American Gigolo

Many people look back at the 1980s through the soft focus lens of nostalgia. They think fondly of John Hughes’ teen movies or the music of The Police or television shows like Miami Vice or the novels of Stephen King. The people who grew up in that decade have attempted to pay tribute to that time in recent years with movies like the remake of It (2017), T.V. shows like Stranger Things and music by likes of Bruno Mars that invoke the era.

Nostalgia for the ‘80s has reached its saturation point and people tend to forget that there was a lot of awful stuff, too, like Reaganomics, the omnipresent threat of nuclear war, the explosion of Japanese fashion, T.V. shows like Alf, the proliferation of mindless synth pop, and the dominance of producer-driven Hollywood blockbusters.

One of the films that best encapsulated the superficial consumerism of the era was Paul Schrader’s American Gigolo (1980). With its icy Eurotrash score by Giorgo Moroder, its expensive clothes by Giorgio Armani and luxurious cars like Mercedes and BMW, it established the stylistic template for popular culture that would be cemented by the equally influential Miami Vice show a few years later for the rest of the decade. Schrader’s film is often dismissed as a shallow exercise in style while failing to realize that its style is its substance. It is all surface, reflecting its materialistic protagonist.

Julian Kay (Richard Gere) is a high-end male escort specializing in wealthy women. He wears only the best suits and drives expensive cars. Schrader immediately immerses us in his world with a montage of him buying suits, driving his Mercedes and dropping off one of his clients all to the strains of Blondie’s “Call Me” while giving us a tour of boutique shops, expensive beachfront condos and affluent hotels – the playground of California’s rich elite.

His world is turned upside down when he meets a mysterious and lonely woman named Michelle (Lauren Hutton), the wife of a California state senator. They meet by chance and she becomes obsessed with him and he finds himself falling in love with her. His life gets even more complicated when he finds out that a woman he had a kinky one-off gig with in Palm Springs has been murdered. Julian soon becomes the prime suspect and begins to lose control of his life that he works so hard to maintain. He must figure out who set him up and why.

Schrader takes us through Julian’s process on getting ready for a job. He lays out his suits, opens his drawer of ties, then dress shirts and so on. It’s a ritual he’s done countless times and Richard Gere skillfully sells it, showing how all these clothes inform his character. In this case, the clothes truly make the man. For Julian it’s all about control. He prides himself in knowing what women want, providing them with a fantasy that plays into their desires. They both get something out of their transactions. They feel wanted and desired and he gets paid.

The impossibly handsome Gere is perfectly cast as the narcissistic Julian. He pays close attention to how he looks and dresses as they are integral aspects of his job. He has to look good for his clients. The actor certainly knows how to wear an Armani suit and has an engaging smile that exudes charm. Julian has his whole act down cold – a tilt of the head, a sly smile, the way he looks at someone, and the silky smooth voice are all parts of his arsenal of seductive techniques.

Gere had a terrific run of films starting in the late 1970s with a small but memorable part in Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), Days of Heaven (1978), and then into the 1980s with American Gigolo and Breathless (1983), playing fascinating, complex characters that weren’t always likable but always interesting to watch thanks to his incredible charisma.

Lauren Hutton is excellent as the rather enigmatic woman that takes a shine to Julian. One imagines her being an unhappy trophy wife who is expected to accompany her husband to all kinds of political functions with an interested expression plastered on her face. The actor conveys an impressive vulnerability like when Michelle seeks out Julian and asks for a date with him. She is frank with what she wants and Hutton is very good in this scene.

The intimacy between Julian and Michelle is more than just being physical with each other. It is the conversation they have after making love for the second time that is interesting as she tries to get him to reveal personal details. When she asks him where he’s from he says, “I’m not from anywhere…Anything worth knowing about me, you can learn by letting me make love to you.” Julian is a blank slate and this allows women to project their fantasies on him. He can be anything they want, which is why he’s so good at what he does. He does tell her why he only prefers older women, which is revealing in and of itself. He cares about pleasuring women. He puts their needs before his own, often to the detriment of his own pleasure.

It is also interesting how Schrader objectifies both men and women in American Gigolo. Initially, as we see Julian ply his trade as it were and it is the women that are shown naked but when he and Michelle make love the second time the camera lingers on their respective body parts equally and, in fact, afterwards we see more of his naked body than hers in one of the earliest examples of full frontal male nudity in a Hollywood film. As he demonstrated in this film and a few years later in Breathless, Gere is a fearless actor very comfortable with his own body.

