Resistance is Futile
X-FILES: SEASON NINE
Stopping just short of a decade's worth of episodes (unless the THE X-FILES films take up that slack), Chris Carter's influential Fox series, the first wildly successful Fox TV show, if memory serves. The season wraps up the series, but anecdotally speaking, it appears to have been quite a disappointment to its die-hard fans.
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X-FILES appears to have reached its peak in the middle years, seasons around numbers three, four, and five, the ones preceding the movie. After that, things fall apart, and mere chaos is loosed upon the world. Personally, I think the series started to go downhill after production moved from protean Vancouver to the sun-baked Los Angeles, under pressure from star David Duchovny (who then turned around and more or less left the show) with season six. There is a distinct difference in the quality of the appearance of the show, and then the guest stars such as Ed Asner and Lily Tomlin, making it seem like LOVE BOAT. Like THE TONIGHT SHOW and POLITICALLY INCORRECT before it, the L.A. move flattened, dulled, and trivialized the show.
I don't know why the series stopped, and the DVD set doesn't go into details, but two effects of the show's cessation are obvious. One is the rise of God imagery and material. The second is a real hostility toward television as a medium.
Take the episode "Scary Monsters." In a story borrowed partially from an old TWILIGHT ZONE episode, it bears the usual X-FILES twists, including clever misdirection as to who is doing what when, but its conclusion or payoff is a wry attack on the narcotic effects of television (the overactive imagination of the main villain is subdued by an institutional inundation of television, the person planted before 16 monitors). In another episode a lonely psychokinetic guy recreates the home of the Brady Bunch as an empty attempt at communion. Another ep takes aim at JACKASS. Meanwhile, the better episodes ("Release") borrow from movies over TV.
Meanwhile, some episodes seem like cruel tricks on the viewer. X-FILES has always skirted the limits of taste, but hours such as "Improbable" — a comedy about serial killing — seem beyond the pale, not attached to humanity at all. And Carter, perhaps in an effort to clean house, started to definitely kill off some of his characters, including the Lone Gunmen, a cruel act that offended fans, but which was motivated (I am guessing) by the desire to pre-empt a spin off.
Then there is the rise of god imagery. With the introduction of the Monica Reyes character, played by Annabeth Gish, increasingly more credence is given to divine intervention in human affairs. I'm not sure where all that began coming from, but the producers of popular shows are probably prone to God complexes. One whole episode, an obviously expensive one, but also confusing, stars Burt Reynolds as God, doing a terrible George Burns turn.
One of the clever things about X-FILES in the beginning was that the premise flipped expectations. Instead of the other way around, here it was the chick who was the skeptic and rationalist, and the guy who was the moony mush-brained believer. Unfortunately, what has always been annoying about the show is that when one is a skeptic the other is a believer, and vice versa. They are never fully aligned.
That problem was aggravated in the ninth season with its full playing field of Scully, Doggett, and Reyes, and the flirtation of Mulder in the shadows, not to mention a host of FBI officials. This causes an imbalanced team, since there are now three fully functioning agents instead of two, but on the good side it means that occasionally Scully and Reyes are in the show alone, as in "Improbable."
But the season has other problems, not the least of which is fake suspense, the padding out of slim stories with distracting and non-pertinent narrative side trips. Again and again, you see people walking onto a scene and seeing others talking just out of their hearing — and rarely if ever is what the other two are saying relevant or "conspiratorial."
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But the conclusion of the series, even though it happened two years ago, puts one in a wintry and reflective mood, and inspires the viewer to try and reconcile the whole of the show with its final hours. One of the show's distinguishing characteristics was that "good" always loses, hapless people are destroyed as a matter of course, and secret rulers of the world always knew more than the planet's docile inhabitants. Born of a few decades of conspiracy theorizing first inspired by questions over the JFK assassination but later also by UFO cover-ups, THE X-FILES caters to a paranoid interpretation of history (though often with a sense of humor). But might there be a larger conspiracy? A meta-conspiracy behind the show's examination of conspiracy? Just what might the effect of about 180 hours of X-FILES have on the populace that watches it, as week after week they learn that resistance is futile and good is weak? Might they then be ripe for domination by a global corporation hell-bent on interfering with our political systems for its own benefit? Could the very foundation of THE X-FILES be a plot by Fox owner Rupert Murdock and his heirs to make us give up all hope in the face of his broadening corporate phalanx? I do not know. I can only speculate.
