Pike's Peak Picks

[Holden Pike]

105894

Know I'm way late to the party, but I've decided I'm going to make one of these here threads where I post reviews and thoughts on some of my favorite flicks. I'll probably start with my current top hundred, then build from there. Eventually. I am not going to do it in a countdown style, or even alphabetically. I'll just throw 'em up randomly, one at a time, when the mood strikes me. Probably very slowly.

No, no, please: hold your applause.

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF FILMS REVIEWED
After Hours (http://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?anchor=1&p=1032997#post1032997)
A Boy & His Dog (http://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?anchor=1&p=1049261#post1049261)
Joe versus the Volcano (https://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?anchor=1&p=2543960#post2543960)
Pennies from Heaven (http://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?anchor=1&p=1047762#post1047762)
A Perfect World (https://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?anchor=1&p=2544837#post2544837)
The Wild Bunch (http://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?anchor=1&p=1035102#post1035102)

*to be updated with each addition
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[mark f]

:highfive:
That OK?

[Yoda]

Nice. :up: I suspect this'll be a popular thread.

And it only took him twelve and a half years!

[rauldc14]

This will be dynamite Holden. I'm sure I'll get a lot of suggestions from your thread here.

[donniedarko]

Don't tell me what to do

http://overheardinthesacristy.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/applause.gif?w=460

[cricket]

I like this; I think I'm going to get some good ideas here.

[Holden Pike]

Alrighty. Kicking it off with what is probably not the "best" Scorsese film, but may very well be my favorite...

105974
Directed by Martin Scorsese Screenplay by Joseph Minion Cinematography by Michael Ballhaus Cast: Griffin Dunne, Rosanna Arquette, Linda Fiorentino, John Heard, Teri Garr, Catherine O'Hara, Verna Bloom, Will Patton, Dick Miller, Bronson Pinchot, Cheech & Chong
1985 / approximately 97 minutes

After Hours is an extremely dark comedy, a Kafkaesque nightmare of guilt and big city paranoia. The story centers on Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne), a bored computer programmer in some nondescript Mid-town NYC office. His apartment is as drab and empty as the rest of his life. One evening while reading alone at a coffee shop Paul meets Marci (Rosanna Arquette), a sexy blond. They have a breezy, flirty talk about Henry Miller and art and whatever. She makes mention of a friend's loft in SoHo where she's staying, finds an excuse to drop the phone number into the conversation, and then she's gone. On a whim and the whiff of possible romance Paul calls her as soon as he gets home. She invites him out into the night, and though it is late and a weeknight he accepts. And so begins his odyssey.

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What follows is a dark, twisted, hilarious series of misadventures as things spin further and further out of Paul's control and he seems stuck in the Hell of downtown after midnight and before sunrise. The movie is populated with a multitude of intriguingly bizarre characters played to the hilt by an eclectic cast. Griffin Dunne (An American Werewolf in London) is the perfect protagonist to put through this kind of urban torture, a neurotic version of the everyman. Rosanna Arquette (Desperately Seeing Susan) simply is Marci, the hot-and-cold, always weird, but extremely sexy girl that coaxes him into this whole mess. Among the other odd denizens of the night are Teri Garr (Young Frankenstein, Mr. Mom) as a bee-hived waitress ("Do you like the Monkees?"), Cheech & Chong as a couple of roaming burglars, John Heard (Big, Home Alone) as a friendly bartender, Will Patton (No Way Out, The Postman) as a leather-bound tough guy, Catherine O'Hara ("SCTV", Best in Show) as an ice cream truck driver, and Linda Fiorentino (Men in Black, The Last Seduction) as the moody, half-dressed sculptress of Plaster-of-Paris bagel & cream cheese paperweights. Every role, no matter how small, is perfectly cast, from the cab driver to the bouncer outside the club to the token seller in the subway. The cab driver shoots a look of anger and annoyance that is so genuine I cringe and laugh every time I see it - a look I recognize instantly and all too well from personal experience.

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Every situation, every character, every line, every camera move is so audacious yet nuanced that you MUST watch the flick multiple times to begin to take it all in. The tone is patently unnerving. Scorsese is a master of...well, many things, including editing a film so that the audience becomes emotionally locked into what is happening on screen. In After Hours that means you are empathetic witness to a nightmare. It's an amazing movie and a whole lot of fun. As Paul gets stuck deeper and deeper into he Hellish quagmire of the SoHo district you can't help but feel for the guy - and laugh at him too. The entire plot is patently unlikely, but that's not the point. This is the stuff that surreal nightmares are made of, not pithy anecdotes. As the night rolls on and the tension builds it becomes more and more hilarious. Well, it's hilarious if you find suicide and blood-thirsty mobs to be breeding grounds for comedy. Did I mention the mob is being led by a Mr. Softee Ice Cream truck playing a tinkling jingle? This is grotesque dark humor at its finest.

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It's a wonderful script by Joseph Minion (Vampire's Kiss), who was an NYU student at the time. Longtime Marty collaborators Thelma Schoonmaker and Michael Ballhaus are along for the editing and cinematography chores, and Howard Shore (The Silence of the Lambs, SE7EN, The Lord of the Rings) adds a playfully haunting score. This is some of Schoonmaker's best work, right up there with Raging Bull and GoodFellas. Scorsese and Ballhaus really have some fun with stylized, exaggerated camera movement, so much so that you may want to take a Dramamine before you watch.

After Hours received very mixed reviews back in 1985, but it did nab Scorsese the Best Director at Cannes, a nomination for Dunne at the Golden Globes, and it won Best Feature at the very first Independent Spirit Awards. This is a brilliant movie that still too-few people seem to know very well today, and one that I force upon folks, constantly. Usually whenever I do they are blown away and wonder why they've never heard of it.

I love this movie, and for many years I never took a trip to NYC without watching it, first.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnlofUNOcZ8
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[Holden Pike]

After Hours odds and ends:


DIRECTOR CAMEO
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Scorsese has a Hitchcockian type cameo, operating the spotlight in the rafters of the Club Berlin.

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Martin Scorsese's parents Charles & Catherine, who appear in many of his films, are visible in the background as two patrons at the mid-town diner where Paul and Marci first meet.

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Amy Robinson, one of the producers on the film, co-starred in Scorsese's Mean Streets

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Scorsese was the first choice by the producers to direct the film. He initially passed due to gearing up production for the first attempt at The Last Temptation of Christ. After Hours was subsequently given to a young Tim Burton on the strength of his short "Vincent" but before Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. It would have been his feature debut. After that incarnation of Last Temptation fell apart and Scorsese became available again, Burton graciously and happily bowed out of the project.

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Teri Garr's character plays a Monkees record in her apartment. She appeared in the cult late-60s film Head (1968) starring the Monkees, directed by Bob Rafelson, and written by Jack Nicholson.

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Released eight months apart in 1985, at the time natural comparisons were drawn between Scorsese's film and John Landis' Into the Night which follows Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Pfeiffer on an unlikely odyssey late one evening around Los Angeles. After Hours is also often compared to Jonathan Demme's Something Wild (1986) starring Jeff Daniels and Melanie Griffith which was released about a year after Scorsese's film. Something Wild is where Scorsese first became aware of Ray Liotta before casting him in GoodFellas.

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Joseph Minion also wrote the teleplay for "Mirror, Mirror", the episode of Steven Spielberg's anthology series "Amazing Stories" that Scorsese directed.

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After Hours was Joseph Minion's thesis at NYU's film program. After the movie's release a lawsuit was filed and a settlement reached when monologist and radio artist Joe Frank claimed that a large section of the script was lifted almost whole from one of his pieces titled "Lies" that aired on NPR's Playhouse in 1982.

[rauldc14]

After Hours absolutely rules. Such a fun watch and great review, Holden. I think it may just be my 2nd favorite Scorsese.

[Sexy Celebrity]

I didn't realize Teri Garr was in Head. I'll have to finally watch this movie now just for the Monkees record.

[mark f]

http://sotcaa.org/head/images/head_pressglossy_coveredwagon.jpg

[rauldc14]

Teri Garr looked oh so good in Young Frankenstein. What has happened

[mark f]

40 years and multiple sclerosis.

[donniedarko]

After Hours is an awesomely surreal Scorsese film, great write up, and fun facts. I was not aware that his parents made Cameos in his films

[Camo]

Great review Holden. Weirdly enough i actually watched After Hours because i seen a highly positive review from you on the Scorcese thread you made. Scorcese is my favourite director and i'd say this is my fourth best of his, after Taxi Driver,The King of Comedy and Goodfellas. Overall i thought it was a great review but this just perfectly sums the movie up for me - "Scorsese is a master of...well, many things, including editing a film so that the audience becomes emotionally locked into what is happening on screen. In After Hours, that means you are empathetic witness to a nightmare."

[Holden Pike]

After Hours is an awesomely surreal Scorsese film, great write up, and fun facts. I was not aware that his parents made Cameos in his films

His parents both appeared in his films, up until their deaths. His father passed after The Age of Innocence, his mother after Casino. Mrs. Scorsese's most famous and wonderful appearance is as Tommy Devito's (Joe Pesci) mother in GoodFellas. She's also quite funny as Rupert Pupkin's mother in The King of Comedy, unseen but always yelling at him from upstairs ("Lower it!").

Charles has highlighted supporting roles in Raging Bull and GoodFellas. He's actually the mobster with the cane walking into the room when Tommy gets whacked out ("And that's that."), the one who slices garlic with a razor blade in prison.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBW5AesgXC8

Consider that a small downpayment on my future GoodFellas review. :)

.
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[cricket]

Great insight on After Hours. I saw it at the movies when it came out, and I remember not thinking much of it. But I was only 14 at the time. Now, Scorsese is my favorite director, and I love dark comedy. I put it on my to see list; I feel as though it could become a favorite of mine.

[BlueLion]

Great review. After Hours was like an out-of-body experience for me. Everything about the film is perfect.

[rauldc14]

I think I need to buy After Hours.

[TheUsualSuspect]

I love After Hours. Ever have a bad day? Pop this on and remind yourself it could be worse.

[Sexy Celebrity]

Aren't you the person, Suspect, who gave me After Hours to watch in that Movie Trade Game? Someone did and I didn't watch it. I will have to correct this soon.

[cricket]

I watched it last night and loved it. What a difference almost 30 years can make on how you feel about something. 4

[earlsmoviepicks]

We need this now Holden-- excellent job!

[genesis_pig]

Not only does he share his favorite movies, but also few interesting facts.

After Hours was in my list of Fave movies on MoFo years ago. Only 2 Scorsese films make my favorite list, The other one is Taxi Driver. I wish Scorsese would do more Dark Comedies. Goodfellas could be considered a black comedy, but it was hardly Dark, bizarre and even surreal at times like After Hours.

Not to forget the Cheech and Chong cameo.

[JayDee]

Holden's starting a reviews thread? Well that's just.....great. That makes me really.......happy. I'm not at all worried about the competition. I'm completely, absolutely fine with this.


http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y193/JayDee87/Tantrum_zpsa6f4dd8a.gif (http://s5.photobucket.com/user/JayDee87/media/Tantrum_zpsa6f4dd8a.gif.html)

http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc275/Dani-Death/Cartoons/Tantrum.gif (http://s214.photobucket.com/user/Dani-Death/media/Cartoons/Tantrum.gif.html)


I should probably just hand this award over to you right now, somehow I doubt I'll be retaining it next year.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y193/JayDee87/iz85_zps3aa24b8c.jpg (http://s5.photobucket.com/user/JayDee87/media/iz85_zps3aa24b8c.jpg.html)



I'll stick with JayDee.

Aww thanks Sexy. http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y193/JayDee87/hug-1_zps21251001.gif (http://s5.photobucket.com/user/JayDee87/media/hug-1_zps21251001.gif.html) At least I'll always have you. (I think that may actually have made me even sadder)

[Gideon58]

Have never really understood all the love for AFTER HOURS...I liked it, but I never have considered the film to be "brilliant."

[Sexy Celebrity]

Holden's starting a reviews thread? Well that's just.....great. That makes me really.......happy. I'm not at all worried about the competition. I'm completely, absolutely fine with this.

Yeah, well how do you think I feel?! Nobody even looks at my reviews anymore -- THANKS TO YOU. I should have won that award!

And everybody just FLOODS Holden Pike with positive rep. FLOODS.

He'll get 30 rep points just for posting a period. Everyone treats that m*****f***** like he's a God when he's not! I am!

But at least JayDee now has somebody around to make him feel like yesterday's garbage. Have fun!

[earlsmoviepicks]

JAY
What do you look so shocked for? He
does this all the time. Fat bastard
thinks just because he never says
anything, that it'll have some huge
impact when he does open his ****ing
mouth.

BOB
Why don't you shut up? Jesus! Always
yap, yap, yapping all the time. Give
me a ****ing headache.

:))

[Holden Pike]

Next up, I'll go with the film that gave me my internet nom de plume...

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Directed by Sam Peckinpah Screenplay by Walon Green & Peckinpah Story by Walon Green & Roy Sickner Score by Jerry Fielding Cinematography by Lucien Ballard Cast: William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Ben Johnson, Warren Oates, Edmond O'Brien, JaimeSánchez, Strother Martin, L.Q. Jones, Bo Hopkins, Emilio Fernández, Alfonso Arau, and Dub Taylor
1969 / approximately 145 minutes

So much blood. So much shooting. So much death.

That is the reputation of Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch. It was much of its initial reaction in 1969, and it's a reputation that endures, even today. Peckinpah's name itself conjures up slow-motion ballets of squibs and gunfire. And there is no denying that is a major part of The Wild Bunch's legacy. But if the movie were just five or six reels of pulpy cinematic violence it would be a footnote and nothing more. In an age where most cable series have two times as much profanity and much more graphic violence in any single episode than The Wild Bunch does in its full running time, Peckinpah's screen violence may lose much of its potency, out of the context of its day.

Why The Wild Bunch is immortal to me is not because of the celebrated/condemned violence, but due to its poetic odes to friendship, honor, and the futility of outrunning progress, all wrapped in an adventure story about laughing outlaws, daring robberies, and messy gunfights that helps to shatter many of the genre myths and attitudes that had been established in previous decades of film and television Westerns. And, yes, it surely is bloody, too.

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1913, a dusty Texas town near the Mexican border. A handful of uniformed U.S. Cavalry men ride in on horseback and enter the post office and railroad office. But they are not there to protect anything. As they draw their weapons and subdue the customers and staff, their leader, Pike Bishop (William Holden), barks out a simple, "If they move, kill 'em!" These disguised outlaws are looking to make off with a haul of silver coins, hopefully a big enough payoff to be their last score. They're getting old and tired, and the new century is about to change the world to one full of automobiles and airplanes and there will be no need for rough bandits anymore. But their heist is no secret, and a band of mercenaries lay in wait for them outside. What follows is a bloody shoot out, indiscriminately taking out more townspeople than it does the would-be robbers or the bounty hunters hired by the rail road to stop them.

In addition to Pike, the surviving outlaws who escape the town are Ernest Borgnine's (Marty, From Here To Eternity) Dutch, Ben Johnson (The Last Picture Show) and Warren Oates' (Stripes, In the Heat of the Night) Gorch brothers, Edmond O'Brien's (D.O.A., White Heat) Sykes, and Jaime Sánchez (The Pawnbroker) as Angel. They escape with their lives, but not the silver: they shot their way out of town for a bunch of metal washers. The men pursuing them are led by Robert Ryan's (The Set-Up, Crossfire) Deke Thorton, a former riding partner-in-crime who went to prison and is now working, reluctantly, for the railroad. He wishes he could be on the other side with them, but he has made a deal, and being an honorable old sumbitch, he aims to keep it. Even though the two-bit mercenaries he has riding with him, including T.C. (L.Q. Jones) and Coffer (Strother Martin), are a mangy gang of scumbags who wouldn't know honor if it took a dump on them, and even though he's riding against his friends, especially Pike.

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Pike and the bunch cross into Mexico and hide out at Angel's small hometown, which they find being run by a dishonorable General Mapache (Emilio Fernández). After Angel insults the General, Pike tries to keep peace by hiring them all out to rob a train full of guns for the unscrupulous General. They know it is a deal with the Devil, but are massively outgunned and see no other way out. Plus, the General has promised them a decent amount of gold for their trouble, and they still need that score they didn't get.

What follows are tests of loyalty and some spectacular action, including a train robbery and the blowing of a bridge, all leading up to one last outrageous act of defiance that is not desperate, rather simply the right damn thing to do.

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Unlike the classic Western archetypes, there are no clear "good guys" and "bad guys". Even our anti-heroes, though we root for them and they are played by familiar actors, are murderous thieves. They have a greater sense of honor than the scum around them, perhaps, but are certainly not simple white knights. They did not shoot only when shot at, they have little regard for anybody who gets in the way of their goals, and not only are they in this for the money, but they actually ENJOY robbing and living outside of the law and civilization. John Wayne was reported to have said that The Wild Bunch "destroyed the myth of the Old West". As the Vietnam War raged in Southeast Asia, Peckinpah thought some de-mythologizing was long overdue. Plus, so much of the popular Western, especially as it dominated the airwaves of the 1950s and '60s, was formulaic and decidedly unrealistic. With the '60s works of Sergio Leone (A Fistful of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, The Good the Bad & the Ugly, Once Upon A Time in the West) coupled with Peckinpah's, they turned most of those conventions on their heads...and then shot them in the face.

The Wild Bunch, in all of its revisionist, gory glory, is one of the towering achievements of the Western genre, and with its themes, performances and artistry, including Lucien Ballard's elegant cinematography and Jerry Goldsmith's perfect score, it transcends the genre and is a great film, period.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwE3TfJUB48

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[Holden Pike]

The Wild Bunch odds and ends…

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Similar themes and some basic plotting as Richard Brooks’ The Professionals (1966), starring Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Woody Strode and Robert Ryan as four aging guns for hire who go into Mexico to get the wife (Claudia Cardinale) of a rich American (Ralph Bellamy), after she is kidnapped by an infamous bandit (Jack Palance).

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William Holden was not the original choice to play Pike Bishop. Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, James Stewart, Charlton Heston, Gregory Peck, Sterling Hayden, Richard Boone and Robert Mitchum all passed. Marvin actually accepted the role, but pulled out after he was offered a larger payday to star in the Western Musical Paint Your Wagon (1969).

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Brian Keith and Richard Harris, both of whom had previously worked with Peckinpah, were the original choices to play Robert Ryan's role of Deke Thornton.

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For Ernest Borgnine's role of Dutch, Steve McQueen, George Peppard, Jim Brown, Alex Cord, Robert Culp, Sammy Davis Jr., Charles Bronson and Richard Jaeckel were all considered, at various stages.

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Peckinpah cast Robert Ryan and Ernest Borgnine after seeing them in Robert Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen (1967).

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Alfonso Arau, who plays Mapache’s second in command, would go on to play the Mexican bandit leader El Guapo in John Landis' Western comedy ¡Three Amigos! (1986), Joan Wilder superfan Juan in Bob Zemeckis' Romancing the Stone (1984), and a director in his own right, including Like Water for Chocolate (1992).

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Approximately 90,000 rounds of blank ammunition were used during the filming of The Wild Bunch, more than the estimated number of live rounds used in the entire actual Mexican Revolution.

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Butch Cassidy's gang of outlaws was called "The Wild Bunch" in the press of the era, but in George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, released the same year as Peckinpah's film, they are referred to as "The Hole in the Wall Gang". Warner Brothers greenlit The Wild Bunch partially to compete with 20th Century Fox, who had won the bidding war for William Goldman's Butch Cassidy script. Peckinpah's film was released in June of 1969, George Roy Hill's in October.

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Strother Martin appears in both The Wild Bunch and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

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The brutal metaphor that opens the film, the children playing with ants and scorpions, was not in the original script. It was suggested to Peckinpah by Emilio Fernández (Mapache), who used to play the torturous game himself as a child.

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Several of the films' most iconic scenes were not in the script, including the train robbery (which was originally done off-screen) and the final walk back toward the village center to get Angel. Those sequences were thought of on the day, quickly designed and staged, then captured by the cameras.

The film received two Oscar nominations: Adapted Screenplay (Peckinpah shares screenwriting credit) and Original Score. It lost both of those Oscars to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It wound up being the only Oscar nomination of Sam Peckinpah's career.

[cricket]

I'm not a huge fan of Westerns in general, but The Wild Bunch is one of the greats. It was my father's favorite movie and will most likely be on my 60's list.

[earlsmoviepicks]

Tell me, Holden, how does it feel? Getting paid for it? Getting paid to sit back and write awesome reviews... with the Mofos arms around you? How does it feel to be so godd---- right?

[TheUsualSuspect]

Never seen it.

[Holden Pike]

105972
Directed by Herbert Ross
Screenplay by Dennis Potter
Cinematography by Gordon Willis
CAST: Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters, Jessica Harper,
Vernel Bagneris, John McMartin, and Christopher Walken
1981, approximately 108 minutes

In 1981, Steve Martin took an artistic risk which might have drastically changed his then-new screen image and Herbert Ross tried to reinvent the Musical for a new, post-modern sensibility. The film was Pennies from Heaven, and it was a box-office flop. A few critics sang its praises, including Pauline Kael, but by and large it was dismissed. I think it is a brilliant movie that was so far ahead of its time, and still lies mostly undiscovered.

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British television writer and novelist Dennis Potter ("The Singing Detective") had a long, successful career starting in the 1960s in the UK, and one of his biggest accomplishments was the 1978 BBC mini-series "Pennies from Heaven", starring Bob Hoskins. It tells the story of a sheet-music salesman in 1930s Britain who dreams of living out the lyrics of the songs he peddles. These rich fantasies are contrasted sharply with the darkness of his real life. Potter pared down and adapted his own eight-hour teleplay into a film screenplay, shifting the setting to Depression-era Chicago, which caught the attention of Herbert Ross, who had been on quite a roll in the 1970s, helming such projects as The Goodbye Girl, The Sunshine Boys, The Last of Sheila, The Turning Point, California Suite, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution and Play it Again, Sam. Steve Martin, fresh from mega success as a stand-up comic playing to rock-and-roll-size crowds and distilling that wild and crazy persona first to the small screen on "Saturday Night Live" and his own specials, and then into The Jerk (1979), signed on to play the dark and complicated lead. Broadway star Bernadette Peters, who was Martin's co-star in The Jerk and at the time his real-life paramour, and Jessica Harper (Phantom of the Paradise, Suspiria, My Favorite Year) would co-star, with Christopher Walken in film-stealing support.

Pennies from Heaven is the musical as psychotic episode. The numbers, often elaborate set pieces, replicating the styles if not the scenes of some classic cinema Musicals, and of which Busby Berkeley himself would have been proud, are delusions that have absolutely zero to do with reality. The usual conceit of the Musical is that the song interludes further the plot and/or give voice to internal emotions of the characters. But not here. Martin's character Arthur is a bizarre and almost irredeemably amoral man, who creates a pretend morality in the music he loves and envisions. He claims, certainly to himself and by extension the audience, to be a pure romantic dreamer trying to honestly make his way in the world, but his selfish and hurtful actions tell otherwise. It's a rather brilliant concept, and to me works even better as a movie than as a TV project (though make no mistake, the BBC version is also spectacular and a must-see). Many of the film's references are to the otherworlds created by movie magic, worlds that millions flocked to during the Depression in order to delude themselves into a fantasy for part of an afternoon or evening. As Fred Astaire was floating across screens in top hat and tails, much of the audience was wondering if they could find steady work, or keep the tenuous hold on their income and possessions. So in one of Heaven's best sequences when Martin and Peters actually enter Follow the Fleet (1936), the Astaire & Rogers classic, the circle is complete, and Arthur's fantasy blends with the larger societal fantasy.

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Another stylistic risk/choice the film makes, carrying over from what was done in the TV version, is to have the actors lip-synch to the existing period tracks, rather than re-record them with these actors. Obviously stage star Peters could have done just about anything they asked, vocally, but this added layer of artifice is intentional, both making some of the song choices seem that much odder and funnier, being mouthed by the protagonists, and also not pretending these fantasies are to be taken in simple genre terms, but almost as if they were being done in front of a mirror in your attic, when nobody was home to catch you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHyWFWJV61k

The look of the film is fantastic, with two basic palettes: the glitz of Hollywood and the dim of Edward Hopper. Several of his paintings are brought to life, including his most iconic, "Nighthawks". Gordon Willis, who was one of the most respected and imitated cinematographers of his era, having lensed The Godfather series for Coppola and Alan J. Pakula's All the President's Men before becoming Woody Allen's go-to collaborator on Annie Hall, Manhattan, Interiors, Stardust Memories, Zelig, The Purple Rose of Cairo and on and on, creates some stunning tableaus and homages.

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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a8/Nighthawks_by_Edward_Hopper_1942.jpg/1200px-Nighthawks_by_Edward_Hopper_1942.jpg

Steve Martin has had an incredibly successful and quite diverse career in film, and while he eventually worked his way into some darker and sometimes intentionally comedy-free projects a couple decades later, it was probably too early and too bizarre a project for his fanbase to accept at the time, en masse. How might his career trajectory had changed if Pennies from Heaven wound up with multiple, high-profile Oscar nominations like Picture and Director? We'll never know.

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This scene, in the next YouTube link, is a perfect example of what the film does. Christopher Walken only has one scene, really. At a particularly low point for the Peters character, she wanders into a bar on the bad side of town. The resident pimp, Walken, approaches her, buys her a drink, and offers her a job, on her back. It is tense and frightening, a cruel fate for this character who did nothing but trust the wrong man. And then, right when things look bleakest, Walken breaks into the Cole Porter tune "Let's Misbehave" by Irving Aaronson and His Commanders...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54iR0xFkEfQ

Dark and ironic eye-candy, this is Herbert Ross' masterpiece in my book, waiting to be rediscovered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPRL3IdIcVc

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[Holden Pike]

Pennies from Heaven odds and ends...

http://www.movieforums.com/community/attachment.php?attachmentid=7452&stc=1&d=1310653782
In the sequence that uses the title song, the "pennies" that are seen raining down from heaven mixed with the rain were penny-sized sequins. After filming, they blew out the stage door, and could be found in the corners in the streets at MGM studios for almost a year.

http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lp41hiVmIx1qlvie8o1_500.gif
Fred Astaire, then eighty-two-years-old, hated the film, which used a clip from Follow the Fleet. He was quoted, "I have never spent two more miserable hours in my life. Every scene was cheap and vulgar. They don't realize that the thirties were a very innocent age, and that [the film] should have been set in the eighties – it was just froth; it makes you cry, it's so distasteful."

http://www.movieforums.com/community/attachment.php?attachmentid=13200&stc=1&d=1393755801
Bob Hoskins, who starred in the original television version, was reportedly upset that he was not seriously considered by MGM for the film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-q7fQg_wRc
MGM prohibited the broadcast of the BBC's original production of "Pennies from Heaven" for a period of ten years, from when the movie premiered. In February 1990, the BBC aired the original for the first time since 1978.

http://www.movieforums.com/community/attachment.php?attachmentid=13199&stc=1&d=1393755278
In an interview, Steve Martin said of the film's lack of box office success, in typical Steve Martin fashion, "I'm disappointed that it didn't open as a blockbuster and I don't know what's to blame, other than it's me and not a comedy. I must say that the people who get the movie, in general, have been wise and intelligent; the people who don't get it are ignorant scum."

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Arts/Arts_/Pictures/2007/10/09/dennispotter460.jpg
Pennies from Heaven was nominated for three Oscars: Best Sound, Best Costume Design (Bob Mackie), and Best Adapted Screenplay, Dennis Potter's only nomination in his career. He lost out to On Golden Pond.

http://www.movieforums.com/community/attachment.php?attachmentid=13201&stc=1&d=1393756044
Nominated for three Golden Globe Awards, including Best Picture Comedy/Musical, Best Actor Comedy/Musical for Martin, and Best Actress Comedy/Musical for Bernadette Peters. Ms. Peters won the Globe, while the film and Steve both lost out to Arthur and Dudley Moore.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ7z57qrZU8
Christopher Walken had trained in the musical theater starting as a child, and is an excellent dancer, though it is a skill that has rarely been called upon for his big screen roles.
They may not have liked the film, but both Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly were very impressed by Walken's scene.

[Thursday Next]

I have never heard of Pennies From Heaven before but it interests me a lot.

[christine]

Interesting to read about the Pennies from Heaven film, I've not seen it but the original series is brilliant. Dennis Potter was a genius. I still remember the last tv interview he gave to Melvyn Bragg - Potter was dying of pancreatic cancer and didn't have long to go, in fact he has to take swigs of morphine during the interview, but he still had a lust for life. Well worth trying to watch it if you can find it.

[Sedai]

Well, it took over a decade, but my favorite thread on MoFo has finally appeared! If I had to choose a person not named Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, or David Lynch, who has taught me the most about film, it would have to be Holden Pike. With his seemingly endless vault of knowledge, vast film-watching experience, or never-ending passion for the art form itself, HP is a huge part of why this is THE best film site on the web. I count myself lucky to have met the dude, Ornery Sumbitch or not.

After Hours is one of my favorite comedies of all time. Great choice for a first review!

I've...never seen Pennies from Heaven.

I am ashamed.

[Sexy Celebrity]

David Lynch can teach film? Go back to school.

[Powdered Water]

After Hours was a long time one of my Dad's favorite flicks. I enjoy it too.

[Cobpyth]

I just watched Pennies from Heaven and I must say you are ABSOLUTELY right about it! It's an audacious musical, that yet has all the classic elements of the golden era in it. Herbert Ross' directing of (especially) the musical numbers is also very impressive.
I loved everything about it: the story, the music, the occasional comedy, the atmosphere, the performances, and so on and so on. I can imagine this film was way ahead of its time, though.

It's full of amazing scenes and moments, but this has to be my favorite:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raoHt0AD-dQ

Plain awesomeness!

Thanks for recommending it in your thread here! I would not have discovered this flick for a very long time if it wasn't for your convincing hymn about it.

[Holden Pike]

If I had only started this a few months ago. Maybe I could have introduced enough of you to it that it would have made the MoFo '80s list? :)

[Holden Pike]

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Directed by L.Q. Jones Screenplay by Alvy Moore, Wayne Cruseturner, and L.Q. Jones Based on the novella by Harlan Ellison Cinematography by John Arthur Morrill Cast: Don Johnson, Tim McIntire, Susanne Benton, Alvy Moore, Helene Winston, Charles McGraw, Tiger, and Jason Robards
1975 / approximately 91 minutes

A Boy and His Dog is an intentionally deceptive title that, with no other context, could easily conjure up images of a live-action Disney movie, either of a Jack London-type tale of surival in nature or perhaps a wacky comedy about a pooch that runs for mayor? This film is about survival, though about as far from a Disney movie as one can get. An accurate, literal title would be something more like A Teenager and His Telepathic Dog Battle Desperate Souls and Mutants for Food and Water in a Post-Apocalyptic Landscape. Tough to fit that on a marquee.

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Years after an atomic war has destroyed most of civilization and humanity, in a radioactive desert somewhere in what was the United States, Vic (Don Johnson, a decade before "Miami Vice" would make him a star) and a dog named Blood (played by Tiger, a Bearded Collie) roam the desolate area looking for supplies and food, trying to avoid danger, most of which consists of the other survivors. Blood is the brains of the outfit, smart and thoughtful, and communicates with Vic via telepathy (voiced by Tim McIntire). Blood also has other useful abilities, including an enhanced sense of smell and a radar-like ability to scan for other living things. The film never explains how Blood and some other dogs have gained this telepathic ability, and it hardly matters. But for all of Blood's advances, he can't pull the trigger on a gun or turn a doorknob, so he and Vic are partners. Vic is supposed to be seventeen or so, and is not terribly bright. An orphan who has survived in the post-apocalyptic landscape for years, he can be impulsive, and at times treats Blood's advice the way a petulant teenager would advice from his father. Much to Blood's frustration. Like many teenagers, Vic is also a little sex-crazed, and in addition to food and bullets, Blood also helps him find women to be with.

The first half of the film has what are, by now, familiar scenarios of fending off groups of bandits looking to take what they want from everybody else. This film was released four years before the original Mad Max, so if it seems less elaborate than something like The Road Warrior, less dystopian than Escape from New York, and less stylized than The Book of Eli or Six-String Samurai or any dozen other movies of the sub-genre in the subsequent decades, remember that this is one of the first.

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The narrative switches gears and locales in the second half, and gets even more surreal, when Vic is lured beneath the surface by a beautiful young woman named Quilla June (Susanne Benton). He first saves from a gang and then is quickly and easily seduced by her. Post-coitus, she tells him of a better place than the murderous desert, a place where she lives. A place called Topeka.

Buried deep below the ground, clearly made before the bombs started to fall, is en entire society of survivors. Their beloved Topeka is made in the fashion of Smalltown U.S.A. circa 1940-something, a funhouse mirror take on Norman Rockwell Americana. It's all gingham and denim, picnics and a marching band. Because the light is artificial and they have been underground for years at this point, all of the residents wear thick, white makeup, a Kabuki pagent resulting in the people looking like grotesque, life-sized dolls. Topeka is controlled by a three-member committee, the clear leader of which is Lou Craddock (Jason Robards). They seem to have enough food, resources, electricity and space down there to last for a generation or two, if necessary. And the next generation is exactly why Vic has been brought there. Much like the mineshaft scenario described by Doctor Strangelove at the end of Kubrick's film, there is a need for prodigious procreation! But poor Vic finds out it's not quite the Letters to Penthouse non-stop orgy he may have imagined.

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"Lack of respect, wrong attitude, failure to obey authority. The Farm, immediately."

A Boy & His Dog is insane, twisted, satirical and it, too, was probably ahead of its time. On their face, the action and T&A elements might have made it likely fodder for a Drive-In potboiler, but it's done with a level of wit and insanity that likely would have confused if not outright bored an audience looking for an A.I.P. style flick. And at the same time, too sleazy and nutty for the Art House circuit.

The film's director, L.Q. Jones, is a well-known character actor who had been in the business for two decades, at that point, having been in dozens of television shows and, most fruitfully, part of Sam Pekinpah's stable of actors, starting with Ride the High Country (1962) and following in Major Dundee (1965), The Wild Bunch (1969), The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), and Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973). He directed only one other movie before this, a micro-budgeted Western The Devil's Bedroom (1964), and never made another movie after A Boy & His Dog. But this one is a terrific film that has attained cult status, yet still too often gets left out of the discussion of Best Science Fiction films.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYPacAuZpyA

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[Holden Pike]

A Boy & His Dog odds and ends…

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Tim McIntire, who does Blood's voice overs, was an actor who worked for many years in the industry, making his film debut with Jimmy Stewart in Shendoah and as an adult had visible roles in The Sterile Cuckoo with Liza Minelli, Brubaker with Robert Redford, and starred as disc jockey Alan Freed in American Hot Wax.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkw2Nv1env8

Tim McIntire also wrote the music and sang the title song for the film. He composed scores and songs for several other films, including “The Ballad of Jeremiah Johnson”, which he also sang, in Sydney Pollack’s Jeremiah Johnson (1972).

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Ray Manzarek of The Doors also worked on the film's music with McIntire.

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If it seems like an odd project for the double Oscar-winning Jason Robards to have agreed to, he did know L.Q. Jones from Peckinpah's The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), which explains at least how the script got to him, if not why he agreed to take the role.

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Harlan Ellison, who wrote the original story, tried to adapt it into a screenplay himself. He gave up, under the frustration of writer's block, so Jones and two others actually wrote it. Ellison is gloriously and sometimes even notoriously outspoken, but except for the last lines of the film, a joke that he thought was cheap and undercut everything that went before it, he rather liked L.Q.'s film, and is often cited as the best adaptation of one of his stories or teleplays.

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The legendary Jimmy Cagney was considered for the role of Blood's voice, but all involved ultimately decided his voice was TOO recognizable and iconic and would have been too much of a distraction for viewers. He would not come out of his self-imposed retirement until Miloš Forman's Ragtime (1981)

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The canine actor is the same Tiger who was the family pet on a handful of episodes of "The Brady Bunch".

[Sexy Celebrity]

Do a Top 100 list.

[Holden Pike]

Do a Top 100 list.
That's essentially what this is. At least the first hundred. But I'm just revealing them as I go, it's not ranked (though my top ten is easy to discover, in my profile) or even revealed alphabeticaly.

That's four down, ninety-six to go.

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[donniedarko]

I watched A Boy & His Dog upon its appearance on this list, and then read your writeup (which I enjoyed :up: ). For me though the movie felt like nothing more than a decent campy apocalyptic tale. I personally enjoyed the first (pre-cult) half of the film, while the rest bored me outside of a few entertaining moments. But as you mentioned it has a selective audience.

[edarsenal]

superb reviews of some excellent movies. Really love the extras you toss in!

[rauldc14]

Didn't like A Boy and His Dog. Translation: it will make the 70s list.

[Zotis]

I love A Boy and His Dog. I'm glad you also appreciated it. But then again I'm not surprised. You have superb taste Holden. The review was well written, and your observations spot on.

[Holden Pike]

Tweaked my banner. More reviews coming, soon.

http://i.imgur.com/6x4KSd8.png

[Holden Pike]

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”It’s been a long time since I Rock and Rolled. It’s been a long time since I did The Stroll…”

When I started this thread back in 2014, I had every intention of adding at least one or two reviews per month. I stalled after only four. Lots of things had been going on, as I just joined my first band, I had just changed careers in my day job, then a few years after that I got married, got into bigger bands, did a lot of traveling, had a granddaughter, got a dog, etc. All great stuff, but it left little time to devote to this particular effort here at MoFo. I still have all those wonderful IRL things, except that I am taking a break from music. That is giving me what I think will be more time to get back to this. I’m gonna try, anyway. Or at the very least, try to try.

Starting with…

[Holden Pike]

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Directed by John Patrick Shanley Screenplay by John Patrick Shanley Cinematography by Stephen Goldblatt Cast: Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Dan Hedaya, Ossie Davis, Abe Vigoda, Lloyd Bridges, Robert Stack, Amanda Plummer, Barry McGovern, David Burton, Nathan Lane, Carol Kane
1990 / approximately 102 minutes

Joe versus the Volcano is a romantic fairy tale about the power of taking chances, an existential comedy with elements of high adventure and true love. Since its release it has seemed to be a divisive cinematic experience, transfixing some and angering others, but those of us who adore it have turned it into a beloved cult flick.

Tom Hanks stars as Joseph Banks. Joe has a truly lousy job, working in the advertising library of a large company that manufactures medical equipment. But that description doesn’t do it justice. It is a huge, dark, industrial plant, Joe one of the many shift workers slowly walking to their stations like zombies. Joe has an office off the plant floor, but it is not much more inviting than the industrial Hell around it. It is essentially a coffin lit by buzzing, blinking fluorescent lights. Joe has just three co-workers in his immediate area: the boss, Mr. Waturi (Dan Hedaya), a nameless male zombie, and a mousey secretary named Dede (Meg Ryan). Joe is even cut off from those folks in a dark room with exposed pipes and shelves. This is the so-called library that is his domain, mailing catalogs to potential customers and sales reps. He does have one item to try and personalize the space: an ornate little lamp he keeps squirreled away in a filing cabinet, with a dancing hula girl for a base and a colorful shade that spins to a tinkling lullaby.

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Joe is miserable. Not just because of his job, but he also doesn’t feel well physically. We learn he takes many doctor appointments, though none of them seem to help. Today he is going to a new specialist during his lunch hour. The specialist is a Dr. Ellison (Robert Stack) who relays a devastating diagnosis: Joe has a Brain Cloud. It is a rare disease with no symptoms, but it is quick, insidious, and 100% terminal. He tells him he has approximately six months to live, and advises to use that remaining time well. Joe laments that he has no money, having spent what little he had on the long series of doctor visits that led him here. He leaves the office stunned by the news, but it also forces him to change his life. He returns to his horrible job and gets one of the best-ever quitting scenes in film, stage, or literature. After years wasted in that dingy purgatory, he finally tells the crass, pushy, and belittling Mr. Waturi exactly where he can shove this job. He also musters the courage to ask Didi out on a date after years of being too afraid to ask. With a finite amount of time left, Joe has taken the first steps to reclaiming his life.

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The date goes well until she learns he is dying, which is too much for her to deal with. The next morning, unsure of what to do, a knock comes on the door. It is an eccentric businessman named Samuel H. Graynamore (Lloyd Bridges). He has learned of Joe’s dilemma from Dr. Ellison and makes him a proposition. His company needs the mineral rights on a small, little-known Pacific island, Waponi Woo, but they have only one thing they will take in trade: a hero. There is an active volcano on the island, and the Waponis believe the fire gods within must be appeased with a sacrifice once every hundred years. That clock has almost run out, but none of the natives are volunteering to sacrifice themselves. That’s where Joe comes in. Graynamore offers to buy his services. He will lavish him with first class travel and any material thing he wants if Joe makes that fateful leap. With a death sentence and no other clear prospects, Joe accepts!

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That is the set up for this adventurous fable. We have left the evil dark forest and can now set out to explore the fantasyland! The next two chapters are in Manhattan and Los Angeles. In NYC he hires a limousine for the day and goes on a no-limit shopping spree. The limo driver, Marshall (Ossie Davis), gives him some sage advice on where to shop, buying fancy clothes, random high-end knick-knacks, and four large steamer trunks to carry it all. In L.A. he is met by Graynamore’s daughter, a flighty but depressed artist named Angelica (also played by Meg Ryan). But it is all just preamble to boarding the yacht that will sail him to the island. That boat is also owned by Graynamore, captained by another daughter, Angelica’s half-sister Patricia, who is played by – you’ve probably guessed it – Meg Ryan.

A couple nights into the cruise across the Pacific, the yacht is sunk in a mighty typhoon, with Joe and Patricia the only survivors. Joe is able to fashion a makeshift raft out of his four large, leather, water-tight steamer trunks! At first Patricia is unconscious but Joe nurses her as best he can, giving her the little drinking water they have and fasting himself. She eventually awakens and they are miraculously spotted by the Waponis. He is greeted as a hero, including by the tribe’s Chief (Abe Vigoda), but now Joe must decide if he will go through with the suicidal sacrifice as planned or cling to the life, and new love, that he has left.

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Joe versus the Volcano got some great reviews, including from Roger Ebert, but it had its share of professional detractors as well, and at the time it was a box office dud that large segments of the audience who did actually go to see it found it unappealing. It was the directorial debut of John Patrick Shanley. Shanley started as a New York City playwright, with seven successful off-Broadway shows under his belt before Hollywood came calling, most of which he had also directed. His first two movies debuted in 1987, Tony Bill’s wonderful but underseen Five Corners starring Jodie Foster, Tim Robbins, and John Turturro (Turturro had won awards for starring in JPS plays) as well as Norman Jewison’s Moonstruck, which was a hit and nominated for six Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director, winning the two actress awards for Cher and Olympia Dukakis and Best Original Screenplay for Shanley over such heavyweights as James L. Brooks for Broadcast News and Woody Allen for Radio Days. The third screenplay he had produced was an infamous bomb, an all-star-studded dark comedy/thriller called The January Man (1989). It was a mess of tone and intent, despite the best efforts of Kevin Kline and Alan Rickman. Absolutely savaged by critics and rightly ignored by audiences. But an Oscar win will get you more than one chance, and after Steven Spielberg read Joe versus the Volcano he not only wanted to produce it but also thought Shanley should make his debut as a movie director.

Joe versus the Volcano is very explicitly set up as a fable, which is why I have always found it odd that one of the main criticisms leveled is it is somehow too artificial and superficial. Everything is exaggerated, like a fairy tale, from the stylized netherworld of Joe’s job to the polished veneers of New York and L.A. to the gigantic moon rising over the ocean, and the colorful cultural mishmash on the fictional island. Of course, none of it is to be taken as “real”, these are movie fantasies seen through a child-like lens. The production design is a treat. And while the world he is moving through is obviously highly engineered, what is always grounded is Hanks’ performance. The situations may be outlandish, but Hanks plays it straight. Thus his existential journey and transformation feel earned and meaningful, even when the sets and many specifics are all purposefully fake. I suppose those who dislike the movie find those two elements incongruous, but for those of us who return to it again and again it is as much for the heartfelt examination of a man’s soul being repaired and the redemptive power of love as it is for the fun of the fantasy elements and the laughs from the comedy.

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For fans there are literally dozens of quotable and funny lines, including Mr. Waturi’s circular one-sided phone call (“I know he can get the job, but can he do the job…I’m not arguing that with you!”), to some deadpan classics from Airplane! vets Bridges and Stack (“Damned if I know, Kemosabe. All I know is, when you’re making those kinds of calls you’re up in the high country”), Angelica has some real corkers (“I’m a flibbertygibbit” and “Oh…I have no response to that”) including her poetry (“’Long ago the delicate tangles of his hair covered the emptiness of my hand…’ Would you like to hear it again?”), and Abe Vigoda’s no nonsense Chief (“No, you just jump in”) is hysterical.

I have loved this movie since I first saw it and am not surprised it developed a cult fanbase. Although he was proud of the film, the mixed reception Joe received and its reputation as being a dud, financially, coupled with his very next movie that released later in 1990, Brian DePalma’s infamous Bonfire of the Vanities which was universally despised as well as a financial failure, the decade started out kinda rough for Hanks. The rest of the decade was nothing but sustained success of all kinds, a run from A League of Their Own (1992) through Cast Away (2000) that saw him triumphant at the box office as well as nominated for four Oscars winning back-to-back for Philadelphia (1993) and Forrest Gump (1994). But for all of that objectively great and popular work, my favorite is still Joe versus the Volcano.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmQDIne3CLo
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[Holden Pike]

Joe versus the Volcano odds and ends:
There are several visual motifs throughout, the most important being the zig-zag lightning bolt shape that reappears. It is first seen and most obvious as the logo for Joe’s company, American Panascope, which is also the shape of the crooked path the employees use. Next it appears in Joe’s apartment, the morning Graynamore visits with his proposition, as a large crack on the apartment wall. We see it again as the actual lightning that cuts the yacht in half and sinks it, and finally it is the shape of the path that goes from the village up to the mouth of the volcano.

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Another visual double is the Waponi ceremonial mask worn at the volcano is the same as the exterior of the factory.

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The portrayal of the American Panascope industrial environment was influenced by Shanley's experience working as an eighteen-year-old for a company that manufactured medical equipment, including catheters, endoscopes, and artificial testicles. The design of Joe's office is based on the office he worked in there, including the fluorescent lighting and a pipe with a valve that reads, "Do not touch".

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Obviously the books Joe has in his desk all forshadow the adventure he is about to take: Robinson Crusoe, Romeo & Juliet, and The Odyssey. Another hint hiding in plain sight is the lampshade on his novelty lamp. As it rotates it reveals a yacht, a pretty blond woman on an island paradise, and a volcano - a volcano that has the exact same zig-zag lightning bolt path we see on Waponi Woo.

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CAMEOS: Carol Kane has a very brief scene as Cassie the hairdresser who cuts Joe’s hair in Manhattan. Though clearly recognizable, she is billed as Lisa LeBlanc in the credits. This was not Nathan Lane’s first film, it was his third, but still long before his Broadway acclaim had transferred to the big screen. He is one of the island inhabitants. His character’s name is Baw, and other than Abe Vigoda’s Chief he is the only other Waponi who seems to speak any English. You may not initially recognize him under his heavy, colorful makeup and headdress, but when he says, “Are you Joe Banks?” his voice is unmistakable.

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Meg Ryan plays three roles, and in a bit of foreshadowing it turned out to be the first of three projects she and Hanks would co-star in, subsequently headlining Nora Ephron’s Sleepless in Seattle (1993) and You’ve Got Mail (1998).

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While most critics gave negative reviews back in March of 1990, Roger Ebert was an immediate supporter. He gave it an enthusiastic thumbs up on the syndicated TV show with Gene Siskel (who gave it a measured thumbs down) as well as a three and-a-half star print review. His full newspaper review can be found on his website HERE (https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/joe-versus-the-volcano-1990) as well visiting critic Collin Souter’s essay, How We Choose Our Favorite Film, and Why Mine is Joe Versus the Volcano (https://www.rogerebert.com/features/how-we-choose-our-favorite-film-and-why-mine-is-joe-vs-the-volcano).

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An alternate, extended ending was scripted and filmed before reworking the ending we all know and love. After being blown into the ocean as the island sinks, the sister yacht, the Tweedle Dum, arrives. On board are not only Dagmar and the rest of the crew from the sunken Tweedle Dee, but Mr. Graynamore and Dr. Ellison. If the footage still exists, it hasn't been made public. Maybe some day? There are only a couple stills with Joe and Patricia on the deck of the boat. However, you can read the screenplay including the original ending HERE (file:///C:/Users/A-A-RON/Downloads/Joe_vs_The_Volcano_411-1.pdf). Without having seen the footage, I prefer the ending as is. More appropriately magical.

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[iluv2viddyfilms]

Just a side note... more later, but Joe Versus the Volcano did get a small contribution to its box office by an eight year old me in 1990 and I loved it then and still do today!

[Holden Pike]

Joe versus the Volcano PHOTO GALLERY

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[Sedai]

I think I shall do Joe vs. The Volcano for my next 90s catch-up flick...

[Holden Pike]

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Directed by Clint Eastwood Screenplay by John Lee Hancock Cinematography by Jack Green Cast: Kevin Costner, Clint Eastwood, T.J. Lowther, Laura Dern, Leo Burmester, Keith Szarabajka, Bradley Whitford, Bruce McGill, Ray McKinnon, Linda Hart, Jennifer Griffin, Lucy Lee Flippin, Elizabeth Ruscio, Kevin Jamal Woods, Mary Alice, and Wayne Dehart
1993 / approximately 138 minutes

Clint Eastwood’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning triumph Unforgiven (1992) was another masterpiece, though it somehow missed connecting with mass audiences or awards in 1993. Set in 1963 Texas, on Halloween night two cellmates, Butch Haynes (Kevin Costner) and Terry Pugh (Keith Szarabajka), escape from prison and abduct an administrator and his car, as well as his revolver. In the minutes before dawn while cruising nearby neighborhoods for another car to steal, Pugh enters a kitchen where a woman is making breakfast for her children. There is no husband in the house, but her eight-year-old son Phillip (T.J. Lowther) walks in on the scene. Pugh is clearly a sociopath, striking the boy and groping his mother. Butch bursts in, beating Pugh, but a neighbor has seen the commotion and enters with a shotgun. Butch gets the pistol, controls the situation without killing anyone, and decides to take Phillip as a hostage.

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So begins the coming-of-age, criminal road trip of A Perfect World. Eastwood plays Red Garnett, Chief of the Texas Rangers who along with two of his deputies as well as an F.B.I. sniper (Bradley Whitford, six years before ”The West Wing”), and criminologist Sally Gerber (Laura Dern, just after her Rambling Rose Oscar nom and the year before Jurassic Park) pile in a fancy Gulf Stream RV to coordinate the pursuit. Butch and Pugh were cellmates but not friends, leading to the film’s first confrontation. Soon it is just Butch and Phillip, who he nicknames “Buzz”, on the small backroads of central and western Texas, avoiding the authorities and bonding along the way. We learn Butch, though a career criminal, is a relatively moral and very bright fella. A bad childhood, with a prostitute mother and a brutal, mostly-absent father, set him on his path. Phillip is the opposite, loved but incredibly sheltered. His mother is a practicing Jehovah’s Witness, meaning young Phillip has missed out on simple American cultural traditions like Halloween, Christmas, carnivals, roller coasters, and sweets. Butch has a vague plan of heading to Alaska, the last place he got a post card from his father years ago, but he doesn’t seem to be in a huge rush, enjoying the problem solving of being on the road and educating his young passenger.

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While it has all the ingredients for a straight action picture full of high-octane chase scenes and gunplay, instead A Perfect World is a character study and contemplative meditation on the legacy of violence. Butch Haynes’ actions have led him to prison, but almost from the moment he locks eyes with Phillip in that kitchen and sees an innocence he wants to both protect while also passing on the bits of wisdom he has cobbled together during his mostly wasted life. There is a backstory with Eastwood’s Ranger as well, where a judgment he made decades ago with the young Haynes that he hoped would scare him straight ultimately contributed to his crooked path, despite the good intentions.

And while the themes are heavy, the movie has plenty of genuine charm and fun, especially watching the relationship grow between Butch and Phillip. It all leads to an inevitable conclusion, one where we see how deep Butch’s traumatic scars really are and the darkness that is lurking when the wrong buttons are pushed. To me this is easily Costner’s best performance, bar none, using his movie star charisma but shading it with danger and compassion. The seven-year-old T.J. Lowther is very good himself. His character is as important as Costner’s, though he must relay his emotions and discoveries without the benefit of as much dialogue.

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A Perfect World did generate money at the box office, though it was mostly foreign receipts. It managed a quiet $35 million in domestic tickets but over a hundred million in the rest of the world! In the U.S. it was released in November but couldn’t keep up with the two big dramas of the season, Philadelphia and Schindler’s List, while the escapist fun of Mrs. Doubtfire and Wayne’s World 2 gobbled up the rest of the business. A Perfect World remains underseen to this day. Give it a look.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Qm-UhA3b4g

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[Holden Pike]

A Perfect World odds and ends…

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The script was originally optioned by Barry Levinson’s Baltimore Pictures before drawing the interest of Steven Spielberg. Spielberg had to back off of the project when he realized how much pre and post production time would be needed for Jurassic Park. A Perfect World has many elements in common with Spielberg’s first theatrical feature, The Sugarland Express (1974). Based on a true story, that narrative follows a woman (Goldie Hawn) who breaks her husband (William Atherton) out of a Texas prison so they can get their infant son, who has been taken away by the State and placed in foster care. On the way they take a State Patrolman (Michael Sacks) and his squad car hostage, leading to a chase of the fugitives headed by a sympathetic older Captain (Ben Johnson).

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Eastwood originally read the script while on the set of Wolfgang Peterson’s thriller In the Line of Fire, the first film since 1968’s Where Eagles Dare where Eastwood was only hired as an actor, not producer and/or director. In the Line of Fire and A Perfect World both reference the assassination of President Kennedy, which took place thirty years prior. Another 1993 production, the drama Love Field starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Dennis Haysbert, also references JFK’s death.

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Eastwood originally envisioned Denzel Washington for the role of Butch Haynes, but Washington turned it down. Eastwood did not plan on playing Red Garnett, wanting to stay behind the camera this time, but once Costner signed onto the project he insisted Clint play the role.

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When Costner’s character stops in the small town to get clothes for Buzz, an advertisement for Bull Durham chewing tobacco can be seen painted on a brick wall behind them. Costner starred as Crash Davis in Ron Shelton’s Bull Durham (1988), playing for the Durham, North Carolina Minor League Baseball team sponsored by the tobacco company.

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Actress Linda Hart, who plays the amorous waitress at Dottie’s Squat 'N' Gobble roadside diner that Costner’s character has an all-too-brief tryst with, went on to play Doreen in Ron Shelton’s Tin Cup (1996), Costner’s Roy McAvoy’s ex who holds the deed to his Texas driving range.


Released just two weeks apart in November of 1993, Brian DePalma’s Carlito's Way and Eastwood's A Perfect World have similar openings and framing devices, with us witnessing the main characters shot and dying, before the narrative moves backwards only to end up back on the opening scenes.
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[Holden Pike]

A Perfect World PHOTO GALLERY
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