She Blogged By Night

"Red Rock West" is a dreamy, neo-noir masterpiece of storytelling. Written by Rick and John Dahl, starring Nicholas Cage, Lara Flynn Boyle, Dennis Hopper and J.T. Walsh.


Michael Williams (Nicholas Cage), a former Marine from Texas, finds himself broke and in the town of Red Rock, Wyoming, looking for a job. The honest Michael takes a detour from integrity and, when mistaken as Lyle from Dallas who has a job waiting for him in tiny Red Rock's only bar, takes the opportunity and pretends to be Lyle. Unfortunately for Michael, he just stole the wrong job -- bar owner Wayne (J.T. Walsh) hired Lyle to kill his wife Suzanne (Lara Flynn Boyle).


Michael tries to do the right thing. He tries, many times, to leave Red Rock. He cannot. Each time he escapes the town he passes by this sign. The first time he passes by the sign it's ominous, the second time it's disturbing, and the third time it's funny. You know he will be back. The town is Fate, and you cannot escape Fate.


"Red Rock West" made me sad. I suddenly became desperately, intensely nostalgic for the 1990s. For the first time in my life I found myself missing that decade, the decade where as an adult I really came to understand films, to have films evoke new ideas and powerful emotions. In the 1990s I always considered myself a child of the 80s, but as I age I realize that the 1990s were my true formative years.


"Red Rock West" made me sad. I found myself missing, deeply missing, J.T. Walsh. It's selfish of course. I never met him, didn't know him, know nothing about his personal life. All I know is that he was a terrific actor, one whose presence is obviously missing in cinema today. There are movies made after Walsh died that have easily definable Walsh-shaped holes in them. You watch them and realize, damn, J.T. Walsh should have been in this. He should be alive.


In college an English professor of mine advocated a literary tool he bitterly called "Stupid Reading". The best example of this was in Huckleberry Finn, where Huck encounters a boy named Buck. The point was that, where a parallel is obvious (i.e. so obvious it's "stupid"), you cannot ignore that parallel without missing the entire meaning of the work.

In "Red Rock West", Michael is believed to be Lyle from Dallas. Later, to complicate things, the real Lyle from Dallas arrives. Both men are from Texas. Both men were in the Marines, Lyle in Vietnam and Michael stationed in Beirut at the embassy in 1983. Michael was wounded in the bombing and we wonder if Lyle from Dallas was wounded in Vietnam, physically or emotionally. Hopper, with his obvious cinematic ties to Vietnam, helps lead the viewer to fill in Lyle's background. It's easy to extrapolate more similarities: Michael struggles with life after the Marines and is only now finding himself in a life-defining situation. Lyle must have completed his own journey years ago and emerged as a killer for hire.


Like most film buffs, I suffer from film fatigue. We've seen it all. After thousands of movies, it's rare for me to have a visceral reaction to films anymore.

Yet even though I had seen "Red Rock West" once, back in its cable run in the mid-1990s, I still gasped out loud at many of the plot twists. I cooed over the gorgeous, languid cinematography, the desolate landscapes and long wet roads. I teared up when I saw J.T. Walsh on the screen... my God, he's been gone for so long. I told Nicholas Cage out loud to not let that woman talk him into going back to the damn town; I laughed when that woman finally suggested it.


Apparently the film almost didn't see the light of day. It went straight to video and was saved only by the Roxie Cinema in San Francisco, which showed the film in an unlimited run in 1994. If you've never seen the film, do yourself a favor and avoid spoilers.



FURTHER READING:

Bright Lights Film (note: the article states Michael is a Vietnam veteran, but that is incorrect. Lyle from Dallas is the Vietnam veteran.)

Review at Qwipster

J.T. Walsh

Reflections on J.T. Walsh (warning: PDF)

My entry on "Alibi" was inspired by sixmartini's wonderful post -- and you are reading sixmartinis and the seventh art, right? Shame on you if you're not. As you skim through the screencaps here you may see some very similar to what sixmartinis already posted, which I promise you was completely unintentional. Her entry apparently worked some unconscious mojo on me. The visuals sixmartini chooses stay with me for a long time, and I truly love that about her blog.

"Alibi", an early talkie from 1929, opens on a semi-silent expressionist scene, the forced metronome cadence of prisoners slowly replaced by sunlight, then freedom, then the rhythmic tapping of dancing girls as Chick Williams (blog fave Chester Morris) is released from prison.

That night he dines at Bachman's club with club owner Buck Bachman, Buck's girl Diamond Daisy, and Chick's girl Joan Manning (Eleanore Griffith). Buck assures Chick that everyone knows he was framed by the corrupt local police. Nearby a table of peculiar men, one smoking a joint, look on. The craziest and allegedly least sober of the group approaches the table and hits on Joan. He is introduced as Billy Morgan (Regis Toomey), one of Buck's "brokers". At Daisy's encouragement he finagles a horrified Joan's address.

During the scene at Bachman's there is a lengthy tracking shot from the back of the room to the table where Chick and his friends are seated. Inspired by Roger Ebert's recent article entitled "How to Read a Movie", and knowing that early talkies had nearly stationary cameras due to the new, cumbersome technology, I watched the scene closely. I noticed patrons slyly moving out of the way of the approaching camera, including an entire table and chairs set which were whisked off to the right to make way for the shot. For a 1929 film, the camera movement is much less static than one would expect, although still nowhere approaching the fluidity that had been achieved in the silent era.

The next morning Tommy (Pat O'Malley) shows up at Joan's house. Tommy is a police officer who works with Joan's father Sgt. Pete Manning. Joan and Tommy have recently broken off a relationship because Joan, having had a policeman for a father, doesn't want to have one for a husband. Sgt. Manning, showing angry loyalty to his job and his fellow officers, is upset with his daughter for dumping Tommy and dating Chick. That Joan also believes Chick was framed positively enrages him. Joan makes it clear she thinks the police are corrupt, and that includes Tommy and her father.

That night a fur store is robbed. The alarm is sounded by an officer who, in return, is shot by the gang that robbed the store. The police immediately suspect local gangster Soft Malone. Tommy and Sgt. Manning return to Manning's apartment to discuss the case, and bring in another policeman, Danny McGann, to help them out. Danny McGann is an undercover cop posing as the drunk and creepy Billy Morgan we saw earlier; his identity is a ruse to infiltrate Bachman's club. When Joan returns to the apartment she recognizes Danny as Billy. When her father says he's going to pin the fur robbery and policeman's murder on Chick, she threatens to expose Danny's undercover identity in revenge.

Joan repeatedly tells Tommy that she loves Chick, while Tommy repeatedly tells Joan he wants to marry her. He'll even quit the force for her, once he captures this cop killer, but she is not convinced.

Joan is played by the rather noncommittal Eleanore Griffith, a successful stage actress who appeared in only two films (after adding an "e" to her name, for unknown reasons). Her most famous appearance was as the "baby vampire" Babuschka in "The Last Waltz", a huge stage hit. During the next couple of years one could find Griffith in many glamour shots in theater magazines, and as you can see in the "baby vampire" link, her personal life was even the subject of press releases. The career boost in 1922 appears to have led to her first film appearance in "Cardigan" (1922), a film I presumed had been lost but which a reviewer for the All Movie Guide appears to have seen. Then again, All Movie Guide has been known to make mistakes, so who knows. At any rate, Griffith returned to the stage after "Cardigan" and was not seen on film for another 7 years. Her last appearances on either stage or screen were in 1929, the year of "Alibi", and there is almost nothing to be found about Griffith past 1930. Did this movie kill her career? She certainly stayed in Hollywood, penning stories and being credited for writing 2 movies in the 1930s, but as far as I can tell she never acted again.

Daisy (Mae Busch) comes upstairs to fetch Joan and is surprised to find Danny, who she knows only as Billy, in the apartment. Danny pretends to be a drunkard again and excuses himself by saying he just followed up on Joan's address to ask her out. Daisy believes it and Joan doesn't expose him... yet. She won't reveal who he really is as long as her father doesn't falsely pin the murder on Chick.

Chick, it seems, has an alibi: Joan. During the robbery and murder Chick and Joan were busy watching a show... and eloping! Ha! The blustery Sergeant throws a fit in Technicolor and tosses Chick out of the house while locking his daughter into a room. Chick smugly leaves and Joan sneaks out a window. Take that, copper!

The Sergeant and Tommy are done harranguing Joan and locking her in rooms against her will, because now they finally manage to leave the apartment and do some police work. They follow the trail of the robbers' getaway, check show times, and round up a bunch of suspects for line-ups. The line-up is supremely creepy. The men in the audience wear black masks to prevent anyone from identifying them later.

With nothing more than a hunch, Tommy and the Sergeant bring in Soft Malone for questioning. For the first time we wonder if Chick really is guilty; Malone has all the same alibis and ticket stubs that Chick had. The cops scare Malone by forcing him to put his fingerprints on a gun that they plan to use in a frame-up -- they're going to murder him and claim "self-defense." They then menacingly open a window with the implication that they'll toss him to his death if he doesn't confess that Chick was in on the murder. Obviously Malone confesses, and as far as I can tell the audience is supposed to believe the confession. I, however, wasn't sure.

Back at Bachman's the lead dancing girl Toots (Irma Harrison) and Billy/Danny flirt with each other. The adorable Toots and the slimebucket Billy/Danny have a thing, all while Toots thinks she's fallen for a mobster's "broker" of course. They're interrupted when Chick arrives and heads straight for Buck Bachman's office in a tizzy: he needs a better alibi because there is a missing 5 minutes in his story.

I'd just like to interrupt this summary to say WOW, what an amazing art deco office! Clearly, Buck and Chick are innocent of any wrongdoing. Anyone who decorates their office like this is an amazing man, a humanitarian, a fine upstanding citizen. C'mon, just look at that wallpaper!

Chick calls Billy/Danny into the office and asks him to lie for them in order to account for that missing 5 minutes, which he agrees to do. Billy claims he needs to go meet a man for some club business, but Chick offers to let Billy have the meeting at Bachman's. Chick calls Billy's contact for him, unaware that Billy's contact is actually a policeman at a pre-determined phone number.

Joan, lonely and impatient for her new husband, arrives at Buck's office. She becomes suspicious when she learns Billy is the alibi for the lost 5 minutes, so she calls her policeman ex-boyfriend Tommy to check into the situation. Tommy isn't at the police station so she uses the pre-determined police phone number, the same one Billy/Danny used moments earlier. Chick immediately knows what's going on and realizes the cops have been alerted and are likely on their way. He manages to send Joan off without her realizing there's a problem.

Chick and two henchmen confront Billy and a tense stare-down ensues. When Toots barges into the office looking for Billy, he is distracted just long enough to be shot. Chick and the henchmen escape while Tommy, the Sergeant, and other police officers arrive just in time for Billy/Danny to die in Tommy's arms in the most protracted death scene since Shakespeare. Seriously, a quick "I would like to have seen Montana" would have sufficed. Did anyone really care about the sleazebucket Billy? He looked like Gilbert Gottfried when pretending to be drunk, but sadly did not have as smooth a voice, nor the pure animal magnetism, of Gottfried.

A fight erupts between Daisy and Buck back at their apartment. Buck beats Daisy for being disrespectful; Daisy laments that she gave up a good husband for Buck. When Joan arrives, though, they go back to pretending to be happy. While they're out of the room Joan innocently calls the police again, still looking for Tommy, and tells them where she's at. They quickly figure that the now-wanted Chick will be at Buck's apartment. Buck's fabulously appointed art deco apartment.

When Chick returns, Joan realizes something is wrong and becomes frightened. Chick tells her the whole truth. Tommy and the police arrive just then, Tommy swearing that he will kill Chick in revenge for killing Danny.

Chick cowers in abject fear, begging and pleading for his life, but to no avail. As he runs in a panic Tommy shoots him in the back. Chick emits a high-pitched howl and collapses on the floor... in a faint. Tommy fired blanks, not real bullets. With undisguised contempt -- contempt at Chick's lack of manliness more than his murdering spree -- he kicks Chick awake. Chick runs out of the suite and onto the roof in a last-ditch effort to escape. He jumps for the next building over and just misses, falling to his death. Tommy and Joan share a moment on the roof as the movie fades out.

If there is one flaw in this film it's that the foreshadowing and intent of the characters is muddled. During the film Daisy, played by the inimitable Mae Busch, snots off to Buck several times. By the conclusion of the film you realize that Daisy and Buck were supposed to positively hate each other and they just pretend to be content in front of Joan as a ruse. Instead, Daisy's quips seem like the normal sassy banter of strong late-silent/early-talkies era woman.

