The Driver

Author Raymond Chandler famously said, “Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man.” I thought of these words as I watched Walter Hill’s The Driver (1978) recently and thought about how it applied to its titular protagonist. The film was only Hill’s second outing as a director and yet it showed an assured touch in the choreographing of vehicular mayhem with a no frills approach to storytelling that is one of the hallmarks of his body of work.

It didn’t hurt that he learned the art and the nuts and bolts of filmmaking from the likes of Norman Jewison (The Thomas Crown Affair), Sam Peckinpah (The Getaway), and Paul Newman (The Drowning Pool). By the time, he directed his first feature film – Hard Times (1975) – he had seen and done a lot. The Driver saw Ryan O’Neal, in a surprising turn as a taciturn getaway driver, heading up a solid cast that featured the likes of Bruce Dern and Isabelle Adjani. The end result is a lean crime film populated by people that are the best at what they do, traveling down those mean streets Chandler talked about – they just happen to be on opposite sides of the law.

The film jumps right in by showing the Driver (O’Neal) plying his trade. He helps two crooks that have knocked over a casino escape the scene of the crime. He’s the epitome of cool under fire – not even breaking a sweat when the cops give chase, skillfully losing multiple pursuers through the streets of Los Angeles. At one point, he plays chicken with two oncoming cop cars! Hill does a superb job depicting this dynamic chase, not only conveying the speed and intensity of it, but also the skill and utter professionalism of the Driver.

The Driver is doggedly pursued by the Detective (Dern) who has been after him for some time and is determined to bust him. He knows what the Driver does – he just can’t catch him in the act. As he says at one point, “I respect a man that’s good at what he does…I’m very good at what I do.” Does this sound familiar? This dialogue would not sound out of place in Michael Mann’s Heat (1995). The Detective respects the Driver’s skills, which only makes him that much more determined to arrest him.

In fact, he is so driven that he bullies a crook (Joseph Walsh) to hire the Driver to help him and his buddies escape a bank after they rob it in broad daylight. It’s a risky move but the Detective feels that it’s worth it if he can catch his prey. This sets the wheels in motion for an inevitable showdown between these two opposing forces.

Ryan O’Neal delivers an incredibly controlled performance as a man of few words, preferring to let his actions speak for him. We know nothing about his past or his private life. He is his work and Hill tells us all we need to know through his actions, like how well he can evade multiple pursuers, or his non-descript attire and economy of words, thereby making him difficult to identify and arrest as he leaves very little of a footprint as it were. Hill even manages to show a slyly humorous side to the man in a scene where he “auditions” for three crooks, proceeding to trash their car in a parking garage while they’re all in it. This sequence is simultaneously amusing and impressive. The Driver is a fascinating, enigmatic character that O’Neal expertly brings to life.

Bruce Dern matches O’Neal beat for beat, being the conceited chatterbox to the latter’s quiet intensity. Whereas the Driver shows very little emotion, the Detective is a grinning braggart so sure of himself and his plan to catch his prey. Dern gives his cop a jovial spin but it’s all a façade to lull his opponents into a false sense of security. Underneath lurks the nastiness of someone that doesn’t like to lose.

Hill takes us on a tour of the L.A. underworld – abandoned factories, parking garages, casinos, and sparsely furnished cheap hotel rooms that reflect the Driver’s world. During the night scenes, Hill utilizes the shadows effectively, creating a neo-noir vibe that is almost tangible.

The director also deconstructs and strips the crime film down to its most basic elements and so the end credits feature no proper names, only identifying the characters by what they do. He provides them with no backstories, forcing us to identify with them by what they do and how they behave in the moment. In this respect, Hill anticipated what Michael Mann has been doing in films like Miami Vice (2006) and Blackhat (2015).

Producer Lawrence Gordon came up with the idea of a film about a professional driver and then Walter Hill wrote the screenplay over the summer of 1975 while waiting for his directorial debut, Hard Times, to be released. He wrote the film for Steve McQueen but the actor didn’t “want to do another car thing.” The studio wanted Charles Bronson – he had worked with Hill on Hard Times – but they had a falling out over it and so he went with Ryan O’Neal instead.

For the role of the Detective, the studio wanted Robert Mitchum but he passed on the role and Hill went with Bruce Dern, rewriting some of his character’s dialogue to accommodate the actor’s personality and to contrast O’Neal’s taciturn Driver.

When it came to principal photography, Hill shot all the dramatic scenes first and then all the chases at night, which he felt “would be very much more in the spirit of what the storytelling wanted to be.” The director had learned about car chases working as second assistant director on Bullitt (1968). He realized that what made the famous car chase so memorable was not just the stunts but “the technique of shooting from inside. You really felt it was a rollercoaster ride as well as something you were observing. I made damn sure that when I was doing The Driver I filmed an enormous amount of inside shots.”

When Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive (2011) came out a lot was made about how much it resembled The Driver (and Mann’s Thief) and it certainly owes a debt to Hill’s film but conversely it is indebted to Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai (1967) with its protagonist of few words that is also an elite criminal. Like Refn did with Drive, Hill makes The Driver his own by applying his specific style and worldview. For example, the crook (Rudy Ramos) that double crosses the Driver partway through the film would be the first of many nasty baddies that populate Hill’s films – amoral men without regard for life, like Luther in The Warriors (1979) and Ganz in 48 HRS. (1982). These guys cannot be civilized or contained – they must be killed because of the threat they pose to the natural order of things.

The Driver may be a criminal but he has his own moral code that he follows and he doesn’t break his rules unless forced to by the bad guy. As Chandler said, he is neither “tarnished nor afraid,” and remains an unflappable presence throughout the film, adapting to any complications that come his way, including the trap that the Detective sets for him.

The Driver received mostly negative reviews when it was first released in theaters. Roger Ebert gave it two-and-a-half out of four stars and wrote, “And then there are those chase scenes. They’re great. They fill the screen with energy, even if it’s mechanical energy that doesn’t substitute for the human kind.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby, “For a movie in which there are so many chases. The Movie is singularly unexciting and uninvolving, though it does have its laughs.” The Los Angeles Times’ Kevin Thomas described the film as “ultraviolent trash that wipes out Ryan O’Neal, Bruce Dern and Isabella Adjani,” and “plays like a bad imitation of a French gangster picture which in turn is a bad imitation of an American gangster picture.” Finally, the Chicago Reader’s Dave Kehr wrote, “There’s no realism, no psychology, and very little plot…There is, however, a great deal of technically sophisticated and very imaginative filmmaking.”

The Driver was not a financial success but has become an influential film, counting filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, the aforementioned Refn, and Edgar Wright among its admirers. For Hill, it began a terrific run of action-oriented films that included films like The Long Riders (1980) and Southern Comfort (1981) and continued up to and including Streets of Fire (1984). Some of them were box office hits, some were not but all of them were instilled with the filmmaker’s no-nonsense, hardboiled sensibilities and a terrific capacity for kinetic action.

SOURCES

Hewitt, Chris. “Edgar Wright and Walter Hill Discuss The Driver.” Empire. March 13, 2017.

The Great Gatsby

Ever since F. Scott Fitzgerald’s magnum opus The Great Gatsby was published, Hollywood has been fascinated with adapting his novel into a film. To date, there have been five official versions, from a silent film made in 1926 to Baz Luhrmann’s postmodern take in 2013. Filmmakers have long been intrigued by the novel’s themes of decadence, excess and its portrait of the Roaring Twenties, making it a haunting critique of the pursuit of the American Dream.

In 1974, a particularly intriguing version of The Great Gatsby was released starring Robert Redford in the titular role and Mia Farrow as Daisy Buchanan, the object of his affection. It was directed by British filmmaker Jack Clayton and adapted by Francis Ford Coppola. The film received scathing reviews and was nominated for several Academy Awards and Golden Globes – even winning a few of them. It is generally regarded as an uneven adaptation at best and an outright failure at worst but I’ve always found it a fascinating take on Fitzgerald’s novel.

The opening credits play over a montage of Gatsby’s opulent mansion that is oddly devoid of life, coming across more as a sterile museum full of nice things: an expensive car, piano, ornate furnishings, marble floors, and exquisite décor, all the while echoey music plays as if to suggest ghosts of the past haunt this place. While the camera lingers over expensive jewelry, it keeps returning to a newspaper photograph and portraits of Daisy Buchanan (Farrow) – the only thing that Gatsby really cares about.

We meet Nick Carraway (Sam Waterston) arriving in West Egg, Long Island via boat to spend the summer hanging out with his cousin Daisy and her husband Tom (Bruce Dern) who live in the far more fashionable East Egg, “drifting here and there, unrestfully, wherever people played polo and were rich together,” Nick observes via voiceover narration. He’s met by Tom and they head back to his house where he’s reunited with Daisy and meets her friend Jordan Baker (Lois Chiles).

One is immediately struck by Daisy’s flighty condescension and Tom’s smug superiority. These people live in their own rarefied world because they can afford it. She even tries to appear deep by making an observation about a bird on the lawn but it comes across as a half-hearted attempt. The film wastes no time showing what a hypocrite Tom is with his talk of the superiority of the rich, upper class and his polo games but his mistress Myrtle (Karen Black) is the wife of a destitute mechanic (Scott Wilson) living in a garage located among a desolate wasteland of ashes.

Nick arrives home and only catches a fleeting glimpse of his enigmatic neighbor Jay Gatsby (Redford). The film cheekily juxtaposes Nick’s simple existence – eating a modest steak dinner he prepared himself with a glass of beer on the porch of his modest rental house – dwarfed by the army of groundskeepers and caterers that prepare Gatsby’s estate for one of his lavish parties. We only catch a couple of glimpses of him until 35 minutes into the film when Nick is brought up to meet the man one-on-one in the heart of his mansion. It is an impressive introduction as Robert Redford flashes that high wattage movie star smile and one can see why he was the ideal actor to play the enigmatic man with loads of charisma.

Daisy and Gatsby have a doomed love affair. When they first met they couldn’t be together because she was rich and he wasn’t. This violated the rules of the upper class. Gatsby spent years amassing a large personal fortune, buying his way back into Daisy’s world in the hopes of proving himself worthy, only she didn’t wait for him and married another rich man. They reunite for a brief affair, knowing it can’t last but are determined to savor every moment they have together.

Bruce Dern does an exceptional job of portraying an Alpha Male reeking of entitlement. He uses up people with little to no thought of the consequences. Karen Black plays his ideal foil, an equally duplicitous spouse that when she wants something, like a puppy being sold on the side of the street, has Tom pay for it. The actress does a wonderful job conveying Myrtle’s indulgence of excess. These aren’t very nice people and Dern and Black aren’t afraid to portray them as such. And yet for all of her vanity, Black gets a moment to suggest that Myrtle is something of a tragic figure while Dern’s Tom is ultimately nothing more than a wealthy bully. “They’re careless people, Tom and Daisy. They smash things up and then they retreat back into their money or their vast carelessness…leaving other people to clean up the mess,” Nick says of them, which perfectly nails their characters.

Sam Waterston plays Nick as a blank slate audience surrogate, acting as our guide among the rich and powerful. The character’s purpose is to react to the behavior and actions of the colorful people he encounters throughout the film. The actor does a decent job portraying the wide-eyed outsider in a world he is familiar with but can never truly be a part of because he’s not rich. As the film progresses, a friendship forms between Nick and Gatsby and this gives Waterston something to do other than being an observer. Nick is a true friend to Gatsby as he doesn’t like him because of his money but because he truly admires him.

Robert Redford always struck me as an actor that kept his cards close to the vest, never letting audiences inside and showing a vulnerable side. It always feels like he keeps audiences at arm’s length and in the process maintaining an air of mystery, which is ideally suited for playing Gatsby. The actor portrays him as an elusive figure that only interacts with people on his own terms.

If Redford is ideally cast as Gatsby then Mia Farrow is very much miscast as Daisy. Her fickle, bird-trapped-in-a-gilded-cage take on the character is grating at times and makes us wonder why Gatsby is so taken with her. That being said, the scene where Daisy and Gatsby meet for the first time in eight years demonstrates incredible on-screen chemistry between the two actors. In particular, Redford’s reaction to seeing her is quite powerful as we see Gatsby, a man always in control, caught up in the moment – a rare thing that sees him letting his guard down.

The Great Gatsby features beautiful cinematography courtesy of Douglas Slocombe (Raiders of the Lost Ark) and features memorable shots like that of Nick leaving the Buchanan’s at the end of the day with the sky and water bathed in the warm orange, pink and yellow hues of the sunset. The soft focus approach gives everything an almost hazy look, making all the metal of the expensive silverware, glassware and jewelry sparkle and shimmer.

For years, the likes of Sam Spiegel, Ray Stark and Sydney Pollack had wanted to adapt F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby into a film. Actress Ali MacGraw dreamed of playing the much-coveted role of Daisy Buchanan, which prompted then-husband and head of production at Paramount Studios Robert Evans to buy the film rights as a gift to her. He partnered with Broadway producer David Merrick who was friends with Fitzgerald’s daughter Scottie. At the time Merrick approached her there were other interested parties and it took him a year before he closed the deal for $350,000.

Potential directors circled the project, including Peter Bogdanovich, Arthur Penn and Mike Nichols, but none of them wanted MacGraw to play Daisy. British director Jack Clayton was hired to helm the film. He had actually tried to acquire the rights to The Great Gatsby himself in the 1940s and was obsessed with the novel for 30 years. To this end, he not only consulted with Fitzgerald estate curator Matthew J. Bruccoli but also with Scottie and literary experts.

Evans hired Truman Capote to write the screenplay. Clayton felt that the first draft had “far too much dialogue and exposition.” Evans was also unhappy with the script, which included confusing dream sequences and flashbacks. He asked Francis Ford Coppola to write a more straight-forward adaptation. The filmmaker was looking for a change of pace from working on The Godfather (1972) and wrote the script in five weeks. Clayton loved Coppola’s script and removed some passages he felt were unnecessary and inserted material from the book that the filmmaker had not included. It was these additions that upset Coppola, including an ending that he felt was anti-climactic.

Evans wanted either Warren Beatty or Jack Nicholson to play Gatsby with the former agreeing but only if MacGraw played Jordan Baker, and the latter only if she was not cast as Daisy. Evans was determined to have his wife play the role. He approached Marlon Brando but couldn’t afford him, especially after The Godfather. They were two months away from the start of principal photography and still hadn’t found their Gatsby. When Robert Redford heard about the project he approached Evans who turned the actor down. Redford met with Clayton who was interested in Nicholson as Gatsby but after talking with Redford for 90 minutes wanted him to play the part. Clayton said of the actor, “You can see the possibility of danger beneath the romantic WASP image.”

Evans still wasn’t convinced and felt that Redford didn’t look the part, which drove the actor crazy: “I began to think Evans never read the book. Sure, he liked the idea of doing Fitzgerald, but he didn’t know the text.” He had first read the novel in college and found it “florid,” but revisited it for the film and “I saw it was something extraordinary, the depiction of human obsessions, and I felt some great screen work could come from it.” The studio also backed Redford and he was cast as Gatsby.

Merrick wanted MacGraw to play Daisy and McQueen to play Gatsby. At the time, Evans and MacGraw were getting divorced after he discovered she was having an affair with her co-star on The Getaway (1972), Steve McQueen. Evans, understandably, disagreed with Merrick and had Paramount executives meet with him and Merrick to decide on potential actresses to play Daisy: Mia Farrow, Katharine Ross, Candice Bergen or Faye Dunaway. Merrick continued to insist on MacGraw while Clayton wanted Farrow and Evans agreed. The studio executives concurred and she was cast in the role. After being cast she discovered that she was pregnant. The shooting schedule was moved up a week and her dresses were altered to hide her pregnancy.

Most people assume that the media blitzkrieg and merchandising of a movie started with Star Wars (1977) but forget that The Great Gatsby predated it with a then-unprecedented amount of hype as typified by Evans hubristically saying, “The making of a blockbuster is the newest art form of the 20th century.” Oh, how prescient that statement was when one considers the rise of the mass marketed studio blockbuster in the 1980s. Paramount spent $200,000 on publicity and promotion with product tie-ins valued at $6 million. The film was made for $6.4 million and made $18.6 million on advance bookings making it a financial success before it was even released in theaters!

Film critics savaged The Great Gatsby when it was released. Roger Ebert gave the film two-and-a-half out of four stars and wrote, “But we can’t penetrate the mystery of Gatsby. Nor, to be honest, can we quite understand what’s so special about Daisy Buchanan. Not as she’s played by Mia Farrow, all squeaks and narcissism and empty sophistication.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “Nothing that Mr. Clayton does with the actors or with the camera comes close to catching the spirit of Fitzgerald’s impatient brilliance…The plot has been dismantled like an antique engine and photographed, piece by piece, preserved in lots of pretty, glistening images that bath the film in nostalgia as thick as axle grease.” Time magazine’s Jay Cocks wrote, “A great deal of time, money and promotion have been concentrated here, but Gatsby’s sad and curious history has resulted in a dull, dreadful movie.” Finally, in his review for The New Republic, Stanley Kauffmann wrote, “In sum this picture is a total failure of every requisite sensibility. A long, slow, sickening bore.”

Redford said of the film, “The truth is, Hollywood wanted to make The Great Gatsby because it was a literary success, not because it was great literature. Enough time may not have been taken to work that one out.” Coppola hated the film and felt that Clayton had ruined his faithful script. Farrow felt that it “was a victim of overhype.”

The Great Gatsby takes a fascinating look at the idle rich and their decadent lives as typified by the people that populate Gatsby’s parties. They are filled with people that want to see and be seen, lose their inhibitions and indulge in all kinds of excesses – this was the Roaring Twenties where the United States was prospering after World War I. And yet, the film ultimately shows these parties as empty affairs that its host Gatsby rarely attends. Why should we care about these people? When it comes to the likes of Tom and Myrtle, we don’t and neither does Nick who becomes disgusted by them and their phoniness, turning his back on their way of life.

As Nick observes early on, Gatsby is a tragic and romantic figure: “For Gatsby turned out alright in the end. It was what preyed on him, what foul dust that floated in the wake of his dreams.” He’s a self-made man that built himself up to impress a woman he loved years ago and never forgot. Unfortunately, he thought that money could buy happiness and return things to the way they were once years ago, but this proves to be his undoing. For its faults, this version of The Great Gatsby is remarkably faithful to its source material and a strong indictment of the vanity of the rich and the dangers of achieving the American Dream.

SOURCES

Callan, Michael Feeney. Robert Redford: The Biography. Vintage. 2012.

Phillips, Gene D. Godfather: The Intimate Francis Ford Coppola. University Press of Kentucky. 2004.

“Ready Or Not, Here Comes Gatsby.” Time. March 18, 1974.

Sinyard, Neil. Jack Clayton. Manchester University Press. 2013.

