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Though this blog’s beloved “Roxanne” was released in the 80s, a very, shall we say, specific looking, feeling, sounding decade, it simultaneously cultivated a feeling of timelessness. This stemmed from its source material, Edmond Rostand’s everlasting 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac, and which was emphasized in both Steve Martin’s often courtly, if relentlessly comical, air and in the soundtrack, employing Strauss’s Blue Danube Waltz and a Mozart string quartet. Still, if there was a decade that was difficult to entirely excise from a film, even a nominally ageless one, it was the 1980s. And so, the Me Decade emerges in “Roxanne” anyway, in the fashion, like Daryl Hannah’s striking jean jacket, and the music, which is not all familiar classical arrangements. The “Roxanne” score is a vintage slice of 80s synthesizer and soft rock saxophone, yes, but I’m thinking just as much about another song, one that appears in the background during a scene at the small Washington ski town watering hole.
It is not a song that dominates the scene like Teena Marie’s “Lead Me On” when Maverick and Goose enter the “target rich environment” in “Top Gun” because “Roxanne” is not that kind of movie. But the song is noticeable, underlining Roxanne’s would-be romance with Rick Rossovich’s hunky but hapless firefighter, and my ears always perked up when I heard it. It was not, alas, included on the official soundtrack, near as I can tell, though IMDb’s soundtrack credits helpfully list it. Oh. Right. The song. It’s called “Can This Be Love?”, written by Janet Minto, Pamela Barlow, Rick Boston, and some dude named –(assumes Dave Barry voice) I’m not making this up – Jeff “Skunk” Baxter. I dunno. A Jeff “Skunk” Baxter track seems like it would be more Skynyrd-y to me but appearances deceive. And anyway, it was performed by Minto and Barlow, who, I learned through the helpful Reverb Nation, were a songwriting duo in the 80s who, as “Roxanne” suggests, dreamt up songs for TV and movies. (Minto was also once married to some guy whose name I forget.) And Reverb Nation, as you can see below, helpfully provides the cut that the official soundtrack does not, one a little more buoyant in its club-readiness than Teena Marie’s boldly swaggering cut.
I have nothing else to say. Why would I? This Ray of Light is purely about the song, which flashes us back to, well, who are we kidding here, not a better time, per se, but that one its brief, transfixing spell of pure 80s provides resplendent temporary amnesia. Feel the glow! Let it show!
Showing posts with label Roxanne. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Roxanne. Show all posts
Thursday, September 17, 2020
Wednesday, November 27, 2019
This One Scene in Roxanne
If Steve Martin is the unquestionable star of the 1987 Cyrano de Bergerac homage “Roxanne”, having written the screenplay himself, making it feel as much like A Steve Martin Film as A Fred Schepisi Film, he nevertheless left plenty of room for Schepisi to stage gags while simultaneously surrounding himself with an impressive stable of supporting characters. Not just the major ones, like Shelley Duvall’s diner owner cum town counselor or Rick Rossovich’s firefighting dufus but the minor ones too. “Roxanne”, after all, is a movie about the town where it is set, a Washington state version of British Columbia’s Nelson, which Schepisi ensured was part of the film’s full fabric, and the town’s fire department, which has been populated with excellent character actors. Even the ones who don’t really get lines seem to have been chosen specifically for their eccentric faces. Michael J. Pollard, meanwhile, has good lines and an eccentric face.
Half-a-century on Pollard was probably still best known for his role as C.W., the getaway driver in “Bonnie and Clyde”, perhaps because that 1967 film remains a landmark of the New Hollywood movement. (In retrospect, I really wish Pollard had just sort of been hanging out over in the wings on the stage at the Dolby Theatre for no reason ever explained as Warren & Faye read the wrong Best Picture winner.) But he was a character actor extraordinaire and if you saw him in anything else, you probably never forgot him, no matter how small the role, like Bill Murray’s “Scrooged” or even “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming” where he didn’t get an official credit. His appearance in the ultra-weird “Arizona Dream” was highly appropriate; he was like the patron saint of character actors, bestowing his blessing on Johnny Depp, Lili Taylor, and Vincent Gallo.
If you saw “Roxanne”, you probably didn’t forget him. The esteemed Roger Ebert didn’t, noting in his original review how “all the corners of this movie have been filled with small, funny moments” and then singling out Pollard, before even mentioning Duvall or Fred Willard has the town mayor, simply deeming Pollard as “a weird little fireman.” It might not sound like much but there isn’t much else to say. Pollard’s Andy is sort of weird and little, just shuffling into his first speaking scene from off to the side, emitting the distinct sensation of someone who watches from afar but is mostly too timid to ever speak up.
