The Screengrab : jane fonda

Great Beginnings: Screengrab's Favorite Opening Scenes Of All Time (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 22:30:00 GMT

DO THE RIGHT THING (1989)

Endings and (especially) middles are hard, but there’s something liberating about the instant rush and hit-the-ground momentum of beginnings, which is why so many great (and even not-so-great) directors are often inspired to make big, bold “HERE I AM!” statements in the first few minutes of films that frequently can’t compete with their own opening sequences. But Spike Lee, after two previous good-but-not-great at-bats with She’s Gotta Have It and School Daze, finally knocked one out of the park with Do The Right Thing, which exploded onto movie screens with the sex-and-violence one-two punch of Public Enemy’s “Fight The Power” and Rosie Perez’s fly-girl attack during the opening credits, then jolted audiences again with an alarm clock and the fast-talking “WAKE UP!” morning rap of Samuel L. Jackson’s dee-jay Mister Señor Love Daddy, who keeps the pace and sets the scene, letting us know in no uncertain terms that it’s HOT and about to get hotter as Lee takes us on a tour of his beloved Bed-Stuy neighborhood, introducing us in quick succession to most of the major players in a world as instantly distinctive as John Ford’s Monument Valley...or even Woody Allen’s Manhattan. (AO)

APOCALYPSE NOW (1979)

Rarely has a film’s initial moments set the forthcoming tone as immediately and evocatively as those of Apocalypse Now with its protracted shot of the Vietnamese jungle. From silence comes the sound of helicopter blades, then the airborne choppers themselves, and then the sparse electric guitar notes of The Doors’ “The End.” When Jim Morrison’s voice croons “This is the end” and bursts of napalm decimate the lush forest, the film fully enters into the realm of the hallucinatory, with Francis Ford Coppola’s pan through the smoke and fire soon integrating the superimposed image of Martin Sheen’s upside-down face, his head on a pillow facing a ceiling fan. Dream and reality coalesce in a woozy, hazy blend of longing, fear and self-inflicted violence (symbolized by a gun lying beside Sheen on the bed) that result, per the Lizard King, in “a wilderness of pain. And all the children are insane.” Table-setters don’t get much more exquisite than this. (NS)

BARBARELLA (1968)

This is more of an excuse for showing Jane Fonda naked than anything else, but the same could be said of the entire movie. An astronaut clad in a rather community theatre-looking metallic space suit floats weightlessly above a yellow shag carpet. Elevator muzak plays in the background and piece by piece, the suit comes off, revealing the astronaut to be a comely blonde, naked beneath the suit. Soon we have Barbarella floating around with her ass in the air to the tones of 1960s muzak. Cute and sexy for sure, but also disturbingly fetus-like. (SCS)

LA DOLCE VITA (1960)

La Dolce Vita has its fair share of famous scenes. The opening in which Jesus dangles from a helicopter flying low over Rome beats Anita Ekberg in the fountain by a mile. Fellini knows that any good opening needs to be odd and enjoyable besides hinting at what's to come. Here we have religion, sexy rich women, poor street boys, modern technology and ruins. And Paparazzo taking photos of it all while Marcello Mastroianni's character quietly eggs him on. (SCS)

THE SEARCHERS (1956)

Much is made of the final scene, where the movie's hero/anti-hero, the racist Ethan Edwards, cannot enter the embrace of the household, and the door slowly shuts on him. The opening scene is a mirror of the end, with Ethan's sister-in-law Martha opening the door and walking from the cool shade of the house into the harsh light of Monument Valley, relocated from Utah to Texas for the purposes of the film. Ethan is riding his horse in through the desert, still a ways off although closer than anything else in the huge landscape. The camera's journey from the dark interior to the brilliant and tremendous exterior emphasizes just how small the ranch is. Ethan's visit is his first in many years, and although the film doesn't say a word about it, it is clear that while his sleazy exploits are one reason he has stayed away for so long, his love for Martha is the primary cause. The whole of the plot revolves around that unspoken love. If you look for it, you can see it from the first moment Martha's face becomes visible, all of the concern and ambiguity that she cannot speak. Unspoken truths are at the heart of The Searchers, and in the gulf between what is said and what is meant is the real history of this country. (HC)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three & Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Sarah Clyne Sundberg, Hayden Childs

Screengrab Salutes: The Top 25 Leading Ladies of All Time (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 20:00:00 GMT

According to the famous quote, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in high heels.

