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Nocturnal Admissions
By D.K. Holm
May 12, 2006
[nota bene: The following column, by necessity, contains some spoilers! If you don't want to know the ending of the movies mentioned, don't read on.]
The Party Trap
JUST MY LUCK
A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION
Here is my audio review of JUST MY LUCK and PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION.
Once upon a time, Lindsay Lohan was poised to become the next Natalie Wood, that is, a child actress in certain generationally beloved films (Wood: Miracle on 34th Street; Lohan: The Parent Trap remake) who successfully makes the transition to adult fare. Wood did it with Rebel Without a Cause, and then went on to become both a sex starlet and a respected actress, which few stars combine. Lohan has yet to make that transition, although the next few weeks may show the way. For now, though, she is just another Tara Reid.
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Regular readers of this column know that I am a huge Lindsay Lohan fan, and have had nary an unkind thing to say about her in the films that have come under review. I first found out about her via, of all things, the VHS EPK of Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. Though vaguely aware of her before that, I hadn't had a frame of exposure to her. One lazy afternoon I was dutifully going through the stack of EPKs for forthcoming films and hit upon Disney's 2004 vehicle for its important star. Lohan impressed me. She was poised and articulate in her pro forma interviews, and then in the included music video, she was funny, graceful, and could actually sing. And boy, could she dance (her mother was a Rockette).
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It came on me like a slow dawning. She … actually is … good. In fact, more than good. She had potential to be great, the next truly great homegrown American movie star. When I saw Mean Girls I was hooked. Cute. Great screen presence. A knack for comedy. And when she came out with the other "mean girls" dressed in faux Santa costumes and stockings and boots and proceeded to dance her castmates off the screen, I fell out of my cushioned, pop-soaked chair and hit the popcorn-laden floor.
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If Lohan has yet to capitalize on her innate talent, I'm sure that it's not due to personal failure or being lured by the party life, as the tabloids would have us believe. I think that it's just hard to have a complete career in Hollywood these days because unless you are already a superstar you don't work with the best talents there. And even then, sooner or later you're going to make a bad decision and start tumbling down through horrible projects. It's a subtle difference that you see between the careers of Johnny Depp and (yes) Tom Cruise, both competing for the status of best screen actor in Hollywood. Cruise has been bigger, longer, and has used that fame to his advantage, consistently working with the best directors: Curtis Hanson, Brickman, Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Scorsese, Levinson, Howard, Pollock, Pakula, Jordan. Cameron Crowe, Paul Thomas Anderson. Spielberg and Woo. Michael Mann. Oliver Stone. De Palma. Kubrick. I mean, that is a fucking dream cast of directors. Depp, by contrast, and though he too is a heartthrob, has been slightly less famous, and so chooses among John Waters, Tim Burton, Kusturica, Halstrom, Jarmusch, Badham, Newell, Gilliam, Polanski, the young, late Demme, the Hughes brothers. Depp has veered more towards European art film directors, but one key difference is that Depp has forged creative partnership with a great director, Tim Burton. But the point is, who else has their sway among such a lineup of helmers.
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Lohan is not quite yet in the position to pick and choose among directors. Thus, with two movies coming out nearly back to back, she falls under the stewardship of Donald Petrie on the one hand, and — in what is widely viewed as a "good career move" — Robert Altman on the other. I would dispute the good news about Altman. He is not a star maker. He favors ensembles, and his movies come across more like chaotic cast parties than worked out, thought through tales that a performer can get his hands on. Petrie, on the other hand, directed Julia Roberts in Mystic Pizza and Sandra Bullock in Miss Conviviality. He is much more likely to know how to shape an actress's performance to "make her" a star. And what Lohan needs to get to a power based position like the one Roberts used to have and that Reese Witherspoon enjoys now, is a couple of $120 million dollar movies in a row.
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But I am slipping into that very thing I usually hate: "career analysis" as film criticism. It's better to look at what she does on screen. In Petrie's Just My Luck, from a script credited to I. Marlene King and Amy B. Harris, from a story concocted by King and three others, Lohan plays Ashley Albright, who has the kind of vague job that Manhattan girls in movies like this have. She's been lucky her whole life, but thanks to some kind of magical mumbo jumbo we have been seeing in movies from Prelude to a Kiss to 13 Going on 30, she "exchanges" her luck, via a kiss at a masquerade ball (that was, by the way, her idea, sold to a young record company owner, so at least the notches of the plot are well laid out), with a notorious loser, one Jake Hardin (Chris Pine), whose band is seeking fame via the same record label owner. Once he has absorbed Albright's luck via an anonymous kiss, his band becomes a hit, and she ends up dirty, poor, and working in a bowling alley.
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The film is geared to a very specific demographic, i.e., girls of the same age as Lindsay Lohan who have been following her career since The Parent Trap in 1998. Mainstream critics are probably going to be less sympathetic, therefore, to Lohan's knack for the accoutrements of the perpetually-teenaged, the lingo delivery, the facial expressions, and hunger for dancing. For my money, Lohan inhabits that universe appealingly, and though the film doesn't feel like star platform like Mystic Pizza, Mystic Pizza didn't feel like a very good movie at the time, either.
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Like Lloyd Kaufman at Troma, Lohan has been playing to her demographic for years, and that probably has been a career-stifling plan. Robert Altman's A Prairie Home Companion, slated for release on June 9, steps out of that predictable array of stories, music, and reaction shots to do something more "arty." If only it were a better film. It's a typical hash of Altmanian mannerisms and incomprehensible interactions among numerous people milling around a crowded location. Based loosely on the idea of Garrison Keillor's NPR show, it's filled with Altman's typically unfunny sense of humor, mostly in the form of Kevin Kline as Guy Noir, a security guard who affects the demeanor and style of old movie detectives. I hate Americana and "whimsy" and consequently hate Keillor's show and never listen to it, thanks to its endless sub-Twain tall tales, but this particular variation on the radio show feels especially death obsessed, with Virginia Madsen wandering around in a trench coat visiting death upon selected victims, such as L. Q. Jones. At the end, she even looms over the main cast members sitting in diner. Maybe this death obsession has more to do with Altman, who recently had a heart transplant, but in any case it makes for a weird cinematic experience.
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Here Lohan plays Lola Johnson, the daughter of one of the Johnson Family singers. Since I never listen to the dreaded program, I don't know if the Johnsons are regular members of Keillor's menagerie, like most of the other characters, or made up for the movie. Suffice it to say that Altman, having in his hands one of the best young singer-dancers around, confines her to a back room where she scribbles poems in a diary while trying to ignore her mother (Meryl Streep) and aunt (Lily Tomlin). Though the poem her petulant character deigns to read out loud is pretty funny, Altman seems hell bent on using her as a parody of recalcitrant teenaged girlhood, sullen and self-absorbed. Finally she does get to sing at the end and Lohan does a good job, but it's a dull song and she is stranded by the director, who insists, in the spirit of the radio broadcast, that she stand stationary, listless and lifeless. The sheer joy that Lohan effortlessly conveys is priceless, and is yet another reminder of Lohan's innate talent, but it is virtually ignored by her director.
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These are not necessarily the movies that I would have wanted her to make at this point. But they are going in the right direction and frankly, Just My Luck is much more entertaining as a movie movie than Home Companion is as an art film, or homage to a radio show. She's listed as slated for Bobby, the film about the shooting of RFK, directed by … Emilio Estevez, followed by another assassination movie, Chapter 27, about Mark David Chapman, who shot John Lennon, written and directed by newcomer Jarrett Schaeffer, another mono-monikered title, followed by Bill, by producer-turned-director, Bernie Goldmann, about a man (Aaron Eckhart) who takes on a rebellious teen, and then Speechless, a modern Cyrano tale from a story by L. Sprague de Camp, and co-starring Adrien Brody (Lohan has been surrounding herself with Oscar winners, statistically probably a good idea). These projects sound serious without being necessarily good. I will probably be wrong but I don't foresee these films as being the 100 million dollar plus films that Lohan needs in a row to seal her relationship with audiences. Lohan would have been perfect as the lead in the original version of The Wedding Planner, called Marry Me Jane before it was "gayified." That's what Lohan needs. A great romantic comedy that will make the unconverted adult audience fall in love with her.
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There's a moment in the 5th episode of the Scrubs: The Complete Third Season (Buena Vista, 2003 - 2004, 22 episodes at 477 minutes, color, NR, full frame, DD 5.1 in English with English subtitles, animated musical menu with 5-chapter scene selection, novelty postcard inset, folding case in plasticene slipcase, three discs, $39.95, released on Tuesday, May 9, 2006) that succinctly defined the show, or at least what the show had become. J.
