It was May, before she went to Cannes, before she lost her passport, before she went all Eleanor Parker and was shut in the slammer. Of course, her incarceration wasn't as bad as Caged. But it certainly wasn't any fun for the freckled one.
In a dumpy Burbank motel, the woman I've defended too many times to count, a woman who's endured more than her share of gossip, family drama, personal demons and quite literally, mean girls, sat down with me to discuss her role in the upcoming
movie Inferno: A Linda Lovelace Story.
Of course I'm talking about Lindsay Lohan, a talented actress I root for, and an actress who should be judged for that -- her acting. I don't care what so-and-so movie writer from whatever
newspaper or Web site feels about Lindsay's partying or sexy lifestyle
(there's a strong strain of misogyny in this kind of critique), the real
question is, can she act? And if so-and-so movie critic doesn't think
she can act, then I can only wonder whether he or she is judging the
actress for her off-screen behavior. That's a shame. If critics assessed Jack Nicholson
for his off-screen behavior, he might not have the Oscars he so richly
deserves. And I won't get started on legends like Warren
Beatty, Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole and the late, great Oliver Reed. And then there's younger names, like...Colin Farrell.
I revere these men for their work and for their legend. But these are
movie stars. Take off your sanctimonious, hypocritical Hedda Hopper hats for a moment and think about it -- since when are movie stars role models? How
boring Hollywood would be if stars had absolutely no scandal in their
lives. How boring life would be if anyone didn't dip into a pool of scandal every once in a while. God bless you sinners! Lindsay's antics aren't anything new -- actors have often been
wild, especially young ones. "It" girl Clara Bow (whom Lindsay adores), was for a time, shunned from "decent" Hollywood society because of her supposedly "crazy" behavior. Still, she didn't have TMZ filming her every move.
And with Lindsay on board, even in the middle of the night No-Tel, Motel, paparazzi showed up -- in the Parking Lot. We were all amused by their desperation. And Lindsay handled it in stride. She's used to it. Thoughtful, funny and good, Lohan depicted her shoot, which were essentially, stills from the movie (written and to be directed by Matthew Wilder), with impressive,
shifting emotions, gritty strength and intense poignancy. As photographer Tyler Shields snapped the dramatic pictures,
based on an especially sad moment in Lovelace's life, it was
fascinating to watch her go in and out of character.
When it was all done, Lindsay sat on the bed with me while I asked questions (and here, simply listened, like a therapist), and she talked quite easily about the sadomasochist relationship of Lovelace and Chuck Traynor, at one point saying the script reminded her of her parents. Yes. She has been through some things.
Roman Polanski is a master. You can think he’s not up to snuff after Chinatown, you can debate about the importance of The Pianist, but after icons like Welles, Kubrick and Altman have left us, Polanski remains one our greatest living filmmakers. An artist who's crafted numerous iconic classics, and one who could have rested on Chinatown alone, he’s still here -- creating challenging, compelling, smart, darkly funny and yes, masterful pictures. It seems impossible for Polanski to not be interesting.
He’s also an extraordinarily controversial figure, a man currently under house arrest in Switzerland for a 1977 sexual assault case in which he pleaded guilty to statutory rape and then (through various reasons that have been argued, defended, explicated, the list goes on and on and I know it all too well) fled before he was to be formally sentenced in 1978. Living as a fugitive until September of last year, he will now face sentencing in the United States, and the circus will begin again. Through a tumultuous life of surviving the Warsaw Ghetto, the loss of his mother in Auschwitz, the murder of his wife (Sharon Tate) at the hands of the Manson family, and his own personal demons, Polanski seems predestined to have an irregular life -- a life of darkness, absurdity and controversy. A life much like his movies.
And yet, even while enduring his current predicament, Polanski managed to finish another picture, which, no matter how you feel about him, is pretty damn impressive. The mesmerizing, political thriller, The Ghost Writer, (an adaptation of the Robert Harris novel The Ghost) stars Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Olivia Williams, Kim Cattrall, Tom Wilkinson and the great Eli Wallach. With McGregor in lead as the titular ghostwriter, hired to pen the memoirs of a former British prime minister (a fantastically funny and sleazy Brosnan), the movie throws the young writer into a series of doomed, dangerous situations, punctuated by strange characters that are subtly ominous and absurd and perfectly Polanskian.
With the excitement that the filmmaker has not lost his touch, here's a look at eight of Polanski's greatest (a nearly impossible task for me since I love nearly every picture he's made -- even the "minor" ones. And please leave me alone about Macbeth and The Fearless Vampire Killers, Frantic, Death and the Maiden, all of which I love). Through both real life and cinematic tragedy and triumph, absurdity and horror, sensuality and perversion, beauty hideousness, what a long, strange and brilliant trip it’s been Mr. Polanski.
Knife in the Water (1962)
It's evident. Roman Polanski emerged from the womb knowing cinema. Proof lies in his glorious first feature, Knife in the Water, a tense, complex, three-character study in which cruelty, violence, sexuality, absurdity (all of the Polanski hallmark obsessions and more) are laid out in pitch perfect sequences and characterizations, confined to one space (Polanski loves nothing more than to trap his characters in apartments, boats or creepy houses. And water continually means something). The story finds a vacationing couple, Andrzej (Leon Niemczyk), a sportswriter, and his wife Krystyna (Jolanta Umecka), picking up a nameless, young hitchhiker (Zygmunt Malanowicz). The young man joins them on their boat trip. Good idea? Not when jealousy arises via Andrzej who can't contend with the younger man's golden boy loveliness. And then there's that knife suggested in the title (filled with violent and phallic meaning) hanging over the proceedings with menace and cruel sexuality. The movie was a critical hit, earning top prize at the Venice Film Festival, and an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film. Darkly funny, sexy, scary, claustrophobic while agoraphobic at the same time (Polanski excels at this particular predicament). The young Polish director was on his way to many more masterpieces to come.
Repulsion (1965)
Through the beautiful visage of ice goddess Catherine Deneuve, Repulsion remains one of the most frightening studies of psychosis ever filmed. It's also one of the most sexually mysterious. Deneuve plays Carol, a nervous young manicurist who goes about her days in the salon, quietly tending to bossy old ladies' fleshy cuticles; but eventually finds herself languishing about her apartment, where, her pathological shyness, sexual repression and repulsions spiral into madness. Perplexing hallucinations haunt Carol as she's holed up in her pad: sexual acts with a greasy man whom she simultaneously loathes and lusts; greedy hands poking through the hallways and kneading her soft flesh; and the moving and cracking of walls. Left alone, she is able to act out what she is so afraid of: the dark sludge of desire. The obscure, slippery and decayed complexities of such desire are conveyed brilliantly and the diseased atmosphere of Carol's apartment/womb is meticulously created through Polanski's inventive camera angles, sound effects and images of clutter.
Polanski's use of ambient sounds (the ticking of a clock, the voices of nuns playing catch in the convent garden, the dripping of a faucet) is masterful,conveying Carol's unsettling fears. Polanski also dresses the film with pertinent details that further exemplify both Carol's madness and the aching passage of time: potatoes sprout in the kitchen; meat (rabbit meat, no less) rots on a plate and eventually collects flies; various debris of blood, food and liquids form naturally around Carol. The use of black-and-white film, wide-angle lenses and close-ups creates an unsparing vision of sickness, and Deneuve's performance is effectively mysterious. As Polanski cameraman Gil Taylor muttered during filming, "I hate doing this to a beautiful woman." A masterpiece of madness.
Cul-de-Sac (1966)
Oh, this movie is so much weird, sexy, subversive, screwy fun. And so brilliant. And so underseen. When will it be released in the United States on DVD? Soon please. It remains one of Polanski's best, and a precursor to themes he would continually dabble in: tortured relationships, bizarre blonde behavior, infidelity, cross-dressing, even film noir via the stalwart Lionel Stander (best known here for his role in Hart to Hart but who should be known as the blacklisted, veteran hard-boiled American character actor). Donald Pleasence plays a strange fellow who happens to luck out with a gorgeous wife (Francoise Dorleac; sister to Catherine Deneuve and a tragic beauty, Not long after completing this picture, Dorleac would, in real life, die too young in an auto accident) who he keeps in a strange, enormous, isolated house on a tiny island off the northeast coast of Britain. Playing a lot like another nor, The Desperate Hours, the bizarre couple will be forced to host two escaped criminals (Stander and MacGowran) who land on their island and essentially hang out to mess with them. But it's not just crime and entrapment that make the story interesting, it's all of the Polanski touches.
Dorleac is cheating on her weirdo husband (who takes to wearing ladies clothes), she also seems perpetually bored, and engages in childlike activities like running around in a gown barefoot, putting on exaggerated eyeliner, playing with rifles and lighting a sleeping Stander's toes on fire with burning pieces of newspaper ("It's called a bicycle" she taunts). The movie is dark but also uniquely funny and starkly beautiful. You feel the isolation, you feel the strange sexuality and you feel the bleakness of it all. The cherry on top? It's all so kinky sexy. A film that only Polanski could create.
Rosemary's Baby (1968)
One of Polanski's most famous, iconic and unforgettable movies, Rosemary's Baby is just as effective as a dark comedy as it is a horror movie. It also works as a strange celebration of one woman's love for her baby, no matter what, and the institutions that attempt to control her (yes, you can read Rosemary's Baby as a feminist work). We all remember young-mother-to-be Rosemary (Mia Farrow) moving into a lovely, though creepy, apartment building and eventually finding herself impregnated by Satan himself. Her ambitious actor husband, Guy (John Cassavetes), is mostly to blame -- he strikes a deal with their eccentric, Devil-worshiping neighbors the Castevets (a wonderfully spellbinding Sidney Blackmer and a charmingly though frighteningly coarse Ruth Gordon) -- and poor Rosemary is the vessel, enduring he Castevets' pregnancy tips, and even agreeing to see the famed Dr. Sapirstein (played by a condescendingly evil Ralph Bellamy in a switch from his usual nice guy roles of yore). A powerfully desperate and touching performance by Farrow carries the picture, but Polanski's colorful, tense and at times, surreal direction (the dream sequence/Satanic seduction is a particular standout) and attention to detail is superb. And again, it's at times, hilarious. "What about Dr. Sapirstein? What about ME!"
Chinatown (1974)
Chinatown isn't just one of Roman Polanski's great masterpieces (perhaps his greatest), it's also one of the true masterpieces of the 1970s, a true masterpiece of neo-noir (some even contend Chinatown a pure film noir, removing the neo from the appellation, and the last one of the genre), and the last true studio picture, a movie that slammed the doors of Paramount, where the infamous producer Robert Evans reigned. Combining the winning elements of a brilliant, intricate screenplay by the great Robert Towne, Polanski's tour-de-force direction and both an iconic Jack Nicholson (as private dick Jake Gittes) and fetchingly mysterious/neurotic Faye Dunaway (as the damaged Evelyn Mulwray), Chinatown works on all levels: thematically, stylistically, philosophically, historically, everything. It's a perfect movie. The labyrinthian plot (taking place in 1937) will find Gittes embroiled in a story of incest, greed, political corruption and a doomed love (you will never forget Dunaway's infamous "my sister, my daughter" moment), wandering through a beautifully styled Los Angeles, that's meticulously recaptured in exquisite period detail and unique, beautifully muted cinematography (interestingly, and purposely, you never actually see anyone going to Chinatown). Polanski himself would have a memorable moment.
Emerging from the shadows, Nicholson's Gittes asks, "Where'd you get the midget" only to be met with a switchblade up his nose via Polanski "You know what happens to nosy fellows? They lose their noses." A classic on par with Citizen Kane, The Maltese Falcon, and The Godfather,Chinatown is truly one of the greatest movies ever made. And watching it today, knowing about Polanski's future to come, the picture's themes and dialogue are startlingly portentous. Think of John Huston's (as Noah Cross) famous line: "You see, Mr. Gittes, most people never have to face the fact that, at the right time and the right place, they're capable of anything."
The Tenant(1976)
Though Rosemary's Baby remains Roman Polanski's classic horror film, for psychological terror, hysterical paranoia, existential break-down and a man in a dress, The Tenant supersedes Rosemary in genuine horror. Polanski cast himself as Trelkovsky, a beleaguered, nervous Polish file clerk who takes an apartment after the previous tenant commits suicide. His neighbors are all kinds of creepy (gotta love a thoroughly disagreeable Shelley Winters), he's seeing strange things in the bathroom across the courtyard and, in one of the picture's more memorable moments, he's found a tooth in the wall. Yes, a tooth. And it's scary. And funny. And scary. Worse, for reasons we can only surmise as ghostly and psychotic, he begins dressing in the prior tenant's clothes, including a dress, wig and a thick smear of lipstick. When he jumps out of the window, not once, but twice in this get-up we are both horrified and humored – a tough combination to successfully convey, but Polanski, master of the dark humor, does so effortlessly. For instance, watch Polanski smack a kid in the park, or observe an especially frightening and imaginative moment when Polanski's head is bouncing like a basketball, and feel confused by your horrified bemusement. Try not to laugh. And then cringe. A Dostoyevskian inspired tale, The Tenant is supremely creepy, philosophically fascinating, funny and daring.
Bitter Moon (1992)
Polanski's boozy, bitter, sexually manic ode to demented dysfunction remains one of the most underrated, misunderstood pictures in his brilliant career, a movie that makes one laugh as much as it horrifies, titillates and illuminates. It's also a movie one can identify with (either literally or, one hopes, allegorically, though that's not always the case in life), which might be part of the reason so many viewers were turned off by it. Which couple do you relate to? The "nice" couple is Hugh Grant and Kristin Scott Thomas, a handsome, respectable British pair, enjoying a cheesy cruise, making the most of whatever excitement is left in their marriage. The twisted duo is a failed and rather hacky novelist (an inspired Peter Coyote) and his mysterious, French sex-bomb of a partner (Emmanuelle Seigner, Polanski's real life wife), whose story becomes Grant's main obsession as he listens to Coyote describe every detail of his relationship. And I mean every detail (simulated barnyard sex situations, urination, insane cruelty, paralyization etc.). Grant falls for Coyote's wife, but this will seriously (and literally) backfire on him during the boat's New Year's Eve party when, yes, lovely Seigner writhes in seductive abandon with, not Grant, but his wife. It's a wonderfully exciting moment of Sapphic sensuality, but one that'll lead to shocking tragedy.
The Ninth Gate(1999)
A movie so underrated it's almost maddening. As shown here, I admittedly have a never-ending love of Polanski's work (including The Fearless Vampire Killers, the wonderful Macbeth and even Pirates, dammit), but so many critics missed the darkly humorous point of this picture. A wonderfully deadpan Johnny Depp stars as Dean Corso, a snaky rare-book dealer hired by a wealthy scholar of demonology, Boris Balkan (Frank Langella), to authenticate a book of satanic invocation called "The Nine Gates of the Shadow Kingdom." He ventures to Europe to compare the book against two other extremely rare copies (if only book dealing were this exciting) and then things begin to get even weirder. For a book dealer, the investigation becomes pretty spectacular, right down to the Eyes Wide Shut-like moment (not at all intended to ape Kubrick's film) during which devil worshipping Langella storms in on a group of supposedly scary Satanists and hilariously calls them a bunch of losers. Though much more understated than Polanski's greatest works of terror (The Tenant, Repulsion) and not as psychologically tumultuous, The Ninth Gate is nevertheless an engaging, beautifully photographed thriller with a stately, graceful style of pacing that feels drugged and otherworldly. Perfectly perverse, playful, penetrating Polanski.
And no, I did not forget. Two of my other Polanski favorites, Tess and The Pianist:
Tess (1979)
A rapturously beautiful Nastassia Kinski stars in just one of Polanski's great classic literary adaptations (his others include Macbeth and Oliver Twist) and indeed one of his finest. Lushly adapting Thomas Hardy's novel, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, may have seemed an odd choice for a filmmaker who just came off making the spare, scary horror thriller The Tenant, but the themes of doom, love, rape, chaos and the chains of fate were no stranger to the auteur. Kinski is the beautiful peasant girl Tess, bound in a relationship with the wealthy but cruel Alec d'Urberville (Leigh Lawson). She becomes pregnant (in the novel the rape is a powerfully evocative and sympathetic moment), extremely unhappy and after a tragedy, leaves his estate to humbly work on a dairy farm. There, she falls in love with the very serious and very virtuous (and aptly named) Angel Clare (Peter Firth), who will take issues with Tess' past. Too much issue. Unfair issue. Extremely sympathetic to its lead heroine, who is trapped in a world of judgment, shame, social position and yes, fate, Tess is a powerful period piece aided by all of the actors and Kinski in particular. Her beauty is so heart-stopping it haunts the picture, becoming almost scary and strange , underscoring the film's lilting, yet hanging doom. As Hardy wrote, "The sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar which the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never entirely removes."
The Pianist(2002)
A triumph. And a personal one. Though based on the real life of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish composer and musician who survived the Holocaust, hiding from the Nazis after they invaded in 1939, the picture was also inspired by Polanski's own youth. Young Polanski, whose father was detained in an Austrian concentration camp and whose mother died in Auschwitz, would spend World War II hiding from the Nazis in Poland, escaping to the Krakow Ghetto and eventually roaming the countryside, living hand to mouth. Instead of making a purely autobiographical film about his extraordinary journey and survival, he crafted this masterpiece, in which Jewish musician Szpilman (played by Adrien Brody) survives Warsaw during five years of German occupation. Unable to play his piano, scrapping for food, shivering with cold and, in some of the movie's most inspired moments, barely speaking a word, he lives. The Pianist is a deeply personal film, and Brody's performance is brilliantly internal, but the movie never panders or attempts to deliver an easy survival story. The dark and brutal truth to the picture, a truth Polanski well understood, is that Szpilman (and Polanski) did indeed survive, but through many random and lucky incidents (and that kind of luck can turn. Polanski's own heartbreak over the murder of his wife from a band of murderers cuts deep in his worldview) . Polanski knows his hero is special. We know he is special. But does the universe know he is special? Incredibly moving, gorgeously made, horrific and dark and, yet inspiring and beautiful, The Pianist is already a classic.
Santa Claus. Elvis Presley. Black leather jackets. I'm traditional that way. May you all have a red, green, gold, silver and in this case, blue Christmas. Happy Holidays!
I saw Lars Von Trier's Antichrist in July. I've watched it twice since then. It cut me deeply. That is not a pun. The movie burrowed into my subconscious, directly where my anxiety lives, and continues to reside in my frangible little hurt locker. I've argued about it. I've defended Mr. Von Trier's look at women. I've pondered his study of grief, his complicated depiction of love, happiness, hate, sexuality. I know he has panic attacks -- real panic attacks. I've thought about his seriousness, his humor, his compassion, his beauty, horror and gore; his conflicted take on therapy and religion, specifically, behavioral modification and if any of these methods help a person toward enlightenment.
He's a clever trickster, but I believe his claims to have made the film in a demented, depressive state -- when the comforting haze of benzodiazepines have worn off and the nerves are so raw and fragile and exposed that one can only sublimate their problems through the cine-dreams enforced on Serge Gainsbourg's daughter. When one's power animal is a ridiculously literal talking fox explaining the order of things to a past Jesus.
This makes sense to me. I've become wildly personal about the thing. I flailed my arms about the picture. I realize it's only a movie. I realize it's not for everyone. But it’s certainly for me. And yet, I haven't been able to write about it. I can only think of this song.
It was headlined by mega star Robin Williams. It was about a loving father. It was a comedy.It was a family comedy, a clever, poignant, wonderfully dark family comedy. It featured Bruce Hornsby. Many audiences weren’t even aware of the auto-erotic asphyxiation plot twist. So why was World’s Greatest Dad, one of the year’s best movies, so woefully underlooked?
Here's something you don't hear every day: Sir? Madam? Your child. He is not a blessed miracle of God sent from heaven above. He is not full of promise. He is not underneath all that back talk sass, a smart kid, a pussycat, an angel. No. He is, in fact, a mouth-breathing brat, an uncommunicative cipher, a selfish unappreciative loafer, an aggressively stupid misfit and a foul-tongued, futureless creep. You don't have to like him. But, please, love him. Never stop loving him.
And I do mean love -- without sarcasm. As does writer director Bobcat Goldthwait with his trenchant, wonderfully touching and tenderly acted World's Greatest Dad, a movie that bravely subverted the sub-genre of "family comedy" by not only daring to offend (and offend for a reason), but daring to break your heart. This is not an easy task which, I’m thinking, made it a tough movie to market. No, Robin Williams does not wear a dress, become an Old Dogs tea party puppet, or awaken Robert De Niro from a decades-long coma. He does attempt to awaken his son out of pornography induced torpor, but that’s just one part of the story. And don’t pretend you can’t relate.
Goldthwait, most famous for his gloriously off color Shakes the Clown (a movie that's now a cult classic, a picture ahead of the politically incorrect curve...and was smart about it then) and the underrated Stay is clever and genuine enough to pull off such the task of “offense” with substance without being smirky or glib or self satisfied about it. Refreshingly, never once did I feel like the director was trying to "shock" me. But perhaps that's because the movie is so genuine. Kids do say the darndest things like for instance (and this is one of my favorite retorts): “Movies are for losers and art fags.” They also say a lot of other things, far worse things I can't repeat lest I offend your delicate sensibilities or, worse, ruin the humor and surprise of, guess what? Something your child might be saying or ogling or doing at this very moment. That's correct -- somewhere, your child is making a rude remark about a girl's genitalia, and if he's creepy enough, directly to her face.
Here that son is the unpleasant Kyle (Daryl Sabara), a kid of no particular genre (not a nerd, not a jock, certainly not popular), a child who, like most teenagers, masturbates, but one who fancies autoerotic asphyxiation, custom pornography, and even the pleasure of watching an old, overweight pack rat neighbor undress. He's not normal-sex obsessed, he's going through his depraved phase (if it’s a phase). His father is a sweet, struggling novelist and high school poetry teacher Lance (Robin Williams), a single dad trying his best to communicate with his mysterious, mind suck of a son (and his son is mysterious -- enough for us to wonder if there's something deeper lurking underneath his disagreeable attitude). Dad also really wants to get published, a desire that comes into play once the movie veers into a very dark and very surprising and very subversive place -- something I won't reveal here since the movie’s twist (of sorts) is such a ballsy one.
The entire movie, which spins into a monumental lie that reveals fakes are worse than liars (when you see the movie, you'll know what I mean) was probably too real, too close to the bone than studios thought audiences could take. Who knows?Audiences aren’t given enough credit for what they can handle (but then, audiences steered clear of another one of this year’s greatest movies, Jody Hill’s brilliant Observe and Report). Bobcat’s picture pleases two parties: Those without kids, specifically, those sick and tired of hearing their friends drone on and on about all of the various wonders of their (ahem) unexceptional children. And those parents enduring a teenager they can barely stand to look at, to listen to, or in the most contemptuous state, even watch drink a glass of milk without disgust. As stated earlier, not all children are miracles. Sometimes they’re just there, answering an interest as: “You wanna know what I like? I like looking at vaginas.” (Hey, at least he admits to liking something).
With this kind of plain speaking crassness and touching paternal frustration, Goldthwait crafted a work of startlingly honest power -- the kind of movie that feels like the book before the movie was made (even though World’s Greatest Dad was not a book). Goldthwait offers the picture modulations in tone that flow from funny to jarring to sweet to purely emotional-- he isn't making a blanket statement claiming all kids are shit-heels. Clearly, to him, some are in fact quite nice. Some stand up for a girl's honor. Some appreciate a warm gesture from a paternal figure. Some will say thank you for a new computer. Some will watch a zombie movie with their surrogate. But, some will also be mawkish frauds, ridiculously dramatic and annoyingly vapid. And parents and adults can be self absorbed jerks, irresponsible drunks and passive aggressive windbags, too. And that balance, coupled with a gentle, yet clever and simultaneously duplicitous and decent performance by a beautifully understated Williams makes the picture wholly unique.
If Bobcat Goldthwait had any modern influences (Terry Zwigoff? Wes Anderson? Todd Solondz?), he has spun this movie into his own creation. And really, Mr. Goldthwait has always been doing this, starting with his comic persona, something many either forgot about or view as a one-shtick novelty act. I never thought so. I always saw something deeper underneath Bobcat. Even as a kid, I sensed something inherently true in his primal animal/child -- angry and frustrated one second, scared and neurotic the next.
A creature who stumbled over words, his voice rising with hysteria and lowering with insecurity, Bobcat's feral act always touched me on some mysterious level, and I felt weirdly protective of him. Channeling the funny, yet creepy, repressed boy/man (and often forgotten) silent screen genius Harry Langdon, Goldthwait could be a wounded child and then, verge towards violence -- letting loose the id of an inarticulate man wrestling a multitude of unknown demons. When he famously set a couch on fire on "The Tonight Show," it was cathartic, funny, scary, embarrassing and weirdly real. Which sums up World's Greatest Dad perfectly.
This movie deserved better. It deserved more screens. It deserved more press. It deserved more praise. It deserved more viewers to watch, writ large, that crappy little kid finally say something clever: “Diving's not really a sport, it's falling.” Find it on DVD.
And look back at Goldthwait’s act. You won't be surprised that the man, cinematically speaking, excels at such shifting passions. A movie concerning the harshness and delicacy of adult and adolescent frustration is not a stretch for the once shaky voiced, furiously stuttering, fire-starting Bobcat. Struggling to find the balance between the appropriate, adult thing to do or say (and usually, hilariously, failing miserably), he was already an early master.
*This just in -- John Waters agrees. For his Art Forum top ten, he names World's Greatest Dad the fourth best film of 2009, asking: "Why, oh why, wasn’t this blackest of comedies a hit?"
"He's the only man in town I'd be afraid to fight for real. I might knock him down, but he'd keep getting up until one of us was dead."
--Robert Mitchum on Frank Sinatra
I almost forgot entirely. Bing might be the personification of Christmas, and Dean may have passed on that very day, but Frank was born with Christmas tunes ring-a-ding-dinging through his tiny fontanel. That's Frank, as in, Francis Albert Sinatra, born Dec. 12, 1915. The famous birthday came to me after spending two solid days listening to Gram Parsons, Kris Kristofferson and Neil Young, realizing I was slipping into an alt-country music coma from which I might never recover. Enough. Needle and the damage done. Not that I don’t love the above artists (Young's "Pocahontas" is a song will, like, the Bad Lt. make my soul dance even after I've left this earth...), but after moping through “Love Hurts” and “The Silver Tongued Devil” like a brown turtleneck, jean-jacketed sad sack -- I needed a change. In went a movie, up came the croon "If they asked meeeee, I could write a book..." and I was no longer in the rust-tinted musical state akin to sitting in the back of my mother’s pine green station wagon after she signed the divorce papers. I was now swathed in furs and jewels and crying in my Eggplant Parmigiana, preferably from Patsy's, one of Sinatra's favorite joints.
Coveting Frank Sinatra is nothing new. We all witnessed the early ‘90s retro embracing of Ol’ Blue Eyes by younger fans, mostly genuine but for some with a Tiki Torch irony that grew as tiresome as Bettie Page bangs and China Doll wigs. But one can’t allow hordes of obnoxious cigar bar patrons laboring over the malt of scotch ruin the party. Frank is timeless. If you don't get it, you don't get it. And if you don't get it, I don't get you. Nothing can cease my warm memories of Sinatra. There's my stoic dad singing “My kind of town, Chicago is my kind of town” while rolling in his powder blue Caprice Classic. There's the time I stayed home "sick" from school and caught A Hole in the Head on channel 12 (oh, the excitement of happening upon an old movie as a kid). And then there was the day I actually saw Sinatra at a State Fair -- it was the only way I could see him (and I convinced an older boy to drive me up there. He was annoyed but, after putting down his Bukowski poems and watching Frank sit center stage, singing "One for my Baby," weaker, but still oozing with soul, he became a Sinatra devotee. He can thank me for that.). To top it off, a fantastically ribald and still gorgeously leggy Shirley MacLaine (the "mascot" as the Rat Pack called her) opened for him. This is a show I'll never ever forget, with, among other highlights, Frank singing "Mac the Knife" replacing Mac with himself. And when Frank Sr. sternly instructed Frank Jr. to start the orchestra all over again after he flubbed. But that was then and this is right now as I watch Pal Joey -- a movie that just saved me from sewing a rainbow patch on my Levi’s or thinking far too long that Jim Croce needs closer consideration. Or reading anything about the Manson family.
Humphrey Bogart once said of Frank Sinatra: "Frank's a hell of a guy. If he could only stay away from the broads and devote some time to develop himself as an actor, he'd be one of the best in the business." Bogart's opinion of his friend's screen talent was on target, but I can only think, thank God Sinatra never took the time, or rather too much time, to "develop himself as an actor." He didn't need to. Studying the craft could have stultified the magic he displayed in some of his most memorable performances.
When it came to acting, Sinatra was a natural. Like Dean Martin, Sinatra was one of those fabled one-take wonders who preferred his freshest read, to tackle his magic head-on. But he wasn't necessarily against rehearsal or research, especially for meatier roles. For Otto Preminger's The Man With the Golden Arm, Frank actually studied the frenzied state of drug withdrawal to play his heroin-addled jazz drummer Frankie, (one has to assume he knew a few junkies as well) and a more complicated Frank graced other impressive films including John Frankenheimer’s classic The Manchurian Candidate (Frankenheimer told me he would not allow a one take), Vincent Minelli's masterpieces Some Came Running and Fred Zinnemann's moving, sexy, wonderfully overwrought From Here to Eternity, which earned Sinatra an Academy Award for his downtrodden little guy Maggio.
All of those performances were excellent, but there were other actors, gifted actors, who could have performed a few of them (though Sinatra did bring something special and un-matched). Eli Wallach was set to play Maggio (and he’d probably have done an equal job...but maybe not), but because of either the oft-told Mafia legend or his own talent, Sinatra landed the plum part. And then, Sinatra was in the running for Marlon Brando's Terry Malloy in Elia Kazan's groundbreaking On the Waterfront -- this could have been interesting but certainly not as brilliant, not in the I coulda been a contender way (and let's not forget the erotic scene with the glove). I adore him, but regardless of Sinatra's chops, he couldn't have matched the raw, soulful intensity of Brando. But then, in another instance, Brando couldn't entirely do Sinatra -- as witnessed in their shared screen musical Guys and Dolls. Brando, gorgeously cast as gangster Sky Masterson is an almost crazy experiment, so when he sings "Luck Be A Lady Tonight" all mysterious, sexy and quirky, he gives the song an intriguing, bizarre-o, Brando edge (I actually love Brando's languid, strange version). But come now. Truly, the song was tailor-made for Sinatra.
Proof positive was when Sinatra later recorded the song -- he not only sang the tune, he grabbed it by the hair, (as he probably wanted to with Brando's face), dragged it to the bed, tore off all of its clothes and attacked it. With his witty, gritty, punctuated and smooth singing style, Sinatra still sends shivers by singing the lyric, "A lady doesn't wander all over the room and blow on some other guy's dice." You can practically feel the cocked eyebrow through the vinyl of the recording.
But perhaps Sinatra's greatest role was one that didn't involve a beat down a la Maggio, or require the harrowing pain of drug dementia a la Frankie. No. To return the movie flickering in front of me, a movie I've watched numerous times, one of Sinatra's best role was as the gigolo lounge singer Joey Evans in the underrated (though overly scrubbed) screen adaptation of John O'Hara's epistolary novel and subsequent Rodgers and Hart stage musical Pal Joey. For those who prefer Sinatra after his crooning bobby-soxers days, and before the disappointing Duets project, Pal Joey is quintessential Sinatra. I love Frank a little older, a little filled out, and with that hat. Oh, he wore it well.
The definition of lovable cad, Sinatra's Joey Evans is all swagger and crass class. But he's talented, and the ladies cannot resist his goomba, plain speaking charms. When he's hired at a San Francisco nightclub, he beds nearly all of the girls on the chorus line (he calls them "mice") with the big (very big) exception of the luscious, mysteriously melancholic Kim Novak (even when she smiles, the lavender lady is sad, nearing the mournfulness of Chet Baker with her wrist-slitting take on "My Funny Valentine"). Sad or not, she is, as he puts it "the mouse with the built." Feminists may not revel in Joey's tomcat antics, but they might at least feel vindication for his stereotypically female role: Joey uses his voice and body to milk older gals for money. In this case, the still beautiful Rita Hayworth whom he's hustling for a club he'll christen "Chez Joey."
But since the movie version is something of a fantasy, Frank's cad is more than a mere smooth operator, he's a bona-fide musical genius, which goes a long way when when wooing a mouse like Rita Hayworth. And so, with his rendition of "The Lady Is a Tramp," he drops a musical masterpiece on the woman, giving viewers one of the sexiest on-screen musical sequences ever filmed. Singing to Hayworth in a closed nightclub, Sinatra sits at the piano and casually begins his song, tossing it out there as easily as he instructs Novak's dog to get out of his drawer (he says "Off! O-R-F"). He snubs out his cigarette and kicks the piano back (all in wonderful punctuation to the tune) and builds the song towards full tilt Frankness. Skulking across the stage, he crafts the tune so brilliantly, and with such amazing timing, that near the finale, he ends the regularly sung lyric "she broke, but its oke," with "she's broke..." and...no words, just a casual shrug of his shoulders. We don't need to hear if she's O.K. or not. She, he, anyone, would certainly be "oke" by then.
It's just so glorious -- slinky and earthy, nasty and sweet, stern and cool. Blue-eyed devil mean (and those eyes could look mean) and then joyously, shout it to the rooftops soulful (those eyes could also look so poignant). And so goddamn Frank. No performer at any time could have played and sung this scene with the genius of Sinatra. In Pal Joey. Sinatra is rascal, cheater, charmer, lover...a man whose philosophy was to treat a "lady like a dame, and a dame like a lady" -- which still works today. I’m certain that Kris Kristofferson would have to concur.
