Tag Archives: Mary Beth Hurt

Retro Television Review: 3 By Cheever 1.3 “The Five Forty-Eight”

Posted on 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 Saturdays, I will be reviewing 3 By Cheever, which ran on PBS in 1979.  The entire show can be purchased on Prime and found on YouTube.

This week, we finish up 3 By Cheever with an adaption of one of his best-known short stories.

Episode 1.3 “The Five Forty-Eight”

(Dir by James Ivory, originally aired on James Ivory)

Laurence Luckinbill stars as Blake, a business executive who rides the train into the city for work and then back to the suburbs when it’s time to return to his perfect home.  One day, as Blake heads to his train, he comes to be aware that he’s being followed by his former secretary, Miss Dent (Mary Beth Hurt).  Blake is concerned because Miss Dent made quite a scene when she was fired from her job a little while ago.  Of course, a part of the reason why she was so upset was because Blake had earlier seduced her, something that he has a habit of doing when it comes to his secretaries.  On the train, surrounded by neighbors (including one that Blake can’t stand because of his long hair), Blake finds himself sitting next to Miss Dent.  She explains that she has a gun in her purse.  As the train heads for its destination, Blake’s confident facade crumbles and he is soon as humiliated by his former secretary as she was by him.  And yet, this being a Cheever story, one wonders if Blake is even capable of realizing why any of this is happening to him.

The final episode of 3 By Cheever was an adaptation of one of John Cheever’s best short stories.  As directed by James Ivory, this adaptation can feel a bit overdrawn.  The short story, for instance, opens with Blake on an elevator, already preparing to head home on the train.  Ivory’s adaptation opens with Blake at the start of his day and we see a lot of things — like Blake’s antagonistic relationship with his long-haired neighbor — that Cheever simply mentioned.  It takes a while for Miss Dent to finally sit down next to Blake and Ivory doesn’t do much to build up any sort of suspense while we’re waiting.

On the plus side, the film reveals Ivory’s skill when it comes to working with actors as both Luckinbill and Mary Beth Hurt give excellent performances.  Luckinbill goes from being oily and overconfident to being a neurotic mess by the end of the show while Hurt does the opposite, going from being meek to commanding.  Both the original short story and Ivory’s adaptation succeed in making you wonder what the future could possibly hold for either one of the two characters.  They both seem to reach a point of no return and it’s hard to imagine Blake going back to his suburban home and his train rides and his motel hook-ups but, then again, this is a Cheever story so the implication is that he does just that, untouched by the fact that he nearly lost his life due to his own behavior.  As for Miss Dent, she reclaims her self-respect by going to an extreme.

This was the last episode of 3 By Cheever.  This was an interesting series of adaptations, even if Cheever’s prose does seem to work best on the page than literally translated to film.  Next week, a new series will being in this spot.

The TSL’s Grindhouse: Parents (dir by Bob Balaban)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

An odd little film, 1989’s Parents is.

It takes place in the 50s of the pop cultural imagination, with neatly laid out suburban neighborhoods and perfectly mowed lawns and big cars driving down the street.  Nick (Randy Quaid) and Lily (Mary Beth Hurt) seem like the perfect couple.  Lily stays at home and spends a lot of time in the kitchen.  Nick is an engineer who works for a company called Toxico and who is helping to develop what will become known, during the Vietnam War, as Agent Orange.  Nick and Lily are friendly, well-mannered, and they love to eat meat.  Lily explains, at one point, that she didn’t really love to eat meat until she married Nick and he showed her how wonderful it could be.

Their son, ten year-old Michael (Bryan Madorsky), is a bit less conventional.  He’s a quiet boy who never smiles and who, when asked to draw a picture of his family, freaks out his school’s guidance counselor (played by Sandy Dennis).  Michael has frequent nightmares.  Michael doesn’t like to eat meat and, in fact, it’s hard to think of a single scene in the movie where Michael is seen eating anything.  Michael is haunted by the sight of his parents making love in the living room.  He’s also haunted by a growing suspicion that his parents are cannibals.

Are they?  Perhaps.  It’s hard to say.  The first time you watch the movie, it seems deceptively obvious that Nick and Lily are exactly what Michael says they are.  The second time, you start to notice a few odd things.  For one thing, we never see Michael actually going from one location to another.  Instead, he just seems to magically show up wherever he needs to be to hear something that will confirm his suspicions.  When his teacher and his guidance counselor discuss his home life, Michael just happens to be in a nearby closet.  When his mother is preparing something that looks like it might be a human organ, Michael just happens to be standing in the pantry.  Are we seeing reality or are we just seeing what Michael thinks is reality?  When Nick starts to threaten Michael and later claims that there’s no way Michael is his son, is he really saying that or is Michael just imagining his fatherr confirming all of Michael’s insecurities?  How much of the film is real and how much of it is in Michael’s head?

