Speed Racer

In retrospect, the Wachowski brothers (at the time, Larry and Andy) peaked critically and commercially with The Matrix trilogy. The good will they endeared with the first film gradually dissipated until the full-on backlash came with the third installment from which they’ve never recovered. They continue to make ambitious, expensive sci-fi epics like Cloud Atlas (2012) and Jupiter Ascending (2015) to routinely negative reviews and lackluster box office returns.

It started with Speed Racer (2008), the Wachowskis’ attempt to reach a broader audience by making a family film based on the popular Japanese anime and manga of the same name. The film was high-profile flop, getting savaged by critics and failing to come close to recouping its pricey $120 million budget. In recent years, the film has begun to undergo something of a critical re-evaluation and I’ve always been struck by its strong visual sense and its touching ode to the familial bond as well as its thinly-veiled critique of the destructive effect of corporate greed on the purity of sports.

The young Speed Racer we first meet is a hyperactive dreamer that fantasizes about racing fast cars just like his older brother Rex (Scott Porter) whom he idolizes. He would rather spend all of his time at the racetrack hanging out with his brother than in school. Rex teaches his younger brother everything he knows, like how to use his instincts and his senses to race. It’s a wonderful scene that provides crucial insight into what motivates Speed to race – the love of the sport and of his brother who died tragically in a race.

The Wachowskis also use this scene to establish the film’s striking visual sense – a hyper-stylized, vibrant color scheme that hasn’t been seen to this degree since Warren Beatty’s bold take on Dick Tracy (1990). Speaking of Beatty’s opus, Cruncher Block (John Benfield) and his cartoonish goons (including one with the most glorious set of mutton chops I’ve ever seen) with their tommy guns seem like a nod to that film, albeit with a modern twist. Establishing the world of Speed Racer right from the get-go is an important decision because it let’s us know that this is a fantasy world with its own look, much like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004) or Sin City (2005). The Wachowskis also introduce their innovative take on car racing and car chases, employing the immersive, time-bending aesthetic of the fight sequences in The Matrix films to Speed Racer, dubbed, appropriately enough, “car-fu.”

The flashbacks not only establish the emotional bond between Speed and Rex over racing but shows the cut-throat tactics rival racing teams will employ when a bomb is delivered to Speed’s home, only to be quickly dealt with by his brother. It is ominous foreshadowing of the lengths rival teams will go to in order to stop Speed.

The dilemma Speed (Emile Hirsch) faces comes in the form of E.P. Arnold Royalton (Roger Allam), the smug, super rich owner of Royalton Industries, and who courts the young driver to race for his team, enticing him with a lavish lifestyle and unlimited resources. The Wachowskis make a point of contrasting Royalton’s calculated corporate culture with its obedient, uniformed employees, automated car factory and rigorously physically trained racers with the Racer team that still works out of Pops (John Goodman) garage where he and Sparky (Kick Gurry) spend weeks building a car with their own hands. They are supported by a small team of people that consist of Speed’s mom (Susan Sarandon), his little brother Spritle (Paulie Litt), and Speed’s girlfriend Trixie (Christina Ricci).

After rebuffing Royalton’s advances, Speed loses his next race, which leaves him disillusioned. It takes his mom to remind him what is important in life when she tells him, “When I watch you do some of the things you do I feel like I’m watching someone paint or make music. I go to the races to watch you make art and it’s beautiful and inspiring and everything art should be.” This passionate speech is the heart of the film and perfectly encapsulates its central theme. The rest of the film depicts Speed’s mission to expose Royalton’s corrupt practices with the help of the mysterious Racer X (Matthew Fox).

Emile Hirsch brings his trademark intensity to the role and it is interesting to see an actor who mostly plies his trade in challenging independent cinema bring that approach to a big budget Hollywood blockbuster. He manages to not get lost amidst all the eye-popping visual effects and has decent chemistry with Christina Ricci, whose big eyes and exuberant take on Trixie, resembles a live-action anime character.

John Goodman gets to engage in a couple of action sequences and, more importantly, a meaningful scene where Pops has a heart-to-heart talk with Speed. Veteran character actors like Goodman and Susan Sarandon tend to get lost in big budget blockbusters like this one – relegated to the margins in favor of CGI set pieces but the Wachowskis make sure that they are given moments to actually act and emote. Both of their moments occur at pivotal moments in the film where their characters give their son important advice about life.

Whole essays could be written about Speed Racer’s bold, visual aesthetic. For example, as Racer X’s attack on Cruncher Block’s mobile hang-out is chock-a-block with saturated reds and midnight blues that is pure visual catnip. The film’s style is its substance as the Wachowskis pay homage to the original anime while also making it uniquely their own and in doing so create a very personal movie within the studio system. One can see racing as a metaphor for filmmaking and the Wachowskis seeing themselves as Speed. Like, their principled protagonist, they do not want to lose their personal touch by being seduced with the lavish riches the studios can provide. Like Speed, they must remain true to themselves and the love for their art.

This is evident early on in a scene where Speed tells Royalton why he can’t be a part of his team by recounting a story of when he was young, staying up late one night with his father watching a vintage car race and how that rekindled his love for racing after his brother died. They got caught up in the race as if they were watching it for the first time – “But for Pops it isn’t just as a sport. It’s way more important than that. It’s like a religion.” One gets the feeling that is exactly how the Wachowskis feel about cinema. Naturally, Royalton mistakes Speed’s passion for naiveté and ridicules him, his glad-handing façade disappearing as he shows his true colors. He gives Speed a history lesson, claiming that competitive car racing is fueled by corporate greed and races like the iconic Grand Prix are fixed. He even goes so far as to threaten Speed, telling him that he won’t finish the next race and he’ll ruin Pop’s business.

The film’s innovative style extends to the flashback techniques the Wachowskis employ, complete with stylish scene transitions that succinctly provide crucial motivation for key drivers in an impending race. The eye-popping visuals are unleashed in the Casa Cristo 5000, a deadly off-road race that killed Rex. All bets are off in this race as many drivers employ a myriad of dirty tricks, like shooting green goop at a rival, blades coming out of hubcaps, a sledgehammer launched from underneath a car, and one vehicle that catapult launches a nest of angry bees onto a rival’s car. The action is fast and furious as the Wachowskis are not bound by the traditional rules of physics and this allows them to embody the dynamics of a live-action cartoon in a way that is audacious and inventive as well as pure visual eye candy. This race lays the groundwork for the final one, which comes across as trippy fusion of Rollerball (1975) and Tron (1982) as all the other racers try to take out Speed – it’s the honest racer against a rigged system.

In fact, Rex gives up everything in order to protect his family. He turns his back on them, becomes a dirty racer and ultimately sacrifices his life. The Wachowskis make a point of showing the impact it has on his family. Once Speed becomes a professional racer he constantly lives in the shadow of Rex, honoring his memory and his accomplishments by refusing to beat his records, even though he could. For Speed, it is more than beating records and winning races – it’s about making his parents proud and racing for the sheer love of the sport.

The original 1960s Speed Racer cartoon was the Wachowskis’ introduction to Japanese animation or anime and the impetus for making the film was that “they wanted to do something their nephews and nieces could watch,” said producer Joel Silver in an interview. He had been trying to make a film adaptation since the early 1990s with Vince Vaughn, at one point, campaigning to play Racer X and the various others, like Johnny Depp and music video director Hype Williams, circling the project. Silver acquired the rights in 1996 and hired eight different screenwriters to crack adapting the property but none of them satisfied the demanding producer. While working with the Wachowskis on V for Vendetta (2005), he asked them if they’d be interested in making it. They were hesitant at first but agreed if they could bring something unique to the material.

For the look of the film, production designer Owen Paterson wanted something “quite timeless, retro and midcentury, but set some time in the future,” creating “a parallel world, an exaggeration of color and action and images.” According to visual effects supervisor John Gaeta, they set out to “create something that’s much more fantastical than what we saw in The Matrix films.” They took the idea that in animation there is no matching perspective between the background and foreground and applied photographic techniques so that they had a live-action film built out of flat layers of photos.