Sadly, Ms. Rogers didn’t make our Top 25 list, but the sentiment holds true for the Leading Ladies who did: after all, like the actors in our recent posting of The Top 25 Leading Men of All Time, the following matinee idols managed to fascinate and captivate over the course of varied careers with astonishing on-screen performances (and off-screen personas)...yet they also achieved their success in a notoriously sexist, looks-obsessed business with a tendency to relegate women to underimagined wife and girlfriend parts...

...or, to quote Goldie Hawn’s actress character in The First Wives’ Club, there are usually three stages to a woman’s Hollywood career: "Ingénue, district attorney, and Driving Miss Daisy.”

But not always, thankfully, as we here at the Screengrab hereby celebrate with our salute to 25 celluloid dames (some of them actual Dames) who defined and redefined our notions of film and femininity...backwards, forwards, up and down, in high heels, cowboy boots and everything in between.

25. NAOMI WATTS (1968 - )

Oh yes, Ms. Watts absolutely kills in the above scene from Mulholland Dr. But she has had a bit of a quality-control problem since, appearing in The Ring and its sequel, 21 Grams, Stay, King Kong, and the unnecessary remake of Funny Games. All of these movies seem risky and high-concept in the abstract, but all of them hedge their bets in some way and fail to deliver on their promise. They’re good enough for what they are, but none of them reach the greatness they suggest. Naomi Watts, however, completely throws herself into her roles. You can see the movie that could have been when she’s on-screen...if you can see anything but her, that is.

24. (TIE) JULIA ROBERTS (1967 - ) & JESSICA LANGE (1949 - )

In The Player, Robert Altman’s poison pen love letter to Hollywood, there’s a running gag about Julia Roberts: every producer pitches every project with her in mind, and even the integrity-bound screenwriter who vows that his “serious” indie film will feature “no stars” eventually gives in, leading to a charmingly self-deprecating film-within-a-film cameo by, yes, Julia Roberts. And though her wattage may have dimmed in recent years (along with the general star power of human actors versus, say, Chihuahuas and Decepticons), she’s still the current reigning champ of modern female movie stars in terms of her career Trifecta of salary (the first female star to crack the $20 million mark), box office clout (over $2 billion + international star power) and industry respect (with multiple awards, nominations and a Best Actress Oscar for her dynamo performance as the titular (get it?) legal clerk of Erin Brockovich). It hasn’t all been hosannas, of course: for all her fame, Roberts hasn’t really given that many memorable performances, and her star turns can range from somnambulant snoozers (The Pelican Brief, Mary Reilly) and romantic comedy fluff (Runaway Bride) to inexplicable appearances in unmitigated disasters like The Mexican and Mona Lisa Smile. But when she’s in the zone, her charisma and presence are formidable: many who loathed Pretty Woman on principle were nevertheless charmed (against their will!) by Roberts’ hooker with a heart of Amex gold, and when she lets herself be likably unlikable (as in her bittersweet chocolate romantic comedies Notting Hill and My Best Friend’s Wedding), she hints at a largely untapped range that may yet blossom in the second half of her already impressive career.

Lange made her movie debut in the 1976 King Kong remake. An actual look at the footage reveals that she was perfectly charming as a sweet but not-too-bright piece of fluff with vague aspirations to stardom, but the movie was used as a piñata by critics, and many of them went so far as to suggest that if Lange was convincing as a dumb blonde, that must mean that she wasn't acting. Badly burned, she didn't appear in another movie until Bob Fosse cast her as some kind of Wilhelmina Agency Angel of Death in 1979's All That Jazz. Her performance there was more kindly treated -- call it the lowered expectations, or Sarah Palin effect -- but it wasn't until she paired off against Jack Nicholson with an unexpectedly fiery performance in 1981's The Postman Always Rings Twice that people began to suspect that they just might have a live one. She followed that up in 1982 with a classic romantic-comedy lead in Tootsie and a performance as the doomed movie actress Frances Farmer (in Frances) that snapped a few necks. Her best work since then has include her performance as Patsy Cline in Sweet Dreams, her end-of-the-sisterhood trio in Crimes of the Heart, and her troubled, trouble-making military wife in Tony Richardson's Blue Sky, for which she won an Academy Award. (Sadly, the movie, which was completed in 1991, got caught up in the bankruptcy of its funding studio, Orion, and didn't make it to theaters until 1994, by which time Richardson had died.) Little that she has done since that has been especially worthy of her, though she has appeared onstage in London and on Broadway in Long Day's Journey Into Night and The Glass Menagerie. She is currently set to play the ruined society matriarch "Big Edie" Bouvier Beale (with Drew Barrymore as Little Edie) in a movie based on the Maysles brothers documentary Grey Gardens.

23. (TIE) SISSY SPACEK (1949 - ) & JANE FONDA (1937 - )

Sissy Spacek was the amoral girl-on-the-cusp-of-womanhood in three of the defining films of the '70s: Badlands, Carrie, and 3 Women (yeah, you read that right: I said 3 Women was a defining film of the '70s). She could have quit after that, but she moved on to playing maternal figures in the movies. Her eyes look different now. She’s lost the shock that made her seem so delicate and young and precious back then, but that shock was always hiding something else, something weirder and harder to define. Her only recent movie where she's recaptured the shade of her younger self was The Straight Story, in which she played a woman who was a little slow. The Straight Story is also one of the very few movies she’s made that’s worth a damn since 1977, so go figure.

Fonda's offscreen reputation as a Vietnam-era leftist political scold has largely overshadowed her legacy as an actress. If there's any justice in this, it has less to do with her right to express her opinions, however embarrassingly, in what passes for her private life, than with her misguided decision to waste what might have been her peak years as an artist on half-baked scripts that she seemed to select on the basis of whatever political message they seemed to be editorializing, whether it was the legacy of Vietnam or nuclear power or women's rights in the workplace. In the 1980s, she didn't seem to know what to do with herself, and she basically retired after an unpleasant run-in with Vietnam vets who picketed the set of the awful Stanley & Iris, in which she taught Robert De Niro to read. But if there was only a short window of time in which Fonda was an actress first and at the top of her game, what she did during that time would still qualify her for any Mount Rushmore of American movie actresses. She spent most of her first ten years in movies establishing herself as an exceptionally saucy, cuddly comic actress: she's a hoot, and a turn-on, even in Barabarella, one of the ugliest-looking rip-off jobs that a pretentious French twat ever talked his trusting American wife into starring in. When her tobacco-road inflection on the line "Essence of man?" and the scene where she shorts out the orgasm machine failed to give Henry Fonda a fatal heart attack, she went about any daughter's life's work another way, becoming "radicalized" offscreen while pouring all that angry, room-clearing energy into starring roles in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? and Klute, two of the least sentimental, most hard-edged, beautifully detailed portraits of doomed women of the New Hollywood era (or anytime). Her Bree Daniels in Klute, the New York prostitute who has total control over her clients and zero control of anything else in her life, remains one of the most perfectly executed and daring star performances in movies.

22. JOAN CRAWFORD (1905-1977)

It’s a testament to the sheer power of Joan Crawford’s personality that the mere act of portraying her can wreck a career: Faye Dunaway, once one of Hollywood’s most promising stars, took on the job in the infamous Mommie Dearest, and she was never the same again. It’s a cliché to say that some famous person is less a human being and more a force of nature, but it’s a cliché that was invented with Joan Crawford in mind: once a drifting youngster who only wanted to be a dancer, she got her hooks into Hollywood at a young age (becoming famous as a flapper even before the sound era made her a superstar), and she never let go for a second. In everything from acting to dancing to business to parenthood to sitting on the board of directors of Pepsi-Cola, Crawford insisted on running the game her way, and woe betide anyone who crossed her. For such a stunning screen presence – named by the AFI as the greatest female star of all time! – Crawford wasn’t the best there was at anything. She was an above-average dancer, but not a great one; she had a unique look – all flashing eyes and floating hair – but she wasn’t one of the screen’s greatest beauties; and she could put in some fine performances (witness Mildred Pierce and Strange Cargo for proof), but she was an unreliable box office draw and never one of the greatest actresses of her day. Indeed, as with her doppelganger Bette Davis, she’s often treasured as much for her bad performances, like Sudden Fear, as for her good ones. But there is probably no one in Hollywood history, male or female, who was so commanding, so arresting, so utterly implacable when she was onscreen: Joan Crawford had more presence than anyone who had come before or has been seen since, and if she wasn’t going to take over the world with her acting, then goddamn it, she at least was not going to be ignored.

21. JULIE CHRISTIE (1948 - )

Julie Christie! The rumors are true! Wait, no. Terry met Julie at Waterloo Station every Friday night. Hold it, she wasn’t just the subject of rock songs? Julie Christie could actually act? Yowza. Actually, even if the only movie she'd ever made was McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Julie Christie would still be one of my favorite actresses. But she’s always great, even when the movie isn’t. And despite the openness in her face (not to mention that incredible perpetual pout), she always brings a sense of mystery and intelligence to her roles, giving them a fully rounded life, though we sometimes only see a snippet.

