Art, Movies and Disenchantment

I had a conversation with a friend in high school, sometime back during the Lincoln administration, about art and society. She was a talented piano player and singer who was becoming disenchanted with art. She said that, with everything that was going on in the world, it seemed to her a life pursuing art was a pointless life, that there was so much more that was so much more important to do. My comment then was that a society without art is a dead society and, therefore, pursuing art might be the most important thing one could do; assuring the preservation of society itself. (My friend, by the way, ended up going to Juilliard, so she seemed to have gotten past her disenchantment.)

On the recommendation of my father, I recently watched the movie Before the Rain. I had never heard of it, but a few days after he mentioned it I was about to go to bed when I noticed that it was about to start on cable TV. I decided to stay up to watch it. (As I get older, it seems, staying up late isn't as easy or often as fun as it once was, so this decision had some weight.) I'm not sure what to say about my reaction to it. It is a wholly sobering film. A very good film, extremely well made, but I had trouble sleeping that night. The movie uses three distinct stories (which eventually pull together into one story) to examine the cultural posturing and machismo that engenders the kind of hatred and distrust that can have had the terrible events in Bosnia happen, hatred that even allows families to kill other members of their own family if the posturing is questioned.

I have recently been wondering, worrying and fretting about what I see as a world being split between increasingly dogmatic extremes, each increasingly less willing to see any common ground. No matter what your ideology, this trend seems to me to be disastrous. I see the world being split in two, or four. Or twenty. It's happening everywhere, including here in the states where we have been more divided since the last couple of presidential elections than, I think, in the rest of our history. In much of the rest of the world (and to a lesser degree here) there is bloodshed everywhere, hatred and posturing and young men with guns, overflowing testosterone and no common sense. Sometimes, I lose all hope that we will be able to pull ourselves out of the mess we've created on the planet before some young man with a nuclear bomb ends it all. With all this going on around us, I wonder how I can justify dedicating myself to a life of art. And then, I remind myself that a society without art is a dead society.

This is not just an empty, philosophical stance. Consider that one of the first things the Nazis did when they came to power was declare which art was sanctioned and which art was "decadent". What they considered decadent was anything that showed any creative or original voice, not necessarily things that were sexual or salacious as the word decadent might imply. Art is often considered dangerous by totalitarian governments or dogmatic people. Again, not necessarily only art that questions policy, incites descent or demands change, but any art that questions anything because questions cause thinking and thinking is very dangerous.

Do I think movies (or any art) like Before the Rain will change the world? Probably not by themselves. But the very act of making and viewing such movies has an effect that I think can be cumulative. Do I think movies (or any art) need to be as intense and dire as Before the Rain to have an effect? Absolutely not. Any movie (or any art) that has any effect on an audience; laughter, tears, thought, confusion, pleasant feeling, awe, wonder, even, probably, horror and disgust, has an effect on the collective consciousness and keeps the collective mind open and primed for expansion. The art itself doesn't necessarily have to be what causes the expansion.

Do light movies such as Princess Bride or even Princess Diaries contribute to this? Absolutely. Do dark movies such as Silence of the Lambs, perhaps, or Saw or Texas Chainsaw Massacre? I really have no idea. I don't often watch those types of movie because I really don't like the effect they have on me, but I would be loath to censor them in case they do, somehow, contribute positively. Certainly enough people enjoy them that they continue to be made.

So. I don't know if what I do is the most important thing I could do, but it is close to the only thing I can do so what's to be done? Even in those moments when I despair, I remind myself that what I do is contributing to the evolution of the mind of man and I find some peace.


Geoff Hoff is co-owner of Joseph Coaler Productions and, with Steve Mancini, co-wrote the satirical novel "Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend".

And Then There's Robert Altman

As you can probably tell, I love movies. I love them unapologeticly. I would often rather go to a movie than have a good meal or sit by a roaring fire with a brandy or watch the waves of a blue and green ocean spread toward me an a beautiful summer day. As I say, I love movies more than is reasonable for an adult person. Because of that, I will often forgive in movies what might be seen as flaws. I also love passion and artistic risk, so some of my favorite films are those that don't quite work but the attempt was grand, movies like Altman's Quintet (was I one of perhaps three people who ever saw this film?) and 3 Women (which was inspired by a nightmare Altman had one night). Robert Altman is a film maker who often takes grand risks, sets himself grand challenges. Usually, the risks pay off and he conquers the challenges, but even when he fails, he does so brilliantly. It's no wonder all the big stars in Hollywood are willing to play cameos (and often parody themselves) in his movies.

The first Altman movie I ever saw was Nashville. It was sprawling and unwieldy and breathtaking, the story of several musicians, both established and new, talented and not, performing in and around Nashville during a political campaign and their fans and fanatics and the wannabe hangers on. Although Altman denies that it was his intent, it presents an odd, compelling, satirical cross section of Americana. (Barbara Harris is a revelation - why did she quit acting and become a casting director, I wonder.) From the opening credits, which hilariously resemble a frenetic television ad for a music compilation, to the political rally at the end, nothing is predictable, everything surprises and I was swept along the ride down the rapids.

The next movie of his I saw was A Wedding, which was much smaller in scale and didn't quite hit the mark as well. I still liked it of course. In that movie, Altman set himself the challenge of presenting a huge cast of characters in a single setting in such a way that the audience ends up knowing and following them all. On this point he was very successful and I really admire him for the attempt, but the movie itself didn't quite flow as well as Nashville did.

Another thing I admire about Altman is that he continues to produce, no mater what. He simply doesn't care. If people stop liking his movies, he does television. And it's always innovative television (Tanner '88 has been copied many times by lessor talents). If he can't get television work, he directs theater. And then he comes back to the big screen and produces something stunning like Gosford Park, which pretends to be a murder mystery but is really a biting examination of class distinction and social mores in 1930s England, just as the "privileged class" was beginning to disintegrate.

Altman has dabbled in surrealism (Brewster Mccloud, 3 Women), social commentary (Nashville, The Player, Short Cuts), war (M*A*S*H), character study (Vincent & Theo), translations of theater (Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean and Streamers) and translations of cartoons into movie musicals (Popeye). Although I haven't yet seen everything he's done (he's done so very much) I will see anything he does.


Geoff Hoff is co-owner of Joseph Coaler Productions and, with Steve Mancini, co-wrote the satirical novel "Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend".

Brando and Newman and Me

This week's entry is a short one. It started as another email conversation with my father, poet Rowell Hoff, who currently lives with his wife Carol in China.

Dad:

We just watched last night the Paul Newman movie "Nobody's Fool". We sort of think he may be, if there is one, the best actor around. What I notice is that I forget about Newman; the person I am seeing is the person in the movie.

I read a review of this movie, the reviewer mentioned that Newman and Brando started out at the same time, the same classes, etc. But what happened to Brando after all? He started maybe imitating himself, maybe just tired of it all, maybe confused (certainly confused!) maybe whatever. Newman perfected his art, there is no other word for it. Did you see him in the movie about Earl Long (don't remember the title)? Cool Hand Luke? Butch Cassidy? The Sting? etc. etc. etc.

Me:
That movie was called Blaze, but no, I haven't seen it. Interesting that you should mention Paul Newman. He is by far my writing partner's favorite actor, Cool Hand Luke his favorite film. And of course both Butch Cassidy and The Sting are two of my absolute top films. I too think he is close to the best actor around. Nobody's Fool was not a great film, but certainly a very good one, and he was fine in it. That particular class at the Actor's Studio produced a lot of wonderful actors, not the least of which were my two acting instructors in college who met and married there. (In other words, my training was second hand the same as Newman's and Brando's. Sort of... Okay, that's really inconsequential to the conversation at hand, but what the hell.)

In terms of raw acting ability, I do think Brando far outweighs Newman, but Brando got very bitter about the industry very early on and Newman just dove in and made it work for himself, becoming a director, producer and better actor. After just "phoning in" (I hate that phrase, but it does describe it) performances for many years, and doing things just for the money, (such as Superman for goodness sakes. A fun film, but what the hell is he doing in it? Not much. Feh) Brando did kind of disappear. He didn't make a movie for almost ten years after Apocalypse Now (what a performance that was!) and The Formula. You can see that he probably had resistance to his whole life by looking at his physical body over those years. Then he started doing some small roles in things and it looked like he was choosing movies he wanted to do and really did his homework. He had only one scene in a movie called Dry White Season with Donald Sutherland in which he never stood up from his chair but walked away with the film. (It was one of those films that bother me a bit because it is about a non-white ethnic group, but seen through White Man's eyes as if that were the only way to communnicate the strange, bizarre Other. Or as if to say, the white oppressor isn't all that bad, see? Look how he feels for the downtrodden. Feh. In this case, the movie is about the struggle of blacks in South Africa but seen through Sutherland's eyes, who plays an upper middle class Afrikaner. But Brando is so wonderful, subtle, he almost makes up for that.) Of course, he followed that up with The Freshman, a movie even he disparaged.

Brando did a slightly bigger role in a caper film a few years before he died called The Score that was a hoot (although one major plot point didn't make a lot of sense) with two other actors that are close to being in Newman and Brando's league: Edward Norton and Robert De Niro. (De Niro was also an Actor's Studio alum, although much later.) I think it was Brando's last movie. Before that he went back and forth between great stuff and trash, following Don Juan DeMarco, a delightful film in which he is delightful, with The Island of Dr. Moreau, a dreadful film in which he is dreadful.

Newman has done some clunkers (don't see Twilight, even though it has another couple of favorites of mine in it, it's almost unwatchable...) but I will see anything he's in and I rarely see a film just because Brando is in it.

Geoff Hoff is co-owner of Joseph Coaler Productions and, with Steve Mancini, co-wrote the satirical novel "Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend".

Baseball Movies (Believe it or Not) and Passion

I recently saw the end of Field of Dreams on television, one of those movies that whenever I stumble across it I end up watching from that point to the end. (Two others are The Usual Suspects and Shawshank Redemption. I've watched the end of those movies more times than I can count.) When Field of Dreams first came out I almost didn't go see it because I thought it was a movie about baseball and I simply wasn't interested. I did go, it was the only thing playing at the time that a friend wanted to see, and I'm very glad I did. It's sort of a modern fairly tale, I guess, and it's about a lot of things but mostly it's about father's and sons. I've probably seen it all the way through twenty or more times and I doubt I've ever made it to the end without crying. Okay, my mother used to say she cried at supermarket openings and I am her son. Don't get me wrong, it's funny and charming, not sad at all, but the emotional impact always hits me broadside.

Interesting that I was objecting because it was a baseball movie; turns out three of my favorite films (of which there are hundreds, I must confess) are baseball movies: Field of Dreams, of course, then Bull Durham (another movie with Kevin Costner, who I insist I don't like, but really love in both of these films) and The Natural with Robert Redford (who I almost always love.) League of Their Own is another good baseball movie, not high on my favorites list but good in any case.

Bull Durham is interesting for many reasons. It was the first time I saw Tim Robins, who I have come to think is one of the bigger talents of the last few decades, and who is close to the top of the list of people I want to meet and work with. The next thing I saw him in was Jacob's Ladder (a strangely compelling, surreal contemplation on war, responsibility and individual redemption that stays with me even though I've only seen it a very few times) and I was shocked to realize it was the same actor who played the punk kid in Bull Durham.

In any case, Field of Dreams is about a man "who never did a crazy thing in his life until he heard The Voice," which tells him to plow a third of his corn field under and build a baseball diamond on it so that Shoeless Joe Jackson (played by Ray Liotta fairly early in his career) can redeem himself from the 1919 Chicago White Sox scandal. But, as is often the case where it's used in American stories from Bernard Malamud on, baseball is really a symbol for something else, something often quintessentially American, but also something universal. Baseball is the one thing Costner's character had to connect with his father, who died before they reconciled, and is something he teaches to his daughter. It is the one thing he can use to connect on a personal level with his favorite author (played magnificently larger than life by James Earl Jones), even though the author refuses to admit he ever liked the sport. It makes me want to be a fan of the sport so that I can have that same connection with my father. Of course, that wouldn't help, as my father isn't a fan of it, either, as far as I know, so we'll have to stick with movies and writing as our bond.

Often, there is something intangible that makes a movie work. In the case of Field of Dreams, a lot of its success was due to the passion that everyone who made the film had for the project. They all believed in it and that belief practically glows from the screen. Passion is my favorite word and I am attracted to that kind of passion even when it is directed toward something I am not passionate about.

In Bull Durham, I think, baseball stands in for passion. And it's a very passionate film. It's a very different movie from Field of Dreams, much more lusty, and Costner is again quite good in it. It was where I fell in love with Susan Sarandon and, as I say, where I discovered Tim Robins. (It seems it was where Susan Sarandon discovered him, also, they've been living together ever since.) It makes the distinction between youthful, undisciplined passion, embodied by Robins' character, and that of Costner's, no less lusty, but grown up, matured, partly because of the added element of respect. One of the best speeches Costner has ever delivered on screen is the "what I believe in" speech. What he believes in includes the hanging curve ball, the soul and the small of a woman's back. Every time I watch that film, by the end of that speech, I believe in all those things, also.

Where Field of Dreams finds a powerful emotional core in its gentle examination of family ties and following a dream, Bull Durham is simply a delight from beginning to end. It is delightful to watch this young buck (Robins) be forced to grow up and this slightly over the hill ringer (Costner) fight against making his peace with the world. And Kevin Costner is in both of them, of all things. Who knew?

Geoff Hoff is co-owner of Joseph Coaler Productions and, with Steve Mancini, co-wrote the satirical novel "Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend".

Woody Allen, Manhattan and the Art of Film

Some people don't like, or don't get Woody Allen and wonder why he is so revered. I think he can be brilliant. The films of his that I have liked, I have loved. Manhattan is one of my favorites. Yes, it is, as some might say, about "whiny aimless people with boring neuroses". That, I think, is part of the point. It has always fascinated me that the most mature, stable and intelligent character in it is the teenager played by Muriel Hemingway. The thing I find amazing about it, though, is that practically every shot is a work of art. This is the beginning, I think, of Allen's experimentation with cinematic technique, and it pays off handsomely. I think you could pull any one frame at random from the film and it would be composed brilliantly. And it is composed that way in order to tell the story, not as an end. I find directors that show off beautifully lit and angled shots often get in the way of the film. I find that often of Allen, actually, (take a look at the nausea inducing hand held camera work in Husbands and Wives) but not in Manhattan. In fact, Allen insisted that it be presented on television, VHS or DVD only in widescreen format to keep the integrity of the shots intact, the first (perhaps only?) film maker to ever do so.

And, yes, given that, most of his stories are about whiny aimless people with boring neuroses. I do recommend "Broadway Danny Rose," though, as a charming tribute to spunk. It is (very) loosely based on a real New York talent agent who actually had a roster much like the one portrayed in the film, an agent who took on the oddest of talent, but who believed in them and supported them beyond all reason. The real agent that it's based on had Andrew "Dice" Clay among his talent pool, but most of his acts were odd variety and specialty acts. I haven't seen it in a while, but remember being utterly charmed by it. It is told as a series of tales by actors and performers sitting around a table at a New York deli, trying to outdo each other telling "Danny Rose" stories, until one comes up with the ultimate tale. And there is one scene in a hanger full of Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade floats that I remember as making me almost choke with laughter. Love and Death is also a good film; a fairly silly but intelligent comedy about Napoleon of all things.

Hannah and Her Sisters is another one that I liked a lot. Allen seemed to grow up in an odd way with that film. I mean Allen himself, not necessarily his art or film making. There seemed far less neurotic, juvenile behavior and the situations, characters and issues presented in it also seemed, somehow, more mature.

The latest by Allen, Match Point, surprised me. It was placed in London rather than New York, which everyone seems to think is the main point of departure and the most notable thing about the film, but it was other things about it that surprised me. It is unrelentingly nihilistic, I think, the whole point being that you win or lose completely by chance, by where the ball falls after it hits the top of the net, not by any endemic goodness or strength of character or act of redemption or even effort on your part. This seems to me to be the biggest point of departure from his other films. (And perhaps he needed to travel to London to make that departure.) Yes, his characters have often been obsessed with death (especially the characters he plays) and have been neurotic and frequently even selfish, but there has usually been an underlying goodness, even sweetness in all of his people. Even the animalistic brutes in Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy played by Jose Ferrer and Tony Roberts (what ever happened to him? He used to be the quintessential white bread foil for Allen) learn about the higher levels of love and human relationships by the end of the movie. The performances in Match Point are quite good (not unusual for Woody Allen, who has gotten the best performances ever from many of his actors) and the story is compelling, but his departure of mood and intent left me a bit cold.

There are so many other Allen films that I love (how could I not talk about Zelig or Purple Rose of Cairo, for goodness sake?) but they will have to wait for some future post. Anyway, I think Woody Allen is revered partly because he has experimented with the art of film making and brought it places other film makers haven't had the foresight or courage to go, partly because he tells compelling, interesting and unusual stories, partly because he gets such intimate performances, but mostly because there is simply no other film maker even remotely like him.

Geoff Hoff is co-owner of Joseph Coaler Productions and, with Steve Mancini, co-wrote the satirical novel "Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend".