MIDNIGHT COWBOY 1969

I’m sometimes asked if I only like movies about women, or if a film has to have a female protagonist in order for me to enjoy it. Granted, even a cursory look at the films I list amongst my favorites would lean toward the answer being, yes; but the truth is, I’m not drawn specifically to movies about women so much as I have a strong aversion to what passes for manhood in a great many motion pictures. Preoccupied as most films are with perpetuating a narrow, outmoded, and distinctly white, hetero-normative vision of manhood, often consisting of oversimplified macho/hero stereotypes and care-worn heroism tropes, I have merely grown weary of outsized masculine totems standing in for fleshed-out, human-scale men.

Never being one to find plot-driven action and adventure to be a preferable alternative to the intensity of simple emotional conflict, I gravitate instead to movies about flawed characters grappling with the human condition. That these have largely been movies about women says more about our culture’s rigidity in its onscreen depiction of masculinity than it does any gender preferences I may hold in the way of  narrative central characters. 

Joe Buck sees the cowboy as the epitome of hetero-masculinity

Hollywood has never lost a dime trafficking in gender stereotypes. In the standard Hollywood film, men “do” while women “feel”; men propel the action, women do all the emotional heavy-lifting. The prototypical American male movie hero is a stoic, unemotional, lantern-jawed man of action, rarely given to moments of self-doubt, diffidence, or introspection. He’s the strong, silent type, indigenous to westerns, war movies, crime dramas, espionage thrillers, sports films, sci-fi, or any testosterone-leaden genre requiring things being “blowed up real good,” or cars raced fast and furiously. Few things are more boring to me than films about men fearful of losing their "masculinity." I really have no idea what that means, and I suspect if I did, I'd have a hard time being convinced of it being anything of value to lose.

Happily, a great deal of this changed (albeit briefly) in the late-'60s with the emergence of the movie anti-hero. The New Hollywood, in its youthful repudiation of America's cinematic status-quo, challenged the old-fashioned concept of masculinity and reimagined the traditional Hollywood leading man as an individual of unprepossessing countenance (Elliott Gould, Richard Benjamin, Malcolm McDowell, et. al.) capable of uncertainty, and more apt to be at war with some inner aspect of his character than to be found pointing a .44 Magnum at some punk and asking, “Do you feel lucky?”

Urban Cowboy
Archaic notions of masculinity collide with the modern world 

A perfect example of the American male redefined can be found in one of the films I consider to be a true, genuine-article, movie classic: John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy. A buddy film for a new generation which in every way embodies the kind of perceptive, complex characterizations I love to see in movies. When a film is this textured in exploring emotional isolation, vulnerability, loneliness, and (a favored theme of mine) the human need to connect—from the relatively rare perspective of the male—it only emphasizes how much time has been wasted and how many rich stories we've missed out on due to Hollywood's persistence in depicting men in terms of masculine archetypes rather than authentic, recognizably flawed individuals.

Jon Voight as Joe Buck

Dustin Hoffman as Enrico Salvatore Rizzo

Sylvia Miles as Cass Trehune

Brenda Vaccaro as Shirley

Midnight Cowboy is the story of Joe Buck (Voight), a naïve Texas dishwasher with a sad, abandoned past who, possessed of little beyond an elemental self-awareness—“The one thing I ever been good for is lovin’”—seizes upon the tin-pot ambition of going to New York and making it big as a sought-after gigolo, servicing the sexual needs of neglected, Park Avenue socialites. Unfortunately, a string of bad breaks (not the least of them being Joe’s ignorance of the largely homosexual implications drawn from his beloved cowboy attire in a Metropolitan setting) results in a drastic reversal of fortunes for Joe, leading to his forging an unlikely friendship/bond with a tubercular, disabled grifter and pickpocket: one Enrico Salvatore Rizzo (Hoffman), or, as he's loath to be called, Ratso.

In detailing the tentative alliance between these two wounded misfits, director John Schlesinger (Darling, The Day of the Locust) and screenwriter Waldo Salt (from the James Leo Herlihy novel), have not only fashioned one of the screen’s great (platonic) love stories, but in the bargain create a terribly moving and heartrending essay on isolation and the need to be needed.

"Joe sees how profusely Ratso is sweating and untucks his shirt to pat down his friend's hair. Ratso, not used to such tenderness, holds onto him, his eyes closed in a stolen moment of bliss."

