What Could Have Been: The Godfather Part III

Posted on January 3, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

If only Tom Hagen had returned….

Recently, when asked about The Godfather Part III‘s somewhat lackluster reputation, director Francis Ford Coppola said that the biggest mistake that Paramount made was refusing to meet Robert Duvall’s salary demands. While Duvall wasn’t demanding to be paid as much as Al Pacino, he still felt that their salaries should be “comparable.” Paramount, who had already gone through a lot of protracted negotiations to get Coppola, Pacino, and Diane Keaton to agree to do the film, disagreed. Originally, Coppola had planned for Duvall’s Tom Hagen to be a major part of Godfather Part III. When Duvall refused to return, the film had to be reimagined.

Coppola’s right. There’s a lot that I do like about The Godfather Part III but it’s undoubtedly a flawed film. (It’s a good gangster film but it never feels like a worthy follow-up to the films that came before it.) And one of the major problems with the film is that Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone doesn’t have anyone with whom he can really confide. Kay (Diane Keaton) holds him at arm’s length for most of the film. Connie (Talia Shire) is too busy scheming and plotting on her own. The rest of the family — Mary (Sofia Coppola), Vincent (Andy Garcia), and Anthony (Franc D’Ambrosio) — are too young to truly understand the sins of the past. If Tom Hagen had been in the film, Michael would have had someone to whom he could relate. He would have had an equal. Hagen’s absence is felt far more than Paramount expected it would be. They should have paid Duvall his five million.

(For his part, Duvall has defended his salary demands by saying that the only reason anyone was making Godfather Part III was for the money so why shouldn’t he get paid? And again, Duvall has a point….)

Salud, you bastards.

Of course, for a long time, it seemed like The Godfather Part III would never be made. After The Godfather Part II swept the 1974 Academy Awards and proved wrong everyone who felt that it would fail, Paramount wanted a sequel. The only problem was that Coppola and Pacino both said they wouldn’t return. And, after Coppola disappeared into the jungle for several years and reportedly went mad directing Apocalypse Now, Paramount wasn’t quite sure that they wanted him to return either.

As unthinkable as it may seem now, it was originally quite probable that The Godfather Part III would have featured neither Pacino nor Coppola. Between 1975 and 1988, several different scripts and treatments were written for a possible Part III. Many of them opened with Michael either dying or already dead and his son, Anthony, taking over the family business. Several of the scripts imagined Sonny’s son, Santino, waging war against Anthony and Tom Hagen (yep, Tom again) being forced to take a side. In the 70s, many of the scripts featured the Mafia working with the CIA to take out Castro and there were more than few that suggested the Corleones were responsible for the Kennedy assassinations. As the 70s gave way to the 80s, the scripts started to deal with the Corleones getting involved in the drug trade and going to war with the South American drug cartels. Think of it as The Godfather vs. Scarface, which would have actually been an intereting concept if they could have gotten Al Pacino to return as both Michael Corleone and Tony Montana. These scripts all reflected the concerns of the time in which they were written but, reportedly, none of them felt like a Godfather movie. The idea that The Godfather was meant to be the story of a family as much as a story about organized crime was frequently missed by those who tried to stop into the shoes of Coppola and Puzo.

Over the years, with Coppola saying that he wouldn’t return under any circumstances, Paramount considered a lot of different directors as a successor. Among those who were considered over the years: Martin Scorsese, Costa-Gavras, James Bridges, Robert Benton, Michael Mann, Philip Kaufman, Alan Pakula, Warren Beatty, Sidney Lumet, Lewis Carlino, and Michael Cimino. (Scorsese seems like the obvious choice out of that list but, personally, I would love to see what Michael Mann would have done with the Corleones.) Sylvester Stallone was also apparently interested in both directing and playing the role of Anthony Corleone. (John Travolta, whom Stallone directed in Staying Alive, was another frequently mentioned Anthony.) It probably came closer to happening than most people are willing to admit.

Still, it wasn’t until 1989 that The Godfather Part III finally went into production and, as Duvall said, it was all for the money. Paramount needed money. Pacino needed money. Coppola, after a string of flops and several financial setbacks, definitely needed the money. Coppola wanted to present the film as being an “epilogue” as opposed to a direct sequel. Paramount was probably correct when they argued that people don’t pay money to watch epilogues. They pay money for sequels.

The eventual script, by Coppola and Mario Puzo, focused on the forbidden relationship between Sonny’s illegitimate son, Vincent, and Michael’s daughter, Mary. As written, Mary was supposed to be 23 years old and savvy about the ways of the Corleone family. Vincent, meanwhile, was a 31 year-old, out-of-control street criminal who, under Michael’s tutelage, became a refined gangster over the course of the film. We all know that Vincent was eventually played by Andy Garcia while 18 year-old Sofia Coppola was cast, at the last minute, as Mary. For all the criticism that Francis Ford Coppola took for casting his inexperienced daughter in a role that she was too young for, just imagine the critical reaction if Coppola had followed Paramount’s wishes and cast Madonna.

Yes, Madonna was Paramount’s suggestion for Mary and Coppola was interested enough to film a screen test with her. Acting opposite of Madonna was Robert De Niro, who was interested in playing Vincent! Though De Niro was in his 40s, he argued that he could still pass for 31 and, having played Vito in Part II, De Niro was intrigued with the idea of playing his own grandson. However, the screen tests did not convince anyone. Both Madonna and De Niro were determined to be too old for the roles. De Niro went on to do Goodfellas and The Awakening instead.

The first choice for Vincent was reportedly Alec Baldwin but, for reasons unknown, Baldwin turned down the role. (Baldwin was also an early possibility for Henry Hill in Goodfellas.) Matt Dillon, Vincent Spano, Kevin Anderson, and Luke Perry all tested for the role. Val Kilmer, Nicolas Cage, Charlie Sheen, and Billy Zane were all considered at one point or another. The studio pushed Coppola to pick Tom Cruise. In the end, Coppola went with Andy Garcia. Garcia received his only Oscar nomination for playing Vincent and his performance is one of the highlights of the film. Still, Nicolas Cage as Vincent is a fascinating idea.

With Madonna out of the running, Coppola offered the role of Mary to Julia Roberts but Roberts was committed to Pretty Woman. A television actress named Rebecca Schaeffer was also highly considered but she was shot and killed by an obsessed fan on the same night that she received the script. Bridget Fonda, Linda Fiorentino, Laura San Giacomo, Annabella Sciorra, and Trini Alvarado were all considered but, in the end, Winona Ryder was selected for the role. Ryder flew out to Rome to do the film and there’s some debate as to what happened next. Ryder has said that she arrived in Italy exhausted after having done two previous films back-to-back. Other reports have said that Ryder had a nervous breakdown in Rome. Either way, her then-boyfriend, Johnny Depp, requested that she leave the film and return to the States and Ryder did just that.

Reportedly, after Ryder left the film, the role was again offered to Julia Roberts and Roberts again turned it down to focus on Pretty Woman. At the time, Sofia Coppola happened to be visiting her father in Rome. Sofia had done a little modeling and had appeared in a few of her father’s films, always in small roles. She had also co-written her father’s segment of New York Stories. Francis announced that Sofia would be playing Mary and, with the studio desperate for The Godfather Part III to be ready in time for a Christmas release in 1990, Paramount had little choice but to go along. The role was rewritten for Sofia. Mary became a far more innocent and naïve character, sometimes to the point of implausibility. Sofia, who is one of my favorite directors, has taken a lot of criticism for her performance over the years. Personally, I think she was pushed into a no-win situation. She was an inexperienced actress, stuck with a hastily rewritten character and all the worst lines. Plus, making out with Andy Garcia while her Dad watched from a few feet away had to be awkward. On the plus side, Sofia’s hair was very pretty in Godfather Part III.

