Prelude to a Kiss

Modern day fairy tales that involve elements of magic realism are hard to pull off credibly in contemporary cinema. With a few notable exceptions (see Field of Dreams), this kind of film is not popular with mainstream movie-going audiences as they have become increasingly jaded and cynical since the 1970s. This may explain why Prelude to a Kiss (1992) failed at the box office and was savaged by critics despite featuring two very popular actors in the leading roles. At the time, Alec Baldwin had established his leading man credentials with The Hunt for Red October (1990) while Meg Ryan became America’s sweetheart thanks to When Harry Met Sally… (1989). Putting these two together must’ve seemed like a no-brainer and yet Prelude to a Kiss underperformed. It certainly isn’t your typical romantic comedy, but for those who become captivated by its bewitching atmosphere, it is a special kind of film with a story that resonates long after it ends.

Based on Craig Lucas’ play of the same name, Prelude to a Kiss starts off as a sweet romance between two people. Peter (Alec Baldwin) and Rita (Meg Ryan) meet at a party. He is about to leave, but is coerced to stay by a friend (Stanley Tucci) who introduces him to her. While Peter initially comes across as a bespectacled, button-downed type (it’s endearing how the filmmakers try to dress down the hunky Baldwin) while Rita comes across as a fun-loving free spirit, dancing to “I Touch Myself” by the Divinyls. She’s all touchy-feely while he tries to tell a lame joke.

They get to talking and there’s a wonderful looseness to the party scene as Peter and Rita have an awkward meet-cute moment that feels genuine. It also helps that there is terrific chemistry between Baldwin and Ryan. Their conversations early on in the film are charming and witty as they touch upon subjects like him reading The White Hotel by D.M. Thomas, having kids, her history of insomnia, and recounting his unhappy childhood due to his parents’ divorce. The latter of which is told so well by Baldwin who has that great voice that captivates Rita (and us). As a result, we don’t want these getting-to-know-you scenes to ever end as they are so engaging and romantic.

They get serious enough that Peter meets Rita’s parents (played charmingly by Ned Beatty and Patty Duke) in a scene that starts off awkwardly as they good-naturedly mess with him, culminating in a funny bit where her dad flexes a bulldog tattoo on his arm, which Beatty plays with just the right eccentric spin. Things go swimmingly and they decide to get married. In another part of the city, an old man named Julius (Sydney Walker) decides to go for a walk and winds up on a train bound for the suburb where Peter and Rita are getting married. He shows up and mingles with the partygoers. At the reception, the elderly man approaches the happy couple and when he gives her a congratulatory kiss something strange happens. The sky darkens for a moment as Rita and Julius swap souls.

No one has any idea what just happened, but on their honeymoon Peter suspects that there’s something wrong with Rita. Maybe it’s her avoidance of physical intimacy or the odd turn of phrase (“You’re my puppy puppy.”) or her quick agreement to quit her job and let him support them or her failure to remember how to make a Long Island iced tea (and she’s a bartender!). The crucial indicator that something isn’t right is her ability to finally sleep. Peter finally figures out what happened between Rita and Julius and the rest of the film plays out Peter trying to get his wife back in her own body.

Reprising his role from the Broadway production, Alec Baldwin delivers one of the strongest performances of his career as a slightly bookish guy who falls in love with a woman that encourages him to be spontaneous and enjoy being in the moment. The actor is capable of wonderful little moments, like how he humors Rita’s aunt and uncle at their wedding reception, while also nailing the big moments as well. This role requires Baldwin to convey a wide range of emotions over the course of the film as we see him go from the first blush of romance to almost losing his mind when he realizes what has happened to Rita. This culminates in the scene where Peter realizes that the person he married isn’t her anymore. The sadness that plays over his face when this sinks in is absolutely heartbreaking. After all, who can he tell? Who would believe him? You really feel for the poor guy.

Meg Ryan is quite good as Rita as she spends the first half of the film getting Peter (and us) to fall in love with Rita thanks to that great smile of hers and an independent streak that makes her a distinctive character instead of a romantic ideal for the male lead. Ryan is especially good when her body is possessed by Julius’ soul. The actress subtly changes how she moves and acts. Peter and Rita aren’t the immature romantic leads that seem to populate so many contemporary romantic comedies. They are smart, passionate dreamers that care deeply for each other. I could listen to their conversations forever and secretly hold out hope that there is a bunch of deleted scenes somewhere with even more conversations between them. The filmmakers have lured us in so that when the fantastical twist happens we’ve become emotionally invested in Peter and Rita. We care about them and want to see them be happy.

The third part of this equation is Sydney Walker who plays Julius. He does a good job of playing the old man initially as an impish enigma and then when the swap occurs the actor has to incorporate many of Rita’s mannerisms in a way that credibly sells the transformation that takes place. He manages to give the impression that Rita is in there, inhabiting this body. It is only until the last third of the film that we get insight into Julius’ motivations and also how Rita was receptive to the swap.

In 1988, Norman Rene directed the first stage production of Craig Lucas’ play Prelude to a Kiss in Costa Mesa, California. After extensively rewriting it (strengthening the storyline and trimming down the number of characters), the two men took the play to New York City where it debuted on Off-Broadway, with Alec Baldwin and Mary-Louise Parker in the lead roles, and then on Broadway with Timothy Hutton replacing Baldwin. The play got rave reviews and soon Hollywood came calling. Lucas met with 20th Century Fox in 1989 and the studio secured the film rights for just over a million dollars in 1990. Two conditions of the sale were that Rene had to direct the film and Lucas’ screenplay could not be rewritten. Baldwin reprised his role, but Parker was replaced by the more box office friendly Meg Ryan. Alec Guinness was originally cast as Julius, but had to leave the production early on when his wife became ill, and was replaced by theater veteran Sydney Walker.

Prelude to a Kiss received mostly negative reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, “Prelude to a Kiss is the kind of movie that can inspire long conversations about the only subject really worth talking about, the Meaning of It All.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “The performances are colorless … The camera doesn’t reveal characters. The close-ups corner the actors to expose banalities.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “C-“ rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “Prelude to a Kiss is squishy yet blah. It teaches the characters a lesson they don’t need to learn.” The Los Angeles Times’ Kenneth Turan wrote, “Fortunately, Baldwin and Ryan form an extremely likable couple, believable both in their initial unsureness and in how they gradually hook onto each other’s loose ends.” Finally, in his review for the Washington Post, Desson Howe wrote, “Prelude is at its best when it’s not being a fairy tale. The middle sags, and the finale is so conveniently beneficial for everyone it ruins any sense of romantic triumph.”

In these kinds of body swap movies there is the tendency to exaggerate the change for comic effect, but Prelude to a Kiss avoids the typical pratfalls and obvious personality clashes for a kind of melancholic tone. The film consists of two different halves with the first part having a warm and romantic tone while the second part is tragic and dramatic. It is this tonal shift that some may find jarring. The soul swapping scene is the most pivotal point in the film where it risks losing its audience. If you can’t or don’t want to make the leap in logic that the film does then the rest of it doesn’t work. Prelude to a Kiss puts an intriguing spin on the notion of soul mates so prevalent in romantic comedies. What happens when two people that are meant to be together have their love put to the test in such an unusual way? Perhaps the answer lies in what Peter says in voiceover at the beginning of the film when he compares love to riding a rollercoaster: “Ride at your own risk … They want you to believe that anything can happen. And they’re right.”

SOURCES

Drake, Sylvie. “Hitting the Jackpot.” Los Angeles Times. June 5, 1990.

Rea, Steven. “Director’s Tale: Taking Prelude to a Kiss From Stage to Screen.” Philadelphia Inquirer. July 12, 1992.

The Doors

Anticipation was high when it was announced that Oliver Stone would be filming a biopic about the popular rock band the Doors. With Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989), he was gaining a reputation for being the premiere chronicler of America in the 1960s so it made sense that he would tackle that decade’s most famous (and infamous) musical acts. The question remained, what kind of approach would Stone take on the material? Many books had been written by journalists, people that knew him and even by members of the band itself, all with their own perspective and opinion on what the Doors meant to them and to popular culture. The world found out what Stone’s take was on March 1, 1991 when The Doors was released to wildly mixed reviews and strong box office. While many critics felt that Val Kilmer delivered an excellent performance as the band’s lead singer Jim Morrison, they felt that the film dwelled too much on his darker aspects and excesses and that Stone played fast and loose with the facts.


One should look at The Doors much like Stone’s subsequent film JFK (1992), as a mythical take on historical figures and events and not as documentary-like authenticity. I find The Doors to be a big, bloated, fascinating mess of a film that reflects the tumultuous times of the ‘60s. Despite the miscasting of a few roles and the rather one-sided view we get of Morrison, Stone’s film is a beautifully-shot acid trip through the ‘60s with some of the best choreographed live concert sequences every recreated on film. Best of all, it brought the Doors’ music back into the mainstream, reminded everyone what a brilliant band they were, and how much they influenced and reflected their times.

The film starts off with Morrison (Val Kilmer) recording An American Prayer and reciting lines that rather nicely apply to the beginning of this biopic. Then, Stone takes us back to New Mexico, 1949 when the singer was just a boy. As Robert Richardson’s camera floats over desolate, sun-drenched desert, the first atmospheric strains of “Riders on the Storm” plays over the soundtrack. Right from the get-go, Stone establishes the mythical approach he plans to adopt for the film by recreating a popular story told by Morrison that as a young boy his family passed by a car accident involving an elderly Native American Indian. As the story goes, at the moment when he died, his spirit left his body and went into the young Morrison. The story was meant to explain Morrison’s fascination with shamanism and mysticism.