Click Here for Part Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven & Eight

Contributors: Hayden Childs, Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce

Warners DVD Keeps John McCain Interview Under Lock and Key

Phil Nugent — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Warner Brothers is fending off reports that they are keeping promotional materials for the November 11 release of the 1987 film The Hanoi Hilton on DVD under wraps rather than using them to stir up interest in the movie rather than advertise any connection to Republican presidential hopeful John McCain. The movie, which was released during the same wave of Reagan-era Vietnam films that included Platoon and Full Metal Jacket (as well as such gung-ho popcorn entertainments as Rambo: First Blood Part II and the Chuck Norris Missing in Action films), is a sympathetically intended treatment of the American presence in Vietnam that is set among the prisoners of war being held at the Hoa Lo prison where McCain served his time as a P.O.W. (The movie is not meant to depict any actual person's experience. However, it does make room for an appearance by an idiotic American movie star and war protester, played by Gloria Carlin, who is called "Paula" but is obviously meant to be Jane Fonda.) Earlier this year, McCain filmed an interview about his own prison experience which was to be included on the DVD. Now, reports Michael Cieply in The New York Times, Warner Brothers has "moved quietly over the last few weeks to block any promotional showing" of any part of that interview, for fear that it "might embroil the project in electoral politics." A spokesman for Warners' home enterttainment division describes its decision as "just us trying to be cautious and not affect the election one way or the other.” In response, Lionel Chetwynd, the British-born Canadian-American writer-director of The Hanoi Hilton, has fired back that "Finding someone in Hollywood who says they don’t want to affect the election is like finding a virgin in a brothel.” And you thought that British-born Canadian-Americans never got off any good ones!

Released by the infamous Golan-Globus/Cannon Film company, and starring Michael Moriarty in his Method-space alien phase, with a supporting cast that includes David "Hutch" Soul, Jeffrey Jones, Paul Le Mat, John Diehl, and Doug Savant, The Hanoi Hilton originally managed to bring together people of all different political beliefs and attitudes about the war in brotherly agreement that this was one shitty movie. A barely detectable blip on the radar screens during its brief spell in theaters (despite attempts by some commentators to pull in conservative moviegoers by hailing it as the anti-Platoon), it has since found an audience of appreciative veterans and nostalgic military hawks who discovered it on videocassette and late-night showings on cable TV. Chetwynd, a self-styled Hollywood conservative whose screenplay credits include the TV films The Siege at Ruby Ridge and DC 9/11: Time of Crisis and who had a hand in Celsius 41.11: The Temperature at Which the Brain... Begins to Die, a "documentary" feature, intended as a back-atcha to Michael Moore, has recently had his attempts to arrange screenings of the movie squelched by Warners lawyers, although Daniel P. Tokaji, an associate professor at the Ohio State University law school, told the Times that “I don’t immediately see what law they would violate.” Chetwynd, who points out that another studio, Lions Gate, doesn't seem to be keeping the pre-election day release of W. under a barrel, probably sees all this as a part of a liberal-Holywood conspiracy to keep his movie from doing its part to propel John McCain into the White House. Those who've taken a look at McCain's latest poll numbers may suspect that it has more to do with Warners not wanting to damage DVD sales by tying their product to a failing brand.

Ignominious Exits: The Top Ten Worst Final Films (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Bela Lugosi, PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (1959)

Depending who you ask (specifically if one of the people you ask is Bela Lugosi’s son and the other is Tim Burton), Ed Wood, Jr. was either a talentless, exploitive vulture or a scrappy independent filmmaker who befriended Lugosi late in life and (inadvertently) made him relevant to a whole new audience of younger fans through cult classics like Glen or Glenda? and Bride of the Monster, climaxing with Martin Landau’s Oscar-winning portrayal of the actor in 1994’s Ed Wood. Either way, though, Plan 9 From Outer Space was hardly the most dignified send-off for a Hungarian film and theater legend and one of the best known international movie stars of the 1930s. For one thing, Lugosi only appears onscreen for a few minutes of the so-called “worst movie of all time” (a designation Screengrab’s own Scott Von Doviak would undoubtedly challenge), but the posthumous “performance” (culled from stock footage) isn’t even listed as an official film performance on the actor’s Internet Movie Database page, possibly because it was completed by a chiropractor.

Errol Flynn in CUBAN REBEL GIRLS (1959)

In his prime, Errol Flynn was the last word in swashbuckling action on screen and the most legendary stud in America in real life. (Reports of his bedroom escapades during the war years inspired the optimistic G.I. catch phrase "in like Flynn.") By 1959, though, Flynn was a has-been and a tax deadbeat with a nearly defunct liver. Lacking the energy to do much that might pass for active, never mind acting, he wrote and narrated this low-budget film, in which he appears as a reporter telling us about the "wonderful" rebel girls who are doing their part for the Cuban revolution. Flynn had actually met Fidel Castro, who gave the project his blessing, and the film returns the favor, though it probably had its origins not in political fervor but a mixture of contractual obligation -- Flynn owed somebody a movie -- and cherchez la femme. Cuban Rebel Girls was actually shaped as a vehicle for Beverly Aadland, a talentless would-be actress who was Flynn's steady companion during the last couple years of his life. (She was about fourteen when they met.) The movie was Flynn's last and her only real credit, though the first-time director, Barry Mahon, followed it up with a stream of films, which tend to have such titles as International Smorgas-Broad and Fanny Hill Meets Dr. Erotico. (Another of his flicks, the Cold War paranoia-fest Rocket Attack, U.S.A., made it to the summit of trash that is Mystery Science Theater 3000.) In every compartment of his life -- co-star/girlfriends, directors, revolutionaries -- Errol sure did know how to pick 'em.

Henry Fonda in ON GOLDEN POND (1981)

Henry Fonda had a very long and honorable career, but his last really notable movie role was probably in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West, made when he was in his early sixties. The role of the ruthless but naive professional killer Frank -- the dark side of capitalistism wearing the face of old Hollywood's favorite spokesman for liberal idealism -- gave him a chance to turn his iconic image on its head while doing things he'd never done before as an actor, and that wouldn't have been a bad way to hang it up. But instead he kept at it through the 1970s, plugging away in disposable roles in ever tackier movies (Ash Wednesday, Tentacles, The Swarm, Meteor, etc.). In one way, his final feature film role in On Golden Pond qualified as a comeback: it was, at least, a respectable part in a high-profile prestige release. But it was also an exploitative piece of casting that put the frail-looking, visibly ailing Fonda on screen as a sick, possibly dying old man, and even tapped into gossip about his relationship with his children by casting his real-life rebellious daughter Jane as a character who's constantly lectured about getting over the past and getting on with her life. (How much of a coincidence was it that, at the time, Jane Fonda was in the process of packing up her sixties image as a political firebrand and remaking herself as the yuppie queen of the workout tape?) For audiences, the emotions that the sentimental movie meant to arouse became inseparable from the guilty feelings one might have had about having come to regard the older Fonda as a has-been. The media took the bait and latched onto the movie in a strange way: it basically double-dog-dared the Motion Picture Academy to not give Fonda an Oscar for his performance, knowing that he'd never gotten one before and that he very likely wouldn't have another chance to earn one. The campaign paid off, but at a loss of some dignity for the man at its center.

Click here for Part One & Part Two

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent

Sydney Pollack, 1934--2008

Phil Nugent — Tue, 27 May 2008 01:00:00 GMT

Sydney Pollack has died at the age of 73, ending a recent struggle with cancer. As a young theater buff, Pollack, who grew up in South Bend, Indiana, went to New York after graduating high school and enrolled at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater, where he first studied under and later served as assistant to the legendary acting teacher Sanford Meisner. Early in his career, Pollack appeared on Broadway in A Stone for Danny Fisher and The Dark Is Light Enough as well as on TV, incluyding episodes of Plyahouse 90, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, and Have Gun, Will Travel. After Burt Lancaster, who he would later direct in the late sixties in The Scalphunters and Castle Keep, suggested that Pollack consider directing, he stepped behind the camera for work on several TV series and eventually broke into movies with the 1965 The Slender Thread. He brought a skilled rapport with actors and a taste for old-Hollywood glamour to his feature film work, and he became associated with certain high-caliber performers who placed a lot of trust in him--particularly Robert Redford, who he directed in seven starring roles, beginning with the 1966 Tennessee Williams adaptation This Property Is Condemned and including the winner of the 1985 Academy Award for Best Picture, Out of Africa. They also worked together on The Way We Were with Barbra Streisand, probably the most successful of Redford's old-style romances, Jeremiah Johnson, Three Days of the Condor, Havana, and The Electric Horseman, which paired Redford with Jane Fonda. Pollack was also an important figure in Fonda's career, having directed her in the 1969 They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, which marked her transformation from sex-kitten comedienne to hard-edged dramatic actress. That picture went a long way towards establishing Pollack as a new-style Hollywood pro; it won Academy Award nominations for Fonda, Pollack, and Susannah York, and earned Gig Young a Best Supporting Oscar for his brilliant performance as a dance-marathon emcee.