As for the rest of the cast, Joe Spinell was originally meant to return as Willi Cicci but Spinnel died before filming began. Cicci’s character was transformed into Joey Zasa, New York’s best-dressed gangster. Dennis Farina, Mickey Rourke, and John Turturro were all considered for Zasa. The role went to Joe Mantegna, who had a lot of fun with the part. I’ve always felt one of Part III’s biggest mistakes was killing of Joey Zasa too early in the film. None of the film’s other villain quite have Zasa’s style.

Virginia Madsen and Diane Lane wee both considered for the role of Grace Hamilton, the photojournalist who has a memorable one night stand with Vincent. After it was decided that she wouldn’t play Mary, Madonna was also briefly considered. In the end, the role went to another potential Mary, Bridget Fonda.

For Archbishop Gilday, the corrupt Vatican banker, many international stars were considered. Presumably, Gilday’s nationality would have changed depending on who got the role. Vittorio Gassman, Phillipe Noiret, Gian Maria Volonte, Yves Montand, Marcello Mastroianni, and Albert Finney were all possibilities before the role went to Donal Donnelly.

Many of those who were considered for the Archbishop were also considered for the role of Pope John Paul I. Vittorio Gassman, Yves Montand, and Michel Piccoli were all considered. The role went to Raf Vallone, who was also considered for the role of Don Vito in the first Godfather.

Finally, there was Don Altobello. Altobello was the latest former Corleone ally to try to betray Michael. Frank Sinatra, whose offense at being used as the model for Johnny Fontane in Part One was legendary, was reportedly interested in the role. Timothy Carey, who was considered for both Luca Brasi and Hyman Roth in Parts One and Two, was a possibility until he suffered a stroke. In the end, Coppola went with Eli Wallach.

As for Tom Hagen, he was gone. He was written out of the film and described as having died off-screen. However, Coppola brought in a replacement lawyer. B.J. Harrison was played by George Hamilton. Unfortunately, Harrison was never as close to Michael as Hagen had been. It’s a shame because Godfather Part III definitely could have used a bit more George Hamilton.

Godfather Part III was released in December of 1990. It did well at the box office. It received a number of Oscar nominations. As a film, The Godfather Part III is heavily flawed but, when it works, it really does work. It may not live up to the standard set by the first two Godfathers but then again, what does? I recently watched Coppola’s re-edit of Part Three, the Godfather Coda. It actually is an improvement. There aren’t any added scenes but the new version does considerably tighten up the film’s pace. The opera at the end no longer drags on forever. Godfather Part III may not be great but it’s not terrible, either. It’s better than it’s reputation.

Still, it’s hard not to wonder what could have been. If only Tom Hagen had come back….

Film Review: Monster (dir by Patty Jenkins)

Posted on January 3, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Aileen Wurnos was often described as being America’s first female serial killer.

Wurnos was born in 1956, in Rochester, Michigan. From the start, her life was a mess. Her father was both a diagnosed schizophernic and a sex offender who was incarcerated when Aileen was born and who hung himself in his jail cell when Aileen was 13. (Aileen reportedly never met him.) Aileeen’s mother abandoned her children when Aileen was four, leaving Aileen and her younger brother to be raised by their alcoholic grandparents. Aileen later said that she was regularly beaten by both grandparents and sexually abused by her grandfather. Aileen also said that she spent her youth dreaming of being famous and being loved, like Marilyn Monroe.

By the time she was eleven, Aileen was already having sex in return for food, cigarettes, and drugs. She was pregnant at 14, which she later said was the result of being raped by a friend of her grandfather’s. She gave up her son for adoption and dropped out of school when she was 15, the same year that her grandmother died of live failure. Kicked out of the house shortly afterwards, Aileen survived through sex work and lived a semi-nomadic existence. While other people her age were starting high school and looking forward to the future, Aileen was living in the woods and going for days without food.

By 1976, she had hitchhiked her way down to Florida and her life briefly seemed to turn around when she met and married a wealthy 69 year-old man named Lewis Fell. Fell was president of a yacht club and prominent enough that his marriage to Aileen was announced in the society pages. That marriage didn’t last, however. Aileen was arrested and served with a restraining order for reportedly beating Fell in much the same way that she later said her grandfather beat her. They were divorced within weeks and, for the next 13 years, Aileen’s life consisted of one arrest after another. She returned to sex work, hitchhiking on the highways. With her looks fading due to her lifestyle, Aileen resorted to carrying around a picture of her adopted sister’s children, showing it to potential customers and telling them that she needed money so that she could go to Miami and be with them, in an attempt to play on her customer’s sympathy. Wurnos was repeatedly raped and beaten by the men who picked her up. By the time she came to fame, she was suffering from PTSD and, in her own words, hated the world and men especially.

Wurnos shot and killed at least seven men in Florida in 1989 and 1990. At her trial, she claimed that every shooting was self-defense. She said that she had been raped and nearly killed by her first victim, who had previously be arrested for rape. She went on to say that all of her subsequent victims had been planning on raping but sh shot them first. Once she was on death row and waiting to be executed, she changed her story several times and said that only the first of the shootings was in self-defense and that the rest were simple robberies. The men, she explained, picked her up. She took their money and then she shot them because she didn’t want them reporting her to the police. Of course, she then later told documentarian Nick Broomfield that all of the killings actually were self-defense but that she changed her story because she hated Death Row and she was eager to die. There were a lot of stories when it came to Wurnos and determining what was true was often difficult.

That said, while Wurnos was undoubtedly a female serial killer, I doubt that she was our first. It depends on what you consider a serial killer to be, with some FBI profilers claiming that Wurnos was unique in that she eventually grew to enjoy killing and that she set out each night looking for someone to kill. That said, throughout history, there have been stories about women who married and murdered multiple men, the infamous black widows. Between 1884 and 1908, Belle Gunness murdered at least 14 people in Illinois and Minnesota. Working with her boyfriend, Martha Beck murdered an estimated 20 people in the late 40s. If so inclined, one could go all the way back to ancient Rome and read about the poisoner Lucasta, whose victims reportedly included at least one emperor.

So, no, Aileen Wurnos was not the first female serial killer but she was the first one to come to prominence after the term was coined. She was the first well-known female serial killer of the post-Ted Bundy era. And because she also committed her crimes at the dawn of the 24-hour media cycle, she achieved a level of fame that was denied to Gunness, Beck, and even Lucasta. Aileen held press conferences as she waited for her execution date. She made the news by alternatively praising and cursing the people who had arrested her and sent her to Death Row. She yelled at judges and threatened reporters. She was, for lack of a better term, good television. She became an icon to some, a sex worker who turned the tables on the potential killers who picked her up. She was also the subject of two documentaries from Nick Broomfield.

That was how I first found out about her. 2003’s Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer used to air on HBO frequently. The film followed the final days of Wurnos’s life and featured an interview with her in which she went from being surprisingly lucid and articulate to being frighteningly unhinged. While a sympathetic Broomfield tried to get her to discuss the circumstances that led to her committing the murders, Wurnos ranted about how the prison was using “sonic pressure” to control her mind. In 2002, when Wurnos was executed, her last words were to compare herself to the “mother ship” from Independence Day and to promise that she would return. With her wild eyes, rotting teeth, and unpredictable anger, Wurnos was frightening but, at the same time, there were brief moments of clarity where Wurnos seemed to understand the gravity of both what she had done and her current situation.

The same year that Broomfield released his documentary and a year after Wurnos was executed, a film called Monster was released. The feature directorial debut of Petty Jenkins, Monster starred Charlize Theron as Aileen Wurnos. Theron, who also signed on as a co-producer, would win her first Oscar for her performance as Wurnos and, indeed, when the film was first released, the majority of the attention centered on how the glamorous Theron transformed herself into the not-so glamorous Aileen Wurnos. Theron famously gained weight and wore prosthetic teeth in order to resemble Wurnos but, as anyone who has seen Broomfield’s documentaries can tell you, she also captured Wurnos’s odd speech patterns and her jittery physical movements. Theron perfectly recreated Wurnos’s trademark wide smile, which somehow managed to be both vulnerable and menacing at the same time. Theron deserved the praise that she got for her performance and she certainly deserved to win that Oscar. And yet, so much attention was paid to Theron’s performance and her physical transformation, that the overall film itself was a bit overshadowed. Along with being one of the saddest films ever made, Monster is a portrait of life on the fringes and of existence in the shadows of conventional American society.

The film opens with Wurnos siting underneath a highway overpass and staring down at a loaded gun, debating whether or not she should just end it all. Occasionally, she provides narration, discussing how she eventually came to find herself homeless and struggling to survive. Her narration frequently switches from being insightful and darkly comedic to being angry and bitter, often in the same sentence. Deciding not to kill herself, she instead goes to a gay bar when she meets another outsider, Selby Wall (Christina Ricci). Selby awkwardly flirts, telling Aileen that she’s the most beautiful woman in the bar. Aileen replies that she’s “not into women.” (Of course, she also lies and claims that she’s only in the bar because her truck broke down and she’s just waiting for a ride.) Yet, before long, Selby and Aileen are in love.

Selby was a heavily fictionalized version of Aileen’s real girlfriend, who didn’t want to have anything to do with Monster and who requested that her real name not be used in the film. In the film’s reimagining of the story, Selby has been exiled to Florida from Ohio, rejected by her religious father. Selby lives with her homophobic aunt but yearns for escape. That’s what Aileen provides for her and, to an extent, Selby provides the same thing to Aileen. There’s an unexpected sweetness to the early scenes between Aileen and Selby, albeit a sweetness that it continually undercut by the fact that we know we’re watching a movie about a serial killer. We watch as they go roller skating together and as they share their first kiss afterwards. We watch as they run off together and as they get their first place together and yet, at the same time, we also watch as Selby pressures Aileen to continue “hooking” so that Aileen will have enough money to support the two of them. As played by Ricci, Selby is a character about whom many viewers will have mixed feelings. When she first appears, it’s hard not to have sympathy for her. She seems to be a naïve outsider. But, as the film continues, she sometimes reveals herself to be just as manipulative as Aileen. Selby may claim to be shocked when she discovers that Aileen has been killing and robbing the men who pick her up but, just like Aileen, we don’t quite buy it. Selby knew what was going on, even if she wasn’t willing to admit it to herself.

In the film, Aileen’s first murder is presented as having been committed in self-defense. The man is a rapist and a sadist and was clearly planning to kill Aileen once he was done with her. Again, as portrayed in both the film and Wurnos’s version of events, he unquestionably got what he deserved. With one notable exception, Aileen’s subsequent murders are presented a bit more ambiguously. The majority of the men that Aileen meets are threatening, even if she shoots most of them before they get a chance to try anything. One can understand why some felt that the film was a bit too sympathetic to Aileen while, at the same time, also acknowledging that the men who would pick up a hitchhiker and expect sex in return are not exactly going to be the greatest group of guys.

Only Aileen’s final victim is presented as being a sympathetic figure. Played by the great Scott Wilson, he picks up Aileen just to get her out of the rain, refuses her offer of sex, and says that he and his wife would be willing to help her get to wherever she needs to go. He picks Aileen up for her own safety but, when Aileen tries to get out of the car, he sees her gun and Aileen kills him to keep him quiet. It’s a powerful scene, brilliantly acted by both Theron and Wilson and it’s hard to watch. (It’s also debatable whether or not it actually happened, which is the danger when it comes to making a movie about someone like Aileen Wurnos.) It’s this scene that shows how far Wurnos has gone. “You don’t need to do this,” he tells her and Wurnos knows that he’s right but, by this point, she’s beyond going back.

The only other truly and unconditionally kind character in the film is Thomas (Bruce Dern), a former biker who allows Aileen to keep her things in his storage locker and who is perhaps the only character to really care about Aileen as a human being. (Even Selby mostly views Aileen as a way to escape her current life.) Thomas is a Vietnam vet, one who suffers from PTSD and who, as a result, understands Aileen’s anger and mood swings. Dern doesn’t get a lot of screen time but he’s a welcome presence whenever he shows up. In the end, though, Aileen knows that even Thomas’s kindness can’t save her from what’s going to happen.

As I said before, it’s a sad film. It’s always watchable because Theron, Ricci, and Dern all give such good performances but it’s still a film that’ll leave you shaken. It’s a trip to the fringes, the corners of existence where there are no exits beyond death. Those who have criticized the film for taking Wurnos at her word do have a point but, at the same time, Theron is often as frightening as she is sympathetic. The viewer may understand why Wurnos does what she does but they still would not want Wurnos anywhere near them. I imagine that, for every viewer who sympathizes with Wurnos, an equal number will breathe a sigh of relief at the knowledge that Wurnos was subsequently executed by the state of Florida. Myself, I’ve always been against the death penalty, regardless of who is sitting on death row or what their motives may have been. At the same time, I can understand why others support it. It’s a frightening world and the death penalty allows people to feel that there are consequences for committing the worst of crimes.

Monster was a critical and, somewhat surprisingly, a commercial hit. Theron won an Oscar and proved herself to be a serious actress. (One doubts Theron would have ever played Furiosa if she hadn’t first played Aileen Wurnos.) Though Patty Jenkins were struggle to get several other projects going, it wasn’t until 2017 that she would make a second film. That film, of course, would be Wonder Woman, a film that was as joyous as Monster was dark.

What Lisa Marie Watched Last Night #219: Saved By The Bell: Hawaiian Style (dir by Don Barnhart)

Posted on January 2, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Yesterday evening, I watched the 1992 made-for-TV movie, Saved By The Bell: Hawaiian Style!

Why Was I Watching It?

Eh. It was on Netflix. I was thinking about all of the fun that I had when I visited Hawaii. I had just posted my review of Dustin Diamond’s Behind The Bell and I was feeling a little guilty about some of the things I wrote about him. I saw the film was available to watch and I thought, “Why not?”

What Was It About?

The Saved By The Bell gang is spending their summer vacation in Hawaii! Kelly’s grandfather (played by “special guest star” Dean Jones) owns a hotel but …. uh-oh! It looks like the hotel is going to go out of business unless Zack and the gang can fool a bunch of principals (led by their principal, Mr. Belding) to check in.

Along with trying to save the hotel, each member of the Gang gets an adventure of their own!

Zack (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) falls for a single mother (Rena Sofer), who has a rich boyfriend who owns a limo. Zack thinks the guy is shallow and is unimpressed with his wealth. Zack Morris, class warrior? Whatever.

Kelly (Tiffani-Amber Theissen) falls for her grandfather’s lawyer, not knowing that he’s actually working for the rival hotel.

