A Flash of Green

What is the price for one’s soul? Is it ever worth the price, to betray loved ones, those who matter most to you? This is the dilemma that newspaper reporter Jimmy Wing (Ed Harris) wrestles with in A Flash of Green (1984), Victor Nunez’s adaptation of John D. MacDonald’s 1962 novel of the same name. As with all of the filmmaker’s films, this one is, first and foremost, a fascinating character study with a conflicted protagonist at its center.
 
Jimmy is a reporter for a local Florida newspaper in 1961. Developers are trying to buy Grassy Bay, a body of water in the heart of Palm City. Their goal: fill it in so that they can build homes on it, making a lot of money in the process. Some of its residents, however, have formed a committee called Save Our Bay (S.O.B.) to stop it, citing egregious environmental damage if it goes through.
 
Jimmy meets with Elmo Bliss (Richard Jordan), a county commissioner, to get the skinny on the development. He is told that the plan is to create an island, populating it with homes; as he puts it, “We’re going to manufacture a paradise.” Elmo is tired of being a commissioner and is going to run for the governor’s mansion. He plans to use the money he makes from Grassy Bay to fund his campaign. He wants Jimmy to spy on the S.O.B.s and dig up dirt on them … for a price, of course. He lays it all out for the reporter when he tells him, “World needs folks like me. Folks with a raw need for power. Without us, wouldn’t anything ever get done.”

Initially, Jimmy stays neutral, giving Katherine Hobble (Blair Brown), one of leaders of the eco-group, a heads up and she begins to rally the locals to stop it. He checks in on her and her two children from time to time as her husband - his best friend -- died a year ago. The steady income from Elmo, however, sways Jimmy, who is adrift in life. Adding to the weight of this decision is his wife, Gloria (Tiel Rey), who suffers from a degenerative brain disorder that her doctors understand little about and from which, it appears, she will never recover. The rest of the film plays out his moral dilemma – help Elmo for the money and in doing so betray Kat, the woman he loves but is afraid to admit it, even to himself.
 
Ed Harris delivers a memorable turn as a man faced with a conflict, a crisis of conscience. The deeper Jimmy digs for dirt for Elmo, the more morally compromised he becomes. He passively watches as his friends are railroaded by local politicians. Why is Jimmy willing to do this? Has his wife’s medical condition left him so cynical that he doesn’t care about anything? Kat and her kids humanize him, give him something to care about – a life he’d like to have. Jimmy’s actions are ruining people’s lives … good, decent people he’s known for years. Even those closest to him, like Kat, are being harassed on the phone by religious zealots, surreptitiously employed by Elmo to scare of members of the S.O.B. Harris does an excellent job conveying the guilt that plays across Jimmy’ face when the S.O.B. fall apart, knowing that it is because of his actions.
 
Richard Jordan does an excellent job of expressing Elmo’s passion for the development deal. He’s honest with Jimmy about his ambitions but not about how far he will go to realize them. Jordan is a fascinating actor to watch as he so effortlessly disappears into his character, something he did often in such diverse films as The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973), The Mean Season (1985), and The Hunt for Red October (1990). In A Flash of Green, Elmo is the obvious villain of the film, but Jordan resists the urge to play him that way, even when he obliquely admits to sending guys to beat-up Jimmy repeatedly in the hopes of ‘persuading’ him to leave town after he turns the tables on Elmo. It is hinted that these two men have known each other for many years, the only reason why Elmo doesn’t have Jimmy killed.

Blair Brown is also very good as a woman still struggling with the loss of her husband, raising two children, trying to protect the bay from greedy developers, and sorting out her feelings for Jimmy. She has a lot on her plate and Brown’s intelligent, layered performance results in a fascinating character. At times, it is painful to watch her and the other committee members struggle against more powerful forces that they have no hope of beating. Brown resists any urge to inflate Kat’s fight to heroic heights, as one would see in a Hollywood movie, and instead opts to have that be only one of many aspects of her rich character.
 
