Glengarry Glen Ross

One of the dangers in adapting a stage play into a film is that you won’t be able to break out of the theatricality inherent with so many plays. Fortunately, film director James Foley seemed to be acutely aware of this when he decided to take on Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), an adaptation of David Mamet’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name with the screenplay written by the man himself.

Right from the start, Foley keeps things visually interesting by bathing the film in Giallo-esque lighting that would make Dario Argento proud. Cinematographer Juan Ruiz Anchia photographs two salesmen talking in adjoining telephone booths, bathing them in white and blue light respectively with contrasting red in the background. Not only are these colors of the American flag and thereby making a subtle allusion to the notion that this story is a damning indictment of Capitalism, one of the principles that made the United States what it is today. The two men bitch and gripe to each other about the potential clients they have to cold call and then turn on the charm once they get them on the phone. Welcome to Mamet’s cutthroat world of real estate sales populated by desperate, often cruel men that are driven to make as much money as they can, consequences be damned.

One night, an office of down-on-their-luck salesmen are given the pep talk from hell by a ruthless man named Blake (Alec Baldwin), an executive sent by their bosses Mitch and Murray, on a “mission of mercy” as he sarcastically puts it. He starts off by telling them that they’re all fired. They have a week to get their jobs back by selling as much property as they can. He gives them an additional incentive: first prize is a new Cadillac El Dorado, second prize is a set of steak knives and third prize is, as he puts it, “you’re fired.” If the salesmen do well they will get the new Glengarry leads and the promise of better clients and good money.

Blake delivers an absolutely punishing speech as he belittles them (“You call yourself a salesman, you son of a bitch?”), is downright insulting (“You can’t close shit, you are shit! Hit the bricks, pal and beat it because you are going out!”), and demoralizing by even questioning their manhood. He throws in all sorts of “encouraging” words, like “Get them to sign on the line which is dotted,” and “Always be closing.” Alec Baldwin delivers a blistering performance as Blake. His character was not in the original stage play, Mamet wrote him specifically for the film. In his brief amount of screen time, Baldwin dominates the screen against the likes of Ed Harris and Jack Lemmon as he delivers a devastating monologue with ferocious intensity. At one point, Dave Moss (Ed Harris) asks him, “What's your name?” to which Blake replies, “Fuck you! That's my name. You know why, mister? 'Cause you drove a Hyundai to get here tonight. I drove an $80,000 BMW. That's my name.” Blake is an icy motivational speaker that only motivates the salesmen out of fear of being unemployed, making this scene eerily relevant to our times as that is also the prime motivator for most people trying to hold down a job in our current economic climate.

If there was ever a film that deserved an Academy Award for best ensemble cast then this is it. Glengarry Glen Ross features a dream collection of acting heavyweights: Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Kevin Spacey, Ed Harris, and Alan Arkin. Pacino plays the slickest salesman of the bunch – Ricky Roma, a smooth-talking, well-dressed bullshit artist of the highest order. This is evident in the scenes where Roma spins an incredibly long and convoluted story, seducing a mild-mannered middle-aged man named James Lingk (Jonathan Pryce). It’s a marvel of acting as we watch Pacino do a spectacular verbal tap dance around the actual pitch until the last possible moment when he’s got the guy’s complete and utter confidence – even then he presents the land he’s pushing as an opportunity as opposed to a purchase, preying on Lingk’s insecurity. It’s a brilliant bit of acting as Pacino commands the scene with his mesmerizing presence. Jonathan Pryce is also excellent as he portrays a weak-willed man susceptible to Roma’s polished charms.

Harris plays Moss as an angry man pissed off at the lousy leads (i.e. clients) and is plotting to defect to a rival, Jerry Graff. George Aaronow (Alan Arkin) is a nervous guy unable to close a sit (pitching a client in person) and seems keen on Moss’ plan to steal the new Glengarry leads and sell them to the competition. John Williamson (Kevin Spacey) is the office manager, a pencil pusher that shows little remorse in what happens to his staff. He’s a smug son-of-a-bitch who takes a particular interest in Shelley "The Machine" Levene’s (Jack Lemmon) plight. Levene is an older salesman trying to make enough money to pay off mounting medical bills for his sick daughter, which colors everything he does.

Levene is a pathetic character desperate to keep his job and still capable of a slick sales pitch (in a nice touch, he often refers to an imaginary secretary named Grace while calling a potential client on the phone), it’s just his judgment that’s off as he finds out with devastating consequences later on in the film. Jack Lemmon somehow manages to make him sympathetic. We see both sides of Levene in a scene where he tries to sell property to a man (Bruce Altman) in his home. The man is not interested and despite Levene's desperate attempts, asks him to leave. It is an increasingly uncomfortable scene that is hard to watch as the man finally and firmly rebuffs Levene. Your heart really goes out to Lemmon's character as he dejectedly walks back out into the pouring rain, looking very much like a drowned rat. It is to Lemmon’s incredible skill as an actor that he makes you care about such a pitiful man

Director Foley successfully transfers Mamet's play to the big screen by creating atmospheric visuals. There is a somber mood that permeates almost every scene. The first half of the film takes place at night during an oppressive rainstorm. Anchia's rich, textured cinematography is the key ingredient in giving Mamet's play a cinematic look. He relied on low lighting and shadows with blues, greens and reds for the first part of the film. The second part adhered to a monochromatic blue-grey color scheme. All the locations are given their own distinctive color scheme, in particular, the hellish red/navy blue of the Chinese restaurant that the salesmen frequent. The overall atmosphere is dark, like that of a film noir.

And then there is Mamet's trademark hard-boiled dialogue or “Mamet speak” as it is known. It has a sharp, staccato quality to it that cuts right to the point with characters often interrupting each other or their dialogue overlapping as evident in the scene where Moss tells Aaronow of his plans to rob their office. One thing that is evident in Glengarry Glen Ross is just how good Mamet is at writing amusing dialogue. For example, at one point, Williamson asks where Roma is to which Moss replies, “Well, I'm not a leash so I don't know, do I?” Mamet’s characters talk like they are thinking about what they are going to say next as they are saying it — much like in real life.

David Mamet’s play was first performed in 1983 at the National Theater of London and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984. That same year it made its United States debut in the playwright’s hometown of Chicago before moving to Broadway. Shortly thereafter, producer Jerry Tokofsky (Dreamscape) read the play on a trip to New York City in 1985 at the suggestion of director Irvin Kershner who wanted to make it into a film. Tokofsky then saw it on Broadway and contacted Mamet. The playwright wanted $500,000 for the film rights and another $500,000 to write the screenplay to which the producer agreed. Washington, D.C.-based B-movie producer Stanley R. Zupnik was looking for A-list material and co-produced two previous Tokofsky films. Zupnik had seen Glengarry Glen Ross on Broadway and found the plot confusing. He also knew of its reputation in Hollywood as being a commercially difficult project but figured that he and Tokofsky could cut a deal with a cable company.

During this time, Al Pacino and Alec Baldwin became interested in Glengarry Glen Ross but without any concrete financing both Kershner and the actors dropped out for various reasons. Pacino had originally wanted to do the play on Broadway but was doing another Mamet production, American Buffalo, in London at the time. Director James Foley read the script in early 1991 and was hired to direct only to leave the project soon afterwards. By March 1991, Tokofsky contacted Baldwin and practically begged him to reconsider doing the film. The producer remembers, “Alec said: ‘I’ve read 25 scripts and nothing is as good as this. O.K. If you make it, I’ll do it.’” This prompted Foley and Pacino to get back on board with Jack Lemmon agreeing to do it as well. Foley and Pacino arranged an informal reading with Lemmon in Los Angeles. From this point, Foley and Pacino had subsequent readings with several other actors. Lemmon remembers, “Some of the best damn actors you’re ever going to see came in and read and I’m talking about names.” Alan Arkin originally wasn’t interested in doing the film because he didn’t like the character he was asked to portray but fortunately his wife, manager and agent pushed him to do it. Tokofsky’s lawyer called a meeting at the Creative Artists’ Agency, who represented many of the actors involved, and asked for their help. CAA showed little interest but two of their clients – Ed Harris and Kevin Spacey – soon joined the cast.

Due to the uncompromising subject matter and abrasive language, no major studio wanted to finance Glengarry Glen Ross even with actors like Pacino and Lemmon attached. Financing ended up coming from cable and video companies, a German television station, an Australian movie theater chain, several banks, and, finally, New Line Cinema over the course of four years. Because of the film’s modest budget of $12.5 million, many of the actors took significant pay cuts do it. For example, Pacino cut his per-movie price from $6 million to $1.5 million. This didn’t stop other actors, like Robert De Niro, Bruce Willis, Joe Mantegna, and Richard Gere from expressing an interest in the film.

Once the cast was assembled, they spent three weeks in rehearsals. The budget was set at $12.5 million with filming beginning in August 1991 at the Kaufman Astoria soundstage in Queens, New York and on location in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn over 39 days. Ed Harris remembers, “There were five and six-page scenes we would shoot all at once. It was more like doing a play at times [when] you’d get the continuity going.” Arkin said of the script, “What made it [challenging] was the language and the rhythms, which are enormously difficult to absorb.” During principal photography, Tokofsky and his producing partner Zupnik had a falling out over credit for the film. Upon the film’s release, Tokofsky sued to strip Zupnik of his producer’s credit and share of the producer’s fee. Zupnik claimed that he personally put up $2 million of the film’s budget and countersued, claiming that Tokofsky was fired for embezzlement, which seems rather ironic considering the subject matter of the film. To date neither one of them has gone on to produce another film with the lone exception of The Grass Harp in 1995 by Tokofsky.

Glengarry Glen Ross received very positive reviews from most mainstream critics. Roger Ebert gave it three out of four stars and wrote, “There is a duet between Harris and Arkin that is one of the best things Mamet has written. They speculate about the near-legendary ‘good leads’ that Spacey allegedly has locked in his office. What if someone broke into the office and stole the leads? Harris and Arkin discuss it, neither one quite saying out loud what's on his mind.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “Mr. Mamet has the vision of a moralist outside of time. He never nudges the audience toward what it's supposed to think. He also has an evil angel's gift for a spoken language that sounds realistic, but is a kind of shorthand for psychic desperation.” Time magazine’s Richard Corliss wrote, “A peerless ensemble of actors fills Glengarry Glen Ross with audible glares and shudders. The play was a zippy black comedy about predators in twilight; the film is a photo-essay, shot in morgue closeup, about the difficulty most people have convincing themselves that what they do matters.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film an “A” rating and Owen Gleiberman praised Lemmon’s performance: “And Jack Lemmon, an actor I've seldom been able to watch without squirming myself, is a revelation. Lemmon hasn't abandoned his familiar mannerisms — the hammy, ingratiating whine, the tugging-at-the-collar nervousness. This time, though, he trots out his stale actor's gimmicks knowingly, making them a satirical extension of the character's own weariness.” Newsweek magazine’s David Ansen wrote, “Glengarry is a compelling look at one of the closed-out items in the catalog of American dreams.”

In his review for the Chicago Reader, Jonathan Rosenbaum praised Foley’s direction: “Foley's mise en scene is so energetic and purposeful (he's especially adept in using semicircular pans) that the unexpected use of a 'Scope format seems fully justified, even in a drama where lives are resurrected and destroyed according to the value of offscreen pieces of paper.” However, in his review for the Washington Post, Desson Howe was not thrilled with Foley’s contributions: “But director James Foley's attempts to ‘open up’ the play to the outside world are dismal. The play takes place in the salesmen's office and a Chinese restaurant. Foley doesn't add much more than the street between. If his intention is to create a sense of claustrophobia, he also creates the (presumably) unwanted effect of a soundstage. There is no evidence of life outside the immediate world of the movie.”

It takes a certain kind of personality to sell something that people don't need but convincing them that they do. There is a whiff of pathetic desperation to Mamet’s salesmen. It seems like their best days are behind them. It’s a vicious circle of sorts – they can’t get access to new, potentially good clients unless they close some of their old ones and they are all deadbeats. These salesmen will say and do anything to keep their job, which begs the question: is that what it takes to be a good salesperson? Ed Harris believes that the film is “about the evils of the free enterprise system. You’ve got these guys selling bogus real estate and they’re upset because they can’t sell it.” The film is a rather timely one as it addresses tough economic times, something that we are experiencing now. One of the reasons Mamet’s characters have such a hard time selling these properties is because nobody has any money and what they do have they’re holding onto it. First performed on stage in the “Greed is good” 1980s, Glengarry Glen Ross was a scathing indictment of the free enterprise system. The film was made in the early 1990s when the economy was doing well and now it has become relevant once again in the lean and mean post-9/11 New Millennium.

SOURCES

Blanchard, Jayne M. "Glengarry Hits the Screen with the Joys of Male Angst." Washington Times. September 27, 1992.

"Glengarry Glen Ross Production Notes". New Line Cinema Press Kit. 1992.

Hartl, John. "Director is Happy to put Big Stars in Film Version of Mamet Play." Seattle Times. September 28, 1992.

Powers, William F. "Pacino, Mamet and . . . Zupnik; Who? The Local Real Estate Mogul Behind Glengarry." The Washington Post. October 4, 1992.

Weinraub, Bernard. "The Glengarry Math: Add Money and Stars, then Subtract Ego." The New York Times. October 12, 1992.

The Rocketeer

With the massive commercial success of Tim Burton’s Batman (1989), other Hollywood studios scrambled to find their own comic book franchise in the hopes of replicating the boffo box office of the Caped Crusader. With the notable exception of Dick Tracy (1990), most of these films failed to appeal to a mainstream audience. These included pulp serial heroes The Shadow (1994) and The Phantom (1996), and the independent comic book The Rocketeer. Originally created by the late Dave Stevens, it paid homage to the classic pulp serials of the 1930s. For some reason, Disney decided that it would be their tent-pole summer blockbuster for 1991, cast two unproven leads – Billy Campbell and Jennifer Connelly – and hired Steven Spielberg protégé, Joe Johnston to direct. Despite promoting the hell out of it and spending a ton of money on merchandising, The Rocketeer (1991) underperformed at the box office.

It’s a shame because out of the lot of retro comic book films done in the 1990s, The Rocketeer was the best one and the most faithful to its source material. While both The Shadow and The Phantom looked great, they were flawed either in casting or with their screenplays while Dick Tracy was top-heavy with villains and director (and star) Warren Beatty’s ego, but The Rocketeer had the advantage of its creator actually being involved in bringing his vision to the big screen. The end result was a fun, engaging B-movie straight out Classic Hollywood Cinema albeit with A-list production values. The film has quietly cultivated a cult following and deserves to be rediscovered.

Cliff Secord (Billy Campbell) is a young, hotshot pilot who races planes for a living with the help of his trusted mechanic and good friend Peevy (Alan Arkin). One day, while out testing his new plane, Cliff stumbles across an experimental jetpack stolen from Howard Hughes (Terry O’Quinn). Soon, he finds himself mixed up with the FBI, who want to recover it, and unscrupulous gangsters who stole it in the first place. Also thrown into the mix is Neville Sinclair (Timothy Dalton), an Errol Flynn-type matinee idol who wants the jetpack for his own nefarious agenda. Cliff’s beautiful girlfriend Jenny Blake (Jennifer Connelly) is an aspiring actress who catches Sinclair’s eye which further complicates Cliff’s life. With Peevy’s help, Cliff figures out how to use the jetpack and fashions himself an alter ego by the name of the Rocketeer.

Billy Campbell does a fine job as the scrappy Cliff Secord. He certainly looks the part and has great chemistry with co-star Jennifer Connelly (they fell in love while making the film). Connelly plays Jenny as the gorgeous girl-next-door and looks like she stepped out of a 1930s film. Jenny loves Cliff but dreams of being a movie star, not hanging around the airfield. Connelly, with her curvy figure, shows off her outfits well and does the best with what is ostensibly a damsel in distress role.

Timothy Dalton has a lot of fun playing the dashing cad as evident in the scene where he “accidentally” wounds a fellow actor during filming for stealing a scene form him. Sinclair is a vain movie star with big plans and there’s a glimmer in Dalton’s eye as he relishes playing the dastardly baddie. Alan Arkin is also good in the role of Peevy – part absent-minded professor-type and part father figure to Cliff.

The Rocketeer features a solid supporting cast with the likes of Ed Lauter playing a no-nonsense FBI agent, Terry O’Quinn as the brilliant Howard Hughes, Jon Polito as the money-grubbing airfield owner, and Paul Sorvino as a blustery gangster begrudgingly in league with Sinclair. His casting is a nice nod to the patriarchal mobster he played in GoodFellas (1990) only a lot less menacing (this is Disney after all). The always entertaining O’Quinn is particularly fun to watch as a dashing Hughes that could have easily stepped out of Francis Ford Coppola’s love letter to American ingenuity, Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988).

The attention to period detail, in particular the vintage planes, is one The Rocketeer’s strengths. The film gets it right with the clothes that people wear and how they speak so that you feel transported back to this era in a way that The Phantom and The Shadow were unable to do. The recreation of old school opulence is fantastic as evident in the South Seas nightclub sequence where Sinclair works his charms on Jenny. Even Joe Johnston’s direction feels like a throwback to classic Hollywood filmmaking as he gives the flying sequences the proper visual flair that they deserve. He wisely keeps things simple, never trying to get too fancy or show-offy as he takes a page out of his mentor, Steven Spielberg’s book. There’s never any confusion as to what is happening or where everyone is – something that seems to be missing from a lot of action films thanks to the popularity of the Bourne films. Johnston is an interesting journeyman director who’s best work is old school action/adventure films, like Hidalgo (2004), or slice-of-life Americana, like October Sky (1999), which is why he was the wrong choice to helm the ill-fated reboot of The Wolfman (2010) and the right director for the upcoming Captain America film.

Filmmaker Steve Miner (Friday the 13th, Parts II and III) was the first person to option the film rights to Dave Stevens’ independent comic book The Rocketeer but he ended up straying too far from the original concept and his version died an early death. Screenwriters Danny Bilson and Paul DeMeo (Trancers and Zone Troopers) were given the option in 1985. Stevens liked them because “their ideas for The Rocketeer were heartfelt and affectionate tributes to the 1930’s with all the right dialogue and atmosphere. Most people would approach my characters contemporarily, but Danny and Paul saw them as pre-war mugs.” Their subsequent screenplay kept the comic book’s basic plot intact but fleshed it out to include the Hollywood setting and the climactic battle against a Nazi zeppelin. They also tweaked Cliff’s girlfriend to avoid comparisons (and legal hassles) to Bettie Page (Stevens’ original inspiration), changing her from a nude pin-up model to a Hollywood extra while also changing her name from Betty to Jenny.

Bilson and DeMeo submitted their seven-page outline to Disney in 1986. They studio put the script through an endless series of revisions and, at one point, frustrated by the seemingly endless process, the two screenwriters talked to Stevens about doing The Rocketeer as a smaller film shot in black and white. The involvement of Disney put the project on a much bigger level as the writers remembered, “you can imagine the commitment Disney was making to develop a series of movies around a character. They even called it their Raiders of the Lost Ark.” With Stevens’ input, Bilson and DeMeo developed their script with director William Dear (Harry and the Hendersons) who changed the zeppelin at the film’s climax to a submarine. Over five years, the mercurial studio fired and rehired Bilson and DeMeo three times. DeMeo said, “Disney felt that they needed a different approach to the script, which meant bringing in someone else. But those scripts were thrown out, and we were always brought back on.”

They found this way of working very frustrating as the studio would like “excised dialogue three months later. Scenes that had been thrown out two years ago were put back in. what was the point?” Disney’s biggest problem with the script was all of the period slang peppered throughout. Executives were worried that audiences wouldn’t understand what the characters were saying. One of their more significant revisions over this time period was to make Cliff and Jenny’s “attraction more believable … how do we bring Jenny into the story and revolve it around her, and not just create someone who’s kidnapped and has to be saved?” DeMeo said. In 1990, their third major rewrite finally got the greenlight from Disney. However, when the studio acquired the rights to the Dick Tracy film from Universal Studios, DeMeo was worried that executives would dump The Rocketeer in favor of the much more high-profile project. However, when Dick Tracy failed to perform as well at the box office as Disney had hoped, DeMeo’s fears subsided.

All kinds of actors were considered for the role of Cliff Secord, including Bill Paxton, who almost got it, and Vincent D’Onofrio, who was offered the role but turned it down. Johnston wanted to cast an unknown but the studio wanted a Tom Cruise. According to the director, “Fortunately, all of the people they wanted didn’t want to do it.” Finally, Billy Campbell was cast as Cliff. Prior to this film, his biggest role to date was regular on the Michael Mann-produced television show, Crime Story. For the role of Jenny, Sherilyn Fenn, Kelly Preston, Diane Lane, and Elizabeth McGovern were all considered but lost out to Jennifer Connelly, fresh from making the comedy, Career Opportunities (1991). Dave Stevens wanted Lloyd Bridges to play Peevy but he turned the film down and Alan Arkin was cast instead. The Neville Sinclair role was offered to Jeremy Irons and Charles Dance before Timothy Dalton accepted the role.

Campbell wasn’t familiar with Stevens’ comic book when he got the part but quickly read it and books on aviation while also listening to period music. The actor also had a fear of flying but overcame it with the help of the film’s aerial coordinator Craig Hosking. To ensure Campbell’s safety, he was doubled for almost all of the Rocketeer’s flying sequences. Hosking said, “What makes The Rocketeer so unique was having several one-of-a-kind planes that hadn’t flown in years,” and this included a 1916 standard bi-wing, round-nosed, small-winged Gee Bee plane.

The numerous delays forced William Dear to leave the production and director Joe Johnston signed on to direct. He was a fan of the comic book and when he inquired about its film rights was told that Disney already had it in development. After making Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989), he was not eager to work with Disney again because of the battles he had with the studio. However, in order to get a chance to direct Honey he had to sign a contract giving the studio the option for two more films – standard industry practice.” They’ll sign anybody to a three-picture deal, just in case you do a good movie,” Johnston said.

After Honey was a big box office hit, he was offered movies like White Fang (1991) and Arachnophobia (1990) – all of which he turned down. It became obvious that Disney was going to hold Johnston to his commitment. Fortunately, he wanted to direct The Rocketeer. Johnston said, “One of the great appeals of Stevens’ work was his attention to detail, which really placed the reader in the period. I’ve tried to do the same thing cinematically.” Pre-production on the film started in early 1990 with producer Larry Franco in charge of securing locations for the film. He found an abandoned World War II landing strip in Santa Maria, which the filmmakers used to build the mythical Chaplin Air Field. The Rocketeer’s attack on the Nazi zeppelin was filmed near the Magic Mountain amusement park in Indian Dunes. The film was shot over 96 days and ended up going over schedule due to weather and mechanical problems.

When the production started, the studio agreed to a $25 million budget and 76-day shooting schedule despite the original schedule was set for 96 days. Johnston knew it would cost more and take longer. In anticipation of this, he scheduled scenes that would take more time and cost more money at the end of the shoot so that it would cost the studio more to fire him then to let him finish. After all the dust settled, the budget escalated and the film took 96 days to shoot. Disney also inundated him with written notes about a variety of issues, from costumes to the script. The director’s solution was to have his assistant read them, summarize them and write replies for him. He also fought the studio over the tone of the film. Originally, it was going to be geared more towards adults and then Disney changed their minds and wanted to attract families instead.

The Rocketeer received mixed to positive reviews. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, “The virtues of the movie are in its wide-eyed credulity, its sense of wonder.” Rolling Stone magazine’s Peter Travers enjoyed Timothy Dalton’s performance: “An elegant if stiff James Bond, Dalton finally loosens up onscreen and steals every scene he's in. He's a swashbuckling Dr. Strangelove.” Leonard Maltin concurred and found that the film, “captures the look of the '30s, as well as the gee-whiz innocence of Saturday matinée serials, but it's talky and takes too much time to get where it's going. Dalton has fun as a villain patterned after Errol Flynn.”

However, The New York Times’ Janet Maslin wrote, “Cliff's good deeds never have any particular stature, even though they supposedly involve earthshaking world affairs. Within the film itself, the polarities of good and evil are too indistinct to matter. Any hint of real risk or sacrifice comes from the other, better films that are invoked.” In his review for the Washington Post, Hal Hinson wrote, “Partly by design, partly by accident, The Rocketeer seems better suited to an audience of kiddies than adults. It stays on its feet and doesn't ask too much of us, and that may be enticement enough for younger folks. It's a humble little item, actually, easily digested and easily forgotten.”

Like The Right Stuff (1983) before it, The Rocketeer is a love letter to the wonders of aviation and the brave souls that risked their lives pushing the envelope. In a nice touch, Cliff even chews Beeman’s gum, the same kind that Chuck Yeager uses in The Right Stuff. The comic book is masterfully translated to the big screen, right down to recreating the iconic Bull Dog Diner. The filmmakers also got all the details of Cliff and his alter ego right, including the casting of Billy Campbell. The same goes for Jenny, although, because Disney backed the film, they downplayed the blatant homage her character was to famous pin-up model Bettie Page. With Dave Stevens untimely passing in 2008, watching this film is now a bittersweet experience but there is some comfort in that at least he got to see his prized creation brought vividly to life even if failed to catch on with the mainstream movie-going public. The Rocketeer is flat-out wholesome fun with nothing more on its mind than to tell an entertaining story and take us on an exciting adventure.

Also, check Mr. Peel's take on the film at his blog.

SOURCES

Arar, Yardeina. “Honey…They Shrunk His Rocketeer Budget.” Los Angeles Daily News. June 24, 1991.

Bonin, Liane. “Way of the Hunk.” Entertainment Weekly. September 8, 2000.

Cagle, Jess. “Bill Paxton.” Entertainment Weekly. July 19, 1991.

“Blast Off!” Entertainment Weekly. July 12, 1991.

“Rocketeer to the Rescue.” Prevue. August 1991

Schweiger, Daniel. “Rocketeer.” Cinefantastique. August 1991.