The Big Town

Most actors have what I refer to as “paycheck movies” somewhere in their filmography. They are movies that are done for the money or the desire to work that month. They are movies that are usually not all that memorable and done purely for mercenary reasons but they are still part of an actor’s body of work. One such movie is The Big Town (1987), made after Diane Lane took three years off from the business and saw her reunited with Matt Dillon, her on-screen love interest in The Outsiders (1983) and Rumble Fish (1983). Like Lane, he had hit a speed bump in his career after the box office hit The Flamingo Kid (1984). I’m sure appearing together was a large part of the appeal of doing The Big Town for both actors. While their on-screen chemistry continued, the final product was something of a mixed bag.

J.C. Cullen (Matt Dillon) is a small-time crapshooter who aspires to make it in the big city. He is a very skilled/lucky dice thrower with the gambling instincts of his deceased father, much to the chagrin of his mother. He’s young and too restless for life in small-town America circa 1957. He soon arrives in Chicago and the movie does a nice job of immediately immersing us in the sights and sounds of the period era thanks to a soundtrack of classic songs from the likes of Johnny Cash, Bo Diddley, and Big Joe Turner among others.

He soon goes to work for Mr. and Mrs. Edwards (Bruce Dern and Lee Grant) who set him up with a place, a bankroll and establish the ground rules. They’re all business and don’t have much expectations as young men like him come off the bus every week. They team him up with Sonny Binkley (David Marshall Grant), a veteran gambler who shows him the ropes. Cullen takes to big city life like a fish to water, making consistent money for the Edwards.

One day, Cullen meets a sweet single mom named Aggie Donaldson (Suzy Amis) at a local record store. She loves all kinds of music and dreams of being a disc jockey one day. Always looking for action, Cullen is told about the Gem Club, a strip joint with high stakes and a very exclusive crap game. It is also the only place in town where gamblers can play with their own money and not give any of it to their handlers. Naturally, the odds are stacked heavily in favor of the house, which is run by the no-nonsense owner George Cole (Tommy Lee Jones).

The first night playing Cullen wins big ($14,000!) and in the process pisses off Cole by not only beating the house badly, but doing it in front of his regulars. After subsequently being set-up by Cole, in retribution, Cullen starts a torrid affair with his gorgeous wife Lorry Dane (Diane Lane), the Gem Club’s star stripper. However, he also finds himself increasingly attracted to the more wholesome Aggie and starts a romance with her. Eventually, Cullen has to make a choice while steering clear of the dangerous Cole – if he can.

Matt Dillon’s cocky gambler evokes Paul Newman’s iconic turn in The Hustler (1961) as both of their characters push their respective luck to the limit. For Cullen, he is very smart when it comes to shooting craps (he expertly figures out when Cole swaps dice for a loaded pair) but exhibits poor judgment when it comes to women, seeing two at the same time. Aggie represents his small-town, Midwestern roots while Lorry represents his flashy big city life. Dillon has the retro looks from a bygone era and has no problem portraying a gambler from the 1950s.

Much like Dillon, Diane Lane looks like she came from another time. Her retro stripper look resembles her mother Colleen Leigh Farrington, herself a nightclub singer and Playboy Centerfold (Miss October 1957) and one wonders if her performance in The Big Town was a tribute to her mother. Lane even pulls off a very sexy fan dance at one point, showing off the research and hard work she put into the role. Lorry is more than a stereotypical bad girl. She is a woman trapped in a situation with a dangerous man that is also her husband. And yet, we are never quite sure if she can be trusted even while Cullen falls head over heels for her. Lane does what she can with an underwritten role that often relegates her to very attractive eye candy.

Dillon and Lane had undeniable chemistry in The Outsiders and Rumble Fish and continue it with The Big Town. As sweet as Suzy Amis’ Aggie is, one can’t see Dillon’s slick gambler settling down with the single mother and her daughter. Cullen and Lorry are much more suited for each other with their similar outlooks on life. It doesn’t hurt that the two actors radiate genuine on-screen heat. And while Dillon does have some nice chemistry with Amis, it pales in comparison to Lane.

Tommy Lee Jones turns in a typically effortless performance as the movie’s heavy, opting for a less is more approach as he conveys danger with an ominous look or a slight edge in his voice. The always-watchable Bruce Dern plays a blind fixer by the name of Mr. Edwards who bankrolls up and coming gamblers like Cullen. He has a nice scene with Dillon where his character tells Cullen how he lost his sight in a well-delivered monologue. He used to be a hotshot dice roller like Cullen but losing his sight ended his career and he’s been searching for the man who robbed him of his vision ever since.

The Big Town sprinkles snazzy period dialogue and colorful gambler slang throughout, courtesy of Robert Roy Pool’s screenplay – itself an adaptation of Clark Howard’s novel The Arm. There is a nice shot partway through the movie of Cullen and Lorry walking down a deserted Chicago street late at night, which is soon followed by them kissing passionately under elevated train tracks much like a similar scene also with Lane in Streets of Fire (1984) albeit without the rain. Ralf D. Bode’s cinematography, coupled with Ben Bolt’s direction results in a movie that looks like it could easily exist in a corner of the world of period television series Crime Story, but as a prequel of sorts (since that show took place in the 1960s).

In late summer of 1986, director Harold Becker was set to adapt Clark Howard’s novel The Arm, about a crapshooter, and approached noted gambling expert Edwin Silberstang to be a technical advisor on the movie. He read the screenplay and agreed to do it. Silberstang taught Matt Dillon the rules of the game, the difference between a basic street game and playing at a casino, and some of the street slang. They spent time betting at casinos in Las Vegas. After ten days, they flew to Toronto where the interior gambling scenes were to be filmed and ‘50s era Chicago was recreated for financial reasons.

Silberstang helped design a special craps table that allowed the audience to follow the action easier and could be broken in half for special shots. However, two weeks into principal photography, Becker was replaced when he clashed with producer Martin Ransohoff over creative differences. Columbia Pictures chairman and CEO David Puttnam brought in one of his friends, Ben Bolt, son of Lawrence of Arabia (1962) screenwriter Robert Bolt, to direct. Puttnam was not fond of Ransohoff’s three-picture deal at the studio and wanted to help out a friend, but it rankled some within the industry who wondered why an unproven Brit was hired to direct a period piece set in Chicago.

The Big Town received mixed reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars and praised Dillon’s performance: “Dillon has some kind of spontaneous rapport with the camera. He never seems aware of it, never seems aware that he’s playing a character. His acting is graceful and fluid, and his scenes always seem to start before their first shot so that we seem him in the middle of a motion.” The Los Angeles Times’ Kevin Thomas felt that it was “so entertaining, so true to its period that it’s easy to peg it as another ‘50s nostalgia piece when it actually possesses the kind of complexity usually associated with less commercial, less starry productions.”

In her review for The New York Times, Caryn James wrote, “More to the point, this huge cliché of a movie isn’t even a distant relation of films like The Color of Money, which can actually make you root for hustlers. The Big Town only proves we’ve gone back to the 1950’s one time too many.” The Chicago Tribune’s Joanna Steinmetz wrote, “But director Ben Bolt, whose previous experience is in British and American television, is not about to let style carry this show. Unfortunately, he’s not about to let substance carry it, either.” Finally, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Ben Yagoda wrote, “Then, somewhere around reel three, the chips, so to speak, are cashed in … So the stageyness becomes stagier, the improbabilities more improbable and the lunacy loonier.”

In retrospect, The Big Town can be seen as a stepping-stone towards bigger and better things for Dillon and Lane (and Jones as well). Shortly after this movie he would attract much critical acclaim for his role as a junkie in Drugstore Cowboy (1989) and she would be nominated for an Emmy for her excellent work on the T.V. miniseries Lonesome Dove (which would also feature Jones). The Big Town didn’t exactly set the box office on fire – barely registering, in fact, but it wasn’t meant to with its small budget and limited distribution. The movie tells a story we’ve seen a million times before: a young man from a small-town that tries to make it in the big city only to learn a painful lesson. While it is hardly an original idea, the movie does have its entertaining moments with engaging performances from Dillon and Lane, which should appeal to fans of both actors.

SOURCES

Comer, Brooke. “Big Trouble in The Big Town.” American Cinematographer. September 1987.

Silberstang, Edwin. Winning Casino Craps. Random House. 2007.

Stadiem, William. Moneywood: Hollywood in Its Last Age of Excess. St. Martin’s Press. 2013.

After Dark, My Sweet

After classic film noir ended with Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil in 1958, what became known as neo-noir emerged in the mid-1960s and continues to be made to this day. There is some debate as to when it became a full-fledged genre with some arguing that this didn’t happen until the 1980s with films like Against All Odds (1984), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981) and Blood Simple (1984). The genre really took off in the 1990s with Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994) and numerous Elmore Leonard adaptations.

That being said, 1990 might have been the best year for neo-noirs with The Grifters, The Hot Spot, After Dark, My Sweet, and The Two Jakes all coming out to varying degrees of success, both critically and commercially. Perhaps the most underrated film from the class of ’90 is After Dark, My Sweet, an adaptation of Jim Thompson’s 1955 novel of the same name by James Foley, no stranger himself to the crime genre with his critically-acclaimed film At Close Range (1986). Cast in the three pivotal roles were Bruce Dern (The Driver), Rachel Ward (Against All Odds) and Jason Patric (The Lost Boys). The end result was a bleak but absorbing crime drama that was well-received critically, but flopped at the box office, failing to make back its modest $6 million budget. It’s too bad, really, as After Dark, My Sweet is one of the very best neo-noirs of the ‘90s.

“I wonder where I’ll be tomorrow. I’ll wonder why I didn’t stay where I was a week ago and a thousand miles from here.” So muses Kevin “Kid” Collins (Jason Patric) in his world-weary voiceover narration. He is a traditional noir protagonist who lives on the margins of society. He’s a former boxer that took one too many shots to the head. It left him unstable and hospitalized, but he managed to escape and spends his days hitchhiking from one desolate small town to the next, “walking away from things for a long time,” as he puts it.

With his rumpled, disheveled look and shuffling gait, Kid is an unassuming punch-drunk guy that most people figure is kind of dumb by the way he talks. One day, he wanders into a bar and tries a down-on-his-luck story on a beautiful woman named Fay (Rachel Ward). He catches her attention after cold-cocking the pushy bartender and she takes him home. Like Kid, we immediately wonder what Fay’s angle is as she takes in a guy she initially rebuffed at the bar, but hey, with Rachel Ward’s looks, he doesn’t wonder too hard. She puts him to work reviving her expansive yard littered with weeds and a swimming pool that looks like a science experiment gone awry.

Fay introduces Kid to the smooth-talking Uncle Bud (Bruce Dern), a guy who knows people – “I know what they’ll do and I know what they won’t do.” In a few minutes, Bud expertly tap dances around pulling off a scam and warns Kid to stay away from Fay – it’s an impressive bit of verbal acrobatics that Bruce Dern pulls off effortlessly. Kid tries to cut loose of Fay and Uncle Bud. He even stays with a kind doctor (George Dickerson) who recognizes the young man’s unstable mental state. However, Kid is drawn back to Fay, unable to resist her allure, and is roped into Uncle Bud’s kidnapping scheme. After Dark, My Sweet plays out in typical noir fashion as the scheme becomes complicated the more Fay, Kid and Uncle Bud distrust one another and it is only a matter of time before someone gets double-crossed. It’s a guessing game for the audience as we try to figure out who’s conning whom and why.

Done early in his career, Jason Patric was desperate to shake free of the heart-throb image that he was tagged with after making The Lost Boys (1987). He saw an independent film like After Dark, My Sweet as a way to show he had some real acting chops by playing a deeply conflicted character. He offsets his matinee idol good looks by adopting body language that suggests a damaged person and speaking in such a way – slow with pregnant pauses – that only enhances Kid’s flaws. However, as the film progresses, Patric shows us that there is more to Kid than meets the eye. There’s a moving scene where the drifter, lying alone in bed, breaks down, still haunted by the memory of killing a man in the boxing ring. In a diverse career, After Dark, My Sweet is still his best performance.

In the ‘80s, Rachel Ward played a quintessential femme fatale in Against All Odds and a parody of one in Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982), but her character in After Dark, My Sweet is a bit more layered. Fay is something of an enigma. She refers to a deceased husband on several occasions, but we’re never sure what exactly her relationship is to Uncle Bud – are they related? Lovers? Partners in crime? Ward is the film’s suntanned femme fatale who catches Kid’s eye with a pair of cut-off jeans shorts that leaves little to the imagination. She doesn’t wear the typical fatale garb – she’s more casual with outfits like a red bathrobe, a flower print dress, and so on, but Ward has the figure that makes it all work and it’s easy to see why Kid is unable to resist Fay’s allure for long. The sexual chemistry, especially as the film goes on, is almost tangible.

