By Joe Valdez

What the *&#! Are They About?
In a bachelor’s pad near Regent’s Park in London, a Dalmatian named Pongo (voiced by Rod Taylor) attempts to break the monotony of a spring’s day by introducing his “pet” — solitary song man Roger Radcliffe (voiced by Ben Wright) — to a suitable mate. Selecting an attractive woman holding the leash of a female Dalmatian named Perdita (voiced by Cate Bauer), Pongo drags Roger through the park and forces the humans to collide into each other. Wedding bells soon chime for Roger and Anita (voiced by Lisa Davis) while Perdita gives birth to 15 Dalmatian pups.

The litter attracts the attention of Anita’s chain smoking, fashion disaster schoolmate Cruella de Vil (voiced by Betty Lou Gerson). Roger summons the nerve to turn Cruella’s offer for the litter down, but later, two thieves dognap the pups. When Scotland Yard is unable to link Cruella to the crime, Pongo takes matters into his own paws, issuing a “twilight bark” for help. Word reaches the countryside, where an old sheepdog and tabby cat trace not just 15, but 99 Dalmatian pups to de Vil’s crumbling mansion Hell Hall, where she intends to turn the pups into a fur coat.

When his highly developed nose earns him a job as poison checker, a rat named Remy (voiced by Patton Oswalt) finds his pleas that their kind do little more than steal garbage falling on the deaf ears of his father (voiced by Brian Dennehy). Remy’s tastes lead him into a farmhouse kitchen, where TV introduces him to the philosophy of renowned chef August Gusteau (voiced by Brad Garrett) that “anyone can cook.” Remy’s expedition to the kitchen for saffron with his trash compactor brother Emile (voiced by Peter Sohn) results in the clan being driven from the attic. During the exodus, Remy is sent floating down a storm drain atop Gusteau’s book.

Realizing he’s in Paris, Remy arrives at the kitchen of his late mentor’s famous restaurant, now run by the temperamental Skinner (voiced by Ian Holm). Witnessing the disastrous attempts of bus boy Linguini (voiced by Lou Romano) at making soup, Remy intervenes. The soup is such a hit with customers that Skinner demands Linguini create his wonder again, under the watchful eye of chef Colette (voiced by Janeane Garafalo). Remy pursues his culinary dreams through Linguini, helping the boy win over food critic Anton Ego (voiced by Peter O’Toole), as well as win Colette’s affection. Reunited with his family, Remy is unsure which world he belongs to.

Writing
Playwright Dodie Smith and her taste for black & white led to her future husband presenting her with a Dalmatian in 1934. She named the dog Pongo. One Hundred and One Dalmatians had its genesis in a comment one of Smith’s friends made about Pongo, recalling that as a puppy, his fur would have made a nice coat. Envisioned as a children’s play at one point, a novel was published to great success in 1956. A scene in which the puppies disguise themselves as Labradors by rolling in soot was enough to compel producer Walt Disney to option the film rights in late 1957.

Disney assured Smith that her story would go into production following the lavish Sleeping Beauty. To pen an adaptation, Disney turned to Bill Peet. Before he would author children’s books like Chester the Worldy Pig, Peet began his career with Disney in 1937 as an “in betweener” assisting with final drawings. Peet supplied character sketches for Dumbo and soon became a senior writer-illustrator with the studio, co-authoring and storyboarding Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan and Ben and Me. Disney’s faith in Peet was so strong that for the first time in studio history, one person was entrusted with adapting and storyboarding an animated feature.

One Hundred and One Dalmatians is credited with being the most contemporary animated feature Disney had yet produced. I seem to remember Lady and the Tramp (1955) being quite modern too, but its creative departure from the fantasy musicals that Disney had banked on in the past was quite a novel approach. The writing contains nice doses of wit early on — with human behavior being commented on by a pet — and has mystery and suspense in the last half hour. None of these engines feels particularly sustained, but I did enjoy the film’s sly mockery of television, via the shows and ads (Kanine Krunchies) the Dalmatians are obsessed with.

Animator Jan Pinkava was standing in the kitchen in early 2000 with his wife when he had an idea for a movie: a rat who wants to become a chef. Pinkava had written and directed Geri’s Game — the Academy Award winning Best Animated Short Film of 1997 — for Pixar Animation Studios. Pinkava shared his story outline with Pixar story artist Jim Capobianco and the pair started on a screenplay. When Pinkava made his pitch to Pixar in March 2003, chief creative officer John Lasseter loved the fish-out-of-water concept. Pinkava continued to hone the script and by the summer of 2004, turned to writers Emily Cook & Kathy Greenberg for help.

To co-direct the untitled project, Pixar brought in Bob Peterson — who’d rewritten Finding Nemo — to whip the story into shape and allow Pinkava to focus on character and set design. Peterson assembled a story reel, but when it was presented to Pixar in late 2004, the studio saw a brilliant idea that was struggling to be realized as a feature length film. A second story reel presented in late spring 2005 was deemed rich in atmosphere, but still flat in story. Animator Brad Bird — whose film The Incredibles was playing like gangbusters for Pixar — had spent two weeks doctoring the screenplay when in June 2005, Pixar asked Bird to take over as director.

The outrageousness of the concept and challenge of finding a way to make audiences care about a rat both appealed to Bird. Rewriting the script, he kept most of Pinkava’s characters, killing off Gasteau and making him a spirit guide of sorts. Instead of an entire family of rats, Bird simplified things by giving Remy a father and brother only. He was taken by a minor character named Colette and expanded her part, making her an ally to Remy and Linguini. The result is an enormously sophisticated situation comedy. Not lacking in his yen for eye-popping action sequences, Bird is supremely acute when it comes to the fabric of relationships.

Writing edge: Ratatouille

Casting
Celebrity voices have been increasingly relied on in animated features, whether the star brings anything worthwhile to the character or not. One Hundred and One Dalmatians belongs to an era when animated characters were brought to life with great voices instead of bankable ones. Rod Taylor brings a dash of sophistication to the voice of Pongo, while it’s impossible to imagine the need for Bette Davis or Joan Crawford to voice Cruella de Vil when Betty Lou Gerson is intensely hilarious in the part. Disney veterans J. Pat O’Malley, Martha Wentworth and Tom Conway also lent their vocal talent to the film.

Characters don’t come to life in animated films with the ingenuity and craft of animators; Walt Disney had built the best animation unit in the world. Frank Thomas designed the character of Pongo and was responsible for a beautiful scene where the dog reacts to Roger bringing a stillborn pup back to life. Ollie Johnston was tasked with the character of Perdita. Marc Davis — whose drafting table had been the birthplace of Bambi and Tinkerbell — designed Cruella de Vil, one of the most memorable characters in the Disney library. Thomas, Johnston and Davis were all part of the “Nine Old Men”, the core animation team responsible for building Disney.

With Pixar’s preference for developing characters both two dimensionally and three dimensionally, designers Jason Deamer, Dan Lee and Carter Goodrich sketched character drawings, which were molded into clay by sculptors Jerome Ranft and Greg Dykstra. The concern that audiences might find rats gross had been dealt with by designing them to walk on two legs. When Brad Bird came on board, he used Bambi and Lady and the Tramp as touchstones, insisting that animals act like animals and not humans. A year spent observing rats in terrariums at Pixar helped animators capture muscle movements and anatomy much more realistically.

Bird arrived on Patton Oswalt to voice Remy after switching on his car radio and hearing the comedian’s bit on Black Angus Steakhouses; to Bird, Oswalt seemed to be this big personality coming from a smaller body. Janeane Garafalo’s attitude and acting chops perfectly fit for the voice of French chef Colette. The verbal dexterity and wit of both performers goes a long way to making Ratatouille so entertaining. Peter O’Toole — rarely if ever employed as just a voice actor — is tremendous as the insufferable food critic. Ian Holm’s French accent is nearly unrecognizable as Skinner, as is John Ratzenberger, whose voice appears as the head waiter.

Casting edge: Even

Production value
Sleeping Beauty had cost a fortune for Disney and underperformed at the box office in 1959. To avoid shuttering his animation division, Disney was looking for a way to cut costs. Ub Iwerks — animator, technical innovator and Disney’s business partner from the earliest days of the studio — suggested that office copiers from Xerox that were appearing on the market might be used to transfer an image onto an animation cel. The Xerox lens could take a picture of a pencil drawing and transfer it onto a plate, which could be dipped in toner and transferred onto a clear cel. This would eliminate the time consuming and costly need for an ink department.

Animators were thrilled that their work would no longer pass through ink tracers and responded with inspired character work; Cruella de Vil’s entrance is one of the grandest ever for a Disney character. Art director Ken Anderson brought a particular look to One Hundred and One Dalmatians: angular, abstract, modern. Layout stylist Ernie Nordli went over some of Anderson’s backgrounds and softened them up a bit, but the results were a radical departure from the lushness of Lady and the Tramp or Sleeping Beauty. Painter Walt Peregoy used color styling to give a mere impression of shapes like doors or furniture.

Disney stalwarts Wolfgang Reitherman, Hamilton Luske and Clyde Geronimi directed One Hundred and One Dalmatians with each supervising the completion of individual sequences. Xerox color had yet to be invented, but with so many of the characters designed to be black & white anyway, the process suggested by Ub Iwerks turned out sublimely well suited to the material. The stark, black lined style beautifully signals that we’ve arrived in a bold new age of animation, with the opening credits sequence in particular bouncing with a jazzy, energetic feel. I’m not a big fan of abstract art, but got a kick out of the Picasso influences that run throughout the film.

Director of photography Sharon Calahan and production designer Harley Jessup were both retained when Pixar brought on Brad Bird to rewrite and direct Ratatouille. Both were major forces in dictating the look and feel of the film. Calahan suggested that the rat world would feel cool and the human world warm. She studied food photography — both good and bad — and arrived on a slightly warm illumination to not only make the dishes look appetizing, but to make the human world feel inviting to Remy. Subdued colors among the characters and props helped highlight the richness of the food, which ends up coming off like a character.

Ignoring animated films like The Aristocats that had previously used Paris as a locale, art director Harley Jessup referenced live action movies from the 1950s like An American In Paris, searching for an idealized look of the City of Lights. But he also drew heavily on Parisian geography to design the sets. Gusteau’s is adjacent to the Place Dauphine. Linguini’s flat was located in Montmartre. The location of the Eiffel Tower through windowpanes was accurate to wherever the scene was supposed to take place. Rooting the look of Ratatouille in Paris resulted in a muted color palette that stands apart from the toybox colors of previous Pixar films.

One aspect you can always bank on with Brad Bird is how imaginative and exciting the action sequences are going to be. This was evident in the “Family Dog” segment of Amazing Stories, on to The Iron Giant and is true of his two animated features for Pixar. This is a ceaselessly entertaining movie, but in addition to the madcap chases are wonderful moments observing human behavior. I particularly like the French lovers Remy spies while moving through the walls; one moment the femme is shooting at her lover and the next, they’re embraced in a kiss. That’s Brad Bird and the type of social observation you don’t see in other children’s films.

Production value edge: Ratatouille

Music
Most of Disney’s animated films up to this point had stopped to break into song and dance, but One Hundred and One Dalmatians broke with form by integrating its songs into the story. Mel Leven wrote all of these. “Cruella de Vil” ranks right up there with “You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch”. I had it stuck in my head for days and was not worse off for the experience. Leven also wrote the tune “Dalmatian Plantation” that closes the film and the hilarious “Kanine Krunchies” jingle. George Bruns composed the score and instead of a classic orchestral approach, his upbeat, jazzy compositions bring a freewheeling, modern vibe to the picture.

After working together on The Incredibles, Brad Bird commissioned Michael Giacchino to compose the musical score for Ratatouille. The collaboration resulted in Giacchino’s first nomination for an Academy Award. The composer brought in French singer Camille to lend her remarkable vocals to the song “Le Festin”, which can be heard twice during the film to magical effect: the montage when Linguini is ceded ownership of Gasteau’s and again before the end credits. Giacchino’s musical ingenuity and range is evident during Skinner’s chase of Remy through across the Seine and is a delight throughout the picture.

Music edge: One Hundred and One Dalmatians

Cultural impact
Arriving in theaters January 1961, audiences lapped up the contemporary approach of One Hundred and One Dalmatians. It became the #1 grossing movie of the year and endures as one of the most popular animated features in the Disney library. Each re-release — in January 1969, June 1979, December 1985 and July 1991 — outgrossed the previous, totaling $144.8 million in the U.S. and $71 million overseas. It inspired two live action versions starring Glenn Close as Cruella de Vil: 101 Dalmatians (1996) and 102 Dalmatians (2000). More importantly, the Xerox process and the commercial success of the film saved Disney’s animation studio.

Ratatouille was the 8th animated feature from Pixar and the first that the pioneering studio greenlit in Emeryville without the input of Walt Disney Pictures. Some speculated that the marketing challenges of a movie with an unpronounceable title, about a food preparing rat, would mark the end of Pixar’s streak of commercial smashes. Opening June 2007, the picture grossed $206.4 million in the U.S. and $414.9 million overseas; only Finding Nemo and The Incredibles had a better box office run. It was bestowed five Academy Award nominations, the most for any Pixar film up to that time. Brad Bird won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature.

Cultural impact edge: One Hundred and One Dalmatians

Winner: One Hundred and One Dalmatians

One Hundred and One Dalmatians has endured as a great entertainment and pioneering achievement in the arts in a way that Ratatouille — sensational while it’s playing, a bit harder to recall quite as fondly months after the viewing experience — just can’t measure up to yet. Brad Bird is a genius, but I think even his fans would admit that some of the greatest animators in history were engaged to bring One Hundred and One Dalmatians to life.