Jessie (Elizabeth Berkley) and Slater (Mario Lopez) try to spend the entire vacation without fighting.

Lisa (Lark Voorhies) makes a bet that Jessie and Slater can’t spend the entire vacation without fighting.

And Screech (Dustin Diamond) is mistaken for a deity by a Polynesian tribe.

Wait, what?

What Did Not Work?

It’s Saved By The Bell …. without a laugh track!

Unfortunately, Saved By The Bell was one of those shows that really needed a laugh track because, without the sound of an audience being ordered to laugh, it becomes next to impossible to ignore just how lame most of the jokes are. Though the cast of Saved By The Bell featured a few talented actors, every single one of them still delivers their Hawaiian Style lines as if they’re waiting for the laughter that never comes. As a result, every “laugh line” is followed by an awkward pause.

As for the show’s plot …. well, let’s put it like this. Traditionally, I start out these posts by discussing what worked before then discussing what didn’t. However, so little works with Saved By The Bell: Hawaiian Style that I felt like it was best to get all of the negative stuff out of the way early. While Saved By The Bell always required a healthy suspension of disbelief, Hawaiian Style abuses the privilege. Saved By The Bell Hawaiian Style asks us to believe the following:

Kelly would be allowed to travel all the way to Hawaii without her parents.
She would be allowed to take along all of her friends, who would also be traveling without parents.
Screech would somehow be invited, despite the fact that no one in the group seems to like him.
Somehow, their high school principal would also turn up in Hawaii at the exact same time.
A single mother would dump her rich boyfriend for a high school junior.
Screech would be mistaken for a Hawaiian God.

Of course, I guess some would say that we should be happy that the Gang was around to save the day but it’s hard not to notice that all of Zack’s schemes are dependent upon some terrible lie. As well, I have to wonder if it was really worth all the trouble to save Kelly’s grandfather’s hotel. I mean, maybe the guy just wasn’t a very good businessman. I would probably be annoyed if I was on vacation in Hawaii with my friends and I was told that I would be spending the entire time working because some guy who was 50 years older than me couldn’t figure out how to balance the books.

This movie apparently aired on primetime television. I wonder how viewers who didn’t know about Saved By The Bell felt when they came across it.

What Worked?

As bad as it was, it was also Saved By The Bell and, as a result, it did have some nostalgic appeal to it. After the movie aired, Saved By The Bell: Hawaiian Style was sold into syndication as four regular episodes of Saved By The Bell and I can still remember seeing them on whatever channel Saved By The Bell was airing on at the time and thinking to myself, “What the Hell?”

The film was shot on location so, needless to say, the scenery was lovely. Mario Lopez and Elizabeth Berkley had a few fun moments as Slater and Jessie tried to go the entire trip without fighting. There were small pleasures to be found. Very small.

“OMG! Just like me!” Moments

When I was seventeen, I spent the summer in Hawaii with my mom and my sisters. It was a lot of fun. Though I don’t swim, I still had a lot of fun laying out on the beach. Hawaii is one of the most incredibly beautiful places that I’ve ever seen. I would sneak out at the hotel at night and then marvel at the scenery during the day. It was one of my favorite summers. Of course, I also didn’t have to spend my vacation helping a bad businessman save his resort. That helped.

Lessons Learned

Apparently, I’ll watch anything.

Insomnia File #52: The Next Karate Kid (dir by Christopher Cain)

Posted on January 2, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or Netflix? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If, over the next few weeks, you find yourself having trouble getting to sleep, you might be tempted to log onto Netflix and watch the fourth season of Cobra Kai. That’s certainly what I’m planning to do over the course of the next few days. However, before you watch Cobra Kai, you should make sure that you’ve seen all of the earlier Karate Kid films because you never know who might show up on the show. I mean, if Thomas Ian Griffith is coming back, anyone could be coming back! And that includes Julie Pierce, the young karate student at the center of 1994’s The Next Karate Kid.

Julie (played by Hillary Swank) is a troubled teenager. She lives in Boston with her grandmother. She attends a high school that is run by a weirdly fascistic self-defense instructor named Colonel Dugan (Michael Ironside), who teaches all of the jocks to be tough, ruthless, and to show no mercy. When Julie’s grandmother leaves to for Los Angeles so that she can relax, Julie’s new caretaker is an old family friend who turns out to be Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita).

At first, Julie wants nothing to do with Miyagi. She’s still angry about the death of her parents in a car crash. All she wants to do is take care of a falcon that lives on the roof of the school. She does like a boy named Eric McGowen (Chris Conrad) but Eric is also friends with the members of Colonel Dugan’s paramilitary gang, the so-called Alpha Elite. She needs someone who can understand her and her anger and, at first, Miyagi doesn’t seem like he’s capable of doing and of that. But then Miyagi discovers that Julie has a natural talent for jumping on top of cars and this leads to….

Well, you know what it leads to. It’s The Next Karate Kid! Ralph Macchio was 33 years old when this film was first released and was a bit too old to still be playing a kid so the film’s producers tried to reboot the franchise by giving Miyagi a new student. The Next Karate Kid pretty much hits all of the story beats from the first film, though it does change things up by not featuring a karate tournament. Instead, it all leads to a post-prom fight between Miyagi and Dugan. This film is your only chance to see Pat Morita face off against Michael Ironside and that’s got to be worth something.

The Next Karate Kid does not have a particularly good reputation and, watching the film, I understood why. There’s very little of the spontaneity or the wit that made the first film memorable. That said, I did appreciate Michael Ironside’s villainous turn. If Hillary Swank doesn’t necessarily give the type of performance that would make you think, “Future two-time Oscar winner!,” she still does a good job of portraying the anger that’s at the heart of the character. If nothing else, The Next Karate Kid deserves some credit for taking Julie’s anger seriously as opposed to just writing it off as being a “teen girl thing.” The Next Karate Kid wasn’t as bad as I expected but it was still hard not shake the feeling that it was largely unnecessary.

That’s said, I still look forward to Julie’s eventual visit to Cobra Kai.

Previous Insomnia Files:

Norwood (1970, directed by Jack Haley, Jr.)

Posted on January 2, 2022 by Jedadiah Leland

Norwood Pratt (played by country singer Glenn Campbell) is a just a good old boy who has just returned home from serving in the Marines over in Vietnam. After saying goodbye to his Marine buddy, Joe William Reese (played by quarterback Joe Namath), Norwood heads to his hometown of Ralph, Texas. Norwood discovers this his sister (Leigh French) has married an idiot named Bill (Dom DeLuise!)

Norwood gets a job working at the local garage but he’s got his guitar and he’s got his dreams. All he wants to do is play his music on the Louisiana Hayride radio program. But with no money and no connections, how is he going to make it there? When a shady businessman (Pat Hingles) offers to pay him fifty bucks to drive a car and prostitute (Carol Lynley) to New York City, Norwood agrees. When Norwood discovers the car is stolen, he abandons both the vehicle and the girl but he still heads up to New York City.

Norwood has plenty of adventures and he meets plenty of people, like a hippie (Tisha Stirling) who invites him to open mike night at a coffee house in the Village. Later, she invites him to join her in a bathtub by asking him if his guitar plays underwater. “No, ma’m,” Norwood says, “but I do.” He also meets a pregnant teenager (Kim Darby, Campbell’s co-star from True Grit) and a little person (Billy Curtis) who is traveling with a super intelligent chicken.

There have been a lot of very good films made about the struggle of military veterans to transition back to civilian life after their tour of duty comes to an end. Unfortunately, Norwood is not one of those films. Both Norwood and Joe have just returned from Vietnam but neither one of them seems to carry any lingering effects from their time overseas. Neither of them shares any war stories or any thoughts on war in general. (Someone does point out that Norwood has a scar. Norwood says it’s a war wound that he got when he accidentally fell off a water truck.) There’s no hint that the war itself was not going well for the United States in 1970 or that it wasn’t a popular war and that returning veterans often felt as if they had been rejected by the same country that asked (or forced) them to serve. Even when Norwood meets the hippies in the Village, there’s no mention of protests. Instead, Norwood presents 1970 as a time with no real conflicts, which is the perfect era for someone as forgettable as Norwood Pratt to become a star.

Norwood has the same basic and episodic structure as an Elvis movie, except that Elvis could actually act when he wanted to. No one can deny Glenn Campbell’s talent as a singer but as an actor, he had very little screen presence. In True Grit and this movie, the best that he could come up with was an amiable dullness. In True Grit, it didn’t matter because John Wayne was in the movie. But in Norwood, Campbell had to carry the story and his acting limitations were much more obvious. Campbell even managed to get outacted by Joe Namath, who, as far as pro football player-turned-actors were concerned, was no Alex Karras. Wisely, Campbell didn’t further pursue a career as an actor and instead concentrated on singing. When Campbell died in 2017, he was praised for both his musical legacy and his honesty and courage while facing Alzheimer’s. He may not have made it as an actor but he still touched a lot of lives.

I Watched Epiphany (2019, dir. by Koula Sossiadis Kazista and Katina Sossiadis)

Posted on January 2, 2022 by Dazzling Erin

Luka (Caitlin Carmichael) is a teenage girl who lives in Florida with her Uncle Peter (George Georgiou) and her father, Theo (Alex Dimitriades). Theo has only recently reentered Luka’s life and Luka was raised by Peter and his wife, who has recently died of breast cancer. Peter and Theo both make a living diving for sea sponges but business is slow, Theo is drinking too much and still having nightmares about the things that he saw when he was growing up, and Peter is hooked on painkillers. Both Peter and Theo came to America from Cyprus but neither tells Luka much about her family’s past or why there is still so much bad blood between the two brothers.

After Luka is caught stealing for a church collection plate, she’s sentenced to do community service. Working at a retirement community, she meets an old Greek man (Burt Young) who also doesn’t like to talk about his past. Even though he’s grumpy and everyone else is scared of him, Luka bonds with him and discovers that they have something in common. Meanwhile, Theo tries to come to terms with the past with the help of his new girlfriend, Cari (Scottie Thompson).

The plot of Epiphany meanders from one incident to another and, at first, I wondered if it was all going to lead anywhere. But eventually it does, especially as Luka learns more about her Cypriot heritage and the tragedy that neither her father nor her uncle can recover from. Some of it, like the identity of the old man, was a little predictable but, overall, I enjoyed Epiphany. Caitlyn Carmichael is great as Luka and it was impossible for me not to relate to her and her coming-of-age story. It’s a sweet movie with a good message about redemption and forgiveness. I liked it.

International Film Review: Purple Noon (dir by Rene Clement)

Posted on January 2, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Early on in the 1960 French film, Purple Noon, there’s a scene in which a young American con artist named Tom Ripley (Alain Delon) looks at his reflection in a mirror, leans forward, and kisses it.

What are we to make of this scene? The easiest assumption would be to say that Ripley is a narcissist and certainly, there is some truth to that. Delon was 25 when he appeared in Purple Noon and the famously handsome actor was probably never better-looking than he was at that time. As well, Delon was an actor who brought, at the very least, a hint of narcissism to every role that he played. That was a part of his appeal. He looked like an angel but he moved like the devil and, when the camera focused on his face, it was easy to see that there were less than pure thoughts brewing underneath the beautiful surface.

However, in Purple Noon, there’s more to that mirror kiss than just Tom Ripley (or, for that matter, Alain Delon) admiring his own reflection. Instead, Tom has dressed up in the clothes of Philippe Greenleaf (Maurice Ronet) and, when he speaks to his reflection, he speaks in an imitation of Philippe’s voice. He addresses his words not to his reflection but to Philippe’s girlfriend, Marge Duval (Marie Lefort). When he kisses the mirror, is he kissing himself, Marg, Philippe, or himself as Philippe? Perhaps every answer is correct.

Tom Ripley is a young man who doesn’t appear to have much going on inside of him but who has definitely learned how to fake it enough to get by. He went to school with Philippe, a wealthy and casually cruel heir to a fortune. Because Philippe is currently living a rather decadent life in Europe, Tom has been hired by Philippe’s father to bring his son back to San Francisco. Tom, who were told grew up without money and who Philippe’s father used to dislike because he felt that Tom’s manners were too “common,” is happy to finally be a part of Philippe’s world and, when we first see them together, it appears as if Philippe is happy to have Tom as a part of his life as well. We watch as they give money to a blind man and then buy his cane. Though Philippe is the one who proceeds to walk around with the cane while pretending to be blind, it’s hard not to notice that Tom is the one who suggested the idea to him. For Philippe, deception is a game whereas, for Tom, it’s a way of life.

As the opening scene of the film suggests, things are not always how they seem. It quickly becomes apparent that Philippe’s charm and money hides a cruel and sadistic streak and, when he grows bored with Tom’s sycophantic ways and Tom’s constant requests for money, Philippe decides to send him away. Unfortunately, for Philippe, Tom is not ready to leave and he’s certainly not ready to abandon Marge, though it’s left to the viewer to decide if Tom is truly attracted to Marge or if he’s just attracted to the fact that she’s a part of Philippe’s world. Because Tom has no identity, it is disarmingly easy for him to slip into a new one, whether it means becoming a friend, a criminal, a loyal employee, or even Philippe himself. During one eventful afternoon, Tom and Philippe’s relationship comes to a violent conclusion while the two of them are on a yacht that’s floating in almost indescribably beautiful sea of water.

If this all sounds a bit familiar, it may be because, while Purple Noon may have been the first adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s classic novel The Talented Mr. Ripley, it was not the last. In 1999, Matt Damon starred in The Talented Mr. Ripley, another adaptation of Highsmith’s classic thriller. Directed by Anthony Minghella, The Talented Mr. Ripley is a bit more faithful to its source material than Purple Noon and yet I have to say that, even with all of the liberties that it takes to Highsmith’s original story, I actually prefer Purple Noon. They’re both good films but Purple Noon is the one that sticks in the viewer’s mind.

While Matt Damon may be the better actor of the two, Alain Delon was the better Mr. Ripley. Delon’s natural lack of expressiveness may have often made him seem stiff and remote as a performer but it is ideal for a character like Tom Ripley, one who only exists on the surface. Whereas Damon’s Ripley is obviously unstable from the minute he makes his first appearance, Delon’s Ripley has perfected a sort of likable blandess. The viewer can believe that Philippe and Marge would want to spend time with Delon’s Ripley while also understanding why Philippe would quickly grow bored with him and his superficial ways. Damon’s Ripley realizes that his crimes have determined his future whereas Delon lives day-to-day as an existential con artist, improvising his way from one crime to another. Whereas the second adaptation was a big and glamorous production, Purple Noon takes a far grittier approach. Director Rene Clement emphasizes the shadows and the ominous atmosphere that dominates Ripley’s world.

