SMOOTH TALK 1985

“You don’t understand. I mean, it’s not what you think. I’d never do that. It’s just…the boys are so nice to you. When we’re together…I never knew it was gonna be so nice. Did you ever have a boy hold you close and sing to you? This one boy, Eddie…he sang to me right in my ear. And he held me so sweetly. June, don’t you know how that feels? Just to be held like that?”

Laura Dern as Connie

Treat Williams as Arnold Friend

Mary Kay Place as Katherine

It’s summer vacation and 15-year-old Connie moves about the suburban California home she shares with her easygoing dad (Levon Helm), quarrelsome mom (Place), and “perfect” 24-year-old sister, June (Elizabeth Berridge), in a sleepwalker’s haze of idle distraction and adolescence-induced self-absorption. Able only to muster up enough energy for sunbathing, toenail-painting, music-listening, and practicing her “How to talk to boys” patter while smiling into mirrors, Connie’s at that age where she feels as if she’s harboring at least four different people under her skin. First there’s Daddy’s little girl; then the lazy, can’t-do-anything-right, “career criminal” her mother thinks she needs to keep her eye on 24/7; and, of course, her sister sees her as a spoiled, entitled brat. But Connie herself feels awkwardly suspended between wanting to remain a little girl like her naive friend Jill (Sarah Inglis), or becoming one of those sexy, self-assured girls at the roadside hamburger stand who attract the boys just out of high school. An ambition she shares with her more with-it friend Laura (Margaret Welsh).

But if at home Connie and her mother continuously lock horns due to one being concerned she’s seeing the image of her former self, while the other fears she’s looking at a vision of her future self; then its only during those long afternoons at the mall (it’s the '80s, the very height of mall culture) where, far from the gaze of those who think of her as a child, Connie has the opportunity to exuberantly, flirtatiously and (tragically) all-too innocently, explore the romantic possibilities of being an adult.

With sensitivity and a sometimes piercing insight into the peculiar pains and anxieties of verge-of-adulthood adolescence, Smooth Talk tells a melancholy coming-of-age story that’s also part Grimm fairy tale and horror story. A sexual awakening, yes, but an awakening to darkness.

“I look at you. I look right in your eyes…and all I see are a bunch of trashy daydreams.”

There’s a reason why a kind of neutered androgyny has always been standard equipment for male teen pop stars over the years. Why the over-effusive journalism of fan mags marketed to adolescent girls (Tiger Beat and 16 Magazine) trafficked in platonic, My Personal Dairy adjectives like, “huggable,” “cute,” “smoochable,” and “dreamy.” Why the casting of boy bands demands the representation of at least one of each prototypically “safe” male personality (the quiet one, the bad boy, the funny one, etc.). And why, in 1972, David Cassidy’s talk of drug use and his discreet display of pubic hair on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine sent hoards of adolescent girls heading for the hills and sounded the death-knell for his teen-idol career.

For a great many girls first becoming aware of their sexuality, sex isn’t really what it’s about at all. At least not in the clinical, literal sense. When you're young, vague adult urges collide with childish illusions. A burgeoning interest in sex during adolescence is, for most girls, a confused jumble of barely-understood, tantalizingly dangerous feelings centering on dreamy fantasies. Heady fantasies, romantic in nature, of idealized boy/men, more feminine than masculine in nature, who ask them out on dates and make them feel special, beautiful, and understood. Of safe, puppydog caresses and scary/exciting kisses which can be tender or torrid, but never go too far.

Does Your Mother Know?
Connie (Dern) and Laura (Margaret Welsh) are intrigued by an "older kids" roadside hangout. Less in a rush to reach adulthood, Jill (Sarah Inglis) lingers behind

If puberty in boys inflames an often difficult-to-understand surge in sexual desire and interest, these exact same feelings converge just as confusingly in adolescent girls, only with the added complication of the deceptively ego-gratifying awareness of the dubious female “power” to attract the male gaze. Of course, the tragic misunderstanding to be found in the pursuit of desirability through the self-objectifying manipulation of one’s appearance is that it only offers the illusion of control. The the possessor of the gaze is the one with all the power. It’s a sad fact of life that in our culture, girls learn the value of their bodies to boys and men long before they learn their own value to themselves.

Rules of Attraction
Longing to be noticed, Connie doesn't know she's already being watched

This tragic misunderstanding leads to girls longing to be cherished settling for being wanted (or worse, never being able to tell the difference), confusing physical development with emotional maturity, and to using sexual activity as a means of coping with emotional emptiness.  

The music of James Taylor, specifically his smooth talk version of the R&B classic, "Handyman"
serves as a premonitory leitmotif for dangerous seduction, just as Dern's
perpetually bare legs suggest a vulnerable voluptuousness

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Smooth Talk is adapted from Joyce Carol Oates’1966 allegorical short story Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Set in that same decade, Oates’ story—an early draft of which was originally titled Death and the Maiden—is dedicated to Bob Dylan (Oates was very into his music at the time, specifically the 1965 song, It’s All Over Now Baby Blue) and was inspired by a Life magazine article the author read about a real-life serial killer of teenage girls known as “The Pied Piper of Tucson.” That such a gracefully delicate film could emerge from such an unsettling source is a testament to Oates’ poetic ability to emphasize the humanity behind the horrific. Also, it's no mean feat that the filmmakers (director Joyce Chopra) are sensitive enough to know that what works in realistic allegory can be effectively softened in the very literal language of film while still achieving the same impact.  

Musician Levon Helm as Harry, Connie's loving but somewhat unconnected father

Wife and husband team of director Joyce Chopra and screenwriter Tom Cole do an extraordinary job of expanding upon and fleshing-out Oates’ slender, shivery prose. As if taking its cue from the mercurial shifts in mood typical of adolescence, Smooth Talk weaves scenes of languid dreaminess and tense family conflict (Connie, who always appears to be lost in a world of her own when around her family: “I wish I could just travel somewhere.”) with moments of the kind of joyous, impulsive wing-spreading we’ve all experienced as a natural part of growing up and discovering who we are.

The dark tone of the narrative’s third act feels, soberingly enough, like the intrusion of adult consequence on the childhood luxury of poor judgment and making mistakes.

With an almost ten-year age gap between them, Connie and older sister June (Elizabeth Berridge) don't even share the same memories

PERFORMANCES

Sometimes when I watch a film with a big star in the lead, the words of Valley of the Doll’s Helen Lawson come to mind: “The only hit to come out of a Helen Lawson show is Helen Lawson, and that’s ME baby, remember?” And by this I mean that some stars, whether intentionally or not; in order to keep the spotlight on themselves, seem to make it their business never to surround themselves with talents larger than their own. Smooth Talk, like a great many of my favorite independent films, features a cast so uniformly excellent, it has the feel of an ensemble piece even in the face of the powerhouse performances of Laura Dern and Treat Williams.

The always wonderful Mary Kay Place is one of those fine character actresses
incapable of striking a false note 

On the topic of Laura Dern, I’m afraid I’m going to come off sounding like one of those 16 Magazine writers myself, for I find it difficult to rein in the hyperbole when referring to this gifted actress. I’ve always been a huge fan, but she is just off-the-chart terrific here. As the character at the center of the story and the catalyst for all the film’s events, Dern makes sympathetically real a girl whose vanity and self-absorption might otherwise come off as shallow. She gives a natural, heartbreakingly honest, close-to-the-skin performance that’s ultimately disarming and oh-so touching. I think is chiefly because Dern, in her ability to expressively convey what a character is both thinking and feeling, clues us in that Connie is having just as hard a time making sense of her feelings as her family. I've seen Laura Dern in many things, but her performance in Smooth Talk has always remained my favorite. Beautifully written, directed, and acted, how Smooth Talk failed to get Oscar nominations in all the major categories is a mystery right up there with 1997s Eve's Bayou.

You can keep your Mike Myers, your Freddy Krueger,  your Jason Vorhees...Treat Williams as A. Friend is hands-down the screen's creepiest and scariest psychopath

THE STUFF OF FANTASY 
Because not a great many people have seen Smooth Talk, I don't want to give too much away about the film's unforgettable last half hour. It's a powerful scene remarkably well-played by Williams and Dern. Treat Williams in particular, gives one of those performances that sneaks up on you. It seems as first as if he's doing very little, then before you know it, you notice your heart has started beating faster and a subtle tension rising within you, making your pulse race. He's that scary...and that good. I was crazy about the film before, but this sequence, with its startling shifts in tone, just blew me away.

"I seen you that night and I said, 'Oh my God, that's the one...'"

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

As a gay man, I’ve never been able to fully identify with most coming-of-age-films. Ones told from a male perspective tend to be designed to flatter the egos of the male audience and mythologize the memories of the male writers. No matter what the title, these films were always populated with impossibly beautiful older women, dream girls, and willing prostitutes who craved nothing more than a sexual encounter with an awkward, gangly, pimply-faced premature ejaculate who couldn't find a clitoris with a GPS device.

Of course, there was the alternative of the John Hughes-type deification of youth movie. Films where, against evidence of logic and all common sense, adults are always corrupt and teens are all pure of spirit and mind. Where characters say things like, “When you grow up your heart dies” and aren't asked to immediately vacate the premises.

No, when I was going through puberty and struggling with adolescence, I didn’t go around punching out authority figures, drag racing, sleeping with lonely local widowers, or turning my house into a brothel while my parents were away. I was just an insecure kid struggling to find out what it meant to be a grown-up.
Male-focused coming-of-age films are encouraged to perpetuate the masculine myth: making puberty all about wearisome rites of passage (invariably centered around getting laid or channeling aggression), so if one wanted a story that dealt with emotions and inner struggle, female-centered coming-of-age-films were the sparse alternative. (Mainstream gay coming-of-age films were still a few decades off.)

I was well into adulthood when I saw Smooth Talk, but like no other film I've seen before or since, it captures, if not the particulars of adolescence as I remember it, most certainly the confused  feelings and anxieties. 

I recall my mood swings, my self-consciousness…my preoccupation with appearance, and need to be on my own. Like the character of Connie (and most teenagers), I'd go places and lie to my parents about where I'd been. I'd have one mode of dress when my parents saw me, but when out with my friends, I dressed more provocatively, hoping my clothes would speak in a sexual language I hadn't yet found the words for.

I grew up in San Francisco, so there were no malls to hang out in, but there the hangouts of Polk and Castro Streets. Too young to actually get in anywhere, my friends and I (a close-knit group out to one another, if no one else) we haunted the poster stores, record shops and moviehouses. Just being around so many out, gay men was exciting and empowering (although nobody used that word in the '70s) and made me feel unimaginably sophisticated and mature. Naturally, when I was actually approached by someone, my shyness and social ineptitude betrayed everything my precocious mode of dress sought to convey, and nothing would come of it. But the reality was, at age 15 and 16…just having someone show interest in you was more than enough.

These days it appears as though the stridently heteronormative strain that ran through the coming-of-age film genre of my era is at last starting to ease up. I certainly hope so. In this day of internet anonymity and sexual restlessness among adolescents, not much about what Smooth Talk addresses has changed over the years. Certainly not the threat of predatory attention. But with new stories to tell and a broader spectrum of human experience represented, films about adolescence and awakening sexuality are bound to reveal more of what we all collectively share, and make obvious the fact that none of us‒male, female, gay, straight‒escapes the pain of growing up.

 Copyright © Ken Anderson

STARTING OVER 1979

Before Drew Barrymore, Matthew McConaughey, Katherine Heigl, and the entire Judd Apatow oeuvre conspired to sour me on the whole genre for good, I really used to love romantic comedies. To me, the absurdist roundelay that is two human souls striving to connect is marvelous fodder for films both touching and hilarious. In that vein, Two for the Road, Ball of Fire, and Sweet November (the 1968 version) are among the funniest, most engagingly romantic films I've ever seen. But I don't think they make those kinds of romantic comedies anymore.
There seems to be a post-feminist hostility embedded in romantic comedies today: a passive-aggressive assignment of all things emotional to “chick flick” dismissiveness, combined with a self-serving aggrandizement of all things boorish and sophomoric to the realm of masculinity. Maybe it’s time for me to explore what’s out there in gay-themed romantic comedies, because the heterosexual battle of the sexes seems to have grown increasingly reductive and mean-spirited. 

One particular favorite of mine from the past is Starting Over, an almost forgotten romantic comedy smash from 1979 (one of the top 20 highest-grossing films of the year) directed by Alan J. Pakula (Klute, Sophie’s Choice) and written by James L. Brooks (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Terms of Endearment). 

Jill Clayburgh as Marilyn Holmberg

Burt Reynolds as Phil Potter

Candice Bergen as Jessica Potter

Starting Over is the story of freelance journalist Phil Potter (Reynolds), struggling to adapt to single life after the dissolution of his marriage to singer/songwriter/self-realization enthusiast Jessica (Bergen). Through the touchy-feely intervention of his psychiatrist brother and sister-in-law (the always-reliable Charles Durning and Frances Sterhagen), Phil meets emotionally wounded, self-effacing grade-school teacher Marilyn Holmberg (Clayburgh), and the two embark on a tentative relationship wherein each is afraid of, yet longing for, emotional commitment and a chance to start over.

Charles Durning and Frances Sternhagen oozing well-intentioned sincerity

I don’t have a whole lot of objectivity where Starting Over is concerned. Not to the degree that I’m blind to the film’s faults, but in as such that my abiding fondness for the film seems inextricably tied to my feelings about the time in which it was made (the late '70s) and my initial response to it when I first saw it (it rivaled What's Up, Doc? as one of the funniest comedies of the time). In other words, this might be one of those films about which I rave from the housetops, yet could very likely leave those seeing it for the first time feeling a little underwhelmed.
I guess it's good for me to remember that the proper response to some films (like jokes that don't translate) can only be, “You had to have been there.” Starting Over was released at the very tail-end of the 1970s and a great deal of its humor is derived from its so perfectly capturing the zeitgeist of that particular point in time. Pop history (and especially historical motion pictures) would have us believe that eras begin and end neatly and succinctly, but in truth, time has a tendency to overlap, and trends and cultural preoccupations sort of bleed into one another.

The underutilized Mary Kay Place (Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman) is extremely funny as a particularly awkward bind date  

In 1979, the narcissism of the “Me” decade began to be co-opted by yuppies and started to transmogrify into a new kind of unashamed era of self-interest and self-realization. It was an era of encounter groups, self-help books, and a whole lot of psychoanalytical navel-gazing. Of course, all this preoccupation with self would eventually lead to the “Decade of Greed” that became the '80s; but in 1979 all this meant was that everyone was caring, sharing, and feeling feels all over the place. The drug-fueled hedonism of the swinging-singles disco era led to a post-sexual revolution ennui mixed with singles-bar aimlessness (captured the previous year in the morbidly moralizing 1978 film Looking for Mr. Goodbar) that in turn boosted divorce rates and threw male/female relationships into a tailspin.

At the urging of his brother, Phil (Reynolds) attends a divorced men's workshop. That's What's Up, Doc?'s Austin Pendleton to the right.

By the late '70s, women who had had their consciousness raised by the feminist movement had to contend with a dating landscape in which there appeared to be no rules. Men, heretofore relegated to the culture-mandated roles of provider/protector, grew commitment-phobic, sought therapy, or clung to macho traditionalism. Women were in a quandary wondering whether there was really such a thing as "having it all," or was the by-product of emancipation merely learning to live alone and liking it. What exactly was romance in the world of the zipless fuck, no-fault divorce, Plato’s Retreat, and men’s sensitivity workshops? It was a crazy time to look for love and Starting Over seemed to capture it all in a humorous lens both sharp and fuzzily sentimental.

