Moonlighting

BLOGGER'S NOTE: This post originally appeared on the Wonders in the Dark blog for their Top 80 Greatest Television Shows.

In a landscape dominated by the likes of Dynasty and Hill St. Blues, Moonlighting was a breath of fresh air when it debuted on American television in 1985. It was a detective show that provided a funny, witty alternative and ambitiously took the screwball comedy popular in the 1930s and 1940s and gave it a contemporary spin that has never been duplicated as successfully on mainstream T.V. since.

Al Jarreau’s memorably soulful theme song plays over opening credits that include stills of iconic Los Angeles culture setting the perfect tone for the show. Moonlighting features a fascinating premise: what does an aging supermodel do once she’s past her prime and can no longer live the lavish lifestyle to which she’s accustomed? Maddie Hayes (Cybill Shepherd) is an ex-model who wakes up one morning to realize that her accountant has run off with all of her money. She scrambles to try and reclaim her fortune. As luck would have it, she invested in several companies and decides to sell off her shares. The last one on the list is the Blue Moon Detective Agency, run by the fast-talking, wisecracking David Addison (Bruce Willis). On the surface, he doesn’t seem like much of a detective but rather more of a hustler on the make.

Maddie tells him that she is closing down the agency. After all, on her first day the staff are playing cards, receptionist Miss DiPesto (Allyce Beasley) is reading a romance novel and David is watching the Family Feud. No phones are ringing and no clients are in the waiting room. Desperate to maintain his cushy gig, David tries his hardest to change her mind. In the process, they stumble across a mystery – or rather, have one thrust upon them. Even though she would never admit it in public, David has chipped away at her defenses and begins to charm her. She holds off on closing down the agency because she is having too much fun running it with David.

Bruce Willis is perfectly cast as the smart-ass David Addison. There is a loose, improvisational feel to his performances as he gleefully gives Maddie grief at every opportunity. Cybill Shepherd is his ideal foil as the cold, no-nonsense Maddie Hayes. The best moments are when these two contrasting personalities clash – the epitome of a love-hate relationship. He is full of smarm and charm while she is the straight man that tries to keep him in check and on point during a given case.

The writing on the show is excellent. The dialogue is crisp with a snap and pop to it. In “Next Stop Murder,” an homage to Agatha Christie murder mysteries, Blue Moon’s chipper, rhyming receptionist, Miss DiPesto wins a contest to participate in famous mystery writer J.B. Harland’s murder mystery train. David and Maddie drive her to the station and accidentally get stranded on the train with a real murder to solve. Here is a memorable exchange in the episode:

Maddie: “I was not born yesterday!”

David: “It’s true. I had lunch with her yesterday. If she’d been born I’d a noticed.”

It isn’t only the words but how Willis delivers them that makes what he says so funny. And yet, the show isn’t wall-to-wall comedy. There are sober moments of drama and, of course, romance. The show even addresses David’s lack of maturity in “My Fair David,” where Maddie bets him that he can’t act like a mature professional for a full week. This episode features some of the funniest bits between Shepherd and Willis in the show’s entire run.

For all of the hilarious banter and hijinks David and Maddie get into, the show has plenty of poignant moments as well, like the episode entitled, “Gunfight at the So-So Corral,” where an aging hitman (Pat Corley) hires David and Maddie to find an up-and-coming killer (Gary Graham) gunning for him under the pretense that he’s his son. There’s the inevitable showdown between the two assassins with the elder one getting the upper hand. In a rare moment of mercy, he lets the younger guy live and delivers a moving speech about what being a killer has done to him over the years.

In some respects, Moonlighting is a clever update of The Thin Man series of movies with screwball comedy pacing complete with rapid-fire exchanges of witty dialogue as the characters banter and bicker furiously like a couple straight out of a Howard Hawks screwball comedy. It is not easy to recreate the fast-paced banter of this genre. It takes a certain skill set to deliver dialogue like that and Willis and Shepherd make it look easy. David infuriates Maddie with his unprofessional behavior that she secretly finds exciting and fun. She comes from the fashion world and is a fish out of water that is shown the ropes of the detective biz by David, an experienced investigator (maybe?) and consummate bullshit artist.

By season two, the show’s creator, Glenn Gordon Caron, parlayed the show’s success into making more ambitious episodes and having characters break the fourth wall. “The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice” was shot in black and white as an homage to classic Hollywood musicals and film noir. It was even introduced by Orson Welles, a week before he died.

Each episode had David and Maddie confronted with and eventually solving a different mystery while the playful sexual tension continued to build, which, at the time, had fans anticipating if and when they would become romantically involved. The eventual consummation of their relationship would ultimately ruin the show. The sexual tension was gone, replaced by uncomfortable tension as the delicate balance between comedy and drama was upset with things getting too serious. The show became consumed by its own meteoric success and the off-screen tension between Willis and Shepherd spilled over to the episodes and the show never recovered, becoming a cautionary tale for future shows of its ilk not to make the same mistakes.

Moonlighting set a new standard for the bickering, romantic comedy that has influenced so many T.V. shows that came afterwards (even something as squeaky clean as Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman to the more recent Castle). In its prime, before things got too serious between David and Maddie, it was the funniest, smartest show on T.V. with the first two seasons in its purest form: sharp and focused. What made the show work so well was the chemistry between Willis and Shepherd, resurrecting her career and launching his (with the subsequent starring role in Die Hard making him a bonafide movie star). The show holds up remarkably well today (even with the dated clothes and hairstyles) and this is due large part to the writing and chemistry between the cast members.

The Bonfire of the Vanities

“And I think if you look at the movie now, and you don’t know anything about the book, and you get it out of the time that it was released, I think you can see it in a whole different way.” – Brian De Palma, Empire magazine, December 2008

Has enough time passed that Brian De Palma’s adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s best-selling novel The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990) can be judged on its own merits? Has enough time passed that its critical and commercial failings don’t matter (if they ever did)? And has enough time passed that its troubled production history, as chronicled in Julie Salamon’s tell-all The Devil’s Candy: The Anatomy of a Hollywood Fiasco, no longer matters? Perhaps this is a case of going into a film without having read the source material being a good thing as it allows the film to be judged on its own merits.

De Palma starts The Bonfire of the Vanities in typically audacious fashion with a long take with no edits as we follow alcoholic journalist Peter Fallow (Bruce Willis) from an underground parking garage up through the bowels of a building, interacting with several people, including a chatty P.R. woman (Rita Wilson), and going up an elevator, getting changed, and finally arriving at the premiere of his own book. You have to admire the seamless choreography of this sequence (courtesy of cinematographer extraordinaire Vilmos Zsigmond) as we get crucial insight into the drunken letch that is Fallow.

His voiceover narration informs us that he’s not really the hero of this story – Sherman McCoy (Tom Hanks) is – and a feature-length flashback tells his story. Sherman is a wealthy Wall Street bond trader and we first meet him taking his dog outside his apartment building for a walk on a dark and stormy night. He meets a man (Kurt Fuller) outside and their exchange feels off as they awkwardly speak stylized dialogue – the first indication that perhaps Tom Hanks was miscast in this film. It’s painful to watch and painful to listen to even in a stylized film such as this one.

The actor fares even worse in a scene where his wife (Kim Cattrall) confronts him over his cheating ways. The initial tone is a comedic one and then awkwardly downshifts to a serious tone so fast that it induces whiplash. The other woman is Maria (Melanie Griffith), a gold digging Southern belle. One fateful night, he picks her up from the airport and accidentally gets lost in the Bronx where he and Maria get to see how the other side lives much to their panicked disdain. They’re accosted by two young African American men and manage to escape, running over one of them, which puts him into a coma.

Fallow is all washed-up and one story away from being fired from a tabloid newspaper until he gets a lead on a story about a hit-and-run involving the same African American man that was run over by Sherman and Maria. He writes about it, which makes Sherman understandably very nervous. With her coaxing he does nothing, figuring it will go away but of course it doesn’t. The rest of the film examines how this crime is exploited by the local community leaders tired of being screwed over by the powers that be time and time again, the media looking for the next sensational story that will sell papers, and the district attorney (F. Murray Abraham) looking to score points with voters as he’s up for re-election.

The main problem the film has is the miscasting of Hanks as a ruthless Wall Street trader. The actor can do many things but ruthless and unlikable is not among them. Even in his darkest roles – Punchline (1988) and The Road to Perdition (2002) – there is always an inherent empathy. He can’t help it as it is in his DNA. This goes against the character of Sherman McCoy who is supposed to be an unpleasant son-of-a-bitch and the casting of Hanks was clearly a move to dilute the character and make him more relatable. What he does do well is sweaty desperation when the cops come calling and casually grill Sherman.