There are also memorable minor roles, such as George Coe as a fellow journalist who doesn’t have the stomach for the darker stories that he and Jimmy sometimes cover. His response is to get so drunk that Jimmy must take him to his wife who cares for him. Even his character has his own arc and finds a way to redeem himself as he does his own part in the unfolding drama.
 
Sam Gowan, who had worked on Victor Nunez’s first film, Gal Young ‘Un (1979), went on to work at the University of Florida Libraries as the assistant director for special resources. Part of his division was the John D. MacDonald repository. MacDonald was a successful crime author, both critically and commercially, with his series of Travis McGee novels, and 1957 novel The Executioners adapted into film twice, in 1962 and 1991. Gowan and his wife enjoyed the man’s novels and she suggested asking Nunez to adapt one of them. Warner Bros., however, owned long-term options on all the Travis McGee novels, save for a couple of the early ones, which were available. He contacted MacDonald’s agent in Los Angeles and worked out a deal that required a small payment up front and a loaded backend, whereby if the film did well financially, the author would be paid more.

The budget for A Flash of Green was $750,000, ten times larger than Gal Young ‘Un. Half of the budget came from a small group of local investors with PBS American Playhouse covering the rest, who had been impressed with Nunez’s first film. To keep costs down, the entire cast worked for Screen Actors Guild minimum.
 
At the time the film was cast, Ed Harris turned down a chance to extend his run on Sam Shepard’s off-Broadway success, A Fool for Love (for which he won an Obie Award), and an offer from Paul Newman to appear in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, to go to Florida and act in Nunez’s project. Harris said, “I loved Victor’s sensibility and his cinematic tastes, his knowledge and how he films.” The actor was also drawn to the character of Jimmy Wing:
 
“I really appreciated the subtle character study that this guy is. He goes through so many changes. He’s someone who gets caught up in events that sort of catch him and sweep him away and he really has to climb his way back. He was a character I could really explore.”
 
To this end, the actor worked with the filmmaker on the screenplay, and during rehearsals, he frequented local stores for his character’s outfits. Harris’ hands-on approach extended to other cast members. Richard Jordan helped get period-specific props for the film and remarked on the challenge: “That era is too recent for anyone to collect and a lot of what you’d want to use has wound up in garbage cans.”

Critics of the day gave A Flash of Green generally favorable reviews. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "A Flash of Green is attentive to the compromises of daily life, and it understands how people can be complicated enough to hold two opposed ideas at the same time." In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, "A Flash of Green is not perfect, but it is provocative and nearly always intelligent." The Washington Post's Lloyd Grove wrote, "Nunez, who also worked the camera with an eye for faded beauty, has made Palm City a self-contained world where there can be no appeal to a higher authority. While sometimes he's a bit heavy on the symbolism -- having Wing, at one point, fiddle with a two-faced doll -- he usually handles the material with admirable subtlety, letting the story all but tell itself."
 
The worlds in Nunez’s films feel fully fleshed out and realized, populated by readily identifiable people with compelling dilemmas. In the case of A Flash of Green he also creates a real sense of place; the attention to period detail on a budget is fantastic, with vintage cars and clothes used sparingly and matter-of-factly. He achieves it with small details, such as the cluttered office that Jimmy works in or the Spartan wood interior of Elmo’s office. Nunez also has a great ear for dialogue, accurately capturing the way people talk, evident in the scene where Kat debates with her friends about the development of Grassy Bay, with one arguing that developing the land will help the depressed local economy. The film presents several different points-of-view and then shows them in conflict with one another.
 
