Slow Dancing in the Big City (1978)

          If not for its posh production values and the pedigree of its director, the cutesy romance Slow Dancing in the Big City would come across like a mildly diverting but altogether forgettable TV movie. The narrative is slight in the extreme, blending an unpersuasive love story with melodramatic subplots, and if the filmmakers imagined they were rendering some sort of intoxicating modern-day fairy tale, they fell short of that goal. Nonetheless, Paul Sorvino’s affable leading performance goes a long way toward making the picture watchable, because he’s wonderfully cast as a rough-hewn but kindhearted New York City columnist sorta-kinda modeled after the inimitable Jimmy Breslin. In fact, it’s easy to imagine that playing the same character in a more consequential story, such as a political drama or better still a whimsical comedy, could have provided a star-making moment for Sorvino. Instead, Slow Dancing in the Big City flopped in theaters just a month after a better film costarring Sorvino, Bloodbrothers, suffered a similar fate. Thereafter, it was back to the character-actor grind.
          Lou Friedlander (Sorvino) enjoys a pleasant life as a minor New York celebrity thanks to his column featuring stories of everyday city people, but he’s bored in his casual relationship with a dowdy waitress. When he meets a dancer named Sarah (Anne Ditchburn), Lou becomes infatuated. Meanwhile, Lou writes stories about Marty (Hector Mercado), a preteen Latino who may be a musical prodigy but lives in a rough ghetto. Lou dumps the waitress so he can woo the years-younger Sarah, who subsequently experiences a serious medical crisis. And so it goes from there. Filmed in slick but uninspired fashion by John G. Avildsen, notching his first movie since winning an Oscar for Rocky (1976), Slow Dancing in the Big City has intermittent credibility. Since Ditchburn was a professional dancer, she’s impressive whenever she’s moving, less so whenever she’s acting. Yet Sorvino fits comfortably into his role, infusing an uncomplicated character with sweetness and warmth while avoiding mawkishness. The main problem, of course, is that it’s impossible to believe Sarah returns Lou’s affections, so the romantic stuff—which is the heart of the movie—rings false. Lesser problems include dreary pacing and a failure to flesh out supporting characters.

Slow Dancing in the Big City: FUNKY

The Stoolie (1972)

          Usually the presence of two directors in the credits for a movie is a sign of trouble, unless the directors are siblings or spouses, because it’s likely someone got fired partway through the process. Yet every so often, there’s a movie like The Stoolie, which bears no obvious traces of behind-the-scenes friction despite being helmed by John G. Avildsen and George Silano. (Best guess: Established filmmaker Avildsen replaced Silano, a cinematographer making his fiction directorial debut.) Anyway, The Stoolie includes the first starring role for stand-up comedian Jackie Mason, also the film’s executive producer. Although never a major screen star, he’s been a beloved figure on the comedy circuit for decades, and The Stoolie is a perfect vehicle for his deadpan shtick. It’s interesting to contemplate what path Mason’s career might have followed if The Stoolie had found an audience.

          He plays Roger Pitman, a low-rent criminal/informer in New York City. Normally, Roger gets paid by the NYPD to rat on fellow crooks, but one day he pulls a fast one—after swiping $7,500 in NYPD front money, Roger skips town for Miami. This doesn’t sit well with his handler, Sgt. Alex Brogan (Dan Frazer), who vows to track down Roger and recover the cash. But first Roger, to whom life has never been kind, enjoys a brief adventure. Hanging out at Miami nightclubs and resorts, he tries to score with ladies, most of whom tell him to drop dead, until he ends up in a diner next to the equally melancholy Sylvia (Babette New). An unlikely romance begins, though Roger is hesitant to explain his background. (“I don’t want to tell you too much about myself,” he says. "I don’t want to lose you this early in the relationship.”) Eventually, Brogan discerns Roger’s whereabouts, and that’s when the story takes an unexpected turn.

          Grounded in solid character work and infused with low-key humor, The Stoolie isn’t for everyone’s taste. Some will find Roger too mopey, Sylvia too naïve, and Brogan too one-dimensional. All true. Yet for those who lock into the movie’s groove—which is really Mason’s groove, all “why does everything happen to me?” kvetching—The Stoolie is quite enjoyable. Some nasty things happen, some sweet things happen, and through it all, Roger struggles to grab whatever dignity and happiness he can. So while this movie is hardly on par with the great offbeat character studies of the ’70s, it at least communicates with roughly the same idiom as those films. And despite the split director credit, it also ranks alongside Avildsen’s most satisfying comedies. Go figure.

The Stoolie: GROOVY

Guess What We Learned in School Today? (1970)

          Though he later become synonymous with inspirational movies, thanks to his success with Rocky (1976) and The Karate Kid (1984), director John G. Avildsen dabbled in edgy sex comedies during the early ’70s, making this offbeat picture and the heinous Cry Uncle! (1971). Combining mockumentary and narrative elements, Guess What We Learned in School Today? ostensibly explores the impact of progressive sex education on the hypocritical residents of an uptight bedroom community. It’s the old satirical notion that folks who complain about sex are actually freaks at home. On some level, this sloppy and uneven movie’s politics are in the right place, since Avildsen and his collaborators portray open-minded intellectuals as forces for positive social change, while depicting hateful censors as villains who need their attitudes adjusted. The problem is how Avildsen and his collaborators express these ideas. Much of Guess What We Learned in School Today? comprises naughty vignettes with nudity and simulated sex, so there’s more than a little sensationalism sprinkled into the mix, and scenes of right-wingers getting their jollies are so perverse as to be cruel. Plus, it’s difficult to justify elements including the sexy, grown-up babysitter who nurtures a teenage boy’s nascent sexuality by reading him pornography while giving him handjobs. One suspects the filmmakers were trying to be outrageous, but more often than not, Guess What We Learned in School Today? is simply vulgar.

          The all-over-the-place storyline mostly follows three people. Roger (Richard Carballo) is a creepy cop who entraps women for solicitation arrests. Lance (Zachary Hains) is an insane ex-Marine who crusades against sex education, calling it a communist plot. And Dr. Lily Whitehorn (Yvonne McCall) is a sex educator with a clothing-optional institute. As various episodes unfold, Lily directly addresses the camera with remarks about the need for people to overcome inhibitions, while Lance and Roger engage in crazed antics. Lance has trouble getting it on with his wife until they convince a family friend to service their teenage son, at which point Lance mounts his wife from behind and drives her to climax while she watches her son have sex and moans her son’s name. Similarly, Roger seems averse to sex until a black transvestite goes down on him. You get the idea. Some of this is mildly interesting, but most of the camerawork is garish and ugly, the physical-comedy bits fall flat, and the satire is painfully obvious. Yet somehow, the picture develops a cumulative effect. The actors playing the rational characters are appealing (including a pair of attractive blondes who frequently appear topless), and, every so often, a throwaway scene gets the picture’s point across without lurid excess. The vignette of Lydia explaining the word “fuck” to schoolchildren accomplishes more than all the movie’s over-the-top carnal encounters put together.

Guess What We Learned in School Today?: FUNKY

1980 Week: The Formula

          While it would be exaggerating to describe this conspiracy thriller as a massive waste of talent, it’s fair to say that the luminaries involved in the project should have been able to generate something more exciting. After all, stars Marlon Brando and George C. Scott both had Oscars to their names by the time they costarred in The Formula, and director John G. Avildsen had recently scored a major hit with Rocky (1976). Even the movie’s deep bench of supporting actors is impressive: John Gielgud, Marthe Keller, Richard Lynch, G.D. Spradlin, Beatrice Straight. Yet The Formula is talky instead of thrilling, and the mano-a-mano faceoff between the top-billed actors that’s promised by the film’s poster never really materializes. On the bright side, The Formula is a handsome-looking movie that benefits from intricate plotting and (no surprise) skillful acting.

          Written and produced by Steve Shagan, the picture begins with a prologue set in Germany during the final days of World War II’s European action. A Nazi general is entrusted with a shipment of valuable papers that Third Reich officials hope to trade for protection after Germany falls, but U.S. soldiers seize the shipment before the Nazi general can escort the papers to a safe place. Next, the movie cuts to the present, where LAPD Detective Barney Caine (Scott) begins investigating the murder of a former LAPD chief. Caine uncovers connections between the dead man and oil magnate Adam Steiffel (Brando), and he also links the dead man to various mysterious people in Europe. Despite skepticism from his superiors, Caine treks to Germany and discovers that the dead man was part of a conspiracy involving a World War II-era formula to convert coal into oil. The ramifications are huge, since replacing petroleum as the world’s primary source of fuel would change the global economic map. Intrigue follows as Caine chases leads with the help of Lisa Spangler (Keller), a German model whose uncle has a tragic connection with the conspiracy.

          The premise of The Formula is interesting and workable, so the problem with the picture is one of execution. Nearly all of Caine’s investigative work takes the form of personal interviews, and there’s a numbing repetitiveness to the way people get shot and killed by unseen assassins immediately after giving Caine vital information. Worse, since the hit men never seem to aim at Caine himself, there’s not much real tension. By the time the movie climaxes in a lengthy (and surprisingly casual) chat between Caine and Steiffel—one of only two scenes shared by Brando and Scott—a general sense of lethargy has taken hold. Still, nearly everyone contributing to The Formula does solid work, from the way Brando hides his character’s evil behind an avuncular façade to the way composer Bill Conti accentuates scenes with robust flourishes. However, because the story never reaches a boiling point, The Formula ends up feeling like an episode from a well-made TV detective show, albeit with fancier actors and more elaborate location photography.

The Formula: FUNKY

Save the Tiger (1973)

          As if being one of the best character studies of the ’70s wasn’t enough, Save the Tiger occupies an important place in the career of actor Jack Lemmon, a rare Hollywood star who was equally adept and comedy and drama. Not only did the picture net Lemmon his only Academy Award for a leading role (he’d nabbed a Best Supporting Actor prize for 1955’s Mister Roberts), but Save the Tiger contains a genuine tour de force performance—Lemmon is nearly every scene, cascading through myriad emotions as he meticulously illustrates the psychological dissipation of an everyman whose pursuit of the American Dream has driven him to the brink of financial and moral ruin. Written by Steve Shagan, who adapted his own novel of the same name, Save the Tiger is an unapologetic attempt at a Big Statement about the costs of capitalism. However, because Shagan and director John G. Avildsen keep their focus squarely on the life of one specific man, the filmmakers mostly evade the pitfall of pretension. (A few florid speeches and the obtuse title, which stems from a minor plot element, are among the handful of minor missteps.)

          Set in contemporary Los Angeles, the movie tracks a day in the life of Harry Stoner (Lemmon), a clothing-company executive who has stretched the firm’s finances too thin. As the day progresses, Harry contemplates and executes various schemes for righting the company’s fiscal ship—his attempt at wooing a client with the services of a prostitute proving especially disastrous—while slowly accepting the grim reality that nothing can extricate him from the trap he’s built. Concurrently, Harry wrestles with the existential questions that are brought up by seeing the consequences of his life choices, and he also faces the sobering fact that he’s lost touch with the carefree rhythms of youth.

          Borrowing a page from Arthur Miller, Shagan defines his protagonist as a victim of the quest for the almighty dollar, but unlike Miller’s Death of a Salesman protagonist Willy Loman, who struggles to find dignity while stuck in the grind of a dehumanizing career, Harry Stoner wants it all—excitement, fulfillment, stability, success. In a sense, therefore, Harry’s disease is the mere act of wanting, so the reckless moves he makes to gain position and wealth are symptoms of the disease. Fitting that analogy, Harry’s wildest idea involves a form of surgery to remove the cancer of financial burden: He tries to involve his business partner, Phil Greene (Jack Gilford), in a plan to burn down the company’s building for insurance money. Could there be a more potent spiritual metaphor than the idea of resurrection through self-destruction?

          Because Shagan’s storyline employs such dexterity in dramatizing concepts, occasional sins of theatrical flamboyance are easily forgiven, although it’s harder to overlook the contrived finale. Nonetheless, Save the Tiger is so purposeful and truthful for most of its running time that it’s virtually a paradigm for intimate storytelling. Earning every golden ounce of his Oscar, Lemmon is on fire from the first scene to the last, revealing the tumult boiling inside every Mr. Nice Guy he’s ever played. Led by the wonderful Gilford, the mostly anonymous supporting cast works efficiently in Lemmon’s shadow. Avildsen captures every nuance with a documentarian’s restraint, transforming Save the Tiger into an unvarnished portrait of modern life as a slog through a callous social system.

Save the Tiger: RIGHT ON

Joe (1970)

          Capturing the anger and confusion of a historical moment when the “generation gap” was at its widest—the dawn of the 1970s—Joe is an unquestionably powerful film. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good film. The narrative is awkward and contrived, the title character doesn’t make his entrance until the 27-minute mark, and the infamous ending is predicated on a silly plot twist. So to characterize Joe as an incendiary statement would be to overreach considerably. Nonetheless, there are good reasons why the picture enjoyed substantial box-office success during its original release, and why it has retained some degree of notoriety since then. Written by Norman Wexler, Joe is about a middle-aged New York ad executive named Bill Compton (Dennis Patrick), who has become estranged from his twentysomething daughter, Melissa (played by Susan Sarandon in her debut film appearance).

          Living with a drug dealer in a grimy Greenwich Village flat, Melissa is a counterculture idealist who’s gotten dragged into her boyfriend’s dangerous world. When Melissa ends up hospitalized after an overdose, Bill tracks down and kills the boyfriend. Rattled after the crime, Bill stumbles into a dive bar where Joe Curran (Peter Boyle) is giving a drunken monologue blaming all of society’s problems on hippies and minorities (“Forty-two percent of all liberals are queer, that’s a fact!”). In one of the film’s least believable moments, Bill confesses his crime to Joe. Thus begins an unlikely odyssey during which Joe leverages the dirt he’s got on his new “friend” to force his way into Bill’s rarified world. Later, when Melissa flees from the hospital, Bill and Joe search for her in the drug underworld, a quest that culminates in an orgy where compliant hippie chicks service Bill and Joe while the ladies’ longhair boyfriends steal personal items from the “straights.” Revenge follows, as does tragic irony.

          As directed by the capable John G. Avildsen, who found tremendous success a few years later with Rocky (1976), Joe is probably a better-made film than the sketchy storyline deserves. The acting is uniformly good, with Boyle the obvious standout as a lout given license by circumstance to manifest his latent psychosis, and Avildsen does a fine job of defining spaces, from the crisp perfection of Bill’s Central Park apartment to the dirty chaos of hippie flophouses. But the story simply doesn’t work as anything except cheap provocation. It’s never totally clear what Joe wants from Bill, or why Bill tolerates Joe’s threatening proximity, and the idea that these two men eventually form true friendship stretches credibility to the breaking point. Worse, the Melissa character exists merely as a set-up for the ending, which doesn’t resonate anywhere near as strongly as the filmmakers presumably hoped it might have.

Joe: FUNKY

Foreplay (1975)

          Yet another in a long line of ’70s sex comedies that are neither sexy nor funny, this three-part anthology picture feels like an attempt to capture the raunchy spirit of Playboy magazine’s humor, but inept execution makes Foreplay feel more sleazy than satirical. In the first installment, “Norman and the Polish Doll,” deadpan comedian Pat Paulsen plays a horny everyman who buys a lifelike female doll (Deborah Loomis) for sexual high jinks, only to realize she’s been programmed to nag instead of fondle. Paulsen’s droll line readings get drowned out by insipid slapstick (for instance, he steps in a toilet on the way to the bath) and he’s frequently upstaged by Loomis’ nudity (it’s difficult to focus on jokes when her lissome figure is on display).

