The minor Philip Seymour Hoffman

After the very sad and tragic passing of Philip Seymour Hoffman, I kept thinking back to his performances in Twister and Along Came Polly.

Twister? Along Came Polly? Why those when I could be talking about Almost Famous or fricken Capote, for which he won an Oscar?

Well, yes, Twister and Along and Came Polly. Neither of those is a great movie. Twister is entertaining junk, and I can't even recommend Polly, which was thoroughly mediocre. I won't even say that Hoffman gave great performances in either movie.

What Hoffman did do is stand out in both, and I think that's actually a trickier feat than his great performances. Long before he died, it was no secret how fearless and powerful Hoffman was. But it's easy to talk about his best work. Many people have already done that and done it very well. However, I think greatness shows not only in what you bring to the best movies, but what you bring to the average ones.

Twister was the very first time I can recall seeing him. (Many tributes have mentioned Scent of a Woman as his first notable role, and I saw that movie, but I honestly don't remember much of anything about it  except for the scenery that Al Pacino ate like the Tasmanian Devil.)  And yet, as Hoffman leaned over into Jami Gertz and whispered, "It's the suck zone," there was a charisma there, a unique energy. I remember thinking, "This guy is somebody to watch." He definitively proved that when Boogie Nights came out the following year. 

By the time Along Came Polly arrived in 2004, Hoffman had Happiness, Magnolia and Cold Mountain under his belt, and Polly seemed like a step backward. It struck me as his Twister character after he'd lost his job as a storm chaser. When I reviewed the movie, I said Hoffman was "slumming."

Maybe he was. Even so, Hoffman still stood out as a very unique presence in a very mediocre movie. Most of his gags were gross, such as squeezing grease from one slice of pizza to another and then eating it, but I remember that a lot more than anything Ben Stiller or Jennifer Aniston were doing.

Now he's gone. And I still have trouble wrapping my head around that fact. I'll miss seeing his amazing diversity in powerful movies like Doubt and The Master, in which he had astonishingly different personalities and chemistry with the same actress, Amy Adams. But I'll miss seeing him in the small stuff too. It's not only sad that he won't be around to make great movies greater. It's sad that he won't be around to make average  movies cool, if only for a few scenes.

Farewell, my friend and hero

I saw Roger Ebert on two occasions. The first time was a lengthy interview he conducted with Martin Scorsese at the Wexner Center in Columbus. I remember vividly the ecstatic overload of movie love that poured from both those men. Marty chattered in his unmistakeable mile-a-minute fashion, while Roger probed the director to explore the nooks and crannies of his great career.

The second time was about a year ago at my very first film festival, when I attended Ebertfest in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. He seemed frail then and rather slow of step. But that glint in his eye was unmistakeable - he loved the movies shown there, and he loved that hundreds upon hundreds of people had come to experience those movies with him in that huge auditorium of the Virginia Theater. That remains one of my fondest memories.

The journey to the Virginia took root 28 years before I was born. Outside of Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson, Roger Ebert was the pop culture figure who had the greatest influence on me. All of them were born in June of 1942 - Paul and Roger on the same day, Brian two days later. The stars aligned spectacularly back then, but Roger's influence was maybe the most profound.

He and Gene Siskel didn't get me into movies per se. I always gave my dad the most credit for that, when one day he brought home a stack of tapes that included 2001, Taxi Driver, After Hours and A Clockwork Orange. I took those movies and ran far and fast with them. Once I did, it was Roger leading the charge.

Roger was the one who convinced me that it would be cool to write about movies for a living. And for a while, I got to do that. Not for as long as I would have liked, but I still got to do it, making me luckier than most. And when I wrote - back then and right now, as I type these words - I always thought of Roger.

His was a conversational style that drew the reader toward him - but not beneath him. Roger talked to his readers, not at them. His reviews were always him saying, "Hey, let's chat about movies for a bit." Best of all, he threw himself Into his reviews so much, I felt like I knew him. I felt like he was right there in the room with me. When he wrote, I could hear him. And I wanted people to hear me too. Many of my readers have told me that my reviews are very me, which I take as the greatest compliment. I got that from Roger.

The most important gift Roger gave was his empathy. He played fair, and he was reasonable. He could be vicious if he wanted to be, but he wielded not so much a cutting tongue as a keen wit. One of my favorite slams of his came from his review of Exit to Eden.

"On the first page of my notes, I wrote, 'Starts slow.' On the second page, I wrote 'Boring.' On the third page, I wrote, 'Endless!' On the fourth page, I wrote, 'Bite-size Shredded Wheat, skim milk, cantaloupe, frozen peas, toilet paper, salad stuff, pick up laundry.'"

But Roger was at his best when he wrote about how good a movie was, or about how movies should be seen. Today, too many people treat movies like chewing gum. Even if they like it, they tend to forget about it after they're done with it. People don't treat movies with enough respect. How else to account for all the impolite talkers and cell phone users (of all ages) in theaters?

Even the people who make the big blockbusters tend to be cavalier about them. No one sets out to make a bad movie, but I wish Hollywood had more ambitious goals than making licenses to print money. Roger once wrote:

There is nothing wrong with a large audience, nothing wrong with making money (some of the best films have been the most profitable), but there is something wrong with the calculation. If the magical elements in a movie - story, director, actors - are assembled for magical reasons - to delight, to move, to astound - then something good often results. But when they are assembled simply as a package, as a formula to suck in the customers, they are only good if a miracle happens ...

We have, after all, only so many hours in a lifetime to see movies. When we see one, it enters into our imagination and occupies space there. When we see movies that enlarge and challenge us, our imaginations are enriched. When we see dumb movies, we have left a little of our better selves behind in the theater."

Roger Ebert left our world on Thursday, but he left his best self behind in his words about movies. If we can see the movies through eyes like his, we - and the movies - will be all the better for it.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Nora Ephron, 1941-2012

One of the many sharp and funny things Nora Ephron once said is "I always read the last page of a book first, so that if I die before I finish, I'll know how it turned out."

That saying turned poignant when Ephron passed away on Tuesday, but it was also fitting for her career. The last page of her film book was Julie & Julia (my review)  a delightfully entertaining showcase for two of our brightest actresses, Meryl Streep and Amy Adams. But it was also a marvel of an adaptation with Ephron cannily stitching together the books by the titular characters. Sure, one could argue that the Julia parts or more interesting than the Juliee parts, but if the movie were only about Julia, it would not have been as interesting, I don't think. If you want to show someone what made Ephron Ephron, start at her final film.

But that's just one example of how smart and savvy her writing was. Her best work is still the screenplay for Rob Reiner's When Harry Met Sally ... - which is infinitely more savvy than any of that Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus stuff. I love how Ephron made the man the hopeless romantic in the end:

I love that you get cold when it's 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible. 

Heck, Ephron even had the class to admit that the most famous line in the script - I'll have what she's having" - was actually Billy Crystal's idea.

I was also fond of Ephron's You've Got Mail, her remake of The Shop Around the Corner/In the Good Old Summertime. Sure, it's saccharine and predictable and it's now as quaint as AOL has become, but that's part of its charm. I can't claim it's as good as the two earlier films, but it fares pretty well in comparison, which is more than can be said of many a remake.

Maybe it's that I'm a romantic myself. Or maybe it was that Ephron gave "chick flicks" a good name. One of my colleagues once complained to me, "You never like any of my girly movies!" I can't remember what I said at the time, but now I would say, "I would if Nora Ephron made more of them."

Elizabeth Taylor, 1932-2011

After Elizabeth Taylor died on Wednesday, I came to regret The Flinstones even more than I already did. That movie, of all movies,  represented the only chance I ever got to see Liz on the big screen in a movie in first release.  That's only too telling about the state of movies today.

I'm not going to get all sentimental and claim that her cameo was a bright, shining light that made the movie good for about five minutes. Not even Taylor could pull that off. Still, Liz Taylor was Liz Taylor, and I was grateful for any reason to experience her star power, however displaced it might have been.

That film only made me wish all the more I could have experienced her charisma at full force in a movie theater. Even on the diminished contours of the TV screen, she was absolutely entrancing. One of my favorite glamor shots of all time was the moment in Father of the Bride where she is revealed in her wedding dress via multiple mirrors. This shot made me forget to breathe for a few dazzling seconds.

It wasn't just that her beauty was otherworldly, it was that she actually seemed open, engaging, approachable. She wasn't an ice queen, she was passionate, and that passion was magnetic.

Sometimes that passion was taken for granted. While scrolling through the abundance of tributes for Elizabeth Taylor Monday, I came across this interesting quote from UK film critic Barry Norman, who said:

"She was actually not at all a bad actress. In films like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? she was extremely good."

Perhaps Mr. Norman meant well, but that struck me as condescending. Too often, when someone is a beauty, we as a society tend to act surprised when they actually have talent. And that's galling when it should have been obvious with Liz.

Her most notorious role was no doubt Cleopatra - but she and Richard Burton made two much better films - Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf? (for which Liz won an Oscar) and Franco Zefereilli's The Taming of the Shrew, in which both of them aced Shakespeare. No small thing, that.

In my book, her best performance may be in Suddenly Last Summer. Yes, it's an overheated drama - it's Tennessee Williams, after all - but Liz more than held her own with no less than the great Kate Hepburn. Author A. Scott Berg quoted Hepburn herself as saying that Taylor "preferred being a movie star to being an actress. But don't be fooled, because I think she is a brilliant actress, truly brilliant. Especially with the Williams stuff."

But Kate boiled down Liz's essential dilemma when she said that Liz preferred stardom to actual acting. Stardom seemed to fuel her. But by the same token, she was a magnet for trouble and tragedy, not always of her own making. As at least one tribute  pointed out, "She was a star at age 12, married at 18 and a divorcee the same year. She became a bombshell goddess at 19 and a widow at 26."  For even other famous people, that range of experience takes an entire lifetime.

Even her scandals affect me personally now. I've been going through some struggles in recent weeks. I won't bore you with the details, but it's been tough - sometimes tougher than I think I can handle.

And yet, Taylor survived one of her most brutal scandals. When she took up with Eddie Fisher, who left Debbie Reynolds for Taylor, Reynolds and Taylor were not exactly on the best of terms for quite some time. And yet on Wednesday, there was Fisher and Reynolds' daughter Carrie saying, "If my father had to divorce my mother for anyone, I’m so grateful that it was Elizabeth. This was a remarkable woman who led her life to the fullest rather than complacently following one around." Reynolds herself paid lovely tribute to Taylor.

If that sort of thing can be forgiven, that gives me hope for my relatively meager troubles.

Still, no one summed up Taylor's legacy better than her son, Michael Wilding, who said "Her remarkable body of work in film, her ongoing success as a businesswoman, and her brave and relentless advocacy in the fight against HIV/AIDS, all make us all incredibly proud of what she accomplished.

"We know, quite simply, that the world is a better place for Mom having lived in it. Her legacy will never fade, her spirit will always be with us, and her love will live forever in our hearts."

Amen.

PS - Costar Paul Newman paid her fine tribute some years ago on TCM. Watch and listen.

John Barry, 1933-2011

John Barry once wrote a song called You Only Live Twice - and the great film composer who passed away Sunday kind of did just that.

Looked rather like Michael Caine, didn't he?

Justly, he is most famous for his work with the James Bond series. He may not have written the theme - that's credited to Monty Norman - but Barry made it what it was with his brassy, guitar-driven arrangement, which sounds both timeless and very 60s at once.

It's easier to list the Bond scores Barry did NOT compose. Through 1987's The Living Daylights, he contributed to all of them except Live and Let Die (George Martin), The Spy Who Loved Me (Marvin Hamlisch), and For Your Eyes Only (Bill Conti) All the Bond films scores from Tomorrow Never Dies onward were composed by David Arnold, who is very much a Barry devotee.

Of the Bond title songs Barry wrote, the most famous is probably Goldfinger, but my personal favorite is You Only Live Twice, sung by Nancy Sinatra, with its lovely string arrangement.



As for the scores, by far my favorite is On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the one with "the other fella," George Lazenby. LOVE the fuzz tone and the Alpine horns.



And if that music sounds familiar, it's because you've heard it in association with another movie, Pixar's The Incredibles. It was the teaser music. And Michael Giacchino's score for that film owes a VERY large debt to Barry.



But Barry also lived another very successful life as a composer for non-Bond films, winning Oscars for Born Free, Out of Africa, and The Lion in Winter, which I just recently saw for the first time. Barry's scores were often characterized by sharp uses of brass contrasted with lush string sections. He was one of those composers who had a very definite sound - a sound we will very definitely miss.

And besides, how can I not love the guy when he sort of has a Beatles connection? Vic Flick was a member of the John Barry Seven who played the classic guitar line in the Bond theme. He also played in the film score of A Hard Day's Night - that's him plucking out the guitar line to "This Boy" in the scenes where Ringo is wandering around without the others.

Had to do it!

A tribute to Tony Curtis, Shell oil and such

Forgive me for writing this Tony Curtis tribute somewhat belatedly, but to be honest, I struggled with it a little. 

Tony Curtis was a great talent. I greatly enjoyed his work in most every film I've seen of his. But I find myself coming up with caveats for them.

The Sweet Smell of Success? He was very good in that, but he was the straight man there. It's Burt Lancaster you remember.

Spartacus? Some of his Bronx-ish line readings were a little silly. And again, that's mainly Kirk Douglas' show.

The Great Race? Funny, but Natalie Wood was much cuter. 

Some Like It Hot? Unquestionably his best work. But even that has a caveat - his female voice was not his own - it was dubbed by voice-over actor Paul Frees, who was also the voice of The Haunted Mansion's ghost host, and, it should be noted, both John and George in the Beatles Saturday morning cartoons. 

And truthfully, I always felt much closer to Tony's former wife - quite literally so. 

And yet ... and yet ...

That IS Curtis doing the great faux Cary Grant in Some Like It Hot. (I imagine that must make watching Operation Petticoat, which came out the same year, 1959,  rather funny.) There is no question that, in his time, he was a star of the first rank. Perhaps I just haven't seen enough of that star. A little DVR-ing of TCM's Tony Curtis tribute Sunday will help take care of that. I'm especially anxious to see The Defiant Ones, which got him an Oscar nod. But even if I wouldn't rank him among my personal favorites, I can say he was still larger than life, even if he was a lower-tier star in the grand scheme of things.

So, forgive me, Tony. I'm not the best person to pay tribute to you. You are much better served by the writings of others more learned than I, particularly Leonard Maltin. But as a certain film of yours said ... nobody's perfect.

Two very sad passings: Gloria Stuart and Sally Menke

The film world has suffered two great losses this week - of a familiar and unfamiliar name - but both were vital in their own ways.

The first loss, was, of course, Gloria Stuart, whom most people know as the elder Rose in Titanic.  She had a solid career in cinema's early days, having appeared in everything from movies with Shirley Temple to James Whale-directed frighteners like The Invisible Man and The Old Dark House. She never became a great star, a fact she lamented, but she was always a striking presence in those films. She wasn't quite the tough dame but not quite the damsel in distress, either. She occupied a fascinating middle ground, and had a very striking look.

Perhaps this is suggestion is a little too on the nose, but she had a fascinating life - and you know who I'd like to see play her in a biopic? Kate Winslet. It will probably never happen, but it's a tantalizing prospect.

On balance, though, it's probably better that she wasn't better known, because otherwise, she would not have gotten the part of Rose in Titanic - a part she played beautifully. Her Oscar nomination for that film wasn't just a case of "Let's give the old movie star something before it's too late" - she fully deserved her nod. Again, she struck just the right balance between spunkiness and sensitivity. And if you ask me, she, not Kim Basinger of LA Confidential - should have WON the Oscar. But living to be 100 was a great reward. Wasn't she a dish?

The other passing this week was of a woman whose name few people know, but her work has been seen and admired by millions, even if they don't know what exactly it is they're admiring. Sally Menke, who edited all of Quentin Tarantino's films, perished in a hiking accident Tuesday. She was only 56.

Many tributes to Menke will call attention to big action scenes like the fights in Kill Bill or the car chase in Death Proof - as well they should. Her work on those scenes was among the best of their kind. 

However, I think Menke's best work was in the kind of editing you're not supposed to notice, like the date between Vincent and Mia in Pulp Fiction - and no, I'm not talking about the dance scene or the needle into the heart. I'm talking about the conversations of the date. Check it out again and listen. They're perfectly balanced. Tarantino has said the date was originally much longer, but he and Menke cut it down to perfect effect so it had just the right air of mystery. 

Whenever Pulp Fiction is shown on TV now, it includes a scene excised from the theatrical cut - the "Beatles people vs. Elvis people" scene between Travolta and Thurman. It's a great scene. It's probably the most widely quoted scene that was not actually in a movie. But Menke and Tarantino were right to cut it, because it dispels the mystique around Thurman's character too soon. 

That's where Menke truly excelled. Check out her work in Jackie Brown, which I think is Tarantino's second-best film, and certainly his most mature one. That film juggles multiple characters and subplots, but the movie breathes just right. The viewer never gets lost and gets caught up in the overlapping stories. That's the mark of  a great editor. 

If you have Netflix, check out the editing documentary The Cutting Edge, which has interviews with Menke and Tarantino, and you'll see what I mean. More importantly, you'll learn more about an "invisible" art at which Menke excelled. (Note: The free streaming ends this Thursday, so catch it soon.)

For Sally, for Quentin and for us who love their movies,  final cut has come far too soon. 

Bye Sally.

The day I met Patricia Neal

Forgive me, my blog title is a bit of a misnomer. I never truly "met" Patricia Neal, who died on Sunday  - at least not in the sense that I walked up to her, shook her hand  and chit-chatted.

However, I did get to see her in the spring of 2008, when she paid a visit to the Sci-Fi Marathon in Columbus I go to most every year. She was there because the marathon was playing the film for which geeks know her best: The Day the Earth Should Still. On the strength of probably the most famous non-English line in the history of film -  "Klaatu barada nikto"  - she earned a place in cinema immortality. 

But she was so much more than that. She was a fascinating mixture - a striking beauty whose face could express a cornucopia of emotions in only a few seconds. She had real sass; she was the kind of lady who could probably be called a broad, and she'd take it as a compliment.

And then there was that VOICE of hers. The one that didn't sound quite feminine or quite masculine. I've heart it described as "husky" or "molasses," but to me it was like fine sandpaper - rough around the edges but smooth to the touch.

As any of her obituaries will tell you, she had to endure more trauma than even a lowlife should have to. And yet, through her steely will, she managed to bounce back and hang tough.

And she was that way when I saw her. She was already in frail health and had to be brought in on a wheelchair. Her memory seemed a bit foggy, but what she lacked in recall she made up for in personality. She hadn't lost an ounce of that. She was vivid and playful as she recalled her career - especially the time she fell in love with Gary Cooper when they made The Fountainhead. Even all those decades later, she still had a dreamy quality in her voice when she talked about him. Who could blame her?

When it came to The Day the Earth Stood Still, she recalled how at the time, nobody had any idea they were making anything that would last - yet last it has. When her interviewer brought up the fact that the movie was being remade (wretchedly, it turned out) with Keanu Reeves in the lead, she queried "Who??" 

The crowd ROARED. I don't think Neal was really trying to be funny, but the WAY she said it, with that voice, was priceless. 

She said her favorite movie of hers was Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd, and that is a very fine choice. Its demonstration of how the power of the media can make millions buy into a charlatan seems more prescient than ever these days. 

