Live from Baghdad

For many Generation Xers, one of the most enduring images from the early 1990s are ones of bombs falling on Baghdad captured via eerie night vision that rendered the experience through an unsettling monochromatic filter. This footage not only signaled the United States’ invasion of Iraq but it also put CNN on the map. Prior to 1990, they were a struggling 24-hour news network looking for a big story. They didn’t have the resources of the big three networks – ABC, CBS and NBC – but what they did have was plenty of ambition to burn. The HBO film Live from Baghdad (2002) chronicles the small but dedicated team of journalists that risked life and limb to get an exclusive scoop on one of the biggest news stories of the decade.

On August 2, 1990, Iraqi tanks rolled into Kuwait City and it seemed like the U.S. would retaliate immediately with Baghdad the likely target. Veteran CNN producer Robert Wiener (Michael Keaton) is hungry and looking for a story that will give the network a much-needed boost. He’s a bit of a maverick that had his car stoned on a previous assignment in Jerusalem. He meets with new network president Tom Johnson (Michael Murphy) and lays it all out: “People aren’t going to wait ‘til seven o’clock at night to find out whether we’re at war or not. They’re going to tune into CNN.” Another executive (Clark Gregg) argues that Wiener lacks the finesse for such a volatile situation.

Wiener’s got his work cut out for him – ABC and CBS are already in Baghdad and CNN has to own the story. Soon, he and his team are flying into Iraq: fellow producer Ingrid Formanek (Helena Bonham Carter), correspondent Tom Murphy (Michael Cudlitz), cameraman Mark Biello (Joshua Leonard) and sound technician Judy Parker (Lili Taylor). Director Mick Jackson drops us right into the city for a full-on assault on the senses as we are bombarded with the noises and chaos of the place. The CNN team barely gets their bearings when they arrive at their hotel and see ABC and CBS leaving.

I like how Michael Keaton shows the savvy way Wiener knows how to grease the wheels when he bullshits and bribes his way into five rooms at a swanky hotel where he had no reservations and then has the balls to hire a young woman as their translator right on the spot all thanks to a nice fat bankroll of cash. Keaton handles the scene with the nonchalant, no-nonsense ease of someone who’s done this many times. The actor has held a long-time fascination with journalism, briefly flirting with the notion of pursuing it in college and being avid daily newspaper reader. This is also reflected in some of the acting choices he’s made over the years, playing a newspaper editor in Ron Howard’s The Paper (1994) and a speechwriter who mixes it up with journalists in Speechless (1994), and so it comes no surprise he would be drawn to a role like Wiener in Live from Baghdad.

Jackson does a nice job in these early scenes showing the dynamic of the CNN team while gradually ratcheting up the tension as he drops constant reminders that they are in a hostile environment. They work under trying conditions, soon discovering that they are under constant surveillance and have to work with primitive technological equipment as demonstrated rather amusingly in a scene where Wiener runs frantically from his technicians to CNN HQ on the phone in order to get their news story beamed on the air. Afterwards, the emotionally and physically exhausted Wiener and Formanek share a quiet drink at the hotel bar only to realize that they have to do it all over again the next day. Helena Bonham Carter portrays Formanek as a tough producer who can hold her own with the likes of Wiener but is also supportive, being there for him when an American oil worker they interviewed is reported missing, kidnapped soon after it airs on CNN. She keeps Wiener grounded and reminds him of why they are there.

One of Wiener’s early goals is to get a much-coveted interview with President Saddam Hussein and he uses every ounce of perseverance and tenacity at his disposal to see Naji Al-Hadithi (David Suchet), the Minister of Information. He’s a very intelligent man who sees through Wiener’s charms as they engage in a battle of wills that Keaton and David Suchet expertly pull off. These intellectual sparring sessions crackle with an intensity that sees Keaton externalize Wiener’s emotions while Suchet internalizes and underplays. These two men clearly respect each other with a friendship developing between them, but they are also at odds with one another.

Once Jackson takes us out of Baghdad to show Wiener and his crew covering a story in Kuwait, we get a better idea of the scope and scale of what’s happening. They touch down and see soldiers hauling away ill-gotten luxury items. They travel along a desolate stretch of road and pass burnt out car wrecks and jeeps still smoking with dead bodies littering the landscape. They soon become part of the story instead of reporting it and are even scooped by the BBC, which makes them look foolish.

Live from Baghdad shows clips of some of the most memorable moments leading up to the Persian Gulf War, like Hussein patting the head of a clearly scared little boy, a woman crying and claiming that Iraqi soldiers took babies out of incubators to die, and, of course, CNN’s interview with Hussein. Jackson wisely alleviates the often-unrelenting tension of these people in a country on the verge of war by showing them in brief moments of downtime, which allows them to be reflective and blow off steam. These scenes humanize Wiener and his crew so that we care about what happens to them when things really get hairy.