The great Bruce Dern adds another fascinating character to an already impressive roster. Right from the get-go we know that the glad-handing Uncle Bud can’t be trusted, but the veteran character actor disarms us with his charm, much as he does with the understandably wary Kid. But as with many of Dern’s characters, the charm is a façade for something darker and volatile underneath.

James Foley is an interesting director who has made some very memorable crime films, including the aforementioned At Close Range and Confidence (2003) as well as an excellent adaptation of the David Mamet play Glengarry Glen Ross (1992). However, Foley remains largely underappreciated by cineastes. In After Dark, My Sweet, he makes good use of the widescreen aspect ratio, especially in the outdoor scenes as he captures the desolate California desert landscapes. Foley doesn’t get too fancy with the camerawork, allowing the actors to do their thing, which is crucial to a film like this where the relationships between the main characters are what drive the story.

After Dark, My Sweet received mixed to positive reviews from critics. Roger Ebert ranks it as one of his “Great Movies” on his website and called it, “one of the purest and most uncompromising of modern films noir. It captures above all the lonely, exhausted lives of its characters.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby felt that the film “ought to push Mr. Patric's career into the big time. It's not often that a young actor as conventionally handsome as he is has a chance to demonstrate his talents in a role as rich, colorful and complex as that of Collie. The role is pivotal to the film's success, as is Mr. Patric's performance.” Newsweek’s David Ansen praised Foley’s direction: “Here he resists the temptation to overstylize Thompson's blunt, black style: he keeps action taut but gives his actors breathing space to work out their feint-and-jab rhythms.” In his review for the Globe and Mail, Jay Scott called it, “a miniature classic, a pulp tragedy.”

However, Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “C+” rating and Owen Gleiberman felt that it was “cool and compelling for about 45 minutes, but it has a clinical, hothouse garishness that grows oppressive.” USA Today gave it one-and-a-half out of four stars and Mike Clark wrote, “Nothing works, though, in this over-elaborate let's-kidnap-a-kid melodrama. Jason Patric (Lost Boys) plays the drifter, and is in some ways an apt choice; even at the end, we're never certain how smart, stupid or calculating this chump really is. But ultimately, Patric degenerates into a one-note whose studied deliveries help expand the running time.” Finally, the Washington Post’s Hal Hinson wrote, “Everything in the picture is sanitized. Because there's no stink of the back alley in it, its fatalism becomes a kind of chic affectation. It's designer cynicism. When his characters sweat, it's as if they're sweating Dom Perignon.”

There is a melancholic vibe that hangs over the entire film as Kid, Fay and Uncle Bud are all headed nowhere. Fay seems resigned to this fate while Kid is indifferent and Uncle Bud is in denial, still planning the score that he hopes will set him up for life. Of course, Bud thinks he has all the angles figured out, including Kid by having Fay keep him in check, but they all make the classic mistake of underestimating the young man. With After Dark, My Sweet, Foley has created a character-driven crime film that wouldn’t look out of place in the 1970s, like something Bob Rafelson might’ve done (and did with Blood and Wine in 1996). At the beginning of the film, Kid wonders where he’ll be tomorrow and by the end, he sees things clearly – “When a man stops caring what happens all the strain is lifted from him.” – and knows what he must do. Like most noirs, it ends tragically for most involved, but there’s an element of self-sacrifice that provides one last, intriguing twist to Fay and Kid’s relationship.

DVD of the Week: America Lost & Found: The BBS Story

In the 1960s, film producer Bert Schneider and film director Bob Rafelson expressed an interest in movie production but both men lacked experience so they use their connections in Hollywood to produce a pilot episode for a potential television series. The end result would The Monkees, an irreverent show done in the style of The Beatles film, A Hard Day’s Night (1964). The show was green-lit and became a pop culture sensation. While developing The Monkees, Schneider and Rafelson met Stephen Blauner who worked for the studio developing the show. They decided to take the money they made from The Monkees and finance a film that Dennis Hopper wanted to direct and star in with his friend Peter Fonda. That film would be Easy Rider (1969) and this counter-culture film became a huge hit both commercially and critically, sending shockwaves through Hollywood.

The Criterion Collection have released an incredible box set sampling some of the most intriguing, experimental, and just plain fascinating examples of BBS Production’s output. Two films that are included have never been released on home video before. This set is quite simply a must-have for any lover of American cinema during the 1970s.

To say Head (1968) is a cinematic oddity is an understatement. Intent at topping The Beatles at their own game, The Monkees appeared in a film that Bob Rafelson directed and co-wrote with none other than Jack Nicholson and that was even more experimental and avant garde than anything the Fab Four had done. The result was a strange, yet playful concert film fused with a trippy pop culture satire. It was a resounding commercial flop when fans realized that the film was not a rehash of The Monkees’ silly, conventional television show.

The opening track, “Porpoise Song,” with its psychedelic imagery, anticipates the British acid house movement by many years and quickly establishes that this isn’t going to be a traditional film by any stretch of the imagination. Gone is the bubblegum pop and in is the Sgt. Pepper’s-esque experimentation. At one point, the band members appear as dandruff in Victor Mature’s hair only to be swept up by a giant vacuum cleaner. Hell, Frank Zappa even shows up with a talking cow to give some sage advice. The Monkees, with Rafelson’s help, gleefully bit the hand that fed them and proceeded to deconstruct their image in a way that no pop group at their level of success had done before or since. Imagine if Justin Bieber decided to star in a film directed Darren Aronofsky.

The critical and commercial success of Easy Rider (1969) scared the hell out of the Hollywood studios at the time of its release. Executives thought that they knew what the public wanted to see: safe comedies like Pillow Talk (1959) or the Frankie and Annette beach party movies. Along came this counter-culture film that featured contemporary rock ‘n’ roll music, two hippie protagonists and a nihilistic ending. And audiences loved it. Easy Rider ushered in the last great decade of American movies in the ‘70s.

After selling their stash of cocaine, Billy (Hopper) and Wyatt (Fonda) decide to ride their motorcycles from California to Florida (by way of the South) where they plan to live off the money. They travel the back roads of American and encounter all sorts of people: suspicious small-townsfolk, an oppressive sheriff and a rancher and his large family who invite them to a meal. The deeper they go into the South, the more resistance they meet because of how they look.