Morgan Freeman kills it as a tough-talking, no-nonsense judge in the South Bronx who schools a naïve assistant district attorney (Saul Rubinek) on how things work in his court via a fiery and masterful monologue – the kind that Samuel L. Jackson usually gets in Quentin Tarantino films – that is a sight to behold and makes me wish the veteran actor would get juicy roles like this again. This is merely a warm-up for the film’s climax where it goes all Frank Capra as Freeman delivers a powerful speech condemning all the parties involved, calling for decency as the judge represents the lone voice of reason.

At the time of The Bonfire of the Vanities, Bruce Willis was at the height of his Die Hard (1988) / The Return of Bruno smarmy charm phase and this role lets him lay it on thick while also showing his willingness to play a deeply flawed character in search of redemption. He’s also not afraid to play up the less likable aspects of Fallow, the high society suck-up and the alcoholic lush.

The Bonfire of the Vanities works hard to make Sherman sympathetic when it should be roasting him. He embodies entitled white privilege, which was big during the materialistic 1980s and is making a comeback with Donald Trump becoming the President of the United States. In one scene, De Palma makes a point of juxtaposing the African American protestors outside Sherman’s apartment building with the dinner party inside populated by his white rich friends as they metaphorically circle the wagons and show support for one of their own. These people are portrayed as arrogant racists that don’t care about anyone but themselves. If they get into any trouble they just make it go away with money.

The film also exposes the hypocrisy of the justice system. The D.A. doesn’t want to punish Sherman because he’s guilty but because it will help him get re-elected. He’s an opportunist that sends out his minions to do his bidding. Then there is the media that are portrayed as a mob of vultures feeding on the latest story of misery, adhering to the ago old credo, if it bleeds, it leads. Sherman is just the latest headline to sell papers – nothing more, nothing less. If Freeman’s climactic Capraeseque monologue seems too gee whiz of an idealistic ending, De Palma ends things with a brilliant visual punchline that hints at how great the film could have been if the studio hadn’t messed with him behind the scenes.

The Bonfire of the Vanities is a cynical take on modern society with everybody available for a price, from the D.A. vying for re-election to the mother (Mary Alice) of the young man in a coma suing the hospital for $10 million. Divorced from its source material, De Palma’s film is a biting satire that attacks the rich, those that exploit tragedies, and the media. At times, it is also a light farce and, as a result, the film is all over the place tonally as it can’t make up its mind what it wants to be. Yet, for all this sloppiness and the miscasting of Hanks (who actually does get better as the film goes along), Bonfire is not the complete disaster it is commonly portrayed as and is actually quite entertaining. It deserves to be re-visited and regarded on its own merits.

Die Hard 2: Die Harder

The 1980s action blockbuster movie was dominated by the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and Jean-Claude Van Damme (among others) – muscle-bound one-man armies that killed scores of bad guys with guns, brawn and cheesy one-liners. Along came Bruce Willis in 1988 with Die Hard, tweaking the formula by playing a guy perpetually in way over his head, tired, hurt, and using his brains as much if not more than his brawn to defeat the bad guys. Audiences were drawn to his tough yet vulnerable wisecracking character John McClane. The movie was a massive success and the inevitable sequel followed. Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990) didn’t stray too far from the first one (why bother messing with a good thing?) except to amp up the stunts, the body count and the explosions all the way to the bank, easily outgrossing the original.

“Merry Christmas, pal!” are the words uttered early on in the movie as John McClane’s day starts off on a sour note and will only get worse as his car is ticketed and towed despite his good-humored protests to a cop that clearly doesn’t care about his problems. It’s Christmas Eve and McClane is at Washington Dulles International Airport to pick up his wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia). This lack of cooperation from local law enforcement is nothing new for McClane who faced plenty of it in Die Hard and it is also foreshadows the interference he’ll experience later on in this movie.

Meanwhile, General Ramon Esperanza (Franco Nero), a drug lord and dictator of Val Verde by way of Manuel Noriega, is scheduled to be extradited to the United States to stand trial for drug trafficking. However, rogue U.S. Army Special Forces Colonel Stuart (William Sadler) and a team of mercenaries take control of the airport effectively shutting them down, which leaves several planes, including the one with Holly on it, circling and running low on fuel. Stuart plans to let Esperanza’s plane land and then demands a 747 be prepped for take-off at which point they will use it to rescue the drug lord.

