Showing posts with label Lauren Bacall. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lauren Bacall. Show all posts

Thursday, November 10, 2016

MISERY 1990

In a verbose, exasperated correspondence, a reader once expressed to me his intrigued bewilderment at how my otherwise—to use his words—“perceptive and aware” observations on the toxicity of idol worship and fame culture (per my essays on Maps To The Stars, The Day of The Locust, Come Back To The 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean Jimmy Dean, The Fan, and For Your Consideration) stood in frustrating contrast to my parallel tendency to lapse into periodic bouts of unapologetic fandom, shameless name-dropping, and displays of philography (autograph collecting). 
Once the feeling of being flattered that my writing could actually exasperate someone had passed; I understood his point. I could see how my expressed disdain for the hollow distractions of fame culture and celebrity-worship perhaps suggested to the reader that I place no value on “fandom” at all, in any of its forms. In which case, my attendant essays subjectively praising actors whose work I admire, upon whom I harbor crushes, or who I’ve met (cue the autograph scans), must have come across as paradoxical at best, hypocritical at worst. 
But that falls under the heading of reading the content while misunderstanding the context. The truth of the matter is that if I do indeed possess any insight into the phenomenon of fame culture, it’s insight born of firsthand experience, not academic observance. I’ve been a film fan my entire life, even owing my 30-year career as a dancer to film fandom (I fell in love with that irresistible 1980 roller-disco glowstick, Xanadu), so I've come to recognize that not all fandom is created equal.

“Healthy fandom,” as I call it, is when the admiration for and appreciation of the artistic accomplishments of others serves as a kind of balm to uplift the spirit and enhance the quality of life. This type of artist-identification has the ability to inspire, broaden horizons, and awaken within individuals an awareness of one's potential and life's possibilities through exposure to the creative arts. Fan worship when channeled into role-modeling can foster self-discovery, self-actualization, and the cultivation of one's own artistic gifts. When it comes to fame culture, I think there's nothing wrong with looking outside of oneself if, by doing so, one also becomes motivated to look within. 
Then there’s what I call “toxic fandom.” That’s when one focuses on the life and achievements of others, not as a means of finding oneself, but for the sole purpose of losing oneself. Toxic fandom doesn’t look to the arts for ways to cope and engage with reality, it looks to the arts to escape from it.
Because the toxic fan seizes upon a personality, film, TV series, or Broadway show with a singularity of focus more appropriate to a religious totem or fetish object; the actual talent or merit isn’t a requirement (cue the Kardashians). Fame can be worshipped for fame’s sake alone. With all that is good, happy, and beautiful in the world projected onto a single subject of worship, said “object of affection” doesn’t merely bring the toxic fan happiness, they represent happiness itself.
Certainly qualifying as the absolute worst-case scenario of toxic fandom gone terrifyingly off the rails is Stephen King's brilliant Misery. Brought to chilling and memorable life on the big screen by director Rob Reiner and screenwriter William Goldman (The Stepford Wives, Magic). 
James Caan as Paul Sheldon
Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes
Richard Farnsworth as Buster
Frances Sternhagen as Virginia
Lauren Bacall as Marcia Sindell
Prolific author Stephen King is the master of Le Cauchemar Banal—the banal nightmare: high-concept thrillers in which ordinary characters in workaday settings find themselves thrust into unimaginably horrific circumstances. Whether it be “bullied high school teen kills entire class,” “dysfunctional family driven insane by haunted hotel,” “rabid dog terrorizes toddler” or, in the case of Misery, “deranged fan imprisons favorite author”; King’s particular literary gift is his ability to mine the darkest, most relatable phobias lurking behind ostensibly commonplace conflicts. The best of the films adapted from his novels (Carrie, The Shining, The Dead Zone) shore up King’s solid storytelling by giving emphasis to his almost Biblical/Freudian take on human nature. I can’t think of a work of Stephen King’s which doesn’t in some way confront matters of sin, redemption, guilt, evil, fate, transformation, loss, and desperation. Sometimes all at once! 
The Wilkes farmhouse
Just the kind of creepy-cozy place you'd imagine a serial killer would live

Adapted from King’s 1987 bestseller, Misery is a two-character, single-location twist on the Scheherazade folk tale (wherein a princess forestalls her execution through the spinning of captivating stories), pitting deranged superfan Annie Wilkes (Bates) against popular romance novelist Paul Sheldon (Caan).
After a Colorado mountain blizzard results in Paul Sheldon crashing his car off of a snowy bluff, he wakes to find himself nursing two broken legs and a dislocated shoulder in the farmhouse of “number one fan” Annie Wilkes. How Paul’s status shifts from patient to prisoner are revealed through character (retired nurse Annie Wilkes is batshit crazy) and the development of the story’s central (and might I say, ingenious) conflict:

Annie would like nothing more than for Paul Sheldon to continue churning out Misery books—a series of historical romance novels chronicling the adventures of heroine Misery Chastain—until his dying day (which threatens to be sooner than Paul would like if he doesn’t get with the Wilkes program).
Paul, on the other hand, after writing eight financially successful but spiritually crippling Misery novels (do I foreshadow much?), would like nothing more than to put Misery out of her misery, move on, and, via his just-completed profanity-laced crime novel Fast Cars, pursue a career of literary legitimacy. 
Misery's tense melodrama is a macabre exaggeration of the possessive/regressive side of celebrity worship. Creative growth may be a fundamental part of being an artist, but an equally dominant characteristic of fandom is the wish for a favorite star to keep repeating past successes.  

The close-quarters confinement of two people with such fierce cross-purpose objectives generates considerable dramatic tension, but Goldman’s taut screenplay, which opens up King’s novel to include rescue-effort sequences involving the local sheriff (Farnsworth), his deputy/wife (Sternhagen), and Paul’s literary agent (Bacall), nicely replicates the novel’s escalating sense of dread born of having the true nature of Paul’s rescuer and biggest fan revealed to us exclusively from Paul’s limited perspective. 
In both appearance and personality, Annie Wilkes amusingly plays into the suppositions many of us hold regarding the kind of people who read romance novels or give themselves over to obsessive fandom. But as Annie’s fangirl eccentricities reveal themselves to be symptoms of a larger mental instability; Paul’s mounting anxiety becomes our own as Annie’s irrational outbursts and mercurial mood swings hurl Misery into violent chaos.
Scenes played for black comedy invite us to share Paul's incredulous amusement at Annie's parochial prudishness, Midwest drabness, ignorance ("Dome Pear-igg-non"), and fondness for pop-culture kitsch. But the laughs catch in our throat as we come to understand that the earnestness of Annie's beliefs are rooted in rigid dogma

Lacking the novel's built-in identification factor (the story is told from Paul's perspective), the film nevertheless does a great job of getting us to experience Annie's rageaholic outbursts and sudden bursts of irrational violence with the same sense of alarm as our hero. So much so that, in effect, Rob Reiner becomes our tormentor; the male Annie Wilkes at whose mercy we suddenly find ourselves. In these instances, we (unlike Paul) can escape, but the compelling nature of the story holds us captive in our seats, no more willing to leave before first learning how things turn out than Scheherazade's king.


MISERY AS FAME-CULTURE METAPHOR
I read Misery many years after having seen the film. And while the movie is very faithful to the book, as with many adaptations, the changes necessary to mold the descriptive liberties of the written word to fit the specific hyper-reality of the screen can shift a story's narrative emphasis in ways interesting and unexpected. Misery the novel, with its stressed emphasis on Paul's point-of-view read very much to me like one man's internal struggle. Paul Sheldon waging a war with the creative process, his life-altering encounter with Annie Wilkes serving as a kind of baptism by fire through which his creative spark is reborn and over which his eventual artistic maturity triumphs. (This falls in line with Stephen King's Rolling Stone interview in which he stated he was Paul Sheldon and Annie Wilkes was his cocaine addiction.)

The film version, with the necessary excision of Paul's nonstop internal monologues and lengthy passages relating to the content of Misery's Return, subtly shifts the dynamics of the conflict. Since we no longer share the inner workings of his mind and are left to merely observe his behavior, Paul Sheldon may remain the story's central character, but his role in it is has become more reactive. Conversely, Annie, who is depicted in the book in almost one-dimensional terms (a monster comprehensible only in as far as Paul is able to make sense of her erratic behavior), is made the more dynamic character in the film because her actions and desires propel the plot. Deprived of his character-illuminating inner monologues, Paul Sheldon's goals become simplified: survival/escape. Annie, depicted in more complex terms, has fragmented, nonlinear goals that intensify in direct proportion to the deterioration of her mental state.
Kathy Bates' unforgettable, Academy Award-winning performance humanizes the monster that is Annie Wilkes. Playing a frightening character more pathetic than sympathetic, Bates somehow never surrenders Annie's humanity, even when her behavior is at its most indefensibly psychotic.

The depth given to the character of Annie Wilkes in the film (which I credit to Kathy Bates 100%) makes her Misery's "dominant focus": the most dramatically compelling element of a movie. Since interest IN a character can feel distressingly like sympathy FOR a character to our subconscious, in thrillers this contributes to creating an overall sense of unease for the viewer (think Hitchcock tricking us into identifying with Norman Bates in Psycho). We identify with Paul Sheldon's left-at-the-mercy-of-a-madwoman vulnerability; but since more of us know what it's like to be a fan than to be a celebrity, a tiny part of us can also relate to Annie. And we hate ourselves for it.

ANNIE WILKES: THE ULTIMATE THE TOXIC FAN 
If, as someone once said, success is the natural killer of creativity, to that dictum I’d also add: fans are the assassins of artistic exploration.
One of showbiz’s most enduring clichés is the artist who, upon achieving mainstream success, longs for artistic credibility: The Gidget who wants to be a dramatic actress (Sally Field), the stand-up comic who wants to be Ingmar Bergman (Woody Allen); the purveyor of pop-music candy floss who wants to be taken seriously (Madonna).
Some stars have been able to reinvent themselves without alienating fans or losing popularity (Robin Williams, Tom Hanks), but in most instances, attempts to abandon a popular commercial brand are met with resistance, if not outright hostility, by the artist's fanbase.
The terrifying relationship between Paul and Annie depicted in Misery is fascinating when viewed as a meta-commentary on the co-dependent love/hate relationship celebrities have with their fans.

“I love you Paul. Your mind...your creativity. That’s all I meant.”
Toxic fandom has at its core, a one-sided inequity of intimacy: the fan knows everything about their favorite celebrity, said celebrity doesn't know they exist. Love for an artist's work can be fulfilling, for it at least has the potential to feed the soul. Even intermingled feelings for the artist themselves, when channeled into an appreciation of an artist's work at least, hold the potential for fulfillment. But when the line gets blurred between love of art and love of artist, you're pretty much staring into the eye of an emotional one-way street.


“You just better start showing me a little more
 appreciation around here, Mister Man!”
Sooner or later the healthy fan learns that it's not possible to prop someone atop a pedestal without eventually realizing they've left themselves somewhere down on the ground. This realization inevitably leads to resentment. A constant complaint of celebrities today (especially among those who hate being reminded of the very real debt they DO owe to their fans) is what they see as the pushy entitlement of fans. These fans carry with them an attitude of "You owe your success to me!" or worse, the embittered "You think you're better than me?"—the latter, sadly, an epithet often hurled by a fan mere moments after treating said celebrity as though they were precisely that. Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust is a work about the deep wellsprings of envy and resentment that can lie beneath fan culture. 

“You and I were meant to be together forever.”
From Presley devotees who refuse to acknowledge Fat Elvis, to Liza Minnelli concertgoers who boo if she doesn't sing Cabaret; the symbiotic, vaguely contentious relationship between toxic fan and artist is always a struggle against stasis. Being a creative artist means development and growth, but being a fan frequently means latching onto some favored moment, digging in one's heels, and refusing to accept the fact that everything moves on. The toxic fan wants fan and celebrity to remain together forever, frozen in aspic.

There! Look there! See what you made me do?”
Ever notice how many online fan sites, chat rooms, and movie tribute pages are rife with the most vitriolic bullying and harassment imaginable? Intense self-identification with a celebrity, movie, or TV series often makes the toxic fan (usually a person with a vague sense of self from the start) feel so special, they tend to grow protective and proprietary over time. Separating themselves from the herd by the bestowal of meaningless titles and rank upon themselves (number one fan, biggest fan, most devoted fan), fandom becomes less about the personal joy one derives from the appreciation of a particular subject, and more about appointing oneself its combative gatekeeper.
Given that the seeds of fandom so often take root in adolescence—when individuals turn to the arts as a means of coping with the pain of loneliness, bullying, or feeling like an outsider—it's the height of irony that in so many cases the bullied grow to become the biggest bullies.

“You’ll never know the fear of losing someone like you if you’re someone like me.”
With its combined elements of genres ranging from horror to crime drama, Misery is a very effective suspense thriller (so much so that to this day I can’t watch the famous “hobbling” sequence, nor can I watch that final, bloody skirmish). James Caan and Kathy Bates are both super, handling the drama and black comedy with equal skill. (Although it's amusing to think that the athletic Caan, in this and 1979s Chapter Two, is Hollywood's idea of what a writer looks like.)
The first time I saw it in 1990, I came away with the feeling of having enjoyed a real thrill-ride of a movie. I've had the opportunity to rewatch it many times since then, and it has become a favorite. Now a quaint little timepiece, what with its rotary phones, typewriters, phonograph records, and bottles of Liquid Paper, what has remained as fresh as the first viewing are the film's characters.
Annie Wilkes may represent the crippling dominance of addiction to Stephen King, but to me, Misery is a searing horror fable (cautionary tale?) about how fame culture can promote emotional displacement through toxic fandom. Culturally speaking, what can be scarier than that?

Do any of you know or have had a run-in with a toxic fan? Better still, a toxic celebrity encounter? Would love to hear about it!


BONUS MATERIAL
In 2008 Kathy Bates appeared as Annie Wilkes in a commercial for DirectTV. Watch it HERE.

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2016

Monday, September 14, 2015

THE FAN 1981

At a time when most of her industry peers were retired, forgotten, or guesting on episodes of Fantasy Island and The Love Boat, 56-year-old Lauren Bacall was enjoying a career resurgence and public visibility rivaling that of her 1940s heyday when she was known as “The Look.”  The year 1981 saw Bacall headlining in the Broadway musical Woman of the Year; topping the bestseller charts with the paperback release of her 1978 memoir By Myself; shilling everything from jewelry to cat food in TV and print ads; and, most remarkably in those pre-Meryl Streep/Helen Mirren years of elder-actress marketability, starring in a nine-million-dollar major motion picture release.
The Fame Game
The Fan, a suspense thriller based on Bob Randall’s 1977 epistolary novel about an aging Broadway star stalked by an obsessive fan, gave Bacall arguably the biggest role of her career. Certainly, the first to require her to carry an entire film on her own.

Filmed on location in New York from March to July of 1980, The Fan was poised for release at the most opportune time to take marketing advantage of Bacall’s already-in-motion Broadway and bookshelf publicity. Unfortunately, as The Fan’s PR-friendly release date of March 15, 1981 neared, several real-life, obsessive fan-based tragedies occurred (targeting John Lennon and then-President Ronald Reagan), conspiring to make this fame-culture melodrama seem more an exercise in bad taste than a film of ripped-from-today's-headlines relevance.
Lauren Bacall as Sally Ross
Michael Biehn as Douglas Breen
Maureen Stapleton as Belle Goldman
James Garner as Jake Berman
Hector Elizondo as Inspector Raphael Andrews 
Kurt Johnson as David Barnum

If musical theater geeks, Glee habitués, and folks capable of making it through an entire Tony Awards broadcast ever longed for an '80s slasher film to call their own, then The Fan more than fills the Playbill. This unappetizingly bloody, yet oh-so delectable/derisible blend of backstage musical, 1940s career-woman soap opera, slasher-flick, and woman-in-peril melodrama, is high-camp movie nirvana. An upscale cousin of the hagsploitation genre of the '60s, The Fan might have substituted seasoned glamour for the usual grotesquery, but in keeping with the requirements of the sub-genre, The Fan's raison d'être remained the prolonged persecution and victimization of a mature star from Hollywood's Golden Era. 

When The Fan opened in theaters in the spring of 1981, the film...to borrow a line from one of the hooty Louis St. Louis (Grease 2) show tunes sung in the film..."Got no love” from either audiences or critics. Patrons old enough to be enticed by the film's elder cast risked having their blue rinses turn stark white at the sight of the movie's copious bloodshed and some of the blunt, Bogie-wouldn't-stand-for-this dialog: “Dearest bitch, see how accessible you are? How would you like to be fucked by a meat cleaver?” Similarly, the teen demographic ordinarily drawn to slasher films weren't quite sure of what to make of a movie set in the middle-aged, Sardi's and cigarettes world of New York legitimate theater.  A wholly uninspired publicity campaign only added to the film’s troubles.
Had The Fan been a play, it would have closed in Boston. Whisked off screens within weeks of its release, The Fan resurfaced with some regularity on cable TV venues like HBO and Showtime throughout the '80s before ultimately disappearing into relative obscurity. Obscurity so complete that Robert De Niro's unrelated but same-titled 1996 sports-themed film has totally eclipsed Bacall's The Fan in the public's memory.
Happily, The Fan's recent release on DVD has rekindled awareness of this very '80s curio. A glimpse back at a New York still atmospherically seedy. A vision of a world populated with record stores, typewriters, payphones, legwarmers, and heavy smokers. All with nary a Starbucks in sight. And while it's no undiscovered classic, The Fan does have its merits (most of them camp-related, I'm afraid) that make it a movie worthy of rediscovery. Not the least of them being Lauren Bacall, a smoking, drinking, tough-as-nails star of Broadway and the silver screen, playing a smoking, drinking, tough-as-nails star of Broadway and the silver screen. And convincingly, too!

The psychological subtheme of The Fan
And the audience LOVES me! And I love them! And they love me for lovin' them and I love them for lovin' me. And we love each other. And that's 'cause none of us got enough love in our childhoods. 
And that's show biz, kid!  - Fred Ebb

No low-budget, body-count slasher flick featuring nondescript teens stalked by a masked phantom, The Fan was conceived as a stylish, A-List, Hitchcockian thriller along the lines of Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) and Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill (1980). The latter a sleeper hit that garnered '50s sexpot, Angie Dickinson, some of the best notices of her career. 
At least that's how things started.
Produced by movie/music mogul Robert Stigwood on the downturn side of a '70s winning streak that included youth-centric films like Jesus Christ Superstar, Saturday Night Fever, and Tommy; The Fan was Stigwood’s most expensive film to date and first stab at cracking the grown-up ticket-buying market. To this end, he amassed a distinguished cast of New York actors and pedigreed Broadway composers (Marvin Hamlisch and Tim Rice collaborated on two–fairly terrible but nonetheless irresistible–original songs). On the production end, he secured the talents of up-and-coming first-time director Edward Bianchi (from TV commercials and music videos) and choreographer Arlene Philips (Can’t Stop The MusicAnnie).

If you've ever seen a Lauren Bacall musical, you know that her being lifted and carried about is a choreography requisite. I was surprised at the number of online reviews that questioned Bacall's "believability" portraying a Broadway musical star in The Fan. Reviews that later expressed surprise upon learning that she was indeed a musical theater star in real life. Bacall was the Best Actress Tony Award winner for both Applause - 1970 and Woman of the Year - 1981.

But as the saying goes, the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and somewhere between screenplay to movie-house, The Fan transmogrified into a film beset by:
1) Bad decisions -  Friday the 13 became a hit during The Fan's post-production, prompting Paramount to order reshoots to ratchet up the violence. 
2) Bad timing and bad decisions - Three months before The Fan's release, John Lennon was killed by an obsessive fan outside NY’s Dakota apartments (as it happens, also the home of Lauren Bacall), after which it is said the film's original downbeat ending (if true to the novel) underwent some 11th-hour tinkering and reshoots.
3) Bad luck -  Bacall's idea of promoting The Fan was to express to the press her disappointment in the finished product. Making matters worse, three weeks into The Fan's less-than-illustrious release, an attempt was made on President Reagan's life by a Jodie Foster-obsessed fan. Suddenly, a film very few people were interested in in the first place began to look to everyone like an exercise in exploitation and bad taste.
Bacall the Buzzkill
Bacall: "The Fan is much more graphic and violent than when I read the script."
Anna Maria Horsford (who appeared in Stigwood's Times Square in 1980) as detective Emily Stolz

Stigwood severely scaled back his usual bombastic pre-release publicity for The Fan (STD results have been released with more fanfare), while Paramount added a disclaimer to its theatrical trailers claiming The Fan was in no way inspired by the tragic death of John Lennon. The latter decision prompting the outspoken Bacall to declare to People magazine: “I think it’s disgusting, revolting, and exploitive!”

In the end, it didn't really matter, for The Fan wound up being one of those rare films capable of offering audiences simultaneously contradictory experiences–none of them satisfactory. Stylishly shot, overflowing in chichi urban gloss, and embellished with a chilling Pino Donaggio score (Carrie, Don’t Look NowThe Fan ultimately failed to find an audience because it clearly didn't know who the hell that was. Classic movie fans familiar with Lauren Bacall thought the film was too classy to be so trashy; slasher fans thought the film wasn't trashy enough. Gays had their own problems with the film.
Strangers in the Night
The Fan did itself no favors by alienating the very audience most receptive to a film offering up ample doses of musical theater, backstage drama, show tunes, tight male bodies in various states of undress, and Lauren Bacall in full Margo Channing mode. On the heels of Windows (1980), a stalker thriller about a lesbian psychopath, and Cruising (1980) a crime thriller about a gay psychopath; many members of the gay community felt The Fan's closeted theater-queen stalker was one gay psycho too many.

None of that applied to me, however. I was a presold audience in and of myself. I’d read The Fan back in 1978, intrigued by the way the book used the thriller genre to comment on the odd love/hate relationship between stars and their adoring public. I was also a longstanding fan of Lauren Bacall from her old movies with Bogart on The Late Show, Applause (the 1973 TV broadcast, anyway), and Murder on the Orient Express; so I was thrilled when I heard she'd been cast.  
Actress Dana Delany making her film debut in The Fan
Adding to my anticipation was the fact that Edward Bianchi was hired to direct and Arlene Phillips was to do the choreography. Bianchi & Phillips had collaborated on a series of eye-popping Dr. Pepper commercials in the late '70s for the advertising agency Young & Rubicam. Commercials I had been inspired by and borrowed from for a couple of my film school projects. When I also learned that Broadway great Maureen Stapleton had joined the cast and that Bacall’s rumored real-life paramour, James Garner, was also on board, The Fan swiftly became one of the most eagerly-awaited films of the year...for me, anyway.

I saw The Fan on opening day at Grauman’s Chinese Theater where the smallish audience of young people in attendance (clearly in search of a good scare) was underwhelmed. I, on the other hand, felt as though I’d died and gone to camp film heaven. Not since Eyes of Laura Mars had I seen such a slick-looking thriller. On capable of being enjoyed on so many levels at once. I wound up seeing it a total of three times before it disappeared from theaters.
Shot on location, The Fan provides many great glimpses of 80s-era New York.
Here the famed Shubert Theater is the site for Sally Ross' opening night in Never Say Never; the fictional musical providing The Fan with so much of its camp appeal


WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
What brings me back to The Fan time and time again are its many sequences depicting the behind-the-scenes creation of the fictional Broadway musical, Never Say Never. Much is made of it being Sally Ross’ singing and dancing debut, a point we in the audience don't doubt for a minute. Bacall's foghorn baritone and reliance on chorus boys to lug and lift her about give the scenes a comic authenticity. 
Populated with recognized Broadway dancers, shot in actual NY rehearsal studios with a knowing attention to procedural detail; the show in question may look terrible, but these sequences are really rather marvelous. The '80s vibe is irresistible (all those short-shorts, spandex, legwarmers, and Arlene Philips' trademark Hot Gossip choreography), and the risible music ("No energy crisis, my professional advice is...") gets caught in your head like an earwig. Of course, it certainly doesn't hurt that I saw this film during my early days as a dancer and that in 1983, when I took my first trip to New York, I took classes at Jo Jo's Dance Factory, the studio used in the film.
All the Boys Love Sally

UK Choreographer Arlene Phillips wouldn't actually choreograph for
Broadway until 1987's Starlight Express
Call Her Miss Ross
Broadway dancer Justin Ross (l.) appeared in the film version of A Chorus Line,
and dancer Reed Jones (r.) originated the role of Skimbleshanks in Cats
 

 PERFORMANCES
If you’re going to make a film about the kind of old-school, glamorous, show-biz diva capable of inciting the flames of obsessive fandom, you couldn’t do much better than landing all-around class-act, Lauren Bacall. Her gravitas as a full-fledged movie star from the golden era gives The Fan a shot of instant legitimacy every time she appears. In one of the largest roles of her career, Bacall is not always filmed as flatteringly as you'd expect, but the effect is rather refreshing. Her face looks terrifically lived-in, and her still-striking looks serve as a welcome change from the botoxed mannequins we've grown used to. Playing a role that isn't perhaps much of a stretch, awfully good. So good in fact, that I kept wishing the film would just allow the story's natural character conflicts (an aging star grappling confronting loneliness, self-doubt, and vulnerability) play themselves out minus all the genre machinations.
Bacall's appearance on Garner's TV show The Rockford Files in 1979, followed by their re-appearance in Robert Altman's HealtH (1980) and yet again here in The Fan, really had gossip-columnist tongues wagging about a romance between the two

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
The '80s come vividly alive in the film's Broadway musical sequences, which are sort of Solid Gold meets Can't Stop The Music. As would be the case with the Broadway musical numbers in 1983s Staying Alive, it's near-impossible to imagine just what kind of Broadway this could be, as the numbers look more appropriate to a Las Vegas revue. But they left me wanting more. not less. (I feel safe in saying I'm likely the only person who felt that way.)
A Remarkable Woman
Hearts, Not Diamonds
Disco Bacall - Has to be seen (and heard) to be believed

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
I've never considered The Fan to be as bad a film as its reputation has led people to believe. Its screenplay is clichéd to be sure (the stage doorman is actually named “Pop”) and the violence needlessly gruesome for such a visually distinguished and stylish film (Bianchi’s music video background is in full evidence), but with a provocative theme and talented cast, The Fan has quite a bit going for it even with its flaws. 
One might have wished for a little more finesse in the areas of motivation and character, but I seriously have a soft spot in my heart for this movie...mostly centered around the Broadway setting, the images of a still gritty and grimy New York, and reminders of my early years in dance. And, of course, it really is great to see late-career Bacallwith that amazing Gena Rowlands-like mane of haircommand the screen once more. Who was it that said, "Nostalgia ain't what it used to be"?



BONUS MATERIAL
THE QUEEN OF BROADWAY
The Fan opened in theaters in May of 1981, Bacall's Broadway musical return in Woman of the Year (granting her a second Tony Award win following her Tony Award-winning turn in Applause in 1970) was in March. For a brief time, Bacall enjoyed the rare distinction of having her name appear on side-by-side marquees. (photo: Walter McBride)


"Deep Brewed Flavah!"
During the '80s Lauren Bacall's commercials for High Point instant coffee were the stuff of lampoon legend. In honor of The Fan, here's one of her most Sally Ross "theatah"- themed ones. HERE 

Before "Be a Pepper!" became the company's slogan, Dr. Pepper was sold as "The Most Original Soft Drink Ever." Edward Bianchi directed this stylish and award-winning commercial from 1975. HERE

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2015

Thursday, November 6, 2014

MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS 1974

Rife with spoilers. Those who wish for the mystery to remain a mystery - read no further.

Of the many films made from Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot mystery novels, I find 1982s Evil Under the Sun to be the most fun, but 1974s Murder on the Orient Express still heads my list as the most stylish, effective, and downright classiest adaptation of the lot.
Although I have fond memories of the publicity and glowing reviews surrounding its release; recall the weeks of long, serpentine lines queuing up outside San Francisco’s Regency Theater where it played; and I even remember going to a Market Street movie memorabilia shop to purchase the gorgeous Richard Amsel-designed poster (“The Who’s Who in the Whodunit”) which hung on my wall for many years...but for the life of me I can’t figure out why, given my interest, I never got around to seeing this in a theater during its initial release. 
Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot
Lauren Bacall as Mrs. Harriet Belinda Hubbard
Anthony Perkins as Hector McQueen
Jacqueline Bisset as Countess Helena Andrenyi 
My best guess is that it had to do with there just not being enough hours in the day to see all of the great films that came out that year. It was 1974, I was still in high school, working weekends as a movie theater usher, and, as was my practice then and remains so today; when it comes to my own personal moviegoing habits, if I like a film, I invariably want to see it several times. This is all well and good given my particular penchant for rediscovering new things in movies with each viewing, but does tend to limit the amount of time I have left for giving equal time to the titles that make up my ever-growing list of unseen movies. At least not without considerable effort applied on my part.

Distracting my attention from Murder on the Orient Express at the time was all the nostalgia craze pomp and circumstance attending the release of The Great GatsbyThe Godfather Part II, and Roman Polanski’s Chinatown. Simultaneously, Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder were defining funny for the 1970s with Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, while on the serious side, my cineáste
pretentiousness (and height) got me into theaters showing the arthouse pseudo-porn of The Night Porter and Going Places. Adding to this already full schedule, That’s Entertainment, The Phantom of the Paradise, and even the lamentable, Mame were filling the theaters, vying for my musical/comedy attention.
Sean Connery as Colonel Arbuthnot
Vanessa Redgrave as Mary Debenham
Richard Widmark as Samuel Edward Rachett / Cassetti
Ingrid Bergman as Greta Ohlsson
More significantly, Hollywood was in the midst of a HUGE "disaster movie" craze (a genre I was as unaccountably besotted with then as kids today are about those Marvel Comics things), so, what with the star-studded The Towering Inferno, Airport 1975, and Earthquake all being released in the same yearnot to mention that star-leaden swashbuckling sequel to another favorite, 1973s The Three MusketeersI suspect the glow of the stellar cast assembled for Murder on the Orient Express was perhaps not as dazzling to me then as it most assuredly seems now. More's the pity and my loss entirely, for I would love to have seen this delightful movie with an audience, at the height of its popularity.
Sir John Gielgud as Edward Henry Beddoes
Dame Wendy Hiller as Princess Natalia Dragomiroff
Michael York as Count Rudolf Andrenyi
Rachel Roberts as Hildegarde Schmidt
Happily, I did eventually come to see Murder on the Orient Express many years later (on cable TV), and, this being the days before the internet, the vast majority of the details surrounding the film were still unknown to me. In fact, my relative ignorance of the film's particulars and wholesale unfamiliarity with Agatha Christie's 1934 mystery novel in general, resulted in a viewing experience that could be summed up as a textbook case of "ignorance is bliss." I was totally swept up in the mystery, baffled by the clues, puzzled by the circumstances, and thrown by the surplus of suspects. It was bliss.
In hindsight, I can only conjecture that my naif experience of the film must have been in some ways on par with what director Sidney Lumet and screenwriter Paul Dehn envisioned for audiences when fashioning the project: Murder on the Orient Express felt very much like watching an actual film from the 1930s filtered through the very contemporary sensibilities of the '70s.
Jean-Pierre Cassel as Pierre-Paul Michel
Martin Balsam as Mr. Bianchi
Dennis Quilley as Antonio Foscarelli
Colin Blakely as Cyrus B. Hardman
George Coulouris as Dr. Constantine
Visually sumptuous, superbly-acted, extremely well-written, and highly entertaining; to this day I am amazed at the dexterity with which this particular adaptation is able to tightrope-walk between being a "fun" murder mystery and emotionally-engaging drama. Seeing it again after all these years, it's easy to see how Murder on the Orient Express sparked a renaissance of sorts in movies based on the works of Agatha Christie. But while many of the films that followed were very good, for me, none were able to capture this film's unwavering panache.

Whether it be amateur crime-solver, Miss Marple or the fastidious Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, the drill in an Agatha Christie mystery remains roughly the same (although Poirot travels in much tonier circles than Christie’s small-town spinster): a confined, preferably exotic, locale; a murder; a collection of eccentric/suspicious characters; multiple motives; multiple red herrings; a surprise twist or two; the presence of a canny sleuth to connect all the dots; and finally, the assembling of the suspects for the flashback reenactment of the and the unveiling of the guilty party.
Since the title Murder on the Orient Express, already specifies the what and where; the fun is to be had in discerning the who, why, when, and how.

The who in this case is an individual of nefarious background and cloaked identity, mastermind of a vicious 1930 kidnap/murder of a three-year-old heiress. An act for which this criminal, in having made off with the ransom money and leaving a colleague to take the blame, has never been brought to justice. Now, five years later, in a luxury train trapped in a snowdrift in Yugoslavia, said individual is found dead of multiple stab wounds in a locked compartment.

The victim’s Mafia ties favor criminal vendetta as the most likely solution to the murder, but as is his wont, M. Poirot’s “little gray cells” alert him to the fact that there is something altogether too expedient in the unanimous airtight alibis of his traveling companions: fifteen-odd strangers of diverse background, class, and nationality...each possessing nothing in common...each unknown to either the victim or one another.
The Usual Suspects
As Poirot’s investigation leads to the unearthing of the details surrounding the kidnapping (a tragedy contributing to the deaths of at least four others) and the mysterious connection each passenger has to the event, Murder on the Orient Express establishes itself as the most engaging, suspenseful, and downright effective of the big-screen adaptations of Agatha Christie I've seen.

On first viewing, I recall being very caught up in the mystery of it all and quite unable to figure out “whodunit” until the final, dramatically staged moments of the Big Reveala revelation of how and why which surprised me considerably more than I would have thought possible.
I really love everything about Murder on the Orient Express, but I’m especially fond of the significant role conscience, guilt, and the pain of loss play in the narrative. For even more persuasive than the film’s glossy production values and high-caliber performances (a rather amazing feat given their brevity), is its emotional poignancy. Most Agatha Christie movies end on a note of triumphant finality born of justice served and wrongs set right, but Murder on the Orient Express has an ending that always leaves me (softie that I am) with a mild case of sentimental waterworks, due to the fact that it touches – ever so lightly – on the sad reality that justice is a sometimes hollow reward for the loss of loved ones no degree of rightful vengeance will ever bring back.
This melancholy ending to a truly elegant film lends Murder on the Orient Express an air of distinction that places it a mark above the other filmed Poirot mysteries.


WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
Murder on the Orient Express is the perfect, made-to-order film for the '70s cinema enthusiast who’s also a fan of Turner Classic Movies (um…that would be me). Directed by Sidney Lumet (The Wiz, The Group) in a style meant to evoke the look and feel of films made in the 1930s, and given a diffused, nostalgic sheen by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth (Oscar-nominated for this film, Unsworth won the previous year for Cabaret), Murder on the Orient Express, although a British production, is one of the best examples of  Old Hollywood moviemaking to come out of the New Hollywood era.
The Orient Express
The titular star of the film gets a grand sendoff with a sweeping waltz theme that is one of the film's chief goosebump moments. Richard Rodney Bennett's glamorous, Oscar-nominated score is outstanding

On a relatively modest budget (just $1.4 million, if Wikipedia is to be believed), Murder on the Orient Express went on to win 6 Oscar nominations: Finney, Bergman (won), costumes, cinematography, score, screenplayand became one of the top-grossing films of the year. With no nudity, foul language, or claims to social relevance; in the youth-obsessed '70s, Murder on the Orient Express was one of the few films capable of luring older audiences away from their TV sets. (The equally enthralled younger audiences approached it as something of a “thinking-man’s disaster movie.”)
For me, Murder on the Orient Express was a welcome respite from overlapping dialogue, non-linear storytelling, gritty realism, and the sometimes-fatuous artistic pretentiousness of the cinema auteur. Taking a break from all that '70s navel-gazing, it was a real treat just to be entertained by a filmmaker who knew how to tell a story. Well-written (Paul Dehn’s screenplay is a witty, largely-faithful adaptation that plays fair with its clues), beautifully shot, extremely well-acted, and a great deal of fun to boot, Murder on the Orient Express was a return to escapism in an era preoccupied with confrontation.
Discovery of the Body

PERFORMANCES
Not being such a devotee of Agatha Christie as to have formed an indelible impression of Hercule Poirot in my mind one way or another, I have to say I greatly prefer Albert Finney’s take on the detective over Peter Ustinov, who always came across as so enchanted by his own performance that I found myself distracted. In my essay on the 1970 musical Scrooge, I had this to say about Finney's propensity for characterization: “(he’s) a movie star with the heart of a character actor. Makeup and prosthetics which would swallow up lesser actors only seem to liberate him.” 
Only 37 years old at the time, Finney is near-unrecognizable as the 50-something Poirot, yet under all that makeup and padding is a sharp, focused performance. Seeming to inhabit the character in every minute aspect from body language to vocal inflection, it’s Finney’s darting, curious eyes that best convey the man behind the makeup. With chin forever bowed so as to appear to always be peering at people, take note of how active his eyes are in scenes where he's required to just listen. Those clear, piercing eyes are the true eyes of a master sleuth.
Finney commands the final third of the film with an amazing, eight-page monologue  

The rest of the cast is flawless; Anthony Perkin’s twitchy, mother-fixated Mr. McQueen (!) being a particular favorite of mine in that it almost feels like Perkins is doing a parody of Norman Bates. The regal Lauren Bacall looks to be having a grand old time as the gum-chewing, prototypical Ugly American; Jacqueline Bisset & Michael York are both so gorgeous as to qualify as special effects themselves; and of course, Ingrid Bergman’s scene-stealing Swedish missionary is a delightful bit of acting whether one thinks she deserved that Oscar or not.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
Murder on the Orient Express is a film that boasts many starsthat luxurious locomotive and the high marquee-value cast, to be surebut as far as I’m concerned, the film’s biggest star and MVP is production designer/costume designer tony Walton.
The Oscar-winning designer (for 1980s All That Jazz) is the jack-of-all-trades genius whose talent lent a distinctive visual pizzazz to Mary Poppins, The Boy Friend, Petulia, The Wiz, and many others. His elegant sets and larger-than-life costume designs for Murder on the Orient Express create an irresistibly stylized atmosphere of theatrical glamour.
Movie magic: In real life, the Orient Express would need to add an extra car just to store the hats

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Although many fans of the film consider it to be the one aspect of Murder on the Orient Express they can do without, the opening sequencea chilling montage detailing the 1930 kidnapping/murder that sets into motion the latter events of the filmis, for me, one of the strongest, most disturbing moments in the film. 
One of the reasons the opening sequence is so effective for me is because the use of newspaper images (all the more terrifying because the eyes never print clearly) brought back scary childhood memories of seeing newspapers reporting the Kennedy assassination, the murder of Martin Luther King Jr, the Manson killings, and the hunt for the Zodiac Killer.
As presented, it’s a dramatic series of events recounted in a random mix of reenactments, newsreel footage, newspaper clippings, and press photographs which proves to be a virtuoso bit of short filmmaking whose choppy, stylized imagery evoke a kind of cinematic equivalent of a ransom note. It's a rousing good start to the movie, and I especially like how it matches, in a kind of cyclical intensity, the film’s penultimate sequence showing how the murder on the Orient Express was carried out.
As Christie’s Miss Marple mystery, The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side, drew upon the real-life personal tragedy of actress Gene Tierney, the instigating crime in Murder on the Orient Express bears an obvious similarity to the 1932 Lindbergh kidnapping case.

A heretofore unaddressed factor contributing to why Murder on the Orient Express ranked so low on my “must-see” list of films in 1974 was my then-limited, not altogether favorable, experience of British crime movies, circa the '30s and '40s. At a time when even the earliest American crime films crackled with tension, the few British films I’d seen struck me as terribly aloof affairs. I was never comfortable with all that British reserve (“Murdered you say? Bit of rotten luck, wot?”), and (wrongly) assumed Murder on the Orient Express would follow suit. 

While it's by no means as stuffy as all that, by the mid-'70s, as American films became bigger, noisier, and in too many instances, dumber (those disaster films), the restraint of Murder on the Orient Express seemed positively invigorating. Clever plot, great dialogue, and a three-act story structure all propped up by beautiful people in fancy clothes in exotic locations…Whaddaya know?...suddenly everything old felt new again.

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2014