It was the 1982 Tootsie, though, that really took Pollack's career to a couple of different levels. A massive hit and instant classic, it elevated his profile as a director. And because Pollack earned many of the film's biggest laughs in his on-screen performance as Dustin Hoffman's agent, it unexpectedly revived his acting career. (Pollack took on the role at Hoffman's insistence; the actor apparently thought that the movie could benefit from the brio that Pollack brought to the many legendary screaming fights that the two of them were having off-camera.) After Tootsie and Out of Africa, he directed such big pictures as The Firm, Random Hearts, and The Interpretor; he also contributed memorable performances to Robert Zemeckis's Death Becomes Her, Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives, and Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, where he was brought in an emergency replacement for Harvey Keitel. In the last several years of his career, he also branched out as a producer of others' films, including The Fabulous Baker Boys, Sense and Sensibility, The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Quiet American, 40 Shades of Blue, and Michael Clayton, where he also played George Clooney's boss. He also served as executive producer on his own last film as a director, the 2005 documentary Sketches of Frank Gehry.

John Phillip Law, 1937--2008

Phil Nugent — Thu, 15 May 2008 22:00:00 GMT

John Phillip Law has died at the age of 70. Six foot five with blond hair, blue eyes and finely crafted features, Law worked in New York theater in the early 1960s before breaking into Hollywood films as the romantic juvenile in Norman Jewison's 1966 comedy The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming. He would go on to appear in two megaton bombs directed by Otto Preminger, the Southern gothic Hurry Sundown the acid-testing comedy Skidoo, in which he played a hippie. That project turned out to be harbinger of the career to come, as was this quote from an interview Law gave in 1966: "I've had more kicks out of playing far-out things. It's like putting on a funny face and going out in front of people and going, 'yaaaaaa.' " He was about to have plenty of opportunities to put on his funny faces. In 1968, in one of his highest-profile roles, he appeared opposite Jane Fonda in Barbarella (1968), playing a blind but well-hung angel and wearing enormous, tacky-looking wings. He also starred in a failed 1971 film version of the Jacqueline Susann pulp bestseller The Love Machine and had the honor of being kissed on the lips by Rod Steiger in The Sergeant (1968). In 1974, he donned a turban to star in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, one of the better later showcases for the stop-motion special effects of Ray Harryhausen.

Although he slipped far down from the A-list in Hollywood, Law kept working, on TV, in oddball low-budget genre films such as Night Train to Terror, and often in Europe, where he made such films as the 1967 spaghetti Western Death Rides a Horse with Lee Van Cleef. In recent years, he began to acquire a new fan base among new filmgoers who saw him as a key figure in the 1960s international cinema of the weird. (In 2001, Roman Coppola honored him as a living memento of that era by casting him in his directorial debut, CQ.) One movie that made a cult comeback through that particular pipeline is Diabolik (sometimes called Danger: Diabolik), a 1967 sci-fi comic-strip caper directed by Mario Bava, starring Law as a space-age super-cat burglar; it served as the inspiration for a Beastie Boys video (see below) and was the last film shown on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Law, a dedicated actor who was almost equally famous for his dedication to the Playboy mansion, could scarcely have asked for a more appropriate, and affectionate, tribute.

Yesterday's Hits: Nine to Five (1980, Colin Higgins)

Paul Clark — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 19:00:00 GMT

The 1970s saw a rise in women in the workplace, with female employment levels in America reaching their highest point since World War II. But while women were making inroads into the job market, they often found themselves frustrated at the treatment they received from the men they worked with, and for. By the end of the decade, this issue was getting too big to ignore, and Hollywood decided it was time to place it front and center in a major motion picture. The result was Nine to Five.

What made Nine to Five a hit?: To begin with, the film’s premise was timely. However, topicality doesn’t guarantee box office, as anyone who’s been following the grosses for Iraq War films can tell you. Say what you want about issues, but most audiences just want to have a good time, and Fox and director Colin Higgins made the wise decision to package their message in the form of a spunky, crowd-pleasing comedy, and a wish-fulfillment fantasy in which three intelligent women get revenge on their “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot” of a boss. Audiences, especially women, ate it up.

Of course, the filmmakers were aided by their three leading ladies, an unexpected but inspired combination: Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Dolly Parton. Fonda had spent most of the seventies in serious roles- and running afoul of the conservative element with her opinions on Vietnam- and Nine to Five gave her a chance to have fun onscreen. Tomlin, in only her fourth big-screen role, was well-known to television audiences for her beloved characters like Ernestine the Telephone Operator and Edith Ann. But the real casting coup was Parton, then best known as a popular country singer, making her acting debut opposite these two established veterans. Whether they were Dolly fans or simply curious to see whether she could actually act, Parton’s presence in the film contributed as much to its box office take as any other factor, making it the second-highest-grossing film of 1980, trailing only The Empire Strikes Back.

What happened?: Part of the problem with topicality is that there’s always a risk that a once-relevant message will eventually become dated. While women still have a way to go before they achieve equality in the workplace, there have nonetheless been great strides made in that direction in the past quarter century. As a result, Nine to Five feels pretty quaint by today’s standards. And while the film’s three stars proved an irresistible draw for audiences, the subsequent years did little to capitalize on their big-screen popularity.

Fonda’s eighties work was far less memorable than the roles she played in the seventies, and by the end of the decade she was better-known for her popular 20 Minute Workout series than she was for her acting. Tomlin, who was more a character actress than a leading lady anyway, made only a handful of movies during the 1980s. And despite several attempts, Parton never found another role that utilized her unique talents. Nowadays, many younger viewers know the film primarily from Parton’s still-famous title song.

Does Nine to Five still work?: Sort of. The film begins promisingly, as hyper-competent veteran Tomlin shows new employee Fonda the ropes, and the film gives us a feel for the dynamic around the office. Higgins also establishes Parton’s role nicely, making her a dutiful employee whose looks and position lead her female coworkers to believe that she’s sleeping with the boss (Dabney Coleman).

But halfway through, the plot becomes bogged down in gimmickry, beginning when Tomlin begins to think she may have killed the boss. Following a long sequence in a hospital and a misunderstanding involving a corpse, Coleman re-enters the scene and comes to believe the women wanted to kill him. So rather than risking arrest, the trio holds him hostage in his home until they can find a way to blackmail him into not turning them in. I liked that the women’s taking control of the office in his absence ends up making the boss more popular than ever with the staff, but unfortunately there’s too much tortured schtick involving Coleman being suspended from the ceiling while wearing makeshift bondage gear to wave through before you get to the big climax.

That said, there’s still a lot to like about Nine to Five, especially its lead actresses, each of whom is at the top of her game. In her prime, Fonda always made for a strong, sympathetic protagonist, and she’s very good here as the audience surrogate. The ever-dependable Tomlin once again proved to be an ace verbal comedian (she gets most of the best one-liners) while showing a real vulnerability. But Parton is best of all, proving she had real movie star stuff. Her outsize persona made her tricky for casting directors, but it’s still a shame that she never again found a role that was half as good as this one. Nine to Five isn’t close to perfect, but it’s still fun to see its three stars working together and clearly having a ball. Observing their undeniable comedic chemistry, is it any wonder that, almost thirty years later, they say they’re still open to the possibility of making a sequel?

That Guy! Classic: Peter Boyle

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 20:30:00 GMT

In all of our occasional looks back at great character actors of the past, we've never written about anyone as universally beloved as Peter Boyle. The husky Irish-American with the wry smile worked, during his forty-year career, in everything from quiet, thoughtful little independent films to blockbuster sitcoms, but despite a number of controversial positions in his private life and the friendship of some of the entertainment industry's most despised liberals (he was a close friend to both John Lennon and Jane Fonda), the American public always took him to heart, and it's impossible to find anyone he worked with that doesn't remember him fondly after his death in 2006.

Originally intending to enter the priesthood, Boyle was bitten by the acting bug early on (his father hosted a children's show in his native Pennsylvania) and after a few minor roles on film and television, hit it big with his lead performance in 1970's Joe. Although he did a tremendous job as a racist factory worker and the breakthrough role opened doors for him, Boyle was deeply shaken by the role: attending his first screening of the film, he was disturbed to hear people cheering the character's reactionary lines, and was extremely selective about choosing his parts from then on. In fact, it's ironic that some of Boyle's most memorable roles have been those of violent, brutal men; the actor himself was, by all accounts, an extremely gentle man, a liberal, and a lifelong pacifist who opposed the war in Vietnam, championed civil rights, and worried constantly about the impact of his performances as brutes, thugs and killers. But his career was also peppered with some extremely adept comic performances, and his greatest success came as a cast member of the highly successful situation comedy Everybody Loves Raymond. He also did some top-flight work in other television dramas, including a swell turn as Fatso Judson in the TV movie adaptation of From Here to Eternity and a lead role in the short-lived but extremely well-made cop show Joe Bash. But it was on the big screen that he had the greatest impact; his odd features and quirky approach ensured that he'd never be a leading man, but he absolutely barnstormed every character role he was given. Although we'll list our favorites below, everyone remembers Boyle fondly from a different performance, and he's sure to go down in history as not just one of the best, but one of the best-loved, character actors in Hollywood.

Where to see Peter Boyle at his best:

YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974)

After a half a decade of playing moody dramatic roles, Boyle shocked and charmed movie audiences when he turned up as the monster in Mel Brooks' brilliant homage/parody of the classic Univeral horror franchise. Showing an aptitude for comedy that would sustain him for the rest of his career, Boyle managed to bring down the house in every scene he was in, often without saying a word; his clumsy, bellowing song-and-dance with Gene Wilder is a paralyzingly funny classic, and the scene he shares with Gene Hackman proves that while the silent era is long dead, the best comic actors can still kill an audience with nothing more than an exasperated look.

TAXI DRIVER (1976)

Amazingly, the very next film that Boyle made after wrapping Young Frankenstein was Martin Scorsese's devastating Taxi Driver, a movie as emotionally intense and dark as Brooks' film was light and breezy. Boyle took on the role of Wizard, the pontificating, droning hack guru who passes for a font of wisdom amongst the cab drivers of New York. It's an important role, especially insofar as it helps establish Travis Bickle's inability to relate to anyone, even the friendly (though completely full of shit) Wizard. Boyle handles it deftly, getting some comic mileage out of Wizard's stories but also giving him the gravitas to act as a sounding board for Robert De Niro's deep alienation.

MONSTER'S BALL (2001)

Just as Boyle's first major success as an actor came from playing a misguided racist in Joe, his last major role on the screen came from playing the unreconstructed bigot of a father to Billy Bob Thornton in Monster's Ball. The lead performances of Thornton and Halle Berry got all the attention, but Boyle was just as riveting as Buck Grotowski, the unapologetically racist father of Thornton's prison guard and the patriarch of his highly dysfunctional family. It's also yet another irony in Peter Boyle's career: though Boyle was a crusader for civil rights, two of his most memorable and powerful roles are as virulently prejudiced men.

Roy Scheider, 1932-2008

Phil Nugent — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Roy Scheider has died in Little Rock, Arkansas, at the age of 75. He had battled cancer in recent years; the cause of death has been reported as complications from a staph infection. Scheider made his film debut in a 1962 horror movie called The Curse of the Living Corpse and throughout the 1960s worked on the stage and on such TV soaps as The Edge of Night, Love of Life, and The Secret Storm. He began to get small movie roles in the late '60s, and had a breakout year in 1971, when, as a thirty-nine-year-old juvenile, he played Jane Fonda's pimp in Klute and Gene Hackman's police partner in The French Connection. (In interviews, and ultimately in a commentary track on The French Connection DVD, Scheider liked to tell a story about how he won the part after someone saw him blow a stage audition and was impressed with the brio with which off the director.) Scheider got an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for the role, which would ultimately lead to his getting his first leading role in The Seven-Ups, a 1973 cop thriller directed by the French Connection producer Philip D'Antoni. But it was of course the 1975 Jaws that was Scheider's biggest hit and the movie that made him a familiar face to the public at large, and beloved to a generation of pop-eyed movie freaks. As the land-locked seaside Sheriff Brody, Scheider was the tentpole of a central triumverate that also included Richard Dreyfuss (wisecracking, brainy, Method) and Robert Shaw (macho, demented, classically theatrical). It was Scheider's job to anchor what would become the most successful movie ever made by serving as the likable audience identification figure, he pulled it off with a smooth, pro's grace.

Scheider starred in a number of other movies (including William Friedkin's Sorcerer, Last Embrace, Still of the Night, and Blue Thunder) but never again found himself at the center of anything near as big a blockbuster. He was also forced, by contractual committment, to appear in Jaws 2, which cost him the chance to star in Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter. He did get an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for serving as the director Bob Fosse's alter ego in the 1979 All That Jazz; he didn't want, but his work in that picture will be remembered as among the best performances of his career. However, by the mid-1980s he was only getting big parts in smaller-budgeted pictures (such as 52 Pick-Up, made for Cannon Films) and indie productions (such as 1997's The Myth of Fingerprints) and appearing in smaller parts in such films as Fred Schepisi's The Russia House, David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch, and Francis Ford Coppola's The Rainmaker. He also starred in the first season of the TV series SeaQuest DSV and played studio chief George Schaefer in RKO 281, an HBO film about the making of Citizen Kane. He kept working at a furious rate, and in one of his last appearances, as a serial killer on Death Row last year in an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, he showed that he was still capable of doing memorable work when the material he was given managed to meet him halfway.