Who Am I This Time? - made for TV

 

Director Jonathan Demme

writer Kurt Vonnegut

WHO AM I THIS TIME? – made for TV                 A+                                                                 aka:  American Playhouse Theater TV                                                                                            USA  (53 mi)  1982  d: Jonathan Demme

I have become an enthusiast for the printed word again.  I have to do that, I now understand, because I want to be a character in all my works.  I can do that in print.  In a movie, somehow, the author always vanishes.  Everything of mine which has been filmed so far has been one character short, and that character is me.                                                                                      —Kurt Vonnegut on adapting his stories to film, from the preface of Between Time & Timbuktu, 1972

Among the very best and most intelligent made-for-TV adaptations from American Playhouse, an anthology of original dramatic films that premiered on PBS in 1982 and continued until 1994, where this film has been hidden in the weeds literally for decades.  It features phenomenal early performances from Susan Sarandon and Christopher Walken, which are so amazingly memorable that once you’ve seen them together, you’ll simply never forget them, which in addition to being a master class on acting is also an impossibly sweet love story.  Susan Sarandon was nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award in Louis Malle’s Atlantic City (1980), while Christopher Walken won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar in Michael Cimino’s THE DEER HUNTER (1978).  Both are utterly spectacular.  The source material is a 15-page short story by Kurt Vonnegut, Who am I this time?, originally published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1961, initially entitled My Name is Everyone, and was later included in a 1968 book of short stories called Welcome to the Monkey House, with a screenplay written by Morton Neal Miller, who doubled as a producer, a Chicago area businessman who shifted his career focus midlife while also owning a construction firm that specialized in renovating old Victorian buildings.  This is a reminder of the heights that literary adaptations can aspire to and actually achieve, and while it’s less than an hour in length, this remains among the top-tiered films you could ever hope to see.  Yes, it’s that good.  Unfortunately, it hasn’t been restored, as there’s no Blu Ray or high-res version.  After making MELVIN AND HOWARD (1980), receiving plenty of awards and critical acclaim, Jonathan Demme became a Hollywood director of note, where his work offers light and hope, created out of a deeply felt affection for people, insisting on their potential, embracing all possibilities.  This script was only handed to him ten days before shooting began, featuring the kinds of characters not usually featured much less expected to carry a film.  Essentially a story about people who inexplicably change their identity in order to flourish, it is set in small town America, which could literally be anywhere, as small towns are uniquely distinctive, filled with old world charm, but in this case it is a fictionalized North Crawford.  George Johnson (Robert Ridgely) makes a trip to the local telephone company to complain about being billed for a call to Honolulu that he never made, going so far as to suggest that no one in North Crawford has ever made a call to Honolulu.  The friendly woman behind the desk is someone he had never seen before, Helene Shaw (Susan Sarandon), who’s in charge of installing a new automatic billing system, going from town to town for the past two years, spending eight weeks in a new and different location teaching local girls how to run the new machine.  And while she apologizes for the mix-up, George is taken by her beauty and sweetness, but also her lack of natural expressiveness, asking very politely if she’d like to try out for a community theater group, as he’ll be directing an upcoming production of the Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Named Desire.  Embarrassed initially, having never given anything like that a second thought, not staying in any one town long enough to establish roots, always remaining a stranger, yet her anonymity, in this case, is an attribute, as she’s a new and fresh face that local audiences have never seen before.

George then wanders over to the local hardware store, seeking out a clerk working in the back, Harry Nash (Christopher Walken in what remains his finest undiscovered role), a painfully shy young man who blends in seamlessly to the background, almost as if he’s not really there, who may as well be invisible in his Harold Lloyd glasses, hat, and bow-tie, yet he is the one constant in the community theater productions, as he always plays the lead role, captivating audiences in every performance, as he has a bombastic flair for the dramatics.  Yet as soon as the final curtain is pulled he disappears, retreating back into that shell of himself, hiding behind those glasses, as socially inept and uneasy with others as he could possibly be.  George treads very cautiously, asking if he would consider the lead role in the next play, which makes Harry extremely nervous, clearly agitated already, finally asking, “Who am I this time?”  Perhaps, unsurprisingly, Ms. Shaw wanders into the tryouts, sheepishly looking around at what looks like a local library, where George, a mild-mannered, aluminum siding salesman, warmly welcomes her, introducing her to Doris Sawyer (Dorothy Patterson), the woman who usually directs the plays, as they ask her to read a few lines of Stella, yet no matter how much they encourage her, she exhibits no emotion whatsoever, drawing on no personal experience, feeling as empty and alienated from the role as is humanly possible, that is, until Harry walks in, already inhabiting the persona of Stanley Kowalski, stripping down to his undershirt, demanding to know when he can audition, aggressively barking out words, as the lines literally explode out of his mouth, where the assault to the senses takes Ms. Shaw by surprise, completely taken aback by his unorthodox approach, taking her breath away, yet the fear he elicits quite naturally turns her into a stuttering and trembling Stella.  When the two of them read one of the play’s fight scenes together, the transformation is like night and day, where it’s suddenly fireworks between them, as she is absolutely transported and thoroughly confounded, touching passions and emotions inside herself she had never felt or even imagined.  Harry is actually a shy, clumsy introvert, but as Stanley he is on fire.  Helene falls hard for him, suddenly feeling weak in the knees, not just because of who he is but because of who she becomes with him.  Yet as soon as they’re done, he retreats back to that nebbish hardware clerk, shunning all contact with people, and literally disappearing before their eyes.  Helene, to say the least, is left stunned.  George and Doris look at each other with eyes of incredulous wonder, as they have themselves a show!  Knowing how much Vonnegut prizes individuality, he has a field day with the blank slates of these two underdeveloped yet highly likeable lead characters, literally paying homage to what theater can do, both embodying their respective roles, neither one with any social life to speak of, never feeling worthy enough on their own.  As described by Helene, “When I get to know somebody nice in real life, I feel like I’m in some kind of bottle, as though I can’t touch that person, no matter how hard I try.”

As the rehearsals progress, it’s clear Helene has grown quite fond of Harry, where he hilariously throws chairs, kicks over tables, while exuding that brute animal magnetism which has charmed its way into her heart, trying to share a picnic basket with him during a break, where it’s clear she’s brought too much, cutting cucumbers in the shape of a heart, so he only has a nibble, yet the queasy nature of just how uncomfortable this makes him is endearing, where it’s remarkable just how dramatically potent they are, where the spaces between the lines say everything, with Demme, who directs with a humanist sensibility, finding just the right balance of comic subtlety in their peculiarly developing relationship which seems founded on just how awkwardly ill at ease they are with themselves, taking comfort that there’s someone else out there to help them bear the load.  But as floundering as they are offstage, their onstage performances are electrifying, becoming a huge success.  Helene is so enthralled with what’s happening between them that she’s informed the telephone company not to move her anymore, as she’s finally staying put.  On opening night, the play is a huge success, as Helene receives a dozen red roses from her coworkers, but finds Harry has disappeared when she turns to give him one, wondering what she’d done to upset him so.  The secret, she discovers, is continuing to read plays together in order to keep Harry socially engaged with her, concluding, “This week I’ve been pursued by Marc Antony, and romanced by Henry Higgins, loved by Henry the Fifth, and I was just proposed to by Ernest Worthing.  Now, don’t you think I’m just about the luckiest girl in town?”  The early 60’s period detail is on point, from women’s hairstyles to storefront window displays, where small town life exudes such an expressive charm, beautifully shot by Paul Von Brack at Oakton School in Evanston and Hinckley, Illinois, never feeling condescending, though it’s given a low-budget TV aesthetic.  A story of two shy people without much personality who come alive onstage is a constant delight, as they go on adventures together in successive roles, where the true value of their performances is just how much fun they’re having, where it’s a bit like John Madden’s SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE (1998), where the superbly written dialogue becomes, in essence, who they are at that given moment, suddenly supercharged with emotions, always inhabiting the characters’ personas for the full run of the play, changing back to their normal selves afterwards.  It’s a miraculous search for identity that just glows with warmth and tenderness as they move from play to play, taking us on a literary adventure of our lifetimes, as the lines between their characters and real life blur, with viewers profoundly changed by the experience, where falling in love was never like this, but it feels so naturally authentic and genuine, with no real false notes to speak of, where this offbeat love story is a blissful hour of entertainment that puts many longer programs to shame, becoming a tour de force about theater, acting, and personality, which miraculously makes you appreciate the wonder of being alive.      

Who Am I This Time? | FULL MOVIE | Christopher Walken ... YouTube (56:02)

Jersey Boys

Rebel Without a Cause

Clint Eastwood thinking he’s in a Michael Jackson "Beat It" video

Millionaires on parade, Clint Eastwood on the set with Frankie Valli

JERSEY BOYS           C        

USA  (134 mi)  2014  ‘Scope  d:  Clint Eastwood        Official site

As someone who never much liked Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons when they were incessantly overplayed on the radio in the 60’s and 70’s, where it always sounded like they had a “produced” rather than a natural sound, it would be a challenge to sit through yet another disappointing Clint Eastwood film since MILLION DOLLAR BABY (2004), a few of which have been among the worst films in this director’s career.  The Four Seasons were the epitome of mass marketing, viewed as old-fashioned and square, the kind of Lawrence Welk schmaltz and sentimentality that even your grandmother could enjoy, where live performances included few spontaneous moments and were identical to the radio sound, as there was little actual performance in an era that featured some of the greatest performers in pop, rock ‘n’ roll, and rhythm and blues history, where the sheer unconventionality of these artists broke from the suffocatingly conformist chains of the 50’s, an era when performers simply stood at a microphone and sang in tune.  Compare that to Tina Turner, Janis Joplin, James Brown, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Eric Burdon, Jimi Hendrix, or Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, who all revolutionized the stage performance.  Nonetheless, adapted from the writing team that produced the Tony Award winning 2005 Broadway musical that won Best Musical, with John Lloyd Young (now at age 38, where his character ranges from a teenager to the father of a teenager, also winning a Tony for Best Leading Actor in a Musical) in the lead role of Frankie Valli as the sole original Broadway performer to be featured in the movie, the film is largely a recreation of the theatrical conception.  This is what’s commonly known in the trade as a moneymaker, a “can’t lose” proposition given to an A-list director, while the investors then sit around and wait for the cash dollars to come rolling in.  That’s been the story of this theatrical production from the outset, costing $7.8 million dollars to produce on Broadway in November 2005, recouping all of their investments by the following June, where 9-years later the show continues to average $715,000 per week in grosses, where the weekly running costs are only about $400,000, which is low by Broadway standards, passing over $1.7 billion dollars in worldwide grosses earlier this year, where there are no announced plans to end its New York run.  Frankie Valli and his songwriter Bob Gaudio have earned $4.1 million dollars so far on the Broadway production alone, as well as a steady stream of revenue from their musical royalties, where early in their careers they inked contracts where they take 6% of the music’s net profits.  And now, the movie, which is wall-to-wall songs, nearly every one a similar looking set piece, which is cheap, easy to construct, assemble a cast, and shoot, which just earns more money into the hands of the investors.  All of this sounds like the Hollywood cash cow business formula, having little if anything to do with cinema itself.  But this typifies what the movies have become—a successful business product.

From the opening thirty seconds, one is immediately less than impressed to the point of being maddened by the look of the film, shot by Tom Stern, who has worked with Eastwood on every film since BLOOD WORK (2002), as the desaturated look has the color faded out, leaving the picture looking dull and lifeless, while every street scene, with every speck of dirt washed away, also resembles the look of a movie set, mostly shot on the Warner Brothers backlot, bearing no resemblance whatsoever to reality.  This deglamorization detracts from the showbiz glitz that is otherwise accentuated throughout, which is basically a trip down memory lane, where the musical production is a showpiece for the Frankie Valli songbook that is heard throughout, with each song sounding so similar, where they even make fun of this criticism early in their rise to success, calling the songs “derivatives,” unoriginal, but copies of similar sounding hit songs.  Apparently the fascination is not so much with the actual voice itself, but with Young recreating the swooning falsetto of Frankie Valli, which was all the rage in soul music in the 60’s and 70’s, like Sam Cooke A Change Is Gonna Come -- Sam Cooke (Original Version in HD YouTube (3:15), Smokey Robinson & the Miracles Smokey Robinson - The Tracks Of My Tears Live (1965) on ...  YouTube (3:05), Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions Gypsy Woman - YouTube (2:20), Eddie Kendricks from the Temptations JUST MY IMAGINATION (1971)- THE TEMPTATIONS YouTube (2:41), or the Isley Brothers ISLEY BROTHERS LAY LADY LAY.wmv - YouTube (10:21), but also Roy Orbison Roy Orbison - In Dreams - YouTube (2:54), Del Shannon Del Shannon - Runaway (Rare Stereo Version) - YouTube (2:20), and Barry Gibb with the Bee Gees Bee Gees _ How Can You Mend a Broken Heart ('71) HQ ... YouTube (3:56), where the sound is so uniquely distinctive that listeners often can’t tell if the singer is black or white.  Coming from the Doo Wop tradition of the late 40’s and 50’s, the term originated in the early 60’s, getting its origins from four guys singing a cappella on the street corner while harmonizing, where the lead falsetto voice was a must, like Little Anthony and the Imperials, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, or Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5, often taking advantage of a young teen singer’s natural adolescent voice before it matures through puberty, at which point that singer’s career was over by the time they turned twenty (which thankfully never happened with Michael Jackson).  The 60’s were perhaps the golden age of the falsetto in pop and rock music, where hearing falsetto voices was common, while today practitioners would include Prince, Thom Yorke of Radiohead, Bono of U2, Chris Martin of Coldplay, or Justin Timberlake.  Frankie Valli is certainly one of the best mainstream pop singers to legitimize the falsetto, where you could hit the high notes while still expressing a masculine feeling of love or defiance.  While he sounds a bit tinny and screeching at times, the group broke into the music scene with Valli’s indisputable sound, Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons - Sherry ( 1962 YouTube (2:34), the first of a string of #1 hits.   

  

Recreated by screenwriters Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, Brickman is a former head writer of the Tonight Show (1969—70), also Woody Allen’s writer for ANNIE HALL (1977), MANHATTAN (1979), and MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY (1993).  There are some extremely funny, drop dead laughter moments, most generated by Christopher Walken as Gyp DeCarlo, easily the best thing in the film as the local mobster, where according to one of his underlings, local hood Tommy Devito (Vincent Piazza), “If you’re from my neighborhood, you got three ways out:  You could join the army.  You could get mobbed up.  Or—you could become a star,” where for this group, “it was two out of three.”  Set in an Italian-American town of Bellevue, just outside of Newark, Jersey, where Frankie was actually born Francesco Stephen Castelluccio, a kid with a voice, the depiction of the mob, however, couldn’t be more sugar coated, where Gyp loves Frankie’s voice to the point of tears when he sings “My Mother’s Eyes” My Mother's Eyes by Frankie Valli (Valley, Vally) - YouTube (3:26) (“That was my mother’s favorite song,”), so he does what he can to protect him, literally offering his services out of the goodness of his heart (only in the movies), as if it’s his responsibility to look after this kid and keep him out of harm’s way.  When local punks and hoods get jail time (including their founder and lead guitarist), in this film prison is a home away from home, where they greet everyone with a smile, even the guards, where everyone asks about the family, where it’s more a family reunion than a prison sentence.  This sanitized version accounts for why little of this criminal record was known about the Four Seasons before the Broadway production, where it likely would have impacted their early years, as record companies might have refused to play their records.  This part of Jersey’s history, which was the major emphasis in David O. Russell’s American Hustle (2013), is simply used for jokes here, suggesting it’s normal for kids get into a little trouble in their youth, but they straighten it all out by the time they become adults.  Of interest, it’s not Frankie, but Vincent Piazza as bad-boy Tommy DeVito that runs the show for most of the picture, playing the swaggering founder of the group, whose loud mouth, obnoxious personality, and lack of business sense gets the band into a deep hole financially, spending the rest of their careers paying off the debt.  So when he steps aside, the vanilla character of Frankie Valli is so underdeveloped that the movie falters without the interest of a mob connection.  All attempts to revive a dysfunctional family fail miserably, so without much of a story, the only thing that matters throughout are the songs. 

An amusing anecdote is Frankie and the Four Seasons actually performed in prison for the real-life Gyp after he was handed a 12-year sentence in 1970, where there were strong intimations that his onscreen persona should be portrayed “respectfully,” where the choice of Christopher Walken must be criminal royalty.  Additionally, Joseph Russo’s depiction of Joe Pesci as just one of the boys from the neighborhood comes across reverentially, as if he’s waiting in the wings to gladhand all the patrons after the show, flashing that big smile.  Also amusing is an Eastwood nod to himself in showing Bob Gaudio (Erich Bergen) watching TV, which turns out to be a clip of the young actor Eastwood half a century ago on the television show Rawhide (1959—65).  While the direction is utterly conventional, shooting a cavalcade of hits as one set piece after another of the group singing onstage to yet another thrilled audience somewhere, anywhere, which is like watching a Vegas act, where one of the most unnerving aspects is when, at different stages throughout the film, each member of the Four Seasons speaks straight into the camera, telling the story of the group by talking directly to the audience, as they do in the theatrical version, the difference being on stage there’s a connection to the songs, while here’s it’s just disconnected talk that gets lost as extraneous material.  Once they get going, however, the endless blur of Frankie Valli hits just keeps coming, where this may be music to the ears of some, perhaps reaching a crescendo with the performance of Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” Can't Take My Eyes off You - Frankie Valli and The 4 ... YouTube (3:45), but the only break in the entire picture was a road performance by an all-female group, The Angel’s, singing “My Boyfriend’s Back” Angels - My Boyfriend's Back - YouTube (2:09), which felt like a revelation.  The film is a bit lackluster and overlong, despite Eastwood cutting out several of the songs, and runs out of steam, where eventually it all looks and feels the same, with John Lloyd Young channeling Michael Corleone in THE GODFATHER (1972) by the end of the picture, which ends with a celebratory Coke advertising style dancing-in-the-streets medley over the closing credits that features every character in the film, a style put to better use by Ellen DeGeneres in her Oscars trailer Oscars® Trailer: Ellen DeGeneres - YouTube (1:00), perhaps originating in Marc Webb’s (500) DAYS OF SUMMER (2009) with Hall & Oates 500 Days Of Summer - You Make My Dreams - YouTube  (2:00), where what’s missing is the urgency and sense of vitality that exists onstage in the live theatrical performance. 

Seven Psychopaths

SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS                   B-                   

Great Britain  (110 mi)  2012  ‘Scope  d:  Martin McDonagh            Official site

Of the three films released by the McDonagh brothers, including Martin’s In Bruges (2008) and John Michael’s The Guard (2011), this is easily the weakest of the three, another black comedy that takes pains with the audience to explain the multiple ideas in conceiving a story, that becomes more about the process of writing, digressing into multiple side stories, always feeling experimental and incomplete, never really feeling much like an actual movie.  Part of the problem is the overly self-conscious nature of the film, a film about the making of a movie, which stops every so often and shares with the audience where it wants to go before it goes there, a device that often does not work.  This may work better in a theater production, where on different nights the actors might actually change the story and use the same clues to different outcomes.  But in a movie, first and foremost there needs to be sustained suspense, dramatic conflict and tension, which is all but absent when the story continually stops as the characters examine the choices to be made, always discussing the possible outcomes before they happen, so when they do, it’s not much of a surprise.  The technique of exposing the writing as the film is progressing is a difficult undertaking, often interfering in the overall interest, where some will find this continually annoying.  Perhaps the best example of this is the highly popular road movie Y TU MAMA TAMBIÉN (2001) by Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón, an otherwise funny and highly entertaining film that is constantly interrupted by a narrator who literally stops the film in order to add some often cheeky narration, a device the interferes with the rhythm and actually changes the pace of the film.  Similarly, Spike Jonze working on a continually evolving Charlie Kaufman screenplay in ADAPTATION (2002) is another headspinner, literally a screenplay about a screenwriter writing a screenplay adaptation of a book.  Some may find this device clever, while others will find it distracting and overly cute. 

In the two earlier works, the writing of the McDonagh brothers is risqué, marvelously inventive, and among the more hilarious films seen in the past few years, and this is a wacky and thoroughly enjoyable adventure as well, where superb acting is always a key to their work.  But this film continually gets sidetracked and bogged down, where the action literally stops as the characters themselves mull over what happens next.  Colin Farrell as Marty is the boozehound screenwriter living in the gorgeous LA digs with the beautiful dame, Abbie Cornish as a trophy girlfriend, while best friend Billy (Sam Rockwell) is continually hovering around him conspiring to change Marty’s life, especially the alcoholism, where the first change seems to be getting Marty kicked out of his girlfriend’s house for his outrageous behavior while drunk, which, of course, he can’t remember.  As he reviews what he’s got so far, writing a new movie script, all he has is a title, as he hasn’t figured out who the psychopaths are or what they do yet.  Billy throws ideas at him left and right, telling him stories or offering newspaper clippings, and slowly, the ideas come, which are visualized onscreen as psychopath #1 and #2, etc. expressed in vignette fashion until the list is complete.  Meanwhile Billy has a side con game going with Hans (Christopher Walken), where they steal pet dogs in a busy upscale block where there’s so much activity it’s easy not to notice the pets are even missing, and then return them as Good Samaritans for a cash reward.  This operation produces steady income until they steal the wrong guy’s dog, Charlie (Woody Harrelson), a local gangster who goes on a rampage trying to find him.  Meanwhile several other so-called psychopaths are on the loose, all allegedly creating mayhem, but they seem to get mixed up in a constantly evolving world of ideas/fantasy/stories where they continually get lost, only to be pulled out of a hat later.  

Undoubtedly, there is some brilliant dialogue written here, and some hilarious lines that almost get lost in the weirdness of what’s happening, where truth and fiction merge as a writer’s ideas are expressed in fantasy scenes, where underneath it all a script is being developed, and there are flashback sequences of various stories being told, all mixed together in a strange brew that doesn’t really hold together the abundance of ideas being offered.  There is a theatricality to the way ideas continually accumulate, but there is little tension or build up of suspense, so when events eventually happen, they feel more like random and isolated events rather than something connected to a whole.  The strength of the film is in its characters, where Rockwell in particular, along with Walken, are as good as they’ve been in years, where they have a brilliantly developed scene in a bar late in the film where Marty is telling Hans (with Billy trying to stop him) the story of the Buddhist/Amish/Quaker psychopath which resonates deeply with Hans, where Tom Waits has an equally compelling backstory, along with a Viet Cong monk who thinks the war is not really over.  Part of the problem is the director’s curious strategy to open the film a certain way, meeting the audience’s expectations, giving them plenty of action scenes, building up the suspense, but then going into a KILL BILL Pt. 2 (2004) style meditation on everything that’s come before, slowing everything down into an utter calm where each character seems to wander off in their own directions.  Never feeling much like a cohesive whole afterwards, instead it’s an obsessive passion on creating individual vignettes strewn together, like an opening scene, Tom Waits’ flashback, a bravura graveyard sequence, the expendable (mis)treatment of women, a hooker that learns to speak Vietnamese at Yale, a tape recorded monologue, a final shoot out (with a gun that jams) set in the desert of a national park next to a sign reading “no shooting allowed,” where by the end it’s questionable whether the project actually works or not.  Was it hilarious?  Individual moments, Hell yes, but does it make us care or come together and work collectively like some kind of existentialist take on writing or living in the modern world, probably not.