Naturally, McClane receives a ton of grief from head of airport police Captain Carmine Lorenzo (Dennis Franz) who doesn’t like some hot dog gloryhound cop treading all over his turf. Dennis Franz is at his profane best, dropping F-bombs with gusto. Watching him and Willis trade insults inserts some much welcome levity amidst the bombastic action sequences. Here’s a memorable exchange early on:

Lorenzo: “Yeah, I know all about you and that Nakatomi thing in L.A. But just ‘cos the T.V. thinks you’re hot shit don’t make it so. Look, you’re in my little pond, now and I am the big fish that runs it. So you cap some low-life. Fine. I’ll send your fucking captain in L.A. a fucking commendation. Now, in the meantime you get the hell out of my office before I get you thrown out of my goddamn airport.”

McClane: “Hey Carmine, let me ask you something. What sets off the metal detectors first: the lead in your ass or the shit in your brains?”

Franz is that rare breed of actor that can casually insert profanity in his dialogue and make it flow like poetry. I almost imagine him flying in his buddy David Mamet on the studio’s dime to write his dialogue. It has that vibe to it. Of course, McClane spends the rest of the movie making him looking stupid.

This being a sequel, the novelty of the original has worn off and McClane seems a little more invincible in this one, but Bruce Willis does what he can to make his character relatable and have flaws, like when he is unable to redirect a plane that the bad guys intentionally crash. We empathize with his frustration at being unable to save the plane and his dejected, defeated face says it all. The movie does its job (maybe a little too well) of making Stuart and his men so evil that you want to see McClane take them all out.

William Sadler plays yet another in a long line of villains with his rogue colonel being a peculiar badass so comfortable with his own body that he practices his martial arts in the nude, which also happens to show off his impressively sculpted physique. It certainly is a memorable introduction to his character. Sadler plays Stuart as ruthless man not above disciplining failure by pointing a loaded gun at a subordinate’s face or, in a particularly nasty move, cause a plane full of innocent people to crash and burn on a runway.

William Atherton and Bonnie Bedelia return as a smug journalist and McClane’s wife respectively, spending the entire movie trapped on an airplane together trading barbs. Among the mercenaries keep your eyes peeled for a young Robert Patrick (T2), a clean-shaven Mark Boone Jr. (Tree’s Lounge), John Leguizamo (Carlito’s Way) and Vondie Curtis-Hall (Chicago Hope).

Much like in the first Die Hard, McClane demonstrates an uncanny knack for improvisation as evident in the first action sequence when he takes on two mercenary thugs in the baggage handling section. After he loses his gun, McClane uses a golf club and then a bicycle to take out one baddie and chase off the other. What I also like is that we see the air traffic controllers problem solve their way around Stuart and his men through good ol’ fashioned ingenuity.

Doug Richardson and Steven E.de Souza’s screenplay has just enough nods to the first movie to let us know that the filmmakers are aware that Die Hard 2 is basically a variation on the original only bigger and louder, symbolized by the iconic money shot (that is equal parts ridiculous and cool) of McClane ejecting out of a plane as it is exploding and him saying at one point, “How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?” The movie ups the ante in many respects as he faces even greater odds and is put in even greater danger.

In 1987, Walter Wager’s book 58 Minutes, a thriller that takes place in an airport, was published and within a year he received a phone call from movie producer Lawrence Gordon over at 20th Century Fox who wanted to option the film rights. As Die Hard was becoming a box office success, the studio had yet to announce the sequel but Gordon knew that it was only a matter of time. To avoid getting solicited by every agent and writer in Hollywood, he hired up and coming screenwriter Doug Richardson in 1989 to adapt Wager’s book with the intention of using it as the basis for Die Hard 2 but not telling the studio until they approached him with the project. The studio’s then-new production chief Joe Roth ordered a sequel for the summer of 1990 with principal photography to start right away in order to meet that deadline.

Wager agreed to the sell the film rights to Gordon and months went by with limited updates until one day he was told that his book was being filmed in a month and was now called Die Hard 2! He was understandably surprised and told that Richardson’s script was being rewritten by Steven de Souza who had worked on Die Hard.

Towards the end of principal photography on The Adventures of Ford Fairlane (1990), the movie’s producer Joel Silver gave director Renny Harlin a script entitled 58 Minutes and told him it was going to be Die Hard 2. Harlin read it, liked it and asked Silver, “’Oh, who’s directing it?’ And he said ‘You.’ And I said, ‘Really? Like, next year?’ He said, ‘Well, next week, basically.’” Within a week Harlin was filming Die Hard 2 and editing Fairlane at night and on weekends.

The shoot was hardly an easy one. The movie was set during Christmas and was intended to be filmed at an airport in Denver but when the production arrived the weather was too warm. They spent the next few months chasing the snow, moving from one location to another, including stints in Washington, Michigan and the Canadian border. The production ultimately went to Los Angeles and used three refrigerated soundstages rebuilding the entire church, which was originally shot in Denver. Finally, a few more wide shots were done at Lake Tahoe, the last place they could find snow.