It’s an odd film, Parents.  It’s also the directorial debut of character actor Bob Balaban.  Balaban has spent the majority of his career playing shy, slightly repressed characters.  Parents, with the withdrawn Michael as the main character, is a film that feels autobiographical.  That’s not to say that Balaban’s parents were cannibals but the scenes where Nick goes from being a loving father to an abusive monster are too intense and suffused with too much pain for them to be anything other than personal.  Balaban’s direction is heavily stylized.  At times, it’s a bit too stylized but ultimately, it works.  The final 30 minutes of the film feel like a nightmare that has somehow been filmed.

A satire of conformity and suburbia, Parents is also a portrait of an alienated child struggling to figure out where he fits into his family.  He’s given the choice of either indulging in his family’s sins or living life alone.  Except, of course, it really isn’t a choice.  Nick expects Michael to do what he’s been told, no matter what.  Randy Quaid and Mary Beth Hurt are both terrifying as the parents but, at the same time, Balaban makes good use of the fact that both of those performers — at least at the time this movie was made — were naturally likable.  You want Nick to be the perfect father that he pretends to be and you share Michael’s anger and disillusionment when he turns out to be something very different.

Parents may be a strange film but it’s not one that you’re going to forget.

Playing Catch-Up: Autumn in New York, Griffin & Phoenix, Harry & Son, The Life of David Gale

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

So, this year I am making a sincere effort to review every film that I see.  I know I say that every year but this time, I really mean it.

So, in an effort to catch up, here are four quick reviews of some of the movies that I watched over the past few weeks!

  • Autumn in New York
  • Released: 2000
  • Directed by Joan Chen
  • Starring Richard Gere, Winona Ryder, Anthony LaPaglia, Elaine Stritch, Vera Farmiga, Sherry Stringfield, Jill Hennessy, J.K. Simmons, Sam Trammell, Mary Beth Hurt

Richard Gere is Will, a fabulously wealthy New Yorker, who has had many girlfriends but who has never been able to find the one.  He owns a restaurant and appears on the cover of New York Magazine.  He loves food because, according to him, “Food is the only beautiful thing that truly nourishes.”

Winona Ryder is Charlotte, a hat designer who is always happy and cheerful and full of life.  She’s the type who dresses up like Emily Dickinson for Christmas and recites poetry to children, though you get the feeling that, if they ever somehow met in real life, Emily would probably get annoyed with Charlotte fairly quickly.  Actually, Charlotte might soon get to meet  Emily because she has one of those rare diseases that kills you in a year while still allowing you to look healthy and beautiful.

One night, Will and Charlotte meet and, together, they solve crimes!

No, actually, they fall in love.  This is one of those films where a young woman teaches an old man how to live again but then promptly dies so it’s not like he actually has to make a huge commitment or anything.  The film does, at least, acknowledge that Will is a lot older than Charlotte but it still doesn’t make it any less weird that Charlotte would want to spend her last year on Earth dealing with a self-centered, emotionally remote man who is old enough to be her father.  (To be honest, when it was revealed that Charlotte was the daughter of a woman who Will had previously dated, I was briefly worried that Autumn in New York was going to take an even stranger turn….)

On the positive side, the films features some pretty shots of New York and there is actually a pretty nice subplot, in which Will tries to connect with the daughter (Vera Farmiga) that he never knew he had.  Maybe if Farmiga and Ryder had switched roles, Autumn in New York would have worked out better.

  • Griffin & Phoenix
  • Released: 2006
  • Directed by Ed Stone
  • Starring Dermot Mulroney, Amanda Peet, Blair Brown, and Sarah Paulson

His name is Henry Griffin (Dermot Mulroney).

Her name is Sarah Phoenix (Amanda Peet).

Because they both have highly symbolic last names, we know that they’re meant to be together.

