1863 (game)

(1961)
Original Game (in Life Magazine)

1961 was a great year for American history buffs.  It was the 100th anniversary of the most important event in US history after the Revolution:  The Civil War. Celebrations and commemorations were everywhere.  Life Magazine had a six-part series on the war, written in part by Bruce Catton, the best-known writer in the field.*

And the final part of the series included a game:  1863.

The concept was simple:  at the beginning of the year, the war was still evenly matched, so either side could win.  So the North and South would fight to see if the result was the same as history.

The pieces (carefully cut out of the magazine and pasted on cardboard) were square tokens for infantry, triangular ones for cavalry, and gunboats, which were shaped like the bottom of a steam iron.  Infantry moved one space at a time, cavalry two, gunboats three – but only on water.  Infantry can move three spaces if they use a railroad.

Battles were won by whichever force was larger; pieces were stacked on top of each other to move together.  The larger force would win, but lose one fewer piece than the defenders:  if it was four against three, you could wipe out the three and have two units left.  Or you could decide to wipe out only one unit and have no losses at all.  If you captured certain key cities, one (for the South) or two (for the North) pieces were removed from the board.

As I played the game, I discovered a secret:  the South usually won.  While they started with fewer pieces than the North, they had better interior lines of control and could create strong defenses by concentrating troops.  It was difficult for the North to gather enough pieces to win a battle.  Meanwhile, the Southern forces could attack where the Northern troops vacated; since they could remove two pieces (10% of the North’s forces) if they captured a key city, and the North only could remove one (6%), a capture was worse for the North.

I used to have friends choose which side to play.  They always took the North.  I counted on that.

The game was popular, and Parker Brothers created a commercial version.  The game pieces were plastic, with a slight knob a the top and an indentation on the bottom, so they could be stacked and not fall over.  After I lost the original bits of cardboard, I got this version and continued to rewrite history.

I can’t find much about when Parker Brothers discontinued the game, but it seems likely the sales dropped after the Civil War centennial.  War games caught on at about that time, too, and compared to them, 1863 was pretty tame and was not realistic in the slightest.

But it was fun.

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*Nowadays, Shelby Foote is the name that would come to mind, but Catton is still an important name.

Repo Man

(1984)
Directed by Alex Cox
Written by Alex Cox
Starring Emilio Estevez, Harry Dean Stanton, Tracey Walter
IMDB Entry

It’s hard to pull off true weirdness in a full-length film.  Weirdness usually works best in small doses; too much and it just gets silly.  Repo Man manages to be as weird as possible from start to finish.

Otto (Emilio Estevez) is a “middle class punk” fired from a dead-end job as a stock clerk in a supermarket.  Bored and depressed, he runs into Bud (Harry Dean Stanton) who offers him money to drive his wife’s car out of a bad neighborhood. After he’s chased by a couple of very irate men, Otto discovers that Bud is a repo man, repossessing cars for a living.  Otto joins up, and discovers that there’s a $25,000 reward for repossessing a missing Chevy Malibu – with something very dangerous in the trunk. 

The film is filled with strange set pieces and sight gags.  Otto’s parents are mesmerized by a TV evangelist, unable to look away from the screen.  Their house is supplied with cans of food (which is what it says on the cans: “Food.”  The bottles are labeled “Drink”).  One of the men in the agency (Tracey Walter) philosophizes:

A lot o' people don't realize what's really going on. They view life as a bunch o' unconnected incidents 'n things. They don't realize that there's this, like, lattice o' coincidence that lays on top o' everything. Give you an example; show you what I mean: suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o' shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either. It's all part of a cosmic unconsciousness.*

One of my favorite subtle jokes is Bud talking about the Repo Code:

Never broke into a car, never hotwired a car. Never broke into a truck. 'I shall not cause harm to any vehicle nor the personal contents thereof, nor through inaction let the personal contents thereof come to harm' It's what I call the Repo Code, kid!**

Stanton’s Bud is also fascinating to watch.  He’s tough, but also very much off kilter, regaling Otto with stories and bizarre observations.

Tracey Walter made a career of playing scuzzy characters but actually can draw on a real personal sweetness that makes his Miller the center of attention in every scene he’s in.

Estevez*** has perhaps his best role as Otto, a slacker before the term was coined.  He has not much in his life until he becomes a repo man, and he takes to the wacky lifestyle with a matter-of-fact joy.

This was Alex Cox’s first feature film.  His next, Sid and Nancy, was a critical success, but he never made much of a splash after that.  His films also grew more serious and his attempt to recapture Repo Man with Repo Chick in 2009 barely made a ripple.

The movie may not be for everyone, but if you like something completely funny that keeps you off balance throughout, you can’t do much better.

“Let’s all get sushi and not pay.”

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*If you look carefully at some of the background shots afterwards, you’ll be rewarded.

**A related point is that the driver of the Malibu bears a striking resemblance to Isaac Asimov.  And, while we’re name dropping, one of the producers of the film was former Monkee Mike Nesmith (and Iggy Pop did the theme song).

***Do I have to mention he’s Martin Sheen’s son and Charlie Sheen’s brother?  At the time the movie came out, I did.

In Memory of Celeste Holm

Letter to Three Wives, from May of 2010.

Frank McHugh (actor)

(1898-1981)

The contract player is extinct in Hollywood.  These were actors who were under contract with a studio and who were cast in dozens of films to play small and often similar roles.  Sometimes they would work their way up to featured and starring roles, but they were always dependable, both for the job and for their performance.  And Frank McHugh was the very definition of a contract player.

He was born in Homestead, PA, son of theatrical parents.*  By the age of 10, he was appearing on stage, and in 1927, he made his Broadway debut.  The timing was good:  at the time he established himself as a Broadway regular, talkies were coming in and Hollywood was looking to Broadway for new talent.

He signed with Warner Brothers and made his movie debut in The Dawn Patrol with Errol Flynn in 1930.  But that sort of adventure wasn’t his forte, and he started working on more comedic roles, including as one of the reporters in the original version of The Front Page.

He first came to my attention in Footlight Parade, one of the great Busby Berkeley musicals.** It stars James Cagney as a producer of “prologues” – live music shows performed in theaters before the main show.***  McHugh played Francis, the dance director, most notable for telling Cagney “it’s can’t be done, I tell you.  It can’t be done.”  He made in impression in every scene he was in.

Here is a nice compilation of his roles****

Frank McHugh

The movie seemed to spur a friendship with James Cagney; the two appeared in 11 films together.  McHugh appeared in over 100 films and easily made the transition to TV when the studios system collapsed.

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*His sister Kitty and brother Matt also had long careers as contract players.

**With songs by the ultimate great but forgotten composer, Harry Warren.  Eventually, I’ll write about him.

***One of the great bits of movie magic is when you realize that Berkeley’s musical numbers could never be performed on a theatrical stage, let alone the stage in a movie house.

****Footlight Parade has more clips than anything else.

Julie and Julia

(2009)
Written and Directed by Nora Ephron
Based upon books by Julie Powell and Julia Child & Alex Prud’homme
Starring Amy Adams, Meryl Streep, Stanley Tucci, Chris Messina
IMDB Entry
(In Memory of Nora Ephron)

Nora Ephron was a writer known for her humor articles, but as a filmmaker and screenwriter, she made her mark with romantic comedies like When Harry Met Sally, You’ve Got Mail, and Sleepless in Seattle.  Her final film was also a love story – not only between people, but people united by a love of good food.

Julie Powell (Amy Adams) is stuck in a depressing job dealing with victims of 9/11.  In order to maintain her sanity, she makes a decision:  she would cook every recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year, and blog about it as she went along.

Meanwhile, we see Julia Child (Meryl Streep), a woman who is living in
France and isn’t sure of what to do with her life.  With the help of her husband Paul Child (Stanley Tucci), she learns to cook, and makes the decision to write a book about cooking.

The movie cuts between the two stories.  Julie goes into her  project with enthusiasm, also with the help of her husband Eric (Chris Messina) – at least at first.

Meryl Streep’s Julia dominates the film.  She is a woman who, once she gets started, accomplishes whatever she wants.  One of the most astounding realizations is that Streep – though not a tall woman – manages to make it believeable that she is really Child’s height of 6’2”.  She managed to play as though she is a big woman throughout.

Stanley Tucci is just wonderful as Paul.  It is probably the most joyful and successful portrayal of a happy marriage in films since Nick and Nora Charles.* 

Since Ephron is best known for her romantic films, she was probably attracted to this aspect of the story.  Her touch with dialog and character was sure and insightful, and the love story more touching than some of her more fictional ones.

Amy Adams is also fine, but does take a back seat to Streep’s strong role.

The film got Streep an Oscar nomination, but otherwise made little impact.  It was Ephron’s final film before her death in 2012.

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*After I saw the movie, I read the book on which half the movie is based, My Life in France.  It’s a great read, covering how Child started as a chef despite the scorn for her cooking school instructor, and the fight to write Mastering the Art of French Cooking. 

Hearts of the West

(1975)
Directed by Howard Zieff
Starring Jeff Bridges, Andy Griffith, Blythe Danner, Donald Pleasance, Alan Arkin
IMDB Entry

In memory of Andy Griffith.  Originally published 5/1//2006.

Howard Zieff is a director who never quite reached his promise.  He started out with a funny road picture called Slither (No, not the more recent horror film of that title), about search for a missing fortune, then went on to direct several successful and easy to like comedies:  House Calls (with Walter Matthau and Glenda Jackson -- a big hit in its time), The Main Event (Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neill) and Private Benjamin (Goldie Hawn), and My Girl (Macauley Culkin, which he was still big).  Then, his career came to a halt:  nothing since the early 90s.

It's a shame.  Zieff was able to create quirky and interesting characters, and certainly seemed to have a commercial touch.  I don't know what happened to him, but I wish he did more.

Hearts of the West is my favorite.  It's set in the 1930s, where Lewis Tater (Bridges) a wide-eyed farmboy with dreams of being a writer of westerns, leaves home for Hollywood.  Without planning it, he ends up being a western movie star and wooing Blythe Danner.  Andy Griffith (an actor I didn't care for previous to this*, but the role made him a favorite) was an older, more experienced movie cowboy who turns out to be Tater's hero.

It's a move that loves moviemaking.  Bridges makes some rookie mistakes, like volunteering for a stunt without asking for more pay and suffering the consequences, and getting involved in a couple of crooks.  And it's also about one of my other favorite subjects:  writing.  It does contain one of my favorite movie lines of all time:  "Anyone can say he's a writer. But when someone else says you're a writer, then you're a writer."  Very true, not only in the context of the movie, but in writing overall.

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*No, I don't like The Andy Griffith Show.

Wizards and Warriors (TV)

(1983)
Created by Don Reo
Starring Jeff Conaway, Julia Duffy, Walter Olkewicz, Duncan Regehr, Clive Revill
IMDB Entry

Fantasy is expensive.  Until CGI (and even after), it was difficult to create a convincing epic fantasy world without spending a lot of money.  It’s even more difficult in TV,* so you kind of wonder how a show like
Wizards and Warriors got greenlighted, especially before franchises like
Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter vastly expanded the audience.

Though it did help that it was good.  And funny.

The show follows Prince Eric Greystone (Jeff Conaway**), engaged to marry Princess Ariel (Julia Duffy) and bound to defend it from Price Dirk Blackpool (Duncan Regehr) of a neighboring kingdom.  As their names should indicate, Greystone is a good guy, and Blackpool is filled with evil plans, usually with the help of his Wizard, Vector (Clive Revill). Greystone has Marko (Walter Olkewicz), the strongest man in the kingdom and who talks to horses, as his aide.

The show never took itself seriously.  The funniest character was Princess Ariel, a medieval Valley Girl who was spoiled and flighty.***  Blackpool was your typical over-the-top villain played for laughs.

Everyone is clearly having fun.  Revill and Regehr make great comic villains, and Duffy is terrific in every scene she was in. 

But the show never caught on.  In addition to the hard sell for high fantasy back then, the show was also still finding its way in the early episodes.  Also the mix of comedy and adventure was ahead of its time; years later, shows like Hercules and Xena managed to find a way to create a mixture.  Add to that the fact that the show was expensive to produce, even using a lot of stock footage and cheap sets, and it boiled down to CBS cancelling it after only eight episodes.

Julia Duffy moved from here to Newhart, where she played the same type of character.  Jeff Conaway struggled with roles and drugs until he was rehabilitated a decade later in Babylon 5; it didn’t last and he died in 2011.

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*Westerns, the meat and potatoes of 50s and 60s TV, suffer some of the same problems.  Studio sets won’t wash for outdoor scenes, and locations are always fraught with the problem of the 21st century intruding on the set. 

**This was his first series role after leaving Taxi.

***The most memorable line from the series was her declaration, when taken to an Inn, “I’ve had fun before.  This isn’t it.”

Dark Star

(1974)
Directed by John Carpenter
Written by John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon
Starring Brian Narelle, Cal Cuniholm, Dre Pahich, Dan O’Bannon, Joe Saunders
IMDB Entry

John Carpenter made his mark with Friday the Thirteenth  and worked primarily in horror and dystopian science fiction with plenty of action.  Dan O’Bannon wrote Alien and also other action and horror films.  So you’d figure if the two of them would get together, the result would be an action-packed SF or horror film.  You’d be wrong.  The result was a comedy, with a decided lack of action.

Dark Star was unusual in that it was a low-budget sf film without monsters being front and center.  The ship that gives the movie its title goes around the universe destroying unstable planets.  As its acting commander, Lt. Doolittle (Brian Narelle) says, “Don’t give me any of this intelligent life stuff; find me something to blow up.”

But the ship has problems.  Its commander, Powell (Joe Saunders) is dead and in a cryogenic locker, Sergeant Pinback (Dan O’Bannon) isn’t really Pinback at all, Talby (Dre Pahich) spends his time in the observatory, watching the stars, and  Boiler (Cal Cuniholm) likes shooting off the ship’s laser indoors.  The ship is out of toilet paper, the ship’s computer is cloying, the intelligent nuclear bombs they carry are becoming a little too intelligent, and the ship’s mascot – an alien that looks like a beach ball with claws – is becoming rambunctious.

Even worse, everyone is terminally bored.  Doolittle wishes he was back on Earth, where he could go surfing and everyone else goes about their tasks with the enthusiasm of a dead slug.

The ship is probably the most disorganized, cramped, and dirty in SF films.*  It looks like it’s been lived in for a year and the crew have long since given up on niceties like cleaning up or even personal hygiene.  There’s a stench on ennui in everything everyone does and says; Carpenter has said it was Waiting for Godot in space.

The set, though, was clearly a forerunner of Alien, which also has a lived in look (though not as lived in).  In addition, O’Bannon clearly expanded the subplot about the alien mascot – with mixes horror with the comedy – into the basis for Alien.

The movie was shot for on $60,000 as an expansion of a student film of Carpenter’s, so there was no question it would earn back its cost once it went into wide distribution.  It launched the careers of both Carpenter and O’Bannon, though none of the actors had any further success.

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*Certainly up until this time.

Notes on a Scandal

(2006)
Directed by Richard Eyre
Written by Patrick Marber, based on a novel by Zoe Heller
Starring  Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, Bill Nighy, Andrew Simpson
IMDB Entry

Judi Dench is one of England’s most beloved actress, usually playing a no-nonsense but likeable woman.  Notes on a Scandal gives her a chance to play someone completely different – a conniving and machiavellian monster who is perfectly willing to destroy everything to get what she wants.

Dench plays Barbara Covett, a teacher in a London school. The new school year brings a new teacher in Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett), who Barbara befriends after she helps her with some unruly students.  As time goes by, Sheba, unhappy in her marriage to her husband Richard (Bill Nighy*), starts an affair with Steven Connolly (Andrew Simpson) – a student in the school.

Barbara finds out and slithers into Sheba’s confidence, not by threatening to reveal the affair, but by helping her to hide it. Of course, she also has an ulterior motive in this and it quickly becomes a game of emotional blackmail.

Dench’s performance is memorable.  Barbara is bitter and cynical, and manipulative to the extreme, slowly and carefully drawing Sheba into her influence.  Yet she projects the feeling that she is basically a lonely and desperate woman, who is moved into delusion in her feelings about Sheba.

Equally good is Blanchett as Sheba, a pleasant but flawed woman who is drawn into Barbara’s schemes because she needs a confidante.  She is conflicted about her relationship with Steven, but still can’t break it off, despite Barbara’s manipulations.  As she says, “Secrets can be seductive.”

The film got Oscar nominations for Dench as Best Actress and Blanchett as Best Supporting Actress, but neither won, possibly because the both had won before.**  Also, given the state of the US filmgoing audience, it inevitably did poorly in the box office.

But if you want to see to top actresses at the top of their form, this is a must.

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*Who, like Jim Broadhurst and the late Pete Postlethwait, seems to show up in every good film out of England made during his career.

**Both for playing Queen Elizabeth I.  Strangely, Anne-Marie Duff, who plays a small but important bit part at the end, also played Elizabeth.

The Unusuals (TV)

(2009)
Created by Noah Hawley
Starring: Amber Tamblyn, Jeremy Renner, Harold Perrineau, Adam Goldberg, Terry Kinney, Joshua Close, Monique Curnen, Kai Lennox
IMDB Entry
Hulu Page
The Unusuals was . . . unusual.  It was both a comedy and a cop drama, switching from one genre to the next at the drop of a hat, with one of the most vivid casts of characters in recent years.

It’s set in the homicide squad of a New York City precinct, where the detectives are all a little bit strange.  Newcomer Casey Shraeger (Amber Tamblyn) when Detective Jason Walsh’s (Jeremy Renner) partner is murdered and Shraeger quickly learns that this isn’t an ordinary precinct.  Everyone has secrets and odd quirks.  Shraeger, for instance, is the daughter of an extremely wealthy family, who can’t understand why she wants to be a cop when she could be living a life of luxury.  Walsh has secrets of his own, and run a restaurant in his spare time without caring whether he gets a customer or not.
Other detectives included Eric Delahoy (Adam Goldberg), who has a brain tumor but is afraid to tell anyone about it or to have it treated.  Leo Banks always wears a bulletproof vest because he’s convinced he will die at his current age of 42.  Henry Cole (Joshua Close) is devoutly Christian, but is hiding some dangerous secrets in his past.  And Eddie
Alverez (Kai Lennox) is a swaggering jerk, who refers to himself in the third person, but can be an excellent cop when his ego doesn’t get in the way.  Also quite funny was the unseen dispatcher, a voice that talks about the strange crimes in the precinct, much like the PA announcer in the movie version of M*A*S*H,
The show was a cross between NYPD Blue and Barney Miller – serious issues and crimes, and funny dialog and characters.  The crimes also range from serious to weird, often changing tone from moment to moment to keep you off balance.  Creator Noah Hawley was involved with Bones for a few years before starting this and it seems to take some of the elements that were successful there.*
But the show never really caught on.  Evidently, the audience wasn’t intrigued by the mix of humor and crime.  The title probably didn’t help much, either – it’s not particularly memorable.  After ten episodes, it was canceled.
The show is still available on Hulu.

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*Though no romance element.

The Wedding Banquet

(1993)
Directed by Ang Lee
Written by Ang Lee, Neil Peng, James Shamus
Starring Winston Chang, May Chin, Ya-lei Kuei, Ya-lei Kuei, Sihung Lung
IMDB Entry

When one thinks of foreign language films, you don’t think of many films set in New York City where the main language is mandarin Chinese. The Wedding Banquet is an early film by director Ang Lee, in set in Manhattan and featuring a dilemma that shows how much social patterns have changed.

It’s a film about a very happy gay couple, Wai-Tung Gao (Winston Chang) and Simon (Mitchel Lichtenstein).  Wai-Tung is in his late 20s, and his parents are beginning to get more and more insistent he get married.  Naturally,* he can’t tell them the truth, and concocts excuses.  But the excuses run out and Wai-Tung is forced to act:  he finds a penniless girl from Taiwan, Wei-Wei (May Chin), who needs a green card, so he asks her to marry them.  His mother and father (Ya-lei Kuei and Sihung Lung) are overjoyed and fly to New York to be there.  But they are shamed by the sparse marriage at City Hall, and, when an old friend meets them, they arrange for an expensive wedding banquet to celebrate their union.

The result is a charming combination of comedy and drama, with revelations (obviously), mistaken identity and secrets, leading to an ending that resolves things delightfully.  The characters are charming and well drawn. 

The movie put Ang Lee on the map.  It got an Oscar nomination (but didn’t win), but that didn’t matter.  His next film, Eat Drink Man Woman** was a bigger hit and, and his version of Sense and Sensibility also showed his ability,  He returned to Chinese language films with the smash Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.  A few years later, he won a directing Oscar for Brokeback Mountain.

Lee is now considered a top film director.  And while he has continued making films showing a great sensitivity to character, The Wedding Banquet shows that he was fine talent from the beginning.

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*This being 1993  and not today.

*A movie you should never see on an empty stomach; you’ll leave the theater starving.  It was remade a few years later as Tortilla Soup.

A New Leaf/Elaine May

(1971)
Directed by Elaine May
Written by Elaine May from a story by Jack Ritchie
Starring Elaine May, Walter Matthau, Jack Weston, James Coco
IMDB Entry

Elaine May was a clear comic genius before she started working in movies. With her partner, Mike Nichols, they were astoundingly good stand-up comics, where the two of them would be both hilarious and psychologically astute. Here is their “Mother and Son” skit, which is both very funny and also ultimately dark and creepy.

Mother and Son

But all great comic teams come to an end and when the two of the amicably decided to move on, both moved into directing.  Nichols made a splash first with Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1966, earning a Oscar nomination.  May took a bit longer to get the director’s chair,* but finally got her chance with A New Leaf in 1971.

The film is about Henry Graham (Walter Matthau), a spoiled rich wastrel who has run through his inheritance and is desperate for the money needed to keep up his lifestyle.  He meets up with Henrietta Lowell (May), a painfully shy botanist and, more to the interest of Henry, a rich heiress.  Henry goes all out to get the clumsy Henrietta to marry him, with the ultimate plan that he murders her and gets her fortune. But it’s not that easy, since Henrietta’s shyness and lack of class continually frustrates Henry.

And of course, no one was better at portraying frustration than Walter Matthau.  May plays Henrietta as a sweet but bewildered klutz, a perfect performance. 

The movie was beset with studio problems.  Originally, May wanted to have a subplot with Matthau murdering several other people, but the film went on too long and was cut.  The cuts seemed to have worked, since the film is ultimately a charming romantic comedy.

A New Leaf opened to good reviews, but poor box office, and I doubt May’s insistence on her own vision made many friends with movie executives, especially since the film’s cost was almost double its budget.  However, she struck gold the next time out with The Heartbreak Kid, even though she only directed.**  Still, the promotional material mentioned her name and it looked like she might make a big breakthrough in films, with two critical successes, and one commercial one.

Alas, it was not to be.  Her next film, Mikey and Nicky, was over budget and late; she shot an incredible amount of film (more than Gone With The Wind) as the two stars – Peter Falk and John Cassavetes – improvised for hours.  Her studio got angry at the delays and barely released the film.

It was 11 years until she directed another film.  That was Ishtar, which didn’t work out too well, either.***

May never directed again. Sexism certainly paid a part, but the fact that at least three of her four films came in late and over budget due to her penchant for perfectionism was probably the greater factor.  May vanished from Hollywood and rarely appeared on the stage, and only had a handful of movie credits, primarily as a writer.  Critics did love her in Woody Allen’s Small Time Crooks, where she was terrific in every scene.

May was a can’t-miss who missed.  But A New Leaf – even cut from her own vision – is a comic delight that makes you wish she had been far more successful.

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*Was there sexism here?  Probably.

**The character of Lila was probably one she could have played, but she evidently wanted a younger actress, and cast her daughter, Jeannie
Berlin.

***The film was unfairly maligned when it came out, since it went massively over budget – the most expensive film up to that time -- without any crowd scenes or fancy special effects to show for it.  Everyone reviewed the price tag, but those who ignored that discovered a funny comedy with a few slow and uneven patches.  Critics are beginning to rediscover the film, and Heaven’s Gate and Cutthroat Island took over at the most expensive high-profile flop.  Eventually, I think it will be found to be a decent (though flawed) little film.

Malice Aforethought (TV)

(1979)
Directed by Cyril Coke
Written by Philip Mackie, from a novel by Francis Iles (Anthony Berkeley Cox)
Starring Hywel Bennett, Judy Parfitt, Cheryl Campbell
IMDB Entry

Anthony Berkeley Cox wrote mysteries, but didn’t seem to like to admit the fact.  He wrote a series of stories and novels starring the detective Roger Sherringham, using the pseudonym of Anthony Berkeley (and the first of those originally had no author’s name at all).  He also wrote a series of books using the name “Francis Iles.”  Cox seemed to have an affinity toward poisoners, and that’s the situation in his book Malice Aforethought.  The book was first dramatized in 1979, and British miniseries that played on Mystery! on PBS in the US.

In it, Dr. Edmund Bickleigh (Hywel Bennett) decides to murder his wife, Julia (Judy Parfitt).*  And he succeeds – only to have his plans slowly unravel.

The story is more than just its outline.  Bickleigh is a sympathetic man, shown as being badly henpecked by Julia and pathetically showing a schoolboy crush on other women.  He also has a nice sense of humor, making the viewer sympathize with him and his goal.

But there were two things that always impressed me about the miniseries.  Most importantly, the way the show made us change our opinions of the characters.  Both Bickleigh and Julia are not what the appear at first, and the change in our impressions is handled brilliantly.

Hywel Bennett makes Bickleigh come alive in a very strong performance.

The other is far more minor, if more personal.  One of the minor characters is a woman named Quarnian Torr.  I loved her first name, and used it for the protagonist of my science fiction novel.

The miniseries was rerun a couple of times, then forgotten.  And, in 2005, the BBC made a new version of the story, which means the earlier one is further obscured.

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*Note to those who fear spoilers:  this fact is laid out immediately.  The book begins: “It was not until several weeks after he decided to murder his wife that Dr. Bickleigh took any active steps in the matter. Murder is a serious business. The slightest slip may be disastrous. Dr. Bickleigh had no intention of risking disaster.” This narration is also used in the miniseries.

Theodore Sturgeon (author)

(1918-1985)
Wikipedia Entry
Bibliography.

As I may have mentioned before, when I first started reading science fiction, the short story was king.  Authors could make a living writing them* and readers were happy with anthologies and single-author collections.

And one of the kings of the short story was Theodore Sturgeon.  While his name is well known to SF writers, and his stories remain in print in small presses, you’d be hard pressed to find him in mass market works.

Sturgeon was born as Edward Hamilton Waldo, but had his name legally changed to when his mother remarried when he was 11.  He started writing in 1938, and soon established himself as a master storyteller, writing science fiction, fantasy, and horror with equal facility.

Sturgeon is best known today for Sturgeon’s Law:  90% of everything is crap.  But very little of his output fits in that category.  He had a fantastic and free imagination and a way of creating vivid  and quirky characters.

The cliché is that he wrote about love, and that’s true in many ways, but he was not writing romance.  He was interested in it in all variations.  “The World Well Lost” from 1953 is one of the earliest stories to treat homosexuality sympathetically.  “If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let Your Sister Marry One,” in the original Dangerous Visions makes a case for a form of sexuality that is still taboo today.** “When You Care, When You Love” shows to what extent someone will go to help someone they love.  “Not an Affair” is about a seduction for a purpose.  The latter two stories have ending twists that make them unforgettable.  “A Saucer of Lonliness” – made into an episode of The New Twilight Zone is a charming love story.

But Sturgeon was no softy.  His short story “It,”*** written in 1940, is one of the best horror stories ever written, because the monster in it is not evil and thus predictable, but amoral and capable of anything at all.  “Killdozer” – later made into a TV movie – is a straight adventure story.  “Mr. Costello, Hero” is a scathing denunciation of McCarthyism; the final image condemns all people who take power by playing on fear.

In a different vein, there were dramatic stories like “The Man who Lost the Sea” (again with a powerful ending) and “Slow Sculpture.”

As for humor, Sturgeon actually had a story in The National Lampoon and while “Pruzy’s Pot” may not be his best work, it’s certainly a great idea for a humor story that fit right in with the Lampoon’s sensibility.  “Two Percent Inspiration” is a fun story, with a great triple twist at the end. 

Sturgeon’s best known works were for TV.  He wrote two Star Trek episodes, both memorable.  “Shore Leave” has people enjoying themselves on what turns out to be an amusement park planet.  His other, “Amok  Time,” wrote the bible for Vulcan sexuality.

As far as novels are concerned, his More than Human is considered a classic, telling the story of the evolution of a gestalt human being, the next step in evolution.****  But his other novels were few and far between.  He ended up writing only six under his own name, plus some novelizations.  One of these is my favorite.  His book The Player on the Other Side is sometimes cited as Ellery Queen’s best novel, but Sturgeon wrote it under Queen’s direction.

Sturgeon didn’t really need to write novels, though.  His stories were sold and constantly anthologized, bringing in a regular income.  He also had dozens of collections, more than just about any other author this side of Asimov.*****

The list of memorable Sturgeon stories is long, though he won very few awards – only the International Fantasy Award, and a Hugo and Nebula for “Slow Sculpture.”  Much of this was timing; a lot of his best work was written before the awards were set up.

Sturgeon died in 1985.  His last novel, Godbody, was published the next year but because SF readers prefer novels (and long ones) to anthologies, it’s hard to stumble upon his work.  A ten-volume edition of his complete stories is available, but it’s not likely something you’ll see in your local bookstore. 

But his contribution to the genre is immense.  There’s even a Theodore Sturgeon Award for best SF short story given each year, though it’s relatively unknown.  Sturgeon’s personal motto:  “Ask the next question” (represented by a Q with an arrow through it) is also well known in SF circles.

Seek out his stories.  No one was better at firing the imagination.

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*The one cent a word that you could get at a top market works out to almost 9 cents a word nowadays, more than any major science fiction market nowadays.  There were also many more decently paying magazines, and, if you wrote a series of short stories, you could repackage them into a book.  Plus there were short story reprint anthologies.

**And will probably remain so.  But Sturgeon raises questions about our assumptions.

***I’m certain that Stephen King knew of it when he reused the title.  The monster in the story was the precursor of other plant-based monsters like The Heap, Man Thing, and Swamp Thing.

****Like many SF novels of the time, it’s a fix-up of three shorter works.  This allowed him to sell the book twice – to the magazine that published the original.

*****Including one titled Caviar, probably the cleverest title for a science fiction collection ever.  Think about it.

Quantum Leap (TV)

(1989-1993)
Created by Donald P. Bellisario
Starring Scott Bakula, Dean Stockwell
IMDB Entry

Quantum Leap was like no other science fiction show.

The concept behind it is complicated.  Scientist Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) is accidentally sent back in time, trading places with someone from the past.  And that was meant literally:  he would look to everyone but the audience just like the person he replaced as he would try to fix something that had gone wrong.  If he failed to make the change, he’d be stuck as the other person forever.  He was assisted by Al (Dean Stockwell), a holographic image of a man from his own time who only Sam could see.  Things were complicated by the fact that the leaps “Swiss-cheesed” his brain, so that there were gaps in his knowledge.

Creator Donald P. Bellisario had had a big hit with Magnum PI, and wanted originally to do an anthology show. But he knew the business well enough to to understand no network would ever agree to one.  That’s where he came up with the idea, allowing there to be the same lead character in every episode, while being able to tell stories of all different times and places.

The show started out with some strict ground rules.*  Sam could only travel within his own lifetime.  No one but Sam could see or hear Al.  And the story would not have him leaping into famous people or anyone near them (though he did have encounters with them, something Bellisario called a “Kiss with History”).

What made the show live up to the concept was the writing. Bellisario wrote many of the scripts, including most of the best.  His wife, Deborah Platt, also contributed quite a bit, and it’s a toss up to figure out who was better.  Tommy Thompson also contributed many good ones.

As for the acting, the two leads were terrific.  Bakula played Beckett with a basic decency and wonder about what was going on around him.** Dean Stockwell’s Al was a comic relief and a big ladies man whose personality completely obliterated the fact that his main role was to dump information about what was going on to both Sam and the audience.***

Some of the most memorable episodes were:

• The Color of Truth. A take on Driving Miss Daisy with Sam as a Black chauffeur in the segregated South.
• What Price Gloria?  Sam leaps into a woman had has to save her roommate while learning to live as a woman.
• Jimmy.  Sam leaps into a Down Syndrome man who needs to show he can work in the real world.
• Another Mother.  Sam learns the problems of motherhood from the female point of view.
• M.I.A. Sam has to prevent a woman from declaring her military husband dead and marrying another person.  At first.  But it turns out much more is going on than Al is willing to tell him.
• The  Leap Home (Part 1).  Sam leaps into himself as a teenager and, as a side mission, tries to keep his family from making bad decisions.  They won’t listen to him and Sam nearly ruins the leap as he tries.****
• The Leap Home (Part 2), which is not the second part of the previous episode, but a sequel to it, where Sam is in Vietnam with his brother, trying to save him while accomplishing its mission.  This had a great multiple-twist ending, each of which is an emotionally charged surprise.
• 8 1/2 Months.  Sam as a pregnant woman.
• Future Boy. About a kid’s show host who has a theory about traveling in time.
• A Leap for Lisa, where Sam leaps into a younger version of Al, and accidentally messes things up, so that Al is replaced in midsentence.
• Lee Harvey Oswald.  Bellisario jettisoned the “no historical figures” rule in response to Oliver Stone’s JFK.  Bellisario didn’t believe in a JFK conspiracy – and actually knew Oswald (a character playing him appears in the episode).  It also shows how to handle time paradoxes the right way.
• Deliver Us from Evil.  Introduces Alia, the “evil leaper,” who showed up as a nemesis in other episodes as someone leaping to undo what Sam had done.  The title “evil leaper” was misleading:  she was less actively evil than she was misguided.
• Trilogy.  Three episodes, all set in a small Louisiana town  at three different times, and centering on Abigail Fuller.  All three stories stand on their own, but the arc is designed so that the final episode builds on things we learned in the first two.
• Mirror Image.  The series finale, where Sam leaps into a small-town bar where things are revealed.  It’s a bit mystical, and not the best episode, but it’s essential, and still gives plenty to think about.

The show was never a ratings smash, but did well enough to continue for five seasons.*****  It had a rabid cult following (who probably are upset I’m calling it “forgotten”), but the general public never warmed to it, and there’s been no revival of it. DVDs are out, and the entire series is available on Hulu (the first two seasons for free), but since it’s so hard to explain the concept, it’s also hard to get people to watch.

If you’ve seen it, you’ll agree it was a great show.  If you haven’t, you’re in for a real treat.

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*Most of which were broken or modified during the show’s run.

**His “Oh, Boy,” which he often said when he showed up in a new situation (and it always was an awkward one), was the show’s catchphrase, so much so that when Superman of the time traveled in a story during the show’s run, he used it, too.

***This sort of info dump is the bane of bad science fiction, but it works here because Al is such an interesting character and because Sam doesn’t know the information.

****Which leads to one of the most powerful exchanges in the show:  Sam is bemoaning the fact that they won’t listen.

Sam: It's not fair, Al. I mean, come on, it's not fair.
Al: Well, I think, uh, I think it's damned fair.
Sam: What?
Al: I'd give anything to see my father and sister for a few days. To be able to talk with them again, laugh with them, tell them how much I love them. I'd give anything to have what you have, Sam, anything.

*****It helped that the director of programming liked it.

John Bunny and Flora Finch (actors)

(Bunny: 1863-1915
Finch: 1867-1940)
IMDB Entry

Nearly everything that was great in the silent film era has been forgotten. There are a few exceptions, but a combination of neglect once sound came in and a lack of interest today in silent and even black and white movies, means that the biggest stars of the time are known only to film scholars.  Silent comedians fare much better than any other, as long as they’re named Chaplin or Keaton.*  But before Charlie Chaplin revolutionized film comedy, the biggest names in comedy in US films** were John Bunny and Flora Finch.

Bunny was born in New York city and gravitated to the theater.  By 1900, he was appearing on Broadway, and when the new medium of film came along, Bunny jumped in.  His first film, Cohen’s Dream, was released in 1909 and he continued to star in comedy short subjects until his death.

Bunny was fat, and used his physique to great advantage.  He usually played a lower class guy who is only interested in getting away from his wife and drinking, gambling and having fun.

His wife was usually played by Flora Finch.  Finch was a thin, sour faced women with a prominent nose that made her resemble the bird she was named for.  She was from a British theatrical family and her career paralleled Bunny – reaching Broadway a few years later. Around 1910, she was cast as Bunny’s wife, and the first successful film comedy team was born.

Their films usually followed a pattern.  Bunny would go out to enjoy himself, but would have to deal with the suspicions of his wife.  Finch was a convincing battleaxe, and the perfect foil for Bunny.  Their

By 1915, they were the most popular film comedians, neck and neck with Charlie Chaplin.  But the films ended with Bunny’s death.***  Finch continued to act into the talky days, but by the end of her career was mostly appearing in walk-on roles.

By that time, they had been forgotten.  Chaplin has revolutionized comedy, moving it from a handful of laughs a reel to a handful of laughs a minute.  Films like A Cure for Pokeritis seem too slow paced, and the jokes are not as funny as what we now expect.  Like all silents that didn’t have defenders, most of the Bunny/Finch movies had become lost.****

It’s hard to say how things would have worked out if Bunny had lived.  I doubt he would have been among the great names of the era; I don’t think from what I’ve seen of Bunny his comedy was strong enough to make him a top name.  But perhaps working on a few features would have enhanced his reputation.  Certainly any male and female comedy team owes a debt to these two.
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*Harold Lloyd and Harry Langdon quickly losing ground.

**Max Linder was the biggest in Europe.

***For some reason, fat film comedians tend to die early.  Think of Fatty Arbuckle, Curly Howard, John Belushi, John Candy, and Chris Farley.

****They also gave a start to a comedian who is far better known today, though was never as successful as Bunny during his lifetime.  Moe Howard wheedled his way into the films in various small roles.  It’s hard to determine which ones, since cast lists were never very complete in those days, and most of Bunny’s films have been lost.  But unlike Milton Berle’s claim that he was in Tillie’s Punctured Romance with Chaplin, Howard’s claim is not disputed, since he did work at the studio where Bunny and Finch were making their films.