D. Dorian (now-world-famous Zach Braff) is having trouble with his brother (Letterman-disciple Tom Cavanagh). Dorian's best friend, the surgeon Turk
(Donald Faison) turns to him and, in a wordy speech characteristic of the show, says, "You know, I love how kids of divorce really have the market cornered on family dysfunction. But let me share with you a typical Thanksgiving at the Turk household: It starts with my mother yelling at my sister for yelling at my grandmother who's yelling at the television screen, which happens to be the microwave. And then my militant brother Jabari — formerly Bob — gives my father attitude for using the word 'black', even though he's referring to the turkey. Which, by the way, only got burnt because instead of turning the oven off, my bi-polar aunt Leslie tried to shove her head in it. But you know what we do? We kiss. And we hug. And we apologize for all the things we said — 'Cause a month later, we gonna get together and do it again at Christmas."
Turk's speech also captures the rhythm of each episode of Scrubs. Cheerfulness or dedication or lust is clouded by some storm that passes finally near the end in time for a (usually) happy ending and a musical montage.
This formula was endearing for the first 50 episodes. But now, by the third season it, and the show's other trick (having someone's bold statement/prediction/self-advice instantly contradicted) have grown wearing. And doesn't one get just a little sick of the pointless yo-yo of the Dorian - Elliot romance (which mirrors the one in its unofficial offspring, Grey's Anatomy). I'm also not fond of the sadistic stalking janitor. And apparently the style doesn't travel. A show by Scrubs writer Matt Tarses, Teachers, was just cancelled by NBC.
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Still, the show remains one of the brightest on TV, with wonderful speeches for John C. McGinley's Dr. Cox, and tightly crafted plots. Season three is the one in which Dorian dates Jordan's sister (Tara Reid); Turk and Karla finally get married; and Cox has a crisis in which he mourns the death of his best friend, Ben Sullivan (Brendan Fraser), who is also Jordan's brother. That's one of the best episodes of the show, a kind of mini-Sixth Sense. Other guest stars include Bellamy Young as the dishy Dr. Miller, Love Boat's Bernie Kopell, Star Trek's George Takei, and Maureen McCormick. Show creator Bill Lawrence used to work on Spin City, and so vets from that show — Barry Bostwick, Richard Kind, Michael J. Fox — pop up for short or long durations.
With each set, Buena Vista adds yet more special features. This one is packed. All of them are confined to the third disc, and include
"Twist and Shout," Don't Try This At Home" (about the show's slapstick), "Long-Term Residents," "What up Dawg?" (about the pets brought to the set), "Scrubs Factor," "Robert Keeps Talking" (a video interview with the actor who plays The Todd), "The New Elliot" (about the character's make over), "Is There a Doctor in the House?," "Scrubbed Out: Deleted Scenes" ("Think As Dumb" from "My Dirty Secret"; "Gibberish" from "My Lucky Night"; "Wayne Newton" from "My Advice to You"; "Shove It Up" from "My Advice to You"; "Bathtub Sponge" from "His Story II"; "Good Doctor" from "My Fault"; "Soft Brown Eyes" from "My Fault"); Alternate Lines: A Second Opinion," also with a "Play All" option ("Bus Full of Nuns" from "My Advice to You"; "Alice Cooper" from "My Clean Break"; "Footgasm" from "My Screw Up"; "Roof Toilet" from "My Porcelain God"; "Uncool Dude!" from "My Choosiest Choice of All"; "Dr. Mengela" from "My Fault"; "Soup Nazi" from "My Self-Examination"; "Mrs. Turkelton" from "My Self-Examination"), a gag reel, and two conventional audio commentaries, the first for "His Story II," with Donald Faison and writer Mark Stegemann, and "My Self-Examination," with Randall Winston, Faison, and Judy Reyes. Finally there is a "Register Your DVD" option (has anyone ever done this?). The first disc has trailers for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Dinosaurs: The Complete First and Second Season, The Golden Girls: 5th Season, Annapolis,Shadows in the Sun/Everything You Want, and Grey's Anatomy: Season One.