But if Martin and Schepisi could have just left him as weird and little, they do an incredible thing much later in the movie in the briefest but bestest of scenes. It’s a moment in which Andy tells Martin’s fire chief, C.D., that he received a call from the eponymous rocket scientist. That’s it; that’s the entire point of the scene. But rather than having Andy just relay the information, the scene is set up as a simultaneous throwaway gag recounted in a single take shown in long shot. One fireman, conspicuously wearing boxing gloves, is sprawled out on the floor while another fireman hovers over him, trying to revive him. Andy is standing to the right, leaning against the wall, also wearing boxing gloves, but in a stance that’s less weird and little than Joe Cool. C.D. enters, looking at the fallen fireman quizzically but without comment, receiving the news of the phone call from Andy, and then departing. As he does, in a moment as shocking as it is comical, Andy points at the fallen fireman with his glove and remarks “He owes me fifty bucks”, his timidity apparently masking a vicious right hook, like you just discovered your mild-mannered neighbor across the street fought Hagler at Caesars Palace.
For one comical moment, Michael J. Pollard got to be heavyweight champion of the world. He died last week at the age of 80.
Half-a-century on Pollard was probably still best known for his role as C.W., the getaway driver in “Bonnie and Clyde”, perhaps because that 1967 film remains a landmark of the New Hollywood movement. (In retrospect, I really wish Pollard had just sort of been hanging out over in the wings on the stage at the Dolby Theatre for no reason ever explained as Warren & Faye read the wrong Best Picture winner.) But he was a character actor extraordinaire and if you saw him in anything else, you probably never forgot him, no matter how small the role, like Bill Murray’s “Scrooged” or even “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming” where he didn’t get an official credit. His appearance in the ultra-weird “Arizona Dream” was highly appropriate; he was like the patron saint of character actors, bestowing his blessing on Johnny Depp, Lili Taylor, and Vincent Gallo.
If you saw “Roxanne”, you probably didn’t forget him. The esteemed Roger Ebert didn’t, noting in his original review how “all the corners of this movie have been filled with small, funny moments” and then singling out Pollard, before even mentioning Duvall or Fred Willard has the town mayor, simply deeming Pollard as “a weird little fireman.” It might not sound like much but there isn’t much else to say. Pollard’s Andy is sort of weird and little, just shuffling into his first speaking scene from off to the side, emitting the distinct sensation of someone who watches from afar but is mostly too timid to ever speak up.
But if Martin and Schepisi could have just left him as weird and little, they do an incredible thing much later in the movie in the briefest but bestest of scenes. It’s a moment in which Andy tells Martin’s fire chief, C.D., that he received a call from the eponymous rocket scientist. That’s it; that’s the entire point of the scene. But rather than having Andy just relay the information, the scene is set up as a simultaneous throwaway gag recounted in a single take shown in long shot. One fireman, conspicuously wearing boxing gloves, is sprawled out on the floor while another fireman hovers over him, trying to revive him. Andy is standing to the right, leaning against the wall, also wearing boxing gloves, but in a stance that’s less weird and little than Joe Cool. C.D. enters, looking at the fallen fireman quizzically but without comment, receiving the news of the phone call from Andy, and then departing. As he does, in a moment as shocking as it is comical, Andy points at the fallen fireman with his glove and remarks “He owes me fifty bucks”, his timidity apparently masking a vicious right hook, like you just discovered your mild-mannered neighbor across the street fought Hagler at Caesars Palace.
For one comical moment, Michael J. Pollard got to be heavyweight champion of the world. He died last week at the age of 80.
Sunday, March 02, 2014
Steve Martin and The Holy Trinity Of Comic Screenplays
When told he had been named recipient of an Honorary Oscar, Steve Martin observed that he had long since given up hope for an Academy Award seeing has how comedians do not win them, demonstrating how in any given situation the comedian is angling for the joke. An Honorary Oscar in Martin’s case, however, for a lifetime body of work as opposed to a statue for a singular performance seems apropos because it spotlights the quiet evolution of his career. At the same time, I find it more personally satisfying, because while best known as a performer before the camera, I have always valued him most as a writer, particularly for an astonishing trio screenplays spanning an eleven year period.
