It's been a busy month, but as always I'm still making time for whittling this damned DVR queue down slowly but surely. Sadly, I'll have to skip out on watching this Akira Kurosawa retrospective that TCM is dedicating Tuesday nights to in March. In order to watch it I'd have to give up all hopes of having a life and just sit around the house every Tuesday for 24 hours only getting up to eat or go to the bathroom. As awesome as that sounds, I'll have to catch up on the many Kurosawa films that I haven't seen another time. We've got more pressing concerns here.
Such as Jeff Bridges amazing Oscar acceptance speech. I felt high just watching it so I can only imagine how Bridges felt saying it! And you know, it's about time The Dude got to hit the stage and hoist that silly statue in the air and get to do the whole spiel. He has worked his ass off for years and post-Lebowski, he's become a national treasure.
So in honor of Jeff Bridges I recorded two films from early in his career and I can tell you that it's not a fluke or Stoner Baiting for Hollywood to give him The Oscar. He's had the goods all along.
First up is Fat City from 1972 directed by John Huston. Bridges co-stars as a young boxer named Ernie Munger trying to make it as a pro fighter. Stacy Keach stars as down & out alcoholic Billy Tully who gets him into the biz (and it just dawned to me that both would go on to play Stoner Movie Icons. Keach as Sgt. Stedanko and Bridges as The Dude). Nicholas Colasanto aka Coach from "Cheers" plays Ruben, the local trainer.
But that's not what the movie is really about. The real story follows Billy Tully through his drunken world of delusion and failure. He's quit boxing and taken to doing farm labor or fry cooking. He eventually winds up in a Bukowski-esque relationship with local barfly Oma, played by the incredible Susan Tyrrell. Once Billy breaks up with her he tries to get back in shape to restart his career as a fighter and search for a better life. But in the world of Fat City, that's no way out either.
As John Huston was once a semi-pro boxer (as was Leonard Garner, author of the original novel and script for the film) he spends more time dealing with the before and after of the fights. Ernie Munger's first trip out of town with Ruben and the other boxers (who are all either black or latino) starts with a scene of the young and brash Wes talking himself up, clearly thinking he's the next Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali and after the fight scenes, we cut straight to them eating in a roadside cafe, every one of them bruised and swelled up like rotten tomatoes.
Scenes like that are the strengths of Fat City. By 1972 Robert Altman, Peter Bogdonavich, Bob Rafelson, Francis Coppola, and Dennis Hopper had emerged as The American New Wave/New Hollywood set, but in one film John Huston out does them all, going bleaker and "realer" than they could hope to. Monte Hellman might be the only one who could hang with Huston in 1972 with Two Lane Blacktop. Fat City makes Five Easy Pieces look like the over-reaching and dated baby boomer wish fulfillment fantasy that it really is. Bobby Dupea's rich kid gone slumming just can't hold a candle to Billy Tully getting shithouse drunk before noon with Oma hanging around his neck like an albatross, telling the world what she thinks of it in the dingiest of dives Stockton, CA has to offer.
When he finally does get his shot back in the ring, he takes such a beating that he doesn't even know if he's won or lost the bout. The minimal but concise scenes we see of his opponent Lucero arriving by bus in Stockton from Mexico are straight to the point. He gets off the bus, checks into a drab hotel, sits in his room waiting for the fight, and when he goes to the bathroom, he's pissing blood. Lucero is just another gladiator in the boxing game, sent out from town to town when he's needed and that's all there is to his existence.
Conrad Hall provides great cinematography. Every natural light source is slightly overexposed to the point of halation (when light sources have a halo effect look) and appear much like they do to anyone unlucky enough to be perpetually hungover.
So we see the differences and similarities between the barely surviving Tully and the young and naive Munger as they make their way through the boxing life. Tully is washed up and looking for redemption in love or in the ring. Munger's life is changed by coming into to contact with Tully and he sees how tough it is to try and make it as a fighter. But he's young enough to hang on and keep his life together.
The film ends with Ernie running into Tully on the street one night. Tully is drunk of course and Ernie tries to beat it but Tully gets him to get a cup of coffee with him. They go to an all-night cafe and Tully has a moment of self realization that suddenly elevates Fat City from genre film to greatness.
The performances by the cast are great. Bridges plays Ernie Munger as naive, charming, and eager to please but also as a bit jaded or at least weary of a loser like Tully as the story progresses. Stacy Keach is the show and it's amazing to see him in a performance like this that is miles away from the kind of tough guys he's know for now. He's incredibly vulnerable and kind of dim but in a lovable way. He was up for the New York Film Critics Circle Award and would have won if there weren't surprise rule changes during the voting. His main competition being Marlon Brando and Laurence Olivier. Not bad company to be in.
Susan Tyrrell is something else. She's almost too much, but that's kind of the point of a character like Oma. She's brash and likes to talk just to make noise. Tyrrell has excelled at playing perverse characters like this through out her whole career. She was nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of Oma which is pretty astounding; Oma is not a character for everybody. But by god she's real and we've all probably run into a barfly of her stripe.
Moving on, I also saw The Last American Hero this time with Jeff Bridges in the starring role as Junior Jackson, an early NASCAR driver who only got in the car racing game to earn money to help pay his moonshining father's legal bills. This is all based on real events reported by Tom Wolfe in the early 60's.
Junior Jackson is a quintessential Jeff Bridges role. He's equal parts parts smart ass and charming good old boy. You can't help but like him. The farm boy side really comes out once he goes from demolition derby driving to playing with the big boys in NASCAR. He hooks up with NASCAR secretary Marge Dennison played by Valerie Perrine only to realize that while she's a sweet Georgia peach, she's a groupie who dates multiple drivers at the same time.
Young Gary Busey costars as Junior's brother while Ned Beatty plays Hackel, a shifty demolition derby promoter in the first half of the film. If you were producing a film in the 70's and needed a shifty and sleazy Southerner, Ned Beatty was your go-to guy (see W.W. and The Dixie Dance Kings for more of this). Also making notable appearances are Ed Lauter, Lane Smith, and William Smith, all character actors you've seen somewhere or another.
It's a nice little film. It seems that director Lamont Johnson was a regular TV hack but he really made a good little film with this. There are some great moments such as the one where Junior is off on the circuit with NASCAR for the first time and goes into a Make Your Own Record booth to send his family a message. He stammers his way through and tells his family how much he loves them, but once he's finished and the record pops out of the machine, he throws it away.
We end the film with Junior winning his first race. After flirting with Marge only to see that she's once again in the company of another rival driver, Junior goes to the press box for his press conference. We freeze frame on the doorway after he enters and his shadow is cast on the wall by a camera flash. Pretty esoteric ending for a race car movie.
Such as Jeff Bridges amazing Oscar acceptance speech. I felt high just watching it so I can only imagine how Bridges felt saying it! And you know, it's about time The Dude got to hit the stage and hoist that silly statue in the air and get to do the whole spiel. He has worked his ass off for years and post-Lebowski, he's become a national treasure.
So in honor of Jeff Bridges I recorded two films from early in his career and I can tell you that it's not a fluke or Stoner Baiting for Hollywood to give him The Oscar. He's had the goods all along.
First up is Fat City from 1972 directed by John Huston. Bridges co-stars as a young boxer named Ernie Munger trying to make it as a pro fighter. Stacy Keach stars as down & out alcoholic Billy Tully who gets him into the biz (and it just dawned to me that both would go on to play Stoner Movie Icons. Keach as Sgt. Stedanko and Bridges as The Dude). Nicholas Colasanto aka Coach from "Cheers" plays Ruben, the local trainer.
But that's not what the movie is really about. The real story follows Billy Tully through his drunken world of delusion and failure. He's quit boxing and taken to doing farm labor or fry cooking. He eventually winds up in a Bukowski-esque relationship with local barfly Oma, played by the incredible Susan Tyrrell. Once Billy breaks up with her he tries to get back in shape to restart his career as a fighter and search for a better life. But in the world of Fat City, that's no way out either.
As John Huston was once a semi-pro boxer (as was Leonard Garner, author of the original novel and script for the film) he spends more time dealing with the before and after of the fights. Ernie Munger's first trip out of town with Ruben and the other boxers (who are all either black or latino) starts with a scene of the young and brash Wes talking himself up, clearly thinking he's the next Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali and after the fight scenes, we cut straight to them eating in a roadside cafe, every one of them bruised and swelled up like rotten tomatoes.
Scenes like that are the strengths of Fat City. By 1972 Robert Altman, Peter Bogdonavich, Bob Rafelson, Francis Coppola, and Dennis Hopper had emerged as The American New Wave/New Hollywood set, but in one film John Huston out does them all, going bleaker and "realer" than they could hope to. Monte Hellman might be the only one who could hang with Huston in 1972 with Two Lane Blacktop. Fat City makes Five Easy Pieces look like the over-reaching and dated baby boomer wish fulfillment fantasy that it really is. Bobby Dupea's rich kid gone slumming just can't hold a candle to Billy Tully getting shithouse drunk before noon with Oma hanging around his neck like an albatross, telling the world what she thinks of it in the dingiest of dives Stockton, CA has to offer.
When he finally does get his shot back in the ring, he takes such a beating that he doesn't even know if he's won or lost the bout. The minimal but concise scenes we see of his opponent Lucero arriving by bus in Stockton from Mexico are straight to the point. He gets off the bus, checks into a drab hotel, sits in his room waiting for the fight, and when he goes to the bathroom, he's pissing blood. Lucero is just another gladiator in the boxing game, sent out from town to town when he's needed and that's all there is to his existence.
Conrad Hall provides great cinematography. Every natural light source is slightly overexposed to the point of halation (when light sources have a halo effect look) and appear much like they do to anyone unlucky enough to be perpetually hungover.
So we see the differences and similarities between the barely surviving Tully and the young and naive Munger as they make their way through the boxing life. Tully is washed up and looking for redemption in love or in the ring. Munger's life is changed by coming into to contact with Tully and he sees how tough it is to try and make it as a fighter. But he's young enough to hang on and keep his life together.
The film ends with Ernie running into Tully on the street one night. Tully is drunk of course and Ernie tries to beat it but Tully gets him to get a cup of coffee with him. They go to an all-night cafe and Tully has a moment of self realization that suddenly elevates Fat City from genre film to greatness.
The performances by the cast are great. Bridges plays Ernie Munger as naive, charming, and eager to please but also as a bit jaded or at least weary of a loser like Tully as the story progresses. Stacy Keach is the show and it's amazing to see him in a performance like this that is miles away from the kind of tough guys he's know for now. He's incredibly vulnerable and kind of dim but in a lovable way. He was up for the New York Film Critics Circle Award and would have won if there weren't surprise rule changes during the voting. His main competition being Marlon Brando and Laurence Olivier. Not bad company to be in.
Susan Tyrrell is something else. She's almost too much, but that's kind of the point of a character like Oma. She's brash and likes to talk just to make noise. Tyrrell has excelled at playing perverse characters like this through out her whole career. She was nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of Oma which is pretty astounding; Oma is not a character for everybody. But by god she's real and we've all probably run into a barfly of her stripe.
Moving on, I also saw The Last American Hero this time with Jeff Bridges in the starring role as Junior Jackson, an early NASCAR driver who only got in the car racing game to earn money to help pay his moonshining father's legal bills. This is all based on real events reported by Tom Wolfe in the early 60's.
Junior Jackson is a quintessential Jeff Bridges role. He's equal parts parts smart ass and charming good old boy. You can't help but like him. The farm boy side really comes out once he goes from demolition derby driving to playing with the big boys in NASCAR. He hooks up with NASCAR secretary Marge Dennison played by Valerie Perrine only to realize that while she's a sweet Georgia peach, she's a groupie who dates multiple drivers at the same time.
Young Gary Busey costars as Junior's brother while Ned Beatty plays Hackel, a shifty demolition derby promoter in the first half of the film. If you were producing a film in the 70's and needed a shifty and sleazy Southerner, Ned Beatty was your go-to guy (see W.W. and The Dixie Dance Kings for more of this). Also making notable appearances are Ed Lauter, Lane Smith, and William Smith, all character actors you've seen somewhere or another.
It's a nice little film. It seems that director Lamont Johnson was a regular TV hack but he really made a good little film with this. There are some great moments such as the one where Junior is off on the circuit with NASCAR for the first time and goes into a Make Your Own Record booth to send his family a message. He stammers his way through and tells his family how much he loves them, but once he's finished and the record pops out of the machine, he throws it away.
We end the film with Junior winning his first race. After flirting with Marge only to see that she's once again in the company of another rival driver, Junior goes to the press box for his press conference. We freeze frame on the doorway after he enters and his shadow is cast on the wall by a camera flash. Pretty esoteric ending for a race car movie.
Good stuff, Greg. I caught Last American Hero off the satellite this winter. I hope Fat City shows up sometime. Huge John Huston fan. And speaking of him and Bridges, be sure and check out nutty late 70s assassination conspiracy flick Winter Kills if you haven't.
ReplyDeleteAlso, my dad ran into Ed Lauter walking the streets of LA one day. Highlight of his life.
Thanks Peter! As a matter of fact I have a VHS copy of Winter Kills that I was hoping to get to for this post but didn't get to.
ReplyDeleteI hope your dad got an autograph or something from Ed Lauter. I think it would have made Ed Lauter's day as well. I also just saw lauter in "The Magnificent 7 Ride!" and will post my thoughts on it and the original "Magnificent 7" soon.