Day 77 Summer School (1987)

Let me say right off the bat, any resemblance between me and Mark Harmon is a figment of your imagination. On the other hand, there are way too many similarities between Mr. Shoop, the character Harmon plays in this movie, and my own Summer School experiences. To start off with, this is a Carl Reiner film, and although I’d forgotten he was in it, I did remember that the need for a Summer School teacher was a result of a teacher bailing out on a Summer assignment.  When I was a freeway flyer in the early 80s, I only got a Summer class when someone dropped out at the last minute or a class was added due to enrollment.  Unlike Mr. Shoop though, I was happy to have a class. I was a young married, getting by on part time assignments,  I needed the cash.

Also like our lead character here, I treated Summer classes differently.  Not by taking them less seriously, but by developing a closer relationship to the students. In summer, college classes met daily rather than just twice a week. I got to know my students and enjoy a little more social interaction rather than just perfunctory. I never took all my students to the go kart track, but Mr. Shoop and I dressed exactly the same for classes in the summer, Aloha shirts and shorts, usually flip flops, occasionally sneakers.  I’m not ashamed to say I still have all of the 80 or so Aloha shirts I acquired in those years. The movie is a little casual about actual teaching, but that’s sort of the point.

So Harmon is reluctantly recruited to teach remedial English to a group of kids who seem unmotivated.  In the best tradition of underdogs overcoming adversity, he finds ways to motivate them and himself.  He pushes some boundaries but never crosses the line with the girls in the class. The students start to take advantage and things get out of hand, thus the comedy. There are also a couple of poignant moments in the film. The attempt to get the students motivated by having them write letters to companies they have complaints with, reminds me of an assignment my wife used to assign her students to help them learn letter writing form. Obviously it is a fantasy version of teaching but it is a lot of fun.

As a movie fan, the film is also fun. It is full of references to other films. There is a lot of Texas Chainsaw Massacre,  references to An American Werewolf in London, and there are movie posters for surf films everywhere.  There is a studying montage that mimics all kinds of film montages. Kirstie Alley is fun supporting romantic interest, but that is not the real focus of the story. The outcome of the big test at the end is a lot more realistic than you might expect,  with a little bit of a “Music Man” finish.

“Summer School” is a very typical teen movie from the 80s. I might have been a little old for it, but teaching Summer School myself gets me a pass in that department.  I only wish I could have brought my dog to class with me.

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Day 73 Bronco Billy (1980)

Everyone knows Clint Eastwood is a Jazz fan, he has written jazz music for some of his films and devoted a film to one of the greats, Charlie “Bird” Parker. Clint however is not a music snob, he likes all kinds of music. In the early to mid-80s, he devoted a number of films to a country score, often featuring songs by country music legends. “Any Which Way You Can”, “Every Which Way but Loose” and “Honkytonk Man” are all emblematic of that aesthetic.  “Bronco Billy” fits that category and adds a lot of comedy elements to the story. This movie is full of Merle Haggard moments, including a performance on screen.

This movie was not a huge success,  in spite Clint’s standing in the film industry at the time but it did make money, more than it cost anyway. . It was Probably too sincere and sweet for the cynical period of the business.  This is a movie with a headstrong hero, a selfish heiress,  and a cast of lovable misfits that just don’t know when to quit.  It is show business like most will never know, but I’ve got to tell you, I know, I lived some of this personally.  I’ll get to that in a minute.

Clint stars with his one time girlfriend Sondra Locke. It is full of the romantic comedy tropes of classic Hollywood,  rather than the later day Rom com’s. There are delusional characters,  madcap moments, a couple of farcical incidents and a bucket load of character actors doing great work, most of whom have worked with Clint multiple times. Geoffrey Lewis, Bill McKinney,  Sam Bottoms, are all vets of Clint directed films. Scatman Crothers is a nice addition to the ensemble. This is a story about people who want to leave their past behind, and live out a fantasy,  in this case a Western fantasy of a Wild West Show. Bronco Billy has tunnel vision for his dream of being a cowboy.  Clint plays a guy who has a big heart, a short temper and a code he lives by, which he wants everyone else in his troupe to follow.