Purple Noon does slightly alter Patricia Highsmith’s original ending, something that Highsmith was reportedly not at all happy about. Highsmith reportedly felt that Alain Delon masterfully captured Ripley’s character while complaining that the film’s ending was a concession to “public morality.” (Interestingly, when Wim Wenders made his own film about Tom Ripley, The American Friend, Highsmith had the opposite reaction, appreciating that the film retained her downbeat ending while complaining that Dennis Hopper’s performance as Ripley was not true to the character she had created.) One can understand and even agree with Highsmith’s objections while also appreciating that the Purple Noon‘s ending does actually work quite well for the story that’s been told. For all of his cleverness, not even Tom Ripley can escape the randomness of fate.

Film Review: All The King’s Men (dir by Steven Zaillian)

Posted on January 2, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

On September 10th, 1935, a Senator named Huey Long was shot and killed at the Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rogue.

While it’s generally agreed that Carl Weiss, the son-in-law of a political opponent, approached Long, there’s still some debate as to whether or not Weiss was the one who shot Long. Did Weiss fire one shot at Long or was Long himself accidentally shot by his many bodyguards, all of whom opened fire on Weiss? (Weiss died at the scene, having been wounded at least 60 times.) There’s even some who argue that Weiss didn’t even have a gun on him when he approached Long and that Long’s bodyguards misinterpreted Weiss’s intentions. Or, as some more conspiracy-minded historians have suggested, perhaps Long’s bodyguards were themselves paid off by one of Long’s many enemies. With Huey Long, anything was possible.

Huey Long has been described as being an American dictator, a man who ran for office as a populist and who, as governor and then senator, ruled Louisiana with an iron fist. His slogan was “Every man a king,” and he promoted a platform that mixed Socialism with redneck resentment. (In modern terms, he mixed the vapid but crowd-pleasing rhetroic of AOC with the bombastic but calculated personal style of Donald Trump.) He often played the flamboyant buffoon but he also knew how to reward his friends and punish his enemies. At the time of his death, he was planning to run for President against FDR. It’s said that, in typical Long fashion, he planned to run as a third party candidate and draw away enough votes from Roosevelt to allow Republican Alf Landon to win. Then, in 1940, Long would run for the Democratic nomination and send President Landon back to Kansas.

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Whether his plan was feasible or not, they came to an end with his death. However, his legacy continued as members of the Long family dominated Louisiana politics for decades to come. Huey’s brother, Earl, served as governor of Louisiana for several contentious terms. Huey’s son, Russell, spent nearly 40 years in the Senate and, as chairman of the Finance Committee, was one of the most powerful men in the country. As late at 2020, Huey’s third cousin was serving in the Louisiana Senate. In the past few years, both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have been compared to Huey Long. Of course, if Huey were alive today, he’d probably be very popular online. Political Twitter has never met an authoritarian that it couldn’t make excuses for.

Among those who were fascinated by the life and death of Huey Long was a Southern poet and novelist named Robert Penn Warren. Warren used Long as the basis for Willie Stark, the man at the center of the novel All The King’s Men. In the novel, Stark is a classic and tragic American archetype, the man of the people who loses his way after coming to power. Stark starts the book as an idealist who wants to make life better for the poor but who, as he works his way up the political ladder, loses sight of why he first entered politics in the first place. He goes from fighting for the people to fighting only for himself. The book was controversial but popular and won the 1947 Pulitzer Prize. In later interviews, Warren often said that All The King’s Men was never meant to be a book about politics but instead a book about two men, Willie Stark and reporter Jack Burden, losing their way during the tumult of the Great Depression. Regardless of Warren’s intentions, most readers and critics have focused on the book as a cynical look at American politics and the authoritarian impulse.

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Considering the book’s popularity, it’s not surprising that All The King’s Men was turned into a movie just three years after it was published. Directed by Robert Rossen and starring a perfectly cast Broderick Crawford as Willie Stark, the film won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1949. Just as with the book, the film was considered to be controversial. Many claimed that the film’s cynical portrayal of American politics was the equivalent of supporting communism, despite the fact that both the novel and the original film present Stark as being the epitome of the hypocritical Marxist dictator. Indeed, if any character would have inspired audiences in 1949 to distrust socialism, it would have been a faux populist like Willie Stark. Still, John Wayne was so offended by the book and the script that he very publicly turned down the role of Willie Stark. That was all the better for Broderick Crawford, who won an Oscar playing the role. When seen today, the original All The King’s Men holds up surprisingly well, as does Crawford’s lead performance. Filmed in harsh black-and-white and featuring a cast of cynical, tough-talking characters, it’s a political noir.

Those who found the 1949 version of All The King’s Men to be dangerously subversive obviously had no idea what was in store for them and the country over the next couple of decades. There’s a reason why the best-known book about the downfall of Richard Nixon was called All The President’s Men. By the start of the current century, with all of the political corruption that was happening in the real world, the flaws and crimes of Willie Stark seemed almost quaint by comparison. In 2006, with George W. Bush serving his second term, America embroiled in two unpopular wars, and the economy looking shaky, it was decided that it was time for a new version of the story of Willie Stark.

This version was directed by Steven Zaillian, the screenwriter whose credits included Schindler’s List, Gangs of New York, Hannibal, and American Gangster. The role of Willie Stark was played by Sean Penn, who was both an Academy Award winner and an outspoken critic of George Bush. (And, make no mistake about it, the new version of Willie Stark would be as much based on Bush as he was on Huey Long.) Jude Law played Jack Burden, the reporter who narrated the story of Stark’s rise and fall. Kate Winslet, Anthony Hopkins, James Gandolfini, Patricia Clarkson, Mark Ruffalo, Jackie Earle Haley, and Kathy Baker all had supporting roles. This was a cast full of Oscar nominees and, indeed, the film’s trailer had that portentous, “the movie is very important and award-worthy” feeling to it that studios go with whenever they’re trying to convince audiences that they have an obligation to see a film, regardless of how boring or annoying it may look. Entertainment Weekly predicted that All The King’s Men would be an Academy Award contender. For nearly two months, one could not see a movie at the Dallas Angelika without also seeing thee trailer for All The King’s Men. It was a movie that was due to arrive at any minute and it was coming with an awful lot of hype.

And then, the strangest thing happened. The film itself kind of disappeared. It arrived and then it promptly got lost. The reviews were overwhelmingly negative. Audiences did not turn out to see the film. It was a box office bomb, one that pretty much ended Steven Zaillian’s career as a director. The film played for a week in Dallas and then left the city’s movie screens. Even if I had been planning on seeing the film when it was originally released, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity. The Gods of cinema, politics, and Southern accents were conspiring to protect me from suffering through a bad movie and I guess I should be thankful. There’s nothing that makes me cringe more than hearing a bad Southern accent in a movie and the trailer for All The King’s Men was full of them.

Way back in November of last year, I noticed that the 2006 version of All The King’s Men was available on Encore On Demand. At the time, I had politics on my mind. The Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial elections had bee held earlier that week. Biden’s huge infrastructure bill had passed the House on the very same night that I came across the film. Hell, I figured, could watching Sean Penn as Willie Stark be any worse than watching Joe Biden try to give a speech from the Oval Office? So, I decided to give the movie a chance and I quickly discovered that watching Sean Penn’s Willie Stark was a lot worse.

