Bill Forsyth‘s Local Hero opened on 2.17.83. I caught a long-lead screening (early or mid December ’82) at the old Warner Bros. screening room at 75 Rockefeller Plaza. I was beaming when it ended around 9 pm or thereabouts. The final scene got me deep down; I was half teary-eyed and so jazzed I walked straight up to Cafe Central (75th and Amsterdam), the actors’ hangout bar. I felt too good to submit to an IRT local — I walked the 26 or 27 blocks in a half hour.
Believe it or not Peter Riegert, 35 at the time, was standing at the bar. I knew him slightly from previous Cafe Central inebriations, and was overjoyed to see him. I told him what a great film LH was and what a high I was on, etc. “And that pay phone ringing at the very end…that’s Macintosh calling!”,” I said after my second Jack Daniels and ginger ale. Riegert, perhaps wondering if I was a little drunk or just a bit slow, smiled and nodded “yeah.”
“Bill Forsyth, Peter Reigert and the Truth About Movies,” posted on 3.28.15. In a More Intelligent Life piece about Bill Forstyh‘s Local Hero (’83), star Peter Riegert is quoted by Jasper Rees as follows:
“Bill [Forsyth] understood that moviegoers are not interested in what the actors are feeling. They’re interested in what they’re feeling.”
Precisely! This is a perfect distillation of the entire Hollywood Elsewhere approach to reviewing movies and performances. This is the sine qua non, the emerald, the whole magillah…words in passing that give the game away.
I’m always perfectly aware of the feelings that an actor is attempting to generate with his or her personality or application of technique or whatever, but all I care about is what I’m feeling as I sit slumped in my seat, tripping happily on the film or the performance or trying to make heads or tails of either one. I might “respect” what a filmmaker has tried to accomplish with this or that approach, but all I care about and all I’m going to write about at the end of the day is if this approach works for me.
For I am King Solomon…the ultimate arbiter, the one-man jury, inspector of the final product, giver or denier of the HE seal of approval.
A performance or a movie, in other words, is not about the idea or theme or cultural undercurrent propelling the filmmakers, but about how I fucking feel as I contemplate the finality of it.