Before Larry David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” there were Albert Brooks’s squirm-inducing comedies. “Modern Romance” is the funniest of Brooks’s comedies and also the most uncomfortable to watch.
In this scene, Brooks’s ultra-neurotic character just broke up his long-time girlfriend and now, regretting his decision to do so, is completely miserable. A work colleague gives him some quaaludes to help him out and he takes all of them. Brooks’s character goes through the entire emotional gamut in under 10 minutes, including several luded-out phone calls. Hysterically funny … and while I’ve never taken ludes, I can’t say I haven’t made some embarrassing phone calls myself in an altered state of mind back in the day.
According to legend, this was one of Stanley Kubrick’s favorite films.
Yes, it’s the infamous scene where Crazy Luther … rattling three glass bottles together … challenges the beleaguered, but strong street gang the Warriors to a final battle. Luther, played by David Patrick Kelly, based this infamous taunt/intimidation on a neighborhood crazy Kelly grew up with who was always screwing with Kelly for some reason or another back in the day. My other thought about this scene is how much I still have a crush on Deborah Van Valkenburgh.
As to “The Warriors,” it’s one of the best action films ever made. Try to see if you can hunt down the original theatrical version instead of director Walter Hill’s revised “director’s cut” which frames the action within comic book frames. Seriously, the film is already a comic book, why would you call extra, unneeded attention to this?
Enough already with these delusional Boomer film directors and their “improvements” on films that don’t need it. As the creators, they can do whatever they want, but don’t make the originals … the ones that I remember seeing and loving … impossible to see. Lucky for me, I managed to track down a theatrical cut DVD three years ago at a Hollywood Video that was going out of business and selling off its inventory.
Drug freakout scenes are one of my favorite cliches in movies. My all-time favorite drug freakout scene (with the exception of Helen Hunt trying to fly in the 1982 CBS TV-movie “Desperate Lives”) is this scene from Oliver Stone’s “The Doors.” With the Velvet Underground’s “Venus in Furs” and “Heroin” playing in the background, Val Kilmer’s Jim Morrison takes a walk on the wild side with all kinds of Andy Warhol characters from Tom Baker (played by Michael Madsen), Warhol (played by Crispin Glover), Nico (played by Christina Fulton), and some unnamed Warhol assistant (played by Oscar winning 70s singer/songwriter Paul Williams). Seeing this on home video doesn’t compare to seeing this film on a huge screen with booming stereo sound back in the day. The wobbly, boat-in-a-tsunami camera movements are much more intense and caused me to have a major headache when I saw this in a theater.
Now back to “Sneakin’ in the Movies” … By the winter of 1985, I had had unparallelled success buying tickets to R-rated films before the age of 17 in my very conservative home town, probably due to my height. So, when me and some friends of mine wanted to see “Porky’s Revenge” on opening weekend, we thought we had a lock on achieving this goal … (OK, I hear you sneering out there … like you were sipping espresso at the local art house discussing a revival of “L’Avventura” when you were 15 … kiss my Antonioni!) …
However, when I went to buy the tickets, I heard words I had never heard before at a box-office: “May I see some ID?” I fumbled out the lame “Oh, I think I left it at home” and bought 3 tickets to a PG-13 film called “The Sure Thing” instead. Since my friends and I were bound and determined to see “Porky’s Revenge,” we simply walked into the theater showing “Porky’s Revenge” and sat down. Unfortunately for us, several other people our age had the same idea, because the film sold out and there were about 50 patrons who bought tickets who couldn’t find a seat. The usher sized up what was happening real fast and announced “We know there are people here that shouldn’t be here. I’m going to come back in 3 minutes and start checking ticket stubs.” We took that as our cue to check out “The Sure Thing.”
Now, “The Sure Thing” was not a completely unknown choice. I knew Rob Reiner (director of “This is Spinal Tap”) had directed it and it had gotten some good notices by critics, so I figured it couldn’t be that bad. Granted, the premise is rom-com hell to the nth degree (wacky-nutty he-man tries to impress a beautiful but uptight woman), but I remember the film got a lot of praise at the time because it was a teen sex comedy with heart … unusual at the time (this was 14-years before “American Pie”). Anyway, I wound up liking it a lot, thought it was funny as hell, and loved John Cusack’s character Walter Gibson.
Riding a wave of nostalgia recently, I watched it again … and well … I’m sorry to say this movie has not aged well … at all. Don’t get me wrong. I really like Cusack as an actor, like many of Rob Reiner’s films, and still have a little crush on Daphne Zuniga, the lead actress. But Cusack’s character in this film is a complete tool. Maybe that contradictory “wacky-nutty-he-man” thing was mildly sexy to women 30 years ago, but I can’t imagine any woman giving this d-bag a fifth look these days. If you disagree, then I think you’re confusing your memory with other Cusack characters (i.e. “Say Anything”) who were a lot more charming … mainly because they didn’t try so hard. This film is so annoying that even Katherine Heigl wouldn’t act in it. Sometimes, memories and nostalgia are not what they’re cracked up to be.
One of Clint Eastwood’s best and most underrated films, “Tightrope” is less interesting as a thriller (even though it’s a very good one) and more interesting as a character study. The lead character played by Eastwood, a New Orleans detective named Wes Block, who drowns his sorrows over his wife leaving him, by frequenting prostitutes and engaging in sado-masochistic behavior. He’s also looking for a serial killer / rapist whose victims are women that Wes has had some involvement with. There’s even some hints that Wes may in fact be in the killer in question.
Assisting Wes in his investigation is a rape counselor named Beryl, played by Genevieve Bujold, who gets him to confront the hows and whys of his behavior in a mature, non-confrontational way. A key scene that explains his character comes when Beryl asks Wes about his job and his ex-wife. She asks him how dealing with sex crimes in his job affected his private life. He answers that it made him want to treat his wife more tenderly. “How did she respond?” Beryl asks. Wes sadly replies, “She said she wasn’t interested in tenderness.” A quietly devastating moment from a great film.
“The Great Santini” is a marvelous film adaptation of Pat Conroy’s novel. Robert Duvall gives what is arguably his finest acting performance as Lt. Col. Wilbur “Bull” Meechum, a Marine fighter pilot who excels in his job, but bullies everyone around him, especially his family. Michael O’Keefe arguably gives his best ever acting performance as Meechum’s oldest son Ben. Duvall and O’Keefe were both nominated for Oscars that year, but lost out to Robert DeNiro in “Raging Bull” and Timothy Hutton in “Ordinary People” respectively. The film also boasts great performances by Blythe Danner, Lisa Jane Persky, Stan Shaw, and David Keith.
The scene I’ve included here is the memorable and very painful scene where Ben plays a one-on-one basketball game with his father. Duvall has balls of steel for doing a film like this, because what his character does in this scene is one of the most hateful displays of bullying I’ve ever seen on film. The best thing about “The Great Santini” is that there is no redemptive arc to Duvall’s character. He’s an immature, pathetic, loathsome human being pretty much throughout the entire film. He’s not entirely unlikable, but damn near close.
When David Lynch was making his 1986 film “Blue Velvet,” he wanted to use This Mortal Coil’s famous cover of Tim Buckley’s “Song to the Siren” for his film. As great as this cover is, Lynch could not afford the rights to use it based on the limited budget he was given to make “Blue Velvet.” So, Lynch used composer Angelo Badalamenti’s and vocalist Julee Cruise’s “Mysteries of Love” instead. The song was effectively used in the film, especially during the scene where Jeffrey (played by Kyle Maclaughlin) kisses Sandy (played by Laura Dern) for the first time and then during the end credits.
Sometimes, one minute of careful editing, brilliant acting, and music tells you everything you need to know about a character in a film. This is the infamous entrance of Robert DeNiro’s character Johnny Boy in Martin Scorsese’s breakout film from 1973 “Mean Streets.” The scene is cut to the Rolling Stones’ “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and Johnny Boy enters the club, two girls on his arm, acting like a cocky jackass with a stupid hat and suit. His friend, played by Harvey Keitel, eyes him with the most in-control “Oh s–t! This a–hole better not start anything tonight” look I’ve ever seen.
Back when I was 12 years old, I used to visit my Dad in the Washington D.C. area about 4 times a year. There was a mall with a 6-screen multiplex within walking distance of my Dad’s towhouse, so I used to spend a lot of my days buying records, reading books in the bookstore, and seeing movies at the mall.
Being a horror movie fan (the sicker the better) and a “Fangoria” reader at the time (a magazine which showed all of the gory scenes from popular movies the same way stroke mags feature aspiring model/actress/whatevers working very hard to make the rent), I was familiar with the R-rated, gory “Creepshow” that was being released to theaters that fall. With George “Dawn of the Dead” Romero directing and Stephen King as the screenwriter, crafting a hyper-sleazy homage to the hyper-sleazy E.C. Comics of the 1950s, I knew this was going to be a great film.
However, the film was “R” rated, which meant (at least from the religious right city where I grew up), that an adult had to buy your ticket and watch it with you in the theater. I knew there was no way in hell my Dad was going to watch it with me. Not because my Dad was a prude (he took me to the original “Mad Max” and Richard Rush’s “The Stunt Man” when I was 10), but because he thought horror movies were stupid.
I knew I could probably sneak in, but every time I’ve always tried to do something underhanded in my life, I always get caught. I’ve never been a good liar or sneak (some people say that’s a good thing). Anyway, I thought “Hey … I’m tall for my age … Maybe I could pass for 17.” I walked up to the box office at the multiplex, trying to be cool and “casually” requested a ticket for “Creepshow.” The ticket taker said “$2.50” I threw down my cash and ran in to the theater thinking “Yeah, motherf–kers! That’s how I roll!” Of course, it never occurred to me that the theater probably had no policy about enforcing the age policy on R-rated movies (ahh, the 1980s in a major city!), but for an afternoon, I thought I was a motherf–kin’ badassss!
The film didn’t disappoint. It delivered lots of gore, bad language, and very very nasty behavior. But with the comic book stylings of the production design, it was all in very good, tasteless fun. It’s funny, but the attached preview doesn’t even remotely hint at how nasty this film is. But even still, like an Alice Cooper album, you find yourself more entertained that offended. Not Romero’s best by any means, but still a lot of fun.
For those that only know Roxy Music by the smooth crooning of 1982’s “Avalon” album need to understand that the band was not always so slick. The material that Roxy recorded during the period between 1972 and 1975 was a wonderful mix of the sleazy and the sublime. “Mother of Pearl” is arguably the greatest song of that period, and arguably the greatest thing they ever recorded.
The first 1:23 of this song is pure metallic freakout by guitarist Phil Manzanera while lead singer Bryan Ferry sings about all of the meaningless sex he’s getting, albeit with a very frenetic, panicked tone. Then, the song slows down considerably and Ferry finally confesses that he’s found what he was looking for all along … true love … and that he will give up everything to spend the rest of his life with his “mother of pearl.” Critics cite the Who’s “A Quick One” as the greatest mini-rock opera of all time. I totally love “A Quick One,” but I would also add “Mother of Pearl” to that very short list. It’s an absolutely thrilling and emotional epic. The song was used in a very pivotal early episode of the hit TV show “How I Met Your Mother” and also in the film “SLC Punk.”
(On a side note, I would also add Green Day’s “Jesus of Suburbia” to that very short list of greatest mini-rock operas of all time. But I’ve already discussed that in an earlier post).
Dave's Strange World 