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"Richard Jewell": Eastwood, Hitchcock's "The Wrong Man" and Hitchcock's "Bomb Under the Table"

posted 5 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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Clint Eastwood told a story once about taking an appointment to meet with Alfred Hitchcock at the latter's office on the Universal lot, circa 1978.

Hitch was trying to interest Eastwood in the hero's role in "The Short Night," a planned Hitchcock spy film that was never made, due to Hitch's failing health and death. I've read A script for The Short Night(if not THE script) and the lead isn't an Eastwood part. Eastwood himself read A script for The Short Night and said "I wasn't crazy about it."

But Eastwood took the meeting with Hitch anyway -- just to meet the icon. Eastwood said: "He sat immobile in his chair, only his eyes moved." Hitch was two years from death, but it was a good meeting. And Eastwood tried to break the ice by noting that he had directed "Play Misty for Me" in the Hitchcock tradition.

Well, 41 years later, Eastwood has directed another film "in the Hitchcock tradition," though with more realism and less flourish than Hitch.

Famously, Eastwood has directed "Richard Jewell" at the age of 89. Eastwood turns 90 in May; and I'm hoping that not only will he direct more films in his 90's but that he will take one more on-screen lead over the title as an actor. That would make history. We will see. And Clint makes me feel good about MY age. "There's plenty of time left." (Uh, if you are superhealthy and superrich like Clint Eastwood.)

There are two main echoes of Hitchcock in "Richard Jewell." The first is a very suspenseful real-life illustration of Hitchcock's old "suspense versus surprise" definition: two men sit at a table, a bomb goes off -- big SURPRISE. two men sit at a table and we are SHOWN a bomb under the table. SUSPENSE. Stop talking! Get up! There's a bomb under the table!

In "Richard Jewell," there's a bomb under a bench. At an entertainment venue(with singers) at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. Eastwood establishes that the bomb is real and that the bomber is NOT Richard Jewell(we see lips call in the bomb while Jewell is still patrolling the venue as security.)

For 89 years old, Eastwood sure can get the suspense going about that bomb. Jewell finds the backpack with it, and demands that protocol be followed and the backpack be called in. Other security men at the scene think that Jewell is being over-dramatic, they don't believe him(more Hitchcockian suspense) --- he's a very overweight and child-like man with a propensity for over-selling his law enforcement powers.

But that bomb IS there, and every moment that people stand near it, the danger increases. Eastwood pulls off a pretty good "Hitchcock sequence" here.

Famously(from the true story) , the bomb did go off(we see nails flying through the air and are reminded that bombs don't just "poof" you into thin air.) Famously, two people died. Famously, Richard Jewell the overweight security guard was hailed as a hero for finding the bomb and helping move people away from it, saving lives .

And famously...soon the FBI with the support of an Atlanta newspaper ..was fingering Richard Jewell as the bomber. He "fit the profile": loner, overweight, white, lives with his mother(hello, Norman), too gung-ho about being a law enforcement wannabee, etc. And proximity to the bomb itself.

Since Eastwood makes sure we see the lips of the real bomber speaking into a phone early on, the Hitchcockian suspense kicks right in: Richard Jewell IS the wrong man. And in Hitchocck terms , he's "The Wrong Man."

For "Richard Jewell" captures some of the depressing terror of Hitchcock's 1956 masterpiece, "The Wrong Man", (starring Henry Fonda in the real-life story of a man wrongly accused of being a stick-up man) -- in that in many ways, the system is just doing its job, he IS a suspect, there ARE clues that point to him(profile-wise, but no real evidence.) And rather like Richard Blaney in Frenzy -- Jewell is the fall guy to take the blame for a very evil crime -- the hate transfers to him.

The cast is exemplary. With semi-unknown Paul Walter Hauser cast as Jewell, Eastwood surrounds him with two Oscar winners and two more noteable actors:

ONE: Sam Rockwell(Oscar winner) as the lawyer who takes Jewell's case(they go back ten years as long-ago co-workers) and bravely takes on the FBI and the press, with the righteousness and rage of a crusader(Fonda had the more realistic and diffident attorney Anthony Quayle in The Wrong Man.)

TWO: Kathy Bates(Oscar winner) as Richard's loving mother, with whom he lives in a small apartment and who is perhaps his only real loved (though he has one loyal male friend.) Bates goes from astonished pride at "her son the hero" and anguished agony when he becomes "her son, the mad bomber." With a pack of press laying siege to her small apartment and the FBI toting away her underwear, Bates gives us a great performance of pain and pride. (Roughly, she's got the Vera Miles role from The Wrong Man: collateral human damage of an unfair prosecution.) CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

CONT

THREE: Jon Hamm as the overzealous FBI man -- unlike Hitchocck's warm-voiced, cold-hearted cops in The Wrong Man, Hamm's guy is overtly interested in bending the rules and the law to "get" Richard Jewell, and ultimately mocks Richard's attempts to assert that they are "fellow law enforcement officers." Hamm sneers " C'mon, Richard, let's talk...cop to cop..." and clearly mocks the equivalency. He's quite hissable,and we are reminded that on "Mad Man," Hamm was as much a villain(cheating on his wives, fighting corporate battles) as a hero(loving father, caring friend -- sometimes.) Hamm goes for villainy here, and this FBI role is a bit close to his OTHER mean(but not corrupt) FBI man in The Town some years ago. Oh well, its a living.

FOUR: Olivia Wilde as "the evil scheming newspaper reporter" who uses sex to get her tips(from Hamm) and never takes no for an answer. One critic wrote that Wilde plays the reporter (a real one, Kathy Scruggs) "like a Velociraptor in a short skirt" and that's about right. Her home paper has protested that it was never proved that the real reporter traded sex for tips(she died of a drug overdose at age 42) but well -- newspapers always complain about newspaper movies(remember Absence of Malice?) For what its worth, there were reports in recent years of female reporters getting tips from their DC bureaucrat "boyfriends" so...it happens. (Warner Brothers is hitting back hard, saying that the Atlanta paper DID botch the case and is trying to cover that up with the reporter controversy. BTW, Leo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill are co-producers of Richard Jewell, so its hardly a right wing production.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

CONT I've personally chided Eastwood(without him caring one bit) for the perfunctory and tight little movies he's made in recent years, but it does seem that when he gets the right subject, he can still make a GOOD movie. Richard Jewell is filled with movement and frenzy; it doesn't seem like an "old man's film" the way The Irishman did. Indeed, Richard Jewell DOES beg the question: just how hard can movie directing really be, if an 89-year old man can turn in something as fast-paced and professional as this movie?

I suppose it boils down to: get good material, you get a good movie. For the Hitchcock buff, the resonance of the bomb scene, the "Fonda Wrong Man" plot and emotion, a little of the "Frenzy Wrong Man" emotion(unlike Fonda, Jon Finch is blamed for a horrendous murder crime, as is Richard Jewell)...I particularly liked Richard Jewell.

[–] TMC-4 (20130) 5 years ago

https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Richard-Jewell-become-the-lowest-earner-in-4-decades-for-a-Clint-Eastwood-film-His-films-are-slow-burning-marathons-so-what-are-chances-this-film-will-pick-pace-and-do-well/answer/Alex-Johnston-39

Eastwood is known to like stories where a principled loner is pitted against a heartless bureaucracy, but there is a sense, with this film, that he has grossly distorted the facts of the case beyond the normal requirements of dramatic economy, especially in the portrayal of the journalist character Kathy Scruggs, played by Olivia Wilde. And that he did this to score political points, not to tell a good story.

I haven’t myself seen Richard Jewell but I have read a good deal about it. If Eastwood did this, it’s because, frankly, he is old and losing his sense of nuance and fairness.

It was already evident in Sully, which I have seen three times, and which seriously maligned the NTSB in the interests of telling Eastwood’s preferred story about a dignified male loner against a bunch of heartless suits. Sully did have Aaron Eckhart as Tom Hanks’ loyal colleague, but still, the unfairness makes a crude melodrama out of what was a far more complex story that Eastwood had no interest in telling.

Eastwood is getting past it as a storyteller. He should either retire, or rethink his work. He could still make good films, if he managed to stop slapping the same tedious archetype on every story that comes his way.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Sully did have Aaron Eckhart as Tom Hanks’ loyal colleague, but still, the unfairness makes a crude melodrama out of what was a far more complex story that Eastwood had no interest in telling.

---

I always felt that Sully "backed itself into" its weird vision of Sully the hero being under assault by the bureaucracy. The truth of the matter is that, as miraculous and wonderful as that event was(a plane crash onto water that resulted in no deaths from the crash OR from drowning)...as a matter of course, it DID have to be officially investigated, and Sully's piloting decisions DID have to be reviewed. So there would likely be some tension on Sully's part even as the world found him a hero, and perhaps he DID feel guilt about having crashed the plane even as he saved it.

The "glory" of Clint Eastwood right now is that he is still directing major movies with major stars at age 89. I'm hoping he directs some more (and stars in one more) after he passes age 90, and makes some history.

How good the movies are, is another matter. For the most part, people aren't going to Clint Eastwood DIRECTED movies anymore. The huge hit American Sniper is surrounded by Eastwood-directed movies people did NOT see. Eastwood as an aged star piloted last year's "The Mule" to hit status, but that's because he was in it.

All that said, I personally liked "Richard Jewell" for "Hitchcock connections" that maybe Clint didn't see...but I surely did. (And I DO think that Eastwood followed Hitchcock in the bomb sequence.)

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

Interesting.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

And by the way, Hitchcock's The Wrong Man (1956) was a flop, too. He KNEW it was going to flop, but he wanted the grim story to be told, so he took no salary to direct it.