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roger1's Replies
Eps that embody the impulse towards various sorts of contrarian fan-fiction based on sub-B-movies and -tv shows are, however, of no interest whatsoever to me. E.g., half an ep. recently was about 5 or so alternative Planet of the Apes movies that some LA TV station and production house fabricated out of pairs of episodes of the (1970s, indifferent quality, short-lived) POTA tv series together with a bit of talkover narration. What? Life's too just short to spend *any time at all* thinking about or watching stuff like that,
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I left all of that in because it becomes "self-accusatory" to myself. I, personally, have spent a fair amount of time recently using the streaming services to look at ALL SORTS of indifferent stuff...but(to my credit), at least they are movies: Pendulum, Doctor's Wives, Wrong is Right and...last week....three of the four Airport movies(all on Netflix right now; the absolutely awful fourth one is not being shown.) I'm afraid I have more of a taste at this point in my life, in "re-visiting schlock I saw or catching up with it," because its just plain HARDER for me to devote my attention to a "deeper film," or a foreign film or something serious but not entertaining to me.
The "Airport" movies quickly became fodder for the hilarious "Airplane" of 1980(which killed the Airport movies off) so they ARE an interesting part of "pop movie culture" AND to me, they put the lie to too much swooning about "the great era of 70's movies." Oh, YEAH? What about the Airports and Skyjacked and Two Minute Warning -- Charlton Heston got rich starring in these stinkers because no other name stars would take the parts...(on topic, a little bit: Martin Arbogast Balsam is in Two Minute Warning, too -- not everything could be Hitchcock.)
Anyway, I guess I can dig where QT and Avary are coming from in reviewing the gold AND the dross of the eras they(and I) grew up with.
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I think this is a clue to how QT may elect to spend his time AFTER he releases his "final film"....He can spin all sorts of fan fiction about his movie characters.
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I've been listening to QT&Avary's podcast only semi-faithfully. In general I find the show is most compelling when it's anchored to a genuinely *good* movie, e.g., recent eps focussed on The Hospital and on The Great Waldo Pepper have been a blast.
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Two very good "under the radar" 70's movies that don't get shown much. One reason, perhaps, is that both movies are very depressing, and these are pretty depressing times we live in...no interest in going there.
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I COULD tolerate DiCaprio in a Scorsese movie, but not in a "lead role" as some badass, grizzled tough guy. Not buying it!
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Nope...but then as has been documented in this era. we don't HAVE a lot of stars qualified to play some badass, grizzled tough guy. Lee Marvin, Steve McQueen and Charle Bronson are gone.
I think Tarantino has used Leo better than Scorsese, only twice to date:
Django Unchained. Calvin Candie is a "child tyrant," living in the shadow of his late father as a plantation owner ,spoiled, enraging in his power over his slaves given his cutesie manner (his power lies in the thugs he has hired and his "power behind the throne," Sam Jackson's turncoat house Negro.) DiCaprio fit that role.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Leo here rather dared to confront the obvious: compared to a REAL macho guy(Brad Pitt's Cliff Booth, ALMOST a grizzled tough guy), Leo's TV star "fake tough guy" is a whiny, stuttering, insecure and rather silly man. A drunk, too. (And yet, Leo's "fake" hero lives in an expensive Hollywood house, th REAL tough guy is consigned to living in a trailer -- Hollywood works like that.)
Anyway, I can't say I've ever been a fan of Leo DiCaprio but his career is simply "success breeds success" and top directors WANT him, and he works for them(Scorsese, QT, Nolan) and his career keeps succeeding. Which in turn makes him richer and richer so all the women want him. Not very fair, but its how Hollywood works.
PS. Leo's "hidden specialty" is a fair talent for YELLING and SCREAMING. I think he demands scenes like that in all his modern movies: Calvin Candie at the dinner table; Rick Dalton at the Mansons in their crummy car, and to himself in the trailer over blown lines; The Wolf of Wall Street to his "team." Big yeller, Leo is. Its his schtick.
> Leo's youth worked when the character was youthful. Gangs of New York. The Departed. <<
You've got a valid point there.
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Thank you.
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He did seem tolerable in those Scorsese movies, and at least fit the character.
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Kind of "luck of the draw." The WORST fit for me was in Shutter Island. As i noted above, he looked like a kid wearing his father's oversized overcoat and hat, "playacting".
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Leo's pushing 50 now, and while he still has a boyish face, I don't think the problem is so much his "youthful looks" but the fact he just didn't have the acting chops to pull off the roles he's given. I don't buy all this propaganda about what a "good actor" he is. He was a decent as a teen heartthrob type actor in the 90s and he managed to pull off stuff like Romeo & Juliet, but it's total cringe when they cast him as "J. Edgar Hoover" and so on.
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Yes, I saw the J Edgar performance(by the equally overrated DIRECTOR star, Clint Eastwood) and no....he didn't much pull off the part, especially as he aged.
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Reminds me when Jesse Eisenberg was ridiculed for being cast as "Lex Luthor" and did indeed suck in the role, just as we predicted he would.
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Which reminds me: we've got all these great Joker performances, where's the great Lex Luthor? Gene Hackman was authoritative and funny ...but refused to shave his head except for a few seconds of skull cap reveal. Kevin Spacey shaved his head(or wore a cap) but came off like Dr. Evil Eisenberg was...Eisenberg. Though his rather snobby and smug attitude came through...
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Note in passing: One guy who generally AVOIDED the “soon to be a major motion picture” thing was: Alfred Hitchcock. He started in America with one: Rebecca. Other than that, from the 60’s I only remember “Topaz” getting that on the book cover. (If only he cast that one like Stanley Kramer or Otto Preminger, with a bunch of old stars in it..it would have “fit” the paperback genre.)
Unlike The Exorcist or Jaws, Psycho was evidently considered too horrific and too “small” a novel to promote with “soon to be a major motion picture.” (The book went out as part of an “Inner Sanctum” mystery series, that was an old radio show, right?)
The story(told in the movie about it) was that Hitchcock did NOT want that book Psycho widely read(to protect the twist) and bought up copies all over Los Angeles, at least.
One more thing: the original novels that become Frenzy(Goodbye Picadilly, Farewell Leicester Square) and Family Plot(The Rainbird Pattern) got paperback releases with a specific tag: “Soon to be a motion picture from Alfred Hitchcock.” But these were NOT wide releases book releases , as with Jaws.
While Wheels never became a movie, instead it became a big TV mini-series w/ Rock Hudson and Lee Remick as the married couple at the story's center.
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I guess no studio saw “Wheels” as a movie. (The title wasn't as direct as "Airport," for one thing.) The mini-series had come into its own with Rich Man, Poor Man. I think they made one other Arthur Hailey mini-series with Kirk Douglas – about banks?
Eventually Arthur Hailey evidently was rich enough and old enough to just quit writing books for movies/TV.
It was just as well. Indeed the whole paperback reading culture rather disappeared – at least “at the movies.” I suspect Spielberg and Lucas started THAT, too. So many of their movies were original scripts – Close Encounters, Star Wars, ET, Indiana Jones. “The big novel” movies started to fade. “Ragtime” in 1981 wasn’t a hit(even with James Cagney returned in it.)
The 80’s also brought us “movies as text”: sequels(Psycho II), remakes(The Thing, The Fly). And TV series as text(The Untouchables.)Certain obscure and important novels were still adapted as Oscar bait(like Terms of Endearment), but the whole reading culture indeed just sort of slipped away and with it the phrase “soon to be a major motion picture’ was retired as well.
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Anyhow I read it v. young. It occurs to me that that sort of blockbuster paperback culture doesn't really exist anymore (people evidently used to *read* for pleasure a lot more than they do now - even if it was pretty junky stuff). Everything from Love Story to Jaws, to Godfather to Airport to The Deep were huge paperback hits long before they were movies, and those novels seemed to be everywhere when I was a kid.
People need to remember that “paperback culture” DROVE the movie business in the 50s, and – to my memory – the 60s and 70s.
A movie generally wasn’t really a BIG movie unless it was a paperback first – with the words “Soon to be a major motion picture” on the cover. And some great movies came from those paperbacks:
Rosemary’s Baby. True Grit. The Godfather. The Exorcist. Jaws.
Some not so great movies, too: Airport and all the “Harold Robbins paperback sex movies.”(The Carpetbaggers, The Adventurers, The Betsy.)
Pauline Kael made the great point that Puzo’s oversexed novel “The Godfather” could have easily ended up a “Harold Robbins paperback movie.” Bring in all the sex; make the characters one dimensional. Cast Ernest Borgnine as The Godfather. That we got the classic we got instead was , as Kael called it: “alchemy.”
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I remember him. He had a big paperback hit, "Wheels" (about Detroit and the Car Industry) that seemed to be on all my parents' friends' coffeetables when I was a kid.
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Yes, its funny. I think his first book was about a hospital, but it wasn't called "Hospital." It was called "The Final Diagosis." No takers for the movies.
Then came "Hotel," about a New Orleans hotel. It made for a serviceable , sophisticated movie but not much of a hit(a "disaster" was rather hidden in the book -- an elevator crash, which in the book killed and/or maimed several people, but in the movie took only one victim -- the one who HAD to die.
I love "Hotel" for its music, its setting, the sophistication of its script, and its cast -- led by the favorite sleeper star of the 60's, Rod Taylor.
"Hotel" was a small hit movie; "Airport" was BIG (second only to the equally old-fashioned hit "Love Story" at the 1970 box office, I think.)
Probably it was the "mad bomber in the sky" plot that drove the crowds to Airport. I read the book young and I remember watching Burt Lancaster come on Johnny Carson in the summer of 1969. The dialogue:
Johnny: How have you been, Burt?
Burt: Oh, fine, Johnny. I'm in Minnesota right now filming "Airport."
Johnny: So you aren't here to promote Airport.
Burt: No, I am here to promote my newest film, Castle Keep.
I remember being so DISAPPOINTED that Lancaster wasn't there to promote Airport yet. Because I was excited about the movie -- I was(remember) a young Hitchcock buff, and I found the suspense building up to the bomb blast quite...exciting.
But yes, swanstep, I remember paperbacks everywhere. Around our house, around our neighbor's houses. On book racks in supermarkets. In book stores. And of course "at the beach."
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My presumption is that DiCaprio can get Scorcese's movies financed, far more easily than Scorcese himself can.
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That's it. It bears remembering that for a long time there, Robert DeNiro was not much of a bankable star; he was a "prestige actor." He needed to be in some hit movies -- The Untouchables, Midnight Run and Backdraft evidently got him "in touch with the masses."
It also bears remembering that Scorsese had a VERY tough 80s after Raging Bull. Movies like The King of Comedy, After Hours, and The Last Temptation of Christ were noteable but not hits. The Color of Money wasn't a particularly memorable film. "Goodfellas"(with a newly bankable DeNiro) would re-start Scorsese's career, but he never forgot what it was like to "not get the money."
That's where Leo came in. Young(younger than the aging DeNiro.) Bankable. And hungry to work with a director of Scorsese's caliber.
"Killers of the Flower Moon" is an event in that Scorsese's "original bankable star"(DeNiro) is in a Scorsese movie for the first time with Scorsese's "later bankable star"(Leo.) But it turns out that not only did DeNiro and Leo work before(in "This Boy's Life") but that DeNiro recommended Leo to Scorsese in the first place.
So it all comes together.
Also: it was "mutual": Leo got Scorsese financing; Scorsese gave Leo "prestige credibility." But sure it is so: in so many movies, Leo just looks too young for the part. In Shutter Island a tough period cop, Leo looked like a boy wearing his father's oversized overcoat and hat. And even if he was the RIGHT age to play Young Howard Hughes, he looked too young.
Leo's youth worked when the character was youthful. Gangs of New York. The Departed. And even (with some age and sex appeal on him) in The Wolf of Wall Street.
Still, it does seem like Leo DiCaprio got the luckiest movie career on earth. Titanic to make him a young superstar. The great Scorsese to keep him in quality movies. Plus Tarantino. Plus an Oscar .
Probably built by Norman's grandfather, who was the richest man in town for what that was worth, and Norman's father was probably the heir who wasted his inheritance in every possible way, leaving his widow no choice but to buckle down and work for a living.
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There you go, two generations of history from one house design!
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Hence, the shabby house with it's out of date interior, and the motel.
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Yes, it ain't much of a mansion.
I'm reminded that if one takes a look at Vertigo from two years before, and sees the nicely burnished staircase and foyer of the "McKittrick Hotel" -- you can see how a house interior COULD look if properly refurbished and maintained.
Norman lives in a musty house "trapped in time." Mother's bedroom: unchanged. NORMAN'S bedroom; still filled with childhood toys never put away.
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Yeah, that was top-flight production design there...
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Yep. The movie WAS nominated for the "Best Art Direction: Black and White" Oscar. It lost to The Apartment; the latter had the famous "office with hundreds" set and the apartment itself but I think the Bates House -- inside and out -- ended up more important and famous.
In another post I said that the house didn't scream wealth, but might have been the best house in a small rural town. The sort of house that might be owned by the owner of the local lumber mill that employed most of the townsmen, that sort of thing
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I like that idea -- a local lumber mill would fit the story being set in Shasta County California..which is where a lot of lumber mills used to be in that state. The open spaces of the Bates Motel area actually lead to mountains and timber. (Fairvale in the movie is a fictional small town, but Hitchcock said the story takes place near Redding, California ...which is in Shasta County.)
And yes, in small towns of the time, there were always "the big homes reserved for the biggest locals."
All the "history" suggested by that house circa 1959/1960 is another reason I don't care for the 1980s/90s sequels. The BEST time period for that movie is when it came out -- 1960, in which America was starting to accelerate out of the small towns, old highways, and old economies of the first half of the 20th Century. The Bates House suggests a home from...the 20s(or 10s)? And the motel was built in the post-war 40's? And Norman killed Mother and boyfriend around..1950? Thus giving him the entire 50s to go slowly mad and become a serial killer....time matters in that movie. 1960 is what it is ABOUT in American history.
The scene allowed Newman to show off his physique -- very muscular but VERY thin -- in HIS underwear, and then to allow Gail Strickland(under a fair "equal opportunity" stripdown) to show off HER physique in bra and panties. Extra element for both: they are very, very wet.
I linger on the "drowning pool" sequence in "The Drowning Pool" because this also -- in the 70's tradition -- rather allows all the characterizations and wit of "Harper' to here almost literally drown in a gimmick which, it seems, the entire MOVIE is about. And then the mystery winds down and Newman goes home, and we simply don't feel that "Harper" epic vibe.
Noteable: "Harper" famously began with a William Goldman idea: Harper sleeps in his office(his wife threw him out) and must retrieve coffee grounds to make coffee. "The Drowning Pool" replaces that scene of frustration with a long opening of Newman sabotaging his New Orleans rental car to shut down the seat belt alarm and allow the car to drive. The latter scene seems a "forced retread" of the firt.
And: in a bit that really should have been cut, Newman tries to fend off some thugs by warning them that "I know karate -- my hands are registered as lethal weapons." Sheesh. Paul Newman as Inspector Clouseau.
Which reminds me: the OTHER 60's movie made into a 70's movie(more successfully) was The Pink Panther. But there, too, the plush and lush 60's production values yielded to a kind of cheapjack realism as Peter Sellers brought back his most famous character.
https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.549f1d4b55bae57f502050abadc290d0?rik=DIGOx69MkSOhbQ&pid=ImgRaw&r=0
And again, that's what great production design does - it gives us the backstory without anyone speaking a word!
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And none better than with the Bates House! Because indeed, one has to picture how and WHY a house of that ornate nature(OK, not a huge mansion, but still) was out there in the middle of nowhere. It was built before the motel and there is indeed the suggestion that the owner(MR. Bates) wanted that isolation, and LIKED the idea of being on a hill so as to look out over the countryside and ...see folks coming.
That photo, by the way, captures the look of the house and the motel very much...but lacks the more youthful and liveable appearance of the house in the original. The photo seems to be of a truly rotted-out skeleton of the house -- no one could live in THAT. Universal uses such photos of the house often to communicate its "ghostly air" but thats not quite the effect in the original.
Also: the hill and low ground AROUND the house is too sparse in the photo. In the movie, there was a few small trees, some statuary, more chairs than in this photo.
Indeed, watching some of Psycho the other night I took note of this:
I'm on record as loving the "crystal clear" day for night shot of Arbogast climbing the steps to the house. But I looked at the EARLIER shot of Norman climbing the steps to the house(after peeping on Marion; just before the murder) and though the photography is much "messier"(a wobbly "matte shot" of the black house against process shots of clouds), the ANGLE is much different -- Hitchcock sets the camera WAY back so we can take in more of the motel(screen right) and more of the space to the left of the motel than in the "Arbogast shot." Its actually the most "roomy" view of house and motel in the movie, and shows more of the "hill and low ground." Every shot of the house is different in this movie.
The scene allowed Newman to show off his physique -- very muscular but VERY thin -- in HIS underwear, and then to allow Gail Strickland(under a fair "equal opportunity" stripdown) to show off HER physique in bra and panties. Extra element for both: they are very, very wet.
I linger on the "drowning pool" sequence in "The Drowning Pool" because this also -- in the 70's tradition -- rather allows all the characterizations and wit of "Harper' to here almost literally drown in a gimmick which, it seems, the entire MOVIE is about. And then the mystery winds down and Newman goes home, and we simply don't feel that "Harper" epic vibe.
Noteable: "Harper" famously began with a William Goldman idea: Harper sleeps in his office(his wife threw him out) and must retrieve coffee grounds to make coffee. "The Drowning Pool" replaces that scene of frustrating with a long opening of Newman sabotaging his New Orleans rental car to shut down the seat belt alarm and allow the car to drive. The latter scene seems a "forced retread" of the firt.
And: in a bit that really should have been cut, Newman tries to fend off some thugs by warning them that "I know karate -- my hands are registered as lethal weapons." Sheesh. Paul Newman as Inspector Clouseau.
Which reminds me: the OTHER 60's movie made into a 70's movie(more successfully) was The Pink Panther. But there, too, the plush and lush 60's production values yielded to a kind of cheapjack realism as Peter Sellers brought back his most famous character.
“Airport” has been called “the first disaster movie,” which it is not. For one thing, there is no disaster. Though the flight is crippled by a mad bomber’s bomb, only the bomber dies(though a key character is injured), and the plane doesn’t crash. In subsequent “Airport” sequels – ALL of which star “George Kennedy as Joe Patroni” -- the planes NEVER crash no matter how menaced.
No, “Airport” was a continuation of the “Grand Hotel” style multi-story drama – done better by “Hotel”(1967), from a book by the same guy who wrote “Airport”(Arthur Hailey, a footnote in paperback history.) The first disaster movie came two years later – “The Poseidon Adventure.”
But this: watching “Airport” in proximity to “Psycho,” one is AGAIN reminded that blockbusters come in different types, and that compared to the square and clunky "Airport," “Psycho” was incredibly artful in its direction, composition, camera moves and montage and MUCH better written than “Airport.” Still, “Airport” was exciting family entertainment in a year where there wasn’t much of that: its Best Picture competition included Five Easy Pieces and MASH.
Also modern for 1970: Heroes Lancaster and Martin are either having an affair(Martin) or contemplating one(Lancaster.) And Martin’s affair(flight attendant Jaqueline Bisset) is pregnant. Which leads to some 1970 style careful debate on the abortion topic.
With all these affairs going on, the movie makes a point of introducing George Kennedy’s heroic engineer-troubleshooter Joe Patroni at home with a very loving and amorous wife all over him(they’ve sent their five kids to grandma’s for a night of sex.)
I always enjoy seeing that scene for several reasons: longtime screen heavy Kennedy has a nice hairpiece for once and is playing a really good guy; his marriage is shown as solid and child-bearing; and – my favorite bit – some never-well-known actress is assigned this one scene to sensually kiss and maul Kennedy, start to finish. That’s what I love about the movie business: “Miss Smith, this is Mr. Kennedy. OK, on action, I want you to crawl all over him and kiss him passionately.” Nice work if you can get it.
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Formerly ecarle.
Its late May and Psycho is still on Netflix, along with The Birds and Marnie. I guess that's all Netflix wants to air from the Universal/Paramount Hitchcocks.
But I rather find the lead off with Psycho in particular to have "cleared the decks" for Netflix to put out a number of other Universal hits (keeping in mind that I thought that Peacock was where Universal movies go.) There also remains the irony that Psycho was released as a Paramount movie, with Paramount's misgivings, and is now officially owned by Universal and hence Universal has the biggest and most famous Hitchcock hit.
The other movies are "pure Universal":
American Graffiti(1973)
The Sting(1973)
Smokey and the Bandit(1977)
Animal House(1978)
..what these all have in common with Psycho is that they were all BIG hits for Universal.
And now they have added one more: Airport(1970)
I connect Airport to Psycho in a rather tenuous way: Psycho was Universal's blockbuster of 1960(OK, Paramounts) -- Airport was Universal's blockbuster of 1970. That's what 10 years distance got you back then.
Actually, for as "ahead of its time" as Psycho seemed in 1960, Airport seemed BEHIND the times in 1970. "New Hollywood" had debuted in 1967 with The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde, and Midnight Cowboy and The Wild Bunch had further broken ground in 1969. Here was this "all-star" potboiler(from a paperback bestseller) which starred two fading stars: Burt Lancaster and Dean Martin (both of whom got their biggest paydays ever from this movie.) Some wag called the 1970 Airport "the Best Picture of 1945."
There are some "modern touches" in Airport. Here, too was a movie with the "split screen' approach that we have mentioned was also in The Boston Strangler and The Thomas Crown Affair. Honestly -- Hollywood REALLY seems to have thought that split screen was the way of the future. Not much longer except with DePalma!
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1999 has a whole book written about it being the best movie year of the 90s, which I decidedly think it is NOT. I’d vote for 1997 first, and then for 1994. Still, my favorite movie of 1999 was among the Best Picture nominees: The Green Mile, from the Shawshank Redemption team of Stephen King and Frank Darabont, with Big Tom Hanks in his superstar years(Saving Private Ryan was the year before; Cast Away would be the next year.)
I’d vote for The Green Mile, but I preferred a lot of 90s movies to it in that decade. However, the movie well mixed Hanks penchant for tear-jerking(at the end) with King’s penchant for horror(a sabotaged electric chair execution of a nice little man goes sickeningly wrong.)
That’s my biggest problem with American Beauty: no sense of controlled TONE. Sometimes, the movie is deeply artful(the home video of the bag blowing in the wind); sometimes the movie is wildly satiric(Lester taking the job at the burger place); sometimes the tone is ridiculous(Bening’s motel tryst with her lover), sometimes the tone is “very serious”( a lot of the final 20 minutes.) Very inconsistent and too overly broad.
And yet, it won Best Director, putting Sam Mendes on the map, and Best Original Screenplay(the less competitive category than Adapted) for Alan Ball.
As noted, the Best Picture win was in some ways “Dreamworks and Spielberg going to war on Miramax and Weinstein.” Weinstein’s Best Picture pitch was “The Cider House Rules,” with a fine, sad character for Michael Caine to play. Caine won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar(the second such win for a leading man actor!). When Caine won the Golden Globe, he was witty to fellow nominee Tom Cruise(Magnolia): “Tom, you didn’t want to win this award. Its for supporting actor – your price would go down!”
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I will admit that I know some men of a certain age who actually LOVE American Beauty for how Spacey eventually rebels against his monstrous wife and sullen, spoiled daughter --its a fantasy they dig.
Yes, I knew some middle-aged dudes who had Lester Burnham as their hero.
I saw American Beauty on release, and maybe a couple of times more. Once was on a golfing trip with some guys and one of them chose to order up American Beauty on Pay per View for “the guys” to watch. Reason why: he loved it. Reason why: because he DID feel it tapped into the dark side of marriage and he WAS entertained by Spacey eventually biting back at both his wife and daughter. I recall that he found the bit were Annette Bening was ALMOST ready to be intimate with Spacey but didn’t want him to spill wine on the couch –“that’s exactly IT!” he said. Interestingly, this guy is still with his wife of decades so…he’s no Lester. And she’s a nice gal.
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Curiously, while the film did seem to want to humanize Carolyn (Annette Bening) at times, the overall picture of her was so horrifying that I'm pretty sure that *no* woman alive had her as *their* hero.
It’s a movie from “the male point of view.” But the tricky part may well be that it is from the GAY male’s point of view: the writer was openly gay Alan Ball, showrunner of Six Feet Under. So there wasn’t going to be much sympathy for the Bening character from any male pov.
And, as you say elsewhere in this thread Caroline's sanctification at the end of the film doesn't convince.
No. I haven’t seen the movie in a long time, so your descriptions remind me of “what happened in the story plot” whereas my memories are more “general”: Whether the script or direction called for it, Bening played that wife WAY over the top for much of the movie; got posited as one of the “possible killers” and THEN reverted to an emotional, caring woman at the end.
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