Don't Make a Scene (Redux): Five Easy Pieces

The Scene: Someplace, somewhere there is a support group for waitresses whose life has been made hell by Five Easy Pieces.

Not that there weren't rude restaurant patrons before the 1970 film. It's just that Bobby DuPea's table manners came off as being so "kewl," so "revolutionary," so "stickin'-it-to-the-man, right-on," that it probably emboldened the on-the-fence "I-want-what-I-want-when-I-want-it-because-the-customer-is-always-right" patron into copy-catting the behavior, thinking it was their right and privilege to do so, rather than admitting that...oh, I don't know...that maybe they're just a-holes.

Yeah, everybody had a visceral thrill that it was some kind of revolutionary hipster-cool, and worth a laugh, but the cold light of day reveals that it's not much of a revolution when "The Man" you're taking your righteous anger out on is a woman making less than minimum wage plus tips. That's some cowardly way to make a statement. Fact of the matter is, this "act of rebellion" is merely "acting out"--a tantrum by an immature man who can't get "his way." Frankly, he's lucky he didn't get one of his pianist's hands pinned to the formica with a steak-knife, Luca Brasi-style.

But, then a number of Nicholson's characters spit down the food-chain at the worker bee's. And Nicholson knew it. He said that he didn't play a character he'd actually like to have lunch with until he played astronaut Craig Breedlove in Terms of Endearment. Certainly he'd be holding onto his plate during lunch with Bobby Dupea. He knew he was playing jerks. But like so many actors who've been appalled by the public's acceptance, and even glorification, of their bad guys,* it didn't stop him from pursuing those roles. He just made them more outlandish to escape the public's reach. And occasionally use them to make a point.

Point is: these people are already servants, there's no reason to demean them further by being a jerk, no matter if Nicholson does it on the big screen. If you think there is, you deserve a big lugie in your plain omelette, hold the potatoes. As Dupea notes in the very next scene "Didn't get me my toast, did it?"

Nope. So, be sure to tip your wait-staff. Just don't knock 'em over.

The Set-Up: Bobby Dupea (Jack Nicholson), ne-er-do-well member of a well-to-do family of musical prodigies has returned home to the Pacific Northwest to a pay a last visit to his dying father. Rootless and aimless, Robert is driving back with his girlfriend Rayette (Karen Black) to his latest job working in an oil-field. Along the way, he's picked up two women (Helena Kallianiotes and Toni Basil..."Mickey" Toni Basil?) who've managed to drive their car into a ditch. Seeking respite from the bickering occurring in the car, Bobby stops at a diner to eat.

Prob'ly shoulda stopped at Burger King.

Order up!

Robert Dupea: I'd like a plain omelette, no potatoes, tomatoes instead, a cup of coffee, and wheat toast.
Waitress: No substitutions.
Robert: What do you mean? You don't have any tomatoes?
Waitress: Only what's on the menu. You can have a number two: a plain omelette. It comes with cottage fries and rolls.
Robert: Yeah, I know what it comes with, but it's not what I want.
Waitress: Well, I'll come back when you make up your mind.
Robert: Wait a minute, I have made up my mind.
Robert: I'd like a plain omelette... ...
Robert: ...no potatoes on the plate...
Robert: ...a cup of coffee, and a side order of wheat toast.
Waitress: I'm sorry, we don't have any side orders of toast. I'll give you an English muffin or a coffee roll.
Robert: What do you mean, you don't make side orders of toast? You make sandwiches, don't you?
Waitress: Would you like to talk to the manager?
Hitchhiker: Hey, mac!
Robert: Shut up.
Robert: You've got bread and a toaster of some kind?
Waitress: I don't make the rules.
Robert: Okay, I'll make it as easy for you as I can. I'd like an omelette, plain, and a chicken-salad sandwich on wheat toast, no mayonnaise, no butter, no lettuce and a cup of coffee.
Waitress: A number two: chicken-salad sand', hold the butter, the lettuce, the mayonnaise, and a cup of coffee.
Waitress: Anything else?
Robert: Yeah, now all you have to do is hold the chicken, bring me the toast, give me a check for a chicken-salad sandwich, and you haven't broken any rules.
Waitress: You want me to hold the chicken, huh?
Robert: I want you to hold it between your knees.
Waitress: You see that sign, sir?
Waitress: Yes, you all have to leave. I'm not taking any more of your smartness and sarcasm.
Robert: You see this sign?
(He sweeps everything off the table)
Five Easy Pieces

Words by Carole Eastman (writing as Adrien Joyce)

Pictures by László Kovács and Bob Rafelson

Five Easy Pieces is available on DVD from Columbia Tri-Star Home Video.

