Slap Shot

BLOGGER'S NOTE: This post originally appears over at the Wonders in the Dark blog as part of their Comedy Countdown. Below is a slightly expanded version.

So how did the 1970s – a decade known for its nihilistic cinema – give birth to some of the best sports comedies in history? With ease, irreverence, and cynicism. In the big four—baseball (The Bad News Bears), football (Semi-Tough), and basketball (Fast Break) and hockey—arguably the best was Slap Shot (1977), a foul-mouthed rowdy take on a minor league hockey team about to fold. Directed by George Roy Hill (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), it starred Paul Newman as the veteran player-coach of a team that desperately tries to keep afloat with hilarious results. Screenwriter Nancy Dowd based much of the screenplay on her brother’s experiences playing minor league hockey. This lent a great deal of authenticity to the hockey-player hijinks on and off the ice. The film received mixed reviews when it was initially released but has gone on to become a much-beloved cult film and is considered by both GQ and Sports Illustrated to be one of the best sports films ever made.

Right from the start, the film sets a satirical tone with an amusing television interview as the Charlestown Chief’s goalkeeper (Yvon Barrette) explains in his thick French-Canadian accent the fundamentals of several key penalties in hockey and what happens to a player when they commit one of them: “You do that you go to the box. Two minutes by yourself. You feel shame and then you get free.” This scene gives us an audacious little taste of what’s to come.

The Chiefs are a bad team having a worse season. Attendance is poor and those who do show up are either wives and girlfriends or fans that openly mock the players. To make matters worse, the local mill is on the verge of closing down and team owner Joe McGrath (Strother Martin) plans to fold the team after the current season ends. Salvation comes in the form of the Hanson brothers who show up with knuckles full of tin foil and suitcases filled with toys. They are dumb goons that player-coach Reggie Dunlop (Paul Newman) benches immediately in disgust (“They’re retards!” he complains to McGrath). With nothing to lose, he decides to stick it to his so-called boss and goes to the press (a local reporter played by none other than M. Emmet Walsh) and “spills the beans” a.k.a. feeds him lies about how the team is going to be sold and move to Florida.

Reggie also decides to start playing dirty out on the ice (to win games, of course). Telling one rival team’s goaltender that his wife is a lesbian (“A lesbian!”) sends the guy into a blind rage. He discovers that the crowd loves watching violent hockey…and to this end he lets the Hanson brothers play. They are the answer to all his prayers as they viciously body-check opposing players, trip their goalkeeper and even do the same to the referee when he’s not looking. You name the infraction and they do it and in style. As a result of their dynamic style, the Hansons become folk heroes to Chief fans (and to this day are loved on fan pages far and wide). It’s not hard to get caught up in their goonish behavior, especially if you can remember the aggressive style of NHL teams like the Philadelphia Flyers, known as the Broadstreet Bullies in the ‘70s and beyond.

In addition to the main dilemma, the film also follows the rocky relationships of Reggie and his estranged wife Francine (Jennifer Warren) as he tries to rekindle the romance between them, and the team’s top scorer Ned Braden’s (Michael Ontkean) lackluster marriage to his bored wife Lily (Lindsay Crouse). One gets the feeling that these relationships are doomed to fail because the men are still boys, trying to grow up. Hill presents a few nice scenes where the wives and girlfriend commiserate over their hockey-playing significant others, lamenting over their lot in life in a particularly poignant scene scored to “Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word” by Elton John. It is this element that almost balances out and even comments on the goonish behavior depicted in the hockey sequences.

Paul Newman does a wonderful job conveying his character’s world-weariness. For Reggie, the Chiefs folding is the end of the line. He’s too old to be traded to another team and if he does continue in hockey, it will be as a coach. He’s burnt out – physically and mentally. And yet there is still a spark of the wily con man as he concocts a story to make the team more valuable – and more inspired. Special mention should go to Reggie’s god-awful fashion sense, which hilariously dates the film as he sports all varieties of hideous polyester: bellbottom pants, a garish collection of shirts with patterns on them that are beyond tacky, and a fur and leather jacket that makes Newman look like a pimp. Slap Shot also contains an impressive amount of cursing, a lot of it coming out of Newman’s mouth, which came as quite a shock to his fans at the time (as he was not known to be a potty mouth), but the homophobic and sexist language reflected how minor league hockey players really spoke.

Michael Ontkean (Twin Peaks) is believably convincing as the smartest player on the team – and the only one who objects to the Chiefs’ new style of violent play, even when Reggie threatens to bench him. As Ned tells Reggie at one point, “I’m not gonna do it. I’m not gonna goon it up for ya.” He recognizes that his teammates are playing for the wrong reasons and they’re turning the game into a joke. Initially, we’re not quite sure what motivates Ned. He looks like he’s just passing time but until what? He’s a college graduate and easily the most self-aware of anybody on a team content to take life one game at a time. Ontkean is able to convey the sense that Ned wishes he could be more like his teammates (he participates in their after-hours poker games) but he’s too smart and wants something more.

In a nice touch, Maxine Nightingale’s disco hit single, “Right Back Where We Started From” is the recurring theme music of sorts for the Chiefs. It is ubiquitous early on, playing over shots of the team bus heading to their next game and even in the background. To go with this memorable music are some truly beautiful shots courtesy of cinematographer Victor J. Kemper (Husbands), like the one of Reggie being dropped off at his house at dawn. In the background we can see the mill churning out smoke – it is at once beautiful and depressing. We know that in a matter of days it will shut down and many people will be out of work…but the light of day turns a poignant gun-metal blue.

During the first hockey game, director George Roy Hill places the camera on the ice with the players so that we are in the action, immersing us in the game. The camera gets right in there on the action so that you feel every hit and dodge the punches thrown in every fight. You can also see the actors doing most of their own skating, shooting, and body-checking along with actual players that were cast in the film.

Nancy Dowd’s script is full of wonderful little touches that provide insight into the minutia of the game, which lends to its authenticity. For example, we see how the Hanson brothers tape foil to their knuckles before every game in case they get into a fight. Another memorable bit is the fight that breaks out between the Chiefs and a rival team—during warm-ups, so there are no officials to break it up! Hill then cuts to the National Anthem being played and the Hansons all bloodied, listening intently while the referee watches them suspiciously, even going so far as to warn one of them to which he responds with the now oft-quoted line, “I'm listening to the fucking song!”

One thing that makes Slap Shot stand out in its genre is the strength of the scenes that take place between the hockey sequences. This isn’t just footage of the guys bonding and pulling wacky antics—it’s also the relationship between Reggie, Ned and Lily. She hates being stuck in a one-horse town and feels that Ned is wasting his time playing hockey…while Reggie finds himself attracted to her and can’t understand why his teammate treats her so poorly. Lindsay Crouse brings a smart grittiness to her character. Lily is Ned’s intellectual equal but is constantly infuriated with him for the way he treats her (he shows his St. Bernard more affection). So why does she put up with it? Why doesn’t she just dump him and take off? I suppose she still loves him…but the friction of their relationship is hastily glossed over during the film’s feel-good finale.

Dowd’s screenplay is an affectionate satire of hockey but can also be read as a fascinating treatise on gender politics. In the film, the women are portrayed as consistently smarter and more mature. Reggie’s estranged wife always looks elegant and comes across as intelligent, having already planned out a future for herself away from the dying town. In a surprising twist, the team’s secret owner turns out to be a woman who has the power to sell or save the team. Meanwhile, the men are presented as silly stereotypes: the crude horndog, the pretty boy interested only in cute groupies, and the Hanson brothers who play with race cars in their spare time and mindlessly do whatever their coach tells them. Out of the men, only Ned—an intriguing, enigmatic character—hints at a more progressive view of the opposite sex. He not only refuses to play like a thug but in the final game openly mocks what his team has become with a show-stopping form of protest that is easily one of the film’s highlights, as he demonstrates just how absurd the game of hockey has become.

