Red Rock West

Direct-to-video no longer has the stigma it once did. Back in the heyday of home video for a film to bypass a theatrical release and go straight to video was reserved for the likes of cheesy erotic thrillers and B-movies starring washed-up actors. Like time, stigma is a funny thing. The scarlet letters of yesteryear are a distant memory due in large part to streaming services like Amazon and Netflix, which have begun to change this perception by releasing high profile movies like Bird Box (2018) on home video as opposed to giving them a wide theatrical release.

Back in 1993, however, Red Rock West (1993), a modest neo-noir starring Nicolas Cage, Dennis Hopper and Lara Flynn Boyle, was unjustly sold to cable television when it wasn’t considered easily marketable by the studio that owned it. Fortunately, it was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival where a San Francisco-based theater owner rescued it from obscurity. While it still didn’t make back its modest budget at least it was given a second chance before being relegated to home video.

Michael (Cage) is a down-on-his-luck war veteran living out of his car and looking for work. A knee injury rules him out of jobs such as an oil drilling gig he shows up for in Wyoming. We learn some important things about him in this opening scene. He’s honest. He could’ve lied on his application about his injury but didn’t. He has integrity. After failing to get the job his buddy told him about he offers Michael a few bucks to which he refuses, telling him, “Don’t worry about me.” This scene is important as it establishes what kind of a person he is – he’ll make his own through life. This is especially crucial later on when we begin wondering who we can trust.

Michael soon finds himself in the sleep little town of Red Rock, arriving like a gunslinger when he goes into a bar looking for leads on any work in the area. Wayne (J.T. Walsh), the owner, mistakes him for a hitman from Dallas he hired to kill his wife Suzanne (Lara Flynn Boyle). Michael goes along with the ruse long enough to take half the money, warn the wife, take her money to kill Wayne, and skip out of town, letting this clearly dysfunctional couple settle their own issues. Of course, this being a noir story it is never that simple and Michael runs into the real hitman, Lyle from Dallas (Dennis Hopper), and finds it increasingly difficult to get out of Red Rock. Part of the fun of watching Red Rock West is seeing poor Michael get deeper and deeper in trouble as his attempts to leave town are thwarted.

Coming off the modest hit that was Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), Nicolas Cage brought an affable everyman quality to Michael as he tones down his trademark Cageisms, which may explain why it isn’t one of his more celebrated performances. Some might consider this to be one of the actor’s tamer performances but so what? You can’t have crazy all the time as that too becomes predictable and stale. I like that Cage plays Michael as a reluctant protagonist that seems to always make the wrong decisions. There are scenes where we see Michael weighing his options over in his mind or berating himself after a particular one goes badly.

Hot off her role as good-girl-next-door Donna in Twin Peaks, Lara Flynn Boyle plays a duplicitous femme fatale. With her flinty gaze and emotionless demeanor, Suzanne is clearly not to be trusted but for some foolish reason (perhaps sex with her clouded his judgment), Michael does and this unnecessarily complicates his life. With the exception of the first season of Twin Peaks, I’ve found Boyle to have a cold presence, which may explain why her most believable role is as an alien in Men in Black II (2002). Dahl finds a way to use her iciness to effect as a scheming woman that manipulates Michael to do her bidding.

When Dennis Hopper shows up he gives the film a jolt of unpredictable energy as Lyle from Dallas, the real hitman. He’s a genial, good ol’ boy until he has to do his job and then Hopper brings his trademark scary intensity that we all know and love. The great J.T. Walsh plays the tightly wound bar owner/sheriff of the town that also harbors a secret. The role doesn’t require the actor to show much range but it does allow him to do what he does best – play an uptight authority figure that makes the protagonist’s life hell.

The first two thirds of Red Rock West is a slow burn as director John Dahl establishes all the characters and their relationships to one another. The last third is particularly enjoyable as we get too see the likes of Cage, Hopper and Walsh share the screen together as they head towards an inevitable confrontation.

Director John Dahl establishes an atmospheric tone right from the opening shot of an empty highway out in the middle of nowhere with ominous storm clouds overhead foreshadowing trouble. The opening credits play over a sunny version of this desolate stretch of road as we see Michael get ready for his job interview and it gives us some crucial insight into his character in economical fashion with no dialogue, instead conveyed visually. With its wide open vistas and twangy, country music-esque score, complete with frontier-type town, Red Rock West feels like a modern western fused with a neo-noir.

In 1992, Red Rock West was made in Arizona on a $7.5 million budget, financed with a negative pick-up deal selling off the cable T.V., video and overseas rights with Columbia TriStar Home Video covering $3.5 million of the production costs. They made a deal with HBO to recoup some of their money.

The film didn’t test well with audiences and fell between the cracks as it wasn’t deemed commercial enough for a strong advertising campaign or artistic enough to go out on the film festival circuit. As a result, there was little incentive for someone to buy the theatrical rights. This didn’t stop Red Rock West from opening well in Europe in 1993, which caught the attention of Piers Handling, director of the Toronto International Film Festival. He decided to show it at the festival that year.

