Georgia

After a string of solid supporting roles in films like Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) and The Hitcher (1986) during the 1980’s, Jennifer Jason Leigh had paid her dues and began to take on more substantial roles in the 1990’s starting with an impressive one-two punch of Last Exit to Brooklyn and Miami Blues in 1990. From there, she never looked back, tackling roles in mainstream Hollywood fare like Backdraft (1991) and Single White Female (1992), and more challenging material in independent films like Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994) and Georgia (1995). The latter was a very personal, passion project for the actress whose mother, Barbara Turner, produced the film and wrote the screenplay, and was directed by Ulu Grosbard, a friend of hers. Georgia depicts the tempestuous relationship between two sisters, both of whom are singers with Leigh playing the younger, less talented one, and Mare Winningham playing the older, more successful one. The film is rich with characterization as it explores the complex relationship between two siblings.


From when they were little girls, Sadie (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and Georgia Flood (Mare Winningham) loved to perform in front of people. Now grown-up, their paths have taken very different directions. When she’s not cleaning rooms at a motel, Sadie scrapes by with the occasional gig as a backup singer, leading a nomadic existence with a string of failed relationships. In contrast, Georgia is a very successful country-folk singer with tons of adoring fans, a loving family and a comfortable life. After getting fired from her latest gig, Sadie travels to Seattle to see her sister and live with her for a bit while she tries to sort out her life, which is going nowhere.

Leigh delivers a truly fearless performance as she actually sings in the film, unafraid to play someone who makes up what she lacks for in talent with passion. For example, she sings a cover of Elvis Costello’s “Almost Blue” in a raspy whisper that is mesmerizing to watch and then sings backup for a band (that features X’s John Doe no less!) terribly, screeching her way through a song. It really takes a lot of guts to put yourself out there like Leigh does, not just in the music scenes but also off-stage in the way she relates (or doesn’t) to those around her. As always, the actress fully inhabits the role and it starts with her look, adopting raccoon-eye makeup and a perpetually disheveled appearance that represents her messy life.

Sadie is obviously the black sheep of her family with her self-destructive tendencies that Leigh doesn’t overplay – it is there in every scene in the way Sadie carries herself, like how she tries to keep it together while performing a cover of “I’ll Be Your Mirror” after taking too much NyQuil. As the song goes on she slowly backs away from the microphone and slouches up against a wall with a look that says so much, almost like she can’t believe what’s happening, like she’s watching it all unfold from outside of her body. Leigh’s gutsy performance culminates in an intense performance of Van Morrison’s “Take Me Back” that seems to go on forever (in a good way) as we see Sadie at her most vulnerable. This sequence encapsulates her character perfectly – all ambition and passion with no talent. She tries so hard that your heart really goes out to her despite being a painfully awful singer. It is this scene that really divided critics and fans of Leigh but I’ve always found it powerful and real with a rawness that is rare. This sequence also says a lot about the relationship between Sadie and Georgia as the former threatens to come apart at the seams on stage while the latter helps her out by providing supporting backing vocals towards the end of the epic rendition of the song.

Winningham is excellent in the title role. I’ve never been a huge fan of her work outside of Miracle Mile (1988) but I really enjoyed what she does in Georgia, playing the supportive older sister. She has a tough job of playing the less flashier role but it is still an important one because she has to provide the ying to Leigh’s yang. For most of the film she maintains an impenetrable air of control but occasionally she vents her frustrations about Sadie to her husband Jake (Ted Levine) and Sadie’s husband, Axel (Max Perlich). I like the relationship between Jake and Georgia. In a few scenes that they have together they suggest two people that have been married for years and know each other very well because they’ve been through so much together and now have settled into a familiar rhythm that Sadie threatens to disrupt.

The first time we see Leigh and Winningham together, they are instantly believable as sisters by the first look that they give each other. It’s one that suggests years of emotional baggage between them. As soon as they start talking, their distinctive personalities emerge with Sadie being a non-stop talking hot mess and Georgia as the reserved one who is nice enough but looks at her sister disapprovingly. Sadie is one of those people who wears her heart on her sleeve and says how she feels when she feels it while Georgia is always in control of her emotions and her life, never letting people in too far. As the film progresses, we get more insight into the complex relationship between the two sisters, like how the younger sibling constantly lives in the shadow of the other.

Leigh and Winningham capitalize on their years of actual friendship to play believable sisters. Georgia loves Sadie but can’t stand her chaotic, spontaneous way of life because it goes against everything she believes in. Over the course of the film, the tension between them simmers until the inevitable boiling over moment thanks to years of conflict and baggage that comes out due to Sadie finally pushing Georgia’s buttons so much that her controlled façade finally cracks.

Underrated character actor Ted Levine is excellent as Georgia’s laidback husband Jake. He has a wonderful scene with Leigh early on where Jake tells Sadie why he no longer tours with Georgia after years of being regarded as nothing more than one of the road crew and how he and his wife had a series of meaningless affairs only to finally emerge in a more stable place. During the ‘90s, he played a variety of roles, from a creepy serial killer in The Silence of the Lambs (1990) to a cop in Heat (1995), but with Georgia he gets to play a normal, decent guy.

The always watchable Max Perlich turns up as a nice guy named Axel who loves Sadie unconditionally despite her lack of reciprocation because she uses people, whether it is for food or a place to stay or for a gig. He is kind and understanding, judging by the amount of patience he displays for her various antics but even he has his limits as she eventually finds out. Leigh had previous worked with Perlich on Rush (1991) and she was obviously impressed with his work on that film when it came time to cast the role of Axel in Georgia. Look close and you’ll also see John C. Reilly in a small role as John Doe’s drummer who appears to be constantly stoned. He has a nice scene with Leigh where his character laments being fired from the band and talks about his life as a junkie whose time is running out.

Jennifer Jason Leigh had always wanted to make a film about sisters and also play a failed singer because she knew that she couldn’t sing. She came up with the idea that the older sibling would be the better singer and that her longtime friend and fellow actress Mare Winningham would play that role. She had always wanted to work with her mother, celebrated screenwriter Barbara Turner, but never had the opportunity. While making Rush, Leigh called her up with “this very vague notion of an idea,” with the hope she would like it enough to write a screenplay for it, and she did, working on it over seven months in 1991.

From the start, Leigh wanted the film set in Seattle and even went there to talk with several local musicians. To prepare for the role, she watched music documentaries about troubled artists like jazz trumpeter Chet Baker and singer Janis Joplin. She believed in the project so much that she became a producer and helped raise money to get it made. It was Turner who originally conceived of recording all the music in the film live and approached Robert Altman to direct because he always filmed live music in his films. He wanted to make the film but couldn’t find the time in his own busy schedule to fit it in. Turner met filmmaker Ulu Grosbard at a dinner party and told him about the project. She sent him the script, he read it and was really taken with how well-written it was. He agreed to direct. Through Joel Coen (while working with him and his brother Ethan on The Hudsucker Proxy), Leigh met producer Ben Barenholtz who loved the script for Georgia and agreed to help find financing. He shopped it around at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival and French production company Ciby 2000 offered him the best deal: total financing and creative control.

However, a year passed before Ciby gave the greenlight and Grosbard began to question recording the music live because every music supervisor he spoke with told him not to do it as it lacked control. With the help of Altman and fellow director Alan Rudolph, Turner convinced Grosbard to film live music and stick with the unhappy ending. He felt that to do otherwise would have been false: “Studios try to do films like this, and paste on a happy ending, and the film fails anyway, and they blame it on being an ‘art’ film.” Ciby also had to be convinced about the casting of Winningham because they were unfamiliar with her work but hearing a tape of her songs sealed the deal. When she was first offered the role in 1992, she turned it down despite how good it was because there was “something weird about playing a famous singer when I was just trying to start my singing career.” However, six months later, the record label that released her debut album, folded and she changed her mind and decided to do Georgia.

Georgia was shot over 45 days on a budget of just over $7 million. Leigh was so focused and committed to playing a drug-addicted singer that she didn’t even notice she had lost a considerable amount of weight (going from 105 lbs to 89 lbs) until filming had ended. She recalled, “I was emaciated and felt horrible, horrible, horrible. This character living inside me was like a virus, and like a virus it takes two or three weeks to dissipate before you come back to yourself.”

Georgia received positive notices from critics with Leigh not surprisingly getting the lion’s share of the praise. Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars and felt that it was just “not a simply plotted movie about descent and recovery, but a complex, deeply knowledgeable story about how alcoholism and mental illness really are family diseases.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “With an exploratory style in the spirit of John Cassavetes, Georgia turns Sadie inside out without giving a neatly dramatic structure to her story. The result is a film as maddening and unpredictable as the character herself, held together by a fierce, risk-taking performance and flashes of overwhelming honesty. Sadie would be unbearable if she didn't feel so real.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film an “A” rating and Ken Tucker wrote, “Different in its rhythms from every other movie out there right now, Georgia puts you through the wringer, but you come out feeling exhilarated.” The Los Angeles Times’ Kenneth Turan wrote, “If there is one quality that defines Georgia, it's how nonjudgmental it finally is. With Leigh's exceptional performance to build on, Sadie is a person we come to care for despite herself. She is not a bad soul, just an impossible one who lacks so much as a clue about being an adult. And the film allows us to both despair for her as Georgia does and admire her for, in Jake's words, being ‘original and brave and without malice.’” Finally, in his review for the San Francisco Chronicle, Mick LaSalle wrote, “As Leigh hurtles through the sky, it's good to have Winningham on screen as a sane point of reference. Leigh's best scenes are with Winningham, whose Georgia keeps Sadie in check – and whose emotional clarity keeps Leigh from getting sloppy.”

The backdrop to Georgia is its depiction of two sides of the music business with Georgia representing the glossy, successful aspect with large venues and adoring fans, while Sadie represents the harsh reality for most – playing bars and almost empty bowling alleys, trying to hustle gigs where she can. Georgia is a real actor’s showcase with most of the cast getting at least one scene where their character is front and center. While this film belongs to Leigh, she is a gracious performer, allowing others to take center stage while she supports them. Sadie is just one of those people that eventually rubs everyone the wrong way whether it be her sister, her manager or her husband. She is one of the many damaged characters Leigh has excelled at playing over the years and perhaps the most fascinating. She runs the emotional spectrum in a performance that is among her very best. By the end of the film you really feel like you’ve gone on a journey with Sadie and seen her through ups and downs, including how her relationship with Georgia has evolved over time. Reminiscent of Bob Rafelson’s films from the 1970’s, Georgia ends without anything resolved between the sisters. They agree to live their own lives on their own terms – they wouldn’t have it any other way. The film ends very much as it began with each sister living their own very different life, leaving us to wonder what might happen to Sadie as she continues to pursue her dreams.

The Hudsucker Proxy

It had to happen. After an impressive run of critically acclaimed independent films, culminating with Barton Fink (1991), which won the top three awards at the Cannes Film Festival, the Coen brothers – Joel and Ethan – made their first Hollywood studio film, The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), with none other than uber producer Joel Silver. Most film critics were unimpressed with the final result and if hitching their wagon to Silver was the Coens’ attempt at appealing to a broader audience that too failed as the film flopped at the box office. So, what the hell happened? It certainly wasn’t from a lack of trying as The Hudsucker Proxy starred a trifecta of stellar acting talent with Tim Robbins, Paul Newman and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Hell, the Coens even enlisted their long-time friend and fellow filmmaker Sam Raimi to co-write the screenplay.

As if eerily foreshadowing the film’s fate, the opening voiceover narration observes the protagonist’s destiny: “How’d he get so high and why’s he feeling so low?” I’ve always felt that The Hudsucker Proxy is the Coen brothers’ most (unfairly) maligned film, which is a shame because it has a lot going for it, including witty dialogue, incredibly detailed production design, some jaw-dropping set pieces, and their usual rogue’s gallery of doofuses, blowhards and snappy wiseasses. This film should be seen as the Coens’ affectionate homage to the classic screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s.

The camera moves over a snowy New York City at night on New Year’s Eve, 1958. As we move past several buildings, we finally come upon the imposing Hudsucker Industries building with a massive clock adorning its façade along with their slogan, “The Future is Now,” thereby introducing the film’s prevailing theme: time. The opening voiceover narration is all about the passing of time as it talks about the beginning of a new year and how people at Times Square are waiting for it to arrive, “all trying to catch hold of one moment of time.” We are introduced to one of the film’s “lost souls” – Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins) – as he climbs out of his office window, ready to commit suicide. The voiceover narration describes him as someone, “out of hope, out of rope, out of time.” The narrator ponders Norville’s fate and offers this sage observation: “Well, the future, that’s something you can never tell about. But the past, that’s another story.” As this last line is being spoken, the camera pans from Norville to the large clock on the building and we travel back in time, one month, to find out what brought him to this sorry state of affairs.

Recent Muncie School of Business Administration graduate Norville Barnes arrives in New York City to make it big. Through a rather Coens-esque twist of fate, he lands a mediocre job in the mailroom at Hudsucker Industries just as the company's founder and CEO Waring Hudsucker (Charles Durning) takes a swan dive off the 44th floor to his death. The Coens continue their obsession with time by having Waring start his watch before he jumps out the window. As he runs across the large boardroom table, the ticking of his watch gets louder as his time is running out. Fearing that the leaderless company will have to go public and “any slob in a smelly t-shirt” will be able to buy stock, the board of directors, led by the ruthless Sidney J. Mussberger (Paul Newman), have one month and decide to find a proxy, a puppet, a pawn, “some jerk we can really push around,” as Sidney puts it, to fill the vacant position left by the recently departed Waring. This will drive the company into the ground so that they can buy back the stock at a cheaper rate. We first meet Sidney looking out the window that his boss just jumped out of with the massive building clock looming ominously overhead.

Norville’s brief stint in the Hudsucker mailroom is depicted as a hellish Orwellian nightmare right out of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985), complete with all kinds of office drones scurrying back and forth. A trip up the elevator offers glimpses of floors filled with seemingly endless aisles of desks like something out of Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (1960). Norville becomes the patsy and is soon blundering his way to success thanks to a little invention called the hula-hoop. And with the catchy slogan, "You know, for kids," Norville's invention becomes all the rage but spells potential disaster for the Sidney and his cronies. As if Norville's problems aren't enough, Amy Archer (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a determined newspaper reporter for the Manhattan Argus is thrown into the mix as she tries to uncover the real story at Hudsucker Industries. Their meet-cute is inventively realized by the Coens as seen and told from the point-of-view of two taxi cab drivers which is a novel way of depicting one of the oldest clichés in the screwball comedy genre.

If The Hudsucker Proxy is remembered at all, it’s for the show-stopping sequence where the hula-hoop is created, marketed and brought out into the world where it eventually becomes a monster hit among kids all over the country. Directed by none other than Sam Raimi, with his usual stylistic virtuosity, this sequence is visual storytelling at its finest. Nice touches include three anonymous Hudsucker executives (seen only in silhouette) in the “Creative Bullpen” (one of whom is Raimi) thinking up names for the hula-hoop – “The Dancing Dingus! The Belly-go-Round,” while in the foreground a secretary reads War and Peace to cheekily convey the passage of time (in a subsequent shot, she’s apparently finished that book and working her way through Anna Karenina). There’s also the bit where a lone hula-hoop rolls down a street only to be discovered by a child and this kickstarts the whole craze. The energy conveyed in this sequence is electric and is a pure cinematic moment.

In The Hudsucker Proxy, Norville has the air of a holy goof about him. He’s a doofus who happens to luck his way into good fortune without being aware of how it happened. Tim Robbins uses his tall, lanky frame for maximum comedic effect as evident in the scene where he first meets Sidney and proceeds to start a fire, runs around with a water cooler jug trying to put it out and then gets his foot stuck in a now flaming wastepaper basket only to almost send the aging businessman out the window. Robbins often sports a goofy grin and instills Norville with unflappable optimism and enthusiasm, especially for his big idea – the hula-hoop.

Amy Archer is your typical career gal, a no-nonsense mash-up of Rosalind Russell and Katharine Hepburn that never stops talking as Jennifer Jason Leigh brilliantly recreates the rat-a-tat-tat delivery of dialogue that was synonymous in films from the ‘30s and ‘40s. Amy, and her distinctive (grating for some) accent, was part of an informal trilogy of period dialogue accents that Leigh perfected in the 1990s along with Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994) and Kansas City (1996). The only problem is that Amy eventually falling in love with Norville doesn’t seem believable. There’s no real chemistry between Leigh and Robbins. The Coens try to make it work but it is the glaring flaw in an otherwise excellent film.

Paul Newman fits seamlessly into the Coen brothers universe as the malevolent puppetmaster Sidney J. Mussberger, a name that evokes that of J.J. Hunsecker from the Sweet Smell of Success (1957). Like Burt Lancaster’s bullying columnist from that film, Newman’s businessman is out for himself and crushes anyone who gets in his way. Sidney is a master manipulator who thinks he has all the angles figured out. It looks like Newman is having a lot of fun with this role as he gets to ham it up a little as a tyrannical tycoon. Watching him spout the Coen brothers’ colorful dialogue is a delight.

The attention to period detail is impressive. It’s not just the cars and what people wear but how they speak that so vividly evokes the 1950s. Blink and you’ll miss a cameo by the late Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith as Norville’s fashionable girlfriend once the hula-hoop takes off and makes him a media sensation. Coens regular Steve Buscemi even shows up for an obligatory cameo as a beatnik bartender. Other Coens alumni, like John Mahoney, as her grumpy editor who always smokes a stogie and yells all the time, and Bruce Campbell, as one of her co-workers and foil, are along for the ride and contribute memorable moments as Amy’s co-workers at the Argus.

Barton Fink's rather impressive collection of awards and accolades drew the attention of big time Hollywood producer Joel Silver who had admired the Coens' films since Blood Simple (1984). He envisioned their next project as the big breakthrough into the mainstream. To aid in their endeavors he used his considerable clout to give the brothers two things that they never had before: a large budget of $30 million and big name stars like Tim Robbins and Paul Newman. As a result, the Coens decided to resurrect an old project that they had shelved years ago called The Hudsucker Proxy. Written in 1986 with Sam Raimi, the Coens had never considered filming Proxy because of the rather large scope that they had envisioned for the film. As Joel explained in an interview, "The reason why we didn't make it when we wrote it is we realized how expensive it was going to be; it had special effects and it was all done on stage sets." Silver's involvement provided them with the means to make the film a reality. And so, with Raimi along for the ride, the Coens set out to subvert the mainstream with their own unique vision.

The Coens were very conscious of The Hudsucker Proxy as a throwback to classic Hollywood cinema. Ethan said, "The script, which contains a lot of traditional genre elements, was marked by a kind of heartwarming fantasy element out of Frank Capra. It also had a lot of verbal comedy, the kind you see in films by Preston Sturges or Howard Hawks, with dialogue delivered in a rapid-fire, machine-gun style. But it was bigger and broader, with physical comedy sequences and a lot of oddball action." While trying to sell Blood Simple after making it, the Coens shared a house with Raimi and this was where The Hudsucker Proxy was written. It took them two to three months to write the script and as early as 1985, the Coens were quoted as saying that an upcoming project "takes place in the late Fifties in a skyscraper and is about big business. The characters talk fast and wear sharp clothes."

This first image that they conceived of was that of Norville about to jump from the window of a skyscraper and then they had to figure out how he got there and how to save him. They decided to incorporate the hula-hoop because, according to Joel, “we had to come up with something that this guy was going to invent that on the face of it was ridiculous. Something that would seem, by any sort of rational measure, to be doomed to failure, but something that on the other hand the audience already knew was going to be a phenomenal success." Ethan said, "The whole circle motif was built into the design of the movie, and that just made it seem more appropriate."

Art house darlings, the Coens wanted to make a film that would be seen by a lot of people and so they approached Silver. Despite his reputation, the producer was hands-off with the Coens and his only input was to convince the filmmakers not to shoot their film in black and white. Silver pitched the project to Warner Brothers by saying that they would get a film that the critics would like and that everybody would want to see. The studio agreed but only if the Coens cast movie stars in the main roles. To his credit, Silver promised to protect the Coens from the studio and convinced executives to give them final cut.

The Hudsucker Proxy would see the Coens utilizing their largest budget up to that point in their career. They needed it in order to build large sets and use elaborate special effects. They had screened Blade Runner (1982) before making The Hudsucker Proxy, which also used elaborate sets and a large, detailed cityscape. Twenty-seven craftsmen spent three months building a '50s New York skyline, constructing fourteen skyscrapers. The film's skyline was based on photographs from a book that art director Dennis Gassner found called, New York in the Forties and the scale after Citizen Kane (1941). Principal photography began on December 1993 on soundstages at Carolco Studios in Wilmington, North Carolina with a budget of $25 million, although, some trade papers reported that it increased to $40 million.

The first signs of trouble surfaced when it was reported that the studio held test screenings for The Hudsucker Proxy. Audience comments were varied and the studio suggested re-shoots. The Coens obliged because they were very nervous working with their biggest budget to date and were eager for mainstream success. They added some footage that had been cut, shot some additional footage and added to the ending. Variety magazine claimed that the re-shoots were done to try and save the film because it was going to be a flop. However, Joel addressed the issue: "First of all, they weren't reshoots. They were a little bit of additional footage. We wanted to shoot a fight scene at the end of the movie. It was the product of something we discovered editing the movie, not previewing it."

The Hudsucker Proxy received mostly mixed to negative reviews. Roger Ebert gave the film two out of four stars and wrote, “And wasn't there something dead at the heart of all of this? A kind of chill in the air? A feeling that the movie was more thought than art, more calculated than inspired? Doesn't the viewer spend more time admiring the sights on the screen than caring about them? Isn't there something wrong when you walk out of a movie humming the sets?” The Washington Post’s Desson Howe felt that the film was, “pointlessly flashy and compulsively overloaded with references to films of the '30s.” The Chicago Reader’s Jonathan Rosenbaum called the film, “a jeering, dreamlike comedy with little on its mind except how neat the Coens are and how stupid or contemptible everybody else is, including the audience.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “C” rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “For all its technical bravado, The Hudsucker Proxy is an unsettling contradiction, a ''whimsical'' fable made by acerbic control freaks. It's a balloon that won't fly.” Time magazine’s Richard Schickel wrote, “Try as they will to create a vision of corporate (and urban) hellishness through sheer stylishness, theirs is a truly abstract expressionism, at once heavy, lifeless and dry.”

However, in her review for The New York Times, Caryn James wrote, “Carter Burwell's music is excessive in just the right way, echoing the overwrought, clue-giving scores of 50 years ago. And Dennis Gassner's design is a flawless addition to the film's muted, fairy-tale mood.” Empire magazine’s Kim Newman wrote, “While the story and the characters are perfect pastiche, making them hard to be involved with, human warmth is imported by the sheer joy of the directorial flourishes.”

The Hudsucker Proxy is about the passing of time and even stages the climactic set piece on the cusp of the New Year as two omniscient figures fight within the cogs and gears of the Hudsucker clock while Norville’s fate hangs literally in the balance. The Coens craftily suspend time for a few moments as they seem to be saying that an individual doesn’t have to be defined by their past and that the future always brings the promise of something new, a chance to redefine oneself. The future is now indeed.

The Hudsucker Proxy contained all of the Coens’ trademarks, however, something seemed to be missing from the mix. Perhaps it was the fact that Proxy was the Coens' second homage to the screwball comedy (the first being Raising Arizona) and this time out their reach far exceeded their grasp. As a critic in Sight and Sound observed, Norville Barnes is a Preston Sturges hero trapped in a Frank Capra story, existing in a world created by Fritz Lang. It is this rather odd mixture that may account for Proxy's demise. Or it may simply be that the Coen brothers do not make mainstream films. They have always had a detached view towards their characters – we never fully identify with them or get to know what makes them tick. As a result, there is no meeting the Coens half way. You either like their films or you don't. It didn't hurt that despite the media blitz for the film, it was virtually absent from most movie theaters outside of large, metropolitan cities. That being said, there is a lot going on and a lot to admire in The Hudsucker Proxy. The film has aged surprisingly well over the years and deserves a long overdue re-appraisal.

The Hitcher

It was the film no one wanted to make. It became the film no one wanted to see. When The Hitcher came out in 1986, it barely made a dent in the box office and what few critics did see the film, hated it for the unrelenting sadism and brutality that occurred with seemingly no rhyme or reason. The film was quickly relegated to home video hell and doomed to obscurity. And then a curious thing happened. The Hitcher gradually began to take on a second life through word of mouth, spawned by the riveting performance of Rutger Hauer, the actor who played the frightening yet charismatic antagonist. The film, much like its villain, is a nasty piece of work that doesn’t care if you like it or not – it just wants to scare the living hell out of you and I would argue that it does so with a refreshing simplicity. The Hitcher doesn’t beg to be psychoanalyzed – it is something to experience in all of its white-knuckled intensity. The film has gone to inspire films like Jeepers Creepers (2001) and The Forsaken (2001) and spawn a vastly inferior sequel and remake.

Jim Halsey (C. Thomas Howell) is driving a car for someone else across the country en route to San Diego. We meet him traveling along a deserted stretch of highway out in the middle of barren desolate terrain buffeted by mountains somewhere in Texas. As night gradually becomes very early morning, Jim struggles to stay awake. At one point, he actually drifts off and nearly drives headlong into a truck. It begins to rain heavily and he spots a lone figure on the side of the road. Ignoring the advice his mother once told him, Jim stops for the hitchhiker – a decision he will come to regret.

The man introduces himself as John Ryder (Rutger Hauer) and right from the get-go something doesn’t seem right about him. He doesn’t tell Jim where he’s going and when they pass a car on the side of the road, Ryder grabs Jim’s leg startling him so that they don’t stop. When Jim tells Ryder to get out, he ignores him and instead tells the young man that the car they just passed belonged to a man who also gave him a ride but he didn’t get far. Ryder says with a laugh that makes us and Jim uneasy, “I cut off his legs and his arms and his head, and I’m going to do the same to you.” Ryder says this last bit with an almost bored indifference as if he were reciting a shopping list.

Ryder proceeds to hold Jim at knifepoint and plays excruciating head games with the young man, including forcing him to say the words, “I want to die.” Fortunately, Jim manages to push Ryder out of the car and drive off. He thinks that he’s free and clear, that he’ll never see this creepy psychopath again. However, this isn’t the last time Jim will see Ryder – it’s only the beginning of a nightmarish journey. Ryder proceeds to stalk Jim, making his life a living hell as he torments the young man in all sorts of sadistic ways, like ramming his car with a pickup truck or framing him for several murders that he in fact committed or nasty little things like putting a severed finger in his food at a diner.

Jim is forced to literally fight for his life as he tries desperately to escape this madman. Along the way, he enlists the help of Nash (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a beautiful young waitress at a diner, and the local cops but to no avail. Ryder is like a force of nature that will not be denied and it’s up to Jim to stop him. Most of the film plays out like a cruel game of cat and mouse as Ryder pushes Jim to the brink of madness.

C. Thomas Howell is good as a young man trapped in a terrifying situation. He is able to convey just the right amount of sweaty desperation as his character tries to figure out a way of this state of affairs. With younger-than-he-looks features and that reedy voice, Howell is well-cast as a naive twentysomething who is forced to grow up real fast and do things he would never have dreamed of doing before. Up to that point in his career, Howell was known mostly as a Teen Beat poster boy with sympathetic roles in films like The Outsiders (1983) and director Robert Harmon uses this image to make Howell instantly sympathetic so that we care about what happens to his character. As the film progresses, Jim gradually comes apart at the seams while Ryder gets calmer and calmer – not at all the stereotypical psycho and his victim. Both actors get to play against type which makes them so interesting to watch.

Along with Wulfgar in Nighthawks (1980) and Roy Batty in Blade Runner (1982), John Ryder is one of Hauer’s signature roles. He has such a fascinating screen presence and infuses his character with a casual menace that is something to behold. He exudes an almost Zen-like calmness that is strangely unsettling. He has one of those dangerous smiles that on the surface seems inviting but is actually quite threatening. Hauer plays Ryder as an enigmatic force of nature. We are never told his backstory or find out why he’s doing this to Jim. These things aren’t important because the film exists entirely in the present. Even though Hauer doesn’t have all that much screen time, his presence dominates the film because when he does appear, he is so charismatic that you can’t take your eyes off him. Throughout it all, the actor gives Ryder a genial grin but it’s those eyes of his that tell a different story, one of madness. Unbeknownst to Hauer, during filming, Howell found him “frightening, intimidating, and that he was in a constant state of fear, almost as if he really was Jim Halsey and I really was John Ryder.” It certainly translates on the screen and makes the film better for it.

I always wondered if most of the film is a nightmare that Jim experiences and that his dream state starts when he nods off at the beginning of the film with Ryder as a grinning boogeyman, the 1980s answer to Robert Mitchum’s evil preacher in The Night of the Hunter (1955). Ryder seems to magically appear just when Jim begins to feel a tiny bit safe. Interestingly, Jim also dreams while holed up in a jail cell and when he awakes it feels like he’s still dreaming, that none of what is happening is real. In retrospect, Hauer has said of his character, “To me he doesn’t exist. He’s just a ghost that comes out of the desert.” Another theory that has been put out there is that Jim is schizophrenic and that Ryder is actually a split personality with Jim, in reality, doing all of the killing. This is one of the things that elevates The Hitcher above your typical hack-and-slash horror film from the 1980s – it is open to interpretation because it refuses to provide in easy answers.

Director Robert Harmon certainly knows how to ratchet up the tension when required, like in the scene where Jim wakes up in a seemingly empty police station only to find everyone in it dead. The opening scene between Jim and Ryder also crackles with intensity as the psycho nonchalantly threatens the young man. Eric Red wrote the screenplay and this was the follow-up to the one he wrote for Near Dark (1987). Both films are set in desolate Texas landscapes with protagonists thrust into nightmarish worlds that they must try and escape from. Red has a real knack for exploring extreme behavior that offers glimpses into the darkest parts of our souls. For a film that has such a notorious reputation, people tend to forget that The Hitcher isn’t all that gory. Even its most shocking set piece largely happens off-screen but, much like with the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), the use of sound and our imagination fills in everything else to horrifying effect.

When he was 20-years-old, New York City-based writer Eric Red made a short film entitled, “Gunman’s Blues” in the hopes of getting the opportunity to direct a feature-length film. When no offers came, he moved from New York to Austin, Texas in 1983, taking a drive-away car cross-country (just like Jim in the film). During the journey, Red had a lot of time to think and became inspired by The Doors song, “Riders on the Storm.” He found that the “elements of the song – a killer on the road in a storm plus the cinematic feel of the music – would make a terrific opening for a film.” According to Hauer, Red had Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards in mind when he wrote the part of John Ryder. Interestingly, the screenwriter also felt that the character should have an electronic voice box. For seven months, he drove a cab and wrote the screenplay for The Hitcher.

After it was completed, Red sent a letter to several Hollywood producers asking if he could send them a copy of his script for The Hitcher. His letter concluded: “It (the story) grabs you by the guts and does not let up and it does not let go. When you read it, you will not sleep for a week. When the movie is made, the country will not sleep for a week.” Script development executive David Bombyk received a copy of Red’s letter and was intrigued by the description of the film. Red sent him a script that ran approximately 190 pages in length (one page traditionally equals one minute of screen time). By all accounts, the original script was not for the faint of heart: an entire family was slaughtered in their station wagon; an eyeball was discovered inside a hamburger; a woman was tied to a truck and a pole and then torn in half; there was a decapitation, as well as several slashings, shootings and car crashes. A big fan of horror films, Red has said that his favorite scene in the script is when the woman is torn apart.

In its original form, Bombyk found the script to be “extremely brutal and extremely gory,” but he and personal manager Kip Ohman (who later became co-producers of the film) also saw in it “a level of challenge, intensity and poetry.” In addition, Ohman described the script as “a suspense Hitchcockian-type thriller.” Bombyk and Ohman were worried about getting it in good enough shape to show their bosses in order to prove to them that it was more than an exploitation film. Bombyk worked with Red via several long distance phone calls to Texas and eventually the writer moved to Los Angeles. Red agreed to work with Ohman on the script until it was ready to be shown to the powers that be. The two men spent six months reworking the script, removing most of what Ohman felt was repetitive violence.

Bombyk brought a revised, toned down version of the script to his boss, producer Eric Feldman and his partner Charles Meeker. Feldman had cut his teeth in the movie biz shepherding a diverse collection of films like Six Pack (1982), Hot Dog... the Movie (1984), Witness (1985), and Explorers (1985). They liked the script but wondered, “how could we manage to translate it to the screen without making a slasher movie?” Meeker said. Feldman and Meeker decided to come on board as executive producers. At this time, Bombyk had also given a copy of the revised script to David Madden, a production executive for 20th Century Fox. Within a few days, Madden called back and told them that the script was “terrific.” However, the studio wasn’t comfortable with the subject matter, but they felt that the writing was unique and interesting enough to give the producers a letter-of-intent to distribute The Hitcher. This would allow them to get financing and then once filming was completed, the studio would reimburse them for the budget.

The producers went looking for an inexpensive director. Still photographer-turned-cameraman Robert Harmon was given a copy of the script by his agent but thought it was just another script – that is, until he listened to a series of messages left by his agent on his answering machine encouraging him to read it. Harmon read the script and early the next morning called his agent and told him that he wanted to do it. In February 1984, the director met with the producers to talk about the project. He recalled, “Even the exact actions that remained in the script were described in much bloodier and gorier detail.” The producers were impressed with Harmon and the fact that he also envisioned the film as a Hitchcockian thriller. However, he objected to the eyeball in the hamburger scene and never planned to show the poor girl getting ripped in half.

Fox ultimately rejected the project over the size of the budget and saw it as a “straight-out horror movie.” Madden also admitted that he would have “argued to soften the movie. There were some people at the studio who thought it was pretty gross.” Feldman and Meeker optioned the film themselves, paying Red $25,000. Major studios like Universal Pictures and Warner Brothers passed on it, as did smaller ones like Orion Pictures and New World Pictures. Reportedly, many executives liked the script but balked at the girl being ripped in half scene. At least two studios were willing to consider making The Hitcher but only if Harmon was replaced. However, to their credit, the producers had faith in the director and stuck by him.

Independent producer Donna Dubrow had heard about The Hitcher while working on another film and to her it sounded like “Duel with a person.” When she went on to work for Silver Screen Partners/Home Box Office, she contacted Feldman, a former employer, and asked for a copy of Red’s script. She submitted it to her boss, HBO senior vice-president Maurice Singer. He liked it and sent it back to New York to be read by Michael Fuchs, HBO chairman and chief operating officer. They needed his approval to get the film made. It would not be easy to convince him because it was not the kind of material that he liked. Sure enough, he passed on the project. However, Dubrow had to go back to New York on other business and met with Fuchs. She mentioned The Hitcher script and pitched the Hitchcockian thriller angle. He listened politely to her and that was that.

When Dubrow returned to L.A., Singer told her that Fuchs agreed to make the film but with the stipulation that the girl would not be torn apart and the violence would be reduced. Over the next few months, the filmmakers negotiated two key scenes in the script with studio executives: the girl getting ripped apart and the eyeball in the hamburger. For the latter scene, Harmon just changed the body part to a finger. As for the former, everyone at HBO/Silver Screen, except Dubrow, wanted it changed. Fuchs did not want the girl to die but Dubrow argued that this would change the story significantly. There were arguments about how she should die and Dubrow remembers, “they were trying to make her death not horrible, when – by the nature of the script – it had to be.” The studio even suggested softening her death by having a funeral. The filmmakers refused to back down and executives finally relented at the last minute.

While these discussions were going on, the producers began the casting process. In early drafts, John Ryder had been described as skeletal in nature and so actors like David Bowie, Sting, Sam Shepard, Harry Dean Stanton, and Terence Stamp were mentioned. Harmon was set on casting Stamp and even carried around his picture to pitch meetings. The actor received a copy of the script but he turned down the role. Sam Elliott was offered the role but an agreement could not be reached on his salary. Singer mentioned Dutch actor Rutger Hauer. While in L.A. for a short visit, he read the script. Even though he was looking for non-villainous roles, the script “really got ahold of me ... I thought, ‘If I do one more villain, I should do this.’ I couldn’t refuse it.” The one reservation he had was with the scene of the girl being ripped apart and Feldman told him, “You are the bad guy and you’ll be the baddest bad guy there ever was!”

For the role of Jim Halsey, the producers mentioned Matthew Modine, Tom Cruise and Emilio Estevez (who, reportedly, was interested). They agreed on C. Thomas Howell and liked his look. At the time, the actor was being more selective with the roles he took and heard that the script was a generic thriller. Harmon personally gave Howell a copy of the script. The actor couldn’t put it down and “couldn’t believe the things that happened to my character in the first 12 pages. I knew I wanted to do it.” Howell also wanted to work with Hauer, fresh from a career-defining performance in Blade Runner. Jennifer Jason Leigh agreed to do the film because she also wanted to work with Hauer again (they co-starred in Flesh + Blood) and loved the character of Nash because “there was a real person there.”

The budget was set at $5.8 million and contractually, Tri-Star was obligated to distribute any film by HBO/Silver Screen. They saw an early screening and Tri-Star president David Matalon said, “It’s the best film that we have for 1986.” The Hitcher opened in 800 theaters and it performed poorly at the box office. To add insult to injury, it was also savaged by critics at the time. Roger Ebert gave the film no stars and wrote, “But on its own terms, this movie is diseased and corrupt.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “It's very clear what sort of spine-tingling suspense Mr. Harmon is after, and just as clear that neither his direction nor Eric Red's screenplay can generate that kind of intensity.” The Chicago Tribune’s Gene Siskel wrote, “This is the kind of movie that may satisfy the mentally deficient, but it is more likely to drive away from moviegoing every unsuspecting adult who stumbles into it hoping for a decent thrill or two.” In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Michael Wilmington wrote, "In the end, the only thing that does scare you about The Hitcher is its emptiness: not the emptiness of a desert road or a fear-soaked night, but a shriveling void in the people who made it." The one lone positive review came from Newsweek magazine’s Jack Kroll who called it “an odyssey of horror and suspense that’s as tightly wound as a garrote and as beautifully designed as a guillotine.”

In attempt at damage control, one of the film’s producers claimed that its commercial failure was because there wasn’t enough violence and that Nash’s death should have been shown: “There’s other gore in the movie, other killings, but this is the main one. It’s the motivation for the hero. You can’t show all the killings we showed and then not the main one. It’s cheating the audience.” He claimed that this hurt word-of-mouth and resulted in its dismal box office results.

In keeping with the current trend of remaking classic horror films that don’t need to be remade (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Friday the 13th), Michael Bay decided to give The Hitcher (2007) a go with music video director Dave Meyers behind the camera and television actress Sophia Bush in the C. Thomas Howell role along with fellow T.V. thespian Zachery Knighton in the Jennifer Jason Leigh role (sort of).

In this version, two college kids – Grace (Sophia Bush) and Jim (Zachery Knighton) – are traveling through New Mexico on the way to Spring Break. Along the way they pick up a mysterious hitchhiker who calls himself John Ryder (Sean Bean) and this remake proceeds to follow the original’s plot quite faithfully. This new version hits a false note right from the opening shot as a cute bunny rabbit is unnecessarily run over by a car in a feeble attempt to quickly establish the film’s badass credibility. Instead, it comes across as a lame attempt that does not bode well for the rest of the film. From there, it quickly trots out the stereotypes, including the slack-jawed yokel cliché complete with lazy eye no less.

Sean Bean is fine as the psychotic killer but he lacks the casual menace of Rutger Hauer who could go from genial to intensely frightening at the drop of a dime. Bean’s take on Ryder is rather generic – he is just another monster that has to be destroyed. With Hauer’s performance, there was a certain twinkle in his eyes, a sly look and shark-like grin as if to suggest that Ryder was actually getting off on all of the carnage he was causing. It’s damn near impossible to improve on an iconic character such as this one and Bean doesn’t quite do it but certainly gets an A for effort. Sophia Bush and Zachery Knighton don’t fare nearly as well as the good-looking young couple but to be honest their characters could be played by anyone. It doesn’t help that they lack any kind of on-screen chemistry. They don’t do anything to make themselves distinctive and certainly don’t hold a candle to their original counterparts, C. Thomas Howell and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

To his credit, first-time feature film director Dave Meyers shoots the hell out of the film. It looks good and almost distracts you from the weak script and generic performances. Sadly, much of the ingenuity he demonstrates in some of his music video work is absent here except for a car chase that is scored to “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails. The same holds true for the scare tactics as Meyers eschews the original’s unrelenting terror for cheap jolts that we’ve seen in countless other, better movies.

This film proves yet again that producer Michael Bay has no understanding of the horror genre, merely offering up a clone of the original film. The Hitcher was a nasty little horror film that had no ambitions other than to scare the crap out of you and succeeded due in large part to Rutger Hauer’s creepy turn as a charismatic and seemingly unstoppable hitchhiker cum killer. The film was an exercise in white knuckle primal fear, charting a young man’s journey on the road trip from hell. What makes The Hitcher so scary is that it takes the plausible set-up of picking up a hitchhiker and then proceeds to take it to all kinds of unexpected places. The film plays on some pretty basic fears only to then heighten them to almost absurd levels as represented by the nearly superhuman Ryder who seems capable of anything. The original film’s stature has improved over the years, helped along by the unnecessary sequel and the instantly forgettable remake. All they do is remind one just how superior the original is – a timeless horror film featuring the ultimate boogeyman.

For more on The Hitcher, check out Sean Gill's fantastic review of the film over at his blog, Junta Juleil's Culture Shock where, last week, he dedicated entirely to Rutger Hauer!

Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle

The 1990s was a good decade for Jennifer Jason Leigh. She was not only prolific, flirting with mainstream films like Backdraft (1991), but also at the height of her creative powers, turning out one astonishing performance after another, disappearing into her roles with chameleon-like proficiency. It was also the decade where she tackled her most challenging roles in a way that threatened to alienate the critics and her fans. In Georgia (1995), she played a struggling musician who has the heart but not the talent as evident in an excruciatingly awful cover of a Van Morrison song that goes on for so long that it tests the resolve of even the most die-hard Leigh fan.

She also tackled stylized, almost impenetrable accents in The Hudsucker Proxy (1993), the Coen brothers’ homage to screwball comedies, and her crowning achievement, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994), where she portrayed legendary writer Dorothy Parker with incredible accuracy. The film was directed by Robert Altman protégé Alan Rudolph, a talented filmmaker with a frustratingly uneven filmography. With Altman attached as producer, Rudolph was able to assemble an impressive cast – a who’s who of ‘90s character actors, like Campbell Scott, Lili Taylor and James LeGros; and survivors from the 1980s, like Matthew Broderick, Jennifer Beals and Andrew McCarthy. It is to Rudolph’s credit that he is able to handle such a large and diverse cast, so much so that a cheat sheet is almost required in order to keep track of who everyone is. Admittedly, Rudolph plays large portions of Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle fast and loose, letting this talented cast run with their characters. For the most part it works, especially the scenes that take place in the Algonquin Hotel.

Dorothy Parker’s heyday was in New York City during the Roaring Twenties where she was part of a thriving literary scene known as “the era of giants.” She got her start writing captions for lingerie ads at Vanity Fair magazine and worked her way up to drama critic, an unheard of position for a woman at that time. She quickly made enemies with her scathing reviews. Parker was fired and became a freelancer along with her close friend and editor Robert Benchley who quit the magazine in protest. She and other New York writers lunched at the Rose Room of the Algonquin Hotel in gatherings they cheekily referred to as “board meetings.” She eventually married screenwriter Alan Campbell and wrote scripts for several Hollywood films but loathed the process and studio machinations in general.

We first meet Parker (Jennifer Jason Leigh) in Hollywood circa 1937 where she runs into Benchley (Campbell Scott). Even though they’re both married they still flirt with each other by trading witty barbs. After they go their separate ways, a stagehand says to Parker, “Must’ve been so colorful in the ‘20s,” to which she replies, “Was it? I barely remember.” This entire sequence is shot in black and white and has a melancholy air to it, accentuated by Mark Isham’s moody jazz score. The film proceeds to flash back to the 1920s and changes to color with a slight sepia tone as if we’re looking at old photographs.

We see the creation of the famous Algonquin Round Table as it starts off with three people ordering food which then grows into five and quickly expands from there until the best and the brightest literary minds in New York City converge on a regular basis to eat, drink and banter endlessly with one another. These scenes demonstrate Altman’s influence on Rudolph as people talk over each other and the overlapping dialogue forces one to follow whatever conversation they please. As the scenes in the Algonquin continue, the table gets larger to accommodate all of the people and the dialogue flies fast and furious. It’s a veritable feast for lovers of witty repartee. In fact, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle often feels and looks like the best Altman film he never made.

Right from the get-go, Jennifer Jason Leigh disappears into her role complete with Dorothy Parker’s distinctive way of speaking. The actress certainly looks the part with her bob haircut and vintage outfits. However, it is Parker’s trademark scathing wit that Leigh nails perfectly. It is her devotion to the characters she plays and her willingness to give herself completely over to them that is one of her most admirable traits. She’s not afraid to show the darker side of the characters she portrays and Dorothy Parker is no different as we see the famous writer undergo a painful abortion and, in another scene, come across as a boozy mess (and yet Leigh still looks great) that attempts suicide by cutting her wrists with a straight razor. It’s a hard scene to watch not because Rudolph shows it (he doesn’t) but we hear it and our imagination fills in the rest. It is so much fun just to see the way she carries herself in any give scene. The actress makes it all look so effortless as it almost seems like she’s channeling Parker. However, this uncanny representation of Parker divided critics, some of whom found her accent impenetrable. Regardless, it’s a brave performance and an absolute crime that Leigh didn’t get nominated or win an Academy Award for her efforts.

The rest of the cast follows her lead, especially Campbell Scott as her best friend and confidante. Leigh and Scott have fantastic chemistry together and do a great job of conveying the unrequited love that existed between Parker and Benchley like the proverbial elephant in the room in the sense that they never address it. However, they do flirt with each other and a typical exchange involves her telling him, “I could kiss you but I’m not sure it would come out right,” to which he replies, “You’re afraid you might melt the gold in my teeth.” Scott is Leigh’s ideal foil as he captures Benchley’s idiosyncratic mannerisms and slightly nervous speech pattern. Scott really shines in a scene where, during a theatrical review featuring the Round Table regulars, Benchley delivers a financial report. Initially, it looks like he’s going to flop in a big way as he dryly rattles off facts. Scott nails his character’s nervous tics and awkward physical gestures. And then an interesting thing happens – Benchley gradually wins over the audience with his awkward shtick. Scott pulls it off with a showstopping performance.

Alan Rudolph was fascinated with writers from the Round Table as a child and this manifested itself in his love for Gluyas Williams’ illustrations in a collection of Robert Benchley’s amusing essays. After making The Moderns (1988), a film about American expatriates in 1920s Paris, he wanted to tackle a fact-based drama set in the same era. He began work on a screenplay with Randy Sue Coburn entitled, Mrs. Parker. In 1992, Rudolph attended a Fourth of July party hosted by Robert Altman who introduced him to Jennifer Jason Leigh. Rudolph was surprised by her physical resemblance to Dorothy Parker and impressed with her knowledge about the Jazz Age.

The screenplay originally focused on the platonic relationship between Parker and Benchley but this did not appeal to any financial backers. There still were no takers even when Altman came on board as producer. The emphasis on Parker was the next change to the script but Rudolph still had no luck finding financing for “a period biography of a literate woman.” Altman finally stepped up and bullied Fine Line Features and Miramax Pictures – two studios he was making films for – to team up, with the former releasing Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle domestically and the latter handling foreign distribution. Altman claimed that he forced the film to be made by putting his own money into it and “I put other projects of mine hostage to it. I did a lot of lying.” He and Rudolph were able to raise the money for the $7 million budget but this didn’t come through until four weeks into principal photography.

Leigh was so committed to doing the film that she agreed to be in it for “a 10th of what I normally get for a film.” The rest of the cast followed her lead and agreed to work for much lower than their usual salaries. She did a great amount of research for the role and said, “I wanted to be as close to her as I possibly could.” To this end, Leigh stayed for a week at the Algonquin and read Parker’s entire body of work while there. She also listened repeatedly to the two existing audio recordings of the writer in order to perfect Parker’s distinctive voice. Leigh found that Parker “had a sensibility that I understand very, very well. A sadness. A depression.”

Rudolph shot the film in Montreal because the building facades in its old city section most closely resembled period New York City. The Rose Room in the Algonquin Hotel was recreated at two-thirds scale on a soundstage. Rudolph invited the actors to write their own dialogue which resulted in a chaotic first couple of days of principal photography. Campbell Scott remembered, “everyone hung on to what they knew about their characters and just sort of threw it out there.” They trusted their director implicitly during the 40-day shoot. The cast stayed in a run-down hotel dubbed Camp Rudolph and engaged in all-night poker games. Leigh chose not to participate in these activities, preferring instead to stay in character on and off camera.

Originally entitled, Mrs. Parker and the Round Table, it was changed to "Vicious Circle" because New Line was worried that people would think of King Arthur and not Dorothy Parker. In anticipation of the film’s release Altman admitted that “ it’s going to be a tough sell. We’re talking about literacy.” A rough cut was screened at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival and predictably divided critics. There were rumors that after this screening Leigh re-recorded several scenes that were criticized for being too difficult to understand because of her accent but she denied that this was done. Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle was generally well-received by critics. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and felt that the film was “best appreciated, I think, by those who already know the players around the Round Table, and have read some of their work. Others are likely to wonder what the fuss was about.” The Washington Post’s Hal Hinson praised Leigh for giving “a disturbing, emotionally raw performance.” In his review for the San Francisco Chronicle, Mick LaSalle also praised Leigh’s performance for giving “as bold a performance as ever, outlining the extreme personality of writer Dorothy Parker with equally extreme choices in manner and speech – and then inhabiting that outline with quirky delicacy and subtleties of feeling.” The New York Times’ Janet Maslin found that “there are major gaps, like the absence of any significant mention of Dorothy Parker's left-wing political passions. But this film crams a remarkable amount of fact and nuance into the telling of its wrenchingly sad story.” The film failed to wow Entertainment Weekly, however, which gave it a “C+” rating. Owen Gleiberman wrote, “The question the movie fails to come to grips with is: How do you get audiences to care about a woman who, in the end, didn't give a damn about herself?”

The great tragedy of Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle is that Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley were so obviously in love with each other and yet never worked up the courage to express their true feelings for one another. Despite being a part of such a vibrant artistic and social scene, Parker is often portrayed as a sad, lonely figure. Rudolph’s film portrays her as a complex person that wrote out of a great pain. She was brilliant and a trailblazer for her time. She never found the true happiness that she sought with Benchley and resigned herself to an unhappy life but out of this produced some great literature that has stood the test of time.