Fool for Love

FOOL FOR LOVE       A                    

USA  (106 mi)  1985  d:  Robert Altman 

If you ain't a cowboy, you ain't shit.               —Eddie (Sam Shepard)

Having written award winning plays for nearly two decades, receiving the Pulitzer Prize for Buried Child in 1978, Sam Shepard never directed any of his own plays until Fool for Love in 1983, when he directed Ed Harris and Kathy Baker in the lead roles of a small production in San Francisco before opening off Broadway in New York a few months later.  Robert Altman spent the first half of the decade working in smaller budget movies outside the Hollywood studios, choosing to film a series of modern theatrical works in a naturalistic setting, where often the entire shoot consisted of a single set in a solitary room.  The director’s focus in these works is more restrained due to the cramped space, where the dramatic power of the performers unleashes itself with a flood of emotions that can barely be contained by such a restrictive environment, giving the impression that the characters feel straightjacketed.  Shepard seems to share this sense of confinement in his own life, as just two years earlier on the set of FRANCES (1982) he met lead actress Jessica Lange, effectively ending his own fifteen year marriage for this new lifelong companion.  His play Fool for Love seems to contain elements of this double life, starring lead characters who feel both smitten and star crossed, who are desperate for one another when absent, but miserable in each other’s company.  It was Shepard who wanted his play filmed and also chose to star as Eddie in the lead role, a lonesome cowboy at the end of an era, somehow out of place and out of time.  Much of the movie does take place in a single room, a seedy 1950’s roadside motel set on a lonely highway in New Mexico’s Mojave Desert where Kim Basinger as May is hiding out trying to find her bearings.  Unlike his earlier works, however, Altman opens up this claustrophobic confinement, allowing his characters to inhabit the real world outside, though it’s about as desolate and isolated as you could find filled with collectible articles of junk strewn around.  While the play focuses on the explosive energy of the tortured couple, the fools in love, as if the world could not contain their feelings, Altman creates a more dreamlike effect, complete with long drawn out flashback sequences narrated by intensely personal monologues, where confoundingly the narration does not match the images we see onscreen, causing a deeply unsettling confusion about what to believe.  Some in the audience may never regain that alienated disconnection with the material, but oddly enough neither do the characters onscreen.  Much of this movie is simply a bewilderment.                   

Once Eddie finds May, carrying a horse trailer and a few horses behind his truck, he wants her to join him, most likely dreaming of living in the open plains near the mountains somewhere, but May is reluctant, mindful of their cyclical pattern of self-destructive behavior.  Though she’s obviously attracted to Eddie, who’s a natural on a horse, he’s also a disturbing sexual presence, causing May to feel mistrustful, though mostly it seems of herself.  While Eddie is desperate to get her back, he tries to charm his way through her defenses, where amusing humor and sarcasm are eventually replaced by drunken rage, where through flashbacks we soon learn the real mystery behind their dysfunctional relationship, which strangely involves Harry Dean Stanton as the Old Man who led a double life when he was younger, moving back and forth between families, each one not knowing about the other, where these two are a product of his duplicity.  Eddie seems to accept the fact that they are doomed lovers, forever connected, where nobody and nothing can come in between, as if it’s their only destiny, while May wants to make a new start, which has Eddie disgusted at the thought, thinking she’s only deluding herself.  While the two go at it, tearing each other apart, making up, continually opening up even deeper wounds, May has a surprise, as she needs to get ready for a date who will be arriving soon, which has Eddie relishing the opportunity to demean and embarrass the poor slob.  If ever there was theater of the uncomfortable, this is it, as the emotional discoveries of love and abandonment veer into the world of horror and the macabre.  The Old Man is also hanging around the periphery of the motel, living in his trailer parked behind the motel, sitting around on chairs watching and drinking, as if he hasn’t inflicted enough damage, yet he may be their “safe” place, a shelter in the storm, someone they have in common, whose initial narration feels like a wayward Greek chorus, a man who set out on a journey, got lost and distracted, and never found his way back home, leaving it up to these two to find their way on their own.  This remote outpost in the middle of nowhere seems to be their exile into purgatory.    

