When Disaster Gabs

Wise: Werth, where's your life jacket?  

Werth: With my yacht. 

Wise: It's the anniversary of both the launch of the Titanic and the Johnstown Flood which makes it highly probable that something disastrous is going to happen today.  

 

Werth: You can't avoid disaster, Wise.  But you can prepare yourself by indulging in some classic disaster flicks and gleaning some tips for making it out alive.  

 

Wise: San Francisco (1936) is one of the first great disaster flicks, setting the template for all the films that follow its lead.  The film opens on New Year's Eve 1904, and stars Clark Gable as Blackie Norton, a casino owner from the wrong side of town, and Spencer Tracy as his best friend Father Mullin who happens to be the local parish priest.  Blackie has no time for religion, but he is determined to spend his wealth trying to make things better for anyone down on his luck.  After a fire ravages a run-down boarding house, Blackie offers a job to displaced chanteuse Mary Blake (Jeanette MacDonald) who has dreams of singing in the local opera house.  

Soon, the two fall in love, but Mary flees into the arms of Jack Holt (Jack Burley), the richest man in town, when she realizes that she'll lose good-girl image if she becomes Jackie's bride.  What she doesn't know is that her new beau made his fortune building shoddy tenements, leaving the city vulnerable to catastrophe. 

Werth: Never date a contractor.

Wise: When that catastrophe strikes in the form of the famous San Francisco earthquake of 1905, the city is thrown into chaos and only those with quick wits and good morals survive.  Gable plays a variation of his famous tough-guy persona, but he's also a man on a spiritual journey.  

Contemptuous of religion, the tragedy forces him to confront both despair and the threat of losing the two people he loves most.  Cast in the familiar role of the understanding clergyman, Tracy has less of an emotional arc, but his palpable chemistry with Gable makes them believable lifelong friends.  MacDonald was the biggest star of the three at the time of the film, and it's interesting to see how MGM's star diva stepped away from the operettas for which she was famous and into a grubby, frontier town.  

Werth: "As she stood in the ruins and sang. A-A-And saaannnggg!"

Wise: To be honest, for years I thought San Francisco was something of a joke, based mostly on the fun Judy Garland made of it when she sang the title song.  But it's actually quite moving, full of the spectacle and big emotions that have become characteristic of this type of film.  Nothing about it is subtle, but it's full of passion, of Clark Gable's snarls and tenderness, of Spencer Tracy's wry morality, and the peculiar—yet compelling—sight of Jeanette MacDonald stooping to a project she clearly felt beneath her, but still having a grand time.
  

Werth: San Francisco must be ground zero for cinematic disasters because Irwin Allen's hit epic, The Towering Inferno (1974), is also set there. Architect Doug Roberts (Paul Newman) is ready to leave the rat race behind after designing a 138 story skyscraper for building guru Jim Duncan (William Holden.) 

But he soon uncovers some shady building practices that Duncan's son-in-law, the corner-cutting queen Roger Simmons (Richard Chamberlain in a rare unlikeable role) has been implementing to lower costs and pocket kickbacks, threatening the safety of the building. Unfortunately, while a red carpet opening event is in full swing on the top floor, an electrical box in a storage room that just happens to contain buckets of flammable material, a wall of Krylon spray-paint cans, and what looks like someone's discarded wedding dress bursts into flame and an evening of blazing terror in the world's tallest building begins.

Wise: Shelley Winters' swim team gold ain't gonna fix this mess. 

Werth: After striking box office gold with The Poseidon Adventure in 1972, Allen stuck to his hit-making blueprint and stocked Inferno with just about every star in Hollywood. Aside from Newman and Holden, there's Steve McQueen as tough-as-nails Fire Chief O'Hallorhan; Faye Dunaway as Roberts' over-sexed wife; Fred Astaire as a dapper, washed-up con man; 

Jennifer Jones as an art tutor with cheek implants that would make Madonna jealous; Robert Wagner as an executive who dips into the secretarial pool; and even O.J. Simpson as a take charge security officer who can't resist rescuing a kitten.

Wise: Making this scene the most ironic in Hollywood history. 

Werth: All of those stars certainly attract attention, but unfortunately, there are too many of them to allow much character development. Newman and McQueen mix up a welcome testosterone cocktail whenever they are together, but for the most part the fragmented stories don't allow for the cohesion that Allen achieved in Poseidon. Inferno is too complicated and too cynical to achieve the heartfelt catharsis of its predecessor, but that doesn't stop it from being a hoot. 

Like a cinematic flume ride, Inferno flies through its sometimes ridiculous plot providing the audience with the thrills it desires—mainly stars (and extras) screaming, falling and burning... in a couple cases all three at the same time. 

While it falls short of the heights achieved in Poseidon, Inferno earned eight Oscar noms, winning three—including one for best song, "We May Never Love Like This Again" which, if you think sounds familiar, it's because it was both written and sung by the same folks who brought you the Oscar-winning song from Poseidon, "The Morning After."

Wise: With all this talk of disaster, maybe we should check out this week's premiere of After Earth.

Werth: I'd rather sit through the San Francisco earthquake... on fire...

Wise: Check back next week for more earth-shaking Film Gab!

True to Life Film Gab

Werth: Hello, Wise.

Wise: Hello, Werth. What cinematic plans do you have for this weekend?

Werth: Well if I can recover from Film Gab favorite Chris Hill's birthday margaritas, I'd like to go see Argo.

Wise: Oh right. The new Affleck flick based on the recently declassified CIA mission to rescue U.S diplomats during the Iran hostage crisis while disguised as a Hollywood film crew.

Werth: It's perfect—real life imitating Hollywood when Hollywood has always enjoyed taking true stories and turning them into movies. But oftentimes movie-making has played fast and loose with the truth. David Lean's Oscar-winner The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) is a perfect example of a movie that people think is based on true events—but is actually more movie magic than reality.  

Kwai tells the story of a group of WWII British POWs led by stalwart Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness) who endure torture and starvation in order to build a bridge for their Japanese captors.

Wise: Kind of like the last time I was at Uniqlo. 

Werth: Shears, a U.S. naval officer (the oft bare-chested William Holden) escapes and is soon leading a group of commandos to blow-up the bridge that Nicholson has taken such care to build. In typical Lean fashion, nature sets a stunning backdrop for this story of human chutzpah and conflict. 

Shot mostly in the dense jungles of Ceylon, the local flora provides a very real cage to trap these men (and actors) in. If you want to grab a bottle of water while watching Lawrence of Arabia, in Kwai you want to grab a moist towelette and a flyswatter. 

Part of Lean's genius was creating all-encompassing atmosphere by replacing sets made by man with sets designed by God.

Wise: Does God get credit for set design?

Werth: The other thing Lean did very well was choose and direct amazing actors. William Holden is as brash, smart-mouthed and rugged as ever—so American he should be made of apple pie. 

Former Asian silent film star Sessue Hayakawa earned an Oscar nom for his role as camp commander Colonel Saito, a cold bastard who finds his well-run deathcamp turned upside-down by Nicholson. 

Which brings me to Guinness. The ease with which Guinness portrays Nicholson is breathtaking. This career soldier's desire for rules and regulations is so deep that he will stand quoting a copy of the Geneva Convention while his captors focus a machine gun on him and his men. 

It should come off as comical how this man justifies building a bridge for the enemy so that he can keep his men's morale up. But Guinness inhabits the unbending role so completely there is no room for comedy. He rightly earned a Best Actor Oscar for making this complex character so real.

Wise: So what about the movie isn't true?

Werth: Try most of it. There was a bridge built by British POWs over the Mae Klong River (Thailand) in 1943, but that's where the similarities end. In fact, when the movie was originally released, veterans who worked on the bridge were fairly upset at the depiction, pointing out that there was no whistling in their camp, and the real-life Col. Nicholson, Phillip Toosey, actually worked to sabotage the bridge instead of building one he could be proud of.

Wise: Long before Peter Jackson was corralling Hobbits or remaking the greatest monkey pic from the Golden Age of Hollywood, he was busy examining the inner lives 1950's teenage girls.  

Werth: Something he has in common with Errol Flynn.  

Wise: Heavenly Creatures (1994) dramatizes the notorious Parker-Hulme murder case in which two New Zealand teenagers developed an incredibly intense friendship that led to the brutal beating death of one girl's mother.  

Juliet Hulme (Kate Winslet), the privileged daughter of an English academic, and Pauline Parker (Melanie Lynskey), the beetle-browed offspring of working class parents, came from very different backgrounds, but they bond over childhood illnesses and a shared love for James Mason and Mario Lanza.  

