TERRIBLE? or JUST TERRIBLE?: "Dream a Little Dream" dir., Marc Rocco, 1989

I would guess that the likelihood of anyone actually enjoying Dream a Little Dream -- a 1989 film that was desperately trying to keep the dream team of Corey Feldman and Corey Haim going after the success of 1987's The Lost Boys (and the...occurrence, lets say, of 1988's License to Drive) -- depends upon one's tolerance level for the so-called performance skills of the aforementioned dynamic duo.  But, acting aside, there are so many reasons to despise this movie deeply.

In the last "Terrible? or, Just Terrible?" segment, I kicked off this exercise in assessing cinema's most lowly product by reviewing The Flaming Urge, a movie I ultimately had to deem "Terrible," as it serves as a pretty hilarious camp artifact from the early 50's, and is definitely worth checking out.  But, The Flaming Urge was kind of a softball when I step back to consider the cinematic depths I've visited in the past.  From Troll 2 to Trapped in the Closet to The Thing With Two Heads (you know--the one where a racist Ray Milland gets Rosie Greer's head transplanted onto his body) I have developed a gleefully perverse relationship with the ill-conceived and poorly executed.

Rosie Greer and Ray Milland in The Thing With Two Heads

I have built up a strange tolerance over the years. And, yes, I do get off on the strange, torturous tickle of mind-numbing repetition, when done right.  Movies that play with an audience's sense of time, that manage that perfect dance with duration, intentionally or unintentionally, can be one of the most important factors when drawing the line between the "Terrible" and the "Just Terrible."  Sometimes, as in a Coleman Francis, or even the recent Indian special effects extravaganza Endhiran (2010), with it's two-and-a-half-hour-plus running time and stubborn unwillingness to leave anything on the cutting room floor, a test of patience can be exactly the thing that pushes a movie over the line from being "Just Terrible" into the delightful realm of the "Terrible."

Aishwarya Rai and Rajnikanth in Endhiran

Then there's Dream a Little Dream, a movie that put my tolerance to the test.  I was aware that "the Two Coreys" had experienced the reality show treatment recently, becoming celebrity casualties for a second time, but I wasn't aware of how bad it had gotten in 1989 with Dream a Little Dream, a movie so inept in it's execution and excruciating in it's duration that I can't imagine it would appeal to any but the hardest of hardcore Corey-ites (or, Hard-Corey-ites, if you like).  If you are one of those people, I don't want to deny you your pleasures, but let's be realistic about this:  Dream a Little Dream is a movie that dangles grotesquely off the end of a decade filled with Old-Young Body Switching comedies and some of the most inexplicable rises to fame of any decade in cinema.  Dream a Little Dream is probably the worst of the ol' "switch-a-roo" movies, considering that it doesn't even get the ridiculous simplicity of that genre quite right.  Jason Robards plays an old guy who is into some sort of mystical Tai-Chi that allows him to tap into something not unlike Dennis Quaid's abilities in Dreamscape, but his experimental exercise results in a misdirection of energy, and he ends up inside one of the most horribly coiffed skulls in movie history (Feldman).  Feldman, who is definitely the "lead" Corey in this picture, has the acting challenge of having to perform as if he had Jason Robards living in his body, but his obsession with Michael Jackson and lack of displaying any capacity for empathy as an actor keep that from happening.  His best friend Dinger, played by Haim, limps around on a real broken leg that they incorporated into the movie after Haim's mother hit him with a car.  The characters of Dream a Little Dream are seamlessly blended with the real lives of the Corey's...as when they throw in a line in the beginning about how Dinger's mother hit him with a car.  That detail comes in the first scene, and it was about halfway through that scene that I had reached my Corey limit.  1 Hour and 54 minutes later, as I watched Feldman and Robards sharing dance moves during the credits to the film's titular theme, I was feeling broken.

The Coreys

There are a number of other characters in Dream a Little Dream--too many, really--as well as a particularly bad performance by young Meredith Salenger (who would go on to hone her skills in the Bill Pullman/Bettie White giant alligator pic Lake Placid).  To unpack the film's story too much farther might trigger some mild trauma, but here goes:  Salenger plays the romantic interest of Feldman, and even though she and Feldman literally crash simultaneously into the backyard mystical experiment of Robards and his romantic interest, played by Piper Laurie, Salenger's character does not switch bodies with her elder counterpart in the movie.  I can't explain why this is, but I thought I should mention it, if only as an example of the inexplicable choices that abound in this film.  Now, with Robards inside him, Feldman finds the courage to court Salenger.  Meanwhile, Salenger's boyfriend, played by William McNamara, an actor we get to watch invent creative answers to the Acting 101 question of "What do I do with my hands?" for the duration of his scenes, comes unhinged, leading to a dramatic climax involving he and Haim that leads to excessive drinking and gun play (this is PG-13 territory, after all).  The Feldman/Salenger plot to keep Salenger awake as a way to save the fate of Robard's and Laurie's love involves Salenger being intentionally drugged by her mother (played by TV's Susan Blakely, a character who is sort of the last word in 80's rich kid Moms).  What will happen if Salenger falls asleep?  I dare you to find out how that plot line works itself out.  Double-DOG dare ya.

