The Lonely Guy

The Lonely Guy (1984), starring Steve Martin and Charles Grodin, is part of a popular subgenre of the romantic comedy with sad sack protagonists unlucky in and often looking for love such as Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (1977) and Albert Brooks’ Modern Romance (1981) with the female equivalent in movies like Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001) and Someone Like You (2001). These movies often feature socially awkward protagonists fumbling their way through unsuccessful relationships. The Lonely Guy fancies itself as a grandiose cinematic statement on the subgenre right down to the mock-epic-style opening that playfully references 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

Larry Hubbard (Martin) is a successful greeting card writer living in New York City. He comes home one day to find his girlfriend in bed with another man and seems completely oblivious to it all in an amusing bit where he carries on with his daily routine as if nothing is wrong. Kicked to curb, Larry wanders the streets until he sits on a park bench and meets experienced “lonely guy” Warren Evans (Grodin) whose girlfriend just left him for a guy robbing her apartment (“It’s probably for the best. She was really starting to let herself go,” he deadpans.).

Warren gives Larry a lot of helpful advice, like avoiding wealthy neighborhoods to live in because they have high crime rates (he even sees a man thrown off a building and another guy shot on the sidewalk in front of him!). These early scenes between Steve Martin and Charles Grodin are among the strongest of the movie as the former’s optimism clashes hilariously with the latter’s pessimism.

Larry soon discovers that there are all kinds of other lonely, single guys like him out there and they need advice like he did and so he decides to write a book entitled, A Guide for the Lonely Guy. It becomes hugely successful and Larry finds himself not so lonely any more. He even tries to pick up a woman at a bar by telling her that he’s looking for a real relationship while she admits that she just wants to have sex. As if on cue, Warren shows up and asks Larry, “Ever think about getting a dog?”

This scene demonstrates how The Lonely Guy deftly juggles satire with keen observations on human behavior. Everything is heightened for comedic effect reminiscent of the Zucker Abrams Zucker movies only not quite as zany. In some respects, this movie, with its self-reflexive voiceover narration and breaking of the fourth wall, feels like a warm-up for Martin’s comedic opus L.A. Story (1991), which manages to balance satire with poignant observations about relationships much more successfully.

Larry meets Iris (Judith Ivey), an attractive woman he keeps running into but is unable to make it work because the timing isn’t right. They have an on-again-off-again relationship that plays out over the course of the movie.

Martin manages to effortlessly tread a fine comedic line between hapless doormat and hopeless romantic. The problem with a lot of romantic comedies is that they’re populated by impossibly good-looking people that would never have a problem finding love and while he is a handsome guy Martin is able to convey the awkwardness of someone lacking confidence – that makes him a believable lonely guy.

Grodin plays Warren as the ultimate dweeb who refers to his plants as “guys.” In the 1980s, he excelled at playing uptight, nebbish characters (Midnight Run) and this is one of the best takes on this type. In a movie with many outrageous gags and set pieces, he wisely underplays, delivering a less is more performance that is quite funny. The best scenes in the movie are between him and Martin. They play well off each other and it’s a shame they didn’t do more movies together.

Neil Simon adapted Bruce Jay Friedman’s book, The Lonely Guy’s Book of Life and then Jay Friedman and Stan Daniels, known for their work on television sitcoms like The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Taxi, wrote the screenplay. The project was a challenging change of pace for them as the latter said, “We were used to writing about real people and real problems – in other words, just straightforward realistic comedy. The Lonely Guy is a stylized way of getting at reality.”

Principal photography began in spring of 1983 at Universal Studios’ famous New York City backlot on Stage 28 with Larry and Warren’s apartments built on the same soundstage. Incredibly, a life-sized scale replica of the Manhattan Bridge was constructed, standing eight feet in the air and was 44-feet wide, taking four weeks to build. In addition, actual location shooting took place in Los Angeles and for three weeks in New York.