Nunez does a deft juggling act of showing how parts of Florida are being ruined by greedy developers and the toll it is taking on the residents, without being preachy about it, and by focusing on the relationships between them. A Flash of Green might be the most low-key crusading journalist film ever made. There are no heroic, epic speeches, moustache-twirling villains, car chases or gun battles – just people trying to protect their own little piece of the world. Much like John Sayles, Nunez is interested in telling stories about everyday people trying to get by, finding that their personal dilemmas are just as worthy of telling as any epic tale. For the people in his films, what goes on in their small world means everything to them. Life is about the choices we make and having to live with them. Jimmy has to live with the choices he has made. They were tough decisions that took their toll on him physically and emotionally. Jimmy finds that it isn’t easy buying back even a part of his soul. It is a long, hard journey but by the film’s end, there is hope that he is on his way to redemption.
 

SOURCES
 
Crandell, Ben. “FLIFF Reunites Old Friends Ed Harris, Victor Nunez.” South Florida Sun Sentinel. November 17, 2015.

Fein, Esther B. “Shaking A Hero Image.” The New York Times. July 22, 1985.
 
Gowan, Sam. “My Life in Movies.” The Gainsville Sun. April 1, 2004.
 
Maslin, Janet. “At the Movies – Jordan Assembled Props.” The New York Times. June 28, 1985.

Ruby in Paradise

No other filmmaker other than Charles Burnett, John Sayles or Mike Leigh excels at telling stories about real people like Victor Nunez. He has been called the working man’s auteur and with one exception, his films capture the essence of Florida culture in a refreshingly understated way that is increasingly rare at time when big budget blockbusters and quirky independent films reside at polar ends of the spectrum with very little in-between. His films are populated by protagonists that are outsiders reinventing themselves in Florida. Nunez has said that he is fascinated by “people who have somehow strayed from the world, and they’re trying to decide whether or not they’ll be able to get back in again.” This is evident in the conflicted reporter torn between two sides in A Flash of Green (1984), the grandfather protecting his family from dangerous criminals in Ulee’s Gold (1997) and this is certainly true of Ruby in Paradise (1993), which chronicles a young woman’s journey from an abusive relationship in Tennessee to her new life working in a souvenir shop in Panama City.


Right from the opening scene Nunez eschews convention when he avoids the clichéd break-up scene by muting the sound of Ruby Lee Gissing (Ashley Judd) leaving her rural home and irate boyfriend (husband?) behind so that we only hear the Sam Phillips song “Raised on Promises” playing over the soundtrack as she arrives in Florida at dawn. Nunez captures this moment by showing Ruby in silhouette, which coupled with the music, makes for a very atmospheric introduction to the film’s protagonist. She awakes in a motel to the sounds of an Indian woman singing a traditional song while carrying some towels to her family. Ruby starts a diary, which allows us access to her innermost thoughts, feelings and musings on life. She’s a young woman trying to figure out who she is and what she wants out of life.

Unfortunately, Ruby arrives during the offseason and work is scarce. However, she finds work at a local souvenir shop when she convinces its owner Mildred Chambers (Dorothy Lyman) to hire her. As she gets acquainted with her new surroundings, Nunez uses this opportunity to immerse us in the sights and sounds of Panama City. There are nice shots of Ruby and one of her co-workers Rochelle Bridges (Allison Dean) walking the deserted streets with the stores shuttered for the season. Nunez wisely lets the impossibly beautiful setting speak for itself as we witness stunning sunsets over the ocean.

Rochelle is a young woman like Ruby trying to get by. She goes to business school when she’s not working and has a boyfriend in Atlanta whom she hopes to marry some day. Mildred’s son, Ricky (Bentley Mitchum), is a good-looking troublemaker who takes a shine to Ruby. He has a contentious relationship with his mother who warns Ruby not to get involved with him, which she does anyway, slipping back into a cycle of men who are no good for her. The crucial difference being that she is no longer suffocated by her surroundings, told what to think and is allowed to make her own decisions, even if they aren’t the right ones. Her relationship with Ricky represents her past, which is why eventually cutting him loose symbolically puts the past behind her. As she says at one point, he is “a 100% of something I would like to forget.”