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Still, for holdouts who still revere the series, the final season's DVD set is packed with material and fully honors the show so many people loved back in its prime. One can still enjoy the moody lighting, the odd character names, and the education vocabulary (one word I picked up was "hymenopteran," but now I can't remember which episode or what the word means, although I think it is the one about the kid who controls bugs).
This ninth set of X-FILES is more or less a model of how to do series television. Each episode looks beautiful in its anamorphic transfer. The sound is great. Certain extras such as deleted scenes are available both attached to the show on that disc, but also on a separate disc.
There is only one audio commentary track by Carter, over "Improbable," the Burt Reynolds-God hour (during which one hears that Carter has a lispy palate just like Gillian Anderson's), but there are tracks for two other episodes by the directors and / or writers. Most of the individual ep extras are either text cast comments or "international clips," scenes from the show as they appear in other international markets. Discs six and seven are where most of the extras appear, and they include material patterned after supplements from previous season, plus some additional stuff cast in the somber hue of reminiscence and parting. The full season survey is "The Truth about Season Nine," which touches on all 20 shows. Two more documentaries focus on the last two-parter, "The Truth," which summarizes the whole Mythology half of the series. Mat Beck gathers all the deleted scenes up here again, with commentary by director Frank Spotnitz, and a survey of special effects sequences with yak by Paul Rabwin. Each set picks a character or two to profile; here it is Reyes and her former lover-nemesis Brad Follmer. Finally, there are 38 promotional spots. The final disc contains two haggard promotional featurettes about the show that aired during its lifetime, plus another one in which celebrities (Cher, for example) talk about their reactions to the show. The disc also has a DVD-ROM game on it. Finally, there is a 24-page booklet with thorough information not only about season and the disc materials but with lists of all nine seasons' titles. THE X-FILES: THE COMPLETE NINTH SEASON hit the street on May 11th and retails for $99.95
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Last Picture Shows and Parallax Views
EASY RIDERS, RAGING BULLS
Hard on the heels of his latest controversial popular history film book, called DOWN AND DIRTY PICTURES, comes this filmic account of Peter Biskind's previous work, EASY RIDERS AND RAGING BULLS. The new book is more about deals gone bad (for one person or another); the old one is more about gossip (Martin Scorsese allegedly high on drugs running down Sunset Boulevard nude). The film is about neither, but still interesting to watch, if for no other reason than that it gives the subjects of his book their voice.
Biskind may be the most unpopular person in Hollywood. Especially if you take into account such cultural artifacts as the Biskind Bashing web site. The film, directed by Kenneth Bowser for the BBC, perhaps wisely minimizes Biskind, simply following the same narrative trajectory as the book, taking its lead and borrowing some of its insights.
It's fun to watch, like a class reunion. Many '70s stars and directors are game enough to be honest about what they were doing (Peter Bogdanovich admits his arrogance; Cybill Shepherd acknowledges the pain she caused Polly Platt in stealing away her husband — Bogdanovich — but also admits that she would do the same thing again today). It's also fun to see bits of THE LAST MOVIE, Dennis Hopper's follow up to EASY RIDER, which as far as I can tell is not on either laser disc or DVD and is fairly hard to view.
Margot Kidder, who appears to have been the queen bee of the new young '70s filmmakers is awfully fun talking out of school about her old chums, and John Milius makes a funny analogy about Hollywood as a whole. The film is fascinating, if superficial (as most movies must be in comparison to a book), but this is one example of when it is good not to have the bias of one person behind the film; Bowser more or less cleanses the film of the Biskind mindset.
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Shout Factory's two disc DVD set is a welcome addition to any film student's library, not so much for the primary film itself but for the extras, or, I should say, "extra," which is a whole other hour's worth of interviews left out of the end version of the documentary. Here, Bowser gives some of his interview subjects more time to talk about their careers, but also "corrects" some of the problems of the source book, for example its undervaluation of film reviewers as creating a market for '70s filmmakers. Thus, Andrew Sarris is invited to discuss the times and his role in them. Bowser also gives many of the people who appear in both Biskind's book and this film the chance to reply to the author. Schrader, for example, complains that Biskind had a thesis and wouldn't deviate from it, not even see the films that Schrader made, such as AFFLICTION, that Schrader believes refute Biskind's conclusions about him. Biskind gets the last word on the extras, though. But he doesn't do much with his opportunity than to complain about the fact that so many filmmakers were mad at him. Duh. EASY RIDERS RAGING BULLS hit the street May 11th, and retails for $24.98.