Meredith Salenger and Corey Feldman in Dream a Little Dream

Aside from featuring unpleasant, grating performances, editing that is seemingly unfinished, a running time that is unforgivable, and a plot that was probably smashed together from a couple of different ideas, screwing up both in the process, Dream a Little Dream is particularly "Just Terrible" because of the actors that got caught up in it along the way:  specifically, Jason Robards, Piper Laurie, and Harry Dean Stanton.  It may be true that commercial cinema commonly favors the fad of the moment over respect for great actors, but if you look back now on the legacy of the Coreys in comparison to some of the work from the three screen legends in this picture, you can't help but be especially hurt by the whole affair.

Jason Robards in Once Upon a Time in the West

Piper Laurie in Carrie

Harry Dean Stanton in Paris, Texas

DOUBLE FEATURE: Monte Hellman's "Two-Lane Blacktop" (1971) + "Road to Nowhere" (2010)

"Youthful idealism...it's not that rare."
          "Really?  I think that's when it's rarest."     --Monte Hellman's Road to Nowhere

Two-Lane Blacktop

Road to Nowhere 

Film Critic Kent Jones began assessing Two-Lane Blacktop  in his article "Slow Ride" by talking about the more successful pictures that came before it, pictures which are more commonly remembered for being the touchstone cinema of the late 60's and early 70's:  Mike Nichols' The Graduate (1967) and Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider (1968).

"In Easy Rider, the fabled “road” equals freedom, befouled by ugly Americana...while in Two-Lane Blacktop it becomes something altogether different and far more interesting: a repository of dreams and fantasies, for squares, hipsters, and obsessives alike."  

I have fond memories of multiple viewings of Easy Rider as a high school student, but looking back on it during a one-time screening for my Film Appreciation course last year, it might be true what Andrew Sarris said about it:  "See Easy Rider for Nicholson's performance...and leave the LSD trips and such to the collectors of mod mannerisms."  Although I like the youthful exuberance and sometimes heavy-handed nature of Hopper's motorcycle western, reflecting on the way my younger self imagined himself through the lens of that iconic picture seems now like a sad commentary on the late 80's.

Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider

Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate

About  The Graduate, Jones recalls Hellman saying in a 1984 interview that it was "not really a very good film," but noting that "it's a great film because of just what it is."  By the time I got around to seeing The Graduate I felt very much the same way; I had discovered the Pixies by that point, so what use did I have for Simon and Garfunkle?  The use of music in the picture, which is commonly one of the most heralded aspects of it, seemed so overdone and played out that I nearly shut off to the experience completely.  Where The Graduate seems something of a relic, Two-Lane Blacktop comes off as timeless, mythic (and not just because I'd take Kristofferson's "Me and Bobby McGee" over "Mrs. Robinson" any day).

Dennis Wilson and James Taylor in Two-Lane Blacktop 

James Taylor is the lead in Monte Hellman's Two-Lane Blacktop. For someone who will be remembered far more widely for his gentle vocal style, he's stuck to the wall forever here as one of the biggest bad asses in American Cinema with a single scene early in the picture where he finalizes a drag bet with a cocky hot-rodder, upping the ante abruptly, adding just the right amount of speed and pressure to his tone:  "Make it three yards, motherfucker, and we'll have us an automobile race."  I can't imagine anyone suspected that the duo of James Taylor (as The Driver) and Beach Boy Dennis Wilson (as The Mechanic) would work as perfectly as it did, then or now, but there is something so right about the pairing that it's hard to believe that neither of them would ever act in a movie again (Wilson drowned in a yachting accident at age 39 in 1983).  Of course, Two-Lane Blacktop is a movie that stars a 1955 Chevy 150 as much as it does Taylor and Wilson, and although it might be a movie that is pleasing to some car lovers, it certainly doesn't act like a typical "Car Movie," from Bullit to The Fast and the Furious, and has probably left more than a few paying customers disappointed over the years for that very reason.

James Taylor and Warren Oates in Two-Lane Blacktop

Richard Linklater, a director who made a similarly decade-defining cult picture at the beginning of the 1990's, Slacker, remarked that Two-Lane Blacktop is "like a drive-in movie directed by a French New-wave director," which is pretty dead-on.  Although nearly all of the Hollywood renaissance directors were burning on the creative fuel supplied by the various European New-wave styles of the late 50's and early 60's, Hellman's picture melds that sensibility so seamlessly with the American traditions of the road picture that it never seems like a conscious nod.  Like The Driver, Two-Lane Blacktop never tips its hand.  Hellman notes in the commentary track of the Criterion Collection edition of the film that there are a couple of consciously Hitchcockian moments of mis-en-scene in the film, but Two-Lane Blacktop never feels like it's copying anyone, but rather setting the pace for the greatest work of the 1970's.

Two-Lane Blacktop

As is the case with fans of 70's cinema, if I get started on Warren Oates we'll be here for a while.  Let's just leave it at a recommendation to check out his lead turn in the 1975 Hellman directed Cockfighter (also featuring Laurie Bird and Harry Dean Stanton, who both appear in Two-Lane).  Oates' work with Peckinpah in this period is significant as well, including The Wild Bunch (1969)  and Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.  Both directors understood the marvelous complexity and vulnerability of this actor, and left us with some of his finest moments.  To refer back to Linklater's "Reasons I Love Two-Lane Blacktop":  #6--"Because there was once a god who walked the earth named Warren Oates." 

Warren Oates

The final scene in Two-Lane Blacktop is a key moment in the history of meta-cinema; a quieting, profound few minutes that draws the viewer back into a deep reflection of the details of the picture, that vaults the film from John Ford territory, as it is most definitely playing with the template of the American western, and into a realm of consideration alongside the works of Bergman and Godard.  The final sequence of Two-Lane Blactop also serves as a portal through which to view Hellman's latest film--his first in 20+ years--Road to Nowhere.  Hellman's filmography reveals a strange journey, particularly for someone who was brought into the industry by Roger Corman, directing horror cheapies like The Beast From Haunted Cave (1959) and a Phillipine jungle-set buried treasure pic concocted by and starring a then unknown Jack Nicholson called Flight to Fury (1964).  The 1980's are probably best left uncovered for Hellman, as he has said that 1988's Iguana was the worst experience of his career, only to be followed by a directorial stint on the third of the Silent Night, Deadly Night trilogy (Better Watch Out!).  I am sure there are some connections and lessons learned between those films that are relevant, but Road to Nowhere mostly reads like a great filmmaker reclaiming his creative self, and pushing away from the missteps of his past in an rather exuberant fashion.

Shannyn Sossamon in Road to Nowhere

Road to Nowhere is the next great entry in the cannon of Meta-Cinema, a picture within a picture within a picture that is even more firmly rooted in the style than the films that are perhaps it's closest cousins: David Lynch's Mullholland Drive (2001) and Inland Empire (2006).  At times bearing a resemblance to an actress who appeared in both of the aforementioned Lynch films, Laura Harring, Hellman's lead actress in Road to Nowhere, Shannyn Sossamon (excellent, as well, in Roger Avery's underrated The Rules of Attraction and Gorin Dukic's feature debut Wristcutters:  A Love Story), captures the same kind of duality that Lynch so often establishes in his central female characters.  Hellman's camera captures this in a subtle manner and, like Lynch, seems to be more interested in raising questions about the nature of his characters and their stories than providing answers.  The experimentation of Road to Nowhere is more restrained than the leaps into the creative abyss that Lynch has taken so successfully over his last few films.  Road to Nowhere is not as interested in the unsettling strangeness that Lynch paints so effortlessly, but shares the same fervor for reveling in the deep, dark holes of incomplete narratives.  As Monte Hellman's alter-ego in Road to Nowhere, Mitchell Haven, reminds us:  "If it all made sense, I wouldn't be interested."

Laura Dern and David Lynch shooting Inland Empire

Shannyn Sossamon and Cliff De Young in Road to Nowhere

Road to Nowhere is a film about the making of a film called "Road to Nowhere" which centers around the mysterious case of Velma Durand.  The character of Laurel (Sossamon) is hired by Haven (Trygh Runyan), which doesn't sit well with the rest of the crew, since the actress has only appeared in one other film:  a low budget horror/exploitation film that captivates Haven during casting.  Amid talk of Leonardio DiCaprio and Scarlett Johansson as casting possibilities, Haven becomes obsessive about hiring Laurel, even though there seems to be problems with Laurel who is embroiled with some kind of political plot in Cuba...or double suicide...and mistaken identity...or something...

Cliff De Young and Shannyn Sossamon (and Velma Durand?)
in Road to Nowhere

Ok, I'm not going to pretend that I or anyone could even do a plot summary on this picture.  But, more importantly, in the attempt is revealed what is so great about Road to Nowhere, and exactly what might cause audiences less inclined to ambiguity to throw up their hands, proclaiming it the biggest piece of pretentious claptrap to come along since...well, the last Lynch picture.  Prepared for a film that is not interested in wrapping up every plot point, or making distinctions between narrative realities, Road to Nowhere can be one of the most rewarding film experiences of the year.  Perhaps a bit of a film buff's delight, the film references abound in Road, with innumerable nods to the world of film noir, from Humphrey Bogart to Sam Fuller, to the specific scenes that we watch along with Haven as he courts Laurel, screening his favorites for her in their room at night, including Preston Sturges' The Lady Eve, Victor Erice's Spirit of the Beehive, and Bergman's The Seventh Seal.  Maybe if you take all of those pictures and mix them up in a stew with a dash of Lynch hair and a pinch of youthful idealism from a 77-year old filmmaker, you get Road to Nowhere.  Then again, chances of "getting" Road to Nowhere in terms of the factual events of Velma Durand's story are slim, but as Haven reminds us, "the myth, as usual, has no relation to reality."  For Haven, the reality he is creating through the film, as it usurps the details of the true story, is what will ultimately, although perhaps only briefly, drive the truth forward.  In Two-Lane Blacktop, Warren Oates' character, GTO, lives by the same philosophical principle, reinventing himself and the world with each hitchhiker and roadside cafe, ultimately taking the story of the film's lead characters away from them in a cloud of dust.  I think Baudrillard called it "the procession of the simulacra," that is, the continual obscuring of the "truth," as the real and the imagined become less and less distinguishable from one another.  As a film that expounds on these ideas, Road to Nowhere leads to some good conclusions, punctuated by Dominique Swain's insistence: "Fuck the facts."  

TERRIBLE? or JUST TERRIBLE?: "The Flaming Urge" dir, Harold Ericson, 1953

If there's one thing I might love more than a great movie, it's a terrible movie.  Of course, terrible movies usually fall on either side of a sometimes thin dividing line that separates the crap-tastic and the torturous.  "Terrible? or, Just Terrible?" is a new review segment that attempts to accurately draw that line, while still recognizing what might be distinctly, even sublimely, awful among the vast reserves of cinematic drek.  The rich well of dreadful movies, no matter what realm of production they rise from, deserves critical appreciation just as much as...well, everything else.  There seems to be a desire recently, as the midnight movie experience has gone through an attempted resurrection, to discover the next Tommy Weisau-esque train wreck.  But, jaw-droppers like Weisau's The Room only come along once in a very long while, and a true cult movie cannot be forced, as Karl and Phillip French note in their seminal book "Cult Movies":

A good many cult pictures have the prime constituent of sad orphans--that of being abandoned and rejected;the problem is, do they retain their status as waifs after being adopted by a large, welcoming family?

It's important to note that the French's weren't just talking about bad movies--their book is mostly filled with great movies, including the likes of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalyspe Now, Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West, Jean Luc-Godard's Breathless, Fritz Lang's M, Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, and the list goes on.  Only does "Cult Movies" occasionally dip into the "Terrible," with entries such as Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space, Joseph Newman's This Island Earth, and Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls. Of course, The Room is the most current example of a cinematic waif with just the kind of large, welcoming family the French's were talking about.  Also, in the terms I am applying here, The Room is definitely a "Terrible" movie:  displaying a sublime, layered ineptitude; perhaps, giving the impression that the filmmaker is inventing the act of film production as part of their process (see:  Doris Wishman), as well as displaying an agressive, even Dada-esque, contempt for subtlety, refinement, or traditional displays of art/entertainment.

Tommy Weisau, director, writer and star of The Room

The "Just Terrible," is inevitably more soul-crushing than the "Terrible."  If the "Terrible" is a slow, delicious twist of a knife, then the "Just Terrible" is a blunt, inelegant blow to the head.  The "Just Terrible," like the "Terrible," may rise out of any realm of cinema production, but are perhaps more likely to creep up from the darkest corners of commercial or mainstream cinema.  Just from recent movie-going memory, Roland Emmerich's 2012, Jimmy Hayward's Jonah Hex, and Louis Leterrier's remake of Clash of the Titans qualify for inclusion among the "Just Terrible" ranks.  All of these movies have the potential to be successfully campy/laughable/enjoyable examples of their respective genres, but all of them are, in my opinion, far from "Terrible," and ultimately, definitively, "Just Terrible."

Josh Brolin as Jonah Hex

For the purposes of this segment, I would like to stick to movies that are, for the most part, considered to be Bad Movies, and look a bit more closely at what pushes a movie just over that line, and headlong into the "Terrible" sublime.  To be clear, I'm not much of a fan of the slash-and-burn criticism that continues to auto-archive in the bottomless cracks of the internet.  For every one of the movies I have already mentioned there is an IMDB post with the heading "I HATED this movie...", although, like a bad movie, there may be kernels of wisdom buried deep within even the most thoughtless, confused commentary.  I certainly don't pretend to connect to everything they told us was a masterpiece in film class (I find a lot of Antonioni to be a slog, and Hitchcock often fails to thrill me), and I am not trying to simply trash a movie that you might deem "Terrible," "Just Terrible," or just pretty darn good.  As always, it's a matter of perspective.  Watching The Room with a group of actors, or an aspiring filmmaker, or a midnight audience of hipsters will no doubt yield very different emotional and/or physical responses to the film. (I recall one student who, without any experience with the world of Bad Movies, approached me about The Room after class, a bit shaken after having seen it.  A "friend" had recommended it as a movie he should see, and he was obviously still trying to grapple with it psychologically days later.  He wanted answers.)

Kyle Vogt and Greg Sestero in The Room      

In reviewing possible films for this segment, I went through a short list of the number of films I had seen in recent years, mostly with my partner Jen (who probably deserves an apology at this point--you're fearless!), as a way to test this binary.  Some films left no doubt as to their "Terrible" status for us, such as the 1959 Mexican production Santa Claus, in which Santa lives in outer space and, with the help of Merlin the Magician, uses his creepy robotic reindeer and his "Rose to Disappear" to deliver presents to children while battling the Devil.  No shit.  Others were definitely "Just Terrible," as in the 1985 cross-dressing comedy Just One of the Guys, a film which seems to have some promising elements, but features lead performances that not so much get under your skin as they do burrow into your flesh.  Similarly, 1984's (please don't click on this!) Rhinestone, starring Sylvester Stallone and Dolly Parton as country singers, or something, would seem to be a cinematic pairing destined for the timeless "Terrible," but...well, no.

Sylvelster Stallone and (Unidentified Actress) in Rhinestone

Other pics we split on:  Larry Cohen's The Stuff (1985) fell just barely on the "Terrible" side for me, whereas it missed the mark for my partner--just the opposite for 1954's Devil Girl From Mars  (we still have Frank Henenlotter's Basket Case I + II to bring us together!).  Some seem like they might qualify for consideration, but maybe prove too bland/competent/uniquely strange/genuinely enjoyable to even enter the running (Harmony Korine's Trash Humpers and John Chu's Step Up 3, as recent examples...not to mention a fun double bill).  Of course, I am always open to suggestions, and please leave yours in the comments section for future segments!

Up first for consideration, as a kind of compliment to the last INSTANT 3 post on "Closeted Themes," is maybe the most badly closeted movie in cinema history, 1953's The Flaming Urge.  Directed by one-time auteur Harold Ericson, The Flaming Urge follows the troubled young man Tom Smith, played by Harold Lloyd Jr., the son of silent film legend Harold Lloyd.  Tom is having problems adjusting to a new town, a new job, and to make it worse, everything seems to be burning down around him.  Fortunately for Tom, the titular "Urge" that he possesses is fire chasing.  Yes, chasing fires, watching fires, being around firetrucks, firemen, fire dogs, not to mention those slides they use to save people from high rise buildings.

A thrilling, dangerous ride in The Flaming Urge

Tom's urges are so strong that they threaten to jeopardize his standing with Mr. Pender, the manager of his new job at the Tie counter of a local department store.  One day, while drawn away from his duties at the Tie counter by the sweet sound of sirens, Tom befriends a local gentleman named Mr. Chalmers who politely asks "haven't I seen you somewhere before?" and seems to share and understanding of Tom's passion for fire chasing.  Of course, Mr. Chalmers is not just another fire enthusiast.  Unbeknownst to Tom, Mr. Chalmers turns out to be the manager of the very department store where Tom is employed.  Mr. Chalmers advises young Tom that maybe instead of chasing  every fire that comes along he should spread it out a bit, as a way to not make his embarrassing urges so obvious.  Mr. Chalmers then reveals that he too enjoys a good fire, and even allows Tom to slide down the fire pole he had installed as a secret getaway from his office!

Jonathan Hale as Mr. Chalmers and Harold Lloyd Jr. as Tom Smith
in The Flaming Urge

Tom learns gradually to temper his urges, with the help from a young, female psychology student, Charlotte Cruickshank, played by Cathy Downs (most notably, Clementine in John Ford's My Darling Clementine).  Equipped with only the first year of a psychology degree, Cathy's pursuit to help Tom with his issues is paralleled by Tom's struggle with the local fire department's fire dog, a pesky animal that he can't seem to shake.  In another frustrating conflict with Tom's boss Mr. Pender, the dog follows Tom back to the department store, crouching low to pull his body covertly along the base of the Tie counter (an impressive animal acting moment that rivals another canine-based television sensation of the early 50's).  Mysteriously disappearing to chase fires was one thing, but now Tom has to explain why the fire dog is following him back to his place of employment.  Not only that, but Tom's idea to create a giant bow tie display is shot down by Mr. Pender, who calls it out as "too flamboyant."

Tom's "flamboyant" bow tie display in The Flaming Urge

Tom and Fire Dog are confronted by Mr. Pender,
played by Byron Foulger, in The Flaming Urge

The climax of The Flaming Urge involves a mysterious fire breaking out in a men's changing room at the company beach party.  Was Tom the culprit?  Will he ever get his job back, given his nearly pyro-maniacal learnings?  Will he ever shake that dog?  I don't want to spoil the finale of The Flaming Urge...but lets just say, even though it seems that Tom gets married to Cathy Cruickshank, remember that final image of the dog running close behind.  Ultimately, The Flaming Urge reminds us that sometimes desire is a lot like a fire dog that just won't leave you alone.  

Who started the fire?  -  The Flaming Urge

Shot on location in Monroe, Michigan, The Flaming Urge captures all the beauty of a highly combustible locale in the early 50's.  A good movie to watch with someone who has a keen eye for subtext.  With a mercifully brief running time of around 67 minutes, The Flaming Urge is delightfully, flamboyantly "Terrible."