The Lonely Guy was savaged by critics with Roger Ebert giving it one-and-a-half out of four stars and writing, “The Lonely Guy is the kind of movie that seems to have been made to play in empty theaters on overcast January afternoons.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “Whenever the film tries for sprightliness, it stumbles. When it gives in to the basic misery of Larry and his situation, though, it begins to make some sort of morose comic sense.” Pauline Kael felt that is had “some wonderful gags and a lot of other good ideas for gags, but it was directed by Arthur Hiller, who is the opposite of a perfectionist, and it makes you feel as if you were watching television.” The Washington Post’s Gary Arnold wrote, “Nevertheless, despite the flailing around, the picture fitfully accumulates a handful of modest highlights and silly brainstorms. They may seem sufficient to justify the trouble, especially if you extend Martin & Co. the courtesy of not expecting a classic.” Even Martin wasn’t too crazy with the end result. He didn’t like Larry and felt that as a character he was “too weak. I realized I played too nebbishy. That’s what was written, but it’s not a character I especially want to play anymore.”

Even though the situations Larry finds himself in are heightened for comedic effect, The Lonely Guy does capture the single guy mindset quite well – the desperation and the rationalization that a lot of men experience as they try to find that special someone. Ultimately, the movie suggests that you have to be willing to put yourself out there if you want to meet someone and that takes courage as you run the risk of being rejected. There’s something to be said about making an attempt and the movie champions this approach albeit in a satirical way. If The Lonely Guy is remembered at all its as a commercial and critical failure that not even its star liked but I think he, Kael and other film critics have been too hard on this trifle of a movie that is funny and features a stand-out performance by Charles Grodin.

SOURCES

Pollock, Dale. “Steve Martin: A Wild and Serious Guy.” Los Angeles Times. September 16, 1984.

The Lonely Guy Production Notes. 1984.

The Spanish Prisoner

“A fellow said, ‘We must never forget that we are human. And as humans we must dream. And when we dream we dream of money.”

This line of dialogue is spoken early on in The Spanish Prisoner (1998) and establishes one of the most important themes of David Mamet’s film: greed. The allure of money is what motivates all of the characters in the film save one – its protagonist, Joe Ross (Campbell Scott). He is not only at the mercy of other people’s greed but also their deception, which is another significant theme of this film.

Joe Ross and his friend and business partner George Lang (Ricky Jay) have invented “The Process,” a complicated formula that controls the global financial market. While pitching it to their boss Mr. Klein (Ben Gazzara) at a resort somewhere in the Caribbean, Joe meets Jimmy Dell (Steve Martin), a wealthy, well-spoken man who offers $1,000 for Joe’s camera. The two men become friends and Joe is gradually drawn into a world filled with elaborate facades where no one can be trusted.

Campbell Scott is first-rate as the innocent man embroiled in a scheme where Joe is at the mercy of situations beyond his control. He is not dumb – just not savvy but he wises up soon enough. Joe is the classic patsy, set-up in an elaborate frame job that is so beautifully orchestrated that we wonder how he’ll get out of it. The actor handles Mamet’s wordy screenplay with ease and his calm, even voice is perfectly suited for the filmmaker’s dialogue.

Steve Martin not only slides effortlessly into this dramatic role, but is also adept at speaking Mamet’s dialogue. He has a tough role in that he plays a charismatic wealthy man who turns out to be a master at the long con, gaining Joe’s trust by giving enough believable personal details in an affable way to gain his (and our) trust. It isn’t until late in the film that we realize just how much we’ve been taken in by Jimmy. At one point, he tells Joe, “People aren’t that complicated, Joe. Good people, bad people. They generally look like what they are.” This is, of course, a lie as Jimmy is nothing like what he seems.

In a mannered performance, Rebecca Pidgeon plays a chatty femme fatale that uses her incessant chatter as a smoke screen. Not for one second do we believe she’s the eager beaver, low-level secretary she pretends to be and even tells Joe at one point, “Who is what they seem? Who in this world is what they seem?” Again, she is conning both Joe and us because her annoying perchance for verbal diarrhea throws us off guard – there’s no way she could be in on the con even when she makes a point of warning us.

Known for playing the obnoxious dad in the popular sitcom Married…with Children, Ed O’Neill is cast against type as a no-nonsense FBI agent along with a pre-Desperate Housewives Felicity Huffman. Long-time Mamet collaborator Ricky Jay is exceptional as Joe’s business partner, getting the bulk of the film’s memorable lines in the first third of the film. Ben Gazzara also has a memorable turn as Joe’s somewhat enigmatic boss whose behavior only adds to our hero’s paranoia.

Not surprisingly, The Spanish Prisoner is chock-a-block with classic Mamet-speak with such gems as George telling Joe, “Here’s what I think, you know – worry is like interest paid in advance on a debt that never comes due.” Another keeper is when Jimmy says to Joe, “A man said, it’s alright when your hobbies get in the way of your work but when they start to get in the way of each other…” And finally, this gem: “Beware of all enterprises, which require new clothes,” says George at one point. The film is an unusual thriller in the sense that everyone speaks eloquently and intelligently in the very distinctive cadence of Mamet’s style.

The Process is the film’s MacGuffin, a thing that everyone values highly but is never fully explained or revealed but is apparently capable of generating a large amount of money, which is also never revealed. The characters dance around what it is exactly and Mamet does this intentionally because it is ultimately unimportant. Its purpose is to get Joe embroiled in a complex web of lies and deceits from which he tries to extricate himself.

One of the first images in the film is of luggage going through an x-ray machine. Mamet is cleverly foreshadowing one of the film’s central themes, which is the nature of perception and how some things are hidden even when they seem to be visible. The first time we watch The Spanish Prisoner we are like Joe – unaware of just how much he’s being manipulated by others. It isn’t until the second time around that we look for the signs that this is all an elaborate ruse. Joe, a man of numbers and formulas, is oblivious to these manipulations because he is so focused on The Process. It isn’t until it is stolen that he gradually becomes more self-aware.

The idea for The Spanish Prisoner came from a time when David Mamet and his wife were on vacation in the Caribbean. It was raining the whole time and he was looking at a little lagoon from his porch and saw a large 140-foot yacht with a helicopter on top: “And I wondered what someone would be like who came off that yacht. Then I started wondering, what if someone came off the yacht and you weren’t sure if they came off the yacht.” He decided to make a light thriller in the style of Alfred Hitchcock or Stanley Donen. He had also wanted to work with actor Campbell Scott since he saw him in Longtime Companion (1989) and felt that he would be right for a “clean-cut, patrician, Leyendecker, Arrow-shirt” role.

The con employed in the film is an actual one called the Spanish Prisoner and still done today: “It’s a fairly long con and involves getting a substantial amount of money off a person and putting the person ‘on the send.’ Making a connection with the guy and sending him off to get some money and come back,” Mamet said in an interview.

The Spanish Prisoner received mostly positive reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars and wrote, “The Spanish Prisoner is delightful in the way a great card manipulator is delightful. It rolls its sleeves above its elbows to show it has no hidden cards, and then produces them out of thin air.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “The splendid inspiration of Alfred Hitchcock is much in evidence, with Mr. Scott as a latter-day James Stewart coping with the most subtly extraordinary of circumstances and later reeling from surprise after surprise. He and Mr. Martin especially display the debonair sang-froid that the material warrants.” The New York Observer’s Andrew Sarris wrote, “The ultimate seriousness of The Spanish Prisoner is validated by the rueful self-flagellation of the hero, and his recognition that the world itself is awash in chaos and corruption. Hence, there is no real Hitchcockian moral closure, no probing into the depths of the soul for the evil that lurks in us all.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “B+” rating and Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote, “In The Spanish Prisoner, a tight, mathematically pleasing exercise in con-manship, Mamet returns to the coolly observed turf he knows well, and pulls off another fine, bitter, intellectual heist.” However, the Washington Post’s Stephen Hunter wrote, “The Spanish Prisoner ends as abruptly as it began slowly. Its rhythms, therefore, feel violated, it just stops, rather too conveniently, with the intrusion of still another level of conspiratorial force far beyond what has gone before.”

Like the protagonist in another Mamet film, House of Games (1987), Joe must navigate a series of challenging con games. However, The Spanish Prisoner is much more complex in its plotting so that the scams perpetrated on Joe are layered in such a way that he is never sure who he can trust. As Joe is being conned by various people in the film so are we by Mamet as he playfully manipulates our expectations of the genre. As Mamet said in an interview, “Well, writing a movie like this is exactly the same as if I were developing a con, because I am developing a con. The filmmaker has to get something from the audience – their belief, their credulity – which they wouldn’t [give] if they were thinking about it.” We think we know which way the plot is going to go only for him to pull the narrative rug out from under us. Some may be put off by The Spanish Prisoner because it doesn’t try to endear us to any of the characters or be sentimental. It’s a logical, methodically plotted thriller, seemingly from another planet and this is due in large part to Mamet’s idiosyncratically written dialogue and stylized direction.

SOURCES

Covington, Richard. “The Salon Interview: David Mamet.” Salon. October 1997.

Pride, Ray. “Con Artist.” Filmmaker magazine. Spring 1998.

L.A. Story

Whenever I imagine what Los Angeles might be like I picture Steve Martin’s version of it in L.A. Story (1991), much like how I used to imagine New York City being like Woody Allen’s Manhattan (1979) before I actually went there. Obviously, the version of L.A. presented in Martin’s film is a romanticized and stylized take but he certainly seemed to capture the spirit of a certain social strata (white, upper-middle class) that was also touched upon in Robert Altman’s The Player (1992). Like with that film, Martin celebrates and satirizes the city’s culture in a way that only someone who has experienced it first hand can. The result is the West Coast answer to Manhattan and a film that would make a good double bill with Altman’s aforementioned film.

The opening credits play over a montage of L.A. culture albeit with a satirical spin, like four cars that all arrive at a four-way stop and proceed to politely wave each other on only to all go at once and crash into each other; there’s the pedestrian wearing a gas mask (on account of the city’s notorious smog); how everyone seems to be watering their lawn; and the traffic light that reads, “Uh Like Walk” and “Uh Like Don’t Walk.” It sets just the right humorous tone as we get a feel for the kind of laughs the film is going for.

We meet Harris K. Telemacher (Steve Martin), a deeply unhappy man who doesn’t realize it because he is so happy all the time as we are told by his voiceover narration. He’s one of those wacky weathermen you see on local television stations cracking lame jokes and wearing funny outfits despite having a Ph.D. in Arts and Humanities. Regardless, a young executive (Woody Harrelson) tells him, “more wacky less egghead.” Harris has lunch with a circle of superficial friends and meets Sara McDowel (Victoria Tennant), fresh off the plane from England and in town to write an article on the city for the London Times. He’s immediately smitten with her, so much so that he almost forgets about his girlfriend Trudi (Marilu Henner) when leaving the restaurant.

One night, while driving on the freeway, Harris’ car breaks down and an electronic traffic signs begins communicating with him. It offers guidance in the form of a riddle that he must figure out over the course of the film. Sara ends up interviewing him for her article which only intensifies his attraction towards her despite his brief fling with SanDeE (Sarah Jessica Parker), a sexy young woman from the Valley who sold him a pair of pants. Harris finds himself physically attracted to her but intellectually she’s a wasteland. Over the course of the film, Harris must decide whether he should stay involved with the vivacious SanDeE or get involved with the beautiful and brainy Sara.