It was well received, but none of the usual art house movie distributors were interested despite the pedigree of the cast and it aired several times on HBO. Bill Banning, owner of the Roxie Theater in San Francisco, saw it at the film festival and wanted to book the film and couldn’t believe it didn’t have a distributor. It wasn’t until January 1994 that he was able to find out who owned the rights. Once it began screening at the Roxie it broke the house record in its fourth week due in large part to positive reviews in the local press and strong word-of-mouth.

Red Rock West received strong critical notices. Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars and wrote, “It’s the kind of movie made by people who love movies, have had some good times at them, and want to celebrate the very texture of old genres like the western and the film noir.” The New York Times’ Caryn James wrote, “The director and co-writer, John Dahl, keeps up this perfect swift timing throughout the film, playfully loading on every suspense-genre trick he can imagine. Red Rock West is a terrifically enjoyable, smartly acted, over-the-top thriller.” In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Kevin Thomas wrote, “Cage’s naturalness as a nice guy in a big jam lends the film considerable substance while Hopper’s wily foil, Boyle’s tough dame and Walsh’s minor-league baddie provide much amusement.” Entertainment Weekly gave it a “B-“ rating and Owen Gleiberman described it as “a tongue-in-cheek film noir gothic…a likably scruffy knockoff of the Coen brothers’ Blood Simple.”

While Red Rock West doesn’t have the acclaim of The Last Seduction (1994) or the cult appeal of Rounders (1998), I still find it to be Dahl’s most engaging and entertaining film. It didn’t deserve its initial fate. Some films get all the breaks in the world, seemingly destined for greatness. Some films get no breaks and are forgotten. Some films take on a life of their own. Time erases stigmas. No one cares if a film was released direct-to-video. Truly good art survives. It can now show up on Amazon or Netflix, waiting for someone to discover it without any pre-conceived notions.

SOURCES

Bearden, Keith. “John Dahl.” MovieMaker. August 2, 1994.

Galbraith, Jane. “Following the Long, Strange Trip of Red Rock.” Los Angeles Times. April 8, 1994.

Hornaday, Ann. “Film Noir, ‘Tweener or Flub’?” The New York Times. April 3, 1994.

O.C. and Stiggs

The 1980s was not an easy decade for Robert Altman. After enjoying a fantastic run of films in the 1970s that included the likes of McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), The Long Goodbye (1973), California Split (1974), and Nashville (1975), he effectively burned his bridges with the Hollywood studios with Popeye (1980) and found work in Europe and took to adapting stage plays for the big screen through independent financing. In the early ‘80s, National Lampoon magazine published wild stories about two troublemaking teenagers named Oliver Cromwell “O.C.” Ogilvie and Mark Stiggs, written by Tod Carroll and Ted Mann.

I don’t know if it was Altman’s agent’s idea or the director saw all these successful teen comedies being made and decided to try one himself, but O.C. and Stiggs (1987) was an ill fit to say the least – one that has its charms and its moments, but definitely a cinematic oddity in the man’s filmography. He didn’t care for the genre and turned this indifference into a movie that was a biting satire of the genre. Not surprisingly, nobody liked it and the movie quickly disappeared. Even among Altman fans it has few supporters and with good reason.

O.C. (Daniel Jenkins) and Stiggs (Neill Barry) are suburban teens and avid practical jokers that live in Phoenix, Arizona. The main target of their gags is the Schwab family, a decadent, materialistic clan headed by Randall Schwab (Paul Dooley), an arrogant blowhard who sells insurance. The mother (Jane Curtin) is a drunk, their son (Jon Cryer) is a gullible idiot while their daughter is about to get married. The source of the boys’ ire towards the Schwabs stems from Randall cancelling O.C.’s grandfather’s (Ray Walston) retirement insurance thus denying him the ability to have assisted care. The movie recounts O.C. and Stiggs’ summer spent terrorizing the Schwabs.

In some respects, O.C. and Stiggs are like teenage versions of Hawkeye and Trapper John from M*A*S*H (1970). Both feature clever hipsters but the latter were also brilliant surgeons whereas the former are only good at one thing – staging elaborate practical jokes. In M*A*S*H, the two surgeons were fighting against authority and the absurdity of war while O.C. and Stiggs are fighting against materialism and mediocrity as represented by the Schwabs with their bad fashion sense and gaudy décor – the epitome of the “ugly American.”

The problem with O.C. and Stiggs is the central characters. They aren’t particularly interesting. Their obsession with pulling endless practical jokes on the Schwabs seems mean-spirited at times with Stiggs embodying the spirit of them while O.C. is given scenes away from his friend that flesh out his character a little bit – at least we get some insight into his behavior. They aren’t as cool as they think they are – they have no friends and no girlfriends thanks to their obnoxious behavior. The teen pranksters are rebelling against the mind-numbing banality of suburbia and the “Greed is good” era of Reaganomics. There is an attempt to provide some kind of motivation for why these kids do what they do. Stiggs’ dad is cheating on his wife while O.C.’s grandfather is unemployed and possibly senile. No wonder they spend all their time together devising elaborate schemes. It is a form of escape from their mundane surroundings.

This movie sees Altman in an extremely playful mood with the same kind of fast and loose structure as California Split, which also features two freewheeling pals careening from one crazy encounter to another. A crazed, babbling Dennis Hopper even pops up as a burnt out Vietnam vet. It’s as if his photographer character from Apocalypse Now (1979) had somehow made it out of Kurtz’s compound and came back to the United States. The boys cross paths with a Schwab neighbor played with effortless cool by Martin Mull. At one point, Stiggs asks him what he does and he replies without missing a beat, “Well, basically I drink and make a lot of money.” Unfortunately, he disappears as quickly as he was introduced but thankfully, and inexplicably, shows up later at a sports-themed restaurant opposite Bob Uecker playing himself, rattling off athletes’ names indiscriminately.

There are some enjoyable moments, like a rare instance of seriousness when we see O.C. having breakfast with his grandfather and we see how the latter’s health affects the former. His jokey demeanor is a façade to cover his rather bleak home life. Another wonderful moment comes when O.C. dances with a beautiful girl (Cynthia Nixon) at the Schwab wedding – a nod to classic Hollywood cinema by way of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. It isn’t enough to keep this uneven movie together.

The characters of O.C. and Stiggs, created by Tod Carroll and Ted Mann, were one of the most popular features in National Lampoon magazine. Their last appearance – in the October 1982 issue – would go on to provide the basis for the movie’s screenplay. Jeffrey Katzenberg over at Paramount Studios loved the stories of these crazy kids and wanted to make them into a movie. A script was written by Carroll and Mann and Sylvester Stallone even briefly flirted with the project.

Young, up-and-coming producer Peter Newman was assigned the project and was able to get Mike Nichols interested in directing but his numerous commitments on Broadway forced him to bow out. Newman had gotten friendly with Robert Altman and pitched the project to him. He was looking for work at the time. MGM, still licking their wounds from the Heaven’s Gate (1980) debacle, were desperate to make a successful teen comedy. Freddie Fields, Altman’s former agent, became the head of MGM at a time when the director was on the outs with Hollywood studios. He agreed to hire Altman to make O.C. and Stiggs but only for $8 million or less and that he promised to shoot the script (the director was notorious for throwing out the script and improvising dialogue). Two months later, Altman was in Phoenix, Arizona in the middle of summer of 1983 where temperatures soared to 120 degrees, making a movie he wasn’t jazzed about doing.

When Altman showed the movie to MGM, their executives didn’t like it and Newman said, “That’s one of the few instances where Bob didn’t want to hang around and fight the fight. He didn’t finish that movie. The studio finished that movie.” This certainly explains the final product and the odd push-pull of style vs. content. Neither Carroll and Mann nor the movie’s two young leads were happy with the final product. To make matters worse, MGM was in financial trouble and so the movie sat on the shelf for years until 1988 where it was screened at the Film Forum in New York City for a week.

There is something oddly fascinating watching Altman apply his trademark aesthetic to the ‘80s teen comedy. While O.C. and Stiggs pull pranks on the hapless Schwabs, the director bombards the soundtrack with multiple layers of sound and overlapping dialogue, and his slow, roaming camera gradually zooms in on something that strikes his fancy. Altman flips the ‘80s teen comedy on its head. He even refuses to populate the film’s soundtrack with trendy New Wave music, instead opting for the catchy African music of King Sunny Ade. No wonder people hated this movie when it came out. Clearly Altman did not grasp the original source material (or didn’t even bother to read it) and just did his own thing.

O.C. and Stiggs is what happens when you pair up a filmmaker with a genre he has no affinity for and the results are, at times, amusing. At some point, you either surrender yourself to the goofiness of the whole enterprise or resist this maddeningly frustrating effort. Aesthetically, it is typical Altman fare but content-wise he’s out of his depth: sometimes, this can result in a fascinating train wreck or a big ol’ bore. This movie falls somewhere in-between. I can’t totally dismiss it but I don’t watch it very often either. This one is for Altman completists only.

SOURCES

Stephenson, Hunter. “Let O.C. and Stiggs Live.” Apology Magazine.

Zuckoff, Mitchell. Robert Altman: An Oral Biography.Vintage. 2010.

Giant

“It is a saga of America…Though the film chronicles the rise of a great Texas cattle and oil dynasty and its relationship to the rest of the community, it could be the story of any section of the United States, confronted with parallel problems. It is Americana.” – George Stevens

Years ago, when Paul Thomas Anderson’s historical drama There Will Be Blood (2007) was released, I came across a review that compared it to George Stevens’ Western epic Giant (1956) and went on to say that the former was a prequel of sorts to the latter. This comparison intrigued and stayed with me for years, making me think of Stevens’ film in a new light. Like Anderson’s film, Giant chronicles the emergence of big oil in the United States only on a much larger scale. It depicts the trials and tribulations of a Texas family from the 1920s until after World War II.

