On Election Day twenty years ago, I
was at Ground Zero in Florida’s Broward County when the chads started hanging.
And thereby hangs a tale.
I was in the area to attend the 2000
Fort Lauderdale Film Festival, one of several regional festivals that once
invited me to partake of their hospitality — and their films — back when I used
to be somebody. On Election Day, however, a colleague and I slipped away from
the festivities (at her urging, I must admit, though she didn’t have to work
hard to convince me) so we could do volunteer work
at the local Florida Democratic Party headquarters. Mostly, I fielded phone
calls from senior citizens who needed transportation to voting places. Later in
the day, I also went door to door to pass out flyers, in the hope of driving
late deciders to the polls.
That night, as my
colleague and I watched the election returns in my hotel room, I… I… well, I
went absolutely nutzoid when the first reports came in that Al Gore had won Florida, and therefore was projected
as the next President. You think Tom Cruise did some couch jumping back when he
was sweet on Katie Holmes? Hah! My colleague actually tried to quiet me down,
for fear people in other rooms would complain about the racket while I hopped
up and down on the couch, the coffee table, the kitchen breakfast bar, etc.
But then, of course, the
first reports were “corrected,” and the Florida projection was withdrawn. And
then... Well, that’s when I put down my glass, and picked up the bottle. And
when that one was empty, I picked up another one. And after my colleague left,
I uncorked a third.
The next day, I awoke
with a very bad hangover. My condition improved only slightly when colleague
called to awaken me with what, at the time, seemed like very good news: Gore had withdrawn his concession. Everything
was still up in the air when I left Fort Lauderdale, but there was hope. A hope
that was not dashed until a few weeks later, when, while I was at a movie
junket in New York, I turned on the TV in another hotel room to learn Gore had
turned in the towel.
I am not at all ashamed
to admit that, for days and weeks and months and, yes, years afterward, I sporadically caught myself thinking: “Dammit! If
only I had managed to get more vans out for voters! If only I had placed flyers
on more doors! If! If! If!” Yep,
another textbook example of Catholic guilt experienced by the eldest child of a
dysfunctional family: It was all my fault.
Postscript: Seven years
later, I was introduced to Al Gore at the Nashville Film Festival. Someone told
him I had written a rave review of his Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truthas a free-lancer for the Tennessean newspaper — no, really, it was somebody else who did the
mentioning, not me — and he smiled graciously while shaking my hand.In fact, I swear to God, he actually bowed
slightly. For about a nanosecond, I thought of telling him the story of my
seven-year guilt trip. But then I came to my senses, and made polite small talk
instead during our brief encounter.
So now I am telling you
the story I lacked the nerve to tell Al Gore. Because as much as I feel
optimistic about Election Day 2020, I can’t totally banish nagging fears
that Election Night might have some nasty surprise in store. I have champagne
on hand to celebrate. But I also have a few bottles of the cheap stuff to dull
the pain of possible disappointment. On the other hand, this time I know: If something terrible does happen, it won't be my fault. Honest.
Along with fellow members of the
Houston Film Critics Society, I am spreading the good word about our latest
project: POTUS Fest: Cinema in Chief,
an overview of movies about real or fictional Commanders in Chief. And as part
of that project, I’ll be taking part in a Zoom
discussion about depictions of American Presidents in motion pictures at 3 pm CT Sunday, Oct. 25, with my HFCS co-conspirators Joshua Starnes (Coming Soon) and Donna Copeland (Texas
Art & Film). The discussion will be
accessible at no charge to those who reserve a ticket — while supplies last —
here.
But wait,
there’s more: At 9 am CT Tuesday, Oct. 20, I’ll be on the wireless with host Craig
Cohen of Houston Matters on KUHF to
talk even more about POTUS Fest: Cinema in Chief. You will be able to live stream the show here.
POTUS Fest: Cinema in Chief gives movie buffs and
political junkies the opportunity to view comments and reviews by HFCS members on
the organization’s website about movies dealing with U.S. Presidents (like Thirteen Days, with Bruce Greenwood as JFK, pictured above). Participating
members are choosing these films — ranging from docudramas to fictional
narratives — based on ways they illuminate the demands, disappointments and
determination that define our Chief Executives.
“Movies take us places we may never visit in person,” says HFCS president
Doug Harris, “and that includes the Oval Office… [W]e are in the middle of an
extraordinary period in American politics. And by extraordinary, I mean
bizarre, unpredictable, and off the rails crazy. Another look at these
exceptional films might help reset the public’s expectations of what could
be. Or should be. Maybe.”
From
my 3.13.19 Variety review: “You don’t have to be Catholic, lapsed or otherwise,
to be amused by Yes, God, Yes,
writer-director Karen Maine’s semi-autobiographical account of a Catholic high
school girl’s coming-of-age experiences with self-discovery and
self-gratification. On the other hand, the gentle shocks of recognition
afforded by this engaging indie comedy likely will be all the more enjoyable
(when they aren’t mildly discomforting) for anyone, male or female, who
remembers having to confess impure thoughts to an inquisitive priest, or
fearing the consequences of actions so forcefully proscribed by nuns and lay
teachers during religion (and, sometimes, biology) classes.
“The
movie received a special jury prize for best ensemble after its world premiere
at the SXSW Film Festival. But there can be no dispute that Natalia Dyer (Stranger Things) is first among equals
here as Alice, a 16-year-old virgin who has already experienced her first
stirrings of sexual turn-on after watching — repeatedly — Leonardo DiCaprio and
Kate Winslet steam up the windows of an automobile below deck on a VHS copy of Titanic.
“After
that, it’s only a matter of time before Satan’s minions — well, OK, a couple
cruising for a threesome in a dial-up AOL chat room that Alice inadvertently
enters — coax her into her first exploration of masturbation. (VHS tapes?
Dial-up AOL chat rooms? That’s right: The precise year is never announced, but
these artifacts, along with pop tunes on the soundtrack, suggest a time period
somewhere between the late 1990s and the early 2000s.)
“Dyer
— who also made an impact at SXSW five years ago with her remarkably nuanced performance
in Leah Meyerhoff’s I Believe in Unicorns
— is exceptionally adept at persuasively portraying Alice as simultaneously
ingenuous and inquisitive, easily embarrassed but obviously intelligent, while
she grapples with both an awareness of her sexuality and the aftermath of a
nasty rumor spread by an obviously insecure classmate. (Don’t worry: He
eventually gets what’s coming to him.)”
Yes, God, Yesis now available on
digital and VOD. You can read the rest of my Variety review here.
From my
6.11.20 Variety review: “There’s something perversely
fascinating about a film as aggressively off-putting as Infamous, a lovers-on-the-run crime drama that practically defies
you to develop a rooting interest in its two dim-bulb lead characters [played by Bella Thorne and Jake Manley, pictured above].
Writer-director Joshua Caldwell borrows freely and indiscriminately
from several earlier and superior examples of its sub-genre — particularly Gun Crazy, Bonnie and Clyde and Natural
Born Killers — while attempting to craft some kind of cautionary tale about
the many and varied ways social media can turn the dangerously discontented
into sociopathic celebrity-seekers. But as he indefatigably underscores the
obvious while steadily escalating the violence, he does little to sustain the
attention of his audience while taking an unconscionably long time to arrive at
a thoroughly predictable conclusion.” You can read the rest of my
Variety review here.
Had fun this
morning talking with Craig Cohen of KUHF Radio’s Houston Matters about the colorful past — and current renaissance —
of drive-ins. You can hear that segment of the program here.
No joke: The first
movie I ever saw at a drive-in really was The 30 Foot Bride Candy Rock, in Mobile, Alabama. And yes, my wife and I really
did see Gone with the Wind at a New
Orleans drive-in during one of its many theatrical reissues back in the day.
On a related
note: Here is the story I wrote for The Houston Post back on Feb. 29, 1992 — Leap Year Day — to mark the closing of Houston’s last drive-in.
FOR ALL OUTWARD appearances, it will be business as usual
tonight at the I-45 Drive-In. You can stock up on popcorn, pizza and Pic insect
repellent in the concession shack. And you can take your pick of the boffo box-office
hit Wayne's World, or the multiple-Oscar-nominated
Bugsy, or four other major studio
releases.
But once the final frames flicker
across the outdoor screens sometime past midnight, the projector will shut down
for the last time. Because tonight, the main attraction is The Last Outdoor
Picture Show.
The I-45 Drive-in — the largest
outdoor cinema in Texas, if not the entire United States, and the last of its
kind in Houston — will close down for good after tonight's screenings. The
admission, as always, is $6 per adult, children 11 and under free.
The 46-acre theater site, at I-45 North
and West Road, has been obtained by Weber & Co., a Dallas-based development
group that wants a K-Mart and a Builder's Square, not six battleship-size movie
screens, on the property.
“We had originally hoped to stay open
until Sunday,” says manager Jan Bettis, “and had a March 1 closing date in our
ads. But then they sent us a letter saying that we needed to vacate by March 1.
So we’ll be closing Saturday the 29th — Leap Year Day.”
The I-45 Drive-in will close just
seven years after opening its gates — and nearly six decades after entrepreneur
Richard Hollingshead opened the first U.S. drive-in in Camden, N.J. Camden's
theater closed four years after its 1933 debut, a victim of public
indifference. The I-45 closes tonight after fighting the good fight against
home video, steadily increasing operating and film rental costs, and Daylight
Savings Time — but finally losing to the rules of the real estate game.
Ironically, says Bettis, the I-45 was
enjoying a slow but steady upsurge in business at the time she received the bad
news of its impending close.
Bettis’ father, Cotton Griffith, has
operated the I-45 through his Griffith Theaters Co. since 1987, when he leased
the drive-in from its original owner, the Dallas-based McLendon Co.
“When we took over,” says Bettis, ''we
heard that there had been trouble in the past, as far as rough crowds go. And
they had kept kind of B-class movies showing. So when we came in, we added
security, and we started doing our best to keep a first-run feature all the
time, and just really built up a family atmosphere to where it is now.
“It’s kind of sad to see it go, because a lot
of the baby boomers are coming out with their kids. Like, your parents used to
bring you to the drive-in in your pajamas, and they watched the movies, and you
went to sleep. Well, that’s what’s happening all over again.”
Bettis smiles when reminded that drive-ins
have traditionally been viewed as “passion pits” rather than family affairs.
“I’m sure that was true for some
people,” she says. “You always have people that come and tell you, ‘My first
child was conceived at the drive-in.’ But I think that’s not all it’s cracked
up to be.”
Drive-ins enjoyed their heyday during
the 1950s, and continued to attract large audiences well into the early '70s.
At one point, Houston moviegoers could choose among such outdoor picture shows
as the Market Street Drive-In, the Tidwell, the McLendon 3 and the Thunderbird,
where double (and sometimes triple) bills were always available at cut-rate
prices. And because drive-ins always needed movies for the bottom half (or two-thirds)
of their bills, some movies (especially cult favorites like Thunder Road, Vanishing Point and Walking
Tall ) remained in continual circulation long after their initial release.
By the '80s, however, drive-ins were
in a state of free-fall decline. Movies began to appear on home video and pay-cable,
sometimes even before they made the bottom half of drive-in bills.
“Daylight Savings Time did a lot to
hurt drive-ins,” says Bettis. “Because a lot of times, people just don't want
to stay up that late. In the summer, we don’t start showing until almost 9 p.m.
And by the time that’s over, most people want to be home in their beds.”
“At one time,” says Cotton Griffith, “there
were over 20 drive-ins in Houston alone. At the I-45, we’re the Last of the
Mohicans, in a sense.”
The target audience for the I-45?
“Anybody and everybody,” Bettis says. “We
have grandmas and grandpas that come out here and bring their grandkids, and sit
in lawn chairs. And then we have the younger couples that come out with their
kids.
“And then we have teen-agers — a lot
of teen-agers. Since most of the drive-ins in Houston closed in the early '80s,
they’ve never been to a drive-in before. We’ve had several that just drive
through the box-office, and just park on the lot. And you go out, and say, ‘Well,
did you plan on paying, or what?’ And they’ll go, ‘Oh, doesn’t somebody come
out to your car to get your money? How do you do this?’”
Joe Bob Briggs, the nationally
syndicated drive-in movie critic, has waxed wroth and waxed nostalgic about the
closing of Houston’s final outdoor cinema.
“I’ll never forget my happiest moment
at the I-45 Drive-In,” says Briggs, “at the world premiere of Yor: The Hunter from the Future, in
1984. The whole thing was staged by Columbia Pictures so that I would see the
movie, but none of the indoor movie critics would. And their efforts paid off.
Because of my review, Yor: The Hunter from the Future made $15, instead of the mere $5 it would have made.
“Also, I can't think of the I-45 without
remembering that it was the last drive-in built by the late Gordon McLendon,
the godfather of the drive-in, the man who built more drive-ins than any man in
America. If Gordon could see what’s happening to the I-45…
“Actually, now that I think about it,
Gordon would be happy to see what’s happening to the I-45, because Gordon
always regarded his drive-ins as investments in raw land. And when it’s time to
sell, it’s time to sell.”
On a more serious note, John Bloom,
Joe Bob Briggs' more sober-sided alter ego, suggests that economics, not home
video or Daylight Savings Time, is the chief culprit in the decline of drive-ins
nationwide.
“When most drive-in were built in the
1950s,” Bloom says, “they were on the edge of town so they could be away from
the lights. As the towns grew, especially during the 1970s, the town would grow
out and surround the drive-in. Depending on what was built around it, the land
would become more valuable and the offers for the property would become so big
that eventually the owners would sell out.”
And even if the drive-in site itself
isn’t sold, Bettis says, the development of surrounding land can hurt business.
“Like, with the I-45,” Bettis says, “you
have all the surrounding light that we have out here now. When they put in
these freeway lights, that really killed us. And then they built the Wal-Mart,
and took down our fence.”
Griffith would like to see some bold
entrepreneur take a stab at filling the void that will be left with the I-45’s
demise. But he doesn’t hold out much hope for that happening.
“It’s very doubtful,” Griffith says, “because
of the land costs and the installation costs. And the film rentals are
extremely high. These days, the only way a (drive-in) makes money is with the
concession stand. That’s why popcorn prices are so ridiculous.”
So, in all probability, tonight will
mark “The End” for outdoor moviegoing in Houston. There are no sequels in
store. That’s all, folks.
“That's the drive-in way,” says Joe
Bob Briggs. “It's also the Texas way. They can rip down those six drive-in screens,
but they can’t take away our memories. We’ll always have Yor.”
Writer-director
Arik Kaplun plays the cultural and emotional clashes mostly for laughs in Yana's
Friends, an engaging romantic comedy that earned nearly all of the
glittering prizes at the 1999 Israeli Academy Awards.
It has taken more
than two years for this free-spirited and life-affirming film to gain wide
exposure on the U.S. art-house circuit, which says a lot -- none of it good --
about the bottom-line mentality that prevails even among supposedly
“independent” distributors. In one key respect, however, the timing of the
delayed release is fortuitous: After 9/11, perhaps American moviegoers will be
all the more receptive to this intelligently heartfelt celebration of love and
resilience in the shadow of war and catastrophe.
Lovely young Yana
-- winningly played by Evelyne Kaplun, the director’s real-life wife – arrives
in Tel Aviv to start a new life with Fima (Israel Damidov), her wheeler-dealer
husband. Unfortunately, Fima soon decides to wheel and deal his way back to
Russia. Yana is left to fend for herself, penniless and pregnant, while
continuing to share an apartment with Eli (Nir Levi), a womanizing would-be
filmmaker who supports himself as a wedding videographer.
Predictably, one
thing leads to another, and the roommates fall in love. Unpredictably, the
lovers and their neighbors manage to survive and thrive while only slightly
inconvenienced by the demands of life during a state of war. Air-raid sirens
wail, designated rooms are meticulously sealed – to provide safe havens from
poison-gas attacks – and everyone wonders if the next sound they hear will be a
Scud missile fired from Iraq. Even so, life goes on.
Yana's
Friends isn't a black
comedy, strictly speaking. But it somehow manages to find a surprising amount
of humor in deadly serious and even potentially tragic situations. Typical of
the movie's cheeky impudence is a scene in which Yana and Eli, brought together
in a sealed room during an air raid, impulsively make love while still wearing
their gas masks.
Hey,
it's like I said: Life goes on. So does love.
During an especially affecting moment in Spring Forward, one of my favorite films, Ned Beatty – playing a parks and recreation worker on the verge of retirement – marvels to a younger colleague played by Liv Schrieber that, somehow, when he wasn’t looking, several years slipped away: “Time goes by, and it seems like a little time. You turn around, and it was a big time.” How true. Thirty years is a big time by anybody’s measure. But I’ve had a mostly grand time during my past three decades as a free-lance film critic (and, periodically, essayist and listicle compiler) for Variety, the venerable trade paper that I still think of as The Show Business Bible. That it actually has been three decades is a little disconcerting – has it really been that long? – but never mind. This weekend, it’s also a cause for celebration. To be precise: My first three free-lance reviews – all of them for films shown at the WorldFest/Houston International Film Festival -- appeared in the weekly edition of Variety dated May 2, 1990. One of the movies just happened to be Red Surf, a melodrama about drug-dealing surfers starring a very young George Clooney. (For the record: the other two were Revenge of the Radioactive Reporter and something called A Girl’s Guide to Sex.) One week later, Variety ran my review of another WorldFest/Houston offering, Chopper Chicks in Zombietown, a spoofy sci-fi B-movie that showcased a very young Billy Bob Thornton in a supporting role. And two weeks after that, I reviewed yet another WorldFest feature: Across the Tracks, a dysfunctional family drama co-starring a very, very young Brad Pitt. So you see: Right from the start, I’ve specialized in spotting fresh talent for The Show Business Bible. Well, OK: I’ve been lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time to spot fresh talent. Thanks to Variety. I already was gainfully employed as a film critic for the late, great Houston Post when I was approached – by no less a luminary than Peter Bart himself -- to serve as a Variety stringer. But in my mind, writing for Variety – even back when I started, at a time when film critics didn’t receive a full byline – was not just a step up but a leap forward. To put it simply and hubristically, it was, to my way of thinking, a sign that I had arrived. I had made the grade, passed the test, completed my apprenticeship – and somehow gained entry inside a very select circle. I felt I had become part of a grand tradition. And you know what? I still feel that way. Blame it on my misspent youth. Back in the mid-to-late '60s, when I was a high school student in New Orleans, I fortuitously discovered The Show Business Bible in a library and was instantly smitten. In fact, I'm not ashamed to say that, while I was growing up, there was something truly magical to me about Variety, my own private gateway to Hollywood and beyond. On Fridays -- after school or, quite often, very early in the morning, before classes -- I would take the bus downtown to buy Variety at a newsstand. (It took two days for the weekly edition, then publishedon Wednesdays, to reach N.O.) I would devour all the reviews of movies and plays and TV shows, all the news about movies in production and box-office hits and misses, and gradually master the Variety-ese slanguage so I could fully understand what to the uninitiated must have seemed like indecipherable code. And, of course, I would marvel at the colossal special-edition issues dedicated to film festivals and year-end wrap-ups, all them filled with dozens of full-page ads for forthcoming movies. I continued to be awestruck by The Show Business Bible well into my twenties and beyond. I still have a photo somewhere that my wife took of me during our first trip together to New York in the mid '70s, long after I had begun my professional writing career. It's a picture of me standing in front of the old Variety office near Times Square -- the one with the big Variety logo emblazoned on a huge ground floor window. I am smiling a great big goofy kid's smile in the picture, like a True Believer enraptured by his proximity to some hallowed shrine. So, of course, when Peter Bart called more than 15 years later… I know, I know: Some of you will be quick to dismiss all of this a sentimental blathering, or shameless self-aggrandizing, or both. And that’s your prerogative. For others, it may seem odd, if not downright incomprehensible, for anyone to still feel so emotionally bound to anything so seemingly antiquated as a newspaper. But, hey, that’s my prerogative. Besides: I’ve also been writing web-only reviews for Vaiety.com for several years now, so it’s not like I’m exclusively an ink-stained wretch. But I remain, deep down, an analogue guy in a digital world, as my heart continues to beat to the rhythm of a printing press. That may change – well, actually, that must change, eventually – but not too soon, I hope. This is probably where I should write something about all the notable filmmakers whose first films I reviewed for Variety at various and sundry film festivals. And after that, I guess I should toss out ten or twenty titles of films that I got to review before anybody else thanks to my Variety affiliation. But that really would be self-aggrandizing, and I would deserve every brickbat tossed in my general direction. So I’ll leave it at this: I am deeply grateful that I’ve been a part of the Variety team for the past three decades. And I look forward to my next 30 years with the organization. (Assuming, of course, that they'll have me.) Because even though I know that the day may come when print media as we now know it will go the way of 8-track tapes and VHS movies, I’m sure that Variety, in some form, will survive and thrive. And I hope to remain part of its ongoing tradition.
Doug Harris, president of the
Houston Film Critics Society, continues to thumb his nose at COVID-19 by
hanging on his balcony spirit-lifting banners emblazoned with quotes from
classic movies. And once again, I’ve been inspired by my favorite currently
sitting president to rummage through my hard drive to provide an appropriate accompaniment.
This time, it’s my original 1998 review of The
Big Lebowski. And remember: It’s, like, just my opinion, man.
And now for something completely
different: The Big Lebowski,
an outrageously funny and indescribably weird shaggy-dog comedy from Joel and
Ethan Coen, the moviemaking siblings who last enthralled us with the darkly
ironic absurdism of their Oscar-winning Fargo.
Not that the Coens have ventured too far afield from what they’ve
done in the past. The anything-goes inventiveness of their latest effort
recalls the high-velocity lunacy of their Raising Arizona. And the vaguely Raymond Chandleresque
pattern of their new movie’s plot reflects their obvious affection for fiction
of the hard-boiled school. (Blood Simple, their first movie, had its roots in
James M. Cain, while Miller’s Crossing, their affectingly melancholy drama
about lethally competitive gangsters, is a superior Dashiell Hammett pastiche.)
Even so, as The
Big Lebowski shambles along from one bizarre incident to the next,
with a randomness that is more apparent than real, the comedy seldom covers
familiar ground. Which is one of several good reasons why it’s so enjoyably
loopy.
Jeff Bridges, an actor whose subtle sense of timing serves him
equally well in dramatic and comedic roles, is extremely engaging as The Dude,
a chronically stoned layabout who seems forever lost in the 1970s. (The movie
is set during the early ‘90s, on the eve of the Gulf War, for reasons that the
Coen brothers feel no need to share with us.) The character’s real name is Jeff
Lebowski, which turns out to be a problem when two tough customers mistake him
for a bilious millionaire with the same name. The bad boys break into The Dude’s
comfortably seedy apartment and demand payment for debts incurred by the wife
of Jeffrey Lebowski. When The Dude insists that he has neither a wife nor a
disposable income, one of the thugs urinates on his rug.
Under normal circumstances, such rude behavior would be easily
forgotten, if not forgiven, by The Dude. But the rug meant a lot to him — “It
really tied the room together!” — and he’s determined to make someone pay
for a replacement. So he somehow manages to locate the palatial home of the
more upscale Jeff Lebowski (David Huddleston). Not surprisingly, the millionaire
gives The Dude the bum’s rush. Very surprisingly, the millionaire later summons
The Dude back to his mansion, to seek our hero’s help in retrieving his trophy
wife, Bunny Lebowski (Tara Reid), from kidnappers.
The Dude is singularly ill-suited for the role of private
detective. Indeed, if he had his way, he would simply continue to concentrate
on his favorite pastimes: smoking, drinking and, along with a few buddies,
bowling. In this, he is very much like the Coen brothers themselves, who regard
their ridiculously complex storyline merely as an excuse to place The Dude in
the orbit of various oddballs and evil-doers. To say that The Big
Lebowski rambles would be to give it more credit for momentum than
it deserves. Even so, despite a final quarter-hour that is unduly protracted
and, worse, insufficiently inspired, the movie is very amusing in its
what-the-hell pointlessness, and often hilarious in its contrast between the
blissed-out Dude and the desperate characters he encounters.
As Walter Sobchak, the hot-tempered Vietnam vet who is the Dude’s
best friend and bowling partner, John Goodman offers furious comic bluster as a
sharp counterpoint to Bridges’ foggy-headed nonchalance. Julianne Moore plays
the movie’s most rational and tightly-focused character, Maude Lebowski, the
millionaire’s sardonic daughter, who has her own plans for taking advantage of
the Dude’s obliviousness. The extremely eclectic supporting cast includes such
notables as Ben Gazzara as a well-to-do producer of cheesy porno movies; John
Turturro as a flashy bowler with a checkered past as a sex offender; Jon Polito
as a shamus who optimistically assumes that The Dude must be smarter than he
looks; and, during one of the film’s clever but overly extended fantasy
sequences, Jerry Haleva as Saddam Hussein.
In the world according to the Coen brothers, the Iraqi leader
doesn't appear at all incongruous as he stands behind a counter and rents
bowling shoes to his customers. Sam Elliott also drops by from time to time as
The Stranger, a drawling cowpoke who serves as narrator, adviser and overall
master of ceremonies. He, too, seems right at home.
BTW: The Big Lebowski inspired such a
humongous cult that somebody made a movie about that cult. Here is my Variety
review of the 2009 documentary The
Achievers: The Story of The Lebowski Fans.
I forget
where I read or heard this, but: There was a day in your life when it was the
last day you played with your childhood friends. Not because anyone died, or
because you or any of them moved away, but it was simply the last day all of
you were together. And you didn’t realize it at the time. Hell, you might not
be able to remember that day even now. But that day happened.
Must admit:
I have been thinking a lot about that this week. Especially last Saturday,
April 18, the 25th anniversary of the day The Houston Post shutdown. I’ve been trying to remember what I did in the Post newsroom on April 17,
1995 – who I spoke with, what we said – and I’m sad to say that, with precious
few exceptions, I’ve been drawing a blank.
But now I have a
more pressing concern: I’ve been trying to remember what I said to my
University of Houston and Houston Community College students during our final
class meetings before the lockdown last month. I hope I said something
encouraging, or optimistic, during those meetings. Especially at HCC, since
this is my final semester teaching there. I’m still keeping up with all of my
students online, of course, as I receive and grade assignments after switching
over from lectures to “distance learning” instruction. Yet still I wonder: If I’d
known then that I would never see many of them ever again – what would I have
said? And would it have mattered?
Our lives,
unfortunately, are littered with last days that we don’t see coming, that we
might not recognize until long after the fact. Most of them have nothing to do with death, and everything to do with life. Maybe the best way to live our lives
is to live each day like it might be the last time we see the people in our
lives?
At
long last: Kino Lorber is re-releasing at virtual theaters Friday, April 24,
through May 7, Thousand Pieces of Gold.
This is my January 3, 1992, Houston Post review.
Nancy Kelly’s Thousand Pieces of Gold is billed as “a testament to the strength
of the human spirit,” but don't let that keep you away. This exceptionally
fine, independently produced film is a small-scale, clear-eyed, sharply
observant drama that, among other notable things, does something movies do very
well, but all too infrequently: It offers the audience a vivid and involving
look at a fascinating chapter in American history that usually is relegated to
the status of footnote.
The title refers to the price paid one morning
in 1880 when a desperate farmer in famine-stricken northern China sells his
adolescent daughter, Lalu (Rosalind Chao), to a marriage broker. Lalu is
summarily shipped off to San Francisco, where she is purchased by Jim (Dennis
Dun), the eager-to-assimilate agent of Hong King (Michael Paul Chan), an even
more coldly pragmatic Chinese immigrant. King operates a saloon in the Idaho
mining town of Warren’s Diggens, and he wants to offer the local “white demons”
something more exotic than beer and whiskey. Lalu, renamed China Polly by her
new “owner,” is expected to work as a prostitute.
But Polly refuses to be exploited in such a
way, and, unsurprisingly, has the gumption to back up her protests with a
knife. Angry, but also a little impressed, King forces her to work as his
personal slave, to pay off the cost of her purchase. Polly turns out to be a
worker of indefatigable energy and endless resourcefulness. She quickly earns
the respect, and slowly wins the love, of the one white man in town who fully
understands what it means to be a prisoner: Charlie (Chris Cooper), a taciturn
Civil War veteran who survived the horrors of Andersonville.
Working from a 1981 novel by Ruthanne Lum
McCunn, which recounted the life of the real “China Polly,” director Nancy
Kelly and screenwriter Anne Makepeace take a straightforward but sympathetic
approach to Polly's story, viewing the strange new world of the Idaho mining
town through the eyes of their feisty heroine, but also allowing other
characters to develop and reveal themselves. Thousand Pieces of Gold unfolds at an unhurried pace, but it never seems
dull, because the events and details that it takes time to observe are often
richly amusing, sometimes suspensefully gripping, and always utterly engrossing.
Rosalind Chao dominates the film, as well she
should, with her strong, subtly detailed performance as Polly. By turns
frightened and bewildered as she enters Warren’s Diggens, Chao's Polly
nonetheless maintains a strength of will that makes it very clear, right from
the start, that no man — not even Charlie, not even after he “wins” her from
King in a poker game, then grants her freedom — will be able to have her on any
terms but her own.
Charlie, who seems bemused and perhaps a bit
proud as Polly develops into an entrepreneur, is played with winning self-effacement
by Chris Cooper (the union organizer of John Sayles’ Matewan). Hard-drinking and war-weary, yet always a gentleman in
his dealings with Polly, and a fair businessman in his dealings with King,
Charlie is a complex character, and Cooper is remarkably good at bringing his
many facets into sharp focus.
Thousand
Pieces of Gold touches upon the injustices that
afflicted Chinese immigrants in America of the 1880s — King must have Charlie
as a business partner because of race-conscious laws restricting property
ownership — and depicts, even-handedly, the bitterness of the white miners
toward Chinese laborers, who are willing to work for lower wages. But the film
is less interested in creating heroes and villains than it is in re-creating a specific
time and place, and revealing full-bodied, sometimes contradictory characters.
Even the rapacious Hong King, played with sly and robust charm by Michael Paul Chan, is allowed some redeeming
qualities, while Charlie occasionally seems self-pitying and weak.
One particularly nice touch: Polly strikes up
an easy friendship with Berthe (Beth Broderick), a hearty German-born
prostitute who teaches Polly how to bake an apple pie. Two women from
different, distant parts of the world, each recognizing the other’s essential
humanity as they settle — awkwardly, reluctantly — into a new home. That, too,
is part of the uncommonly interesting American history lesson offered in this
uncommonly good American independent movie.
On
April 19, 1995, one day after the closing of The Houston Post, at 9:02 am CST, there
was a terrorist bomb attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Office Building in
Oklahoma City. Sixteen Social Security employees were among the 168 people who
were killed. My wife was working for Social Security at the time.
I
feared this would be the first in a series of terrorist attacks on federal
offices across the entire nation. So, the next day, I begged my wife not to go
to work. Her reply: “Fuck it. You lost your job. One of us has to be making
money.” I couldn’t argue with that, so I stayed home and cooked dinner and
washed dishes.
Less than two weeks later, I covered for Variety
“Top Dog,” an unfortunately ill-timed Chuck Norris dramedy about a San Diego
cop, his love-hate relationship with a bomb-sniffing K-9 and, as I said in my review, “right-wing extremists who
plant bombs in public buildings as part of their campaign of terror.” The
movie wasn’t half-bad, and it certainly wasn’t Chuck’s fault that I got creeped
out, but…
BTW:
Note in the review the reference to April 20 as Hitler’s birthday. I wonder
what fresh hell might await us tomorrow?
At around
10 am on April 18, 1995, one of my Houston Post editors called me at home while
I was eating breakfast to break the bad news: The Post was shutting down,
effective immediately, and we had until 5 pm to get all of our belongings out
of the building.
It was a
shock. But it wasn’t a surprise.
Truth to
tell, The Post had been on shaky financial ground long before the owners opted
to pull the plug. And by the way: By “closing,” the owners were able to sell
all their assets for a hefty sum to the Hearst Corporation, owners of the
competing Houston Chronicle, allowing Hearst to avoid any inconvenient
anti-monopoly regulations that might have kicked in had Hearst simply bought
The Post. There were rumors that other companies had made offers to purchase
our paper, and keep it afloat, but Heart evidently dangled a bigger check than
anyone else.
That the
fourth largest city in the United States had suddenly become a one-newspaper
town was really big news for, oh, I dunno, maybe 24 hours. The next day,
however, the Oklahoma City bombing occurred — a much worse tragedy, I would
readily agree — and people stopped paying attention. Nowadays, I suppose, the
Post closing might have remained fodder for cable TV chat shows for a week or
so. But that is now, this was then. I vividly remember being interviewed by a headhunter
for an out-of-town paper — one of several that descended on Houston the day
after the closing, to see who might be worth recruiting — in a Holiday Inn
hotel room. The guy was polite, and seemed truly sympathetic. (He represented
the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and I did wind up landing a few free-lancing gigs
from that paper.) But throughout our conversation, it was obvious that while he
had one eye trained on me, he had the other eye trained on a TV across the room
that was telecasting live reports on the Oklahoma City horror.
For years
afterward, I likened what happened to me 25 years ago today to being aboard a
ship that had suddenly been shot out from under me. Instead of grasping for any
debris that might keep me afloat, I lunged toward anything, anywhere, that
might keep me, at least temporarily, solvent. The Post closed on a Tuesday. By
the following Friday, I had a free-lance piece in the Houston Chronicle — an
interview with director Nikita Mikhalkov, whose Oscar-winning Burnt By the Sun was the opening-night
film that year for the WorldFest/Houston International Film Festival. The
following Sunday, I was one of a small group of Post survivors who were
interviewed on the morning news show aired by KPRC-TV, the NBC affiliate. When
the show ended, I approached the producer and suggested that, hey, wouldn’t
movie reviews be a swell addition to his program? The following Sunday, I was
on the air.
And yes, I
have no doubt that had there been podcasts then, I would have launched one of
those, too.
To this
day, I can tell you who called me within hours after news of the Post closing
broke to offer condolences, job leads and/or, no kidding, office equipment. I
can also tell you who returned my calls during the days and weeks afterward.
And I can tell you who immediately stopped taking my calls.
Clint
Eastwood had one of his people call me to promise that he’d make himself available
for an interview to promote his next movie, and he didn’t really care when or
even if I could sell it. (He made good on that promise, and I did sell the
interview pegged to the release of The
Bridges of Madison County.) Todd McCarthy, then my editor at Variety, called
with a fistful of free-lance review assignments — I had been writing for The
Showbiz Bible since 1990 — and a promise that the paper would cover my expenses
for the next Sundance Film Festival. (Again: Promises made, promises kept.) Saundra Saperstein of the Toronto Film Festival
called to assure me that I would get my press credentials for that festival the
following September, no matter what.
It was
during the 1995 Toronto Fest, incidentally, that (with a little help from
fellow critic Jami Bernard) I did an interview with Denzel Washington (tied to Devil in a Blue Dress) for the New York
Daily News. Not long afterwards, when my son George asked me how he was able to
have such a swell 9th birthday party even though daddy was, ahem,
unemployed, I responded: “Uncle Denzel came through for us.” Years later, when
I told Washington that story, he laughed heartily.
It helped a
lot that, within days of the Post closing, Hunter Todd of WorldFest/Houston
gave me an aging IBM PC that had been gathering dust at his headquarters. Up to
that point, I had been getting by in my free-lance work for the better part of
a decade with a Kaypro 2X. The upgrade increased my productivity immeasurably.
(On the other hand: I still have 5-inch floppy discs of WordStar files from my
Kaypro that I haven’t been able to access in a very long time.)
I worked so
fast and furiously to assemble a patchwork of free-lance gigs, I didn’t have or
make time to truly mourn the Post. The impact of what I had lost didn’t fully
hit me until, while I was at the Toronto Fest, I got a call from my wife
telling me she had gotten a call from the editor at a newspaper where I had
been absolutely certain I would get my next film critic job. Except I didn’t.
And somehow this shocked me even more than the closing of The Post.
Yes, that
sounds impossibly arrogant. But consider: I started writing film reviews for
professional publications in 1967, while I was still in high school, and continued
while working in various capacities at The Clarion Herald in Jackson, Miss; The
Shreveport Times; and The Dallas Morning News. When I landed my first (and, so
far, last) full-time job as a film critic at The Post in 1982, I was truly in
the right place at the right time. Editors under three different owners saw
having a “celebrity” film critic as an asset to exploit while competing with
the Chronicle. (At one point, God help me, I even starred in my own TV
commercial.) So they encouraged me to attend as many junkets and film festivals
as possible — it was not uncommon for me to attend Sundance, Berlin, SXSW, Cannes,
Montreal, Toronto, and the Sarasota French Festival within the same 12-month
period — review everything from Hollywood blockbusters to art-house obscurities,
and accept every interview request from any TV or radio station.
Just how
elevated was my profile? One year at Cannes, Bertrand Tavernier introduced me
to friends as not merely a Houston film critic, but “the film critic of Texas.”
After reading my review of Bugsy, Warren
Beatty asked that I be invited to the Love
Affair junket, where he granted me one of a very few one-on-one interviews.
I had enjoyed similar exclusivity when I got to sit down with Francis Coppola
and George Lucas for an hour at the Tucker:
The Man and His Dream junket. Harvey Weinstein (yeah, I know) took me aside
at a film festival to inform me that I ranked among the handful of critics
working at the No. 2 papers in their markets to be considered, by a wide
margin, more influential on local moviegoers than their competitors at larger
papers.
Fortunately,
Jeff Millar, then the film critic at the Chronicle, was… well, it might be
unfair to describe him as burnt out on being a film critic. But he had other
things on his plate — like authoring novels and writing the Tank McNamara comic
strip — so he didn’t attend junkets or film festivals, and he really didn’t
write as many reviews as I did. He was nice fellow and a true gentleman — he
took me out to lunch the week after The Post closed — but I have often wondered
if I would have achieved anywhere near the recognition I did had I been up
against a 1980s version of, say, Justin Chang or Inkoo Kang.
Anyway: I
got the call in Toronto, and that’s when it hit me: The Post was really, truly
gone, and I probably would never again have it as good as I did there. So I lay
down on the couch in the living room of the friends with whom I was staying —
friends who, fortunately, were not at home at the time — and starting crying.
For a long time. And then I got up, wiped my eyes, and headed out to the next
screening.
Things
weren’t too bad for a while. It was a Wild West period on the Internet in the
mid-1990s, and some newly established websites paid astonishingly huge sums for
free-lance pieces. (For the better part of a year, I was paid $1,000 for every
interview I wrote for MSNBC.com; today, I would be fortunate to earn a tenth of
that sum for the same product.) It didn’t take long, unfortunately, for editors
to realize how many younger, hungrier free-lancers would work a lot cheaper
than veterans in their 30s and 40s (or older). I got a gig writing for the
weekly Houston Press that lasted about a year, until the people running the
chain that owned it started using the same critics in all their alt-weeklies.
The KPRC-TV job actually expanded for a while — I did interviews (many now
available on You Tube) and interviews on both the Saturday and Sunday morning
shows — but ended in 1999. The same year my wife and I filed for bankruptcy.
(Thank God
she remained gainfully employed the whole time I was between jobs — and was
able to keep me on her health insurance plan. If she had not been there, I would not be here.)
And since
then? Well, I must confess: When a dear friend introduced me to Coldplay in
2008, and I heard the lyrics, “Now I sweep the streets I used to own,” the
shock of recognition was more than a little discomforting. But then as now, I
press on.
Truly, I
have no reason to complain. I started teaching at the university level in 2001,
a job I enjoyed so much that I went back and earned an MA degree so I’d be
qualified to teach even more. (I’m still an adjunct, not a full-timer, but that’s
the way it goes.) I still write free-lance reviews for Variety — I will celebrate a much happier anniversary, my 30th, with that paper next month — and I’ve been
fortunate to discover some fresh talents over the years. Indeed, I am often
reminded just how important a Variety review, by me or anyone else, can be. (I
once got an email from a cinematographer who thanked me because, after I
singled out his work on an indie film, he finally was able to land an agent.)
And since 2006, I have held posts as contributing editor and senior writer for
Cowboys & Indians magazine, which has put me in contact with many movie and
music notables I admire.
Looking
back, I can see that I was a kinda-sorta canary in the coal mine when The Post
closed in 1995. Many other newspapers have closed since then; many more no
longer employ full-time film critics. I foolishly assumed that I would just
leap into another film reviewing gig shortly after the shuttering of the Post.
Even now, I remember what a friend and fellow journalist told me at the time: “They’ll
be kissing your sneakers to hire you.” Every so often, I remind her of that
statement, and we both have a good chuckle.
What neither of us could have
foreseen, of course, is the paradigm shift that led to the drastic reduction of
print film critics, and the massive increase of online film critics. For years,
I continued to apply for film critic positions that sporadically opened up
until… Well, I’m embarrassed to say just how long I kept sending out messages
in bottles. But I do remember the day when I heard about a job, felt
momentarily excited — and then told myself, “No, that time has passed. And you
ain’t ever going to play Hamlet, either.”
Of course,
to be brutally honest, it’s entirely possible that I was never as good as my
friend thought, or I hoped, and that’s why I never landed another full-time gig.
But even if that’s true, hey, I haven’t done too badly for a mediocrity, have I?
Call me the Bob Uecker of film critics, and you won’t be far off the mark.
This
probably is the last time I will mark the anniversary of the Post closing with
any post this long-winded and self-aggrandizing. After all, I am not entirely
bereft of shame. Still, I am a melancholy frame of mind right now that has
little or nothing to do with the current COVID-19 pandemic. Well, actually,
there is some connection: Because of the drastic cutback in advertising for
newspapers and websites that can be traced to the pandemic and the accompanying
lockdown, I know a lot of my younger colleagues (and a few older ones) currently
find themselves in the same position I was 25 years ago today. As bad as I had
it then, I fear it may be worse, much worse, for them.
To the
newly unemployed, I can only offer my condolences because, literally, I can
feel your pain. I wish I could be more encouraging. But trust me: You’ll be
much better off if you don’t expect anyone to kiss your sneakers anytime soon.
, a melodrama about drug-dealing surfers starring a very young George Clooney. (For the record: the other two were 
, a spoofy sci-fi B-movie that showcased a very young Billy Bob Thornton in a supporting role. And two weeks after that, I reviewed yet another WorldFest feature: 
, a dysfunctional family drama co-starring a very, very young Brad Pitt.