Steve Martin was born a poor black child. Wait, that’s not right. In fact, it’s a little obvious, and obviousness is not one of the hallmarks of Steve Martin’s career. His contribution to the movies may be massive, but he is also a novelist and a playwrite, an accomplished banjoist, an avid collector of art, and a first-time father at the unobvious age of 67. Even as a comedian he refused the “shamanistic high life of seventies comedy” because, as Rick Anderson wrote in New York Magazine, “he was relentlessly square.” And yet for being a relentless square, for wearing a suit onstage, for kinda, sorta apprenticing at Disney, he was edgy and inventive. He didn’t seek to perform comedy so much as perform – to quote his memoir “Born Standing Up” – “a parody of comedy.” His act was almost a critique of the comic persona as it was then known. To wit, it was his college courses in psychology, at both Long Beach State and UCLA, where he began formulating the ideas for his own act, analyzing the deeper meaning of the punchline rather than writing punchlines.
Martin was uninterested in automatic applause, a “distance” that Rick Anderson refers to, “an odd performative gap between himself and whatever he happens to be doing.” This is glimpsed not only in his stage comedy but in his earliest films, most of which I like, though perhaps do not outright love, such as the seminal “Jerk” and the Carl Reiner-helmed “The Man With Two Brains.” In these productions you can feel that distance throughout. The old Roger Ebert rule of comedy stipulates that a funny hat by itself is not funny, and that instead a man must not know he’s wearing a funny hat. In these films Martin does not know he’s wearing a funny hat exactly, but you can sense him having picked out the proper funny hat just before filming.
C.D. Bales in “Roxanne” doesn’t know his nose is funny. Well, he knows his nose is funny to others, it's just not funny to him. Written by Martin and based off the exalted Edmond Rostand play “Cyrano de Bergerac”, the 1987 Fred Schiepsi comedy, timeless even if the soundtrack and fashion are dated (aside from Daryl Hannah’s sleeveless jean jacket, which looks as chic now as it did then), “Roxanne” marked the first time Martin truly explored that distance he had cultivated between himself and his audience. The character knows his overlong schnoz automatically opens a social chasm between him and whomever else, and so he seeks to compensate.
This is most famously rendered in the sequence where he bets the name-calling jerk at the bar he can conjure up twenty better insults than “big nose”, and proceeds to do so. Each one is funny, absolutely, but the scene’s subtext makes clear the way he uses humor as a shield. That, and the way he uses performance, speaking for and writing letters for Rick Rossovich’s knucklehead Christian-stand-in who can barely converse with Roxanne without hyperventilating, to avoid expressing his true feelings.
Martin's script is ultimately intelligent enough to not only make Roxanne herself intelligent (she has her own life, so much so that she briefly exits the film to go live it) and to make his romantic rival an identifiable panicky goofball rather than a mean-spirited nemesis but to allow C.D. the opportunity to learn his self-worth rather than the heaven-sent astrophysicist teaching it to him. It also, I think, betrays Martin's inner-whimsy, forgoing the tragedy of Rostand's source material by allowing its characters to see the good in others and in themselves.
Although Martin had movies in between, his next screenplay was not until 1991, “L.A. Story”, and at first glance it might appear to harken back to his earlier sketch comedy ways. Martin said he worked on the screenplay for seven years and this is easy to sense – marvelous scenes are at a premium and the teeniest of gags are sprinkled throughout, as if written on a cocktail napkin at the last second. For such an array of side-splitting gags, however, the film has a noticeable and fascinating mystical component.
In the film, Martin plays Harris K. Telemacher, a weatherman in Los Angeles, an occupation which provides ammunition for all manner of jokes but also slyly suggests the ultimate existential crisis. His eventual aide-de-camp is quintessentially Angeleno - that is, a freeway sign, which magically pulls him over one night and presents life advice via glowing block lettering. This is his Call To Adventure, which he initially refuses, before finally accepting and, thus, Crossing the Threshold into a place that, frankly, is as much about New Age spiritualism (Enya peppers the soundtrack) as it is stellar comedy bits.
The script centers around Harris falling for a kooky Brit, Sara (Victoria Tennant, Martin's then-wife), but overall it's not a Love Story. It's an "L.A. Story", and ultimately the film plays like its creative force (though Mick Jackson was the director) is having a dialogue with both the city, resisting it and admiring it, and a higher power, the performer relinquishing his place center stage and letting the divine take him where it will.
That mysticism becomes even more interesting when considering "Bowfinger", a film which followed "L.A. Story" eight years later. There Martin is quite consciously taking shots at Scientology in the form of Mindhead, a vaguely defined new age religion to which fictional movie star Kit Ramsey adheres (played by Eddie Murphy, a man who has become rather unlikable but who becomes likable in dual roles through the conduit of Martin's writing). In fact, Martin is taking potshots at Hollywood as a whole, playing a wannabe movie director named Bobby K. Bowfinger. Here the performative gap is between the Industry and Bowfinger, him standing outside its gold-encrusted guarded walls and trying to claw his way inside. He eventually does, making a guerrilla big-budget movie with a low-budget and with Kit Ramsey as star even though Kit Ramsey doesn't know he's in it.
