The Tender Bar

What Does J.R. Stand For?

or

One Swingin' Dick to Another...

 

A comedian stands on stage and says "So, a termite walks into a saloon and says "Is the bar tender here?" and he waits...

 

George Clooney's directing career has been hit-or-miss. It's never been very consistent, except for the love of details, decor, quality...in words and pictures. After a disastrous run of films soon after leaving his television career, there was a period where Clooney paused and re-considered (rather than merely considered) roles being offered to him, resisting the urge—as the late Betty White observed—to act like a feral cat, consuming whatever was available, in the concern that the supply would run out. Tent-pole films were out, as they could be compromised by locked-in release dates. Directors were important, and not just "flavor-of-the-moment" directors studios were pimping. Scripts had to have the spine to be improved, rather than good box-office "buzz." Clooney wanted less time in the trailer and more time learning the craft, and started directing only when he found a project with enough of a chance to work—a long-languishing Charlie Kaufman script, based on Chuck Barris' highly questionable memoir. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind put Clooney on the directing map, and his next film Good Night, and Good Luck. established his cred as a "serious" director. This was no stunt. Clooney wanted to make good films and good art. To that end, Clooney started swinging for the fences than easy lay-ups.

The results have been mixed. But, with The Tender Bar, he's established a new high-mark for his efforts. Based on J.R. Moehringer's memoir, with a script by William Monahan (the first script of his I've liked!), it's a coming of age story of how a village takes care of their own. JR (played by Daniel Ranieri in the early years) and his Mom (Lily Rabe) make another return to the house of her father (Christopher Lloyd) after being kicked out of her place for being behind on the rent five months. This is not looked upon kindly by the residents who include three generations of family, none of whom have fled the nest. To Mom, it looks like failure. To JR, it looks like family.

JR's father is merely referred to as "The Voice"—a radio bum who got Mom pregnant and had no designs on anything post-ejaculation. This produces the first words of advice from JR's Uncle Charlie (Ben Affleck, developing an Al Pacino growl) "He's just an asshole who happens to be on the radio. Don't look for your father to save you. And don't play sports (you're no any good at it). That's all I have to say. The game is five card stud." And as Uncle Charlie has assured JR "I'll always tell you the truth," JR has to believe him. Still, he listens to his father's voice on the radio as if it was His Master. It is only when the father starts breaking promises that JR takes Charlie's advice.

Charlie runs the Dickens Bar down the road, dive for a regular crowd of pack-rats of which Charlie is the Master of Ceremonies and Obedient Servant. "When you're eleven years old," says JR "You need an Uncle Charlie." Especially, when wisdom is so casually dispensed—you've got to know "how to change a tire...jump a car" and tangentially "never hit a woman even if she stabs you with scissors." He encourages him to read, opening up his closet full of books to him, inspiring JR to become a writer.

But, single Mom wants him to be a lawyer and go to Yale. It seems impossible, but JR stays on track and when he's a young man (played by Tye Sheridan), he's off to New Haven to chart his own course, with several detours along the way, including a romance with a girl (Briana Middleton) that throws him right off the road.

The reviews have been mixed, but I owe that to post-Trump cynicism, where when someone tells you they'll tell you the truth, you can't believe they'd actually do it. Maybe it has something to do with professional jealousy as Moehringer's won a Pulitzer. I don't know. All I know is, at this point in time when a lot of people are moving back home, it is a nostalgic look at when America had such a thing as a community, instead of dwellings standing in for bunkers. 

Clooney has always had a nostalgic streak—his contemporary work can be a little nasty and his one futuristic one had no hope at all. But, here, principles are still intact, his dialog crackles quickly (when it's not overlapping) and the pauses are deftly comic. And the director is less concerned with locked-down formalism as with an economy of footage, that still takes the time for the important interplay of looks between people—or more importantly, not looking. And despite the incessant cursing, it's concerned with civility...and learning about it and recognizing it, no matter what class it originates in.

There are no big issues underpinning the story, other than the origins of respect and grace, personal attributes that have shown up in the director's other movies that give them their air of being old-fashioned and principled. This one is less of a sermon, more of a demonstration. It makes its points softer and less obtrusively, and for some reason that reflects an attitude of more respect towards the audience, maybe because self-respect is so inherent a theme of it that it reflects back. 

It makes it less a coming of age story, than one of the coming of wisdom.

Tully (2018)

Fight Club for Mommy's
or
"One Life For Yourself/And One for Your Dreams"

Tully is probably several years too late to rescue all the girls who decided to have babies after seeing Juno. If that first Diablo Cody/Jason Reitman film was a Hallmark Card to the wonders and romance of bringing a child into the world (without consequences), then Tully is the follow-up that dashes cold water on the idea—motherhood is work. Hard work. And when it comes down to it, the one person who will be running the biological mill will be the woman who bore it and will continue bearing it.

When we meet Marlo (Charlize Theron), she is in her last week of pregnancy and "densely populated"—a "natural hug-buffer," as she describes it. It's the third for Marlo and her husband Drew (Ron Livingston), not planned, but welcome, and Marlo is a bit tense about it: she's worried about her other two kids, Sarah (Lia Frankland), very reserved for a child, and Jonah (Asher Miles Fallica), who might be autistic, but the best officials at school can label it as is "quirky." The constant care of new baby might squeeze out attention needed for the old ones.

Marlo used to be in the human resources department for a company that makes protein bars. His job is a bit more vague—"I audit organizational paths"—and is swamped with work; he's barely around with just enough time to do homework with the kids, eat dinner, and pass out after blasting zombies on the game console. her job is to negotiate the school system for Emma and her special-needs child.

An uncomfortable dinner with Marlo's brother (Mark Duplass) oroduces an idea for Marlo in the form of a gift—after their third child, brother bought his wife a "night-nurse," a nanny who comes at night, takes care of the baby and lets the parents get some much needed sleep. Marlo is horrified at at the idea—nobody's going to invade her house and take care of the most vulnerable family member. She's sure it's going to turn badly—like a "Lifetime" movie where her family turns against her and she ends up walking with a cane.

But, once daughter Mia is born, life turns into a steady stream of changing, feeding, pumping, and collapsing that director Reitman collects in a savage edited sequence that should be known as "The Monotony of Motherhood Montage." She's burning out...fast.

She decides to try the night-nanny idea, and, one night, Tully arrives. And she is something. 26, rail-thin, educated and positive, she immediately bonds with baby Mia and, after some initial reluctance ("She's...weird") with Marlo. "I'm here to take care of you," says Tully, Marlo's confused: "I thought you were going to take care of the baby." "You're the baby," counters Tully.

Tully's a whiz—so much energy ("You're like Saudi Arabia," says Marlo. "You have an energy surplus."). In the morning, the house is spotlessly clean. a couple days later, cupcakes are made for Jonah's class.

And there are the late-night talks. While Marlo talks about what she's lost, Tully re-inforces what she has—a family, great kids, no matter how hectic—her life is good. Tully, so young, gives Marlo some much-needed perspective in the whirling monotony. And things are fine—until Tully come sin one night and wants to give Marlo a night out...and announces that she has to leave. This devastates Marlo. "I'm just here to bridge a gap," Tully explains. "It's time to move on."

Tully is a bit of a wonder and a welcome return to Reitman's gifts as a director, taking Cody's scenario and making it relatable and just a bit foreign (and Theron's fearless, shame-less performance is another in her impressive ability to fling off her glamour-puss image for the sake of the role). It is a much-needed antidote to the beatific view of Motherhood as something saintly and more down to Earth in showing just how tough a job it is to be the life-support system to an infant that, frankly, can't do anything for itself without the slavishly unwavering care and maintenance imparted by the parent, in a complete 24 hour cycle. A friend summed it up perfectly—"Having kids is the most miraculous thing...that ever sucked."

That suckage makes up a big part of Tully and the extreme mental and physical demands—the survival of which is its own life-miracle—form the spine of the thing. That it tackles the subject clear-eyed, if kaleidoscopically, and delves into the too-often looked-down-upon subject of post-partum depression, makes it a valuable little manual on children and inner-children and the care of both. If sometimes the narrative logic veers off-kilter a bit once or twice (which will elicit some post-showing kvetching, I'm sure), that's okay; like child-raising, The Big Picture is more important than the occasional lapse, and Tully keeps nurturing the more one thinks about it.