Film Review: Short Cuts (dir by Robert Altman)

Posted on April 15, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Opening with a swarm of helicopters spaying for medflies and ending with an earthquake, 1993’s Short Cuts is a film about life in Los Angeles.

An ensemble piece, it follows several different characters as they go through their own personal dramas. Some of them are married and some of them are destined to be forever single but they’re all living in varying states of desperation. Occasionally, the actions of one character will effect the actions of another character in a different story but, for the most part, Short Cuts is a portrait of people who are connected only by the fact that they all live in the same city. There are 22 principal characters in Short Cuts and each one thinks that they are the star of the story.

Jerry Kaiser (Chris Penn) cleans the pools of rich people while, at home, his wife, Lois (Jennifer Jason Leigh), takes care of their baby and works as a phone sex operator. Jerry’s best friend is a makeup artist named Bill (Robert Downey, Jr.) who enjoys making his wife, Honey (Lili Taylor), looks like a corpse so that he can take her picture. One of her photographs is seen by a fisherman (Buck Henry) who has already discovered one actual corpse that weekend. He and his buddies, Vern (Huey Lewis) and Stuart (Fred Ward), discovered a dead girl floating in a river and didn’t report it until after they were finished fishing. (The sight of Vern unknowingly pissing on the dead body is one of the strongest in director Robert Altman’s filmography.)

Stuart’s wife, Claire (Anne Archer), is haunted by Stuart’s delay in reporting the dead body. A chance meeting Dr. Ralph Wyman (Matthew Modine) and his wife, artist Marian (Julianne Moore), leads to an awkward dinner between the two couples. Claire works as a professional clown and Ralph ends up wearing her clown makeup while his marriage falls apart.

Earlier, Claire was stopped and hit on by a smarmy policeman named Gene Shepard (Tim Robbins), who just happens to be married to Marian’s sister, Sherri (Madeleine Stowe). Gene is already having an affair with Betty Weathers (Frances McDormand), the wife of a helicopter pilot named Stormy (Peter Gallagher). When Stormy discovers that Betty has been cheating, he takes a creative revenge on her house.

Doreen Pigott (Lily Tomlin) lives in a trailer park with her alcoholic husband, Earl (Tom Waits). Driving home from her waitressing job, Doreen hits a young boy. The boy says he’s okay but when he gets home, he passes out. His parents, news anchorman Howard Finnegan (Bruce Davison) and his wife, Anne (Andie MacDowell), rush him to the hospital, where his doctor is Ralph Wyman. As Howard waits for his son to wake up, he has a revealing conversation with his long-estranged father (Jack Lemmon, showing up for one scene and delivering an amazing monologue). Meanwhile, a baker named Andy (Lyle Lovett) repeatedly calls the Finnegan household, wanting to know when they’re going to pick up their son’s birthday cake.

Based on the short stories of Raymond Carver and directed by Robert Altman, Short Cuts can sometimes feel like a spiritual descendent of Altman’s Nashville. The difference between this film and Nashville is that Short Cuts doesn’t have the previous film’s satiric bite. As good as Nashville is, it’s a film that can be rather snarky towards it character and the town in which it is set. Nashville is used as a metaphor for America coming apart at the seams. Short Cuts, on the other hand, is a far more humanistic film, featuring characters who are flawed but, with a few very notable exceptions, well-intentioned. If Nashville seem to be a portrait of a society on the verge of collapse, Short Cuts is a film about how that society ended up surviving.

It’s not a perfect film. There’s an entire storyline featuring Annie Ross and Lori Singer that I didn’t talk about because I just found it to be annoying to waste much time with. (The Ross/Singer storyline was the only one not to be based on a Carver short story.) The conclusion of Chris Penn’s storyline wasn’t quite as shocking as it was obviously meant to be. But, flaws and all, Altman and Carver’s portrait of humanity does hold our attention and it leaves us thinking about connections made and sometimes lost. Seen today, Short Cuts is a portrait of life before social media and iPhones and before humanity started living online. It’s a time capsule of a world that once was.

Retro Television Review: Miami Vice 2.17 “Florence Italy”

Posted on June 24, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show can be purchased on Prime!

This week, the Grand Prix comes to Miami!

Episode 2.17 “Florence Italy”

(Dir by John Nicolella, originally aired on February 14th, 1986)

An impromptu street race with a white Porsche leads to Crockett and Tubbs discovering the body of a young prostitute who was known as Florence Italy (Marilyn Romero). Their chief suspect is the owner of the Porsche, a racecar driver named Danny Tepper (Danny Sullivan). However, while Tubbs is convinced that Danny is guilty, Crockett is a bit less convinced. It soon becomes apparent that the murderer is either Danny or his father Frank (Stephen Joyce), a veteran racer who is scheduled to compete against his son in the up-and-coming Miami Grand Prix.

This was a bit of a throw-away episode. It was shot during the actual Grand Prix and, as a result, the emphasis is less on the mystery and more on the cars and the racing and cheering people in the stands. The majority of the racers (including Danny and Frank) are played by actual racers. Indeed, if not for the brutal murder that starts things off and a sensitively-handled scene where Sonny tries to talk to a racing groupie who has been the victim of abuse, this episode could pass for a infomercial about everything that’s fun about Miami. As it is, the mystery doesn’t amount to much. There’s only two suspects and Tubbs is so convinced that Danny is guilty that it’s obvious that the twist is going to be that he isn’t. That only leaves Frank.

On the plus side, the direction was stylish and neon-filled and the tragic Charles Rocket was entertaining in a small role as a sleazy race sponsor. (I had to laugh when Crockett decided that the best way to solve the murder would be to go undercover of Sonny Burnett, racing sponsor.) This episode did a good job of making Miami look like the ultimate playground, where even the prostitutes get to wear cute outfits and where Crockett might let a drug dealer go if he’s willingly eat his marijuana while Crockett and Tubbs watch. Tubbs is full of righteous fury in this episode but Crockett just goes with the flow.

This was a fairly nonessential episode but …. hey, I like fast cars.

Moments in Television History #17: Charles Rocket Nearly Ends SNL

Posted on February 21, 2022 by Jedadiah Leland

On this day, 41 years ago, Saturday Night Live was nearly canceled.

In 1981, Saturday Night Live was in its 6th season and things weren’t going so well. Lorne Michaels had left the program and he had taken what was left of the original cast with him. The new producer, Jean Doumanian, had hired an entirely new group of writers and performers. Doumanian felt that her biggest star would be a former news anchorman-turned-comedian named Charles Rocket. In order to prop up Rocket, she surrounded him with a cast that included Gilbert Gottfried, Denny Dillon, and Joe Piscopo. (Among those who auditioned but were not selected: Jim Carrey, John Goodman and Paul Reubens.) Seeking a black comedian who could take over the roles that were previously played by Garrett Morris, Doumanian tried to recruit a performer named Charlie Barnett. When Barnett skipped his second audition, she then considered hiring Robert Townsend before she finally settled on a 19 year-old stand-up comedian named Eddie Murphy.

To no one’s surprise, the initial reviews of the new Saturday Night Live were brutal. Everyone knew it would be difficult, at first, to win over the critics who were used to Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, Belushi, Aykroyd, and Lorne Michaels. What no one expected was that the reviews would never get better and that, instead of Charles Rocket, it would be Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo who would emerge as the new fan favorites. Reportedly, a few of the cast members resented Murphy and Piscopo’s success. No one was happy with the way Doumanian was running the show. It didn’t take long until Season 6 was better known for its backstage tension than for it comedy. As ratings plunged, there were even rumors that the show might not be renewed.

On February 21st, 1981, those tensions went from being backstage to being on thousands of televisions. The night’s episode was hosted by Charlene Tilton, a cast member of what was then the most popular show in prime time, Dallas. Everyone in the country was debating who had shot J.R. Ewing. Saturday Night Live decided to do its own tak on the phenomenon by asking, “Who shot Charles Rocket?” Over the course of the show, Rocket was shown having a conflict with every member of the cast. Finally, towards the end of the episode, Rocket was shot. During the traditional goodbyes, Rocket appeared sitting in a wheelchair and smoking a cigarette. With the rest of the cast surrounding him, Tilton asked him how he was feeling.

Here’s what happened:

“Oh, man.” Rocket said, “I’ve never been shot before. I wish I knew who the fuck did it.” It can be difficult to hear him in the video above but you can tell from the reactions of the cast that everyone immediately knew what Rocket had said.

This may not seem like a big deal today but this happened in 1981. This was before HBO started producing their own shows. This was before anyone had ever heard of a streaming service. This was when there was only three major networks and they were all closely watched by the FCC. Dropping an F-bomb on live television, with no tape delay or chance to bleep it out, was a big deal.

Later, Charles Rocket would say that he didn’t even realize what he had said. That could have been true but the look on his face after he said it suggests that Rocket was aware of what he was saying. Before Rocket said it, there had been reports that NBC was planning on firing the entire cast at the end of the season. Did Rocket make an honest mistake (one that has since been made a few more times by cast members and guests on SNL) or was he going out with a bang? Was this Rocket’s way of getting back at a network that didn’t appreciate him?

The reports about NBC planning to make changes were true, to an extent. The plan was to fire Doumanian and replace her with Dick Ebersol. Most of the cast was going to be fired but NBC was specifically planning on keeping the three performers who it was felt were the strongest members of the ensemble: Eddie Murphy, Joe Piscopo, and Charles Rocket! Needless to say, after Rocket’s bit of improvisation, NBC changed its mind.

At first, it seemed like the show itself might also get canceled as a result. In1981, the networks had to deal with people like Jerry Falwell leading crusades to cleans up network television. Just as Fredric Wertham once blamed juvenile delinquency on comic books, all sorts of problems were being blamed on television. Jean Doumanian was fired after one more episode, along with Charles Rocket, Gilbert Gottfried, and cast member Ann Risley. Tragically, Charles Rocket’s career never recovered from this moment. Today, it probably wouldn’t be as big a deal. NBC would get hit by a fine but the moment itself would go viral and lead to even bigger ratings. But in 1981, saying the F-word on national television was a career killer. Rocket did appear in several movies, usually playing smarmy villains. But he never reached the stardom that had been predicted for him and ended up taking his own life in 2005.

In the end, the only thing that saved Saturday Night Live was that the Writers Guild went on strike and production on every NBC show shut down. By the time the strike was settled, the season was over and Dick Ebersol had managed to convince NBC to let him keep the series going by focusing on Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo. When Saturday Night Live returned for its seventh season, Murphy was the undisputed center of the show. He achieved the stardom that had originally been predicted for Charles Rocket.

Previous Moments In Television History: