unhinged than usual, is the best thing about the film and the main reason to see it.  By making Karl Gunther the self-loathing son of a war criminal, Schmoeller and Kinski bring an interesting subtext to the film.  Gunther is more than just a slasher movie villain.  Instead, he’s the embodiment of Hitler’s hateful legacy.

As I mentioned at the start of this review, Klaus Kinski was a legendary for being difficult.  Years after both the release of Crawlspace and Kinski’s own death, director David Schmoeller released a 9-minute documentary about the experience of making a film with Kinski.  The title of that film: “Please kill, Mr. Kinski.”  Apparently, this was a request that several members of the crew made to Schmoeller over the course of filming.  (Interestingly enough, Werner Herzog would make his own Klaus Kinski documentary — My Best Fiend — in which he mentioned that, during the shooting of Fitzcarraldo in Brazil, a native chief offered to have Kinski killed.)  Please Kill, Mr. Kinski is a fascinating look at not only low-budget exploitation filmmaking but also what it’s like to have to work with a talented monster.  As of this writing, it can be viewed on YouTube.

 

Film Review: The Last Flight of Noah’s Ark (dir by Charles Jarrott)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I recorded the 1980 film, The Last Flight of Noah’s Ark, off of TCM because I looked at the title and the fact that it starred Elliott Gould and I figured that it would be a film about an expedition to recover the actual Noah’s Ark.  I figured that it would feature scenes of Elliott Gould and Christopher Plummer (who I just assumed would be in the movie) climbing Mount Ararat and having comical disagreements about all of the snow.  I also assumed that the movie would end with the real Noah’s Ark sliding down the mountain while Gould and Plummer tried to steer it.

Seriously, it sounded like fun!

Of course, it turned out that I was wrong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwA4JZAcmlE

It turns out that The Last Flight of Noah’s Ark is about an out-of-work pilot named Noah Dugan (Elliott Gould) who has a gambling problem and owes a lot of money to the mob.  Normally, you’d be worried that this means Dungan has a contract out on his life but instead, it just means that a bald guy named Benchley (Dana Elcar) keeps popping up and saying that Dugan’s got a week to come up with the money.

Since this film was made before our current socialist moment, Dugan is forced to get a job.  Unfortunately, the only one that he can get involves flying a missionary (Genevieve Bujold) and a bunch of animals to a South Pacific island.  Dugan agrees but, because the plane is an old World War II bomber, he ends up having to make an emergency landing on a remote and uncharted desert isle.

Of course, it quickly turns out that Dugan, the missionary, and the animals aren’t alone!  First off, it turns out that two orphans (played by Ricky Schroder and Tammy Lauren) stowed away on the airplane.  And then, we discover that there are two Japanese soldiers stranded on the island as well!  They’ve been there since World War II!  Fortunately, one of them is named Cleveland (John Fukioka) and can speak English.

(As for Christopher Plummer, he’s nowhere to be seen because he’s not in the movie.)

Anyway, can you guess what happens?  If you think that Noah and the gang turn the plane into a big boat, you’re on the right track.  If you think that cynical Noah turns out to actually have a soft spot when it comes to children, you’re right.  If you think that Noah and the missionary embark on the most chaste romance in movie history …. oh my God, have you seen this movie before!?

Here’s the thing with The Last Flight of Noah’s Ark — the animals are cute.  I mean, the animals really are adorable.  There’s this one duck who has more screen presence than every human in this movie.  And normally, I’d say that cute animals can save just about any movie but this might be the exception to the rule.

I mean, I get it.  This was a movie for kids and that’s great.  But my God, this is a slow movie.  We start with Dugan getting threatened by the gamblers and then it’s another 25 minutes before Dugan even starts the engine on that plane.  I get that this is a family film but I imagine that even families in 1980 would have been bored to death by it.  Elliott Gould certainly seems to be bored, as he gives a performance that all but screams, “Where’s my paycheck!?”

What would have improved The Last Flight of Noah’s Ark?

Christopher Plummer, dammit.

Film Review: American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince (dir by Martin Scorsese)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film, Taxi Driver, there’s a scene where homicidal Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) has a meeting with an extremely helpful gun dealer.  The dealer’s name is Easy Andy and if you want to buy it, Andy’s got it.  Andy’s the type who not only has every gun imaginable in his attaché case but he’ll also toss in a specially made holster for free.  “Ain’t that a little honey?” Andy asks as Travis aims a gun out a window and imagines what it would be like to shoot a random passerby.

It’s only a 4-minute scene but it’s one of the most memorable moments in a film that’s full of them.  Easy Andy was played by a man named Steven Prince and, for those 4 minutes, Prince easily stole the picture from De Niro.  As soon as Easy Andy shows up on screen and starts taking, you can’t look away from him.  He’s a bit like the chemist that Patrick McDermott played in The French Connection.  He’s sleazy but he’s got an undeniable charm.

