The Screengrab : cat on a hot tin roof

Armond White Brings the Noise

Phil Nugent — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 16:00:00 GMT

The movie American Gangster grew out of a profile of Frank Lucas that Mark Jacobson wrote for New York magazine, and now Jacobson is back at the same place with another troublemaker, Armond White, movie critic for the New York Press and newly elected chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle. As Jacobson notes, White has the position "because he was the only one who wanted the generally thankless job." That's a clue both to how seriously White takes his job and also to the mixed feelings, to put it gently, that he arouses among many of his colleagues. White is a man of strong opinions, opinions that run against the main current of received opinion more often than not. (He panned the Dark Knight and thought the world of Torque.) The late, great Pauline Kael used to say that people who could agree to disagree with other people about politics and religion and whether their own kids belonged in rehab or on Death Row would lapse into seizures and hurl death threats at you if they found out that you disagreed with them about some stupid-ass movie. You might think that people who form and express opinions about movies for a living would be beyond this sort of thing, and boy, would you be wrong. But even in the the smaller-than-it-looks world of movie criticism, White is a contentious figure. He says that his father "taught us about the rights of the working man, and also that if you didn’t have anything to say, you should keep your mouth shut. But if you did have something on your mind, you should talk up, don’t keep it to yourself." There isn't much that White doesn't feel comfortable sharing when it comes to movies and writing about movies. There was a time when Kael and the self-styled "auteurist" critic Andrew Sarris had a rivalry that inspired younger critics to pick sides and keep old fights going, but when White spoke to Jacobson, he made a point of pledging allegiance to both critics, as a way of declaring his admiration and kinship with any good writer and sharp thinker who takes movies seriously. The reason so many other contemporary critics treat White as the enemy isn't that he provides an alternative to a chorus of mainstream voices but that when he goes after his colleagues in print, he isn't shy about suggesting, or even saying out right, that they're not as serious as they should be. This can even take the form of things such as White's decision, back during his previous tenure as head of the New York Film Critics Circle in 1994, to schedule the annual awards dinner "during the Sundance Film Festival, creating conflicts for some members. White defends this decision. 'The circle is the oldest and most legitimate film-critic group in the country. We’re not the Dallas Film Critics Circle. If people wanted to carry water for penny-ante shit like Sundance, that’s too fucking bad. The circle comes first.' ”

"If you cut me open," says White, "that’s what you’d find: the movies, Bible verses, and Motown lyrics.” He recalls growing up on movies as a kid, when “I used to love to see stuff like The Long, Hot Summer and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. To me, this was a window into the adult world. Now people watch movies so they can stay kids, which proves how infantilized the culture is. I wanted to see how grown-ups acted, in CinemaScope." And for all his vitriol, he sees himself as a positive force, claiming that "he has never knocked a film without suggesting a superior movie a viewer might more profitably spend his time watching. Instead of the usual ten-best list, White offers the 'Better-Than List,' in which he expounds on why one lesser-known or critically unfashionable movie is better than another highly touted but ultimately empty product." It sounds great in theory. In reality, you'd be surprised how few fans of The Dark Knight are soothed by hearing that while the movie they love is a piece of shit, they can redeem themselves by trading it in for Transporter 3. Meanwhile, some of the critics who respect his intelligence and faith in his own taste and who might be expected to have his back feel that he's showboating when he does what they call his "last honest, angry man" routine. His show of principles has also taken the form of writing a controversial piece a few years ago in which he castigated his fellow critics for accepting DVD screener copies of movies for review, thus ending the accepted idea, once taken as gospel among critics, that you haven't earned the right to claim to have really seen a movie unless it's been on a large screen in proper theater conditions. “I don’t say these things to call attention to myself or to get a rise out of people," White protests. "I say them because I believe them. We’re living in times when critics get fired if they don’t like enough movies. People don’t need to hear what mouthpieces for the movie industry tell them. They need to hear the truth.”

Pat Hingle, 1924 - 2008

Phil Nugent — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:00:00 GMT

Pat Hingle, who died this past weekend at the age of 84, was one of the most familiar and dependable of all American character actors, over the course of a career in film, TV, and the stage that spanned some fifty years. Born in Denver, Colorado, he served in the navy during World War II and studied acting at the University of Texas. In the first several years of his career, Hingle appeared in the Broadway productions of Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (as Gooper, father to the no-neck monsters), Archibald Macleish's J.B. (in the title role), and William Inge's The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (for which he received a Tony nomination). He also made his movie debut (not counting an uncredited small role in On the Waterfront) in the 1957 Method melodrama End as a Man (A.K.A. The Strange One, based on a play that he had also appeared in. Hingle was offered the title role in the 1960 Elmer Gantry, but before the film started shooting, he suffered a horrendous accident, falling more than fifty feet down an elevator shaft. He was laid up for more than a year recovering from his injuries, which included a fractured skull, his left leg broken in three places, and the loss of a finger. Elmer went ahead with Burt Lancaster , who won an Academy Award for it. Hingle maintained a good-natured attitude towards the whole thing: ""I know that if I had played Elmer Gantry, I would have been more of a movie name. But I'm sure I would not have done as many plays as I've done. I had exactly the kind of career I had hoped for. And I never, never forget that I'm the recipient of the blessing that is life. It was given to me to try again."