But all the introductory emotional fireworks is just a prelude to the main event, which is the evening arrival of the gentleman caller, Randy Quaid, just an ordinary guy genuinely concerned about May who becomes a silent witness, like the role of a Holy Fool.  After a little physical altercation, he is quickly offered a drink to settle things down, and over drinks at a lonely motel bar illuminated by the neon lights shining through the window and reflected in the mirror above the bar, each of these doomed lovers tells their sad tale of woe to a perfect stranger, embellished with hypnotic pacing as they backtrack into the sordid details of their tortured pasts.  These eloquent monologues are fiercely intense and highly disturbing, yet they couldn’t be told with more quiet, purposeful understatement. Both Shepard and Basinger, initially defined by how much she fears and is both attracted and repelled by him, disappear from view, replaced by younger more innocent versions of themselves onscreen, where only their voices remain connected to who they really are.  The dreamlike quality of the flashback memories have a haunting effect, as if they’ve been replayed in their minds hundreds of times, and whatever actually happened has been replaced with countless variations and inventions until they barely recognize who they are anymore.  Their entire adult life has been one long struggle to rid their minds of these painful truths, but just seeing one another brings it all back where they’re forced to relive the heartbreaking tragedy all over again, where only in an alcoholic haze does the subject even surface before returning once more into the deep recesses of their damaged souls.  These flashback sequences near the end of the film are among the most uniquely original scenes Altman has ever filmed, and the way he continually disconnects the visual memory from the descriptive monologues is sublimely poetic, where the film itself becomes a surrealistic plateau of mental anguish and existential dread, sure to repeat itself hundreds of more times, like an infected virus spreading through the bloodstream.  Shepard literally inhabits the role he wrote, a character where every nuance matters, while Basinger’s smoldering sexuality and pitch perfect Southern twang may be her best performance over her entire career, rivaled only by LA CONFIDENTIAL (1997).  Also a steady stream of soulful country music marks the first half of the film, a combination of Waylon Jennings and Sandy Rogers, who is Shepard’s sister, who can be heard on YouTube (4:52) here: Sandy Rogers - Go Rosa.  Altman’s stream-of-consciousness theme of tortured and damaged souls was never more poetically realized than this film, where an early scene that wordlessly expresses Basinger’s relationship to a small girl locked out of her motel room is simply heart wrenching.     

Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean

The cast of the Broadway show "Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean" celebrate opening night backstage at New York's Martin Beck Theatre, Feb. 19, 1982. From left are, Sandy Dennis, Cher, and Karen Black.

COME BACK TO THE FIVE AND DIME, JIMMY DEAN, JIMMY DEAN      A-

USA  (109 mi)  1982  d:  Robert Altman

Altman spent the entire decade of the 80’s recovering from the critical failure of POPEYE (1980), a box office bonanza that grossed nearly $50 million dollars, preferring to make smaller more intimate films, none of which came close to generating even a million dollars, converting a series of plays into movies starting with this one, followed up by STREAMERS (1983), SECRET HONOR (1984), and Fool for Love (1985).  Adapted from the Ed Graczyk play, Altman chose to use the same set from the short-lived original Broadway stage production, which features two identical small town “five-and-dimes” separated by a two-way mirror, which allows simultaneous viewing of both the present and the past, shooting the entire film in a single room.  Normally one might think this would be a disaster in the making, an exhaustive endurance of tedium, but keeping the same Broadway cast, Altman turns this into a tour de force drama, a showcase of acting talent that becomes searingly confessional.  Set in a Woolworth's diner in a near empty town not far from where GIANT (1956) was filmed in Marfa, Texas, this is the site for the reunion of the “Disciples of James Dean” fan club, commemorating the 20th anniversary of his death.  It’s not your typical reunion as these women have not kept in close contact, so as they delve down memory lane, life holds a few surprises in store.  Sandy Dennis, Cher, Kathy Bates, and especially a mysterious appearance by Karen Black add to the building intrigue, as the mood starts off friendly enough, but each woman has highly personalized sequences that likely include mirror flashback sequences, where the initial polite tone of respectful quiet builds to a crashing crescendo of in-your-face drama, literally surprising the hell out of the audience, as something so light and easygoing suddenly takes a turn into the world of a Bergman chamber drama. 

Using the old-fashioned jukebox music of the McGuire Sisters, singing songs like “Sincerely,” this is really one dynamo of a women’s picture, as these women delve into each other’s habits and character flaws, literally dissecting one another onscreen in an attempt to redefine themselves in a new and different way, not as they were, but as they are, or can be, now.  This metamorphosis of change doesn’t come easy, as many, especially Sandy Dennis, kick and scratch the entire way, absolutely refusing to alter her perceptions.  Her near manic stubbornness is like living in a protective bubble with the other women continually poking and prodding until the bubble bursts.  This kind of liberating intensity is not for the squeamish, but it makes for extraordinary theater, resembling Fassbinder or early Cassavetes, as few others make films as blunt as this one, an ensemble work featuring dynamic performances as dramatically powerful as any Altman film, which might surprise a few people, as this is a hard film to see, never released on Video or DVD even after the passing of thirty years.  That situation has been rectified somewhat, as it’s one of the feature films traveling the country in 2011 as part of the UCLA Festival of Film Preservation.  Initially shot on 16 mm, then blown up to 35 mm, again much like early Fassbinder and Cassavetes, this adds a bit of edginess to the raw emotions on display, never looking pretty, but always challenging the audience with the claustrophobic feel of the world closing in.  All seem to be holding dark secrets of some kind, where slowly through the fixated probing of Black, things are not as they seem, where people soon become unglued.  Using a brilliantly innovative set design, the film seamlessly crosses between the 1975 present and the 1955 past, blending revelatory moments in the present with a familiar emotional arc from the past, where each period of time continues to shed light on the other.

Sudie Bond plays Juanita, the widowed elderly owner of the establishment where they all used to work when they were kids, sharing their lives and their traumas together, all conveniently tucked away and nearly forgotten until unearthed by this reunion.  Juanita places her faith in God and takes a hard line against sinners and trespassers.  Cher, in her first meaty role, is surprisingly comfortable in the role of Sissy, something of a sexual floozy in high school and still amazingly candid, with a mouth that speaks her mind, never coy or bashful, quite capable of a full frontal assault, including godlessness.  Sandy Dennis plays Mona, the woman with the most to lose, as like Blanche DuBois, she clings to her dreams of the past, like living in a Glass Menagerie, as her fluttery speech and fragile state of mind appear to feed on her own self-inflicted neuroses and delusions.  The highlight of the reunion is always her recollection of the time she visited Marfa during the filming of GIANT, when she was chosen as an extra and miraculously spent the night with the brilliant young actor himself, naming her own child after Jimmy Dean, the object of their teen idol worship.  Kathy Bates is nothing less than brilliant in her role as Stella Mae, the sassy, straight talking Southern belle who struck it rich marrying a Texas oilman, a woman with a taste for hard liquor and easy living, who never for a second seems satisfied.  Marta Heflin is the quiet one of the bunch, Edna Louise, a bit dimwitted, constantly reminded of that by Stella Mae, but a friend to all, even if they barely know she’s there.  Karen Black as Joanne is the mystery woman with a role that requires unraveling the tightly wound secrets from each person, as she has a special transparency all her own.  She’s startlingly dark, an angel of gloom that seems to hang over each of them like a dark cloud hovering over their own guilty consciences, but she’s anything but happy about it, feeling like she’s continually been dealt a losing hand.  She seems to be the only one paying a price for everyone else’s delusions, as much like Edna Louise, she has become invisible.                

 

None of these six women would ever see themselves as feminists, yet they stubbornly cling to their own separate beliefs, where this film is a dialogue that challenges all their assumptions.  Something of a free-wheeling emotional slugfest, everyone gets to take their shots, but also gets shot down by the others in this collective group therapy where no one walks out a winner.  Everyone’s artificial façade is exposed, and none too gently, where the drunken and pointedly judgmental tone is strangely familiar with Edward Albee’s Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), where Dennis is the link to both films. But the Graczyk play here, while confoundingly interesting, full of bracing moments, simply isn’t in the same league as Albee.  While it has its own complexities with some extraordinary intimate moments between women, there is simply not the same kind of depth or realization.  Instead it is a portrait of delusion and loss of faith, where an unending sadness permeates every inch of that room, yet in Altman’s hands it feels magical, as if our own lives will be cleansed by their personal anguish and pain.  It’s a reminder of the kind of interior poetry that few filmmakers can master, that Altman achieves here and perhaps again later with Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love, another rarely seen effort.  The 80’s was a decade when Altman went smaller, peering into the bleak and dysfunctional souls of damaged humans who spend their lives covering up their own unbearable pain, which is usually a patchwork job that falls apart all too easily whenever someone gets too close for comfort.  Love is an elusive goal rarely if ever reached, as people are too busy building layers of protection that hide them from the truth about themselves.  Plato said:  Beauty is the splendor of truth—well not from the vantage point of any of these women, where the piercing knife only makes them bleed.