Just based on his performance in Taxi Driver, you would think that Steven Prince was one of those 70s character actors who split their time between Scorsese, Altman, and the occasional big studio film.  However, Steven Prince was actually not an actor.  Instead, he was a member of Martin Scorsese’s entourage, a friend who was something of a personal assistant to the director in the 70s.

In 1978, two years after Prince stole 4 minutes of Taxi Driver away from Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese directed a documentary about his friend, American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince.  Essentially a 55-minute conversation between Prince, Scorsese, and actor George Memmoli, American Boy was Scorsese’s homage to Shirley Clarke’s 1967 documentary, Portrait of Jason.  Both documentaries feature a night spent with a New York-based raconteur and both feature plenty of stories about drugs, death, and celebrity.  The main difference is that you watch Portrait of Jason frightened that Jason is on the verge of having a mental breakdown whereas you spend most of American Boy expecting Steven Prince to drop dead at any second.

From the minute that Steven Prince arrives at George Memmoli’s house, he looks like he’s on the verge of collapsing.  He’s painfully thin and his face is skeletal.  His eyes are sunk deep into his head and surrounded by dark circles and his teeth are noticeably brown and rotten.   Prince was only 29 or 30 when American Boy was filmed but one look at his face and you know that he’s lived a lifetime in those three decades.  When he speaks, his voice is a nasal croak.

When Prince first shows up, he and Memmoli get into a wrestling match that seems to go on forever.  Watching the heavy-set Memmoli collapse onto the cadaverous Prince, you find yourself worrying about what’s going to be left of Prince once they’re finished.  (At first, the wrestling seems terrible self-indulgent but actually, it’s classic Scorsese.  His feature films have often dealt with men who, because of their hang-ups, still act like children.  Why should a documentary be any different?)  When the wrestling finally ends and Prince starts to talk about his life, his charisma is evident but you’re still weary.  Prince is the type of story teller who knows how to bring you into his world but, whenever you start to get too close to what’s actually going on inside of him, he pushes you away with a sudden punchline or a sarcastic quip.  It’s appropriate that Prince starts things off by telling a story about getting stoned because he has an addict’s charisma.  He has the charm of a man who has to be charming because, otherwise, he’d probably be dead.

And yet Prince is such a skilled story teller that, despite your better instincts, you do start to let your guard down.  He talks about growing up and how much he loves his family and Scorsese shows us home movies so we can compare the happy child that Steven Prince was to the recovering addict who is now talking to us.  He tells a story about tricking a man into drinking vodka, little realizing that the man was an alcoholic who was trying to stay away from booze.  He tells us about a female friend who OD’d and how he had to use a medical book, a magic marker, and a shot of adrenaline to bring her back to life.  (That story was later recreated in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.)  He talks about the time he spent working for Neil Young and he talks about his own struggle with heroin.

He also talk about the time that he killed a man.  Prince was working at a gas station when he caught a man stealing tires.  Prince ended up shooting the man in self-defense and, for a few brief moments, we see one of the reasons why Scorsese and Memmoli find Prince to be so intriguing.  What they’ve only done in the movies, Steven Prince has done in real life.

Much as with Portrait of Jason, you find yourself wondering how much of American Boy was spontaneous and how much of it was planned out beforehand.   Were Prince and Memmoli really wrestling or were they just following stage directions?  Is Prince really telling us the story of his life because he wants to or because Scorsese keeps asking him questions?  Throughout the film, Scorsese continually reminds us that everyone in the film — including himself — is essentially performing for the cameras.  (Early on, we see and hear Scorsese asking if the camera’s rolling.  At another point, he says that he’ll just edit an awkward moment out of the film.)  And so, we’re left to wonder: are we seeing a true profile of Steven Prince or are we seeing what Scorsese wants us to see of Steven Prince?  Is Steven Prince a real person or is he just another one of Scorsese’s troubled outsiders?

It’s not always an easy film to watch.  Charismatic or not, a little bit of Steven Prince can go a long way.  And yet, it’s still a film that, once you start watching it, you really can’t look away from it.  It’s a bit like Prince himself; imperfect but always intriguing.  And, as unwell as Prince often appears to be in American Boy, he’s still with us.  (In 2009, he even did a follow-up to American Boy, American Prince.)  Steven Prince survives.

Film Review: The Fountainhead (dir by King Vidor)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Gary Cooper look as miserable in any film as he did in the 1949 film, The Fountainhead.

In The Fountainhead, Gary Cooper plays Howard Roark.  Roark is an architect who we are repeatedly told is brilliant.  However, he’s always has to go his own way, even if it means damaging his career.  At the start of the film, we watch a montage of Howard Roark losing one opportunity after another.  He gets kicked out of school.  He gets kicked out of the top design firms.  Howard Roark has his own vision and he’s not going to compromise.  Roark’s a modernist, who creates sleek, powerful buildings that exist in defiance of the drab, collectivist architecture that surrounds them.

Howard Roark’s refusal to even consider compromising his vision threatens the rich and the powerful.  A socialist architecture critic with the unfortunate name of Ellsworth Toohey (Robert Douglas) leads a crusade against Roark.  And yet, even with the world against him, Roark’s obvious talent cannot be denied.  Dominique Francon (Patricia Neal) finds herself enthralled by the sight of him working in a quarry.  Fellow architect Peter Keating (Kent Smith) begs Howard to help him design a building.  Newspaper publisher Gail Wynard (Raymond Massey) goes from criticizing Howard to worshipping him.

Have I mentioned that Howard Roark doesn’t believe in compromise?  If you have any doubts about this, they’ll be erased about halfway through the movie.  That’s when Roark responds to a company altering one of his designs by blowing up a housing project.  Roark is arrested and his subsequent trial soon turns into a debate between two opposite philosophies: individualism vs. collectivism.

So, let’s just start with the obvious.  Gary Cooper is all wrong for the role of Howard Roark.  As envisioned by Ayn Rand (who wrote both the screenplay and the novel upon which it was based), Roark was meant to be the ideal man, a creative individualist who has no doubt about his vision and his abilities.  Cooper, with his down-to-Earth and rather modest screen persona, often seems to be confused as to how to play such a dynamic (some might say arrogant) character.  When Roark is meant to come across as being uncompromising, Cooper comes across as being mildly annoyed.  When Roark explains why his designs must be followed exactly, Cooper seems to be as confused as the people with whom Roark is speaking.  It doesn’t help that the 47 year-old Cooper seemed a bit too old to be playing an “up-and-coming” architect.  In the book, Roark was in his 20s and certainly no older than his early 30s.  Cooper looks like he should be relaxing in a Florida condo.

Who, among those available in 1949, could have been convincing in the role of Howard Roark?  King Vidor wanted Humphrey Bogart for the role but if Cooper seemed to old for the part, one can only imagine what it would have been like with Bogart instead.  Henry Fonda probably could have played the role.  For that matter, William Holden would have been an interesting pick.  Montgomery Clift and John Garfield would have been intriguing, though Garfield’s politics probably wouldn’t have made Ayn Rand happy.  If Warner Bros. had been willing to wait for just a few years, they could have cast a young Marlon Brando or perhaps they could have let Douglas Sirk make the movie with Rock Hudson and Lana Turner.  (Or, if you really wanted to achieve peak camp, they could have let Delmer Daves do it with Troy Donahue and Sandra Dee.)

If you can overlook the miscasting of Gary Cooper, The Fountainhead‘s an entertaining film.  King Vidor directs the film as if it’s a fever dream.  The film’s dialogue may be philosophical but the visuals are all about lust, with Pat Neal hungrily watching as a shirtless Gary Cooper breaks up rocks in the quarry and Vidor filling the film with almost fetishistic shots of phallic Howard Roark designs reaching high into the sky.  If Cooper seems confused, Neal seems to be instinctively understand that there is no place for underplaying in the world of The Fountainhead.  The same also holds true of Robert Douglas, who is a wonderfully hissable villain as the smug Ellsworth Toohey.  Interestingly, the film ends with a suicide whereas the novel ended with a divorce because, under the production code, suicide was apparently preferable to divorce.  I guess that’s 1949, for you.

Because America is currently having a socialist moment, there’s a tendency among critics to be dismissive of Ayn Rand and her worship of the individual above all else.  Rand’s novels are often dismissed as just being psychobabble, despite the fact that, in some ways, they often seem to be borderline prophetic.  (Barack Obama’s infamous “You didn’t build that!” speech from 2012 could have just as easily been uttered by Ellsworth Toohey or one of the many bureaucrats who pop up in Atlas Shrugged.)  Here’s the thing, though — as critical as one can be of Rand’s philosophy, there’s still something undeniably appealing about someone who will not compromise their vision to the whims of the establishment.  It’s goes beyond politics and it gets to heart of human nature.  We like the people who know they’re talented and aren’t afraid to proclaim it.  (Modesty, whether false or sincere, is a huge turn off.)  We like the people who take control of situations.  We like the people who are willing to say, “If you don’t do it my way, I’m leaving.”  In a way, we’re all like Dominique Francon, running our hands over architectural models while trying to resist the temptation to compromise and accept something less than what we desire.  We may not want to admit it but we like the Howard Roarks of the world.

Even when they’re played by Gary Cooper.