This was an old favorite, a film that hit me when I saw it (at 10? 11?) as something strangely funny in some kind of adult way that I sort of comprehended, ‘though I could feel the whoosh overhead as innuendo flew by. And that’s something, ’cause the writing in this film is bone-dry, almost all the humor coming from some collision of the laconic manly cowboy-talk, iconic Western conventions, and irony thicker than a seed bull. I seriously loved the movie, saw it again in my teens, and tracked down other work by its writer, Tom McGuane, who subsequently became one of my favorite novelists. (Admittedly, however, his film work–the interesting Missouri Breaks, the pretty funny Tom Waits-including Cold Feet, and the execrable Ninety-Two in the Shade which was very poorly adapted by McGuane from his own excellent novel–is middling.)
Would it hold up? Mostly. There are some real pitfalls: Here we are in Montana, yet the film too rarely exploits the environment to amplify the plot, or the tone. Sam Waterston makes a lousy ‘half-blood’ Indian, and not just because 20 years of playing stolid middle-class white father figures on television ruins his counterculture (let alone his Native culture) credibility, and his father in this film is a character actor (Joseph Spinell) fresh out of playing Italian-Americans in every New York film ever shot. (I was reminded, however, of a great jab by Sherman Alexie, who was asked during the p.r. for Smoke Signals what he thought his film would do for Indians in the movies, and he replied “Now we’ll get to play Italians in more films.”) There are a few dud ‘serious’ scenes, and a couple overplayed jokes.
But the strengths:
Some of the most deeply-ironic, deeply-funny dialogue one’s likely to see. McGuane excels at conversation that plays so elliptically on the edge of funny that it makes you wonder what’s going on, like dialogue from a Western rewritten by Beckett.
Slim fucking Pickens and Harry Dean fucking Stanton, both of whom run away with the picture whenever they’re on.
A great scene where Stanton and Jeff Bridges unfold a kind of “tense” lawman/rustler dialogue, while playing Pong at a bar–the shot of the pong screen with their doubled reflections.
I recommend it. And I’m going to rewatch the Waits movie to see how that holds up, too. Even more, I recommend reading something by McGuane.
Granted it was Reynolds who got me into McGuane’s books – and eventually into theis film – and I did like it. Though mostly becuase of Jeff Bridges – and some residual fondness for Harry Dean Stanton.
Though it’s been several years since I’ve seen it, I do remember that the pong scene was quite good.
I’ve never seen Cold Feet, and couldn’t get too far into Missouri Breaks when I came across it on TV.
This comment adds nothing to Reynolds’ original post, but I wanted to say something, b/c I felt bad that no one ever really responds to his insular, uninteresting little ramblings.
Ha. I appreciate your compassion, such as it is.
For my next insular post, a study of prison movies, with an emphasis on the futuristic. And perhaps an appreciation of Stuart Gordon.
perhaps, too, a comparison of Jean Claude Van Damme and Christopher Lambert, to determine who makes the best innocent man wrongly accused and sentenced to a futuristic hell hole prison who must then lead a jail break and forge a community among his brutish cellmates…
as for Stuart Gordon, I appreciate his allegiance to Lovecraft and recommend his Re-Animator and recent film Dagon. Brian Yuzna took over for the second and third sequels to Re-Animator, and as a horror series they are as entertaining as the Hellraisers or the cheesier but effective first two Wishmaster movies (Have you fulfilled the Prophecy?). Yuzna also loosely adapted a series of Lovecraft stories in the anthology film Necronomicon, the best segment of which stars the late lamented David Warner (also a Peckinpah regular). Necronomicon also includes Richard Lynch, my vote for the creepiest actor ever.
one of the great pleasures of the horror genre…perhaps peculiar to some…is following the entries in a particular ever-expanding series, in order to discover the great moments or the film that manages to do something new and interesting with the original concepts, even briefly. the evil cenobite in space works, the evil leprechaun in space doesn’t. perhaps it’s the green suit. me gold!
I look forward to insular postings on disreputable genre directors and the metaphysical questions they pose–for instance, who is creepier, Hector in Saturn 3 or the talking computer in Demon Seed?
There is a recent series of DVDs out that seem to be marketing themselves as the ‘best Lovecraft films’ I think. I will find more on it later. I had thought about trying to watch some of The Dunwich Horror type old Lovecraft films to see how they stack up. I read a big batch of his stuff 1 or 2 years ago and Houellebecq’s recent essay on him also. But I didn’t get around to the films. Any rec’s for some of the better adaptations for Lovecraft films? Re-Animator need not apply, though I enjoyed it immensely at the age of 15. Video Journeys in Los Feliz has a whole Lovecraft section – entirely on VHS.
Lovecraft films: Dagon is pretty good, a warts-and-all adaptation–as good (and weak) as its source. (It’s kind of hard to believe, but one HPL story, told in the first person as a kind of diary, did actually end with the narrator writing into his diary “Aaarrrgh—” or something like it, as things from beyond entered his room. I think it’s easier to be creeped out by HPL when you’re 13 than when you’re 53, as you are now, Mark.) From Beyond is both more ridiculous and probably more fun. But far and away my favorite Lovecraftian film is John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness which gets everything about tone and suggestive otherness exactly right, yet is not in any direct way a product of HPL.
Michael stole much of my thunder regarding Gordon, alas alas. But I have a film by him from last year I need to watch, as soon as I replace my broken dvd player, and then I will actually do the Gordon discussion. I’m sure you’re on pins and needles. (I’ll post it in the section on Last Days, because who wants to talk about that?)
As to Frisoli’s other notes–I really wanted to like that space-bound leprechaun, but it did blow, even when he somehow expanded in size and became a giant leprechaun. Obviously Demon Seed‘s computer is creepier, and not just because it inseminates Fritz Weaver’s wife–although Fritz Weaver is creepy all on his own; the Seed A.I. also gets the nod because it menaces Julie Christie, who’s a lot sexier than Hector’s love interest, Farrah Fawcett. Oh, as we talk about futuristic-prison movie heroes, add Steve Railsback to the list–Escape 2000 is a futuristic prison movie, with Railsback playing the guy from The Stunt Man (which is about the only role he seems ever to play), and also with gratuitous coed nudity, the hunting of humans for sport, a man blown to pieces by special futuristic-prison “deterrents,” and a vicious mutant man-beast used as a weapon against the human prey. It’s got it all.
There are, still, plenty of other pre-Gordon Lovecraft films out there right? However, looking over the Gordon oeuvre I was amazed that I’d seen so many of them (though not the sequels). Was then thrilled to realize I had passed on seeing Space Truckers.
But here’s where his CV gets a little weird. OK, he directed a Halloween episode of the TV series “Honey I shrunk the Kids” (with Peter Scolari), probably without any decapitation oral sex scenes, but then there’s the completed but not yet released Edmond.
Now, for a guy who uses Poe, Lovecraft and Bradbury for his film sources, I’d think that a Mamet play would be quite a step up (or at least a few miles sideways) for him. But this thing looks legit: He not only has the full Mamet cast (Macy, Mantegna and Rebecca Pidgeon) but has his own regular in it (George Wendt!)
Sounds like someone lost a bet.
I remember reading somewhere that Gordon has avant-garde theater chops in Chicago, where he started out.
I have seen some of that old Lovecraft stuff, but… not a whit of it sticks in my memory. It’s very much the kind of stuff you run into–and find yourself watching–on late-night cable television. I looked at IMdb and recalled (slightly, and somewhat fondly) Die, Monster, Die!, with Karloff, and Necronomicon which was dull. But it seems to me HPL makes more of an impact indirectly, as a pretty heavy influence for stuff from Evil Dead to some of the early Stephen King to the aforementioned Carpenter film. A fiction sidenote: Neil Gaiman wrote a pretty damn cool story called “A Study in Emerald” which mashed Sherlock Holmes and Cthulhu arcana. Joe Bob says check it out.