It's a long list: Marlon Brando in The Wild One and The Godfather, Nicholson in Chinatown, Darth Vader in Star Wars, Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs,... now that I think of it, Anthony Hopkins liked the fact that people enjoyed Dr. Lecter.

Transformers

We talked about the toy-sales aspect of the Barbie movie, although the film-makers had other things on their minds as well. But, you can't say that about the other toy-franchise that keeps manufacturing movie after movie with no other agenda than selling gadgets.

This was written at the time of the first film's release. We'll have the first sequel next week (and after that, I stopped caring.)

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day.

"I bought a car—turned out to be an alien robot. Who knew?"

One has always suspected from the evidence that Director Michael Bay likes machines more than he does people. The stunts--the "tent-pole" sequences-- have loving care lavished upon them, but character development is there for laughs...people are more effective as collateral damage than the purpose of the story. And if somebody gets squished along the way...well, who cares? After all, another stunt is on the way, and how cool is that? The epitome of this director-fetish occurred in Pearl Harbor (never seen it, for personal reasons) when the "money" shot of the attack was one that followed an air-dropped bomb on its destructive path through the U.S.S. Arizona. Bay said in interviews he did "Pearl Harbor" just so he could do that shot. I've seen that little piece of film numerous times (I keep looking for a CGI version of my father waiting on the dock), and it is impressive. It's also the coldest, most heartless way to present a tragedy I've ever seen. What if Oliver Stone had had a "bullet" shot that traveled from the Texas School Book Depository to the meat of JFK's brain (As cruel as that sounds, I've seen similar things a few times on the CSI shows), wouldn't someone raise a stink about that? It's as if one of these little destructive things is on a hero's quest and we follow it's little travails to its ultimate goal. Boom! "Scoooore!" So I've looked at Bay's career with a jaundiced eye, looking for the day he'd grow up and become a real director.

I don't know that he has, but if he keeps making movies like Transformers, maybe he shouldn't. One wants to be cynical about a 2 hour 20 minute commercial for Hasbro (the movie is rife with product placement for young and old alike), but damn, if the things isn't as effective an action-comedy that has come down the pike in quite awhile. Aimed directly at where male adolescents live, the movie has the great good sense to cast Shia LaBeouf as its token humanoid.* LaBeouf's fidgety, jittery, always "on" performance is one of those joys to behold in movies-- constantly shifting, feeling like an ad-libbed performance (though the prize for that must go to Julie White as the slightly addled Mrs. Witwicky, always trying to make something positive out of a negative) and holding his own against all comers be they performing veterans or CGI monsters.

The story deals with an invasion of Earth by warring stealth robots, the Autobots and the Decepticons, who hide in plain sight by adapting the forms of the mechana of whatever world they crash-land on. They're decidedly nostalgic, taking on the form of boom-boxes and 70's Camaro's. When we meet hyper high-schooler Sam Witwicky, he is combining a school assignment with a mercenary sales-pitch trying to raise money for wheels. This sets in motion a plot so full of contrivance that it almost knocks your block off (sorry, wrong battling robots), but between the machine gun performances and Bay's constantly moving camera (a bit less shake and quiver than usual), you don't have time to notice, so deeply submerged is the movie in the "now."

Along the way are some interesting performances by Bernie Mac, matching LaBoeuf shift for shift in animation,** Jon Voight, looking florid and dour as the Secretary of Defense, John Turturro, whose agent for the secretive Section 7 ("...never heard of it." "And you never will.") careens into Pacino-like histrionics, and Michael O'Neill from "The West Wing," brings an understated straight-faced gravity in the face of sci-fi mayhem that just allows the movie to survive a lengthy exposition sequence at Hoover Dam. All fit as the tone of the movie is more like the Spielberg-produced Gremlins, than, say, The Iron Giant.

After pulling off a good movie for most of its length, it succumbs to the wishes of the toy-clutching fanboys, and turns into 45 minutes of "Rock'em, Sock'em Robots" in the streets of L.A., which is just as boring as it sounds. All the fun just drains right out of the movie while the titular characters get in each other's grills, kick each other's cans for what seems like an eternity.

That's one of the problems. One can kvell about stereotyping, but I can't think of any minority (or majority, for that matter) not being lampooned (in fact, there's a nice double-shot at white geeks and director Bay when a fan boy reacts to a violent meteor shower--"This is SO cooler than Armageddon!") except for Asians. Didn't "Transformers" start in Japan? Hmmm.

Also, why are two of the more prominent women-roles both made up like 30 year old porn stars? And one's supposed to be in high school? How many grades was she sent down? They may be hawt (I believe the phrase is), but really, the only other person who comes close to having that much make-up caked on them is Jon Voight! And there is the staple of Bay--the slow-motion military shots that look like they've been culled from recruitment ads, and the faux-Hans Zimmer thudding score makes it feel more germanically militaristic than normal.

Still in all, it's the best damned, most entertaining toy commercial I've seen in a long time. Can't wait for "Furby: The Movie."

"Some assembly may be required. Choking hazard."

* Ever been annoyed at black-themed movies where the stars and main characters are white? This is sort of a mechanoid version of that scenario.

 

** Though it does cause some of the dialogue editing to be a bit ragged in places.

Suspensions of Disbelief —"Like, yeah-Huh!"

On my earlier film blog, I would sometimes pair up movies I'd seen recently if they had some slight connection. This is one of those. 

Juno became a smash hit, despite my reservations and Diablo Cody—and Jason Reitman—went on to do some stellar work. Both are working on things. Ellen Page is now Elliott Page, and is now identifying as a male. One thing that hasn't changed is his amazing talent. I don't change things when I move these posts from the old blog to the new blog, unless I find mistakes, so I've kept Elliott's name as it was at the time of the writing, which was at the time of the film's release. 

Director Craig Gillespie, who made Lars and the Real Girl, made I, Tonya, Cruella, and the min-series "Pam and Tommy", as well as directing Diablo Cody's mini-series "The United States of Tara."

 

--Sacred Vessels in the Land of Addictionary.org

Juno is a film so dominated by its script (by Diablo Cody*) and its actors (they're all television veterans with countless man-hours before the camera) that all director Jason Reitman has to do is get out of the way-though in the transitions he routinely cuts on the 1's of the pervasively twee-rock soundtrack to maintain the air of perkiness. The kids that dominate this film about lower-middle-class families making the most of a bad situation—well, bad in the timing—are so pervasively cute and clever in their articulation and word-play that one wonders if they hail from some part of the country where the main sport is Scrabble, and instead of MySpace they all hover around "Addictionary.org." 

Ultimately one has to ascribe to it the same rule that one applies to Bette Davis movies where everyone always has the perfect come-back: "They have better writers than we do."

But the same troubles. Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) starts the movie pregnant and pissed. And pissing. She's buying the home-pregnancy tests out of the box one at a time from the convenience store and using their facilities to test it. "You better pay for that pee-stick when you're done with it," says the clerk (played by "The Office's Rainn Wilson). "Don't think it's yours just because you marked it with your urine!" She gets the unholy pink "x" and starts to puzzle out how to proceed: telling parents, telling sperm-donor, what to do with said spawn, yadda yadda yadda.

Juno skips along dealing with all these crises and quite a few more, and never slides into bathos, preaching or "after-school special" earnestness. The characters are all people for whom regrets are a waste-of-time, and are too busy doing their best to do too much navel-gazing. Well, almost all. One walks away charmed, and admiring the cleverness and the near-occasion of bravery the movie displays. And there are no bad performances. Anywhere. No actor lets this material touch the ground, whether its the stunningly decent work by vet-thesps like Alison Janney and J.K. Simmons, but also wise work by Michael Cera, Jason Bateman, and, yes, Jennifer Garner. But the big bouquet goes to Ellen Page who carries the movie on her slim shoulders and always finds a way to make the dialog sound like she's just saying it off the cuff. That's a tough trick to pull for an entire movie--an entire comic movie--this entire comic movie. Frankly, it would've been easier giving birth.

------------------------------------------------------------------ 

It Takes a Sex Toy to Raise a Village 

 

 Everybody likes Lars (Ryan Gosling). Lars is 27, lives in the carriage-house of the family home. Keeps to himself. He goes to work, eats, attends church, chops wood.

And that's about it.

Lars is socially retarded to an alarming degree, so much so that he feels it hurts to be touched. His family worries about him. They feel guilty. They don't know what to do.

But Lars does. He's surrounded by people with relationships, so he decides to get one. But that touching thing...that's a problem.

Then one day, Bianca shows up, a mail-order girlfriend. Lars tells his brother and sister-in-law that he has a girl-friend and he'll bring her over for dinner. They're elated. Then they find they didn't need the extra setting. Bianca's a sex-doll. Fairly realistic looking, but she doesn't move. At all. Lars has to carry her, until he gets her a wheelchair. He cuts her food for her. Eats it, too.

In a case of intervention, all four go to the doctor (Patricia Clarkson, being warm but acting cold), who takes one look at Bianca and worries out loud that she needs weekly treatments for her alarmingly low blood pressure, and uses the opportunity to find out exactly what is going on with Lars. She advises that they should play along--"Bianca's in town for a reason," she says. "But, people will laugh at him!" says his harried brother, played by a note-perfect Paul Schneider. "You, too," says the doc.

Lars and the Real Girl could be perverse, and if Lars actually had relations with Bianca, people wouldn't be enjoying this movie nearly so much. Nor would it be as enjoyable if the entire town didn't, for the sake of Lars, go along with the story and accept Bianca. And that acceptance happens almost immediately. Sister-in-law Karin informs her coffee klatsch friends that Bianca is anatomically correct, and one of them says, "Soooo...she's just one of the girls, then..." The pastor of the church goes along with it. Everybody does. Ev-e-ry-bo-dy. Which set off some reality alarms for me. There aren't any disaffected youth, or jerks or morons in this town? Hell, if any of the kids from Juno lived there, Lars would be getting the "stink-eye," at least. And in a land where every inflatable Christmas lawn ornament is at risk, Bianca has it REALLY easy.

Still, it's an enjoyable film, full of heart in the right place, and offers lots of enjoyable surprises in screenplay, performance (it's hard to believe this is the same Ryan Gosling from Fracture) and overall tone. One wishes there was a second there where one could believe in it.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* Diablo Cody has such a fresh, smart way with dialog that one hasn't been as excited by a screen author's work since Zach Helm, who wrote Stranger Than Fiction. Since Helm went on to create the lead balloon Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, one doesn't want to be too effusive in one's praise, lest one set oneself up for disappointment.

The Greatest Game Ever Played

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

The Greatest Game Ever Played (Bill Paxton, 2005)
Mark Twain said it best, "Golf is a good walk spoiled."

Director Bill Paxton compounds the error.

Despite the inherent drama of Mark Frost's* account of the David versus Goliath 1913 U.S. Open, Paxton takes the advice to "keep-your-eye-on-the-ball" a bit too literally in order to punch up the movie's visual fireworks. Though Frost has fashioned a good story of contrasts, pitting a renowned British pro--the greatest golfer of his day--against an unseasoned American amateur, Paxton keeps threatening to derail it with fancy camera moves and divot-POV's. It becomes a bit of a crutch; rather than solving the perpetual "make it interesting" challenge of filming golf, the director fashions every power-stroke with a new "fly-away" special effects shot. Once or twice, sure, it is fun. And it's all well and good to try and enliven the proceedings of one of the slowest-moving sports, but the swooshing, spinning flight paths he employs on so many shots become wearying and take away from the human drama, which is where the strength of the story lays.

Fortunately, Paxton's cast couldn't be finer. Shia LaBoeuf's Francis Ouimet is a constant revelation of emotions--he has one of those faces that the camera loves; every thought in his head etches something across his chinless features. By contrast, Stephen Dillane's Harry Vardon is all-laser-beam-intensity, betraying nothing but an iron will. One of Paxton's best moves is a shot of Vardon in the gallery, watching Ouimet play.The faces in the crowd turn their heads following the result of a powerful wood shot, except for the British golfer fixated on the kid's moves. Dillane has been doing more and more impressive work lately...in The Hours, and as Thomas Jefferson in HBO's "John Adams." If Thames wants to stop playing revolving doors with their Sherlock Holmes series on shorts (Richard Roxburgh, Rupert Everett) they could do worse than trying out Dillane as The Great Detective.

Yeah, yeah "He looks so young." 

It's a great story--a heart-warming story, made more so by the fact that it's true.** There was no need to go as overboard as Paxton does. One of the first things you learn in golf is that you do better if you don't try so hard. 

 

Grace wins over power.

* Frost more famously co-created "Twin Peaks" with David Lynch, and also co-wrote the screenplay for "The Fantastic Four" proving that no matter how well you've played before you can still occasionally be below par.

*** It's true a lot--but not completely. AND HERE, THERE BE SPOILERS. Highlight no further.
 

 

 

 

 

--the final score was actually Ouimet - 72, Vardon-77, and Troy-78. It didn't come down to the wire as depicted in the film.