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All sitcoms, however, aspire, or should, to the condition of Nat Hiken. A painfully shy, almost inarticulate speaker, Hiken was, when alone, or with a team of writers, the premiere comedy writer of the 1950s and early '60s (Hiken's career, from radio writer to series producer, is elucidated in David Everitt's excellent bio, King of the Half Hour, published in 2001 by Syracuse University Press). The two creations to which all sitcom writers must turn are, of course, The Phil Silvers Show and Car 54, Where Are You? and the reason is simple: they were actual, really, truly situation comedies. That is, the humor was not wisecrack or insult based (though there was some of that in Hiken's scripts) but derived from the complex and interacting situations (quandaries, really) into which Hiken inserts his overweening characters.
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The sitcom is "under threat" these days, and even NBC Entertainment president Kevin Reilly calls comedy "a challenged genre." This isn't entirely due to the existence of that Emmy magnet Everybody Loves Raymond, or its eventual retirement, along with numerous other sitcoms, seemingly all at once. Although Raymond is every intelligent person's whipping boy for what is wrong with sitcoms, I don't think its detractors every actually watched it, as it is not the anodyne, sugary show that their criticisms suggest (that was The Cosby Show. It's actually a rather vile show about unpleasant hateful people who continually undermine and bitch at each other. It's really not all that far off from Seinfeld, with the main difference being the Hiken factor. In Raymond, everyone just stands around and talks. In Seinfeld, which must have been influenced by Hiken and his practices, at least three intricate situations are developed that intersect brilliantly in an episode's final minutes. If the "irony" of Raymond's title is lost on those who haven't seen it, the show's continual success first in prime time and now in syndication, only takes its devoted viewers away from the true essence of situation comedy.
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Despite the fact that both of Hiken's main shows have been turned into very bad movies, Paramount has now gathered 18 episodes of the Phil Silvers Show under the title Sgt. Bilko: The Phil Silvers Show (Paramount, 1955 - 1959, 18 episodes at 7 hours, 45 minutes, black and white episodes with some color extras, NR, full frame, DD English mono with English subtitles, animated musical menu with 5-chapter scene selection, numerous extras, folding case in paper slipcase, three discs, $39.95, released on Tuesday, May 9, 2006) for, with luck, new generations of sit-com writers to learn from.
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Disc No. 1 features "New Recruits," which comes with an audio commentary by Allan Melvin, who played Cpl. Henshaw, and who has a brief audio intro for every episode and extra. That show is joined by "The WAC," which is about a typical mix up, "The Horse," which illustrates Bilko's dreams of escape, "The Eating Contest," with a cameo by Fred Gwynne, who later acted for Hiken in Car 54, and "Bivouac," one of the more complex plots. There is a "Play All" option. Disc No. 2 opens with "The Twitch," then moves on to "The Investigation," which mocks government panels, "The Revolutionary War," about Bilko's purported ancestors, "The Court Martial," which has an audio commentary by George Kennedy, "The Con Men," in which Bilko uses his skills for once in defense of his men, "A Mess Sergeant Can't Win," featuring Joe E. Ross, later of Car 54, "Doberman's Sister," with an audio commentary by Larry Storch (last seen in The Aristocrats) and Mickey Freeman (Pvt. Zimmerman). Disc No. 3 "Bilko's Tax Trouble," "The Big Scandal," with a cameo by Julie Newmar, "Hillbilly Whiz," featuring and with an audio commentary by Dick Van Dyke, "Bilko the Art Lover," which takes him off base and to Manhattan and Alan Alda, "Bilko Joins the Navy," with an audio commentary by Storch and Freeman, and "Weekend Colonel," the very last episode which, in a nod to conventional morality, finds Bilko finally in the brig.
If you were to watch only two episodes from this set, they would have to be "The Court Martial" and "The Big Scandal." "The Court Martial" is a satire on military bureaucracy that reaches Hellerian heights (a monkey gets drafted and the only way to get rid of him and save face is to court martial him). "The Big Scandal," which begins with the base at a hypnotist's performance, is an excellent example of how several threads come together in the end in an explosion of comic happenstance.
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Each disc has a wealth of special features. Disc No. 1 includes the full "Lost Audition Show," performed in front of a live audience, a clip from the The Ed Sullivan Show, where Silvers and some of the cast did two scenes from the episode, "Bivouac" (and which reminds one of Paul Ford's inability to perfectly memorize his lines), a moment from the 1956 Emmy Awards, an excerpt from the The Dick Cavett Show which brought together Silvers and Jack Benny, some promo video footage of Steve Martin, Dan Aykroyd and Phil Hartman promoting Sgt. Bilko (Hartman proves to be a superb mimic), some Nick at Nite intros with Hartman, and an audio feature of Silvers at the Friars Club Roast for Humphrey Bogart, from 1955. Disc No. 2 starts off with the show's original opening and some original commercials, a gag photo, and a video excerpt of Tony Randall and Jack Klugman "remembering" the show for the benefit of TV Land viewers. Disc No. 3 kicks off with the 1957 Emmy award ceremony, and excerpt from the show Phil Silvers on Broadway, which has a sketch with the cast of the show, a 1959 Pontiac Commercial, a New Phil Silvers Show promo, a TV interview with Silvers, conducted by Sonny Fox, an audio of the "Bilko Growl," and a photo gallery. If you are as big a Bilko fanatic as me you will eat up all of these features, regardless of how trivial.
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I never wonder why I am addicted to That '70s Show: Season Four (Fox, 2001 - 2002, 27 episodes at 598 minutes, color, NR, full frame, DD surround in English with English subtitles, animated musical menu with 5-chapter scene selection, slip case with individual snap cases, four discs, $49.95, released on Tuesday, May 9, 2006), ending this year, and with half its run now out on disc. Despite the fact that it isn't really all that funny (it suffers from some of the same recurrent flaws as Scrubs above), and though it enjoys (is hampered by? One could go either way) a remarkable consistency over its past many years — the characters never seem to change, age, or leave, until recently.
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No, despite those complaints, I like the show for three reasons. The terrific theme song (I always do a little arena rock dance in the living room when it comes on). The 360 (that's what the makers call the occasional moments when characters gather around a table to smoke pot, although you never see them inhale and were it not for the cloud of vapors a non-experienced viewer might not even know what they are doing; this was a brilliant way to get around Fox proscriptions against an 8 PM TV show "encouraging" drug use). And Laura Prepon's Donna. She's like the dream girl next door: red headed, tomboyish, aggressive yet sensitive, game, taller than everybody. Prepon embodies her perfectly, and according to supplements on this set she may not be all that different from the fictional Donna. God, I hope Prepon has a career in movies or another show after this.
Season four is the one in which Donna and Eric are broken up, and Donna's mother Midge (the husky voiced Tanya Roberts) leaves the family. Donna dates Kelso's brother Casey (Luke Wilson), Fez appears in the school musical (I always love the musical pageants in this show), and Kelso breaks up with Jackie. At the end of the season, Donna and Kelso have split town. Sources and parodies include It's a Wonderful Life, Wuthering Heights, and The Wizard of Oz. Aerosmith make an appearance.
It's amazing how the writers and actors derived infinite variety from this stable set of unchanging characters. They are well drawn, brilliantly cast (whichever happens first, that is), and utterly relaxed. And the writers relied on few if any of the standard plot "twists" or contrived arguments that more conventional shows such as Happy Days always used.
As with the Scrubs set, Fox's 70s sets get more packed as they go along. This edition includes three commentary tracks, almost one per disc (director David Trainor on disc 1, ep two, then ep six on disc 3, and ep one of disc 4), plus promo spots on all four discs, and on disc four, the whole season condensed to four minutes, video interviews with Prepon and Mila Kunis, and a session with Trainor on how he directs the show. It's all relatively minor, but good for '70s fans.
And incidentally, if you are interested in KILL BILL, you might find my new book, KILL BILL: AN UNOFFICIAL CASEBOOK useful. It is now available in fine bookstores everywhere, or from Amazon.
Not only that, I've got a new book out on an aspect of film noir I call film soleil, titled simply FILM SOLEIL. It is sure to alter film criticism as we know it to its very core. Order it now!
And if you are interested in what I sound like, I can be heard on KBOO radio (90.7 FM) the second and the fourth Wednesday of the month, at 9 AM in the morning (Pacific Standard Time) on Ed Goldberg's show MOVIE TALK along with Dawn Taylor. It's available via streaming audio (in 20 Kbps Stereo). The next broadcast is Wednesday, May 24, at 9 AM, with the critics' ten best lists.
COMING SOON: Oscar winners on DVD, a package of Hitchcock movies and TV shows, REMINGTON STEEL and other TV mystery shows, many STAR TREKS, the third annual DVD Tray of Horror, and more!
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