Your thoughts?

By Joe Valdez

What the *&#! Are They About?
In the mines of the Roman province of Libya, slave Spartacus (Kirk Douglas) sinks his teeth into the ankle of a guard, earning himself a death sentence. Recognizing an unbroken spirit he could mold into something great, slave merchant Batiatus (Peter Ustinov) purchases the condemned and returns with him to the city of Cupua, where Batiatus operates a gladiator school. Spartacus proves as agile intellectually as he is physically, though fellow slave Draba (Woody Strode) refuses his friendship, given that they may have to fight each other one day. Granted time alone with slave girl Varinia (Jean Simmons), Spartacus becomes enraptured with her.

Roman general Marcus Crassus (Laurence Olivier) arrives with a small party and requests to see two pairs of gladiators fight to the death. After the blood spectacle, Crassus buys Varinia, so outraging Spartacus that he launches a slave revolt. Moving from town to town, the rebellion grows in strength. In the Roman Senate, Gracchus (Charles Laughton) shrewdly dispatches the garrison of Rome to extinguish the uprising, paving the way for Julius Caesar (John Gavin) to take control of Rome and hold the ambitions of Crassus in check. Reunited with Varinia and befriending an escaped slave (Tony Curtis), Spartacus moves on Rome.

Kirk Douglas and Jean Simmons in Spartacus

In the year 180 A.D., General Maximus (Russell Crowe) leads 5,000 Legionaries in a spirited victory over the last Germanic tribe holding out against the Roman Empire in northern Europe. Visiting the battlefront, the aging caesar Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris) bequeaths protection of Rome to Maximus in the hopes that the people will resume control of the Senate from corrupted politicians. When hearing of the secession, the caesar’s ambitious male heir Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) murders his father, while his sister Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) aligns herself with Commodus in order to protect her young son Lucious (Spencer Treat Clark) from harm.

Maximus escapes execution in the forest, but is unable to save his wife and son from crucifixion. Taken for a deserter, he ends up in Zucchabar, the property of a freed gladiator and merchant named Proximo (Oliver Reed). Expected to meet a quick death in the gladiatorial pits of Morocco, Maximus, along with slaves Juba (Djimon Hounsou) and Hagen (Ralf Moeller) survives and becomes a favorite of provincial crowds. In Rome, Commodus assumes power by reviving the spectacle of gladiatorial contests in the Roman Coliseum. There, Maximus wins over the urban mob and vows to stay alive long enough to have his revenge over Commodus.

Russell Crowe and Djimon Hounsou in Gladiator

Writing
The genesis of Spartacus was with author Howard Fast — a member of the American Communist Party — who in 1950 was sentenced to three months in a federal prison for contempt of Congress, refusing to name suspected Communist contributors to a home for orphans of Spanish Civil War veterans. Once a prisoner, Fast used the prison library and his newfound sympathy for the disempowered to research the Roman slave rebellion of 71 BC. Fast would self-publish Spartacus in 1951. The book came to the attention of the wife of producer Edward Lewis in late 1957. Lewis was the business partner of Kirk Douglas in the actor’s Bryna Productions.

Douglas took Spartacus to United Artists, which was moving ahead with their own Spartacus project: The Gladiators, set to star Yul Brenner. Undeterred, Douglas renegotiated a 60-day extension on the property with Fast. When the author was unable to turn in a suitable draft quickly enough, Lewis and Douglas turned to Dalton Trumbo, the highly regarded screenwriter who’d spent 11 months in prison for contempt of Congress. On the strength of an adaptation Trumbo cranked out in three weeks, Laurence Olivier, Peter Ustinov and Charles Laughton signed on, The Gladiators folded and Universal Pictures stepped up to finance Spartacus.

Kirk Douglas and Peter Ustinov in Spartacus

Dalton Trumbo had been in steady employment since his prison term — working on Roman Holiday, among others — but Kirk Douglas insisted that Trumbo receive screen credit, breaking the decade long Hollywood blacklist against talent with former ties to the Communist Party. Douglas, Olivier, Ustinov nor Laughton treated Trumbo’s dialogue as scripture, allegedly generating much of their own. Regardless of who what wrote line, Trumbo’s craftsmanship is evident. The unyieldly source material is given powerful dramatic momentum throughout, while a strong sense of character is never lost amid the tremendous and tremendously expensive set pieces.

David Franzoni became interested in gladiators after he’d dropped out of grad school. Bumming around the world, he was in Baghdad when he swapped a book on the Irish revolution with one titled Those About To Die, a 1958 study of the Roman Coliseum by Daniel Mannix. 20 years later, a biopic Franzoni had written on George Washington came to the attention of Steven Spielberg. While adapting Amistad for the director in Rome, Franzoni began researching what became Gladiator. Franzoni took some of his research to producer Douglas Wick, who saw contemporary parallels to a society distracted from the important issues by entertainment.

Connie Nielsen and Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator

Franzoni’s pitch to Spielberg and DreamWorks executives Walter Parkes & Laurie MacDonald for a movie set in the gladiatorial pits of the Roman Coliseum was enthusiastically received. The “sword and sandal” genre had been dead in the 40 years since Spartacus, but Franzoni and Wick thought the ancient world could be brought to life not just by computer imagery, but developing the story as a modern day morality play. Though Franzoni had provided a blueprint for Gladiator, playwright John Logan was brought in to improve the characters. Logan was credited with crafting most of the best dialogue that made it into the film.

After a cast reading at Shepperton Studios two weeks before the start of shooting, it was felt the script still wasn’t ready. Douglas Wick reached out to playwright William Nicholson, who streamlined the plot and made the characters more likable. Instead of a revenge story, Nicholson hinged Gladiator on the love Maximus felt for his family and highlighted his transience toward a pagan afterlife. “Script by committee” is usually a recipe for disaster, but Gladiator is an exception. The toil of numerous scribes, producers and studio executives resulted in exciting action sequences, terrific dialogue, complex characters and a story with a deep emotional core.

Russell Crowe in Gladiator

Writing edge: Gladiator

Casting
Howard Fast was not thrilled about Kirk Douglas playing Spartacus — finding the actor and some of his choices lacking in nobility — but along with the star, Laurence Olivier, Peter Ustinov and Charles Laughton were always the first choices for their roles. Searching for a female lead with a Germanic look after Ingrid Bergman and Jeanne Moreau passed, Douglas settled on Sabine Bethmann, who lost the role of Varinia after three weeks of filming, replaced by Jean Simmons. The supporting cast is just as notable: Woody Strode, Herbert Lom (as a Sicilian pirate) and Charlie McGraw as the freed gladiator who proves Spartacus’ tormentor in particular.

Tony Curtis and his Brooklyn accent are not the easiest to buy as an escaped slave who becomes Spartacus’ most trusted advisor. The rest of the main cast is one for the ages. Some of the greatest screen actors in Hollywood history were available when Spartacus went into production and at least three are in the movie. Olivier and Laughton show no conscience gobbling up the scenery as longtime foes in the Roman Senate. Ustinov brings much needed wit and humility to the role of the slave merchant Batiatus. The athleticism and intensity of Kirk Douglas seem better suited to the role of Spartacus than perhaps any in his stoic film career.

John Hoyt and Laurence Olivier in Spartacus

There was some talk of Mel Gibson being offered the role of Maximus, but Russell Crowe was quickly settled on as a better fit for the part. After leading roles in two critically acclaimed films — L.A. Confidential and The Insider – Crowe was more familiar in Hollywood than by name in the general public. Casting Commodus, Jude Law was screen tested, but director Ridley Scott had worked with Joaquin Phoenix on a movie he’d produced called Clay Pigeons and was intrigued enough to push for him as the morally bankrupt caesar. Connie Nielsen and Djimon Hounsou bring strength and agility with their obvious physical attributes as performers.

Louis Di Giaimo was the casting director and to whatever degree he was responsible for filling out the supporting roles, Gladiator was extraordinarily well cast. Richard Harris seemed reinvigorated on screen as the dying emperor; his moments with Crowe and his death scene are tremendous. Oliver Reed returned from 20 years of anonymity and steals the film as the charismatic slave merchant, the last father any of his men will have. Reed unfortunately died of a heart attack at the age of 62 with three weeks of shooting to go. Derek Jacobi, Ralf Moeller and bodybuilding legend Sven-Ole Thorsen (as the tiger gladiator) give commendable performances.

Ralf Moeller, Djimon Hounsou and Russell Crowe in Gladiator

Casting edge: Even

Production value
Spartacus went into production January 1959 in Death Valley under the direction of Anthony Mann, who’d shot a number of successful westerns for Universal. Good with action and crowds, Mann was overwhelmed by Douglas, Olivier and Ustinov, prima donna writer-directors each pushing to do things their way. After three weeks, Mann asked to be let go. Douglas called up a promising 30-year-old director under contract to his production company. Busy developing a screen adaptation of Vladimir Nobokov’s Lolita, Stanley Kubrick agreed on a Friday night to take over the $12 million budgeted Spartacus. He arrived on the set Monday morning.

Unable to make changes to the script he’d inherited, Kubrick did benefit from the work of Saul Bass, the acclaimed graphic designer who’d created title sequences for Anatomy of a Murder and North By Northwest. In addition to the majestic title sequence he would design for Spartacus, Bass had also been tasked with location scouting and with designing the gladiator school. Three weeks of second unit photography took place in Spain — utilizing the Spanish army for the shots of thousands of marching soldiers — though most of the battle was actually shot on the Universal backlot. Russell Metty served as director of photography.

Peter Ellenshaw was a matte artist on Spartacus

Stanley Kubrick would sever his business relationship with Kirk Douglas following Spartacus, resenting his lack of creative control over the production. After decades of disowning the blockbuster, the visionary director conceded late in life that Spartacus turned out better than he felt at the time. In spite of being a director for hire, Kubrick did replace Sabine Bethmann with Jean Simmons and insisted on playing classical music during a number of key scenes, heightening the performances of Douglas, Simmons and Woody Strode. Elegantly composed visually, Spartacus has a more humane feel than any picture Kubrick would ever direct.

Ridley Scott was on the short list of directors whose finesse for creating worlds and spectacle was well suited for Gladiator. Knowing that Scott was a graphic designer, Douglas Wick and Walter Parkes presented him with a 19th century painting by Jean-Léon Gérômeen titled “Thumbs Down”. More so than their pitch or the script, it was the gladiatorial painting that won Scott over. The exacting director was used to taking his time, but seemed reinvigorated by his experience with Gladiator. At one point, Scott wanted Maximus to fight a rhinoceros and storyboarded the sequence, before the reality of working with either live rhinos or a $1 million CG facsimile scotched the idea.

John Nelson and Mill Film supervised visual effects for Gladiator

Gladiator commenced shooting February 1999 in Surrey, England, in an area the Royal Forestry Commission had slated for deforestation. Collaborating with director of photography John Mathieson, Scott had the entire German front sequence — the first act of the film — finished in just over three weeks. For the provincial scenes, production designer Arthur Max built an arena into the side of an ancient village at Ait Ben Haddou, Morocco. The third act of the film was shot in Malta, where the Roman Coliseum was partially rebuilt out of plaster and plywood at a cost of $1 million, with the upper tiers and other elements added in with CG.

I didn’t care for Gladiator when it opened. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon had the narrative elegance and emotional power and Gladiator was buttered popcorn to me. But the 155-minute theatrical version of Gladiator has been supplemented on DVD with an extended cut clocking in at 171 minutes. Reinserted are a conspiratorial scene between Lucilia and Graccus, Commodus hacking away at a bust of his father and a terrific scene where Commodus supervises the execution of two Centurions. As with Kingdom of Heaven, the extended cut of Ridley Scott’s epic contains more texture and intelligence than the box office friendly version.

Kirk Douglas and Charles McGraw in Spartacus

Production value edge: Gladiator

Music
With the exception of Stanley Kubrick, the greatest contributor to the success of Spartacus would be Alex North, who composed the vibrant musical score. For the film’s preservation on laserdisc by the Criterion Collection in 1991, Peter Ustinov would comment that the only thing that ages the film for him is its music. It is hard to imagine Stanley Kubrick going with something so romantic if he’d had his way, but North’s marvelous score is Old Hollywood at its finest. It doesn’t punctuate the action as music by John Williams or Jerry Goldsmith would have years later, but sets the table for a big time movie going experience.

Again, time has evened out the grouchy reaction I had of Gladiator after it swept the Academy Awards over Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, particularly where music is concerned. Normally a big time hater of the bombastic scores Hans Zimmer turns in for Jerry Bruckheimer productions, I’m actually enamored of his work on Gladiator. Instead of coming on like a psychic jackhammer, Zimmer’s score is mysterious and majestic, the soundtrack I would have between my ears if transported to the Roman Empire. Zimmer collaborated here with Australian vocalist Lisa Gerrard, whose Mediterranean flavor is used in just the right doses.

Kirk Douglas and Woody Strode in Spartacus

Music edge: Gladiator

Cultural impact
Through its original theatrical run, re-release in 1967 and restoration in 1991, Spartacus would earn $11.1 million in the U.S. That was enough to make it the third highest grossing film released in 1960, back when tickets were 25 cents. Nominated for six Academy Awards, it won four: Best Supporting Actor (Peter Ustinov), Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design. Beyond its legacy as one of the most entertaining roadshow epics of the 1960s, Spartacus defied social conservatives like the American Legion, which vilified the film for giving two “Commies” a writing credit. As a result, Spartacus broke the Hollywood blacklist.

Opening May 2000, Gladiator was a global blockbuster, grossing $187.7 million in the U.S. and $269.9 million overseas. A hit all over the world, the film definitely had its impact felt in Hollywood, which quickly greenlit Master and Commander, The Last Samurai, Cold Mountain, Troy, King Arthur and finally, Kingdom of Heaven, briefly restoring the historical epic to prominence among studio production slates. Gladiator would be nominated for 12 Academy Awards and win five: Best Picture (Douglas Wick, David Franzoni, Branko Lustig), Best Actor (Russell Crowe), Best Costume Design (Janty Yates), Best Sound and Best Visual Effects.

Cultural impact edge: Spartacus

Russell Crowe in Gladiator

Winner: Gladiator

Spartacus will always be one of the grand entertainments of the 1960s and significant for breaking the Hollywood blacklist along the way. Gladiator won lots of awards and made some people very rich. Both were being written as they were being filmed, an early indicator of total fucking disaster. Yet both have achieved status as classics. Personally, I find Gladiator to be the better film, the state of the art in story, casting, music and of course, visual effects. Maybe in 40 years, it will look as dated as Spartacus, but today, it reigns supreme among historical epics, with Master and Commander in its rearview mirror.

Your thoughts?

By Joe Valdez

What the *&#! Are They About?
C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) — accountant for Consolidated Life, or more specifically, “Ordinary Policy Department, Premium Accounting Division, Section W, desk number 861” — has made his West 60s apartment available to four executives who treat Baxter’s home as their extramarital playground. His neighbors, a Jewish physician and his wife, form the impression that Baxter is “a notorious sexpot” who scores with a different woman each night. Baxter is so accommodating with the arrangement that he sleeps on a bench in Central Park when an admin manager (Ray Walston) calls from a bar around the corner and requests use of the bachelor pad.

Baxter’s cooperation earns such high marks at the office that personnel director J.D. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) learns about the apartment. In exchange for membership in the key club, he decides Baxter is executive material. To celebrate his promotion, Baxter works up the nerve to ask out kooky but alluring elevator operator Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) completely unaware she’s the girl Sheldrake intends to take back to his place. Baxter finds out and receives a coveted promotion in return for his discretion, but has to choose between his climb up the corporate ladder and his feelings for Miss Kubelik.

Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise), a top agent at Sports Management International — “I handle the lives and dreams of 72 clients and get on average 264 phone calls a day” — is stricken with a bout of conscience late one night. He authors a “mission statement” calling on his peers to take fewer clients and make less money for the greater good. His vision inspires single mom Dorothy Boyd (Renée Zellweger), the only member of SMI who volunteers to leave with Jerry when he’s fired by his smarmy protégé (Jay Mohr). Jerry manages to take two clients with him, including the #1 pick of the forthcoming NFL Draft: Frank Cushman (Jerry O’Connell).

When Cushman defects on the eve of the draft, Jerry & Dorothy focus on their remaining client — a wide receiver for the Arizona Cardinals named Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr.) — and the contract extension the irascible athlete and his wife (Regina King) need for the future of their family. Jerry calls off an engagement to his driven fiancée (Kelly Preston) and to keep her from leaving L.A., rewards Dorothy’s loyalty by marrying her, much to the disconcert of her divorced sister Laurel (Bonnie Hunt). While his friendship with Rod empowers both men professionally, Jerry realizes his missteps with Dorothy threaten to make all of it meaningless.

Writing
The Apartment had fermented in the mind of writer-director Billy Wilder since 1945, when he wrote himself a note after seeing Brief Encounter. David Lean’s classic dealt with the affair between a married man and a married woman, but Wilder was more intrigued by the character that lends the lovers the use of his apartment and had to crawl back into a warm bed all alone. Unable to get around the Production Code or the Catholic Church’s Legion of Decency in 1948 or 1949, Wilder found tolerances had shifted dramatically in the wake of Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe and Little Richard. By the 1960s, audiences were ready for a movie with implicit sexual content.

Eager to make another film with Jack Lemmon following the success of Some Like It Hot, Wilder and co-writer I.A.L. Diamond dug out their ideas for The Apartment. According to Diamond, the story was drawn from the Hollywood scandal in which producer Walter Wanger shot talent agent Jennings Lang when he discovered Lang was sleeping with his wife, Joan Bennett; an employee at MCA had provided the apartment where his boss and mistress were shacking up. Wilder & Diamond brought The Apartment to producer Walter Mirisch, with United Artists footing a budget. A script was finished only four days before filming began November 1959 in New York.

Many consider The Apartment to be the best comedy Billy Wilder ever made. It is, but it’s still one black cup of coffee. While at his peak in the 1950s (Sunset Blvd., Ace In the Hole) Wilder was not content writing jokes; he wrote films about murder and deceit that had a lot of humor in them. The Apartment turns on lies, a suicide attempt and the corruption of the American dream, but the vital wit in Wilder & Diamond’s script make it all go down with a teaspoon of sugar. Their structure is waterproof — nothing is introduced that isn’t paid off later — and arrives at a happy, Hollywood ending without threatening to insult the intelligence of the audience.

Jerry Maguire came in the wake of writer-director Cameron Crowe’s poorly received second feature, Singles. By the time Warner Bros. released it in the fall of 1992, even some of Crowe’s friends accused him of exploiting the Seattle music scene. The disconnect Crowe felt from people he’d once known well would bleed into his next script. He’d been studying the work of master filmmakers like Ernst Lubitsch, Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder. The film that impacted Crowe the most was The Apartment, which he loved so much — in its comic yet biting portrait of a working stiff and his love for an elevator operator — it quickly became Crowe’s favorite film.

After spending a year researching “stiffs with briefcases”, a friend showed Crowe a photo in the L.A. Times of a sports agent and his client. Far from a jock growing up, Crowe was drawn to the frenzied, big money backdrop of professional sports and with the help of sports attorney Leigh Steinberg, spent the next three years interviewing agents, athletes and owners in the pros. Along the way, producer James L. Brooks suggested they begin Jerry Maguire where an ‘80s movie would have ended: the guy who finds “the religion of goodness.” That guy would then spend the rest of the movie dealing with the consequences of his new philosophy.

The beauty of Jerry Maguire is in the dexterity of Cameron Crowe’s screenplay, which is about a bachelor romancing a single mom, the bonding of an agent and his male client, and a look at the business of pro sports in the 1990s. With Crowe’s perfectionist attention to detail, heartfelt wit, and ambition, any one of those stories would have probably made a good film. Here, we get all three. It’s also funny, with supporting characters of supporting characters entering and exiting to tremendous effect. The movie may have too much heart, but that’s just Crowe; he doesn’t pour sugar on for effect, but seems to really feel as much as his film does.

Writing edge: Jerry Maguire

Casting
After Jack Lemmon agreed to reteam with Billy Wilder in the role of C.C. Baxter, the director chose Shirley MacLaine to play Fran Kubelik, who accepted on the basis of a plot synopsis and the 30 script pages that had been finished. MacLaine was perhaps best known for the Rat Pack comedies Some Came Running and Can-Can, but Wilder hoped to push her dramatically. Paul Douglas — who’d appeared in A Letter To Three Lives — was cast as Mr. Sheldrake, but a couple of days before filming began, died of a heart attack. Wilder & Diamond both arrived on Fred MacMurray, who’d worked for Wilder on Double Indemnity in 1940.

Jack Lemmon & Shirley MacLaine have an undeniable chemistry on film. The only contemporary equivalent I can think of is Tom Hanks & Meg Ryan, except that Ryan has little emotional range and annoys me greatly. Like Hanks, Lemmon beautifully plays the dreams and struggles of an average guy with impeccable comic skill and without making him seem like a loser. MacLaine is a superb comedienne in her own right; this might be the finest role of her career. As for the limited supporting cast, it is fun to see Fred MacMurray play a rat bastard, as opposed to driving a flying car for Disney, while Ray Walston turns in terrific work as the conniving Mr. Dobisch.

Cameron Crowe wrote Jerry Maguire for Tom Hanks, who graciously declined in part because he didn’t buy Jerry’s marriage to Dorothy. Winona Ryder was a frontrunner to play the Shirley MacLaine part, but after four months of auditions, Ryder, Bridget Fonda, Marisa Tomei and Mira Sorvino were all passed over. The offbeat and melancholy quality of the virtually unknown Renée Zellweger sold her to the filmmakers. Crowe and Cruise made a personal plea to Billy Wilder to accept the part of Jerry’s mentor Dicky Fox, but the 89-year-old retired director brusquely declined. An executive VP of Intellectual Property at Sony Pictures named Jared Jussim filled the role.

It sure is hard to enjoy Jerry Maguire these days. Some ill-advised media outbursts have transformed Tom Cruise into the most despised movie star in the land. Renée Zellweger has been branded with mousy parts and Cuba Gooding Jr. has gone from Academy Awards to Daddy Day Camp. As celebrities, they get thumbs down, but as actors, each turn in fine performances. Credit goes to Crowe, James L. Brooks and casting director Gail Levin for filling the other roles. Bonnie Hunt, Jay Mohr, Regina King, Kelly Preston and Beau Bridges are amazing to watch here. Todd Louiso is a laugh riot as Chad the Nanny, while Jonathan Lipnicki (the kid) turned the whole movie. A parade of pro athletes appear as themselves to neat effect.

Casting edge: Even

Production value
While Billy Wilder initially shot exteriors for the apartment on West 69th Street, autumn in New York proved so chilly and unreliable after dark that the footage was reshot on a soundstage at Goldwyn Studios in Culver City. The artifice of the apartment and its sidewalk doesn’t detract from the story one bit, perhaps because in black & white, they don’t look nearly as phony as they would have in color. Production designer Alexander Trauner did a magician’s job creating the illusion of spectacular depth inside Consolidated Life by constructing desks and chairs that got smaller and smaller the further into the background they were positioned.

No style looks more dazzling to me in a movie than black & white film stock framed in anamorphic format. La dolce vita, The Hustler, Jules et Jim and The Haunting are just a few titles from the early 1960s that I can watch over and over just in terms of their presentation. The shadows of black & white film just have a dreamlike quality that resonates deep within the imagination, while the epic vertical horizon of anamorphic scope seems inherently suited to movies, even intimate dramas like The Apartment. If I was a big time film director in the ‘60s like John Frankenheimer, I would have shot in nothing but black & white anamorphic. Joseph LaShelle lit The Apartment.

Jerry Maguire commenced filming March 1996 in more than 70 locations in the Los Angeles area, as well as in Tempe, Arizona. Janusz Kaminski — who became Steven Spielberg’s preferred DP starting with Schindler’s List – lit the film. Production designer Stephen Lineweaver constructed two major sets at Sony Studios in Culver City: Dorothy Boyd’s home and the interior of Sports Management International. Costume designer Betsy Heimann does a yeoman’s job doing what I typically ignore unless it’s a period film — costume design — finding the right wardrobe for sports agents, single moms, a kid and others in the same film.

Cameron Crowe is not a filmmaker who has ever seemed concerned with camera lenses or effects, but Jerry Maguire was directed with a tremendous amount of finesse. Beyond the script and casting, what I like most about Jerry Maguire was how neatly it encapsulates worlds that on the surface would seem totally exclusive to each other — locker rooms and broadcast booths, suburban living rooms and backyards, hotels and airplanes — and makes them feel alive. Jerry’s journey as a character is how he navigates each of these worlds and how he comes out on the other side. Crowe does an underrated job of taking us on that journey visually.

Production value edge: The Apartment

Music
The Apartment and Jerry Maguire are films of different eras. Other than the fact that one is in black & white and the other in color, in no other area is the year they were made more obvious than in the musical arrangements. Billy Wilder turned to Adolph Deutsch to compose the musical score for The Apartment. The results — other than a fine piano theme, “The Jealous Lover” written by Charles Williams — are undistinguishable from any other movie made 20 years prior. In fact, I would be hard pressed to recall music from any Wilder film of the period.

Next to Quentin Tarantino, no filmmaker today has a better vinyl record collection than Cameron Crowe. Jerry Maguire marked the first time in his career he really started putting the stamp of his personal tastes in rock ‘n roll or folk music on his films. “Magic Bus” by The Who, “I’ll Be You” by The Replacements, “Secret Garden” by Bruce Springsteen, “Shelter From the Storm” by Bob Dylan and “Wise Up” by Aimee Mann are all used to great effect. Singer/ songwriter Nancy Wilson would compose two acoustic guitar themes: “We Meet Again (Theme from Jerry Maguire)” and “Sandy”.

Music edge: Jerry Maguire

Cultural impact
Opening June 1960, The Apartment would earn $6.5 million in the U.S. and $2.7 million overseas, making it the 8th highest grossing movie released in 1960. It would earn ten Academy Award nominations and win five: Best Art Direction (Alexandre Trauner, Edward G. Boyle), Best Editing (Daniel Mandell), Best Original Screenplay (Wilder & Diamond), Best Director (Wilder) and Best Picture. A musical comedy based on the film — Promises, Promises — ran on Broadway for four years beginning in 1968, while Wilder’s sophisticated brand of human comedy and drama continues to inspire filmmakers. The Apartment was even Billy Wilder’s favorite among his own films.