We quickly jump to Venice Beach, 1965 where Morrison is attending film school at UCLA along with Ray Manzarek (Kyle MacLachlan). He also meets Pamela Courson (Meg Ryan), who would go on to become the great love of his life, and they quickly become romantically involved. The appearance of these two people exposes early on one of the film’s flaws – the miscasting of Kyle MacLachlan as Manzarek and Meg Ryan as Pamela. Whereas from his first appearance on-screen, you instantly accept Val Kilmer as Morrison, MacLachlan comes across as too stiff and the dialogue doesn’t sound natural coming out of his mouth. Not to mention, his wig is a distraction. With Ryan, it is her identification with romantic comedies like When Harry Met Sally... (1989) and Joe Versus the Volcano (1990) that makes it so hard to believe her as a free-spirited flower child that eventually transforms into a promiscuous drug user. In scenes where Pamela is supposed to come across as naive, Ryan conveys a clueless vacancy. It’s too bad because she would go on to demonstrate an ability to tap into a darker side with Prelude to a Kiss (1992) and more significantly with the little-seen Flesh and Bone (1993). However, with The Doors, she is clearly out of her comfort zone and it is glaringly obvious.

From there we go to that fateful day when Morrison sang some of the lyrics to “Moonlight Drive” to Manzarek and they proposed starting a band, coming up with the name, the Doors. Stone jumps to the band now with drummer John Densmore (Kevin Dillon) and guitarist Robby Krieger (Frank Whaley) rehearsing “Break on Through (To the Other Side).” This is a really strong scene as it shows the genesis for their biggest song, “Light My Fire” and Stone makes a point of showing that Morrison didn’t write all of their songs. Stone also shows how they all contributed to the song’s evolution that resulted in the classic it became. I also like how we see the Doors starting out, playing a small dive on the Sunset Strip called London Fog. Morrison is still so shy on stage that he can’t face the audience. This is the film at its best, showing the band creating music and in action, performing live.

It goes without saying that The Doors truly comes to life during the concert scenes as all the theatrical stage lighting and dynamic camera movements showcases Richardson’s skill as one of the best cinematographers ever to get behind the camera. The warm colors he uses in the London Fog scenes conveys an intimacy representative of the small venue and symbolizes a band still learning their chops, both musically and how they perform in a live setting. Richardson really gets a chance to cut loose in the sequence where the band go out into the desert and take peyote. He employs all sorts of trippy effects and also creates some stunningly beautiful shots, like that of a blue sky populated by all kinds of fragmented clouds or a pan across a rocky formation with shadows creeping upwards, animated via time lapse photography.

Stone then segues to the Doors playing at the Whisky a Go Go in 1966 – the next step to the big time. We see them perform “The End,” an epic Oedipal nightmare. It’s a hypnotic song that shows how far the band had come. Morrison is no longer shy and commands the stage like no other before him. Kilmer is mesmerizing in this scene and you can see how fully committed he is to the role. It’s not just the ability to recreate Morrison’s signature moves but he has an uncanny knack to immerse himself in the singer’s headspace. In these concert scenes it is incredible to see the actor throw himself completely into them just as Morrison would.

In the spot-on casting department, it was an absolute delight to see Michael Wincott freed from the shackles of playing clichéd heavies and make an appearance as legendary music producer Paul Rothchild who worked on many of the Doors’ albums. He has a fantastic scene later on when he tries to get through to a drunken Morrison during an awful recording session and delivers an impassioned speech even though the singer tunes him out.

Stone’s film starts to lose its mind when the Doors arrive in New York City in 1967 and the way he presents the hysteria of their arrival is like the Second Coming of the Beatles. There are moments of amusing levity as Stone shows the obvious culture clash between the square staff at The Ed Sullivan Show when the producers try to be hip by talking to the band in their own “lingo” using words like “groovy” and “dig it” that sound forced and fabricated. The Doors are told to change a lyric in “Light My Fire” so as to satisfy standards and practices. Stone has a bit of fun with their televised appearance, fudging how Morrison defied the censors.

Stone shows the skyrocketing of Morrison’s ego and how he began to believe his own hype. He also suggests that Morrison really started to lose control when he and his bandmates attended a party at Andy Warhol’s The Factory. All sorts of pretentious weirdoes vie for Morrison’s attention. Manzarek sums it up best when he tells Morrison, “These people are vampires.” However, it’s when the rest of the band departs the party leaving Morrison to fend for himself that Stone suggests the moment when the first schism between them was created. The look of distrust on the singer’s face as his bandmates depart says it all. There is no one to keep his indulgent behavior in check. We are subjected to an unfortunate fey caricature of Warhol thanks to the usually reliable Crispin Glover. Hanging out with Nico and Warhol’s regulars brings out Morrison’s worst excesses which Richardson shoots like some kind of monstrous nightmare, a bad trip that we want desperately to end. This sequence starts Stone’s escalation of depicting Morrison’s self-destructive journey.

And so we get a scene where Morrison does cocaine with a self-professed witch (played by a vampy Kathleen Quinlan) and participates in a silly, over-the-top ceremony whose inclusion stops the narrative cold. Stone is playing with the mythic figure that we know as Jim Morrison. The Doors tries to show both sides: the mythic persona and the real man drowning in fame, drugs and alcohol. Stone hints at this transformation when Morrison does the famous photo shoot that has been immortalized in posters and in the pages of glossy rock magazines like Rolling Stone. Morrison is drunk on alcohol and one might argue his own fame. He begins to believe in his own image and the photographer (Mimi Rogers) only coaxes him on when she says, “Forget the Doors. You’re the one they want. You are the Doors.” It is at this point in the film that Morrison is no longer an artist or a poet, but a commodity to be used up by everyone: the media and the masses. On Morrison’s rise to the top, everyone wants a piece of him, to capture a little bit of the exhilarating ride. Morrison’s mistake was that he obliged and thought that he could handle it.

We see how drugs and alcohol fuel Morrison’s irrational behavior and he becomes verbally and physically abusive towards Pamela. Anything that was good about Morrison depicted in the film is now gone and all we’re treated to is a series of scenes showing what an asshole he had become and how he had been consumed by his own fame. His bad behavior reaches new heights of ridiculousness during a scene where he and Pamela host a dinner party for their friends and hanger-ons. Stoned out of his mind (and probably drunk), Morrison provokes Pamela who starts throwing food around hysterically and then tries to stab him with a carving knife while he taunts her. Stone sledgehammers the point home by playing “Love Me Two Times” on the soundtrack as if to reinforce Morrison repeatedly cheating on Pamela with other women. If there is anything good that comes from this wildly over-the-top scene it is that it shows how estranged Morrison has become from the rest of his bandmates.

Fortunately, the film has amazingly choreographed concert sequences that repeatedly bring it back from the brink of its own excesses. The New Haven ’68 concert depicts Morrison’s run-in with the law when he was maced in the face backstage by a cop. It’s no longer about the music but the abuse of his power as a lead singer with a microphone to air his grievances. The best concert sequence in the film is the San Francisco ’68 one. Bathed in hellish red light, Morrison whips the crowd into a frenzy. His increasingly desperate performance is juxtaposed with his out of control personal life as he almost traps Pamela in their bedroom closet and proceeds to burn it down, gets in a car accident and is involved in a Wiccan marriage ceremony. We see Morrison in a wonderfully hallucinatory moment channel his Native American Indian spirit as he loses himself in the music. The last shot of this powerful sequence shows Morrison drunk on his own power and fame as much as he’s drunk on alcohol. The expression on Kilmer’s face says it all.

Over the years, directors like Brian De Palma, Martin Scorsese and William Friedkin flirted with directing a Doors biopic. In 1985, Columbia Pictures acquired the rights from the Doors and the Morrison estate to make a film. Producer Sasha Harari wanted Oliver Stone to write the screenplay but never heard back from the filmmaker’s agent. After two unsatisfactory scripts were produced, Imagine Films replaced Columbia. Harari tried contacting Stone again and the director met with the surviving band members. He told them that he wanted to keep a particularly wild scene from one of the early drafts. The group was offended and exercised their right of approval over the director and rejected Stone. By 1989, Mario Kassar and Andy Vajna, who owned Carolco Pictures, acquired the rights to the project and wanted Stone to direct. The Doors had seen Platoon (1986) and were impressed with what Stone had done.

Stone agreed to make The Doors after his next project, Evita (1996). After spending years on it and courting Madonna and later Meryl Streep to play the lead role, the film fell apart over salary negotiations with Streep. Stone quickly moved on to The Doors and went right into pre-production. Guitarist Robby Krieger had always opposed a Doors film until Stone signed on to direct. Stone first heard the Doors when he was a 21-year-old soldier serving in Vietnam. Historically, keyboardist Ray Manzarek had been the biggest advocate of immortalizing the band on film but opposed Stone’s involvement. According to Krieger, “When the Doors broke up Ray had his idea of how the band should be portrayed and John and I had ours.” Manzarek was not happy with the direction Stone wanted to take and refused to give his approval to the film. According to Kyle MacLachlan, “I know that he and Oliver weren’t speaking. I think it was hard for Ray, he being the keeper of the Doors myth for so long.” Manzarek claims that he was not even asked to consult on the film and if he had his way wanted it to be about four members equally rather than the focus being on Morrison. Stone claims that he repeatedly tried to get the keyboardist involved, but “all he did was rave and shout. He went on for three hours about his point of view ... I didn’t want Ray to be dominant, but Ray thought he knew better than anybody else.”

While researching the film, Stone read through transcripts of interviews with over 100 people. The cast was expected to get educated about 1960s culture and literature. Stone wrote his own script in the summer of 1989. He said, “The Doors script was always problematic. Even when we shot, but the music helped fuse it together.” He picked the songs he wanted to use and then wrote “each piece of the movie as a mood to fit that song.” Before filming, Stone and his producers had to negotiate with the three surviving band members, their label Elektra Records, and the parents of Morrison and Pamela Courson. Morrison’s parents would only allow themselves to be depicted in a dream-like flashback sequence at the beginning of the film. The Coursons wanted there to be no suggestion in any way that their daughter caused Morrison’s death. Stone found her parents to be the most difficult to deal with because they wanted Pamela to be “portrayed as an angel.” The Coursons tried to slow the production down by refusing to allow any of Morrison’s later poetry to be used in the film. After he died, Pamela got the rights to his poetry and when she died, her parents got the rights. Legendary concert promoter Bill Graham, who promoted Doors concerts in San Francisco and New York in the ‘60s, played a key role in negotiations.

When Stone began talking about the project as far back as 1986, he had Kilmer in mind to play Morrison, impressed by his work in the Ron Howard fantasy film Willow (1988). However, during this time actors ranging from John Travolta to Richard Gere to Tom Cruise and the lead singers from INXS and U2 were considered for the part. Stone auditioned nearly 200 actors to play Morrison in 1989. In his favor, Kilmer had the same kind of singing voice as Morrison and to convince Stone that he was right for the role he spent thousands of dollars of his own money to make his own eight-minute video, singing and looking like the Lizard King at various stages of his life. When the Doors heard Kilmer singing they couldn’t tell if it was him or Morrison’s voice. Once he got the part, he lost weight and spent six months rehearsing Doors songs every day. Kilmer learned 50 songs, 15 of which are actively performing in the film. He also spent hundreds of hours with record producer Paul Rothchild who told him, “anecdotes, stories, tragic moments, humorous moments, how Jim thought, what were my interpretation of Jim’s lyrics,” he said. He also took Kilmer into the studio and helped him with “some pronunciations, idiomatic things that Jim would do that made the song sound like Jim.” The actor also met with Krieger and Densmore but Manzarek refused to talk to him.

Stone auditioned approximately 60 actresses for the role of Pamela Courson. The part required nudity and the script featured some wild sex scenes which generated a fair amount of controversy. Casting director Risa Bramon Garcia felt that Patricia Arquette auditioned very well and should have gotten the part. However, Meg Ryan was cast and to prepare for the role, she talked to the Coursons and people that knew Pamela and encountered several conflicting views of her. Before doing the film, Ryan was not at all familiar with Morrison and “liked a few songs.” She had trouble relating to the culture of the ‘60s and said, “I had to reexamine all my beliefs about it in order to do this movie.”

Stone originally hired Paula Abdul to choreograph the film’s concert scenes but dropped out because she did not understand Morrison’s on-stage actions and was not familiar with the time period. She recommended Bill and Jacqui Landrum. They watched hours of concert footage before working with Kilmer. They got him to loosen up his upper body with dance exercises and jumping routines to develop his stamina for the demanding concert scenes. During them, he did the actual singing and Stone used the Doors’ master tapes without Morrison’s lead vocals to avoid lip-synching. Kilmer’s endurance was put to the test during these sequences, with each one often taking several days to film. Stone said, “his voice would start to deteriorate after two or three takes. We had to take that into consideration.” One sequence, filmed inside the Whisky a Go Go was harder than the others due to all the smoke and the sweat, a result of the body heat and intense camera lights. For five days Kilmer performed “The End” and after the 24th take, Stone got what he wanted and the actor was left totally exhausted.

With a budget of $32 million, The Doors was filmed over 13 weeks predominantly in and around Los Angeles. Krieger acted as a technical adviser on the film and this mainly involved showing his cinematic alter ego Frank Whaley where to put his fingers on the fretboard. Densmore also acted as a consultant, tutoring Kevin Dillon who played him in the film. Controversy arose during principal photography when a memo linked to Kilmer circulated to cast and crew members listing rules of how the actor was to be treated for the duration of filming. These included people being forbidden to approach him on the set without good reason, not to address him by his own name while he was in character, and no one could “stare” at him on the set. Understandably upset, Stone contacted Kilmer’s agent and the actor claimed it was all a huge misunderstanding and that the memo was for his own people and not the film crew.

Not surprisingly, The Doors received mixed to negative reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote, “The experience of watching The Doors is not always very pleasant. There are the songs, of course, and some electrifying concert moments, but mostly there is the mournful, self-pitying descent of this young man into selfish and boring stupor … The last hour of the film, in particular, is a dirge of wretched excess, of drunken would-be orgies and obnoxious behavior.” In her review for The New York Times, Caryn James wrote, “At its best, the film's haunted Doors music and visceral look creates the sense of being in some hypnotic trance. But by the end, audiences may feel they have been beaten over the head with a stick for two hours.” Time magazine’s Richard Corliss wrote, “His movies make people edgy, and that's a good thing. But this time Stone is a symptom of the disease he would chart … Maybe it was fun to bathe in decadence back then. But this is no time to wallow in that mire.” In his review for the Washington Post, Hal Hinson wrote, “Amid all this trippy incoherence, the performances are almost irrelevant. Kilmer does a noteworthy impersonation of the singer, especially onstage, where he gets Morrison's self-absorption. He gets his coiled explosiveness too, but the element of danger in Morrison is missing.”

