Sam Rockwell hasn’t yet achieved A-list movie stardom, but he is one of the finest actors in this country, with outstanding film and stage performances going back more than two decades.
At the moment, Rockwell is supporting Christopher Walken on Broadway in the new Martin McDonagh play, “A Behanding in Spokane.”
Years ago, before he broke out in movies, I saw Rockwell deliver an astounding performance in a Mike Leigh play at a tiny off-Broadway theater.
The piece was about a group of volatile, struggling young Brits and until I read my program I assumed the charismatic lead was a newcomer from across the Atlantic.
Since then, Rockwell has been in many major films, but has usually played supporting roles (he is especially good in the grossly underrated 2007 Brad Pitt picture “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” – left).
George Clooney was an early Rockwell fan and gave him one of his rare starring film roles in the 2002 flop “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.”
Art house movieogers became aware of Rockwell’s talent in a wonderful 1997 film by Tom DiCillo, “Box of Moonlight.” The picture got good reviews at the Sundance Film Festival that year but, sadly, was picked up by a second-rate distributor that mishandled it.
Despite the much-hyped American independent film movement of the late 1980s and 1990s, lots of very good low-budget films fell through the cracks during that fervent period.
Miramax Films, under the dynamic leadership of two genuine movie lovers, Harvey and Bob Weinstein, had a genius for selling tricky little movies to the press and public, making hits out of such offbeat pictures as “Like Water for Chocolate” and “The Crying Game.”
A few other companies, such as Sony Classics, also had the ability to market indies successfully, but dozens of worthy 1990s releases were picked up by inept (and under-financed) distributors and barely saw the light of day.
And, when a movie is badly distributed in theaters, the chances are pretty good that the home video release will be mangled as well.
This is why you may not have ever heard of “Box of Moonlight.”
Written and directed by DiCillo, the film takes the road movie formula and embroiders it with fresh characters, hilariously off-kilter social commentary, and a real love of roadside Americana at its kitschiest.
John Turturro stars as a Chicago corporate drone — assigned to an engineering project in Tennessee — who is shocked when the project is suddenly cancelled and all of the workers are told they can go home early.
The man has been upset by gleaning that his workers think he is an uptight, ruthlessly regimented machine disguised as a human.
Remembering a happy childhood vacation spent at a Tennessee lake, the engineer spontaneously decides to take off in a rental car to see if the resort is still there. When the man meets a wacky young off-the-grid free-thinker — Rockwell in what should have been a star-making performance — who lives on his own in the woods, the engineer’s life as he knows it is changed forever.
What is so charming and smart about DiCillo’s approach is his respect for both of the major characters — we get to see the downside of each man’s approach to life, but we also get to see how the unlikely friendship changes both men for the better.
DiCillo fills the background with great screwball Middle American characters who are never condescended to by the filmmaker. Catherine Keener got one of her best early movie roles in “Box of Moonlight” as a daffy phone sex operator who crosses Turturro’s path.
The politically conservative and religiously rigid people Turturro meets along the way are satirized by DiCillo but in a very gentle manner. The director also clearly has a deep affection for the rural areas around Knoxville where he shot the picture — it’s one of the most beautiful indie films of the 1990s.
