It had to happen at some point. In the wake of Bonnie & Clyde, The Graduate, Easy Rider, M*A*S*H, and The Godfather, all films that were not expected to do well, let alone win Oscars, the studio heads finally caved in and said fuck it, give these guys as much money and resources as they want. And that’s when the Film Brats of the New Hollywood finally fell on their asses in a spectacular way.
We all know that Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie is generally thought of as the straw that broke the camel’s back, even though it’s actually a great film (and maybe now that Hopper has passed away we’ll get an in depth DVD release or even, god help us, a look at Alejandro Jodoworosky’s cut) but there are definitely worse offenders out there. The following films all have on thing in common. They failed at the box office.
Brewster McCloud is considered Altman’s first critical disaster and usually gets lumped in with Quintet and Popeye when you see the E! True Hollywood Story or Biography episode on the man, but I can tell you that Brewster McCloud ranks right up there with M*A*S*H, Thieves Like Us, Nashville, Short Cuts, The Player, or Gosford Park. It’s biggest problem? It’s the follow-up to M*A*S*H and it’s way ahead of its time.
What we get is a more of the irreverent humor of M*A*S*H and the twisted genre expectations of The Long Goodbye. There is a whimsical humor to it all with the scenes of Rene Auberjonois lecturing the audience about birds as he slowly begins to turn in to one. This more innocent kind of humor as well as the detailed sets seem like a precursor to Wes Anderson as well as usual suspect Paul Thomas Anderson.
Part satire, part action movie, Brewster McCloud was never going to have an easy time meeting expectations but seen in context of Altman’s other films and it all starts to make sense. We see the first use of Altman casting his regulars with Bud Cort as Brewster, Sally Kellerman as his guardian angel, John Schuck as a Houston police officer picked to work with Michael Murphy’s super cop Det. Frank Shaft, and G. Wood as, what else, cynical and hard-assed Capt. Crandall. And of course this marks Shelley Duvall’s first appearance in an Altman film.
Oh yeah, and Stacy Keach plays a greedy old man that Brewster works for. Trust me, you just gotta let some of this stuff roll. It’s Altman in the 70’s so of course we get some deconstruction of cinema in the beginning and end credits.
It may not be perfect but it definitely ranks amongst Altman’s best films.
Alex In Wonderland. Or I Think My Farts Smell Just as Good As Fellini’s. Paul Mazursky gets a pass for acting in Stanley Kubrick’s early film Fear & Desire, but his own films have never been anything spectacular. Alex In Wonderland is his follow-up to Bob and Ted and Carol and Alice, and it sadly falls flat.
There’s an overpowering smell of incense and smugness that makes it hard to take any of it as serious as it wants to be. Easy Rider at least had some cynicism about commune hippies, but here we get Donald Sutherland talking about he really wants to make a film about “The Panthers, man!” when he’s really dreaming about dancing naked negroes on a beach. I guess because he wishes they were as free and innocent as they were in Africa or is he only comfortable with black people when they’re singing and dancing? I’m probably giving this more thought than it deserves if it weren’t or the fact that 50% of the film is made of uninteresting dream sequences. A Vietnam-type battle raging in the streets of Hollywood is inspired but it’s too little too late. This movie wants to be 8 1/2 so bad and it just can’t reach. No matter if you get Fellini himself to make an appearance it will not summon his genius. Jeanne Moreau makes a cameo somewhere but I had fallen asleep by that point.
Ellen Burstyn gets to play the thankless Wife role. Right on, man! It’s about me and how hip and far out and groovy I am! Jesus. Mazursky was on the wrong side of 40 when he made this. I’m betting he wore a dashiki on the set.
Zardoz. Holy shit John Boorman, you have my admiration for having the balls to make this your follow-up to Deliverance. Zardoz is like a 1970’s Doctor Who taken to extremes the BBC would never allow. Due to time allowances I won’t get into the plot mechanics, which you could call either high-concept or convoluted and just say that we get a pirate moustached Sean Connery in hot pants wandering the wastelands of the future. He falls in with the immortal intelligent elites who view him as a savage. And by that I mean we get Charlotte Rampling in a silky frock getting hot and bothered by the Scottish rogue.
Just when it seems that the film has been nothing but one rambling essay after another about mankind’s ability to create or destroy, we get one trippy chase scene and a doozy of a denouement that ties it all together.
You have to see Zardoz at least once in your lifetime. The greatest tragedy is that it was released in 1974 and not 1978 because if it were, we’d have had the requisite tie-in toy line.
Pulp. Get Carter is perhaps the classic British crime film. Suspenseful yet bleak, it takes the plot and prose of Ted Lewis’s “Jack’s Return Home” and combines it with a career-defining performance by Michael Caine and the environment of Manchester and industrial Northern Britain. So after the success of Get Carter, director Mike Hodges and Caine decided to work on another film that would subvert the situations of Carter. Instead of hardnosed Jack Carter, Caine would play Mickey King, a writer of lurid pulp novels. Instead of the action taking place in overcast Newcastle-upon-Tyne, it would be in the sunny Mediterranean island of Malta. The film was Pulp.
Sadly, this was not what audiences were expecting. Get Carter was such a hit and had garnered such a cult following that anything but Get Carter Part 2 was going to have a hard time finding an audience.
But it is not a film without its charms. The plot revolves around Mickey being hired by expatriate American actor Preston Gilbert (Mickey Rooney) to write his biography. He’s picked Mickey because his own life could be straight out of one of Mickey’s dime-store pulps. Gilbert has mafia connections, which keep him from returning to the US. Along the way Mickey runs afoul of a hit man (the great Al Lettieri aka Sollozzo The Turk from The Godfather) who is out to kill Gilbert.
The story is more comedic in nature but still retains a hardness that makes it definitely a Seventies film. While it isn’t Get Carter Part 2, it is an interesting companion piece and contrast to Get Carter.
I’m really starting to appreciate Mickey Rooney in the 70’s where he’s more than ready to play the dirty old man with some rough edges and cynicism toward his usual public image. He’s a mischievous old goat here and really makes the film.
The cinematography is grand too. Event the wide-angle shots feel claustrophobic as Mickey makes he way from editor’s offices to hotel room in Malta that may or may not contain a dead body.
The Fortune. I’m sure Mike Nichols, Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson thought this was a great idea over an eight ball with Bob Evans, but man this movie is not as funny as it thinks it is. It wants to be a throw back to the screwball comedies of yesteryear but the pacing is glacial and there are so many better black comedies to watch than this. Thanks for throwing Scatman Crothers a bone but it’s too little too late.
On paper this should have worked. Warren was hot on the heels of Shampoo while Jack was just coming off of Chinatown and on his way to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Mike Nichols was one of the first directors to usher in the New Hollywood with The Graduate. But watching the film you can’t help but wonder where the talent went?
By many accounts, the film was rushed into production without a firm script in place. It was made as a favor to screenwriter Carole Eastman. She had helped make Jack’s career by writing Five Easy Pieces. But they should have let this one go.
If you want to watch two hours of Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson fight over who gets to screw Stockard Channing, than this is the movie for you.
Stay Hungry. This movie is just fucking insane. By the time you see Arnold playing fiddle in a bluegrass band your mind has already been constantly blown that it just washes over you. I can’t decide if Stay Hungry is so bad that it’s bad or so bad that it comes around to being great. You could make an argument for either case.
So this was Bob Rafelson’s first film after the break up of BBS Productions, the epitome of New Hollywood. It’s a very audacious film to say the least and wildly different from the elegiac The King of Marvin Gardens. Stay Hungry is a free for all of ego and id. It’s perhaps the closest Rafelson ever came to being at peace with the fact the he might not be a serious artiste but instead is a guy who came up co-creating The Monkees.
Where else can you see The Dude, Freddy Kruger, The Terminator, Mama Gump, T.C. From Magnum P.I. and Scatman Crothers all in the same film? And who’s that? It’s Helena Kallianiotes reprising her role as the Over-the-top Bulldagger from Five Easy Pieces only this time she’s not a hitchhiker; she’s a karate teacher! Not to mention Joe Spinell as a mobster (what else would he be?) and even Ed Bagley Jr. even shows up as a country club good ole boy. They don’t make ‘em like this anymore.
This movie just can’t settle on what it wants to be. Does it want to be a straight drama about a young man from an old money Southern family (Bridges) who’s tired of doing what’s expected of him so he falls in with the lower class people from his gym (Arnold, Sally, Bobby Englund and T.C.)? Or is it about a young man falling in with sleazy mobsters who want to buy up fitness centers in downtown Birmingham, AL just to tear them down to build skyscrapers? Or better yet, is it about a body builder pussy hound, who sometimes likes to wear bondage masks while he works out, (Ahnold) who uses his perky girlfriend (Sally) and the rich kid from the gym (Bridges) to find him some high-class poon?
Well the simple answer is all of the above. Which brings Rafelson full circle with the zany style of The Monkees. The big finale features contestants from a Mr. Universe contest running wild in the streets to save the gym while striking impromptu poses for bewildered onlookers. That shit could have only happened in The Monkees or just maybe the end sequence of Blazing Saddles.
There are so many crass and tasteless things jumping off in this film that I lost count but I was certainly entertained.
