H.E.A.L.T.H.

H.E.A.L.T.H.        B                
aka:  HealtH

aka:  Happiness, Energy And Longevity Through Health

USA  (105 mi)  1980  ‘Scope  d:  Robert Altman

Altman goes straight for the jugular with this one, a carnivalesque satire on political hysteria, another example of the director assembling order from the mass chaos on the movie set, as there are few moments in this film where there aren’t a half a dozen things happening at once.  Set entirely on the grounds of the upscale Don Cesar Hotel in St. Petersburg, Florida, the events take place at a health convention where rival candidates Lauren Bacall and Glenda Jackson are vying for the presidency of the organization.  Bacall as “the first lady of health” is hilarious as a wind up doll who raises her arms triumphantly as she espouses one catch phrase or another, often repeating them, each time to applause and fanfare before running out of energy where she sits motionless in the exact same position until someone winds her up again, while Jackson keeps spouting historical speech phrases from a bygone age about the glories of democracy, every word of which is ignored as she may as well be reading off the back of a cereal box for all the interest it generates.  Bacall may be Altman’s take on Ronald Reagan reading from the teleprompters, who was just about to be elected President while they were making this film, while Jackson was the dour and humorless voice of the Democrats, personified by the decency of Adlai Stevenson, a man who droned on endlessly about public virtues but who put everyone in the room to sleep, where parts of Jackson’s ramblings were supposedly taken directly from his speeches.  Stanley Kubrick made the most scathing use out of Stevenson, making him President in DR. STRANGELOVE (1964), where that is the biting sarcastic tone of this film where everything in politics is fair game. 

The end of the Carter era represented the rise of special interest groups, self-serving organizations taking themselves a bit too seriously, lending themselves to buffoonery and political parody, shown dressed up as a variety of fruits and vegetables, often seen as little more than celebrity seekers, where Altman delights in showing just how far these groups will go for attention.  Each candidate has handlers who prepare them for the television cameras and their public appearances, while behind the scenes are lowlife characters paid to perform all the dirty tricks.  One such character is the smooth talking opportunist James Garner, Bacall’s campaign manager who continually pulls her out of the public’s eyes when she’s wound down, while another is Henry Gibson in drag trying to spread some dirt on Bacall’s opponent, suggesting she is really a he.  Joining the fray is Carol Burnett as a Presidential emissary on health, filling in for the previous emissary who was discovered dead.  The three are brought together by TV broadcaster Dick Cavett, playing himself as a talk show host covering the convention, seen through a hotel window lying in bed every night and gleefully watching his arch rival Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, who attempts to interview the candidates while all around them are singing groups, marching bands (The Steinettes!!), and anyone else seeking their fifteen minutes of fame, all vying for the audience’s attention, so the mayhem and confusion on the set is reminiscent of the burlesque era of the Marx Brothers at their most undisciplined.  Despite the confusion, there are well written zingers in this one that fly fast and furious, but also exaggerated caricatures, like Donald Moffat as Colonel Cody, the spitting image of Buffalo Bill, a zillionaire who goes on a right wing rant about owning not just the convention, but the government itself, believing everybody works for him, “Lady, you have told me what I wanted to hear.  Your are for real.  That means you are no threat to anyone,”or lengthy improvisations that seemingly come out of nowhere, like Alfre Woodard as the black public relations director of the hotel, the only woman of sanity in the entire film, suddenly thrust into one of Cavett’s interviews, or Jackson’s ditzy secretary, Diane Stilwell as Willow Wertz, another typical dumb blond, but this one has no feelings in her vagina, so she’s never had sex.  But of course, neither has Lauren Bacall, claiming she’s an 83 year old virgin!!   It’s all pretty ridiculous, but that’s the point. 

Even with all the hoopla and non-stop frenzy, somehow, despite all the staging theatrics, with its multi-stranded plotlines, cast of thousands, and clever use of layered dialogue, where the film is this close from turning into a full-blown musical number, Altman actually has a handle on things just as they are on the verge of spinning out of control.  The title actually comes from the slogan Happiness, Energy And Longevity Through Health, using a health food convention as a stand-in for the often sleazy and underhanded practices that occur during an election year, where lying becomes the universal truth, so long as it’s properly packaged, where everything is an illusion, a manipulation of words and images, as even Colonel Cody is not the right wing zealot he would have us believe, but is instead Lauren Bacall’s crazy brother, where the health food convention is followed by a convention of hypnotists.  Twentieth Century Fox studios wouldn’t release this in an actual election year, finding it too controversial, and after a series of financial setbacks refused to distribute it altogether, so it sat on the shelf until Altman took it to colleges and film festivals, eventually releasing it himself two years later in 1982.  It has a similar history of no video or DVD release, supposedly due to music infringements, but Altman himself wrote the lyrics for one of the songs used, “Chick and Thin,” while another, a jingle called “Exercise Your Right to Vote” was a theme song used in a later Altman film, TANNER ’88 (1988).  However, the sounds of political convention music are heard wall to wall throughout this film, like “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” “Happy Days Are Here Again,” “The Grand Old Party,” “It’s a Grand Old Flag,” or “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy,” none of which received musical clearance.  On June 12, 1982, President Ronald Reagan watched the film at Camp David, where in his diary he called it “the world’s worst movie.”  Released in the same year as Spielberg’s E.T. (1982), which became the highest grossing film in history, the age of the director was over, as blockbusters altered the landscape by changing the whole business of film finance.  For Altman and others, including Martin Scorsese, in the 80’s it became more difficult than ever to finance their films.   

