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With Joe Meyers, entertainment writer

Archive for August, 2012

‘Perils of Show Business’: Charles Grodin explains it all for you

Friday, August 31, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

You don’t have to be an aspiring actor to enjoy the new DVD “The Perils of Show Business” (Limelight Editions) in which Charles Grodin talks about his experiences progressing from useless acting classes in his youth to delivering some of the finest performances in modern movies.

It’s a no-frills production, with an informally dressed Grodin talking directly into the camera for an hour (I assume the DVD was shot in the actor’s Fairfield County home). In a lesser talent’s hands, this could have been a deadly affair, but Grodin is a such a great storyteller and has such a down to earth attitude that you might share my wish that the session was longer.

He also names names when it comes to bad experiences in moviemaking, including run-ins with the once almighty producer Ray Stark, director Roman Polanski and the playwright Neil Simon.

Grodin is refreshingly critical of two of the most legendary New York acting teachers, Uta Hagen and Lee Strasberg.

The actor studied longer with Hagen, but says he only really learned in her classes when he had the chance to work on scenes. The “exercises” such as packing an imaginary suitcase left him feeling foolish and frustrated (and he says these lessons never came in handy during his long professional career).

Grodin pooh poohs the idea of actors studying dance to improve their craft (unless you intend to work in musicals).

“The Perils of Show Business” takes us beyond acting and into some of Grodin’s life philosophy which now seems to be simply trying to follow the Golden Rule (he tells a rather unpleasant story on himself about one of his own acts of unkindness that bothered him in the days and weeks following the event).

If you love the actor’s work as much as I do, you will relish his behind the scenes stories on the making of “Rosemary’s Baby” — the first movie in which he had a noticeable part (as the gynecologist who turns poor Mia Farrow over to the devil cult near the end) — and his breakthrough role in the great Elaine May film “The Heartbreak Kid.”

For those who have always wondered why the 1972 comedy seems so different in tone from every other film Neil Simon scripted, Grodin supplies the answer — May encouraged the cast to improvise and bring their own ideas to their characters (much to Simon’s chagrin).

Here’s hoping Grodin is planning a sequel (or two) to this fast and funny account of a life on Planet Show Business.

‘Where the Boys Are’ — spring break circa 1960

Thursday, August 30, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

The invaluable Warner Archive program has made lots of obscure films available on DVD for the first time.

The folks who run the Archive do a great job of ranging from the earliest days of movies to more recent decades in search of interesting titles that have fallen off most people’s radar.

Last year’s batch of DVD-on-demand titles included one of the biggest box office hits of 1960-1961 — “Where the Boys Are” — which has gone in and out of print on various video formats several times over the past few decades.

Best remembered now for the smash title tune by Connie Francis, the film helped to create the template for the beach movies that would be churned out by the dozen through the mid-1960s (when even teens started enjoying some of the racier adult-themed movies that began to come out of the Hollywood studios).

Producer Joe Pasternak shot the picture on a low-budget — by the standards of MGM — which meant packing the cast with inexpensive movie newcomers like Dolores Hart, Paula Prentiss and Jim Hutton.

Pasternak was smart enough to know that one of the major attractions of the film was its depiction of the growing spring break scene in Fort Lauderdale, so he budgeted for several weeks of location filming that now give “Where the Boys Are” a wonderful semi-documentary feel.

The movie’s success helped to boost the spring break phenomenon. About 20,000 kids showed up in Fort Lauderdale for the college break before “Boys” came out. A year later, the movie boosted the crowd above 100,000. In the decades to come, college students would have more disposable income and would extend the fun-in-the-sun blast to the Caribbean and Mexico.

Although the fashions and some of the behavior in the film now look antique, the treatment of sex in “Where the Boys Are” is not as retrograde as you might expect from a 51-year-old movie. All four of the major female characters weigh their virtue against the pleasures of a fling in Florida and the central character Merritt (played by the gorgeous Dolores Hart) gets into trouble in the opening scene when she brings up the Kinsey Report with a prudish professor.

The actresses are fun to watch — especially Hart and Prentiss (in her screen debut) — because they are so lively and so obviously capable of taking care of themselves. These are the women who would read “The Feminine Mystique” a few years later and be ready for the sexual revolution that arrived in the second half of the decade.

(Hart shocked Hollywood by becoming a nun a few years after “Where the Boys Are” opened; she is mother superior of a Connecticut order.)

The movie was apparently a considerably watered-down version of the Glendon Swarthout it was based on — he included chapters in the second half in which the students aided the Castro revolution in Cuba (!) — but it remains one of the best of all the many spring break pictures that would follow it.

(Warner Archive titles are made on demand and can be ordered at www.wbshop.com/warnerarchive)

‘The Last Bohemia’: nostalgia isn’t what it used to be

Wednesday, August 29, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

The combination of aging and gentrification can do a real job on young city dwellers.

Artists who fell in love with Greenwich Village in the 1950s found themselves pushed out by rising rents in the 1960s and 1970s.

Many of those folks moved north to Chelsea and south to SoHo to find a new affordable bohemia. A decade or so later they were squeezed out of their new haunts by an explosion of galleries and shops that sent rents soaring.

On to the Lower East Side the artists moved and then when the inevitable gentrification began, there was nowhere else to go but Brooklyn if you were young, broke and adventurous.

This is where journalist Robert Anasi came in, more than 20 years ago, when he set up camp in what was then the dangerous rundown neighborhood of Williamsburg.

Older New Yorkers with a broader view of real estate and history knew what would be inevitable after Anasi and his peers made the locale seem hip and liveable in their lowdown way.

“The Last Bohemia: Scenes from the Life of Williamsburg, Brooklyn” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is Anasi’s love/hate letter to the place where he was young and foolish before the arrival of turn-of-the-century folks who only wanted to pretend they were down and out.

Although the book is specifically about the changes in Williamsburg — and Anasi — over the past 20 years, it tells a story that can be related to by anyone who was ever young, poor and ambitious.

“The Last Bohemia” is all about the joy that can be found in your 20s when the absence of money and expensive diversions can make you look deeper into yourself and pay more attention to those who are struggling around you.

Even if gentrification doesn’t come along and kick you out of your funky, post-college environs, aging has a way of bumping people up to nicer homes, safer neighborhoods, and domestic responsibilities that leave little time for hanging out talking about how you will change the world.

Anasi delivers a series of portraits of the characters he knew in Williamsburg before and during its transformation into today’s pricey New York City trend center.

We meet the bums, the artists, the musicians, the baristas who filled out the cast of the fervent city life that Anasi was living.

Anasi is honest about how rough the area was in the late 1980s and the early 1990s — and admits that the arrival of coffee shops and restaurants and bookstores improved daily life — but he is also saddened by the area’s decline into an expensive stage set of bohemia in which only trust fund babies and slumming, hipster-costumed businesspeople can afford to live.

The title “The Last Bohemia” is probably a misnomer — kids will always find new cheap places to crash and set up shop. But with the changes in the economy it might be a while before another New York neighborhood as rundown as Williamsburg circa 1990 will be so completely transformed in such a relatively short period of time.

‘Dearie’: falling for Julia Child all over again

Tuesday, August 28, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

The line between biographer and subject seems to disappear in “Dearie” (Knopf), Bob Spitz’s terrific new book about the late, great Julia Child.

Most Americans already have a sense of the woman’s cultural importance.

But the book brings us so close to the “French Chef” that we get a real feel for her offscreen and offstage life — without ever turning sappy or obscuring her flaws, Spitz places us in a love relationship with Julia Child.

I doubt that many readers will complain about the size of “Dearie” — 529 pages — because in addition to living a wonderful, adventurous life, the impact that Child had on her country in the second half of the 20th century cannot be overstated, and we need space and time to ponder what she did.

Julia arrived on the public scene in 1963, in an era when making food seemed like more of a chore than a pleasure to women (and men) who were taking on work and family responsibilities that made TV dinners, canned spaghetti, and other “convenience” foods look God sent.

Middle class people’s experience of restaurant dining was pretty much limited to the occasional visit to nearby Italian family joint, a Howard Johnsons stop on a motor trip, and an annual seafood dinner at the beach (if you were lucky enough to live near a beach).

Julia’s down-to-earth, common sense approach to French gourmet cooking — and our trust in her belief that this was great food — made everyone start thinking outside the box.

Child’s bestselling cookbooks and her constant presence on TV helped to light a spark that would ignite the food frenzies of the 1970s and 1980s — the quiche fad, the crepe madness, all of those hip new restaurants in square cities like the one I grew up in (Philadelphia).

Yes, fast food chains were exploding at the same time — there was no such thing in most urban areas in the 1950s and 1960s — but after being programmed by Julia Child, and her followers, few of us could have a Big Mac without knowing we were eating junk.

“Dearie” shows us how Julia Child changed the home entertainment scene as well as the food scene. “The French Chef” began as a local Boston “educational television” experiment. In the early ’60s, every city and many small towns had one of these channels, but no one watched them, unless your idea of fun was a droning college lecture or a bare bones public service broadcast.

Child became an instant hit in Boston with her delightfully eccentric personality and her absence of any nervousness about being on TV with no training (the woman didn’t even watch TV — she and husband Paul didn’t own one).

The WGBH brass was stunned to have an actual hit on their hands and before they knew it, similar stations all across the country were buying the show and watching their ratings rise.

Within a decade, WGBH was producing “Masterpiece Theater” and “Nova” and other stations – like WNET in New York and WHYY in Philadelphia — were doing likewise, and their TV audiences loved the programming so much that they were willing to give cash donations to keep things rolling along.

The wonder of “Dearie” and Julia Child is that the woman had an amazing life before she emerged as a TV star at the age of 50 — she and her husband Paul worked for the forerunner of the CIA during World War II and after. (And the book makes it clear Julia was much more than a glorified secretary — she had high level clearances and knew where most of the agents were working and what they were up to).

Julia’s eventual love of food and cooking emerged organically after she and her husband were posted in Paris.

With many biographies there is a temptation to skip over the early years’ stuff to get to the “good parts” — the years of fame and hobnobbing with celebrities — but Spitz makes Julia’s youth and young womanhood every bit as entertaining as her glory years.

“Dearie” is that rarest of creations — a fantastic read about an almost completely admirable person of great accomplishment.

‘Lisztomania’: a flashback to Hollywood’s stoned age

Monday, August 27, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

High on the success of “Tommy,” maverick British director Ken Russell had the freedom and the financing to make any movie he wanted to in 1975.

Instead of drifting back toward the rather conventional 1969 hit that made his name — “Women in Love” — Russell decided to do another of his wildly unconventional historical bio-pics.

Using his “Tommy” star Roger Daltrey once again, Russell came up with “Lisztomania,” about the debauched life of the 19th century composer and pianist Franz Liszt.

The casting of The Who’s lead singer — and solo rock god — as Liszt was not as crazy as it might sound. When the composer performed a century earlier, he inspired such hysterical response from young female fans that the term “Lisztomania” was coined.

Russell took this idea and ran with it, fashioning a series of almost abstract sequences about Liszt’s impact on young audiences, his complicated love life, the rivalry between Liszt and Richard Wagner, and the way that Wagner’s music eventually fired up the German nationalism that resulted in the Nazi party and Adolf Hitler.

“Lisztomania” was so bizarre — even by 1970s standards! — and had such a disconnected narrative that it perplexed critics and audiences alike and didn’t receive nearly as wide a release as “Tommy” did. The film basically disappeared from sight for 37 years, until Warner Archive recently added the title to its indispensable made-on-demand DVD program.

With its rude phallic symbolism and disregard for historical accuracy, Russell’s movie no doubt still has the power to shock viewers who aren’t prepared for its outrageous visual excesses. But as a time capsule from 1975 and a reminder of its late creator’s wild gifts, “Lisztomania” is terrific fun.

Like Robert Altman, Russell was already into middle-age by the time he scored his first big commercial success with “Women in Love” so he made up for lost time by making nine films between 1969 and 1977 (Altman raced through the 1970s, too, after “M*A*S*H” put him on the map in 1970).

The rush to make those movies gave them all a slightly hysterical quality — even the “old-fashioned musical” Russell made in 1971, “The Boyfriend,” has a trippy, anything-for-a-jolt feel.

Russell, who died in 2011, turned off as many moviegoers as he turned on, but he was a one of a kind talent with incredible visual gifts. It is highly unlikely that the Hollywood studio system will ever again fund such a filmmaking rampage.

In praise of Lois Smith – in England, she’d be a Dame

Sunday, August 26, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

The new Sam Shepard play “Heartless,” which officially opens Monday night at the Signature Theatre in Manhattan, is a real head-scratcher.

I’m hoping that the reviews published on Tuesday will help unravel some of the mysteries in this tale of a highly dysfunctional Southern California family.

Shepard has never been one of our easier playwrights — he doesn’t believe in conventional structure or immediately sympathetic characters — but he has succeeded in grabbing audiences with plays like “True West” and “The Curse of the Starving Class” that take on a more conventional dramatic shape.

With “The Tooth of Crime,” “Buried Child” and now “Heartless” a theatergoer is left to his or her own devices to puzzle out the abstract plotting and hard to pin down characters.

“Heartless” seems to be about Sally (Julianne Nicholson) inviting troubled academic Roscoe (Gary Cole) to crash at her place, where the suburbs meet the desert outside Los Angeles. Sister Lucy (Jenny Bacon) talks in riddles and is blatantly rude to Sally’s guest.

A very strange nurse turns up — Elizabeth (Betty Gilpin) — who is caring for the sister’s outrageously angry and nasty mother, Mable Murphy (Lois Smith).

Just when we think we have a handle on what is going on in “Heartless,” Shepard throws us a curveball — a suggestion that one of the characters is a ghost and that another might be some sort of walking dead person (after being the donor in a heart transplant).

What held my interest and made me happy to be in the theater was Lois Smith as Mable Murphy.

The 82-year-old actress has reached national treasure status after a long and distinguished career in theater, film and television (her credits range from “True Blood” to “East of Eden” and from “Twister” to “Next Stop, Greenwich Village”). We have been lucky in Connecticut in recent years that Smith has chosen to work on major roles at Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven and at Hartford Stage.

Smith has spent her golden years avoiding old dear roles in favor of daring unconventional parts like the witch in last season’s Signature production of the Tony Kushner play “The Illusion” and her unhinged mama in “Heartless.”

The actress has the advantage of playing the one clearly drawn character in the Shepard play — a crazy, angry old lady who says whatever comes into her head — but what a pleasure it is to see a veteran performer still taking chances and still scoring in a career that has now spanned more than 60 years.

‘Robot and Frank’: Langella hits another one out of the park

Friday, August 24, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

Frank Langella continues his run of wonderful twilight years performances with the new independent film “Robot and Frank,” a poignant comedy-drama set in the near future.

So many actors find starring film roles drying up as they head into their 60s and 70s that the 72-year-old Langella’s renaissance is a cheering development. Not since Burt Lancaster surprised everyone with his daring performances in “Atlantic City” and “Local Hero” has an established screen actor re-energized his career in such surprising ways.

Langella has never been better than he was in “Starting Out in the Evening,” “Frost/Nixon” and now “Robot and Frank.” How wonderful that a great veteran actor has been able to use all of his experience and deepening charisma in roles worthy of his talent.

Perhaps the fact that Langella has always maintained a busy stage career has allowed him to be more discerning than other senior film actors who must desperately latch on to any part they can find in TV or movies. In between his recent run of terrific movies, Langella has continued to hold on to his position as one of the best stage actors in the country with frequent New York appearances (last season in “Man and Boy” and a production that has not quite coalesced yet for the coming season).