This translates to the character as evident in a scene that occurs halfway through the film between Julian and Detective Sunday (Hector Elizondo) who is investigating the murder when the latter asks the former, “Doesn’t it ever bother you, Julian? What you do?” He replies, “Giving pleasure to women? I’m supposed to feel guilty about that?” When Sunday argues that what he does isn’t legal Julian says, “Legal is not always right.” He arrogantly says that some people are above the law and at this point he loses Sunday who sees things in simpler terms.

In 1977, Paul Schrader sold his screenplay for American Gigolo to Paramount Pictures. The next year John Travolta agreed to star and the filmmaker felt that the character of Julian Kay was a natural progression for the actor after his role in Saturday Night Fever (1977). Schrader had seen Travolta in a photo shoot for Variety where he was unshaven and in a white suit and felt that he was right for the part. The actor’s participation set the wheels in motion and the film was given a $10 million budget. The director auditioned four or five actors for the role of Michelle and liked Mia Farrow the best but when he tested her with Travolta, “she blew John off the screen. She made him look like an amateur, like a kid, not like the seducer.” As a result, he had to go with someone else and cast Lauren Hutton who had tested well with Travolta. Unfortunately, several things prompted the actor to drop out of the production: his mother had died, recent movie Moment by Moment (1978) was a commercial and critical failure, and he was anxious about the homosexual elements in the script. His departure left Schrader with two days to cast someone else.

After strong performances in high profile films that weren’t very profitable, Schrader wanted to cast Richard Gere in American Gigolo. Then head of Paramount Barry Diller didn’t want him, preferring Christopher Reeve instead. Schrader didn’t think Reeve was right for the part, as he was “too all-American, didn’t have that reptile mysteriousness.” Unbeknownst to the studio, Schrader offered the part to Gere on a Sunday, giving him only a few hours to decide. Once Gere agreed, Schrader left a note on Diller’s gate at his home. The executive was understandably upset as the director wasn’t authorized to do that. Schrader argued that Travolta was better for Urban Cowboy (1980), which the studio wanted to make and Diller allowed Gere to be American Gigolo.

Schrader said of Gere’s commitment to the role as opposed to Travolta: “In one day, Richard Gere asked all the questions that Travolta hadn’t asked in six months.” Gere was drawn to the project by Schrader’s approach to how it would be shot, “with very European techniques – the concept opened up: less a slice-of-life character study and something much more textured, stylistic.”

When Travolta dropped out, Schrader was tempted to go back to Farrow, however, he didn’t want to push his luck with the studio after they let him cast Gere but regrets not sticking with the actor: “Obviously I did everything I could and Lauren did everything she could to be as good as she could, but Mia just had stronger chops.”

When it came to putting Los Angeles on film, Schrader realized that it had been photographed countless times and wanted to bring a fresh perspective. He hired production designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti, who had worked on Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970), Giorgio Armani for the clothes, and Giorgio Moroder, who had scored Midnight Express (1978), to compose the film’s score. Scarfiotti, in particular, was an important collaborator as Schrader admired his visual style and the “idea that you can have a poetry of images rather than a poetry of words.” He put Scarfiotti in charge of the look of the film, which included production design, wardrobe, props, and cinematography.

Schrader picked Moroder to compose the film’s score as he liked the “alienated quality” of his music and “how propulsive it was, how sexual yet antiseptic. A sound for a new Los Angeles.” Moroder had originally wanted Steve Nick to sing the film’s theme song but she turned him down. He sent a demo to Blondie with the music and lyrics already written. Their album Parallel Lines was a massive hit but they had not been approached to contribute to a film. They admired both Moroder and Schrader’s work and agreed to do it. Debbie Harry didn’t like the lyrics and asked if she could write her own. She saw a rough cut of the film and the opening scene was in her mind along with Moroder’s music when the first lines came to her.

Clothes were also an important aspect of the production. According to Schrader, when it came to Julian, “the clothes and the character were one and the same. Remember, this is a guy who has to do a line of coke just so he can get dressed.” Armani had gotten involved at the suggestion of Travolta’s manager back when the actor was still attached to the project. The fashion designer was getting ready to go into an international non-couture line and the timing was right. When Gere came on board they kept all the clothes and tailored them for the actor.

To prepare for the role Schrader had Gere study actor Alain Delon in Purple Noon (1960), telling him, “Look at this guy, Alain Delon. He knows that the moment he enters a room, the room has become a better place.” According to the actor, the nudity wasn’t in the script, rather “it was just the natural process of making the movie.” He also didn’t know the character or his subculture very well: “I wanted to immerse myself in all of that and I had literally two weeks. So I just dove in.”

In retrospect, Schrader regrets that the homosexual aspects of the script were toned down to get studio backing: “At the time, we thought we were being brave, promoting this androgynous male entitlement. Now I look back, and we were being cowardly. It should’ve been much more gay. Then again, I probably got it made because Julian pretends not to be gay.”

At the time, American Gigolo received mostly negative reviews by several mainstream critics. In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “Julian Kay is someone of absolutely no visible charm or interest, and though Mr. Gere is a handsome, able, low-key actor, he brings no charm or interest to the role. Then, too, the camera is not kind to him. It's not that he doesn't look fine, but that the camera seems unable to find any personality, like Dracula, whose image is unreflected by a mirror.” The Washington Post’s Gary Arnold wrote, “By the time it sputters to a fade out, Gigolo pays a heavy price for such sustained pretentiousness in tawdry circumstances. This movie invites a sort of sarcasm that destroyed Moment By Moment without ever generating as much naive entertainment value.” Roger Ebert, however, gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars and wrote, “The whole movie has a winning sadness about it; take away the story's sensational aspects and what you have is a study in loneliness. Richard Gere's performance is central to that effect, and some of his scenes – reading the morning paper, rearranging some paintings, selecting a wardrobe – underline the emptiness of his life.”

If the thriller genre elements don’t work as well as they should in American Gigolo it’s because the aspects of Julian’s profession and his developing relationship with Michelle are infinitely more interesting. It feels like Schrader was still trying things out and would be more successful at marrying these aspects in the film’s spiritual sequel The Walker (2007) decades later. American Gigolo is a fascinating fusion of the commercial sensibilities of slick movie producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Schrader’s art house inclinations (in particular, the films of Robert Bresson), establishing a stylistic template whose influence would be felt throughout the rest of the decade. Gone was the gritty, looseness of the 1970s, replaced by a slick sheen with style and spectacle over character development as epitomized by Bruckheimer produced blockbusters like Flashdance (1983) and Top Gun (1986). American Gigolo has aged better than many of these films thanks to Schrader’s thematic preoccupations, most significantly a self-destructive protagonist that finds redemption, and Gere’s strong performance that anchors the film. It may seem like a happy ending inconsistent with the rest of the film but Julian has survived at a great cost to his reputation. Everything he is has been torn down and now he must find some way to rebuild his life.

NOTES

Anolik, Lili. “Call Me!” Airmail News Weekly. February 8, 2020.

Jones, Chris. “Richard Gere: On Guard.” BBC News. December 27, 2002.

Krager, Dave. “Richard Gere on Gere.” Entertainment Weekly. August 31, 2012.

Perry, Kevin EG. “The Style of American Gigolo.” GQ. March 2012.

Segell, Michael. “Richard Gere: Heart-Breaker.” Rolling Stone. March 6, 1980.

MGM MOD DVD of the Week: Defiance / Patty Hearst

Defiance (1980) is an early Jerry Bruckheimer production, back when he was interested in making gritty crime films like American Gigolo (1980) and Thief (1981). Unfortunately, Defiance was given a limited released where it promptly bombed at the box office and failed to connect with a mainstream audience, relegating it to late night cable television. MGM has recently resurrected the film and finally given it a DVD release with the Movies On Demand program.

Tom “Tommy” Gamble (Jan Michael Vincent) is a tough merchant seaman who finds himself suspended with a six-month stay in New York City until he can get another job at sea. Broke and bummed at having to spend all this time in a city he can’t stand the sight of, he walks the dirty streets to the strains of “Bad Times” by Gerard McMahon (one of seven he wrote and performed for the film), which tries to capture the blue collar aesthetic of Bruce Springsteen but to a funk beat. He’s closer to Eddie and the Cruisers (1983) than Springsteen, however. A bartender that Tommy knows hooks him up with an apartment to crash in and it has all the slummy allure of a cesspool.

He spends his spare time (of which he has plenty) learning Spanish in the hopes of getting a ship bound for Panama. Despite his best efforts to keep to himself, Tommy befriends his chatty neighbor upstairs, Marsha Bernstein (Theresa Saldana), his noisy next-door neighbor Carmine (Danny Aiello), Abe (Art Carney), the savvy local shopkeeper, and a snotty-nosed street urchin (Fernando Lopez). This cozy collection of ethnic stereotypes are being harassed by a street gang populated by rejects who didn’t make the cut in The Warriors (1979) and led by the silent but deadly Angel Cruz (Rudy Ramos). Even though Tommy makes it clear that he wants to be left alone, the gang roughs him up (they take his art supplies!) and terrorizes the neighborhood (for kicks they throw bottles and cans at a street cleaning vehicle and disrupt a bingo game which is pretty innocuous on the deviant scale) until the merchant seaman reaches his breaking point and opens up a can of whoop-ass on these punks.

Defiance is the kind of urban revenge film that Cannon Films would have made in the 1980’s, probably starring Charles Bronson, complete with a xenophobic view of the big city. Instead we get Jan Michael Vincent, fresh from his iconic role in the Big Wednesday (1978). With his lean, chiseled features, he is well cast as the decent man who is pushed too close to the edge. As envisioned by the actor, Tommy is a tough guy but underneath is a real softy as the charm of the tenants in his building – in particular, Marsha and the kid – eventually break through his gruff exterior. Danny Aiello appears in an early role as a genial local bringing his own unique brand of charm to the role as only he can. Art Carney is slumming it as a stereotypical storeowner. Look closely and you’ll see Tony Sirico (Paulie from The Sopranos) in an early role and Lenny Montana (Luca Brasi from The Godfather) in small but memorable roles as respectable members of the neighborhood.

Director John Flynn orchestrates everything with his trademark no frills style that wouldn’t look out of place on an episode of Hill Street Blues. It is the kind of meat and potatoes filmmaking that is ideally suited for Defiance. Let’s be honest, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how the story is going to end but that’s neither here nor there. The purpose of this film is to tell a simple yet entertaining story.

 

Coming off the commercial and critical failure that was Light of Day (1987), Paul Schrader went on to direct Patty Hearst (1988), a low budget docudrama about the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) in 1974. Based on her 1982 autobiography Every Secret Thing, the film is a gritty account of how the SLA attempted to brainwash the newspaper heiress and force her to rob a bank and become a revolutionary. The film made its debut at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival but was given a very modest release and pretty much dropped off of everyone’s radar soon afterwards. It has finally been given a Region 1 DVD release thanks to the MGM MOD program, which restores the original aspect ratio and features a fine transfer.


Schrader wastes no time in showing the Hearst kidnapping and in doing so doesn’t spend much time establishing who she is or letting us get to know her, which makes it a little hard, initially, to empathize with her plight. He proceeds to show the relentless indoctrination the SLA did on Hearst – keeping her in a closet, opening the door occasionally to spout chunks of their radical left-wing manifesto. The tag-team of sensory deprivation and being force-fed SLA dogma wears down her defenses. Schrader shoots these scenes in shadowy rooms with distorted lenses and skewed shots accompanied by creepy, atmospheric music that evokes the claustrophobic feeling of a horror film.

Natasha Richardson does a good job of conveying the gradual breaking down of Hearst’s mental state to the point where she would be receptive to the SLA’s propaganda. The actress not only looks physically haggard but you can see it in her eyes – that glazed look of desperation. Richardson also captures the pampered softness of a woman born with a silver spoon in the mouth – the granddaughter of publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst. If we didn’t sympathize with her early on then we do while watching her get brainwashed. This innocent, young woman is bullied and treated like a prisoner of war. They get her to the point where she wants to join their cause and has no problem regurgitating their beliefs. In addition to Richardson, Schrader assembled an interesting cast of character actors to play SLA members: Ving Rhames as their militant leader, William Forsythe as a guy who wishes he was black and also Dana Delany and Frances Fisher.

With the rise of domestic terrorism in the last ten years, Patty Hearst remains eerily relevant. By the end of the film she goes from being programmed by the SLA to being programmed by doctors, lawyers and medical experts. For a low budget film, Schrader gives it a slick, cinematic look. The locations are sparse with no pretty details, just stark by design. This is contrasted with stylish lighting and color schemes. The film’s focus is on Hearst and the insular world of the SLA, which makes sense as the outside world’s reaction to what happened is well-documented. This is Hearst’s story told mostly from her perspective. Is she merely a spoiled rich brat or brainwashed revolutionary? Patty Hearst makes a case for both and leaves it up to the viewer to make up their own mind.

 

The Mosquito Coast

The Mosquito Coast (1986) is one of Harrison Ford’s most fascinating performances and it came at a time when he was able to use his box office clout from the lucrative Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises to push through the Hollywood system more challenging films. This certainly applies to the film which focuses on a brilliant inventor who decides that western society has become too corrupt and materialistic and moves his family to the jungles of Central America where he attempts to manipulate a small village into his idea of a civilized society. Not exactly the most accessible project but Ford and director Peter Weir, hot off their successful collaboration on Witness (1985), teamed up again on The Mosquito Coast, an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Paul Theroux.

The film is about a man obsessed with imposing his will on others to the degree that he exhibits self-destructive tendencies. What better person to realize this than Paul Schrader who was brought on to write the screenplay. He knows a thing or two about these types of protagonists as evident with Taxi Driver (1976) and Raging Bull (1980), both of which he wrote. The Mosquito Coast also allowed Weir to continue his fascination with strangers in a strange land, which he had explored previously in The Year of Living Dangerously (1983) and Witness. So, the trifecta of Ford, Schrader and Weir was an inspired one but the end result was too extreme for mainstream audiences and the film was a box office flop and received mixed reviews.

The film is narrated by Charlie Fox (River Phoenix) and done after the events depicted in the film. He is a young, teenage boy who clearly idolized his father: “I grew up with the belief that the world belonged to him and that everything he said was true.” Allie Fox (Harrison Ford) is a brash and brilliant inventor. Right from the first shot, he expresses his disappointment with what America has become as he tells Charlie, “Look around you. How did America get this way? … This place is a toilet.” Weir cuts to a shot of Allie and his son driving down a street dominated by fast food restaurants, their large signs almost completely obscuring several trees and a grassy hill as the visuals only serve to prove Allie’s point and will be eerily relevant towards the end of the film.

Allie continues his rant as if he were channeling Travis Bickle’s disgust for society from Taxi Driver: “The whole damn country is turning into a dope-taking, door-locking, ulcerated danger zone of rabid scavengers, criminal millionaires and moral snakes.” Amazingly, these words come out of a film released during the height of the supposedly “Greed is good,” Ronald Reagan-era 1980s in America when the country’s economy was booming. However, these sentiments also apply to our current situation with the war in Iraq, the Enron scandal, 9/11, and the collapse of the global economy. Allie is disgusted by what America has become and is “sick of dealing with people who want things I’ve already rejected.” Ford delivers this angry monologue with just the right amount of self-righteous indignation.

The first inkling we get that Allie is losing touch with reality is the cooling system he was supposed to make for a nearby farmer. Not only is he late with the device but it isn’t what the man wanted. Ford is brilliant here as he shows how Allie takes a rejection and deflects it, and ignores his mistake as a shortcoming of the farmer. This incident only confirms his beliefs. The farmer’s parting shot is probably the best observation about Allie: “A know-it-all who’s sometimes right.” After observing some poor migrant workers, Allie begins to think about how valuable ice and his cooling system would be in the jungle where it is always oppressively hot. He laments that these workers left the jungle to work basically as slaves for the farmer and muses about how much courage it would take to leave civilization and go live in the jungle.

So, Allie uproots his family – wife (Helen Mirren), two sons and two daughters – and heads for the jungles of Belize. En route, he and his family cross paths with the Reverend Gurney Spellgood (Andre Gregory) and his family. Spellgood is a man who will play a prominent role in their lives. Allie has little time for Spellgood and religion, referring to The Bible as “God’s owner’s handbook.” He is even able to quote Scripture back to Spellgood. Like Allie, Spellgood is zealous in his beliefs, they just happen to be based in religion and not science.

As soon as Allie and his family arrive, Weir immerses us in this strange new world with an audio-visual assault on our senses with local music and the hustle and bustle of the port city. Allie buys a small town and the next day, he and his family take a boat there. Weir shows a long shot of their journey along a curvy river that goes deep into the jungle and one can’t help but think of Willard’s river journey in Apocalypse Now (1979) only Allie is Colonel Kurtz ready to go native and impose his will on the locals. The river journey features some beautiful cinematography courtesy of Weir’s regular cinematographer John Seale. The vibrant greens of the lush jungle jump out at you and are in sharp contrast to the brown dirt that populates the jungle floor. As he did with Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) and The Year of Living Dangerously, Weir has a real knack for immersing us in the film’s setting, so much so that it almost becomes like another character. The Mosquito Coast is no different as we see how harsh the environment is, from the intense sun to the monsoon-like rain. This inhospitality is juxtaposed with the beauty of the trees and the serene river that winds through the jungle.

Allie puts his family and the natives to work, clearing the land and gathering up resources so that they can build his utopia. At times, he seems to do through sheer force of will. Everything seems to be going smoothly until Spellgood shows up and tries to win back the hearts and minds of the townsfolk only to have Allie spurn him yet again, much to the pastor’s chagrin. The confrontation is only a prelude to future conflict between these two headstrong men.

This is one of Harrison Ford’s best performances as he shows us the method to Allie’s madness. He is a charismatic despot of sorts. In a way, many of his diatribes about the wasteful nature of America are right on point. It’s his solution to its ills that don’t always make sense. Ford is fully committed to the role without a shred of vanity. He’s not afraid to play an unlikable character and approaches Allie Fox as someone who thinks that they aren’t crazy even though it is pretty obvious that he has a very skewed perspective on things. Ford nails the zeal of Allie’s beliefs but is still able to make him somewhat relatable thanks to his natural charisma. It’s a role that calls for the kind of physicality that Ford excels at as we see Allie building the town up with his own hands. He is so good at the physical aspects of acting – hence all the action roles he’s played in his career – and Allie is no different. More importantly, Ford shows how Allie’s megalomaniacal tendencies gradually consume him. It is small things, at first, like the way he belittles one of his sons for complaining about roughing it in the jungle.

Weir does a good job ratcheting up the tension during a sequence where three armed mercenaries arrive and Allie has to come up with a way to get them to leave. It is where Allie’s madness actually works to his advantage but at a horrible price, as he is willing to destroy everything he worked so hard to build up in order to get rid of them. Eventually, Allie’s epic vision becomes incredibly myopic as he alienates his own family. The actors that play the family members are all excellent, from Helen Mirren as the nurturing mother, to River Phoenix as the loyal son. Initially, they all believe in what their father is doing unconditionally but over time they gradually come to question his methods. They are decent people pushed to their breaking point by Allie.

Producer Jerome Hellman read Paul Theroux’s novel in 1982 and bought the film rights with his own money shortly after it was published. He felt that a great film was possible if the right people were involved but also had his reservations and admitted that he “didn’t fully appreciate how out of the ordinary the Establishment would consider this.” He soon hired screenwriter Paul Schrader to adapt the book and a first draft was developed in 1983. That same year, Hellman approached Peter Weir to direct based on films like Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Year of Living Dangerously. Hellman said, “the thematic harmony between Peter’s previous work and The Mosquito Coast was striking, but I was also impressed with the humanism in his work.”

After reading the first draft of the script, Weir met with Hellman and Schrader in Sydney, Australia where they spent a week discussing every aspect of it. Once he felt that it could be made into a film, Weir agreed to direct. Hellman then brought him to the United States and showed him the book’s New England locations. The producer also arranged a meeting between Weir and Theroux but the director was apprehensive because he had a bad experience with a novelist on one of his earlier films. Fortunately, the two men got along and Theroux encouraged Weir to make the film his own. Hellman and Weir then spent two years trying to get a studio interested in making The Mosquito Coast but with little success. Hellman remembered that they were turned down all over Hollywood, “most places three or four times.”

In early 1984, they realized that due to the seasonal demands of the plot, they would have to delay principal photography for another year. However, Weir was chomping at the bit to direct a film and he received an offer to direct Witness. During the making of that film, he developed a close working relationship with its star, Harrison Ford. During this time, Jack Nicholson became interested in taking on the role of Allie Fox but when the deal fell through, Hellman and Weir agreed that Ford would be perfect to play the character. Ford was drawn to the role because it was so different from anything he had done before: “I was aware that there was opportunity here for more complicated characterization and because the character is so verbal and effusive, it goes against the kind of characters for which I’m best known.” Ford also wanted “the edgy feeling of the book still to be preserved. We didn’t want to abandon the balls of it because it’s not necessary for him [Allie] to be entirely likable as long as the audience can understand what he’s about.” Furthermore, Ford “worked hard not to make him too sympathetic, to keep an edge, to keep him bristling.”


After Witness was released and became a big hit (garnering several Academy Award nominations), almost every studio wanted to make The Mosquito Coast but Hellman, burnt out from shopping the film around and getting repeatedly rejected, wanted to find independent financing. He met with producer Saul Zaentz to ask for advice and to read the script. He did and was so taken with it that he offered to have his company finance, present and supervise the distribution of the film.

Seeing as how most of the film is set in the jungle, it was crucial that Hellman and Weir find the right location. They considered Costa Rica, Guatemala, Jamaica, Mexico, and Hawaii before picking Belize, which had everything they needed: mountains, ocean, jungle and rivers – all within an hour radius of Belize City. It was also an English language country whose political situation was stable. While filming in the jungle, the cast and crew endured cuts and bruises, mosquito bites and heavy sunburn with large snakes common on the set. Ford found the shoot long and humid. It was more exhausting for him mentally than physically because of “the complexity of the role and the endless process of sorting out and reappraising where we were at.”

Weir drew inspiration for the visual look of The Mosquito Coast from a bulletin board he had on location that was adorned with postcards, pages from magazines, a pressed flower, a match box, and so on. “It’s a question of texture, a kind of mosaic of inspirations,” he said. Weir felt that it was important to shoot the construction of the town Allie owns to be filmed in continuity and so three versions of it were created. Each was a little more advanced than the one before. As the crew moved from one set to another, the construction crew would do additional work on the previous set. This allowed Weir to film in days what would’ve taken many months to do.

Not surprisingly, The Mosquito Coast did not fare well with critics at the time. Roger Ebert gave the film two out of four stars and wrote, “Allie Fox's madness is more of a drone, an unending complaint against the way things are. It is painful to watch him not because he is mad, but because he is boring – one of those nuts who will talk all night long without even checking to see if you're listening.” However, the Washington Post’s Rita Kempley enjoyed Ford’s performance: “Sooner or later a man of invention will pollute paradise, a grand contradiction that gives Mosquito its bite and Ford inspiration for his most complex portrayal to date. As a persona of epic polarities, he animates this muddled, metaphysical journey into the jungle.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “In spite of its authentic scenery (it was filmed in Belize), this Mosquito Coast is utterly flat. Even its exotic melodrama fails to excite the imagination. The problem is not in the performances but in the way they have been presented, most of the time in a cool, dispassionate, third-person narrative style, stripped of Charlie's troubled thoughts and feelings that give the book its emotional force.” The Los Angeles Times’ Sheila Benson criticized Weir’s approach to the material in her review: “He's orchestrated The Mosquito Coast's action to match Fox's progressive mental state, from rage to explosion to squalls and finally to hurricane velocity; however, the film leaves us not with an apotheosis, but exhaustion.” To his credit, Harrison Ford has no regrets about making the film: “I adored that movie. If people didn’t want to see me be mean to kids, I understand that. But I was thrilled to have made that movie.”

In some respects, one could see The Mosquito Coast as a commentary on the extreme nature of the cult of personality as both Allie and Spellgood are prime examples of someone who believes that their vision of society is the right one. At first, Allie’s vision is quite seductive and seems to work but as time goes on and outside forces threaten it, the cracks begin to show. Weir takes an unflinching look at the extremes of science and religion and this apparently turned off audiences and critics alike. It is time for this film to be rediscovered and recognized as one of his more thought-provoking efforts made within the system by a movie star with enough clout to make it happen.

SOURCES

Diehl, Digby. “The Iceman Cometh.” American Film. December 1986.

Honeycutt, Kirk. “Harrison Ford on Harrison Ford.” Daily News. 1986.

McGilligan, Pat. “Under Weir and Theroux.” Film Comment. November-December 1986.

The Mosquito Coast Production Notes. 1986.

Thompson, Anne. “Gamblers on the Coast.” The Globe and Mail. November 7, 1986.

Turan, Kenneth. “Still the Same After All These Years.” GQ. November 1986.