Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to Sam Elliott. In this scene from the classic film Road House, Sam Elliott and Patrick Swayze have a heart-t0-heart. Swayze’s Dalton has a past that can only be understood by Sam Elliott’s Wade Garrett.
Take it away, mijo.
A mad bomber is blowing up large chunks of Seattle and seems to have a vendetta against the city’s bomb squad. John Pierce (Sam Elliott), a burn-out who used to be the best of the best when it came to defusing bombs, comes out of retirement to help with the investigation. The only problem is that all of the evidence seems to be pointing at Pierce. Pierce does his best to prove his innocence while more and more members of the bomb squad get blown up.
The Final Cut has its moments. The lengthy opening scene features Amanda Plummer and John Hannah as two cocky members of the bomb squad who discover that defusing their latest explosive isn’t going to be as simple as they think it is. The final 20 minutes takes the film into Saw territory, with an underground lair and a woman who has been turned into a human explosive. In-between, though, the movie is often slow and Sam Elliott sleepwalks through a role that really demanded the low-budget equivalent of a Lethal Weapon-era Mel Gibson. (Wings Hauser comes to mind.) The actual identity of the bomber will be easy for anyone to guess though the bomber’s final fate is actually executed pretty well.
Director Roger Christian is a long-time associate of George Lucas’s and also worked on Alien as a production designer. That’s probably why the sets, especially that underground lair, look surprisingly good for what was obviously a direct-to-video B-movie. Five years after The Final Cut, Christian would attain an infamous immortality when he was the director unfortunate enough to be credited as directing Battlefield Earth. Compared to Battlefield Earth, The Final Cut is damn good movie.
Though the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences claim that the Oscars honor the best of the year, we all know that there are always worthy films and performances that end up getting overlooked. Sometimes, it’s because the competition too fierce. Sometimes, it’s because the film itself was too controversial. Often, it’s just a case of a film’s quality not being fully recognized until years after its initial released. This series of reviews takes a look at the films and performances that should have been nominated but were, for whatever reason, overlooked. These are the Unnominated.
I have come around on Tombstone.
The first time I watched this 1993 film, I was a bit confused as to why so many of my friends (especially my male friends) worshipped the film. To me, it was a bit too messy for its own good, an overlong film that told a familiar story and which featured so many characters that it was difficult for me to keep track of them all. Perhaps because everyone I knew loved the film so much, I felt the need to play contrarian and pick out every flaw I could find.
And I still think those flaws are there. The film had a troubled production, with original director Kevin Jarre falling behind in shooting and getting replaced by George Pan Cosmatos, a director who didn’t have any real interest in the material and whose all-business approach rubbed many members of the cast the wrong way. Kurt Russell took over production of the film, directing the actors and reportedly paring down the sprawling script to emphasize the relationship between Russell’s Wyatt Earp and Val Kilmer’s Doc Holliday. On the one hand, this led to a lot of characters who really didn’t seem to have much to do in the finished film. Jason Priestley’s bookish deputy comes to mind. On the other hand, Russell was right.
The film’s heart really is found in the friendship between Wyatt and Doc. It doesn’t matter that, in real life, Wyatt Earp was hardly as upstanding as portrayed by Kurt Russell. It also doesn’t matter that the real-life Doc Holliday was perhaps not as poetic as portrayed by Val Kilmer. Today, if you ask someone to picture Wyatt Earp, they’re probably going to picture Kurt Russell with a mustache, a cowboy hat, and a rifle. And if you ask them to picture Doc Holliday, they’re going to picture Val Kilmer, sweating due to tuberculosis but still managing to enjoy life. Did Doc Holliday every say, “I’ll be your huckleberry,” before gunning someone down? He might as well have. That’s how he’s remembered in the popular imagination. And it’s due to the performances of Russell and Kilmer that I’ve come around to eventually liking this big and flawed western. With each subsequent viewing, I’ve come to appreciate how Russell and Kilmer managed to create fully realized characters while still remaining true to the Western genre. If Wyatt Earp initially fought for the law, Doc Holliday fought for friendship. Kilmer is not only believable as a confident gunslinger who has no fear of walking into a dangerous situation. He’s also believable as someone who puts his personal loyalty above all else. He’s the type of friend that everyone would want to have.
That said, I do have to mention that there are a lot of talented people in the cast, many of whom are no longer with us but who will live forever as a result their appearance here. When Powers Boothe delivered the line, “Well …. bye,” he had no way of knowing that he would eventually become a meme. Boothe is no longer with us, I’m sad to say. But he’ll live forever as long as people need a pithy way to respond to someone announcing that they’re leaving social media forever. Charlton Heston appears briefly as a rancher and he links this 90s western with the westerns of the past. Robert Mitchum provides the narration and it just feels right. The large ensemble cast can be difficult to keep track of and even a little distracting but there’s no way I can’t appreciate a film that manages to bring together not just Russell, Kilmer, Boothe, Heston, and Mitchum but also Sam Elliott, Bill Paxton, Michael Biehn, Michael Rooker, Billy Bob Thornton, Frank Stallone, Terry O’Quinn, and even Billy Zane! The female roles are a bit underwritten. Dana Delaney is miscast but Joanna Pacula feels exactly right as Doc Holliday’s lover.
But ultimately, this film really does belong to Val Kilmer. When I heard the sad news that he had passed away last night, I thought of two films. I thought of Top Gun and then I thought of Tombstone. Iceman probably wouldn’t have had much use for Doc Holliday. And Doc Holliday would have resented Iceman’s attitude. But Val Kilmer — that brilliant actor who was so underappreciated until he fell ill — brought both of them to brilliant life. In the documentary Val, Kilmer attends a showing of Tombstone and you can say he much he loves the sound of audience cheering whenever Doc Holliday showed up onscreen.
Tombstone was a flawed film and 1993 was a strong year. But it’s a shame that Val Kilmer was never once nominated for an Oscar. Tombstone may not have been a Best Picture contender but, in a year when Tommy Lee Jones won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the similarly flawed The Fugitive, it seems a shame that Kilmer’s Doc Holliday was overlooked.
Tombstone (1993, dir by George Pan Cosmatos (and Kurt Russell), DP: William Fraker)
Previous entries in The Unnominated:
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly watch parties. On Twitter, I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday and I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday. On Mastodon, I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.
Tonight, at 10 pm et, I will be hosting #FridayNightFlix! The movie? 1989’s Road House!
The name is Dalton! Everyone thought that Dalton would be bigger but he’s the second best bouncer in the world and if anything happens to Wade Garrett, he’ll be the absolute best. He’s a legend but can he clean up the wildest bar in Missouri? Will Ben Gazzara convince him to switch sides? Will Doc convince him to give peace a chance? And will Tinker ever get over his fear of polar bears? Just remember, pain don’t hurt. Be nice until it’s time not to be nice. And always check the boots for blades.
If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag! I’ll be there tweeting and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
Road House is available on Prime!
See you there!
1972’s Frogs opens with Pickett Smith (played by a youngish Sam Elliott) canoeing through the bayou, taking pictures of all of the local sights. Pickett is a nature photographer and someone who is very concerned about what pollution is doing to the local wildlife. Eventually, Pickett ends up meeting the Crocketts, the wealthy family that owns and lives on an isolated island. Wheelchair-bound family patriarch Jason Crockett (Ray Milland) is looking forward to celebrating the 4th of July. It’s a tradition and he goes all out, decorating the mansion with American flags and listening to patriotic music. The Crockett family always celebrates with Jason, though it quickly becomes apparent that Jason would be just as comfortable celebrating without any of them.
The last thing that Jason Crockett wants is some preachy environmentalist showing up at his mansion and ruining the 4th of July with a bunch of complaints about the pesticides that he’s been using to keep away the island’s wildlife. The only thing worse than having to deal with an environmentalist would be having to deal with an invasion of alligators, snakes, and frogs. Unfortunately, Jason is going to have to spend his holiday dealing with all of those things. Soon, the mansion is surrounded by frogs and servants and family members are showing up dead all over the place.
I’ve seen Frogs a handful of times. It’s one of those films that many of my friends seem to like much more than I do. I have to admit that, for whatever reason, I always find myself struggling to focus on the film. Some of that is because there are more than a few slow spots. But the main problem is that frogs really aren’t that menacing. Frogs are cute and kind of goofy-looking, much like Sam Elliott without his mustache. The alligators are certainly scary. And there’s an attack by a cottonmouth that makes me go, “Agck!” every time that I see it. But frogs just look cute when they start hopping around. Our cat gets excited whenever he sees a frog because he knows that he can put his paw on their back and make them jump. Frogs aren’t threatening but I suspect that’s probably the point of the film. Frogs is not a film that is meant to be taken too seriously and all of the close-ups of the frogs staring at Ray Milland, Sam Elliott, Joan Van Ark, and Adam Roarke are obviously meant to be more humorous than scary. By the end of the film, the frogs are hopping over American flags, like a group of rebellious amphibians that have decided to stage their own 1968 Democratic Convention.
The majority of the cast is adequate if not exactly outstanding, with most of them doing what they can to try to look terrified of a bunch of frogs. That said, the only one who really makes a strong impression is Ray Milland, who appears to relish the opportunity to play someone who dislikes literally everyone that he sees. As played by Milland, Jason is so honest about being a miserable old man that it’s hard not to like him. He doesn’t like humanity and he’s not going to pretend otherwise. One gets the feeling that, when this film was released, he was meant to represent the same establishment that got America into Vietnam. When viewed today, he comes across like the one person who would be smart enough to never get on social media.
Reportedly, this was one of Andy Warhol’s favorite films. I’m glad he enjoyed it.
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.
Tonight, for #ScarySocial, Deanna Dawn will be hosting 1972’s Frogs, starring Sam Elliott and Ray Milland!
If you want to join us on Saturday night, just hop onto twitter, start the film at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag! The film is available on Prime and YouTube. I’ll probably be there and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.
Tonight, at 10 pm et, I will be hosting #FridayNightFlix! The movie? 1989’s Road House!
The name is Dalton! Everyone thought that Dalton would be bigger but he’s the second best bouncer in the world and if anything happens to Wade Garrett, he’ll be the absolute best. He’s a legend but can he clean up the wildest bar in Missouri? Will Ben Gazzara convince him to switch sides? Will Doc convince him to give peace a chance? And will Tinker ever get over his fear of polar bears? Just remember, pain don’t hurt. Be nice until it’s time not to be nice. And always check the boots for blades.
If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag! I’ll be there tweeting and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
Road House is available on Prime and Netflix!
See you there!
Calvin Dexter (Sam Elliott) is a former CIA agent who now works as a professional avenger. No, that doesn’t mean that he knows Iron Man or that he works with John Steed and Mrs. Peel. Instead it means that, motivated by his own feelings of hopelessness after his daughter was killed in Panama, Calvin offers his services to anyone who needs more help than the law can or will provide. Calvin Dexter is not your typical, cynical ex-spy. He is trying to make the world a better place by taking out its worst inhabitants. He is such an idealist that he even has a “No Peace Without Justice” bumper sticker on his pickup truck.
When Dexter is hired to track down Rickie, the son of an old friend, he discovers that Rickie was captured while working for a charity that was trying to help refugees in Bosnia. Rickie was tortured and murdered by men working for the Serbian warlord, Zoran Zilic (David Hayman). Dexter sets out to avenge Rickie’s death. Unfortunately, CIA director Paul Devereux (James Cromwell) considers Zilic to be a security asset. He doesn’t care how many people Zilic kills as long as he’s useful to U.S. Intelligence. Devereux sends another CIA agent, Frank McBride (Timothy Hutton), to stop Dexter by any means necessary.
Based on a novel by Fredrick Forsyth and produced for the TNT network, Avenger is one of those movies that used to show up often on late night television. I can remember it playing in the background during more than one late night study session in college. It’s the ideal film for late night viewing because there are enough twists and turns to hold your attention but the story is still easy to follow. While the movie does have an important point to make about the war crimes that took place in Bosnia and America’s role in protecting some of the worst perpetrators of those crimes, its main strength is the determined performance of Sam Elliott. Elliott is one of the few actors who has mastered the art of being both laid back and laser focused at the same time. He plays Dexter like a modern day frontier marshal, traveling to the most dangerous parts of world to dispense simple but effective justice.
Avenger is fast-paced and it will hold your attention. Sometimes, it feels like it could have been a pilot for a potential show and it is easy to imagine Dexter traveling to a different country each week and taking out a new international villain. Timothy Hutton has a few good scenes as the rival CIA agent, even if he can’t match Sam Elliott’s killer charisma. As usual, James Cromwell is well-cast as a government official who thinks that the ends can justify any means. Whenever I see a movie like this, featuring Cromwell as the epitome of what everyone hates about the establishment, I’m reminded that it’s been a long time since he played Archie Bunker’s reliably goofy best friend, Stretch Cunningham.
I had a long day on Wednesday so I unwound the only way that seemed appropriate. I watched Road House, the classic film in which Patrick Swayze plays Dalton. Dalton is the second-greatest bouncer of all time. Who is the greatest? None other than Dalton’s mentor, Wade Garrett!
Now, there’s a lot of reasons to love Road House but the performance of Sam Elliott in the role of Wade Garrett is definitely one of them. If you don’t cry a little when Ben Gazzara’s goons murder old Wade, you just don’t have a heart. In the end, of course, Wade’s bloody corpse gets left on top of the bar and, honestly, I think that’s the way Wade would want to go.
Anyway, watching Road House reminded me of just how awesome Sam Elliott is so I decided to follow it up by watching another Sam Elliott film, one that I had previously DVR’d off of TMC last week. Filmed in 1975 and released in ’76, Lifeguard features a youngish Sam Elliott as the title character. Even though the lifeguard in question might be named Rick Carlson, it’s hard not to think of this film as essentially being Wade Garrett: The Early Years.
When Lifeguardopens, Rick Carlson is 32 years old. He’s been a lifeguard since he graduated high school. In his youth, he was a championship-winning surfer. Now, he’s an aging beach bum who is content to spend both the summer and the winter sitting in his lifeguard tower, watching life on the beach and occasionally saving someone from drowning. Rick has a small apartment, several girlfriends, and a legion of adoring fans. Younger lifeguards like Chris (Parker Stevenson, who would later co-star on Baywatch) view him as being a mentor. Beachgoers view him as being an authority figure, the type that can go to if the surfers are being obnoxious or if some old perv is wandering around exposing himself. 17 year-old Wendy (Kathleen Quinlan) flirts with him and, against his better instincts and common sense, Rick often flirts back. Despite a bit of gray in his hair and the fact that he gets winded a bit easier, Rick is still living the same life that he was living when he first graduated high school and he’s happy with that.
Or, at least, he is until he gets an invitation to his 15 year high school reunion and he discovers that everyone else is actually living a real life with real responsibilities. When he discovers that his former girlfriend, Cathy (Anne Archer), is now divorced, Rick starts to think about what could have been. When another former high school friend, Larry (Stephen Young), offers Rick a high-paying job selling cars, Rick finds himself wondering if it’s time to leave the beach and finally get a “real” job.
