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.

Kong: Skull Island

Now, more than ever, Hollywood studios are all about movie franchises – not just one sequel after another, but several franchises existing in a larger one, often referred to as a cinematic universe. Studio executives gamble hundreds of millions of dollars on these individual franchises in the hopes that they’ll be commercially successful. Marvel Studios led the charge and has been doing it longer and more successful than anyone else while its rival, DC Entertainment, has had decidedly mixed results.

This hasn’t stopped every studio from trying with Warner Bros. wading into the fray with Godzilla (2014), the first franchise within the MonsterVerse. It was successful enough financially to embolden the studio to go ahead with their second franchise reboot – Kong: Skull Island (2017). Instead of setting it during the 1930s as Peter Jackson’s epic reimagining had done in 2005, the filmmakers decided to set it during the Vietnam War with all sorts of references to Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979). It’s a nifty idea but does it translate into a decent movie?

Unlike Godzilla, this movie wastes no time introducing the Big Guy in a fast-paced prologue set somewhere in the South Pacific during World War II. Is the purpose of this sequence to establish Kong’s presence in roughly the same geographic neighborhood as Godzilla thereby linking these franchises? The opening credits take us through three decades of history until we reach 1973 and the last days of the Vietnam War.

Bill Randa (John Goodman), a senior government official, and Houston Brooks (Corey Hawkins), a young geologist, fast-talk their way into mounting an expedition to the mysterious Skull Island complete with a military escort. The soldiers were supposed to be going home but their superior officer, Colonel Packard (Samuel L. Jackson), a career military man, is more than happy to take on one more mission.

Since they are venturing into uncharted territory, Randa hires professional tracker James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston), a former British Special Air Service captain. Mason Weaver (Brie Larson) is an acclaimed photojournalist intrigued by the air of mystery that surrounds the island and finagles her way onto the expedition. Both Conrad and Weaver are outsiders and suspicious of the true nature of this mission, which creates an uneasy bond between them.

This movie makes some odd choices along the way, like the scene where the expedition flies a squadron of helicopters through a dense and difficult storm that surrounds the island but all the tension of this scene is drained by Packard droning on about the Icarus myth. Why? Samuel L. Jackson’s flat delivery is supposed to demonstrate his character’s unflappable nature, I suppose, but it also robs the scene of the white-knuckle intensity that everyone else is experiencing. The establishing shots of the lush island are breathtaking and then the filmmakers ruin the mood by blasting Black Sabbath over the soundtrack a la “Ride of the Valkyries” in Apocalypse Now.

Fortunately, this clumsy moment is disrupted by a Kong attack, captured in agonizing slow motion and then a fantastic shot of the giant ape in front of the setting sun with the helicopters coming at him. Not surprisingly, Kong makes short work of the helicopters in a thrillingly staged sequence as he ruthlessly dispatches these aggressive interlopers on his turf while Packard quietly fumes in anger as Jackson gets to do his best Captain Ahab impression, growling his way through his dialogue while doing his best Kubrickian death stare. You know he will make it his life’s mission to take the giant ape down in retribution for killing several of his men.

As determined as Packard is, Randa is even more obsessed with killing Kong for his own personal reasons that John Goodman chillingly reveals to Packard. Meanwhile, Conrad and Weaver just want to escape the island, alive if possible, but it won’t be easy as they encounter all sorts of creatures – some benign, some very deadly. The movie quickly divides its time between Packard and his men and Conrad and Weaver.

John C. Reilly’s scene-stealing turn as a World War II pilot that crash landed near the island and has been trapped their ever since acts as our grizzled tour guide to this exotic land and its inhabitants while also acting as Skull Island’s equivalent to Dennis Hopper’s gonzo photojournalist in Apocalypse Now. He provides much-welcome levity amidst the CGI workouts and cardboard character stereotypes while also injecting a humanistic energy and vitality that is largely absent from the rest of the movie. To that end, Tom Hiddleston and Brie Larson aren’t given much to do except gape at amazement at the CGI wonders the filmmakers put in front of them, or grim-faced determination as they run away from another computer generated monster.

I see what the filmmakers are trying to do with Skull Island – fuse the hallucinogenic madness of Apocalypse Now with King Kong (1933), which is admittedly an intriguing idea. That being said, Skull Island comes across more as a great movie pitch that hasn’t been developed any further than that. Say what you will about Peter Jackson’s King Kong, but at least it was a personal statement and a love letter to the original film while Skull Island feels more like franchise building, but I do appreciate the 1970s Vietnam War era setting; it’s just a shame that the filmmakers don’t do more with it than endlessly reference Apocalypse Now and use it as an excuse to play classic rock over the soundtrack at various points. The movie has performed well at the box office so mission accomplished I suppose.

Paul Thomas Anderson Blogathon: Magnolia

BLOGGER'S NOTE: This post originally appeared over at Jeremy Richey's blog Moon in the Gutter as part of the excellent Paul Thomas Anderson Blogathon that is running all this week. So far there have been nothing short of top notch submissions. I urge you to check out and support all of the hard work Jeremy has been putting into this loving tribute to PTA.

Along with Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson started making films during an exciting time for American independent cinema. The 1990s saw an explosion of talented filmmakers produce some of the most fascinating work to come along in some time. Some of the diverse talent included the Coen brothers, Allison Anders, Steven Soderbergh, Richard Linklater, and Gus Van Sant to name but only a few. Among the best and the brightest from this decade would have to be Anderson and Tarantino, two filmmakers steeped in encyclopedic film knowledge and with all kinds of talent to burn. They both started off with lean, character-driven crimes film – Tarantino with Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Anderson with Hard Eight (1996). Then, they capitalized on the notoriety of those films to each make one that was a rollercoaster ride with tons of flashy camerawork brimming with the confidence of the brash, young Turks that they were. The result? Tarantino made Pulp Fiction (1994) and Anderson made Boogie Nights (1997). Both films were massive hits, wowing critics and audiences alike. So, were Jackie Brown (1997) and Magnolia (1999) signs of maturity from Tarantino and Anderson? Both films divided critics and underperformed at the box office but, for me, they remain their most personal and intimate examinations of the relationships between people.

Partway through Magnolia, former quiz kid Donnie Smith (William H. Macy) tells a patron (Henry Gibson) in a bar, “I’ve got so much to give, but I just don’t know where to put it. I have trouble knowing where to put things…” These lines sum up Anderson’s ambitious epic perfectly for it is a film filled with the most extreme examples of love and pain in its rawest forms. Like Donnie, the film wears its heart on its sleeve in what I feel is the filmmaker’s most personal film to date. However, at times, Anderson has trouble knowing where to put things and the film threatens to collapse under its own ambitions – juggling multigenerational storylines, a musical number and a freak occurrence right out of the Bible. What holds the film together is its big heart as represented in part by Aimee Mann’s songs that are used throughout, most notably at one of the film’s show-stopping scenes. In some respects, Magnolia is an epic love letter to the films of Robert Altman (in particular, Nashville and Short Cuts) that explores the interconnected lives of several diverse and fascinating characters in the San Fernando Valley.

Even the film’s prologue is ambitious and epic in scope as it tells of three incidents of chance and coincidence from the past as narrated by none other than David Mamet regular Ricky Jay. However, as the prologue winds down, the narrator makes this telling comment about the last incident: “This is not just ‘something that happened.’ This cannot be ‘one of those things’ … This was not just a matter of chance. These strange things happen all the time.” Many have wondered what exactly this amusing and amazing prologue has to do with the rest of the film. I think that those last few lines of voiceover narration are the key, as if to say, what you are about to see is not a matter of chance and that no matter how fantastical things get they’ve happened before.

We are introduced to a fascinating collection of characters. There’s Frank T.J. Mackey (Tom Cruise), a slick infomercial salesman pushing a how-to guide on having sex with women called, Seduce and Destroy. His estranged father is Earl Partridge (Jason Robards), an old man dying of cancer and who is being taken care of by Phil Parma (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a kind and caring male nurse, while his beautiful wife Linda (Julianne Moore) deals with the pharmacy to get more medicine for her husband. Jimmy Gator (Philip Baker Hall) is the veteran host of a long-running children’s game show called What Do Kids Know? He cheats regularly on his wife and is also dying of cancer. His estranged daughter Claudia (Melora Walters) is a cocaine addict who picks up men and has sex with them. She does this to numb the pain she feels as a result of her father neglecting her for years. So much damage has been done that she won’t even talk to him when he tells her he’s dying.

Jim Kurring (John C. Reilly) is a police officer and a nice guy looking for that special someone. He’s a decent man that loves his job and feels like he can make a difference. Donnie Smith is a washed-up former quiz show whiz kid that is now a failed electronic salesman recently fired from his job before he goes to have braces that he does not need, put on his teeth. Stanley (Jeremy Blackman) is a very smart boy that appears on What Do Kids Know? but he’s very unhappy as he’s being forced to do so by his overbearing father (Michael Bowen) who’s only interested in advancing his own acting career at the expense of his son. Stanley is under all sorts of pressure by his father to be a winner and this clearly has taken its toll on the poor little guy – he’s a nervous wreck and obviously headed for a meltdown.

There are all kinds of fascinating references to the Bible contained within Magnolia. From little things, like Donnie muttering something about the “sins of the father” while throwing up in the bathroom of a bar, to Stanley who appears visually like an angel after he attacks Jimmy Gator on the set of their game show. There is a shot where he is framed in a way that looks like he has wings because there is a large medical logo behind him (also a reference to Earl, the dying patriarch?). Could this boy be an angel that makes the rain of frogs happen? When he breaks into the library, he pours over books on the genealogy of angels, meteorology and a few others. Was he using the book on angels to find his power that allowed him to invoke the plague? Most significantly, the film is littered with references to the numbers “8” and “2.” Look closely during the game show scene and someone can be seen holding up a sign that reads, “Exodus 8:2” which refers to a line in the Bible that talks about a plague of frogs. This is only one of many references, some obvious, some subtle that littered throughout the film like Easter eggs.

There are so many themes that Anderson explores in Magnolia, chief among them the sins perpetuated by the father on his child. Frank T.J. Mackey confronts his father who is dying from cancer on his deathbed. It is an absolutely gut-wrenching, emotionally exhausting scene as the brash young man, in the prime of his life, is confronting his father who is at the end of his – in fact, he’s barely there at all – a ghost. Frank represents the second generation dealing with the sins of their father and how, in his case, he is ill-equipped to deal with it because he was never given the tools he needed as a child. This is arguably the greatest sin perpetuated by Earl because it was his responsibility and obligation to give his son the proper tools for life. As a result, Frank had to be the father that Earl never was and take care of his dying mother. Once she died, Frank was alone in the world and forced to grow up way too soon. No wonder he turned out the way he did. Frank aggressively preys on women because his lack of a mother figure growing up. She could have taught him to respect women. When faced with a strong woman – a television interviewer – that digs into his past, a chink in his armor appears exposing his insecurities and paving the way for a long overdue confrontation with his father. This is also echoed with Donnie whose parents exploited him on a game show when he was child and never loved him or taught him how to deal with life and so he grew up a confused man full of love but unable to know what to do with it.

Donnie is the older version of Stanley whose overbearing father forces him to do the game show, What Do Kids Know? Donnie is what Stanley will become unless he changes the way things are. If you think about it, the game show itself is a rather neat metaphor for one of the central themes of the film: children vs. adults. Even the title of the show has a rather cynical vibe to it, like something only an adult would say. Not to mention the show itself is life in a nutshell as it’s all about winning and losing. This is certainly how Jimmy Gator sees things, like when he tells a woman backstage, “I’m fucked. I’ve lost.” Of course, a game show host would see life as a game and in terms of winning and losing. In his eyes he’s clearly lost, not just because he’s dying of cancer but because he failed with his daughter as well. Thanks to his lack of love and guidance, Claudia turned out to be a drug addict unable to love someone else because she doesn’t know how.

The stumbling block between the adults and children in Magnolia is miscommunication. The adults either don’t listen to or understand children. For example, a little boy named Dixon (Emmanuel Johnson) raps a song that identifies the killer in a case Jim is investigating but he doesn’t make the effort to pay attention to what the boy is saying. In Claudia’s case, years of being an awful father cause her to push him away at a crucial moment in his life when he is facing his own mortality. In another example, the game show people and fellow contestants don’t listen to Stanley when he tells them he has to go to the bathroom and this results in an embarrassing moment for him and for the show. All of these examples make me think of another key line from Magnolia as Jimmy says at one point, “the book says we may be through with the past but the past ain’t through with us.” I always interpreted that line to mean that if we don’t learn from our past mistakes then we are condemned to repeat them. And you can see the younger generation – Claudia, Frank and Stanley – trying to break the repetitious cycle and not make these same mistakes.

Anderson's film takes the best elements from his previous work – the emotional core of Hard Eight and the ambitious scope of Boogie Nights with an amazing ensemble cast that features regulars like John C. Reilly, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Philip Baker Hall (all of whom portray completely different characters than they had done in previous Anderson films) and new additions like Jason Robards and Tom Cruise. Cruise, in particular, is nothing short of a revelation. He plays the ultimate misogynistic pig bastard. Think of a more outgoing version of Jason Patric's character from Your Friends and Neighbors (1998) and you get an idea of the intensity and sheer ferocity of Cruise's motivational speaker/sexual predator character. He drops the superstar shtick and becomes Frank, complete with frat boy swagger and blowhard bravado as he spews out memorable gems like, “Respect the cock and tame the cunt!” to his receptive audience of men like some kind of profane Tony Robbins motivational speaker. He even nails the faux concern his character shows an audience member who recounts a story about a woman that rejected him. His dog and pony show is full of bluster as it parodies some of his gung ho protagonists from films like Top Gun (1986) and Days of Thunder (1990).

Julianne Moore starts off playing a shrill, bitchy trophy wife but it quickly becomes evident that her character is coming apart at the seams as she realizes that the man she loves is rapidly dying before her eyes. There’s a scene early on where her attorney levels with her about Earl’s condition and as he’s telling her, Anderson keeps the camera on Moore so that we see the emotions play over her face: fear, disbelief and so on. Over the course of the film, she does an incredible job of convincing us that Linda really does love her husband and will do anything to help him. Jason Robards delivers an absolutely heart-wrenching performance as a dying man full of regrets and tired of living with so much pain. He does such a good job of conveying someone in incredible agony that it is hard to watch some of his scenes.

Finally, John C. Reilly plays a bumbling yet well-meaning police officer. In a film that features a lot abrasive characters, Jim provides the film’s warm, emotional center. Watch the way he deals with an irate black woman whose apartment he is investigating. Despite her belligerent attitude, he is patient and courteous. The same goes for the first time he meets Claudia, investigating a noise complaint as she has her stereo up way too high, which incidentally, so is she – coked to the gills. Their burgeoning relationship is the heart and soul of Magnolia and you find yourself rooting for these two people to find each other in this turbulent world. Melora Walters is also fantastic as she conveys an incredible vulnerability of a person deeply wounded emotionally. Claudia tries to desensitize herself with drugs and meaningless affairs and it is Jim who finally reaches her and he shows her that there are decent people in this world. The final image of Magnolia, a reaction shot of Claudia, is perhaps the single most amazing and heartfelt image in any Anderson film.

It is no secret that Anderson loves working with and writing for actors. Each and every character as their own unique arc so that by the end of the film they all have undergone a dramatic change, some pivotal moment or decision that has changed their lives forever. And that is truly something when you realize how many characters and subplots he is juggling in Magnolia. It really is a marvel of editing and Anderson establishes a fascinating tempo of montages with quickly edited shots of the various storylines followed by a series of scene with long takes and then follows them with quick edits and so on. He claimed that Magnolia was structured somewhat like “A Day in the Life” by the Beatles: “It kind of builds up, note by note, then drops or recedes, then builds again.”

After making Boogie Nights, Anderson had wanted to make a film that was “intimate and small-scale,” something that could be made very quickly in 30 days. During the long editing period of that film, he started getting ideas for Magnolia and started writing down material. He started with lists of actors and music. At the time, he was listening to Aimee Mann’s music and ended up using her two solo albums as a basis and inspiration for Magnolia. Certain lines of dialogue in the film came directly from her songs, like, “now that you’ve met me, would you object if you never saw me again?” which came from “Deathly.” (it also inspired the character of Claudia.) In addition, at the climax of the film, all the characters sing along to Mann’s “Wise Up.” Anderson came up with lists of images, words and ideas that “start resolving themselves into sequences and shots and dialogue.” The first image he had for the film was the smiling face of actress Melora Walters. Another early image that came to Anderson was that of Philip Baker Hall as her father and envisioning him walking up the steps to her apartment where they had an intense confrontation. As he started writing the screenplay, it “kept blossoming” and Anderson realized that there were so many actors he wanted to write for. Then, he decided to put “an epic spin on topics that don’t necessarily get the epic treatment.” He wanted to make “the all-time great San Fernando Valley movie.” Anderson ended up writing a 200-page script.

Before he became a filmmaker, one of the jobs Anderson had was working as an assistant for a T.V. game show, Quiz Kid Challenge, an experience he incorporated into Magnolia. He actually had the title of the film in his head before he wrote the script. He also did research on the magnolia tree and discovered a concept that eating the tree’s bark helped cure cancer. The rain of frogs was inspired by the works of Charles Fort and Anderson was unaware that it was also a reference in the Bible when he first wrote it into his script. He claimed that at the time he came across the notion of a rain of frogs, he was “going through a weird, personal time,” and started to understand “why people turn to religion in times of trouble, and maybe my form of finding religion was reading about rains of frogs and realizing that makes sense to me somehow.”

Anderson cast several of his regular actors against type in this film. The character of Jim Kurring originated in the summer of 1998 when John C. Reilly grew a moustache for fun. He started putting together a not very smart cop character. He and Anderson made a few parodies of the Cops reality T.V. show with the director chasing the actor around the streets with a video camera. Actress Jennifer Jason Leigh was even in one of these bits. Some of Jim’s dialogue also came from these sessions. Anderson had wanted to make Reilly a romantic lead because it was something different and a role he had never done before. The actor even told Anderson at one point that he was tired of being “always cast as these heavies or these semi-retarded child men. Can’t you give me something I can relate to, like falling in love with a girl?”

For Philip Seymour Hoffman, Anderson wanted him to play a “really simple, uncomplicated, caring character.” The actor said of his character, “this guy really takes pride in the fact that every day he’s dealing with life and death circumstances.” For Julianne Moore, he wanted her to play a crazed character on several pharmaceuticals. The actress said of her character: “Linda doesn’t know who she is or what she’s feeling and can only try to explain it in the most vulgar terms possible.” For William H. Macy, Anderson felt that the actor was scared of big, emotional roles and wrote for him, “a big, tearful, emotional part.” Philip Baker Hall based Jimmy Gator on real-life T.V. personalities like Bob Barker, Alistair Beck and Arthur Godfrey.

Tom Cruise was a fan of Boogie Nights and contacted Anderson while working on Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999). He met the actor on the set of that film and Cruise told Anderson to keep him in mind for his next film. After he finished writing the script, the filmmaker sent the actor a copy. The next day, Cruise called him, they met, but he was nervous about the role; however, he ultimately agreed to do the film. The character of Frank T.J. Mackey was based in part on a recording that a friend gave to Anderson in 1997. His friend was teaching an audio-recording engineering class and recorded two of his students talking in a recording studio. They were “talking all this trash” about women and quoting a man named Ross Jeffries who was teaching a new version of the Eric Weber course, “How to Pick Up Women,” but with hypnotism and subliminal language techniques. Anderson researched Jeffries and his led to four or five other men like him. He also transcribed the tape and did a reading with John C. Reilly and Chris Penn, incorporating this into Frank and the sex seminar. Anderson felt that Cruise was drawn to Frank because he had just finished making Eyes Wide Shut where he played a deeply repressed character. Magnolia allowed him to cut loose and play someone “outlandish and bigger-than-life.”

Anderson had met Aimee Man in 1996 when he asked her husband, Michael Penn, to write music for Boogie Nights. She had songs on soundtracks before but never “utilized in such an integral way.” Anderson heard some demo tracks from a new record that she was working on while writing his script. She gave Anderson rough mixes of a few songs and found that they both wrote about the same kinds of characters. She ended up writing “Save Me” and “You Do” specifically for Magnolia.

After the critical and commercial success of Boogie Nights, New Line Cinema told Anderson that he could do whatever he wanted for his next film and he realized that, “I was in a position I will never ever be in again.” He convinced New Line Cinema to give him final cut on Magnolia. Head of production Michael De Luca made the deal and granted him final cut without hearing an idea for the film. However, when it came time to market his film they had bitter arguments. Anderson felt that the studio didn’t do a decent enough job on Boogie Nights and did not like their poster or trailer for Magnolia. So, he designed his own and cut together a trailer himself. Even though he got his way in the end, Anderson realized that he had to “learn to fight without being a jerk. I was a bit of baby. At the first moment of conflict, I behaved in a slightly adolescent knee-jerk way. I just screamed.” In addition, he also wrote the liner notes for the soundtrack album and pushed to avoid hyping Cruise’s presence in the film in favor of the ensemble cast.

Not surprisingly, Magnolia had its share of supporters and detractors among film critics. USA Today gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four and called it "the most imperfect of the year's best movies.” Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and wrote, “Magnolia is the kind of film I instinctively respond to. Leave logic at the door. Do not expect subdued taste and restraint, but instead a kind of operatic ecstasy.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "B+" rating, and Lisa Schwarzbaum praised Cruise's performance: "It's with Cruise as Frank T.J. Mackey, a slick televangelist of penis power, that the filmmaker scores his biggest success, as the actor exorcises the uptight fastidiousness of Eyes Wide Shut ... Like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, this cautiously packaged movie star is liberated by risky business.” The Los Angeles Times’ Kenneth Turan also praised Cruise: "Mackey gives Cruise the chance to cut loose by doing amusing riffs on his charismatic superstar image. It's great fun, expertly written and performed, and all the more enjoyable because the self-parody element is unexpected.” In his review for The New York Observer, Andrew Sarris wrote, “In the case of Magnolia, I think Mr. Anderson has taken us to the water's edge without plunging in. I admire his ambition and his very eloquent camera movements, but if I may garble something Lenin once said one last time, 'You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs'.”

However, in her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “But when that group sing-along arrives, Magnolia begins to self-destruct spectacularly. It's astonishing to see a film begin this brilliantly only to torpedo itself in its final hour," but went on to say that the film "was saved from its worst, most reductive ideas by the intimacy of the performances and the deeply felt distress signals given off by the cast.” The Observer’s Philip French wrote, "But is the joyless universe he (Anderson) presents any more convincing than the Pollyanna optimism of traditional sitcoms? These lives are somehow too stunted and pathetic to achieve the level of tragedy.” Time magazine’s Richard Schickel wrote, “The result is a hard-striving, convoluted movie, which never quite becomes the smoothly reciprocating engine Anderson (who did Boogie Nights) would like it to be.”

Magnolia is a polarizing film because so much information, so many characters and so many storylines are thrown at the viewer that it is bound to alienate some. Also, the intensity level of this film is so high for so much of the running time that it tends to leave one exhausted. It’s not a film that requires you to be passive. It engages you and challenges you and for that reason I feel that it is an important film. By its conclusion, every character’s life has changed in a very dramatic way and the whole film builds towards this life-changing event with their emotional states heightening as they head towards a complete transformation. This is reached during the climax with the rain of frogs. We come back to Macy’s line, “I’ve got so much love, but I just don’t know where to put it,” which, if you think about it, ties the film together. Magnolia is grandiose, overblown and too ambitious for its own good but I wouldn’t have it any other way. It is quite brilliant, actually, because it refuses to play things safe as it examines the dysfunctional relationships between children and their parents in an unflinchingly honest way.

The Culture Snob has a fascinating essay analyzing this film in detail. Here is an incredible in-depth profile of PTA over at Esquire.

SOURCES

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Braun, Liz. “He Finally Gets the Girl.” Toronto Sun. January 11, 2000.

Dawson, Tom. “I went from being anonymous to: ‘Who is this guy we’ve got to have him.’” Scotland on Sunday. March 5, 2000.

Goldstein, Patrick. “Heading in a New Direction.” Toronto Star. December 24, 1999.

Hirschberg, Lynn. “His Way.” The New York Times. December 19, 1999.

Konow, David. "PTA Meeting: An Interview with Paul Thomas Anderson." Creative Screenwriting. January/February 2000.

Lacey, Liam. “The Lion and The Young Cub.” Globe and Mail. January 22, 2000.

Magnolia Production Notes. New Line Cinema. 1999.

Morse, Steve. “Aimee Mann’s Voice Carries Magnolia.” Boston Globe. December 7, 1999.

Patterson, John. “Magnolia Maniac.” The Guardian. March 10, 2000.

Pevere, Geoff. “Director Can Do Both Riveting and Ribbiting.” Toronto Star. January 23, 2000.

Portman, Jamie. “How Magnolia Grew and Grew.” Ottawa Citizen. December 30, 1999.

Puig, Claudia. “Dangerous Ground is Paul Thomas Anderson’s Turf.” USA Today. January 7, 2000.

Strauss, Bob. “Magnolia Springs From Valley Roots.” Montreal Gazette. December 19, 1999.

Strauss, Bob. “Everything’s Coming Up Magnolias for Actress.” Globe and Mail. December 23, 1999.

Weintraub, Bernard. “Boogie Writer Back in the Valley.” The New York Times. October 8, 1999.