                        - Dustin Hoffman commenting on one of the film's most poignant scenes

The kind of mature-themed major motion picture unimaginable in today’s teen-driven multiplex marketplace, the then X-rated Midnight Cowboy fairly knocked me for a loop when I saw it in 1969 (I was fairly shaken by it, finding some parts absolutely harrowing, later feeling heartbroken and bawling my eyes out at the end...then staying to watch it all again). I was just 12-years-old at the time, and in my film fan fervor, Midnight Cowboy looked to me like the future of American movies. Strange to think of it now in the age of Iron Man and The Avengers, but try to imagine: I was only an adolescent movie enthusiast, but already I'd had the good fortune to have been exposed to the brilliance that was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Rosemary’s Baby, Secret Ceremony, and Bonnie and Clyde…and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? was just around the corner.

Like an unspoken promise, the quality of these movies led me to the optimistic (naïve?) belief that American films were headed in an entirely new direction. I thought that motion pictures, freed from the constraints of censorship by the dissolution of the Production Code and recently-relaxed definitions of obscenity, could at last take their place as the emergent pop-cultural art form of the 20th century. Alas, conservatism and consumerism ultimately won out, but for a brief time there, Hollywood was turning out the most AMAZINGLY offbeat and thought-provoking movies.  Small wonder that the '60s and '70s still linger in my memory as my absolute favorite era in American film. I see now that it's because we were both growing up at the same time.

X-Rated
Bernard Hughes appears as Townsend "Towny" P. Locke in one of Midnight Cowboy's most  controversial scenes

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Putting aside for a moment Waldo Salt’s absolutely incredible screenplay (and if you've read Herlihy's novel you know what a splendid adaptation it is), as far as I’m concerned, cinematographer Adam Holender (Puzzle of a Downfall Child) and composer John Barry (and all sundry music contributors) are as much the stars of Midnight Cowboy as Voight and Hoffman.
Displaying the kind of seamless collaboration which served to both feed and mislead auteur theorists critics back in the day,  Holender and Barry create a look and sound for Midnight Cowboy so cinematically well-suited to its themes of fractured dreams and abandoned hopes (the use of disorienting flashbacks and subjective audio were considered innovative for its time), that the mode of storytelling becomes as important as the story itself. And, of course, who can listen to Fred Neil's Everybody's Talkin' (sung by Harry Nilsson) without visualizing Joe Buck strutting like a peacock down the crowded Manhattan streets, the diminutive Ratso Rizzo at his side, struggling to keep up.

Repeat viewings reveal the incredible amount of backstory and character exposition that's relayed through the film's economic and artful use of flashbacks and dream sequences. Everything you need to know about Joe Buck's troubled past is revealed in jarring flashes, like memories he's trying to repress. But I find the true richness of this device in that it reveals so much without explaining anything. It's both refreshing and challenging when a film asks you do some of the work yourself.

Shown in flashback, Joe is sexually assaulted by town rowdies jealous of the attention paid to him by the town goodtime-girl, Anastasia Pratt, aka Crazy Annie (Jennifer Salt, daughter of screenwriter Waldo Salt). 

PERFORMANCES

Midnight Cowboy is so chock full of amazing performances that it becomes an exercise in futility to extol the virtues of any one particular actor. Still, each time I watch it, I find I'm left with lingering impressions of newly-discovered bits of brilliance in performances I thought I was long-familiar with.

Making his film debut, long-time favorite Bob Balaban is appealingly vulnerable as the young student who, even in his naif outing as a sexual outlaw, has it over Joe Buck in the street-smarts department

"I got a strange feelin' somebody's bein' hustled!" - Doris Day in Calamity Jane
Oscar-nominee Sylvia Miles makes more out of 6 minutes-worth of screen time than any actress I've ever seen. As the Park Avenue "socialite" with the braying voice and whiplash temper, Miles creates a vividly dimensional character out of little more than a sketch. I could go on about what I adore about her performance, but I couldn't put it any better (or more hilariously) than a fellow blogger does HERE

Sylvia Miles had the showier part, but I have a soft spot for Brenda Vaccaro and what she does with her thoroughly unique role as the emancipated woman who gets a kinky kick out of paying for sex with, as she puts it, a "cowboy-whore" she meets at a party. Like almost every supporting role in Midnight Cowboy, hers is a character one can easily imagine having a life beyond the frame of the screen (judging by her apartment, possibly a pretty fascinating one).   

Midnight Cowboy was my first exposure to both Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman, both of whom give the kind of performances that make stars. Some of the actors considered for the role of Joe Buck include: James Caan, Don Stroud, Alan Alda (!), Michael Sarrazin, Lee Majors, Alex Cord, Gary Lockwood, Robert Forester, and Michael Parks.

Hoffman is, of course, a revelation, especially in light of the extreme departure Ratso Rizzo is from his work in The Graduate; but it's the sad-eyed Jon Voight who ratchets up the film's pathos by way of achieving, in his portrayal of the hapless hustler Joe Buck, what I've always admired in the work of Julie Christie: the ability to instill in shallow, not-very-bright characters, a considerable amount of inarticulate depth.

Haunted
If it's disappointment and sadness that leads Joe to willingly accept sexual objectification as a viable means of existence, then Midnight Cowboy qualifies as the male perspective of a tragic real-life circumstance we tend to see played out in public most often by women. Consider the doomed fates of sexualized small-town girls, Dorothy Stratten and Anna Nicole Smith.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Fantasy isn't perhaps the best word to describe what I mean, but I adore the seedy, grimy look of late '60s New York captured in Midnight Cowboy. It's an Alice Through the Looking Glass view of Manhattan inspired, one can't help but assume, by Brit director John Schlesinger's unfamiliarity with the city, and his fascination with its sordid contrast to the cheery image of America presented in advertising and TV commercials. As would be the case in later years in films like Klute (1971) and Taxi Driver (1976), Midnight Cowboy uses New York as though it were another character in the story.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
As it is rare for a director to even turn out ONE classic film in the entirety of their careers, I find it sometimes a little baffling how easily John Schlesinger's name—the man who gave us Midnight Cowboy, Darling, and The Day of The Locust...three genuine classics, in my book—is so often bypassed in discussions of great directors. Even the gay community rarely gives it up for this director (to my knowledge, the only "out" director working in mainstream film at the time) whose body of work is decidedly uneven, but nonetheless yields several impressive efforts. Happily, Schlesinger won the best directing Oscar for Midnight Cowboy, and the film won Best Picture that year (Salt also won for his screenplay).

There’s no telling what, if any, impact Schlesinger’s sexuality had on the way Midnight Cowboy turned out (after all, the original novel was written by a gay man, but adapted by a straight). But even by today’s standards, what still impresses me about Midnight Cowboy is how strongly it stands as one of mainstream cinema’s most persuasive examples of the purposeful deconstruction of the masculine myth.

Joe Buck embraces a traditional concept of masculinity no longer considered relevant or even valid in an urban (modern) environment. In fact, Joe is rather stunned to learn that everything he once thought represented masculinity and manhood (macho posturing, sexual pursuit, and dressing like a cowboy) has, somehow, become perversely feminized ("You're gonna tell me John Wayne's a fag?!"). Manliness of the sort he admired as a boy in the movies, or copied from the rodeo cowboys that populated his grandmother’s bed, had transmogrified into the macho “drag” adopted by homosexual prostitutes plying their trade on New York's Forty-Second Street.

Joe discovers he's but one of many Midnight Urban Cowboys

Like a great many men who haven't a clue as to how to view themselves without clinging to an antiquated hunter-gatherer/alpha-male paradigm; Joe, without a defined code of “masculinity” to follow, is at a loss. Ironic, because, as revealed in the novel and an early draft of the screenplay, what inspires Joe to come to New York in the first place is his learning that the urban phenomenon of the overworked businessman has resulted in a surplus of sexually frustrated city women. In short, Joe believes there is a shortage of "real men" in New York, and his goal is to step in and fill the void, so to speak.

Even within the sex trade where he hoped to make his fortune, Joe finds himself unwittingly cast in the feminine role of being the one pursued by males rather than in the (equally passive) part of easygoing stud sought after by women. Yet, in his inarticulated longing to love and be loved (his only familiarity with it is as a purely physical act) Joe finds the closest thing he has ever known of it in the deep friendship he develops with another male. One every bit the misfit he is. 

Scenes of Domesticity

Over the course of the film, as Joe and Ratso come to need and depend on one another, Joe’s deep-rooted masculinity anxiety shows signs of being replaced by both a fragile sense of self-worth, and a broader concept of what it means for him to be a man. Joe even tables his dreams and awakens to the reality that he's not cut out for hustling. He places the needs of someone else before his own, and though he commits a violent act out of desperation, it's one born of a genuine concern for the only person that has come to mean anything to him (the only person he has, in fact). Rico drops his tough-guy front and reveals his vulnerability (who could call a man in a Hawaiian shirt Ratso?) forcing Joe to abandon his own false macho attitudinizing, resulting in two individuals at last becoming defined (in our eyes and their own) by their humanity; not the empty labels of masculinity.

And for a rather bleak and somber film, I think that's a really lovely, bittersweet  message to end with.

THE AUTOGRAPH FILES

Bernard Hughes - 1980

Copyright © Ken Anderson

GOSFORD PARK 2001

Adapting Robert Altman’s trademark, multi-character, freeform narrative style to the formalized structure of a classic Agatha Christie murder mystery is such an inspired concept, I’m rather surprised it took until nearly the end of Altman’s 50-plus years in film for someone to think of it. But after tackling musicals (Popeye), westerns (McCabe & Mrs. Miller), farce (Beyond Therapy), romantic comedy (A Perfect Couple), film noir (The Long Goodbye), the psychological thriller (Images), and satire (The Player); a good, old-fashioned whodunit was just about the only genre left for one of the more resilient and versatile filmmakers to come out of the New Hollywood.

Robert Altman has been one of my favorite directors since first discovering him in the early 1970s. But following the rather (for me) dismal back-to-back entries of Cookie’s Fortune (1999) and Dr. T and the Women (2000), I really thought Altman had gone the way of that other '70s favorite, Peter Bogdanovich; i.e., dried-up creatively, his best work behind him. I was wrong. Like Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, and Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman proved himself to be one of those directors capable of delivering surprisingly fresh and innovative work well into their seventies. Indeed, at the ripe old age of 75, Altman’s Gosford Park revealed the director in his finest form since 3 Women (1977), delivering not only one of his most solid and fully realized films, but his biggest boxoffice hit since M.A.S.H. (1970).

Maggie Smith as Lady Constance Trentham

Clive Owen as Robert Parks

Kristen Scott Thomas as Lady Sylvia McCordle

Jeremy Northam as Ivor Novello

With Gosford Park, the collaborative efforts of Robert Altman, producer Bob Balaban, and screenwriter Julian Fellowes combined to create a marvelously layered re-creation of a traditional English-style crime mystery with a decidedly Altman-esque twist. The twist being that the mystery—a murder taking place during a weekend shooting party at an English country estate in 1932— is not seen from the point of view of the aristocratic set of relatives and guests, but rather, from the perspective of the servant class, below stairs. It’s a simple yet ingenious device allowing for the filmmakers to cleverly intermingle the crosscutting stories of some 35 characters while making shrewd observations on everything from the class system, changing times, sexual mores, social conventions, personal relationships, and cultural differences.

Helen Mirren as Mrs. Wilson

Alan Bates as Jennings

Emily Watson as Elsie

Kelly Macdonald as Mary Maceachran

In detailing a strained weekend in the country in which virtually all in attendance have something to hide or something they’re after, Altman’s legendary virtuosity behind the camera serves the misleadingly conventional setup exceptionally well. In fact, not since Nashville has Altman’s celebrated “bag of tricks” (overlapping dialogue, peripheral activity, cross-cutting storylines, ensemble cast of characters harboring secrets) seemed so organic to the material. Ostensibly hemmed in by the rigid constraints of the religiously adhered-to rules of the British social class structure, Altman actually comes off as more liberated than ever. There’s something in Julian Fellowes’ (Downton Abbey) surprisingly witty, culturally-perceptive script that presses most of Robert Altman’s best qualities to the forefront (I can’t think of a single director capable of getting us to keep track of, let alone care about, so many characters), while suppressing a great many of his weaknesses (the English locale spares us Altman’s fondness for the easy laugh of hayseed southern accents).

Michael Gambon as William McCordle

Eileen Atkins as Mrs. Croft

Bob Balaban as Morris Weissman

I saw Gosford Park when it opened in 2001, and, clocking in at a little over two hours, it's a film I was nevertheless sorry to see come to an end (a problem happily remedied by the DVD which contains loads of deleted scenes!). In a world where I find myself feeling grateful if the film I'm watching at least chooses to rely on smart clichés instead of stupid ones; Gosford Park is an endangered species: a film that feels like it's shedding the rote and predictable with the introduction of each new character. Somehow, while still adhering to the genre conventions of an Agatha Christie crime drama (or, as is referenced in the film itself, a Charlie Chan thriller) Gosford Park manages to confound expectations. The comedy is sharp, the drama is well-played and frequently moving, the characters are dimensional, the mystery element engrossing, and its subthemes on class distinctions are poignant and eye-opening.
Of course, the biggest surprise of all is that after all these years, Altman is in the best form of his career.

A particular favorite of mine is Camilla Rutherford as Isabel McCordle.  She and Mabel Nesbitt are characters with story arcs I'd describe as classically Altman-esque.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Perhaps the right word here is “grateful.” What I’m grateful for about Gosford Park is the depth of its intricacy. It's an entertaining film that breezes along, providing both character-based humor and genuinely affecting dramatic moments, yet Gosford Park has a great deal more on its mind than just providing a solid mystery and a houseful of suspects. It's a very smart, observant look at the kinds of surface behaviors and rituals that people engage in order to mask who and what they really are. And all this is layered atop a social satire and comedy of manners contrasting self-imposed hierarchies of status against those that are socially imposed. It's a film just brilliant in its complexity, chiefly because all of these layers play out subtly beneath an outrageously entertaining mystery that is fun to watch in and of itself.
From every conceivable angle, Gosford Park is a marvel of logistics. So many stories to tell, so many characters, so much information to impart...and yet, the film feels light and effortless. That Altman is able to deliver to us so many interesting characters in so brief a time is a skill he has demonstrated several times before; his being able to do so while simultaneously enlightening us as to the myriad duties and rituals that go into the running of an English manor house is something else again.

Gosford Park is a great film for repeat viewings. It's staggering the amount of subtle details one misses when first just trying to figure out "whodunit." The interwoven lives of all the characters become much clearer.

For me, it's such a delight to see a film that asks something of you. That requires your attention, mental involvement, and active participation in following along and picking up on all the pieces provided. It’s great not to have everything spelled out for you, or to have a camera continually directing your gaze towards where you should be looking and why. Gosford Park assumes an alertness from its audience and rewards you with a story that pays off as terribly sharp mystery, crisp comedy, taut character drama, and biting social commentary.

Stephen Fry as Inspector Thompson

PERFORMANCES
The nearly all-British cast assembled for Gosford Park is an eye-popper (Knights! Dames! The inexplicable presence of Ryan Phillippe!), a fact made all the more impressive by having some of the most distinguished actors democratically blended and divided between the upstairs and downstairs characters. Dame Maggie Smith steals scenes and looks quite at home as the snobbish dowager Countess (a role that is essentially a dry-run for the one she would assume 9 years later in Downton Abbey); but it's great fun seeing Sir Alan Bates as the butler of the household, silently occupying scenes like an overqualified extra; or Dame Helen Mirren, makeup-less and relegated to below stairs quarters. And as Gosford Park is a murder mystery, such egalitarian casting works much to the film's benefit, as it is impossible to play the "billing" game here - attempting to guess the victims and guilty parties based on star rank.

Geraldine Sommerville as Louisa Stockbridge (younger sister of Lady Sylvia)
Altman films have a reputation for being well-cast, and Gosford Park is no exception. As was the case with A Wedding, Altman makes it easier for us to tell who's-who by casting actors who look as if they could plausibly be related

The performances in Gosford Park are so uniformly excellent that it's both pointless and futile to try to single out a particular actor. I confess to finding Ryan Phillippe to be the weakest link, although even in this instance his blank screen persona works well within the film's context. Nor am I too fond of Stephen Fry's Inspector Thom...(above stairs, no one lets him complete his introduction), which feels like another of Altman's risky forays into needlessly broad farce (think Opal in Nashville). Certainly, individual characters and their storylines stand out more than others, but if you're like me, you'll wind up having a different "favorite" each time you view the film.

Claudie Blakley as Mabel Nesbitt, serenaded by Ivor Novello

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

There's no escaping the feeling when watching Gosford Park, that one is watching the most elegant, life-sized game of CLUE ever! The insular, bygone world depicted is meticulously recreated in the seamless blending of locations and sets, outrageously gorgeous clothing, and an attention to period detail in makeup and hairstyles that fittingly recall the very sort of films from Britain's past that Gosford Park pays homage to.

Derk Jacobi as Probert, Sir William's valet

All this lavish period-detail fetishism would be off-putting were it not used in service of dramatizing the huge difference in the lives of the "haves" and "have-nots" of Gosford Park. And this is precisely why Robert Altman has always remained one of my all-time favorites; for while the average director would be content to have us ooh and ahh over the jewels, gowns, and luxury of the life depicted, Altman matches every loving close-up and perfectly framed shot of upstairs opulence with a similar shot in the tight and privacy-free servant's quarters. He never preaches or tells us what we should feel about it all, but unlike, say, the inappropriately worshipful depiction of wealth in 1974s The Great Gatsby, Gosford Park captures it all, but with a conscience.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Gosford Park ranks among my top five favorite Robert Altman films. I’m also an avid Downton Abbey fan...a fact that really intrigues me. Not only about myself but about America. American audiences aren’t known for taking British culture to its bosom, but Julian Fellowes’ tales of servants and the social classes seem to have struck a chord with us.

Speaking for myself, I suspect there is something about the distancing effect and “otherness” of British society class struggles that allows me to be entertained by them in ways unthinkable were these tales told about contemporary wealthy American households with maids, nannies and the like. Here in the U.S. we still have yet to come to terms with our own race-based class systems.
Our films and audiences have no trouble humanizing the downtrodden and their plight if they are white; but so much guilt is attached to our ugly slavery/Jim Crow history that Hollywood tends to mostly greenlight movies in which black characters in servitude exist to reassure white audiences or provide them with white "hero" characters who rescue the oppressed from the very racist social structures they created.
No, as far as America is concerned it can take a Downton Abbey to its bosom because it is infinitely easier for this country to culturally process stories that feature white characters both above and below stairs. A lot of uncomfortable subtext is avoided. In my own experience, I can attest to there definitely being a distancing issue here that makes Downton and Gosford suitably escapist.

Gosford Park boasts a beautiful musical score
There's an absolutely charming sequence where we're shown the servants hiding in the shadows to listen to the music coming from the drawing room. Ironically, the aristocracy is bored by it, while the lower classes, prohibited from being seen listening to it, are transported by it. 

Were there to ever be a film about slavery in America (or even the recent past of the Jim Crow era or the 1960s) in which slaves or victims of systemic racism are depicted not as they usually are (as a social issue), but as fleshed-out, fully-realized characters with the same level of dimensional humanity as the servants of Gosford Park or Downton Abbey – varied, unique individuals granted their resentments and temperaments, people with their own hopes, personalities, and emotional agonies derived from their life circumstances – I'm pretty sure my heart would never stop breaking.

Copyright © Ken Anderson     2009 - 2013

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION 2006

Although I like to think of myself as having a good sense of humor, I’m afraid I’m not what you might call an “easy laugher.” (My partner would beg to differ. Given my fondness for Peter Sellers, Benny Hill, and particularly Don Adams; I think he ranks my funnybone somewhere in the “easily-amused, lowbrow laugh-whore” zone.)

But be that as it may, I just don’t happen to find many motion picture comedies to be particularly funny. This is especially true of contemporary comedies, a great many of which seem little more than 5-minute skits painfully dragged out to feature-film length. My face turns to stone at just the mention of the names Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Tim Allen, Rob Schneider, or Vince Vaughn; each of whose films (of which I’ve mercifully experienced but a smattering) feels like an eternity spent in the frathouse kegger from hell.

Looking over my DVD collection, I note that a preponderance of what I consider to be my favorite comedies are actually of the unintentional variety: Showgirls, Mommie Dearest, The Oscar, The Poseidon Adventure. But also represented are the '70s comedies of Mel Brooks; Peter Bogdanovich’s What’s Up, Doc? and Paper Moon; the counterculture black comedies of John Waters and Paul Morrissey/Andy Warhol; and, although I haven’t found Woody Allen to be particularly funny since Manhattan Murder Mystery and Bullets over Broadway, I can’t deny that I own virtually all of his early, Diane Keaton-era films.

Jane Lynch and Fred Willard do a terrifyingly spot-on send-up of those vapidly cheerful, vacant-eyed hosts we've all seen on Hollywood news magazine programs like Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood.

These days, I find television to be the most satisfying and consistent source of comedy. Or, more accurately, the whole TV/Internet/DVD connection. From the brilliant The Larry Sanders Show to Arrested Development, Lisa Kudrow’s Web Therapy and The Comeback, Parks & Recreation, Ricky Gervais’ The Office and Extras, and Louis C.K.’s Louie…the comedy stuff being made for television nowadays (owing, perhaps, to the briefer format) is head and shoulders above what’s being done in film.

The sole exceptions to the above-stated criticism leveled at motion pictures are the (all-too infrequent) ensemble comedies of Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy & Co. This is Spinal Tap, Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, and my personal favorite, For Your Consideration, rank, in my estimation, among the best American comedies ever made. 

Catherine O'Hara as Marilyn Hack:  32-year veteran actress

Harry Shearer as Victor Allan Miller: 40-years in the business, still works for scale

Eugene Levy as Morley Orfkin: Worst Agent in the World

Parker Posey as Callie Webb: "I don't act for trophies."