          The second installment, “Vortex,” is moderately better, but still not particularly good. Based on a story by respected scribe Bruce Jay Friedman, the piece stars a young Jerry Orbach as a swinger visited by a muse (George S. Irving) who manifests as a doughy Italian man wearing only red bikini briefs. The muse takes Orbach’s character back to the scenes of several near-miss sexual encounters, each of which turns out to be just as frustrating the second time around. Orbach tries valiantly to form a characterization, and “Vortex” almost works. Almost.
          The final episode, “Inaugural Ball,” directed by future Rocky helmer John G. Avildsen, stars Zero Mostel as a U.S. president whose daughter is kidnapped. The criminals demand that in exchange for the release of his child, the commander-in-chief must mount his first lady (Estelle Parsons) on national TV. The closest “Inaugural Ball” gets to wit is the moment when Mostel solemnly announces his decision to comply with the demand: “Call the surgeon general. Tell him to prepare a massive dose of testosterone.” Mostel’s performance is smotheringly loud, which accentuates the crude nature of the comedy throughout “Inaugural Ball,” and the piece drags on forever. (Linking the three stories together are crass interstitial bits in which a clownish professor, played by Irwin Corey, presents a vulgar lecture about sexual topics.) All in all, Foreplay has the exact opposite effect of the activity described in its title: It’s a complete turnoff.

Foreplay: LAME

Cry Uncle (1971)

Truly vile, this low-budget attempt at spoofing the private-eye genre features excitable character actor Allen Garfield in one of his few leading roles, but the picture’s real claim to notoriety is that it’s an early effort by director John G. Avildsen, who later rose to fame with the Rocky and Karate Kid franchises. Whereas those series comprise feel-good family entertainment, Cry Uncle is a gutter-level sex flick; in fact, thanks to copious amounts of nudity, a few unpleasantly realistic sex scenes, and a generally depraved atmosphere, Cry Uncle carried an X-rating in its original release. The story is the usual film-noir gobbledygook about a private detective getting embroiled in a morally complex blackmail case, and (of course) the detective becomes sexually involved with someone related to the case. On the plus side are a few amusing throwaway moments, like the scene with a chain-smoking cop (Paul Sorvino in an early role) who can’t stop coughing. Additionally, some viewers might find Garfield’s performance amusing, since he takes his exacerbated-everyman persona to a greater extreme here than in most other films. However, it’s difficult to see beyond the movie’s grimy sexual content, since lowbrow smut infuses nearly every frame (in the few scenes when characters aren’t actually screwing, they’re talking about screwing). Given that most of the carnal scenes involve Garfield, whose physique is not exactly that of an Adonis, it’s evident that Avildsen was after something other than titillation—there’s nothing remotely sexy about watching hairy, overweight, sweaty Garfield mount one woman after another. Presumably, Avildsen was trying to mock the film-noir trope of private dicks being sexual catnip for all the women they meet. Whatever the intent, humor is nowhere to be found in scenes like the jaw-dropping moment when Garfield’s sex-crazed character rapes a corpse. The irony is that if Cry Uncle didn’t have so much sleaze, it might have been a watchable spoof. As is, however, the plot-driven scenes are probably boring for viewers who prefer the raunchy bits, and the sex scenes are so unpleasant they sour the experience of following the story.

Cry Uncle: SQUARE

W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings (1975)

          One of the more offbeat titles in Burt Reynolds’ long litany of Southern-fried ’70s action/comedies, this charming-ish romp stars Reynolds as W.W. Bright, an amiable outlaw stealing and swindling his way through the Deep South in the 1950s. Through convoluted circumstances, he ends up enlisting a struggling country band called the Dixie Dancekings as accomplices in a series of nonviolent stick-ups. The musicians participate willingly because W.W. turns out to be a swell manager, using his gift of gab to trick promoters into giving the band better gigs and fatter paychecks.

          Among those pursuing the outlaws is a gun-toting religious nut named Deacon (Art Carney), whose presence lends an odd flavor to the movie’s requisite car chases. Carney goes way over the top with his performance, which seems like it belongs in a different movie than the one featuring easygoing Reynolds and his rhinestone-festooned buddies, and the film suffers because leading lady Conny Von Dyke lacks charisma.