The Chicago Reader’s Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote, “Some of the effects are arresting, and apart from some unfortunate attempts to ‘re-create’ Ed Sullivan, Andy Warhol, and Nico, the movie does a pretty good job with period ambience. But it's a long haul waiting for the hero to keel over.” Famous conservative pundit George Will not only attacked Morrison, calling him, “not particularly interesting” and that he “left some embarrassing poetry and a few mediocre rock albums,” but also the film: “for today’s audiences, Stone’s loving re-creation of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district is just a low-rent Williamsburg, an interesting artifact but no place for a pilgrimage.” However, Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “B” rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “As Morrison, Val Kilmer gives a star-making performance. Lolling around in his love beads and black-leather pants, his thick dark mane falling over features that are at once baby-sweet and preternaturally dangerous, Kilmer captures, to an astonishing degree, the hooded, pantherish charisma that made Morrison the most erotically charged pop performer since the early days of Elvis.”

So how did the actual Doors feel about the film? Robby Krieger was impressed with Kilmer’s portrayal of Morrison: “It was really weird. I even called him ‘Jim’ a few times without meaning to.” In his memoirs, John Densmore wrote, “For what it is, I do think Oliver Stone’s vision of Jim Morrison has integrity; however, it is a film about the myth of Jim Morrison.” Ray Manzarek said of the film, “The movie misses out – Oliver Stone blew it ... The movie looks good, sure, but the basic heart is stone cold.”

Stone also uses several film techniques like special lighting to create a red hue over everything and a swaying, chaotic camera to create an off-kilter hallucinogenic world that he would later perfect in Natural Born Killers (1994). This effect gives the film the overall effect of a peyote experience without actually taking drugs. The Doors also captures the madness and paranoia of the era with quick edits of the horrors of Vietnam, and the Robert F. Kenney assassination juxtaposed with the belligerent cops at every concert, and the rampant drug use associated with this scene. One band member says during the film that he took drugs to expand his mind not to escape as Morrison did. As the scenes of Morrison’s excessive behavior pile up, a feeling of exhaustion sets in as it begins to be all too much which, I guess, is kind of how Morrison felt towards the end. A feeling of burn out takes over and the end of the film can’t come soon enough. The experience of watching The Doors leaves one drained and you really feel like you’ve been somewhere and experienced something.

The Doors is a potent reminder of the self-destructive power of rock stars that the media manipulates and thrives on. At one point in the film during a press conference, Morrison says, “I believe in excess,” and in doing so underlines the whole thesis of the film. The Doors is a film about excess on many levels: on a individual level with Morrison himself, on a national level with thousands of fans going crazy at the mere sight of the singer, and on a personal level with Stone’s own preoccupations permeating throughout. The Doors also examines the seductive power of the cult of personality, the god-like status to which people like Morrison or someone like Kurt Cobain are elevated to and the inevitable crash that follows when they can’t handle the responsibility. Morrison represents a generation trying to escape the pain of a crazy world. Like Cobain, Morrison wanted to ultimately be seen as an artist, but was treated in life and after his death like a commodity (Morrison was once referred to as the “ultimate Barbie doll.”). Both men were consumed by the very thing that created them: the media. They also ended their own lives, Cobain via suicide and Morrison through alcohol abuse. The Doors is a powerful study of excesses of every kind: sex, drugs, alcohol, and fame on an individual and on a society.

SOURCES

Broeske, P. “Stormy Rider.” Sunday Herald. March 10, 1991.

Green, Tom. “Kilmer’s Uncanny Portrait of Morrison Opens Career Doors.” USA Today. March 4, 1991.

Hall, Carla. “Val Kilmer, Lighting the Fire.” Washington Post. March 3, 1991.

Kilday, Gregg. “Love Me Two Times.” Entertainment Weekly. March 1, 1991.

MacInnis, Craig. “The Myth is Huge, But the Truth is the Lure of the Eternal.” Toronto Star. March 2, 1991.

McDonnell, D. “Legendary Rocker Lives Again On.” Herald Sun. March 2, 1991.

McDonnell, D. “Rider on the Storm.” Courier-Mail. March 16, 191.

Mitchell, Justin. “Opening Up A Closed Door.” St. Petersburg Times. December 28, 1990.

“Oliver Stone and The Doors.” The Economist. March 16, 1991.

Riordan, James. Stone: A Biography of Oliver Stone. Hyperion. 1995.

Thomas, Karen. “Helping Stage The Doors.” USA Today. March 12, 1991.

Thomas, Karen. “Ex-Doors Member Slams Stone, Film.” USA Today. April 4, 1991.

When Harry Met Sally...

Can men and women be friends without sex getting in the way? This is the question that When Harry Met Sally... (1989) asks and then wisely leaves up to the viewer to decide. Released in 1989, this romantic comedy is a classic example of the right people in the right place at the right time with Rob Reiner directing, Nora Ephron writing and Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan as the romantic leads with old standards re-interpreted by a then-up-and-coming singer Harry Connick, Jr. The results were amazing to say the least, launching the careers of the aforementioned into the stratosphere and creating a benchmark that every romantic comedy has since been judged by.

Harry Burns (Billy Crystal) meets Sally Albright (Meg Ryan) after they both graduate from university and share a car ride from Chicago to New York City. Along the way, they argue about the differences between men and women and Harry says that they can never be friends because sex always gets in the way, to which Sally disagrees. She finds him obnoxious and he thinks that she’s too uptight. Once Harry and Sally arrive in New York and go their separate ways, they figure that they will never see each other again. Over the years, Harry and Sally run into each other again during various stages in their lives and become friends. The film chronicles the development of their relationship.

In 1984, Rob Reiner, producer Andrew Scheinman and writer Nora Ephron met over several lunch meetings to develop a project together. The second meeting transformed into a long discussion about Reiner and Scheinman’s lives as single men. The next time they all met, Reiner said that he had always wanted to do a film about two people who become friends and don’t have sex because they know it will ruin their relationship but have sex anyway. Ephron liked the idea and Reiner put a deal in place at a studio. She then proceeded to interview him and Scheinman about their lives in order to have material to draw on. These interviews also provided the basis for Harry. In Ephron’s first draft, Harry and Sally did not end up together at the film’s end, which she felt was “the true ending,” as did Reiner until he met his future wife while making it and changed his mind.

At the time, Reiner was constantly depressed, pessimisitic yet very funny. Sally, in turn, was based on Ephron and some of her friends. When Crystal came on board the film was called Boy Meets Girl, and he made his own contributions to the script, making Harry funnier. Crystal “experience[d] vicariously” his best friend Reiner’s return to single life after divorcing comedienne and filmmaker Penny Marshall. In the process, he was unconsciously doing research for the role of Harry. During the screenwriting process, when Ephron wouldn’t feel like writing, she would interview people who worked for the production company. She also got bits of dialogue from these interviews. She worked on several drafts over the years while Reiner made Stand By Me (1986) and The Princess Bride (1987).

When the film started to focus too much on Harry, the classic deli scene was born. Crystal said, “we need[ed] something for Sally to talk about and Nora said, ‘Well, faking orgasm is a great one.’ Right away we said, ‘Well, the subject is good.’ and then Meg came on board and we talked with her about the nature of the idea and she said, ‘Well, why don’t I just fake one, just do one?’” Ephron suggested that the scene take place in a deli and it was Crystal who actually came up with scene’s classic punchline, “I’ll have what she’s having,” spoken by Reiner’s mother. At a test screening, Reiner remembers that all the women in the audience laughed during this scene while all the men were silent. Originally, Ephron wanted to call the film, How They Met and went through several different titles. Reiner even started a contest with the crew during principal photography – whoever came up with the title won a case of champagne.

The film’s dialogue has a ring of honesty to it, from Harry and Sally’s discussion about having good sex early on in the film, to their conversation about fake orgasms during the famous deli sequence. One memorable scene is when Harry tells Sally what all men think about after having sex: “How long do I have to lie here and hold her before I can get up and go home? Is thirty seconds enough?” Disgusted, she replies, “That’s what you’re thinking? Is that true?” Harry tells her, “Sure. All men think that. How long do you like to be hold afterwards? All night, right? See, that’s the problem. Somewhere between thirty seconds and all night is your problem.” What they talk about and how they do it really captures the way men and women talk to and about each other. Much of the dialogue is also very funny. For example, there’s the little asides, like Sally’s anal-retentive and very particular way of ordering food at restaurants, or the Pictionary scene where Harry’s best friend Jess (Bruno Kirby) ineptly guesses Sally’s drawing as “baby fishmouth” (?!). Crystal’s reaction to Kirby’s guess is absolutely priceless.

The film finds humor in painful situations, like when Harry tells Jess that he’s breaking up with his wife because she cheated on him. Jess tells him, “marriages don’t break up on account of infidelity. It’s just a symptom that something else is wrong.” Harry replies, “oh really? Well, that symptom is fucking my wife.” The film is also chock full of brilliant observations about relationships – easily the best of its kind outside of a Woody Allen film. This is something that is missing from so many romantic comedies now. Most contemporary ones feel the need for some kind of zany premise to justify their existence and feature crude humor instead of working at creating fully-realized characters and authentic sounding dialogue. This is one of the strengths of When Harry Met Sally... because many of the situations and dialogue were based on the real-life experiences of the creative team that made the film.

Because When Harry Met Sally... is so character and dialogue-driven, many forget just how beautifully shot a film it is, thanks to Barry Sonnenfeld, who got his start with the Coen brothers. The establishing shot of New York City early on shows the iconic skyline bathed in golden sunlight. There is another scene where Harry and Sally walk through Central Park and are surrounded by fallen leaves that perfectly capture the city in autumn. The sequence is saturated in warm yellow, reds and browns. These shots and the locations used in the film are captured in such loving detail by someone who is a native of the city, as Reiner was at the time.

I have a yearly ritual of watching this film between Christmas and New Year’s because part of the film is set during the holidays. There is a nice montage of New York during winter: people window shopping, sledding in the park, the streets covered in snow and Christmas decorations, and Harry and Sally getting a tree. Not to mention, the film’s climactic moment takes place on New Year’s Eve.

The casting for this film is perfect. Billy Crystal’s character is definitely cast in the neurotic Woody Allen mould with his obsession with death. For example, he tells Sally early on that when he buys a book he reads the last page first so that if he dies before finishing the book he’ll know how it ended. However, Crystal is infinitely more charming than Allen and has a certain vulnerability that is attractive. Meg Ryan is adorable as Sally, bringing a perky, irrepressible charm to the role. She compliments Harry’s pessimism. Ryan also nails Sally’s need to control every aspect of her life as typified by the way she orders food at a restaurant. She is the epitome of practicality as typified by the argument she has with Harry about who Ingrid Bergman should’ve ended up with at the conclusion of Casablanca (1942).

They are ably supported by Bruno Kirby and Carrie Fisher as their respective best friends. Not only do they play well off Crystal and Ryan, but also each other once their characters become a couple. Fisher’s scenes with Ryan where they speak honestly about their respective relationships have an honest feel to them. When Sally tells Marie that she broke up with her boyfriend, her friend laments, “you had someone to go places with. You had a date on national holidays.” They talk about dating and Fisher demonstrates fantastic comic timing, like when she goes through her Rolodex of available men and when told that one is married, folds over the corner of the index card with his contact information and puts it back – you know, just in case.

A memorable scene with Kirby includes the blind date where Harry tries to hook Jess up with Sally but he ends up getting involved with her best friend Marie. They are at dinner and Marie ends up quoting a line out of one of Jess’ restaurant reviews and his reaction is so real and genuine. I would have loved to have seen a film from the perspective of Jess and Marie showing how their courtship and marriage played out. This was one of the late-great Kirby’s most memorable roles and watching him in this film again serves as a sad reminder just how poorer cinema is with his passing.

Columbia Pictures released When Harry Met Sally... using the “platform” technique which involved opening it in a few select cities and then gradually expanding distribution over subsequent weeks. Crystal was worried that the film would flop at the box office because it was up against several summer blockbuster films, including Batman (1989) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989).

When Harry Met Sally... was not only a commercial success but a hit with critics. Roger Ebert called Reiner "one of Hollywood's very best directors of comedy," and said that it was "most conventional, in terms of structure and the way it fulfills our expectations. But what makes it special, apart from the Ephron screenplay, is the chemistry between Crystal and Ryan.” The Washington Post’s Rita Kempley praised Meg Ryan as the "summer's Melanie Griffith – a honey-haired blonde who finally finds a showcase for her sheer exuberance. Neither naif nor vamp, she's a woman from a pen of a woman, not some Cinderella of a Working Girl.” USA Today gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, “Crystal is funny enough to keep Ryan from all-out stealing the film. She, though, is smashing in an eye-opening performance, another tribute to Reiner's flair with actors.” However, in her review for The New York Times, Caryn James described the film as "often funny but amazingly hollow film" that "romanticized lives of intelligent, successful, neurotic New Yorkers." James characterized it as "the sitcom version of a Woody Allen film, full of amusing lines and scenes, all infused with an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu."

When Harry Met Sally... doesn’t answer the question about men and women being friends because it is more concerned with the differences between the sexes. Harry and Sally spend most of the film trying to under one another and find themselves attracted to each other’s idiosyncrasies that one finds endearing only after you’ve gotten to know someone over a long period of time. This film is arguably the best thing that Crystal, Reiner, Ryan and Ephron have ever done. Crystal went on to make several decent if not exactly memorable films (except for City Slickers). Reiner has made one increasingly forgettable film after another (Rumor Has It, Alex and Emma, etc.). Ephron and Ryan teamed up again for Sleepless in Seattle (1993) which was a monster hit, and You’ve Got Mail (1998), but both films don’t quite resonate as well or as memorably as When Harry Met Sally...

SOURCES

“It All Started Like This.” When Harry Met Sally… Collector’s Edition DVD. 2008.

Keyser, Lucy. “It’s Love at the Box Office for Harry Met Sally…” Washington Times. July 25, 1989.

Lacey, Liam. “Pals Make Buddy Picture.” Globe and Mail. Jul 15, 1989.

Peterson, Karen. “When Boy Meets Girl.” USA Today. July 17, 1989.

Weber, Bruce. “Can Men and Women Be Friends?” The New York Times. July 9, 1989.

“When Rob Met Billy.” When Harry Met Sally… Collector’s Edition DVD. 2008.