Hoffa

 

Danny DeVito is quite the accomplished character actor, starring in television shows such as Taxi and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and highly regarded films such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) and Get Shorty (1995). What isn’t talked about nearly enough is his directorial output, which is not as prolific but does contain some notable efforts. In the 1980s, he directed back-to-back hits with the Hitchcockian goof Throw Momma from the Train (1987) and the pitch-black divorce satire The War of the Roses (1989). Both films demonstrated his stylistic flare behind the camera and decidedly darkly humorous worldview.
 
DeVito parlayed the box office clout he accrued from those two films into Hoffa (1992), an epic rise and fall historical biopic about controversial labor leader James R. Hoffa, who led the powerful International Brotherhood of Teamsters union and eventually ran afoul of both organized crime and the United States government, disappearing on July 30, 1975 never to be seen again.
 
The success of Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas (1990) kicked off a golden age of historical biopics in the 1990s with the likes of JFK (1991), Bugsy (1991), Malcolm X (1992), Quiz Show (1994), and The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996) among many others populating cinemas during this time. Stone’s The Doors (1991) and the aforementioned JFK, however, paved the way for Hoffa to get made – that, and the machinations of the film’s producer Edward R. Pressman to put together the team of legendary actor Jack Nicholson in the titular role, getting Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet to write the screenplay, and DeVito to direct.

This was going to be the latter’s magnum opus that would garner all kinds of awards and catapult him into the rarified air of the likes of Steven Spielberg and Stone. Some critics, however, bristled at the lionization of Hoffa as a hero, raising more than a few more eyebrows as the man was known for employing controversial tactics to get want he wanted. Hoffa failed to make back it’s $40+ million (which reportedly rose to close to $50 million) budget, received mixed reviews and picked up a few, scattered award nominations. What happened?
 
The film begins at the end of Hoffa’s (Nicholson) life – the last day he was seen alive with the rise and fall of his career seen through the flashback reminisces of Robert Ciaro (DeVito), a long-time friend and an amalgamation of several real-life associates. We see how the two men met, while Ciaro is on the road making a delivery and Hoffa pitches him a membership to the Teamsters, then a fledgling organization. At the time, truck drivers were overworked and underpaid. Hoffa shows up to the loading docks one-day spouting Mamet’s profane dialogue, telling the workers to go on strike, which starts a massive brawl. In doing so, he also costs Ciaro his job and later that night he ambushes Hoffa only to be held at gunpoint by one of his associates, Billy Flynn (Robert Prosky). “Life’s a negotiation. It’s all give and take,” Hoffa tells Ciaro as he apologizes and explains him motives.
 
We see Hoffa’s early, botched strong arm tactics, such as firebombing a local business that results in the death of Flynn. We see Hoffa mixing it up, yelling at scab drivers crossing picket lines, getting into scuffles not just with the cops but also the mafia. The strike is cutting into their profits and Hoffa cuts a deal with them, which not only aids in his rise to leadership of the Teamsters, but also, ultimately, led to his downfall. The film shows early on how Hoffa wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty, helping a trucker change his tire while he pitches membership to the Teamsters, natch, and getting bloody while fighting in the strikes.

 At times, David Mamet’s Midwest tough guy dialogue feels like it could have come from one of fellow Chicago native Michael Mann’s films but it has his distinctive cadence in such gems as “Because I’m sitting out here to meet with a fella,” or “What’s out the car is my guy. What’s in here is you watching the phone.” Another memorable bit of dialogue: “Are we talking words, here, we usin’ words? That’s what we’re doin’.” The cast, in particular Nicholson and DeVito nail the sharp, clipped style of Mamet’s dialogue.
 
Unlike the cast of The Irishman (2019), Nicholson, et al were cast at just the right time in their lives to play younger and older versions of their characters credibly. Nicholson does an excellent job delivering several of Hoffa’s fiery speeches. He fully commits to the role compared to Al Pacino’s take on the man in The Irishman where the legendary actor seems to be playing himself rather than the man. Nicholson certainly captures the bluster and swagger of Hoffa, a man with charisma and confidence to spare. One of the joys of his performance is watching him spout so much of Mamet’s dialogue – no easy feat – and he does it while adopting the Teamster’s distinctive tone and way of speaking. Some of his best scenes are the ones where he squares off against Robert Kennedy (Kevin Anderson) as he reduces their conflict to the working man versus the rich elite. Nicholson does get a few reflective moments in the scenes on his last day seen alive as he and Ciaro reflect on their friendship over the years.
 
Nicholson and DeVito are surrounded by a hell of a supporting cast with Anderson’s uncanny take on Kennedy, nailing his distinctive accent. J.T. Walsh shows up as one of Hoffa’s close associates who is initially loyal until he gets a taste of power and turns his back on his mentor at a crucial moment. A young John C. Reilly shows up as another one of Hoffa’s associates who worships him early on but eventually betrays him by testifying against him during the trial for labor racketeering. Armand Assante also pops up as the mob boss that Hoffa makes a deal with to gain more power within the Teamsters. The veteran actor wisely downplays his performance next to Nicholson’s acting pyrotechnics. He doesn’t need to chew the scenery as his mere presence exudes power and authority. His performance is a sobering reminder of how much his presence is missed films such as this and Sidney Lumet’s Q & A (1990). There are also small parts for Bruno Kirby and Frank Whaley, who was on quite the run at the time with pivotal roles in The Doors, JFK and Hoffa.

The film is ambitious in its scale and scope as evident in the scene where Hoffa leads a strike that turns into a massive brawl involving hundreds of people. DeVito captures the chaos masterfully as trucks are overturned, people are viciously beaten and even a mother is separated from her child all the while the corporate bigwigs can be seen watching safely from their lofty vantage point. It’s a tough, brutal sequence that is unflinching in its depiction of ugly violence. The epic look and feel of Hoffa is due in large part to his direction with the help of legendary cinematographer Stephen H. Burum as he digs deep into his stylistic bag of tricks including crane shots, split diopter lens, sweeping 360-degree camera moves, God’s eye overhead shots, point-of-view shots, and masterful framing of shots and scenes via 2:35.1 aspect ratio that rival the likes of Spielberg and Stone at the time.
 
Joe Isgro was a top record promoter making a reported $10 million a year but in 1989 a grand jury indicted him on 51 counts of payola and drug trafficking. The charges were dismissed a year later but the damage to his reputation had been done and he decided to pivot into the film business. Just before this legal mess he had been approached by Frank Ragano, former Hoffa attorney, and Brett O’Brien, son of Chuckie O’Brien, Hoffa’s adopted son. The former claimed he had obtained the film rights from the Hoffa estate, however, not long after Isgro signed a letter of agreement to do the film, O’Brien told him that they didn’t have the rights and their option had expired. Isgro told O’Brien the deal was off and made a new one with another production company for the rights to Chuckie’s story, which was used as the basis for the screenplay written by Robin Moore, who had authored The French Connection, and interviewed several members of the Teamsters union about Hoffa’s disappearance in 1975.
 
Isgro approached film producer Edward R. Pressman with Moore’s script hoping that Pressman could convince Oliver Stone to direct. Pressman liked what he read and optioned the script as well as the tapes and transcripts of Moore’s interviews. He found the script “very expositional, not fully formed as a movie but there was the raw material for one.” Caldecot Chubb, then Vice President of Pressman’s production company, pitched Hoffa to 20th Century Fox production executive Michael London in August 1989. He recalled telling London, “In America, everyone thinks they know Hoffa. They think he was a gangster, period. But he was a labor leader, a guy with courage and heroism, a guy who stood up for his men.” An hour and half after their meeting concluded, London called Chubb and told him that if he could get David Mamet to write the script they would finance the film.

Pressman had met Mamet in 1985 and called him, pitching the idea of Hoffa as King Lear. In October 1989, Mamet met with Pressman, Chubb and Joe Roth, then President of Fox. Pressman remembers Mamet telling them that his father had been a labor lawyer and he understood that world. His conditions were that they could give him and all their research material and he would give them back a finished script. He was paid in the neighborhood of one million dollars and put two other projects on hold while he spent several months writing the script.
 
The studio loved what Mamet wrote and told Pressman to hire a top director. His first choice was Barry Levinson but when he met with Mamet about the script in 1990, the men did not see eye to eye on the vision for the film and the director passed on the project. Pressman reportedly met with Stone and John McTiernan but they weren’t seriously considered for the film. Around this time, Danny DeVito was having lunch with Roth who was telling him about the projects they were working on and when the former heard about Hoffa he immediately wanted to do it. He met with Pressman in April 1990 and presented his vision of the film. The producer said, “It was clear to me Danny was articulate and ambitious and every bit as prepared as the best filmmakers I’d worked with.” DeVito was hired.
 
To play Hoffa, both Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino were considered until someone suggested Jack Nicholson. He read the script in the summer of 1990 after making The Two Jakes (1990) and agreed to do it but principal photography had to be delayed for six months while he filmed Man Trouble (1992) for Bob Rafelson. His salary increased the film’s budget dramatically to over $40 million and Roth told Pressman in the fall of 1991 that Fox would only pay for $37 million of it. Pressman sold the cable rights in France for $5 million and convinced DeVito to work for union scale, saving an additional $7 million in exchange for a share of the film’s box office receipts.

Hoffa shot for 85 days, starting in February 1992 in Pittsburgh before moving on to Detroit, then Los Angeles with the final two weeks in Chicago in June on an initial budget of $42 million that eventually came in just under $50 million.
 
Hoffa received mixed reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars and wrote, "Hoffa shows DeVito as a genuine filmmaker. Here is a movie that finds the right look and tone for its material. Not many directors would have been confident enough to simply show us Jimmy Hoffa instead of telling us all about him.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, "Mr. Nicholson has altered his looks, voice and speech to evoke Hoffa, but the performance is composed less of superficial tricks than of the actor's crafty intelligence and conviction. The performance is spookily compelling without being sympathetic for a minute." The Los Angeles Times' Kenneth Turan wrote, "All the audience is left with are snapshots of repetitive tough-guy behavior, a scenario that is too limited to hold anyone’s interest for a 2-hour-and-20-minute length."
 
Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman gave the film a "D" rating and wrote, "When an actor as great as Nicholson gives a performance this monotonous, it raises the question, Why make a movie about Jimmy Hoffa in the first place? The answer, I suspect, is that it wasn’t so much Hoffa’s life as his lurid, headline-making death that hooked a major studio into backing this project. The result is somehow perversely appropriate: a massive Hollywood biopic about a man who never quite seems there." In his review for the Washington Post, Desson Howe wrote, "The biggest mistake is DeVito's direction. He fills every moment with soaring, weighty music and spectacle-happy cinematography. Like a kid clutching power candy, he can't let go." While doing press for the film, DeVito made no apologies for his positive take on Hoffa: “He put bread on the table of the working man. That to me is a hero.”
 
DeVito does lay it on a bit thick at times, such as the scene where hundreds of trucks park by the side of the road as drivers show their support for Hoffa as he and Ciaro are driven to prison with David Newman’s score swelling dramatically. Hoffa’s home life is also never seen with his wife Josephine (Natalia Nogulich) trotted out for a few moments but we get no insight into their dynamic. If the film’s portrayal of Hoffa has fault it’s that we don’t get an understanding of what motivated the man. When we meet him, he is fully-formed. He is confident of his convictions. How did he get that way? What made him such a staunch defender of the working man? Why was he so power hungry? We never know for certain and maybe no one did but it is a lack of depth in an otherwise compelling portrait of the man. For all the hero worship of Hoffa, DeVito does try to show the ramifications of the man’s actions such as him ignoring the Teamsters leadership’s orders to back off and starting a massive brawl with the scabs and cops that results in the death of several of his fellow members. There’s also the scene where he uses intimidation tactics to kill a newspaper story that will portray him in a negative light thereby damaging his chances of being elected President of the Teamsters.

Among the gold rush boom of historical biopics in the ‘90s Hoffa has mostly become forgotten thanks to its lackluster box office and mixed critical reaction. By the time Stone made Nixon (1995), large scale, star-studded historical films were no longer en vogue and by the end of the decade less and less of these films were being made with notable exceptions such as Michael Mann’s The Insider (1999), but despite stellar reviews it also underperformed at the box office. Hoffa has enjoyed some renewed interest thanks to The Irishman, which features the labor leader prominently. While he is not the central character his presence casts a long shadow over the film and is nowhere near as interestingly depicted as in DeVito’s film. Perhaps there is a more definitive take on the man? A limited series that could go into more detail? In the meantime, we have this lavishly staged, well-acted look at the man who had a profound effect on labor unions and the working class.
 
 
SOURCES
 
Freedman, Samuel G. “The Captain of the Hoffa Team.” The New York Times. September 13, 1992.
 
Goldstein, Patrick. “A Labor-Intensive Hoffa.” Los Angeles Times. August 30, 1992.
 
Willistein, Paul. “DeVito’s Hoffa Salutes Top Teamster Working Class Hero.” The Morning Call. December 25, 1992.

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.

Five Easy Pieces

Jack Nicholson had one of the best runs of any actor during the 1970s and that’s saying a lot when you consider it was at a time when the likes of Robert De Niro, Gene Hackman and Al Pacino, among others, were doing some of their very best work. Nicholson actually made a big splash with his scene-stealing supporting role in Easy Rider (1969), which kickstarted a fantastic run of films, beginning with Five Easy Pieces (1970) and continuing with notable efforts like The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), The Last Detail (1973), and Chinatown (1974) – and this is before the halfway point of the decade! Perhaps his most fruitful collaborator during this period was filmmaker Bob Rafelson whom he co-wrote The Monkees movie Head (1968) with and went on to direct Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces and The King of Marvin Gardens. Five Easy Pieces is one of those complex character studies that typified some of the best American films from the ‘70s.

We meet Bobby Dupea (Jack Nicholson) working on an oil field somewhere in California to the strains of “Stand by Your Man” By Tammy Wynette, which, in retrospect, seems ironic because he could care less about his girlfriend’s loyalty. It is playing on a record player when he comes home and Nicholson gives it a brief look of disdain. When Bobby rebuffs his girlfriend Rayette’s (Karen Black) suggestion to play the song again she tells him to play the B-side, he snarkily replies, as only Nicholson can, “It’s not a question of sides, it’s a question of musical integrity.” The last bit is delivered with the actor’s trademark shit-eating grin. It seems like Ray doesn’t exactly understand what he means but does know that he’s making a joke at her expense.

Bobby and Ray go bowling with his co-worker Elton (Billy “Green” Bush) and his wife Stoney (Fannie Flagg) and then proceeds to belittle her in front of them for her lack of athletic prowess. He’s cruel to Ray and looks down on her, which begs the question, why is he with her and why does she put up with him? Bobby is someone who doesn’t suffer fools gladly, which makes one wonder why he lives with Ray, a nice enough person but clearly not his intellectual equal. He barely tolerates her needy behavior and one gets the feeling that he is punishing himself.

The early scenes of Bobby and Elton working on the oil fields are beautifully realized as we actually see these guys hard at work and then joking with each other during breaks. These moments have a naturalistic vibe as Nicholson and Billy “Green” Bush play so well off each other that they are completely believable as good friends.

It’s the first indication of what Bill Murray would later say in Stripes (1981), that Bobby is “part of a lost and restless generation.” He doesn’t have time for people that can’t keep up with him. He cheats on Ray and then lies to her about it. She knows he is and even cries about it but stays with him anyway. Even Elton rubs Bobby the wrong way, provoking him to say, “Keep on telling me about the good life, Elton, because it makes me puke!”

Five Easy Pieces is a slice-of-life film whose story doesn’t begin properly until 30 minutes in when Bobby quits his job and Elton is arrested – all on the same day. To make matters worse, Bobby’s sister Partita (Lois Smith) tells him that their father is very ill, having barely survived two strokes. We also find out that Bobby is a classically trained pianist and comes from an affluent family. He soon heads out to be with them, Ray in tow and the film shifts gears into road movie territory before finally settling into a family drama.

Nicholson plays Bobby like a man at war with himself. He is a misanthrope trying to act like he cares about other people. He tries to make it work with Ray but can’t help but be cruel to her. It’s in his nature to condescend to those that can’t keep up with him or piss him off. This usually manifests itself in treating Ray like shit most of the time but it is also funny and deserving, like the famous diner scene where he gives a surly waitress a piece of his mind in trademark Nicholson fashion.

His relationship with Ray is the first of several contradictions about the man. Rafelson sometimes conveys these contradictions visually, like when Bobby and Elton are stuck in a traffic jam on a freeway and the former hops up on the back of a truck and begins playing the piano strapped to it. He starts playing a classical piece really well and gets so engrossed in it that he doesn’t realize (or care) that the truck is taking the off ramp while Elton continues on. It’s quite the image: Bobby in his oil rigging work clothes playing piano. His contradictory nature is what makes him such a fascinating character. He’s Holden Caulfield all grown up and like J.D. Salinger’s most famous protagonist, he can’t stand phonies, dishing out scathing put-downs to people that upset him, like the aforementioned waitress.

The scenes where Bobby interacts with his family are when we get the most fascinating insights into his character and the closest to understanding him. His family is a bunch of eccentric intellectuals that delight in taking digs at each other and it is easy to see why Bobby hasn’t visited them in years. Most interestingly, we see how he acts around a woman named Catherine (Susan Anspach) who is his intellectual equal. She doesn’t put up with any of his shit and accuses him of having no inner feeling, but they have a brief fling anyway. She ends up offering a very accurate assessment of Bobby’s personality in a quietly powerful scene that Susan Anspach delivers in direct and eloquent fashion.

Karen Black has the tough job of playing a sweet woman who may not be the smartest person but she doesn’t deserve Bobby’s condescension. Ray is a target for much of his scorn. It’s not that she’s dumb per se; it’s just that she’s not as smart as Bobby. She doesn’t always understand what he says or gets things he references but then few people do outside of his family. Ray is not blessed with the kind of self-awareness that curses Bobby. After the first time he lays into her verbally we feel sympathy towards Ray. Sure, she’s annoying at times and talks a lot about nothing in particular, but she’s a nice person – an innocent of sorts. Black does a good job of refusing to reduce Ray to a silly caricature.

Jack Nicholson first met Carole Eastman in 1957 at an acting class taught by veteran character actor Jeff Corey. They became friends and would work on The Shooting (1967) with her writing the screenplay and him acting in it. Bob Rafelson met Nicholson at a film society in Hollywood and they bonded over foreign films and John Cassavetes. They ended up writing the script for the Monkees movie Head. At the time, Nicholson had given up acting and told Rafelson, “I’m tired of it. I always get to play the shitty B-part not the A-part, and it’s always in conventional movies.” The director responded, ‘Well, not the next one.’ The next one I want you to star in it.”

Rafelson had written some scripts in the 1960s based on friends he had in college and afterwards, some of whom were dead: “So I was writing about self-destruction.” He envisioned the protagonist of what would become Five Easy Pieces as a concert pianist, originally coming up with a vision of “Jack, out in the middle of a highway, the wind blowing through his hair, sitting on a truck and playing the piano.” He wasn’t happy with the scripts he had written and showed one of his scripts to Eastman. He knew of her work on The Shooting and Puzzle of a Downfall Child (1970). He said of the writer: “I don’t think I ever met anybody – male or female – with such audacious and bold imagination.”

He asked her to work on it and she came back with Five Easy Pieces. Rafelson recalled, “The only scene of mine she kept was the one in the diner.” The character of Bobby was a composite of Nicholson, her brothers who “drifted almost mysteriously from place to place, and whose behavior remained finally inexplicable to her,” Ted Kennedy, “whose position as the youngest in his own celebrated family suggested the kinds of competitive feelings and fears” she wanted for Bobby, and her “own deep personal beliefs.” Rafelson said of Eastman, “Here she was, this rather thin and kind of fragile-looking woman and she could easily write about the most obscure things like waitresses, Tammy Wynette, bowling alleys, oil fields…”

Rafelson ended up tweaking Eastman’s script in several ways, most significantly the ending, which as originally written, had Bobby die when his car veered off a bridge – an allusion to Kennedy and Chappaquiddick. Nicholson and Rafelson did not like this ending with the former wanting Bobby to walk down a street alone, but the latter ultimately went with the one in the film. Eastman was quite upset at the changes Rafelson made and felt betrayed.

Five Easy Pieces was shot over 41 days, starting in early winter 1969 and going into January on a budget of $876,000 on location around Bakersfield, California, Eugene, Oregon, and Victoria, British Columbia. When it came to the climactic scene between Bobby and his father, Nicholson and Rafelson disagreed on how the character should act. The director wanted Bobby to break down and cry and the actor felt that he would be doing it out of self-pity. Nicholson ended up rewriting the scene himself, waiting until the day of, on location, to write it. While writing and then acting the scene, he drew on his own relationship with his actual father.

Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and called it a “masterpiece of heartbreaking intensity.” In his review for the Village Voice, Nick Pinkerton wrote, “director Bob Rafelson and screenwriter Carole Eastman’s film is totally human, trading [Easy] Riders’ counterculture mytho-poetics for a study in the charisma of disdain (which Nicholson personifies) and how rebellion and loutishness are often indistinguishable (ditto), never excusing the pain Bobby causes.” However, The New York Time’s Roger Greenspun felt that it was a film “that takes small risks and provides small rewards.”

At the end of Five Easy Pieces, Bobby comes to terms with who he is and makes peace with his father in a moving scene that demonstrates his capacity for inner feeling – he just keeps it buried deep inside, only allowing it to surface during rare occasions. He says to his father, “I move around a lot, not because I’m looking for anything really but because I’m getting away from things that get bad if I stay.” This is as close as Bobby gets to a confession of sorts, or an explanation of his behavior. Rafelson has said that he saw Five Easy Pieces about a man “condemned to search for the meaning of his life.” Bobby spends the entire film discontented, looking for something he can never find, doomed to spend his life searching for the meaning of it all. Rafelson and Nicholson would work together again several times, but this maybe their best collaboration to date.

SOURCES

Biskind, Peter. Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. Simon and Schuster. 1998.

Knepperges, Rainer. “The Monologist and the Fighter: An Interview with Bob Rafelson.” Senses of Cinema. April 2009.

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

McLellan, Dennis. “Carole Eastman, 69; Wrote Screenplay for Five Easy Pieces.” Los Angeles Times. February 27, 2004.

Pinkerton, Nick. “Bombast: Carole Eastman.” Film Comment. November 21, 2014.

Thomson, David. “One for the Road: Bob Rafelson and Five Easy Pieces.” Sight and Sound. September 2010.

The Last Detail

Hal Ashby directed some of the best films to come out of the 1970s, exploding out of the gates with four motion pictures over five years. They were all quirky comedy-drama hybrids that, in terms of subject matter, couldn’t be more different and yet are united in the sense that they all feature offbeat protagonists. They focus on outsiders that exist on the margins of mainstream society, like the death-obsessed young man who falls in love an unflappable, optimistic septuagenarian in Harold and Maude (1971). In its own way, The Last Detail (1973) is a comedy tinged with drama and one that features marginalized protagonists in the form of two veteran United States Navy petty officers that have to transport a young sailor from Virginia to New Hampshire and end up learning something about themselves and each other along the way.

At the time, Ashby was coming off the commercial and critical failure of Harold and Maude when Jack Nicholson told him about The Last Detail. Then up-and-coming screenwriter Robert Towne had adapted Darryl Ponicsan’s novel of the same name with the actor (they were close friends) in mind. Nicholson was on an incredible run of classic film roles that started with Easy Rider (1969) and continued with two Bob Rafelson films – Five Easy Pieces (1970) and The King of Marvin Gardens (1972). His role in The Last Detail would yet again demonstrate his power and versatility as an actor, resulting in him being crowned Best Actor at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival.

Billy “Badass” Buddusky (Jack Nicholson) and Richard “Mule” Mulhall (Otis Young) are assigned “chasers” duty, which involves taking a young sailor by the name of Larry Meadows (Randy Quaid) to Portsmouth Naval Prison. He’s been sentenced to eight years for trying to steal $40 from the Commanding Officer’s wife’s pet charity project. They have a week to do it, but Buddusky proposes that they can pocket more of the per diem and spend it on the way home if they get Meadows there as fast as possible. I like how the film settles into a character-driven groove with a series of colorful encounters that provide insight into these guys after efficiently setting up the premise.

Meadows is just a scared kid that did something stupid and pissed off the wrong person as a result. Meadows has hardly had any life experiences and will be denied the possibility of them for eight long years unless Buddusky and Mulhall do something about it. Not surprisingly, Buddusky’s original plan goes out the window as he and Mulhall bond with Meadows by getting him drunk, stoned and laid in one last hurrah before eight years of imprisonment.

The Last Detail continued Jack Nicholson’s fascination with angry outsiders that live on the margins. It was the start of a great run of like-minded characters, beginning with Easy Rider. It is interesting to watch the choices he makes as an actor in this role, from the way Buddusky seems to sarcastically chew his gum to the way he wears his sailor’s cap. Nicholson is equally adept at showing the anger that simmers under his character’s façade and the explosion of rage that occurs when provoked, like the famous scene where a bartender refuses to serve the three sailors, which is reminiscent of the even more well-known diner scene in Five Easy Pieces. Later on, there’s a nice moment where Buddusky explains why he gets so angry and how liberating he finds it to wail on someone that ticks him off. He even tries to pick a fight with Meadows. It gives us some valuable insight into Buddusky’s volatile nature. Nicholson also shows us moments where his character is a consummate bullshit artist, like when he, Mulhall and Meadows get invited to a party in New York City and he tries to impress a young woman (Nancy Allen) by romanticizing life in the Navy. He’s stoned and getting no where with this girl who looks like she’d rather be anywhere else. Nicholson effortlessly inhabits the role in a way that seemed to disappear through the late 1980s and beyond when he relied more and more on his movie star persona.

Fresh-faced Randy Quaid does a nice job of conveying his character’s clueless naiveté. He plays Meadows as a pathetic mess of a human being. With his young, soft face, the actor projects a kind of innocence, but his actions sometimes say otherwise. For example, on the train he tries to make a break for it and when caught breaks down crying. Quaid achieves just the right mix of awkwardness and an occasional sympathetic side to keep us interested in this bundle of contractions all the while holding his own against a flashy actor like Nicholson. Quaid exhibits character behavior that is intriguing to watch – so much so that we want to know more about Meadows. Why did he try to steal the money? Over the course of the film, Buddusky and Mulhall try to find out what motivates this kid. As they get closer to prison, Quaid shows how the inevitable weighs more and more on Meadows’ mind by facial expressions, which oscillate between contemplative and anxious.

Otis Young has the least flashiest role, but it is a crucial one as he provides the stable, calming voice of reason, trying to keep everyone on track. When Buddusky comes up with some wild idea or wants to diverge from their mission, Mulhall is the sober realist and this sometimes causes friction between him and Buddusky, but when they are presented with an outside threat they quickly close ranks.

Robert Towne’s script hits us up with salty language right from the get-go, but it never feels false or forced because it rolls off the tongue so easily off someone like Nicholson who curses as naturally as breathing. I also like how the film is set during the winter months and you can tell that they actually shot it during that time by how you can see the actors’ breath in outdoor scenes. It looks so cold that it is almost tangible, most notably in a scene towards the end when the three sailors decide to have a makeshift picnic out in a snowbound park. They stand around freezing their asses off while trying to start a fire to cook hotdogs.

Producer Gerry Ayres had bought the rights to Darryl Ponicsan’s novel The Last Detail in 1969, but had difficulty getting it made because the studio was concerned about all of the bad language in Robert Towne’s screenplay, asking him to reduce the number of curse words. Towne told them, “This is the way people talk when they’re powerless to act; they bitch.” The screenwriter had refused to tone down the language and the project remained in limbo until Jack Nicholson, who was by then a bankable movie star, got involved. Towne, who was good friends with Nicholson, had written the role of Buddusky with the actor in mind.

Director Hal Ashby was in pre-production on Three Cornered Circle at MGM when Nicholson told him about The Last Detail, his upcoming project at Columbia Pictures. Ashby had actually been sent the script in the fall of 1971, but the reader’s report called it, “lengthy and unimaginative.” After looking at it again, he had warmed up to it. Ashby wanted to do it, but the project conflicted with his schedule for Three Cornered Circle. However, he pulled out of his deal, impressed by Nicholson’s loyalty, with MGM and took Nicholson’s suggestion that they work together on The Last Detail.

Ashby and Ayres read Navy publications and interviewed current and ex-servicemen who helped them correct minor errors in the script. During pre-production, Ashby worked with Towne on polishing the script and with Nicholson on his character. Ashby wanted to shoot on location at the naval base in Norfolk, Virginia and the brig at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, but was unable to get permission from the U.S. Navy. However, the Canadian Navy was willing to cooperate and in mid-August 1972, Ashby and his casting director, Lynn Stalmaster, traveled to Toronto to look at a naval base and meet with actors. The base suited their needs and Ashby met actress Carol Kane whom he would cast in a small, but significant role.

Nicholson was set to play Buddusky and so the casting of The Last Detail focused mainly on the roles of Mulhall and Meadows. Nicholson and Towne were friends with Rupert Crosse and felt that he would be perfect as Mulhall. Bud Cort, who had worked with Ashby on Harold and Maude, begged the director to play Meadows, but he felt that the actor was not right for the role. Stalmaster gave Ashby a final selection of actors and the two that stood out were Randy Quaid and John Travolta. Quaid had the offbeat and vulnerable qualities that Ashby wanted.

Shortly before principal photography was to begin, Crosse discovered that he had terminal cancer and Ashby delayed production a week so that Crosse could come to terms with the news and decide if he still wanted to do the film. However, a day before filming was to begin, Crosse had to pull out and Ashby and Stalmaster scrambled to find a replacement, quickly casting Otis Young as Mulhall. Ashby had tried to get Haskell Wexler, Nester Almendros and Gordon Willis as the film’s director of photography, but when none of them were available, he promoted Michael Chapman, his camera operator on The Landlord (1970). Ashby and Chapman worked together to create a specific look for the film that involved using natural lighting to create a realistic, documentary style.

Ashby decided to shoot The Last Detail chronologically in order to help the inexperienced Quaid and the recently cast Young ease into their characters. Quaid was indeed very nervous and wanted to make a good impression. Ashby kept a close eye on the actor, but allowed him to grow into the role. With the exception of Toronto doubling as Norfolk, the production shot on location, making the same journey as the three main characters.

The day after principal photography was completed; Ashby had his editor send what he had cut together up to that point. The director was shocked at the results and fired the editor. The director was afraid that he’d have to edit the film himself. Ayres recommended brining in Robert C. Jones, one of the fastest editors in the business and who had been nominated for an Academy Award for Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967). Jones put the film back into rushes and six weeks later had a first cut ready that ran four hours. Ashby was very impressed with Jones’ abilities and trusted him completely.

However, the studio was not happy with the length of time it was taking to edit The Last Detail as well as the amount of bad language in it. Columbia was in major financial trouble and needed a commercial hit. Jones called Ashby while he was in London meeting with Peter Sellers about doing Being There (1979), telling him that Columbia was fed up. The head of the editing department called to tell Ashby that a studio representative was coming to take the film away. However, Jones refused to give up the film and Ashby called the studio and managed to smooth things over with them.

By August 1973, the final cut of The Last Detail was completed and submitted to the MPAA, which gave it an R rating. Columbia was still not happy with the film and asked for 26 lines with the word “fuck” in them to be cut. Ashby convinced the studio to let him preview the film as it was to see how the public would react. The film was shown in San Francisco and the screening was a success. Columbia decided to give the film a limited release to qualify for Oscar consideration with a wide release in the spring of 1974. Both Nicholson and Quaid were nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor respectively.

The Last Detail received very positive reviews with lion’s share of the praise on Nicholson’s performance. Roger Ebert gave it four out of four stars and wrote of Nicholson, “He creates a character so complete and so complex that we stop thinking about the movie and just watch to see what he’ll do next.” The Village Voice’s Andrew Sarris praised Ashby’s “sensitive, precise direction.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby felt that the film had “one superbly funny, uproariously intelligent performance, plus two others that are very, very good, which are so effectively surrounded by profound bleakness that it seems to be a new kind of anti-comedy.” Time magazine’s Richard Schickel wrote, “there is an unpretentious realism in Towne’s script, and director Ashby handles his camera with a simplicity reminiscent of the way American directors treated lower-depths material in the ‘30s.”

For all of their fun and wild times – including picking a fight with some army soldiers in a train station washroom – Meadows’ fate hangs over them like an ominous storm cloud that occasionally makes itself known. While Mulhall wants to take Meadows straight to prison, Buddusky wants to show the kid a good time because it will be the last one he’ll have for eight years. Even though, by the end of The Last Detail, Buddusky and Mulhall do their job, you can tell that Meadows got to them, past their hardened Navy lifer exteriors. For them, Meadows represents how fucked up the system is – that someone could get punished so severely for such a minor crime. It’s not right, but there is nothing they can do about it, which ends things on a rather melancholic note of resignation that is refreshing for a film that started off as a comedy.

The Last Detail performed well at the box office and it has gone to become an influential film, representing one of Nicholson’s finest performances of the ‘70s. It was an excellent early role for Quaid and was also part of a fine run of films during this decade for the character actor. And finally, for Ashby it marked another great effort in a decade chock full of classics as he would go on to make, including Shampoo (1975), Coming Home (1978), and Being There.

SOURCES

Biskind, Peter. Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. Simon & Schuster. 1998.

Dawson, Nick. Being Hal Ashby. University Press of Kentucky. 2009.