They both have cancer.  They’ve both been given a year to live.  Of course, they don’t realize that when they first meet and fall in love.  In fact, when Phoenix comes across several books that Griffin has purchased about dealing with being terminally ill, she assumes that Griffin bought them to try to fool her into falling in love with him.  Once they realize that they only have a year to be together, Griffin and Phoenix set out to make every moment count…

It’s a sweet-natured and unabashedly sentimental movie but, unfortunately, Dermot Mulroney and Amanda Peet have little romantic chemistry and the film is never quite as successful at inspiring tears as it should be.  When Mulroney finally allows himself to get mad and deals with his anger by vandalizing a bunch of cars, it’s not a cathartic moment.  Instead, you just find yourself wondering how Mulroney could so easily get away with destroying a stranger’s windshield in broad daylight.

  • Harry & Son
  • Released: 1986
  • Directed by Paul Newman
  • Starring Paul Newman, Robby Benson, Ellen Barkin, Wilford Brimley, Judith Ivey, Ossie Davis, Morgan Freeman, Katherine Borowitz, Maury Chaykin, Joanne Woodward

Morgan Freeman makes an early film appearance in Harry & Son, though his role is a tiny one.  He plays a factory foreman named Siemanowski who, in quick order, gets angry with and then fires a new employee named Howard Keach (Robby Benson).  Howard is the son in Harry & Son and he’s such an annoying character that you’re happy when Freeman shows up and starts yelling at the little twit.  As I said, Freeman’s role is a small one.  Freeman’s only on screen for a few minutes.  But, in that time, he calls Howard an idiot and it’s hard not to feel that he has a point.

Of course, the problem is that we’re not supposed to view Howard as being an idiot.  Instead, we’re supposed to be on Howard’s side.  Howard has ambitions to be the next Ernest Hemingway.  However, his blue-collar father, Harry (Paul Newman, who also directed), demands that Howard get a job.  Maybe, like us, he realizes how silly Howard looks whenever he gets hunched over his typewriter.  (Robby Benson tries to pull off these “deep thought” facial expressions that simply have to be seen to be believed.)  There’s actually two problems with Howard.  First off, we never believe that he could possibly come up with anything worth reading.  Secondly, it’s impossible to believe that Paul Newman could ever be the father of such an annoying little creep.

Harry, of course, has problems of his own.  He’s just lost his construction job.  He’s having to deal with the fact that he’s getting older.  Fortunately, his son introduces him to a nymphomaniac (Judith Ivey).  Eventually, it all ends with moments of triumph and tragedy, as these things often do.

As always, Newman is believable as a blue-collar guy who believes in hard work and cold beer.  The film actually gets off to a good start, with Newman using a wrecking ball to take down an old building.  But then Robby Benson shows up, hunched over that typewriter, and the film just becomes unbearable.  At least Morgan Freeman’s around to yell at the annoying little jerk.

  • The Life of David Gale
  • Released: 2003
  • Directed by Alan Parker
  • Starring Kevin Spacey, Kate Winslet, Laura Linney, Gabriel Mann, Rhona Mitra, Leon Rippy, Matt Craven, Jim Beaver, Melissa McCarthy

For the record, while I won’t shed any tears whenever Dzhokahr Tsarnaev is finally executed, I’m against the death penalty.  I think that once we accept the idea that the state has the right to execute people, it becomes a lot easier to accept the idea that the state has the right to do a lot of other things.  Plus, there’s always the danger of innocent people being sent to die.  The Life of David Gale also claims to be against the death penalty but it’s so obnoxious and self-righteous that I doubt it changed anyone’s mind.

David Gale (Kevin Spacey) used to the head of the philosophy department at the University of Texas.  He used to be a nationally renowned activist against the death penalty.  But then he was arrested for and convicted of the murder of another activist, Constance Harraway (Laura Linney) and now David Gale is sitting on death row himself.  With his execution approaching, journalist Bitsey Bloom (Kate Winslet) is convinced that Gale was framed and she finds herself racing against time to prevent Texas from executing an innocent man…

There’s a lot of things wrong with The Life of David Gale.  First off, it was made during the Bush administration, so the whole film is basically just a hate letter to the state of Texas.  Never have I heard so many inauthentic accents in one film.  Secondly, only in a truly bad movie, can someone have a name like Bitsey Bloom.  Third, the whole film ends with this big twist that makes absolutely no sense and which nearly inspired me to throw a shoe at the TV.

Of course, the main problem with the film is that we’re asked to sympathize with a character played by Kevin Spacey.  Even before Kevin Spacey was revealed to be a sleazy perv, he was never a particularly sympathetic or really even that versatile of an actor.  (Both American Beauty and House of Cards tried to disguise this fact by surrounding him with cartoonish caricatures.)  Spacey’s so snarky and condescending as Gale that, even if he is innocent of murder, it’s hard not to feel that maybe David Gale should be executed for crimes against likability.