The siren sounds of the Monroe fire engines strike the ears
of young Tom for the first time in The Flaming Urge

Have suggestions for "Terrible? or, Just Terrible?"  

Please let me know, and feel free to comment on any of the films mentioned in this segment in the Comment section.

Thanks to the Neo-Futurists of Chicago who tipped me off to this gem and others through their "It Came From the Neo-Futurarium" series.  Check it out.

 

INSTANT 3: Closeted Themes

One possible reading of the film I addressed in my last post, Bad Company (1972), is one that puts a queer lens to the relationship between Jake (Jeff Bridges) and Drew (Barry Brown), considering that their characters could be read as the romantic coupling at the center of the film.  In one revealing scene, Brown's character is the only one in the gang who refuses to have sex with a female prairie prostitute.  His excuse is that he's "saving it for marriage," but there's definitely other tensions in the air.

Jeff Bridges and Barry Brown
on the set of Bad Company

For this second installment of "Instant 3" I want to recommend three flicks available to watch instantly on your Netflix queue that you won't find in the "Gay and Lesbian" section, though they should probably all share that genre classification.   In the age of the "Bro-mance" (a term I use reluctantly), which are too often just another excuse for naturalizing audiences to homophobic punchlines, it seems necessary to champion films that are presenting complex and under-represented presentations of gender and sexuality.  I am always interested in movies that are dealing with issues of masculinity and male relationships that don't fit into cookie-cutter categories of social expectation (although not available to "Watch Instantly," check out Jerry Schatzberg's Grand Prix Cannes Winner Scarecrow (1973), Elaine May's Mikey and Nicky (1976), Alex and Andrew Smith's The Slaughter Rule (2002), for starters).

David Morse and Ryan Gosling
in The Slaughter Rule

The following recommendations (all pretty male oriented, I'm aware--but, please send me your suggestions for their female counterparts!)  include two regrettably under-seen pictures that rank among the best films of 2008-2009, and a landmark indie film that most have probably seen, but maybe haven't considered as the gayest work of a great director:

1) Bronson (2008) - Tom Hardy has been sadly underused since his tour-de-force performance in Nicolas Winding Refn's portrait of England's most violent and artistic prisoner (most notably breathing a bit of life into Christopher Nolan's overwritten Inception); once you see Bronson you may understand why, since a character like Mikey Peterson, aka Charlie Bronson, only comes along once in a lifetime.  Bronson begins as if it were a typical bio-pic, but succeeds by never acting as if one film could "tell the story" of a life, instead combining a grandiose visual sensibility with a larger-than-life subject to create a biography that is truly an avant-garde example of it's genre.  Bronson is plot-less in the best sense; not a novel, but a painting.  The film alternately uses voice-over, staged sequences, and slightly skewed locations as a way to stay expressively focused on it's complex central character.                                                                 Bronson never quite acts as you suspect it should:  in one moment bombastic, then nearly silent; at times maddeningly masculine, then utterly feminine.  Hardy is at the heart of all of this, giving a performance of remarkable technical skill; a combination of the most refined comedic moments of Buster Keaton and the most intensely frightening moments of Ben Kingsley...but with prison workout muscles.  The character of Bronson is progressively ushered through the film's narrative by an impressively queer supporting cast, including Hugh Ross as Bronson's Uncle Jack, Matt King as his fighting promoter, Paul, and James Lance as his prison art instructor, Phil.  Bronson's relationship with all of these men is physically measured in a curious fashion, contrasting the depiction of his struggles to relate to the women in his life.  Of course, in one sense, it's a prison movie, but one that never uses the sexuality of prison life as a cheap punchline, but explores it in an almost absurdist manner.  For a film that ultimately leaves us with one of the most brutal images of confinement in prison movie history, Bronson is terrifically funny and fantastically colorful at times, as well as easily being the most quotable film of the last ten years (my favorite line being Uncle Jack's assessment of Bronson's facial hair:  "That's an outstanding set of mustaches").  I hope to catch up with Refn's other work soon, including the Pusher trilogy, Fear X with John Turturro, Valhalla Rising (also available to "Watch Instantly" on Netflix), and the upcoming Walter Hill homage, Drive.