However, the movie in which she gave her best performance was, for me, the one for which she won her Oscar - 1963's Hud. Not many actresses could play haunted sensuality, but Neal could - vividly. 

Toward the end of that film, Paul Newman says to her, "I'll always remember you, honey - you're the one that got away." 

We'll always remember Patricia Neal, but she'll never get away, as long as there's a movie screen to flicker somewhere, on the faces in the crowd.

For more fine reading, check out EW's list of her essential performances, and critic Joe Leydon's recollections of Neal.

Jim Henson left us 20 years ago, but ....

... are the Muppets coming back? All the signs say they are. And that's something wonderful to ponder this week of all weeks. It was 20 years ago on May 16 that Jim Henson passed away suddenly from respiratory illness.

It was the celebrity death that staggered me the most. Yes, even more so than John Lennon's or George Harrison's. Much as I may not have wanted to admit it, George's death from cancer was sadly inevitable. And John Lennon's death, though surprising, didn't floor me in 1980 - for better or worse, that was what truly launched my Beatlemania.

Jim Henson's passing, on the other hand, stunned everyone. Not only was it a bolt from the blue, but it felt like a piece of my childhood had fallen away. I was crestfallen. When Fred Rogers died several years later, one tribute used a powerful pair of sentences: "Some people should simply not be allowed to die. Fred Rogers is one of them." I thought that would have applied equally well to Jim Henson.

And while few seriously believed the Muppets would die with Henson, for awhile, the decline in quality after his death was alarming. Consider this recap of all the Muppet theatrical films pre- and post-Henson. (This list does not take into account the two fun Sesame Street movies, or side projects like The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth.)

The Muppet Movie: The first, and by far the best of the Muppet pictures. It earns a place in immortality on the strength of "Rainbow Connection " alone. GRADE: A+

The Great Muppet Caper: It's not really a sequel to The Muppet Movie, but it felt like one, in that the second time just wasn't as funny or as inspired as the first. GRADE: B

The Muppets Take Manhattan: A rebound - not quite up to Muppet Movie, but still greatly entertaining. That doesn't seem so surprising now, considering it was Frank Oz's solo directing debut, and he went on to have an impressive directorial career. GRADE: A-

The Muppet Christmas Carol: This was the first movie made after Jim's death, and it seemed the Muppets were still in great shape. This is my second-favorite Muppet movie, aided greatly by Michael Caine's Oscar-quality (no, really) work as Scrooge. GRADE: A

Muppet Treasure Island: The decline begins. It was fun overall, and Tim Curry made an ideal long John Silver, but the movie simply wasn't that amusing. Fozzie in particular is wasted. GRADE: B

Muppets from Space: An inspired idea (is Gonzo really an alien) gets fairly lackluster treatment. It's watchable enough, but there's one comedic misfire after another. The Muppets performing against the Commodores' original recording of "Brick House" felt wrong, and I remain mystified as to why they failed to crack the obvious Pigs in Space joke. The DVD commentary is much funnier than the film itself. GRADE: C+

Some TV specials followed, some better than others, but the absolute nadir of the Muppets was their profoundly misguided Wizard of Oz, filled with dull tunes and lame jokes that not even Fozzie would crack  on his worst day. The state of the Muppets looked quite dire.

And then, slowly but surely, the Muppets began making a comeback through a series of very clever and funny web videos, culminating in the mega-popular take on "Bohemian Rhapsody."



And later this year, a new theatrical film is slated to go into production. Cheekily called The Greatest Muppet Movie Ever (and I hope that title sticks) it's being written by Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller, who co-wrote Forgetting Sarah Marshall. That may sound surprising, but it makes complete sense if you recall that movie ends with a puppet show.

My favorite quote of Hensons's was always this: "When I was young, my ambition was to be one of the people who made a difference in this world. My hope still is to leave the world a little bit better for my having been here."

I feel more confident than I have in a long time that the Muppets will once again hold true to that.