Adapted from Edna Ferber’s 1952 novel of the same name, it was directed by Stevens who had made the masterful Western Shane (1953), and starred three young actors in their twenties: Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor – both of whom had already made several films – and James Dean, who was appearing in only his third film but already had an Academy Award nomination and would receive another one for his performance in Giant. Unfortunately, he died before it was completed. The film went on to become a big commercial and critical hit and is rightly viewed as a cinematic masterpiece even though it isn’t talked about as much anymore.

We first meet Jordan “Bick” Benedict Jr. (Hudson) en route to Ardmore, Maryland where he intends to buy a horse he plans to put out to stud. He’s the head of a wealthy Texas ranching family and ends up falling in love with the horse owner’s beautiful daughter Leslie Lynton (Taylor). Bick is a confident man that becomes strangely uncomfortable when talking about the size of his ranch but once he meets Leslie, he can’t stop thinking about her and is unable to get to sleep. She is also a confident person in her own right and is smitten with Bick, reading a book about Texas after meeting him. Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor have a fantastic chemistry together, which makes Bick and Leslie’s whirlwind romance believable.

Leslie is not afraid to speak her mind by first telling Bick how the U.S. stole Texas from Mexico and then asking if he’s married. This angers Bick and we get an amusing shot of him glaring at Leslie while she playfully chews on a piece of bacon, pretending to ignore him. After exchanging longing glances between each other while looking at the horse he just bought, it is obvious that they are madly in love.

They are soon married and she goes back with him to Texas. They arrive on his land and Stevens does a wonderful job capturing the epic grandeur of Texas as he shows Bick and Leslie driving home through an expansive, desolate landscape in a long shot that makes their car look so small in comparison to the spread of barren land. We also get the first real indication of the rampant racism inherent in the state when Bick casually criticizes a Mexican man at the train station. A few minutes later, Bick refers to his Mexican maids as “those people” and chastises Leslie for simply asking them their names and being nice. Elizabeth Taylor radiates warmth and decency as Leslie doesn’t quite understand Bick and his older sister Luz’s (Mercedes McCambridge) attitude towards Mexicans.

Stevens gives James Dean’s Jett Rink a wordless introduction, letting the actor express himself through his laconic posture. Not surprisingly, Dean makes an instant impact when Jett meets Bick and Leslie, getting into an argument with the former and then shyly extending his hand to the latter before awkwardly withdrawing it and leaving.

Stevens uses the Benedict picnic to give us a slice-of-life look at Texan culture with an emphasis on its cuisine and the weather, which Leslie hasn’t adapted to yet but she’s a quick learner and acclimatizes herself to their way of life much to the chagrin of Luz who feels threatened by the new young bride. Stevens also gives us a window into how a cattle ranch is run, including the branding of calves and some of the environmental dangers, like rattlesnakes.

Realizing that Leslie doesn’t share the same views about Mexicans that Bick does, Jett takes her to the impoverished slums where they live and Stevens shows rundown shacks and hovels populated with sick children and a decent-sized graveyard located in the middle that is a real eye-opener for her (and us). This scene must’ve come as quite a revelation for American audiences in 1956 as racism wasn’t depicted so openly in mainstream Hollywood movies.

The earliest indication we get of the coming oil boom is at Luz’s funeral when a neighboring family tells Leslie how they struck it rich thanks to finding oil on their land. In her will, Luz leaves a small amount of land to Jett. He epitomizes the self-made man by starting off with almost nothing and becoming very wealthy when he discovers oil on his land in a scene that is paid homage to in There Will Be Blood. Like Daniel Plainview in Anderson’s film, Jett starts off with one oil well and builds a vast empire, becoming a ruthlessly rich man, much to Bick’s annoyance who harbors bitter resentment over failing to acquire such oil-rich land while he stubbornly continues on with his cattle ranch. Stevens shows how this wealth corrupts Jett, bringing out his worst tendencies, causing one of Bick’s friends to say, “Bick, you shoulda shot that fella a long time ago. Now he’s too rich to kill.”

The years pass and Bick and Leslie have children and watch them grow up while they get older and become domesticated homebodies, sleeping in separate beds – a shadow of their younger, vibrant selves. Jett continually attempts to buy Bick’s ranch in order to expand his oil empire and to stick it to the man he used to work for when they were younger. The aging makeup on Dean, Hudson and Taylor isn’t all that realistic-looking but does just enough to not be distracting either. The actors compensate by the way in which they carry themselves and act, even altering the way they talk in subtle ways.

“You are an odd one, aren’t you, Jett?” Leslie says to him at one point and it could sum up his character and Dean’s Method performance, which is in sharp contrast to the classically trained Hudson and Taylor. It is all the little, eccentric flourishes that Dean makes, like the way he tilts his cowboy hat forward on his head or his disjointed way of speaking that sets him apart from the rest of the cast. One feels that he’s working off instinct and living in the moment and it sets him apart, much like Jett from the rest of the characters.