          As directed by no-nonsense craftsman John G. Avildsen, the movie zips along at a strong pace, somewhat to its detriment; the picture is so thin on character development that audiences are expected to accept outlandish contrivances at face value. So, for instance, it’s a given that lead singer Dixie (Van Dyke) will fall for rascally W.W. simply because that’s what happens in movies, and it’s a given that Deacon is perpetually unable to capture W.W. simply because, well, that’s what happens in movies. The weak characterization makes everything that happens in the movie feel inconsequential, so even though several scenes are entertaining and the movie in general is quite watchable, nothing sticks in the memory very long after the last credit rolls.

          Still, for Reynolds fans, the picture offers plenty of cinematic comfort food, from the leading man’s wisecrackery to the presence of frequent Reynolds costars Ned Beatty, Jerry Reed, and Mel Tillis. Reed in particular stands out as the hot-tempered leader of the Dancekings, because his fights with W.W. for control over the band-cum-gang have more energy than other scenes; as the actors later demonstrated in projects like the blockbuster Smokey and the Bandit series, Reed and Reynolds have a smooth rhythm together.

W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings: FUNKY

Rocky (1976) & Rocky II (1979)

          In many respects, cinema history has not been kind to Rocky, the feel-good hit that turned Sylvester Stallone into a superstar and an Oscar-nominated screenwriter. The film’s detractors dismiss Rocky as pandering hokum, and Stallone has been dogged for years by rumors that he didn’t really write the script. Further resentment is fueled by the fact that Rocky won the Best Picture Oscar for 1976, defeating such acclaimed competitors as Network and Taxi Driver. And of course the film’s biggest impediments are the many gratuitous sequels that cheapen the Rocky brand. Yet when the muck is pushed aside, one quickly rediscovers a gem of a movie, which isn’t so much pandering as old-fashioned. The story follows low-rent boxer Rocky Balboa (Stallone), who supports his going-nowhere pugilistic career by working as a muscleman for a Philadelphia gangster, even though Rocky’s too inherently decent to inflict much damage on his employer’s enemies. A simple soul with zero self-esteem, Rocky’s in love with a meek pet-shop clerk, Adrian (Talia Shire), whose brother is foul-tempered drunk Paulie (Burt Young). The other key figure in Rocky’s life is a crusty manager, Mickey (Burgess Meredith), who doesn’t think Rocky will ever amount to anything. But when the reigning heavyweight champ, Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers), agrees to a publicity-stunt fight in which he’ll give a “nobody” a shot at the title, Rocky’s life changes overnight.
         Yet Rocky isn’t so much about boxing as it is about a small man learning his value in the world, so the filmmakers employ time-tested storytelling gimmicks to put viewers squarely in the underdog hero’s corner. The narrative’s pervasive optimism is leavened by a gritty visual style, courtesy of director John G. Avildsen, who uses working-class neighborhoods and other evocative locations to create a tangible sense of place, so in its best moments Rocky has a level of docudrama realism that sells the contrived storyline. Avildsen also created the definitive sports-training montage, often imitated but never matched—Rocky at the top of the steps! Stallone’s ambition infuses his performance, from the intensity of the boxing scenes to the sweetness of the romantic interludes, and the whole cast meshes perfectly, like the players in a well-oiled stage play. Bill Conti’s thrilling music, especially the horn-driven main theme and the exciting song “Gonna Fly Now,” kicks everything up to epic level, and Rocky boasts one of the all-time great movie endings.
          Three years after the first film became a blockbuster, Stallone starred in, wrote, and directed the first of many unnecessary sequels. Rocky II is the most irritating installment in the series, because shameless crowd-pleaser Stallone undercuts the impact of the original movie with a trite denouement that essentially erases the climax of the previous film. Rocky II features all of the principal players from the first movie, and it’s made with adequate skill, but it’s a hollow echo at best. What’s more, the next two sequels, both released in the ’80s, dispatched with credibility in favor of super-sized entertainment, so Rocky II represents the juncture at which the series enters guilty-pleasure territory.

Rocky: OUTTA SIGHT

Rocky II: FUNKY