Christopher Guest as Jay Berman: Alleged Film Director

Ascribable perhaps to its departure from the usual “mockumentary” format they’re known for, For Your Consideration is regarded by some devotees of the Guest/Levy films to be one of their weaker efforts. For me, it's the total opposite. While I wouldn't go so far as to insist any of these films is better than the other (each manages to be uproarious in its own unique way), I can say that due to its satirical targets being topics near and dear to my heart (movies, Hollywood, The Academy Awards, fame culture), For Your Consideration is the film I relate to the most. I get all the inside jokes, I understand the characters, I recognize the absurd world depicted. For Your Consideration achieves the impossible in creating a flawless and riotously funny satire of an industry that increasingly teeters on the brink  of becoming a satire of itself.

John Michael Higgins as Corey Taft (alias Jo-Jo): Movie Publicist

For Your Consideration tells the story of what happens when three otherwise rational actors in an inconsequential little independent film allow themselves to get swept up in the frenzy surrounding the self-propigating hype of the Academy Awards. Following Christopher Guest’s usual mode of commenting on the large by focusing on the small; Hollywood and the film industry is savagely lampooned when we're allowed behind the scenes in the making of Home for Purim— a by-all-appearances dreadful family drama (think Lifetime or Hallmark Channel caliber) in the southern gothic tradition of Eugene O’Neill. Minus the talent. 

The amusingly overwrought Home for Purim chronicles the domestic travails surrounding a family reunion in the Pisher household in 1940s Georgia (pisher being Yiddish slang for just what it sounds like…pisser). From its team of hack writers, dedicated cast of never-quite-made-its, and barely-up-to-the-task production crew, Home for Purim is journeyman filmmaking in every department. But because it's an independent feature, cast and crew indulge themselves in the delusion that what they are making is art.
Once The Academy starts knocking, principles and pretensions are put to the test. In depicting the many (hilarious) ways in which Hollywood types are willing to quickly sell out when fame and fortune comes calling makes For Your Consideration a laugh-a-minute look at a world where high-flown pretensions of “art”commingle uneasily with standard-operational workday mediocrity.

Bob Balaban (I love that guy) as Phillip Koontz (not Kuntz) and Michael McKean as Lane Iverson.
The conjointly-disregarded writers of  Home for Purim

As was the case with the delusional regional theater thespians of Waiting for Guffman, For Your Consideration mines its (occasionally poignant) comedy from the big-time dreams and ambitions of the talent-challenged. But since it takes place in Hollywood, the absurdity ante is considerably upped, because, as we all know, being absolutely terrible at one’s job has never been an obstacle to success in the movie business. Hope springs eternal in an industry where individuals of no discernible talent (Kristen Stewart, Vin Diesel) can rake in the millions, or truly abominable, full-on crap directors like Michael Bay and Dennis Dugan (IMDB him, if you dare) never cease to be employed.

Wake Up, L.A.!
For Your Consideration's television spoofs are so off-the-chart deranged, they don't look like spoofs at all.

For Your Consideration shows what happens when career actors for whom working in the movies has always meant earning a living and not being on the A-List, are given a last-gasp shot at a ride on the red carpet of fame.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Hollywood satires are as old as the industry itself (the 1937 Leslie Howard comedy Stand-In is a good example). But too often they’re either kid-gloved jabs at the easy targets of greed, egomania, and artifice (i.e., Jerry Lewis’ The Patsy, Walter Matthau’s Movers and Shakers, Mel Brooks’ Silent Movie, Singin’ in the Rain); or embittered, not-very-funny, revenge-fueled vendettas by tarnished Golden Boys no longer at the top of the heap (Blake Edwards’ S.O.B., Joe Eszterhas’ Burn, Hollywood, Burn). The flaw of the former is the toothlessness of the satire; the flaw of the latter: the convenient way the filmmakers tend to posit their onscreen surrogates as the principled victims of a morally corrupt industry (an industry you sense they'd sell their mother for to get a chance to again be a major player in).

Jennifer Coolidge as producer Whitney Taylor Brown & Jordan Black as production assistant Lincoln.
Not a functioning brain cell between them. 

In the end, the biggest lie of these satires is their being rooted in the questionable notion that somehow the movie industry is this monolith of empty values and avarice operating independently of the individuals it employs. If the movie industry is creepy, it's because of the Brett Ratners and Charlie Sheens it attracts, not its profit-based corporate structure.

Where For Your Consideration shines (and why I find it so hilarious) is that it presents Hollywood as an industry that is only as empty-headed and superficial as the people who seek to make their living in it. The humor comes out of the character flaws of individuals who willingly subject themselves to its rejections and petty humiliations; who delude and flatter themselves that they are absolutely NOT a part of the system; and who, pitiably, are so fueled by longing and vulnerable to temptation that they readily sell out every last principle and ideal they have when an opportunity for fame and fortune presents itself.

 For Your Consideration finds both the humor and humanity in people of unexceptional gifts harboring the dream of being extraordinary.

There's not a movie made that couldn't be made better with the casting of Parker Posey.
Rachael Harris as Debbie Gilchrist: "Dying is easy. Playing a lesbian is hard!"

PERFORMANCES

As is always the case with Christopher Guest’s ensemble comedies, the entire cast is absolutely brilliant, making it impossible to point out one favored bit without leaving out a dozen more. Suffice it to say there’s not a single character in the film I wouldn't have enjoyed seeing more of. Even after multiple viewings, I keep catching new bits of business and finding more layers in the marvelously comic characterizations. They are all just great.

Ensemble members Rachael Harris, Ed-Begley, Jim-Pidddock, and Deborah-Theaker 

Of course, special mention must be made of Catherine O’Hara, who just shines as Marilyn Hack. Her performance here is doubly notable because it inspired real life to imitate art (O'Hara garnered considerable Academy buzz for the film. A buzz that never materialized in an Oscar nod). 

There’s no way that I can watch her sympathetic portrayal of an actress who so humiliatingly loses her grip at the thought of being nominated for an Oscar without thinking of Sally Kirkland. For those unfamiliar with the name, Sally Kirkland is an actress who’d been appearing in films since the 60s without making much of an impact when, in 1987, a Best Actress Oscar nomination for Anna, thrust her into the limelight. And she ran with it.

Serious Actress                                      Movie  Star

Catherine O'Hara's transformation from dedicated professional to potential Oscar-nominee is nothing short of chilling in perfectly capturing that "perpetually startled"  look of the face-lift set. Amazingly, there are no special makeup effects involved. She's just using her facial muscles! 

Determined to reverse decades of obscurity, Kirkland (who in Anna beautifully portrayed an unglamorous, middle-aged stage actress) launched herself into an exhaustive campaign of self-promotion memorable for its shamelessness. Almost unrecognizably glammed-out, wearing perilously short skirts that enhanced her always-on-display, recently-enhanced breasts; the 46-year-old veteran actress carried on like a giggly starlet on a string of nighttime talk shows—most frequently The Arsenio Hall Show. A sad coda to her tale is while she continues to work in films, her Oscar nomination never did result in stardom. In addition, Kirkland suffered so many serious health issues as a result of her breast implants that she had to have them removed and later became an advocate for the banning of the surgical procedure.

Don Lake & Michael Hitchcock as the squabbling Siskel/Ebert-like TV film critics

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

A few of my favorite bits of dialogue.

Victor Allen Miller: "It’s just a bit silly about the Oscar stuff, don’t you think?"

Sandy Lane : Silly? It’s the Backbone of this industry!"

Victor Allen Miller: "An industry noted for not having a backbone."

Corey Taft: “In every actor there lives a tiger, a pig, an ass, and a nightingale. You never know which one’s going to show up.”

Simon Whitset (cameraman): "Do you know how tight my aperture is right now? Have you any idea?”

Jay Berman (director): “If you’re being a smart-ass, you know what I'm gonna do? I’m gonna put you across my knee.”

Variety Headlines
Pointing Guy Scores Big  / "Let's Shoot The Puppy" Gets Axed: Studio Pulls Plug

Lane Iverson: “You can't throw the baby out with the bathwater because then all you have is a wet, critically injured baby. And I don’t think that’s what you want to put your name on.”

Debbie Gilchrest: "I feel like it's ambiguous. I don't think it's clear that I'm gay. I mean, I got the look, but I think that we're pussyfooting around the subject."

Brian Chubb: "That made you sound gay..."

Sandra Oh & Richard Kind as the marketing directors for Home For Purim

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy make comedies about dreamers, and as such, their humor always has a touch of wistfulness to it. Being a huge film fan and a dreamer myself, perhaps that's why For Your Consideration is my favorite of their films. Or maybe it's just that I get a kick out of a movie that takes a bit of the air out of the kind of people who go around saying things like: "It's all about the work," "It's important to hone one's craft," or refer to their voices and bodies as "My instrument." 

Copyright © Ken Anderson