There has always been a fascinating push/pull in Steve Martin’s career – a desire to be regarded as a serious artist (The Spanish Prisoner) and yet he does wacky comedies (The Jerk) to pay the bills. With L.A. Story, he gets to do both and in many respects it is his magnum opus as the screenplay (which he wrote) ambitiously blends broad humor sight gags with witty dialogue that sometimes references Shakespeare. In the scenes between him and Victoria Tennant (his wife at the time), one gets the feeling that Martin is wearing his heart on his sleeve and that he shares Harris’ hopelessly romantic aspirations. Harris is just trying to find love. When we meet him he’s in a passionless relationship with Trudi that almost seems like a business partnership more than anything else. Then, when Harris meets SanDeE (her name itself is a pretty funny gag) he thinks that maybe he’s found love but soon realizes that they have nothing in common even though the sex is great. However, when Harris meets Sara he knows she’s the real deal as they make an instant connection. Martin does a nice job of playing a guy of substance living in social strata that is devoid of it. With Sara, Harris finally meets someone that he can be himself with and doesn’t have to explain many of the intellectual references he makes. Martin wisely doesn’t try to imitate Woody Allen’s neurotic, nebbish characters and instead he tempers his wacky persona with a more wistful, romantic side, like his scenes with the intelligent freeway sign.

With her cute, little ‘20s flapper-esque hat and quirky personality, Victoria Tennant’s Sara is the Diane Keaton to Martin’s Woody Allen. Like Keaton’s character in Manhattan, Sara speaks her mind and doesn’t act like the people in Harris’ circle of friends, which is one of the things that he finds attractive about her. L.A. Story is also a sober reminder of just how gifted a comedienne Sarah Jessica Parker was before she hit it big with Sex and the City. She brings an endearing goofy charm to her carefree spirit of a character. SanDeE lacks a self-awareness that Harris finds refreshing.

The film sends up several clichés of L.A. culture, like how everyone carries a gun while driving on the freeway; or how everyone is so blasé about a strong earthquake; or the exotic variations of coffee everyone orders – with a lemon twist, of course; or how everyone drives everywhere, even a few feet to a neighbor’s house. None of these gags are very mean but rather good-natured pokes at the silliness of a lot of the city’s cultural practices and the stereotypes that everyone has of the place. Martin isn’t out to critique L.A. with biting satire but rather with affectionate parody.

L.A. Story is beautifully shot by British cinematographer Andrew Dunn (Gosford Park) who captures gorgeous sunrises and sunsets. The night scenes absolutely shimmer while the day scenes have a romantic, soft focus look to them. This all ties into the magic realism vibe that Martin is going for as he presents an idealized vision of L.A., which includes talking electronic freeway signs or how he avoids a traffic jam by riding on the sidewalk and through people’s backyards. Martin does lay it on a bit thick with the Shakespeare references, especially the obvious Hamlet quote complete with Rick Moranis as a British gravedigger but they never take you completely out of the romantic spell that he is trying to cast over the film.

Steve Martin first thought about the project that would become L.A. Story in 1984 when he and Victoria Tennant first became involved romantically, seeing it as love letter to their relationship. One day, he was driving down the freeway and thought about using one of its electronic signs in a film and began writing the screenplay. Martin had felt that the “ugly image” of L.A. had “been done so much, there’s nothing new about it. I wanted it to be L.A. through lovers’ eyes.” A native of the city, he had lived there for 25 years before making the film and was well-versed in its culture and distinctive idiosyncrasies. He wanted to capture the “calm desperation of rushing on and never pausing to ask, ‘What did I do for the last 10 years except figure out how to make a left turn on Santa Monica Boulevard?’”

However, he kept putting it aside because he found the task of writing his first original script on his own rather daunting: “I kept feeling it was too weird, so I’d put it away for a while, and then I would get it out again and work on it again.” After making Roxanne (1987), its success emboldened him to finish his script for L.A. Story. As he worked on the script, Martin decided to reference Shakespeare several times, quoting lines from Richard II, Hamlet, Love’s Labor’s Lost, and King Lear. He started off with only a couple of references and the rest were added later.

L.A. Story marked the second film Martin had made with producer Daniel Melnick (the first being Roxanne), veteran of such cinematic classics as Straw Dogs (1971) and Network (1976), who suggested hiring British director Mick Jackson. Melnick showed Martin a tape of the British television miniseries A Very British Coup to demonstrate the stylish look Jackson could bring to their film. The director was initially hesitant to accept the offer because he wondered what he could contribute to a film about L.A. and assumed that Martin preferred to work with little direction. However, this is exactly what the comedian wanted: an outsider’s perspective and a strong director. Martin soon found that he and Jackson shared a common interest in contemporary art and decided to reference the work of David Hockney throughout L.A. Story. For example, a swimming pool scene referenced his painting “California,” which depicted two figures floating on a raft in a pool.

L.A. Story received mixed reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and wrote, “It isn't thin or superficial; there is an abundance of observation and invention here, and perhaps because the filmmakers know they have so much good material, there's never the feeling that anything is being punched up, or made to carry more than its share.” In his review for the Washington Post, Hal Hinson wrote, “What saves L.A. Story is its soft-centered sweetness. The movie is a bonbon; it delivers a little sugar jolt. Instead of savaging the Angeleno vacuousness, Martin … embraces the town's space case innocence.” The Globe and Mail’s Rick Groen wrote, “Gracefully, wittily, charmingly, Martin reveals its dark truths while honouring its bright wish.”

However, in his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “The movie is less a narrative than an accumulation of gentle gags about smog, fads, freeways, dress, earthquakes, mating habits and trendy restaurants.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “B” rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “Martin, who supplies the rather doleful narration, certainly wins your empathy, but he spends too much time reining himself in … L.A. Story would have been funnier and more exhilarating if Martin had admitted that, in his wild-and-crazy way, he really belongs there.” USA Today gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and Mike Clark wrote, “L.A. Story is a mass of contradictions: an unexpectedly ambitious comedy that's not ambitious enough, a Steve Martin love poem to wife Victoria Tennant that serves her badly, and an oft-insane Martin script that needs a second creative madman behind the camera.”

Much like the characters in Manhattan, the ones in L.A. Story get into messy relationships but with the exception of Harris spend little to no time agonizing over them like in Woody Allen’s film because they have already got another affair going on the side. Sara offers a refreshing perspective for Harris, which he finds very attractive. For all of the satirical jabs Martin takes at L.A. one gets the impression that he also has a lot of affection for it and this comes through in the budding romance between Harris and Sara. Amid all of the superficiality of the city’s culture that surrounds them they can make a meaningful connection. At times, it feels like he’s making an epic statement about L.A. but the film also adopts a more intimate vibe during the scenes between Harris and Sara. “Why is it that we don’t always recognize the moment when love begins but we always know when it ends?” Harris says late in the film. It is a telling observation with a lot of truth to it. L.A. Story’s message is that there is someone for everyone – even in L.A.

SOURCES

Benenson, Laurie Halpern. “Steve Martin Targets L.A.” The New York Times. February 3, 1991.

Horn, John. “Steve Martin Has Eye for Los Angeles in L.A. Story.” Associated Press. February 5, 1991.

Murphy, Ryan. “Life’s No Joke for Shy Comic Martin.” The Advertiser. February 23, 1991.

Portman, Jamie. “Steve Martin Pens Comic Valentine to Favorite Town.” The Record. February 7, 1991.

Yakir, Dan. “L.A. Story.” Globe and Mail.” February 15, 1991.

Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid

In the early 1980s it must’ve seemed like a crazy idea to mix several contemporary actors with clips from classic films into something resembling a coherent story. Even now it seems like a pretty wild idea and one with few antecedents (Kung Pow! Enter the Fist is the only one that comes immediately to mind). But director Carl Reiner and comedian Steve Martin had the chutzpah to give it a try with Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982), a comedy that simultaneously pays tribute to and affectionately parodies film noirs from the 1940s and 1950s. Only a few years earlier, Reiner and Martin hit comedic pay dirt with The Jerk (1979) and so anticipation was high for this new collaboration. The result was a rare cinematic experiment that was viewed by some as lazy filmmaking and a clever homage by others.

Reiner sets the proper tone right from the get-go by featuring the Universal Pictures logo from the ‘40s. The opening credits play over a rainy city skyline at night (does it get any more noir than that?). The buildings are obviously an illustrated backdrop signifying that we are dealing with a fantasy world drenched in noir, anticipating Sin City’s (2005) own artificial world by many years. Private investigator Rigby Reardon (Steve Martin) is hired by the beautiful Juliet Forrest (Rachel Ward) to investigate the mysterious death of her father John Hay Forrest (George Gaynes), a highly regarded scientist and cheesemaker. The authorities have ruled it an accident but she suspects murder, her father the victim of a giant conspiracy.

Reardon’s hard-boiled voiceover narration plays around with the pulpy dialogue common in the film noir genre for comedic effect. For example, after his first meeting with Juliet, he thinks to himself, “I hadn’t seen a body put together like that since I solved the case of the murdered girl with the big tits.” His voiceovers also complement visual gags like when Reardon arrives at Dr. Forrest’s cheese lab and he observes, “I had no trouble finding Dr. Forrest’s cheese lab. It smelled like the number on the door.” Cut to a shot of a door with a “2” on it. In another scene, Juliet can actually hear Reardon’s voiceover narration, much to his surprise. There are a few gags that would be repeated in the short-lived Police Squad television show, which was also a parody of the crime thriller genre, but Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid’s focus is predominantly film noir.

Reardon is not your typical gumshoe. For example, he goes into a hysterical murderous rampage whenever he hears the words, “cleaning woman.” Steve Martin wisely knows when to play it straight, like when it comes to saying the hard-boiled dialogue that often authentically evokes film noirs while also poking fun at them as well. He also picks his moments to cut loose and act zany, most notably whenever the “cleaning woman” phrase is invoked. Martin has a lot of fun interacting with various screen legends, like the phone conversation he has with a hysterical Barbara Stanwyck from Sorry, Wrong Number (1948). His poker-faced delivery of most of his dialogue is what makes it so funny, as is some of the physical bits of business he does, like when Reardon makes a cup of his famous java for Burt Lancaster from The Killers (1946), which evidently involves an entire bag of coffee grounds and two eggs (including the shells).

Juliet is not a typical femme fatale. For starters, whenever Reardon is shot she removes the bullet with her teeth, a procedure she learned at camp. Rachel Ward looks absolutely gorgeous all dolled up and looking like she walked right out of a film from the ‘40s, which is obviously the look they were going for. Ward has the perfect sultry voice of a noir fatale and watching this film again serves as a vivid reminder of what a sexy presence she was in the 1980s with films like Against All Odds (1984), which really put her on the map and into the mainstream consciousness. Ward seemed to gravitate towards crime films, also appearing in the underrated neo-noir After Dark, My Sweet (1990). Martin and Ward play well off each other and have several funny exchanges of dialogue, like when she tells him at one point, “You’re a very smart man,” to which he replies, “So was Abraham Lincoln. Look what happened to him.”

In the summer of 1980, Martin was having lunch with Reiner and screenwriter George Gipe. They were discussing a screenplay Martin had written when the comedian suggested that they use a clip from an old film somewhere in his project. From this suggestion came the idea of using all sorts of clips from classic films throughout the entire feature. The three men left the lunch thinking about how they could incorporate all of these old clips into a story. Reiner figured that they could work Martin into the old footage via tricks like over-the-shoulder shots so that it looked like he was talking to these famous actors.

Reiner and Gipe spent countless hours viewing classic films looking for specific shots and “listening for a line that was ambiguous enough but had enough meat in it to contribute a line opposite,” Reiner said at the time. He and Gipe took lines of dialogue from the clips they wanted to use and juxtaposed them while also trying to write a story based on them. They finally worked out a story and then met with Martin who contributed some funny material of his own. In preparation for the film, he purposely chose not to watch any classic film noirs because he “didn’t want to act like Humphrey Bogart ... I didn’t want to be influenced.”

In order to accurately recreate the look of film noir, Reiner recruited some of the people that helped define several classic films from the genre. Costume designer Edith Head, responsible for memorable outfits in films like Double Indemnity (1944), Notorious (1946) and Sunset Boulevard (1950), created over 20 suits for Martin in similar fashion to those worn by Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart back in the day. Production designer John De Cuir, a veteran with 40 years of experience on films like Brute Force (1947) and The Naked City (1948) designed 85 sets over the ten-week shooting schedule. Rounding out these cinematic legends was composer Miklos Rozsa, who created the atmospheric soundtracks for Double Indemnity, Spellbound (1945) and The Asphalt Jungle (1950), and he helped give the film an authentic noir sound. Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid looks and sounds as good as it does because of the work of these talented people. Sadly, it would be the last film for both Head and Rozsa.

Reiner and director of photography Michael Chapman do a pretty good job blending the vintage footage with their own. Nowadays you would just use CGI but back then they didn’t have that luxury and had to pay careful attention to the cinematography so that their shots would match up, making the seamless blend that much more impressive. Chapman studied the angles and lighting popular among ‘40s film noir, conducting six months of research with Technicolor to try and match the old film clips with his new footage. Principal photography began on July 7, 1981 with the bulk of it done on the soundstages of Laird International Studios in Culver City and three exterior locations shot in and around Los Angeles.

Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid actually received a pretty decent response from critics. In his review for Newsweek magazine, David Ansen wrote, "A one joke movie? Perhaps, but it's such an engaging joke that anyone who loves old movies will find it irresistible. And anyone who loves Steve Martin will be fascinated by his sly performance, which is pitched exactly between the low comedy of The Jerk and the highbrow Brechtianisms of Pennies from Heaven." The New York Times’ Vincent Canby praised Martin's performance: "the film has an actor who's one of America's best sketch artists, a man blessed with a great sense of timing, who is also self-effacing enough to meet the most cockeyed demands of the material." However, Time magazine's Richard Corliss wrote, "The gag works for a while, as Martin weaves his own plot-web into the 18 old movies, but pretty soon he's traveling on old good will and flop sweat".

Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid is quite possibly my favorite Steve Martin comedy, even over beloved classics like The Jerk and L.A. Story (1991), because of its film noir trappings and its very funny script chock full of all kinds of gags, both verbal and physical. It is a film noir lover’s dream as we get to see Martin “interact” with the likes of Humphrey Bogart, Burt Lancaster, Veronica Lake, Ingrid Bergman and countless others. There is also a lot of fun to be had identifying which films are used in the various clips seen throughout but this is also one of its criticisms – that the film is nothing more than a stylish parlor game of spot the reference. Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid is some kind of crazed, ambitious experiment that has rarely been duplicated – clearance rights for all of these clips would be a legal nightmare in today’s ultra-litigious climate. In retrospect, the film had limited commercial appeal which may explain why it didn’t exactly set the box office on fire, disappointing mainstream audiences expecting Reiner and Martin to rehash The Jerk. Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid is not talked about much anymore making it prime for rediscovery as a cult film oddity.

Some of the stills used in this article came from the Precious Bodily Fluids blog and this excellent post on the film (featuring more stills). Here is a pretty snazzy fan site.

SOURCES

Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid Production Notes. Universal Pictures. 1982.