A Wedding

A WEDDING                                      A-  
USA  (125 mi)  1978  ‘Scope  d:  Robert Altman 

“You know, weddings are the happiest events I could possibly dream of — and yet somehow, when they’re over, it’s always so sad.”               

—Rita Billingsley (Geraldine Chaplin)

“I like to allow for accidents, for happy occurrences, and mistakes. That’s why I don’t plan too carefully, and why we’re going to use two cameras and shoot 500,000 feet of film on A Wedding. Sometimes you don’t know yourself what’s going to work. I think a problem with some of the younger directors, who were all but raised on film, is that their film grammar has become too rigid. Their work is inspired more by other films than by life.” 

—Robert Altman from Roger Ebert interview June 12, 1977,  The Chicago Blog: In memory of Robert Altman 

A sprawling mess of a movie that couldn’t be more fun, one of Altman's funniest films, where what seems like that holy day disintegrates into pure mayhem and turns into the marriage from hell.  Altman offers no hints in the opening half hour, playing it straight with a few minor glitches, where the pageantry of a church wedding, including the choir of the St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Evanston, Illinois, by the way, seems glorified by the sacred music and formal attire, as an endless parade of family and guests are introduced, where it’s impossible for the audience to keep track of them all, but therein lies the intrigue. By the time we identify the bride and groom, Amy Stryker as Muffin and Desi Arnaz Jr, as Dino, and the Bishop stumbles over their wedding vows, they seem almost like an afterthought, swallowed up by the more scandalous affairs of others.  Altman revisits the loosely defined Nashville (1975) formula of a dozen things happening simultaneously, only expanding the base of main characters utilized from 24 to 48, eventually creating a farce like atmosphere where events spin out of control, not the least of which are the characters themselves who succumb to the pressure of having to continually put on their happy faces at an elite social gathering of high society.  Adding to the high drama is the corpse of the groom’s grandmother (Lillian Gish) in an upstairs bedroom, who dies just seconds before the wedding party arrives at her palatial estate, an event that is one of the worst kept secrets throughout most of the evening.     

By the time the guests arrive, Altman can’t wait to expose them as hypocrites, scoundrels, cheats, backstabbers, drug addicts, and hell, why not throw in very likely connected to the mafia for good measure?  By the time we hear a painfully amateurish and neverending rendition of the song “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing,” the kind of off-key version sung in the piano lounges of motel conventions all across America, no one is left unscathed, including the groom who has apparently impregnated the bride’s sister Buffy, Mia Farrow, who doesn’t seem the least bit ashamed, while her mother Tulip (Carol Burnett) is having the ultra dramatic slow dance of her life with late night comic joke master Pat McCormick, something of a balding gentle giant, who is not only putting the moves on her but declaring her to be his lifelong soul mate, suggesting they meet for a private moment outside in the greenhouse in ten minutes, leaving the overwhelmed Tulip in a state of flux.  On the groom’s side, Vittorio Gassman is the alleged mafia father figure who designed an exact replica of his favorite Italian restaurant in his basement.  Easily his best scene is the unexpected arrival of his brother from Italy, where the two of them go into an unsubtitled rage of venomous Italian words, which of course goes on for several minutes and no one has a clue what the hell they’re arguing about before they eventually embrace in brotherly love.  Before the night is done, Mia Farrow is in the pants of the brother.         

Where all this is leading, no one knows, as this is simply a roller coaster ride of strange and mysterious events, where the audience is continually caught off-guard and challenged by the multitude of characters, which is not at all uncommon at large wedding receptions, where people fade in and out of one’s radar with some obviously creating more of a lasting impression than others.  When the uninvited bride and groom’s best friends arrive, Pam Dawber (Mindy from Mork and Mindy) and the party animal Gavan O’Herlihy, both are subsequently seen openly making out with the betrothed, as if there is some unfinished history.  The open-minded morals of the younger generation are seemingly excused by their parents as the dalliances of youth, while the adults are all too busy covering up their own affairs behind closed doors.  Geraldine Chaplin is the straight-laced, can’t-veer-from-the-program party planner, the one always announcing what the various party activities will be, but also summarily left out of all the activities herself, apparently without a friend in the world, leaving her lost and alone in the middle of all this “happiness.”  She provides an unintended narration of the festivities, usually blatantly ignored, treated with disdain like some of the hired help.  It’s interesting to see how this film lays the groundwork for a later Altman work that actually highlights the distinctive viewpoints of the upstairs and downstairs social classes in Gosford Park (2001).  This film only begins to shed light on the class divisions, preferring instead to go for broad comedy, where by the end, the wedding party is a train wreck waiting to happen.  For years this film was unavailable in any format except old VHS copies, but was eventually released on a composite DVD of 70’s films called The Robert Altman Collection.