Tuesday, March 26, 2024

THE DEARTH OF MUSIC

 

If you are among those who thought the musical theatre suffered an irreparable blow with the demise of Stephen Sondheim, let me introduce you to This is Me… Now, a visual extravaganza for Netflix, conceived by and starring Jennifer Lopez. It is a major music video that advances the form in at least in one sense… taking it from being a visual interpretation of one “song” to an entire album of “songs.”

Note the quotation marks on “song” and “songs.” I am of the wrong generation for this kind of music… or, for that matter, this kind of choreography.

I am not too old, however, to appreciate J.Lo’s looks, her body, or her sensual approach for this work that she has chosen. It is just the pretense that this whole Superbowl-halftime-thing is an actual art form that has me shaking my head in despair.

Let’s go back. The art direction (meaning, in this case, the sets), spectacular. Decent special effects, an all-star supporting cast in stuff that borders on the silly, and J.Lo, soaking wet, scantily clad, rolling around in the muck and mire. Folks used to get arrested for this kind of thing.

Not too deeply buried in this display is J.Lo’s homage to Hollywood, her childhood fantasies, and her advocacy for psychotherapy. It is an odd movie… even with a lot of credits it only (mercifully) runs for just over one hour. It is a long time to watch anything with one’s jaw open, but I found a remedy for that.

Immediately after completing the 60 plus minutes on Netflix, I quickly switched over to YouTube where for more than an hour and a half I watched film clips from old Hollywood musicals until happily satiated.

Fred & Ginger, Gene Kelly, Doris Day, Rita Hayworth, Cyd Charisse, Robert Preston, Shirley Jones, Debbie Reynolds, Danny Kaye, Fosse & Verdon. Now… that’s entertainment. And a cure for just about anything, including This is Me… Now.

It was NOT the musical that took me on my recent trek to New York City. I went there to see Tyne Daly in Doubt, the play by John Patrick Shanley. Health concerns took my friend and former colleague out of the play but there was no abandoning the trip. My long-time pal, Joe Feury, was displaying his most recent art work as a benefit for Ukraine and I was bound to show up for that. You want to talk about star-crossed… Joey’s beautiful and Academy Award winning spouse, Lee Grant, took a fall at the event and fractured her hip. Not to worry. Lee has been doing Pilates and Yoga for years and, as a result, is recovering faster than any of us believed possible. Of course, dinner at their home had to be canceled so what with no Tyne Daly on stage and no Lee Grant at home there were nights to be filled and, predictably, we chose the musical theatre.

Too bad. It meant missing two apparently great straight play presentations, Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People and a Shanley play that I have never seen but have been told is terrific, Brooklyn Laundry. It proves, once again, that even so-called pros at the game need to do their homework before launching into the Big Apple.

The musical theatre did allow me to catch up with last year’s Tony winner, Kimberly Akimbo… a worthwhile couple of hours spent in the theatre with a couple of stand-out performances from Victoria Clark and Bonnie Milligan and one of the more understandably dysfunctional families ever presented on stage.

And then there was Days of Wine and Roses… admiration of this (I think) ill-conceived venture may depend on one’s level of musical education. It far exceeded mine, forcing me to now confess my lack of appreciation for the discordant. Remember Henry Mancini’s Academy Award winning theme song from the 1962 motion picture of the same name starring Lee Remick and Jack Lemmon? Well, fuhgeddaboudit. You will find nothing so melodious in this stage version featuring the often-fabulous Kelli O’Hara and the always-reliable Brian d’Arcy James.

Both these folks can sing, and the composer seems to know this by allowing them a pretty note at the end of each “song” which they are allowed to hold long enough for what I suppose is meant to be some kind of dramatic effect. That one final note is the closest you will get to a melody the entire evening.

The play is one hour and forty-five minutes and there is no intermission. The reason for this is at least two-fold: first, it is an easy bet that liquor sales would be way down during any interlude at this show and, I would guess of even greater importance, is the suspicion that if there were an intermission, half the audience would not return for the second act.