This is a light little film that is often overlooked in Eastwood’s filmography but perfectly conveys the show business spirit the movie is supposed to emulate. The traveling Wild West Show is a throwback to earlier times, even for 1980. There is a drop top vehicle with a longhorn hood ornament and six shooters for door handles.  A Great visual gag happened at the end with a tent made by the inmates of a mental asylum,  and the live audience in each show responds to both the show and the situation,  sometimes enthusiastic and other times indifferent.  The kids in the movie however all love a cowboy, and that’s one of the reasons I love the film as well.

I said earlier that I had some personal experience that goes with this film. My Father was a professional entertainer. He loved show business the way Bronco Billy did in the movie. We did tent shows, we had breakdowns in remote places, there were rebellions by the crew that were squashed through the sheer force of his personality.  I  laughed really hard when we saw this movie. My wife to be, just a month from our wedding wondered why I was so amused. She and my Dad were  never as close as I might have wanted them to be, but when I told her that Clint could have been cribbing some of his performance from my Pop,  I think she appreciated him a little more.

Day 72 Sweet Liberty (1986)

Comedy Tuesday

Alan Alda was a film actor, who made it big on TV after having a number of flop films. On the show M*A*S*H, he excelled at making snarky comedy comments while skewing wartime mentalities. He also wrote and directed some of the episodes which gave him the confidence and cache to do the same with some new films and he had some great success. He wrote and starred in “The Seduction of Joe Tynan”, and he added the title of director to “The Four Seasons”, which was a surprise success and seemed set to establish him as a go to actor/director. This was his next film and it underperformed in contrast to Four Seasons. He only directed two films after that, the last one being in 1990. So his directing career has lain dormant for 30 plus years, is this film the reason why?

The premise of the film is a promising one. A respected college history professor, writes a book about the American Revolution, which becomes a bestseller and is being turned into a movie. That should be enough to get a film started and keep it focused. The problem is that Alda continuously gets side tracked by some personal drama involving the professor and his long time girlfriend, and the side plot of his aging mother and the difficulty he has trying to help her care for herself. Every time the story about the movie and it’s complications gets started, we take a break for one of these sincere but irrelevant plotlines and it turns the film into something of a slog. This should be a jaunty little comedy about the clash between the historical academic record and the fictional screenplay.

The film is full of actors who should be able to bring the story to life, and some of them do. Bob Hoskins, plays the screenwriter who venerates the book but has to sell himself short to stay in the movie business. His part end up being a bit of a cartoon, ironic since he had “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” in his near future. It is also interesting that the same year he made this, he also had an Academy Award Nomination for his performance in “Mona Lisa”, a far darker film. Michelle Pfeiffer was just hitting her stride in films, with the previously discussed “Witches of Eastwick” her next film. She is right for the role in this movie, but the part is underwritten and should have been more related to the main plot. It’s easy to see the potential of her character in the story, as an actress who wants to get it right in the film, but struggles to succed in the male dominated film industry.

Michael Caine is always a joy to have in a film, but he can’t write his own parts, he just has to play them, and they often force him into less than stellar movies. Here he plays an actor who is a bit of a rogue, playing a horrible historical character, who has been rewritten to be a bit of a rogue. His charms are lavished on local women and other film personnel, but he is married and his wife shows up on the shoot. He has two big scenes where his charm is supposed to carry us past the flimsy role he has. The first is a helicopter gag that feels completely out of place in the movie. The second is a sequence in an amusement park where all of the parties are together and overcome the awkwardness of the moment by singing and skipping down the street. In a big surprise, that moment actually works.

