WORLD TOUR Day 8 - Hollywood, CA
BEFORE: Even after almost four years of steadily watching movies, I still have a couple cinematic sins to atone for. In college I wrote a paper on Preston Sturges, and cited this movie extensively, along with "Miracle at Morgan's Creek", and "Christmas in July", which were shown in class. Problem was, I never got around to watching this one, and extrapolated my conclusions about Sturges' body of work from reviews and plot summaries. I guess I did all right with the paper, and in my defense I was probably pretty busy with classes and part-time jobs, but on the other hand, there should be no substitute for directly watching a film itself.
No direct links available tonight, but Bette Midler from "Down and Out in Beverly Hills" was also in "Jinxed!" with Jack Elam, who was also in the 1955 film "Wichita" with Joel McCrea.
THE PLOT: A director of escapist films goes on the road as a hobo to learn about Life...which gives him a rude awakening.
AFTER: I didn't realize this connection when I drew up the schedule, but with Nick Nolte playing a homeless man in yesterday's film, and Joel McCrea masquerading as a tramp in this one, maybe I sort of subconsciously knew what I was doing. The great economic divide between the ultra-rich and the dirt poor is also on display here - and the same curiosity that Richard Dreyfuss' character had when he spent the night sleeping on the beach is seen tonight in John Sullivan, the Hollywood director who wants to ride the rails and experience the plight of the common man.
Problem is, his handlers want him to travel the country with a "land yacht" (what they used to call RV's or winnebagos, I guess) that's stocked with a chef, a photographer, and a publicist, all of which makes it difficult for him to get lost and rough it. It's not what he had in mind, so he ditches the entourage. 2nd problem, despite his best efforts to see the countryside, he keeps accidentally winding up back in Hollywood. In addition, his efforts to reward those who extend kindness to him result in him forming a bond with a young actress, who's about to give up on her dreams of Hollywood success. If only someone she knew turned out to be a famous Hollywood director in disguise...
After a few false starts, they finally get the hang of going incognito and jumping aboard freight trains, sleeping in shelters and eating in soup kitchens. It's a weird way to bond with a new girlfriend, but to each his own. The ambitious director figures that this is the best way to experience the human condition, so that it can be properly portrayed in his movies. (ASIDE: My father didn't really understand my desire to get into filmmaking either, but since he knows a lot of people who work with the needy in the Boston archdiocese, when I was a teenager he would occasionally suggest that I rent a camera and make documentaries about the fine charitable work that some people do. Sorry, Dad, but I never had the desire to make documentaries, and my career got pulled in a different direction.)
Once the grand experiment is over, Sullivan goes out one last time to hand out money to the poor, as a final reward to the downtrodden, for opening his eyes to their troubles. Big mistake, as a set of contrivances ends up with him beaten, arrested, and assumed to be dead. A couple blows to the head and some lingering cold remedies render him unable to properly identify himself, and he ends up in the worst situation of all. He then gets to really experience misery, with no way to call for help or write a letter to his Hollywood staff.
But even when his situation is most dire, it's the simple entertainment of a cartoon that can still make him laugh, along with the other inmates. It turns out that making comedy (or animation, I guess) is one of the most noble pursuits of all, since it can bring happiness to the downtrodden. It's true, no matter where you go - hospitals, prisons, even asylums - there are TVs everywhere. Who doesn't love TV? (And by extension, movies that run on TV) I've certainly kept myself entertained this summer with "Storage Wars", "America's Got Talent", "Hell's Kitchen", "Wipeout" and just about every competition show on the Food Network.
However, after reading the Fall TV Previews, I've concluded that this upcoming season's new network shows collectively form the worst pile of crap I've ever seen. Not one new show holds any interest for me, so my pledge to not add any shows to my rotation will be easier than ever to uphold. Oh, I'll still watch my annual standbys, but I'm now down to just 2 CSI shows, 1 Law & Order, Survivor, The Amazing Race, Shark Tank, the Sunday Fox animation line-up and the NBC Thursday comedies. That's it. (Sure, there's a second tier of cable shows I watch, like Dirty Jobs, Bizarre Foods, Mythbusters, Top Shot and Hoarding: Buried Alive - but the Big 4 networks are slowly losing me)
There's something very self-reflexive or "meta" about a film with a character who wants to make a film about social issues, but ends up determining that people would rather see a comedy to forget their troubles, when the film ITSELF does a fine job of portraying the plight of the Depression-era poor. However, it also piles on the slapstick comedy, perhaps because its own director already knew what the director in the film finds out. And the fictional film-within-the-film (which Sullivan ultimately decides not to make) is called "O Brother, Where Art Thou?", which eventually got used 60 years later as the title of a REAL film by the Coen Brothers, whose plot made a number of references back to "Sullivan's Travels". Got that?
NITPICK POINT: Sullivan's team of lawyers can get him out of a Missouri chain gang, presumably on some kind of manufactured technicality, or by paying the damages and injury expenses. But they can't get him out of his loveless marriage of convenience? OK, I guess that's where you're going to draw THAT line for the purposes of the story.
Even though Sullivan travels to Las Vegas and as far as Kansas City, for my purposes I'm treating this as a film set in old Hollywood, and I'm discounting any additional mileage, since my tour will be in Kansas anyway in a few days. Two more days in Hollywood, though, before I head east.
DISTANCE TRAVELED TODAY: 4 miles / 7 km (Beverly Hills to Hollywood)
DISTANCE TRAVELED SO FAR: 533 miles / 862 km
Also starring Veronica Lake, William Demarest (last seen in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington").
RATING: 6 out of 10 sinkers (donuts)
Funny how rarely the self-described Enlightened Folk in these movies choose to learn about the plight of the lower economic classes by actually meeting them and getting to know them as people. There's this undercurrent of "Wouldn't it be great if there were more people like me, doing these wonderful things for these wretched masses?" But God forbid that he should tell anyone his real name. "Fight on, noble street person," he says, with a tear in his eye. "Your story SHALL be told!" How about you just make a friend and see him or her socially, without the context of a savior/saved relationship?
ReplyDeleteHere's another chain for you: "Self-Serving Movies." Movies in which -- whether they're good or bad -- the filmmaker is settling a beef against critics or against perceived threats to filmmaking in general. Start with "Sullivan's Travels," continue to "A Face In The Crowd" (Elia Kazan, with his typical light touch, reminds us that TV is a cynical and manipulative medium that must be stopped), "Stardust Memories" (Woody Allen on how difficult it was to be Woody Allen, even before he left his wife for his stepdaughter), "Adaptation" (Charlie Kaufman writes an adapted screenplay that explains how difficult is is to write an adapted screenplay besides being a genius who deserves so much more success than other screenwriters)...
The Woody Allen films will be handled next year - I haven't decided whether to just hit the ones I haven't seen or just power through them all in sequence, because I could probably use a refresher course in most of his films. Next year's all about Woody Allen, Alfred Hitchcock and James Bond, plus whatever's left over.
ReplyDeleteI've seen "Adaptation", though I usually hate movies that involve screenwriters researching, struggling with and writing movies that turn out to be the movie you're watching RIGHT NOW. But that one was so meta and so twisty that it shattered all the rules, and I made exceptions for it.
It's definitely a genre, and every genre relies on stereotypes, but if you push it far enough, or even "too far", you can end up making a film that is the ultimate incarnation of that particular genre. Take a film like "Unforgiven" - it's a Western, and as such it relies on many of the same elements that you find in other Westerns. But it's so big, so packed with elements that somehow it becomes one of the best Westerns, even though it's mired in stereotype.
"Gladiator" is another example - so big, so over-the-top that you excuse its similarities to every other gladiator film ever made. I'm sure there are other examples...
"Sullivan's Travels" does make me wonder how much of Preston Sturges resides within John L. Sullivan. Did he once have a noble desire to tell the story of the common man, but found himself corrupted by Hollywood wonks who just wanted light comedy with "a little sex in it"? Is there a film that Sturges made which was masquerading here as "Ants in Your Pants" or "Hey, Hey in the Hayloft"? Or was this just a subtle poke at the musical revue films common in his time?
According to his bio, Sturges was born into a wealthy family, but also served in the Army during WWI. He had a failed career as an inventor before he started writing plays while recovering from an appendectomy. His plays got him into some financial trouble, causing him to move to Hollywood to try and make money on features. The success he had with films like this one, and "Miracle at Morgan's Creek" bolstered him to become an independent filmmaker, which was a commercial mistake, and gave him a reputation as an expensive perfectionist.
I don't know, it seems like his life was a financial roller-coaster. It doesn't seem like he was much like Sullivan, who was at first out of touch with the common man. He's quoted as saying, "When the last dime is gone, I'll sit on the curb outside with a pencil and a ten cent notebook and start the whole thing over again."
But did he ever really want to make a picture called "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"
I need to see some more Charlie Kaufman films. You're one of many, many friends who love his movies and yet my reaction to them remains the same: it's like being taken on a wonderful ride for a whole hour by a driver who suddenly pulls over to the side of the road, is silent for three minutes, and then exits the car, throws the keys down a sewer grate and walks away with the car still idling.
ReplyDeleteIT'S ONLY A TRIP IF YOU TAKE US TO A DESTINATION, CHUCK.