Some Drivel On...Production Design

Recently The Ringer published an Oral History of Mike Judge’s 1999 white collar cult classic “Office Space.” The entire piece is superb, with all sorts of revelatory information, big and small, the anecdote about a Michael Bolton softball video improv that failed to make the final cut actually making me laugh out loud. But what I really enjoyed was the deep dive into production design. You might not think about production design when it comes to a movie like “Office Space”, and Sanford Panitch – then 20th Century Fox VP – might say that Judge “didn’t really believe in production design.” But that sounds like something a VP would say. Indeed, the evidence indicates Judge cared a lot about production design, with leading man Ron Livingston explaining how initially the principal office set looked “kind of the way an office would look in ‘When Harry Met Sally’” and that Judge went about discarding extraneous décor to render a “soulless, impersonal environment.” My favorite detail in the piece, though, was learning the film’s two T.G.I. Friday’s inspired chain restaurants – Chotchkie’s and Flingers – were actually filmed in the same restaurant with minimal variation, eliciting that sensation of being stamped out from a cookie-cutter, identical to its overall presentation of suburbia.

That cookie-cutter (non) sensation often seems contrary to production design, or at least how the Academy sees production design. The year “Office Space” was released the Oscar winner for Best Production Design was “Sleepy Hollow.” True, the work of Rick Heinrichs was excellent on its own terms, creating an entire village on a soundstage and wringing maximum effect from gloomy architecture. But it, in the vein of all the other nominees that year, was a period piece, a chance to look through a cinematic kaleidoscope, or something, rather than holding up a mirror, which is how Daniel London deemed the production design of “Office Space.”

I like looking through a cinematic kaleidoscope, or something. Indeed, I have long cited my favorite house in a movie as the Victorian marvel of Vincente Minnelli’s “Meet Me in St. Louis” (1944), a triumph of production design and art decoration, its interior as carefully curated as Alfonso Cuarón’s ode to his childhood home in “Roma.” When I drifted off to “Meet Me in St. Louis” while still awake again recently on Turner Classic Movies to emotionally combat a wicked mid-December illness, my eyes frequently wandered away from the actors to revel over the carpets, the curtains, the drapes, the lampshades, the light fixtures, the knick-knacks, and everything in-between. The house wouldn’t be the house without everything that goes into it, and it wouldn’t be the house without the era’s Technicolor, providing a crucial fanciful kick, a Zillow ad seen through the prism of a cotton candy machine.

“The Aviator”, which won the Oscar for Best Production Design in 2004, was similar to “Meet Me in St. Louis”, not so cotton candied, perhaps, but still with an optic presentation, to quote Q-Tip, that sizzled your retina. I mean, getting to recreat the Cocoanut Grove is any production designer’s dream! It won the Oscar for Best Production Design in 2004 with Dante Ferretti beating out the aforementioned Rick Heinrichs for “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events”, as well as “Finding Neverland”, “The Phantom of the Opera”, and “A Very Long Engagement”, all period pieces or fantasies. Not nominated that year was Henry Bumstead for “Million Dollar Baby.” He had won twice previously, for “The Sting” and “To Kill A Mockingbird.” Do I need to say they were both period pieces?

“Million Dollar Baby” was more akin to “Office Space”, not just in the sweaty, thrifty aesthetic of The Hit Pit, where so much of the action takes place, but everywhere, including the home of Frankie Dunn, which is the antithesis of the “Meet Me in St. Louis” house, holding up a mirror.

That front door, glimpsed over Frankie’s shoulder is like holding up a mirror. I swear half the homes in my hometown had front doors just like it.

That doormat? Man, that doormat looks like Bumstead picked it up from Lowe’s on the way to the set that morning.

This closet? The sparse set decor of a man who basically wears the same three outfits over and over and over.

And finally, Frankie’s bedroom. A door that looks worn away from years of use and a bedspread that is purely functional, its color, or lack thereof, mixing with the wall and closet door to evince something far south of vibrant and much more muddied, an interior design of griminess, like Frankie himself, as much an expression of the character’s soul as Eastwood’s weary grimace.

Some Drivel On...Million Dollar Baby

I have never been satisfied with anything I have written about "Million Dollar Baby." On the 12th anniversary of the greatest moviegoing experience of my life, I tried again.