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Star Power
THE TIN STAR
When I was first getting "into" movie directors I was pleased to come upon Anthony Mann, who dabbled in many of the genres I liked and frequently used one of the great cinematographers, John Alton. It's reasonably safe to say that Mann made many of the best noirs and best westerns of the '50s. He is the epitome of the auteurist discovery, a director working in relative obscurity who quietly turns out fascinating, complex, and powerful films masked by their genre identity. I know very little about him, which in a way is a good thing — I can view his movies are pure cinematic "texts," as the boys at the quarterlies like to say.
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I suppose that THE TIN STAR is viewed as one of Mann's lesser westerns, but gadfly that I am, I happen to think it is one of his best. The film stars Henry Fonda in what would normally be the James Stewart role (Mann and Stewart made several films together), in this case as an ex-sheriff turned bounty hunter who finds himself in a small town ruled by a vicious, racist blowhard Bart Bogardus (the ranine Neville Brand). Though now Fonda's Morg Hickman is on the surface only in it for the money (a common stance in Mann's films), he nevertheless takes under his wing the uncertain and nerdy sheriff Ben Owens (Anthony Perkins). Hickman teaches him how to shoot, and when; how to bluff, and when to stay out of a fight. Under his tutelage, Owens takes back the town from Bogardus and his thugs (freeing a city from criminals being a popular '50s theme).
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The story is a little more complicated than that, but those are the bare essentials. Also consistent throughout Mann's career and found in this film is a liberal "social protest" film style sympathy for minorities, and Bogardus is presented as a vile racialist, seeing and judging people solely by their color, and able to detect, like a Nazi commandant, traces of other races in persons of mixed heritage. Westerns from THE OX BOW INCIDENT to HIGH NOON have used the western setting to explore contemporary issues (just as science fiction films have), and Mann's political sentiments (derived from a screenplay by Dudley Nichols) do not get in the way of the story (though Bogardus's racist is a motivating force for much of the action). But the point is well made that the only thing separating civilization from chaos is a little tin star.
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But also consistent with Mann's other films is his strong visual dynamic (Loyal Griggs was the cinematographer here). The coolest aspect of THE TIN STAR's look is Mann's use of the sheriff's office and his framing within the frame of some characters with the office's windows. The sheriff can see what's going on in the town, but he can't do anything about it, until Hickman arrives. Mann and Griggs also like low angles, the "democracy" of the wide screen frame, and multiple characters doing different things at the same time. There is a marvelous scene in which a calm Hickman simply watches with great concentration a nervous Owens pace around in his office.
It's a quiet but great film, and Paramount's inexpensive DVD ($9.98, from its Widescreen Collection) offers a great transfer, enhanced. The audio options comprise a DD 5.1 surround, and an English mono track, which the box says is restored (there are also English subtitles). THE TIN STAR hit the street May 11th.
Boone. Richard Boone
HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL
Be wary of nostalgia. For DVD distributors will prey on you. You may think to yourself, Hey, I'll get that DVD set of the TV show I loved as a kid. It'll be fun to wallow in the memories of an era of simple television, with crisp stories of noble people told in concise running times (and, on disc, without the interruptions of commercials).
That was the way I felt about HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL. I'd seen it as a kid, but hadn't seen one frame of it since. I had fond memories of Richard Boone as Paladin, the first of the James Bond-style TV characters. Based in a prestigious San Francisco hotel, Paladin is a gun for hire with a mysterious past. The way HAVE GUN stories usually work out, Paladin ends up working for causes than for money (though he never seems to lack for it).
But whoa!, when the set arrives the first thing I notice is that the it contains 39 episodes. That's about 20 hours of film, but twice the number of actual shows your typical DVD reviewer is used to (most series these days range from 13 to 22 eps). Double the complexity! Twice the narratives to assimilate!
The good news is that, for all its evidence of typical network TV impoverishment, HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL turns out to be a pretty damn good show. Like most programs at the time, it is "episodic," with Boone meeting new people and interesting situations with each half hour. It also bears the casual racism of the time, which Paladin's man Friday being a Chinese hotel clerk named Hey Boy (Kam Tong). Later there is a Hey Girl (Lisa Lu).
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The brainchild of Herb Meadow and Sam Rolfe, and mostly directed by Andrew V. McLaglan, son of a movie star and western film hack, HAVE GUN sounds better than it looks (like most TV shows of the '50s, indeed even today, it is really a radio show). But it is rife with cameos by future greats, including Charles Bronson, Angie Dickinson, R. G. Armstrong, Murray Hamilton, and Stuart Whitman. Most important to the show of course is Boone himself, and personally I view him as one of the great, underappreciated actors. Note the way he really looks at people when he talks to them, and even a moment as simple as Paladin getting out of a carriage and paying off a clerk is filled with warmth, humanity, and sincerity.
This Paramount set of HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL season offers good full frame transfers (derived, I am guessing, from 16 mm prints of the show), with adequate sound (sometimes it sounds a little shredded in the higher registers). The extras are modest, but helpful, consisting of textual cast notes on the guest stars. HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL retails for $49.95, and hit the street May 11th.
War Games
THE FOG OF WAR: ELEVEN LESSONS FROM THE LIFE OF ROBERT S. MCNAMARA
When the history of the 20th century comes finally to be truly written it will be a panorama of war criminals. The French generals of WWI; Woodrow Wilson; Hitler; Kissinger; all the way up to Rumsfeld (as the new NEW YORKER suggests in the third of so-far three articles on the prison tortures).
Mr. Robert McNamara seems to be aware of this prospect, and of his inclusion on the list. Since the 1980s he has written several books, the most prominent being IN RETROSPECT, which purports to be his side of the story of how we got into Vietnam and in over our heads. For some reason people seem to think that his book is an apologia and many reviewers have carried that believe over to Errol Morris's film on McNamara.
Apparently left over hippies and former radicals want to believe that McNamara is sorry. They have a romantic notion that the man has changed, that they, in the high moments of protest, toppled him and made McNamara see the light. Frankly, I defy anyone to find evidence of this remorse in the movie.
One of the many problems with FOG is that for being a documentary about McNamara there aren't a lot of alternative voices. In fact the film features only one person: McNamara. That's what makes me think that the film is some kind of put up job. That McNamara only participated because he knew that he would have a solo forum and not be put on the spot. Sure, Morris gets around finally to asking the "tough" questions, but then Bob just says, "I don't want to talk about that," and that's that. The steady onslaught of close-ups of McNamara, like something out of Richard Avedon, with his dewy, piteous eyes also is designed to make you think that he is sorry, but in fact he is just an old guy with wet eyes.
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Morris tries to distract the viewer from the obvious fact that the film is little more than a paid infomercial with a succession of "illustrative" images that look like stock footage and may or may not be actual footage of things that McNamara is talking about, or which Morris shot to "help" us understand what we are hearing. Thus, when McNamara mentions the domino theory of communist succession, Morris helpfully shows real footage of dominos falling across a map of Southeast Asia.
Morris structures the film around 11 "life lessons" that sound like they come out of evangelical business manuals like WHO MOVED MY CHEESE. Number four is "Maximize efficiency." Number two is "Rationality will not save us." This brings up an interesting contradiction; because McNamara claims that, during the Cuban missile crisis, a bunch of rational men almost cause WW III. However, later on McNamara notes that Curtis LeMay, whom McNamara worked for during the war on Japan, was eager to go bomb Cuba and the Russians. That doesn't sound so rational individuals. Also, McNamara neglects to note that the missile crisis was averted thanks to back-channel communications and deals that led to a mutual pull out (the U.S. quietly took its missiles out of Turkey).
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Alexander Cockburn points out in THE NATION that McNamara's career after LBJ fired him is even worse — as head of the World Bank he spearheaded gross poverty in Africa and other nations (one of the deleted scenes goes into the World Bank years). McNamara is and was a soulless, bottom-line, by-the-numbers bureaucrat who would have fit right into Germany between the wars. That he remains a mean-spirited conservative is reveal by one of the deleted scenes in the extras, which has McNamara talking about debating a girl on the street during a WTO protest. McNamara "bests" her and tells her she doesn't know what he is talking about. I think that this particular deleted scene tells the viewer more about McNamara than the whole of FOG OF WAR>: his vindictiveness, his need to be right, his unwillingness to apologize, his willing participation as a tool of world powers. He can't even be gracious about a well-meaning girl on a street challenging him.
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Other extras include several more deleted scenes, some of which show him talking about his late wife, telling unfunny anecdotes, and evading more Morris questions. There is also a text extra of more life lessons from McNamara.
Columbia Tristar offers the Oscar winning documentary with a fine wide screen (1.78:1) transfer enhanced for widescreen TVs, and good sound (DD 5.1), with French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese subtitles (plus closed captions). The static, silent menu offers 28-chapter scene selection. FOG OF WAR retails for $24.96 and hit the street on May 11th.
NEXT TIME: FAST COMPANY, THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY, PAYCHECK, ILSA SHE WOLF OF THE SS, THE TIN DRUM, and more!
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