By putting his character at the center of the story, Alda is required to be more serious than he should be. I think more time spent with Hoskins, figuring out what to do about the script would have given us more to laugh at. His disputes with the director played by Saul Rubinek, are tart and need a little more to make the humor work. It is only at the end of the film when Alda’s character openly defies the production plans that the conflict between he and the director gets the comic payoff it deserves. Alda may have been satirizing Hollywood’s tendency to infantilize movies, but he needs to take a bigger bite of that apple and commit to it. His story ends up being good natured instead of funny and brutal.

We saw this at the Alhambra Place, just up the street from us. Dee was pregnant that summer and sitting in an air conditioned theater for a trifle like this was a nice tonic to her condition. I watched this on Laserdisc, and I noticed it was in a 1:33 ratio. There was no panning and scanning because it was not framed for a widescreen look. The film is shot in a very basic style, probably reflecting the TV setups of the era and not the more elaborate camerawork that would follow in a few years.

The Laser Disc Inner Sleeve had advertising for other products on it

I would love to have more of these, I do have Frankenstein and The Mummy.

Day 69 Shirley Valentine (1989)

Comedy Tuesday

Some films are meant to have social impact, some are meant for entertainment, and some just manage to be charming when they his the right moment. I suppose you could look at this movie as a proto feminist film, but really it is not. The title character is heroic in her own personal way, but I don’t think that heroism has anything to do with the distance between men and women. Shirley Valentine is at war with banality and giving up on life. She is a middle aged woman, looking around and asking, is this it? Unlike the middle age crisis that we looked at a couple of days ago in “Tempest”, Shirley is the most level headed person in the story.

All of us would like to live out a dream, but as Shirley discovers in this movie, the reality is not the same as the image in our head. Pauline Collins originated the role in a one woman play, by writer Willy Russell, and it arrived on screen in a manner similar to his earlier work on “Educating Rita”, with a star worthy performance. Collins won the Tony Award on Broadway and was nominated for an Academy Award for this part on screen.

Sometimes actors in a play or film, break the fourth wall and speak directly to the audience. I suspect that if you counted lines and minutes where that happens in film, this movie will have the most time devoted to a direct conversation with an audience that is not really sitting in front of the actor. Heck, if you add the time that the character addresses the wall itself, it has to be a certainty. Shirley’s ruminating on her life and where to go with it, and we are the people she is talking to.

Although the subject of a life crisis can be dramatic, and this has those elements as well, it is far more easy to listen to someone question their decisions when they are full of doubt and are willing to let a little self depreciation into their thought process. Admittedly, there are a couple of turns in the story that seem far fetched and “movie moments” but you know what, they work. For instance, when Shirley has told us about her school days and then she runs into the girl she was envious of and cruel to, they end up having a very nice visit with one another and reveal that there were jealousies on both sides of the relationship. One of the warmest moments in the film comes from an unlikely source. Shirley has seen her neighbor from across the street as something of a prig, and she bluntly baits her with a lascivious fib, but instead of taking umbrage, the neighbor becomes a catalyst in a very sweat way for Shirley to keep moving forward.

I am shocked to discover that there were critics who put this film down as a string of greet card gibberish. That perspective ignores the events and relationships that are being described by Shirley. Context is king and I think those folks lacked the proper context. Shirley and her Husband Joe, played by future Théoden King Bernard Hill, were once happily in love. They may still love one another, but that is not always enough for a person. Relationships succeed when they fulfill our needs, when they cease to do so, then alternatives are appealing. Shirley has a holiday fling, but she is not in love with the Greek Island lothario played with dead pan delight by Tom Conti. He is merely a means by which she finds herself again. Oh, and along the way he spouts the most amusing seduction lines you will heat in a film.

Director Lewis Gilbert, who made three of the biggest scale 007 movies, also made intimate films, like “Educating Rita” and a film this movie reminded me of, “Alfie”. The Greek Island settings are skillfully shown as part of Shirley’s fantasy but also the reality. He assembled one of the funniest lovemaking visual metaphors I have seen, and he allows Collin’s timing to move the film at the right pace.

This was one of those films that I think I snuck off to see. The kids were in daycare, Dee was at work, and I had no late afternoon class so I must have gone to see this at a matinee. I thought I might have had it on Laserdisc, but now that I think about it, Dee and I rented it to watch after the kids were done with whatever they had picked out for a Friday night. In spite of the fact that I had only seen it twice, and at least thirty years have passed since I last saw it, I remembered it vividly. To access it for today, I went ahead and added Paramount Plus to my streaming services. There will be some other things to catch up on.

Day 68 La Bamba (1987)

Director Luis Valdez made only two theatrical films, “Zoot Suit” based on his play and this biography of early Rock and Roll Star Ritchie Valens. I suspect that his true call was the theater and judging by the way this movie is staged and the actors play their parts, that may be a better fit. There is noting dynamic in the way the camera moves, or in the set ups or editing. This is a straight forward biopic that covers about two years in the life of Ritchie Valens. Most of the actors went on to better performances later in their careers, but they were all a little stiff and heavy handed in this film.

The main exception is the lead actor playing the title role. This was Lou Diamond Phillips first lead role and he carries the picture over the finish line despite some of the films weaknesses. His strongest moments are the performance pieces where he manages to sell the singing, even though his musical voice was provided by someone else. That someone else by the way was David Hildago, who sings for the band Los Lobos, they provided all of the Valens material that is seen and heard on screen. I was a fan of the band from the time of their album “How Will the Wolf Survive?”,. Although they played all over the area at the time, I did not see them until years later in maybe 2005 or 2006.

There is supposed to be a lot of accuracy in the film from Ritchie’s life. The family was deeply involved in telling the story, and that may be another slight problem There are too many times when the focus shifts to his wayward half brother Bob Morales, and the abusive relationship he had with the girl he stole from Ritchie. Even if it was all true, it feels cliched and Bob is basically a loser who draws attention to himself because of jealousy. Ritchie says it correctly when they have a confrontation at a Christmas : “Nobody told you to throw your life away! I’m only sorry I didn’t say something about you being drunk half the time. You did it to yourself!”.

The climax of the film does feature the fateful moment that has become known as the Day the Music Died. I have a personal reason for connecting with this set of stories, I was born on that day, a year earlier, so Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens all died on my first birthday. I of course have no memory of that, but when the Don McClean song “American Pie” became a hit, I suddenly realized the connection and I have always felt a little melancholy on my birthday as a result.

In addition to Los Lobos, there were a couple of other 80s Rock and Roll stars who played 50s Rock and Roll stars in this film. Brian Setzer of the Stray Cats and the Brian Setzer Orchestra, played Eddie Cochran at an Alan Freed show in NYC and Marshall Crenshaw played Buddy Holly at the Winter Dance Party at the end of the movie. Both of those guys were solid but they are not really part of the narrative which focused so much on Ritchie’s family.

Copyright HAG ?2008

Day 66 Perfect (1985)

Thirty years after this movie was released, there was a libel lawsuit over the accuracy of a Rolling Stone article, which the magazine lost. They settled with the relevant groups and an investigation by the Columbia Journalism Review, concluded that the story was a mess, and the Washington Post called it a complete crock. Maybe Jann Werner should have been a little more careful about playing a thinly veiled version of himself in a prescient film starring John Travolta. When asked in the film why she doesn’t want to be featured in the story he is writing, Curtis’s character Jessie replies “because I’ve read magazines.” That was in 1985 and the status of journalism has not really improved.

This movie is schizophrenic, it wants to be about the sexy health club movement of the era, and it wants to condemn that movement simultaneously. It shows a journalist with some integrity about the promises he made to a story source, who also deliberately pursues the heath club story without the objectivity it deserves, in other words, he found information to tell the magazines version of the story, instead of telling the story of the subjects. It is exactly the kind of bias that journalists get justly accused of every day, and the whole process was endorsed by the Rolling Stone, on who’s articles the movie was based.

Let’s talk about the other story in a little more detail. Travolta plays Adam Lawrence, the journalist writing both stories. He is intrigued by the character of Jessie and the whole health club scene. Or at least it looks that way as he befriends a number of the club members and uses his relationships to get content and quotes for the article. Most of this material is designed to titillate us with long sequences of fit young adults working out in tight fitting clothing. There are literally scenes that last as long as the soundtrack song being used to score the sequence. They involve the cast in thrusting and gyrating in a provocative manner as part of aerobic workouts. Jamie Leigh Curtis in her leotards is usually posed in front of a mirror so we can observe her body from multiple perspectives. Travolta still has his workout form from “Staying Alive” where Stallone helped him sculpt his body for that picture. There is really nothing suble about it.

Millennials will almost certainly chuckle at the computer references and the use of phones and phone answering machines. The archaic nature of the technologies is unavoidable but it sometimes necessary to reflect the times. The workout clothes and the hairstyles of the secondary characters will also amuse. This movie has a reputation as an enjoyable “bad” movie, and I can see why. It is not the fault of the actors, they are all fine, it is simply obvious that this was an effort to make a commercially successful film, more than it was to tell a dramatic story.

Dee and I saw this at the Alhambra Place. I think it might have been the second movie we saw there after the James Bond film, “A View to a Kill”. I can’t remember the exact details but I did have a set to with another audience member. They were loud and I asked them to hold it down, and they got a little mouthy. I think we moved up a couple of rows because they kept talking. I also remember that I was wearing a pair of shorts that would definitely be out of place in modern fashion. I guess I was worried that I might be underdressed for a tussle. It never came to that, and I don’t think I saw this movie again except maybe once on the old SelectTV Channel, which was an over the air movie service, sort of like HBO but with a schedule only afternoons and evenings.

Day 60 The Big Easy (1987)

It seems to my memory, that great things were predicted for Director Jim McBride after this film, that’s not the way it went. In the 80s he had three pretty good sized films and then it was TV work and small projects and they were intermittent at best. This film was supposed to launch him to greatness, but it did limited business and despite some awards, it did not produce the desired effect.

Dennis Quaid stars as a New Orleans detective with a shaky relationship to integrity. He seems like a good cop but he goes along with the easy corruption that seems to flourish in his precinct. He crosses paths with a state District Attorney played by Ellen Barkin and sexual tension starts to draw the audience in. Before they get too seriously entangled with one another, Quaid’s character gets caught up in a sting designed to root out that corruption, and of course this State Attorney is in charge of the operation.

There is also a murder investigation which looks like it may be a gang war, but it turns into something else. The recently passed Ned Beatty plays the police captain of Remy’s(Quaid’s character) precinct and he is also romantically involved with Remy’s widowed mother. The mystery and crime elements are the least interseting part of the film, it is an insight into the culture of the Cajun family that Remy comes from, and the loose environment of police practices in The Big Easy, as New Orleans ifs referred to here, that make this worth a watch. This was the first place I ever heard of zydeco music, much less listened to any of it, and the movie was filmed on contemporary New Orleans locations.

Although it may seem a little exaggerated, I thought Quaid’s Cajun accent was solid, but the best thing about it is that it is consistent. It does not come and go like the accents of other actors. Barkin was coming off of some good secondary roles in “Buckaroo Banzai” and “Eddie and the Cruisers”, and this was a starring opportunity that she took on with great confidence. The sultry love interest would be a recurring part she would play for the next decade. It was John Goodman who would be making a splash with his career in the next few years. I noticed him in the previous year in David Byrne’s “True Stories” and the next year he starred in the breakout hit TV show “Roseanne”. In this he is one of the other detectives who works with Quaid. It’s not a big part but he had a little fun with it.

