Angel Heart

In 1987, the stars aligned for Alan Parker’s horror noir adaptation of William Hjortsberg’s 1978 novel, Fallen Angel, into the film Angel Heart. It was part of a trend in the mid to late 1980s of movies featuring supernatural elements tied to Caribbean or South American magic with Santería and brujería in The Believers (1987), and Voodoo magic in Child’s Play (1988) and The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988) being notable examples.
 
Several attempts had been made to adapt Hjortsberg’s book since its publication, but it wasn’t until Parker signed on to the project that it got serious traction. It didn’t hurt that he cast Mickey Rourke as his lead actor, red hot from the notoriety of 9 ½ Weeks (1986), and opposite him, Lisa Bonet, one of the breakout stars of the very popular television sitcom, The Cosby Show, which raised eyebrows at the time as she was known for playing a squeaky clean character in a wholesome show to starring as a femme fatale in a sexually explicit film.
 
Despite this, and the controversial, steamy sex scene between Bonet and Rourke’s characters, which forced Parker to cut 10 seconds to avoid an X rating, Angel Heart failed to make back its $18 million budget and received a mixed critical reaction. It has, however, gone on to influence filmmakers like Christopher Nolan and enjoyed a re-evaluation over the years as an atmospheric neo-noir fused with unsettling elements of supernatural horror.

New York City, 1955. Parker immediately immerses us in the snow-bound city with shadowy alleyways and great attention to period details with era-specific cars and clothes that set a noirish tone. Harold Angel (Rourke) is a slightly seedy private investigator approached by a mysterious client named Louis Cyphre (Robert De Niro) for a job. They meet at a church in Harlem and right from the get-go something is off. It could be the woman outside on the verge of passing out, surrounded by family and friends, or it could be the room where a woman is scrubbing gruesome blood-spattered stains off a wall from an apparent suicide by a parishioner who blew his brains out.
 
The initial meeting between two of the greatest actors of their respective generations is as wonderful as one would hope as they face off against each other. Robert De Niro plays it low-key yet ominous with the occasional sidelong glances at his no-nonsense attorney (played by Law & Order’s Dann Florek) and exuding a cultured air while also a malevolence in his piercing stare. In contrast, Rourke playfully mispronounces Cyphre’s name and acts nervous, laughing uncomfortably as Harry is clearly intimidated by his future employer. Their scenes together, particularly their first and last one, are some of the film’s best moments if only to see De Niro’s bemused malice square off against Rourke’s smartass bravado.
 
Cyphre wants Harry to track down a well-known singer by the name of Johnny Favorite from back in the day who failed to honor a contract. Johnny came back from World War II suffering from shellshock and extensive facial injuries involving intensive reconstruction. He wants to know if the man is still alive but, of course, it isn’t that easy as Harry quickly realizes.

Rourke is perfectly cast as a low-rent P.I. in way over his head. He excels at playing these types of characters and delivers a memorable performance as a cocky gumshoe whose whole life gradually unravels. Harry is literally a tortured soul but not particular smart as it becomes apparent early on as he fails to pick up on the clues to the nature of his character. The film’s most significant moment of horror comes with his big revelation – something that was readily apparent to everyone else. Rourke gives it his all in the scene, conveying a truly tormented soul with raw intensity.

Much was made at the time of Bonet’s highly sexualized performance and how different it was from her family-friendly character on The Cosby Show. She shows off plenty of skin and is fine as a voodoo priestess with a secret, but comes off a little stiff, at times, in the scenes she shares with Rourke, a much superior actor. Fortunately, the camera loves her and she photographs very well, providing an alluring screen presence.
 
Parker’s screenplay tells us too much of what we are already seeing. On several occasions, Harry tells Epiphany Proudfoot (Bonet) how beautiful she is, which is unnecessary. We have eyes, we see her beauty by the way she is photographed. Harry also repeatedly says how much he hates chickens, which seems too on-the-nose, and that he’s from Brooklyn, which we quickly discern from his accent.

What Parker the screenwriter lacks in subtlety (Louis Cyphre = Lucifer – really?) Parker the director more than makes up for it with excellent direction and gorgeous cinematography courtesy of frequent collaborator Michael Seresin, aided by the incredible, period-rich production design by Brian Morris and art direction of 1950s era New York by Armin Ganz and Kristi Zea that envelopes you in this world with its evocative imagery of slow spinning fans and gated elevators going down, even if the latter image is rather heavy-handed (I wonder where it is going to?).

Visually, Parker contrasts the cold darkness of New York with the bright, sun-drenched heat of New Orleans. The source novel takes place entirely in NYC, but I can see what drew Parker to N.O. It is a visually stunning place with its own unique look and vibe. Parker plays up its hot house atmosphere, complete with sensual heat generated by Bonet and Rourke.
 
Alan Parker was sent the book when it was published in 1978 where it had immediately acquired a reputation for being tough to adapt as it was told in the first person “since so much of it happens inside the person’s head,” said the filmmaker. Paramount Pictures optioned the rights with the book’s author William Hjortsberg writing the screenplay. Robert Evans was being lined up to produce with John Frankenheimer directing. Not long afterwards Dick Richards replaced Frankenheimer with Dustin Hoffman starring as Harry Angel.