It's a satire, and a brilliant one, loaded with massive gags - the highway "stunt" sequence which has made me laugh, hard, every single time I have watched it - and small gags - at the end Bowfinger is hired to direct a film in Taiwan "starring Kit Ramsey's brother", a witty nod to it all being about who you know as opposed to who you are. But whereas early period Martin likely would have made the mockery the overriding point, "Bowfinger" quietly opens up into something so much more soulful without shunting the humor, "debt, desperation and dreams" as the late great Roger Ebert put it.
When a filmmaker or an actor or a writer is really humming during a particular era, the works created will not merely stand on their own as genuine achievements but actually converse with one another, illustrating the core attitude of their creator and saying something far-reaching. This trinity of scripts, which I in my addled cinematic state of mind believe to be holy, eternally proved Steve Martin as more than a mere parodist and revealed his comic earnestness. It was when he stopped holding himself at a remove and instead gave himself over to us. It was when, to quote "L.A. Story", he let his mind go and allowed his body to follow.
Life is absurd and cruel, and Martin observes those facts with sharp wit, and it's complicated and infuriating, and he never denies this, but in spite of its imperfections, it is something to savor. Early in his career, "Bowfinger's" film-within-a-film, "Chubby Rain", would have been pure irony. But by 1999, by the completion of those three screenplays and the wraps of their filming, he had forged new ground. "Chubby Rain" may have been awful but it was created with good intentions, and he let those intentions win out.
And at the end, when he had breached Hollywood's walls, when he was inside the palace and had a chance to loot, pillage and plunder, he instead recited the lines that are, to me, the most moving in the Martin canon, not for their cleverness but their loving simplicity, a sign the student had become the master. "Not bad seats. Not bad seats at all."
Congratulations, Steve.
Steve Martin was born a poor black child. Wait, that’s not right. In fact, it’s a little obvious, and obviousness is not one of the hallmarks of Steve Martin’s career. His contribution to the movies may be massive, but he is also a novelist and a playwrite, an accomplished banjoist, an avid collector of art, and a first-time father at the unobvious age of 67. Even as a comedian he refused the “shamanistic high life of seventies comedy” because, as Rick Anderson wrote in New York Magazine, “he was relentlessly square.” And yet for being a relentless square, for wearing a suit onstage, for kinda, sorta apprenticing at Disney, he was edgy and inventive. He didn’t seek to perform comedy so much as perform – to quote his memoir “Born Standing Up” – “a parody of comedy.” His act was almost a critique of the comic persona as it was then known. To wit, it was his college courses in psychology, at both Long Beach State and UCLA, where he began formulating the ideas for his own act, analyzing the deeper meaning of the punchline rather than writing punchlines.
Martin was uninterested in automatic applause, a “distance” that Rick Anderson refers to, “an odd performative gap between himself and whatever he happens to be doing.” This is glimpsed not only in his stage comedy but in his earliest films, most of which I like, though perhaps do not outright love, such as the seminal “Jerk” and the Carl Reiner-helmed “The Man With Two Brains.” In these productions you can feel that distance throughout. The old Roger Ebert rule of comedy stipulates that a funny hat by itself is not funny, and that instead a man must not know he’s wearing a funny hat. In these films Martin does not know he’s wearing a funny hat exactly, but you can sense him having picked out the proper funny hat just before filming.
C.D. Bales in “Roxanne” doesn’t know his nose is funny. Well, he knows his nose is funny to others, it's just not funny to him. Written by Martin and based off the exalted Edmond Rostand play “Cyrano de Bergerac”, the 1987 Fred Schiepsi comedy, timeless even if the soundtrack and fashion are dated (aside from Daryl Hannah’s sleeveless jean jacket, which looks as chic now as it did then), “Roxanne” marked the first time Martin truly explored that distance he had cultivated between himself and his audience. The character knows his overlong schnoz automatically opens a social chasm between him and whomever else, and so he seeks to compensate.
This is most famously rendered in the sequence where he bets the name-calling jerk at the bar he can conjure up twenty better insults than “big nose”, and proceeds to do so. Each one is funny, absolutely, but the scene’s subtext makes clear the way he uses humor as a shield. That, and the way he uses performance, speaking for and writing letters for Rick Rossovich’s knucklehead Christian-stand-in who can barely converse with Roxanne without hyperventilating, to avoid expressing his true feelings.
Martin's script is ultimately intelligent enough to not only make Roxanne herself intelligent (she has her own life, so much so that she briefly exits the film to go live it) and to make his romantic rival an identifiable panicky goofball rather than a mean-spirited nemesis but to allow C.D. the opportunity to learn his self-worth rather than the heaven-sent astrophysicist teaching it to him. It also, I think, betrays Martin's inner-whimsy, forgoing the tragedy of Rostand's source material by allowing its characters to see the good in others and in themselves.
Although Martin had movies in between, his next screenplay was not until 1991, “L.A. Story”, and at first glance it might appear to harken back to his earlier sketch comedy ways. Martin said he worked on the screenplay for seven years and this is easy to sense – marvelous scenes are at a premium and the teeniest of gags are sprinkled throughout, as if written on a cocktail napkin at the last second. For such an array of side-splitting gags, however, the film has a noticeable and fascinating mystical component.
In the film, Martin plays Harris K. Telemacher, a weatherman in Los Angeles, an occupation which provides ammunition for all manner of jokes but also slyly suggests the ultimate existential crisis. His eventual aide-de-camp is quintessentially Angeleno - that is, a freeway sign, which magically pulls him over one night and presents life advice via glowing block lettering. This is his Call To Adventure, which he initially refuses, before finally accepting and, thus, Crossing the Threshold into a place that, frankly, is as much about New Age spiritualism (Enya peppers the soundtrack) as it is stellar comedy bits.
The script centers around Harris falling for a kooky Brit, Sara (Victoria Tennant, Martin's then-wife), but overall it's not a Love Story. It's an "L.A. Story", and ultimately the film plays like its creative force (though Mick Jackson was the director) is having a dialogue with both the city, resisting it and admiring it, and a higher power, the performer relinquishing his place center stage and letting the divine take him where it will.
That mysticism becomes even more interesting when considering "Bowfinger", a film which followed "L.A. Story" eight years later. There Martin is quite consciously taking shots at Scientology in the form of Mindhead, a vaguely defined new age religion to which fictional movie star Kit Ramsey adheres (played by Eddie Murphy, a man who has become rather unlikable but who becomes likable in dual roles through the conduit of Martin's writing). In fact, Martin is taking potshots at Hollywood as a whole, playing a wannabe movie director named Bobby K. Bowfinger. Here the performative gap is between the Industry and Bowfinger, him standing outside its gold-encrusted guarded walls and trying to claw his way inside. He eventually does, making a guerrilla big-budget movie with a low-budget and with Kit Ramsey as star even though Kit Ramsey doesn't know he's in it.
It's a satire, and a brilliant one, loaded with massive gags - the highway "stunt" sequence which has made me laugh, hard, every single time I have watched it - and small gags - at the end Bowfinger is hired to direct a film in Taiwan "starring Kit Ramsey's brother", a witty nod to it all being about who you know as opposed to who you are. But whereas early period Martin likely would have made the mockery the overriding point, "Bowfinger" quietly opens up into something so much more soulful without shunting the humor, "debt, desperation and dreams" as the late great Roger Ebert put it.
When a filmmaker or an actor or a writer is really humming during a particular era, the works created will not merely stand on their own as genuine achievements but actually converse with one another, illustrating the core attitude of their creator and saying something far-reaching. This trinity of scripts, which I in my addled cinematic state of mind believe to be holy, eternally proved Steve Martin as more than a mere parodist and revealed his comic earnestness. It was when he stopped holding himself at a remove and instead gave himself over to us. It was when, to quote "L.A. Story", he let his mind go and allowed his body to follow.
Life is absurd and cruel, and Martin observes those facts with sharp wit, and it's complicated and infuriating, and he never denies this, but in spite of its imperfections, it is something to savor. Early in his career, "Bowfinger's" film-within-a-film, "Chubby Rain", would have been pure irony. But by 1999, by the completion of those three screenplays and the wraps of their filming, he had forged new ground. "Chubby Rain" may have been awful but it was created with good intentions, and he let those intentions win out.
And at the end, when he had breached Hollywood's walls, when he was inside the palace and had a chance to loot, pillage and plunder, he instead recited the lines that are, to me, the most moving in the Martin canon, not for their cleverness but their loving simplicity, a sign the student had become the master. "Not bad seats. Not bad seats at all."
Congratulations, Steve.
Tuesday, September 03, 2013
Life Goals
One of my many, many favorite moments in "Roxanne", one of my all-time favorite movies, involves Steve Martin's Cyrano-esque Fire Chief C.D. Bales attempting to teach his hapless firefighting charges how to properly put into effect a fire hose. To do this he strikes up Strauss's "Blue Danube Waltz" on a record player and has them move in time to the music with the full-force hose in hand. "A one, a two, a three!" he implores. "A one, a two, a three!" Then the spirit moves him. "I can't stand it!" he cries as he waltzes in time by himself.
I thought of this moment just the other day. I was on the El platform waiting for a train that, as trains in Chicago will, wouldn't come. As I did, a young man, twenties, sporting a well-coiffed faux hawk, ascended the platform and found a waiting spot a couple feet down from me. He was wearing headphones. He scrolled through his iPod. He found a song to his liking. He liked it so much, in fact, that he began dancing. Right there. On the train platform.
Several people moved away and re-positioned themselves farther back down. I stayed where I was, admittedly fascinated by this public display of dancing and even, well, a bit jealous. I remember the time I was on the train and I had just uploaded the new Gwen Stefani album on my iPod and I was so overcome with the groove that mentally I was screaming "I can't stand it! Just get up, Nick! Just get up and DANCE!" I, of course, didn't.
Days like today are a time for both reflection and looking ahead, a time to take stock of the man I am and the man I want to be, and what goals I can set in the hopes of eventually being me to the best of my ability. This probably should involve things that are health-related and finance-related and career-related.
Alas, I merely want to become the sort of man who dances in public. If I can become that man then I think I will have done all right in this life.
I thought of this moment just the other day. I was on the El platform waiting for a train that, as trains in Chicago will, wouldn't come. As I did, a young man, twenties, sporting a well-coiffed faux hawk, ascended the platform and found a waiting spot a couple feet down from me. He was wearing headphones. He scrolled through his iPod. He found a song to his liking. He liked it so much, in fact, that he began dancing. Right there. On the train platform.
Several people moved away and re-positioned themselves farther back down. I stayed where I was, admittedly fascinated by this public display of dancing and even, well, a bit jealous. I remember the time I was on the train and I had just uploaded the new Gwen Stefani album on my iPod and I was so overcome with the groove that mentally I was screaming "I can't stand it! Just get up, Nick! Just get up and DANCE!" I, of course, didn't.
Days like today are a time for both reflection and looking ahead, a time to take stock of the man I am and the man I want to be, and what goals I can set in the hopes of eventually being me to the best of my ability. This probably should involve things that are health-related and finance-related and career-related.
Alas, I merely want to become the sort of man who dances in public. If I can become that man then I think I will have done all right in this life.
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
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!
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.
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.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Roxanne
When I recently visited New York three of my friends and I stopped off at a way cool Brooklyn bar for a few drinks and some food and one of the establishment’s perks was showing three simultaneous movies with a certain theme. The theme of this night was 80′s and one of the films was "The Jerk." Three of the four at our table decided "The Jerk" was the quintessential Steve Martin movie. I, of course, was the holdout.
I believe then and believe now that "Roxanne" sits atop the formidable talent’s canon.
Sure, he’s always thought of as a funny guy, "Born Standing Up." He’s remembered for his wacky late 70′s, early 80′s comedies or his 00′s slumming for paychecks, likely to fund his art collecting. But when I think of Martin I always think of his distinct ability to blend humor with wistfulness. I think of his inate ability to play happy and sad within the same frame. I think of him with his face shrouded in the shrubs beneath Daryl Hannah’s balcony as she tells him (even though it’s not really to him) his pouring forth of his heart on paper was “eloquent” which he aptly corrects as “Not eloquent – just honest.” Steve Martin, I think, wanted to be Wordsworth as much as he wanted to be Jerry Lewis.
The film is based on the 1897 Edmond Rostand play Cyrano de Bergerac and it opens with a nod to that material as Martin’s C.D. Bales, the fire chief of a Washington ski town, finds himself in a duel opposite two lugheads with a tennis racket and ski poles substituting for rapiers. It is clever and funny. But it is the moments right before this sloped duel that interest me most – C.D. leaving his house and bopping and skipping – literally – down the street and along the sidewalk singing Fats Domino’s "I’m Walkin." You have to be of a certain unswervable disposition to sing to yourself in public. This is the portrait of a carefree man in love with life! But then the two lugheads inevitably insult the elongated nose of C.D. and while we see that he has learned how to live with this funky appendage we will soon see that he has not necessarily learned how to deal with it.
Two outsiders change his existence. The first is Chris McConnell (Rick Rossovich), an ace firefighter who has been called in to help instruct C.D.’s rather lamentable band of firemen, a group including Michael J. Pollard, weirdly hilarious, a young Damon Wayans and the town’s mayor (Fred Williard) who is spearheading Oktoberfest and says of his uniform, in that memorable Williard-ese, “I want it to say action with style. Sort of a GQ firefighter.” And while Chris may know just how to handle a burning blaze, well, when it comes to women he makes men clueless about females look like they’re totally in control.