Live from Baghdad was mostly well-received by critics at the time. In his review for The New York Times, Ron Wertheimer wrote, “the interesting relationship here is between Wiener and Hadithi. Mr. Suchet offers a performance of steely restraint, managing to convey the humanity in a man who must be one tough customer to have reached this vital position.” The Los Angeles Times’ Howard Rosenberg wrote, “Although it tells its narrow story well, in a sense Live from Baghdad buries the lead. HBO’s movie about the heady 1991 success of its AOL Time Warner sister company ends at a point – just after the initial bombing – when the war’s bigger media story was just beginning.” In his review for Entertainment Weekly, Marc Bernardin wrote, “Not only does Live from Baghdad offer a masterful look at professionals trying to keep it together in a nation that’s falling apart, but it also manages a rare feat indeed: conveying the energizing fear that the correspondents, doing what they were born to do, must have felt as Iraq began to explode outside their hotel window.”

As Iraq heads towards the January 15, 1991 deadline that the United Nations gave for them to withdraw from Kuwait or face military action, the CNN brings in veteran reporters Peter Arnett (Bruce McGill), John Holliman (John Carroll Lynch) and Bernard Shaw (Robert Wisdom) to interview Hussein and get word out that the U.S. are going to commence bombing imminently. While the other major networks, and most sane people, prepare to leave, Wiener decides to stay as does much of his crew. It’s not a decision that any of them take lightly and Jackson makes a point of showing them really considering their options.

However, the U.S. has other ideas and before anyone can leave, the bombardment of Baghdad begins and the sky is lit up as those iconic images people of my generation remember so well are recreated. CNN’s coverage during the Persian Gulf War was a game changer and showed that they could compete with the big boys and beat them at their own game. Wiener and his team put their lives on the line to record an important moment in history as it happened.

SOURCES

Tapley, Kristopher. “Michael Keaton’s Love of Journalism: The Paper, Live from Baghdad, Spotlight.” HitFix. January 27, 2015.

Beetlejuice

Tim Burton's films are populated by outsiders and non-conformists with their own unique vision of life that sets them apart from mainstream society. It is this affinity for the disaffected that is perhaps the most personal aspect of his work. The success of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (1985) paved the way for Burton's next feature, Beetlejuice (1988), his calling card – a breakout film that led to his getting the job to direct Batman (1989). It is also one of the purest examples of his distinctive sensibilities – a skewed sense of the world as seen through the eyes of someone who is an outsider.

Barbara (Geena Davis) and Adam Maitland (Alec Baldwin) are a happily married couple living in a small town when they are killed in a car accident on the way home from running an errand. In a darkly whimsical touch, their demise hinges on a small dog perched precariously on a plank of wood that sends them off a bridge to a watery demise. The Maitlands come home with no recollection of how they got back. It slowly dawns on them that they’ve died. Maybe it’s the presence of a book entitled, Handbook for the Recently Deceased (“It reads like stereo instructions,” Adam laments) or maybe it’s when he steps out of the house and finds himself in a nightmarish realm populated by a gigantic sandworm.

At first, Barbara and Adam think they’re in some kind of heaven – getting to spend eternity in a home they love, but their idyllic existence is shattered when the Deetzes arrive and move in. Delia (Catherine O’Hara) fancies herself an artist (“This is my art and it is dangerous!” is a priceless bit she says in describing her work), but is actually quite awful. Her husband Charles (Jeffrey Jones) is a crass former real estate developer. Lydia (Winona Ryder) is their daughter, a brooding girl decked out all in black and who lives by the credo, “My life is a dark room. One big dark room.” Only she can see the Maitlands (“I myself am strange and unusual.”) and becomes sympathetic to their plight.

Thrown into the mix is Otho (Glenn Shadix), a trendy hipster interior decorator (“So few clients are able to read my mind. They just aren’t open to the experience.”) that helps Delia transform the Maitland house into a Yuppie nightmare. Barbara and Adam want to get rid of the Deetzes and seek help from the afterlife. First, they go to a kind of Department of Motor Vehicles from the beyond and are assigned a caseworker by the name of Juno (Sylvia Sidney) who gives them some advice.

The waiting room on the way to meet Juno is an amusing tableau of grotesques, from a woman cut in half to a man with a shrunken head to a man with a shark still attached to his leg. It is all of these little touches that bring the afterlife scenes vividly to life and are so memorable, like the sickly yellow and green lighting scheme that portrays it as some kind of bureaucratic hell, or when Juno has a cigarette and the smoke exits the slit around her neck.

When her advice doesn’t get rid of the Deetzes, but instead encourages them to stay (in a memorable scene where the Maitlands force the Deetzes and their friends from the city to lip-synch and dance around to “The Banana Boat Song” by Harry Belafonte), they enlist the help of Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton), a self-professed "bio-exorcist" who helps the recently deceased from being "plagued by the living,” and acts like a perverted used car salesman. Not surprisingly, he has his own agenda, which soon puts him at odds with the Maitlands, culminating in a wonderfully surreal battle royale between the good ghosts and the bad mortals with Betelgeuse ping-ponging back and forth like a bee on acid.

Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis are well cast as the nice but rather bland Maitlands. All they want is to be left in peace and see the Deetzes as an affront to everything they value. The Maitlands represent wholesome, small-town America and much of the humor in the film comes from the culture clash between them and the insensitive big city Deetzes. 1988 was a good year for Baldwin who showed versatility in several films, including Married to the Mob, Working Girl and Talk Radio, but playing such a “normal” guy in Beetlejuice was quite a departure from these other roles. Likewise, it was a strong year for Davis who also appeared in Earth Girls Are Easy and The Accidental Tourist, which featured the actress playing very different roles. Their easy-going charm and how comfortably the play off each other made Baldwin and Davis a believable couple.

