Well, dear readers, may I just say the following: 108-degrees. Need I say more? That is insanity personified. I walked outside and it was like a sauna bath. It is oppressively hot. It is The Day the Earth Caught Fire hot. It is abnormally hot. Yesterday, I believe, was record heat. We need some damn respite from this damn heat, that’s what I say and have said. I’m not listening to any damn music right now, but the home environment has been cooled down to a toasty seventy-eight. Now, I did a lot of movie-watching yesterday and so let’s get right to that without further delay. After posting the notes last night, I watched the remake of John Cassavetes’ film Gloria. The remake starred Sharon Stone and was directed by someone named Sidney Lumet. Lumet, who hadn’t really had a hit film since The Verdict, was on a huge downward spiral and Gloria is almost but not quite the nadir of that spiral. The screenplay is inept, clearly no one understood why the Cassavetes film actually worked, the direction is inert, and the performance of Sharon Stone is, I hate to say it, laughable. Gena Rowlands was the real deal, of course. You believed she was the character she was playing. The way the plot kicked in made total sense. In the remake, they completely screw up the set-up, which basically ruins what’s to follow. The gangsters in the original film feel real, not like actors. Here, the gangsters are right out of Casting 101, including, I’m sad to say, George C. Scott. For the film to work on any level, you have to believe that Gloria is not someone you mess with, she is a badass broad who’s been around the block with her mob friends. Twenty minutes into the original film, you see exactly just what a badass she is – it’s a great scene. And we get a couple more like it later. The remake loses all those scenes, so this Gloria is basically weak – she has one scene where she acts tough but it’s so inept that it’s unintentionally funny when it should be anything but. Her relationship with the Spanish kid is soap opera bad, her wardrobe is completely wrong, well, everything is wrong. The film was, of course, a huge bomb and deservedly so. Even the score by Howard Shore is terrible. But the most astonishing and inept thing of all, and everyone should hang their heads in shame from Mr. Lumet to the producers to the studio – Columbia – the same studio that put out the original film – why should they hang their heads in shame? Because there is no one single mention anywhere that this film is based on the screenplay, characters, and film by John Cassavetes. Not one word. Not even a thank you. Nothing. It was shameful in 1990 and it’s even more shameful now.
Here are some capsules of the other things I watched: Suspect, starring Cher and Dennis Quaid, directed by Peter Yates. Saw it when it came out and it was quite bad, but sometimes these things seem better years later – this unfortunately did not. The screenplay is ridiculous, the characters behave the way they do because the writer needs them to – no one would behave the way they do in life, heaven knows. Everything is contrived, the dialogue is glib, the ultimate villain reveal predictable. I like courtroom dramas, but this one really does stink. The Black Rebels, a film from 1960 about racism amongst the teen set that was originally called This Rebel Breed. It stars Rita Moreno (a year before West Side Story), Mark Damon, Richard Rust, and other “teens” who are all about twenty-seven. It’s certainly earnest in its way, but not very good, really. Score is by David Rose, of all people. About ten minutes into the film there’s an abrupt splice and music edit and suddenly we’re seeing a makeout scene with much boob grabbing and behind grabbing. No movie in 1960 would have had such a scene. Then ten minutes later we have another abrupt edit and we’re seeing nude women with bouncing boobs – when in doubt, bring on the nudes. That continues throughout the film and these sequences just come completely out of the blue, blue being the operative word. Then I remembered the credits, which a) had the title spliced in in a completely different font and style than the credits, and then a spliced in credit just before the director credit that said something like “Additional scenes directed by” the producer. So, I looked it up and sure enough, the film had played the bottom half of a double bill in 1960. Five years later, the producer shot the nude scenes and re-released it to out of the way low-rent drive-ins under the title The Black Rebels. Amazing.
Then it was Deadly Stranger, kind of a missing Hayley Mill film, never officially released anywhere and available only in crappy bootlegs, like the one on view on Tubi. Terrible. The movie, in which Simon Ward also stars, is pretty bad, and I was surprised to see that Ms. Mills is quite nude in it. The big twist can be ascertained long before the reveal. Finally, something called Whispers, based on a novel by Dean Koontz, the first film to be made from that prolific writer. This seems to have been filmed for television – hard to tell, really – but it’s a dreadful film. I’ve only read one Dean Koontz book and wasn’t that taken with it. The dialogue here is rancid, the plot is wacky, and sometimes what works on the page doesn’t work on film with actors. In the book, the setting is Los Angeles. I think they want us to think it’s LA in the film but it’s Canada, and obviously Canada from frame one. Then we get the usual assortment of Canadian supporting players, some decent, some horrible. The stars are Victoria Tennant and Chris Saranadon. The villain of the piece is played by someone named Jean Leclerc, who gives one of the worst performances ever. He obviously looked at the title, Whispers, and decided that he should literally whisper every single line. That and his French-Canadian accent means you don’t understand or ever hear anything he says, which is not good if you have a leading part. The director is also Canadian, Douglas Jackson, who seems to be the King of bad Canadian TV movies. Anyway, it’s awful fro start to finish.
I also watched another twenty minutes of Chapter Two and could take no more.
Yesterday was a holiday Sunday. I got almost eight hours of sleep, got up, answered e-mails, then just puttered around, doing zero work, which was fine. I had my small pepperoni pizza from Marco’s Pizza – 1200 calories and that was it for the day. Then I went right to viewing and that was the rest of the day and evening, obviously. I had a couple of nice telephonic conversations, too.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll make a show order and maybe start writing commentary, but mostly I’ll relax. I may go out to get some kind of cold sandwich, like a Subway Club or maybe something from Gelson’s that I can make here. I’m also getting some fruit bars in various flavors because those are the perfect antidote to the heat. Then at some point, I’ll watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow and the rest of the week is getting the rest of the perks done – some have started shipping already – viewing self-tapes and casting roles, figuring out the last of the New York locations, letting actors know what day they’ll be working, finishing the commentary for the Kritzerland show, and then we have our first rehearsal for it on Friday.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up when I’m up, make a show order, eat, get some fruit bars of various and sundried flavors, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Labor Day, a day without Labor. What will you be doing on Labor Day, and what are your favorite films with totally gratuitous nudity? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, where we shall follow our ducky little dictum: When in doubt, bring on the nudes.