Rock Hudson isn’t afraid to play a man who is a product of his environment and with that comes a racist attitude towards Mexicans. Bick is also a questionable father, forcing his little boy to ride a pony when the child is clearly terrified of doing so. He gets his child-rearing skills from his strict father and is obviously more skilled at ranching. Bick ends up a bitter old man while Jett is a pathetic old drunk. However, the former learns to be more tolerant of Mexicans, even getting into a fight with the owner of a diner who insults his Mexican daughter-in-law and refuses to serve a Mexican family that comes in. Even though Bick loses the brawl, his willingness to fight for the rights of other shows how far he’s come since the beginning of the film.

Elizabeth Taylor plays a character full of life and the actress absolutely radiates unbridled energy that is infectious. She delivers a charismatic performance that is riveting to watch. Leslie is a progressive character that addresses the sexist attitudes of the times in which she lives, in particular Texas, in a tense scene in which she insists on listening in on Bick and his friends talk politics, much to his chagrin as she makes him look bad in front of them. He believes that women should know their place and it’s implied that it is at home cooking and raising children, which doesn’t sit too well with her. If she is supposed to know her place at home then she finds other ways to make a difference, like bringing in a doctor to improve the health conditions in the Mexican village.

Two of Dean’s Rebel Without A Cause (1955) co-stars – Dennis Hopper and Sal Mineo – make memorable appearances with the former as Bick’s rebellious grown-up son and who has a fantastic scene with Hudson late in the film where the two men have it out, and the latter delivering a wordless performance as a wide-eyed local boy that goes off to meet his tragic fate in World War II.

Edna Ferber’s Giant was first serialized in the Ladies’ Home Journal before Doubleday published it in the fall of 1952. It depicted the turbulent lives of three generations of a Texas family and proved to be very popular if not somewhat controversial with its depiction of racial tensions and an interracial marriage. Naturally, Hollywood came calling. After all, they had already adapted ten of her books.

Initially, Ferber kept the studios at arm’s length and this tactic backfired when they began to lose interest. Not filmmaker George Stevens who was intrigued by the controversy around the novel and felt it was ripe for a cinematic treatment. He was also drawn to its love story: “So many of our romantic pictures just lead up to the altar and leave you with a general assumption of inevitable happiness. But this is a story about the hazards of the marriage relationship.”

Stevens teamed up with producer Henry Ginsberg who made an offer to Ferber for the movie rights to Giant in December 1952. Ginsberg decided to form a production company with Stevens and Ferber to produce and distribute adaptations of the latter’s works starting with Giant. The next challenge was to find a studio to bankroll it. Shane had not yet been released and Stevens was considered something of a commercial risk. That is, until Shane was released and became a critical and commercial hit. Warner Bros. agreed to back it, advertise and also distribute it in December 1953. The budget was set at $1.5 million.

When it came to the screenplay by Fred Guiol and Ivan Moffat, Ferber was quite critical of it, giving Stevens notes about various drafts that were largely ignored. She wrote to Stevens, “I want to only say this: I know nothing about the making of motion pictures. I know about writing. I know about dialogue, characterization, situation…As a writer, I find some of the Giant speeches wooden, unvital, and uncharacteristic.” She offered to write a draft and flew to Los Angeles on June 20, 1954, working a six-day-a-week schedule with Stevens, Guiol and Moffat. She finished her draft on August 8 and Stevens ended up using the script that he, Guiol and Moffat wrote instead.

When it came to casting, Stevens initially toyed with Audrey Hepburn and William Holden. Even though he didn’t resemble Bick, Rock Hudson wanted badly to play the role. Stevens’ secretary told her boss to screen a small Western that Hudson had made that required him to age. Stevens did so and was impressed, casting Hudson without even meeting him! However, the actor was under contract with Universal Studios who refused to lend him out. Hudson fought the studio and won out.

Stevens felt that Elizabeth Taylor was too young for the part of Leslie and approached Hepburn who turned him down. Stevens briefly considered the likes of Grace Kelly, Jane Wyman, Rita Hayworth and many others. He really wanted Kelly but MGM refused to loan her out. Once she heard that Kelly wasn’t available, Taylor begged MGM to loan her out and pursued the role, eventually winning Stevens over. Over the course of the film, the actress would befriend Hudson and Dean, staying close to the former for the rest of his life.

For Jett Rink, Stevens wanted Robert Mitchum but he had a conflict with another project. He considered Anthony Quinn, Rod Steiger and Montgomery Clift among others. Dean was friends with Guiol and got into the habit of hanging around Stevens’ office. The director felt that the actor didn’t physically resemble the character but was swayed by Dean’s skill as an actor.

Principal photography began on May 19, 1955 on a 77-day schedule in Charlottesville, Virginia where the scenes that involved Bick and Leslie meeting and falling in love were filmed. From there, the production moved to Marfa, Texas with a crew of 250 people descending on the small town. To drum up word of mouth about the film, Stevens allowed the public to watch filming with an average of 300 onlookers during the week and 700-1,000 on weekends.

