The Screengrab : andre gregory

When Good Directors Go Bad: The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990, Brian De Palma)

Paul Clark — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Of all the prestige projects of the 1990 awards season, few had more potential than The Bonfire of the Vanities. To begin with, it was based on Tom Wolfe’s first fiction book, which had been widely read in serialized form in Rolling Stone before becoming a bestseller upon its publication as a novel. The director was Brian De Palma, who made his reputation with a series of kinky, Hitchcock-inspired thrillers during the seventies before branching out into more mainstream fare such as Scarface, The Untouchables and Casualties of War. With a wildly popular novel and an A-list director, Warner Bros. had visions of Oscars dancing in their heads, and they consequently filled the cast with big names, from recent Oscar nominees Tom Hanks, Melanie Griffith, and Morgan Freeman to newly anointed action superstar Bruce Willis, and backed them with plenty of first-rate character actors.

Ideally, The Bonfire of the Vanities should have been one of the biggest movie events of 1990. But then, if it had been, I would be writing about it in my Yesterday’s Hits column instead of When Good Directors Go Bad. As it stands, the big-screen adaptation remains one of the most notorious fiascos in Hollywood history, earning back a mere $15 million of its then-extravagant $50 million budget, and receiving mostly savage reviews. As a De Palma fan of long standing- I’m the guy who liked The Black Dahlia, after all- I’d like to say that the film was merely misunderstood, but even I have to admit that it’s a failure.

Part of the problem is the casting of the principal roles, from the top on down. If you were casting the role of an ambitious commodities trader and self-anointed “Master of the Universe”, whose name would come to mind? Michael Douglas? Tom Cruise, perhaps? But after Warner Bros. deemed the character too unsympathetic on the page, they decided to cast Tom Hanks in the role, which is sort of like casting Jimmy Stewart as Gordon Gekko. Also problematic was the casting of Willis. The character of journalist Peter Fallow was written as a dissolute Brit (the role was originally offered to John Cleese), but Willis ended up being cast for marquee value, and gave one of his laziest performances, smirking his way through the role and pissing off most of the people involved with the production with his ego.

Worst of all is Griffith. During the eighties, Griffith’s dumb-blonde persona proved to be surprisingly adaptable to a number of filmmakers’ visions, from the tart-with-a-heart of Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild to the streetwise porn star of De Palma’s own Body Double. However, the role of Maria Ruskin was far beyond her limited talent. On the page, Maria may be the trickiest character in the novel, a wily manipulator whose ditzy façade hides a pitch-black heart. But Griffith can only manage the ditzy part, so when the character begins to reveal her shameless nature after Sherman’s life begins to go down the tubes we never believe it. The two halves of her personality- sexy and cunning- never mesh convincingly, so rather than lacing her manipulations with an erotic charge, her dark side makes the sexy stuff creepy, which surely wasn’t what the film was aiming for.

But while the casting issues might have been out of De Palma’s hands, he’s far from blameless. Admittedly, Wolfe’s novel is something of a tough nut to crack, simultaneously a cross-section of New York City life, a morality tale, and a savage takedown of the craven greed and ambition that fueled the eighties. However, it fails on all three counts. Much of its power as a snapshot of the Big Apple’s social strata is lost because its characters are sketchy and one-dimensional, a problem that might have been partially alleviated by spot-on casting, but not entirely. Likewise, the film places its morality tale aspects on the back burner for most of its running time, only to have judge/voice of reason Morgan Freeman bust out an extended monologue about decency in the film’s final five minutes, at which point it comes off as a tacked-on moral rather than a natural outgrowth of the story.

This leaves only the exposé aspect of the story. In nearly 700 pages, Wolfe was able to lay bare the motivations of nearly all of the major players in the story, from Sherman, Maria and Peter, to the lawyers, politicians and community leaders who opportunistically seized upon his case for their own personal gain. Without the time to do this onscreen, De Palma instead focuses on the circus (political and media-driven) that ensues. But while a more assured comic filmmaker might have been able to spin even an abbreviated Bonfire into a bitter little pill (imagine what an Ace in the Hole-era Billy Wilder might have done with this material), De Palma brings almost nothing to the material aside from the liberal use of unflattering wide-angle close-ups to underline the grotesqueness of the characters. Sure, there are a handful of cool camera tricks- especially the nearly five-minute-long opening Steadican shot- but for the most part they don’t really work in the context of the story, and mostly just call attention to themselves. I hate to use a criticism that De Palma’s detractors are wont to levy at him, but in this case, they’re right.

In the end, the biggest failing of The Bonfire of the Vanities is one of tone. The scathing satire of the original novel was replaced by a more hamfisted style that was both broad and shrill. A few of the jabs hit (I love how Andre Gregory’s poet is introduced: “he’s on the shortlist for the Nobel Prize. He has AIDS.”), but most of the time they whiff. Scenes like the one where Maria’s cuckold husband (Alan King) suddenly dies in mid-conversation or the famous “crumbs” monologue by Sherman’s wife might have worked on the page, but they flounder and die onscreen, the former because it’s not inherently funny to see a minor character kick the bucket, the latter because Kim Cattrall plays the character as such a high-strung harpy that it’s hard to focus on anything she says.

Now, it’s entirely possible that Ebert was right when he wrote that The Bonfire of the Vanities might be enjoyable to those who are unfamiliar with the book. But I wouldn’t bet on it. De Palma and the studio took a powerful and lacerating story and adapted it in the most pedestrian way possible, and replaced the prickly citizens of Wolfe’s New York City with characters who are both cartoonish and, worse, uninteresting. If anything good came out of my watching Bonfire again, it’s that I’ve been inspired to re-read the book, to immerse myself in Wolfe’s language and marvel at the world he created. By now, it’s become a cliché that people are generally better off reading the book, but in this case that’s the only way to go.

That Guy!: Wallace Shawn

Peter Smith — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:00:00 GMT

"Squat", "toadlike" and "bespectacled" are not the first three adjectives you want on the list when you're building your movie star résumé. But That Guy! isn't about movie stars. It's about character actors, B-listers, stock-in-traders — and Wally Shawn is one of the best. Best imagined as the guy who gets parts for which Bob Balaban is simply too macho and charismatic, Shawn suffered perhaps the ultimate indignity when, playing Diane Keaton's ex in Manhattan (his movie debut), he was described as a "homunculus" by none other than Woody Allen, himself not entirely lacking in homuncular qualities. Still, the son of legendary New Yorker editor William Shawn has managed to carve out a decent Hollywood career playing nebbishes, losers and schnooks — while simultaneously building an eminently respectable career in New York as an insightful, volatile playwright whose work is intelligent, fiercely political and often controversial. Harvard-educated and terrifically well-informed, Shawn has written opinion pieces for The Nation, interviewed Noam Chomsky, and produced a widely-read translation of Bertolt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera, all while appearing in Hollywood fare ranging from Clueless to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. His distinctively nasal, high-pitched voice has made him a natural for animation, and he's provided memorable voice-overs as Rex the dinosaur in the Toy Story franchise and Bob Parr's insufferable boss in The Incredibles. Only a few of Wallace Shawn's outstanding plays have made it to film; while a David Hare-directed version of The Designated Mourner (perhaps his finest work) was made in 1997, it was seen by precious few people, and his most popular script, Aunt Dan and Lemon, remains unfilmed. But as an actor, Shawn has endeared himself and his ungainly appearance to thousands of people who know nothing about his off-Broadway existence.

Where to see Wallace Shawn at his best:

MY DINNER WITH ANDRE (1981)

The movie that put Wally Shawn on the map — and gave him his first and last leading-man role to date — was made at a time when he was still known only as the author of some well-reviewed plays in New York. Louis Malle's filmed adaptation of a number of actual conversations Shawn had with his friend Andre Gregory, who has been the director of a number of Shawn's plays, turned out to be a surprise hit, proving that there was a bigger audience than previously suspected whose idea of a good time was watching two overeducated Manhattanites argue about whether or not an electric blanket is morally defensible.

THE PRINCESS BRIDE (1987)

Wallace Shawn's best-known role is as the not-so-masterful criminal mastermind Vizzini in Rob Reiner's beloved adaptation of William Goldman's The Princess Bride. It is here that he gives new meaning, or lack thereof, to the word "inconceivable," and gets to play straight man to Andre the Giant in one of Hollywood's oddest comic pairings. (Shawn claims that he played the role of Vizzini perfectly straight, since he lacks a sense of humor. That claim in and of itself would seem to suggest otherwise.)

VANYA ON 42nd STREET (1994)

A meta-referential film that is both an adaptation of Anton Chekov's Uncle Vanya and a movie about making that adaptation (and making the movie about making the adaptation), Vanya on 42nd Street is one of the most successful blends ever of film and theatre, thanks largely to its explosion of talent: aside from Wallace Shawn in the title role, it features great performances from Julianne Moore as Yelena and Brooke Smith as Sonya, a crackerjack script by David Mamet and tight, taut direction by Louis Malle, and a big-screen reunion of Shawn and Andre Gregory, again playing himself.

— Leonard Pierce

The Rep Report (November 2 - 20)

Peter Smith — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 17:00:00 GMT

NEW YORK: From November 2 through the 20th, Film Forum brings back Jean-Jacques Beinex's 1981 romantic comedy-thriller Diva, in a new 35 mm. print. As visually graceful as it is inventive, playfully witty, with actual if improbable characters pushing the plot forward, it remains an especially flavorful example of what used to be called "an exercise in pure style" from back before easy access to computer imagery and MTV syntax resulted in an explosion of would-be prodigies turning out movies that really are exercises in pure style. The new print is reported to also boast some new, improved subtitles. (The first time I saw the movie, on cable TV on my fifteenth birthday — I rode my brontosaurus to the house of my friend who had HBO — a single half-assed glitch in the subtitles served to completely screw up the plot.) If you haven't seen it before, nothing else you have seen can fully prepare you for it; Beinex himself has spent the last quarter century failing to follow it up.

October 30 would have been Louis Malle's seventy-fifth birthday, which makes this a good time to check out what may be his happiest masterpiece, the autobiographical 1971 comedy Murmur of the Heart. (I do not mean to suggest that there might ever be a bad time to check it out.) The Film Society of Lincoln Center will be showing it on November 1 as part of their "Young Friends of Film" program. Andre Gregory, who worked with Malle on two of his finest American films, My Dinner with Andre and Vanya on 42nd Street, will be on hand to introduce the film.

BERKELEY: Romanian cinema, believe it or not, is hot right now and getting hotter, so Pacific Film Archives is offering a handy primer in the form of Revolutions in Romanian Cinema (November 3 - December 9). The country produces fewer feature films than any other European country — half a dozen a year — but as Spencer Tracy used to say, what's there is choice. The schedule includes The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, the Cannes festival winner that really got the West paying attention, as well as the sardonic 12:08 East of Bucharest and the powerful recent New York Film Festival entry 4 Months 3 Weeks 2 Days. Plus five other feature films and a program of shorts.

The Pacific Film Archive also hosts The Passion of Pasolini (November 1 - December 7), dedicated to the work of the still-controversial Italian novelist, poet, and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini. The series, which includes his adaptations of The Decameron, Arabian Nights, The Canterbury Tales and The Gospel According to St. Matthew opens with his 1961 debut feature Accattone; it closes with his scandalous last film, the 1975 Salo. Just keep telling yourself: it's only chocolate, it's only chocolate. . .

WASHINGTON, D.C.: The twentieth annual 2007 European Union Film Showcase opens November 1 and runs through November 20th at the AFI Silver Theater, showcasing a wide selection of new and recent films from across the continent. The opening night selection is Christopher Columbus: The Enigma, the latest by the startlingly prolific Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira. The director, who will be in attendance, turns ninety-nine on December 12. I just thought I'd put that out there in case you want to show up and give him his birthday card a little early.

— Phil Nugent