Leatherheads

Written at the time of the film's release...

That Sunday Night Feeling

A director's got to love a project...I mean, really love it... before they devote two to three years of their life, and millions of dollars to it. Maybe the incentive is financial, maybe it's prestige, or getting something someone else wants. But you have to wonder what George Clooney saw in Leatherheads, his "football at the dawn of the pro's" movie. It can't have been financial, although there would probably be a number of ticket-buyers who would go see him or Renee Zellweger in anything. I'm sure there wasn't a bidding war on it, and the studios tend to thumb their noses at "period pictures" (although that's all Clooney's directed so far) because they cost more than a modern-day movie. But Clooney can make any movie he wants as long as he's in front of the camera.

Why this?

Maybe it's a love of football, or the time-frame when liquor sales were banned and speakeasy's were the black-market--when the country was suffering and needed heroes, and when nobody looked twice if you broke the rules...because there weren't any. College football was the game, and pro-football was only for those lugs who never grew up. We believed in heroes hook, line and sinker, and didn't question anything. Life was tough enough. Was that it? Or does Clooney just get his jollies pulling off a movie-trick like making you believe you're really watching a movie set in the '30's, down to the cars, the wardrobe, and the fast way with lines that makes you realize you missed a joke two lines back on the way to the capper. Is it a tribute to Hawks? What is this amiable mutt of a movie?

It works, of course, because Clooney is a good director who's willing to stretch and teach at the same time. He's an artistic director who pulls things off like comic timing and the way a joke is told just by the way it's framed and by the stillness of the thing. He's a director of grace notes that linger because it would just be too sad to waste that held moment that might define a character or make a third-string player a second-string player, and he loves his cast--he knows that the best part of John Krasinski is he's got the wide open face of Gary Cooper hiding something, and he knows that Renee Zellweger should only be doing comedy, pinch-faced or not, because she looks like a kewpie-doll but she's got an iron spine and a zinger of a talent for timing--she's our Jean Arthur.

Or maybe because it's just another in a string of movies about people who do what they have to because it's their nature, and even if they take a flyer, it's worth it because they wouldn't have it any other way, no matter the cost. Because to not do it, would mean compromising their soul. Whether its Danny Ocean, or Edward R. Murrow, or Chuck Barris, or Michael Clayton, or Bob Barnes or Dodge Connelly. Or George Clooney. You do it because its yours to do. And you don't want to wake up on Monday morning knowing you missed your chance.

It's when you know you've grown up.

Ronin (1998)

Ronin (John Frankenheimer, 1998) John Frankenheimer's long directorial career started out with him as a young television "turk," who wasn't afraid to be controversial or veer into the surreal. Early works like The Manchurian Candidate (the earlier, better one), Seven Days in May and Seconds (Rock Hudson's finest hour) showed a film-maker not afraid to tackle political and social issues in an entertaining, often satirical way. He'd veer off into odd territory like Grand Prix, and The Gypsy Moths, where the indifferent material would win out over his film-making expertise. The films would be a technical marvel, but descend into soap-opera when not behind the wheel, or falling through space. 

On occasion, he'd even hit the skids (Prophecy, The Extraordinary Seaman, 99 and 44/100% Dead). But then, there are his thrillers, like Black Sunday, and even French Connection II (which had Gene Hackman's "Popeye" Doyle in France to track "Frog One") that in their final acts are primers on how to stage chases and action finale's--bare-boned, fast-paced and visceral.

His master-class in action directing, Ronin, however, is like an entire final act--lean and mean, with no fancy motivations and cryptic dialogue. It is a job done among professionals (or at least those who consort themselves as professionals). It is the heist film reduced to the most rich of consommés. Even the "Object of Desire" (or "McGuffin," if you will) is obscure—it is never established what is in "that" suitcase that everybody wants, nor does it matter. They just want it, and are willing to plot, and double-cross and double-deal to get it. The characterizations are on the thin side--people just have their jobs to do, and their marks and targets to hit. Their history is their reputation and their reputation is why they're on the job. 

Nobody's going to be discussing their childhoods and nobody cares to ("You ever kill anybody?" "I hurt somebody's feelings once" is as close as anybody comes). The dialog is circumspect, ironic, and arrogant (in the french meaning of the term). The fact that they are there means they are good enough to have survived to be there. Do the job.

And the cast is superb. Robert DeNiro, Jean Reno, Sean Bean, Natascha McElhone (where's she been?), Stellan Skarsgard, Michael Lonsdale, and Jonathan Pryce, all doing professional, unsentimental work. The set-pieces are amazing, especially a car chase through the Paris tunnels. But just as much care goes into the staging of the planning. If anybody wants to see how the "Mission:Impossible" franchise should be done, this movie is the model.