Easy Rider is a fantastic snapshot of the times. It signaled the end of the not-so idyllic ‘60s, where having long hair could deny you a room in a motel because the manager didn’t like the way you look. Time running out is a constant theme throughout Easy Rider. When Billy and Wyatt start their journey, Wyatt throws away his watch. Later on, he finds a discarded pocket watch just before they leave the commune. Also, as they are leaving, the hitchhiker they picked up warns Wyatt that time is running out. It eerily foreshadows the film’s disturbing finale and gives a feeling of impending doom that hangs over the entire film.

Five Easy Pieces (1970) is one of those complex character studies that typified some of the best American films from the 1970s. Bobby Dupea (Nicholson) is a former piano prodigy who spends his days working on an oilrig with his best friend Elton (Bush). As Bill Murray would later say in Stripes (1981), he’s “part of a lost and restless generation.” He’s someone who doesn’t suffer fools gladly which makes one wonder why he lives with Rayette (Black), a nice enough person but clearly not Bobby’s intellectual equal and he barely tolerates her needy behavior. One gets the feeling that Bobby is punishing himself.

He is a restless soul as evident in a fascinating scene where, frustrated at being stuck in a traffic jam on the interstate, he gets out of his car and starts playing the piano on a back of a nearby truck. Bobby wants to fit in – hence the blue-collar employment – but he keeps sabotaging his jobs and relationships with an acute self-awareness and his rejection of familial responsibilities. This is a slice of life film whose story doesn’t begin properly until 30 minutes in when Bobby finds out that his estranged father is ill and decides to take road trip to see him. Nicholson delivers a brilliant, gritty performance that would typify a lot of his work in the ‘70s. He’s not afraid to play an unlikable guy who treats those around him poorly. Bobby is full of anger – at the world, at others and at himself.

Drive, He Said (1970) marked the directorial debut of Jack Nicholson. By this point in his career, he had already tried his hand at screenwriting and, of course, acting, so directing seemed like the next logical step. The film concerns the relationship between Hector Bloom (Tepper), a talented college basketball player, and his increasingly radical roommate Gabriel (Margotta). The first thing that strikes one about this film is how topical it is as it deals frankly with sex and nudity (both male and female) – something that was being explored explicitly at the time and how politicized college campuses had become because of the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, and so on.

In A Safe Place (1971), Tuesday Weld plays a beautiful free spirit in this whimsical experimental film. Scenes often cut abruptly to others and the film lacks a concrete story but is anchored by a strong performance by Weld. Along for the ride is Orson Welles as a mysterious magician who performs several tricks. The lack of a linear narrative can make this a frustrating experiment for some. In some respects, it’s a snapshot of its time and could never be made now.

Made in the early ‘70s, The Last Picture Show (1971) firmly established director Peter Bogdanovich as one of the premiere American filmmakers of that decade. It is also his undisputed masterpiece in a wildly uneven career. Based on the novel of the same name by Larry McMurtry, the film is a lament for the absence of simpler times and a simpler way of life. It’s set in a dusty Texas town in the early 1950s with the focus on three aimless teenagers: Sonny (Bottoms), Duane (Bridges) and Jacy (Shepherd). Sonny and Duane play for the local high school football team and endure constant criticism from their elders for their poor play. Social life for the teens revolves around the small town’s lone movie theater. Our three teen protagonists are bored and can’t wait to get out of their town where nothing ever happens.

Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges and Cybill Shepherd were all young, up-and-coming actors at the time and are excellent in their respective roles. It is easy to see why an actor like Bridges went on to become such a versatile thespian. Even this early on in his career he displays an uncanny knack for embodying a character. Bogdanovich does a good job with this material and the rich, textured black and white cinematography, coupled with the run-down Texas town, feels like it could exist in the same world as the characters in Hud (1963), another film based on a McMurtry novel.

Bob Rafelson reunited with Jack Nicholson for another tale about disillusioned and disaffected Americans with The King of Marvin Gardens (1972). Like their best collaborations, it’s a character study, exploring the relationship between two estranged brothers. David (Nicholson) is a depressed radio show host in Philadelphia. One day, he receives a phone call from his scam artist brother Jason (Dern) who is stuck in a jail in Atlantic City. Once he gets out, Jason ropes David in on a real estate scam. The gregarious older sibling makes it out to be too good to be true and that’s because it is.

Jack Nicholson is fascinatingly cast against type as a reserved, button-downed intellectual. David is a quiet, responsible person, which is in sharp contrast to Bruce Dern’s motor-mouthed Jason, a guy always on the make. He’s a consummate bullshit artist and the cynical David sees right through his hustle. The King of Marvin Gardens is an intriguing snapshot of an Atlantic City that doesn’t exist anymore. At the time, it was in decline but all of the old architecture was still gloriously intact and Rafelson shows it off to the degree that it is almost another character in the film. It’s interesting to note that the film’s offbeat rhythm anticipates Vincent Gallo’s Buffalo ’66 (1998) complete with a woman dancing by herself in a spotlight. Dern and Nicholson play well off each other and are believable as brothers. They have a familiar short hand and get on each other’s nerves much like real siblings do.

Special Features:

On the Head DVD is an audio commentary by The Monkees – Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith, Peter Tork. Rather appropriately, they talk about how they got their own television show and then the film. They are all pretty candid about how badly the film performed at the time and how it was their attempt to trash the image of the band from the show.

“From The Monkees to Head” is an interview with director Bob Rafelson. He talks about the genesis of the T.V. show and how The Beatles influenced it with A Hard Day’s Night. He goes on to talk about how the show led to the film and how everyone around him told him not to make it.

“BBS: A Time for Change” is a 30-minute featurette on BBS, an independent production company that existed from the late 1960s to the early 1970s. This is an excellent look at the genesis of this company and its place in cinematic history.

There are screen tests for all four Monkees that were done before the T.V. show. They were integrated into the pilot episode and helped launch the show. Their personalities really come out in this footage. We also see two of The Monkees paired up with two other guys that never made the final cut.

“The Monkees on The Hy Lit Show, 1968” is a rare T.V. appearance by the band to promote Head. It takes place next to a boxing ring (?!) and it is interesting to see them try and explain their film.

“Promotion” includes several theatrical trailers, T.V spots and radio spots for the film. Also included is a collection of stills and behind-the-scenes photographs.

On the Easy Rider disc, there is an audio commentary by co-writer and director Dennis Hopper that was recorded in 2009. He kicks things off by talking about the genesis of the film. He also talks about his motivation for making the film and what he was trying to say with it. He points out bits of dialogue and visual inserts that were improvised. There are several lulls throughout as Hopper tends to get caught up in watching the film.