In All The King’s Men, Sean Penn gives the type of bad performance that can only be given by a good actor. Penn yells and grimaces and barks out order like the villain in a badly dubbed Bollywood movie. When he watches a dancer, he doesn’t just look at her. Instead, he stares with all the intensity of a cartoon wolf who has just spotted Little Red Riding Hood. There’s nothing subtle about Penn’s performance, least of all his overbaked accent. The only thing wilder than Penn’s accent is his hair, which often seems to be standing up straight as if he’s just removed his fingers from an electrical socket. It’s a performance that is heavy on technique but empty on substance. In both the book and the original film, Willie Stark is flamboyant in public but cool and calculating in private. In the remake, Penn yells and sweats and jumps around and comes across as being so desperate that it’s hard to buy into the idea that anyone would believe a word that he said. Broderick Crawford’s Willie Stark was believable because Crawford, with his bulky build and his plain-spoken manner, came across as being a real human being. One could imagine voters looking at Crawford and believing that he was just like them. Sean Penn, on the other hand, comes across like a rich man’s version of a poor man. Penn is too obviously condescending to be an effective populist. Voters will forgive a lot but they’ll never forgive a politician who openly talks down to them.

As for the rest of the cast, they’re a very talented group but not one of them is convincingly cast. In fact, many of them give career-worst performances. Anthony Hopkins does his usual eccentric routine but it doesn’t add up too much because the audience never sees him as being anything other than Anthony Hopkins using a rather spotty Southern accent. When Hopkins’s character dies, it’s not a tragedy because the character himself never feels real. Instead, you’re juts happy that Hopkins collected a paycheck. Kate Winslet seems to be bored with the role of Stark’s mistress. Mark Ruffalo is dazed in the role of Winslet’s brother. As Jack Burden, Jude Law seems as lost as anyone, which wouldn’t be problem if not for the fact that Jack is the one narrating the film. When your narrator is lost, you’re in trouble.

There’s really only two members of the cast who escape the film unscathed. Jackie Earle Haley is properly intimidating as Stark’s devoted bodyguard. Haley doesn’t get many lines but one look at his disturbed eyes tells you all you need to know about how far he’ll go to protect his boss. On the other hand, James Gandolfini gets several lines and he does such a good job of delivering them and he plays the role of a corrupt political boss with such a perfect combination of good humor and cold pragmatism that you have to wonder just how much All The King’s Men would have been improved if Gandolfini had played Willie Stark instead of Sean Penn.

Steve Zaillian’s direction involves a lot of soft-focused flashbacks and several visual references to the Nuremberg rallies. Just as with Penn’s performance, there’s nothing subtle about Zaillian’s direction, despite the fact that the story itself is so melodramatic that it calls for the opposite of a heavy-handed approach. One wonders what exactly Zaillian was trying to say with his version of All The King’s Men, which presents Willie Stark as being a monster but still as the audacity to end with a clip of him giving a rousing campaign speech. Again, the problem is that we never buy into the idea that Willie Stark was ever sincere in his desire to help the common man. Everything about both Penn’s performance and Zaillian’s direction serves to suggest that, from the start, Stark viewed them as just being a means to an end. Ending the film with a flashback of Willie giving a campaign speech is about as moving as a friend from high school contacting you on Facebook and then trying to get you to take part in a pyramid scheme. There’s no sincerity to be found in any of it.

In the end, it’s a film of overheated performances and meticulously shot scenes that all add up to very little. There are a few moments where Sean Penn’s body language and his vocal inflections suggest that he’s trying to channel George W. Bush but there’s nothing particularly shocking or subversive about that. In 2006, every movie and TV show had to find a way to take a swipe at Bush and Penn’s never been particularly reticent when it comes to broadcasting his politics. Though All The King’s Men was executive produced by political consultant James Carville, there’s very few moment in the film that feel authentic. It’s like a high school senior’s view of politics.

All The King’s Men came and went quickly. Fortunately, everyone was able to move on. Steven Zaillian has not directed another film but remains an in-demand scriptwriter. Sean Penn, Anthony Hopkins, and Kate Winslet all won Oscars after appearing in this film (though, it should be noted, none of them won for this film). Mark Ruffalo and Jude Law went on to join the Marvel Universe. Jackie Earle Haley continues to be a much-respected character actor. Tragically, James Gandolfini is no longer with us but his performance as Tony Soprano will never be forgotten. The second version of All The King’s Men wasted a lot of talent but, fortunately, talent always finds a way to survive.

A Blast From The Past: Better Use Of Leisure Time

Posted on January 1, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Well, it’s a new year.

That means that it’s time to start thinking about what you want to make of yourself this year. What are you going to do? What are you going to accomplish? How are you going to make yourself proud of who you’ve become?

There’s a lot of movies coming out. Maybe you’ll go to them. Or maybe you’ll be the person who spends all of their time on twitter, tweeting about how scared you are of going back to the theaters. Both options come with their risks and their rewards.

There’s a celebrity edition of Big Brother airing in February. Maybe you’ll watch it. Maybe you’ll blog about it, because you like getting paid more than your dislike the show. Or maybe you’ll spend all of your time on twitter, talking about how much you hate reality TV.

2022 is an election year. Maybe you’ll run for office. Maybe you’ll volunteer to work for a campaign. Maybe you’ll spend all of your time on twitter, tweeting about how people need to vote for your candidate. Maybe you’ll come up with the hashtag that changes the course of the election! Maybe you’ll hang out in the paring lot of Whataburger, waiting for Beto to toll by.

Or maybe….

Eh.

You’re not going to do anything.

Let’s be honest, most of us are very lazy and we have absolutely no idea how lucky we are compared to people who lived just a few decades ago. We take a lot of things for granted and we waste a lot of time doing nothing, precisely because we can do just about anything that we want.

(Of course, in my case, I’m have ADHD. I spend a lot of time doing things but usually, I end up trying to do them all at once. Reading a book and watching a TV at the same time is not difficult but when you also try to vacuum the living room while doing those other two things, it starts to get a little bit more difficult. Still, my super power is ADHD and I’m thankful.)

Well, fear not! A short film from Coronet Films has traveled all the way from 1950 to encourage you to make better use of your leisure time! Why …. that’s even the name of the film! Better Use of Your Leisure Time follows a good-for-nothing, spoiled teenager named Ken as he learns why spending all of your time moping is perhaps the worst thing that you can do. With the help of a judgmental narrator and the ability to see alternative universes, Ken learns an important lesson. There’s no hope with mope! Ken discovers that some people actually have hobbies and spend their free time creating and learning and being a decent citizen. It’s an important lesson and hopefully, it’s one that Ken will remember the next time that someone tells him that moping is no big deal.

Anyway, as far as Coronet Educational Films go, this one isn’t bad. Ken is a bit of a loser but that’s to be expected of these type of films. It’s very much a product of its era and, if nothing else, it stands as evidence that people wasted time even before the internet existed. TAKE THAT, LUDDITES!

Watch, enjoy, and learn. LEARN, GOSH DARN IT!

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: The Irishman (dir by Martin Scorsese)

Posted on January 1, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Released by Netflix in 2019 and clocking in at close to 4 hours, the Martin Scorsese-directed Best Picture nominee, The Irishman, is a film about many different things.

At its simplest, it’s a film about a very old man named Frank Shearan (played by Robert De Niro). Frank is an Irish-American from Philadelphia. Frank is a veteran of World War II and a former truck driver who was briefly a fairly important figure in the Teamsters union. He did a few years in prison. At the start of the film, though, he’s just another elderly man living in a retirement community. All of his friends are dead. His wife passed away years ago. His children never comes to visit. In fact, the only people interested in talking to Frank are the FBI but Frank doesn’t have much to say to them. That’s not to say that Frank isn’t talkative. For the first time in his life, he wants to talk to people but there’s no one left to talk to. The only people who listen are those who are required to do so. A nurse politely nods along as as he tells her about his old friend Jimmy Hoffa. (She’s never heard of him.) A priest listens to the story of Frank’s life and offers him absolution. At times, Frank looks straight at Scorsese’s camera and appears to be talking straight to the audience. Frank has a lot of interesting stories but who knows how truthful he’s being or if his memory can be trusted.

The Irishman, though, is not just the story of Frank. It is also a secret history of America during the latter half of the 20th Century. Frank may look old and harmless in that nursing home but, to hear him tell it, he was once acquainted with some of the most powerful men in America. He went from executing Italian POWs during World War II to executing hits for the Mafia in post-war America. Along the way, he became close to crime bosses like Skinny Razor (Bobby Cannavale), Angelo Bruno (Harvey Keitel) and Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci), men who may not have been household names but who still wielded a lot of power. These are men who, Frank flatly states, fixed the presidential election of 1960 and who later quite possibly killed the man they had elected president. Frank also became a close associate of Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino), the labor leader who was reputed to have mob connections and who disappeared in 1975.

The Irishman is also a tribute to the modern gangster film, featuring role for nearly every living actor associated with the genre. De Niro, Pacino, Pesci, Keitel, Bobby Cannavale, Domenick Lombardozzi, Gary Basaraba, they’ve all played their share of gangsters in films and television show that were both good and bad. Having them all appear in one film together serves to remind the viewer of just how much of America’s popular entertainment has revolved around stories of organized crime. Even as the old school Mafia has declined as a real-world power, it’s become a permanent part of pop culture. Everyone loves a gangster, except for the people who actually have to deal with them on a daily basis.

Not surprisingly, considering the stars and the director, it’s a film full of smart, detailed performances. When the film was originally released, Pacino and Pesci got the lion’s share of the praise and they certainly deserved it. Pacino gets the best lines and brings some unexpected wit to his performance as Jimmy Hoffa. Pesci, meanwhile, finally gets to play a gangster who is not psychotic and shows that he can be just as compelling when he’s not raising his voice as when he is. Still, some of my favorite performances came from actors who one wouldn’t necessarily associate with a Scorsese gangster film. I liked the nervous humor that Ray Romano brought to the role of a corrupt union lawyer. I liked the seething resentment that Stephen Graham brought to the role of Jimmy Hoffa’s main rival in the union. (The scene where Graham and Pacino argue over who is more owed an apology for all of their past disagreements is both funny and, due to the people involved, somewhat frightening.) Jesse Plemons is poignantly dumb in his brief role as Hoffa’s stepson. Louis Cancelmi doesn’t get a lot of screen time but he steals every scene in which he appears as a paranoid hitman. (Cancelmi plays a character named Sally Bugs, proving that not everyone in the Mafia gets a cool nickname.)

And then there’s Anna Paquin, who provides the film with its moral center. When the film was first released, many Twitter critics complained that Paquin, who played Frank’s daughter Peggy, only a had a handful of lines. It was one of the stupidest controversies of 2019, which is saying something when you consider how much time Film Twitter devotes to generating stupid controversies. Peggy doesn’t say much because she’s decided that she doesn’t want to be a part of her father’s life. From the moment that she first sees Frank beating up a store owner, Peggy knows that her father and his associates are violent men. She not only fears them but she resents the damage that Frank does to not only her family but to the families as other as well. The only one of her father’s associates who she likes is Jimmy Hoffa, because Hoffa cares about helping others. When Hoffa disappears, Peggy makes a decision to disappear from Frank’s life and Paquin’s withering stare says more than any lengthy monologue could. Peggy doesn’t say much because she knows that her words would be wasted on a man who she knows is a liar. The scene where she silently walks away from her now elderly father tells us everything we need to know about the emotional consequences of the life that Frank has chosen to live. Regardless of how many lines she did or didn’t have, Paquin gave one of the best performances of 2019.

Famously (or, depending on which critics you read, infamously), de-aging technology was used so that De Niro, Pacino, Pesci, and Keitel could play both the younger and the older version of their characters. At first, it can be a bit jarring. The de-aging works fine with Pesci and Keitel, both of whom are already supposed to be middle-aged when they first meet Frank. (Admittedly, Keitel only has a few minutes of screen time.) With De Niro and Pacino, it’s a bit less successful. Even when they’re playing younger versions of themselves, De Niro and Pacino still move and stand like old men. Fortunately, in the case of Pacino, his natural movie star charisma wins out over his obvious age. In the end, we believe that he’s Hoffa because we want to believe that all of our important historical figures were as interesting and entertaining as Al Pacino is in The Irishman.

And yet, ultimately, even the awkward de-aging works to the film’s advantage because it reminds us that we’re not necessarily seeing what happened. Instead, we’re seeing what Frank says happened. We’re seeing his memories, or at least what he claims to remember. It makes sense that, when Frank thinks about himself as a young truck driver in 1956, he would picture himself not as he was but instead as just a slightly less weathered version of who he would eventually become. Throughout the film, there are hints that Frank’s memory should not be trusted. Some of his stories are incredibly detailed while others — like when he transports weapons for the failed invasion of the Bay of Pigs — are a bit more vaguely presented. Is Frank lying or is he misremembering or are we just expecting too much detail from a man who is now essentially waiting to die? The film leaves that up for us to determine.

The Irishman is Scorsese at his most reflective. Compared to Goodfellas and Casino, The Irishman is certainly one of Scorsese’s less “flashy” films. But, on repeat viewings, it becomes cleat that The Irishman is the perfect conclusion to the gangster trilogy that began with Goodfellas and continued with Casino. All three of these films deal with someone who rises up the ranks in the mob while remaining, as a result of their ethnicity, an outsider. (Henry Hill and Frank Shearan are both Irish. Ace Rothstein was Jewish.) All three of them are briefly on top of the world and all three of them are left wondering how they’re going to continue their lives after their days at the top are over. In Goodfellas, Henry Hill makes no secret of his disgust at having to live in the bland anonymity of the suburbs. In Casino, Ace Rothstein ends the film with a mournful acceptance the fact that he will never return to his beloved Vegas. (“And that’s that.”) In The Irishman, Frank finally realizes that he has comes to the end of it all, alone and with nothing but death in his future. All three of them made their decisions and, in the end, all three of them are left to deal with the consequences. The trilogy goes from Henry’s anger to Ace’s depression to Frank’s acceptance.

It may seem strange to describe a film like The Irishman as being underrated, seeing as how it was nominated for 10 Oscars and got a Criterion release in record time. And yet, when the film first came out, there was a vague sense of disappointment to found in even some of the positive reviews. It was a Scorsese film that was so eagerly awaited and arrived with so much hype that there was no way it could live up to some of the expectations that had been set for it. (And, of course, there’s also a whole set of people who were predestined to dislike the film precisely because it was a Scorsese film and it was so anticipated.) It’s a long film and, while Netflix should be praised for allowing Scorsese the freedom to make his epic, it’s also not a film that should be viewed in bits and pieces on a tiny screen. The Irishman is a film that should be watched in one sitting and it’s definitely a film that most viewers should watch more than once. It takes more than one viewing to truly grasp the the world that Scorsese has recreated.

The Irishman was nominated for Best Picture. It lost to a worthy competitor, Parasite. Still, regardless of who took him the Oscars, The Irishman is a film that will live forever.