J A N E T I L I T Y

I didn’t see any of the Oscar nominated films this year. I’ve become extremely cautious about traveling for twenty minutes to spend ten dollars to sit for two hours to see something that is far less interesting than the trailer had made it out to be. The last experience was seven months ago, it was not a happy one, and, like Mr. Bennet, I am reluctant to be sent on a fool’s errand again.

I do find many movies about movies noteworthy, however; it’s always interesting to see how capable a profession is of self-examination, so I’ve listed ten of movie movies that are well worth looking up.

10. Sweet Liberty (1986) Professor Michael Burgess (Alan Alda) has written a historical text on a little-known Revolutionary War incident. His book is optioned, the production comes to his home town to shoot and Michael is both horrified by the banal adaptation of his scholarly work, and charmed by the lead actors. Michael Caine, as the womanizing leading man, and Lillian Gish, as Michael’s eccentric mother are delightful.

Michael Caine & Michelle Pfeiffer

9. RKO 281 (1999) In 1939, 25-year-old Orson Welles was given an unprecedented contract with RKO to develop his own projects. RKO’s 281^st production was Citizen Kane. The film takes a prevalent theory – that Charles Foster Kane was based upon William Randolph Hearst – and proposes that the story line was developed as retaliation for insults exchanged between Welles and Hearst at a dinner party. James Cromwell as Hearst, Melanie Griffith as Marion Davies and particularly Liev Schreiber as Welles are very good.

Cromwell & Griffith

8. Overnight (2003) – This documentary should be screened in graduating film classes as a cautionary tale. In the late 90s, Troy Duffy, bartender, musician and aspiring screenwriter attracted an impressive offer to direct his script, The Boondock Saints. How and why the deal unravels is a chilly expose of Hollywood politics.

Duffy (second from right) & the Boondock Saints

7. Sullivan’s Travels (1941) Preston Sturges wrote and directed the tale of sheltered filmmaker John Lloyd Sullivan, who wants to abandon lightweight comedies to make his dream project, “something that would realize the potentialities of film as the sociological and artistic medium that it is”, a realistic drama about human misery called Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? His plan to disguise himself as a tramp and acquaint himself with raw humanity spirals downward, and Sullivan comes away from his brush with what we now call “flyover country” concluding, “There’s a lot to be said for making people laugh.”

Veronica Lake & Joel McCrea

6. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962) If Baby Jane could be categorized, it would belong to a thinly populated genre called Tinseltown Gothic, just below Sunset Boulevard. Here, two aging stars – former child star “Baby Jane” Hudson, and her wheelchair-bound sister Blanche – wage a war of envy, bitterness and escalating cruelty. Based on Henry Farrell’s thriller, Baby Jane was shot in brilliant black-and-white by Robert Aldrich, who went on to do another Farrell gothic, Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte. Overtly a shocker, Baby Jane can also be seen as an indictment of Hollywood’s culture of disposability.

Baby Jane w/ her lookalike doll

5. Hollywood Shuffle (1987) – Robert Townsend co-wrote, directed and stars in this semi-autobiographical satire of Hollywood; specifically, the dearth of roles for actors of color. While Bobby Taylor (Townsend) auditions for the only available roles for African-Americans – pimps, thugs and assorted second bananas – his fantasies conjure up “Black Acting School”, with subjects like Jive Talk 101, casting directors fixed on finding an Eddie Murphy type and a hilarious, expletive-laden send-up of Siskel and Ebert, “Sneakin’ into the Movies”. Townsend’s film is quite savvy in the use of comedy to make a larger point; it’s interesting, and perhaps a bit said, to see that after a quarter of a century, the point still applies.

Every actor has a day job

4. Lady Killer (1933)- Long before Get Shorty, Lady Killer speculated that a life of crime may be the perfect training ground for a Hollywood career. James Cagney stars as Dan Quigley, an incompetent theatre usher who is fired, falls in with a gang of crooks, flees the cops, winds up in a Hollywood where he uses his street smarts to boost his acting career, until the film world and the underworld collide. Cagney is brilliantly funny and Mae Clarke is the perfect foil.