So far two musicals back-to-back and I cannot remember two notes that could be strung together from either or both combined. That was also true for our third musical, but at least Water For Elephants had its moments of promise… not so much in the musical idiom… but it was, I thought, staged beautifully, and performed expertly. Kudos to the director, especially with the stampede sequence near show’s end. Unlike the movie of the same name, this newly opened show is a fine theatrical tribute to the excellent Sara Gruen novel of the same name.

Finally, my wife and her gal pals all but dragged me to The Notebook… based on the super sentimental motion picture starring Gena Rowlands, James Garner and a then very young, and new to all of us, Ryan Gosling. I never read the book, but I remember the movie had its impact even on someone who usually thinks of this kind of thing as rather treacle-like.

There are no great songs. No “Some Enchanted Evening” or “If Ever I Would Leave You”… and that is a shame because they would really work here. Still, the music that is there serves the show and its characters well even if it will not make the “Ah, yes, I Remember it Well” song list a few years hence. It is okay. The show works. And there is not a dry eye in the house (including either of mine).

It was a good night in the theatre and a lovely surprise for me. The first actor on the stage, the show’s leading man… is Dorian Harewood, one of the stars of my long-ago series, The Trials of Rosie O’Neill. I have not seen Dorian in over thirty years, and it was a thrill to find him back on Broadway.

There was another self-serving benefit for this old guy. For years I could not go to a Broadway show without seeing an actor up there on the stage that I had worked with either on Cagney & Lacey or some other show of mine. The mini bios in the Playbill almost always had a mention or two of an actor’s credits which included a show produced by me. That hasn’t happened in a long time… one of the disadvantages of living too long.

I confess, it made me feel a lot more relevant to see the bio of the number one actor in the play… there in the number one position in the Playbill… and among the listed credits of which he was proud, The Trials of Rosie O’Neill.

After the show, the crowd at The Notebook’s stage door proved too difficult for me to navigate and so I missed congratulating Dorian in person. On the plus side, there was, in that sizable and enthusiastic crowd, proof positive just how entertaining this show is.

What a concept. But apparently it is not as obvious as one would think. The very basic, fundamental thing… no matter who you think you are now… is to make sure that if nothing else, a show must be entertaining… should be on page one of every producer’s notebook.

 

Barney Rosenzweig

 

Monday, March 11, 2024

HAIL TO THE VICTORS

If you laid some money down on this year’s Academy Award presentations you had to walk away with most of the cash in the betting pool… assuming your ballot was based on what was written here.

To begin with there was Robert Downey Jr., Emma Stone, Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer, and Poor Things, followed by the skunking of Scorsese’s ode to a partial history of the Osage Indians in Oklahoma’s early 20th century (Killers of the Flower Moon), and the Leonard Bernstein flick, Maestro.

One-trophy winners from the ultra-popular (and successful) Barbie, The Holdovers, and American Fiction validated the under-achieving mentions they were given in this space over the past several weeks.

Finally, it must be conceded that Zone of Interest far exceeded my expectations with a win for best sound and “Best International Feature Film.” Honest, it wasn’t… no matter what my granddaughter Greer has to say to the contrary.

The Academy show, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, was good, not too long, and Ryan Gosling all but stole the show with his Ken bit from Barbie. I could go on, but there is an empty suitcase that needs to be packed for tomorrow’s trip to the Big Apple and a few Broadway shows about which I have yet to get excited.

More on all of that to come once I return to the balmy breezes of my warm island.

 

Barney Rosenzweig

Sunday, March 10, 2024

LIFE AND ART

In the grand cosmos of filmdom, if asked about a movie portraying one of history’s horrific tyrants, readers of these columns might well gravitate to Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. Perhaps Broderick Crawford’s Willie Stark in All The King’s Men, maybe Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland, or Ian McKellen’s Richard III.

Here in Miami, what many refer to as the capital of Latin America, it could readily be understood if the despot who came to the forefront in such a poll was Augusto Pinochet and his nearly 17-year reign of terror that visited Chile in the last century.

Put that story in the hands of an inventive filmmaker who elects to tell this tale in a stylized motion picture, making the dictator even more of a monster than first realized. Imagine: what if Pinochet were a 250-year-old vampire… one who quite literally and figuratively was sucking the blood out of his countrymen?

You could then, if you were enough of a visionary, amplify all of that by taking on the cinematic styling of the films of the German expressionists of the silent era, then bring it all up to date with the reveal that the mother of this horrific monster is none other than the Iron Lady, England’s Margaret Thatcher. Do all that, and you will find yourself smack in the middle of El Conde… one of the more surprising motion pictures of this… or any other year.

Do not make of this review more than it is. This picture is not for everyone. Still, it is a lot more than I ever thought I was getting into when I naively sat in that darkened room to see Pablo Larrain’ s brilliant piece of political satire.

You may know of Larrain from such Academy nominated films as Neruda, Jackie, Spencer, or No, but you will have to wait a long time to see him top this latest work. El Conde can be screened on Netflix in the original Spanish; steel yourself.

Also from Latin America is the Academy nominated feature, Society of the Snow… the story of the Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed while attempting to cross the Andes mountains. This is a true story of heroism, sacrifice, and the will to live, magnificently and emotionally recreated by director J.A. Bayona and his wonderful ensemble of young actors. Once again the viewer finds himself in Chile, this time with a straightforward narrative that emulates a great documentary. Once again, your Netflix subscription proves its worth.

Golda, a motion picture starring Helen Mirren, presents this reviewer with some problems of objectivity and memory. It was not that many years ago that I hoped to produce the play Golda’s Balcony by William Gibson with actress Annette Miller. Someone else got the privilege of mounting the play in New York with Tovah Feldshuh where it had a record-breaking run. There was also the version of the same events written by my friend Renee Taylor in her An Evening with Golda Meir.

Both Renee’s version and playwright Gibson’s were, in my judgment (and to the best of my memory), far superior to this motion picture, directed by Guy Nattiv from a screenplay written by Nicholas Martin.

The failure here is one of simple storytelling. There is a vast amount of stuff that makes up the life and times of Golda Meir and this skimpy flick doesn’t even attempt to scratch the surface.

The film focuses on events in and around the Yom Kippur War of 1973. It assumes, more than fifty years after the fact, that its audience will know who Moshe Dayan is/was, and what this once dashing figure meant to millions of Jews all over the world. “The fog of war” takes on even greater significance in this overly confusing depiction of events. None of this, I hasten to add, is Helen Mirren’s fault.

Ms. Mirren is always interesting, and I will forever be grateful to her for the kind words she has often shared with her public about the influence of my series, Cagney & Lacey, on her own career. It is not because of her that this movie is as flat as it is. Even great actresses need dialogue and, if memory serves, both Ms. Taylor’s one woman show, and Gibson’s play relied heavily on memoir material that is in the public domain and therefore available to screenwriter Martin. Some of that material could have been… should have been… in this movie.

Golda Meir was one fascinating woman but most of that came through her great wit… unfortunately, little of that comes through in the screenplay of this motion picture which, if you must, you can see on Amazon Prime or Hulu.

As to wit and political savvy, nearly two years before he died in a Siberian prison camp, a documentary was produced featuring Alexei Navalny, the Russian opponent of Vladimir Putin. It is also on Amazon Prime and Hulu and you should see it.

The 98-minute documentary clarifies… assuming you had some doubt… just what it was Mr. Putin had to fear from this charismatic, camera-ready individual who believed his destiny was to confront the current corrupt regime in “Mother Russia” and to ultimately engage the country in a debate about its future.

The film also reveals shocking details of the plot to assassinate Navalny… shocking, not only in its purpose but in the stupidity of the perpetrators. It also predicts (naively) a brighter future… one, which we now all know, Navalny did not live to see.

True, the film does not go so far as to show Putin, cape unfurled, flying over Moscow in a quest for blood before sunrise, but this is, after all, a documentary, not  political satire. Besides, who among us really knows what happens in the Kremlin after dark?

 

Barney Rosenzweig

Saturday, February 24, 2024

THE LONG AND THE SHORT

 

Sometimes, when the big things in life let you down, it just might behoove you to look for the smaller things to help bring you up.

Did someone ever say that? Dunno. But the bromide came to me as I watched the final two episodes of the latest edition of the heavily bloated limited series, True Detective: Night Country.

I had written of my disappointment in this latest incarnation of the classic Max (formally HBO) series but somehow felt assured … even read somewhere… that this sinking ship of a series would be righted in the end with the last two episodes helping to make sense of the wasted hours of watching Jodie Foster trudge through the tundra in this truly thankless role.

Mercifully, there were only six episodes of the Night Country edition of True Detective instead of the usual eight. And the last two episodes were better. But not “better” enough to make much of a difference. If you have not started this limited series… don’t.

Moving on to the “smaller things” of the week… two motion picture Academy nominees in the small picture category: a documentary, The ABCs of Book Banning and a short work of fiction, Wes Anderson’s The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar.

You can see the book banning doc on Paramount+ and I can assure you it is an admirable piece of work which deserves your attention and will warm your heart. The film takes less than 30 minutes to do all the things… and more… that lesser works may strive for and never achieve. And I was not surprised to learn that fellow octogenarian, Sheila Nevins, who for years famously headed up the extraordinary documentary division of HBO, was responsible for producing this gem.

Wes Anderson’s film can be found on Netflix and is a minor hoot that begs the question, who puts up the money for this kind of mini movie? An all-star cast, a clever production design, and all for a film that is 37 minutes long. The answer to my query is “nobody,” as this mini movie with its nomination from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in its “tiny” category is, in fact, one of four stories in a quartet of such yarns by Roald Dahl.

I will not scrutinize this particular “gift horse” too carefully. Its 37 minutes are… well, delightful… and, even though it will not make up for the hours of bleakness spent at home screening the Alaska-based True Detective: Night Country, it is… after all… something. Is it kosher for a section of a quartet to be singled out as … well, a singular little movie? In the words of Norman Lear’s grandmother: “Go know.”

Meanwhile, Acorn TV and/or AMC (via Amazon Prime) have now delivered the final episodes of Monsieur Spade. I am not sure if I am more disappointed that the series has ended or by writer Tom Fontana’s design for the closing, bringing as he must, all of the mystery’s loose ends to some kind of conclusion.

This is a very nice series that, in my judgment, deserved a better ending. Still, I rank this homage to one of America’s great fictional detectives high above the True Detective mess that is Ms. Foster’s Night Country.

And last, but… well, last… is Ryan Murphy’s latest edition of Feud. This one is Capote Vs. The Swans, a tale of Manhattan’s social elite, the so-called Swans of New York society, and their fascination with the flamboyant literary genius, Truman Capote. There will be eight episodes of this limited series; I have seen the five chapters Hulu has released so far.

It would be easy enough to pass off this glitzy, ultra-superficial melodrama as “guilty pleasure” (for, indeed, that is what it is) but Naomi Watts, as Babe Paley, takes on her leading role, imbuing her character with such poignancy and humanity, that it lifts the entire project into something much more than this viewer thought possible.

It does not hurt that the recently deceased Treat Williams plays her philandering husband, the former CBS chieftain, William S. Paley. Williams and Watts combine to present a flawed but loving couple… culminating in a scene together, accompanied by the Perry Como rendition of “It’s Impossible,” that should be remembered at Emmy time.

I am not convinced episodes six through eight will be able to top what these two actors have already done, but you can bet I will be watching to find out.

There you have it. The long and the short of it, in the year’s shortest month… even with this year’s enhancement of an additional 24 hours.

Happy Leap Year!

 

Barney Rosenzweig

Saturday, February 17, 2024

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

Griselda is a limited series on Netflix starring Sofia Vergara, the Emmy Award winning actress from the very popular network TV series, Modern Family. Largely, based on facts from Miami’s Cocaine Cowboy era of the 1970s and 80s, the series is worth your attention if for no other reason than Ms. Vergara’s performance in the last two episodes of the six presented by the same team that brought Narcos to our home screens via Netflix.

There is no reason to elaborate more on the project save to caution the faint of heart that Griselda is rife with scenes of violence and sexual references. You have been forewarned.

Max (in better days known as HBO) has come out with a new True Detective edition. This one stars Jody Foster and takes place during a particularly dark time of year in the frozen north of Alaska. I have, in days gone by, often admired this mystery series but I am having trouble slogging through the tundra with Ms. Foster on this one.

It ain’t over yet, and they might very well bring me around, but, frankly, I am not sure I can stick with this. Four episodes in and I have absolutely no idea what this story is about and, what is worse, I don’t much care. None of the characters have come forth as compelling and not one performance has yet proven to be noteworthy. 

Maybe it can be salvaged. Spring could be coming. Maybe a sunrise? Hope springs eternal. If you want to see Ms. Foster enforce the law in better circumstances and a more hospitable climate, I recommend you re-visit the now semi-classic motion picture, Silence of the Lambs. You should be able to see it on Max or by renting from I-Tunes or Amazon.

Monsieur Spade is a series on Acorn TV that answers the query about whatever happened to Sam Spade after The Maltese Falcon? Clive Owen takes on the (one would think, thankless) task of replacing Humphrey Bogart. It may be hard for those of us of a certain age to believe it, but Mr. Owen acquits himself quite well.

Also high on the scale of acquitting oneself is the very talented writer Tom Fontana (St. Elsewhere, Oz). He does a very nice job with this, especially with the requisite one-liners that emanate from the show’s leading man.

The plot is appropriately convoluted, the scenery of the French countryside and the basic premise both hold up well, and the whole thing is… for want of a better descriptive phrase… very nicely done… especially for grownups.

What really counts is that Mr. Owen pulls this thing off with no small amount of thanks to Monsieur Fontana. Were he still alive, I believe, writer/director John Huston would approve.

I must add, for it would be remiss of me not to remind you, that Huston’s original The Maltese Falcon, replete with an ensemble of some of Hollywood’s finest character actors, is readily available on Amazon Prime. If you have not seen it in a while, it is worth revisiting.

In fact, consider a great trifecta of film noir and parlay from The Maltese Falcon to Apple TV for The Big Sleep (also with Bogart… this time as Philip Marlowe and this one directed by the great Howard Hawks from a very convoluted screenplay by none other than William Faulkner), then finish with Jack Nicholson as J.J “Jake” Gittes in the best of them all, Robert Towne’s Chinatown, directed by Roman Polanski. This last is a really well mounted motion picture from Towne’s brilliant (and award-winning) screenplay, it can be seen on Paramount Plus, Netflix or Prime Video.

The crimes in the above range from murder to drug dealing to extortion and incest. The punishment? Watching the first four episodes of the latest incarnation of True Detective on Max.

 

Barney Rosenzweig

Saturday, February 10, 2024

THE UNKINDEST CUT

One looks at motion picture and television credits today and sees multiple producer credits… sometimes literally dozens of names… culminating only recently with the motion picture, Ferrari, where fully 52 individuals take some form of producer credit. It all adds to the speculation as to just what it is a producer does.

There are, of course, multiple answers depending on the medium, the individuals involved, and the era to which one is referencing. I spent a good part of my erstwhile career fighting the proliferation of credits, advocating for the importance of the singularity of one voice, that of the storyteller, as the basis for every project.

I began my career at a time when the producer was that individual; the one with the vision to make a film and/or TV project in the first place, who put all the pieces into place, who hired the writer to write the script, the director to bring to life on the stage what it was that was printed on the page, and was the final word on which actors would play the various parts. It was the producer who did all those things, as well as being the sole liaison between the financing entities and the artists involved in the film’s creation.

Clearly it is not that way anymore. Today, Broadway is a literary medium where the author has an inordinate say over just what it is that is being presented on that stage. Neither the producer nor director has that kind of power in the theatre of the 21st century. Motion pictures have become a director’s venue, and only television bears a slight resemblance to the producer as showrunner that I remember from those days of the long ago.

As big a job as it was back in my day, I always held that it was a job for one person although sometimes, to good effect, that one person might hyphenate and become both producer and director, or producer and writer, or producer and actor, or… in the case of Charlie Chaplin… all four of these things. There are always exceptions for true genius. For the rest of us, I hold to my conviction that these functions are singular jobs.

Many producers have had an especially strong imprimatur in their respective arenas. No one has ever matched David Merrick and his Broadway career that lasted six decades. There were a lot of writers and directors over that half century involved in his projects, but there was no mistaking a David Merrick production.

Almost anyone could direct a Walt Disney movie, but no matter who takes on that task, anyone and everyone watching that movie can tell it is a Disney flick. Talk about imprimatur, the style of producer Walt Disney still resonates more than fifty years after his death.

Dozens of different directors and writers plied their craft at MGM for Producer Arthur Freed, but it was the producer’s stamp that was clearly on display with Singin’ in the Rain, On The Town, The Band Wagon, An American in Paris, Meet Me in St. Louis and Gigi.

I was thinking of this the other evening as I screened one of my all-time favorite movies for my grandson, now a freshman at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Alex indulges me in this pastime, but I suspect (hope, at least) that what we are sharing is more than feigned interest on his part.

The movie we were screening was Amadeus, directed by Academy Award Winner, Milos Forman, and as the movie droned on… and on… I found myself twisting in my chair even more than my grandchild did.

Movies do not always stand the test of time. There are some terrific flicks from yesteryear that disappoint on viewing today. Coming quickly to mind is Where’s Poppa? I remember it being a hysterical comedy over 50 years ago. It lays an egg today. The Band Wagon… one of my all-time favorites, a musical I have often ranked above Singin’ in the Rain, does not hold up nearly as well as it did in my memory… although Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse remain a great dancing couple, and the Dancing in the Dark number still makes me weep.

On a recent viewing, I found All the President’s Men slow and plodding in its story development. In fairness, it was all sort of news back in the Nixon era, but it drags on and on today. And Five Easy Pieces… a revelation in 1970… is pretty much a stinker in 2024. Neither Three Days of the Condor nor Body Heat hold up all that well, and the picture that catapulted Tom Cruise to fame (Risky Business) has little of the charm and humor I remember so vividly.

Which brings me back to Amadeus. Could 1984 really have been that long ago? How could such a fabulous… flawless, I once thought… motion picture stink up the room as much as what I was viewing on my 90” television screen in 2024?

I was in the midst of apologizing to my grandson (I think Alex really, semi-secretly relishes these moments of his grandfather’s humiliation) when I noticed a banner on the cover of the Amadeus DVD.

“Director’s Cut” is what it said in big bold letters. A quick bit of research, as to what it was I saw at the screening held by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nearly 40 years ago, revealed that the award-winning version I saw then was NOT the “Director’s Cut” but a film that was over 20 minutes shorter than the version just screened in my living room.

Do you see how these notes ideally come full circle? Yes, folks, that is what a producer does. Saul Zaentz, three-time Oscar winning producer (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus, The English Patient) is the one with the kahunas to say to internationally acclaimed director Milos Forman, “…the picture is too long, Milos, and these are the cuts I want made.” And, surprise, surprise, the difference between the two versions is astounding.

This Director’s Cut was released years after the original; one would have to guess that director Milos stewed over this note from his producer for over a decade, since it took him 18 years to get Orion Pictures to go back and alter the Oscar winning Amadeus to his specifications and put back the clunky 20 plus minutes Zaentz had him take out.

I don’t know what Zaentz thought or felt about that.  Perhaps it is enough to say the award-winning team of Zaentz and Forman never again worked together after Amadeus. Zaentz went on to win the coveted Irving Thalberg Award from the Motion Picture Academy given to “creative producers whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production” and (for The English Patient) his third Oscar. He was a great producer.

There is no question that Milos Forman was a fine director, but perhaps it suffices to say that two-time Academy Award winner Forman never received an Oscar for a film that wasn’t produced by Saul Zaentz.

Around the time I was born there was a song, which Barbra Streisand brought back thirty years later in the 60s, called Sam, You Made The Pants Too Long. From what I hear, Ms. Streisand should have thought of that while editing her recent autobiography. Whatever, it certainly was the message Forman ultimately chose to ignore much to the disadvantage of his own film. As my mother often said, “be careful what you wish for, lest you get it.”

You made the coat and vest fit the best,

You made the lining nice and strong,

But Sam, you made the pants too long.

Songwriters: Fred Whitehouse, Milton Berle, Samuel M. Lewis

You have now been warned. If, like me, you yearn to re-visit Amadeus… or, I am going to guess, any vintage or classic from the past, beware of the add-on banner: “Director’s Cut” or, any other reference to a newly hyphenated version which subverts the collaborative process that was once at the core of making motion pictures.

And while in the strolling down memory lane mode, let me take this moment to apologize for an error on my part. In a recent review I referenced the 1945 film Rhapsody in Blue and its star, Alan (sic) Alda. What I should have written was not Alan, but Robert Alda, the father of the M*A*S*H leading man.

It was a weird mistake for me to make. I have never met Alan Alda, but I did meet his father, back in the 1960s on the set of Daniel Boone, when Robert Alda, famed star of stage and screen, came to see his youngest son, Anthony, play a featured role in my Fess Parker starrer.

I remember that star-struck day very well and was saddened to learn while re-checking my facts for this paragraph, that the boy who his father came to watch back in the late 1960s, tragically died over a decade ago at the age of 52 and over a decade after his father, Robert Alda… star of Broadway’s Guys and Dolls and Hollywood’s Rhapsody in Blue had preceded him.

Given my oft-stated sensibility to credits and their proliferation, the irony of my having made such a mistake is not lost on this writer. The minor piece of good news is that this addendum, and its reference to credit where it is properly due, does… at the very least… help to end this piece on a properly thematic note.

 

Barney Rosenzweig

 

Saturday, February 3, 2024

Not so Short

 

Having spent the better part of three hours watching Oppenheimer, I feel relatively (and happily) satiated with what I learned of the life of the father of the Atomic Bomb.

The 1945 film classic, Rhapsody in Blue, may not have been an in-depth… or even accurate… portrayal of the life of George Gershwin, but I still remember it well from my youth and will today always stop at the Turner Classic Movie channel when they play this Alan Alda starrer. It satisfied. The movie helped me with whatever I really had to know about America’s favorite composer of classical music.

Lin Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton may or may not be historically accurate, but it is safe to say that audiences walk away believing they know more about the essence of the man and American history than they did when they entered that theatre.

And then there is Napoleon. A film by Ridley Scott. Did you know there are literally thousands of books about the former emperor of France? Do you know how I know that?

Google.

And what was I doing on Google after spending an entire evening watching a movie all about one guy? That is the point of this piece. I should not have had to do that… not after spending the better part of three hours following the adventures of a fella whose forename is the title of that self-same flick.

Napoleon is lusty, and beautiful. Its sets and costumes are sumptuous, its crowd and battle scenes impressive, it is professionally and artistically directed, and it sorta, kinda, doesn’t work. Three hours and I felt I understood the lead character no more than I did before the movie started. When you consider all that went into this movie… and all the resources at the command of Mr. Scott and screenwriter David Scarpa… it makes you wonder… what were they thinking?

It is not because I was a history minor at USC over 60 years ago. I remember a few things from those halcyon days, but my overall knowledge of French history is only un petit peu better than my familiarity with the French language, which is pretty much limited to the names of a few dishes from the old days at Hollywood’s Ma Maison or Miami’s Pastis.

It is a given that Sir Ridley Scott is an accomplished filmmaker. Some of the best titles in movies and TV have some association with this knighted director and sometime producer. Alien, Gladiator, Blade Runner, House of Gucci, Thelma & Louise, Black Hawk Down and in television, the iconic The Good Wife. A person of my background could easily fess up to jealousy of such a resume. Screenwriter Scarpa is not in the same league, and it shows.

In Napoleon we have a movie about a minor officer in the French army who rose through the ranks to conquer most of the known world and became the Emperor of the French Republic. His troops loved him and followed him blindly into battle. When he returned to march on Paris from his exile in Elba, the soldiers sent out to intercept this invasion fell under his spell and joined forces to reinstate him once again to power. Hey, he must have been some charismatic dude.

Now I must ask the question: Have you seen Joaquin Phoenix? The guy is one of our best actors. One could argue that no one plays the neurosis of the ordinary man better. Charismatic? Not so much. Maybe if Scarpa had read his Shakespeare he could have produced a St. Crispin’s Day-like speech from Henry V that might have helped Mr. Phoenix pull that off.

How about once doing something… anything… that would aid the audience to understand what this individual had going for him that would make him such an impressive and outstanding leader of men in battle?

You are going to have to go to those 60,000 books written about the man for anything close to an answer. On Ridley Scott and his three-hour movie you should not depend.

Quel dommage.

 

Barney Rosenzweig