This was a date night movie for Dee and I, we left our one year old with Grandma and went out for the evening. I’m pretty sure this was another film we took in at the Alhambra Place, just four or five blocks North of where we lived on Garfield Ave. The most memorable scene, other than the sex moments, involved using a magnet to blank out some VHS tapes that contain evidence. Not too long ago, I saw the same idea being done more elaborately on “Breaking Bad”.

Day 51 An Officer and a Gentleman (1982)

Just as America was feeling it’s way back from the military setbacks of the 1970s, and the economic malaise that accompanied it, the zeitgeist was right for an old fashioned love story. Maybe the language would be frank, and sexuality more explicit, but the tone is still old fashioned and it fit with the moment. This was a movie that was optimistic in the long run, even as it featured some harsh setbacks.

Zack Mayo, Richard Gere’s character, is the son of a non commissioned petty officer in the Navy. His Father is not the kind of sailor that you would hold up on a recruitment poster and Zack has led a tough life, growing up around a shady environment. He was smart enough to graduate college however, and he wants to be a Naval Aviator. First he has to get through Officer Candidate School, which is basically “boot camp plus” for Officers. Much like “Full Metal Jacket”, which started this project, “An Officer and a Gentleman” is centered around the rigors of training and an adversarial Drill Instructor . In this case however, the DI is not just charged with turning out killing machines, but also instilling in them a sense of pride and honor. Mayo lucks out because his DI is Sgt. Emil Foley, played by Lou Gossett, Jr.. As much as the romance between Mayo and local girl Paula Pokrifki, Debra Winger in an Academy Award nominated role, is important, the relationship between the Officer Candidate and his Training Sgt., defines the picture.

The candidate is smart, and a bit of a slick operator, but he has yet to learn how to lead. The scene where the candidates are first finishing the obstacle course, we see Zack, squatting down next to a wall, absorbed in what he has managed to do, but indifferent to his classmates. He exploits his family knowledge of how the military works to get boats and belt buckles right for inspection, and charges his cohorts to get the same outcome. Similarly, as he develops a relationship with Paula, he finds it hard to commit to anything other than having a good time. Winger’s character claims that is her only goal also, but she is bluffing as she falls for the hard headed candidate in whom she sees potential.

There is a parallel story with David Keith (not Keith David), who is a fellow candidate and with whom Zack embarks on weekend liberty along with the two local girls. Maybe we all see what is coming, and we know that the story has to play out a tragedy somewhere for the fairy tale to mean anything, but being aware that we are being manipulated emotionally, does not stop it from working. Zack and his buddy Sid are not opposite sides of the coin, but they are divergent paths and we are forced to see the road is a bumpy one.

Gere has the starring role, but Winger is the star of the film when it comes to acting. She has a nearly thankless character arc that comes across as misogynistic at times, but she transcends the limits of the role through her performance. No one in the film though is better than Lou Gossett Jr.. Sgt Foley is just as hard core as any other Drill Instructor we see in films of this era, but he is not a one dimensional character. His antagonism to the candidates is not personal, he wants to root out the unsuitable, and polish the unrefined, so that at the end of their time together, they have earned his respect and the salute he gives them is not merely perfunctory.

Cynics may complain about the conclusion, but they are wrong. We know where the movie is headed when Mayo forgoes the chance to set the record on the obstacle course and instead chooses to provide backup to one of his classmates who needs the encouragement. That was the turning point for me. Even the fight between Foley and Mayo is a forgone conclusion at when it happens. The final moment is inevitable and as corny as it may be, it still works at moving us because we see that Paula has rescued Zack from being just another asshole in the Navy, and helped make him the Officer that he deserves to be.

One of the reasons that I remember this film fondly is that it opened the weekend of our second anniversary. We saw it as our Anniversary night out, and probably went to Black Angus for dinner afterwards. A romantic film like this was just the ticket to celebrate the romance that Dee and I were sharing and would continue to share for many years after.