The other outsider is Roxanne Kowalski (Daryl Hannah), an astronomer who has arrived to view a comet she has predicted will pass soon in the sky overhead. She is disarmingly sweet, incredibly intelligent, and one of the few fashionable women who roamed the style-confused 80′s, making the jean jacket vest look as innovative as Faye Dunaway’s mini skirts and berets in "Bonnie and Clyde." Roxanne and C.D. meet cute when she gets locked out of the home she is renting……naked. Again, Martin’s screenplay indicates its intentions. This easily could have led to crude and idiotic obviousness but Martin keeps the tone light and, dare I say, character driven. He asks if she would like a coat. She says no and then when she realizes he didn’t bring him a coat says, increduously, “I was being ironic.” Martin’s reply is classic: “Oh, irony. We don’t get that here. We haven’t had irony here since 1979 when I was the only practitioner of it and I stopped because I was tired of being stared at.”
And upon getting her back into her home with the greatest of ease, he falls for her almost instantly, and how could he not, listening to her wax rhapsodically about her passion, the manner in which he steals little glances of her as she does so, luminously subverting the cheesy 80′s score that accompanies it. One of Martin’s most brilliant decisions, and a lesson which rom com writers of the here and now should heed, was to make Chris a genuine doofus as opposed to a raging prick, his looks offset by the fact that a ridiculously attractive woman sends him running to the bathroom to hurl into a trash can. This is identifiable. Even when he tells Roxanne, in a fit of pitiful desperation, ”Your knockers are like melons” you can’t get upset because, damn it, the guy is trying his best, and it makes it much more believable that Roxanne might be attracted to him in the first place.
Of course, one of the film’s stretches is that we are asked to believe she somehow fails to recognize the fact the guy of the “Your knockers are like melons” line is not the same guy sending her flowering tomes via the U.S. Mail (remember letters? Sigh….) and spouting prose from beneath her balcony. She even recognizes this fact out loud as he’s spouting it - “Your voice is different.” Ah, but that’s the whole point, isn’t it? In the midst of their inevitable argument about C.D. actually penning the letters that made Roxanne swoon, C.D. advises the handwriting and the signature didn’t even match. How could she not have noticed? “Because you wanted to believe it!” C.D. declares. “You wanted it all! All the romance and emotion, all wrapped up in a cute little nose and a cute little ass!” Harsh, maybe, but maybe true.
Like Jesse of "Before Sunrise" declaring “People have these romantic projections they put on everything that aren’t based on any kind of reality” (guilty!) or Elaine Benes of "Seinfeld", staunchly pro choice, learning her potential one true love might well be pro life and dismissing such a possibility because, “Well, he’s just so good looking”, the movie is well aware that problems with love are not always caused through deceitfulness by the other person but often by deceitfulness within our own minds. C.D. is so convinced his super sized protuberance will prevent him from ever finding love that he has to resort to ghost writing love letters to actually tell Roxanne how he really feels. He might be that fun loving guy who sings to himself as he walks, but he’s got self doubt just like the rest of us.
That’s the Martin I most enjoy – the sentimentalist. The Harris K. Telemacher of "L.A. Story" was a wacky weatherman, sure, but he wanted to leave the wacky behind him and find something real and meaningful in the traffic sign ravaged landscape he called home. Bobby K. Bowfinger’s effort to make a film was filled with wacky hijinks, yes, but he was one man grasping at one last shot to make his one big dream come true. It’s why when I look at Martin I don’t see the guy with the arrow on his head, I see the guy with the big nose.
Which is why I dig the way he chose to end his adaptation. Cyrano de Bergerac dies but C.D. Bales gets the girl. Hollywood eloquence? Nah. Just honest.
Sure, he’s always thought of as a funny guy, "Born Standing Up." He’s remembered for his wacky late 70′s, early 80′s comedies or his 00′s slumming for paychecks, likely to fund his art collecting. But when I think of Martin I always think of his distinct ability to blend humor with wistfulness. I think of his inate ability to play happy and sad within the same frame. I think of him with his face shrouded in the shrubs beneath Daryl Hannah’s balcony as she tells him (even though it’s not really to him) his pouring forth of his heart on paper was “eloquent” which he aptly corrects as “Not eloquent – just honest.” Steve Martin, I think, wanted to be Wordsworth as much as he wanted to be Jerry Lewis.
The film is based on the 1897 Edmond Rostand play Cyrano de Bergerac and it opens with a nod to that material as Martin’s C.D. Bales, the fire chief of a Washington ski town, finds himself in a duel opposite two lugheads with a tennis racket and ski poles substituting for rapiers. It is clever and funny. But it is the moments right before this sloped duel that interest me most – C.D. leaving his house and bopping and skipping – literally – down the street and along the sidewalk singing Fats Domino’s "I’m Walkin." You have to be of a certain unswervable disposition to sing to yourself in public. This is the portrait of a carefree man in love with life! But then the two lugheads inevitably insult the elongated nose of C.D. and while we see that he has learned how to live with this funky appendage we will soon see that he has not necessarily learned how to deal with it.
Two outsiders change his existence. The first is Chris McConnell (Rick Rossovich), an ace firefighter who has been called in to help instruct C.D.’s rather lamentable band of firemen, a group including Michael J. Pollard, weirdly hilarious, a young Damon Wayans and the town’s mayor (Fred Williard) who is spearheading Oktoberfest and says of his uniform, in that memorable Williard-ese, “I want it to say action with style. Sort of a GQ firefighter.” And while Chris may know just how to handle a burning blaze, well, when it comes to women he makes men clueless about females look like they’re totally in control.
The other outsider is Roxanne Kowalski (Daryl Hannah), an astronomer who has arrived to view a comet she has predicted will pass soon in the sky overhead. She is disarmingly sweet, incredibly intelligent, and one of the few fashionable women who roamed the style-confused 80′s, making the jean jacket vest look as innovative as Faye Dunaway’s mini skirts and berets in "Bonnie and Clyde." Roxanne and C.D. meet cute when she gets locked out of the home she is renting……naked. Again, Martin’s screenplay indicates its intentions. This easily could have led to crude and idiotic obviousness but Martin keeps the tone light and, dare I say, character driven. He asks if she would like a coat. She says no and then when she realizes he didn’t bring him a coat says, increduously, “I was being ironic.” Martin’s reply is classic: “Oh, irony. We don’t get that here. We haven’t had irony here since 1979 when I was the only practitioner of it and I stopped because I was tired of being stared at.”
And upon getting her back into her home with the greatest of ease, he falls for her almost instantly, and how could he not, listening to her wax rhapsodically about her passion, the manner in which he steals little glances of her as she does so, luminously subverting the cheesy 80′s score that accompanies it. One of Martin’s most brilliant decisions, and a lesson which rom com writers of the here and now should heed, was to make Chris a genuine doofus as opposed to a raging prick, his looks offset by the fact that a ridiculously attractive woman sends him running to the bathroom to hurl into a trash can. This is identifiable. Even when he tells Roxanne, in a fit of pitiful desperation, ”Your knockers are like melons” you can’t get upset because, damn it, the guy is trying his best, and it makes it much more believable that Roxanne might be attracted to him in the first place.
Of course, one of the film’s stretches is that we are asked to believe she somehow fails to recognize the fact the guy of the “Your knockers are like melons” line is not the same guy sending her flowering tomes via the U.S. Mail (remember letters? Sigh….) and spouting prose from beneath her balcony. She even recognizes this fact out loud as he’s spouting it - “Your voice is different.” Ah, but that’s the whole point, isn’t it? In the midst of their inevitable argument about C.D. actually penning the letters that made Roxanne swoon, C.D. advises the handwriting and the signature didn’t even match. How could she not have noticed? “Because you wanted to believe it!” C.D. declares. “You wanted it all! All the romance and emotion, all wrapped up in a cute little nose and a cute little ass!” Harsh, maybe, but maybe true.
Like Jesse of "Before Sunrise" declaring “People have these romantic projections they put on everything that aren’t based on any kind of reality” (guilty!) or Elaine Benes of "Seinfeld", staunchly pro choice, learning her potential one true love might well be pro life and dismissing such a possibility because, “Well, he’s just so good looking”, the movie is well aware that problems with love are not always caused through deceitfulness by the other person but often by deceitfulness within our own minds. C.D. is so convinced his super sized protuberance will prevent him from ever finding love that he has to resort to ghost writing love letters to actually tell Roxanne how he really feels. He might be that fun loving guy who sings to himself as he walks, but he’s got self doubt just like the rest of us.
That’s the Martin I most enjoy – the sentimentalist. The Harris K. Telemacher of "L.A. Story" was a wacky weatherman, sure, but he wanted to leave the wacky behind him and find something real and meaningful in the traffic sign ravaged landscape he called home. Bobby K. Bowfinger’s effort to make a film was filled with wacky hijinks, yes, but he was one man grasping at one last shot to make his one big dream come true. It’s why when I look at Martin I don’t see the guy with the arrow on his head, I see the guy with the big nose.
Which is why I dig the way he chose to end his adaptation. Cyrano de Bergerac dies but C.D. Bales gets the girl. Hollywood eloquence? Nah. Just honest.
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