It soon became evident that the estimated $1.5 million budget would not be enough, nor would the proposed schedule. The budget was increased to $2.5 million with 35 days added (the eventual budget was $5.4 million). Due to the nature and scale of the film as well as Stevens’ habit of shooting too much footage, by the end of June the production was eight days behind schedule and $200,000 over budget. Where did the money go? In ambitious shots like a massive herd of Longhorn cattle. Stevens’ scouts managed to find the nearly extinct breed and shipped them all to Marfa at a considerable cost. The façade of the Benedict house was built in Hollywood and shipped to Marfa on flatcars. It was erected in the corner of the Worth Evans ranch.

To make matters worse, Taylor was frequently ill and studio executives became so worried about these delays that they considered taking the film away from Stevens. Dean and Stevens had a turbulent relationship with the actor refusing to hit the marks that the director wanted him to and defiant acts like showing up late for filming or sometimes not at all. This tested Stevens’ patience but fortunately Dean was doing brilliant work in the role. After Marfa, all the interior scenes were shot on soundstages at the Warner studio back in Hollywood with filming ending on September 30, 1955. The most unfortunate incident that plagued the production was when Dean was killed in a car accident before the film was released. All of his scenes had been filmed but one was inaudible and needed to be looped in post-production. His former roommate and best friend Nick Adams was hired to loop Dean’s dialogue.

We watch Bick, Leslie and Jett grow up and it’s fascinating to see how they’ve changed towards the end of the film from how they were when we first met them. One gets the feeling that their lives hadn’t quite turned out as they imagined they would. Sure, they have vast wealth and large families but are they truly happy?

Giant is an epic saga about the dark side of the American dream and how one man (Jett) comes to embody it and another man (Bick) is embittered by it. Stevens’ film spans decades as it chronicles the lives of three people through good and bad times, through the birth of children and the death of a dear friend. The film is both intimate and epic in the sense that it depicts their personal lives on a large scale with the sweep of American history as the backdrop. It is as much a story about America as it is about these people as they are part of the country’s very fabric.

SOURCES

Gilbert, Julie Goldsmith. Ferber: Edna Ferber and Her Circle, a Biography. Applause Books. 2000.

Hyam, Joe with Jay Hyam. James Dean: Little Boy Lost. Warner Books. 1992.

Kelley, Kitty. Elizabeth Taylor, the Last Star. Simon & Schuster. 1981.

Moss, Marilyn Ann. Giant: George Stevens, a Life on Film. University of Wisconsin Press. 2015.

Rosenfield, John. “Texas-Sized Giant.” Southwest Review. Autumn 1956.

Speed

When it comes to action movies you don’t have to reinvent the genre every time out. Audiences are hungry for engaging characters to root for, a dastardly villain to jeer and some exciting action set pieces to get their pulses racing. Speed (1994) does just that. While it certainly didn’t win any points for originality – it’s basically Die Hard (1988) on a bus – the movie is so effortlessly entertaining that its flaws seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Every time I watch Speed I get caught up in the action and marvel at the fantastic chemistry between its two leads – Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. And to think the former was considered something of a gamble at the time despite previously starring in the modestly successful cops and surfers action movie Point Break (1991). The latter was something of an unknown commodity herself, appearing previously in a string of forgettable supporting roles in movies like The Thing Called Love (1993) and Demolition Man (1993). The success of Speed changed both of their careers and how the media and the public at large perceived them.

When an explosion strands a group of people in an express elevator between the 29th and 30th floors in a high-rise office building in downtown Los Angeles, SWAT are called in to rescue these poor folks before the mad bomber (Dennis Hopper) blows the emergency brakes in 23 minutes unless he gets three million dollars. Leading the charge is Jack Traven (Keanu Reeves) and Harry Temple (Jeff Daniels), a young hotshot and a cynical veteran respectively, that are introduced hurtling through the air in their in the same kind of fashion as seen in early Tony Scott and Michael Bay action movies.

Jack and Harry have a tried and true dynamic that is familiar in these kinds of movies with the former being a cocky guy who thinks outside the box while the latter is an endless source of sarcastic remarks. They are also very good at their job, so much so that they manage to thwart the bomber in an excitingly tense sequence. It looks like the bomber blew himself up, but when a bus explodes near Jack’s favorite coffee shop (such a ‘90s staple), our intrepid hero is contacted by the bomber and told of a specific bus that has a bomb on it that will arm itself once it reaches 50 miles per hour and blow up if it then goes below that speed. Jack has to find it and then figure out a way to either disarm the bomb or get the passengers off without the bomber’s knowledge. He’s aided in this endeavor by Annie (Sandra Bullock), one of the bus passengers.

I like the little bits of business in the movie, like the attention paid to some of the bus passengers, most notably Alan Ruck’s good-natured yet annoyingly overly chatting tourist and how Annie comes up with a lame excuse, like gum on her seat, in order to move away from him without hurting his feelings. It is things, like that moment, that provide bits of insight into these characters and makes them more relatable. There are also moments of levity like Glenn Plummer’s understandably irked car owner providing a humorous commentary to Jack commandeering his vehicle and then driving like a maniac to catch the bus. These moments are used judiciously to help alleviate the tension at key junctures in the movie.

In 1994, Keanu Reeves was still known mostly for independent movies like River’s Edge (1986) and My Own Private Idaho (1991) and dabbling in studio fare like Parenthood (1989) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992). If there were any questions about his leading man credentials prior to Speed, they were quashed by the movie’s massive success. I like that De Bont makes a point of showing Jack thinking things through and figuring out that the bomber is in the building at the beginning of the movie. And so, the beauty of Speed is that it’s not just a battle of wills between Jack and the bomber, but also of wits. Reeves does a fine job in the thankless stereotypical action hero role. The actor doesn’t inject too much personality into the character beyond acting heroic, but comes to life in his scenes with Sandra Bullock who temporarily frees him from the constraints of his underwritten role and actually steals many of their scenes together. That being said, he excels at the physical stuff, building on the action chops he displayed in Point Break and anticipating the even loftier action movie notes he would hit with The Matrix films.

I like that Annie isn’t your typical damsel in distress and Sandra Bullock doesn’t play her that way. She takes the wheel of the bus after the driver is incapacitated and offers witty, witheringly sarcastic remarks, like when Jack asks her if she can drive it (“Oh sure, it’s just driving a really big Pinto.”). She engages in amusing, Joss Whedon-flavored banter with Jack, which helps break up the tension every so often. Annie is not an ultra-confident action heroine, but just someone trying to do the best they can under extraordinary circumstances. It is this appealing girl-next-door quality that audiences fell in love with and transformed Bullock into America’s sweetheart for a few years. With her adorable good looks and spunky charm, Bullock is very likeable as Jack’s foil. There is something inherently appealing about her that makes you like the actress. Annie not only shows resilience in the face of overwhelming danger, but also a vulnerability that is refreshing in an action movie and quite endearing.

It doesn’t hurt that Bullock has terrific chemistry with Reeves. It’s not something you can manufacture: it either exists or it doesn’t and the two actors play well off each other as Annie humanizes Jack. They make a good team working together to keep the bus moving while he tries to figure out how to get everyone off safely. It’s really only until the final showdown with the bomber that she’s reduced to a stereotypical damsel in distress role. The success of Speed paved the way for an ill-conceived sequel that Reeves wisely opted out of, leaving Bullock to try and recreate the magic of the first one with Jason Patric, whom she did not have good chemistry with like she did with Reeves, which can’t be stated enough.

Thanks to his memorable turn in Blue Velvet (1986), Dennis Hopper enjoyed a string villainous roles in several movies (see Super Mario Bros., Red Rock West, Waterworld, and so on) and he looks to be clearly relishing a mad bomber character that alternates between gleefully tormenting Jack and ranting about what he’s owed. Hopper’s baddie isn’t your typical movie psycho, but a guy with a specific agenda that gradually becomes apparent over the course of the movie.

Having learned from master action movie director John McTiernan where he was the cinematographer on Die Hard and The Hunt for Red October (1990), Jan de Bont shows considerable action chops on Speed, from the daring elevator rescue that kicks things off to the preposterous jump the bus makes over a large section of missing freeway. De Bont understands that what makes most top-notch action movies work is dynamic editing. Kinetic action is best conveyed with the right amount of editing so that when something dramatic is happening the movie often cuts to a reaction shot of someone, for example, to show how he or she are dealing with it. No matter how implausible the action if the actors sell it, we’ll believe it, much like the aforementioned bus jump.

Screenwriter Graham Yost had cut his teeth writing for television and found himself between jobs when he wrote the screenplay for Speed – then called Minimum Speed. He finally got a job writing for Full House when he got the call that his Speed script had sold. He soon quit the sitcom. Jan de Bont was developing a movie about skydiving at Paramount Pictures when he was shown the script for Speed. He liked the premise and wanted it to be his directorial debut, sticking with the project even when the studio put it in turnaround and it eventually migrated over to 20th Century Fox. However, he wasn’t the first choice to direct with the likes of John McTiernan and Walter Hill approached, but both of who turned the project down.

For the role of Jack Traven, the studio approached Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks and then Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson. Someone mentioned Keanu Reeves and Yost remembered that he was quite good in Parenthood. The actor was initially hesitant to do the movie after reading Yost’s script: “There were situations set up for one-liners and I felt it was forced – Die Hard mixed with some kind of screwball comedy.” Coming off Bernardo Bertolucci’s Little Buddha (1993), Reeves spent two months in the gym in order to look the part of a police officer. He immersed himself in the role, training with the actual LAPD SWAT, which inspired him to get a military-style haircut. This freaked out some studio executives who felt the look was a little extreme. He further immersed himself in the role by also picking out his character’s clothes. While Speed was in production, Reeves’ good friend and fellow actor River Phoenix died from a drug overdose. De Bont adjusted the shooting schedule so that Reeves had a chance to deal with it.