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When we meet Maggie Fitzgerald, aspirant welterweight women’s champion of the world, we do not see her, not exactly, because we see what she sees, a point-of-view shot rushing forward toward a boxing arena. Then the camera flips and Maggie, shrouded in shadows, steps out of those shadows in a silent whoosh, the kind that flutters your heart before you know what hit it, from the dark into the light.

That’s where much of “Million Dollar Baby” takes place – in the spaces between dark and light. You see it in the immediate aftermath of this introductory shot, as Maggie walks with boxing trainer Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood), cheerily begging for him to train her, in a hallway barely illuminated by creaky overhead lights, marching into and back out of shadows.

You can't have light without darkness, of course, as the saying goes, a pedantic one perhaps, but that is given extraordinary meaning in "Million Dollar Baby", where its characters spend many daylight hours in the sweaty comfort of the Hit Pit gym that Frankie owns, hitting speed bags and trading barbs, but where the real emotional gristle can only be found in the dark, whether late night hours in the gym after everyone has gone or in a hospital room late in the movie where even Maggie doesn't give in to the dark by counterpunching fate. "Million Dollar Baby" is a boxing movie, yes, but it is also a character-centric movie, underlined by its myriad nighttime shots where only characters seem to fill the frame.

These characters are familiar. Maggie is a hopeful pugilist who lost her father, the only person who really ever loved her, long ago. Frankie just drove away a boxer who was his best shot for a title and drove away his daughter long ago. It only makes narrative sense that they unite, professionally and personally, becoming protege and mentor, surrogate daughter and surrogate father. And then there is Scrap Dupris (Morgan Freeman), ostensibly the gym's manager but really the story's scribe, on hand to observe the proceedings and record them for posterity, revealed in the closing shot where he is writing a letter to Frankie's daughter, after Frankie has disappeared into the ether, who has presumably sought her father out. That reveal adds depth to re-watches of "Million Dollar Baby" and cancels out objections of plausibility.

"Million Dollar Baby" is viewed through the eyes of Scrap who is viewing the story through the prism of time, rendering it as something like a fable, evoked in the boxer who Maggie inevitably meets for the championship of the world. That opponent is nicknamed The Blue Bear, which sounds like something out of an ancient gaelic myth, and is why The Blue Bear's highly (obviously) illegal methods might not pass muster in terms of traditional plot holes but are excused in this re-telling. Scrap is heightening for effect, yet also excusing elements that don't concern his story, whether it is what becomes of The Blue Bear or why the fawning public that is occasionally hinted at as Maggie achieves roaring success is never really glimpsed. Scrap limits his tale to the main players, which he weaves with a gravelly poetry.

This intimacy is evoked in Eastwood's famously frugal direction. The training montage is a staple of these sorts of films, but when it arrives here, as it must, after Maggie has convinced Frankie to take her on as a pupil, its presentation is not only low-key rather than rah rah, underlined by Eastwood’s minimal, almost mournful, score, but presented not as the hero's assemblage of her superpowers but as the forming of a bond. This bond is further evinced in dialogue exchangers where the two become like boxers sparring outside the ring, dancing around one another.

The best scenes in the movie often involve that byplay, like the ways in which Maggie sunnily tests Frankie's exasperated patience, transforming that patented Eastwood squint into a comic reaction rather than an impending threat. In an early scene, Maggie shows up at the Hit Pit, trying, once again, to earn Frankie's help, repeatedly calling him "Boss", which he can't stand.

"If I stop calling you 'boss' will you train me?"
"No."
"Then I may as well keep calling you it."

That last line is perfect. It's a choppy sentence, concluding in an ill-placed "it", which is why it sounds just right, like something Maggie Fitzgerald of the Missouri Ozarks would say, and which Swank has Maggie say so incredulously. Frankie and Scrap's numerous exchanges, meanwhile, were not included in the original stories by F.X. Toole because in those original stories the characters' respective narratives were split up. So, screenwriter Paul Haggis invented their dialogue, transforming them into longtime friends whose friendliness often reveals itself through comic antagonizing, underlined by the deadpan reactions of the two old acting pros. After one verbal round, Frankie tells Scrap to "get the hell out of my office", which Scrap does, but watch Freeman in this moment and how he has his character give a little "Well, what do you want me to do?" shrug that then gives way to humored smile.