“Robot and Frank” shows the risk-taking that has been a part of Langella’s recent film work — like “Starting Out in the Evening” the new film was a no-budget affair shot in the New York area by young filmmakers who might not have been able to pull off their side of tricky stories.

Langella plays a retired thief, living in rather affluent conditions in an idyllic little town, who is slowly losing his grasp on reality. His two grown children — played by James Marsden and Liv Tyler — worry about their father but have their own busy lives to contend with (the son lives “ten hours away” and the daughter is some sort of political activist who travels the globe).

Frank’s son decides to get his dad a robot that can handle all of the housework and also make sure that the old man follows a strict health and exercise regimen.

“Robot and Frank” turns into a virtual two-hander as we see a relationship develop between these two unlikely roommates. The robot (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard) keeps making it clear to Frank that he is simply a device but the machine becomes much more than the Siri feature on an iPhone.

When Frank learns that the robot has no morality chip, he starts to plot a burglary against a rather vile young neighbor who is part of the movement to remove all of the books from the local library in a digital conversion plan.

As Frank becomes more attached to the robot — and seems to be getting healthier — the movie becomes more poignant because it’s about a “friendship” that doesn’t really exist. The film veers into the same territory that made Steven Spielberg’s “A.I.” so gripping despite its many flaws.

Director Jake Schreier keeps Christopher D. Ford’s story moving, and he gives Langella plenty of room to deliver a master class in film acting.

(“Robot and Frank” opens today at the Avon Theatre Film Center in Stamford and the Garden Cinemas in Norwalk.)

‘Fatal Honeymoon’: a TV movie only Nancy Grace could love

Thursday, August 23, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

The movie division of Lifetime Television has been steadily moving away from its early years staple — heavy-handed tales of women victimized by men — so it’s surprising to see the network return to old bad habits with “Fatal Honeymoon.”

The movie, debuting Saturday night at 8 p.m., is based on the true story of Gabe and Tina Watson, an Alabama couple who were honeymooning in Australia a decade ago when Tina drowned in a diving accident.

What first looked like a clear-cut accident became a criminal case when Australian authorities zeroed in on Gabe as a murder suspect because of some suspicious behavior during and after his wife’s drowning (rather than save her himself, he swam away for help, and then when crew members were working to revive her, Gabe stayed on another boat).

Watson eventually plea bargained a manslaughter sentence that resulted in him spending 18 months in an Australian jail, but when authorities back in Alabama charged the man with murder the case was dismissed due to a lack of evidence.

The makers of “Fatal Honeymoon” have no doubts about the guilt of Gabe who is played as a glowering villain from first appearance to last by Billy Miller.

The character is presented as such a creep that it makes the movie’s victim, Tina (played by Amber Clayton), look like a fool for moving forward with a relationship after he engineers a high-pressure first date with her while they are still in college.

As played by Miller, we can see why Amber’s dad, Tommy Thomas (Harvey Keitel), has such reservations about the young man — he creates scenes in restaurants, browbeats Tina constantly and generally behaves like a bordeline psychopath (the actor’s handsome but scary look reminded me of Michael Biehn as the deranged stalker in “The Fan”).

What’s missing in “Fatal Honeymoon” is any indication of what Tina saw in Gabe and a real motive for Gabe to kill her. Gabe is shown asking Tina to change her insurance policy to make him the beneficiary, before they leave for Australia, but she didn’t make the change, so he didn’t inherit a cent (wouldn’t any cold-blooded killer worth a damn double-check this detail before doing away with the policy holder?)

Did Gabe really court and marry Tina just to murder her for insurance money? And wouldn’t he have done all of this with more finesse than is displayed by the stereotypically nasty man in this movie?

The case against Gabe Watson didn’t hold up in an Alabama court and it doesn’t hold up in the Lifetime dramatization.

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