DVD of the Week: America Lost & Found: The BBS Story

In the 1960s, film producer Bert Schneider and film director Bob Rafelson expressed an interest in movie production but both men lacked experience so they use their connections in Hollywood to produce a pilot episode for a potential television series. The end result would The Monkees, an irreverent show done in the style of The Beatles film, A Hard Day’s Night (1964). The show was green-lit and became a pop culture sensation. While developing The Monkees, Schneider and Rafelson met Stephen Blauner who worked for the studio developing the show. They decided to take the money they made from The Monkees and finance a film that Dennis Hopper wanted to direct and star in with his friend Peter Fonda. That film would be Easy Rider (1969) and this counter-culture film became a huge hit both commercially and critically, sending shockwaves through Hollywood.

The Criterion Collection have released an incredible box set sampling some of the most intriguing, experimental, and just plain fascinating examples of BBS Production’s output. Two films that are included have never been released on home video before. This set is quite simply a must-have for any lover of American cinema during the 1970s.

To say Head (1968) is a cinematic oddity is an understatement. Intent at topping The Beatles at their own game, The Monkees appeared in a film that Bob Rafelson directed and co-wrote with none other than Jack Nicholson and that was even more experimental and avant garde than anything the Fab Four had done. The result was a strange, yet playful concert film fused with a trippy pop culture satire. It was a resounding commercial flop when fans realized that the film was not a rehash of The Monkees’ silly, conventional television show.

The opening track, “Porpoise Song,” with its psychedelic imagery, anticipates the British acid house movement by many years and quickly establishes that this isn’t going to be a traditional film by any stretch of the imagination. Gone is the bubblegum pop and in is the Sgt. Pepper’s-esque experimentation. At one point, the band members appear as dandruff in Victor Mature’s hair only to be swept up by a giant vacuum cleaner. Hell, Frank Zappa even shows up with a talking cow to give some sage advice. The Monkees, with Rafelson’s help, gleefully bit the hand that fed them and proceeded to deconstruct their image in a way that no pop group at their level of success had done before or since. Imagine if Justin Bieber decided to star in a film directed Darren Aronofsky.

The critical and commercial success of Easy Rider (1969) scared the hell out of the Hollywood studios at the time of its release. Executives thought that they knew what the public wanted to see: safe comedies like Pillow Talk (1959) or the Frankie and Annette beach party movies. Along came this counter-culture film that featured contemporary rock ‘n’ roll music, two hippie protagonists and a nihilistic ending. And audiences loved it. Easy Rider ushered in the last great decade of American movies in the ‘70s.

After selling their stash of cocaine, Billy (Hopper) and Wyatt (Fonda) decide to ride their motorcycles from California to Florida (by way of the South) where they plan to live off the money. They travel the back roads of American and encounter all sorts of people: suspicious small-townsfolk, an oppressive sheriff and a rancher and his large family who invite them to a meal. The deeper they go into the South, the more resistance they meet because of how they look.

Easy Rider is a fantastic snapshot of the times. It signaled the end of the not-so idyllic ‘60s, where having long hair could deny you a room in a motel because the manager didn’t like the way you look. Time running out is a constant theme throughout Easy Rider. When Billy and Wyatt start their journey, Wyatt throws away his watch. Later on, he finds a discarded pocket watch just before they leave the commune. Also, as they are leaving, the hitchhiker they picked up warns Wyatt that time is running out. It eerily foreshadows the film’s disturbing finale and gives a feeling of impending doom that hangs over the entire film.

Five Easy Pieces (1970) is one of those complex character studies that typified some of the best American films from the 1970s. Bobby Dupea (Nicholson) is a former piano prodigy who spends his days working on an oilrig with his best friend Elton (Bush). As Bill Murray would later say in Stripes (1981), he’s “part of a lost and restless generation.” He’s someone who doesn’t suffer fools gladly which makes one wonder why he lives with Rayette (Black), a nice enough person but clearly not Bobby’s intellectual equal and he barely tolerates her needy behavior. One gets the feeling that Bobby is punishing himself.

He is a restless soul as evident in a fascinating scene where, frustrated at being stuck in a traffic jam on the interstate, he gets out of his car and starts playing the piano on a back of a nearby truck. Bobby wants to fit in – hence the blue-collar employment – but he keeps sabotaging his jobs and relationships with an acute self-awareness and his rejection of familial responsibilities. This is a slice of life film whose story doesn’t begin properly until 30 minutes in when Bobby finds out that his estranged father is ill and decides to take road trip to see him. Nicholson delivers a brilliant, gritty performance that would typify a lot of his work in the ‘70s. He’s not afraid to play an unlikable guy who treats those around him poorly. Bobby is full of anger – at the world, at others and at himself.

Drive, He Said (1970) marked the directorial debut of Jack Nicholson. By this point in his career, he had already tried his hand at screenwriting and, of course, acting, so directing seemed like the next logical step. The film concerns the relationship between Hector Bloom (Tepper), a talented college basketball player, and his increasingly radical roommate Gabriel (Margotta). The first thing that strikes one about this film is how topical it is as it deals frankly with sex and nudity (both male and female) – something that was being explored explicitly at the time and how politicized college campuses had become because of the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, and so on.

In A Safe Place (1971), Tuesday Weld plays a beautiful free spirit in this whimsical experimental film. Scenes often cut abruptly to others and the film lacks a concrete story but is anchored by a strong performance by Weld. Along for the ride is Orson Welles as a mysterious magician who performs several tricks. The lack of a linear narrative can make this a frustrating experiment for some. In some respects, it’s a snapshot of its time and could never be made now.

Made in the early ‘70s, The Last Picture Show (1971) firmly established director Peter Bogdanovich as one of the premiere American filmmakers of that decade. It is also his undisputed masterpiece in a wildly uneven career. Based on the novel of the same name by Larry McMurtry, the film is a lament for the absence of simpler times and a simpler way of life. It’s set in a dusty Texas town in the early 1950s with the focus on three aimless teenagers: Sonny (Bottoms), Duane (Bridges) and Jacy (Shepherd). Sonny and Duane play for the local high school football team and endure constant criticism from their elders for their poor play. Social life for the teens revolves around the small town’s lone movie theater. Our three teen protagonists are bored and can’t wait to get out of their town where nothing ever happens.

Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges and Cybill Shepherd were all young, up-and-coming actors at the time and are excellent in their respective roles. It is easy to see why an actor like Bridges went on to become such a versatile thespian. Even this early on in his career he displays an uncanny knack for embodying a character. Bogdanovich does a good job with this material and the rich, textured black and white cinematography, coupled with the run-down Texas town, feels like it could exist in the same world as the characters in Hud (1963), another film based on a McMurtry novel.

Bob Rafelson reunited with Jack Nicholson for another tale about disillusioned and disaffected Americans with The King of Marvin Gardens (1972). Like their best collaborations, it’s a character study, exploring the relationship between two estranged brothers. David (Nicholson) is a depressed radio show host in Philadelphia. One day, he receives a phone call from his scam artist brother Jason (Dern) who is stuck in a jail in Atlantic City. Once he gets out, Jason ropes David in on a real estate scam. The gregarious older sibling makes it out to be too good to be true and that’s because it is.

Jack Nicholson is fascinatingly cast against type as a reserved, button-downed intellectual. David is a quiet, responsible person, which is in sharp contrast to Bruce Dern’s motor-mouthed Jason, a guy always on the make. He’s a consummate bullshit artist and the cynical David sees right through his hustle. The King of Marvin Gardens is an intriguing snapshot of an Atlantic City that doesn’t exist anymore. At the time, it was in decline but all of the old architecture was still gloriously intact and Rafelson shows it off to the degree that it is almost another character in the film. It’s interesting to note that the film’s offbeat rhythm anticipates Vincent Gallo’s Buffalo ’66 (1998) complete with a woman dancing by herself in a spotlight. Dern and Nicholson play well off each other and are believable as brothers. They have a familiar short hand and get on each other’s nerves much like real siblings do.

Special Features:

On the Head DVD is an audio commentary by The Monkees – Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith, Peter Tork. Rather appropriately, they talk about how they got their own television show and then the film. They are all pretty candid about how badly the film performed at the time and how it was their attempt to trash the image of the band from the show.

“From The Monkees to Head” is an interview with director Bob Rafelson. He talks about the genesis of the T.V. show and how The Beatles influenced it with A Hard Day’s Night. He goes on to talk about how the show led to the film and how everyone around him told him not to make it.

“BBS: A Time for Change” is a 30-minute featurette on BBS, an independent production company that existed from the late 1960s to the early 1970s. This is an excellent look at the genesis of this company and its place in cinematic history.

There are screen tests for all four Monkees that were done before the T.V. show. They were integrated into the pilot episode and helped launch the show. Their personalities really come out in this footage. We also see two of The Monkees paired up with two other guys that never made the final cut.

“The Monkees on The Hy Lit Show, 1968” is a rare T.V. appearance by the band to promote Head. It takes place next to a boxing ring (?!) and it is interesting to see them try and explain their film.

“Promotion” includes several theatrical trailers, T.V spots and radio spots for the film. Also included is a collection of stills and behind-the-scenes photographs.

On the Easy Rider disc, there is an audio commentary by co-writer and director Dennis Hopper that was recorded in 2009. He kicks things off by talking about the genesis of the film. He also talks about his motivation for making the film and what he was trying to say with it. He points out bits of dialogue and visual inserts that were improvised. There are several lulls throughout as Hopper tends to get caught up in watching the film.

Also included is a 1995 commentary by Hopper, Peter Fonda and production manager Paul Lewis. This is a much livelier track as everyone shares filming anecdotes like Phil Spector lending his limousine and bodyguard to the film. They also point out where various scenes were shot and how also just how stoned Jack Nicholson was during the famous campfire sequence.

There are two trailers.

The second disc starts off with a 30-minute BBC2 documentary entitled, “Born to be Wild”. It features Hopper, Fonda, Karen Black and cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs. Hopper and Fonda talk briefly about how Roger Corman taught them to make a film fast and cheap. Of course, they address the casting of Nicholson and how Hopper didn’t see him in the role. Everyone tells some good filming anecdotes in this highly enjoyable extra.

Carried over from the 35^th Anniversary Edition is “Easy Rider: Shaking the Cage,” an hour-long retrospective documentary featuring new interviews with Fonda, Hopper, Seymour Cassel (who worked on the crew) and Black. Hopper says that the film was an attempt to counter the mainstream fluff like the Frankie and Annette beach party movies that ignored sex, drugs and contemporary rock ‘n’ roll. This is a top-notch look at all the wild stories of filming Easy Rider, including the infamous Mardi Gras shoot.

“Hopper and Fonda at Cannes” features a segment from French T.V. of Fonda and Hopper at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival with their film and they briefly talk about it.

Finally, there is an interview with Steve Blauner, one of the founders of BBS. He talks about the genesis of the company and about their start in T.V., creating The Monkees. He points out that the money from the show paid for Easy Rider.

If you own the 35^th Anniversary Edition of the film you might want to hold on to as the commentary that Hopper does on it is not included, nor is the excellent BFI Modern Classics book on Easy Rider by Lee Hill or the bonus CD with select songs from the film.

The Five Easy Pieces disc starts off with an audio commentary by director Bob Rafelson and interior designer Toby Rafelson. Toby points out that the entire film was shot on practical locations. Originally, she didn’t want to do the film but Bob convinced her when he told that he was going to use their own furniture (!). By keeping it under budget and on time, he had final cut and could also cast whomever he wanted. Naturally, Bob talks about working with Nicholson on this engaging track.

“Soul Searching in Five Easy Pieces” features an interview with Rafelson where he talks about the film’s development. He was nervous about doing Five Easy Pieces because it was the first time he worked with actual, serious actors. He had written two screenplays but didn’t like them. He showed them to screenwriter Carol Eastman and she threw them out and wrote her own.

“BBStory” is a 2009, 46-minute documentary about BBS Productions and features the likes of Rafelson, Peter Bogdanovich, Jack Nicholson, Karen Black, and several others. It starts off with the social and political conditions that gave birth to the company. The studio system was collapsing and BBS made films that reflected the times that people were living in.

“Bob Rafelson at AFI” features excerpts from an audio recording of Rafelson speaking at the American Film Institute. He talks about his career and the films he made for BBS.

Finally, there are two teaser trailers and one full-length trailer.

Drive, He Said starts off with “A Cautionary Tale of Campus Revolution and Sexual Freedom,” a featurette where Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern and co-producer Harry Gittes talk about making this film. It was about college campus revolution and at one point during filming a real riot broke out on the campus they were at. They went ahead and filmed it without permission. Nicholson talks about shooting the basketball sequences and how he cast actual players.

Also included is a trailer.

A Safe Place includes an audio commentary by director Henry Jaglom. He points out that the film was originally a play starring Karen Black. By adapting it into a film he wanted to make it more abstract, exploring the internal nature of Tuesday Weld’s character. Jaglom is quite eloquent and engaging on this track.

“Henry Jaglom Finds A Safe Place” sees the filmmaker talking about the influence of improvisational theater and the New Wave of European cinema. He was interested in creating stories about the inner lives of women.

“Notes on the New York Film Festival” sees Jaglom and Peter Bogdanovich talk with film critic Molly Haskell about The Last Picture Show and A Safe Place in 1971. It’s great to see them all in their prime talking so confidently about their work. The two directors banter playfully with each other in this enjoyable extra.

Also included are outtakes of Orson Welles blowing his lines and four screen tests.

There is a trailer as well.

The Last Picture Show includes an audio commentary by director Peter Bogdanovich and actors Cybill Shepherd, Randy Quaid, Cloris Leachman and Frank Marshall. The director explains why he shot the film in black and white and says that the town was divided about them filming there. He goes into the casting choices with some interesting stories. Shepherd says that she never acted before doing that film and gives her impressions of working on it as do the other participants.

Bogdanovich returns for another commentary, this time by himself. There is some overlap from the previous track making it kind of redundant. Not surprisingly, he dwells on the nuts and bolts of filmmaking and discusses its themes.

Also included are two trailers.

The second disc includes “The Last Picture Show: A Look Back,” an hour-long documentary made in 1999 with most of the key cast members and Bogdanovich and author Larry McMurtry recalling their experiences of making the film. It takes us through the genesis and filming to its reception. There is a fair amount of crossover of information from the commentaries but if you’re not into listening to commentaries then this is for you.