Parker was then re-introduced to the book when producer Elliot Kastner gave it to him in 1985. He hadn’t written a screenplay in a while, instead mostly rewriting other people’s work. He was also intrigued about the fusing of the supernatural with the detective story. In adapting the novel, Parker changed the story form being set entirely in New York City to half there and the other half in New Orleans for “very selfish reasons,” and “a lot of the leads within the novel itself went down to New Orleans, and I thought it was a way for me to open it up and give it a different look.” He also felt that New York was an “overly filmed city,” but was drawn to Harlem as he felt that not enough films had been shot there. He did research at the Harlem Library, looking into “bizarre religious movements of the 1930s and 1940s, born of economic isolation, and perhaps spiritual desperation.” He wrote most of the script there and “once I’d broken the back of the story” wrote the rest in New Orleans where he had wanted to move some of the action. It was there that he wrote, “sitting at corner tables in remote bars in the city’s shadowy back streets.”
 
In search of financial backing, Parker met with Andrew Vajna and Mario Kassar at the Cannes Film Festival after a screening of Birdy (1984). The independent movie producers had made millions of dollars with the lucrative Rambo and Terminator franchises and were willing to take risks on films like Angel Heart, agreeing to finance it.
 
For the casting Harry Angel, Parker met with Jack Nicholson but he didn’t show much interest. He then met with Mickey Rourke for lunch and, according to Parker, “told me quite emphatically that he was the only one to play Harry Angel and so I should ‘stop talking to the other guys.’”

Parker courted Robert De Niro for months, meeting a few times, and went over the script, “every single line and everyone single idea that he had from the point-of-view of the character,” the filmmaker remembered. Two weeks away from filming and Parker still hadn’t gotten De Niro to commit to the film. Originally, he had been approached to play Harry Angel but told the director that he wanted to play Cyphre. Parker didn’t want to pressure the actor in case he said no as there wasn’t an alternative choice for the part.
 
Parker had not seen Bonet on The Cosby Show. She came and was the second person to audition for the part. Parker was impressed with her: “She was very young, she had an innate intelligence beyond her years.”
 
Not surprisingly, De Niro committed fully to the transformation into his character: “All I know is when we were working we always knew when he was on the set because suddenly we all felt kind of strange. He became very creepy…You’d feel his presence. Somebody would say, ‘Bob must be here,’ and you’d turn around and there he was,” Parker remembered. For De Niro and Rourke’s first scene Parker used two cameras simultaneously in opposite directions, “this way, should the two of them begin to improvise or go off at a tangent, provoking in the other an action or reaction, a moment’s magic that one inspired in the other would be captured on film.” Observing their acting styles, Parker said, “Bob was cool, meticulous, charming and generous, but had everything under control. Mickey was disarming and ingenuous, but at all times gave as good as he took.”

Angel Heart was originally given an X rating by the Motion Picture Association of America for the sex scene between Bonet and Rourke’s characters. Parker said at the time, “They have not told me what it is specifically they objected to. I am not really sure what is acceptable and what is not…It’s like carving up a body. You get down to where there’s only a foot left and they say, ‘Ah, that’s it.’” The Director’s Guild of America then-president Gilbert Cates leant his support: “We’re against any kind of censoring of material.” Parker appealed the X rating twice before cutting 10 seconds from the scene to obtain an R rating on February 26, 1987. Parker said of the experience, “The film will play uncut almost everywhere in Europe. In most countries, sex is not something that gives you a problem. Violence is. It’s almost the reverse of the way it is here, where you can blow 10 people’s heads off in two minutes and it’s OK.”
 
Angel Heart received a mixed to negative critical reaction. Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half stars and wrote, “Angel Heart is a thriller and a horror movie, but most of all it's an exuberant exercise in style, in which Parker and his actors have fun taking it to the limit.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “Affection of any sort is totally lacking in this film adaptation. The only wit is supplied by Mr. De Niro, who delivers his lines, some of which are genuinely funny, with a comic daintiness that gives firm style to the otherwise murky, pointless narrative “ The Washington Post’s Rita Kempley wrote, “While it has a sinister elegance, the movie is over-stylized, and we're over-stimulated when the soundtrack goes berserk, from a few thumpity-thumps to a visceral, ventricles a-pumping score.” In her review for The New Yorker, Pauline Kael wrote, “This is a lavishly sombre piece of hokum-funereal and loony.”
 
For all of its heavy-handedness, Angel Heart is ultimately a triumph of style over substance. I like how Parker gradually introduces the horror genre elements as Harry dives deeper into the voodoo culture that Johnny was a participant. He ratchets it up when more people Harry encounters wind up dead in all kinds of horrible ways. Horror noirs drenched in atmosphere are cinematic catnip for me and on this level the film certainly delivers. Parker has made a neo-noir as a waking nightmare with Harry trying to desperately to wake up, but unable to much like he is unable to escape his true nature.

Angel Heart would make for an excellent double bill with another horror noir, Roman Polanski’s The Ninth Gate (1999) also with a slight script offset by plenty of style to spare and featuring a damned protagonist to anchor the occult lunacy that threatens to overwhelm the film. Whereas Polanski’s film playfully pokes fun at genre conventions, Parker’s effort treats them with deadly seriousness, which exposes the script’s deficiencies. It could have used a bit more levity other than the occasional flourishes by Rourke. As a result, at times, we are laughing at Angel Heart rather than with it in the case of The Ninth Gate.
 
 
SOURCES
 
Daily Variety. April 28, 1986.
 
Gallagher, John A. Perfect Movies. February 17, 1987.
 
Parker, Alan. Angel Heart: The Making of the Film – Beat for Beat. Tri-Star Pictures. 1987.
 
Publishers Weekly. August 21, 1978.

Year of the Dragon

“No one remembers in this country. No one remembers anything.” – Stanley White

A commercial and critical debacle on the scale of Heaven’s Gate (1980), which helped topple a Hollywood studio, would be a career killer for most filmmakers but not for Michael Cimino who came roaring back five years later with the controversial adaptation of Robert Daley’s novel Year of the Dragon (1985). Co-written by Oliver Stone, it starred Mickey Rourke as a hard-charging, unrepentant racist and sexist cop that decides to battle organized crime in New York City’s Chinatown.