Dan Duryea (actor)

(1907-1968)
Wikipedia Entry

Hollywood was always about typecasting. This was especially true under the studio system, where an actor could develop a type and keep working for years.  Dan Duryea knew his part, and became one of the more entertaining heavies in film.

Duryea grew up in White Plains, NY and tried his hand on Broadway. He got his first break in in 1934 with a small role in Dead End, which got larger as the play continued to run. That led him to several more plays, until he was cast as Leo in the original run of The Little Foxes.  When the play became a film, he reprised the role, and moved to Hollywood to try his luck.

Duryea realized quite early on that he was not leading man material.  There always was a superior smirk in his smile, and sarcasm in his words. So he made the decision to make good use of these and become a bad buy.  He usually played a bully and a coward, someone who would threaten you just for the fun of it, and vicious enough to carry through.  But if he was defeated, he’d be whimpering at the unfairness of how he was being treated.

After The Little Foxes, he appeared in Ball of Fire, cementing his reputation and a sleezy character as a comic villain. He cracked jokes but also made a sinister presence as he did so.  Later, he went into full-fledged villain, the type of guy who would threaten the hero or heroine while smirking all the time as their discomfort.

Other appearances during this time in the Scarlet Street, which he convinces his ex-girlfriend to swindle the mild-mannered Edward G. Robinson.*

Even when he doesn’t play and out-and-out villain, he’s a deliciously unlikeable character.  In The Great Flamarion, he’s the husband of Mary Beth Hughes, and, while not actively bad, he’s unpleasant enough so that you understand her desire to get rid of him

Duryea’s career devolved into B pictures by the 1950s, but TV came around to keep his career going.  He even starred in a syndicated show, China Smith, though I can’t imagine him as a hero.  His final major role was in the first prime time network soap opera, Peyton Place.

Duryea died in 1968. 

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*Robinson, of course, is best known as a gangster, but he was also adept in playing a Milquetoast.

The American

(2010)
Directed by Anton Corbijn
Written by Rowan Joffe, from a novel by Martin Booth
Starring George Clooney, Violante Placido, Thekla Reuten, Johan Leysen, Paolo  Bonacelli
IMDB Entry

George Clooney is the perfect combination of film star looks and acting chops, and is not afraid to do serious movies without regard to his image.  He’s been making a series of moderate budget films that allow him to stretch himself.  The results have included such films as Syriana,
Good Night and Good Luck, The Good German, The Men Who Stared at Goats, and The American.

In The American, Clooney plays Jack.  In the opening scene, he’s with his girlfriend in Sweden, when all hell breaks loose.  After the shocking events there, he flees to Italy, where he contacts Pavel (Johan Leysen), asking for a place to lie low.  Pavel sends him to a small town in Abbuzzo, but Jack, paranoid to a fault (and, we discover, for good reason), goes to a second small town and vanishes even from Pavel.  He agrees to help in if Jack – whose talents include manufacturing custom-made weapons – does one final job, designing a gun for Mathilde (Thekla Reuten).  He also develops a wary friendship with a prostitute, Clara (Violante Placido) and the town’s priest (Paolo Bonacelli).

This is not an action film, despite its spies and double crosses.  It concentrates on Jack’s (quite justified) paranoia.  People are out to get him, and he’s not sure he can trust anyone.  The town he hides out in is a maze of crooked streets and tight alleyways, where anyone can hide, and the film makes the most of the location.

Clooney, of course is excellent.  He’s good at portraying his fear even without dialog.  He makes even the most innocuous thing potentially sinister.

The film actually did adequately at the box office, making back its costs and getting some good reviews.  But it was overlooked at awards time and seems to be overshadowed by other movies. Perhaps the title was the problem:  it seems to promise something quite different from what it is, though it is perfectly reasonable, since everyone in the small town refers to Clooney as “The American.”

This was director Anton Corbijn’s first dramatic feature after a background as a still photographer and the director of some short documentaries. He is a filmmaker to watch.

The Creation (music)

(1966-68)
Original Members: Kenny Pickett, vocals; Eddie Philips, lead guitar; Jack Jones, drums; Bob Garner, bass
Wikipedia entry

Sometimes a music group seems to have all the pieces to become stars, and still never manage to break through.  The Creation surely fits into this category.  I only heard of them recently* when their name came up as a suggestion from Last.fm.  When I listened, I discovered a very talented group that never got the right breaks and whose history had some eerie connections with the Who and the Beatles.

The group started out as “The Mark Four,” playing just north of London and – like the Beatles – in Germany.  Two singles were released, but when nowhere.  But in 1966, the group signed with new management, changed bassists,** and changed their name.

Shel Talmy, best known for producing the early Who albums, produced their first singles.  “Making Time” was their first attempt.

Making Time by the Creation

The song had some similarities to the Who circa “The Who Sing My
Generation.”***  But instead of a monster hit first time out, the song failed to crack the top 40.

Their next song, “Painter Man” showed further promise, breaking into the top 40.

Painter Man

The group had a dynamic stage show, with guitarist Eddie Phillips**** showing some good licks and innovation, including playing the guitar with a bow.  They often performed “Painter Man” while spray painting the stage and setting it afire.

However, instead of building, things started falling apart.  It’s possible that a band that sounded like the Who was at a disadvantage when the Who was around.  Finally, Kenny Pickett, their lead singer, left, and their next single was a departure from the sound of the first two, confusing their fans.  No album was released in the UK.

In Germany, though, things were different,  the group was a major success there, with “Painter Man” going to #1.  Their singles and unreleased tracks were cobbled together into an album, "We Are Painterman,” but it was never released outside of the Continent.

The group remained a footnote and was forgotten.  Pickett and Phillips, the group’s songwriters occasionally collaborated (notably on “Teacher, Teacher,” recorded by Rockpile).  And, as time went by, there was an appreciation of the group’s talent.  Phillips and Picket re-formed the group in the mid-80s, and the original lineup was back in place in 1993, due to the high regard of the group in some circles.  The reunion ended when Pickett died in 1997, though Philips still is around making music.

It’s one of the more interesting what-might-have-beens in rock history.

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*I’ve read Lilian Roxon’s Rock Encyclopedia multiple times over the decades, and also the NME Encyclopedia of Rock.  Neither mentions them.