Often the back and forths between Frankie and Scrap relate directly to the gym's finances, whether it is members paying their dues or splurging for brand name bleach. Indeed, there is a lot of talk of money in "Million Dollar Baby", not in a get rich away but an economically anxious way, with Frankie chastising Scrap for buying brand name bleach and imploring Maggie to set aside savings. Indeed, while Haggis might overdo Maggie's "trash" roots, there are moments when her scrounging for every penny truly hits home, like the shot at her dinner table where she spills out an entire jar of change onto her table and rifles through it. This shot is lit just by a dingy lamp, which makes her look like some desperate prospector from a bygone era.

At first glance, Swank's character is not filled with grand dimension because what she is what she's going after. The script tries to fill that out with her family, but Haggis's gravest writing misstep is making Maggie's family so gruesomely monstrous that they veer into caricature, one of the details I overlooked on my first experience with the movie because I was so far gone into it but that plainly sticks out on re-watches. But what also sticks out is the way Swank fills out Maggie with a humility that is at odds with her fearsome presence in the ring.

Consider the moment early in the film, before Frankie agrees to tutor her and when he is still overseeing Big Willie, the future champ. Maggie stands and watches Frankie and Big Willie work; Frankie catches her watching them; Maggie lowers her head, embarrassed,

Swank plays Maggie as fiercely earnest and earnestly fierce, no in-between, not so much repressing the gruesome past of her family, or even having gotten past, but simply, to quote Lloyd Dobler, deciding to be in a good mood. She does not allow that demeanor to drain away in the final act, where a horrific injury leaves her paralyzed, not even in the eventual deathbed scenes, which would have been such an easy choice, but to actually maintain the fierce earnestness she's had all along. The decision to take her own life, and to ask Frankie to do it, while inevitably politicized, is strictly personal.

Yet because in her paralysis she unable to end her life on her own, she asks for Frankie's help, making the decision personal for him too, leaving him in a moral bind, as the narrative gives itself almost entirely over to him. If Maggie has brought him into the light, ending her life will send him re-plunging into darkness, which is where the movie ends, as Eastwood's closing shot mimics an earlier shot set at a roadside diner, only this time with the windows fogged, as if what we are seeing is not reality but a hazy dream, a dream in which he be left to wander for an eternity.

Pause for the Cause

As I do each and every year on this day, I would like to take a moment to give thanks and pay homage to the anniversary of the single greatest moviegoing experience of my life. You know the film.

Pause for the Cause

As I do each and every year on this day, I would like to take a moment and give thanks and pay homage to the anniversary of the single greatest moviegoing experience of my life. You know the film.

Pause for the Cause

As I do each and every year on this day, I would like to take a moment to give thanks and pay homage to the anniversary of the single greatest moviegoing experience of my life. You know the film.

Top 5 Movie Locations I Wish I Could Visit

Recently it was unveiled that photographer Rä di Martino had, by chance, wound up searching for and tracking down the long-ago sets used by George Lucas for the Tatooine scenes of his legendary original "Star Wars" film. Well, this got me to thinking.

It got me to thinking about how the righteous hosts of Filmspotting, Adam Kempenar and Josh Larson, the Rob Gordons of Top 5 Movie Lists, a couple months back unveiled the Top 5 Movie Locations They Wished They Could Visit.

Granted, I am no amateur when it comes to actually visiting movie locations. Everyone knows I took a pilgrimage to North Carolina to pay respect to the filming locations for "Last of the Mohicans" and on the way there I stopped to pay respect to Elizabethtown (because of "Elizabethtown") and when I visited my sister in Maine I made sure we took a detour to Bethel and Andover to pay respect to the filming locations for "The Myth of Fingerprints" and when my sister lived in Oregon I made sure we spent a day in Eugene to pay respect to the filming locations of "Without Limits."

Of course, all those are real locations that actually exist and the point of Filmspotting's list was to name make-believe places that solely exist within the movie itself that you wish you could go visit. Ah! Well, that's different!