Also included is a 1995 commentary by Hopper, Peter Fonda and production manager Paul Lewis. This is a much livelier track as everyone shares filming anecdotes like Phil Spector lending his limousine and bodyguard to the film. They also point out where various scenes were shot and how also just how stoned Jack Nicholson was during the famous campfire sequence.

There are two trailers.

The second disc starts off with a 30-minute BBC2 documentary entitled, “Born to be Wild”. It features Hopper, Fonda, Karen Black and cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs. Hopper and Fonda talk briefly about how Roger Corman taught them to make a film fast and cheap. Of course, they address the casting of Nicholson and how Hopper didn’t see him in the role. Everyone tells some good filming anecdotes in this highly enjoyable extra.

Carried over from the 35^th Anniversary Edition is “Easy Rider: Shaking the Cage,” an hour-long retrospective documentary featuring new interviews with Fonda, Hopper, Seymour Cassel (who worked on the crew) and Black. Hopper says that the film was an attempt to counter the mainstream fluff like the Frankie and Annette beach party movies that ignored sex, drugs and contemporary rock ‘n’ roll. This is a top-notch look at all the wild stories of filming Easy Rider, including the infamous Mardi Gras shoot.

“Hopper and Fonda at Cannes” features a segment from French T.V. of Fonda and Hopper at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival with their film and they briefly talk about it.

Finally, there is an interview with Steve Blauner, one of the founders of BBS. He talks about the genesis of the company and about their start in T.V., creating The Monkees. He points out that the money from the show paid for Easy Rider.

If you own the 35^th Anniversary Edition of the film you might want to hold on to as the commentary that Hopper does on it is not included, nor is the excellent BFI Modern Classics book on Easy Rider by Lee Hill or the bonus CD with select songs from the film.

The Five Easy Pieces disc starts off with an audio commentary by director Bob Rafelson and interior designer Toby Rafelson. Toby points out that the entire film was shot on practical locations. Originally, she didn’t want to do the film but Bob convinced her when he told that he was going to use their own furniture (!). By keeping it under budget and on time, he had final cut and could also cast whomever he wanted. Naturally, Bob talks about working with Nicholson on this engaging track.

“Soul Searching in Five Easy Pieces” features an interview with Rafelson where he talks about the film’s development. He was nervous about doing Five Easy Pieces because it was the first time he worked with actual, serious actors. He had written two screenplays but didn’t like them. He showed them to screenwriter Carol Eastman and she threw them out and wrote her own.

“BBStory” is a 2009, 46-minute documentary about BBS Productions and features the likes of Rafelson, Peter Bogdanovich, Jack Nicholson, Karen Black, and several others. It starts off with the social and political conditions that gave birth to the company. The studio system was collapsing and BBS made films that reflected the times that people were living in.

“Bob Rafelson at AFI” features excerpts from an audio recording of Rafelson speaking at the American Film Institute. He talks about his career and the films he made for BBS.

Finally, there are two teaser trailers and one full-length trailer.

Drive, He Said starts off with “A Cautionary Tale of Campus Revolution and Sexual Freedom,” a featurette where Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern and co-producer Harry Gittes talk about making this film. It was about college campus revolution and at one point during filming a real riot broke out on the campus they were at. They went ahead and filmed it without permission. Nicholson talks about shooting the basketball sequences and how he cast actual players.

Also included is a trailer.

A Safe Place includes an audio commentary by director Henry Jaglom. He points out that the film was originally a play starring Karen Black. By adapting it into a film he wanted to make it more abstract, exploring the internal nature of Tuesday Weld’s character. Jaglom is quite eloquent and engaging on this track.

“Henry Jaglom Finds A Safe Place” sees the filmmaker talking about the influence of improvisational theater and the New Wave of European cinema. He was interested in creating stories about the inner lives of women.

“Notes on the New York Film Festival” sees Jaglom and Peter Bogdanovich talk with film critic Molly Haskell about The Last Picture Show and A Safe Place in 1971. It’s great to see them all in their prime talking so confidently about their work. The two directors banter playfully with each other in this enjoyable extra.

Also included are outtakes of Orson Welles blowing his lines and four screen tests.

There is a trailer as well.

The Last Picture Show includes an audio commentary by director Peter Bogdanovich and actors Cybill Shepherd, Randy Quaid, Cloris Leachman and Frank Marshall. The director explains why he shot the film in black and white and says that the town was divided about them filming there. He goes into the casting choices with some interesting stories. Shepherd says that she never acted before doing that film and gives her impressions of working on it as do the other participants.

Bogdanovich returns for another commentary, this time by himself. There is some overlap from the previous track making it kind of redundant. Not surprisingly, he dwells on the nuts and bolts of filmmaking and discusses its themes.

Also included are two trailers.

The second disc includes “The Last Picture Show: A Look Back,” an hour-long documentary made in 1999 with most of the key cast members and Bogdanovich and author Larry McMurtry recalling their experiences of making the film. It takes us through the genesis and filming to its reception. There is a fair amount of crossover of information from the commentaries but if you’re not into listening to commentaries then this is for you.

“A Discussion with Filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich” sees him talking about how he got into show business, what directors influenced him and, of course, The Last Picture Show.

“Picture This” is a documentary about Bogdanovich and key cast members reunited to make the sequel, Texasville (1990) while also talking about their experiences making the original film. It also paints a fascinating portrait of the people that lived in the town.

Also included are 16mm screen tests of several actors in the film.

There is location footage that Bogdanovich shot while scouting places to shoot for the film.

“Truffaut on the New Hollywood” features filmmaker Francois Truffaut talking briefly about the New Hollywood directors in 1972 on French T.V. He also offers high praise for The Last Picture Show.

For The King of Marvin Gardens, there is a selected-scene commentary by Bob Rafelson. He talks about some of the stylistic choices he made. After Five Easy Pieces, he wanted to make a more abstract film. He talks about the film’s style and comments on the characters.

“Reflections of a Philosopher King” sees Rafelson and actress Elle Burstyn talking about the characters in the film and how they came to be and evolved over the course of filming.

“Afterthoughts” features Rafelson, cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs and actor Bruce Dern talking about the style of the film and how it was achieved and why. There is some overlap from the previous extras but Dern and Kovacs’ comments are quite good and funny as hell.

“About Bob Rafelson” is brief text biography of the man’s career.

Finally, there is a trailer.