The film polarized critics, failed to make back its $22 million budgets and angered members of the Chinese American and Asian American communities that blasted it for being racist, sexist and xenophobic but Cimino defended his film by arguing that it dealt with racism and was not actually racist. This did little to quell the controversy, which hurt its box office performance.

Cimino immediately immerses us in the sights and sounds of Chinatown with a cacophonous celebration in the streets filled with people. Amidst this chaos, one of the local crime bosses is killed in broad daylight sparking speculation that a gang war has begun with young punks moving against their elders. This gets the attention of the New York Police Department who install Stanley White (Rourke) as the new police captain of Chinatown.

He immediately adopts a more proactive approach to crime by barging into newly appointed kingpin Harry Yung’s (Victor Wong) office and telling him and his underlings to keep the young gangs under control, laying down the law in a superbly delivered speech:

“You think gambling, extortion, corruption are kosher because it’s a thousand years old? Well, all this thousand years old stuff, it’s a lot of shit to me. This is America you’re livin’ in, it’s 200 years old so you better get your clocks fixed.”

This tactic doesn’t endear him to his superior, Bukowski (Raymond J. Barry) who scoffs at White’s theory that the Chinese gangs, if they go unchecked, will make in-roads into other boroughs. It’s a fascinating fiery battle of wills as White argues that the reason the Chinese gangs don’t get busted for trafficking heroin is because they’re smart. Bukowski dismisses this notion and tells White to go after the youth gangs whom he regards as nothing more than troublemakers.

One memorable exchange has Bukowski tell White, “You’re not in Vietnam here, Stanley,” to which he replies, “There, I never saw the goddamn enemy. Here, they’re right in front of my eyes. They got no place to hide, no jungle.” In some respects, he has a point and in other ways he doesn’t. New York is its own jungle made of concrete and steel that is just as dangerous and unforgiving as the one in Vietnam as White will find out later on.

Cimino provides valuable insight into White’s troubled home life and his turbulent relationship with his wife Connie (Caroline Kava) who wants to have a child; the only problem is he is never around because of his workaholic tendencies. They’ve grown apart and, as a result, he finds himself increasingly attracted to beautiful young Chinese American television reporter Tracy Tzu (Ariane Koizumi). Their initial meet-cute starts off as a history lesson as White attempts to dazzle her with his knowledge of Chinese history and the ills that plague Chinatown, and it culminates in a bloody shoot-out as a brazen youth gang riddle the restaurant they’re in full of bullets.

Meanwhile, the leaders of the Chinese triad societies have their own problems. The youth gang attacks have made them look weak and no new revenues are coming in. It’s time for new leadership and the ambitious Joey Tai (John Lone), a bridge between the gangs and the elders, has a plan for the Chinese mafia to re-exert their influence in Chinatown and beyond thereby setting up an inevitable confrontation between him and White but not before a series of escalating attacks against each other.

Year of the Dragon is a snapshot of the criminal underworld in 1980s Chinatown, showing how things work in a way that is fascinating to watch. Cimino doesn’t pull any punches and presents flawed characters on both sides of the law. This is best exemplified by Mickey Rourke’s obsessed cop. The actor is not afraid to play unlikable characters and White is one for the ages – he’s racist, sexist and manages to piss off just about everyone that he comes in contact with, including his wife who tells him at one point, “You used me up, Stanley and then you burned me down. And I was a rock,” but he is good at his job, which is all he has left. Even that begins to slip through his fingers as his increasingly aggressive tactics burn his bridges within the police department and the Chinese community. It is Rourke’s natural charisma that makes White an interesting character. Watch how the actor works the room when White confronts Harry Yung and how he controls the space, or the scene where he gives a squad of cops a pep talk – it’s a masterclass in acting.

Cimino and Oliver Stone’s screenplay crackles with intensity and is chock-a-block with tough guy dialogue while also acting as a searing expose of the Chinese triads by pitting two strong-willed men against each other, leaving plenty of bodies in their respective wakes. The script goes to great lengths to show how the drug trade works, like how Joey gets his heroin directly from Southeast Asia, bypassing the Italian mafia who has always marginalized them. You certainly feel Stone’s politics blasting through his pulpy prose. Year of the Dragon is the cinematic explosion of Cimino and Stone’s collective ids writ large over every frame of this gritty, visceral opus (with a dash of Sidney Lumet cop procedural for good measure).

Coming off writing the screenplay for Scarface (1983), Oliver Stone was depressed at being unable to get personal films like Platoon (1986) made. He was contacted by filmmaker Michael Cimino who was adapting Robert Daley’s book Year of the Dragon for Dino de Laurentiis. He had read and was impressed with Stone’s script for Platoon and wanted him to co-write the script for Year of the Dragon. Cimino thought that if Stone worked for a lower than usual fee, de Laurentiis might finance Platoon. Stone told him that no one cared about the Vietnam War anymore but Cimino disagreed. Stone remembers, “It was Michael who convinced me that the climate was right for it.”

Stone met with de Laurentiis and he agreed to write Year of the Dragon if the mogul financed Platoon (he later reneged on this agreement with Stone). Cimino and Stone conducted a lot of research for the film, interviewing anybody who would talk to them about gangs and heroin dealing in New York’s Chinatown, but it wasn’t easy. Stone said:

“We got information finally from a dissident gangster group. These were guys who were on the outs and very unhappy. They took us to Atlantic City and showed us the inner workings of the gambling world, and also showed us their side of what was going on in Chinatown.”

This connection was provided by a line producer by the name of Alex Ho who had been working for de Laurentiis for two years. He remembered:

“One time Oliver and Michael wanted to see this gambling house where only Chinese people are allowed to enter. So this policeman who was really nice to us busted one of the gambling joints that night so we could see what it was like…Another night Michael wanted to see what happens when someone is shot with a shotgun, so we spent the whole night sitting in an ambulance.”

For the protagonist, Stone suggested changing his name to Stanley White, after a police detective friend he knew from another project. White gave them permission to use his name and a lot of his “eccentricities.” Stone, however, was not happy with how de Laurentiis interfered with the ending of the film. While White had two women in his life, so did Joey Tai – one in Hong Kong and one in New York. Stone said:

“In a moment of sentimentality, he brings the Chinese wife to the States and the Mickey Rourke character finds out about it. So, after he can’t get him legally with a bust or a wiretap, he busts him for bigamy.”

De Laurentiis made Cimino change the ending to a more conventional shoot-out, which Stone did not like. The filmmaker said that Cimino also ran into problems casting the role of Stanley White:

“We went to several people, but they didn’t want the part. In some cases, it was because of Michael’s reputation after Heaven’s Gate, but also most actors didn’t care for the character. He’s a right-winger. He’s a racist. That is the way the character was conceived and written. He’s sexist on top of it. You had to have a big pair of balls to play that part.”

Cimino shot on location in North Carolina, recreating nearly all of the New York setting there at great expense. Ho remembered:

“Like there were two Mercedes that were to be in crashes. There was a 380 and a 450, and I said, ‘Could I buy a 380 and then just change the number to 450 for the crash scene?’ And Michael said, ‘No.’ That was like ten or fifteen thousand dollars.”

Not surprisingly, Year of the Dragon divided critics. In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “The actors fare particularly badly under such circumstances. Mr. Rourke, who almost always generates a relaxed, knowing magnetism, is entirely lost in the underwritten role of a middle-aged policeman.” The Los Angeles Times’ Sheila Benson wrote, “Year of the Dragon has an arrogant, electric energy that dares you to look away from the screen for an instant. Do so and you miss a furious piece of action that has bubbled up, seemingly out of nowhere.” In his review for the Washington Post, Paul Attanasio wrote, “Cimino might make a good movie if he were forced to shoot someone else’s script, and banned from hiring extras, but he’ll never do it – he’s an auteur, and our best example of auteurism’s limits.” Finally, the Chicago Tribune’s Gene Siskel wrote, “For all of its excesses, Year of the Dragon is a solid entertainment. It marks director Cimino as a man to watch now not for his spend-thrift ways but for the size of his vision.”

Year of the Dragon opened in 982 theaters on August 16, 1985 and was met with harsh criticism and protests by the Asian community in Hollywood, New York City, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Boston. They objected to the racist and sexist attitudes expressed in the film. Many felt that it perpetuated Asian stereotypes. Judy Chu, an instructor of Asian-American studies at UCLA, said that the film “only reinforces the stereotype that Asians have no value for love and no sense of integrity…Even the newswoman is a stereotype. She is a new version of an old stereotype of the Geisha girl.” Even Richard Daley, the author of the novel, which it was based on, became an outspoken critic of the film: “When I read the script, I wanted to cry. I thought about taking out full-page ads…Dissociating myself from Cimino’s work. It is offensive to anybody.” Eventually, a disclaimer was placed before the film.

Stone dismissed criticism of the portrayal of Chinese people in the film: “The thing critics never realized is that the Chinese were at that time the biggest importers of heroin in this country. They outdid the Mafia, but nobody knew about it because they did it quietly.” Cimino also addressed the controversy, saying, “The film was accused of racism, but they didn’t pay attention to what people say in the film. It’s a film which deals with racism, but it’s not a racist film. To deal with this sort of subject, you must inevitably reveal its tendencies.”

While Year of the Dragon features several racist characters it isn’t a racist film. Cimino isn’t afraid to acknowledge the existence of such people and those kinds of ugly sentiments. He lets many of the Chinese characters speak in their native tongues and espouse their history in America, shedding light on decades of horrible treatment. If anything, Cimino’s film is a savage indictment of such attitudes showing how they lead down a destructive path.

Instead of playing it safe in the hopes of getting back in the good graces of Hollywood, Cimino stayed true to his artistic sensibilities and delivered a hard-hitting crime drama that asks difficult questions and offers no easy answers. Year of the Dragon is an ugly film that forces you to engage it on its own terms and there’s a refreshing honesty to this approach. It flew in the face of the rah-rah, America is great sentiments of movies like Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), Rocky IV (1985), and Top Gun (1986). Cimino’s film exposes an America that is rotten to the core and built on a foundation of thousands upon thousands of bodies – people that died anonymously. Is it any wonder it failed at the box office? You don’t come out of Year of the Dragon feeling good but sometimes that’s okay, too. Sure, White got his man and got the girl at the end, but it’s a hollow victory at best and one could argue that it didn’t change much. At least he tried and Cimino admires the attempt.

SOURCES

Camy, Gerard; Viviani, Christian. “Entretien avec Cimino.” Jeune cinema. December/January 1985/1986.

Horn, John. “MGM/UA May Insert Dragon Disclaimer.” Los Angeles Times. August 28, 1985.

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

Diner

A great hangout movie is hard to do well. You have to have a cast of memorable characters brought vividly to life by actors with quotable dialogue. All of these elements are crucial because they often distract from the fact that most hangout movies are about nothing and by that I mean they are largely plotless. The godfather of the genre is George Lucas’ American Graffiti (1973), which followed a bunch of teenagers driving around in cars and goofing off. It featured a cast of then unknown actors, some of whom would go on to be big-time movie stars (Harrison Ford). It also had a fantastic soundtrack of vintage 1950s rock ‘n’ roll music. This film established a template that many others would follow – most notably Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused (1993) and Superbad (2007).

Another great and hugely influential hangout movie is Barry Levinson’s Diner (1982), which was the first of his four “Baltimore Films.” This semi-autobiographical film depicts the reunion of six twentysomethings during the last week of 1959 for the upcoming wedding of one of their own with much of the action taking place at a local diner. It not only marked the directorial debut of Levinson (who also wrote the screenplay) but also featured an incredible cast of then up-and-coming actors: Steve Guttenberg, Daniel Stern, Mickey Rourke, Kevin Bacon, and feature film debuts of Tim Daly, Ellen Barkin and Paul Reiser. The success of Diner would help launch their careers as well as that of Levinson’s.

Instead of adhering to a traditional narrative, Diner is comprised of a series of vignettes. We meet Modell (Reiser) at a local dance as he tells Robert “Boogie” Sheftell (Rourke) that Timothy “Fen” Fenwick (Bacon) is breaking windows in the basement of the building. We learn that Fen does crazy things as a goof and that Boogie is a smooth talker with the ladies, convincing Fen’s date to go back with him even though he ditched her. As they leave the dance for a local diner, Levinson introduces the funny, observational humor that comes out of Modell’s mouth when he tells Boogie, “You know what word I’m not comfortable with? Nuance. It’s not really a word. Gesture is a good word. At least you know where you stand with gesture.”

We are introduced to the pivotal location of the diner as Eddie Simmons (Guttenberg) argues that Frank Sinatra is better than Johnny Mathis because the former is better in every respect and this leads to a hilarious bit where Modell asks Eddie for the last half of his roast beef sandwich much to the latter’s chagrin. It is so funny to see Modell intentionally wind up Eddie only to feign innocence when his friend tries to call him on it. There’s a loose, spontaneous feel to this scene and Levinson even keeps in Kevin Bacon’s reaction to Eddie and Modell’s bickering. His laughter looks genuine – an unguarded moment of the actor breaking character.

The way the actors interact with each other suggests that these characters have been friends for most of their lives in the way they speak to each other. There is a familiarity and a short-hand that is believable. One imagines that they’ve had this same argument a hundred times before. The diner scene also establishes Boogie’s mounting gambling debt and his schemes to get inside information for his next bet while settling the Mathis/Sinatra debate by stating that Elvis Presley is better than both of them.

These guys still have a lot of growing up to do, like Boogie’s ever-increasing gambling debts or Eddie still living at home, driving his mother crazy, or Fen’s childish pranks, even going so far as to fake a bloody car accident. Only Laurence “Shrevie” Schreiber (Stern) is married but he’s hardly the epitome of maturity, obsessively collecting 45s and cruelly chastising his wife Beth (Barkin) for failing to understand his organizational system. In addition, Shrevie can’t tell Eddie if he’s happily married or not. He tries to articulate it in terms of having sex with his wife. Before they were married they talked a lot about it and spent time planning when to have it and then once they were married they talked about it less because it wasn’t a big of an issue. It basically boils down to not having much in common with her as he tells Eddie, “You know, I can come down here, we can bullshit the whole night away but I cannot hold a five minute conversation with Beth.” Male friendship is the most important thing in these guys’ lives and this is symbolized by the diner because it is the place where they get together regularly. Only William “Billy” Howard (Daly) seems to have any kind of maturity and this is a result of going to college and removing himself from his circle of immature friends.

The cast is uniformly excellent with Paul Reiser getting the bulk of the film’s funny, quotable dialogue. Tim Daly has the lion’s share of the film’s dramatic scenes as Billy reunites with an ex-girlfriend (Kathryn Dowling) and she tells him about being pregnant with his child. Over the course of the film Billy wrestles with the dilemma of what to do about it. The good-looking Mickey Rourke is well-cast as a persuasive Lothario. He’s always scheming, whether it’s placing sports bets or making moves on beautiful women. Fen is the black sheep of his family, dropping out of school, refusing to work and living off his trust fund. Kevin Bacon hints at a checkered family past and this is what fuels Fen’s unpredictable behavior. So long as he lives off a trust fund he will never grow up. The actor does a good job of portraying the prankster side of Fen and also the more troubling aspects as well.

Levinson doesn’t shy away from how badly women were treated back then, from Boogie’s womanizing tendencies to Eddie forcing his fiancée to take a quiz about football and his favorite team, the Baltimore Colts, which she must pass before he will marry her. The most troubling example of this behavior is how badly Shrevie treats Beth. He’s an obsessive record collector and freaks out at her inability to adhere to his organizational system. She is a casual music listener while it is very important to him. She can’t understand this and he doesn’t understand why she doesn’t appreciate it more. He has a very personal connection to music that she doesn’t but this argument is symptomatic of a larger problem – they don’t have much in common.

Levinson immerses us in the sights and sounds of the diner with insert shots of clean plates being stacked and ketchup bottles being refilled. There is also the fantastic attention to period detail, from the vintage cars to the occasional slang that the characters say to what they wear to the period music (a killer soundtrack featuring the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins among others). He also fills in the margins of the film with amusing bits like the guy who eats the entire left side of the diner’s menu causing Modell to quip, “It’s not human. He’s not a person. He’s like a building with feet.” There’s the guy who obsessively quotes dialogue from Sweet Smell of Success (1957). It is these moments that help flesh out this world and make it more real, more tangible, transporting us to ‘50s era Baltimore.

Barry Levinson worked on the Mel Brooks comedy High Anxiety (1977) and used to tell the filmmaker Diner-esque stories about growing up in Baltimore. Brooks told Levinson, “You should write that as a screenplay,” but he couldn’t figure out how to do it. Levinson went on to write several scripts with ex-wife Valerie Curtin and during a period where she was acting in a film he started writing Diner. It took him three weeks and during that time he figured out the framework – it takes place over a five-day period – and that it was “all about male-female relationships, lack of relationship, lack of communication.” He frequented the Hilltop Diner in Northwest Baltimore and some of the conversations in the film, like the Mathis or Sinatra debate, came out of actual conversations he had. In addition, the six guys in the film were composites of friends and family and things they did and said.

Producer Mark Johnson met Levinson on High Anxiety and originally they were going to work together on Toys (1992), which they made years later, but it didn’t happen. Johnson went on to work for producer Jerry Weintraub at MGM while Levinson wrote Diner. When he read the script he loved it and wanted to make it. Johnson gave Levinson’s script to Weintraub who set it up almost immediately at MGM. At the time, the studio had several other larger budget movies and because the one for Diner was so low ($5 million), he was left alone, able to shoot on location in Baltimore, and cast relatively unknown actors in the lead roles.

When it came to casting the film Levinson saw around 600 guys. Kevin Bacon had just quite television soap opera Guiding Light when he got the call to audition for Diner. He originally read for Billy and Boogie. He met with Levinson who asked him to read for Fenwick, a character the actor had difficulty relating to. When he came back to audition, he was quite sick with a 103 degree fever. “I had a kinda slowed down and out-of-it quality, just based on the illness, that sorta worked for the character.” He ended up using that approach in the film.

Tim Daly auditioned in New York and read for Levinson who liked him. The actor came back repeatedly and read as well as doing a couple of screen tests. The studio wanted another actor but that person didn’t want to do the film and Levinson liked Daly and cast him as Billy. Paul Reiser came in with a friend and had no intention of auditioning. The casting director saw him and thought he’d be good in the film and told Levinson who met him the next day and cast the Reiser. Levinson purposely under-wrote Modell because he knew that if he “put in more stream-of-consciousness stuff, I’d have gotten some resistance [from the studio].”

Levinson only saw one person for the role of Beth and that was Ellen Barkin. The studio didn’t want her because they felt that she wasn’t pretty enough. The filmmaker lied his way into casting Barkin anyway. According to the actress, her on-screen relationship with Daniel Stern mirrored their off-screen one: “We’ve since made amends to each other, but it was a little difficult.”

Levinson remembers that they shot the film mostly at night and this resulted in keeping an unusual schedule: “Coming back, daylight is coming up and you’re coming back to the hotel to go to sleep at the Holiday Inn. Everybody else is getting up to go to work.” One of the biggest challenges was finding the diner. He wanted to use the Double-T Diner but they wanted too much money. Fortunately, Johnson found one in a diner graveyard in New Jersey. They transported it on a flatbed truck and placed it where they wanted it, which was Fells Point.

Levinson shot all the diner scenes last so that the cast would have time to bond and “draw on the rapport they’d developed over seven weeks. By that time they had their edges, little things that bothered them about each other, and those unspoken tensions enriched the movie,” the filmmaker said at the time. This method paid off. Steve Guttenberg and Mickey Rourke became good friends during filming and at one point they told Levinson they wanted to do a scene together because they didn’t have one. The filmmaker went back to his trailer and a few minutes later came out with a scene where Eddie talks about being a virgin. They went ahead and filmed it that day.

Reiser was Levinson’s secret weapon and he allowed the comedian to improvise dialogue. For example, during the “nuance” scene, Reiser remembers Levinson telling him, “’You’re bothered by the word ‘nuance.’’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘I don’t know, it’s a strange word, just play with it.’” The “roast beef sandwich” scene was also completely ad-libbed and came out of the actors talking in-between takes, eating whatever they wanted.

During post-production, MGM executive David Chasman wanted Levinson to cut the roast beef sandwich scene from the film but the director refused because he “wanted the piece to be without any flourish, without anything other than basically saying, ‘This is all it was.’” The studio wanted a sex comedy like Porky’s (1981) and didn’t like what Levinson had done. As Johnson recalls, “They didn’t know what to make of it.” When it came to test screenings, audiences in Levinson’s hometown of Baltimore hated the film and even the local newspaper The Baltimore Sun gave it a negative review. It didn’t help that the studio advertised the film by putting an emphasis on the soundtrack of classic rock ‘n’ roll music (perhaps trying to ape what American Graffiti had done) but this did not appeal to test audiences. Levinson was not happy with this approach: “They were expecting Grease and they didn’t get it.”

MGM was hesitant to release Diner and didn’t set a date. One of Johnson’s mother’s best friends was influential film critic Pauline Kael. He snuck a print out and showed it to her. She loved it and called the studio telling them, “You guys are about to have a lot of egg on your face because I’m about to give this movie a rave review and it’s not going to be available.” The studio finally released it in one theater in Manhattan.

Diner started getting strong reviews and in each city the film played it broke house records but, according to Levinson, “it never went wide because they never had any belief that it could play to a broader audience.” Pauline Kael wrote, “It isn’t remarkable visually but it features some of the best young actors in the country.” Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars and wrote, “Diner is often a very funny movie, although I laughed most freely not at the sexual pranks but at the movie's accurate ear, as it reproduced dialogue with great comic accuracy.” The New York Times’ Janet Maslin wrote, “These characters are individually well drawn, and they're played beautifully. Mr. Levinson has found a first-rate cast, most of them unknown but few to be unknown for long.” In his review for Newsweek magazine, David Ansen wrote, “But while seeming to traverse familiar ground, Levinson and his superb young cast are sprinkling it with sparkling insights.” The Globe and Mail’s Jay Scott wrote, “Rhythmically, Diner is uneven. The strong opening gives way to a somewhat lassitudinous half hour but, when the pace does pick up, it never wobbles – the film works slowly, but surely.” However, in his review for the Washington Post, Gary Arnold felt it was “an oddly disappointing nice try.”