Hitting theaters December 1996, Jerry Maguire was a blockbuster. It tallied box office of $153.9 million in the U.S. and $119.6 million overseas. After Singles, Cameron Crowe wanted to make a movie that people would want to watch on TV at night, and TNT has granted him that wish with repeat broadcasts of Jerry Maguire over the years, minting “Show me the money!” in the popular consciousness. This was the peak of Tom Cruise’s popularity: Rosie O’Donnell devoted an hour of her daytime talk show to her adoration of Cruise and his latest film, which was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture (only Cuba Gooding Jr. took home an Oscar).

Cultural impact edge: Even

Winner: The Apartment

The Apartment is, was and always will be a beautifully made motion picture. To the credit of Cameron Crowe, when it comes to comedy, a love story or a read on the fine print of the American Dream, Jerry Maguire is actually a slightly better written and directed film. But for reasons mostly beyond anyone’s control, it’s become bloated with the baggage that massive success can bring. I much prefer watching Jack Lemmon & Shirley MacLaine in beautiful black & white widescreen than hearing “Show me the money!” one more time.

Your thoughts?

By Joe Valdez

Frances McDormand was born June 23, 1957 in Chicago, Illinois. Adopted by a Disciples of Christ minister and his wife, McDormand grew up in towns across Illinois, Georgia, Kentucky and Tennessee due to her foster father’s work setting up congregations. At the age of 8, the family settled in Pittsburgh. McDormand attended high school in Monessing, a voracious reader, but otherwise unremarkable student. An English teacher noted her passion for Shakespeare and suggested she consider theater arts.

Playing Lady Macbeth, McDormand recalled, “I did the sleepwalking scene and it was the first time I’d ever done anything that I felt was mine. I took it much more seriously than the other kids. When we were backstage, for example, I knew it was important to be quiet when other people were acting. It seemed like I knew the ethics of the theater environment intuitively. It became clearer and clearer to me that acting was the only thing I knew how to do.”

McDormand earned her Bachelor’s Degree in theater at Bethany College, a liberal arts school in West Virginia affiliated with the Disciples of Christ. She recalled, “I was completely naive about the business of being an actor. My family didn’t go to the theater or to the movies. We watched television, like every 1960’s small-town American family, and I certainly never thought about being on TV. I thought I was going to be a classical actor in the grand tradition.” McDormand was accepted into Yale Drama School, where she befriended a classmate named Holly Hunter.

Receiving her master’s degree in theater, McDormand moved to New York in 1982, where she shared an apartment with Hunter in the Bronx and eked out a living waiting tables. Hunter had already made a Broadway splash in Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart and had even been offered the female lead in a low budget film noir shooting in Texas. Hunter informed rookie director Joel Coen and co-writer/ producer Ethan Coen that she wasn’t available, but suggested to her roommate that she go read for the part.

In 1984, McDormand made her film debut in Blood Simple – the critically acclaimed debut from the Coen brothers — and launched her New York stage career in Tina Howe’s Painting Churches. 16 years later, the actress would muse, “It’s a scary thing going into the workforce with a $50,000 debt and you’ve been trained as a classical theatre actor. There’s always a depression in the theatre. There’s only two givens with choosing acting as a profession: one is you will always be unemployed, always, and it doesn’t matter how much money you make, you’re still always going to be unemployed; and that you have no power. The only power you have is the word ‘no.’”

In short order, McDormand would say ‘yes’ to a six episode arc on one of television’s most prestigious dramas (Hill Street Blues, 1984), a tongue-in-cheek drive-in flick written by the Coens and directed by Sam Raimi (Crimewave, 1985) and a Coen brothers comedy (Raising Arizona, 1987). By this time, McDormand was also married to Joel Coen. While McDormand’s run on a promising cop show called Leg Work only lasted seven episodes on CBS in 1987, the following year, she would reap a lion’s share of attention playing the battered wife of a Klansman (Brad Dourif) in Mississippi Burning, receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress at the age of 31.

Accepting work in a number of high profile movies — the female lead in Sam Raimi’s big studio ticket (Darkman, 1990), Demi Moore’s gal pal (The Butcher’s Wife, 1991), a part in a Robert Altman ensemble (Short Cuts, 1993) – McDorman would be impossible to miss in ‘96. She played a boozing hooker in the heist comedy Palookaville and had an unforgettable scene as the “highly strung” football crazed ex-wife of Chris Cooper in John Sayles’ Lone Star. Appearing as a criminal psychiatrist in Primal Fear that same year, McDormand virtually disappeared into the fabric of the legal thriller starring Richard Gere, Laura Linney and Edward Norton.

McDormand would receive an Emmy nomination for her performance as a soulful mechanic in the 1996 Showtime movie Hidden In America. Holly Hunter had this to say about her friend at that time: “Frances always had wonderful instincts. She’s grown into herself mightily over the last several years, but even when I first knew her I felt she had a real strong sense of who she was. Some actors say they don’t know themselves at all and that’s why they act, because they can disappear into other people. But with Frances I think it comes from a sense of self.”

McDormand had popped up in four of her husband and brother-in-law’s films, but her starring role as Marge Gunderson — the very pregnant police chief of Brainerd, Minnesota — in the Coen brothers 1996 masterwork Fargo cemented her place in film history, earning McDormand an Academy Award for Best Actress in the process. Frances McDormand has grown into an actress whose exuberance and subtle willpower are impossible to miss, or forget: as a German Jew interned in a Japanese prison camp in Paradise Road (1997), a Tony nominated turn as Blanche Dubois in a production of A Streetcar Named Desire staged in Dublin in 1998, starring off-Broadway opposite Billy Cudrup in Dare Clubb’s Oedipus, or Academy Award nominated performances in Almost Famous (2000) and North Country (2005).

McDormand has also stayed active in the 52nd Street Project, a non-profit theater group that mentors kids from Hell’s Kitchen. She summed up her career in 1998 by commenting, “By saying I’m a character actor and that I play supporting roles in films, I’m not being self-deprecating. That’s my agenda — because character actors work until they decide not to work. Leading women can work forever on stage, but they have peaks and valleys in film work. By saying this is what I am, I have control.”

Where Are You Getting This *&#!?
“How Frances McDormand Got Into ‘Minnesota Nice’” By Graham Fuller. The New York Times, 17 March 1996

“I’d Love To Play A Psycho Killer” By Michael Ellison. The Guardian, 26 January 2001

Frances McDormand. Turner Classic Movies

John Goodman was born June 20, 1952 in Afton, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. His father — a mail carrier — died shortly before Goodman turned two, leaving his mother to raise him and two siblings with whatever she could earn working as a cashier at Globe Drug, a waitress at Jack and Phil’s Bar-B-Cue and taking on babysitting or ironing chores. Goodman recalled his entrance into acting. “The first moment was in eighth grade. Doing a play. I forgot my lines. I couldn’t look down and say I forgot my lines. So I got up from the dinner table, walked around, improvising, until I got the thread back. It just seemed natural. We had a good-looking acting teacher, and she gave me a big hug and a kiss.” Attending a local community college, Goodman transferred to Southwest Missouri State on a football scholarship.

When a knee injury landed him on the DL, Goodman gravitated toward Missouri State’s noted drama program, which counted Kathleen Turner and Tess Harper as students. Harper recalled, ”You could see even then that there was an intense struggle going on in his characters. And he was very handsome. He looked like the star football player cast in the lead for the school play.” Graduating in 1975 with a BFA in theatre, he borrowed $1,000 from his brother and lit out for New York. Within a month, Goodman had a job: the role of Thomas Jefferson in a touring dinner theater production of 1776. His New York theater debut came in 1978 alongside another struggling actor named Nathan Lane. Goodman recalled, ”I was Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. People didn’t seem to like the play too much, maybe because we did a disco version.”

At 6’3” and more than 200 pounds, Goodman won work in commercials; including a popular spot for Mennen Skin Bracer. “The people were nice, the money was nice, but I just kept telling myself, ‘I’m drowning here. This is not what I want.’ I started to develop this snotty attitude so I wouldn’t get cast. Sometimes I’d show up hung over. I was drinking a lot back then.” Goodman made his Broadway debut in 1979 in Michael Weller’s Loose Ends, starring Kevin Kline. More regional theater would follow before Goodman landed bit parts in a feature film (Eddie Macon’s Run, 1982) and a TV movie (The Face of Rage, 1983). His break came in 1985, when Goodman was cast as Pap Finn in the Broadway musical Big River.

In search of a big man who could belt out a tune, Talking Heads frontman David Byrne tapped Goodman for his directorial debut, True Stories (1986). More film work followed: an escaped convict in the Coen brothers comedy Raising Arizona (1987) and a crooked New Orleans cop in The Big Easy (1987). Goodman returned to the stage for a Los Angeles production of Antony and Cleopatra in 1987. In the audience was an ABC talent scout searching for someone to play Roseanne Barr’s husband on the sitcom Roseanne. Goodman’s role as Dan Conner would run 10 seasons. During hiatuses, he played Sally Field’s homely hubby in Punchline (1988) and an NYPD detective opposite Al Pacino in Sea of Love (1989). A pair of starring roles — in the comedy King Ralph (1991) and Babe Ruth in The Babe (1992) – were not well received, but Goodman found a fan in Steven Spielberg.

Interviewed for Inside the Actor’s Studio in 2003, Goodman recalled, “I did a movie called Always with Steven Spielberg and the first meeting, the first reading, got the whole cast together, and the first thing out of his mouth was, ‘Ladies and gentleman, I have found my Fred Flintstone.’ … I tried to talk myself out of it. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to hear ‘Yabba dabba do’ for the rest of my life. Then I lightened up and decided to have a little fun with it and we had a great time.” Goodman’s starring role in The Flintstones (1994) was eclipsed by 13 stints as the host of Saturday Night Live from 1989 to 2001. Buck Henry would later remark, “There were people outside the cast that I look at and say, ‘They could have been cast members’ — Tom Hanks, Alec Baldwin, John Goodman and Steve Martin. Those four people were essentially cast members, because they really fit into the format and they understood their work, and they were really great guest hosts.”

John Goodman’s natural affability and the apparent ease with which he improvises with other actors has extended from theater (he returned to Broadway in 2009 opposite Nathan Lane in Waiting For Godot), to TV (Goodman finally won an Emmy Award in 2006, for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series on Studio 60 at the Sunset Strip) to his voice work for Monsters, Inc (2001) and Bee Movie (2007). The Coen brothers wrote the part of the volcanic Charlie Meadows in Barton Fink (1992) for Goodman, as well as the role that remains the actor’s favorite: bitter Vietnam veteran Walter Sobchak in The Big Lebowski (1998). Goodman commented, “When I look at myself on film, I just see shit I should’ve done. I’m incapable of watching myself objectively. Unless it’s The Big Lebowski. The writing is so goddamned good, you can just enjoy it, go along for the ride like everybody else.”

© Joe Valdez

Where Are You Getting This *&#!?
“Being the Big Guy; Actor John Goodman: Funny and Formidable” By Peter de Jonge. New York Magazine, 10 February 1991

“Bat Man” By Allen Barra. Entertainment Weekly, 1 May 1992

“Down Mean Alleys with John Goodman” By Franz Lidz. The New York Times, 8 March 1998

“Big Man Tries Beckett” By Charles McGrath. The New York Times, 16 April 2009

Photo courtesy Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images

By Joe Valdez

What the *&#! Are They About?
Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) and her husband Guy (John Cassavetes) move into the 7th floor New York apartment of a recently deceased old woman. They ignore the advice of a close friend, who tells them about the Bramford Building’s “unpleasant reputation around the turn of the century”, including a couple of notorious tenants who practiced witchcraft there, earning the building the nickname “Black Bramford”. Before they even meet their neighbors (the Castevets), the couple can hear them bickering through the thin walls. Rosemary later meets a reformed junkie named Terry who was cleaned up and taken in by the Castevets.

After Terry is found dead on the sidewalk of an apparent suicide, the nosy Minnie Castevet (Ruth Gordon) invites her new neighbors to dinner with her husband Roman (Sidney Blackmer). Guy is won over by the energetic couple, while Rosemary is suspicious of the strange potables and desserts Minnie tries to push on her. Guy’s acting career suddenly heats up and he suggests they have a baby. Following a strange dream the night they conceive, Rosemary is urged to leave her obstetrician for one the Castevets recommend. Weight loss and paranoia follow, leading Rosemary to believe those around her be to a coven of witches keenly interested in her baby.

While digging for antiquities in northern Iraq, Father Merrin (Max von Sydow) unearths an ancient stone carving of a demon, strangely buried with a modern day St. Christopher medal. The discovery causes grave alarm for the priest. Across the world in Georgetown, Maryland, film actress and single mother Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) hears something strange in her attic, leading her to check and make sure her 12-year-old daughter Regan (Linda Blair) is all right. Also in D.C., Father Karras (Jason Miller) wrestles with guilt over abandoning his elderly mother and questions whether he still has the faith to be a man of God.

Regan is diagnosed as hyperkinetic, which her mother is made to believe by doctors explains “lies” her daughter has been giving about her bed shaking at night. Chris experiences poltergeist activity as Regan’s behavior becomes more unsettling: spouting vile obscenities, running down the stairs backwards on her hands, and masturbating with a crucifix. A homicide detective (Lee J. Cobb) investigates a church desecration and the bizarre death of Chris MacNeil’s director, while Chris looks to the church for help. They turn to Father Karras, who reaches out to Merrin to help him expel whatever evil has taken hold of the child.

Writing
Bitten by a sting of commercial failures as a playwright, Ira Levin — whose debut novel A Kiss Before Dying was published to great acclaim in 1953 when Levin was 22 — found inspiration in his wife’s pregnancy for a second novel in 1967. Rosemary’s Baby would sell 5 million copies in the U.S. William Castle — the schlock movie director and promoter whose gimmicks included sending inflatable skeletons flying over the heads of audiences during House on Haunted Hill and rigging seats to shock moviegoers watching The Tingler – was sent the novel in galleys form and anticipated that a film version might be his bid for respectability.

Having already bet the farm acquiring the film rights to Rosemary’s Baby, Castle took on a partner in Paramount Pictures, whose young head of production Robert Evans loved the material, but had no interest in producing a William Castle cheesefest. Evans wanted Polish filmmaker Roman Polanski to direct. Knowing Polanski was an avid skier Evans lured him to the States under the ruse of directing Downhill Racer. Agreeing to adapt Rosemary’s Baby instead, Polanski consulted with production designer Richard Sylbert, a New York native who spent 30 days honing a shooting script with Polanski after he’d completed a first draft.

Ira Levin — who later authored The Stepford Wives — has been accused by some of being a hack, but for me, Rosemary’s Baby is a brilliantly executed study in paranoia; every character Rosemary encounters seems to have a vested interest in her pregnancy, or could they just be trying to help? Whether it was the fact that he was a committed agnostic, or just felt that it was better filmmaking, Roman Polanski also resisted supernatural thrills and instead, gave his adaptation an intense psychological edge, keeping us guessing until the end of the movie whether Rosemary is in danger from witches, or just experiencing some pregnancy related dementia.

William Peter Blatty was enrolled at Georgetown University in 1949 when his New Testament class covered a case he’d read about in the Washington Post, detailing the alleged exorcism of a 14-year-old boy in Mount Rainer, MD. A Catholic whose faith was wavering at the time, Blatty sold the idea of The Exorcist to paperback publisher Bantam Press, which commissioned a novel and ultimately sold it to Harper and Row. Published in 1971, The Exorcist was a runaway hit, selling 13 million copies in the U.S. alone. Blatty adapted a screenplay and attaching himself to the project as producer, saw every studio in Hollywood turn his bestseller down.

Warner Bros. had passed on The Exorcist when head of production John Calley was slipped a copy of the novel. So terrified reading it at night that he tried getting his dog to share the bed with him, Calley would pursue every major director of the day — Mike Nichols, Arthur Penn, John Boorman — to helm the picture. Each turned it down for technical or personal reasons. Blatty even pleaded with Peter Bogdanovich to direct before arriving on William Friedkin, whose kinetic, documentary-like approach had helped The French Connection win an Academy Award for Best Picture. Blatty felt a realistic aesthetic was just what his fantasy/horror picture needed.

Not caring for a 226-page first draft full of flashbacks, Friedkin compelled Blatty to adopt a straight forward narrative. The resulting script may have won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, but isn’t very cohesive. Father Merrin drifts into and out of the story, most of the characters share tenuous relationships and the dialogue is passable at best. Still, the result is one of the most visceral portraits of evil ever conjured. In addition to the phantasm of levitation, projectile vomiting and demonic possession, the story does deal with the crisis of faith and hopelessness in subtle and powerful ways, making the story that more unnerving.

Writing edge: Rosemary’s Baby

Casting
Seeking an all-American girl for the role of Rosemary, Roman Polanski wanted to cast Tuesday Weld. But Robert Evans — looking for a bigger name — preferred Mia Farrow, who was appearing on the popular TV show Peyton Place. While I think Weld would have been extraordinary, there’s no question that the nervy but beguiling Farrow went full throttle here and made Rosemary her own. Robert Redford was the first choice of both Evans and Polanski to play Guy and would also have been terrific, but legalities apparently kept him out of the cast. John Cassavetes brings much greater edge to the role of a struggling actor who might turn to the occult for career help.

In casting the supporting players — the sweet old faces who might possibly be witches — Rosemary’s Baby is in a class all its own. It’s impossible to imagine the film being as great without Ruth Gordon, who is nothing short of a force of nature in this; Minnie Castevet alternates between being one of the great little New York characters of all time, and the neighbor from hell. Gordon won a richly deserved Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Elisha Cook Jr. plays a realtor, Ralph Bellamy is Rosemary’s suspect obstetrician and newcomer Charles Grodin appeared as a physician whose best intentions only end up harming his patient.

The first actress Blatty sent a script to had been Shirley MacLaine, who’d been his neighbor in California and provided the inspiration for Chris MacNeil. Once casting began in earnest, the writer-producer’s first choice for Father Karras had been Marlon Brando, but skittish that The Exorcist would become Brando’s show instead of his, Friedkin turned to a capable list of actors who were hardly matinee idols: Ellen Burstyn, Jason Miller, Max von Sydow. This decision goes a long way to giving The Exorcist a realistic texture. Burstyn in particular seems cognizant of the frustrations and fears of a single mother and communicates both vividly.

The Exorcist wouldn’t be the masterpiece that it is without two actors. Radio and film veteran Mercedes McCambridge supplied the voice of the demon and it’s her vocal work — sounding like an ancient woman with a glass bottle jabbed in their throat — that makes The Exorcist so terrifying. The entire movie hinged on the casting of Regan. An above average child actor might have been cast here and the results would have been laughable, but Linda Blair’s ferocious, no holds barred performance is a standard bearer for any actor working under makeup. Strangely, Blair seems to make a much more convincing demon than she does a 12-year-old.

Casting edge: Even

Production value
Roman Polanski’s aesthetic for Rosemary’s Baby has been discussed ad nauseum over the decades. In the 1992 documentary Visions of Light, cinematographer William Fraker relates a great anecdote about Polanski moving Fraker’s camera to the left so that only Ruth Gordon’s back would be visible during a shot where she’s in a room talking on the phone. When that scene went before an audience, 1,500 people actually craned their necks around to try to peek inside the room. I don’t subscribe to the notion of Director As God, but Robert Evans and Fraker have both credited Polanski with pushing the film’s look and finding unusual ways to create tension visually.

Intricately designed by Richard Sylbert, Rosemary’s Baby was shot in 14 weeks: two weeks in New York for exterior shooting around the Dakota Hotel were followed by 12 weeks of interiors on the Paramount lot in Los Angeles. The dream sequences are like tiny art films in their own right. What surprised me watching this film again was how these sequences refuse to indulge in the psychedelia of the time. Watching Ken Russell flicks, I often feel like I’d enjoy them much better with pharmaceuticals. On the other hand, Rosemary’s Baby features some of the most textured dream sequences ever put to film, whether viewed sober or otherwise.

What began as a 105-day production schedule when shooting for The Exorcist commenced on a soundstage at 20th Century Fox studios in New York would stretch on for 200 days, back when it was considered insane to spend more than $1 million on a horror flick. But the bucks are on the screen. The opening sequence in Iraq gives the movie an ominous, almost epic feel, while William Friedkin’s decision to shoot a good portion of the film handheld certainly has a sense of immediacy to it. We’re constantly kept off balance and while the jarring approach has produced vomit in most of Friedkin’s films since, The Exorcist is a punch in the gut.

The makeup effects in The Exorcist were designed by Dick Smith, whose protégé Rick Baker also worked on the film and credits his mentor with being responsible for the state of the art of prosthetic makeup in film today. Beyond just making an actor look like a demon, Smith’s work was pioneering: the projectile vomit, the welts that appeared on Regan’s stomach spelling out HELP ME, or her head spinning around. None of that stuff had been done before and it holds up remarkably well. Smith’s work is so great that watching the movie again, it never really occurred to me that I was seeing special effects.

Production value edge: Even

Music
Neither Rosemary’s Baby nor The Exorcist feature the type of bombastic musical arrangements I’ve learned to endure in Jerry Bruckheimer type productions, thankfully. Instead of punctuating how we’re supposed to feel at any given moment, both films opted for very unconventional scores to eerie, even unsettling effect. Many people remember the lullaby that plays over the opening credits of Rosemary’s Baby, with a fine organ and string accompaniment floating underneath. There’s an elegance and bit of sadness in Krzysztof Komeda’s compositions for the film, subtle but extremely effective.

Lalo Schifrin was commissioned to compose the score for The Exorcist, but William Friedkin — who reportedly likened Schifrin’s score to “fuckin Mexican marimba music” — literally threw the reels out the door and brought in classical recordings he felt suited the movie better. These include “Night of the Electric Insects” by George Crumb’s string quartet Black Angels and portions of the 1971 “Cello Concerto” by composer Krzysztof Penderecki. Stanley Kubrick would later use Penderecki to great effect in The Shining. The spine tingling theme is “Tubular Bells” by Mike Oldfield and can be heard every Halloween in TV or radio advertising to conjure spookiness.

Music edge: Even

Cultural impact
Arriving in theaters June 1968, Rosemary’s Baby ultimately earned $15 million in the U.S. and finished the 7th highest grossing picture of the year. Today, it not only figures in debates over which horror films are the scariest ever made, but marked the beginning of a six year run for Robert Evans that would transform Paramount into the most prestigious movie studio in the world. The film was followed only by a forgettable made-for-TV movie in 1976 — Look What’s Happened To Rosemary’s Baby – in which Patty Duke played Rosemary and Ruth Gordon reprised her Oscar winning role, but does continue to be referenced in sitcoms and on cartoons.

No contest. The Exorcist was a box office sensation. Opening December 26, 1973, not even freezing weather kept audiences from lining up outside theaters on the East Coast. Through several re-issues, it would gross $232.6 million in the U.S. and $208.4 million overseas, making it the highest grossing R-rated movie ever in its day. Four sequels followed: John Boorman’s maligned Exorcist II: The Heretic (1975), the subpar Exorcist III (1990) written and directed by William Peter Blatty, Paul Schrader’s little seen Dominion (2005) and the version reshot by Renny Harlin, Exorcist: The Beginning (2004). The original is widely considered the scariest movie ever made.

Cultural impact edge: The Exorcist

Winner: Rosemary’s Baby

The Exorcist is the scarier movie. Rosemary’s Baby is the better film. I can watch it over and over and always find something new to savor — in the art direction, in the performances, in the story — while The Exorcist is not a movie I feel the need to revisit. Though in many ways superior, once The Exorcist is over, that’s all folks, it doesn’t resonate for me all that much.

Your thoughts?

By Joe Valdez

What the *&#! Are They About?
In the Pacific Northwest, John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) drifts into a small town in search of a buddy he served with in Vietnam. After receiving word that his friend has died, Rambo draws the attention of Sheriff Will Teasle (Brian Dennehy) who doesn’t care for the stranger’s dirty look or sullen attitude and shuttles him to the city limits. Rambo stubbornly tries to return to town, earning himself a trip to jail. There, Teasle’s deputies attempt to clean the prisoner up, triggering Rambo’s memory of being a prisoner of war.

Overpowering his captors, Rambo escapes into the chilly rain forest above town. The police learn that their fugitive is a decorated Green Beret, an expert in guerilla warfare tactics and survival. 200 National Guard troops are mobilized to help track him down and Rambo’s mentor Col. Traughtman (Richard Crenna) is sent in by the Pentagon to advise. Traughtman notifies the authorities that he’s not here to protect Rambo from them, but the other way around.

When a chopper carrying a cabinet minister goes down in Central America, a seven-man Special Forces team is sent on a rescue mission. Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is reunited with Vietnam buddy Dillon (Carl Weathers) who’s gone to work for the CIA and insists on participating in the operation. Rappelling into the jungle, the team discovers the skinned bodies of a Green Beret team that appears to have been sent in before them.

After assaulting a rebel camp, the squad — which includes a macho gunner (Jesse Ventura) and Indian tracker (Sonny Landham) — realize the story of a captive cabinet minister was cooked up to get them to strike the guerillas, who Dillon believes shot down the chopper of Green Berets. Heading to the evacuation site with a prisoner (Elpidia Carrillo), things go from bad to worse when the squad falls prey to a seven-foot tall, heavily armed and camouflaged alien big game hunter.

Writing
First Blood and the character of Rambo had their genesis in a 1972 novel by David Morrell, a Canadian born professor of English at the University of Iowa who experienced the effects of what became known as post-traumatic stress through students who were returning from the Vietnam War. Morrell’s action thriller was optioned by Warner Bros., where the best of many, many drafts was written by the team of Michael Kozoll & William Sackheim in the mid-1970s, when it was ultimately decided by the studio that audiences didn’t care much about Vietnam anymore.

By 1981, Sylvester Stallone had accepted a $3.5 million offer from producers Mario Kassar & Andrew Vajna to play Rambo. To keep the star aboard the project when he got cold feet, the producers encouraged Stallone to rewrite the script to his particular sensibility. The resulting story tapped into the rooting interest of the underdog that Stallone had developed so well in the Rocky pictures. Despite its superb visceral elements — including a frenzied pursuit through the Pacific Northwest rain forest and a claustrophobic sequence where Rambo is trapped in a mine — the original First Blood never veers into comic book territory, revealing both Rambo and his adversary Sheriff Teasle to be men of duty. Both are seen bending under the stress of their ordeal.

Predator began as a spec script written by Jim Thomas & John Thomas. Titled Hunter, their concept was human beings being stalked by a dilettante from another world, like big game hunters stalking exotic animals and returning home with a trophy, I guess. The Thomas brothers completed their script in September 1983 and sold it in early 1984 to Fox, where producer Joel Silver ultimately developed it as a vehicle for Arnold Schwarzenegger.

After an uncredited polish by David Peoples, Hunter would become The Predator during its production and ultimately, Predator. While the personalities of the badass Special Forces unit are allowed to bubble to the surface of a ceaselessly entertaining conceit, there’s not a terrific amount of suspense here, with Arnold’s triumph over the Predator never really in question. The inclusion of a female POW who comes along for the ride and a needlessly convoluted set-up do get in the way of the film’s roll licking factor.

Writing edge: First Blood

Casting
Behind his image as a monosyllabic he-man, it’s often overlooked how good an actor Sylvester Stallone can be. The original First Blood is one of the best performances of his career. It’s easy to imagine Rambo as an orphan; yeah, he’s a trained killer, but instead of emphasizing invincibility, Stallone plays the character’s loneliness and disquiet beautifully. Kirk Douglas was eagerly pursued to play Col. Traughtman and reported for work before bowing out when director Ted Kotcheff and the producers demurred over Douglas’ script revisions, which included Rambo dying at the end. The late Richard Crenna is no Spartacus, but does a credible job.

The Stallone flicks that are worth revisiting are the ones where Sly was given a great adversary — like Nighthawks, or to a much lesser extent, Rocky III and Demolition Man — and First Blood is no exception. In addition to being a tremendous character actor, Brian Dennehy takes what in the sequels would have been just a brutal redneck sheriff and here, gives him the texture of a real man doing a job. Never entirely likable, he’s never unlikable either, much like a real sheriff. Lisa Freiberger did a yeoman’s job casting Jack Starrett, Chris Mulkey, David Caruso and Michael Talbott as deputies.

Arnold Schwarzenegger was still pretty much developing his chops as an actor when he was offered the lead in Predator, but his sense of self, his ability to toss out one liners (“Stick around” as he impales a rebel with a machete) and physique made him perfect for this type of flick. But personally, I find Predator 2 a much better take; even though Danny Glover is playing a tough cop, he’s much more vulnerable and the outcome is called into greater question than if you have the Terminator as your hero.

Casting director Jackie Burch had room to maneuver with the supporting cast and this is where Predator goes into another gear. Carl Weathers — who briefly played linebacker for the Oakland Raiders – brings as much charisma here as he does athletic prowess. Producer Joel Silver had previously worked with Bill Duke and Sonny Landham, two heavies you would not want to fuck with in a bar, and brought them aboard. Jesse Ventura — a former Navy SEAL, bodyguard and professional wrestler — adds even more color to the film, while 7 foot, 2 inch tall Kevin Peter Hall was both menacing and graceful as the title villain.

Casting edge: Predator

Production value
One of the reasons First Blood is so fucking good is the approach taken by director Ted Kotcheff, best known for this film and the even more masculine North Dallas Forty, but who probably wouldn’t have been influenced by MTV even if it had been around a decade earlier. This is a classically mounted picture, with certain restraint taken to making things look and feel as real as possible, while delivering entertainment in the process. The cinematography by Andrew Laszlo — framed in anamorphic format — is nothing short of stunning, soaking up the mist covered rain forests of Hope, Canada.

John McTiernan had a B-movie called Nomads to his credit when he was hired to direct Predator. His energy and ideas are all over the picture — essentially a Tarzan flick with guns — but this is firmly a B-movie produced by a major studio. While makeup effects maestro Stan Winston saved the day by coming in near the end of production to redesign the creature, the shooting location is a slightly less than exotic Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and the optical effects dated. The film has some nice compositions, but the lighting by Donald McAlpine is nothing to rave over.

Production value edge: First Blood

Music
No contest. Jerry Goldsmith is my favorite film composer/ conductor in modern Hollywood, and his score for First Blood — commissioned between Poltergeist and Psycho II — is as emotionally rousing as his best. Chords of Goldsmith’s theme for this film, which put Mario Kassar & Andrew Vajna on the map as Hollywood players, would later be heard over the logo of Carolco Pictures during the early 1990s.

Alan Silvestri then and now is probably best known as the composer of Back to the Future, but always struck me as someone you approached if John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith were unavailable. His work for Predator is pretty serviceable, rising to the level the production probably had to pay a good composer. It might still be one of the more recognizable themes of the genre, right up there with Brad Fiedel’s work on The Terminator. It does get the job done.

Music edge: First Blood

Cultural impact
Opening in October 1982, First Blood was a huge hit with audiences, pulling down box office receipts of $47.2 million in the U.S. and $78 million overseas, back when tickets were three bucks. The decision not to kill Rambo off made somebody a billionaire; by the end of the decade, Rambo had spawned two cartoonish sequels and an actual cartoon titled Rambo: Force of Freedom. Rambo: First Blood Part II transformed David Morrell’s scarred war vet into a symbol of American military muscle, spawning bumper stickers, knives and bubble gum and name dropping into media addresses given by President Reagan, much to the chagrin of liberals.

Hitting theaters in June 1987, Predator also went over well at the box office, grossing $59.7 million in the U.S. and adding $38.5 million overseas. It helped Joel Silver on his way to becoming the Action King of Hollywood and for a brief spell, put John McTiernan at the top as well. An Arnold-less sequel attracted significantly less business in 1990, but the uber-equipped Predator seemed to resonate with genre fans, returning in 2004 (Alien vs. Predator) and 2007 (Alien vs. Predator: Requiem), sort of making him the Frankenstein Monster of the new millennium. A full “reboot” can’t be too far around the corner.

Cultural impact edge: Even

Winner: First Blood

Your thoughts?

What the *&#! Is This About?
“People are always asking me if I know Tyler Durden,” narrates a young man we will come to know only as the Narrator (Edward Norton) as someone holds a gun barrel in his mouth. Minutes before he’s to witness dozens of office buildings explode in controlled demolition, The Narrator explains how he got here. Sleepwalking through life as an insurance claims adjuster for a major car company and gripped in what he refers to as “the Ikea nesting instinct,” he comments, “I’d flip through catalogs and wonder, ‘What kind of dining set defines me as a person?’” Unable to sleep, the Narrator crashes support groups for testicular cancer, blood parasites or sickle cell anemia, finding that when people think you have a terminal disease, they listen to you.

The Narrator’s catharsis is threatened by the appearance of another faker, Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter), who attends group therapy because “It’s cheaper than a movie and there’s free coffee.” The Narrator’s day job sends him across the country investigating fatal car crashes to determine if a recall would be cost effective for his company. He dreams of a midair collision to break the monotony, while seated next to him, a dapper soap peddler named Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) demonstrates how ridiculous the emergency landing procedures on an airliner are. When he returns home to find his apartment has mysteriously exploded, the Narrator meets Tyler for a drink. His new buddy points out the Narrator’s dependence on consumer culture. “The things you own end up owning you.”

In the parking lot, Tyler asks the Narrator for a favor. “I want you to hit me as hard as you can.” If for no other reason than they’ve never been in a fight, the men wail on each other before calling it a night. The Narrator is invited to crash at the decrepit house Tyler occupies between jobs as a renegade caterer and film projectionist. The boys’ nocturnal fisticuffs start drawing the attention of other disaffected young men. Tyler gives it a name – Fight Club – and sets some ground rules. “The first rule of Fight Club is that you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club.” Marla re-enters the Narrator’s life when she and Tyler meet and engage in round the clock, rambunctious sex in the house. Tyler then hatches a plan to expand the social anarchy of Fight Club from the basement to the streets.

Who Should Be Held Responsible?
After graduating the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism, Chuck Palahniuk returned to his hometown of Portland and wrote for a local newspaper (The Oregonian) for a time. He ended up having to take work writing service procedures for freight trucks. It was during a trip to the Pacific Coast Trail that Palahniuk got into a dispute with some campers. The author recalled, “The other people who were camping near us wanted to drink and party all night long, and I tried to get them to shut up one night, and they literally beat the crap out of me. I went back to work just so bashed, and horrible looking. People didn’t ask me what had happened. I think they were afraid of the answer. I realized that if you looked bad enough, people would not want to know what you did in your spare time. They don’t want to know the bad things about you. And the key was to look so bad that no one would ever, ever ask. And that was the idea behind Fight Club.”

Palahniuk used his newfound affinity for brawling to write Fight Club over a three-month period in 1995. He later mused, “I never expected the book to be published. I had been rejected so many times because my work was seen as too dark and depressing, that when I sent off Fight Club, I thought it was just a fuck off to New York publishing. It was my last gesture.” But within weeks of sending a first draft to his agent, the galleys came to the attention of Raymond Bongiovanni, a literary scout for Fox 2000 in New York. He phoned president of production Laura Ziskin, who recalled, “He was very excited about it, not sure it was a movie, but sure he had read the work of an exciting new voice. Thirty six hours later I was sitting on the edge of my bed in the middle of the night reading passages of the book out loud to my husband.”

Big name producers had passed on the book before it got to Joshua Donen and Ross Bell, who were enthusiastic about the material. Donen ultimately zeroed in on David Fincher – the director of Seven - imploring him to read Fight Club. Amid protests that he was too busy, Fincher finally cracked open the book. He later recalled, “It’s sardonic, it’s sarcastic, and naïve, and cynical and funny. I knew Marla. I knew the Narrator, I knew the Narrator’s attraction and repulsion to Marla, I knew his need for Tyler. I knew why he looks up to Tyler. I just knew it.” Much to the amazement of everyone involved with the project at that point, Fox expressed interest in actually producing Fight Club. Ross Bell reportedly told friends, “This is a seditious movie about blowing up people like Rupert Murdoch.” Fincher had sworn never to make a movie at the Murdoch owned studio again after the ordeal he’d gone through over his first feature film, Alien³.

David Fincher recalled, “I didn’t have a very good time with Fox the first time, so I was basically going thinking, ‘Oh, no that’s over with.’ But Josh called and told me to just go in and talk with Laura Ziskin, and tell her that I wanted to make it. So I do - I go in and talk with Laura Ziskin and I told her, ‘Here’s the movie I’m interested in making and I’m not interested in watering any of this shit down. I’m not interested in explaining, but I think I can make a movie that you don’t need to have read the book in order to understand what’s going on. I have no interest in making this anything other than what this book is, which is kind of a sharp stick in the eye.’ She was very cool with it. We could have made it a three million dollar or five million dollar Trainspotting version, or we could do the balls-out version where planes explode and it’s just a dream and buildings explode and it’s for real - which is the version I preferred to do - and she backed it.”

Fincher proposed developing a script on his own, without taking a fee, but also without studio executives needling him with notes. After eight months working with screenwriters Jim Uhls and Andrew Kevin Walker and producer Art Linson, Fincher came back with a script, a $60 million budget, a schedule - including stages on the studio lot that Fincher wanted to shoot in – and two leading men, Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. Norton recalled, “Fincher sent me the novel, and I read it in one sitting. It’s obviously a surreal piece that operates at an almost allegorical level within someone’s madness, and I felt immediately that it was on the pulse of a zeitgeist I recognized. It speaks to my generation’s conflict with the American material values system at its worst. I guess I’ve felt for a long time that a lot of the films that were aimed at my generation were some baby boomer perception of what Gen-X was about. They seemed to be tailored to a kind of reductive image of us as slackers and to have a banal, glib, low-energy, angst-ridden realism, none of which I or anyone I know relates to.”

After presenting their package, Fincher and Linson gave Fox three days to decide whether they were in or out. The next day, the studio agreed to produce Fight Club. Studio chairman Bill Mechanic had become an advocate of the project. To afford Fincher’s vision, he reached out for $25 million from Arnon Milchan and his New Regency Enterprises. In order for Fincher to get his budget – which had climbed to $67 million – the director surrendered final cut to his financiers, but Milchan still wanted the director to bring his budget down to $62 million, arguing that Rupert Murdoch – the media tycoon who owned Fox – would not see this as a good investment. Fincher dug in, reportedly saying, “That $5 million is not going to come from Eastman Kodak, it’s not going to come from Teamsters, it’s going to come from visual effects, it’s going to come from sets, from costumes, it’s going to come right off the screen. It’s going to come from the moments they want in the fucking trailer.” Milchan passed on co-financing the picture.

In June 1998, Fight Club commenced a 100-day shooting schedule around Los Angeles. Once he got a look at three weeks of footage Fincher had shot, Arnon Milchan changed his mind about getting involved in the film; he agreed to split the risk with Fox. In early 1999, after 10 weeks of editing, Fincher screened a cut of Fight Club for the top brass at the studio. The screening was not met with enthusiasm. Mechanic delivered the news to Fincher: the movie was simply too long and too violent. Laura Ziskin elaborated on the concern at Fox. “I was afraid of it. I thought it was really smart, it had real ideas in it, and that’s hard. I was afraid. Could we sell it? I was always afraid of that.” Many at the studio had a far stronger reaction. Mechanic recalled, “There were people who abhorred it. They’d walk up to me and say, ‘I hated it.’”

When Fight Club premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September 1999, the bad taste was amplified among critics. Kenneth Turan, the Los Angeles Times: “What’s most troubling about this witless mishmash of whiny, infantile philosophizing and bone-crunching violence is the increasing realization that it actually thinks it’s saying something of significance.” Anita Busch, the Hollywood Reporter: “The film is exactly the kind of product that lawmakers should target for being socially irresponsible in a nation that has deteriorated to the point of Columbine.” Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun Times that Tyler Durden came off “sounding like a man who tripped over the Nietzsche display on his way to the coffee bar in Borders. In my opinion, he has no useful truths. He’s a bully - Werner Erhard plus S&M, a leather club operator without the decor.”

Bill Mechanic later mused, “I had wanted the Pauline Kaels of today – and there isn’t one – to provide a context for understanding the film. Forget about whether you liked it or not. There should be people who see things in a broader context, and there aren’t. I understand not liking the movie. I don’t understand not understanding the movie, or not thinking that it’s an important film.” Laura Ziskin was also one of the few supporters of Fight Club left in the film industry. “A lot of people condemned the movie without seeing the movie. But it is a scary movie. I think that’s right. It was at the crest of something.” Fight Club came and went from theaters in the U.S. with $37 million in grosses. Even after adding $63.8 million overseas, it was deemed a commercial failure.

But on college campuses and in repertory theaters, screenings of Fight Club were selling out. A few journalists started rethinking their reaction to the film. In the independent student newspaper of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, Samuel McKewon wrote, “Fight Club is an essential movie for the 21st Century - one of the few out there - that skewers materialism with such a bold, fierce bravado, and certainly, you wonder what all the fuss over American Beauty was for. The latter has ice water running through its veins; it’s detached, damning, judgmental. Fight Club has hot, black blood running through its two-hour-plus running time. It judges by showing.” By the time the DVD arrived – with four commentary tracks and subversive menus - even Entertainment Weekly ranked Fight Club #1 on its list of “The 50 Essential DVDs.”

While Fight Club was dying a quick death at the box office, Edward Norton offered his take on whether the film was socially irresponsible. “You can’t not pursue a creative statement because of the fear it will be misinterpreted. If you did, nothing of any substance would get done.” He added, “Many of the things that have been called subversive are regarded as classics now, including much of Oscar Wilde. Because some men pursue their sexual obsessions with young girls, does that mean Nabokov shouldn’t have written Lolita? Should Martin Scorsese not have made Taxi Driver because there was the potential that someone like John Hinckley would use it as the excuse for his particular pathology? I think the answer to that is definitely no. Art has an important role in holding up a mirror to the things that are unhealthy in a culture.”

Should I Care?
Mixing brooding atmosphere, wildly inappropriate information – “Did you know if you mixed equal parts of gasoline and frozen orange juice concentrate you can make napalm?”- perversely twisted black comedy and a wry mockery of the consumer culture that most of the audience participated in daily, Fight Club was the film version of a Molotov cocktail. 10 years later, it’s still riled up about the state of the planet; the only difference is that after 9/11, Enron, Martha Stewart’s fall from grace and Britney Spears’ ascension to near royalty, audiences seem to have caught on with what Chuck Palahniuk was getting at in the mid-1990s. Going back to watch Fight Club again is like downloading Nostradamus to a techno vibe.

From screenplay to David Fincher’s visionary direction, casting to music (The Dust Brothers composed the groovy synthesizer score), editing (James Haygood) to sound, the film delivers a 9.0 to a 9.5 in virtually every routine it puts on the floor. There’s not really a flaw exposed in the entire movie. Marla Singer may be the only female character of consequence, but this morbidly creative heroine is anything but eye candy, expressing herself in wonderfully kooky ways, like talking on the phone with the cord wrapped around her throat. Gleefully sardonic moments like that demand the film be seen more than once, if for no other reason than to savor the terrific plot twist 1 hour and 50 minutes in and how it rewires the viewing experience. If Fight Club isn’t a masterpiece, I’m not sure what is.

© Joe Valdez

Where Are You Getting This *&#!?
“Fighting Talk” By Graham Fuller. Interview, November 1999

“Todd Doogan Interviews Director David Fincher” By Todd Doogan. The Digital Bits, May 2000

“Bruise Control” By Stuart Jeffries. The Guardian, 12 May 2000

Rebels On The Backlot: Six Maverick Directors and How They Conquered the Hollywood Studio System. By Sharon Waxman. HarperCollins (2005)

What the *&#! Is This About?
In Los Angeles – overpopulated and choked in pollution - of the year 2019, the Tyrell Corporation leads the field of robot design with the “Replicant,” a being virtually identical to a human, but superior in strength and agility, and at least equal in intelligence. After a mutiny in an off-world colony, Replicants have been declared illegal on Earth, where they are tracked down and “retired” by special police known as blade runners. One of these blade runners administers an empathy test known as the Voight-Kampff to Tyrell employees in an attempt to screen out possible Replicants. One of his subjects - Leon (Brion James) - is pushed too far by the test and shoots the officer. Ex-blade runner Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is summoned by his old captain (M. Emmet Walsh) to hunt down four Replicants – two male and two female – who have arrived in L.A. for reasons unknown.

Paired with a cop (Edward James Olmos) who speaks an amalgam of French/German/Hungarian, Deckard goes to see Dr. Tyrell (Joe Turkel). He learns that a new model of Replicant – the Nexus 6 – has been implanted with memories so real that it may actually believe itself to be human. Designed to develop its own emotional responses, the Nexus 6 has been engineered with a 4-year life span. Tyrell has Deckard administer the Voight-Kampff Test to his secretary Rachael (Sean Young). Deckard realizes that she’s a Nexus 6. Rachael does not react well to news that she’s an artificial being and seeks Deckard out in an effort to cope with this. Meanwhile, the other escaped Replicants – combat model Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), assassin Zhora (Joanna Cassidy) and pleasure model Pris (Daryl Hannah) – befriend a lonely robotics designer (William Sanderson) in attempt to infiltrate the Tyrell Corporation, seeking reprieves on their lives and the meaning of their existence.

Who Should Be Held Responsible?
Philip K. Dick capped a prolific decade that included 19 novels, 27 short stories and a Hugo Award in 1963 with the publishing of his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?‘ in 1968. In a phone interview with Paul M. Sammon a little more than a year before his death in 1981, Dick discussed the novel’s genesis. “It stems from an interest on my part in the problem of differentiating the authentic human being from the reflux machine, which I call an android … Where for me, the word ‘android’ is a metaphor for people who are physiologically human but psychologically behaving in a non-human way. I got interested in this when I was doing research for Man In the High Castle and I was studying the Nazi mentality. And I discovered that although these people were highly intelligent, they were definitely deficient in some manner in appropriate affect, appropriate emotion that would accompany the intellectual process.”

After struggling as both a flamenco dancer and a screenwriter in the 1970s, Hampton Fancher thought he would take a shot at being a film producer. Fancher recalled, “I thought I would produce a movie. And this guy – Jim Maxwell – who’s a close friend, knows me well, said, ‘You might, I think science fiction’s gonna happen.’ And he said, ‘Do you know who Philip K. Dick is?’ I said, no. He said, ‘Well there’s a book called Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?‘ And I said, okay, I’ll read that. I read it. I didn’t like it that much. But I thought, okay, that’s commercial. Here’s a thru-line: bureaucratic detective chasing androids. In ’78 or so, my friend Brian Kelly, he had $5,000. He said, ‘Maybe you could get an option and that might be a good commercial project that you could get behind, and, you know, make some money.’ That’s all we’re talking about, is making some money.”

Brian Kelly zeroed in on producer Michael Deeley with the project. Deeley recalled, “I’d been pursued for about two years by Brian Kelly – who’s a very close friend of mine – who had this idea in mind to make a movie, based on Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? And I’d first read it and thought: this wasn’t very interesting.” Fancher’s take on the material was cerebral and dialogue driven, a cautionary tale of over population and ecological disaster that largely took place in rooms. Fancher pressed ahead anyway, first with a treatment, then several drafts of a screenplay. “The intellectual aspects of the screenplay were taken from my response to the death of animal life on this planet, and what that meant. That’s probably the thing that saw me through the first draft, was I had a passion about that, and so my affection for the project was consistent.”

On the strength of Hampton Fancher’s adaptation, Michael Deeley ultimately agreed to produce the film, opting for the title Dangerous Days. His first choice to direct was Ridley Scott, who was mixing Alien in England at the time. Scott recalled, “I said, ‘I don’t really want to do another science fiction, I’ve just finished one. So, but I’ll read it.’ I read the script, which was Hampton Fancher and it was called Dangerous Days. And I turned it down.” Scott’s friend and associate Ivor Powell had gotten a hold of the script and had a different reaction. Powell recalled, “And I said, ‘Listen, I think we should give this a second thought. I really think this is powerful and emotional and really interesting.” The idea stuck with Scott and when he was unable to crack an adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel Dune for producer Dino De Laurentiis agreed to direct Dangerous Days. Hampton Fancher had never cared for that title, and appropriated one from William S. Burroughs that he liked better: Blade Runner.

Filmways agreed to finance a budget, but Deeley recalled, “We’d spent about two and a half million by the time it became perfectly clear that the world we were building was much bigger than twelve and a half million dollars. Much, much bigger.” As sets were being constructed, Deeley brokered a three-way arrangement to secure alternate financing and keep the project alive. Producer Alan Ladd Jr. – who had a deal with Warner Bros. – put up $7.5 million for U.S. distribution rights. Singapore movie mogul Sir Run-Run Shaw also invested that sum, for the film’s foreign rights. Another $7 million came from producers Jerry Perenchio and Bud Yorkin, who received TV and home video rights and agreed to finance the completion budget, should Blade Runner go over schedule.

Meanwhille, Hampton Fancher was struggling to conceptualize what Ridley Scott wanted to see. Scott recalled, “The hunter falls in love with the hunted, except they never go outside the apartment. It’s very interior. I want to take them outside the door. Once we go outside the door, this world has to support the thesis that she’s android, humanoid, robot.” He added, “We got up to a point where Hampton was just getting exhausted. Go back to the anvil, back to the anvil, back to the anvil.” David Peoples was approached to deliver a shooting script. Scott added, “Peoples I think is more – and I mean this in the best possible way – is simpler? Hampton is more cerebral. And for the most part this was very cerebral. And I thought, actually, bringing in something like Peoples would maybe create some fresh air in the corridors to make it move. Because my danger as a director is I tend to get very cerebral and get engaged with darkness and detail.” One of Peoples’ contributions ended up being the idea that Roy Batty would save Deckard’s life.

After Dustin Hoffman spent several months attached to the role of Deckard – moving further away from the filmmakers’ vision as time progressed – actress Barbara Hershey mentioned to Hampton Fancher the name Harrison Ford. A visit that Michael Deeley and Ridley Scott made to England to watch dailies from Raiders of the Lost Ark – then shooting at Pinewood Studios – won them over. Ford recalled, “I remember that I read a script, which I thought was interesting. At the first version that I read of it, of the film, had some issues, I had some issues with. There was a voiceover narration attached to the original script, and I said to Ridley that I played a detective who does no detecting. How about we take some of this information that’s in the voice-overs and put it into scenes, and so that the audience could discover the information, discover the character through seeing him in the context of what he does, rather than being told about it. And some of that survived, and some of it didn’t.”

With conceptual designer Syd Mead creating the industrial look of the film – cars, streets, buildings and neon – Blade Runner commenced shooting March 1981 on the Warner Bros. backlot in Burbank. Working in the American film industry for the first time, Ridley Scott mused, “There’s nothing worse when you’ve done two and a half hours of commercials - and I know I’ve got a very good eye - in three seconds I can give you a set-up, having walked in the room without ever seeing it before. So I don’t like discussion. I know exactly what I want, and I want to walk in and say ‘Do it.’ That’s the director’s job. The director’s not meant to stand there and consult with half a dozen people in the room.” In addition to Scott’s brusque communication skills, filming nights under heavy rain and smoke effects wore down the crew - many of whom quit – as well as some of the cast, with Harrison Ford seething through most of the shoot.

A test screening of Blade Runner was held in Dallas in March 1982. Production illustrator Tom Southwell recalled, “Everybody was expecting a heroic follow-up to Raiders of the Lost Ark or Star Wars and the way it was advertised on television - with only the visual effects shots of a flying car going over a futuristic city and sort of a fight sequence - doesn’t prepare you for the traumatic, emotional side that there is in the film that kind of leaves you sort of broken.” Specific objections raised at the test screening were that the film was too confusing, too dark, too slow and ended too abruptly. Scott addressed these concerns by filming a brighter ending, with Ford and Sean Young escaping to the pristine countryside, and inserting voiceover narration by Ford to help audiences along with the plot.

While its visual design won acclaim, many critics were left with a bad taste to the overall film. Janet Maslin, the New York Times: “Science-fiction devotees may find Blade Runner a wonderfully meticulous movie and marvel at the comprehensiveness of its vision. Even those without a taste for gadgetry cannot fail to appreciate the degree of effort that has gone into constructing a film so ambitious and idiosyncratic … But Blade Runner is a film that special effects could have easily run away with, and run away with it they have. And it’s also a mess, at least as far as its narrative is concerned.” Pauline Kael, the New Yorker: “Blade Runner doesn’t engage you directly; it forces passivity on you. It sets you down in this lopsided maze of a city, with its post-human feeling, and keeps you persuaded that something bad is about to happen. Some the scenes seem to have six subtexts but no text, and no context either.” Roger Ebert, the Chicago Sun Times: “Blade Runner is a stunningly interesting visual achievement, but a failure as a story.”

In June 1982 during its first weekend of release in the U.S., Blade Runner opened big; only E.T. was drawing a bigger crowd. But as word of mouth spread - and audiences flocked to Rocky III or Star Trek II - the film’s commercial prospects sank. Grossing $32.6 million in the U.S., Blade Runner was not only deemed a commercial disappointment, but a creative disappointment by some of the people who’d worked on it. In 2007, associate producer Ivor Powell recalled, “For me, it’s still – emotionally – falls short of total satisfaction because I just think there is an emotional logic and a sort of a narrative logic that doesn’t run as true as I feel that it should do, and in a sense I felt that what we made was an incredibly beautiful looking – as one would expect with Rid – but it’s almost like an art movie.”

Accordingly, Blade Runner became a staple of midnight screenings on college campuses or at revival houses. Then in 1990, a work print seen only at test screenings in Denver and Dallas was briefly exhibited in Los Angeles. Popular demand for a definitive version of Blade Runner led to Ridley Scott being permitted to supervise a “Director’s Cut” in 1992. The much maligned voiceover narration and the upbeat ending were both removed and 12 cryptic seconds of Deckard dreaming of a unicorn was inserted. In addition to audiences who’d missed it, critics who’d seen Blade Runner and given it a lackluster appraisal started changing their assessment. By 2007, Roger Ebert had begrudgingly added Blade Runner to his list of Great Movies, amending his 1982 review by writing, “I have been assured that my problems in the past with Blade Runner represent a failure of my own taste and imagination, but if the film was perfect, why has Sir Ridley continued to tinker with it, and now released his fifth version? I guess he’s only human.”

Commenting in 2007 on the reception of Blade Runner, writer-director Frank Darabont mused, “’82 I think was owned by E.T. It’s a brilliant film, I’m taking absolutely nothing away from it, but it was definitely happy comfort food. It always will be. It’s one of the best examples of that kind of film ever. I’m not damning it with faint praise. It’s wonderful. But I think that everyone was so plugged into the happy comfort food at that time that they weren’t giving movies like Blade Runner a chance, or John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing.” Also in 2007, special effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull summed up what he finds enduring about Blade Runner: “We’re in a movie business where most movies are disposable commodities. They’re the summer blockbuster. I’m not going to name what they are, but they come and go in weeks and, bye bye. Nobody wants to resurrect them. Nobody wants to see them again. So the ones that are really truly well made - the kind of Casablancas of science fiction - survive, and get seen over and over.”

Should I Care?
Instead of reassuring the audience with a hopeful vision of the future, Blade Runner is an emotional downpour. The atmosphere is choked with smoke and rain. Animal life is endangered. The background dialects are impenetrable. Citizens with the means have fled Earth. Those who’ve stayed behind struggle to relate to each other as humans because in the film’s vision of the future, we’ve replicated life beyond the point to retain what it means to be human. The strengths and weaknesses of Blade Runner come down to it being one of the grandest art films of all time, second only to 2001: A Space Odyssey. The story never adheres to a straightforward detective mystery. Where the Replicants are or how Deckard finds them is the least interesting business in the picture.

What Fancher and Peoples do so well in their script is pose questions about what it means to be human, and where we might be headed if we continue to lose sight of that. Rutger Hauer, Brion James, Daryl Hannah and Joanna Cassidy perform some of the finest work of their careers as the Replicants – the real heroes of the film - as does Harrison Ford, who brings the right amount of downbeaten sleaze to his role. Blade Runner is deliberate and comes close to paralyzing the viewer with stimulus overload, but Ridley Scott’s eye for detail and his design genius are never in question. The stunning cinematography by Jordan Cronenweth and haunting electronic score by Vangelis add immensely to the well-deserved re-evaluation of Blade Runner as a classic.

© Joe Valdez

Where Are You Getting This *&#!?
Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner. By Paul M. Sammon. HarperPrism (1996)

Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner. Blade Runner (Five-Disc Ultimate Collector’s Edition). Warner Home Video (2007)

What the *&#! Is This About?
On the 16th of November 2027, London wakes to the following news: “The world was stunned today by the death of Diego Ricardo, the youngest person on the planet.” For 18 years, women have been infertile, and no one has been able to explain why. In the absence of all hope, anarchy has overwhelmed most of the world, but Britain “soldiers on” by banning all immigration, rounding up and deporting any asylum seekers. A group calling themselves the Fishes have organized an anti-government insurgency in support of immigrant rights, and are blamed for a bombing that almost kills Theo Faron (Clive Owen) as he’s ordering his morning coffee.

Theo was a political activist in his youth, but following the death of his son and the dissolution of his marriage has become a low-level bureaucrat. He remains largely apathetic about the future of the planet. The only thing Theo looks forward to are visits to the Bexhill area - which in addition to housing a refugee camp - is home to his friend Jasper (Michael Caine), a retired, ganga smoking cartoonist who cares for his wife (Philippa Urquhart), a photojournalist who experienced something so horrific, possibly in New York, or possibly at the hands of British intelligence, that she remains in a catatonic state. Returning to London, Theo is abducted by the Fishes, who he discovers are led by his fugitive ex-wife Julian (Julianne Moore).

Julian implores her ex-husband to help them smuggle a girl past security checkpoints and to the coast. Theo’s cousin Nigel (Danny Huston) has government financing for a project called Ark of the Arts - spiriting the masterpieces of the art world and relocating them to London – and it’s believed he can help. Theo is offered £5,000 for his services, but the only travel permit his cousin can obtain stipulates that the girl remain under Theo’s supervision. With the aid of an insurgent (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and a nursemaid, Theo realizes that the girl he’s transporting, Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey) is carrying a child. Julian hopes to deliver her to the Human Project, a think tank who as legend would have it, is working on mankind’s cure for infertility.

Who Should Be Held Responsible?
Published in 1993, The Children of Men was a change of pace for mystery writer P.D. James. She imagined a world of the year 2021, where global infertility has brought civilization to its knees. James had come across a newspaper article that mentioned human fertility in the west had declined in the last 20 years. Not long after, she encountered another article, which stated that most of the life forms that have existed on earth have since died out. The author recalled, “And I thought - suppose it happened to human beings, suddenly, all in one year? What kind of world would it be? What would it mean for the way people lived, their motivation? It is almost unimaginable, what it might do to human beings.” She added, “I suppose it is a sort of moral fable; I don’t like to describe it as science fiction.”

Talent agent Hilary Shor read The Children of Men two months after delivering her first child. With her partner in the newly formed Hit & Run Productions – Tony Smith – Shor brought the project to producer Marc Abraham of Beacon Communications (later Strike Entertainment). Due to the detailed requests of P.D. James – her book be developed only as a feature, the story had to be set in England – it took a year, but Beacon finally negotiated the film rights. After a pass by Paul Chart, Shor hired Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby to adapt a screenplay. Fergus recalled, “We had done A Scanner Darkly for our first writing assignment - not the Richard Linklater one that ultimately got made. We were hired by Jersey Films to try to crack that book, and I think we had a lot of success with that adaptation so they said, ‘Hey give these guys a shot at Children of Men because it seems to be one that’s not going anywhere.’ We just read it, and we said, ‘Oh my God! This is Casablanca!’ It’s the perfect love triangle. It fit that mold and that’s when they got excited and thought, ‘Wow this could actually be a film.’”

After two years of writing, Fergus & Otsby had a draft that was good enough to be sent to Alfonso Cuarón, a Mexican director of two widely praised but little seen Hollywood films: A Little Princess and Great Expectations. A low budget Spanish language feature he’d shot in his native country - Y Tu Mamá También – had yet to be released. Cuarón recalled, “The truth of the matter is I didn’t respond to the material. I was not interested in doing a science fiction film and also the book takes place in a very posh universe. I respect, I love P.D. James. I enjoy the book, but I couldn’t see myself making that movie. And, nevertheless, the premise of infertility kept on haunting me for weeks and weeks and weeks.” Cuarón was committed to shooting Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, but promised the producers he’d tackle The Children of Men next.

Ignoring the Fergus & Ostby draft - as well as one by David Arata, which Cuarón referred to as “a generic action movie” - the director co-wrote a script with Timothy Sexton, who was tasked with adapting the novel, while Cuarón sketched his own ideas for what he wanted in the movie. “When I started working on the film I met with the art department and they undusted all the old rejections from science fiction movies they had done, they were so excited to do this movie that took place in the future. They started showing me all these amazing things. Supersonic cars, buildings, gadgets and stuff and I was like, ‘You guys this is brilliant, but this is not the movie we’re doing. The movie we are doing is this,’ and I brought in my files. It was about Iraq, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland, the Balkans, Chernobyl and I said this is the movie we are doing. The rule I set is this movie is not about imagination, it is about reference.”

Referencing The Battle of Algiers and the lead actor in a movie they liked called Croupier, Cuarón & Sexton finished their adaptation and sent it to Clive Owen, who recalled, “He was very high on my ‘directors I would love to work with’ list and even some of his films that were not as commercially successful I think are very special. When he first sent me the script I wasn’t sure about the part, I didn’t quite know why he wanted me to do it. It’s a highly unusual lead part, you look at that character and there are very unusual traits that he’s got. It’s not the kind of part where you can do your thing as an actor, it’s about sacrificing yourself to Alfonso’s vision and not getting in the way of it, which seemed more important than doing any sort of acting.” Cuarón added, “I’m thankful that this movie didn’t happen before Harry Potter. For two years I was working on Harry Potter in London – which is very different from being a tourist. Suddenly, you’re inside and witnessing the social dynamic. I can’t claim to understand the Brits, but at least I witnessed the class system, for instance, and other subtle things.”

With Cuarón’s freshly minted prestige and Julianne Moore, Michael Caine and Chiwetel Ejiofor joining the cast, Universal rolled the dice on Children of Men and its $72 million budget. Shooting commenced November 2005 in London. Cuarón recalled, “All the time we were shooting, we kept saying, ‘Let’s make it more Mexican’. In other words, we’d look at a location and then say: yes, but in Mexico there would be this and this. It was about making the place look rundown. It was about poverty.” Children of Men premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September 2006 before opening in the U.K. and Spain that same month. Universal bumped its release in the U.S. back to Christmas Day, supposedly so the picture could vie in awards contention.

The Hollywood Reporter’s Risky Biz Blog wrote that the studio was in fact orphaning Children of Men. “While many critics were impressed by the film’s virtuosity and bravado, the industry types were seeing a downer film that was going to lose money. The movie is a brilliant exercise in style, but it’s another grim dystopian look at our future - like Blade Runner or Fahrenheit 451 – that simply cost too much money (between $72 and as much as $90 million, I’ve heard) to make a profit.” Brandon Gray of Box Office Mojo said at the time. “These pictures tend to be box-office disappointments. A lot of them develop an audience later on television or DVD. They grow in esteem over time.”

Critics wasted no time lavishing the film with acclaim. Manohla Dargis, the New York Times: “Children of Men may be something of a bummer, but it’s the kind of glorious bummer that lifts you to the rafters, transporting you with the greatness of its filmmaking.” Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: “It’s a work of art that deserves a space cleared for its angry, nervous beauty.” Derek Elley, Variety: “Picture more than delivers on the action front - not in bang-for-your-buck spectacle but in the kind of gritty, doculike sequences that haul viewers out of their seats and alongside the main protags.” However, the overwhelmingly positive ink was not spun into box office gold.

Nominated for three Academy Awards - Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography (Emmanuel Lubezi) and Best Film Editing (Alfonso Cuarón, Alex Rodriguez) – Children of Men was ignored on its release, grossing $35.5 million in the U.S. and $34 million overseas. Responding to an interviewer who mused that the film was too dark, Cuarón stated, “It pretty much depends on your own sense of hope. What we wanted to do at the end was to give a little glimpse of a possibility of hope. A very small glimpse. So you invest your own sense of hope in the story. After you go through this journey of what I consider to be the state of things, outside our green zones, then at the end is the question: Do we have a possibility of hope? I personally believe yes. Hopefully people believe that the movie is a very hopeful movie.”

Should I Care?
With bursts of documentary-like photorealism, Children of Men depicts one of the most subliminally disturbing visions of the future ever rendered to film. The only thing that doesn’t provoke a visceral reaction may be the pedestrian title, which P.D. James may have resorted to because Apocalypse Now was taken. “That movie really stayed with me” can be used to sum up any of the great films of a decade, but where Children of Men is most pronounced is in its verisimilitude. In this depiction of Things To Come, the future is not flying cars or robots. It’s Cuba. Fashion and technology have been frozen for 20 years. Infrastructure is in decay. Solders stand on every corner. Trash bags and stray dogs line the streets. Billboards advertise euthanasia kits under the brand name Quietus (“You decide where”) and remind citizens “Suspicious? Report all illegal immigrants”.

While the conceit that Theo would go on the run with Kee rather than hand her over to the authorities constitutes what is known as a plot hole, instead of being badgered by gaps in the narrative, I was absorbed by the reality of the environment being portrayed. The randomness of terrorist atrocities, suppression of human rights, impunity of death squads and dwindling flicker of hope bleed into a sort of nightmare you know you can wake up from, even though it seems a little too similar to the world we’re living in now. Alfonso Cuarón demonstrates not only technical virtuosity, but maintains a strong moral conscience in the story. Along with director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki and the art department, Children of Men may replace Blade Runner as the dystopia that other filmmakers rip off for the next 20 years.

© Joe Valdez

Where Are You Getting This *&#!?
“Mistress of Morality Tales” By Jan Dalley. The Independent, 20 September 1992

“Children of Men Feature” Time Out London, 21 September 2006

“Alfonso Cuaron Discusses Children of Men” By Rebecca Murray. About.com, 20 December 2006

“Alfonso Cuaron on Children of Men” By Brad Brevet. Rope of Silicon, 22 December 2006

“Tribeca Film Festival conversation with Mark Fergus” 11 February 2007