Day: November 19, 2020

Unsatisfying

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Everyone remembers Adrien Lyne‘s Unfaithful…right? Another Manhattan infidelity drama, somewhat in the vein of Fatal Attraction and highlighted by Diane Lane‘s affecting performance as a married suburbanite having a hot affair.

The story, written by Alvin Sargent and William Broyles, Jr. and based on Claude Chabrol‘s La Femme Infidel, was about Lane cheating on mild-mannered husband Richard Gere. The hot boyfriend was played by Oliver Martinez, a young-Gere lookalike.

I happened upon a couple of YouTube clips, and the first thing that came to mind was the much-reported uncertainty and equivocating that Lyne went through over Unfaithful‘s ending. Gere kills Martinez in a fit of rage, you see, and Lyne (or the 20th Century Fox suits) wanted everything to be morally right and owned up to.

The ending implies that after much hemming and hawing Gere has decided to tell the cops that he killed the boyfriend. Which I found hugely unsatisfying.

I don’t think anyone wanted this ending. The audience, I sensed, wanted to give him a pass for bashing Martinez over the head. He could feel badly about it, of course, but the only thing people really wanted was for Gere to SKATE — to walk away and live with it. The principle was that a husband killing his wife’s boyfriend is not a good thing, obviously, but that it’s semi-forgivable. Or at least understandable.

All I know is that as the closing credits rolled I was muttering “that‘s how it ends?”

Kurt & Goldie

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Yesterday a N.Y. Times interview with Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, written by Ashley Spencer, appeared. I was somewhat interested in Kurt’s thoughts about guns or rightwing issues of any kind, or about Trump perhaps. (Five years ago there was a slight hoohah about a spirited discussion Kurt and I had during a Hateful Eight interview.) But there was nothing.

My main interest, honestly, was how this long-lasting couple (they’ve been together since ’83) are holding up appearance-wise. That’s all I’m going to say.

In late ’81 or early ’82 Russell and I happened to attend the same private Manhattan party. It was thrown by a female PMK publicist of some standing. Everybody was buzzed and having a raucous old time, and there seemed to be a certain spark or current between Russell and the publicist. Maybe. None of my business.

In any event I left at a reasonable hour. The next morning I decided to call the publicist and thank her for inviting me. Bad idea, as it turned out, because I’d called around 9:30 am, which was too early. The publicist answered, barely. She didn’t say “hello?” when she picked up — she said “hrmmph.” That told me to hang up right away as I didn’t want to be the bad guy who woke her up. I was calling from a pay phone at Grand Central so she never knew.

Exactly 40 Years Ago

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Michael Cimino‘s Heaven’s Gate had its disastrous New York premiere on 11.19.80, at the Cinema 1 on Third Avenue. A climatic moment in history, and I was there — a witness, a survivor, taking the pulse, mulling the significance. Was the legendary Larry Karaszewski there also? Maybe. Then again he was 19, about to turn 20, and as far as I know still living in South Bend, Indiana. So maybe not.

Posted on 8.13.12: “I was there, man. I was in that audience [at the Cinema 1], and in all my years of watching films I have never felt such a sucking sensation in a room…a feeling of almost total inertia from the oxygen having been all but vacuumed out by a filmmaker with a ridiculous and over-indulged sense of his own vision and grandeur, and by a resultant approach to filmmaking that felt to me like some kind of pretentious waking nightmare.

“I could feel it in one of the earliest scenes, when John Hurt is addressing his graduating Harvard classmates in a cocky, impudent, self-amused fashion and Joseph Cotten (as a character called ‘Reverend Doctor’) is shown to be irked and offended by the snide and brazen tone of Hurt’s remarks, and right away I was saying to myself, ‘What is this? I can’t understand half of what Hurt is on about and I don’t give a damn why Cotten is bothered. If this is indicative of what this film will be like for the next three hours then Cimino is fucked and so am I because I have to sit here and watch it.’

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Psychotic Malevolence

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From “Trump tries to subvert the election, inviting Michigan G.O.P. lawmakers to the White House,” posted earlier today in N.Y Times: “After failing repeatedly in court to overturn election results, President Trump is taking the extraordinary step of reaching out directly to Republican state legislators as he tries to subvert the Electoral College process, inviting Michigan lawmakers to meet with him at the White House on Friday.

“Mr. Trump contacted the Republican majority leader in the Michigan State Senate to issue the invitation, according to a person briefed on the invitation. It is not clear how many Michigan lawmakers will be making the trip to Washington, nor precisely what Mr. Trump plans to say to [them]. The president has made few public appearances since the election and his daily schedule often has no events on it, despite the worsening coronavirus pandemic.

“The White House invitation to Republican lawmakers in a battleground state is the latest — and the most brazen — salvo in a scattershot campaign-after-the-campaign waged by Mr. Trump and his allies to cast doubt on President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s decisive victory.”

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Affecting Instances of Nonverbal Acting

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Earlier today some Facebook guy asked for examples of scenes with great nønverbal acting. The vast majority of respondents will point to scenes in which the protagonist is conveying strong levels of anxiety, stress or barely suppressed panic. Prime example: Al Pacino in the seconds before he whips out the gun and shoots Al Lettieri and Sterling Hayden in The Godfather. But of course, the increasingly louder sound of a subway train rolling underneath is a key ingredient.

I tend to prefer subtler examples.

Mark Harris‘s favorite is Lily Tomlin‘s simmering reaction to Keith Carradine‘s singing of “I’m Easy” in Nashville. I agree as far as Tomlin is concerned, but the scene falls apart because Carradine won’t stop pathologically staring at her. No cafe performer would ever do that as it makes him look obsessed if not insane. Women in the cafe are noticing his staring and looking around to see who the object might be…Jesus.

One of my nonverbal favorites is James Gandolfini collapsing inside at the end of the legendary “Long Term Parking” episode in season #5 of The Sopranos (i.e., the one in which Adriana gets whacked). That’s me — that’s how I feel 80% of the time when I let the combination of the pandemic and the Khmer Rouge get to me. And that’s how I always respond if anyone asks if I’m good.

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