Ruby meets a nice guy named Mike McCaslin (Todd Field) who runs a nursery where she buys a plant for her new place. They start dating and she finds him to be everything that Ricky isn’t. Mike listens to her, makes her feel good and gives her breathing room. He helps her break out of the cycle of bad relationships with domineering men. Todd Field brings an easy-going affability to the role of Mike and is not afraid to show the character’s faults. He is cynical, looks down on people who enjoy mainstream popcorn movies (and yet is fascinated by a T.V. evangelist) and discourages Ruby from going back to school. Mike is definitely a glass-half-empty kind of person. He doesn’t buy into the materialism of our culture. He leads a lo-fi life. His job is growing things from the earth and selling them.

Ruby in Paradise is filled with all kinds of character-defining moments that are little pieces of a bigger puzzle. For example, Nunez paints Mildred the way you would assess someone in real life. At first, we only see as a strict boss at work but later in the film she takes Ruby on a business trip to a trade show in Tampa and the two women get to know each other. We get the impression that perhaps Mildred even sees some of herself in Ruby and, in turn, the young woman sees her boss in a new light. This sequence humanizes Mildred and helps us understand her character better. Nunez obviously has affection for these characters and this makes us care about them as well.

There is plenty of local color in this film, like the next-door neighbor Ruby observes frequently – an old man who fishes daily off a nearby pier. There is the teenage girl next door who lives with her abusive boyfriend, which also acts as warning for Ruby that if she’s not careful she could so easily slip back into old habits. Ruby in Paradise is filled with blue-collar folks and Nunez actually shows them at work, which is a nice touch. He shows the little details of everyday life that enriches these people and pulls you into their lives because it makes you think about your own. These characters flesh out the world that Ruby inhabits.

Victor Nunez had always been fascinated by Panama City. As a child, he vacationed regularly there with his family. As an adult, he became intrigued by the life experiences of the people who worked year round in coffee shops and motels. This led to the genesis of Ruby in Paradise. After completing A Flash of Green, a few years passed and he made notes about his initial ideas concerning the challenges women faced: “How do we define who we are, now in this time?” He wanted his protagonist Ruby to try and figure this out during the course of the film. He spent a year working on the screenplay drawing inspiration from several literary sources: William Faulkner’s The Bear for the character of Mike; the structure of The Odyssey but with a woman instead of a man going through a series of trials; and Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen as a model for depicting a woman’s dilemma. For the look of the film, Nunez was inspired by Italian neo-realism cinema where character, place and story are “inexplicably linked.” He spent years trying to get Ruby in Paradise made and was rejected numerous times by financiers who read the script and felt it wasn’t “American enough. It was not hot enough. It was not cool enough or urban enough.” It got so bad that he began questioning his abilities as a filmmaker and felt like an outsider in the film business. He finally decided to make Ruby regardless of the budget and financing suddenly fell into place when his great aunt passed away, leaving him what was left of her trust. In addition, he was also able to borrow money. The final budget was a lean $750 to $800,000.

Nunez went to Los Angeles for ten days to cast Ruby in Paradise. According to the filmmaker, the casting director was pushing a very accomplished young actress but she didn’t feel right to him. He saw three actresses who were very good but were “a little too much Tennessee Williams and not enough Tennessee. Their experience of the South was from doing Williams, not from living in the north of Florida.” He met with Ashley Judd who had grown up in various places in the South with only a few television credits and had been modeling in Japan. She came in late, did the interview, came back 30 minutes later and gave him a CD of the Judds (her sister and mother’s country music band) so that he would know which sister she was. Judd had read the script and “felt passionately moved by it. And for some reason or another had an instantaneous and deep understanding of the material.” Nunez realized that she had “minimal acting experience but exuded a ‘hungry’ quality that was right on.”

To get a feel for the role, Judd drove the back roads from Tennessee to Florida, observing the people she encountered along the way. Principal photography lasted six weeks with a day and a half in Tampa and two days of pick-ups. To save time, money and get the exact shots he wanted, Nunez operated the camera himself, something that he has done for his entire career. “When you make low-budget films, you live in the ‘good enough’ mode by and large. And if you’re lucky, you’re moving fast enough and everything is flowing well enough that ‘good enough’ is what you need.”