Michael Keaton’s Betelgeuse is the comedic equivalent of a whirling dervish – a force of nature as he makes the maximum impact with his limited screen-time. Betelgeuse is a venal degenerate willing to say or do anything to get what he wants. Keaton embodies him with just the right amount of manic energy. The scene where Betelgeuse meets the Maitlands for the first time and lists his “qualifications” is a marvel of comic timing and tempo as the actor bounces off of Baldwin and Davis’ intimidated couple. Keaton conveys a zany energy that recalls his feature film debut, Night Shift (1982), only cranked up another notch. Beetlejuice was the culmination of a string of comedies for Keaton and served as a fitting conclusion to an impressive run of films (although, he did star in 1989’s The Dream Team) and so it’s not surprising that he went all out with this role. He would go on to play Batman in Burton’s two contributions to the franchise and then tried his hand at more serious fare.

Beetlejuice was a breakout film for a young Winona Ryder whose Lydia was a poster child for young goths everywhere. She does a nice job playing a death-obsessed girl who isn’t overly fond of her parents and finds herself increasingly drawn to the Maitlands. Ryder’s performance goes beyond the superficial trappings of her character to reveal a deeply unhappy person. The most obvious character who represents Burton's loner motif would seem to be Betelgeuse with his outrageous appearance and worldview that threatens to dominate the whole film, but it is Lydia who is also the most autobiographical character in Burton's film. Lydia's all-black attire and dreary credo, "my life is a dark room," mirrors the filmmaker's own fashion sense and personal assessment of himself. Therefore it seems only natural that Lydia is the actual emotional center of this film, not Betelgeuse, with the true conflict being the resolution of her morbid fixations, while the larger battle of life vs. death rages on around her. The success of Beetlejuice would lead to her signature role in the pitch black comedy Heathers (1988).

Catherine O’Hara and Jeffrey Jones play vain, self-absorbed Yuppies that are the complete antithesis to the Maitlands. O’Hara, in particular, is excellent as the sometimes shrill wannabe artist who feels the need to impose her taste on others. She plays well off of Glenn Shadix’s pretentious interior decorator as evident in the scene where they go through the house, picking out color schemes for various rooms. Coming out towards the end of the 1980s, Beetlejuice can be seen as a cheeky critique of Yuppie materialism as embodied by the egotistical Deetzes who see the quaint small-town as an opportunity for them to exploit it for commercial gain. They are set-up as the film’s antagonists and we can’t wait to see them their comeuppance at the hands of Betelgeuse.

After Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, Tim Burton was offered screenplays with the word “adventure” in it and found that they lacked originality. “I had read a lot of scripts that were the classic Hollywood ‘cookie-cutter’ bad comedy. It was really depressing.” He finally started work on a script for Batman, but it was put on hold by the studio until the director proved his box office appeal. Eventually, record industry mogul turned movie producer David Geffen gave him the script for Beetlejuice, written by Michael McDowell. For Burton, McDowell’s script had a “good, perverse sense of humor and darkness … It had the kind of abstract imagery that I like.”

Burton worked on the script with McDowell and producer Larry Wilson for a long time until they felt that a fresh perspective was needed. Script doctor Warren Skaaren was brought in to provide some logic. Burton ended up casting several actors with a knack for improvisation, which was incorporated into the shooting script. For example, when Michael Keaton was cast as Betelgeuse, Burton would go over to his house and they would come up with jokes, creating the character through lengthy discussions.

Burton originally wanted to cast Sammy Davis Jr. as Betelgeuse, but fortunately the producers rejected that notion. It was Geffen who suggested Keaton, but Burton hadn’t seen him in anything because he preferred to meet with the actor in person. When they met, Burton began to see Keaton as Betelgeuse. For the look of the character the director wanted him to resemble someone that had “crawled out from under a rock, which is why he’s got mould and moss on his face.”

Geffen had overspent on their remake of Little Shop of Horrors (1986) and so they allocated only $13 million for Beetlejuice’s budget with $1 million designated for its extensive special effects. To this end, artist Alan Munro was hired and worked closely with Burton storyboarding the film in the spring of 1986. They quickly found a common affinity for movies that came up with creative ways to create SFX cheaply. This translated to effects that were “more personal … What people will see are effects that are, in a sense, a step backward. They’re crude and funky and also very personal.”

Burton and Munro decided early on to avoid costly post-production opticals in favor of performing the effects live on set. Munro was brought back two months after completing the storyboards to oversee the visual effects when the producers realized it was going to be a bigger job that originally anticipated. To help out Munro, Burton brought in frequent collaborator effects consultant Rick Heinrichs. He and Munro spent the first few weeks of production filming tests to show the crew that they could create effects via “cheap, stupid, easy methods.” The crew wasn’t convinced and Munro remembers, “There weren’t a lot of believers when we were actually working on the film.” Heinrichs remembers that they ran into problems creating the effects live and this made for “one of the most exhausting and frustrating experiences I’ve ever been through.”

Beetlejuice received mixed reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film two out of four stars and wrote, “But the story, which seemed so original, turns into a sitcom fueled by lots of special effects and weird sets and props, and the inspiration is gone.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “Mr. Burton, who seems to take his inspiration from toy stores and rock videos in equal measure, tries anything and everything for effect, and only occasionally manages something marginally funny.” The Washington Post’s Rita Kempley called it a “stylish screwball blend of Capraesque fantasy, Marx Brothers anarchy and horror parody … Not since Ghostbusters have the spirits been so uplifting.” In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Kevin Thomas wrote, “There’s a distinctive feel to Beetlejuice, a deliberate Brecht-Weill jerkiness that allows satire and just plain silliness to play off each other most successfully.”

Beetlejuice has the polished, yet personal, handmade feel of Burton’s previous film complete with old school effects that included stop-motion animation, matte paintings and practical makeup effects, which have helped the film age well over the years. Like his other films, Beetlejuice is interested in outsiders, people like Lydia and Betelgeuse that don’t fit in or taking people like the Deetzes, who are at home in a big city like New York, and making them fish out of water in small-town Connecticut. The Maitlands are also taken out of their comfort zone of a living existence and thrust into the strange world of the afterlife.

Beetlejuice serves up many of the clichés of life after death and the supernatural and proceeds to gently poke fun of them in an entertaining way with a showstopping performance by Keaton at the heart of it. It remains one of Burton’s signature films and one of the best examples of how he managed to marry an idiosyncratic style with commercial appeal. Beetlejuice’s success would lead to a short-lived cartoon and occasional talk of a sequel that has gained some traction in recent years.

SOURCES

Salisbury, Mark. Burton on Burton. Faber & Faber. 1995.

Shapiro, Marc. “Explaining Beetlejuice.” Starlog. May 1988.

White, Taylor L. “Making of Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice and His Other Bizarre Gems.” Cinefantastique. November 1989.

Night Shift

The Ron Howard comedy Night Shift (1982) is significant for two reasons: it marked the first collaboration between the young director and producer Brian Grazer and it was the feature film debut of Michael Keaton. The first reason is important because it was the beginning of a partnership between Grazer and Howard that continues to this day and has resulted in many films of theirs garnering not only critical acclaim, but some serious box office results and even a few Academy Awards. The second reason saw the debut of a major talent in the form of Keaton who comes to life on-screen with killer comic timing and the ability to play brilliantly off his fellow actors. The end result is a sweet comedy about seedy subject matter that, at first glance, doesn’t seem like the right material for Howard, but armed with a fantastic screenplay by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, he makes it work.

It helps that initially Howard plays it straight by showing the mean streets of New York City as a pimp frantically tries to avoid two persistent enforcers (one of whom is played by Richard Belzer). The sequence ends with the two thugs throwing him out a window while tied to a chair. He plummets in agonizingly slow motion only to crash through a basketball hoop down below. Queue the catchy theme song performed by Quarterflash – written by none other than Burt Bacharach and Carole Bayer Sager. It plays over the opening credits as the camera follows a city morgue car driving through the streets at night, which sets a funky kind of vibe to offset what just came before.

Mild-mannered Charles Lumley III (Henry Winkler) works at the City Morgue where one night he meets Belinda (Shelley Long), a prostitute who comes in to identify the body of her pimp that took the swan dive in the film’s prologue. Charles feebly tries to protest being switched over to the night shift despite his six years on the job in favor of his superior’s dimwitted nephew (“That Barney Rubble – what an actor!”). To make matters worse, he has to break in a new co-worker – Billy “Blaze” Blazejowski (Michael Keaton) who comes bounding into the City Morgue office full of energy, his Walkman blasting “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” while he rattles off all sorts of questions at Charles, At one point, he picks up a framed picture of Charles’ fiancée and asks, “Hey, Chuck, who’s this? The wife? to which he replies, “Fiancée.” Without missing a beat, Billy says, “Nice frame.”

After Charles discovers Belinda beaten up in the elevator of the apartment building they both live in, the two neighbors get to talking and she laments at the loss of her pimp. It has made life for her and her girlfriends tough because they have no one to protect them from their clients. Charles tells Billy who comes up with the idea that they become pimps or “love brokers” as he puts it. Charles is understandably skeptical – it could be yet another of Billy’s scatterbrained ideas, but is swayed by Belinda’s charm as they become close friends over breakfast every morning. Armed with Charles’ financial acumen and Billy’s boundless enthusiasm and people skills, they become pimps and realize that they are quite good at it, but soon run afoul of the guys that took out Belinda’s previous pimp.

In his personal life, Charles is engaged to a woman that clearly controls their relationship as evident in a scene that sees Henry Winkler channeling a nebbish Woody Allen in what would’ve been a pretty good audition tape for one of his films. Charles comes home every day and narrowly avoids being mauled by a neighbor’s dog that seems to roam the hallways of the apartment building unsupervised. Basically, he’s a doormat who lets every one in his life walk all over him and doesn’t seem to mind all that much. He’s resigned himself to this lot in life.

Known at the time for playing the cool Arthur Fonzarelli on the popular television sitcom Happy Days, Winkler is cast wonderfully against type as a meek guy who is too busy making everyone else happy and not paying attention to his own needs. With his often nervous, mild tone of voice and button-down attire, Charles is miles away from the smooth-talking, black leather jacket-clad Fonz. After playing such an iconic role, I’m sure he wanted to avoid being typecast. Winkler does a nice job of showing Charles’ gradual transformation from pushover to someone that becomes more assertive in his personal and professional life with help from Billy and Belinda who give him a push at just the right moments.

Billy fancies himself an idea man and carries around a tape recorder because he gets so many ideas on a given day. (“I can’t control them. It’s like they come charging in. I can’t even fight ‘em even I wanted to.”) He comes up with some real doozies, like the solution to eliminating garbage on the streets of New York – edible paper. Or, putting mayonnaise in a tuna fish can, which only sparks an even better idea – feed mayo to live tuna (“Call Starkist.”). It’s a fantastic introduction, not only to the character of Billy, but also to Michael Keaton who arrives like a force of nature, bouncing off of Winkler’s reserved Charles and reacting to everything like an over-caffeinated kid.

Keaton is a revelation as Billy Blaze, playing a scene-stealing hustler who seems to coast through life on his wits. The actor nails his character in scenes like the one where Billy unconvincingly conveys Charles’ plan to Belinda and her friends. He starts off by hilariously breaking down the word “prostitution” in what amounts to a lot of nonsense. Fortunately, Charles steps in as the obvious brains of the operation by telling these women that they can make ten times what they make now, which definitely gets their attention. That being said, Billy isn’t all flash and bluster as demonstrated in a nice moment he has with Charles and Belinda where he reflects on his dysfunctional parents, which gives us a little insight into what motivates him.

The admittedly raunchy premise is tempered by the sweet romance that develops between Charles and Belinda. Unlike his fiancée, she doesn’t boss him around, but instead treats him as an equal. Before she became a household name with Cheers, Shelley Long was delightful as Belinda, the hooker with a heart of gold. She brings a nice amount of charm to the role and has good chemistry with Winkler.

Brian Grazer and Ron Howard first met in 1978, but nothing came of the encounter. Three years later, Grazer, ambitiously trying to make a name for himself as a producer, sought out Howard once again with an idea he had for a film. It was inspired by an actual news item about two guys that ran a prostitution ring out of a New York City morgue. Howard wasn’t immediately taken with the idea, but liked the notion that it would defy people’s expectations of him.

Howard had been trying to develop screenplays with two writers that had worked on Happy Days – Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel. They took Grazer’s idea and wrote a script that the aspiring producer shopped around Hollywood. Most of the studio heads liked the premise, but weren’t crazy with the idea of letting “the kid from Happy Days” direct. However, Alan Ladd Jr. over at Warner Bros. decided to take a chance on Howard after George Lucas vouched for him.

When it came to casting Night Shift, Grazer and Howard pursued John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, but when they were unable to get them opted for Michael Keaton and Henry Winkler. At the time, Winkler had grown tired of playing a character like the Fonz and wanted to portray someone “more like myself.” He remembers that Mickey Rourke auditioned for the role of Billy Blaze and came in with a transistor radio tied with twine around his neck. Keaton was a stand-up comedian and made the decision to play Billy Blaze like someone who was hyperactive. The energy he conveyed in dailies freaked out studio executives so much that they pressured Howard to recast the role. However, the young director believed that Keaton was an “improvisational genius” and convinced executives that through editing his scenes the comedian would be a crowd-pleaser.

Night Shift enjoyed mostly positive reviews from critics at the time. Pauline Kael felt that it wasn’t “much of a movie but manages to be funny a good part of the time anyway.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “Mr. Keaton is a former improvisatory comedian whose timing is as good as his gags and who doesn’t miss a beat when he is sparring with Mr. Winkler.” Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote, “This isn’t as snappily directed or as caustically conceived as the subsequent Risky Business, which has a similar theme, but it’s arguably just as sexy and almost as funny.” Finally, Variety wrote, “Though the plot line hardly sounds like a family film, this is probably the most sanitized treatment of pimps and prostitution audiences will ever see. None of this much matters, because director Ron Howard and screenwriters Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, all TV veterans, are only bent on giving the audience a good time.”

Most of the film’s humor comes from the contrasting personalities of the straight-laced Charles and the wild and crazy Billy Blaze. Eventually, his constant chatter gets on Charles’ nerves and he tears into Billy in a rare moment where he loses his cool. It’s a rare moment of friction between the two and they quickly bond from it as a result. Howard picks the right moments to insert a bit of reality, be it the rough patch that Charles and Belinda hit in the last third of the film or the eventual reappearance of the thugs that killed Belinda’s pimp. These scenes threaten to upset the delicate balance that Howard manages to maintain for most of the film. These moments remind us what’s at stake for these characters and provides some much-needed conflict that Charles and Billy have to overcome.

Leave it to Ron Howard to make a feel-good comedy about prostitution, succeeding where the similarly-themed Doctor Detroit (1983) failed. This is due in large part to the winning appeal of Keaton and Winkler who make an excellent comedic team. Like most of Howard’s films, there’s a strong, humanistic core at the heart of Night Shift as Charles brings some compassion and decency to a profession not exactly known for such things. I suppose that’s what makes this film a bit of wish fulfillment, escapist fare to help us forget about our humdrum lives for a couple of hours. The film proved to be a modest hit for Grazer and Howard, leading to their next, even bigger commercial hit, Splash (1984).

SOURCES

Gray, Beverly. Ron Howard: From Mayberry to the Moon …and Beyond. HarperCollins. 2003.

Heisler, Steve. “Random Roles: Henry Winkler.” A.V. Club. April 29, 2009.

Jackie Brown

After the commercial success of Pulp Fiction (1994), Quentin Tarantino could make whatever film he wanted. He decided to defy expectations by adapting Elmore Leonard’s crime novel Rum Punch as Jackie Brown (1997), a comeback vehicle tailor-made for one of his favorite feminist Queens of Kicking Ass, Pam Grier. After years of plugging away in countless unremarkable supporting roles, she started resurfacing on the popular culture radar with small but significant parts in Mars Attacks! (1996) and Escape from L.A. (1996). However, Jackie Brown would be a starring role alongside Robert De Niro and Samuel L. Jackson who appeared in supporting roles. Tarantino’s gamble paid off and while it didn’t rack up Pulp Fiction-type grosses at the box office, it was a critical darling primarily due to Ms. Grier hitting it out of the park with a confident, assured performance. More importantly, it demonstrated that Tarantino could step back from the pop culture pastiche that was Pulp Fiction for a more substantial outing that placed emphasis on mature, fully-realized characterization over the more superficial reproductions in his previous films. The end result was a sometimes funny, sometimes poignant look at the notion of aging and the baggage that it brings.

Pam Grier appears on-screen during an opening credits sequence that evokes a similar one in The Graduate (1967) only instead of evoking a somber mood as that film did with “The Sound of Silence” by Simon and Garfunkel, Jackie Brown sets an upbeat tone with the triumphant strains of “Across 100th Street” by Bobby Womack and Peace thereby proudly announcing the return of the actress to the mainstream after years of toiling away in television.

We are subsequently introduced to Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson), a slick guns dealer who loves to talk big (we first meet him explaining the pros and cons of various guns), but he is also someone not to be messed with as an interlude with one of his flunkies – an even chattier guy known as Beaumont (Chris Tucker) – illustrates. In trademark Tarantino fashion, the two men verbally spar as Ordell convinces Beaumont to do a favor for him. As in most of his films, characters often talk as a form of survival and only when they stop is when bad things tend to happen. The Beaumont interlude has nothing to do with the story, but it does provide us with crucial insight into Ordell. He’s clearly a dangerous man who will do anything to protect his business. Tarantino depicts this sequence in a series of his characteristic long takes that establishes the stylistic approach he adopts for the rest of the film. This allows scenes to breathe and the actors to savor each word like a fine meal.

Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) is a stewardess for Cabo Air, an obscure Mexican airline, and works for Ordell, bringing him large amounts of money across the border into the United States. One day, she’s stopped by L.A.P.D. detective Mark Dargus (Michael Bowen) and A.T.F. agent Ray Nicolet (Michael Keaton) who search her. In addition to finding $50,000 in cash, they also discover a small packet of cocaine that was planted and which lands her in L.A. County Jail. Ordell hires Max Cherry (Robert Forster), a veteran bail bondsman, to get her out. When Max meets Jackie coming out of lock-up it is quite possibly love at first sight as the camera oh-so gradually zooms in on Max’s face and he is clearly drawn to this beautiful woman walking towards him as the soulful strains of “Natural High” by Bloodstone plays over the soundtrack, complimenting this moment perfectly.

Being the nice guy that he is, Max drives Jackie home and on the way they go for a drink at a local bar. It gives her a chance to have a drink and a cigarette and decompress after a brief stint in jail. Fed up working for an increasingly suspicious Ordell and feeling pressured by Dargus and Nicolet, Jackie – with Max’s help – devises a scheme to con Ordell out of $550,000 of his retirement money and give the cops what they want – the gun dealer.

After the sprawling epic that was Pulp Fiction, with its unexpected plot twists and shifts in time, Tarantino dials it back for Jackie Brown, taking his time by delving deep into these characters, letting us get to know them in a way he hadn’t done in his previous films. In the past, his characters were pretty superficial – a collection of pop culture references and quirky dialogue, but working from solid source material provided a strong foundation from which he could add his trademark flourishes.

The best scenes in Jackie Brown are between Jackie and Max, like when he visits her the morning after she gets out of jail. In-between discussing what to do about Ordell, they talk about vinyl vs. CD and getting old. Max speaks frankly about losing his hair and doing something about it while she speaks of gaining weight over the years. It is a wonderfully honest conversation between two adults who have been around the block more than a few times with very little to show for it except a few regrets.

Tarantino wrote the role of Jackie Brown specifically for Pam Grier and clearly plays to her strengths while also allowing her to show off acting chops that the veteran actress was rarely given the opportunity to in the past. Grier has definitely aged well, but Tarantino doesn’t avoid the issue of age and in fact makes it the film’s central theme. Like Jackie, Grier has had her share of ups and downs in life, only her character has little to show for it. The scam she plans to pull on Ordell is her chance to get out of a crappy situation and start over in style. This scheme revitalizes Jackie and Grier does a great job of conveying the transformation that her character undergoes over the course of the film.

Much like Grier, Robert Forster’s career started off strong, but fizzled out over the years into a string of forgettable B-movies and T.V. shows. However, Tarantino never forgot about him and was confident that, with the right material, the actor would remind everyone just how good he could be. Forster brings a world-weary charm to Max with every line in his weathered face suggesting years of dealing with criminal low-lifes like Ordell and Louis and he’s tired of it all. Forster has a great scene where Max tells Jackie a story about when he decided to quit being a bail bondsman. It not only provides his motivation for going in with Jackie on her scheme, but also brings them closer. They are both looking for a better life.

Jackie Brown was part of a solid run of films for Robert De Niro in the 1990s that included the likes of Casino (1995), Heat (1995) and Ronin (1998). Where in those film he played ultra-professional criminals, in Jackie Brown he’s a slightly dim-witted goon, but the actor wisely doesn’t go for a stereotypical caricature that we’ve seen in so many films, but rather a guy who thinks he knows what’s going on. Ever the chameleon, De Niro looks the part with his unshaven, unkempt appearance. Louis is incompetent as evident in his actions during the climactic money switch as he lets Melanie’s increasingly annoying behavior get to him. De Niro handles this sequence so well – we share in Louis’ mounting frustration.

As he demonstrated with Pulp Fiction, Samuel L. Jackson was born to say Tarantino’s dialogue. No one issues badass threats quite like he does and you can see the actor relishing every word as he flat out enjoys the hell out of his role. Ordell thinks he’s the smartest guy in the film and this over-confidence proves to be his undoing as he underestimates Jackie. Not surprisingly, Jackson gets most of the film’s flashiest dialogue, but he’s also quite gracious with is castmates as evident in the scenes he has with Grier, which crackle with intensity as Ordell maintains a jovial façade, but there’s an undercurrent of menace. It’s a tricky balancing act that the actor manages so well.

Tarantino gives all the significant characters prominent moments to do their thing, like when Louis (Robert De Niro), a friend of Ordell’s, and Melanie (Bridget Fonda), Ordell’s beach bunny girlfriend, bond over getting high. Both them aren’t too bright with Melanie only thinking she is while Louis struggles to keep up with Ordell’s plans, content to go with the flow. Initially, Melanie comes across as a flighty pothead, but as the film progresses her annoyance factor increases, so much so that we actually sympathize with Louis’ growing frustration, which comes to a head during the climactic money swap. Bridget Fonda, a mainstay of ‘90s cinema, really sinks her teeth into the role during this sequence as Melanie relishes needling Louis about his lack of intelligence, right down to over-annunciating his name in a way that would make even the most resilient person lose their cool.

Michael Bowen and Michael Keaton have small, but pivotal roles as a cop and an ATF agent respectively. They nail the condescending arrogance of their characters who think that they’ve got Jackie under their thumb. Keaton especially is good as a guy who thinks he’s some sort of hot shot with his new-looking black leather jacket and tight white t-shirt. It’s a role he would go on to reprise briefly in another Elmore Leonard adaptation, Out of Sight (1998). One of the joys of Jackie Brown is watching all of these actors bouncing off each other and having fun doing it as they get to chew on these meaty roles.

When Quentin Tarantino was 15-years-old, he shoplifted a paperback copy of The Switch, a crime novel by Elmore Leonard. He loved it and read the author’s other books and was amazed at how Leonard created “his own unique universe.” After Pulp Fiction, Tarantino took his time until the right project presented itself and that was Leonard’s 1992 novel Rum Punch, which featured some of the same characters from The Switch. Tarantino remembered, “When I read the book, I saw the entire movie in my head.” In particular, he was drawn to the age of the characters: “I liked their age. I liked the fact that this is an older movie, that we’re dealing with more mature people … I liked the fact that there was a wonderful desperation about these people, due to their age and their place in the scheme of things.”

Early on, Tarantino reached out to Leonard and told him that he was adapting Rum Punch. In adapting the book, Tarantino made a few significant alterations, including changing Jackie’s race from white to black, because he wanted Grier to play the role, and the setting from Florida to L.A. because he knew that area better. Then, Leonard heard from Tarantino again just before filming started and the filmmaker admitted that he had been afraid to talk to him because of all the changes he made. Leonard simply told him: “Why? Because you’ve changed the title and you’re starring a black woman in the lead? Do what you want. You’re the filmmaker, you’re going to do what you want anyway.”

While writing the screenplay, Tarantino began to think about who could play Jackie and thought of Pam Grier. “She had all the right qualities. She had the right age – she’s in her 40s. She had the right looks for that age.” Initially, he envisioned playing the role of Ordell because the filmmaker felt that the character was a composite of all his mentors when he was a young man. Ordell was the “persona of who I could have been at 17 if I didn’t have artistic ambitions … I would have been involved with one scam after another. I would have done something that I would have gone to jail for.” It took some effort on Tarantino’s part to let go of the character and let Samuel L. Jackson play him. To prepare for making Jackie Brown, Tarantino watched Hickey & Boggs (1972), Straight Time (1978) and They All Laughed (1981).

Tarantino first met Grier when she auditioned for a role in Pulp Fiction (which would eventually be played by Rosanna Arquette). A year afterwards, the actress met him on a street in Los Angeles where he told her that he was writing a film with her in mind. A year later, she met Tarantino again and inquired about the film. He gave her the script. At first, Grier figured that his then-girlfriend Mira Sorvino would be playing Jackie and she’d play her best friend. She was pleasantly surprised when he told her that she would be playing Jackie. Grier identified with the character because “there are metaphors in her life that parallel mine. I know I’ve brought a lot more humanity, a lot more pain and emotion and texture to this role than to anything I’ve done because of everything I’ve been through.” When she accepted his offer, she told Tarantino, “You’re asking a lot. I’ll have to strip myself bare. I’ll have to reveal myself and be raw on screen.” To that end, she gave it her all: “I was so tired at the end of the day, I’d just go home, sit in the tub and cry.”

Robert Forster first met Tarantino when he auditioned for Reservoir Dogs. He didn’t get the part (the role went to Lawrence Tierney) and the director told him that he wouldn’t forget the actor. While writing the script for Jackie Brown, Tarantino had four actors in mind to possibly play Max – Paul Newman, Gene Hackman, John Saxon and Forster, but was always leaning towards Forster. When he finally decided to cast Forster in Jackie Brown, he had no agent and according to the actor, “nobody wanted me.”

Jackie Brown enjoyed mostly positive reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave it four out of four stars and wrote, “You savor every moment of Jackie Brown. Those who say it is too long have developed cinematic attention deficit disorder. I wanted these characters to live, talk, deceive and scheme for hours and hours.” The New York Observer’s Andrew Sarris wrote, “Mr. Tarantino has returned after a long directorial hiatus with his wisest, warmest, subtlest and most suspenseful effort without sacrificing his patented outrageousness and his exhilaratingly clever narrative strategies.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “B” rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “Pam Grier looks marvelous, with her diamond eyes and sexy half sneer, and though the middle-aged bulkiness of her body gives you a bit of a start, she is, as always, a commanding actress; she blends street smarts and melancholy the way she used to blend street smarts and Amazonian hauteur.” The Washington Post’s Steven Hunter found the film to be “funny and the plot twists are so sudden and violent it’s great fun.”

However, in her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “The film is best (and most patiently) enjoyed as a set of laid-back sketches that don’t always head anywhere, even if a filmmaker of Mr. Tarantino’s talents can make schmoozing such an end in itself.” The Los Angeles Times’ Kenneth Turan wrote, “For one thing, at 2 hours and 40 minutes, Jackie Brown plainly takes longer than it should to unfold. Along with that too-leisurely pace goes a lack of immediacy, a sense that this is the kind of thing that Tarantino not only might have done in his sleep but in fact has.”

When Jackie Brown was released, filmmaker Spike Lee criticized Tarantino for excessive use of the “n-word” racial epithet in the film. “Quentin is infatuated with that word,” Lee said, “What does he want to be made – an honorary black man?” Years later, Tarantino addressed Lee’s comments: “My biggest problem with Spike was the completely self-serving aspect of his argument. He attacked me to keep his ‘Jesse Jackson of cinema’ status. Basically, for a little bit of time before I came along, you had to get Spike Lee’s benediction and approval if you were white and dealing with black stuff in a movie. Fuck that.” Regardless, Leonard himself approved of Tarantino’s film: “I liked it. I like to see my characters done so well on the screen.”

At the heart of Jackie Brown is an unrequited romance between two people that we want to see get together. They come from different worlds and this conflict is captured perfectly in the last scene as Jackie drives off with the Delfonics’ "Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)” playing over the soundtrack. I love that this fine example of classic early Philly soul is their song (it might as well be also known as the “Jackie Brown Love Theme”) and encapsulates their relationship. Jackie’s facial expression goes from slightly sad to a slight smile at having successfully accomplished her goal back to slightly sad because of the unrequited romance with Max.

Tarantino has to be commended for refusing the temptation to simply crank out another Pulp Fiction and instead adapt someone else’s work and make it his own. He made what is easily his most mature and substantial film – a Quentin Tarantino film for people who don’t like his films. Jackie Brown isn’t merely a pastiche of other movies and pop culture references, but actually tells a substantial story with characters that resonate long after the film ends. Unfortunately, it didn’t perform as well as Pulp Fiction did at the box office and ever since Tarantino has fallen back to what he knows best – endlessly sampling other movies, giving genres like the martial arts movie and the western his own unique spin, but they all lack the soulful substance of Jackie Brown.

SOURCES

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Fleming, Michael. “Playboy Interview: Quentin Tarantino.” Playboy. 2003.

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Gilchrist, Todd. “Robert Forster Talks about Auditioning for Reservoir Dogs and How Jackie Brown Boosted His Career.” The Playlist. October 4, 2011.

Hirschberg, Lynn. “The Man Who Changed Everything.” The New York Times. November 16, 1997.

McGilligan, Patrick. “Elmore Leonard Interviewed.” Film Comment. March/April 1998.

Millner, Denene. “Pam Shifts Grier in Jackie Brown.” New York Daily News. December 25, 1997.

Portman, Jamie. “Tarantino Takes Different Direction.” Montreal Gazette. December 19, 1997.

Snead, Elizabeth. “’70s Survivor Pam Grier.” USA Today. January 2, 1998.

Svetkey, Benjamin. “Jackie, Oh!” Entertainment Weekly. December 19, 1997.

Vigoda, Arlene. “Lee Takes on Tarantino Over Use of Racial Slur.” USA Today. December 18, 1997.

Vognar, Chris. “Elmore Leonard Discusses Jackie Brown and Other Movie Adaptations in a 1998 Interview.” Dallas Morning News. August 20, 2013.