**Bob Garner, like Paul McCartney, played bass backing up Tony Sheridan.

***Including the same guitar, bass, lead singer, drums combination.

****Peter Townsend supposedly asked him to join the Who as a second guitarist. He declined.

*****Including a short stint by eventual Faces and Rollling Stones guitarist Ron Wood.

Mose Allison (music)

(1927- )
Official Website
Wikipedia Entry

Jazz and blues may have a common heritage, but they diverged rather quickly into two streams.  I’m a big fan of the blues, and, though I can appreciate jazz, it’s not my favorite. Sometimes I even find it hard to understand how the two are related.* But there’s someone who clearly shows that the two are closely related:  Mose Allison.

Allison was born in Mississippi so maybe the blues was in his blood.  He took up piano and began to make a name for himself as a jazz musician, recording with Stan Getz and others before recording his first solo album in 1957.  In the beginning, the record company didn’t like him singing, but he managed to sneak in a couple of original songs and vocals on his albums.  These are the tracks that made his reputation, and finally, when he was allowed to sing on all the songs on an album, it made him into a major name in blues and jazz.

Allison had a distinctive voice.  It could probably be described as thin, but he used it perfectly.  He had a way of flattening the notes in a way that added a plaintiveness to his tone and brought the blues come to the fore. It was also distinct because his piano playing was so deeply rooted in jazz as his vocals were part of the blues.

The result was something like “Young Man Blues**”:

Young Man Blues

Allison put out albums for five decades and his work has been covered by people like Cactus, Paul Butterfield, The Clash, Elvis Constello, The Kingston Trio, Van Morrison, Maria Muldaur, Bonnie Raitt, Leon Russell Hot Tuna, The Yardbirds, and Johnny Winter. His most covered song, “Parchman Farm” is blues with a real kick at the end; the final line changes your perception of the singer 180 degrees.

Parchman Farm.

Allison never became a big star for two reasons.  First, it’s hard to become a big star playing jazz or the blues; the genres both have relatively limited appeal.  Jazz and blues artists haven’t topped the charts since the 50s.  Even more of a problem was that Allison fell between the two genres.  Record companies didn’t know how to market him, and fans might see him as being in one genre or another – but not the one they preferred.

Still, he has had a long history of success (including an album as recently as 2010), and he was a pioneering figure in music.

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*The blues sound more like early country music to me, especially with someone like Jimmy Rodgers.

**Familiar to those who know the Who and their classic album Live at Leeds.

Fletcher Knebel (author)

(1911-1993)
Wikipedia Page

Political humor dates badly.  I remember taking an Art Buchwald column during the Watergate days and saving it, because it was the funniest thing he had written.  Six months later, it was mildly amusing.  A year later, it was just barely funny.  Now, I doubt anyone would laugh it all.*

It’s the same thing for political drama.  Political books written in the Cold War era just don’t have the same impact today, and have long since been forgotten.  But one of the biggest names in the genre was Fletcher Knebel.

Knebel was a reporter and political columnist in the late 50s and early 60s. He started writing novels, joining up with another newspaperman Charles W. Bailey.  Their first novel – and the only one by Knebel that is still familiar today was Seven Days in May.  It was the story of an attempted military coup against the US president, inspired in part by Knebel’s meeting General Curtis LeMay.**  The book was a massive popular and critical success, and spawned a well-regarded movie.***

For most people these days, that’s probably all that Knebel is known for.  But he continued to write successful political thrillers into the 1980s.

He followed his success with Convention, then parted company with Bailey to write on his own.  All his books were of the same type:  political events lead to serious questions like what to do if the president may be insane (Night of Camp David)**** or an important top aide disappears (Vanished) or if the presidential candidate dies just before the election (Dark Horse).  The books were great page turners.

But I doubt they’d have much appeal today.  The assumptions and fears were in a far different political climate.  Trespass, for instance, is about Black militants taking revolutionary action, something that was a potential (if unlikely) threat back then, but which sounds just silly today.

Still, Knebel was a major success, his books selling over 6 million copies worldwide.  All are out of print (including Seven Days in May, though you can buy the movie), and aren’t likely to be rediscovered. 

Knebel died in 1993, committing suicide after a long bout with lung cancer.  Ironically, his most famous quote is “Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.”

He may never come back into style, but his writing is worth remembering.

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*It was titled (at least in my local newspaper), “What We Have Learned So Far.”  Buchwald evidently understood the problem; as far as I know, it was never reprinted in any of his books.

**LeMay was a successful commander who became too right wing for the military, famous for his comment about bombing North Vietnam back into the Stone Age.  He advocated using nuclear weapons in Vietnam and ended up running as George Wallace’s vice president for the American Independent Party in 1968.

***The book was actually near-future science fiction.  The movie tried to show this by using people talking on videophones.

****Written prior to the 25th Amendment spelled out the process.

Don Juan Demarco

(1994)
Written and Directed by Jeremy Leven
Starring Marlon Brando, Johnny Depp, Faye Dunaway.
IMDB Entry

In these beyond-cynical times, romance is very difficult to bring off.  Few movies of recent vintage are out-and-out romantic without being cloyingly sweet.  That is certainly why Don Juan Demarco has been overlooked.

It’s the story of a mysterious young man (Johnny Depp) who claims to be the famous lover, Don Juan.  After attempting suicide, Don Juan is put into a mental institution, where Dr. Jack Mickler (Marlon Brando) decides to determine if he is insane.  It doesn’t help that he insists he is Don Juan, and Dr. Mickler is Don Octavio, his host at the villa where he is staying. 

The movie succeeds almost entirely to Depp.  His Don Juan is not out for conquest, but to bring romance and pleasure to women.  He seduces them with a romantic intensity that is irresistible.  In the example below, his outfit is ridiculous, and his dialog is just this edge of over the top, but Depp manages to make it completely believable:

Don Juan’s first seduction*

Marlon Brando really gets a second placer to Depp in the acting department, though his role has far less for him to do.  Faye
Dunaway is good as Dr. Mickler’s  wife, whose life is affected by Don Juan, too.

Director Jeremy Leven was originally a psychologist when he started writing novels.  He adapted the screenplay of his first novel, Creator, and one more before getting this chance to direct, after which he spent several years without a film credit.  Eventually, he was the scriptwriter for several other romantic comedies,** but none that were so well done.

This is a movie for anyone who believes in love.

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*One nice little touch is that, about a hour into the film, you can spot the same woman in the same restaurant, looking longingly at door as she waits for Don Juan to return.

**I dislike the term “romcom” and detest the assumption that a romantic comedy is not for men.

In memory of Peter Bergman (1939-2012)

Member of the Firesign Theater.