Lifeguard is an episodic film, a mix of comedy and drama that has an unexpectedly melancholy feel to it. For the most part, the film asks us to sympathize with Rick’s desire to spend the rest of his life on the beach but, at the same time, it also doesn’t deny that there are drawbacks to Rick’s lifestyle. Rick’s living the life he wants but he’s largely doing so alone, unable to build up any sort of personal connection with anyone who isn’t 16 years younger than him. Interestingly enough, for a film called Lifeguard, we really don’t see Rick rescuing many people or doing anything else that you might expect to see a lifeguard doing. Modern viewers will probably spend the entire movie waiting for Rick to give a speech about why being a lifeguard is a holy calling but that moment never happens. Instead, it’s pretty clear that Rick mostly just enjoys hanging out at the beach and being a lifeguard allows him to get paid to do just that. Watching the film, I could not help but compare Rick’s laid back attitude to the overly earnest lifeguards who populated Baywatch. Mitch Buchannon would have kicked Rick off the beach for not taking the job seriously enough. As well, as opposed to the vibrant cinematography that we’ve come to expect from beach movies, the visual style of Lifeguard is often moody and underlit. At times, the beach itself looks like it’s suffering from an existential crisis. The sand looks dull. The skies above the water often appear to be gray and full of clouds. Rick has apparently decided to spend the rest of his life on the ugliest beach in California.
It’s a flawed film, to be sure. The attempts to mix drama and comedy often lead to uneven results and Anne Archer, Parker Stevenson, and Stephen Young are stuck with underwritten characters. (The film’s script especially lets Young down, making Larry such an obnoxious character that it’s hard to believe that he and Rick would have ever been friends in the firs place.) When the film does work, it’s due to the performances of Kathleen Quinlan and Sam Elliot. Though her character is a cliché (the rebellious teenager who isn’t as worldly as she thinks she is), Quinlan does a good job of giving the character a personality that makes her more than just a stock temptation.
The film belongs, of course, to Sam Elliott and he is perfectly cast. As he would do decades later in The Hero, Elliott does a wonderful job of suggesting the little doubts that lurk underneath the laid back surface of his character. His strongest moment occurs not on the beach but when Rick goes to his high school reunion and realizes that he no longer fits in with his former classmates, all of whom have careers and families. Rick goes from being cocky to insecure in a matter of minutes and Elliott captures Rick’s emotions beautifully. At that moment, it’s hard not to feel sorry for Rick. One can understand why he’s tempted to leave the beach for the real world but, at the same time, one can also see that Rick understands that it might be too late for him to do so. He’s spent the last 15 years in a perpetual adolescence and the rest of the world has moved on. Elliott perfectly captures the moment when Rick realizes that his happiness has come with a price. Rick is a flawed (if ultimately good) person but Sam Elliott gives a flawless performance in the role. Just as surely was Wade Garrett rescued Dalton when Wesley’s men tried to stop the beer delivery, Sam Elliott saves Lifeguard.
Happy birthday, Bradley Cooper!
Bradley Cooper is 45 years old today. With all the recent talk about how people’s lives have changed over the past decade, let’s take a minute to appreciate just how spectacularly things have gone for Bradley Cooper, career-wise. Ten years ago, Bradley Cooper was probably best-known for playing the smarmiest member of The Hangover‘s quartet of friends. Now, Cooper is known for not only being one of the best actors working today but also for making an acclaimed directorial debut with the 2018 Best Picture nominee, A Star Is Born.
Cooper not only directed A Star is Born but he also starred in it. He played Jackson Maine, a country musician who has been drinking for as long as he can remember. He used to drink with his father and when his father died, Jackson continued to drink alone. (At one point, Jackson says that he was a teenager when his father died.) Managed by his older brother, Bobby (Sam Elliott), Jackson became a star but his career has been in decline for a while. For all of his talent and for all of his belief that he has something worth saying, Jackson is drinking his life away. He stumbles from show to show and is often dependent upon Bobby to tell him what he missed while he was blacked out.
When Jackson stumbles into a drag bar and sees Ally (Lady Gaga, making her film debut) singing a song by Edith Piaf, he is immediately captivated by her talent. Ally, whose father (Andrew Dice Clay) is a limo driver who once aspired to be bigger than Sinatra, is at first weary of Jackson but he wins her over. After she punches a drunk and he takes her to a grocery store to construct a makeshift cast for her hand, she sings a song that she wrote and Jackson decides to take her on tour. Soon, they’re in love and, before you know it, they’re married!
Unfortunately, Jackson’s alcoholism threatens both their happiness and their future. While Ally’s star rises, his continues to dim. Will Ally sacrifice her career for Jackson or will Jackson sacrifice his life for Ally?
It’s a familiar story, one that’s been told many times. The first version was 1932’s What Price Hollywood, which featured aspiring actress Constance Bennett falling in love with an alcoholic director played by Lowell Sherman. In 1937, What Price Hollywood? was unofficially remade as A Star Is Born, with Janet Gaynor as Esther, the actress who falls in love with faded matinee idol, Norman Maine (Fredric March). The next version came out in 1954 and featured Judy Garland as Esther and James Mason as Norman. Significantly, the 1954 version added music to the plot, with Judy Garland singing The Man That Got Away.
In 1976, the story was told a third time. This version of A Star is Born starred Barbra Streisand as singer Esther Hoffman and Kris Kristofferson as a self-destructive rock star named John Norman Howard. The 1976 version was terrible, largely because there was zero chemistry between Streisand and Kristofferson. And yet, one gets the feeling that the 1976 version is the one that had the most influence on the 2018 version. Not only does Bradley Cooper’s version of A Star Is Born make the story about aspiring singers but one gets the feeling that Cooper watched the 1976 version, saw the lack of chemistry between Kristofferson and Streisand, and said, “There’s no way that’s going to happen in my movie!”
Indeed, it’s the chemistry between Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga that makes the latest version of A Star Is Born so compulsively watchable. I mean, we already know the story. From the minute that Jackson and Ally meet for the first time, we know what’s going to happen. But Cooper and Lady Gaga have got such an amazing chemistry, that it almost doesn’t matter whether the movie surprises us or not. There’s a scene where Ally says that she’s always been told that her nose is too big and Jackson responds by nonchalantly touching her nose and, with that one simple and very naturalistic gesture, the film convinces us that Jackson and Ally are meant to be together, even if just for a while. It also makes it all the more upsetting when a drunk and jealous Jackson later uses Ally’s insecurities against her.
(Of course, I should admit that I’ve always been insecure about my own nose so, at that moment, I totally understood what Ally was feeling.)
It’s an unabashedly romantic and sentimental film but it works because, as a director, Cooper brings just enough of an edge to the story. Cooper, who has been sober since 2004, has been open about his past struggle with alcoholism and, as both an actor and director, he’s smart enough not to romanticize Jackson’s addictions. In many ways, Jackson Maine is a pain in the ass to be around. We watch as he goes from being a fun drunk to a sad drunk to a mean drunk, all the while lashing out at anyone who gets too close to him. At the same time, Cooper also captures the spark of genius and the hints of inner goodness that would explain why he is never totally rejected by those that he’s hurt. Cooper offers up hints of who Jackson could have been if he hadn’t surrendered to pain and addiction. We understand why Ally and Bobby stick with him, even if we wouldn’t blame either one of them if they refused to have anything more to do with him.
Lady Gaga, meanwhile, gives a performance is that is down-to-Earth and instantly relatable. Anyone who has ever been insecure or who has ever felt as if she was being punished for being independent or thinking for herself will understand what Ally’s going through. At some point, we’ve all been Ally and we’ve all had a Jackson Maine in our lives. Sadly, these stories rarely have happy endings.
For most of 2018, it was assumed that A Star Is Born would be the film to beat at the Oscars. While it was eventually nominated for 8 Oscars, Bradley Cooper did not receive a nomination for Best Director. (Cooper, Lady Gaga, and Sam Elliott were all nominated in the acting categories.) In the end, Green Book won Best Picture while A Star Is Born only won one award, for Best Original Song.
Of course, Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga’s performance of that song was perhaps the highlight of the entire Oscar ceremony.
That’s the power of good chemistry.
Through the Shattered Lens 