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 Commitments

Everyone wants to relive a magical cinematic moment. A film or theater or evening that just makes one want to return back in time. For me, one such experience was the first time I saw The Commitments (1991). It was a film that spoke endless depths of sincerity both in spoken and sung dialogue. When it first came out, Alan Parker’s film became a bonafide cultural phenomenon with the soundtrack album climbing up the charts. People were hungry for authentic-sounding music, tired of the hedonistic hairspray bands of the 1980’s. To its credit, the film still stands as an unabashed love letter to the belief that music can change your life and make a difference.

Jimmy Rabbitte (Robert Arkins) aspires to be the manager of the world’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll band, with only one kind of music in mind: Soul. Disgusted with the current state of bands in Ireland, this determined young man decides to assemble an old school Dublin soul band in the tradition of greats like Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett. Jimmy holds auditions out of his parents’ house (in which he still lives, by the by) and soon assembles his group of young musicians whom he can’t wait to mould. With the help of Joey “The Lips” Fagan (John Murphy), the only veteran musician in the band, Jimmy begins to whip the rest of the members into stage-ready shape.

One of the things that makes The Commitments work so well is its brazen cast of relative unknowns. These actors come with no preconceived notions or baggage that name actors bring to the table (Bruce McDonald’s rock ‘n’ roll movie, Hard Core Logo, would also successfully employ the same technique). With the exception of two band members, they were all real musicians, lending the film fresh authenticity. Parker showed his aptitude for working with first-time actors with Fame (1980) and did it again, more genuinely, with this film.

For such a large cast, all of the characters are beautifully realized. From the egotistical lead singer, Decco (Andrew Strong), to minor characters such as Jimmy’s Elvis-worshipping father (Colm Meaney), Dick Clement, Ian Le Frenais and Roddy Doyle’s screenplay provides each character with his or her own unique character tics that define them. From Rabbitte’s colorful one-on-one interviews to Decco’s repugnant outbursts, the actors and their counterparts provide hit after hit.

The Commitments has been said to be a musical with dialogue intervals, due to the infusion of music everywhere. Everyone in the community is in touch with music. From the local gangster (“Everything’s shite since Roy Orbison died.”) to Mr. Rabbitte (“Elvis wasn’t a Cajun! That’s fuckin’ blasphemy!”), it’s in everyone. It is Jimmy who articulates the very essence that drives the film when he delivers an impassioned speech about the power of soul music. “Sure it’s basic and it’s simple but it’s something else. Something special. Cos it’s honest. There’s no fucking bullshit. It sticks its neck out and says it straight from the heart.” What unites The Commitments’ band members; however, is really a bit more than a love of music. This band is a way out for them. It is a release for them. It is something that they can all look forward to, something that represents possibilities. Bernie (Bronagh Gallagher), stuck working a chippie van, or Decco, the bus conductor — they’re all in need.

The dialogue, in particular the banter between the members of the band, is another strength of the film. Their conversations are littered with “familiar profanities” that are utterly convincing considering that these kids (the actors, that is) come from the urban slums of Dublin. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the film’s source material is Roddy Doyle’s book of the same name. Finally, the best part of the film is the music. The concert footage (and its corresponding audio) was recorded live, which separates it from films that use previously recorded music that always sounds too polished, too lip synched. There is a rawness and energy to the musical sequences that perfectly captures the experience of seeing a band live. This is due in large part to how the musicians perform, most surprisingly Andrew Strong, who was only 16 years old at the time and had a voice made to sing gritty soul music. It is also due to how Parker photographs them all. He uses snap zooms and employs many close-ups of their faces and them playing their instruments. It gives these sequences a you-are-there immediacy that is very effective.

After making several Hollywood films in the United States, Parker “wanted to do something that wasn’t so colossally expensive ... I wanted to do something lighter and with music.” While making Come See the Paradise (1990), two British screenwriters, Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, turned him on to Doyle’s 1986 novel The Commitments. Parker felt that he understood and empathized with the characters. Clement, La Frenais and Doyle ended up writing the screenplay together.

Parker started work on the film in the summer of 1990 when he flew into Dublin to hold auditions. It was important to him that all of his actors be musicians first. Casting directors assembled 64 bands from Dublin’s club scene and after seeing approximately 3,000 musicians, Parker picked 12 for the main cast. According to the director, the musicians were cast “to be pretty close to the kinds of personalities they already had, so they’re not playing roles outside of themselves.”

The Commitments received mostly positive reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, “The result is a movie that doesn't lead anywhere in particular and may not have a profound message — other than that it's hell at the top, however low the top may be. But the movie is filled with life and energy, and the music is honest. The Commitments is one of the few movies about a fictional band that's able to convince us the band is real and actually plays together.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “The Commitments finds Mr. Parker again doing what he does expertly: assembling a group of talented newcomers, editing snippets of their exploits into a hyperkinetic jumble, and filling the air with song.” Time magazine’s Richard Corliss wrote, “The Commitments finds Mr. Parker again doing what he does expertly: assembling a group of talented newcomers, editing snippets of their exploits into a hyperkinetic jumble, and filling the air with song.” However, Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “C” rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “The idea that the Commitments are doing something revolutionary by ‘bringing’ soul to Dublin is downright insulting. In Parker's hands, soul music becomes little more than a self-serving metaphor — an easy symbol for ‘commitment’ and integrity. His film celebrates musical daring without having a shred of it.”

The Commitments refuses to resort to sappy altruism. This music isn’t going to save the world but it does enrich these characters’ lives for a brief moment in time. Apparently, other people felt the same way. After the film debuted in theaters, the band in the film actually toured (and continues to tour to this day albeit with only some of the original members) the country and people fell in love with the movie and the music. The Commitments ranks right up there with Hard Core Logo (1996) and Almost Famous (2000) as one of the greatest films about a fictional band’s rise and fall.

Grace of My Heart

Grace of My Heart (1996) is Allison Anders’ unabashed love letter to three decades of popular music, from the doo-wop era of the late 1950’s, to the rise of girl groups in the 1960’s to the psychedelic era of the 1970’s, all seen through the eyes of a female songwriter cast in the mould of Carole King, among others. Anders’ passion project finally gave a substantial role to character actress Illeana Douglas who, finally freed from the shackles of numerous supporting character roles over the years, delivers a career-defining performance. Despite the pedigree of having Martin Scorsese as executive producer and the likes of John Turturro and Matt Dillon in supporting roles, Grace of My Heart was not a commercial hit, and was quickly eclipsed by another nostalgic look at popular music from the ‘60s that came out the same year – Tom Hanks’ That Thing You Do! (1996), which, incidentally, wasn’t a huge hit either but had much more advertising muscle behind it. For all of its flaws, which include a weak third act, Grace of My Heart is a fascinating look at a time when the craft of writing a good song mattered. It is a film that deserves to be rediscovered.


Edna Buxton (Illeana Douglas) comes from a wealthy suburban Philadelphia family whose mother has her life all figured out – marry a man from another wealthy family and live the rest of her life as an obedient housewife. Let’s not forget that the film begins in 1958 where this was the prevailing attitude. However, a chance encounter with a talented singer by the name of Doris Shelley (Jennifer Leigh Warren) backstage at a local talent contest inspires her to pick a different path in life for herself, one that is not planned by her controlling mother. Edna wins the contest, receives a recording contract and moves to New York City to make it as a singer.

However, Edna finds out that there are all kinds of women who sound just like her and sing the same kinds of songs. A kindly yet condescending engineer (Richard Schiff) tells her that guy groups are where it’s at. Her life changes when she meets Joel Milner (John Turturro), a brilliant record producer who convinces Edna to write songs for others. She figures that this will do until she can record her own material. He also changes her decidedly unglamorous name to the catchier Denise Waverly. They work out of the legendary Brill Building, the headquarters for pop-music during the ’50s and ‘60s and which saw the likes of Burt Bacharach, Neil Diamond, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Phil Spector and many others write some of the biggest hits at the time.

With Denise’s insistence, Joel records one her songs with a girl group known as the Stylettes and it is a hit, bucking the prevailing trend of popular guy groups. Joel then pairs her up with Howard Caszatt (Eric Stoltz), a Beatnik poseur who injects social issues into the songs he writes with her. I like that Anders shows Denise and Howard writing a song together and we see them coming up with ideas for lyrics and melodies. They soon become romantically involved and get married after she becomes pregnant. After she has the baby, Denise continues to work, quite unusual for the times, but it becomes obvious that she has a real knack for creating hit songs while Howard appears to be holding her back. This causes tension in their personal lives and it’s not long before she catches him in bed with another woman.

The next man in Denise’s life is popular radio disc jockey John Murray (Bruce Davison) who becomes smitten with her and uses his show to promote a controversial song she wrote. He’s a nice enough guy and seems like the one she should be with instead of the pretentious Howard; it’s just too bad that he’s married. During the course of the film, Anders also shows the rivalry between fellow female songwriters, like when Joel brings Cheryl Steed (Patsy Kensit) in to write hit songs and Denise immediately sees her as direct competition. Cheryl even gets a better office then Denise who has been there longer. Cheryl quickly becomes Joel’s new favorite songwriter, much to Denise’s dismay but she puts on a brave face in public.

Joel then decides to team her up with Cheryl as an experiment and the two women are instructed to write a song for bubblegum pop singer Kelly Porter (Bridget Fonda channeling Leslie Gore). Initially, they don’t know what to write about but after being privy to a secret part of Kelly’s personal life they figure it out. Cheryl and Denise bond over the Porter song, become close friends, and generate a hit. After years of writing songs for other people, Joel reminds Denise that she started working for him to create her own music and sets her up with Jay Phillips (Matt Dillon), a brilliant yet temperamental musician from the West Coast, to produce her single. It is at this point that Grace of My Heart shifts from songwriters working in the Brill Building to the experimental West Coast psychedelic scene and some momentum is lost. It may be that Jay and his world is just not as fascinating as Joel and his. It also doesn’t help that John Turturro’s performance is so strong and memorable, while Matt Dillon seems miscast as the mercurial Brian Wilson-esque Jay.

Illeana Douglas is an unconventional choice to play Denise. Her speaking voice doesn’t really match up with the person cast as her singing voice (the fantastic sounding Kristen Vigard) but it is refreshing to see someone who doesn’t look or act like your traditional A-list movie star and it would only happen in an independent film like this one. Douglas makes it work, using her considerable talents to show the different sides of her character – her doubts, fears and aspirations – while also running through the spectrum of emotions. There are scenes where she breaks down completely, is romantic, funny, and really digs deep within herself to fully inhabit Denise. The veteran actress shows a vulnerability that is fascinating to watch, especially the scene where she records her first single, the soulful and soaring “God Give Me Strength” (written by Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello no less!). This is a criminally underrated performance that should’ve won her every acting award the year it came out.

John Turturro, with his black suit, goatee and sunglasses, plays a nicer, more neurotic version of Phil Spector, the legendary record producer and pioneer of the Wall of Sound production technique, mixed with Don Kirshner, a rock producer who gave Neil Diamond and Carole King their starts. Of all the men that pass in and out of Denise’s life, he is a consistent presence and the voice of reason, constantly reminding her about her considerable talent while never candy-coating his opinions on her music or her life. He plays a flashy personality and one of the film’s pleasures is watching how he plays off of Douglas. There is a wonderful scene between them where Denise apologizes for her first single leading to Joel’s financial ruin but he dismisses that notion, reminding her that she wrote his first hit and many after as well as inspiring him to take chances he would have never done otherwise. It a touching moment between the two characters – one in which we see Joel let his guard down for moment and in doing so it reveals a lot about him. It is so rare that Turturro plays nice, decent guys and so it is a real treat to see him refreshingly cast against type in this film.

In 1994, Allison Anders was gearing up to direct Paul Is Dead from an autobiographical screenplay with Hugh Grant lined up to star. Then, a month before the start of filming, the actor pulled out and with it the financing, which was contingent on his participation. Understandably upset, Anders was woman without a film. In stepped Martin Scorsese who had written a fan letter to Anders after seeing Gas Food Lodging (1992). He was eager to team up his then girlfriend and actress Illeana Douglas with Anders for a film that he would produce. After making Cape Fear (1991), Douglas had acted in but was ultimately cut out of a string of impressive films: Jungle Fever (1991), Husbands and Wives (1992), and Quiz Show (1994). Feeling depressed as a result of these snubs, she talked to Scorsese who recommended she start developing relationships with directors. Douglas went on to make a low-budget film called Grief (1993) and went to the Sundance Film Festival with it. There, she met Anders and they became friends. Afterwards, the two women kept in contact in the hopes of making a film together.

Initially, they wanted to do a biopic about American poet Anne Sexton but couldn’t get the film rights to her life. They were both obsessed with music, in particular Anders with girl groups from the ‘60s. Douglas told her about how she used to work in the Brill Building as an assistant for infamous New York publicist Peggy Segal and that maybe they should do a film about it. As a result, Anders wrote the role of Edna/Denise specifically for Douglas. When it came to writing the screenplay, both women put a lot of personal details into it. For example, Denise’s relationship with Jay was reminiscent of Douglas and Scorsese. When Anders thought of Douglas for the film, she was looking for an actress to “embody all sorts of contradictions. I have to find the right woman to speak to other women.” However, the actress was worried about how women would react to Denise’s habit of getting involved with men who aren’t good for and tended to sidetrack her dream of recording her own album, “because women don’t want to think Edna would let a guy interrupt a career. But that’s the big secret: Women always think that being loved is much more important than being talented.”

The script originally started as the story of one singer/songwriter but then Anders and Douglas started to add aspects of others: Joni Mitchell, Phil Spector and the Beach Boys. Legendary songwriter Gerry Goffin, who was married to Carole King at one time, was brought into write three songs for the film (including one with his daughter and recording artist Louise Goffin) and also gave Anders a lot of autobiographical information, which she incorporated into the script. Instead of using actual songs that came from the time period, Anders decided to have new songs that sounded like they came from that era because “it would have been very confusing to have these fictional characters writing songs that were already well-known to the public.” Originally, Douglas expected to do her own singing, having started out doing musicals, but the studio wanted to make a lucrative record deal and she had to lip-synch to Kirsten Vigard’s voice.

Grace of My Heart is a treasure trove of hidden gems for music fans who are hip to the music and the musicians of the eras it depicts. For example, towards the end of the film Denise uses her skill for crafting pop songs towards creating very personal ballads, much like Carole King did with her top selling record Tapestry, which inspired some of the songs. In her previous films, Anders used alternative rock (Gas Food Lodging) and hip-hop (Mi Vida Loca) as the soundtrack for stories about young women. While Grace of My Heart is about music from a bygone era, she had contemporary indie rockers team up with seasoned veterans. Gerry Goffin, the inspiration for Howard Caszatt, wrote a song with Los Lobos. Brill Building veteran Carole Bayer Sayer teamed up with Eurythmics guitarist Dave Stewart on a song. Easily the best collaboration on the film’s soundtrack saw Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach pen the signature song “God Give Me Strength,” which went on to become more successful than the film itself.

Grace of My Heart was made on a small budget and there wasn’t much money to advertise it. The film opened in only 39 theaters in North America and failed to make back its $5 million budget. To make matters worse, it was quickly overshadowed by Tom Hanks’ That Thing You Do!, which came out shortly after. It received mostly mixed reviews with critics praising the time spent on the Brill Building era but criticizing the last third where Denise moves out to the West Coast to be with Jay. Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “B” rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “Once Grace of My Heart leaves the Brill Building, the movie gets stranded in a parade of '60s clichés. It turns into the most banal of melodramas, complete with a ''tragic'' finale that plays as borderline kitsch. Still, there's no denying Anders' talent. She should have been content to make a catchy single and not stretched it into an overblown rock opera.” The Globe and Mail’s Rick Groen gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote, “In its embracing of easy melodrama, of the wronged woman who endures and then prevails, Grace Of My Heart hopes to emulate the elegant simplicity of the pop music it celebrates. But that combination, as potent as it is rare, is hard to bring off – like her hired melody-makers, Anders gets the simplicity yet misses the elegance. All the trite notes are there, but none of the redeeming grace.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “Ms. Anders, who displayed such effortless, down-to-earth feminism in Gas Food Lodging, has to strain harder to make a heroine out of Denise. Ms. Douglas plays her eagerly, but the film casts her as an old-fashioned victim in many clichéd ways … This story offers so little novelty that the film's musical score and great retro costumes easily upstage its drama.”

The San Francisco Chronicle’s Edward Guthman wrote, “Anders is very good to her actors and writes smart, well-rounded characters. Her problem is loving them too much, embracing them too tightly and not knowing when to let go.” Roger Ebert gave the film two-and-a-half stars out four and wrote, “I would have preferred a more limited story that went deeper, instead of a docudrama that covers so much ground, so relentlessly, that we grow weary.” The Washington Post’s Richard Harrington wrote, “One major problem is that Grace of My Heart feels like a preview reel from some upcoming miniseries. Despite its two hours, events seem to unfold too quickly and in too little depth. Anders never really captures the communal bustle, competitive friendships or astounding productivity of the Brill Building's golden age.” In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Jack Mathews wrote, “Grace marvelously re-creates that atmosphere of sweatshop creativity, both the pressure and the joy, and Douglas' portrayal of a woman fighting for her own identity and a piece of the action gives the story a solid emotional footing.” USA Today gave the film three out of four stars and Susan Wloszczyna wrote, “Allison Anders (Gas Food Lodging) infuses her epic with joy and a keen eye for pre-feminist details, before the pill and pantyhose set us free.”

Ultimately, Grace of My Heart is the story of a survivor. Denise endures all kinds of ups and downs in her personal and professional life with music as the constant thread that runs throughout. It is always there for her whereas the men in her life come and go. Her personal journey propels the film and when it hits a lull this mirrors the lull in her life until someone like Joel comes along and gets her going and the film’s narrative starts up again. By the end of the film you really feel like you’ve been on a journey with this character. Denise channels all of her life experiences into her music and so it makes sense that the film climaxes with her finally recording and releasing the full-length album she had always wanted to do. It is rare when you see a film that is such a labor of love as this one. Anders and Douglas poured so much of themselves into this project and it shows. Grace of My Heart may strain at times under its own ambition but one has to admire its desire to do so in a day and age where so many films and filmmakers play it safe.

DVD of the Week: Crazy Heart

In 2010, Jeff Bridges finally received an Academy Award for acting after several previous nominations over the years and a long, illustrious career chock full of diverse roles in films as varied as the murder mystery Cutter’s Way (1981), big-budget science fiction with Tron (1982), playing a gifted musician alongside his real-life brother Beau in The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989), a cult film stoner comedy with The Big Lebowski (1998), and even playing the President of the United States in The Contender (2000). Bridges’ best films are character-driven ones where he is allowed to fully immerse himself in a role. Crazy Heart (2009) is that kind of a film. Made independently for little money, it almost did not come out in time for end of the year awards consideration but once word got around of Bridges’ gritty, heartfelt performance, the accolades (and awards) came flooding in and deservedly so for the veteran actor.


Bad Blake (Jeff Bridges) is a burnt-out country and western musician who travels endless stretches of highway all over the United States just so he can play a bowling alley in some dead-end part of a town in New Mexico. In between gigs, he lives his life in a bottle of alcohol, the only thing that seems to keep him going and what is also destroying his world-weary body. It’s safe to say that Blake has definitely seen better days.


While doing a gig in Santa Fe, he agrees to be interviewed by Jean Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal), the niece of a local musician he’s playing with and a writer for a small newspaper. There’s something about her that catches his eye and makes her stand out from the countless women he’s had flings with – maybe it’s her knack for initially resisting his sweaty, boozy charms. They begin a relationship and he starts to think about finding a way out of the self-destructive grind that is his life.


Jeff Bridges does a fantastic job transforming himself into the grizzled, bloated mess that is Blake. He’s one of those rare actors not afraid to look awful if the role calls for it. You can see the toll that Blake’s hard-drinking, hard-living life has taken on him etched all over Bridges’ face. The actor brings his customary authenticity to the role, including singing and playing Blake’s music.


He’s ably supported by the likes of Maggie Gyllenhaal as the woman in his life who decides to take a chance on him even though she knows what a trainwreck he is, Robert Duvall as an old friend of Blake’s who helps him get sober, and an uncredited Colin Farrell as his more successful protégé and who tries to help out his old mentor. They are all very good in this film, especially Farrell who also did his own singing and playing.


With Crazy Heart, writer/director Scott Cooper juxtaposes old school country with the slick sound of new country as represented by Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell), who has gone on to sell out arenas while Blake is still playing two-bit dives. The kind of music Blake plays is no longer popular anymore even though in a perfect world it should be. Ultimately, the film adheres to the tried and true conventions of the redemption story as we wonder if Blake has what it takes to clean himself up and get his life in order. What elevates Cooper’s film from others of its kind is the excellent performances of the entire cast led by Bridges’ fearless turn as a self-destructive man.

Special Features:


There are six deleted scenes clocking in at a total of ten minutes. We see more of Blake on the road performing live, which is a nice addition if only to see Bridges’ musical chops on display. We also see a bit more of Tommy living the good life on tour. Naturally, there is more footage of Blake and Jean’s relationship.


Finally, there is a theatrical trailer.

Eddie and the Cruisers

When Eddie and the Cruisers came out in 1983 it was either ignored or received negatively by critics and performed poorly at the box office. However, over the years it has quietly cultivated a small but dedicated cult following. The film is primarily a mystery – what happened to musician Eddie Wilson? – and it also an unabashed love letter to rock ‘n’ roll and the New Jersey shore in the 1960s. It has been over 25 years since the film was released and it is high time for a re-evaluation of this under-appreciated gem.

Maggie Foley (Ellen Barkin) is a journalist for Media magazine and is doing a retrospective piece on Eddie and the Cruisers, a New Jersey bar band that was a minor sensation in the 1960s with one hit record and the top song in country during the summer of 1963. The band were working on an ambitious follow-up when lead singer Eddie Wilson (Michael Pare) drove his car off a pier and met with a watery demise on March 15, 1964. Or did he? No body was found. Maggie’s hook is that maybe Eddie didn’t die. She draws a parallel between him and French poet Arthur Rimbaud, who like Eddie, pulled a disappearing act at the height of his popularity while striving for perfection in his art. Now, everyone is looking for the master tapes of A Season in Hell, the album that was to be Eddie’s magnum opus, and which also disappeared only a day after Eddie vanished.

Through a series of flashbacks from all of the surviving band members, we see the rise and fall of Eddie and the Cruisers. The film is told predominantly from the point-of-view of Frank “The Wordman” Ridgeway (Tom Berenger), the band’s piano player and lyricist. He teaches English in high school now but Maggie’s questions bring all the old memories flooding back. The first flashback takes us back to 1962, while President John F. Kennedy was still in the White House, and when the United States was still a relatively innocent and hopeful country. Eddie and the Cruisers meet Frank at a bar in the Jersey Shore. Sal Amato (Matthew Laurance), their bass player, has been writing their songs but they aren’t enough for Eddie who tells him, “it just ain’t what I was looking for.” Eddie spots Frank and asks him what he thinks. Frank impresses Eddie with his knowledge of writing when he points out that Sal’s song needs a caesura, “a timely pause, a kind of strategic silence.” This is pretty high-falootin’ stuff for a rock ‘n’ roll movie and an indicator that this film aspires to be something different.

Eddie dreams of creating music that endures and director Martin Davidson juxtaposes these almost wistful sentiments with Sal’s contemporary Cruisers revival that is pure Las Vegas cheese, bastardizing the music as a lame lounge act where he finally gets to front the band. He embodies the very thing that Eddie was against – prostituting yourself instead of remaining true to the music. Sal’s version of the Cruisers, complete with an Eddie wannabe, is like when you see Lynyrd Skynyrd with only one original member of the band left – a pale imitation of its former self.

Davidson has said that the inspiration for the film came from a desire to "get all my feelings about the music of the last 30 years of rock music into it.” He optioned P.F. Kluge’s novel of the same name with his own money and at great financial risk. He wrote the screenplay with Arlene Davidson and decided to use a Citizen Kane-style story structure. He said in an interview, “That was in my head: the search.” He made a deal with Time-Life, a company that was going into the moviemaking business. However, they quickly exited the business after making two films that were not financially successful and Davidson’s project was left high and dry. He was understandably upset and a couple days later he went out to dinner and ran into a secretary who worked on the first film he had made. Davidson told her what had happened to his film and she gave his script for Eddie and the Cruisers to her business partners. In a relatively short time a deal was struck with a company called Aurora and Davidson was given a $6 million budget. Aurora made only three films – The Secret of NIMH (1982), Heart Like a Wheel (1983), and his film.

In order to get a credible looking and sounding band for the film, Davidson hired Kenny Vance, one of the original members of Jay and the Americans. He showed Davidson his scrapbook, the places they performed, the car they drove in, and things like how they transported their instruments. Vance also told Davidson stories about his band, some of which he incorporated into the script. Vance asked Davidson to describe his fictious band and what their music sounded like. Initially, he said that the Cruisers’ sound resembled Dion and the Belmonts but when they meet Frank they had elements of Jim Morrison and The Doors. However, Davidson did not want to lose sight of the fact that the Cruisers were essentially a Jersey bar band and he thought of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Davidson told Vance to find him someone that could produce music that contained elements of those three bands. Davidson was getting close to rehearsals when Vance called him and told him that he had found the band – John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band from Providence, Rhode Island. Davidson met them and realized that they closely resembled the band as described in the script, right down to a black saxophone player, whom he actually cast in the film. Initially Cafferty was hired to write a few songs for the film but he did such a good job of capturing the feeling of the 1960s and the 1980s that Davidson asked him to score the film

Tom Berenger did not try to learn how to play the piano for the film but did practice keyboards for hours in his trailer to at least create the illusion that he could play. Matthew Laurance actually learned how to play the bass through rehearsals. Michael Pare said of his role in the film that it was "a thrill I've never experienced. It's a really weird high. For a few moments, you feel like a king, a god. It's scary, a dangerous feeling. If you take it too seriously." Davidson had the actors who played in Eddie's band rehearse as if they were getting ready for a real concert. Pare remembers, "The first time we played together – as a band – was a college concert. An odd thing happened. At first, the extras simply did what they were told. Then, as the music heated up, so did the audience. They weren't play-acting anymore. The screaming, stomping and applause became spontaneous.” Davidson recalls, "One by one, kids began standing up in their seats, screaming and raising their hands in rhythmic applause. A few girls made a dash for the stage, tearing at Michael's shirt. We certainly hadn't told them to do that. But we kept the cameras rolling.”

The filmmakers do a pretty good job recreating the period details on a modest budget at best. There’s the cool cars, the clothes, and so on, but more importantly there is a tangible atmosphere of simpler times and nostalgia. This is encapsulated in the straight-ahead rock ‘n’ roll music of the Cruisers that sounds a lot like early Springsteen. There is also a little bit of period music, most notably Del Shannon’s “Runaway,” that is used to immediately transport you back to that time. As soon you hear that distinctive song it instantly invokes that period and there is no question where we are.

What Eddie and the Cruisers nails so well is the dynamic between the members in the band, like how Sal gets on Eddie’s nerves, or how a romance develops between Frank and Joann Carlino (Helen Schneider), the band’s back-up singer. Davidson’s film shows how the band members bicker among each other but come together when it counts – playing live, where they know how to energize an audience. The film presents several band archetypes – the charismatic lead singer, the junkie band mate, the arrogant one, the laid back one, and the thoughtful one – but without being too obvious about it. Joann is the Patti Scialfa to Eddie’s Bruce Springsteen but Frank falls for her the first time they meet in ’62. There are certainly sparks between them but as anyone who’s been in a band knows, the fastest way to break one up is getting romantically involved with a fellow bandmate.

One of the best scenes in the film that illustrates the band’s dynamic is the flashback showing how their biggest hit, “On the Dark Side,” evolved. Eddie takes Frank’s slow ballad and spruces it up with a catchy up-tempo keyboard melody. Pretty soon the rest of the band joins and a hit is born. This scene shows what a great team Eddie and Frank are – the former supplies the music and the latter supplies the words. It also shows Eddie’s uncanny ear for what works in a song.

Michael Pare really sells the music well and delivers just the right amount of energy and charisma. It helps that the vocals he’s lip-synching to fit him well. You almost believe that he’s really singing. Pare also portrays Eddie as tantalizingly elusive and enigmatic. You are never quite sure what he’s thinking and he’s a man of few words but clearly has ambitions above and beyond entertaining an audience. With the album A Season in Hell, Eddie wanted to create something different and when the powers that be tried to deny him, he disappeared. Along with Streets of Fire (1984), Eddie and the Cruisers was supposed to make Pare a big movie star but both films tanked commercially and critically. Now, he’s relegated mostly to direct-to-home-video fare.

Tom Berenger conveys a slightly sad, wistful vibe as Frank clearly misses the times he had with the band. He has made peace with his lot in life. He’s no longer a musician and his ambitions died alongside Eddie. I always liked Berenger and he’s wonderfully understated in this film. He would go on to the role of a lifetime in Platoon (1986), which was the antithesis to his role in Eddie and the Cruisers and showcased his versatility as an actor. Prior to this film, he also had a memorable turn in The Big Chill (1983). For awhile it looked like he would be leading man material but he has settled rather nicely into character actor roles.

A young Ellen Barkin plays the persistent reporter who tries to unravel the mystery of Eddie’s death. She looks so young and beautiful in this film but isn’t given too much screen time. Looking back, she had a pretty fantastic run in the 1980s with this film, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984), The Big Easy (1987), and ended the decade in style with Sea of Love (1989). Joe Pantoliano plays the Cruisers’ manager with the same kind of enthusiasm that he would display in other memorable roles in the 1980s, like Risky Business (1983), The Mean Season (1985), and Midnight Run (1988).

Eddie and the Cruisers was originally intended to open during the summer but a scheduling error resulted in a September release when its target audience – teenagers – were back in school. It was released on September 23, 1983 and grossed $1.4 million on its opening weekend. The film was pulled from theaters after three weeks and all of the ads were pulled after one week. It would go on to make a disappointing $4.7 million in North America.

Eddie and the Cruisers received largely mixed to negative reviews. Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film two out of four stars and found the ending “so frustrating, so dumb, so unsatisfactory, that it gives a bad reputation to the whole movie.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, "Some of the details ring uncannily true, like the slick oldies nightclub act that one of the Cruisers is still doing nearly 20 years after Eddie's supposed death. Other aspects of the movie are inexplicably wrong. Eddie's music sounds good, but it also sounds a lot like Bruce Springsteen’s, and it would not have been the rage in 1963.” However, she did praise Pare's performance: "Mr. Pare makes a fine debut; he captures the manner of a hot-blooded young rocker with great conviction, and his lip-synching is almost perfect.” Gary Arnold, in the Washington Post, wrote, "At any rate, it seemed to me that what Eddie and the Cruisers aspired to do was certainly worth doing. The problem is that it finally lacks the storytelling resources to tell enough of an intriguing story about a musical mystery man.”

In 1984, Eddie and the Cruisers found new life on HBO. After the soundtrack album suddenly climbed the charts, the studio re-released it in the fall of 1984. During its play dates on HBO, the album sold three million copies. Nine months after the film opened, “On the Dark Side,” the Cruisers big hit in the film, was the number one song in the country. Embassy Pictures re-released the film for one-week based on successful summer cable screenings and popular radio single but it failed to perform at the box office. The film and the album eventually did well enough to make way for a sequel – Eddie and the Cruisers II: Eddie Lives (1989) – that saw Eddie as a construction worker in Montreal (?!). Davidson was offered the sequel but was not crazy about the idea and wanted no part of it. With the exception of Pare, Laurance and Cafferty, nobody from the first film had anything to do with it and the less said about this awful film the better. After the commercial failure of the first film, Davidson has continued to work steadily, mostly in television, directing episodes of Law & Order, Picket Fences, Chicago Hope and Judging Amy but has been inactive since 2002.

It’s interesting that the initial rise and fall of Eddie and the Cruisers mirrors the arc of President Kennedy. The band peaks during his presidency and Eddie disappears and his band breaks up after Kennedy is assassinated and the country was thrown into turmoil and disillusionment. This parallel seems more than just a coincidence so I’m sure Davidson had it mind when he wrote the screenplay. What is so endearing about Eddie and the Cruisers is the idealism that permeates the film as embodied by Eddie’s desire to create songs that will allow him “to fold ourselves up in them forever,” as he tells Frank at one point. The film has an internal conscience and celebrates the notion that music can take you to another place and make you forget about your daily problems for a few minutes. This is tempered by a melancholic tone that permeates all of the scenes that take place in the present. Eddie’s death and the end of the Cruisers hangs like a heavy cloud over the surviving members and all of the old feelings and memories are dredged up thanks to Maggie’s inquiries.

Eddie and the Cruisers celebrates getting lost in the music and how it makes you feel. This is pretty ambitious stuff for a little a film about a reclusive singer for a bar band. And, for the most part, the film pulls it off. Along with Almost Famous (2000) and Hard Core Logo (1996), it is definitely one of my favorite films about a fictious band. Davidson is still proud of his film but is bitter about how it was handled. “That picture should have been a theatrical success. There was an audience for it. People still watch it and still tell me about it.” Eddie and the Cruisers has aged surprisingly well and over time all the good notes are intact.

I would be remiss without giving a shout-out to John Kenneth Muir's book, The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia for providing the bulk of the production information contained in this article.

Here's the trailer: