Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

After the critical acclaim of Drugstore Cowboy (1989) and My Own Private Idaho (1991), filmmaker Gus Van Sant parlayed his newly-acquired clout within the film industry to realize one of his dream projects – an adaptation of Tom Robbins’ Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. This 1976 novel about the freewheeling adventures of Sissy Hankshaw, a young woman with enormously large thumbs that give her a preternatural ability to hitchhike through life. Robbins deftly used magic realism to tackle topics such as free love, feminism, drugs, animal rights, and religion, among others.

In 1977, Tom Robbins autographed Gus Van Sant’s copy of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and the future filmmaker vowed one day to adapt it into a film. Producer Robert Wunsch optioned the book and in April, 1977, hired screenwriter Stephen Geller to adapt it. This option expired a year later and actor Shelley Duvall bought the rights. In 1980, Warner Brothers hired her to write and star in a film version, for which she even wrote a screenplay, but nothing came of it. “One studio told me, ‘Too quirky even for us,’ and I had toned it down quite a lot!” She lost the option to Daryl Hannah. Let’s take a moment to contemplate what Duvall’s version would have been like…with her unconventional looks and style of acting, she might have been an excellent choice to play Sissy.

Jump to May 1990 and TriStar Pictures had the rights, hiring Van Sant to direct Cowgirls. Two years later, the studio put the project on hold after deciding that the material may not be accessible enough for mainstream audiences. In August of 1992, the rights moved over to Fine Line Features, who agreed to produce Van Sant’s adaptation for $9 million. Shooting began in September, in New York City.

When it was announced that Van Sant would write and direct the adaptation, it seemed like the ideal marriage between filmmaker and source material. His depictions of Bob’s (Matt Dillon) drug-induced daydreams in Drugstore Cowboy and Mike’s (River Phoenix) surreal, narcoleptic dreams in Idaho suggested that he was the perfect filmmaker to bring Cowgirls’ unique brand of hippie-tinged flights of fancy to life.

After Idaho, everyone wanted to work with Van Sant; he cashed in his cool clout to populate Cowgirls with cameos from the likes of Roseanne Arnold, Buck Henry, Carol Kane, and William S. Burroughs, while also casting prior collaborators Keanu Reeves, Grace Zabriskie, and Udo Kier. He even got k.d. lang, hot off her internationally lauded 1992 album, Ingénue, to create the soundtrack. In the central role of Sissy, he cast then-up-and-coming actor Uma Thurman, who had gotten good notices for her performances in Dangerous Liaisons (1988) and Henry & June (1990) and, a year later, would strike it big in Pulp Fiction (1994).

Cowgirls screened at the 1993 Toronto International Film Festival where it was savaged by critics. This prompted Van Sant to recut the film before its release in theaters where it was subsequently mauled by critics, grossing only $1.7 million off an $8.5 million budget. Where did it all go wrong for Van Sant, who had been such a critical darling prior to Cowgirls? Had he merely misunderstood the source material? Was it simply another case of a book that could not be adapted into a film? Most importantly, is Cowgirls any good?

Right out of the gate, Van Sant introduces Sissy in two scenes featuring cameos by Buck Henry and Roseanne, which was a mistake. We are trying to get a handle on who Sissy is and where she’s coming from, only to be distracted by these instantly recognizable celebrities. These cameos take one out of the film at the crucial moment we are meant to be learning about Sissy’s origin story. She finds that her large thumbs give her the uncanny ability to hitch rides from anyone and uses this power to satisfy her wanderlust. Like Mike from Idaho, Sissy comes from a troubled past and seeks to find a new family that will love her as she is. Sissy, however, is not a tragic character like Mike, finding hope and promise in the open road, speaking passionately about it: “Moving so freely, so clearly, so delicately…I have the rhythms of the universe inside of me. I am in a state of grace.”

Among the eccentric characters she crosses paths with is The Countess (a flamboyant John Hurt), a rich, New York-based transvestite that gave her numerous modeling assignments years ago when she first left home. The film shifts gears and spins its wheels for a spell when he sets her up with Julian (Reeves), an artist with an entourage of pretentious sycophants played by none other than Sean Young, Carol Kane, Ed Begley, Jr., and the inimitable Crispin Glover. In an odd and uncomfortable scene, the latter shows up sporting a horrible combover and proceeds to compare the size and shape of Young and Thurman’s breasts. This does little, however, to distract from the unfortunate decision to cast Keanu Reeves as a Mohawk Indian, complete with dark skin.

After this mercifully brief episode, The Countess gives Sissy her first modeling assignment in years: go out west to Oregon and film a commercial for two of his feminine hygiene products, with a group of whooping cranes, while they perform their mating ritual in the background. He warns her, however, to stay away from the cowgirls that populate the nearby Rubber Rose Ranch, a health spa for wealthy women. This is easily the weakest part of the film. Hurt’s cartoonish queen, complete with exaggerated pratfall when Sissy hits him, appears to be acting in a completely different movie.

Miss Adrian (Angie Dickinson) runs the ranch and is at odds with the young cowgirls, led by the bullwhip-wielding Delores Del Ruby (Lorraine Bracco) and her young charge, Bonanza Jellybean (Rain Phoenix). The film comes to life once Bonanza and Sissy meet. The cowgirls are unhappy with their working conditions and decide to take over the ranch by force. The reasons behind the takeover are as much about protecting as are protesting, specifically the endangered whooping cranes, who, like the cowgirls, are being threatened by the ruling patriarchy (i.e. the government). The cowgirls are protective of the birds and use them to protest the rule of masculinity that has kept them subservient for many years.

When the revolt begins, Sissy flees to higher ground and meets The Chink (Noriyuki "Pat" Morita), a Japanese-American quasi-religious guru. He tells her about the simple pleasures of life. Initially, he comes across as more holy fool than holy man but there is a method to his madness.

Uma Thurman is well cast as Sissy. In addition to her ethereal beauty she is also able to convey the earnest passion of her character. Her approach to wide-eyed, irrepressible positivity – is similar to what Johnny Depp did with filmmaker Edward D. Wood, Jr. in Tim Burton’s Ed Wood (1994), but not as extremely stylized…and not as well-written. Thurman’s approach portrays Sissy as incredibly naïve, which would go against her years in the modeling industry and a lifetime of hitchhiking. She’s seen and experienced too much to have such a naïve world view. I think Thurman is opting to play Sissy and as an eternally earnest optimist, always believing the best in everyone she meets. 

Rain Phoenix has a natural presence in front of the camera with her big, expressive eyes. However, Van Sant saddles her with a lot of clunky, expositional dialogue that sounds like she is giving her dissertation about cowgirls for a Masters program, often delivered in stiff, wooden fashion by the inexperienced actor. Once we get past her awkwardly-written dialogue, the chemistry between her and Uma works its magic as their two characters fall in love.

Cowgirls screened at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 13, 1993 to a disastrous critical reaction. Fine Line cancels the film’s November 3 release to allow Van Sant to re-edit the film. After the screening, Van Sant realized, “There wasn’t a focus on specific characters,” and had issues with “pacing and construction of the story.” It was a wakeup call for the filmmaker about its problems:

“Everyone liked the movie within our creative group, all parties were really happy with it and no one said it needed work. No red flags went up. It wasn’t until we had a chance to see it with an audience that we first heard feedback and got a different response than what we thought.”

Producer Laurie Parker said that the first cut was too episodic: “It was kind of like the greatest hits of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. You’d have to make it like Berlin Alexanderplatz to present all of Robbins’ digressions. As it was, we ended up going back to our original idea of focusing on Sissy and the cowgirls.” Author Robbins’ sticking point with the film was Sissy’s thumbs:

“I suggested that he change the size of Sissy’s thumbs from scene to scene. I used 30 or 40 metaphors to describe Sissy’s thumbs, ranging in size from a cucumber to a baseball bat, so that each reader could decide what they looked like. If there’s anything I don’t like about having the book filmed, it’s that the thumbs are pinned down to a specific size.”

Van Sant cut down the New York scenes, including Sissy’s relationship with Julian, in favor of more time spent on the Rubber Rose Ranch, with more attention paid to the relationship between Sissy and Bonanza. He also cut out an entire subplot involving the enigmatic Clock People, keepers of the keys of cosmic consciousness. Sissy getting pregnant by the Chink was also excised, only a shot near the end of the film of Sissy’s child in the womb remaining to note its occurrence.

This process was nothing new for Van Sant, who re-edited Drugstore Cowboy after the film’s distributors saw the first cut, and My Own Private Idaho, which took at least six months to edit. “This is a standard journey for me. It just took longer than usual this time,” he said. Nevertheless, the April 12, 1994 release date was moved to April 29, only to be postponed again to May 20. The official reason was that too many movies were coming out that weekend.

Roger Ebert kicked off the film's overwhelming negative reception by giving it a half of a star out of four. He wrote, "What I am sure of is that Even Cowgirls Get the Blues is one of the more empty, pointless, baffling films I can remember, and the experience of viewing it is an exercise in nothingness." In her review for The New York Times, Caryn James wrote, "The central problem is Sissy. Uma Thurman looks the part. But she has a strained backwoods Virginia accent and is carried along by a script that tries to cram in so much of Sissy's life that she careers from one city to another without becoming more than a character sketch."

The Washington Post's Desson Howe wrote, "Bereft of atmosphere, or even coherence, the movie becomes an episodic parade of goofballs, eccentrics and lesbians whose lives and purposes are barely outlined. Sissy and company deserve better than this." In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan wrote, "Though it is possible to pin various philosophical labels on Cowgirls, loaded as it is with undeveloped notions about feminism and individuality, nothing about it is really memorable except the appealing musicality of the fine k.d. lang/Ben Mink score, which deserves better." Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman wrote, "The patronizing archness of Cowgirls seems directed, finally, at the audience itself – at anyone who expects a movie to add up to something humane and involving."

The inherent problem any filmmaker faces with adapting a novel is that everyone who reads it – including them – has their own unique take on it that is different from others. When someone attempts to visualize their experience of the source material, they risk alienating others who didn’t have the same experience. Then there is a book like Even Cowgirls Get the Blues that is chock-a-block with fantastical, metaphysical and philosophical elements that are hard to translate visually.

 

SOURCES

Eller, Claudia. “Cutting Room Corral.” Los Angeles Times. October 14, 1993.

Grimes, William. “How to Fix a Film at the Very Last Minute (or Even Later).” The New York Times. May 15, 1994.

Kempley, Rita. “The Thumbprint of Gus Van Sant. Cowgirls Director Ropes a Bum Steer.” The New York Times. May 19, 1994.

Kilday, Gregg. “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues: From Book to Film.” Entertainment Weekly. May 20, 1994.

Kort, Michele. “Shelley Duvall Grows Up.” Los Angeles Times. December 15, 1991.

Rochlin, Margy. “Shelley Duvall.” Los Angeles Times. March 9, 1986.

Hackers

The first few times I watched Hackers (1995) I hated it. I found its depiction of computer hacking laughably unrealistic. Its characters were shallow and the dialogue cheesy beyond belief. Basically, I found the film to be an affront to everything I knew and loved about the Cyberpunk genre. Call it Cheeserpunk. That being said, it’s amazing what more than ten years and repeated viewings on cable television will do to wear down your resolve. That, and my good friend Rob’s relentless championing of the film ever since I can remember. Yes, I stopped hating and learned to love this scrappy little piece of entertainment and to embrace all of its flaws as virtues. Obviously, we’re not talking Shakespeare here but it’s not exactly Leonard Part 6 (1987) either. Hackers really should be judged on its own terms and it’s interesting how the passage of time can get you to look at something in a completely different way. So let’s go back to the mid-1990s shall we? When Jolt Cola was the preferred beverage of the hacker elite. Before the advent of high-speed Internet and when cyberspace seemed so much smaller than it does now. Hackers certainly didn’t set the world on fire but it didn’t crash and burn either and was actually fairly well-received by film critics. Most significantly, it featured rather prominently a young actress who would go on to bigger and better things: Angelina Jolie. She created quite an impression with those sexy, bee-stung lips and don’t-fuck-with-me attitude of someone just starting out and with something to prove.

When he was 11-years-old, Dade Murphy a.k.a. Zero Cool, crashed 1,507 computer systems in one day. He was busted and forbidden to go near a computer or use a touch-tone telephone until he turned 18. Seven years later, Dade (Jonny Lee Miller) and his mother (Alberta Watson) move to New York City where he spends his spare time doing harmless hacks, like breaking into a small, local television station and replacing a talk show featuring a Rush Limbaugh wannabe with a vintage episode of The Outer Limits. That is, until he runs into another hacker by the name of Acid Burn who bounces him out of the system in a colorful cheesy sequence that mixes an early form of Instant Messaging with clips from vintage films in an attempt to depict their battle in a visually interesting way because, let’s face it, there is nothing sexy about watching two people type away on their computers.

Dade shows up to his first day at high school and is immediately smitten with a beautiful girl named Kate Libby a.k.a. Acid Burn (Angelina Jolie) who proceeds to pull a prank that leaves him stranded on the roof with several other gullible new students. Of course, this establishes an antagonistic love-hate relationship between the two like some kind of unholy union between Howard Hawks and Steve Jobs. While hacking into the school computer system (to infiltrate Kate’s English class no less), Dade catches the attention of the Phantom Phreak a.k.a. Ramon Sanchez (Renoly Santiago) who invites him to an arcade that he and his fellow hackers frequent. It’s there that he meets Cereal Killer a.k.a. Emmanuel Goldstein (Matthew Lillard), Joey Pardella (Jesse Bradford), a hyperactive doofus always trying to impress his friends by trying to pull righteous hacks, and, a little later on, Lord Nikon a.k.a. Paul Cook (Laurence Mason), a hacker with a photographic memory. He also crosses paths yet again with Kate and proceeds to beat her high score on a video game that nobody has ever bested her at. Afterwards, Phreak informs Dade, “Congratulations. You just made an enemy for life.” The arcade is a dream hangout for teens with T.V.s everywhere, kids rollerblading all over the place, lots of video games, and loud dance music – what more could you want at that age?

Dade and Kate continue to flirt-er, prank each other but this is put on the backburner when Joey is busted by the Feds for hacking into and retrieving a highly sensitive garbage file from a supercomputer (known as a Gibson, an obvious nod Cyberpunk author William Gibson). It turns out that the garbage file is more valuable then he realizes as it contains vital information about a corporate hacker named The Plague a.k.a. Eugene Belford (Fisher Stevens) who works for mega-corporation Ellingson Mineral Company. Unbeknownst to its clueless executives, The Plague is actually ripping them off and covering his tracks by unleashing a computer virus that will cause one of their oil tankers to capsize and spill its contents into the ocean at a predetermined time. He is also in cahoots with Margo (Lorraine Bracco), a technically illiterate corporate executive who is getting cozy with him between the sheets.

When Joey and then Phreak are busted for possessing a copy of the garbage file, Dade, Kate, Cereal Killer, and Lord Nikon team up to clear their friends’ names and expose The Plague’s nefarious scheme. Naturally, he blames the virus on our hacker heroes and this brings in the Secret Service, led by Agent Gill (Wendell Pierce), a self-important jerk who thinks that he’s smarter than these kids. So, they decide to teach him a lesson in an amusing montage where Dade and Kate compete to see who can make Gill look more foolish and this involves listing his work phone in a kinky personal ad, canceling his credit card and, in a nice touch, declaring him deceased.

With those pouty, sexy lips, attractive figure (accentuated by a series of form-fitting outfits no less) and short, pixie haircut, Angelina Jolie resembles a rather gorgeous Romulan in this film. Even this early on in her career, she exuded a natural charisma, an impressive confidence and exotic looks that are fascinating to watch. Her character is probably the one that comes closest to the actual Cyberpunk genre with her futuristic club kid attire and punk rock attitude with just a hint of vulnerability. Already you can see the makings of a big-time movie star. For all of their cyber-sparring, Kate and Dade have a strong chemistry together as did Jolie and Jonny Lee Miller. They became an actual couple while making this film and it certainly translates on-screen as you can’t fake the kind of attraction they have towards each other. You can see it in the way they look at each other. Miller acquits himself just fine as a confident elite hacker. He wisely delivers an understated performance instead of trying to compete with the colorful supporting cast. His best scenes are, not surprisingly, with Jolie. He would be able to cut loose and steal scenes in his next film, the now iconic Trainspotting (1996), which really allowed him to show his acting chops in a way that Hackers never could.

Cereal Killer is one of the many spazzy characters that populate Matthew Lillard’s resume. Early on, his character infiltrates Dade and Kate’s Advanced English class just so he can participate in an exercise where students quote a passage from a significant author of the 20th century. While Dade quotes Allen Ginsberg (nice touch), Cereal, befitting his gonzo behavior, cites Ozzy Osbourne: “Of all the things I’ve lost I miss my mind the most.” Watching Jolie’s reaction to Lillard’s mock confusion at being called out for being in the wrong class is priceless and every time I see it I wonder if she’s breaking character and they decided to keep it in. Lillard would go to make a career out of playing motor-mouthed characters in films like Scream (1996) and SLC Punk (1998).

I have a feeling that recent Academy Award winner Fisher Stevens would probably like to forget this film but he certainly commits to the role, playing the cartoonish villain The Plague complete with cheesy dialogue and condescending attitude that just begs for him to be foiled by Dade and his buddies. Stevens looks like he’s having a lot of fun with the role and punctuates his scenes with little gestures or gives his dialogue a bit of a spin that lets you know he is fully aware of the kind of film this is and his role in it: the moustache-twirling bad guy. Most impressively, Stevens manages to spout such gems as, “God wouldn’t be up this late,” with a straight face. Now, that’s acting. Lorraine Bracco, a long way from the heights of GoodFellas (1990), has the thankless task of playing the techno-phobe foil to Stevens’ oily villain. She vamps along gamely but her considerable talents are pretty much wasted in this film.

It’s hard to believe that the same guy who directed Backbeat (1994), a gritty biopic about the early days of The Beatles before they made it big, also made Hackers. You couldn’t get more different in look or tone but, thematically, they are similar in the sense that they’re both about young people trying to express themselves and who live outside the mainstream. Director Iain Softley does everything he can to make Hackers look as visually dynamic as possible. The hacking/cyberspace sequences are certainly done in the spirit of films like Tron (1982) or television shows like Max Headroom with neon green text scrolling along tall columns and when a data file is discovered all kinds of multi-colored words come flying out at you. In other words, Softley eschews realism in favor of vibrant, colorful imagery in a playful way befitting the film’s young protagonists, like this would be the kind of film that they would watch over many cans of Jolt Cola. To this end, Softley also populates Hackers with all kinds of pulsating electronica, including the likes of Orbital, Prodigy, Massive Attack, and Underworld – a who’s who of the genre in the ‘90s. The musical highlight of Hackers for me is the use of the hypnotically groovy track, “Connected” by the Stereo MCs that plays during the party scene at Kate’s as Cereal and Dade work the room. It has an insanely catchy groove that instantly takes me back to that time quite unlike any other song in that genre.

Screenwriter Rafael Moreu had been interested in computer hacking since the early 1980s. After the crackdown in the United States during 1989-90, he decided to write a screenplay about this subculture. For research, Moreu went to a meeting organized by the New York-based hacker magazine 2600. There, he met Phiber Optik a.k.a. Mark Abene, a 22-year-old hacker who would go on to spend most of 1994 in prison on hacking charges. Moreu also hung out with other young hackers who were being hassled by the government and began to figure out how all this material would translate into a film. He remembered, “one guy was talking about how he’d done some really interesting stuff with a laptop and payphones and that cracked it for me, because it made it cinematic.”

One of the film’s producers Janet Graham realized that Moreu’s script was tapping into the zeitgeist of the moment: "We recognized that hacking has become a cultural phenomenon. Here are these very bright kids, who are multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and from every strata. They are neither nerds nor terrorists, but they have become proficient in something with ramifications most of us have only begun to comprehend.” Director Softley was also drawn to the cultural significance of hackers: "It wasn't as much the computers as the idea that here was a phenomenon that today's generation has latched onto in the way that their predecessors latched onto rock 'n' roll. I think their agenda is simply to have fun, to do what they want to do and not allow anybody to tell them what not to do."

Softley and casting director Dianne Crittenden saw over 1,000 actors from England and the United States and, as a result, landed then-newcomers Jonny Lee Miller and Angelina Jolie. To prepare for the film, the cast spent three weeks learning how to type, rollerblade and getting to know each other. This clearly paid off as they interact with each other in the film much like actual friends would as evident in the scene in the arcade or when they go to Kate’s party. In addition, the cast also read a lot about computers and met with actual hackers while actor Jonny Lee Miller even attended a convention.

The arcade in the film where the protagonists hang out came out of research that the filmmakers did. Their aim was to make it part nightclub, part clubhouse – a place where hackers came to share information, scope out the latest gear and challenge each other on cutting edge video games. The arcade was built from scratch in an abandoned indoor swimming pool on the edges of London. The video game that Dade and Kate play was called WipeOut and was created by Sony Playstation.

Amazingly, director Iain Softley did not use any computer graphics for the cyberspace sequences. He wanted to go for “more conventional methods of motion control, animation, models, and rotoscoping to create a real, three-dimensional world, because… computer graphics alone can sometimes lend a more flat, sterile image.” According to Miller, Softley wanted “to go for a cyberimagery that speaks for the late twentieth century, where it is reflected in fashion, in music, in everything. The thriller bit is really a peg to hang it all on.” In regards to the film’s visuals, Softley said, “You can’t film the transfer of data. I wanted it to be a psychedelic thing, with references to 2001. I was very cavalier about representing computers, I wanted it to be a metaphor and not take itself too seriously. I see it almost as a cyber fairytale.”

For such an easy target for critics, Hackers actually garnered a decent amount of positive reviews. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "The movie is smart and entertaining, then, as long as you don't take the computer stuff very seriously. I didn't. I took it approximately as seriously as the archeology in Indiana Jones.” The San Francisco Chronicle’s Peter Stack wrote, "Want a believable plot or acting? Forget it. But if you just want knockout images, unabashed eye candy and a riveting look at a complex world that seems both real and fake at the same time, Hackers is one of the most intriguing movies of the year.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “despite her sullen posturing, which is all this role requires, Ms. Jolie has the sweetly cherubic looks of her father, Jon Voight.” USA Today gave Hackers three out of four stars and Mike Clark wrote, "When a movie's premise repels all rational analysis, speed is the make-or-break component. To its credit, Hackers recalls the pumped-up energy of Pump Up the Volume, as well as its casting prowess.” The Toronto Star’s Peter Goddard wrote, "Hackers joy-rides down the same back streets Marlon Brando did in The Wild One, or Bruce Springsteen does in Born to Run. It gives all the classic kicks of the classic B-flicks, with more action than brains, cool hair and hot clothes, and all the latest tech revved to the max.”

However, the Los Angeles Times’ David Kronke obviously didn’t click with the film’s youthful exuberance when he wrote, "All this is courtesy of the short-circuited imagination of Rafael Moreu, making his feature screenwriting debut, and director Iain Softley, who hopes that if he piles on the attitude and stylized visuals, no one will notice just how empty and uninvolving the story really is. All the sound and fury in the world can't disguise the fact that yowling music, typing montages and computer animation do not a gripping finale make.” In his review for the Washington Post, Hal Hinson wrote, "As its stars, Miller and Jolie seem just as one-dimensional—except that, in their case, the effect is intentional.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “D” rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “What's most grating about Hackers, however, is the way the movie buys in to the computer-kid-as-elite-rebel mystique currently being peddled by magazines like Wired.”

When it was released the film’s screenwriter saw it as more than just about computer hacking but something much larger: “In fact, to call hackers a counterculture makes it sound like they’re a transitory thing. I think they’re the next step in evolution.” Yeah, riiiight. Half-jokingly, he saw Hackers as a film about relationships, a “cyberpunk romantic comedy.” (?!) Oddly enough, Moreu only went on to only pen one other screenplay that was made into a film, a lackluster sequel to Brian De Palma’s Carrie (1976) no less which pretty much sunk his career and he hasn’t been heard from since.

So, what do we learn about hacking from this film? Not much, aside from don’t do a hack from your personal computer on a target located across state lines because you’ll get busted by the Feds. Also, the most commonly used passwords apparently are: love, secret and sex with special mention going to god because system operators have huge male egos. And, finally, hacking is more than just a crime, it’s a survival trait. In some respects, Hackers is the ‘90s answer to Tron as both films feature a brilliant underground hacker infiltrating a large corporate mainframe in order to expose wrong-doings and clear his name. After all, information just wants to be free, right? Their target demographic may be different but their goal is the same: to make an entertaining popcorn movie. When you get down to it, Hackers is silly fun with nothing more on its mind then to have a good time and what’s wrong with that?

Here is a fantastic review of the film over at Cashiers du Cinemart.

SOURCES

“Jonny Lee Miller and Angelina Jolie – The Happy Couple.” Empire. June 1996.

McClellan, Jim. “Cyberspace: The Hack Pack.” The Observer. January 8, 1995.

Page, Aubrey. “7 Highlights from the 20^th Anniversary Celebration of Hackers, Including Sequel Talk and Fashion Drama.” Indiewire. September 16, 2015.

Penfold, Phil. “Good Work If You Can Hack It.” The Herald. May 3, 1996. 

Goodfellas

"For as long as I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster." – Henry Hill

From his early days making Mean Streets (1973), Martin Scorsese was always fascinated by gangsters. As a child, he had grown up around them and was intrigued by their lifestyle. Goodfellas (1990) was his triumphant return to the subject and to his old neighborhood in New York City. The film would also reunite Scorsese with actors Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro – a combination that proved to be successful both commercially and critically. By all accounts, the film was a labor of love for the filmmaker and his cast and crew. This is abundantly evident in the incredible attention to detail and passion that is contained in every frame of this film. Goodfellas has all the trademarks of a master filmmaker at the top of his game, displaying an unwavering confidence while also telling an extremely entertaining and engaging story as well.

Goodfellas is a crime epic that spans three decades while following the dramatic rise and fall of three gangsters through the eyes of one them — Henry Hill (Ray Liotta). Early on, Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro) tells Henry the two most important rules for a gangster to follow: “Never rat on your friends and always keep your mouth shut.” Of course, Henry will break both these rules by the end of the film. Goodfellas depicts their obsessive pursuit of the American Dream, how consuming it is, and how everything eventually turns sours and ultimately devours them. The film is also about addiction and how it not only draws the characters in but us as well. We become addicted to the power of the film's style and visuals, which shows the seductive allure of the gangster lifestyle: to be able to do anything. And yet, the film isn't afraid to show the flipside — the nightmarish lows that come with the dizzying highs – with unflinching honesty.

Scorsese first read a review of a book entitled Wiseguy written by New York crime reporter Nicholas Pileggi and Henry Hill while on the set of The Color of Money (1987). Scorsese never intended to make another mob film but was so intrigued by the review that he read the book and came away from the experience feeling that it was the most honest portrayal of gangsters he had ever read because it gave one “a sense of the day-to-day life, the tedium – how they work, how they take over certain nightclubs, and for what reasons. It shows how it's done." He thought that the book would "make a fascinating film if you just make it what it is – literally as close to the truth as a fiction film, a dramatization, could get.” Scorsese was clearly drawn to the documentary aspects of the book – something he had tried to depict in Mean Streets. And like with that film, Scorsese was drawn to a grittier, more realistic view of gangster life, as opposed to the epic grandeur of The Godfather films. Another thing the filmmaker took away from the experience of reading Wiseguy was the approach he wanted to take with the film version: "To begin Goodfellas like a gunshot and have it get faster from there, almost like a two-and-a-half-hour trailer. I think it's the only way you can really sense the exhilaration of the lifestyle, and to get a sense of why a lot of people are attracted to it.”

Scorsese called Pileggi and told him how much he admired the book and his desire to make it into a film with the two of them writing the screenplay. Pileggi replied, "To tell you the truth, I've been waiting for this phone call all my life. If you want to do it, you can do it.” As the two men began to write the screenplay they recognized similarities between themselves. Both Scorsese and Pileggi had grown up in Italian-American neighborhoods with similar experiences. As a result, the two men bonded and the process of writing the screenplay became a passionate, personal project as Scorsese and Pileggi wrote 12 drafts before they achieved an ideal shooting script. The director retained most of what was included in the book, "but the visual styling had to be completely redone in our writing sessions. So we decided to share the credit.” The two men decided which sections of the book they liked and put them together like building blocks. Scorsese persuaded Pileggi that a traditional narrative structure was not needed. The director did not want to deal with the gangster film episode by episode but start in the middle and move backwards and forwards. Scorsese would compact scenes and realized that if they were kept short, "the impact after about an hour and a half would be terrific.” He wanted to do the voiceover like the opening of Jules and Jim (1962) and use “all the basic tricks of the [French] New Wave from around 1961.”

Since the title of Pileggi's book had already been used for a television series and for Brian De Palma’s 1986 comedy, Scorsese and the writer decided to change the name of their film to Goodfellas. This film would be the first screenplay Scorsese had put his name on since Mean Streets – clearly this project was near and dear to the filmmaker's heart.

This level of commitment did not stop with Scorsese. Many of the cast and crew felt as passionately about the material. Once De Niro agreed to play Jimmy Conway, Scorsese was able to secure the money needed to make the film. The director cast Ray Liotta after De Niro saw him in Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild (1986) and Scorsese was surprised by "his explosive energy" in that film. The actor had read Pileggi's book when it first came out and found it fascinating. A couple of years afterwards, his agent told him that Scorsese was going to direct a film version. In 1988, Liotta met the director over a period of a couple of months and auditioned for the film.

To prepare for his role, De Niro consulted with Pileggi who had research material that had been discarded while writing the book. De Niro often called Henry Hill several times a day to ask how the real man he was portraying walked, held his cigarette, and so on. Driving to and from the set, Liotta listened to FBI audio cassette tapes of Hill, so he could practice speaking like his real-life counterpart. To research her role, Lorraine Bracco tried to get close to a Mob wife but was unable to because they exist in a very tight-knit community. She decided not to meet the real Karen because she "thought it would be better if the creation came from me. I used her life with her parents as an emotional guideline for the role." Conversely, Paul Sorvino had no problem finding the voice and walk of his character but found it challenging finding "that kernel of coldness and absolute hardness that is antithetical to my nature except when my family is threatened."

Goodfellas was shot during the spring and summer of 1989 with a budget of $25 million. Scorsese broke the film down into sequences and storyboarded everything because of the complicated style throughout. He claims that the film's style comes from the first two or three minutes of Jules and Jim: extensive narration, quick edits, freeze frames, and multiple locale switches. It was this rebellious attitude towards convention that mirrored the attitude of many of the gangsters in the film. Scorsese remarked, "So if you do the movie, you say, 'I don't care if there's too much narration. Too many quick cuts? - That's too bad.' It's that kind of really punk attitude we're trying to show." He adopted a frenetic style in order to almost overwhelm the audience with images and information. He also put a lot of detail in every frame because the gangster life is so rich.

Liotta was impressed at how dedicated Scorsese and his crew were to the material. "What's interesting is, as you're working with them, it's so loose and relaxed...they work with a wonderful, self-confident kind of ease.” The actors on the film reacted to this relaxed atmosphere and as a result Goodfellas contains some truly inspired performances. It is obvious that Scorsese loves working with his actors. Sorvino commented that the director "really likes actors and has respect for their creativity – he inspires, encourages, and develops it. He says, 'Okay, let's just try this. He doesn't give you a lot of verbiage, or an avalanche of meaningless facts and information." Because Scorsese has years of filmmaking experience, he is very well organized, storyboarding and planning out every shot before any filming begins. This allows a certain amount of leeway and improvisation with his actors and crew. The film's producer, Irwin Winkler equated the way Scorsese works with the rather improvisational nature of jazz:

"He knows what he wants, but he still has the freedom of improvising and trying new things. He knows how to seize the moment when an actor does something a little different or a little special. Knowing what he wants makes it easier for him to do these improvisations, because he has, at least, a standard by which to keep it under control. He's like a jazz musician. He doesn't know all the notes he's going to hit, but he knows the melody he's going to stick to."

According to actor Joe Pesci, improvisation and ad-libbing came out of rehearsals where Scorsese let the actors do and say whatever they wanted. He made transcripts of these sessions, took the lines that the actors came up with that he liked best, and put them into a revised script that the cast worked from during principal photography.

Scorsese’s movie has an incredible amount of voiceover narration — usually the kiss of death because it slows down the narrative flow of the film and the audience gets bored with so much exposition. However, in this case it is essential. For the first third of the movie Henry tells us how and why he became a gangster and how their world works. Once he meets his wife, Karen (Lorraine Bracco), she takes over some of the voiceover narration duties. However, it is Henry’s voice that is prevalent throughout — this is his story after all.

The soundtrack for the film is almost wall-to-wall with a diverse selection of music. The only rule he adhered to was only use music that could have been heard at that time. Musical cues were used to the let the audience know which decade the action is taking place: doo-wop for the 1950s, girl group pop music for the 1960s and Rolling Stones rock ‘n’ roll for the 1970s. He also uses music to give the audience an idea of what a character is thinking or feeling. For example, there is a scene where Jimmy is sitting at the counter in a bar. The camera slowly moves in on him as the opening strains of “Sunshine of Your Love” by Cream plays over the soundtrack. Coupled with the cold, amoral look on De Niro’s face, the audience instinctively knows that he is going to kill someone very soon. It is a brilliant bit of foreshadowing done with music. According to Scorsese, a lot of non-dialogue scenes were shot to playback. For example, he had "Layla" playing on the set while shooting the scene where the dead bodies are discovered in the car and the meat-truck. Sometimes, the lyrics of songs were put between lines of dialogue to comment on the action.

There are so many classic scenes in Goodfellas that have become a part of cinematic history. For example, there is the “Am I Funny?” scene between Henry and Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci). Tommy is telling a story to a group of gangsters and everyone is laughing along. Then, Henry makes an offhanded comment that Tommy takes the wrong way and is offended. The tone of the scene shifts suddenly to one of tension as Tommy gets angrier and angrier. Is he going to hurt Henry? Is he going to kill him? Henry manages to talk his way out of it and the tone shifts back to a humorous one but the element of danger is always there, lurking under the surface because Tommy is such an unpredictable character. This famous scene was based on an actual event that happened to Pesci. It was worked on in rehearsals where he and Liotta improvised and Scorsese recorded four to five takes, rewrote their dialogue and inserted it into the script. This scene is indicative of the rhythm of the entire movie. There is an unpredictability that constantly keeps the audience off-guard in an exciting and entertaining way.

A great example of this technique is near the film's end when Henry Hill's life is rapidly unraveling due to a self-destructive drug habit. To mimic Henry's swift downward spiral Scorsese expertly orchestrates the whole film so that everything leads up to this terrifying last day when Henry finally becomes completely unglued and his world comes crashing down around him. The frenetic editing, not just visually but also musically, simulates Henry’s frenzied state of mind. Henry's last day as a wise guy was the hardest part of the film for Scorsese to shoot because he wanted to create the character's state of anxiety and the way the mind races when on drugs for people who had never been under the influence of cocaine and amphetamines. When preview audiences saw this scene they were "agitated" by it and Scorsese argued that that was the point of the scene. The director and the film's editor Thelma Schoonmaker actually made this sequence faster with more jump cuts to convey Henry's drug-addled point of view.

Another celebrated scene is the long tracking shot through the Copacabana nightclub, which came about because of a practical problem – the filmmakers could not get permission to go in the short way and this forced them to go round the back. Scorsese decided to do it in one shot in order to symbolize Henry's whole life is ahead of him and according to the director, "It's his seduction of her [Karen] and it's also the lifestyle seducing him.” This sequence was shot eight times.

Goodfellas had its world premiere at the 1990 Venice Film Festival where Scorsese received the Silver Lion award for Best Director. The film proved to be a favorite with critics and audiences alike. In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, "More than any earlier Scorsese film, Goodfellas is memorable for the ensemble nature of the performances ... The movie has been beautifully cast from the leading roles to the bits. There is flash also in some of Mr. Scorsese's directorial choices, including freeze frames, fast-cutting and the occasional long tracking shot. None of it is superfluous.” USA Today gave the film four out of four stars and called it, "great cinema – and also a whopping good time.” Newsweek magazine’s David Ansen wrote "Every crisp minute of this long, teeming movie vibrates with outlaw energy.” A rare, dissenting opinion came from The Independent’s Anthony Lane who wrote, "There is a short, needling comedy of violence and cowardice somewhere inside this stylish film, and it is worth watching more than once to prise it free. Scorsese himself chickened out, I think; perhaps the Mob got to him after all.” Pauline Kael was also not taken with the film: "Scorsese the arousal junkie makes you feel you'd like to hang out with him and listen to him tell how he brought off the effects; he's a master. But this picture doesn't have the juice and richness that come with major performances. It has no arc, and doesn't climax; it just comes to a stop."

William Fugazy, of the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations, a watchdog group on ethnic injustice, which claims a membership of 10 million and consists of 76 of the largest heritage groups in the United States, called for a boycott of the film and wanted Warner Bros. to ban it: "It's the worst stereotyping, the worst portrayal of the Italian community I've ever seen. Far worse than The Godfather. One killing after another.” Scorsese responded to this criticism by saying, "As Nick Pileggi always points out, there are 18 to 20 million Italian-Americans. Out of that, there are only 4,000 alleged organised crime members. But, as Nick says, they cast a very long shadow.”

Goodfellas became one of Scorsese's most successful and famous films since Taxi Driver (1976). However, it was snubbed at that year's Oscars, losing to Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves (1990) in most of the major categories except Best Supporting Actor, which was awarded to Joe Pesci. Regardless, Goodfellas has stood the test of time and its legacy paved the way for the likes of The Sopranos with what seems like half of its cast being alumni from Scorsese’s film. Goodfellas is just flat-out a great film, one that stands up to repeat viewings and has aged remarkably well. The words “classic” and “masterpiece” often get thrown around a lot but this is a film that truly deserves such monikers.

SOURCES

Arnold, Gary. "Real Fellas Talk about Mob Film." The Washington Times. September 25, 1990.

Clark, Mike. "GoodFellas step from his childhood." USA Today. September 19, 1990.

Gilbert, Matthew. "Scorsese Tackles the Mob." Boston Globe. September 16, 1990.

Goodwin, Richard. "The Making of Goodfellas." Hotdog.

Kelly, Mary Pat. Martin Scorsese: A Journey. Thunder Mouth Press. 2003.

Linfield, Susan. "Goodfellas Looks at the Banality of Mob Life." The New York Times. September 16, 1990.

Malcolm, Derek. "Made Men." Film Comment. September–October 1990.

Portman, Jamie. "Goodfellas Star Prefers Quiet Life." Toronto Star. October 1, 1990.

"The Making of Goodfellas." Empire Magazine. November 1990.

Thompson, David; Christie, Ian. Scorsese on Scorsese. Faber and Faber. 2004.

Van Gelder, Lawrence. "At the Movies." The New York Times. October 12, 1990.

Witchel, Alex. "A Mafia Wife Makes Lorraine Bracco a Princess." The New York Times. September 27, 1990.