Hingle returned to work looking older, gruffer, squatter, and craggier: an easy casting call for authority figures at a time when those roles often meant dads who don't understand their kids (as in Splendor in the Grass, where he played the father of Warren Beatty, who was all of fourteen years his junior) or cops who were either crooked or self-righteously brutal or both. He appeared with Clint Eastwood in Hang 'Em High, The Gauntlet, and Sudden Impact, played Sally Field's father in Norma Rae, starred in the original Broadway production of Arthur Miller's The Price, and did an unholy shitload TV, notably playing Colonel Tom Parker to Kurt Russell's Elvis Presley in John Carpenter's 1979 Elvis and Sam Rayburn to Randy Quaid's Lyndon Johnson in the 1987 LBJ: The Early Years.

Unlike a lot of actors who work that much, Hingle has the distinction of having continued to get better, tapping into deeper veins of regret and exposing a streak of wry humor as he started to get almost as old as his characters. Reviewing the 1985 The Falcon and the Snowman, in which he played the hardass FBI-agent father of Timothy Hutton, Pauline Kael wrote, "It's a role Hingle has played dozens of times --he's a pop-culture joke in this role--but I doubt if he has ever done it as well." Five years later, he went to town in perhaps his best movie role, the terrifying cracker crime lord Bobo Justus in Stephen Frears's Jim Thompson adaptation The Grifters, giving Anjelica Huston the shivers and making it seem as if all the secrets to the universe might be contained in the line, "You'll never shit right again." He also played Commissioner Gordon in the 1989 Batman, a role that he would reprise in three other movies, playing it alongside a total of three different different--Batmans? Batmen? Whatever. More recently, he played Ben Franklin in a late-'90s revival of the Broadway musical 1776 and turned up in the movies A Thousand Acres, Muppets from Space, Shaft, and Talladega Nights. He died at his home in Carolina Beach, North Carolina, where he decided to settle after working there shooting the 1986 Maximum Overdrive, Stephen King's directing debut. ""I really do believe there was a divine hand that headed me here," he had told a local reporter.. "I am happy that I think it's going to end here."

Screengrab Salutes: The Paul Newman Top Ten (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 14:30:00 GMT

7. CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF (1958)

Newman's first on-screen brush with Tennessee Williams. (Four years later, he'd star in a hysterical version of Sweet Bird of Youth, and in 1987 he directed Joanne Woodward in a movie of The Glass Menagerie.) It suffers from the requirement that the play be bowdlerized for Hollywood: unless you know the original's big revelation about the exact nature of the relationship between Newman's Brick and his faithful football buddy Skip, you could run this movie backwards and forwards and still end up a little hazy on just what it is that's got the rich boy with the hot wife so pouty. But it gives Newman the chance to show off his Actors Studio chops and make with the heavy Broadway dramatics, especially in the famous showdown about "mendacity" with the doomed, cantankerous father figure, Big Daddy (Burl Ives, looking like a redneck cave troll). And seeing the Adonis-like Newman demonstrate his manly self-control by refusing the increasingly desperate advances of an in-her-prime Elizabeth Taylor must have inspired a compelling mixture of bewilderment and admiration in theaters from coast to coast.

6. THE STING (1973)

Shortly after Newman’s death, Larry King replayed a series of recent interviews with the flinty, taciturn actor, who came across as guarded and frankly embarrassed to be the center of attention under the glaring spotlights. The only times the star’s famous blue eyes really lit up with the kind of playful, mischievous glee familiar from so many of his film roles came when he spoke about a prank war between himself and his old running partner, Robert Redford. To say The Sting was only his second best on-screen pairing with Redford is hardly damning the seminal caper flick with faint praise, considering the American Film Institute named their best buddy flick (1969’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) one of the best westerns of all time, and both their paired collaborations racked up a total of 12 Academy Awards between them (with The Sting earning Oscars for Best Picture as well as Best Director for lucky charm helmer George Roy Hill, who would later direct Newman in Slap Shot). When asked why he and Redford never did another film together despite their palpable onscreen chemistry, Newman explained they wanted to, but simply never found a suitable project...understandable, considering the standard they’d set for themselves with films of a quality Hollywood barely even bothers to attempt anymore. Screenwriter David S. Ward’s twisty Depression-era tale of a grifter dream team seeking revenge on the Scottish gangster who killed one of their own makes Ocean’s Eleven (either version) seem like a simple snatch-and-grab job, and Hill’s direction elevates the impressive game of his two leads by surrounding them with a memorable ragtime score, gorgeous production design and an all-star character actor Who’s Who including Robert Shaw, Charles Durning and Eileen Brennan as a formidable floozy whose lived-in chemistry with Newman gives Redford a run for his money.

5. COOL HAND LUKE (1967)

What must have seemed like a stunner back in 1967 – Paul Newman, one of the most beloved actors in America, playing what essentially boiled down to a counterculture icon – has lost a bit of its punch. Stuart Rosenberg’s direction isn’t the most sure-handed in the world, and the screenplay (by Donn Pearce, based on his own novel) lays on the Jesus metaphor a bit thick. But even surrounded by a terrific supporting cast, including George Kennedy and Strother Martin, it’s Newman’s iconic performance that makes the irrepressible, defiant prisoner Luke into perhaps the most famous anti-hero in ‘60s cinema and keeps the movie’s reputation from falling in with a lot of other forgotten rebel-without-a-cause films of the day. Newman’s strength, as in so many of his best-known performances, is that he completely owns the role, in all its contradictions and confusions, and doesn’t slow down for a second. When we’re asked to laugh with him, we can’t help but do so; when we’re asked for feel for his suffering, we do it without a thought. A lot of actors wouldn’t be able to reconcile the swings of the character from grinning smart-ass to inspiring martyr, but Newman throws himself into the part with such conviction that while we may not always believe the script, we always believe him.

Click Here for Part One & Part Three

Contributors: Phil Nugent, Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce