Werth: Hey, Wise.
Wise: Hey, Werth. How come you have a five-day beard and your hair looks like a before picture from a Wen Hair Care infomercial?
Werth: Because unfortunately due to the wrath of Hurricane Sandy, I still don't have electricty.
Wise: That stinks, Werth.
Werth: But still, there are those who lost much more than I have in the storm.
Wise: True, true. Our thoughts go out to all those who lost power, property and loved ones.
Werth: Of course every chance I get to go to a friend's house and charge up my laptop, I pop in a DVD and try a little Hollywood classic film escapism. And when I think of movies where hurricanes play an integral part, a rare gem immediately comes to mind. Samuel Goldwyn's production of the Gershwin classic Porgy and Bess (1959) was complicated from its very start. Many of the African American stars approached to appear in the film were initially hesitant because the characters of Catfish Row were viewed as stereotypes from a former time.
Sidney Poitier in particular downright refused to do the film because he felt that Porgy singing songs like "I Got Plenty o' Nuttin'" was the wrong image to portray during the Civil Rights Movement. But Hollywood legend has it that Goldwyn played hardball and Poitier decided to do the film lest Goldwyn decide not to use him in the much more progressive film The Defiant Ones (1958).
Wise: In Hollywood, you're only as good as your last compromise.
Werth: Ultimately the production came together under the direction of Otto Preminger and the beloved/notorious musical was put to film with Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge, Pearl Bailey and Sammy Davis, Jr. hunkering down as a hurricane blows into town. Normally, I'd give a lovingly detailed description of the film based on on a recent viewing—however, if the racial thorniness of Porgy and Bess was bad in 1959, it has become even more conflicted in the ensuing years—and unfortunately, Porgy and Bess has never been transferred to DVD.
Wise: Geena Davis makes it to DVD, but Gershwin doesn't?
Werth: The reported reason for the film to be kept in the vaults is conflicts with the Gershwin estate, but Poitier has been very vocal about his disgust for the project, recruiting tastemakers like Oprah to denounce the film. It's a shame because, racial issues aside, the film is an amazing record of some of the best African-American performers of the time giving life to a score that despite its "Black patois" is truly one of the greatest ever written.
And Oscar-nominated Leon Shamroy's color cinematography is vibrant and beautiful. When I saw the film at a special event at the Ziegfeld Theater several years ago, the future looked bleak for Porgy and Bess.
The last remaining prints are decaying and no one seems to want to devote the money to saving them. I think that's a shame. The conversation that Porgy and Bess generates is a unique perspective on racial issues of that time, and the film should not be erased because it is difficult. In fact, that is the very reason it should be saved.
Wise: While the gale-force winds have driven you back to re-examining neglected classics, I spent my storm watch deeply invested in dudes in frocks (Team Jujubee!) as well as another category five disaster: Twister (1989).
Werth: Twister wasn't a total disaster area. There were some lovely close-ups on Cary Elwes and his lips.
Wise: Actually, this is the other Twister based on the novel Oh! by Mary Robison. Kansas soda pop and mini golf millionaire Eugene Cleveland (Harry Dean Stanton) has been neglecting his kids while chasing his fortune as well as the sexy, but snappish host of a local Christian children's TV program. His daughter Maureen (Suzy Amis) spends most of her time sipping beer from a can and ignoring her own daughter Violet, while his son Howdy (Crispin Clover) swans about the house in velvet jackets and a sleek bob, looking like the source material for Johnny Depp's Willy Wonka.
Werth: Crispin Glover invented fey creepiness.
Wise: Into this maelstrom of family dysfunction bursts Maureen's ex Chris (Dylan McDermott) who wants to marry Maureen and save both her and Violet from the insanity of their family. Just as his efforts begin to look hopeless, a tornado touches down and the family flees into the basement where they are forced to confront their frustrations and each other.
Werth: Kansas basements are great for frustrating confrontations.
Wise: The film is something like an awkward family reunion with mismatched performances and oddball connections, lots of shouting, narrative doglegs, and even though things end up happily enough, no one is sure if attending was a good idea. McDermott gives soulful intensity and energizes his scenes, but it's Glover who gives the most memorable—and bizarre—performance of the film. (His guitar solo is not to be missed.)
Werth: Speaking of things not to be missed, everyone should tune in next week for a less stormy Film Gab.
Wise: And hopefully Werth will look less like Tom Hanks in Castaway.
Werth: Hi, Wise.
Wise: Tell me, Werth. Do you have...The Hunger?
Werth: While I do have an extensive video collection, I tend to shy away from vampire lesbian flicks.
Wise: No, I meant The Hunger Games—the new movie based on Suzanne Collins's ballyhooed dystopian teen series where a bunch of pouty-lipped pre-adults are forced to fight each other to the death.
Werth: Sounds like the sales rack at Abercrombie & Fitch. But I do love any good flick that takes place in the bleak near-future where individuals must battle each other for survival.
Wise: I know, The Vow was awesome.
Werth: I was thinking more along the lines of John Carpenter's Escape from New York. Picture it. 1997. America's at war with the Commies and Manhattan's crime rate is so high the whole island is turned into a maximum security prison.
Wise: Wait—1997? I thought this blog was about the future?
Werth: The movie was made in 1981—so back then 1997 was the future. Donald Pleasance is the President and his plane gets shot down by a terrorist worker's group and crash lands in Battery Park where the prisoners take him hostage.
Wise: This is so '97.
Werth: So the only man that Manhattan Prison Warden Hauk (Lee Van Cleef) can turn to is war-hero turned bank robber Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell). Snake only has 24 hours to sneak into the city, find the President and rescue him and get a full pardon before Snake's head explodes.
Wise: What?
Werth: It's complicated, but John Carpenter has always been a writer/director who didn't necessarily rely on plot believability. His knack for creating fast-paced action-horror movies revolved around creating a hero and a cast of characters that stood out from the seemingly pointless point A to point B stories.
Russell was practically a Carpenter muse portraying several studly heroes in classics like The Thing (1982), Big Trouble in Little China (1986) and sequel Escape from L.A. (1996). In Escape from New York Russell unashamedly relishes playing the un-repentant anti-hero. He doesn't so much wink at the audience as wink, sexily snarl and then blow some dirtbag's head off.
Wise: I assume that's how he snagged Goldie.
Werth: Snake is dropped by glider into the hellish landscape of dilapidated, crook-murderer-psycho-infested New York City in the hopes of finding the President. Along the way he runs into a cavalcade of 1980's character actors like Isaac Hayes, Harry Dean Stanton, Ernest Borgnine and Adrienne Barbeau—and her breasts. The whole film is good, dirty fun with shots of the desperate crew running through such cherished NY landmarks as a Chock Full 'o Nuts store.
Considering the whole thing was shot on the lot in L.A. and in St. Louis, Missouri, the "NY feel" is better than it deserves to be. And with a classic, cheap-but-creepy synthesizer soundtrack composed by Carpenter himself, Escape is one of those cult '80's flicks that is a fun place to visit even if you don't want to live there.
Wise: In Children of Men (2006), Clive Owen plays Theo Faron, a civil servant in 2027 Great Britain—the last stable nation amid a worldwide crisis of pollution and infertility. Kidnapped by his ex-wife Julian Taylor (Julianne Moore) who now runs a militant immigrant rights splinter group, Theo makes a deal to smuggle Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey), a young pregnant refugee, out of the country and to a medical community sequestered in the Azores.
Werth: I wish someone would do the same with Snooki.
Wise: Loosely based on P.D. James's novel of the same name and directed by Alfonso Cuarón, the film is a compelling mix of the possible and the improbable, filled with everyday details seamlessly mixed with futuristic contraptions that make the film's grim view of the future seem particularly close at hand. This is the guy who directed the third, and best, Harry Potter movie, and he's made his career finding the perfect balance of conflicting tones.
Werth: Which in cinema usually means really dark lighting.
Wise: Even more vital to communicating Cuarón's vision is Owen's performance: casting off his matinee idol looks, Owen transforms Theo from a man riven by despair into a guardian of a hope he never knew he possessed. This isn't the typical sci-fi action hero bluster—although there's plenty of gun play and chase scenes—instead Owen creates a man who had lost his soul, but now finds his way.
And he's not the only one showing off his acting chops: Michael Caine has a delightfully daffy role as a pot smoking eccentric; and Julianne Moore uses her fragile beauty to portray a woman who's lost everything but her ideals.
Werth: Speaking of losing ideals, are you ready to battle your way through the crush of teens to see The Hunger Games?
Wise: I think I'll save my fighting spirit for next week's Film Gab.