Diner failed to connect with audiences and quietly began disappearing from theaters. MGM was prepared to write it off but then strong reviews from influential New York critics gave it a second lease on life. The studio realized that they could possibly make money off the film and re-released it in seven theaters where it managed to gross approximately $1 million. The New York Times ran a favorable review and followed it up with an in-depth article on Levinson and the film, which generated word-of-mouth business.

Levinson does a nice job of juggling each character’s storyline, whether it’s Boogie’s gambling problems, Eddie getting ready for his wedding, or Fen’s increasing erratic behavior, and having them all dovetail nicely by the film’s conclusion. They’re not all entirely resolved but that’s the point: life’s problems are not easily solved within the confines of a film and one imagines these characters dealing with the fallout of the events depicted in Diner long after it ends.

The six guys in Diner come across as fully-fleshed out characters (with perhaps the exception of Modell) with rich backstories that are only hinted at and this adds to their authenticity and how the actors portray them that invites repeated viewings. This is why Levinson’s film still holds up after all these years. Diner feels like a very personal film and this is due in large part to all the personal touches and little details that populate it.

Diner is about a group of young men still acting like boys. They are on the cusp of being adults and either make the transition willingly or are forced to through marriage. The film depicts this transitional period in their lives when they have one foot in adolescence and one in adulthood. It is a film about male friendship and examines the dynamic between these six guys and why it is more important than their relationships with girlfriends and wives. Diner excels at presenting memorable characters that are funny and real, dealing with real problems. The film is full of quotable dialogue but also deals with serious issues that aren’t glossed over and aren’t all resolved by the end credits.

SOURCES

Farber, Stephen. “He Drew From His Boyhood to Make Diner.” The New York Times. April 18, 1982.

Harris, Will. “Ellen Barkin on Great Directors and Her Favorite Roles, from Diner to Buckaroo Banzai.” The A.V. Club. August 15, 2014.

Harris, Will. “Tim Daly on Madam Secretary, Voicing Superman, and Killing Stephen Weber.” The A.V. Club. September 19, 2014.

Price, S.L. “Much Ado About Nothing.” Vanity Fair. March 2012.

Serpick, Evan. “Diner: An Oral History.” Baltimore Magazine. April 2012.

Williams, Christian. “The Diner Opens.” Washington Post. May 14, 1982.

Homeboy

The Wrestler (2008) is generally regarded as Mickey Rourke’s comeback film and proved that given the chance, with the right material, he could be a great actor again. This film oddly echoes another one he made 30 years prior, entitled Homeboy (1988). Interestingly, both films are underdog sports stories with the actor playing down-on-their-luck loners looking for redemption. What makes Homeboy a more interesting film than The Wrestler is that it was a personal, passion project for Rourke as opposed to Darren Aronofsky’s film, which was tailored to the actor’s talents. Homeboy was a film that originated with Rourke and one that he had nurtured and massaged for years, even writing the screenplay under the nom de plume of Sir Eddie Cook.

It’s hard to believe that by 1988, Rourke’s career was considered washed-up – at least in Hollywood where he started off strong with memorable roles in Diner (1982), The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984), and then scored his biggest commercial hit with 9 ½ Weeks (1986). This would mark a high point for the actor who’s reputation for being difficult was overlooked so long as his films made money, but three consecutive underperformers saw Rourke increasingly relegated to the margins. It also didn’t help that he fancied himself a boxer – an obsession that would help derail his career even further in the 1990s.

Johnny Walker (Mickey Rourke) arrives at a sea-side resort one rainy night and takes refuge in a nearby bar populated by African Americans who, by and large, look at him with contempt and disdain. It could be that he’s white and it could also be the cowboy attire that he’s wearing. He joins in on a dice game and pretty soon he’s been accepted and is dancing on the bar with a woman while chugging from a bottle of whiskey. Johnny’s handler Lou (Thomas Quinn) arrives to take him to a boxing match he’s supposed to be fighting in.

To say Johnny is an unorthodox boxer is an understatement. When he first climbs into the ring he plays mind games with his opponent by testing the ropes and staring at him silently in a way that could be mistaken for being mentally handicapped. The fight starts and Johnny spends the first round taking all kinds of punches from his opponent and getting in close. He comes out fast in the second round and proceeds to knock his opponent out. This catches promoter Wesley Pendergass’ (Christopher Walken) eye.

Wesley is a shifty promoter cum small-time crook who talks a good game but is clearly trouble. He also moonlights at a local strip club as a stand-up comic/song and dance man who tells jokes badly and sings even worse. Imagine Christopher Walken doing these two things, badly, in his very particular way and you get an idea of just how awesome it is to behold.

Johnny ends up frequenting an amusement park on the boardwalk, drawn to Ruby (Debra Feuer), a good-looking woman that runs a mini-horse ride. She is struggling to get by but dreams of fixing a broken down carousel her father left her before he died. Johnny soon gets roped into a dodgy scheme with Wesley that you know can only end badly. Added into the mix is Grazziano (Kevin Conway), a grizzled low-rent version of Gene Hackman’s Popeye Doyle, complete with the porkpie hat. He is shadowing Wesley and Ray (Antony Alda), his junkie sidekick, just waiting for them to screw-up. The rest of the film plays out Johnny’s dilemma – does he continue participating in a sport where he’s only one or two fights from possibly dying or go in on Wesley’s ill-conceived scheme or give it all up and help Ruby realize her dreams?

