Chinatown

Chinatown (1974) is a rare example of a collection of artists at the height of their powers coming together to produce a masterpiece born out of conflict and strife. Fresh from his success on The Last Detail (1973), screenwriter Robert Towne wrote a mystery inspired by the California Water Wars that took place in Southern California at the beginning of the 20th century and involved a series of disputes over water with Los Angeles interests securing water rights in the Owens Valley. Studio chief and producer Robert Evans bankrolled the project and Towne wrote the screenplay with his good friend Jack Nicholson in mind. The actor was coming off the critically-acclaimed The Last Detail asked Roman Polanski to direct. The two men had been looking for a project to work together on and chose this one. The end result is a wonderfully complex and nuanced tale of greed and corruption whose deeper meanings and rich attention to detail reveal themselves upon subsequent viewings.

Jerry Goldsmith’s somber score, complete with mournful trumpet, sets a melancholic tone over the opening credits, evoking a bygone era. Polanski offsets this with the playful opening scene that sees private investigator J.J. Gittes (Nicholson) showing a client (Burt Young) photographs of his cheating wife. Looking visibly upset, Burt Young offsets this with exaggerated whimpers and distressed histrionics, which provokes Gittes to tell him, “Alright Curly, enough is enough. You can’t eat the venetian blinds. I just had ‘em installed on Wednesday.” Gittes dresses nice and has an expensive-looking office but he plies his trade in the seedy underbelly of society with a specialty in infidelity.

He meets a woman calling herself Evelyn Mulwray (Diane Ladd) and she hires him to uncover evidence that her husband Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling), the chief engineer of Water and Power for the city, is cheating on her. At a hearing that Gittes attends, Mulwray receives considerable flack from local farmers accusing him of stealing water that is ruining their livelihood, but refuses to approve the building of a dam because of the danger it poses. Gittes and his associates follow Mulwray around for a couple of days until they find him cheating on his wife, which naturally makes a big stink in the press.

The real Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) shows up with her lawyer and threatens legal action, which prompts Gittes to dig deeper. Why would someone pose as Hollis Mulwray’s wife and set him up? To complicate matters, Hollis Mulwray winds up dead, found drowned in a dried waterbed. Evelyn hires Gittes to find out what happened, which sees him cross paths with the powerful Noah Cross (John Huston), her father and former business partner of her late husband.

By the time Jack Nicholson made Chinatown he was on quite the roll with films like Easy Rider (1969), Five Easy Pieces (1970), and the aforementioned The Last Detail, among others, under his belt. As a result, he brings a relaxed confidence to his performance, effortlessly inhabiting the role of J.J. Gittes. He starts off playing the character as a man comfortable with his lot in life and is good at what he does. Over the course of the film, this confidence gradually erodes as Gittes gets deeper into the Mulwray murder. I like how Towne’s script pokes holes in Gittes’ character, showing his flaws despite a desire to appear classy, like when he tells his office cohorts an off-color joke unaware that Evelyn Mulwray is listening to the whole thing behind him. Nicholson’s glee in telling the joke is palpable and then he brilliantly turns on a dime when Gittes realizes that Mulwray heard what he said. Nicholson does a fantastic job of maintaining a tricky balancing act of playing a man brimming with confidence only to have it chipped away, bit by bit, as he finds himself embroiled in affairs much larger than himself.

Faye Dunaway is well-cast as the icy femme fatale Evelyn Mulwray. The actress maintains a frosty exterior as she portrays a woman harboring a dark secret. Evelyn forms an uneasy alliance with Gittes and the scenes between Dunaway and Nicholson crackle with an intriguing tension, which apparently mirrored their off-screen relationship as well. As the film progresses, Gittes melts some of Evelyn’s icy exterior and yet Dunaway still manages to hint at further depths to her character that are eventually revealed towards the end.

Polanski sprinkles playful moments throughout the film to offset the pervasive pessimistic mood. This is evident in a scene where Gittes runs afoul of two henchmen, one whom is played by the director. Polanski’s first line is said off-camera – “Hey there, kitty cat,” and he proceeds to slice open Gittes’ nose with a switchblade. For a good portion of the film, Nicholson sports a large bandage on his face, which subversively messes with the leading man’s good looks. A move like that would never fly with studio executives today who are scared to death of messing with any formula that could cost them money and this is just one of the chances Chinatown takes.

Another fantastic scene is Gittes’ lunch with Noah Cross where we get to see the legendary John Huston play off against Nicholson. The former exudes the confidence of a powerful man like Cross and the actor is clearly having fun with the role, like how he repeatedly mispronounces Gittes’ name as a way of subtly exerting control over the private investigator. Cross expertly dances around Gittes’ questions but the latter doesn’t back down either. The scene is a fascinating battle of wills as Gittes begins to realize what he’s up against.

Polanski brings an assured touch to the direction, masterfully utilizing the widescreen aspect ratio with the help of cinematographer John A. Alonzo. They manage to simultaneously evoke classic Hollywood cinema with the retro-noir period trappings while also bringing a European sensibility, mostly through the psychological underpinnings of the story. These visuals and the atmosphere that is created is greatly enhanced by Jerry Goldsmith’s score, which not only evokes a more elegant time but also expertly services a given scene, like being suspenseful when necessary and so on.

Thanks to all the political assassinations that occurred in the 1960s and then the Watergate scandal in the 1970s, government corruption was very much on peoples’ minds at the time Chinatown was released and this is reflected in the story that sees Gittes mired in corruption. Like most private investigator/mystery stories, much of the pleasure comes from the colorful characters Gittes encounters and how he unravels the various layers of the complicated plot.

While walking in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains, screenwriter Robert Towne came up with the idea for a detective story about the corruption of the land by developers. While filming Drive, He Said (1971) in Eugene, Oregon in the spring of 1970, he checked out a book from the local library by Carey McWIlliams about the history of oil and water exploitation in Southern California. It inspired him to base one of the crucial characters on William Mulholland, a pioneering Los Angeles water-supply engineer.

For the retro-vibe that he wanted to evoke, Towne read a photo essay entitled “Raymond Chandler’s L.A.” in New West magazine and drove around the city while also looking at old postcards that reminded him of “the sights and sounds of childhood.” He also read plenty of hardboiled fiction by Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, especially the former for his descriptions of L.A.

Towne first worked on the characters of Noah Cross and the incestuous relationship with his daughter Evelyn Mulwray. Then, he switched his focus to the detective-hero, which he named J.J. Gittes after a mutual friend of his and Jack Nicholson’s, Harry Gittes. Towne and Nicholson had been good friends for some time and the former tailored the role of Gittes specifically for the latter. While writing the script, the scope and density of the script was daunting for Towne as he found himself trying “one way and another casually to reveal mountains of information about dams, orange groves, incest, elevator operators, etc.”

Initially, Towne envisioned himself directing, “figuring no matter how bad I was as a director, if I could tell a decent story they would watch it.” However, he was broke at the time and need money to finish the script. Paramount Studios executive and producer Robert Evans originally approached Towne to adapt F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby for a sizable paycheck but he passed on the assignment to focus on Chinatown instead and made a deal that gave the studio a 30-day option on it.

Nicholson had wanted to work with film director Roman Polanski for some time. They were friends socially and Nicholson called and asked him to direct Chinatown. The director was happily living in Rome, recovering from making What? (1972) and was not keen on returning to the United States, a place where his wife Sharon Tate had been brutally murdered by members of the Manson Family in 1969. Originally, Evans wanted Peter Bogdanovich to direct but when he passed the producer persuaded Polanski to fly to L.A. and meet with Towne. Aside from the chance to work with the likes of Nicholson and Towne, Polanski was low on funds and his bills were accumulating. He needed money.

Polanski read Towne’s initial draft and felt it was “brimming with ideas, great dialogue, and masterful characterization,” but that it “suffered from an excessively convoluted plot that veered off in all directions.” Towne wasn’t thrilled with Polanski’s criticisms but was convinced by the powers that be to do some rewrites on the script. Polanski found the revised draft even more difficult to follow and didn’t like the ambiguity of the film’s title, insisting that at least one scene take place in that location. Towne had gotten the title from a Hungarian vice cop who told him he had worked vice in Chinatown in L.A. When the writer asked him what he did there, the cop replied, “As little as possible.”

Polanski felt that Towne was prone to procrastination and so he created a routine consisting of eight-hour work days and partying away the night. The writer remembers, “The mood at night was—it was the 1970s.  We had a good time.” The rewriting consisted of Towne re-sequencing scenes and clarifying the complicated plot while Polanski worked on the dialogue and changing the focus so that the entire film is from Gittes’ point-of-view. Within eight weeks they had created a shooting script. Towne has said that he fought with Polanski every day and Evans said the final product was the result of “a lot of arguments, fights. There was warfare throughout the picture, but that’s healthy.” After the dust settled, Polanski and Towne were no longer speaking to each other.

When it came to casting, Evans picked then-wife Ali MacGraw to play Evelyn Mulwray but when she ran off to marry actor Steve McQueen, he offered the part to Jane Fonda who turned it down. Polanski suggested Faye Dunaway who he knew socially and liked her “retro” look but Evans didn’t like the idea and considered the actress to be trouble.

Polanski’s approach to filming Chinatown was not as a classic black and white movie “but as a film about the Thirties seen through the camera eye of the Seventies.” He insisted on shooting in color and Panavision. He originally hired legendary cinematographer Stanley Cortez (The Magnificent Ambersons) but when he didn’t work out, Polanski skewed younger with John Alonzo (Harold and Maude) instead.

When filming began in the fall of 1973, Polanski and Dunaway did not get along. According to him, she fretted over her appearance, didn’t always know her lines, and bothered him to rewrite them. When he did she would then go back to the original dialogue. She would ask him for her character’s motivation and he screamed at her that the salary she was being paid was all the motivation she needed. It got so bad between them that Evans arranged a meeting with Dunaway, her agent and Polanski. Evans decided to keep Dunaway off the set for three weeks to let things cool down and when she returned the actress no longer spoke to Polanski and was all business when it came to direction. The actress recalled, “I thought Roman was thwarting me and not supporting me.”

Nicholson wasn’t crazy about Polanski’s habit for multiple takes and being given line readings – two things he hated as an actor. Nicholson recognized that Polanski was a brilliant filmmaker who liked to argue and adjusted accordingly. During filming, Polanski made two significant changes to Towne’s script with Evans’ approval, much to the writer’s chagrin and who subsequently felt betrayed. The most notable one was changing the ending, which he made much more nihilistic than Towne intended, prompting the writer to call it, “the literal and ghoulishly bleak climax.” Years later and with the benefit of hindsight, Towne agrees that Polanski was right to change the ending.

When it came to post-production, Polanski hired classical composer Philip Lambro to score Chinatown. Seven weeks before the film’s premiere it was previewed in San Luis Obispo. It was a disaster according to Evans who recalled, “By the time the lights came up, half the audience had walked out, scratching their heads.” He felt that Lambro’s “dissonant, weird, scratchy” music was to blame. Evans delayed the film’s premiere and brought in Jerry Goldsmith to create a new score, which he did in a staggering ten days! According to Evans, seeing the film with Goldsmith’s music was like seeing a completely different film.

Not surprisingly, Chinatown received mixed reviews from the major critics back in the day. Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and praised Polanski’s work: “He’s made a perceptive, loving comment on a kind of movie and a time in the nation’s history that are both long past. Chinatown is almost a lesson on how to experience this kind of movie.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “Mr. Polanski and Mr. Towne have attempted nothing so witty and entertaining, being content instead to make a competently stylish, more or less thirties-ish movie that continually made me wish I were back seeing The Maltese Falcon or The Big Sleep. Others may not be as finicky.” The New Yorker’s Pauline Kael wrote, “The film holds you, in a suffocating way. Polanski never lets the story tell itself. It’s all over-deliberate, mauve, nightmarish; everyone is yellow-lacquered, and evil runs rampant. You don’t care who is hurt, since everything is blighted. And yet the nastiness has a look, and a fascination.” Finally, in his review for the Village Voice, Andrew Sarris wrote, “It is Polanski’s decision alone to tilt Chinatown toward tragedy that ultimately redeems the enormous contributions of the others. Yet even Polanski’s intense feeling for tragedy could never have been realized without the vision of tragedy expressed in Nicholson’s star-crossed eyes.” Finally, in his review for the Village Voice, Andrew Sarris wrote, “It is Polanski’s decision alone to tilt Chinatown toward tragedy that ultimately redeems the enormous contributions of the others. Yet even Polanski’s intense feeling for tragedy could never have been realized without the vision of tragedy expressed in Nicholson’s star-crossed eyes.” Chinatown was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, including ones for Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Director, and Original Screenplay, winning for the latter.

Chinatown sheds light on one of the many dirty secrets of L.A. and shows how the expansion of the city didn’t come easily – a lot of wheels were greased in the process and lives were ruined because of all the money that was at stake. It was something that people in the ‘70s could relate to and this translated into commercial and critical success. Its legacy is an impressive one with flawed neo-noirs like Mulholland Falls (1996) and masterful ones like L.A. Confidential (1997) influenced by it. Towne and Nicholson even revisited the character of Gittes with The Two Jakes (1990) but without Polanski and it wasn’t as well-received, proving that the alchemy of Chinatown, with everything coming together like it did, was impossible to replicate. As of Gittes’ associates tells him at the end of the film, “Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown.”

SOURCES

Dunaway, Faye with Betsy Sharkey. Looking for Gatsby: My Life. Simon & Schuster. 1995.

Evans, Robert. The Kid Stays in the Picture. Hachette Books. 1994.

Iorio, Paul. “Sleuthing Chinatown.” Los Angeles Times. July 8, 1999.

King, Susan. “A Vintage L.A. Story.” Los Angeles Times. November 15, 2004

McGilligan, Patrick. Jack’s Life: A Biography of Jack Nicholson. W.W. Norton & Company. 1995.

Meikle, Denis. Roman Polanski: Odd Man Out. Reynolds & Hearn Ltd. 2006.

Teachout, Terry. “The Perfect Film Score.” Wall Street Journal. July 10, 2009.

Popeye

Popeye (1980) is the film you get when the powers that be entrust a big budget, high-profile project to an idiosyncratic maverick like Robert Altman who proceeds to take the studio’s money and produces a fascinating cinematic oddity. Never one to play it safe, he enlisted fellow iconoclastic artists like musician Harry Nilsson to compose the score, acclaimed playwright Jules Feiffer to write the screenplay and cast comedian Robin Williams, in only his second film role and first starring one, as the titular character. Looking back at it now, it’s amazing that the film ever got made in the first place (it almost didn’t). It is also a powerful reminder of just how safe and formulaic these kinds of films have become over the years (one only has to look as far as Michael Bay’s Transformers movies). And this is due in large part to publicized commercial failures like Popeye, Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York (1977), and Francis Ford Coppola’s One from the Heart (1982), which resulted in Hollywood freezing out these darlings of 1970s American cinema in favor of successful producers like Joel Silver, Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer who helped usher in a flashy style over substance that reflected the materialistic decade of the 1980s.

The film starts off on a dramatic note as we see Popeye (Robin Williams) arrive at the seaside town of Sweethaven on a rowboat during a dark and stormy night. As the opening credits end, night gives way to day and we are introduced to the town and its denizens. This also allows us a chance to marvel at the impressive production design as the entire shanty town of Sweethaven was built from scratch. It looks like a fully-functional, lived-in place much like the grungy, frontier town in Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971).

As soon as Popeye sets foot on the docks he’s greeted by the local taxman (Donald Moffat) and hit with a ridiculous number of taxes (docking tax, new-in-town tax, leaving-your-junk-around-the-warf tax, and so on). It also gives us the first indication of Robin Williams’ take on Popeye, which is muttering to others and mostly to himself. In this respect, his portrayal of the iconic sailor is reminiscent of Elliott Gould’s version of Philip Marlowe in Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973). Popeye is on a journey to find his estranged father who left him when he was a baby. In a nice touch, he keeps an empty frame next to his bed with the words, “Me Poppa” scrawled where a picture should be.

The director applies his trademark layered audio tracks with a nicely orchestrated dinner sequence at the Oyl boarding house where Popeye. Olive (Shelley Duvall) and her family talk about Bluto (Paul L. Smith), her fiancé and a large man who resides on a ship known as the Vile Body. He enforces the various town ordinances, in particular, the 9 p.m. curfew where all the town lights must be out. Popeye gets ready to eat only to realize by the end of the scene that dinner is over and everyone has left the table. He mutters bemusedly to no one in particular, “Never good to be too full, I guess.”

The film’s first action sequence takes place at a local diner when six ruffians (including a young Dennis Franz) make fun of Popeye’s pappy and provoke him into showcasing his formidable brawling skills. Altman employs gifted physical performers to give the fight a stylized look as innocent bystanders do all kinds of pratfalls trying to avoid getting pulled into the fracas. It is refreshing to see a pre-CGI comic book adaptation eschew expensive special effects in favor of the natural physical prowess of an actor. For someone not known for action/adventure, the action sequences, especially Popeye’s fight with a giant octopus, are inventively staged by Altman. He favors long shots so that you can see all the action and, in the case of the climactic battle between Bluto and Popeye, the actors do most of their own stunts.

Popeye was Williams’ first starring role in a film and he certainly picked an ambitious one, playing an iconic character first popularized in comic strip form in the 1930s. It was the Fleischer brothers cartoons from that era that most people remember and was the criteria which many critics used to criticize his performance. This is quite unfair as Altman and Feiffer were trying to evoke the Popeye of E.C. Segar’s original comic strip. The actor does his best to ground the character while adding an air of whimsy to most of the things he says. Popeye is content to take things in stride, but isn’t afraid to stand up for himself. Williams, ever the expressive performer, is ideally cast as Popeye. The comedian grimaces and mutters his way through the film in a way that must’ve freaked out the studio who fretted so much about whether audiences would understand anything he said or not, forcing him to re-record Popeye’s dialogue

If there was any actress that was born to play Olive Oyl it would be Shelley Duvall. With her tall, slender frame and large expressive eyes, she does a fantastic job of embodying the high-strung Olive. There’s an adorable dorkiness to Duvall’s take on the character that is quite endearing. It also helps that she has good chemistry with Williams. They have a nice scene together when Popeye and Olive argue over how best to parent Swee’Pea (Wesley Ivan Hurt), a baby they found abandoned in a basket the night before. There’s another scene with the kid where Popeye and Olive serenade each other under the guise of singing the baby to sleep that is charming in its sincerity. The highlight of their sweet romance (and of Duvall’s performance) is when Olive serenades Popeye by singing “He Needs Me,” which is one of the loveliest, most fanciful love songs. Duvall pulls it off as Olive pines for Popeye by singing and dancing her way into his heart. The song would be resurrected years later by Altman devotee Paul Thomas Anderson in his own quirky romantic comedy Punch-Drunk Love (2002).

Far from the cinematic trainwreck that critics of the time pronounced it to be, Popeye is an engaging, fun fairy tale of a film that doesn’t have a cynical or crass bone in its body. This sincerity extends to Harry Nilsson’s delightful songs full of innocence and romance that probably flew over a lot of kids’ heads at the time. I know it did with me and it took years for me to appreciate the artistry that went into them. The decision to include numerous musical numbers and have the actors sing was certainly a ballsy one and adds to the stylized feel of the entire film. Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall were not accomplished singers and so having them to try carry a tune wasn’t always pleasing to the ear, but in the case of “He Needs Me” there is a sweet simplicity that works. There is an unpolished yearning in Duvall’s voice that you wouldn’t get in the same way with a professional singer.

  

After seeing the Broadway musical adaptation of Annie in 1977, Hollywood producer Robert Evans was so taken with it that he pursued the film rights. However, he was outbid for them. He still had his heart set on adapting a comic strip as a movie musical. As luck would have it a Paramount Studio executive reminded him that they had the rights to Popeye. Evans decided he would produce it. He was good friends with actor Dustin Hoffman and contacted him about playing the titular character.

Executive producer Richard Sylbert suggested Evans contact screenwriter Jules Feiffer (Little Murders) to write the screenplay. He jumped at the opportunity because the writer hadn’t had a script produced into a film since the early 1970s and idolized the work of E.C. Segar who created Popeye. Feiffer agreed to do it if he could replicate the tone of the comic strip and not the animated Fleischer brothers short films from the late ‘30s and early 1940s. Evans agreed, but under the condition that the film appeal to both adults and kids. Feiffer started by reading a book about Segar’s career. He found himself drawn to how civil Popeye was “about the awfulness of everybody,” and “a genuine charm … a civility towards his view of the universe.” Feiffer decided to have the romance between Popeye and Olive Oyl as the heart of the film while also having the sailor search for his estranged father.

It was soon announced that Lily Tomlin would play Olive Oyl and Hal Ashby was hired to direct. To prepare for the role, Hoffman took tap-dancing lessons and worked with a choreographer. During the rewriting process, Feiffer and Hoffman began to drift apart for reasons that are still unclear. Feiffer said, “It ended up just very unfriendly, and I still don’t remember finding out a damn thing about what he felt about the movie.” Incredibly, Evans sided with Feiffer and not his good friend Hoffman who subsequently left the project. With the lack of a bankable movie star, the project fell apart with studio executives losing interest and Ashby and Tomlin moving on to other films.

Evans stuck with the project and claimed that the material was so strong anyone could play Popeye even up and coming comedian Robin Williams who was enjoying success on the Mork and Mindy television show. Paramount executives loved the idea of Williams as Popeye and the project picked up momentum with Gilda Radner being considered for Olive Oyl thanks to the success of Saturday Night Live. Evans still needed a director. Arthur Penn and Mike Nichols were considered, but Robert Altman received a copy of the script. He was interested, but only if he would have creative control. Evans met with Altman and was impressed with his take on the material. He offered the director the job much to the chagrin of the studio who wanted to go with a more commercially viable director. At the time, Altman was coming off successive box office failures. However, Evans stood by Altman with Williams supporting him as well. The studio relented and Evans said, “It’s got to be exciting to make it. I’d rather take a chance on falling on my ass but possibly hitting magic than just make something that’s predictable.”

While Evans went off to Texas, overseeing preparations for Urban Cowboy (1980), Altman began populating the cast and crew with his regulars, including the likes of Paul Dooley and Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl, which didn’t sit well with studio executives that needed convincing. Most interestingly, Altman hired singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson to compose the score despite others warning him against it. Williams supported the decision early on and after meeting the man, Altman was convinced.

Feiffer had his reservations about Altman because he knew of the director’s reputation for straying from the script and encouraging improvisation from his actors. His initial meetings with the director did little to reassure him. Feiffer also didn’t like the lyrics Nilsson wrote for many of the songs as he felt they conflicted with his script. Altman wasn’t convinced that he would be able to work with Evans or Feiffer who didn’t think he could work with Altman or Nilsson. Altman and Feiffer got along during meetings about the script, but once filming began the latter was unhappy with Williams’ improvisations. He complained to Altman who in turn complained about Feiffer to Evans. Altman told Feiffer to speak with Williams privately and that smoothed things over.

Altman loved shooting on location and away from the intrusive presence of the studio. To this end, he picked the island of Malta for the film. The remote location had its setback, however, as the production was plagued by bad weather, special effects problems, and accidents and injuries during filming which resulted in the production going $20+ million over budget. The production ran into difficulties with the creation of Popeye’s iconic muscular forearms which didn’t look right. Williams remembered that they were like “wearing two long gloves that you use to clean the toilet.” After a few tests proved that they didn’t work, the makeup person was fired and an Italian makeup crew was brought in and they did a much better job. Meanwhile, Altman had to film around Williams for almost four weeks while the arms were redesigned.

Due to the isolated location and shooting frequently at night, a lot of alcohol and drugs were consumed by the cast and crew. Altman’s wife, Kathryn remembers, “Everybody was very loaded. A lot of tantrums and fights and tantrums.” Williams concurred: “When we were on Malta, we were on everything but skates. And then they sent the skates in and it got interesting. The open bar at dailies? I think anything, everything was going on.” In addition to the pressures of starring in his first lead role on a big studio film, Williams and wife were not getting along and got into shouting matches after a day of filming had ended.

A six-track studio was built on the island for Nilsson and his musicians. He wrote at least three songs for the film there. Partway through principal photography, Altman did not know the final sequence of songs in the film and this upset the mercurial Nilsson resulting in him leaving the island in a rage. Arranger and conductor Van Dyke Parks took over and completed the score. Most of the tracks that had been laid down were not rerecorded with more polish and Altman liked their raw quality.

Despite all the tension and mishaps during principal photography, Altman cultivated a real sense of community, encouraging the cast and crew to bring family and friends to the location. Movies were flown in for weekend double features. Talent shows were organized and everyone got together to watch dailies. There were also many after hours parties hosted by Altman and his wife.

Far from box office bomb, Popeye made a profit, but the not the kind of numbers the studio was hoping for and this resulted in the film being forever tagged as a commercial flop. Not surprisingly, Popeye received mixed reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, “Popeye then, is lots of fun. It suggests that it is possible to take the broad strokes of a comic strip and turn them into sophisticated entertainment.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “You keep expecting the film to erupt with the kind of boisterousness that is only possible in a musical. It never does. The dances, like the music, are tentative and restrained.” Pauline Kael felt that the film didn’t “come together, though, and much of it is cluttered, squawky, and eerily unfunny … But there are lovely moments – especially when Olive is loping along or singing.” Newsweek magazine’s David Ansen wrote, “This is high-risk chemistry, and the results are bizarre … Popeye’s air of alienated whimsy makes for an odd ‘family movie’ indeed.”

At the time, there was a trend to resurrect iconic characters from a bygone era thanks to the success of Superman: The Movie (1978), which begat high-profile commercial and critical failures like Flash Gordon (1980), The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981), Bo Derek’s Tarzan the Ape Man (1981). Unfortunately, Popeye gets lumped in there as well. It was Altman’s swan song with Hollywood and its highly publicized failure effectively relegated him to outsider status for the rest of the ‘80s until his triumphant return with The Player (1992).

SOURCES

McGilligan, Patrick. Robert Altman: Jumping Off the Cliff. St. Martin’s Press. 1989.

Zuckoff, Mitchell. Robert Altman: An Oral Biography. Alfred A. Knopf. 2009.