“A Discussion with Filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich” sees him talking about how he got into show business, what directors influenced him and, of course, The Last Picture Show.

“Picture This” is a documentary about Bogdanovich and key cast members reunited to make the sequel, Texasville (1990) while also talking about their experiences making the original film. It also paints a fascinating portrait of the people that lived in the town.

Also included are 16mm screen tests of several actors in the film.

There is location footage that Bogdanovich shot while scouting places to shoot for the film.

“Truffaut on the New Hollywood” features filmmaker Francois Truffaut talking briefly about the New Hollywood directors in 1972 on French T.V. He also offers high praise for The Last Picture Show.

For The King of Marvin Gardens, there is a selected-scene commentary by Bob Rafelson. He talks about some of the stylistic choices he made. After Five Easy Pieces, he wanted to make a more abstract film. He talks about the film’s style and comments on the characters.

“Reflections of a Philosopher King” sees Rafelson and actress Elle Burstyn talking about the characters in the film and how they came to be and evolved over the course of filming.

“Afterthoughts” features Rafelson, cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs and actor Bruce Dern talking about the style of the film and how it was achieved and why. There is some overlap from the previous extras but Dern and Kovacs’ comments are quite good and funny as hell.

“About Bob Rafelson” is brief text biography of the man’s career.

Finally, there is a trailer.

Tron: Legacy

It has been over 25 years since Tron (1982) was released in theaters. Made on the cusp of the home computer revolution, the film was a simple good vs. evil parable that saw a disgraced computer programmer hack into the network of the corporation that fired him only to be zapped into cyberspace where he got to see how the other half lived. Tron was a modest success at the box office and resoundly trashed by critics. It seemed destined to become merely a footnote in cinematic history as one of the earliest examples of computer graphics in a Hollywood film. Over the years, it developed a decent cult following who dreamed of a sequel some day. That day has finally come.


Hoping for a lucrative franchise that doesn’t involve pirates, Disney ponied up a considerable amount of money so that the filmmakers of Tron: Legacy (2010) were able to utilize the same kind of 3D digital cameras that were used to make Avatar (2009) and the CGI technology used to age Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008). And, in keeping with the original filmmakers hiring cutting edge composer Wendy Carlos, Tron: Legacy features an atmospheric score by hip electronica music duo Daft Punk. The end result is a stunning assault on the senses.

In 1989, hotshot programmer and CEO of Encom Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) disappeared, leaving his young son Sam with his grandparents and no indication as to why he left. Since the death of his wife four years before, Flynn’s behavior had become increasingly erratic and he had become obsessed about a brave new world, a digital frontier that he had experienced in Tron. Sam (Garrett Hedlund) grows up to become a rebellious chip off the old block as he breaks into Encom just so he can publicly embarrass the company’s current CEO. Since Flynn’s absence, Encom has returned to its old, soulless ways much to the chagrin of his long-time friend and current board member Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner). He informs Sam that he got a page from his father at the office in his old arcade.

Long shuttered and collecting dust, it is a cemetery for classic arcade games. Sam uncovers his father’s personal computer and before he knows it, he’s zapped into the computer world. Flynn’s prized program Clu (also Bridges) has taken over and rules the computer world with a fascist, iron fist. Flynn has become a fugitive and it’s up to Sam, with the help of a program named Quorra (Olivia Wilde), to make things right again.

Rather fittingly, the real world footage is shot in 2D but once we enter cyberspace, the film comes vividly to life with cutting edge 3D technology. Much of the iconography from the first film is present – the disc battle, light cycles, etc. – but amped up with The Matrix-like action sequences and three-dimensionalized. If there was ever a film would that begged to be given the 3D treatment it is this one. However, these effects aren’t that apparent or as frequent as one would hope which begs the question why even do it in the first place? Short answer: money. The filmmakers have basically taken the imagery of Tron and cranked it up to 11 – pure, unadulterated eye candy with things like dialogue and characterization taking a backseat. The attention paid to production and art design is phenomenal with all kinds of neon-drenched landscapes full of ambient sounds that will keep architecture buffs busy for years. That being said, the CG to recreate a younger version of Jeff Bridges, circa 1982, is distracting with its waxy, stiff look and dead, lifeless eyes, which, I guess, is appropriate for what is basically an evil clone of the real deal within the film.

Say what you will about the original Tron and its flaws but at least it was anchored by a playful and charismatic performance by Jeff Bridges who acted as the audience surrogate into a strange, new world. This time around, Garrett Hedlund takes on that role with limited success. The uninspired screenplay doesn’t do him any favors and so he does the best with what he was to work with, which admittedly isn’t all that much. Bridges plays a grizzled, burnt out version of his original character and with his beard and long hair it almost seems like the Dude from The Big Lebowski (1998) was zapped into the computer world. As if sensing this, Bridges even lets out a few Dudeisms at certain key moments in the film, which at least livens up the forgettable script.

Noted British actor Michael Sheen even shows up channeling David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust persona as Castor, a preening, flamboyant host of a nightclub where Daft Punk have a cameo as DJs. Using these musicians to do the score for Tron: Legacy was a masterstroke and they seem like the logical evolutionary step from Wendy Carlos. However, those fans expecting them to recreate their trademark dance music might be disappointed as they opt for a more orchestral score that at times is reminiscent of early 1980s John Carpenter, in particular Escape from New York (1981), while also referencing Vangelis, Maurice Jarre and Hans Zimmer’s score for The Dark Knight (2008). Their finest moment comes during a battle at Castor’s club where Daft Punk gets to really show off their musical chops as they segue from ambient music to pulsating dance music to bombastic beats that accompany with the action. Along with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ score for The Social Network (2010), this may be the best soundtrack of the year.

Tron: Legacy replaces the “information just wants to be free” message of its predecessor with a “sins of the father” theme as Flynn attempts to stop Clu, his Frankensteinian creation, and repair the damage done between him and Sam. Tron: Legacy manages to make this world and its characters accessible to those not familiar with the first film by basically rehashing its plot, blow-by-blow, which may disappoint fans. However, it does feel like a continuation of the first film with all kinds of references to things that happened in it. There is also a rather nifty cameo by a notable character actor that hints at a possible villain for the next film, if this one makes enough money. Of course, there is the usual criticism that the dialogue is weak, the story is formulaic and there is a real lack of characterization – all issues critics had with the original film. Tron: Legacy certainly lacks in these areas also, but like the first film, the visuals are so impressive, so captivating in the way they immerse you in the computer world, that you tend to ignore the flaws, relax and enjoy the ride.

Here is a link to my article on the original film.

The Spielberg Blogathon: Catch Me If You Can

BLOGGER'S NOTE: This post is part of The Spielberg Blogathon organized and run by Adam Zanzie and Ryan Kelly. It runs from December 18 - 28. I urge you to check out and support all of the hard work these guys have done putting it together.

I’ve never been a big fan of Steven Spielberg’s post-1980s film career as he juggled big budget box office blockbusters (Jurassic Park) with obvious bids for Academy Award validation (Amistad). It has been the more offbeat films, like Munich (2008) and Catch Me If You Can (2002) that I’ve preferred over the likes of Schindler’s List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). To me, Catch Me If You Can has a looser, more freewheeling feel to it reminiscent of Spielberg’s earlier films, like The Sugarland Express (1974) or Jaws (1975). The film is based on the life of Frank Abagnale Jr., a clever con man who managed to steal millions of dollars during the 1960s and 1970s by convincingly assuming the identity of a Pan American World Airways pilot, a Georgia doctor and a Louisiana lawyer – all before his 19th birthday. He would become the youngest person ever placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. Not only did Catch Me feature a more playful Spielberg, but demonstrated Leonardo DiCaprio’s genuine acting chops – something he hadn’t really done since What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993). The film began a terrific run for the young actor who went on to star in films directed by Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott and Christopher Nolan.


The ‘60s style animated opening credits, accompanied by John Williams’ jazzy, atmospheric score, establish a fantastic retro vibe right from the get-go. It has the look and feel of a vintage Saul Bass credits sequence while anticipating the like-minded opening credits for the also ‘60s-set television show Mad Men. Catch Me If You Can cleverly begins during a T.V. game show To Tell the Truth where the announcer gives us a thumbnail sketch of Frank’s exploits and has us (and the game show audience) guess who is the real Frank out of three men claiming to be him. Of course, it is Leonardo DiCaprio but the irony here is that he’s on a game show where contestants have to guess his identity while the FBI had to do it for real. We flashback to Christmas Eve, 1969 and a sick, disheveled Frank (DiCaprio) is rotting away in a French prison. How did he get here? Why does he look so awful? What is this guy’s story? The film takes us back to 1963 and the beginning of Frank’s story.

He comes from a good home and nice parents – Frank, Sr. (Christopher Walken) and Paula (Nathalie Baye) – that clearly love him and each other. We see the inspiration for Frank’s future endeavors in his father who, early on, impresses his son by using his charisma to convince a sales lady to open a suit store early by concocting a story about an impending funeral. He then has his son pose as his chauffeur in order to impress a bank. That, however, does not work and Frank’s father has to sell their car and their home and move into a smaller one because he owes money to the IRS. And then, one fateful day, Frank’s father opens a bank account for his son and gives him a book of checks thus giving him the means to create his own fortune and his own destiny.

On his first day at school, he’s mistaken for a substitute teacher and goes with it just so he can get revenge on a bully but then continues the charade for an entire week! This incident, and the discovery that his mother is having an affair resulting in his parents getting a divorce, leaves Frank lost and disillusioned as the safe, idyllic existence he once knew is now gone. It is this lack of identity and security that inspires him to pose as other people in successful professions like airplane pilots and doctors. It’s an obvious reaction to his father’s failure to restore his family’s former way of life.

What is so amazing is how easy it is for him to pull off these elaborate schemes. It’s a combination of check forging and charisma. By maintaining a confident attitude and the ability to charm people, Frank makes lots of money and seduces several lovely ladies in the process (including then young up-and-coming actresses Elizabeth Banks, Jennifer Garner and Amy Adams). Eventually, Frank’s methods catch the attention of no-nonsense FBI investigator Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks), an expert at identifying bank fraud and check forgers. He makes it his mission in life to catch Frank after he humiliates him during their first encounter.

Leonardo DiCaprio has a lot of fun adopting Frank’s various personas, including dressing like Sean Connery era James Bond after watching Goldfinger (1964). There is a delicious irony in DiCaprio, arguably the most recognizable movie star on the planet at that time thanks to Titanic (1997), playing a world class liar who jet sets around the world bedding high-class prostitutes and buying expensive suits. However, underneath the suave bravado, DiCaprio hints at a lonely young man looking for a father figure that he unknowingly finds in Carl. During their years-long cat and mouse game they develop a relationship and a mutual respect for one another. The role is a tricky juggling act as DiCaprio has to assume several different identities while revealing the real Frank once in awhile and also hint at his possible motivations.

Tom Hanks tones down his amiable persona to play the prickly Carl Hanratty. He hasn’t played this abrasive a character since the misanthropic stand-up comic in Punchline (1988). He does a good job playing a dogged investigator with a pronounced Boston accent. Carl even displays the same kind of humorless professionalism as a protagonist straight out of a Michael Mann film, albeit with a slightly whimsical spin that is Spielberg’s trademark.

Taking a break from playing the Christopher Walken persona he’s asked to trot out in almost every film he’s done in the last 20 years, the veteran actor is absolutely heartbreaking as Frank’s blindly optimistic father. He shows a range in this film that he hadn’t displayed in years (or since for that matter) and this is particularly evident in a scene where father and son meet over dinner at a posh restaurant. Frank tries to give his father a brand new car in the hopes of impressing his estranged mother but he has to refuse it (the IRS are still investigating him). He tries to reassure his son that he hopes to get back together with his wife but his voice cracks with emotion and he looks to be on the verge of tears. Walken comes off as incredibly sympathetic at this moment and your heart really goes out to his character as we realize that he and his wife will never reconcile.

Frank Abagnale sold the movie rights to his story in 1980 and for years they languished in development hell in Hollywood. In 1997, screenwriter Jeff Nathanson was given a tape of Abagnale talking about his life by producer Devorah Moos-Hankin. It reminded him of his favorite films that “focus on people who are working on the wrong side of the law; yet you can’t help but root for them because they’re so incredibly charming.” He thought that Abagnale’s life would make a good film. He pitched the project to DreamWorks because they had hired him to do rewrites on several films in the past. With Abagnale’s story, Nathanson saw a character he hadn’t seen in “a long time; Hollywood really stopped making that kind of movie in the ‘70s.” Initially, all he had were some “cool scenes” and “great cons” but it wasn’t until he met the real Abagnale that the script started to take shape. After several interviews with the man, he opened up to Nathanson and talked about his family life and the relationship with his father. He realized that this was the key to the film: “A kid searching for his identity, searching for the love he can’t find in his own house.” This realization helped Nathanson to start structuring the film and also introduce the character of FBI agent Carl Hanratty as a secondary father figure. The screenwriter spent three years rewriting his script. It was during one of these many drafts that Carl was given more of an emphasis and became a central character along with Frank.

Leonardo DiCaprio read Nathanson’s script and was fascinated by this man’s extraordinary life. DreamWorks became involved in 1999 based on Nathanson’s work. In 2000, Gore Verbinski had signed on to direct with DiCaprio starring and with a supporting cast that included Ed Harris, Chloe Sevigny, and James Gandolfini as the FBI agent in pursuit of Frank. However, delays on Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York (2002) stalled the production and Verbinski and most of the cast went on to other projects. In 2001, Lasse Hallstrom was going to direct Catch Me If You Can with filming to start in March 2002. However, he also left the project. By August 2001, Spielberg came on board. He had just come off the dark, paranoid futuristic science fiction film Minority Report (2002) and was looking for something lighter to do. He had always been a fan of films about scam artists and con men and was drawn to Abagnale’s amazing exploits. Tom Hanks read the script and asked Spielberg and DiCaprio if he could be in the film and they quickly agreed. He replaced Gandolfini who had to bow out due to a prior commitment with filming another season of The Sopranos.

It was DiCaprio who first suggested to Spielberg that Christopher Walken play Frank, Sr. To play Paula, the director wanted to cast a French actress. His friend and fellow filmmaker Brian De Palma was living in Paris at the time and Spielberg gave him a copy of the script. He asked for help and De Palma conducted screen tests with several actresses, one of whom was Nathalie Baye who had been in Francois Truffaut’s Day for Night (1973).

To research their roles, DiCaprio and Hanks attended one of Abagnale’s lectures to a group of FBI agents. Ironically, Abagnale was now the head of an anti-fraud consulting firm. Initially, DiCaprio was skeptical about meeting Abagnale and talked to Spielberg who discouraged him from doing it. Against his director’s wishes, DiCaprio met privately with his real life counterpart and invited him to live in his Hollywood house for two days, which he did. The actor studied Abagnale’s every move and taped their conversations. His impressions of the man were that he was “an instinctual actor. He’s somebody that for whatever reason puts people at ease.” DiCaprio’s approach to portraying Abagnale was that “at a certain point you draw enough information from the person, and then you have to go off on your own and create that character and let the character have a life of its own.”

Catch Me If You Can was shot in a speedy 56 days utilizing more than 140 sets on locations in and around Los Angeles, New York City, Montreal, Quebec City. Among the many locations used, the production was able to film in the historic TWA Terminal at New York’s JFK airport, which opened in 1962, and was empty when they shot there. At times, cast and crew shot in three locations on a single day. Spielberg did not do very many takes and remarked, “moving so fast kept the momentum going for the entire cast and crew.” DiCaprio concurred: “It was like a theatre group. We were always creating new things and then moving to the next location.”

Cinematographer Janusz Kaminski strove to keep the film’s visual approach very simple: “Let’s create a world that’s slightly idealistic, and not too serious.” The film’s color scheme often mirrored Frank’s emotional arc. His initial, ordinary existence is reflected in a bland, slightly monochromatic look. As Frank’s life gets richer and more successful, the color palette gets more vibrant with striking oranges, yellows, reds and pinks. At the end of the film, when he becomes a part of bureaucracy, the colors go back to being monochromatic in nature.

Legendary composer John William adopted a progressive jazz score in keeping with popular tastes of the 1950s and 1960s. He was influenced by the film music of Henry Mancini who dominated the ‘60s with his “stylish, jazzy approach to films that we now associate with that period so nostalgically.”

Catch Me If You Can enjoyed a very positive response from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film three stars and wrote, “This is not a major Spielberg film, although it is an effortlessly watchable one.” In his review for The New York Times, Stephen Holden wrote, “Catch Me is the most charming of Mr. Spielberg's mature films, because is it so relaxed. Instead of trying to conjure fairy-tale magic, wring tears or insinuate a message, it is happy just to be its delicious, genially sophisticated self.” While the Village Voice’s J. Hoberman was less impressed with the film, he did praise DiCaprio’s performance: “DiCaprio is far more successfully cast here than in Gangs of New York: His performance is all about acting; it's a mild kick to see how he'll manage to talk his way out of nearly every scrape.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “B” rating and Owen Gleiberman enjoyed Hanks’ performance: “It's a relief, after Hanks' funereal torpor in Road to Perdition, to see him having this much fun playing a law enforcer this dweebishly obsessed (the actor sports one of the few note-perfect New England accents in movie history).” In his review for the Washington Post, Desson Howe described it as “a movie that steadfastly refuses to be spectacular. At first, that seems to be its drawback. In the end, that's its disarming sweetness.” Finally, Time magazine’s Richard Schickel wrote, “Abagnale's story, combined with Nathanson's sensitivity to his family situation and Spielberg's interest in lost boys who manage to find their best selves, results in about the nicest movie you could ask for at the holidays: a gently funny, sweetly adventurous film that makes you feel genuinely good, that is to say, entirely unconned by false sentiment or sharp, overmanipulative Hollywood practices.”

Ultimately, all Frank wants is for things to be the way they were when he was younger: his parents still married and living in a nice home. He thinks that by accumulating wealth and projecting a successful image, he can save his father from financial ruin and impress his mother enough so that she’ll take back Frank, Sr. But life doesn’t always work out that way and no matter how many glamorous professions he impersonates or fake checks he writes, is going to make things right. It is this sober reality that makes Catch Me If You Can more than just an entertaining caper film. In some respects, this is a coming-of-age film as we see Frank go from an ambitious teenager to a disillusioned adult. This is also a coming-of-age film for DiCaprio that saw him move on from youthful characters in flights of fancy-type films like Romeo + Juliet (1996) and Titanic, to working with prestige directors like Spielberg on more mature fare that dealt with weighty themes. It is a transition he has made successfully as evident with award-winning films like The Departed (2006) and critically-acclaimed blockbusters like Inception (2010).

Here's a neat little article about the film's stunning opening credits sequence.

 

Untamed Heart

At first glance, Untamed Heart (1993) seems like nothing more than your standard chick flick destined for regular rotation on the Lifetime Channel. And to be fair, there are definitely elements of that much-maligned subgenre but what redeems the film is Marisa Tomei who delivers a wonderful performance that transcends the sometimes cliché-ridden story. There is also actor-director Tony Bill’s excellent casting against type of Christian Slater who, for a rare moment in time, dropped his cool guy shtick to play a shy, socially awkward character. Bill gets solid performances out of his entire cast, which almost makes you forget the predictable beats of the story. The end result is a bittersweet holiday treat.

As a child, Adam lived in an orphanage run by nuns. He was the recipient of a heart transplant and was fed a fairy tale story that he was given a baboon’s heart thanks to the heroic efforts of his adventurer father. A sickly boy, he (Christian Slater) grew up to be reserved bus boy at a local Minneapolis diner. Untamed Heart takes us back to the early 1990s as soon as we hear the DNA remix of Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner.” Caroline (Marisa Tomei) is a plucky waitress at the same diner. She is unlucky in love and right from her first scene, where she’s dumped by her boyfriend (that he would reject someone that looks like Tomei strains credibility but I digress) right before Christmas no less, we are rooting for her. This is because Tomei comes across as instantly sympathetic. Breaking her heart is like kicking a puppy fer Chrissakes!

Caroline commiserates with her best friend and fellow waitress Cindy (Rosie Perez), the sassy and cynical counterpoint to her co-worker. Tony Bill does an excellent job of establishing the diner and the colorful characters that populate it in only a few minutes. His camera moves around just enough so we get a sense of the layout of the place and then juxtaposes it with the people that work there to create a warm, inviting place. The cozy atmosphere of the diner is created with the help of Christmas lights and music, like the Cowboy Junkies’ dreamy cover of “Blue Moon.” The song is used to great effect in a shot where both Caroline and Adam are isolated in the same frame together. She is on one side, sitting by herself, and he’s on the other side, sweeping up the floor. This isn’t some sterile set located on a soundstage but a place that looks lived in and that has probably existed for many years. Set during the holiday season, Bill really conveys a sense of place – not just the diner but also the many establishing shots of a cold, snowy Minneapolis that sets the right atmospheric tone.

We see what a kind, nurturing person Caroline is when she tends to a nasty cut on Adam’s hand. She is oblivious to the intense, longing looks he gives her while she fixes him up. The way Christian Slater plays this scene is quite something. He doesn’t say anything to her (until the very end of the scene when she’s left and he says a quiet, “Thanks.”) but the actor conveys everything through his expressive eyes. Caroline and Adam develop a special bond when, one night, he rescues here from two guys (a pre-Sex and the City Willie Garson and Homicide: Life on the Street’s Kyle Secor) from attacking and trying to rape her.

Bill does a nice job of gradually developing the romance between Caroline and Adam. It is a slow burn that is accelerated by her attack. Afterwards, they have now shared something intensely personal and maybe for the first time she really notices him. Caroline is obviously moved by his selfless act and one gets the impression that he’s the first guy to look out for her, to be there for her when she needed it and not ask for anything in return. It is these scenes of their budding romance where the film is at its very best. We have become emotionally invested in Caroline and Adam and care about what happens to them.

Marisa Tomei is so good in this film. Fresh from her Academy Award-winning turn in My Cousin Vinny (1992) (?!), she plays a much more realistic character. Caroline is a bit of mess (as she says at one point, “My life is like watching the Three Stooges in Spanish.”). She has lousy taste in men and just wants to be loved by someone. Her chatty behavior is contrasted with Adam’s near-mute conduct but once they get involved she gradually gets him to open up. Tomei conveys a touching vulnerability that is quite endearing. The haunted look she adopts after her attack is heartbreaking. Most importantly, she has fantastic chemistry with Christian Slater, which is absolutely vital for a film like this. Their burgeoning romance is completely believable.

Untamed Heart is easily the best performance of Slater’s career. He showed that he could dial everything down and deliver a surprisingly minimalist performance. Freed from pages of dialogue, he has to rely more on his body language and his eyes to convey what Adam is feeling. Even when he does speak it is simply and directly. I’d love to know what Bill saw in Slater’s past performances that inspired him to cast the young actor as Adam. He even looks and acts differently with long, unkempt, unwashed hair and an introverted vibe in the way he acts. Adam avoids contact with people whenever possible. He hinted at this kind of character with the shy side of his protagonist in Pump Up the Volume (1990) but nothing to the extent that we see on display in Untamed Heart. Like Tomei, he also conveys an astonishing vulnerability.

Bill manages to tone down the usually manic, motor-mouthed Rosie Perez but without completely neutralizing her energy. She still gets some good zingers in there, like when she tells her nagging boss, who always complains that her breaks are too long, “You are like wet sand in my underwear.” (his reaction is priceless, by the way)

It’s too bad that once Caroline and Adam become a couple Untamed Heart loses its way a bit and veers dangerously close to disease-of-the-week made-for-T.V. territory – something that we’ve seen a million times. Sadly, the film shifts gears into a doomed romance storyline as Adam’s medical condition threatens his romance with Caroline. We get the standard relationship montage where we see the happy couple buy a car together, go for walks with his dog and so on. This culminates in a cheesy scene where they attend a hockey game and Adam even plucks a stray puck from the air for Caroline. It’s something I could have done without but it really is the odd misstep in an otherwise engaging film. Slater and Tomei do the best they can with what they’re given. However, as their romance deepens, the looks of unconditional love they convey to one another seems so genuine and real. Again, it’s all in the eyes.

Tony Bill was looking for unknown talent for a potential project and asked an agent at William Morris to send over some screenplays done by new writers. The script for Untamed Heart had originally been submitted as a writer’s sample. Bill showed it to producer Helen Bartlett who was moved by its theme of “having someone, somebody you never would have expected, come into your life and really transform you, change you.” Two weeks from Tom Sierchio handing the script for Untamed Heart to his agent, Bill optioned it and MGM agreed to make it.

Bill cast Marisa Tomei based on her audition for his earlier film, Five Corners (1987). She was too young for that film but he had kept track of her career over the years. Tomei found herself drawn to this “very warm story.” In order to perfect a regional accent, she chose a driver from the area who ended up acting as a dialogue coach. Once she had the accent down, she spoke with it on and off the set. When Christian Slater was first offered the part of Adam, he had his doubts and needed to be convinced to do it. He was scared of the role because it was so different from anything he had done before. As he said, “this one was a very internal performance, and at first I wasn’t really sure if I understood that.”

The film was originally set in New Jersey but for logistical reasons the producers could not shoot there and so they began to look for a city that could double for the Garden State. As luck would have it the filmmakers were scouting locations in Minneapolis and realized that it was “architecturally interesting.” They decided to actually set the film in the city as opposed to having it double for New Jersey. The production went on to cast 35 of the film’s 40 roles from the local acting community and utilize an almost completely local crew.

Untamed Heart received generally positive reviews from critics. Roger Ebert wrote that the film was "kind of sweet and kind of goofy, and works because its heart is in the right place.” The Washington Post’s Hal Hinson grudgingly admitted that it was “hopelessly syrupy, preposterous and more than a little bit lame, but, still, somehow it got to me.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “B-“ rating and Owen Gleiberman praised Tomei's performance: "With her flashing dark eyes and libidinous overbite, Tomei is adorable — she looks like a flirtatious bunny rabbit — but what's astonishing is the range of expression that passes over those delectable features.” Rolling Stone magazine’s Peter Travers wrote, “The Rain Man-Dying Young elements in Tom Sierchio's script are pitfalls that Slater dodges with a wonderfully appealing performance. His love scenes with the dazzling Tomei have an uncommon delicacy.” In his review for The New Yorker, Anthony Lane praised Tomei for bringing "startling high spirits to a dullish role. She snatches moments of happiness out of the air and shares them out to anyone who’s around.” However, in his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby felt that the film was “to the mind what freshly discarded chewing gum is to the sole of a shoe: an irritant that slows movement without any real danger of stopping it.”

It has been said about another Tony Bill film, My Bodyguard (1980), that, “it’s a nice, sweet movie, which I mean in the best possible way, with a surprising amount of depth found in its simple story." These words could so easily apply to Untamed Heart. By the film’s end one really feels like you’ve gone on a journey with these characters, especially Caroline who’s changed dramatically from where we saw her at the beginning. She’s gone from an emotional doormat when it comes to relationships to having experienced true love – to give of one’s self and to be there for someone else in return.

DVD of the Week: Cronos: Criterion Collection

Cronos (1993) marked the auspicious feature film debut of Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro and introduced the world to his unique worldview that fused his love of dark fairy tales with the macabre. The film was the culmination of Del Toro cutting his teeth on short monster movies where he learned how to do special effects and makeup effects himself. The film dominated Mexico’s equivalent of the Academy Awards and won the critics’ award at the Cannes Film Festival. Unfortunately Del Toro’s film was a commercial failure at the box office despite positive notices from The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Sun-Times. However, it was a launching pad, career-wise, for Del Toro who went on to make Mimic (1997) for Miramax, which was plagued with studio meddling, and the popular Hellboy films among many others.


Created in 1536, the Cronos Device is said to be the key to immortality. It attaches itself to the bearer and drains blood from them in return for eternal life – they become a vampire of sorts. For hundreds of years the scarab-looking device was in the possession of its architect. When he died it came into the possession of a kind, old antiques store owner by the name of Jesus Gris (Federico Luppi). An American businessman named Angel de la Guardia (Ron Perlman) has been looking for the device as his benefactor desires to become immortal. Of course, Gris messes with the device and is unable to resist its lure. He soon finds himself craving raw meat and blood – even going so far as to lick a small pool of it off a public bathroom floor! He also looks younger and not only has to worry about being taken over by the device but also has to watch out for Angel.

There is a wicked streak of dark humour that runs through Cronos reminiscent of the early films of Stuart Gordon or Roman Polanski and is not as prevalent in Del Toro’s more serious films, like The Devil’s Backbone (2001) and Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), but surfaces in his more commercial work, like the Hellboy films. Cronos would mark the first time that he would work with actor Ron Perlman and he is quite good as a ruthless but somewhat inept businessman. They have gone on to collaborate on several subsequent films together with the actor serving as the director’s cinematic alter ego.

Cronos is one of the more subtle vampire films as Del Toro doesn’t show blatant vampire iconography until well into the film. At this stage in his career, he was still working out his themes and still deciding what his trademark motifs were to be. The narrative beats are different from his later films but in a good way. Del Toro makes fairy tales for adults and Cronos is a parable for several things, chief among them be careful what you wish for because you might just get it and it won’t be everything you thought it’d be. Not to mention achieving comes at an awful price as if Del Toro is saying that we are architects of our destruction.

Special Features:

There is an audio commentary by writer/director Guillermo del Toro. He explains that one of the primary inspirations for the film was alchemy, which he talks about in some detail. The filmmaker touches upon the colour scheme and why he used the ones that he did. Del Toro says that he wanted to create layers of vampirism – political, religious, and economic, etc. He also speaks knowledgably about filmmaking, history, mythology, literature and how they inform Cronos.

Also included is a commentary by producers Arthur H. Gorson, Bertha Navarro and Alejandro Springall. They provide a much more nuts and bolts approach – i.e. how they raised the money for the budget so that it would be independent of the studios thereby giving Del Toro total creative freedom. They also point out the themes in Cronos that he would continue to explore in subsequent films.

“Geometria” is a short horror film Del Toro made in 1987. A teenager is supposed to be studying for a geometry test but is more interested in the occult. He summons a demon and all hell breaks loose. In his introduction, Del Toro calls the film a silly idea and talks about how he was influenced by Italian horror filmmakers like Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento.

“Welcome to Bleak House” features Del Toro taking us on a tour of his fascinating “man cave,” a house full of props and artifacts from his films as well as toys and books that he’s collected over the years. He has organized the house in a series of libraries. This is a film genre fan’s dream and one could easily spend hours exploring its rooms.

There is an interview with Guillermo del Toro. He sees Cronos as very important because it was where he first articulated his universe. He discusses some of the themes this film explores and how they resurface in later films. Del Toro talks about his intentions with this film as well.

Del Toro’s long-time cinematographer Guillermo Navarro is interviewed and recalls when he first started working with the director. He also touches upon when Del Toro approached him about making Cronos. Naturally, Navarro talks about his approach to the visuals.

There is an interview with actor Ron Perlman. He talks about how he got involved in the film. Del Toro sent him a fan letter and a copy of the screenplay, both of which impressed him. Perlman tells some funny stories about working on Cronos and with Del Toro.

Federico Luppi talks about working with Del Toro on Cronos. He speaks admiringly of the filmmaker while we see clips from the film and behind-the-scenes footage, including all sorts of makeup and gore effects being applied to the veteran actor.

There is an impressive stills galley featuring rare photographs and illustrations with captions written by Del Toro identifying them.

Finally, there is a trailer.

 

Waking the Dead

Keith Gordon began acting at a young age, appearing in films by legendary directors like Brian De Palma and John Carpenter but when he found acting in films, like the Rodney Dangerfield comedy Back to School (1986), unfulfilling, he decided to try his hand behind the camera, tackling a series of literary adaptations on modest budgets but managing to entice actors like Nick Nolte and Gary Sinise to appear in his films. In his Senses of Cinema interview with Gordon, Peter Tonguette best sums up the director’s body of work as having: “moral gravity and their aesthetic richness.” Arguably his most successful and sincere film to date is Waking the Dead (2000), a heart-wrenching story about love and loss spanning two decades.


In 1974, two Chilean nationalists and an American activist are killed in a car bomb. The two nationalists had been touring the United States and speaking out against Chile’s dictatorship government. Sarah Williams (Jennifer Connelly) was the American activist also killed in the explosion and the film begins with her boyfriend, Fielding Pierce (Billy Crudup), finding out about her death via a television broadcast. We flash back to 1972 when Fielding and Sarah meet for the first time in New York City. She’s working for a publishing company that Fielding’s hippie brother, Danny (Paul Hipp), runs while Fielding is serving in the Coast Guard.

For Fielding it is love at first sight and over lunch he shares with her his idealistic beliefs – that politics can still make a difference and that you have to be part of the system to do it. He sees serving in the Coast Guard as part of his duty for his country and a stepping stone on the way to becoming President of the United States. He lectures for a bit but you can tell that Sarah sees right through him. Over dinner it is her turn to share her idealistic beliefs. She can tell that he’s ambitious, but doesn’t share his career path. Despite their ideological differences they fall in love.

We flash forward to Chicago, 1982 and Fielding is a lawyer in the District Attorney’s office and working his way up the social and political ladder. His girlfriend Juliet (Molly Parker) is a socialite and her uncle Isaac Green (Hal Holbrook) pulls strings so that the governor personally picks Fielding to run for a congressional seat. His life seems set until one snowy night he hears Sarah’s voice in the wind. Is it her ghost or his conscience? Or did she somehow manage to survive the car bombing back in ’74? Fielding still misses her and confesses to his sister (Janet McTeer), “it gets better and then it’s like it never got better at all.” Is he cracking up, sabotaging himself just when he’s poised to achieve a crucial step towards his ultimate goal?

Keith Gordon takes us back and forth in time to explore Fielding and Sarah’s relationship and how it continues to haunt him in the present. For example, he sees a little girl standing on a sidewalk who reminds him of Sarah. He walks through an airport terminal and everyone begins to look like her. These visions really get under Fielding’s skin (and ours too). With the nature of Sarah’s work it is possible that she faked her own death to continue her activism. Whenever Fielding sees her she is tantalizingly just out of reach like a ghost. He regrets not dwelling more on her death and trying to figure out what happened. There’s a nice scene between him and his father where he tries to articulate how much he still misses Sarah. Billy Crudup does a fantastic job of conveying how Fielding tries to make sense of his feelings and convey them to his father. He’s wracked with self-doubts at the worst possible moment in his life but he’s got to sort through them if he hopes to continue on his current career trajectory.

Gordon does a fantastic job charting the trajectory of Fielding and Sarah’s relationship. There’s a particularly telling exchange between them when they start living together in Chicago. She tells him about her fear of disappearing. He reassures her that he won’t let that happen to which she replies, “it’s not up to you,” and this eerily foreshadows what happens to her. Through editing, Gordon shows the sharp contrast between the ambitious, glad-handing Fielding getting the vote out in the 1980s with the idealistic version in the 1970s who is kept grounded by the earthy Sarah, his social conscience. A year into their relationship and we can see them already moving in different directions – she is getting into activism and he’s heading for the D.A.’s office.

There’s a scene where Fielding and Sarah go to a black tie event and while he schmoozes, she can barely hide her contempt and then tears into a guest, confronting him about his politics. If they continued on these paths would they have stayed together had she lived? She even calls him on his trajectory: “It’s all mapped out. It’s been mapped out long before we ever met. I’m not going to change it.” One of the things that strikes me about their relationship is the real and honest discussions they have about their beliefs. They are depicted in a way that is smart and fascinating to watch play out. At one point she says to him, “it’s so infuriating loving you sometimes,” and what couple that has been together for some period of time has felt this way and maybe even verbalized it? It’s a realistic portrayal of a relationship: they love each other passionately and have ugly arguments, too, just like anybody else. It is this commonality that we can all identify with. One can’t help but see some of themselves in their relationship.

Jennifer Connelly is a revelation in this film. Not only does she play Sarah as a vision that haunts Fielding’s conscience but also a real, tangible person who is smart, beautiful and with fierce political convictions and unafraid to voice them. Sadly, this is in short supply in American cinema and her character evokes Sigourney Weaver’s Jill Bryant in Peter Weir’s The Year of Living Dangerously (1982). Early on, Connelly delivers a passionate monologue where Sarah tells Fielding what she wants out of life. It is the moment where he falls in love with her and so do we. In this scene, the actress conveys the intelligence and passion of her character. It’s where we become emotionally invested in Sarah. She is beautiful and smart and like Fielding we want to know more about her.

Paul Hipp plays Fielding’s ne’er-do-well brother Danny, the black sheep of the family who goes from goofy publisher of a counterculture press in the ‘70s, to the drug-addicted mess who wants to marry an Asian prostitute (Sandra Oh) in the ‘80s. The actor had a scene-stealing turn in Clint Eastwood’s adaptation of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997) and has worked with filmmaker Abel Ferrara on numerous occasions. He gives a memorable performance in Gordon’s film, making the most of his limited screen-time, refusing to play a stereotypical hippie or a clichéd junkie.

Producers Griffin Dunne and Amy Robinson first approached Keith Gordon about directing Waking the Dead because they liked his adaptation of The Chocolate War (1988) and asked him to read Scott Spencer’s 1986 novel Waking the Dead in 1991. At the time, he was in the midst of falling in love with the woman that would eventually become his wife. While reading the book it made him think about “what would happen if I ever lost her, and how devastated I would be, and whether I could go on, and whether what I had gotten with her would be enough to go on or whether there would be no point.” He wrote the first draft in late 1991 to early 1992 when Warner Brothers was interested in backing it. The studio asked him to tell the story in chronological order, give it a happy ending, take the politics out and make Sarah more likable because “people don’t like a woman with strong politics.” Gordon refused and the project stalled so he went off and made A Midnight Clear (1992) and Mother Night (1996). After making the latter film, he read the script for Waking the Dead again and still wanted to make it into a film.

Gordon contacted Spencer who told him that the rights to the novel had reverted back to him. He gave the filmmaker permission to adapt it free of charge because he liked the script. The project finally picked up steam when Jodie Foster agreed to make it with her production company. Gordon had tried to get her interested in financing Mother Night but she passed on it. After attending one of its screenings, Foster told Gordon that she made a mistake not backing it. She asked him if he was working on anything new and he gave the script for Waking the Dead. She read it and wanted to do it. Foster had a deal with Polygram and took the project from Warner Bros. and set up Gordon’s film there.

Foster suggested Tom Cruise play Fielding and they sent him the script but he did not agree to do it despite liking the material. It was at this time that Gordon got a call from Billy Crudup’s agent telling him that the actor really wanted to do the film. He knew of the actor’s reputation but had not seen much of his work. Gordon thought that Crudup might be too young and that Polygram would not approve. At the time, the actor was making The Hi-Lo Country (1998) and executives at Polygram thought he was going to be a big movie star and were willing to take a chance on him.

For the role of Sarah, Gordon auditioned all kinds of actresses but found that they would “get the intelligence, but not have the sensuality. Or they would get the sensuality, but wouldn’t have the anger.” He did not even want Jennifer Connelly to read for the part because he was under the impression that she was beautiful but not a great actress. Her agent was persistent, however, and got Gordon to watch two independent films that had not been widely seen. In particular, he was impressed with her work in Far Harbor (1996) where she delivered a “long monologue about the death of her baby and she played this manic-depressive woman and she was fabulous.” Once he cast Connelly, he not only realized that she had the qualities necessary for the character but that she and Crudup had chemistry right away. Gordon rehearsed with the two actors for three weeks, discussing what happened between scenes and what their characters were like together so that they knew everything about them by the time principal photography began.

In a fantastic example of lousy timing, Polygram went out of business right around the time Waking the Dead was going to be distributed in theaters. They were being sold to Universal Studios and so Gordon did not know who to ask about things like putting a soundtrack album out (he later snuck many of the musical cues on the menus for the DVD).

Waking the Dead received mostly mixed to negative reviews from critics who didn’t seem to connect with what Gordon was trying to do with this film… or simply felt that he wasn’t successful. In his review for The New York Times, Stephen Holden wrote, "In falling short of its goal, the movie raises the question of whether it's possible to film an intelligent tear-jerker that prompts us to think and cry at the same time … At its best, Waking the Dead suggests an intellectually upscale answer to Love Story. At its weakest, it comes off as a stiff, muted exercise in countercultural nostalgia.” Roger Ebert gave the film two-and-a-half stars and said it "has a good heart and some fine performances, but is too muddled at the story level to involve us emotionally. It's a sweet film. The relationship between Sarah and Fielding is a little deeper and more affectionate than we expect in plot-driven melodrama.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "C" rating and Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote, "the arbitrariness of the lovers' passion and the somber hysteria with which the novelist and filmmaker treat every issue, whether its South American dictatorship or female armpit hair, is enough to anesthetize the living.”

The Chicago Reader’s Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote, "I can cite only one unequivocal reason for seeing Waking the Dead, and that's Jennifer Connelly ... What makes Connelly so remarkable isn't her character's radicalism but her capacity to keep the character fresh every time she appears and to leave a lingering impression that makes the hero's (and the movie's) sense of loss acute.” On a more positive note, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Mick LaSalle called it "a film teeming with riches. One of the most powerful romances of recent years, it is as generous as they come ... an intelligent tale told with go-for-broke passion ... Crudup and Connelly are splendid together ... Waking the Dead gives us acting at its biggest and most beautiful." In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Kevin Thomas wrote, "The seeming presence of Sarah creates a special challenge for Gordon and his stars, and that Waking the Dead deals with it so imaginatively, makes the film all the richer and provocative an experience.”

I love that Waking the Dead opens with the beautiful Joni Mitchell song, “A Case of You” from her Blue album. It has been said that the song is told from the point of view of a sarcastic, cynical lover and one can’t help but see this as a commentary on Sarah. This film is many things – a love story and a supernatural thriller with politics woven throughout. At its heart it is a love story about two people with contrasting beliefs but who fall in love anyway. How does someone carry on after the love of their life is gone? How does it affect your life? Waking the Dead offers no easy answers (because there are none) and explores, in fascinating detail, how one man deals with the death of a love one. Gordon never really tells us definitively if Sarah is dead or not, leaving it up to us to make up our own mind. One could argue that a huge chunk of Fielding’s idealism died the day Sarah did and his visions of her are bits of it fighting to re-emerge. Ultimately, his struggle is an inner one with his soul as the prize.