Together they create an all-consuming fantasy world, and when their parents begin to worry that their fierce friendship would tip inevitably into lesbianism, plans were made to separate them.  Lashing out, the girls bludgeon Pauline's mother and hope to flee to Hollywood.  

Werth: It might have been easier for them to just wear tight sweaters and hang around the soda fountain.
 

Wise: This is the first film appearance of both Winslet and Lynskey, and it's incredible how committed they both are to their performances.  Winslet is by turns fragile and venomous, already displaying the talent that has made her the darling of awards season.  

And Lynskey, who has until recently been mostly confined to sidekick roles (including a long-running stint on Two and a Half Men), reveals the ferocity inside not-so-pretty girls who have something to prove.  

Werth: You'd be ferocious too if you had to act with Charlie Sheen for eight years.

Wise: But it is Peter Jackson himself who does the most amazing work here.  Writing the script with his longtime partner Fran Walsh, he finds the heart of the picture in the girls' friendship and not in the frenzy surrounding the trial.  Plus, as director, he is somehow able to seamlessly combine period piece, fantasy film, domestic drama, and murder mystery into a beautifully integrated whole. 

The film isn't about lurid details—although the scene with a brick in stocking bashing Pauline's mother's skull would turn anyone's stomach—but about the beauty and danger offered by the creative life.

Werth: Speaking of creative, I have to pick-out which flavor margarita I'm going to drink several of tonight.

Wise: Tune in next week for more salt or no-salt Film Gab!

Red State Stars

Werth: Happy Friday, Wise!

Wise: Happy Friday, Werth! I trust you survived this week with your chipper-ness intact.

Werth: I did—but with so much focus on Republicans in the media, I got a little antsy.

Wise: Now, now, Werth. Republicans can be a great source of entertainment—and some of them were even great movie stars. Long before she became a pal of high-powered Republicans, or the U.S. Ambassador to Ghana (1974) and Czechoslovakia (1989), but after she had abandoned the frilly dresses and sausage curls, Shirley Temple tried to make a career of being a teenage movie star. 

Werth:  This is the second time you've talked about late-career Shirley Temple.  

Wise: It's a fascinating period as she attempts to transform from Depression-era icon of spirited pluck and into a more complicated image of a young woman whose desire to do right is sometimes torpedoed by her overblown romantic fantasies.  


Werth: The Good Ship Lollipop could have used a torpedo...  

Wise: In The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947) Temple stars as seventeen-year-old Susan Turner who unceremoniously discards her boyfriend after playboy/artist Richard Nugent (Cary Grant) delivers a lecture at her school.  Her sudden infatuation is so intense that her older sister and guardian Margaret (Myna Loy playing a dour, smalltown judge with a bit of a wink) forces Grant to pose as Temple's boyfriend until she gets over the crush.  This leads to some fantastic comedy as Grant gamely delivers nonsensical teenage patois, makes a mad dash in a sack race, and suffers the kind of indignities that only an actor with his unflappable charm could endure.  

Werth: He doesn't tapdance on a stairway with her, does he?

Wise: Screenwriter Sidney Sheldon captures and caricatures the pretensions of each character—including fine comedic work from Harry Davenport, Rudy Vallee and Ray Collins—and won an Oscar for best screenplay.  His script is both funny and savvy and features the kind of cross-talking gymnastics that Grant specialized in during these screwball comedies.  

But it is Temple herself who has the biggest heart and gives the biggest performance in this movie—she is sly, witty, vulnerable and endearing—and it's a shame there aren't more examples of her skills playing a young adult.  

Werth: My favorite Hollywood Republican never had sausage curls, but he was definitely a beefcake. William Holden considered himself a moderate Republican, but was not very politically active, unless you count his stint as best man at Ronald Reagan's wedding to Nancy Davis in 1952 (back when Reagan was still a Democrat.)

Wise: Also before the Republicans abandoned the country club for NASCAR. 

Werth: Holden made a career out of playing leading men who had brains as well as looks, and his turn as journalist Paul Verrall in Born Yesterday (1950) is no exception. Paul is hired by scrap metal magnate cum gangster Harry Brock (Broderick Crawford) to smarten up his ex-chorus girl fiancée (pronounced "fee-an-see") Billie (Judy Holliday) so she won't embarrass Harry while he wines, dines and bribes Washington, DC, congressmen and their wives.

Wise: Now, of course, the obvious path for dim-witted dames afflicted by malapropisms is running for President. 

Werth: Paul wants to write a story on how crooked Harry is, so a civics lesson for Billie is the perfect chance for him to get in close. Following the bible of romantic comedies, Paul and Billie fall in love, but the unique element is how Billie is transformed—not by love—but by knowledge. She goes from being comfortable with being stupid as long as she gets a coupla' mink coats designed by Jean Louis, to a woman who wants a better life for herself and for her country... but who still wears Jean Louis.

Wise: These days you'd be stupid to want mink coats—unless you enjoy having paint thrown at you.

Werth: Directed by George Cukor and based on the successful Garson Kanin stageplay, Born Yesterday has its moments of "too cute" as Billie learns about democracy walking with Paul through quaint '50's DC locations, but the performances of the three leads more than make up for it. Holden is so effortlessly charming on camera that it is impossible not to fall head over heels in love with him—even when he's wearing glasses. 

Broderick Crawford gets the right balance of doofus and menace to make Harry the comic villain that we like less than we hate. And Holliday puts in an Oscar-winning performance as Billie (she beat both Bette Davis for All About Eve and Gloria Swanson for Sunset Boulevard). Following-up her performance in the role on Broadway, she chirps and squawks her way through the film with comic precision and sensitivity—creating a woman that transcends the typical dumb, blonde, mob moll stereotype. 

Wise: See. Didn't I tell you that Republicans could be entertaining?

Werth: At least when they're on the silver screen. Tune in next week when we discuss Michelle Bachman in The Goodbye Girl.

Happy Birthday Lucy!

Although more well known for her prowess on the small-screen, Lucille Ball first started out as a hopeful silver screen actress, appearing in a multitude of uncredited chorus girl roles for RKO and MGM. Her non-traditional comedy talent didn't translate to the big screen and she became known as "Queen of the B's" for the many roles she played in lower-level pictures. In 1953, however, Ball and her husband Desi Arnaz would create a little TV show called I Love Lucy, and the world was never the same again. Now firmly ensconced in a television persona, Ball would make fewer forays onto the big screen, including the Vincente Minnelli comedy The Long, Long Trailer (1953) (with Arnaz), Yours, Mine and Ours (1968) (with Henry Fonda), and the movie musical version of Mame (1974) (with Bea Arthur). 

But her links to the Hollywood movie community remained strong and her television show would often feature guest stars who played themselves to the delight of Lucy herself and fans everywhere. Episodes with William Holden, Harpo Marx, Tallulah Bankhead and Joan Crawford are wonderful reminders that the First Lady of Television started off on a much bigger screen. Lucille Ball would have turned 100 today.

I’m as Gab as Hell...

Werth: Hey there, Wise.

Wise: Hi there, Werth. 

Werth: Ever since Sidney Lumet died last Saturday, I can’t stop thinking about his movies.



Wise: He was a masterful, prolific filmmaker.

Werth: And one film in particular has stuck in my craw.

Wise: Should I call your internist? 

Werth: That won’t be necessary.  One of my all-time favorite movies is Network (1976), and I know everybody talks about it, but I don’t think its praises can be sung enough.

Wise: Cue the chorus.

Werth: Network’s log line could read: A news agency deals with ratings, revolutionary groups and a messianic newscaster—but the movie deals with so much more than that. Max Schumacher (William Holden) is an aging newsman who finds himself inside bars downing shots of whiskey and reminiscing about his days with Walter Cronkite. His pal Howard Beale is fired for poor ratings by corporate news muckety-muck Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall) and ambitious succubus Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway).

Something in Beale snaps (or is illuminated by the truth) and soon he is ending his final broadcast by pulling back the curtain and exposing the bullshit wizards of the corporate news world with a mad soliloquy. His rallying cry, “I’m as mad as Hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore” is shouted from the rooftops and makes the ratings skyrocket. 

Wise: Faye Dunaway makes a lot of people scream from the rooftops.  

Werth: Christensen knows good ratings when she sees them, and soon she re-organizes the nightly news with Beale’s ranting editorials, psychic hoo-haw, and a group of Symbionese Liberation Army wannabes—turning Beale’s cry for legitimate change into a program catchphrase.

Wise: Sounds like a day at the Fox News Network.

Werth: Exactly. Network is more than a smart, funny, pinpoint accurate satire of corporate news. It’s eerily prophetic. The emergence of nothing-is-sacred “reality news”, rabid, almost religious editorializing (whether it’s honest or not), and sacrificing hard news for ratings is so common now that it’s difficult to imagine the days when those elements were new inventions. Today in our 24 hour news cycle, the Cronkites, the Murrows and the Max Schumachers have all been eaten alive by the likes of Christensen’s new “whorehouse network.” 

Wise: What channel is that on Time Warner?

Werth: Paddy Chayefsky’s script is flawless. You could literally sit down and read it like a book. The performances by all the principles are pitch perfect (Holden and Ned Beatty were nominated for Oscars and Finch and Dunaway won). And the man who brought it all together, Lumet, was given his third Oscar nomination for Best Director. Like an experienced conductor, Lumet weaves together the different sounds of biting comedy (Dunaway’s orgasm scene and the contract negotiations with the Ecumenical Liberation Army),  manic passion (Finch’s inspired on-air orations), and nuanced pathos (Schumacher’s wife’s private and touching admonishment of her philandering spouse) without missing a beat, making a film that is still relevant, fresh and entertaining today. Network is a cautionary tale about a society where heroes are built-up and then chewed-up to appease us. It is an ugly reflection of our culture, one we should watch until we’re “as mad as Hell.” 

Wise: You know it’s funny because the Lumet film I’ve been thinking about this week examines many of those same themes—unlikely heroes, delirious arias about personal integrity, mistrust of talking heads—although in an entirely different way.  

Werth: Let me guess, The Wiz.  

Wise: No, The Wiz—wait, what?  How did you guess that?  Is it that obvious?

Werth: Let’s just say that like Lumet, you often return to the ideas that interest you most. 

Wise: I guess that is a trait all us geniuses share.  Anyway, after the success of the all-black Broadway musical version of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, plans were made to translate it to film, and when Diana Ross expressed interest in playing Dorothy, the producers decided they needed to find a director of large enough stature to manage both the outsize production and Diana Ross’ fledgling acting career.  Lumet may not have been the obvious choice, but he certainly was an interesting choice because of the ways he transformed the project.  When it first appeared onstage, The Wiz remained much more faithful to Baum’s novel than did the beloved Judy Garland musical, albeit peppered with a jive-talking urban patois meant to reflect African-American experience.  Lumet brought on Joel Shumacher to write the screenplay—

Werth: You mean Joel “Nipples on the Bat-suit” Schumacher?

Wise: That’s the one.  Gone was pre-teen Dorothy and her life on the Kansas farm, replaced by the decidedly mature Ross playing an excruciatingly shy 24-year old elementary school teacher who is swept from her apartment in Harlem to a fantasy version of seedy 1970’s New York City.  This change makes an odd kind of sense in the story, although it necessitated further adjustments to the script to make it even more appropriate to Ross’ talents.  The film becomes even more focused on her emotional arc, often to the detriment of the other characters.  Most significantly, it is now Dorothy who convinces her friends of their unrealized gifts, leaving Richard Pryor’s Wiz to cower in the background instead of performing something like the good-natured flimflam mastered by Frank Morgan in The Wizard of Oz.  

Werth: Pryor looks like he had plenty to occupy him off-camera. 

Wise: Dorothy’s three companions in Oz—Michael Jackson’s Scarecrow, Nipsy Russell’s Tinman, and Ted Ross’ Cowardly Lion—each have marvelous moments even though their talents feel mostly underutilized.  Jackson, in particular, brings real warmth to his portrayal, true grace to the awkward Scarecrow, but he never has the opportunity to make the character fully real.  In his final good-bye to Dorothy, he is almost immediately brushed aside by Diana Ross instead of being allowed to connect with the audience before being shuffled away.  

Werth: Not even the Moonwalk can compete with Ross’ hinge-like, stick-leg, high kicks.

Wise: In some ways, it’s a shame that Lumet and Ross didn’t leave The Wiz to be made by someone else entirely while the two of them developed a film about a reluctant New Yorker who eventually allows both the magic and the mayhem of the city to release her inhibitions.  That would have been a picture ideally suited to Lumet’s affectionate dissections of the city and Ross’ twitchy drive.  

Werth: Maybe they could have called it Twitch and the City.  Or The Blair Twitch Project.  I know!  How about The Twitches of Eastwick?

Wise: Or maybe not... Check back next week for more Film Gab... and less twitching.

Werth: The Seven Year Twitch?