Ruby in Paradise received largely positive notices from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and wrote, “Ruby in Paradise is a breathtaking movie about a young woman who opens the book of her life to a fresh page, and begins to write.” In her review for the Washington Post, Rita Kempley wrote, “Nunez's empathy and affection for women are reflected here in both his fine writing and his obvious respect for his heroine.” The San Francisco Chronicle’s Edward Guthmann gave the film four out of four stars and wrote, “Judd, in her first film, gives a subtle, delicate performance.” The Guardian’s Derek Malcolm wrote, “The whole film is very well played, very well set and directed with a sharp eye for detail. And if it tells its story in a way which may suggest that 114 minutes ought to have been about 100, those who like it may not mind hanging around for a few minutes longer. Of all the American independent movies this year, Ruby In Paradise is one of the strongest because, for all its meandering style, it seems to know exactly what such a life as Ruby's is about.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “With a girlish face that contrasts hauntingly with her steady, mature speaking voice, Ms. Judd projects a seductive radiance that becomes the film's inner core. She gives substance to the film's slow, reflective manner and to its suggestion that Ruby's journey of self-exploration may truly lead to some greater serenity.” USA Today gave the film three out of four stars and Mike Clark wrote, “Judd, though, looks like a screen rarity – projecting intelligence and beauty without even seeming to try.”

However, Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “C+” rating and felt that it was “tentative-and more than a little plodding. Instead of following through on the relationships, Nunez allows Ruby in Paradise to get bogged down in his heroine's economic woes” In his review for the Globe and Mail, Rick Groen wrote, “For all its sensitivity, Ruby In Paradise combines the art-film's fear of melodrama with the pedant's fear of the cliché – life, alas, admits of both.”

Judd’s performance, like the film itself, is wonderfully understated. While she is naturally beautiful, her hair and makeup are very natural. Ruby is a very stripped-down version of a human being as represented by how she dresses and where she lives. This is her foundation that will allow her to grow. Nunez allows the character moments of quiet contemplation as Ruby watches the world and enjoys the simplicity of life. She is not a perfect character. She makes mistakes, like getting involved with Ricky, but she learns from them. She often looks haunted, like she’s never fully in the moment, slightly detached from what she’s doing, like at work doing menial tasks. Judd suggests that Ruby is thinking about something else. Judd disappears completely into the role as she delivers an intelligent performance of an independent woman. Done early in her career (it was only her fourth role and first lead in a feature film), Ruby in Paradise was the breakout role for the actress who went on to bigger films and a variety of parts but nothing quite as good as this one.

While Ruby in Paradise launched Judd’s career it sadly did not do the same for Nunez despite winning the Grand Jury Prize (along with Bryan Singer’s Public Access) at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival. He did go on to make his most high profile film to date, Ulee’s Gold, which revitalized Peter Fonda’s career but then didn’t make another film until the little-seen crime film Coastlines (2002) with Josh Brolin and Timothy Olyphant. Nunez doesn’t make dynamic-sounding films that dazzle financiers, hence the lengthy lulls between projects, which is a shame because he is a rare breed of filmmaker. One that finds the poetry in the everyday lives of people just trying to get by as best they can.

SOURCES

Bettendorf, Elizabeth. “Looking at Florida Like a Native.” Research in Review. Fall/Winter 2009.

Macaulay, Scott. “Fade to Paradise.” Filmmaker. Fall 1993.

Smith, Russell. “Little Ashley’s A Big Girl Now…” Calgary Herald. February 19, 1993.

Stone, Judy. “Modern-Day Heroine in a Honky Tonk.” San Francisco Chronicle. October 31, 1993.

Walsh, S. Kirk. “For Ashley Judd Acting was the Siren Song.” The New York Times. October 3, 1993.