Tom Hardy in Bronson

2) Big Fan (2009) - Robert D. Siegel had an impressive couple of years as a screenwriter, first with the Darren Aaronofsky directed The Wrestler (2008), followed closely by his directorial debut, Big Fan.  Featuring a lead dramatic turn by the masterful stand-up comedian/writer Patton Oswalt as NY Giants fan and toll booth attendant Paul Aufiero, the casting is a bit of a gamble, but works perfectly paired with the scruffy desperation of Kevin Corrigan as his best friend Sal, a character who we know dangerously little about other than he lives for Giants football.  If there is another high point to Sal's existence, it's curling up in bed and listening to Paul call in to their favorite late-night sports talk show with his prepared monologues railing against the Philadelphia Eagles.
The film is essentially about the relationship between two men leading a poor working class existence (they can't actually afford tickets to the game, but travel whenever they can to view the game on their portable tube from the stadium parking lot), and Siegel understands that his compassion as a writer/director for these characters is the key to the success of the film.  In contrast, what the current spate of "Bro-mances" miss is that there has to be a romance between the writer and the characters, and every turn of Big Fan shows an all-too-rare affection for the losers at hand.  Paul and Sal's fandom is one that is private and affectionately drawn, as they play out the arguments of an old married couple arguing over which soda to drink.  When they attempt to make their passion public, as in the parking lot scene where they fail at getting a "Here we go Gi-ants!" chant going, wandering through a crowd that they are trying to perform along with but are obviously separate from, they fail.  This separateness of Paul and Sal's fandom stands in contrast to the depiction of the Eagle's lair, which Paul eventually infiltrates.  In the lair, Paul confronts his radio-show nemesis, Philadelphia Phil (Michael Rappaport, perfectly cast), whose booster-ism is portrayed as a communal, public experience, where everyone chants in unison, "Gi-ants SUCK!"  This chant eventually becomes muddled, as the camera focuses in on Paul's shaken reaction to the barrage of noise, now sounding more like "This Guy SUCKS!"  It's this moment that is the character-based climax of the film, but for a film that has been characterized too often as a "dark character study," Big Fan leaves it's characters in a pretty sweet place.
In the same way that Bronson is a prison film that doesn't play by the rules of its genre,  Big Fan is going to disappoint those looking for a typical "sports" movie (or, perhaps, something more along the lines of 1996's The Fan--the triumphant sound cue in Big Fan is less Nine Inch Nails, and more Tanya Tucker), but unfortunately what might be missed is a film that is pretty expansive in its implications.  Big Fan is not a "small" film at all, particularly because it's showing us something about fan culture that feels nearly unprecedented in American film, and doing so in the uncompromising spirit of the early 70's character study.

Patton Oswalt and Kevin Corrigan in Big Fan

3)  Reservoir Dogs (1992) - We know that Quentin Tarantino had a thing for queer readings from his screen time in the rightfully forgotten indie Sleep With Me (1994), which may have been a call to look back at 1992's Reservoir Dogs in the same light.  It's hard to believe that Reservoir Dogs is coming up on a 20 year anniversary, but in retrospect it holds up remarkably well, and unlike a number of pictures that surrounded it and attempted to copy its style (I'm talking to you, Boondock Saints fans), Dogs doesn't feel helplessly locked into the early 90's.  The film has already been unpacked through a queer lens better than I could ever hope to here, so I will spare you the details.  Suffice it to say that if you haven't checked out this picture in a while, or haven't seen it at all, it is definitely worth revisiting for a number of reasons.  Although it has probably come to be considered what I often refer to (in my best faux-macho TBS promo voice) as "Movies for Guys Who Like Movies!!!" fare, it is hard to recall a film that subverted portrayals of masculinity in such a uniquely stylish manner.

Harvey Keitel and Steve Buscemi in Reservoir Dogs

"Bad Company" dir., Robert Benton, 1972

Jeff Bridges in Bad Company

There is a scene in Bad Company where a 23-year old Jeff Bridges, playing Jake Rumsey, the leader of a young gang of thieves who are wandering west from Missouri in a dodge of their being rounded up to fight for the Union, berates his young travelling companions for not knowing how to clean the rabbit they have just haphazardly riddled with pistol fire.  It's still early in their journey, and the goal of their travels is not even a glimmer on the horizon of the story being told.  A moment before, the six boys had lined up, each one holding his pistol in an awkward display of violent posturing, and now they slowly shuffle in around Jake, who has become their father as he moves forward from the pack and hunches over the dead animal while opening his knife.  "How can you not know how to clean a rabbit?" Jake demands, as he begins to display the process, throwing in the occasional bit of narration.  Even though we have seen the rabbit blown apart in graphic detail (a nod to the "rabbit hunt sequence" in Jean Renoir's 1939 The Rules of the Game),  now, as Jake cleans the rabbit, we see only Jake's face as he tears with progressive unease at the flesh.  We hear the skin being torn away and the squish of guts set against a series of close-ups on the members of the young gang who are not only disgusted by the sight, but with themselves.  The scene goes on for a while, pushing the sound of each violent gesture of the process to an unsettling degree, holding steadily on the faces of the boys.  Bridges performance takes over the camera toward the end of the scene, as his instructions become progressively mumbled, and we see the weight of what he's done creep quietly, slowly across his face.  The boys need to eat.  Jake holds up the skinned rabbit, and tosses it back into the dirt.

Jeff Bridges as Jake Rumsey

 Bad Company is a movie that has dropped off the radar a bit, but is definitely worth revisiting, not only as a reflection on the career of Jeff Bridges, who seems to have nearly reached guru-like status over the past few years, but for some indelible scene work, beautifully shot and acted.  The film was impeccably photographed by Gordon Willis, whose credits include two small films that sandwich Bad Company in his filmography, The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather:  Part II (1974), perhaps another reason why Bad Company was lost in the shuffle.  Of course, it may also have something to do with the writer/director of the film, Robert Benton, having previously penned the picture that nearly began the Hollywood Renaissance, Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1967).

Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty in Bonnie and Clyde

For a movie carrying a "PG" rating, Bad Company is every bit as provocative and unsettling as Bonnie and Clyde, (and, another example of a 70's film that would never receive a "PG" rating today) although Bad Company seems to want to masquerade as a "buddy" comedy from time to time, accented uncomfortably in a few scenes by a jaunty, barroom piano score.  It's hard to tell whether or not the contrast of this light-fingered score with a rather horrific massacre scene that happens late in the film was an intentional juxtaposition or a studio attempt to offset the brutal truth of the scene.  In the scene the boys murder an elder gang of character actors (including David Huddleston, Geoffrey Lewis, and Ed Lauter), designed to mirror their own thieving gang in the film.  Lewis even goes to the extent of playing his death comically, slumping over with his arms out like a wind-up doll that's wound down, and Lauter's exclamation of "I'm dead!  The little rat got me!" just before he is gunned down in close-up has the air of a comedic punchline, when, in fact, everything about the scene is cold blooded.  The boys whose stomachs turned over cleaning a rabbit are now murderers, and seem to have come around to the fact that murder is survival in the West.

Joshua Hill Lewis, Barry Brown, Jerry Houser, and Geoffrey Lewis
in Bad Company

Bad Company is a revisionist western that comes after a series of films that used the western genre to reassess morality in the Viet-nam war era.  Another movie that was breaking the rules of film violence alongside Benton's Bonnie and Clyde was Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, with its famous opening montage of violence; a scene reminiscent in style of Eisenstein's "Odessa Staircase" sequence in the silent Russian masterwork, Battleship Potempkin, but with less accent on who the "bad guys" might be.  (As a side note, this scene, which was notorious in its time for sending patrons out of the theater vomiting, which was considered so violent for its time that it spawned parody, would routinely strike my film students as "pretty tame").  Bad Company comes at the tail end of an era when the western had collided head on with the counter-culture, from the "spaghetti" westerns of Leone and Corbucci to the pinnacle of the "acid western" with Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo (1970), as well as a number of American westerns that explored the myth of the west through a new lens of alienation, including Monte Hellman's Ride in the Whirlwind (1965) and The Shooting (1968), Peter Fonda's Easy Rider follow-up, The Hired Hand (1971), and, perhaps most notably, Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971).

Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo

Maybe Bad Company dropped at a bad time, amid a number of films that possibly overshadowed it's small scale, but there are also problems with the film's characterizations, particularly the central character of Drew Dixon, played by Barry Brown (a young actor who unfortunately committed suicide in the late 70's as a result of severe depression and alcoholism).  The character's arc is not strong enough to sustain the story in a plot-based way, and the performance has alternately false and truthful moments to a frustrating extent.  It seems that Bad Company could have been a classic with real staying power, but was foiled by a few performance, sound, and editing choices.  You see moments of brilliance in all of the actors here (did I mention a young John Savage?--terrific), and the brilliance of the script shines through at every turn, but it's the small choices--how we get from scene to scene, and how that affects the progressive, complicated arc of the main character--that ultimately hinder the film.  Still, Bad Company is worth checking out for the inventive and perfectly drawn ways it refuses the "slick" violence  of so many westerns that came before it .  The gun play is clumsy and hapless, an often startling commentary on the gun play of the John Wayne/John Ford era.  In one scene, Big Joe, the leader of the older gang (Huddlestein, who would go on to play another counter-part to Bridges), twirls his pistol in an attempt to impress the other men.  The gesture is decidedly unimpressive, and made only more uncomfortable by Huddlestein's closing line reading:  "I'll tell ya boys...I'm the oldest whore on the block."

Jeff Bridges and Barry Brown in Bad Company

Aside from the homage to Renoir, there is another interesting reference that returns a couple of times in the film:  Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.  In one scene, Drew reads from the book to the impatient audience of the young gang, but Jake seems to be the only one who is truly interested.  Just before the final moment of the film, the gang torn apart, and the necessity for criminality seemingly second nature at this point, Jake pauses a moment and asks Drew, "Say, how'd that Jane Eyre turn out?"  In one of Brown's best moments in the film, he replies "Oh, fine, fine."  The ending of the film will not surprise fans of Bonnie and Clyde, although only the abruptness is comparable, not the actual events of the final scene.  Bad Company leaves us with some interesting questions, and doesn't simply act as a Viet-nam era allegory, but plays well in relation to both the history of the 1860's and the 1960's.

David Lean's Oliver Twist

Although I wasn't aware of it in my initial viewing, I should also throw in that the film's characters are loosely based on the characters in Oliver Twist--yet another lens through which to revisit this lost gem.  

Robert Benton

Director/writer Robert Benton would go on to write the first Superman movie, and direct Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), Places in the Heart (1984), and (with Bridges, again) Nadine (1987).