My Man Godfrey
My Man Godfrey firmly established Carole Lombard (To Be or Not to Be) as Hollywood’s premier screen comedienne in the 1930s; and it has since taken its rightful place in the pantheon of essential screwball comedies. Lombard steals the show as Irene, a loopy New York heiress who tabs down-on-his-luck Godfrey Smith (played by Lombard’s real-life former husband, William Powell) as the “forgotten man” she needs to complete a scavenger hunt. Captivated by the unflappable Godfrey, she hires him on “to butle” for her eccentric family, with hopes of eventually grooming him to be her de facto protégé. One aspect of the film’s genius is displayed in the casting of its hard-luck hero: Contemporary audiences couldn’t help but feel that if someone as sophisticated as Powell (The Thin Man) could bottom out, then surely anyone could. And Gregory La Cava’s directing style (much of the dialogue was reworked on the set during production) finds its natural complement in the skill of his extraordinary supporting cast. Eugene Pallette excels as Irene’s gravel-voiced father, while Alice Brady plays the role of the strong-willed but oblivious mother at perfect pitch. The underrated Gail Patrick keeps the story moving as the vengeful brat trying to upset her younger sister’s fantasy; and Mischa Auer provides the film with some of its funniest moments playing Carlo, the ludicrous high society parasite willing to degrade himself in any manner required to stay in the family’s good graces. While the politics of this class comedy are a bit confused — what begins as a vaguely Marxist critique of American capitalism eventually dissolves into a rather reactionary climax — they never threaten to disturb the delightfully charmed and topsy-turvy world that La Cava and his gifted performers have created. — DG [written for Barnes & Noble.com]

Hatari!
Produced on the heels of director Howard Hawks’s “comeback” hit, Rio Bravo, this rollicking action-comedy proved to be one of his most charming and exhilarating adventures — and one of the last truly great films he would make in a long and storied career. The plot itself is minimal, but the situations are pure Hawks: The story follows a group of professional big-game hunters through a single season, as they drive high-speed across the dusty African plains capturing wild animals for zoos and circuses around the world. John Wayne plays Sean Mercer, the gruff, romantically gun-shy leader, whose tight-knit group is turned upside down when a disarmingly beautiful wildlife photographer (Elsa Martinelli) arrives on the scene. Clocking in at 159 minutes, this is easily the longest film Hawks ever made, yet his control of its pacing is masterful. Hatari! floats effortlessly between intense action scenes and moments of light comedy, never once faltering. The large ensemble cast is immensely likable, and the film’s incredible safari sequences are among the most thrilling ever photographed — the actors risked life and limb doing all their own animal wrangling, without the aid of camera tricks. Cleverly scripted by the brilliant Leigh Brackett (The Big Sleep), Hatari! offers irresistible delights that are far too numerous to mention here. But one would be remiss in neglecting to note the contributions of a waggish Red Buttons, and the buoyant score by Henry Mancini — highlighted by his now-famous “Baby Elephant Walk.” — D.G. [written for Barnes & Noble.com]

Boo ya.

[Q&A from an interview with Robert Altman, originally written for Barnes & Noble.com]

DG: What was the genesis of the Nashville project?

Robert Altman: Joan Tewkesbury had written the screenplay for Thieves Like Us, and I really wanted to make that film. But I was working with United Artists at the time, and they weren’t really interested in the project. They said they’d produce it if I’d make a country-western movie for them. They already had a script and a deal with the singer Tom Jones. Well, I read that script and didn’t want to do it, but I told them I’d be willing to do something else — a movie that was really about Nashville — and I promised them it would have plenty of music. So I sent Joan to Nashville to just kind of hang out for a few weeks and come up with some kind of idea for a movie. She did, and when we finished the script and gave it to United Artists, they passed on it. So now I had this great piece, but I didn’t have any way to make it. Finally Jerry Weintraub, who was in the record business at the time, came over to my office and said, “I want to get into the film business; how do I do it?” I handed him the script and said “Get this made.” He came back about a week later and said, “Okay, I’ve got Marty Starger who wants to do it at ABC.” And that’s how Nashville got made.

DG: Is the Geraldine Chaplin character Joan Tewkesbury’s joke at her own expense — in the way that she’s always hanging out on the fringes?

RA: Yeah, I’m sure it was. Most of the characters and incidents in the film were in some way inspired by things that Joan experienced while she was doing research in Nashville. In fact, when she got off of the plane and first headed into town, there was a wreck on the freeway, and she was held up there for about two hours; that experience inspired a scene that ended up opening the picture.

DG: The whole idea of the bicentennial celebration and the bigger themes about America — were those things you wanted to emphasize from the start?

RA: It was part of a political conceit that we got into. After the script was finished, I came up with the idea for the assassination of Barbara Jean and added the character of the candidate to it. I asked a friend to write speeches for a fictional political candidate that he’d like to see get elected, because I wanted to weave that into the story as well. In the early stages, Polly Platt (The Last Picture Show) was involved in the picture; she was going to be the production designer. But she didn’t like it at all when I put the assassination into the script. Joan didn’t like it either. But the political theme added some necessary weight to the story. I told them I was sorry, but it was going to stay in the script. So Polly Platt quit the picture, but thankfully Joan stayed on.

DG: How much improvisation went into the film? Was there any rewriting done by Joan during production?

RA: Yeah, Joan was always there, and we would improvise and do rewrites while shooting the scenes. That’s the way I do all my films, so Nashville was no different in that sense. It’s just the way I make movies. I start with a script, cast the film, and then the work really starts.

DG: Was it your idea to cast actors who would write and sing their own songs?

RA: No, that evolved, because we didn’t know how we were going to do it at first. I hired Richard Baskin to supervise the music. We listened to a lot of good songs, and then Ronee Blakely was introduced to us. Richard brought her in just to do some songs. She wasn’t an actress, and initially we didn’t think about her as a possibility for the film. We had already cast Susan Anspach to play Barbara Jean. But then we found out that our budget was so small that we had to pay everyone in the cast less money. Susan wouldn’t take the pay cut, so we had to replace her. When we came to Nashville, we had no Barbara Jean. Ronee was singing backup for Hoyt Axton at the time. She hung out with us and worked on a few songs, and I started to look at her in a different way, trying to figure out if she could do this part for us. Ultimately, we cast her.

DG: The scene where she has a mental breakdown onstage is beautifully done. Was that scripted or improvised?

RA: The screenplay indicated what was supposed to happen in general terms, but Ronee wrote and choreographed everything she did in that scene. She came to me the morning we were supposed to shoot it and told me that she had written some stuff. I didn’t have time to read it. So I told her we’d shoot it her way, and if it didn’t work we’d just edit it out. Of course, she was magnificent.

DG: The soundtrack was just recently released on CD for the first time, and it sounds terrific. How was the music recorded?

RA: All the music was done live. That was very important to us. We didn’t do any playback or that sort of thing. And most of the songs were written by the actors. We weren’t trying to make “hit” songs. When we finished this picture and showed it down in Nashville, all of the country music royalty down there — people like Hank Snow, Minnie Pearl, Roy Acuff — just hated the picture. They protested that it wasn’t Nashville; “Nashville writes good songs, blah blah blah.” I don’t mean any disrespect, but I think the artists down there at the time just took it too personally and felt that they should’ve written the songs, that somehow we’d violated something.

DG: But that’s what’s so poignant about the songs as they’re performed in the movie. You feel that they’re coming from real people

RA: Yeah, that’s the way I feel about it, too. The recording industry only selects a few of the many songs written. I wanted to see bad songs in there too, as well as good ones. I wanted a cross section — like when you cut a tree down and look at the rings.

DG: Critics have referred to the film as a “mosaic of America.” Did you think along big thematic lines like that when you were making it?

RA: Well, I wanted to tell a lot of different stories and show the lives of people we don’t normally see onscreen. And, of course, I was very conscious of the political side of it from the start. I think we ended up saying a lot about America and the intense longing that many people in this country feel. In my opinion, the character of the political candidate predicted Jimmy Carter and, later, Ross Perot. It’s a funny thing though: Later, when John Lennon was killed, the Washington Post called me. They opened the conversation by asking if I felt responsible for this. I said, “Well, how do you hold me responsible?” And they replied, “Oh, you came out with this film a few years ago, and you kind of predicted that assassination would move over from politicians to celebrities.” So I said, “Well, why didn’t you heed my warnings?” [laughs]

DG: One of the recurring themes in your films — and particularly in Nashville — is that winning often turns out to be losing. When your characters get something they’ve dreamt of, it usually ends up empty or wrong somehow.

RA: It’s like the old saying “Be careful what you wish for.” It’s a theme that’s always interested me. I’ve many times been asked by producers “Are you going to have a ‘happy ending?’” Well, I feel that that depends on where you decide to end the picture. You could make a nice love story, where at the end everybody’s kissing, and that’s a happy ending. But if you were to look at the lives of those same characters a year later, they might have broken up, or one of them might have fallen ill or died in a car accident — all kinds of things could happen. Happiness is just a stop along the way. Whether a movie has a happy ending or a sad one depends on where you stop telling the story.

DG: Did you have final-cut approval on the picture?

RA: I always do. I’ve never made a film without final say on the cut. Even if I hadn’t negotiated for that kind of control, I’d take it. I have to make the film the way I see it.

DG: Nashville is a really sprawling and ambitious film. Were you happy with the way Paramount marketed it?

RA: For the most part, yes. Maybe they thought the film was too long, and that probably hurt its chances. Also, you have to remember there were plenty of people who didn’t like it when it was first released. Not everyone knew what to make of it.

DG: Where do you rank Nashville among your own work?

RA: It’s one of my kids. I suppose I should be more modest about it, but I love all my films. They’re a part of my life now. The movies I made over the years may have their flaws, just like people do, but it doesn’t lessen my love and affection for them. Sometimes it seems we had to move heaven and earth to get them made, but they’re all finished, and I wouldn’t change a thing.

August 15, 2000

My Marvel Years

by Jonathan Lethem

“In the mid-1970s I had two friends who were into Marvel comics. Karl, whose parents were divorced, and Luke, whose parents were among the most stable I knew. My parents were something between: separated, or separating, sometimes living together and sometimes apart, and each of them with lovers.

Luke had an older brother, Peter, whom both Luke and I idealised in absentia. Peter had left behind a collection of 1960s Marvel comics in sacrosanct box files. These included a nearly complete run of The Fantastic Four, the famous 102 issues drawn by Jack Kirby and scripted by Stan Lee, a defining artefact (I now know) of the Silver Age of comics.

Luke was precocious, worldly, full of a satirical brilliance I didn’t always understand but pretended to, as I pretended to understand his frequent references to ‘Aunt Petunia’ and ‘The Negative Zone‘ and ‘The Baxter Building‘. He was disdainful of childish pursuits and disdainful of my early curiosity about sex (I didn’t catch the contradiction in this until later). Luke didn’t buy new comics so much as read and reread old ones. Luke’s favourite comic-book artist was Jack Kirby.

Karl was precocious, secretive and rebellious, full of intimations of fireworks and drugs and petty thievery that frightened and thrilled me. He was curious about sex, and unaware of or uninterested in the early history of Marvel superheroes. For him, Marvel began with the hip, outsiderish loner heroes of the 1970s – Ghost Rider, Luke Cage, Warlock, Iron Fist. His favourite comic-book artist was John Byrne.

Karl got in trouble a lot. Luke didn’t.

Though all three of us lived in rough parts of Brooklyn, Karl and I went to a terrifying public school in an impoverished neighbourhood, while Luke went to St Ann’s School, safe in moneyed Brooklyn Heights. Karl and I were forced to adopt a stance of endurance and shame together, a kabuki of cringing postures in response to a world of systematic bullying. That was a situation I could no more have explained to Luke than to my parents. Karl and I never discussed it either, but we knew it was shared.

In 1976 Marvel announced, with what seemed to Karl and me great fanfare, the return of Jack Kirby, the king of comics, as an artist-writer – a full ‘auteur’ – on a series of Marvel titles. The announcement wasn’t a question of press conferences or advertisements in other media, only sensational reports on the ‘Bullpen Bulletins’ pages of Marvel comics themselves, the CNN of our little befogged minds at the time. Kirby was the famed creator or co-creator of a vast collection of classic Marvel characters: the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Thor, Silver Surfer, Doctor Doom, the Inhumans. In a shadowy earlier career he had also created Captain America. His career reached into prehistory: the notion that he was about to reclaim his territory was rich and disturbing. In fact, what he would turn out to bring to Marvel was a paradoxical combination: clunkily old-fashioned virtues that had been outmoded, if not surpassed, by subsequent Marvel artists, together with a baroque futuristic sensibility that would leave most readers chilled, largely alienated from what he was trying to do. Later, I’d learn, Kirby’s return created rifts in the ranks of the younger Marvel writers and artists, who resented the creative autonomy he’d been granted and found the results laughable. At the time, all I knew was that Kirby’s return created a rift between myself and Karl.

Kirby hadn’t been inactive in the interlude between his classic 1960s work for Marvel and his mid-1970s return. He’d been in exile at DC, Marvel’s older, more august and squarer rival. In his DC work and the return to Marvel, where he unveiled two new venues, The Eternals and 2001, Kirby gradually turned into an autistic primitivist genius, disdained as incompetent by much of his audience, but revered by a cult of aficionados in the manner of an ‘outsider artist’. As his work spun off into abstraction, his human bodies becoming more and more machine-like, his machines more and more molecular and atomic (when they didn’t resemble vast sculptures of mouse-gnawed cheese), Kirby became great/awful, a kind of disastrous genius uncontainable in the form he himself had innovated. It’s as though Picasso had, after 1950, become Adolf Wölfli, or John Ford had ended up as John Cassavetes. Or if Robert Crumb had turned into his obsessive mad-genius brother, Charles Crumb….”