Cagney

3. Ed Wood (1994) – Tim Burton’s sly, affecting and impeccably cast send-up to the 1950s filmmaker who came to be known as the Worst Director of All Time. Burton recreates Wood (Johnny Depp) by way of his shoestring-budgeted, seat-of-your-pants productions, his utter lack of skill and boundless enthusiasm. Wood’s film sets became a gathering place for a loyal band of misfits, marginally-talented hopefuls and oddities, including the aged, drug addicted Bela Lugosi, brilliantly played by Martin Landau.

Depp & Landau

2. My Best Fiend (1999) – How does a determined, poetic, but ultimately pragmatic director carve out a working relationship with an actor who is both brilliant and mad? My Best Fiend is Werner Herzog’s document of a turbulent 15-year working relationship with the actor Klaus Kinski. In a resume weighted with forgettable films, Kinski’s collaborations with Werner Herzog were the  ones that stood out. Herzog’s laconic accounts of the effects of Kinski’s erratic behavior – “Towards the end of the shooting the Indians offered to kill Kinski for me,” he says of Fitzcarraldo. “I declined at the time, but they were dead serious” – bring some wry humor to this fascinating portrait. (My Best Fiend is not to be confused with the 1982 documentary, Burden of Dreams, about the making of Fitzcarraldo.)

Kinski, in a serene moment

1.The Big Picture(1989) – An award-winning short film springboards film school graduate Nick Chapman (Kevin Bacon) onto Hollywood’s fast track. Soon he’s taking meetings, attending parties, cozying up to an ambitious ingenue (Terri Hatcher), while elbowing aside his loyal friends and downsizing his values. This incisive and witty take on making it in the film industry, from director and co-writer Christopher Guest is very smart, and a lot of fun – plus it has one of my favorite all time lines, when the agent tells his client that he has a stack of scripts and he’s “read almost all of them almost all the way through.”

Terri Hatcher & Kevin Bacon

“I think if old Saint Valentine but knew

The way his fête-day’s now commemorated

And if the strange productions met his view

That fill our picture-shops, at any rate, he’d

Be much amused and no doubt marvel, too,

At fame, he surely scarce anticipated.”

From St Valentine’s Day, Mary Eliza Rogers, 1851

Among the strange productions of Valentine’s Day are the annual compilations of the best romantic films, so instead of the usual candidates – Sleepless in Seattle and The Notebook, for example – I’ve chosen ten very good romantic films for my belated Valentine’s Day post: some of them are funny, some sobering, some bittersweet and many unjustly overlooked.

Hudson and Lolabrigida

10. Come September(1961)– An absolutely delightful romantic comedy showcasing Rock Hudson’s underappreciated comedic gifts. Hudson plays an American tycoon, who spends his Septembers at his Italian villa with his Italian mistress. He arrives in July to find that his mistress is engaged, his steward has been renting out the villa to American tourists, and the current guests are a gaggle of teenage girls. When their chaperone is injured, Hudson winds up looking after the young charges, counseling them on propriety and virtue while trying to win back his lady love. Co-starring Gina Lollabrigida, Sandra Dee and Bobby Darin, who performs his 1961 hit, Multiplication.

9. Electric Dreams (1984) – A 20^thcentury, high tech (for the era) Cyrano, with the three points of the love triangle being the socially awkward architect

Von Dohlen and Madsen

 Miles (Lenny von Dohlen), the pretty cellist upstairs, Madeline (Virginia Madsen) and Miles’s home computer, “Edgar”. Miles loves Madeline, Madeline loves the duettist who accompanies her through the air ducts, unaware that it is not Miles, but Edgar, and Edgar begins to develop “feelings” for Madeline. The technology may be dated, but the performances are fresh and unpretentious, the musical score is vintage 80s and a nod must go to Bud Cort as the voice of Edgar.

Sheedy and LaPaglia

8. Betsy’s Wedding  (1990) – Free-spirit aspiring designer Betsy (Molly Ringwald) is marrying buttoned-down banker Jake (Dylan Walsh). Wackiness ensues. This would be no more than a pleasant ensemble comedy except for an utterly charming subplot that involves the budding romance between Betsy’s cop sister and a mobster’s nephew Stevie Dee (Anthony LaPaglia who is terrific). His dogged, formal courtship is both touching and hilarious (“I have the highest respect for your father. Do you think he would be offended if I requested your permission for a kiss good-night.”) Ally Sheedy turns in a very sweet performance as the object of his affection.

Cagney and Day

7. Love Me Or Leave Me(1955) – This is not a hearts-and-flowers lighthearted comedy, but an earnest biopic of torch singer Ruth Etting and her turbulent marriage to manager/mobster Martin Synder (James Cagney). The ambitious, long-suffering Etting is beautifully played – and sung – by Doris Day, and the volatile relationship is treated with remarkable frankness. The film was nominated for six Oscars, including one for Cagney’s performance, though, unaccountably, not Day’s. It won for best story.

Baker and Lathan

6. Something New(2006) – Wealthy, upscale Kenya McQueen (Sanaa Lathan) is moving up the corporate ladder. Brian (Simon Baker) left the corporate world for the blue-collar life of a landscaper. The social and economic differences would have been enough for a love-against-obstacles romantic comedy, but the added hurdle is that Kenya is black and Brian is white. An interracial romance – particularly in a romantic comedy walks a fine line: it either risks being preachy by hammering the racial issue, or being too saccharine in pretending it’s not an issue at all. Screenwriter Kriss Turner and director Sanaa Hamri get it just right. Not a weak link in the cast; Earl Billings is especially charming as Kenya’s pragmatic father.

5. Two for the Road(1967) – This bittersweet tale of a decade in a marriage was ahead of its time for its non-linear storytelling. Instead of a

Hepburn and Finney

chronological narrative, the romance and betrayal, exhilaration and trials of Joanna (Audrey Hepburn) and Mark (Albert Finney) are told through a series of road trips that occur during stress points in their marriage. Even after forty years, the film still has a very contemporary feel, and thanks to the assured direction of Stanley Donen and editing of Madeleine Gug and Richard Marden, and the score may be Henry Mancini’s best.

D'Onofrio and Tomei

4. Happy Accidents (2000) – Ruby (Marisa Tomei) has a habit of picking fixer-uppers who let her down. Along comes Sam (Vincent D’Onofrio) who is sweet and devoted and the perfect man except for his claim to be a “backtraveler” from the year 2470. Is he from the future, or hopelessly delusional, and, if he’s the perfect man for Ruby, does it matter? Writer, director and editor Brad Anderson deftly meshes romance, mystery, suspense and time travel into an original take on the modern love story.

3. The Whole Wide World (1996) – This was the last small film that Renee Zellweger made before Jerry Maguire. Based on One Who Walked Alone, the

D'Onofrio and Zellweger

memoir of Novalyne Price, The Whole Wide Worldrecounts Price’s time as a Depression-era Texas schoolteacher, and her friendship and budding romance with prolific fantasy writer Robert E. Howard (Vincent D’Onofrio). Many romantic films follow the pairing of two eccentrics; here, there is only one, “this morose, ungainly misfit among men”, and the woman who is pragmatic enough to know that there is no future, yet romantic enough to hold out hope a bit too long. Beautifully directed by Dan Ireland; D’Onofrio deserved a lot more recognition for this performance.

Tomei and Molina

2. The Perez Family (1995) – After 20 years in a Cuban prison, Juan Raul Perez (Alfred Molina) is released and is dispatched to Miami with a group of Marielitos, and to a hoped-for reunion with his wife and daughter. To expedite the process, Perez agrees to form a “family” with the spirited Dorita Perez (Marisa Tomei) and two other Perezes in order to get priority placement with a sponsor. The problem? Perez’s wife, Carmela is comfortably Americanized and involved with a charming police detective, and Perez finds himself falling in love with Dorita.

1. Crossing Delancey (1988) – It baffles me that Crossing Delancey is overlooked when people are listing their favorite romantic comedies. It is a fresh, witty, winning tale of the romantic complications of a thirtysomething Manhattanite, predating Sex and the Cityby a decade, and far more engaging. Izzy Grossman lives uptown, plans author events for an upscale independent bookstore and is infatuated with a European novelist. Her Lower East Side grandmother thinks it’s time Izzy found a nice Jewish husband. She engages the local matchmaker and the two old ladies set their sights on Sam, the neighborhood pickle vendor.
   

   Riegert (The Pickle Man!) and Irving

   Izzy rejects their efforts and tries to foist Sam off on one of her friends while pursuing the novelist, only to figure out that grandma knew best after all. The scenes between Reizl Bozyk, as the grandmother, and Sylvia Miles as the matchmaker are hilarious, the script is sophisticated and clever, and there are probably women who still think of Peter Riegert and “the pickle man”.