Top 5 Movie Locations I Wish I Could Visit

5. Rick’s Café Americain, "Casablanca." Tonight they’ll be at Rick’s. Everybody goes to Rick’s. Except for me. I wanna go to Rick’s too! I do, I do, I do!!!

4. Speedboat, Gulf of Mexico, “Miami Vice.” Remember in Michael Mann's exorbitantly underrated update on the 80's TV show when Colin Farrell & Gong Li jet off to Cuba for mojitos and salsa (dancing) via speedboat? Sure, you do. I admit this location is a little difficult to pin down. I also admit this location is very much real but... Well, I could rent a speedboat. Sure. And I could pilot that speedboat from Miami to Havana, Cuba with a fetching lady to imbibe mojitos and dance salsa. But, of course, I couldn’t really do any of this. I would never make it to Havana for the mojitos because the Cubans would lock me up. If by some miracle I did make it to Havana I could never possibly dance the salsa (could we instead contort very enthusiastically but very, very badly to Kylie Minogue?). Of course, I would never get anywhere near Havana because if I tried to pilot a speedboat it would totally capsize in about 27 seconds, never mind the fact that I could never pull off Colin Farrell’s suit or convince a fetching lady to join me in the first place. And all that is why if I could be magically transported to movie location with the movie gods covering my every move I would be transported to a speedboat with a Malin Akerman-esque lady jetting off to Havana for mojitos and a salsa.

3. The Hit Pit, “Million Dollar Baby.” Never mind that Frankie Dunn would probably take one look at me, grimace and banish me to the corner where Danger is shadow boxing to pitiful effect, I would like so much just to spend a day – just an afternoon even – at his hole-in-the-wall gym. I would sit back, breathe in that disgusting aroma of sweat, gym socks, fresh blood and cheap bleach, listen to the sounds of speed bags and skipping rope. Besides, visiting Maggie Fitzgerald’s home gym would be for me like a baseball aficionado getting to set foot in the home locker room of old Yankee Stadium.

2. New York City, “The Royal Tenenbaums.” As much as Woody Allen’s “Manhattan” romanticizes that city all out of proportion, it is still showing us the real Manhattan – as in, places that actually exist. Wes Anderson’s “Royal Tenenbaums”, on the other hand, while technically being set in Manhattan envisions it is as a mythical Manhattan, a place that only exists in our imaginations. It is set on streets and at places that while being located in New York do not actually exist – such as The Public Archives and the Lindbergh Palace Hotel. This is what sets it apart. I think my favorite place to visit in NYC every time I go is The Algonquin Hotel partially because just being inside it feels like New York in the 30’s and 40’s. And really, that’s the New York I want to visit – the New York of the 30’s and 40’s. And the New York of “The Royal Tenenbaums” feels like the New York of the 30’s and 40’s but still with the amenities required by the modern unmanly man.

1. Nelson, Washington, “Roxanne.” So in the wake of the esteemed Roger Ebert’s passing I was, of course, perusing various Ebert-related bits out there on the world wide interwebs and stumbled across a Youtube video of he and the late Gene Siskel discussing “Roxanne”, one of my all-time favorites, on an episode of At the Movies. (Both of them loved the movie so much Ebert actually concluded their review by saying “We can’t even have an argument.” Awesome.) And a line of Siskel’s struck me like a bolt of Midwest lightning in May. He termed Steve Martin’s lead performance as being akin to “effervescent ginger ale.” Well, it is! It is effervescent ginger ale! But the whole movie is effervescent ginger ale and its setting – the city of Nelson, Washington – is effervescent ginger ale! Not just the scenery, mind you, which is striking or the delightfully slanted streets of a ski-town but the……the………aura. The way Martin declares “Irony? Oh, we don’t get that here” just seems to permeate every sidewalk and home and main street shop. But at the same time it’s not staid, plain-jane Eisenhower America, it’s something sweeter and truer, a place where no one seems to put on airs or masquerade as something they’re not. It comes across so tranquil, so refreshing, so much like……effervescent ginger ale.

Dammit, I want to go there.

What Day Is It Again?

"Seems there are Irish people everywhere, or people who want to be." - Scrap Dupris

Pause for the Cause

As I do each and every year on this day, I would like to take a moment and give thanks and pay homage to the anniversary of the single greatest moviegoing experience of my life. You know the film.