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

To Dream The Impossible Film
or
The Very Definition of "Quixotic"

Say this for director Terry Gilliam, he won't let anything go. He wrote The Man Who Killed Don Quixote in 1987, started filming it in 2000 when it was beset by terminating issues both meteorological and financial (as was well-documented in the film Lost in La Mancha—at that point the film was starring Jean Rochefort and Johnny Depp) and consequently had enough aborted starts that would lurch to a stop, it became known as "the most cursed movie in history."

I wouldn't say that—a lot of movies have long gestation periods and get penciled in and erased faster than a sports team visit to the White House. And most cursed? I don't know about that, either. It makes for what passes for "good" Hollywood journalism these days. As for "cursed" I'd say that would fit such films as Battlefield: Earth and Myra Breckenridge, and I was the one who was cursing at them.

Gilliam directing Jean Rochefort in 2000

But, the film is done and in limited release—it's been made a "Fathom Event" like a Met opera or a "Dr. Who" premiere—designed to bring in more of the inspired, rather than the casual film-viewer, and that is probably a wise choice. Because The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is made for those who know of it, have anticipated it, and are likely to have some attachment to it or to director Gilliam. My own relationship to the film-maker is very specific and odd, but I'll leave that until after the synopsis.

Adam Driver plays Toby, a former film-maker who now directs commercials and is fairly jaded, sassy and comfortable in the more marketable role, despite the fact that the current job, a commercial being shot in Spain featuring Don Quixote, is behind schedule and over-budget. "The Boss" (Stellan Skarsgård) is putting pressure on him—the psychological kind—to get things done, while also taking advantage of the location to indulge in what he indulges in. The Boss' younger wife Jacqui (Olga Kurylenko) is also putting pressure on him—the physical kind—as the Boss is not paying much attention to her. 

Toby would care a bit more, but, he's creatively stuck and it is only a chance encounter with a DVD of his ten year old student film of "Don Quixote" while at a crew dinner that seems to interest him.  Going back to the Boss' apartment with Jacqui, he has more interest in his movie than her attempts to seduce him. Well, he can say that, of course, but when the Boss comes back to his room, a desperate and disheveled Toby can only knock the older man over and race down the hotel corridor, hoping he hasn't been recognized.

That night, Toby reminisces about the making of his student film, done with the most modest of budgets and using locals to star—the old cobbler Javier (Jonathan Pryce) that he found by accident and hired to play the Don despite his never acting before, and the innkeeper's daughter, Angelica (Joana Ribeiro), whom he becomes enamored with, telling her that she could be come a big star someday. It is only when she is being harassed by a crew member that Javier defends her honor, and realizes that he just might be Don Quixote.

But, that's in the past, and Spain's windmills are replaced by wind turbines. Things aren't any better the next day on set and Toby's even more paranoid about the next appearance of The Boss, given the previous night's activities. He absconds with a crew-member's motorcycle to "scout locations" but mostly to make his escape, tooling around the country-side that he remembers from ten years ago. He re-visits the inn, only to find that Angelica has moved away to pursue the dreams that Toby put in her head—to the innkeeper's grief.

He also finds a tourist attraction—directed by signs—to "Quixote." There he finds a dilapidated farm with a makeshift theater, where his film is being shown, with the added attraction of having its star performing alongside the film—it's Javier, only the shoemaker is completely lost in the role, thinking that he truly IS the one—the only—Don Quixote. Not only that, he thinks that Toby is his Sancho Panza. In the panic and confusion, the theater is set ablaze, and both men flee in panic: Toby, back to his set and The Don, to seek adventure.

At the movie-set, the police are waiting—a suspect has been picked up for the break-in at the Boss' room the previous night, and he wants Toby to identify him (while the police eye the motorcycle suspiciously as it was noticed at the town's fire). Toby begins to panic, but he is rescued by Javier, now on horseback, still under the mania that he is Don Quixote, who needs his squire by his side to regale him with his past adventures, and to ride the countryside to find new ones.

Toby begins to suspect he'd be better off with the local police.

Adventures they have—involving hidden Spanish gold, the usual assortment of dastardly windmills, terrorists, the missing Angelica and Russian oligarch's...but are they really? Toby starts to become unstuck in reality, not knowing what might be true and what might not—especially when he and the Don come across a village where residents are from the 17th century. Toby begins to suspect that he is losing his mind and that the old man might be the cause.

Intriguing story, right? But, it's at this point that the plot starts to bog down and become a bit too complicated at almost the same place where the film-making begins to get a little spare. It is difficult to know where Gilliam should have gone with this—make it longer with more exposition and more of the fantasy-reality confusion, or tighten it and eliminate a couple sub-plots and incidences. The film is 2 hours 20 minutes, but feels much longer, which is rarely the case with Gilliam's films, which usually deserve the time to enrich the story, even while he pushes the pace to cram it all in..

I've always had a weird physical reaction to Gilliam's films: they make me fall asleep. It has nothing to do with exhaustion or losing sleep the night before. It usually has to do with sensory overload...or more accurately, information overload (as I can sit through any hyper-kinetic film and not fall asleep—I might get bored, but never fall asleep). It's a particular affectation with Gilliam—he throws so much information at you...but my reaction is for my brain to shut down and and go into "sleep" mode. I'm not proud of that fact—embarrassed by it, actually—it just happens. No other director can do that with me, and it usually happens when Gilliam is firing on all antic cylinders on a film I consider good.

I stayed awake throughout The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Take that for what it's worth.

To sum up: long wait, which it doesn't live up to. But, the kernel of the idea wasn't lost in La Mancha. Sure, they might have updated it with the perfidy of Russian oligarchs (which seems fresh and new—and it is certainly not from 1987) and displays the dangers of dealing with them as opposed to benign sugar-daddies (like George Harrison) for funding—there may be some sword-grinding going on there , given the many attempts to jump-start. It merely hammers home the point that flights of fancy or madness can be communicable where intentions coalesce (much like film-making*).

But, not just film-making. More grandly, it can also be in the pursuit of the altruistic, which flies in the face of the more jaded reality in which we all must live. Think of "The Greater Fool Theory," but with nothing so mundane as money or finances applied to it. Think instead of the value of Values and Virtue. The Real "Golden Rule."

Okay, maybe it isn't that great a movie, but I'm glad it's there, just to know that impossible...even "cursed"...things are possible. It gives me a reason to get up and put on my armor in the morning.

* Francis Coppola makes much the same point in his Tucker: the Man and his Dream, in the scene where his accountant tells Tucker why he stuck around for so long with the failing company:

Abe: [to Tucker] ... When I was a little kid, maybe five years old, in the old country, my mother used to say to me; she'd warn me, she'd say, 'Don't get too close to people. You'll catch their dreams... '... Years later, I realized I misunderstood her... 'Germs', she said, not 'dreams', 'You'll catch their *germs*'...[they both laugh] I want you to know something, Tucker. I went into business with you for one reason - to make money. That's all... How was I to know...[chokes up, head down]... if I got too close, I'd catch your dreams...

The Doctor and the Devils

The Doctor and the Devils (Freddie Francis, 1985) The film company Brooksfilms (established by Mel Brooks) had a bi-polar streak to it. Yes, they would do comedies, of course, like Mel's movies and To Be or Not To Be and My Favorite Year. But they would also make projects of The Elephant Man (the first studio film directed by David Lynch—now, there was a gamble), the Frances farmer biography Frances, and this film, adapted from a literary rarity, an original screenplay by Dylan Thomas (written in 1953), based on the true story of the mercenary ghouls Burke and Hare, who, starting in the year 1827, developed a lucrative trade in killing locals in Edinburgh and selling the corpses to an anatomy professor for display in his lectures.

The script was adapted by Ronald Harwood and the film directed by legendary British cinematographer Freddie Francis (The Innocents, The French Lieutenant's Woman, Glory, as well as The Elephant Man, Dune and The Straight Story for Lynch, and Cape Fear for Martin Scorsese). 

One can't say anyone scrimped on the cast. For all the loathsomeness of the subject matter, it attracted a great crew of British thespians with Jonathan Pryce and Stephen Rea as the psuedonymed Robert Fallon and Timothy Broom, who would liquor their victims up and then suffocate them for the betterment of science. Their customer is Dr. Thomas Rock (Timothy Dalton, just before his Bond years), who in some twisted idealism, looks the other way at the subjects brought to him by Fallon and Broom. He is opposed, and looked on with suspicion, at the Institute by Professor Macklin (played by a pre-Trek Patrick Stewart) and supported there by Dr. Murray (Julian Sands) who has his own secrets—he is in love with a bar-doxie (Twiggy), who may become one of the potential victims.

Great cast, maybe, but great movie it is not, despite the pains taken to present the squalor of London, both upstairs and downstairs. After starting out as a cinematographer, Francis became a director, doing a lot of pictures for Britain's Hammer Studios, a good prep for his work on this. It is atmospheric, alright, with a low-level discomfiture throughout, with Fallon and Broom being the lowest of the low, preying on the sick, weak and debilitated, and Rock turning a blind eye to the source (grave-robbing at best) of his demonstration subjects. 

There is a very large irony inherent in the script, not to far afield from the one Richard Matheson employed in "I Am Legend." But, the script, whatever it's pedigree (Harwood is an Oscar-winner, Dylan Thomas a writing legend) is the film's true down-fall.  It might seem a bit leaning to the pedestrian to say this, but there is no one to root for in all this, no one to sympathize with—not even the victims—and one watches with a dis-interest in the outcomes...for anyone.

There might have been a real reason no one dug up this script for so long.