Donner Party

[beamish14]

For those curious about what happened with Scrooged, I can’t recommend Dennis Perrin’s Michael O’Donoghue biography Mr. Mike highly enough. He wrote what was arguably the first American graphic novel,Phoebe Zeig-Geist and the infamous cancelled-in-production Arrive Alive (1992) starring Willem Dafoe and Joan Cusack

[beamish14]

Dave Grusin’s terrible scores

haha there are actually three Dave Grusin scores that I really like, and one of them is his jazz piano stuff for The Firm (which otherwise totally sucks, I'm not denying that for a nanosecond).

That’s what immediately comes to mind as one of my most-loathed scores! Haha.

[Beloved Aunt]

LOL its funny how in The Firm that as soon as the only character in the entire film who is colorful or interesting in any way or not a totally bland cipher, Gary Busey, turns up, Grisham makes sure to get rid of him immediately by having some other character put a bullet between his eyes. I also found Tom Cruise saving the day by

Spoiler

falling on top of WIlford Brimley

to be oddly amusing. Though that certainly doesn't make it a good film...

[Beloved Aunt]

That’s what immediately comes to mind as one of my most-loathed scores! Haha.

beamish, I'm curious, what do you dislike about it exactly?

[beamish14]

That’s what immediately comes to mind as one of my most-loathed scores! Haha.

beamish, I'm curious, what do you dislike about it exactly?

It just sounds like elevator music. I remember how wildly incongruous it was during scenes of Cruise running around, but maybe that enhances its appeal for many

[Mr Sausage]

I think Donner's peers are more guys like Hyams (mentioned above) and John Badham, or on the next tier up, guys like Tony Scott and McTiernan - the '80s and '90s were boom times for studio action directors.

George P. Cosmatos (who was arguably more faceless than any of them)...

So faceless that he has the reputation of being the guy to hire when the star wanted to ghost direct (see: Rambo 2, Cobra, Tombstone). He even let Stan Winston and the effects team ghost direct the SFX scenes in Leviathan. He should've let them do the whole thing, it's such a flat, incompetently done movie.

I detest all of the Lethal Weapon movies and find them mean spirited

No doubt true, but 80s action films are so mean spirited in general that I never noticed. Cobra, Rambo, Roadhouse, Above the Law, Kick Boxer, Beverly Hills Cop 2, Invasion USA. The Reagan era was filled with grim, violent, but oddly sanitized big budget action films. Robocop is the best of them because it pokes fun at that very attitude, making the most violent, most unfeeling, most sanitized (ie. sexless) action hero possible a literal corporate drone with no personality outside the dictates of his overlords. It works as a jab at Schwarzenegger and Stallone et al, who always made themselves cool outsiders and other marginal figures, but were endlessly using their violence and sexlessness to reinforce a moralistic, reactionary system. Lethal Weapon 2 (and to a lesser extent the first one I guess) has at least a goofy humour and a focus on friendship and family that carries it through the negative stuff (eg. a delight in tormenting its characters). Plus Riggs is at least anarchic and self-absorbed enough that he doesn't come off as one of those lame enforcers of Reagan era morality, even if his arc is essentially to have his rough edges sanded off from contact with Murtaugh's middle class dream. When he goes off breaking rules and ignoring protocol, it feels crazy and personal rather than a righteous bucking of liberal trends in the Dirty Harry vein. It's...something.

I don't know why I'm defending movies I only sort of like.

[domino harvey]

Perhaps so, but there’s definitely a streak of unpleasantness running through all of these films that perhaps it just seems more glaring when watched in close quarters. My writeups of the series might help

Lethal Weapon (Richard Donner 1987) Boy, Shane Black sure loves Christmas, huh? Not really sure how this film jump-started a franchise, though some of the component parts are tolerable on their own. Having a suicidal detective throw himself into dangerous situations because he doesn't fear the consequences is a promising premise, even if the film doesn't quite capitalize on it enough. And it was fun to see Greg's dad from Dharma and Greg as a villain! But I could have done without all the torture and the constant exploitation of a young teenage girl who's entire function is to be either a hee-larious starry-eyed crush for Mel Gibson to "charmingly" evade or a victim in constant need of rescuing. And what a silly fist-fight finale (Though it was already pretty absurd-- I can't remember since both films ran together in my memory a bit, but doesn't Danny Glover actually drive or direct a police car into his own house?)

Lethal Weapon 2 (Richard Donner 1989) Dropping most of the dramatics in favor of buddy cop comedy and increased action, this ends up only being about as successful as the first, which is to say not very. I definitely didn't care for the new love interest for Gibson who's only function was to sleep with him before almost immediately dying. Glover is charming enough in both films in an role both underwritten and long since adopted as a shorthand mantra ("I'm getting too old for this shit"). The retconing to push in a connection between the sequel's baddies and Gibson's earlier tragedy is clumsily handled, and I don't think this film has any idea what diplomatic immunity means. But I did appreciate the film's attempts at political relevancy and the scene where Danny Glover and Joe Pesci go to the South African consulate is probably the only part of the film that actually works.

For those like me who didn't enjoy these films, or even if you did, I strongly recommend National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1, which runs the series over the coals and is probably the best non-ZAZ ZAZ-style film. I revisited recently and was shocked at how funny even its worst gags are.

Lethal Weapon 3 (Richard Donner 1992) / Lethal Weapon 4 (Richard Donner 1998) Well, I didn't enjoy the first two installments but I'd already bought the four-pack, so here we are for round two to finish out the series. And Lethal Weapon 3 quickly proves to be the worst of the bad bunch with the pattered dialog and interplay now played for maximum grating annoyance and thrown at the audience in giant stupefying handfuls. The film also suffers from a completely anonymous villain and several pointless action scenes that come out of nowhere and proceed to go nowhere (and since the last quarter of the movie is essentially one giant two-part sustained action sequence far more effective than anything else in the film, I'm not sure why they couldn't have forgone the other examples). By contrast I found myself liking Lethal Weapon 4 the "best" (relative to the others in the series only), as the over-stuffed plot softens some of the more annoying tics of the returning characters in favor of shoehorning in new annoying tics from Chris Rock, and at least it's something else. And the fourth film does feature a spectacularly stupid action sequence (and I say that as a compliment) involving a highway chase that ends with the high speed pursuit somehow being followed through an entire floor of an office building-- entered through about the fifteen floor. It's some Live Free or Die Hard physics, but I could care less about plausibility in a movie like this-- novelty over plausibility in action sequences, always.

Seeing two of these films together does highlighting their worst flaws. Chief among these has to be how obnoxious Mel Gibson's character is to everyone he allegedly cares about. It made sense in the first installment for him to be suicidal, but his actions in the third film are downright homicidal, and frankly, as cheesy as it was, I was glad for his little moment at the cemetery with Joe Pesci in the final film because I was sick of seeing Gibson and Glover piss all over the guy for no reason for three movies. An even worse trend present in all of these films is the introduction of a stock "sympathetic" character who shares some kind of fleeting personal relationship to one of the two detectives and who's presence in the film extends solely to being murdered by the bad guys. It's an insulting plot device, and one so transparently mean-spirited-- couldn't the same vengeance be enacted on behalf of a loved friend, colleague, or romantic partner recovering from non-fatal injuries in a hospital? And that, despite the phony "We're family" ending of the fourth film, is my overall takeaway from these films: they're just nasty, mean movies, and without anything else of interest that would excuse, forgive, or comment on that tone.

(I was periodically trying to think of good action movies from the decade while waiting for Mel Gibson to shut up. There's the Die Hards, of course, and Speed, and the Long Kiss Goodnight, and then a whole bunch I don't ever need to see or think of again (the Last Boy Scout et al). Am I forgetting any essential 90s action films in the first category?)

[domino harvey]

[…] the infamous cancelled-in-production Arrive Alive (1992) starring Willem Dafoe and Joan Cusack

Hasn’t heard of this, here’s an article by a writer who was able to read a copy of the script

[Mr Sausage]

One thing that struck me on my own rewatches last year was, yeah, just how mean the movies are to Joe Pesci, even well past the point where he should've become an exasperating but beloved member of the team. Riggs and Murtaugh just seem to hate him even as the movies assume the audience loves him. Makes no sense except as part of the cruel streak of humour running through the films.

[Matt]

I am the same age as most of the kid actors in The Goonies and I also hate it. But I probably thought I had "outgrown" movies like this in 1985. I was seeing VisionQuest, Desperately Seeking Susan (which I didn't get at all), and The Breakfast Club. I absolutely loved Young Sherlock Holmes though.

[beamish14]

I absolutely loved Young Sherlock Holmes though.

It’s just so enchanting. The hallucination scene with the gremlin/demon chiseling a tombstone is still horrifying. It’s got a better final Easter egg/stinger than any Marvel film

[beamish14]

[…] the infamous cancelled-in-production Arrive Alive (1992) starring Willem Dafoe and Joan Cusack

Hasn’t heard of this, here’s an article by a writer who was able to read a copy of the script

If you subscribe to the screenwriting journal Backstory, you can read it.

Speaking of Barry Levinson again, What Just Happened was partially inspired by producer Art Linson’s experiences on Arrive Alive.

[hearthesilence]

I don't think Pollack ever directed a great film, but I'll take his body of work over Donner's or Mangold's.

I think he's a fine character actor (in his own film Tootsie but also in The Player, Husbands and Wives and Eyes Wide Shut), and he's a distinguished producer, with an executive producer credit on at least two excellent films (The Fabulous Baker Boys and Searching for Bobby Fischer) and a producer credit on IMHO one of the greatest American films of the past 25 years, Margaret (which sadly he couldn't help out of its troubles with Gary Gilbert after he died from cancer just ten months after his diagnosis). He also directed an invaluable concert film, Amazing Grace (basically the live performances that made up what was arguably Aretha Franklin's last truly great album), and even though an enormous technical oversight meant it couldn't be completed until years after his death, he still deserves a lot of credit for it.

As for his own directorial work, I have mixed feelings about Tootsie (a film quite a few people seem to love), but it is directed with aplomb. I saw it a very long time ago but I thought They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? was pretty thin yet again well-acted and directed with aplomb.

The Firm is based on a piece of shit and I would never expect Pollack to make something great out of it, but I think it's a decent albeit lightweight thriller. It's laughable to hear Grisham fans complain about the changes to the book because it wasn't like there was anything remotely brilliant that was lost. Instead, Pollack made a mercifully brisk and economical third act. It's not a highlight in anyone's filmography, but it has a lot of brilliant people (Robert Towne, Gene Hackman, Holly Hunter, etc.) brought in to get the job done on a story that didn't require any of them to dig really deep.

And I still snicker at the mention of Jeremiah Johnson because of The Simpsons (middle-brow culture brought down a notch or two).

[Beloved Aunt]

Pollack is just generally a very skillful and intelligent craftsman, never mind that he wasted his skills almost exclusively on a giant pile of junk. I just think of him as someone to admire, even though his career as a director was largely a waste. It's amazing how even Pauline Kael and John Simon, who both, whatever else one might say about them, have very sharp minds and consistent taste, even they loved Tootsie when it came out. For me watching that film makes the 80s seem like they took place centuries ago, and on a different planet--this was once considered sophisticated, hip, funny, topical, and cutting edge?? My mind boggles.

[The Curious Sofa]

I'm not sure I have seen anybody write anything positive about Tootsie here, so I'll come out as a fan. Pollack's strenght was as a director of actors and the whole cast, many of them future stars, is firing on all cylinders here (though I'd agree with beamish14 that the Grusin score sucks). Characters behave as they would have back then, not like a liberal audience would wish they'd behave from today's perspective. Elaine May did a rewrite and her sensibility is keenly felt.

I remember when Blake Edwards' Victor/Victoria and Tootsie came out around the same time, both comedies about cross-dressing entertainers. At the time, I preferred the Edwards film because it at least had a gay character, but when I saw it again recently, I found it incredibly stale. The stage-bound Paris looks like something that would have been done in the 60s (like the elephantine My Fair Lady, rather than the self-aware art direction of New York, New York or One From the Heart), and all the actors are at least two decades too old for their roles. Tootsie, on the other hand, has risen massively in my estimation since then.

[Beloved Aunt]

No, I agree that it's a very polished, skillfully acted and directed piece of work. My dislike of the film is entirely due to the almost utter lack of anything that qualifies as wit, and the plethora of cringe-inducingly lame stuff in its place, that the screenplay consists of. Really, though the actors are all good, the best performance is given by George Gaynes, whose character is the only remotely funny aspect of the whole sorry endeavor, because there is actually a real-life aspect to it, while still being totally preposterous.

[The Curious Sofa]

Spoiler

No, I agree that it's a very polished, skillfully acted and directed piece of work.

My dislike of the film is entirely due to the almost utter lack of anything that qualifies as wit, and the plethora of cringe-inducingly lame stuff in its place, that the screenplay consists of.

Spoiler

Really, though the actors are all good, the best performance is given by George Gaynes, whose character is the only remotely funny aspect of the whole sorry endeavor, because there is actually a real-life aspect to it, while still being totally preposterous.

That's a little vague for me, but perhaps in this case "wit" is in the eye of the beholder. The comedy in Tootsie doesn't come from jokes or witty dialogue, it comes from the situations and characters, but never at the expense of them. It takes a naturalistic approach to how these people would deal with an unusual situation and there is a generosity of spirit in how it deals with its flawed characters.

[hearthesilence]

I'd agree with beamish14 that the Grusin score sucks

"GOOO, Tootsie gooo....ROLL, Tootsie, ROLL!" It's like they named the movie Tootsie just to get that sweet payoff!

[MichaelB]

No doubt true, but 80s action films are so mean spirited in general that I never noticed. Cobra, Rambo, Roadhouse, Above the Law, Kick Boxer, Beverly Hills Cop 2, Invasion USA. The Reagan era was filled with grim, violent, but oddly sanitized big budget action films. Robocop is the best of them because it pokes fun at that very attitude, making the most violent, most unfeeling, most sanitized (ie. sexless) action hero possible a literal corporate drone with no personality outside the dictates of his overlords. It works as a jab at Schwarzenegger and Stallone et al, who always made themselves cool outsiders and other marginal figures, but were endlessly using their violence and sexlessness to reinforce a moralistic, reactionary system.

And, crucially, it's made by a far more interesting director than Badham, Cosmatos, Donner, Hyams, et al, with a keen awareness of the absurdity underlying the premise of most American action films - and by "American" I mean their aggressively performative patriotism as well as their nationality, which is why they're somewhat queasier watches on my side of the Atlantic.

[Mr Sausage]

It's the only big American action film I can think of that doesn't valourize the police as an institution (even if often diluted by liberal values). The police are bought and paid for, a corporate tool wielded at the end as a faceless death squad against one of their own. You just don't see the police conceived as something wielded by social elites with specific values and agendas in American action films. But then the whole film comes across as a vision of American fascism from its politics and capitalism right down to its heroes and popular entertainment. In such a system violent revenge becomes righteous not because it's applying necessary balance to a system weakened by humane policies, but because it's an expression of personal identity in a faceless, dehumanized world.

Of course the moment Verhoeven and Numeier weren't involved the series fell apart completely. By the third, their joke about the hyperviolent killing machine being adored by children became the movie's whole intent!

[jazzo]

I'm not sure I have seen anybody write anything positive about Tootsie here, so I'll come out as a fan. Pollack's strenght was as a director of actors and the whole cast, many of them future stars, is firing on all cylinders here (though I'd agree with beamish14 that the Grusin score sucks). Characters behave as they would have back then, not like a liberal audience would wish they'd behave from today's perspective. Elaine May did a rewrite and her sensibility is keenly felt.

I remember when Blake Edwards' Victor/Victoria and Tootsie came out around the same time, both comedies about cross-dressing entertainers. At the time, I preferred the Edwards film because it at least had a gay character, but when I saw it again recently, I found it incredibly stale. The stage-bound Paris looks like something that would have been done in the 60s (like the elephantine My Fair Lady, rather than the self-aware art direction of New York, New York or One From the Heart), and all the actors are at least two decades too old for their roles. Tootsie, on the other hand, has risen massively in my estimation since then.

Count me in as a fan, as well. I remember my mother taking me to see Tootsie in when it came out, and being so impressed that she felt like she could take me to a movie that didn’t have a single element in it that would appeal to an eleven years-old boy, and feeling really grown up coming out of the theatre.

The film, after many revisits over the decades, has only grown in my estimation, and along with Broadcast News, Moonstruck, and Bull Durham, remains one of my favourite mainstream comedies from that period, clearly intended for an adult audience.

I’ve never understood the harsh retro criticism it has received, and actually find its script very progressive and non-judgemental, if you can properly contextualize it within the era it was made, which is what I think the issue is for many younger first time viewers. Maybe that makes me sound like an old man shaking his fist at a cloud, but Tootsie makes me chuckle throughout, and I love it.

I’ve shown it to my eleven year old daughter, and it and What’s Up Doc? are two of her favourite movies, ever.

[hearthesilence]

FWIW, this is Dave Kehr's original review of Tootsie when it opened in Chicago:

With most of the humor predicated on homosexual panic, this Dustin Hoffman drag comedy plays like the reactionary inverse of Blake Edwards’s Victor/Victoria: it’s a film about sex roles that upholds and solidifies strict polarities, styled as safe situation comedy rather than Edwards’s rousing, vulgar farce. Just as Kramer vs. Kramer carried the subliminal point that fathers make the best mothers, so does Tootsie (1982) suggest that men—given the chance—make the best women. As an unsuccessful actor who lands a female part on a soap opera, Hoffman learns a firsthand lesson in chauvinism, an experience that allows him to lecture his costars—Jessica Lange, Teri Garr—on women’s rights. Sydney Pollack’s professional direction gives the choppy, errant material the appearance of smoothness and integrity, and there are several solid laughs and some excellent supporting performances. But this is a film to be wary of.

[Beloved Aunt]

George Gaynes aside, can someone point me to the alleged

several solid laughs

in this film? I'll wait.

[hearthesilence]

The opening sequence with the auditions is excellent. (Music aside.)

[jazzo]

George Gaynes aside, can someone point me to the alleged

several solid laughs

in this film? I'll wait.

Sure. I mean, for me, start around minute one, and then you can switch off around minute 115 or so.