Mickey Rourke is fantastic as a punch-drunk boxer living on the margins of society. It is the kind of character he excels at playing – one that has a tragic-romantic vibe to him. Like many of the characters the actor plays, Johnny is a thinker, a brooding type that could easily be mistaken for dumb, but Rourke’s performance suggests a man that observes others and takes in the entire scene before he responds or acts. We also get a brief glimpse of how he sees the world and it’s in slow motion with distorted sound as if everything is underwater.

Our first glimpse of Wesley Pendergass sees him playfully trying to comb fellow promoter Moe Fingers’ (Jon Polito) balding head before primping his own luxurious head of hair with a mischievous glint in his eyes as only Christopher Walken can do. It’s a brief teaser for the full reveal a few beats later when Wesley works the room, poking fun at Lou: “And Lou, why was God so good to me and so awful to you?” in his trademark patter that is a thing of beauty to watch. Walken’s Wesley is all smiles and flamboyant moves but in certain scenes he reveals the menace that lurks underneath the gregarious façade. He talks a big game but is strictly small-time.

Not surprisingly, the main draw of Homeboy is the scenes between Rourke and Walken. It is great to see two talented performers like them play off each other with the former portraying a man of few words and the latter playing a flashy motormouth. Each actor brings their own unique energy to their respective roles and it is a lot of fun to see them bounce their distinctive acting styles off each other.

Debra Feuer brings the tough sensibility of someone that has survived a lot of hard times but it hasn’t stopped her from trying to realize her dreams. There’s a nice scene where Ruby recounts memories of watching her father work that Feuer delivers with an air of wistful nostalgia while Rourke, the generous performer, just listens, giving his co-star the space to have her moment. She and Rourke have excellent chemistry together (they were married at the time) as evident in the scenes they share, bringing out the vulnerability in their respective characters.

Lou, as played by Thomas Quinn, is a burnt-out, disheveled variation of Burt Young’s trainer in Rocky (1976). He perfectly encapsulates the seedy charm of this world, populated by broken down boxers and small-time criminals. Over the course of the film, he reveals that Lou really does care about Johnny’s well-being, to the point that he admits his own shortcomings as a trainer to the fighter. This is a world that Rourke knows well and it is evident in the details, from the bustling gym where you can almost smell the sweat, to the seaside carnival where you can almost feel the cool wind coming off the ocean.

Mickey Rourke came up with the idea for Homeboy while he was a struggling actor. When he was younger, he attempted a career as an amateur boxer but after a few fights, a severe concussion ended that aspiration. Rourke never forgot and wanted to depict his boxing experiences on film. He based the character of Johnny Walker on someone he knew as a child, and a boxer who frequented the same gym in Miami as he did: “He had all the tools. He just had a little trouble upstairs … There was no guidance in his life. There was no love. And if you don’t have a certain amount of love, you’re going to turn out like a piece of shit.” Rourke hero worshipped the boxer but was also intimidated by him: “There was some dark fucking thing when I looked at him. When I looked at him, I was looking at myself.”

While working on Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate (1980), Rourke met and became friends with Christopher Walken. Over dinner one night Walken told Rourke about his theory on how the dinosaurs died out. Rourke was intrigued by Walken’s theory and told him about a film he wanted to make some day about a boxer. Rourke told Walken that he would play the fighter’s manager. Rourke remembered, “I thought, ‘Wow, here I’m having this one chance to have dinner with one of my favorite actors in the world, and he’s talking about dinosaurs in outer space.” Rourke initially wrote what would become Homeboy on coffee-shop napkins as far back as 1984. In an interview from 1985, he described the film as being “about a guy who never was a champion, he’s a guy who was pretty much the reason I stopped boxing.”

When it came time to make Homeboy, Rourke was only interested in casting friends and childhood buddies in supporting roles as opposed to well-known actors. He also cast his then-wife Debra Feuer opposite him and picked Angel Heart’s cinematographer Michael Seresin to direct his first and to date only film.

While Homeboy was released in Europe, it failed to find a theatrical debut in North America when Rourke had it blocked because of a lawsuit he filed against the film’s producer Elliott Kastner for failing to pay him and denying approval over final editing and music. Rourke said, “I felt violated. I learned a great lesson—never trust someone on a handshake. People’s words mean nothing in this business.”

Homeboy is a fascinating study of a self-destructive man. Johnny could be a half-decent fighter if he didn’t drink so much and had enough in the tank to finish off his opponents. Rourke’s actual boxing skills certainly give the fight scenes an authenticity. This is a film about making choices and being smart enough to make the right ones. This sometimes involves learning from many bad ones and this doesn’t always happen. Over the course of the film Johnny has to figure out what’s important to him and make some serious choices that will affect his life forever. Homeboy is no Raging Bull (1980) and it doesn’t aspire to be like that film. It’s an intimate slice-of-life story about people just trying to get by and finding compelling drama in their day-to-day struggles.

SOURCES

Caulfield, Deborah. “Dragon Rourke Breathes Fire.” Los Angeles Times. September 16, 1985.

Dutt, Saurav. Stand Alone: The Films of Mickey Rourke. Lulu.com. 2011.

Goldstein, Patrick. “The Last Anti-Hero?” Los Angeles Times. February 24, 1991.

“Rourke in Dispute Over Homeboy.” Los Angeles Times. May 27, 1989.

Smith, Gavin. “Out There on a Visit.” Film Comment. July/August 1992.

Walken, Christopher. “Mickey Rourke.” Interview. January 16, 2009.