THE FOX 1967

 

Films that attempt to dramatize (and, in so doing, comment upon) distasteful aspects of the human condition, set a difficult course for themselves. Pedestrian directors, often in an effort to appear even-handed and avoid offending, tend to oversimplify. In these instances, the nuanced complexities of flawed personality and moral ambiguity are muted in ways designed to confirm audience preconceptions and, by fade-out, restore order and confidence in life's parity.
By way of contrast, artful directors take the risk of being misunderstood and misinterpreted as they eschew easy answers in favor of a little emotional honesty. Invested in examining more than explaining, while at the same time respectful of an audience's ability to extract from a story whatever ideas or themes they wish to divine on their own; this particular genus of film is not often a popular taste favorite, but it's the kind of movie that bears the stamp of creative fearlessness (recklessness?). 

Ellen: "No, I tried. I tried, and I couldn't shoot."

Paul: "Then you didn't want its life."

Ellen: "Yes...yes, I did!"

I can't vouch for movie audiences worldwide, but we Americans have earned a reputation for preferring our films to tell us how we should think and feel about a topic. Otherwise, we seem to get easily confused. Take, for example, when Bryan Forbes' feminist horror film The Stepford Wives (1975) was thought by many to be sexist chiefly because the women don't "win" in the end, and the chauvinistic behavior exhibited by the men wasn't as obviously satiric as some would have liked. Similarly, Samuel Fuller's powerful anti-racism film White Dog (1982) was practically yanked from theaters because many mistook this dramatic parable about the teaching of hatred (a dog is trained by white supremacists to attack black people), for actually being racist itself.

The depiction of objectionable behavior (especially in the absence of punishment or retribution) is not necessarily an endorsement of it. Often, as in the case of the predatory male character in The Fox, a man whose motives and actions can be read as despicable, it is a means of provocation. A sly method of exposing us to the unpleasant things within ourselves we fail to recognize because it doesn't flatter our self-image.
I'm no fan of morally dubious movies that glorify selfish instincts or try to normalize evil (we have reality TV and our current Presidential election to do that); but I do admire films that aren't afraid of ambiguity, are open to interpretation, and resist the impulse to explain the complex.

Sandy Dennis as Jill Banford

Anne Heywood as Ellen Marsh

Keir Dullea as Paul Renfield

As relationships go, few are more emotionally and psychologically complicated as the triangular one at the center of The Fox, director Mark Rydell's (The Rose, On Golden Pond) 1967 adaptation of D. H. Lawrence's 1922 novella.

Jill and Ellen are two college friends living a life of isolated independence on a remote farm in Canada (Lawrence's story took place in WW I England, the film updates to '60s Ontario). Jill (Dennis) is the domestic type, forever fretting over her stove and household accounts ("You and your mixing bowl and your muffin tray have conquered the elements"), while Ellen (Heywood) stomps about in work boots handing the entirety of the farm's manual labor.
One blonde, one dark, this kind of easy, heavy-handed symbolism is something of a motif in The Fox, one I don't particularly mind since the cues are taken from Lawrence's heavily-Freudian short novel. Both are younger than portrayed in the novel, and the film presents the pair's adoption of traditionally feminine/masculine roles as arising as much out of practicality as personality: Jill's verbose excitability, physical weakness, and pragmatic temperament contrasting with Jill's athleticism, protectiveness, and taciturn malleability (her standard response to all questions is "It makes no difference to me"). 

But if Jill's obvious contentment with their domestic arrangement suggests the fulfillment of a desire to cloister herself away from the male (even the animals are mostly female: Edwina the hen, Eurydice the cow- and in a monologue I don't believe is in the book, she recounts a college date-rape incident); Ellen's distracted restlessness hints at something suppressed rising to the surface. Her waking hours are dazed by a kind of sensual reawakening, while in her dreams she is simultaneously haunted and hypnotized by the fox that has been raiding their henhouse.


In spite of their sharing a bed (never even touching or kissing goodnight until a distraught conciliation scene near the end) and evince the relaxed affection of a long-married couple, like the book, the film leaves ambiguous the degree of Jill and Ellen's intimacy. Although the notion of a platonic "Boston Marriage" was easier to accept in 1920 England than in the sexually liberated '60s. 

This ambiguity, whether one finds it maddeningly coy or simply a cop-out, genuinely serves to make what might otherwise be just another romantic triangle more emotionally provocative. Label it lesbianism or bisexuality, whatever is between Jill and Ellen is intensified once their peace is invaded by the fox-like Paul (Dullea), the merchant seaman grandson of the farm's deceased former owner. 

The initial effect of the screenplay's refusal to define the particulars of Jill & Ellen's relationship (or the women's sexuality) is that the audience is placed in the unwanted but self-reflexive position of identifying with the townspeople and Paul. We're forced to ask ourselves, is our desire to KNOW what these women are to one another just part of a need to define them, explain them, and assign roles to their behavior…indeed, to subject the characters to the confining, socially-imposed definitions they seek independence from?  

Secondarily, once Paul makes the shift from welcome guest to predatory intruder, the motives for his actions become less obvious when we don't really know exactly what it is he has insinuated himself into the middle of. Depending on the scene, Paul comes across convincingly as either harmless or sinister.

The Fox, a three-character drama, set, pointedly, in the chilly dead of winter, is something of a war movie. Its vast battlefield encompassing everything from sexuality, gender politics, masculinity, femininity, love, violence, passion, and independence. The weapons of choice: nature (human and animal), instinct (masculine and feminine), self-preservation, domination, and possession.
The catalyst for it all, the fox (the male); an animal functioning out of a natural, violent instinct to dominate, or an animal of cunning?

Ellen: "You know, you do resemble him (the fox), Mr. Renfield. It's remarkable."

The Fox is one of the few "adult" films from my childhood I was unsuccessful in persuading my mom I was mature enough (at 10 years old) to see. Though crushed at the time, in retrospect I'm glad she didn't relent, for not only wouldn't I have understood it, but I'm certain that at the time I would have been deeply disappointed that this intelligent, psychologically intricate film wasn't the risqué, lesbian romp its ad campaign (and my pre-teen imagination) led me to expect.

When I ultimately got around to seeing The Fox in 1979 or so, I remember enjoying it, but somehow feeling afterward that I'd been the victim of a bait-and-switch. Over the years the film had developed a reputation as an LGBT favorite, but when it was all over—with Jill dead by murder/accident, and Ellen whisked away by the domineering Paul—I knew what I'd just watched wasn't a film depicting lesbianism so much as another Hollywood movie using the sensationalistic lure of homosexuality to merely: (quoting Karen Hollinger's book Feminist Film Studies) "validate the superiority and desirability of heterosexuality." A feeling I also got from a similar triangular tug-of-war in the 1984 film adaptation of Henry James' The Bostonians.

It's an opinion I still hold about The Fox, but having read the book and lived a good deal more of life since then, it's now just one of many opinions and impressions I'm left with regarding this fascinating and compelling movie.

Female & Male: Natural Enemies?

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

I began this essay by citing how difficult it is for films to dramatize distasteful behavior without audiences (me, in this instance) resorting to the knee-jerk response of disapproving of a film because they disapprove of the behavior depicted.

That's precisely what happened the first time I saw The Fox. The character of Paul (his being a fox and all) is supposed to be a disruptive force in the relationship of Jill and Ellen. Instinctively, without malice and without even knowing why, his male sense of superiority compels him to seek dominance over these women; in particular, a need to possess the life of Ellen, the woman most threateningly "masculine" and self-possessed of the two.

His marriage proposal (the least romantic on record, and underscored with ominous music) is more an act of authority and submission than a declaration of love. 

Paul, locking his prey in his gaze

Because I so strongly resented the negative subtext (the "weak" women being easily overpowered, the sexual pliancy of Ellen, the nagging femininity of Jill) and became preoccupied with my expectation of the film offering a conclusive, pro-individualism message. So keenly was I hoping for some last-minute sign of feminist redemption, it went entirely over my head how Paul's assumptive, force-of-will-dominance in the narrative (and seeming victory in the end) is depicted as an ultimately negative destructive force that actually (and tragically) results in none of the characters getting what they want.

The Fox turned out to be exactly the anti-machismo declaration I wanted it to be - an intelligent look of the predatory nature of man in the face of the vulnerable; but because it took the subtle, roundabout route, it took me several years and many viewings to catch it.

Of course, this is just my personal take on a film among whose many virtues lies its ability to be appreciated, interpreted...and even reviled...in many different ways.

Ellen "What is there here for me, Jill?"
Jill: "Yourself. Something I could never take from you."

"And when he holds me, I feel I'm seeping into his flesh...and there's no more me."

PERFORMANCES

No matter how one ultimately feels about The Fox as a film, it's hard not to credit its three stars with giving vividly realized performances. Anne Heywood - whose honest-to-god real name of Violet Pretty(!) makes me want to hug her - is sensational. I've never seen a single one of her other films, but I think I'd have a hard time seeing her as anyone but Ellen Marsh. Playing the most conflicted, least communicative character, Heywood somehow manages to make us feel Ellen's strength as well as her uncertainty. In the marvelous scene in which she reveals to Jill that she has always felt responsible for taking care of her, Heywood says it with such tender weariness it just breaks your heart.

The beautiful Keir Dullea (I'll do it for you now, so you won't have to: "Keir Dullea, gone tomorrow" - Noel Coward) is well-cast as the living embodiment of the fox. Facially, he's not the most expressive actor, but he's been blessed with the most astounding eyes, and it's they that do all the emotional heavy-lifting. 

Shot in a manner to best emphasize his vulpine features,
Dullea gives an appropriately sly performance

Coming as a surprise to no one, Sandy Dennis (long-rumored to be lesbian in real life, I certainly hope she was) is my favorite in the film. She's the warmth the film needs in the early scenes, but when she turns chilly, she's truly excellent...in these scenes, the excitable Jill reveals an unexpected sturdiness. Dennis' Jill Banford is one of her least-mannered performances, but given her high annoyance ratio among film lovers, one can't help but feel she serves a purpose in The Fox not dissimilar to that which the casting of Shelley Duvall  served for Stanley Kubrick in The Shining: asked why he cast Duvall in his film, Kubrick gallantly responded: "Well, you gotta have somebody in that part that maybe the audience would also like to kill a little bit."

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Lalo Schifrin's beautiful Oscar and Grammy-nominated musical score.

William Fraker's (Rosemary's Baby, Looking for Mr. Goodbar) breathtaking cinematography.

Paul wields his phallic ax
If it is Paul's wish to have Ellen lose herself within him, then it's imperative that he
remove the one person who reminds Ellen she has a self-worth preserving 

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

For movies to work for me, they don't have to always be about the truth. They can be just as engrossing and engaging if they are about a truth. The Fox is not the triumphant feminist/LGBT love story I thought it would be. But what it is I've seen played out countless times in my life.

You see it in the "mansplaining" phenomenon (which is nothing new). You see it in the way men like Donald Trump can only relate to women by trying to exert power over them; either through sexual objectification or, when feeling threatened, trying to belittle or destroy them in some way. I see it in gyms I've worked in, where men feel the need to exert a subtle superiority over women by being "helpful" and offering unsolicited workout tips.
You see it in the paradox of male fantasy fetishizing of girl-on-girl sex existing side by side with a real-world hatred and fear of lesbians and bisexuals.

The Fox explores how merely the idea of women existing without need for a man
can ignite a primal fear in the male

I've personally listened as scores of bright, accomplished, self-reliant women tell me they're looking for a man who'll boss them around or take control. I've been around when women with loyal cores of loving girlfriends dropped them all like hot potatoes when a fascinating man came along and consumed all their attentions.

Lost or Found?
When Ellen appears in her pink feminine finery, making like a contented, domesticated female,
has she reclaimed a suppressed part of her nature or surrendered herself to what Paul wants her to be?

These things are neither admirable nor desirable, and not even indicative of most people's relationships; but here, some 90 years after D.H. Lawrence put pen to paper, the contradictory and cruel power plays between men and women seem to have changed little.
For me, The Fox is an allegory about a particular kind of male/female dynamic, with the suggestion that what is instinctual and primitive is not necessarily natural.

I've been crazy about the poster art graphic design for The Fox since it came out. The striking poster is one of the most beloved in my personal collection. But I only recently learned that this marvelous work represents one of the very few examples of a Black artist being commissioned for movie poster work. The sublime poster is the collaborative art of Leo Dillion and his wife Diane Sorber, the award-winning illustrators of countless children's books. Apparently, it is the only movie poster they worked on.

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2016

THE OUT OF TOWNERS 1970

The-Out-of-Towners is Neil Simon’s second original screenplay but first solo original screenplay credit (1966’s poorly-received After the Fox being a reluctant collaboration with longtime Vittorio De Sica screenwriter, Cesare Zavattini). As the much-anticipated follow-up to The Odd Couple—1968’s 4^th highest-grossing film—The-Out-of-Towners was something of a critical and boxoffice disappointment. In 1970 it disappeared from theaters so quickly I entirely missed its theatrical run. For the longest time, the only version I was familiar with was an edited-for-TV broadcast copy which suffered from the excising of the film’s marvelously ironic coup de gras (aerial hijacking was at its height during the '70s, and therefore no laughing matter), and deprived us of the last of Sandy Dennis’ near-iconic wails of "Ohhhh, my God!”

Jack Lemmon as George Kellerman

Sandy Dennis as Gwen Kellerman

The plot is pretty basic, an ideal setup for any number of fish-out-of-water comedy scenarios. On the occasion of his promotion to Vice President in charge of sales for the New York division of Drexel: maker of fine plastic precision instruments; Twin Oaks, Ohio resident George Kellerman (Lemmon) and wife Gwen (Dennis) embark on what is intended to be a fun-filled, 24-hour excursion to the Big Apple. Part job interview (“It’s just a formality.”), part second honeymoon, it’s an opportunity for the happy couple to enjoy a First-Class, all-expenses-paid sampling of the best that Fun City has to offer before uprooting and moving the entire Kellerman clan (two children and dog) from the drowsy suburbs of Ohio to The City That Never Sleeps.  

Armed with an itemized itinerary (mapped out over the course of nine lunch hours), buoyed by high hopes, and fortified with two bottles of ulcer medicine in a brown suitcase; what could possibly go wrong?

In a word, everything.

Once the Kellerman’s leave behind the blue skies and green lawns of Ohio, it’s as if they’ve fallen through the looking glass. Any and everything terrible that can befall and beset a visitor to a big city happens to our hapless couple. And therein lies the simple perfection of Neil Simon’s approach to the comedy in The-Out-of-Towners. It has nothing moving to say about learning to let go of the ones we love (The Goodbye Girl), no life-affirming lessons about second chances (Chapter Two), no laughter-through-tears ruminations on the importance of familial reconciliation (I Ought to Be in Pictures); The-Out-of-Towners is just a laugh-out-loud dark comedy built around your standard, run-of-the-mill, suburban middle-class urban-panic nightmare.

 The Dream vs. The Reality

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

The-Out-of-Towners is an original screenplay by Neil Simon based on Visitor from Toledo, a discarded act from his 1968 play Plaza Suite. Always an autobiographical writer, the catalog of catastrophes meted out to George and Gwen Kellerman during their visit to New York is said to have been inspired by a particularly disaster-prone trip Simon took to Boston in 1967 to doctor the flagging David Merrick musical, How Now, Dow Jones.

And while The-Out-of-Towners condenses a lifetime’s worth of travel horror stories into one nightmarish 24-hour NYC excursion, everything that happens is rooted in a recognizable reality and culled from urban nightmares told around a campfire. This core of verisimilitude is the chief reason why the 1970 film remains consistently funny after more than forty years while the painfully contrived 1999 Steve Martin/Goldie Hawn remake is as forgettable as it is superfluous.

Directed by Arthur Hiller (Love Story, Plaza Suite, The-In-Laws) the structure of Simon’s The-Out-of-Towners is essentially that of a three-character comedy. The three characters being: The Couple, The City, and The Camera.

As the couple, Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis—cast as Mr. & Mrs. Middle-Class Everyman—get the biggest laughs from playing it entirely straight. The comedy stakes are raised by watching how this loving but dissimilar pair react when the comfortable rhythms of a 14-year marriage (he clearly “handles” things while she meekly defers, even when she knows better) are put to the test by the unexpected. And the unexpected is clearly something control-freak George doesn’t handle too well (remember, he works for a company that makes precision instruments). As the direness of their circumstances increases, their heretofore polite exchanges begin to take on a decidedly acerbic tone.

The urban jungle brings out the tiger in mild-mannered Gwen

The city of New York is the story’s neutral antagonist. And as a window into the John Lindsay era of blighted, cash-strapped NYC, a vivid antagonist it is. Neither villain nor enemy, its fogged-in airports, muggings, garbage strikes, missed trains, torrential rains, and overcrowded hotels are all neutral urban maladies meted out with indifference. It’s only George (in his privileged petulance) who sees every setback as a willfully directed obstacle to his goals and a personal affront to his status as an out-of-towner. Forever tilting at urban windmills, George’s consistently defensive reactions to the most innocuous of complications is one of the film’s most amusing running gags. He behaves as if everything is happening to him alone. An entire plane of passengers is inconvenienced by bad weather, yet he’s the only one who sees alerting the stewardess to his dinner reservations as an effective facilitator of results. (Gen-Xers seeing this film for the first time are sure to be gladdened upon learning that having an unreasonable sense of entitlement didn’t originate with them.)

Gwen and George's visit to NYC coincides with a sanitation strike
The film has two crippling strikes occur at the same time.
In real-life, the NYC transit strike was in 1966, the sanitation strike in 1968

Lastly, cinematographer Andrew Laszlo (The Owl & the Pussycat, Streets of Fire) turns his remarkably versatile camera into The-Out-of-Towners’ third character. As noted by entertainment writer Joe Meyers, Laszlo’s location camerawork (a great deal of which is hand-held) gives the film a gritty, almost documentary feel that adds immeasurably to its nervous effectiveness. By turns jarring and hysterical, panoramic and claustrophobic, sometimes even witty (as when we are given a dog’s-eye-view of a box of Cracker Jack); in even the most confining locations, Laszlo’s camera seems to be everywhere at once, an active participant in the proceedings and an invaluable contributor giving The-Out-of-Towners the distinction of being the single most cinematic of Neil Simon’s films.

Andrew Laszlo's versatile camera gives us a suitcase's POV of an airport

PERFORMANCES

In her 2006 memoir How I Lost 10 Pounds in 53 Years, actress Kaye Ballard, who appeared with Sandy Dennis in a 1988 production of Neil Simon’s female version of The Odd Couple, states that Dennis confided to her that she and Simon didn’t get along because The-Out-of-Towners’ funniest running gag—Gwen's infinite variations on the whining exclamation: “Ohhhh, my God!”—was her own ad-lib. It seems he never forgave her for being the one responsible for the film’s biggest laugh.

Whether the story is apocryphal or not (what reason would Ballard have to lie?), there’s no denying that Sandy Dennis brings a wealth of comedic ingenuity to a part that must have looked like absolutely nothing on the page. Dennis redeems the rote role of the long-suffering wife through the force of her individuality. The very mannerisms and quirks that contributed to the public’s swift disenchantment with the actress, who just three years earlier had been hailed as a star of tomorrow, transform the otherwise colorless character of Gwen into a distinct personality and surprisingly feisty comic foil for Jack Lemmon’s hyperreactive George.

New York, New York: Gwen finds her vagabond shoes aren't up to the task

Coming on the heels of two barely-seen independent films (That Cold Day in the Park and Thank You All Very Much), The-Out-of-Towners looked very much like a mainstream comeback for the Academy Award-winning actress, but in truth, it was more a return to supporting roles after a brief tenure as a leading lady. Still, after two such serious films in which she played soft-spoken characters, it was nice to see Dennis in funny mode. Makes you wish she’d made more comedies.

Although I like him a great deal, I’m not a huge fan of Jack Lemmon (Simon’s first and only choice for the role), but he does have a knack for making disagreeable characters palatable (ever see Under the Yum Yum Tree?), and as such, he makes an ideal George Kellerman. In fact, Lemmon is so good here that his work in The-Out-of-Towners ranks as one of my top fave Jack Lemmon performances. A vibrating bundle of counterproductive outrage and irrational ire, Lemmon is the manic comic engine that makes the entire film work.

I can't think of another actor capable of playing so many shades of pique

If Dennis does wonders with the simple act of active listening and repeating the phrase, “I can verify that!”, Lemmon is a miracle worker when it comes to playing countless variations on the incredulous reaction shot. Both actors share a splendid chemistry, turning a film which might otherwise have been just a drawn-out string of calamity jokes into a rich character comedy about a married couple and what happens when they’re wrenched outside of the confines of their comfort zones.

             

A real treat for viewers of a certain age is The-Out-of-Towners' supporting cast of familiar faces.

Billy Dee Williams as Clifford Robinson / Boston Lost & Found

Ann Prentiss (sister of Paula) as the 1st Stewardess

Anne Meara as The Purse-Snatch Victim

Clockwise from top: Dolph Sweet, Johnny Brown, Ron Carey, Anthony Holland

In addition, there's Robert Altman stalwart, Paul Dooley making his film debut as a hotel desk clerk; stand-up comic Sandy Baron as a television AD; Richard Libertini as a baggage handler; Graham Jarvis (Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman) as a mugger; and Carlos Montalban (brother of Ricardo) as a Cuban Diplomat. And many more familiar faces from '60s TV.

Character actor Dort Clark
He has only one tiny line in the film, but I have to include him here because he's been a long time
favorite of mine from his appearances in TV shows like That Girl and Car 54 Where Are You? 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

I think that The-Out-of-Towners has aged better than most of Simon’s other works, but that’s not to say it’s not old-fashioned. In fact, one of the main reasons I like it so much is because it is so old-fashioned. Old-fashioned as in classic. In structure it seems to follow an archetypal pattern: The setup is simple (George needs to make that 9am meeting); the obstacles are clear (every person, place and thing that represents New York is standing in his way); and the comedy arc is timeless (George’s overreliance on order and efficiency is going to take a serious beating). As comedy utterly devoid of pretense or allusions to significance, it’s some of the funniest writing of Simon’s career.

Comedy Has an Expiration Date
It's doubtful viewers today are aware that  the scene with Lemmon & Dennis running to each other in
Central Park is a parody of a ubiquitous Clairol Hair Care TV commercial from the 60s  

If The-Out-of-Towners’ depiction of New York has the exaggeration of satire, the look of the film itself is pure documentary. Shot on location in and around Manhattan, Boston, and Long Island (standing in for Ohio), it’s a treat to see so many glimpses of late-'60s New York. And the nostalgia evoked by such sights as The Automat and the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel (with its placards advertising Peggy Lee appearing in The Empire Room) are offset by visions of a time when stewardesses wore go-go boots, women carried gloves, and train stations had cigarette machines and phone booths.

Bracing themselves against a rainstorm, Gwen and George walk past The Automat 

Posters for two concurrently running Neil Simon Broadway shows 
(Plaza Suite and Promises, Promises) grace a Boston train station  

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Most comedy is often so much a product of its time that it’s not unusual for a popular comedic film from the past to fall flat with audiences today, and vice versa. I don’t really know what problem 1970 audiences had with The-Out-of-Towners, but it’s easy to imagine that perhaps the unrelenting dark tone of the humor took fans of Neil Simon by surprise.

In the course of 24-hours, the Kellermans are subjected to (and this is only a partial list): a rerouted flight, lost luggage, a missed train, a broken shoe, a kidnapping, a mugging while asleep, a chipped tooth, a lost wedding ring, being chased by a mounted policeman, an exploding gas main, and getting caught in a diplomatic protest. Without benefit of a breather, some might have found the film’s pacing exhausting.

Or maybe it was a matter of oversaturation. The '70s were the start of “disillusionment cinema” and dark comedies were all the rage. New York, then in a state of major economic and social decline, was a popular target for serious drama (Peter Boyle's film, Joe) and bleak satire. Jules Feiffer kicked off the trend in 1967 with his truly grim satire Little Murders (made into a film in 1971). But the same year Neil Simon’s poison-pen to Manhattan hit the screen, New York came under fire in Diary of a Mad Housewife, The Owl and the Pussycat, Where’s Poppa?, and The Landlord. The Out-of-Towners may have been a victim of being just one New York satire too many.

The-Out-of-Towners always has an answer for the question, "What more could possibly go wrong?"

But in today’s atmosphere of cringe-comedy and humiliation humor, The-Out-of-Towners feels surprisingly contemporary and in step with the times. Director Arthur Hiller and Neil Simon manage to depict a suitably threatening New York City without resorting to either racist casting or xenophobic humor; something almost unimaginable today. And unlike similar scenarios in which bad things befall well-intentioned protagonists and it feels somewhat cruel to laugh at sad-sack victims (Martin Scorsese’s After Hours comes to mind), The-Out-of-Towners consistently reveals the obstinate George Kellerman to be the architect of his own misfortune, granting us free rein to laugh at and with the blowhard.

Never let it be said that George & Gwen Kellerman didn't learn from their experience.
Eagle-eyed viewers will note that on the return flight home, 
Gwen has won the battle of the "little gray suitcase" 

If you've never seen it, The-Out-of-Towners is a near-perfect example of frustration comedy. An unbroken chain of snappy comebacks, laughably familiar situations, and expertly set-up gags with unexpected payoffs. I'm in the camp that feels much of Neil Simon’s work has not aged very well, but The-Out-of-Towners is the exception and ranks high on my list of all-time favorite motion picture comedies—a list topped by What's Up, Doc?, Airplane, and Young Frankenstein.

BONUS MATERIAL

Essay: NEIL SIMON: VOICE OF THE URBAN UNDERDOG

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 -2015

COME BACK TO THE 5 & DIME JIMMY DEAN, JIMMY DEAN 1982

“Life is never quite interesting enough, somehow. You people who come to the movies know that.”                                                            Dolly Gallagher Levi - The Matchmaker

Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean is a (melo)dramatization of what can happen to lives when the consoling balm of idol worship (movie or otherwise) becomes a crutch for self-delusion, avoidance, and the denial of truth.

As anyone knows who has spent more than five minutes at an autograph convention; attended a pro sporting event; visited Comic-Con; stood among the glassy-eyed throngs outside a movie premiere; or navigated the choppy waters of an internet fansite chat room (a drama-queen war zone littered with trolling land mines): fame-culture idol worship and devout religious fanaticism are merely different sides of the same coin.

Life presents us with challenges and can sometimes feel like a cruel, dispiriting, achingly lonely place. In those moments when we feel its sting most keenly, it’s natural to seek solace (and sometimes escape) in the arts: that spiritual oasis of inspiration and beauty that has the power to restore hope to the human soul the way rainfall can restore life to the scorched, arid plains of a drought-plagued Texas town.

But all too often the need to salve the pain of life and fill the void of loneliness through external means (as opposed to, say, self-reflection and action) leads to the quick-fix distraction of fame culture. Fame culture being the existential bait-and-switch that says our personal lives can somehow be enriched through the over-idealization of someone else’s. Particularly the lives of those perfect demigods and goddesses of the silver screen.

Fame culture doesn’t speak to the individual who works to fulfill his/her potential through the inspirational example set by the genius and talent of others. Fame culture merely requires one to surrender the concerns of one's own existence to the enthralled pursuit of information about, and preoccupation with, the comings and goings of the rich and famous. Such passive fealty is rewarded with the blessed gift of never having to think for a second about one's own life, one's own concerns, or anything remotely connected to what is real and germane to one's life. As questionable a tradeoff as this seems, it represents the absolute cornerstone of what we jokingly refer to as pop culture.

“Believing is so funny, isn’t it? When what you believe in doesn’t even know you exist.”

Entire television networks and charitably 85% of the internet are devoted to feeding us ‘round-the-clock updates on what celebrities are up to. Celebrities whose careers and personal lives are staunchly and vigilantly defended against slander and attack by legions of devoted fans. Fandom of the sort that leads to cyber-bullying, broken friendships, and in extreme cases, death threats.

All rather sad when faced with the reality that celebrities by and large go about the business of living their lives grateful for, yet blithely unaware of, said fans’ existence (That is, outside of the hefty dollars fan devotion brings to their bank accounts. Money that enables them—irony of ironies—to build stronger fortresses, hire more bodyguards, and enforce stricter security…all the better to keep fans at arm's length.)

 “‘Cause growing up is awfuller than all the awful things that ever were."    - Peter Pan  

The desire to lose oneself/find oneself in the idealized illusion of salvation presented by the arts and fame culture is something most keenly felt in adolescence. Adolescence being the time when, in the immortal words of The Facts of Life theme song: “The world never seems to be living up to your dreams.”  Celebrity worship allows for the kind of escapism that can make the bullied and isolated feel less like outsiders and misfits, providing as it does an outlet for pent-up emotional release. At its best, the idolization of the famous can be a catalyst for change and growth; at its worst, fame idolatry can be such an effective pain reliever that it encourages avoidance, inhibits emotional growth, and promotes living in the past.

September 30, 1955
Members of the McCarthy, Texas James Dean Fan Club, The Disciples of James Dean,
react to news of the actor's death 

“Think what you can keep ignoring…”  Stephen Sondheim  -  Company 

Sandy Dennis as Mona

Cher as Sissy

Karen Black as Joanne

The year is 1975, and on the 20^th anniversary of the death of James Dean, the last remaining members of The Disciples of James Dean (make that the last remaining interested members)—a fan club that held its weekly meetings after hours in the local Woolworth’s 5 & Dime—return to the drought-ridden, near-deserted, West Texas town of McCarthy for a reunion.

Still residing in McCarthy in various states of arrested development are: moralistic bible-thumper Juanita (Sudie Bond), who inherited the 5 & Dime after her husband died; goodtime girl Sissy (Cher), “The best roller-skater in all of West Texas” and over-proud owner of the biggest boobs in town; and Mona (Dennis), James Dean fan club leader and lifetime Woolworth employee whose preeminent moment in life was being chosen as an extra in the film Giant (although no one has ever been able to find her in the film), and who lays claim to being the mother of James Dean’s only son.

Kathy Bates as Stella Mae

The only out-of-town attendees are boisterous Stella Mae (Kathy Bates), now the wife of a Dallas oil millionaire, and mousy Edna Louise (Marta Heflin), pregnant with her 7^th child and still, as she was in high school, ever on the receiving end of Stella Mae’s relentless verbal abuse.

Into this airless environment of stasis comes Joanne (a wonderfully reined-in Karen Black) playing a chaos device in a tailored suit; a woman-mysterious in a yellow Porsche (Dean died in a Porsche). In true Southern Gothic tradition, her presence incites the unearthing of secrets and the head-on confrontation of several dark and painful truths.
And as for the two Jimmy Deans of the title, they are less a titular redundancy than a reference to the two unseen Jimmy Deans of the tale. One is the Hollywood actor whose untimely death at age 24 assured him a place of cultish immortality; the other is Mona's twenty-year-old son Jimmy Dean Jr, a rebel with considerable cause. Both are the unseen male presence—"ghosts" if you will—which figure so prominently in Mona's delusions. Both make her feel special and give her life importance.

Marta Heflin as Edna Louise

As titles go, I was never too crazy about Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean which always reminded me too much of the unpleasant, similarly phrase-titled 1976 film When You Comin’ Back, Red Ryder? …which as it so happens, also had a diner setting. But I suppose it might also be a nod to Inge's Come Back Little Sheba and that play's similar theme of longing for an idealized past. But who cares about a title when you have Altman alumnae Sandy Dennis (That Cold Day in the Park) and Karen Black (Nashville) joined by pop star, tabloid queen, Cher returning to the big screen for the first time since her somnambulistic title-role performance in 1969s Chastity?

I saw Jimmy Dean when it was released in Los Angeles in the fall of 1982. The buzz at the time was that, on the heels of the flop trifecta of Quintet, A Perfect Couple, and HealtH (the latter I don’t recall even opening in LA), plus the off-beat oddity that was Popeye; Jimmy Dean was to be a return to 3 Women form for Altman. Filmed on a shoestring budget, shot on Super16mm and blown up to 35mm, in a year of bloated megafilms (ET, Annie, Tron) Jimmy Dean was small, personal, and idiosyncratically appealing (and oh so '70s) in its determination to be an anti-blockbuster.

Featuring the same cast as the film, Robert Altman mounted a much-ballyhooed Broadway production of Ed Graczyk's play early in 1982. The critics were not kind. The show closed after 52 performances. A week later the film version was underway and completed in 19 days.

Long before Carol Burnett’s hilarious “Eunice” character came along and forever altered my ability to take the genre completely seriously, I had been in love with Southern Gothic films. Adapted from the works of authors like Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, and William Inge, these extravagantly melodramatic films had their heyday in the sexually repressed climate of the '50s. Their crisis-filled storylines—– all sex, secrets, lies, and hypocrisy—–stylistically dramatizing the submerged conflicts and contradictions of an era obsessed with sex, yet rooted in oppressive Christian dogma and the sustained illusion of conformity at all costs.

Though initially drawn to the genre for its female-driven narratives and the camp potential of the traditionally overheated performances; I eventually came to appreciate the subtle queer coding concealed in so many of the stories related to isolated individuals struggling to find love and self-acceptance in environments unsympathetic to anyone not fitting in with the mainstream.

Making his film debut as Joseph Qualley, a teen bullied for dressing up in women's clothes,
openly gay actor Mark Patton (A Nightmare on Elm Street 2) was a real-life victim of bullying
growing up in his hometown of Riverside, Mo.

Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean may not be true Southern Gothic per se, but it has all the trappings. It’s got ponderous themes (Is the entire world just a deserted dustbowl full of pitiful souls trying to give our lives meaning by worshiping gods that don’t even know we exist?); weighty symbolism (Reata, the palatial mansion in Giant, is, like so many of the characters at the 5 & Dime, only a false façade); religious allegory (Mona's assertion that she was "chosen" to bring Dean's only son into the world); and a steady stream of tearful disclosures and shocking revelations done to a fare-thee-well by a cast to die for.

"Miracle Whip is poetry, mayonnaise isn't."
Robert Altman defending one of the improvised changes he imposed upon Graczyk's screenplay.
Sudie Bond as Juanita 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

In his book, Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan, late film critic Robin Wood makes an interesting point about how often the best of Robert Altman’s films are those expressing the female (if not necessarily feminist) perspective. I’d have to agree. Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean makes a superb companion piece to 3 Women: the former being a study, in reality, imposing itself upon the guarded illusions of women with nothing to cling to but the dreams of the past; the latter a kind of magic-realist exercise in which fantasy and wish-fulfillment come to erode the personalities of three dissimilar women.

While I've always had a little problem with the actual screenplay for Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (five major epiphanies in one afternoon seems a tad crowded even for a 20-year reunion), I have nothing but praise for the stellar performances, the film's themes, and Altman's sensitive and thoughtful direction. This movie is a MAJOR favorite.

PERFORMANCES

Curious that it took the formulaic, “high-concept” Hollywood of the 1980s to unite my favorite iconoclast director with two of the most famously idiosyncratic actresses of the '70s. Much has been written about the mannered acting styles of Sandy Dennis and Karen Black. Still, in Jimmy Dean, the stark originality of these actresses rescues the film from the kind of Steel Magnolias down-home, southern-fried clichés Graczyk’s screenplay flirts so recklessly with.

As with so many Altman films, the performances here represent the best example of ensemble work; each character fleshed out in ways that make even the most theatrical contrivances of the plot feel genuine and emanate from a place of authenticity.

Deservedly so, Cher was singled out for a great deal of critical acclaim for her performance. After having become something of a tabloid punchline for the public soap opera that was her personal life, she amazed audiences by more than holding her own with several formidable seasoned professionals. Her relaxed, natural performance nicely offsets the more eccentric contributions of her costars (although Sudie Bond comes across as perhaps the most real of Graczyk's characters) and she is a delight to watch. Mike Nichols, after seeing her in the Broadway production, cast her opposite Meryl Streep in 1983s Silkwood. 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY 

One of my favorite quotes is Bergen Evans’ “We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us.” 

In Jimmy Dean, the past of 1955 and the present of 1975 play out simultaneously on opposite sides of mirrors situated behind the Woolworth’s soda fountain counter. Each side serving to illuminate and provide insight and counterpoint to the actions and motivations of the characters.

I’ve never seen a theatrical production of this film, but on the DVD commentary, the playwright says it was Altman’s idea (one he didn’t agree with) to have the same actors play their adult and 16-year-old selves. Maybe the decision isn’t true to Graczyk’s vision, but Altman’s idea makes for a marvelous visual commentary if you want to make a case for these characters never changing. Watching the youthful 1955 sequences played by the same mature actresses in the 1975 scenes reinforced for me the feeling that the seeds of what these characters would become have already taken root. It’s a creative choice that I think imbues Graczyk's sometimes overstressed plot points with real poignancy and poetry.

Maybe people don't change. Perhaps we just never saw who they really were. 

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Robert Altman has often expressed a dislike of idol worship and fame culture, feeling it distracts people from looking at their own problems, and, like religion, encourages them not to think for themselves. It's certainly a theme he’s addressed before in his films (Nashville, Buffalo Bill & the Indians, HealtH, and The Player).

In a 1982 interview for New York Magazine, Robert Atman stated that one of the main reasons he was drawn to making Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean was to counterbalance his 1957 documentary The James Dean Story: a sparse, nonsensationalistic look at the brief life of the actor that Altman felt was ultimately misunderstood and subverted into a work of hagiography by James Dean cultists.

Thanks to the internet, I finally saw that for-years-rumored-about nude photo of James Dean that figures in play as an item Stella Mae pays over $50 dollars for (Edna Louise: "Is that a tree branch in his hand, or what?"). I personally don't think the model in question looks much like James Dean at all, but I do love a good myth.

Altman’s adaptation of Graczyk’s play, which depicts the most devout of Dean’s worshippers as an intensely unbalanced woman coping with the emptiness of her existence by shrouding herself in an elaborate delusion, does indeed stand in stark contrast to the harmless, romanticized view of fandom promoted by the media and so-called entertainment news. 

But what I found most provocative and what gave me the most food for thought in Jimmy Dean is how ingeniously it dramatized the two-way mirror effect of idol worship.

One side of the mirror is idealized fantasy, the other is reality. The idealized side is the side we project ourselves into when we escape into movies or obsess over the lives of celebrities. There, time is frozen. We don’t have to grow up, and the only risk is that it can become a time-stealing distraction.

The reality side of the mirror offers nothing but the naked lightbulb of having to look clearly at ourselves and our lives. Tragedy is when the world of dreams becomes so compelling to us, reality starts to pale in comparison. Salvation comes through the realization that it is only on the reality side of the mirror where genuine happiness and fulfillment is possible.

Altman may have disliked celebrity culture, but idol worship (in the form of the standing-room-only throngs crammed into the Martin Beck Theater to see Cher's legit stage debut)
played a huge role in the theatrical production even making it to 52 performances

Like a great many gay men of my generation who grew up feeling isolated and misunderstood, movies were my solace, escape, salvation, and inspiration. I grew up loving movies and movie stars, and, as the title of this blog asserts, they were the stuff to inspire dreams. I was one of the lucky ones in that I didn’t lose myself in my love of movies (well, not completely) and that my own pop cultural obsession (Xanadu…yes, THAT Xanadu) altered the course of my life and led me to a profession which has been more fulfilling to me than I ever could have imagined.

Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean is a reminder that the arts are here to help us better cope with life, not retreat from it.

BONUS MATERIAL
Sandy Dennis' character in this film claims that her child is the son of James Dean. In the 2007 documentary Confessions of a Superhero, Christopher Dennis, a wannabe actor who dresses as Superman for tips in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood, claims to be the secret son of Sandy Dennis.

Robert Altman's documentary: The James Dean Story (1957) on YouTube.

Cher actually made her feature film debut playing herself opposite Sonny Bono in the musical comedy spoof, Good Times - 1967 (it's also director William Friedkin's first film, and is in its own way, every bit as terrifying as The Exorcist). In 1969 with a script by Bono, Cher made her dramatic acting debut in Chastity, A film in which she plays a hippie drifter with one facial expression. Both are available on YouTube and are prime examples of late-60s cinema.

The DVD of Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean has as its only extra feature, a great, many-axes-to-grind interview with playwright Ed Graczyk, who. while respectful, clearly did not relish working with Robert Altman. Like listening to an embittered Paul Morrissey griping about how Andy Warhol got all the credit for the films he directed, Graczyk seems loath to extend any gratitude to Altman for his part in making Jimmy Dean the playwright's most well-known play. Instead, he devotes considerable time detailing (in admittedly enjoyable behind-the-scenes anecdotes) the many ways in which Altman deviated from his original concept.

The Disciples of James Dean - 1955
James Dean is the perfect pop culture icon. A figure of idolatry who didn't live long enough to
disappoint, disillusion, or age (in other words, seem human). Like all gods, he remains forever unchanged in a state of youthful perfection, 

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009  - 2015