Many people look back at the
1980s through the soft focus lens of nostalgia. They think fondly of John
Hughes’ teen movies or the music of The Police or television shows like Miami Vice or the novels of Stephen
King. The people who grew up in that decade have attempted to pay tribute to
that time in recent years with movies like the remake of It (2017), T.V. shows like Stranger
Things and music by likes of Bruno Mars that invoke the era.
Nostalgia for the ‘80s has
reached its saturation point and people tend to forget that there was a lot of
awful stuff, too, like Reaganomics, the omnipresent threat of nuclear war, the
explosion of Japanese fashion, T.V. shows like Alf, the proliferation of mindless synth pop, and the dominance of
producer-driven Hollywood blockbusters.
One of the films that best
encapsulated the superficial consumerism of the era was Paul Schrader’s American Gigolo (1980). With its icy
Eurotrash score by Giorgo Moroder, its expensive clothes by Giorgio Armani and luxurious
cars like Mercedes and BMW, it established the stylistic template for popular
culture that would be cemented by the equally influential Miami Vice show a few years later for the rest of the decade.
Schrader’s film is often dismissed as a shallow exercise in style while failing
to realize that its style is its substance. It is all surface, reflecting its
materialistic protagonist.
Julian Kay (Richard Gere) is
a high-end male escort specializing in wealthy women. He wears only the best
suits and drives expensive cars. Schrader immediately immerses us in his world
with a montage of him buying suits, driving his Mercedes and dropping off one
of his clients all to the strains of Blondie’s “Call Me” while giving us a tour
of boutique shops, expensive beachfront condos and affluent hotels – the
playground of California’s rich elite.
His world is turned upside
down when he meets a mysterious and lonely woman named Michelle (Lauren
Hutton), the wife of a California state senator. They meet by chance and she
becomes obsessed with him and he finds himself falling in love with her. His
life gets even more complicated when he finds out that a woman he had a kinky
one-off gig with in Palm Springs has been murdered. Julian soon becomes the
prime suspect and begins to lose control of his life that he works so hard to
maintain. He must figure out who set him up and why.
Schrader takes us through
Julian’s process on getting ready for a job. He lays out his suits, opens his
drawer of ties, then dress shirts and so on. It’s a ritual he’s done countless
times and Richard Gere skillfully sells it, showing how all these clothes
inform his character. In this case, the clothes truly make the man. For Julian
it’s all about control. He prides himself in knowing what women want, providing
them with a fantasy that plays into their desires. They both get something out
of their transactions. They feel wanted and desired and he gets paid.
The impossibly handsome Gere
is perfectly cast as the narcissistic Julian. He pays close attention to how he
looks and dresses as they are integral aspects of his job. He has to look good
for his clients. The actor certainly knows how to wear an Armani suit and has
an engaging smile that exudes charm. Julian has his whole act down cold – a
tilt of the head, a sly smile, the way he looks at someone, and the silky
smooth voice are all parts of his arsenal of seductive techniques.
Gere had a terrific run of
films starting in the late 1970s with a small but memorable part in Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), Days of Heaven (1978), and then into the
1980s with American Gigolo and Breathless (1983), playing fascinating,
complex characters that weren’t always likable but always interesting to watch
thanks to his incredible charisma.
Lauren Hutton is excellent as
the rather enigmatic woman that takes a shine to Julian. One imagines her being
an unhappy trophy wife who is expected to accompany her husband to all kinds of
political functions with an interested expression plastered on her face. The
actor conveys an impressive vulnerability like when Michelle seeks out Julian
and asks for a date with him. She is frank with what she wants and Hutton is
very good in this scene.
The intimacy between Julian
and Michelle is more than just being physical with each other. It is the conversation
they have after making love for the second time that is interesting as she
tries to get him to reveal personal details. When she asks him where he’s from
he says, “I’m not from anywhere…Anything worth knowing about me, you can learn
by letting me make love to you.” Julian is a blank slate and this allows women
to project their fantasies on him. He can be anything they want, which is why
he’s so good at what he does. He does tell her why he only prefers older women,
which is revealing in and of itself. He cares about pleasuring women. He puts
their needs before his own, often to the detriment of his own pleasure.
It is also interesting how
Schrader objectifies both men and women in American
Gigolo. Initially, as we see Julian ply his trade as it were and it is the
women that are shown naked but when he and Michelle make love the second time
the camera lingers on their respective body parts equally and, in fact,
afterwards we see more of his naked body than hers in one of the earliest
examples of full frontal male nudity in a Hollywood film. As he demonstrated in
this film and a few years later in Breathless,
Gere is a fearless actor very comfortable with his own body.
This translates to the
character as evident in a scene that occurs halfway through the film between
Julian and Detective Sunday (Hector Elizondo) who is investigating the murder
when the latter asks the former, “Doesn’t it ever bother you, Julian? What you
do?” He replies, “Giving pleasure to women? I’m supposed to feel guilty about
that?” When Sunday argues that what he does isn’t legal Julian says, “Legal is
not always right.” He arrogantly says that some people are above the law and at
this point he loses Sunday who sees things in simpler terms.
In 1977, Paul
Schrader sold his screenplay for American
Gigolo to Paramount Pictures. The next year John Travolta agreed to star
and the filmmaker felt that the character of Julian Kay was a natural
progression for the actor after his role in Saturday
Night Fever (1977). Schrader had seen Travolta in a photo shoot for Variety where he was unshaven and in a
white suit and felt that he was right for the part. The actor’s participation
set the wheels in motion and the film was given a $10 million budget. The
director auditioned four or five actors for the role of Michelle and liked Mia
Farrow the best but when he tested her with Travolta, “she blew John off the
screen. She made him look like an amateur, like a kid, not like the seducer.”
As a result, he had to go with someone else and cast Lauren Hutton who had
tested well with Travolta. Unfortunately, several things prompted the actor to
drop out of the production: his mother had died, recent movie Moment by Moment (1978) was a commercial
and critical failure, and he was anxious about the homosexual elements in the
script. His departure left Schrader with two days to cast someone else.
After strong
performances in high profile films that weren’t very profitable, Schrader
wanted to cast Richard Gere in American
Gigolo. Then head of Paramount Barry Diller didn’t want him, preferring
Christopher Reeve instead. Schrader didn’t think Reeve was right for the part,
as he was “too all-American, didn’t have that reptile mysteriousness.”
Unbeknownst to the studio, Schrader offered the part to Gere on a Sunday, giving
him only a few hours to decide. Once Gere agreed, Schrader left a note on
Diller’s gate at his home. The executive was understandably upset as the
director wasn’t authorized to do that. Schrader argued that Travolta was better
for Urban Cowboy (1980), which the
studio wanted to make and Diller allowed Gere to be American Gigolo.
Schrader said
of Gere’s commitment to the role as opposed to Travolta: “In one day, Richard
Gere asked all the questions that Travolta hadn’t asked in six months.” Gere
was drawn to the project by Schrader’s approach to how it would be shot, “with
very European techniques – the concept opened up: less a slice-of-life
character study and something much more textured, stylistic.”
When Travolta
dropped out, Schrader was tempted to go back to Farrow, however, he didn’t want
to push his luck with the studio after they let him cast Gere but regrets not
sticking with the actor: “Obviously I did everything I could and Lauren did
everything she could to be as good as she could, but Mia just had stronger
chops.”
When it came to
putting Los Angeles on film, Schrader realized that it had been photographed
countless times and wanted to bring a fresh perspective. He hired production
designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti, who had worked on Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970), Giorgio Armani
for the clothes, and Giorgio Moroder, who had scored Midnight Express (1978), to compose the film’s score. Scarfiotti,
in particular, was an important collaborator as Schrader admired his visual
style and the “idea that you can have a poetry of images rather than a poetry
of words.” He put Scarfiotti in charge of the look of the film, which included
production design, wardrobe, props, and cinematography.
Schrader picked
Moroder to compose the film’s score as he liked the “alienated quality” of his
music and “how propulsive it was, how sexual yet antiseptic. A sound for a new
Los Angeles.” Moroder had originally wanted Steve Nick to sing the film’s theme
song but she turned him down. He sent a demo to Blondie with the music and
lyrics already written. Their album Parallel
Lines was a massive hit but they had not been approached to contribute to a
film. They admired both Moroder and Schrader’s work and agreed to do it. Debbie
Harry didn’t like the lyrics and asked if she could write her own. She saw a
rough cut of the film and the opening scene was in her mind along with
Moroder’s music when the first lines came to her.
Clothes were
also an important aspect of the production. According to Schrader, when it came
to Julian, “the clothes and the character were one and the same. Remember, this
is a guy who has to do a line of coke just so he can get dressed.” Armani had
gotten involved at the suggestion of Travolta’s manager back when the actor was
still attached to the project. The fashion designer was getting ready to go
into an international non-couture line and the timing was right. When Gere came
on board they kept all the clothes and tailored them for the actor.
To prepare for
the role Schrader had Gere study actor Alain Delon in Purple Noon (1960), telling him, “Look at this guy, Alain Delon. He
knows that the moment he enters a room, the room has become a better place.”
According to the actor, the nudity wasn’t in the script, rather “it was just
the natural process of making the movie.” He also didn’t know the character or
his subculture very well: “I wanted to immerse myself in all of that and I had
literally two weeks. So I just dove in.”
In retrospect,
Schrader regrets that the homosexual aspects of the script were toned down to
get studio backing: “At the time, we thought we were being brave, promoting
this androgynous male entitlement. Now I look back, and we were being cowardly.
It should’ve been much more gay. Then again, I probably got it made because
Julian pretends not to be gay.”
At the time, American Gigolo received mostly negative
reviews by several mainstream critics. In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “Julian Kay is someone of
absolutely no visible charm or interest, and though Mr. Gere is a handsome,
able, low-key actor, he brings no charm or interest to the role. Then, too, the
camera is not kind to him. It's not that he doesn't look fine, but that the
camera seems unable to find any personality, like Dracula, whose image is
unreflected by a mirror.” The Washington
Post’s Gary Arnold wrote, “By the time it sputters to a fade out, Gigolo pays a heavy price for such
sustained pretentiousness in tawdry circumstances. This movie invites a sort of
sarcasm that destroyed Moment By Moment
without ever generating as much naive entertainment value.” Roger Ebert,
however, gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars and wrote, “The whole
movie has a winning sadness about it; take away the story's sensational aspects
and what you have is a study in loneliness. Richard Gere's performance is
central to that effect, and some of his scenes – reading the morning paper,
rearranging some paintings, selecting a wardrobe – underline the emptiness of
his life.”
If the thriller genre
elements don’t work as well as they should in American Gigolo it’s because the aspects of Julian’s profession and
his developing relationship with Michelle are infinitely more interesting. It
feels like Schrader was still trying things out and would be more successful at
marrying these aspects in the film’s spiritual sequel The Walker (2007) decades later. American Gigolo is a fascinating fusion of the commercial
sensibilities of slick movie producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Schrader’s art
house inclinations (in particular, the films of Robert Bresson), establishing a
stylistic template whose influence would be felt throughout the rest of the
decade. Gone was the gritty, looseness of the 1970s, replaced by a slick sheen
with style and spectacle over character development as epitomized by
Bruckheimer produced blockbusters like Flashdance
(1983) and Top Gun (1986). American Gigolo has aged better than many
of these films thanks to Schrader’s thematic preoccupations, most significantly
a self-destructive protagonist that finds redemption, and Gere’s strong
performance that anchors the film. It may seem like a happy ending inconsistent
with the rest of the film but Julian has survived at a great cost to his
reputation. Everything he is has been torn down and now he must find some way
to rebuild his life.
NOTES
Anolik, Lili.
“Call Me!” Airmail News Weekly. February 8, 2020.
Jones, Chris.
“Richard Gere: On Guard.” BBC News. December 27, 2002.
Krager, Dave.
“Richard Gere on Gere.” Entertainment Weekly. August 31, 2012.
Perry, Kevin
EG. “The Style of American Gigolo.” GQ.
March 2012.
Segell,
Michael. “Richard Gere: Heart-Breaker.” Rolling Stone. March 6, 1980.