Chick's guilt is also questionable throughout the film. Chick has so little to say that many in the audience must have had no idea that he was truly guilty. Further, the pacing from the moment we are finally certain he is involved in the crime -- when he asks Billy/Danny to help him with his alibi -- to the moment we see with our own eyes that he's a cop killer is tedious. It makes the revelation less important, less urgent. There is also very little made of the police coercing a confession from Soft Malone in a horrifyingly improper manner. We expect there to be some kind of ambiguity, an exploration of whether doing the wrong thing for the right reason makes everything okay. Or at the least a comparison of the criminal's behavior versus the police's behavior, something. Instead we get the bad guy defeated and the girl goes with the good guy and no one questions anything.

Despite the methods of the police in this film being questionable at best, "Alibi" was banned in several cities, namely Chicago, for its "disrespect" to the police and their procedures. Perhaps people were more upset at seeing corrupt police, but I suspect the assumption of the day was that any method, ethical or not, was appropriate as long as the bad guy was caught. Censors also did not approve of showing the murder of police officers. Here in Kansas the film was banned specifically for the scene where a gangster thumbs his nose at a police officer.

Oh, and another flaw: Chester Morris doesn't have nearly enough screen time. You can tell he's a newbie actor, still rough around the edges and with some timing issues, but the sheer raw emotion of his performance is outstanding. Visceral, direct, uncomplicated -- he must have been a revolution in his day, and it's easy to see why he was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance.

There are some absolutely lovely images in this film. I'll leave you with a few more after the Further Reading links.

FURTHER READING:
goatdog's entry on Alibi
BFI's entry on Alibi
Apocalypse Later: A Cinematic Travelogue
poster image courtesy Vitaphone Varieties

The Film Doctor recently challenged me to compile a list of my favorite films. The catch is that I must have one film per letter of the alphabet. The whole alphabet? That's at least 15 films, maybe more! The worst part was trying to pick just one film for some of the letters. I failed a few times and resigned myself to listing runners up when I absolutely had to. "C" was a particularly difficult letter for me.

This meme is originally from Blog Cabins and I'm supposed to challenge others, but since I'm already in the blogosphere doghouse for my recent demand that you tell me your 3 favorite movies (what the hell was I thinking?), I will keep this voluntary.

***

All About Eve (runners up: A Star is Born 1937, A Star is Born 1954, The Asphalt Jungle)

The Best Years of Our Lives (runner up: Blade Runner)

The Conversation (runners up: The Cranes are Flying, Charley Varrick, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Carnival of Souls)

Dr Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

8 1/2 (runner up: Electra Glide in Blue)

Femme Fatale

The General

The Haunting

The Innocents

Jewel Robbery (runner up: "Ji Ji", aka "Miracles", aka "Black Dragon")

The Killing

The Little Foxes

Millers Crossing (runner up: Metropolis)

Night of the Hunter

Out of the Past

Point Blank (runner up: Pulp Fiction)

Quatermass and the Pit

Rope (runner up: Rashomon)

Skyscraper Souls (runners up: Sunset Blvd, Shichinin no samurai, Silence of the Lambs)

The Third Man (runners up: Touch of Evil, Tacones lejanos aka High Heels)

The Unknown

Victor/Victoria

The Wrong Box

X: The Man with X-Ray Eyes

Young Frankenstein

Ziegfield Girl

So what's your list? If you do this meme, let me know so I can add a link to your entry here. Here's a few who took my completely voluntary and not at all demanded at virtual gunpoint challenge:

Thrilling Days of Yesteryear: Now I know my ABC’s

Matt at The Art and Culture of Movies

Princess Fire and Music

Thad at ThadBlog (and yes, I'm pretending it's a real list)

Beerman at 3B Theater: Micro-Brewed Reviews

Sam Wilson and Jack Pendarvis answer the meme in the comments section.

It's announcement day here at She Blogged By Night, but don't worry, patron saint El Brendel is here to cheer you up.

Folks, I am tired and I am stifled. Things need changin' around here. For those of you who read only the first few sentences of a post, read this:

1. The Monday Morning Question is going on hiatus until after the holidays.

2. The self-imposed PG rating of She Blogged By Night is being thrown over for my new, improved, nutritious R+ rating. Now with more fiber! The adult language starts now, so if naughty words bother you, consider yourself warned.

If you'd like to know the details, read on.

For the past few weeks I've found myself unable to keep up with a lot of things that need doin'. With the holiday season upon us, I've decided to take a hiatus on the Monday Morning Questions until after the beginning of the year. Don't worry, they won't go away -- they're the most popular part of the blog.

I will still be posting to SBBN. I have some reviews/summaries to finish up, an old entry that needs a thorough renovation, new sidebar elements to add, several edits to make on various entries, and possibly even a blogathon to create. My blogroll is also a mess and needs to be organized; if you're not listed on the blogroll and probably should be, that's why.

As for the tone, language, and content of the blog, well, it has to change. When I started SBBN over a year ago I decided to keep things as close to G or PG as possible. My reasoning was that I would reach a larger audience, maybe get linked more, and avoid unintentionally offending people. I have to tell you, though, that keeping my jibes and language in check is not easy. For good or ill, I express myself through sarcasm, profanity, off-color comments and an occasionally rude tone. Just ask anyone who knows me from Usenet or LiveJournal, they will confirm, heartily and with great gusto, just how crude I can be.

Further, as I discover more and more movie bloggers who are an absolute joy to read, I realized that my own creative energies (such as they are) are stifled when I censor my language. And alls I gots is my language. I'll never have the raw inventiveness of the contributors of LAZY EYE THEATRE; I'll never be as eloquent as Dean Treadway of Filmicability; I'll never be the genius of prose and research that Jeff Cohen of Vitaphone Varieties is. I have to rely on the precious few talents I do have to make this ding dang hobby of mine readable, and my talents sadly hinge upon profanity and sarcasm. True story.

Now I shall be blunt: I will say fuck. I may say fuck a lot. Not just fuck, but fucker, fucking, fuckwad, fuckwit, fuckknocker, fucklozenge, fucktruck and Fuckabees. I, like the late lamented Bill Hicks, may decide to rant and rave about social issues for several long paragraphs before popping the 'chute and floating gently down to Dick Joke Island in the final paragraph. I promise you I won't work blue unless I feel it is appropriate, and if I ever go too far, you are expected to take me to task and learn me some manners.

Photos and screencaps will always be SFW. (I once inadvertently opened an email at work that contained the nude photo of Joan Crawford. That was fun. I will not inflict similar "fun" on you, dear reader.)

Another reason I want to change the tone of the blog is because there are many movies I want to blog about which require frank discussion. It was difficult to keep my review of "The Maltese Bippy" family-friendly, for example, and plenty of movies from the 60s on have adult content. When thinking about films I love that have a more modern tone, such as "The Innocents", I realized discussion of even subtext of many of these films would be almost impossible to do in a G-rated fashion.

I'm excited about these changes, and while I don't expect anyone else to be excited, I do hope you're not all completely mortified.

Good morning, chickadees. Sorry for missing last week's question, I was overwhelmed with real life responsibilities.

This week's question: What actors do you feel are underrated or underappreciated?

As you can see, my answer is Henry Daniell. No, it's not Errol, because he's a Mr Suave Dude who gets all the love in the world.

Originally I had planned on giving a bit of background and/or biographical info on Daniell, but there's very little out there about him. The IMDb bio is inaccurate (it lists him as dying in 1964 when he passed away on Halloween of 1963) and the Wikipedia article has no sources.

That's my point: Daniell is sadly underappreciated. He was a solid actor with a lengthy stage career, who was featured in a dozen must-see classics like "The Philadelphia Story", "The Body Snatcher", "Lust For Life", and "My Fair Lady". He was instantly recognizable, had a distinguished voice and played the suave villain with plenty of flair. Yet we know absolutely nothing about him, there are no fan pages for him online, no festivals, and you don't go into a film forum or read a list of the top actors and find someone saying they're a big Henry Daniell fan.

I am a big Henry Daniell fan, though -- I tend to believe character and supporting actors are far more intriguing and talented than leads who rely on star power or personality -- and even I don't mention him often enough. So here it is, my online declaration of love for Henry Daniell.

What underrated or underappreciated actor do you want to send a little love to?