Marilyn -  "Before I met you I'd finally gotten to the point in my life where I no longer thought some man was gonna come along and make this huge change. I'd finally gotten to the point where I liked being unattached."

After her Oscar-nominated emergence in 1978's An Unmarried Woman, Jill Clayburgh became the unofficial screen spokesperson for modern womanhood. She was a real favorite of mine and is sensational here. The progressive feminine image she presented—of a woman who wanted, not needed a man—would become fairly obsolete by 2012 thanks to the regeneration of the Disney Princess Myth and TV reality show humiliations like The Bachelor and Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire? 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

As stated, the thing I most enjoy about Starting Over (and something I’m not at all sure carries over to those discovering the film today) is how wittily the film captures the tenuous, walking-on-eggshells state of male/female relationships in the '70s. The 1970s was culturally the decade where all the dust was settling from the upheavals of the 60s, and people were these vibrating bundles of anxiety putting herculean effort behind maintaining a front of laid-back serenity. (The sale of Valium skyrocketed in the '70s; a fact inspiring one of Starting Over’s biggest and then most talked-about gags).

Phil suffers a panic attack at Bloomingdale's

Traditional gender roles, those typified by the  Rock Hudson/Doris Day comedies of the '60s, were dismantled in the '70s, necessitating a new kind of sex comedy. Ads for Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (1977)—the real game-changer in romantic comedies—labeled it “A Nervous Romance.” That classification goes double for Starting Over; only instead of urban singles, were invited to enjoy the amorous fumblings of the newly divorced. Individuals who perhaps married when one set of rules was in place, forced to re-enter single life ill-prepared for the cultural change-up in the game plan.

Love, American Style
(I've always loved that print that hangs above them: "Woman Reading" by Will Barnet)

PERFORMANCES

Few who weren’t around to bear witness to the painful spectacle of Burt Reynolds’ willful self-exploitation and wasting of his talents in the '70s can't appreciate what a delightful departure (and surprise) Starting Over was. The promising performer of Deliverance (1972) spent the better part of the decade ignoring his gifts as an actor, instead choosing to court dubious celebrity and fashioning himself into the male Jayne Mansfield (or the Matthew McConaughey) of the '70s. One of the biggest (if not the biggest) box-office stars of the time, Reynolds, with his myriad talk-show appearances, gleeful self-objectification, and seemingly endless stream of unwatchable, good ol’ boy redneck comedies, enthusiastically participated in turning himself into a Hollywood punchline.

Divested of his trademark pornstache and dropping his tired Dean Martin-esque "I'm so cool I don't care" indifference act; Reynolds gives perhaps his best pre-Boogie Nights performance in Starting Over. I don’t know that I've ever found Reynolds to be particularly likable before, but here he is quite appealing and quite wonderful. Underplaying marvelously, he’s one of the few male characters on screen able to convey a sweetly insecure vulnerability without slipping into wimpdom.

Alas, much in the way Eddie Murphy’s noteworthy performance in Dreamgirls failed to prevent Hollywood from remembering the hot mess that was Norbert; the career turn-around Starting Over may have signaled for Burt Reynolds was sabotaged by the two-strikes-you're-out disaster followup that was the craptacular Smokey and the Bandit II (1980) and The Cannonball Run (1981).

The ultimate sign of commitment: giving your sweetheart the key to your apartment 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Without a doubt, the biggest buzz attending Starting Over on its release was the breakout comedy performance of Candice Bergen. Never highly-regarded for her acting, but a popular screen presence due to roles capitalizing on her ice-princess beauty, Bergen had heretofore only shown her comedic side on television (she was the first female host of Saturday Night Live and appeared to great effect on The Muppet Show). As Starting Over’s self-confident, atonal singer of atrocious “empowerment” pop songs, Bergen garnered the best notices of her career and, at age 32, launched a second career of sorts as a skilled comedienne.

Candice Bergen's highlight scene, in which she attempts to seduce her ex-husband by singing her disco composition "Better Than Ever," received the loudest and longest laugh from an audience I have ever heard in a movie theater.

The songs attributed to Bergen’s character were written by then-collaborative-couple Carole Bayer Sager and Marvin Hamlisch, whose own relationship they immortalized in the Neil Simon-penned Broadway musical They’re Playing Our Song (1978). I'd always thought Bergen’s songs in Starting Over were intended to be awful, both musically and lyrically (although I can’t help liking the song “Better Than Ever.” Oddly enough, Bergen’s version more than the Stephanie Mills version heard at the end), but in truth, they sound identical to the songs from their hit Broadway show, so maybe they aren't as satiric as I once assumed.

Future Murphy Brown co-star, Charles Kimbrough, has a bit part as a salesman

 Home Alone's Daniel Stern (who would also appear in the Jill Clayburgh films I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can and It's My Turn) plays a student in Burt Reynolds' journalism class in Starting Over

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Starting Over is a terrifically funny and touching romantic comedy, but I can understand if time has diluted some of its punch. For one, the image of Burt Reynolds as a wiseguy sex machine is so dim now that no one is likely to derive much pleasure from seeing him cast against type. Seeing Burt Reynolds without his mustache in 1979 would be today akin to seeing Lady Gaga wearing Crocs.

Similarly, most people's memory of Candice Bergen today only extends back as far as Murphy Brown, so her atypically relaxed and risk-taking performance here lacks the shock value it had in 1979. The same can be said for the humor derived from her terrible singing. The idea of a no-talent pop star was riotous in 1979; folks looking at the film today might well think she sounds no worse than Katy Perry.

The Academy snubbed Reynolds, but both Clayburgh and Bergen received Oscar nods for Starting Over. Clayburgh had previously appeared with Reynolds in Semi-Tough (1977) while Bergen would re-team with the actor in the 1985 crime film Stick

I have no idea why some comedy is enduring (I Love Lucy) while other kinds of humor seem to grow less funny over time (I love the film Shampoo, but I look at it now and can't even remember why I once found it to be so hilarious). Starting Over, for better or worse, bears the stamp of its time, but in a way that I don't think dates it so much as lends its humor an authenticity and its characters a sense of existing in a real-time and place. (Starting Over, which takes place in Boston, has a great look of winter and autumn about it. The huge coats the characters wear look for once like they're actually for function, not fashion, plus, I love that people in this movie use the bus!)

Starting Over is full of '70s-era jokes about finding oneself, Accutron watches, and telephone answering machines, but its sweetly comic look at the need to take chances to find love is something I don't think can ever be labeled dated.

THE AUTOGRAPH FILES

Autograph of Candice Bergen from 1991, at the height of her Murphy Brown fame

Copyright © Ken Anderson

NEW YORK, NEW YORK 1977

It's an odd thing being a film enthusiast. One part of you regards film as an art form, worthy of all the aesthetic principles applied to fine art; the other makes peace with the fact that film is an entertainment industry "product" and just as likely the inspiration of tax shelters, hedge funds, and profit predictions. (I'm not naive to the realities of the movie industry, but I confess that I still find it a sobering experience watching the Academy Awards each year and hearing, instead of lofty speeches about their dedication to the higher principles of art, the gratified listing of professional associates like producers, agents, managers, and publicists.) 

It's for these reasons why, in this world full of directors more concerned with building an add-on to their Malibu beach homes than with building a legacy of work that has something to say about the human condition, I remain (sometimes blindly) faithful to and thankful for filmmakers like Martin Scorsese. Even when he falters, as I believe he does with New York, New York, he's still one of those directors who always appears to be trying to make films that matter.

Liza Minnelli as Francine Evans

Robert De Niro as Jimmy Doyle

I first saw New York, New York in San Francisco in 1977. Due to the success of Taxi Driver, Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese were extremely hot at the time, and San Francisco was all abuzz over the fact that, simultaneous to the release of New York, New York, Liza Minnelli was appearing at the Orpheum Theater in a pre-Broadway tryout of the Scorsese-directed musical, Shine It On (which became The Act by the time it reached Broadway). Minnelli had suffered a string of movie flops following 1972’s Cabaret, but the papers were full of gossip about her romance with Scorsese and predictions that New York, New York would return her to her former station as the queen of show biz.

Alas, despite high-running anticipations, New York, New York flopped rather spectacularly when it opened. The original version I saw on opening day was hastily re-edited within the week and a shorter version re-released to theaters, but to no great effect. The verdict was already in and the film pretty much declared D.O.A. by the critics.

DeNiro and Minnelli Make with the Goo Goo Eyes

The most extravagant film to date for the gritty Scorsese (the combined budgets of all his previous films didn't equal the $14-million spent here), New York, New York is a 1940s MGM backstage musical viewed through the dark prism of the '70s zeitgeist (individualism, commoditization of art, and feminism crop up amongst the nostalgia fetishism). Sweet-natured big band singer Francine Evans (Minnelli) falls for volatile saxophone player Jimmy Doyle (De Niro), and in the tradition of A Star is Born and Cover Girl, Francine’s professional ascendancy threatens De Niro’s ego and puts a strain on their romance.

Realistic Tensions on Stylized Sets

No expense is spared in giving the film the look and feel of those quaintly studio-bound romances of old, but Scorsese’s desire to contrast '70s naturalism with the stylized artificiality of '40s musicals doesn’t really gel, and the whole enterprise feels like an obscenely over-funded film school experiment.  

Without a doubt, Scorsese’s biggest and most fatal miscalculation is in mounting such a staggeringly sumptuous production and then neglecting to give us either characters to care about or a romance to root for (or, to be honest, much in the way of a story at all). What were the writers thinking in dreaming up De Niro’s Jimmy Doyle? Did Scorsese really think a guy this noxious (he's like a cross between Travis Bickle and Jake LaMotta) would make for an appropriate musical-comedy leading man? Even with the film structured as something of a dramedy, De Niro's lack of any kind of redeeming qualities leaves an emotional hole dead-center of this overstuffed opus. In addition, not only is De Niro’s character such a selfish, hot-headed, obnoxious bully that watching his scenes becomes an increasingly trying experience, but the level of passivity with which his abuse is met by Minnelli's character has the effect of souring our feelings toward her as well.

Robert De Niro: Star Quality? Yes. Charm? Not so much.

When veteran filmmakers lament the loss of the artistic freedoms that came with the "New Hollywood" of the '70s, one can't help but feel that a lot of the blame must fall at their own cocaine-dusted feet. Seventies darlings like Peter Bogdanovich and Michael Cimino provided the nails for their own coffins by misusing their success to cultivate costly, undisciplined vanity projects (At Long Last Love & Heaven's Gate, respectively), and Scorsese follows suit with New York, New York.

These directors, who were so resourceful with tiny budgets, all seemed to lose their minds when handed millions, prompting the studios and lawyers to ultimately step in, like stern governesses, and take back the keys to the candy store. Scorsese allows improvised scenes to drag on and on pointlessly, as if unable to ascertain when to cut; characters pop in and out with little information given as to their importance to the leads; and whole scenes look randomly assembled, able to be inserted and deleted with little effect to the plot. It's never a good sign when you can imagine a film being screened with its reels out of order, and it not making a whit of difference. I respect when a filmmaker tries to do something different, but creative self-indulgence on such a grand scale just feels needlessly wasteful.

Mary Kay PLace as Bernice Bennett

Barry Primus as Paul Wilson

Mary Kay Place (Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman) and Barry Primus (Puzzle of a Downfall Child) play peripheral characters whose significance to the plot varies significantly depending on which cut of the film you've seen.

 WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Given my criticisms, New York, New York might seem to be an odd choice to number among the films which inspire me. But I really do find something admirable in what Martin Scorsese attempted to do here, a feeling which has nothing to do with his inability to actually pull it off. It's a provocative idea to explore what a director known for his realist/naturalistic style could bring to a genre as grounded in artificiality as the classic Hollywood musical. To his credit, Scorsese doesn’t mock or cynically hold himself superior to the genre. He really appears to respect the dramatic and emotional potential of musicals and clearly has an affinity for their dream-factory allure. If anything, New York, New York makes a good argument for the unpopular theory that, in terms of professionalism and mastery of craft, contemporary directors can't hold a candle to even the most journeyman studio-contract directors of the past.

PERFORMANCES

This is the first love story I’ve ever seen that had the audience on its feet cheering when the lovers DON’T end up together! I’m really not equipped to judge Robert De Niro’s performance because the character he plays is so detestable I can’t tell if De Niro is simply miscast, or if he thinks his creepy stalker act is actually supposed to be charming (sad to say, but I've known many women -and men- who would willingly put up with such behavior if the guy looked like De Niro). What I can speak to is how terrific Liza Minnelli's performance is. I think it's her absolute finest post-Cabaret film work, and she is in the best voice of her career. Though ill-served by the script, she is exactly right and a perfect fit for what should have been the role of a lifetime and another Oscar nomination. After spending most of her career trying to distance herself from comparisons with her mother, Minnelli just goes all Garland on us here, and the results are fantastic. Any warmth and heart that the film has is chiefly due to her.

Minnelli's finest film moment: Singing the hell out of "The World Goes 'Round"

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

On par with how far afield this film goes emotionally, is how superbly the film works musically. Scorsese handles the musical sequences surprisingly well and displays a real knack for the ways in which music can be seamlessly integrated into a narrative. The score is chock full of great postwar standards, and the new songs by Kander & Ebb (Chicago) are among their best work. That the terrific title song failed to get an Oscar nod, and was otherwise largely ignored until covered by Frank Sinatra some two years later, attests to the level of public indifference New York, New York was met with on its release.

A great many subpar classic MGM musicals have been saved by spectacle. Unfortunately, New York, New York's many splashy musical numbers aren't enough to fully surmount the film's narrative shortcomings.

Diahnne Abbott (then Mrs. De Niro) appears as a singer in a Harlem nightclub

         

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Some people can forgive a film anything if there are lots of explosions or chase scenes. Me, I'm a sucker for a film that's beautiful to look at. Cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs (Easy Rider), costume designer Theadora Van Runkle (Bonnie & Clyde), and production designer Boris Leven (West Side Story) give New York, New York a period gloss that almost, just almost, makes up for the fact that, while all dressed up, the film ultimately has nowhere to go.

My Favorite Set: The Neon Nightclub

Obviously, everything I've written about New York, New York are the impressions I was left with after I saw the film. That's the fair bargain struck between the filmmaker and the movie-goer: let me have your attention for a couple of hours (or three) and you are free to take from this experience what you will, pro or con. That's straightforward and honest to me. I invest my time, they invest their ideas and inspiration. What pisses me off is when I've invested my time and it's nakedly apparent that the movie I'm watching is a product of pitch meetings, dealmaking, and ledger sheets.

Which is precisely why, flawed as it is, New York, New York still remains such a valuable piece of cinema to me. Love it or hate it, whether you think it's courageous or foolhardy, there's no getting around the fact that Scorsese was at least trying to do something interesting. Who's to say what part drugs and addiction played in giving the final film its hodgepodge feel (reports lean toward considerable); but I like that it's so obviously the work of someone vitally excited by filmmaking. The missteps are easier to take when there is some passion on display. I'll take a wrongheaded, artistically well-intentioned flop over a calculated, market-researched blockbuster any day.

THE AUTOGRAPH FILES
By the way, I was one of the many who went to see Ms. Minnelli at the Orpheum Theater that summer in 1977, and stood out by the stage door to get the photograph below autographed by both Scorsese (lower left) and Minnelli (w/smiley face). Considering all the pressures of the show, the movie, and everything else, you couldn't have met two nicer people.

Above: Larry Kert appeared in the "Happy Endings" number that was initially cut from the film and later restored. Got this autograph when he was appearing in a play in Los Angeles

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2011