Slap Shot follows the sports movie template of a team of misfit players, loveable losers that when faced with a dilemma that threatens their very livelihood, gets their act together, and try to turn things around. The film’s knack for showing the inner workings of a sports team in an accurate and heartfelt way anticipated future sports movies like Bull Durham (1988), which does for baseball what Slap Shot did for hockey. And much like Ron Shelton’s film, Slap Shot comments on the inherent silliness of grown men acting as boys while also commenting on the absurdity of the level of violence in the sport. As the season goes on and the Chiefs start winning, the games get more and more violent – on both sides of the blue line. This spills over to the fans as they not only fight in the stands but outside the rink before the game has even started!

Slap Shot’s origins came from an unlikely place. Los Angeles-based writer Nancy Dowd received a late night phone call from her brother in 1974. At the time, he was playing for the Johnstown Jets of the now-defunct North American Hockey League. He was drunk and told her that the team was folding. She asked him who owned the team and when he admitted not knowing she went back east and wrote Slap Shot after spending part of the 1974-75 season with the Jets. She actually spent a month traveling with the team and at other times had her brother set up a tape recorder in the locker room and on the bus in order to capture how these guys talked and interacted with each other.

Many of the hockey antics depicted in Slap Shot are based on actual events. For example, the pre-game bench-clearing brawl happened in the mid-‘70s in a playoff game between the Jets and the Buffalo Norsemen. Another scene has one of the Hanson brothers get hit in the face with a set of keys and he and his siblings go into the stands to find the person who did it. In a game against the Mohawk Valley Comets, Jets player Jeff Carlson took a cup of ice to the face and he went into the stands with his brothers Steve and Jack. Jeff and Steve went on to play two of the three Hanson brothers in the film with Dave Hanson (who also played for the Jets) playing the third sibling.

Director George Roy Hill, who had worked with Paul Newman previously on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and The Sting (1973), gave the actor the script on a Wednesday. Newman called him back on Friday and told the director, “It’s foul, but it’s got it. Let’s do it.” He had skated frequently during his childhood and kept up with it occasionally over the years but still spent seven weeks training. He found that shooting the hockey scenes to be fun but grueling work: “This has been the toughest physical film I’ve ever done. And believe me, I’ve done some rough ones.” Several young, up and coming actors tried out for the Ned Braden role, including Nick Nolte and Peter Strauss, but none of them could skate well enough. Strauss even broke his leg trying to learn. Michael Ontkean, who was a former hockey player at the University of New Hampshire, got the part.

Not surprisingly, Slap Shot divided critics when it first came out. Newsweek magazine’s Jack Kroll found it to be “tough, smart, cynical and sentimental.” In his review for the Washington Post, Gary Arnold called it “a joyride conducted by drivers who betray an undercurrent of hostility toward their passengers.” Furthermore, he felt that “The profanity expresses more that documentary fidelity to the vocabulary of jocks. It's an aggressive outlet for the filmmakers, too. Once you hop on, it's advisable to concentrate on the gratuitously funny aspects of the ride and to avoid taking the hostility personally.” The New York Times’ Vincent Canby found that the film had “a kind of vitality to it that overwhelms most of the questions relating to consistency of character and point of view.” He added, “Much in the manner of Network, you know that it's an original and that it's alive, whether you like it or not.” Pauline Kael felt that Newman delivered “the performance of his life.” Oddly enough, Sports Illustrated’s Frank Deford criticized the screenplay: “The dialogue by Nancy Dowd is as puerile as it is unnecessarily vulgar. Apparently Nancy Dowd believes that male camaraderie can be instantly created with a whole lot of garbage mouth.”

Like many sports comedies made in the ‘70s, Slap Shot ends with Reggie and his team winning yet also losing. They win the league (albeit on a technicality) but the team is no more, leaving many of its players with uncertain futures. Think of Rocky (1976) where Rocky Balboa lost to the champ but went the distance; or The Bad News Bears (1976) failing to win the championship but demonstrating grit and determination. This non-traditional view of what it means to “win” was the hallmark of many sports movies from this decade and reflected a prevailing mood of the era. It wasn’t until Star Wars (1977) that people got tired of this view and wanted more escapist, idealistic fare and this became reflected in sports movies in the 1980s with efforts like Hoosiers (1986) or Major League (1989) where the protagonists win and there is no question that things end on a high note. That being said, Slap Shot still casts a long shadow with any new hockey film inevitably being compared to it, from films that only reference it, like Happy Gilmore (1996), to outright homages like the recent Goon (2011), or the instantly forgettable Slap Shot sequels (two so far). None of them come close to the bawdy fun or the authenticity and fire of Hill’s film, an insanely quotable classic that appeals both to the hardcore hockey fan and to fan.

SOURCES

Levy, Shawn. Paul Newman: A Life. Three Rivers Press. 2010.

Mastovich, Mike. “Capturing the Spirit of Slap Shot…30 Years Later.” Sports Illustrated. February 25, 2007.

Merron, Jeff. “Old-Time Hockey Indeed.” ESPN.

Murphy, Austin. “Goons Forever.” Sports Illustrated. July 2, 2007.

Warning Sign

With the rise of nuclear power in the 1970s fear of its misuse became something of a mini-fascination in Hollywood with films like The China Syndrome (1979) and Silkwood (1983) that dealt with the misuse and subsequent cover-up of this energy source. These were serious-minded message films. Riding on their coattails was Warning Sign (1985), which dealt with a virus outbreak, the cinematic sibling of the nuclear power disaster film sub-genre, with notable efforts like The Andromeda Strain (1971) and The Crazies (1973). These films were more grounded in the science fiction and horror genres but the message was still the same – we will pay dearly for messing with things we don’t fully understand, resulting in our destruction despite even the best intentions. Director Hal Barwood’s film falls somewhere in-between, with pretentions towards the hard SF of the former and yet delivering the visceral thrills of the latter albeit with a solid cast of notable character actors like Sam Waterston (The Killing Fields), Kathleen Quinlan (Twilight Zone: The Movie), and Yaphet Kotto (Alien).

When a scientist (G.W. Bailey) accidentally steps on a beaker of highly dangerous chemicals unknowingly dropped by another (Richard Dysart), in a sequence that strains credibility, an alarm goes off forcing the plant’s head of security Joanie Morse (Kathleen Quinlan) to lock the place down. Just another day at BioTek Agronomics, a research center for agricultural innovations but is actually a secret laboratory that makes bioweapons for the United States government. Sound familiar? It should. The first few minutes of this film were ripped off pretty heavily by Resident Evil (2002).

Frustrated friends and loved ones gather outside the plant trying to find out what happened, including Sheriff Cal Morse (Sam Waterston), Joanie’s husband. Pretty soon the government arrives to assess the situation led by a Major Connolly (Yaphet Kotto) of the U.S. Accident Containment team. Something doesn’t seem quite right what with Connolly and his men arriving so quickly and Cal figures out the experimental yeast cover story is a bunch of hokum. So, he tracks down ex-BioTek employee Dr. Dan Fairchild (Jeffrey DeMunn) who tells him about the company’s true nature.

Once BioTek is locked down, Barwood (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Matthew Robbins) does a nice job of ratcheting up the tension as Cal figures out what’s really going on. The director also doesn’t waste much time introducing the threat, setting things in motion pretty much right from the get-go and then letting it all play out, first as a procedural and then, as the situation in the lab worsens, a horror film with a government away team encountering people driven into murderous rages by the viral outbreak.

The always watchable Jeffrey DeMunn (The Blob) is excellent as the jaded ex-employee who begrudgingly helps Cal. Along with the local lawman, he acts as a voice of reason and the only hope the former has of being reunited with his wife Joanie. He also gets to deliver a lot of expositional dialogue, filling us and Cal in on how the virus works. DeMunn is such good actor that he can make this dialogue so interesting that we want to know more. A pre-Law & Order Sam Waterston is also believably convincing as the concerned husband who will do anything to get his wife out of the contaminated facility despite his near-paralyzing fear of germs (a tacked on bit of business that is never really developed). The actor brings his customary gravitas to the role, which helps cut down the cringe-inducing bits of dialogue, like at one point saying he feels like Dirty Harry. Fortunately, he and DeMunn do the best they can and play well off each other, Waterston the stand-up lawman and DeMunn the burnout scientist. They make an even better team after breaking into the facility, looking for Quinlan’s beleaguered security chief.

Kathleen Quinlan gives a solid performance as the resourceful security chief faced with the frightening realization that she is trapped in a sealed off facility with co-workers driven crazy by chemicals. She is smart, following protocol to lock things down, and then tough as she bravely navigates the various dangers brought on by the outbreak. She and Waterston have nice chemistry together, even when they are reduced to talking to each other via walkie talkies. They make for believable couple that you want to see reunited. It is also interesting to see these two actors cast against type in action-oriented roles.

Hal Barwood got his start as a screenwriter, often working with Matthew Robbins on films like Corvette Summer (1978) and Dragonslayer (1981), but he always wanted to direct: “In writing, you’re always watching directors ruin your stuff … There’s a tendency to want to get your hands on the controls and do it yourself.” After his screenplay for MacArthur (1977) was butchered (according to Barwood), he and Robbins decided to write and direct their own material. The inspiration for Warning Sign came from history. While researching genetic engineering, they discovered the Borna virus, which occurred in Germany during World War I. It was very rare and only affected horses and other animals, driving them crazy until attacked each other. The other historical factoid they came across was the 1976 outbreak of Legionnaire’s disease in Philadelphia. Robbins found the notion of a “new and hitherto unknown disease infecting people,” fascinating.

He and Robbins did a fair amount of research on viral outbreaks and uncovered little-known germ warfare experiments conducted by the United States in the 1950s, including an incident where the government dispersed a disease by plane off the coast of San Francisco. Interestingly, Barwood didn’t draw upon other viral outbreak films like The Andromeda Strain (1971) for inspiration but rather Night of the Living Dead (1968) because it had the “sensibility of horror happening in the midst of everyday events.” For some time, he planned on Warning Sign to be his directorial debut, done quickly and on a modest $7 million budget originally from the Ladd Company in early 1982 but at some point moving the project to 20th Century Fox. To help temper his inexperience as a director, Barwood cast actors who were skilled and experienced enough that he wouldn’t have to worry about getting good performances out of them.

Warning Sign received mostly mixed to negative reviews from critics. In his review for The New York Times, Jon Pareles wrote, “Warning Sign is unlikely to start a national debate on biological warfare; it does, however, while away the minutes kinetically.” The Globe and Mail’s Salem Alaton said of Barwood’s approach: “He's got a didactic melodrama full of hackneyed messages when he could have made a lively comedy called Night of the Living Post-Graduates.” In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Kevin Thomas praised the performances of DeMunn, Quinlan and Waterston but felt that “for all its energy and considerable technical finesse, it's never fully engaging either.”

Barwood does a nice job of creating a real sense of dread and danger as he utilizes tried and true horror conventions, like fear of the unknown to great effect. He also adopts a siege mentality a la George Romero, making Warning Sign a kind of retroactive prequel to The Crazies as one imagines BioTek being the company that creates the bioweapon unleashed on the unsuspecting townsfolk in Romero’s film. It’s just a shame that time and time again Barwood’s film is let down by its pedestrian script. It is also kind of alarming just how much Resident Evil cribs from Warning Sign only with a bigger budget and an emphasis on action and spectacle. Because Barwood’s film isn’t that well known, disappearing soon after it was released, the connections between the two films are rarely made. For all of its clunky dialogue, Warning Sign is still enjoyable thanks to the performances of DeMunn, Quinlan and Waterston who manage to rise above the material.

SOURCES

Lowry, Brian. “On the set of Warning Sign.” Starlog. September 1985. Pg. 64-66.

Lowry, Brian. “Hal Barwood: The Shock of Directing.” Starlog. December 1985.

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.