BEFORE: So it turns out that while I was celebrating the lives of some famous Americans, like Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Frances Farmer and Jackson Pollock, I was inadvertently setting up a mini-reunion of the cast of another very American film, "The Right Stuff". That film starred Dennis Quaid ("Postcards From the Edge"), Sam Shepard ("Frances"), Ed Harris ("Sweet Dreams", "Pollock") and the voice of Levon Helm ("Sweet Dreams"). Maybe it's just coincidence, and maybe this sort of thing happens all the time around here and I just fail to notice it. Whatever, let's roll with it. Ed Harris from "Pollock" was also in "The Right Stuff" with Barbara Hershey (last seen in "Black Swan"), who appears tonight.
AFTER: My BFF Andy suggested this one a couple of years ago, said it simply had to be on the list, so when TCM ran it during an Oscar marathon, I picked it up. Took a while to figure out a way to work it into a theme - but after films like "Frances", "My Week with Marilyn" and "Postcards From the Edge", all films about filmmaking, I'm hoping this is the most logical place for it.
When we first see Cameron (is that his first name or last name?) he's being arrested in a diner, then chased out of the woods by the police, and with his denim ensemble and bearded face, I was picking up a real Charles Manson vibe from him. Turns out the actor played the notorious Manson a few years earlier in "Helter Skelter", so that's probably why. (We don't learn at first WHY he's a wanted man, so it certainly COULD have been for running a cult of Satanic killer followers.) After ducking the cops, he faces off against a man driving a 1920's classic car, who tries to run him over on a bridge. The car goes off the bridge, however, and the presence of a camera crew in a nearby helicopter informs us that our hero (?) has just interrupted a movie stunt.
Cameron encounters the movie crew again, during the filming of a war-scene on a beach, one which confuses the crowd of onlookers because the carnage looks all too real. This is an indication that in the land that he's about to enter, nothing is as it appears. The director hires him as a replacement stuntman (actually as a replacement "Bert", since Bert is missing after driving that car off the bridge) and this sets up an unusual dynamic between Cameron/Bert and the film's director, Eli Cross.
Cross needs Cameron to be the new Bert, because he can't let on that Bert is dead, or the police will want to investigate and shut down the production. Cameron needs Cross because he needs a job and a place to hide - so they're sort of stuck with each other in a symbiotic relationship (one that feels a little too familiar to me, but I digress...). Things are made more complicated with the addition of the lead actress, Nina Franklin, in an obvious but still quite unconventional love triangle.
Cross is also drawn to Cameron's history as a Vietnam vet - since he's making a movie set in World War I, he feels that he could learn something from Cameron's story, what it means to survive a war. Cameron/Bert is wild, unpredictable, and scarred - everything that a pampered actor is not. Even though he's only doing stuntwork, since Cameron's survived a real war with actual bullets being shot at him, then logically doing stunts with fake bullets should be easy by comparison.
It's around about this time that things start to get a little blurry, with the actors taking on some of the characteristics of the characters they're playing, and vice versa. The director suggests changes to the script based on Cameron's back-story and abilities, and at the same time the crew sets up certain stunts without telling the stunt man about them, in order to get his reactions to be more genuine. It becomes something of a mind-game, with the director acting like God in control of a small universe, treating his actors like pawns in a life-sized chess game.
From a filmmaking point of view, there are a few dozen "in-jokes", just using the language of film, which also serve to blur the lines between the movie we're watching, and the film-within-a-film that those characters are making. Sudden cuts are used to change scenes or situations, while at first deceiving the viewer - like showing the actor dangling from a flying plane, then pulling back to reveal that he's now dangling from a prop plane, just 10 feet above the ground. I lost track of the times I was led to believe one thing, and then told another.
This leads to the occasional NITPICK POINT, as in the aforementioned battle-scene. There's just no way that they could shot that scene all in one go - with the actors playing uninjured soldiers in the beach scene, then with the explosions going off, followed by the realistically injured soldiers, with all that stage blood and so on. The injured soldiers were half-buried in the sand (to disguise lost limbs and such), so that takes a lot of setting up. Any director with half a brain would realize that the scene would need to be shot in segments, due to the complexity of setting up those injuries. It's all to showcase how great the effects are, but it's just not practical.
This all leads up to the big final stunt, and by this time the viewer may not know what's going to happen, or which way is up, or what the truth is any more. What is reality, anyway? I mean, none of it's real, because filmmaking is a business built on illusion, and all actors (even stuntmen) are liars, so either it's all real, or none of it is real, or perhaps both.
The big building that served as the scenery for most of the set-work is, of course, the Hotel Coronado, made famous in the film "Some Like It Hot" - I recognized it right away because I know my San Diego landmarks. To me it doesn't look a thing like a German mansion, but maybe that's the best that the crew of this film (or the film-within-the-film) could get on short notice.
Also starring Steve Railsback, Peter O'Toole (last seen in "What's New Pussycat?"), Allen Garfield, Alex Rocco, Sharon Farrell, Adam Roarke.
RATING: 6 out of 10 breakaway walls
I love this movie because of Peter O'Toole's performance but also because of the screenplay's pinpoint use of misdirection and manipulation. This is a movie about a director who manipulates his key stunt performer to see and think and do exactly what he wants him to, created by a director who manipulates his audience with the same kind of precision.
ReplyDeleteYes, all movies are about manipulating the audience. I can't think of another where it's done this well. By the end, the audience and the stuntman are exactly on the same page.
Also, isn't it a brilliant premise for this kind of story? No wonder this is my favorite Peter O'Toole performance: he's great at playing English royalty. He's a medieval king. As the director of A-list features, reality (during the shoot) is exactly as he commands it to be, and his "court" are unfailingly and unquestioningly loyal. He's a maniac, but in a world where maniacs can flourish.