Die Hard 2 received mostly positive reviews from critics at the time. Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars and wrote, “Because Die Hard 2 is so skillfully constructed and well-directed, it develops a momentum that carries it past several credibility gaps that might have capsized a lesser film.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “It will surprise no one who saw the first Die Hard that the heart and soul of the new film is Bruce Willis, who this time is even better. Mr. Willis, with his self-deprecating jokes and his ability to smoke a cigarette while carrying a machine gun, remains a completely wrong-headed choice for the role of a noble, self-sacrificing hero. That’s why he’s so good.”

The Los Angeles Times’ Sheila Benson wrote, “With flawless technical collaboration, Harlin gets airport control towers and dark New England churches to look rich and brooding for his mostly nighttime action scenes; his fireballs detonate with hell’s own roar, his stunts may be hilarious but they’re show-stoppers, and against all odds, a few of his actors manage a little humanity in all the din.” In her review for the Washington Post, Rita Kempley wrote, “Though it has more holes than a cheese grater, the screenplay by Steven E. de Souza of Die Hard and Doug Richardson is persuasive braggadocio, a fast-churning, bloodthirsty canticle of mayhem.” Finally, in her review for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Carrie Rickey wrote, “Like its predecessor, it is an action movie with a sense of humor – and a human component. It also is a gripping, white-knuckle thriller that keeps you at the edge of your seat and nerves.”

Watching Die Hard 2 again is a potent reminder of a time when Willis still cared about acting and didn’t phone it in like he’s done in the last two movies in the franchise that don’t deserve the Die Hard moniker. Most fans agree that they should have stopped with Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), which was a fitting way to end things on a high note but as long as they make money and Willis is up for it there will be another installment in this tired franchise.

SOURCES

Sullivan, Mike. “Die Hard’s Secret Sequel.” Creative Screenwriting. May 27, 2014.

Wager, Walter. “What Hollywood Did to His Novel…And He Loved It.” Los Angeles Times. July 28, 1990.

Willman, Chris. “Renny Harlin Finds Plenty of Action in Hollywood.” Los Angeles Times. July 4, 1990.

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

In 2005, Robert Rodriguez adapted the comic book Sin City into a film with help from its creator Frank Miller who co-directed it. Convincing the veteran comic book writer/artist to come on board was a smart move on the filmmaker’s part as it assured that Miller’s luridly violent noir tales would be faithfully translated. This was achieved through a then-groundbreaking green screen environment that allowed Rodriguez to place his actors in Miller’s stylish world with a striking look comprised of black and white with strategic splashes of color. This innovative approach attracted a star-studded cast that included Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Clive Owen and Benicio Del Toro among others. The final result dazzled audiences and was a commercial success.

A sequel seemed inevitable, but instead Rodriguez went on to team up with Quentin Tarantino on the box office misfire that was the Grindhouse double bill (2007) while Miller applied the Sin City aesthetic to a disastrous adaptation of Will Eisner’s comic book The Spirit (2008). Over the years, talk of a sequel surfaced occasionally with the likes of Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie being mentioned in potential leading roles. Nine long years later and the stars (and money) aligned for Rodriguez and Miller to reunite with Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014). The film promptly tanked at the box office and received mixed to negative reviews. What happened? Did Miller and Rodriguez wait too long? A green screen-heavy film is no longer a novelty. Two cast members with characters in the film had passed away and some roles have been recast. The general consensus seems to be that they waited too long to make a sequel and interest in the film had waned.

Some might complain that A Dame to Kill For is just more of the same. As a big fan of the first film this is not necessarily a bad thing. After seeing Sin City, I wanted to see more of Miller’s stories brought to life. In addition to adapting A Dame to Kill For and the short story “Just Another Saturday Night” from the Booze, Broads, & Bullets collection, Miller created two new stories specifically for the film – “The Long Bad Night” and “Nancy’s Last Dance.” By doing this, he has given the fans a real treat by offering two stories where the outcome is not known and introducing new characters into this universe.

In “Just Another Saturday Night,” Marv (Mickey Rourke) wakes up amidst a car accident unable to remember how he got there. He proceeds to recall what happened via flashback on a snowy Saturday night. This segment is a nice way to reacquaint us to the brutal yet darkly humorous world of Sin City.

“The Long Bad Night” introduces us to Johnny (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a confident gambler who decides to take on Senator Roark (Powers Boothe), the most powerful man in the city, in a high-stakes poker game and gets more than he bargained for. It’s a lot of fun to see Joseph Gordon-Levitt square off against Powers Boothe, the former playing a young upstart and the latter an evil, influential man.

The centerpiece of the film is “A Dame to Kill For”, which features Dwight McCarthy (Josh Brolin) as a private investigator taking photographs of a businessman (Ray Liotta) cheating on his wife with a hooker (Juno Temple). When the man tries to kill her, Dwight intervenes. He has a tortured past, which involves keeping his homicidal impulses in check.

Afterwards, Dwight gets a call from an ex-lover by the name of Ava Lord (Eva Green), a beautiful woman married to a very rich man. She’s in some kind of trouble and he finds himself drawn into her tangled web yet again. He soon runs afoul of her imposing bodyguard Manute (Dennis Haysbert) who proceeds to work him over. Realizing that he’s out of his depth and bent on rescuing Ava, Dwight enlists Marv’s help, which only complicates things in typical noir fashion.

In “Nancy’s Last Dance,” Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba) is an exotic dancer still haunted by the death of her lover John Hartigan (Bruce Willis) and is obsessed with avenging his death by killing Roark, the man responsible for it. Over time, she’s counseled/haunted by Hartigan’s ghost, which drives her increasingly crazy.

Actors Josh Brolin, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Eva Green slip seamlessly into the Sin City world. It helps that they have that old school noir look, especially Brolin with his chiseled tough guy features and gravelly voice – perfect for his character’s voiceover narration. In no time the actor makes you forget that he plays a character once portrayed by Clive Owen. Gordon-Levitt is excellent as the young newcomer with a secret and manages to elicit sympathy for his ultimately doomed character. Green plays Sin City’s reigning femme fatale. The stunning actress has an alluring, exotic look and can turn a vulnerability on and off at will all the while playing a cold-hearted manipulator of men. Green gives key line deliveries the right venomous spin that makes Ava Lord a fearsome figure in this world.

It’s great to see Mickey Rourke return to the role of Marv, a character he inhabits so well. He brings a world-weary charm and a much-needed dose of dark humor to the film. Powers Boothe, who only had a minor role in the first film, gets a much meatier part in A Dame to Kill For and it’s a lot of fun to see him sink his teeth into such a deliciously evil character. Unfortunately, Jessica Alba is once again miscast as Nancy, the stripper with a heart of gold. While she looks the part, the actress doesn’t have the chops to pull of the tricky evolution of character that goes from sweet girl traumatized by the death of loved one to a revenge-obsessed vigilante. Miller’s stylized dialogue needs to be delivered a certain way. Some actors can pull it off and others can’t. Alba falls into the latter category and it becomes painfully obvious in her segment. Even her dancing is unconvincing.

While it no longer has the technological novelty factor as an incentive (shooting it in 3D really didn’t help either), there is certainly no other film out there that looks like Sin City. There have been a few imitators since, most notably The Spirit and Max Payne (2008), but the look of the film is so specific to its universe that few have dared to emulate it. Rodriguez has said that with the first Sin City he held back somewhat stylistically for fear that it would be too much for audiences. Emboldened by its commercial success, he took the look further and made it even more faithful to Miller’s comic book. So, there are things like Ava being rendered in black and white accentuated with red lips and green eyes, and visual flourishes like Marv recounting past exploits while a tiny car chase revolves around him, or the moody storm clouds that hang heavy in the cemetery where Nancy visits Hartigan’s grave. And why not? It’s not like the characters or the world they inhabit are based on any kind of reality. They exist in a hyper-stylized neo-noir universe drenched in atmosphere.

The dialogue in A Dame to Kill For is riddled with clichés and the characters are drawn from archaic stereotypes, but that’s the point. Miller is paying homage to the Mickey Spillane crimes stories he clearly idolizes. The film immerses itself in noir clichés and wears them proudly like a badge of honor, refusing to make any excuses for trading in them. There’s really nothing more to it than that, which may make the film seem instantly forgettable, but Rodriguez’s film never aspires to be art as it is unrepentedly sexual and violent with very few if any redeeming characters. The first Sin City film came out at the right time and tapped into popular culture zeitgeist. A Dame to Kill For is not so lucky, but you have to give Miller and Rodriguez credit for sticking to their guns and delivering another faithful adaptation of the comic book which may only appeal to fans and probably won’t convert the uninitiated.

Breakfast of Champions

Alan Rudolph’s 1999 adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s 1973 novel Breakfast of Champions is the cinematic equivalent of a stand-up comedian trying so hard to be funny only to bomb spectacularly on-stage. If it’s possible for a film to exude flop sweat then this one does. And yet, it is not some impersonal Hollywood film churned out by committee. It is a passion project decades in the making and funded by its leading man, Bruce Willis, out of his own pocket. The film was a brave attempt by the movie star to show that he had some range as an actor, but he took a book that was widely regarded as unfilmable and made something that alienated Vonnegut’s fans and confused everyone else. Breakfast of Champions played the film festival circuit only to be given a brief theatrical release on a few screens before being relegated to obscurity on home video. Perhaps this misguided mess of a film deserves this kind of fate but it is a fascinating trainwreck nonetheless.

In a nod to the crude illustrations that appear sporadically throughout the novel, the opening credits also feature them while Martin Denny’s exotic lounge music plays on the soundtrack. We meet successful car salesman Dwayne Hoover (Bruce Willis) with a gun in his mouth but he doesn’t pull the trigger because he’s called to breakfast. He talks briefly with his suicidal, television-obsessed wife Celia (Barbara Hershey) and heads off to work in Midland City. Dwayne is a man barely keeping it together. He suffers from an identity crisis but has to also deal with Hawaiian Week at his car dealership. As if he didn’t have enough problems to deal with, Dwayne is having an affair with Francine (Glenne Headly), a co-worker at the dealership. Harry Le Sabre (Nick Nolte) is the sales manager at Dwayne’s dealership and likes to wear women’s clothing. He is paranoid that his boss will find out about his kinky habit.

Meanwhile, Eliot Rosewater (Ken Campbell), of the Rosewater Foundation, writes a fan letter to obscure pulp fiction author Kilgore Trout (Albert Finney), who has written 200 novels and 2000 short stories for sleazy men magazines. He has been invited to the Midlands City Arts Festival with a $1000 check to cover expenses and the promise of becoming famous. Breakfast of Champions alternates between Dwayne’s unraveling mind and Trout’s ruminations on life and his writing as he travels to the Arts Festival.

Is it any wonder Dwayne has no idea who he is when he’s constantly surrounded by images of himself, be it the omnipresent car advertisements on T.V., or his employees that surprise him one morning at work all wearing Dwayne Hoover masks (which resembles a low-tech version of the multiple Malkovichs in Being John Malkovich). Bruce Willis does a good job playing a man rapidly coming apart at the seams, but we never get an idea of why. Very little motivation is provided and so one assumes that Dwayne simply woke up one day on the brink of sanity. He starts off trying to blow his own brains out and goes downhill from there. Eventually, he comes to the realization that the only way to get out of his existential funk is talking to someone from another planet. Enter: Kilgore Trout.

Nick Nolte is hilarious and easily the best thing about this film as the unhinged Harry Le Sabre. He’s almost as far gone as Dwayne and the film plays out like a race to see who’s going to snap their cap first. Nolte and Willis also seem to be locked into a battle of wills to see who can deliver the most fearless performance devoid of any kind of vanity. It’s close, but I give Nolte the win by a hair. If I took anything away from this film it was the unforgettable image of Nolte running across a car lot yelling, “Maui!” while wearing a red lingerie. The scenes between the two actors are the best parts of the film, especially the one where an increasingly nervous Harry tries to explain to Dwayne why he is a cross-dresser.

Albert Finney is largely wasted in this film as early on Trout carries on a meaningless conversation with his pet budgie named Bill. The veteran actor spends most of his screen-time playing the cantankerous Trout who rambles on endlessly in rather cryptic fashion. The rest of the cast doesn’t fair much better with their one-note supporting characters but they all gamely do their best with the material they’re given.

Filmmaker Alan Rudolph had been trying to make a film version of Breakfast of Champions shortly after it was published in 1973 and actually wrote a screenplay in 1975, but its unconventional satire of small-town American life was largely plotless and a hard sell to movie studios. After working with actor Nick Nolte on Afterglow (1997), Rudolph convinced him to sign on and then used his name to attract financing, but still couldn’t drum up any interest.

In 1993, Bruce Willis and Rudolph had tried to make the film together, but problems with scheduling, financing or scripting prevented it from going ahead. Finally, after making Mercury Rising (1998), Willis’ brother told him, “Every action sequence in that movie was derivative of at least three films you’ve already done.” The actor decided that he needed to “do some movies without a gun in my hand,” or, as he put it, a chance to “work a little acting into my career now and then.” His production company bought the rights to Vonnegut’s book and provided the reported $10-12 million budget. As Nolte said jokingly, “Knowing Bruce, he probably presold it in Europe first.”

Willis was drawn to playing Dwayne Hoover because the character did “the scariest thing that any human being could: take the hard look inside.” Getting the film self-financed afforded Rudolph complete creative freedom – something he would not have had with a studio. It also allowed Willis to own the negative to a film he starred in. Once the star-studded cast was in place, Touchstone Pictures agreed to distribute it. Filming took place over six weeks in Twin Falls, Idaho in February 1998.

During the editing stage, Rudolph felt that Breakfast of Champions had a chance at being a box office success, especially with the cast he had assembled. After announcing a spring 1999 release, the studio changed their mind and gave it a very limited release in the fall. In retrospect, Rudolph was glad that it took so long to get the film made “because what once was a dark satire has now become an honest reflection of American culture that’s accelerating into collective madness.”

Not surprisingly, the knives came out when critics review Breakfast of Champions. In his review for The New York Times, Stephen Holden wrote, “In many ways, Breakfast of Champions is an incoherent mess. But it never compromises its zany vision of the country as a demented junkyard wonderland in which we are all strangers groping for a hand to guide us through the looking glass into an unsullied tropical paradise of eternal bliss.” Entertainment Weekly, on the other hand, gave it an “F” rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “Rudolph, in an act of insane folly, seems to think that what matters is the story. The result could almost be his version of a Robert Altman disaster – a movie so unhinged it practically dares you not to hate it.” The Los Angeles Times’ Kevin Thomas wrote, “As it is, Breakfast of Champions is too in-your-face, too heavily satirical in its look, and its ideas not as fresh as they should be. For the film to have grabbed us from the start, Rudolph needed to make a sharper differentiation between the everyday world his people live in and the vivid world of their tormented imaginations.” In her review for the Village Voice, Amy Taubin felt that the film, “suffers from a saccharine ending, but that's hardly its worst problem. Another middle-aged male-crisis opus, it begins on a note of total migraine-inducing hysteria, which continues unabated throughout.”

Understandably bitter with the way Breakfast of Champions was received by critics and audiences, Rudolph chalked up his film’s commercial failure to American film critics “who still have the power to destroy a little movie, and who used that power to blast the hell out of Breakfast,” and also the way Disney, who owns Touchstone Pictures, released it: “In such a derisory fashion that no one knew it existed.”

With its heightened, stylized performances from a star-studded cast and a hallucinatory look, it makes one think that Rudolph saw Terry Gilliam’s adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) – another book with an unfilmable reputation – and decided to apply the same aesthetic to Breakfast of Champions, but it just doesn’t work because the source material is so different. Rudolph employs all kinds of zany graphics in an attempt to give us a look inside of Dwayne’s mind. As with someone of his caliber of filmmaking, Breakfast of Champions looks great, complete with atmospheric cinematography and rich set design that helps immerse us in this very stylized world.

Maybe Rudolph was inspired by his mentor Robert Altman’s absurdist ode to flight, Brewster McCloud (1970), but the end result is more like the teen comedy misfire O.C. and Stiggs (1984). The main problem with Breakfast of Champions is that it makes no sense to anyone who hasn’t read Vonnegut’s novel. It is an impenetrable collection of highlights from the book and yet I find myself admiring Rudolph and company’s chutzpah for making such a blatantly uncommercial film. Not since Gus Van Sant’s failed adaptation of another unfilmable novel, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993), has a film squandered such talent. Like the aforementioned film, Breakfast of Champions is populated with an impressive cast as big names like Willis and Nolte who are supported by Barbara Hershey, Buck Henry and Owen Wilson in small roles. One feels that this film was more fun to make then it is to watch. I can’t totally hate it though, because it does feel like everyone’s heart is in the right place. You have to give Rudolph and co. an A for effort, but that’s about all you can do. This is for fans of indecipherable adaptations of iconic novels. All others need not apply.

SOURCES

Leigh, Danny. “Bullets for Breakfast.” The Guardian. July 6, 2000.

Lieberman, Paul. “Keeping it Fresh with a Vengeance.” Los Angeles Times. October 10, 1999.

Stein, Ruthe. “Nolte Charms at Renovated Film Center.” San Francisco Chronicle. April 19, 1999. Pg. C1.

Wallace, Amy. “A Die-Hard Dreamer.” Los Angeles Times. October 9, 1998.

Yakir, Dan. “After 20 years, Breakfast is Served.” BPI Entertainment News Wire. September 15, 1999.