Some Drivel On...He Got Game

Maybe the funniest part of Spike Lee’s hardwood opus “He Got Game” (1998) is the college basketball coach cameos. Even now you will recognize many of them, like Roy Williams, like Jim Boeheim, each one recently embroiled in real world scandal, in a fictional ESPN segment involving the film’s principal character, #1 high school basketball recruit Jesus Shuttlesworth (Ray Allen).The coaches, all made to cheekily say the film’s title, tend to have grins on their faces, perhaps not so much from the enjoyment of being in a movie but knowing this will likely be a boon to real-life recruiting. That mixes and matches fiction and reality in a delicious, disturbing way since that’s what “He Got Game” is all about – the sport’s seedy, black market underbelly, where talented high school basketball players are stricken by all manner of leeches looking to get theirs by way of someone else’s.

Lee opens the film with a basketball montage, showing various young players shooting hoops in big cities and small towns, all set to Aaron Copland’s “John Henry.” If the score’s mood seems to elevate these moments to myth, refashioning basketball as the national game, it’s hard not to connect the actual myth of John Henry to exploited African-American basketball players which certainly seems to be Lee’s aim. Everyone wants something from Jesus, from his girlfriend Lala (Rosario Dawson) to his Uncle (Bill Nunn) to coaches like Billy Sunday, played by John Turturro whose slickness and real-life Italian heritage suggest Rick Pitino, and whose emergent recruiting practices suggest Pitino too. The person who wants the most from Jesus, however, is his father, Jake (Denzel Washington), in prison for accidentally killing his wife, Jesus’s mom.

Jake is approached by the Warden (Ned Beatty) with an offer from the Governor for temporary release to try and convince Jesus to attend Big State, alma mater of the Governor. If successful, Jake will get early release. If this plot detail sounds like a gimmick, that’s only because you haven’t read in-depth on the wild wiles of college basketball recruiting. The only reason, I’m fairly certain, my state’s ex-Governor, Rod Blagojevich, never tried a similar stunt was because no elite high school recruit was going anywhere near Northwestern. This twist on recruiting turns, naturally, into a chance for Jake to try and atone for his sins, which is never made easy, by the script or by Jesus, who is, in the meantime, not only fending off leeches but simultaneously trying to raise his sister (Zelda Harris). It’s a busy movie, in other words, but it hangs together, even Jake’s subplot with Dakota (Milla Jovovich), a woman of the night staying next door in the fleabag motel where Jake is shacked up while on his bizarro recruiting trip.

Washington practically lets Jake boil not with resentment, resigned to his sins, but anger nonetheless, all of which comes home in his gait. If actors often play prisoners a step behind, Washington has Jake move with a purpose, a walk that seems like it only has so much time on the outside and wants to take it all in. In one brief section he cuts across the city in a series of swift cuts underlining that speed. And this hurry is born out in flashbacks with the younger Jesus where Dad’s mettle-testing one-man basketball boot camps where he distinctly comes across like a man who knows time is already running out on creating a #1 NBA draft pick. And yet, in his scenes with Jovovich, Washington exudes a palpable tenderness, which renders the bright neon light pouring through the motel windows feel less, makes it feel almost like the carnival of Coney Island transplanted indoors, Jake’s time might be borrowed, but in trying to help Dakota get out of a sticky spot, he does his best to right his violent wrong.

That sort of tenderness ebbs and flows all throughout “He Got Game” and becomes crucial. There is a lot of anger here. How could there not be? In the scenes between father and son, Jesus bristles with anger for the sins his father wrought, and Allen, who I have wrote about before in this role, adopts the tunnel vision of his character quite convincingly. In a volatile flashback to a scene where Jesus and Lala discuss a baby “they” chose to abort, riding a ferris wheel, a fine juxtaposition, Jesus essentially just shouts her opinion down, which is where Lee, never one to let anyone off the hook, makes clear that even if Jesus is a savior on the hardwood, his life has transgressions.

If basketball is the film’s prominent subject, we only see it in snippets, like an early sequence cutting between Jake shooting jump shots on the prison basketball court and Jesus shooting jump shots on the playground, a moment to simply revel in Ray Allen’s perfect, sumptuous shooting form. Later, when father and son stroll the boardwalk, Jake explains how Jesus got his name, not from the Bible but from Earl Monroe (“Black Jesus”), and Lee cues up a few grainy stock images of Monroe from his days with the Baltimore Bullets, which don’t feel standard issue but like little flickering memories that sear themselves into the minds of kids when they first find and fall in love with the game.

“He Got Game” climaxes on the court with a one on one showdown between father and son to decide whether or not Jesus will sign with Big State, which sounds as gimmicky as the inciting incident but becomes so much more, an emotional bloodletting of sorts. No, the only real-real basketball game occurs early in the form of a nighttime playground contest with nothing on the line but pride. Lee sets this pickup game to Aaron Copland’s “Hoedown”, making it feel like a sudden burst of joy, when all the surrounding noise falls away and all you see is the unadorned beauty of the game.

Fences

Before “Fences” has even faded in we already hear Denzel Washington’s voice. That is apropos. His voice lords over “Fences.” I don’t mean his auteur voice, considering he directed this film, but his voice voice. There is a traditional soundtrack, yes, sure, but Washington’s voice is the true soundtrack. It’s everywhere, nearly all of the time. At one point he opens a window to holler at God and he sounds louder than the thunder and lightning roiling around outside. Washington has always possessed an authoritative voice, of course, and in everything, from the Oscar winners to the middlebrow box office grabs to the dreck. I don’t remember much of “The Siege” but I remember Washington hollering so hard mid-movie his nose bled. And so it’s no wonder that he would be drawn to “Fences”, August Wilson’s seminal, Pulitzer winning 1983 play, in which a one-time Negro Leagues baseball player turned Pittsburgh garbage man in the 1950s lords over his surroundings with speech since it provides Washington the opportunity to verbally cut loose for damn near two hours. Not that his character is just talking to talk, though he kind of is, though we’ll get to that.

When the film finally does fade in, it finds Washington’s Troy Maxson riding the back of his garbage truck with is longtime co-worker and friend Bono (Stephen McKinley Henderson). As they depart the truck, the camera follows them across the street, down the sidewalk and into Troy’s backyard, where we will remain for a good chunk of the movie. Despite the fine set decoration and the very genuinely weary way in which Washington, who also directed, has Troy to plop into his preferred patio chair, this backyard setting comes to feel like a stage, as does the house when the action occasionally moves indoors. Though each character has something to do, usually, sipping gin or knitting or something else, it never feels exactly lived in, with the hustle and bustle of an actual home. There is one moment when Troy has an argument with his son Cory (Jovan Adepo) in the front yard and as the action prepares to unfold, you can sort of see all the actors execute their blocking to be in the proper position so as not to interfere with the camera’s view. It’s disconcerting.

That theatricality can, of course, be traced to the film’s aforementioned theatrical roots. It’s probably inevitable. Washington and Davis acted these parts on Broadway too and sometimes you can see how well he and Davis know these characters. In the smaller space of the movie screen, where intimacy is always paramount despite the screen’s size, smaller actions and spontaneity are typically the most important tools, and the larger actions and rehearsed tones of Washington and Davis mean that their byplay can feel…well, not unnatural, per se, but the two actors are so comfortable in the rhythms of these characters that you can occasionally hear dialogue effecting a certain tone rather than being lived out, like the lockstep way in which their lines can arrive right on top of one another.

Then again, for the all the complaints I’ve admittedly lobbed so far, Washington has a specific strategy that I still rather admired. He is mostly content not to try and overly cinema-ize “Fences”, instead putting focus squarely on the words. Because, what words! Big speeches, stinging asides, brutal confessions, funny, funny stuff, the latter never more so than Troy orating on the overratedness of Jackie Robinson which sounds exactly like something Troy would say. Indeed, the failure in baseball still gnaws at him, and be blames it all on white man’s America, which is completely fair, even if you can’t help but wonder if he’s inflating his own past athletic ability. After all, he incessantly trumpets the need for a man to take care of his own house, except it’s eventually made clear that his house was bought by the money Troy’s older brother Gabe (Mykelti Williamson) was paid for the crippling mental injury he sustained during WWII. In other words, Troy’s self-appointed sage status is something of a fraud, which is precisely what incites these sermons. “You’re not listening,” he declares when he feels like he’s not being heard except the only one who isn’t really listening is him.

Maybe the movie’s best shot is a simple one of Rose leaning against the brick wall, one eye hidden behind the brick, like she has been allowed to be fully present in the face of Troy’s positioning of himself as the man of the house. A mid-movie reveal, however, shifts the playing field as his weaknesses are thrust to the forefront and her strength in the face of such betrayal overrides everything else.

It’s not right to say that Viola Davis steals “Fences.” Because stealing a movie implies a person playing a smaller character sort of doing things on the periphery that become more memorable than what is being done by primary players at the epicenter. Wilson writes the character of Rose so that she assumes center stage and Davis matches that writing with a performance that quietly builds to eventually match the furor of Washington’s. And when it does, Washington does not cede the spotlight. No, Davis rises up, steps into that spotlight and wrests it for herself. She takes over “Fences”, just as Rose assumes the film’s foremost responsibility, a melding that may as well mute all of Washington’s hollering.

Five Actors To Play The Next Bourne Movie Governmental Antagonist

The Bourne movies are defined, obviously, by Jason Bourne, the brainwashed black ops karate master played by Matt Damon, except for "The Bourne Legacy" where he was played by Jeremy Renner. Yet these movies are equally defined by Jason Bourne's obligatory governmental antagonist, or occasionally part-sympathizer, played by an impressive list of heavyweights, like Chris Cooper, Brian Cox, Joan Allen, David Straithairn, and Edward Norton. The most recent entry to this governmental antagonist list, featured in the forthcoming "Jason Bourne", opening this week, will be played by the none other than the infamously irascible Tommy Lee Jones. And it got us to thinking. It got us to thinking about who will play the governmental antagonist in the next Bourne movie...say, "Bourne Again"? Listicle!!!

Five Actors To Play The Next Bourne Movie Governmental Antagonist 

Denzel Washington

As the CIA's vaguely defined "Senior Secret Consultant", Washington's Xavier Thirdkill emerges in flashbacks as the man who really trained Bourne, off site, in the Himalayas, Henri Ducard to Bourne's Bruce Wayne. And now that Bourne cannot be stopped, Thirdkill will have to leave the office for the field, a la Darth Vader at the end of the first "Star Wars", meaning we can pit "Bourne Again" as Denzel vs. Damon so that either 1.) Bourne can finally be killed since it's Denzel and Denzel can't lose or 2.) Denzel finally realizes he has found his own Denzel and happily passes the torch so he can retire from action movies.

Jane Kaczmarek

Kaczmarek co-stars as Gillian Gibbs, new chief analytics officer at Polydeuces Credit Union. However, due to several mix-ups up and down the chain of command, Gillian has no idea that Polydeuces is just a CIA front and that the "analytics" department is code for "black ops". Before her first week is over, the hefty file on Jason Bourne has been dropped on her desk since he's just re-appeared on the grid in Zurich and with nothing but guile and endlessly re-fillable travel coffee mug, Gibbs is forced to orchestrate a global pursuit of Jason Bourne without even being able to check her email because the CIA hasn't set up her password yet.

Michael Rapaport

"I've got three words for you, all right? Fuck Jason Bourne. All right? Fuck that guy. And don't lay his backstory guilt trip on me, all right? I don't want hear that sob story bullshit. He's fucked up? Big fucking deal. I got news for you, it's the CIA. We're all fucked up. They pulled me outta my 9th grade statistics class, stuck me in an accelerated intelligence agency program and I haven't been outta this fucking building since. I haven't seen more than forty five minutes of sunlight - TOPS - in forty fucking years, all right. Cry me a fucking river, Jason Bourne. I'm gonna put your whiny ass in a pine box, ya understand? We got six thousand Jason Bournes in this place, it can't be that fucking difficult. You know why it took them so long to kill Jaws? Because they sent one fucking boat! We're gonna send a hundred fucking boats, all right? A hundred aircraft carriers with a hundred nuclear warheads and shoot every single one of them straight up his fucking ass."

Frank Vincent

With the CIA fnally realizing that despite their immense resources they will never be able to stop Jason Bourne, a CIA officer is tasked with making secret contact with a member of the Las Vegas syndicate, Gordon the Gasbag (Kevin Corrigan), who puts them in touch with legendary mafia kingpin Frankie Poblano (Frank Vincent) about making their problem go away. "Get a couple guys and dig a hole in the desert. And when I'm ready, I'll tell you, 'Go get Jason Bourne.' And you make him disappear, you know what I mean?"

A Bunch Of Suits At A Table

Remember the scene in "Zero Dark Thirty" when Leon Panetta gathers a bunch of Important People at a conference table to see who thinks Osama bin Laden is really in that Abbottabad compound? And no one can agree with any exact certainty about whether or not Osama bin Laden is really in that house? And Leon Panetta asks "Do you guys ever agree on anything?"And so rather than "Bourne Again" this will be "The Bourne Compromise" as we follow Bourne making his way toward Langley, evading those sent to dispatch him, who primarily fail because the people back at the conference table can't ever agree on anything. The final scene finds Bourne bursting into the conference room. None of the suits can agree on who should pull their weapon.

Wistfully '95: Crimson Tide

Since I could finally both drive and get into R-rated movies in 1995, it doubled as the year in which I fell head over heels in love for the experience of Going To The Movies. And so, here in the future in 2015, we will periodically re-visit a handful of the offerings to which I first paid homage in various multiplex cathedrals of Des Moines, Iowa.

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It’s movie obsessive common knowledge that Tony Scott’s “True Romance” co-conspirator Quentin Tarantino did uncredited rewrites to Scott’s 1995 submarine epic “Crimson Tide”, named for a football team that then was not quite as overbearing as it is now. Mr. Tarantino’s re-writes pertained not to sonar and periscopes, because that's not Q.T.'s wheelhouse, but rather to additions of pop culture, marking it a tad more accessible and a bit more humorous. One of those additions appears near the start when a couple submarine officers earnestly discuss commanders in submarine movies. They mention “The Enemy Below”, which pit Robert Mitchum as an American sub captain locked in deep sea battle with Curd Jurgens as a German sub captain. They mention “Run Silent Run Deep” in which Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy are both Americans aboard the same sub who must find a way to work together. And while both these movies inform “Crimson Tide”, rest assured, Tony Scott, the maverick who gave birth to Maverick, goes his own way.

“A maximalist,” Manohla Dargis wrote in her New York Times obituary of Tony Scott, “(he) used a lot of everything in his movies: smoke, cuts, camera moves, color.” Truth. Mr. Scott never met a formal trick he wouldn’t subsequently pile like so much coleslaw on top of a cinematic sandwich that already had two pounds of meat and fries. “Busy” never really captured his aesthetic; his camera was a day trader high on whatever you’d like and everything else. Still, what often got lost amidst his impressive deployments of frenzied style were the epic confrontations between characters. Tony Scott loved confrontations. We remember “Top Gun” for its flash and dash and Ray Bans, of course, but we remember it just as fondly for Maverick vs. Ice and Maverick vs. Jester and Maverick vs. Viper and Maverick vs. Himself. We remember Christopher Walken squaring off with Dennis Hopper in an incredible verbal tete a tete. Then there’s “Crimson Tide.”

In theory, “Crimson Tide” is a showdown between the United States and a Russian ultra-nationalist, between opposing submarines lurking in the depths of the sea. Of course, it’s not really about any of those Cliff Notes. What it’s really about is the two primary officers aboard the U.S. Naval nuclear sub, the USS Alabama (“Go ‘bama! Roll tide!”), Captain Frank Ramsey and his brand new handpicked Executive Officer Ron Hunter. It’s about slowly escalating confrontation between these two men born of an order rendered incomplete on account of a technical glitch that causes mutinies and reams and reams of splendid shouting matches. More than that, though, it’s about a confrontation between two actors, Gene Hackman raising hell as Ramsey and Denzel Washington maintaining impassioned fastidiousness as Hunter.

To be sure, Scott gussies up his films with plenty of bells and whistles, not to mention lathering it up with a prototypical booming Hans Zimmer score. There are depth charges and catastrophic leaks and missiles fired and all sorts of other traditional action-packed entrees served. Yet it never comes across as more than Simpson/Bruckheimer contracted scaffolding to provide a place where two all-world thespians can unleash verbal torrents, both loudly or quietly. It’s a friendly, hella good reminder that so often the only energy source a film requires to power it to ascendant heights is a couple acting titans. And this is why the film ends not with more missiles fired and not with WWIII, but with Hackman and Washington seated across from one another discussing Lipizzan Stallions.