To that end, locations scouts and photographers took approximately 10 million 360-degree, high-definition photographs of settings in Greece, Morocco, Italy, France, Germany, Death Valley, and sections of the California coast using ultrahigh-definition cameras. According to Gaeta, they applied an enhancement to these photos or, “sometimes a matte painting over the locations, ahead of the live-action photography. So then, in the movie, out of the window of a Moroccan palace you see the Italian Alps. We have these bizarre combinations that don’t necessarily make sense but they create these very stunning images.” They were then used in scenes utilizing green screen technology on the sets of Studio Babelsberg near Berlin.

Roughly 75-85% of the film was shot on green screens with the rest done on vibrantly painted sets to match the look of the world the Wachowskis were creating. While more than 100 cars were modeled and created digitally, two of them – Speed’s Mach 5 and Racer X’s Shooting Star – were given full-sized replicas with the actors sitting in replica cockpits that were mounted on a hydraulic gimbal platform linked to racing software programmed to pre-conceived sequences.

When Speed Racer was released the critical brickbats came out in force with The New York Times’ A.O. Scott leading the charge: “Mobsters, detectives, sportscasters and ruthless rival racers all parade across the screen, but none of them generate the sparks of humor, danger, energy or nobility that would ignite a sense of pop magic. Speed Racer goes nowhere, and you’d be amazed how long the trip can take.” Entertainment Weekly gave it a “D” rating and Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote, “This newest iteration is about a demon on wheels who’s chasin’ after someone for 135 minutes – which makes for an awful lot of wheel spinning.” The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane wrote, “You could call it entertainment, and use it to wow your children for a couple of hours. To me, it felt like Pop fascism, and I would keep them well away.” The rare positive review came from Time magazine’s Richard Corliss who wrote, “You can tell that everyone had liberated fun making the film; it feels like the group effort of Mensa kids let loose in the paint store.”

I’m ashamed to say that I was swayed by the negative reviews at the time and did not see Speed Racer on the big screen – something I regret deeply since. It was fellow blogger Dennis Cozzalio over at the Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule blog whose passionate defense of the film inspired me to check it out. He wrote, “Far from finding Speed Racer incoherent, I instead discovered it to be a whooshing marvel which challenged me to see a simple story with fresh, often incredulous eyes, one that doesn’t exploit easy nostalgia but instead takes an elastic approach to the familiar tropes of the cartoon, creating an experience of film merged with digital effects that folds back on itself in exhilarating new ways.”

Not surprisingly, Speed Racer proved to be too idiosyncratic for the masses but, by and large, the Wachowskis have managed to make the films they want to make despite repeated commercial and critical failures. Undoubtedly, the film is a complete failure, commercially speaking (it’s running time is too long for kids to sit through), but on artistic terms it is a triumph – a fascinating allegory for remaining true to one’s self as an artist. Speed Racer is a phantasmagoria of CGI imagery guaranteed to melt your eyeballs and a rare studio film unafraid to bite the corporate hand that fed it, all wrapped up in a brightly colored pop art bow.

SOURCES

Bowles, Scott. “First Look: Speed Racer’s Demon on Wheels.” USA Today. May 30, 2007.

Dunlop, Renee. “The Wachowski Brothers Bring Live Action Anime, Color and Movement to New Levels in Speed Racer.” CGSociety. May 16, 2008.

Hobart, Christy. “The Speed Racer Time Warp.” Los Angeles Times. May 8, 2008.

Kit, Borys. “Speed Hits Live-Action High Gear.” The Hollywood Reporter. November 1, 2006.

Lawrence, Will. “Speed Racer: Fast-Moving World of the Wachowski brothers.” The Telegraph. April 25, 2008.

McCarthy, Erin. “Speed Racer’s Breakthrough CGI Road Rally: Anatomy of a Scene.” Popular Mechanics. October 30, 2009.

“Wachowskis Are Good to Go Speed Racer.” Los Angeles Times. November 1, 2006.

Pecker

It is generally acknowledged that the cinematic demarcation line for Baltimore filmmaker John Waters is Hairspray (1988), the film that saw him go from campy, taboo-smashing films featuring his good friend Divine to more mainstream-friendly fare starring recognizable movie stars like Johnny Depp and Kathleen Turner. With Pink Flamingos (1972), his notorious exercise in bad taste, Waters felt that he had taken his outrageous white trash aesthetic as far as it could go. After all, where do you go after showing someone eat a piece of dog shit? From Hairspray on, his films were more sweetly subversive rather than in your face raunch. Pecker (1998) is one of his more endearing efforts, featuring Edward Furlong as a young, aspiring photographer and Christina Ricci as his girlfriend who runs a Laundromat with an iron fist. The film is an appealing tale about artistic expression and the price of becoming an overnight sensation.

When he’s not working at a local sandwich shop, Pecker (Edward Furlong) takes pictures of the people and places in the Baltimore neighborhood of Hampden. He finds beauty in every day things, like cheese melting on a burger cooking on a grill or a woman shaving her legs on the bus. Occasionally, he’s joined on spontaneous photo shoots by his best friend Matt (Brendan Sexton III), a shoplifting delinquent. They goof off, playing harmless prank games like “shopping for others,” which involves putting odd items in the shopping carts of unsuspecting customers and watching the chaos that ensues at the checkout. Pecker also hangs out with Shelley (Christina Ricci), his workaholic girlfriend and muse.

We are soon introduced to one of Waters’ trademark family of eccentrics who live a blissful existence until their world clashes with that of another. His mother Joy (Mary Kay Place) runs a thrift store shop where she dresses homeless people for very little money. His little sister Chrissy (Lauren Hulsey) has an eating disorder in the form of being a sugar junkie. His dad Jimmy (Mark Joy) runs a local bar and is facing stiff competition from a newly opened strip club across the street. His grandmother Memama (Jean Schertler) runs a “pit beef” sandwich stand and talks to her statue of the Virgin Mary whom she’s convinced speaks, but is really Memama saying “Full of grace.” His older sister Tina (Martha Plimpton) is a fag hag that emcees go-go dancers at a gay bar in downtown Baltimore.

While exhibiting his photographs at work, Pecker meets Rorey Wheeler (LiliTaylor), a New York art gallery owner and art collector who is taken with his pictures and offers to show them in the Big Apple. His work is an instant hit among the city’s elite art snobs. As one critic puts it, “Pecker is like a humane Diane Arbus.” He even impresses legendary photographers Cindy Sherman and Greg Gorman (playing themselves).

Pecker soon finds out that he’s become a hit at home as well, but it comes at a price. His parents’ house is robbed while they were in New York, Little Chrissy is put on Ritalin by child protection services and Matt can’t shoplift anymore because storeowners recognize him from Pecker’s photos. Shelley is harassed at work with obscene phone calls (a cameo by John Waters no less), Joy is given an unnecessary fashion makeover, Memama is labeled a religious nut and can no longer get Mary to talk, and Tina is fired from her job.

Edward Furlong plays Pecker with the same kind of gee whiz optimism as Johnny Depp did in Ed Wood (1994). The young photographer is an idealistic dreamer who finds beauty in the mundane and trashiness. Of all the cast, Martha Plimpton has the most fun as Pecker’s white trash sister. The actress sports a hideous teased out black wig and calls everyone “Mary.” Tina is truly in her element emceeing at the Fudge Palace, giving the various dancers saucy introductions. It is also nice to see old school Waters regulars Mink Stole and Mary Vivian Pearce in small roles as well as some of his newer stock company, like Patricia Hearst, in minor but memorable parts.

The screenplay for Pecker was partially inspired by some of John Waters’ own experiences with fame. He said in an interview, “What happened to me later after the successes of some of my earlier films did happen to Pecker.” However, as a whole, he didn’t feel like his career was like Pecker’s. “What is true is what happened after success, especially with people like Edith Massey … It made her life better. But there were other people whose lives were made worse. Some of them were wanted by the police, and suddenly they were being recognized by people on the street.”

While researching his script, Waters hung out at the Hampden Laundromat and the bar that he ended up using in the film. Before he started writing it, the filmmaker came up with the title. He liked writing it and saying it. “It’s a word I’ve always wanted to use because it’s funny and almost no one ever says it anymore.” With Pecker, Waters wanted the film to reflect the two sides of his life: the blue collar Baltimore and the New York art world. When it came to casting the titular character, the director was drawn to Edward Furlong’s reputation for playing brooding characters. He couldn’t recall seeing the actor smile in a film and decided to cast him against type. As a rule, Waters never casts comedians in his comedies.

Not surprisingly, Pecker received a mixed reaction from critics. In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “Finding hilarity in John Waters's latest movie title is the basic pre requisite for enjoying the goofy ingenuity of his new film. Remember that Mr. Waters proudly establishes himself as perhaps the first filmmaker to accompany his directorial credit with a shot of rats mating, and you'll be nicely attuned to Pecker and its ebulliently trashy fun.” The Toronto Star’s Norman Wilner wrote, “And just as Pecker, the character, is propelled by his happy-go-lucky nature, Pecker, the movie, is similarly bouncy and amiable. There's no real villain, which does make the movie's midsection a little saggy, but then this isn't a story about good people and bad people.” In his review for the San Francisco Chronicle, Peter Stack wrote, “The film is never truly funny, but it's an amusing novelty, gaining strength from smart characterizations and sly cogency about the way people are exploited under the limelight of celebrity.”

Roger Ebert gave the film two out of four stars and wrote, “There's also a certain tension between the gentler new Waters and his anarchic past. In the scenes in the male strip bar, for example, we keep waiting for Waters to break loose and shock us, and he never does, except with a few awkward language choices.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “D” rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “Waters, replaying the arc of his own career, is being smugly disingenuous about why he was ever embraced. None of this would matter, of course, if Pecker were actually funny. Alas, it's about as funny as leopard skin on a leopard.” USA Today gave the film two-and-a-half out of four stars and Susan Wloszczyna wrote, “Nothing the filmmaker has done since 1988's Hairspray has clicked and, as sweet as Pecker is, it's flimsy whimsy.”

I like that Pecker culminates in an exhibit of his latest photos that unites the freaks and art snobs so that we get hilarious images of gay strippers cavorting with lesbian go-go dancers, homeless people and art critics, dealers and lovers. We get to see the New York elite cut loose and let their freak flag fly free. At the time, Pecker was seen as Waters’ most diluted effort to date and a blatant bid for mainstream acceptance. I see it as a sincere and heartfelt statement about artistic integrity and being true to oneself. Ironically, Waters’ white trash aesthetic has finally tapped into the pop cultural zeitgeist with reality television shows like Jersey Shore, which is populated with grotesque caricatures that he could only dream of creating. Sure, Pecker is as inoffensive as it gets but there is something amusing about Waters trying to bring terms like “dingleberries” and “teabagging” into the mainstream. The film is forgettable fare for most, but let’s face it, most of Waters’ films rarely had anything profound to say and he was rather proud of that. Pecker carries on in that tradition. It is a film hard to dislike because it is so amicable and sweetly engaging.

SOURCES

Beale, Lewis. “Flamingo Kid at Heart.” Daily News. September 22, 1998.

Behar, Henri. “Pecker Press Conference.” Film Scouts. September 1988.

Rodriguez, Rene. “In Deep Waters.” Austin American-Statesman. September 24, 1998.

DVD of the Week: The Ice Storm: Criterion Collection

Director Ang Lee has had a fascinatingly diverse career. He’s tried his hand at the literary adaptation with Sense and Sensibility (1995), the Civil War epic with Ride with the Devil (1999), a period martial arts tale with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), and a comic book adaptation with the much-maligned Hulk (2003). He has successfully dabbled in several genres and with The Ice Storm (1997), he adapted Rick Moody’s 1994 novel of the same name, a drama set in 1973 during the waning years of the sexual revolution.

The film takes place during the Thanksgiving holiday in New Canaan, Connecticut and explores the relationship between two families: the Carvers and the Hoods. Paul Hood (Tobey Maguire) is returning home from school and hopes to lose his virginity to an attractive classmate named Libbets Casey (Katie Holmes). His sister Wendy (Christina Ricci) is obsessed with the Watergate hearings and delights in watching President Nixon going down in flames. Their parents, Ben (Kevin Kline) and Elena (Joan Allen), are a bland WASPy couple whose marriage is stuck in a rut. Ben is having an affair with Janey Carver (Sigourney Weaver) who is in a loveless marriage with Jim (Jamey Sheridan). They have two sons, Mikey (Elijah Wood) and Sandy (Adam Hann-Byrd), oddly off-kilter boys who are becoming increasingly sexually aware with Wendy’s help.

All of their conflicts and problems boil to the surface at a “key party” that the Carvers and Hoods attend during an ice storm. There’s a faint whiff of desperation as all of these conservative WASPs try to be hip swingers. Meanwhile, their children are up to their own subversive activities with unfortunate, tragic consequences.

Needless to say, both of these families are very dysfunctional with the adults being sexually repressed and the kids exploring their sexuality. Lee underlines the dysfunction of these families by visually referencing panels from issue 141 of the Fantastic Four comic book occasionally throughout the film. Paul is reading it on a train during the film’s climactic ice storm. The FF are a family of superheroes and in this particular issue they are plagued by internal strife. There is some delicious foreshadowing as Tobey Maguire would go on to play Spider-Man and Lee would adapt the Incredible Hulk.

The Ice Storm feels like an Ingmar Bergman or John Cassavetes film from the 1970s with a dash of Atom Egoyan (the look of either Exotica or The Sweet Hereafter). It also has a textured, painterly quality thanks to the exquisite cinematography of Frederick Elmes who also shot some of David Lynch’s best films (Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, and Wild at Heart). He really captures the tacky, kitschy look of the ‘70s and is helped considerably by the attention to period detail (awful sweater vests over turtleneck sweaters) and the top notch production design (capturing the look of the houses from that era).

The Ice Storm takes a fascinating look at a specific time and place through the eyes of an outsider – the Taiwanese-born Lee who offers a fresh perspective on American culture. His film can be seen as a melancholic lament for the end of an era and the loss of innocence that began with the Kennedy assassination. Kudos to the Criterion Collection for giving this unfairly neglected film their deluxe treatment.

Special Features:

The first disc features an audio commentary by director Ang Lee and producer/screenwriter James Schamus. They banter back and forth like the long-time friends and collaborators that they are. At one point, Schamus jokingly refers to a “pre-Scientology” Katie Holmes and recounts some of the challenges of shooting on location including greedy town locals who held up filming. Lee makes some astute observations about the characters and points out his favorite shots and lines of dialogue in the film. They talk about Maguire’s voiceover narration and how it provides structure to the film and how it comments on the action. This is an entertaining and informative commentary.

There is also a theatrical trailer.

The second disc starts off with “Weathering the Storm,” a 36-minute retrospective featurette with new interviews with a lot of the key cast members who reflect on making the film and how it affected their careers. Joan Allen describes the script as minimalist in nature and was intrigued by it. Kevin Kline’s agent described it as the bleakest one he’d ever read and this piqued the actor’s curiosity who read and found it quite funny. Sigourney Weaver talks about the social restrictions her character and women in general faced in the ‘70s. Everyone talks about what it was like to work with Lee. This is an excellent look at how the film came together by some of the actors who were in it.

“Rick Moody Interview” features the author of the source novel talking about his feelings towards the film adaptation. These characters were an intimate part of him and the film version was a very different take on them. He was allowed to watch the process of the adaptation by the filmmakers.

“Lee and Schamus at MOMI.” The two talk about their filmmaking career together at the Museum of the Moving Image in November 2007. They talk about how various films came together and reflect on them in an eloquent and intelligent way.

“The Look of The Ice Storm” features interviews with cinematographer Frederick Elmes, production designer Mark Friedberg, and costume designer Carol Oditz. They talk about how they helped realize Lee’s vision.

Also included are four deleted scenes with optional commentary by Schamus. We see Ben at work in a funny bit with Kline and Henry Czerny. He talks about why these scenes were cut.