As originally written, Annie was an African-American paramedic and at some point, Halle Berry was approached but after reading the script she turned it down, "But in my defense, when I read the script the bus didn't leave the parking lot." Yost wanted someone funnier for the part and thought of Ellen DeGeneres. The studio wanted actresses like Meryl Streep and Kim Basinger, both of whom passed because they didn’t buy into the movie’s premise. The studio didn’t want Sandra Bullock and De Bont had fight for her: “I couldn’t see Julia Roberts driving this bus. I could not see several other actresses … I felt I needed an actress who you could believe would have taken the bus and Sandra had this kind of every day look – I mean that in a good way – in the way she dresses, the way she behaves, very casual.” De Bont brought Bullock in to audition with Reeves several times to not only convince the studio that she was right for the role, but to also develop a rapport between the two actors that would be readily evident in the final movie. At the very last moment, the studio relented and allowed him to cast her.

Everyone agreed that the script needed work. Early on, Yost had a big reveal that Harry was the movie's villain, betraying Jack and masterminding the entire scheme. “The idea of having him on the bomb squad lent him years of experience dismantling bombs, but also a certain obsession with their intense [danger].” It was one of the producers that suggested the villain be someone fascinated with bombs. A week before principal photography was to begin, De Bont brought in Joss Whedon, then a script doctor on films like The Quick and the Dead (1995) and Waterworld (1995), to do some revisions, which involved, according to Yost, rewriting almost all of the dialogue. He also cut back on some of Jack’s superficial humor and made him a more earnest character, tweaked the plot, like showing how Jack was able to track down Dennis Hopper’s bomber, and changed Alan Ruck’s character from a lawyer who is killed to a tourist. It was Whedon that gave Hopper's character more dialogue but had envisioned a different baddie than what the actor ultimately brought to the role: “I wrote a very straight forward, though a little off-center guy - don’t get me wrong, he’s blowing people up, he’s not okay - who is weirdly thoughtful." De Bont remembers, “I would call him early in the morning and say, ‘Joss, I need two lines for this.’ And then he’d call me back 10 minutes later. He’d come up with some great little sayings that were basically continuing the tension, while at the same time pushing some relief into it as well.”

De Bont came up with the action set pieces, like the 50-foot bus jump, that he had always wanted to see in a movie. It was accomplished by a stunt driver who actually performed the jump only with no missing roadway and, in the process, completely destroyed two buses. De Bont said, “I wanted to make sure he felt the reality of the situation as well." Initially, Reeves was hesitant do his own stuntwork but De Bont convinced him to do quite a bit of it, including the sequence where Jack rolls out from under the bus, and the moment where Jack jumps from the car to the bus. De Bont remembers, "I told him it was basically like stepping onto an escalator. You just move up!” Reeves said, “The shot in the film is a stunt man, but I got to do it once.”

Speed enjoyed mostly positive reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and wrote, “All of this is of course gloriously silly, a plundering of situations from the Indiana Jones and Die Hard movies all the way back to the Perils of Pauline, but so what? If it works, it works.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “The summertime no-brainer needn’t be entirely without brains. It can be as savvy as Speed, the runaway-bus movie that delivers wall-to-wall action, a feat that’s never as easy as it seems.” The Los Angeles Times’ Kenneth Turan wrote, “Nothing Speed puts on screen, from fiery explosions to mayhem on the freeway, hasn’t been done many times before, but De Bont and company manage to make it feel fresh and exciting.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film an “A” rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “It’s a pleasure to be in the hands of an action filmmaker who respects the audience. De Bont’s craftsmanship is so supple that even the triple ending feels justified, like the cataclysmic final stage of a Sega death match.” Finally, the Washington Post’s Hal Hinson praised Sandra Bullock’s performance: “If it weren’t for the smart-funny twist she gives to her lines – they’re the best in the film – the air on that bus would have been stifling.”

Like any good action movie thrill ride, Speed puts its characters through its paces by confronting them with one danger after another. What makes this movie so appealing is how Jack and Annie work together to figure out and overcome the obstacles that confront them. Not every problem is solved with a gun like in so many action movies from the 1980s. In fact, in Speed, guns are rendered useless, forcing Jack to be much more resourceful. If there isn’t much depth to these characters it’s because there doesn’t need to be. Speed has nothing more on its mind then to be an entertaining ride and on that level it works like gangbusters.

SOURCES

Bierly, Mandi. “Speed 20^th Anniversary: Screenwriter Graham Yost Looks Back on the ‘Bus Movie’ That Became a Classic.” Entertainment Weekly. June 10, 2014.

Calvario‍, Liz. "Halle Berry Shares Which Role She Almost Took From Sandra Bullock." Entertainment Tonight. April 30, 2019.

Duca, Lauren. Still Traveling At 50 MPH 20 Years Later: Why Speed Was The Pinnacle Of ‘90s Action Movies." The Huffington Post. June 9, 2014.

Gerosa, Melina. “Speed Racer.” Entertainment Weekly. June 10, 1994.

Kozak, Jim. “Serenity Now! An Interview with Joss Whedon.” In Focus. August/September 2005.

McCabe, Bob. “Speed.” Empire. June 1999.

Tapley, Kristopher. “Sandra Bullock, Keanu Reeves and Jan de Bont Look Back at Speed 20 Years Later. HitFix. June 10, 2014.