It also ends with Ramsey recommending to a Naval Tribunal that Hunter be given command of his own boat, and it’s not difficult to read this conclusion as Hackman passing the baton of his own role on to his co-star. “When threatened, Hackman retreats to his glasses and clipboard,” Steven Hyden wrote in his January retrospective of the actor, “the accoutrements of command. And how does Denzel respond? I DO NOT RECOGNIZE YOUR AUTHORITY. Like that, Denzel Washington becomes Gene Hackman right before your eyes. And Denzel held on to that role in subsequent movies. Flash forward 20 years and it’s Denzel playing daddy to Mark Wahlberg in 2 Guns.”

Eh, yes and no. I'd agree with the first part, not the second. Yes, Washington has often assumed the Ramsey-ish role of charismatic elder, dealing with or imparting wisdom to or screaming at a co-star, but Wahlberg vs. Washington is assuredly not Washington vs. Hackman. Nor was Ethan Hawke in “Training Day”, a part working away from Washington’s King Kong postulating and a performance that didn't win even if its character did. Angelia Jolie took a turn as Washington's protégé in “The Bone Collector” and though she won an Academy Award a year later this was still before Angie had cracked the Jolie Movie Star Code. Ryan Reynolds in “Safe House” is like watching a Biloxi Shucker flail away against a Major League pitcher.

“For more than 30 years,” Hyden wrote, “people bought movie tickets to watch Hackman take charge.” In “Crimson Tide”, Hackman took charge and Washington had the cojones to wrestle that charge away. And now, twenty years later, Washington continues roaming Hollywood evermore intent to take overblown thrillers like “The Equalizer” in an increasingly woebegone effort to find someone willing and able to wrest charge away from him. I fear in twenty years, he'll still be searching.

Top 5 Actor vs. Actor Showdowns

I am a fervent adorer of "Ocean's Twelve", as we know, but rather than launch into yet another passionate argument for the film's unappreciated brilliance, I'd simply like to re-iterate that its single flaw is this: a scene was not included that featured George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Julia Roberts sitting in a room together and LITERALLY reading from a phonebook, trying to one-up each other. A Hollywood Actor Royal Rumble.

Last week I was listening to a podcast with Grantland founder Bill Simmons and the site's resident film critic, Pulitzer Prize winner Wesley Morris. Morris mentioned how Meryl Streep has openly admitted to competing with actresses in films. This led to a later discussion on how the infamous scene between Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro in the diner in "Heat" was essentially like a pickup basketball game, one on one, Jordan vs. Bird, which led to pitching an idea of re-visiting noted movie moments to ask "Who Won The Scene?" And this, as it must, got me to thinking.

Not necessarily about scenes and wondering who won them, but actorly competition, a full night of Hollywood's best squaring off in the ring, a stellar undercard and the monumental main event, live from Madison Square Garden.

Top 5 Actor vs. Actor Showdowns

Al Pacino vs. Denzel Washington

You want to get the undercard to a heavyweight title fight off to a fluffy start, and what better way than these two Oscar-winning titans hollering at each other for five rounds? But maybe it wouldn't just be hollering? Maybe the heat of battle would allow Al to re-locate his long-gone nuance and Denzel to internalize and, in turn, show us his soul. Or maybe not and they'd just holler, and five rounds of Pacino & Denzel hollering would be pretty cool. 

Amy Adams vs. Rachel Weisz 

I dare say it wouldn't have the pre-match buzz of our other bouts, but, trust me, this would bring the heat. Two chameleons, one American and one Brit, staring each other down and throwing elegant haymakers, gracefully swerving from sassy to charming to sexy to spinster to hippie to indie to classical to bawdy and back again. 

Christian Bale vs. Michael Shannon 

The intensity. Sweet Jesus, man, the INTENSITY!!!!!! They wouldn't touch (figurative) gloves, they would squint and spit and chew scenery. It would be exhausting in the best way possible. 

Cate Blanchett vs. Kate Winslet

You're toast, Blanchett. 

Daniel Day-Lewis vs. Meryl Streep

The main event. 15 rounds. No referee because he/she would just distract. A fury of tics and accents and costume changes and bone marrow embodiments. I'd think Streep might be the favorite, if only because Day-Lewis seems to require so much prep work and getting-into-character time. Unless he spent the months leading up to the bout prepping and getting-into-character. Still, no one has really ever counterpunched Day-Lewis, and Streep could counterpunch. But then, Streep has never had anyone get back up off the ropes. And Day-Lewis would get back up off the ropes. Let's call it even 'til we see it.